Military dictatorship in FRG

[Post]

Germany is a member of NATO at this time.

Does this make it possible that the legitimate German government invokes article 5? I guess not (since it's not an invasion by another country).

Or that if neighboring countries (France, Low Countries, Denmark and UK, maybe Italy too) decide to take action (invade) on request of the legitimate (civilian) government, the military government invokes article 5? I guess not, if NATO hasn't accepted the military government as the legitimate government. If they have, I guess they can, but obviously it's not likely the surrounding countries will accept the military goverment as the legitimate government. But what if only the US has recognised it? Then the US has to decide which allies they value more.

 

[Monk78]

It was smaller than French and British military. The Brits even freaked out over German reunification in 1990 - ITTL they would have fully supported De Gaulle's actions.

Also, expect pro-democratic elements in Germany to throw their lot with France.

As for the US, propping up a West German dictatorship is not worth losing every single one of any other European country, especially when France + Britain still > West Germany in the 1960s.

I agree it will ruffle a lot of feathers but what will Europe do ? Go their own way and leave the NATO alliance ?

 

[Salvador79]

I have a feeling to US leadership of 60s a German military dictatorship on a tight US leash is still far more acceptable than losing most of Europe to soviet influence.

But that was never a threat in the 1960s, for all the Student Riots that went on.

The US might tolerate it post factum, but it would not start it. Which removes the biggest potential for this to hapoen at all.

You need a deeper PoD for that. Neither Johnson, nor even Nixon would try this.

 

[LeX]

What if it's not a dictatorship per se but a situation like Japan where the US backs a conservative establishment party to stem the tide of left-wing populism or something. Then the conservative party dominates federal politics and wins every election with about 70-80% of the vote, turning Germany into a de facto one-party state.

 

[Salvador79]

What if it's not a dictatorship per se but a situation like Japan where the US backs a conservative establishment party to stem the tide of left-wing populism or something. Then the conservative party dominates federal politics and wins every election with about 70-80% of the vote, turning Germany into a de facto one-party state.

Are you familiar with the German political landscape?

That would need a very different 1949.

 

[Orcbuster]

Are you familiar with the German political landscape?

That would need a very different 1949.

Yeah in short this thread shows a massive lack of knowledge of post WWII german politics and society.

European too for that matter.

 

[LeX]

Are you familiar with the German political landscape?

That would need a very different 1949.

Not very. Isn't it basically SPD and CDU plus a few other major parties?

I admit my scenario may be unlikely. But NATO/the US allowing an actual dictatorship of any kind after defeating the Nazis is even more implausible.

 

[Scerus]

There is also the Warsaw Pact / Soviet reaction too.

Presumably a military dictatorship might look into acquiring their own (at least tactical) nuclear weapons arsenal, which would dramatically escalate tensions if NATO doesn't cut them adrift out of embarrassment. Though Washington would be a lot more lenient given communism was seen as a greater threat than barbaric military dictatorships, at least in South America. This is Europe though - which makes this more complicated.

 

[Monk78]

There is also the Warsaw Pact / Soviet reaction too.

Presumably a military dictatorship might look into acquiring their own (at least tactical) nuclear weapons arsenal, which would dramatically escalate tensions if NATO doesn't cut them adrift out of embarrassment. Though Washington would be a lot more lenient given communism was seen as a greater threat than barbaric military dictatorships, at least in South America. This is Europe though - which makes this more complicated.

Germans getting their own independent nukes will not happen. Even for the US regardless of the soviet threat this will cause unnecessary provocation.
USSR might delighted to see such discord in NATO, and may welcome such a development even though publicly they would condemn this “fascist regime “

A German military dictatorship does not have to be a Latin American style barbarism ,they could use more sophisticated and subtle methods of repression and propaganda. A greater alliance with church , and right wing Christian fundamentalists groups in US. They might even go out of their way to develop really close ties with Israel offering them military assistance.

 

[Salvador79]

Not very. Isn't it basically SPD and CDU plus a few other major parties?

Yes. And the SPD had given up on full socialism and made their peace with a welfarist market economy in the Godesberg conference in 1959. The only relevant third party in the 1960s were the Free Democrats, i.e. the liberals. There was not a hint of a surge of leftist populism at the ballot box.

I admit my scenario may be unlikely. But NATO/the US allowing an actual dictatorship of any kind after defeating the Nazis is even more implausible.

Yes, I agree with that. The "leftist surge - then CDU/CSU as LDP equivalent" version has 0.0001% plausibility, and the coup has 0.0000000001%, if this is going to be the PoD, and that's a bold estimation ;-)
Mind you, you can have all of that with a PoD somewhere in the 1940s. But the world would look quite unrecognisable then.

 

[NedStark]

The US might tolerate it post factum, but it would not start it. Which removes the biggest potential for this to hapoen at all.

De Gaulle and the British wouldn't, though, even post factum, and the US wouldn't risk losing two nuclear-armed democracies to prop up a German dictatorship.

 

[Tolkiene]

Yes. And the SPD had given up on full socialism and made their peace with a welfarist market economy in the Godesberg conference in 1959.

Yep. And even before that it was anti-communist. No surprise, given how the SPD had been forced to fuse with the Communists to create the SED in East Germany, and what had happened under the Weimar Republic. Kurt Schumacher, leader of the SPD until 1952, famously referred to the Communists as Nazis with a red coat of paint and accused the KPD of being class traitors, as they'd helped undermine the Weimar Republic instead of defending it. After the war he considered them stooges of the Soviet Union.

Schumacher and people like him wanted more state intervention in the economy, but along the lines of what the Labour Party did in post-war Britain. In other words, a mixed economy where certain strategic sectors such as steel and coal are nationalised, but otherwise capitalism is retained.

Which, by the way, wasn't a viewpoint limited to parties on the left. The Ahlener Programme of the CDU demanded exactly that. But the more 'left-wing' elements in the CDU such as Jakob Kaiser lost out to Adenauer and Erhard. And when it became clear that the 'social market economy' was a vote-winner the SPD embraced the consensus in the Godesberg conference.