No Berlin Wall.

Obviously there would have been a substantial brain drain from the DDR, but it would still have survived and more Vietnamese would have been brought in as workers! Remember ultimately having the wall there did not stop this vanished state from going bankrupt anyway!
 
Obviously there would have been a substantial brain drain from the DDR, but it would still have survived and more Vietnamese would have been brought in as workers! Remember ultimately having the wall there did not stop this vanished state from going bankrupt anyway!

The propaganda hit of people fleeing the workers paradise was huge.
 
1. The Soviet Union loses all sorts of face because as Thorf mentioned, the whole "people fleeing from the workers' paradise" was a bit of a public relations issue for the Soviet brand of communism.

2. They won't just lose skilled labor, they'll lose labor in general, something like that without anything to hold back fleeing emigrants would actually lead to population decline in the GDR.

It would never happen, Moscow could never stomach the idea of exposing GDR as a gaping failure that people wanted to leave and it would only make NATO more emboldened to press on Soviet weaknesses.
 
1. The Soviet Union loses all sorts of face because as Thorf mentioned, the whole "people fleeing from the workers' paradise" was a bit of a public relations issue for the Soviet brand of communism.

2. They won't just lose skilled labor, they'll lose labor in general, something like that without anything to hold back fleeing emigrants would actually lead to population decline in the GDR.

It would never happen, Moscow could never stomach the idea of exposing GDR as a gaping failure that people wanted to leave and it would only make NATO more emboldened to press on Soviet weaknesses.


The unskilled labor is the bigger propaganda hit as why are workers fleeing the "worker's paradise"? The professionals are less of a propaganda problem because they aren't workers. Economically the opposite is true. Unskilled labor is easily replaceable. You can get them from anywhere. Good engineers, doctors, scientists and teachers are much harder to replace.
 
Errrm i dont exactly think you can use Vietnamese manpower to replace those losses.

The Vietnamese Colonization of Berlin is something i can support tho. ^_^'
 
Want no Berlin Wall? You have to make the Soviet System work well enough that the people don't want to leave, and it doesn't look like a hellhole to the rest of the world. Good luck.
 
The DDR's government built the Wall because they worked out that if the haemorage of professionals and people of working age people continued at the rate it was the country's economy would implode. so without the Wall the DDR's population will shrink and age until a point is reached where they will have to do something...such as build a Wall. ;)
 
While not ASB necessarily, I did say good luck for a reason.

It isn't ASB up until a certain point.

Certainly there's not much the USSR can do after it's already gone far enough down the path of "we're going to launch a totalitarian state the likes of which the world has never seen and nobody leaves it... or else".

The changes the USSR would need to make would almost certainly butterfly away the Interwar Period and WWII as we know it.
 
It isn't ASB up until a certain point.

Certainly there's not much the USSR can do after it's already gone far enough down the path of "we're going to launch a totalitarian state the likes of which the world has never seen and nobody leaves it... or else".

The changes the USSR would need to make would almost certainly butterfly away the Interwar Period and WWII as we know it.

Yes, this is what I meant.

Really, what killed it was that it was totalitarian. If you prevent that, maybe, but then this scenario wouldn't have happened, as WW2 probably gets butterflied, and replaced by a lot of different separate conflicts.(Latter is a guess based on certain other ATL scenarios.)
 
Perhaps if the Berlin Blockade succeeds and there is no West Berlin?

Every source I've ever read stated that the West would not alow west Berlin to fall if the Airlift failed the allies would go to plan B send armoured colloums to smash their way through to berlin which would fail forcing the Allies to use nukes agianst the soviet counter attack so we have world war iii probably ending in a flattened russia and a radioactive europe.

So things would have to remain the same in regards to Berlin.
 
Every source I've ever read stated that the West would not alow west Berlin to fall if the Airlift failed the allies would go to plan B send armoured colloums to smash their way through to berlin which would fail forcing the Allies to use nukes agianst the soviet counter attack so we have world war iii probably ending in a flattened russia and a radioactive europe.

So things would have to remain the same in regards to Berlin.
Every thing ive seen says that East Germany and the Soviets would always put up the Berlin Wall if West Berlin is on the other side tho. To achieve one impossible goal requires another apparently. :eek:
 
Yes, this is what I meant.

Really, what killed it was that it was totalitarian. If you prevent that, maybe, but then this scenario wouldn't have happened, as WW2 probably gets butterflied, and replaced by a lot of different separate conflicts.(Latter is a guess based on certain other ATL scenarios.)

The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state before and during December 30, 1922, you can't escape that.

Besides that's an incredibly subjective assessment and it betrays your ideological sympathies on the matter. The Soviet Union just has to slowly ease off of some of the worst stuff and perhaps either continue or remake the liberal policies of the 20's USSR.

Beyond a certain point the USSR has to pull a China and ease off the command economy while keeping the political system around.
 
The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state before and during December 30, 1922, you can't escape that.

Besides that's an incredibly subjective assessment and it betrays your ideological sympathies on the matter. The Soviet Union just has to slowly ease off of some of the worst stuff and perhaps either continue or remake the liberal policies of the 20's USSR.

Beyond a certain point the USSR has to pull a China and ease off the command economy while keeping the political system around.

Okay, couple things here I need to establish.

1. I'm not arguing for or against command economics. Rather, what I stress is that we can't judge them from the examples of China or the Soviet Union, because both were totalitarian, where an economic system will be FAR less efficient from issues like corruption. When China economically liberalized, it had to release some grip. It has to tolerate some verbal dissent(complaining on the Internet won't get you insta arrested as an example) because of the costs to maintain those aspects.

2. And? What I'm saying is that the Soviet Union either has to BECOME Democratic, collapse from its inefficiency from totalitarianism, or somehow begin that way.

3. Other totalitarian regimes still had MASSIVE inefficiency despite using market economics(corporatist style, yes, but still market) because of their totalitarian elements.
 
Recently came across Berlin 1961 by Fredrick Kempe, arguing that the DDR might have collapsed earlier due to mass emigration, had the crisis he writes about gone differently -- so if he's to be believed, a 1960-61 PoD would work...
 
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