No Nazi Germany: Effects on the Middle East?

Okay, assume that the Nazis come to power; an authoritarian democratic government muddles through which is probably *fascist-lite, but it's not rampantly aggressive, elections still happen, etc. (They're just meaningless, thanks to the president's power to rule by decree).

But what happens in the Middle East? I can't help but note that the region seems primed for *something*. The Iraqi government fell during the Golden Square Coup, for instance; Egypt's government fell shortly after the war, etc.

But in a world where German is les... Nazi, and the region is exposed to fewer shocks, what would end up happening?

I recognize that this is probably impossible to deal with without going into the fate of Palestine/Israel, but mainly I'm curious if you see a more Soviet-friendly Arab nationalism, with all the fun that entails.
 

Hashasheen

Banned
Okay, assume that the Nazis come to power; an authoritarian democratic government muddles through which is probably *fascist-lite, but it's not rampantly aggressive, elections still happen, etc. (They're just meaningless, thanks to the president's power to rule by decree).

But what happens in the Middle East? I can't help but note that the region seems primed for *something*. The Iraqi government fell during the Golden Square Coup, for instance; Egypt's government fell shortly after the war, etc.

But in a world where German is les... Nazi, and the region is exposed to fewer shocks, what would end up happening?

I recognize that this is probably impossible to deal with without going into the fate of Palestine/Israel, but mainly I'm curious if you see a more Soviet-friendly Arab nationalism, with all the fun that entails.

Bump for the Logic and Reason Offensive!

The Nazi's didn't have that big of an influence later on, but I suppose Baathism could be considered a Arab version of Nazi-lite.

I suppose that there would be no Holocaust or increased Anti-Semitism, so there would be either a smaller Jewish Population because they feel safe in their countries, or a larger one because 6 million didn't die. This could have effect on Yiddish, since 6 million more speakers has a huge effect. See the Non '36 Arab Revolt for more on the Jewish/Israeli benefit, since that's what been mainly going on.
 
You would not have a Jewish state in what is now Israel. You would probably have a Palestinian state, with portions of Jerusalem and the Holy Land treated as reservations for visitors of three major faiths.

To get to this point, you would need a Versailles less punitive on Germany, and far less controlling roles for Hitler and Himmler. But those issues have been well discussed before.

Now, the result is six million more Jews treating Germany and Poland as home, both countries in their Versailles borders. Anti-Semitism would not go away; moves to counter it would wait for the civil rights movements of later decades.

But what about the middle east? Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the many Arab states would not have a Jewish Israel to treat as an encroaching country that had no right to exist. So, does this mean less unity among Muslims? Tremendous pressure will come to claim the petroleum resources in this region. Do more countries retain a strict, Saudi type Islamic code? Or does the region unify against western interests as a whole?
 
Why would these places retain a Strict Saudi type code when they didn't have one at this point in time?

I guess I see this playing out three ways.

On the one hand, you'll see British, French, and so forth enroachment in the region, and probably more efforts at a delayed withdrawal.

But as you point out, Israel is much less likely to happen; it will simply infuriate too many people.
 
An influence would be in Syria and Lebanon as the SSNP and the Lebanese Phalange were influenced by nazism.

 
But in a world where German is les... Nazi, and the region is exposed to fewer shocks, what would end up happening?

I recognize that this is probably impossible to deal with without going into the fate of Palestine/Israel, but mainly I'm curious if you see a more Soviet-friendly Arab nationalism, with all the fun that entails.

Was fairly friendly OTL, no? Nasser for quite a while, Syria, Iraq for all its Fascist inclinations, Algeria, Tunisia, south Yemen...now, if Reza Shah is overthrown at some point, we might get a lefty pro-Soviet Iran, but Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan sans Israel, etc. have pretty strong monarchies. Are we talking explicitly Marxist states?

Bruce
 
If there is no Nazi Germany, I'd expect the Soviet Union to simply kill its own enthusiasm under Stalin and fall apart in the 1960s. The Effects of the Cold War never beginning and the Soviet Union turning into a failed state instead of a aspiring superpower would be huge.

The UK and France will both eventually make an exist from the Middle East, but France probably does so unwillingly and the UK probably disregards the Balfour Declaration and probably leaves Transjordan in place.

With the Soviet Union never really getting very far in global politics, the key political choice is going be whether nations in the middle east oppose their former colonizers or support them for economic inducements. The Shah of Iran is likely to support the West, King Faruq of Egypt is unlikely to do so. But without Israel to polarize them, this is at best a mid-level issue.

The Middle East is still well on its way into turning into a pile of dictatorships. Fascist Italy isn't going to let go of Libya at all, so Libya is probably turning into a nationalist trainwreck. Pakistan shearing off of India probably happens as well, although it would probably be later chronologically than OTL.

So, by the modern day, Islamic Fundamentalism is rising in the Middle East but may well be directed at oppressive governments instead of the West for cold war interventions that never happened.

Don't forget, without Nazi Germany, Japan would not feel like it had a "narrow window" to act and the United States would probably remain a sleeping giant for some time, perhaps all the way to the present day. There would probably not be a counterfactual Second World War, since Japan would not fight the entire world by itself.

The implications of a Soviet Union slowly dying out, the Anglo-French Alliance at least nominally running the world, and America in a deep sleep, are going to totally rewrite the Middle East--it'll probably wind up going into major wars against itself and some kind of "Arab Nation" taking over, perhaps dominated by either Iraq or Egypt. This would probably happen in the 1960s-70s and be completed by 1995.

By the present day this Arab State would be a major economic power, probably facing Islamic Fundamentalists as its primary form of opposition. The Arab State probably will not include Libya or Iran, but otherwise, it is essentially united the Entire Middle East.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
USSR will be lot better of with a collapse in the 60ties instead of of the 90ties, but it will not end up as a failed state, even today after 30 years more of communism it isn't even close to a failed state. A "collaps" in the 60ties will look more like the Chinas change from communism to capitalism except it will have a lot higher GNP per capita compared to the west than China does. So USSR will likely evolve into a quasy Fascist state with socialist trapping, before it late bloom into a Democracy.
 
USSR will be lot better of with a collapse in the 60ties instead of of the 90ties, but it will not end up as a failed state, even today after 30 years more of communism it isn't even close to a failed state. A "collaps" in the 60ties will look more like the Chinas change from communism to capitalism except it will have a lot higher GNP per capita compared to the west than China does. So USSR will likely evolve into a quasy Fascist state with socialist trapping, before it late bloom into a Democracy.

I don't even see why it would transform after Stalin died. It didn't in OTL, after all, and Kruschev was about as anti-Stalin as you could get.

I guess I'm mainly interested in when does the pot boil over. France left Syria OTL when it was exhausted in 1945; how much longer would it try to stay in the ATL?

What of Egypt's unsteady monarchy?
 

Hashasheen

Banned
I don't even see why it would transform after Stalin died. It didn't in OTL, after all, and Kruschev was about as anti-Stalin as you could get.
Staling was planning a Second Purge before Barbossa, and without that, he could have done it. George Orwell's Big Brother could very well represent the USSR in this scenario.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I don't even see why it would transform after Stalin died. It didn't in OTL, after all, and Kruschev was about as anti-Stalin as you could get.

I don't think it would, it was answer to Blue Max idea that USSR would fall. Likely it would survive up to the same time as OTL, if the oil crisis still happen in 70ties, if not I would give it a decade less.

I guess I'm mainly interested in when does the pot boil over. France left Syria OTL when it was exhausted in 1945; how much longer would it try to stay in the ATL?

What of Egypt's unsteady monarchy?

Honestly I have a hard time seing any monarchies north of Saudi Arabia survive, with the exception of Iran. But without Israel you could see a United Arabic Republic which worked.
 
I don't even see why it would transform after Stalin died. It didn't in OTL, after all, and Kruschev was about as anti-Stalin as you could get.

I guess I'm mainly interested in when does the pot boil over. France left Syria OTL when it was exhausted in 1945; how much longer would it try to stay in the ATL?

It stayed in Vietnam until 1954 OTL in spite of a local resistance a lot more formidable than whatever the Syrians could have thrown at them, and there wasn't much of a settler population to worry about, as in Algeria: OTOH Vietnam produced quite a bit of wealth in tropical products before the war, and I don't know if they ever got enough out of Syria to just cover the expenses. Some, er, streamlining of the empire seems likely to occur before long even in the absence of WWII.

What of Egypt's unsteady monarchy?

Well, without WWII Farouk probably doesn't have to deal with the embarrassment of the British establishing tighter controls in 1941, but I suspect he wouldn't have lasted much longer than OTL in a world in which monarchies were becoming increasingly old-fashioned. The question is, if a revolutionary government overthrew the king, would the British bother to intervene as long as they initially promised to respect UK rights with respect to the canal? Even without WWII, India is going independent by the end of the 40's one way or another (indeed, some have argued that the tensions leading up to WWII delayed Indian independence) and after India goes, there is less of a pressing need to control the canal.

It's hard to say what the USSR's role in all this is after Stalin dies: I find Max's claim that Stalin sans WWII "kills the enthusiasm" and brings about the collapse of the USSR rather dubious: to use Valdemar's analogy, Mao's death (and there was a man with a reverse Midas touch: everything he touched after 1949 turned into shit) did not bring about the collapse of China. The mechanisms of tyranny are all in place at his death, and Kruschev and et al are sure as hell not going to let any inner doubts about the validity of the system prevent them from applying them vigorously to maintain control.

What I do think is that there would be a bigger anti-Stalin reaction after his death in a no WWII-situation: not a switch over to capitalism as occured in China, but a more thoroughgoing move to reform.Faeelin, Kruschev inherited a system which after all had beat the Nazis, added Eastern Europe to the communist empire, duplicated the atom bomb, and seen 1/5 of humanity join their side. It was rather less clear that a clean break was needed than in Mao's case: I expect Kruschev (if he still gets the job: Butterflies may well lead to receiving a bullet in his neck sometime before 1953) would still makes some soothing noises as to the times when Stalin was right, but would feel freer to make more radical changes to the system.

Of course, radical does not necessarly mean useful or effective. Well-meant but badly thought out reform might indeed bring about a collapse of the system such as occured in the USSR OTL in the 80's, but it would not occur because the USSR had "become a failed state" or because Stalin's toadies had given up on Communism.

The trouble is it's hard to see exactly what way it might go. Big Yugoslavia? (Tito era, I mean). Left-fascistic ala mega-Iraq? Economically more capitalist but loudly a champion of the colonized nations? (Hm. One wonders if a TL is possible in which an informal anti-colonial alliance exists between the US and the USSR: not gun-running, perhaps, but a propaganda offensive and free chicken dinners for whatever African or Middle Eastern or SE Asian revolutionary is in town).

Bruce
 
this is sorta a no WW2 thread.

Balbo in Libya was well on the way to turning north Libya into Italy's Fourth Coast, Allowing Italy to Hold it till after Oil is discovered.

Britain's Protectorate over Palestine didn't expire till the 1960's so with no War, the Trickle of Jewish Immigration would have continued for another 12 Years.
I think there would still have been a attempt to establish Israel, only in the '60's.

France's control over it's Empire wouldn't have been disrupted by the whole Free French v Vichy French experience. Both Algeria, and Morocco would have been more stable.

Syria was already semi independent, and without the Fighting of WW2, would have been a much less Radical Nation upon gaining Full Independence.

I Think TTL's Mid East/NAfrica, would be a much calmer, less Radical area.
 
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