No Nazi Regime

Had Hitler not been made Chancellor, odds are in the next election as the economy picked up the SDP, Centre, and BVP would all have made sufficient gains to form a coalition government.

Meanwhile, the issues between Hitler and Strasser were becoming more apparent. Strasser was contemplating taking his folks and splitting off from the NSDAP to form a National Socialist Freedom Party that would coalesce with the SPD (the SPD opted against this historically).


So what if a grand coalition had formed under Otto Wels, the Nazi Party split between the Hitlerites and the Strasserites, and the Weimar Republic continued on?
 
What about the Communists? What happens to them?

I assume they continue on. Their support was fairly consistently between 9% and 14% of the vote, and they'd probably get 9% to 11% as things get better economically. I doubt they'd ever be invited to be part of the formation of a government - especially considering Stalin told them not to.
 
If Hitler isn't made Chancellor in '33, the alternative won't be the SPD, but given the routine use of Article 48, some boring technocrat at best, a Hugenberg at worst. Basically you'd see something like the pre-34 Nazi regime, only Jews are only barred from public office, and the other parties are still window dressing.
 
I'm wondering about the longer run, through the 1940s & 50s. Without rearmament Germany has some economic advantages over France, Belgium, Poland and others. In general all of Europe will see rising prosperity into the 1960s. Such conditions tend to 'liberalize' social trends and politics.

If the USSR becomes expansionist then we might see a rehabilitation of Germany and replacement of the Versailles treaty in order to build a strong anti Soviet coalition.
 

Deleted member 1487

I'm wondering about the longer run, through the 1940s & 50s. Without rearmament Germany has some economic advantages over France, Belgium, Poland and others. In general all of Europe will see rising prosperity into the 1960s. Such conditions tend to 'liberalize' social trends and politics.

If the USSR becomes expansionist then we might see a rehabilitation of Germany and replacement of the Versailles treaty in order to build a strong anti Soviet coalition.
The question is do we see the EEC? Europe's OTL post-WW2 growth was largely driven by the liberalization of trade in Europe and globally. Are we still seeing the collapse of the colonial systems by the 1960s and the uniting of the Western/Central European economies and the end of the tariff wars? There is a lot that could go wrong or right ITTL economically speaking without WW2.
 
The question is do we see the EEC?
No, The EEC, ECCS, EC, or EU was a direct reaction to both the second world war as well as the occupation of eastern Europe by the Soviet Union. Since neither of those happen in this timeline, there will be no form of European Integration. There might be cooperation between some countries (I could see the scandinavian countries cooperating, or maybe even the Benelux countries), but no European wide proces.
 
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Deleted member 1487

No, Thee EEC, ECCS, EC, or EU was a direct reaction to both the second world war as well as the occupation of eastern Europe by the Soviet Union. Since neither of those happen in this timeline, there will be no form of European Integration. There might be cooperation between some countries (I could see the scandinavian countries cooperating, or maybe even the Benelux countries), but no European wide proces.
OTL version of it was a function of WW2...but the EU was a Astride Briand proposal in the late 1920s-early 1930s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union#Background
In 1920, advocating the creation of a European economic union, British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that "a Free Trade Union should be established (...) to impose no protectionist tariffs whatever against the produce of other members of the Union."[28] One of the first to imagine of a modern political union of the continent was Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, who wrote the Pan-Europa manifesto in 1923 and founded the Pan-Europa Movement.[29] His ideas influenced his contemporaries, among which then Prime Minister of France Aristide Briand. In 8 September 1929, the later gave a famous speech in favour of a European Union before the assembly of the League of Nations, ancestor of the United Nations.[30]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_of_European_unity_before_1945#After_the_First_World_War
Following the catastrophe of the First World War, some thinkers and visionaries again began to float the idea of a politically unified Europe. In 1923, the Austrian Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-Europa movement and hosted the First Paneuropean Congress, held in Vienna in 1926. The aim was for a specifically Christian, and by implication Roman Catholic, Europe. In contrast Trotsky raised the slogan "For a Soviet United States of Europe" in 1923, for a non-Christian but communist Europe.

In 1929, Aristide Briand, French prime minister, gave a speech in the presence of the League of Nations Assembly in which he proposed the idea of a federation of European nations based on solidarity and in the pursuit of economic prosperity and political and social co-operation. Many eminent economists, among them John Maynard Keynes, supported this view. At the League's request Briand presented a Memorandum on the organisation of a system of European Federal Union in 1930.

In 1931 the French politician Édouard Herriot published the book The United States of Europe. The British civil servant Arthur Salterpublished a book of the same name in 1933.

Between the two world wars, the Polish statesman Józef Piłsudski envisaged the idea of a European federation that he called Międzymorze ("Intersea" or "Between-seas"), known in English as Intermarum, which was a Polish-oriented version of Mitteleuropa.

The Great Depression, the rise of fascism and communism and subsequently World War II prevented the inter war movements from gaining further support.
 
OTL version of it was a function of WW2...but the EU was a Astride Briand proposal in the late 1920s-early 1930s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union#Background


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_of_European_unity_before_1945#After_the_First_World_War
Vague ideas of people (even influential people) does not mean it would actualy happen. I think it needed the kickstart of the second world war, combined with the thread of the Soviet Union for it to actualy happen and gain support.
 

Deleted member 1487

Vague ideas of people (even influential people) does not mean it would actualy happen. I think it needed the kickstart of the second world war, combined with the thread of the Soviet Union for it to actualy happen and gain support.
You're entitled to your opinion, but we will never know what was truly possible absent WW2, because IOTL the rise of Nazism, the remilitarization of Europe, and WW2 derailed all the interwar efforts. After the Great Depression got worked out, perhaps absent the insanity of the rise of Fascism and the war it would have been possible to establish an early EEC.
 
Vague ideas of people (even influential people) does not mean it would actualy happen. I think it needed the kickstart of the second world war, combined with the thread of the Soviet Union for it to actualy happen and gain support.
Agreed. A number of influential people wanted to see a Union of the English Speaking Peoples in the Edwardian era but this never came to pass as the circumstances were never right. I think something like the EFTA might be the best that could be hoped for.
 
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