No nazis and Weimar Republic survives

I can't see the West going to war over Finland or the Baltic states. They belonged to Tsarist Russia - it's a case of regaining former territory...or at least the appeasers would espouse that argument. If Stalin waits until 1939 to attach Finland and is humiliated by Finnish resistance, then without a militaristic Germany as a threat in the west, Beria or someone might pluck up enough courage to depose Stalin for such a humiliation.
 
Finland more important

ljofa said:
I can't see the West going to war over Finland or the Baltic states. They belonged to Tsarist Russia - it's a case of regaining former territory...or at least the appeasers would espouse that argument. If Stalin waits until 1939 to attach Finland and is humiliated by Finnish resistance, then without a militaristic Germany as a threat in the west, Beria or someone might pluck up enough courage to depose Stalin for such a humiliation.

During the Winter War in OTL the allies tried several times to provide forces and material to the Finns, albiet with conditions attached. Also considering the strategic position of Finland in relation to Moscow and Leningrad it would have been a very tempting jumping off point in any future war.

Tsarist Russia by this time was dead and buried, the West was vehemently opposed to the Communist regime in Moscow, it was only the arrival of Hitler and the facsits that turned their attention away from the Russian problem.
 
Tsarist Russia being dead isn't the point - the fact that said countries were included in the borders of pre-war Russia would be a point for the appeasers (and they would exist in this TL) to consider.

Of course the allies tried to supply materials, a country in the middle of a war spends cash like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Supplying materials and declaring war are two different things however.
 
No Germany to distract them

In the timeline I am pondering the west does not have the distraction of an armed and agressive Germany. Russia would be seen as the problem state instead and as such the efforts that were put into containing Hitler would be put into containing Stalin instead. Yes this would probably mean that some territory would be given up in exchange for "Peace in our time" but we are going to face the same problem, Russia once it has decided that the west is weak, and Stalin would see any backdown as a weakness, would be tempted to go further, Poland being one of the main targets.

Remember Finland was once part of the Swedish empire until 1808 when the Russians invaded. However it wasn't just sucked into the Russian Empire, instead it was basically a semi-independant nation with its own language, culture and industry. Finland had stronger ties with the Swedish than with the Russians.

Just a point though, the Allies offered both men and materials to the Finns in their war with Russia, this is pretty much tantamount to a declaration of war.
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Okay I'm a little confused, how would the disappearance of the Nazi party from the timeline prevent the invention of the Internet? Or result in a Communist Europe?

The electronic digital computer was invented to aid in English code breaking efforts during WWII. I’m not sure if this would have affected the Internet much, however, as something else would have come along requiring it. Still, what would that be? The need for making thousands upon thousands of calculations per second is not something that comes up a lot in regular life, though once you can do it, the applications become endless. I still give more credit to the American space program, which miniaturized the computer.

Without Hitler at least Germany would probably go Communist. If Weimar survives it possibly turns Communist by Democratic vote about the same time as Hitler would have taken over or before. A strong Communist party in Germany means a strong Communist movement in Europe. Interesting departure here is whether Trotsky survives since Stalin’s “Socialism in One Country” doctrine isn’t so much a matter of survival as of lost opportunity. However, Hitler arose to power later than Trotsky was expelled.

Tsarist Russia by this time was dead and buried, the West was vehemently opposed to the Communist regime in Moscow, it was only the arrival of Hitler and the facsits that turned their attention away from the Russian problem.

Or caused them to use it as a counterweight to the Communist menace. How else can you explain the several opportunities which France had, and failed, to end the Nazi regime before it really got started?

Did Russia really want Finland? IIRC Stalin wanted part of Finland to serve as a strategic buffer in a war with Germany (tho how that would work I dunno) and was willing to grant Finland some Russian territory in return. Mannerheim, rightly, refused. (you don't just give your citizens to a mad dictator)
 
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I don't think Germany would have gone Communist

At least not all the way. There would be definitly be socialist elements to the country but remember by the time the thirties rolled around, the serious communists in Germany were a spent force. Instead the political landscape was dominated by conservatives and the moderate Socialiast parties.
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
cranos said:
At least not all the way. There would be definitly be socialist elements to the country but remember by the time the thirties rolled around, the serious communists in Germany were a spent force. Instead the political landscape was dominated by conservatives and the moderate Socialiast parties.

Without Naziism, spent on what? Naziism was strong enough by 1924 that Hitler felt he could start a successful revolution if he obtained a national voice and it only became stronger while he was in prison. Some of what I've read suggests that by 1933 Naziism was spent, since it had actually lost seats in the last election, but it can be argued this was due to the public's perceiving the Red Menace to be well and truly over by then.
 
cranos said:
At least not all the way. There would be definitly be socialist elements to the country but remember by the time the thirties rolled around, the serious communists in Germany were a spent force. Instead the political landscape was dominated by conservatives and the moderate Socialiast parties.

By 1930, Communism was gaining ground again fast. Granted, the only way Germany at the time could have gone Communist would have been a violent revolution, but there were enough people willing to take part. The communist party rivalled the Nazis in vote-pulling power, and this was not a moderate, Eurocommunist outfit with rad appeal, this was the real deal Moscow loyalist revolutionary cadre. When you have almost 20% of the electorate supporting such a party (in the presence of a less radical alternative, not as the only left-wing option) that says something is wrong here. Now, the Communist vote was quite obviously tied to economic hardship, which means that after '33 it would have gone into decline anyway. The question is, though, all else being equal - would the radical, violent supporters that Hitler could draw to himself have joined the Communists instead if there had been no Nazi party? The relative ease with which thugs drifted between the two groups in the early years is notorious.

Given the Communist strategy in Germany was to allow Hitler his victory, fully expecting him to fail. they would then point to themselves as the only truly revolutionary party and take power. Naive as hell, but it begs the question what the strategy would have been without Hitler?

Better hope Reichsbanner and Stahlhelm can overlook their differences long enough...
 
Naziism

Naziism was never an all conquering ideology in Germany during the twenties and early thirties, it was only through the collapse of the Wiemar and resulting power vacuum that Hitler was able to rise to power.

1919 - 1924/5 saw many different revolutions through out germany, both communist and fascist, none of them succeeded everytime one started the government was either able to stamp it out through force or through the use of general strikes and other means.

The 1923 Beer Hall Putsch was Hilter and the National Socialists blowing their load way to early, they thought that the country would rise up with them, they were wrong.

So what we have is the truly communist forces crushed by the freikorps and the freikorps crushed or assimilated by the government, and the this alternate timeline we do not have an organised fascist party instead we have lots of little splintered groups that have no chance of making any impact on the landscape dominated by moderate socialists and conservatives.
 
KPD Attacked SPD

carlton_bach said:
By 1930, Communism was gaining ground again fast. Granted, the only way Germany at the time could have gone Communist would have been a violent revolution, but there were enough people willing to take part. The communist party rivalled the Nazis in vote-pulling power, and this was not a moderate, Eurocommunist outfit with rad appeal, this was the real deal Moscow loyalist revolutionary cadre. When you have almost 20% of the electorate supporting such a party (in the presence of a less radical alternative, not as the only left-wing option) that says something is wrong here. Now, the Communist vote was quite obviously tied to economic hardship, which means that after '33 it would have gone into decline anyway. The question is, though, all else being equal - would the radical, violent supporters that Hitler could draw to himself have joined the Communists instead if there had been no Nazi party? The relative ease with which thugs drifted between the two groups in the early years is notorious.

Given the Communist strategy in Germany was to allow Hitler his victory, fully expecting him to fail. they would then point to themselves as the only truly revolutionary party and take power. Naive as hell, but it begs the question what the strategy would have been without Hitler?

Better hope Reichsbanner and Stahlhelm can overlook their differences long enough...

The KPD had the bright idea to start gouging the SPD instead of targeting the Nazis, this is what led to their amazing electoral gains, however by splintering the left, the way could have been left open for more centrist parties to move in, especially as you say with the economic recovery well on its way and a stable government system in place.

The far right is not going to have its rallying point, instead it will be splintered much like the left. Its a bit like the arena scene from "Life Of Brian"

Brian Are you the Judean People's Front?
Reg F--- off.
Brian What?
Reg Judean People's Front. (scoffs) We're the People's Front of Judea. Judean People's front, caw.
Francis Wankers.
Brian Can I join your group?
Reg No. Piss off.
Brian I didn't want to sell this stuff. It's only a job. I hate the Romans as much as anybody.
PFJ [nervously] Sssh! Ssssh, sssh, sssh, ssssh.
Judith Are you sure?
Brian Oh. Dead sure... I hate the Romans already.
Reg Listen. If you really wanted to join the PFJ, you'd have to really hate the Romans.
Brian I do.
Reg Oh yeah? How much?
Brian A lot!
Reg Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the f---ing Judean People's Front
PFJ [together, nodding in agreement] Yeah
Judith [disgusted] Splitters
Francis And the Judean Popular Peoples Front.
PFJ Oh yeah. Splitters.
Loretta And the peoples Front of Judea.
PFJ Splitters.
Reg What?
Loretta The Peoples front of Judea. Splitters.
Reg We're the Peoples front of Judea.
Loretta Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
Reg Peoples Front! [scoffs]
Francis Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
Reg He's over there.
[A single old man sits on a lower seat.]
PFJ [To the old man.] SPLITTER!
 
There is a very simple POD that would butterfly away the nazis: If the US government had not though catastrophic mismanagement caused the Great Depression the nazis would never have risen to power.
 
Originally Posted by Napoleon XIV
Originally Posted by cranos
Okay I'm a little confused, how would the disappearance of the Nazi party from the timeline prevent the invention of the Internet? Or result in a Communist Europe?
The electronic digital computer was invented to aid in English code breaking efforts during WWII. I’m not sure if this would have affected the Internet much, however, as something else would have come along requiring it. Still, what would that be? The need for making thousands upon thousands of calculations per second is not something that comes up a lot in regular life, though once you can do it, the applications become endless. I still give more credit to the American space program, which miniaturized the computer.

Originally Posted by Count Dearborn
The war might have started later, and as the computer grew out of the cryptography devices of WWII, the computer as was know it would probably appear later. Thus, in this world, as of 2005, the Internet would still be part of DARPA, and not open to the public.

Napoleon XIV is correct. The electronic digital computer was indeed invented to assist Allied code breakers decode encrypted Nazi communications. Without Nazis, there would be no WWII, or at least a very different one, and thus no German Enigma machine so the invention of electronic digital computers would be prevented or rather delayed. As Napoleon said, the need for making thousands upon thousands of calculations per second is not something that comes up often in everyday life, though once you can do it, the applications become limitless. This statement is at least as true, probably more so, about the Internet as it is about the electronic digital computer itself. The need for a distributed global network of decentralized computer networks is trivial, but once built finds unlimited applications. Put simply, the Internet is one of those rare inventions that we never actually needed and did just fine before it ever existed, but once it was around, we can not live without it!

Of course, I mostly agree with Count Dearborn that a premature demise of Nazism would prevent the invention of the Internet, though Napoleon neglected to explain why (apart from saying that without Nazi codes to crack the invention of electronic digital computers would at least be postponed), and Count Dearborn did not go into much depth. Essentially, the Internet is a military technology recieved by the civilian sector. It is purely a product of the Cold War. To understand the origin of the Internet, it helps to know the background. Though the Internet is not a singular invention, and thus has no one inventor, it is largely the brainchild of Paul Baran. Baran was one of the sole inventors of packet switching and devised concept of decentralized computer networking, two major technological prerequisites. In the late fifties, Paul Baran worked at RAND Corporation where he wrote theses on distributed and decentralized computer networks and their strategic importance in nuclear war. Shortly before Paul Baran's brief employ at RAND the Soviets launched Sputnik and early in 1958, Congress established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) under the US Department of Defense (DoD) so as to promote American technological research and counter the threat of potential Soviet technological superiority. When Paul Baran moved to ARPA, he continued his research and eventually ARPA considered building such a network. ARPANET was intended to facilitate communication between DoD computers, including computers at civilian universities accross the USA so as to link ARPA researchers. It was itself a project to develop a "nuke-proof" military computer network. ARPANET was built in 1969, then consisting solely of four interconnected nodes throughout California and Utah. Within a few years the network grew to hundreds of nodes accross the West Coast and eventually the entire nation. By the 1970's, ARPA was renamed to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and ARPANET, by now having expanded to massive size split into two distinct but interconnected networks, ARPANET (which connected computer nodes at universities such as UCLA) and MILNET, with the whole system collectively referred to as DARPANET. The modern Internet essentially grew out of ARPANET. In the meantime, various smaller decentralized computer networks were built by government agencies, all modeled on ARPANET. Also, various private (corporate) computer networks such as BITNET were built. By the 1980's, ARPANET declined and would be completely and permanently decomissioned by decade's end. The National Science Foundation established NSFNET, which grew into the new Internet backbone in the civilian infrastructure. Eventually Tim-Berners Lee developed the World Wide Web protocol.

In short, the precursor to the Internet was originally devised as a sort of defensive military communication network. Its primary objective was to facilitate communication in the event of nuclear bombardment and thus provide a retaliatory strike. Because of the distributed decentralized layout of this network, even nuking a cities and obliterating local network nodes could not destroy or sever the network since there are no hubs. Given that Cold War paranoia concerning mutually assured obliteration pushed such innovation, would there be an Internet without the possibility of nuclear war? One might imagine that without a Nazi Party there would be no WWII. Otherwise whatever would turn out to be WWII would be different. Even if America had an eventual conflict with Japan, would the Americans have an atom bomb to use? The main reason for developing a bomb was because it was feared that Nazi Germany was developing one. It is clear now that the Nazis did not have a program to develop the Bomb, or rather at least not a successful program, and it is fortunate that the Nazis failed to develop nuclear arms. But without a Nazi Germany, what is the likelihood of nuclear arms ever being developed? And what about the Soviet Union? Assuming the USSR exists in this timeline, would they acquire nukes? It seems that without a nuclear arms race, any smaller arms races as well as civilian technological struggles would seem trivial and frivolous. Would the USSR even bother with space exploration? Presumably the government infrastructure would not be as big. Also without a WWII (or a different one), would there be a Cold War comparable to the OTL? After all, the Soviets were able to extend their protectorate over wartorn Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and East Germany, thus giving birth to the Warsaw Pact, but probably would not have been able without the chaos of war. Also the events of WWII in the Asia-Pacific region including the power vacuum following the collapse of Japanese and Euro-American imperialism helped the Maoists take China and Ho Chi Minh rise to power in Vietnam. Nevertheless perhaps the contagion of World Communism was inevitable at this point.

Which brings up my final point. I am not so sure how no Nazis mean 75% of Europe would turn Communist. Perhaps if Marxist factions seized control of Weimar Germany, Communism would expand throughout Europe. On the other hand, without a Nazi threat, the Western allies would never team up with Stalin's Russia and for all we know the WWII in this timeline might be between the Soviets and the US.
 
The question is: without WW-II the world would have been a more happy place? I think yes,and if the price is a more slow tecnological and social (see pop culture) development,well,is a very reasonable price.
 
There is a very simple POD that would butterfly away the nazis: If the US government had not though catastrophic mismanagement caused the Great Depression the nazis would never have risen to power.

The depression acually started earlier in Germany as a direct result of the boom, with US investors seeing a better bet closer to home. So you'd need to prevent the boom from going wuite so stratospheric as well.

There are a number (a heartbreakingly high number) of ways that Hitler could have been stopped - I'm thinking of producing a list.
 

Glen

Moderator
I have been pondering what would have happened if somehow the Nazi party did not come to power, instead the Weimar Republic had been strengthened and a centrist party or coalition had come to power in the thirties instead of either the facists or the communists?

My own personal theory is that the second world war would have happened anyway. If instead of invading the surrounding germanic areas/nations the germans had built even a loose alliance including Poland, Austria and maybe the chezks(sp?) Russia is going to start getting nervous.

Basically the 2nd World War would happen later than OTL and would the USSR/Communist China vs Germany/Britain(And Empire)/France/Japan(maybe)

I'll work on it

The Current Incarnation of [thread=52437]Weimar World[/thread].

The Gargantuan Discussion from which it was spawned, including discussion on the likely intentions and actions of Stalin in such a world.

[thread=15985]AH Challenge: Weimar Republic Survives TL[/thread]

Enjoy!;) :cool:
 
Soviets:
  • Russia
  • Communist China
Uhhh, China was either a) Nationalist or b) invaded by Japan in this period. Now, I can see Kwantung Army biting off more than it can chew with Russia & this sparking a broader war, especially if Stalin gets frisky over Finland. So:

Allies:
  • Britain/Empire
  • Germany/Austria
  • France/Belgium/Holland
  • Japan
  • Finland
against

  • Russia
  • China (Japan mainly)
  • Italy (weapons only for China)
  • U.S (pro-China, against Japan; likely not actively involved)
(which could see the really strange consequence of Germany, which supported China, effectively being on both sides...)
 
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