Why should Nazism switch to that and not North Korea like totalitarian regime ?
The social makeup and economy are completely different. At the very most, it might evolve towards a China model. But the North Korea scenario is completely farfetched. Not to mention that *any* right-wing dictatorship on earth has eventually evolved to democracy within 40 years at most.
(snip overblown extermination scenarioes which are completely irrelevant since we are discussing a compromise peace with the Allies, not the "fatherland" one where Nazis get a free hand in Europe).
Why should Allies agree to continued occupation of North, South and East Europe by Germany ?
It doesn't happen, ITTL. That's the German victory ATL. Possible, but other PODs.
We can start with the fact that neither of them waged a war with the goal of racial extermination like Nazi Germany did with its death camps and gas chambers.
No, they focused on butchering their own people instead. Social classes, minorities, political opponents, anyone that looked funny to the NKVD.... And when hey got the opportunity to do the same to other peoples (the Baltics, the Poles) they were mroe than happy.
There is no force of nature that forces them to be reasonoble. They might consider it even better to perform a large ethnic cleansing or extermination to claim ethnic majority in disputed areas.
They won't, cause that won't give them the peace deal they seek.
And the Germans had death camps with gas chambers to exterminate whole nations.
And the Soviets did it by planned working them to death, disease, slow starvation...
Soviets saved more people then they killed and if you take both plans and timeframe the Nazis are without doubt much worse then them.
Soviets "saved" no one. They fought a war to save their own hides, and whomever they managed to put their hands on, among former Nazi subjects, they immediately started to oppress, send to slave camps, and butcher, on their own. It was just an exchange of tyranny.
Which other country determined whole national groups to be something lower then animals and wanted to exterminate them by such means as gas chambers ?
Stalin, re extermination of the Kulaki. Pol pot, re. extermination of urban Cambodians, intellectuals, anyone but an uneducated peasant, and anyone with glasses.
It might be that Versailles was not enforced well enough. Perhaps after WW1 Germany should have been divided and occupied for couple of decades. It worked after WW2.
No, it worked because Truman reversed the insane Roosevelt policies and built a free, indepedent, and united (as much Germany as the Allies controlled) Germany, that was allowed to build a prosperous economy, rebuild its army and join EU and the Nato. NOT the fanatical plans of Roosevelt, Morgenthau, and their clique.
The German Resistance wanted borders from 1914 and expansion in the south, they also wanted “free hand in the East”.
And by 1943, they are not going to get it. If they want a peace, they will have to compromise.
Poland demanded incorporation of Gdańsk, rest of Upper Silesia, more defensive positions, and East Prussia.
Who cares about the farfecthed claims of the Poles ? It's not like they have aries in the field , or are making any substantial contribution to the war effort. The Allies waged a war to save Poland and others as independent nations, not because they could fatten themselves exploiting the blood of Aliied soldiers. They will take whatever deal they Allies decide on, as in OTL.
To be defeated Germany must lose independence, that is obvious. What else do you expect ? The Allies happily giving Germany want it grabbed up till 1939 ?
They started grabbing other peoples by march 15, 1939, when they invaded Bohemia and Moravia, and that what turned Allied opinion against Germany, when they saw it was not just about fulfilling legitimate national self-determination claims. Until 1938, they had been liberating ethnic Germans from foreign domination, amid cheering crowds.
A return to non-defensive borders for Poland and Czechoslovakia ?
Funny, I thought this war was waged to save peoples of Europe from domination, not to allow Czechs and Poles to fulfill their farfetched nationalistic claims.
Leaving German military potential intact ?
We can agree about military limitations.
After years of brutal racist motivated war that murdered milions ?
Here's the list of the Nazi war criminals that we agreed upon. Since you insisted that you want them tried in your tribunals, instead of ours, we are shipping them, as per truce agreements.
None of those examples were totalitarian dictatorships based on racist supremacy ideology.
Which is completely irrelevant as to shape the social forces that will cause a dictatorship to fall. Loony belief in the superiority of communism didn't save OTL Soviets from an humiliating fall, loony belief in farfetched racial theories that progress of science wsill show as more and more ridiclous won't save ATL Nazis. Racial doctrines won't make a iota of difference.
Spain, Greece, Chile, Argentina faced strife or civil war that Germany didn’t in establishing Nazi rule.
Such strife merely dissuaded dissidents from using violence to fight those regimes, but it fell eventually anyway, in any case. The point is irrelevant.
Eastern Europe didn’t choose its rule but was occupied.
After 10, 20, or 30 years it matters very little how a regime occurred, it matters how popular and efficient is right now.
Ending German ability to build tanks I would hardly call a catastrophe.
Those plans involved destroying the Gemran economy wholly, which would have caused a catastrophic fall of economy, and since Germany (or France, or UK) has not the means to sustain itself without industry, a catastrophic famine.
You dodged the question. The German resistance didn’t want to keep POW’s. It wanted to keep Central and Eastern Europe.
They will have to compromise. That's the matter of diplomacy. Since the whole point of overthrowing the NAzi is to get peace for Germany, once they see the initial plan is wholly urealistic, they will scale down. They aren't fanatics. Those they blown apart in order to take power.
Who guarantees the Germans will leave ?
If they don't, the Allies break the truce. If they do, they advance and liberate Europe.
Who guarantees they won’t return with German borders remaining up to 1939 land grabs and its military and economic production untouched ?
No doubt, the Allies will station troops on Gemrany's borders, as they did OTL. That will garantee it effectively. The Allies can always force military limitations and unrestricted access for inspections, through the treaty. That will garantee it, too.
And its obvious that Germans would use their presence to influence territorial decisions or ethnic makeup.
Which presence ? They are withdrawing to their 1939 borders. Displaced Czechs, Poles, etc. are free to return and reverse any ethnic changes the Nazis worked.
Not to Soviets, Poles, Czechs, British.
Historically, the British were the ones that willed to moderate demands vs. the Germans vs. Roosevelt extremism, if ITTL the American shape a more moderate policyt vs. the Gmerans (the whole assumption of TTL), they will happily jump the bandwagon.
The Czechs and the Poles ? Are you seriously assuming the Allies will take the demands of utterly powerless governments in exile, that have to beg everything from the Allies fro their very existence ? They will jump when London and Washington say jump. They are going to get their countries back, it way suffices. The American people and the British people aren't going to keep shedding the blood of their sons and to waste their money so that a bunch of Slav nationalists can fatten themseleves.
As for the Soviets... yes, they will moan and rage, but what they want ? The Germans will withdraw from every inch of Soviet soil, so their legitimate war aims are fulfilled. Continuing the war after that means they have plans to control Eastern Europe, which is wholly unacceptable. We didn't fight a war to save Europe from Hilter, in order to abandon it to the Bolsheviks. Look, if they insist, it seems like we will have to start countermeasures against them. For starters, we will station troops in those Eastern Europe countries.
Too bad Czechoslovakia wanted pre-Munich borders, and too bad giving Sudetes to Germans makes Czechs soveirgnity in the hands of Germany as it is without defensive borders. Too bad also Poland wanted Upper Sileisa, Gdańsk, East Prussia and correction of borders to make them more defensive.
Who cares about the claims of nationalist Slavs ? Sure the Allies aren't going to wage 2-3 more years of total war in order to fulfill them. They are free again, what they want ? if they want to be defended, they can accept our garrisons, and enter our defensive alliances.
Also both countries wanted to remove pro-Nazi German minorities who supported invasion of their countries and comitted atrocities.
Quite a questionable ethnic cleansing request, which might have worked IF the Allies had had to fight all the way to Berlin, since that mustachoed fanatic will fight to the bitter end. Since the Allies have a decent chance for immediate peace, and they won't have fanatics of their own in charge, they got an ictus last year, they will grab it. Goodbye, Polish-Czech ethnic cleansing.
I can’t imagine British or Soviets allowing Germany to keep its war potential untouched after what they went through.
The British will accept the peace deal, once Hitler is gone. Even if Churchill wouldn't, Americans and his own Parliament will force him to. The Soviets may not like it, but in the end will take it, rather than waging a war of their own, with the very real perspective of the Allies turning on them, once the red Army crosses the Soviet borders.
And both latter demands conflict with demands of Polish and Czech governments-supported by Soviets in this regard.
The Poles will never ever risk Soviet domination willingly, by letting the Red Army occupy them, once the Germans are committed to retreat. The Czech, well, they might, but betraying the Allies for siding with the Soviets (besides starting the happy trip to Communist dictatorship) will destroy any and every residual sympathy the Allies might have. Welcome to the Cold War, waged on the Czech border.
Poles expected East Prussia and Upper Silesia as compensation for their lost land along with some border corrections in Pomerania and Greater Poland.
What they expected and what they will get are two wholly different things. They also expected democracy and national independence, they got 40 years of Communism instead. The Czech-Polish tip of the tail won't wag the US-UK big dog. They aren't going to fight two more years of total war for Czech-Polish nationalists.
If you think anybody would accept German conquests from 1939 by allowing them to stage referendums(especially after years of ethnic cleansing of milions and murdering milions of Polish citizens)
Well, that maybe is a little too difficult to push through.
Not in the view of Czech government.
Which nobody really cares about, nor they are in the position to push through anything, as they are beggars living in London at the Allies' mercy. If Czechs on the ground get really strange ideas, well check what happened to Greek communists.
And who guarantees that Germans won’t try to take it back once they recover ?
Allied garrisons, defensive alliances, Germany limitations (which will nonetheless scrapped in due time to make them a better bulvark against the Soviets) the inspections to enforce them.
Stalin “I never exterminated whole nations believing them to be worse species then animals, nor did I sent children to gas chambers, in fact my soldiers liberated people from camps where such gas chambers existed and defeated people who did it” ?
No, it's "I exterminated whole nations and social classes beliveing them to be enemy of the people scum unworthy to live, I extemrinated children by purposefully causing famines, I sent millions of my own people to slave camps to slowly work them to death, and when my army enlarged my empire by defeating my enemy that had set up his own death camps in conqured countries, I started sending those people to MY death camps".
One would need to be a very foolish person to allow Germans 1-2 years to recover their military, strenghten their hold on Central Europe and prepare for better defense and war.
1-2 years to phase Germany's government from provisional military junta to democracy, NOT to implment the peace accord.
And not only for moral and ethnic reason but also due to political ones, diplomacy and pure strategic ones. Why should anyone allow Germany what it conquered.
It does keep anything that it conquered. It keeps what it got peacefully, with the agreement of the Western powers, and it always was German anyway.
1918-1871= 47. Not centuries at all.
Posen was German since the first Partition of Poland. I'm counting from that.
I have an impression you are bit biased towards the German side.
On these forums, I made no secret of the fact that historically and (geo)politically, my strong sympathies go to Germany, the USA, Israel, and the British Empire, and my strong antipathies go to Communists/Soviets, Islam, Russia, France, and Slavs, in that rough order.
Oh but Poland demanded Gdańsk, and much more. Upper Silesia etc,
American and British lives and money won't be wasted so that greedy Poles can fatten themselves on stuff that wasn't theirs before the war.
removal of pro-Nazi Germans, trials of war criminals, compensation for damage and exploitation and so on.
The peace agreement may, and will, include all of these. Just not Polish territorial enlargement.
And why would Soviets, Czechs, Poles agree to that ? If you can imagine that, so can Stalin. And Stalin can promise Poles and Czechs more then Germans can. A status of Finlandization, more territories, agreement to help in removing German population, military aid, direct support for partisans as envisoned by Poles in Operation Tempest.
If the Czechs and Poles are so foolish to purposefully invite the Red Army in, instead of the Allies (assuming the Allies just don't coup them away, as they did in Greece 1944), they are just outting their own neck in the Communist noose, first. Second, any and all consideration their claims might have with the Allies will vanish like smoke. They will be enemy. Third, the Allies will immediately ally with Germany, scrape its military limitations, maybe even place troops on the eastern German borders which the German government will be happy to invite in. The Cold War immediately starts, only it's waged in Silesia/Pomerania/Austria. But the USA will have the whole of Germany on its side. The Polish and Czech people will curse the foolish choice of their former governments within a month of tasting the NKVD's caresses.
Now now, pretty much of war criminals were in Wehrmacht as well. And nobody is interested in protecting them. Especially Eastern countries were the gross bulk of crimes were comitted. Only the military junta might tried to protect those people.
The top echelons of the Nazi government and the most egregious middle-rank offenders, provided they aren't killed in the coup or the following hasty purges, will be tried as they were OTL, by German tribunals under Allied supervision or Allied ones, it is to be settled by the peace agreement. If the Allies want them, they will get them. As for the mass purges and trials of the low echelons that you are thinking of, they didn't happen OTL when the Allies occupied Germany, no reason they should happen here.
Without Sudetes their independence is at the mercy of Germany, and as to rights to that regions, they obviously had different view then yours.
If we throw ethnic borders to the winds, and go for historic claims and security, then Germany has a very valid claim to the 1914 borders, and everything goes up in the air. The whole Allied war claim was based on national self-determination, they will rely on that, and under that the Czech have no valid claim on the Sudetes.
The hopes of not being German puppets.
They can be in the American sphere of influence, and get its protection.
And as to Russian domination-why not ? It was always prefered to German one, as it was neither as racists or dangerous to Polish nation. Russians might have opressed the Poles, they didn’t want to erase Warsaw and settle it with Russians.
Oh suuurree. Poles will throw newfound independence to the winds, and happily invite Russians, which oppressed and butchered them for a century, and did it again in 1939-40, back in, to set up a nice Stalinist paradise, so that they can grab a little more German land.
What about reperations, war criminals, removal of Nazi Germans, creating safe borders as opposed to borders from 1939 ?
They can have a decent mount of everything, except the land grab.
Gdansk was never Polish ? It actually dates its founding from creation by Polish ruler Mieszko, and alltogether was part of Poland for over 600 years.
Did I tell ya how much the "a millennia ago, we ruled here" and "we want more votes, to make up for the dead of WWII" farfetched overblown Polish nationalist rethoric grates on my nerves ? Danzig was ethnically German, until Stalin's goons ethnically cleansed it. That's what matters.
Let’s star that your proposal allows German to keep control over Central and Eastern Europe which was never an Allied goal.
They retire. They might get *economic* influence, later, as the Eastern Europe masses discover how good German consumer goods are... That won't oppress anybody.
Stoping SU was never a war goal.
For Churchill and Truman ? The hell, yes. Not for Roosevelt, who would have happily thrown Europe to Chthulhu, if that would allow him to trample Germany better. But we have POD him away. Churchill kept pushing plans to land Allied landings in the Balkans instead of Italy and France, just to deny Stalin any foothold byond Soviet borders.
War criminals from Wehrmacht are saved,
Which ones ? if you mean the Nuremberg trials, they will be ITTL as in OTL. If you pipedream summary trials and mass shootings of Wehrmacht officials, sorry, they didn't happen OTL, either.
the war potential of Germany wasn’t limited
Nobody but Roosevelt wanted to cripple Germany, and throw open the door of the continent to Stalin.
and borders return to their unstable status of 1939.
Which nobody but a bunch of powerless Slav nationalists will care about. Surely British and US electors won't condone further world war in order to appease them. The tail does not wag the dog.
The War aims of Allies were far more then “Hitler out” The Allied war aims also included revision of borders and stopping German potential to wage another war.
You sorrily mistake the Roosevelt clique of German-hating leftists, who were powerless once he was out, for the whole rest of the USA-British ruling elites, which were very aware of the dangers of crippling Germany, for European economy, and letting Stalin dominate the continent.
To ensure that Germany will be disarmed, its industry dismantled so that it will not be used for another war, and that Germans will see that they are defeated. The lack of parade in Berlin was a complaint after WW1.
The fact that you assume the collated demands of the most extreme anti-German nationalists fringes from two wars, as the collective will of the Allied ruling elites and peoples, and assume the Allies will happily keep pouring blood and money in order to fulfill them, once they have a serious chance to end it all with honor, and achieve their main war objectives (destruction of Nazism, liberation of Europe) makes it rather difficult to take it seriously.
I am sure neither Britain, Soviet Union, nor Poland or Czechoslovakia will imagine that. And I am sure if they would they would happily agree to Germany being a great power and dominating Eastern Europe. Certainly they would not combine their efforts to thwart German attempt at remaining a power with the ability to control Europe by destroying Allied Camp during talks aime at making Allies do their dirty work against SU.
Which will only jumpstart Cold War, and make the Allies even more wary of doing any sacrifice of their resources to appease those treacherous "allies".
Super harsh treaty ? Then what was Brest Litovsk. Germany was neither divided nor occupied. Hardly a harsh treaty.
Unfortunately the historic consensus disagrees with you. I can see why it must seem so to you, as Versailles didn't admittedly allow Poles to steal German land up to the Oder, what a shame.
In comparision the post-WW2 treaties were harsher and worked.
No, the Truman-Attlee policy of pacification, German reconstruction, independence, national unity, industrial development, integration in Western economic and miliary alliances, and rearmment, worked. The Roosevelt policies were a recipe for catasthrope , only Stalin would have benefited, by picking the pieces of a beggered, starving, resentful Germany.
The ATL I argument, just advances the very successful policies they did since 1946-47, in 1943-44, by removing the main obstacle, Roosevelt and his clique.
Somewhow there was no another war, and Germany didn’t turn into dictatorship.
Because Trumand and Attlee made a U-turn, and salvaged what could be salvaged from Roosevelt's catastrophic policies. Unfortunately, for everything beyond the Elbe, it was too late. If only he had died early... hence this ATL.
Once Roosevelt is gone, and the fanatical anti-German element within the Allied leadership is gone with him, you want the Allied leaders and electors to mindlessly keep pouring blood and money in a long total war, once a good chance for a reasonable peace settlement is nearby, eding the war early and fulfiling what the mainstream war aims of the Allied opinion was (destruction of Nazism, liberation of Europe), in order to fulfill plans of extreme economic and territorial rape of Germany that were only the plans of the most extreme anti-German fringe (only influential with Roosevelt) and to cater at the extreme claims of a bunch of nationalists in minor occupied and powerless countries that had precisely zero influence and political-military leverage on the Allies, totally and purposefully disregarding the goals of not disrupting the economy of Europe and containing soviet expansion as much as possible that were foremost in the minds of anyone in the Allied ruling elites but the Roosevelt clique, and were the very basis of the Allied policy on Germany after the war.
Your view assumes that the Czech and Polish governments in exile are in control of the USA and UK governments, and their claims and concerns form the basis of their policy. That's way ridiculous.