PC: Hindenburg Retires = No Nazi Germany = No WWII?

Was thinking about this scenario lately, a couple of new thoughts:

First, what happens with the Sexual Revolution seen in Weimar Germany, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the 1920's, without the rise of the Nazis or WWII?

I also wondered how the global gold standard would be affected without Bretton Woods, and got this great answer:
Everyone but the gold bugs wanted to get off it. The Germans were moving in that direction, but Versailles and Hitler prevented it because he wanted control over the currency that free floating wouldn't give. Likely the Germans dump gold ASAP without Hitler and Schacht, assuming he gets into a position of authority, works out a bunch of trade deals and clearing arrangements, plus gets into trade dumping to pump up the German global position. Without rearmament Germany could export tons more, especially military equipment and actually end up dominating a lot of lucrative markets and outcompeting the Brits. China could end up being a super market for them if Japan isn't allowed to get away with invasion sans Hitler. The French will cling to it longer without having to worry about rearmament, same with the Brits. The US had dumped it during the Depression, but might come back to it like they did after WW2 if the economy stabilizes. I think it will continue on in economically conservative circles while risk taking states with little options to accumulate gold, like Germany, are an example of what a long term free floating currency looks like. There will not be a petrol dollar or a US let global economy system like Bretton Woods even if FDR somehow gets Europe to work with him on a global response to trade collapse. There is too much opportunity for Germany to want to work with the US on an international system, because in the chaos they can use their economic leverage to create a neo-colonial empire sort of like what China is doing in Africa now. Ironically the Gold Standard colonial states will be in serious trouble when their colonies break off, because they are totally unprepared for global competition for markets in the post-gold new age. The world will probably look like more of barter economy with trade blocs on a new neo-colonialist model ironically led by Germany, who IOTL under Hitler was more concerned about forming an old school empire in Europe; Schacht might well be the 'wizard' the creates the new game in the anarchy that is the world trade system post-Depression and during the collapse of the imperial systems.

This book lays out what Schacht was trying to do and might well prove to be the model for European states as their empire collapse:
https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Shadow-Empire-Economics-Spanish/dp/0674728858/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Germany IOTL post-WW2 did pursue a somewhat similar policy of finding captive markets to exploit via capitalism rather than mercantilism. The German corporate model of cartelism would be pretty formidable and aimed and conquering foreign markets. As it was companies like IG Farben dominated Latin American pharmaceutical markets until WW2 cut them off and the US took that over, so as per their pre-war bi-lateral trade deals they will try and create barter deals to get around the lack of cash/gold and make gold effectively superfluous in their model, which I think might evolve into an alternative system that countries would adopt that don't want to play by the gold rules.
 

Deleted member 1487

Likely there would be a swing back toward morality after the hedonism of the 1920s, much like there was in the 1950s after WW2, while the 1960s-70s then saw the 1980s-90s as a more conservative time. Things will balance out, perhaps quicker without a dictatorship forcing things back into a box for it to explode again in the 1960s. Without WW2 perhaps there is a synthesis of values by the 1940s, social change has pushed boundaries, but once the economy improves there is more of a desire to want a more stable family oriented culture and order that Germans tend to crave. That is just Germany. In the US, Britain, and France culture was in different cycles. Likely the 1950s comes to the US in the 1940s once prosperity returns after the Depression, just a much more tempered version of growth. Britain might swing to Labour sooner by the 1940s and have a more liberal culture, but less 'americanized' and wild without WW2 breaking down social norms. France would actually probably avoid it's more conservative turn after WW2 as we know it and stay pretty liberal politically and socially. It seems like the war and upheaval forced a pretty big conservative political move after the failure of the 3rd and 4th Republics. Then the 1960s and wars in the colonies moved things back to the left a bit.
 
I'd say where Britain and France are concerned, you make a lot of sense; FWIU, WWII really did have something of a liberating affect on British culture and a reactionary one on French. As to Germany... well, I think it helps to be a little more specific in what I'm talking about. I could see the "hedonist" ethos calming down over time, especially under the influence of the Depression, but I'm less sure that we'd see reactionary moves against porto-feminism and gay liberation being nearly as successful. What we may see here is a synthesis of what you called "stable family oriented culture" and more "modernist" views of sexuality, sort of akin to what the US saw when the "free love" counterculture of the 1960's started to die down, but with feminism, gay rights, and what not surviving on to become part of the larger suburban ethos, redefining how Americans thought of "family life".

As to the US, I think you're overlooking just how much of an impact WWII and the GI Bill in particular had on the family culture in the late 40's and 1950's; they really were crucial to creating the "golden age" of the nuclear family, which most certainly would not have existed in the form as OTL without them. Betty Friedan went so far as to say that there was a concentrated effort after WWII to reverse gains women made in the previous quarter century, creating these gender norms and family model. Without the GI Bill, in addition to higher education being out of reach for a larger number of Americans (as we discussed earlier), the meteoritic rise of the suburbs would be less likely than not.

There's also the question of how all these alternate sexual cultures interact with one another; I think if France and Germany were both more sexually liberated than OTL, they'd be playing off each other, which could play a role in a larger "European Sexual Culture", influencing places like (the Republic of) Spain, (richer) Czechoslovakia, etc.
 
and no
Without the GI Bill, in addition to higher education being out of reach for a larger number of Americans (as we discussed earlier), the meteoritic rise of the suburbs would be less likely than not.
also no WWII means no national highway plan in the 50s, so the whole urban planning might go in a different direction as well
 
Touching again on the Gold Standard -- would both the US and UK get back on it, considering that dropping it proved so crucial to their economic recoveries? I can easily see New Deal Democrats opposing such a return (some possibly even bringing back Bryan rhetoric on the subject), so America may well decide to remain a floating currency. I can also see it being a contentious issue in the UK, with Labour opposing the move, especially if nobody else is coming back first; even if they do this, other Commonwealth nations like Canada and Australia may decide to hold off. (The Empire of Japan will also remain off the GS, for what that's worth.)

The only major economic powers I can see remaining on the GS as of 1940 TTL are France and, interestingly enough, the Soviet Union (who, FWIG, stayed on gold after 1924); pretty much the rest of the world may stay with floating currencies, though now without everybody pegging their money to a single nation (like the US), but a series of monetary *alliances*, where smaller economies peg their currency to a more powerful economic partner (as much of Europe will do for Germany, others will do for the US, etc), including some that will do so with GS nations (like France), and others still that continue to pursue autarky (like Japan). And I agree that France is in serious trouble when their colonial empire starts getting stressed.
This would be an interesting timeline
Check out "The Airship President" (link in the OP).
 

Deleted member 1487

Touching again on the Gold Standard -- would both the US and UK get back on it, considering that dropping it proved so crucial to their economic recoveries? I can easily see New Deal Democrats opposing such a return (some possibly even bringing back Bryan rhetoric on the subject), so America may well decide to remain a floating currency. I can also see it being a contentious issue in the UK, with Labour opposing the move, especially if nobody else is coming back first; even if they do this, other Commonwealth nations like Canada and Australia may decide to hold off. (The Empire of Japan will also remain off the GS, for what that's worth.)

The only major economic powers I can see remaining on the GS as of 1940 TTL are France and, interestingly enough, the Soviet Union (who, FWIG, stayed on gold after 1924); pretty much the rest of the world may stay with floating currencies, though now without everybody pegging their money to a single nation (like the US), but a series of monetary *alliances*, where smaller economies peg their currency to a more powerful economic partner (as much of Europe will do for Germany, others will do for the US, etc), including some that will do so with GS nations (like France), and others still that continue to pursue autarky (like Japan). And I agree that France is in serious trouble when their colonial empire starts getting stressed.
They returned to it in the best circumstances for them post-WW2. They just had a fixation on controlling the system via controlling the levers of currency value. That is why they based Bretton Woods on the gold standard and were too leery of the potential issues with a free floating currency that could not be fully controlled. Clearly a lot more understanding of the value of free floating currency developed over the years when the supply of gold was no longer sufficient to keep up with economic growth. Perhaps they just needed to hit that tipping point to force their hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock

The issue was they wanted to avoid a race to the bottom in terms of export advantages, but without the US effectively forcing it on the rest of the world post-WW2 the new norm would be probably led by Germany looking for export advantage, because they didn't have a captive EU market to work with. Effectively the 1970s situation would start being the norm in the 1930s and '40s without the war, even as Britain and the US perhaps returning to the gold standard to try and keep inflation under control. I think there was a weird fetish everyone had, even the Germans, though they realized sooner the value of a free floating currency when they were denied the ability to have it and the ability to accumulate gold, had about inflation. Gold was supposed to prevent inflation from causing a Weimar situation (though in Weimar it was the lack of gold and no free floating currency that was the problem). To be fair there was an economic orthodoxy at the time and it was only post-Great Depression and WW2 that we learned enough about economics via real life experience and increased theoretical study to know that inflating the currency within limits was actually a good thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard#Depression_and_World_War_II

Ironically Alan Greenspan was of the old school mindset and believes that the dropping of the gold standard by Britain caused the Great Depression in Europe, as it undermined confidence in the banking system at a critical moment when European banks were teetering on the edge after US credit dried up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_dollar#Gold_standard
Regardless everyone in US Fed planned on returning to the gold standard ASAP once the economy was stabilized, but they weren't about to by the time WW2 started IOTL due to lingering issues in the economy, but they did ASAP when the war looked like it was won and the US held most of the gold reserves of the world.

Nations that could not afford to accumulate gold would stay off by necessity, but the US would return due to the prevailing orthodoxy that not even WW2 changed, especially as they had so much gold that it made sense for them once they could leverage the world to play by their rules. France I think would have to leave the GS in the 1930s for budget reasons, they had accumulated too much gold and damaged their national budget by having too strong a currency that depressed exports, while lacking solvency by the time the Rheinland crisis happened in 1936 for even mobilization. Even without the Nazis in power 1936-37 might force the liquidation of gold to ensure solvency for the national bank. The USSR AFAIK was not on gold due to the Imperial government selling off holdings and and taking abroad what was there when they fled. They did find gold mines in Siberia so post-WW2 they did accumulate large holdings. They were starting to just as the start of the German invasion. Not sure how many would peg their currencies to bigger nations if they maintain the gold standard themselves, as currency values were then pegged to the international value of gold and that made convertability much easier than calculating free floating currency values. Germany will barter via clearing arrangements and probably continue to abuse suppliers via that system, running up debts they'd continually delay payment on to keep suppliers on the hook and barter with them using that debt (take what we have to offer to get your value out of us or good luck with nothing).

If Japan either doesn't invade China or gets enough sanctions to call off the invasion, then Germany would actually get rich on the low prices of raw materials they were getting for their industrial goods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-...il_1941#Germany_and_Chinese_industrialization
The most important industrial project from Sino-German cooperation was the 1936 Three-Year Plan, which was administered by the Chinese government's National Resources Commission and the Hapro corporation. The purpose of this plan was to create an industrial powerhouse capable of resisting Japan in the short run, and to create a centre for future Chinese industrial development for the long run. It had several basic components such as the monopolisation of all operations pertaining to tungsten and antimony, the construction of the central steel and machine works in Hubei, Hunan, and Sichuan, and the development of power plants and chemical factories. Cost overrun for these projects was partly assuaged by the fact that the price of tungsten had more than doubled between 1932 and 1936.[23] Germany also extended RM 100 million line of credit to the KMT. The Three-Year Plan introduced a class of highly educated technocrats to run these state-owned projects. At the height of this programme, Sino-German exchange accounted for 17% of China's foreign trade and China was the third largest trading partner with Germany. The Three-Year Plan had many promises, but much of its intended benefits would be undermined by the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.[24]

Without the Nazis wrecking deals with the USSR, Germany and the Soviet Union would actually have a ton more trade in the 1930s too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany–Soviet_Union_relations_before_1941#The_.22Third_Period.22
The Great Depression had wrecked Soviet finances by the early 1930s, so they were looking for barter arrangements, which was fine by Germany with limited currency reserves by then too.

In the end the global trade system would be a free for all and I think powers like Britain and the US would crave the stability of the gold standard, because the mess of a multi-currency global system was too much for them to really handle, especially when competitive advantage was being sought by inflating currencies. Germany didn't really want a free floating currency, hence the clearing system, which was in effect a barter arrangement, so I wonder if they ever got enough gold if they might try and revert to it...but then they might never want to by the time they can due to their neo-colonial policies probably bearing fruits in the 1940s such that it is better to keep the barter system and network of raw material arrangements going, rather than risking returning to gold. I'm sure you can make a case for a number of different outcomes.
 
Thinking about this lately -- if Hitler doesn't come to power in Germany early 1933, does this mean Engelbert Dollfuss has less reason to be worried about the rise of the Nazi party in Austria? If so, does this prevent him taking power as dictator in 1933 and/or the civil war of 1934? And if that's so, does this mean Red Vienna survives?
 
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