Bru, West Germany is basically a starved hellhole ITTL. How are the Germans going to have an indipendent foreign policu when they don't have an industry or even food anymore?
At best I can see them going full Nazbol.
Red Spies in the White House: An Alternate Cold War
- Thread starter Ulysses Orbis
- Start date
At best I can see them going full Nazbol.
Ironically I can see West Germany requesting to join East Germany as a way of giving the Allies in general and White's America in particular a big middle finger. It also seems that in this case it would be the economically most sensible decision (which, as I have seen on AH.com repeatedly, seems to be considered as the definitive and unquestionable argument to validate all types of decisions).
This is my interpretation of how Germany woud look like by say the mid-50s (I’m just riffing something quickly):
- East Germany will not be that much different than OTL, but perhaps be a bit bigger due to annexing land in the West, and most likely have a lot more hungry mouths to feed (though still roughly the same number of people as OTL)
- Bavaria has a strong national identity, and may go independent, and fall under the Soviet umbrella, especially if Austria also becomes another USSR-puppet, though Bavaria may end up more of a conservative nation which is only esthetically different from its ML counterparts
- The Danes may annex parts of Schlesweig (perhaps all the way down south to Hamburg but that’s pretty ASB)
- West Germany would be a mess due to various different groups having different interests. The US may fully pull out, the UK could try set something up in Hamburg, the French may try working together with the Russians, and I’m sure the Dutch (and Belgians if they’re not split due to the Royal Question) would try to have a say as well.
- Everyone that can will try, in one way or the other, get a pie from the Ruhr, to the extent that you’d see some unholy alliances form due to politicking for control of the areas by various foreign governments, and wannabe warlords.
You could probably draw a straight diagonal line from Hannover to the South, and say that everything to the East is safe, but not free, and everything to the West of said is line is a vast territory with millions of inhabitants, but without a state. At some point things would stabilize, but by then further Balkanization, and another generation forever disillusioned by foreign nations would have been a fact.
- East Germany will not be that much different than OTL, but perhaps be a bit bigger due to annexing land in the West, and most likely have a lot more hungry mouths to feed (though still roughly the same number of people as OTL)
- Bavaria has a strong national identity, and may go independent, and fall under the Soviet umbrella, especially if Austria also becomes another USSR-puppet, though Bavaria may end up more of a conservative nation which is only esthetically different from its ML counterparts
- The Danes may annex parts of Schlesweig (perhaps all the way down south to Hamburg but that’s pretty ASB)
- West Germany would be a mess due to various different groups having different interests. The US may fully pull out, the UK could try set something up in Hamburg, the French may try working together with the Russians, and I’m sure the Dutch (and Belgians if they’re not split due to the Royal Question) would try to have a say as well.
- Everyone that can will try, in one way or the other, get a pie from the Ruhr, to the extent that you’d see some unholy alliances form due to politicking for control of the areas by various foreign governments, and wannabe warlords.
You could probably draw a straight diagonal line from Hannover to the South, and say that everything to the East is safe, but not free, and everything to the West of said is line is a vast territory with millions of inhabitants, but without a state. At some point things would stabilize, but by then further Balkanization, and another generation forever disillusioned by foreign nations would have been a fact.
Hmmmm. Then why do Germans refer to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park, as “ Tomb of the Unknown Rapist”?
ric350
I guess he's meaning the Soviets don't tried to exterminate Germans, omitting the rape part.
Exterminate from east Europe. Which considering the post war ethnic changes is an apt description
Soviets deported Germans from East Prussia. They didn't "exterminate" Germans from the rest of Eastern Europe.
And Czechia. And Poland. And Yugoslavia. And Hungary, and bunch of other places that fell under Soviet control outside of new German border. When the alternative to leaving is a truck riding on your skull it’s extermination.
Nope. Red Army didn't participate in those deportations. It's a well known historical fact.
Also, none in the West Allies opposes to this. In fact, they pleased the Soviets for doing this. Not only this, the Allies transferred to the Soviets many people that flows out the USSR and stays in Western Europe at the moment...
This is the basis one of the main plot points in the classic movie “The Third Man”.
ric350
While you are, in general, correct regarding the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia,. Romania, and Hungary, insofar ad the actual authorities overseeing the expulsions and the front line personnel were not Soviet/Red Army, the reality is that the governments in those countries were utterly incapable of doing literally anything without NKVD and Red Army support. The governments lacked everything from fuel, to vehicles to weapons, to boots for their freshly formed puppet armies, THat all came courtesy of the Red Army, including transport for NKVD Border Guards.
There is also the reality of Eastern Prussia (aka Kaliningrad). Here there was not puppet government that could be given the proper orders to make the ethnic cleansing appear to be the work of the outraged locals taking "just actions" against the "Nazi Invaders "™ (many of whom had family roots going back the better part of a thousand years). Here Stalin and the Red Army had to get their hands into the mix, even if it was only to push the East Prussian civilians over the new Soviet-Polish borders where the Communist puppet Polish government could take over and complete, in every detail, Stalin's slightest whim, or to deported, in some cases to Soviet Labor camps (this number was somewhat limited since most able bodied men had been taken as PoW during the final assault on East Prussia and already moved to Red Army/NKVD labor camps.
There is plenty of blood to be poured on hands regarding the expulsions, on both sides of the Atlantic, including those of the Red Army.
As I have stated before there exists no evidence to support the allegations that Hiss was a spy of the Soviets and the case against him is nonsense and there exists no record of any episopinage comitted by him in the Soviet Archives as has been confirmed by every scholar who has looked
The Venona decrypts list Hiss.
"Among those identified are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White (the second-highest official in the Treasury Department), Lauchlin Currie (a personal aide to Franklin Roosevelt), and Maurice Halperin (a section head in the Office of Strategic Services)."
In the Enemy’s House: Venona and the Maturation of American Counterintelligence
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To be fair, all this TL works on the mechanics of "Anyone who in OTL was accused of being a Soviet spy, regardless of the truth (or lack thereof) of such accusations, TTL is effectively a Soviet spy." So even if that's true I don't think it matters much here.
Really? I'm quite surprised, usually whenever I see Hiss mentioned in AH on here it's usually about him being a Soviet spy in the U.S. government.
Yep, everyone who’s had a poke about the Soviet Archives has said the same, no evidence Hiss ever had a relationship with Soviet intelligence, it to mention in regard to Venona all they have is one decrypt that someone, may have been Lampere wrote a memo saying “probably Hiss“ on and they all ignore the fact that the FBI despite all their best efforts for 20 years failed to find anything that could confirm this
I personally have always believed that this was a bit like the idea that all iterations of the Communist States of America would always exclusively focus on Eugene Debs and Daniel De León as references as if there were no others: they are "known" and have "cool names" and that's enough for many AH writers.