Reversed WWII from an 18th century POD?

Sternberg

Banned
I've had an idea in mind for a while now. At the very basics of it, Russia becomes an analogue to Nazi Germany, and Germany itself becomes an analogue to the Soviet Union. With butterflies harmed, WWII still happens from 1939 to 1945.

I've talked with a Polish friend of mine about it, and he claims it's impossible without a POD in the 18th century at the very latest. He says that Russia would have to be an industrial superpower, and that Germany would have to be, in his words, a retarded agrarian economy. He also says that Germany's location makes it impossible as well. In order to make it work, he says that for Russia, it needs to avoid succumbing to decadence so that the far-right can take hold, and that the Tsar needs to remain in power. He also says that a communist revolution would need to succeed in Germany.

It's gotten me thinking about whether I should keep the 1914 POD I originally wanted, or if I should go with a new POD in the 18th century. I'm probably going to go with a new 18th century POD, since it might allow me more creative freedom.

What do you think? Ignoring mass butterfly killing, how would an 18th century POD work for an alternate WWII that still happens between 1939 and 1945? Do you think I should go with an 18th century POD, or just stick with a 1914 POD?
 
Germany shouldn't be too difficult to turn communist (IRL the two main totalitarian political movements in Weimar Germany were the communists and the Nazis, butterflying away Hitler -- have him killed in the trenches, say -- could reduce the Nazis' appeal and allow the communists to take over). Russia as a Fascist country might be more difficult, though. Probably you'd need a POD before 1914 (although going back to the 18th century might be a bit much) to ensure that the Russian brand of communism is a very racist and chauvinistic one.

That would switch the politics of the two countries around. I'm not sure if that's what you wanted. If you want the roles of the countries to be reversed as well -- have Russia start a war and then see the tide turning against it after an ill-judged attack on Germany -- that would be more difficult, due to geography if nothing else. (Since Germany is between Russia and Britain/France, it's hard to see these countries having a WW2-scale conflict without crossing through Germany, which would only happen if Germany joined in on one of the sides.)

Or alternatively, if it's not too much of a departure from your reversed WW2 analogue, you could have a fascist Russia invade a communist Germany, and then have Britain and/or France play the role of the USA, intervening a few years later and swinging the balance in favour of Germany. On second thoughts, they'd probably be more likely to join in on Russia's side, since having a powerful country in central Europe turn communist would most certainly not be to their liking. Still, a reversed WW2 can include a reversed outcome, I suppose? :p
 
Oh dear. No, the communists were not equally likely to the Nazis to take power.

The Nazis had a huge advantage in that they were selected as, essentially, the lesser evil by the highly conservative officer establishment (which had similar views to most German soldiers), and had, by its alliance with that establishment, managed to make inroads into the army and take over the allegiance of many German soldiers. As such, the Nazi takeover was a fairly peaceful transition of power.

The communists could never possibly have achieved this. With an 18th-century PoD it's easily possible simply because virtually everything we know about Germany will be butterflied away, but with a PoD in the twentieth century? No way.

If you want Germany to remain a primitive agrarian state, but still united, your best bet is that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Germany's closest ever equivalent to tsarist Russia) never falls. That is problematic, since by the 18th century central authority was already extremely limited and its powers were de facto independent states. Perhaps if Austria becomes more dominant it might manage to assert sovereignty over the other German-speaking countries, using the HREGN as a convenient front for Austrian domination, and this state of affairs gradually becomes permanent…

I'd imagine that you have to change the French Revolutionary Wars. When your first experience of revolution is a cruel foreign invasion trying to impose it on you, it's not exactly going to be put into your culture; that was the experience of OTL. Also, it was the French Revolutionary Wars that destroyed the HREGN in OTL.

So my very, very tentative and rough TL would be:

1776: The American rebels get some bad luck and are crushed before the Kingdom of France can send them assistance (hardly impossible). As a result, the Kingdom of France isn't bankrupted, so Louis XVI never has to call the Estates General.

1780s or 1790s: There is a general European war with which the other European powers break the hegemony of recently united Great Britain (the American Revolutionary War served this purpose IOTL), which had emerged as the most powerful country in the world after its victories in the Seven Years' War. Let's say that Prussia is on Great Britain's side and Austria, France and Spain are against.

Great Britain and Prussia lose this war. Austria then tries to use the HREGN as a tool to control the former Kingdom of Prussia.

The HREGN remains a backwater under tight Austrian domination but gradually evolves a unified German identity, perhaps with the help of a few invasions in European wars; that might help the HREGN/Germany to get extra territory, which it will need to be a proper analogue to OTL's Russia.

Late in the 19th century, Russia gets a good tsar and manages to improve its industry. This massively rising power (probably even more so than OTL's Germany, due to Russia's vast resources) is a huge destabilisation of the global balance of power, and Russia finds itself on the wrong side of a huge multinational coalition including the HREGN.

Sometime between the 1880s and the 1920s, we get a WW1 analogue which results in the overthrow of the HREGN and its replacement by a *communist regime. Russia, however, loses the war but later develops a *fascist regime.
 

Sternberg

Banned
Good feedback so far. Now for more questions.

First of all, if the POD involves the Americans losing their war for independence, would it be possible for them to rebel again and successfully gain independence on their second try? The reason why I ask is because I've been wanting to have the United States play some role in this timeline, with a Walt Disney-like President in power from the end of WWII to the 1960s. Basically, someone who would have been known for their work in art and film, and as President would have been credited with bring America onto the world stage while at the same time detracted for his length of time in office and as being a "dictator with a smile".

Second, what territory might an Austrian-dominated, unified, and expanded Holy Roman Empire control? Are we talking Lebensraum-sized portions of territory, or something the size of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary put together, with some other bits put in?

Third, would butterflies from a 1776 POD diverge things enough to allow neopaganism to become popular among the extreme-right? With the Ultra-traditionalists, or Puchoviks, as I've called my Russian Nazi-analogues, I want them to be so traditionalistic that they would consider the Abrahamic faiths unfit for their ideal Russian state, labelling them "Jewish lies and superstitions", and have an ultimate goal in removing the Orthodox church and replacing it with their take on revitalized Slavic paganism, which they would consider more legitimate for a unified Pan-Slavic state.

I'll also be adding a link to a Google Docs sheet where I'll be setting up a rough timeline based on input from you all. It might be wiser for me to make this something of a collaborative effort, since my knowledge in history is too spread out. I know a lot about history in general, but I don't know much about specific parts of history.
 
Good feedback so far. Now for more questions.

First of all, if the POD involves the Americans losing their war for independence, would it be possible for them to rebel again and successfully gain independence on their second try?

It's absolutely possible, and that, indeed, was part of the scenario I proposed. However, it would probably be a more nationalistic and centralised American state, due to the longer and bloodier struggle for independence; it would probably not be called the 'United States', which was an explicitly federal move. A much tighter federation is likely, maybe even an outright unitary republic. But the anti-British backlash will deliver the same libertarianism as existed IOTL, and 'manifest destiny' will still happen (probably even more strongly due to the longer period of British power keeping the Americans away from the Appalachians), thus leaving an American culture fairly comparable to OTL's.

That does, however, presume that the British do nothing to mollify the Americans' concerns, e.g. lifting the Proclamation Line or devolving tax revenue; neither of those outcomes are impossible in the much more decentralised British colonial empire that existed before 1776. So I would judge that a successful American rebellion after this PoD is possible, but not certain.

The reason why I ask is because I've been wanting to have the United States play some role in this timeline, with a Walt Disney-like President in power from the end of WWII to the 1960s. Basically, someone who would have been known for their work in art and film, and as President would have been credited with bring America onto the world stage while at the same time detracted for his length of time in office and as being a "dictator with a smile".

For Walt Disney himself? Impossible. Even an 1870s-era PoD is going to leave Walt Disney butterflied out of existence, and by that time Germany and Russia are too close to OTL to realistically switch roles; a PoD in the 18th century will mean he can never exist.

For someone like him? It would depend on the development of American culture, but all the most basic elements that created OTL's American culture (libertarianism and mistrust of government, strong religiosity, probably a civil war over slavery, expansion at the expense of the Native Americans and 'manifest destiny', and frontier spirit) are still there, I think. Perhaps someone who's studied the social history of the USA could comment on this.

Second, what territory might an Austrian-dominated, unified, and expanded Holy Roman Empire control? Are we talking Lebensraum-sized portions of territory, or something the size of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary put together, with some other bits put in?

Certainly not Lebensraum-sized portions of territory; for that Russian power would have to be decisively broken, and history has proven that that is very difficult to accomplish. This is hard to answer, because it's pretty implausible for the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation to survive anyway. It would certainly include the Habsburg domains and eastern Germany. Whether it would get what IOTL is western Germany, I don't know; it depends on the progress of future wars, as the Kingdom of France will be interested in claiming much of that.

A useful force to awaken German nationalism would be an invasion by the Kingdom of France. If that happens, and if France is successfully defeated by the HREGN and its allies (almost certainly including the British and maybe the Spanish and the Dutch too if the French are being very expansionist) that might unite all of the German-speaking lands under the HREGN, and such a large and powerful HREGN is probably needed, since we want it to be big enough to survive against a super-Russia (as any industrialised Russia would be, compared to OTL).

So let's say that when Great Britain loses its war to a European coalition in the late 18th century, the rest of Europe manages to secure major victories over the Royal Navy, thus permitting a French invasion of Great Britain that turns southern England into a French puppet kingdom while the United Kingdom of Great Britain retains power in the rest of the island of Great Britain. As a result, the rump UK is essentially unable to resist France, for fear of invasion; this nicely neutralises the British threat that would cause problems for my scenario later. Later, a Louis XIV-style charismatic soldier-king gets the throne of France sometime in the 1810s-1830s, determined to make France the hegemon of Europe. The Kingdom of France tries to expand at the expense of the Dutch Republic and the western-German petty states that are nominally part of the HREGN, and succeeds, beating off Spanish attempts to stop them. Then the French invade the bits of the HREGN that are actually under solid Austrian control, they get over-extended and they're thrown back; they don't have the resources of OTL's Napoleonic France, with its conscription and efficiency at providing vast armies for the Emperor.

That would unite all of the German-speaking lands, maybe even the Netherlands too, within the HREGN. The HREGN would also keep the parts of Poland that went IOTL to Austria and Prussia, and it would have the territory of OTL's Austria-Hungary. Later, it would probably forge an alliance with the Russian Empire against the Ottoman Empire, since the factors that make Russia desire to expand against the Ottomans are already in place and the HREGN in this scenario is a natural ally against Ottoman rule.

Third, would butterflies from a 1776 POD diverge things enough to allow neopaganism to become popular among the extreme-right? With the Ultra-traditionalists, or Puchoviks, as I've called my Russian Nazi-analogues, I want them to be so traditionalistic that they would consider the Abrahamic faiths unfit for their ideal Russian state, labelling them "Jewish lies and superstitions", and have an ultimate goal in removing the Orthodox church and replacing it with their take on revitalized Slavic paganism, which they would consider more legitimate for a unified Pan-Slavic state.

It would be difficult for a *fascist movement to start off opposing Christianity; Christianity was very deeply rooted in Russia just as in most of the rest of Europe. Any fascist movement that takes power basically has to accommodate Christianity, since such movements depend on fear of radical ideologies that ordinary citizens view as a threat (such as communism), and any fascism that calls for the end of Christianity will be considered a great threat to the ordinary values of small-c conservative *Russian families who might otherwise support it.

Maybe if a *fascist movement gets a lot of power in Russia it might, once it is already securely in power, act against Christianity—but even that is difficult to imagine, given that the *fascist movement's support base will be in small-c conservative families who enjoy the security of a traditionalist movement and feel threatened by radical ideas.

I'll also be adding a link to a Google Docs sheet where I'll be setting up a rough timeline based on input from you all. It might be wiser for me to make this something of a collaborative effort, since my knowledge in history is too spread out. I know a lot about history in general, but I don't know much about specific parts of history.

All right. I'll try to be relatively helpful, but please bear in mind that virtually all I've said is some very wild speculation: it doesn't even include a scenario for how and when the anti-British coalition in the late 18th century arises, which will be incredibly important in determining the future of this scenario.
 
Oh dear. No, the communists were not equally likely to the Nazis to take power.

I never said that the communists were "equally likely" to take power, just that they were one of Weimar Germany's two main totalitarian movements. Which is true, hence why lots of conservatives supported the Nazis ("Hey, Germany's gonna turn either Nazi or Communist, might as well support the lesser of two evils...").
 
I never said that the communists were "equally likely" to take power, just that they were one of Weimar Germany's two main totalitarian movements. Which is true, hence why lots of conservatives supported the Nazis ("Hey, Germany's gonna turn either Nazi or Communist, might as well support the lesser of two evils...").

I apologise for misquoting you and (it appears) exaggerating what you meant, but you did say "Germany shouldn't be too difficult to turn communist"and I objected to that. Germany wouldn't be too difficult to turn some other kind of authoritarian-nationalist (the Nationalist Party or some ATL equivalent could easily have become the titan of the German Right if Hitler had died in the trenches) but communism is very difficult; any communist takeover of Germany could only come in a civil war, in which the non-communist side would receive lots of support from France and the United Kingdom and would probably also be supported by the Social Democrats, who had a tendency to be loyal to the German government and were not very revolutionary at all.
 

Sternberg

Banned
I'm bumping this because I've found a bit more inspiration for things.

I've been looking at stuff on Russian neo-paganism and anti-Semitic views held by neo-pagans, and I think it really fits what I had in mind with the Puchoviks. Beliefs like Palestine and the Phoenicians being ancient Russians really intrigue me as a potential element to the Puchoviks. Or at least a part of them, as I'd imagine there being militant atheists and extreme elements of the Russian Orthodox Church in the party as well.

Given a Russian defeat in an alternate WWI, I've been wondering how anti-Christian sentiment could become popular amongst the Russian extreme-right following said outcome of an alternate WWI. Perhaps the church would end up being associated with the Romanovs, who could have been believed to have cost Russia the war and its losses?
 
I've had an idea in mind for a while now. At the very basics of it, Russia becomes an analogue to Nazi Germany, and Germany itself becomes an analogue to the Soviet Union. With butterflies harmed, WWII still happens from 1939 to 1945.

I've talked with a Polish friend of mine about it, and he claims it's impossible without a POD in the 18th century at the very latest. He says that Russia would have to be an industrial superpower, and that Germany would have to be, in his words, a retarded agrarian economy. He also says that Germany's location makes it impossible as well. In order to make it work, he says that for Russia, it needs to avoid succumbing to decadence so that the far-right can take hold, and that the Tsar needs to remain in power. He also says that a communist revolution would need to succeed in Germany.

It's gotten me thinking about whether I should keep the 1914 POD I originally wanted, or if I should go with a new POD in the 18th century. I'm probably going to go with a new 18th century POD, since it might allow me more creative freedom.

What do you think? Ignoring mass butterfly killing, how would an 18th century POD work for an alternate WWII that still happens between 1939 and 1945? Do you think I should go with an 18th century POD, or just stick with a 1914 POD?


Hitler could be killed in the trenches,or the current leadership if the german workers party distrust him when he decided to join so they had him offed or Hitler could have also went to a meeting of the Communist Party of Germany and decided that he liked them better the the National Socialist German Workers Party
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Frankfurt Assembly offers constitutional monarchy to Wilhelm I?

I've had an idea in mind for a while now. At the very basics of it, Russia becomes an analogue to Nazi Germany, and Germany itself becomes an analogue to the Soviet Union. With butterflies harmed, WWII still happens from 1939 to 1945.What do you think? Ignoring mass butterfly killing, how would an 18th century POD work for an alternate WWII that still happens between 1939 and 1945? Do you think I should go with an 18th century POD, or just stick with a 1914 POD?

Frankfurt Assembly offers constitutional monarchy to Wilhelm I? Or Friedrich Wilhelm?

He takes it, Germany federates and industrializes, but a "liberal" Germany ends up losing "big" in an analog to the Great War (could be in the late Nineteenth Century or the early Twentieth); resulting stresses lead to Communist revolution/takeover (revolt from the left?), and by the mid-Twentieth Century, the German Socialist Federation (?) looks awfully "red"...

Meanwhile, the Russians end up losing "big" along the way as well, and some early Twentieth Century analog to Corporal Hitler (Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg has always struck me as a likely candidate) come up with the Russian Nationalist People's Party, and away we go...

Best,
 
Frankfurt Assembly offers constitutional monarchy to Wilhelm I? Or Friedrich Wilhelm?

But they did…

He takes it

This being the difficult point. I doubt it would be easy to convince an absolute monarch who believes that his power derives rightfully from the
will of God that he ought to humbly accept what is offered to him by the disgusting treacherous revolutionary rabble of the streets, under a power-limiting constitution devised by that rabble.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Well, true...but I was looking for something that

But they did…



This being the difficult point. I doubt it would be easy to convince an absolute monarch who believes that his power derives rightfully from the
will of God that he ought to humbly accept what is offered to him by the disgusting treacherous revolutionary rabble of the streets, under a power-limiting constitution devised by that rabble.


Well, true...but I was looking for something that straddles the "post WW I" and "French Revolutionary Wars" era; close enough to be imaginable.

Maybe not.

Best,
 
Well, true...but I was looking for something that straddles the "post WW I" and "French Revolutionary Wars" era; close enough to be imaginable.

Maybe not.

Best,

I didn't mean to be insulting by dismissing that, and I'm sorry if I came across that way. I just think that reversing their roles at all, given how different their societies were, would be difficult without a very early PoD.

I have very little idea (except propagandistic utopian depictions from the Left and the equally misleading impression that it would be just like the USSR from the Right) how a communist revolution would go down in a highly industrialised society because it's never happened IOTL; I think it's much easier for an ATL to depict a communist revolution in a Tsarist Russia-esque society, because we from OTL have more experience with what might happen in that scenario. The same, I think, is true for a far-right, revolutionary, totalitarian racist regime; it's easier to handle if it happens in a society roughly like OTL's Weimar Germany.

That's why I thought of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation to be an approximate Tsarist Russia-analogue (autocratic, very large, multi-ethnic but clearly dominated by one ethnicity, agrarian, poorly industrialised, unabashedly aristocratic, not much of a middle class) and of early Russian industrialisation and modernisation to make the Russian Empire an approximate Imperial Germany-analogue (semi-autocratic, militaristic, semi-aristocratic, heavily industrialised, large middle class) complete with Russia losing *WW1. This convergence is questionable, obviously, but I don't think it's impossible, and it makes it much likelier that we'd get a recognisably USSR-esque communist Germany and a recognisably Nazi-esque "Puchovik" Russia.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Oh, understood...just struck me that a "revolution from the left" in

an ostensibly "liberal" Germany might be more likely than one in a "conservative" Germany, paradoxically enough; I mean, even Lenin needed Kerensky to come into power first.

On the Russians as militant nationalists, its a stretch, but von Ungern-Sternberg has always struck me as one of those truly world class sociopaths who actually could have given Hitler et al a run for their money in terms of state evil.

Best,
 
Oh, understood...just struck me that a "revolution from the left" in an ostensibly "liberal" Germany might be more likely than one in a "conservative" Germany, paradoxically enough; I mean, even Lenin needed Kerensky to come into power first.

But if liberals had been in power for a long time rather than just briefly and in a disastrous period as Kerensky was, the situation would have been very different to OTL's Russia as of just before the Bolshevik seizure of power. I'm not saying that a communist revolution is less likely in a liberal industrialised society than a Tsarist Russia-esque society (Marx would of course agree with you there), only that a communist revolution in a liberal industrialised society would be so different to OTL's communist regimes that I don't think anyone can honestly claim to be very sure of what it would be like.

On the Russians as militant nationalists, its a stretch, but von Ungern-Sternberg has always struck me as one of those truly world class sociopaths who actually could have given Hitler et al a run for their money in terms of state evil.

Best,

Here we're coming to analysis of the causes of Nazism, which can always manufacture an argument. Perhaps this is an overly class-based way of looking at it, but I thought that the Nazis' electoral success was, to an extent, due to the middle classes (and also the aristocracy) being terrified of the communist threat that they saw as imminent and consequently supporting the Nazis as a bulwark against it (plus, of course, the elements of ultra-nationalism, submission to the state, revanchism, racism and cruel leadership that are apparent at first glance). To get maximum convergence in the results, maximum background convergence is what I would suggest, simply for the sake of convenience in writing.

Perhaps that's not very intellectually sporting of me. Oh well.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
No, that's fair - I was thinking of a "The God that Failed" type reaction

But if liberals had been in power for a long time rather than just briefly and in a disastrous period as Kerensky was, the situation would have been very different to OTL's Russia as of just before the Bolshevik seizure of power. I'm not saying that a communist revolution is less likely in a liberal industrialised society than a Tsarist Russia-esque society (Marx would of course agree with you there), only that a communist revolution in a liberal industrialised society would be so different to OTL's communist regimes that I don't think anyone can honestly claim to be very sure of what it would be like.

Here we're coming to analysis of the causes of Nazism, which can always manufacture an argument. Perhaps this is an overly class-based way of looking at it, but I thought that the Nazis' electoral success was, to an extent, due to the middle classes (and also the aristocracy) being terrified of the communist threat that they saw as imminent and consequently supporting the Nazis as a bulwark against it (plus, of course, the elements of ultra-nationalism, submission to the state, revanchism, racism and cruel leadership that are apparent at first glance). To get maximum convergence in the results, maximum background convergence is what I would suggest, simply for the sake of convenience in writing.

Perhaps that's not very intellectually sporting of me. Oh well.

No, that's fair - I was thinking of a "The God that Failed" type reaction to a collapsed liberal/constitutional monarchy in Germany giving rise to a leftist revolution; something like the Communards replacing a "liberal" Orleanist monarchy in France.

As far as the causes of Nazism, I agree, there is a spectrum of interpretations (some far more suspect than others, of course), and you're right, an expansionist/militarist/nationalist "Russian State" analog is not easy - so the maximum convergence in background is probably as reasonable an approach as any.

Best,
 
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