Russian East Germany

Here's a random thought I had.

What if Stalin decided it was in the Motherland's interest to allow the Germans in the Soviet occupation zone to emigrate westward, and then brought in ethnic Russians and other 'reliable' people to fill in the void, shipping off whatever German population was stubborn enough to remain on to Siberia or thereabouts after a few years of waiting for them to leave on their own accord.

If freely allowed,a nd even encouraged to leave, how many Germans would do so ITTL?
(wiki says ~ 3.6 million left OTL between 1945 and 1961)

Would they do it? Could they do it, even if they wanted to? Effects if the Soviets tried this?
 
The problem is that OTL Soviets never attempted such massive forced relocations where millions of people would be involved. They routinely did resettlements of various magnitude but with hundreds of thousands at most (which did include about a million Soviet Germans, but not at one time). Population of East Germany was about 15-20 million at the time. Admittedly, if allowed freely to leave, many probably would go to West Germany, but I doubt it would be more then half. So ultimately it is a logistical and humanitarian catastrophe which would be very difficult to hide.
Also there just were not enough people to settle instead. USSR just lost about 30 million of its people in the war, mostly Slavic, and the population boom of Central Asiatic people was still in the future.
But what if East Germany was offered to Poles and Czech? Or better, as a land for Jewish state? Thogh is is even less plausible then original scenario I suppose.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Here's a random thought I had.

What if Stalin decided it was in the Motherland's interest to allow the Germans in the Soviet occupation zone to emigrate westward, and then brought in ethnic Russians and other 'reliable' people to fill in the void, shipping off whatever German population was stubborn enough to remain on to Siberia or thereabouts after a few years of waiting for them to leave on their own accord.

If freely allowed,a nd even encouraged to leave, how many Germans would do so ITTL?
(wiki says ~ 3.6 million left OTL between 1945 and 1961)

Would they do it? Could they do it, even if they wanted to? Effects if the Soviets tried this?
A lot of people would flee to West Germany: if the alternative is dying in Siberia then I could easily see the majority of the population (>50%) leaving.

It wouldnt' happen all at once though, a large % of the population has to stay behind to keep the economy running while stalin forcibly (or incentive's) relocate Russians to Berlin or where ever

I could easily see something like 50% of east germany being russian by the 1980s: it would be similar to what happened in Kazakhstan where ethnic russians were 45% of the population by 1991.

If the USSR still falls though then yeah, I have no idea what happens next: it's quite possible reunification doesn't occur or some nasty ethnic civil war occurs, the new East German government might be overtly nationalistic and starts to expel the Russians (which again, is what happened otl in Central Asian ex-Soviet Republics), or maybe some nasty ethnic civil war occurs which ends up requiring NATO intervention.

West Germany would be even more powerful than OTL: it gets a massive influx of skilled labor and co-ethnics to drive the industrial boom even further.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Approaching escape velocity while headed towards ASB land.
Why?

The soviets expelled ten millions+ of Germans and engineered situations where nearly 50% of the population in some soviet central asian republics were slavs
 
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Because in this case, the Western Allies and Western Germany should be in agreement. That's the ASBish part of it.
 
what agreement is required?

If people need to enter Western Germany, don't you think the guys in charge there, first the Western Allies when it was occupied, then the BRD, would have their say?

Initially they might be happy to welcome brotherly Germans in, also as a demonstration of how evil the USSR is. When they realize this is going to run into the hundreds of thousands, let alone millions, they will also understand that accepting those people in means being accomplices in forcible deportation.
You'll remember that's against Geneva IV 1949, BTW, article 49 (the USSR is a signatory, to boot). Nobody in the West will want to touch this with a 6-yard pole.
 

RousseauX

Donor
If people need to enter Western Germany, don't you think the guys in charge there, first the Western Allies when it was occupied, then the BRD, would have their say?

Initially they might be happy to welcome brotherly Germans in, also as a demonstration of how evil the USSR is. When they realize this is going to run into the hundreds of thousands, let alone millions, they will also understand that accepting those people in means being accomplices in forcible deportation.
You'll remember that's against Geneva IV 1949, BTW, article 49 (the USSR is a signatory, to boot). Nobody in the West will want to touch this with a 6-yard pole.
those are circumstantial political difficulties not asbs
 
Stalin did not want the Germans to be united in one, rearmed, bitterly anticommunist nation--which is what expulsion of all East Germans to the West would have meant.

Yes, the inital expulsions would temporarily cause disruption in the West. (It would also guarantee a violently hostile West--something that Stalin did not want in 1945. He knew that the West would not object too strongly to expulsion of Germans from, say, Czechoslovakia, because of the argument that they had been a "fifth column" there. Not to mention that it was not the Communists but the "democrat" Benes who had taken the lead in demanding the expulaion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia.) But in any but the shortest run, the addition of almost 20 million people to West Germany enormously strengthens its industrial and military capacity--and even in the short run it has the disadvantage of immensely strengthening the Right in western Germany's politics (against the Social Democrats who advocated a policy of neutrality) and making it much more likely that West Germany will rearm (with American encouragement). Of those twenty million people expelled, many will become soldiers, or will beget soldiers (or workers in military-related industries). This is *not* what Stalin wants--especially when he can instead have those twenty million industrious East Germans working for *him.*

An important function of the GDR, incidentally, was to give the Soviet bloc a bargaining card in negotiations with West Germany--we'll be nicer with your fellow Germans in the GDR if you'll do this or that for us. Why give up that card?

Oh, and what happens to West Berlin in this scenario?
 
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Stalin did not want the Germans to be united in one, rearmed, bitterly anticommunist nation--which is what expulsion of all East Germans to the West would have meant.

Yes, the inital expulsions would temporarily cause disruption in the West. (It would also guarantee a violently hostile West--something that Stalin did not want in 1945. He knew that the West would not object too strongly to expulsion of Germans from, say, Czechoslovakia, because of the argument that they had been a "fifth column" there. Not to mention that it was not the Communists but the "democrat" Benes who had taken the lead in demanding the expulaion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia.) But in any but the shortest run, the addition of almost 20 million people to West Germany enormously strengthens its industrial and military capacity--and even in the short run it has the disadvantage of immensely strengthening the Right in western Germany's politics (against the Social Democrats who advocated a policy of neutrality) and making it much more likely that West Germany will rearm (with American encouragement). Of those twenty million people expelled, many will become soldiers, or will beget soldiers (or workers in military-related industries). This is *not* what Stalin wants--especially when he can instead have those twenty million industrious East Germans working for *him.*

An important function of the GDR, incidentally, was to give the Soviet bloc a bargaining card in negotiations with West Germany--we'll be nicer with your fellow Germans in the GDR if you'll do this or that for us. Why give up that card?

Oh, and what happens to West Berlin in this scenario?

All correct considerations. But I'd add that the West would simply not stand this. They wouldn't say, oh, let's welcome those 20 millions so that we will have a more populous, stronger, and rabidly anti-Communist Western Germany. No, they'll tell Stalin: stop that.

Now, in 1945-1951, it's not that the West couldn't defeat the Soviet Union; they had nukes, Stalin had none (save a couple of tests in 1950-51). It's that there wasn't a good enough reason to go to war - again, even if lots of right-wingers said that that was the right time to do so. The populations wouldn't stomach it.
But this scenario would provide the reason.

Naturally there would still be strong opposition to war in the West, by left-wingers. Yet Stalin knows all the above, and while lots of bad things could be said about him, he wasn't a risk-taker. It will never come to the West having to threaten him about this idea, because he'll never even consider trying it.

Nor are any of the deportation scenarios any indication that he would. In all cases, a justification could be produced. Some minorities within the Soviet Union were collaborating with the enemy, during the war, it was wartime, and it was an internal affair of the Soviet Union. Russians moving to the Baltics or in Central Asia? That's spontaneous internal emigration, and again an internal affair. Germans out of Poland and Czechoslovakia and into Eastern Germany? It's the Germans who actually want to go away and the authorities of Eastern Germany welcome them. Poles out of Ukraine and into the new Polish borders? Ditto, Poles wanting to live in Poland and Poland welcoming them. None of the deportees could later claim otherwise, because, to whom would they be complaining, in Communist Eastern Germany and Poland?

But not in this case. Sure, some young, unattached, anti-Communist Eastern Germans might welcome the opportunity. But the vast majority of any people, even if faced by an oppressive regime, want to hang on to their home, their town, their job, their life. They'd be forcibly deported. Nor would the authorities of the place they're sent to be happy to welcome them, not in the millions, not to become accomplices in the largest mass deportation in that time frame. And there would be a free environment to air their complaints.

So it's ASBs.
 
Why should he do this? He hasn't 15 million Russians to replace the Germans. The USSR suffered a lot during WWII and this workforce is needed at home.

Stalin wanted a neutral, capitalist Germany. He was interested in taking as much German industry as possible to rebuild the Soviet Union and then leaving. The creation of the GDR made no sense and certainly wasn't planned by him. And the depopulation of Germany would have made even less sense.

BTW the deportation of Germans from Czechoslavakia wasn't Stalin's idea, even if he certainly agreed with it. It was the decision of Beneš, the social-democratic president of pre-war Czechoslovakia.
 

Deleted member 97083

The problem is that OTL Soviets never attempted such massive forced relocations where millions of people would be involved. They routinely did resettlements of various magnitude but with hundreds of thousands at most (which did include about a million Soviet Germans, but not at one time).
The Soviets evacuated 16 million people in the wake of the German invasion, also the relocation of factories behind the Urals involved the movement of 10 million people. During the war, the Soviets were capable of moving 2.5 million men to the frontline constantly.

For a large movement in Soviet occupied territory, the logistics are there. The issue is motivation.
 
Why?

The soviets expelled ten millions+ of Germans and engineered situations where nearly 50% of the population in some soviet central asian republics were slavs
Not some, just one - Kazakhstan. Which has half the population of East Germany and it took decades to reach that far, building upon settlement that started during Tsarist times.

And a minor point - it wasn't only, or even mostly the Soviets who carried out the expelling of Germans. This was done mostly by the Czechs and Poles themselves.
 
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