Smallest possible warsaw pact?

Are we talking about smaller from 1945, or shrinking later (Western support for Czechoslovakia in 1968 might help)?
 
Backing Dubcek and his lot brings in a lot of the same issues as the idea of backing Nagy and his lot back in 1956, the West is at that point pushing its luck with a nation that is considered to be under the Soviet sphere of influence. The Soviets have much more to lose (mostly, it leads to a lot of different people asking some very difficult questions about the Warsaw Pact and giving everyone the impression that the Soviet Union will, when pressed by the West, abandon its allies... that bodes poorly for their reputation as the supporter of all the world's communist movements) from backing down over Czechoslovakia than the West does. A good version of this could mean a genuine spree of reform in a desperately stagnating Soviet Union, but the way it was set up, if the Soviets let Dubcek go it will be seen as a moment of weakness where the Soviets let themselves lose a major friend, really, losing say... Romania or Bulgaria would be bad, but losing major arms exporter like the Czechoslovaks is a particularly painful price for Moscow to pay.

A smaller Warsaw Pact requires a substantially weaker Soviet Union, there is simply no understating the importance of the Warsaw Pact to postwar Soviet foreign policy, the view is that another monstrously devastating war has to be presented by the systematic subjugation and control over every single nation west of the Soviet Union proper that represented a corridor of entry into Soviet territory, especially, especially Poland. Poland was the shining jewel of this policy.
 
Suppose it's possible all the satelite states could have become full blown SSRs.

That will dilute the advantage of having a majority population of ethnic Russians and additionally bring in a lot of problems and populaces that the Soviet government would be better off not dealing with.

Mainly it completely kills their claims (no matter how bogus... it is crucially important to uphold them) of the independence of the states that were, in reality, satellite states of the Soviet Union.

Plus... groups like the Poles resent the economic and political dominance exerted upon them by the Soviet Union already... having their proudly "independent" nation completely annexed into the Soviet Union would provoke rebellions the likes of which the Soviet Union has never experienced.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
Plus... groups like the Poles resent the economic and political dominance exerted upon them by the Soviet Union already... having their proudly "independent" nation completely annexed into the Soviet Union would provoke rebellions the likes of which the Soviet Union has never experienced.

Ummm...what? You really think the Poles, after 6-7 years of Nazi occupation, would revolt against the Soviets? Them and what army? The Polish people are at their absolute lowest point, they aren't going to up and rebel because of the Soviets incorporating them into the USSR, it's a damn sight better than extermination.

The people of Europe as a whole are tired of war and conflict. The Poles will be quietly subdued because there are things more important to them than some abstract concept of national independence, like rebuilding their homes and families.
 
Okay, could Hitler be persuaded that the Soviets represent a much bigger threat to him than the WAllies, and thus, he throws much of his European army against them, holding them at least in Poland, but leaving France open to the Allies? Maybe the Vichy French finally come on board (or at least make a show of doing so) and offer themselves as reserves, and even front-line soldiers in place of German soldiers.
 
...could Hitler be persuaded that the Soviets represent a much bigger threat to him than the WAllies, and thus, he throws much of his European army against them...

He did that IOTL. A good part of the German army, I've heard in the region of 75%, was fighting desperately to hold the Soviets back. I'm not sure how much more could be transferred East without effectively surrendering to the Western Allies.
 
He did that IOTL. A good part of the German army, I've heard in the region of 75%, was fighting desperately to hold the Soviets back. I'm not sure how much more could be transferred East without effectively surrendering to the Western Allies.
Well maybe the double agents in Britain could send information back that the allies were calling off the invasions of Norway and France (at least in 1944) due to technical and communicational difficulties and would instead make an September/October attack through Greece.
 
Ummm...what? You really think the Poles, after 6-7 years of Nazi occupation, would revolt against the Soviets? Them and what army? The Polish people are at their absolute lowest point, they aren't going to up and rebel because of the Soviets incorporating them into the USSR, it's a damn sight better than extermination.

The people of Europe as a whole are tired of war and conflict. The Poles will be quietly subdued because there are things more important to them than some abstract concept of national independence, like rebuilding their homes and families.

You neglect the fact that the Soviets occupied a slice of Poland as well and were not the most beloved of visitors. They may not revolt immediately after the end of the war... But sooner or later they are going to want independence back...

But please, disregard me and the fact that in the end the fact that the Soviet decision to create the People's Republic of Poland rather than make a full-blown Polish SSR was what actually wound up happening...
 
The absolute minimum is Poland and Romania.

A united and neutral Germany would either prevent or dissolve the East German regime. Stalin had initially hoped that all of Germany would go red, but it will cease to be a realistic hope the moment the Allies figure out that maybe they shouldn't just let the Germans starve for starvation's sake.

Czechoslovakia and Hungary could be Finlandized. Czechoslovakia looked like it would be before the 1948 coup. As for Hungary, apparently the Communists feared that the Red Army would leave the country, so they were not operating on the assumption that their rise to power was inevitable.

Bulgaria could become part of a non-aligned Yugoslavia. The union would have to take place before the Stalin-Tito split, obviously, and the West would have to signal its willingness to defend the communist defector as it did in OTL.

Ummm...what? You really think the Poles, after 6-7 years of Nazi occupation, would revolt against the Soviets? Them and what army? The Polish people are at their absolute lowest point, they aren't going to up and rebel because of the Soviets incorporating them into the USSR, it's a damn sight better than extermination.

The people of Europe as a whole are tired of war and conflict. The Poles will be quietly subdued because there are things more important to them than some abstract concept of national independence, like rebuilding their homes and families.

I leave you to argue with the historical record:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursed_soldiers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_October
 
PRC was never a part of the Warsaw Pact I belive

As time went on, they tried to take an active role over ordering WarPac members around, but the Sino-Soviet Split ended that.

Anyway, let's analyze OTL members:

Hungary: hotbed of resistance to the Russians, not in a strategic location. Can be tossed aside with no real losses. However, it opens Yugoslavia to closer relations with NATO, which aren't so easy for Tito with the Soviets on his border. Possibly too dangerous to throw aside.

Bulgaria: Strategic location, very close to Russia. They're going to be in it unless the West somehow backs up an anti-Russian government there (unlikely with POD after 1945).

East Germany: Leaving aside Russian paranoia about a United Germany, it is in a strategic location, and I don't see the Russians being happy with the idea of a potentially hostile state several hundred km closer to their border.

Romania: Mildly hostile, not very important except as land route to Bulgaria. I suppose they can be tossed aside, but they have a land border with the USSR, so I think they'll be retained in the WarPac.

Poland: Too important to the Soviets, too close to Russia itself, and, if released from WarPac, too likely to align with NATO. Not gonna happen.

I really can't see the Warsaw Pact getting any smaller than it was IOTL, really. Stalin was just too paranoid about western attacks for any of these nations to drift out of the Soviet sphere of influence before his death, and by then, their Soviet-aligned governments are too deeply entrenched. At most, East Germany will be unified with West Germany.
 
Regardless of the size of the WP, I could see national communism a la Ceausescu taking hold in Poland as long as they don't try to touch the Soviet bases there.

Oh, and I disagree, Romania would be more important than Bulgaria. Right next door to the Ukraine, invasion route for forces coming from Greece or Austria. The Yalta percentages reflected this and it's the reason the Red Army stayed longer here than in Bulgaria.
 

I agree, my idea was basically that the Soviet Union will not abandon this crucially important policy of theirs (it wasn't just Stalin either... a lot of different people were beyond eager to put as much land between the Soviet Union and Western Europe as possible after the war). They have to be so weak that they CAN'T pick on these nations, there is no other way around it.
 
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