Soviet Union joins allies in 1939

Shadow1080

I've been curious to how strong was Soviet Union in 1939 and how was it compatible with Nazi Germany. What if Molotov and Ribbentrop Pact wasn't signed and in this scenario Germany still invades Poland without agreement. I know this obviously sounds completely impossible but what if in this scenario I make it happens just so we can find out how powerful Germany is in 1939. As Germany invades Poland, Stalin in this timeline is a more different person and decides to help out Poland and her allies. Because of too much powers against Germany, Italy joins in the war to help out her Nazi ally. What would happen?

I asked this question before, but people kept telling me how it's not possible and they never even gave a theory to what would happen. I know it's not possible, but this is alternate history and I'm curious to what would've happen if Stalin himself chose a different fate. So can you guys please tell me how would this all go in this impossible timeline that actually happens in this alternate history? From my experience, I played Hearts of Iron 4 as Soviet Union in 1939 without modifying my army and keeping it the way it was. I kept losing to Germany in Poland despite having way larger army and the whole Poland still ended up being conquered, but as Germans went deeper into Russia the front turned into a stalemate, and France on the other hand was conquered by Italy and Germany.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Hearts of Iron 4 sounds too generous to the Germans under the circumstances you describe.

That is probably to keep it a more reasonably balanced game.

Real life was much more stacked against the Germans.
 

Carl Schwamberger

I've gamed this situation many years ago. While the German player had some big advantages in 1939 he had to be careful he did not over extend. Despite the purges the Red Army had a lot of potential in 1939. Without the sort of German attack possible in 1941 the Red Army can mobilize in a more efficient manner & take advantage of any overreaching.
 
marathag

marathag

Carl Schwamberger said:
I've gamed this situation many years ago. While the German player had some big advantages in 1939 he had to be careful he did not over extend. Despite the purges the Red Army had a lot of potential in 1939. Without the sort of German attack possible in 1941 the Red Army can mobilize in a more efficient manner & take advantage of any overreaching.
Click to expand...

And the Stalin Line on the Border would be intact
 

Shadow1080

Gwachiko said:
I still think the Soviets would demand Eastern Poland and the Baltics as a compensation.
Click to expand...
You are kinda right. If you play HOI4, there is a campaign tree for Soviet Union and one of them is "Offer Poland protection" which demands Poland to cede Eastern part for protection. If Poland agrees then the Soviet Union and Poland are allies. '

If Red Army never decided to attack Poland in 1920, but allowed it to be interdependent while controlling it's Eastern land which it originally was lost after the 1920 war, would Stalin protect Poland?
 
Gwachiko

Gwachiko

Shadow1080 said:
You are kinda right. If you play HOI4, there is a campaign tree for Soviet Union and one of them is "Offer Poland protection" which demands Poland to cede Eastern part for protection. If Poland agrees then the Soviet Union and Poland are allies. '

If Red Army never decided to attack Poland in 1920, but allowed it to be interdependent while controlling it's Eastern land which it originally was lost after the 1920 war, would Stalin protect Poland?
Click to expand...
Indeed. Most of his territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe would be fulfilled while not letting Germany get too powerful. Killing two birds with one rock.
 

naraic

Germany did everything on a shoestring with no room for error in 1939/1940. Honestly if Russia didn't invade Poland from the east I feel that it would have taken Germany til early November to finish up the war with Poland and that German forces would have been exhausted before invading the low countries and France.
 

hammerdin

The Germans now necessarily have to split their panzer divisions. That means maybe they have 5 measly panzer divisions to throw at the French in 1940.

That is not near enough.

Meanwhile the number of Soviet tank divisions (and trucks available) is going to go through the roof.

In 1940, they will outnumber the measly five panzer divisions guarding the east multiple times over.

And unlike in 1941, the Germans do not outclass Soviet tanks yet by and large, as most of their tanks are made up of Panzer IIs.
 

David T

Michael Jabara Carley wrote a book called *1939: The Alliance That Never Was* arguing that such an alliance was possible. Here is a post I wrote about it many years ago in soc.history.what-if (with links updated):

***

I have not yet had a chance to read it, though I glanced at it in a library about a year ago. Anyway, I came across some reviews of it at http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lx&list=h-diplo&user=&pw=&month=0002 It seems to be
a revival of the old-fashioned "Guilty Men" hypothesis--British and French appeasers allowing their anti-communism to stand in the way of an alliance with the USSR which was both possible and necessary to stop Hitler. He seems to regard everything from arguments that the Red Army had been too weakened by Stalin's purges to be a reliable ally to the understandable Polish fears of allowing Soviet forces on Polish soil (apparently he thinks Britain and France could and should have forced the Poles to accept this) as a mere "excuse" on the part of French and British policy-makers. (At least that's the impression I get from the reviews; this may be a considerable oversimplification of the book itself, but Carley's response to his critics http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbro...2&week=c&msg=wnF3KLnOCTXVJNzweJNqSQ&user=&pw= seems to support the summary I have given of his views.) He also rejects the notion that Stalin was angling for a deal with Hitler all along, arguing that while it was necessary for the USSR to keep its options open, this did not mean its interest in collective security was merely a cover:

"As for 'repeated' early Soviet overtures to Nazi Germany, this statement is misleading. Here I refer readers to the important article by Geoffrey Roberts, University College Cork, Ireland, in the _International History Review_ (August 1994). It is based on then freshly published Soviet documents; Roberts shows that Soviet overtures in Berlin were tactical probes or trade initiatives; collective security was the main Soviet policy. This is more than can be said for the British and French governments where the interest in composition with Nazi Germany was greater than in Moscow. Indeed, this Anglo-French interest made it necessary for the Soviet government to keep the door ajar to Berlin, so it would not be left alone to face Nazi Germany. As U.S. historian T. J. Uldricks put it, 98 percent of Soviet diplomatic activity to advance collective security was not 'a brittle cover' for the remaining two percent directed at Nazi Germany (p. 263, n. 23)....

"I am not a great believer in counter-factual history," (Here I will just add that whenever I see a historian write this, I expect a "but" to follow, and I was not disappointed...) "but what I said in _1939_ (p. 257), and Sally Marks alludes to it, was that
if there had been a grand alliance in 1939, and Poland had joined it rather than attempting to compose with Nazi Germany, this alliance would have been victorious. Rumania would have joined as well, so that Polish, Rumanian, and French armies would have been part of the victorious coalition. These allies would have blocked the Soviet expansion which actually occurred in the power vacuum created by the destruction of Poland and France. In that hypothetical victory there would have been no power vacuum in eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union would not have challenged the strong position of its allies. As Gorodetsky points out, Stalin was an opportunist who pursued limited, traditional Russian foreign policy objectives in eastern Europe, not world
communist domination."

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/k_UfGBkrtoY/gRbT2QPherwJ
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
David T said:
In that hypothetical victory there would have been no power vacuum in eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union would not have challenged the strong position of its allies.
Click to expand...

Well, there is going to be some "suction" of Polish power away if Germany invades and bombs it at all. And Soviet troops in Poland will be in that vacuum.

Alex Milman on SHWI was pretty sure this is going to equate surely into Soviet-dominated, Communist Poland, and probably eastern Germany.

And, while Carley's point about a less battered west (well France would never be occupied, but it could have heavier military casualties - see WWI) is true, the interior Soviet Union is a lot less battered, and nothing has happened to draw American power into Europe.

I'd say in this ATL the Soviets sort of end the war with greater power potential relative to the west than OTL. But, I agree that beyond the Baltics and Eastern Poland, immediate Communist expansion is going to be "too complicated". So, for instance, with the Romanians an undefeated member of the Allies coalition, the Balkans and Hungary are not going Red as an immediate consequence of the war. Possibly the Romanians would be the vanguard of liberation for the Czechs and Slovaks too (although, given the Munich deal, the Czechosloovaks may decide to give themselves to the Soviets.).

In Poland, itself, and probably eastern Germany, the Soviets will have massive forces that *could* crush and grind down any resistance to their control.

Still however, without the total destruction and lengthy occupation, multiyear genocide and then the crushing of the Warsaw Uprising, the noncommunist Poles would really probably be a lot less ground down than OTL, which maybe gives them hope for bargaining an autonomous existence in western Poland. The Soviets could decide that an adjustment to the approximate 1914 borders (minus central Poland, plus Galicia) plus control over eastern Germany and some influence over Polish foreign policy is a pretty good deal, if it looks like confrontation with the Poles, French, British, Romanians and maybe Germans again would be the outcome of insisting on total Soviet control to Berlin.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top