Soviets Create Demilitarized Buffer in Eastern Europe

What if after WWII, the Soviet leadership decides to simply demilitarize Eastern Europe, take reparations for the damage done by the Nazis and their allies, and then withdraw their armies. To make sure this sticks, they legitimize by treaty the right to intervene militarily should any attempts to remilitarize occur but do not impose Communist governments or base the Red Army there.

No Warsaw Pact, but between the damage done by the war and the assets taken back into the USSR, there's no way anything hostile to the USSR will be emerging within the next generation if not more.

No Stalin might be a good way to go about this, but Stalin taking a more "enlightened self-interest" approach might think that imposing Communism on Eastern Europe and garrisoning it will create enemies in the West and close by and be a needless drain of resources.
 
That would require that SU gives up something they earned with blood in their eyes. Remilitarization and imposing of communism wouldn't work either, without Soviet presence there it wouldn't be possible to supress dissent, either dierectly or indirectly.
 
That would require that SU gives up something they earned with blood in their eyes. Remilitarization and imposing of communism wouldn't work either, without Soviet presence there it wouldn't be possible to supress dissent, either dierectly or indirectly.

Who said anything about imposing Communism?

And even if the Soviets aren't in-country, they can always invade. If they take Kaliningrad as war reparations from Germany, that gives them a good jumping-off point to attack Berlin or Warsaw.
 
You're still going to see a hell of a lot of reds in Eastern Europe, to be completely honest. The Soviet Union played no direct role in the rise of communism in Czechoslovakia, for example, and Yugoslavia and Albania made it all on their own. Post-war Europe was a place where the communists had some goddamn shit to their name, they were viewed quite positively. Germany, at the least, is liable to see a nice, big Communist party in their parliament, and there will be similar stuff with other countries.

Poland's pre-war government isn't coming back, because it will steadfastly refuse to accept any territorial concessions, which means that the USSR will steadfastly refuse to allow it back.
 
What would this mean for East Germany? I suspect that there won't be a NATO, but might be a sort of Anglophone Pact, especially if the Maoists still win out in China and butterflies lead to all of Korea going red.
 
Lots of homegrown communist Governments will still spring up, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia come to mind, central and eastern Europe may look very Yugoslavian in a few years, France might get a good deal more reds as well.. The impression of the USSR is much better in this world, and the Cold War is possibly avoided altogether, although I can see the Soviets continuing to intervene directly in Asia.
 
Bulgaria sure, but Czechoslovakia I don't tknow the KSČ was steadily losing support before the coup, and most people expected (including Stalin as we now know) them to lose the next free elections, this is why they went on with coup, if they try a coup without soviet forces in Czechoslovakia I would say that there is a 50%/50% chance of succes for the KSČ.
 
Bulgaria sure, but Czechoslovakia I don't tknow the KSČ was steadily losing support before the coup, and most people expected (including Stalin as we now know) them to lose the next free elections, this is why they went on with coup, if they try a coup without soviet forces in Czechoslovakia I would say that there is a 50%/50% chance of succes for the KSČ.
I am not sure what you mean but during communist coup in February 1948 there were not soviet troops in Czechoslovakia. Last Soviet and American troops left Czechoslovakia before December 1st 1945 (except some wounded).
 
In a way, this could be a liberalwank. But, that might depend on the precise POD and butterflies resulting from it.
 
What would this mean for East Germany? I suspect that there won't be a NATO, but might be a sort of Anglophone Pact, especially if the Maoists still win out in China and butterflies lead to all of Korea going red.

Not sure about East Germany. The Soviets could keep an army of occupation there supplied by sea and through Poland* on the grounds that this is Germany, not some Axis satellite.

Or they could just come up with the "demilitarized neutral Germany" thing they did with Austria. Without garrisons in every Eastern European country, the Czechoslovakian coup, etc., the Allies might be more willing to go for that. If they strip-mine eastern Germany of industry, Germany will be a lot less threatening for awhile.

*If Poland has no army and will get stomped on if it looks like they're trying to make one, running a supply line through Poland or the Kaliningrad Oblast might not be problematic even if there aren't massive Red Army bases in-country.
 
Not sure about East Germany. The Soviets could keep an army of occupation there supplied by sea and through Poland* on the grounds that this is Germany, not some Axis satellite.

*If Poland has no army and will get stomped on if it looks like they're trying to make one, running a supply line through Poland or the Kaliningrad Oblast might not be problematic even if there aren't massive Red Army bases in-country.

What if part of the demilitarization of Eastern Europe includes something not unlike one of the Stalin Note proposals for Germany?
 
I edited the post to include that.

Well, if Germany remained divided and occupied, a cold war still seems likely, but it's one which would go better for the USSR. However, a neutral, demilitarized Germany in addition to a demilitarized Eastern Europe likely butterflies away NATO and the Cold War, but not all of the intrigue and espionage of the time.
 
There's no way this is happening after WW2.
The USSR was determined to not allow something like Barbarossa to happen again, and the best way to safeguard against THAT, is a series of MILITARIZED buffer-states. In order to get to the Rodina, an invading army would have to go through all of Eastern Europe, which wouldn't fall without a fight.
Which leads me to another point: There's NO WAY that the USSR isn't going to impose communism on Eastern Europe. Those they highlight Yugoslavia and Albania fail to take into consideration that although those countries were indeed communist, they were not Soviet puppets. At least Yugoslavia wasn't. The USSR had little interest in them, because they weren't part of the "buffer" between Western Europe and itself.

And I haven't even gotten into the fact that the USSR even wanted to spread the Revolution to the rest of Europe. Ivan was knocking at Europe's door, and if he'd gotten the opportunity to kick it in, he would've. He would NOT have just gone back to his own house, to stay in the metaphor.

All in all: For this to happen, Andy the Alien Space Bat needs to make an appearance and magically make Stalin into a philanthropist.
 
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