alternatehistory.com

I've decided to put my other TLs on hold to do this WW2 timeline. The first post is an introduction with OTL history for those less familiar with this period. The PoD is not in this post although you can guess what it is from the title probably:p.


Stalin’s Hubris



Chapter I: Silence before the Storm and a Pact with the Devil., 1933-1940


By 1941, storm clouds were gathering over eastern Europe and in spite of Stalin’s attempts to stall these inevitable developments, war would soon come to the Soviet Union which explains his faithful decisions in the few months preceding the war. It had been Hitler’s stated intention since the mid 1920s to conquer Lebensraum or ‘Living Space’ in eastern Europe at the expense of the Soviet Union for the German people needed more resources and land to keep on growing in his opinion. The details were not yet worked out, but the Slavic sub-humans or Üntermenschen were to become slaves to the German colonists and produce cheap food and commodities for the German people. Many others shared this view and with Hitler’s ascension to the position of dictator of Germany in the period 1933-’34, the previously good relations between the USSR and Weimar Germany ended, but for a moment it seemed as if this would change in the light of Hitler’s rearmament and remilitarization. Hitler broke the chains of Versailles and rapidly rearmed Germany. During the Weimar years, relations had been good. With the Treaty of Rapallo, the Soviet Union assisted Germany in circumventing the bounds of the Versailles treaty by allowing the German military to train in Russia. Germany was one of the first to recognise the USSR which allowed for economic and military cooperation. The Treaty of Locarno, however, led to a détente between Germany and the west. This deepened the USSR’s diplomatic isolation further. The Nazi regime was bent on destroying and enslaving the Soviet Union so, needless to say, diplomatic relations took a nosedive with German repression of the German communist party and unabated rabid anti-Soviet propaganda.

Hitler’s internal politics and boasting would soon be transformed into a rash foreign policy. Upon the signing of the Second Soviet-French Treaty of Mutual Assistance, Hitler saw fit to remilitarize the Rhineland which the Treaty of Versailles explicitly forbade him from doing. He used the excuse of German being encircled; this was therefore a necessary step to ensure Germany’s security. This was only the beginning, however. Moscow, in the meantime, followed a dual strategy, with two squarely opposite methods, to ensure that they would negate the German threat.



Adolf Hitler, elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

The 7th World Congress of the Comintern in 1935 officially endorsed the Popular Front strategy of forming broad alliances with parties willing to oppose the fascists, a policy pursued by the Communist parties since 1934. At the same time, at the 7th Congress of Soviets, Molotov emphasized the need for a good relationship with Berlin. On November 25th, 1936, Hitler’s Germany and militarist Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact, joined by Mussolini’s fascist Italy in 1937. Economically, the Soviet Union made repeated efforts to re-establish closer ties with Germany in the mid-1930s. The Soviet Union mainly sought to repay debts from earlier trade with raw materials, while Germany sought to rearm, and the countries signed a credit agreement in 1935. By 1936, raw material and foodstuff crises forced Hitler to decree a Four Year Plan for rearmament "without regard to costs." However, even facing those issues, Hitler rebuffed the Soviet Union's attempts to seek closer political ties to Germany along with an additional credit agreement. Foreign Commissar Litvinov's strategy faced ideological and political obstacles. The Soviet Union continued to be perceived by the ruling class in Great Britain as no less a threat than Nazi Germany (some felt that the USSR was the greater threat), not least for its policy of supporting the elected government in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). At the same time, as Stalin was radically removing any opposition to him in the Great Purge which weakened his country, it was not perceived to be a valuable ally by the West. Among the biggest mistakes in this purge was the execution of some 35.000 of the finest officers of the Red Army which would show its effects in the Winter War.

During the late 1930s, both Hitler and Stalin moved to change their foreign policies. Hitler had annexed Austria in 1938 with little opposition, if any, from France and Britain. This was followed by the Sudetenland Crisis in which Hitler had demanded the cession of majority-German Sudetenland by Czechoslovakia. In order to avoid war, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain initiated a conference known as the Munich Conference in which the leaders of the European great powers convened. Beside Hitler and Chamberlain, the leaders of the other great powers of Europe were present as well. Among these were Mussolini and Daladier; notably absent were the Soviet General-Secretary Joseph Stalin and Czechoslovakian leader Edvard Beneš. The former was upset that his country was not seen as a great power while the latter was not involved in a decision regarding his own country’s territorial integrity no less, which is why this is often referred to as the Munich Betrayal by the Czechs. In September 1938 an agreement was reached. Germany gained the Sudetenland without a single shot being fired. Britain’s appeasement policy seemed successful, but Hitler’s invasion of rump Czechoslovakia in March 1939 dashed this notion. Hitler believed the western powers were weak which explains this move that had the unintended consequence of ending any faith in Hitler’s moderate and peaceful objectives. A second consequence was that Stalin’s collective security policy had failed although it’s questionable whether he would have acted even if France and Czechoslovakia had opposed Germany in a war. Because of Germany’s betrayal, there was no ‘Munich’ for when Germany wanted to reclaim Polish territory. Initially, Germany merely claimed the Polish Corridor to connect Germany with its East Prussian exclave, but later the restoration of Germany’s 1914 borders. After the negotiations had failed war was on in September 1939.



From left to right: Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Galleazo Ciano at the Munich Conference.

Before the German invasion, the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact had been signed between the Soviet Union and the Nazi regime in Berlin. Hitler knew that he couldn’t handle a two-front war, more so since he lacked resources. Germany had only 25% of the oil it needed. Germany feared that they would run out of resources due to a British naval blockade if war did happen. With the resulting shortages in oil, manganese and rubber, their war effort would have stagnated very quickly. This was also a signal to Paris and London to take the tripartite negotiations more seriously, which they didn’t. The negotiations for a Anglo-French-Soviet alliance quickly became empty talk as Stalin believed the west didn’t sincerely want an alliance, preferring to see Germany and the USSR fight each other to death. This belief was amplified when the French and British bowed when faced with German demands and war threats. France and Britain still regarded the Soviets as just as big a threat as Nazi Germany, if not bigger, and due to the purges didn’t view the USSR as a valuable ally. Japanese aggression in the Battle of Khalkin Gol (May 11th – September 16th 1939) was a stimulating factor for the Soviets to seek a détente as well since Stalin knew he couldn’t fight a war on two fronts. Also, unlike the Anglo-French leaders, Hitler was willing to cut up eastern Europe into spheres of influence, intending to end the deal when it suited him. The Baltic states and Finland were recognised as being part of Moscow’s sphere of influence. A commercial treaty, a non-aggression treaty and a secret protocol concerning the division of Poland were included in the final agreement, shocking western Europe.



Molotov signs the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact, behind him are German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

A week after the signing of the agreement, Germany invaded Poland on September 1st 1939. France and Britain fulfilled their obligation towards Poland to defend the country and declared war, but this wasn’t followed by anything other than some border skirmishes with German forces. Germany attacked Poland from north, west and south while the Luftwaffe established air superiority over the obsolescent and weak Polish air force. While Poland possessed the 7TP tank, equal to the panzer III in terms of firepower and armour, Germany was numerically superior. Stalin delayed his attack to gauge the response of the west and to prepare since the Red Army was woefully unprepared for any kind of deployment outside its own country’s borders, even to Poland which was on the USSR’s border. The Soviets waited until Warsaw had fallen and even then it took them a week to achieve readiness for the invasion. On September 17th, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland and sealed the country’s fate, citing Polish oppression of Belarusians and Ukrainians (quite hypocrite since Stalin did the same) as a reason. On October 6th, the brief war with Poland was over. Its army and weak air force were smashed and Soviet betrayal denied them their ‘Romanian bridgehead’ in the southeast of the country and rendered their defensive plan useless. The Polish government fled the country and Poland had ceased to exist even if there had been no official surrender.





German and Soviet officers shaking hands after Poland’s defeat.

The last negotiations with Finland had been initiated by the Soviet side as part of its collective security policy in April 1938. These were meant to reach an understanding and to secure a favourable Finnish position in case of a German attack on the Soviet Union through Finnish territory since Leningrad was so close to Finland’s borders, but this had proven futile due to the Finnish reluctance to break neutrality, and negotiations ended in April 1939, shortly before Litvinov's dismissal in favour of Molotov. On October 13th, 1939 new negotiations started in Moscow, and the Soviet Union presented Finland with proposals including a mutual assistance pact, the lease of the military base of Hanko, and the cession of a 70 km-deep area on the Karelian Isthmus located immediately to the north of the city of Leningrad to the Soviet Union, in exchange for border lands further to the north. Finland, however, declined the offer, withdrew from negotiations on November 7th, 1939, and continued preparations for a possible Soviet invasion. On November 26th, the Soviet Union staged the shelling of Mainila near the border, accused Finnish troops of the provocation and requesting their withdrawal. Finland, turn, requested a withdrawal of troops of both nations from the border area. As, a response, the Soviet Union denounced the 1932 Soviet-Finnish Non-Aggression Pact, and on November 29th broke off diplomatic relations with Helsinki. On November 30th, 1939, forces of the USSR under the command of Marshall Kliment Voroshilov attacked Finland in what became known as the Winter War, starting with the invasion of Finnish Karelia and bombing civilian boroughs of Helsinki. On December 1, 1939, the puppet socialist government of the Finnish Democratic Republic was established under the auspices of the Soviet Union in the border town of Terijoki. On December 14 the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for waging a war of aggression. After presiding over the disastrous start of the campaign, and a disproportionally heavy death toll of Red Army soldiers, Voroshilov was replaced by Semyon Timoshenko as the commander of the front on January 7th, 1940 (and four months later as People's Commissar for Defence). In mid-February, 1940, Soviet troops finally managed to break through the Mannerheim Line, and Finland sought an armistice.

The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed on March 12, 1940, and at noon the following day the fighting ended. Finland ceded the Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga Karelia, part of Salla and Kalastajasaarento, and leased the Hanko naval base to the USSR, but remained a neutral state, albeit increasingly leaning toward Germany. The consequences of the conflict were multiplex. While the invasion revealed the striking military weaknesses of the Red Army and prompted the Soviet Union to reorganize its military forces, and it gained new territories, it pushed neutral Finland towards an accommodation with Nazi Germany, and it dealt yet another blow to the international prestige of the USSR. Suffering disproportionally high losses compared to the Finnish troops, despite a fourfold Soviet superiority in troops and nearly absolute superiority in heavy weapons and aircraft, the Red Army appeared an easy target, which contributed to Hitler's decision to plan an attack against the Soviet Union. Soviet official casualty counts in the war exceeded 200.000 which led to the radical demotion of both generals Voroshilov and Kulik whose incompetence was seen as the main reason. Both were opposed to tanks, artillery and aircraft, preferring infantry, cavalry (honourable fighting) instead. Kulik even went so far as to call machine guns ‘police weapons’. A lot would have to change before the Red Army and the Soviet Union was ready for war.


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