The post-WWII peace settlement in a no-Fall-of-France scenario?

I get it, you're using Finland as an example. The thing is central Poland is not very mountainous and the winters are not particularly harsh there and the Germans dont have the home advantage because they themselves are invaders. Where would the German tanks and aircraft come from to defend in the East? They're already in use in the West. Even if the Red Army is a total mess the Red Airforce would rule the skies and pound everything from Kiev to Dresden back to the stone age.

The soldiers dont have to execute brilliant maneuvers, they just need to shoot their guns, the Germans even being 10 times better than the Soviets man vs man still means a crushing Soviet victory.

So you mean full frontal assault look at Finland age Mg42s landmines and a modern army and watch.Again the Germans don't need to commit massive forces to this take some 2nd rate divisions guarding the Siegfried line as well as whatever units that are not needed and can be spared integrate a handful of veteran formations into them have pioneer units set up defenses in suitable locations move the old pre dreads the Germans have and dig dig dig. The Red army is ill prepared and ill supplied they would eventually breakthrough yes after horrendous casualties and after anywhere from 3 months to a year depending on the commander. Also considering their performance in the winter war what makes you think the Red Airforce would rule all? If that was the case the Finns would have been dealt with far easier.

I doubt Stalin would invade without extracting every item can out of Germany and would only invade if he could guarantee success and not lose prestige after another phyric victory that once again made the Red Army the laughing stocks of the world.
 
So you mean full frontal assault look at Finland age Mg42s landmines and a modern army and watch.Again the Germans don't need to commit massive forces to this take some 2nd rate divisions guarding the Siegfried line as well as whatever units that are not needed and can be spared integrate a handful of veteran formations into them have pioneer units set up defenses in suitable locations move the old pre dreads the Germans have and dig dig dig. The Red army is ill prepared and ill supplied they would eventually breakthrough yes after horrendous casualties and after anywhere from 3 months to a year depending on the commander. Also considering their performance in the winter war what makes you think the Red Airforce would rule all? If that was the case the Finns would have been dealt with far easier.

I doubt Stalin would invade without extracting every item can out of Germany and would only invade if he could guarantee success and not lose prestige after another phyric victory that once again made the Red Army the laughing stocks of the world.
Why would Stalin give a damn? It's not he who's doing the dying, in fact he doesnt mind throwing away millions of lifes to get what he wants. How many Soviet Soldiers is one German soldier worth on the battlefield - the Soviets can provice the number and increase it, there's no way a German army fighting in the West can take on the Red Army, they certainly had no problem rapidly advancing hundreds of kilometers when they inaded Poland and the Baltic States or when they whipped the Japanese in Khalkhin Gol.

I've explaind already why the Finns were successful agains the Soviets, all things which are lacking in Poland - there's no harsh winters, the Germans are not fighting for their land, the Germans have no home advantage, the fighting is on a very large front and not on a narrow land strip between forests and frozen lakes etc, in fact the Soviets dont have to invade in Winter.
 
Why would Stalin give a damn? It's not he who's doing the dying, in fact he doesnt mind throwing away millions of lifes to get what he wants. How many Soviet Soldiers is one German soldier worth on the battlefield - the Soviets can provice the number and increase it, there's no way a German army fighting in the West can take on the Red Army, they certainly had no problem rapidly advancing hundreds of kilometers when they inaded Poland and the Baltic States or when they whipped the Japanese in Khalkhin Gol.

I've explaind already why the Finns were successful agains the Soviets, all things which are lacking in Poland - there's no harsh winters, the Germans are not fighting for their land, the Germans have no home advantage, the fighting is on a very large front and not on a narrow land strip between forests and frozen lakes etc, in fact the Soviets dont have to invade in Winter.
The question not being asked here is what's in it for Stalin? Prior to 1941 he wasn't trying to build a buffer zone to defend against attacks from the West, the list of places he attacked or took over maps almost exactly onto former Tsarist territories. Without Barbarossa, the Soviets aren't really going to be all that interested in a buffer zone - particularly if all they get is more troublesome Poles. Having the British and French on their border is also likely to be seen as less of a threat than Germany - weak and divided democracies and all that. He's an opportunist, sure, but thinking of him as an amoral Georgian reincarnation of Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great is likely to be more helpful than using post-WW2 in OTL as a guide: Barbarossa changed his thinking hugely here.
 
Why would Stalin give a damn? It's not he who's doing the dying, in fact he doesnt mind throwing away millions of lifes to get what he wants. How many Soviet Soldiers is one German soldier worth on the battlefield - the Soviets can provice the number and increase it, there's no way a German army fighting in the West can take on the Red Army, they certainly had no problem rapidly advancing hundreds of kilometers when they inaded Poland and the Baltic States or when they whipped the Japanese in Khalkhin Gol.

I've explaind already why the Finns were successful agains the Soviets, all things which are lacking in Poland - there's no harsh winters, the Germans are not fighting for their land, the Germans have no home advantage, the fighting is on a very large front and not on a narrow land strip between forests and frozen lakes etc, in fact the Soviets dont have to invade in Winter.

Ever heard of context? The Polish army by this point in time was busy fighting the Germans and not the Soviets not helped by the fact that when they soviets invaded the Poles had been more or less defeated. The battle of Khalkhin Gol was more intents and purposes the Red Army's best unit in the area having stripped additional units for equipment IIRC all lead by one of their best commanders and may i ask what is the point of comparing 20th-century industrial warfare to marching into the capitals of tiny states with limited military capability. Units consume much MUCH more supplies when engaging in combat which they will. Context.

Also, I don't think you get what I mean. Stalin will probably extract every last concession he can get from Germany in exchange for raw materials before he thinks about invading. He gives a damn because getting all those new tools and technology from the Germans will improve the USSR.
 
The question not being asked here is what's in it for Stalin? Prior to 1941 he wasn't trying to build a buffer zone to defend against attacks from the West, the list of places he attacked or took over maps almost exactly onto former Tsarist territories. Without Barbarossa, the Soviets aren't really going to be all that interested in a buffer zone - particularly if all they get is more troublesome Poles. Having the British and French on their border is also likely to be seen as less of a threat than Germany - weak and divided democracies and all that. He's an opportunist, sure, but thinking of him as an amoral Georgian reincarnation of Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great is likely to be more helpful than using post-WW2 in OTL as a guide: Barbarossa changed his thinking hugely here.
Concessions from W-Allies, recognition as a great statesman and international player and whatever loot the Red Army can carry home (a lot, basically everything not bolted down).

Ever heard of context? The Polish army by this point in time was busy fighting the Germans and not the Soviets not helped by the fact that when they soviets invaded the Poles had been more or less defeated.
The same thing would apply to the German army, they're fighting in the West with their best men and equipment and then the Soviets come.

The battle of Khalkhin Gol was more intents and purposes the Red Army's best unit in the area having stripped additional units for equipment IIRC all lead by one of their best commanders and may i ask what is the point of comparing 20th-century industrial warfare to marching into the capitals of tiny states with limited military capability. Units consume much MUCH more supplies when engaging in combat which they will. Context.
The same thing would apply ot this invasion, the best available generals would lead it with the best equipment they have pooled for the operation. Germany actually is a tiny state with limited military capabilities, to attack Poland they had to abandon most of the defences against France, it's just French reluctence which kept West Germany from being invaded right then and there, the same thing would happen in the East with a protracted war in the West.

Also, I don't think you get what I mean. Stalin will probably extract every last concession he can get from Germany in exchange for raw materials before he thinks about invading. He gives a damn because getting all those new tools and technology from the Germans will improve the USSR.
He will take what he can get but at some point the Germans will give nothing any more, at that point he can just take the technology and machinery with his own hands.
 
The WAllies didn't much care about Eastern Poland, it was Finland that really got their hackles up first. Their rather more likely to be pushy over the Baltics. But having just finished a exhausting multi-year war, I rather doubt they'd be willing to haul off and attack Stalin... particularly since the Soviet reform and rearmament program would be bearing fruit by the time Germany's done for.



That might no longer be the case before Germany's finished. It rather depends on how long things take, but if the war lasts in mid-'42 or longer, the Red Army should be prepared enough that it could indeed invade a Germany which still has most of it's strength concentrated against the west.
Would they really need to attack if they are around Berlin with five million men and twenty armored divisions, having just destroyed Germany? When Central European nations are joining allies giving them new manpower sources and political support, even if their armies are not so well equipped? There will be negotiations.
 
The same thing would apply to the German army, they're fighting in the West with their best men and equipment and then the Soviets come.
The same thing would apply ot this invasion, the best available generals would lead it with the best equipment they have pooled for the operation. Germany actually is a tiny state with limited military capabilities, to attack Poland they had to abandon most of the defences against France, it's just French reluctence which kept West Germany from being invaded right then and there, the same thing would happen in the East with a protracted war in the West.

Concessions from W-Allies, recognition as a great statesman and international player and whatever loot the Red Army can carry home (a lot, basically everything not bolted down).

Why would he concessions from the British and French for all intents and purposes he invaded an allied state and attacked another what concessions? I doubt the Wallies would allow the Red Army to simply take over the Poland in its entirety

Also no it wouldn't the Poles have committed virtually everything against the Germans the 3rd Reich hasn't yet there are reserve units still available 2nd rate units not in pressing need in the front those can be transferred the Germans need to delay delay delay. If the coup goes of the Germans will transfer substantial forces East the men of the General staff spent the better part of the 20th century fighting communists on the streets. Hitler can also probably be convinced due to the threat of ''Judo Bolshevism'' to transfer divisions not needed on the front aswell. It wouldn't be Kahingol because as you said there would be a much much wider frontage the Soviet units at Khalkin were the best and had a lot of equipment stripped from other units can't do it here because guess what stripping away equipment from front line units to concentrate in a single one is a very very bad idea. On top of well I'm just gonna copy paste some stuff from space battles here


Quite possibly. A lot of the vast expansion of the Soviet military had the practical effect of handing the Germans a lot of prisoners.

Just to be clear about the problems the Soviets labored under with regards to training and experience in June of 1941, here's a brief run down of a small selection of the problems faced by their tank forces.

The Soviet tank forces had been in a continual state of organizational flux for years. In June of 1940 they were again reorganized into large mechanized corps, each containing two massive tank divisions with 375 tanks each, and a motorized division. The Soviets were in a bind; they were rapidly expanding the size of their military and yet they had too few trained officers. Their solution was to spread those officers thinly over large formations. This meant that many officers were commanding far more troops than they could easily control. Even so, the officers of the tank divisions were under ranked and under trained. It was not uncommon for battalions to be commanded by lieutenants (rather than the required major) and many platoons and company commanders had only perfunctory training. The lack of skilled officers led to disorganization and chaos. Officers were overwhelmed with too many tasks while being too inexperienced to know which ones to prioritize, how to address them. Few could even manage to effectively lead their units in peacetime, let along exercise basic proficiency at handling their units and formations in combat.

As far as the enlisted were concerned, some Soviet troops in the west had gained experience from the occupation of the Baltics and the invasion of Poland, but most of these conscripts had reached the end of their service and been released prior to the German invasion. The bulk of the troops who faced the Germans - some 73% - were draftees raised in early 1941 with only five months training. For the troops on the border with the Reich that training was substandard. In their new forward positions proper training facilities, such as tank gun ranges, were scarce, as was fuel, ammunition, and parts. Using the 5th tank division as an example, six of the new T-34s were set aside for training and crews were rotated through these vehicles. This necessarily meant that the efficiency of training decreased, but it also meant the crews had little experience with anything beyond platoon level maneuvers. As late as April of 1941 some 37% of the 5th Tank Division's 564 drivers had less than 2 hours of time driving their tanks, while another 36% had less than 10 hours. [Zaloga, "Panzer 38(t) vs BT-7," Kindle loc.667] These are men who were challenged to perform even the most basic tasks such as switching gears (not the easiest task in the BT-7 or T-34), and the lack of training explains the extremely high percentage of Soviet tanks that broke down or simply crashed and immobilized themselves.

The reality is that the tank combat of June of 1941 pitted a group of superbly well-trained veterans with extensive battle experience against an army of trainees caught up in an overstretched and chaotic system. The result was always going to be one sided.

That those trainees only had enough logistical support to fight for a few days turned a very bad situation into an incipient catastrophe. By the book, the Soviet tank divisions were supposed to have fuel on hand for two months of combat. But at the end of a tenuous and overloaded logistics chain the forces in the Baltic and Western Districts had fuel for no more than a week. When the German invasion stuck the disruption of corps and divisional resupply, and the requirements to conduct large-scale maneuvers they were not prepared for meant that some units ran out of gas within 24 hours.

The Soviets had also been caught in the middle of a switch over to new equipment. For the tank divisions, the old BT-7 was being phased out, to be replaced by the T-34. Replacement parts for the BT-7 were increasingly hard to find making maintenance difficult, meaning most were in very poor condition. Meanwhile, the T-34 had inevitable teething problems which were not helped by the inexperience of its crews. As a result, mechanical readiness plummeted. Although 80% or more of tanks in the Western divisions were rated as combat capable on 22 June, many of those were well past due for an overhaul. 29% of all Soviet tanks were overdue for a factory overhaul, and 44% overdue for rebuilding at rear area workshops [Zaloga, loc.552]. These problems hit the forces along the Western border particularly hard since many of their tanks had been used in the invasions of the Baltics and Poland and were particularly worn out. The Soviets got around this by simply not driving them much (with the commensurate reduction in training time and quality), but this wasn't an option when combat broke out and is one of the reasons for the very high rate of breakdowns.

And then on top of this were all the basic organizational problems caused by the expansion of the Red Army such as insufficient artillery tractors, too few trucks, no armored recovery vehicles, etc, etc, etc (Glantz goes into these organizational issues at length in "Stumbling Colossus").

And this comes back to training again. These logistical problems were exacerbated - and often caused - by the inexperience and inadequate training and manning of staff officers at all levels. The problems faced by the Red Army in 1941 were mountainous and even skilled staffs with the proper numbers of officers would have been seriously challenged by them. Not only would a smaller military have eased many of these problems, it would have also reduced the command burdens and allowed more experienced officers to work together in greater concentrations to deal with smaller issues.
 
Concessions from W-Allies, recognition as a great statesman and international player and whatever loot the Red Army can carry home (a lot, basically everything not bolted down).
But in this scenario he gets most of those without needing to go to war:
  • The concessions that are most important to Stalin relate to things like recognising occupied Poland as part of the Soviet Union. Since doing anything about it essentially requires them to to go war with the Soviet Union, then this is essentially a fait accompli. If anything going to war places some of these in jeopardy.
  • Given that the Soviet Union would be coming out of the war with concessions from Finland and Romania, and having reconquered Poland east of the Curzon Line and the Baltic States, he's going to be recognised as a great statesman. Joining a major European war and grabbing bits of Poland doesn't help here, nor does it make Stalin an international player - you need the Americans to be involved deeply in Europe too for that to happen.
  • Booty is a poor argument for going to war, particularly since they can get the Germans to deliver almost as much with a few shipments of raw materials at far lower cost and risk.
 
Addressing the OP: I don't think teritorial transfers are as likely as breaking up Germany. There had been proposals to break up Germany into 4-5 smaller states.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Addressing the OP: I don't think teritorial transfers are as likely as breaking up Germany. There had been proposals to break up Germany into 4-5 smaller states.
That would be very hard to sustain in the long-run considering that the German people wouldn't want it, though.

Indeed, think of our TL's post-WWII division of Germany--it stopped working at the first sign of liberalization and quickly ended afterwards.
 
That would be very hard to sustain in the long-run considering that the German people wouldn't want it, though.

Indeed, think of our TL's post-WWII division of Germany--it stopped working at the first sign of liberalization and quickly ended afterwards.
The other concern will be how the first German unification happened in OTL - under the first of the German states to put together a competent enough military to ensure that they'd be in charge. Which is emphatically not the sort of Germany that their neighbours want to have around!
 

CaliGuy

Banned
The other concern will be how the first German unification happened in OTL - under the first of the German states to put together a competent enough military to ensure that they'd be in charge. Which is emphatically not the sort of Germany that their neighbours want to have around!
That's why you should restore democracy to Germany while keeping it intact but also breaking up Prussia so that no German state has dominance over the rest.
 
That's why you should restore democracy to Germany while keeping it intact but also breaking up Prussia so that no German state has dominance over the rest.

How are you going to break up Prussia? Get rid of the original Prussia (East Prussia), either by making it it's own country (presumably along with Bavaria?) or giving it to the Soviets or Poles? That would entail a lot of ethnic cleansing as in OTL.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
How are you going to break up Prussia? Get rid of the original Prussia (East Prussia), either by making it it's own country (presumably along with Bavaria?) or giving it to the Soviets or Poles? That would entail a lot of ethnic cleansing as in OTL.
If the Soviets attack Germany they will likely demand East Prussia in the peace conference. And if the Soviets choose to ethnically cleanse it, nobody will stop them.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
How are you going to break up Prussia? Get rid of the original Prussia (East Prussia), either by making it it's own country (presumably along with Bavaria?) or giving it to the Soviets or Poles? That would entail a lot of ethnic cleansing as in OTL.
By splitting it into several German states as was done after the end of World War II in our TL.
 
No fall of France?

The Wallies would drive to Berlin and raze the place to ground to be sure they'd put a stake into Germany's heart deep enough. World War One would then be remembered as the Entente having been too easy on the Germans.

The post-war WWII reparations would be some kinda horrific.

And I'd not be surprised to see the Wallies going for some sort of "ethnic consolidation" which moved any Germanic peoples out of neighboring countries in order to ensure there'd be no such excuses in the future. Yeah, pity about the Rhineland being declared a German exclusion zone but at least some Germans with sufficient technical skills could be allowed to be employed there as guest workers - and all having to be back on the other side of the New Germany border by shift's end...


If I understand OP correctly, the fall of Poland still occured. When the allies try to go Berlin I can easily see the commanders in the east handing over all of Poland to the Soviets and start actively working with them. In the scenarios mentioned above most Germans would hand over the country before living under the French.
 
I reckon we would see a permanent occupation of Germany by Britain and France paid for by Germany who would be forbidden a military.
 
That would be very hard to sustain in the long-run considering that the German people wouldn't want it, though.

Indeed, think of our TL's post-WWII division of Germany--it stopped working at the first sign of liberalization and quickly ended afterwards.
Only partially, and in large part due to the Cold War; you'll note Austria has spent basically the entire time since WWII emphasizing its separate existence and certainly not expressing any interest in a second Anschluss. If the Allies had been serious about keeping Germany divided permanently, it could have been done (and once you've established collaborationist governments in the various divided Germanies, they'll do part of it themselves, as the President of e.g. Bavaria wants to keep his position rather than being unified and placed under the President of Saxony or what-not). It's certainly easier than keeping Germany under permanent military occupation, which seems the other alternative. Maybe send in the tanks every now and again to knock a local would-be Bismarck over the head, but that's about it.
 
If I understand OP correctly, the fall of Poland still occured. When the allies try to go Berlin I can easily see the commanders in the east handing over all of Poland to the Soviets and start actively working with them. In the scenarios mentioned above most Germans would hand over the country before living under the French.

Facepalm

No, they wouldn't the men of the general staff and many in the Wehrmacht spent the interwar years in Freikorps units fighting communists in the streets of German cities the last last thing they want is Soviet occupation of their land they despise the French they probably despise the Bolsheviks more
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Facepalm

No, they wouldn't the men of the general staff and many in the Wehrmacht spent the interwar years in Freikorps units fighting communists in the streets of German cities the last last thing they want is Soviet occupation of their land they despise the French they probably despise the Bolsheviks more
They also spent the interwar years training with the Soviets.
 
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