What if- Everyone calls Hitler's bluffs from the beginning

AHC: IOC plays better poker in '36, [highlights Nazi rearmament,shorter war?] , prevents Holocaust?

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...mament-shorter-war-prevents-holocaust.396685/

People generally said in response that it was unrealistic, which is fine. And in OTL, the Olympic Committee was primarily focused on the Olympics being "successful" and most of their moral energy seemed to be anti-critic, rather than standing up to the damn Nazis.

Remember that the '36 Winter Olympics were also in Germany and there were some problems with the Nazis being too upfront and in your face. And the Olympic Committee did ask for changes.

Then there was the Nazi rearmament of the Rhineland on March 7, 1936.

If the Olympic Committee had been a little bit more realistic and skeptical from the very beginning. Say, they announce of vote of member states in June whether or not to cancel the Olympics.

The Nazi Party was popular with the German people. That's the sad truth. Because they were young and active and doing something in regards to the Great Depression, whereas a lot of stick-in-the-mud western governments weren't, or at the very least were slow to the activist approach.

If that big stadium is sitting empty in August, that may knock the Nazis down a peg. And it may communicate to citizens of democracies, Wow, this rearmament of the Rhineland is a pretty big deal.

But you'd need to find someone in the IOC less anti-communist, less anti-Semitic (and less corrupt) than Avery Brundage to push for that.
 
I hate AH premises where people are all like, "What if these people just thought like us?" It isn't happening, and honestly, if it weren't for good old reductio ad Hitlerum, it wouldn't even be the least bit reasonable. "No army, ever!", said the world's largest empires. It's an untenable position for people at the time to have, and honestly, that's something that would be pretty obvious to us if we didn't have our own reasons to think "Get rid of Hitler at all costs and hope for the best" was an alright course of action.
I was trying to get past the idea that some super smart leader does it all while the rest of us just sit on our butts. But you're right. Talking about individual American citizens knowing more and caring more is pretty vague.

Okay, how about this? In OTL, I think the American Bund social organizations were generally in favor of Hitler. If they instead split, this gives newspapers extra motivation to cover the topic, puts extra weight on the scale, and like much of journalism, some coverage gives momentum for more coverage.
 
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What else was going on in the USA, and the wider world, in 1933? There was the Great Depression for one. What other important issues? Some may have been of greater important, of more consequence at the time, than whoever was the new government in Germany. Besides, what could Germany do? They were also in bad shape, probably worse than the USA, with a military even smaller than the USA's. Germany was also the Europeans' problem. Why should the USA get involved if Germany's neighbors aren't getting involved? If the USA did actively oppose the Nazis back then, how do the various European countries respond? Do they applaud the US effort? Be indifferent? Tell the Americans to mind their own business? I'm guessing mostly a mix of the last two.
I know the depths of the Great Depression was pretty much when Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933.

The Reichstag Fire which the Nazis blamed on the Communists was set Feb. 27. This was used to expand the emergency powers Hitler's cabinet had already voted themselves the beginning of Feb.

So, yes, I agree, getting the attention of people in America will be a problem.
 
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Pomphis

Banned
Trenchwarfare will resume over the Rhineland reoccupation

No. The were only 3 batallions moving in, and they had orders to withdraw if there would be an intervention.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhein...marsch_deutscher_Truppen_am_7._M.C3.A4rz_1936

Am Morgen des 7. März rückten drei Bataillone der Wehrmacht in das Rheinland ein und errichteten Garnisonen in Aachen, Trier und Saarbrücken.
...
Am 8. August 1947 ordnete die französische Nationalversammlung ein parlamentarisches Untersuchungsverfahren zur Ermittlung der Ereignisse von 1933 bis 1945 an. In dessen Abschlussbericht wurde festgestellt, dass 1936 wegen der damaligen massiven militärischen Überlegenheit Frankreichs eine sofortige Gegenbesetzung zweifellos möglich war. Im Falle deutscher Gegenwehr hätte sie sogar darüber hinaus in weitere wichtige Zentren Deutschlands ausgedehnt werden können.
[24]

Auf deutscher Seite war man sich dieser Möglichkeiten Frankreichs voll bewusst. Nach 1945 sagten mehrere damals beteiligte deutsche Generäle aus, im Falle einer französischen Gegenwehr bei der Rheinland-Aktion hätte sich Deutschland in keiner Weise behaupten können.
[25] Außerdem gab es Befehle, sich im Falle französischer Gegenwehr sofort wieder hinter den Rhein zurückzuziehen.[26] Zusätzlich hatten die einmarschierten Truppen den Befehl, in Bereitschaft zu stehen, innerhalb von einer Stunde zurück zu marschieren.[27]
 
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-entered-rheinland.303985/page-7#post-8638101

For why the French were so reluctant to move without British support, I'd like to repost here an old soc.history post of mine:


James Thomas Emmerson, in his book _The Rhineland Crisis: 7 March 1936_
concluded that Hitler would have resisted the French. Yes, he
acknowledges, several times Hitler was to say subsequently that had the
French marched in, he would have had to beat an ignominious retreat, but
he usually said that to boast about his "nerves of steel", show how much
more daring and wise he was than his diplomats and generals, etc.
(Actually, the generals didn't put up any real opposition. Fritsch said
he agreed that remilitarization of the Rhineland was a necessity, but
evidently had some reservations--he agreed to it only after Hitler assured
him the operation would not result in hostilities. Blomberg had no
objections at all. As for the diplomats, Foreign Minister Neurath
probably expressed personal reservations, but did not challenge the
Fuhrer. Neither Hitler nor Neurath nor the generals thought that France
would act so long as it was clear that the action was not a preparation
for an attack on France--for this reason the number of troops
participating in the remilitarization was limited.) The actual military
orders, Emmerson claims, show that resistance was intended. Moreover,
Hitler's statement to Schuschnigg in 1938, often used to bolster the
theory that Hitler wouldn't resist, actually was that Germany "would
withdraw perhaps 60 kilometers but would still hold the French."

An important fact to remember is that the French army in 1936 had no
strike force capable of marching as far as Mainz, let alone occupying the
entire Rhineland. Nor did it possess a single unit which could be made
instantly combat-ready. To resist militarily, the French required
mobilization, which would take time--and during that time, it would no
doubt be evident how totally isolated the French would be in favoring
force. Moreover, the French army believed that the Rhineland had really
been militarized for a long time--they counted, besides the newly
introduced troops, 30,000 members of the labor service and 30,000 members
of the Landespolizei and other police organizations as combat forces.
They also counted over 200,000 "auxiliaries"--all Germans in the
Rhineland who belonged to such organizations as the SA, SS, and NSKK
(motorized corps of the SA). These, the French believed, would put up a
stiff resistance in familiar terrain, certainly for as long as would be
required for Blomberg to bring in his reinforcements.

Gamelin believed that he could establish a foothold on German soil, but
that his advance would be halted rapidly, both by supply problems and by
the enemy--he counted not only over a million Germans already under arms
but millions of members of pre- and para-military formations, disciplined,
partially trained, and capable of being integrated into fighting units
with reasonable speed. They might only be cannon fodder in the short run,
but eventually the weight of Germany's larger population would tell,
especially since France had no equivalent pool of semi-skilled manpower.

Although it is clear in retrospect that the French overestimated German
military strength, that doesn't mean that an occupation of the Rhineland
would have been a walkover. Hitler was not bluffing. The Aachen, Trier,
and Saarbrucken battalions were under orders, not to flee, but to pull
back into previously prepared positions, where their job was to "halt the
enemy advance" for as long as possible before pulling back again to
designated defensive areas. J.A.S. Grenville, in _A History of the World
in the Twentieth Century_ (1994), comes to the same conclusion: "It is a
myth that all that was required to humiliate Hitler was a French show of
strength...German troops were to withdraw as far as the Ruhr and there to
stay and fight. But in view of earlier French political and military
decisions it was obvious that the only French counter-moves would be
diplomatic." (p. 224) Hitler knew that France had not marched in March-
April 1935 during the conscription crisis--and the Reich was considerably
stronger eleven months later.

It is far from clear to me that if the French had marched into the
Rhineland, this would have brought down the Hitler government--it might
have had the opposite effect of unifying Germans around him against the
invader (particularly if they saw that Britain and other nations were
critical of the French move). The French, in any event, had unpleasant
memories of their occupations of the Rhineland during the 1920's, and put
their trust in the Maginot Line they were building. BTW, there was one way for
Germany to remilitarize the Rhineland which wouldn't even
have involved the slight risk Hitler actually incurred.
Hitler could simply have proclaimed that the 14,000 Landespolizei in the
Rhineland were hereby incorporated into the Wehrmacht! France was most
unlikely to have intervened to stop a "militarization" that did not
immediately increase by even one the number of armed German forces in the
Rhineland. Yet once the principle of remilitarization was established,
Germany could then gradually add to their number.

I don't know why Hitler didn't choose this low-risk approach to
remilitarization. Probably it was (as suggested by Emmerson) because he
wanted a _dramatic_ proof to the Germans that their "slavery" had ended--
troops marching across the bridges, aircraft over the Cologne Cathedral,
etc.


***

In a later post, I observed:


It is curious that we get so many what-ifs about the Rhineland crisis of
March 1936 and so few about Hitler's introduction of conscription a year
earlier, which was arguably the time France should have moved (even
without British support, if necessary), the Reich obviously being much
weaker militarily than it would be in 1936. Yet even in 1935, there would
be the dilemma that while France was certainly superior militarily to
Germany, it is not clear that a French reoccupation of the Rhineland would
bring down the Hitler regime--it might actually solidify German popular
support of Hitler--and sending French troops all the way to Berlin to
overthrow Hitler, even if it could be done militarily, would be
extraordinarily messy, would involve a lot of French casualties, would
raise the question of just who would succeed Hitler, when could the French
occupying troops ever leave, etc. (And it is doubtful that any French
government could have survived the internal controversies caused by a
bold response to Germany, especially one not supported by the UK: France
was hardly a model of political stability at that time.) Once the military provisions
of the Versailles Treaty had been unilaterally denounced and conscription reinstated,
remilitarization of the Rhineland was just a matter of time.
 
It is curious that we get so many what-ifs about the Rhineland crisis of
March 1936 and so few about Hitler's introduction of conscription a year
earlier, which was arguably the time France should have moved (even
without British support, if necessary), the Reich obviously being much
weaker militarily than it would be in 1936.
We have our favorite topics here at Alt History. And I think that's okay, as well as branching out!

Okay, so looking at '35 and Germany re-introducing conscription.

1) Could France mass troops on the border thereby introducing a crisis which they subsequently allow Britain to "resolve," this chess play?

2) Could France block and inspect shipping, embargoing military-related goods with the threat of a broader embargo?

If the eventual allies could run one ahead, for example, in which the Austria crisis is taken as serious as the later Czech crisis but even starting earlier with this general approach, might make a big enough difference to count.
 
What are the ramifications to world history if at everytime Hitler did something that the West stood up and said- we call your bluff and we will go to war. For instance- raising the military beyond limits, anschluss with Austria, Czechoslavakia, militarization of Rhineland, seizure of Saarland, anything and everything up to Poland in September 1939.

Hitler would have to play the Russia card earlier. A different series of diplomatic crisis evolves, but given Hitler's agenda, still a dynamic and very dangerous one.
 
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