What if Germany lost all the land west of the Rhine, instead of all the land east of the Oder-Western Neisse?

[Crueldwarf]

Think the ethnic cleansings would probably still happen, even then. Furthermore an unconditional surrender would involve situational awareness the German senior officials lacked, for the most part. And I'm not talking about the Nazis alone. Even the people who tried to kill Hitler during the July plot fantasized about getting away with a negotiated peace.

But this is a scenario in the same ballpark of plausibility of Western Allies deciding to go to a new war to save some German lives. And early surrender is a much more moral option than Unthinkable.

And yes, ethnic cleansings will still happen. No one will forgive Germans for the shit they did out of the goodness of their hearts. But with intact German state apparatus and no fighting to utterly demolish local infrastructure, these things will be much more organized and therefore will cause much less victims.

 

[1962strat]

But this is a scenario in the same ballpark of plausibility of Western Allies deciding to go to a new war to save some German lives. And early surrender is a much more moral option than Unthinkable.

The ballpark being with absolutely 0 basis on reality.

 

[David T]

(1) There was no chance of the Rhineland being separated from Germany after World War II. France was too weak to impose such a separation without the US and UK agreeing, and they were completely opposed, especially after the Cold War made western Germany look like a potential ally against the Soviets. (2) The eastern boundaries of Germany were basically up to Stalin. He had the troops there and the Western Allies were not going to start a Third World War to get them out. [1] It is certainly possible that Stalin might have decided on a more "generous" eastern border for Germany--for most of the War he seemed to regard the Oder as sufficient compensation for Poland for its loss of territories to the east of the Curzon Line. His demand for the Oder-western Neisse line came relatively late in the war. Had the Western Allies been more insistent at Potsdam, they could have gotten a line *very* slightly more favorable than the Oder-western Neisse https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ain-had-held-firm.525036/page-2#post-22884366 but that is it. In particular, there was never any chance that East Prussia--which Germany had in the space of three decades *twice* used as a base for invading Russia/USSR--would have been allowed to stay German.

[1} Even if their governments had wanted to, it would have been politically impossible: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...peration-downfall.492956/page-4#post-20830718

 

[Falecius]

Some notes:
1) The Soviet Union was the victim of a war of extermination waged by the Nazi-controlled German state and its allies with the precise purpose of destroying its statehood, ideology, and, for the most part, peoples. They endured monstrous losses because of that, trying and managing to win a genocidal war which had been waged against the physical and cultural existence of the majority of its inhabitants. Of course, the Soviet state under Stalin was itself a totalitarian tyranny with very little regard for human life, and Stalin's own foreign policy had been effectively Nazi-enabling for a period, but then, the point is that they weren't in a forgiving mood, to put It mildly, at all. The Soviet Union having "no say" in the post-war settlement after a conflict in which they were the main fighting force, shouldering the main front largely alone, is of course out of the question and only possible if the German Army had not invaded the Soviet Union in the first place (or had won, which is both very unlikely and absolutely horrifying). Of course, again, the ethnic cleansing was not morally justified in any way.
2) While Prussia was the largest German state, which had unified the country, its capital and cultural center was Berlin, in Brandenburg. The dynasty which took its royal title from Prussia actually was from Brandenburg too (well, OK, originally from Swabia). Prussia was strictly speaking only a region (though not a small one) of the state to which it gave its name. Then, of course, the Eastern territories ceded to Poland and Russia were far larger than Prussia in this sense, but the core territory of the Prussian state was still arguably Brandenburg, most of which remained part of Germany (and the part that didn't, Neumark, wasn't heavily populated, less so than other ethnically cleansed eastern areas).
3) "Operation Unthinkable" was called like that for some very, very good reasons. It was indeed, well, just that. Unthinkable.
Ok, fine, not literally so, They did think about it after all. But they thought it was a really bad, bad, bad idea, which, by the way, of course it was. And most likely, it wouldn't have saved any Eastern German's farm. (But might have turned quite some of those into moonscape battlefields, again).

 

[Jan Olbracht]

I'd not compare Königsberg to 13 colonies, it is silly comparision. I'd say East Prussia was for Germany what Sardinia was for Italy.

 

[BiasHangover]

I'd not compare Königsberg to 13 colonies, it is silly comparision. I'd say East Prussia was for Germany what Sardinia was for Italy.

Or England was to Britain.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

In WW1, France annexing the Rhineland could not be reconciled with neither Wilson’s advocacy of self-determination or Britain’s insistence in keeping the balance of power. The fought Napoleon tooth and nail to avoid this, why would they allow it now?

3- The logistics of it. France’s demographics were already declining and were greatly hit by WW1, so even if you expelled the several million germans, finding enough Frenchmen to repopulate it while not crippling other French areas would have been hard. Annexing the area full of Germans is an extremely stupid idea in the age of nationalism.

What if they just set up a buffer state in Rhineland? Just wondering if in lieu of crippling reparations, they could have demanded territorial changes at Versailles. At they very least, that region could have been broken away from Prussia, put under Konrad Adenauer (a Rhinelander who despised the Prussians), and been put under French economic and political influence, even if still part of Germany.

Granted, this is rather projecting (faint) possibilities in the early '20s backwards into time, as well as his postwar importance.

In a speech on 1 February 1919 Adenauer called for the dissolution of Prussia, and for the Prussian Rhineland to become a new autonomous Land (state) in the Reich.[12] Adenauer claimed this was the only way to prevent France from annexing the Rhineland.[12] Both the Reich and Prussian governments were completely against Adenauer's plans for breaking up Prussia.[13] When the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were presented to Germany in June 1919, Adenauer again suggested to Berlin his plan for an autonomous Rhineland state and again his plans were rejected by the Reich government.[14]

In mid-October 1923, the Chancellor Gustav Stresemann announced that Berlin would cease all financial payments to the Rhineland and that the new Rentenmark, which had replaced the now worthless Mark would not circulate in the Rhineland.[17] To save the Rhineland economy, Adenauer opened talks with the French High Commissioner Paul Tirard in late October 1923 for a Rhenish republic in a sort of economic union with France which would achieve Franco-German reconciliation, which Adenauer called a "grand design".[18] At the same time, Adenauer clung to the hope that the Rentenmarkmight still circulate in the Rhineland. Adenauer's plans came to naught when Stresemann, who was resolutely opposed to Adenauer's "grand design", which he viewed as borderline treason, was able to negotiate an end to the crisis on his own.[18]

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Here's the actual article about the short-lived Rhenish Republic attempt.

Rhenish Republic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I'm amused that as per the Monarchism in Bavaria after 1918 link in my other thread, the Bavarian Royal Party had contacts to Rhenish separatists and to France.

 

[Jan Olbracht]

Or England was to Britain.

Tell me at which point vast majority of German nation lived in East Prussia? When was Konigsberg Germany's capital and biggest city?

 

[kholieken]

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2...ny-review-james-hawes-mystery-heart-of-europe

East of Elbe is not really "Germany". Its frontier lands that suck wealth from west and had different priorities and cultures.

 

[David T]

The death toll for the eastern ethnic cleansing of Germans was 2,500,000.

You are stating as a fact a figure larger than the estimate of the German governmnet---which in turn has been widely disputed by historians as exaggerated.

According to the German Historical Museum; "Flucht und Vertreibung aus den ehemaligen Ostgebieten des Deutschen Reichs hielten bis lange nach Kriegsende an und forderten zwischen 1944 und 1947 bis zu 600.000 Menschenleben. Amtliche Zahlen aus den 1950er Jahren gingen von ca. zwei Millionen Toten aus, halten einer Überprüfung aber nicht stand." ("Flight and expulsion from the former eastern territories of the German Reich continued long after the end of the war and claimed up to 600,000 lives between 1944 and 1947. Official figures from the 1950s assumed around two million deaths, but do not stand up to scrutiny." https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/zweiter-weltkrieg/kriegsverlauf/massenflucht/

"The West German government during the cold war conducted investigations of the wartime flight and expulsions. The Schieder commission published a series of reports that documented the expulsions based on eyewitness accounts. Schieder chronicled the flight and expulsions, but did not provide background on the wartime crimes of Nazi Germany in Central and Eastern Europe that motivated the Allies to expel the Germans after the war. Schieder in 1953 estimated that 2 million persons perished in Poland, a figure that continues to endure in Germany.[2] Schieder's estimate of the casualties was superseded by a separate demographic analysis of prepared by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, in 1958 they estimated losses at 2.225 million.[3] The German Church Search Service working with the German Red Cross attempted to trace and identify those who perished in the expulsions. The investigation of the Church Search Service was only partially successful, by 1965 they were able to confirm about 500,000 deaths but could not clarify the fates of 1.9 million persons that were listed as "unsolved". The findings of the Church Search Service were not published until 1987.[4][5][6] Another report was issued by the German Federal Archives that identified 600,000 civilian expulsion deaths due to crimes against international law. This report was not published until 1989.[7]

"Ingo Haar who is currently on the faculty of the University of Vienna said on 14 November 2006 in Deutschlandfunk that about 500,000 to 600,000 victims are realistic, based on a German governmental studies initiated in the 1960s.[8] Haar said these numbers were compiled from actually reported deaths, while higher figures of about two million deaths were estimated with the population balance method in a German governmental study of 1958.[8] Haar said the higher estimates must be seen in the historical context of the 1950s, when the government of West Germany needed high numbers for political reasons.[8] During the Cold War West Germany wanted to revert to prewar borders in Central Europe. Military historian Rüdiger Overmans said on 6 December 2006 in Deutschlandfunk that only the about 500,000 registered deaths could be counted, and that the unaccounted cases calculated with the population balance method need be confirmed by further research.[9] However, on 29 November 2006 State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Christoph Bergner, reaffirmed the position of the German government that 2 million civilians perished in the flight and expulsion from Central and Eastern Europe.[10] The German Red Cross in 2005 maintained that death toll in the expulsions is 2,251,500 persons.[11]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_estimates_of_the_flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans

(I am not taking sides on what the actual figures are, simply saying that one particular estimate should not be treated as the undisputed truth, especially when it is larger than the West German and then German government's own widely criticized estimates.)

 

[1962strat]

What if they just set up a buffer state in Rhineland? Just wondering if in lieu of crippling reparations, they could have demanded territorial changes at Versailles. At they very least, that region could have been broken away from Prussia, put under Konrad Adenauer (a Rhinelander who despised the Prussians), and been put under French economic and political influence, even if still part of Germany.

Granted, this is rather projecting (faint) possibilities in the early '20s backwards into time, as well as his postwar importance.

My guess is that reparations and occupation of the Rhineland were simply more advantageous. France and Belgium did not demand reparations for no reasons, the material losses were insane.

I also probably think that they recognized that breaking away the Rhineland would squander any chances of Germany entering the world order peacefully. The Rhineland state would also be overwhelmingly in favor of joining Germany again, so the Entente would have to pour a lot of resources into quelling any possible uprisings. Long term, it was probably unsustaible.

As for breaking it away from Prussia, Versailles didn't really interfere with German internal politics.

 

[BiasHangover]

You are stating as a fact a figure larger than the estimate of the German governmnet---which in turn has been widely disputed by historians as exaggerated.

According to the German Historical Museum; "Flucht und Vertreibung aus den ehemaligen Ostgebieten des Deutschen Reichs hielten bis lange nach Kriegsende an und forderten zwischen 1944 und 1947 bis zu 600.000 Menschenleben. Amtliche Zahlen aus den 1950er Jahren gingen von ca. zwei Millionen Toten aus, halten einer Überprüfung aber nicht stand." ("Flight and expulsion from the former eastern territories of the German Reich continued long after the end of the war and claimed up to 600,000 lives between 1944 and 1947. Official figures from the 1950s assumed around two million deaths, but do not stand up to scrutiny." https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/zweiter-weltkrieg/kriegsverlauf/massenflucht/

"The West German government during the cold war conducted investigations of the wartime flight and expulsions. The Schieder commission published a series of reports that documented the expulsions based on eyewitness accounts. Schieder chronicled the flight and expulsions, but did not provide background on the wartime crimes of Nazi Germany in Central and Eastern Europe that motivated the Allies to expel the Germans after the war. Schieder in 1953 estimated that 2 million persons perished in Poland, a figure that continues to endure in Germany.[2] Schieder's estimate of the casualties was superseded by a separate demographic analysis of prepared by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, in 1958 they estimated losses at 2.225 million.[3] The German Church Search Service working with the German Red Cross attempted to trace and identify those who perished in the expulsions. The investigation of the Church Search Service was only partially successful, by 1965 they were able to confirm about 500,000 deaths but could not clarify the fates of 1.9 million persons that were listed as "unsolved". The findings of the Church Search Service were not published until 1987.[4][5][6] Another report was issued by the German Federal Archives that identified 600,000 civilian expulsion deaths due to crimes against international law. This report was not published until 1989.[7]

"Ingo Haar who is currently on the faculty of the University of Vienna said on 14 November 2006 in Deutschlandfunk that about 500,000 to 600,000 victims are realistic, based on a German governmental studies initiated in the 1960s.[8] Haar said these numbers were compiled from actually reported deaths, while higher figures of about two million deaths were estimated with the population balance method in a German governmental study of 1958.[8] Haar said the higher estimates must be seen in the historical context of the 1950s, when the government of West Germany needed high numbers for political reasons.[8] During the Cold War West Germany wanted to revert to prewar borders in Central Europe. Military historian Rüdiger Overmans said on 6 December 2006 in Deutschlandfunk that only the about 500,000 registered deaths could be counted, and that the unaccounted cases calculated with the population balance method need be confirmed by further research.[9] However, on 29 November 2006 State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Christoph Bergner, reaffirmed the position of the German government that 2 million civilians perished in the flight and expulsion from Central and Eastern Europe.[10] The German Red Cross in 2005 maintained that death toll in the expulsions is 2,251,500 persons.[11]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_estimates_of_the_flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans

(I am not taking sides on what the actual figures are, simply saying that one particular estimate should not be treated as the undisputed truth, especially when it is larger than the West German and then German government's own widely criticized estimates.)

2.5m was meant to say 2.2m. As I got my number from some of the sources you listed. So a brainfart 🤯on my part.
https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2...ny-review-james-hawes-mystery-heart-of-europe

@kholieken

East of Elbe is not really "Germany". Its frontier lands that suck wealth from west and had different priorities and cultures.

Silesia didn't suck wealth, and had German culture.

 

[Aphrodite]

The death toll for the eastern ethnic cleansing of Germans was 2,500,00.

To get it, they counted:

Anyone who could speak German as German even if they spoke Polish or Yiddish at home.

The Germans who died fleeing to Nazi Germany to escape the advancing Red Army. (They were "expelled" because they couldnt return)

Those who died during the war.

Those who died of wounds, bad nutrition or disease in the aftermath- as if Poles werent dying like flies from the same causes.

They made little effort to either separate civilian and military deaths or find the missing. Anyone they didnt find got counted as dead

It is as meaningful as the German efforts to blame the Entente for WWII because Versailles was so harsh - utter and complete nonsense.

The Soviets werent nice and committed many war crimes but they didnt round up the Germans and send them to gas chambers. They would have if Stalin had ordered it but he didnt.

 

[BiasHangover]

This is the crybaby figure designed to make the Germans to be the "victims" of WWII.

Calling a death toll cry baby figures is incredibly offensive.

 

[Aphrodite]

Calling a death toll cry baby figures is incredibly offensive.

It was a deliberate distortion made to earn sympathy and to create a false impression. It just wasnt a seriously derived number.

There just wasnt a massive death toll from the forced relocations. It was from the general suffering from a war the Germans had started of their own free will.

As far as I know, there werent widespread executions of Germans not complying. I know of no incidents of forced starvation.

I know the Germans did that and far worse in the East


Im sure there were some deaths and certainly no one defends any war crimes committed against anyone including the Germans.

But for the Germans to falsely exaggagerate their suffering to elicit sympathy is also "highly offensive"

Its also "highly offensive" fir them to blame the Treaty if Versailles for WWII.

I'll add that my grandfather was Lithuanian, forcible sent to Nazi Germany to work in German factories and lived through the Battle of Berlin.

He saw thousands of his countrymen executed and deprived of everything. Of about fifty men who attended his brother's wedding, six survived the war.

 

[CalBear]

To get it, they counted:

Anyone who could speak German as German even if they spoke Polish or Yiddish at home.

The Germans who died fleeing to Nazi Germany to escape the advancing Red Army. (They were "expelled" because they couldnt return)

Those who died during the war.

Those who died of wounds, bad nutrition or disease in the aftermath- as if Poles werent dying like flies from the same causes.

They made little effort to either separate civilian and military deaths or find the missing. Anyone they didnt find got counted as dead

It is as meaningful as the German efforts to blame the Entente for WWII because Versailles was so harsh - utter and complete nonsense.

The Soviets werent nice and committed many war crimes but they didnt round up the Germans and send them to gas chambers. They would have if Stalin had ordered it but he didnt.

Guess what?

Genocide denial,/justification, even if its against the "Bad Guys" is flat against Board policy. Doesn't matter if it is the generally accept figure of ~2M or the lower figure from the BDR Archive study of 1969 (600K, which does not even count deaths due to starvation, disease, or long term deaths from injuries suffered during the Expulsions). Doesn't even matter if the Germans were responsible for the war, nor that the Nazis perpetrated the Shoah. MINIMUM SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND HUMAN BEINGS died for no reason that they spoke Germam or had parents/grandparents who spoke German (that remind you of anything, maybe an atrocity I mention in the previous sentence?).

I was able to confirm this in less than five minutes. You clearly have reviewed at least some of the literature on the subject since you attempt to debunk it by category. That pretty much removes the "well, maybe it just ignorance" mitigating factor.

Don't get to handwave AT LEAST 600,000 dead civilians/demobilized troops.

To Coventry with you.

 

[Aghasverov]

Damn... a little shocked by this one.
As much as I may have disagreed with Aphrodite on quite a few points, and sparred with her a bit, I can't say that I won't miss her input on the discussion threads...

 

[stodge]

Perhaps we're looking at this question in the wrong way.

The question is framed in rather brutal terms but in effect the situation in 1945 in the Rhineland was the same as in 1919. Although still part of a German state, the Rhineland was militarily occupied - the difference this time was the whole of Germany had been physically conquered by its enemies so it wasn't just one part of the country that lay under foreign military control, it was all of it.

For the French, the security concerns which had plagued its relationship with the German state since 1871 had been resolved - finally and unexpectedly. The military threat from the German state was removed - the reason for maintaining an occupation presence in the Rhineland and ensuring that part of Germany was demilitarised (the security of France) also no longer existed. The new threat was from Communist Russia which had control of a significant part of the territory of the former Germany.

Political expediency deemed the creation of a stable and democratic German state as being integral to France's own security - the viability and integrity of such a state meant it needed the totality of its territory). Thus, revanchism of any kind for the western powers was off the table - the French couldn't have the Saarland, the Danes couldn't have South Schleswig - in the interests of creating a new state whose very purpose was to act as a bulwark against future Communist aggression.

A more interesting scenario is t ask what would have happened had that stable West German democracy failed but that was never really likely with substantial numbers of American and other allied (eventually NATO) forces in the country and facing the obvious threat of an East German state under the thumb of ideological Marxism and housing substantial Soviet forces.

In a way it had never enjoyed since the creation of the unified German state, France now had security and safety on its eastern border from Germany - that didn't mean there wasn't a threat but that threat was pushed a few hundred miles further east to the Elbe river.

 

[H.Flashman(VC)]

Guess what?

Genocide denial,/justification, even if its against the "Bad Guys" is flat against Board policy. Doesn't matter if it is the generally accept figure of ~2M or the lower figure from the BDR Archive study of 1969 (600K, which does not even count deaths due to starvation, disease, or long term deaths from injuries suffered during the Expulsions). Doesn't even matter if the Germans were responsible for the war, nor that the Nazis perpetrated the Shoah. MINIMUM SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND HUMAN BEINGS died for no reason that they spoke Germam or had parents/grandparents who spoke German (that remind you of anything, maybe an atrocity I mention in the previous sentence?).

I was able to confirm this in less than five minutes. You clearly have reviewed at least some of the literature on the subject since you attempt to debunk it by category. That pretty much removes the "well, maybe it just ignorance" mitigating factor.

Don't get to handwave AT LEAST 600,000 dead civilians/demobilized troops.

To Coventry with you.

I'm not so sure she disputes the 600.000 figure. She disputes the more than 2 million figure created in the 50's, when most Germans were still in their denial fase, and were indeed trying to frame themselves in a victim role. To be clear where i stand, whenever this discussion comes up, i have always said that the german population made a radical transformation in the 60's, when it comes to the view of the world war 2 moral guilt question. It is now the country in Europe that is most aware and most accepting their responsibility, and i can say i admire them for that feat. I wished that historiographies of other countries were as open about this, as the German historiography is, including the one of my own country. But that state of awareness wasn't present in West Germany, where and when these figures were made up. Aphrodite has a good point there, and i do question if her remark about this is really that offensive, for that reason.