What if the second world war occurred a decade earlier?
- Thread starter Malone
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stirlingdraka
Donor
They can`t afford war. Hitler tried to seize power in Germany in 1923 and failed. Who is fighting? You can`t just shift everything back ten years.
In 1929 the world was on the brink of the Great Depression. On one hand a war mobilization would just be the thing to get all the unemployed off the street and all the factories busy. On the other, without having to address the underlying root causes of the depression, most nations would just kick the can down the road to be hit with a double whammy of depression and economic transition once the war is over. So instead of the 1940' s being like OTL's 1950's they will be more of OTL's 1930's redone - on steroids - with a population that is already overall war- hardened and trained to handle a gun
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You can have a Second World War in 1929, but it would have far different sides than OTL.
How WW2 could begin in 1929? Germany was in ride condition. It wasn't ready to fight. And no one too wasn't in good condition. World was yet recovering from WW1 and Great Depression was knocking on door.
Wou would need much earlier POD getting this to happen. Probably WW1 should occur at least one decade earlier.
Wou would need much earlier POD getting this to happen. Probably WW1 should occur at least one decade earlier.
Garrison
Donor
having some sort of colonial conflict in 1929, quite possible. Some skirmishing in Europe over post war borders, also possible. Full scale war between the major nations that could rise to the level of a world war? Just not going to happen. Its not just a matter of means its a matter of will, no one at that time is thinking in terms of a new war, it took Hitler's particular brand of insanity to embrace war as a necessity for his vision of Germany's future. I cannot visualize any other leader in 1929 surviving if they tried to pursue such a policy. From a practical view point you are talking about one or more major powers either retaining the massive military infrastructure they possessed in 1918 or deciding to recreate it within only 3-4 or four years of the end of the war. This begs the question, why would any of them do that?
Ramontxo
Donor
1920 Kapp's putch succeeds*. Brutal repression on the home front coupled to assurances to the international community (and this is getting more difficult by the minute) gets the new government a modicum of stability. By 1929 France has Germany surrounded by an ring of alliances going from Checkoslovakia and Poland to Belgium and Italy and the Balkans with the UK looking uneasily to the situation. The German Army looks far more tougher on paper than in reality. It can mobilise quite a large number of troops but it is deployed as an internal occupation army to try to keep the perennial internal unrest at bay. Also it doesn't have the doctrine or industrial capacity to sustain a prolonged war. Now with the great depression making the whole situation looking like a fast train in the brink of derailing someone makes a mistake...
It is not too plausible but not ASB either . IMHO the whole thing would have imploded before. And the factors to considerate are what the UK (imo it would be in a similar position to 1939/40 Roosevelt's USA at the beginning) and the URSS. The last would surely try to use the occasion but how and with what consequences...
It is not too plausible but not ASB either . IMHO the whole thing would have imploded before. And the factors to considerate are what the UK (imo it would be in a similar position to 1939/40 Roosevelt's USA at the beginning) and the URSS. The last would surely try to use the occasion but how and with what consequences...
That would be completely out of character for Stalin and the Soviet Union was nowhere near prepared for fighting a war at this point.
Stalin wasn't idiot who would try do that without Europe being distracted. And Soviet Union was even in worse condition than Germany.
So, it's Trotsky rather than Stalin running the Soviet Union after Lenin's death, and trying to spread Marxism worldwide by force if necessary? Combine that with Ramontxo's 'Kapp Putsch succeeds' idea, and maybe...
Except that the Poles are not pushovers that can easily be defeated by the Red Army (as 1920 proves). They would also likely be supported by the French if the Soviets invade Poland.
Trotsky being a warmongering nutcase is a caricature of the man.
Yep, but then there's another W.I. It's not Stalin but Trotsky. Then a WWII is more likely?
Trotsky wasn't really popular in communist party so not much of chances to rise to power even if Stalin dies before Stalin. And I am not sure if Trotsky really would begin war. Yes, he was surely willingful to spread communism but not quiet sure if he would risk war with every European nation.
To quote an old post of mine:
Why does everyone assume that Trotsky is more likely to do this than Stalin? Leaving aside the obvious and extreme riskiness of this course, he never advocated it. "Encouraging world revolution" (which both he and Stalin favored *as long as it could be done*) =/= "invade everyone with the Red Army." Trotsky seems to have been at first reluctant to cross the Curzon Line and invade ethnic Poland in 1920. (Some people have questioned this, but Richard Pipes, not exactly an admirer of Trotsky, has defended him on this point: "Several historians have questioned whether Trotsky really opposed the invasion of Poland as he later claimed...But the documents cited against him date from August 1920, when the matter had long since been decided, and Trotsky, having fallen in line like a good Bolshevik, naturally desired a quick and decisive victory." *Russia under the Bolshevik Regime*, pp. 182-3.)
From an interview of his in 1940:
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QUESTION: Do you, as the former head of the Red Armies, feel it was necessary for the Soviets to move into the Baltic states, Finland and Poland, to better defend themselves against aggression? Do you believe that a socialist state is justified in extending socialism to a neighbor state by force of arms?
ANSWER: It cannot be doubted that control over the military bases on the Baltic coast represents strategical advantages. But this alone cannot determine the question of invasion of neighboring states. The defense of an isolated workers’ state depends much more on the support of the laboring masses all over the world than on two or three supplementary strategical points. This is proven incontrovertibly by the history of foreign intervention in our civil war of 1918-20.
Robespierre said that people do not like missionaries with bayonets. Naturally that does not exclude the right and duty to give military aid from without to peoples rebelling against oppression. For example in 1919 when the Entente strangled the Hungarian revolution, we naturally had the right to help Hungary by military measures. This aid would have been understood and justified by the laboring masses of the world. Unfortunately we were too weak ... At present the Kremlin is much stronger from a military point of view. However, it has lost the confidence of the masses both inside the country and abroad.
If there were soviet democracy in the USSR; if the technological progress were accompanied by the increase of socialist equality; if the bureaucracy were withering away, giving place to the self-government of the masses, Moscow would represent such a tremendous power of attraction, particularly for its nearest neighbors, that the present world catastrophe would inevitably throw the masses of Poland (not only Ukrainians and White Russians but also Poles and Jews) as well as the masses of the Baltic border states on to the road of union with the USSR.
At present this important pre-condition for revolutionary intervention exists, if at all, in a very small degree... https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/ww2.htm
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Now of course there is boasting here: if *I* were in charge of the Soviet Union, there would be popular revolutions in eastern Europe, and everyone would be begging the USSR to come to their rescue! But I doubt that as actual leader of the USSR, he would be guilty of such self-deception, knowing about the nationalism Polish workers had shown in 1920...
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/what-if-the-soviet-union-invaded-eastern-europe-in-the-early-30s.411037/#post-14322206
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In another post, I stated that it was a fallacy to think "socialism in one country" had anything to do with the comparative likelihood of Stalin and Trotsky following aggressive policies with respect to supporting foreign revolutions:
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Really, "socialism in one country" has nothing to do with it.
"Socialism in one country" was an attempt to keep up the morale of the Bolsheviks after the failure of Europe to undergo successful Communist revolutions in 1918-23. If did not mean that the USSR would give up on encouraging revolutions abroad, only that as of circa 1925 there seemed little immediate chance that such revolutions would succeed (at least in Europe) and in the meantime the USSR could build socialism even without such revolutions.
I agree with Leszek Kolakowski, *Main Currents of Marxism*, "It is possible that if Trotsky had been in charge of Soviet foreign policy and the Comintern in the 1920s he would have taken more interest than Stalin did in organizing Communist risings abroad, but there is no reason to think his efforts would have had any success. Naturally he used every defeat of Communists in the world to accuse Stalin of neglecting the revolutionary cause. But it is not at all clear what Stalin could have done if he had been actuated by the internationalist zeal which Trotsky accused him of lacking. Russia had no no means of ensuring a German Communist victory in 1923 or a Chinese one in 1926. Trotsky's later charge that the Comintern failed to exploit revolutionary opportunities because of Stalin's doctrine of socialism in one country is completely devoid of substance." https://books.google.com/books?id=qUCxpznbkaoC&pg=PA807