What if World War Two was a war against the USSR and not Germany?

RNG

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What if World War Two was a war against the USSR and not Germany? What if Britain, America, and Germany fought the Soviet Union with Germany taking the Soviet Union's place in the cold war and so fascism takes communism place, a war on black say. How would this drastic change to World War Two happen? What would Japan's role in it be? What would the modern would look like?
 
Sure, Stalin starved the Ukrainians, and he could have provoked foreign aggression. But the world was digging out of hard times (Great Depression in the U.S.) and each country was trying to recover. So, what can Stalin do to get the world to wage war against the Soviets?
 
Stalin wouldn't be stupid enough going against Europe alone if he can't be sure about victory. But perhaps Trotsky?
 

FBKampfer

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Possibly if Hitler goes for a bait and switch with Poland and Stalin takes the bait.

I mean the man clearly was an idiot. Wiley and paranoid, but not smart in the traditional sense of the word.

The only thing standing in the way is his paranoia. Perhaps continue German-Soviet cooperation, and Stalin comes to see Hitler as quite an amicable and trustworthy fellow.
 
If Russia takes the place of Germany its going to need allies(and not just a grassland like Mongolia) and places to invade, with Europe being the final and ultimate goal. The only route it can take then is China, or India. Could make Japan its ally. Can't see any other realistic allies(like Spain).

I can imagine an exhausted Soviet Union being pushed back from Berlin after one of their armies got trapped in lets say Nurnberg or Stuttgart and the Germans push all the way to Moscow whilst the USA comes from the East, crossing the gigantic distance to join the Germans in the siege, only to have the capital split and the Moscow Wall erected after Stalin and his cabinet are either dead or captured and Leningrad nuked.

Of course, Germany would be more surrounded by its enemy in this cold war than the Soviet Union was, having taken all of Eastern Europe including the most populous and industrial part of Russia. Its a powerful position though, plenty of space to throw up an iron curtain.
 
1) Well, even if Germany is fascist, it cant be Nazi and it definitely cant be led by Hitler.
2) You probably need Germany and USSR to have opposite post-war experiences. USSR recovers quickly and expands its industrial capacity much earlier. You probably need to get rid of the Russian Civil War.
3) Germany probably needs a more sluggish recovery. Rearmament doesnt begin until the Soviet threat becomes more acute. They need to be weak enough to require French and UK assistance. This is pretty reasonable if they dont challenge Versaille earlier.
4) If the Soviets become this powerful this quickly, I can imagine the US becoming involved more quickly as communism is seen as an existential threat to Capitalism and Democracy moreso than Fascism.
5) I can see the Soviets threatening the Middle East more acutely.
6) Japanese tread more carefully in Manchuria and greater China. I can see that war being more contained if only due to the risk of Soviet entry. Maybe they negotiate a non-aggression pact once US at war with USSR and/or Japan. Maybe even aid each other - USSR sells out Mao to protect its rear.
7) Fascist Germany, ITTL, never gets powerful enough to create a cold war. The USSR was isolated from the West militarily during WWII and from the ROW following the war in a way Germany never could. British, French, and American troops would almost certainly have to pass through Germany to fight the Soviets.

The one exception to all this is if Germany does not launch Barbarossa in June 41 and the Soviets pre-empt in 42. But there are a lot of butterflies here and I think it is well past the point of the US and UK joining Germany. Hitler was too well known for what he was by that point.
 
Well, if this doesn't sound familiar...

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RNG

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Perhaps the Russian Civil War never happens, maybe because the leaders of the While Movement are arrested. The Polish Soviet Civil War is won by Russia and Poland is now a Soviet puppet state. Finland and the Baltic states stayed Russian. Trotsky heeds Lenin's warning about Stalin and has Stalin assassinated. Hitler is killed at the Beer Hall Putsch and the Nazis have a leader who doesn't want to expand Germany in the same way as Hitler but does want German territories and colonies back. Instead of rearmament they focus diplomatic discussions with Britain and France in order to given back their colonies. Trotsky fears a Germany invasion of Poland backed by Britain and France in order to liberate it. Trotsky invades Germany. Britain and France back Germany. At first Russia is successful. They take Germany and reach the French border. Japan and Russia signed a non aggression pact so Russia wouldn't have to fear a Japanese invasion. Japan bombs Pearl Harbour and America not only declares war on Japan but also Russia. With the help of America Russia is pushed back and Germany and Poland are liberated. Germany is asked to help with Japan but refuse unless they are given back their colonies. Britain and France agree. Russia falls and Japan is nuked. World War Two ends. The leader of Germany was killed in the Fall of Germany. The next leader is more fascist and also extremely isolationist. At the Potsdam Conference he demands to given much of East Europe. The West wants to created a democratic Russia however give in and give him Poland, the Baltic States, and Russia up to Moscow, with the rest being made a democratic nation. A cold war soon develops between America and Germany. Proxy wars take place. Fascism is endorsed by many independence movements. Germany falls much like Russia. Germany is a nuclear armed superpower. They still have many Pacific islands. They tried to stamp out the use of other European languages in their colonies and so they speak German however they do have loan words mainly from technologies created between World War One and World War Two. Fascism is not seen in such a bad light rather is is communism that is seen in a bad light.
 
What about have the Weimar authorities execute Hitler for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch while the USSR goes all out Trotskyist?
 
What about have the Weimar authorities execute Hitler for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch while the USSR goes all out Trotskyist?

The idea that Trotsky would be any more anxious than Stalin to precipitate a war with all of Europe (and America) seems more than dubious to me. As I wrote here recently:

"Furthermore, even if we assume that Trotsky was more anxious than Stalin to encourage revolutions abroad, that is not the same thing as invading foreign countries with the Red Army. On that, Trotsky seems to have been if anything a bit more cautious than Stalin. 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.) In 1940 he was somewhat critical of Stalin's military expansion, remarking " 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..." https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/ww2.htm (Admittedly, once in exile Trotsky had an incentive to criticize almost everything Stalin did, so this is not proof that he would use the Red Army abroad less than Stalin. But there is no good reason to think he would have used it more.)"

Furthermore, without Hitler's hatred of "Judeo-Bolshevism" and desire for Lebensraum what motive would a non-Nazi Germany have for going to war with the USSR--which did not occupy any territory claimed by Germany and which actually helped Germany evade the military restrictions of Versailles? Indeed, Hitler faced dissent within his own party on his anti-Soviet obsession. Hitler actually acknowledged that his hatred of the Soviet Union was going against the grain of many on the German Right--even the völkisch Right--who wanted a German-Soviet alliance; he complained in Mein Kampf that "today even folkish circles rave about an alliance with Russia..."
http://books.google.com/books?id=GcfYq-T3liUC&pg=PA38 Gregor Strasser was later to change his mind, but in 1926 he said "Our enemy in the East is Poland, not Russia onto which we do not border." "Even Alfred Rosenberg, whose views helped to determine Hitler's total opposition to a Russo-German alliance, regarded Poland as the main enemy and admitted the need for a temporary Russo-German alliance..." http://books.google.com/books?id=X8T248Aer0kC&pg=PA64
 
What if World War Two was a war against the USSR and not Germany? What if Britain, America, and Germany fought the Soviet Union with Germany taking the Soviet Union's place in the cold war and so fascism takes communism place, a war on black say. How would this drastic change to World War Two happen? What would Japan's role in it be? What would the modern would look like?

This could happen if the USSR became an overt aggressor nation before Germany. That's a very big if, and very unlikely with Stalin in control of the USSR and Hitler in charge of Germany.

But if Stalin had lost out in the Politburo infighting of the 1920s... and the alternate leader of the USSR is...

Less purge-inclined, so that the Red Army was reformed rather than lobotomized.

More adventurously minded, so that in the mid-1930s the USSR begins actively seeking to regain the former imperial territories which broke away or were taken after the Revolution (Finland, the Baltic states, eastern Poland, Bessarabia), and in fact uses implicit threats of war combined with political subversion to gain some of these territories. (I.e. what Hitler did for Germany.)

Even more adventurous, so that circa 1940, he believes the Red Army is superior to the German, French, and British armies, and therefore the USSR can use overt war to gain control of additional territory and countries. (This would not be entirely crazy. I have a book on Soviet tanks which claims that by 1940 the USSR had 20,000 AFVs - more than the rest of the world combined. Mostly junk, but most of other countries' AFVS were junk too.

I'll go further - the alt-USSR makes the same deal with Hitler to partition Poland, except that the USSR moves first, and Germany gets the freebies afterward. So the UK and France go to war with the USSR, and suffer disasters.

Eventually, the USSR double-crosses Germany and invades them too (just to get at France). Eventually, Germany, Britain, and France combine to bring down the USSR and Japan (the US becoming involved).

A Cold War ensues, between Germay and the US/UK/France.
 
Trotsky was not a madman adventurer who wished to war against a united European/American capitalist bloc. This meme really needs to die. That's not what Permanent Revolution is.
 
I'm kinda working on a TL on this, but it is based on the Red Alert series which has Stalin more aggressive for the sake of plot. Germany ain't Nazi though.
 
The big problem with such a swap is the very different circumtances Nazi Germany and the USSR faced in the 30’s, which basically comes down to that German obsession with ‘Lebensraum’.

Whoever is running Germany in the 1930’s is going to be expansionist to a greater or lesser degree, there’s just too many issues with the German economy for it to be otherwise, not to mention all the territory lost after WWI.

The USSR is in the opposite situation. Land, resources and manpower in abundance, it just needs to develop the infrastructure to exploit them effectively. Even with someone far less brutal than Stalin in charge agricultural reform and industrialization are going to the be the priority. Even if some alternate USSR/Russia wanted to resume the 19th Century ‘Great Game’ they will need to focus on internal development first and without Stalin’s ruthless disregard for the human cost that could take decades.
 
seems unlikely (to say the least) but Soviet-Japanese alliance would have been dangerous, Japanese navy with all the fuel they needed? Soviet submarines more lethal to enemy than their own crews?

not sure if they could sustain operations but it seems the Soviets could occupy large parts of Iran and Iraq?
 
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