WI: At the end of world war 2 Russia didn't give up any part of Berlin?

To me the agreement just seems kind of out of style for Russia. I understand this with a Berlin right on the line between USA captured and Russia captured Germany but with it right in the middle of Russian controlled Germany I would have just kept the whole city if I had been Stalin.

Is this something that could have happened with out the US starting a conflict or did the US make it very clear that keeping all of it wasn't an option on the table?
 
sure they could have, it would have triggered major animosity and been day one of the cold war. The soviets could have kept everything they won on the ground if they wanted, this level of reneging might have triggerd a war with the soviets and or the Western Allies would do more to undermine the soviet positon and to possibly exclude the soviet union from the United Nations.

The soviets spilled a lot of their own blood marching west in Death Fest II - the second world war, If they were going to renege on Berlin and they would have to do this immediately, at which point the western allies would renege on the rest of the agreements. ( you would see a smaller east Germany and divided Austria, ( or what ever allied Austria is taken, simply remains with Germany. )

Also I might add, if it is known before hand that the soviets are not going to play ball, then the germans might surrender more in the west, or the allies decide to push harder. if its decided may 2nd, then there isn't much besides war that the west can do about it.

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To me the agreement just seems kind of out of style for Russia. I understand this with a Berlin right on the line between USA captured and Russia captured Germany but with it right in the middle of Russian controlled Germany I would have just kept the whole city if I had been Stalin.

Is this something that could have happened with out the US starting a conflict or did the US make it very clear that keeping all of it wasn't an option on the table?

Well, for one thing, if the Soviets had not withdrawn from western Berlin, the US wouldn't have withdrawn from the areas of Saxony and Thuringia where it had troops, and which were designated for the Soviet occupation zone.

(Solzhenitsyn was later to complain about FDR and Churchill, "How could they give away broad regions of Saxony and Thuringia in return for the preposterous toy of a four—zone Berlin, their own future Achilles' heel"? See my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Z9hZnCnFOec/58Ixb_7jw40J)
 
As the map shows and David T points out, areas conquered/ liberated by the Americans wound up in the Soviet zone. The zones of occupation had been agreed to much earlier, and the Allies all wound up following the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam agreements pretty scrupulously. And if there was more suspicion that someone would renege, the end of the war and the early postwar years would have played out quite differently in other respects.

Also, remember the reaction to the OTL blockade on West Berlin when thinking how much trouble not allowing a West Berlin in the first place would have caused.
 

Deleted member 1487

The US gave up a ton more territory than the Soviets did with Berlin, so besides not leaving Soviet zones of East Germany, they'd keep most of Bohemia. That would probably mean the Soviets keep Vienna and parts of Austria. Who knows what Yugoslavia does ITTL. I wonder if that does happen if the Soviets will do the Eastern Niesse line and keep East Germany further east than IOTL to make up for it being reduced due to the Wallies sitting on Thuringia and Saxony. Poland might well get screwed on a number of their OTL gains from East Germany if the Soviets need to make the DDR more viable by letting it keep more Eastern territory. Not sure what the Soviets would do with East Austria in the long term or Slovkia sans Bohemia. The Czechs might not like the US sticking around and perhaps without the Soviets occupying them and sanctioning removing the German minority the Sudeten Germans stay put.
 
The US gave up a ton more territory than the Soviets did with Berlin, so besides not leaving Soviet zones of East Germany, they'd keep most of Bohemia. That would probably mean the Soviets keep Vienna and parts of Austria. Who knows what Yugoslavia does ITTL. I wonder if that does happen if the Soviets will do the Eastern Niesse line and keep East Germany further east than IOTL to make up for it being reduced due to the Wallies sitting on Thuringia and Saxony. Poland might well get screwed on a number of their OTL gains from East Germany if the Soviets need to make the DDR more viable by letting it keep more Eastern territory. Not sure what the Soviets would do with East Austria in the long term or Slovkia sans Bohemia. The Czechs might not like the US sticking around and perhaps without the Soviets occupying them and sanctioning removing the German minority the Sudeten Germans stay put.
More like Belarussia gets hosed as Poland stays more east,mhowever a unique proposition might be to just toss east Germany to Poland in spite. ( doubtful but then again who knows. The sliver that remains of east Germany wouldn't be much with out the other territories lost in OTL.

Would make reunification a unique larger Germany. Or even maybe the soviets cut a deal to sell the occupied land back to west Germany,most still giving the other territory to Poland as OTL after plundering east Germany for every brick and scrap of resource
 

Deleted member 1487

More like Belarussia gets hosed as Poland stays more east,mhowever a unique proposition might be to just toss east Germany to Poland in spite. ( doubtful but then again who knows. The sliver that remains of east Germany wouldn't be much with out the other territories lost in OTL.

Would make reunification a unique larger Germany. Or even maybe the soviets cut a deal to sell the occupied land back to west Germany,most still giving the other territory to Poland as OTL after plundering east Germany for every brick and scrap of resource
No, Belarus wasn't an independent county, it was part of the USSR. So the USSR was going to take Polish pre-war territory with Russian minorities and leave Poland diminished in size to aggrandize itself. There is no way in hell the Soviets would give East Germany to Poland, as there would as many Germans in Poland as Poles. Who knows what the Soviets might actually do in that case honestly.
 
Keeping all of Berlin indicates Stalin does not want to cooperate with the Western Allies at all and would create a diplomatic crisis. It changes plans for the war in the Pacific as no Soviet troops would now be expected nor wanted. It would immediately end Lend Lease about five months earlier than OTL. US and Britain would not recognize any of Stalin's attempts to change the governments of Eastern Europe and therefore they'd lack international legitimacy. It would put US and British forces on alert in Europe when they still have all their armed forces mobilized and intact. It could easily lead to a third world war.

Reneging on agreements already made would cause the Soviet Union to be diplomatically isolated which is the one thing Stalin always sought to avoid. It is hard to see how this early confrontation benefits him relative to OTL.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
There is no way in hell the Soviets would give East Germany to Poland, as there would as many Germans in Poland as Poles. Who knows what the Soviets might actually do in that case honestly.

There is a simple, yet utterly ruthless, solution to that problem: Drive those Germans out of the territory. Stalin certainly wouldn´t have had any scruples about that.
 
No, Belarus wasn't an independent county, it was part of the USSR. So the USSR was going to take Polish pre-war territory with Russian minorities and leave Poland diminished in size to aggrandize itself. There is no way in hell the Soviets would give East Germany to Poland, as there would as many Germans in Poland as Poles. Who knows what the Soviets might actually do in that case honestly.
Well if they are reneging, maybe they have a different mind set and I know that belarus was not independent .

However not playing fair with Poland which was ground zero for the war in Europe might be enough to force the west's hand to continue the war to liberate Poland.

Sliver east Germany wouldn't be so useful obviously except as a symbolic victory.
 
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