WI Germans liberate Ukraine...

...but still lose the war.

Basically, what if the German occupation policy in the USSR allowed the Ukrainians and Baltic peoples to set up their own nations, putting them on par with the other Axis allies in Eastern Europe? This scenario has been done to death on this forum, so I decided to change it a little bit.

What if, with all this occuring, the Russians still manage to win, pushing all the way to Warsaw (I doubt that they could make it to Berlin in this scenario before the Allies)? What would happen to the Balts and Ukrainians, who openly supported the Nazi invasion?

What do you think?
 

NomadicSky

Banned
The same thing that happened in OTL.

Maybe with the Russians being even more vengeful and taking away the autonomy of those areas after the war.
 
In this timeline, though, there'd be a lot more collaborators in Ukraine, established governmental structures and armies, no partisans to wreak havoc behind the German lines, etc.

Different battles might take place, OTL battles might have different outcomes, etc.

If you go with a ludicrously maximal scenario, a greatly reduced number of partisans could affect the outcome of Stalingrad (more troops and supplies available for the Germans in the city), which would delay the Soviet uber-counterattack that took them to Berlin.

That being said, if the Soviets end up in Berlin anyway, the "independent Ukraine" got drowned in blood and fire somewhere along the way.

One possible butterfly is a much larger number of collaborators and refugees fleeing the USSR and, per the agreements, sent back to the Soviets to be killed. Operation Keelhaul in TTL might be much larger and thus much more difficult to cover up, which could produce a gigantic scandal that takes down Truman or some other Democrat later.

Stalin might also have huge numbers of Ukrainians deported to Central Asia or Siberia and huge numbers of "loyal" ethnicities settled in their place. When the USSR falls, Ukraine could have lots of ethnic unrest as returning Ukrainains and their families fight with Mongolians and others over their old homes and jobs.

Think the Kurds who were kicked out of various cities by Saddam trying to drive out Arabs who were settled there.
 
Ukraine will possibly re-live Civil War ITTL. Would you care to look at Ukraine today, you would see that industrial, urbanist and heavy populated NE is pretty warm and fuzzy toward Russia. Elections after elections are giving "pro-Russian" regions (who would spearhead anti-nationalist effort in proposed TL) between 30% and 40% representation. Actual proportions of people who're not rabid Russophobes (predominant characteristic of ordinary Ukrainian nationalist, as there're preciously few traits manifesting Russo-Ukrainian split otherwise) is probably slightly higher, as FPTP system drowns voices of discontent in battleground regions (think Florida, where <500 votes in 2000 sent state Republican, contrary to wishes of 49.9999999% of voters there or even more, if one chooses to believe multitudes of vote rigging reports). NE vote for their MPs overwhelmingly (with swarms of observers doggedly working every time to uncover possible rigging and failing at their crusade), but number of electoral areas electing "nationalists" or populists in Central Ukraine have pretty close calls time after time (rural areas leaning toward "nationalists" and urban giving serious consideration to "russophiles"). So, ITTL you have country where at least 40% of indigenious population are seriously ticked off at "official collaboration with Nazi" and probably another 40% being mad as hell at "Muskovite arse-lickers". Well, Stalin might even keep Ukraine technically independent for a decade or so (1954 is coming, don't you forget) to rid himself of 3-5 millions of potential nationalist troublemakers without bearing formal responsibility for horrors of civil war.
 
It's not as if somehing simialr didn't happen. You had NDH, puppet state carved from Yugoslavia. Then there was Slovakia, another puppet state. In both cases they were simply readmited to old countries ith leadershi put on trial.

OTOH we are talking about Stalin here so he might not go so easy on these folks, seeing how he treated Caucassians, Cossacks and so on.
 
OTOH we are talking about Stalin here so he might not go so easy on these folks, seeing how he treated Caucassians, Cossacks and so on.
Cossacks may be a nice example, actually. Remember that most Russians (and most Cossacks themselves) don't consider "Cossack" to be a separate ethnicity. They're considered "ethnic community" (at par with Pomors), which developed some peculiar traits to adapt to regions they settled. Besides, 10 Cossacks served in Red Army for each one who served Germans (and Red Cossack units enjoyed well deserved reputation of being among toughest Red troops). Therefore, Cossacks were not considered "hostile nation" the way Balts were (it was pretty much accepted by Soviets that majority of Balt males of appropriate age were serving with Nazis, so generally mere fact of being in German service wasn't enough to send someone in Gulag; however, ethnic Russian collaborators were hunted down and prosecuted well into 1970s). They were simply "traitors" and traitors command extremely low respect from ordinary Russian. Therefore, punishment for traitors was hard and was widely seen as well-deserved. Same fate could await officials of Independent Ukraine post-WWII, would Eastern Ukrainians be allowed to have their way with "filthy traitors of Mother Ukraine".
 
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