WI: Hitler Allies with Ukrainians Rebels during WWII

Read newt gingirich's 1945. In that novel, Hitler's injured before Pearl Harbor, and Goering has to lighten up policy.
The Nazi's create puppet states in Ukraine, and Belarus. Us focuses on Japan, and many anti communists in the east ally with the Reich.
 
It really seems, from a military perspective, like the Germans started collaborating too late with the Ukrainians, and especially the Balts. The Balts, IOTL, actually repulsed the Russians until they got outflanked and Finland dropped out of the war. A massive-revamp in policy when the USSR did not suddenly collapse could have churned out enough Ostruppen to not win the war (US entry guarentees Allied victory) but to grind the Soviets to a halt. The Russians filled man-power shortages by conscripting the men they recaptured when they took back their territory from the Germans. The Germans, by collaborating with them to the extent they did with the Croats and Slovaks, could have raised many divisions and a political will to resist the Soviets. All it takes is avoiding a major blunder (surrounding sixth army, calling off Kursk...neither forgone conclusions) and we can very well see the Russians bled white and simply sitting on their hands until the Allies make significant headway in Italy and France.
 
Hitler must not exist.
Hmm
Hitler wanted much of Eastern Europe for Lebensraum, which meant the conquered lands would be for the German people. Hitler would laugh at the idea of giving Ukrainians any autonomy, since he considered Slavs to be Untermensch. Hitler was too committed to his beliefs to EVER consider that prospect. Either the the partisans are killed or are converted into slaves. In order for this to be plausible, Nazism in general would not be present at all.
Ayy, Hitler might turn on them later, I won't rule that out.

Edit: If I do make this into a timeline, Hitler WILL turn on them.
 
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Deleted member 1487

It really seems, from a military perspective, like the Germans started collaborating too late with the Ukrainians, and especially the Balts. The Balts, IOTL, actually repulsed the Russians until they got outflanked and Finland dropped out of the war. A massive-revamp in policy when the USSR did not suddenly collapse could have churned out enough Ostruppen to not win the war (US entry guarentees Allied victory) but to grind the Soviets to a halt. The Russians filled man-power shortages by conscripting the men they recaptured when they took back their territory from the Germans. The Germans, by collaborating with them to the extent they did with the Croats and Slovaks, could have raised many divisions and a political will to resist the Soviets. All it takes is avoiding a major blunder (surrounding sixth army, calling off Kursk...neither forgone conclusions) and we can very well see the Russians bled white and simply sitting on their hands until the Allies make significant headway in Italy and France.
The Estonians and Latvians were certainly an under-tapped manpower resource. The Lithuanians never trusted the Germans, so they weren't really a group that collaborated enough to form units with. The Soviets had the manpower to conscript and make unwilling manpower fight or else, the Germans did not however.
 
Hitler's policy choices were influenced by those around him. OTL the extreme fanatics Himmler and Goebbels gained more influence than the more pragmatic views of Goering and Rosenberg. The top Nazi leadership might be likened to a heterogeneous mix of thugs and fanatics. If you remove Himmler then Hitler might choose a more rational approach.
 

Deleted member 1487

Hitler's policy choices were influenced by those around him. OTL the extreme fanatics Himmler and Goebbels gained more influence than the more pragmatic views of Goering and Rosenberg. The top Nazi leadership might be likened to a heterogeneous mix of thugs and fanatics. If you remove Himmler then Hitler might choose a more rational approach.
Hitler let himself be influenced by those around him. He chose to listen to Ribbentrop and Himmler and ignore Goering and Rosenberg. So really all Hitler was doing was getting moral support for things he wanted to do anyway.
 
Hitler let himself be influenced by those around him. He chose to listen to Ribbentrop and Himmler and ignore Goering and Rosenberg. So really all Hitler was doing was getting moral support for things he wanted to do anyway.
A question I might have is what did Hitler really want to do? Other than a rabid antisemitism, nationalism and egocentrism his views seemed malleable. It has been many years since I read the Toland and Fest( English translation) biographies. Whether not he was strongly attached certain policies remains a mystery to me.
 
Essentially, in this timeline, he creates a Ukrainian puppet State to get cannon fodder to fight the Russians, and then a Russian free state to serve as a buffer against the Soviets, but little do the collaborators know, Hitler will surly turn on them when they are no longer of any use.
 
Essentially, in this timeline, he creates a Ukrainian puppet State to get cannon fodder to fight the Russians, and then a Russian free state to serve as a buffer against the Soviets, but little do the collaborators know, Hitler will surly turn on them when they are no longer of any use.
Yes. How does he arm and feed these men. He at least will have a couple million willing ex-Soviet POWs that can be conscripted.
 
Yes. How does he arm and feed these men. He at least will have a couple million willing ex-Soviet POWs that can be conscripted.
It would likely also cause much more Soviets to surrender than OTL. And in this ATL Stalin might have to accept these defectors back into the army when the tide turns in his favor again.
 
The Germans wind up with somewhat less motivated soldiers ("Why are we invading these people?"), little change to the opposition of the occupied people ("You launched an unprovoked attack and conquered us!"), and a much weaker logistics and war economy ("We can't take those inhumane emergency measures! Ukrainians are people too!").

Also I can see that no one has brought up the elephant in the room: why are the Nazis planning to create a puppet state for the prosecution of a long war against the Soviet Union when the entire rationale for the invasion of the USSR was predicated on it being over inside of six months?
 

Deleted member 1487

The Germans wind up with somewhat less motivated soldiers ("Why are we invading these people?"),
Fighting communism. Having Ukrainians on side wouldn't change the core war against the USSR, Jews, and Stalin. In fact IOTL the Ukrainians were helping a lot and helping the Germans kill Jews, police areas, and even fight. Generally most Germans didn't seem to have any issues with Ukrainians when they invaded the region, it was the follow on SS Einsatzgruppen that were tasked with not only destroying the Jews, but later destroying the Ukrainian UPA leadership. Throughout the war the Ukrainians did work with the Germans, same with all sorts of other peoples. The German people and soldiers did not know about Generalplan Ost, they were fighting Communism and 'Jewish Bolshevism'.

little change to the opposition of the occupied people ("You launched an unprovoked attack and conquered us!"), and a much weaker logistics and war economy ("We can't take those inhumane emergency measures! Ukrainians are people too!").
Depends on which peoples. The Ukrainians were extremely thankful to be liberated initially until the Germans started suppressing their efforts at nationalism and forming their own government, plus the COIN strategy and war on Ukrainian national monuments. The Russians of course would continue on all the same, but the Ukrainians would stay friendly if the Germans did first and let them have their own government and promise independence post war. The actual number of self-identified Ukrainians though were smaller than the population of the Ukraine-SSR, which had at least half the population speak and consider themselves Russian. So about half the population of occupied Ukraine would not be Ukrainian to the Ukrainian government or the Germans and treated differently and much worse as a result. That means OTL Nazi policies with Ukrainian government anti-Russian policies too, which gets all the necessary food and raw materials that were seized IOTL. It is just more targeted oppression with UPA help.

Also I can see that no one has brought up the elephant in the room: why are the Nazis planning to create a puppet state for the prosecution of a long war against the Soviet Union when the entire rationale for the invasion of the USSR was predicated on it being over inside of six months?
This is the best point here. By the time the Nazis realize that they would need Ukrainian long term help the damage would largely have been done. Now there could be a POD where Hitler and the Nazis decide not to colonize the East and just go for a Brest-Litovsk peace....but then they'd be Not-sis.
 
Isn't agricultural production much more efficient when you don't kill all the farmers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_Ukrainian_Nationalists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army
Part of that depends on which areas of Ukraine you mean. The UPA had it's support in the areas west of the Dniepr, so theoretically they could feed their people and organize a government based in Kiev, giving surpluses to the Germans, while then starving the pro-Russian/Soviet populations east of the Dniepr. People with a Ukrainian identity then had a major split geographically much as they do now:
6302493.jpg


It isn't inconceivable that to eliminate potential sources of resistance to their rule they'd use food as a weapon to deal with Russian identity civilian populations to create their visions of a 'mono-ethnic state'. Given that people that considered themselves Ukrainian, not Russian, was probably less than half the population of geographic Ukraine, there are a lot of people that the UPA would see as threats to their regime and potentially disposable in the search for food for the war effort. Besides it is not like they couldn't ration either.
That says little about Ukraine's capacity to assist the Germans unless if it is married to where agricultural production originated. The principal benefit that the Germans expected and desired from Ukraine was her agricultural capacity. This is not, and was not, distributed evenly throughout Ukraine. I have not thus far, been able to find a map of Ukrainian agricultural output relevant to the era, but soil maps to the time period under discussion - which would be broadly similar - do exist.

russ_x76.jpg


For commentary upon this (from a different map: http://www.fao.org/ag/agp/agpc/doc/counprof/Ukraine/ukraine.htm )
The north-west has a wide belt of soddy (dern or dernovo)- podzolic soils with mainly light texture on sand-clay strata. These soils form some 70 percent of the total cover, are characterised by low humus content, increased acidity and therefore need application of mineral fertilizers and organic manures, as well as lime to yield a rich harvest. Thirty percent of the territory is occupied with sod (dern), meadow, meadow-bog and peat-bog soils with slight soddy (dernor dernovo) sands on elevated pine-clad terraces. Over 600,000 hectares(60 percent) of Ukrainian peat lands are concentrated here.

A wide belt of grey forest soils, as well as podzol and typical chernozems with a 1.2-1.5 m thick humus bed, running from south-west to northeast, is located somewhat to the south. These soils are formed on loess strata. In addition to these, small areas are occupied with bog, meadow and meadow-chernozem soils, often of solonetz type.

Further to the south, encompassing a considerable part of the territory of Odessa, Kirovograd, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Lugansk regions, typical chernozems stretch, with the thickness of their humus bed up to 80-90 cm, formed on moist-loamy strata.

The southern part of Prychernomorie lowlands contains dry southern chernozems, which are replaced along the coastlines of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov with a rather narrow strip of dark-chestnut and then chestnut soils combined with solonetz and soloth.

Carbonatic chernozems and brown forest (often with gravel) soils prevail in the Crimean Mountains, while the Carpathians are characterised with short-profile mountain-forest and sod-brown soils with low content of humus, leached and heavy acid soils (pH=3.6 - 5).

[Note: The classification applied in this paper is the Russian Soil Classification (Ivanova and Rozov, 1967) or a variant thereof. The terms dern(ovo) and sod are typically Russian and not easily translatable. Dernovo is used as "pseudo" in podzol-like soils. "Sod" refers to the topsoil horizon. Many of these soils correspond with the Albeluvisols (or FAO Podzoluvisols) which are characterized by a dark surface horizon, a bleached eluvial horizon and a horizon in which clay has accumulated. They are normally acid and sandy textured.

Western Ukraine can be broadly summarized thus as having soils which are worse in quality than their Eastern Ukrainian equivalents. Of course, agricultural productivity might vary beyond the soil productivity, but I would doubt that Western Ukraine would have any great advantage over their Eastern Ukrainian equivalents, or would be the inverse. The debilitating problems of collectivization would be avoided, such is true (although collectivization also makes it much easier to collect the farmers' agricultural surplus), but Poland's economic growth during the Interwar was lower than their Soviet equivalent, and investment and productivity gains in Eastern Poland - which became much of Western Ukraine - would be lower still. I think it highly doubtful that Western Ukraine produces anything in regards to an agricultural surplus given its poverty and poor soils. Starving Russians in Eastern Ukraine is what happened originally; all that the change in policy does is spare Western Ukraine from the same treatment and decrease the amount of food that can be taken from the region.

Rationing furthermore is not an option, not on the scale that is needed by the Germans. The agricultural surplus generated in the region is not enough to simultaneously ensure a healthy working population (especially important for the hard labor which unmechanized farming implies), while also providing for the food needs of the Germans. Thus, the question will be; who is to suffer? The Germans, or the Ukrainians?
No German government will ever choose the latter, and if they choose that then any policy seeking Ukrainian collaboration will be greatly reduced in effectiveness.

An obvious long term option is to starve the Russians in the East and replace them with peasants from the West who are loyal. But this is a long term option and either actively harms or at least does nothing to help agricultural production in the short term. If this is a long term policy, then it falls into the regular problem of German ideology; settling Ukrainian peasants there instead of Germany peasants is alien to German ideological and strategic plans.

Isn't agricultural production much more efficient when you don't kill all the farmers?
Isn't industrial production much more efficient when you don't starve all the workers?
The choice, in the short term, is whether to prioritize calorific consumption for Germans and industrial workers or for Eastern European farmers. Providing production does not increase - difficult to conceive in wartime Europe outside of temporary increases due to good harvests - the only option is to reduce consumption. The obvious target is the Ukrainians, and the only people who have the supplies of food the Germans need is the Eastern European/Ukrainian peasants. Germany will inevitably squeeze them, and this will make any attempts at cooperation meaningless.

From what I understand this only became true in late 42 and 43 . Before that Germany was able to feed it self, but the harsher winters caused a lower harvest.
The military crisis of the winter of 1941-2 frustrated Herbert Backe's
immediate aim of bringing about a massive rearrangement of the food
balance in the Eastern territories. But at the same time it confirmed his
deepest anxiety. Backe had not been bluffing in 1941. In light of the
extension of the war into the indefinite future, Germany was facing a
severe food problem.78 The German grain harvest in both 1940 and
1941 had been well below average and imports from the occupied
territories had not made up the difference.79 For lack of feed the swine
herd had been reduced by 25 per cent since the start of the war, triggering
a cut in meat rations as of June 1941.80 Bread rations had only been
sustained by making severe inroads into grain stocks. By the end of
1941, these were nearing exhaustion. When the order to ship large
numbers of Eastern workers to Germany for work was first given by
Goering in November 1941, Backe protested vigorously.
81 The 400,000Soviet prisoners of war already in Germany were more than he could
provide for. Goering had spoken casually of feeding the Eastern workers
on cats and horse-meat.82 Backe had consulted the statistics and reported
glumly that there were not enough cats to provide a ration for the
Eastern workers and horse-meat was already being used to supplement
the rations of the German population.83 If the Russians were to be given
meat, they would have to be supplied at the expense of the German population.
The official ration that was settled on for Soviet prisoners and Ostarbeiter
in December 1941 was clearly inadequate for men
intended for hard labour. It consisted of a weekly allocation of 16.5
kilos of turnips, 2.6 kilos of 'bread' (made up of 65 per cent red rye,
25 per cent sugar beet waste and 10 per cent straw or leaves), 3 kilos of
potatoes, 250 grams of horse- or other scrap meat, 130 grams of fat and
150 grams of Naehrmittel (yeast), 70 grams of sugar and two and a
third litres of skimmed milk. The appalling quality of the bread caused
serious damage to the digestive tract and resulted in chronic malnutri-
tion. The vegetables had to be cooked for hours before they were palat-
able, robbing them of most of their nutritional content. Though this was
a diet that was, relatively speaking, high in carbohydrates, providing a
nominal daily total of 2,500 calories, it was grossly deficient in the fat
and protein necessary to sustain hard physical labour. It was certainly
not enough to restore half-starved Soviet prisoners to good health. To
make matters worse, in the vast majority of camps nothing like this
official ration was ever delivered to the inmates.
Exhausted grain stocks and such major decreases in the animal reserves does not speak of the agricultural economy in 1940/1941 being in good health. Even marginal decreases in calories are going to have major effects upon the growing foreign labor supply, which will stunt armaments increase further.
 

Deleted member 1487

That says little about Ukraine's capacity to assist the Germans unless if it is married to where agricultural production originated. The principal benefit that the Germans expected and desired from Ukraine was her agricultural capacity. This is not, and was not, distributed evenly throughout Ukraine. I have not thus far, been able to find a map of Ukrainian agricultural output relevant to the era, but soil maps to the time period under discussion - which would be broadly similar - do exist.


Western Ukraine can be broadly summarized thus as having soils which are worse in quality than their Eastern Ukrainian equivalents. Of course, agricultural productivity might vary beyond the soil productivity, but I would doubt that Western Ukraine would have any great advantage over their Eastern Ukrainian equivalents, or would be the inverse. The debilitating problems of collectivization would be avoided, such is true (although collectivization also makes it much easier to collect the farmers' agricultural surplus), but Poland's economic growth during the Interwar was lower than their Soviet equivalent, and investment and productivity gains in Eastern Poland - which became much of Western Ukraine - would be lower still. I think it highly doubtful that Western Ukraine produces anything in regards to an agricultural surplus given its poverty and poor soils. Starving Russians in Eastern Ukraine is what happened originally; all that the change in policy does is spare Western Ukraine from the same treatment and decrease the amount of food that can be taken from the region.

Rationing furthermore is not an option, not on the scale that is needed by the Germans. The agricultural surplus generated in the region is not enough to simultaneously ensure a healthy working population (especially important for the hard labor which unmechanized farming implies), while also providing for the food needs of the Germans. Thus, the question will be; who is to suffer? The Germans, or the Ukrainians?
No German government will ever choose the latter, and if they choose that then any policy seeking Ukrainian collaboration will be greatly reduced in effectiveness.

An obvious long term option is to starve the Russians in the East and replace them with peasants from the West who are loyal. But this is a long term option and either actively harms or at least does nothing to help agricultural production in the short term. If this is a long term policy, then it falls into the regular problem of German ideology; settling Ukrainian peasants there instead of Germany peasants is alien to German ideological and strategic plans.
So effectively very limited changed in food requisition, but they get West Ukrainian help to enact their plans.
 
The Estonians and Latvians were certainly an under-tapped manpower resource. The Lithuanians never trusted the Germans, so they weren't really a group that collaborated enough to form units with. The Soviets had the manpower to conscript and make unwilling manpower fight or else, the Germans did not however.
How many divisions could they have formed if the Reich used more Baltic manpower?
 
Fighting communism. Having Ukrainians on side wouldn't change the core war against the USSR, Jews, and Stalin.

And if there was ever a time you don't reveal more how much you buy into German general apologia...

No, the core war from its conception to its execution, was about racist conquest and exploitation. For the Germans, fighting communism was tied up within that racist context, not something that existed outside of it. The German people are not going to be willing to die by their millions in frozen fields for no material benefit to themselves beyond the altruistic glow of liberating the oppressed Slavs from the scourge of Communism.

Depends on which peoples. The Ukrainians were extremely thankful to be liberated initially until the Germans started suppressing their efforts at nationalism and forming their own government, plus the COIN strategy and war on Ukrainian national monuments.

Outside the territories annexed by the Soviets in 1939, Ukrainian reaction was on the average no different from the Russian reaction.

which gets all the necessary food and raw materials that were seized IOTL.

No matter how nicely the Germans treat them, the Ukrainians are not going to give up so much resources that they themselves will starve to death, which is what the Germans need to take in order to get "all the necessary food and raw materials that were seized IOTL." Simply feeding the conquered Soviet population would be such a huge draw on Germab stocks and transport that the Germans could never hope to logistically sustain their operations beyond the frontier regions.

The atrocities perpetrated on the Soviet citizenry were not some regrettable unpleasantness the invasion could have done without. They were a key factor in making the whole venture worthwhile to Nazi Germany. Without them, the invasion loses not just economic legitimacy, but even the OTL facade of logistical sustainability.

This is the best point here. By the time the Nazis realize that they would need Ukrainian long term help the damage would largely have been done. Now there could be a POD where Hitler and the Nazis decide not to colonize the East and just go for a Brest-Litovsk peace....but then they'd be Not-sis.

In which case, the entire history of the world, much less the war, is so altered that the Germans can't even begin to contemplate an invasion of Soviet territory.
 
So effectively very limited changed in food requisition, but they get West Ukrainian help to enact their plans.
No, it denies them from requisitioning food from Western Ukraine. Given that Western Ukraine would represent a broad (due to population), but thin (due to low productivity), agricultural base, not requisitioning and starving the Western Ukrainians denies them an outsized amount of food as compared to utilizing the very meager surplus. The Western Ukrainians aren't going to cooperate in starving themselves, which will mean that the assistance they tender is limited.
 
The Germans wind up with somewhat less motivated soldiers ("Why are we invading these people?"),

BS, watch German propaganda videos they call themselves liberators. So, this caricature is ahistorical.

little change to the opposition of the occupied people ("You launched an unprovoked attack and conquered us!"),

Huh? The Croats and Slovakians fought hard for the Germans. So did the Balts when given the opportunity. It is amazing how hard people will fight when you let them have a country and pit them against the Soviets.

and a much weaker logistics and war economy ("We can't take those inhumane emergency measures! Ukrainians are people too!").

That's possible, but being that the cost of occupying Ukraine was actually a net negative, there is a real chance at collaboration being a net positive economically as well as militarily.

Also I can see that no one has brought up the elephant in the room: why are the Nazis planning to create a puppet state for the prosecution of a long war against the Soviet Union when the entire rationale for the invasion of the USSR was predicated on it being over inside of six months?
Because, as my first post in the thread indicated, it is not out of the question that the Germans would go for a long war anyway. Afterall, they thought France would be a long war. The only reason they though Russia would be a short war is because they considered Russia weaker than France,
 
No, it denies them from requisitioning food from Western Ukraine. Given that Western Ukraine would represent a broad (due to population), but thin (due to low productivity), agricultural base, not requisitioning and starving the Western Ukrainians denies them an outsized amount of food as compared to utilizing the very meager surplus. The Western Ukrainians aren't going to cooperate in starving themselves, which will mean that the assistance they tender is limited.
But you just said that the main output was in Eastern Ukraine. It would rather help enlist the support of Western Ukrainians in subjugating the East, putting the screws on them harder than before.
 
BS, watch German propaganda videos they call themselves liberators. So, this caricature is ahistorical.



Huh? The Croats and Slovakians fought hard for the Germans. So did the Balts when given the opportunity. It is amazing how hard people will fight when you let them have a country and pit them against the Soviets.


Hell, I have the old Wehrmacht propaganda newspapers from my Great-grandfather and they justify the wars as either provoked by British agends or as a war of liberation.

It sounds absurd but the German propaganda was extremely effective and a lot people actually believed that they were the liberators who fought against the vile Soviet butchers.
 
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