WI Man in the High Castle with Surviving Soviet Union?

(ooc: pretty sure this is the right chat for it)

Anyways, this is an idea I've been toying with for a while now. Basically, the Axis Powers roll all sixes on all fronts of the war like in Man in the High Castle but with one major difference: Hitler decides against going to war with the Soviets and devotes his resources to fighting the western Allies, leaving the USSR still alive and kicking by the 1960s. Everything else is similar, America is still divided and most of Europe is under the Axis Banner, but what would this world actually look like?
 
(ooc: pretty sure this is the right chat for it)

Anyways, this is an idea I've been toying with for a while now. Basically, the Axis Powers roll all sixes on all fronts of the war like in Man in the High Castle but with one major difference: Hitler decides against going to war with the Soviets and devotes his resources to fighting the western Allies, leaving the USSR still alive and kicking by the 1960s. Everything else is similar, America is still divided and most of Europe is under the Axis Banner, but what would this world actually look like?
A vastly paranoid and heavily armed (Red) Army with a country.
 
Anyways, this is an idea I've been toying with for a while now. Basically, the Axis Powers roll all sixes on all fronts of the war like in Man in the High Castle but with one major difference: Hitler decides against going to war with the Soviets and devotes his resources to fighting the western Allies, leaving the USSR still alive and kicking by the 1960s. Everything else is similar, America is still divided and most of Europe is under the Axis Banner, but what would this world actually look like?
Maybe you could incorporate aspects of The Great Mistake here:
 
The USSR would be like North Korea today. Every citizen is required to serve in the Red Army while the Soviets would build more tanks, ships, planes, and even attempt on atomic weapons because it is surrounded on all sides.
 
How far would the Soviets go with supporting resistance movements?

It's a good way to keep the Axis off balance, but if say the Chinese or Polish resistance gets too annoying, Heer Hitler may send the Luftwaffe or German rocket forces to call on Leningrad.
 
Realistically they'd probably take advantage of when the Nazi's are particularly invested in fighting in the west and launch a reverse Barbarossa after they've prepared. To Stalin it wouldn't take a genius to realize that after the Nazi's are done in the West they're probably turning East. Therefore it makes sense to attack the Nazi's when most of their forces our still garrisoning or conquering the UK, US, Canada, Eastern South America, and the like instead of when they've conquered/largely assimilated those places and have formed extra troops from the new territories.

You might see an alliance between the Japanese and the USSR sharing research and resources. The USSR and Japan end up splitting up China with some sort of rump Chinese puppet state of the USSR continuing to exist.
 
Realistically they'd probably take advantage of when the Nazi's are particularly invested in fighting in the west and launch a reverse Barbarossa after they've prepared. To Stalin it wouldn't take a genius to realize that after the Nazi's are done in the West they're probably turning East. Therefore it makes sense to attack the Nazi's when most of their forces our still garrisoning or conquering the UK, US, Canada, Eastern South America, and the like instead of when they've conquered/largely assimilated those places and have formed extra troops from the new territories.

You might see an alliance between the Japanese and the USSR sharing research and resources. The USSR and Japan end up splitting up China with some sort of rump Chinese puppet state of the USSR continuing to exist.
Probably not, given intense anti-communism in Japan.
 
Probably not, given intense anti-communism in Japan.

True. But I could see elements of the Japanese gov coming to the realization that a world divided entirely between Japan and the Nazi's is a scenario where Japan is distinctly in the inferior position. As long as the Soviets are willing to let the Japanese have their way in China a tentative partnership is definitely possible. The USSR gets some resources it needs while the Japanese get the industrial, technical, and scientific aid they desperately need.

It's not an alliance either party would exactly like but I could definitely see it in a scenario where Europe, the UK, and most of the US has fallen to the Nazis while the Soviets are still kicking.

From the Japanese perspective a tri polar world where they get their own empire and they don't have to face the Nazi's entirely on their own is desirable. In OTL during WW2 their was some tentative quiet cooperation between the Soviets and Japanese. Much of US lend lease sent to the USSR was sent via Soviet flagged ships loading cargo on West Coast US ports openly sailing to Vladivostok.
 
Depends on what their relationship is. If they decide to uphold the M-R pact/renew it, that could be a gateway to the Axis for the USSR. At this point, all of the "Big Three" of the Axis, (USSR, Germany, Japan) grow closer in ideology to where they may as well be the same ideology with different symbolism.

If the relationship is tumultuous/warring, I can see a joint invasion of USSR from the Axis, but after a full rearmament and rebuild after the purges, as well as fortifications along the perimeters of the Soviet border, the USSR may be slightly reduced in size from minor losses of the fringes (Białystok, North Sakhalin maybe) but the invasion is met with a very large and highly mechanized force in the West, as well as a very difficult march through Siberia in the East, like a far larger Winter War.

If the USSR invades, it might go better, but it still depends when that happens. If they attack on the historical date of June 22, 1941 (Bogatyr? Bagration?) then they will probably lose eventually because of the same problems they had OTL but magnified because of their terrible supply chain and different railroad gauge. If they attack West, assuming they would sign the NAP with Japan for similar reasons of OTL.
Attack later, say 1948 (wasn't that year mentioned somewhere in MHC?) then they would have a definite advantage although they probably would barely get to the Oder-Neisse, although with the second Exodus of Jewish scientists from America to elsewhere (USSR might be seen as best option, since Stalin's Anti-Semitism wasn't nearly as well known as his anti-Nazi-ism) the Soviet nuclear bomb project might take less time. Perhaps they are bold enough to attack precisely because they have Nukes?
 
Depends on what their relationship is. If they decide to uphold the M-R pact/renew it, that could be a gateway to the Axis for the USSR. At this point, all of the "Big Three" of the Axis, (USSR, Germany, Japan) grow closer in ideology to where they may as well be the same ideology with different symbolism.

If the relationship is tumultuous/warring, I can see a joint invasion of USSR from the Axis, but after a full rearmament and rebuild after the purges, as well as fortifications along the perimeters of the Soviet border, the USSR may be slightly reduced in size from minor losses of the fringes (Białystok, North Sakhalin maybe) but the invasion is met with a very large and highly mechanized force in the West, as well as a very difficult march through Siberia in the East, like a far larger Winter War.

If the USSR invades, it might go better, but it still depends when that happens. If they attack on the historical date of June 22, 1941 (Bogatyr? Bagration?) then they will probably lose eventually because of the same problems they had OTL but magnified because of their terrible supply chain and different railroad gauge. If they attack West, assuming they would sign the NAP with Japan for similar reasons of OTL.
Attack later, say 1948 (wasn't that year mentioned somewhere in MHC?) then they would have a definite advantage although they probably would barely get to the Oder-Neisse, although with the second Exodus of Jewish scientists from America to elsewhere (USSR might be seen as best option, since Stalin's Anti-Semitism wasn't nearly as well known as his anti-Nazi-ism) the Soviet nuclear bomb project might take less time. Perhaps they are bold enough to attack precisely because they have Nukes?
What about the 1960s? Assuming MitHC levels of development of course..
 
I highly doubt that this is Plausible. Hitler and the NSDAP were rabidly anti-communist and wanted to remove it from the world with the USSR being seen as the source of it. I don't see the USSR remaining an independent fully fledged state in such a world. The Nazis may decide to use Moscow as part of the respective neutral zone of this world but I don't see how they would be allowed to keep their european territory. East of the Urals would likely stay red but everything west would be coveted by Berlin.
 
You get a “surviving” USSR by following the OTL German plans. They expected to drive the Soviets beyond the Urals and then to fight a rump slavic state for perpetuality.

They would settle ‘Wehrbauer’ (soldier-peasants) along the Ural borderland who’d become the greatest of the German Race through permanent struggle with the Slavs.

The Man in the High Castle isn’t as insane as the OTL Nazis.
 

chankljp

Donor
The USSR would be like North Korea today. Every citizen is required to serve in the Red Army while the Soviets would build more tanks, ships, planes, and even attempt on atomic weapons because it is surrounded on all sides.
I think it would be fair to call the hypothetical MITHC-verse USSR a 'North Korea in which every single government policy is 100% justified and reasonable'. After all, prioritising the allocation of resources towards the military and building WMDs at the expense of the welfare and even the most basic standards of living for your citizens is quite reasonable in the world in which the moment the Nazi find an opening, they will absolutely invade and genocide your entire country until there are no citizens left.
 
Perhaps the Soviets would support a reduced PRC as a buffer against the Japanese? This could help explain how China still exists when the USA doesn't, and explain where the Black Communist rebels are getting those guns from. Maybe they would also be more explicitly Communist ITTL than in the show, although the Soviets might lean more towards Russian nationalism with a veneer of Communist symbolism than anything else.
 
So a massive version of North Korea then.
Wich is the same as North Korea of 2021, but on a bigger scale.

Not quite the same though. Because no matter what, under a man-in-the-high-castle-like scenario the USSR will be seen as the "good guys" or a "beacon of hope" by every resistance movement out there. For the Nazis and the Japanese areas like the US "neutral zone" just became much more dangerous liability if any resistance can (and will) coordinate with the USSR.
 
So, a new question regarding this scenario. Assuming war breaks out between the Reich and the USSR sometime in the 1960s, who would most likely win (assuming no nukes are used or not enough are used to cause the endtimes) and why?
 
So, a new question regarding this scenario. Assuming war breaks out between the Reich and the USSR sometime in the 1960s, who would most likely win (assuming no nukes are used or not enough are used to cause the endtimes) and why?
Probably the Reich gets a lot of victories early on due to the disparity of technological advancements. We see the Reich have jets and helicopter gunships. I doubt the current situation the USSR does not get to develop an equivalent to be in par.

But even war machines have their limits. There would come a time when the Reich becomes overextended in trying to pacify the rump USSR. What could happen is we the Red Army pull off a Vietnam War-style of insurgency that would cause a long-dragging conflict. A similar scenario occurred in Fatherland where the USSR continues to fight the Germans well into 1964.
 
A world where the United States was defeated by the Japanese and the Nazis, and the USSR exists? Sorry, but this is at least not conceptual.
 
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