WI No Nazi Germany?

No, but the Russian Rightists didn't enjoy near as much popular support as Rightists in Germany. And both Maoism and Leninism rose to power in the wake of apocalyptic civil wars. Bad as things were in Weimar Germany was, they weren't anywhere near that.

Leninism also arose with a fair degree of foreign backing, which backing a popular front to make the Social Democrats the KPD's DVNP is well within Soviet talents were they so hot and bothered.

Germany invaded the USSR in a war of racist imperialism and brutal conquest. China invaded North Korea because it didn't want hostile troops on its border--these situations don't strike me as all that similar.


China invaded North Korea for the clear nationalist reason of not wanting hostile troops on its border. Mao's reasons for authorizing intervention were quite transparently nationalistic. The logic of German power politics makes a clash with the USSR inevitable. Clashing does not, of course, imply OTL.

Also, won't a Red Germany with a heavy nationalist influence be more focused on scooping up the pan-German lands than going to war with the Soviets? If the German Reds are pan-Germanist (as most were IOTL), then you're going to see a lot of long-term issues with Czechoslovakia and Austria that are going to warrant more attention than plans to piss off your one and only ally.


This would be the Czechoslovakia the USSR offered to defend IOTL?

Why would a Red Germany go to war with the USSR when they can just restore the 1914 borders--or whichever they like--in the East by invading Poland?I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing why a Red Germany-USSR war is inevitable or even all that likely.

Because no USSR is going to just accept that without its own gains, which pan-Germans are unlikely to accept in a real sense?
 
No, but the Russian Rightists didn't enjoy near as much popular support as Rightists in Germany. And both Maoism and Leninism rose to power in the wake of apocalyptic civil wars. Bad as things were in Weimar Germany was, they weren't anywhere near that.

Germany invaded the USSR in a war of racist imperialism and brutal conquest. China invaded North Korea because it didn't want hostile troops on its border--these situations don't strike me as all that similar.

Also, won't a Red Germany with a heavy nationalist influence be more focused on scooping up the pan-German lands than going to war with the Soviets? If the German Reds are pan-Germanist (as most were IOTL), then you're going to see a lot of long-term issues with Czechoslovakia and Austria that are going to warrant more attention than plans to piss off your one and only ally.

Why would a Red Germany go to war with the USSR when they can just restore the 1914 borders--or whichever they like--in the East by invading Poland?I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing why a Red Germany-USSR war is inevitable or even all that likely.

I agree with all of these, unless Red Germany gets a Red Hitler analogue to make it make ridiculously stupid choices that would alienate the ONLY ally Germany would have at that point, really the two have every reason to cooperate and every reason to AVOID any sort of serious conflict that could split them apart. Unlike the USSR-China dynamic, the two are geographically separate enough to have their own spheres of influences and the ability to resolve their territorial disputes without stepping on each other's toes.

Once Germany resolves the Silesia and East Prussia issues with Poland there isn't much further incentive for the Germans to go into Poland when Austria, and Czechoslovakia, nations Germany has nationalistic claims towards, let Poland be a loyal communist puppet state so the Soviets get their buffer state and the Germans don't have to worry about Poland any more. A majority of the leadership of the Soviet Union and Germany respectively will be aware that a war between the two of them would play directly into the hands of people who don't care for either regime, but they don't have the same beef with each other that Communist China and the USSR did.
 
I agree with all of these, unless Red Germany gets a Red Hitler analogue to make it make ridiculously stupid choices that would alienate the ONLY ally Germany would have at that point, really the two have every reason to cooperate and every reason to AVOID any sort of serious conflict that could split them apart. Unlike the USSR-China dynamic, the two are geographically separate enough to have their own spheres of influences and the ability to resolve their territorial disputes without stepping on each other's toes.

Once Germany resolves the Silesia and East Prussia issues with Poland there isn't much further incentive for the Germans to go into Poland when Austria, and Czechoslovakia, nations Germany has nationalistic claims towards, let Poland be a loyal communist puppet state so the Soviets get their buffer state and the Germans don't have to worry about Poland any more. A majority of the leadership of the Soviet Union and Germany respectively will be aware that a war between the two of them would play directly into the hands of people who don't care for either regime, but they don't have the same beef with each other that Communist China and the USSR did.

German socialists did not like the Soviets any better than German nationalists did, German communists would rather rapidly realize in controlling Germany they have a better claim to be Marxist than the Soviets, while the logic of their own expansion means KPD and Stalinist interests grind against each other. Would the KPD be willing to trade half of Poland to the USSR or would it try to claim all of it?

That was when there was a clearly belligerent regime in Germany, with an obvious Soviet ally in place the Soviets have a lot more incentive to let them roll into Czechoslovakia.

Clearly belligerent? Up to 1938 it was Japan and Italy which had invaded other countries with poison gas and massed slaughter, Germany had annexed only Austria when a majority of Austrians did favor Anschluss. Now, Hitler was pretty clearly itching for war in 1938 but he was also not ready to really and truly risk it then. In 1939, all that changed. Up to 1938.....
 
German socialists did not like the Soviets any better than German nationalists did, German communists would rather rapidly realize in controlling Germany they have a better claim to be Marxist than the Soviets, while the logic of their own expansion means KPD and Stalinist interests grind against each other. Would the KPD be willing to trade half of Poland to the USSR or would it try to claim all of it?



Clearly belligerent? Up to 1938 it was Japan and Italy which had invaded other countries with poison gas and massed slaughter, Germany had annexed only Austria when a majority of Austrians did favor Anschluss. Now, Hitler was pretty clearly itching for war in 1938 but he was also not ready to really and truly risk it then. In 1939, all that changed. Up to 1938.....

1. Yeah but the Soviets will probably be able to work out a compromise rather than fight the Germans. Stalin is intelligent, he'll come to the table with a German leader who isn't boyishly ambitious like Hitler, if they split Poland OTL, they can do it again for this one.

2. I think it is safe to say that the Soviets knew what they were in for sooner or later once Hitler was in power, it wasn't an issue of Germany not invading anyone, Stalin knew as well as anyone that once they were good and ready the Germans were going to be a problem. The Nazi-Soviet pact, it could be argued, was simply a means of buying time to delay this problem.
 
Snake, Heavy, Wolfpaw, et el

I'm looking to get the thread back on topic, if possible (as interesting as the question of Red Germany's relation to the USSR is).

From the discussion prior to this tangent, it sounds like a TL where Hindenburg just didn't appoint Hitler to the Chancellorship would, around 1940, be eerily similar to one where Hitler was killed by Elser -- that is, a more Wilhemite, right-wing/military dictatorship, looking how to reclaim lost German territories in a way more sane than OTL.

Do I have that about right? In TTL, how do you (all) think the republican institutions of Germany would manage? Is some form of dictatorship largely inevitable by the time Hindenburg was ready to appoint Hitler? Or if averting that decision does give German democracy a chance, how good is it and what is the most likely course?
 
Snake, Heavy, Wolfpaw, et el

I'm looking to get the thread back on topic, if possible (as interesting as the question of Red Germany's relation to the USSR is).

From the discussion prior to this tangent, it sounds like a TL where Hindenburg just didn't appoint Hitler to the Chancellorship would, around 1940, be eerily similar to one where Hitler was killed by Elser -- that is, a more Wilhemite, right-wing/military dictatorship, looking how to reclaim lost German territories in a way more sane than OTL.

Do I have that about right? In TTL, how do you (all) think the republican institutions of Germany would manage? Is some form of dictatorship largely inevitable by the time Hindenburg was ready to appoint Hitler? Or if averting that decision does give German democracy a chance, how good is it and what is the most likely course?

Weimar Germany was already re-arming and both Bruning and Hindenburg were pretty authoritarian leaders themselves. Any DVNP-style leadership will be far more cautious than Hitler's, which changes OTL politics enough that a WWII as we know it is unlikely, but so also is no war in Europe whatsoever.
 
Weimar Germany was already re-arming and both Bruning and Hindenburg were pretty authoritarian leaders themselves. Any DVNP-style leadership will be far more cautious than Hitler's, which changes OTL politics enough that a WWII as we know it is unlikely, but so also is no war in Europe whatsoever.

Ah yes, I can see your point -- it seems Weimar Pessimism is more of the consensus than I had thought...
 
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