RousseauX
Donor
Not going to happen, the Allies viewed the Nazis as a front for "Prussia militarism" anyway and nobody was going to trust the Germans in 1944-45.
WI: Successful Valkryrie
- Thread starter idontlikesand
- Start date
What could be a paradigm shift....and an important one to many Germans (even if they'd mostly never realize that they'd be dead in OTL), is that this government will try to end the war as un-costly as possible.....instead of making the end as bad as imaginable.
Earlier evacuations in the East.
Huge priority on air defense.
Aborting the genocides.
Earlier restitutions of the right of occupied territories.
And continous demands to negotiate a peace.....could at least lead to a slightly different form of unconditional surrender.
Earlier evacuations in the East.
Huge priority on air defense.
Aborting the genocides.
Earlier restitutions of the right of occupied territories.
And continous demands to negotiate a peace.....could at least lead to a slightly different form of unconditional surrender.
I think this is the biggest point; a successful Valkyrie plot is going to result in an earlier unconditional surrender on all sides, not Operation Unthinkable.
As I remember correctly, earlier plans for the partition of Germany still left Germany with most of its territory east of the Oder. I think some readjustments might be made in the territory, but post-war Germany is going to keep the majority of its contiguous territory. East Prussia is probably gone, though.
Oh, Austria definitely won't be a part of Germany after the end. An earlier surrender by Germany (before fighting in Italy is finished) might even allow Austria to regain South Tyrol. As I recall, only the British were really in favor of giving it to Italy, while the other Allies were fairly ambivalent.
RousseauX
Donor
There is no reason to expect a unified Germany, everyone will get occupations zones in Germany. The best Germany can hope for is concessions on the Polish border.
Which is entirely irrelevant, being a local surrender and not a peace treaty. It's as if the Westerners would complain because Paulus dealt only with the Soviet Union for surrendering his troops at Stalingrad; we were talking about separate peace.
And anyway the same objection still stands: did the German troops involved make peace with the Western Allies and keep making war with the Soviet Union? That is the only sensible meaning of "separate peace". Since they didn't, there was no separate peace.
Op Valkyrie took place as the German armies in Normandy were approaching collapse. Any confusion in orders or weakening of 'will' and the Allied armies breakout and romp across France a couple weeks earlier, possiblly with worse consequences for the confused and demoralized German soldiers.
Churchill & Brooke the two most powerfull Brits had little interest in negotiating anything significant with any German leader. Eisenhower the most powerfull Allied leader on the continent had even less interest. None of the major commanders, Montgomery, Bradley, Devers, Clark, or Alexander had any interest in anything but docile German PoW or rotting corpses. The idea that something preserving a German government and state could be negotiated in 1944 is a complete nonstarter.
The death of Hitler, and any infighting among the surviving German leaders is very likely to break the morale and discipline of the German army in the west. No desperate struggle over the bridges to Arnhem, no stubborn resistance on Walchern & Beveland blocking the channel to Antwerp, no bloodly fight in the approaches to Achen, no extended battles around Nancy or Metz & in the Vosges. Between September & November we may have seen multiple bridgeheads across the Rhine & masses of PoW marching westwards across France.
If the German armies in the east do retain some sort of cohesion & slow the Red Army as per OTL, then Operation Eclipse becomes something more than a outlandish WI exercise.
Churchill & Brooke the two most powerfull Brits had little interest in negotiating anything significant with any German leader. Eisenhower the most powerfull Allied leader on the continent had even less interest. None of the major commanders, Montgomery, Bradley, Devers, Clark, or Alexander had any interest in anything but docile German PoW or rotting corpses. The idea that something preserving a German government and state could be negotiated in 1944 is a complete nonstarter.
The death of Hitler, and any infighting among the surviving German leaders is very likely to break the morale and discipline of the German army in the west. No desperate struggle over the bridges to Arnhem, no stubborn resistance on Walchern & Beveland blocking the channel to Antwerp, no bloodly fight in the approaches to Achen, no extended battles around Nancy or Metz & in the Vosges. Between September & November we may have seen multiple bridgeheads across the Rhine & masses of PoW marching westwards across France.
If the German armies in the east do retain some sort of cohesion & slow the Red Army as per OTL, then Operation Eclipse becomes something more than a outlandish WI exercise.
the allies did not demand to partake in the Paulus negotiations while Molotov demanded a seat in the sunrise negotiations.
The Field Marshals in the West planned on surrendering. They knew the strategic picture far better then those in Berlin (Hitler or the plotters) and saw it as only a question of who gets to Berlin first the Americans and Brits or Stalin. The plotters will stop the Final Solution and may try to negotiate, but with Hitler out of the way the Marshals in the West will surrender their Army Groups after several days of it becoming clear the attempts at talks aren't working.
The plotters and the Field Marshals will be hated in the post war era if Stalin still gets half the country and the ethnic cleansing and mass rape still occurs, but in the more modern era there would start to be changes in German history that perhaps it was for the best and it might have been worse if they kept fighting and the Final Solution would still be taking place.
Upper Silesia will be completely gone as well, it had been disputed after WW1 already. I also don't think that Germany could keep the whole of Pomerania.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalta-Konferenz#mediaviewer/File:Vertreibungsgebiet.jpg
Apparently, these options were still on the table for the Western Allies prior to Jalta; ITTL that would be almost half a year after the coup and a different final phase of the war.
I think nobody yet added that even if the new German leadership doesn't opt to "let the Americans in", they'd most probably not push with their last reserves into the Battle of the Bulge, but spend the final card somewhere in Poland against the Red Army.
However, it is hardly imaginable that the result of the final alternate phase of the war is Americans and Soviets meeting at Torgau. It will most probably be on the Oder rather.
First in line of succession was Goring. Goring had no involvement in the Holocaust. So, he had no reason to think the Allies would execute him. Maybe Germany surrenders immediately with Goring as the new fuhrer. Had that happened, the Allies might have decided not to try Goring at Nuremberg as a reward.
First of all, the 3rd Reich is no monarchy with a line in succession. Hess held sort of a "Vice-President" position, but with him leaving, the question was left lingering by Hitler, perhaps deliberately so.
Göring had massively profited from Aryanization of Jewish businesses and actually ordered Heydrich to give the whole Jewish issue with a methodical and thorough administrative approach; thus starting the developments which led to the infamous Wannsee-Conference.
However, it is present-day thinking that anybody in the situation would see the genocide against the Jews as the pivotal issue in the judgement of Germany and its leadership. It was a factor for some of the conspirators, but not overall.
Göring's position in 1944 is somewhere between a walking joke, the man who failed to protect the Reich's cities as well as to provide the promised airlift into Stalingrad, and one of the most blatant examples of corruption.
He is neither in much of a position to make demands to the putschists, nor of much value to them. He is certainly not to run the Luftwaffe any more!
I deem him pragmatic enough to accept a respectable position; an ambassadorship to Salo perhaps.
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Who else might rather continue his career in the new Reichs government?
Realpolitik
Banned
My guess is that there will still be unconditional surrender, but somewhat earlier. The new regime will transfer all of their men east and give very little resistance, if any, to the AAs. No Battle of the Bulge this time. Auschwitz and Company are probably shut down and the Final Solution abandoned(assuming that someone like Himmler doesn't take over, whatever their feelings toward the Jews, the new guys will have bigger fish to fry and they know it), but the other camps remain up and the Jews and forced laborers in. Warsaw uprising, if it still happens, might be a little more successful as the Germans will be more likely to abandon Warsaw altogether and focus on defending eastern Germany at all costs. The military junta will not be dumb and focus on keeping the Russians away from Germany and trying to get some conditional surrender. When the latter clearly fails, then they will realize the jig is up and avoid the 1945 OTL Untergang, or they will simply not leave any German soldiers in the West for the Allies to kill anyway.
So this is all a good thing in terms of saving lives, both for the Germans and for their victims, but not impactful politically. Germany MIGHT hang onto a little more of its territory, but East Prussia and Austria are gone for sure. There also might be a little more resistance to the whole collective guilt thing, which won't really matter as the Cold War comes on schedule. How Germany's zones and Berlin will be impacted is anyones guess, but I have a hard time thinking a united Germany will be standing.
So this is all a good thing in terms of saving lives, both for the Germans and for their victims, but not impactful politically. Germany MIGHT hang onto a little more of its territory, but East Prussia and Austria are gone for sure. There also might be a little more resistance to the whole collective guilt thing, which won't really matter as the Cold War comes on schedule. How Germany's zones and Berlin will be impacted is anyones guess, but I have a hard time thinking a united Germany will be standing.
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Realpolitik
Banned
It should be noted that of the 6 million Holocaust victims, a third of them died in the last year of the war(or so I remember). So even at this stage, no Hitler would be a very good thing overall for the world in lives, especially if the Western front battles never happen and the bombing stops. Not to mention all the Hungarians, Poles, and Germans that die from the bombings and battles and uprisings. However, there is also the geopolitical standpoint, which was very different in 1944 than looking back on it 70 years later.
Time for a "how I react now, and how I would have back then" moment.
Hell, looking back on it with the benefit of hindsight, if it means saving all those lives, I'd be perfectly fine with letting Germany hang on to Silesia, going on to focus on Japan with the atom bomb in development, and letting them and the Russians destroy each other further if they feel like it. Screw Stalin, he'll be our enemy after the war anyway-if he wants unconditional surrender, he can get it himself(and mind you, Stalin was the one OPPOSED to unconditional surrender OTL). No way that will fly in late 1944 however, and I understand that-we might want them for Japan, as the atom bomb is not a given yet. I don't see FDR realizing that right away, and well he might-the Soviets are on the East, and there is no way that they will ascede to anything separate. Stalin's paranoia will be in overdrive if this all happens, and there is no way we can or will want to take on the Red Army at the time. The American people might not have loved "Uncle Joe", but they can't be turned 180 immediately like some people think.
But people aren't robots for the current propaganda either. If Germany will surrender to the Western Allies alone in late 1944, make that public, and just let the Americans advance without fighting if the Americans keep insisting on an unconditional surrender on all fronts with the current terms, the public will not react well to any American kids dying for the Soviets and their future empire if Japan is still around. Thus, I doubt that the war would last to May 1945 for the Western Allies, no matter what happens.
More immediately, the Soviets want Berlin, and they have the manpower and fighting skill to get it. I wonder how the Eastern front will go? How will they react if the Americans and British get to Berlin first as the whole German army floods to the east?
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Stolengood
Banned
Unfortunately, people quite close to FDR were robots... covert Stalin-bots, to be precise.
"December 1934
A secret Hitler decree secures Göring's position as successor to Hitler in the event of Hitler's death or inability to carry out his duties."
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007772
Goring wasn't at the Wannsee Conference. He never did anything that would've led him to believe the Allies would execute him once the war was over.
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What Hitler thinks is irrelevant as he is dead. Fat man doesn't have his own separate army like Himmler does so he doesn't have a vote in this process, Himmler does. The army be it the July Plotters or the Marshals considered fat man a complete and utter drug addicted failure.
Hitler had Germany by the short hairs in 1944 given the near God like aura he was seen in the eyes of the German public and low ranking soldiers. But, once he is gone all bets are off.