What if? Europe's map if Adolf Hitler had never existed.

General WWII era German military discussion that doesn't fit someplace more specific.
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M.H.
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Post by M.H. »

Kitsune wrote:Reb wrote:
The aliens complain that of all the earth peoples "the Deutch" are the most intractable and warlike!
Actually, we are nice people. Why oh why are we always misunderstood? :(
Yeah...I never understood it either...*shakes head* :wink:
Michael N. Ryan
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Post by Michael N. Ryan »

I never liked Turtledove. He seems to enjoy everything could have been worse. And recently he's gone off the Politically Correct Deep end.
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No Hitler?

Post by Gerst »

The "Red Stain" observation is correct. Nobody in the "west" had any balls in the 1930's and the only political groups which were organized on an international scale were the Communists.

But look at the positive side - Europe would have been spared the infusion of the degenerate American culture!

Gerst
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Post by Michael N. Ryan »

Europe's decadence and debauchery is self inflicted.

Americans had nothing to do with the debauchery of the 20's in Paris or for that matter Berlin or Viena or any other place. I would be more inclined to say it crossed over to the States rather then came from them.

Certainly, Western civilization would be better off it got a good kicking and developed dicipline and order from the experience rather than this current cultural mess. Democracies can be strong too. But there is neither will or cause.

Of course the reason this is the case is that there are no strong enemies to threaten us. No chance of invading armies to force us to be strong to keep them at bay.

Yes, we have a terrorist problem but terrorists nible from the shadows where invading armies come from plain sight.
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Post by phylo_roadking »

Hi all. I occasionally take a look back through old threads fo interesting stuff, but missed this one til now.......

The map of Europe would not generally speaking have ben any different from now......

Germany; its a moot point as to whether any WWII would have occured. And certai ly dubious whether the Communists would have won out in GErmany. In a normal peacetime economy and political environment, extreme movements only appear for TWO factors, either a HIGHLY charismatic leader - Hitler, Mussloini etc. - or becaue an extremeist party at the OTHER end of the political soectrum appears. The Comunists in Germany only had their resurgence at the end of the 1920s in Germany because the NSDAP and llied right-wing parties were there; IF there had been no Hitler, the Right would have been the previous amorphous group of veterans' groups and right-wing conservatives, and without an extreme to fight against the Communist movement would have remained centre-Left, giving the bulk of its support to more Socialist parties. LIke the Moscow-driven communist movements in the post-war UK - try and subvert the existing socialist parties the ones with a REAL chance of winning an election, rather than wating yourself trying to build an electable party from scratch. Remember, it was about winning ELECTIONS in Germany, tho it may not have seemed so - the Wiemar governments showed themselves perfectly willing to use force either under their own control or that of people withe "the best interests of the nation at heart". So after the first 2-3 years post 1918 there was no longer a chance of a violent revolution or coup succeeding.

No matter what charismatic leader appeared, if any, it is by no means clear that a war would have ensued; you need to research this in dpeth, but the Wiemar German scoiety was VERY "Western"-facing by the early 1930s, and a lot of traditional "German" values were being replaced by US/UK/French scoiety and values. The average German was aware that things HAD got better - TWICE, once after the war and the end of the reparations issue, then again in 1931-32 as the country dragged ITSELF out of the economic problems of the Wall Street Crash and the Depression. It really took a Hitler to concentrate their minds back and constantly on what HE saw as the causes or all this, the REST of the population - when given the chance - were just too glad it was over or getting there!

As for France being too weak, or two shortsighted and letting things get out of control....I don't think so; this was the country that had been DECIMATED by WWI, and resoved that it would NEVER happen again, that maintained then built up again large tank armies through the 1920s as well as the '30s, and who after all DID build the Maginot Line. History in the context of ONLY WWII showed this to be a mistake; But what would have happened of ANY national army had come straight at it???

Not a fanciful idea; you need now to look at Soviet Russia; it was actually until 1941 the most inwardly-looking nation on earth, even by comparison with the isolationism of the USA. It was FAR more concerned with the maintenance of the state than really worrying about affairs abroad.....This is where someone will mention Finland, and Spain.....

Soviet Russia, UNTIL her own borders were crossed, actually respected foreign nations' borders scrupulously! You can't count Finland Estonia etc., ....because the Soviets didn't! To them these were parts of the former Mother Russia. To them, THEIR lessons about foreign entanglements were loosing the war against Japan, then against Germany, THEN against Poland!!! But their plan was NOT to incoprporate the rest of theworld into Sovieet Russia - it was the promulgation of the Revolution abroad in each INDIVIDUAL country, so that in the end borders would come down between international Communism. Very different tangent.

(Finland....What if Finland had been fought NOT against a background of WWII.....you'd have had the same Russian weaknesses, now faced by massive foreign intervention and aid; some Western help did arrive to assist the Finns along with German aid, but mostly on a "private" leve - forign credits buying small numbers of aircraft etc. What if Hitler had not been looming across the Baltic as a potential enemy.....)

Likewise, look at the lessons they learned; Foreign intervention in Soviet affairs, at a very low level, played a HUGE part in the Civil War; SIX tanks nearly took Petrograd during the invasion from Estonia...imagine the effect a WHOLE armoured division would have on the Red Army of the '20s or early '30s.....THEN they learned how useless their mid-1930s style army actually was in Finland.....So combine lessons like that - with the relative weakness of Russian equipment in Spain - with the fact that they would actually have respected the declared neutrality of Holland, Belgium etc. .....And IF the map had changed, it would only have been Germany at the very most that would have changed colour, and only a VERY small chance of that.

And remember - it was the threat of Hitler's Germany rearmed - not Nazism as a political creed - that stopped the Purges in the Red Army; imagine what the Red Army would have been like on the eve of the invasion of Finland if the Purges had not stopped.....let alone any fictional advance aginst the Maginot Line through a Communist Germany....! It wouldn't have happened anyway because Stalin didn't really care what happened abroad, as long as it didn't walk in his door; when it DID thats what made him paranoid and changed the map of Europe. The level of support given in Spain was crumbs from the table compared to the resources at his command, just badly managed and terribly abused during the Purges.

As for Italy - Mussolini was a fool - at TIMES - but he knew the Italian Army stood no chance against ANY European army, Ethiopia had taught him that. And Libya wasn't exactly a pushover either. Its noticable that ALL his expansionist moves later were made at a time when he assumed or thought that his opponents were either tactically weaker or strategically distracted. Add this to the fact that Spain was the first hint to the Regia Aeronautica that their new airforce, bought in bulk in the '20s, was starting to age fast and would not remain on a par with the rest of Europe very much longer at all. And Italy was too near bankrupcy to replace it again.

P.S. discount Italian Fascism totally from the political board; it was, like German Nazism for Germany, wholly tailored to Italy. It wasn't exportable as a political movement. Nazism was, very nearly, but really only in a nation ONCE it had been fully opened up to it by conquest. Prior to that movements like the Blackshirts in the UK, the Blueshorts in Ireland etc. ...all were violent, important and threatening....but NOT to the political Status Quo in tradtional democracies - see the comments above about having to get HUGE voting power and win elections, not just strong-arm your way into power.

Time to be controversial here - There MAY have been a Europe-wide war break out, just a rolling escalation one nation at a time like WWI, in ONE particular circumstance; its not impossible that IF the Purges had continued in Soviet Russia, that the POLES would have seen a chance to profit from Russia's weakness and invade! After all, like the Finns at first, the Polish-Soviet War had taught THEM that the Red Army could be beaten....a forlorn hope you may think,but this would have been in the environment of NO German rearmament or military expansion thus no match Soviet build-up, rather a continuing downward spiral. What Stalin was really doing in the '30s was giving the NKVD its head, and destroying that fine balance of Army, Police and Party that Communist Russia needed to govern itself. WWII and its preceeding threat stopped his paranoia just short of the country becoming ungovernable...let alone undefendable....!
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Post by Rajin Cajun »

I agree with Phylo thats a very sound observation of the era especially European politics. I'm always curious as to why people believe Stalin had some über-plan to take all of Europe. Sure Lenin and Trotsky might have because they deeply believed in an Internationalist acheivement of Communism. Whereas Stalin differed and said it could only be built in one state at a time and that one revolutions had no effect on the another.

If Stalin was so hell-bent on taking Europe by the throat as so many people continue to suggest then why the bloody hell did he purge the Red Army? Incompetence? Sure there were plent of incompetents left in the Red Army and Stalin would know since he served with them but that would have been a small fraction of people. Trotskyite loyalists? This is most likely the biggest one he didn't trust the Red Army because they had been led by Leon Trotsky himself and therefore felt they could betray him the state and the Soviet Experiment as a whole. Finally because he had no plans for warfare he was spending a hell of a lot more time collectivizing farms and building factories to even think about wasting time invading.

People need to remember this nation was scarred from warfare. They failed the Russio-Sino War, the Great War led them into even more trouble and a lot of dead for nothing gained, the Russian Revolution with the Whites vs. the Reds which led to an even more devestating waste of manpower and resources within Russia while still leaving a power vacuum that would not be filled till Lenin took power the Duma overrode him on a trial for the Tzar and had him and his family executed post haste. Then you have the Entente invasion of the Russian state to oust the communists which led to them being repulsed and the Red Army finally securing its borders from foreign invaders.

A nation this devestated had not chance of taking Europe in fact as phylo suggested there might not have been much of a "threat" from USSR if there had been no Second World War. I would suggest people read Stalin's works and compare them to say Lenin and Trotsky. Stalin was much more pragmatic and did not believe in importing the Revolution as is so commonly slandered against him.
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Post by Michael N. Ryan »

Stalin had no military sence, like most politicians.

His reason for purging the red army was the same reason he purged the communist party, he didn't trust his own generals. So he replaced them with men he trusted. This could certainly be seen as a first step towards launching war.
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Post by phylo_roadking »

Michael, more like an exercise in paranoia. Stalin was a remarkably typical Georgian - paranoid, fearful, gloomly, moody. Jolly and luaghing at times, but usually at someone else's misfortune. You don't need to purge questionable generals on the eve of an invasion....you put them in the front line! Darwin takes care of most of them, and the rest.......the NKVD are watching them anyway! Only a paranoid mind would "waste" the valuable resource of a trained military officer, a thinking tyrant uses them up in the process......
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Post by Pirx »

I don't believe that typical Georgian is paranoid, fearful, gloomly, moody.
I am also interesting about Europe without Hitler. And i wonder: did that times created Hitler or Hitler has created that times? And it's looks like that there is no simply answer.
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Post by phylo_roadking »

Pirx - both. First they created Hitler.....then he found that 1920s Germany was a blank canvas for his mania.
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Guys,

I would suggest that one consequence of a world without Hitler would be a bigger Germany than we have today. It might be Communist, but probably not smaller.

Cheers,

Sid.
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What if?

Post by Gerst »

The nice thing about discussing "what ifs" is that nobody can be proven wrong.

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Post by phylo_roadking »

Sid, if Germany had ended up Communist - which is highly unlikely - it would have remained with exactly the same land borders as 1919. Any attempt to "rectify" issues like the Danzig Corridor would have missed and hit the wall, because the Poles would definitely not have taken it laying down, ands the German "communist" army would have been without the benefit of the Friekorps that were essential to stabilising that frontier in 1918-21, and the Junkers' officer corps in the Reichswehr.

In fact, its very likely that the question of the Danzig corridor would have been entirely moot, there's NO way a Communist regine in Germany would have or could have extended its rule over East Prussia.

More likely the result of a Communist attempt to gain power would have been another spate of internal putsches etc., if not open civil war...which given the politcal situation would have resulted in a PROPER military government, instead of a de facto one with the army and Freikorps backing the presidency. In THAT event, it would have been an inwardly-facing military government, like Greece of the Colonels, rather than Hitler's outwardly-expansionist militarism. You could say that in the end the Communists would have HELPED political stability in Germany - in the long run!

Obviously the very first thing any military government would have done, either during civil unrest or after consolidation, would be to repudiate Versailles, but only the army/navy/airforce limits, certainly without the rabid hatred of a Hitler Germany would have remained a nation for its citizens, not a Germany for the rest of the world like Adolf wanted.

In turn? A stronger France. France was as weak politcally at the turn of the 20th century as it was in the late '20s and '30s...but it was the threat of the Kaiser's Germany that led to strong unifying governments. A militarily strong Germany would have forced stability for the greater good on the French, in preparation for what they could in all conscience have fully expected, a limited war over Alsace-Lorraine.

Don't forget, all that at this point the League of Nations was a spent force, the Entente was a thing of the past, and yes although the UK and France were very close, that mutual defence pact was not yet in place again. A strong German military leader COULD have contemplated war again, another seesaw swing of Alsace-Lorraine changing hands, but the WHEN would depend solely on how stable Germany was internally. IF both countries' military buildup had gone on apace, the French would have remained militarily stronger.

Whether intentionally or not, Hitler's racism - not antisemitism but his desire to unite all German peoples - distracted him into eastern Europe and the Balkans for many years; and made the French forget they were the "Old Enemy". A purely military government would have been necessarily more focused on their military defeats, not their political ones of 1918. So, no Sudetenands, no Czechoslovakia, no Anshluss.......and a German military government looking for a "force equalizer".......

Exactly when did the the OKW first talk to Heisenberg??? Now THAT would have broken the Maginot line for them nicely.....! And a long-planning military government would have spent the money this time. And without the Nazi antisemitism, Germany's universities would have been FULL of gifted physicists...rather than them all being in US and UK universities in 1940. Heisenberg's strange "mistake" wouldnt have been made, and without a Hitler looming over all of Europe there wouldn't be a Henry Stimson consulting Einstein, or a Maud Comittee in the UK, and the Joliot-Curies were IT when it came to French atomic research.....

So, either you have a Westward-facing, peacful Weimar Republic, or a military government brought to power by a Communist attempt to sieze it. One would be if not a friend at least not an enemy; the other would not have Hitler's rabid nationalism or antisemitism, but WOULD have the Bomb.....!
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They had their chance

Post by Opa »

I don't know-a 100,000 men Reichswehr simply could not cope with a civil war--if the SPD had been equivoquating, then the Commies might have won in 1933. Poland would have been f...., first because as non-Communist, Stalin would certainly have "rectified" the boundaries concerning Danzig, and later as satrapy of the Soviet Empire, only that unlike what happened in 1945, there would have been no strategy to hitch on Slavic nationalism to make Communism more palatable.

The Communists had as much of a chance of the Nazis--both highly organized political minorities--and if successful, we'd all be off for the worse.
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Post by Rajin Cajun »

I disagree Ryan. Stalin had a lot of military sense hence a lot of his victories during the Russian Civil War the problem ended up being he was unable to adapt from trench warfare to mechanized warfare and therefore a lot of men payed the price because Stalin thought he could repeat his success. He wouldn't have been the only one to underestimate the German war machine.
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