A non-Nazi German regime is highly unlikely to implement the Holocaust, or to launch Operation Barbarossa, or to have such giant war aims as Hitler's regime did, so this would be a huge plus all in itself. And I'm highly skeptical that Britain would actually be willing to fight for Poland if Germany's goals were limited and if Germany didn't betray the West's trust with Czechoslovakia beforehand.
Alternate History Ideas and Discussion
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A non-Nazi German regime is highly unlikely to implement the Holocaust, or to launch Operation Barbarossa, or to have such giant war aims as Hitler's regime did, so this would be a huge plus all in itself. And I'm highly skeptical that Britain would actually be willing to fight for Poland if Germany's goals were limited and if Germany didn't betray the West's trust with Czechoslovakia beforehand.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
A thuggish, but relatively “vanilla” German regime would be much preferable, yes. Myself, I’m thinking something more akin to Pinochet’s Chile or Franco’s Spain than Hitler’s Reich, even if murderous reprisals against communists and (limited) persecution of Jews and Slavs is still standard fare for Germany at this time.
Of course, even if they don’t start the next World War, there’s still Soviet Russia to the east (which means Germany may decide to participate, anyway). Not sure how butterflies will affect things there, given the considerable foreign-policy differences between someone like Stalin and someone like Trotsky. But if it’s the latter that seizes power ITTL (or someone analogous, at least), then, well…
A different anti-Communist authoritarian party might still launch something like Barbarossa to remove the threat of a Communist neighbor and get a resource supplying Ukrainian and Crimean puppet state.
I don't think Poland gets out of this as an independent nation. Possibly even if France and Britain pressure them into giving up Danzig without a fight Russia will take advantage of their real or perceived weakness. I don't believe Germany can avoid going to war to reunite Prussia.
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
It's just that this assumes that this non-nazi party will act at the same rapid pace as OTL Hitler and co.
Yet this was not a very popular approach, and without the speech machine that was Hitler, it will be more difficult to convince Germans to make such radical moves.
Most likely, World War II may break out but much later which changes many things in effect because the ratio of forces will be different, as well as the war may break out over Czechoslovakia or not break out at all by Germany but by the Soviets.
We simply forget that the Nazis succeeded very strongly in mobilizing Germany as a nation because they created a totalitarian state, but the authoritarian party will not have the power and strength to do so as easily as OTL, and without the Nazis the main problem becomes the Communists in Germany who will benefit most from the absence of a rival.
Just as well without the Nazis, there will eventually be an attempted communist revolution in Germany which will provoke a strong world reaction in this regard.
AFAIK, non-Nazi Germans generally didn't have a serious problem with the Czechoslovak borders. Weimar Germany didn't, for instance. And Stalin was very cautious in his foreign policy, preferring not to make any radical moves first.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
'Nazi Germany And Soviet Russia Swap Reputations'.
That is, the crimes of Stalin's USSR become the gold standard for evil in the Western imagination decades later, whereas those of Hitler's Germany remain a close (albeit lesser-known) second.
That is, the crimes of Stalin's USSR become the gold standard for evil in the Western imagination decades later, whereas those of Hitler's Germany remain a close (albeit lesser-known) second.
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
Well, it's quite simple, the Soviets have to do a Red Alert and blow themselves up on the stupid snout losing the war completely by making the Allied troops discover the Gulags with their own eyes.
I don't know, Hitler, however, is persuaded by the anti-war faction not to go into Czechoslovakia by which Munich and the whole brothel doesn't happen then so eventually WWII starts with the Soviets and the Germans as the lesser evil become what OTL were the Soviets?
Or maybe Poland does the most popular alter-history in Poland which is the Ribbentrop-Beck Pact and successfully helps Germany win against the USSR but at the same time is guaranteed by the West or somehow stabs Germany in the back and helps them defeat the West.
Honestly, there are a lot of possibilities.
And I have a strong alternative history in my head, but strongly alternative that even the starting conditions are different from OTL toying with the idea that we have a country in the style of the Nazis/fascists but ultimately being less evil than the Communists who committed such a series of crimes that it got the reputation of Nazism OTL after a huge defeat.
Anyone interested in something like this? But be warned it will be very different from OTL and full of fantasy.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Hmm, an interesting approach. Alternatively, I suppose we could go the other direction with this and make the Soviets ludicrously evil (which I actually posted about a while back), at which point you'd probably get a scenario that makes even OTL Third Reich look mildly less horrible than the supersized Khmer Rouge with Stalinist characteristics over in Eastern Europe.
I once had an ASB story idea where, on the eve of World War II, a mysterious event known as "The Maddening" corrupts the Allies into becoming just as bad as Nazi Germany. Naturally, this "corruption" extended to Soviet Russia, too, with Stalin's paranoia shooting through the roof and his bloodthirstiness amplified to truly Hitlerian levels.
The highlights of his rule include carrying out an early Doctors' Plot, unleashing more Holodomors to completely destroy the ethnic republics, erecting "People's Guillotines" everywhere that are used non-stop, and quadrupling down on blood purges designed to whittle away the adult population and raise future generations who only know Stalin. The survivors, meanwhile, are forced through a Cultural Revolution-style erasure of Old Russia and a total militarization of Soviet society, with children raised in Sparta-inspired "youth education centers" in which they're regularly beaten, brainwashed, and culled into becoming soldiers in a "Final Revolution" to destroy capitalism forever. The result is the USSR going from a brutal, relatively isolated mega-Gulag to the bastard spawn of a Red Sparta, North Korea, and 1984's Oceania, its people giddy for a worldwide nuclear war with the West as soon as the "fascist menace" has been crushed and obliterated completely.
The highlights of his rule include carrying out an early Doctors' Plot, unleashing more Holodomors to completely destroy the ethnic republics, erecting "People's Guillotines" everywhere that are used non-stop, and quadrupling down on blood purges designed to whittle away the adult population and raise future generations who only know Stalin. The survivors, meanwhile, are forced through a Cultural Revolution-style erasure of Old Russia and a total militarization of Soviet society, with children raised in Sparta-inspired "youth education centers" in which they're regularly beaten, brainwashed, and culled into becoming soldiers in a "Final Revolution" to destroy capitalism forever. The result is the USSR going from a brutal, relatively isolated mega-Gulag to the bastard spawn of a Red Sparta, North Korea, and 1984's Oceania, its people giddy for a worldwide nuclear war with the West as soon as the "fascist menace" has been crushed and obliterated completely.
Have the Soviet Union be led by Leon Trotsky instead of by Joseph Stalin and have him attempt some kind of world revolution in the 1930s or 1940s? Then Hitler could be a Western ally against Trotsky's Soviet Union, with the West eager to downplay Hitler's crimes in order to avoid having their ally look bad. Of course, Hitler might also be a bit less brutal in this TL in order to avoid alienating the West. So, possibly no Holocaust.
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
Technically that's what OTL was, the Nazis relative to the Communists were pathetic in what they did, the problem is that it was the Germans at the time who became the whipping boy and their camps widely known hiding the nightmare of the Gulags in the USSR.
I see, a rough ride.
Namely, this ATL is much more populous than ours.
Their first world war ended with 60 to 80 million dead. I based this on an old AAR, a mega-campaign of the old Paradox games where the author mentioned that he lowered the number to 60 because it was very much too high, even though in his world superpowers having hundreds of millions of inhabitants is standard.
For example, before WW1
The most populous country in the world - the Kingdom of Nihonia, 1.2 billion people
Second: the Kingdom of Germany 824 million people
Third-the British Republic- 723 Million people
Fourth The Polish Empire 687 million People (with dominions counts almost 1.8 billion but we are talking about Poland alone)
Fifth the Kingdom of Great France 654 million people
The whole joke is that after losing the War, a civil war breaks out in France in which the Communists eventually win, then form the Union of Workers' Republics and conquer Aragon (Spain here) and Portugal. And during World War II, they conquer Germany in tandem with Poland and invade Great Britain.
And what is the point in the end? They are just as or even less bloody than the OTL counterparts but because the world is much more populous they murder more people in hard numbers than the OTL despite being slightly lower in percentage.
And due to the fact that the human psyche is not very different from the OTL in terms of crimes and attitudes towards them, communism after the final defeat at the hands of the Polish-Arcadian(America here) and the rest of the alliance became known as our Nazism.
Their first world war ended with 60 to 80 million dead. I based this on an old AAR, a mega-campaign of the old Paradox games where the author mentioned that he lowered the number to 60 because it was very much too high, even though in his world superpowers having hundreds of millions of inhabitants is standard.
For example, before WW1
The most populous country in the world - the Kingdom of Nihonia, 1.2 billion people
Second: the Kingdom of Germany 824 million people
Third-the British Republic- 723 Million people
Fourth The Polish Empire 687 million People (with dominions counts almost 1.8 billion but we are talking about Poland alone)
Fifth the Kingdom of Great France 654 million people
The whole joke is that after losing the War, a civil war breaks out in France in which the Communists eventually win, then form the Union of Workers' Republics and conquer Aragon (Spain here) and Portugal. And during World War II, they conquer Germany in tandem with Poland and invade Great Britain.
And what is the point in the end? They are just as or even less bloody than the OTL counterparts but because the world is much more populous they murder more people in hard numbers than the OTL despite being slightly lower in percentage.
And due to the fact that the human psyche is not very different from the OTL in terms of crimes and attitudes towards them, communism after the final defeat at the hands of the Polish-Arcadian(America here) and the rest of the alliance became known as our Nazism.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Sure, the communists had more actualized success spreading their ideology around. (Success they don't deserve, as I'm confident you'll agree.)
However, given that the Nazis fantasized about razing Eastern Europe and either exterminating or enslaving every last man, woman, and child living there, a World War II German victory probably would've generated a body count making even Chairman Mao look like "second-best". And even then, much of the mass death in Maoist China was due to callous incompetence, rather than driven by premeditated intention expressed in itemized lists of populations the Nazis sought to kill off.
Well, considering how you've exponentially increased the world population and "reconfigured" the list of countries involved here—in fact, that you both make Poland an imperial superpower akin to OTL British Empire and describe America as "Polish-Arcadian" rather than mostly British in origin (with bits and pieces from other Western European settlement, of course) suggests a way further-back POD, dating at least to the US's founding—I certainly wouldn't call your TL simple.
But anyway, I think the fact you retroactively changed global geopolitics centuries before pushing communism off the deep end makes things more complicated, not less. My scenario may have been ASB, but all it required was a snap of Skippy's fingers to alter the temperaments of the Allies, hence Stalin devolving into the Soviet version of Pol Pot. (Although, admittedly, FDR and Churchill are no better, thanks to the fact they also end up losing it.)
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Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
More accurately POD is the year 1066. And no, America is not Polish-Arcadian (well partly yes but not as you understood) it is the name of North America in this TL.
My point is that the reluctant alliance of the VI Polish Empire and the Confederation Nations of Arcadia and minor states beat the UWR.
But yes, Poland in this Timeline is such a kind of British Empire of this world.
(Although unlike the British, the Poles lost their Empire twice, and each time they managed to rebuild it in a slightly different but similar shape).
Let me put it this way, imagine that there could be a state calling itself the Third Rome, and being it but having almost none of its original lands but surpassing the First and Second Rome both in size, achievements and ability to rise from decline.
This is the Polish Empire, the road to their power they paid a huge, and terrible but they achieved it.
Of course, as you model the AAR of Paradox games, you have some things that you have to explain somehow. Well, and the author for the sake of drama purposely let himself be beaten.
More precisely, he unleashed World War I, but in the 18th and 19th centuries under the name of the Great Continental War, won it, and then the Republican Revolution broke out in Poland, which started a six-year civil war as a result of which Poland lost its "first dominion" and part of its territory became independent, well, and half of Poland proper was lost to its neighbors, which became more than 100 years later the cause of the Second Great Continental War (their IWW) or at least the foundation for it, which again Poland lost despite almost being victorious. The result, the loss of the rest of Poland proper and the complete screwing of all Poles, plus the forced detachment of her dominions.
Then we have the Third Great War, in which initially there was an alliance with the commune, regaining all of Poland proper, then fighting the UWR, winning and partially rebuilding the Empire and regaining the main goal of all of Poland proper. (Although in ruins)
Overall, it's a pretty interesting scenario, and if I knew how to make it a kind of game of the type that forum players control the countries in question, I would.
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Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
I see; thanks for clarifying.
Trotskyite USSR's not a bad idea, yeah. Not sure he'd be as "totalitarian" on the domestic front, but even ignoring a predisposition towards Red Terror we saw one too many glimpses of IOTL, the fact a Soviet-led "World Revolution" would bankroll lots of terrorism and Revolutionary Catalonia expies popping up all over Europe before being crushed by the Western powers probably means fascism gets a lease on life it didn't receive IOTL.
In fact, I can imagine Hitler and Mussolini (or any analogues who play similar roles, at least) being viewed as "strong" and "tougher on those bloodthirsty Reds" than the liberal democracies are, hence lending them a veneer of a "viable alternative" to Liberalism's "softness" and "materialistic decadence" in the face of revolutionary disorder. Of course, whether that image would last is a different question, seeing as Hitler is still Hitler, and may use a German victory after his country's been "ravaged at the hands of (Judeo-)Bolshevism" as pretext to secure Lebensraum and enact a much-delayed Holocaust after the war. And if the Reich takes a turn for the worst in a "Nazi victory" version of Twilight of the Red Tsar, well...
I see; thanks for clarifying.
Trotskyite USSR's not a bad idea, yeah. Not sure he'd be as "totalitarian" on the domestic front, but even ignoring a predisposition towards Red Terror we saw one too many glimpses of IOTL, the fact a Soviet-led "World Revolution" would bankroll lots of terrorism and Revolutionary Catalonia expies popping up all over Europe before being crushed by the Western powers probably means fascism gets a lease on life it didn't receive IOTL.
In fact, I can imagine Hitler and Mussolini (or any analogues who play similar roles, at least) being viewed as "strong" and "tougher on those bloodthirsty Reds" than the liberal democracies are, hence lending them a veneer of a "viable alternative" to Liberalism's "softness" and "materialistic decadence" in the face of revolutionary disorder. Of course, whether that image would last is a different question, seeing as Hitler is still Hitler, and may use a German victory after his country's been "ravaged at the hands of (Judeo-)Bolshevism" as pretext to secure Lebensraum and enact a much-delayed Holocaust after the war. And if the Reich takes a turn for the worst in a "Nazi victory" version of Twilight of the Red Tsar, well...
More like Hitler simply deports the Jews to Siberia or Madagascar or Central Asia or wherever after the end of this alt-WWII rather than outright murdering them. In a time of peace, there won't be as much pressure to outright murder Europe's Jewish population (less radicalization, less of a threat of German starvation, et cetera).
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Potentially, depending on how far eastward Germany extends its holdings. Still, Gulag-ing the entire Jewish population is still (at least, by OTL standards) genocide on a severe scale, and again considering that Hitler is... well, Hitler, he'd probably still aim to cull them via Siberian weather and working conditions rather than via industrial killing centers built to carry out an overt Final Solution. That was, after all, the original plan IOTL.
Potentially, depending on how far eastward Germany extends its holdings. Still, Gulag-ing the entire Jewish population is still (at least, by OTL standards) genocide on a severe scale, and again considering that Hitler's still Hitler, he'd probably still aim to cull them via Siberian weather and working conditions rather than via industrial killing centers built to carry out the Final Solution. That was, after all, the original plan IOTL.
In peacetime, though, Hitler would still need to worry a bit more about foreign relations than he would in wartime. Though he could always (as he actually did in 1939) say that if the West genuinely cares about the Jews that much, then it is more than welcome to personally accept them as immigrants, but only after Nazi Germany steals almost all of their wealth, of course, thus leaving them almost penniless when they end up in the West.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Pretty sure mass-deportation of Jews and taking everything they have as an "exit tax" would raise eyebrows, though, especially on such a large scale. (I assume Eastern European Jews living under German occupation would be included in the deportations here.)
Alternatively, Hitler could wait and turn on them at the last minute (as Stalin did in Twilight of the Red Tsar), becoming steadily more and more anti-Semitic towards the end of his life before concocting his own "Doctors' Plot" as an excuse to get rid of them. He could, of course, die before anything comes of it (just like Stalin IOTL), though seeing as his inner circle had no shortage of hateful psychos (Himmler and Goebbels, namely), he could easily have a successor who greenlights a long-delayed Holocaust in Hitler's place.
Well, Hitler did try to get rid of Germany's Jews through coerced emigration in the pre-WWII years, and while that certainly generated a lot of anger in the West, it wasn't enough to cardinally destroy Western relations with Hitler. It took Hitler invading other countries and him mass murdering Jews for the West to view Hitler as evil incarnate in real life. As for Hitler waiting until he's near-death to do this, that's not his style. He wanted to act quickly, not to leave things for his successors to handle.