Possible peace with Stalin (with and without Hitler)

[Jenna Haze]

I want to implement some peace events for germany, especially for a successful valkyrie like coup so i ask:

Would there be a plausible chance for peace in the east with A: Hitler in Power or B: Hitler and NS Party removed by the Military? - i give various dates of significance(i know its a lot )

What do you guys think the chances for peace are in:

1941 before Moscow
1941/42 after Moscow

1942 before Stalingrad encirclement
1942 with a succesful Stalingrad breakout

1943 after the battle for Kharkov before Kursk
1943 after a victory at Kursk
1943 after Kursk

1944 before Bagration
1944 after Bagration

I heard that the Soviets thought about making peace after their defeat at Kharkov in 1943 with the 1939 borders - i dont know if it really was a possibilty.
I guess Hitler was mabye too fanatic to give up Ukraine, Baltics and Belarus but a Military Junta would probably care about 1914 borders in the east and consider everything else negotiatable.

 

[Thymic]

As far as I've heard the Valkyrie group wanted to do the opposite - make a peace with the West to focus on fighting the Soviets. They did not consider it likely to succeed though, it was more a matter of honor then chances of winning

 

[Altruist]

chances for peace are in:

1941 before Moscow
1941/42 after Moscow

1942 before Stalingrad encirclement
1942 with a succesful Stalingrad breakout

1943 after the battle for Kharkov before Kursk
1943 after a victory at Kursk
1943 after Kursk

1944 before Bagration
1944 after Bagration

A: 0.1%
B: 1%

Nazis being Nazis can't make peace with the Sovietunion. At first because they won, then because they lost. Due to the Nazi race ideology and also due to committed crimes. There is a point you cannot/won't dare step back.

And from the point of the Sovietunion:
As long as they lost, there is no base for peace because it is about survival. Once the Red Army started to win... why making peace with those bastards? Additionally, the Nazis had proven not to be trustworthy.

The German military/Wehrmacht, even in 1945, had no plans/hopes or wishes for peace with the Sovietunion but only with the Western Allies.

Fortunately for the Germans, the Russians seemed/seem to have a weak spot in their hearts for the Germans. Otherwise it would be difficult to imagine a continued existence of Germany after WW2.

 

[Jenna Haze]

A: 0.1%
B: 1%

Nazis being Nazis can't make peace with the Sovietunion. At first because they won, then because they lost. Due to the Nazi race ideology and also due to committed crimes. There is a point you cannot/won't dare step back.

And from the point of the Sovietunion:
As long as they lost, there is no base for peace because it is about survival. Once the Red Army started to win... why making peace with those bastards? Additionally, the Nazis had proven not to be trustworthy.

The German military/Wehrmacht, even in 1945, had no plans/hopes or wishes for peace with the Sovietunion but only with the Western Allies.

Fortunately for the Germans, the Russians seemed/seem to have a weak spot in their hearts for the Germans. Otherwise it would be difficult to imagine a continued existence of Germany after WW2.

I think you have a problem to differentiate Hitler, Himmler and the Nazi Party from people like von Witzleben, Beck and Stauffenberg. These are militaristic, even autocratic if you want but for sure not nazi. They did not like the soviets obviously but if there was a chance for peace they would not have said no.

Stalin would for sure have thought about any peace, more so before kursk, less so until bagration. After that? Who knows, probably at this point the valkyrie coup was right that the allies were more likely to start talks but before that i think the chance was higher than 1% and higher the better the deal for Stalin.

 

[Altruist]

I think you have a problem to differentiate Hitler, Himmler and the Nazi Party from people like von Witzleben, Beck and Stauffenberg.

I don't think so.
The nobility saw themselves as Herrenmenschen by birth while the Nazis, those upstart parvenues led be a mere lance-corporal became Herrenmenschen by ideology... see, I can differentiate them.
Apart from this sarcasm, I do agree that some of those "noble" Wehrmacht generals would had rather liked not to have attacked the Sovietunion... AFTER it became obvious that they would loose. But after they did and then loosing, what would they had to offer to the Sovietunion for peace? A simple: "Sorry, we thought we could conquere you" somehow doesn't seem enough.
Able to conquere almost all of Europe and to lead millions of people into death but not even capable to kill the Führer.

Stalin would for sure have thought about any peace [...]

Some say Stalin as a leader was saved by the outbreak of WW2. Perhaps.
Peace with Germany after all the atrocities... I can't imagine Stalin surviving that. So I think it was rather the other way around, Realpolitik demanding from Stalin NOT to make peace, whatever the costs.

Additionally the SU had already experienced the Molotov–Ribbentrop or Stalin-Hitler pact, broken by Germany. And in WW1 the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk almost led to the downfall of the Bolsheviks. I just can't imagine another bilateral peace of the SU with Germany. Especially not after the Casablanca Conference in 1943 in which the USA committed to the war aim of unconditional surrender of Germany.

But that's the dirty bloody history. And you were asking for opinions about historically chances for peace between the SU and Germany.

Darkest Hour, though, is a game, so you are free to invent scenarios, crazy ones, funny ones, whatever... even that Hitler and Stalin had a secret meeting and fell in love with each other and, hand in hand, changed the world. I guess Hitler would had had quite some interesting ideas to share with Stalin how to make vast underpopulated Siberia a region brimming with people.

 

[Jenna Haze]

I don't think so.
The nobility saw themselves as Herrenmenschen by birth while the Nazis, those upstart parvenues led be a mere lance-corporal became Herrenmenschen by ideology... see, I can differentiate them.
Apart from this sarcasm, I do agree that some of those "noble" Wehrmacht generals would had rather liked not to have attacked the Sovietunion... AFTER it became obvious that they would loose. But after they did and then loosing, what would they had to offer to the Sovietunion for peace? A simple: "Sorry, we thought we could conquere you" somehow doesn't seem enough.
Able to conquere almost all of Europe and to lead millions of people into death but not even capable to kill the Führer.


Some say Stalin as a leader was saved by the outbreak of WW2. Perhaps.
Peace with Germany after all the atrocities... I can't imagine Stalin surviving that. So I think it was rather the other way around, Realpolitik demanding from Stalin NOT to make peace, whatever the costs.

Additionally the SU had already experienced the Molotov–Ribbentrop or Stalin-Hitler pact, broken by Germany. And in WW1 the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk almost led to the downfall of the Bolsheviks. I just can't imagine another bilateral peace of the SU with Germany. Especially not after the Casablanca Conference in 1943 in which the USA committed to the war aim of unconditional surrender of Germany.

But that's the dirty bloody history. And you were asking for opinions about historically chances for peace between the SU and Germany.

Darkest Hour, though, is a game, so you are free to invent scenarios, crazy ones, funny ones, whatever... even that Hitler and Stalin had a secret meeting and fell in love with each other and, hand in hand, changed the world. I guess Hitler would had had quite some interesting ideas to share with Stalin how to make vast underpopulated Siberia a region brimming with people.

How do you know nobility saw themselves as Herrenmenschen by birth? What does that even imply, just being better than the rest of the population (which is likely) or being a better race than lets say the russians (which i do not believe, this nobility class or however you call it had good ties to russia until the russian alliance with france i think).

Also its likely in my opinion that a lot of generals would have prefered to not attack the soviets but hitler was popular in 1941 and no major defeat happened so far (unless you want to count the battle for britain) so the opposition didnt dare to act at this point.

With Hitler alive what would a peace with Stalin have looked like? I read that Hitler demanded more or less another Brest-Litovsk and the Soviets were willing to give more or less the 1939 borders, after Kursk maybe only the old imperial borders of 1914 who knows. Without Hitler however things get more interesting and thats the main point of my question because i have written a few events about a military coup during the Stalingrad encirclement:

According to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Attentate_auf_Adolf_Hitler there was a good chance to kill Hitler in march 1943 after the german victory at Kharkov (around the same time stalin considered a 1939 border peace if this story is true at all.)

Lets say Hitler is killed whats the situation? You got a german victory at Kharkov which some generals would have liked to use to immediately repush the sector and not wait for the historic Kursk bulge to be reinforced. Would Stalin have accepted another Brest-Litovsk? 99,9% chance no but what about something like 1939 borders + national territory of german allies (Vipuuri, Bessarabia) and maybe eastern galicia - something around that + handing over whatever high level NS personnel responsible or atrocities in the east could be arrested, maybe even Himmler. Stalin would get the postwar borders more or less but without millions of additional dead soviet people.

Lets say Stalin demands more i could imagine the military junta to give him poland too up to the 1914 borders at maximum, even the breakup of the axis (except italy) and the neutralisation(or howver you say that in english) of the whole balkans for a peace.

For the question what a military junta would offer after defeat at Kursk and before Bagration? 1914 and a free hand for Stalin in the balkans i could imagine. But the chances for peace with the soviets obviously decrease with defeats but we dont know how many of Hitlers mistakes would have been repeated by Manstein and so on in full control.

 

[Eginhard 38]

How do you know nobility saw themselves as Herrenmenschen by birth? What does that even imply, just being better than the rest of the population (which is likely) or being a better race than lets say the russians (which i do not believe, this nobility class or however you call it had good ties to russia until the russian alliance with france i think).

Well, I'll let Altruist defend his own opinions. However, I'd say that nazism didn't come out of thin air. Racist opinions about Slavic people largely predated it in Germany, not the least because racist views were just fairly common everywhere - the point of being considered as something normal back then. In the pre-WW1 German context, Pangermanism, a quite common ideology among the core of Germany's military elite (the Prussian landed nobility), was mainly defined by its rivalry with a Panslavic Russia for dominance in Central and Eastern Europe. This is rather well documented, and often cited as one the main factors to explain why the July 1914 crisis led to the outbreak of WW1.

Given that most WW2 German military leaders were themselves from the same caste, it is quite plausible that they would have, at least in part, inherited such opinions.

There's another factor to consider here: anticommunism, which was far from being a purely nazi thing (I'd even say it was their strong anticommunist stance that made nazis so popular among the general population in the first place). That some German generals would have accepted a compromise with Russia is much plausible, regardless of what they would think of Slavic people, but they would probably be less enthusiastic about the same with a communist Russia.

And about German-Soviet military ties, I'd say they were mostly opportunistic. Diplomatically isolated nations (as were both countries in the 1920s) tend to become closer. See, for example, how South Africa and Israel started to cooperate with each other while they were both under international economic sanctions in the late 1960s.

 

[Jenna Haze]

Well, I'll let Altruist defend his own opinions. However, I'd say that nazism didn't come out of thin air. Racist opinions about Slavic people largely predated it in Germany, not the least because racist views were just fairly common everywhere - the point of being considered as something normal back then. In the pre-WW1 German context, Pangermanism, a quite common ideology among the core of Germany's military elite (the Prussian landed nobility), was mainly defined by its rivalry with a Panslavic Russia for dominance in Central and Eastern Europe. This is rather well documented, and often cited as one the main factors to explain why the July 1914 crisis led to the outbreak of WW1.

Given that most WW2 German military leaders were themselves from the same caste, it is quite plausible that they would have, at least in part, inherited such opinions.

There's another factor to consider here: anticommunism, which was far from being a purely nazi thing (I'd even say it was their strong anticommunist stance that made nazis so popular among the general population in the first place). That some German generals would have accepted a compromise with Russia is much plausible, regardless of what they would think of Slavic people, but they would probably be less enthusiastic about the same with a communist Russia.

And about German-Soviet military ties, I'd say they were mostly opportunistic. Diplomatically isolated nations (as were both countries in the 1920s) tend to become closer. See, for example, how South Africa and Israel started to cooperate with each other while they were both under international economic sanctions in the late 1960s.

But were the generals so much anti communists that they would risk the destruction of the nation rather than atleast trying to find a peace? A communist nation on the Bug is better than a communist nation on the Spree.

 

[Altruist]

How do you know nobility saw themselves as Herrenmenschen by birth? What does that even imply [...]

In Germany nobility (around 0.01% of the population) was a ruling class, hereditary (thus by birth), originally granted by king or emperor who again claims his power from god. Especially the Prussian nobility is historically very much entangled with the Teutonic Order, notorious for their brutal crusades against the Slavic East and until today its spiritual continuation symbolized on every German tank with the cross of the Teutonic Order. Common practice of Prussian nobility/Prussian Junkers was to keep their peasants in slavery (which was called Leibeigenschaft in German) until the French under Napoleon freed them in 1806 when they defeated Prussia. So, like most nobility, you can't even correctly call them rascists because they look down on all, and the Prussian nobility looking even a bit further down when it comes to Slavic people.

This 0.01% of the German population possessed nearly all high ranks in the Wehrmacht (each name with "von" = nobility) and the core of it Prussian. And many of them were kind of disgusted by the, as weird as it may sound but in their eyes: egalitarian character of the Nazi ideology which upgraded lowly common Germans by race to Herrenmenschen. To make things even worse somebody became "Führer" they would had expected just good enough to clean their shoes and allowed to speak only when ordered to. THIS was the main reason for the bad blood and distrust between Nazis and nobility. But both dependent on each other and bound together by their goal to create a situation to force the rather war wary majority of Germans into another war again.

To avoid above long text I shortened all that attitude to "Herrenmenschen by birth".
The only thing I regret is that the usage of "Herrenmensch" is quite unfair towards Nietzsche who came up with this expression but meant something completly different with it. As so many things it was taken up by the Nazis and completly perverted for their ugly and stupid ideology.

Lets say Hitler is killed whats the situation?

The NS movement and party was, no surprise, a bit more than just one man. The Wehrmacht no longer the state within the state Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic. The generals of the Wehrmacht not really the all-wise men winning all battles and Hitler alone responsible for every mistake as claimed by the surviving generals in all their memoirs.

To secure their power over Germany the Nazis had established in all core areas dual structures: beside the old one another competing one loyal directly to party and Führer. SS, Gestapo, Hitleryouth, BDM are only the most well known ones.
Which was also the reason why several assassination plans from within the Wehrmacht included not only Hitler but several other important party figures. If that would had been enough to break the strong grip of the party over all Germany? Which was strong enough to let the Germans fight to the very bitter end and those who refused getting executed until the very last day...

Takeover of the Wehrmacht: In DH terms the mildest result would be a big raise in dissent.
But if the plotters within the Wehrmacht aren't even thinking about the importance of shifiting the blame of a Hitler assassination to, let's say, a jewish bolshevist conspiracy but it becomes clear on day 2 that a part of the Wehrmacht was behind murdering the guy they had sworn to... I'd expect the SS to run amok, many other Nazi organisations, too, and the Wehrmacht itself in turmoil as well.
Quite an interesting challenge to code that into events.
But still I have problems to see a higher probability than 1% this leading to a good base for peace with whomever... IF you want to claim it having a real historical chance.

But with all that said, please, don't understand me wrong, in no way I'd ever hold it against a modder to come up with events and scenarios which are highly historically improbable. On the contrary, everybody of us is usually thankful for every addition to DH and creative plot twists.

 

[Jenna Haze]

So far i only modded the option that takes out Hitler, Göbbels, Himmler and Göring alltogether because i am not good enough / too lazy to create a civil war with the SS that would be acceptable to my taste.

I do not share your opinion that getting rid of the nazis would have been near impossible. There were a couple of Waffen SS Generals who could have been won over by the military. According to wikipedia about Rommel and the 20 July Plot (i know wikipedia - i do not say its 100% true) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel the following happened:

On 15 July, Rommel wrote a letter to Hitler giving him a "last chance" to end the hostilities with the Western Allies, urging Hitler to "draw the proper conclusions without delay". What Rommel did not know was that the letter took two weeks to reach Hitler because of Kluge's precautions.[279][280] Various authors report that many German generals in Normandy, including some SS officers like Hausser, Bittrich, Dietrich (a hard-core Nazi and Hitler's long-time supporter) and Rommel's former opponent Geyr von Schweppenburg pledged support to him, even against Hitler's orders, while Kluge supported him with much hesitation.

Lets say Hitler is killed and these Waffen SS Generals support the military - would the Hitler/Himmler fanatics have the power to spark a major civil war without huge Waffen SS formations?

Also there is some article (i dont remember the SS General Name, maybe it will come to my mind tomorrow) about Rommel wanting to surrender the western front and the SS guy in his staff said "You are our commander, we will follow you.".

I dont want to pretend achieving peace would be easy, but in 1942/1943 i would give it more than your 1% chance. For the Valkyrie Coup in July 1944 i agree a peace would be very difficult, maybe immediate surrender to the west could have brought some concessions to the postwar order who knows.

 

[Jenna Haze]

Thats the situation on 22.11.1942 and here are my ideas for peace offers Stalin may take:

White Line: Defeat at Stalingrad with no successful counteroffensive
Red Line: 6th army is rescued and front stabilized or some Kharkov like counteroffensive happens in the first half of 1943
Green Line: 6th army is rescued and Leningrad or Smolensk Bulge are taken (or both)

Terijoki will stay with Russia in either peace and Finland will get Kestenga instead. I think that was the original offer to Finland in order for Russia to secure the Leningrad area.

For the last two i am not sure so maybe this:

Yellow Line: Moscow or Baku are taken
Purple Line: The Archangelsk-Astrakhan Line is taken

Are the requirements too low or what would you suggest?

 

[Manasian]

I agree with much of what Altruist says, in the sense that the ideological "lock" prevents any separate peace between the USSR and Nazi Germany. Personally, I find that the war in the East is a war to the death between two ideologies (whereas in the West it is a more "classical" war) and can only lead to the total destruction of one of its ideologies (this can be compared to a religious war or crusade, the latter term has even been used for propaganda). If there is to be a separate peace and this is to be a realistic minimum, it would be necessary (in my opinion) for both Hitler and Stalin to be overthrown/killed and all their followers (SS, Communist Party, etc.) neutralized. Therefore, we would have a war comparable to that of the West, between two normal states (and not two ideologies) and therefore possibility of peace (as in the West).

Let us also add that if Hitler wanted peace in the West it is also because he is very anglophile, he is an admirer of the British Empire (while on the other hand, he is violently russophobic).

 

[Dinglehoff]

I want to implement some peace events for germany, especially for a successful valkyrie like coup so i ask:

Would there be a plausible chance for peace in the east with A: Hitler in Power or B: Hitler and NS Party removed by the Military? - i give various dates of significance(i know its a lot )

What do you guys think the chances for peace are in:

1941 before Moscow
1941/42 after Moscow

1942 before Stalingrad encirclement
1942 with a succesful Stalingrad breakout

1943 after the battle for Kharkov before Kursk
1943 after a victory at Kursk
1943 after Kursk

1944 before Bagration
1944 after Bagration

I heard that the Soviets thought about making peace after their defeat at Kharkov in 1943 with the 1939 borders - i dont know if it really was a possibilty.
I guess Hitler was mabye too fanatic to give up Ukraine, Baltics and Belarus but a Military Junta would probably care about 1914 borders in the east and consider everything else negotiatable.

Without any primary source information about peace considerations from the Soviet archives or whatever, it would be hard to quantify or evaluate that likelihood without basically making it up yourself to correspond to an ahistorical course of events. As far as the Soviets go, peace probably wouldn't even be a consideration as long as the Western Allies aren't getting completely and catastrophically routed. If they are, maybe, if there's some kind of long bloody stalemate going on in the east or more likely if the Western Allies have to make peace on their own.

Without serious ahistorical defeats stressing the alliance, I doubt there'd be any response to a post-coup regime other than demands for immediate surrender.