https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_One_Country
I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.
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What happens if Germany stops at the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939?
- Thread starter Secret Master
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_One_Country
I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.
SM I was not suggesting that the Germans IRL would if they allied with Poland, more what I plan to do as Germany.After all I will need access directly into my new Russian lands.
True, but we may need to see what the Polish AI can cook up on its own.
Just one more round of mefo bills outta do it.
I would be interested in a bit more explanation of why the ussr would suddenly start invading other countries as the Soviet historical expansionism (including Baltics and finland) within that timeframe was the direct consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which presumably would not happen here. So while an interesting theory, it seems a bit lazy to me.
As for the topic in hand, I would be with tooze in predicting economic collapse and either internal coup or intensification of Nazi terror in Germany.
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I think mostly cause they probably tick over at some point and start doing so.
With the NF's eventually someone somewhere has to kick off proccedings, which really I guess is a flaw in the game, but it is there. It maybe Europe just stays at an uneasy peace till '48 and the Japanese and the US just have a private war in the Pacific.
With the NF's eventually someone somewhere has to kick off proccedings, which really I guess is a flaw in the game, but it is there. It maybe Europe just stays at an uneasy peace till '48 and the Japanese and the US just have a private war in the Pacific.
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I agree with virtually everything you said above. I would go further and say I think that without Germany fighting against France and UK, a Soviet invasion of Europe becomes much less likely. If the Soviet Union didn't make a M-R Pact with Germany, but still moved unilaterally against Finland or the Baltic States, the Communists probably would've faced a unified Europe.
I tend to disagree with what you're saying here. From an international relations standpoint, the Czechslovak partition was a catastrophe which gave Hitler had significantly fewer and worse options until he went to war. Until the French were defeated by Germany, Romania actually sold much more oil to the United Kingdom than Germany. And Turkey and Yugoslavia, ostensibly neutral, were closely aligned with the Allies.
Adam Tooze describes Germany's 1939 Balkan resource-trade outlook:
So long as the Allies have a presence on the continent of Europe, in the form of France, the ability of Germany to monopolize power in the Balkans is severely limited.
One more thing to widen the perspective, Romania is a big producer of oil by European standards, but Romania only produced about the same amount of oil as the US state of Ohio, which was merely the 16th highest oil producing state in the USA.
And there is for Germany the option to trade with the USSR. The trade that historically the USSR insisted on was for Machine tools for Russian raw materials. This had the effect of making Germany stronger in the short-term, but it also definitely made the USSR much stronger in the long term. It's not a good option for Germany long-term unless the USSR is being played by a friendly human.
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Yes, i think so. After the annexation, they started to prepare for the worst. Not to forget that they gave the guarantee to Poland to back it up and started intense diplomatic manouvering into isolating Germany and inciting diplomatic pressure via economic means.
Without the annexation, there would not have been a need to do so. Disarmament wasn't actually the most important thing they wanted to enforce but stopping the Germans to further their armament and territorial gains unilaterally. If Germany followed their intended route, it would have to rely on diplomatic endeavors to have their NF "get all Germans under one roof" solved. Diplomacy would lead to negotiations, agreements, thus limiting spontaneous, surprising developments the Allies would not be able to control. They - especially the British - were inclined to keep the post WWI world order in place. It was advantageous to them and as a world spanning power, they had many dependent nations/puppets/colonies at their disposal. This way they were effectively controlling the League of Nations which led revisionist governemtns to leave that club.
Thanks for that interesting source. I think that the conclusions are correct. However, we shall not forget that this is an analysis of what actually happened after the annexation historically. It does not contain Secret Master's idea of the annexation to be the last aggressive act on the part of the Germans. They and the Allies were already heading towards a clash of arms straightly and therefore mobilising and arming themselves to the teeth - with the well known strenuous economic consequences. For the reasons other posters have already mentioned that leaving a course of an arms race, Germany and it's economy could have very well prevailed i believe. Their economic role in international trade was growing while the British and French was about to decline. This was a process since 1937. To maintain peace, it would have been necessary for the German government to publicly speak out for a stop in rapidly increasing the military and to actually do so. After some time (dunno how much), the tension would have a good chance to cool down with different matters coming up to fill the newspapers. It's not that different from today. Of course a lenient occupation policy and possibly the creation of a semi independent Czech state would become a necessity in the long run. See newly created Slovakia as a reference.
However, this is only theory as the Germans followed the 'quick and easy path' to the dark side.
I can only guess how matters will be handled ingame...
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Yes I know it was OT, because it was a frustration driven response, as you clearly have no understanding of Marxist theory.
Now, back on topic:
The soviets proposed invading Germany before Munich and were completely ignored. I believe they would continue with their military build up to counter possible German aggression, but at a much slower pace. However, if Germany's economy continued to faulter and they were driven to expand aggressively, the allies would handle it much easier than in our timeline.
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Time is on Stalin's side regardless. I'm not sure the Soviets can be "driven to expand aggressively" short of a scenario that ends up with the Soviets and Germany having a giant throw-down in Central Europe that the Germans start. (And I'm guessing the British and French are not going to start a crusade to destroy the Soviets out of thin air.)
I'm not saying that Stalin might not eventually make a bid for expanding the Soviet Union's power, but as long as the game ends in 1948, we're not looking at a lot of time. Unless the entire world refuses to trade with the Soviets, they continue to gain strength just sitting at their 1936 borders. There's a lot of room for industrial growth, and consequently military strength growth.
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SM has it right. Time is indeed on the side of the Soviets and Americans, who have almost limitless resources, room to expand their industry, and large population bases to draw upon. The UK and France don't have all of that directly, but have overseas colonies to provide resources. Germany, shorn of its colonies after WWI, cannot compete without the goodwill of the other major powers, otherwise it runs out of resources. Germany is the driving force in the game, and Japan to a lesser degree for the same reasons: they NEED to expand and either take resources from someone else, or at least guarantee their ability to trade for them. A peaceful Germany means that they are willingly accepting "second tier" status.
Maybe they just want to play the long game.
Yes, you are right, though. Germany is kind of dancing to the economic tune of the western powers until their colonial empires fall apart.
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Hardly. Most of the mess in the Balkans was Mussolini trying to one-up Hitler after the failure of France (and failing horrendously). If Germany stops, Italy will probably bully Yugoslavia for Dalmatia then go back to building their power block in the Balkans.
Germany, on the other hand, is by now a car without brakes: it needs to keep going on the road to war, because the arms industry is the only functional part of its economy and the whole thing is going to come down if they can't loot France at least. I can see the next big European war exploding out of a German communist revolution somewhere in 1941 or so between the Allies and the SU.
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Face it, the Balkans was already a mess even before Mussolini and Stalin started funding revolutionary movements for their own agendas. By the time Hitler got his hands into it, things were already reaching the boiling point, and he was shrewd, desperate, and ruthless enough to exploit the situation, playing the various factions off against each other as he did within Germany. That drove Italy, and eventually Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria into the Axis, and shattered Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.
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Sure. But before the invasion of Poland, that was the last aggressive act of the part of the Germans. You and I believe @Secret Master when he says after partitioning Czechslovakia he's not going to invade any other countries, but the Central European AIs shouldn't necessarily believe him. For Germany to put Romania in the Axis camp without defeating France might require years, maybe more than a decade, of rebuilding trust.
Actually Germany after 1933 was heading down the autarkic economic path that North Korea has gone down. Because German economic priorities after 1934 were on maximizing military re mobilization, their presence in international trade had not increased significantly. The allies had much better access to global markets and the resources of their colonies. By 1939 the only products the Germans had that the Romanians wanted to trade for oil were armaments. In particular the advanced fighters that Germany desperately needed to challenge the Allies.
To imagine that Germany would become peaceful and than someday become the economic leader of Europe is actually what happened. But that process would take decades and would require diplomatic compromise, trust and foreign investment, and a focus on exporting consumer goods. Therefore it's vanishingly unlikely to happen while Hitler is the leader of Germany.
Slovakia was a puppet state, not independent of Germany. So long as Germany dominated it's tiny Czech puppet, it wouldn't do much to reduce tensions. Demilitarizing immediately after partitioning would be a very risky move after alienating the Allies. It might an opportunity for the Soviet Union.
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We also have to take into consideration how not going into the winter war would affect soviet military doctrine. We know in real life they had a chance to begin a new design on their military strategy, but I believe this would be too difficult to model in game, unless you just nerf some of their combat stats for land units and have them return via events (slowly) after the Winter War.
Would a Secret Master lie to Romania?
You are quite right, though. I'm guessing Romania has no reason to trust anyone except France/Britain in the face of the destruction of Czechoslovakia.
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I'm sorry, I know this is off-topic, but you have no idea what you are talking about and you are incredibly misinformed on the topic. And if you think URSS was communism, you have to inform yourself better on what defines communism.
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Would be fun if Germany also went for aiding China instead of allying with Japan, although an alliance between Japan and Russia would be highly unlikely, they could form a non-aggressive pact (as IRL) and Japan could hit the allies in the back, by taking over Indochina, pacific islands, Burma?, India?, Australia?, New Zealand?
Most important question for me would be, does Germany still sign a NAP with Russia? or perhaps even the alliance (as was possible in HOI3), in the event of an alliance it's bye bye allies or total nuclear warfare.
Most important question for me would be, does Germany still sign a NAP with Russia? or perhaps even the alliance (as was possible in HOI3), in the event of an alliance it's bye bye allies or total nuclear warfare.
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