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Post by Devonian on Jan 18, 2015 22:17:39 GMT
As you all know in 1939 N@zi Germany and Soviet Russia entered into the very unpleasant people/Soviet pact and proceeded to partition Poland. Britain and France the declared war on Germany. But supposing the history of post WW1 Europe had been different. Suppose a Communist government had been set up in Germany and a Fascist government in Russia. Suppose this communist Germany and fascist Russia had made a pact in 1939 and then partitioned Poland along exactly the same line in actually was partitioned on in 1939. Which country, if any, would Britain and France have declared war on?
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Post by Richard Cromwell on Jan 18, 2015 23:09:32 GMT
We would have declared war on Communist Germany even earlier. Probably before Anschluss. I don't see a scenario in which the Monarchy loses Russia to Fascists though. This. The British interest was the defeat of Germany not the "scourge of fascism" or anything else. Germany as a country is just much more of a threat. And, yes, it's almost totally inconceivable that fascists could have won power in Russia. Sometimes when the liberal state attempts to mythologise its past we end up with some clear discrepancies and contradictions. If we fought the war to save Poland, then why didn't we attack the Soviet Union? In fact, if we fought the war to ensure Poland's independence then we failed quite spectacularly. The truth is, we needed an excuse to cut an aggressive competing nation down to size. So we gave an independence guarantee we had no intention of honouring in anything other than a nominal way to a backwards jingoistic military dictatorship.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jan 19, 2015 9:25:30 GMT
The British interest was the defeat of Germany not the "scourge of fascism" or anything else. Germany as a country is just much more of a threat. This
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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2015 11:01:31 GMT
Don't really buy this as a counterfactual. You need to set out how Russia becomes fascist, how this leads to Germany becoming communist and why they wait until 1939 to carve up Poland. Also what do they do before 1939? Presumably a communist Germany would have been more interested in "strategic interventions" than in annexing Austria and the Sudetenland etc.
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johnloony
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Post by johnloony on Jan 19, 2015 21:18:53 GMT
In real life, the German invasion of Poland was the last straw which broke the camel's back. The answer to the counterfactual question depends on what Communist Germany did before 1939.
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Post by mrhell on Jan 19, 2015 22:05:55 GMT
I could only see fascism occurring in Russia within an element of the White Russians and Kornilov not dying in 1918. Even then a White victory might be monarchical in nature.
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Jan 19, 2015 22:55:43 GMT
The British interest was the defeat of Germany not the "scourge of fascism" or anything else. Germany as a country is just much more of a threat. This It doesn't help that people generally (but rarely here- ok, one definite exception) have no idea what a fascist regime looks like, usually lumping in Spain and Hungary. If Britain wanted to take out fascism, we would have been fighting Italy and Austria long before Germany. And there would have been a case for throwing in Poland, ironically.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Jan 20, 2015 16:52:50 GMT
There are a couple of problems with a 'fascist Russia' counterfactual. Although there was a strong proto-fascist movement before 1914 (c.f. the Black Hundreds and related charmers) it could never have seized power as it supported Tsarism. By 1917 the problem is a little different; popular opinion in Russia was overwhelmingly in favour of some kind of socialism and the Right was discredited and demoralised. This leaves us with the civil war, and while it can be argued that there were fascist tendencies in some White armies (certainly Denikin's forces seemed more interested in murdering Jews than in defeating the Red Army), the Whites were an utter, utter shambles and I don't see how they could have held power for long even had they seized it.
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Post by Devonian on Jan 20, 2015 18:36:38 GMT
There are a couple of problems with a 'fascist Russia' counterfactual. Although there was a strong proto-fascist movement before 1914 (c.f. the Black Hundreds and related charmers) it could never have seized power as it supported Tsarism. By 1917 the problem is a little different; popular opinion in Russia was overwhelmingly in favour of some kind of socialism and the Right was discredited and demoralised. This leaves us with the civil war, and while it can be argued that there were fascist tendencies in some White armies (certainly Denikin's forces seemed more interested in murdering Jews than in defeating the Red Army), the Whites were an utter, utter shambles and I don't see how they could have held power for long even had they seized it. The point of suggesting the fascist Russia/ communist Germany was not to raise the question of how likely it would have been to arise in the first place, that's a separate issue, but what people think the UK's and France's reaction would have been if it had.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Jan 20, 2015 18:39:38 GMT
In which case how might the UK have reacted to a Green led Russia in the 1970s?
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Post by Devonian on Jan 20, 2015 18:47:23 GMT
We would have declared war on Communist Germany even earlier. Probably before Anschluss. I don't see a scenario in which the Monarchy loses Russia to Fascists though. This. The British interest was the defeat of Germany not the "scourge of fascism" or anything else. Germany as a country is just much more of a threat. I think this is absolutely right. WWII was fought for the same reasons as WWI, the Napoleonic wars, the Seven years war and the war of Spanish succession, to stop any one continental country becoming too dominant.
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Post by Devonian on Jan 20, 2015 18:58:09 GMT
In which case how might the UK have reacted to a Green led Russia in the 1970s? The counterfactual was not simply one about a fascist Russia but a fascist Russia that made a pact with a communist Germany and then partitioned Poland. In the case of Green led Russia if Green Russia had dominated a 'Green block' covering most of Eastern and Central Europe and the Balkans then I expect that the UK would have reacted in exactly he same way as it did to he actual Communist Russia of the 1970s.
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Post by Richard Cromwell on Jan 20, 2015 19:42:24 GMT
This. The British interest was the defeat of Germany not the "scourge of fascism" or anything else. Germany as a country is just much more of a threat. I think this is absolutely right. WWII was fought for the same reasons as WWI, the Napoleonic wars, the Seven years war and the war of Spanish succession, to stop any one continental country becoming too dominant. Indeed, it just happened to fit in with an ideological narrative after the fact as a fluke of history. For quite a while, however, the most vociferous opponent of Hitler's Germany was Fascist Italy (our ally); the two countries even came close to war. It's also reflected in the post-war treatment of Portugal compared to Spain. They were, more or less, the same in terms of ideological make-up but the former was, in a manner of speaking, a "neutral on our side".
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Jan 20, 2015 21:35:43 GMT
I think this is absolutely right. WWII was fought for the same reasons as WWI, the Napoleonic wars, the Seven years war and the war of Spanish succession, to stop any one continental country becoming too dominant. Indeed, it just happened to fit in with an ideological narrative after the fact as a fluke of history. For quite a while, however, the most vociferous opponent of Hitler's Germany was Fascist Italy (our ally); the two countries even came close to war. It's also reflected in the post-war treatment of Portugal compared to Spain. They were, more or less, the same in terms of ideological make-up but the former was, in a manner of speaking, a "neutral on our side". It also helped that Franco was a posturing, strutting Hispanic caudillo whilst Salazar was a quiet, unassuming, Catholic ascetic with a reputation for incorruptibility.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2015 22:24:47 GMT
What if Blum had armed the Spanish Republicans?
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neilm
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Post by neilm on Jan 21, 2015 2:12:27 GMT
They'd still have lost.
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Post by Tangent on Jan 21, 2015 22:54:08 GMT
As you all know in 1939 N@zi Germany and Soviet Russia entered into the very unpleasant people/Soviet pact and proceeded to partition Poland. Britain and France the declared war on Germany. But supposing the history of post WW1 Europe had been different. Suppose a Communist government had been set up in Germany and a Fascist government in Russia. Suppose this communist Germany and fascist Russia had made a pact in 1939 and then partitioned Poland along exactly the same line in actually was partitioned on in 1939. Which country, if any, would Britain and France have declared war on? The context would have been completely different. An authoritarian right-wing regime in Russia (let us say, for the sake of argument, that someone like Kornilov managed to defeat the Bolsheviks either at the moment of the October Revolution and soon afterwards) would not have been excluded from Europe in the same way as the USSR was, and would probably have maintained a greater continuity with Tsarism. My feeling is that such a Russia would have, after the first flush of victory, moved away from the Western Powers, and towards a Russo-German partnership, as the nearest that could be obtained to the old Holy Alliance. You would have had a Rapallo which was more than a marriage of convenience, at least before the German revolution. While France would have certainly been prepared to guarantee the new eastern nations against both Germany and Russia, Britain would be much less inclined to act, unless this Russia posed a threat to British interests in Asia or the Eastern Mediterranean - and, of course, this Russia would have probably asked for the Allied promise of Constantinople to be fulfilled. A Communist Germany would, I think, have been weaker and more unstable than Nazi Germany, and would be more vulnerable to Anglo-French threats.
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Jan 21, 2015 22:57:05 GMT
A post-Tsarist Russia, vaguely pro-monarchy, leading an Orthodox bloc. Now that would have been interesting.
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Post by Tangent on Jan 21, 2015 23:22:25 GMT
Indeed. And, as a complication, the dislike of any accommodation with Russia on the part of Western progressives (and influential Americans) that could be seen during and immediately before the war would probably be intensified.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Jan 22, 2015 0:26:59 GMT
But could a White government have held power for long? They would still have clashed with the peasantry (over attempting to roll back the revolution in the countryside rather than over grain requisitions) and would still have had trouble with the Near Abroad. And mostly they were idiots and not really a unified force...
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