MarkF617 wrote: ↑22 Jul 2021 22:19
War with Germany is always on the cards.
No, it wasn't inevitable. Hitler alone made that war happen. Had Hitler not attacked Stalin there is no credible evidence to suggest that Stalin was in any rush to attack Germany. Had Barbarossa not occurred there is no reason to suppose that the British would get their eastern front. In this AH Germany has undertaken a different outcome to the war with France than historical. It resembles more Napoleon's war with Austria in 1805. A Germany which treats France equally in defeat is a Germany that is pursuing a radically different grand strategy than the one Hitler pursued in the real war.
Stalin was well aware of the contents of Mein Kampf the Soviets were preparing to fight Germany.
If Stalin thought any such thing then he'd never have signed a non-aggression pact prior to the German invasion of Poland, would have never attacked Finland later that year, and would have invaded Germany in May 1940 with 200 divisions. He also would not have gone into shock for a month after the German invasion. No, Mark, to me the evidence suggests that Stalin thought that he would partner with Hitler and overthrow the Imperialist world order. It was Hitler,
and Hitler alone, that prevented that from happening.
I never said it was inevitable the Soviets attack but it is more likely than them abandoning their traditional goals to go gallivanting off to India, China and Korea.
Soviet post-WW2 foreign policy basics contradict this assertion. Communist China and Korea were fundamental Soviet policy goals, as was overthrowing the colonial empires and supplanting them with communist regimes. An alliance with India was a Soviet foreign policy triumph that has lasted to this very day after the Treaty of Friendship of 1971. The idea that Stalin with an intact Soviet Union and the strongest army on Earth was going to pander to a weak and fading British presence in these locations seems highly unlikely to me.
As I said earlier there is realistically no scenario where Germany doesn't attack the Soviet Union as they only have a small window of opertunity where they thought they had a chance to win (they were wrong they had no chance).
The evidence suggests that Hitler was at least contemplating not attacking the Soviet Union in 1941, right up until the disasterous Molotov visit of November 1940. In terms of the theory that Hitler believed he had a small window to attack Stalin, I think you will find that this relates to Hitler's calculations of Anglo-American intentions in 1942, not Hitler's assessment of the purely German-Soviet balance of power. (That is to say, Hitler in 1941 believed he could beat the Soviets in 1941, 1951 or 1961 if it were just Germany vs. the SU and nothing else). If there are Hitler quotes that state otherwise, I'm not aware of them and would be interested to see you post them.
Britain's hope of winning lay with the USA and/or the USSR Getmany's only hope was to remove these threats thus since the USA was untouchable the USSR had to be removed. This was Germany's only hope, the hope that the British would throw in the towel as they could not defeat Britain.
All this is of course irrelevant ad thete is no chance what so ever of the Germans not occupying France. It took 2 World Wars to acheive this they were not going to let the French off.
The AH is that Germany has not occupied France. If you can contribute to that scenario, please feel free to do so. If your purpose is simply to pollute the thread with arguments why the thread should not exist, then please feel free to withdraw on the basis of the fact that such posts contribute nothing to the premise.
