The winner of POTF 22 was Lord Oda Nobunaga, earning 1 competition point and 5 rep points. Well done!


Winning Post
How plausible was a Nazi-Commintern Allaicen?

It was actually a lot more plausible than people seem to think. For starters Germany had been drawn closer to the Soviets due to the Versailles Treaty and the Russian Civil War. Both were seen as rogue states by the Western Powers/League of Nations. The key geopolitical issue was the question of Poland, as an example. There was also quite a bit of German-Soviet cooperation after WW1 which lasted even into Hitler's earlier terms of office. A German-Soviet alliance was favored by the Foreign Office and the Wehrmacht. So the Conservative elements in Germany were openly calling for an alliance with Stalin. Anything from exchange of officers, material support, weapons, doctrines, were ongoing even after Hitler took power.


It is not really accurate to say that because the Nazis took power using middle class shop owners and upper class magnates that this necessarily determined whether there could be a Soviet-German relationship. After all their opposition to Communism was first and foremost internal and so long as Stalin did not violate that they were not opposed to an alliance of pragmatism. Keep in mind that after the Battle of Warsaw the Soviets were seen as being exceedingly weak and impotent. Regardless of whether the Red Army was a joke, everyone in Europe regarded it as such. For example during the 1930's the OKH claimed that it could fend off a Soviet invasion with only half as many divisions as that which the Soviets would field. As a reference that would be about 30 to 50 German Divisions, which is frankly an absurd claim on their part. But the point is Stalin was not expected to be able to overrun Poland or threaten Europe any time soon. Which made an alliance of convenience between Germany and the Soviet Union quite plausible at that time as well.


The other part which no one takes into account in these discussions is the radical element within Nazism. The most notable being Ernst Roehm but which also included Goebbels and the Strasser brothers. These individuals and their vast columns of support had all advocated a formal alliance with the Soviet Union in order to defeat France and Poland. Indeed the idea of Germany being a natural Russian ally goes back to Bismarck (Three Emperors League) and Kaiser Wilhelm II (Russo-Japanese War as an example). This didn't really change at all under the Weimar Republic. But in the case of Roehm, Goebbels and the Strasserites, this was largely due to their radical position that the USSR and Bolshevism were the correct response to Capitalism and undoing the European status quo which had been imposed by France and Britain. They also saw a national revolution (as Stalin had claimed that he was only interested in revolution in Russia) as a good way of purging the Wehrmacht and German society of Liberalism and Monarchism/Conservatism. This may well have led Germany down the path of Civil War, if it were attempted, but either way it ended abruptly when Hitler purged the SA (including many of the Strasserites and many other potential factions within the NSDAP).


So what was the key issue? When Hitler took power in 1933 he immediately changed course. He made a non-aggression pact with Poland, which he intended eventually to form an alliance with Poland. This ran contrary to the desires of the Conservatives who controlled the Foreign Office and the Wehrmacht. To be fair much of the populace was also very strongly anti-Polish. Hitler's key position was that the threat posed by Bolshevism was the top priority, and it made more sense to reclaim the Brest-Litovsk boundaries than to pursue a pointless war against France and Britain, which he believed saw the USSR as a primary threat anyway. To this end he signed the British Naval Treaty and concluded pacts with France and Poland, as well as making alliances with Italy and Japan, aimed first and foremost to waging war against the Soviet Union by the year 1938. All three states hoped that this alliance would expand to include Poland, Hungary and Romania. With France and Britain basically giving them free reign, ideologically at least it made sense since the British and French regimes at the time were wary of Communist expansion (although for France it was really more an internal issue about radicals I guess).


In addition to this Hitler also opened up to the Western Powers, this was interpreted by the Soviets as his having become a puppet of the West. While not really true that Hitler was controlled, it is a fact that Chamberlain hoped to use Nazi Germany as part of a greater chess piece in his game against the Soviet Union. It was largely due to Conservative/Tory ideological reasons that Britain resisted so long to collaborate with the USSR (as seen in 1938 and 1939). This refusal was in large part what led to the Molotov-Ribbentrop and a huge strategic victory for Stalin (in which he gobbled up the Baltic, Poland, Bessarabia, and pretty much made Hitler his satrap with barely a shot being fired). It is therefore ironic that Hitler removed Neurath in favor of Ribbentrop (and many others, as he removed internal threats, the SA et all, and external threats, Conservatives/Monarchists), in order to steer the Foreign Office away from talks of Soviet alliance and invasion of Poland, only to have Ribbentrop negotiate that very pact.


I suppose the alternative was simply to wait for the USSR to collapse. This was something that many Conservatives and Liberals were claiming would happen as they did not believe the Soviet Union to be economically viable. This sentiment was also influenced by the "White Emigrés" which had fled the USSR. Surely if there were so many famines then the Soviet Regime would be overthrown. This went hand in hand with the claims that the Red Army had been completely degraded after 1920, after all their only state opponents in Poland defeated them, and most of their enemies had been mutineers, anarchist farmers and the hollowed out remains of the White Army. It is very much the case that the Soviet Union was seen as being very weak, while various state actors across the world regarded them as a geopolitical threat, but a very impotent one (it was more the threat of Revolution). However the results of the Spanish Civil War did not appear to convince anyone that this was not the case. Hitler and the Nazis were somewhat of a Black Sheep in calling for the USSR to be considered a priority. As other than Germany the USSR had very few serious rivals with the other one being the British Empire, and this ultimately boils down to the Great Game, the Tory/Chamberlain position, and then the Cold War.


Still the possibility of a Soviet-German rapprochement during the war is seldom considered, even though it was still possible. It was clear that in 1939 and 1940 Hitler's policy of Western appeasement had collapsed (and that is to say also German attempts to appease the West). Not even the victory in 1940 was enough to bring Britain to the negotiating table, even the defeated France was apprehensive about German alliance (the French didn't even make peace technically). Britain was then cast as the main enemy with the inevitability of American intervention. The British naval blockade strangled continental Europe and made it inevitable for the Germans to lose a war that turned out longer than they bargained for. As an aside this is really why it made no sense for the Germans to wait, since they had been ahead in their rearmament program by 1939 and had a cutting advantage over Poland. Where as Britain and France were still mobilizing even into 1940.


Obviously, the Soviet Union had no chance that it wouldcollapse, as we know it lasted until 1991. Although this possibility was still entertained by the German staff, military intelligence did not seem able to discover the real strength of the Red Army and its ability to mobilize huge armies. Hence we have the rotten house of cards quote. But even before Barbarossa and after, the Germans were willing to formalize their alliance with the USSR. The problem in the former case is that Hitler would just be acting as a sort of satrap for Stalin. Stalin's conduct during that time made the Soviets appear untrustworthy, for instance he put the Germans on the spot multiple times and renegotiated the Molotov-Ribbentrop to give the USSR more concessions. Every time the offers became more absurd with Stalin asking for more territory. This together with German dependency on Soviet oil and materials, as well as the threat of being caught on the receiving end of a Soviet invasion, made Barbarossa all the more likely. But in spite of that the Germans and Soviets still negotiated secretly from 1941 until 1943, though neither was willing to concede any territory, a key part of these negotiations involved Stalin joining the Axis and abiding by certain conditions. However this was not to the liking of Germany's other allies who had also signed the anti-Comintern Pact and so for all these reasons the decision made in 1939 was reversed back to Hitler's anti-Soviet policies of the 1930's.


Although it seems that as the war went on it was less to do with ideological differences rather than geopolitical differences. One thing that doesn't seem to be explored what so ever, is the evolution of the ideological concerns between Germany and the Soviets. Key factors in understanding this would have to be Hitler and Stalin's respective stances towards the West, as well as the pro-Soviet stances within the Nazi party. For instance what was Stalin's reaction and ideological justification to the Night of the Long Knives and that whole purge? Here we have Hitler purging quasi-Bolshevists who wanted an alliance with the USSR. Seeing this how did Stalin deal with it ideologically and why would he think that the Germans would not invade the USSR? The only other explanation is that Stalin didn't care because he always saw it as sheer pragmatism and probably was planning to go to war against Germany eventually. He certainly was willing to in 1938, in alliance with the Czechs, French and British, and made overtures to Poland, Britain and France in 1939, all of which were rejected.



Runner-up this week is sumskilz. See you next time!


Runner Up Post
USA Democratic party 2020 candidates and primaries thread
I noticed they sold 18% of the state owned Danish Oil and Natural Gas company to Goldman Sachs.