AHC: Neutral, United Germany in the Cold War

On March 10th, 1952 Stalin passed on a note to the other Allied powers in Germany proposing a united, neutral, and demilitarized Germany with no preconditions on economic policy and guaranteed democratic freedoms and participation. Some historians have argued this might not have been a bluff, as the US assumed, as it would have guaranteed Soviet security. A demilitarized Germany wasn't going to repeat the Great Patriotic War and guaranteed neutrality, even if it ended up being a western capitalist democracy, would give a huge buffer zone along with neutral Austria and Tito between the Eastern Bloc, the USSR, and the West. In effect Germany, if we assume the proposal was genuine, would have been another Finland.

What PoD is necessary, after 1945, to have the West receive this proposal favorably and how will the Cold War unfold without the intense military buildup of both sides along the Fulda Gap for the Third World War? Could it be possible for some kind of lasting detente to be reached after Stalin's death?
 
On February 22, 1946, George Kennan sent his telegram outlining the case for containment and stating that peaceful co-existence was unlikely. Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech a few weeks later. Getting rid of these events is fairly important. But practically speaking you need to butterfly the attitudes and perceptions that produced thes sentiments. They werent produced in a vacuum.
 
That Stalin did not expect or want the March 1952 note to be accepted--but simply meant it as a propaganda tool--is strongly argued in John Lewis Gaddis *We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History* (Oxford UP 1997) where he notes that "Soviet diplomat Vladimir Semyonov recalled Stalin asking: Is it *certain* the Americans would turn the note down? Only when assured that it was did the Soviet leader give his approval, but with the warning that there would be grave consequences for Semyonov if this did not prove to be the case." p. 127

If there was a chance for a unified Germany, it was more likely during the "Malenkov-Beria interregnum" of March-June 1953. See my post "'Germany Will Be A Bourgeois-Democratic Republic'--Malenkov" at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Z-eAjLyqJZg/XRJrrtbDsUwJ
 
Heh. What if the West accepted Stalin's note, called his bluff.

He'd find it hard to back down... I imagine that he'd put so many obstacles in the way that it wouldn't happen, but...


We have discussed this before, and my usual response is: with a neutral blok from Finland and Sweden through Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia, the Warsaw Pact and NATO have no shared boundaries. (OK, there's about 10 miles of boundary between Norway and the USSR, but no one's going to field a tank invasion there.)

Both sides iOTL were paranoid about the OTHER guy attacking. With a large 'speed bump' in the middle, tensions could be a lot lower, and the Cold War could thaw quite a bit.

It might, indeed, be a very different, and better world.

Of course, Germany united earlier, and with no military commitments could end up being even more of an economic powerhouse than iOTL.
 
Heh. What if the West accepted Stalin's note, called his bluff.

He'd find it hard to back down... I imagine that he'd put so many obstacles in the way that it wouldn't happen, but...


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The Problem is you can´t call the bluff in a couple of days. If you start to negationate about Stalins offer, you have to set the whoe EDC-project on hiatus and its not sure if it can be restartet.
 
The Soviets would have a hard time letting East Germany go to the west. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the rest of the communist bloc would fold overnight. In 1945, perhaps. But not after 1950ish.

Also just want to point out the Soviets crushed an East German revolt in 1953.
 
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