I very largely agree with this post, just a few points...
..Sadly the Russo-Finnish War will probably go forward, although if Germany is not seen as as much of potential threat, the French/British may help Finland more, and potentially in concert with a "right wing" Germany.
I don't know why you think Stalin will attack Finland. And if he were going to do that, why not also Estonia?
Clearly the Soviets had some motive to wish to rectify their borders, and also Finland along with all the Baltics were in living memory once part of imperial Russia--as was a big part of Poland! They had reason to fear all the states on their European borders, generally not so much out of fear of their own capabilities which against the vast Red Army were puny, but as staging areas of Western backed aggression. Ideology says the Revolution will embrace the world, but by 1939 or 40 it is coming up a quarter century since the Russian spark that "should" have signaled global collapse of capitalism. Ideologically speaking it would be past time to get a move on. (There is an ideological reply to that though, which is that the Revolution should be the work of each nation's own proletarians; clearly Marx did not suggest that some Communist superpower should arise that then conquers the rest of the globe a la Genghis Khan!)
It seems you are suggesting all of these motives must come to a head and result in some degree of action, somewhere, and Finland is IT! I say no, the Winter War was part of the general genie of WWII European Theater let out of the bottle by Hitler, and the Soviets dared to attack because along with the Baltics and the Soviet "share" of Poland, Finland was in the sphere of influence the Germans conceded to the USSR. With the Nazi sphere of influence preoccupying the Western Allies and interposed between them and the eastern Baltic, Swedish neutrality concentrating any possible routes for relief of Finland all the closer to German shores, the Russians were sheltered from consequences vis a vis the larger world, had Germany's promise they could do as they liked there, and Stalin must have considered that the Germans would make the most of their sphere of influence and for the Soviets to fail to do that with theirs would leave them vulnerable.
Take away Hitler and the Berlin-Moscow pact, and even if the ATL Germany does retain the OTL clandestine arrangement of the Soviets allowing them to develop military kit and tactics on Soviet soil in return for the right to observe and learn, this tenuous relationship would hardly be enough for Stalin to count on the Germans holding Britain and France at bay while Stalin starts expanding Soviet power. Actually the major benefit to the Germans in the Weimar-era pact days was that they could not get away with basic R&D and drilling under the eyes of Versailles enforcers in Germany and the Soviets having a chance to piggyback on their developmental work was an unfortunate cost, and rather than go on paying it, relations with Russia would surely worsen once the Germans could do as they liked in Germany itself. The new German regime might be tempted into an alliance of convenience with the Soviet Union, particularly if the Western European economies, shellshocked by the Depression, prove to have no interest in free trade with German produced goods and the poorer eastern and Southern European markets are both inherently slim pickings in terms of opportunities and also jealously steered away from German ties by rival interests--the liberal Allies and Italy alike preferring to monopolize these markets, or anyway having a tacit shared interest in avoiding another competitor, Germany might find it in their rational interest to take on the USSR as a trade partner. The USSR had abundant resources and a crying need for expert high tech foreign advice on upgrading their methods to the latest state of the art as well as importing high quality industrial goods.
But none of that opens the doors for Stalin to set foot in any of the nations the USSR bordered, however puny, unless in contradiction to the OP, world war does break out with a solid and serious and permanent German-Soviet alliance on one side. I think German bigotry can be overcome to the extent of an honest trade deal but I don't think Stalin can partner with German right wing strong men in a proper military alliance--anyway exploring that possibility is another ATL. Here we assume they don't go that far, whether because they are more reasonable and peaceful than the Nazis or because in their petty bigotry and envy of Russian controlled resources they telegraph by their grimaces to Stalin that he cannot trust them as military allies.
Perhaps you know detailed information about the outbreak of war between the Soviets and Finns that explains why you think that despite the general situation lacking the special circumstances of OTL the Russians will attack anyway, but it seems to me in my possible ignorance of other special circumstances that Finland would be covered as all border nations; Stalin as Great Procrastinator would in theory and in intention look to real hot war someday, and someday pretty soon, but in practice always draw back from daring action just this year, not just out of fear of Western power to retaliate but also from considerations of internal control, notably fear that a successful Red Army conquering general could take over in a Napoleonic coup.
If there is something special and different about Finland in particular, please expound on it a little more, so we can judge how well these conditions would evolve in parallel in a TL with no Hitler and a less aggressive German nation. Perhaps the Winter War would happen indeed, and perhaps even though the British and French would have better options to assist the Finns, they don't for some reason or other--presumably the Finns still are able to do well as OTL, because I certainly don't see the Finns having any reason to be in a much different situation.
I do think that absent a Hitler-Stalin Pact, not only the western League powers but Germany too are available to send aid, if not in the form of a massive wartime alliance that turns into an anti-Soviet crusade seizing Karellia and then turning into an epic struggle in the heart of northern Russia (that too would violate the OP) at least a la the Spanish Civil War of OTL loads of volunteers to reinforce and supply Finland.
And Stalin, being perfectly well able to foresee such unfortunate consequences as serious and troubling possibilities if not certainties, will follow his general practice of caution and refrain. No Winter War! Or if there is one it needs to be for special reasons unknown to me.
While you won't have the worst of the Nazi racial issues ITTL, the reality was that much of Central and Eastern Europe was making life unpleasant for the Jews without any help from the Nazis. While in Germany proper, the rise of the Nazis led to Jews leaving (or trying to), the rise of legal antisemitism with restrictions on professions, university admissions, civil service etc was leading to an exodus of Jews (note that many Jewish scientists who arrived in the USA were from Hungary, Italy, etc). However due to the immigration restrictions in most places, 1945 will still see large Jewish populations in many countries where almost none are today. You can bet money that the British will not be letting more Jews in to Palestine or allowing a state of Israel to exist.
OTL British policy was not friendly to Zionism in this period; only briefly and rhetorically with the Balflour Declaration which was very quickly regretted decades before; otherwise Britain sought to preserve status quo and found the Zionists becoming major headaches. But nevertheless substantial numbers of Jewish settlers kept infiltrating and establishing their own militias and displacing Palestinians generally. I can't see that changing much one way or the other. Indeed there is not going to be a consensus among the leading world powers that the Jews ought to be compensated with their own nation in guilt and shame after a great war that here is not happening; there will be no UN to declare Israel.
There is a League of Nations though and I believe Britain holds Palestine via a League mandate. If the League survives, as I would expect it to become an Anglo-French rubber stamp in effect but still also a forum for other interests, and policy must be justified by some high flown rhetoric that seems less sordid than established power realpolitik, the issue of Palestine is going to be a hot potato indeed. I can't see the League going so far as to demand the expulsion of the Jewish settlers--perhaps over time a strong regional Arab power will develop that takes Palestine and does that dirty deed, perhaps in a truly atrocious way that cares little for the survival of the settlers on any terms anywhere. Or perhaps some sort of two state federal solution is worked out. It helps with the latter if Jewish immigration to Palestine is indeed on a much smaller scale.
Indeed I agree you are right that Eastern Europe is going to be quite different than the ethnically cleansed setup we know of OTL. But indeed some of the people who either were exterminated or displaced permanently OTL will emigrate more or less voluntarily, as voluntary as seeking a better life because of persecution at home ever is anyway. Most of these will be Jewish. Where will they go though?
The USA will take some but very few; we had severe quotas. Britain might wind up taking a surprising number, and I suspect even more will settle in France! At any rate, when France has left wing governments. As mentioned the Zionist "solution" will be much promoted. Just possibly, faced with the alternative of accepting a lot of ragtag Jewish refugees from Poland (mostly, and Eastern Europe generally) British policy might have a change of heart and take on the ugly task of making room in Palestine and reviving the brief Balflour policy, perhaps with some quid pro quo that Jewish Palestine eventually renamed Israel shall be a Commonwealth Dominion--perhaps even going so far as to annex Sinai to it with bounds far west enough to annex the Suez Canal. Assuming something like that does not happen, Palestine remains a place displaced Jews will want to go and that the Zionist movement encourages them to try to go to, but alas for them immigration there is restricted and perhaps the terms of an eventual federal partition (maybe again as a permanent British Dominion that annexes Suez!) demand immigration restrictions continue.
Interestingly the Soviet Union is yet another possible destination; Stalin might find it expedient to dissemble his personal anti-Semitism and put out plausibly that the USSR welcomes both skilled and proletarian Jews; the artificial Jewish homeland established briefly by Soviet policy in the far east might become a permanent thing. In addition to the possibility of simple immigration, I would guess a lot of Jews in Eastern Europe will become Communists or Red sympathizers--I am not sure just what percentage I ought to mean by "a lot," but the more oppressive the situation the more radical they are likely to become--not all of them going Communist to be sure, others will become Zionists or try to form some radical alliance with other minorities or even the poorer members of the dominant ethnicity that steers clear of Third International entanglements. Government reaction cracking down on these subversives will send them fleeing as hunted refugees doubly unwelcome in the West--quite a few of the forthrightly Communist ones will make their way to Russia and comradely asylum there.
You know where I think the balance and majority of displaced Eastern European Jews, and possibly Romany and others will wind up settling though?
Germany, that's where! And while the various flavors of anti-semitism that Hitler organized, united and whipped up to a frenzy will oppose this, they will be somewhat weaker and there will be regions, such as say the Big Smoke of Red Berlin, where they will be welcomed warmly enough, or anyway tolerated.
Over time if the German state falls back into liberal-progressive or even social-democratic hands, Germany might take moral leadership in seeking to promote more tolerance and acceptance in Eastern Europe, the Mitteleuropa they will tend to dominate economically and increasingly diplomatically anyway, in part due to a greater acceptance of Yiddish Jewry as connected to or part of the German identity, and in part as a sop to remaining anti-Semitic sentiment along the lines of "if we can persuade the eastern Europeans to accept them as we can and must, they can stop leaving their ancient homes
and they will stop coming here! What else can we do, kill them all or something? Surely not! We are civilized Germans, not barbarians like those creepy Russians!"
...Missiles are going to be lag way behind, absent WWII Germany is not going to be putting the money in to the V-2 program, and also costs will be higher as no "free" slave labor.....
We should never forget that slave labor--extra nasty in form, in that the slaves were not even fed--did enable the mass production of one of the world's highest tech weapon systems of its age.
That for people who smugly assume slavery and high tech are totally incompatible and slavery was some irrational mistake rather than a highly profitable mode of production in the right circumstances.
But the development of the V-2 at Peenemuendee was not dependent on slave labor; that was the construction of them at "Camp Dora" complex after the British bombed the original development site.
I am not nearly as sure of this as you are--frankly I think it is wrong. Perhaps it is fair to say they won't develop a lot faster--they could, if the regime made a big enough priority, but assuming war does not actually loom closely on the horizon there is little reason to do that. One reason might be if they observe they do have the bomb, or are about to have it with great confidence and they realize they have no delivery system worthy of the name, that any aircraft bombers they have essentially require a suicide mission, that assuming that the V-1 is also developed that even an upgraded Buzz Bomb is going to be too vulnerable to enemy countermeasures to reliably deliver the preciously rare and expensive A-bombs. Attention will turn toward ballistic missile delivery. Note this does not have to immediately mean true ICBMs! Indeed Europe is on such a Lilliputian scale compared to the truly global reach distances contemplated in a US/Soviet confrontation that if the Germans were not much worried about war with Russia or China or America but mainly thinking of Britain, France or Italy we are talking IRBMs with ranges measured in hundreds rather than thousands of miles. (Realistically I don't see development stopping until true global ranges are achieved though). In the short run, Germany does not require a missile that can be launched from the Harz mountains and reach London; what they need first of all is one that can be launched and thrown just far enough that the launch team is not included in the death zone! They need something more like a Redstone than an Atlas then. Then they can think about putting one on a U-boat and coming in close to London, or setting up a mobile launch site just dozens of kilometers from Paris (they got real close in the Great War after all).
OTL, the German Army started funding and recruiting von Braun's group (anyway it became vB's at this point) because due to a lack of imagination rockets were not restricted by the Versailles treaty. If Entente enforcers happened to notice that the Weimar government was funding rocket research and even openly admitting it was for military purposes, tough titty, they would have no legal grounds to forbid it. Therefore the Army looked into them more seriously than other more conservative militaries--note that the Soviet Union too was promoting rocket R&D, being more visionary in this respect than most as befits a bunch of Red revolutionaries!
Now we do assume that at some point the authoritarian German regime tears up the Versailles Treaty; at that point there is no longer a special reason to divert funding into rocketry. But by the time that point had been reached OTL, the Army had been seeing some promising results and of course a small military bureaucracy committed to this mode of development had evolved that defended ongoing funding. The case was convincing enough to keep it going and I would think that vB would progress at the same rate as OTL, demonstrating what is essentially a V-2 at essentially the same time as OTL. As such, the V-2 is not already a cost-effective weapons system of course, and an Army that is not engaged in an existential struggle under a lunatic dictator would soberly see that. But right about the same time, assuming that the Germans do start the first A-Bomb project, enough progress on that front should solidify the impression that sooner or later, within 3 years or 7 or at the most 10, Germany would have atomic bombs, and they would need a special delivery system. If it had been possible for first generation A-bombs to be made as light as the V-2 warload, then if by some ASB means Hitler had both in say 1944, then the V-2 would have been a perfectly suitable system to bomb say London, or alternatively pin down the Allies invading through coastal ports, with really big blasts. "Perfectly" suited might be an exaggeration since the targeting was pretty spotty, though the blast range of even a small A-bomb would tend to compensate for that, but improvements in the form of separating warhead from the spent rocket would improve accuracy. The point being that the V-2 already had the range, what it lacked was throw-weight. Which is to say what the German A-bomb would need would be a bigger V-2. It would take time to develop this of course, time von Braun was not given in the Reich OTL due to the Allies bombing out his base and forcing him to concentrate on mass production of V-2s with slave labor underground. But there is no war here, no one is going to bomb Peenemuende, and the funds from the Army ought to continue with the full backing of the General Staff. So, I don't doubt a bigger V-2--which by the way is essentially what Redstone was OTL--could be well in hand by 1950.
By the time the German rocket teams had that much success under their belts, I don't see why the German army would ever drop them; other rocket uses would ramify, for JATO, for field artillery, anti-tank weapons, all sorts of stuff. Going beyond the minimum necessary rocket to lob an A bomb far enough not to kill the Germans who launched it, to something with more depth like Redstone, to something that could indeed hit a distant European capital from the heart of Germany, to something that could do that to Russia, then China and the USA, to true ICBMs, would be an obvious sequence and why should Germany not develop it?
They can also claim they are developing rockets for peaceful space exploration; von Braun claimed that was really what he was always about and some of his Army patrons sympathized too. Space launch will not be a national priority but it will get some support, especially as a pallative diplomatic cover for ongoing weapons development.
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WI as I suggest, the League powers approach Germany in the middle-late 30s, around 1937 or so, with a deal in hand, proposing to better integrate recovering Germany into the peaceful European picture, Locarno II if you will, and undertake some consolidation and cooperation of weapons programs with a watchful and nervous eye to the east cast at the USSR--OTL they were in the League IIRC by this point, but they might not be ATL, or be expelled as part of this deal with Germany. The Germans might be asked to drop the rocket program, but the point of this notion of mine is that British and French military are starting to worry seriously about Soviet power as well as wishing to defuse a Great War rematch in which they could not be confident Russia would play her part in the historic war again. With a very jaundinced eye turned east, I think the Germans might rather be encouraged to double down, with of course the Western allies putting in some aid of their own and the hardware to emerge being shared by all the great powers under League of Nations auspices, and reserved for continental defense in a NATO-like alliance.
Both the Bomb and the missiles to carry them might well be much accelerated! I've explained why I agree with you that the bomb project actually cannot be very rushed, and major stockpiles before 1950 are probably ASB. But a rocket ready to deliver all of them would not be. At least not one with ranges of 500-1000 miles!
