Would a Central Powers Victory be Dystopian?

[Tibi088]

I've seen the topic of "what would happen in the Pacific/East Asia?" crop up on this thread a couple times, with the consensus being "Japan would still go militarist-haywire and set out to form the GEACPS by force" regardless of the circumstances.... but here's a thought....

View attachment 851578

(No idea why it downloaded "greyed-out" like that...)

Now, the "old guard" of the German Foreign Ministry was inclined toward improving relations with China, and mistrusting the Japanese... this continued even under the Weimar Republic (Hans von Seeckt was sort of an unlikeable bastard, I know, but he was favourable toward China), and into the early years of Nazi rule... Note the Stahlhelm the Chinese officer is wearing. It wasn't until Ribbentrop that German policy shifted toward Japan, and away from China.

With a CP victory in WWI, and presumably no Nazis, there would've been no Ribbentrop (a wine merchant with poor grammar and worse writing ) anywhere near the Foreign Service... IF close Sino-German relations continued apace, and the Chinese military had been able to deliver a good come-uppance to the Japanese when they came a-knocking, where would they turn if they were still, at that point, dreaming of a great Pacific Empire? The DEI? Not likely, if the Netherlands are part of the "Germano-sphere" (and likely they would be)... Siberia? I suppose that depends upon whatever the hell happened in Russia.... Indochina? Possible, but again likely part of the Germanosphere, whether willingly or not. Hemmed in from conquest, and perhaps beaten badly early on rather than rolling 6's in the early 1940's, the militarist faction in Japan may have fallen out of favour in a hurry. Likely the "alliance system" would turn out quite differently in this scenario.

I would alo point out that in a CP victory scenario a WWII or an analogue in Europe is unlikely.

Even if the british and the french are somewhat weaker after a WWI loss than they were OTL (though unlike in the CP's case their loss is more likely to be a purely military one and not also a collapse of the homefront which IMO has much worse effects on society) they would not be bogged down in a WWII in Europe. So if Japan decided to try anything it would have to count on much more ability to resist both fromthe french and the british - which is very different compared to what happened OTL. Would they even dare to attack them in such a scenario?

 

[Sacer Bubonicus]

True. People tend to forgot that Germany was already at path of liberalisation and there was already pretty strong SPD which couldn't be ignored.

Of course, the right is just going to curl up and die off...

Conservative Revolution - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

the German Conservative Revolution can be defined by its disapproval of:
[...]
+ the class analysis of socialism; with the defence of an anti-Marxist "socialist revisionism";[23] labelled by Oswald Spengler the "socialism of the blood", it drew inspiration from the front line comradeship of World War I.[15]

Conservative Revolutionaries argued that their nationalism was fundamentally different from the precedent forms of German nationalism or conservatism.[26] They condemned the reactionary outlook of traditional Wilhelmine conservatives and their failure to fully understand the emerging concepts of the modern world, such as technology, the city and the proletariat.[62]

Many of the intellectuals involved in the movement were born in the last decades of the nineteenth century and experienced WWI as a formative event (Kriegserlebnis, "war experience") for the foundation of their political beliefs.[32] The life on the front line, with its violence and irrationality, caused most of them to search a posteriori for a meaning to what they had to endure during the conflict.[33] Ernst Jünger is the major figure of that branch of the Conservative Revolution which wanted to uphold military structures and values in peacetime society, and saw in the community of front line comradeship (Frontgemeinschaft) the true nature of German socialism.[34]

Prior to the rise of the Nazi Party, the foremost example of this ideology in German politics was the DNVP, which managed 15-20% of the vote in Weimar elections. And remember what I explained about Imperial German elections: as long as the Kaiser and Kanzler want to keep the SDP out of effective power, they can just select someone from a rightwing party to be the Präsident des Reichstags. From that point on, they just need to keep a majority coalition of non-SDP parties to not only keep them out of power, but push through their own agenda without SDP interference as well.

Actually, the Weimar system was basically just a slightly edited version of the Imperial German system. It just had the Chancellor and President be directly accountable to the Reichstag instead of a non-existent Kaiser, so there was no way for anyone to override the democratic will of the Reichstag. Contrast this to the Imperial German system, which was specifically designed to make it so that the Kaiser could override or block the majority party in the Reichstag if it didn't align with his views.

 

[Clandango]

Tell me, what do we think about Poland? I know that people like to limit it to Congress Poland, minus the Polish Border Strip, but that always seemed a bit impractical, given the populations of Poles to the east, as well as those who would be evicted from Germany. Would we see Poland expanding into some of the modern Ukrainian and Belarusian territory, especially as those hadn’t really solidified as states or full ethnicities at that point? Or at least I don’t believe they did, as Belarus was given back to Russia in the peace treaty, and half of Ukraine came from Austria.

 

[Lalli]

Tell me, what do we think about Poland? I know that people like to limit it to Congress Poland, minus the Polish Border Strip, but that always seemed a bit impractical, given the populations of Poles to the east, as well as those who would be evicted from Germany. Would we see Poland expanding into some of the modern Ukrainian and Belarusian territory, especially as those hadn’t really solidified as states or full ethnicities at that point? Or at least I don’t believe they did, as Belarus was given back to Russia in the peace treaty, and half of Ukraine came from Austria.

Giving Polish border strip away seems indeed pretty impractical and not useful for anyone. I don't think Poland being bigger altough if A-H dissolves Poland might get Polish speaking areas of Galicia. Germany hardly wants promote much bigger Poland since it might get wrong ideas.

 

[Tibi088]

Of course, the right is just going to curl up and die off...

Conservative Revolution - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Prior to the rise of the Nazi Party, the foremost example of this ideology in German politics was the DNVP, which managed 15-20% of the vote in Weimar elections. And remember what I explained about Imperial German elections: as long as the Kaiser and Kanzler want to keep the SDP out of effective power, they can just select someone from a rightwing party to be the Präsident des Reichstags. From that point on, they just need to keep a majority coalition of non-SDP parties to not only keep them out of power, but push through their own agenda without SDP interference as well.

Actually, the Weimar system was basically just a slightly edited version of the Imperial German system. It just had the Chancellor and President be directly accountable to the Reichstag instead of a non-existent Kaiser, so there was no way for anyone to override the democratic will of the Reichstag. Contrast this to the Imperial German system, which was specifically designed to make it so that the Kaiser could override or block the majority party in the Reichstag if it didn't align with his views.

And if you look at say how the monarchy developed in England you will see something very similar a bit earlier. The ruler had a lot of freedom to determine whom he/she asked to form a government - I think technically he could still do so (one of our british members will correct me if im wrong). But as time passed it became the norm to ask the winner of the election. In Germany the same progress would happen. Because if the ruler remaines embroiled in day to day politics sooner or later he/she will fall. A monarch, as an unelected position in the west, where legitimacy is more and more tied to the will of the people, simply can not afford to be political after a point. If the monarch cannot realize this, the monarchy will fall.

 

[Snaut]

I don't see a Central Powers Victory scenario being inherently better or worse than OTL.

WW2 in Europe is still likely. It seems unlikely to me that the UK and Russia can be decisively weakened, and there is also the USA which may decide that it has no choice than to become closely involved in European affairs. Especially if Germany gets victory disease and begins to push its weight around worldwide. Italy, France, A-H and the Ottomans may not be in the same weight class as Germany but the former two can't be trusted and the latter two are multi-ethnic empires with lots of problems and can turn into liabilities.

If the war is the kind of short 19th century-style conflict everyone expected it to be it is unlikely to be decisive. The "lesson" learned from it may be that a war isn't such a big deal in itself, and that a rematch can be expected.

Nor is a Central Powers victory any guarantee of safety against Fascism, Communism or similar radical ideologies. Italy went fascist despite winning, Spain went fascist despite being neutral. A long war puts a strain on all participants and winning doesn't instantly remove it. If a wounded person loses too much blood stopping the wound won't help.

 

[Sacer Bubonicus]

And if you look at say how the monarchy developed in England you will see something very similar a bit earlier. The ruler had a lot of freedom to determine whom he/she asked to form a government - I think technically he could still do so (one of our british members will correct me if im wrong). But as time passed it became the norm to ask the winner of the election. In Germany the same progress would happen. Because if the ruler remaines embroiled in day to day politics sooner or later he/she will fall. A monarch, as an unelected position in the west, where legitimacy is more and more tied to the will of the people, simply can not afford to be political after a point. If the monarch cannot realize this, the monarchy will fall.

You're talking two very different situations here.

Spoiler: What went down in England

What happened in Britain was that king Charles I found himself at loggerheads with the English Parliament over, well, basically everything, but the key issue was that he wanted to raise taxes in order to defeat rebellions in Scotland and Ireland, and raising taxes was Parliament's prerogative since medieval times. They refused. He then tried to raise funds without raising taxes, found himself going nowhere with what he was able to get, and eventually the whole thing spiraled into a civil war as both sides rushed to raise troops to suppress the rebellions and feared that the other side would turn its troops on them instead of the rebels. King and Parliament then both began demanding that the other side disarm their soldiers and surrender some of their legal powers to them, which they refused to do, and thus the fighting started. Afterward, the victors got to write the rules.

Then, a generation later, the Catholic king James II came to the throne, and it was generally understood that he would be followed by one of his Protestant sisters. Then his wife gave birth to a boy, whom would obviously be Catholic, and Parliament basically conducted a coup against him in conjunction with William of Orange out of fear that England would be plunged back into Popery. They let William be king on condition that they got to rewrite the rules yet again to the extent that Parliament was supreme and could tell the king to go fuck himself on a constitutional basis. That's the highly-condensed story of how parliament gained supremacy over the monarchy.

One of the chief problems in the situation was that there was no institutional interface between King and Parliament like the Chancellor and President in Imperial Germany, which meant that if the majority in Parliament didn't like the king's program, the king's only option was to suspend Parliament. And it was not just the majority of Parliament that was opposed to him, but virtually all of Parliament by the end.

Contrast this to the situation in Germany, where the Reichstag has an in-built mechanism for the Kaiser to exert his influence as long as his agenda has at least some support and, more importantly, to keep the majority from exerting its influence. If the parties the Kaiser favors are in the minority, then his opponents simply can't get any laws passed. If he compromises with some neutral parties to obtain a majority, then he can push through whatever legislation he likes.

And the DNVP (20% of the Reichstag) supporting him + whoever else he gives concessions to not shack up with the SDP is plenty enough to allow the Kaiser to at least cockblock the SDP without the issue appearing to be a Reichstag vs. Kaiser issue. As long as what he wants isn't universally unpopular (eg. return to the Prussian three-class franchise after it's already been replaced(*)), he can use this power with little/no fear of provoking a violent reaction. He'd have to really piss off every demographic for it to stop being a party vs. party issue and turn it into a Reichstag vs. Kaiser issue.

(*): which not even the DNVP would want. They're rightwing, but they're not aristocratic.

 

[Flavius Iulius Maiorianus]

The Germans were hardly unique.

• American Soldiers in the Philippines Write Home about the War
• The Filipino Genocide
• massacre of French West African veterans of the 1940 Battle of France, by French forces
• Massacres committed in Africa during colonial times

How did WW1 Start?

And I'm not saying you're wrong, you're absolutely correct. Everyone was bad, and that's the point I'm trying to make. We shouldn't idealize any country in 1914. Imperial Germany did a lot of good. They also did a lot of bad. So did everyone else.

 

[Flavius Iulius Maiorianus]

I would alo point out that in a CP victory scenario a WWII or an analogue in Europe is unlikely.

Even if the british and the french are somewhat weaker after a WWI loss than they were OTL (though unlike in the CP's case their loss is more likely to be a purely military one and not also a collapse of the homefront which IMO has much worse effects on society) they would not be bogged down in a WWII in Europe. So if Japan decided to try anything it would have to count on much more ability to resist both fromthe french and the british - which is very different compared to what happened OTL. Would they even dare to attack them in such a scenario?

World War 2 could still happen imo, it'd come from the Soviet Union. TTL's WW2 might look a lot like a hypothetical WW3 from OTL, with the Soviets fighting the west.

 

[Kalga]

In a way, a limited/negotiated victory (which any CP victory will end up being, mainly due to the UK being immune from any invasion of either its homeland or its major colonies) will lead to more major wars (whether the French or russians being too weak to do so on paper is irrelevant because the stakes are perceived to be not absolute in the same way that the OTL treaty of Versailles was for a time).

And there's a chance that these major wars might lead to one where nukes being used in a more significant way.

 

[Tibi088]

World War 2 could still happen imo, it'd come from the Soviet Union. TTL's WW2 might look a lot like a hypothetical WW3 from OTL, with the Soviets fighting the west.

It could but I think it rather unlikely. First the soviet union might not exist in TTL, and I highly doubt that a non soviet Russia might industrialize to the soviet extent. Even if it does its a much weaker country - it wont have most/all of Ukraine which would weaken it significantly. I also see it very unlikely that it would attack Germany without assured western support (the same being true for the west). At least european France would also likely be demilitarized to a certain extent, but a Maginot line definately wont exist.

The point im trying to make is that if the CP's win WWI there wont be any other power, Russia/Soviet Union included, that would dare to start a one on one fight against them. The bare minimum to even dream about challenging them would be the reestablishment of an Entente like coalition and the full remilitarization of France against Mitteleuropa (or the invlvement of the US, though I dont see why they would do so if they sat out WWI), but Germany has to be very distracted to see that and do nothing.

 

[Flavius Iulius Maiorianus]

It could but I think it rather unlikely. First the soviet union might not exist in TTL, and I highly doubt that a non soviet Russia might industrialize to the soviet extent. Even if it does its a much weaker country - it wont have most/all of Ukraine which would weaken it significantly. I also see it very unlikely that it would attack Germany without assured western support (the same being true for the west). At least european France would also likely be demilitarized to a certain extent, but a Maginot line definately wont exist.

The point im trying to make is that if the CP's win WWI there wont be any other power, Russia/Soviet Union included, that would dare to start a one on one fight against them. The bare minimum to even dream about challenging them would be the reestablishment of an Entente like coalition and the full remilitarization of France against Mitteleuropa (or the invlvement of the US, though I dont see why they would do so if they sat out WWI), but Germany has to be very distracted to see that and do nothing.

That depends. By 1917 the Bolsheviks were in power, and in the scenario I outlined, they only had to cede Poland and Lithuania due to never enacting the "No War, No Peace" policy, which allows Germany to move more troops to the western front faster. And I don't think the Central Powers, who were on the verge of collapse and squeaking out a win, would be much more willing than OTL's Entente to intervene in Russia.

 

[H.Flashman(VC)]

From that point on, they just need to keep a majority coalition of non-SDP parties to not only keep them out of power, but push through their own agenda without SDP interference as well.

Will Zentrum in the 1920's play ball with the conservatives? IMO, no.

And the DNVP (20% of the Reichstag) supporting him

They had that 20 % result in 1924 under their most moderate leadership, who was even willing to accept for the moment the current Republican situation, and was even prepared to enter government. Then Hugenberg started to meddle in that party, The party turned away from Weimar and immediately lost 5% of those votes. Yes, they will be stronger in case of a German victory, but not strong enough to get those non SDP majorities, without other parties who urge for political change.

 

[Sacer Bubonicus]

Will Zentrum in the 1920's play ball with the conservatives? IMO, no.

Given their historical disagreementts with the SDP, and the fact that they were willing to join minority coalitions against the SDP, including with the DNVP, I'd say they would. As long as the DNVP don't go full retard and demand Kulturkampf 2: Electric Boogaloo, they'll be fine.

The biggest controversy would likely be over anti-Polish measures, since there were distinct pro- and anti-Polish camps in Zentrum in Imperial days.

They had that 20% result in 1924 under their most moderate leadership, who was even willing to accept for the moment the current Republican situation, and was even prepared to enter government. Then Hugenberg started to meddle in that party, The party turned away from Weimar and immediately lost 5% of those votes. Yes, they will be stronger in case of a German victory, but not strong enough to get those non SDP majorities, without other parties who urge for political change.

The party was pro-monarchy from the start. Its failure in 1928 had to do with the failure of DNVP measures to stop the ongoing rural depression at a time when the party leadership continued to whinge about the monarchy, which had led to many of its rural voters quitting the party in disgust. Many of them went on to join the new CNBL and DBP. And of course the Nazis eagerly picked up on this and used it to gut the party yet further in 1930.

 

[Kalga]

It could but I think it rather unlikely. First the soviet union might not exist in TTL, and I highly doubt that a non soviet Russia might industrialize to the soviet extent. Even if it does its a much weaker country - it wont have most/all of Ukraine which would weaken it significantly. I also see it very unlikely that it would attack Germany without assured western support (the same being true for the west). At least european France would also likely be demilitarized to a certain extent, but a Maginot line definately wont exist.

The point im trying to make is that if the CP's win WWI there wont be any other power, Russia/Soviet Union included, that would dare to start a one on one fight against them. The bare minimum to even dream about challenging them would be the reestablishment of an Entente like coalition and the full remilitarization of France against Mitteleuropa (or the invlvement of the US, though I dont see why they would do so if they sat out WWI), but Germany has to be very distracted to see that and do nothing.

Weaker on paper (or in hindsight) isn't going to stop potential warmongers who are going to reject reality. Heck, the same train of logic could have applied to hitler in OTL when he decided to take on both the UK and France by himself in 1939.

 

[Mitridates the Great]

World War 2 could still happen imo, it'd come from the Soviet Union. TTL's WW2 might look a lot like a hypothetical WW3 from OTL, with the Soviets fighting the west.

I'd say the other ridiculous suggestion of "The Nazis come to power anyway and launch a coalition against the Soviet Union" is rather more likely. In reality, it is more likely that what is happening is exactly what Hitler wanted: Germany as the leader of a Western coalition to destroy the Soviet Union and re-establish Czarism by force of arms under a reactionary monarchy. It is certain that the UK and the USA will rather do this than try to continue antagonizing Germany for reasons.

 

[Clandango]

Giving Polish border strip away seems indeed pretty impractical and not useful for anyone. I don't think Poland being bigger altough if A-H dissolves Poland might get Polish speaking areas of Galicia. Germany hardly wants promote much bigger Poland since it might get wrong ideas.

To be fair, Soviets did a similar thing in the opposite direction. Shove Poles into a new area until they are the majority. Lviv, Godno, basically anywhere that was heavily striped as Polish in Interwar Poland. Or the clear majority in the area between Lithuania and Belarus. I suppose we should look over religious maps, as Catholic Belarusians might be thrown in with the Poles. Plus so much the better for Germany and their satellites that the Russians have less of Belarus.

 

[Sacer Bubonicus]

exactly what Hitler wanted: Germany as the leader of a Western coalition to destroy the Soviet Union and re-establish Czarism by force of arms under a reactionary monarchy.

Uh... that is decidedly not what Hitler wanted.

https://i.redd.it/ekzn3nazlqf71.jpg

www.reddit.com

It is certain that the UK and the USA will rather do this than try to continue antagonizing Germany for reasons.

Well, for America it was a purely ideological fight, and yet they entered it anyway.

 

[Jan Olbracht]

To be fair, Soviets did a similar thing in the opposite direction. Shove Poles into a new area until they are the majority. Lviv, Godno, basically anywhere that was heavily striped as Polish in Interwar Poland. Or the clear majority in the area between Lithuania and Belarus. I suppose we should look over religious maps, as Catholic Belarusians might be thrown in with the Poles. Plus so much the better for Germany and their satellites that the Russians have less of Belarus.

More likely Germans go for easier solution: just let the Poles starve.

 

[Mitridates the Great]

Uh... that is decidedly not what Hitler wanted.

https://i.redd.it/ekzn3nazlqf71.jpg

www.reddit.com

Well, for America it was a purely ideological fight, and yet they entered it anyway.

I'm meaning the point of "Germany as leader of a Western coalition against Soviet Union". Remember, many of Hitler's peace offers can be summed as "I retreat from the West but you supply me while I do Generalplan Ost".