Overall, most people on this forum think that should the Nazis either not exist or not succeed as a movement, the Weimar Republic would still fall to some kind of militaristic right-wing nationalist and revanchist regime (Notzis/Kaiserboos are not what I have in mind, these tropes are just lazy and unoriginal IMHO), in the case of no Nazis, they would be one that is not as genocidal and brutally expansionist as the Nazis were, but still one that are slowly and pragmatically (instead of quickly) re-arming itself and militarizing its state, and that also seeks to undo the Treaty of Versailles, and regain back the territories (and to a lesser extent, the overseas colonies) of the German Empire as of 1914
Weimar or a right-wing Germany merely demanding their pre-1919 German Empire borders back is a much more reasonable position, instead of wishing to become an unrealistic gigantic empire from the Channel Islands to the Urals, and you also have the Soviet Union under Stalin doing their own thing and having their own plans, and thus, it seems that even in a TL without the Nazis, it looks like that the Second Polish Republic was inevitably doomed in some way or another.
Asking this because I have been recently working on a no-WWII timeline, and what the world as of 2024 looks like ITTL, now being honest, I personally think that even with no Hitler, the Nazis could still gain power under a different charismatic leader, or a series of various charismatic figures, but regardless, for my story which demands a no-WWII world, the POD that I have is Hitler becoming an accomplished and passionate artist and never getting involved in politics, and the butterflies of him never showing up to the DAP results in more of the top Nazi leadership getting killed off during a significantly different (and even more poorly-executed) Beer Hall Putsch, with the party never recovering after that.
Thus after the disastrous putsch, the DAP (ITTL they never adopted the NSDAP name and the Swastika as their symbol) falls into irrelevance and fades away from history, and are remembered as a bunch of Sicarii-esque suicidal cultists that would have never realistically gained power in Germany (wink wink), with the surviving Nazis fleeing to other far-right organizations (the ones that would accept them, since the TTL Nazis are now more viewed as a glorified street gang of idiotic thugs and delinquents who give German Nationalists a bad name, rather than patriotic heroes and revolutionaries), and never rising to prominent positions themselves.
So what are your opinions on this?,
Weimar or a right-wing Germany merely demanding their pre-1919 German Empire borders back is a much more reasonable position, instead of wishing to become an unrealistic gigantic empire from the Channel Islands to the Urals, and you also have the Soviet Union under Stalin doing their own thing and having their own plans, and thus, it seems that even in a TL without the Nazis, it looks like that the Second Polish Republic was inevitably doomed in some way or another.
Asking this because I have been recently working on a no-WWII timeline, and what the world as of 2024 looks like ITTL, now being honest, I personally think that even with no Hitler, the Nazis could still gain power under a different charismatic leader, or a series of various charismatic figures, but regardless, for my story which demands a no-WWII world, the POD that I have is Hitler becoming an accomplished and passionate artist and never getting involved in politics, and the butterflies of him never showing up to the DAP results in more of the top Nazi leadership getting killed off during a significantly different (and even more poorly-executed) Beer Hall Putsch, with the party never recovering after that.
Thus after the disastrous putsch, the DAP (ITTL they never adopted the NSDAP name and the Swastika as their symbol) falls into irrelevance and fades away from history, and are remembered as a bunch of Sicarii-esque suicidal cultists that would have never realistically gained power in Germany (wink wink), with the surviving Nazis fleeing to other far-right organizations (the ones that would accept them, since the TTL Nazis are now more viewed as a glorified street gang of idiotic thugs and delinquents who give German Nationalists a bad name, rather than patriotic heroes and revolutionaries), and never rising to prominent positions themselves.
So what are your opinions on this?,
- How would this non-Nazi but still right-wing and nationalistic Germany seek to undo Versailles?
- Could the Second Polish Republic survive to the modern-day with its 1939 borders, even with its ethnic Ukrainian, Belarusian, and German regions?
- Lithuania is also an elephant in the room, would it still keep claiming territory from Poland indefinitely?
- Would Germany be satisfied with Poland ceding a Danzig corridor of the sorts, Germany now has direct access to East Prussia but not its pre-1919 territories?
- Would Poland agree to negotiate with a more sane Germany?, or would Germany still militarily invade Poland alongside the USSR much like IOTL?
- If Poland is still invaded by both countries (this time in the mid-late 1940s instead of 1939), what would they seek to do with it?
- Germany annexes its pre-1919 areas, but leaves Poland as a rump and landlocked puppet/client state just like in WW1 (this time, Poles still get ethnically cleansed and shoved into a small rump state, but on the flipside, the whole Generalplan Ost/Slavic untermensch extermination is not a thing), while the Soviet Union perhaps also plans to annex it as a small Polish SSR, with the exact same territory of the Russian Empire's Congress Poland?
- What about other territories that Germany also desires back, like the border areas of France and Belgium?
- I am assuming that if there is no war between Germany and Poland, then Stalin would likely also sit back and avoid large-scale invasions, perhaps only Moldova would be in his sight, and this could result in the Soviets pivoting to Asia.
- And most importantly, with this more sane Germany, that (I assume) annexes Austria but does not goes after Czechoslovakia, would Britain and France still declare war on them?
Last edited:
