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[Continuation] Schwarz-Rot-Gold: An Interwar Germany Quest

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I honestly want an independent poland yeah sure they hate us but at least we can have a buffer state between the soviet and us. We could in the Long term improve relations with them although the tension between both sides will be a pain to deal with
 
Springleaf168 said:
I honestly want an independent poland yeah sure they hate us but at least we can have a buffer state between the soviet and us. We could in the Long term improve relations with them although the tension between both sides will be a pain to deal with
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I don't think we could ever really achieve good relations with them, they pretty much are the France of the East. Silesia is our Alsace-Lorraine and they're pissed they didn't get Danzig. As for a buffer, they're not really worth it as one in my opinion. As soon as the Red Army builds up, they'll be no match for it, and we'd be totally defenceless since we'd have no leverage towards negotiating rearmament without a communist neighbor.
Magoose said:
if there is a second world war.

It might just be a European conflict between the powers of Europe and the Soviets
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It depends on the US and the British really, any war involving them and the Continental Powers is a world war pretty much.
 
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Mr. Sandman said:
They did turn a blind eye to us ignoring treaty restrictions during our civil war. It is very possible they'll do the same if we are the only thing between the Red Army and France. An army of 100.000 would get steamrolled and they know that. They may be unanimous in not wanting us to rearm NOW, when they don't know the Polish lost yet. I'm confident that will change when they get that rude awakening.
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You are severely underestimating the French fear for "Germanboogaloo part two, twice the sauerkraut".

They'd rather see Germany split between the Soviets and the Entente than a rearmed Germany just two years after the Great War.
 
Dutch said:
You are severely underestimating the French fear for "Germanboogaloo part two, twice the sauerkraut".
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Well they might get it anyway, if they keep deciding to violate German sovrgenty with their actions, and continually being duche bags.

France should try Realpolitik. It worked well for germany
 
[X]The Doctor: Professor Emil Fischer is a practicing surgeon and teacher at the Katharinenhospital in Stuttgart, and has seen the war close-up. Most of the severely wounded were dispatched to his wards for reconstruction, and before that he was a surgeon on the Western Front. Emil Fischer has seen death and conducted triage for five bloody years, and now comes peace. Dr. Fischer has doubts as to the durability of that.

[X]The Detective: Detective Arthur Biermann is part of the Berlin Special Branch, trained by a Belgian detective and now coming to terms with his new duties – the Special Branch was founded to deal with terrorism, insurrection and sensitive tasks. With the new peace in the republic, that task will hopefully be of less importance. Biermann wouldn't bet on it.

[X]Eagle Unbowed: Poland has won on the Vistula, at a terrible cost in men and munitions. The eagle is as yet unbowed and unbroken, and the Soviets have been thrown back out of Poland – a peace of mutual exhaustion now reigns in eastern Europe, as the Soviet armies head east to deliver a coup de grace to the White Armies on Russian soil.

[X]The Merchant of Death: Gustav Krupp made a deal with the Devil in 1920, a deal to sell arms in conjunction with Sir Basil Zaharoff and Vickers Corporation. Sir Basil has sold arms the world over to anyone who can pay, and with Krupp's former war-plants now disassembled and being 'scrapped' in France by Zaharoff, German-pattern arms will be seen in every war from China to the Balkans. A brave new world, full of rich markets, now beckons.
I can't tell if this option is for Zaharoff or Krupp. I'm intrepreting it as Krupp since a Zaharoff perspective would mostly focus on things that aren't Germany since it's no longer at war, right?
 
Dutch said:
You are severely underestimating the French fear for "Germanboogaloo part two, twice the sauerkraut".

They'd rather see Germany split between the Soviets and the Entente than a rearmed Germany just two years after the Great War.
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This is a totally different situation than IRL though, the French had a lot to benefit from taking that attitude OTL. If the Soviets become a threat to Central Europe and are poised to sweep away Germany, they'd have to reconsider their position on that. Again, they did allow us to rearm while fighting communists and extreme nationalists, why wouldn't they consider doing the same when there is a much larger threat afoot?
 
Mr. Sandman said:
The situation was completely different then though, the leftists were in power IIRC, Poland was a buffer between them, the Soviets and the Germans. The Nazis were extremely nationalist, which we aren't, and the Soviets were adering to the revolution in one country concept. It is an apples and oranges situation. Also, even if we don't immediately get the Rhine back, getting it ssoner is very possible, as is a reduction in reparations, which we'll have a much harder time paying than in OTL.

It's been made pretty clear they'll be driven off towards Krakow, and form a sort of "Czechoslovak Bridgehead" with the army making a fighting retreat, distracting the Red Army from us and eventually being forced to go into exile. If they can't hold at Vistula, they'll lose the war and that's it. They won't go without a fight though.

So basically your point is we shouldn't even try to negotiate? A long process it may be, but it'll be much, much worse if the French have no compelling reason to be reasonable. Which is my whole point. We NEED to renegotiate the reparations at the very least: we just got out of a civil war that devastated our industrial hinterland and we have even larger obligations this time around.

Yeah, that's the main advantage of Poland falling, we'll be in a stronger diplomatic position. We can negotiate with the Entente since they have a reason to go "softer" on us.
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The Cartel de Gauches had been out of power for over a year at that point and the Prime Minister was Pierre-Étienne Flandin leader of the ARD which could hardly be considered a leftist government. The French do not care if we are explicitly aggressive revanchists or not, Germany in any shape is the fundamental continental opposition to France. If France wasn't willing to show mercy towards a revolutionary German Republic in 1919 which explicitly overthrew the Kaiser, what makes you think that they'll be so much more generous with us now? If anything the existence of Poland as a keystone of French influence on the continent and then proceeding with the Soviet Alliance anyways is an argument in favor of the position that France will be all but unshakable in its opposition to us. Poland, which very much viewed the Soviet Union as infinitely more threatening to itself than Germany in the interwar, a country which would never willingly cooperate with the Soviets on defense, was in that sense disregarded by France despite the full public knowledge of these foreign policy tendencies in favor of the Soviet alliance to contain Germany.

Nothing has been said as to whether or not Poland will survive from its position at Krakow but I find it deeply unreasonable to simply presume that Poland will be wiped off the map once more or made into a puppet republic. The Soviet Union is still fighting the civil war, the White Army was stopped on the gates of Petrograd just half a year ago. It's questionable if the Soviet Union even has the ability to hold onto Polish gains let alone the desire to given its still deeply precarious position.

I'm not saying don't negotiate at all, that's such a ground level part of foreign policy that one does not simply dispense with it. However, your goal of pushing the French off of the Rhine is totally impracticable. If France had its way at Versailles there would no longer be a Germany and the border would be on the Rhine. We already put all the pressure we could unilaterally on the French at Paris. To get any concession of substance, the facade of unity between the Entente powers is where the concentration of diplomatic effort must be. France is deeply dependent on its allies for the long term containment of Germany and must bow to their desires to an extent when tensions run high between them. Britain while not particularly well inclined to us is not inherently opposed to Germany the way France is, it is opposed to the hegemony of any power on the continent and Germany can have a part to play in that balancing act. The United States holds deepseated reins over the whole Entente in the form of war debt and is having rather deep buyers remorse at having involved itself in European affairs with the Treaty of Versailles being perceived generally as European perfidy. There is crucial ground to be leveraged here, an upswing of public opinion on Germany with the perception that we are the victims of European machinations.

The basic principle is that France cannot dictate by itself and its allies can be brought to quickly sour on the occupation.
 
Valkyrien said:
I'm starting to think we may end up fighting the French instead
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As great as France might seem to us right now it's time as a great power is nearly over. France have spent all it energies in the great power now it is war weary and broke as well ( not nearly as bad as us but still).

granted their situation is better than us but the french aren't spoiling for a fight not without Britain helping them. What the French want is to keep us down as much as possible
 
Magoose said:
Well they might get it anyway, if they keep deciding to violate German sovrgenty with their actions, and continually being duche bags.

France should try Realpolitik. It worked well for germany
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This is French Realpolitik. With France bled white during the Great war, having a massive war debt to the US, it's northern industrial regions utterly destroyed and lacking guarantees from the UK or US, allowing Germany to rearm would essentialy allow Germany to utterly dominate France for the next decades.
 
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Sturmi said:
Nothing has been said as to whether or not Poland will survive from its position at Krakow but I find it deeply unreasonable to simply presume that Poland will be wiped off the map once more or made into a puppet republic.
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Yes it has, and I'll quote that for you
mouli said:
You do not know IC. The Soviets may decide or be able to rip off ethnic Ukrainian/Belarusian/Russian regions from Eastern Poland.
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mouli said:
Yes.
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There is also stuff from the previous thread about this, but it is far too late here to look through that and I need to sleep. If the Polish lose at Vistula, they're in deep doo doo and it is a matter of time before they're driven off of Poland.
Sturmi said:
If France wasn't willing to show mercy towards a revolutionary German Republic in 1919 which explicitly overthrew the Kaiser, what makes you think that they'll be so much more generous with us now?
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Because there was no incentive THEN to do so. We are talking about redrawing the map and completely shifting the geopolitical dynamics in Eastern and Central Europe. There wasn't a threat of a power threatening to sweep through Europe in the name of Internationalism, we hadn't just fought a civil war that weakened us even more.
Sturmi said:
If anything the existence of Poland as a keystone of French influence on the continent and then proceeding with the Soviet Alliance anyways is an argument in favor of the position that France will be all but unshakable in its opposition to us. Poland, which very much viewed the Soviet Union as infinitely more threatening to itself than Germany in the interwar, a country which would never willingly cooperate with the Soviets on defense, was in that sense disregarded by France despite the full public knowledge of these foreign policy tendencies in favor of the Soviet alliance to contain Germany.
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The Soviet Union wasn't literally in the gates of Warsaw then, and the Sanation regime was massively paranoid over the Soviet Union. And again, apples to oranges, you're completely ignoring the fact a National Socialist government that was on the process of rearming and would enter the Rhineland a year later was right next to France. You're applying 1930's logic to a alternate history early 20s. The Soviets are a threat to them if Poland falls, and they know that, where did all those Renault FT's in Polish hands come from? Certainly not us.
Sturmi said:
To get any concession of substance, the facade of unity between the Entente powers is where the concentration of diplomatic effort must be. France is deeply dependent on its allies for the long term containment of Germany and must bow to their desires to an extent when tensions run high between them.
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As you said, to an extent, if we want any meaningful foreign policy achievements, having the Poles fall would be a crucial tool to doing so. I just don't see us having substantial success without it happening.
 
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Sturmi said:
The Cartel de Gauches had been out of power for over a year at that point and the Prime Minister was Pierre-Étienne Flandin leader of the ARD which could hardly be considered a leftist government. The French do not care if we are explicitly aggressive revanchists or not, Germany in any shape is the fundamental continental opposition to France. If France wasn't willing to show mercy towards a revolutionary German Republic in 1919 which explicitly overthrew the Kaiser, what makes you think that they'll be so much more generous with us now? If anything the existence of Poland as a keystone of French influence on the continent and then proceeding with the Soviet Alliance anyways is an argument in favor of the position that France will be all but unshakable in its opposition to us. Poland, which very much viewed the Soviet Union as infinitely more threatening to itself than Germany in the interwar, a country which would never willingly cooperate with the Soviets on defense, was in that sense disregarded by France despite the full public knowledge of these foreign policy tendencies in favor of the Soviet alliance to contain Germany.

Nothing has been said as to whether or not Poland will survive from its position at Krakow but I find it deeply unreasonable to simply presume that Poland will be wiped off the map once more or made into a puppet republic. The Soviet Union is still fighting the civil war, the White Army was stopped on the gates of Petrograd just half a year ago. It's questionable if the Soviet Union even has the ability to hold onto Polish gains let alone the desire to given its still deeply precarious position.

I'm not saying don't negotiate at all, that's such a ground level part of foreign policy that one does not simply dispense with it. However, your goal of pushing the French off of the Rhine is totally impracticable. If France had its way at Versailles there would no longer be a Germany and the border would be on the Rhine. We already put all the pressure we could unilaterally on the French at Paris. To get any concession of substance, the facade of unity between the Entente powers is where the concentration of diplomatic effort must be. France is deeply dependent on its allies for the long term containment of Germany and must bow to their desires to an extent when tensions run high between them. Britain while not particularly well inclined to us is not inherently opposed to Germany the way France is, it is opposed to the hegemony of any power on the continent and Germany can have a part to play in that balancing act. The United States holds deepseated reins over the whole Entente in the form of war debt and is having rather deep buyers remorse at having involved itself in European affairs with the Treaty of Versailles being perceived generally as European perfidy. There is crucial ground to be leveraged here, an upswing of public opinion on Germany with the perception that we are the victims of European machinations.

The basic principle is that France cannot dictate by itself and its allies can be brought to quickly sour on the occupation.
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To your mind, what does that imply in terms of policy?
 
Secretariat said:
To your mind, what does that imply in terms of policy?
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My understanding of their argument is that we should do what we were going to do anyway in negotiating with them anyway, but with the Poles winning at Vistula. My main gripe with it is the French have no reason to change their terms if we don't have the Red Menace hanging over their heads, I just don't think levaraging the British and Americans will cut it for the changes we desperately need, considering the larger reparations and worse economy than OTL.
 
I'd like to remind people that one of the main reasons for the Treaty of Versailles and the harsh reparations is that the war left France, to be perfetcly frank, dirt poor.

It was one of the reasons France pushed for the "battleship holiday" during the Washington and London Naval Treaties, they needed a couple decades with little-to-no battleship construction to let them balance the budgets.


Also, my vote. Consider me convinced to throwing Poland under the bus to undermine France.

[X]The Merchant of Death: Gustav Krupp made a deal with the Devil in 1920, a deal to sell arms in conjunction with Sir Basil Zaharoff and Vickers Corporation. Sir Basil has sold arms the world over to anyone who can pay, and with Krupp's former war-plants now disassembled and being 'scrapped' in France by Zaharoff, German-pattern arms will be seen in every war from China to the Balkans. A brave new world, full of rich markets, now beckons.

[X]The Communist: Ernst Thalmann is a former soldier, a decorated one, who did a bunk from the Army in 1918 for the sake of the November Revolution and the Uprising that followed it. Thalmann's side of the war has lost...this time. The next time will be different, and that is why Ernst Thalmann has remained in Germany – to organize the workers and make sure that they are in a position to take what is theirs by right. Weimar is unstable, and presents opportunities.

[X]The Detective: Detective Arthur Biermann is part of the Berlin Special Branch, trained by a Belgian detective and now coming to terms with his new duties – the Special Branch was founded to deal with terrorism, insurrection and sensitive tasks. With the new peace in the republic, that task will hopefully be of less importance. Biermann wouldn't bet on it.

[X]Eagle Unbowed: Poland has won on the Vistula, at a terrible cost in men and munitions. The eagle is as yet unbowed and unbroken, and the Soviets have been thrown back out of Poland – a peace of mutual exhaustion now reigns in eastern Europe, as the Soviet armies head east to deliver a coup de grace to the White Armies on Russian soil.

[ ]The Heir is Dead: Yakov Sverdlov was Lenin's protege, and he survived his influenza infection in 1919 to direct the decossackization of Ukraine in 1919-1920. Upon his death, the succession in the Soviet Union has been thrown once more into doubt, as the moderate internationalist Sverdlov has left a vacancy that Lenin has hesitated to fill.
 
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[X]The Merchant of Death: Gustav Krupp made a deal with the Devil in 1920, a deal to sell arms in conjunction with Sir Basil Zaharoff and Vickers Corporation. Sir Basil has sold arms the world over to anyone who can pay, and with Krupp's former war-plants now disassembled and being 'scrapped' in France by Zaharoff, German-pattern arms will be seen in every war from China to the Balkans. A brave new world, full of rich markets, now beckons.

[X]The Communist: Ernst Thalmann is a former soldier, a decorated one, who did a bunk from the Army in 1918 for the sake of the November Revolution and the Uprising that followed it. Thalmann's side of the war has lost...this time. The next time will be different, and that is why Ernst Thalmann has remained in Germany – to organize the workers and make sure that they are in a position to take what is theirs by right. Weimar is unstable, and presents opportunities.

[X]The Detective: Detective Arthur Biermann is part of the Berlin Special Branch, trained by a Belgian detective and now coming to terms with his new duties – the Special Branch was founded to deal with terrorism, insurrection and sensitive tasks. With the new peace in the republic, that task will hopefully be of less importance. Biermann wouldn't bet on it.

[X]The Heir is Dead: Yakov Sverdlov was Lenin's protege, and he survived his influenza infection in 1919 to direct the decossackization of Ukraine in 1919-1920. Upon his death, the succession in the Soviet Union has been thrown once more into doubt, as the moderate internationalist Sverdlov has left a vacancy that Lenin has hesitated to fill.
 
chriswriter90 said:
I'd like to remind people that one of the main reasons for the Treaty of Versailles and the harsh reparations is that the war left France, to be perfetcly frank, dirt poor.
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Yeah, we can try to negotiate something with the Americans so they'll provide a loan to the French, with us paying a certain amount of interest or something to that effect. Or something like the Dawes or Young plan. Getting it done early would really help us out.
chriswriter90 said:
It was one of the reasons France pushed for the "battleship holiday" during the Washington and London Naval Treaties, they needed a couple decades with little-to-no battleship construction to let them balance the budgets
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I didn't know that, you learn something new everyday I suppose. Thanks for sharing!
 
Anyway some final thoughts before heading to bed.

I'm getting the feeling people are arguing backwards here. Why do we need rearmament? What is the necessity? So far the argument has been that we need to go with the Soviet victory in order to rearm so we can defeat the Soviets.
 
[X]The Soldier: Fritz Muller has known little but war for most of his adult life. He was drafted at seventeen, and went to the front in 1914. Muller survived the war, survived the civil war that followed, and has put down his rifle in August 1920 to face a brave new world that he doesn't know how to navigate. His section is dead or crippled, his army has dissolved once more and the Kaiser that he took an oath to serve in 1914 is in Germany no longer. Fritz Muller has been naught but a soldier at war, and now he is one no longer.

[X]The Doctor: Professor Emil Fischer is a practicing surgeon and teacher at the Katharinenhospital in Stuttgart, and has seen the war close-up. Most of the severely wounded were dispatched to his wards for reconstruction, and before that he was a surgeon on the Western Front. Emil Fischer has seen death and conducted triage for five bloody years, and now comes peace. Dr. Fischer has doubts as to the durability of that.

[X]The Detective: Detective Arthur Biermann is part of the Berlin Special Branch, trained by a Belgian detective and now coming to terms with his new duties – the Special Branch was founded to deal with terrorism, insurrection and sensitive tasks. With the new peace in the republic, that task will hopefully be of less importance. Biermann wouldn't bet on it.

[X]Eagle Unbowed: Poland has won on the Vistula, at a terrible cost in men and munitions. The eagle is as yet unbowed and unbroken, and the Soviets have been thrown back out of Poland – a peace of mutual exhaustion now reigns in eastern Europe, as the Soviet armies head east to deliver a coup de grace to the White Armies on Russian soil.
 
Dutch said:
I'm getting the feeling people are arguing backwards here. Why do we need rearmament? What is the necessity? So far the argument has been that we need to go with the Soviet victory in order to rearm so we can defeat the Soviets.
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This is a good point. What are your goals? What are the broad means you want to use? Use that to pick a choice. Rearmament is a tool/objective that is not an end in and of itself, it is subordinate to the goal of defense/projection of power.
 
Dutch said:
I'm getting the feeling people are arguing backwards here. Why do we need rearmament? What is the necessity? So far the argument has been that we need to go with the Soviet victory in order to rearm so we can defeat the Soviets
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Because the Soviets might be a threat either way, it was implied in the previous thread they're beefier than before, and the army is a good escape valve for unemployment. And we won't need to rearm the way the Nazis did, at least I hope not, since we don't know what will come in the future. It will also be a massive domestic victory, which will strengthen the government, something important in the aftermath of a civil war. Hindenburg and his fellows, for example, will look at us with much more respect. As will conservative voters. These are only a couple my sleep addled mind can conjure up.
 
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