- Pronouns
- It/Its
How would you have a democratic and accountable economy that isn't a command economy? Elected economic planners seems like teh most accountable and democratic system
Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline
- Thread starter Aelita
- Start date
- Timeline Post-1900 Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
They certainly thought they were.
And isn't that just terrifying?
That's certainly what we'd like to believe (with regards to the Reich).Kinda like McCarthyists saying the USSR was doomed to fail because it was built on a lie and such.Children,hiding,pathetically trying to convince themselves the monster under the bed isn't real.
Katamariguy
Pessimist. Contrarian. Naysayer.
- Location
- Upstate NY
Yeah,I've always felt that's just something we like to repeat to ourselves to try to calm ourselves down about how close Hitler came-and that his ideas proved bulletproof.
Nah, you're a wehraboo. If you say these things, you are inexplicably caping for Hitler, ignoring the weaknesses of the German war machine, and generally praising a regime that does not need the support.
- Location
- London
The Reich was coming apart at the seems in 1938 with regards to money and only conquest kept it going. It was an inept, failing system kept afloat by loot no more no less. In contrast the USSR economy lasted decades and only imploded due to investment mistakes in the Brezhnev era coming home to roost.
Nazi Germany was a disaster waiting to happen and the tragedy is it didn't implode be for Hitler started his wars.
Also with the possible exception of the attempt to ally with the UK in the mid 30's its long been clear, none of Hitler's "peace offerings" were serious. Any treaty (especially with untermensh) was a temporary arrangement to be broken at will. Heck Hitler was furious about Munich because he wanted A war and didn't get it.
Even the attempts to make an arrangement with the UK was more about fear of a repeat of the blockade than any real acknowledgement of our right to exist and once that fell through Hitler got busy preparing for war.
Also the Herr was a glass cannon good for sneak attacks and lightning strikes but doomed in a long war. The Allies in contrast were juggernauts, slow to get going but victory was inevitable once the back of the Herr was broken.
Both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were monsters but the latter was a competent monster let down by its leaders. The Nazi machine was so flawed I doubt anyone could have won with it long term especially once the barbarism of the SS and the Heer (which is historical record BTW) ensured "kill them or die ourselves" became the only option.
- Location
- The Midlands.
I think there's a difference between actively wishing the Nazis had won and not subscribing to the view that their defeat was in any way inevitable. After all, every criticism made of their economic system and military logistics in this thread is absolutely true but they still successfully conquered most of Europe (whether or not they could have held it in the long run is another matter) and came very close to forcing Britain to sue for peace anyway, thanks to a combination of bad decisions by their adversaries and a couple of all-or-nothing long shots that paid off.
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Well, they thought they were building a better world - for the Aryans anyways.
But here's the thing. Everything they were doing towards that "better world" fucked it up all the more. And if they had somehow accomplished the impossible and won? They would have irreparably fucked up the world, even for themselves. Which is the truly terrifying thing. Idiots promising a utopia for their people and yet failing at every step. Their economy depends on looting and expanding, and there's only so much they could expand to before they get into a nuclear war (if not with the USA, then with Japan) if they had even gotten as far as developing nuclear weaponry before their own industry and economy collapsed. They had zero ideas on how to handle the economy, Speer was the only Nazi who didn't have his head in the clouds regarding Germany's economy and industrial abilities, and they all vastly underestimated their foes based on hideously outdated ideals of race. Even their culture was effectively stifling itself, meaning it was going to eventually flounder in mediocrity:
They put their faith in the superiority of their "Aryan Übermenschen", and when that proved insufficient they threw good money after bad chasing numerous overhyped, inefficient wunderwaffen that did more to bleed money from the Reich than it did to hurt the Allies (and often killed more Germans than it did Allies!). If the Allies were technically backwards in any way, it's because they went with what worked, not what looked flashy, while the Axis wasted money on dead-end projects that would need years of peacetime research to properly implement.Hugh Trevor-Roper - [I]The Mind of Adolf Hitler[/I] said:
YES! That's my point.Thank you for sticking up for me.
Katamariguy
Pessimist. Contrarian. Naysayer.
- Location
- Upstate NY
You said a lot of questionable things that went way beyond that.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
There's no situation where the Third Reich can seize Moscow with the set up for operation Teutonic in 1940 (indeed, Hitler is very much against the Heer's obsession with capturing Moscow as a primary goal anyway and is instead focused on objectives suited for a long war). And even if they do; they cannot seize Arkhangelsk or Vladivostok and the Soviets have no reason to agree to a peace while the Americans are willing to support them indefinitely and are far more invested in this fight than they were in world war one. Germany and Italy's best hope is holding onto Poland and the Balkans; they will never be able to hold onto the Soviet Union proper, especially when Britain cuts off support for them when it deems that Germany, Italy, and Japan have become the United Kingdom's overriding strategic threat.
Last edited:
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
This idea that the Russian masses were passive observers who would "settle" for any revolutionary outcome and were not attempting to drive events throughout is completely preposterous. If anything, the workers were more radical than any active party at several points during the height of the revolution, including June and October 1917 (in both instances the mood of the workers in particular pushed the Bolsheviks to precipitous action in order to retain their base of support). Both February and October had mass support among the workers and poor peasants, if not necessarily majority support for the Bolshevik Party specifically. The Constituent Assembly elections do not support the idea that either the workers or the poor peasants would have "settled" for a Right-SR program; they were held without a separate Left-SR list being available, and the results were over-weighted to the Right-SRs. The Soviets were more representative of the masses' opinions at that time, and were able to return a Bolshevik-Left-SR coalition.
The highest levels of Bolshevik leadership were disproportionately upper-class of various sorts both in comparison to the country but also to most of the party, which had become a mass organization in its own right, and both a center of working-class organization and intellectual life, before 1905.
All capitalism is planned, the only question is whether you want to call planners shareholders and investors or party cadres and bureaucrats
I know you're winking at each other, but this is probably generating unnecessary confusion. Capitalist planning is done on the level of the firm, syndicate, and/or state regulator, depending on the level of development and prevailing political climate in the country. Obviously as the scale goes up it approaches the scope of socialist planning. However, it never replicates its function. Capitalist planning is planning for production to realize profit on the market, and so can never escape the anarchy of production.To call the free market planned is an insult. Planning requires long term goals, while shareholders only care about their quarterly profit margin. The free market is unfettered chaos.
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
True, it's never producing for use and thus always misses the mark. Bad planning is still planning though.
I also don't like using anarchy in this meaning because I respect our anarchist comrades. I think chaos is a good enough word to describe this?
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Meh, the mutualists and cooperativists replicate production for realization of profit on the market in every respect, it's apt enough. Besides, anarchists are more than capable of getting their own licks in.
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
Warning: Phrasing is important
Ellf
Apprentice Wizard
- Location
- Virginia
phrasing is important
@dcd your recent posts in this thread have come off as possible Nazi apologia. However, upon reading further into your posts and the rest of your following posts, I am of the opinion that you simply phrased your point poorly and as such are coming off in a way you did not intend. Now, this was actually disruptive, and while that would run afoul of Rule 4, this is your first offense, and you clearly did not mean things to go the way it came out. As such, I will simply be issuing a staff notice against your account to remind you to be careful of your phrasing in the future.
You don't want to have people misinterpret what you mean, and I'm fairly certain you aren't trying to be supportive of a hateful regime.
Thank you.
@dcd your recent posts in this thread have come off as possible Nazi apologia. However, upon reading further into your posts and the rest of your following posts, I am of the opinion that you simply phrased your point poorly and as such are coming off in a way you did not intend. Now, this was actually disruptive, and while that would run afoul of Rule 4, this is your first offense, and you clearly did not mean things to go the way it came out. As such, I will simply be issuing a staff notice against your account to remind you to be careful of your phrasing in the future.
You don't want to have people misinterpret what you mean, and I'm fairly certain you aren't trying to be supportive of a hateful regime.
Thank you.
Sorry to ask again about Brazil; so here is what I am wondering.
"Though initially a bodyguard formation, the Green Guard would end up growing later on to form an organization of units who could be entrusted with politically sensitive tasks that the regular Brazilian army and police were not entrusted with doing. Surrounded by the Latin American comintern and with the colossus of the Union of American Socialist Republics to its north Salgado knew that he would need to engage in a tremendous deal of change to his country to prepare it for war; including heavy industrialization programs that ironically drew much inspiration from the rapid industrialization programs of Stalin. Financed by loans and investments from Western Europe who were desperate to find new partners after the change of relations with the old favourites of Chile and Argentina as well as from the burgeoning Axis in Europe and Japan who were keen on building up an ally close to America, Salgado's brazil and its allies were quickly changing countries. All across the Latin American Integralist bloc, factories were being built up and the economy was being dragged kicking and screaming towards something approaching modernity. A vast program of infrastructure building, industrialization, resource exploitation, and more were set up to unleash the "potential of the bloc."
(From the alternate history.com, @The_Red_Star_Rising)
So I take it that Salgado though personally wanted deindustrialization must have A. been realist enough to realize that industrialization was needed (i mean i could see him accepting that, the dude OTL was a known opportunist) or B. Brazil's corporate elite made him act more reasonable and accept the need to industrialize the economy?
I have heard that Brazilian Empire TTL is an emerging superpower and is considerably wealthier than OTL, having a post war economic boom of sorts. Is this more due to heavy investment from the capitalist bloc or from Brazil's breakneck industrialization, or both?
Sorry I just confused given the seeming contradicting viewpoints but I realize there may be more to it
"Though initially a bodyguard formation, the Green Guard would end up growing later on to form an organization of units who could be entrusted with politically sensitive tasks that the regular Brazilian army and police were not entrusted with doing. Surrounded by the Latin American comintern and with the colossus of the Union of American Socialist Republics to its north Salgado knew that he would need to engage in a tremendous deal of change to his country to prepare it for war; including heavy industrialization programs that ironically drew much inspiration from the rapid industrialization programs of Stalin. Financed by loans and investments from Western Europe who were desperate to find new partners after the change of relations with the old favourites of Chile and Argentina as well as from the burgeoning Axis in Europe and Japan who were keen on building up an ally close to America, Salgado's brazil and its allies were quickly changing countries. All across the Latin American Integralist bloc, factories were being built up and the economy was being dragged kicking and screaming towards something approaching modernity. A vast program of infrastructure building, industrialization, resource exploitation, and more were set up to unleash the "potential of the bloc."
(From the alternate history.com, @The_Red_Star_Rising)
So I take it that Salgado though personally wanted deindustrialization must have A. been realist enough to realize that industrialization was needed (i mean i could see him accepting that, the dude OTL was a known opportunist) or B. Brazil's corporate elite made him act more reasonable and accept the need to industrialize the economy?
I have heard that Brazilian Empire TTL is an emerging superpower and is considerably wealthier than OTL, having a post war economic boom of sorts. Is this more due to heavy investment from the capitalist bloc or from Brazil's breakneck industrialization, or both?
Sorry I just confused given the seeming contradicting viewpoints but I realize there may be more to it
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I think it was more that Salgado, a rabid anticommunist, is taking his cues from a very prominent Communist regime and rapidly modernizing his country. I'm not familiar with Salgado's ideology, especially ITTL, but he does have a point; an agrarian Brazil would eventually get crushed should the UASR help TCI Latin American industrialize, so he needs to preempt that. As for capital, I'd say a bit from the local plantation owners (help me or the country goes Red and you lose everything) and captains of industry, and quite a bit from American exiles and Franco-British help (yes, a bit anachronistic to call them that yet, but the idea that they're working together is there) to take advantage of Brazil's massive resource base.
This is just my two cents, so not sure how accurate it all is.
Where is the details on ttl's Man in the High Castle?
Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Just that focuses on a group of people in MacArthur's America, now increasingly influenced by Japanese culture as part of a burgeoning alliance between the two as a counterweight against the Nazis.
- Location
- Back in the 90s (In a very famous TV show)
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Ve/Ver
I'd honestly read that TL, that sounds incredibly interesting.
I'm kind of tempted to write it, but that'd need permission and I'm not sure if I'd be up to the task.
Record of the Polish War
- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
Excerpts from Winston Smithers*, Record of the Polish War, (Oxford: Osprey Books, 1988)
Following the conclusion of the Franco-German Non-Aggression Treaty, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop swiftly delivered Hitler's demands to the government of the Polish Republic on the 19th of April. The initial demands were outrageous, perhaps even impossible. Hitler demanded that Poland cede territorial control of the Danzig corridor and extraterritorial access rights to the Free City of Danzig.
This alone would effectively reduce the republic from sovereign state to German satellite state cut off from the world market. Had French guarantees been worth the paper they had been printed on, it would have been stubbornly refused. So on a cold morning on the 20th, President Władysław Raczkiewicz sent a telegram in reply, indicating a willingness to negotiate based on this initial proposal.
[...]
While Hitler entertained the diplomatic offers, the armed forces of the Polish Republic continued to mobilise for war. Since Franco-German rapprochement began last year, the Polish Army had been preparing for this contingency. Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły had proposed forming a "national redoubt" in eastern Poland, heavily fortifying the Vistula River to hold out against the Wehrmacht while aligning with the Soviet Union against German expansion.
Such an option had been literally unthinkable just a year before. But in spite of the military soundness of the strategy and the desperate disparity of forces between Poland and Germany, the government of the Second Republic rejected it as defeatist. The fear that once Soviet soldiers were allowed on Polish soil, they'd never leave was all too real, and the political cost of abandoning half the country and most of the heavy industrial zones to Germany was far too high.
President Raczkiewicz instead modified the planned defensive works. While the formidable Vistula would be used in the north, the new Rejtan Line would extend north-south from the approaches to Lodz to Krakow.
With enough time, it might have resembled a second Maginot line. But as the troops of the Polish Army dug-in during late April, it was incomplete. A system of strongpoints, heavily fortified with concrete bunkers, heavy guns, and overlapping fields of fire, covered most of the lines of communication. But much of the line consisted of improvised earthworks hastily constructed.
[...]
Hitler took the unusual step of meeting with Raczkiewicz in person in the still neutral Free City of Danzig, though it too was under a Nazi Party administration, albeit one that had not yet had the means to do away with the institutions of democracy and free press. Raczkiewicz had arrived on the 25th of April expecting serious negotiations to take place, and was hopeful that war could be avoided, even if it meant serious compromises.
He did not expect Hitler to dramatically raise his demands, adding the "return" of Poznan and Eastern Silesia as well as military basing rights in Poland itself. The German delegation clarified after the stunned Poles asked the interpreters if they heard this right, stressing that these demands would be met or there would be war.
The terms could not be accepted. Nor could Poland win the war on its own. Raczkiewicz addressed the nation that night, telling them to prepare for the fight of their lives. He continued to hold onto hope that British or French intercession could at the very least force a peace settlement that retained Polish sovereignty.
[...]
On the morning of the 13th of May, without a declaration of war, German armed forces crossed the border into Poland. Citing a series of false-flag attacks on German civilians in Silesia and Danzig conducted by the Waffen-SS as a pretext, Hitler declared that "the long night has fallen on the Polish subhumans." Fall Weiß would be the prelude for the dynamic, mechanised war that would soon swallow all of Europe.
Aside from smaller corps sized "operational groups" intended to delay and harass the German advance, the bulk of the Polish Army was concentrated into six area armies manning vital sections of the Rejtan Line. At full mobilisation, the Polish Army assembled 39 infantry divisions (nine of which were lower strength reserve divisions), eleven cavalry brigades and three motorised brigades.
Germany would commit 75 divisions to the invasion, including ten Panzer divisions. In a departure from Czechoslovakia a year prior, the Panzers and their supporting motorised infantry divisions were separated from the main field armies. Instead, they were concentrated into Panzergruppe, with relative independence of action under the army group headquarters.
While the Poles would field 210 obsolete tanks, the German Army would commit nearly four thousand tanks, a majority of which were the modern medium Pzkfw III. This twenty to one disparity in armor would be compounded by a near five to one disparity in aircraft.
[...]
The war began with the rapid destruction of the Polish Air Force. The Luftwaffe continued round-the-clock operations, bombing civilian and military targets that were helpless to resist. The Polish delaying troops, mostly cavalry, fought desperately to delay the advance and destroy lines of communication.
Meanwhile, the tanks remained behind the infantry, chomping at the bit, as the bulk of the German forces advanced twenty kilometers a day through the countryside choked with fleeing civilian refugees.
The heaviest fighting began on the fifth day, as the German army began assaulting the defensive works of the Rejtan Line. The four Panzergruppen began their assaults, achieving breakthroughs south of Lodz and at Moblin from East Prussia. The Polish defensive line broke at the hinge between Army Lodz and Army Krakow. Fighting retreats turned into a rout.
[...]
By Day 10 of the invasion, Panzergruppe 1 under General Heinz Guderian linked up with Panzergruppe 3 under Generalleutnant Georg-Hans Reinhardt east of Warsaw. The link up trapped three Polish armies, Lodz, Poznan and Warsaw, into a cauldron. While the battered Army Krakow began preparations to relieve the pocket, the troops of the Soviet West Front crossed the eastern border.
Declaring that the Polish state had ceased to exist, Stalin stated his aims were to "protect Byelorussian and Ukrainians citizens" now rendered stateless, the invasion confirmed rumors of a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact carving up eastern Europe into spheres of influence.
Marshal Rydz-Śmigły ordered Polish forces not to contest this action. Envoys were sent in an ultimately vain attempt to get the Soviets to join the war as a co-belligerent. The fate of Poland was sealed.
[...]
Polish forces continued to fight on for two more weeks. The tightening noose around Warsaw ultimately collapsed effective, coordinated Polish resistance. While German forces regrouped to recover from the unexpected logistical strain of the war, diplomatic efforts continued. Protests and strikes in France against the perceived collaboration in German conquest and the "blood money" won from the Franco-German commercial agreement would ultimately collapse Daladier's embattled government, placing the Left Bloc under Leon Blum back in power.
It was this forlorn hope that pushed President Raczkiewicz to continue resistance even after Marshal Rydz-Śmigły broached the subject of seeking terms on the 25th of May. Blum had opposed appeasement, and it was still possible that France could honor the pact.
But however much Blum wished to, he could not find the political capital, especially within the French Army, to obtain a declaration of war. Following the receipt of France's final diplomatic note on the 8th of June, Raczkiewicz offered an armistice to begin discussing terms of surrender. Generaloberst Gerd von Rundstedt accepted the ceasefire, only to immediately break it to further consolidate Army Group South's position. This charade continued until German forces were mere blocks from the Presidential Palace, and the final instrument of surrender was delivered.
[...]
Following the official capitulation, it is sometimes said, the real war began. The Długa wojna, "the Long War", began with the partition. Dissidents from the Second Republic, the Polish Socialist Party, the Polish Communist Party, the German Socialist Labour Party of Poland, and the General Jewish Labor Bund, formed a government-in-exile under the banner of the "National Liberation Front" (Narodowowyzwoleńczy front). The NLF denounced the leadership of the Republic turning to collaboration in the "General Government" puppet state set up by Germany.
While the government of the USSR received them with marked indifference, the the UASR offered funding and resources for official operations based in Metropolis, and pushed Stalin into providing some lines of communication to the underground in the General Government. The porous border between the regions newly annexed to the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs became the harbinger of things to come, as most of Poland's Jewish population found itself deported and force marched eastward, along with significant portions of the Polish intelligentsia.
The brutality of German occupation would be felt immediately. Unlike the Czechs, who Nazi ideologues considered to be Germans with a false national consciousness, Poles were denigrated as subhuman. Thus, following the surrender the Nazi government declared that Poland had ceased to exist, rendering all Polish citizens stateless subjects.
While Hitler wished to enact the harshest measures immediately, he was cognizant of the need to maintain a positive image as Germany prepared for the Drang nach Osten. While Germany outright annexed just over half the territory it occupied, the remaining section, from Warsaw extending southwest to the new Soviet frontier, was reorganized as the General Governorate for the Polish Territories. While it would be administered by a Governor-General directly appointed by the Reich government, in this stage it functioned more like a puppet regime, with the right-wing Polish National Democrats invited to serve in a subordinate role.
These dangled carrots helped appease the diplomatic pressure from Britain, and also massaged world public opinion of Germany while promoting compliance with German occupation measures. In this immediate period, only the socialist left would maintain underground resistance.
The occupation measures would still be infamously harsh, to the point where no amount of flattery and collaboration regime could disguise them. In the directly annexed territories, a system of racial classification was implemented. Those of provable "German blood" who had collaborated were given German citizenship, and enriched by land and property taken from Poles. The various other degrees of "German" were subject to re-education when these carrots proved to be insufficient. Those who had their German blood "polluted" by Polish blood, and who had proven to be resolutely "Anti-German" in national consciousness were to be deported, along with the rest of the Poles, into the territories of the General Government, save those who were conscripted for industrial or agricultural labor.
In the General Government, a system of forced industrial labor was implemented under the auspices of Front Ford. As more men were conscripted into the military and the war economy further geared up, Germany faced a crisis in industrial and agricultural labor. The gap was to be made up by men and women conscripted in Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia, and Poland.
At this stage, the zwangsarbeit system was brutal but not actively murderous. Owing to the relatively good international trade relations Germany enjoyed, food rations for conscripted laborers was between ten and twenty percent lower than those enjoyed by German nationals, depending on profession. But their work hours were longer, and they faced draconian restrictions on their private lives.
Polish forced laborers were paid less than half of their German counterparts, and received little to no social benefits. They could not attend German church services or otherwise socialize with Germans publicly. Sexual relations with German women was punishable by death, and they had no privacy in their barracks. Many ordinary comforts, such as alcohol, were contraband and if found the workers was subject to corporal punishment. It must be stressed that these conditions only worsened from the high point in 1939-40.
[...]
The shockwaves from Fall Weiß would ripple outwards, setting the stage for the Second World War. The most immediate outcome was the rapid diplomatic realignment of the Baltic states. The republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had frigid diplomatic relationships with Germany at best in the 1930s. The ultimatum for the return of Memel, the conquest of Poland, and the racial animus against Balts and Estonians, had accomplished what decades of Soviet diplomatic pressure could not: rapprochement between the Soviets and the Baltic states.
On 18 August 1939, the military dictatorship of Antanas Smetona conceded to Comintern demands to allow free elections in the spring of 1940. The Lithuanian Communist Party, as well as other parties banned by the regime, would be legalized and allowed to contest the election. As a concession, Soviet election observers were rejected in favor of a delegation composed of representatives from Argentina, Chile, Mexico and the United Republics. While no agreement was made on army or naval basing, a basic commitment to collective defense was made.
Once Lithuania caved, the rest of the Baltic states soon followed. President and Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis relented under Soviet pressure. A similar commitment was made for free elections, but Ulmanis was more amenable to military cooperation with the Soviet Union. Already economically attached to the Soviet Union, the ever rapacious Germany would only want to further extend its reach to the relatively wealthy small nation.
In Estonia, the unpopular regime of Andres Larka established by the Vaps movement collapsed after several weeks of unrest in Tallinn. A grand coalition of the National Centre, the Settlers Party, the Socialist Workers Party, and the now above ground Communist Party took office under the restored 1920 Constitution. The new government under August Rei signed a mutual defense treaty with the USSR on 20 October 1939.
In Western Europe, British and French perfidy greatly sharpened the political divide. In the United Kingdom, the ruling Conservative and Unionist Party threatened a major split. A bloc of Conservative MPs, led by Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, had broken with the government over the tacit support of German expansion. Joined by a number of MPs from the Liberal Party, this bloc broke the National Government, and reduced Prime Minister Edward Wood's majority.
The controversy generated by the "Fascist Unionist" bloc within the C&UP mounted and in spite of their growing strength Prime Minister Wood reshuffled the cabinet in November 1939 to remove their most public sympathizers from ministerial positions. It did little to improve the domestic political situation. Communist-aligned groups within the trade unions were making considerable gains agitating against the export of war materiel to Germany, arguing that the oil, rubber and steel will one day return to Britain in the form of Nazi bombs. With Labour attempting to hold the impossible line of "neither appeasement nor militarism", the Commonwealth Workers' Party was making dramatical organizational gains in Labour's traditional strongholds.
In France, the government of Leon Blum held a razor thin mandate. Blum hoped to improve his odds following elections scheduled for May 1940, but his current supply-and-confidence agreement with the SFIC (French Section of the Communist International) was tenuous. If the increasingly militant communists made significant gains, some in his own party feared they'd begin an insurrection. Even if they did not, it might be impossible to maintain his government.
Political support for rearmament remained broad, but there were many in the republican right who had once advocated opposing Germany who now switched to appeasement. The French Army general staff informed Blum on 2 November 1939 that it did not have any confidence in its ability to successfully stop a German invasion through the Low Countries without Great Britain.
In the Comintern, all major plans for a decolonisation war against the British Empire were shelved indefinitely. At bilateral Soviet-American defense meetings in August, the two country's military attaches began developing a framework for American assistance in a future Soviet-German War. But these talks were limited by the official stance of Stalin's government to avoid any appearance of violating the non-aggression treaty with Germany.
While the Soviet Union began loosening the leash on the Red Army, beginning rehabilitation for officers who'd been forced into retirement or sentenced to hard labour in Siberia, the ongoing expansion and armaments plan was not significantly modified or accelerated, with Josef Stalin overruling the recommendations of People's Commissar for Defence Kliment Voroshilov. In Politburo talks, Stalin was almost in denial about the apparent failure of the triangulation strategy with Germany. Stalin was still convinced that he'd ultimately outplayed Britain and France, and that Hitler would use the respite they'd granted him to strike a crushing blow against them and avenge the Versailles diktat.
In America, the mood was more somber. Expecting a potential British-German military alliance against the Soviet Union, the Central Workers' Government voted to mobilise for war. The resulting resolution was referred to the full plenum of the Congress of Soviets for ratification on 1 July 1939. The resolution inducted all militia members into active duty service in the Armed Forces, and established a three-year universal service requirement. The economy shifted to a war footing, reorienting most of the civilian economy towards the production of war materiel. Rationing, wage and price controls, and compulsory recycling of important raw materials would begin in the fall.
Following the conclusion of the Franco-German Non-Aggression Treaty, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop swiftly delivered Hitler's demands to the government of the Polish Republic on the 19th of April. The initial demands were outrageous, perhaps even impossible. Hitler demanded that Poland cede territorial control of the Danzig corridor and extraterritorial access rights to the Free City of Danzig.
This alone would effectively reduce the republic from sovereign state to German satellite state cut off from the world market. Had French guarantees been worth the paper they had been printed on, it would have been stubbornly refused. So on a cold morning on the 20th, President Władysław Raczkiewicz sent a telegram in reply, indicating a willingness to negotiate based on this initial proposal.
[...]
While Hitler entertained the diplomatic offers, the armed forces of the Polish Republic continued to mobilise for war. Since Franco-German rapprochement began last year, the Polish Army had been preparing for this contingency. Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły had proposed forming a "national redoubt" in eastern Poland, heavily fortifying the Vistula River to hold out against the Wehrmacht while aligning with the Soviet Union against German expansion.
Such an option had been literally unthinkable just a year before. But in spite of the military soundness of the strategy and the desperate disparity of forces between Poland and Germany, the government of the Second Republic rejected it as defeatist. The fear that once Soviet soldiers were allowed on Polish soil, they'd never leave was all too real, and the political cost of abandoning half the country and most of the heavy industrial zones to Germany was far too high.
President Raczkiewicz instead modified the planned defensive works. While the formidable Vistula would be used in the north, the new Rejtan Line would extend north-south from the approaches to Lodz to Krakow.
With enough time, it might have resembled a second Maginot line. But as the troops of the Polish Army dug-in during late April, it was incomplete. A system of strongpoints, heavily fortified with concrete bunkers, heavy guns, and overlapping fields of fire, covered most of the lines of communication. But much of the line consisted of improvised earthworks hastily constructed.
[...]
Hitler took the unusual step of meeting with Raczkiewicz in person in the still neutral Free City of Danzig, though it too was under a Nazi Party administration, albeit one that had not yet had the means to do away with the institutions of democracy and free press. Raczkiewicz had arrived on the 25th of April expecting serious negotiations to take place, and was hopeful that war could be avoided, even if it meant serious compromises.
He did not expect Hitler to dramatically raise his demands, adding the "return" of Poznan and Eastern Silesia as well as military basing rights in Poland itself. The German delegation clarified after the stunned Poles asked the interpreters if they heard this right, stressing that these demands would be met or there would be war.
The terms could not be accepted. Nor could Poland win the war on its own. Raczkiewicz addressed the nation that night, telling them to prepare for the fight of their lives. He continued to hold onto hope that British or French intercession could at the very least force a peace settlement that retained Polish sovereignty.
[...]
On the morning of the 13th of May, without a declaration of war, German armed forces crossed the border into Poland. Citing a series of false-flag attacks on German civilians in Silesia and Danzig conducted by the Waffen-SS as a pretext, Hitler declared that "the long night has fallen on the Polish subhumans." Fall Weiß would be the prelude for the dynamic, mechanised war that would soon swallow all of Europe.
Aside from smaller corps sized "operational groups" intended to delay and harass the German advance, the bulk of the Polish Army was concentrated into six area armies manning vital sections of the Rejtan Line. At full mobilisation, the Polish Army assembled 39 infantry divisions (nine of which were lower strength reserve divisions), eleven cavalry brigades and three motorised brigades.
Germany would commit 75 divisions to the invasion, including ten Panzer divisions. In a departure from Czechoslovakia a year prior, the Panzers and their supporting motorised infantry divisions were separated from the main field armies. Instead, they were concentrated into Panzergruppe, with relative independence of action under the army group headquarters.
While the Poles would field 210 obsolete tanks, the German Army would commit nearly four thousand tanks, a majority of which were the modern medium Pzkfw III. This twenty to one disparity in armor would be compounded by a near five to one disparity in aircraft.
[...]
The war began with the rapid destruction of the Polish Air Force. The Luftwaffe continued round-the-clock operations, bombing civilian and military targets that were helpless to resist. The Polish delaying troops, mostly cavalry, fought desperately to delay the advance and destroy lines of communication.
Meanwhile, the tanks remained behind the infantry, chomping at the bit, as the bulk of the German forces advanced twenty kilometers a day through the countryside choked with fleeing civilian refugees.
The heaviest fighting began on the fifth day, as the German army began assaulting the defensive works of the Rejtan Line. The four Panzergruppen began their assaults, achieving breakthroughs south of Lodz and at Moblin from East Prussia. The Polish defensive line broke at the hinge between Army Lodz and Army Krakow. Fighting retreats turned into a rout.
[...]
By Day 10 of the invasion, Panzergruppe 1 under General Heinz Guderian linked up with Panzergruppe 3 under Generalleutnant Georg-Hans Reinhardt east of Warsaw. The link up trapped three Polish armies, Lodz, Poznan and Warsaw, into a cauldron. While the battered Army Krakow began preparations to relieve the pocket, the troops of the Soviet West Front crossed the eastern border.
Declaring that the Polish state had ceased to exist, Stalin stated his aims were to "protect Byelorussian and Ukrainians citizens" now rendered stateless, the invasion confirmed rumors of a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact carving up eastern Europe into spheres of influence.
Marshal Rydz-Śmigły ordered Polish forces not to contest this action. Envoys were sent in an ultimately vain attempt to get the Soviets to join the war as a co-belligerent. The fate of Poland was sealed.
[...]
Polish forces continued to fight on for two more weeks. The tightening noose around Warsaw ultimately collapsed effective, coordinated Polish resistance. While German forces regrouped to recover from the unexpected logistical strain of the war, diplomatic efforts continued. Protests and strikes in France against the perceived collaboration in German conquest and the "blood money" won from the Franco-German commercial agreement would ultimately collapse Daladier's embattled government, placing the Left Bloc under Leon Blum back in power.
It was this forlorn hope that pushed President Raczkiewicz to continue resistance even after Marshal Rydz-Śmigły broached the subject of seeking terms on the 25th of May. Blum had opposed appeasement, and it was still possible that France could honor the pact.
But however much Blum wished to, he could not find the political capital, especially within the French Army, to obtain a declaration of war. Following the receipt of France's final diplomatic note on the 8th of June, Raczkiewicz offered an armistice to begin discussing terms of surrender. Generaloberst Gerd von Rundstedt accepted the ceasefire, only to immediately break it to further consolidate Army Group South's position. This charade continued until German forces were mere blocks from the Presidential Palace, and the final instrument of surrender was delivered.
[...]
Following the official capitulation, it is sometimes said, the real war began. The Długa wojna, "the Long War", began with the partition. Dissidents from the Second Republic, the Polish Socialist Party, the Polish Communist Party, the German Socialist Labour Party of Poland, and the General Jewish Labor Bund, formed a government-in-exile under the banner of the "National Liberation Front" (Narodowowyzwoleńczy front). The NLF denounced the leadership of the Republic turning to collaboration in the "General Government" puppet state set up by Germany.
While the government of the USSR received them with marked indifference, the the UASR offered funding and resources for official operations based in Metropolis, and pushed Stalin into providing some lines of communication to the underground in the General Government. The porous border between the regions newly annexed to the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs became the harbinger of things to come, as most of Poland's Jewish population found itself deported and force marched eastward, along with significant portions of the Polish intelligentsia.
The brutality of German occupation would be felt immediately. Unlike the Czechs, who Nazi ideologues considered to be Germans with a false national consciousness, Poles were denigrated as subhuman. Thus, following the surrender the Nazi government declared that Poland had ceased to exist, rendering all Polish citizens stateless subjects.
While Hitler wished to enact the harshest measures immediately, he was cognizant of the need to maintain a positive image as Germany prepared for the Drang nach Osten. While Germany outright annexed just over half the territory it occupied, the remaining section, from Warsaw extending southwest to the new Soviet frontier, was reorganized as the General Governorate for the Polish Territories. While it would be administered by a Governor-General directly appointed by the Reich government, in this stage it functioned more like a puppet regime, with the right-wing Polish National Democrats invited to serve in a subordinate role.
These dangled carrots helped appease the diplomatic pressure from Britain, and also massaged world public opinion of Germany while promoting compliance with German occupation measures. In this immediate period, only the socialist left would maintain underground resistance.
The occupation measures would still be infamously harsh, to the point where no amount of flattery and collaboration regime could disguise them. In the directly annexed territories, a system of racial classification was implemented. Those of provable "German blood" who had collaborated were given German citizenship, and enriched by land and property taken from Poles. The various other degrees of "German" were subject to re-education when these carrots proved to be insufficient. Those who had their German blood "polluted" by Polish blood, and who had proven to be resolutely "Anti-German" in national consciousness were to be deported, along with the rest of the Poles, into the territories of the General Government, save those who were conscripted for industrial or agricultural labor.
In the General Government, a system of forced industrial labor was implemented under the auspices of Front Ford. As more men were conscripted into the military and the war economy further geared up, Germany faced a crisis in industrial and agricultural labor. The gap was to be made up by men and women conscripted in Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia, and Poland.
At this stage, the zwangsarbeit system was brutal but not actively murderous. Owing to the relatively good international trade relations Germany enjoyed, food rations for conscripted laborers was between ten and twenty percent lower than those enjoyed by German nationals, depending on profession. But their work hours were longer, and they faced draconian restrictions on their private lives.
Polish forced laborers were paid less than half of their German counterparts, and received little to no social benefits. They could not attend German church services or otherwise socialize with Germans publicly. Sexual relations with German women was punishable by death, and they had no privacy in their barracks. Many ordinary comforts, such as alcohol, were contraband and if found the workers was subject to corporal punishment. It must be stressed that these conditions only worsened from the high point in 1939-40.
[...]
The shockwaves from Fall Weiß would ripple outwards, setting the stage for the Second World War. The most immediate outcome was the rapid diplomatic realignment of the Baltic states. The republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had frigid diplomatic relationships with Germany at best in the 1930s. The ultimatum for the return of Memel, the conquest of Poland, and the racial animus against Balts and Estonians, had accomplished what decades of Soviet diplomatic pressure could not: rapprochement between the Soviets and the Baltic states.
On 18 August 1939, the military dictatorship of Antanas Smetona conceded to Comintern demands to allow free elections in the spring of 1940. The Lithuanian Communist Party, as well as other parties banned by the regime, would be legalized and allowed to contest the election. As a concession, Soviet election observers were rejected in favor of a delegation composed of representatives from Argentina, Chile, Mexico and the United Republics. While no agreement was made on army or naval basing, a basic commitment to collective defense was made.
Once Lithuania caved, the rest of the Baltic states soon followed. President and Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis relented under Soviet pressure. A similar commitment was made for free elections, but Ulmanis was more amenable to military cooperation with the Soviet Union. Already economically attached to the Soviet Union, the ever rapacious Germany would only want to further extend its reach to the relatively wealthy small nation.
In Estonia, the unpopular regime of Andres Larka established by the Vaps movement collapsed after several weeks of unrest in Tallinn. A grand coalition of the National Centre, the Settlers Party, the Socialist Workers Party, and the now above ground Communist Party took office under the restored 1920 Constitution. The new government under August Rei signed a mutual defense treaty with the USSR on 20 October 1939.
In Western Europe, British and French perfidy greatly sharpened the political divide. In the United Kingdom, the ruling Conservative and Unionist Party threatened a major split. A bloc of Conservative MPs, led by Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, had broken with the government over the tacit support of German expansion. Joined by a number of MPs from the Liberal Party, this bloc broke the National Government, and reduced Prime Minister Edward Wood's majority.
The controversy generated by the "Fascist Unionist" bloc within the C&UP mounted and in spite of their growing strength Prime Minister Wood reshuffled the cabinet in November 1939 to remove their most public sympathizers from ministerial positions. It did little to improve the domestic political situation. Communist-aligned groups within the trade unions were making considerable gains agitating against the export of war materiel to Germany, arguing that the oil, rubber and steel will one day return to Britain in the form of Nazi bombs. With Labour attempting to hold the impossible line of "neither appeasement nor militarism", the Commonwealth Workers' Party was making dramatical organizational gains in Labour's traditional strongholds.
In France, the government of Leon Blum held a razor thin mandate. Blum hoped to improve his odds following elections scheduled for May 1940, but his current supply-and-confidence agreement with the SFIC (French Section of the Communist International) was tenuous. If the increasingly militant communists made significant gains, some in his own party feared they'd begin an insurrection. Even if they did not, it might be impossible to maintain his government.
Political support for rearmament remained broad, but there were many in the republican right who had once advocated opposing Germany who now switched to appeasement. The French Army general staff informed Blum on 2 November 1939 that it did not have any confidence in its ability to successfully stop a German invasion through the Low Countries without Great Britain.
In the Comintern, all major plans for a decolonisation war against the British Empire were shelved indefinitely. At bilateral Soviet-American defense meetings in August, the two country's military attaches began developing a framework for American assistance in a future Soviet-German War. But these talks were limited by the official stance of Stalin's government to avoid any appearance of violating the non-aggression treaty with Germany.
While the Soviet Union began loosening the leash on the Red Army, beginning rehabilitation for officers who'd been forced into retirement or sentenced to hard labour in Siberia, the ongoing expansion and armaments plan was not significantly modified or accelerated, with Josef Stalin overruling the recommendations of People's Commissar for Defence Kliment Voroshilov. In Politburo talks, Stalin was almost in denial about the apparent failure of the triangulation strategy with Germany. Stalin was still convinced that he'd ultimately outplayed Britain and France, and that Hitler would use the respite they'd granted him to strike a crushing blow against them and avenge the Versailles diktat.
In America, the mood was more somber. Expecting a potential British-German military alliance against the Soviet Union, the Central Workers' Government voted to mobilise for war. The resulting resolution was referred to the full plenum of the Congress of Soviets for ratification on 1 July 1939. The resolution inducted all militia members into active duty service in the Armed Forces, and established a three-year universal service requirement. The economy shifted to a war footing, reorienting most of the civilian economy towards the production of war materiel. Rationing, wage and price controls, and compulsory recycling of important raw materials would begin in the fall.
- Location
- The great frozen north
Why is America shelving their plans for a decoloniation war when they half-expect Britain to join with Germany?