No. Of course they wouldn't nuke forests.
What if the Japanese and Germans had resisted allied occupation?
- Thread starter Disgustipated
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No. Of course they wouldn't nuke forests.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Don't see why not. Germany gets turned into three large Austrias and we might even have avoided NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the whole Cold War. The germans did lost the war - totally - and were in no position to argue about it.
Remind me, how did Germany force the Netherlands to surrender?
LightSpectra
me autem minui
That doesn't answer the question raised, which is how punishing Germany even further somehow avoids revanchism or makes the Allied cause appear more just.
Well, a major tenet in the Morgenthau plan was to de-industrialize Germany, make it into a giant potatofield basically. And allow only light industries if even those. That didn't really make too much sense from the economical point of view, by 1947. It was more beneficial for the Germans and indeed for western Europe, to be able to get the Germans exporting products and getting some growth in the economy. A Morgenthau plan- potatofield Germany would not have been even self sufficient in its food output, this was estimated at the time, so in that sense the plan had a pretty callous intent, to starve off millions of Germans to death (together with the forced manual labor, at least initially). Austria itself got off pretty lightly compared to a hypothetical Morgenthau Germany.
The two years or so after the end of the war were pretty harsh all around Europe, food and coal rationing in Britain, emaciated Germans and pretty much most other Europeans. Hence the Marshall plan I guess (instead of Morgenthau plan...) Also to inject capital into the European economies to fuel growth. Marshall took the step to remove gradually the severe limitations on German industries and this together with food aid and German currency reform were important factors in recovery. They also wanted to contain communist influences in a way with the Marshall plan, since the issue became relevant with the Greek civil war.
I don't think there's really any way to claim that the cold war would have been avoided if the Morgenthau plan was initiated. Cold war, or rather the iron curtain, was a term first coined by Göbbels in the final year of the war, but the actual thing happened quite irrespective of the Germans themselves. Certainly Bundeswehr contributed to the bulk of the NATO forces in Germany, but I don't think the mutual enmity between the west and the east could have been avoided by demilitarizing the western half of Germany. Also it would be factually wrong to say that Austrian model worked fine, there were serious tensions in Austria during the occupation between Soviets and Allied anyway. The thing was solved after Stalin's death during Khrushchev anyhow.
The faultline between the democracies and people's democracies would simply have been drawn in a more westward position. Truman was after all the American president (Truman doctrine), and Stalin was leading the USSR
The two years or so after the end of the war were pretty harsh all around Europe, food and coal rationing in Britain, emaciated Germans and pretty much most other Europeans. Hence the Marshall plan I guess (instead of Morgenthau plan...) Also to inject capital into the European economies to fuel growth. Marshall took the step to remove gradually the severe limitations on German industries and this together with food aid and German currency reform were important factors in recovery. They also wanted to contain communist influences in a way with the Marshall plan, since the issue became relevant with the Greek civil war.
I don't think there's really any way to claim that the cold war would have been avoided if the Morgenthau plan was initiated. Cold war, or rather the iron curtain, was a term first coined by Göbbels in the final year of the war, but the actual thing happened quite irrespective of the Germans themselves. Certainly Bundeswehr contributed to the bulk of the NATO forces in Germany, but I don't think the mutual enmity between the west and the east could have been avoided by demilitarizing the western half of Germany. Also it would be factually wrong to say that Austrian model worked fine, there were serious tensions in Austria during the occupation between Soviets and Allied anyway. The thing was solved after Stalin's death during Khrushchev anyhow.
The faultline between the democracies and people's democracies would simply have been drawn in a more westward position. Truman was after all the American president (Truman doctrine), and Stalin was leading the USSR
I think - not my idea, obviously - that the breakdown of the wartime alliance was a systemic issue caused chiefly by disagreement between the various Allied powers as to what constituted a post-war peace. They never bothered to hash it out during the war itself, the Americans in particular as a deliberate policy decision.
Basically I started wondering, could it really have been possible to have an early detente, "a true peace" and avoid the Cold War?
In western Europe, the European Coal and Steel Community was a concrete step towards better economic integration. With French, Benelux, and German industries tied together, this measure did end up pacifying the warlike European tendencies
Or alternatively, peace through power, when Guards tank armies reach the Atlantic? Would it be possible to find a workable peace without being assimilated into the Soviet?
Russian objective was to have some form of buffer between the west and the Motherland, due to the grievous losses and devastation that USSR suffered in the land war on her soil. Then again, neither was USA, at least politically, willing to abandon Europe to Soviet dominance. Austria was a case where both sides backed off, but I think that would have been difficult with the two Germanies, (or even the other soviet buffers for that matter, if you're willing to go that far).
Why would it need to be the west who takes the first step, to back down before Soviet military power? Certainly it would be quite unthinkable that Soviets would simply leave DDR be on its own, and back off in conjunction with British, French and American withdrawal from West Germany? Soviets had explicitly worked the map of eastern Europe to take a military base in Kaliningrad, take a slice out of eastern Poland, and compensate Poland with German territories. Simply backing off mutually would go directly against the Soviet buffer state strategy which they had been working on?
You would have to define the conditions of peace on both sides and come to an agreement or compromise. For superpowers generally, compromises are touchy issues, prestige demands something better for your side. Austria was a pretty small chip in the big picture. Western Europe was also tied economically to themselves and America for that matter. Soviet bloc was supposed to be contained and maintained from within, although there some countries with bilateral soviet trade that weren't located in the soviet sphere of influence. The bilateral trade agreements and Cominform and Comecon were Soviet counter-measures. Then there was also a mutual technology embargo between the west and the east.
There probably was way too much mutual distrust, fear and threat for any big co-operation to happen between just like that. Stalin after all had some pretty deep seated distrust of the West.
In western Europe, the European Coal and Steel Community was a concrete step towards better economic integration. With French, Benelux, and German industries tied together, this measure did end up pacifying the warlike European tendencies
Or alternatively, peace through power, when Guards tank armies reach the Atlantic? Would it be possible to find a workable peace without being assimilated into the Soviet?
Russian objective was to have some form of buffer between the west and the Motherland, due to the grievous losses and devastation that USSR suffered in the land war on her soil. Then again, neither was USA, at least politically, willing to abandon Europe to Soviet dominance. Austria was a case where both sides backed off, but I think that would have been difficult with the two Germanies, (or even the other soviet buffers for that matter, if you're willing to go that far).
Why would it need to be the west who takes the first step, to back down before Soviet military power? Certainly it would be quite unthinkable that Soviets would simply leave DDR be on its own, and back off in conjunction with British, French and American withdrawal from West Germany? Soviets had explicitly worked the map of eastern Europe to take a military base in Kaliningrad, take a slice out of eastern Poland, and compensate Poland with German territories. Simply backing off mutually would go directly against the Soviet buffer state strategy which they had been working on?
You would have to define the conditions of peace on both sides and come to an agreement or compromise. For superpowers generally, compromises are touchy issues, prestige demands something better for your side. Austria was a pretty small chip in the big picture. Western Europe was also tied economically to themselves and America for that matter. Soviet bloc was supposed to be contained and maintained from within, although there some countries with bilateral soviet trade that weren't located in the soviet sphere of influence. The bilateral trade agreements and Cominform and Comecon were Soviet counter-measures. Then there was also a mutual technology embargo between the west and the east.
There probably was way too much mutual distrust, fear and threat for any big co-operation to happen between just like that. Stalin after all had some pretty deep seated distrust of the West.
This goal dates well before that. But even if the Soviets get a buffer, they integrate the buffer and now need to buffer their former buffer.
In the long run without a more pressing issue to make them allies of convenience, I don't think the mutual animosity (that went right through the people) would allow for good relations in the long term.
This was the fundamental problem that led to the breakdown of the wartime alliances.
The biggest reason the post-Napoleonic peace worked so damn well is because the powers involved defined what that peace meant and agreed on it during the fighting, and structured their actions during the last wars against the Empire to better facilitate that peace. The Cold War, on the other hand, began because the USSR and the Western powers began to implement their respective programs for global peace during the war before realizing that those programs were mutually incompatible. The famous wartime conferences did not mitigate this at all; they were almost all instances of typical eighteenth-century diplomatic horse-trading, and structured specifically such that Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill would not have to find some sort of way to figure out how the postwar world was supposed to work.
The purpose of strategic bombing was to destroy military, industrial, and civilian targets. Bombing cities, thus killing civilians was a major way to diminish moral and force the enemy to surrender. Excessive bombing was a major part of German strategy during the first half of the war. Deaths of civilian targets were not accidents that the Germans avoided; they were a necessary part of destroying the enemy's will to fight.
Of course, this sort of bombing was used to an even greater extent by the allies, who like the Germans sought to destroy enemy moral by bombing a wide range of targets including urban areas home to millions of potential casualties.
Please note that before allied bombing began the Germans had been using terror bombing on the British and in their campaigns in continental Europe. Allied bombings were a response to the war the Germans started.
M
Me,myself,and,I
Guest
Avoid the cold war? Are you nuts? Stalin would've started WWII if Hitler hadn't beat him to it, and after the war Stalin started planning WWIII it's a miracle he died when he did. Splitting Germany up would not have affected the cold war or the Warsaw Pact, particularly since the pact was effectively Soviet occupation.
As for a resistance. It would have been suicide. The Russians would have spared no one and punished German civilians for the resistance fighters actions, and the Western allies were in no mood for such an operation. We were real mad at the Germans and particularly at the Japanese.
M
Me,myself,and,I
Guest
Hold on that is not entirely correct. Here is what happened, during the battle of Britain German strategy was to bomb RAF targets, however within weeks (the Luftwaffe estimated 2 weeks the RAF 1) of total collapse by the RAF a German bomber flight missed it's target and dropped it's bombs on London instead. The Brits responded by bombing Berlin, Hitler then failed his sanity check and ordered the switch from bombing RAF targets to bombing civilian targets. The Brits proceeded bomb the hell out of the German cities and factories.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
This paragraph is pretty solidly false. The RAF was never "within weeks of total collapse", the first German attack on London civilians was not a mistake, Britain's policy to target industry with bombers was decided before the war began, and it wasn't entirely Hitler's onus to switch to the London Blitz (the Generalstabschefs der Luftwaffe had pretty roundly agreed that there needed to be a general change of strategy).
ParkCungHee
Deity
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God Dachs, haven't you played Red Alert Yet?
But that was Kane's fault, not Stalin's! :3
Racsoviale
Smoke me a kipper!
Where does zombielenin figure into this?
M
Me,myself,and,I
Guest
Joseph Stalin had been planning to bring as much of Europe in to the fold of communism as he possibly could. Originally the plan was to set up a communist regime in Germany, however the Nazi part proved to strong. Stalin's plan after the war began was to wait it out and when the dust had settled he could roll right over a shattered Europe, however that didn't work out either. Afterwards Stalin began preparations for WWIII though that was not supposed to happen until sometime during the '50s he was also planning another purge when he died.
LightSpectra said:
I am afraid you are wrong. According to contemporary sources the RAF was within a week or too of collapse, the pilots were exhausted from having to fly missions around the clock, planes were damaged or destroyed, and they were losing men. The first bombing attack on London was done by a group of German bombers that got lost in the fog IIRC and bombed London because they had orders not to come back with bombs.
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