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Well, I suspect that a Germany that went communist in the 20s or 30s would also end up on the losing side of a world war. A communist Germany, it seems to me, would be likely to feud with Russia over who the de facto leader of European communism is. The Soviets were very invested in that, and they would rather a foreign communist movement fail than turn into a rival to them - as with Spain, for instance, where they prioritised defeating left-wing rivals over defeating the Nationalists. Communist Germany likely either gets absorbed into the Soviet sphere, or it has to fight to prevent it. That's either an earlier GDR, or it's a world war. Neither outcome seems particularly rosy for Germany.
Is either worse than our WWII? I really don't know. It's very difficult to speculate about counterfactuals, especially in a case like WWII where we might have to weigh up competing moral intuitions. Suppose OTL-WWII is on average better for all Germans, but far, far worse for German Jews, whereas AU-communist-Germany is on average worse for all Germans, but German Jews are only a little bit worse than average. A strict calculation of utility favours OTL-WWII, but it's also singled out a small minority for especial suffering. How do you weight that in your calculation? Does it matter? Does it not? I know that to me it feels rather icky to say that I'd prefer the timeline which is slightly better for everyone but which requires throwing a minority group that I'm not in under the bus.
(Maybe it makes a difference that in this alternate history, we, in addition to not having a Holocaust, also probably don't have Israel either. From a Jewish perspective, is it better or worse to never found the state of Israel? Another question that depends a lot on your values.)
You think? German communism was on good terms with and supported by Russia generally. The less-authoritarian socialists who were critical would face the wall anyway. I think the germans expected international cooperation, Stalin didnt have anything but Russia at this point so its not clear why he would turn them down, and then maybe this becomes a political conflict in international communism and eventually a german-soviet split, but actual war seems very unlikely.
Theres some variation in these scenarios but I think they play out pretty similar to "early GDR" anyway - GDR problems are mostly not the fault of the russians, IMO. And I assumed a capitalist coalition does survive and cold war and both german and russian communism eventually collapse like they did, which Im now less sure about - full Germany is much more powerful than the actual GDR territory, and they may have been able to stabilise the russians when their leaders lost faith, and Im pretty vague on what happens to the rest of the Warsaw Pact in all of this. I went with this because I consider it the optimistic scenario for german communism - which is still worse than actual, and thats sufficient for my point.
If there is a worldwar anyway at a similar time, it would have to be France going fascist in response, massively cleaning up its act with the army, and either being attacked late in the process or getting it through and starting it themselves, and Im not sure Roosevelt would have been on their side (though at that point he may be couped).
This isn't why they wouldn't feud, it's why they would feud. Communism did indeed turn out to be one of those systems where the people who got into power were the ones ruthless enough to murder the idealists who might object to ruthlessness ... and ideas like "we should stay on good terms with those foreigners" and "we should support those foreigners", if held as terminal values rather than just means to an end, are just another form of idealism. If your leaders are all selected by a process that winnows out the ones foolish enough to not betray their competition before they can be betrayed by them, or even if you just suspect that the other guys' leaders were selected by such a process, your only non-idealistic option is to try to maneuver yourself into a good position to strike first yet again, before they succeed at doing the same. It takes ambition to climb to the top of an authoritarian pyramid, and ambitious authoritarians can only safely collaborate with underlings who are too humble to worry about or rulers who are too strong to challenge, not with other ambitious authoritarians.
I often hammer on FDR and FDR apologetics, but to be fair I do think there's a reasonable argument that can be made that some fraction of the wrecking ball he took to United States and classical-liberal values was actually necessary to avoid even worse. In an atmosphere of uncertainty and panic spawning significant socialist and fascist movements, perhaps the only escape was to adopt some of their less-murderous tenets so that the more-murderous movements could no longer use those to appeal to the populace and win with the whole package. And although it dismays me that FDR was and still remains so popular, the knowledge that his values won out through popularity rather than through war or murder means we never got stuck in that same cycle where nobody can imagine any way out except more war and murder.
Yes, but the russian communists did not fight civil wars among each other, and neither did they fight with the chinese after those left.
In the OTL Russia had a very direct hand in setting up communist governments in places it had effectively conquered post WW2, which gave them a very central position. The communist Germany timeline has a big questionmark to the how, not just the who, of communist international organisation.
They hunted Trotsky all the way to Mexico to assassinate him, in between their massive internal purges. Out of the first Politburo, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, Bubnov Kamenev and Zinoviev executed, and Sokolnikov assassinated in a Soviet prison. Lenin and (unless you believe the Beria-assassination theory) Stalin were the only two of those seven not to be killed by other Russian Communists.
A few hundred dead here and there wasn't much of a fight in the end, but it did risk going nuclear before tensions cooled. Relying on Richard Nixon's firm hand and cool head to avert thermonuclear armageddon is like the final stage of international desperation, if not outright evidence for ongoing Anthropic-Principle effects; it is not a desirable or peaceful relationship.
Palace coups are not civil wars. If there was something like an international communist government, Id totally expect them to kill each other in there too, but not a war between nations.
I dont know much about that, but they had a massive common enemy sitting at the ready. Maybe the soviets thought they could win off nukes alone without being weakened vs the US, but couldnt and the attempt would be massively dumb. Something like the nuke imbalance would be unlikely in this timeline, and if anything Germany has them first, and possibly even before the West, in which case Russia would be far down the list of targets.
The Great Purge featured several hundred thousand executions, plus more deaths in the gulags. Maybe that's not a Civil War, it's just sparkling mass homicide, but either way it's really not a great choice of ally.
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