this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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If Germany had started with, and stuck to, attacking Russia, I doubt it'd have been a world war. I don't remember who all were Russia's allies at the start, but IIRC only the French were particularly fond of Russia. There weren't a lot of the usual royal contract-through-marriage, were there? Did many nobles have Russian cousins?
Pretty sure that last time they had already taken a couple other countries before heading to Russia. Stopping at Russia was already too late.
Well, yeah. That's why I qualified it with "if they had started with..." You're right, though; they couldn't have invaded Russia without first going through a couple of other countries first. They could have technically invaded Russia while minimally involving other countries by going through Poland to get to Kaliningrad Oblast. But then they'd be stuck again; they'd have to have taken Belarus to get to Moscow.
So: Poland, Belarus, and next stop: Miscow! Easy peasy. Talk the Japanese out of antagonizing the US and have them focus on Russia, with a promise to divide it. Not that the Japanese would have been much help on mainland Russia, but it'd at least give them something else to worry about.
I'm afraid you're gonna have to come up with a specific timeframe here.
WW1? The Germany Empire wasn't really the spark for this one. The entire royalty of the continent was effectively cousins. There may be some wiggle room, but most of them were literal cousins, with Wilhelm II and Nicholas II being most notable in this context.
Nobody was 'fond' of Russia in any way. Most European nations then saw it as they do now- large, unpredictable, and territorially aggressive. France and Britain were a part of the Triple Entente not because they trusted each other, but because it was a reasonably sensible counter to the Triple Alliance.
WW2? Royal intermarriage was mostly a moot point after the first go around even in nations that managed to not get their entire lineages deposed. As for the Soviet Union, still wildly unpopular. If your point is that Nazi Germany might have gotten away with things if they'd stayed tied up with Russia instead of trying to diversify their murder portfolio- I'd disagree. They would have gotten the OK from other Western powers for a time, but would still crumple from internal strife, the war was as much a wallpapering of those issues as it was any grand ambitions of Hitler's.
I think the point is more that for WW2 the other nations would have just left them to it more. Maybe profit off the increased demand for materials. However, the war started because of Germany invading Poland, and you kinda need to go through Poland to get to the USSR.
Encourage the USSR to try and take all of Poland first, then attack back when they are getting close? Not sure tbh.
Sure, good point; I assumed we were taking about WWII because - as you point out - Germany wasn't the instigator, and OPs post seemed to imply WWII.
And I disagree about the irrelevance of noble ties at the start of WWII. Yes, most of the countries involved were no longer monarchies, but names still had weight. Take Thurn und Taxis in Germany, for instance.
I grant that by 1930 they weren't the drivers of policy, and even before that Europe's royalty were regularly going to war with their cousins. But few in the hereditary European elite had many ties to Russia.
I didn't say Germany would have won a war with Russia, only that if they had, and has stayed focused on Russia, it wouldn't have become a world war. There'd have been no "Allies".
There's a big caveat there, though, and that's Japan. Germany attacking Russia would have naturally resulted in an alliance with Japan in any case, and once America got involved now the Germans are allied against the Americans. Without the Western front, though, America could have focused all efforts on Japan and might have allied with Russia; the Pacific conflict might have been shorter, and not ended with the Bomb. But once Japan's defeated, does America continue to reinforce Russia against Japan's former allies, the Germans?
I also wonder what role Africa would have played. Germany was always going to need to go after the oil, and what alliances would have resulted from that? I don't think any of the Western countries saw Africa as anything more than a source of natural resources, so it would have been less "coming to their aid" and more "protecting our assets there".
Without an invasion of France, or aggression against the UK directly, would the UK have gotten involved, or would Chamberlain's policy held? I feel as if France, if anything, would have only dug in and fortified their borders, and watched.
The aristocrats of the western empires may have still carried weight to their names, but the Great Depression was really putting strain on the legitimacy and popularity of the established order.
As for Japan: they were already scrapping with the Soviets at the time in Khalkhin Gol. If anything the American entry to the war freed the Soviets to just a single front. American efforts in the European theater I largely take to be more "maintaining market access" to the UK and France than any real desire to be there.
France may have sat back, but I kinda doubt it. A weakened Germany after fighting the Soviets would have tempted them to retake lands east of the Rhine that they'd lost following the Napoleonic campaigns. My take is that none of the powers were peacable or invested in the status quo, just less rabid about expansion than the Nazis.
Oh, yeah. It's all wild speculation. The Germans and French have been trading land on that border for so long, there's no way Germany or France wouldn't start something at some point.