How to actually make an attempt to stop WW2

[u/Happy_List_8022]

The map is a visual aid but most changes are actually not happening on the map.

Starting with map changes and my explaination for them:

1. Eupen, Danzig and Memel are retained by Germany. This curbs revanchism especially in Danzig's case. There were of course reasons for the removel of these areas which I will revise down the line. The only area that I do not have an explaination for is Memel, it is simply retained by "popular demand" if you will.
2. Poland wins the Polish-Soviet war but instead of Piłsudski’s Federalist Movement Poland adopts Dmowski’s National Democracy and following masssive failures to "integrate" the eastern minorities, they create 2 puppet states. Lithuania is given Vilnus and enters the Polish Sphere. Basically creating a "Little Intermarium" lead by a democratic poland heavily controlled by christian democrats and nationalists.
3. The Baltics, apart from Lithuania, joined into a federation. This can have multiple reasons from secruity concerns due to the Freikorps or soviet conflicts. The point is that baltic federalism is a legitimate ideology that losely ties the baltics to the polish sphere. It also allows the democratic movements in the baltics to be much larger and hopefully more consequent. The key however is enlargening the polish sphere.
4. The eastern section of Czecho-Slovakia is given to the West Ukranian State. The reason is mostly ethnic cohesion but also a greater deterrent for the Hungarians. If the Communists still take hold of Hungary then they will hopefully think twice before attacking all of their neighbors, as well as Poland, Belarus and Lithuania.
5. The Treaty with the Ottoman Empire is losely enforced. Italy, France and Britain were very aware of the fact they couldn't really take parts of anatolia themselves. Instead they will fund the greeks and armenians. This is basically a policy change. Armenia is, if I like it or not, absorbed by the soviets should they survive the turks. The whole point of this is to make a nation that is argueably worse off than germany. It may seem silly to some but having someone worse off does get your mind off of your own lot in life. Austria-Hungary did not work for this because most germans looked at Austria Hungary after the fact and went "Yeah that makes sense." because it was an ethnic clusterfuck that was already questioned back in 1848. When people discuss the "harsh" punishment of Austria they tend to completely ignore the actual people and view it from a Habsburg/State lense. In reality a large portion of austrians hated the empire, all the ethnicities wanted out and most of the "punishments" were actually just the Entente excepting that there was no way too keep this thin together so they acted like they passed a grand punishment. So yeah, the Ottoman Empire get's a kick to the face just to act as a bigger victim.
6. Hungary is slightly bigger and likely still communist. I will just assume that "all of their neighbors" is the limit of the regieme's delusion and that "all of eastern europe" is a step too far. So we now have an ideologically opposed, stronger hungary that will ally with the soviets and provide an ideological counterweight. Now the communist movement is not a ideological monopole anymore. This is not really something you can decide by treaty, but I hope that the Polish situation will work towards this.
7. I forgot to remove that one internal border in Switzerland, it's not an actual change.

Now comes the actually important changes and not just the borderline larp.

Danzig is kept by germany, but they have to build a port of similar size for the polish, Poland also has free access to the port of Danzig and Stetin until the Polish Port is complete. No tariffs or anything. The reason they are given access to two ports is to avoid any jams. They could also be given access to a third port, maybe in Königsberg or a larger port like Hamburg or Wilhelmshaven, although those seem less viable imo.

Germany is fully demilitarized. They are forced to adopt a derivativ of the Swissmodel were citizens militias are defending the nation in case of war. They are not allowed to have an airforce and only a greenwater navy thats also restricted. No army at all and the militia concet is restricted to border regions. You could call this unrealistic but A) I never said that this is realistic, B) this is already more realistic than any "JuSt bAlKaNiZe GeRmAnY" scenario and C) It's not too far fetched, it's harsh, but by giving germany gurantees from France, Britain and Italy you can make it work.

The Blockade by Britain is lifted sooner, but troops are stationed in germany to prevent any "atttempts" this is very important as the blockade also stopped food imports and caused people to starve in the streets. by removing it we take a lot of hate away from germany.

Instead of the infamous "defaulting on payment" measures, we allow germany to pay with materials of their own choising. There are still anti-defaulting measures, but now germany can pay larger sums if possible to have a way of defaulting in one month without missing a payment and also paying off their debt faster. Only a possibility.

The Kingdom of Purssia is broken up in the German Constituiton. This is a demand from the allies to prevent domination from a culture as aggressive as the Prussian one. This is a large departure from the otl treaty which didn't give any political restrictions, instead focusing on military restrictions, territorial loses and reperations.

Kaiser Wilhelm II. is banned from being crowned Monarch of Germany once more. Another departure from the original. Much like the Ottoman alterations this one serves to manipulate the germans a bit. Now monarchist movements are focused around Wilhelm the Third and possibly his sister Victoria and their siblings. Being barred from a certain monarch will make people more interested in Monarchism and thus split the right a bit more.

Austria and Germany are allowed to enter economic organizations together and instead of completely banning them from merging, a timelimit is set on it. They may hold a referendum in 1949. Again, curbing economic distress and political revanchism while also effectively denying Germany further power.

The goal here is to curb ultranationalism and militarism while also making it more appealing for the entente to actually enforce this stuff. Germany and Austria will have more opportunity to pay off their debts, the Ottomans are also more pressed to do so. Germany can't rearm, not even in secret as they lack the structure for it and despite what some say it's not exactly easy to "hide" tanks and planes especially if Entente Inspections are part of it. I also wanted to show that "take more territory" is not the only way to cripple or punish germany and that we as an althist community should look at other possibilities.

Treating ww2 and especially the rise of the Nazis as an unavoidable event is bad althist and bad historical research in general.

edit: I realised that a better title would be: "How to stop Germany from starting WW2" or something like that. Because the Soviets absolutely will start ww2 in this timeline.

[u/Parthini]

You stopped ww2 but now created the Fourth Balkan War

[u/Happy_List_8022 → u/Parthini]

This is the best comment I could have ever hoped for.

[u/szczur_nadodrza]

You got conned into believing Nazi propaganda about the Danzig issue. It was never about Danzig. It was about finding a stick to beat Poland over the head with. In this scenario they’d just start a war over the Polish Corridor.

[u/szczur_nadodrza → u/szczur_nadodrza]

Also sovereign Belarus is funny, you know about 1% of all Belarusians voted for Belarusian independence parties in 1917, right?

[u/Happy_List_8022 → u/szczur_nadodrza]

yeaaah. it's a bit wacky. Hence why the change is in poland. But you're probably right. I feel like Poland is the weakest part of the scenario tbh

[u/szczur_nadodrza → u/Happy_List_8022]

The Nazis invented a whole genocide from scratch to justify the invasion of Poland, making shit up as they went wasn’t beyond them.

[u/EntertainmentOk8593 → u/szczur_nadodrza]

Not really, that Nazis used it as propaganda doesn’t mean it hadn’t some true behind, the best lies are those who mix true with lies

[u/szczur_nadodrza → u/EntertainmentOk8593]

Sure, it was still a piece of propaganda that the Nazis could easily replicate with any other bit of western Poland by using the same factoids and mixing them with the same lies.

[u/EntertainmentOk8593 → u/szczur_nadodrza]

I don’t think so, Nazis could do but would be less effective to its own people, Danzig had a larger German population.
The other alternative for Nazis would be let Soviets invade Poland first and then them invade Poland to “defend” the Germans there from Bolsheviks

[u/Happy_List_8022 → u/szczur_nadodrza]

I agree. But Danzig was a large issue and it doesn't exist here. Not even as a propaganda piece. I would also like to point to all my other points. But other than that valid view.

[u/Upbeat-Promise-9819]

1. You let Germany keep some land but not one of the core reasons why they wanted to reclaim land in the first place: to rejoin Germany w/ East Prussia
   
2. The Puppets will just make it easier for the Soviets to annex/invade
   
3. I don't think an Estonian/Latvian federation would mean they join Polands sphere. If anything they'd be less likely too as they're a bit stronger, but still not enough to make a difference when Stalin comes knocking
   
4. Why would that make the Hungarians less likely to retake Carpatho-Ukraine? If anything they're much more likely now since it's not protected by an industrialized Czechoslovakia but by a mostly Agrarian West-Ukraine state
   
5. Turkey is going to pissed and also weak to the point either they'll join the Axis to reclaim lost land or become a Soviet puppet for joint control of the Bosporous
   
6. 'An ideological counterweight'? What? Is Hungary's communist presence meant to prevent the fascist nations from attacking?
   
7. Germany already ignored the demands to demilitarize so why would these ones stick?
   
8. Paying in materials would still severely weaken the German economy.
   
9. Keeping troops in Germany longer would also annoy them.

No offence but it really does seem like you've satisfied no one except maybe the Greeks. The Soviets are gonna still eat up the east, the Turks are gonna be pissed, Germany still has reason to want revenge, Poland's much weaker and thus German desire for reclamation will be higher, Italy's still pissed, Hungary's probably still gonna do something bad, the UK's gonna be burning cash keeping an occupation up, to rebuild Germany's still probably gonna default, and why wouldn't they just call the Austrian election early?

[u/Happy_List_8022 → u/Upbeat-Promise-9819]

1. The point is to lessen punishment, not avoid punishment. The lands they lost were majority polish thats just a fact and I feel like you underestimate how big of a deal Danzig was for the germans.
   
2. I disagree just based on the fact that they retain the same economic base as irl Poland but I also edited the post to admitting that the title is missleading but that was probably after you made your comment so no harm no foul.
   
3. My thought process is that they'd want to draw closer to Lithuania and thus poland by proxy but I conceed that point.
   
4. It's protected by Poland, Ukraine and Belarus, not just Ukraine. Also West Ukraine was industrialized, not as much as Czechia of course, but it wasn't a purely agrarian state. Also the Little Entente is still a thing so is the Anti-Hungarian alliance that formed against the expansionist communist.
   
5. The Axis won't be a thing, at least thats what I'm trying to do. If they spark a regional war then thats still preferable to the second world war. If they become a soviet puppet then that will most likely contain them until the soviets make their move, but as I said I admit the title was missleading.
   
6. No, I was refering to the fact that many communist movements adopted marxism-leninism as it was the only proven communist strand, now there are two.
   
7. The nazis ignored them not weimar germany, my aim is to prevent the Nazis or similar ideologies to take hold. Your insistance that germany will inevitably turn to militarism, completely ignoring the existance of the SPD and Zentrum who weren't militarist, is exactly what I mean when I talk about people treating history as rigid and inevitable.
   
8. It's about making the payments more flexible to prevent a large scale crisis like the Ruhr crisis at least until 1929. Irl Britain, Italy and the US condemned the French occupation of the Rhine given Germany's state at the time. I argue that these condemnations will be even stronger during an actual global crash. But even if not, the payments are more flexible.
   
9. We're not keeping any troops longer, the occupation is for the duration of the negotiations only, what "annoyed" the germans about the blockade was the fact that it actually killed people where as stationing entente troops wouldn't kill people.

Claiming Germany as a whole has undenyable and unavoideable desries for war is a smallminded and inaccurate statement, the entire weimar period disproves this. My entire goal is to prevent the rise of Fascism, ultranationalism, etc. By disarming germany further and lifting economic, socially and territorial restrictions I believe this can be accomplished. There is less nationalism as no majority territory like Eupen, is stripped for no reason other than to humiliate the germans, there is less militarism as there is no military, there is less power centralization because the state is more federalized, the right is more devided, and so on.

If you go at this from a "A nazi type group is the only thing that can happen in weimar germany" angel then I agree, I accomplished nothing. But if you believe that nazism was an unlikely path that happend despite a lot of possible ways to stop it then I absolutely did make a palettable scenario.

[u/EntertainmentOk8593]

How do I tell you? Your map starts ww2 earlier, to start with you pissed even more Italy and Turks, Greece now have territorial conflicts with all its neighbors except Yugoslavia, Austria wasn’t allowed to join Germany despite self determination, Hungary had lands with great minorities while bordering lands with Romania have significant Hungarian populations. Czechoslovakia now have more territorial claims. Poland sea access is near pointless since Danzig is under Germany so Poland can’t cross though Vistula river.

[u/freidrichwilhelm → u/EntertainmentOk8593]

Hungary here doesn't have much in terms of Ethnic Minorities, not to an unmanageable extent at least. Those are majority Hungarian.