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.
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.