[Thunderhawk]

Stemming from some comments about Soviet occupation of Germany after WW2 and how it was 'nicer then the Germans deserved', I have been thinking..


I am operating under the view that the Soviet policy towards the Germans after WW2 was harsh, but not genocidal. The mass expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe along with the ~2 million German POWs who died in the USSR strike me as minor compared to the genocidal campaign of Nazi Germany in the USSR. I am trying to understand why the historic outcome happened rather than a bloody or genocidal revenge. I am under the impression that communism and Stalin operated with the idea of converting people to their ideology, so it was better to change Germany and the Germans than seek bloody revenge - would that impression be correct?

If the Soviet union had a stronger nationalist streak to it by the end of WW2, would that have been enough for an official indifference toward German civilian deaths? Or support for the targeting and elimination of German civilians as an act of revenge for the million killed by the Nazis? Did the Soviets actually have the man power and structure where they could massacre millions of civilians? If the Soviets were massacring millions of German civilians in revenge, would the Americans have continued their food and trade program to the Soviets? Would they or any Western Ally intervene to stop the massacre?

[Smilin' Dave]

I am trying to understand why the historic outcome happened rather than a bloody or genocidal revenge.

Well for one Stalin, for all the destruction he directly caused, didn't actually go in for genocide*. Mass deportation and purges were about the 'limit', and as you noted the mass deportations occurred and it wouldn't surprise me if certain persons were locked up or even executed after Soviet occupation (can't find any examples right this moment...).

Another consideration is that it wouldn't have been useful. Initially East Germany was 'useful' in that it could be made to pay reparations and stripped of any possible resources. As the Cold War emerged East Germany became a front line state, and thus an important strategic position which could supply troops and was perhaps easier to allow to police itself to an extent then to run it simply as a satellite. This isn't too far off the approach of the Western powers to West Germany either - initially punitive, shifting towards the idea that Germany could be a partner in the emerging conflict with the East.

Did the Soviets actually have the man power and structure where they could massacre millions of civilians? If the Soviets were massacring millions of German civilians in revenge, would the Americans have continued their food and trade program to the Soviets? Would they or any Western Ally intervene to stop the massacre?

Hypothetically the Soviets could probably have just managed a starvation type plan (basically what the Holodomor is typically portrayed as*), I don't think they really had the time/capacity to set up the sort of infrastructure you saw in Nazi Germany. I don't think the West would have stood for it though, it would have just been all wrong for them in terms of timing and and location even if they would have preferred to ignore it. Quite what they would have done about it, I don't know (the Red Army would have been in the way of any plan for direct intervention, and I don't think there was any other leverage sufficient).


*Can I be clear at this point and say any discussion of the Holodomor/Great Famine belongs in another thread. In fact there are probably already threads around for that debate.

[Andropov]

This was a major mistake of Stalin, one of his few. If I was in charge, Germans would be deported to the USSR to work in forced labor facilities while Germany proper colonized by Slavs.

[Decky]

I liked Stalin's plan to deindustrialise Germany, I forget what it was called so I can't find the wiki but it was good shit. Castrate the beast.

[Preston Cole]

:mfw rabid commies think genocide on Germans wouldn't get a hail of atom bombs on Moscow.

[Thunderhawk]

I liked Stalin's plan to deindustrialise Germany, I forget what it was called so I can't find the wiki but it was good shit. Castrate the beast.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan

Another consideration is that it wouldn't have been useful. Initially East Germany was 'useful' in that it could be made to pay reparations and stripped of any possible resources.

This, and the West's abandonment of the Morgenthau plan, makes me wonder if Soviet policies towards Germany were mild out of ideological/moral reasons or out of practical necessity?

[Smilin' Dave]

This, and the West's abandonment of the Morgenthau plan, makes me wonder if Soviet policies towards Germany were mild out of ideological/moral reasons or out of practical necessity?

I would got a step further and say that the Soviet leadership probably just didn't hate the Germans that much. To be sure they were far from friends as of VE day 1945, but I don't think there was a pathological hatred present. Hatred didn't really seem to monopolise their discussions about the war or other policy that I know of. Stalin's purported responseto reports of mass rape doesn't so much seem indicative of hatred so much as indifference... he doesn't even really seem to make it sound like a question of revenge.

[Rei Murasame]

I liked Stalin's plan to deindustrialise Germany, I forget what it was called so I can't find the wiki but it was good shit. Castrate the beast.

Was it the same as Morgenthau's plan? I might be willing to bet money that it was, by 'some coincidence'.

[Decky]

Was it the same as Morgenthau's plan? I might be willing to bet money that it was, by 'some coincidence'.

Stalin argued very forcefully that the Germans shouldn't even be left with the ability to build metal furniture as it would (apparently) mean they could rearm more quickly in the future as they would have metal working skills. The problem is the plan would mean there would be tens on millions of excess Germans there would be no jobs for. Mercy won out in the end (and look how they have repaid us).

[Rei Murasame]

You can guess that I'm a Eurofederalist without any qualms at all, right? Germanophobia is like some sort of political disease, I think.

[Decky]

You can guess that I'm a Eurofederalist without any qualms at all, right? Germanophobia is like some sort of political disease, I think.

And we see fascist nationalism's true Teutonic face. You are no different from the capitalists claiming to be nationalists while selling Britain up the river to the yanks.

[Rei Murasame]

Do you think Britain really deserves anything else? Seriously, what would you rather have happen? Maybe there's some irony in the fact that you are trying to cling to Britain's past more than I am.

[Decky]

Do you think Britain really deserves anything else? Seriously, what would you rather have happen?

Anything but Germany.

In an ideal world.



Everyone seems to think I was joking in the other thread. Let the Union burn, the UK means no more to me than NAFTA.

It is not a real country and it has nothing whatsoever to do with me.

[Rei Murasame]

Wouldn't that lead to each bite-size piece becoming part of the EU and having no clout whatsoever?

[Decky]

Nope, why would Mercia be in the EU? Norway isn't.

[Figlio di Moros]

This, and the West's abandonment of the Morgenthau plan, makes me wonder if Soviet policies towards Germany were mild out of ideological/moral reasons or out of practical necessity?

More likely out of practical necessity. The Soviets were quite active in recruiting German scientists post-war, giving them absurd bonuses to get them to deflect from the west. It clearly paid off.

Of course, America wouldn't have let the USSR enact "revenge" to quite such a large scale, and had several years before the Soviets stole the designs for the A-bomb. They could have, on the other hand, rounded up a number of Germans during the war and sent them to GULAGs and whatnot, and forced the poles into "North German" post war. A Bavaria-Austria would've sufficed for south Germany, Jutland to Denmark, and the Rhineland to the Dutch, French, and Belgians possibly. Whether or not the long-standing effect of such a division would be the end of Germany itself is impossible to know, since Rhinelanders might very well have opposed their occupiers.

[Nattering Nabob]

Stemming from some comments about Soviet occupation of Germany after WW2 and how it was 'nicer then the Germans deserved', I have been thinking..

A woman telephone operator from the Soviet Army recalled that:

When we occupied every town, we had first three days for looting and ... [rapes]. That was unofficial of course. But after three days one could be court marshaled for doing this. ... I remember one raped German woman laying naked, with hand grenade between her legs. Now I feel shame, but I did not feel shame back then... Do you think it was easy to forgive [the Germans]? We hated to see their clean undamaged white houses. With roses. I wanted them to suffer. I wanted to see their tears. ... Decades had to pass until I started feeling pity for them.[43] Link

[Andropov]

Some rapes are not equivalent to wholesale slaughter of millions of old men, women, and children.

[Allerton]

How many rapes are equivalent to the wholesale slaughter of millions? Is there some sort of quota the Soviets could have filled and then after that the top brass would call it all even, fair and square, and everyone would get to go home?

[Andropov]

I would have found it fair to deport East Germans to the USSR proper, rebuild the country, and then send them back to West Germany and populate what was East Germany with Slavs.