A surviving Weimar Republic by 1960 - Schadenfreude rather than Revanche, is the main feeling to for

Full title:A surviving Weimar Republic by 1960 - Schadenfreude rather than Revanche, is the main feeling to former WWI enemies & German Republic "sits pretty"

Imagining a scenario where the German elites do no hand power to the Hitler and the Nazis, one can project a few features about what lies ahead for Europe and the world.

For one thing, a surviving republic is a completely plausible scenario, especially if you have an early enough PoD such that the President elected in 1924 is not the reactionary and increasingly elderly and manipulable Hindenburg, but a more normal, centrist politician like Wilhelm Marx, whose chances of signing away executive powers to Hitler or any Nazi are vanishingly small.

Spoiler: tangent/rant on why Communism is an unlikely alternative to Nazis
A surviving Weimar Republic is also certainly a more plausible "runner-up" scenario to what really happened compared to a Communist takeover, revolution, or electoral victory in 1930s Germany, despite that long being an alternative people have suggested. The Communists coming to power in Germany by legal, electoral means, or by violent uprising, indeed by any reason than what created East Germany, defeat and occupation in a war with the USSR, is just a really unlikely scenario, because of strong majority sentiment against Communism in Germany despite nontrivial minority support. 〈insert pop-up content here〉

So let's just say the Weimar Republic survives because Wilhelm Marx is President since 1924. The Republic endures close-calls during the high-tide of Nazi electoral and street support in the early 1930s, but Chancellor Bruning holds on with a minority government, and his economic program begins to ameliorate the Depression, and the Nazi electoral tide recedes.

The Nazi Party, German anti-Versailles sentiment, secret gradual rearmament, and some open rearmament will not go away overnight, and will remain part of the European scene through the 1930s at least, and likely into the 1940s. Germany is slowly rearming in these years up to the level of a 'normal' country of its size and population, while party politics revert to the mean with the Catholic Centre and SDPs taking the largest vote shares and Nazis and other right wingers, libertarian Free Democrats, and Communists, all taking smaller vote shares at successive elections.

Spoiler: boring economic recovery details
The German, and European, recovery from the Depression is real, but painfully gradual, not restoring employment or growth or optimism quickly to late 1920s levels. However, the lack of breakneck German rearmament, and accompanying crisis atmosphere in Europe may be healthier than OTL for European and American economies starting 1937 or so, with less aggressive movement of gold from Europe to America (some cite this 'hot gold' movement, and excessive US Treasury 'sterilization' of gold inflows as the major cause of the 'second dip' of the Great Depression in 1937, which reversed much of the 1933-36 recovery progress). 〈insert pop-up content here〉

Without an aggressive rearming German dictatorship, the Spanish Nationalist mutiny may not get off the ground and thus the Spanish Civil War and international proxy conflict is avoided. Additionally, Italy is never recruited to form the anti-German 'Stresa Front' with France and Britain, and thus never feels emboldened to invade Abyssinia. So Italy and Germany remain League of Nations members throughout the decade. Italy may still end up turning its clientage of Albania into an outright annexation before 1940, without the powers of the world thinking it an earth-shaking event however.

Japan will likely get embroiled in full warfare with China on schedule in 1937 and have occasional border clashes with the USSR. Other powers will be loath to do much besides verbally/diplomatically censure Japan and provide aid to China however. Mandatory sanctions will be very slow in coming and will never really be binding on all relevant producers of the few basic raw materials Japan cannot obtain or manufacture internally, petroleum products and iron/steel.

Without Germany bullying its way to increased territory and starting a war of conquest, Stalin will also cautiously avoid war in Europe. Even in the Far East in the late 1930s and for most of the 1940s, with respect to East Asia, he will sharply defend his eastern border, and at times support Chinese resistance generously, but not engage Soviet forces in the Sino-Japanese War.

Spoiler: Too much gory detail on USSR development
What the Soviet Union does do is relentlessly build its heavy industrial production base and infrastructure through its relentless five-year planning cycle. The Soviets protect their territory with a more than ample military, and by the later 1940s begin to allow a greater share of investment to go into consumer goods for at least the urban and party connected population of industrial centers. One five-year plan follows another, 1938-1943, 1943-1948, 1948-1953,etc. With so much core industrial development and urbanization and education accomplished by the plans through 1948, the 1948 plan allows much more diversification for emphasis on development of Asian and Arctic frontier zones, modernization of ground, sea, and air forces, and the aforementioned improvement of consumer goods sector. The usual planning process is less thorough in 1953, with organizations directed to proceed for the next year as they have the previous.

Spoiler: The long Sino-Japanese stalemate in this ATL
The China war will remain an inconclusive stalemate, with the Netherlands, Soviet Union, Romania, Mexico, and even to some extent the US and British Empire earning 'blood money' from selling Japan the petroleum it needs to fuel its war effort (at least for its aircraft and watercraft, most of Japan's ground forces are not terribly mechanized or motorized). The Japanese exploit and develop occupied Manchuria and China, even managing to start some oil production by the end of the '40s in occupied Manchuria and Shandong to help alleviate their extremely thin foreign exchange margin. 〈insert pop-up content here〉

Spoiler: Long tangent: 1950s Soviet-Japanese War & Communist takeover of China
The USSR astonishes the world, but most importantly, Japan, with a series of wide-ranging surprise attacks from the Kuril islands, to Tokyo (by bomber), the Japan and China Seas (by submarine) to Korea, to Manchuria, and China in February 1954, on the 50th anniversary of the Japanese surprise attacks marking the start of the Russo-Japanese War.

The all-out Soviet attacks shock the Japanese, make rapid initial advances using Soviet doctrines of mechanized warfare and deep battle, and shake up what had become a routine, hum-drum Sino-Japanese warm cheering the Chinese side into renewed vigorous activity. After the first 8 weeks and the Soviet outrunning of their supply lines, the pace of Soviet and Chinese advance slows, and the Japanese have a chance to regroup and counterattack in some locations in the Kuril islands, perhaps Sakhalin, Korea, east China, but they have nothing left in Manchuria or Inner Mongolia, and Chinese Communist forces are rapidly armed up with captured Japanese arms and donated Soviet arms, with their ranks increased by captured and 'converted' Chinese and Manchurian 'puppet troops', formerly working for the Japanese. The Soviets (who include sizeable Mongolian forces) also integrate thousands of captured ethnic Korean POWs from the IJA into all-Korean units under Soviet born or Soviet trained Korean officers and Commissars.

Over the course of 1954, the Soviet, Mongolia, and now allied Chinese [Communist and Nationalist] and Korean forces mount consecutive wall, river, and urban crossings (while also leaving some cities, towns or garrisons besieged) that on the Asian mainland clear all the Korean peninsula and China north of the Yangzi river of Japanese and puppet forces. Chinese Nationalist forces this year, based out of Chongqing in the southwest, make good headway pushing back Japanese forces from the southwestern province of Guangxi and western Hubei and they occupy and push into western Hunan and Guangdong, reaching the outskirts of Guangdong.

Soviet aviation generally rules the day in airspace above Soviet or Chinese or Korean ground forces, but has less staying power at greater distances, with its longer-range bomber force attempting strikes on Japanese home islands and naval targets facing frightful attrition. The relatively inexperienced Soviet naval forces, although having some good equipment, also face heavy losses and attrition, with long-distance surface combatants not having a great deal of longevity against the Japanese navy. Nevertheless, naval engagements and aeronaval engagements still cost the Japanese precious fleet assets that will take years to replace. And the Soviet air umbrella and lodged ground forces on Sakhalin, and at least the northern Kuriles, are strong enough to maintain the dominant Soviet hold on those islands, even though the Soviets pose no realistic ground threat to Hokkaido, the other Japanese home islands, Cheju-Do island, the Ryukyus, or Taiwan.

Over the course of the winter-spring 1955 campaign, Soviet and Chinese Communist forces, with some Mongolian and Korean forces, cross the Yangzi river in strength to drive the Japanese out of Shanghai and Wuhan, and then, against KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek's express preferences, continue driving forward and flying forward to "support" Chinese Nationalist operations to liberate coastal ports in Fujian, Guangzhou, and Hainan from Japanese forces. In March 1955 Stalin dies, but this is no relief for the Japanese, whose last vestiges on the Asian mainland and Hainan are eliminated by May 1955, and who stop attempting new landings. The Japanese Empire signs an armistice with the new Soviet collective leadership in June.

After the end of this war, Korea is soon turned into a Communist-guided 'People's Democracy'. The bolstered and expanded Chinese Communists force the legal Chinese Nationalist government into a coalition government by December 1955, and then have an internal coup and outbreak off fighting leading to Communist sole power in China by June 1956.
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As we get to the mid-1950s, Germany will have shed all the disabilities and inequalities of the Versailles Treaty, France and Britain will have long stopped attempting any forcible collection of reparations or enforcement of disarmament clauses. The Treaty diktat, the postwar 'Soviets' in Bavaria and some of the cities, the Ruhr occupation, the 1920s hyperinflation, and even the Great Depression, and the time before the Saar Plebiscite of 1935 returned that land to Germany will all have become increasingly distant memories to the German republic.

This German republic of the middle 1950s will be prosperous, certainly fully recovered from the depression, reestablished in world markets (not all of them, but several of them), leading and advancing in science and technology, and enjoying increasing food security, food and energy affordability, and increased family and personal mobility and entertainment through automobilization and rapid spread of television.

Food and energy affordability will be coming thanks to emerging 'green revolution' technology and improved fertilizers and strains of grains, giving the lie to Malthusian fears of starvation felt by reactionary proponents of Lebensraum and autarky whose experiences were heavily informed by the blockade. "Nonessential" television, film, and recording technologies for widespread consumer applications, and services catering to commuting and touring motorists are the types of technologies that would all have advanced *faster* not slower, in the absence of a general war in Europe.

In political terms, after 1943 or so, if the political stars align, with parties favoring customs union or even political union being elected in both countries at the same time, peaceful, voluntary, Austro-German Anschluss is easily on the table and not something France or any other country will really have the will or leverage to stop. Actual expansion of Germany, even just a customs union, puts a somewhat different spin on the narrative of territorial losses from the end of WWI.

In the meantime, certainly, the Danzig Free City and Polish Corridor can remain sore points Possibly Memel as well. But natural demographic trends would be towards shrinking the German minorities in the east, and not growing them, with many of the younger generation more attracted to moving into the more advanced economy of Germany proper rather than staying in Danzig, Poland, the Baltics, Romania, Yugoslavia, and possibly even the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland. Relative growth of Poles demographically will certainly make the Polish provinces comprising the corridor and Posen even more thoroughly Polish. The ethnic Polish percentage of the Danzig Free City may increase substantially over time based on family patterns and economic attraction. Likewise with the Lithuanian population of Memeland. The trend within Germany will generally still be for people to move west and towards the cities within the country, with increased labor scarcity in the east, despite the lack of the war, and a combination of worries about Polish migration into all of Germany's eastern provinces combined with landowners demands to have access to Polish and other eastern laborers to keep their farming operations economically viable.

When the Germans compare themselves with the French across the Rhine, they may not have much cause for envy. They may see more unresolved class tension and strife and will certainly see France absorbed in much more colonial controversy, counterinsurgency, revolt, and war.

There may be less cause for German rage against its former WWI enemies and desire for revenge against them, less of a sense of humiliation or compulsion to 'even the score'.

By no later than the middle 1950s, France will almost certainly be absorbed in an intense colonial war against the Vietnamese (and probably Lao and Khmer people), if not also the Syrians and Lebanese, and facing increased political demands from the Tunisians and Moroccans and others throughout their colonial empire.

Vietnamese nationalist revolt is inevitable, even if deferrable. Since I judge a Communist China likely by the middle 1950s, specifically Communist led revolt there would not be deferrable any longer, and that helps encourage revolt elsewhere in the French Empire. If Britain in this ATL has not already quit Burma, Chinese Communist supported insurgency is likely there as well.

With the Philippines having been granted their independence by the USA by 1945, I cannot imagine the Dutch East Indies going on another full ten years without broad, enduring, violent colonial independence movement fighting against the Dutch or without such a movement having already persuaded the Dutch to quit the main islands. That is despite the lack of a Japanese occupation in this TL. Only so much patience, waiting can be expected and only so much repression will work.

Indeed German youths, and parents, will probably look across the border to their west at their French, Dutch and British compatriots and think, "Thank God we were relieved of our colonies back in 1919, otherwise I'd be drafted to fight in a tropical hellhole". And German news correspondents would probably be reporting some of this action, and blood, from the field into German (not to mention metro French, Dutch, UK) homes on TV, probably in color.

The French will have had to deal with decolonization in Syria-Lebanon since at least 1945 or so. They promised by 1936 independence by 1944. So, by 1944, they would have to either keep their promise, or more likely, go back on their promise, thus provoking a Syrian rebellion and causing them to be engaged in a counterinsurgency from then on. Once the Syrian and Indochinese insurgencies either win or last a sufficient amount of time (in years) while scoring propaganda victories, we can expect an Algerian revolt, and counterinsurgency to begin like clockwork, even if France chooses to fight against it for twenty years.

...With this degree of trouble for France, the dominant feeling in German might instead be one of feeling relatively lucky, and of feeling joy or satisfaction in the misfortune of others--which the Germans have a word for: Schadenfreude, and it could apply to varying degrees to Germany's other WWI opponents in the long run as well.

Germans looking south over the Alps will almost certainly see their Italian compatriots having to deal with counterinsurgency fights in Libya, Eritrea, Albania – although as long as that regime is Fascist, its censorship should be stricter and more effective.

Britain will not be free from violence, or at least tension, in its decolonization process, there were promises being made, implicit or explicit for substantial home rule or de facto independence, and expectations building for it, in the mid-30s, to be achieved within a decade, by the mid to late 1940s. Even without WWII happening, the Indians will be demanding/expecting this by the timeframe. The only difference not having WWII makes is that the British may have the political will and budgetary/military means to frustrate the Indians, delay their independence, and force the Indians to fight the British in a broad, sustained, violent insurgency rather than through a process of mass protest and negotiation. So either Britain let's go of India on basically the OTL schedule in the relatively non-violent manner of OTL (Indians vis-à-vis Brits, not Indians intercommunally) or Britain tries to majorly delay effective independence past 1947, in which case it gets to fight the Indian war of independence, which it will concede due to attrition, fiscal cost, and international and domestic protest no more than eight years after it begins in earnest. The second Britain in particular, would not be one for Germans to envy.

The situation is similar for Britain in Egypt, which in 1936 also promised a treaty and alliance revision for 1944, rendering its nominal "independence" more effective. Independence and even de-puppetization of the Middle East was already baked in the cake even before WWII. Lack of WWII would not have made Indians or Middle Easterners more quiescent, it just could have allowed the Europeans to be more wastefully stubborn.

And once Britain is yielding on India and Egypt, the rationale for much of the British Empire disappears, and the idea that Britain can be convinced to leave spreads.

Additionally with Britain, without its WWII experience, and the increase in wartime class solidarity and the postwar triumph of Labor, a longer Conservative ascendancy may leave 1940s and 1950s Britain more divided and agitated along class lines.

America would be the richest, highest tech former enemy for Germans to be most envious of in this scenario, but even here, the Germans in the 1950s and 1960s could make a few favorable comparisons - even without WWII Civil Rights agitation will likely take place, as will massive resistance to it. Additionally, while America will have recovered from its Great Depression technically even in without WWII, without WWII's destruction of competing country's industrial firms and its GI Bill it will be far less industrially dominant, with companies unable to be as generous to median worker, with less social solidarity and more wealth stratification and more open expression of labor and workplace and regional strife. Germans might feel that their welfare state is a little more comprehensive, their employers a little more appropriately paternalistic, their unions a bit more honest, and if things like paramilitary a truly a chapter that ended in the 30s or early 40s, that Germans are more restrained, orderly, less violent people than Americans, with safer, cleaner streets.

To sum up – The Germans by 1960, even by the mid-1950s, should be feeling like they are doing pretty well. In many ways better off, more harmonious and less troubled than their immediate western and southern neighbors. They will always feel superior to their immediate eastern numbers. Map-obsessed geopolitical junkies may think the eastern border is ugly border gore, that looked much better in 1914, but, with most people not thinking of genocide, many others would think – "the problem with getting Polish land is getting more Polish people" (their POV, not mine). Besides, they could even look back on history and observe that Frederick the Great, his Dad and the Great Elector all had some of their best Prussian days without Danzig or the Polish corridor, and America does just fine with Alaska as non-contiguous connected just by sea. Based on my estimate of the ruin of Japan, they won't be jealous of Japan. Like everybody else, they will be fearful of the massive and demonstrably growing and powerful USSR, but hardly any but the most naïve or ideological would want to trade the German for Soviet lifestyle.

So might the Germans think on the WWI settlement sure the Allies did them dirty, it wasn't fair, but Germany is doing pretty OK, better than most of its enemies from then, and those fringe revanchists, the guys who pine for the Kaiser and some of the old Nazis, are weird old cranks. Thank goodness they were ignored. And on this TL's alternate-timelines forum, people who wrote Germany does a round two against the Entente scenario would have their ideas called ASB, unless they have Germany beaten early on all fronts?