In an alternative reality, the Nazis are busy
trying to annex Britain while Stalin is about to launch a surprise attack on Germany. The US is sitting back and watching from a
distance, but there’s one great big issue that will soon get the Americans involved. Can you guess what it is? You’ll find out later. We’re not going to say the Nazis and the
communists agreed with each other and fought alongside. We wouldn’t be so ridiculous to say Hitler
stopped despising communism and that Stalin put down his axe and stopped swinging out
against fascism. We’re talking about a Devil’s Alliance
today, a dirty, horrible partnership based solely on the cynical logic of realpolitik. Hitler and Stalin make a deal. Nonetheless, Hitler would still think Stalin
was a “cunning Caucasian,” and Stalin would still at one point want to free people
from the “yoke of fascism,” but they would join together to achieve some immediate aims. Before we talk about what this alliance would
look like and what would happen, we at least should make it look plausible. So, here’s some background information. The world was not a safe place in the 1930s. Under Adolf Hitler, the German military was
once again a powerhouse. In 1933, Hitler had taken Germany out of the
League of Nations. He’d also snubbed the World Disarmament
Conference. He’d secretly rearmed the German forces,
which, if it weren’t for an anti-Nazi German journalist named Carl von Ossietzky, would
have stayed secret longer. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the German
populace was looking for a way out of extreme poverty. The Nazis, as well as the Communists, were
on the rise in Germany. Communism and fascism in many parts of the
world were looking to many people like a safer bet than what had turned out to be corrupt
and reckless capitalism. In the 1930 German federal election, between
them, the Nazis and the Communists won close to 40% of Reichstag seats. In 1934, nearly a third of people in working-class
areas in Germany wanted Hitler as their leader. Many shouted in the street, “Hitler for
Germany, all for Germany for Hitler!” Sure, many Germans were afraid to question
Nazi propaganda, but by 1938, Hitler’s charisma, with the help of Goebbels’ propaganda, had
led a majority of Germans to believe Hitler was some kind of Superman. They approved of his compulsory military service,
of his new and massive Wehrmacht, and the re-militarization of the Rhineland. Germany had been weak, Hitler said, and now
it was strong. He told his many followers:
“I overcame chaos in Germany, restored order, enormously raised production in all fields
of our national economy...I have not only politically united the German nation but also
rearmed it militarily… I have led millions of deeply unhappy Germans,
who have been snatched away from us, back into the Fatherland; I have restored the thousand-year-old
historical unity of German living space…” His concept of “living space (“Lebensraum”)
was what Hitler believed was Germany’s manifest destiny to have territory for 300 million
Germans, and it meant the Slavs and Jews that lived in the territory he wanted would have
no rights at all. Hitler had much of Germany in the palms of
his hands when on August 23, 1939, he did something unexpected by Germans and governments
abroad, especially considering his living space plan. He made peace with the Soviets. This was very shocking and also confusing. Some Western communists said it wasn’t true. The American communist screenwriter Herbert
Biberman said it was nothing but “Fascist propaganda.”...It wasn’t. Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with the
Soviets, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The world only found out at the Nuremberg
Trials in 1946 that there were Secret Protocols in this pact, in which the two nations agreed
to split up parts of Europe, including their agreement to partition Poland. Germany invaded Poland shortly after, while
the Red Army did just the same. In some ways, they were a team. Stalin even sent German Communists who’d
gone over to Russia back to Germany. Some Germans, arrested during Stalin’s bloody
purges, went straight from the Gulag and into concentration camps. Both sides caused untold suffering in Poland. The Soviets famously murdered about 22,000
Polish army officers in the Katyn Forest. Stalin deported close to a million Poles to
Siberia and to various places in Central Asia. The Nazis, meanwhile, walked into Poland and
took land and property. They deported around a million Poles to work
as slaves in Germany. They massacred people and rounded up Polish
Jews, around three million of them, many of whom ended up dying in death camps. This pact of horror surprised the British
and the French governments, both not keen on fascists or communists. Churchill was often fervent in his dislike
for the Soviets. He said, “Never forget that Bolsheviks are
crocodiles…. I cannot feel the slightest trust or confidence
in them.” And later, he said, “It would be a measureless
disaster if Russian barbarism overlaid the culture and independence of the ancient States
of Europe.” As you’ll see later, he often changed his
tune. When Germany was busy invading Western Europe
and doing so in a frighteningly speedy fashion, Soviet materials helped the Nazis considerably. In the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement
of 1940, the Soviets sent the Germans huge amounts of raw materials, including grain
and rubber. This wasn’t a great idea in the long run,
of course. Little did Stalin know what Hitler had in
mind, which was the Nazi Generalplan Ost policy (the Master Plan for the East), replete with
genocide and ethnic cleansing. For the millions of tons of cereals, wheat,
oil, and cotton, the Soviets received those famous German weapons, including the country’s
latest warplanes, the Ju 88 bomber, the Bf 109, and 110 fighters. The Soviets also received tanks, ships, masses
of machinery, and machine tools. You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. Together, they were stronger. Stalin didn’t believe it when the British
in 1941 sent him reports stating that the Germans were planning an invasion. When Germany unsuccessfully tried to beat
the British in the Battle of Britain, Stalin was quite happy to watch these two countries
weaken themselves. And when, on April 3, 1941, Winston Churchill
sent a message via the British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Stafford Cripps, saying the
Germans were planning an attack on the Soviets, Stalin chose not to believe it. On May 31, 1941, Churchill said, “We have
firm indications that the Germans are now concentrating large army and air forces against
Russia.” On June 12, the British Joint Intelligence
Committee warned, “Fresh evidence is now at hand that Hitler has made up his mind to
have done with Soviet obstruction and to attack.” Stalin still didn’t trust the snakey British,
and for good reason, the British were snakey. Even the Americans were wary of the British. Franklin D. Roosevelt often openly aimed hostility
at the British Empire, criticizing Churchill’s imperialism. As the New York Times wrote many years later,
the two men were “United but Divided.” Roosevelt’s son, Elliot, was even more critical
of the British, once saying that Britain and France had exploited their power and run the
global banking system for too many years. After Germany invaded Poland, only 16% of
Americans in a Gallop poll said American troops should be sent to Europe to help Poland, France,
and Britain. This is important to know for this show today. As political realists might say, in a world
where there is a balance of power politics, each nation is out for itself. Trust and loyalty are rare commodities in
terms of realpolitik. Countries, then, would usually let nations
fight it out rather than step in and help, especially if the fight weakens them both. They might only join in the fight when one
nation becomes too powerful. This passing of the buck happened in Europe
for many years. Britain chose to fight the Nazis in the end,
but for a while, that was not certain. Britain wanted to remain powerful and keep
its empire, which would have happened for a while had it signed a non-aggression pact
with the Nazis, but Britain was rightly concerned about German hegemony, so it fought. It was less ideological than it was a matter
of staying powerful. On June 21, 1941, there was a sense of panic
in the Kremlin. In the Soviet Embassy in Germany, officials
tried to contact Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop but kept being told
he was out. They wanted clarification about something,
which was news that the Germans were mounting a huge military operation on the Soviet border. They received a message saying Ribbentrop
“is not here, and nobody knows when he will return.” In Moscow, the foreign affairs minister, Vyacheslav
Molotov, demanded the German ambassador, Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, go directly to the
Kremlin. Schulenburg received the message while he
was destroying German documents. He went to the Kremlin and neither confirmed
nor denied the news. Schulenburg had been against the invasion. Like many, he believed invading Russia always
ended in tears for the invaders. Look what happened to Napoleon! Schulenburg had actually previously warned
Soviet officials but had been ignored. It took time for Stalin to realize that the
warnings he’d gotten so far were real, upon which Goebbels in Germany said Stalin was
like a rabbit mesmerized by a snake. Stalin soon held a meeting with Molotov and
deputy premier Lavrentiy Beria. In what the military historian Antony Beevor
said was an act of cowardice, and humiliating for Stalin, they talked about giving up Ukraine,
Belarus, and some of the Baltic states. On June 22, Molotov’s voice was heard on
the radio, saying, “Today, at four o’clock in the morning, German troops attacked our
country without making any claims on the Soviet Union and without any declaration of war.” He paused and then said, “Our cause is just. The enemy will be beaten. We will be victorious.” You know what happened next: The bloodiest
battle the world had ever seen. Forty million would die. Stalin would have around 300,000 of his own
troops killed for cowardice and similar transgressions, not much less than total British (450,000)
and American (418,000) war deaths. It was a world war, of course, and many countries
lost young men and civilians, but the battles on the Eastern Front could not be compared
with any of the other battles that happened during the war. Not just the battles, either, but the starvation
and the massacres of civilians. So, why did Hitler do this? It seems to us these days that it was an insane
tactical blunder, but Hitler thought he could win, as did most other countries. The Soviets, despite how the West felt about
them, were promised support. It wasn’t out of ideological kindness. Britain believed a Soviet loss would mean
trouble for its empire and, of course, Hitler coming back for Britain. Churchill said on the radio, “No one has
been a more consistent opponent of Communism for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle
which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, its
tragedies, flashes away.… The Russian danger is, therefore our danger
and the danger of the United States.” Churchill spent a lifetime trying to pull
the US into fights, but he had a point. According to realistic logic, it wouldn’t
be a bad thing for Britain for both Germany and the Soviets to weaken each other. Churchill did send military aid, as did the
Americans, but rather than fight the Germans in Europe after the Soviet invasion, they
stalled. The Americans didn’t get involved militarily
until 1941, when Pearl Harbor sealed the deal, but the Allied invasion of Europe didn’t
happen until June 1944. Before becoming president, US senator Harry
Truman spoke the language of realists when he said, “If we see that Germany is winning,
we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that
way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under
any circumstances.” He was talking the talk of a bait-and-bleed
military strategy. When the Germans were successful at the Battle
of Kyiv and took 665,000 people prisoner after killing many more, the Soviets occupied Kyiv. Hitler called it “the greatest battle in
world history.” Back in the West, no one really believed the
Soviets would hold out. They gave them no chance. Moscow would fall, they said. The Germans looked invincible. They knew it would be tough, though. At a meeting on May 2, the country’s armament
planning secretariat said the war could only be won if the German army could feed itself
from the captured Soviet lands. He wrote, “If we take what we need out of
the country, there can be no doubt that millions will die of starvation.” They expected the deaths of millions, but
they thought they had to do it. The beliefs of the Germans were summed up
by the commander of the Fourth Panzer Group, Col. Gen. Erich Hoepner, when he said, “The
war with Russia is a vital part of the German people’s fight for existence.” And it looked like the German invasion of
the Soviet Union would be over quickly. The Germans sent around 3.8 million troops,
as well as thousands of tanks, aircraft, and other military vehicles. What the Germans didn’t expect was how ruthless
Stalin would be in his Order No. 227, saying, “Not one step backward.” He meant it. The Russian military-industrial complex was
also incredible as time went on. As people starved en masse, Stalin ensured
that weapons were produced at almost miraculous speeds. It was a catastrophe for the Soviet people
but good for the West. As the historian Max Hastings says in his
book “Inferno”: “Stalin’s war aims were as selfish and inimical to human liberty
as those of Hitler. Soviet conduct only seems less barbaric because
it embraced no single enormity to match the Holocaust. Nonetheless, the Western Allies were obliged
to declare their gratitude because Russia’s suffering and sacrifice saved the lives of
hundreds of thousands of British and American soldiers.” Germany, in the end, met its nemesis on the
Eastern Front. In 1943, Time magazine made Joseph Stalin
“Man of the Year.” Years before, the same magazine had called
him an enemy. Now it said this once brutal tyrant was behind
the “magnificent will of the Russian people to resist.” Make no mistake, he was still a brutal tyrant,
and he would be featured in Time magazine again, but it served the US at that moment
to paint a nicer picture of Stalin. By the way, Hitler also won Man of the Year,
in 1938, but he was depicted as the devil incarnate. Stalin was a hero in ’43, according to the
American press, just as American generals were thinking about destroying his country
in the near future. Time magazine couldn’t have been more wrong
when it said about Stalin, “There are reports in high circles that he wants no new territories
except at points needed to make Russia impregnable against invasion.” What Stalin wanted was what Hitler wanted:
world dominance, or at least regional hegemony. At a Kremlin dinner in 1944, the commie-hating
Churchill made a toast and said, “I have always believed, and I still believe, that
it is the Red Army that has torn the guts out of the filthy Nazis. He later told the House of Commons, “I feel
that their word is their bond. I know of no Government which stands to its
obligations, even in its own despite, more solidly than the Russian Soviet Government.” Stalin would soon become the enemy again,
with the Cold War on the horizon. The balance of power had gone too much in
the direction of the Soviets and Soviet-style communism, and the US did everything it could
to reverse that. Had Germany not invaded the Soviet Union,
something similar would have likely happened. The balance of power, for a while, at least,
would have looked different, though. Hitler may have gone through with Operation
Sealion, the plan to invade the British mainland. Accomplishing this would have taken colossal
amounts of resources and manpower, which is the reason why countries attempting to become
hegemons don’t usually attempt to invade militarily-strong countries protected by water. Nonetheless, had Hitler waited and been patient,
built a lot of new landing craft, expanded his navy, and watched the German economy grow
as prisoners from already-occupied nations slaved away in Germany’s factories, the
Nazis would have likely been able to invade Britain. It would take the entire might of the Nazi
war machine, but it was accomplishable. In 1940, the British army had 1.65 million
men, and a year later, 2.2 million. Three million served in total. An astounding 13.6 Germans fought in WWII. The British produced 27,528 tanks during WWII. The Germans produced 49,777. Hitler’s navy was no match for the British
navy, which, including the Germans not having enough suitable landing craft, would have
made the invasion incredibly hard. Still, the British army was nothing compared
to the German army. In realist logic, it’s not only how big
your army is, it’s how well it can perform, but the Brits were up against a larger and
better-trained German army. Things could have been different had Hitler
grounded Britain’s Royal Air Force by bombing the hell out of airfields, not smashing cities. Again, had he just held in there and kept
going after Britain, we think he could have forced the Brits to sign a peace treaty. If that didn’t happen and Hitler succeeded
in a full-on land invasion, he would have brought back the British Fascist party and
its leader Oswald Mosley, as well as many of the 40,000 British fascists who would take
up positions in the new Nazi-led government. Just like in France, there would have been
British resistance, although we know from Hitler’s little black book that one of the
first things he’d have done in Britain is arrest the 2,820 people he thought would cause
him trouble. British folks watching this video might be
thinking no way, not on my great grandad’s watch, but just look at what Hitler managed
to do in France. Sure, antisemitism was much more pervasive
in France than in Britain, and the French Popular Party (fascist) had around 120,000
members. It would have been much harder to placate
Britain, but not impossible. The question is, would the Americans have
sent troops to fight Hitler and help Britain? We should recall what Truman said about supporting
whoever was winning. Remember, in the US, there was also a lot
of criticism of the European imperialists. Also, the German American Bund (fascist) in
the US had about 25,000 members, and a large swath of America was against going to war
against Hitler. There were also people such as Charles Lindbergh,
an important voice in the US, who was avidly non-interventionist and sympathetic in some
respects to the Nazis - who actually awarded him the Service Cross of the German Eagle. He often spoke at America First Committee
events, whose speakers regularly spread pro-fascist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. Its 800,000 members believed that even if
the British lost against the Nazis, the Nazis were no threat to the US. Many of them believed that the new Nazi European
superpower would actually make a great trading partner. Make money, not war. The communists were the real threat. You also had people such as the industrialist
Henry Ford whose 1922 book “The International Jew” inspired many Germans who would become
Nazis. Hitler called Ford “a single great man”
partly for calling Jewish people the “World's Foremost Problem.” What we’re saying is that we cannot be certain
that the US would come to Britain’s aid. In a world of balance of power politics, that
move might not have favored the US. What the US could have done is sell arms to
Britain as the Nazis spent months, possibly even years, trying to invade. It would have been good business, and the
Americans would have known Hitler would be too weak to pose any danger to the US after
such a costly invasion. At this point, the Soviets and the Germans
are still sticking to their 10-year peace pact. Stalin, rightly still fearing the Nazis, would
have waited for Germany to become weaker in its fight with Britain, and then, we believe,
he would have pounced. In real life, many historians believe Stalin
was waiting for the right opportunity, and some say he would have attacked Germany as
early as 1941 had Germany not attacked the Soviets first. Hitler always thought that could happen, which
is why he had a preemptive war plan for the Soviet attack. The war between the two was always going to
happen at some point. For once, this was about power as well as
ideology. It’s the Soviets, then, that will launch
the attack, not the Germans. In this case, we must think about the balance
of power again. If Germany managed to annex Britain, the US
would certainly be concerned about Germany becoming a regional hegemon. But then the Soviets would have attacked Germany,
so we’re sure the US would have supported the Soviets just as they did when the invasion
was the other way around. The worrying thing for the Americans, though,
is that by 1941, scientists were already talking about an atomic bomb. In fact, the British Tube Alloys project was
ahead of the American atomic bomb research effort at the start, at least in 1940, when
the German-Jewish physicists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls figured out the critical mass
needed to make the bomb. The device needed to reach critical mass and
thus create a nuclear explosion could also be made a lot smaller than hypothesized, which
meant dropping thethe nuclear bomb from a plane became a great option. The US soon took over regarding the creation
of the first atomic bomb, but in 1941 and 1942, there is no way on earth the Americans
would just stand by while the Nazis took advantage of British scientists. Remember, in real life, the Americans believed
the Nazis had made a lot of progress towards making an atomic bomb, although this couldn’t
have been further from the truth. In our alternate reality, it would be in the
interest of the US for the Soviets to invade the Nazis and so make it difficult for them
to proceed with the atomic bomb research. With those British and British ex-pat scientists,
the Nazis may well have raced forward in the progress they made towards the bomb. The US would have been in a difficult position. The Nazis having the bomb would not be good,
and yet, the Soviets having the bomb wouldn’t be great, either, if they managed to defeat
the Nazis and get their hands on the nuclear science. In 1940 and 1941, the Soviets were a lot further
behind on nuclear research than the rest of the world powers, but this could have easily
changed in our scenario with access to German scientists and research. So, the US would have had to join the war
and fight against whoever was winning in Europe and whoever was proceeding with their bomb
project (US spies would have been helpful in this regard). The US, then, could have gone to war against
the communists or the fascists. The Americans, at this point, would have no
idea about concentration camps. Even if they did find out about the Nazi’s
Final Solution plan, stopping a country from possibly blowing up the world would have been
the most important thing. So, had the Nazis not invaded the Soviets,
they would have focused on Britain longer and won, but the battle between the Nazis
and the Soviets was always going to happen. If the Soviets churned out massive amounts
of military machinery during the Nazi attack on Britain, they might well have succeeded
in beating Hitler, and so become the enemy of the US. In real life, the Soviets ended the war in
a strong position, which worried the hell out of the Americans. Many Americans, including future President
Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, wrote that Japan was ready
to surrender and there was no need to drop the bombs. Right or wrong, they said it. Leo Szilard, one of the main people behind
the US’ bomb, later said after he spoke with Secretary of State James F. Byrnes -Truman's
chief adviser - he got the feeling the Japanese bombings were always about scaring the Soviets,
not just beating the Japanese. In fact, declassified documents show that
on August 30, 1945, when the Soviets and US were supposedly allies, Major General Lauris
Norstad sent a document to General Leslie Groves that outlined 15 “key Soviet cities”
to be hit with U.S. atomic weapons, including Moscow. He wrote about another 25 “leading Soviet
cities” to be hit, including Leningrad. The Americans always had the Soviets in their
sights. Groves and Norstad estimated that 66 Soviet
cities could be destroyed with 204 atomic bombs, which would obliterate the Soviet Union’s
aluminum production, as well as 95% of its aircraft, 97% of its tanks, and 95% of its
oil refining ability. According to realist logic, the stronger country,
the most threatening one is the one that gets attacked. Despite the US and the Soviets still being
allies and celebrating the end of the war, a top-secret Pentagon document dated September
15, 1945, explained: “The destruction of the Russian capability
to wage war has therefore been used as a basis upon which to predicate the United States’
atomic bomb requirements.” To sum this up, a Cold War was inevitable,
but the enemy would depend on who won between the Soviets and the Nazis and who was leading
the atomic bomb project. We should also mention that countries which
lost millions of citizens, such as China (15 to 20 million), Poland (5.9 to 6 million),
the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia (3 to 4 million), India (2.2 to 3 million), and Yugoslavia (1
to 1.7 million) would have also been involved in this scenario. The side they support would have remained
similar, but they wouldn’t have had the influence or power to change the outcome of
the scenario in a major way Now you need to watch “What If Japan Was
Never Hit By Nuclear Bombs.” Or, have a look at “The Only Man To Survive
TWO Nuclear Bombs.”
