r/HistoryWhatIf • u/c00b_Bit_Jerry • 1h ago
How might the course of the Cold War have been altered if Operation Valkyrie resulted in a conservative-led German pariah state in the middle of Europe?
Let’s say immediately after the Valkyrie putsch, the SS is crushed at home and Germany withdraws to her October 1938 frontiers over the course of four months, the London Poles return to Warsaw and establish a free government west of the Vistula, and the Allies pause operations and meet in Denmark to figure out what to do next.
Everyone hopes for the talks to go smoothly, but Poland’s refusal to allow the Red Army transit to their planned occupation zone in East Germany ends up dragging out and ultimately derailing the conference - with a paranoid Stalin walking out after incorrectly concluding that the German coup and the return of the London Poles were somehow part of a Western conspiracy.
Thus, the war in Europe ends in a disappointing way, with the Allies failing to overcome their disagreements over Poland, and the Cold War soon beginning with an internationally-shunned “German Empire” in the heart of Europe.
This is all, of course, VERY far-fetched and kind of ridiculous to imagine. But regardless; In such an unlikely outcome to World War II, how might the presence of an authoritarian-conservative Germany, (with the Nazis mass-purged but far fewer Wehrmacht war criminals brought to justice), change the course of the Cold War from 1945 into the 1950s?