Negotiated peace in Europe?

[p51]

I was recently reading about the proposed negotiated peace settlements the Germans tried with the allies.
It got me wondering...
Say that Wach Am Rhein succeeded and split the allied armies, and American and British citizens went ballistic, forcing Churchill and FDR into a negotiated peace. Stalin proobably would have said no and fought on alone as German forces retreated into Germany and shored up their defense in the East.
So, eventually Russia overruns Germany, maybe as late as 1946 or 47.
My question is this: Given that highly unlikely scenario, what would the world have done once the holocaust because publically known (assuming the Russian domination of Germany hadn't been complete)? Would the allies then have taken back the settlement and then threw back in against the Germans? Would there even have been a Nuremberg trial at that point?

 

[Guttersnipe]

Why do you think a Soviet occupation of all Germany would've resulted in the Holocaust being unknown in the west? The Soviets were extremely diligent in the documentation of German atrocities committed against populations in Soviet occupied territory. Initial Soviet reluctance to participate the Nuremberg trials was not because of a desire for the Holocaust to remain unknown. If anything, the treatment of German war criminals (both real and imagined) tried by the Russians was far, Far, FAR more severe.

 

[dhermann1]

We would surely have used the Bomb on Germany, it became available just at that time.
But I don't see the American or British populations giving up at that point. That toehold the Germans had would not have lasted long. The fighting would have lasted a few more months, that's all.

 

[1961MJS]

I was recently reading about the proposed negotiated peace settlements the Germans tried with the allies.
It got me wondering...
Say that Wach Am Rhein succeeded and split the allied armies, and American and British citizens went ballistic, forcing Churchill and FDR into a negotiated peace. Stalin probably would have said no and fought on alone as German forces retreated into Germany and shored up their defense in the East.
So, eventually Russia overruns Germany, maybe as late as 1946 or 47.
My question is this: Given that highly unlikely scenario, what would the world have done once the holocaust because publically known (assuming the Russian domination of Germany hadn't been complete)? Would the allies then have taken back the settlement and then threw back in against the Germans? Would there even have been a Nuremberg trial at that point?

Hi

I really believe that your whole premise is flawed. Watch on the Rhine came FAR to late in the war to have any affect at all. The war lasted MAYBE 3 weeks longer that it would have otherwise. Splitting the US and the Brits just wasn't in the cards by 1943, much less 1944.

The US already knew about the Holocaust by 1943 also (if memory serves) but it wasn't publicized because FDR etc felt that it wasn't even believable. He believed it, but didn't believe that most Americans would believe it because it was so wrong.

Just my $0.02

 

[p51]

Why do you think a Soviet occupation of all Germany would've resulted in the Holocaust being unknown in the west?

Not at all, in fact I was wondering if the West gave up on Russia for any reason to sue for a negotiated peace, what would the West have done once the Russians made the world aware of the holocaust in a way nobody could keep mum about it?
I was thinking of this in terms of what any German thought they could possibly have gotten out such a deal, as they tried several different ways. I doubt they had any illusions of Stalin agreeing to anything but Hitler's head on a pike, so what did they think would happen?
I know the scenario is flawed but I never thought the end of the war in Europe was ever a foregone conclusion, at least the way we know if it. Yes, a defeated Germany was going to happen, but what manner of defeat they experienced by, say, 46 or 47, that's the part that could have gone many different ways if certain plausible elements happened different.

 

[Stanley Doble]

The so called final solution to the Jewish question was not implemented until 1941 or 42. Up until that time it would not have been a factor.

When were these negotiations?

Allied leaders remembered how WW1 ended with a negotiated armistice and how that led to WW2. They did not want to make the same mistake again. That is why at the end of the war they refused to negotiate and would only accept an unconditional surrender.

Whether they were more flexible earlier in the war I don't know. But it was pretty plain after Stalingrad that the tide had turned.

As to the people demanding a negotiated peace. What did the people have to say about it? They had nothing to say about the war, why would they be consulted about the peace?

 

[Stanley Doble]

"Given that highly unlikely scenario, what would the world have done once the holocaust because publically known (assuming the Russian domination of Germany hadn't been complete)? Would the allies then have taken back the settlement and then threw back in against the Germans? Would there even have been a Nuremberg trial at that point?"

What does this even mean? What are you thinking? Do you suppose Roosevelt and Churchill would have said "Oh my God! Hitler was trying to kill all the Jews in Europe! Let's cancel the peace treaty and get out of Germany so he can finish!"

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I can't see any negotiated peace while Hitler was alive, I believe Hitler felt the same way, that is why there were so many attempts on his life by his own senior political and military men (I believe there were 4 known assassination plots).

If Hitler had been assassinated his successor would have been free to negotiate peace terms. What those terms would have been, and if the Allies would have even been willing to negotiate I don't know. But as Ben Franklin said, a bad peace is better than a good war.

It seems logical that things would have played out more or less as they did. There would have been war crimes trials then the slate would have been wiped clean. They did not want to repeat the mistakes of WW1 with its reparations, and long drawn out recriminations. They wanted the young people of Europe to have a fresh start not poisoned by old grudges.

 

[1961MJS]

...When were these negotiations?

Allied leaders remembered how WW1 ended with a negotiated armistice and how that led to WW2. They did not want to make the same mistake again. That is why at the end of the war they refused to negotiate and would only accept an unconditional surrender....

Hi

Himmler and Goering both put out feelers to see if Churchill would bite. Maybe some of the others did too. Greta Braun's hubby got executed for working with Himmler on it (and being a coward, and a drunk, and cheating on Greta...) We're talking March 1945 time-frame. No real chance of anything much happening.

Later

 

[p51]

Folks, I'm not sure why my original question has been so hard for a couple of you to understand...
I was refering to a possible negotiated peace wherein the allies weren't aware of the scope of the holocaust, then they learn of it, and my question from there was would they have thrown it out and gone back to war against the Germans once they found out, after said negotiated peace took place...
I never said it was really plausible, just wondering. That's all.
There were several official and unofficial attempts by several people (probably wishful thinking on individual levels) to neotiate a peace with the allies, as early as 1942 right to the very end.

 

[1961MJS]

Hi

It would be an especially weird deal since most of those doing the negotiating were in on the holocaust.

Later

 

[Edward]

We would surely have used the Bomb on Germany, it became available just at that time.
But I don't see the American or British populations giving up at that point. That toehold the Germans had would not have lasted long. The fighting would have lasted a few more months, that's all.

Possibly... depending on how much they knew (or, indeed, cared) about the impact of the radiation fallout across Europe. I don't claim to know the answer myself exactly, but I'd have thought an atomic bomb in Berlin would have a good chance of causing significant radiation illness elsewhere? Don't these things have quite a wide reach? I suspect even pictures of German citizens suffering from radiation sickness might have been politically difficult in the post-war environment, as once you strip away accents and language (as a photo does), it's much harder to distinguish them as "different" (as I've long suspect some must have done post-Hiroshima etc).

Allied leaders remembered how WW1 ended with a negotiated armistice and how that led to WW2. They did not want to make the same mistake again. That is why at the end of the war they refused to negotiate and would only accept an unconditional surrender.

It was the Versailles "Diktat", not the negotiated armistice, that led to the simmering resentment within Germany that helped pave the way for Hitler's war. Had something like Operation Valkyrie succeeded, I could have seen a settlement being negotiated by whomever replaced Hitler (providing it wasn't Goebbels or another of his inner circle). A peace negotiated with the military would probably have been a different scenario than one with a defeated political regime.

In the scenario presented in the OP.... no, I don't believe the Allies would have gone to war again against Germany over the death camps. The Soviets would certainly have made it known, and Stalin already had form when it came to show trials. Nuremberg would have happened after a fashion, but with much less attention to legal niceties of providing the opportunity of a robust defence; under Stalin I suspect it would have been little more than a dressed-up summary execution. Another key difference, I think, would be that the Soviets wouldn't have been shy to release information that the Western Allies might prefer remain under wraps, such as earlier knowledge of the death camps than they owned up to, or perhaps they might, if thought to their advantage, try to make some capital out of claims that German 'undesirables' were turned away by Allies, as refugees, ending up in the camps as a result.

Interesting scenario on which to speculate... seems to have more unknowns, in many ways, than the more common 'what if...' of Hitler winning (which I suspect would have been a very distinct possibility had he not backed off on the Battle of Britain, subsequently cancelling Operation Sealion, and opening up the second front). Had Stalin won and won alone, I'm sure there would have been a Soviet equivalent Patton in the Kremlin arguing for carrying on Westwards to drive out the capitalists; likely meeting the same denial of such a request.

 

[p51]

Edward, I think you make good points. I have talked with many people who were in the US when the world of the Holocaust got out and while there was an overall state of shock, I have gotten the impression over the years that many Americans viewed it as "someone else's" problem at the time. With a current view of the world with hindsight, we pretty much look back and view squashing the Nazis as doing the world a substantial favor. But I've never been convinced we really thought of it that way at the time as few Americans truly understood the scope of the Holocaust for many more years and many couldn't relate to the victims...

 

[rjb1]

I don't think that a separate peace with the Western powers was anything more than wishful thinking by some Germans who didn't want to be taken over by the Russians. (with very good reason).
By the time we found out about the death camps by direct observation we were well inside Germany and by then there was no chance of stopping the war. Short of executing prisoners, we were killing Germans as fast as we could almost up to the end. And speaking of prisoners, in the last part of the war the German Army was heading West as fast as it could and giving up in wholesale lots. My dad was there and said that they even stopped taking official surrenders. They just waved at a surrendering German unit and pointed to the rear. They didn't even bother to take their weapons. They just headed for the rear as our people drove on. Everyone knew it was over.
As that relates to the idea of a separate peace, my impression is that since everyone knew the war was effectively over and the Germans were defeated, why would we even consider a peace negotiation?
Since this was in April 1945, and the bomb wasn't available until August, I have never seen any chance at all that it would be dropped on Germany (or that there was any need to).
Another intangible but important factor was the timing of the death of Roosevelt. I think Truman and everyone else felt they had to win one for the Gipper (FDR) at that point, on both fronts.