Guest Post: 8 February, 1943 - Madame Kollontai recalled to Moscow

This story originally appeared on Today in Alternate History.

"The fear that Moscow and Berlin might again come to terms preoccupied American and British statesman long after Hitler had forced the unwilling Stalin to join the Allied coalition." ~ Stalin and the Prospects of a Separate Peace in World War II by Vojtech Mastny (1972)



In 1930, the aristocratic daughter of a Tsarist general, Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai, had been an unusual choice to head the Soviet legation to Sweden. Nevertheless, over the following thirteen turbulent years, she had achieved much to ensure Swedish neutrality and was even considered for promotion to ambassador. However, at seventy years of age, her health was rapidly failing, and she was forced to check into a sanatorium. She then returned to Moscow during late February 1943. Her remarkable contribution to the Revolution was praised by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov.

Socialist Convention, 1910

Mikhailovna had been a long-term compatriot of Rosa Luxemberg, a leading Polish-born communist who was brutally murdered by German right-wing elements during the Spartacist uprising twenty-five years earlier. Given the circumstances of this atrocity, she nurtured a deep-seated hatred of the Nazis that made her totally the wrong person to open peace feelers.

But with her colourful presence suddenly removed from the scene, Hans Thomsen, the German diplomat in Stockholm, sensed a stronger appetite for compromise in the new Soviet legation. With the annihilation of German forces at Stalingrad, the power between the two belligerents had temporarily reached a moment of balance. None of these developments would have changed calculations in Berlin because of the planned offensive to launch Operation Citadel. However, the prospect of peace certainly did appear to change the assessment of officers in the Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front. Consequently from Thomsen's reported encouragement, Hitler (and also Himmler to avoid a civil war breaking out between the Wehrmacht and the SS) were assassinated on the orders of Major Georg von Boeselager during a visit to the headquarters in Smolensk on 13 March.

The new Fuhrer Hermann Göring, having been a member of the Nazi Party since 1922, was no more likely to be accepted by the Allies than Hitler's former deputy Rudolf Hess. However, there were valid reasons for Stalin to show a great deal more trust in Göring than Hitler. A veteran World War I fighter pilot ace, Göring was a recipient of the "The Blue Max" and also the last commander of Jagdgeschwader 1, the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen. In short, his military judgement was far more sound, and Stalin did not so much as trust Göring on a personal level rather to be convinced that he and the Germany military leadership were committed to peace given their action in assassinating Hitler. Ultimately, Stalin believed that Göring, had he been in charge of the Third Reich two years earlier, would not have launched Operation Barbarossa and was, after all, willing to cancel Operation Citadel. Göring and Stalin were able to negotiate a separate peace. Göring, privately, realised that the German army was lacking experienced soldiers and, even equipped with the new models of tanks, were unlikely to triumph, which contributed to his friendliness with a strong enemy.
 
Operation Citadel was cancelled, but so too was the flow of Allied supplies to the Soviet Union as the separate peace deal caused an anti-red backlash in the West. With a presidential election looming in the United States, and Franklin D. Roosevelt himself in declining health, time was of the essence as far as the Western Allies were concerned. As a demagogue playing the long-game, Stalin might have been prepared to cede territory, at least for the time being, but the elected democracies in the West were never going to agree to anything short of unconditional surrender. Instead, the Western Allies remained stubborn even though the end of hostilities on the Eastern Front enabled Göring to reinforce the Atlantic defences

The Wehrmacht gained a full year equipping troops with brand new equipment that had time to fully work out the bugs from the Panzer and Tiger tanks and the new semi-automatic carbines. They also gained the resources necessary to improve their surface-to-air missile program that used homing missiles against bomber formations. Nevertheless, within twelve months, Allied forces had landed in Normandy and the Third Reich was doomed by the overwhelming military power of the West. It was now Stalin's turn to abrogate a peace deal, but his Red Army was equipped with American vehicles and no spare parts.

It was re-election year in the United States, and with the strong possibility of a Republican isolationist being voted into office, there was hesitation to restart the Lend-Lease programme. Stalin watched in powerless horror as a tank carrying General Patton entered Berlin in triumph.

Author's Note:

In reality, Madame Kollontai remained in Stockholm and her diplomatic initiatives with Thomsen are disputed. Mastny later blamed Kollontai for the failure of the talks. Provine's Addendum:FDR narrowly won his fourth term in office through vigorous campaigning that seemed designed to show he was in full health. Most of his energy was devoted to distancing himself from Stalin, while the Republicans lambasted his previous outreach to the Soviet Union. Despite the show, or perhaps because of it, Roosevelt was exhausted and passed away in April of 1945, never seeing the end of the wars he worked to win. Truman received the mantle and continued the fight with Allied soldiers slogging away both in Europe and the Pacific. Germany was the foremost opponent, whom Allies attacked through Churchill's preferred "soft underbelly of Europe," encouraging local resistance to frustrate German defenses as much as possible on the long road to liberation. Berlin finally fell in winter of 1945 with another coup fueled by starving civilians breaking the Nazi grip. In 1946, Japan fell after the fourth use of atomic weapons when a counter-coup wrested control from the Kyujo militarists who had seized what was left of the government after the destruction of Tokyo to drive the islands to fight to the last man.The war ended, but occupation and rebuilding was a long process. War-weary citizens voted out Churchill and Truman, but the driving anti-red sentiments continued conflicts to stamp out their influence, such as American aid in Kai-shek's elimination of Mao in China. The Soviet Union became isolated, and efforts to push for an expansion of influence in Eastern Europe ended with severe crackdowns by allies of the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As communist ideals crept up in revolutionaries in South America and Africa, NATO extended its reach to become the World Treaty Organization. Driven by trade agreements and international military action to keep friendly governments in power, many see the WTO as a biblical new world order holding egregious power with little concern for means of maintaining that power. Not that anyone would dare say such a thing too loudly.