raharris1973
Well-known member
In this alternate timeline (ATL), an androgynous ASB by the name of John Birch Ayn Rand F. Buckley Snuffaluffaguss, observing earth, notices the Soviet Union's first atomic device test on August 29th, and concludes: "Enough is enough, I do not want those Commies having this destructive nuclear power when they're capturing so much land and population and possess so much military might, and their capitalist competitors are largely disarming conventionally.....this timeline needs a reset!"
Accordingly, within 24 hours, the ASB surveys the world footprint of Communist power from Central Europe to East Asia, and conjures up a time safely before Communism captured control of the area, 40 years before, September 1909, and starting at the epicenter of the Soviet test site, begins a process of wallpapering or painting over 1949 Communist lands with their equivalent lands from the time forty years prior. Rather than all happening in an instant, covered in a dome of white light, this process unfolds over 72 hours until reaching the boundaries of Communist controlled lands, like a spreading inkblot, or an ISOT* cloud, from the test site at a constant rate.
In Europe it replaces the great majority of the Soviet Union and a chunk of the People's Republic of Poland with the 1909 Russian Tsarist Empire of Nicholas II. However, parts of the 1949 Soviet Union, like the Klapeida (formerly Memel) and Kalingrad) and southwest Ukraine districts are replaced by the 2nd German Empire of of Wilhelm II's northern East Prussian districts and the Austro-Hungarian Empire of Franz-Joseph east Galician districts. Additionally, 1909 Tsarist Russians, expecting the borders of their state to include Finland and the Kars-Ardahan region, wil instead be surprised to find borders with "Republics" of Finland and Turkey, insisting it is 1949.
The People's Republic of Poland, and the Soviet zones of Germany and Berlin, with their civil administration under the Socialist Unity Party (SED), are replaced by the Wilhelmine 2nd Reich. But at the inter-zonal boundary of Germany, and western Berlin, the nascent Western German state and Western Allied occupation zones remain.
Likewise, the Romanian and Bulgarian monarchies of 1909 replace the 1949 "Democratic Republics" of those countries, on the appropriate land footprint as of 1909, with their remaining lands acquired later replaced by their Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Imperial lands from 1909.
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Soviet Zone of Austria and Vienna, the southern portion of the Polish People's Republic and the northern/western half of Yugoslavia are all replaced by their equivalent 1909 Austro-Hungarian lands, while the Western Allied occupation zones of Austria and Vienna remain in their 1949 incarnation.
The remaining south and east of Yugoslavia is divided between Serbia, Montenegro and Ottoman Imperial lands. The Ottoman Imperial lands that replace part of Yugoslavia (Sanjak of Novi Pazar, Kosovo, Macedonia) also include Albania, and have a land corridor consisting of land that was in the south of Bulgaria in 1949 that touches the Thracian section of the Turkish Republic of 1949.
Additionally, multiple isolated patches of rural villages in Greece still controlled by the Communist-led Greek Democratic Army (DSE) are replaced by their 1909 equivalents, which were variously Greek or Ottoman ruled at the time, but here they were fairly easily fall supinely under 1949 Greek rule.
Lastly the Communist-ruled city-state of San Marino, surrounded by Italy, will revert to its 1909 incarnation.
In Asia, the land of the 1909 USSR will be replaced by the 1909 Russian Empire, except for Tannu Tuva (replaced by Qing Mongolia), South Sakhalin and the Kuriles (replaced by local 1909 Imperial Japanese population and administration). The DPR Mongolia will be replaced by Qing China's Outer Mongolia province/region. The Communist-held sections of China as of September 2nd, 1949 - largely the north and east, with the lion's share of the population and industry, will be replaced by 1909 Qing China, with the remainder of Guomindang and warlord or autonomous areas still in their 1949 condition. Korea north of the 38th parallel will be replaced by the 1909 formally independent but closely Japanese supervised Empire of Korea. And in Indochina, Viet Minh occupied areas where French rule is largely ineffective and no-go as of Sept 1949, will be replaced by their 1909 equivalent. Similar for rural pockets of the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, and Indonesia, where Communists are ascendant.
----
Now that we're through with the detail textual map description, back to the event narrative.
On 3 September, 1949, US aircraft collected samples in the Pacific measure high levels of radiological material blown from Soviet/former Soviet territory. American scientists judge it consistent with what they would expect from a surface atomic test.
Under these odd circumstances, where Communist/Western borders are clearly affected by the time-displacement event, after more than a day loss of contact with embassy Moscow, the meaning of this observation is not clear and is debated.
Scientists looking at the samples in isolation and ignoring the time-displacement event posit that the Soviets did perform an atomic test with reasonable confidence.
But other scientists and lay people aware of the samples speculate on a possible connection of causal relationship, of the test being somehow responsible for the time displacement event, leaving mysteries of - "how so?" and "why have previous tests and combat explosions not done this?" and "why does the time displacement conform to so precisely to human-defined borders?". Others posit a reverse relationship - that there may have been no Soviet atom test, but radiological products might have been a byproduct of the time-displacement event, but again, with no ability to explain how cause and effect would be related.
In any case, beyond these enigmas, the United States will continue to pursue some high-altitude reconnaissance flights over the "Communist" lands and around their edges. Overflights in particular will confirm what interlocutors who uptime people are meeting at the border say, that the infrastructure in Russia does appear both "fresh", but forty years out of date. Overflights will get bolder over the "Communist" lands as no intercept attempts, anti-aircraft fire, or radar pings are detected.
All this adds up to confirm for the moment there is no modern USSR hiding behind a surface layer of a primitive appearing Russia or Central Europe or China or Korea. Thus, President Truman has no reason to worry there will be imminently more atomic tests out of Russia, so he does not need to publicize the results of the radiological sample collection.
He, and other western governments, will have an infinitely more complex announcement to make, regarding the increasingly confirmed time-displacement event.
----
Global shock, awe, panic, and speculation about divine purposes, and "prepping" for the end of the world will be mixed on both sides of the time divide with everyday people, commercial enterprises, and governments, going on with their daily activities, and the inertia of continuing on with "what they were doing anyway".
For 1909 European port towns like Lubeck, Riga, Talinn, Odessa, Dubrovnik/Ragusa, that is going to mean grain export ships and passenger ships with would-be immigrants heading west to Paris, London, and the Americas. Countries now with stricter immigration rules than in 1949. Attempt human movement from east to west would continue, but the motives and drivers would change. Instead of 1949 people in Central Europe fleeing Communist repression and food and other goods shortages, people trying to move west will generally not be folk with trouble getting food at home. They will though be trying to go west for the prospect of getting higher wages or earnings than possible at home, over time. Quite possibly to bring back home in retirement, or to set up roots overseas. They are not likely fleeing political repression if migrating from Germany or Austria-Hungary, but could be fleeing political repression or especially religious oppression or ethno-national repression if coming from the Russian Empite. Or fleeing the draft or ethnoreligious oppression if coming from Ottoman Europe.
Immediately fraught political issues in Central Europe, even as the threat of Communism recedes, are the disposition of Germany, with "East Germany" being the old Wilhelmine 2nd Empire. I think the Kaiser's main palaces and Reichstag of the time were in the Soviet zones, unless I am mistaken. The 2nd Reich's reputation for tyranny and militarism and memories of WWI vets in the ruling classes of the west in 1949, are certainly enough that western leaders in Britain, France and the USA, not to mention Konrad Adenauer, prefer to build their Federal Republic of Germany in the west rather than turn over western zones to the German monarchy.
Likewise, the Habsburg Dual Monarchy is not considered a model democracy. But it thinks it owns Austria and parts of Italy. Again, I think the main palaces and parliament were in the Soviet zone, but I may be wrong. In any case, all the Hungarian institutions in Budapest should be intact.
Despite Turkish Ataturkist ideology and its discouragement of Ottoman nostalgia, I think the 1949 Turkish Republic would feel a protective fiduciary responsibility for the Turkish speakers and Muslims of the downtime 1909 Ottoman lands, not looking kindly on any Balkan state attempts to partition the Ottoman strip of lands there. They should have the tech advantage to protect it. And Civil War and war-recovering Greece should have neither the means, nor even in the interest, in the near term at least in opposing a Turkish zone of influence there as opposed to Serbian or Bulgarian. The late 40s early 50s was at a low point of salience of the Turkish threat to Greece compared and contrast to the early 20s and the rise of the Cyprus issue in the 60s.
In Asia, the MacArthur occupation administration and uptime Japanese government it was partnered with should have few problems bringing the Japanese administration of South Sakhalin and the Kuriles to heel, and the regime simply extends north. Although there will be more puzzlement and resistance, ultimately Imperially-voiced orders will suffice to secure peaceful evacuation of the Japanese Kwangtung Army from the Kwangtung peninsula leasehold and troops from the South Manchuria railway zone, and garrison troops and advisors from northern Korea.
The technology difference should allow for Guomindang forces, by this point pushed down to Taiwan, Guangzhou and west Chinese cities like Chongqing, to push aside 1909 Qing troops and authorities and assert control over the Yangzi Valley, reestablish their capital there, and reestablish their regime nationwide.
The new state of Israel, and diaspora Jewish populations, will find the backtiming of Central and Eastern Europe a major miracle. So will some other Central European groups like Gypsies, and the Poles, although they will now be without a state. Populations devastated by the Holocaust and WWII are revived. Israel will look to Europe for immigrants, just as in OTL it looked to DP camps and the east bloc, and Jews from Arab countries will fall lower on its priority list. But for would-be emigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, the United States would still be the favored destination. The question would be if there would be any loosening of immigration restrictions in the USA, or other countries in the Americas, to accommodate the demand, or not, in the early 1950s.
There would not be an anti-Communist tyranny rationale to bend immigration laws, but rigorous exclusion and vocal support for continued exclusion of particular national and religious categories of immigrants, especially "white" categories could start offending and mobilizing many people in society and the culture of this alternate 1950s in favor of non-discriminatory immigration criteria.
Although Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the "East German Empire" would have vast numbers of men under arms exceeding what the west has, the reality of the tech gap would be so transparently large from early on that the eastern empires would fairly quickly conclude they have to accommodate the 1949 political order, or at least geopolitical order, and defer to American and western dominance, and try to get favorable ties with the USA and western markets and access to technology.
The future of Germany is interesting. A *theoretical* possibility is that as "news from the future" is learned about everything that went wrong for Germany over the next 40 years of the history that used-to-be, there is a public and elite groundswell in the East German Empire to reform the system and abolish the monarchy and dissolve itself and conform itself within Adenauer's new federal German republic.
That really may not be the most likely outcome though. The other European states may have a discomfort with a Germany that grows so large, so quickly. Adenauer himself could fear insufficient dominance by his CDU-CSU and "too many damn Prussians". Eastern Germans are going to be more socially, culturally, and religiously conservative than western Germans. The forty years, generation plus difference, may make the German halves feel "foreign" to each other.
The lack of a sovereign Poland will become a sore point in Europe. The lack of a Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia, not necessarily. West Austrian unification with a downtime Austro-Hungarian Empire? The potentially involved parties, and outside powers, may not have much of a problem with it.
What happens to US politics, its right, center, and left wings, and its business model and social bargain with the sudden loss of the Communist competitor.
On the one hand, with the Communist states gone, the Communist geopolitical threat is gone. Countries are not being "lost" to Communism.
The Truman Administration and young liberals like Hubert Humphrey, will feel justified in supporting a free trade, developmentalist, pro-UN foreign policy abroad, and domestic liberal reformism, the "Fair Deal" at home. A big domestic priority will be Civil Rights. Truman will not miss at all that he did not overspend on the conventional military, and there is no pressure to go further toward development of "the super", the H-Bomb. A big domestic priority for northern liberal Democrats will be Civil Rights.
The wind should be taken out of the sails of McCarthy and Nixon with no "loss of China" no Red Bomb, no reason to hunt for Bomb spies, and no Korean War.
Labor organizations in America and Western Europe will retain their focus obtaining the good life for their members without so much of a prolonged distraction on purging Communist Party and adjacent radical influences. God, or whatever, destroyed Communism, so we don't have to. Now among the labor-movement and working-class folk depending on the cultural attitudes of the area or racial attitudes, racially equal civil rights or perceived adjacency to culturally "advanced" or "new" stances may be unpopular or divisive, but labor should remain more mission focused and less witch-hunt oriented.
Conservatives in America, and elsewhere, will have a choice to make. Do they respond to the loss of salience of the Communist issue by dropping it, or doing something else? I suspect that despite some moderates deciding to mount a pragmatic, technocratic, fiscally responsible critique of the New Deal order, focused on balancing the budget, efficiency, right-to-work laws, that is small "c" conservative and calm, angry conservatives, too long out of power and frustrated by the loss moderate "me-too" Republican Tom Dewey twice, will tack to the right, to paleoconservative fundamentals. It will have some parallels to the conservative shift in the 90s and 200s post-Cold War.
They will reformulate the Communist issue. As opposed to "God, or whatever, destroyed Communism, so we don't have to.", the line will be, "Yes, God destroyed Communism abroad, now it's time to destroy New Deal Communism at home, root and branch. We know God hates it, so let's cleanse ourselves before he turns his wrath on us." This will lead the Party in the direction of Taft and its conservatives, to an attitude of repudiation of the New Deal and foreign aid, to sticking to the letter of immigration quotas, and a return to American ideas, and even a nostalgic embrace of Herbert Hoover.
With people fatigued by 20 years of Democratic rule, reforms including new Civil Rights measures, international exertions, and revelations of corruption within the Truman Administration and urban Democratic machines, there will be a surprisingly large constituency for this. There will be an increase in funding for think-tanks promoting these views.
The difference between this form of right-wing enthusiasm in the early 50s, that I fully expect to lead to a Robert Taft nomination, and the McCarthyism of OTL, is that the Democrats and Democratic establishment, except for southern segregationist exceptions, will have little hesitation squarely opposing this vision. I still expect Taft to lose to a renominated Truman, or Stevenson, or any other alternative.
However, a question lies ahead, with the cheap labor and relatively undeveloped economies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russian Empire, Balkans, and China open for the exploitation of 1950s American and western capital and not closed to it behind an iron curtain, can and will western capitalist use outsourcing and offshoring starting from the early to mid-50s to start killing the economic leverage of the western labor movement, and forcing a race to the bottom in labor standards?
On the one hand, with labor gains more recently won, the labor movements are more awake to the danger and ready to respond. They are politically engaged. Even businesses are somewhat disciplined by memories of depression and war. But without any *current* geopolitical threats, perhaps corporate giving and business, much earlier than OTL decide, "why invest in the commons?" "Why do any giving to centrist or liberal causes?" "Who needs a cohesive society when there is nothing to defend against except excessive demands of labor against capital?", and business starts, much earlier than the 70s, biased giving towards right-wing, explicitly pro-business causes and think-tanks with low-tax, deregulatory pay-offs?
*ISOT- Island in the Sea of Time, look up the novel and concept on google, if you are unfamiliar, then return.
Accordingly, within 24 hours, the ASB surveys the world footprint of Communist power from Central Europe to East Asia, and conjures up a time safely before Communism captured control of the area, 40 years before, September 1909, and starting at the epicenter of the Soviet test site, begins a process of wallpapering or painting over 1949 Communist lands with their equivalent lands from the time forty years prior. Rather than all happening in an instant, covered in a dome of white light, this process unfolds over 72 hours until reaching the boundaries of Communist controlled lands, like a spreading inkblot, or an ISOT* cloud, from the test site at a constant rate.
In Europe it replaces the great majority of the Soviet Union and a chunk of the People's Republic of Poland with the 1909 Russian Tsarist Empire of Nicholas II. However, parts of the 1949 Soviet Union, like the Klapeida (formerly Memel) and Kalingrad) and southwest Ukraine districts are replaced by the 2nd German Empire of of Wilhelm II's northern East Prussian districts and the Austro-Hungarian Empire of Franz-Joseph east Galician districts. Additionally, 1909 Tsarist Russians, expecting the borders of their state to include Finland and the Kars-Ardahan region, wil instead be surprised to find borders with "Republics" of Finland and Turkey, insisting it is 1949.
The People's Republic of Poland, and the Soviet zones of Germany and Berlin, with their civil administration under the Socialist Unity Party (SED), are replaced by the Wilhelmine 2nd Reich. But at the inter-zonal boundary of Germany, and western Berlin, the nascent Western German state and Western Allied occupation zones remain.
Likewise, the Romanian and Bulgarian monarchies of 1909 replace the 1949 "Democratic Republics" of those countries, on the appropriate land footprint as of 1909, with their remaining lands acquired later replaced by their Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Imperial lands from 1909.
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Soviet Zone of Austria and Vienna, the southern portion of the Polish People's Republic and the northern/western half of Yugoslavia are all replaced by their equivalent 1909 Austro-Hungarian lands, while the Western Allied occupation zones of Austria and Vienna remain in their 1949 incarnation.
The remaining south and east of Yugoslavia is divided between Serbia, Montenegro and Ottoman Imperial lands. The Ottoman Imperial lands that replace part of Yugoslavia (Sanjak of Novi Pazar, Kosovo, Macedonia) also include Albania, and have a land corridor consisting of land that was in the south of Bulgaria in 1949 that touches the Thracian section of the Turkish Republic of 1949.
Additionally, multiple isolated patches of rural villages in Greece still controlled by the Communist-led Greek Democratic Army (DSE) are replaced by their 1909 equivalents, which were variously Greek or Ottoman ruled at the time, but here they were fairly easily fall supinely under 1949 Greek rule.
Lastly the Communist-ruled city-state of San Marino, surrounded by Italy, will revert to its 1909 incarnation.
In Asia, the land of the 1909 USSR will be replaced by the 1909 Russian Empire, except for Tannu Tuva (replaced by Qing Mongolia), South Sakhalin and the Kuriles (replaced by local 1909 Imperial Japanese population and administration). The DPR Mongolia will be replaced by Qing China's Outer Mongolia province/region. The Communist-held sections of China as of September 2nd, 1949 - largely the north and east, with the lion's share of the population and industry, will be replaced by 1909 Qing China, with the remainder of Guomindang and warlord or autonomous areas still in their 1949 condition. Korea north of the 38th parallel will be replaced by the 1909 formally independent but closely Japanese supervised Empire of Korea. And in Indochina, Viet Minh occupied areas where French rule is largely ineffective and no-go as of Sept 1949, will be replaced by their 1909 equivalent. Similar for rural pockets of the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, and Indonesia, where Communists are ascendant.
----
Now that we're through with the detail textual map description, back to the event narrative.
On 3 September, 1949, US aircraft collected samples in the Pacific measure high levels of radiological material blown from Soviet/former Soviet territory. American scientists judge it consistent with what they would expect from a surface atomic test.
Under these odd circumstances, where Communist/Western borders are clearly affected by the time-displacement event, after more than a day loss of contact with embassy Moscow, the meaning of this observation is not clear and is debated.
Scientists looking at the samples in isolation and ignoring the time-displacement event posit that the Soviets did perform an atomic test with reasonable confidence.
But other scientists and lay people aware of the samples speculate on a possible connection of causal relationship, of the test being somehow responsible for the time displacement event, leaving mysteries of - "how so?" and "why have previous tests and combat explosions not done this?" and "why does the time displacement conform to so precisely to human-defined borders?". Others posit a reverse relationship - that there may have been no Soviet atom test, but radiological products might have been a byproduct of the time-displacement event, but again, with no ability to explain how cause and effect would be related.
In any case, beyond these enigmas, the United States will continue to pursue some high-altitude reconnaissance flights over the "Communist" lands and around their edges. Overflights in particular will confirm what interlocutors who uptime people are meeting at the border say, that the infrastructure in Russia does appear both "fresh", but forty years out of date. Overflights will get bolder over the "Communist" lands as no intercept attempts, anti-aircraft fire, or radar pings are detected.
All this adds up to confirm for the moment there is no modern USSR hiding behind a surface layer of a primitive appearing Russia or Central Europe or China or Korea. Thus, President Truman has no reason to worry there will be imminently more atomic tests out of Russia, so he does not need to publicize the results of the radiological sample collection.
He, and other western governments, will have an infinitely more complex announcement to make, regarding the increasingly confirmed time-displacement event.
----
Global shock, awe, panic, and speculation about divine purposes, and "prepping" for the end of the world will be mixed on both sides of the time divide with everyday people, commercial enterprises, and governments, going on with their daily activities, and the inertia of continuing on with "what they were doing anyway".
For 1909 European port towns like Lubeck, Riga, Talinn, Odessa, Dubrovnik/Ragusa, that is going to mean grain export ships and passenger ships with would-be immigrants heading west to Paris, London, and the Americas. Countries now with stricter immigration rules than in 1949. Attempt human movement from east to west would continue, but the motives and drivers would change. Instead of 1949 people in Central Europe fleeing Communist repression and food and other goods shortages, people trying to move west will generally not be folk with trouble getting food at home. They will though be trying to go west for the prospect of getting higher wages or earnings than possible at home, over time. Quite possibly to bring back home in retirement, or to set up roots overseas. They are not likely fleeing political repression if migrating from Germany or Austria-Hungary, but could be fleeing political repression or especially religious oppression or ethno-national repression if coming from the Russian Empite. Or fleeing the draft or ethnoreligious oppression if coming from Ottoman Europe.
Immediately fraught political issues in Central Europe, even as the threat of Communism recedes, are the disposition of Germany, with "East Germany" being the old Wilhelmine 2nd Empire. I think the Kaiser's main palaces and Reichstag of the time were in the Soviet zones, unless I am mistaken. The 2nd Reich's reputation for tyranny and militarism and memories of WWI vets in the ruling classes of the west in 1949, are certainly enough that western leaders in Britain, France and the USA, not to mention Konrad Adenauer, prefer to build their Federal Republic of Germany in the west rather than turn over western zones to the German monarchy.
Likewise, the Habsburg Dual Monarchy is not considered a model democracy. But it thinks it owns Austria and parts of Italy. Again, I think the main palaces and parliament were in the Soviet zone, but I may be wrong. In any case, all the Hungarian institutions in Budapest should be intact.
Despite Turkish Ataturkist ideology and its discouragement of Ottoman nostalgia, I think the 1949 Turkish Republic would feel a protective fiduciary responsibility for the Turkish speakers and Muslims of the downtime 1909 Ottoman lands, not looking kindly on any Balkan state attempts to partition the Ottoman strip of lands there. They should have the tech advantage to protect it. And Civil War and war-recovering Greece should have neither the means, nor even in the interest, in the near term at least in opposing a Turkish zone of influence there as opposed to Serbian or Bulgarian. The late 40s early 50s was at a low point of salience of the Turkish threat to Greece compared and contrast to the early 20s and the rise of the Cyprus issue in the 60s.
In Asia, the MacArthur occupation administration and uptime Japanese government it was partnered with should have few problems bringing the Japanese administration of South Sakhalin and the Kuriles to heel, and the regime simply extends north. Although there will be more puzzlement and resistance, ultimately Imperially-voiced orders will suffice to secure peaceful evacuation of the Japanese Kwangtung Army from the Kwangtung peninsula leasehold and troops from the South Manchuria railway zone, and garrison troops and advisors from northern Korea.
The technology difference should allow for Guomindang forces, by this point pushed down to Taiwan, Guangzhou and west Chinese cities like Chongqing, to push aside 1909 Qing troops and authorities and assert control over the Yangzi Valley, reestablish their capital there, and reestablish their regime nationwide.
The new state of Israel, and diaspora Jewish populations, will find the backtiming of Central and Eastern Europe a major miracle. So will some other Central European groups like Gypsies, and the Poles, although they will now be without a state. Populations devastated by the Holocaust and WWII are revived. Israel will look to Europe for immigrants, just as in OTL it looked to DP camps and the east bloc, and Jews from Arab countries will fall lower on its priority list. But for would-be emigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, the United States would still be the favored destination. The question would be if there would be any loosening of immigration restrictions in the USA, or other countries in the Americas, to accommodate the demand, or not, in the early 1950s.
There would not be an anti-Communist tyranny rationale to bend immigration laws, but rigorous exclusion and vocal support for continued exclusion of particular national and religious categories of immigrants, especially "white" categories could start offending and mobilizing many people in society and the culture of this alternate 1950s in favor of non-discriminatory immigration criteria.
Although Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the "East German Empire" would have vast numbers of men under arms exceeding what the west has, the reality of the tech gap would be so transparently large from early on that the eastern empires would fairly quickly conclude they have to accommodate the 1949 political order, or at least geopolitical order, and defer to American and western dominance, and try to get favorable ties with the USA and western markets and access to technology.
The future of Germany is interesting. A *theoretical* possibility is that as "news from the future" is learned about everything that went wrong for Germany over the next 40 years of the history that used-to-be, there is a public and elite groundswell in the East German Empire to reform the system and abolish the monarchy and dissolve itself and conform itself within Adenauer's new federal German republic.
That really may not be the most likely outcome though. The other European states may have a discomfort with a Germany that grows so large, so quickly. Adenauer himself could fear insufficient dominance by his CDU-CSU and "too many damn Prussians". Eastern Germans are going to be more socially, culturally, and religiously conservative than western Germans. The forty years, generation plus difference, may make the German halves feel "foreign" to each other.
The lack of a sovereign Poland will become a sore point in Europe. The lack of a Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia, not necessarily. West Austrian unification with a downtime Austro-Hungarian Empire? The potentially involved parties, and outside powers, may not have much of a problem with it.
What happens to US politics, its right, center, and left wings, and its business model and social bargain with the sudden loss of the Communist competitor.
On the one hand, with the Communist states gone, the Communist geopolitical threat is gone. Countries are not being "lost" to Communism.
The Truman Administration and young liberals like Hubert Humphrey, will feel justified in supporting a free trade, developmentalist, pro-UN foreign policy abroad, and domestic liberal reformism, the "Fair Deal" at home. A big domestic priority will be Civil Rights. Truman will not miss at all that he did not overspend on the conventional military, and there is no pressure to go further toward development of "the super", the H-Bomb. A big domestic priority for northern liberal Democrats will be Civil Rights.
The wind should be taken out of the sails of McCarthy and Nixon with no "loss of China" no Red Bomb, no reason to hunt for Bomb spies, and no Korean War.
Labor organizations in America and Western Europe will retain their focus obtaining the good life for their members without so much of a prolonged distraction on purging Communist Party and adjacent radical influences. God, or whatever, destroyed Communism, so we don't have to. Now among the labor-movement and working-class folk depending on the cultural attitudes of the area or racial attitudes, racially equal civil rights or perceived adjacency to culturally "advanced" or "new" stances may be unpopular or divisive, but labor should remain more mission focused and less witch-hunt oriented.
Conservatives in America, and elsewhere, will have a choice to make. Do they respond to the loss of salience of the Communist issue by dropping it, or doing something else? I suspect that despite some moderates deciding to mount a pragmatic, technocratic, fiscally responsible critique of the New Deal order, focused on balancing the budget, efficiency, right-to-work laws, that is small "c" conservative and calm, angry conservatives, too long out of power and frustrated by the loss moderate "me-too" Republican Tom Dewey twice, will tack to the right, to paleoconservative fundamentals. It will have some parallels to the conservative shift in the 90s and 200s post-Cold War.
They will reformulate the Communist issue. As opposed to "God, or whatever, destroyed Communism, so we don't have to.", the line will be, "Yes, God destroyed Communism abroad, now it's time to destroy New Deal Communism at home, root and branch. We know God hates it, so let's cleanse ourselves before he turns his wrath on us." This will lead the Party in the direction of Taft and its conservatives, to an attitude of repudiation of the New Deal and foreign aid, to sticking to the letter of immigration quotas, and a return to American ideas, and even a nostalgic embrace of Herbert Hoover.
With people fatigued by 20 years of Democratic rule, reforms including new Civil Rights measures, international exertions, and revelations of corruption within the Truman Administration and urban Democratic machines, there will be a surprisingly large constituency for this. There will be an increase in funding for think-tanks promoting these views.
The difference between this form of right-wing enthusiasm in the early 50s, that I fully expect to lead to a Robert Taft nomination, and the McCarthyism of OTL, is that the Democrats and Democratic establishment, except for southern segregationist exceptions, will have little hesitation squarely opposing this vision. I still expect Taft to lose to a renominated Truman, or Stevenson, or any other alternative.
However, a question lies ahead, with the cheap labor and relatively undeveloped economies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russian Empire, Balkans, and China open for the exploitation of 1950s American and western capital and not closed to it behind an iron curtain, can and will western capitalist use outsourcing and offshoring starting from the early to mid-50s to start killing the economic leverage of the western labor movement, and forcing a race to the bottom in labor standards?
On the one hand, with labor gains more recently won, the labor movements are more awake to the danger and ready to respond. They are politically engaged. Even businesses are somewhat disciplined by memories of depression and war. But without any *current* geopolitical threats, perhaps corporate giving and business, much earlier than OTL decide, "why invest in the commons?" "Why do any giving to centrist or liberal causes?" "Who needs a cohesive society when there is nothing to defend against except excessive demands of labor against capital?", and business starts, much earlier than the 70s, biased giving towards right-wing, explicitly pro-business causes and think-tanks with low-tax, deregulatory pay-offs?
*ISOT- Island in the Sea of Time, look up the novel and concept on google, if you are unfamiliar, then return.