Ensuring Ernst Thälmann and the KPD win in Germany. The Soviet Union was stuck on its back foot through the 30s and 40s because of their relationship to Germany more than anything else. If the German revolution had succeeded or even just made it a second Spanish Civil War, the Soviets would have been able to build up domestic industrial capacity.
Alternatively, I'd give Marx enough material to make a Das Kapital of natural economy. Like with his ideas of primitive accumulation conditions, there wasn't enough source material for it. We could have had true radical environmentalism in the 60s and 70s. A true answer to industrialism and the oil economy, stealing the thunder from the hippies, pushing for real climate change solutions as soon as it became a policy issue. I think that would have really intensified western efforts and helped the eastern ones avoid some of their ecological and agricultural mistakes.
If the German revolution had succeeded or even just made it a second Spanish Civil War, the Soviets would have been able to build up domestic industrial capacity.
oh shit, what if there was a Korean/Vietnam style civil war but earlier and in Germany?
As I understand the USSR did try to help supply/manage something like that in the early 20's, but it required going through Poland; which they weren't able to do. :/
In addition to not having them as a military rival, as far as I remember, Germany or some other industrial country having a successful revolution, and subsequent aid from that country, was taken as a given Lenin's original plans for the development of the Soviet Union after the revolution. It almost seems like the possibility of their revolution being the only successful one in Europe never really occurred to him. You can see a lot of the same optimism in pre-1918 Lenin as you can see in Marx and Engels, where they saw things going much better and on a faster time scale than what actually happened. Between the lack of allies and the foreign invasion, the original plan had to be scrapped, and a "strategic retreat" to the NEP and its reintroduction of the market became the new policy.
It's an interesting alt-history to think about, where the new USSR keeps the more state-run system it had pre-NEP, and starts developing with the aid of a friendly industrial power, and therefore the "capitalist roader" faction that eventually led to Gorbachev never gained as much influence.
I've been thinking about it more lol. After Karl Liebknecht was released from prison, he met with different groups to organize a general strike and uprising. He got some of them to agree, but they pushed it back to the 11th of November. He then met with the USPD, but they wouldn't sign on. Before the 11th came around, the Kiel Mutiny had spread and started a revolution on its own, that they were then forced to try and co-opt. They weren't able to, and instead the SPD was able to call it off once they got what they wanted. The KPD then launched their own uprising, and got defeated by the army and the proto-SA Freikorps.
So, as a time traveler, one avenue would be to:
A, convince the Revolutionary Stewards to move the uprising up, to line it up with the Kiel Mutiny spreading into a revolution across the country.
And B, get the USPD on board with the uprising. Major figures in the mutiny were already USPD members, and so you gain the support of the main anti-war political body, as well as the large groups of armed sailors that were about to start taking over cities in the north of the country.
Of course if you do that, then you have to figure out the re-invasion by the allied armies to prop up the SPD and the Wiemar Republic lol, but it's a start
I don't know how feasible a White Normandy would be. The thing that really brought the world out of the Great Depression was the war economy, but the war economy only began in response to Hitler's external aggression when it passed the point of not being able to ignore it. They'd have the incentive to stop it like the Russian Civil War, but in like 1933 when the New Deal was just kicking off and CPUSA was poised to gain in the 1936 elections. It'd also mean the collapse of the Axis, so while the Japanese would be in China and maybe other pacific islands they might not go for Pearl Harbour and end American isolationism. I don't think the liberal elements of France and Great Britain would have been enough even with a lend-lease, and Soviet industry would be somewhere near its normal 1940 levels by the time it'd happen.
The scenario I was picturing would happen in late 1918 or early 1919, as a more successful version of the Sparticist Uprising that's able to make use of the organic uprising that they ended up tailing. This would be during the time period where peace negotiations had barely started, so the western front is kind of just frozen, but all the allied troops were still deployed, and the blockade was still in place. So when I say re-invade, I mean basically the western front starting up again, with the allied forces moving in to support the SPD government in opposition to the new Sparticist/KPD government. But that's also not a sure thing in this scenario, an attempt to start the war back up might would trigger something like the 1917 mutinies in the French Army, but on a much larger scale.
I do agree with that though, if this happened with Thälmann like you had originally mentioned, they'd be in a much worse position to intervene, short of it turning into a full world war at least
Kicking off in 1918/1919 would be good for radicalising the alienated vets who turned to street violence. Coming out of the blockades and turnip winter would also mean the public has a lot more to gain from socialism than a decade later when fascism was promising the same material gains at the expense of minority groups.
The thought has interested me enough that I've been working up an alt history timeline lol. I haven't worked out the details yet past changing the date of the uprising, but my rough plan so far is that once the counter-revolution is defeated in Germany and the USSR, Rosa returns to Poland to start agitating there, since she isn't killed in this timeline. With pressure from both the east and west from the two communist countries, eventually a communist government comes to power in Poland, opening up a land corridor from Germany to the USSR. That's as far as I've had the time to think about it though lol
Ensuring Ernst Thälmann and the KPD win in Germany. The Soviet Union was stuck on its back foot through the 30s and 40s because of their relationship to Germany more than anything else. If the German revolution had succeeded or even just made it a second Spanish Civil War, the Soviets would have been able to build up domestic industrial capacity.
Alternatively, I'd give Marx enough material to make a Das Kapital of natural economy. Like with his ideas of primitive accumulation conditions, there wasn't enough source material for it. We could have had true radical environmentalism in the 60s and 70s. A true answer to industrialism and the oil economy, stealing the thunder from the hippies, pushing for real climate change solutions as soon as it became a policy issue. I think that would have really intensified western efforts and helped the eastern ones avoid some of their ecological and agricultural mistakes.
oh shit, what if there was a Korean/Vietnam style civil war but earlier and in Germany?
As I understand the USSR did try to help supply/manage something like that in the early 20's, but it required going through Poland; which they weren't able to do. :/
In addition to not having them as a military rival, as far as I remember, Germany or some other industrial country having a successful revolution, and subsequent aid from that country, was taken as a given Lenin's original plans for the development of the Soviet Union after the revolution. It almost seems like the possibility of their revolution being the only successful one in Europe never really occurred to him. You can see a lot of the same optimism in pre-1918 Lenin as you can see in Marx and Engels, where they saw things going much better and on a faster time scale than what actually happened. Between the lack of allies and the foreign invasion, the original plan had to be scrapped, and a "strategic retreat" to the NEP and its reintroduction of the market became the new policy.
It's an interesting alt-history to think about, where the new USSR keeps the more state-run system it had pre-NEP, and starts developing with the aid of a friendly industrial power, and therefore the "capitalist roader" faction that eventually led to Gorbachev never gained as much influence.
I've been thinking about it more lol. After Karl Liebknecht was released from prison, he met with different groups to organize a general strike and uprising. He got some of them to agree, but they pushed it back to the 11th of November. He then met with the USPD, but they wouldn't sign on. Before the 11th came around, the Kiel Mutiny had spread and started a revolution on its own, that they were then forced to try and co-opt. They weren't able to, and instead the SPD was able to call it off once they got what they wanted. The KPD then launched their own uprising, and got defeated by the army and the proto-SA Freikorps.
So, as a time traveler, one avenue would be to:
A, convince the Revolutionary Stewards to move the uprising up, to line it up with the Kiel Mutiny spreading into a revolution across the country.
And B, get the USPD on board with the uprising. Major figures in the mutiny were already USPD members, and so you gain the support of the main anti-war political body, as well as the large groups of armed sailors that were about to start taking over cities in the north of the country.
Of course if you do that, then you have to figure out the re-invasion by the allied armies to prop up the SPD and the Wiemar Republic lol, but it's a start
I don't know how feasible a White Normandy would be. The thing that really brought the world out of the Great Depression was the war economy, but the war economy only began in response to Hitler's external aggression when it passed the point of not being able to ignore it. They'd have the incentive to stop it like the Russian Civil War, but in like 1933 when the New Deal was just kicking off and CPUSA was poised to gain in the 1936 elections. It'd also mean the collapse of the Axis, so while the Japanese would be in China and maybe other pacific islands they might not go for Pearl Harbour and end American isolationism. I don't think the liberal elements of France and Great Britain would have been enough even with a lend-lease, and Soviet industry would be somewhere near its normal 1940 levels by the time it'd happen.
The scenario I was picturing would happen in late 1918 or early 1919, as a more successful version of the Sparticist Uprising that's able to make use of the organic uprising that they ended up tailing. This would be during the time period where peace negotiations had barely started, so the western front is kind of just frozen, but all the allied troops were still deployed, and the blockade was still in place. So when I say re-invade, I mean basically the western front starting up again, with the allied forces moving in to support the SPD government in opposition to the new Sparticist/KPD government. But that's also not a sure thing in this scenario, an attempt to start the war back up might would trigger something like the 1917 mutinies in the French Army, but on a much larger scale.
I do agree with that though, if this happened with Thälmann like you had originally mentioned, they'd be in a much worse position to intervene, short of it turning into a full world war at least
Kicking off in 1918/1919 would be good for radicalising the alienated vets who turned to street violence. Coming out of the blockades and turnip winter would also mean the public has a lot more to gain from socialism than a decade later when fascism was promising the same material gains at the expense of minority groups.
The thought has interested me enough that I've been working up an alt history timeline lol. I haven't worked out the details yet past changing the date of the uprising, but my rough plan so far is that once the counter-revolution is defeated in Germany and the USSR, Rosa returns to Poland to start agitating there, since she isn't killed in this timeline. With pressure from both the east and west from the two communist countries, eventually a communist government comes to power in Poland, opening up a land corridor from Germany to the USSR. That's as far as I've had the time to think about it though lol