What if the Cold War (1947-1991) had instead been fought between the United States and Germany – and not the Soviet Union?
It may be hard to believe, but it was not a foregone conclusion that the United States would co-operate with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The US remained neutral at the beginning of the war and later took sides, probably because of Japan’s role in the conflict. Japan, which was allied with Germany, was in conflict with the US in the Pacific, and this likely contributed to the US siding with the Axis powers. But what if things had turned out differently?
Many people think it’s obvious that the US fought Germany alongside the Soviet Union, because the Germans were the most evil of the evil. But it is not so obvious. The Soviet Union was just as bad, they also murdered many civilians during the First and Second World Wars and the period in between. They were even worse than the Hitlerites.
Most Germans (with or without a party book) probably saw the fight against communism as the ultimate goal, regardless of the other goals of the war, just as the US did in the subsequent Cold War.
The fight against communism was central, almost existential. Americans and Germans had this goal in common. To defeat communism. Yet the US chose to fight on the side of the Soviet Union.
Had they chosen Germany, and together defeated the Soviet Union, the greater evil would have been defeated faster, and the lesser evil could have been defeated afterwards. Nazi Germany would probably have perished, as would the Soviet Union. Perhaps the cult of personality around Hitler would not have survived him? Perhaps his successor would have proclaimed some kind of German perestroika and glasnost (umstrukturierung und transparenz)?
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were certainly competing in who was the worst, but objectively speaking, Lenin and Stalin had more civilian lives on their hands than Hitler. If we are to be strictly mathematical. The logical thing for the US to do would have been to ally with Hitler – defeat the Soviet Union – and then start a cold war against Germany, which they would eventually win.
But the US and even British long-term strategy has always been to antagonise and sow division in Central Europe. A German victory might have outshone the UK and US efforts? And given the German economy a huge boost, especially with the huge supply of raw materials from the occupied Russian territories. At least in the short term. Continental Europe had become a great power, eclipsing the Anglosphere. And this could not be allowed to happen, no matter who were the most evil of the evil. So they allied with the communists, bombed the hell out of Europe and divided the ruins among themselves.
