"No Hitler AND no Stalin." Topic

Here's a "What-If" course of historical event's I'd like to explore. Assume no Hitler AND no Stalin. Assume the Crown Prince of Germany returns to be a Constitutional Monarch for Weimar, and the Bolsheviks are defeated in the Russian Civil War, leading to a similar constitutional monarchy under one of the collateral branches. No Holocoust, No Gulag, No World War Two. Only small nibbling wars here and there waged by people who aren't homicidal maniacs and who can't afford it in the first place.

Imagine-- the Big bad men of Europe are Mussolini and Franco. Maybe the only fragment of WWII we will get is Japanese expansion in China.

I'm much more intrigued as to the works of peace that could have been done.

Piers Brandon's work "The Dark Valley" is a history of the Depression, the contention of which was that it was as traumatic, disorienting, and casualty producing as a World War. Perhaps a bit of overstatement, but not by much. Fascinating book, fascinating time.

OSchmidt:
Perhaps the whole thing hinges on the amount of economic dislocation caused to Russia and Germany by the aftermath of WWI, War Reparations levied on Germany, the Collapse of the Weimar Republic economically and how fertile German and Russian soil would be for radicalization. Assuming that the two constitutional monarchies could weather the economic storm of the 1920's and 1930's (by no means a sure thing), then perhaps Germany would emerge as the dominant European economy by the mid 1940's and an earlier version of the EEC might have been formed by 1950 (likely without the participation of Britain). Niall Ferguson has speculated that had Imperial Germany won WWI that they would have moved to integrate European economies much faster and a proto-EU may have emerged much earlier than it did. France may have become a stronger socialist state financed by the fruits of colonialism and empire and as Terrement has said might be the bulwark against European Fascism's spread.
I think Russia and Germany might still have collided over control of North-eastern Europe and the Balkans. What form this would take is beyond me. A series of limited wars or an all-out war is anybody's guess.
Empires would have continued longer and the process of decolonization might have been long delayed as nations like Britain and France would not have been bankrupted by fighting two world wars in 30 years. An interesting aspect of your question is what would the state of Anglo-American relations be in a world where the British Empire/Commonwealth-plus is challenged by American commercial and military expansion?
Another intriguing question is what would an expansionist Japan do and who would it ally with as it fought either a Republic of China or a non-communist "Maoist" China. Would Britain and the USA have contained Japan or would a "Pacific" war have erupted?
As to works of peace, a League of Nations/UN which promotes the spread of human rights and continues the building of a body of international law against war? Greater economic cooperation between non-imperial countries and the formation of a non-imperial trade bloc to countervail the economic integration and comparative advantage of imperial powers? Perhaps a league of non-imperial nations would begin to try to undermine the empires and push to dissolve empire from within by financing development projects in decolonizing nations? Women might have gained more economic clout and political power as in many decolonizing nations they played an important role in economic productivity and growth?
No communist victory in Russia and China and no proto-fascist Stalin means no Cold War at least as we know it. That means no arms race, no space race and slower technological advancement perhaps. At the same time the billions spent on the war and reconstruction could have been invested in other things. How would this money be spent? Productively to improve the world or would it have just gone to line the pockets of financiers and industrialists? Also, no war expenditure and no reconstruction means that European and American industry would have reached excess capacity quickly so a series of recessions and perhaps one or two major depressions might come along too? This could fuel war and simply delay the scenario that leads to a much larger war.
A very interesting topic and I wish I could come up with more positives. I'm inclined to think that Terrement's less rosy predictions would likely have come true.
Cheers and good gaming.
Rod Robertson.

We all live Happily Ever After.

With the Monarchs still in place then I think nothing happens in Western Europe for another decade or two. I think the Aristocracy learned their lesson after the War to End All Wars. Although, at some point, the Germans would get tired of the economic noose around their necks and look to settle the score.

With no Russian revolution there is no Communism, so we're back to Colonial squabbles in Africa & Southeast Asia.

The big wild card is Japan: they were already into China & Khalkin Gol would likely have expanded into a territorial war along the border (as some one said, Russo-Japanese War II). However, without a war the development of advanced weapons slows down. So, everyone is still probably armed with early war weapons as late as 1950.

Dear Terrament and Rod I Robertson.

Thanks for the posts. You two understand what I am thinking about. In your posts you enumerate several things which could have taken place, but they would all be sniping, grumbling, small wars which NONE of them could afford and sustain for long. I do not see a wonderfully peaceful world with everyone falling all over each other in brotherhood, but I do see conflicts on a smaller scale with perhaps more limited endurance, and I don't see the mass purges and the holocaust. On to be sure there will be Nazi's and Bolsheviks, but as to how far they get to power is problematic.

On the whole for me a more interesting period. That's what I predicated my WWII game "The Shattered Century upon."