Would Tsarist Russia Have Been Able To Sustain An Invasion And Beat The Nazis

Sindri

Just a thought that struck me a few days ago and I was wondering what the experts on the forum thought. I'm no expert so I could only offer hypothetical answers to the topic based on my limited knowledge which would be wholly inadequate, but I might do when I've had a chance to think about it some more.

My limited thoughts, which occurred to me while writing this post would be that Tsarist Russia (if it still existed at the time) would not have been able to due to what I think would be an extremely poor economy and manufacturing/industry sector, also what I think would have been less political power from the Tsar probably due to stresses on Russian society from the peasants previous to the Nazi invasion, as well as extreme discontent from the peasants at this particular time and it probably would have led to it's downfall.

It would also be interesting to know what you experts of the forum think the Bolsheviks would have done in this situation, if you have any thoughts on it?

Manach

Offhand, yes.
In that AFAIR from a text on Russian history I read, that the during Tsarist times of pre-WWI that Russia was in the top ten industrised nations so would have the capacity to wage war.
That it had a measure of democracy from reforms that gave it a semi-representive Duma hence an ability to rouse the popular masses.
And assuming the Bolsheviks did not take power, it would have a functional officer class at the start of the war.
Last point, the rise of Nazism was directly tied to the threat of a communist state, so if the latter is not present this implies that the form of Nazism in Germany of the 30s would not have arisen.

jonniebgood1

Impossible to say but it is an interesting question.

I doubt that the Tsar in his latter years from 1902 say onwards would have had the authority to organise in the way that the communist leadership did. The authoritarian leadership of Stalin had massive well documented problems but it also had advantages in organisation and in the links with the ordinary people. This contrasted with the disconnect between the Tsar and the Russian people in WWI. Something that is often missed in analysis of the USSR amongst the morases of tradgedies and crimes of the communist leaders is that that system was grounded in the local Russian systems of rule for 100's of years. Local communes and village commities had alot of powers under the Tsar which was a factor that made Russia more suitable for communism than most other countries. Leading on from this I would contend that the local communities would not have been united against Germany under a disconected Tsar as they were under communist rule.

ardmacha

These alternative histories depend on what assumptions you make. A reformed Tsarist government might have been effective enough.

The Russians initially lost a lot of ground in the war because Stalin had purged almost all generals who were any use, this might not have happened in an alternative scenario.

jonniebgood1

ardmacha wrote: »

The Russians initially lost a lot of ground in the war because Stalin had purged almost all generals who were any use, this might not have happened in an alternative scenario.

Good point.

bluecode

Surely the fact that Tsarist Russia lost to the non Nazi Germans in WW1 would answer that question? The Germans weren't even fully committed to the war in the East, yet still won. Something which no doubt reassured Hitler in his ambitions. Unless Tsarist Russia had reformed very radically and strenghtened. No doubt there would be a similar result.

Manach

bluecode wrote: »

Surely the fact that Tsarist Russia lost to the non Nazi Germans in WW1 would answer that question? The Germans weren't even fully committed to the war in the East, yet still won. Something which no doubt reassured Hitler in his ambitions. Unless Tsarist Russia had reformed very radically and strenghtened. No doubt there would be a similar result.

Fair point.
My counter-argument would be the characteristics of the Russian soldier did not significantly change between WWI and WWII. From the various accounts, they fought well and bravely in both. What did significantly change was the conduct of the German army.
During WWI, there were horrific incidents of cruelty to civilians in Europe, but the worst was contained to the Balkans. During WWII, sections of the German forces were there to exterminate the population within Russia, no matter the ethnic origin. Having to face this type of foe once word of such massacres spread, would be a major factor in stiffening Russian patriotic resistance.
During WWII, Stalin somewhat downplayed the political underpinings of the regime, and instead boosted output of pro-nationalist Russian media output to re-enforce the image of a mortal threat to the Rodina, motherland.
Hence, a Tsarist regime facing such a threat as Nazi-Germany could count on a similar effect.

bluecode

Arguably but somehow I doubt the Tsarists would have machine guns positioned to 'motivate' men not to retreat. Although it's plausible! Stalin's regime was ruthless in the extreme more so than even the Germans when it came to dealing with their own men. Practices like decimation for failure in battle and executing officers whose men ran or deserted had a certain effect too. Certainly patriotism was invoked but that can only go so far.

Sindri

Manach wrote: »

Fair point.
My counter-argument would be the characteristics of the Russian soldier did not significantly change between WWI and WWII. From the various accounts, they fought well and bravely in both. What did significantly change was the conduct of the German army.
During WWI, there were horrific incidents of cruelty to civilians in Europe, but the worst was contained to the Balkans. During WWII, sections of the German forces were there to exterminate the population within Russia, no matter the ethnic origin. Having to face this type of foe once word of such massacres spread, would be a major factor in stiffening Russian patriotic resistance.
During WWII, Stalin somewhat downplayed the political underpinings of the regime, and instead boosted output of pro-nationalist Russian media output to re-enforce the image of a mortal threat to the Rodina, motherland.
Hence, a Tsarist regime facing such a threat as Nazi-Germany could count on a similar effect.

Their tactics were still reliant on similar obsolete practices. I believe some of their generals still counted on cavalry as their primary unit and developed their tactics around that except for Zhukov. Would Zhukov, a peasant, have been a Marshall in Tsarist Russia?

Manach

That the Russian general staff were reactionary, goes without saying. Did that make them less effective militarily? One could point to the same officer class taking on the might of Napoleon's army two centuries ago this year, and chasing them back to Paris.
For every general as good as Zhukov, how many non-entities were kept in place due to their only virtue of political orthodoxy?

liberty 2007

Perhaps they would have been allies!!!

jonniebgood1

liberty 2007 wrote: »

Perhaps they would have been allies!!!

Ideological differences would certainly have been less.

Reekwind

Sindri wrote: »

Just a thought that struck me a few days ago and I was wondering what the experts on the forum thought

To meet the Nazi invasion, even just with the same capabilities/resources that the Soviets did, then Tsarist Russia would have had to:

• Massively expand its industrial base, urban workforce and manufacturing sectors
• Completely revamp its military capabilities and organisations; including ending the system of court patronage
• Clear out its officer corps and develop a new, modern approach to warfare
• Construct an entirely new set of state institutions that could better coordinate the economy and affairs of state
• Purge the army and bureaucracy of the useless, uneducated and parasitic nobles who gave Tsarist governance such a bad name
• Somehow convince the Tsar to relinquish a degree of power to put the country on a more stable and less capricious footing. Probably involving the removal or neutering of the Imperial court
• Do all of the above without sparking massive social unrest

In short, not a chance. The Tsardom would have needed massive internal reforms just to catch up with where the other Great Powers were in 1914; actually surviving to 1941, and defeating the Nazis, would have been impossible. In 1914 Russia at least had size but in 1941 the speed of the German advance would have far, far outstripped the ability of the Tsardom to react

(That the Soviets did have that organisational ability to mobilise vast resources in an incredibly short space of time was the product of the intense state-building and institution construction that they'd been occupied with following 1917. Put simply, the Soviet state, for all its many flaws, was incomparably more efficient than its Tsarist predecessor)

Their tactics were still reliant on similar obsolete practices. I believe some of their generals still counted on cavalry as their primary unit and developed their tactics around that except for Zhukov

To be blunt, this statement is wrong in almost every possible way. Following WWI and the RCW, Soviet military minds arrived at a military doctrine (formally enshrined in the 1936 Field Regulations) that was every bit as modern and sophisticated as that being developed in Germany. Soviet deep operations strongly emphasised the use of mobile/mechanised forces, operating in combined arms, to shatter an enemy's front through multiple armoured breakthroughs into the rear

The purges weakened this commitment to mobile warfare somewhat, as well as crippling the Soviet officer corps, but as a result the Red Army in 1941 was a modern industrial force. It was in an infinitely better shape that the Imperial Army in 1914. The pity is that it was thrown away due to political interference

The image of the Red Army as some primitive tool throwing away men in human wave attacks is a myth

(Incidentally those cavalry divisions that were retained were invaluable during the defence of Moscow when they proved to be quite mobile in the snow and ice)

Would Zhukov, a peasant, have been a Marshall in Tsarist Russia?

Senior officers in the Imperial Army were uniformly drawn from the nobility and primarily owed their positions to court patronage. So, no

Manach wrote:

In that AFAIR from a text on Russian history I read, that the during Tsarist times of pre-WWI that Russia was in the top ten industrised nations so would have the capacity to wage war.

Tsarist Russia was so far behind the other Great Powers in terms of industrialisation that it ultimately proved to be incapable of waging a long war. The country was infamously backwards and could not compete with the industrial might of a Germany

Today very few economic historians would argue that in the absence of the Revolution Tsarist industrial growth would have produced an industrial base as the Soviet's possessed in 1941

That it had a measure of democracy from reforms that gave it a semi-representive Duma hence an ability to rouse the popular masses

Except that following 1905 the Duma was increasingly discredited and unrepresentative. It in no way provided a rallying banner to the "popular masses" and nor did anyone attempt to make it so. The Tsarists emphasised the figure of the Supreme Autocrat, the Provisional Government played up its own petty Napoleons and the Soviets were based on, well, the soviets

Last point, the rise of Nazism was directly tied to the threat of a communist state, so if the latter is not present this implies that the form of Nazism in Germany of the 30s would not have arisen.

Which supposes that:

1) The rise of National Socialism was tied to the existence of the Soviet Union and not the mass of labour unrest in Weimar Germany and the complete hostility of many sections of the German elite to Weimar institutions

2) Communism as a 'spectre haunting Europe' does not predate 1917. The reality is that Germany had experienced 'red scares' a century before the Nazis employed the language of Judeo-Bolshevikism

Sindri

Very good post!

Would anyone like a rebuttal?

Manach

This would be more of a reiteration of my points on Tsarist Russia. It would be based on a number of sources* with I had previously read.
To portrait the Tsarist's government as some monolithic structure is wrong. Within the era of the Romonovs, there were both strong autocratic rulers and weak ones who were replaced by the multiple differing stakeholders within the state.
The Tsarist Russian military structure had the ability to learn from its mistakes and change according. During the Napoleonic era, the early battles against the then most modern state, France, ended in disaster. The Russian high command/political leadership took these lessons on board. The results were
> An efficient spy network that had numerous assets to know when and where the 1812 invasion was happening.
> A massive re-modernisation of the army with new command structures and tactics
> The strategy of lulling French suspicions by feigning semi-allied status.
> The strategy of willing to sacrifice Russian land to stretch French logistical supply lines.
> Working in concert with other Great Powers to hinder the French,


To say that the Duma was ineffective is wrong. Democratic structures with rare exceptions need a generation or two to take root and become effective. The gureilla campaigns that hamstrung Napoleonic forces where based as well on local nation resistance and lead by traditional structures, which the Soviets took so much effort to exterminate during the 30s in the purges in the Ukraine.
Compared to the Democratic creditably of the Nazis, whose local civil Gautleiters were based purely on party locality and when the tide of war turn against the Nazis, proved highly ineffective in defending German cities.

To say that the Russian industrial base was relevant is wrong. According to figures, Around the turn of the 19thC, it was the 10th most industrised country. The Germans themselves in the 1941 campaign relied heavy on draught animals to transport logistics. The Germany that defeat the Russians in WWI had surpassed the British Empire in productivity and was one of the leading scientific workshops of the world. The German of the Nazis had cruelly purged sections of its population and derided certain sciences as unGerman.
So to me, a reasonable democratic Tsarist state with a professional officer classes defeats the Nazis.

*Sources
1812 : Napoleon's fatal march to Moscow Zamoyski, A
Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814 Lieven
Germany 1945 - Bessler?
The Russian Revolution Moorehead, A
Russia's War Overy, R
+ an academic course on Empires.

Reekwind

Manach wrote: »

The Tsarist Russian military structure had the ability to learn from its mistakes and change according. During the Napoleonic era, the early battles against the then most modern state, France, ended in disaster. The Russian high command/political leadership took these lessons on board...

And, out of curiosity, how did the Tsardom react to the humiliating defeat of 1905?

Rhetorical question. Having being handed a stinging lesson by the Japanese you'd have thought that the Tsardom would have thoroughly revamped its military capabilities to meet the looming European war. Yet here are some stats from Tuchman's Guns of August:

• Russia began the war with a reserve of 850 shells per gun. The range for Western armies was 2-3k. This was despite Russian pre-war plans calling for 1,500 per gun
• A Russian infantry division had seven field-gun batteries. A German infantry division had 14
• The whole Russian Army had 60 batteries of heavy artillery. The German Army had 381 in total
• In 1913 the Russian army was found to be short of 3,000 officers
• In 1913 the War Minister, a gross incompetent named Sukhomlinov, dismissed five College instructors for persistent preaching of "fire tactics", as opposed to the school of the bayonet. Sukhomlinov openly boasted of not having read a military manual for 25 years

And this isn't even touching on the chaos at the top as War Ministry squabbled with the Finance Ministry. In addition to those two, the the mess of agencies competing for the Tsar's ear on defence included the General Staff, Council of State Defence, Council of Ministers, the Navy and Foreign Ministry. Those ministers who actually were competent (Witte or Stolypin) did not meet happy ends

The scary thing is that all of this is that it represents Tsarist attempts to actually modernise. And undoubtedly some progress was made from 1905 - but it was slow, confused and deeply reluctant progress. In the 20th C the Tsardom needed wholesale reforms (not some foreign policy changes of "an efficient spy network") but proved utterly unable to implement them

So the idea that you could turn this decrepit, antiquated organisation into a modern mechanised fighting force, in the space of two decades, is ludicrous. They couldn't even meet Western WWI standards in a decade

To say that the Duma was ineffective is wrong. Democratic structures with rare exceptions need a generation or two to take root and become effective

And did the Duma get a "generation or two" to establish itself? Again, rhetorical

The reforms of 1906 were overturned by the Autocracy as soon as politically possible with the Duma quickly neutered as an effective legislative chamber. Just over a year after the first legislative elections came the June 1907 coup and the redrawing of the franchise to produce an entirely unrepresentative and reactionary chamber of landowners and businessmen. Figes (A People's Tragedy) argues that this was the death-knell of Russian liberalism and that the most notably outcome from the whole sorry episode was the emergence of the socialists as the foremost bodies of opposition

It should really not be a surprise that the biggest opponent of 'democracy taking root in Russia' was none other than the Tsar himself

To say that the Russian industrial base was relevant is wrong. According to figures, Around the turn of the 19thC, it was the 10th most industrised country

Out of how many industrialised nations?

In 1914 the Russian Empire lagged behind every European competitor in terms of industrialisation. It's GNP per head was almost half that of Italy, the least developed of the European Powers, never mind Germany (Davies, The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union). It was less industrialised, again per capita, than Austria, Spain, Belgium, Sweden and Switzerland.

When compared to an actual world leader the gulf was even starker. Relative to the United Kingdom (Britain, excluding the Empire), in 1910 Russia produced: half as much electricity, 10% as much coal, less than half as much pig iron, half as much steel and a quarter the textiles. The difference between the USA and Germany was even greater. (Nove, An Economic History of the USSR.) This is in absolute terms and despite Russia's massive population advantage

So to answer my original question, the Russian Empire lagged behind every single industrialised nation in the world with the exception of Japan. That is, it ranked tenth out of eleven. The difference between the top and bottom of this table was absolutely massive and, crucially, growing; the contemporary Russian economist (and anti-Bolshevik) Grinevetsky admitting that "Russia in her pre-war economic growth was not merely not catching up the younger countries... but was in fact falling behind" (Nove)

So to me, a reasonable democratic Tsarist state with a professional officer classes defeats the Nazis.

And a democratic Tsarist state with a professional officer class is an oxymoron

Sure, you could envisage the Tsardom in 1941 as a constitutional democracy that's fully industrialised and possesses a solid middle class, good infrastructure, a professional and meritocratic officer class, etc, etc... but that's fantasy, not history. Could the Tsarist state of 1914 have conceivably transformed itself into what amounts to a modern Western state in the space of two decades? Not a chance and certainly not without completely rewriting the nature of the Tsarist state

Manach

Reality, Politics and Statistics.

If in reality the Russian army was in such a dire straits after the changes of the 1903 war, then no other Great power would have courted it as part of an alliance as it would have been a disadvantage. As well, the Central powers armies did not march straight to Moscow and dictate terms in 1914. It took three hard years of fighting against Germany, the premier power of the day, and fighting the minor Great powers of the Austrian and Turkish Empires on other fronts before the Russian regime capitulated. They lasted one year less that the Hapsburg and German regimes. Offhand from reading 'Storm of Steel', the German troopers of the great 1918 offensive fully expect to roll-up the Western allies after the masses of troops had been freed from the Eastern front.

In politics like sausage making, it does bear too much scrutiny to look behind the scenes. Paraphrasing from Bismark, my reading of a recent biography, for much of his own rule show a similar vein of ramshackle party before country driven executive branch that was run by Bismark based on his landed estate in Prussia. That the Duma was made up of landowners and businessmen, that can fairly well sum up the Westminster parliament of the time.

In regard statistics, to measure like with like there has to be some form of reasonable comparitor between the systems. In the case of the Soviet successor state to the Tsars, reliable numbers would be difficult to come by because to the nature of the State which put ideological contraints on accurate reporting ( 'The Last Day of the Soviet Union 'by Conor O'Clery )- so much so that the State sector in industrial terms was highly ineffecient and the agricultural sector, outside the small few private plots, equally bad.

In Summary, the Tsarists' regime had won against Napoleon and lasted three years against the central powers. Given that the sentiment that WWII German forces were not the same capacity as their WWI forebears ("1945" - Bessell), the Tsarist would defeat the Nazis.

Reekwind

I go into some detail on specific points below but to be honest there's not a huge amount of meat in this discussion. For me the crux is simple: did the Tsardom have the capability to reform itself to both survive WWI and rearm for WWII. This was the same test that every other nation faced in this period

Now nothing that you've presented suggests to me that the Tsardom was about to radically reform its political, economic and military structures to the degree required to repeal a hypothetical Nazi invasion. It couldn't even hold itself together long enough to survive the Great War

Manach wrote: »

If in reality the Russian army was in such a dire straits after the changes of the 1903 war, then no other Great power would have courted it as part of an alliance as it would have been a disadvantage

Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War; the Russian Army embarked on a modernisation programme after the war; the Russian Army entered WWI is relatively poor shape. I don't think you'll find a historian who disagrees with any of those statements

But in relation to the appeal of Russia as an ally: numbers. It wasn't called the 'Russian steamroller' for nothing. The expectation was that within six weeks of mobilisation the Tsardsom would have some 2-3 million soldiers in the field, with the potential to mobilise some further 14 million peasants. Sometimes, to quote Stalin, quantity has a quality all of its own. This was the looming reality that shaped both French and German pre-war planning

The French commanders were not particularly fussed by the inadequacies of their Russian counterparts - the important point for them was that Russia threaten Germany's eastern flank. Even Tannenberg, a crushing Russian defeat, was a good result for the French, drawing as it did critical divisions away from the West

What no one predicted in 1914 was that the numerically superior Russians would be ejected from Poland and held or driven back to the point of collapse

Offhand from reading 'Storm of Steel', the German troopers of the great 1918 offensive fully expect to roll-up the Western allies after the masses of troops had been freed from the Eastern front

Yes, because finally Germany would be able to focus on one front. That is, actually having a numerical advantage on one front instead of being outnumbered on two

It should be pretty clear that it was only the distraction of the West that kept the Germans from 'rolling up' the Russians in one grand Gorlice–Tarnów offensive. The greatest hindrance to German progress, except for France, was the sheer scale of European Russia - something that the panzers would (nearly) overcome in 1941

That the Duma was made up of landowners and businessmen, that can fairly well sum up the Westminster parliament of the time.

No, it can't. Not unless you want to ignore almost a century of parliamentary reform (or lack of it). Let's compare:

In 1914 over 60% of the adult male population could vote in elections to the House of Commons. Parliament in turn determined government and government policy. In contrast the Duma was a largely consultative body with no real power or influence. When it did annoy the Tsar it was abolished

In 1907 Stolypin brazenly changed the Russian franchise to:

• Reduce the weight of non-Russian minorities in the Empire. Thus Poland, with a population of 11 million returned a grand total of 14 delegates. This was a decrease from the 46 delegates to the Second Duma. (In contrast, in the 1906 election, Ireland, with her population of 3-4 million, sent 84 MPs to Westminster)
• Increase the weight of the Great Russian lands. Hence Kursk (population 2.5 million) returned 11 deputies
• Changed the franchise so that within European Russia almost 50% of delegates were chosen ('elected' seems too inaccurate here) by landowners. The actual majority of the population, peasants and workers, only elected less than a quarter of the delegates returned from these areas
• 18 cities were stripped of their right to elect deputies (to reduce liberal strongholds) while of those cities that did vote, 50% of the vote was reserved for men of "substantial wealth" (who, it hardly needs to be pointed out, were a tiny minority of the population)
• Women, men under the age of 25, students, soldiers, sailors and dismissed civil servants were excluded from the franchise entirely
• The actual mechanics of voting was made more convoluted (requiring three different stages/votes in some areas) so as to increase the opportunities for official and/or unofficial rigging by the officials/landowners

(Incidentally, the Second Duma was abolished because it had dared to criticise the Tsar's handling of the army reforms. Which is relevant. See Abraham Ascher's biography of Stolypin for more details on the above)

Now it's absolutely no wonder that the Duma was not respected or considered to be a genuinely representative or democratic body, never mind one capable of "rousing the masses". If you think this then you're in a minority of one. There's really not much more that can be said about that. (Other than that pointing out 'democracy' as a potential Tsarist strength really made me smile)

In regard statistics, to measure like with like there has to be some form of reasonable comparitor between the systems. In the case of the Soviet successor state to the Tsars, reliable numbers would be difficult to come by because to the nature of the State which put ideological contraints on accurate reporting ( 'The Last Day of the Soviet Union 'by Conor O'Clery )

1) That's entirely irrelevant because I was comparing figures for Western and Tsarist industrialisation. Unless the Soviets invented a time machine then we should be okay to use those

2) On Soviet figures, economists have been studying these for decades. If I were to quote them then it would be from an expert in the field (and Davies is the authority here) and I'd typically provide a range of estimates, when discussing growth

But then your assertion (regarding "accurate reporting") is bunk, for any period before the 1970s at least. While Soviet 'headline figures' are obviously suspect from the late 1920s onwards, the reporting mechanisms were relatively sound and produced a wealth of raw data. It is possible to work back from distortions (either outright falsification or use of favourable series/prices) and construct reasonably sound estimates. It's painstaking work but, as I say, the likes of Nove, Davies, Harrison, Wheatcroft, Gregory, et al, have been doing this for decades. See Davies, The Crooked Mirror of Soviet Economic Statistics

In Summary, the Tsarists' regime had won against Napoleon and lasted three years against the central powers. Given that the sentiment that WWII German forces were not the same capacity as their WWI forebears ("1945" - Bessell), the Tsarist would defeat the Nazis.

I'm really not sure why you keep referencing Napoleon. Is it because he actually succeeded in reaching Moscow? Or are you flying in the face of pretty much universal agreement amongst historians, and contemporaries, in denying that Tsarist Russia needed to reform to survive?

Manach

Well, the reason for an emphasis on the Napoleonic was that is the era I'd be most familiar in terms of reference material with, that France at that time were the first nation to initiate modern concepts of total war and mass citizen armies and that the Russian state when facing such a threat managed to radically transform itself to met the challenge and defeat them.

Reekwind

Whereas I'd suggest that of considerably more relevance is the failure of the Tsardom to "radically transform itself" in response to European competition in the late 19th C, the crisis of 1905 and, indeed, the war of 1914

jonniebgood1

Manach wrote: »

Well, the reason for an emphasis on the Napoleonic was that is the era I'd be most familiar in terms of reference material with, that France at that time were the first nation to initiate modern concepts of total war and mass citizen armies and that the Russian state when facing such a threat managed to radically transform itself to met the challenge and defeat them.

Was their victory over Napoleon not down to many issues such as distance and weather as much as any credit to Russia. As shown in Minards famous graph, translation below. The graph is excellent and shows how the army strength diminished the further it went along with other significant features of the conflict.

Farmer Pudsey

If Tsarist Russia had survived the Bolsheviks, the first question is who would rule it at the start of WW 2. Tsar Nicholas was fifty at the time of his death. His son Alexei was a hemophiliac who was unliky to survive to adulthood. The next in line was not the Tsar daughters but his younger brother Grand Duke Micheal.

Nicholas had abdicated in his favour but he refused to take the throne with out the approval of the duma/provisional Grovernment If Grand Duke Micheal became the Tsar in the 1920's or 30's more than likly he would have started to reform Russia. It is unliky the tsarists would have survived until 1940 without reforming. Grand Duke Micheal was intresting in that it seems he was a polar opposite to Nicholas, he was popular with the ordinary soldiers and was a fairily capable officer, his wife Natalia Brasova was a Liberal as it seems was he. He had a distrust of the upper echlons of Russian society if he came to power he may have changed and modernised Russia before WW2

The other issue is that if the Nazi's had come to power with a tsarist Russia insitu would Tsarist Russia have been supportive of same like some of the upper echelon of British and French Society.