FROM RUSSIAN SOCIAL MEDIA:
(Not my words)

No Great Patriotic War. What would have happened if Germany had honored the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is one of those historical agreements discussed primarily because they were violated. On August 23, 1939, the USSR and Germany signed a non-aggression pact; less than two years later, on June 22, 1941, German troops crossed the Soviet border. Operation Barbarossa began, turning the Eastern Front into the main land theater of World War II and ultimately becoming a primary cause of the Third Reich's downfall.

Yet the treaty itself stipulated a ten-year term. What would have happened had Berlin actually decided to honor it—at least until 1949? This is the very scenario depicted in an alternate-history map by user Ordinary-User1996, published in the AlternateHistory community. The author proposes a fascinating point of divergence: instead of the Great Patriotic War, an almost decade-long German-Soviet "Cold War" emerges, during which the two totalitarian superpowers divide Europe and build up their arsenals, fully aware that a confrontation is ...