Doing research for Twilight 2000

[Crajon39]

While I was doing research for bring TW2000 into 2016 , I found a very interesting item . Has anyone heard of KALININGRAD OBLAST . Well Kaliningrad Oblast is an Russian state that sits on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania .It is home to the Russian Baltic fleet , because of the warm water port there. The nearest Russian territory is a few hundred miles away .
Durning my research I have learned that Kaliningrad has requested from the Russian government to become an independent country but the Russian government has rejected this several times. The youths of Kaliningrad see themselves more as Europeans than Russians, this has led to several protest for independence.
Now for the fictional part , let us say if their was an Kaliningrad sovereignty party that was being brutality attack by the Russian government and this party formed an armed resistance group . This group was being chased by units of the Baltic Sea Naval Infantry and crossed over to either Poland or Lithuania, the Naval Infantry units followed them into Poland or Lithuania and attacked . Durning the fighting several Polish or Lithuania border guards were killed along with some civilians. I believe that this maybe a flash point for TW 2000 in 2016 .

[RN7]

Could lead to trouble with the Germans as it was part of East Prussia until the Second World War, and Poland and Lithuania also have some historical claim to it.

[Crajon39]

Very true .

[Matt Wiser]

There aren't any Germans left: they all got "removed" after WW II. The unlucky ones got expelled to West Germany. The really unlucky ones got sent East first to make little rock out of big rock in a Gulag before going to the West. The NKVD took care of the lucky ones.....need anything more be said about that?

[RN7]

Originally Posted by Matt Wiser

There aren't any Germans left: they all got "removed" after WW II. The unlucky ones got expelled to West Germany. The really unlucky ones got sent East first to make little rock out of big rock in a Gulag before going to the West. The NKVD took care of the lucky ones.....need anything more be said about that?

I know Matt Germany evacuated well over 2 million German civilians from East Prussia in 1945 including what is now Kaliningrad during Operation Hannibal, although many civilians were still trapped in Konigsberg when it fell to the Red Army in April 1945. I think there were less than 200,000 Germans left in the whole of East Prussia by May 1945. Its hard to know the precise figure for casualties as this region was Included in the Oder-Neisse border shifting that occurred after the Potsdam Agreement. Remaining civilians were expelled and soldiers sent to POW camps. But as late as 1950 Poland recorded that there was still 164,000 Germans living in Polish territory that was East Prussia before the war. However more Germans remained, they just hid their identities by Slavicising their names. I actually know a Russian of German origin from Kaliningrad who's family did that until the 1990's. He on the other hand never hid his German roots and was also a very large Soviet Marine with Spetsnaz training, so if he got a hard time in the Soviet military for being German it wasn't to his face.

The whole issue of the lost eastern German territories is still controversial and a touchy subject to many in Germany and Eastern Europe. The legitimacy of the border shifting after Potsdam is also controversial, as West Germany never recognised its legitimacy and refused to have any diplomatic relations with any country who did (including East Germany) until the 1970's after Ostpolitik. Many Germans and their children were born and have roots in East Prussia, and the lost eastern territories is one of the issues that the German far-right bang on about. Germany probably would have a legitimate case in any international tribunal to seek monetary compensation against Russia, Poland and others for losses incurred by the terms of Potsdam, although no German government would ever be likely to do that. However German legitimacy to ownership of Kaliningrad (Konigsberg) would be at least as solid as Russian claims to the Crimea.

[Blink_Dog]

Originally Posted by Crajon39

While I was doing research for bring TW2000 into 2016 , I found a very interesting item . Has anyone heard of KALININGRAD OBLAST . Well Kaliningrad Oblast is an Russian state that sits on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania .It is home to the Russian Baltic fleet , because of the warm water port there. The nearest Russian territory is a few hundred miles away .
Durning my research I have learned that Kaliningrad has requested from the Russian government to become an independent country but the Russian government has rejected this several times. The youths of Kaliningrad see themselves more as Europeans than Russians, this has led to several protest for independence.
Now for the fictional part , let us say if their was an Kaliningrad sovereignty party that was being brutality attack by the Russian government and this party formed an armed resistance group . This group was being chased by units of the Baltic Sea Naval Infantry and crossed over to either Poland or Lithuania, the Naval Infantry units followed them into Poland or Lithuania and attacked . Durning the fighting several Polish or Lithuania border guards were killed along with some civilians. I believe that this maybe a flash point for TW 2000 in 2016 .

Maybe mixed with that newly discovered oil deposits off the Kaliningrad and Polish shores to add some economic incentive to that scenario. Politically you could maybe have the Poles, Baltic countries vote in nationalist parties so the general population is more fired up against the Russians, it would give some NATO members like France, Spain and Italy little incentive to join in if NATO votes to take action (then the old modules would still work with the setting).

[mpipes]

I never liked the outcome GDW came up with for the aftermath of the war.

Long term, I've always seen Germany in the aftermath of the Twilight War as gaining control over Austria, Northern Poland and the western quarter of the Czech Republic. and even parts of France Poland ends up with Kaliningard and all its pre-WWII territory (less the Danzig Corridor) and Belarus and Ukraine get hundreds of square miles of Russia. Russia loses all of its territory north of St. Petersburg to Finland as well as the entire Kola Peninsula to Finland and Norway. Russia 25 years after the war consist of little more than a handful of essentially semi-autonomous city states with Siberia aligned with the US and Japan and all the Republics independent.

[Legbreaker]

And the USSR in China?
Poland is a wasteland. Why would they have gained anything? I'd have thought they'd be carved up instead.

[mpipes]

The Polish Free Congress inherits the country and Germany was a staunch supporter/ally for them along with the Baltic States, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Everyone "in the neighborhood" allied against the Russians and stood together in the end.

[Legbreaker]

So what about the other, "legitimate" Polish government. How about the Czechs, Hungarians, and other Pact members?
The Twilight War was a stalemate, not a western victory.