Soviet Union starts WWII

[Alkaloid]

The events of a war do not make the war an expansionist one. Otherwise the USA would have conducted an expansionist war in WWII given how it occupied most of Europe and Asia.

They don't. But the public perception of 'last time we invaded Belgium and four years later France and Britain occupied all of Germany, uncle Hans was the only one of his siblings to come home from the war and he did it in chains' would stick. It's a thing that might stop the fascists riding a populist wave of "Jews and gays tricked us into surrendering, we didn't really lose" to power, and make public support for war a difficult thing to obtain.

The german military had no strategic war aims when the war started, in fact you can easily find a lot of Historians arguing that they never even finalised the war goals during the war. It is one of the reasons why WWI was such a failure of strategy.

German failure to plan has what impact on the existence of the Septemberprogramm or the deportation and forced labour of civilians in occupied territories?

[Thanas]

They don't. But the public perception of 'last time we invaded Belgium and four years later France and Britain occupied all of Germany, uncle Hans was the only one of his siblings to come home from the war and he did it in chains' would stick. It's a thing that might stop the fascists riding a populist wave of "Jews and gays tricked us into surrendering, we didn't really lose" to power, and make public support for war a difficult thing to obtain.

That is not a given considering mentalities back then and is in fact rather disproven by the war of 1871 and the behaviour of the polish nation after 1918.

German failure to plan has what impact on the existence of the Septemberprogramm or the deportation and forced labour of civilians in occupied territories?

a) Forced labour/deportation is once again not something you can single out Germany for.
b) You do know that the Septemberprogramm never became official policy and was most likely nothing but an attempt to start a debate? Do we have to rehash the discredited Fischer theory?

[Alkaloid]

That is not a given considering mentalities back then and is in fact rather disproven by the war of 1871 and the behaviour of the polish nation after 1918.

I'm not saying it's a given, I'm trying to present a situation that could link OPs scenario to a roughly similar end to the first world war as per our timeline.

a) Forced labour/deportation is once again not something you can single out Germany for.

I'm not singling them out, I'm pointing out that they were treating civilians in occupied countries like colonial subjects, and weren't going to stop.

You do know that the Septemberprogramm never became official policy and was most likely nothing but an attempt to start a debate? Do we have to rehash the discredited Fischer theory?

I do know that it was never official policy. But I'm really not sure how you reconcile 'not expansionist' and 'this is a list of all of the countries we should make vassal states' as the starting point for your debate. Especially given it was written in September of 1914. We don't have to rehash the Fisher theory, but I think anyone who thinks Germany was just going to benevolently withdraw from France or Belgium once they were no longer capable of fighting is deluded at best.

[Thanas]

That is not a given considering mentalities back then and is in fact rather disproven by the war of 1871 and the behaviour of the polish nation after 1918.

I'm not saying it's a given, I'm trying to present a situation that could link OPs scenario to a roughly similar end to the first world war as per our timeline.

But the end would nowhere be similar.

I'm not singling them out, I'm pointing out that they were treating civilians in occupied countries like colonial subjects, and weren't going to stop.

Pretty sure they would stop as soon as the war would be over or their presence was no longer necessary.

I do know that it was never official policy. But I'm really not sure how you reconcile 'not expansionist' and 'this is a list of all of the countries we should make vassal states' as the starting point for your debate. Especially given it was written in September of 1914. We don't have to rehash the Fisher theory, but I think anyone who thinks Germany was just going to benevolently withdraw from France or Belgium once they were no longer capable of fighting is deluded at best.

Oh they would have grabbed the german-inhabited and german-speaking part of Belgium for sure. But I really doubt they would have grabbed other territory as the German Empire always had a minority problem and only somewhat solved the polish minority problem by offering most of them jobs where they had to migrate and integrate. But consider that they would already have to integrate parts of former Austria-Hungary, especially the Sudetenland, Austria proper, parts of nowadays Romania. Tyrol and Styria etc. (doess that necessitate keeping Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia? Probably does).

Point is even if Germany had gone full Heart-of-Iron mode and would have wanted to annex all the provinces in the world - it would not have had the means to do so. I think at best they would have been able to integrate territories that were either already german-speaking or friendly to Germany. Not a lot of those around in France.

That being said, the war was always sold to the german parliament as a defensive war undertaken to help an ally in need. Grabbing huge parts of France does not compute with that. The fact that the annexation goals ranged far and wide and were never clearly defined shows to me that Germany had no grand strategy to annex parts of its neighbours besides those it had a cultural or historic claim to. This is of course different than the French war aims.