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From: The Horny Goat <lcra...@home.ca>
Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if
Subject: Re: Italo-Greek War what-ifs
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On Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:47:03 +1100, Phil McGregor
<asp...@pacific.net.au> wrote:

>>>Trivia note:  Bulgaria was the only Axis nation to come out of the war with a 
>>>net gain in territory (Southern Dobrudja).
>>
>>True - but given the price was 45 years of Communism I doubt they'd
>>say they were better off for it!
>
>Do you *really* *seriously* think that they would have been able to
>*avoid* a communist dominated government, if not a Soviuet
>"liberation" *even if* they had remained a neutral?

Obviously not if Stalin thought he NEEDED Bulgaria or if Bulgaria was
perceived to be any kind of threat to the Soviet Union.

Otherwise sure why not? Finland managed it quite well and they were
_far_ more of a threat to the USSR than the Bulgarians ever were even
in OTL. Obviously if Bulgaria stays neutral they're likely to be
considered far less of a threat.

Similarly Tito's Yugoslavia escaped Soviet invasion in 1949-50 despite
essentially telling Stalin in p*** up a rope. 

The flip side of this is that there was plenty of Soviet repression in
what became Warsaw Pact countries that did not involve Soviet troops.
East Germany Poland and Romania all had clampdowns in the postwar era.
So no question a non-communist Bulgaria COULD have been forced into
the Soviet bloc but it was by no means inevitable as the Finnish
example shows. Bulgaria was by no means as important to Stalin as was
Greece or Estonia.