A different Cold War

[eurofed]

This TL combines and develops three AH ideas I’m fond of: a WWII with an Allied victory that does not divide or mutilate 1938 Germany (apart from East Prussia); a Cold War that turns out more beneficial to the West and more damaging to most of its enemies/rivals; a widespread perception in the Western world that Stalinism was just as bad as Nazism. Unfortunately, the latter two story themes do require Communism to become even more murderous and destructive than OTL. Certain parts of the TL include ideas borrowed from “Twilight of the Red Tsar”, by Napoleon IV, running on ah.com (used w/o permission due to my inability to contact the author).

ITTL Roosevelt died by an early stroke in 1939, and after James Garner completed his term, one among James Farley, Cordell Hull, or Thomas Dewey was elected President in 1940. Although the new President followed an internationalist foreign policy broadly similar to FDR, he was much more suspicious of Stalin and more willing to grant a lenient peace deal to the Axis powers, although he still aimed for their surrender and military occupation. The botched attempt of Britain and France to intervene in the Winter War and deny Germany access to Swedish iron supplies caused the German occupation of Sweden, the Anglo-French bombing of Baku, and a state of war between the USSR and the Entente powers.

Hitler reluctantly accepted Stalin as an ally - even if he planned to attack the Soviets once the British were defeated - and the Axis alliance was expanded to the USSR. The Soviets attacked and overrun Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan, while Germany did the same to Western Europe and forced France to surrender. Because of the Soviet co-belligerence, Germany and Italy agreed to cooperate and pursue a Mediterranean strategy, while Spain and Vichy France joined the Axis. Charles de Gaulle died during the Fall of France, so no equivalent of Free France ever arose and France was deemed an enemy power by the Allies.

The Axis forces occupied Portugal, Gibraltar, and Malta, overrun North Africa, drove the British out of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, and made inroads into western India and East Africa. The British Empire was in dire straits, despite the generous Lend-Lease support of the USA, when Hitler and the Japanese changed the picture. Hitler deemed the war against the British was all but won, so he decided to attack the USSR. This turned WWII into a three-way conflict, and the strategic equation further turned against the Axis when Japan brought America in the war with a pre-emptive attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor.

They decided to seize the European colonies in Southeast Asia to secure a steady supply of resources against the American embargo of Axis countries that was strangling their economy. Trade with the USSR in the co-belligerence period considerably ameliorated the situation, but it turned bad again when Germany attacked the USSR. Unfortunately for the Axis, the Japanese didn’t trust their invasion of Southeast Asia to succeed without eliminating the potential threat of the Philippines and the US Pacific Fleet on their flank. Although the initial Japanese rampage swept everything up to New Guinea and eastern India, US intervention turned the tide of the war thanks to the mobilization of vast American manpower and industrial resources.

American build-up enabled the Allies to push Axis forces out of India, gradually roll back the Japanese in the Pacific, and conquer the Horn of Africa, Arabia, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. US power also turned the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic and the air war in Europe. After these successes, the Americans made a decision to give priority to conquest of Western Europe and defeat of the Euro-Axis rather than liberation of the Balkans and the Near East, despite the contrary wishes of the British. Allied landings in Iberia, Italy, and later France and Scandinavia were successful. The war in the Eastern Front eventually turned bad for the Axis after an initial vast success because of engagement in these other theaters, although the Soviets paid a terrible price for their victories.

Deeming the war lost, the military component of the German Resistance managed to overthrow the Nazi regime. The anti-Nazi faction was able to organize adequately and get sufficient support in the Wehrmacht because they were confident of getting a lenient deal from the Allies if they were successful. After they took over, they made diplomatic feelers for peace negotiations with the Allied governments. Although their requests for anything less than surrender were quickly and decisively shot down, they were able to get Allied assent to a peace deal (nominally unconditional surrender, de facto a conditional one) that guaranteed Germany and its allies lenient terms.

They were to be ensured their national integrity (no forced political division of their countries), their internationally-recognized/ethnic borders (for Germany and Italy this essentially meant 1938 borders), their economic base (no forced deindustrialization or unsustainable reparations), a liberal-democratic political system, eventual return to political independence after clearing out of fascist elements, and a free-market economy.

Due to the role the German military played in ending the war, the Allies also gave the informal guarantee that their prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity would essentially target fascist leaders, people directly involved in atrocities, and high-ranking members of the fascist parties, paramilitary militias, and secret police. Military and civilian personnel otherwise involved with fascist regimes because of their jobs would be spared and there would be no mass punishments nor prosecutions for waging an aggressive war.

Germany, its allies, and the Anglo-Americans agreed to these terms. The Axis forces started a general pullout from the fronts (France, Iberia, Italy, and Scandinavia) where they were engaged with the Allies. They let the Allied forces advance without opposition across Europe, while they concentrated on the Eastern front to make a last stand. Their objective was to stalemate the Red Army as much as possible before the Anglo-American troops would reach Eastern Europe.

As soon as Stalin got notice of this deal, he ordered the Red Army to press on and advance as much as possible against the Axis forces, no matter the cost in men and material. He feared an expanded conflict with the Allies, but he hoped to win the USSR a favorable compromise peace by threatening and if necessary trying to exhaust the Americans with attrition war – even if the USSR was close to exhausting its own resources in the struggle against the Axis. To further this goal and maximize Soviet war gains, he aimed to grab as much land as possible before the Allied reached the Eastern front. WWII in Europe turned in a race to establish facts on the ground favorable to the Allied or the Soviets. The Axis forces bitterly resisted the Soviet offensives in a last stand sustained by the hope to avoid Soviet occupation of their countries.

In the end, the Red Army was eventually able to clear the Wehrmacht out of Soviet territory and conquer Finland, the Finnmark, the Baltic states, East Prussia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. The Soviets were also able to exploit their control of Turkey and the support of Yugoslav and Greek Communist partisans to seize Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece. However the Red Army got stalemated close to the eastern borders of Germany, Italy, and Sweden, long enough for the Allied troops to reach the Eastern front lines, disarm and disband the Axis forces, and deploy before the Soviet troops. A few significant military engagements between the Allies and the Soviets took place that essentially entrenched the pre-war borders of Sweden, Germany, Bohemia-Moravia, Slovenia, Italy, Turkey, and Iran as the frontline. Otherwise military operations in Europe mostly slowed down to a crawl and a de facto ceasefire settled in.

This occurred because the Americans decided to give priority to victory in the Pacific against Japan before dealing with the Soviets in Eastern Europe and the Near East, despite the bitter complaints of the British. Stalin knew America was more powerful and much less exhausted by the war than the USSR, which had scraped the bottom of its manpower barrel by conquering Eastern Europe and was teetering on the brink of economic collapse. A series of Allied offensives in the Pacific pushed the Japanese back all their way to their homeland, and allowed the Americans to conquer Japan and Korea, although they paid a very harsh price due to fanatical Japanese resistance.

The Soviets attacked the Japanese with their last few resources and with some effort defeated them in Manchuria and northern China. However they were unable to prevent the Americans from occupying Japan and Korea. Because of the very high casualties the Americans had suffered in the last phase of the Pacific War, a war exhaustion mood settled in the US public opinion. They balked at the high price that was expected for a decisive victory against the USSR. Pressure grew to bring war to an end, and this drove a reluctant US government to start peace negotiations with the Soviets. The Allies and the Soviets signed a truce with indefinite duration that established the existing frontlines as the demarcation line between the Western world and the Soviet bloc – soon to be dubbed the “Iron Curtain”. However the Allied powers refused to sign a formal peace treaty with the Soviets unless they agreed to withdraw from all the territories they had occupied since 1939.

Nuclear weapons only became available to the Americans after the truce was formalized, so they could not be used as a tool to extract greater concessions from the Soviets. The Allied powers balked at breaking their just-signed word with an unprovoked attack once they got their first nukes. Moreover, they did not realize the USSR was much weaker than they thought. The Soviets were on their last legs after their effort to defeat the Axis powers, and they would have quickly folded if faced with an American conventional offensive. Due to the subsequent actions of Stalin, the Western world was to bitterly regret and widely criticize this decision during and after the Cold War. It became infamous as the ‘Western Betrayal’ of the peoples forsaken to Stalinist tyranny and genocide.

[lordroel]

Aug 3, 2016 15:06:07 GMT eurofed said:

This TL combines and develops three AH ideas I’m fond of: a WWII with an Allied victory that does not divide or mutilate 1938 Germany (apart from East Prussia); a Cold War that turns out more beneficial to the West and more damaging to most of its enemies/rivals; a widespread perception in the Western world that Stalinism was just as bad as Nazism. Unfortunately, the latter two story themes do require Communism to become even more murderous and destructive than OTL. Certain parts of the TL include ideas borrowed from “Twilight of the Red Tsar”, by Napoleon IV, running on ah.com (used w/o permission due to my inability to contact the author).

ITTL Roosevelt died by an early stroke in 1939, and after James Garner completed his term, one among James Farley, Cordell Hull, or Thomas Dewey was elected President in 1940. Although the new President followed an internationalist foreign policy broadly similar to FDR, he was much more suspicious of Stalin and more willing to grant a lenient peace deal to the Axis powers, although he still aimed for their surrender and military occupation. The botched attempt of Britain and France to intervene in the Winter War and deny Germany access to Swedish iron supplies caused the German occupation of Sweden, the Anglo-French bombing of Baku, and a state of war between the USSR and the Entente powers.

Hitler reluctantly accepted Stalin as an ally - even if he planned to attack the Soviets once the British were defeated - and the Axis alliance was expanded to the USSR. The Soviets attacked and overrun Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan, while Germany did the same to Western Europe and forced France to surrender. Because of the Soviet co-belligerence, Germany and Italy agreed to cooperate and pursue a Mediterranean strategy, while Spain and Vichy France joined the Axis. Charles de Gaulle died during the Fall of France, so no equivalent of Free France ever arose and France was deemed an enemy power by the Allies.

The Axis forces occupied Portugal, Gibraltar, and Malta, overrun North Africa, drove the British out of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, and made inroads into western India and East Africa. The British Empire was in dire straits, despite the generous Lend-Lease support of the USA, when Hitler and the Japanese changed the picture. Hitler deemed the war against the British was all but won, so he decided to attack the USSR. This turned WWII into a three-way conflict, and the strategic equation further turned against the Axis when Japan brought America in the war with a pre-emptive attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor.

They decided to seize European colonies in Southeast Asia to secure steady supply of resources against the American embargo of Axis countries that was strangling their economy. Trade with the USSR in the co-belligerence period considerably ameliorated the situation, but it turned bad again when Germany attacked the USSR. Unfortunately for the Axis, the Japanese didn’t trust their invasion of Southeast Asia to succeed without eliminating the potential threat of the Philippines and the US Pacific Fleet on their flank. Although the initial Japanese rampage swept everything up to New Guinea and eastern India, US intervention turned the tide of the war thanks to the mobilization of vast American manpower and industrial resources.

American build-up enabled the Allies to push Axis forces out of India, gradually roll back the Japanese in the Pacific, and conquer the Horn of Africa, Arabia, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. US power also turned the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic and the air war in Europe. After these successes, the Americans made a decision to give priority to conquest of Western Europe and defeat of the Euro-Axis rather than liberation of the Balkans and the Near East, despite the contrary wishes of the British. Allied landings in Iberia, Italy, and later France and Scandinavia were successful. The war in the Eastern Front eventually turned bad for the Axis after an initial vast success because of engagement in these other theaters, although the Soviets paid a terrible price for their victories.

Deeming the war lost, the military group of the German Resistance managed to overthrow the Nazi regime. The anti-Nazi faction was able to organize adequately and get sufficient support in the Wehrmacht because they were confident of getting a lenient deal from the Allies if they were successful. After they took over, they made diplomatic feelers for peace negotiations with the Allied governments. Although their requests for anything less than surrender were quickly and decisively shot down, they were able to get Western Allied assent to a peace deal (nominally unconditional surrender, de facto a conditional one) that guaranteed Germany and its allies lenient terms.

They were to be ensured their national integrity (no forced political division of their countries), their internationally-recognized/ethnic borders (for Germany and Italy this essentially meant 1938 borders), their economic base (no forced deindustrialization or unsustainable reparations), a liberal-democratic political system, eventual return to political independence after clearing out of fascist elements, and a free-market economy.

Due to the role the German military played in ending the war, the Allies also gave the informal guarantee that their prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity would essentially target fascist leaders, people directly involved in atrocities, and high-ranking members of the fascist parties, paramilitary militias, and secret police. Military and civilian personnel otherwise involved with fascist regimes because of their jobs would be spared and there would be no mass punishments nor prosecutions for waging an aggressive war.

Germany, its allies, and the Anglo-Americans agreed to these terms. The Axis forces started a general pullout from the fronts (France, Iberia, Italy, and Scandinavia) where they were engaged with the Allies. They let the Allied forces advance without opposition across Europe, while they concentrated on the Eastern front to make a last stand. Their objective was to stalemate the Red Army as much as possible before the Anglo-American troops would reach Eastern Europe.

As soon as Stalin got notice of this deal, he ordered the Red Army to press on and advance as much as possible against the Axis forces, no matter the cost in men and material. He feared an expanded conflict with the Allies, but he hoped to win the USSR a favorable compromise peace by threatening and if necessary trying to exhaust the Americans with attrition war – even if the USSR was close to exhausting its own resources in the struggle against the Axis. To further this goal and maximize Soviet war gains, he aimed to grab as much land as possible before the Allied reached the Eastern front. WWII in Europe turned in a race to establish facts on the ground favorable to the Allied or the Soviets. The Axis forces bitterly resisted the Soviet offensives in a last stand sustained by the hope to avoid Soviet occupation of their countries.

In the end, the Red Army was eventually able to clear the Wehrmacht out of Soviet territory and conquer Finland, the Finnmark, the Baltic states, East Prussia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. The Soviets were also able to exploit their control of Turkey and the support of Yugoslav and Greek Communist partisans to seize Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece. However the Red Army got stalemated close to the eastern borders of Germany, Italy, and Sweden, long enough for the Allied troops to reach the Eastern front lines, disarm and disband the Axis forces, and deploy before the Soviet troops. A few significant military engagements between the Allies and the Soviets took place that essentially entrenched the pre-war borders of Sweden, Germany, Bohemia-Moravia, Slovenia, Italy, Turkey, and Iran as the frontline. Otherwise military operations in Europe mostly slowed down to a crawl and a de facto ceasefire settled in.

This occurred because the Americans decided to give priority to victory in the Pacific against Japan before dealing with the Soviets in Eastern Europe and the Near East, despite the bitter complaints of the British. Stalin knew America was more powerful and much less exhausted by the war than the USSR, which had scraped the bottom of its manpower barrel by conquering Eastern Europe and was teetering on the brink of economic collapse. A series of Allied offensives in the Pacific pushed the Japanese back all their way to their homeland, and allowed the Americans to conquer Japan and Korea, although they paid a very harsh price due to fanatical Japanese resistance.

The Soviets attacked the Japanese with their last few resources and with some effort defeated them in Manchuria and northern China. However they were unable to prevent the Americans from occupying Japan and Korea. Because of the very high casualties the Americans had suffered in the last phase of the Pacific War, a war exhaustion mood settled in the US public opinion. They balked at the high price that was expected for a decisive victory against the USSR. Pressure grew to bring war to an end, and this drove a reluctant US government to start peace negotiations with the Soviets. The Allies and the Soviets signed a truce with indefinite duration that established the existing frontlines as the demarcation line between the Western world and the Soviet bloc – soon to be dubbed the “Iron Curtain”. However the Allied powers refused to sign a formal peace treaty with the Soviets unless they agreed to withdraw from all the territories they had occupied since 1939.

Nuclear weapons only became available to the Americans after the truce was formalized, so they could not be used as a tool to extract greater concessions from the Soviets. The Allied powers balked at breaking their just-signed word with an unprovoked attack once they got their first nukes. Moreover, they did not realize the USSR was much weaker than they thought. The Soviets were on their last legs after their effort to defeat the Axis powers, and they would have quickly folded if faced with an American conventional offensive. Due to the subsequent actions of Stalin, the Western world was to bitterly regret and widely criticize this decision during and after the Cold War. It became infamous as the ‘Western Betrayal’ of the peoples forsaken to Stalinist tyranny and genocide.

A nice timeline, question is all of Germany in the hands of the Allies.

[eurofed]

Aug 3, 2016 15:10:41 GMT @admin said:

A nice timeline, question is all of Germany in the hands of the Allies.

Yep, with the strategically inevitable exception of Danzig and East Prussia, that are lost to the Soviets, ethnically cleansed of Germans, and merged with Communist Poland. TTL Iron Curtain otherwise follows the pre-war eastern borders of Sweden, Greater Germany, Bohemia-Moravia, Slovenia, and Italy. Thanks to the surrender terms the post-Nazi Euro-Axis powers bargain with the Allies, they keep their pre-war borders. For Germany and Italy, this basically means 1938 borders. The Soviets control Finland, Poland, Slovakia, Yugoslavia (going to be a Soviet satellite ITTL), Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, and Iran. Basically speaking, the Iron Curtain gets shifted eastward in Central Europe and westward/southward in the Balkans and the Near East. Admittedly, WWII circumstances are such ITTL the Allies could have easily gotten even further, with an Iron Curtain on the Vistula-Danube and a divided Poland and Hungary, or even the 1941 Soviet border, but in the end I decided this demarcation line was feasible given the circumstances and probably optimal for certain story purposes concerning the German-Polish border, the Cold War balance of power, and the European integration process, so I let the Soviets be a little lucky.

Notably, ITTL the Allies are just the British, Americans, and the Dominions, since the USSR and France are enemy powers, albeit the Soviets get away with a very favorable peace deal thanks to American post-Downfall exhaustion, exaggerated Western assumptions about Soviet power, and nukes not yet being an option when the war ends. ITTL Western Europe includes an essentially intact Germany, Iberia is returned to democracy after the war, France gets the status of defeated enemy power, the conflict turned out a little less destructive to the continent, and the USSR is perceived as an even worse existential threat for the Western world, both because of its enemy status during WWII and due ot its postwar actions (i.e. Stalin living longer and killing a lot more people). All of this shall allow Europe, and by extension the Western world at large, to become substantially stronger and more united (although there are a few other pro-Western butterflies). You may also notice all of Korea joins the Western bloc, so the Koreans are spared the tender mercies of the Kim dynasty. But China... poor China.

[lordroel]

Aug 3, 2016 16:03:31 GMT eurofed said:

Aug 3, 2016 15:10:41 GMT @admin said:

A nice timeline, question is all of Germany in the hands of the Allies.

Yep, with the strategically inevitable exception of Danzig and East Prussia, that are lost to the Soviets, ethnically cleansed of Germans, and merged with Communist Poland. TTL Iron Curtain otherwise follows the pre-war eastern borders of Sweden, Greater Germany, Bohemia-Moravia, Slovenia, and Italy. Thanks to the surrender terms the post-Nazi Euro-Axis powers bargain with the Allies, they keep their pre-war borders. For Germany and Italy, this basically means 1938 borders. The Soviets control Finland, Poland, Slovakia, Yugoslavia (going to be a Soviet satellite ITTL), Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, and Iran. Basically speaking, the Iron Curtain gets shifted eastward in Central Europe and westward/southward in the Balkans and the Near East. Admittedly, WWII circumstances are such ITTL the Allies could have easily gotten even further, with an Iron Curtain on the Vistula-Danube and a divided Poland and Hungary, or even the 1941 Soviet border, but in the end I decided this demarcation line was feasible given the circumstances and probably optimal for certain story purposes concerning the German-Polish border, the Cold War balance of power, and the European integration process, so I let the Soviets be a little lucky.

Notably, ITTL the Allies are just the British, Americans, and the Dominions, since the USSR and France are enemy powers, albeit the Soviets get away with a very favorable peace deal thanks to American post-Downfall exhaustion, exaggerated Western assumptions about Soviet power, and nukes not yet being an option when the war ends. ITTL Western Europe includes an essentially intact Germany, Iberia is returned to democracy after the war, France gets the status of defeated enemy power, the conflict turned out a little less destructive to the continent, and the USSR is perceived as an even worse existential threat for the Western world, both because of its enemy status during WWII and due ot its postwar actions (i.e. Stalin living longer and killing a lot more people). All of this shall allow Europe, and by extension the Western world at large, to become substantially stronger and more united (although there are a few other pro-Western butterflies). You may also notice all of Korea joins the Western bloc, so the Koreans are spared the tender mercies of the Kim dynasty. But China... poor China.

Is Sweden going to be pro-allies or remain neutral as in OTL.

[eurofed]

Aug 3, 2016 16:21:36 GMT lordroel said:

Is Sweden going to be pro-allies or remain neutral as in OTL.

ITTL Sweden is part of the NATO equivalent (the role of Scandinavia in the European integration process is... special) for three reasons: they are occupied by Nazi Germany because of the botched Entente attempt to intervene in the Winter War and seize control of Swedish iron; Sweden shares a border with Communist Finland; and the USSR is perceived as more dangerous and destructive than OTL (to the degree that people usually think Hitler was just as bad as Stalin, or even the slightly lesser evil that got dealt with first because of circumstances). Hmm, given the interest for postwar Europe, I might as well accelerate my posting schedule and give you the next updates that describe Cold War Europe in some detail.

[lordroel]

Aug 3, 2016 16:40:11 GMT eurofed said:

Aug 3, 2016 16:21:36 GMT lordroel said:

Is Sweden going to be pro-allies or remain neutral as in OTL.

ITTL Sweden is part of the NATO equivalent (the role of Scandinavia in the European integration process is... special) for three reasons: they are occupied by Nazi Germany because of the botched Entente attempt to intervene in the Winter War and seize control of Swedish iron; Sweden shares a border with Communist Finland; and the USSR is perceived as more dangerous and destructive than OTL (to the degree that people usually think Hitler was just as bad as Stalin, or even the slightly lesser evil that got dealt with first because of circumstances). Hmm, given the interest for postwar Europe, I might as well accelerate my posting schedule and give you the next updates that describe Cold War Europe in some detail.

Will the Soviet integrate Soviet occupied Finnmark with the rest of the Soviet Union because i do not see them handing it back to Norway, will Bohemia-Moravia be allowed to become part of Slovenia.

[eurofed]

The Cold War quickly unfolded in Europe. The Axis states and the countries they had conquered were subject to Allied military occupation for a while. They underwent a process of reconstruction, democratization, rehabilitation, and re-education aided by generous US economic support. It turned them into functional liberal democracies and unleashed a robust economic recovery soon exploding into an industrial boom. The process also was the basis for the start of the European integration process. The Western bloc in Europe came to include Britain, Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal, France, the Low Countries, Germany, Bohemia-Moravia, Italy, and Slovenia. Germany and Italy kept their pre-war borders, although East Prussia was lost to the Soviets and its German population was expelled. Ireland and Switzerland maintained their tradition of neutrality; Sweden dropped it due to the experience of Axis occupation and the Soviet threat on its eastern border.

The Soviet bloc grew to include Finland, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. Stalin mostly reasserted the 1941 borders of the USSR in Europe and turned conquered countries into Communist client states utterly subservient to his will. Nevertheless the Communist leaders of Yugoslavia and Greece showed willingness to resist the authority of Moscow. The Soviets mostly re-established pre-war borders in Eastern Europe, although they allowed Finland to get Finnmark and Poland to annex East Prussia. In the Near East, the USSR annexed eastern Anatolia and northwestern Iran as a set of Armenian, Kurd, and Azeri SSRs that were ethnically cleansed of their Turkish and Persian population. Greece was allowed to annex Cyprus whose Turkish population was deported to Anatolia.

The experiences of WWII and a mild stroke he suffered soon after the end of the war changed Stalin’s personality: he became more reckless and mentally instable, and even more paranoid and brutal. However he was also driven to take better care of his health, which extended his life up to the early 1960s. He became even more fanatically persuaded the only way to ensure the survival of the USSR and his own absolute power was to forge the Communist bloc into a monolithic engine and ruthlessly destroy any imagined threat to his authority. Within a few years after the war, he started a new large-scale purge, a replica of the Great Terror that claimed the lives of millions of Soviet and Eastern European citizens and a sizable portion of the Communist ruling elites.

He took special care to target those minorities that he had come to suspect of disloyalty, such as the Jews, Northern Caucasians, and Tartars. As a result, the vast majority of the Soviet Jews, Northern Caucasians, and Tartars were annihilated, and their territories became subject to extensive Russification. Even the Central Asian peoples suffered sizable losses, although Stalin later switched to a more lenient policy towards them because of the Sino-Soviet conflict. He showed leniency to Georgians, Armenians, Kurds, and Azeris either because of his own ethnicity or since he perceived them as a useful demographic tool to ensure Sovietization of the Near East. The Second Great Terror was expanded to Eastern Europe and the Near East, leading to an even greater loss of life. All anti-Soviet resistance in the Baltic lands, Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan was brutally crushed with extensive use of scorched-earth tactics, massacres, and chemical weapons.

After the fall of the USSR, evidence emerged to suggest Stalin probably planned to expand the Soviet genocide to the Baltic peoples, but luckily for them he got distracted by events in the Balkans, China, and the Middle East till the end of his life. He perceived the attempts of Yugoslav and Greek Communists to keep their autonomy as an intolerable challenge to his authority, treason, and ideological heresy. Therefore after diplomatic and ideological pressure failed to make them submit, he sent the Red Army to occupy Yugoslavia and Greece. All Yugoslav and Greek attempts to resist the Soviets with guerrilla warfare were brutally crushed with the same ruthless means used to quell anti-Soviet resistance in the rest of the Soviet bloc. After an extensive repression and purge, the two countries were turned into cowed Stalinist clients of the USSR. To punish the rebels, Stalin allowed loyal Bulgaria to annex Vardar Macedonia and West Thrace.

Soon after the end of WWII, the Chinese Civil War ignited again and China became the battleground of a proxy war between the Western and Communist blocs. The Soviets re-equipped and refitted the Chinese Communist forces with plenty of their own and captured Japanese equipment. The CCP soon got the upper hand, despite the best efforts of the KMT forces. The Americans were reluctant to commit their own forces in a major land war in China so soon after the end of WWII – a decision bitterly regretted later – so they failed to intervene and turn the tide in time. In the end they were only able to use their air-naval power to help the KMT entrench in Taiwan and Hainan. The CCP established the PRC in mainland China.

It seemed for a while the USSR and the PRC were destined to become major partners in the Communist bloc, but this was not to be. The Maoist leadership of the CCP and Stalin mutually distrusted each other since before the war, the PRC had ambitions of autonomy and equality that the USSR was intolerant of, conflicting territorial claims and economic issues acted as a serious irritant, and Soviet interventions in the Balkans greatly increased mutual distrust. In a few years, distrust grew into alienation and bickering, then an overt Sino-Soviet split, military border incidents, and eventually a war between the USSR and the PRC. Stalin decided to crush the Maoist upstarts just as he had done with Tito and his followers in the Balkans.

The Red Army invaded northern and western China. Although it got very successful in its initial offensive thanks to its vast weapons and organization superiority, the Soviets soon faced the same strategic quagmire the Japanese had experienced during WWII. The Chinese made extensive recourse to guerrilla tactics and put up a stubborn resistance, making advantage of their demographic superiority. The Soviets soon resorted to extreme brutality to quell Chinese resistance, quickly making themselves as hated as the Japanese. However they lacked the manpower resources to occupy all of China, even more so after the serious demographic losses the USSR had suffered because of WWII and the Stalinist genocide. Moreover, Soviet economy was still painfully struggling with postwar reconstruction and the Second Great Terror purges didn’t help. Stalin also feared a vast deployment of the Red Army in East Asia would leave the USSR vulnerable to a Western attack in Europe. However he was unwilling to suffer an humiliation in his Chinese adventure.

Out of frustration, Stalin decided to use WMDs to crush the Chinese, building on the precedent of the Red Army successfully using chemical weapons to eliminate rebels in the Soviet bloc. The Soviets launched a vast nuclear, chemical, and biological attack on Chinese territory using nukes, nerve gas, and smallpox. The attack did bring China to its knees, but it also sealed Stalin’s place in history as the worst mass-murderer ever. About one-tenth to one-fifth of the Chinese population, depending on estimates, died or became displaced because of the war, the Soviet NBC attack, and famine. The latter was admittedly much worsened by Mao launching his crazy “Great Leap Forward” campaign of rapid industrialization and collectivization just before the war. China became a failed state and collapsed into a new warlord era.

The Soviets gradually pulled out of most of China proper, although they kept a presence in Northern China, being content its rebellion had been punished and its threat crushed for the foreseeable future. They annexed Manchuria, Xinjiang (renamed East Turkestan), and Greater Mongolia as various SSRs, expelling the surviving Han population from these regions. Tibet seized independence. China got divided between a pro-Soviet client, a PRC rump, a Taoist extremist group, various emergent warlords and separatist ethnic groups, endemic banditry, and a resurgent KMT. The RoC did project out of Taiwan and Hainan in an attempt to restore order and its rule in the mainland, but its own resources were insufficient to the task. With a lot of effort backed by Western help, the KMT was gradually able to entrench its control in the southeastern provinces, and restore some semblance of order and acceptable living conditions in the region. The rest of China remained a disaster area trapped into famine and civil war. A flood of millions of starving and diseased Chinese refugees swept Southeast Asia.

[lordroel]

Aug 3, 2016 16:45:23 GMT eurofed said:

The Cold War quickly unfolded in Europe. The Axis states and the countries they had conquered were subject to Allied military occupation for a while. They underwent a process of reconstruction, democratization, rehabilitation, and re-education aided by generous US economic support. It turned them into functional liberal democracies and unleashed a robust economic recovery soon exploding into an industrial boom. The process also was the basis for the start of the European integration process. The Western bloc in Europe came to include Britain, Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal, France, the Low Countries, Germany, Bohemia-Moravia, Italy, and Slovenia. Germany and Italy kept their pre-war borders, although East Prussia was lost to the Soviets and its German population was expelled. Ireland and Switzerland maintained their tradition of neutrality; Sweden dropped it due to the experience of Axis occupation and the Soviet threat on its eastern border.

The Soviet bloc grew to include Finland, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. Stalin mostly reasserted the 1941 borders of the USSR in Europe and turned conquered countries into Communist client states utterly subservient to his will. Nevertheless the Communist leaders of Yugoslavia and Greece showed willingness to resist the authority of Moscow. The Soviets mostly re-established pre-war borders in Eastern Europe, although they allowed Finland to get Finnmark and Poland to annex East Prussia. In the Near East, the USSR annexed eastern Anatolia and northwestern Iran as a set of Armenian, Kurd, and Azeri SSRs that were ethnically cleansed of their Turkish and Persian population. Greece was allowed to annex Cyprus whose Turkish population was deported to Anatolia.

The experiences of WWII and a mild stroke he suffered soon after the end of the war changed Stalin’s personality: he became more reckless and mentally instable, and even more paranoid and brutal. However he was also driven to take better care of his health, which extended his life up to the early 1960s. He became even more fanatically persuaded the only way to ensure the survival of the USSR and his own absolute power was to forge the Communist bloc into a monolithic engine and ruthlessly destroy any imagined threat to his authority. Within a few years after the war, he started a new large-scale purge, a replica of the Great Terror that claimed the lives of millions of Soviet and Eastern European citizens and a sizable portion of the Communist ruling elites.

He took special care to target those minorities that he had come to suspect of disloyalty, such as the Jews, Northern Caucasians, and Tartars. As a result, the vast majority of the Soviet Jews, Northern Caucasians, and Tartars were annihilated, and their territories became subject to extensive Russification. Even the Central Asian peoples suffered sizable losses, although Stalin later switched to a more lenient policy towards them because of the Sino-Soviet conflict. He showed leniency to Georgians, Armenians, Kurds, and Azeris either because of his own ethnicity or since he perceived them as a useful demographic tool to ensure Sovietization of the Near East. The Second Great Terror was expanded to Eastern Europe and the Near East, leading to an even greater loss of life. All anti-Soviet resistance in the Baltic lands, Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan was brutally crushed with extensive use of scorched-earth tactics, massacres, and chemical weapons.

After the fall of the USSR, evidence emerged to suggest Stalin probably planned to expand the Soviet genocide to the Baltic peoples, but luckily for them he got distracted by events in the Balkans, China, and the Middle East till the end of his life. He perceived the attempts of Yugoslav and Greek Communists to keep their autonomy as an intolerable challenge to his authority, treason, and ideological heresy. Therefore after diplomatic and ideological pressure failed to make them submit, he sent the Red Army to occupy Yugoslavia and Greece. All Yugoslav and Greek attempts to resist the Soviets with guerrilla warfare were brutally crushed with the same ruthless means used to quell anti-Soviet resistance in the rest of the Soviet bloc. After an extensive repression and purge, the two countries were turned into cowed Stalinist clients of the USSR. To punish the rebels, Stalin allowed loyal Bulgaria to annex Vardar Macedonia and West Thrace.

Soon after the end of WWII, the Chinese Civil War ignited again and China became the battleground of a proxy war between the Western and Communist blocs. The Soviets re-equipped and refitted the Chinese Communist forces with plenty of their own and captured Japanese equipment. The CCP soon got the upper hand, despite the best efforts of the KMT forces. The Americans were reluctant to commit their own forces in a major land war in China so soon after the end of WWII – a decision bitterly regretted later – so they failed to intervene and turn the tide in time. In the end they were only able to use their air-naval power to help the KMT entrench in Taiwan and Hainan. The CCP established the PRC in mainland China.

It seemed for a while the USSR and the PRC were destined to become major partners in the Communist bloc, but this was not to be. The Maoist leadership of the CCP and Stalin mutually distrusted each other since before the war, the PRC had ambitions of autonomy and equality that the USSR was intolerant of, conflicting territorial claims and economic issues acted as a serious irritant, and Soviet interventions in the Balkans greatly increased mutual distrust. In a few years, distrust grew into alienation and bickering, then an overt Sino-Soviet split, military border incidents, and eventually a war between the USSR and the PRC. Stalin decided to crush the Maoist upstarts just as he had done with Tito and his followers in the Balkans.

The Red Army invaded northern and western China. Although it got very successful in its initial offensive thanks to its vast weapons and organization superiority, the Soviets soon faced the same strategic quagmire the Japanese had experienced during WWII. The Chinese made extensive recourse to guerrilla tactics and put up a stubborn resistance, making advantage of their demographic superiority. The Soviets soon resorted to extreme brutality to quell Chinese resistance, quickly making themselves as hated as the Japanese. However they lacked the manpower resources to occupy all of China, even more so after the serious demographic losses the USSR had suffered because of WWII and the Stalinist genocide. Moreover, Soviet economy was still painfully struggling with postwar reconstruction and the Second Great Terror purges didn’t help. Stalin also feared a vast deployment of the Red Army in East Asia would leave the USSR vulnerable to a Western attack in Europe. However he was unwilling to suffer an humiliation in his Chinese adventure.

Out of frustration, Stalin decided to use WMDs to crush the Chinese, building on the precedent of the Red Army successfully using chemical weapons to eliminate rebels in the Soviet bloc. The Soviets launched a vast nuclear, chemical, and biological attack on Chinese territory using nukes, nerve gas, and smallpox. The attack did bring China to its knees, but it also sealed Stalin’s place in history as the worst mass-murderer ever. About one-tenth to one-fifth of the Chinese population, depending on estimates, died or became displaced because of the war, the Soviet NBC attack, and famine. The latter was admittedly much worsened by Mao launching his crazy “Great Leap Forward” campaign of rapid industrialization and collectivization just before the war. China became a failed state and collapsed into a new warlord era.

The Soviets gradually pulled out of most of China proper, although they kept a presence in Northern China, being content its rebellion had been punished and its threat crushed for the foreseeable future. They annexed Manchuria, Xinjiang (renamed East Turkestan), and Greater Mongolia as various SSRs, expelling the surviving Han population from these regions. Tibet seized independence. China got divided between a pro-Soviet client, a PRC rump, a Taoist extremist group, various emergent warlords and separatist ethnic groups, endemic banditry, and a resurgent KMT. The RoC did project out of Taiwan and Hainan in an attempt to restore order and its rule in the mainland, but its own resources were insufficient to the task. With a lot of effort backed by Western help, the KMT was gradually able to entrench its control in the southeastern provinces, and restore some semblance of order and acceptable living conditions in the region. The rest of China remained a disaster area trapped into famine and civil war. A flood of millions of starving and diseased Chinese refugees swept Southeast Asia.

So we now what the Soviet Union did, can we excpecht a post about the Allies.

[eurofed]

Aug 3, 2016 16:44:19 GMT lordroel said:

Will the Soviet integrate Soviet occupied Finnmark with the rest of the Soviet Union because i do not see them handing it back to Norway, will Bohemia-Moravia be allowed to become part of Slovenia.

Exactly, the Soviets do not return occupied Finnmark to Norway and merge it with Communist Finland (yet another instance of TTL post-WWII borders being significantly different). As it concerns a Czech-Slovene merger, I do not see it much likely or feasible, given the two states do not share a border (German Austria stands in the way). If their concerns about the sustainability of their independence had been truly overwhelming, they would have probably sought some kind of confederal bond with Germany and/or Italy, but WWII actions of the Germans and Italians make this politically distasteful. However, ITTL European integration starts earlier and more successfully, and goes much further, so the EU fulfills the support needs of the Czechs and Slovenes and protects its own eastern border more than adequately with its Pan-European army and complete economic integration. Basically speaking, the Czech Republic and Slovenia become two other minor member states of united Europe together with Benelux and Portugal, while Germany, France, Italy, and Spain get to be the big guys.

[lordroel]

Aug 3, 2016 16:58:51 GMT eurofed said:

Aug 3, 2016 16:44:19 GMT lordroel said:

Will the Soviet integrate Soviet occupied Finnmark with the rest of the Soviet Union because i do not see them handing it back to Norway, will Bohemia-Moravia be allowed to become part of Slovenia.

Exactly, the Soviets do not return occupied Finnmark to Norway and merge it with Communist Finland (yet another instance of TTL post-WWII borders being significantly different). As it concerns a Czech-Slovene merger, I do not see it much likely or feasible, given the two states do not share a border (German Austria stands in the way). If their concerns about the sustainability of their Independence had been truly overwhelming, they would have probably sought some kind of confederal bond with Germany and/or Italy, but WWII actions of the Germans and Italians make this politically distasteful. However, ITTL European integration starts earlier and more successfully, and goes much further, so the EU fulfills the support needs of the Czechs and Slovenes and protects its own eastern border more than adequately with its Pan-European army and complete economic integration. Basically speaking, the Czech Republic and Slovenia become two other minor member states of united Europe together with Benelux and Portugal, while Germany, France, Italy, and Spain get to be the big guys.

A forgot that both the Czech Republic and Slovenia where under allied control.

So is Iran under Soviet control because this would mean that you can make the Kingdom of Iraq who is surrounded on both side by Soviet puppets as this universe Iran.

[eurofed]

Aug 3, 2016 16:51:01 GMT lordroel said:

So we now what the Soviet Union did, can we excpecht a post about the Allies.

The next post concerning Cold War Europe and basic political setup of the Western world is coming. I even have a nice map of early Cold War Europe, although I'm not sure when to post it since it includes Middle Eastern events, which are covered later and substantially diverge from OTL. Basically speaking, Western Europe is much stronger and more united, there is no UN, its role is partially filled by a global NATO, India remains united (and starts its path to become a nicer equivalent of OTL China, the main superpower rival of the USA and the EU, since Stalinism screws Russia and China hard). United Korea becomes a second Japan, things are not much different for the Japanese although they may take a little more to recover from Downfall (but are spared the nukes) and they are allowed to rearm under *NATO supervision because of the Sino-Soviet War. TTL America gets covered later, but it does not get much different from OTL. The most important difference is there is no Korean or Vietnam War, so things significantly diverge for the USA since the 1960s, and the Americans have it easier because the Europeans have their back as superpower partners.

[lordroel]

Aug 3, 2016 17:16:07 GMT eurofed said:

Aug 3, 2016 16:51:01 GMT lordroel said:

So we now what the Soviet Union did, can we excpecht a post about the Allies.

The next post concerning Cold War Europe and basic political setup of the Western world is coming. I even have a nice map of early Cold War Europe, although I'm not sure when to post it since it includes Middle Eastern events, which are covered later and substantially diverge from OTL. Basically speaking, Western Europe is much stronger and more united, there is no UN, its role is partially filled by a global NATO, India remains united (and starts its path to become a nicer equivalent of OTL China, the main superpower rival of the USA and the EU, since Stalinism screws Russia and China hard). United Korea becomes a second Japan, things are not much different for the Japanese although they may take a little more to recover from Downfall (but are spared the nukes) and they are allowed to rearm under *NATO supervision because of the Sino-Soviet War. TTL America gets covered later, but it does not get much different from OTL. The most important difference is there is no Korean or Vietnam War, so things significantly diverge for the USA since the 1960s, and the Americans have it easier because the Europeans have their back as superpower partners.

Well i can wait for the map, just would like you to know its a good universe building, but one question, what happen with Netherlands East Indies, did it still get its independence like OTL or was it differently here.

[eurofed]

Aug 3, 2016 17:04:14 GMT lordroel said:

A forgot that both the Czech Republic and Slovenia where under allied control.

So is Iran under Soviet control because this would mean that you can make the Kingdom of Iraq who is surrounded on both side by Soviet puppets as this universe Iran.

Yep, Soviet control of Turkey and Iran, and their unrestricted access to the Med and the Persian Gulf, are a big reason why ITTL the Allies throw the Sykes-Picot agreement in the dustbin and rewrite the political map of the Middle East. However, there are still the effects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arab resentment for Western colonialism and support of Isreal, and the Western powers not reacting nicely to anti-Western Arab nationalism to complicate things. The Arab world probably gets to be one of the areas where things turn less optimal for the West, notwithstanding the general pro-Western bent of the TL. Middle Eastern events shall get covered in the second next update.

[lordroel]

Aug 3, 2016 17:24:20 GMT eurofed said:

Aug 3, 2016 17:04:14 GMT lordroel said:

A forgot that both the Czech Republic and Slovenia where under allied control.

So is Iran under Soviet control because this would mean that you can make the Kingdom of Iraq who is surrounded on both side by Soviet puppets as this universe Iran.

Yep, Soviet control of Turkey and Iran, and their unrestricted access to the Med and the Persian Gulf, are a big reason why ITTL the Allies throw the Sykes-Picot agreement in the dustbin and rewrite the political map of the Middle East. However, there are still the effects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arab resentment for Western colonialism and support of Isreal, and the Western powers not reacting nicely to anti-Western Arab nationalism to complicate things. The Arab world probably gets to be one of the areas where things turn less optimal for the West, notwithstanding the general pro-Western bent of the TL. Middle Eastern events shall get covered in the second next update.

So a much more screwed up Middle East then.

[eurofed]

Aug 3, 2016 17:20:58 GMT lordroel said:

Well i can wait for the map, just would like you to know its a good universe building, but one question, what happen with Netherlands East Indies, did it still get its independence like OTL or was it differently here.

Thanks for the appreciation and kind words. As a matter of fact, I have two maps of Europe that respectively describe the postwar situation, and the late Cold War one when the Soviet bloc starts unraveling (the destructive rampage of a longer-lived, crazier Stalin is bound to have long-term consequences). The TL writeup more or less extends to the early-mid 1970s, just before the moment when I tentatively expect the Soviet bloc really starts to collapse and Islamism to become a serious global problem (a stronger West can easily crush the likes of Nasser and Saddam in the bud, but this has nasty unforeseen consequences). I have been unfortunately unable to create a world map of TTL, because of my uncertainty of the exact course decolonization of Sub-Saharan Africa would take ITTL.

Southeast Asia does not get to be much different from OTL, except its borders are somewhat different, Communism is wiped out early thanks to the fall of the PRC (thankfully no Pol Pot, although Indochinese Reds get ruthlessly purged as in Indonesia), and they have to deal with millions of Chinese refugees fleeing the Sino-Soviet War. On the other hand, many Chinese refugees eventually find their way to America and Europe, where they basically take the place of the OTL Muslim immigrants (and are much less troublesome to integrate). Japan, united Korea, Southeast Asia, and India all share in filling the niche that devastation of China left vacant, so the rise of the 'Asian Tigers' to industrialized powerhouses happens easier and earlier than OTL.