So, after my mom's fifth session of chemotherapy, things are...slightly but decisevly better, not only I got back to study for my last three exams but time to read what I like about : horror podcasts, alternate history and more. So, I browsed the net and I got inspiration from this article : How Soviet tank crews nearly captured Hitler in 1943 so I wondered what could happen IF the Soviet Union indeed capture one of the most despicable man to exist in recorded history. I will admit that ignorant on the subject of fuel and logistics, and my style of alternate history is much more conversational than some alternate history timelines I have seen. I thought that I wanted to do with Lukewarm War couldn't be obtained, even with the best case scenario I had in mind.
ORIGINAL BEGINNING OF THE WHAT IF : OPERATION GALLOP WAS A SUCCESS ?
DEATH OF A LEADER
Kolya held his PPSh-41 with the camera. He had survived another day of the Great Patriotic War and what a day it was, with Zaporozhye into Soviet control once again. Maybe this war will be over soon and I will be back to Leningrad. It did cost a lot of lives, but Skachok was a success if one didn’t consider the fact their comrade commander Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin was dead by a stray bullet from the Fascists and the problem of the fuel which had been resolved just for Skachok was now again an issue.
<< Kolya! Come here ! >>
It was Danil, the Cossack Commissar, who for some reason wasn’t a bastard asshole as the ones he preceded.
<< You won’t believe it ! >>
What can be so urgent for all of his shouting ? Kolya asked himself. He was only the photographer of his tank squad and amateurish one. He couldn’t even develop his photos unless they were approved by the bureaucracy, because nobody wanted a photo that could tarnish the performance’s reputation of the Red Army.
He reached the Commissar, who was pointing his revolver against what appeared to be a Fascist General.
<< Comrade Commissar, you asked for me ? >>
<< I did, I did…Kolya you can’t believe how happy I am ! >>
<< What is…the reason ? And who is German ? >>
The fascist spoke in German, one of the few languages he didn’t know. It was General then Fel'dmarshal then Erich von Manstein.
<< This bastard is one who created one too many problems for the Motherland. He’s…was as of now…Hitler’s little pet.>>
<< So we captured him , Comrade Commissar. That sounds like great news…
<< That’s not all! >>
<< What do you mean, Comrade Commissar? >>
The Cossack pointed in a general direction with his free hand, indicating what appeared to be a ditch. Or a hole.
Quickly he moved to see what was inside. Or better, who was inside.
Him.
The cause of all the suffering of the Motherland, covered in blood and probably bullets both in his chest and back.
The Fuhrer.
Adolf Hitler.
<< It’s a shame we didn’t have him living and breathing ! Imagine what would have happened if the vermin wasn’t lying there! >>
Kolya, even though was shocked to see the evil fascist dead, did not waste time and took several pictures, each from different angles and during different times of the day. The NKVD came later to put the body in a box and send it to Moscow in the most rapid and discreet way and take his photos, asking for information about him. Kolya behaved with humility and pretended to minimize what he did, because he would be under closer inspection than before.
In his head, he prayed that he would be forgotten by them.
MOSCOW, 31st FEBRUARY 1943
Stalin had rejoiced at the idea of the death of Hitler, ecstatic and some even would have said “even joyful”, a rarity of the man of steel, not only this had been a strategic victory but a morale victory for the Soviet Union and its people, with the additional benefit of being of a “golden” bargaining chip for a post-war order favorable to him.
He was already seeing the effects of the killing of Hitler on the front itself : Romania had withdrawn to her pre-1939 borders Mussolini had been executed and the Italian Army occupied fighting border wars against the Hitlerite puppets of Vichy and Croatia, trying to suppress both fascist and opposition’s insurgencies and insurrections to keep at least their continental gains along with Corsica.
<< Well, well, well, it didn’t turn out as you expected…right Adolf ? >> said Stalin musing over the corpse of Hitler with a glass of vodka in his hand, with Molotov, Beria, Zhdanov and Zhukov present as silent watchers.
<< Your New Order is doomed…it will be…our New Order! >>
His sycophants could only nod and agree, something they would have done even if Stalin was objectively wrong, with only Zhukov being the one who could have spoiled the moment, but chose not to.
Disgruntled military men had became the bread and butter of the Royal Italian Army and many had already understood by the first week December 1942 that Italy would see a devastation even greater than the previous conflict and probably loose what little they had gained through the delirious partnership with the Fuhrer, so slowly they built up measures and contact networks of those who would oppose the Duce, meanwhile carefully preparing secret defenses and mining the borderlands with Croatia, Montenegro, Germany and France, because they understood very well that if they wanted to keep Italy intact they had to deal with the Nazi Reich because in now way possible that Adolf Hitler would stay and watch his ally slip away peacefully and would try to keep it in the Axis. When the Fronte Italiano della Libertà proposed the plan to remove Mussolini, Vittorio Emanuele III hesitated initially but ultimately approved the plan in New Year’s Eve and in less than a day the overwhelming majority of the Fascist hierarchs was imprisoned and the Duce himself was instead given a kangaroo court, a show trial and a summary execution by firing squad.
Germany, aided by Croatia and Vichy France tried to retaliate but, even though barely, they got repulsed or blown to bits by mines and the attempted invasion and temporary occupation of Naples was met not only by the Italian Royal Army but the Neapolitans themselves who threw out the now so hated "crauti". The news pleased both the Western Allies and the Soviets, hoping and crossing their fingers for a domino effect which indeed happened shortly there after : one by one the Axis was disintegrating with Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Hungary following suit although fighting each other to control as much land as they could get from each other. The German troops stuck in Albania, Serbia and Greece were either captured or picked one by one by Chetniks, partisans or the general populace that was tired of the last two years of massacres and what remained was almost nothing for Germany. Hitler and his inner circle were left with a couple of choices : fight their former allies and get overrun by the Red Army by the end of the year or sign a ceasefire with them and “turn the Red tide”. Or at least attempt to stop it . Hitler, after being persuaded by many, acquiesced to the second option even though in his delirious state he could really have well said to continue; Italy,Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Albania, Montenegro and Serbia were free but that didn't mean an end to their troubles. While the Bel Paese had controversially achieved Musssolini’s Greater Italy, discontent had been sown into the general population and former fascists, while the Balkan nations had gained their liberty from Berlin’s fist, they still had the Partisan problem to be dealt with, which eventually happened after the short border conflicts for land grabs they turned their attention against the Communist resistance that wasn’t annihilated in the initial phases of Fall Weiß and contrarily to German planners’ expectations, the death of Tito didn’t mean an end to the cause of pan-Yugoslav communism.
While the withdrawal of the Balkans from the war enormously helped the Allied and Soviet efforts, it wasn’t all fine and dandy : the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway and the successes of the Burma Campaign by the Japanese resulted in a very difficult situation for the Allied Pacific war effort ; then, the IJA with the Indian National Army, the Burmese Army and a Thai division manage to breakthrough in India which was resulting into a financial, industrial and military disaster for the British Empire and enormous blow to morale, with the IJA arriving at Ahmedabad,reaching the outskirts of Bombay and the border of the Berar Province; this gave the impulse for the Manhattan Project to be accelerated and the Swedish to start contemplating joining the Allied cause to not found themselves completely surrounded by the Soviets in the very near future as they were already going through Norway and were about to reach the Oder just as Operation Overlord had started the 6th of June.
The Japanese Empire and their collaborators in the final phase of World War II
The USSR on their part, didn’t immediately go for Berlin, with Stalin already scheming for postwar plans for Germany and Europe as a whole : his intentions were to reach up until Belgium to then engulf the fascist Reich and present the WAllies with a fait accompli ; despite being callous plans, Stalin’s intentions translated into action which did result in tens of thousands of avoidable casualties, the Red Army had “liberated” the Low Countries and most of Northern Germany before even encircling Berlin.
As the walls of human, Communist soldiers were closing in, a last ditch attempt was made to save at least part of Germany from disaster by German Army officers and generals headed by Friedrich Olbricht, Henning von Tresckow and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, but it only precipitated the inevitable and in December of 1944 the Soviets took Berlin just as the United States were dropping the two first nuclear bombs on Kokura and Yokohama, much to the Vozhd of the Soviet Union’ shock, immediatly ordering the Red Army in Siberia to basically “swarm” Manchukuo with everything they got, but the Japanese and their collaborators offered stiff resistance against them, mostly because they knew what awaited them if they had got captured by the Soviets, so the Kwangtung Army and their allies the Manchukuo Imperial Army and Mengjiang National Army became as “suicidal” as kamikazes, with Stalin only getting Manchuria and South Sakhalin postwar and Korea and the Chishima Islands being under the US occupation of Japan when the Asian Empire of the Rising Sun finally surrendered.
So, after my mom's fifth session of chemotherapy, things are...slightly but decisevly better, not only I got back to study for my last three exams but time to read what I like about
So, after my mom's fifth session of chemotherapy, things are...slightly but decisevly better, not only I got back to study for my last three exams but time to read what I like about
You have my backing. My two parents got cancer only some years apart. Dad indirectly died of it (chemo secondary effects) and this triggered my mom own cancer - at least she survived. 2009-2011, how we hate you.
I read about any loss of parents with great sympathy. I lost my father (77) in 2004 and was away from home My mother died in a nursing home at 92 in the morning when I had left her after having breakfast together.
I was relieved that neither had to experiwnce the Covid years or see the tragedy in Ukraine.
So, after my mom's fifth session of chemotherapy, things are...slightly but decisevly better, not only I got back to study for my last three exams but time to read what I like about
So, after my mom's fifth session of chemotherapy, things are...slightly but decisevly better, not only I got back to study for my last three exams but time to read what I like about
You have my backing. My two parents got cancer only some years apart. Dad indirectly died of it (chemo secondary effects) and this triggered my mom own cancer - at least she survived. 2009-2011, how we hate you.
I read about any loss of parents with great sympathy. I lost my father (77) in 2004 and was away from home My mother died in a nursing home at 92 in the morning when I had left her after having breakfast together.
I was relieved that neither had to experiwnce the Covid years or see the tragedy in Ukraine.
Thank you all. I will try to reply to each subject as best as I can :
We were lucky because she discovered everything in a week months ago, a physician/doctor organized everything quickly and neatly and she confirmed that same week. She waited for me to return from Portugal and have one good night of sleep to tell both my sister and me. It was too late to extract (or whatever the technical medical term is) but not too late to save her and start chemotherapy.
We consider ourselves lucky that we discover early but also that is no longer like in 2020/2021; plenty of people died of cancer because their screenings got canceled or postponed indefinitely in the initial phases of COVID, something that our Health Minister won’t ever admit (but he has a master in Political Science so…I don’t think he will ever admit he did something wrong) and she found this amazing doctor that “saw” it immediately and made it so my mother could start the process almost instantly.
Regarding Ukraine : I am worried about potential energy shortages because we have/or used to have most of our energy and gas needs satisfied from Russia, as of now the Italian Prime Minister Draghi sends weapons to Ukraine, sanctions Russia but ENI is still buying gas and whatnot in rubles and Putin said that our gas supply would continue…I personally think Draghi is doing an awful job in every way possible and this is just the epitome of his incompetence, because he speaks about sacrifices the “Italians are willing to make” when we are not in the position to do so and after the two previous years, not to mention to he wanted to switch off Russian when we didn’t have an alternative immediatly available.
I will admit I am probably biased because not only I consider myself very critical of capitalism and the banking system but I am worried as well our Prime Minister will cost the country affordable heating and electricity and consecutively my mom’s chemo might be delayed and compromised, which is my first worry and basically only one in the Ukrainian War.
End of my useless and off-topic cascade of typed words.
On Operation Citadel : would it still happen ? Or would it go worse ? My idea was for the Red Army to “liberate” everything up to the Reichskommissariat Wallonien (though I don’t know “how to do that”). I know the idea I have in mind would be a propaganda-morale blow for the Axis. Italy would go out in a negotiated peace, Romania and Bulgaria would likely do the same and the three of them would likely get a Finland-like deal but without loss of gained territory.
I know that Stalin and co might get high on victory and have a much BRUTAL and QUICKER advance Westward.
On Hitler’s successors : Goering seems an obvious choice but I remember him being already discredited by 1943, you could get Martin Bormann, or indeed Goebbels.
Another thing that might change, but I am not an expert on it, is that the Wannsee Conference’s Final Solution might be severely downgraded IF not halted and the resources wasted on the extermination of the Jewish people will be redirected almost instantly to the war effort. So a good thing could be more survivors.
On the other hand, more countries will be in this timeline version of the Warsaw Pact. With all the consequences will entail.
This consecutively will also impact popularity of political parties : the far left parties (communist and not) will be more popular than our world, but also hard or far right or leaning right parties will be as well because more countries are in the Moscow faction.
So this is the Italy I had envision for this alternate history story in a negotiated peace . I used (mostly) the Thousand Week Reich states border, but for some reason I couldn't get Dalmatia right.
An alternate history tank I had envisioned for this Operation Gallop, I forgot which parts I used of which tanks.
Belgium shortly after liberation by the Red Army of the Soviet Union, 1945, unknown
Former Belgian Communist resistance partisans casually strolling after liberation, 1945/1946, unknown
Momignies looked liked a very different city compared Kolya to what Kolya was used to, he had only two extremes : the kolkhoz he grew up in the first years of his life and then Leningrad; Momignies looked like it was frozen in time minus the prisoners wearing Stahlhelms and obeying Red Army officers.
In the end he got almost what he wanted when they discovered the body of Hitler in Zaporhyzie, but now he had become the personal photographer of Zhukov and in way was his chaffeur and secretary, which did help but he was in the spotlight, so anything that could be interpreted as a wrong move would have made his life riskier.
But for now, he was just driving Zhukov who was supposed to meet the Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower.
They descended the jeep and went straight ahead to the tent of the American general, which was very spartan in its interior appearance.
<< How are you General? >> asked Eisenhower.
Kolya translated the conversation between the two military men. It seems they had chemistry, but couldn't comment on it because he wanted to stay on the good graces of Zhukov.
It was mostly political talk, albeit unofficial and the record of it wouldn't see the light of day until someone decided to do so. Eisenhower talked that while president Roosevelt was not bothered the Soviets influence expanded from Manchuria to Norway and the Low Countries, a lot of other members of the American political and economic sphere were, at best, concerned. (1)
The Hero of the Soviet Union replied that not only it had been decided everything at the Tehran Conference but they were "only" de-nazifying the liberated territories, mentioning they were having...issues in both Germany and Manchuria, the first regarding the Werwolf insurgency which had taken a blow against Soviet intelligence when they had successfully assassinated Lavrenty Beria in route to the South Tyrolean capital of Bozen and the second was their...difficulty into finding Konstantin Vladimirovich Rodzaevsky, the head of the Russian Fascist Party hydra, asking if there would be a chance it was the United States Military Administration of Korea,affirming he was spotted near the Manchurian border.
Eisenhower expressed that he would ask the President and his collegues in the Pacific to do their best to deliver Rodzaevsky to the USSR.
Zhukov nodded in approval and swallowed his glass of vodka, followed by congratulations on the capitulation of the Japanese Empire and very weirdly, also of the annihilation of the cities of Kokura and Yokohama, asking if they had the intention on using the new weapon in India, considering the Anglo-American had to promise to the king of Afghanistan a nullification of the Durand line to enlist the help of the hermit Central Asian Kingdom. (3)
Kolya presumed the Hero of the Soviet Union brought up the argument of the nuclear bomb because he would have received some informational concessions on the part of the American, but the only clue he got was that was that the American president was in favor of self determination as much as he was for Indonesia, now an indepedent country.
Old partisan strolling down Brussel, late 1940s, colorized, unknown
EDIT : Remove a French West African going indepedent after a massacre that generates a rebellious uprising quasi-revolution.
EDIT 2: Added black and white Midjourney AI generated images for further immersion.
Since they have MUCH more political capital, it would be expected that they got farther than our world
Rodzaevsky was the (delirious or delusional) leader of the RFP in Manchuria. In this world he escapes instead of being captured by the Red Army.
Basically the situation between Anglo-American political forces and India are much more strained and much more EARLY than oour world. The A-bombs also were developed much earlier and dropped on different cities.
I used a fast forward method in the narration. Predicting who is going to be in charge of the Third Reich could have been a mess, though I guess it would be Goering or Goebbels.
The Holocaust has a chance to have been halted or at the least severely downgraded as soon as Hitler died in my timeline, the only safe assumption is that there will be more Jewish individuals and families alive, unless Hitler successor follows thr Fuhrer stupidity because we are still talking about Nazis.
Presumely, in this scenario, the Soviets will still invade Manchuria, but the Americans get the whole of Korea.
I was also inspired by The Berlin Project where the Manhattan projects gets sped up, resulting into two different cities being hit.
I was also inspired by a currently developing timeline of DKing of African Yugoslavia to sort of "debuff" Free France postwar.
I don't have a book on it but this is the best thing I came up with :
Momignies looked liked a very different city compared Kolya to what Kolya was used to, he had only two extremes : the kolkhoz he grew up in the first years of his life and then Leningrad; Momignies looked like it was frozen in time minus the prisoners wearing Stahlhelms and obeying Red Army officers.
In the end he got almost what he wanted when they discovered the body of Hitler in Zaporhyzie, but now he had become the personal photographer of Zhukov and in way was his chaffeur and secretary, which did help but he was in the spotlight, so anything that could be interpreted as a wrong move would have made his life riskier.
But for now, he was just driving Zhukov who was supposed to meet the Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower.
They descended the jeep and went straight ahead to the tent of the American general, which was very spartan in its interior appearance.
<< How are you General? >> asked Eisenhower.
Kolya translated the conversation between the two military men. It seems they had chemistry, but couldn't comment on it because he wanted to stay on the good graces of Zhukov.
It was mostly political talk, albeit unofficial and the record of it wouldn't see the light of day until someone decided to do so. Eisenhower talked that while president Roosevelt was not bothered the Soviets influence expanded from Manchuria to Scandinavia and the Low Countries, a lot of other members of the American political and economic sphere were, at best, concerned.
The Hero of the Soviet Union replied that not only it had been decided everything at the Tehran Conference but they were "only" de-nazifying the liberated territories, mentioning they were having...issues in both Germany and Manchuria, the first regarding the Werwolf insurgency which had taken a blow against Soviet intelligence when they had successfully assassinated Lavrenty Beria in route to the South Tyrolean capital of Bozen and the second was their...difficulty into finding Konstantin Vladimirovich Rodzaevsky, the head of the Russian Fascist Party hydra, asking if there would be a chance it was the United States Military Administration of Korea,affirming he was spotted near the Manchurian border.
Eisenhower expressed that he would ask the President and his collegues in the Pacific to do their best to deliver Rodzaevsky to the USSR.
Zhukov nodded in approval and swallowed his glass of vodka, followed by congratulations on the capitulation of the Japanese Empire and very weirdly, also of the annihilation of the cities of Kokura and Yokohama, asking if they had the intention on using the new weapon in India, considering the Anglo-American had to promise to the king of Afghanistan a nullification of the Durand line to enlist the help of the hermit Central Asian Kingdom.
Kolya presumed the Hero of the Soviet Union brought up the argument of the nuclear bomb because he would have received some informational concessions on the part of the American, but the only clue he got was that was that the American president was in favor of self determination, just as he had demonstrated with the war of independence in French West Africa that had started with Thiaroye Massacre.
A year later, approximately (just edited as of now) @GTX I took the inspiration from timelines of Alternate History forum with the following alternate "histories" :
I expect that if Hitler is killed DIRECTLY by the Soviets the first consequence would be Italy dropping out MUCH sooner and in a MUCH more favorable condition and positio, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary (this last is highly unlikely though since they largely border it) would follow suit with would amount to a white peace/turnaround Finland style.
Consecutively, I see the USSR having more diplomatic political capital and would "pummel to death" Germany and its occupied territories and would go further West than our world, "liberating" Norway, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands instead of Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria.
I don't know if I could save Poland or Czechoslovakia post-WW2 frankly. The first is next to impossible just like the Baltics, but the coup of 1948 could still fail. But even if I save both best case scenario(unlikely) is finladization.
It would be interesting to see how the German military reacted. Regardless of who may seize political power, I don't necessarily see the Germans collapsing in the East. If anything, I would foresee whomever ends up in power trying for a separate peace with the likes of the UK/USA and then transferring as many forces to the East as possible to 'hold the line' and then get as good a deal as possible with the Soviets. Remember also that come early 1943, while they would have just suffered the Stalingrad disaster, the Germans were still quite strong. If allowed to hold the line and allow the professionals to play their role things may have been able to be stabilised.
It would be interesting to see how the German military reacted. Regardless of who may seize political power, I don't necessarily see the Germans collapsing in the East. If anything, I would foresee whomever ends up in power trying for a separate peace with the likes of the UK/USA and then transferring as many forces to the East as possible to 'hold the line' and then get as good a deal as possible with the Soviets. Remember also that come early 1943, while they would have just suffered the Stalingrad disaster, the Germans were still quite strong. If allowed to hold the line and allow the professionals to play their role things may have been able to be stabilised.
Personally, I disagree, but fair point. Though I am not sure how easily and rapidly they can try...and for how long.
I wouldn't be surprised if they collapse overnight just by low morale alone. Goering is already out in your opinion? Because I remember him being politically irrelevant by 1944.
@GTX NOTE : I started this story (more of a draft) to think about how could the world evolve...if the Soviets did like Tsar Alexander and (almost) reach Paris.
I thought it would be a neat idea to see if weapons like the H&K or MP5 would become Warsaw Pact weapons, then how socio-political evolutions could be in the non-occupied countries.
If the USSR falls, the world will probably more conservative as well.
Kolya wanted to have nothing to do with Zhukov as much as he did before, not after witnessing the annexation of Man'chzhuriya and the expulsion of what Stalin defined as the expulsion of wreckers, anti-revolutionaries and fascists after the Chinese Communist Party had declined to “cede” the region to the Soviet Union, leaving the majority of the population of the former Japanese puppet being Russian Whites, Japanese, and Koreans ( the latter probably tempted to leave and go to the Pyongyang in the United States Army Military Government in Korea Zone) or the mass expulsion of the last remaining Germans from what was now called Królewiec. He felt a deep sense of sadness knowing that the Man of Steel demonstrated little, if any, empathy towards formerly presumed allies and perceived defeated enemies, and showed no mercy or different treatment to them.
And he was still with Zhukov.
His personal photographer. Though he had felt more as his chaffeur and barista than a photographer.
<< Pour me another glass Nikolay >>
Driving and serving the Marshal was a risky hassle, but except for the near contortion he could do it without a problem. It annoyed him but there were advantages to be close to one of the heroes of the Soviet Union.
When they arrived at Stalin’s dacha, Kolya almost sighed a breath of relief. However, the sensation didn’t last for long, noticing immediately the guards were crying.
<< What happened ? >>
Asked Zhukov abruptly when he interpelled one of the soldiers sobbing.
<< Comrade Stalin is dead >>
Kolya stood still out of shock unlike the Marshall, who rushed immediately inside. The “photographer” followed suit but remained composed and serious, concentrating all of his energies in not crying or smiling.
The bastard is dead!
He was one of the few who had not lost any family members to the terrors of the NKVD and others, but the anguish consumated lots of his life. Or during the war. Kazan was a blessing. Now Stalin was dead and maybe…maybe he was safe.
He reached a room where Zhukov was sitting on a chair and standing up were Mikoyan, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Bulganin and others. Turns out Stalin had been dead for a week, but his inner circle had declared him dead that day and that was not good news for Zhukov.
Because Zhukov now was the “new Kalinin”, which meant his value was zero to the new government and that he would be powerless to stop or depose or whatever he would have potentially intended to do according to them. The new government was already organized : Mikoyan would become Chairman of the Council of Ministers and double as a Minister of Foreign Trade, Voroshilov would become Minister of Defense and Molotov retained the Foreign Affairs, meanwhile the Internal Affairs would be given to one of Beria’s favorites, a certain fellow called Ivan Serov.
Zhukov was intimately dismissed , but not Kolya. The photographer felt a chill down his spine when Mikoyan called on him to stay :
<< Nikolay…>>
<< Comrade Mikoyan >>
<< I heard you are good with languages…>>
<< I am, Comrade Mikoyan >>
<< Comrade Serov might need your help >>
Might. More like will. More like you will work for him from now. Kolya felt his heart aching at idea of being a lapdog servant of the intelligence. Ivan Serov took him aside afterwards and approached him with an eerie, uncanny valley smile.
<< Have you ever wished to travel the globe, Ilyanov? >>
<< No Comrade Serov >>
<< Well, you will pack your bags and like it. The world awaits! >>
God, I am working with demons now… what should do I do ?
Mikoyan
Serov
Stalin's death happens much earlier
Mikoyan seemed the right compromise between hardliner and reformist factions
Personally, I disagree, but fair point. Though I am not sure how easily and rapidly they can try...and for how long.
I wouldn't be surprised if they collapse overnight just by low morale alone. Goering is already out in your opinion? Because I remember him being politically irrelevant by 1944.
In early 1943 Germany was still very strong with around 9 million men in service (roughly 6M in Here, 1.7M in Luftwaffe, 780K in KM and 450K in SS). While they would have just suffered the Stalingrad loss, they were still very much a force to be reckoned with and still had relatively high morale I believe. This was also all before the Kursk Battle let alone the disasters of 1944. If nothing else, they would not have simply allowed the Soviets to overrun them.
Also the Western Allies would still be awaiting an opportunity to get back on the mainland with the war in North Africa still underway. Therefore, despite the calls for Unconditional Surrender from the Casablanca Conference, I suspect an opportunity to draw a quick end to the war would be extremely attractive to the allied powers.
Again, it is hard to say who would end up in power. While I suspect the likes of Goering would have been a possibility, it is also just as likely that an Army led Government with a smattering of reliable non-military operators could form a Government of National Emergency, perhaps under the figurehead of a figure such as Crown Prince Wilhelm? Either way, it would still be fairly conservative and intent on holding Germany's place in the world - in fact, if you read about many of the German Resistance, even they had plans that didn't involve Germany just handing over everything.
@GTX NOTE : I started this story (more of a draft) to think about how could the world evolve...if the Soviets did like Tsar Alexander and (almost) reach Paris.
I thought it would be a neat idea to see if weapons like the H&K or MP5 would become Warsaw Pact weapons, then how socio-political evolutions could be in the non-occupied countries.
If the USSR falls, the world will probably more conservative as well.
Personally, I disagree, but fair point. Though I am not sure how easily and rapidly they can try...and for how long.
I wouldn't be surprised if they collapse overnight just by low morale alone. Goering is already out in your opinion? Because I remember him being politically irrelevant by 1944.
In early 1943 Germany was still very strong with around 9 million men in service (roughly 6M in Here, 1.7M in Luftwaffe, 780K in KM and 450K in SS). While they would have just suffered the Stalingrad loss, they were still very much a force to be reckoned with and still had relatively high morale I believe. This was also all before the Kursk Battle let alone the disasters of 1944. If nothing else, they would not have simply allowed the Soviets to overrun them.
Also the Western Allies would still be awaiting an opportunity to get back on the mainland with the war in North Africa still underway. Therefore, despite the calls for Unconditional Surrender from the Casablanca Conference, I suspect an opportunity to draw a quick end to the war would be extremely attractive to the allied powers.
Again, it is hard to say who would end up in power. While I suspect the likes of Goering would have been a possibility, it is also just as likely that an Army led Government with a smattering of reliable non-military operators could form a Government of National Emergency, perhaps under the figurehead of a figure such as Crown Prince Wilhelm? Either way, it would still be fairly conservative and intent on holding Germany's place in the world - in fact, if you read about many of the German Resistance, even they had plans that didn't involve Germany just handing over everything.
@GTX NOTE : I started this story (more of a draft) to think about how could the world evolve...if the Soviets did like Tsar Alexander and (almost) reach Paris.
I thought it would be a neat idea to see if weapons like the H&K or MP5 would become Warsaw Pact weapons, then how socio-political evolutions could be in the non-occupied countries.
If the USSR falls, the world will probably more conservative as well.
Kolya had been sent by Serov to analyze the Balkans as well as Italy for prospects of exploitation for a people’s revolution. But the situation was more complicated than he expected, what happened in Italy was a very unusual war, not just because it happened at the same time of the Balkan Border conflicts as Romania, Croatia, Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria fought as they withdrew from the Axis what can be considered borderline “every man for himself” wars, but because it had united a rag-tag of republicans, former hierarchs (or underlings) and leftists and communists, who had been also fighting between each other the day before but now were starting to realize they shared a common enemy : the Savoy royal family with their loyalist army, the latter which was too busy protecting what little they had gained in barely more than two years of war in the east against (soon to be former) Yugoslav partisans, from Lubiana to Cattaro, and in the west from Ennesì to Nizza against the French resistance. This situation lead to the unpredictable outcome of the emergence of a literally unknown Sicilian landlord and agricultural entrepreneur by the name of Silvio Milazzo, who had seen the writing on the wall of the monarchy with the demise of Hitler which ultimately led to Mussolini’s downfall and execution and sought to exploit it, starting to contact what would have been potential partisan-like organizations in the style of France and Yugoslavia and die-hard (and not so much) followers of Mussolini, uniting what nowadays are described as the right and the left against the (in that case monarchist) “center”, as well as people such as the President of the Confindustria Giuseppe Volpi.
In a matter of a few months, what began as multiple minuscule insurrections became a general uprising with no political inclinations but anti-monarchist sentiment which depleted the loyalist forces not only of resources but of the will to fight after the victories in the East and West, with very few hardline monarchists still holding on.
The political situation post-conflict was … weird. Milazzo had been a good leader for the fight but not so much for keeping said leader position in times of peace and while he wouldn’t be forgotten, his career as a national figure head was over ; expectedly, new parties formed just as soon as the shooting stopped, all originally separate parties that merged in a matter of weeks : National Liberal Republican Christian Democratic Union Bloc (Blocco dell'Unione Democratica Cristiana Nazionale Liberale Repubblicana) with Alcide De Gasperi as chief and Luigi Einaudi as deputy, with the third in command being Randolfo Pacciardi, then there was the National Movement, headed by journalist Giorgio Almirante (whose past article Defence of the Race was made even more public seemed to affect little the party’s electoral result) and finally the coalition of the Popular Democratic Front for Freedom, Peace, Labour, overtaken recently by mostly socialists and social democrats at the expense of the communists and namely Togliatti.
In his report, Kolya wrote to Serov that just as the Balkans, Hungary and Czechoslovakia after the failure of the 1948 putsch, the best they could hope was to get the same deal they had given to Finland (a “cordial” neutrality) and would wait for his next reassignment.
He prayed with a hush voice to himself : Saint George the Dragon slayer, please help me out of this nightmare.
NOTES :
What changed from our world in this alternate universe (thanks to the early death of Hitler) ?
Italy and the Balkan allies of the Third Reich, while violently, jump ship as soon as the Austrian heroin-addicted failed painter is publicly world known to be dead, preserving most of their gains and out of Stalin’s deadly grasp.
However…
Norway, (what remains of) Slovenia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands and the whole of Germany and Austria share the grisly endwar with Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Baltic countries ; in addition the ethnic cleansing of postwar Europe still happens but the roles are reversed.
I hope clear, it is just an inversion of “fate” for narrative purposes, I do not condone any type of violence whether religious, ethnic OR socio-political.
Returning to the subject at hand :
Italy also is seeing a MAJOR DIFFERENCE. Instead of getting a much less worse deal THAN what Germany got, the country goes out without an inch since Hitler’s successor was too busy keeping morale up as long as the Italian king didn’t actually go along with the Allies, which doesn’t even happen here.
So why Fascists, Communist all the sudden unite ? Beyond what I wrote, I don’t have what could be considered a realistic explanation, although his based on a real event :
Silvio Milazzo and Volpi also are not works of fiction : you can both read about them on Wikipedia (I don’t think there are sources about them in English). The first became famous for uniting the neofascists and communists of Sicily against the Christian Democracy in the late ‘50s , the second was fascist then helped the resistance after 1943.
Another major difference in Italy is : there are MUCH LESS political parties. The “funny” names you seem above are above are more political parties that are merged.
I have may have contradicted myself narratively because it’s 11 PM in Italy and I have been wanting to sleep for two hours.
If I did I will try to remedy that.
Edited : there are three parties instead of four now.
@GTX NOTE : I started this story (more of a draft) to think about how could the world evolve...if the Soviets did like Tsar Alexander and (almost) reach Paris.
I thought it would be a neat idea to see if weapons like the H&K or MP5 would become Warsaw Pact weapons, then how socio-political evolutions could be in the non-occupied countries.
If the USSR falls, the world will probably more conservative as well.
That last is, in my opinion, incorrect as the bolshevik threat couldn't be used as a bludgeon against any kind of progressive idea like, say, civil rights.
@GTX NOTE : I started this story (more of a draft) to think about how could the world evolve...if the Soviets did like Tsar Alexander and (almost) reach Paris.
I thought it would be a neat idea to see if weapons like the H&K or MP5 would become Warsaw Pact weapons, then how socio-political evolutions could be in the non-occupied countries.
If the USSR falls, the world will probably more conservative as well.
That last is, in my opinion, incorrect as the bolshevik threat couldn't be used as a bludgeon against any kind of progressive idea like, say, civil rights.
@GTX NOTE : I started this story (more of a draft) to think about how could the world evolve...if the Soviets did like Tsar Alexander and (almost) reach Paris.
I thought it would be a neat idea to see if weapons like the H&K or MP5 would become Warsaw Pact weapons, then how socio-political evolutions could be in the non-occupied countries.
If the USSR falls, the world will probably more conservative as well.
That last is, in my opinion, incorrect as the bolshevik threat couldn't be used as a bludgeon against any kind of progressive idea like, say, civil rights.
@GTX NOTE : I started this story (more of a draft) to think about how could the world evolve...if the Soviets did like Tsar Alexander and (almost) reach Paris.
I thought it would be a neat idea to see if weapons like the H&K or MP5 would become Warsaw Pact weapons, then how socio-political evolutions could be in the non-occupied countries.
If the USSR falls, the world will probably more conservative as well.
That last is, in my opinion, incorrect as the bolshevik threat couldn't be used as a bludgeon against any kind of progressive idea like, say, civil rights.
The Italian situation had many contradictions. The first government of Italy was a coalition of the National Christian Democratic Union and the National Liberal Republican Bloc which collaborated with the other political forces except for the National Movement of Almirante, which was vehemently anti-American (1) unlike De Gasperi and Pacciardi, not to mention they had still to contend with the French who were clearly in the American camp and hadn’t recognized their territories being taken from them by the Bel Paese; a similar although much more lenient treatment was given to the Popular Democratic Front for Freedom, Peace, Labour because of the 404 km border (2) they shared with the soon-to-be German Democratic Republic and didn’t want to get an intervention from the Soviet Union and were in the process to negotiate a final peace deal, which was almost forfeited because of the enormous refugee exodus caused by the yet to be demobilized militias conducting anti-German pogroms just like the anti-Slavic forced relocations from Istria and Lubiana to Cattaro. (3).
Kolya was starting to ask himself if killing Hitler in Operatsiya Skachok was that all good in the end because he considered it to have caused more harm than good, this line of thought probably helped by the fact Serov had kept him “stationed” in the Bel Paese, this time to observe the military situation in it, like he hadn’t done enough during Operatsiya Golovolomka into basically kidnapping over 3000 thousands former Fascist scientists, engineers and technicians from all over the defunct Reich (4).
Italy indirectly had something akin to this, but it was much to circumstances which they couldn’t control : in addition to the Askaris of former Italian East Africa (now all of it part of the returned Empire of Ethiopia) and North Africa, many German units had been “stranded” in the “Boot” of Europe and among them there were the very famous Desert Fox Erwin Rommel and the infamous commando Otto Skorzeny (5), who conveniently and weirdly had managed to snuck out their families from the Occupation Zone.
From his understanding, the new Italian government, while despising Germans for bringing them into an atrocious total war, knew they could be valuable assets to prepare Italy for the future, just like Ettore Muti and Junio Valerio Borghese, presumably to turn Italy into a Swiss-style fortress.
The former Royal Italian Army wasn’t in the best shape to defend a country, in fact it was a miracle they had managed
to defend Nizza, Savoy and Lubiana, Dalmatia,Istria and Cattaro. There was a general wish from the Prime Minister to rearm Italy for the potential conflict with the nations bordering them, namely the State of Croatia, the Kingdom of Serbia, the State of Montenegro and the Socialist Republic of Slovenia-Carinthia in the east, while on the North there was Soviet occupied Germany and on the west laid France itching for a rematch to take back the lost lands and Corsica.
De Gasperi, but also controversially Togliatti, wanted to avoid another potential mutilated victory scenario which could form another Mussolini, gave a general amnesty to former royalists and fascists had a similar “treatment”, their crimes before taking up arms against the House of Savoy pardoned but not forgotten, which is why they were given few roles in the new governments, with only specials cases permitted to have participation such as Ettore Muti taking care of the military aviation (6) and Junio Valerio Borghese (7) taking care of the Navy instead, all the while being monitored by the previously monarchist Amedeo Guillet (8) who had become Minister of Defense, but to counterbalance this move the Interior Minister would have been Pietro Nenni of the Socialist wing of the Democratic Front with Ruggero Grieco of the Communist wing as deputy, who made the controversial decision of not disbanding the Corpo Femminile Volontario di Assistenza per i Servizi Ausiliari delle Forze Armate Repubblicane and transforming the national police forces into the Milizia Popolare per la Sicurezza Interna (9).
The order of the day was restoring the Bel Paese armed forces, so the three began with haste, with Muti having to rely on the few remaining Italian and former Luftwaffe planes and pilots, meanwhile Guillet could rely on a more vast assortment of both Italian and (surrendered) German veterans (including the notorious Rommel and his family), the latter which brought a an enormous quantity of weapons, tanks, trucks and many other goods, such as many Sonderkraftfahrzeug 251, Bergepanther,Panzer VI Ausf. B "Königstiger", Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B Schwimmwagen, Flammpanzer VI , Sd.Kfz.231 8-Rad, Sd.Kfz.263 6-Rad and Sd.Kfz.234 Puma. The “aeronautical” inventory from Germany : Messerschmitt Me 262 , Arado Ar 234 Blitz Messerschmitt Me P 08.01 and several famous Stukas :1 Horten Ho 229 , one of the only ten that survived which wasn’t captured by either by the Western Allies, as well as Horten Ho XVIII Amerikabomber prototype.
The human capital for aviation, besides the many pilots, consisted of Hans Guido Mutke, Germany’s notorious fighter pilot, along with the Horten brothers, who didn’t want to surrender to or get captured by the USSR like many brilliant minds had tried; joining their newfound Italian benefactors was also Woldemar Voigt designed the Me 262 and P.1101 jet aircraft at Messerschmidt. Before the war's end he had redesigned the Me 262 by placing the turbines in the wing roots in Ultimate 262 HGII. Borghese, unlike the army, had to work with much less numerous and fancy leftovers, he had what had survived intact of the Regia Marina, but he got lucky during a diplomatic mission to establish ties with Free India just a little over Bhose’s liberation of his country. He suggested to De Gasperi to send Italian orientalist, Indologist and scholar of East Asian studies Giuseppe Vincenzo Tucci as an unofficial ambassador and the result was an unintended stroke of luck for him and Muti, since the Netajii had still a morbid fascination with the deceased Duce. It turned out just as Italy had many leftover German combatants in his country, so did Free India had Japanese sailors, soldiers, planes, submarines and ships, including the famous Yamato and Musashi, which had docked in India for maintance shortly before the atomic bombs were about to be dropped. (10)
In exchange for establishing diplomatic and economic ties, Bhose’s Free India would gift the former Japanese Navy to Italy, consequently the Bel Paese would establish links with postwar Japan, returning much of what was given from India back to the Islands of the Rising Sun. (11)
1.2 FOREIGN RELATIONS
Italy’s foreign policy was in a bit of pickle, because while it had been the junior partner to Germany in the Axis it was also the first to drop out of it in 1943 which resulted in the chain reaction of “drop outs of the war” with Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Croatia with Serbia. (12)
When analyzing the situation for financial compensation, the new Italian foreign ministry studied carefully, because they needed to balance a difficult political situation at home and trying to find a good standing with former enemies and allies. The first country was the former “protectorate” of Montenegro which was lead by Krsto Popović and his loyal Zelenaši who barely outmaneuvered pro-Chetnik Blažo Đukanović and suppressed the communist Yugoslav Partisan insurgency, they wouldn’t get financial help just like the State of Albania headed by Kol Bib Mirakaj and his predecessors Tefik Mborja and Jup Kazazi along with
Maliq Bushati and Ekrem Libohova but would get undercover help to crush the Communist rebels. (13)
The situation with Kingdom of Serbia was more peculiar since while the Chetnik borderline collaborated with Axis forces, the returned young king Petar II Karađorđević made a case that he was the was the legitimate sovereign of the now-defunct Royal Yugoslav government and the claim for reparations extended to its successor state of the Kingdom of Serbia, consecutively 125 million dollars were paid to Belgrade’s government as well; then it came the turn of Greece who got 235 million dollars in reparations since it was involved in humanity’s deadliest conflict because of Italy; one hundred of those were initially supposed to go to the Soviets but it was traded for something more practical, the Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance of 1948 signed between the Kingdoms of Romania,Bulgaria,Hungary and the republics of Finland, Italy and shortly later (after the failed pro-Soviet communist coup) Czechoslovakia and the Comintern member countries (14).
Balkan leaders after World War II
There were also supposed to be 30 million dollars for the Ethiopian Empire however both the Popular Democratic Front and the National Movement were against the idea : the leftist coalized party had not intention of financing the rebuilding of a pro-Western decadent and autocratic monarchy when they had fought to overthrow the Italian one and Giorgio Almirante somewhat echoed their argument albeit much more carefully and for undisclosed, different reasons. This prompted Emperor Haile Selassie not only to expel all the Italians and the Italo-Ethiopians, Italo-Somalis and Italo-Eritreans but to annex Somalia and Eritrea as well despite Anglo-American initial protestations, which in turned caused the Italian Republic to host and later finance and sponsor the Somali Youth League members and Eritrean Liberation Front as well as other organizations which would emerge with the Ethiopian Civil War in 1974.
Then it was the young Republic's attention had to be turned West…towards Washington D.C.
Eisenhower then the Stassen administrations tried to woo the Italian governments towards itselves but even though there were several Americanophiles in the Italian parliament, the biggest opposition blocs in it were adamantly against it, with the National Movement wanting to preserve the territory of Greater Italy and the FDP who wanted to keep the USSR happy, therefore resulting in a large “corridor of nations” hellbent on not giving an excuses to Moscow to bring his wrath upon their land.
As a consequence of internal political pressure, Italy started rearmament in the early 1950s with a goal of armed neutrality. However, whether the Italian governments and populace wanted it or not, the Central Intelligence Agency started up the clandestine Operation Gladio organization who recruited a vast assortment of “associates” but especially among the Carabinieri with and Italian mafias such as the 'Ndrangheta, Camorra, Cosa nostra and Sacra Corona Unita, but even future Commander-General of the Carabinieri Giovanni De Lorenzo was approached, which would spell doom for Italian-American relations.
The 50s were relatively prosperous and serene time for the, because unlike Germany, Italy and the Balkans had avoided the Soviet onslaught, with Italy starting an economic Golden Age in 1956, with FIAT Automobiles not only selling but also exporting their Fiat Cinquecento the next year everywhere and Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi investing everywhere but especially Hashemite Social National Kingdom of Greater Syria and then the Kingdom of Romania with the Ploesti oilfields, plus it started trade agreements with Hungary, Czechoslovakia and at the end of the year Poland, with Italian companies finding investing in companies like Zakłady Radiowe Radmor, WZT "Telza" (Warsaw Television Works) the computer manufacturer Wrocławskie Zakłady Elektroniczne Mera-Elwro in 1959 and the producer Przedsiębiorstwo Produkcyjne Podzespołów Elektronicznych „Dolam” as well as the radio-maker Diora (15). It was then to turn its attention to the Middle East and North African “area” of the neighborhood for deals for ENI, sending the timidly controversial Massimo Invrea as an ambassador of sorts to Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya and newly united Egypt-Sudan to make energy contracts for ENI with Enrico Mattei, often out-bidding or out-dealing British, French or American companies and both gaining the ire and consecutively assassination attempts by firstly British-French and American upper echelons of power and secondly oil companies through and once these were made public it furtherly eroded the Bel Paese public opinion against the European PACCATO members (16) , inadvertently edging a mild shift which would push Italy towards a re-approachment with the once enemy in Moscow and giving a righteous motivation for the Italian government to fund further research and development for their defence in case of a joint Anglo-Franco-American intervention (which was considered seriously by London and Paris but never by any American administrations), culminating in Mario Tchou-Olivetti mainframe computers receiveing large investments and the production of the Ambrosini Sagittario jet fighter for domestic deterrance of potential invasions but also export to developing countries such as Brazil who didn’t get much American military surplus after World War Two as it was initially supposed to and at the time was also acquiring weaponry primarily from Israel in the forms of the UZI submachinegun and helicopters from Wytwórnia Sprzętu Komunikacyjnego PZL-Świdnik S.A. of the National Republic of Poland (17).
Almirante was very anti-American in the beginning in our world even though the Americans would rather have him than any left leaning canditate
The our world border with Austria
As the Istrian-Dalmatian forced relocations and exodus occurred, this could as well have happened, a tragedy with reversed roles.
Basically all operations to get the brilliant minds of the Third Reich conducted in our world by the Anglo-Americans but done by the USSR.
He probably became infamous for other reasons since Hungary,Italy and the others jumped ship after Hitler’s death.
Ettore Muti IS no Balbo but is better than nothing in my opinion
Junio Valerio Borghese is an interesting character. He was basically an Italian Otto Skozerny, but Skozerny at least had the decency to not cooperate with organized crime against his own country
Amedeo Guillet was known as the Devil Commander because he managed to conduct guerrilla warfare with indigenous forces against the Allies in former Italian East Africa and died at the age of 101 !
Corpo Femminile Volontario di Assistenza per i Servizi Ausiliari delle Forze Armate Repubblicane would be basically what in our world were the “female” forces of the sides of the Italian Civil War. The Corpo Femminile Volontario per i Servizi Ausiliari delle Forze Armate Repubblicane and Corpo di Assistenza Femminile (so it goes a bit like Israel) and of course the police becomes a sort of Militsiya and unlike our world, it is ONLY one CENTRALIZED force instead of MANY (supposedely) CENTRALIZED forces.
So as a bit of alternate history technology and I reasoned that the Western Allies couldn’t get all of the military and paramilitary forces that didn’t manage to escape West and that the Soviet wouldn’t get all of the experts. Giuseppe Vincenzo Tucci actually exists. There are several articles on his exploits in Italian. Subhas Chandra Bose allegedly met Mussolini during his travels, though if memory serves me right there are no wide reports on this meeting or meetings. I thought it would be cool for Yamato and Musashi to survive after the global conflict and not be used as atomic target practice.
Also it would be VERY cool for Italy, Japan and India to establish ties MUCH EARLIER.
The nations that "noped" out of the Axis in 1943
Without the help of the advancing Soviets, in my humble opinion they would not be dethroned by the WAllies or Moscow for the sake of not wanting to throw bodies and waste human lives, as well as we could see the same outcome of the Chinilpa (Korean: 친일파, lit. "pro-Japan faction") of South Korea in our world.
Based on this article https://www.studenti.it/miracolo-economico-italiano-1958-1963-storia-origini-conseguenze.html I presume that since the war lasted much less and with a different Civil War the recovery would come much early, also the Vanoni Plan could likely bring results much better than our world. Also there isn’t competition from Western Germany because there is only one communist Germany. On the Polish companies : all of them existed or still exist in our world. However I don’t think there is a chance that any company after 1959 could still exist since the divergence happens a decade or more before they are being set up.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massimo_Invrea ,https://patrimonio.archivioluce.com...oni-arabi-massimo-invrea-nel.html?startPage=0 As of now I don’t know who could be an Arab speaker better than this guy, in my research there isn’t a figure that comes out which would be better suited. He was one of those who adhered to the Italian Social Republic then later the Italian Social Movement (but in this world the first didn’t exist at all and the second doesn’t have the stain of the first); I am open to better suggestions though. The assassination attempts on him and Mattei are based on the Il delitto Mattei by Egidio Ceccato, a book I recommend for those who can understand Italian.
From my superficial readings , the Ambrosini Sagittario projects never got off ground, my approximate educated guess is that since they were in NATO, there wasn’t a need for an indigenous jet fighter but I might be seriously wrong here; the reasoning here is that since they are not in an alliance (yet!) the Italian government has to get its hands on something to avoid remaining behind tech races since there isn’t the American Eagle protecting them, Italy would absolutely need to have something like this. Poland by the end of 1956 in this world is no longer subservient, so they are free to sell their own military “products” to other countries without any repercussions. Brazil getting weapons from Italy, Israel, Poland will turn useful in a few years.
Coat of Arms of the Italian People's National Republican Army after 1948
The various Italian Anti-Monarchist Forces and Otto Skozerny and Erwin arrival in Italy
Kolya had finally left Italy but wasn’t sent back home unlike he had hoped; instead, Serov had him relocated to Germany and occasionally had him also head over to the People’s Republic of the Low Countries, though his primary goal was to monitor the progress and development of the Nationaler Heimatschutzdienst, which was a very time-consuming “job” due to the fact the NHS had to be loyal to Moscow first and foremost, very few could qualify since most expert “spies” had been fierce Hitlerites.
He light up a cigarette, when one of his colleagues passed him a French newspaper; Kolya didn’t even wait for him to open his mouth and directly translated it.
<< It says Republican candidate Eisenhower wins the election against Harry Truman. Is the Soviet bomb to blame ? >> (1)
<< May I ask you for one ? >> said Malinsky, making a gesture for a cigarette.
<< Sure. We are about to have a busy day or weeks, I can’t know since it depends on two men, our boss and premier comrade Mikoyan. >>
<< You think our work is going to become harder ? >>
<< Frankly, I haven’t the faintest clue Malinksy. I have been busy with checking, double checking and so on that I hadn’t paid attention to anything that wasn’t in Berlin. >>
Malinsky approached him and whispered to him.
<< Serov thinks you knew Eisenhower. >>
<< Our boss is mighty and wise >> replied Kolya with a smile that was sardonic and sarcastic at the same time << but I only took pictures of him with Zhukov and vice versa. >>
<< What we can expect from him ? >>
<< Well, he will treat with professional courtesy Zhukov, but a capitalist is still a capitalist. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is doing like Italy and Spain and recruiting fleeing Hitlerites >>
<< Didn’t we catch them all ? >>
Kolya didn’t reply and continued to smoke. Whatever his response might have been, Ivan Serov would make sure he wouldn’t have a tongue to reply to another question.
<< We should return to work Malinsky. Unless you want to report to comrade Serov why our… new German proletarian friends are probably going to be easily crushed just like the French did to the Vietnamese >> (2)
<< I rather not…>>
Of course you would avoid the anti-Semite like the plague. (3)
His desk phone rang.
<< Jah ? >>
<< At ease Kolya. It’s me. >>
Malinsky recognized from Kolya’s frozen face who was on the other side of the line :
<< How I may be of assistance ? >>
<< You are being re-deployed elsewhere. >>
Again ?
<< Lisbon. >>
“Thanks” to German scientific minds, the USSR gets the bomb AHEAD of time, consecutively Truman stays president only for one term and gets beaten by Ike who accepts the Republican nomination. I haven’t the faintest clue who could be his VP.
The French, having to fight one years less, are just in decent enough shape they can save their Indochina territories…for now.
Serov had supposedly a sense of humour deeply anti-Semitic.
LISBON, 1951
Kolya had an immense difficulty learning Portuguese and dropping his accent took a considerable effort despite already speaking languages like Spanish and French, but now he knew the tongue of Lusitania as a native, but for what ? To be an errand boy in Salazar private inner circle, while it beat inspecting the operators in the Low Countries and Germany, it wasn’t certainly entertaining to be a glorified maître for the political entourage of Portugal. It wouldn’t last long as Serov predicted, in fact it would be an abysmal failure, a waste of time.
And he didn’t have to lift a finger.
Once he had returned to the kitchen of the palace, it didn’t take long for a miniscule error to be made by the ruler of Lusitania and Ultramar.
He put his foot wrong while going down the stairs.
Kolya didn’t see it personally, but Salazar fell down the stairs and instinctively grabbed Americo Tomas and both dropped on Marcelo Caetano. Two years and half of infiltration and subterfuge to avoid detection and it all went up in smoke because of a momentary act of clumsiness with the first two dead and the third comatose!
Serov literally was fuming with fury according to his colleagues and called the Portuguese Communist Party saying was worthless without Salazar. His boss couldn’t be more right on it, because the Portuguese President Francisco Higino Craveiro Lopes (1) wasn’t as staunchly anti-equal rights to the colonized as Salazar would have been and he witnessed it first hand.
The first acts of the new suzerain in Portugal was finding a compromise with the colonies and pacifying a potential revolt from his own colonizer countrymen, ensuring they wouldn’t think of pulling the same thing Rhodesia would do later.
The very publicized “Act of Normalization and Equalization of the Ultramarine Territoritories” was as a blessing as much as a danger to Portugal, unbeknownst to the President. The KGB knew that the Portuguese fellow Washington Response Pact members France and Spain were proposing a putsch and assassination attempt against Lopes and were hoping Eisenhower would have approved it, but he didn’t! All the possibilities Kolya could have done his job went down the toilet because lady luck was on Lisbon’s side.
Soon, he was also out of a (cover) job, with Lopes renouncing the overwhelming majority of amenities Salazar enjoyed.
Variants of the Portuguese flag after the death of autocrat Salazar and the beginning of the Normalization Period
I remember him the only one who wanted to keep the Empire united and wanted to compromise with the independence leaders of the African colonies. I might be confusing him with someone else though.
I will do the Italian Army section of this timeline as soon as I can, it turned out more difficult than I expected. This is gonna be a more a "history book" style part since as of now I am unable to move the story forward with "Kolya". Except the long tricolor banners and the photos, I made the rest myself.
During the global conflict, there was a proposal for unification of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan which saw significant opposition and was delayed until Sami al-Hinnawi, who belonged to the SSNP, came to power in Syria, resisting many coups, with the most notorious offender being by Adib Shishakli, another Syrian military leader who was arrested and executed in his prison cell in 1949 after the latest coup orchestrated by him.
Sami al-Hinnawi did everything possible to achieve Antoun Saadeh dream of an united Fertile Crescent and so held a meeting between the Iraqi and Transjordanian Hashemites to create what would become a mouthful of an official country name : the Hashemite Social National Kingdom of Greater Syria and the first order of the day after unification was to establish an Anglo-Franco-Americanophile foreign policy on the surface, since it was argued that the Comintern had clearly supported Israel through political-diplomatic recognition and letting or helping Jewish people emigrate to what was still Mandatory Palestine, though not all of them agreed on it, but the fact of the matter is that they were surrounded by somewhat pro-Western countries by all sides such Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia, the first who had to concede territory to avoid a war with Mikoyan, the second who had almost their country carved up by the Soviet Union if it wasn’t for Anglo-American pressure and Saudi Arabia had already been friendly to the United States since its founding. Just as the Anglo-French recruited former SS and Wehrmacht men into the French Foreign Legion to patrol their dominions and the Americans procured “former” Drittes Reich personnel for their newly founded Central Intelligence Agency (notable recruitment including Friedrich Panzinger from the RSHA, Heinrich Müller from the Gestapo and Otto Ernst Remer from the Wehrmacht), so did the Syrians, Turks, Iranians and Saudis. (1)
Nowadays it is not a mystery of the availability of Germans in the mercenary and intelligence “markets” during the Lukewarm War, but before the fall of Communism it wasn’t known : the rape of Germany and Austria (with an estimation of at least four million victims), pressing tens of millions of Germans into Gulag-style forced labour or mass deportations to Central Asia, the confiscation of foreign stocks,large amounts of German patents, copyrights and trademarks worth about 30 billion dollars and relocation through dismantling and relocation of surviving German industries to the Soviet Union. (2)
Japan fared a little better than Germany, but the Tokyo Trials were largely influenced by the Soviet’s Berlin Trials and the leaking of documents to the press of the Truman administration desire to have a US friendly Japan which in order to do so it would mean sparing many war criminals and intentionally sabotaging the trials ; the latter caused a scandal and uproars from surviving POWs of the Wallies not only in the United States but in France, United Kingdom, Indonesia and the Phillipines and consecutively the prosecutors only spared former Japanese Marshal Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy Isoroku Yamamoto and the Showa Emperor and the Imperial family, but all of people on trial would get the death sentence, indirectly ensuring left or left-leaning dominance in Japanese elections for a long period of time, which is ironic to think it would have been dead on arrival if Mosobaru Suzuki had vetoed Tetsu Katayama proposed budget, but historians dismiss this considering Shigeru Yoshida and McArthur’s violent repressions of the 1946-1947 riots after the strike organizers had become confrontational, which turned Japanese public opinion against the American sponsored transitional government, and it would be be clearly in the names of the successors for the IJA as the People's National Defense (人民国防
Jinmin Kokubō) and the IJN People’s Defensive Navy (人民防衛海軍 Jinmin Bōei Kaigun) and the police would be remade National People's Militia Agency (国民民兵庁 Kokumin Minpei-chō), much to the chagrin of the Gaijin Shōgun, the American President and the Emperor, with many proposals to putsch the leftists governments being discussed by the Truman and later by Eisenhower. In 1951 when the peace was definitively signed, American troops were out, with Eisenhower calling it Truman Troubles : "We spilled our blood to subdue aJapan only for MacArthur and my predecessor to turn it into a pinko monarchy". (3)
The same could not be said of China, one of the main issues of Eisenhower was an Asia First policy in the yet-to-be declared anti-communist policy, because no amount of re-assurances from his old war buddy Zhukov would convince him that Mikoyan didn’t plan aggressively to expand and he was, unlike his predecessor, in favor of preserving the Anglo-French empires and that as many countries stayed non-communist as possible, so he it was necessary to create an equivalent to the Comintern to defend from a possible Soviet invasion of Asia and Europe, therefore after he started massive public relations, logistics and supply campaign for the Nationalists in China and after months of intense fighting, the two sides and their “sponsors” came to a diplomatic agreement and borders were drawn : Sinkiang would become a satellite of Soviet Union, while Inner Mongolia would be annexed into Mongolia proper, Mao would be left with the majority of what remained of China with the exception of the South-West controlled by the KMT and associates, while Shangai would revert to their pre-1943 status; both Chinese sides, unlike their backers, were left deeply bittersweet and dissatisfied to be at the mercy of European power (but there was little room to discussion with the two nuclear armed states), especially Mao, with the Soviet-American arrangement sowing the seeds of war thirty years later. (4)
When peace was achieved in China, Eisenhower went into laying the groundwork of the Pact of Allied Collective Collaboration Assistance Treaty Organization, signed in Washington between the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain (despite initial protestations), Iceland, the Kingdom of Serbia, the kingdom of Montenegro, the State of Albania,Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia and lastly France and Italy, the most difficult of all since the Bel Paese held his terra irredenta that France claimed as legitemely theirs, but the matter was resolved through monetary reparations ; membership for Czechoslovakia, Romania, Denmark, Hungary, Turkey and Sweden were also discussed but the timing was still considered intensely inappropriate from a diplomatic-strategic perspective and have the potential to create tensions which were still not there, but Eisenhower secretly authorized financing any political party or entity that even looked mildly opposed to communism and the Soviet Union. PACCATO would later absorb “spin-off” organizations like SEATO and the Middle East Treaty Organization. (5)
With the exception of the assassination of Italian Communist leader Togliatti and the conclusion of the last phase Chinese Civil War and the threats launched against Bhose and Free India, Eisenhower’s first term (and the first phase of the Lukewarm War) afterwards became a staring contest between Washington and Moscow, the latter which was also preparing itself.
The Soviet Union not only had twenty million victims in four years of conflict but the damage was enormous and the recently failed putsch in Czechoslovakia agitated Mikoyan a lot, so the political grip was tightened in many aspects, but the economic control was being let more loose after Malenkov’s proposal were accepted as politically sound despite opposition from the hardliners, but the Armenian leader was able to found a middle ground, especially when he had reportedly told them : “We have troves and troves of human treasures from our defeated foe comrades! We might as well use them!”
Everyone from German “experts” like Wehrner Von Braun and Heisenberg to the P.O.Ws was put to work, with the only difference being the mortality rate : 88% of captured German and former Axis soldiers perished while rebuilding the Soviet Motherland and the remaining were sent to Siberia or Kazakhstan. (6)
Mikoyan also changed some of the administrative divisions of the Soviet Union : the first was re-attaching Nakhichevan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, then Russophone majority areas of Ukraine and Kazakhstan and the autonomous oblast of Crimea were transferred to the RSFSR; meanwhile the Baltic Soviet Republics were united into one, creating the Baltic Soviet Republic. Other relevant border changes was Mikoyan giving back Lwow and Wilno to Poland, as well as transferring Królewiec and Kłajpedy, to ameliorate relations between the Union and their puppet state , with the same thing happening with Slovenia which was compensated with Koroška (Carinthia) and the districts of Lipnica (Leibnitz), Lonč (Deutschlandsberg) and Jugovzhodnaštajerska (Südoststeiermark), and with the transfer finalized Mikoyan started to re-initiate Germany as an allied satellite buffer puppet state against the grand coalition that was forming under the US and the start of 1949 saw the USSR engage in many court proceedings against its own soldiers since they had to stop excesses of the Red Army and had to execute dozens of thousands because they were behaving like beasts, not to mention they had to deal with Werwolf insurgency remnants until their total annihilation at end of the year. (7)
The next year the Soviet Union created the Ministry for State Security, an intelligence service subservient to Moscow first and Berlin second, with Wilhelm Zaisser at its helm, who would later overthrow Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht with Mikoyan’s blessing after the German Uprising of June ‘53 ; four years later, the short-lived National People’s Army was fused with the Minister of State security and became the National People's State Security Army (Nationale Volks Sicherheits Armee), solidifying his control over the country, only to die a year later and succeeded by his deputy Markus Johannes Wolf. (8)
Germany wasn’t in the best mood to begin a new decade. In 1950 when the Soviet’s reckoning was over, it was still occupied (and would be for many decades) and had lost the eastern territories overwhelmingly to Poland and the other Soviet satellites of the People’s Republic of Lusatia-Sorbia as well as many parts of Austria to the People’s Republic of Slovenia (9).
Not to mention that the new German Democratic Republic was being ruled by Moscow’s lapdogs and it didn’t take long for it to be almost a perfect match of George Orwell’s Oceania of his book 1984, the main difference being that Germany was not in a state of perpetual war, but it had become the blend of stratocratic Prussia and Himmler’s Gestapo wearing a coat of crimson and gold with hammers and sickles instead of Pickelhaube and Luger pistols which for the first years was solely focused on loyalty to the communsit cause (which meant the USSR first and foremost),rebuilding a loyal army, the latter which was changed from top to bottom even in its uniforms in the long run, with the plans to phase out Wehrmacht-like uniforms with Soviet-like uniforms so much so that SSh-39 and SSh-40 helmets were being used by the National People's State Security Army and finally root out the last elements of the Werwolf insurgency. (10)
Various attempts of unifying the Near East went down in the toilet
With the Soviet Union occupying all of Germany, what happened in our world is turned to eleven. I do not condone such behaviour by ANY ARMED FORCES OF ANY KIND.
Since the juries would be overwhelmingly Soviet it is reasonable to believe they would take the gloves off and execute the majority of the Nazi socio-economical and political elite unlike to what had happened in our world ; the leak about Truman’s will to be more lenient against Japanese war criminals is fictional, I thought it was very macabre that the Americans went with kids gloves regarding Italian and Japanese war criminals; you may ask why I haven’t written about Italian trials, my reasoning is that Italy unlike postwar of our universe isn’t occupied by Anglo-Yugo-American forces, and in the previous chapters realpolitik was applied even more than our world. So what would be the best comparison with this Japan than our timeline ? It’s basically an East Asian Denmark that will resent the United States for decades to come…. The names could be wrong since I don’t know a lick of Japanese and only know one actual Japanese person. I do not know if Yamamoto would be spared OR not.
Probably there will be German POWs and consecutively more dead because they would not be spared even though Stalin is dead.
The did partly THIS in our world. I guess it goes even worse here.
Zaisser attempted BUT failed in our world. EDIT : Initially I had made Erich Fritz Emil Mielke the successor to Zaisser but since he only served since 1957, I thought it would make more sense Wolf.
Germany lost slightly worse as mentioned before.
Well I assume there wouldn’t be much need to do what the USSR did with the GDR army uniforms since they occupy of all of Germany. For reference to get an idea, Deviantart user EmperorGrieferus made various interpretations of GDR Soviet styled uniforms here https://www.deviantart.com/emperorgrieferus
EISENHOWER PRESIDENCY (1949-1957)
If WWII was won with British intelligence, American steel and Russian blood, the empires of yore would be kept intact until the first biennium of the Eighties thanks to American intelligence and money and German blood and sweat.
Eisenhower and Stassen had inherited a delicate situation with the Truman administration. Helping Chiang Kai Shek had avoided a domino effect which could have spilled over into neighboring French Indochina, Thailand and Ba Maw’s State of Burma, but the British loss of India proved to be a difficult challenge, almost compromising London’s empire, but unlike his predecessor, Ike was less for self-determination, as demonstrated his acceptance of Ethiopia’s annexation of Italian Somalia and Eritrea; Americo-Indian relations were strained to say the least and while the United States had normalized relations with Bhose just as they had done with Sukarno, the membership of Portugal and France which guaranteed no further territorial concessions or modification, meaning their overseas exclaves were also guaranteed protection and soon Bhutan, Nepal and Afghanistan (which was enlisted by the British against Bhose and got compensated with Sind, Balochistan, Indian Pashtunistan, but failed to take Punjab) were safeguarded against Free India’s potential aggressions; following the resolution of the Chinese Civil War, the administration had another headache but more close to home : the Puerto Rican Revolt ; the unincorporated territory had exploded in anger after decades of occupation and the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party had taken advantage of the absence of the overwhelming majority of the National Guard that was yet to return from China and easily took over the island, demanding justice and freedom and Ike was undecided on how to properly react and before anyone could suggest a military intervention or a similar move Stassen argued to work out a deal with the PRNP , proposing to Puerto Rican inhabitants the choice of a referendum in which they could choose to be incorporated into the Union as a new state or indepedence but this last option would have also the obligation of Puerto Rico joining not only the Organization of American States but the PACCATO alliance as well. (1)
Unsurprisingly with the PRNP control, most of their compatriots voted to be independent despite the catch of having to still be aligned with the United States even though de facto Puerto Rico wouldn’t even try to contribute anything significant during the Lukewarm War, but Eisenhower and Stassen had saved face for the time being. Their attention soon turned to the Philippines and British Malaya : both had to be dealt with quickly to show that Communism wouldn’t be tolerated ; so the United States Armed Forces in China were sent to those lands and brutally suppressed both rebellions and by February 1951 both Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930 were nearly extinct and no longer a preoccupation for the Eisenhower administration, who by then had its attention returned its attention to Japan once more, Treaty of Peace with Japan in San Francisco being signed the 8th September 1951, with Eisenhower bitterly agreeing to it despite they had to recognize Soviet authority and claims over South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands while at the same time renouncing any idea of military bases in Japan. (2)
It wasn’t long before another foreign issue came to Washington's attention, this time in Africa with the Mau Mau Uprising of the next year, with the administration reacting the same way they had done in British Malaya and the Philippines : with efficient brutality while supported by the “Germans of the French Foreign Legions”, former Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS personnel that now were footsoldiers, drill sergeants and other jobs in the French Colonial Empire.
It wasn’t all of a success for Ike however : the Central Intelligence Agency attempted regime changes in Egypt, Iran, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Paraguay had failed and it was clear as day that Washington D.C. wouldn’t always get its way; if that wasn’t enough, in 1955 the Buraimi dispute turned into a war between the US-friendly Saudia Arabia and PACCATO member United Kingdom, with the peace treaty granting the Aden Protectorate the previously lost by Yemen regions of Asir, Qunfudah,Al Bahah, Jizan and Najran, meanwhile the Trucial states got a land connection with Kuwait who would also get its claims validated and recognized; recently available documents clearly show that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was the aggressor, but the threats made Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud regarding petrol had an effect of galvanizing the VP to promote energetic self sufficiency and started a program for using the power of the atom to achieve such goal. (3)
Eisenhower’s heart attack in September 1955 complicated things and Stassen became sort of an undeclared shadow President and then another problem happened : Cyprus. Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (EOKA) had started an insurgency in April against British authorities in the Mediterranean island and when Anthony Eden requested help both him and Ike were just discussing what, who and how much to send to help, however reports started pouring in on how the British Cypriot forces were trying to maintain control : thousands of mass arrests, widespread use of torture and rape. (4)
The Soviet ambassador, while not caring about the EOKA since they were the exact opposite of Communists, took the issue to the United Nations the Cypriot Question to cause a rift in PACCATO and didn’t mince words :
<< The horrendous and Fascist-like attitude of the British Empire is hypocritical : you claim to be beacons of FREEDOM yet you have behaved like Hitlerites ! And your allies are no better ! You butchered partisans just as Turkey murdered innocents in the Istanbul Progrom >>
Eden took it as a personal affront, but both Stassen and Eisenhower had agreed (for once) that Britain had overstepped and overreacted too harshly and it was a miracle worse behavior by British army personnel had YET to be reported. In the end Cypriot unification would be decided by a popular referendum with United Nations observers with the obvious exclusion of the United Kingdom, causing a humiliating diplomatic defeat and the fall of Eden’s government, with Churchill fuming at America’s perceived betrayal. Unsurprisingly, Cyprus voted overwhelmingly to unify with their motherland, starting a destabilizing period in UK and Turkish politics, the latter having a failed coup by notorious ultranationalist Hüseyin Nihâl Atsız along with former defendants of Racism-Turanism trials, with him and Zeki Velidi Togan, Hikmet Tanyu, Alparslan Türkeş and Orhan Şaik Gökyay executed later that year in an undisclosed location. Turkey would only see re-stabilization after the military coup of 1960 and the elections and Constitutional referendum of next year (5).
The "martyr" putschits of the Turkish ultranationalist cause
Then in the last two months of the year it became evident of the instability of the French Republic, or so it seemed according to badly researched investigations and intelligence reports, probably exacerbated by the more often than not independent-minded French political class.
Stassen had to be convinced strongly it was utterly necessary to do something about the French Republic, especially because he had seen the miserable spectacles that were their past tries at interventions, rightfully pointing out their (reluctant) “allies” Spain and Portugal, who were also “recipients” of German veterans and American money, refused the help of their intelligence due to the pathetic failures that were the attempted topplings of King Farouk, Mossadegh and Arbenz which made the two Iberian autocracies realize that the Americans were incompetent in regard with espionage and counter-intelligence and had to be on their own.
Eisenhower was clear:
<< Unlike the Italians, where the far opposite sides of the political spectrum had found quid pro quos with the center, the French socio-political situation is volatile. >>
The Vice-President had unfortunately already used his political capital with Ike in persuading him to reply to Emmet Till’s mother's letter, a move that could have very well compromised his chance to become President.
<<I don’t want to put in charge people who shot our boys in France who sided with Hitler rather than their own countrymen >>
Eisenhower did agree with the sentiment and when Operation Gaul was enacted in the latter half of January 1956 the a rag-tag of military personnel of former Free French military men, whose first target after the government was none other than the man that had been their leader in wartime : De Gaulle. It is unclear how the Marshall of Free France met his untimely demise, but if reports from the Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure archives are not taken as pure speculation, he was tied, blindfolded and shot in the head, subsequently buried in the first pit found and many met an identical fate such as Minister of the Overseas François Mitterrand.
The Central Intelligence Agency and the “National Security Government” would give the same treatment to the opposite ends of the political spectrum : the Socialists lost Vincent Auriol, Daniel Mayer Guy Mollet and of the Communists only Waldeck Rochet didn’t meet the firing squad like Thorez, meanwhile former Axis collaborators like Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour either fled or got shot in the streets and the only surviving member of the French Action party was Georges-Paul Wagner unlike Pierre Boutang and others who would meet the guillotine in an almost tragi-comical repeat of history.
The “mois de silence” would be seen as a Robespierre-an and Stalin-esque show trials and purges but barely reported anywhere in the supposedly free world. Anyone who the government thought could potentially threaten the stability of the French Republic and her overseas territories was either on the government hit list or had been on the literal or metaphorical chopping block.
The new “French Reconstructionist Republic” would serve the interests of PACCATO no matter who was in charge and effectively, with the exception of the nuclear program, the military governments of the “Période directoriale américaniste” were the Parisian puppet-like extensions of Washington D.C. but thanks to the second “presidency” of Georges-Augustin Bidault, the United States would also help the colonial and economic interests of France, helping suppressing the MNA, PCA and FLN insurgencies and the movements of independence and liberation squashed in their cradle with merciless brutality, those who survived went underground and would re-emerge once the time was right. (6)
Finally a brief moment of breathing room came in the final months of Eisenhower’ second term : the first major (although diplomatic) victory against Moscow came with the 1956 Poznań protests, where a hundred thousands Polish protesters clashed against the Polish People's Army, Internal Security Corps and Służba Bezpieczeństwa, all commanded by none other than Anatol Fejgin on orders of Ministers of Internal Affairs of People's Republic of Poland Salomon Morel, former commander of the Zgoda labour camp and Jaworzno concentration camps, with him treating the protesters as “enemy insurgents and combatants” and the result was near chaos : over thirty-thousands protesters dead and nearly seven thousands wounded, but the government forces suffered eight-thousand dead and three hundred and half wounded, the consequences of this violent response was a full blown revolution due to word of mouth that grew so much that many Soviet and Polish military barracks got overpowered by massive waves of angry mobs, but the stroke that broke the camel's back was the execution of non-tenured professor of Catholic University of Lublin Karol Józef Wojtyła. (7)
Karol Józef Wojtyła, Martyr of the June Revolution
Soon, banners could be seen everywhere with written :
NIGDY WIĘCEJ!
(NEVER AGAIN!)
PAMIĘTAJ WOJTYŁA!
(REMEMBER WOJTYLA!)
Mikoyan was, understandably, livid. And panicking at the same time. Many wanted to invade to restore order, especially Molotov’s faction, but allegedly Zhukov had enough sway to convince Anastas that such action would compromise the public image of the Soviet Union.
Swallowing his pride, when Stassen confronted the USSR that if they were about to a free Poland they would “let her go”, he accepted, but the Withdrawal Treaty that was stipulated a couple of written clauses in which the Central European nation could not join any alliance and couldn’t ban the Polish United Workers' Party. The barely organized Polish revolutionary leadership, despite expressing outrage, accepted. As the last of Soviet soldiers and People’s Polish Army left, the Polish government-in-exile quickly flew and returned to Poland to organize the first (actually free) election of Poland in decades, with victory awarded to Tadeusz Bielecki with the promise of “NEVER AGAIN!”. The election was predictable : Tadeusz Bielecki of the Nationalist faction came first, followed by Stanisław Mikołajczyk with the PSL coming second and the Stronnictwo Pracy of Jan Jankowski came third, with socialists and communists not even reaching the minimum required percentage to get into the Sejm. Bielecki, Mikołajczyk and Jankowski formed a sort of “national salvation government” and adopted the mantra of the protests that overthrew the Moskal’s puppets : NIGDY WIĘCEJ! (NEVER AGAIN!).
The only country which (initially) reacted negatively to Poland’s liberation was Israel, which was deeply worried since the cause of Poland’s revolt were two Polish Jews and Israel was afraid of losing more hundreds of thousands of their own kind to potential anti-Semitic pogroms, when just twenty years prior they had lost two million of their co-religionists to the Holocaust; Bielecki and many in his government, while they were certainly the exact contrary of Philosemitism, would adopt a strategy of polityka realistyczna with Israel since they shared along an analogous situation of hostile neighbors (USSR and their German puppet with Poland and Israel with the Kingdom of Syria, Lebanon and the Kingdom of Egypt) and they would collaborate secretly with South Africa and Sweden in their nuclear weapons program research. (8)
A transcript of a recording between an operative and Mikoyan reports the following :
From Nikolay [REDACTED]
“Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, we lost Poland due to the brutal brainless machinations of Fejgin and Morel and I had told my superior that both were liabilities to the cause of the Communist International. Morel used methods which could only be described as butchery, I don’t think even the Fascists me and my comrades fought in the Great Patriotic War would go so low as them. It is no surprise that the Polish workers reacted as they did by defenestrating and impaling Fejgin and tearing apart Salomon.
I would advise a cautious approach from now on.”
As if a heart attack that hit Eisenhower in 1955 had not been enough, he and Stassen had to deal with the Civil Rights Movement, with the American Vice President strongly lobbying for much integration efforts, publicly declaring support for the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Sweatt v. Painter (1950) McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), and pushed the general turned President to reply to Emmet Till’s mother’s letter, with Ike remarking later in life that Stassen was too much vocal and too partisan for being a second-in-command, expressing that he was surprised that they were both elected for two consecutive terms when “ everything Stassen did or said had the potential to compromise my presidency and his political future… I honestly don’t know what shocked me more, that he managed to win the primaries both times or that he won the elections in 1956 and 1960”.
They also had to constantly deal with the increasing Red Scare and McCarthyism, who “had the decency of dying of alcohol poisoning” shortly after the beginning of the Sputnik Crisis in December 1956. (9)
When he was inaugurated, Stassen first priority was to understand why the Tech Gap was happening and set the Central Intelligence Agency to find out answers : with many operators of the bureau and collaborations with MI6 and Mossad, it was discovered that the Soviets as they were “liberating” Norway, the Low Countries and Germany, had initiated Operation Osoaviakhim which wielded enormous results for the Soviet Union, not only as a bittersweet recompense but also to close the military gap Moscow had, with the hundreds of former Nazis experts helping Mikoyan’s Comintern to surpass the Americans in those fields in that period, later becoming the reason for legitimising and kickstarting the Comintern cybernetics camp.
As a matter of fact head of the Soviet space program’ Valentin Petrovich Glushko couldn’t have asked for better help in his projects than the insight of the Third Reich’s former “employees”, a sentiment shared by many of his colleagues and affiliates such as the mathematician Mstislav Keldysh and Igor Kurchatov, the latter bittersweetly remarking “We wouldn’t had the power of the atom so quickly if we hadn’t spilled so much blood to conquer Germany”.
The list of people captured in the Operation was enormous (10) :
Aeronautics and rocketry
Eugen Sänger
Hans Amtmann
Herbert Axster
Erich Ball
Oscar Bauschinger
Hermann Beduerftig
Rudi Beichel
Anton Beier
Herbert Bergeler
Magnus von Braun
Wernher von Braun
Ernst Czerlinsky
Theodor Buchhold
Walter Burose
Adolf Busemann
GN Constan
Werner Dahm
Konrad Dannenberg
Kurt H. Debus
Gerd De Beek
Walter Dornberger - head of rocket programme
Gerhard Drawe
Friedrich Duerr
Ernst R. G. Eckert
Rudolph Edse
Otto Eisenhardt
Krafft Arnold Ehricke
Alfred Finzel
Edward Fischel
Karl Fleischer
Anton Flettner
Anselm Franz
Herbert Fuhrmann
Ernst Geissler
Werner Gengelbach
Dieter Grau
Hans Gruene
Herbert Guendel
Fritz Haber
Heinz Haber
Karl Hager
Guenther Haukohl
Karl Heimburg
Emil Hellebrand
Gerhard B. Heller
Bruno Helm
Rudolf Hermann
Bruno Heusinger
Hans Heuter
Guenther Hintze
Sighard F. Hoerner
Kurt Hohenemser
Oscar Holderer
Helmut Horn
Hans Henning Hosenthien
Dieter Huzel
Walter Jacobi
Erich Kaschig
Ernst Klauss
Theodore Knacke
Siegfried Knemeyer
Heinz-Hermann Koelle
Gustav Kroll
Willi Kuberg
Werner Kuers
Hermann Kurzweg
Hermann Lange
Hans Lindenberg
Hans Lindenmayer
Alexander Martin Lippisch
Robert Lusser
Hans Maus
Helmut Merk
Joseph Michel
Hans Milde
Heinz Millinger
Rudolf Minning
William Mrazek
Hans Multhopp
Erich Neubert
Hans von Ohain
Robert Paetz
Hans Palaoro
Kurt Patt
Hans Paul
Fritz Pauli
Arnold Peter
Helmuth Pfaff
Theodor Poppel
Werner Rosinski
Heinrich Rothe
Ludwig Roth
Arthur Rudolph
Friedrich von Saurma
Edgar Schaeffer
Martin Schilling
Helmut Schlitt[
Albert Schuler
August Schulze
Walter Schwidetzky
Ernst Steinhoff
Wolfgang Steurer
Heinrich Struck
Ernst Stuhlinger
Bernhard Tessmann
Adolf Thiel
Georg von Tiesenhausen
Werner Tiller
JG Tschinkel
Arthur Urbanski
Fritz Vandersee
Richard Vogt
Werner Voss
Theodor Vowe
Herbert A. Wagner
Hermann Rudolf Wagner
Hermann Weidner
Georg Rickhey - director of the slave labour Mittelwerk factory
Walter Fritz Wiesemann
Philipp Wolfgang Zettler-Seidel
Architecture
Heinz Hilten
Hannes Luehrsen.
Electronics - including guidance systems, radar and satellites
Wilhelm Angele
Ernst Baars
Josef Boehm
Hans Fichtner
Hans Friedrich
Eduard Gerber
Georg Goubau
Walter Haeussermann
Otto Heinrich Hirschler
Otto Hoberg[
Rudolf Hoelker
Hans Hollmann
Helmut Hölzer
Horst Kedesdy
Kurt Lehovec
Kurt Lindner
JW Muehlner
Fritz Mueller
Johannes Plendl
Fritz Karl Preikschat
Eberhard Rees
Gerhard Reisig
Harry Ruppe
Heinz Schlicke
Werner Sieber[
Hans K. Ziegler
Material Science (high temperature)
Klaus Scheufelen
Medicine . biological weapons, chemical weapons, and space medicine
Theodor Benzinger,
Rudolf Brill,
Konrad Johannes Karl Büttner, Fritz Laves, Richard Lindenberg, Ulrich Cameron Luft, Walter Schreiber, Hubertus Strughold, Hans Georg Clamann, and Erich Traub.
Nuclear Program
Heinz Barwich
Ludwig Bewilogua
Erich Bagge
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
Max von Laue
Karl Wirtz
Karl-Hermann Geib
Peter Adolf Thiessen
Justus Mühlenpfordt
Nikolaus Riehl
Physics
Gunter Guttein,
Manfred von Ardenne
Gustav Ludwig Hertz
Gerhard Schwesinger
Gottfried Wehner
Helmut Weickmann and Friedwardt Winterberg
Chemistry and Chemical engineering
Helmut Pichler
Leonard Alberts
Ernst Donath
Josef Guymer
Hans Schappert
Max Josenhaus
Kurt Bretschneider
Erich Frese
NOTES :
I thought about Ike needing all the men he could get to save KMT China so gets also from Puerto Rico, leaving it unguarded and open to free itself (with clauses of course)
I reason that both him and Stassen would even go HARDER than Truman did in our world.
The Buraimi dispute didn't go in that direction, here it turns into an actual war since the British Empire is more bent on keeping it together after loosing India to Bhose
This is based on historical facts unfortunatly
Plausible in my opinion
The CIA has to get their shit together at some point
With Salomon Morel and Anatol Fejgin actually paying for the crimes they commited, I think Polish-Israeli relations could POTENTIALLY go better. I see as realistic as Wojtila as potential victim of a reprisal. The only plausible (in my humble "passionate of history but not expert or anything" opinion) the only way the Polish would kick out the Comintern troops and loyalists would be if the Communist authorities OVERREACT MASSIVELY
Poland and Sweden DID have nuclear programs during the Cold War but were inconclusive unlike South Africa and Israel.
Some thing went as they did in our world. The reason why Sputnik was developed and launched earlier can be seen below.
Due to the USSR getting further than our world, it would stand to reason that they would also get the lion's share of the most brilliant minds of the Third Reich and in turn get more technological advances than our "timeline" got.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Edited Yamamoto'survival , which would probably happen since the circumstances that lead to his death would not happen.
Added an expande (first) part on the Eisenhower and (now) Stassen presidencies.
Added the Cyprus Emergency with another POD.
Point 5 was edited, there isn't a ultranationalist Turkey, leaders get executed.
This took forever to put down, reason and so on. I can understand fully why this subgenre is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to do in a way that makes sense, especially since I have much less breathing room than an Axis (total or partial) victory scenario or Confederate States victory.
The Cold War, unlike the first 45 years of the 20th century, while it is (for me at least) more interesting than the millenias that preceded it, it has so many nuances and little events and stuff happening that to develop an alternate timeline becomes more time consuming.
@archipeppe@Dilandu@Antonio I am working on the Italian side of the Cold War. Thing is, I am trying to search for stuff (aircraft and aircraft carriers, tanks and so on) but having difficulty finding proposals here or good drawings.
Since you guys are clearly more expert than me, what do you suggest?
Sorry for seemingly abandoning this but a lot of stuff happened. I was fighting in court because of my father, which in the end had to settle with me and now he is trying one against me, my mother and my sister to take the house here in Italy.
Difficult times, I see. I wish you could find the less harmful solution.
About your question on Cold War military unbuilt hardware, you're in the best place to carry out your research. Just start browsing the threads and then you'll find a list additional related subjects in the right side of the window. Try also with the advanced search engine.
My advice is you better ask for help with specific questions, because general questions could take considerable effort to be answered.
Hitler's loss doesn't solve Germany's needs or problems. Even a peace with Stalin doesn't solve them.
Only a financial rescue from the Allies can save Germany from economic collapse.
1943 is intriguing, because the UK hasn't run out of Belgian gold until that year, having run out of it's liquid assets in '42.
It's thus in UK interests to turn to peace and focus on retention of the profitable parts of the Empire.
It's definitely their interest to have a change of regime in France and Berlin.
It's not actually in the US interests for Britain to stop borrowing money.
Nor is it apparently in FDRs administrative interest to stop fueling the Soviets. Help they gave for free....
USSR is effectively happy to take upto East Germany. That narrows access to a defensible stretch of land....and by that logic the Balkans, Hungary and Czechoslowakia. This means Stalin will look for excuses to take them.
India is....a controversial topic. As is Thailand.
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