Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Cold War Rosy

[This was a challenge scenario from alternate history group at yahoo – save as much as you can via a different Yalta]

The West biggest initial problems was FDR.

FDR was depending on your views a sick man, a fool or both by 1945.

He f***** up absolutely everything he touched and then left Truman completely unprepared and out of the loop. With FDR in nominal charge nothing improves.

So have FDR have a stroke New Year's Eve but linger till January 30th.

The rest of FDR's cabinet and the powers in the Democratic Party despised the lame duck VP Wallace. At best Wallace was what the Leninists call a useful idiot on the subject of the SU. The Venona Intercepts seem to say he was a Soviet intel source whether witting or otherwise. So he gets frozen out of the remaining days of FDR’s term. A war cabinet runs the country while Truman is brought up to speed. The open split leads Truman to do a purge - Harry Hopkins, Wallace, Dexter White, Alger Hiss and the rest of the pro-Soviet element of FDR's government go out with FDR's body.

Truman goes to Yalta and it is a VERY different Yalta.

Truman was a pugnacious US nationalist, not a Wilsonian fool like FDR. Truman accepts the basic outline of the occupation zones but the Mr Nice Guy act ends there. There is no way to save Eastern Europe. So the concentration is on saving Eastern Europeans - Polish nationalists/Home army, Rumanian and Hungarian democrats and monarchists...it is made clear that continuing Lend Lease post war is contingent on the Anglo-Saxons being able to scoop up as many anti-Communists as possible. Truman asks Stalin to take pesky Reds from our zones, especially French and Italian. [For those of you who saw the original version of this I am basically leaving Greece out per Demitrios’ criticisms – I claim what little understanding I have of the Greek situation as coming from sources who saw it from a Cold War standpoint so we will just leave Greece a republic but within the Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence]. It is agreed that Czechia, Turkey and Croatia/Slovenia will be in the Anglo-Saxon sphere and Slovakia and the rest of Yugoslavia in the Soviet Zone.

In addition, a different deal is made on the Far East. The Kuriles and the Korean peninsula south of the waist are in the US Zone. Manchuria, North China, Sinkiang and far North Korea in the Soviet. Each side is to supervise ‘their’ Chinese.

Returning from Yalta Truman stops for a week in London. First a deal is made with the UK. In essence Lend Lease will be continued after war's end [call it the Marshal Plan 3 Years early]. Plan will cover the UK and those nations willing to sign up for a proto-NATO [an anti-German no more wars alliance under Anglo-Saxon command]. As part of the deal Churchill and Atlee agree that whoever wins the post war election the UK will keep a national government for duration of the US aid period. Truman sells this at home as a way of cushioning the expected postwar Depression and as a way to make sure we don't have a 3rd world war.

Italy, Norway, Denmark and the Benelux agree to discuss negotiating. France balks but sees merit in 'encouraging' armed French Reds to 'return to the Socialist motherland' - i.e. DeG forcibly disarms the more extreme Stalinists and ships them off to Russia.

Ike is also called to London and given clear written instructions for the balance of the war. His goal in Germany is link up with the Soviets hopefully on the Elbe but as convenient. Racing Stalin to Berlin is out. Taking Kiel and Lubek is key to liberate Denmark and made a major objective. So is occupying Prague and as much of Bohemia/Moravia as possible. The next priority is a linkup with the 15th Army Group coming up from Italy. The Alpine redoubt intel is written off as meaningless -there is no industry in that area and no enough food.

Finally the Big Two issue a proclamation that continued resistance by the Greek Reds to the British occupation forces in Greece will be treated as an act of war against the Allies. A Greek Republic is formed with the local Reds allowed a party as long as it foreswears all allegiance to Moscow. The Royalists are allowed a political party and promise of a referendum on the monarchy after 24 months of postwar reconstruction aid.

War in Europe ends without a formal surrender. Truman has flown back to London the end of April, met with Churchill. The two have then together flown to Ike's HQ in Paris to personally handle any negotiations. When Donitz tries to arrange a surrender they refuse to do anything without having their ambassadors in Moscow confer with Stalin and get him to send a representative. The excuse is how badly the Soviets reacted to the Axis surrender on the Italian front. [Stalin all but accused the West of doing a separate anti-Soviet alliance]. Stalin responds with typical paranoia. War drags on for another week as the remaining German forces and a horde of civilians retreat into the western lines. Ultimately there are local surrenders in Norway, Denmark, Crete and the bypassed fortresses but no specific V-E day. The fronts link up through the 2nd and 3rd week of May. All goes well most places. However Tito gets into several shooting incidents in Slovenia and Istria. West responds in kind and there are a series of battles in which Tito's forces are knocked back into Croatia. Tito seizes the Western military missions as hostages. It takes into June to get the missions released. In the interim Stalin puts a freeze on repatriation of western POW's [he overran several hundred thousand western POW's - mostly downed air crews]. We have suspended aid through this. Lines have hardened. Soviets have set up Red governments in Norwegian Lapland, Persian Azberjain and Kurdistan. We have held our positions on the Elbe in the Sov Zone of Germany and they have not allowed us into our zones in Vienna and Berlin.

Potsdam is supposed to sort all this out. Given the trouble with the Soviets Truman is hesitant about the idea of invading Japan. He is even more hesitant after seeing the casualties from Iwo and Okinawa. So Nimitz is instructed that Japan and adjacent areas are a Navy theatre [putting Macarthur and his plans for an invasion of the Home Islands into AH limo] and that the next target is Pusan in Korea to complete the blockade of Japan. Truman also has us contact the Japanese embassy in Switzerland with a modification of unconditional surrender. We are willing to preserve the institution of the Emperor under an American occupation Shogun with the Japanese people to vote on keeping the monarchy at the end of the occupation [essentially what actually happened but earlier].

Tokyo accepts the offer and Truman announces the surrender of Japan on day one of the conference. Stalin has a tizzy. He's a month from being ready to attack Japan. We propose that Zhukov and Molotov be detailed to Nimitz's HQ to go into Tokyo with our advance team to work out a Japanese withdrawal schedule in Manchuria. The conference essentially marks the beginning of the Cold War instead of the end of the wartime alliance. Aid is resumed but directly tied to people coming out - it is ransom, Danegeld. Put that way we get the people we want but in fits and starts into 1948-49. Needless to say word that hundreds of thousands of Anglo-Saxon prisoners are being held hostage makes a tough line politically possible. Churchill still gets clobbered in the general election but stays on as Deputy PM in a national government. UK goes welfare state but the lurch to the left is moderated by Marshall Plan commitments - UK desperately needs the cash and is willing to be more moderate to get rebuilt.

DeG prefers to be difficult. Wants to be a 3rd force. West buys him out of his right to occupation zones in Germany and gets a year to evacuate France in return for a one-time large aid payment in the range of $1 billion in US, UK, Canadian goods and food.

Tito complicates matters by trying for Trieste and Slovenia one last time. In the 3-week summer campaign Ike knocks him out of Croatia, Dalmatia, Herzegovina. Stalin ends the stupidity by sending the Red Army into Belgrade and chasing Tito into the Bosnian mountains. Beria will take 2 years to have his police commandos hunt the last Titoists down. Tito ends his life in 1947 in Red Square at the end of a rope. Three million Yugoslavs flee into the Allied lines.

Meanwhile in China there is a de facto partition. Chiang has occupied Tientsin and south with the Red Army and Mao occupying the north. No Chinese CW as Red China is firmly brought into the proto Warsaw Pact under Chu Te and Lin Biao. Mao dies of an ‘autocrash' while in Moscow for consultations. Chiang is needless to say not pleased with this state of affairs. His continual spats with the US lead us to go back on our Cairo promise of giving him Taiwan. US occupies Taiwan instead and sets up a local administration under US military.

The last bit of actual war ends with the fall of Tito but the leftovers of WW2 linger for a decade. The Dutch are faced with nationalist and Red revolts in their East Indian territories. The war there drags on inconclusively into the early 50's. Eventually the separate pieces of the East Indies attain independence under varying Australian, Dutch, US and British protection. Two million people die and another million choose exile into Soviet China. Java will be restive for a further generation but the rest adapt well.

In Palestine the Jewish resistance is crushed by deportations. Given the Soviet sympathies of much of the Zionist movement there is simply no way that we will permit a Soviet satellite so near to the Suez Canal. Arab Palestine gets its independence in 1947. 60% of the former Jewish residents are resettled in the Russian zone of East Germany and the remainder allowed to settle in various western nations.

In Malaya a police emergency drags on into the 1960's.

The French colonial campaign in Indochina goes on into the 1970's devastating that lovely nation as the Viets lack the firepower for stand-up battles and the French lack the money for a big enough army to occupy the whole country in enough strength to permanently beat down the Reds and Nationalists.

France eventually does join the Western block but always keeps its distance. It is minimally in the West and is never given the aid the others are.

With Stalin's death in 1953, Beria assumes control. The USSR directly annexes its satellites. Most of the remaining Germans and Austrians are bought out in one last hostage deal with payments into the late 50's. The small western zone in Austria is merged into the new West Germany which is allowed to join the British led EFTA which is in turn linked to NAFTA [US, Canada and most of the Carib]. France is an associate EFTA member. The key nations in the EFTA are UK, Germany and Italy but it also includes the Benelux, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia, Greece and Turkey. The price of Turkey's admission is the union of Greece and Cyprus with US, Turkish and UK guarantees for the Turkish minority via forces at the treaty bases. Lebanon, Iraq, Persia, Palestine, Jordan, Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, Eire, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland are associate members by individual treaty [no 2 deals the same].

India-Pakistan is still the disaster it was in OTL.

So is Algeria

UK has spent large sums building infrastructure in its African and Asian ex-colonies so they come to independence better prepared and with small consumer export sectors to repay their building loans. The contrast between British and French Africa is a never-ending source of discussion. The French lacked the money and foresight to do any of this. Belgian Congo and the Portuguese Empire are intermediate cases, better than the French but MUCH worse than the British. Britain has also done similar measures in their pseudo-imperial areas of Libya, Ethiopia and Somalia.

So the Beria Detente leads to the end of the Cold War. The world has two rival blocks with some powers [France, Java, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, India] trying to manoeuvre between them. However the threat of world war ends in the mid 1950's as both sides go to a defensive armaments stance and work on building economic ties.

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