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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Stop ‘Em At
The 38th Parallel:
The Soviet Intervention In Korea
By Chris Oakley Part 10
January-April 1953 January 15th, 1953--In an attempt to stop or least slow down the advance of Zhukov’s forces toward the northern banks of the Yalu River, U.S. Air Force B-29s bomb Soviet and Chinese ground troop positions near the China border. January 17th, 1953--Seeking to cripple Israel’s maritime commerce and bring the Israelis to their knees, Gamal Abdel Nasser orders the Egyptian Navy to blockade the Straits of Tiran. January 20th, 1953--Dwight Eisenhower is sworn in as the 34th President of the United States; in his first major military decision as commander-in-chief, he authorizes U.S. Air Force squadrons in central Europe to begin mounting tactical bombing raids in support of the Hungarian rebels. January 21st, 1953--American warplanes bomb key Soviet military and command/control facilities in and around Budapest. January 22nd, 1953--Israeli fighter jets sink the lead ship in the Egyptian navy’s Straits of Tiran blockade line; two of her sister ships are also sunk and a third heavily damaged in the attack. This raid marks the beginning of a three-day-long IDF campaign to break the blockade line altogether. January 23rd, 1953--In retaliation for the previous day’s Israeli air strikes on the Straits of Tiran blockade line, Egyptian jets bomb the Israeli naval base at Eilat. January 25th, 1953--Bad weather, continuous U.S. bombing raids, and mechanical difficulties with a number of Soviet and Chinese armed vehicles compel Marshal Zhukov to halt his ground forces just ten miles from the northern banks of the Yalu River. They will hold this position for nearly two weeks. January 28th, 1953--The Chinese air force’s top-scoring fighter ace is killed in action while defending Shanghai against a U.S. air strike targeting the city’s industrial sectors. January 29th, 1953--The head of the Polish Communist secret police dies suddenly after a long bout with cancer; a post- mortem autopsy also reveals traces of poison in his system, suggesting he may either have been targeted for an assassination attempt or tried to commit suicide before the cancer could claim his life. January 31st, 1953--The CIA station chief in Yokohama cables the agency’s headquarters at Langley, Virginia that his field agents in Siberia have picked up indications that the Soviet navy’s two largest surviving surface warships in the Pacific are or shortly will be the scene of mutiny attempts. February 2nd, 1953--CPSU First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev is sent to a Red Army hospital to undergo surgery to remove a blood clot near his heart. February 3rd, 1953--U.S. and allied fighter jets bomb Chinese military supply dumps near the border town of Hulutao Cun. February 6th, 1953--Leonid Brezhnev is released from the hospital and resumes his duties as CPSU First Secretary. February 7th, 1953--In one of the last major naval engagements by the U.S. Pacific fleet before the end of World War III, anti-sub aircraft sink two Soviet submarines just under 80 nautical miles off San Francisco Bay. February 8th, 1953--Radio Moscow issues a bulletin claiming that Soviet and Chinese advance troops crossed the Yalu River at 8:30 PM Moscow time the previous night. The White House is quick to make a statement challenging this claim and asserting U.N. forces have in fact blocked the Communists from advancing southward. February 9th, 1953--Reuters publishes a report confirming that Soviet and Chinese ground troops have in fact tried to cross the Yalu and met with stiff resistance from U.N. forces. February 11th, 1953--A Soviet airborne division is sent to the Yalu front in hopes of breaking through the U.N. battle lines. February 13th, 1953--U.S. and Royal Navy carrier jets bomb Red Army defensive positions on the northern edge of the Yalu. February 14th, 1953--Two Red Army convoys attached to the Soviet occupation forces in Hungary are wiped out by NATO fighter jets in the so-called “Valentine’s Day air raid”. February 17th, 1953--An anti-Communist riot in the Polish city of Kielce leaves 31 people dead and 127 injured; most of the people killed in the riot are civilians shot dead by Communist security forces. February 19th, 1953--After receiving intelligence warnings of an possible impending Soviet nuclear strike against Inchon, U.S and South Korean authorities begin a precautionary evacuation of the provisional South Korean capital. February 21st, 1953--Leonid Brezhnev convenes a special session of the CPSU Central Committee to get their candid assessment on whether a Communist victory is still possible in Korea. To his dismay, the Committee almost unanimously agree the situation in that theatre is untenable. February 22nd, 1953--South Korean civilians begin returning to Inchon as fears of a Soviet nuclear attack on the city start to recede. February 24th, 1953--U.S. Air Force fighter jets dive-bomb Red Army and PLA troop concentrations along the northern banks of the Yalu River. February 25th, 1953--The Soviet ambassador to China meets with Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai for consultations on the possibility of resuming cease-fire negotiations with the U.S. and its allies; those negotiations have been suspended for at least 18 months and political pressure is building in both the Soviet Union and China for an end to hostilities. February 27th, 1953--The Communist Chinese government sends a message to the U.S. State Department through the Yugoslavian embassy in Washington stating the People’s Republic of China is ready to resume cease-fire talks with the United States and its allies at the earliest possible date. The State Department says it will take the offer under advisement. March 2nd, 1953--In a White House press conference, President Truman announces that U.S. diplomats will be traveling to Geneva in two days’ time to resume cease-fire negotiations between the U.N. coalition and the Communist bloc. March 4th, 1953--U.N. and Communist representatives assemble in Geneva for the resumption of cease-fire negotiations to end the Third World War. March 5th, 1953--Hungarian anti-Soviet partisans blow up two Red Army munitions depots in southern Hungary. March 7th, 1953--After nearly a month’s delay due to last-minute procedural disagreements, the U.S. Supreme Court hears opening arguments in the ACLU’s petition to overturn the Anti-Communist Security Act. March 9th, 1953--Soviet occupation forces in Hungary destroy a major rebel munitions cache northeast of Budapest in retaliation for the March 5th rebel attack on Soviet munitions stores down in the southern part of the country. March 10th, 1953--The official Chinese government news agency Xinhua announces the sudden death of Mao Zedong from an apparent heart attack. March 12th, 1953--Soviet air force jets bomb NATO positions in eastern Poland in a desperate attempt to thwart the advance of U.S. and allied ground troops toward the Polish-Soviet border. March 13th, 1953--NATO warplanes strike Soviet airbases near the Polish-Soviet border in response to the Soviet bombing raids of the previous day. March 16th, 1953--Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong’s longtime foreign minister, is named as Mao’s successor as head of the Chinese Communist government. March 19th, 1953--Joseph McCarthy makes a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate predicting, in his words, “catastrophe” for the American people if the Anti-Communist Security Act is ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. March 21st, 1953--The John Birch Society, America’s leading far right political action group, issues a bitter denunciation of President Truman’s decision to resume peace negotiations with the Soviet Union and China; the society chairman accuses Truman of treason. March 22nd, 1953--Hungarian rebels occupy the headquarters of the country’s official state radio service. March 24th, 1953--The New York Times prints an editorial which passionately defends the Truman Administration’s decision to resume cease-fire negotiations with the Soviet Union and China and harshly criticizes the John Birch Society president for his“treason” comments. Outraged by the Times’ denigration of its March 27th, 1953--Making good on the threats it first issued three days earlier, the Birch Society stages the first of its daily rallies outside the offices of the New York Times. Six people are arrested for disturbing the peace. March 29th, 1953--People from the ACLU’s New York City local branch begin holding daily counter-demonstrations against the John Birch Society in support of the New York Times. The paper sees a 40 percent jump in reader subscriptions thanks in part to a campaign by the national ACLU leadership encouraging its members to subscribe to the Times as a show of defiance against the Birch Society. March 30th, 1953--The U.S. Supreme Court hears closing arguments in the ACLU’s petition to overturn the Anti-Communist Security Act. That same day Joseph McCarthy calls for the impeachment of any Supreme Court justice who rules in favor of overturning the act. April 2nd, 1953--Polish anti-Communist political figures meet in Gdansk to begin drafting what they hope will become the basis of a post-Communist constitution for Poland. April 3rd, 1953--By a vote of 5 to 4 the U.S Supreme Court rules the Anti-Communist Security Act to be unconstitutional. In the majority opinion, the justice who cast the deciding vote against the act says it constitutes “a gross violation of the guarantees of free speech provided by our First Amendment”; the dissenting April 5th, 1953--Joseph McCarthy files a bill in the U.S. Senate calling for a thorough restructuring of the Supreme Court; under the terms of this bill SCOTUS judges would be elected instead of appointed to their positions on the bench. He tells his Senate peers the proposed reform is necessary in order to put a stop to April 6th, 1953--En route home after an inspection tour of NATO bomber bases in Europe, U.S. Air Force general Curtis LeMay is killed when his personal aircraft collides with an RAF transport plane over the coast of Scotland. His demise temporarily knocks the NATO bombing campaign off balance, as General LeMay was one of the U.S. military’s foremost experts on strategic bombing at the time of his death. April 10th, 1953--Leonid Brezhnev dies unexpectedly of a stroke just before midnight; Nikita Khrushchev takes over as CPSU First Secretary, and in his first official act orders that cease-fire talks with the West continue. April 15th, 1953--The chief U.S. negotiator in the cease-fire talks to end the Third World War declines to comment on rumors a pact is imminent.
To Be Continued
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