The Third World War

This is a research paper from an alternate world. Spot the fictitious people in this world if you can…

Background

Stalin did not keep a diary, he did not go on television or radio, and therefore we do not know for sure why he ordered the attack on his former allies. This history can only offer conjecture for the reader, please write if you have any other ideas.

The probable point when Stalin decided to take all of the Eurasian Mainland and impose communism was the discovery by Germany of the graves of polish troops, killed by Russians, at Katyn, 1943. Following on the heels of a Soviet claim to have released all polish officers to the allies; it soured relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. The US had a large polish community, who promptly began pressing their congressmen to demand a full accounting of war prisoners and to guarantee Poland’s 1939 borders. They soon managed to force FDR to make the supply of more lend-lease dependent upon Stalin agreeing to such conditions.

Seeing that it was open season on communists, Hoover ordered the arrest and interrogation of a number of scientists belonging to the Manhattan project, the project to build an atomic bomb. Stalin had been receiving nuclear secrets from the communists in the project, now that pipeline had been cut off and his paranoia was simulated. Determined to prevent a US war on the USSR, he acted to destroy possible resistance movements and built up in secret for the invasion of Western Europe.

Noting the chaos in America, Winston Churchill ordered the British high command to draw up plans for an attack or defensive moves against the red army. Soviet spies hear of this and Stalin makes a grin decision: as soon as Germany is rendered helpless, he will attack the west.

Recently, research by the noted historian David Atwell has opened a new field of speculation. It appears that a cabal of Soviet generals created evidence that the west was planning a surprise attack for Stalin to keep his attention focused outwards instead of holding another purge[1].

Having encircled Berlin and blocked all passages to the city, Stalin ordered the Red army to rest for a few days, while bombing Berlin with Allied planes and then ordered the red army to attack across the stop line near Leipzig.

The Soviet attack had varying levels of success. Some of the allied commanders, such as Patton, had expected such a move and had made limited preparations. Others had not expected to be attacked when the Soviets arrived to shake hands with their allied counterparts and surprise was total. Fortunately, most of the allied forces were back from the lines and the Soviets failed, barely, to destroy them in the first blow.

However, the allies were pushed back largely by the masses of Soviet tanks, which were better than the allied tanks, and were slowly pushed back towards the Rhine. Some confusion was caused by stay German units that attacked both sides indiscriminately and by the propaganda of the Soviet forces, which effectively sabotaged France’s ability to fight as a civil war threatened to breakout in the allies rear. The actions of General Montgomery[2], who ordered the mass arrest and shooting of French Communists and the support he received from DeGualle, remains controversial to this day. Their actions may have stopped a full-scale civil war, but caused the death of DeGualle by a lone sniper and the accusation that Montgomery had planned it that way to dispose of a thorn in Britain’s side.

Meanwhile, after some shock, the allied high command had been building a defence line on the Rhine River and prepared to stop the Soviet Army there.

The use of allied air power was extremely vital to stop the Soviets from hitting the Rhine before the allies were ready. British and American fighters were superior to the Soviet fighters, while being heavily outnumbered in most places, and the Soviet bombing capability was far inferior to the allied power. Soviet tank columns and supply bases were regularly bombed before they could be moved and allied radar helped the outnumbered allied forces to intercept Soviet air raids.

Allied naval power was not able to be decisive, but it wiped out the remaining U-Boats and what elements of the Soviet navy dared to come out for battle were swiftly sunk. American Marines were able to land in the Baltic’s and Finland and quietly supply arms for a resistance movement.

The Battle of the Rhine was the single worst battle ever won by the western allies in the entire history of warfare. Fought in July 1945 in dropping snow and terrible cold, 47 British and American divisions, 14 of which were armoured, faced off against 170 Russian divisions, 30 of which were armoured. The Soviets had achieved a miracle in planning to get so many troops into the battle zone, even though it would be their last along those lines, and their supply situation was terrible. The attack began at three o’clock in the morning, and continued to rage for over a week.

The west had not been idle. The defence lines were dug in and well armed. Bazookas, heavy guns, even a number of captured German 88 guns, the most lethal anti-tank gun in the war, had been placed into position. There were powerful tank formations placed in reserve to act as a interception force and more reinforcements were on their way. In addition, there were around 200’000 Germans who had been press-ganged into the construction and used as cannon fodder by both sides. Poles, Czechs and Italians were also present. The whole world held its breath.

By far the oddest addition to the lines was a Spanish force. Franco had crushed a communist uprising just after the war began and he was now able to send forces to aid the west. Some of these were survivors of the ‘blue division’, who had seen action against the Soviets before, and were more than willing to fight them again.

It’s hard for anyone to say when the battle really began. Before the main Soviet thrust, there a number of clashes between advance patrols of the two armies, which had elasticised into small battles involving tanks. In his memories, Marshall Zhukov would claim that these had been intended to lure the allied tanks out of the defence line. If so, it failed.

The battle was defiantly on when the Soviets launched a combined arms assault on the northern end of the line near Bonn. This attack severely dented the allied defences, but swift action managed to destroy the Soviet forces. This was evidently a sign for the rest of the Soviets, who attacked the line along its length, hoping to punch a way though. The battle continued with many brave and heroic actions on both sides, until Marshall Zhukov realised that the Soviet forces were not getting anywhere and slowed the tempo down a bit while reassigning the situation. This allowed allied bombers to smash though the Soviet air defences[3] and bomb anything with a red star on it mercilessly. This, more than anything else, won the battle, and the Soviet forces retired in disarray, their supply lines damaged and in many cases destroyed.

To add insult to Soviet injury, the German garrison of Berlin, the last forces adhering to the Third Reich, chose this moment to stage a breakout while the Soviet forces were weakened. Despite brave and fanatical actions on the part of the SS guards, Soviet forces and lack of fuel forced the convoy to stop and surrender. The Soviets now have an unusual prisoner, Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun and a number of the remaining nazi hierarchy.

Aside from the main field of conflict, there were four other parts of the world which saw the two forces collide. In order of importance, these were Iran/Middle east, Norway/Finland/Sweden, Greece and Japan/Manchuria.

The Soviets, one day after their attack on the west in Europe, ordered their forces in North Iran to advance into allied territories and occupy them. Despite being armed with older tanks, the allies were worse off at first and the few British divisions were swiftly destroyed or pushed back. The Soviets, having overrun most of Iran, advanced into Iraq in order to seize the reminder of the oil supplies, and then into northern India, (now Pakistan). Despite claiming to be a liberation movement, the Soviets committed massacres and rapes on the civilian population and shot Nehru when he attempted to form an alliance with them. The American and British forces in the pacific that had been drawn up for the invasion of Japan were soon routed to India and a daring amphibious raid on Bander Abbas managed to cut the Soviet supply lines. The force in North India was finally destroyed in early 1946, while the force that had occupied Iraq was held in the country, but was skilfully operated by its commander and remained in occupation until the end of the war. The inclusion of Turkey to the allied side (Turkey joined the west in September 1945[4], when it became obvious that the Soviet position in the middle east was declining) allowed bombing raids on the Soviet oil refineries in the Caucasus.

The battle of Norway went very differently. The British 1^st airborne division had landed in Norway with instructions to accept the surrender of the German forces. In a race piece of pragmatic thinking, the commander of the force had secret instructions to persuade the Germans to aid the allies in any defence of Norway if the Soviets came over the border from Finland. The German Commander, General Franz Bohme, wanted to surrender, but he was worried about the possibility of being handed over to the Soviets. Once certain guarantees had been made, he surrendered to the Norwegian resistance. Many of the German troops were willing to fight the Soviets, especially after rumours of Russian rapes and other atrocities leaked out, but others just wanted to go home. The Soviets were not, however, going to allow the allies to establish themselves in Norway unopposed, and they attacked from Finland with the reluctant (obtained at gunpoint) cooperation of the Finns. Throughout the war, the Americans and the Finns had maintained diplomatic relations and secret plans were drawn up after the war continued to supply the Finns with weapons and equipment. Once the Americans could spare a large number of old Sherman tanks, the Finns received in secret several hundred of them. However, the Finns had to wait to strike until the battle of Tronso, when the Soviet forces were defeated by the German and British forces dug into the hills and the Swedes entered the war. Once that happened, the Finns attacked the Russian rear and defeated them in a number of pitched battles across Finland.

The Grecian civil war erupted in late 1945 as communist and monarchist forces fought for dominance over Greece. The British had been trying to supply the anti-communist factions with some help from Turkey, which had demanded Cyprus in return. This had served as excellent propaganda for the communists and attracted many Greeks who cared nothing about communism to their side. Luckily for both sides, the need for supplies prevented all-out war from developing until 1947, when the British and Americans were able to spare supplies for the monarchists and the Soviets were desperate enough to send older tanks (dating from the winter war) in hopes of providing a deterrent to allied attacks. After some unpleasant fighting, the monarchists won the war in 1949 and accepted a co-dominion over Cyprus with turkey, meditated by Britain.

The conflict in Manchuria was the most confused campaign of the war and left a legacy of hatred, loss and destruction that was even worse than the battle of Stalingrad. The need to hold American forces in Europe or divert them to Iran caused operations on land against Japan to be toned down until the current crisis was resolved. Any rational and sensible government would surrender, and indeed the Japanese did offer a truce to the Americans, which was rejected. However, the American submarine blockade was held in place and American battleships would bombard the Japanese coast on occasion, most of the planes involved in the bombing campaign (along with their carriers) had been withdrawn to bomb Viviostock, the Soviet naval base. An American marine division had taken the base in September 1945, but a swift Soviet counter attack had retaken the base. The Japanese government had seen the events as a sign of divine favour and ordered their divisions in Manchuria to attack the Chinese Nationalists forces. The battles were nasty and resulted in the death of Chiang Kai-Shek, and his replacement by a committee of Chinese nationalists. Recruiting the American general Stilwell, they managed to use the Chinese army to hold the Japanese in Nanking, which had been recovered earlier. Stilwell managed to convince the Chinese to talk a truce with the Chinese communists and build a proper army using American supplies. Free of Chiang Kai-Shek’s dead hand, the model Chinese army was soon established and was used to slowly push back the Japanese. The campaign had to be put on hold when a small number of Chinese warlords revolted in western china, and had to be suppressed by brute force. Stilwell became a Chinese citizen and was the war minister for the Chinese Government until 1955, when china split up into four sections. The Japanese surrendered and their troops were ordered to attack Siberia after the first atomic bombs were dropped in 1946[5].

After the Battle of the Rhine had been declared over, hostilities simmered along for three months before any side took offensive action. This was caused by the need by both sides to prepare adequate reserves before attacking. The war was mainly fought at this point by small amounts of infantry, the tanks being held back until they were desperately needed. Finally, General Eisenhower proclaimed himself ready to begin the liberation battle and attacked towards Leipzig with nearly a thousand tanks, both Shermans and Pershings. Swiftly problems with the Shermans became obvious as they were no fair match for the modified T-34 and the JS-2 Soviet tanks, although the Pershings and the British Centurion tanks were a better match. However, the Soviets would enjoy a qualitative edge in tanks until the war ended. However, the Americans had learnt most of the required lesions in the battles against the Germans and soon learnt the remaining lessons.

The problem for the allies in the first phase was what has entered the history of warfare as Motties (Finnish word). These were forces belonging to the Soviet Union that were encircled by allied forces, but refused to surrender and had to be destroyed by bombing and artillery attack. These, even when they just stayed where they were, were a problem and a number of skilled or forced (by the NKVD) Soviet commanders used the change to run rampant behind the advancing allied lines until their supplies ran out, where upon they killed the commissioners and surrendered.

The allied attack took the front line forward to the original stop line from WW2. Both Monty and Eisenhower wanted to go further, but President Truman overruled them until early 1946, when the supply lines were properly established and the strategic bombing campaign could properly bite.

The issues behind the polish/German revolt in December 1945 are discussed below. However, the appearance of large revolts in Poland, which spread into East Germany, and distracted Soviet forces. Confusion in the allied ranks led to general Patton taking his force and launching an armoured attack in to the Soviet lines in hopes of supporting the revolts. Superfortresses and other allied aircraft flew support missions, but the terrible weather limited what they could do. Refugees soon began to appear along allied lines as the Soviets destroyed whole cities (Warsaw was burned to the ground) and created an enormous problem for allied logistics. The use of chemical weapons against Polish civilians and Patton’s column hardened American hearts for the final battle.

The conflicts that appeared behind the lines were of significant importance in four places: France, the US, Poland and the Soviet Union. The conflict in France was by far the worst, but they were all significant.

The French communists, after some confusion, had risen against the Americans and the French Provisional government about two days after the Soviet attack began. Broadcasting propaganda about how the Americans were going to establish a capitalist state covering all of Europe, they called upon the communists of the world to unite and smash the capitalists. Despite some disruptions in the UK and US, (Glasgow, Manchester and New York), they achieved very little beyond France, where they held down US troops and sabotaged the attempts of the French to rebuild their army. The rising may well have been a crucial factor in the disaster at Leipzig, where a whole US brigade was trapped and crushed by Soviet troops when their assistance had to be diverted to France. General Montgomery took command of the allied forces and ordered harsh measures against the communists, further damaging French/British relations and accidentally allowing DeGuallle to be killed in June. The uprising had be suppressed by December, but the effects of the brief civil war remain. The conspiracy theorists have had a field day on the uprising, blaming it on Stalin or on Churchill’s desire to strengthen the British Empire by sabotaging the French industry. Certainly, about seventy percent of the remaining French infrastructure was destroyed and the only help the allies gave until 1950 was help in rebuilding the transport networks. Evidence for the Soviet archives suggests that Stalin did not order the uprising, but it happened anyway, without much Soviet support. Spetnez Troopers were reported to have taken part in the conflict, but the only evidence for this is a dead body of uncertain origins.

The political scene in the US was nasty. A large number of people had admired the USSR for its resistance and were unwilling to aid in its destruction. A Majority of people, however, considered the Soviet attack to be like Pearl Harbour and were willing to go to any cost to destroy the USSR. There were a number of pogroms against communist supporters but the Truman Doctrine (1946) managed to alleviate most of the problems by promoting mixed-race army units, racial equality and a limited welfare state.

The Poles were a little unhappy about their treatment at the hands of their ‘liberators’. Polish solders had been arrested and disarmed, polish women had been raped and their country was being occupied. Not surprisingly, this led to discontent and then an uprising, with limited American and British support. The Polish communist party was able and willing to support the polish demands and acted as a cat’s paw to trick the Soviets out of whatever supplies they could get. The uprising was supposed to begin when the allies reached Poland, but the NKVD got a scent of the plot and the uprising began in December. Despite careful preparation, they never stood a chance, and were largely wiped out by February 1946. Ironically enough, Poland is the only major western country with a communist party that is legal, most of the members of the original party either having been killed by Stalin directly or in the uprising.

Behind the lines in the USSR during the war was the largest human disaster in history. Disease and deprivation stalked the land and when the Soviets started dragging up men from the Muslim SSRs, there were revolts throughout the USSR. The Stalinist regime would have been able to cope with them, but a popular uprising after the first nuclear attack led to the overthrow of the communist party in 1947 and the break-up of Russia[6].

Having gathered the greatest land force in history, the allies began operation unthinkable, the invasion of Poland and the USSR. The attack began in March 1946 and was continued until the Soviet collapse. The attack was meant to liberate Poland, which succeeded in its objectives, but the plan of forcing the Soviet surrender was delayed until the first atomic bomb was dropped.

Advancing into Poland, the allies found a terrific disaster. Parts of the Soviet army had fallen to pieces, including in their ranks men from China and Korea and others, who had been drafted and simply wanted to go back home. German Troops who had been press ganged were quick to surrender, while Russian troops fought on until they lost hope or ran out of supplies. The allies methodical bombing had destroyed most of the Soviet transport net, their lorries (supplied by America as part of lend lease) had run out of spare parts or been shot off the road by allied planes. The Red Air force fought bravely, but was no match for the Hurricanes, Spitfires and the new Meteor jet fighters.

Soviet woes were not helped by the entry of Sweden into the war on the allied side. Swedish forces joined the British in Norway and the Finns to expel the Soviets from Finland and then start an attack down towards Leningrad. The Soviets had dug in there though, and managed to hold back the attack.

The decision on wither or not to use the atomic bomb had rested with president Truman throughout 1945. Once the bombs (the allies had constructed four by 1946) were ready, the Soviets had pushed the allies far back enough so that they could not be deployed on any major Soviet city. Possibly the most controversial decision of the President was not to allow them to be dropped on an eastern European city or used to impede Soviet forces as they dug in, when asked why, Truman is said to have replied; “they have enough misery without us adding to it.”

Despite this, the results of Hitler’s Barbarossa campaign were enough to turn even General Montgomery’s hair white when considering the possibility of a campaign in Russia. This caused Truman to order plans drawn up for the use of one of the bombs and, when Finland was liberated, allowed one of the Superfortresses to be based there and then ordered to fly to Leningrad and destroy it. On may 23^rd, 1946, Leningrad was reduced to radioactive rubble and the Soviet Union neared disintegration.

Quite why Stalin did not sue for peace is uncertain, but analysis of captured documents suggests that he expected the Soviet atomic project to have been able to deploy a device and stave off total defeat with it. Quite what happened is unclear, but the pertinent fact that greeted allied leaders two weeks later was a massive discharge of radiation in Brest-Livestock, just after the allied spearheads had reached that area. It soon became clear that the Soviet bomb had merely fizzled, rather than exploding[7].

While disruption racked the Soviet Union, the allies decided that it was time to crush Stalin once and for all. Advancing into the vacuum of the Leningrad explosion, the allies launched one more atomic bomb mission, Target: Moscow.

Ironically, it seems that Stalin had contracted a fatal case of lead poisoning just before the bomb hit. Certainly, Soviet troops were surrendering in droves on the day of the atomic attack and the German and allied prisoners who had been press-ganged were released. Still, the general war ended when Moscow was destroyed, as the USSR disintegrated then.

The Turks attacked upwards towards Stalingrad on the same day, and, not entirely to the pleasure of the British, they also moved into Iraq and accepted the surrenders of the Soviet troops there, establishing a position that would be used to make turkey an economic superpower by 1960.

Ironically, there was no proper peace settlement in 1946. The short-lived provisional government, made up of the reminders of the Soviet administrative machine and the army commanders, surrendered much of their troops to the allies and signed a document that handed over Leningrad to the Finns and the Caucasus to the Turks. Factions in Byelorussia and the Ukraine emerged as soon as the bomb dropped and attempted to take control of their own nation again. Communist parties were either absorbed or wiped out, as the nations fought over the spoils of the disintegrating Soviet army. US pressure helped to settle many of those problems, but conflicts between the Baltic States and Byelorussia over territory and freedom were to continue until Byelorussia withdraw from those territories under US pressure in 1950.

Japan had been almost completely wiped out by starvation. The US blockade had prevented any food from reaching the country and killed the emperor when he and his court had attempted to escape to china. Nearly seventy percent of the population had died in the war or from starvation, riots had killed most of the remaining ruling elite in 1946. US occupation probably came as a relief. Japanese forces on the mainland attacked Soviet forces in Siberia hoping to carve out a new empire on the disintegrating Soviet colossus, but Chinese forces ended that by crushing Japanese forces and overrunning much of the area involved.

A peace treaty was finally signed by Germany in 1949, Admiral Donitz signing for Germany. The nation was disarmed, rebuilt on a federal structure and occupied by forces from America, Britain, Poland and France.

American and British forces occupied parts of the former Soviet Union and attempted to form a government, but a complete occupation was impossible for logistical reasons. The successor states to the USSR recognised the American presence in the Soviet industrial areas and other places, Khamchaka and Siberia were annexed to the US in 1948, and the Mongolian SSR was briefly occupied after reports reached the Americans that the Russians had placed a nuclear faculty there. No evidence of this was ever found and it now appears to have been an intelligence blunder.

[1] Atwell, David. The Origins of the Third World War revisited.

[2] Scott Palter, in The Life of Monty, convincingly refutes the conspiracy theory, but its still popular among the French.

[3] David Clark, The USAF in the Third World War.

[4] McSporran, Fred. Turkey: Coward nation or hero?

[5] Roberts, James. The False Hope: Japan and the Third World War

[6] Blair, Scott. Scraping the Barrel: the Soviet’s search for Manpower

[7] McLachlan, John. The Soviet Bomb

The Third World War: 1945-50

Background