Before I leave for holiday, I'd like to launch a little challenge: how would the world have developed in the fifties-sixties and beyond, culturally, technologically and politically if WWII had gone more or less as OTL but there had been no Iron Courtain and no Cold War? What different decisions could have led to this scenario, if indeed it's even possible?
No Cold War or a Different Yalta
- Thread starter Lord Hastur of Carcosa
- Start date
In order for this to be possible, you need the Axis pushed out of Africa by the end of 1942 at the latest, and then the forces which would otherwise have been there are deployed in the East instead, getting the Allies not only to Berlin first, but more or less to the 1937 borders, with the Baltic States and former eastern Poland liberated by the West rather than by the Soviets.
the sad mafioso
Banned
For this situation to occur, you would absolutely need to see a massive socialist revolution engulf the developed world. The only cure for imperialism, both economic and militaristic, is the proletariat state and the complete expropriation of the capitalist class. As V.I. Lenin rightfully pointed out, imperialism is indeed the highest stage of capitalism. As the cold war was undoubtedly a construct of western imperialism, for it to be prevented outright we would need to see a course of historical development which witnesses a proletariat seizure of power across the capitalist dominated world.
so you implies it is possible only if one side win in an indirect way - one side get a wild turn right or left?
I read The New World recently, part of a history of the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy Commission, and I was astonished at how serious Truman's administration seems to have been about nuclear disarmament. I've been wondering ever since if there might have been some way to see that accomplished. It would almost certainly require knocking off Stalin before or shortly after the end of WW2, in favor of someone like Beria, maybe Malenkov. At least potentially, you might see a world with a US-USSR rivalry, but one that doesn't rise to the level of the Cold War. It would be a very difficult AH to make work, but potentially an interesting one.
Or the USA adopts an early post-war UK style labourist position in 1945/6 during the Coal, Rail and Soldier strikes. This leads to Detente 1941–1955/6ish. (Why 1955/6ish? probable economic crises in both imperialist blocs).
yours,
Sam R.
Lost the game
Banned
The US goes to war over the panay incident. You have troops who are battle-hardened against the Japanese in 1942ish (japan wouldn't last more tha 4-5 years), who saw the elephant a couple years ago in the pacific, instead of green troops who have no experience in North Africa. D-Day comes a year earlier, and Anglo/American and Soviet troops meet and shake hands on the Polish border- the pre-1939 one- instead of the Elbe.
Cook
Banned
It hasn’t occurred to you that if the Allies are pushing that much harder it would result in more forces being diverted to their front, weakening the Eastern Front and allowing a more rapid advance by the Red Army as well?
Perhaps, but even at the end, the Nazis fought far harder in the East than in the West. Other than being at a different location than was expected, what made Overlord an overwhelming success was the absence of the luftwaffe.
They really didn’t, Anglo-American forces faced fanatical holdouts and continuous small unit actions until the last day of the war. German forces were no longer capable of organized resistance at army or division level but they were still fighting.
However on the Eastern Front the sheer number of German troops and resources committed precluded similar levels of disintegration until the Battle of Berlin almost, even if the Soviets did take millions of POWs by war’s end…
Yes, but fighting fanatical holdouts who lack supply lines or air support is preferable to the alternative, and if this POD allows for a slightly further German advance in the East, then the Germans will fight that much harder for everything they have, believing (wrongly) that the Soviets might soon be knocked out of the war.