So I'm planning to write a TL where the PoD is simply FDR picks Richard Russell Jr. over Truman, Wallace, and Byrnes as his VP in 1944 due to all the early benefits of Russell being on the ticket (Deep Southerner (from Georgia), well connected, relatively pro-Labor, pro-New Deal, Conservative enough to keep Conservative Dixiecrats supportive, etc, etc) and when FDR dies in April of 45, Russell becomes President and after stifling the efforts of Northern Liberals, the Dixiecrats and Northern Democrats split with Russell encouraging a Dixiecrat ticket led by Laney that leads to a contingent election that sees no VP and no President elected by Congress and Russell, who won the chance to go back to the Senate in the 48 Sen Election in GA, resigns just before the new year starts on January 1st, allowing his SoS, Tom Connally of Texas to be his successor and Acting President at least until the House basically agrees to confirm him as official President after the contingent election crisis goes unsolved. Both Russell and Connally bring forward what you'd expect of Dixiecrats of this time and in 1952, one of three Republicans, being John Wayne/Marion Robert Morrison (ITTL Governor of California 1947-1953 (if he runs for President), Walter Elias Disney, or a Bob Taft that sees the entirety of two terms. However, all of this is not what I want to talk about today.
What I want to talk about is what I have planned for the 50s re:Korea, China, Indochina, and the USSR/Warsaw Pact. In 1953, Stalin died and the process of De-Stalinization occurred allowing for the end of the Korean War before things could get nasty (as in nuking Manchuria), the slow break-up of Sino-Soviet Relations (though I think this was going to happen regardless, Mao always wanted China to be on top and no Soviet leader would submit to an upstart like China), and the USSR to survive another few decades. ITTL, however, Stalin lives to at most late 1957 and because of this, the following things happen
What I want to talk about is what I have planned for the 50s re:Korea, China, Indochina, and the USSR/Warsaw Pact. In 1953, Stalin died and the process of De-Stalinization occurred allowing for the end of the Korean War before things could get nasty (as in nuking Manchuria), the slow break-up of Sino-Soviet Relations (though I think this was going to happen regardless, Mao always wanted China to be on top and no Soviet leader would submit to an upstart like China), and the USSR to survive another few decades. ITTL, however, Stalin lives to at most late 1957 and because of this, the following things happen
- Manchuria gets nuked by the orders of the Republican President in 1954 to get the PRC to agree to end the war with the South winning as the USSR and Stalin shows themselves unwilling to help
- Stalin purges old leadership and the old Bolsheviks and replaces with younger faces who are in their 40s or 50s with no obvious potential succession behinds him.
- Stalinism persists for a longer period and thus the situation of the USSR agriculturally and economically gets worse
- No Hungarian Revolution since no one is suicidal
- Mao, after being pressured by the CCP, goes to war with the USSR in 1955 or 1956, leading to Beijing being nuked and China, now effectively leaderless, falling into complete civil war
- When Stalin dies, a brief period of instability and a power struggle as various people try to grab power only to fail leading to a civil war
- this Soviet Civil War quickly spirals as the rest of the Warsaw Pact and other Soviet Socialist Republics see this as their chance to break free, turning it from a multisided civil war for control of the USSR to a dozen sided conflict with various factions trying to seize power in Russia and the break-away states, loyalists trying to maintain the loyalty of the break away states, and then just people looking out for themselves.