Feel free to comment and post your thoughts
I started this on a different forum, so here are few other contributions:
Alternate Cold War – Background
POD: Eisenhower dies in a road accident in July, 1944.
V-E Day
Eisenhower’s successor is not so cautious and changes allied tactics in Europe towards more blitzkrieg-like operations. Therefore when the Allies break out of Normandy in August, the allied advance is much quicker and bolder than it was in our timeline. Instead of wasting time massacring German armies in Falaise pocket and laying siege to coastal towns in Britanny, the allied divisions advance rapidly into the French interior and towards the Low Countries and Germany itself. Field Marshal Montgomery successfully secures Scheldt Estuary and liberates Antwerp, thus opening the harbor to Allied shipping. This proves to be a crucial point in the Allied campaign, as the emerging logistical problems are thus greatly mitigated and the Allied advance can continue.
In September, Omar Bradely’s 12th Army Group penetrates through Saarland into Germany and together with Montgomery’s 21st Army Group encircles the remnants of Westheer in the so-called Ruhr Pocket. At that point, no relevant German forces can oppose the allied thrust towards Berlin.
Meanwhile, Hitler is stunned by the speed of the allied advance into his Third Reich and the apparent willingness of his armies to surrender to the Allies the moment their communication lines with his headquarters are severed. He becomes obsessed with the developments in the West and rapidly loses interest in other theatres. In a rare stroke of common sense, he appoints Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, whom he sacked as commander of the Army Group South only 4 months earlier, as Oberbefehlshaber Ost (Supreme Commander East) and transfers Walther Model to the West to lead a hopeless defense against the Allies. Manstein promptly reorganizes the battered German armies and begins to apply his plan for a “flexible defense” on the Eastern front.
Stalin is also shocked by the success of the Allies. Fearing that the Westerners could defeat Germany on their own thus denying him the spoils of victory, he orders an immediate general offensive despite the objections of his field commanders, who argue that the Red Army needs to improve the bad supply situation before it can launch another offensive. Stalin remains adamant and so the Red Army begins its hastily prepared offensive across the Vistula in late September, 1944. It is here where von Manstein achieves his last and greatest victory. The Soviets, who are not aware of the major change of German tactics on the Eastern Front, expect the Germans to stand firm and refuse to pull back as it was common when Hitler was in command and Manstein uses their mistake to his advantage. First he feigns a breakup of German defenses along Vistula, but then he launches a brilliant counter-offensive during which he manages to encircle Soviet spearheads on the wrong side of the river. In other places, German forces pull off a fighting retreat and as a result the German lines along the Vistula are now stronger than ever before. Soviet autumn offensive thus completely fails and the Soviets suffer horrendous casualties, especially among their best units which were spearheading the attack.
Furious Stalin responds by sacking Zhukov whom he (unfairly) blames for the disaster and orders Ivan Konev to prepare another offensive. Konev manages to persuade Stalin that the Vistula Line is currently impregnable, but suggests an acceptable alternative: a major push through Romania, Hungary and the Balkans which could flank the German defenses in Poland. Stalin agrees and the offensive begins in October. Despite initial heavy losses in Bessarabia, the Red Army break through and Romania soon surrenders, followed by Bulgaria. However, Manstein manages to save most of German armies by a general withdrawal to Hungary and Slovakia where they form another defensive line blocking the Soviet advance into Germany.
At the same time, Anglo-American armies encircle Berlin. Hitler is shot dead a day later by a disgruntled officer when he refuses to allow the surrender of the city and Berlin is declared an open city by its military commander soon afterwards. Hermann Göring assumes the role of the Führer of the Third Reich, but he is powerless to stop further allied advance across Germany. American armies liberate Bohemia and enter Poland and Austria by early November. German forces along Vistula hold their ground to the very last moment and only surrender to the Americans and the British when they appear on the horizon. The Soviets on the other side of the river are powerless to intervene.
WW2 in Europe finally ends on 17th of November, 1944, when Göring issues a general surrender order to all German forces. Red Army hastily moves to occupy the remaining parts of Hungary, Yugoslavia and Slovakia, while German soldiers flee west to surrender to the allied forces. In Europe, an uneasy peace begins.
Cold War begins
The conflict later known as the Cold War erupts almost immediately after the German capitulation. Stalin immediately demands that the Allies pull back to Elbe and allow the Soviet Union to occupy its own zone in Germany. The Allies refuse arguing that the Soviet forces didn’t enter Germany proper (except East Prussia) and that the Allied armies are well capable of occupying Germany without Soviet assistance. Moreover, the Polish government now reigning over the Allied-controlled Poland refuses to allow the Soviets (who have severed diplomatic relations with it following the uncovering of the Katyn massacre) any military transfer. Although this means little as the Polish government relies on the Allies and their armies, the Polish refusal is used as an argument against the Soviet demand for their own occupation zone in Germany.
Feeling betrayed, Stalin proclaims that he will no longer adhere to any previous agreements made with the Western Allies. As retaliation to what he perceives as an unforgivable injustice after all the sacrifices the Soviet people have made in WW2, he tightens his rule over Soviet “liberated” countries in Central Europe and the Balkans. In Poland, a Communist interim government is established, but pre-war Eastern Poland is annexed to the USSR. Czechoslovakia is definitely split when the USSR annexes Ruthenia and establishes a puppet Communist government in Slovakia, ironically a former puppet of Nazi Germany. Similar development takes place in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and even Finland, which doesn’t escape sovietization this time as Stalin is definitely not in a forgiving mood. In Greece, a brutal civil war erupts between competing partisan groups and the Soviets send massive amount of weapons and supplies to the Greek Communists, who quickly overrun most of the country. Non-communists are forced to flee mainland Greece and most islands, but they manage to fortify themselves in Crete, Rhodos and Cyprus, previously held by the British. And so in just two years following the V-E day, the USSR asserts firm control over the Eastern part of the Continent. Later, Winston Churchill during his address to the British public famously says:
“From Elbing in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Athens, Helsinki, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.”
The West is forced to respond and in 1948, an alliance of Western democracies is formed around the United States – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In the next 20 years, almost all European countries join it, with the exception of Ireland and Switzerland which decide to remain neutral. Soviet answer to NATO, the Warsaw Pact, is created in 1949 in Eastern Warsaw, the capital of the newly proclaimed People’s Republic of Poland. A barrier of concrete and barbed wire is erected on the eastern bank of Vistula, the famous Warsaw Wall separating Eastern Poland from its Western counterpart now called the Republic of Poland. Later it becomes one of the most famous symbols of the Cold War.
With the advent of nuclear weapons and their first use against Japan in 1945, the world is plunged into a long and bitter ideological conflict which often threatens to engulf the whole world in nuclear fire. Large armies stand opposing each other on the Vistula, Soviet navy operating from Greek bases shadows the Western fleets in the Mediterranean, jet bombers patrol over the Arctic and ever growing number of nuclear missiles are aimed at the enemy targets. Only Gods know if this “Cold War” stays cold...
I started this on a different forum, so here are few other contributions:
Czech Rep. renamed to Czech Federal Republic (Česká Spolková Republika - ČSR [It's a dig against the commie Slovakia since the abbreviation is the same as the abbreviation of former Czechoslovakia]; Bundesrepublik Böhmen in German). This is meant to explain the post-war development in the Czech lands. Instead of getting rid of the Germans, the leadership was forced by circumstances to seek such a constitutional solution that would prevent a repetition of the Sudetenland crisis. In the end, a federal model was adopted and Bohemia/Moravia were divided into 9 federal states (spolkové země, bundesländer) + the capital Prague district. Three states are predominantly German, three are predominantly Czech and three are mixed. Both languages are official and large effort was made by the authorities to make the population largely bilingual, with partial success (mostly in the mixed states and bigger cities). 27 years after the V-E day, relations between the two nations are mostly without problems, though critics say that instead of living together, Czechs and Germans live alongside each other and mostly mind their own business. Still shamed by their war-era collaboration with the Nazis, talking about a possible secession is a taboo among the Germans in C.F.R. The country is sometimes called "the Belgium of Central Europe" by foreign observers.
[Concerning the eastern border of Germany] There was no large-scale ethnic cleansing of Germans in this timeline. They had no reason to flee, so Silesia remained thoroughly German-speaking. As such, there was no justification for handing it over to Poland. Only Polish majority areas were given to Western Poland as a form of reparation (plus Danzig, for symbolic reasons).
I already mentioned that [the USSR] was more vigorous in intervening in the Chinese civil war (the commies won a year earlier than in OTL and Taiwan is not independent). Korea is united under communist rule and Japan is divided with North Japan being communist (an OTL Korea-like situation).
[Why the USSR dhaven't annexed the whole of Eastern Poland] Soviets needed to have "independent" Polish commie state which would claim the rest of Poland, which was the main reason why they didn't annex eastern Poland (that, and the opposition from ethnic Poles would be too much of a burden).
As for Finland, Stalin was content with making it communist; I think he was afraid of a protracted guerilla warfare in Finland and he still remembred how costly the victory over Finland was.
As I already mentioned, the Soviet offensive into Poland failed because Stalin rushed it and because Manstein was able to inflict devastating defeat on the Soviet spearheads. As a result, the Soviets were no longer able to advance into Poland in 1944. Instead, they chose to attack on the flanks where their strength was still high - the Balkans and Finland (for irony's sake let's say that after Stalin fired Zhukov, he sent him to lead the Soviet effort in the North to 'redeem' himself).
Since the Soviets now put much higher priority to the Finnish front, Finland didn't really stood a chance and was defeated and occupied. The resistance from partisan groups convinced Stalin, however, that it would be more profitable to have Finland as a puppet and let Finns fight Finns rather than to annex the whole country to the Soviet Union.
Here's the summary of post-war events in Czechoslovakia (the Czech F. Rep.):
Post-war Czechoslovakia
The rapid Allied victory in Europe caught the Czechoslovak government by surprise. By 1944, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile had already been trying to forge a new and stronger relationship with the Soviet Union as it was largely expected that it would be the Red Army who would liberate the Czechoslovak territory. When Bohemia and Moravia were liberated by the US army instead, the exiled leadership moved from London to Prague in late autumn 1944 and established an interim government based on a wide political coalition called the National Council. For the Communists who had been organizing in Moscow the victory of Western Allies was a blow to their post-war plans. The party was subsequently split and the members of Slovak origin moved to Soviet-occupied Slovakia, whereas the Czech members returned to western Czechoslovakia during the winter 1944/45.
Two biggest issues in the early post-war period were the fate of the Sudeten Germans and the reunification with Slovakia.
The government-in-exile’s preferred solution was to expel the whole Sudeten German population and this stance put it at odds with Sudeten German exile in Britain (mostly social democratic oriented Germans forced into exile by the Nazis). However this plan turned out to be undoable in the reality of post-war Czechoslovakia. The factual loss of Slovakia meant that the population of the state dropped by roughly 3 million and the Sudeten Germans thus made up nearly 1/3 of the country’s population. Their removal would practically ruin the already struggling economy and severely weaken the country. Moreover, the Western Allies voiced strong opposition to any large scale forced transfer of German population which could have destabilized their relatively smooth occupation of Germany. Therefore a lighter variant of the plan was chosen. In a series of trials the notorious Sudeten German Nazi collaborators were sentenced either to death (a minority of cases) or loss of citizenship and deportation in which they were usually joined by their families. After these trials, roughly 300,000 Czechoslovak citizens of German nationality were deported to Germany and Austria. The problem was hardly solved as the remaining Germans were only barely tolerated and there was a real threat of widespread civil unrest in the future.
The issue of reunification with Slovakia was an equally complicated one. When the Soviets were denied their own occupation zone in Germany proper, they began sealing the borders drawn along the demarcation line and setting up puppet Communist regimes in the countries ‘liberated’ by the Red Army. This had proven to be very difficult in Slovakia, where Communism had almost negligible support among the traditionally rural and Catholic population. Slovakia was thus ruled by an interim government formed from former members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party for a period of 3 years following the end of WW2 in Europe. This government was seen by most Slovaks as an illegitimate one and the Soviet occupation forces soon began to clash with anti-communist partisans in the mountainous regions of central Slovakia.
In this situation, the Soviets laid out a plan for reunification which asked for withdrawal of both Western and Soviet armies from all of Czechoslovakia (except the sub-Carpathian Ruthenia which had already been annexed by the USSR) and federalization of the country based on tolerance of the pro-Soviet Communist government in Slovakia. As it was clearly unworkable, the Czechs refused this plan and demanded free elections to be held in whole Czechoslovakia, which in turn was not acceptable to the Soviets who feared than instead of using Slovakia as a Trojan horse to introduce Communism in Czechoslovakia, Slovakia would be de-communized and thus lost for the Soviets. When the negotiations finally broke up in 1945, the Soviet Union formally recognized the existence of the Slovak state (soon renamed to Slovak Socialist Republic) and guaranteed it’s ‘independence’. Following this outright violation of the territorial sovereignty of Czechoslovakia which had now become merely a virtual country, the Czech government in Prague renounced the Czechoslovak-Soviet treaty of 1943 and suspended diplomatic relations with Moscow.
1946 elections
As the long-planned elections approached, the newly re-constituted political parties in (western) Czechoslovakia began their election campaigns. Major parties were:
- the Agrarian Party representing the rural Czech population led by Josef Černý;
- the National Democratic Coalition, an alliance of pre-war center-right parties oriented mostly towards liberal urban middle-class, led by Petr Zenkl;
- the Czechoslovak People’s Party, a strongly Catholic conservative party led by Jan Šrámek;
- the Czech Social Democratic Party, a party split between pro-communist and non-communist wings, led by Zdeněk Fierlinger;
- the Czech Communist Party, a pro-Soviet Bolshevik party led by Klement Gottwald;
In addition, two major Sudeten German parties were set to win seats in the parliament, the German Social Democratic Party led by Wenzel Jaksch and the German Christian Social People's Party, a conservative party led by Robert Mayr-Harting.
It soon became clear that the Communists were set to win the elections, carried on a wave of dissatisfaction with the post-war development. CPP program was essentially a populist one. It promised a new round of negotiations with the USSR on the reunification of Czechoslovakia, a nationalization of key industries, an agrarian reform and redistribution of land among small farmers and most of all, more punishment for the ‘German collaborators’. Secretly funded and supported by the Soviets, the Communist Party was well-organized and very influential. It managed to infiltrate many non-Communist organizations and parties (Czech Social Democrats were heavily under the Communist influence by 1946), trade unions, the police and it also had many supporters in the military, mostly those who were fighting in the ranks of Red Army during the war. In addition to that, it had established a paramilitary arm called the People’s Militia (Lidové milice) which it often used to demonstrate its power and strength.
Other parties were naturally scared by the prospect of Communist-dominated government, yet they were not able to form a wide pre-election coalition which would face the Communist-Social Democratic bloc. As expected, the Communist party won the elections in May, 1946, but they failed to obtain absolute majority with the Social Democrats, who fared bad in the elections since they were seen largely as a mere puppet of the CPP.
A difficult political situation ensued. The Czech parties wanted to form a purely Czech government, without the German parties, but except the Social Democrats, none of them was willing to enter a Communist-dominated government. Although President Edvard Beneš first asked the CPP leader Klement Gottwald to form a government, he was unable to do so as he couldn’t obtain any support from other Czech political parties and cooperation with German parties was out of question. When the first attempt had failed, Beneš asked the leader of the 2nd strongest Czech party, the National Democratic Coalition, to try to form a government. Zenkl’s only option now was to invite both German parties into the government to form the widest possible non-Communist coalition. After other parties agreed to negotiate with the Germans about a future constitutional reform granting the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia fair representation in the country’s political system, it was publicly announced that an agreement was reached.
The Communists were outraged; they clearly failed to take the possibility of wide Czech-German anti-Communist coalition into consideration. Believing that it was the right time to strike (and incited by Soviet spies), they denounced the new government as “a bunch of traitors who would sell the country back to the Germans” and called for a general strike. People’s Militias began attacking the Germans and “bourgeois enemies” in the streets and clashing with the police. However, the Communist Party overplayed its hand. Despite some response to their call for a general strike, majority of trade unions didn’t take part in it and the Party’s reputation was thus greatly damaged. Also the violence displayed by the People’s Militia surprised many of CPP’s voters who realized that the Communist scare tactics was awfully similar to that used by the Nazis. As a result, many of its supporters turned away from after the post-election turmoil.
Meanwhile, the President and the Prime Minister jointly announced an ultimatum to the Communists, ordering them to dissolve the People’s Militia and end all incitement to violence. When the Communists failed to respond, a state of emergency was declared in many cities and the police accompanied by selected reliable army units were send in to disarm them. This was eventually accomplished after severe clashes which led to the death of several policemen. In the following weeks, the violence ebbed out and the Communists realized that they had lost the gambit. But the worst was yet to come: in a trial held before the Constitutional Court, the Czech Communist Party was banned for an obvious subversion of democratic order and an attempt to stage a coup d’etat. Klement Gottwald fled to Slovakia to escape imprisonment, but many top-ranking officials of the Communist Party were sentenced to many years in prison in the follow-up trials. The armed forces including the police and the military also underwent a series of purges in which pro-Communist officers were either dismissed or shifted to less important positions. Remaining Communist party members either went into illegality or they joined the Social Democratic party, now purged of the pro-Bolshevik wing after the resignation of its pro-Communist chairman Zdeněk Fierlinger. In the end, the failed Communist takeover of 1946 turned out to have been a mortal blow to the credibility of Communist ideas in Czech lands.
The end of Czechoslovakia
When the post-election turmoil finally receded, serious negotiation began between Czech and German representatives about the future of Czechoslovakia. As it was now clear that reunification is no longer viable, it was obvious that a major constitutional overhaul was necessary and with the Parliament cleansed of radical Communists, such a reform became possible.
Several models were discussed, ranging from purely unitary republic based on French concept of a political nation to a Swiss model of semi-independent cantons. In the end, a compromise solution was chosen. The constitutional reform would include an administrative reform abolishing the old Czechoslovak system of land governments and replacing it with a system of federal states of similar size and population, each with its own government and parliament. Since the territorial distribution of ethnic Germans didn’t always follow the borders of the new states, this reform resulted in 3 majority German states, 3 mixed states where no nationality had a clear majority and 3 majority Czech states. Both languages were declared official and the government committed itself to promoting bilingualism in all parts of the country. Also, the name of the country was changed to Czech Federal Republic (Bundesrepublik Böhmen was chosen as the official German translation after prolonged disputes over semantics), a clear sign that old Czechoslovakia had now definitely ceased to exist.
Despite the initial skepticism, the new system proved to be a stable one. To the surprise of many, it helped to defuse the national tensions in the C.F.R. and gradually as the economic situation began to improve, both Czechs and Germans learned to live alongside each other in peace and respect. This is not to say that this coexistence was without problems, but the pessimism of the early post-war era eventually made way to cautious optimism and a new faith that despite their differences and past disputes, the Czechs and Germans are capable of mutually profitable cooperation inside the borders of the historical Czech lands.
[written by another poster] Had a bit of a think about Scandinavia in this. Pretty speculative, but still.
Finland weathers the first Soviet offensive in the summer of 1944 as per history. This time the Soviets decide to go for broke, amps up the effort and overrun the Finnish defenses, fair enough.
As per history and then some we will be seeing Soviet troops pushing into northern Norway in pursuit of retreating German forces. The real question might be why they should leave, and if they are focusing on this front, why not push hard and fast at least to somewhere useful, like Trondheim to perhaps secure a port directly on the North Atlantic?
As per history, Soviet units will perhaps also make it to the Danish island of Bornholm - and maybe then some. If the Soviets focus on this front, Denmark is an achievable objective, depending on the rapidity of the British advance. There might be a race for Denmark? Again the prospect of direct access to the Atlantic is a Soviet strategic objective.
If Finland goes down in the Autumn of 1944, this brings Soviet troops directly to the Swedish border along Torne river in the north. That is guaranteed to make the Swedes nervous. It also brings up the question whether the Soviets would break for Sweden here, or just keep pushing their offensive? There were some serious considerations about forcing Sweden to enter the war against Germany towards the end of the historical WWII. Had the 200 000 German troops in Norway not surrendered in 1945, it is possible Sweden would have committed to fighting these. Churchill pushed for such a move.
At least the Soviets would be looking at picking up the Swedish island of Gotland in the middle of the Baltic, especially if they are racing towards Denmark and can use it as a stepping stone, whether that would be a permanent arrangement or not.
I guess it is possible that Sweden might actually enter WWII as a belligerent on the Allied side, and take a fight with the German troops in Norway in 1944, as a way of preempting some kind of hostile move by the Soviet Union having hove very much into view in Sweden.
As per Winner's map for this scenario, it might be that Sweden enters the war alongside the Allies in 1944, to preempt possible Soviet designs on both Sweden, northern Norway and Denmark, while the British successfully race from the west and south to beat the Soviets to these areas. (Thus I get to make my native land enter WWII to eventually do what was after all the right thing in that war.)
Finland ends up as a Soviet satellite, a People's Republic of Finland, headed by the leader of the Finnish Communist Party founded in Moscow in 1918, Otto Ville Kuusinen, whose Finnish puppet government was initially set up at Terijoki already during the Winter War in 1939. Curiously the situation would mean the vindication of Finnish Fieldmarshall Mannerheim's idea of sending 70 000 Finnish children to grow up in Sweden, as was done in 1939-1945, as a means of ensuring a generation of Finns would grow up in freedom, to possibly return to liberate Finland at some later point in time. Not counting the potentially large number of direct refugees from Finland to Sweden beginning in 1944. Considering how historically 30 000 refugees made it to Sweden from the Baltic States at the Soviet occupation of their lands, we can assume they turn up, complemented with at least a similar number of Finns.
While Finland is lost, that sets Sweden, Denmark and Norway up as western allied democracies in the post-war era. The post-war idea of a Nordic defensive alliance of these three countries might be viable, but considering all three nations were belligerents on the side of the Allies eventually, NATO membership for all three is more likely.
Historically in the immediate post-war period Sweden were doing all kinds of things in cahoots with especially the UK, in the form of surveillance photography of Soviet military installations along the Baltic, and the introduction of numerous spies and agents into the Baltic states — an utter failure, since the British intelligence community was riddled with Soviet double-agents (Kim Philby et al.) All it would take would be a formalisation of this actual cooperation.
A bit dramatically, if the Swedes would be more immediately worried about being a direct frontline state in a possible showdown with the Soviet Union, it might mean that independent nuclear deterrence capability would get a higher priority, and the Swedish nuclear weapons program would not be scrapped in the early 1970's. With NATO resources at its back, Sweden might decide that their invasion defense would be large enough at maybe 600 000 men or so (instead of 900 000 in the late 1980's), and thus find the money for the nukes as well?
[Would there be a Cold War?] Of course there would be a Cold War. Soviets are royally pissed by the result of WW2 and they want more power in the world, which means Cold War is going to happen.
They would be less dangerous with regard to their nuclear/rocket arsenals but it would be a huge mistake to underestimate their capability to make life difficult to the West by other means.
They don't control most of Central Europe in this timeline, but they penetrated deeper in Asia and their grip over the Balkans is much firmer than in OTL. They also have better access to the Middle East thanks to their alliance with commie Greece and annexed parts of Northern Iran, so we can expect more trouble in this region. For example, I don't think they would support Israel in its war of independence in this timeline, maybe they'd rather support the Arabs.
I'd say that this Cold War would be even more dangerous than the OTL one. Soviets in TTL are more assertive and more angry at the West, and the lack of early nuclear deterrence could mean that the Soviets would build even bigger conventional military, and also invest in the Navy and Air Force. At the same time, the West would probably rely more on nuclear weapons than it did in OTL, which would leave it weaker by the time the Soviets will have caught up with them in the nuclear race.
There is a distinct possibility that WW3 might start in the 1970s. Or the Soviet empire will collapse under the weight of the costs of maintaining such a huge military without developed satellite states in Central Europe to share the costs...
About East Asia - I don't know. I admit I am focusing on Europe. Few guidelines about Asia:
China is united and Communist, and there was no early Sino-Soviet split in this timeline.
Korea is united and Communist, balancing between China and the USSR.
Japan is split between the southern democratic part and northern Communist puppet republic controlled by the USSR. I thing that there would be a lot of tension there as both superpowers kept their military forces on the home islands.
Vietnam conflict happened in this timeline too and it was longer and more violent.
India - I don't know. Ralph wants it to turn Communist, but I don't know enough to come up with a realistic way to do it. I leave it to others if anybody is interested.
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