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Chapter Ten- WWIII
World War III- Part Four

"He who defends everything defends nothing."- Frederick the Great

Following the nuclear defeat at the Second Battle of Jena, the already precarious Soviet position tipped over the edge into the abyss of inevitable defeat. Everywhere one looked, the dam was bursting. The Chinese had liberated the ruins of Beijing, India was proving a useless ally, and the German front was on the verge of being cracked open. Nonetheless, Brezhnev refused to even admit that defeat might be imminent, fighting on at mounting cost and in spite of ever-increasing odds...

March 1, 1965: Once the full scale of the losses at the Second Battle of Jena become apparent to the Soviet public, a series of protests and demonstrations of varying degrees of violence break out in the cities of the USSR. They're viciously subdued by the Soviet police, but constitute an unwelcome symbol of what is to come...

Over the course of the first week of March 1965, similar protests break out in the Warsaw Pact capitals, which are suppressed with even greater brutality by the Soviet occupying forces.

While these protests carry on, the broken Communist armies are pushed back all along the front, as there are no effective substitutes for those units put into the Jena gamble from other sectors of the front.

In the Allied camp, there is now a debate on the best way to exploit the Jena victory. With the Soviet salient in West Germany collapsing by the day, opinion is divided on whether to advance to Berlin or Prague. The West Germans favour the former, while the British feel that the latter will be a softer target. In the end, the Americans side with the West Germans, and plans are drawn up to capture the East German capital.

March 6, 1965: Wolfsburg is liberated by the British, who are pleasantly surprised at the comparatively low casualties which they suffer

March 12, 1965: Operation Thumbtack is launched by the Americans and West Germans, an offensive designed to begin the process of isolating Berlin. Leipzig and Halle both fall after four days, and by the 20th, the West German-American force is situated 35 km from Potsdam.

Operation Thumbtack is accompanied by a smaller British offensive in northern Germany, which crosses the Elbe between Luneburg and Salzwedel, with the end goal of taking Rostock, both to divert Soviet troops and isolate still further the German capital

March 16, 1965: All along the Chinese front, a general offensive codenamed "Imperial Dragon" commences, designed to throw back the weary Red Army with waves upon waves of inexhaustible Chinese manpower. The exhausted Soviets fall back quickly, seeking only to retire to the pre-prepared positions in Manchuria which were built by Khruschev and Mao for the People's Republic of North China in the 1950s. More than one correspondent compares the Red Army's situation to that of the Wehrmacht following its catastrophic defeat in Operation Citadel. Zhangjiakou, Chengde, and Qinhuangdao all fall in short order, with remarkably low Chinese casualties, especially when compared to the losses in earlier battles.

April 1, 1965: In a stunning blow (dubbed in later years "the last Allied defeat of the war"), President Lyndon Johnson suffers a heart attack in the middle of the day, and rapidly slides into critical condition. He is hospitalised, and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey takes over the day-to-day running of both the government and the war. (1)

April 9, 1965: With the Anglo-American-West German force rapidly approaching Berlin, the first domino in the collapse of the Warsaw Pact falls. East German dictator Walter Ulbricht is arrested en route to a meeting of East German military leaders. He and several other major regime figures are thrown into prison, and attacks on the Russian garrisons of both East and West Berlin begin, the people all too glad to have a try at liberating themselves before the Allies arrive. Willi Stoph, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, declaring his intent to "pull a Donitz", proclaims himself leader, and calls on the East German army to placidly surrender. Although many are fearful of the reprisals of Allied troops for the various nuclear attacks on Allied cities, a decent number are willing to go over, especially to their Western brethren. However, these East Germans are not treated as co-belligerents, instead, they're thrown into prison camps. However, the treatment they receive is markedly better than that meted out to captured Russians...

In a fit of fury, Brezhnev has the various rubber-stamps left in Moscow declare war on East Germany, and fighting breaks out all over the country between East German and Soviet troops. He also gives orders that Berlin be destroyed with nuclear weapons as punishment. However, this order is deliberately "lost", and the Soviet dictator is informed that the city has been destroyed, later being shown a film of Beijing's destruction to fool him. Those left alive in the USSR who aren't total yes-men realise, now more than ever, that Brezhnev will have to be destroyed, or else a sea of nuclear fire will consume Russia...

Meanwhile, following East Germany's example, revolts break out in Poland, Hungary, Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania, as well as in the Baltic provinces of the USSR. Russian troops clash with those of their erstwhile puppets, and for the rest of the war, a guerilla fight will be waged between the Russians and the people to their rear, although the communist governments themselves will remain theoretically loyal. The East German fiasco prompts the Soviets to increase their troop presence in Shenyang, Changchun, and especially Harbin, to prevent Deng Xiaoping or anyone else attempting to do something similar in the Soviet Republic of Manchuria.

April 11, 1965: After the short, anticlimactic Second Battle of Berlin sees the Allies and people of Berlin expel the last Soviets remaining, East Germany formally surrenders to the Allies. Stoph is arrested, along with all of the regime heads, and- much against the will of plenty of Britons, West Germans, and Benelux- an amnesty for all East Germans who lay down their arms is announced. This last point is mostly acting President Humphrey's doing.

That same day, Lyndon Johnson experiences a small revival- he is able to make a televised five-minute announcement from his hospital bed, declaring his faith in Humphrey as acting president and praising the nation for fighting on. However, he is in no state to return to office, at least not yet.

April 14, 1965: In a daring move, US General Maxwell D. Taylor lands five divisions behind enemy lines at the Chinese port of Dalian, from where they rapidly advance to Shenyang. The Dalian bridgehead is rapidly reinforced with both American and Chinese troops, and the Allies stand poised to advance either into Korea to topple the Kim regime, or into the heart of Manchuria.

April 16, 1965: Italy, Yugoslavia, and Turkey all declare war on the Warsaw Pact, rushing troops into the Balkans and Caucasus

News of this is enough to provoke further the barely controlled turmoil in Moscow and other Soviet cities, with fresh rounds of riots breaking out. In the cities of the Warsaw Pact satellites, meanwhile, the chaos is far less controlled, with Soviet troops battling locals in the streets. The satellite armies, meanwhile, are in varying states of mutiny.

April 20, 1965: Following a long, hard month of advances after the Second Battle of Jena, the Allies pause to regroup on the Oder River. Now, a version of the old "broad front/narrow front" argument from World War II is resurrected, with some Allied commanders wanting to conquer Poland as the prelude to an advance into the USSR's heartland itself, while others want to remove the flanking threat posed by Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Proponents of the latter point to the need to relieve Yugoslavia, which is presently fighting on a wide front indeed.

April 23, 1965: Even as Italian and British troops stream into the country, Austria declares war on the Warsaw Pact.

April 28- May 18, 1965: Operation Sunrise is launched by a joint American-Chinese force, designed to utterly cripple the Soviet Republic of Manchuria. Over the course of three weeks, the pre-prepared defences are utterly swept away, as one city after another falls to the Chinese and Americans. When Harbin falls on May 10, Chairman Wang Ming has already fled to Russia, and Zhu De takes over the Soviet Republic of Manchuria, now little more than a guerilla force operating on the Russian border- just like the Chinese Communists just prior to the Second Manchurian Storm. State president (2) Deng Xiaoping, meanwhile, is captured and taken back to Nanjing.

May 3, 1965: After a long struggle, Lyndon Johnson finally expires, dying in his sleep at two AM. The next day, Hubert Humphrey is formally inaugurated as the 37th POTUS, with David Rusk as vice-president. In his inaugural address, President Humphrey calls on Brezhnev to surrender and pledges to "continue the fight until all the people of Eastern Europe and China are free"

May 7, 1965: In New Delhi, an important development occurs. Kandispal Vispoot is forcibly removed from power and a civilian government dominated by the Swatantra Party and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, two covertly Chinese-backed pre-communism parties which went underground at the start of the Vispoot era, takes power. Within hours, an armistice with the Chinese and Pakistanis is requested and granted, with a peace treaty to be signed later on.

May 14, 1965: Operation Frederick (3) is launched. Frederick consists of a massive Allied assault across the Oder into Poland. The Red Army is driven back closer and closer to their homeland, and by this point, the Polish army is fighting pretty much on the side of the Allies. Insurgents have already liberated Warsaw by the time the Allies reach it, on May 20.

Meanwhile, the Baltic states go into revolt, as do the republics of the South Caucasus. Soviet troops are pulled from the now-forgotten Xinjiang front to quell the uprisings, with the result that Ma Bufang's troops are poised to enter Soviet Central Asia by the start of June.

With the Soviet Union collapsing in a way far more thorough than in the summer of 1941, and riots visible from the windows of their Kremlin offices, a certain cabal of Soviet apparatchiks have finally had enough...

On May 18, 1965, a clique of Soviet leaders who Brezhnev hadn't purged (and who weren't mindless yes-men)- Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers Dimitry Polyansky, Prime Minister of the Russian Soviet Federal Republic Gennady Voronov, and Yuri Andropov, together with a unit in the Moscow garrison willing to defect and a hefty helping of local rioters, mount a coup, arresting Brezhnev and several others major figures in the regime. The Allies are immediately contacted through the Swedish embassy, and a request for an armistice is granted...

World War III is over

Thoughts? Comments?
(1) As a great fan of David bar Elias' TL-191: After the End, I was quite pleased to find out that, as Johnson's VP, Humphrey (something of a hero in that TL) would get the presidency in TTL as well!
(2) Former state president Liu Shaoqi had died only a few weeks prior to the outbreak of WWIII, the result of his suffering in the Cultural Revolution
(3) Named after the medieval German prince Frederick Barbarossa, whose name Hitler used for his own invasion of the USSR. The Allies doing this in TTL is a way of casting two fingers at the Soviets, so to speak
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