alternatehistory.com

The Treaty of Moscow and the End of World War III
The Signing of the Treaty of Moscow and the End of World War III​
World War III was, to the surprise of many, saved from bearing the title "bloodiest conflict in human history". That, however, was only because Hitler's six-year war, when compared to Brezhnev's seven-month one, would put anything and anyone in the shade. (1) Although precise estimates are still hard to come by, it seems safe to say that Allied military deaths hovered around 2,750,000, of which perhaps two million were Nationalist Chinese. Meanwhile, the death toll of the Red Army was in all probability closer to one million. When combined, the Warsaw Pact nations likely suffered 600,000 or so deaths, the result of the way in which the Soviets treated them as cannon fodder. (2) Indian casualties likely hovered around 175,000, owing to the more defensive nature of their front.

That number, of course, excludes civilian casualties. In Beijing prior to the war, there were approximately 4,600,000 people, nearly all of whom died during the war, be it in one of two city-wide street battles, in the Soviet nuclear attack, or due to radiation. In Suzhou, a further six and a half million died. In the Soviet Union, meanwhile, approximately 1.2 million died in the nuclear destruction of Leningrad, either in the blast itself or as the result of cancer directly caused by the atomic attack. Minsk saw 100,000 deaths, with similar numbers in Kiev, Kharkov, and Smolensk. The destroyed Allied cities of Norwich, Ipswitch, Amsterdam, Brussels, Kassel, and Fulda, meanwhile, suffered an average of 90,000 deaths apiece. Add to this 500,000 or so West German civilian deaths from being located in the combat zone and executions from the harsh Soviet occupation and perhaps 50,000 deaths of Warsaw Pact insurgents, and one gets a rough total of 18,315,000 deaths in the 249 days between Chiang Kai-shek's declaration of war on India and the May 18 armistice request, which amounts to a horrifying average of 73, 555 deaths per day. For comparison purposes, if that figure- and with it, the intensity of combat which created it- were to be extrapolated to every day of World War II, then the number of deaths in that conflict would be approximately 162 million.

All of this was very much on the minds of the Allied leaders as they travelled to Moscow in the late spring of 1965. Even as they did so, defeated Communist regimes in Eastern Europe fell. Nicolae Ceacaseau, Władysław Gomułka, Alexander Dubcek, Todor Zhvikov, and István Dobi all found themselves hounded from power by the masses in whose name they ironically claimed to rule. As the few units left fighting in these armies for the Soviets threw down their arms, Allied troops advanced eastwards, being welcomed into Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Sofia, and Bucharest as liberators. Meanwhile, the Baltic and South Caucasus remained in a state of turmoil, and chaos spread to Ukraine. Latvia was the first to go, declaring its independence on June 1. The next day, Armenia and Estonia formally seceded from the USSR, followed by Azerbaijan on the third. Lithuania quit the union on the fifth, and Georgia on the seventh. However, it should be noted that none of these newly proclaimed nations as of yet controlled all of the territory they claimed, and indeed would not succeed in evicting the still-loyal units of the Red Army before their independence was confirmed by the Treaty of Moscow. Really, the only area where the USSR didn't have a headache brewing was in Central Asia, where the republics there made no move to secede. Additionally, the Belarusian SSR remained fairly calm.

Thus, on June 1, 1965, when the Allied delegation arrived in Moscow to present terms to Polyansky, Voronov, and Andropov, they were not in a benign, forgiving mood. The Americans sent President Humphrey and his new Secretary of State John Moore Allison, picked for his close ties to the Chinese government. Great Britain sent Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart, while Chiang dispatched his son and future successor Chiang Ching-kuo. West Germany, meanwhile, was represented by Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer. Since the USSR's fragile domestic situation post-coup meant that it didn't actually have a foreign minister right when one was needed most, the top three selected Dimitry Polyansky to represent them, although all three communicated quite regularly by telephone.

In a sign of the way they were going to handle this treaty, the Allied delegation arrived at Moscow with four armoured and four infantry divisions, one from each major combatant. Until the negotiations were finished, Moscow would be under Allied military occupation. This aroused everyone's ire and infuriated the Soviet troika at the top, but what could anyone do? The Allied garrison was well-behaved, with remarkably few incidents of looting or "incidents", even from the extremely vengeful Chinese and West Germans. For the first time in several months, the protests and riots, alongside the accompanying street violence these entailed, came to a halt. The fact that the Allied soldiers came with food also helped to smooth relations somewhat between them and the locals, whose rations had been decreasing for months. Nonetheless, this was clearly a military occupation, complete with propaganda posters, occupation zones, and curfews.

The Allies differed immensely on their objectives at the treaty signing. Virtually everyone was unanimous that their raison d'etre was to prevent the Soviet Union from ever threatening their hegemony again. However, the Americans, whose cities had never tasted nuclear fire, were markedly more moderate in their approach to the defeated USSR than the others. From Humphrey's perspective, dismembering the USSR completely would only send it spiralling downwards into warlordism and chaos for the foreseeable future. The instability thus created would not only prove dangerous for the nations bordering the Soviet Union but would also be a humanitarian catastrophe. At that last point, however, the Chinese and West Germans effectively said, "Precisely." Revanchism was high on the lists of priorities of all the Allied nations save the United States. In seven months, the Chinese and West Germans had come to hate the Russian people in a way the Americans did not. The United States saw its role as essentially akin to the one it played twenty years past- namely, it had to reconstruct and reform Russia. Stewart, Chiang Jr, and Fischer responded to that point with, "well, Germany was occupied and thoroughly de-Nazified in 1945, no?" To which Humphrey replied with the obvious- even if we wanted to, we couldn't occupy all of Russia! Humphrey was also afraid of repeating the Treaty of Versailles- namely, by inflaming public anger amongst the peoples of the Soviet Union against the West with a harsh peace treaty which punished the average man in the street. That, in turn, might make them turn to some kind of neo-Brezhnev who promised to "restore the glory of the Motherland", or something to that effect. The other Allies responded with the same argument, that "if we outlaw communism and dismember the bloody place, that won't be an issue, will it?" Why, they asked, couldn't the Occupation of Moscow be replicated elsewhere in Russia? A smaller bone of contention came when the Yugoslavian dictator Tito announced his intention to keep hold of Albania, which he had conquered, and annex it. Eventually, the weary Allies decided to give him the green light there, although they remained displeased.

However, some points went over much more smoothly. Central and Eastern Europe had to be brought into the Allied fold, and democracy had to be fostered in these areas. Additionally, the areas of the USSR fighting for independence had to be recognised as independent nations. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia were to be treated as victims of Soviet aggression and permitted to join NATO. Also unanimous was the desire for German reunification. Chiang's claim to Mongolia and a swathe of the Russian Far East also went unopposed. The Soviet Union would also be deprived of all nuclear technology, plus its Security Council seat. Hubert Humphrey dangled the promise of additional reconstruction aid over the heads of the other Allies in exchange for their agreeing to leave the rump USSR intact, and, muttering "against my better judgement", they eventually acquiesced.

It should go without saying that Polyansky was not present at these inter-Allied debates. The bill was presented to him a week later, on June 7, 1965:

  • The USSR is to acknowledge the independence of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Belarus. ​
  • The USSR is to cede the provinces of Primorye, Khabarovsk, Amur, and Yevery to the Republic of China. Mongolia is also to be annexed to China, as is the Second East Turkestan Republic​
  • The USSR is to pay the Allies 5 billion rubles in reparations​
  • Leonid Brezhnev and other key regime figures are to be handed over to the Allies for trial and punishment. ​
  • The USSR is to cede all nuclear weapons and is banned from ever researching nuclear energy for any purpose​
  • The Red Army is to be reduced to 125,000 men​
  • The USSR is to give up its seat on the UN Security Council​
  • The Kaliningrad area is to be annexed into Poland​
  • The Warsaw Pact is dissolved​
  • Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia are to be admitted into NATO​
  • North Salakhin and the Kuriles are to be transferred to Japan​
With the signing, World War III formally ended. The world could now look ahead to the future, whatever that might consist of...

(1) Except, that is, for OTL's Great Leap Forward...
(2) As always, these figures are very rough ones

Comments?
Top