AHC: Make America the worlds sole Superpower following the Second World War.

The Soviet Union wasn't bled dry. They had over 1 million battle tested men waiting in siberia.

True I suppose I should amend my statement as that was an overstatement. However the Soviets did lose around 10% of their prewar population if my quick calculations are correct, with a population around 191 Million in 1940 and over 20 Million dead in WWII. Additionally much of the Western Soviet Union had been fought over at least twice. I guess it would make more sense to say that while the Soviet Union was heavily damaged but nowhere near out of men to fight.

Edit: My quick calculations are wrong, I think it's closer to 5% dead but 10% was the total casualties. I didn't read the information correctly.
 
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I agree. Without the threat of the Soviets, the US is going to continue with it's initial plan of cutting the military to the bone. By the mid-1950s the US isn't going to be able to intervene significantly in military conflicts overseas.

Let's say that Germany is defeated from the West while the Soviets have essentially been defeated, but the German occupation drains enough manpower and resources East such that an invasion from the West is still possible. That, plus Japan, means the US will be bogged down in occupation duty for quite some time. France and the UK just won't have the funds or manpower to do the job. They'll help, but it's still a huge job.

I also don't think the US will turn its back on Europe after all this. It will still be a humanitarian nightmare from the Rhine to Moscow and the last thing anyone will want will be to abandon the continent only to have the same problems come back later. The US will help get Europe and Asia back on their feet because there will be nobody else to do the job. Ideas like the Morgenthau Plan may be tried, but even getting Germany back together will be seen as a necessity to rebuilding Europe.

While it will be a significantly different postwar world, the US will be busy with occupation and rebuilding for at least a decade. That implies a very large army of occupation. It may not be the best fighting force in absolute terms, but in this scenario, it doesn't have to be. It will be spread across Europe and Asia.
 
An even later U.S. enterence into the war say with Lend Lease being passed early 42 and extended to the Soviets early 43 and somewhat less squeezing of Japan and Pearl Harbor happening a year later then OTL.

The British more exhausted, the Soviets far weaker and Asia even more messed up.
 
Have Roosevelt die sooner, possibly in 1944 (after reelection of course) so that Truman becomes POTUS sooner. Truman was not fooled by Stalin and did not have Roosevelt's trust of Stalin. I think a Truman/Churchill alliance instead of a Truman/Atlee alliance could have put Stalin in his place easier regarding some of the demands in Eastern Europe. Perhaps you see Poland or Czechoslovakia in a Finland position instead of Comintern domination. An agreement on a peaceful, neutral, but united Germany outside of any economic or military bloc, such as a position Austria was put into. This means no Coal and Steel community between the Benelux countries and France and Germany. This means the West may look to Franco in Spain as more help, or maybe not, maybe isolate Franco even more since there's a Germany, Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia (and don't forget Yugoslavia) buffer between the Soviet sphere and Western Europe; Franco might get toppled instead of a peaceful transition to a constitutional monarchy.

With Tito in Yugoslavia and a smaller eastern bloc, perhaps Bulgaria pulls a Yugoslavia since the Soviet Union would have to go through Romania (or through the Black Sea). Even if crushed this could give incentives to Hungary to be a bit more rebellious as they might see the Soviet Union as too reactionary and overhanded because it is out of weakness. Hungary might see the economic progress of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany as something to aspire to.

Czechoslovakia might actually create a workable nationality out of two, not all that dissimilar ethnic groups if they have 40 or 50 years of peace, prosperity, and democracy to distract from ethnic tensions; the Slovak independence movement may be weaker than Scotland's.

The EEC/EC/EU never forms beyond a France and BeNeLux cooperative. EFTA may not form in response though if it does, you have a French-led pro-western group keeping out the British (because of deGaulle) that maybe brings in Italy, then a German led neutral economic group of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, and Sweden; Finland joins later as OTL; UK, Denmark, and Norway is not initial in formation as the USSR probably would be too suspicious and not allow Finlandized nations to accede to a treaty of magnitude with the UK and other NATO nations. UK, Denmark, Norway might join later during a thaw of the Cold War especially since in ATL the Soviet Union is much weaker, but then again France may need UK or others to counterweight a Germany that as in OTL has great industrial capacity.

So, I say that the results, at least in Europe, of a weaker Soviet Union would be a bigger German-French rivalry in economics and this may set up for a WWIII given the right conditions putting the Soviet Union (one assumes not a super power but still a great power or at least a formidable European power) in a place where they'd have to make decisions on who to back; a UK/USA bloc (possibly including the Commonwealth or at least Canada) would have to also make decisions on who to back, though NATO would make that obvious if it was German aggression, but if it was just an economic "cold war" or trade war it is possible the UK drags the USA into a pro-German led camp.

Am I in ASB territory or is it possible? Love to hear commentary.
Before making a time line, it's always a good idea to see what happened in the same period in OTL. No matter how early Roosevelt dies, Truman can't become President before 20 January 1945, by which point Poland is within days of being entirely occupied by the Soviet Army and once they're there, they're not leaving without a war. Now Truman might force a change in military strategy which might lead to the Western Allies reaching Berlin or Prague first, (though probably not both), but I'm not sure that Truman would be willing to force his opinion on Eisenhower, considering his inexperience and lack of knowledge or whether he would be able to recognize in time that such a change should be carried out.

Bulgaria is a particularly poor example since it had been occupied since September 1944 and its government was lead by the most loyal Communist party in Eastern Europe; a Yugoslavian scenario is out of the question.

As for Czechoslovakia, I'm not too knowledgeable on the subject, you would have to ask some of out Czechs and Slovaks. But I have to say that creating artificial nations was a specialty of the Communists, not of democracies and most of their attempts failed in the end anyway.
 
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