AHC: Soviet-American war without WW2

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to have the USA and the USSR fight a war without the Second World War happening.

You can set your POD as far back as the year 1900. Now, this does not mean other (relatively minor) wars can`t happen, just that the two powers fight a war outside the constrains of the OTL post-WW2 situation.

Oh, and also the war can`t end with total nuclear annihilation of one (or both) sides. ;)
 
Can there be a conflict analogous to World War 2, but with different combatants than OTL's war (ie. a global conflict involving multiple nations, but with the USA and USSR on opposite sides)?
 
American troops are sent to Siberia after the Tsar falls to help prop up the Whites and the Red Army fights to expel them.

Oops, happened IOTL.

I suspect any conditions that bring the USA and USSR into conflict would likely be a part of some Great War that is called WWII. For example, you can have the much discussed "USSR joins the Axis" scenario where the Anglo-French intervene in Finland and/or bomb Baku. The USA like OTL, joins the Allies
and fights Germany and the USSR. Nuclear annihilation is inflicted on the Nazis, and Stalin (or whoever deposes him) sues for peace. But WWII still occurs.

It's also difficult because the USA and USSR are natural allies. They're practically on opposite sides of the world and are alternatives to the Old World colonial powers. They didn't really come into conflict IOTL until those Old World powers self-destructed, and the USA and USSR filled the colonial vacuum.

I suppose there's the "global crusade against communism" angle, but it's hard to bring about because no one wanted to fight that kind of war after WWI, and if it did occur, it would be WWII. Without some cataclysmic event (ie WWII happening in one form or another) to destroy the old world order, there's no way for the USA and USSR to become engaged in a war that's small enough not to end in atomic apocalypse.
 
Red Alert?

Germany never turns fascist, while the USSR ends up with a leader favoring expansion west... The US must intervene, or the soviets will eat western Europe.
 

Robert

Banned
Two things would have to happen.

One, Woodrow Wilson loses in 1916 to Charles Evans Hughes. And two, Hitler is killed on During World War One.

A President Hughes would have reacted the same way to the Zimmerman Note, the German attempt to encouraging Mexico to attack the United States to keep it neutral. The U.S. would have entered World War One, and Germany would have been defeated after it had itself defeated Russia.

Without Hitler to mold the Nazi Party into a national political movement, the Weimar Republic might have a chance to stabilize the economic situation. President Hughes was more of an internationalist, and kept the U.S. more involved with the reconstruction of Germany after the war.

The Soviet Union would have come to power, hostile to the West, especially the United States which joined the attempt to aide the anti-communist forces during the Civil War.

With a more moderate Germany economically alined to the United States, the possibility of a NATO-Warsaw Pact kind of war taking place in the 1930s seems the most likely scenario.
 
I feel like any POD before the actual formation of the USSR that still results in its creation isn't taking the butterfly effect into account enough.
 
I feel like any POD before the actual formation of the USSR that still results in its creation isn't taking the butterfly effect into account enough.

If we have a POD that doesn't change the outbreak of WWI, the collapse of the Russian empire is quite likely, and the Bolsheviks were well positioned in organization and ruthlessness to come out at least as part of the winning side if not the sole victors in the inevitable kerfluffle. I don't see a change in the US election of 1916 as likely to butterfly these factors.

Bruce
 
The Soviet Union never had any interest in a general war with the West, or expansion deep into Europe using military force. Stalin's acquisitions IOTL were opportunistic moves which were unlikely to repeat themselves.
 
Can there be a conflict analogous to World War 2, but with different combatants than OTL's war (ie. a global conflict involving multiple nations, but with the USA and USSR on opposite sides)?

That invites Red Alert-type scenarios, and I`m especially not fond of them. Not the lest because the attempts at this scenario have produced trainwreck timelines in both the post 1900 sections and especially the ASB sections of this website.

But, if there is no other way, the I guess you can use an analogous conflict, just not OTL WW2 for obvious reasons.

I feel like any POD before the actual formation of the USSR that still results in its creation isn't taking the butterfly effect into account enough.

Then don`t use one. As far back as 1900. means your POD can be in every point after 1900., which includes up to today, actually. I thought people would be smart enough to see this point without me spelling it out for them...
 
American troops are sent to Siberia after the Tsar falls to help prop up the Whites and the Red Army fights to expel them.

Oops, happened IOTL.

Doesn`t count. Why? Because the Americans left before the USSR was formed in 1922. :p

It's also difficult because the USA and USSR are natural allies. They're practically on opposite sides of the world and are alternatives to the Old World colonial powers. They didn't really come into conflict IOTL until those Old World powers self-destructed, and the USA and USSR filled the colonial vacuum.

It`s why I called it a challenge. ;)

I suppose there's the "global crusade against communism" angle, but it's hard to bring about because no one wanted to fight that kind of war after WWI, and if it did occur, it would be WWII. Without some cataclysmic event (ie WWII happening in one form or another) to destroy the old world order, there's no way for the USA and USSR to become engaged in a war that's small enough not to end in atomic apocalypse.

So, a war started without nuclear wepons would still end up in an atomic apocalypse? Even if we take that the OTL timeframe of when either the USA and the USSR could actually do this was more then a decade after the invention of nuclear weapons, and that the date of nuclear weapons being invented isn`t set in stone?
 
the great depression becomes worse and causes a larger communist movement which turns militant.

the soviet union supplies weapons and advisors to the workers of the usa for the proletarian cause and violence increases steadily until it's practically a new civil war. the soivet connection is revealed when some advisors get captured and begin to talk.

usa wins against the communists and carries the fight to them alongside a wider anti comintern pact :D
 

Kongzilla

Banned
Germany could be defeated in 1940 and is forced back. With Germany soundly beaten the question is what to do with the Soviets since they invaded Poland as well.
 
Top