AHC: Soviet Mediterranean

Deleted member 97083

With a POD of January 1941 or later, through what series of events would it be possible for the Soviet Union to control 70% of the Mediterranean coast by 1950?

What would be the geopolitical affects of such a situation?
 
As in direct control? Cos that'd require at the very least owning all of the European side up to France or maybe Spain and the vast majority of the Middle Eastern/African side, which puts them in conflict with practically every power of note in Europe.

Even indirect control through friendly powers is likely impossible, barring Communist takeovers of Spain, Italy, France and Turkey and the utter collapse of colonialism in North Africa.
 

Deleted member 97083

As in direct control? Cos that'd require at the very least owning all of the European side up to France or maybe Spain and the vast majority of the Middle Eastern/African side, which puts them in conflict with practically every power of note in Europe.

Even indirect control through friendly powers is likely impossible, barring Communist takeovers of Spain, Italy, France and Turkey and the utter collapse of colonialism in North Africa.
Well I was thinking a combination of factors.
  1. Stalin occupies Turkey in early 1941 as a response to German and Italian Balkan Campaigns. He also recognizes German threat immediately in June 1941.
  2. Soviets avoid encirclement at Kiev and Vyazma-Bryansk, leading to 1+ million extra Soviet troops in 1945.
  3. Operation Torch fails, Western Allies pursue Atlantic focused strategy.
  4. Due to failure of Torch, D-Day happens in 1945 instead of 1944. The Soviets are farther west.
  5. Soviets take all of Germany, most of Italy, and eastern parts of France.
  6. The Western Allies, thinking the Soviets to be overextended, pursue Operation Unthinkable, which leads to Soviet occupation of all of mainland Europe and much of the colonies in the Middle East.
 
I think the only way this happens is if Stalin dies on 1/1/41 and his successor is brilliant. The Soviets severely annihilate the Germans in 1941 and push through Europe before the allies ever get going. Even then it would be difficult as the British will look to protect their interests in the Med and/or its possible D-Day occurs in '43.
 
Americans retreat into isolationism and associated butterflies lead to Italy and France (via election) and Greece (via revolution) slipping to Communism. Some part of the new Communist Alliance goes into Spain and Portugal to eliminate fascism once and for all. Turkey sees which way the wind is blowing and falls into the Soviet sphere.

That gives the Soviets control over everything bar Egypt.
 
What if it just stopped at step 5, except maybe all of France goes Communist and more or less Stalinist. Perhaps, as in Yugoslavia, French Communists have enough independent spirit and political traction that they throw off Stalin's rule at some point but remain in charge on their own terms. A Red-Army liberated France is of course a very different situation than Tito's power in Yugoslavia--but I imagine that as the Third Reich collapses in the East, being plowed under by the advancing Red Army machine, a more or less Stalinist controlled uprising breaks out in France, when the Germans are too weak to turn around and crush it. So although lacking the long track record, street cred and half-decade long loyalty of his followers Tito had and having little time to accumulate and test the sheer numbers of Party fighters as a proportion of population Tito had, still the Red Army and NKVD or whatever initials it is using that decade find the French touchy and harder to control than in Nazi-steamrollered Eastern Europe.

Or not; the numbers of Soviet occupiers might simply be high enough, or the strength of the French Party's grassroots connections too weak, and France remains under Moscow's control.

Now I see that you do have D-Day in 1945, which would tend to liberate part of France on Western terms--and indeed in a scenario where the Russians have more punch and the Western Allies are delayed a year, the Red Army is probably right about on the point of breaking through the last bits of Germany in the west, when the first US/UK/Free French troops hit the beaches. The Soviets will feel about D-Day the way we feel about the USSR's declaration of war on Japan and invasion--after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs went off. Certainly if Western and Soviet troops meet in the middle of France instead of in Germany, everything then hinges on politics--will the Soviets meekly surrender eastern France to De Gaulle? Will De Gaulle and his Anglo-American patrons allow the Soviets to hang on to it, along with all of Italy and Germany? Will Stalin propose some thing like withdrawal of the Red Army to Germany (but not all his secret agents, only the ostensible ones) and then count on a combination of gratitude and political skulduggery to put in an elected Communist government which promptly and irrevocably allies with him? (In that case a future rupture might be more possible, but I'd predict that in Stalin's lifetime does not happen for the same reasons Mao let it appear that he was under Stalin's thumb even while kicking all sorts of sand in his eyes within the bloc).

Or as you say, France is partitioned.

I don't see step 6 as particularly coupled to the worse situation on the ground though. I think that if the breaks were such that the W-Allies were delayed and the Reds advanced, on paper the same cordiality and collegiality would prevail as OTL--with the same naysayers and Cassandras, followed by the same vigorous reaction of the rump West, which after all was mainly muscled by potential US power. In other words, of course Churchill would be pulling his hair out at the notion of this sweeping Red tide, but while Hitler remains to be defeated will continue to treat with Stalin (even as he has reservations and some contingency plans cooking) and FDR will continue to more or less trust him.

Perhaps in this objectively more dire situation the USA does not demobilize to the near total extent it did OTL. Perhaps Harry Truman cannot win election in '48--though frankly I would not bet on that; it could be that by then he will have had ample opportunity to show his mettle and that combined with his scrappy populism may make his victory less of a squeaker, though perhaps as much of a surprise to the establishment. Or hell, Dewey or whoever wins.

I just don't think the USA and Britain are so ready to go to war with Stalin, regardless of how much territory he holds--indeed the more he holds, the more unwise just shooting from the hip will seem. The USA after all would presumably still have the A-bomb monopoly, for what little that was worth. I suppose if Stalin gets hold of part of France he will be able to take Belgium and the Netherlands too, and then there is nothing to protect Denmark at all--but I don't think he'll invade Sweden and any forces that go to Norway overland will be tiny and not able to take control. So the two big peninsular Scandinavian countries are out of Stalin's hands, as is Spain and Portugal.

In this case I don't think Stalin can afford to move on the Middle East, not by means of invasion--promoting strong revolutionary movements and taking his chances the Anglo-Americans would be desperate enough to construe that as an act of war maybe, but even that scared him OTL.

Ours is a TL where the west controlled the low countries, Italy, all of France, and the lion's share of Germany while Denmark too stood on our side; it may be that Eurocentric Bolsheviks will not see the USA as being essentially enough of the Capitalist nations to count. But if the USA does not demobilize--if we set as a condition of that Soviet withdrawal to a frontier within a Germany we never struck a direct blow against on the ground, and Stalin decides to defy that--I think the level of force we alone could maintain, in combination with the growing threat of nuclear bombardment, would indeed check him. Britain too although we know from OTL was on the ropes economically does have a war economy that involves no starvation (in Britain, India is another story and a weak point) and can produce serious amounts of war material, and a Commonwealth fully mobilized and trained. To an extent British commitment will suffer a bit from sympathy with the Russians, but that will evaporate fast if they do stuff like try to control all of France clearly against French democratic wishes, and will treat all of Germany and the huge bulk of the European continent besides as spoils of war. Which one supposes Stalin will do.

Could even Indian independence be off the table? Well, Labour was committed to it, and OTL the War Cabinet committed long before V-E day to holding elections and setting up a regular Ministry after V-E day, regardless of the status of the Pacific Theatre. Perhaps ITTL the WC will postpone and Churchill stays in charge at least until after V-J day. And perhaps the Tories are more popular due to the dire Soviet threat? But again, perhaps Labour, which included plenty of patriots skeptical of Bolshevism, will take a harder line. Regarding India, I suppose a Labour government, even facing the Reds so closely across the seas, will keep the commitment to turn India loose-but Churchill might not! Any failure of the British to honor Indian nationalism will mean trouble, but perhaps in the circumstances Churchill can overcome his bigotry enough to make an appeal to Indian conservatives alarmed by the Soviets right north of them, or conceivably these conservatives can band together and appeal even to a Labour government that perhaps some stronger form of commonwealth with the Empire is on second thought a very good idea.

Britain is going to be pretty down and out after the war, dependent on Yankee largesse--but that largesse may be forthcoming, for pragmatic reasons iced with sentimental ones, given the severe crisis in Europe and possibly globally, especially as the Maoist Reds in China will be in the ascendency. If the USA remains on a partial war footing, demobilizing some but not all troops--say, half of them--and the war material plants find their orders are cut back but not to nothing, with some being repurposed to civil production but others rolling along, with US rationing relaxed but not eliminated and price controls and semi-voluntary wartime industrial planning still in place, some might predict a less prosperous USA and in certain senses this will be clearly the case--the massive consumer boom of the later postwar period will be delayed, denatured or never happen. But to an extent, even under rationing and price controls and to an extent as much because of central planning as despite it, the US economy, assuming no immediate major war, will surge upward anyway. In wartime conditions poor Americas ate better than they had in decades; housing was a serious problem but might be better solved by a New Deal heritage US government with war powers than the laissez-faire solutions of OTL. Job security will be very high, inflation manageable (or let run wild but wages will spiral up behind it pretty fast with schemes to protect the real value of most capital holdings). One question might be how will US organized labor react to Soviet near-hegemony? Some leaders will regard Stalin as more or less on their side, but I think by and large US labor will be more skeptical than conservative Labourites in Britain will be. They will react badly to what they regard as open betrayals by Truman or whoever, but it is possible a New Deal heritage government still mobilized for possible war, even against a Red enemy, will instead cut ad hoc deals with labor, getting them to extend their wartime no-strike pledges for concrete gains and security. Perhaps the scope of organization will be hemmed in but the already unionized will have solid assurances of their safety. Or maybe the regime allows the unions to organize to their heart's content, assuring the capitalists that even with total organization the power of the unions will be kept within limits they can live with. Taftites might die of apoplexy but more moderate Republicans can accept it. (For that matter Truman might have more trouble from conservative Southern Democrats than the Taftites!)

Under these conditions, Truman (I assume he runs the crucial first few years unless we suppose the ATL war situation would butterfly his nomination by FDR in favor of someone assumed to have more gravitas--but who would that be? Not Wallace for sure! Regardless of any feelings I may have about Wallace, in a TL with Stalin bidding fair to conquer all of Europe in 1944, there is no way the party bigwigs would let Wallace keep the VP position. So I think Truman is pretty likely to inherit the Presidency--unless one supposes the Republicans could win in '44, but I don't think that would happen either). OK Truman will retain substantial military force, much of it deployed in France already. Britain would be no easy pushover, the RN at maximum levels of effectiveness as is the RAF; Stalin has no navy to speak of. That can change in a decade or so but in the short run, the Reds are less of a military threat to Britain than Hitler was. The Russians do have a lot of submarines and have presumably captured the U-boat works, but the RN and USN are pretty good at ASW by now. The massive Red Army, enriched over OTL by the pickings of Italy, all of Germany, and the Low Countries atop their OTL spoils, certainly might threaten to crush the combined Anglo/American/Free French forces like bugs--but even given overwhelming numbers that will eventually prevail, the W-Allied forces are salted and well-armed and won't go down without a nasty fight. The Red Army is spread thinner than OTL, offset maybe by greater numbers due to the early good fortune mentioned, but surely that margin is worn down again somewhat conquering all of Italy, West Germany, the low countries and east France. They are unwelcome occupiers to large numbers of Europeans wherever they are, with only limited help from local political allies--who are themselves pretty fearful and possibly willing to cut a deal with the Yankees and friends. On paper, Stalin can maybe take the W-Allies in France. He knows that what they will do in fact is give a good account of themselves, then retreat again to Britain where he can't touch them. And just maybe the W-Allied forces already in France, knowing that the entire might of the USA and Commonwealth are backing them, benefiting from heavy air support that can probably achieve air superiority over the Red air forces, will hunker down instead, and reinforcements from semi-demobilized Britain will quickly be raised and poured in, followed by legions of Yankees, Canadians and Australians armed with the best weapons on Earth. Oh, and Truman maybe only has a few A-bombs, and maybe Red air defenses can knock out their bombers--and maybe not, and suddenly there's a huge radioactive hole in Stalin's front lines or a key logistic center is gone. All the W-Allies have to do really is hold the line while the USAF gets better at penetrating through and one by one, key industrial and logistic centers get blown away. If the Soviet soldiers were fighting to secure their Motherland, he might be able to rely on them, but they are far from home, embedded in a bunch of countries whose surviving peoples generally don't like them much, with the W-Allies perhaps dropping weapons and ammo for partisans. It could get very very ugly.

The Westerners, despite the desperate urging of the Free French keen to see the rest of France liberated, can afford to stand pat, if they stay mobilized. The US economy is not hurting for lack of the American soldiers, it is running at full steam and more productive than ever. Britain, with a sympathetic USA backing them, can contribute a good share too. The USA is probably putting any anti colonial rhetoric on the back burner. Or simply taking over the colonial role de facto, in the guise of assisting fledgling new republics--basically in the places the Japanese occupied I don't think the Americans will turn them over to rump France but instead set them up as new allied nations. Britain can hold all the colonies she could take back herself, and France keeps the colonies that never changed hands. It is not necessary to demobilize! Given the stark situation I think most Tommies and GI's would accept that the duration is not over yet, and that they'll go home only on rotation--if the war does not flare out they will be mustered out in a few more years, replaced by new recruits, but a huge army is here to stay.

Given the flashpoints of OTL history one might guess WWIII is inevitable, but given the balance of terror of OTL and seeing it as I do as being partially a matter of two super-blocks led by people who didn't actually want a war if they could help it, I think the big war is as avoidable as OTL. To reiterate a theory mine, Stalin is the Great Procrastinator. Ideology and his personal instinct of tyranny both urge him to aggressive war, but he knows he is a sucky general, whereas anyone competent at it he entrusts to run the war for him becomes a potential rival to remove and replace him. The ideal situation for him is the just completed Great Patriotic War, but that is done with, Hitler is gone, the Japanese warlords are no more, and now he must turn his army on the allies who have been helping them. He would lose no sleep over that but I think that his political calculation is, the Soviet ruled peoples must know that it was the greedy capitalists who struck first. And on the other side of the line, the capitalists may indeed be greedy, but also war-weary. Although Stalin may rule Europe, the Anglo-Americans control the globe that made Europe rich, and between them have plenty of industry to fill the role of the entire First World, and moral capital enough to make controlling the Third World seem a solvable problem. Objectively they face a worse problem than we did OTL, but the Soviets are super powerful mainly in potential. They have a vast army in hand to be sure, but that army is likely to be stuck merely as a dead weight on the regime, kept mobilized for reasons of preparedness and defense. Can the Soviets now develop the air and sea power to threaten the USA? Or even Britain? If they can it will take time, time in which the western powers too can build up their capabilities even further and still live comfortable lives while doing so.

I think they just sit and glare as OTL. Western France is a permanent bastion and threat to the bloc, a tripwire for global nuclear war. Oceania calls the shots outside of Soviet Eurasia--and we know from OTL that EastAsia will hive off soon enough. Under the necessarily harsh and inefficient Soviet management, the resources of Western Europe will not change the balance of power so much; Ivan will remain objectively behind.

I suppose the Soviets will build up a big navy, but it will not be too hard for combined USN/RN force to hold in check. Eventually there will be missiles, until then the Soviets are at the mercy of the USAF protected mainly by their large expanses of territory and finite US resources.

I do think given your initial conditions Stalin can incorporate Turkey, Greece, Italy and parts of France, though perhaps not any great ports in the latter. He might get away with trying to take the French mandated territory of Lebanon and Syria but to press on down into Palestine and beyond would be to declare war with Britain and hence the USA, something that won't happen until Hitler is vanquished. And then, not then either.

It doesn't matter than the USSR probably can win on many fronts. The point is, starting a war is starting a war, a war with Great Britain and the USA that will not end until one side or the other is defeated. There would be little more reason for Stalin to think that the war will be won by the Soviet side in this ATL than in OTL. The core of the Soviet Union is devastated and a major reason the Red Army does not go home but remains deployed is that there are few homes standing for the soldiers to live in should they return to where they came from in Russia. Britain is bomb-damaged but they repaired around that, otherwise fully operational as is the USA, and the USA has the ability to make A-bombs, something that cannot destroy the USSR today, but can within a half decade or so. Now would indeed be the time to knock the two opposing Great Powers out but the one thing the great Red Army lacks is global reach, even Britain can defend against everything he's got.

I suppose one factor I usually assume prevents Americans from starting World War Three does not apply here...Stalin is not holding Europe hostage. Stalin has already conquered Europe and only later will be holding small remnants of it--perhaps Scandinavia, and surely the British Isles and Iberia---hostage with threats of destruction, otherwise the only way to free Europe is to defeat Stalin, or hope he chokes on an empire bigger than he can swallow. The W-Allies, leaving out the French anyway, have nothing to lose. So perhaps for that reason the importunities of the hawks who argue the war is inevitable, has really in a clear sense already started, and should be ended by the western powers at whatever cost now because it will only cost more to do so later-indeed, later the Reds might win, will prevail after all.

But I don't see Truman, or Eisenhower, being the first one to strike, nor will any British leader persuade either that it must be done by a Western first strike. Some other combination of leadership might do it perhaps, particularly with Churchill in the mix, but if the West does not strike first, I don't see Stalin doing it either, not when he has practically all of Europe to play around with and the rest of the world to seek to win over through politics.
 
Well I was thinking a combination of factors.
  1. Stalin occupies Turkey in early 1941 as a response to German and Italian Balkan Campaigns. He also recognizes German threat immediately in June 1941.
  2. Soviets avoid encirclement at Kiev and Vyazma-Bryansk, leading to 1+ million extra Soviet troops in 1945.
  3. Operation Torch fails, Western Allies pursue Atlantic focused strategy.
  4. Due to failure of Torch, D-Day happens in 1945 instead of 1944. The Soviets are farther west.
  5. Soviets take all of Germany, most of Italy, and eastern parts of France.
  6. The Western Allies, thinking the Soviets to be overextended, pursue Operation Unthinkable, which leads to Soviet occupation of all of mainland Europe and much of the colonies in the Middle East.


There are a few problems with your list.

1) I cant speak to Turkey's military prowess as of 1941 but I am going to guess they are more like Finland than Iran. Also, an invasion of Turkey most likely eliminates lend-lease and any sort of alliance with the West.
3) I have a hard time seeing how Torch fails. It might take longer and the French might put up a bigger fight but failing?
4) If Torch fails or doesnt go off, the West lands in France in 1943. There have been several threads discussing how the German forces were relatively lightly positioned in in France in 1943. The main reason the West couldnt land was because they were running around the Med. No Med campaign and they almost certainly land in 1943.

Continuing on this, if the Germans are struggling against the Soviets and the Soviets are in Turkey, the allies will be even quicker to land in France owing to fears of the Soviets overruning the continent. And the Germans will have to devote more resources to the East if those million troops in point 1 are still around.

I am going to go back to my prior post. I think you need the Soviets to roll over Germany in 1941. Maybe the pre-empt with Zukhov in early June. It might still be a tough slog through Poland and eastern Germany so along the way, Soviet troops go through the Balkans and Italy. They get Italy, the French go communist after the war - along with their colonies - so the Soviets have Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Syria, Libya, Algeria, Italy, Greece, and an independent but communist France. They dominate the Med as well as Europe.
 
Well, the Communists in France and Italy were strong, and there was a civil war in Greece. Still, it's a wank, and the US might have thrown nukes (don't forget Stalin didn't have them until 1949).
 
Wouldn't a Communist Europe all the way to Spain/France/Italy [with land connection between them and the Eastern Bloc], the Near East and Turkey/Greece from the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia be enough even without North Africa or the Middle East? Add a larger Soviet Mediterranean or Black Sea Navy.
 
In case they take France and/or Spain: Forget about the Med. They'll have access to the Atlantic! What will the Anglos say about that?
 
1) I cant speak to Turkey's military prowess as of 1941 but I am going to guess they are more like Finland than Iran.
They had a peace time army of 174,000 men which didn't start seeing increase until the start of 1940, at that time they mustered ~230,000 men, one armoured brigade, and three cavalry brigades. But almost all of the equipment was pre-WW1 with rifles like the Lee Enfield, Lebel, Masuiers etc. being used. They had fortifications along the Dardanelles and along the outer regions of the country to the East. The airforce was 370 planes of all type with only about half of them being modern even though they had over 8,000 men in their airforce. The Turkish navy consisted of the outdated battle cruiser Yavuz (ex-Goeben), 4 destroyers, 5-6 submarines, 2 light cruisers, 3 mine-sweepers, 2 gunboats, 3 motor torpedo boats, 4 minelayers and a surveying vessel.
 
Again with Turkey, as with the Middle East in general, the question is can Stalin get away with doing something the British and Americans really really don't want him to do?

With the W-Allied D day coming so very late, it could be that the Soviets and W-Allies are very badly out of joint with each other, no formal alliance at all. This is dangerous for Stalin because he risks the British and Free French declaring war on the grounds of his invasion of Poland in '39 and the Americans going along with it. It means no Lend-Lease aid either. Now I happen to be of the opinion that LL was not vital to Soviet victory, largely on the grounds that they had managed to check the German advance at Stalingrad before any substantial amount of useful aid had much of a chance to make it to Russia. The OP postulates the Soviets have better luck saving a million Soviet casualties, and this might more than make up the value of Lend-Lease to the USSR OTL, as massive as that eventually was. People who assert that LL was in fact vital, if not to Soviet survival than to their eventual hegemony over Eastern Europe, point out that when the form of aid shook out after an inept first year or so, it took the form of large numbers of trucks and other vehicles that enhanced Soviet mobility, and without these the Red Army would be much slower to advance--giving the Germans some relief I suppose, but mainly just miring down the steamroller so the Western Allies would have more time to conquer the Reich on their own terms.

That more sophisticated argument has some merit I suppose--but especially if we give the Soviets some early luck they did not have OTL, I do think Soviet industry would simply supply more Soviet-made vehicles, or the Red Army would become more foot-centric. Perhaps this does mean a slower advance but not a less inexorable one.

But the TL does presume the Russians not only advance as far as OTL but much farther, and I think that Soviet formal participation in a Grand Alliance with the W-Allies is presumed here. They are getting Lend-Lease that does assist their mobility, and the OTL Monday-morning quarterbacking that assumes no LL for Russia would have been a good thing is all the more influential and repeated the more often and loudly ITTL than here.

OTL Turkey managed to stay formally neutral and I am not sure whether Stalin would dare rock that boat while claiming alliance with Britain and the USA. Even if objectively Britain could not aid Turkey (which seems odd, given that nothing is going to displace the British from Egypt and Palestine and Iraq) it is a dangerously annoying slap in an ally's face.

Perhaps we had best account for Soviet hegemony over Turkey as the outcome of an ostensibly spontaneous Communist revolution in that country, one Stalin claims to have done nothing to provoke. I think at that point Churchill, and possibly even FDR, would lose all patience with Soviet claims and this might represent the rupture of the Grand Alliance. Having allied with the Soviets, thus implicitly forgiving and forgetting the prior violation of Poland, the Allies lack a cause of war with the Soviets and can ill afford for reasons I've argued to start a new one.

On Stalin's side, I'd wait to seize Turkey until the Reich is clearly on the ropes even if the W-Allies were to offer them terms, as long as those terms fell short of joining the Germans in a grand anti-Soviet crusade. Now Stalin can't be sure the westerners won't go that far--no matter how sure we may be they would not, the Communists clearly feared this possibility to the last minute. Therefore I'd say the fall of Turkey to Communism is something that happens during the end game of the war, mere weeks or days before the belated US/British/Free French forces meet up with the Red Army somewhere in France. Relations are freezing and souring anyway due to the situation on the ground in France, with Stalin taunting the W-Allies for helping too little and too late.

I've argued that Stalin would hesitate to provoke Britain and the USA with even ostensibly domestic Red revolutions; perhaps I had better walk back from that and suppose he is willing to risk overt and total war with the western powers at this juncture over nominally spontaneous Communist risings. What is going to limit him here though and prevent a realistic prospect of a red tide drowning Palestine, Egypt, Libya and Algeria is that the Communist insurgent forces are not so strong on the ground, and faced with Soviet betrayal, Churchill and Truman (or even say Clement Attlee, who professed a stronger commitment to British Empire than the Labour Party as a whole preferred) will take steps to secure colonial possessions, American anti-colonialism being trumped by anti-Communism. Americans might as I suggest prefer promoting nominally independent new nations, but will see eye to eye with British recommendations that neocolonialist strings should be tightly attached.

The OP is not directly concerned with what else Stalin and other Communists like Mao or Ho Chi Minh do east of Suez; perhaps along with Turkey, Iran succumbs to an ostensible Tudeh revolution. Perhaps there, unlike Turkey, US and British influence in the south of the country aids "counterrevolution" and both sides find themselves confronting each other not only in France but in a proxy civil war in Iran, one where the Western powers show strong resolve by pouring in resources and military assistance to the anti-communist side.

In every case I think Stalin can only seize power in countries that directly border places he already controls. By the time he can consolidate his hold on Turkey, the British and Free French, with US help will have shored up Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, perhaps losing some territory or even this entire tier (probably not southern Iraq but maybe Kurdistan) to eventual Soviet victory--but managing anyway to hold Palestine, Jordan and southern Iraq and southern Persia. On the Med, the Reds might advance to the northern reaches of Palestine but no further. Greece of course gets eaten like a grape, again falling ostensibly to the domestic Greek Communists. It will become very plain to all observers that while domestic Communists did exist and participate and are placed in nominal charge, all Red victories depend on massive Red Army assistance and proceed clearly under Moscow's direction. But Stalin will blandly deny it.

If he were to persist in shoving on for as much as the Red Army might grab on paper, he will be provoking more and more active Western resistance based on rising outrage that would silence all pro-Soviet opinion (having eroded most of it away quickly) and committing the West into a war to the finish they would be resolved to win. Even if Stalin has a tin ear for this dissonance in the West, I believe Communist intelligence would alarm him rapidly with how fast he is souring sentiment in the USA and Britain and that this would happen fast enough he will pull the plug on all adventures beyond Turkey, Greece and possibly north Iran--indeed he might as OTL be intimidated into pulling out of Iran completely. Under the circumstances perhaps he can get away with holding a thin strip of Iran, rounding off Soviet control of the Caspian sea shores but leaving the bulk of Iran--mostly desert to be sure--in the hands of the opposing royalist government. In this case then neither Syria nor Lebanon nor northern Iraq are in danger as Stalin reins in any plans to bother them. Securing Turkey and Greece and possibly a strip of Iran might seem worth while in the case, since the Cold War is being started pretty much at the same moment as V-E day or conceivably earlier. Knowing for sure that Western forces will be alert and probing at Soviet defenses, pushing the buffer south from actual Soviet borders will seem necessary.

Again the question is, does the Cold War immediate go hot too? I'm of the belief that no, if Stalin and the Western leaders show the same characteristics as OTL, both will want the other side to make the first intolerable move, and will be flexible about what is intolerable. It is not Stalin's moment for world conquest yet, he may reasonably judge time is more on his side than against despite the fact that the Americans have an A-bomb capacity already up and running. But slowly, he knows that too, and the Soviets will have the same capability within a few years. (Given the extent of his conquests he probably can and therefore will throw more resources than OTL at that project and somewhat sooner too). His instinct to procrastinate will be borne out I think as the Soviet military realizes the fashions in which they are vulnerable, including political ones. The idea of holding off while rebuilding Soviet industrial capacity and thus military capability will be appealing, more so than a premature Red crusade. Whereas I think Western powers will underestimate Soviet capabilities and ability to grow, and yet also recognize they are large. I do think the "attack sooner than later" lobby will be stronger, and God knows that might make a Western first strike inevitable, but I judge it will not.

Going to full scale war at any time is certainly in the cards, but I say postponing WWIII indefinitely is also.

What is not in the cards, I think, is Soviet conquest of 70 percent of the Med coastline. Or if that is attainable, it is because the Soviet advance into France takes them all the way to the Spanish border and a shoot-from the hip "operation unthinkable" continuation war does happen and does backfire on its Western initiators, giving the Red Army the chance to take Spain as well. Or perhaps it stalls in the west, maybe France gets taken back along with say the Lowlands, but goes better for the Reds in the Middle East, leading to Soviet presence on the Persian Gulf via either or both of Iran and Iraq, and the OP's hope of pressing down the Med coastline to Egypt, Libya and beyond.

However in that scenario I don't foresee a cease-fire. The war will grind on until one side or the other collapses.

If the Western peoples see themselves as guilty of starting the war against the Soviets, they might weaken and sue for terms to limit the damage. But even if it is objectively true that Western leaders decide to fight the Soviets instead of accept the loss of part of France, and do this when public opinion might not support it, I think in the course of the fighting people will rethink and decide the Western offensive was both justified and necessary.

Given full resolve on both sides, I would predict an eventual Western victory. But also that it happens at tremendous cost, with a really large percentage of US male population casualties of the front lines, and comparable if not worse losses among the Commonwealth powers; the French themselves may wind up practically extinct. Along with most of the population of Europe and especially Soviet citizens; decimation among Chinese will dwarf even these losses (and yet lots of Chinese will survive). Western victory will take the form of a grinding front line that gobbles up soldiers, tanks and tactical air power, while the USA ramps up A-bomb production and by very expensive trial and error learns to penetrate Soviet air defenses and wreck cumulatively worse and worse damage with an increasing rate of nuclear strikes. Even if the Soviets manage to get a few test bombs working and field a few dozen with telling effect, by then the USAF will be blasting away at the Soviet interior pretty regularly and eventually undercut their ability to make more bombs. I suppose, facing a frightful rate of losses extrapolated to exhaust Western manpower perhaps before a Soviet defeat, Americans and Britons will go over to higher and higher tech expedients meant to minimize those losses while keeping pressure up on the foe, and seeing progress in the nuclear bombardment campaign, will become more and more conservative on the front lines. It might be a mercy to the West, if not the French, if the initial land war goes badly in Europe forcing a total withdrawal from France and perhaps even abandoning Spain and Portugal (after all they sat the war against Hitler out--though I daresay the Red Army pouring into France might stampede Franco into begging to be taken into the alliance, especially once the Western powers start denouncing the Soviets)--it will remove Western forces from the European meat grinder and make the focus the air/sea defense of Britain and perhaps Scandinavia while men like Curtis LeMay pursue a strategic nuclear air war initially in slow motion. Other fronts may remain live of course. US and British Naval supremacy will confine Soviet power to Eurasia, even with maximal Chinese help.

By the time the Soviets collapse, the cumulative bomb megatonnage released in Eastern Europe and central Asia might be so much that the survival of the "victorious" West and neutral regions if any may be threatened by fallout levels; fission bombs are going to produce fallout at a much worse rate than thermonuclear weapons would and I don't think the Americans will have developed the H-bomb in a deployable way.

I don't think there is any prospect of a war flaring up in 1945 and being settled any other way than by total Soviet defeat.

And I think Stalin would understand this in 1945, and procrastinate for time to perhaps change the balance. By his ideology, the decline of capitalism and triumph of proletarian revolution is guaranteed--eventually. Therefore if he sits and waits, the situation for his bloc should improve--someday.

Meanwhile he assimilates what he already has, which is task enough!

The way I see the Instant Cold War going is, after a period of severe tension in which the Western forces landed in France form up to defend their limited frontiers and active shooting wars in Turkey and Iran proceed until Stalin is scared enough to rein them in (result, too little of Turkey is left to hold and is conceded in return for Soviet withdrawals in Iran and some backing off of Red forces from sensitive borders), the Western Allies meanwhile tear up the UN charter. They might like it enough to reform it under essentially the same terms but excluding the USSR and all purported nations under Soviet control, or there might be a new organization with a different charter, like Heinlein's "Federated Free Nations" or some such (from Have Space Suit, Will Travel). This is essentially a US-Commonwealth alliance. The "Free Nations" remain highly mobilized, retaining WWII arms and force levels while frantically pouring money into all sorts of advanced weapon projects. Under this sort of War Capitalism with ongoing rationing, the standard of living gradually, slowly but methodically improves (as long as major war is held off) and Third World nations (mostly Latin America at this point, though I'd foresee the hasty "liberation" of some but not all colonies) are brought to heel informally by OSS type operations to guarantee their allegiance. Very possibly the FFN (to name it that) pushes through populist land reform (with compensation to elites coming out of US coffers) and a moderate rate of global industrialization, with an eye toward falling back on them should the Soviets develop super weapons to clobber US and Commonwealth industry. The Third World "Free Nations" also undertake to raise up military forces and pledge them to the probable coming global war--this is politically dangerous but the Americans probably feel confident they can manage that given a free hand and a press that does not ask pointed questions about the actual political legitimacy of the small nations' governments. Similarly in the remaining colonies--conciliatory reforms and a coopted set of native elites recruited to keep order, sweetened further by major capital investment. Some of these are turned loose formally pretty soon, others remain colonies indefinitely.

Colonial (and maverick Third World) peoples will be mobilized into insurgencies aligned with the Soviets to be sure. (Vice versa though, the gloves are off regarding OSS type subversion in the Communist sphere--unless perhaps a tacit agreement is reached limiting both in the interest of avoiding the big war). Instead of fighting the Russians in an apocalyptic big fight, American and Commonwealth (and to the extent they have the numbers, French) forces will be increasingly bogged down in colonial wars. But they may be able to resolve these, probably by rather brutal, draconian means--it will sap the morale of the West somewhat but the perception will be strong that the alternative is surrender to Communist dictatorship. I'd be reluctant to game out Western politics because I'd fear it would become very reactionary, possibly to a degree that Hitler or anyway Mussolini would be rehabilitated; given American Jim Crow practices this could become very ugly indeed. One might hope otherwise, that in the face of the Communist threat American racism is sacrificed instead, but I think that would be a case of water running uphill unfortunately.

Meanwhile the Soviet bloc, frozen on its WWII victory frontier lines plus a swathe of the Middle East, would look east to China. Perhaps Soviet management would secure itself more tightly than OTL, Mao turning up tragically dead supposedly at the hands of reactionaries (as might Tito in Yugoslavia for instance) or perhaps Mao will be the loose cannon he actually was OTL--but during Stalin's lifetime, Mao valued the appearance of a monolithic Communist bloc and helped keep his defiances of Stalin secret. Obviously both Korea and French Indochina are potential flashpoints for the Big War. Assuming nothing worse than the Chinese Civil War and a conflict or two no worse than the Korean War happen and there is no big war, Soviet policy will keep a tremendous army mobilized in Europe, in part because there are few places for the soldiers to live back in the USSR, and raise up big armies from the occupied peoples, having created "fraternal people's republics" there under Party control. Of course these conquered provinces will have been devastated by the war and their reconstruction offset by tribute in massive amounts of capital and consumer goods flowing east to the USSR. Turkey and "People's Iran" will of course be under similar policies, and also absorb large Soviet occupation forces they will have to support. In not too much time, the Soviets will explode some A-bombs of their own and feverishly set about producing them, but will not have aircraft good enough to seriously threaten the USA. (They will soon acquire a realistic ability to smash Britain however--to be sure British air defenses, massively backstopped with US resources, will be very formidable). Another possible flashpoint of the Cold War will be Soviet efforts to develop a Navy that is a serious challenge to the USN/RN. (Funding for the RN will be considerably higher and more stable than OTL, as also the RAF--it will probably amount to more US subsidy and more debt, but no one will be counting the cost at the time). Stalin can't forego that without admitting the Reds won't be victorious any time in the foreseeable future, but it will have no place to operate except the Black Sea and Caspian; there will be no friendly ports outside of Eurasia and none between the farthest south extent of Sino-Soviet power in Southeast Asia and Turkey on the Med; the Suez canal will be forthrightly closed to Soviet aligned ships as will the Panama Canal. The situation on the high seas will be more militarized; for Soviet sailors to get any practice at sea they'd have to hug their coastlines. The vast Mediterranean coastline, the premise of this TL, will do them little good if the West controls both Suez and Gibraltar and is prepared to bottle up Soviet bloc shipping at these checkpoints. Of course the Soviets also control vast stretches of Atlantic coastline from which to launch submarines, which western forces can track and harass but not sink--not in most waters, without initiating a state of war.
 
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