AHC: Soviets win WW3

Zachariah

Zachariah

Banned
Looks like there are a whole host of brilliant WW3 ATLs here on AH.com; however, I've noticed that pretty much all of them end with the USA and NATO emerging victorious, and all traces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact dying in an unparalleled nuclear holocaust. As such, your challenge is to come up with a plausible, non ASB ATL in which NATO and the USA end up on the losing end, and the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union emerge 'victorious' (i.e, survive, and get NATO and the USA to unconditionally surrender), in a third world war which involves a large-scale nuclear exchange. What do you think? Is it possible, or utterly impossible? And how far back would the POD for such a TL have to be, to make such a scenario plausible?
 
KuboCaskett

KuboCaskett

AFAIK, the Soviets had a chance in the 1970's to inflict massive damage to NATO, at least without nukes, and of course when the 1980's came around, NATO's odds were increasingly in their favor, more so by the late 80's. I'm not sure if this Soviet edge can apply to the late 40's to the 1960's, though.

And honestly, there isn't much WWIII TLs here that involve the conflict in the 20th century and are close to being completed.
 

Lalli

Probably best chances are on 1940's and even then it is probably ratherly stalemante than total victory.
 

Deleted member 97083

Enver Hoxha becomes General Secretary of the Soviet Union. 100 million bunkers later, WW3 happens, with sufficient warning such as an American invasion of Cuba. Many Soviets find shelter before nuclear war breaks out. While perhaps 40% of Soviets survive, the Soviet Union start out with a higher population, so they "win".
 

starman

KuboCaskett said:
AFAIK, the Soviets had a chance in the 1970's to inflict massive damage to NATO, at least without nukes, and of course when the 1980's came around, NATO's odds were increasingly in their favor, more so by the late 80's.
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Was the use of nukes necessarily inevitable had there been a WWIII? Both sides had poison gas in WWII but refrained from using it. The reich went down to defeat without using the deadly tabun it had.
With regard to your second sentence here, Afghanistan and the crumbling of the Soviet state ruined their edge in Europe.

I'm not sure if this Soviet edge can apply to the late 40's to the 1960's, though.
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In the '40s much of their country was devastated so they were right to demobilize and focus on reconstruction. And of course they didn't have a counter to US nukes until '49.
 
Histor32

Histor32

Achaemenid Rome said:
Enver Hoxha becomes General Secretary of the Soviet Union. 100 million bunkers later, WW3 happens, with sufficient warning such as an American invasion of Cuba. Many Soviets find shelter before nuclear war breaks out. While perhaps 40% of Soviets survive, the Soviet Union start out with a higher population, so they "win".
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you really like Hoxha don't you :p
 

Asp

The idea of the U.S. unconditionally surrendering doesn't track. Nuclear superpowers with doomsday arsenals don't do that. That's the point of being a nuclear superpower.
 

Lalli

Peabody-Martini said:
WW3 is like herpes simplex, there are no winners.
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Cuban Missile Crisis and earlier was such WW3 possible where would has been victor. Against common myth Cuban Missile War wouldn't have caused total collapse of humankind. USA would has survived and Western Europe would has suffered greatly but too survive. But Eastern Europe and USSR would be radioactive wasteland. Perhaps even later WW3 could had victor but it would has been pretty Pyrrhic.
 

The Red

It is possible but you need to have a PoD prior to the Second World War where the Soviets can dwarf the US in regards to nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them. You'd probably have to go back to the early thirties.

In such a scenario it's most likely that the US would act like the Soviets, exaggerate and boast about how many weapons they have whilst quietly looking for a way out of any actual confrontation.
 

ObssesedNuker

A unconditional defeat isn't possible. A conditional defeat is, but it would be terribly unlikely and you'd have to basically contrive some political preconditions in order for it to happen.
 

Deleted member 94708

If the POD is post-war, then this would require a heck of a lot of contrivance to make it work.

IOTL the period in which the Soviets could drive NATO from Continental Europe in a conventional conflict coincided with the period in which NATO's nuclear use policies varied between "glass everything between the Oder and the Yangtze on day one" and "take tactical nukes out of the box on day one and if the Soviets escalate beyond tactical use, then glass everything between the Vistula and the Amur".

Honestly, whichever party is losing will unpack nuclear weapons to avoid the loss, and at any point after 1966 or 1967 that means that at war's end there is essentially no one left to win. Before that point the US and to a lesser extent its NATO partners can "win" for certain values of win, but the USSR cannot.
 
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