Cold War brings out a third side: Europe

[Strategos' Risk]

With a POD after, say, 1941, create a Cold War where it's mainly between the U.S. and the USSR, (with a PRC either allied to the USSR or hanging off on its own, plus a third-world non-alignment movement not doing much other than being made pawns), but also including a third side based in Europe that's pretty much hostile to both sides (like the PRC post-Sino-Soviet split).

The biggest options are:

All of Western Europe: Doesn't make any sense for NATO to kick the U.S. out, so this option is pretty implausible. I don't think that during the Cold War the entire continent of Europe would get angry at the U.S. at once to warrant such behavior.

The United Kingdom: This requires some sort of POD in which the British empire doesn't fall apart as soon. I think that since we're assuming an Allied victory, the Allied nations are mostly likely to walk away nearly intact. Well, maybe Italy as well, but the Italians never had a big empire as a base to become a major power anyways.

France: Could they pull off a For All Time sort of fascist turn, retain their colonies, and become a lose agent to mess with the U.S. and USSR?

 

[WhatIsAUserName]

Have the European empires stay intact? But that's a huge stretch, and they'll never be able to keep all those different nationalities in line to form a a major third party in the cold war.

Or, the USSR could survive, and the EU federalizes, becoming a superpwer.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Not all empires, just possibly the British or the French, but it may take FaT-dystopian level brutalities to maintain them.

 

[fhaessig]

CED goes through. Over the next dozen years, European side of Nato coalesces in a single pillar, which is roughly equal to the US one.

In the late 70, US becomes completely isolationist, pulls out of NATO in the early 80s. As a result, SU doesn't collapse though it loses some WP subjects.

QED

 

[B_Munro]

The hard bit is

"a third side...that's pretty much hostile to both sides (like the PRC post-Sino-Soviet split)."

It's hard to see a democratic Europe with that level of hostility to the US (we're talking maybe 20 years worth of George Bush here).

Hm. US goes isolationist again after WWII, fear of communist takeover leads to political triumph of hard right in Europe? Trouble is can't see the USSR standing for a return of the hard right to power in Germany, so your "Fascist block" [1] would have to be limited to France, Italy, Iberia and the Low countries. And it's hard to see it being very cohesive. (As somebody one said, "nationalists of the world, unite!" is self-contradictory).

Bruce

[1] Or "Latin Union?"

 

[Satyrane]

Off the top of my head

Stalemate in Second World War? Not quite sure how you achieve it, but anyway:

Germany holds continental Europe but is fought to a standstill over Russia (possibly both are forced to accept truce with the introduction of nuclear weapons?) UK and US on one side, USSR on the other, and 3rd Reich in between, hostile to both.

 

[B_Munro]

Stalemate in Second World War? Not quite sure how you achieve it, but anyway:

Germany holds continental Europe but is fought to a standstill over Russia (possibly both are forced to accept truce with the introduction of nuclear weapons?) UK and US on one side, USSR on the other, and 3rd Reich in between, hostile to both.

Can't do it with post 1941 PODs: the US is in the war, and Roosevelt has authorized an "all out" approach to developing the atom bomb. The only choice Germans have in January 1942 is between looting & rape from the Red Army and Instant Sunshine from the US airforce.

Bruce

 

[MerryPrankster]

Can't do it with post 1941 PODs: the US is in the war, and Roosevelt has authorized an "all out" approach to developing the atom bomb. The only choice Germans have in January 1942 is between looting & rape from the Red Army and Instant Sunshine from the US airforce.

Bruce

If they can defeat the Red Army and build a buttload of air defenses, the Instant Sunshine might have problems getting to its targets.

 

[Hapsburg]

I got an idea. It might be a bit weird and nigh-implausible, but it could work, depending on the circumstances.
Some of the protestant Northern parts of OTL West Germany is partitioned by the Netherlands and Denmark. Niedersachsen becomes the independent Republic of Hanover, maybe as a British puppet-state. The remaining Catholic-centred parts becomes the rump German state, but in control of major industrial centers along the Rhine, with Frankfurt as its hauptstadt, declaring itself the "Republic of Germany" or something like that.
The Republic of Germany joins with France, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Liechtenstein, Belgium, Malta, a slightly less communist Yugoslavia (it wasn't a WPer), and Luxembourg in the "Roman Alliance", a sort of EU-like thing with a somewhat catholic "thing" to it, but that point is emphasized less and less as time goes on, due to attempts to appease the mostly-Orthodox Yugoslavia, a vital strategic spyglass to the east. Eventually, starting with France, but later on with Spain, develop thier own nuclear weapons and reactors.
Later on, Czechoslovakia's revolution succeds, maybe due to the Soviets concentrating on somewhere else (Afganistan? Iraq?), and it joins the Roman Alliance, later on called the "Roman Union". The RA/RU is not hostile to NATO, but it maintains itself as seperate from that organization. They are somewhat hostile to the WP, as much as NATO is. They sometimes will strike deals with NATO, but maintain a seperate sense of self. Their main goals are stability, peace, and self-sufficiency for Western Europe.
An idea of a map, c.1970.

 

[B_Munro]

If they can defeat the Red Army and build a buttload of air defenses, the Instant Sunshine might have problems getting to its targets.

The US can massively outproduce the Germans in terms of airplanes. Quick, which of those 1,000 Superfortresses is the one carrying the bomb? Not to mention the Germans also have to hold down their conquests - which will be a messy prospect for _years_ in the east - and worry about the landings: by 1945 the US should have geared up enough for a _serious_ invasion of Europe (unlike the dinky little D-day of OTL). Remember, the US fought the war with something of a "guns plus butter" mentality - if we'd been willing to squeeze the US economy till the pips squeaked, production probably could have been ramped up quite a bit further.

Bruce

 

[backstab]

The US can massively outproduce the Germans in terms of airplanes. Quick, which of those 1,000 Superfortresses is the one carrying the bomb? Not to mention the Germans also have to hold down their conquests - which will be a messy prospect for _years_ in the east - and worry about the landings: by 1945 the US should have geared up enough for a _serious_ invasion of Europe (unlike the dinky little D-day of OTL). Remember, the US fought the war with something of a "guns plus butter" mentality - if we'd been willing to squeeze the US economy till the pips squeaked, production probably could have been ramped up quite a bit further.

Bruce

By the time thoes 1000 bombers got to Berlin, the ME262's would have reduced them to 0

 

[MerryPrankster]

The US can massively outproduce the Germans in terms of airplanes. Quick, which of those 1,000 Superfortresses is the one carrying the bomb? Not to mention the Germans also have to hold down their conquests - which will be a messy prospect for _years_ in the east - and worry about the landings: by 1945 the US should have geared up enough for a _serious_ invasion of Europe (unlike the dinky little D-day of OTL). Remember, the US fought the war with something of a "guns plus butter" mentality - if we'd been willing to squeeze the US economy till the pips squeaked, production probably could have been ramped up quite a bit further.

Bruce

If every nuclear raid requires 1,000 Superfortresses, it might still take awhile to reduce Fortress Europe. No "instant Allied victory in 1945."

In such a situation, the Germans (if they've made some sort of arrangement in the East) could try to invade Britain and keep it from being used to launch such raids. If they don't have to worry about the USSR, they could build a dedicated invasion fleet.

 

[MerryPrankster]

By the time thoes 1000 bombers got to Berlin, the ME262's would have reduced them to 0

The Allies had jets too. Plus they'd eventually build jet bombers.

However, let's not forget the Me-262 and various other "wonder aircraft." If the Germans can bludgeon the Soviets into submission before the Americans come in sufficient numbers, resources will become available for wonderful goodies.

 

[B_Munro]

If every nuclear raid requires 1,000 Superfortresses, it might still take awhile to reduce Fortress Europe. No "instant Allied victory in 1945."

I was exaggerating for effect: but note the US was using hundreds of them regularly in bombing raids vs. Japan. And as you note yourself, the US won't take too long to figure out how to build it's own jets (note the British Gloster Meteor III was in production OTL by December of 1944): the Germans sure as heck won't be able to consistently shoot down enough of the planes to prevent multiple cities going up in smoke through 1945. The notion that the Germans could _maintain_ a technological edge over the US and UK enough to protect them from nuclear devastation is absurd. So the Reich might continue dying into 1946: they're still toast.

In such a situation, the Germans (if they've made some sort of arrangement in the East) could try to invade Britain and keep it from being used to launch such raids. If they don't have to worry about the USSR, they could build a dedicated invasion fleet.

A fleet takes years to build, is horribly expensive, and in any event would be facing the US navy, the British navy, the US airforce, the British airforce...Sealion all over again. Frankly, this begins to sound like Naziwank.

Bruce

 

[MerryPrankster]

A fleet takes years to build, is horribly expensive, and in any event would be facing the US navy, the British navy, the US airforce, the British airforce...Sealion all over again. Frankly, this begins to sound like Naziwank.

And all the "Instant Allied Victory 1945" scenarios sound like triumphalist Ameriwank.

Of course, you said you exaggerated.

Whether or not a successful invasion of Britain after peace in the East can be pulled off is not important. If it can be tried, it can disrupt the use of Britain as a staging area for nuclear strikes.

And remember, the early bombs took awhile to build. The US only had a few during its "nuclear monopoly" period.

If they expend one destroying a Nazi buildup on coastal France, another one on Berlin, and a third on some Nazi staging area in central France or the Low Countries, that might be it for months. And that assumes all three bombs make it through.

 

[Magnum]

it's always nice to see any tipe of discussion eventaully become a WWII discussion.

 

[Ivan Druzhkov]

Off the current topic, but still a good question

How would a surviving Britain or France pay for being a superpower? Their finances never really recovered after WWI, and WWII pretty much made expensive foreign adventures impossible. Furthermore, they'd still be bound to the Americans as part of the general Atlantic trade system, and unless they lost their senses and went the pure command-economy-screw-everyone route, they'd still need American trade to keep running. An America, by the way, and would be essentially undamaged from WWII. A surviving British or French Empire wouldn't be able to outspend the Americans or out-force-produce the Soviets, and would probably not be able to keep in the fight for very long.

This might make things easier for the Soviets, however. If the Americans and Europeans are fighting, then Moscow might be able to use the threat of a total invasion of Europe to wring some concessions out of London or Paris, especially the Americans won't be coming to help anytime soon. If they play their hand right, they might be able to get European recognition of their hegemony over Eastern Europe (which was the main foreign policy goal in Brezhnev's time), and getting some more Western technology in exhange for oil and no interference in Africa would just be gravy.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

On what will you base this ongoing semi-hostility? In OTL there was, of course, the fairly deep ideological divide between the Soviets and "the West" until the 1980's.

The problem I foresee is that the Soviet menace and American economic competition, combined with the natural centrifugal forces that always existed in Europe, are just going to be too strong for any kind of centripetal forces to overcome; unless they are nationalistic and then you're violating them with this Roman, or whatever it works out to be, alliance anyway.

If France can manage to work in close accord with Spain, Austria, Rump Germany, Italy, etc, then how long before they recognise that it would be lot more profitable, convenient and safe to work with England et al too? Again, you need some sort of basis for this cold war, some reason why this particular group of European nations, who have overcome historical differences, just will not do the same and then work with these particular other European nations, given that they are all together in competing with America and being menaced by the Soviets.

Given that, one way to start it from WWII is to have a much stronger France, one that has prominent role in it's own liberation and the defeat of Germany.