DBWI: The Vistula offensives get carried out.

Eurofed

Banned
OOC: I admit this wasn`t my intention, but if you guys agree with the Falklands war equivalent, I have no problems with it.

OOC: good for me

Perhaps bombing large cities? The flak towers were built for a reason, though the attrition rates were very high on the Soviet side, so one could add "returning to base alive" as something Soviet air power wasn`t really good at.

Heh, luckily for us, Stalin's strong belief in brute force and terror tactics, much as it worked fine for him in other issues, made him blind to the growing evidence that actually terror bombing of cities is not a very effective strategy to cripple enemy war effort, especially if you have no air supremacy.

You could try and have a PoD to make the Euros finish the Ural bomber to allow this.

Uhm, not sure what it might be. Honestly, I cannot think of a really good reason why they did not finish it.
 

Eurofed

Banned
In part was undestable, between the effort by the NKVD to inflate the menace posed by their fleet and the running paranoia of the first year well it's normal, in a certain sense, that the most wost case scenario...even when ludricous was believed. Still you are right about the attempt to scare the Americans to join the war, and even if not succesfull at least keep the lifeline of support open.

Of course, there never was a realistic chance of Soviet invasion of the Western Hemisphere, short of the Bored Alien Meddlers building them a large land bridge, but without US support, it was inevitable that a Soviet empire that controlled all the resources of continental Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and China would have managed to invade the British Isles and Japan sooner or later, not to mention drive India into submission, and become a formidable naval threat for the USA. The US interventionists could not know how screwed-up Soviet preparations for invasion of Britain actually were, nor even in hindsight we can rely on them staying pathetic forever.

Yes, but many things good in paper at the reality test resulted a disaster, like the British/German Danzica raid of 1943 (basically OTL Dieppe)

Perhaps because it was too much to be a proper raid, and too little to be a proper amphibious offensive.

For your eyes only the PLA next big thin

Militarization of space yields so many cool toys...:D:cool: Have you any images of US and EL stuff ?

Yes it will probably the best strategy

I yield to majority opinion. I just argue that in the end, some secondary amphibious operation in Dalmatia might have been added to the plan to appease the Euro naval lobby eagerness to make some serious amphibious offensive stuff in the Med.

What little has remained, after years of China being basicaly a kindergartend child with a bad attitude now everybody simple detest them

Well, here and there they are sometimes still able to buy some opportunists' sympathies, but yes, they have managed to make their international standing much less than it could have been given their economic weight and CINO attitude.

OOC: Probably yes if arab nationalism is still strong, Suez was a too juicy target to ignore

OOC: there are easy ways for the Western powers to appease Egyptian nationalism and channel it to less painful achievements, such as allowing them to annex Sudan, throwing money at the Aswan and Qattara projects, and making a slow, gradual, negotiated handover of Suez itself.

TTL Egypt shall inherit the South Sudan problem, but they won't have an exhausting series of wars with Israel to fight (they shall be much like OTL Greece and Turkey, nominal allies with no love with each otehr that are driven by geopolitical constraints to be in the same block) and they shall get more Western money during the Cold War, so in he end Egypt should be a better place than OTL.

OOC: Vittorio Emanuele d'Aosta can be king, basically being raised to fullfill the institutional role can curb his excess for the prime minister, well if we keep OTL politician now people like FIni or D'Alema, Veltroni or Casini can be premier but if we try the unexpected card due to butterfly we can get Francesco Totti (famous soccer player) or Gerry Scotti (TV personality) as politicians...ok is just for the lulz and be crazy.

OOC: Quite possibly butterflies may allow at least one or two of the OTL politicians you quote to pick a political career ITTL as well, and any of them would turn out to be a decent Premier in a less corrupt Italian poliitcal system. Anyway, in modern times the EL is a federal polity in all but name, so most of the real power is in Bruxelles. If Cohn-Bendit (a French-German) is EL Premier, there are actually very good chances that an Italian is EL Foreign Minister.

Speaking of politician, Palmiro 'Il migliore' Togliatti will be probably elevated to head of the 'legitimate' Italian government created by the soviets using expatriate so to give a legal facade at their war and fancies themselfs as liberators for propaganda purpose, naturally he will be forever considered a traitor as his cohorts.

OOC: Well, of course even after Western Europe and Japan return to democracy, Communist movements shall be socially ostracized, if not legally banned, across the Western bloc. I'd say legally banned in the EL and Japan, socially ostracized just like OTL neo-Nazis in US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Besides being the fifth column of a threatening and oppressive enemy empire, they shall be seen as the apologists of the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist atrocities, the modern archetype of evil in this world, no basis for popularity. A smart Communist like Togliatti shall be despised as a traitor and apologist of democide, but allowed reluctant respect for his cleverness.

I wonder which term the West shall invent to make a quick label of Communist atrocities. I cannot remember whether we already addressed the point in the OT.
 
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Oh, yea. :cool: My dad was an aviation buff, and he used to bring me see it once in a while when I was a kid. I especially loved the aerobatic team of the EAF Air Force, the Euro Arrows.

Yeah, those air shows are really good, but I enjoyed the millitary parade better; especially the part when they rolled out SGW-era tank replicas before their modern sucessors. :D

If we consider military quality, IMO the best among the non-superpowers remains Japan, however, closely followed by Britain. India had to put some serious attention in its military given that has China and its clients on three sides, while Brazil not so much. Canada has relatively little in comparison, but of very good quality.

I agree, but I would also put Israel up there behind Britain. An interesting thing to note in your post is that Canada is the only country named that isn`t a member of the Superbomb club.

Yeah. Unfortunately the naval lobby within the Japanese ruling elite was able to persuade the rest that the European powersw were finished and their colonies ripe for the picking. Those belligerant impulses would have been put to a much better use if the army lobby had prevailed that advocated a strike against the Soviets while the bulk of their troops was tied in Europe.

I believe you would have to avoid the battle of Khalin Gol for the army lobby to win; even with most of everything thrown in Europe and the Middle east the Siberian army seemed reasonably powerfull.

OOC: Well, OTL Portugal, too, although it got the longest-lasting right.wing authoritarian regime in Europe, never restored the monarchy. Which country would have been more likely to do so ITTL, France or Portugal ?

OOC: Make it France, then. So Free Greece, Portugal and Czechia are the only republics in the pre-fall EL.

The threat of uncontrolled incidents is high, yes, but the threat of the incidents escalating into war is IMHO very little. Just remember how last year three consecutive incidents between Northern Indochina and Southern Indochia simply fizzled out after some political head-butting. Two out of three of those incidents could be considered an outright act of war, but nothing happened.

This could be because the incidents happened between what could be called proxy states. If the incidents would happen between, say, Chinese and Japanese military units, the threat of escalation would rise considerably.

Though I don`t think they were having a beer in RL since they were all going back on the field not long afterwards, but what kind of a German would not drink beer in a Hollywood film, right?

An East German. They are mostly shown drinking votka for some reason.

My friends keep tell me that, but honestly i cannot go farther than the flashback museum scene between the protagonist and his wife

Then I`d suggest skipping most of the first part of the film and star watching after the museum then. Afterall, you won`t miss anything if you had already seen the first part.

What little has remained, after years of China being basicaly a kindergartend child with a bad attitude now everybody simple detest them

OOC: Look at post #87. China doesn`t behave like a nationalistic bully all the time, and I`d assume not even most of the time.

OOC: good for me

OOC: And me.

Uhm, not sure what it might be. Honestly, I cannot think of a really good reason why they did not finish it.

I believe it had something to do with classic inter-Euro bickering, but don`t quote me on that. I think the French disagreed with someone about something, and no compromise was reached.

I yield to majority opinion. I just argue that in the end, some secondary amphibious operation in Dalmatia might have been added to the plan to appease the Euro naval lobby eagerness to make some serious amphibious offensive stuff in the Med.

Greece could fit; there was no place from which the Euros could have undertaken a land offensive there, and the Danube offensive never even envisioned the liberation of Greece.

I wonder which term the West shall invent to make a quick label of Communist atrocities. I cannot remember whether we already addressed the point in the OT.

OOC: Was there anything in OTL we could re-use as a name?
 

Eurofed

Banned
Yeah, those air shows are really good, but I enjoyed the millitary parade better; especially the part when they rolled out SGW-era tank replicas before their modern sucessors. :D

Tank exhibition was very cool too, but I suppose dad infected kid-me with his airplane enthusiasm. An especially fond memory was the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Atlantic Pact in 2000, when the various AP national aerobatic teams staged a combined exhibition: the EL Euro Arrows, the US Blue Angels, the UK Red Devils, and the Canadian Showbirds. In hindsight, it was especially meaningful to see all of them performing together since the AP was soon to flex its air power muscles (again) in the coming Second Gulf War.

I agree, but I would also put Israel up there behind Britain. An interesting thing to note in your post is that Canada is the only country named that isn`t a member of the Superbomb club.

Agreed about the place of Israel in the military pecking order. I was just oblivious of them. :eek: Israel has been relatively off the radar since the Fall and the Iran-UAR War aligned the UAR with the West and put an end to Arab-Israel armed clashes. It shall be decades before Arab countries and Israel may be true friends, but I do hope integration for the so-called "Palestinian refugees" minority eventually works in the UAR with Western help as it did in Egypt, and the main remaining source of Arab-Israeli bitterness may abate.

After all, Egypt did successully integrate those refugees (and all the ones that fled Europeanization and the failure of the Arab nationalist uprisings in the Maghreb) long ago, thanks to the economic boom jumpstarted by the Aswan Dam, Qattara Depression Flooding, and New Valley hydroelectric projects (too bad that resettlements helped destabilize the South Sudan area, and turn it into a running sore for Egypt). The UAR has had the usual post-Communist socioeconomic mess to clean up, but they have their oil revenue to rely upon.

Not that the Middle East would become an oasis of peace and stability even if the Arab-Israel feud is put to rest for good. If three wars and a difficult pacification involving Iran were not reminder enough of that, there is the Saudi Revolution.

Honestly, Canada would have had little justification for joining the superbomb club. The USA, EL, UK, Russia, China, India, Japan, Israel, South Africa, and Pakistan all had their own good motives to become SB powers and the Brazilian bid was a wide stretch (also because it pushed Argentina's own SB program). The Iranian ambition was of course squished. IMO the Burmese SB program is a fake from top to bottom, if it were not, the AP and the Pacific Pact would have invaded (or at least bombed) already, China or no China, the Western powers ill-tolerate SB Pakistan enough already. It would have been interesting if Ukraine and Kazakhstan had kept their SB arsenal after the Fall, in all likelihood there would have been no Crimean Crisis and Russia would not have re-annexed Kazakhstan.

I believe you would have to avoid the battle of Khalin Gol for the army lobby to win; even with most of everything thrown in Europe and the Middle east the Siberian army seemed reasonably powerfull.

Well, the "Zhukov dies in the purges" PoD may be a little cliche, but IMO it would have been enough to make Khalkin Gol a tie, and give the IJA lobby the upper hand.

OOC: Make it France, then. So Free Greece, Portugal and Czechia are the only republics in the pre-fall EL.

OOC: Good for me, but in all likelihood Free Greece is not a republic either.

This could be because the incidents happened between what could be called proxy states. If the incidents would happen between, say, Chinese and Japanese military units, the threat of escalation would rise considerably.

Well, some air-naval incidents have involved US and Japanese units.

An East German. They are mostly shown drinking votka for some reason.

As a rule taste in alcoholic beverages may be a mark of political affiliation for Eastern Europeans in SGW and Cold War movies: Communist stooges of the Soviets drink vodka (even if they don't really like it) to ape their masters just like they mouth broken Russian, dissidents and Resistance members proudly quaff beer and wine and pretend they don't know any Russian even if they do. Strangely enough, the stereotype had some basis in reality.

Greece could fit; there was no place from which the Euros could have undertaken a land offensive there, and the Danube offensive never even envisioned the liberation of Greece.

Heh, if the British and the Continentals had made a constructive strategic compromise to combine the Vistula-Danube land offensives with a amphibious landing in Greece, it could have been the best plan of all. With some luck, the Euros could have liberated all of Eastern Euope (except unlucky Finns and Baltics of course), or at least the Soviet block in Europe would have likely been restricted to Finland, Serbia, Bulgaria, East (Old) Romania, and Turkey. Was that option ever seriously discussed and planned back then ? If it did, we might put it in the PoD map instead of the one with the landing in Dalmatia I did.

OOC: Was there anything in OTL we could re-use as a name?

OOC: I dunno if the word would somehow manage to become known to the West early enough, but otherwise 'Holodomor', with an expanded meaning, to encompass all Communist atrocities from 1917 to the Fall, seems like the obvious choice. It is concise, ominous, and easy to spell enough to catch on like wildfire in TTL Western popular culture as a universally-known symbol of evil, just like 'Holocaust' IOTL. Alternatively the 'Scourge' like lukedalton suggested seems quite good too (esp. given the obvious strong parallels the West shall make between the Soviets and the Huns/Mongols).
 
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Of course, there never was a realistic chance of Soviet invasion of the Western Hemisphere, short of the Bored Alien Meddlers building them a large land bridge, but without US support, it was inevitable that a Soviet empire that controlled all the resources of continental Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and China would have managed to invade the British Isles and Japan sooner or later, not to mention drive India into submission, and become a formidable naval threat for the USA.


Funny this is very similar to the story of that invasion-themed american film...Red Dawn, with Matt Dillon, Nicolas Cage and Ally Sheedy (and the rest of the so-called brat-pack in supporting roles) who play the adolescent anti-communist guerrila forces (the Tigers) against the Warpact invasion, and better not forget now former governor Stallone as the downed pilot. yes i know totally unrealistic and very jingoistic but i admit that is one of my guilty pleasure.

The US interventionists could not know how screwed-up Soviet preparations for invasion of Britain actually were, nor even in hindsight we can rely on them staying pathetic forever.
Well at that time the SOviet seemed really almost invincible

Perhaps because it was too much to be a proper raid, and too little to be a proper amphibious offensive.

Probably and even if i understand the raise morale rationale behind the idea, the planning stage was abysmal

Militarization of space yields so many cool toys...:D:cool: Have you any images of US and EL stuff ?

flying-carrier-iso-left.jpg
This is the propesed US version for the Helicarrier, they even created a contest for the naming of the class and the ships, for now it's a battle between Shield and Fury for the class/first ship name

I yield to majority opinion. I just argue that in the end, some secondary amphibious operation in Dalmatia might have been added to the plan to appease the Euro naval lobby eagerness to make some serious amphibious offensive stuff in the Med

For this i agree, i doubt that the navy will kindly stay on the side meanwhile the army and aviation boys and girls will take all the glory.


Well, here and there they are sometimes still able to buy some opportunists' sympathies, but yes, they have managed to make their international standing much less than it could have been given their economic weight and CINO attitude.

The problem is that take the 'no criticism of the leaders' attitude on the international stage, basically become incredibly enraged for everything that even resemble a not total endorsement of their internal policy...after a while become a little irritanting.


OOC: there are easy ways for the Western powers to appease Egyptian nationalism and channel it to less painful achievements, such as allowing them to annex Sudan, throwing money at the Aswan and Qattara projects, and making a slow, gradual, negotiated handover of Suez itself

OOC: Sounds good.

TTL Egypt shall inherit the South Sudan problem, but they won't have an exhausting series of wars with Israel to fight (they shall be much like OTL Greece and Turkey, nominal allies with no love with each otehr that are driven by geopolitical constraints to be in the same block) and they shall get more Western money during the Cold War, so in he end Egypt should be a better place than OTL.

OOC: good description, probably the periodic rise up of diplomatic problem and some sporadic incident so to demostrate that not all is quiet in paradise but in the end not very much more.

OOC: Quite possibly butterflies may allow at least one or two of the OTL politicians you quote to pick a political career ITTL as well, and any of them would turn out to be a decent Premier in a less corrupt Italian poliitcal system. Anyway, in modern times the EL is a federal polity in all but name, so most of the real power is in Bruxelles. If Cohn-Bendit (a French-German) is EL Premier, there are actually very good chances that an Italian is EL Foreign Minister

OOC: Well D'Alema can be or Andreotti as the historical EL Foreign Minister.


OOC: Well, of course even after Western Europe and Japan return to democracy, Communist movements shall be socially ostracized, if not legally banned, across the Western bloc. I'd say legally banned in the EL and Japan, socially ostracized just like OTL neo-Nazis in US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Besides being the fifth column of a threatening and oppressive enemy empire, they shall be seen as the apologists of the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist atrocities, the modern archetype of evil in this world, no basis for popularity. A smart Communist like Togliatti shall be despised as a traitor and apologist of democide, but allowed reluctant respect for his cleverness.

OOC: i agree, and probably the socialist will try very hard to distance themself from them (honestly they will probably be eliminated by the red army and the collaborators as too weak and not enough revolutionary)
I wonder which term the West shall invent to make a quick label of Communist atrocities. I cannot remember whether we already addressed the point in the OT

OOC: Maybe the Scourge, as in Attila the HUn but even Holomodor, seems good.

flying-carrier-iso-left.jpg
 

Eurofed

Banned
Funny this is very similar to the story of that invasion-themed american film...Red Dawn, with Matt Dillon, Nicolas Cage and Ally Sheedy (and the rest of the so-called brat-pack in supporting roles) who play the adolescent anti-communist guerrila forces (the Tigers) against the Warpact invasion, and better not forget now former governor Stallone as the downed pilot. yes i know totally unrealistic and very jingoistic but i admit that is one of my guilty pleasure.

Heh, I heard they are preparing a remake with unnamed invaders that look a lot like Chinese (all the more funny since the Chinese were assumed to be allies of the West in he original movie).

Well at that time the SOviet seemed really almost invincible

The effect of being the only ones that had really prepared to fight a world war in 1942. Even British and German preparations were half-assed in comparison, not to mention the French, Italians, and Japanese.

For this i agree, i doubt that the navy will kindly stay on the side meanwhile the army and aviation boys and girls will take all the glory.

Yup, although I'm sold on the value of a secondary landing in Greece rather than Dalmatia.

The problem is that take the 'no criticism of the leaders' attitude on the international stage, basically become incredibly enraged for everything that even resemble a not total endorsement of their internal policy...after a while become a little irritanting.

Well, if nothing else periodic Chinese saber-rattlin gives the Western powers a credible enemy and a good motivation to keep their own military power in peak efficiency (and personally I prefer that efforts to prevent militarization of space failed during the Cold War: besides the fancy toys you posted, all the more motivation for keeping the space race at full speed, even if it seems to have taken a strong life of its own)

OOC: Well D'Alema can be or Andreotti as the historical EL Foreign Minister.

OOC: Either or both seems quite good.

OOC: i agree, and probably the socialist will try very hard to distance themself from them (honestly they will probably be eliminated by the red army and the collaborators as too weak and not enough revolutionary)

OOC: surely socialists shall be wiped out in the Communist bloc and shall try very hard to distance themselves from Marxism in the Western bloc. In the end, I do expect social democratics and 'Greens' shall fill the left-wing side of the European political spectrum, christian democrats and conservatives the right-wing side. Neo-fascists shall be halfway between minor mainstream and big fringe, but no pariahs. Japanese broadly similar, and Americans different as usual.

OOC: Maybe the Scourge, as in Attila the HUn but even Holomodor, seems good.

OOC: Both 'Scourge' and Holodomor work good, perhaps even both are used with a different meaning. The former is especially plausible since Western propaganda and pop culture are going to capitalize a lot on the easy analogies between the Communists and the Huns/Mongols.
 
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