How to Increase US Cold War Paranoia

I am doing the preliminary Spadework for a timeline. The goal of this time line is for a USA very Paranoid about a Red Dawn Scenario. I would like suggestions on these topics.


  1. Increasing US Paranoia
  2. Maintaining a viable Communist threat into the 1990's
  3. Keeping cold war tensions continuously high


P.S. if this should be moved tell me where and who to PM to get it moved
 
I once composed an AH scenario in which the following happens. It's the background for a possible AH novel.

1. Massive epidemics break out in Japan during the very late stages of WWII, killing huge numbers of Japanese. My POD is that a ship from China carrying goodies from the bioweapons program is wrecked on the Japanese coast. Plague-infested rats fan out from the wreckage.

2. The U.S., thinking Japan weak enough for a conventional invasion, launches Downfall. The landings are insanely bloody (in part due to massed kamikaze attacks), the logistics are disrupted by typhoon, etc. The A-Bomb is deployed in a tactical role.

3. The protracted death of Japan leads to the Soviets grabbing all of Korea. By the time the dust settles, Japan is so depopulated (especially in males) that the U.S. ends up annexing it.

4. A generation or so later, there's a conspiracy among National Guard units based in the Japanese states to pull a Teutobergerwald on American military bases and declare independence. It's backed by the Soviets who intend nuke the "resurgent fascists" once the U.S. is expelled and then occupy Japan.

If the Soviets' plan succeeds, they've pulled off an incredibly cunning political gambit and then seized control of territories that were once U.S. states..

Take "who lost China" that led to McCarthyism and crank it up times 100.

I also posted a scenario in which the Cuban Missile Crisis leads to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba and the Soviet conquest of East Berlin before cooler heads prevail. Tens of thousands of American soldiers are dead, radioactive fallout contaminates southern Florida, Cuba is an occupied radioactive death zone, and NATO has had to cede territory to the USSR.

That won't be fun either.
 
If you want a realistic fear of a Red Dawn scenario, have the Soviets occupy Western Europe after WWII due to no U.S. entry, a failed D-Day, etc.

I've got a scenario where that happens, Britain gets all paranoid and reactionary a la Portugal, and we ultimately have a Communist military coup led by men sick of endless fighting in Africa. If the Royal Navy goes along with it, that would give the Soviets a much stronger naval presence than OTL.

Bonus points if there's a Communist Iceland, although the U.S. would not permit that to happen.
 
I was looking for an earlier divergence point, closer to 1920 but good suggestions. I was planning to have the Fire Ballon program start a forest fire, maybe I will follow that up with a Bio Attack, but this is still in the early stages of planning.

Thank you for the help though
 
Obvious answer is obvious: the USSR does extremely well against the Germans in 1941 due to the absence of Operations Marita and Punishment and the resulting one-two punch of the Germans driving ahead into mud and against a Soviet enemy that's fully prepared for them and in the Rasputitsa is able to adjust its armor to the north more than the south and thus bleeds German logistics white long before December, meaning WWII is over by 1944 and in Europe by 1943 at the latest as a primarily Soviet triumph in Europe followed by Soviet victories in East Asia and Stalin being his normal dickish, brutal, murderous self. The USA would have paranoia that the overwhelming triumphs of Soviet arms relative to the slower and more halting progress of US arms means totalitarian ascendancy is inevitable and somewhat of an inferiority complex exists, leading to paranoia about an invasion that's never really possible but is very much a prevalent theme. Instant siege mentality USA and triumphalist, brutal USSR ruling much more of Europe and a good swathe of Asia including Hokkaido and parts of Honshu.
 
If you want a realistic fear of a Red Dawn scenario, have the Soviets occupy Western Europe after WWII due to no U.S. entry, a failed D-Day, etc.

I've got a scenario where that happens, Britain gets all paranoid and reactionary a la Portugal, and we ultimately have a Communist military coup led by men sick of endless fighting in Africa. If the Royal Navy goes along with it, that would give the Soviets a much stronger naval presence than OTL.

Bonus points if there's a Communist Iceland, although the U.S. would not permit that to happen.

Or for a POD that requires less personality transplants, simply have the Germans attack on May 15th as they originally planned only to bog down in mud and against a Red Army fully ready and waiting for them, facing a continual series of battles across the frontier that step by step hollows out their logistics and enables the USSR to make better use of that 10 million men squandered IOTL as a result of the need to keep the Germans from making tremendous gains. The ultimate result will be the same, the Soviets take over more of Europe, the cause doesn't require anything other than OTL events.

Given what the USSR did with the OTL 1944 armies that were actually running low on manpower, their executing Bagration-level offensives with the ability to call upon not 6,000,000 men across the Front but 9,000,000 or 10,000,000 is actually a pretty terrifying thought.....for the Germans.
 
Paranoia is fear based on unrealistic or illogical concerns. I'm not all that sure you can't get the USA to be much more paranoid about the Soviet Union and Communism than it was in the late 1940's and 1950s.

As others have said to create a cold war in which a "Red Dawn" fear was realistic, the changes have to occur outside of the USA. Ultimately, you have to create a USSR which was significantly more powerful, successful, expansionist, and truly revolutionary than the one that existed in the 1940's. You need a USSR that:

(1) Was far less dependent on US assistance in the Great Patriotic War
(2) Never really allied with the western powers and defeated Germany before the British and Americans invaded Europe.
(3) Became a model for much more successful series of local communist regimes in western Europe
(4) Was actually capable (in 1950-60) of fighting a stategic war against the USA and British Commonwealth (I'm presuming the UK stays in the US camp) - ie effective strategic bombers, a lot more missles, a lot more nuclear bombs, a real blue water navy, etc
(5) Was actually capable of projecting meaningful military power to assist revolutionary groups in the face of US power
(6) Did not join the UN (or whatever UN-like group exists), or dominates it


In our TL, the USSR never came close to the USA in military or diplomatic power until maybe the late 1970, and even then this was more because of US laxity than Soviet abilities. In actual fact, if a nuclear world war had broken out over Berlin, Cuba, whatever in the 1950's-1960's, the USA would have been able to destroy the Soviet Union with (as Dr Strangelove might say) acceptable losses. To have the US paranoia during that period be based on reality, you need a PoD in the early 20th century (or maybe even earlier) to create a Russia (and later USSR) that was industrially and technologically prepared to risk war with the USA much more than our USSR was. YOu probably also need to creat a Communist Party in the USSR that was far more revolutionary and far more willing to take risks than Stalin and his successors. An insane, brutal "big thinker" like Hitler in charge of the movement might help. Stalin met the first two criteria, but one could hardly give him credit for having the pure sweep of evil-thinking on a vast scale Hitler had.
 

Incognito

Banned
An insane, brutal "big thinker" like Hitler in charge of the movement might help. Stalin met the first two criteria, but one could hardly give him credit for having the pure sweep of evil-thinking on a vast scale Hitler had.
Not sure if I fully agree you but... what if Hitler were to somehow end up in Russia/U.S.S.R. and rise to the governing position of the communist party? (Most likely initial P.O.D. would be Hitler's mother/parents moving to Russian Empire for some reason just prior to Adolf's birth)
 
How about US communists going violent? Bombs (either targeted or general terror), assassinations....

After WW2, I mean.
 
All good points, thank you for the support. I was going to have the divergence point in the Mexican Revolution, have it last long enough to get support from Communists in the USSR. Thank you for the ideas some of them will end up in the TL.
 
All good points, thank you for the support. I was going to have the divergence point in the Mexican Revolution, have it last long enough to get support from Communists in the USSR. Thank you for the ideas some of them will end up in the TL.
You're going to have to prolong the civil war a very long while in order to have them do something like that. They were too tied up to help in other European countries, let alone in a place like Mexico.
 

Incognito

Banned
You're going to have to prolong the civil war a very long while in order to have them do something like that. They were too tied up to help in other European countries, let alone in a place like Mexico.
Maybe Trotsky could stir up something durring his exile?....
 
How about US communists going violent? Bombs (either targeted or general terror), assassinations....

After WW2, I mean.

All good points, thank you for the support. I was going to have the divergence point in the Mexican Revolution, have it last long enough to get support from Communists in the USSR. Thank you for the ideas some of them will end up in the TL.

Have 60's/70's style militant leftism in the late 40's early 50's instead, plus a Red Mexico?

It'd make for some interesting times.

Not in a good way either.

Make for an interesting read though.

The best POD (in terms of best bang for your buck) would be Red Mexico by the late 40's.
 
Have 60's/70's style militant leftism in the late 40's early 50's instead, plus a Red Mexico?

It'd make for some interesting times.

Not in a good way either.

Make for an interesting read though.

The best POD (in terms of best bang for your buck) would be Red Mexico by the late 40's.

I was thinking more along the lines of Red Brigades and Baader Meinhof plus some indiscriminate bombings.

I'm not buying Red Mexico idea. Us would not tolerate it on their borders.
 
I was thinking more along the lines of Red Brigades and Baader Meinhof plus some indiscriminate bombings.

I'm not buying Red Mexico idea. Us would not tolerate it on their borders.

1. That works too.

2. Maybe an attempt to suppress it is TTL's version of Vietnam?

Without the Vietnam War, more of SE Asia goes Communist, so even if the US successfully suppresses Red Mexico, there'd still be Communist gains overseas, cranking up the paranoia.
 
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