No Cold War

I don't know much on the subject, so I don't have any specific POD for you guys to comment on, so I'll keep this short and sweet: How can we stop the Cold War from beginning?

EDIT: That reminds me, just in case someone tries it. No POD that averts or changes WWII significantly (basically the Nazis and Japanese still have to lose and the OTL Allies all still have to take part in the war).
 
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Easiest would be to have an isolationist take power in the US, someone like Taft, near the end of WWII or during the lead up to it. Second option would be an incompetent Soviet leadership like Beria, or someone who just doesn't care about the ideology.
 
POTUS Henry Wallace and General Secretary Beria (this one's harder since everyone else hated him).

So we'd have a guy who'd let Soviet troops on American soil as President and a guy that would allow American troops on Soviet soil as General Secretary, I think this goes beyond preventing the Cold War altogether. :D
 
Well of the two, at least Beria actually got there, if only briefly. His alliance with Malenkov was solid, get him to isolate Khrushchev from Bulganin, and deflate his head so he can stop being an outright dick to everybody else.

That will keep him in power longer... whether he can have the liberty to enact his policies is another matter. He tried to move too quickly, and didn't spend enough time consolidating his power so that he has leeway within the party when he faces TTLs version of the '56 uprisings. Even restricted it should lead to a greater thaw in the late 50s.
 
Well of the two, at least Beria actually got there, if only briefly. His alliance with Malenkov was solid, get him to isolate Khrushchev from Bulganin, and deflate his head so he can stop being an outright dick to everybody else.

That will keep him in power longer... whether he can have the liberty to enact his policies is another matter. He tried to move too quickly, and didn't spend enough time consolidating his power so that he has leeway within the party when he faces TTLs version of the '56 uprisings. Even restricted it should lead to a greater thaw in the late 50s.

I feel Beria would have come to power too late to stop a Cold War, it was already in full swing. If we intend to stop the Cold War after its happened, I think it would require a major ideological shift in either side with isolationism the easiest. Beria certainly would go for that, but as to whether the Americans would let him off like that and call it quits for internationalism, that's another story. We've also got China to deal with, Beria's reaction to China will be extremely important.
 
One way to stop the Cold War is to have it go hot. WW3 in mid/late 40's takes care of that nicely. Queue America as THE world power in 20th century
 
I feel Beria would have come to power too late to stop a Cold War, it was already in full swing. If we intend to stop the Cold War after its happened, I think it would require a major ideological shift in either side with isolationism the easiest. Beria certainly would go for that, but as to whether the Americans would let him off like that and call it quits for internationalism, that's another story. We've also got China to deal with, Beria's reaction to China will be extremely important.

Well yes, that is true. That is the Wallace end of the equation, that I wasn't attempting to address. Specifically you'd still need to butterfly away the influence of Kennan and probably Marshall on the American side, and make the Churchill "Iron Curtain" rhetoric less received in the States... If working with the Truman administration, then possibly increase the influence and lifespan of Stettinius and keep Acheson his old okay-with-the-Soviets self (again, get rid of Kennan.)

And China is huge as well, because that increased the pantshitting in the USA. (Of course w/Marshall out of the picture Turkey, Greece and possibly Italy probably move toward Communism democratically, and we're looking for a USA that does less pantshitting about Communists in general.)
 
Stalin Note

Germany cannot be a point of contention if it's neutral in the same manner as Austria. The good will established as a result of this proposal being taken seriously butterflies to the neutralization of Korea and Vietnam.
 
Germany cannot be a point of contention if it's neutral in the same manner as Austria. The good will established as a result of this proposal being taken seriously butterflies to the neutralization of Korea and Vietnam.

This is a good start. A neutral Germany sets the tone for the rest of Europe, strengthening the unaligned movement and providing a great buffer between the Soviets and Western allies. It would scale back the Cold War at the very least.
 
This is a good start. A neutral Germany sets the tone for the rest of Europe, strengthening the unaligned movement and providing a great buffer between the Soviets and Western allies. It would scale back the Cold War at the very least.

I think that there might still be some controversies, and states with clear alignments towards one side or the other, but the whole process could be more subdued or take unexpected turns long term.
 
One way to stop the Cold War is to have it go hot. WW3 in mid/late 40's takes care of that nicely. Queue America as THE world power in 20th century
I'm not sure "nicely" is the word I would choose. The two most likely versions of this WWIII are Hairog's TL and Instant Sunrise over Moscow. There is no way a Cold War doesn't occur with an intact Soviet Union.
 
A potentially far more devastating WW2 that breaks up the Soviet Union.

Thing is, 'isolationist' America was always going to be intact, and 'isolationism' really just applied to not being involved in the Western European affairs. But WW2 rather made Western European affairs an American affair, and such non-interventionism never applied in, say, Asia.
 
The Soviet Union is much more devastated by WWII. So devastated that the US and the UK liberate Eastern Europe. I would also have Jiang win the Chinese civil war.
 
I'm working on a TL right now with Beria taking power in the Soviet Union. I see China as the primary stumbling block in the Cold War as opposed to nuclear weapons in OTL. If we saw a balkanized, warlord style China continue past WWII, it could lead to either a wind down or a wind up in Cold War tensions. Thoughts?
 
It could have been avoided if the Soviets had been willing to accept "neutralized" Eastern Europe and Germany instead of states totally controlled by them. That's almost ASB with Stalin, though. Maybe if Stalin died right after the end of WWII then whoever his successor was might be willing to accept such an arrangement.

Assuming Europe ends up similar to OTL, there still might have been a milder Cold War if the Communists hadn't been completely victorious in China, or if there hadn't been any Korean war.
 
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