No NATO

Jonjo

Banned
What if for some reason, NATO never came into existance or a unified American/Western Europe alliance came into being.. would the Soviets pick off the countries one by one or support communist rebels most intensely in each country?
 

Esopo

Banned
What if for some reason, NATO never came into existance or a unified American/Western Europe alliance came into being.. would the Soviets pick off the countries one by one or support communist rebels most intensely in each country?

No. The ussr never wanted to expand over its influence sphere in europe. Even whitout nato, the usa would mantain strong ties with european western countries and the russians wont risk a war.
 
I think Stalin would probably push his luck here and there. Can't see any invasions being likely but a fair bit of pressure and support for communist uprisings, riots, terrorist organisations. General destabilising of capitalist Europe. Berlin might be taken at some point if not all of Germany on some pretext or other.
 
I'm sure Europe might be able to rig up something to threaten the Soviets even without the USA and Canada. (I have an idea for that in a someday upcoming TL, where the whole face of the geopolitical world is changed- from a Cold War in Europe and a Cold Peace with the USA (thanks to Presidents Wallace and Taft), a near European WWIII in the 1960's (with spies, missile silos in Wales, and JFK as a reporter), and a USSR breakup in the 1980's- and a UK-Canada-Australia-New Zealand vs. USA-Argentina-various other American nations war over the Falklands. All thanks to a British spy noted for his non-spying accomplishments being a few second too late...)
 
Why is there no NATO? Has the US taken its toys and gone home? Was there no effort to rebuild Europe after the war? Has the US pledged to come to Europe's aid against outside aggression, but not erected any formal structure for it? If Europe is as broken as it was in 1945 and no American money and expertise is incoming, the whole Comintern things starts looking pretty good.
 

Jonjo

Banned
Why is there no NATO? Has the US taken its toys and gone home?

Yes

Was there no effort to rebuild Europe after the war?

Some loans maybe due to being former allies and a mutual dislike of Communism but nothing like what we got in OTL

Has the US pledged to come to Europe's aid against outside aggression, but not erected any formal structure for it?

Informal indirect aid at best

If Europe is as broken as it was in 1945 and no American money and expertise is incoming, the whole Comintern things starts looking pretty good.

Except it means Communism and Soviet rule.
 

Cook

Banned
No. The ussr never wanted to expand over its influence sphere in europe.

All evidence to the contrary, including demands for air and naval bases in the Dardanelles and Libya, border encroachments on neighboring European states and support for two major insurgency campaigns. Plus of course the Soviet’s own archives that show that Stalin was confident that Europe would suffer economic turmoil similar to that which followed the First World War, during which he would be able to pick off the states of western Europe one by one. The Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine and creation of NATO put a rather large spanner in his works.
 
This despite the disastrous state of the USSR and its military following WWII. (Many of their artillery pieces were horse-drawn.)
The only way the communists could take over those nations would be for the domestic communists to take over- either by force or democratically.
 
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