Omnicide: World War III In 1953

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    • Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth

    "1941 was not the worst, oh no. And 1945 was not the end. All we went through together was meaningless. Those desperate, brutal battles against the fascists in the long first summer of the war, the bitter cold outside Moscow and Stalingrad, and our heroic march to Berlin- none of it mattered. Everyone thought we had escaped it. Everyone thought we were heroes, and that we had secured our Motherland for eternity. Yes, the Americans had the Bomb but so did we. And there was nothing we could not do after beating the Hitlerites. So we had seven years of peace. Almost like a dream. Seven years to live, rebuild, love play, take pride in all we had done, dream of a future... which never came. All that time, we were in limbo. Just waiting for the axe to fall. Was it inevitable? I do not know. That is not for my generation to determine. It is for those youngsters who survived when my boys did not. When I look back on what's left of this country of ours, though, I can only draw one conclusion.

    History will forget the crimes of the Hitlerites. They will remember ours as the historic omnicide."
    -Interview with an anonymous Russian, 2003

    ***​

    I’m scared.

    EISENHOWER WARNS CHINESE: RETREAT!

    Everything’s gone quiet all of a sudden. We’re just waiting now.

    CHINESE LEADER MAO: CHINESE PEOPLE WILL “NEVER BACK DOWN” TO “IMPERIALIST WEST”; STALIN VOICES SUPPORT!
    -The New York Times, 18 March 1953

    Here we are in our bases- the finest army in the world, so we’re told! So why are we so damned afraid? Why isn’t there a damned thing we can do except fight? Aren’t we smarter than this? Wasn’t twice enough?

    MULTIPLE NUDETS OF UNCONFIRMED STRENGTH ALONG YALU RIVER LINE
    -The Boston Globe, 25 March 1953

    LARGEST NUCLEAR ATTACK IN HISTORY- TEN TIMES THE FORCE OF HIROSHIMA BOMB!
    -The San Francisco Examiner, 25 March 1953

    IMPERIALISTS STRIKE DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF KOREA WITH ATOMIC WEAPONS; MEASURES FOR COLLECTIVE SECURITY ALREADY UNDERWAY!
    -Pravda, 25 March 1953

    Birthday's only two months away. But I know I won’t live to see it.

    SOVIET UNION BEGINS MOBILIZATION; PENTAGON ORDERS UNITS: BE VIGILANT!
    -Stars and Stripes, 29 March 1953

    We’re heading off the cliff once again. Last time my brother didn’t come home from a field just north of here. Guess it’s my turn now… they always said we were inseparable. Heh.

    PYONGYANG OBLITERATED; US BOMBERS CONDUCT UNARMED FLIGHT OVER CHINESE AIRSPACE!
    -The New York Times, 13 April 1953

    Who ever heard of Korea anyway? Is it really worth throwing everything we have on the pyre just for the sake of some silly little yellow bastards about whom no-one cares? Guess so. And what the hell does it have to do with here in Germany?

    SOVIET FORCES POUR INTO YUGOSLAVIA; TITO VOWS RESISTANCE!
    -Associated Press, 17 April 1953

    One way or another, I guess we’re about to find out. Damnit.

    EISENHOWER ISSUES FINAL ULTIMATUM TO CHINESE WITH CONSEQUENCES "THE WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN!"
    -    The Boston Globe, 20 April 1953

    TITO: YUGOSLAVIA NEEDS ARMS, NOT EXILE!
    -    The Wall Street Journal, 24 April 1953

    Holy Mary, mother of God...

    "MASSIVE" ATOMIC BOMBING OF RED CHINESE POSITIONS ON THE COAST- CASUALTIES "UNTHINKABLE!"- EISENHOWER TO ADDRESS NATION!
    -The New York Times, 27 April 1953

    "If the imperialists wish to commit genocide they will soon find how vulnerable they are... The Soviet Union is a nuclear power too, and we will use all means available to defend our socialist brethren."

    AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 1025 SHOT DOWN OVER TEMPELHOF AIRPORT!
    -Stars and Stripes, 19 May 1953

    Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death… whenever that might be.

    EISENHOWER ISSUES ULTIMATUM TO KREMLIN WITH 24-HOUR DEADLINE
    -The New York Times, 21 May 1953

    COMRADE STALIN DENOUNCES AMERICAN IMPERIALISM IN KOREA, EUROPE
    -Pravda, 22 May 1953

    So from all of us here in Germany- everyone in the entire world- I guess it’s good night.

    ***WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM***
    “... already the forces of the Soviet Union and the wider Communist bloc have engaged those of the United States. Soviet forces have killed American soldiers and officers…”

    At least I’ll be in good company when I go.

    SOVIET ARMY POURS ACROSS NORTH GERMAN PLAIN, FULDA GAP
    -Daily Mail, 24 May 1953

    “...This morning, at 0500 hours local time, the Soviet Union attacked our forces, and those of our Allies, in West Germany. At 0825 hours local time, Soviet forces crossed the Iranian and Turkish borders…”

    The whole world’s going to hell… and maybe I’ll follow it there.

    “...Soviet nuclear forces have attacked Frankfurt, Mannheim, Bonn, Cologne, Essen, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Seoul, and Busan…”

    W. GERMAN GOVERNMENT SEEMINGLY DECAPITATED- ADENAUER MISSING
    -Associated Press, 25 May 1953

    “Such premeditated aggression dwarfs the crime of Pearl Harbor. It dwarfs the Nazi invasion of twelve years prior, which the Soviets so cynically claim we wish to repeat.”

    Let no one ever say I didn’t die in a good cause.

    "My fellow Americans..."

    Untitled presentation.png

    ​
    "...we are at war."
     
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  • Index

    • Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth

    After much thought and procrastination, I've decided to begin a new timeline about a cheery topic: World War III in the early Fifties. Why, when it's a common enough AH trope? Well, for one thing, this TL begins in 1953, not 1983. The United States had just under 1200 atomic bombs, and the Soviets had about a tenth of that. Britain was barely a nuclear state, while France, China, India, etc, weren't even on the radar. Now a war with under 1500 atomic bombs won't be pretty, but neither will it end civilisation.

    And that's really what I'm interested in here: what would a Third World War look like where neither side has the nuclear or conventional means to obliterate each other? Where the limiting factor is not willingness to destroy, but capability to?

    I've certainly taken some liberties with plausibility in the opening chapters. No country has ever wanted to fight a Third World War for good reason, and neither do the powers here. Rather, accident, miscalculation, bad information, paranoia, and more than a little egoism cloud judgement in all the capitals. The POD is Joseph Stalin living a few months longer, and urging Mao Zedong to ignore Eisenhower's nuclear threats. His bluff called, the President believes he must escalate, starting a chain reaction ending two months later with mushroom clouds. If nothing else, I hope this captures some of the confusion and existential fear of the Cold War.

    I must credit @President Earl Warren, as well as all the folks in this thread, for providing me with feedback and helping me develop ideas for TTL. Despite this, my knowledge is far from complete (especially regarding exact unit placements, commanders, numbers, etc, specific to the early Fifties), and I welcome any and all feedback. Creative influences include, on-site Protect and Survive and its spinoffs, @CalBear's The Anglo-American/Nazi War, and @Sorairo's The Death of Russia, as well as Lions Will Fight Bears in the Writer's Forum.

    Off-site, Threads was my first real look at what nuclear weaponry and modern war does on a human level (and the resultant lack of sleep gave me plenty of time to think!) Anne Applebaum's Red Famine and Chang+Halliday's controversial Mao: The Unknown Story demonstrated the callousness of Communist politics, especially in times of crisis. Johnathan Dimbleby's Operation Barbarossa (as well as a 1964 book of the same name) illustrated how Stalin controlled and shaped the Soviet military, as well as its capabilities and drawbacks. Cathal Nolan's The Allure of Battle hammered home that there is no such thing as a short war, or one that is easy to control- TTL's leaders are about to discover that nuclear weapons do not change this equation. Red Storm Rising, for all its plausibility issues, remains perhaps THE novel of WWIII. Of course, the ongoing war in Ukraine has provided just enough fear to inspire me, as well as making me think about how Great Powers can fall out. On a lighter note, The Death of Stalin gave me general inspiration for doing something USSR-related, and maybe some of the court intrigue will wind up in this TL once Stalin eventually is poisoned... dies in a nuclear attack... suffers a stroke... actually, no one's sure.

    College and work will dictate the pace of updates. I have eleven pre-written, but as a general rule I won't post one before I've written another. So for example, chapter 2 won't go up until chapter 12 is done. Going to shoot for once a week.

    Hope you stick around- and when I get something wrong, please say so. Hopefully this will strike a balance between grim and enjoyable!

    -Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth
     
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    psychedout265

    Banned
    1200 atomic bombs are more than enough to wipe out the Soviets and Chinese unless they mount an effective air defense. And the US would be wise to unleash first and fast to protect Europe from obliteration by Soviet nukes. South Korea is gone, Japan will get hit yet again, sadly.
     
    shearsforest

    shearsforest

    Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth said:
    "1941 was not the worst, oh no. And 1945 was not the end. All we went through together was meaningless. Those desperate, brutal battles against the fascists in the long first summer of the war, the bitter cold outside Moscow and Stalingrad, and our heroic march to Berlin- none of it mattered. Everyone thought we had escaped it. Everyone thought we were heroes, and that we had secured our Motherland for eternity. Yes, the Americans had the Bomb but so did we. And there was nothing we could not do after beating the Hitlerites. So we had seven years of peace. Almost like a dream. Seven years to live, rebuild, love play, take pride in all we had done, dream of a future... which never came. All that time, we were in limbo. Just waiting for the axe to fall. Was it inevitable? I do not know. That is not for my generation to determine. It is for those youngsters who survived when my boys did not. When I look back on what's left of this country of ours, though, I can only draw one conclusion.

    History will forget the crimes of the Hitlerites. They will remember ours as the historic omnicide."
    -Interview with an anonymous Russian, 2003

    ***​

    I’m scared.

    EISENHOWER WARNS CHINESE: RETREAT!

    Everything’s gone quiet all of a sudden. We’re just waiting now.

    CHINESE LEADER MAO: CHINESE PEOPLE WILL “NEVER BACK DOWN” TO “IMPERIALIST WEST”; STALIN VOICES SUPPORT!
    -The New York Times, 18 March 1953

    Here we are in our bases- the finest army in the world, so we’re told! So why are we so damned afraid? Why isn’t there a damned thing we can do except fight? Aren’t we smarter than this? Wasn’t twice enough?

    MULTIPLE NUDETS OF UNCONFIRMED STRENGTH ALONG YALU RIVER LINE
    -The Boston Globe, 25 March 1953

    LARGEST NUCLEAR ATTACK IN HISTORY- TEN TIMES THE FORCE OF HIROSHIMA BOMB!
    -The San Francisco Examiner, 25 March 1953

    IMPERIALISTS STRIKE DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF KOREA WITH ATOMIC WEAPONS; MEASURES FOR COLLECTIVE SECURITY ALREADY UNDERWAY!
    -Pravda, 25 March 1953

    Birthday's only two months away. But I know I won’t live to see it.

    SOVIET UNION BEGINS MOBILIZATION; PENTAGON ORDERS UNITS: BE VIGILANT!
    -Stars and Stripes, 29 March 1953

    We’re heading off the cliff once again. Last time my brother didn’t come home from a field just north of here. Guess it’s my turn now… they always said we were inseparable. Heh.

    PYONGYANG OBLITERATED; US BOMBERS CONDUCT UNARMED FLIGHT OVER CHINESE AIRSPACE!
    -The New York Times, 13 April 1953

    Who ever heard of Korea anyway? Is it really worth throwing everything we have on the pyre just for the sake of some silly little yellow bastards about whom no-one cares? Guess so. And what the hell does it have to do with here in Germany?

    SOVIET FORCES POUR INTO YUGOSLAVIA; TITO VOWS RESISTANCE!
    -Associated Press, 17 April 1953

    One way or another, I guess we’re about to find out. Damnit.

    EISENHOWER ISSUES FINAL ULTIMATUM TO CHINESE WITH CONSEQUENCES "THE WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN!"
    -    The Boston Globe, 20 April 1953

    TITO: YUGOSLAVIA NEEDS ARMS, NOT EXILE!
    -    The Wall Street Journal, 24 April 1953

    Holy Mary, mother of God...

    "MASSIVE" ATOMIC BOMBING OF RED CHINESE POSITIONS ON THE COAST- CASUALTIES "UNTHINKABLE!"- EISENHOWER TO ADDRESS NATION!
    -The New York Times, 27 April 1953

    "If the imperialists wish to commit genocide they will soon find how vulnerable they are... The Soviet Union is a nuclear power too, and we will use all means available to defend our socialist brethren."

    AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 1025 SHOT DOWN OVER TEMPELHOF AIRPORT!
    -Stars and Stripes, 19 May 1953

    Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death… whenever that might be.

    EISENHOWER ISSUES ULTIMATUM TO KREMLIN WITH 24-HOUR DEADLINE
    -The New York Times, 21 May 1953

    COMRADE STALIN DENOUNCES AMERICAN IMPERIALISM IN KOREA, EUROPE
    -Pravda, 22 May 1953

    So from all of us here in Germany- everyone in the entire world- I guess it’s good night.

    ***WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM***
    “... already the forces of the Soviet Union and the wider Communist bloc have engaged those of the United States. Soviet forces have killed American soldiers and officers…”

    At least I’ll be in good company when I go.

    SOVIET ARMY POURS ACROSS NORTH GERMAN PLAIN, FULDA GAP
    -Daily Mail, 24 May 1953

    “...This morning, at 0500 hours local time, the Soviet Union attacked our forces, and those of our Allies, in West Germany. At 0825 hours local time, Soviet forces crossed the Iranian and Turkish borders…”

    The whole world’s going to hell… and maybe I’ll follow it there.

    “...Soviet nuclear forces have attacked Frankfurt, Mannheim, Bonn, Cologne, Essen, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Seoul, and Busan…”

    W. GERMAN GOVERNMENT SEEMINGLY DECAPITATED- ADENAUER MISSING
    -Associated Press, 25 May 1953

    “Such premeditated aggression dwarfs the crime of Pearl Harbor. It dwarfs the Nazi invasion of twelve years prior, which the Soviets so cynically claim we wish to repeat.”

    Let no one ever say I didn’t die in a good cause.

    "My fellow Americans..."

    "...we are at war."
    Click to expand...
    I applaud the usage of the "headline format" (typically only used for Current Politics scenarios) in a post-1900s scenario.
     
    One- Background
  • Index

    • Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth

    One- Background​

    Like all historical tragedies, the Third World War has its roots in miscalculation fortified by arrogance. Endless amounts of time and effort have been spent over the past sixty years asking why it happened, and whether or not it was inevitable. The question remains academic, almost more philosophical than geopolitical or historical. Is it inherent in man’s nature to self-destruct? The events of Spring 1953, leading up to the nuclear exchange of 26 May, argue yes, yes it is. Nations were destroyed, millions were killed, Europe was polluted beyond repair, and the global economy shattered. But the greatest casualty of all was man’s self-esteem. Humanity in 1945 was traumatised but determined to recover. Humanity in 1961 knew the damage was beyond its ability to fix.

    This is that story.

    "Aah, the Fifties. The GOOD Fifties, that is. Three great years, and five great ones before that. It was..." Chuckles. "How do I even explain it to youse guys? People were happy all the time, near enough. Everyone knew each other, liked each other, loved their country- 'less they was a Red sucker, of course. But we'd beat the fascists, done all that, and thought- now what can't we do? Maybe, we thought, we coulda taken all that energy we put into killing Germans and Japs, and use it to make this country- even the world- better." Grows sombre. "Or maybe the hell not, as it turned out. And, y'know, maybe it's our own fault. Maybe in the good years between the wars we got so lazy and elected such dumb fu- uh, such cretins, they made it inevitable." Sighs. "But yeah. The gravy train came to an end on May 24, 1953, and none o' youse guys born after can even imagine."

    The roots of World War Three stretch back to the division of the Korean Peninsula in 1945. The northern half, occupied by Soviet troops, became a Communist republic while the latter, occupied by the Americans, came under a military junta. Communism’s inherent expansionism lead the North to invade the South on 25 June 1950. From that day on, East and West traded shots until the Allied ceasefire with the USSR a decade later.

    Dictator Kim Il-Sung had banked on a quick unification like his comrade Mao Zedong in China. He had instead found himself in a quagmire. The prospect of Communist armies evicting the West from their one foothold on the Asian mainland was too much for the Americans. Under the auspices of the United Nations, Allied forces landed and quickly threw Kim's armies back to their start line. Unwilling to leave his regime intact, they pushed north, taking Pyongyang and surging to the Chinese border. Only a few mountainous square miles remained in Communist hands. Had the Allies quickly crushed these remnants, the War would never have begun. MacArthur's failure to do so is thus perhaps the single greatest missed opportunity of the Twentieth Century, rivaling even the Allied failure to invade Nazi Germany in the autumn of 1939.

    The Allies had by this time crossed a red line. North Korea protected Communist China and the Maritime Provinces of the USSR. Neither felt comfortable with Allied forces on their border and on 25 October 1950 Chinese forces rushed to save the North Koreans. This, too, is a possible start date for the War. Back-and-forth fighting throughout 1951 eventually settled the frontline at approximately the prewar border. Koreans became a sideshow in their own war as hundreds of thousands of Allied troops stared at millions of Chinese (and a few Soviet pilots and technical advisers). Neither side had the strength to push on without escalating the war, so the Allies turned to strategic bombing. North Korea, a tiny country of 46,000 square miles, received more bombardment than Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan over a comparable time period. Yet neither side was willing to blink, and thus Korea remained a bloody stalemate.

    Then came the American Presidential Election.

    The Democratic Party had been in power for twenty years as of November 1952. Elected to arrest the Great Depression, they had become the “Party of Roosevelt”- unchallengeable during the war years. Yet Harry Truman was not his predecessor. No one had voted the man into power and his victory in 1948 had come as a shock. Four years later, the American public had had enough. People blamed the Democrats for a sluggish economy, perceived weakness against Communism, and- perhaps most importantly- failure in Korea. They thus turned to the charismatic Republican candidate.
    250px-Put_Real_Men_in_Government%2C_No_More_Clowns%2C_Cut-ups%2C_or_Characters_-_Wisconsin_Historical_Museum_-_DSC03240.JPG
    ​
    Dwight D. Eisenhower promised change. The hero of Normandy Beach exuded confidence and commanded trust. If he had fought his way onto the European Continent to the heart of Nazi Germany, surely he could do a better job leading the American people than his rival? Best of all, he promised to “Go To Korea” and end the war. Thus, the American people granted Eisenhower four years in the White House.

    "Forty years ago now, I feel confident in asking: did you vote for, or at least approve of, President Eisenhower?"

    "Yes, sir. Yes I did vote for him and I am not ashamed to admit it. I was on Normandy Beach- oh, not the first wave, but near enough- and I have never been privileged to serve under a finer commanding officer. I thought to myself in the first days of June 1944: "I shall follow that man wherever he leads me." And I relied upon those same instincts in November 1952... And then I found out where "wherever" turned out to be." (Gestures towards stump where his right arm once was)

    "Yes I did, and may God have mercy on my soul for it. The madman started a war that killed all three o' my boys, all for the sake of some yellow people who we beat down good in the last war anyhow."

    "No, and I've been wondering why not ever since. Man was a fantastic leader- the best President since Lincoln. What he got us through, those first days of the War, no one else could have."     (Smiles) Didn't vote for him in 1956 either- servicemen in England couldn't vote.

    ***​

    Only weeks into his Presidency, Eisenhower demanded fresh negotiations to end the Korean War. He sought only to end the shooting. Forcing the Chinese to leave North Korea- or even ensuring that war could never return to the Peninsula- was impossible. Nor did Eisenhower plan to abandon the South. While most of the UN forces would head home, the Eighth Army would stay put. Korea would always be a flashpoint, but it could at least be a "cold" one.

    Eisenhower understood the UN had thus far fought the war “on the cheap”, with only 330,000 US soldiers on the Peninsula. By contrast, 110,000 Americans had fought at Iwo Jima alone. That was why the stalemate had been politically acceptable: it came at a relatively low cost. Having just escaped the privations of the Second World War, the American public had no stomach for more conflict. As the commander of Operation Overlord and a career military officer, Eisenhower was hardly sensitive to casualties (something he would soon amply demonstrate). Yet he was well aware of his obligation to preserve the lives of as many US servicemen as possible. Letting the war drag on without progress at a cost in American lives would, he believed, constitute a dereliction of duty. Besides, as he knew too well, Gold Star families voted. If he brought the men home now, they would thank him at the ballot box.

    Eisenhower's subsequent actions were, without question, the most heavily debated policy decisions of the Twentieth Century. Nearly seventy years of academic, military, and "armchair" opinions have covered everything from full-chested support to inane conspiracy theories. The central dilemma is this: why, if the President sought to make peace, did he escalate the quasi-war with China? Lurking in the background is, of course, an immense trauma from not only a war, in the words of one historian, "very much more total" than that against the Nazis, but from having brought total destruction to so much of the world. Had March 1953 been properly handled the human race would be better off by almost any imaginable metric- not least of which, it would be far more numerous. Those who saw the world crumble in 1953 look back and wonder if it could have been avoided; those born after the War wonder what their lives could have been. Small wonder Eisenhower's genuinely benign, if short-sighted, interests are grossly distorted.


    ***​

    In March 1953, several squadrons of B-29s made a much-publicized move to Iwo Jima, some 1330 miles from Pyongyang. Truman had made similar deployments earlier in the war to intimidate the Chinese, yet their nuclear weapons had been incomplete. Now, however, the United States possessed the means to conduct a nuclear attack on North Korea or China at the stroke of a pen. Eisenhower also reached out to Chiang Kai-shek, still holed up on Taiwan. If the war escalated and Chiang attacked the Mainland, he would enjoy American support.

    Eisenhower didn’t anticipate any of this coming to pass. Launching a nuclear attack that would kill millions of civilians was, in fact, the last thing he wanted to do. He sought to contain Communism at the Thirty-Eighth Parallel, not crush it under a weight of kilotons. The goal was not to spark an all-out war with China but to scare it into backing down. Unable to respond to an American nuclear strike, and with Stalin unwilling to risk World War Three, Mao Zedong would agree to peace. (1)

    Appeasement hadn’t worked against Nazi Germany; Eisenhower was not about to make the same mistake as Chamberlain.

    Eisenhower submitted his demands to Beijing via the Indian Embassy on March 10. POW exchanges- with Chinese and Korean prisoners given the right to determine their future- were to be followed by a ceasefire. Chinese troops would retreat north of the Yalu River. UN peacekeepers would remain, defending US interests under the guise of ‘mediation’. Failure to meet these demands, the note warned, would lead to American use of nuclear weapons. Eisenhower waited for the Chinese to blink.

    Millions would die before he got his answer.

    (1) This is the PoD. Stalin doesn't die in March 1953, so there is no impetus in the Kremlin to end the Korean War. This causes Mao to call Eisenhower's nuclear bluff in spring 1953.... and things go from bad to worse.
     
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  • Index

    • bikchanin

    History will forget the crimes of the Hitlerites. They will remember ours as the historic omnicide."
    -Interview with an anonymous Russian, 2003
    Click to expand...
    I'm getting severe Red Spies in the White House vibes from this quote alone given how that timeline is devolving into a dystopia. It's telling how terrible of a world that this timeline will be given that Hitler is not seen as a total monster but instead some kind of weird anti-villain. And from this quote, it's implied that National Socialism isn't seen as completely evil. This story is probably going to be up there with the likes of Decisive Darkness, Footprint of Mussolini and Twilight of the Red Tsar. Watched.
     
    MLK JFK LBJ Beatles

    MLK JFK LBJ Beatles

    Mao is like a puppet of Stalin, so this TL makes sense, him and Stalin both are ruthless red monster, Khrushchev more like a human being, Mao hate that.
    Oh God after watching this, I really appreciate that Stalin died in March 1953 in OTL
     

    Marquis

    So, the situation is that the Soviet Union and China have a major manpower advantage, and NATO has only just been created, so the integration of western nations is still an ongoing project.

    Good news - the USN and RN have absurdly overwhelming sea power, the undisputed best tank in the world is British, the Hawker Hunter is on the point of ending the MiG scourge and the F-100 has just flown. The RAF is in the process of starting production and introducing strategic jet bombers and the B-47 Stratojet is in US service.

    Bad news - the Soviets are getting Whiskey-class submarine production up and running, the American M48 tank has only just entered production and is very much still in the debugging phase, we don't have a heavy tank capable of reliably dealing with the IS series heavies, the Hawker Hunter is going to need a lot of debugging and the F-100 is a murdery bastard to fly at the best of times. The B-47 Stratojet is a horrible handling thing, and the British V bombers are not service-ready.
     
    Two- Vyshinsky's Blank Cheque
  • Index

    • Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth

    Two- Vyshinsky’s Blank Cheque​

    Interviewer: To what extent, do you think, does the build up to the Third World War recall the July Crisis?

    Tuchman    : Now there, that there is the question historians will ponder for the next five hundred years. And the answer is, sadly, both are far too similar. Judgment was clouded by fear, a lack of information, and a belief that "the Other" sought, above all, your demise. But more than anything else, though, the relationship between Soviet Russia and the... I hesitate to say 'the Chinese government', but... the Maoist government... it parallels that between the Dual Monarchy and the German Empire. Both made guarantees which seemed plain and simple. Whatever you do with the Serbian problem, we will support you. If the Americans use atomic weapons on your cities, we will come to your defense. But Wilhelm's Germany ignored what the Russians would do, then that the Tsar and France were allied, so he had a two-front war, and by then the situation was out of control entirely. And... and the Soviet government had the same problem.

    Interviewer: Sorry to side-track you, but this has always fascinated me, and I think our viewers would love to know: when you say 'the Soviet government', who do you mean? Stalin? His underlings? Who... who was really calling the shots in spring 1953?

    Tuchman: (looks directly at the camera): I don't know. Even- and I devote a whole chapter in my book to this problem- even after all our research, all we've done, no one really knows how much say Stalin had in all this, or which subordinates were more powerful, or anything like that. (Smiles) One more reason for historians to look poorly on the Strategic Air Command, I suppose.

    Interviewer: I see. Do go on.

    Tuchman: But getting back to the point, so Imperial Germany completely failed to see the ramifications of its blank check to Austria-Hungary. And neither did the Soviets understand what they were starting when they promised to support Mao. They soon found out.

    -Interview with Barbara Tuchman for the release of her 1983 magnum opus The War. Over seven hundred pages long, it drew criticism for depicting World War III as the product of avoidable mistakes by both sides, rather than the conventional wisdom of Stalin as a second Hitler whom the Allies were bound to nobly resist.

    ***​

    Eisenhower's ultimatum met with mixed reactions in Beijing. In some ways, the ultimatum was convenient, as it offered a chance to end a seemingly unwinnable war. Whatever casualty records existed were doubtless destroyed during the War, but tens of thousands of Chinese (including his own son An-ching) had come home in body bags. Having barely finished its own civil war, Communist China needed time to rest and focus on domestic reconstruction. If, as some have postulated, Mao hoped to use the Korean War to convince Stalin to let him access Soviet nuclear technology, he had failed there too. (1) Eisenhower's ultimatum had been delivered in a secret enough manner that relatively few knew of it. Mao could thus accept without losing face or fear of being seen as having cowed to the "US imperialists". (2)

    Despite all his public bravado, Mao had to have known how much more powerful the Americans truly were. Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved the Americans would use their atomic weapons to avoid an excessively bloody battle. Would Eisenhower take two Chinese cities off the map if it would save tens of thousands of Americans? If he did, there was no way to save him. Communist China's already minimal air force had largely been shot down over Korea; the troops there relied on Soviet pilots for cover. Though infamously uncaring about the lives of his own people (3), Mao knew a nuclear strike of sufficient size could destroy his regime.

    What would have happened had Mao ended the war is one of the great "what-ifs" of our time. Instead, as with everything else, he forwarded it to Moscow.

    The telegram from Beijing reached Ambassador Zhang Wentian at two AM Moscow time on 13 March. Stalin’s health, however, derailed everything. The Vozhd had suffered a minor stroke only hours before the telegram arrived, and his doctor was preparing for emergency surgery. The operation went well enough, but Stalin had to be kept in a coma for a few days, hooked up to breathing and feeding tubes. He would probably live, the doctors agreed, but this was no time for him to do anything.

    Just as a major crisis was unfolding, the Soviet Union was practically leaderless.

    Foreign Minister Andrey Vyshinsky visited Zhang at noon on the sixteenth with Deputy Chairman Georgy Malenkov in tow. Both men were in a conundrum. They took Eisenhower’s nuclear threat seriously and doubted anything good would ever come out of Korea, even if Chinese armies marched all the way to Busan. Had it been up to them, they would have told Zhang to back down. Yet both were petrified of what the Vozhd would say. Stalin was comatose now, but he would wake up in a few days. Malenkov and Vyshinsky were, strictly speaking, not even supposed to converse with one another without his approval. If Stalin found out they had been speaking in his name to foreign ambassadors while he was unconscious, he would assume they were plotting against him. They would then spend the brief remainder of their lives in the Gulag.

    Vyshinsky and Malenkov had to tell Zhang what Stalin wanted them to say, not what made good sense.

    The two men responsible for (mis)managing Eisenhower's threats
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    The two met in Malenkov’s office at midday on 13 March. Both men knew the office was bugged, so they wrote their true thoughts on paper- namely, that this was dangerous and pointless. In a blessing to historians, Malenkov kept these documents in a briefcase with his personal effects, where they survived the war. Unaware that Mao didn’t care whether or not the Americans bombed China, they tried to figure out a diplomatically acceptable way to ask the Chinese to risk millions of civilian lives. The two finished their work around six PM and retired, agreeing to meet Zhang at dawn the next day.

    Zhang was already in his office when Vyshinsky and Malenkov called. Speaking "in the name of Comrade Stalin", they urged the Chinese to ignore Eisenhower's ultimatum. The Americans had refrained from using atomic bombs during the Berlin Crisis four years prior. Why, if they had been unwilling to start the Third World War over the heart of Europe, where their armies directly stood off against those of the Soviets, would they do so over a small East Asian peninsula? Eisenhower was bluffing to prove himself in his new role and appease his supporters. Better to call his bluff and "teach him his place".

    Vyshinsky also sought to downplay the true threat to China. Soviet Air Force units already provided cover on the Korean Peninsula; defending Manchuria or Beijing from atomic attacks would be easy. And if the Americans did attack, "proportionate measures" would be taken in retaliation. Article I of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1950 declared any attack on China an act of war against the Soviet Union. China's leaders had pushed for the Treaty because they knew how vulnerable they really were, and without it they likely would not have entered Korea. If the Chinese needed them, Vyshinsky promised, the USSR would be there.

    "Vyshinsky's blank cheque", as it was dubbed after the war, is frequently compared to the German promise of unconditional support for Austria-Hungary in the summer of 1914. Guarantees of support from a stronger power led Vienna to overplay its hand and spark a war with Russia forty years prior. Now, Vyshinsky had just convinced Zhang that even if the war went nuclear, the Communists would still win. This played perfectly into the shared belief in the Communist hierarchy of Chinese invincibility.

    Zhang's comments have not been recorded, and we can only guess how much he knew. He was certainly aware of Stalin's latest stroke, but only the inner circle knew how weak the Vozhd really was. Had Zhang realized that Stalin had just signed away millions of his countrymen? Did he wonder just how bad things could get for his homeland? Or did he- like Mao- believe Eisenhower was bluffing, and that in any case, the Revolution was strong enough to survive whatever its enemies threw at it? Or- far more likely- did he suppress any lingering doubts beneath Vyshinsky's guarantees? It made no difference either way. Nothing Zhang could have said would have changed Mao's mind, and no one dared question Stalin. He telegraphed the Soviet instructions to Beijing that same day.

    And so another opportunity to save mankind from itself was lost.

    (1) Mao: The Unknown Story obviously doesn't get written ITTL- the fates of its authors are unknown but grisly- but conspiracy theories surrounding Mao still persist.
    (2) Which he did IOTL because the new men in the USSR would back him. Here it has to go by Stalin...
    (3) The Great Leap Forward never happens ITTL, so the most obvious evidence for this isn't there. Instead we get something which makes the GLF look like a minor round of shortages.
     
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