marathag

Banned
Does the internet even develop? Arpanet was a Cold War DOD creation. No Arpanet no internet as we know it.
It was an out growth of the first distributed network to hook the various Combat and Direction Centers to Radars, Interceptor bases and SAM sites. That program started in 1951, with first test sites in operation in October, 1953. Smashing the USSR to glowing cinders won't change the directions of linked computers
 
It was an out growth of the first distributed network to hook the various Combat and Direction Centers to Radars, Interceptor bases and SAM sites. That program started in 1951, with first test sites in operation in October, 1953. Smashing the USSR to glowing cinders won't change the directions of linked computers
With a hot war in ‘53 does it progress beyond that? Best case the entire communist bloc and Western Europe are worse off than 1945 Germany and the U.S. is wounded. With nobody left to fight and domestic reconstruction taking priority that sort of project likely takes a back seat.
 

bguy

Donor
*WAllied intelligence estimates of the Soviet military's strength in 1953 still placed it at 4 million. In fact, it was 5.7 million. They mistakenly thought the bulking up of forces they could see in Eastern Europe and along the Soviet frontiers in the Middle and Far East were coming at the expense of slimming down the units in the interior.

How far could the Soviets really supply an advancing 5.7 million man army as nuclear strikes start happening all over Europe?
 
Without ARPANET (really, not having an existential threat will impact the USA's military infra development in a lot of ways), computer networking will probably start as experiments by civilian universities, eventually developing into some sort of civilian not-ARPANET as universities decide that want to connect and slowly expanding from there.
 
Story-wise, the American nuclear arsenal deployed in Europe can be reduced by Soviet nuclear attacks on the airbases the nuclear weapons are stored in.
That was a perennial American worry. The problem with that is that the Soviet doctrine around nuclear weapons employment during the High Stalin-era was... well, they didn't have one. Stalin basically viewed nukes more as prestige weapons than anything else and straitjacketed the Soviet military thinking on the subject of nuclear ordinance. The explicit idea of using ones own nuclear weapons to pre-empt and destroy the enemies delivery capabilities don't emerge until after Khrushchev takes over. Looking to conventional Soviet bombing doctrine doesn't lend much confidence : when it wasn't being tied to it's usual army (or navy) support role, the VVS tended to revert to old-fashioned psychological terror bombing in the Dehoutian model, which we know now to being pretty useless. That suggests the Soviet bombs would be employed to simply try and terrorize the enemies populace, when they are not deployed for operational purposes (like, for example, dropping one on the harbor of Pusan to cut the supplies to the Americans in Korea).

Now, one could argue that maybe the sudden nuking of targets in China (minus those which get intercepted) might focus Stalin's attention on the subject, but that's speculative.

How far could the Soviets really supply an advancing 5.7 million man army as nuclear strikes start happening all over Europe?
Why do you think that in the rest of that post I'm emphasizing the fact that Western forces have thoroughly integrated themselves with nukes as being the decisive factor here?
 
Last edited:
. The interesting question is, how far east can they push? Moscow is out of the question
What Moscow? Does the US not just keep making bombs after all the Soviets can't really destroy US industry and nuclear production, so they will just keep attacking deeper craters for 8 years......?
How could the Soviet Union keep fight a major war for 8 years when all their major industrial centers have been destroyed?
That's still a very long time when they are under nuclear bombardment.
 

bguy

Donor
Why do you think that in the rest of that post I'm emphasizing the fact that Western forces have thoroughly integrated themselves with nukes as being the decisive factor here?

You still seemed to think that they'd at least be able to get into France though. I'm wondering if Soviet logistics could sustain an offensive even that far with nuclear weapons going off all over their supply lines.
 
How successful had the CIA been by War Day in determining the location(s) of Soviet nuclear research? By this time, both nations are at work on thermonuclear fusion bombs. The Russians already know where Hanford, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge are. Those may be more important targets than Detroit and Pittsburgh.
 
You still seemed to think that they'd at least be able to get into France though. I'm wondering if Soviet logistics could sustain an offensive even that far with nuclear weapons going off all over their supply lines.

No?

The Red Army would be able to charge forward through it's superiority in weight of numbers and material and probably could still reach as far west as the Rhine, but the Americans have tactical nuclear weaponry pretty well integrated into their forces by this point and will blast away at the Soviets with them heavily. By the time they reach the river, they'll be hollowed out, their supply lines will be collapsing under the aftereffects of American strategic nuclear strikes, and the line will likely stabilize there briefly before the continuously reinforcing US and NATO begin to roll them back.

The Rhine is close to France, but it isn’t quite France. Now were this 1950 or earlier, then the Soviets could go as far as the Pyrenees and it’s 50/50 or whether they could drive beyond it. But back then SAC was still a mess and tactical nukes were only a concept. Three years of the Korean War arms build-up changed a lot.

How successful had the CIA been by War Day in determining the location(s) of Soviet nuclear research?

Intelligence had determined the general location of 5 nuclear material production and parts fabrication: Elektrosal (east of Moscow), Krasnoyarsk, one of two enrichment plants in the Sverdlovsk region, Novosibersk, and the production reactor complex at Kyshytm. They didn’t have the location nailed down specific enough for immediate A-Bomb delivery, but that’s what pre-strike air reconnaissance is for. However, the main nuclear research and assembly areas at Arzamas-16 had not yet been ID’d.

Although speaking of thermonukes, RDS-6 was tested in August ‘53. Though I have not seen any indication any deliverable examples were readied in that year like was the case with RDS-4.
 
Last edited:
What about those who were imprisoned at Spandau in 1953? How are they getting out of combat in this scenario?
They’re either blown up by a nuke, executed by Soviet soldiers upon them capturing the prison, starved to death in a gulag, or evacuated to a secure location in the UK, Norway, or the US.
 
Cough Cough
1679592569448.png
 
Top