Remotely Plausible Soviet Invasion of the United States?

[Carlosjm]

Russian Dominated US

I think this possibility could be helped by:

US never purchases Alaska.

1) Russia could exploit Canada's national resources

2) Russia would have base near US to attack

3) Russia could meddle in Canadian politics. Russia could exploit Anglo/Franco divide. They could offer Quebec assistance to break away. A Quebecois Democratic Republic?

4) Russia could present itself as a counter weight to the "Americanization" of Quebec. Forms an alliance with Canada. Especially Canadian Socialists.

 

[jolo]

Another earlier PoD:

Lenin decides to keep fighting against the Germans. The war was nearly over anyways, and making peace made him pretty unpopular at home.

Being victorious in 1918 keeps his assailant away, one way or the other - so he lives much longer. Also, the SU now possesses some of the most advanced industrial areas of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Ukraine and Poland never get independent, which also avoids the war with them and leaves much more of their industries intact. Rumanian oil fuels the Russian economy instead of the European economy.

Lenin being much more pragmatic than Stalin, the SU allows more and more free market - similar to China. That adds additional momentum to the Russian economy.

With the SU much stronger, a cold war starts earlier and a little bit hotter. Let's say Britain starts trouble from the South (Iran, India, Afghanistan...) and a war erupts between them. With a tank army much more formidable than in OTL, they "liberate" India and cause a lot of unrest in western countries. That unrest keeps the US out of the war, while most of Central Europe and the Balkans become an early Warsaw Pact.

With masses of Indian volunteers, the SU is able to liberate more and more countries in its reach. The US tries to apply more pressure against that, but as later in the case of Japan, they don't manage more than some embargos - which don't hit the SU too much, as it has enough ressources.

After some time, Britain has to give in. The SU uses the peace to expand communism to most of Asia, more parts of Europe and some parts of Africa. Officially, they don't have too much to do with those "revolts" - but the weapons of the insurgents look pretty Russian.

At about 1930, the US has put local insurgencies down and sees the SU as a great danger to their safety. Together with GB, Japan, France and some other "free" nations, they decide to attack the SU. While the allies are technologically more advanced, the SU has about the same industrial strength and many more recruitable people.

With a surprise landing in northern Canada, the US is caught off guard. At the beginning, they try to get the Russians out of Canada with aerial assaults, but that is not very effective against soldiers hopping from cover to cover. The attack also leads to weakening efforts of the Allies in Asia, so that Japanese and other Asian opposition is quickly routed by the Russians. The Communists now possess all of continental Asia and, by 1934, all of continental Europe. Wherever the Allies try to attack, they are successfully repelled.

After the US concentrates its efforts on getting the Russians out of Canada, the Russians are able to land in Alaska and Greenland, and win over a few Latin American states, from which the rest of the Americas is attacked.

The last major resistance breaks by 1938. After that, Australia, all of Africa, every populated Island, and so on are turned into communist states.

With the revolution having occurred all over the world, there is a lot of popular demand to fullfill the promises of communism - equal rights, small or no real government, local autonomy for every ethnicity and culture, and so on. This leads to a police state similar to OTL SU, which in turn leads to a few revolts. After one is successful (as in OTL), we have many independent states, wars, and so on. The SU stays pretty intact though, and plays world police in all the hot spots, including the remains of the US sometimes.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

Some Quick Ideas....

- In 1989, Ishihara Shintaro, conservative techno-nationalist leader of the LDP wrote Japan Must Say No , proposed the sale of cheap microchips to be used by the Soviet Union, in an effort to increase the bargaining power of Japanese government in world affairs.

-In 1936, The Soviet Union proposed the idea of recruiting Nikolai Tesla to help develop his "death ray" weapon, which he publicized quite often, starting in 1934 in New York City, New York.

-In 1976, many conspiracy theorists believe that the Soviets created a high-energy electromagnetic weapon, which had the capability of creating massive blackouts, massive pscychological breakdowns (e.g. riots), and severe weather disturbances (e.g. hurricanes, thunderstorms) under Operation WOODPECKER

 

[Ivan Druzhkov]

-In 1976, many conspiracy theorists believe that the Soviets created a high-energy electromagnetic weapon, which had the capability of creating massive blackouts, massive pscychological breakdowns (e.g. riots), and severe weather disturbances (e.g. hurricanes, thunderstorms) under Operation WOODPECKER

So that's where half of the technology in Red Alert 2 came from. Interesting.

Incidentally, while we're talking about a Soviet invasion of the United States, does anyone have a way to give them a suitable navy? IIRC, the navy was generally the least prominent branch of the Soviet military. If you want the Red Army in Toledo, you're gonna need some ships; preferably two to four times more than the Americans and their allies.

 

[jolo]

So that's where half of the technology in Red Alert 2 came from. Interesting.

Incidentally, while we're talking about a Soviet invasion of the United States, does anyone have a way to give them a suitable navy? IIRC, the navy was generally the least prominent branch of the Soviet military. If you want the Red Army in Toledo, you're gonna need some ships; preferably two to four times more than the Americans and their allies.

A few hundred years ago the Koreans repelled a Japanese invasion attempt by building many lightly armored small boats with a single cannon each. They destroyed a far superior fleet with such a simple idea.

Anything like that is possible in a war Russia against the US - the US used Battleships, the Russians could have answered with subs and torpedo boats. The US used aircraft carriers, the SU could have answered with a more compact aircraft carrier, like some of todays solutions. The US used landing boats, the SU could have developed landing subs. And so on.

Also, even if naval superiority is not achieved, it should be possible to cross the 3 miles between Russia and Alaska.

 

[Jason]

What if the purpose of the invasion was not to conquer the USA but simply to distrupt it? The conquest of the USA is almost impossible given its size but an invasion to destroy part of it might work? Say an invasion via Alaska, through western Canada and down the western sea board would cause havoc and could then withdraw northwards.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

Some Quick PODs....

-In 1980, during the Mariel Boatlift, there was an active rumor that Fidel Castro was using the boatlift for two covert reasons. First, to sow racial and civil unrest by dumping Cuba's criminal population onto American shores. Second, was to spread biological weapons or terrorist cells into the United States.

-In 1950, the Chinese PLA planned to launch an attack on Vladivostok Naval Yard in a stolen American aircraft, sparking the Soviets to launch an attack on the Americans during teh Korean War. The United States had a plan just in case called Operation Shakedown which was designed which called for the Americans to use 20 nuclear weapons against the Moscow-Gorki region; 12 nukes around Leningrad; 15 nukes in the Caucasus region’ and 15 nukes in the Vladivostok and Irkutsk regions. Britain planned to use 52 nukes against the Volga area and Donets Basin.

 

[wkwillis]

We use Atkins instead of Groves to run the Manhattan project. We get the bomb in 1945 as in OTL, but with better techniques so that we have a thousand bombs in 1951 instead of 20 as in OTL (IIRC). We use them all as thermonuclear weapons and start a global nuclear winter as a response to the Korean war.
Russia loses it's entire urban population but since it's after the harvest they still have their crops in, but with twice as much food as they need. We have our harvest in, too, but still have all our people to feed. We lose more people than the Russians because we feed everyone not quite enough and hope that the weather recovers the next year, and it doesn't.
So in 1953 fifty million Russians fight a war with fifteen million Europeans and fifteen million Americans. They don't win because they don't have the logistics of invasion, but they do land troops on our coasts and trash the cities that are still left. They occupy Europe successfully.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

Some Quick PODs....

-Starting in 1943, Stalin reassured his clique within the Politburo that invasion of the United States was not necesary. He claimed , before the introduction of the Marshall European Reconstruction Acts that the U.S. economy and those of Western Europe were doomed to collapse before 1952...

-In 1936, Willaim Randolph Hearst reported two major media hoaxes. The first reported a major famine in the Ukraine, at a time when Pravda was reporting record harvests. The second repoorted anti-monarchy riots in London, outside of Buckingham Palace. What if both stories had been true?

-In the 1960s, Nikolai Fedyakin and Boris Derjaguin announced the creation of an experimental substance called "polywater" which could lower the initial freezing point of water to -40 Celcius or raise its boiling point to 150 Celcius. In order to prove this, they conducted experiments in Kostroma and Moscow. Unfortunately, like cold fusion, the results proved flawed.

-In 1993, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Russian ultra-nationalist leader announced the existence of a substance called "red mercury", which according to his statements allowed Soviet scientists to create nuclear weapons that were the size of an average baseball. Starting in 1995, the Russian Strategic Services reported the demand by rogue states and terrorist organizations for supplies of "red mercury". Like reports of cold fusion, "red mercury" turned out to be a major hoax.

 

[Ivan Druzhkov]

-In 1950, the Chinese PLA planned to launch an attack on Vladivostok Naval Yard in a stolen American aircraft, sparking the Soviets to launch an attack on the Americans during teh Korean War. The United States had a plan just in case called Operation Shakedown which was designed which called for the Americans to use 20 nuclear weapons against the Moscow-Gorki region; 12 nukes around Leningrad; 15 nukes in the Caucasus region’ and 15 nukes in the Vladivostok and Irkutsk regions. Britain planned to use 52 nukes against the Volga area and Donets Basin.

Odd...that American plan seems to resemble one the Soviets "discovered" in the last few years of Stalin's reign. Known as the "Plan of the Internal Blow", the idea was for the Americans to win the Korean War, put Chiag back in Beihjing, and launch an invasion of the USSR from the east. Meanwhile, several nuclear rocket launchers would be smuggled into Moscow via Murmansk, installed in the American embassy, then fired at the Kremlin when war was declared.

I thought that that was just a silly plan concocted by Stalin to add an element of foreign subversion in the "Jewish Doctor's Plot". In any event, the stories about the "Internal Blow" were quashed soon after Stalin died.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

That's A Little Scary...

Ivan Druzkhov- That is a little too scary, even for my tastes. It sounds like one of those plot twists by John Le Carre wherein the ultimate bluff is the lie which proves to be true.

Some other weird PODs:

-Starting in 1962, Phyllis Schaffly and General Curtis Le May campaigned for greater nuclear arms developoment. According to one statement , teh conservative leaders claimed that by the year 1968 that the Soviet Armed Forces would have an orbital nuclear weapons platform.

-In July 1961, the Soviet submarine K-19 had a reactor core explosion, and nearly had a nuclear meltdown. The worst part was the fact that the nuclear meltdown took place in the North Atlantic, just off the coast of New Foundland, sparking the attention of the U.S. Navy.

-In October 1986, the Soviet submarine K-219 was lost in the WesternAtlantic, off the eastern coast of Bermuda. What is most frightening is that according to naval intelligence reports, one of the 16 nuclear weapons silos was smoking and looked like it was about to launch. What is especially troubling is the fact that the Soviets blamed the damage from a collision with an American submarine

 

[Halnzder Kverldak]

There are far too many gun-nuts and militant organisations in the USA.

That`s why the US is still a free country.

 

[Halnzder Kverldak]

In 1962, the Cuba crisis led to a conventional war between Nato and Warsawa.
The soviets contained the west and defeated them in the ruthless and brutal battle of Berlin in July 1963, by September they reached Hambourg and Amsterdam, there the opposing armies starts dugging in and start a trench war. The soviets defeate the allies in the middle-east, with China defeates them in all continental asia...
After (In 1964) they invade shoutern Italia from Greece and from there invades north-west Africa and after the whole continent.
The US concentrates only on the western european fronts(since a surprise attack allow the sovs to crush Spain and Portugal in 1965), the French-Italian front, the French-Spanish front, the German-Czech front, the northern German front(off course danemark and norvedgia has fallen by then).
Massive bombardements increase drasticallyeastern european supporte of the red army, especially after the "holocaust of Warsawa"(worste than Dresden).
In 1966, half of shipes going from the US to europe are lost due to submarines, by June 1966, the US can`t supply the europeans.
The western european have no oil for their gigantic aviation, face food shortage, raw material shortage that hammper their war effort.
The soviets bmardement destroy their industry and communications, sovet fllets then takes the advantage and attack all coastal cities, the europeans can`t defend their coastes and are finally collapsing by October 1966.
The soviets had massively construted transports in Siberia to carry troops and supplys to the Bering straight...
During the winter of 66-67, the soviets troops crossed the artic to invade the artic coast, Alaska and Groenland. The US bombed but it wasn`t enought, ground troops where needed.
Problem was, by 1966 all young men and women betweeen the age of 18 to 25 had been send to attack in Europe and Japan and where now in Siberia.
The soviets and the chines had much more soldiers available than the US before the war and hadn`t that much casualties.
Their soldiers knew about war then moste US troops where inexperienced.
The fight was bloody and the US governement wasted millions of remaining soldiers, then the winter came, the US army failed, panicked by the disaster the US army ordered a retreate that turned into a debacle.
The soviets seized moste equippement left behind and started invading the US in spring 1968.
It cost them millions uppon millions but it was less resistance than that of WWII`s Germans.
The war of attrition was won and they seized the greate cities that fell one after the another, once encircled famine did the rest, after the fall of the west coast and north-east USA, military production crumbled and the soviets occupied Washington by summer of 1968, the US surrendered.

 

[Glen]

I'm looking at writing a cyberpunk-style story set in a world dominated by Communism. The Communist ideology seems to fit perfectly into a cyberpunk world, with corrupt Party members replacing corrupt executives, etc.

Anyway, I want to set the story in a Soviet-occupied New York. Any remotely plausible way this could happen by 2013?

Check out this othertimelines discussion, Swing Life Away, for some ideas, though I think the Soviets don't win in the end, exactly.

http://www.othertimelines.com/msgboard/index.php?showtopic=4228&hl=swing+life+away

 

[Chengar Qordath]

The Iraqi gun nuts seem to be causing lots of problems in the Sunni Triangle.

However, the "something to lose" dynamic works very well.

A lot of the reason the US has trouble with Iraq is that it is trying to be nice and win over the Iraqi people by avoiding any collateral damage. An invader that has no objection to killing huge numbers of innocents can do a lot more damage to any insurrection, both by killing larger numbers of the enemy and by making people more reluctant to support any partisans.

 

[FirstCitizen1]

True. If we behaved like true conquerors, Iraq could be 'passified' within weeks. However, Americans have been exposed to a pesky philosophies, such as Christianity, secular humanism, and political realism. Absent all these, a first strike by our nuclear arsenal might allow us to become the first power in history to conquer the world. (Eliminate Europe, Russia, China in the opening minutes of our un-provoked attack, clean up at our liesure.)
So what if we the American Brass decided it was going to declare total war on the entirety of the rest of the world, begining with an unexpected sneak attack, (Reasons are uniportant). Could America win?

 

[Lord Douglas]

True. If we behaved like true conquerors, Iraq could be 'passified' within weeks. However, Americans have been exposed to a pesky philosophies, such as Christianity, secular humanism, and political realism. Absent all these, a first strike by our nuclear arsenal might allow us to become the first power in history to conquer the world. (Eliminate Europe, Russia, China in the opening minutes of our un-provoked attack, clean up at our liesure.)
So what if we the American Brass decided it was going to declare total war on the entirety of the rest of the world, begining with an unexpected sneak attack, (Reasons are uniportant). Could America win?

Well, there are a hell of a lot of other countries around with nukes around. I suspect that the Chinese and Russians would launch at the first news, India and Pakistan after an initial hesitation due to surprise, Israel (well why would the US want to destroy Israel), France would hesitate for a long time, probably try to surrender and then launch, the British would be completely astonished (although whether the US would try to destroy the UK is very questionable) and when they realise that they have no other option they will send the Royal Navy out to sea with whatever they can rescue of the Royal Family and Government and then fire their nukes at all of the US, while GB is being completely annihilated behind them.

 

[Jason]

Question, could you expect the US military to actaully obey such an order, to launch an unprovoked nuclear assault on the rest of the world? Back in my days, ok I wasn't reponsible for nucs but if someone had ordered me to launch an unporvoked assault on the rest of the world I'd have questioned the order, if not refused it (but maybe thats down to Sandhurst)

Well, there are a hell of a lot of other countries around with nukes around. I suspect that the Chinese and Russians would launch at the first news, India and Pakistan after an initial hesitation due to surprise, Israel (well why would the US want to destroy Israel), France would hesitate for a long time, probably try to surrender and then launch, the British would be completely astonished (although whether the US would try to destroy the UK is very questionable) and when they realise that they have no other option they will send the Royal Navy out to sea with whatever they can rescue of the Royal Family and Government and then fire their nukes at all of the US, while GB is being completely annihilated behind them.

 

[ShawnEndresen]

In 1981, as a test, they changed all of the launch codes without informing the missile-keepers and ordered them to launch in order to get a realistic answer to this question.

75% of personnel responsible for nuclear weapons refused an apparently lawful order to initiate a nuclear first strike.

That was a generation ago, of course. Couldn't say if the current military would be more or less than that.