Small Country, Big Consequences - a tale of a three way Cold War and hot war

map!! i soo wanna see a map!!
Wat will happen to french and dutch east indies? Will Nazi Germany basically get control of them through thiere puppet goverments in Amsterdam and Paris?

I suspect that independence under pro-U.S. governments is more likely for French and Dutch Asia/Pacific holdings.
 
Update. :)


Chapter V: New Order, Cold War and the Continuation War, 1944-1955.



Hermann Goering was now the undisputed leader of Europe and he started to organise his conquests. He formed the European League in 1945 which provided for a military alliance and also a common market with free traffic of capital, goods and services as well as stiff common external tariffs. Europe thusly became Germany’s political and economic hinterland. Founding members were Germany, Italy, France, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. A Russian government-in-exile under Tsar Boris I was also included, but it had no political significance of any kind and was only recognised by a handful of countries. Germany signed lucrative commercial treaties with a number of members which put German companies in top economic positions to exploit Europe’s resources and labour pool, making Europe a German market and resource area.

Stalin watched this development with growing distrust and so he formed his own communist bloc which included the People’s Republic of China, Mongolia, Korea and Hokkaido. The Red Army actively campaigned in China in support of the communists and defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang forces, forcing him to retreat to Taiwan in 1945. The People’s Republic of China controlled the Chinese mainland fully by summer 1945 and received recognition from the Soviet Union, Mongolia, Korea and Hokkaido (of which the latter two weren’t recognised by the majority of the world). The USSR, China, Korea, Mongolia and Hokkaido formed the Sverdlovsk Pact, a military and economic bloc opposed to the European League under Nazi Germany. The border between the European League and the Soviet Union became the most heavily militarized region in the world with high troop concentrations, bombers constantly ready to go and enormous defensive lines with bunkers, trenches, pillboxes, landmines and artillery positions. The Cold War had begun.

This showed in a number of proxy conflicts, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia, where the Soviet Union and China supported communist rebellions. The Nazis and fascists attempted to support counter movements, but their racist ideologies made them rather alien to any Asian or African nationalists who saw more in a Marxist inspired class struggle combined with Asian or African nationalism. Communist success was mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia since communism was rather alien to the Muslim Arabs in North Africa. Italy brutally squashed resistance in thinly populated Tunisia and Libya using chemical weapons, carpet bombing and mass death marches to concentration camps in the desert where the majority of the inmates perished. Mussolini also flooded his colony with Italian settlers, especially after oil was discovered in 1946 which brought new wealth to Italy. Very soon the indigenous Arabs, Berbers and Bedouins were a minority in their country and resistance became sporadic. In Italian East Africa, there was more trouble since a massive uprising broke out there with the support of the Soviet Union in the shape of weapons, money and advisors. The Italian army used similar radical tactics as those used in Libya although here the population was bigger and a massive colonial war erupted which preoccupied Italy until the early 1950s when the mass killings started to affect the numbers of the resistance movements, forcing them to revert to terrorism and guerrilla warfare. France experienced troubles in Algeria and Morocco which were also put down harshly and the French also sent settlers even if their colony had a much bigger population. Still, both Oran and Algiers would became French dominated areas.

In Southeast Asia, an uprising occurred in French Indochina where Ho Chi Minh proclaimed an independent communist state and he was heavily sponsored by both Stalin and Mao. The French responded by launching a vicious colonial war. The Dutch East Indies, which were formally ruled by the Dutch government-in-exile, saw a takeover of leftist and nationalist minded rebels who proclaimed the People’s Republic of Indonesia and joined the Sverdlovsk Pact. The Soviets, however, also stirred up unrest in India, Burma and Britain’s African colonies which created a three way Cold War. India and Burma gained their independence successfully, followed by Malaysia though the African colonies were not this successful. Due to mutual enmity, three camps formed who waged proxy wars all over Asia, Africa and South America: Nazi dominated Europe, the communist bloc and an emerging Anglo-American power bloc which incorporated much of the South American continent (dominated by rightwing military juntas) and the British Commonwealth in the WATO or Western Atlantic Treaty Organization.

This Cold War also showed in an arms race between the three power blocs. In 1945, the United States successfully detonated its first atomic bomb and through their own sources Stalin and Goering were soon notified. Stalin had launched his atomic bomb project in 1944 after the end of the war under Beria’s NKVD who motivated scientists like Igor Kurchatov, Andrei Sakharov and Georgy Flerov to work harder in the vast Asian steppes where their lab was located. Germany had capable scientists like Kurt Diebner, Werner Heisenberg and Carl von Weizsäcker, but their program was years behind on Western and Soviet program. Goering sped up the program, but also decided to build upon the missile program that had been running since the late 1930s and to increase existing stockpiles of nerve gas and other chemical weapons. The Reich was the leader in world missile technology which compensated for its lagging behind in nuclear physics. Germany successfully tested the A4 missile in 1944 and it had a range of 320 kilometres and could carry a one tonne warhead. Goering pressed the program and funded it heavily since it would provide Germany with a way to strike deep into the USSR and the United States against which no defence existed. A new version known as the A9 was soon developed which had an extended range of 750 kilometres due to its wings and was successfully tested in 1945. There were some experiments with Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles or SLBMs launched from U-boat towed 300 tonne platforms, but they only worked in calm seas and there were accidents leading to the shelving of the project. Instead work was redirected to the A9/A10, the world’s first multi-staged rocket on which designing had begun as early as 1940. In this missile, the A9 was placed on top of a bottom stage, the A10 which was powered by six A4 engines for a thrust of 200 tonnes, a range of 5.000 kilometres and the capability to reach semi-orbit. A successful test was conducted in 1947 from Peenemunde test site in northern Germany.

Germany prospered economically now that the war was over while Stalin continued using Five Year Plans to construct a massive military apparatus. The United States did best economically with an enormous boom after the war, especially with North America, South America and the British dominions forming a common market in which American products came to dominate.

Culturally speaking, the scene was a lot more gloomy. Germany remained a police state with a relatively stagnant culture based on baroque and neoclassicism as shown in many German cities. Nuremberg, Munich, Berlin and Linz were completely reconstructed with Albert Speer’s marble and granite giants while Wagnerian opera dominated German radios. Especially Berlin received special attention: the east-west and north-south axes saw the construction of two enormous avenues, each two and a half times the size of the Champs-Élysées, and the former saw construction of a massive Arch of Triumph that spanned the width of the avenue; besides this an enormous system of subways was built which were said to be the most beautiful in Europe; at the heart of Berlin lay the People’s Hall which could fit 180.000 people inside, was 250 metres wide, 200 metres tall and adorned with the statues of the titans Tellus and Atlas, and an eagle on top clutching a globe rather than the usual swastika with its talons to symbolize world domination. It of course remains largely covered up that much of these behemoths were built with Polish slave workers and political prisoners. Amidst this grandeur, the Nazi regime remained oppressive with the Gestapo suppressing any dissent. In the eastern Polish regions, the SS had its own playground, Himmler’s little private kingdom in which he committed the most horrible acts of genocide and human experiments. The Soviet Union wasn’t much better off with Stalin more paranoid than ever and purging any suspected “fascist spies” or “bourgeois lackeys”, creating a grim atmosphere kept alive by fear of Germany. Stalin similarly started a building spree in Moscow, Stalingrad and Leningrad to outdo Goering’s mega building projects, building the Moscow State University among other things which was the tallest building in Europe. Britain, being in the frontlines of the struggle against “Brown Europe”, also became somewhat more authoritarian and in cinema, literature and art the invasion theme became prominent, creating a pessimistic outlook. Only the US remained optimistic with a quite frivolous culture and confidence that America could handle whatever obstacle came before it.

The fragile peace that existed would soon come to an end thanks to a grave internal security problem that had arisen within Nazi Germany. Over the years, the SS had grown by recruiting ever more fanatical youths with Nazi ideals from across Europe and in Poland the organisation had nearly unlimited power to commit the worst acts of barbarity ever known. Himmler and Heydrich had been relatively quiet since they knew Goering would dispose of them at a moment’s notice, but by the late 1940s the SS was over 2.5 million men strong with 1.2 million of them in the armed branch, the Waffen SS, making the organization a state within the state. Himmler besides the SS also controlled the SD, the Gestapo and all of Germany’s police forces, making him a very feared and powerful man. Moreover, the Reich’s nuclear weapons project resided under the joint jurisdiction of the SS and Gestapo which motivated the scientists to work hard, finishing a heavy water reactor to produce plutonium by 1949. This power put him in a position to voice his long held criticisms of Goering who was much too old-fashioned, had strayed from the Führer’s ideals and had done nothing against the Judeo-Bolshevik threat to the east. Besides this, Himmler accused Goering of being a corrupt morphine addict who was no longer fit to rule (which wasn’t far from the truth in 1950 by which time Goering did little actual ruling and only showed up for the occasional ceremonial event). Over the course of the spring of 1950, tensions started to brew within the Nazi leadership with hardliners siding with Himmler and moderates with Goering. In May, Himmler launched a quick, successful coup in coordination with his subordinate Heydrich. The SD had been feeding Goering false information for months and suddenly he was arrested by the Gestapo on April 20th, Hitler’s birthday, while SS units across the country seized control of party and government buildings, arresting pro-Goering regional party and government leaders. Himmler, in a press release, stated as motivation that Goering was too sick to rule and then he had him placed under house arrest in a castle in southern Bavaria.

Himmler was too reviled by the leaders of the armed forces to become Führer and Heydrich was seen as his sock puppet. Instead, the long sidetracked head of the party chancellery (a mostly symbolic position by now seeing how Bormann barely had access to Goering) Martin Bormann made a reappearance as did Alfred Rosenberg. Bormann was one of the old party members and deemed acceptable while Rosenberg was the party’s leading ideologist supporting the ideas of Hitler and now Himmler on Lebensraum, anti-Semitism, racial theories and rejection of Christianity for a new Nazi faith. Bormann became President and Rosenberg became Chancellor, but neither wielded any more power than Himmler allowed them to. Their rule was based on his support and so the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler became the power behind the throne which was clear due to his much greater prominence in politics and the publicity he received.

Himmler quietly took it upon himself to finish what the great Adolf Hitler, his idol, had started and destroy the Jews and Bolshevism. This started with a series of military exercises in eastern Europe together with Slovakia, Hungary and Romania which aroused Stalin. A period of deteriorating Soviet-German relations started for as far as their relationship could get any worse. In June 1950, tensions were heightened when the Germans successfully tested an atomic bomb with a yield of 16 kilotons in Poland. The Soviet Union by now had its own small but growing nuclear arsenal, having successfully tested a 22 kiloton warhead at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan in October 1948 (although it was a warhead copied from the US through espionage). A tense stand-off occurred with the Nazis and communists staring each other down. Things looked like they’d settle down and that the two powers with their major troop concentrations and army manoeuvres were merely sabre rattling a little more than usual, at least that was what Prime Minister Clement Attlee an President Harry S. Truman were told by their political advisors. They couldn’t have been more wrong as they failed to factor in the lunacy of Himmler and his cronies. In their defence, though, the sabre rattling continued for so long that even Stalin came to believe that Nazi Germany was just trying to provoke him into attacking which would certainly earn Germany the sympathy of Britain and the US who would happily help the Germans exhaust themselves and destroy the Soviet Union and themselves in the process.

Then – suddenly without warning and without provocation because preparations had been conducted by written orders and with radio silence – Germany attacked and launched what would become known as the Continuation War. One June 22nd 1952, exactly 140 years after Napoleon’s invasion, Himmler launched the invasion of the Soviet Union which had been meticulously planned over the years, but which had been shelved. German nuclear bombers destroyed Leningrad, Minsk and Kiev while German artillery launched a massive attack with nerve gas across the border, destroying border garrisons. Fortunately, the nerve gas lingered, forcing German soldiers to advance in cumbersome biohazard suits which slowed them down. After the initial attack, Nazi Germany possessed seven more atomic bombs of which several were deployed in a tactical sense. One was detonated in Lithuania, destroying an entire Soviet army stationed there and allowing for a quick advance along the Baltic coast with Latvia and Lithuania being taken in two weeks and German troops passing by the radioactive, smouldering ruins of Minsk a few days after. In Belarus and Ukraine, three more atomic bombs were deployed, destroying Soviet forces and allowing for a quick German advance to a line along the Dnieper. The remaining three nuclear weapons remained in reserve just in case. Himmler triumphantly declared he had won and sent a telegram with his peace conditions to Moscow, demanding a Brest-Litovsk version 2.0. Himmler, however, had been too early in declaring victory.

After the initial shock of a surprise attack, Stalin furiously ordered retaliation and he now held all the cards. Nazi Germany had only three more nuclear weapons which they were reluctant to use since they were a trump card, but the Soviet stockpile consisted of between 50 and 100 atomic bombs according to most estimates which are guesses due to losses of Soviet records of the time. Twenty nuclear bombs were detonated along the Vistula river which cut off German forces in the Soviet Union off from supply and they were crushed in a matter of days by massive Soviet counterattacks in Belarus and the Western Ukraine in large pincer movements. The Soviets also used an experimental boosted fission weapon with a yield of 300 kilotons to attack Wilhelmshaven, thereby destroying much of the German surface fleet in port in retaliation for the destruction of the Baltic fleet in Leningrad. Furious, Himmler ordered the sixty thus far produced A9/A10 ICBMs to be fitted with nerve gas. Two dozen cities across the entire Soviet Union were attacked, killing many millions of civilians. An outraged Stalin responded by destroying the Peenemunde test and launch site with another atomic bomb as well as Hamburg, Kiel and Lübeck. Realizing the utter insanity of Himmler and his disregard for the human cost of the war, the Wehrmacht staged a coup in August 1952, barely two months into the war. Himmler was summarily executed by firing squad, Bormann and Rosenberg were placed under house arrest, general Von Manstein assumed leadership of the country and a civil war erupted between the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine on one side and the SS, Gestapo and SD on the other.

The regular armed forces defeated the SS and executed most of its leadership for treason in quick court martials and the organization was disbanded. Peace then reigned over Europe’s battlefields.




Epilogue


The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had laid each other to waste in one of the shortest, but also one of the most devastating major wars in history with over 20 million casualties in total. The shattered Nazi regime made peace with the Soviet Union which itself had been heavily affected by the war too.

After the demise of their original leading cadres, both started to disintegrate rapidly under the weight of economic decay, heavy defence expenditures, the cost of reconstruction and uprisings from ethnic minorities. In Nazi Germany, protests broke out everywhere and resistance against occupation grew once again. The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg were given independence as were Denmark and Norway. Poland failed to break free due to the nuclear war and Germanization which had changed the ethnic makeup of Poland, decimating the original population. Bohemia remained within Germany because it had had been too heavily Germanized already. The Soviet Union’s economic policies started to fail increasingly during reconstruction since the system failed to provide in basic needs. By economic rationing, the Soviet Union under Khrushchev lingered on into the 1960s, but was eventually forced into democratic and economic reforms. Due to the relatively limited nature of the nuclear war (“Mutually Assured Destruction” had not yet come into play), both states survived although they were impoverished and faced a series of epidemics unseen since the previous century, not to mention enormous harvest failures which led to a subsistence crisis in the first year after the war, killing millions more. The two totalitarian systems faced the toughest challenge they had ever seen and weathered it more or less successfully, but demands for reform became louder as time progressed.

Italy, though having declared war, had hardly participated in the war and hadn’t seen nuclear strikes. Mussolini filled part of the power vacuum together with his Balkan puppet states Greece and ex-Yugoslavia which were joined by Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania (which had lost Bessarabia to the victorious Soviet Union) to form the Rome Pact, a military and economic alliance (soon also joined by Spain, France and Portugal). He had oil wealth on his side due to the discovery of oil in Libya, but it couldn’t prevent his regime from eventually falling. It tested an atomic bomb in 1955 with Anglo-American help since they now viewed Italy as the policeman of the region against communism and Nazism. Italy grew economically, especially since waves of settlers to Libya and Tunisia succeeded in turning it into the desired “Fourth Shore”. Italy, however, was still stuck in a low-level guerrilla war in Abyssinia. Mussolini passed away at the age of 75 in 1958 and he proved to be the binding factor in post-nuclear and post-Nazi period Italy. He was succeeded by Count Ciano, but in the 1960s he was faced with increased demands for democracy. Uprisings across Italy forced the Fascist Grand Council to concede, especially with Germany no longer propping them up.

France had become a royalist dictatorship after Pétain’s death and it followed a similar path after massive protests against the colonial wars in Algeria and Indochina in the 1950s and 60s, eventually organizing elections in 1966. Harvest failures in the wake of the nuclear attacks on Germany due to a radiation cloud drifting over France compounded the issue with the government instating rationing, leading to increased popular unrest. France failed to hold onto its colonial empire the way Italy did because it was so much bigger, but by the mid 1960s it had achieved French majorities in Algiers and Oran which both remained part of metropolitan France. The rest of its African and Asian empire fell apart in the 60s and thanks to the enormous expenses on these wars, the state was nearly bankrupt which fed demand for reform. King Henry VI was faced with rioting and political violence across France and clashes between the military and civilians leading to blood baths, deepening the spiral of violence. This forced him to organise new elections.

By today, both the USSR and Germany have come a long way in democratization and reconstruction since then, but much needs to be done and neither has fully regained its paramount position. The USSR remains the dominant power of the (former) communist states and Germany has regained its position as economic top dog although resentment lingers in the post-fascist Europe of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s among the formerly occupied nations. Both are nonetheless being accepted back into the international community as equals.

Those who profited from this the most were the US and Britain who became even more powerful economically, breaking open European markets in return for which Germany received economic help. Germany also sold much of its missile technology, making the United States the first country on the Moon in 1968 and the first on Mars in 1986 while it was already the leader in the field of computers, introducing the first personal cpmuters in the 1970s. Thusly, in the post-nuclear world, the United States followed by a rapidly developing China and India inherited the Earth.
 
I have some questions at this point:

- If Stalin had a nuclear advantage of 150 to 20, how come not every city in Germany is smoldering right now?
- How did the two sides come to negotiations? You mentioned the German action of killing the SS dudes, but what made the Soviets suddenly forgive Germany and not nuke them into the earth?
- Did the USSR get de-Stalinized?
 
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