Soviet Europe

A scenario that is often brought up in theory but not discussed in detail is that if the UK had made piece with Nazi Germany in 1941, or if the US had not entered the war, and the Soviet Union had still managed to defeat the Nazis, they would have conquered their way all the way to the Atlantic. Imagine they did so. Soviet troops march into Berlin in 1946, and Paris not long after that. I'd assume that the liberated areas would go communist as quickly as the areas the Soviets liberated in OTL. But how would red Europe evolve in the long term?

Some factor to consider: The Soviets would have much less to fear from the West without NATO and American ground troops on the continent. And the power of the non-Soviet part of the communist bloc in Europe would be a lot higher than today. With those combined I would expect a lot less Soviet military presence in the territories they limited, and perhaps less, or at least less successful, interference with their politics as well. What would an independent communist France or Italy get up to? Would the liberalization of the kind that was crushed in OTL by possible?
 
A scenario that is often brought up in theory but not discussed in detail is that if the UK had made piece with Nazi Germany in 1941, or if the US had not entered the war, and the Soviet Union had still managed to defeat the Nazis, they would have conquered their way all the way to the Atlantic. Imagine they did so. Soviet troops march into Berlin in 1946, and Paris not long after that. I'd assume that the liberated areas would go communist as quickly as the areas the Soviets liberated in OTL. But how would red Europe evolve in the long term?

Some factor to consider: The Soviets would have much less to fear from the West without NATO and American ground troops on the continent. And the power of the non-Soviet part of the communist bloc in Europe would be a lot higher than today. With those combined I would expect a lot less Soviet military presence in the territories they limited, and perhaps less, or at least less successful, interference with their politics as well. What would an independent communist France or Italy get up to? Would the liberalization of the kind that was crushed in OTL by possible?
If the Soviets pulled this off, it means the US never entered the war. The Soviets would not merely be scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel to accomplish this; Stalin would have splinters in his fingers. I could see the werewolves actually appearing in this timeline. The Red Army would struggle to find the forces to occupy all this space which would force them to create friendly regimes, but would they fully pull back? Nearing collapse, paranoia regarding the West would likely be even greater (no American aid to make them doubt). So yes, the Communist Bloc would be less Russian centered as collaboration would be essential but not likely by much.

This of course would free the US from Vietnam (France isn't taking it back and Ho Chi Minh was more nationalist than communist) and to support China even more aggressively preventing North Korea and Mao's rise. Cuba also does not happen. Europe is going to be the Soviets' sole focus and that wasteland is going to be costly without Marshal aid (What? You can't sell a worker's paradise if you don't rebuild and the cost of a hundred plus million extra souls isn't going to be cheap). Algeria probably remains under the thumb of the Free French with American support.

Rather than Europe, I could see the US pouring money into east Asia as a bulwark against communist expansion, China in particular. Watch them become a power much sooner.

Would this free the Soviets from a need for a strong military? With just Eastern Europe they struggled through the forties and fifties to put down challenges to their authority. All of Europe, with likely covert American and British support, while facing a demographic crisis...I give it until the seventies at the latest with Soviet economic mismanagement really making a mess of things as their reactionary leaders struggle to keep Europe in their sphere while they spiral the drain. Gonna be hard to hide American affluence all over the continent. Would the Soviets have the will to crack down hard or would the two world wars, the civil war, and the cost of occupation strip the USSR of its aggressive nature as the wars did Europe?
 
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If the Soviets pulled this off, it means the US never entered the war. The Soviets would not merely be scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel to accomplish this; Stalin would have splinters in his fingers. I could see the werewolves actually appearing in this timeline. The Red Army would struggle to find the forces to occupy all this space which would force them to create friendly regimes and then fall back. So yes, the Communist Bloc would be less Russian centered as collaboration would be essential.

This of course would free the US from Vietnam (France isn't taking it back and Ho Chi Minh was more nationalist than communist) and to support China even more aggressively preventing North Korea and Mao's rise. Cuba also does not happen. Europe is going to be the Soviets' sole focus and that wasteland is going to be costly without Marshal aid (What? You can't sell a worker's paradise if you don't rebuild). Algeria probably remains under the thumb of the Free French with American support.

Would this free the Soviets from a need for a strong military? With just Eastern Europe they struggled through the forties and fifties to put down challenges to their authority. All of Europe, with likely covert American and British support, while facing a demographic crisis...I give it until the seventies at the latest with Soviet economic mismanagement really making a mess of things and their reactionary leaders struggle to keep Europe in their sphere as they spiral the drain.

I could see this causing fascism to never be delegitimized in the Democratic West (when news of the Holocaust comes out, the idea that it was exaggerated may have a lot more mainstream backing). That paired with minority white, French rule by a "republic" in Algeria would almost certainly making them go fascist pretty quickly.

I really don't see the Soviets having such intense challenges to their rule with collaboration and a massive industrial base (compared to the relatively poor one that Eastern Europe had).

I could see them maintaining their grip on Europe, which goes into a slow decline, and the economic power of Communist Europe comes back in the 50s and 60s (think the industrial explosions of Japan and now China) in a sort of mercantilist communist countries collectively trading with the West sort of way. This would allow the communist countries to exist in increasing irrelevance all of the way up to the modern day.

The US will likely be more authoritarian (and maybe have more of a racist bent than it currently does) and be longtime allies with China (which sits somewhere between authoritarian dictatorship and republic).
 
The way to achieve this is to delay the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Find a PoD that delays the invasion till 1942, and even more, convinces Stalin that it's going to happen (UK making peace with Germany would go a long way to achieving this) then the Nazi invasion will not get half as far, or even a quarter. This in turn means that less of the USSR is destroyed, there are more Soviet troops available, and the Germans are defeated faster. Stopping the UK from jumping back in to save France from the Soviets is hard, but just in terms of giving the Soviets the resources to occupy Western Europe reducing their massive losses is the way to go.
 
If the Nazi war effort against the USSR has collapsed, Britain, regardless of previous diplomatic stance towards the Reich, would occupy western Europe
 
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