There will be mayor interest from USA and Europe to see Yugoslavia proper. In order to contain the USSR, it could be like otl south Korea! Also remember that in otl China got quite chumy with USA by founding a common ground in clashing with USSR. It got to the point of China and USA supporting the Khmer Rouge only to spite Vietnam and USSR!
The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL
- Thread starter TastySpam
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Just started reading this TL today, great stuff! If you need help with any Cyrillization of Japanese words or names (the Polivanov system) or a romanized Chinese (possibly Latinxua Sin Wenz?) I'd be willing to help!
BigBlueBox
Banned
Nah, Yugoslavia is completely and utterly screwed. Beria will most likely either force it to remain a Soviet satellite, in which case it will receive zero Western assistance, or break it up into its constituent nations in order to prevent it from being an obstacle to Soviet hegemony in the Balkans. Italy will also do its best to keep Yugoslavia weak and divided if it does somehow emerge independent and as one country.
Chapter 76 - The People's Republic of Burma
The People's Republic of Burma
The People's Republic of Burma came into existence after the bloody Burmese Civil War, a remarkably complex civil war which saw Communists and foreign powers on both sides. In particular, the Communist Party of Burma had actually been split in whether to accept the aid of the People's Republic of China, with the "Red Flags" siding with Mao and the Yellow Flags siding with Prime Minister U Nu, their forces only defecting to the Maoist side after General Ne Win's coup put him in charge of the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League government, which he used to subsequently purge of the Communist Party members. The Civil War began in March 1948 with the Red Flag Communists commencing combat operations against the U Nu government, and significantly accelerated in early 1949 when the Second Field Army of the People's Liberation Army arrived in Burma to assist them. The war reached its most violent stage in late 1950 with the British-backed coup of General Ne Win and the arrival of Commonwealth troops. The war would last until 1954, with the final defeat of the Commonwealth forces in the Battle of Meiktila. The war famously pitted former comrades against each other, as the most important officers of each side were World War II veterans - many of them had even served alongside each other in the British Burma Rifles fighting against Japanese forces. Most historians judged that the Civil War could have been avoided if not for the 1947 assassination of Aung San, the father of independent Burma.
In 1954, Burma was in a mess. Much of the Indian and Chinese trading population had fled Burma into neighboring Thailand. Entire swaths of Burma's landscape had been literally burned down in the fighting from Commonwealth napalm strikes, while many of the jungles and paddies of Burma were littered with Communist-placed land mines. Several of the ethnic minority regions were under the de facto control of ethnic armies, such as the Karen National Union that had revolted in 1949. Although the Burmese Communists first saw them as part of a British plot to split and divide Burma, the advice of both Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai was to try very hard to accommodate their demands. Relations between the two groups were frosty until Ne Win's coup in 1950, warming only because the ethnic armies tended to loathe Ne Win far more than they did Communists.
Although most of the ethnic minorities demanded independence, an unsuccessful incursion by the KMT and a border war with India severely spooked leaders on both sides, forcing them to the table. Mao's last act before leaving Burma was to help forcing both sides to the table at the Yangon Truce, brokered by famous Burmese poet Kodaw Hmaing. Inspired by the orthodox Marxist nationalities policy of the Soviet Union, the Yangon Truce included a promise by the ethnic militias to be subsumed into the broader (Burmese) People's Army. Simply put, the leaders of Communist Burma simply feared any future border conflicts (both China and India were viewed as hostile) and were willing to make any concession to gain the military manpower of the ethnic armies. In return, most of the ethnic regions were designated as autonomous regions, similar to the Soviet Socialist Republics. With the flight of Mao but a significant PLA presence in Burma, Zhou Enlai was left around to run North Chinese operations in Burma. Although the Burmese Communists were extremely suspicious of Zhou, he expertly diffused tension by simply not really ever intervening in Burmese politics. The PLA Second Field Army, although technically an independent foreign force, more or less took all orders from the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Burma, Than Thun. It was definitely possible to sneak out Mao from Burma, as well some other major leaders, but there wasn't a really good way to extricate the PLA 2nd Field Army from Burma, so there they stayed.
At home, Than Thun proved to largely be a Maoist-inspired radical in the territory directly governed by the Communist Party of Burma. Land was redistributed to the peasants, with mass killings on the basis of class orchestrated by the new government. Ironically, Chinese (and Indians) were disproportionately likely to be landlords and merchants, and much of the Chinese population of Burma fled into China or Thailand. The participation of the People's Liberation Army in persecuting Chinese was widely displayed in China proper, but it also meant that Than Thun didn't view them as a threat. The Indian population also largely fled into India proper. Out of a population of 20 million, the Burmese Civil War killed an estimated 700,000 people, while the mass killing of landlords and other opponents of the new Communist regime was estimated to have killed up to 100,000 people. A border war almost sparked immediately between India and Burma, as the Indian public was outraged over the persecution of Indian merchants, the United Kingdom begged the Indians to keep fighting such a war, and the remnants of Ne Win's Army fled to India, setting up a government-in-exile that was largely sober and reasonable due to the lack of Ne Win. A major outcome of this was a proxy border war, where the United Kingdom would funnel equipment into India and the Pakistanis/Soviets into Burma.
Burma was only beginning to recover from both the brutal civil war and Communist repressions, when Zhou Enlai decided it was time to use up all of the political capital that he had accumulated. In late 1956, both the North Chinese divisions of the Burmese People's Army (BPA), as well as many of the more militaristic members of the Burmese People's Army (most of them), aching for a fight and rather confident in their abilities after driving British forces out of Burma, decided it was time to repay the debt to the nation that had rescued their revolution. Not to mention that Burma was technically a member of the State Union (although the least integrated one), and they were in a since obligated. Than Tun eventually agreed, largely as he saw overall sentiment in the BPA was overwhelmingly in favor. BPA forces, avoiding the most common mountain passes to China, made a famous but very costly climb over the various mountains that was quickly compared to Hannibal crossing the Alps. Arriving in Yunnan, they landed into the one province that perhaps loathed the central KMT government more than any other. They found no shortage of peasants to join their army, while the actual local government, still angry that the central KMT had persecuted and exiled their long-time leader, Long Yun, simply stood at the sidelines. The Southwest proved to be an immediate problem zone, as much of the lightly guarded rural mountainous areas in Yunnan were lost to the KMT, forcing the KMT to redirect a significant amount of troops from the offensive against the PRC down South to retake Yunnan.
How does Communist Burma hold up in spite of the existence of South China?
The China-Burma border is mostly defensible mountain passes. A brief incursion by the KMT in an earlier update ended rather poorly, so they gave up on the idea of regime change. KMT rule is probably weakest in the Southwest and North too.
The Communists basically went over the mountains directly because unlike the KMT in Burma, they can supply themselves in Yunnan from to a friendly local population.
So why did when the Chinese Communists took control, Burma didn't go communist? I am confused
Sorry, I explained it in a bad way on my phone. Anyways, the KMT made a brief incursion into Communist Burma, but the Yunnan-China border is mostly mountain passes, so it was defensible. Thus, the KMT offensive from Yunnan to Burma failed badly. The BPA/PLA had an option the KMT didn't have - crossing from Communist Burma into Yunnan across the mountains, bypassing KMT defenses, and supplying themselves from a sympathetic local population. This was an option the KMT didn't have in their earlier incursion
Also BTW, the less than stellar performance of the ROC Army in Burma was a big contributor to the war, becaudr it caused the PRC, especially Mao, to greatly underestimate the competence of the ROC Army (thus starting this war).
Yeah how’s underestimating the National Revolutionary Army working out for Mao again? Oh right, poorly.
Yeah one downside of spending half a decade fighting the British in Burmese jungles is really not keeping up with the news. The ROC Army of 1957 is significantly improved from the 1947 version. Way more professionalization and thus institutional loyalty. There are tons of Communist informants and spies, but you've had no armies or generals wholesale defect like in the OTL Communist victory, where this happened quite often to the KMT. The ROC Army is probably somewhere in the quality middle of the PLA and the North Chinese militia, which is a fine place to be when that's the narrow majority of enemy troops.
Edit: a lot of individual troopa desert and defect, especially during the 10-10 offensive, but no entire armies like OTL. The ROC officer corps is actually reliable
Sorry I should’ve written my sentence better. I mean why in OTL didn’t Burma go communist when China went communist? Because this scenario honestly confounds me.
so uh, assuming that East Tokyo is composed of the wards of Arakawa, Adachi, Sumida, Katsushika, Edogawa, Taito, and Koto.
Ginza, a major commercial center, is right next door to a bunch of commie-run slums. That's a very, very stark contrast. I suspect Sumida will be East Tokyo's Alexanderplatz.
Also East Tokyo has a big chunk of 下町 (Shitamachi).
If Chou ward is also part of East Tokyo, we'll see gigantic irony, and we see it be the Alexanderplatz. And Shinjuku becomes all more dominant commercially.
Ginza, a major commercial center, is right next door to a bunch of commie-run slums. That's a very, very stark contrast. I suspect Sumida will be East Tokyo's Alexanderplatz.
Also East Tokyo has a big chunk of 下町 (Shitamachi).
If Chou ward is also part of East Tokyo, we'll see gigantic irony, and we see it be the Alexanderplatz. And Shinjuku becomes all more dominant commercially.
Would't it be kinda odd to make the soviet zone a landlocked enclave? I mean, in Berlin there wasn't much of a choice but Tokyo is a coastal city, so wouldn't it make more sense to give the soviets a zone with coast?
I think the way I planned it, East Tokyo is actually only 5 wards - Adachi, Katsushika, Sumida, Edogawa, and Koto.
Seems reasonable. Do they control the port in front of Koto? They could take notes from West Berlin and make their exclave the most luxurious place in north Japan, a working and vacation site for high ranking functionaries, in order to project and image of prosperity for the south Japanese to see. Also the overwhelming
precedes of soviet and American troops make a war really unlikely so east Tokyo is not really in danger of war, unless USA or USSR decide that they want WW3 and they want it nuclear.