The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL
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Chapter 50 - Winter War 2: Electric Boogaloo
Winter War 2: Electric Boogaloo
The results of the Finnish election of 1956 were never in doubt. Kekonnen was once thought to be the favorite to become President, but anti-Soviet sentiment had never been stronger than after the Yugoslav invasion. Although Stalin believed that crushing Tito would bring many of the Communist states to heel - and indeed, most of the Warsaw Pact client states redoubled on ideological orthodoxy and alignment with the USSR as a result of the war, the political impact was the total opposite in liberal democratic Finland.
Then Prime-Minister Karl-August Fagerholm easily won the presidential election as most of the MPs voted down the pro-Soviet Kekkonen. Fagerholm pledged closer relations to NATO, even hinting that he'd join it. Immediately after in January, 1956, the Soviet Union immediately sent a harsh ultimatum to Prime Minister Fagerholm. It demanded his resignation as Prime Minister and a re-do of the 1956 presidential election. The Finns were not impressed. Finland's political establishment had been given a great shot of confidence by the ability of the Yugoslavs to resist. Finland, with its presumably superior military tradition, was thought to be able to do that but more. Fagerholm responded instead by mobilizing the Finnish Army and gaining guarantees of support from the USA, France, and United Kingdom (as well as Canada and New Zealand - Australia under Prime Minister Evatt didn't return his call). Interestingly, Fagerholm also contacted Charles de Gaulle, who was nominally opposed to the French intervention in Yugoslavia, and de Gaulle noted that he would be vociferously opposed to any Soviet intervention in Finland, drop much of his antiwar sentiment, and even personally lead French troops in Finland.
Unbeknownst to Fagerholm, Shepilov might have been scared off, but Stalin was not to be scared off. Ironically, the Soviet ultimatum really wasn't one - it was merely a first offer to entice Fagerholm to not join NATO. However, his immediate hostile response made the Soviets conclude that the Western powers had concocted a plan to pull Finland permanently into their orbiy. Furthermore, from Stalin's perspective, the war in Yugoslavia was a stunning success for Communism. De jure General Secretary Shepilov was also the general who had overseen the first Winter War (disastrously) and in the many years since, had educated himself thoroughly on all of the mistakes made during both the Winter War and Continuation War, which improved Stalin's confidence.
French and British troops began mobilizing to show up, when the Soviet Union struck weeks before anyone expected. Unbeknownst to the West, Shepilov had become an expert in Finland and realized that the Finnish presidential elections in 1956 might lead to the alignment of Finland away from the USSR. A contingency plan was prepared immediately upon Fagerholm's election to the Prime Minister's office in 1954. As a result, bombs were fired within hours after the new Prime Minister refused to negotiate, assuming wrongly that the Soviets would be too preoccupied. Within the Kremlin, the war was largely unpopular and seen by most Red Army commanders as merely Shepilov trying to "avenge" his defeat in the Winter War. Only the top Soviet leadership understood that the orders were still coming from Stalin.
As the invasion took place in late January, the war was quickly called a "Second Winter War." Following the Yugoslav playbook, the Finns hoped to resist until Western forces could arrive. However, Finland was not Yugoslavia. The Finnish Army was almost entirely infantry reservists, unlike the Yugoslav Army, which had extensive aerial, artillery, and armored capabilities. This is because the Paris Peace Treaties prevented Finland from having a standing army, and their strategy for defense was to create a huge pool of infantry reservists that could re-enact the tactics of the Winter War, with hit-and-run infantry attacks in the forests of Finland. The Finnish infantry reserve was quite large, even despite the lack of a standing army. Shepilov, realizing this, had an alternative tactic: burn down all the forests. The USSR of 1956 had a lot more artillery and airpower than the USSR of 1940 or even 1944. Whenever Finnish infantry troops holed up in a forest, the Soviet response was to hammer the forest with napalm air strikes and rocket barrages. One Finnish veteran described the hellish experience; the combination of fire and rockets meant flaming bark shrapnel tearing apart those who had been lucky enough not to immediately burned alive. In his testimony, the luckiest suffocated and never burned or bled.
Outside of the forests, Soviet armored divisions plowed through the Salma line. Although it had been extensively fortified with bunkers, mines, and anti-tank provisions, there were simply so many Soviet tanks, it wasn't possible to destroy them all before the line was totally overrun. Finnish command concluded that it was impossible to resist anywhere outside of the cities, but that it would be too devastating for civilians for the Finnish Army to turn them into redoubts like Zagreb or Belgrade. Fagerholm immediately contacted Moscow, offering a cease-fire and suing for peace. The Finns were stunned when Moscow declined, stating only that a total unconditional surrender would be accepted. The Finnish cabinet concluded that the Soviet Union was liable to annex Finland, largely because they were rebuffed when they offered a second surrender offer, with the sole condition that Finland was to be a client state of the USSR similar to the Warsaw Pact nations. In addition, reports had filtered in that Beria's NKVD had been summarily executed high-level Finnish officers. As a result, the Finns decided to fight. With Soviet mechanized corps approaching Helsinki, the resolve of the nation was to be quickly tested.
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Well shit! Things don’t look good for Finland, Mannerheim is spinning in his grave.
Wow, the Soviets managed to move fast.
Unfortunately, I just don't see Finnish elan saving the day this time.
I'm not sure what Finland had in mind when it offered to become a client state nor of Stalin's intended message but the vagueness of his objectives here makes them all the more intimidating IMO. Making Finland a Republic of the Soviet Union seems awfully extreme and a tad risky but who knows. The USSR already had a naval base in Finland and a nominally independent Finnish client state means the Soviets could effectively get another seat at the UN. But we can't even be sure whether Stalin has decided what he plans to do.
I do hope Finland doesn't become anything like the bloodbath Yugoslavia did.
Also, I'm thinking Sweden might consider continuing with its nuclear weapons program.
Unfortunately, I just don't see Finnish elan saving the day this time.
I'm not sure what Finland had in mind when it offered to become a client state nor of Stalin's intended message but the vagueness of his objectives here makes them all the more intimidating IMO. Making Finland a Republic of the Soviet Union seems awfully extreme and a tad risky but who knows. The USSR already had a naval base in Finland and a nominally independent Finnish client state means the Soviets could effectively get another seat at the UN. But we can't even be sure whether Stalin has decided what he plans to do.
I do hope Finland doesn't become anything like the bloodbath Yugoslavia did.
Also, I'm thinking Sweden might consider continuing with its nuclear weapons program.
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Presumably putting tons of fortifications in the Hexi corridor - it's actually pretty hard for either side to launch an offensive on each other now.
Fixed, thanks for the pointer.
Well that’s good. Though I wonder if there’ll be a Uyghur insurgency ITTL?
Chapter 51 - Pole and Hungarian Brothers Be
Pole and Hungarian Brothers Be
By 1956, the Hungarian People's Army was a demoralized mess, having taken the brunt of losses in the invasion of Yugoslavia. Morale largely collapsed in the Battle of Zagreb, forcing Soviet troops to take over the offensive. The HPA entered the Yugoslav War with 65,000 troops, but after the Zagreb offensive, had less than 25,000 active troops (Soviet forces estimated that around 10,000 Hungarian troops died, 25,000 had been wounded, and up to 5,000 had deserted). Stories of political commissars executing retreating Hungarian troops deeply soured the nation on the government. Mihaly Farkas, the founder of the Hungarian People's Army, had quietly left government after Stalin's Jewish deportations (probably to evade persecution himself), leaving the HPA without civilian oversight.
The increasingly bloody invasion of neutral Finland (for both sides, but especially the Finns) seemed to be a final blow to the regime's popularity - the war seemed to be accelerating, not weakening, hurting Hungary's already painfully ailing economy. From 1945-1956, Hungary had been under the one-man rule of Matyas Rakosi, a hardcore Stalinist who purged the party of most of its moderates.[1] Widespread discontent with the regime led to a massive protest near the Józef Bem (a national hero in both Poland and Hungary) statute in Budapest, criticizing the war and low wages. The response from Rakosi was simple: to send the army and disperse the protesters, by force if necessary.
The results came as a surprise to all parties involved. The Hungarian police had been deeply demoralized as well, as many of their most capable members had been forcibly pressed into the Hungarian People's Army in order to replace casualties taken in Yugoslavia. Although some officers gunned down protestors, many refused to fire and surrendered to protesters who swarmed them in indignation. Rakosi, hearing reports that some police had defected, panicked and immediately telephoned Moscow calling for a military intervention.
Soviet forces were already too engaged in Finland and Yugoslavia, the East Germans engaged in Austria, Romania engaged in Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria being outright invaded. As a result, the task of dealing with Hungary was given to the Czechoslovak and Polish armies. The leader of Communist Poland, Bolesław Bierut, excitedly volunteered for the operation. Outrage exploded in Poland upon hearing that the Polish Army was being sent to crush Hungarian protesters. Workers went on strike in Poland, and General Secretary Bierut ordered them to be destroyed as violently as possible, to prevent a Hungarian-style outcome.[2] In the Poznan Massacre, Polish tanks and machine guns tore into Polish protesters - an estimated 7,000 protesters and 600 soldiers were estimated to have died. The massacre seemed to have lit a fire in Poland. Similar protest movements emerged in every major Polish city. Unfortunately for Bierut, Soviet troops had been moved from Poland to the Finnish border in the previous year. Most notably, mobs of protesters swarmed Warsaw, forcing Bierut to flee the nation. His fleeing car was notably destroyed by an angry Polish truck driver, who rammed his truck into the escaping convoy.
Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, interestingly an ethnic Pole, flew to Moscow to demand from Shepilov that a Soviet battle force be immediately sent to Poland. Shepilov immediately agreed to the demand from his old friend, without even contacting Stalin (who approved retroactively). The 5th Army was transferred from the Far Eastern Military District to crush the Polish Insurrection, which only seemed to be getting stronger as workers and students quickly seized major industrial cities, declaring a neutral "Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland." Various battalions of the Polish military immediately defected to the rebels, although the Polish People's Republic held most of the countryside. The two sides largely settled into a stalemate - the rebels didn't have the strength to push out and the Communists were waiting for Soviet reinforcements.
Much to the shock of the Soviet Union, the first thing that the Hungarian Army did once it returned to Hungary...was immediately arrest Rakosi. Commander of the Hungarian forces in Yugoslavia, Bela Kiraly, declared a temporary government that would bring "stability" to the Hungary by pacifying the riots.[3] Appointing Imre Nagy as General Secretary of the Communist Party and Janos Kadar as Prime Minister, Kiraly launched a brutal purge of Rakosi allies, having former stalwarts of Rakosi arrested, shot, and dumped in mass graves. Although the protests largely ended, gunshots were regularly heard in Budapest due to the political violence. From the perspective of the Soviet Union, Kiraly was a non-ideal leader, but they had bigger problems to worry at the time, unaware of his true aims. The withdrawal of all Hungarian forces from Yugoslavia was spun as a "security measure" against "counter-revolutionary" forces. As a result of the resolution in Hungary, the Czechoslovaks were ordered to march north in Poland instead, with Hungary largely "pacified."
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[1] OTL, Rakosi lost his one-man control of the Hungarian Communist Party due to destalization. ITL, that hasn't happened yet.
[2] OTL, they were violently dispersed, but not massacred.
[3] OTL, Kiraly was purged from the party and put in a gulag. ITL, with war looming with Yugoslavia, the Soviets prevent him from being purged.
Probably not. They don't actually border anymore and a hardline Communist Czechoslovakia is in the middle of the two.
What can they do besides sending aid to the finnish? Hostile neutrality is the most they would dare to do against Stalin. After all, Sweden keep its neutrality when the nazis invaded both Denmark AND Norway, no way they would risk their lives now.
Chapter 52 - Operation Pukchin Tongil
Operation Pukchin Tongil
By 1955, the military balance between the two Koreas had grown even more lopsided. Kim il-Sung simply was engaged in a variety of factional struggles with his Soviet-backed military advisers - and simply didn't trust the Korean People's ARmy enough to funnel massive amounts of funding into it. In contrast, President Lee Beom-Seok had funneled untold funds into the new Korean National Army. Despite its military inferiority, the North Koreans attempted to play tough by regularly participating in brief incursions into the DKR to support left-wing guerillas and rebels. This had the negative effect of encouraging the anticommunist powers to funnel even more funding into the KNA.
President Lee could not help but notice that Soviet forces in the Far East had almost entirely been shuffled to the West to deal with various European crisises, such as Yugoslavia, Finland, Poland, and to a lesser extent, Hungary. In particular, the Soviet Fifth Army moved West on the request of Field Marshal Rokossovsky to suppress the Polish Revolution. Lee contacted all of the local regional anticommunist powers - including President Kai-Shek of China, President Richard Russell of the USA, and Prime Minister Hatoyama of Japan. Chiang and Russell enthusiastically endorsed his plan, Hatoyama actually disapproved, but he was the least important actor here. Chiang was still smarting over the Xinjiang coup and saw an easy way to strike back at the USSR - while Russell was elated to find a way to strike back at the USSR for their Yugoslav invasion that didn't involve directly going to war against the USSR.
On the morning of March 1st, 1956, the 37th anniversary of the famous March 1st Movement for Korean independence, the Korean National Army launched a wide sweeping attack across the border. On the eve of war, the North Korean Army numbered roughly 132,000 men, largely concentrated in defensive positions across the border. Although Kim il-Sung asked Joseph Stalin for permission to invade the South in 1950, Stalin turned down his request, not excited about getting dragged into an East Asian War that he just had narrowly avoided in China. However, he never gave up on the idea, and placed KPA divisions on the border ready for a strike south. In contrast, the KNA numbered roughly 250,000 men. Both sides were well-armed due to receiving surplus weapons from the USSR and USA, which ramped up in the early 1950's as both armies demobilized from World War II. In fact, on the eve of the war, both armies greatly resembled in equipment their patrons - the North Koreans sporting Mosin-Nagant rifles, T-34s, and Yak-3s, while the South Koreans sported M1 Garands, M4 Shermans, and P-51 Mustangs (both armies largely reserved their most advanced, new weapons for each other). South Korean forces also had a large advantage in artillery and naval forces, though the two armies were equally matched in armored and aerial capabilities.[2]
However, Lee interfered in the military plans. The original plan for the invasion of the North was simply a quick strike to blitz the numerically inferior North Korean army on the border and attempt to encircle and destroy the bulk of North Korean forces before they could retreat to Pyongyang and mount an urban defense of the city, akin to Stalingrad (1941), Berlin (1945), or Zagreb (1955). The goal of this plan was to capture Pyongyang relatively unharmed and with low levels of civilian casualties. Lee vetoed this plan. He insisted that victory over the North would be pointless if Communism wasn't truly crushed, if the North Koreans could escape into North China or the Soviet Union. Instead, Lee ordered his general staff towards an alternative plan. In Operation Pukchin Tongil, the South Korean Army was to launch a grand offensive across the border. However, this was only to be a distraction - the real objective was to ship two armies across the sides of Korea, landing in Yongyu (to the North of Pyongyang), erect large defensive perimeters to the North, and then advance south from there. The landings would be aided by disguised American merchant marine ships - South Korea had enough warships, but not enough transports, and in one of the many controversial acts of his presidency, Russell ordered US Merchant Marines to disguise as ROK Navy ships to help. With the bulk of the South Korean Army advancing from the South, they would pincer both the North Korean Army as well as the DPRK government in Pyongyang, turning it into a grand battle of annihilation.
By and large, the North Korean Army took the bait, rushing troops down to the border as South Korean artillery and infantry crashed against North Korean positions. The initial "victories" of the North Korean Army lured Kim il-Sung into complacency, a complacency brutally crashed by landings in relatively undefended Kaesong and Wonsan. Within a week, the bulk of North Korean forces were being pushed from both south and north into Pyongyang, where they rapidly prepared to make their last stand. The North Korean government, defiant, took inspiration from the Battle of Moscow, when Stalin refused to flee Moscow, assuming that they could easily hold out long enough for Soviet intervention. This proved to be a grievous mistake. The biggest advantage of the North Korean Army was its parity in armored and aerial power. Stuck in a city, their tanks were less effective than otherwise and any airfields set up were under constant artillery fire from South Korean forces.
Like Yugoslavia, losses in Pyongyang were horrific, but they were exceptionally horrific due to the policies of both governments. Lee intended on Pyongyang being the grave of most of North Korea's Communist Party, including its leadership, and he ordered the army to target any group of individuals fleeing the city. Lee feared that North Korea's leaders could sneak out in disguise - as a result, caravans of refugees were typically arrested and interned to help sift out government members - however any caravans that couldn't be stopped were bombed and machine-gunned by South Korean forces, This led to more bloodshed, as this rapidly stiffened the resolve of the North Korean Army, which was then actually able to conscript many of those civilians that would have otherwise escaped. Under orders from the DPRK government, civilians were forcibly drafted and commissars roamed the streets of Pyongyang, executing those who fled or deserted from the widely unpopular conscription orders.
This also led to a diplomatic incident that embarrassed the US - one Merchant Marine captain, Leonard LaRue of the USS Meredith Victory, abandoned his mission (dropping off equipment to South Korean marines) to load almost 20,000 civilians trying to escape from Pyongyang. Outraged South Korean planes bombed the ship, trying to sink it. Miraculously, the ship escaped sinking - LaRue said while he credited Jesus Christ for protecting him, he also pointed out that he suspected the individual pilots were intentionally missing his ship (the theological argument was naturally that Christ was working through them). When news of the incident leaked, the American press largely expressed anger that the US Navy did little to nothing to protect the ship - even though public sentiment was widely in favor of the war and of American support of South Korea, the story made many Americans concerned about civilian casualties.
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[1] I recently visited the Korean War museum in Seoul and they had a pretty good diagram on the order of battle on the eve of the war in 1950. ITL, the North/South ratio of troops was 198k/106k, with NK advantages in tanks and planes (though parity in ships/artillery). However, 1/3rd of the North Korean troops (and generally the crack troops) were veterans of the People's Liberation Army, lent to Kim Il-Sung by Mao. ITL, the PRC doesn't really have that kind of luxury, so the KPA is a lot smaller and more poorly trained (and gets overrun easily).
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South Korea was smart to attack when the Soviet Union was too busy to intervene in any way but it did attack first and that could limit direct US involvement. At least, for now. I don't have a problem with the Northern military being significantly weaker but being overrun in a week and the South under Rhee being that capable and moving that quickly is what really surprises me. It sounds like what's happened is the two nations have had their military situation perfectly inverted... South Korea obviously received tremendous US military aid, though with the war in Europe and other conflicts in Asia, there are likely limits to what was available. Perhaps Chiang helped provide some sort of assistance? Still, unless the North totally lacks comparable weapons, the ROK army must have been pushed to the absolute limits of its capabilities to maintain such a massive offensive, especially with the amphibious attacks. Those landings are a lot like Inchon and that was a major undertaking for the US, let alone a dictatorship reigning over mostly agricultural areas of an already underdeveloped country. This has the added downside of being against an enemy on the defensive, weaker though it is. Is South Korea really that masterful with its logistics? Rhee's behavior is also worrying... Even if he wins the war which he seems poised to do, he already has a legacy of brutality.
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No, the North Korean Army just really sucks. Pretty much all the arms that went to North Korean army OTL went to North China instead, including all of their best troops. The KPA had a big advantage in aircraft and tanks...but ITL, those all went to North China instead...
The gap really expands by 1956, because the US Army demobilized in a way that Soviet Army didn't, so the Americans are just throwing equipment at all of their allies. South Korea is poor, but their army is rocking American gadgets, while the North Koreans are pretty starved of equipment. The 1950-1956 period is pretty important.
ITL, the South Koreans probably have an advantage in 1950 with the KPA losing the 1/3rd of its army that were the best troops. And having way less equipment - the advantage significantly expands by 1956.
I'd say the ITL advantage the South has over the North is actually significantlly wider than the OTL advantage the North had over the South.
Randomly, the South Korean Navy was weirdly strong in 1950 (they won everything on sea even in early 1950), partly because it took so many surplus American ships. I guess by 1956, the advantage is bigger and there are even more American surplus ships (from demobilization).
Well it's no surprise the Soviets had little to nothing to spare given their activities, including supplying the Warsaw pact. With all the heavy industry Japan built in Korea concentrated in North Korea and totally intact and with Kim still trying to prepare for a conflict with his limited resources, North Korea would have built up some sort of rudimentary arms industry (and bought some stuff from North Japan). Of course it wouldn't have been nearly advanced enough to make up for the lack of support. Or of Kim being, apparently, exceptionally incompetent by not expecting this kind of war, otherwise there could be better defenses further North. Too bad then that Mao hadn't redirected some of that materiel rather than let the South Koreans move all the way up to their border because I seem to remember that North China was already getting rid of some of its wwii surplus.
However what's interesting about this war is that it looks like the US is so massively behind it. Besides donating a very generous portion of its own surplus war equipment (which otherwise should have gone to China) and lots of transports, the US is providing colossal amounts of fuel, ammunition, training and funds. If the North Korean army were indeed as weak as it is, that would indicate that the US had planned for an invasion rather than a mere defense of the South and backed the South before the invasion started. That's kind of morally sinking a little close to the level of Stalin.
By the way, if there were to be an invasion of North Japan, now would be the time to do it. North Japan might want to rethink its pacifism after this.
However what's interesting about this war is that it looks like the US is so massively behind it. Besides donating a very generous portion of its own surplus war equipment (which otherwise should have gone to China) and lots of transports, the US is providing colossal amounts of fuel, ammunition, training and funds. If the North Korean army were indeed as weak as it is, that would indicate that the US had planned for an invasion rather than a mere defense of the South and backed the South before the invasion started. That's kind of morally sinking a little close to the level of Stalin.
By the way, if there were to be an invasion of North Japan, now would be the time to do it. North Japan might want to rethink its pacifism after this.
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