The worst cold war tl cliches

One cliche that I've seen a few times is the idea that Yugoslavia will always fall into line with the Soviets in the case of WW3, or indeed in the case of any escalation of hostilities - sometimes even with Tito still in charge, despite his personal feelings.

Most likely Tito would do everything in his power to remain neutral until either NATO or the Warsaw Pact had clearly won.

The Soviets would likely only invade Yugoslavia if they have plans to invade Italy (which would make Austria a speed bump too).
 
CalBear said:
In the last 250 years there have been exactly Six wars involving democracies where an existential threat could reasonably be seen. in every case where the situation arose the democracies involved fought to the last.

Two involved Israel, in 1967 and 1973 and ended quickly, long before the question of fighting to the last man could even be considered.

The British were also involved in two, WW I & WW II, in neither case did the British public blink, despite horrific losses and, in the case of WW II, stunning reversals on the battlefield.

The U.S. was, as already noted, involved in the one, the Civil War along with the CSA. Both sides absorbed almost unimaginable losses compared to any previous (or following) conflict and both sides fought to the bitter end.

The sixth was the War of the Pacific involving Chile, Bolivia and Peru. Peru fought on AFTER all of its major cities were occupied and its forces were reduced to small bands of insurgents in the Andes.

If the battle of Britain counts, why does not the Battle of Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, France, count? None of them had any reason to expect subsequent liberation at the time of their defeat. What about the Spanish civil war Too?
 
If the battle of Britain counts, why does not the Battle of Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, France, count? None of them had any reason to expect subsequent liberation at the time of their defeat. What about the Spanish civil war Too?

It should be noted that they fought until they were literally incapable of continuing and ALL had active resistance movements after occupation. Size varied of course as did length of resistance, but they fought.

Denmark capitulated early, after brief resistance, but considering the odds against it any resistance at all is worth notice and the Danish resistance movement was effective enough to get all but a handful of the Jewish population out of the country.

The Norwegians fought until its last combat units were effectively destroyed except for those that retreated with the Allies. An overwhelmingly powerful garrison kept resistance to intelligence (highly effective) and some sabotage.

Luxembourg literally had no military aside from some ceremonial guards

The Dutch fought on from exile, and suffered serious casualties among its resistance fighters. Its Army fought until overwhelmed in 1940. The same applies for Belgium (whose King surrendered after his Army was pocketed). Although the King surrendered, the Government did not. Now the Belgians and Dutch did have a lot of men who volunteered for the SS.

The French are an interesting issue. The Army did fight hard (suffering very heavy casualties too, and inflicting a significant number). Its problem was that national morale collapsed and only a small minority were in the Resistance until the Germans took over Vichy. However, another minority fought on with the Free French and a lot of the Vichy troops changed sides and were active with the French French leading up to and during Liberation.

Yeah they fought on until they couldn't and still some of them escaped to fight on some more.

They also ALL joined NATO and even Luxembourg had a military (a battalion plus people who joined Belgian military units) after World War 2
 
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Speaking of conventional wars and WWIII, there's another cliché that bugs me:

That a WWIII on a conventional scale must start after OTL's 1980 and 1991 because reasons; I get that at the time, there's not only more fancy hardware but a less reliance on breaking out the nukes when the war starts generally on both sides of the curtain. But still it would hella interesting to see the Cold War going hot a lot earlier than the 80's, personally I like to see it happen either in the 60's, but of course that would require some PODs to change the massive retaliation doctrine and the people who are willing to uphold that doctrine and of course getting the Soviets at least on par with the US nukes number wise.
 
The Nazis did the same way OTL and in the Losing the Peace TL, the discrediting of fascism got undermined by the Morgenthau plan, which is absolutely bonkers for as far as I'm concerned. As a result the memory of the Holocaust gets constantly countered with the whole screwing up the German people thing (and sometimes denied), a kind of "whataboutism" is abundant; and that the Jim Crow system and anti-Semitism are still around in the West by the 1980's. Who's to say that some counterpart to the idiotic Morgenthau plan would be formed in a WWIII to punish the Soviet people's because reasons?

Though I would add that communism IOTL isn't as hated as fascism and Nazism are, but that's another subject for another time.

I think that we have grossly differing definitions of what discrediting means. Nazism is an extremely fringe ideology IOTL and holocaust deniers are very rare. The important thing to notice is that the Morgenthau Plan *didn't happen.* The Allies were smarter than that. Furthermore, what would have stopped them from doing so in the case of the USSR is that they have a ton of nukes. You can't walk over a power like that.

One cliche that I've seen a few times is the idea that Yugoslavia will always fall into line with the Soviets in the case of WW3, or indeed in the case of any escalation of hostilities - sometimes even with Tito still in charge, despite his personal feelings.

Most likely Tito would do everything in his power to remain neutral until either NATO or the Warsaw Pact had clearly won.

The Soviets would likely only invade Yugoslavia if they have plans to invade Italy (which would make Austria a speed bump too).

The thing is that Tito died in 1980, so for most conventional WWIII scenarios (which seems to occur in the 1980s) it actually depends on his successors, of whom there were a ton who were each in power for like a year. Probably some would have aligned with the Soviets, others NATO, and others would have gone for neutrality.

Speaking of conventional wars and WWIII, there's another cliché that bugs me:

That a WWIII on a conventional scale must start after OTL's 1980 and 1991 because reasons; I get that at the time, there's not only more fancy hardware but a less reliance on breaking out the nukes when the war starts generally on both sides of the curtain. But still it would hella interesting to see the Cold War going hot a lot earlier than the 80's, personally I like to see it happen either in the 60's, but of course that would require some PODs to change the massive retaliation doctrine and the people who are willing to uphold that doctrine and of course getting the Soviets at least on par with the US nukes number wise.

The problem is that's really hard to do. The Soviets didn't have the nukes to fight earlier than the mid to late 1970s (to be generous), and at that point NATO conventional power was at its nadir, so the nukes would have come out quickly. Solving Soviet nuclear inferiority in particular is very hard. The conventional balance can be boosted, but it pretty much just creates a 1980s scenario earlier.
 
India is either more or less ignored or it gets screwed over. I don't know if that's the worst Cold War tl cliche, but it's one that I've noticed.
 
South american countries remains isolationist, independent of who is in power, be the populists, or USA sponsored dictatorships, or communist satellites, they never break their isolation
 
I think that we have grossly differing definitions of what discrediting means. Nazism is an extremely fringe ideology IOTL and holocaust deniers are very rare. The important thing to notice is that the Morgenthau Plan *didn't happen.* The Allies were smarter than that. Furthermore, what would have stopped them from doing so in the case of the USSR is that they have a ton of nukes. You can't walk over a power like that.
I could have specified the whole WWIII Morgenthau plan to be taking place AFTER the nukes have flown (and yet NATO still somehow survives which is a long story in itself) but I must have forgotten to put that there. And I should note that the Morgenthau Plan is carried out in the Losing the Peace TL not OTL; and we should be thankful that never happened.

The problem is that's really hard to do. The Soviets didn't have the nukes to fight earlier than the mid to late 1970s (to be generous), and at that point NATO conventional power was at its nadir, so the nukes would have come out quickly. Solving Soviet nuclear inferiority in particular is very hard. The conventional balance can be boosted, but it pretty much just creates a 1980s scenario earlier.

You might have a good point, though the only way I can think of to get the Soviets more nukes before the 70's is by having them get the A-bomb earlier than the US but that might end up creating more butterflies than necessary.
 
This is a good accounting but I would add to that the Canadian and Iberian militaries. The Canadians had one of their Brigade Maneuver Groups permanently stationed in Germany and another at home. The Spanish Armed Forces added an additional five divisions and I believe six independent brigades if their Special Operations Command was at brigade strength (and I think that was just their active strength). I don't know anything about the ORBAT of the Portuguese Armed Forces but they trained quite extensively for conventional combat against the Soviets. There is also the Scandinavians, particularly Norway. They add a few more.



With respect, I think you're wanking the Category C divisions. Yes, it is technically possible to move their Category C's in thirty days. If NATO wanted to they could as well, the problem is that the level of performance you will get out of them will reflect to a great degree the level of preparation their men had. Military skills atrophy heavily in a short period of time with no practice. Unpracticed reservists with T-55's going up against the best troops in the world isn't a great proposition.



If the Soviets started a conventional WWIII I think that would pretty thoroughly discredit Communism. Even today it isn't a widely loved ideology. Throw some more millions of deaths on the pile in an unprovoked offensive (NATO wasn't going to start anything so that's pretty much the only way it could happen) and I think it would be a hated to an only slightly milder degree than fascism.
Re the Canadians... Things changed a bit over the years but my understanding is that for most of the latter part of the Cold War they had a Brigade Group stationed in West Germany (along with fast jets) a Brigade group stationed in Canada that was tasked to reinforce Norway (along with more fast jets that were based in Canada but ear marked for deployment to Norway.) They (at times ?) also had commitments to the ACE mobile force (battalion level ?) and (often ?) troops stationed in Cypress on peace keeping duty that may have had some form of war time role in Europe.

I'm not sure what else would have been left in Canada (maybe the equivalent of a large battalion / small brigade of regulars and various "milita" reserve units.). There was some talk of being able to deploy ground troops within Canada to be able to counter small scale incursions. The balance of the fast jets would have been largely tasked with air defence although concecviably some of the training units could have been used in the ground attack role (especially if it was in Canada against an invader with minimal air defences.)

IIRC at the very end of the Cold War there was a plan to be able to build up the forces in West Germany to the equivalent of a division in the event of a crisis. I believe the Norway commitment was dropped at the same time.
 
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I could have specified the whole WWIII Morgenthau plan to be taking place AFTER the nukes have flown (and yet NATO still somehow survives which is a long story in itself) but I must have forgotten to put that there. And I should note that the Morgenthau Plan is carried out in the Losing the Peace TL not OTL; and we should be thankful that never happened.

You might have a good point, though the only way I can think of to get the Soviets more nukes before the 70's is by having them get the A-bomb earlier than the US but that might end up creating more butterflies than necessary.

Indeed.

The question being whether that was actually possible. I frankly doubt the Soviets had the wealth or R&D capacity to do it before the West; what they gleaned from their espionage in our programs was critical IOTL.

Re the Canadians... Things changed a bit over the years but my understanding is that for most of the latter part of the Cold War they had a Brigade Group stationed in West Germany (along with fast jets) a Brigade group stationed in Canada that was tasked to reinforce Norway (along with more fast jets that were based in Canada but ear marked for deployment to Norway.) They (at times ?) also had commitments to the ACE mobile force (battalion level ?) and (often ?) troops stationed in Cypress on peace keeping duty that may have had some form of war time role in Europe.

I'm not sure what else would have been left in Canada (maybe the equivalent of a large battalion / small brigade of regulars and various "milita" reserve units.). There was some talk of being able to deploy ground troops within Canada to be able to counter small scale incursions. The balance of the fast jets would have been largely tasked with air defence.

IIRC at the very end of the Cold War there was a plan to be able to build up the forces in West Germany to the equivalent of a division in the event of a crisis. I believe the Norway commitment was dropped at the same time.

Interesting. Thanks for telling me.
 
I'm a little curious as to why the fascination always seems to be with the Cold War going hot, when in OTL, the pressures were always to avoid that.

It's not as though there is a shortage of areas where proxy wars took place/could have taken place, and it's not as though there isn't plenty of mileage in that classic of fiction, the spy thriller (be it well written or otherwise). I'd have thought that one of the lessons we can draw from incidents such as Cuba or Able Archer is that you have to work hard to get WW3 kicked off, because all the pressures tend to work to keep it under control. The build-up in fiction often takes the form: "Side A does this, Side B responds thus, and whoops, never mind." You rarely get to see the efforts both sides put in to finding out what the hell's actually going on, or trying to find ways of bringing things under control, or indeed, doing any of the things that could prevent the Hot War.

But no, as soon as the words "Cold War" are uttered, you may as well start revving up the tank engines in the Fulda Gap.
 
I'm a little curious as to why the fascination always seems to be with the Cold War going hot, when in OTL, the pressures were always to avoid that.

It's not as though there is a shortage of areas where proxy wars took place/could have taken place, and it's not as though there isn't plenty of mileage in that classic of fiction, the spy thriller (be it well written or otherwise). I'd have thought that one of the lessons we can draw from incidents such as Cuba or Able Archer is that you have to work hard to get WW3 kicked off, because all the pressures tend to work to keep it under control. The build-up in fiction often takes the form: "Side A does this, Side B responds thus, and whoops, never mind." You rarely get to see the efforts both sides put in to finding out what the hell's actually going on, or trying to find ways of bringing things under control, or indeed, doing any of the things that could prevent the Hot War.

But no, as soon as the words "Cold War" are uttered, you may as well start revving up the tank engines in the Fulda Gap.

I generally agree, but it's only natural to be fascinated by societies which suddenly, and for the first time in history, can inflict civilization ending damage on each other over the course of a few hours-- and risk the real fear that it happens by accident.

As for ignoring the inertia of both sides not wanting war, I think that's the difference between most TLs on here and the great TLs on here. You see how things spiral out of control despite nations trying to avoid a fate that no one wants.
 
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As for ignoring the inertia of both sides not wanting war, I think that's the difference between most TLs on here and the great TLs on here. You see how things spiral out of control despite nations trying to avoid a fate that no one wants.

You're right in that the better TLs take account of what people would actually do as situations develop.

Me, I remain of the view that were I to write a WW3 TL (well, technically I have - see sig - but that wasn't 100% serious even though more or less factually accurate and probably more realistic than some WW3 TLs), I'd probably finish it at the point of the war starting. The tale would be how the world reached that point. Once it kicks off, you can summarise events as: "Lots of people die. One side wins, but it's all a bit futile as there's now a new definition of pyrrhic victory."
 



In OTL, we were extremely fortunate that there were basically rational people in charge for most of the Cold War. In the Soviet Union, the leadership largely supported detente when NATO was weaker in the 1960s and 1970s and there was a more liberal reformist in charge when the Soviets' internal problems reached critical mass in the late 80s/early 90s. Those were tremendous strokes of luck, and they were by no means inevitable. It is quite possible that we could have gone to war if things happened differently.

As to why people focus on that instead of timelines that go the way of the OTL Cuban Missile Crisis, I would say it's simply the thrill of imagining what could have happened but different as opposed to things that are largely similar to what happened in OTL. It's *alternate* history; where's the fun in that? :p
 
As to why people focus on that instead of timelines that go the way of the OTL Cuban Missile Crisis, I would say it's simply the thrill of imagining what could have happened but different as opposed to things that are largely similar to what happened in OTL. It's *alternate* history; where's the fun in that?

I'd distinguish between alternate history that hangs together in a plausible manner with people responding to different circumstances as one might expect them to react, with additional knock-on consequences; and alternate history that arm waves stuff aside because it's alternate history and supposed to be fun and logic can go hang (which is not what you're saying, but I am extending the point to its logical conclusion); and all the stages between those two positions.

It's by no means impossible for WW3 to break out, and the how that happened could be interesting. Speaking personally, I find the whole Cold War interactions fascinating in and of themselves, and the how unintended consequences can bounce through are fascinating. There are many such points, and tweaking things at any of these can lead in interesting directions. For example, what happens if Yasser Arafat breaks his neck when performing a swallow dive into the arms of his adoring fans at the Commodore Hotel in Beirut in March 1977. OTL, he was caught, and the party continued, and he duly goes on to sign the Oslo Accords. In an alternate, there's an accident, he dies, and the consequences for the Lebanese Civil War, and the later Israel/Palestinian agreement at Oslo is affected.
 
... that had cost America dozens of aircrafts and crews since 1966. ... the earliest aircrafts able to drop LGBs

Sorry, but I just can't keep watching this in silence.The plural of 'aircraft' is 'aircraft'. It's like 'sheep' and 'deer'; the plural form of the noun is the same as the singular. I realise this might seem like pointless pedantry and nit-picking, but my day job is as an editor and I am thus a professional pedant and nit-picker - I'm also required to be an active member of the alt-write (we prefer that to "grammar-Nazi"). This stuff is like nails on a chalk-board. :(

Apologies for the interruption. As you were...
 

Archibald

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Dear Gunnarz

Did it ever happened to you that english might no be my first language ? that not everybody is born speaking English ? Just think about it. thank you.

MERDE
 
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