The worst cold war tl cliches

James G

Gone Fishin'
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
Despite being from outer space and jockeying your way across to earth, your English is good enough.
 

orwelans II

Banned
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
So? He didn't do it out of malice. If English isn't your first language you should be happy that there are people like Gunnarnz who'll take some time to point out a mistake that you have made and help you improve your English.
 
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
My thoughts exactly, as people never cease to be fascinated with how a Third World War would play out, whether it'd be conventional, nuclear, or somewhere in between; personally I like the ones where they go in depth and show the post war world (and not ones where "shortly nukes fly because lol").
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
"Better dead than red"

"Better red than dead"

"I don't know about WW III, but WW IV will befought with sticks and stones."
 
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

Je suis vraiment désolé, mais je n'y avais pas pensé à cela. I have taught English in other countries, and I am aware of the difficulties learners face. I try to be considerate of people who are using a language that is not their first.

In this particular case, your English seemed like the type used by fairly educated native speakers who did not pay attention in English class because they think they know it all already! I was trying to point out a way you could get even better, and I did not intend to insult your heritage.

Calmez-vous un peu, et peut-être que nous pouvons être amis.
 
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.

Well, it is one of the great What-Ifs in history as of this moment. Kind of a, wow we dodged that bullet. What would have happened if we didnt.

As to your critique, that is what I am attempting to do in my currently stalled TL. And it is really, really, really fucking hard. I've perused about 20 Soviet books from the era, half a dozen bios of Reaganites such as Haig, MacFarlane, Schulz, Casey, and Weinberger and another dozen or so books on the geopolitics of the era. And I still feel this black hole like gravitational pull toward the tired Clancy/Hackett Tropes. It's really hard to get to sides to fight when they both know it might lead to Armageddon.

As to why I want(ed) to do it in the first place, I was 10 years old in 1983 and remember the hysteria like yesterday. I have a childhood fascination, which I suspect many others do to.
 
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 agree. It matters a lot that in the 1950s Eisenhower, Kennedy and Krushchev all had a very firm understanding of the face of total war from their experiences in World War II. It also matters a lot that Brezhnev and his Politboro were focused on the status quo at home and while there was a huge military buildup on the part of the Soviets it seems to have a lot more to do with keeping the Army happy than any real ambitions regarding expansion.

In the 1970s it was clear that full scale war would indeed involve Mutually Assured Destruction and only in the mid 1980s did both sides think there was a possibility or keeping any war conventional. But not so much that they ignored MAD.

Stalemate had essentially been the key element of the Cold War. Sure some of the Third World was in play from time to time but it never really made a difference to the overall stalemate. Ending that was too high risk in the face of MAD.
 
I agree. It matters a lot that in the 1950s Eisenhower, Kennedy and Krushchev all had a very firm understanding of the face of total war from their experiences in World War II. It also matters a lot that Brezhnev and his Politboro were focused on the status quo at home and while there was a huge military buildup on the part of the Soviets it seems to have a lot more to do with keeping the Army happy than any real ambitions regarding expansion.

In the 1970s it was clear that full scale war would indeed involve Mutually Assured Destruction and only in the mid 1980s did both sides think there was a possibility or keeping any war conventional. But not so much that they ignored MAD.

Stalemate had essentially been the key element of the Cold War. Sure some of the Third World was in play from time to time but it never really made a difference to the overall stalemate. Ending that was too high risk in the face of MAD.

Well, isnt that the challenge? South survives, Axis wins, Rome survives, WWIII goes hot. Granted, there are a lot of great TL opportunities about niche subjects but ultimately writers have to pursue topics that interest them. And its not as if this topic has been written about more often than WWII or ACW. It just seems like it because Jimmy Green writes about 10,000 words an hour (compliment/awe intended).
 
Well, isnt that the challenge? South survives, Axis wins, Rome survives, WWIII goes hot. Granted, there are a lot of great TL opportunities about niche subjects but ultimately writers have to pursue topics that interest them. And its not as if this topic has been written about more often than WWII or ACW. It just seems like it because Jimmy Green writes about 10,000 words an hour (compliment/awe intended).

Sure, it is just that we should expect some excellent explanations to get over the high bar of 'oh shit if we fight we will destroy each other'

In my opinion the best chance the Soviets ever had was in 1948-51, and Stalin was pretty damned paranoid.
 
For my money, the most 'cliche' topics for AH seem to be attempts to change history to the present day as much has possible without going on an utterly unpredictable (for the writer) trajectory like PoDs farther back would require. Counterbalancing the US's rise to world dominance with a surviving Confederacy is one way of dramatically changing the 20th century without throwing the earth off it's axis; German victory in WWI could throw off the Soviet Union's rise to superpower status, and the Cold War going hot would definitely give the 'end of history' crowd a theoretical kick in the pants.
 
Mussolini makes a third side of the cold war with Fascist Italy, Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, a clown car of latin american dictatorships, South Africa, sometimes Israel, and is usually joined by Rhodesia (technically not a Cold War cliche as it relies on a WWII POD, but I feel it's still relevant enough). Mussolini could probably cobble together some sort of diplomatic block, but no one would acknowledge it as an equivalent to the western or eastern blocks.

Decolonization happens as per our timeline, unless the timeline is about a different decolonization for one country. In that case a principled socialist/white african is able to lay the foundation for a truly democratic version of Gaddafi's Libya/Smith's Rhodesia and it never becomes a pariah state. Bonus points if the author's IRL political affiliation becomes abundantly clear.

A surviving South Vietnam either exactly follows the path of the four asian tigers, or remains a backwards den of corruption for perpetuity. In all likelihood a modern South Vietnam would look a lot like modern Thailand rather than its past self or the modern tiger states..

In the conventional phase of WWIII the Red Army is a tidal wave that effortlessly wipes away every NATO formation east of the Rhine in under a week and is only prevented from continuing to the Pyrenees by American Nuclear strikes. The Warsaw Pact Army outnumbered NATO, but it was not to such an extent that the Bundeswehr and the other NATO formations in Central Europe would dematerialize on contact.

In the conventional phase of WWIII NATO's soldiers wade up to their knees through the corpses of Soviet conscripts as A-10s strafe columns of T-54s from secure skies. The armies of the Warsaw pact weren't so qualitatively backwards, I'd certainly take a T-72 Ural over any second generation western MBT in a heartbeat.
 
Well, it is one of the great What-Ifs in history as of this moment. Kind of a, wow we dodged that bullet. What would have happened if we didnt.

As to your critique, that is what I am attempting to do in my currently stalled TL. And it is really, really, really fucking hard. I've perused about 20 Soviet books from the era, half a dozen bios of Reaganites such as Haig, MacFarlane, Schulz, Casey, and Weinberger and another dozen or so books on the geopolitics of the era. And I still feel this black hole like gravitational pull toward the tired Clancy/Hackett Tropes. It's really hard to get to sides to fight when they both know it might lead to Armageddon.

As to why I want(ed) to do it in the first place, I was 10 years old in 1983 and remember the hysteria like yesterday. I have a childhood fascination, which I suspect many others do to.
I know one TL that doesn't result in either destruction of both sides nor a ceasefire called Able Archer 83, and it's one of my favorite TLs and partly the inspiration behind my TL.

And I should point out that WWII didn't bring out the feared chemical weapons despite various opportunities to do so (thanks to Hitler of all people being the key to deterring them); though since nukes are much more prominent in post-1945 geopolitics, it might be more difficult to deter nuclear usage in a WWIII but still possible as far as I'm concerned.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
Imo, the worst cliche is that right after WWII, the West absolutely has to resort to nuclear weapons to stop a conventional Soviet attack. It requires such a long string of rolling Snake Eyes on part of the W-Allies that it's almost ASB territory.
 
Imo, the worst cliche is that right after WWII, the West absolutely has to resort to nuclear weapons to stop a conventional Soviet attack. It requires such a long string of rolling Snake Eyes on part of the W-Allies that it's almost ASB territory.
Honestly to me, that makes sense if the Soviets don't have enough nukes to do a good amount of damage to Europe and North America to an extent, which applies from 1945 to the late 60's OTL.
 
Whenever internal politics is featured, it's almost always restricted to the Anglosphere. Generally speaking, America will be covered extensively, Britain will probably be covered at least a little and Canada and Australia might if they're lucky. Everyone else has their politics ignored unless the TL is really detailed.
I know that the demographics of the board means that knowledge of politics outside of the English speaking countries is limited but it would be nice to see more coverage of places like France and Germany and the rest of western Europe. And, for that matter, India and Japan too.
 
Arab and Israel immediately try to kill each other, again. Same for India-Pakistan

EDIT: Immediately after nuclear exchange.
 
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Arab and Israel immediately try to kill each other, again. Same for India-Pakistan
To be fair that's pretty much OTL. Depending on what we count as a war Israel and the Arabs has fought between 9 and 12 wars with each other (and there also were the two Intifadas), while India and Pakistan have fought 4 wars and had multiple standoffs, armed incursions, and insurgencies.
 
To be fair that's pretty much OTL. Depending on what we count as a war Israel and the Arabs has fought between 9 and 12 wars with each other (and there also were the two Intifadas), while India and Pakistan have fought 4 wars and had multiple standoffs, armed incursions, and insurgencies.
Goddammit, forget to add "after nuclear war" :biggrin:
 
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