Notes from the Author
Hey everyone, I am sure you are somewhat surprised that I am bringing this back with a time skip, but it is the best thing for this story and timeline. UNSUNKEN SUN was always supposed to be about how the world would deal with the consequences of a bloody Third World War. I am not a good war writer, to be honest, and it was very hard to write those early chapters. I have decided to resume this project which has been brewing in my mind for a very long time. The story will now resume after the war’s conclusion. The writing style will also slightly change, becoming much more chronological, taking inspiration from Gap80’s wonderful Kentucky Fried Politics timeline. Additional hope for this timeline to be a very graphic experience as well with me designing for example logos, flags, and materials to the best of my ability how they would appropriately appear.
I will provide a skeleton of events for the war below to start things off.
WW3
The start of the Third World War much more resembled the start of the First, rather than the Second.
Internal tensions and chaos would push the world over the edge and the superpowers on a collision course. What started the Berlin May Day Riots and the Airlift Catastrophe is still unknown though the general blame is put on the now-deceased Josef Stalin, and the Soviet Union.
The war would last just a few days short of 4 years and would end with both sides being scorched by the fire of atom bombs. The United States led by the young President Harold Stassen would lead the Western Allies (later the Brussels Pact) to victory against the Soviet Union, and their satellite states. While much of the War was spent in Europe, Asia (especially China), and the Middle East were both important fronts of the conflict.
-EUROPE-
Europe faced perhaps the harshest devastation of the War. The first year and a half of the war went largely in the Soviet Union’s favor with them conquering most of Germany, Austria, Denmark, The Netherlands, Greece, and large chunks of Belgium, and Northern Italy. With each inch of sovereign land, they conquered they would create the skeleton of a new Red Regime across the continent. It was in 1950 when the red tide began to be pushed back. This came following the unintentional murder of Crown Princess Elizabeth and her 1-year-old child Charles by Soviet Bombers who drifted off course of a bombing run in England and caught the Princess, and her child while they were traveling by mere coincidence. The following period of Allied victories that led to the retaking of the west bank of the Rhine would be labeled “Elizabeth’s Revenge”.
The War would come to unite Western Europe greatly as General Eisenhower’s Volunteer Army of Germany, and later Army of Europe would become a multicultural fighting force that contributed to the liberation of Germany, and Central Europe. As the tide began to shift, Stalin would hasten the Soviet Union’s nuclear program and began work to once more defend Eastern Europe. Poland and the last bits of Eastern Germany would prove to hold tightly. The focus of the allies would turn south aiming at liberating Austria, and Greece.
The Allied landings in Greece would come to represent a tidal shift in the war. Landings from British and American troops based in Allied Crete and Cyprus would quickly reconnect with monarchists and other anti-communist fighters in Greece to liberate Athens from the KKE. With a new front opening in the Balkans, and the Soviets losing ground in Europe, and the Middle East, many leaders on the left began to believe that the Soviets would be pushed back to Russia. One such leader was the leader of neutral Yugoslavia Josef Tito who saw this pivotal moment as potential to both secure safety for Southern Slavs, and distance himself from Soviet Communism. Tito would begin the now-famous Macedonia plot by secretly reaching out to the leader of Bulgaria Georgi Dimitrov, and Albanian Minister of the Interior Koçi Xoxe. While Dimitrov had long known Stalin, he too began to see the cracks forming on the Soviets side of the war. The plot would effectively have Yugoslavia declare war on the Soviets citing harassment on its national sovereignty. At the same time the Albanian and Bulgarian governments would carry out a large crackdown citing Yugoslavian influence but in actuality would lead to mass arrests of NKVD and Soviet officials. This would lead to a coup against Hoxha in Albania, and a self-coup for Dimitrov in Bulgaria. This would end in each country welcoming in Yugoslavian troops, and later Allied troops in exchange for Greek Macedonia, pardons for any involvement with the Soviet war effort, and most importantly the right to form a South Slavic Union.
The Macedonian Plot sent shockwaves throughout the whole world. While some of the Western Allies did not want to formulate any relations with communists saving their own skin, the strategic advantage it brought was too large to ignore. The Soviets were outraged, and it reportedly drove Stalin mad that Tito had not only betrayed him but stabbed a knife in the back of Communism. The Allies would later retake Istanbul and enter the Black Sea where one of the most daring campaigns of the war would take place: The Crimea Campaign. Allied troops wanted to establish a zone of control in the Black Sea to use as a base of operations against the Soviets in Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and the Caucuses. The battle would be hard-fought but lead to a triumphant allied victory in core Soviet territory. This would follow with more victories in the Balkans, and the Allies entering both Ukraine and the Caucuses.
One of the greatest hindrances to the Soviets was the taste of freedom within its occupied zones. Since the last war there had still been resistance in its territories such as the Forest Brothers in the Baltics, and several holdovers in its satellite state such as monarchist in Romania. Even those with connections to the old White Movement before the Soviet Union participated in holding the bear down little by little. The Western Allies and their intelligence agencies would work with these organizations covertly, and especially with their own leave behind resistance groups in land occupied by the Soviets in the initial red blitz through Europe. These groups and their leaders would prove to be quite influential following the War and honored for their resistance to the Soviet Union.
In January of 1952 the Soviets would send strongly worded demands for an armistice and a return to the prewar borders, or else the allies would face dire consequences. The allied response was that there would be no return to the prewar borders and that any negotiated peace would include the liberation of all governments conquered since 1936 by the Soviet Union. Seeing their demands ignored, Stalin would order the most infamous action of the War: Operation Nyet. The Soviet Airforce while small was making great strides when it came to adapting former lend-lease plane designs to their domestic equivalents during the war. One of the key adaptions to such Bombers was being able to carry atomic payloads. Operation Nyet would occur on February 7th in the early morning with over a dozen nuclear-armed bombing squadrons taking off from Soviet-held Bornholm. While many squadrons were stopped before they could hit their targets (the most significant missed target being Amsterdam) Operation Nyet was unfortunately very successful and led to a record amount of casualties in the war.
Cities hit by Operation Nyet
Paris, France
Lille, France
Le Havre, France
London, United Kingdom
Norwich, United Kingdom
Brussels, Belgium
Antwerp, Belgium
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Bremen, Germany
Cologne, Germany
Dusseldorf, Germany
Essen, Germany
This attack signaled a new deadly stage in the war that most were hoping to avoid. The war had gone nuclear and resulted in incomprehensible destruction. It also became all too clear that the Soviets were not able to be negotiated with any longer and all hope for a negotiated peace was thrown out the door. The Western Allies now demanded total capitulation. Retaliation would quickly follow and with the Western Allies authorizing the Atomic bombing of the Soviet Union. The British in fact would be the first ones to retaliate, a simple wish granted to them by the United States. An RAF nuclear-armed bomber squadron would take off from Cyprus and later hit the city with Stalin’s own name: Stalingrad. The United States and the Soviet Union would begin using the bombs tactically against each other driving up the casualties for the last months of the war. By May 1st, 1952 4 years since the May Day Riots the Western Allies have cleared most Soviets' forces from Europe, and are progressing slowly to Moscow when news of Stalin’s death emerges. This greatly demoralizes the Red Army and great gains are made for the allies. On June 1st the United States and its allies would issue the Nicosia Declaration, demanding the unconditional surrender of the Soviet Union or face the total destruction of its motherland. The Soviet Government did not produce a clear unified response with the newly declared leader Levrenty Beria silent on the matter. On June 8th a bombing squadron famously led by pilots George McGovern, and Barry Goldwater would drop the world's first thermonuclear bomb on the military research city of Obnisnk near Moscow to show what would follow if they did not further comply. What followed was the unexpected Red Army coup d’etat led by Georgy Zhukov that decapitated the Soviet Government and killed the interim leader Beria. Zhukov would then order all troops across the nation to stand down and declare unconditional surrender to the Western Allies. With the fighting officially ending on June 28th.
-MIDDLE EAST-
The war in the Middle East would come following both the Arab victory against the short-lived Israeli state, and the slowing of the red blitz in Europe. Stalin would declare war on Turkey late in 1949 with the aim of dominating the middle east and stripping the western allies of a major source of oil. The surprise invasion from the Soviet border was followed by attacks from their forces in Thrace, and the Black Sea. The Soviets would make good process in both Eastern Turkey and Anatolia. The Soviets would go on to establish a military zone for an eventual Kurdish State as well.
As 1949 drifted into 1950 the Turkish Government would relocate to Antalya in southern Turkey and hold out there as the Allies would reinforce. Stalin still hoping to cut off oil lines would expand the war as Soviet troops entered Northern Iraq, and Syria under the pretexts of aiding a Kurdish rebellion led by Soviet ally Mustafa Barzani. The Soviet war effort would largely falter after the initial advance due to the surprising united effort of the Arab League. In 1951 the allied offensive in Turkey, the liberation of southern Greece and Yugoslavia joining the war against the Soviet Union would cause the Soviets to retreat from the Middle East with the Arab nations claiming victory. This would largely humiliate the Soviet war effort having lost to technologically inferior desert tribesmen.
-EAST ASIA-
The East Asian theatre of the war would mark the second time that China’s civil war intertwined with a global conflict. It would ultimately become one of the bloodiest fronts in the war. While it was a stated goal of the Truman administration to keep the war in Europe, and explicitly out of China he would come to face opposition from the now Stassen-led GOP, and most importantly Douglas MacArthur. His opposition to taking sides in the Chinese Civil War largely came from George Marshall’s dislike of Chang Kai Shek and his distaste for the whole conflict from his previous unsuccessful mission to China. General MacArthur would largely influence events in the early months of the war that would lead to US involvement in Asia. A great shock to the international community was the Philippines firmly allying with the Nanjing regime, an act that would have grave consequences.
The War in Korea would follow a similar note to Germany, as it would start with rival governments being created by each superpower to fight each other. As the war in Germany as well the Soviets would initially succeed through their sheer manpower advantage. By New Year’s Day 1949 the Soviets had overrun the peninsula, with the South Korean government and allied forces retreating to Japan and Jeju.
When Stassen entered office he declared a new phase of the war in his inaugural speech. He would put this new phase into motion by reaching out to a newly inaugurated president of the Republic of China, Li Zongren. President Stassen would set up a direct line of communication and seeing as Korea had been recently lost would work together to avoid communist domination of Asia. Stassen would leverage support with what he referred to as ‘strategic reforms’. While the young President knew that this was essentially America forcing changes on other countries he deemed that some reforms were necessary to advance the war effort. These would largely apply to the situation in China, and sometimes even to its European allies such as France, which he would strong-arm into giving Indochina more Autonomy to appease the Chinese and prevent another communist guerilla campaign. WWIII would truly engulf China when communist forces gunned down a group of US Marines stationed in Tsingtao. The so-called Tsingtao massacre would lead to both Chinese governments firmly falling into opposing sides of the war. America would provide countless advisors, materials, and supplies to help maintain the Nanjing regime's war effort. The US Military would even assist China in modernizing its airforce and infrastructure to better fight the war against the Communists.
One of the most infamous moments of the Asian theatre of the war was of course what would later be labeled as the Filipino Tragedy. In 1948 the Philippine Government took a hard stance against the PKP (the Philippine Communist Party) and officially outlawed the party after it saw an insurrection growing. This and the Philippine government's involvement in Chinese Nationalists' fight against the Communists in their own civil war led to the formation of the People's Liberation Army (Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan) commonly referred to as the Huks. In 1949 things would grow worse as Quirino was elected under what was largely labeled as a sham election even to those in the west. Through the smuggling of weapons, the underground insurrection grew and spread across Luzon under the leadership of Jose Lava and Luis Taruc. He preached that the final patriotic war of independence would through off the chains of American exploitation, and imperialism so that a truly free and independent Philippines could rise. Though there had been several low-level raids between the Huks and the Government things would rapidly escalate during the early hours of the 30th of December 1949. During Rizal Day celebrations the Huks would attack in a surprise decapitation strike on the government killing President Quirino and many members of the government. It is believed to this day that the Huks were able to pull this off through infiltration of the Philippine military. The Huks would go on to quickly claim the Quezon City and most of Luzon declaring the All-Filipino Revolutionary Socialist Republic on New Years' Day 1950. This would greatly disturb many in the Western Alliance and lead to yet another red scare in the middle of the war of red insurrection. MacArthur was greatly shocked by the matter and felt betrayed by men who only just a few years pledged their loyalty to the rightful Philippines Government and the United States when they were invaded by the Japanese in the last war. The Philippine Civil war though would only be a piece of the devastation that would become known as the Filipino Tragedy.
The source of the plague outbreak that would devastate the Philippines already embroiled in crisis is largely unknown and thus left to the realm of rumors and hearsay. Some have hypothesized that the plague outbreak was in some way connected to Japanese biological warfare research group Unit 731 either coming to the Philippines through a communist Chinese plot, a forgotten Japanese plot, or a bioweapons depot. Some believe though that it was merely bad luck with it cropping up out of the bad conditions of both a globalized war and a civil war at home combined with a rapidly moving population. All that's known is that the first cases began to crop up in February of 1950 in the port city of Batangas and quickly spread throughout Luzon and the rest of the Philippines. Although the civil war would end in late 1951 with US troop involvement, and stability would start to return with anti-biotics being shipped in from the US the devastation would create a very different Philippines in the years that followed.
In September of 1950 with the war in China shifting to the Allies' advantage and the nationalists making gains against the communist forces focus would shift back to Korea. Macarthur would achieve one of his greatest strategic triumphs: The Landing at Incheon. Allied forces would pull off what was considered an impossible landing that would lead to the liberation of Seoul and the eventual liberation of Korea as a whole. This would spell doom as more and more of these landings and shows of naval power would slowly lead to allied forces clawing back the coasts of the orient. Later in 1951 Allied forces would conquer the Soviet’s prized possession in the east: Vladivostock. There Macarthur declared “Never will Moscow hold access to the sacred Pacific Ocean, for it has invalidated its name.”
The war in Asia would continue longer than in Europe owing to the fighting of guerilla holdouts in China, Siberia, and the Philippines. This war like the last would cement the importance of Asia to those in the west and lead to the cultures of the east being ever more present in the eyes of America.
The Third World War ended just like all wars before. Not the end of all things, but the loss of many.