What if communism didn't spread to Eastern Europe?

Let's say that Churchill wanted more influence in the region and gets Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in the West zone of influence. What will happen next? How will their economies look like now? Will they join Nato and the EU?
 

nbcman

Donor
Let's say that Churchill wanted more influence in the region and gets Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in the West zone of influence. What will happen next? How will their economies look like now? Will they join Nato and the EU?
Soviet Boots on the ground trumped whatever PM Churchill wanted. There would need to be a stronger WAllied presence in the Balkans to make this happen which the US was not willing to support.
 

Lusitania

Donor
What u need then if for a weaker Soviet Union which at time of D-Day is still fighting Germans deep in Ukraine. The Germans continue to loose ground to the soviet advance and western front still happens iOTL.

Here you have chance of western allies overtaking larger oration if Eastern Europe. Yalta conference never happens since it still under German control.

Germans surrender to western allies as Soviets get to their 1939 border with Eastern Europe.

US Truman and western allies agree to let Soviets occupy Poland, Romania plus eastern part of CzechSlovakia but keep other half half of eStern Europe under their control.

Stalin wants to attack west but US nuclear bombs over Japan causes him to reconsider.
 
Soviet Boots on the ground trumped whatever PM Churchill wanted. There would need to be a stronger WAllied presence in the Balkans to make this happen which the US was not willing to support.

I suppose the British could, if push came to shove, stage a regional attack as a unilaterial action outside of the broader coalition if they're willing to foot the cost in both material and US relations. Still, it would require making concessions to the Soviets elsewhere... maybe selling out Finland and allowing Austria to be part of the Eastern Bloc?
 
I suppose the British could, if push came to shove, stage a regional attack as a unilaterial action outside of the broader coalition if they're willing to foot the cost in both material and US relations. Still, it would require making concessions to the Soviets elsewhere... maybe selling out Finland and allowing Austria to be part of the Eastern Bloc?

What would "selling out Finland" actually mean, and how would it differ from the OTL? As it was, the British would not have done anything more than sending a sternly worded letter to Stalin if the USSR occupied Finland in 45-47. The Red Army had practically boots on the ground in Finland (the Porkkala base) and wielded significant political and economic leverage over the Finns. There was practically nothing the British could "give up" in Finland.
 
I suppose the British could, if push came to shove, stage a regional attack as a unilaterial action outside of the broader coalition if they're willing to foot the cost in both material and US relations.

That’s liable to end with whatever force the British send getting smashed, not an expansion of their influence into Eastern Europe.
 

nbcman

Donor
I suppose the British could, if push came to shove, stage a regional attack as a unilaterial action outside of the broader coalition if they're willing to foot the cost in both material and US relations. Still, it would require making concessions to the Soviets elsewhere... maybe selling out Finland and allowing Austria to be part of the Eastern Bloc?
See the British led Dodecanese campaign on the success of a regional attack. Not the British forces finest hour. Taking unilateral action or getting US support would be difficult after this fiasco.
 
May I suggest a POD with a leaner Lend-Lease Program?
Russia only receives whatever the UK can spare, but there are no direct shipments from the USA. Russia receives barely enough LL to defend 1942 front lines, but not enough to conquer Germany.
 
What u need then if for a weaker Soviet Union which at time of D-Day is still fighting Germans deep in Ukraine. The Germans continue to loose ground to the soviet advance and western front still happens iOTL.

Here you have chance of western allies overtaking larger oration if Eastern Europe. Yalta conference never happens since it still under German control.

Germans surrender to western allies as Soviets get to their 1939 border with Eastern Europe.

US Truman and western allies agree to let Soviets occupy Poland, Romania plus eastern part of CzechSlovakia but keep other half half of eStern Europe under their control.

Stalin wants to attack west but US nuclear bombs over Japan causes him to reconsider.

Why the hell would they agree to allow the Soviets to occupy Eastern Europe at all if they've only just barely managed to reclaim their 1939 borders by the end of the war? At best in this scenario, I can see the USSR getting an East German Puppet out of their occupation zone, but quite literally nothing more. No need to give any land or spheres of influence to wildly incompetent Russians after all... At best they'd end up with Finland and the Baltic states.

Yes, Stalin can always try to leap the border with the Red Army and take what he wants, but that seems a very short route to "World War 2: The Last Act", which ends with mushroom clouds over Minsk, Kiev, and Moscow.
 
Well, one idea could be that the USSR suffers from worse internal problems than OTL, hindering them in the field enough to where the rest of the Allies can pretty much claim all of Eastern Europe (barring maybe the Caucasus) under their domain and influence. As such, they'd be under the Western side and the USSR would probably not be able to do much without provoking war. It may also lessen the impact of the Cold War since the USSR doesn't have anyone besides possibly the Caucasus to make a pact with. Less panic could mean smarter decisions, especially once NATO sees the inevitable cracks between Russia and China
 
Even if Stalin doesn't go as further east, that doesn't change Yugoslavia. Since it wasn't thanks to Stalin and the red army that Yugoslavia was liberated but Tito and the Partisans. There would need to be changes to Yugoslavia during the war to change it.
 
There is one other way east Europe could not have gone Communist: Stalin decides he doesn't need Communist governments there, and is contented to have "bourgeois" ones if they are sufficiently "friendly" to the USSR. Before dismissing this as impossible, remember that this is what happened in Finland...
 
There is one other way east Europe could not have gone Communist: Stalin decides he doesn't need Communist governments there, and is contented to have "bourgeois" ones if they are sufficiently "friendly" to the USSR. Before dismissing this as impossible, remember that this is what happened in Finland...

This happened after the Red Army twice got a bloody nose in its dealings with the Finns. The combination of Finland's geopolitical position and its WWII era history with the USSR was rather unique. The challenge with other nations "achieving" the same position in Stalin's eyes is to make Stalin see them through the same kind of a cost-benefit calculation as he saw Finland, and to make them neutralized in the same way Finland was - not occupied by the Red Army but still tied to the USSR by a defensive treaty, and not at any real risk to join a Western defence organization.

Like I have said before, Finland ending up in its OTL Cold War position merely confirms that Finland could do it in certain (highly contingent) circumstances, not that other nations could do it as well.
 
Even if Stalin doesn't go as further east, that doesn't change Yugoslavia. Since it wasn't thanks to Stalin and the red army that Yugoslavia was liberated but Tito and the Partisans. There would need to be changes to Yugoslavia during the war to change it.
Solving that would be easy, instead of supporting Partisans in 1943, UK should continue supporting Chetniks, creating similar situation like in Greece IOTL, with Chetniks having upper hand over Partisans.
 
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