WI: Anti-unthinkable

Unless you can fundamentally change the leadership on both sides I doubt it would work. It's not like the west lacked for aggressive anti-communists, and the soviets had a leadership that never wanted to help. So I'd say it's largely impossible unless you could get a social democratic dominance in the U.S. And a completely reworked soviet system plausibly based on a Bukarin led Soviet government.
 
Rumour has it that Beria offed Stalin because Stalin was planning to have him as a scapegoat similar to Yezhov.Not sure if that's true.But if that is true and Stalin decides to to it earlier,it might work.
 
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Presdient Henry Wallace

Combine a Soviet leadership wanting better relations with the West with 'Finlandization' of Poland. Ideally Stalin dying earlier, deal with Polish resistnce, support for Polish uprising and early end to War


Anything that gets the Red Army out of the middle of Europe will certainly help with this WI.

If Poland is free, that really makes the Soviet FOrces in Germany look like temporary occupation forces, rather than a potential invasion force.
 
Poland is likely to be a very serious sticking point in almost every context post VE Day.
From the Soviet perspective at the time, paranoia was justified. They had just survived the largest war of extermination in recorded history, at a terrible, terrible cost.
They were STILL surrounded by (at least) potential (ideological) enemies (which sometimes coincided with traditional strategic rivals) on all sides.
I don't think that any Communist Soviet leader could feel safe and just trust the West at this point, assuming OTL's WWII. While relations would could be better with different leaders, I don't think that you could expect anything more than relatively amicable rivalry (as opposed to enmity).
In this context, securing Poland would be a strategic priority for Moscow, whether the Poles like it or not (and the Poles probably won't anyway) simply because Poland is the strategic highway to invade Russia. This is going to cause problems.
 
Poland is likely to be a very serious sticking point in almost every context post VE Day.
From the Soviet perspective at the time, paranoia was justified. They had just survived the largest war of extermination in recorded history, at a terrible, terrible cost.
They were STILL surrounded by (at least) potential (ideological) enemies (which sometimes coincided with traditional strategic rivals) on all sides.
I don't think that any Communist Soviet leader could feel safe and just trust the West at this point, assuming OTL's WWII. While relations would could be better with different leaders, I don't think that you could expect anything more than relatively amicable rivalry (as opposed to enmity).
In this context, securing Poland would be a strategic priority for Moscow, whether the Poles like it or not (and the Poles probably won't anyway) simply because Poland is the strategic highway to invade Russia. This is going to cause problems.


Assume that the Soviets fall into internal disorder or otherwise are in a much weaker negotiating position.

A neutral zone that stretches from Sweden and Finland through Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia might be palatable (barely) to the Soviets. Said zone probably has to include Germany eventually.

A massive DMZ between the East and West would reduce Cold War tensions a LOT, as the invasion of multiple countries to get from one side to the other would take long enough that the defender could bring up reinforcements and hold off the attack.

Since, in actually, neither side actually planned to invade the other but was very paranoid about the other invading them, this would reduce tensions and help bring about the results you desire.

Having (probably) capitalist countries a lot nearer (even if politically neutral) might show off the failings of communism, and cause the Soviets to reform more quickly.
 
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