WI: France and Italy go Communist

In the late 40s France and Italy’s Communist Parties won a significant number of votes, but still failed to take over their countries.

What if they actually took power and then did away with Capitalism and Democracy in Italy and France? Perhaps the Communists build better coalitions or have a few more successful speech’s to marginally improve their standings and America panics at the idea of the Communists or Socialist Coalitions winning and tries directly interfering, resulting in America getting caught with massive anti US backlash. Or America does something seemingly counter productive to American foreign policy at the time, like refusing to back France in its Empire. Or Italy narrowly keeps its unpopular monarchy which results in backlash against the Italian government that enough people feed off of to support the Communists.

Afterwards, France/Italy align with the Soviet Union.


What would the American and international reaction be? How would France treat its colonies? With Austria and Switzerland nearly surrounded, how does this change their politics? How does Spain deal with having a border with Communist France? Does France combine its occupation zone of Germany with East Germany?

Is Truman in trouble if he loses Italy, France, and China? Does this provoke an incredibly aggressive American response or cause them to give up much of what they did OTL?
 
What would the American and international reaction be?

To prevent this before it happens.
In OTL the USA pumped dollars in the first Italian elections. They'll just pump more if the Communists seem headed to a landslide victory. In the worst case, there will be a military coup.
 
To prevent this before it happens.
In OTL the USA pumped dollars in the first Italian elections. They'll just pump more if the Communists seem headed to a landslide victory. In the worst case, there will be a military coup.

But would an American-supported Italy be viable if you had communist governments in Yugoslavia, France and southern Germany (French occupation zone)? Italy would more or less be surrounded by the eastern block, and in case of WWIII, American troops in Italy would be in quite a bad spot.

For me, that sounds more like finlandization than Italy as a NATO member.

Austria's situation, BTW, would be very similar: In the north, an American occupation zone that can, in case of a war, very easily be cut off from northern Germany (British).
In the west, the French (communist) occupation zone and neutral Switzerland.
In the south, Italy surrounded by the Eastern Block.
In the east, Soviet puppets.
 

kernals12

Banned
In 1948, 70% of Italians voted against communist rule. I do not see any plausible way to get that down to 49%, which they would've needed since every other party was adamant about not forming a coalition with the communists.
Same thing in France, where the communists never topped 29% of the vote in legislative elections.
Communism was a toxic ideology all over the west, for good reason.
 
But would an American-supported Italy be viable if you had communist governments in Yugoslavia, France and southern Germany (French occupation zone)? Italy would more or less be surrounded by the eastern block, and in case of WWIII, American troops in Italy would be in quite a bad spot.

Greece and Turkey became NATO/OTAN members, and look who were their neighbors. Dominance of the neighboring sea counts a lot; more than the lines of land communication between, say, Albania and Greece.
 
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