WI: Nazi Sympathizer Suicide Bombs Potsdam Conference

potsdam-conference.jpg


Say a Nazi sympathizer successfully sneaks into the Potsdam conference as a translator and suicide bombs the negotiations, killing Churchill, Stalin, and Truman in the blast.

What happens next and what will be the shape of the world in the aftermath?
 
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TinyTartar

Banned
Say a Nazi sympathizer successfully sneaks into the Potsdam conference as a translator and suicide bombs the negotiations, killing Churchill, Stalin, and Truman in the blast.

What happens next and will be the shape of the world in the aftermath?[/QUOTE]

Well, I'd expect retaliation punishments against Germans to be numerous, and likely with more official sanction and brutality in the Soviet zone and French zone.

Churchill being killed during an election campaign would make Britain be thrown into confusion, but Atlee likely wins anyway. Truman dying would be confusing as well, as he did not even have a vice president. Kenneth McKellar would likely assume the office of Presidency, and he did not seem to be someone who would be as ready to reform as much as Truman did both at home or abroad.
 
Say a Nazi sympathizer successfully sneaks into the Potsdam conference as a translator and suicide bombs the negotiations, killing Churchill, Stalin, and Truman in the blast.

What happens next and will be the shape of the world in the aftermath?


Churchill being killed during an election campaign would make Britain be thrown into confusion, but Atlee likely wins anyway. Truman dying would be confusing as well, as he did not even have a vice president. Kenneth McKellar would likely assume the office of Presidency, and he did not seem to be someone who would be as ready to reform as much as Truman did both at home or abroad.[/QUOTE]

By the time of the Potsdam conference the votes were more or less all cast. There was only the delay in getting overseas ballot papers to be counted.

Who was Truman's Sec of State?
 
Derek Jackson said:
Who was Truman's Sec of State?
The Secretary of States (SOS) was James F. Byrnes, and under the 1886 Presidential Succession Act, SOS was first in line if the president died with no vice president to succeed him. The Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate weren't in the line of succession at that time (they were restored in 1947). So, say hello to President Byrnes.
 
The death of Stalin would be the most interesting, who would wind up in power and what would they do in the post war period. Wonder if things like the Berlin airlift and Korean War would happen.
 
The death of Stalin would be the most interesting, who would wind up in power and what would they do in the post war period. Wonder if things like the Berlin airlift and Korean War would happen.
Beria, Molotov and maybe Zhukov fighting over dominion of the Soviet State with the NKVD and Soviet Army fighting it out...
 
Wait a second, Byrne as Secretary of State would have been at the conference, probably in the meeting room too,. He is probably killed/ Morgenthau becomes the first Jewish President.
 
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