WI: No Cold War

The OTL Warsaw Pact was about the smallest buffer zone Russia could accept. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania will certainly become Soviet satellites after 1945: they share borders with the Soviet Union, so the Russians can't afford to take the chance that they become hostile. .

So what's the threat here, once you get past Stalin's paranoia?

Bruce
 
It wasn't just Stalin's paranoia that the west was a danger for the USSR. During the Civil War, the West sent military forces to fight with the Whites against the Reds for goodness sake. Westerners had, between the Fascists and Communists, preferred the former over the latter many many times before the war. And it had this new Superweapon which, against the Japanese, it had shown it was willing to use.
And from the West's point of view, Communism was expansionist and dictatorial, and posed a danger to free men and free government (not to mention free enterprise). The Soviet Union had barnstormed Europe, and pushed all the way up to Berlin, were claiming the city as their own, and their leader said things like [In relation to the Soviets taking Berlin] "Tsar Alexander reached Paris".

It's just too much suspicion, too many differences, too many fears about one another. And in the post war world, the Soviets are a superpower, and America is a superpower. They have these massive spheres of influence: The US has the Americas, and Western Europe, Australasia, as well as the colonies of the great powers. The Soviets have continental Asia, Eastern Europe, and growing Communist forces around the globe chipping away at European Imperialism (many of which will succeed in time, such as Red China).

I will not say that the Cold War is something which cannot be avoided. But I'm saying its not necessarily the easiest thing to avoid. At some point, they're going to cross each other's paths, and some western power will become angered by or fearful of a Communist movements takeover of a colony, former or current, and bring in their buddies for defense with the USSR bringing in its buddies to defend its Communist friends. Perhaps you can minimize tensions and have it at detente levels persistently, but it seems like they're going to be in competition.
 
This scenario is a no-go, the Soviets are in any OTL-style situation going to be the big territorial winners of the war and for obvious reasons neither the UK nor USA will ever accept this. The WWII alliance working as it did is a testament to its leaders but it was strictly dependent on the major threat posed by Nazis, after they're gone there's no foundation to avert the Cold War whatsoever.
 
Russian paranoia about invasion long predated Stalin, over the centuries they've been invaded by just about every country around from every conceivable direction. After the terrible cost of defeating the Nazis they were determined that it wouldn't happen again, with the benefit of hindsight there were clearly alternatives to enslaving a large portion of Europe but given the mutual suspicion between the Allies there wasn't the trust in each other that was needed Right up until VE Day Stalin seemed to be half expecting the British and Americans to side with the Germans and attack the Soviets, the use of the A Bomb probably heightened that impression. It should have been very different but given the personalities at the time some form of confrontation was inevitable.
 
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