WI Stalin dies in 1948
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Grey Wolf
Donor
I dunno, you're talking 1948 so the war is won. Stalin is not necessary to holding the country together after the war, so the next generation can get in earlier. It depends, but its possible that something like the Berlin airlift won't even be necessary, and the Cold War could stay tepid ?
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
What was so critical about 1948 vs 1953?
Poland was under effective Communist control by 1947, Bulgaria "officially" became a Communist state in June, Czechslovakia had it's Communist takeover in February 1948, Romania in April, in Hungary only the Communist party and the Social Democrats were still standing (although the actual takeover didn't take place until 1949), so the situation in Eastern Europe isn't going to change much. Whoever takes over is rather unlikely to reverse this, although they might be more willing to push for the idea of a neutralized Germany.
The atom bomb project continues, although if Beria is purged in the immediate aftermath, it might be delayed a bit.
One possible major consequence: whoever is in charge might nix the North Korean invasion, although I wouldn't put it past Kim to invade anyway in expectations that if he did badly, the Soviets or Chinese would be forced to support him to save face.
Good point about the Berlin airlift: a newly installed and still shaky regime might be unready to make such an in-your-face challenge [1] to the West. Hmm - no Berlin Airlift, perhaps no Korean war - milder Cold War in it's early phases?
One wonders as to the effects of no Berlin crisis and a new Communist leadership (conciliatory, or making loud noises to stregnthen their Red cred?) has on the 1948 presidential election.
More detail? Well, we need to decide on who steps into his shoes, first...'
Bruce
[1] A bit uncharacteristically bold of Stalin, or was he just misreading the West seriously, as he badly misread Hitler earlier? Or was he getting more reckless in his old age?
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Grey Wolf
Donor
Still reckon this is the major likely divergence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade
A new leadership couldn't afford to piss the West off, IMHO
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade
A new leadership couldn't afford to piss the West off, IMHO
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
Riain
Banned
Stalin, for all his faults, believed in spheres of influence. So while brooking no interference in Eastern Europe etc he didn't meddle in the Mid East and other western SoI. Kruschev didn't have such qualms, it was one of his lasting legacies to gain a foothold in the Mid East in 1956 just before Suez. So if Stalin was gone in 1948 perhaps the Cold War would have gotten worse by being provoked further afield than East Germany.
The USSR shut off supplies to the North Koreans after Stalin died. The Korean war ends when Stalin dies. If Stalin dies in 1948, the Korean war doesn't even start.
What would happen to the South Korean and Japanese economy without massive amounts of US money? What happens to the Cold war without the Korean war to give the Conservatives an excuse to build up a huge military force?
Does America become even richer and more powerful without bleeding economically for the next fifty years? Russia?
What would happen to the South Korean and Japanese economy without massive amounts of US money? What happens to the Cold war without the Korean war to give the Conservatives an excuse to build up a huge military force?
Does America become even richer and more powerful without bleeding economically for the next fifty years? Russia?
Well, we don't know whether Kruschev is going to follow Stalin or not if he dies in 1948. And Stalin supported the N. Korean invasion and had to be pushed to remove his forces from N. Iran, both rather further afield than East Berlin.
And, as dumb as some of the stunts he pulled were (see, Cuba) I'm not sure you can call Kruschev particularly aggressive re the Third World as much as responding to opportunities opened up by the end of colonial rule: Kruschev was hardly responsible for the Free Officers revolt in Egypt, and I'm doubtful if Stalin would have turned away third-world regimes looking for legitimacy for their undemocratic regimes just because they weren't "in his sphere of influence." Any likely successor regime is in any event going to be constrained by their lack of an effective delivery system for their bombs to the US before the 60's.
Be fair: a big military buildup was a pretty non-partisan notion once the Korean war was under way. Communist military aggression! US troops in peril!
Of course, Kim might force the issue even without a green light from Moscow: and even without the Korean war, there are going to be various possible flash points for a sharp cooling of US/Soviet relations. The Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Revolts in Eastern Europe. Wars between Israel and Soviet client states in the middle East.[1] The Soviet intervention in the Iranian civil war. [2] Kim goes for broke, on his own, in 1963. And, of course, both sides will get very nervous when little metal moons capable of carrying nuclear warheads start orbiting - a less "intense" cold war probably slows ballistic missile research, but it's not going to stop it.
Will the Cold War remain more "relaxed" than OTL? It might: even OTL, Kruschev made efforts to achieve some sort of detente cordiale with the US, although he couldn't help blowing it when the propaganda gem of a shot-down U-2 fell in his lap: and then there was the Nixon-era move to detente (which, however, was blown out of the water by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and other percieved "cheating."). So, given no Korean war, and perhaps no Vietnam war if a more relaxed US doesn't feel the need to guarantee the continued existence of South Vietnam, it might be that some sort of "cold peace" might exist.
But I wouldn't bet on it - the fundamental fact of the division of Europe and the Soviet forces sitting in Eastern Europe will be a permanent annoyance. Will both sides agree to keep their forces in the European theatre at a minimum? Even if the Soviets don't build up their forces in Eastern Europe to historical levels, US worriers will point out that the main bulk of the Red Army is a short railway ride from Central Europe, while the US home base is on the other side of the Atlantic. And those military interventions to keep Eastern Europe in line are going to have serious impacts on US opinion as to the stability of the situation in Eastern Europe.
Of course, a Cold War that slowly Hets Up over the 50's and 60's as Soviets crush revolts in Eastern Europe, the US moves more troops into Western Europe in response, more Third World nations go Red or at least Pink, and missiles develop into ocean-crossers, won't look quite the same as ours. The scariest parts might be in the late 60's, say, rather than pre-1964 and late 70's-early 80's. Less duck-and-cover in the 50's, but ICBM attack panics a decade and a half later, as the latest Israel-Arab war gets very messy. The Big Ugly Third World Intervention might be, say, in Africa rather than in SE Asia - we win that one, but the effects on racial politics at home might be ugly.
A delayed space race, perhaps - effects of Moon landings in the late 70's, with the USSR putting a man on the moon as well? Or perhaps no space race, or one that concentrates on building orbital battlestations rather than reaching our satellite. A Youth Culture, no doubt - contraceptives, easy transportation, mass entertainment, and annoyance with the older generation for bringing the world to it's current fix - but with no Vietnam, or a bunch of smaller third-world interventions instead perhaps, and a different schedule of cold war fears and hopes and dissapointments, a different one.
Japan will be poorer without the stimulus of the Korean War, but there's too much drive, too much talent there for it to _remain_ poor. Japan will slowly scale the ladder of increasingly sophisticated exports, perhaps battling a more protectionist attitude in the US than OTL, and will perhaps never have the brief fantasy of imminent superpowerdom it had in the 80's - but a more realistic appreciation of it's possibilities and prospects may lead the Japanese to avoid some of the stupid shit they did OTL. Chunks of Tokyo will never rise to values rivalling most of California, and possibly a Japan less certain of the superiority of it's way of doing things might not get as deep into the financial hole as it did OTL. Japan will almost certainly have at least western European standards of living by 2008, and might not still be struggling to escape from a now 16-year-old stretch of slow growth: whether it might have avoided the demographic mess it currently faces, I'm not so sure. (One thing which strikes me as unlikely to be butterflied is the warm regard OTL Japanese feel for foreign immigrants.)
How well off the USSR? Well, any drop in the intensity of the Cold War is good news for the USSR, whose "security" needs at times ran over 25% of it's GNP, but given the fundamental crapitude of it's economic system in any situation where it lacked a clear, life-or-death challenge ("get the atom bomb built or face a long Siberian vacation"), it's hard to see how much more productive it's civilian industries and agriculture would have been even with rather more money thrown at them. More crumbling, slum-project-level housing: a greater number of rickety cars with lawnmower engines: perhaps some more horribly destrucitve mega-projects, say the diversion of Siberian rivers to refill the Aral sea or more nuclear-powered money-losing cities in Siberia. Perhaps the USSR has enough money to actually build a decent road system, which would help, especially with stuff like getting the crops to market rather than rotting in storage, as large amounts usually did. And of course, the Cold War might, as I suggest, just end up heating up _later_ than OTL.
Perhaps the economy just reaches crisis point a decade later than OTL - OTOH, rising oil prices might just save their bacon (unless, ironically, a larger - I shan't say "better" - Soviet economy, more cars and trucks and roads, means they need most of that oil for _local_ consumption, and don't have that much to spare for export.) In any event, a truly _normalized_ relationship between the USSR and the US requires an end to the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, which was only sustainable with naked military force - and the blow to Soviet legitimacy which will automatically come from any such retreat and the subsequent collapse of (most, at least [3]) of the local regimes is always going to be hard to take.
Bruce
[1] Is it possible for the relatively cordial relations that existed between the fairly leftist early Israel and the USSR to continue ATL? Or will the strategic and propaganda value of befriending the Arabs instead always tip the balance against Israel in Soviet considerations?
[2] Less paranoid US (no Korean war) lets Mossadeq consolidate his position in Iran: unfortunately, the Republic turns out to be rather unstable.
[3] There's an AH challenge - strengthen the Warsaw Pact governments so that all of them wouldn't collapse like dominoes if the USSR nixes military force as a means of keeping afloat in the 80's.
I think something like the 1848 Berlin blockade/airlift was probably inevitable. Just looking at a map makes the enclave appear such an obvious oddity. I don't think it was terribly 'in your face' because Stalin probably didn't expect much of a confrontation. Stalin's advisors probably didn't believe an airlift would be attempted (let alone prove successful!) and also didn't imagine that the Western Allies would seriously contemplate going to the war over the issue. The most plausable reaction from their perspective would be a bit of sabre ratting and then the West would have pulled out Berlin.
As it was they were wrong, possible on both counts.
That is a wonderful mistake. So good, in fact, that it almost calls for a Challenge!
CanadianGoose
Banned
Who would die 1st - Zhdanov or Stalin? A lot depends on it. Zhdanov was at this moment the heir apparent. Zhdanov becoming Party leader (even for mere months) would lead to strengthening of "economists" (as opposed to "ideologues" of Malenkov-Khrushchev) within leadership. This former group (what's left of it after Leningrad Affair) largely forged Beria's political views IOTL. Worst case scenario (for West) would be creation of mixed economical model and resulting strengthening of Soviet Union. "Economists" were also less prone to costly political escapades in far-off lands. Anyone itching to see USSR pulling Deng by 1955?