Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

The Soviet Bear

Preface: Before I start this AH, I’d like to explain how I developed this idea. Both because I’ve drawn (with permission) on someone else’s idea, but also because I think its an interesting and detailed development of an idea that I’ve been toying with for a long time.

I’ve often wondered what would be needed to have a powerful USSR facing off against a weaker Europe in the late 1930s-early 1940s. There were, however, several problems with the idea, the USSR only began its rise to great power status in 1933 and that process was hindered by Stalin deciding to kill off most of the officers of the red army, along with many other useful people. By the time the USSR had recovered, Hitler’s Germany was a growing threat and the two powers divided Poland between them. I got this far and gave up for a while.

When I came back to it, I reasoned that in order for the USSR to be a super-threat, we needed to remove Nazi Germany somehow, but ones like that had been done on many other occasions. I gave up again until I read an AH by Dale called: An Early End to the Spanish Civil War?

Dale put forward an idea that fitted in with my own, but it needed a little refinement. I found that missing piece on a train journey where I was reading a book on the subject and here you are. Enjoy!

What Really Happened: Stalin convinced/tricked/threatened the Spanish republicans into sending most of their gold reserve to the USSR for ‘safekeeping.’ The Soviets then cheated the desperate Spaniards outrageously and kept most of the gold for themselves. Dale, however, drew the connection that Stalin sent some aid at the crucial moment, just in time to save Madrid, after the payment was made. The war continued for an extra two years.

What Might Have Happened: The nationalist forces managed to repeat Lee’s mistake of losing some orders just before the battle. The republicans found them and managed to strengthen the crucial sector just before the nationalists attacked. Random events like that are valid PODs, so if we alter that, Madrid might still fall anyway. Let’s have the nationalists succeed in taking Madrid.

As the fortunes of the republicans wither, Stalin loses interest. He presses the communist forces to abandon their comrades and go underground, which most of them do. By the end of 1936, most of the republicans have fled or been crushed. Franco is the new master of Spain.

Germany appears to benefit from the defeat of the republicans, but the reality is that she suffers; she now lacks the training and tested weapons from the war, while her potential emernies are stronger relative to Germany. Poland and Italy are stronger than OTL. Germany is still rearming at a desperate rate, but her economy is weaker than OTL and less able to bear the burden. Further, the Germans have less experience and are forced to experiment with many different types of weapons, instead of having a tried and true design.

The Germans are in a downwards spiral. They need to spend scare resources on raw materials with fewer and fewer suppliers. As Britain and France become anti-Germany, their rearming makes them stronger than Germany, while they support Czechoslovakia and Poland. Germany needs conquests, but there are no powers that Hitler can be certain of a quick victory against in 1938, while reunification with Austria would probably mean war with Italy.

The German army declines relative to France and Britain. As that becomes more obvious, the German government begins to feel concern about the future of Germany under Hitler and starts to consider other options. The German economy hits crisis point in mid-1938 and conservative army officers, faced with orders to launch a suicidal attack on Czechoslovakia, force a change in government. Hitler is forced into exile to Italy and Rudolf Hess is the nominal new leader. Real power lies with the army.

The nations of Europe breathe a sigh of relief. Rearmerant was damaging all of their economies and the bigger nations had other things to worry about. Britain, for example, was concerned about the threat from Japan. Released of the need to build a large army, Britain could work on airplanes and better ships to use in a far eastern conflict. Britain also bought a few of the more advanced German innovations and copied them.

Japan, however, was seriously annoyed. She had been hoping for a war that would keep the Europeans busy while she gobbled up china and considered the colonies in the Far East. Now, she was faced with three nations that might be able to interfere with her plans. She strengthened her forces in China and eyed the Soviet Far East.

Stalin continued his military expansion, funded by Spanish gold, having brought the military under his heel. The Soviets were designing an army that in numbers was far stronger than the western ones, although less good, man-for-man, at initiative and control.

Crisis comes with this timelines equivalent of the Nomonhan incident. In OTL, the Japanese army officers on the spot started a minor border skirmish with the Soviet troops. The Soviets annillaitted a large fraction of a Japanese force with VERY high casualties and the stunned Japanese made peace. In ATL, the same thing happens – but Stalin does not make peace. This time, there is no threat from the west.

Stalin dawdles on negocations until the Soviets have built up sufficiently and goes for a knockout. The Soviets smash though the Japanese lines and head for Korea. The Japanese scramble in reinforcements and take air control, but the Soviets are improving rapidly and the Japanese simply can’t match them on the ground. Determined suicide tactics hold back the Soviets in some places, but the Soviets become adapt at artillery bombardments (often building up hundreds of guns and letting rip all at once) and avoid the pockets with other forces.

The Japanese rush forces from the rest of china northwards. The Chinese are able to win small victories as the Japanese weaken, causing massive bloodshed in places though Japanese reprisals and other problems. The Japanese also launch a biological attack on the Soviet forces, which weakens individual divisions, but the Soviets are able to institute quanatitine measures and avoid the worst. The diseases spread into the local population to some extent and give the Soviets a powerful propaganda tool.

Despite massive resistance, the Soviets reach the borders of Korea alarmingly quickly and head inwards. The Korans revolt against their Japanese overlords and succeed in forcing the Japanese to hold back forces from the battlefront. The Japanese also experiment with an amphibious landing in the rear of the Soviet lines, but it runs into overwhelming Soviet firepower and is destroyed. The Japanese air power advantage is eroding, although the Soviets are not as good as the Japanese, they’re improving. The Japanese are also forced to move flight operations to their carriers as the Soviets learn to target their airfields in Korea. The Soviet offensive has slowed down, due to Korean territory, but no one is in any real doubt as to the outcome.

The Chinese communists have been able to advance their status to some degree as the Soviets won huge victories. They claim to have supported the Soviets in their major battles and to have planned the Soviet invasion to free china for communism. That act falls apart when Stalin declares his intention of annexing Manchuria and Korea. The Chinese nationalists have been mopping up Japanese units in the reminder of china, but Chieng quietly moves forces north and allows the Japanese to withdraw unmolested. The Soviets either disarm or destroy units from either Chinese side that they encounter and neither can take on the Soviets in a straight battle.

The outside world responds with considerable panic. The Japanese are losing badly. While some people responsible for the defence of the British and French empires are relived, the prospect of a Soviet advance into Europe is starting to look all too possible. The Baltic States, Finland and Poland start to look for support from outside, although there is no one with the military power to face off against the USSR. The general consensus is to start rearming – again. The US is less worried, but starts a smaller rearmerant program.

By the end of 1939, the Soviets have destroyed most of the Japanese units in Korea. The Japanese have been forced to do their own Dunkirk and withdraw what people and equipment they can – hampered by Korean fighters – and covered by the guns of the Japanese battleships. The Soviets lose several units in coming under those guns, so they fall back and allow the Japanese to evacuate with little interference. Soviet bombers attempt to attack the Japanese ships, but the Japanese carrier-borne aircraft are able to hold them off, although with heavy losses.

The war stalemates. The Japanese navy takes a few minor soviet islands and bombards soviet bases, but is unable to redress the land balance or retake lost ground. The soviets plan an invasion, but do not have enough naval power to overcome massive Japanese supremacy – outside fighter aircraft range the Japanese are supreme – and they try to bomb Tokyo, although after a single raid the Japanese have enough fighters in place to destroy the next one and the soviets give up.

Stalin starts to plan the next step in his world conquest scheme, by moving forces to the west and preparing for an invasion. Meanwhile, he makes deals with the various Chinese warlords, offering them a place in the new soviet structure if they renounce the nationalists and communists – he brands Mao a bandit and Chieng a Fascist – and many agree. The nationalist forces collapse under this new pressure and many communists give up. Others continue the struggle as guerrilla units, although they’ve lost their main sources of supply. The warlords are also ordered to make life difficult for the foreign bases in China, invading some encampments and interfering with shipping to others. One particularly eager-to-please warlord blocks all of Hong Kong’s links to the mainland and tries to invade. The British forces slap him back.

The soviet build-up in Europe looks very threatening to the western powers. Germany begins a new rearmerant drive, although they’re hampered by their lack of resources and money. The Poles, Finns, Turks and Romanians make that problem a little easier by purchasing weapons from the Germans. The Germans also privately discuss alliances with the other powers, although the Poles and French are suspicious of German long-term intentions and both powers have communist parties who are preaching the goodwill and peaceful intentions of the Soviet Union – not to mention actively impeding war production. The Polish military dictatorship hangs a few dozen communists and sends the rest underground with little support – as they’re preaching a message in favour of the Poles traditional foe – but the French have political difficulties in destroying their own communists, many of whom are actively stockpiling arms.

The British are also worried. The loss of the Japanese threat is now taking second place to worries about the Soviet intentions. The British have long worried about a soviet invasion of India through Afghanistan and are now also worried about a soviet takeover of all of China. To add to their woes, the British have a commitment to defend Iran, which is also a soviet target and probably the easiest one to defeat.

The United States has re-elected FDR. He’s begun building a coalition to take on the soviets, but that’s a harder task than taking on the Japanese. There is a communist faction in the US that thinks Chieng deserved his fate – and many Americans are willing to cheer for the defeat of the Japanese. The US is being inundated with orders for weapons from Europe, but FDR is unwilling to order a massive expansion in the absence of any serious threat.

The Germans are good at realism. They’ve been sharing information with the Japanese and secretly with the Poles. They’ve also decided to advance into Poland in the event of a soviet invasion.

All the great powers are studying the lessons of the Nomonhan Conflict. The general conclusions are:

Massed tank forces are very important and war-winning
Air Bombing over long distances is futile without surprise and will only work once.
Small pockets of survivors behind the lines of the advance are either able to interfere with supply lines or helpless depending upon circumstances.

The outside world has developed the picture of the Red Army as a massive wave of unbeatable tanks and endless supplies of infantry. The Red Army commanders have a few problems with that as the recent conflict revealed their flaws. Their main problem is transport, they don’t have enough motorised vehicles to transport all they need. Forces in the Nomonhan conflict were relying on houses, press-ganged Chinese and Japanese and captured Japanese vehicles. The expanded soviet industry is able to fill in those holes and train drivers, but it means taking time from the preparations for war. The Red Army commanders dawdle as much as they dare with Stalin breathing down their necks.

The war crisis begins in early 1941. The Germans have refined their plans to move into Poland and a Hitler supporter in the German command informed Hitler of the plan. Hitler, now a strong prophet of anti-communism, publicly demanded that the Poles let the Germans in before the soviets invade. The Poles go ballistic and demand that the German government clarifies its intentions towards Poland. Stalin, however, sees the whole episode as staged for the benefit of providing an excuse to move German troops in to Poland and he makes several demands of the Poles:

That the Poles refuse to allow German troops to enter Poland and prevent by force any that attempt to do so without permission,
That the Poles grant Soviet troops full access permission,
That the Poles hand their government over to polish communists, advised by Moscow.

Stalin’s demands also include a carrot. If the Poles surrender and cooperate, the soviets will not push their demands for the area of eastern Poland claimed by the former Russian empire and the Ukrainian SSR and the soviets will hand over the East Prussia area, currently held by Germany. The Poles, however, reject Stalin’s demands and prepare for attack.

The Germans kick up their preparations. The Poles are screaming for help (supplies and weapons, not troops) from the other European nations. Italy has finished its rearmerant and sends what supplies they can spare. Mussolini also prepares several divisions for the Polish Front and pushes Romania and Hungary into burying their differences. Italian troops also appear in those nations. The Germans also send most of their atomic scientists to Britain (considerable theory work, but no material progress as yet) and prepare fallback defences.

With Soviet attack hours away, the Poles decide on a gamble. They arm up their airforce and send it into the Red Army bases, bombing soviet troops and supplies. The initial soviet response is uncoordinated, but they soon rally and counterattack. Soviet troops also advance into Poland, often smashing though Polish lines in places or surrounding them. In all matters, but ‘right’, the soviets have the advantage. The Polish air force is forced backwards into Poland and many Polish citizens flee through Germany to France.

The Germans advance into the Polish rear as peacefully as possible. They are often fired on by Polish units, but the polish government is desperate and is more than willing to accept help from anyone. Italy launches several highly publicised bombing raids from Romania, but those have little impact. Within three days, the Germans and Soviets are at war and fighting in the middle of Poland.

Place your bets here for the war of Europe Vs. the USSR. The Soviets have more experience, better tanks, and considerable influence in the rear lines of the powers. However, the soviets need to keep a major second-line army in Manchuria to keep an eye on the Chinese warlords.

The Germans have better command and control skills, faster manoeuvring and slightly better aircraft. They’re also quicker to learn from their mistakes. On the other hand, the Germans are significantly weaker than OTL. They’ve needed to cut down spending dramatically and reduce the size of the army. I suspect that they’ve not been able to mass-produce the Panzer III and IV and are limited to tanks that are easy to destroy for the soviet tanks.

The other powers hesitate. Italy sends several divisions for Poland, but mainly builds defences along her borders and strengthens her position in the Balkans. Britain reinforces her positions in Iran and India, as well as reforming the alliance with Japan, but declines to become involved in the ground combat. France mobilises, but massive disruption caused by the communists makes it hard for the French government to help out the Germans and Poles, while some factions think that a French attack on Germany is a good idea. Finland, Sweden and Norway draw together into a self-defence pact, while Spain, Turkey and Greece remain neutral.

The main problem, of course, is that Poland struck first. The other powers really don’t want to be involved in a war, far less than OTL, and they’ve got a fig leaf to abandon them if they want to, not to mention massive communist movements in their own nations. Finally, the British and the French don’t trust the Germans and would prefer not to have a massive army on their ground.

How will this war go? Will the red army breach the lines of Europe? Will Britain and the US be drawn into the war? Will atomic weapons be developed in time and by whom? Tune in soon for Part Two!

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