by Geoff Wolak
The RAF started to knock down bridges and to destroy roads along a thousand mile front line - to slow the Russian advances, but with limited effect. The Russians were held around Berlin, but advanced to encircle the city in the weeks that followed.
Austria fell, Switzerland soon threatened, Tito’s Yugoslavia attacked after Tito refused to side with his communist brethren and attack the allies. Russian units crossed the Bosphorus Straits from Greek territory and encircled Istanbul. At the same time, Russian units in Georgia moved south west into Turkey and Armenia. And there they halted. Stalin then negotiated with the Turks, and offered them territory in the Arab east if they cooperated.
The Turks had seen an opportunity for regaining their Ottoman Empire, at least some of it, and sided with the Russians - their old enemies. Russia left Turkey alone, but had advanced on northern Syria, where France ran its mandated territory. It was a smart move on behalf of the Russians, because France was exhausted from the war, and could never have mustered enough in the way of men and machines to defend the mandated colony. When the first Russian units had crossed into northern Syria they had been welcomed by the local Arabs as liberators from the oppressive French overlords, the British in Palestine receiving limited numbers of reinforcements through the Med.
The RAF on Cyprus launched bombing raids, effective raids since they were daylight, no Russian fighters in the region. The Russians took to spreading out their forces, and using back roads where possible. The RAF bombers, in the hands of pilots skilled from the war with Germany, turned over a great many vegetable patches, and scared a great many goats, but made little real progress.
With the month being May, the weather was good for the Russian units in the Arctic Circle, and they had attacked into Norway, where little more than ten thousand British soldiers had been based at the time. But this time the RAF had the benefit of really crap Norwegian terrain, and tactical bombing destroyed what few good road passes and bridges there were in the north. The Russian advance ground to a halt.
Around Berlin, the RAF carried the British army in this war, that army exhausted after seven years of fighting, Britain just about bankrupt. And to top it all, large scale riots in the vast British colony of India had tied up forty thousand much-needed British soldiers. Ghandi was not being such a pacifist on this world.
With the US ground forces taking heavy losses in Germany and retreating, the American press had not been very kind to the incumbent. He had the bulk of his forces in the Far East, some quarter of a million men tied up in Japan. So he made a smart move, and bombed the crap out of an undefended Vladivostok, soon sending ships that way.
The Americans, losing ground in Germany, easily overran Russia’s Far Eastern outpost, and soon Stalin was feeling the heat at home. The Soviet leader had to dispatch troops east by train. The Americans took the Russian islands north of Japan and moved inland, a strategic bridge and pass fortified and held. Beyond that bridge the terrain was terrible, and so the USAF bombed the rail line, the only way to move through Siberia. Stalin’s reinforcements would have a long walk.
Looking for things to do to appease the folks back home, the US incumbent had dispatched troops by ship from the Philippines, and they had landed in Iran with the blessing of the Iranians. Those soldiers were soon on trains heading north, and towards the Iran/Iraq border and the Kurdish region. The British, with long-standing ties in the area, flew supplies to the Kurds in northern Iraq and in Syria, weapons and explosives, a few dozen keen SOE instructors on hand. Bridges were soon blown ahead of advancing Russian units.
In a move that was somehow predictable, the Russians moved into Afghanistan, their aim being to attack the west of India, not yet the nation of Pakistan, and to draw British troops that way. As I read, I was shaking my head.
The British in India did indeed move troops that way, but also flew their SOE specialists into Afghanistan. There, they handed over money, and supplies of guns and ammo, and needed to do little else. The Afghans were soon sniping at Russian convoys in mountain passes, or leaving mines on roads, a good forty years ahead of time.
The RAF then turned to what it knew best - heavy bombing, and attacked Minsk effectively, reducing it to rubble. The RAF could reach Moscow from Norway with medium bomb loads – just about, and so began night attacks, the Kremlin reduced to rubble as some six hundred bombers a night flew over the Baltic. Saint Petersburg was hit repeatedly, as were many small towns in the west of Russia or in Byelorussia. The Russians had the men under arms, and plenty of female comrades for those men under arms, and they possessed the tanks and artillery, but the allies had the air power and the naval resources.
Six weeks after the start of hostilities, the Berlin enclave had been abandoned by the allies, who pulled back towards a line that would have seemed familiar in my time line. Bavaria was held well enough at this time, American units dug in and sniping down at the advancing Russian units. Slovenia had fallen, northern Yugoslavia taken by the Russians, the hills to the south held by the Yugoslav Army, and now Italy was under threat.
And there started a problem, since Italy housed a vast number of communist sympathisers, all previously armed and trained by the British SOE during the war with Germany. Inside Italy, bridges were soon being blown, but by Italian communists. Barracks were raided, weapons stolen, and the country was divided in its outlook, many Italian citizens welcoming the advancing Russians.
The Americans had a large army holed-up in Italy at the time, and that army was in jeopardy, under attack from Italian communists. Many American units had moved north at the start of hostilities with the Russians, but were soon bogged down in the Italian Alps. Switzerland decided that being neutral was not an option, and preferred the Americans to the Russians. They welcomed American units into Switzerland.
USAF P51 Mustangs and B17 bombers started to operate out of Switzerland, previously neutral, Swiss citizens soon being earnestly trained in guerrilla warfare. The advancing Russian units were held in the Alps, and there a line was drawn as aerial warfare took its toll on the Russians.
That timeline then produced the first of many variations, when a joint British/American dirty bomb was dropped on Moscow, a second on Minsk, a third on Kiev. Within a week, Russians were falling sick, and believing that a chemical had been used, akin to the First World War. Hundreds of thousands of Russian civilians fell ill, a fact that The West kept quiet about. Night raids continued on Russian cities, and the Russian losses were growing. Stalin threw everything he had at the central sector, and decimated British positions with suicidal tank attacks, the British soon back to the Dutch border.
In eight weeks, the British had lost more soldiers in combat than against the Germans, and had taken to arming German civilians and former soldiers out of desperation. On the Dutch border, German Wehrmacht units had reformed, and were fighting alongside the British.
North of those positions, British warships had sailed right up to Saint Petersburg, Murmansk, Riga, Tallin and Kallingrad, and had pounded the crap out of those cities, casualties high amongst civilians. The Russians had no defence against the battleships, and the cities were abandoned. Coastal towns were hit right around the Baltic, and the port of Sebastopol in the Black Sea ceased to exist, dying under a cloud of ash. Odessa was struck and flattened, along with many ports and coastal towns in the Ukraine.
The Russian losses were unsustainable, and the war had been foolish for Stalin. When he ordered various sectors abandoned, and that all armour now attack the Dutch border, one of his own generals, Kruschev, shot him dead. Kruschev brought units back from Siberia, from Norway, from the Middle East, and from Yugoslavia, and offered the allies a truce. The allies had been in no position to be bold, and agreed a truce, Russian armour soon seen to be going home.
Kruschev lambasted Stalin in the Russian media as having brought this on the Russian people, and he found a willing audience. He pulled his soldiers back to his own borders, and started on his next headache, that of rebuilding Russia. Its cities
were just rubble, its hospitals full of those dying from radiation. It was not a pleasant prospect.
The allies rolled into Germany for a second time, on through Poland, and there they halted. Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria and Yugoslavia, they all received their freedom, and licked their wounds. The Americans agreed to leave Vladivostok, and pulled their units out of Iran over the next six months.
The war with Germany, and the war with Russia, had left Britain bankrupt and asking America for loans. Britain got the loans, but so long as it broke up its empire, and history repeated itself. The recession that followed the war was also an aberration in the time line, and America suffered another 1929 style depression. To ease the unemployment situation, soldiers were not sent home, but kept on.
A year after the end of the war with Germany, six months after the end of hostilities with Russia, the first atom bomb was tested. The world started to rebuild, and the British Empire started to shrink. Germany was occupied by the allies, Poland left with just a token force and seen as a buffer state.
Czechoslovakia was occupied, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania left to their own devices; The West did not have the money to rebuild them. America occupied Japan, and Britain held onto Hong Kong. India became independent, then immediately started to fight itself. The British African colonies were of little interest to the Americans, but the British pulled out none the less.
In the spring of 1948, Turkey had been made an offer by the allies; allow us in, or be destroyed. The Turks allowed in allied soldiers – having chosen the wrong side, bases soon created facing the Russians. Syria was held down by France, Palestine by Britain – for now, Trans Jordan and Egypt being British protectorates.
Later that year the United Nations was formed, surpassing the old League of Nations, and hope was restored. The Russians were too weak to do anything, but many small wars of independence started to break out around the globe.
During the 1950s, Britain and America remained in economic depressions, as did many countries, and the post-war recovery was far slower than in other time lines, far slower. That led indirectly to the rise of socialist movements in The West, and the Russians had a hand in communist subversion. The Americans held show trials of communists, and Italy elected a communist government whilst America still had bases there. The “Yankee aggressors” were told to leave, and did so.
In the years that followed, many of the Italian communist leaders were assassinated at the hands of the CIA, but Italy remained either socialist or communist. France had turned socialist, and the depression had kept its politics far to the left. Holland and Belgium duly followed suit, soon to be followed by Denmark. Germany was being administered by the allies, but local elections returned many socialist candidates. In Britain, the Labour party held power, and in a break with the time line saw communists tolerated - and even elected. A few bombs had gone off in London.
The net effect of the war with Russia, coming on top of the war with Germany, had been to slow any world economic recovery, and that had made the hungry masses shift to the left when voting. Even America saw a shift, with the Democrats in the White House for four consecutive terms, and little chance of a Republican getting in.
Russia, meanwhile, had not suffered financially from trying to administer Eastern Europe, and had rebuilt well enough. Those suffering from radiation were “put down”, and radioactive rubble was removed by workers with a low life expectancy – or by criminals. The prisons were emptied of political prisoners, and there were a few of those. The Russian army modernised as the years rolled on, cities were rebuilt, roads repaired, and by 1959 Russia was again considered a threat, and now nuclear armed thanks to the details of the Manhattan Project being leaked to them by communist sympathisers working on the project – as in our time line.
By 1959, America was moving ahead with technology and industry, and reached a point that it should have done five years earlier. It possessed jet fighters and basic jet passenger aircraft, computers as big as a house, plastic telephone sets, and modern marketing techniques.
It also possessed a health service insurance scheme that was far more socialist and progressive than it should have been, in any timeline. Decades of Democrats in the White House had created a Medicare programme and a pension programme that would have made the socialists in France and Italy envious. The US Government had linked the investments made into the medical insurance and general pension schemes partly to US bonds, partly to the stock markets. So, as the nation did better, so did a person’s pension and medical care. That was nothing new in itself, but the levels of investment were two or three times greater than in other time lines.
A Democratic Congress had also sponsored many doctors through college, working on the assumption that a shortage of skilled doctors forced up Medicare prices. The US had a surplus of doctors, and so medical costs were not excessive.
During the 1950s, China had invaded Korea and taken the country, America in no mood for a fight, and communism was spreading in the region. The French had left Indo-China, and elections had returned socialist or communist governments, the domino effect in operation. India started to suffer from Maoist guerrillas, but received British and American support, and West Africa was awash with guerrilla groups.
South America, meanwhile, was tearing itself apart with communist insurrection. Argentina and Chile held their own, Brazil’s socialist government refusing to deal with “Yankees”. Colombia and Venezuela turned socialist, as did Ecuador, and when they threatened the Panama Canal US forces fought a long drawn-out campaign in the jungles, defending Panama. South Africa’s brutal Apartheid regime held out against the various black communist groupings, punishment swift and harsh for its errant citizens, and fought a border war for many years.
In the Middle East, Britain had left Egypt and Trans Jordan, and was allowing Jews into Palestine, since the Jews were not setting off bombs yet – the Arabs were. Those Arabs were being nudged by Syria, which in turn was being nudged by Russia. Egypt also sent agents to Palestine and Jordan to mix things up a bit, and an independent Egypt was now leaning firmly towards Russia. Iraq and Iran were democratic, as they had been in my time line, and resisting communist influence – backed by Britain and America.
The 1960s saw a parallel with many time lines, with Russian and Chinese backed communism spreading, but the period did not witness a proxy war in Korea or Vietnam, just a prolonged conflict around Panama, as well as American support for brutal dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and South Africa.
As for Israel, they got started late, and fought a war of independence from the local Arabs in 1952, backed by Britain and America – who saw the local Arabs as siding with a socialist Syria and Egypt. The new Israeli state was formed, but a cartoon in a western paper depicted it as US aircraft carrier in the hostile sea of the Middle East.
By 1967, Israel had fought six small wars, and even its most steadfast Zionist founders were starting to wonder the merits of occupying the ancestral land. The founding fathers had remarked that you were a nation state when the first police officer arrested the first prostitute. Now the Israelis joked: you know that you are a nation state when the first air raid warden arrests the first prostitute for not closing her curtains during a raid!
Turkey suffered many terrorist attacks, and the mid-1960s were denoted by bombs going off in western cities, on buses and on trains. The Cold War was well and truly on, but Israel was the only proxy war being fought between Russia and America. And, during the 1960s, when good music was evolving, most people thought that a nuclear war was inevitable.
But no war came, and the years rolled by. I sighed when I realised where this was going, exactly where.
When the legitimate Iranian government, democratically elected, had suggested that the oil companies – backed by Britain and America – should be nationalised, it was overthrown by a puppet regime organised by Britain and America, an exact parallel to most other time lines. The new regime was brutal, and killed a hundred thousand of its
own citizens in a decade. In 1971, an Islamic revolution began early, and the puppet regime - the very unpopular Shah, was duly kicked out by the masses. Britain and America introduced sanctions. Somehow, it seemed familiar.
In 1947, in a parallel to my own time line, America had signed a pact with Saudi Arabia. America would get the oil, the brutal misogynist and undemocratic Saudi monarchy would be propped up and defended – by those who swore they believed in democracy. Seems that American morals could be bought in this timeline as well as in many others, and some idiot in the White House had persuaded OPEC to trade all oil in dollars. It was a slow moving train wreck.
1972 saw the Iranian masses threatening their neighbouring states, sponsoring terrorism, and setting off bombs. But the Ayatollah was a pragmatist, and joined forces with the communists in Egypt and Syria. Iraq was soon under threat, its own communists gaining support, and the country started to tear itself apart. American forces protected the Saudis and the Gulf States, British forces camped out in Kuwait, Oman and Yemen.
1973 saw bombs going off most every day in Kuwait, in Iraq, and in the smaller Gulf States. Jordan’s ruling monarchy then suffered a bomb blast that killed the king and his family. A socialist government came to power, and signed an accord with Syria and Egypt, but would not volunteer to go fight anyone except the Israelis - who had taken the west bank of the Jordan a few years earlier.
Sudan turned communist, not long after the discovery of substantial oil deposits, and The West feared a communist Middle East. Israel, the US aircraft carrier, received plenty of funding, and plenty of new military hardware.
