The alternative timeline focuses on the Soviet Union, its allies and enemies in an alternative historical setting in 1958. The timeline's point of departure is the Winter War between the USSR and Finland in early 1940. The date is set ten years after the conclusion of the great world conflict known in anglican literature as the Second World War and The Great Class War in European/Soviet terminology.
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The Socialist World Republic was founded in Moscow in 1949, immediately after the conclusion of the Second World War and is an international organisation fostering mutual economic, military and political cooperation between the world's socialist states. Every corner of Europe except the British Isles was occupied by the Red Army or pro-Soviet partisan groups after the great conflict between the German lead Axis Powers and the USSR came to an end. In Central-Eastern Europe as well as in Scandinavia, the appeal of socialism and soviet-type communism was high, while the Red Army in Central-Western Europe was the main force behind the establishment of soviet republics. The Socialist World Republic was modeled as a successor to both the pre-war League of Nations and the Communist International mixed with elements of OTL Comecon. It thus functions as an international tool of collective security and military cooperation, an socialist economic block as well as an important tool for Moscow's direct influence on foreign countries (due to the Comintern effect of Marxist-Leninist democratic centrism).
Regarding the military aspect of the SWR, all member states (note: individual soviet republics, not states, are represented at the SWR), are bound by treaty of military cooperation regarding defense against external powers and peacekeeping. The Soviet Armed Forces has made up the backbone of internal peacekeeping through the SWR Peacekeeping Mandate, thus maintaining permanent military occupation within the UES and the NSU. Throughout the 1950s however, the UES has made serious efforts to take over it's own peacekeeping and defenses.
Japanese expansionism in East Asia co-incited with German and Italian aspirations in Europe during the 1930s and the beginning of the world war in Europe, bringing the Japanese Empire close to direct cooperation with the Axis Powers. Despite this, Japan never formally joined the Axis and never joined the war against the Western Allies. This was due to the global effect of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the German-Soviet common war against Britain and France in 1940. By that time, the Second Sino-Japanese War had been raging on since 1937. US president Franklin Roosevelt had been slowly making way for the USA to turn away from isolationism, and since there was universal opinion against US participation in the European War because of the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact, Roosevelt focused on Japanese containment.
In the summer of 1940, Japan agreed to US demands of discontinuation of the war in China, when the latter threatened to cease vital exports of oil to Japan. Increased US presence in the Pacific and Soviet approaches in Central Asia, lead to this conclusion, but the Japanese were also pressured into ceasefire by the Axis, who felt it was important to keep the US out of the world war. The result was that the Empire of Japan withdrew from their territorial aspirations in East Asia and isolated itself from the Axis. Diplomatic relations with the USA and the USSR remained stiff.
Over the course of the first phase of the German-Soviet war, 1941-1944, important international developments lead to a change of Japanese policy. First, after the British withdrawal from the war and the Berlin Peace Conference, Roosevelt's interventionist aspirations began to lose momentum rapidly. The second blow his faction came in 1943, when the president died and his supporters lost the presidential election the following year. The election of pacifist and isolationist president Joseph Kennedy in 1944 marked a strict return to US isolationism in foreign affairs. Kennedy even withdrew US diplomatic and economic support for China in its struggle with Japanese occupation (Japan had held its occupied areas since the ceasefire of 1940). Second, the USSR approached Japan in early 1944 after years of non-contact to negotiate an non-aggression treaty.
The Soviets were desperately in need of a guarantee of Japanese neutrality, and even offered to trade precious oil with the Japanese in case the Americans would threaten to cease exports again. The Soviet-Japanese Pact of Neutrality and Normalization was thus signed in Tokyo in march 1944. Resembling the previous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the treaty not only carried with it mutual promises of neutrality, but also a division of China into spheres of influence. The Japanese recognized Soviet influence in Mongolia and Xingjiang in exchange for a recognition of Japanese influence in China Proper. Furthermore, this lead to another treaty in 1945, where the Japanese recognized Soviet annexations of said territories, and the Soviets formally gave way to recognizing the independence of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and a continuation of a Japanese war of aggression in China. Lastly, it was agreed that the Chinese provinces of Tibet and Inner Mongolia be kept separated from each sphere and mutually recognized as independent states serving as a buffer zone between the two powers. This was Stalin's lesson from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
As a result of the treaty, masses of Soviet troops were released from the Soviet Far East, which contributed to the first successful Soviet assault in the Ukraine against the Germans. In the autumn of 1944, following a series of staged terrorist attacks in the Japanese occupation zone of China, the Empire of Japan declared the ceasefire of 1940 null and void and launched an offensive into the Republic of China. The USA was alerted by the events, but Kennedy's stance was not altered and the US remained non-interventionist in Asian affairs.
The Third Sino-Japanese War continued for two more years. The Chinese Republic eventually broke down while fighting without diplomatic and economic support against the Japanese. Chinese communist partisans, no longer backed by Moscow, were either defeated by the Japanese or managed to defect to Xingjiang and Mongolia. In 1947, the Kuomintang Republic of China surrendered, and the pro-Japanese puppet government formerly operating form Nanking took over the reins of China Proper.
The Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was established in the aftermath of the war. A zone of economic and military cooperation among the Japanese-dominated states, it grew during the early 1950s by incorporating the Empire of Vietnam and the Kingdom of Thailand. Thailand had been collaborating with Japan during the latter stages of the Sino-Japanese War and became entangled in the Co-Prosperity Sphere's economic web, eventually joining the alliance in 1949. Japanese-backed guerrillas overthrew the French colonial administration in French Indochina in 1952 after a few years of militancy. The Empire of Vietnam immediately became a Japanese satellite state after its formation.
More former colonies in the East Indies have become increasingly more economically dependent on the Co-Prosperity sphere during the 1950s. The Sphere now serves as an important and growing power block in the world weighing up against the SWR in Eurasia and the capitalist block in America.
The United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth entered the Second World War reluctantly. Despite emerging victorious in the previous world war, the British Empire had been struggling and declining in its aftermath. Unfortunately for the British, this war had far worse consequences for the Empire than did the Great War. After a series of disastrous diplomatic and military ventures, the British were demoralized, defeated and forced to sued for piece with the Germans and Soviets in early 1941. At the Berlin Peace Conference, the Empire was made pay the price. Apart from having to give up parts of its navy and paying heavy reparations to Germany, Britain lost its colonies in Northeastern Africa and the Middle East to Italy and Germany, as well as Pakistan west of the Indus River to the USSR. Britain suffered a loss of influence and prestige in the world, most notably among their allies. The Americans had already turned their backs in 1940 when the British decided to intervene in the Russo-Finnish Winter War, and the autonomous dominions felt uneasy within the Commonwealth, disappointed over the fact that their troops had fought for nothing. The Indians, who had been demanding independence for decades, were now completely bent on leaving the British Empire altogether - and this they did only a year later, in 1942, along with Burma.
On the bright side though, the United Kingdom managed, unlike France, to withdraw completely from the war in Europe after 1941. Hitler got what he wanted from the British; peace, neutrality and a lip-service to his hegemony in Europe. And even though the British Empire was at a breaking point, the war in Europe and the ultimate Soviet victory in 1948 meant that Britain and the dominions were more dependent then ever on each other's backing. During the years 1942-1945, the so-called 'Empire Question' was the hottest topic in the parliaments across the British Commonwealth. Colonial unrest in Africa following India's secession from the Empire made matters even worse. London reacted by tightening the grip on the colonies and entering negotiations with the dominions on the much discussed idea of Imperial Federalism.
In 1944-1945, steps were taken into that direction. The large white settler dominions of Canada, Australia and New Zealand became separate and fully sovereign and independent kingdoms in a personal union with the Windsor monarchy. This step amounted to the nullification of all rights and duties existing between them and the United Kingdom which had to be reconstructed if the Commonwealth was not to be rendered null and void. In light of economic hardships and political uncertainty, the kingdoms decided not to depart into five different directions, but to strengthen the Commonwealth by turning it onto a confederation of equal states.
Thus, in 1946, the British Commonwealth was reconstituted and renamed the Commonwealth of Anglican Realms, a name giving the impression of a cultural union, based on brotherly ties between sovereign kingdoms and not the domination of one over the others. A Commonwealth parliament was created with equal representation of all five kingdoms, with a joint foreign policy regarding security and defensive matters, as well as a joint Commonwealth Armed Forces.
The Republic of Ireland proudly left the British Commonwealth before and during the Second World War. However, the nation has been re-approaching the Anglican Commonwealth since continental Europe closed off and since economic cooperation increased after Ireland followed the Commonwealth into joining the US lead Free Trade Community in 1955.
When the Second World War was over in 1948 after nine years of bitter fighting, tens of million of people had lost their lives and cities lay in ruins all the way from Madrid to Moscow. After a fight-to-the-death battle between two civilizations and social systems, it was natural that the defeated, conquered side converted over to the winning side, and this happened all over Europe, excluding the British Isles, relatively peacefully. Some nations adopted Soviet-style communism, others democratic socialism, and to some, the new system was perceived as attractive and victorious or at least worth the try because of the failure of the old system. Others’ hands were forced by the Red Army and the NKVD.
The Union of European Soviets is a federation of Russian-style Soviet republics in West-Central Europe. The UES was formed in 1953, two years after the Second World Congress of the Socialist World Republic decreed that unionism was the next logical step in the development European sovietism. The Eastern European republics were incorporated into the Soviet Union already in 1951.
Unlike the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, the western union favored large republican units. Instead of giving small nations their own SSR as was preferred in the East, the UES consists of five large national units; the French, the German, the Italian, the Dutch and the Iberian (or Spanish-Catalan-Portuguese as it is officially termed). Let us briefly account for the UES republics.
The French Commune is currently the leading republic of the UES. It is an interesting twist of fate that the declining great power, being a double loser in the Second World War - first against the Germans, then the Soviets -, ended up as the leading nation in Western Europe. The cause for this development was that France had the strongest communist movement in Western Europe before the war and at the war's end – some of them had even been involved in administration before 1939. Many of those who took over in 1948 were communists who had been fighting the Germans from underground during the war years, while their counterparts in Germany, Italy and Spain had mostly been behind bars or operating from Moscow. Additionally, many Frenchmen saw the Red Army as a liberating force from the Germans (as was the case in many Eastern European republics too).
The Soviet Federation of Iberia is the militancy hotspot in the UES, because this was the last bastion of reaction and fascism during the final phase of the war and survived the war with little material damage, in comparison with Germany and France. However, it was in the post-war period that Iberia became intensively heated by class conflict, conflicts of ethnic groups as well as violence committed by, and against, the Soviet occupation forces. Unhealed wounds from the Spanish Civil War lead to a great red terror in 1949-1950, after which the Soviet Republic stood secure and united, but severely wounded.
Germany was the grand loser of the Second World War. The nation suffered total destruction and massive casualties. In 1948-1949, zealous remnants of the SS and National Socialist guerrilla parties roamed remote regions of Germany and Austria, terrorising civilians and the Soviet occupation forces. Despite mass killings and great terror, National Socialist insurgents continued to operate underground well into the 1950s. The German Soviet Republic was also burdened by war reparations, and relinquishment of industries to Russia. Despite all this Germany has made good progress in normalisation since the mid 1950s and is rising in economic strength at a rapid speed.
There were two Western European states that were abolished in 1948. Belgium was absorbed into the French Commune and the Dutch Soviet Republic, and Switzerland was carved up between the German, Italian and French soviet republics. In order to appease the populations of these countries, the former Swiss and Belgian cities of Brussels and Geneva became some sort of super-national administrative centers of the socialist world. Brussels now serves as the capital of the UES, a historically neutral city situated between France and Germany, in which Belgian bureaucrats and administrators have found a fitting role. The former capital of the League of Nations, Geneva, is now the seat of its successor organisation, the Socialist World Republic, having also taken over Comintern activities, formerly conducted in Moscow.
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