Interwar Cold War

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I have already posted elsewhere a variant of this strategic scenario, which developed it with a PoD occurring during WWII, and made its version of the Cold War unfold in similar circumstances as the ones we are familiar with. In this version, similar ATL Cold War conditions get established during the interwar period in Europe and Asia as a result of a divergence occurring in the immediate aftermath WWI and the Russian Revolution. Because of the different origin, certain features get to be substantially different from OTL or the post-WWII ATL versions (isolationist America, not so weakened British Empire, intact and sane Germany and Japan, fascism is essentially prevented, slower decolonization, etc.).

Things more or less began to diverge when the Reds reaped more military success than OTL in the Finnish and Russian civil wars. This allowed the Communists to overrun Finland and the Baltic states, and to crush the Russian Whites quicker and easier than OTL. It also put the Soviets in a position to provide timely support to the Hungarian Soviet Republic which allowed it to win the upper hand in its conflicts with its neighbors. These successes emboldened the victorious Soviet leaders to double down and try their hand at exporting the Revolution across Europe by force. They were vaguely aware of the serious logistic and exhaustion problems a Soviet invasion of Europe immediately after WWI and the RCW would face, but they were confident revolutionary fervor and Communist insurrectionary activism across the continent would make up for the difference.

For a while it seemed like their bold assumptions were right since the Red Army crushed the Poles and cooperated with the HSR to defeat the Czechoslovaks and the Romanians in a two-front war. In relatively quick order, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania were overrun. These successes enabled the Soviets to pull the Bulgarians to their side and stage a Communist takeover in Bulgaria. They made use of the traditional good feelings between the Russians and the Bulgarians and promises of a reversal of Bulgaria’s humiliation in WWI.

Despite the traditional and recent enmity between the Russians and the Ottomans, the threatened dismemberment of the Turkey by Greece and the Entente powers drove the Turk nationalists in an alliance of convenience with the Soviets. Unlike Hungary and Bulgaria, however, the Turk nationalists mostly stayed in control and were able to prevent a Communist takeover of their land.

The Soviet-Hungarian-Bulgarian-Turk alliance defeated the Serbs, pushed back the Greeks, and overrun vast tracts of the Balkans. By then the Red Army was facing serious logistic and overextension problems at the frontline, and was largely running on fumes. However their successes made the Soviet leaders confident world revolution was at hand, so they ordered the Red Army to invade Germany and instructed Communist parties to stage uprisings across Europe.

A wave of strikes, riots, and civil disorders occurred in several capitalist countries, most seriously in Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, and Austria, where it took the form of armed uprisings. To a less severe degree, disorders also occurred in Britain, the Dominions, the USA, and Japan. Comintern-backed agitation and rebellion arose in India, China, and the Arab lands.

Ultimately, however, the Western governments and regular armies, variously supported by right-wing militias and foreign allies, were able to put down the Communist rebellions. The Germans quickly rearmed and reorganized their army to fight back the Soviet invasion. They got the support of the British, Americans, and Italians that switched to regard the Reds a worse danger than a resurgent Germany. The French initially stood in opposition and even attempted to check the German comeback with an abortive invasion of the Rhineland. The potentially disastrous French drive soon collapsed because of German resistance, unrest at home, the opposition and sabotage of the other Entente powers, and the threatened mutiny of the French soldiers that had lost their appetite for aggressive wars of revenge.

As a rule, the German troops fought with considerably more determination since they were defending their homeland from invasion. So they were able to push back the overextended Soviet invasion; the Germans made an alliance with the Czechs and the Poles, and their counteroffensive swept Bohemia-Moravia and western Poland. In a similar way, the Greeks painfully fought back the Soviets and their allies from their territory with the help of an Entente expeditionary corps. However they were forced to withdraw from western Anatolia. The Italians intervened in the Western Balkans after forming their own alliance with the Albanians, Slovenes, and Croats. The Italian soldiers got persuaded to fight competently by the perceived necessity of forestalling an invasion of Italy and protecting the irredentist claims in the region.

Various interventions by the French, Dutch, British, Germans, and Italians helped put down the unrest in minor nations and the colonies. Acting in concert, the Germans and the Italians conquered western Hungary. The European counteroffensive, the failure of Communist revolution in Western Europe, and the threatened rise of anti-Bolshevik resistance in Russia and conquered Eastern Europe persuaded the Soviet leaders of the necessity of a compromise peace. More or less the same way, creeping war exhaustion, Franco-German antagonism and mutual distrust, and the looming threat of revolutionary collapse drove the necessity of a compromise peace in the minds of the Western leaders.

So WWI and the Russian Revolutionary Wars at last came to an end. A compromise peace was agreed upon between Germany, the Entente powers, the Soviets, and Turkey. The leaders of the capitalist powers got persuaded that a Communist takeover of Europe had been barely avoided, and to contain a resurgence of the same threat a reasonable compromise deal to restore goodwill between former enemies was imperative.

By the terms of the peace agreement, the Communists remained in control of the lands of the former Russian Empire, including Finland, the Baltic states, and eastern Poland (up to the Narew-Vistula line). They also got Slovakia, eastern Hungary (up to the Danube), Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia. Within the Soviet leadership, a clash occurred between Lenin’s unitary view and Stalin’s autonomist argument about the proper disposition of the conquered nations of Eastern Europe. As a compromise Finland, the Baltic states, eastern Poland, Slovakia, eastern Hungary and Romania were incorporated as various SSRs into the newly-established USSR. Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia instead formed a Communist Balkan Federation.

The Communist army and secret police brutally crushed any resistance to Soviet rule in the conquered lands. A wave of Russian and Eastern European refugees fled the Red Terror into the Western nations. As a rule, however, the nationalities that had showed greater cooperation with the Soviets during the war got a more lenient treatment and a preferential deal as it concerned territorial settlements. The peoples that had resisted conquest to the bitter end got the opposite. Nationalist Turkey kept Anatolia, eastern Thrace, and the Turkish Straits. The Turk leaders stayed friendly to the USSR, although they refused to join the Balkan Federation. They were wary of excessive Soviet influence in their country and wished to avoid another general war with the European powers.

France annexed Alsace-Lorraine, Wallonia, and Luxemburg. It was going to receive a fair amount of reparations from Germany to account for the damage the war had wrought on its northern and eastern regions. However the terms the powers agreed upon ensured the reparations would be sustainable for German economy. The Netherlands annexed the Flanders. France and Germany agreed to keep military parity of their land forces (subject to revision in case of Soviet threat) and establish a strip of demilitarized territory on both sides of their border. The powers agreed to cast all the blame for the war on the defunct regimes of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Serbia.

Germany ceded Alsace-Lorraine to France and Posen to Poland. It annexed Austria and the Sudetenland. Plebiscites confirmed its ownership of West Prussia and Upper Silesia with large majorities. After the Soviet invasion, many Pole inhabitants of these areas came to regard Germany as a better option than the fragile western Polish state. Germany guaranteed the Poles and the Czechs free use of several German ports. It was returned Cameroon and awarded Belgian Congo as compensation for the loss of its other colonies. However the French and the Germans eventually agreed to swap Cameroon for Middle Congo and Gabon.

Italy annexed South Tyrol, the Kustenland, central Dalmatia, and many Adriatic islands. It got a protectorate over Carniola and Albania. A strip of demilitarized territory was established on both sides of the German-Italian border, with similar terms as the Franco-German deal. Britain and Italy agreed to cede Cyprus and the Dodecanese to Greece to reinforce it against the USSR and Turkey, in exchange for basing rights in various Greek ports. Poland (up to the Narew-Vistula line), Czechia, Hungary (up to the Danube), and Croatia got independence, and found themselves in the uneasy role of Europe’s frontline against the Soviet colossus. The other great powers agreed to recognize Ethiopia in the Italian sphere of influence, and soon afterwards the Italians conquered and annexed it.

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In the postwar period, the Western European states struggled for a while to achieve economic and political stability, but eventually they were able to find sufficient equilibrium and entrench their status of liberal democracies. However the ordeals of the revolutionary period and the looming threat of the USSR put the Western world at large into a Red Scare mindset. Communist parties were outlawed and far-leftists made subject to harsh police repression in continental Western Europe, Japan, and Latin America. Even in the more liberal English-speaking and Nordic countries, Communists and their sympathizers often faced ostracism, harassment, loss of jobs, and many limitations to their rights.

To pacify the right-wingers, the Germans enacted a monarchical restoration that re-established the Hohenzollern (with William III on the throne) as heads of state for Germany and Prussia. The restoration was extended to the other most prestigious dynasties in various German states, such as the Habsburg in Austria, the Wittelsbach in Bavaria, the Wettin in Saxony, and the Welf in Hanover. It was skipped in the historical minor states, however. The Germans took the opportunity of constitutional change to enact other reforms, such as a change of electoral law and introduction of constructive vote of no confidence to check instability and factionalism, and a revision of internal borders of German states to streamline and rationalize them.

In the USSR, the Soviet leaders came to the conclusion their expansionist strategy was fundamentally right, but its implementation had been premature. Immediately after WWI and the Russian Revolution, the USSR was too burdened by war exhaustion and backwardness to properly fulfill its historical role of being the spearhead and guide of world revolution. For a while, they would turn inward, stabilize their empire, entrench their power, industrialize, rearm, and build up the economic and military might of the USSR by whatever means necessary. Up to the day the USSR was ready for the ultimate confrontation with the capitalist powers, they would look for and exploit any opportunity to destabilize and confound their enemies and sow unrest in their empires.

In the Western world, the resentments and distrust sowed by the war lingered for years; however a generalized consensus emerged to deem the peace deal acceptable and a new fratricidal conflict to be avoided lest the Reds exploit the opportunity to prey on a divided and weakened Europe again. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, however, the mood shifted to deem true reconciliation and economic and military cooperation between the Western European states essential to prevent a new conflict, contain the Soviets, and keep economic and political instability at bay. The fortunate coincidence of a group of foresighted French, German, and Italian statesmen coming to power at the same time allowed Western Europe to make a major leap and paradigm shift towards cooperation and integration.

The result was the creation of the European League (EL), which included a military alliance, a customs and monetary union, and the gradual establishment of an European common market and an integrated military. France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands were the founding members of the EL; Poland, Czechia, Hungary, and Croatia quickly joined it to gain economic support and protection from the USSR. Despite their questionable economic and military contribution, the Eastern European states were granted full membership out of strategic concerns, being at the frontline of the Iron Curtain.

Spain, Portugal, and Greece did not join the EL due to their economic weakness and political instability. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden did not join the European integration process either out of their commitment to neutrality, but opted to establish a similar regional project of their own. The outcome was the Nordic Union, a confederation of the three Scandinavian states and self-ruling Iceland. The NU officially pledged neutrality but almost everyone expected it would side with the EL in case of a general war that involved the Baltic.

Britain shunned membership in either organization because of its imperial status and commitments, although it sought informal but close economic and military cooperation with both. The USA retreated to their traditional isolationist stance after the war, only really caring about their own security and interests in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific. However they showed benevolence and non-committal support towards the European efforts for reconciliation and cooperation, and stayed suspicious of Communist encroachment in their own sphere.

Because of Soviet expansionism in Europe, Britain and America provided diplomatic and economic support to Japan’s efforts to retain control of North Sakhalin, Outer Manchuria, and Trans-Baikal, which it had occupied during the Russian Civil War. When the Soviets attempted to conquer the area, armed clashes between the Red Army and the IJA yielded the Trans-Baikal to the Soviets, but the Japanese kept control of Outer Manchuria and North Sakhalin. Much as it happened in Europe, the apparent military stalemate and war exhaustion persuaded the Soviets to let the issue lie until they had increased their strength, and make peace with Japan.

However they identified China as one of the most promising targets for immediate expansion of Communist influence. So the USSR poured a great deal of support to Chinese Communists. The resulting civil war between the KMT and the CCP greatly complicated and delayed China’s recovery from the chaos of the warlord era. The Japanese picked the Soviet threat in the Far East and China’s sorry state as an excuse to seize control of Inner Manchuria, and the Western powers accepted it. To compensate for their own losses in the Far East, the Soviets supported the secession of Xinjiang under a pro-Soviet warlord and its annexation as a SSR. They also kept Outer Mongolia as a Communist client state and supported its seizure of Inner Mongolia.

The Japanese annexed North Sakhalin and organized Outer Manchuria and Inner Manchuria in a Manchurian client state where they engaged in economic development, Japanese-Korean settlement, and forced removal of the Russian and Han population. The Soviet threat dominated the perception of the Japanese nationalists and militarists, so they focused their attention on containing it, defending and developing Korea and Manchuria, and opposing Communist influence in China. They buried their tentative plans to directly dominate China by military conquest, instead getting engaged with more indirect means of influence, such as supporting various pro-Japanese cliques and warlords as proxies. In domestic policy they essentially focused on ensuring a high degree of Japanese military preparedness.

The radical faction of the Japanese nationalists and militarists tried to impose their wish for hardcore authoritarianism and endless expansionism on the nation by means of attempted mutinies, coups, and assassinations, but they were suppressed and purged by the civilian government and elder statesmen acting in concert with the Emperor and the military moderates. A number of moderate liberal reforms were enacted, including limitations to military influence on the cabinet, universal male suffrage, regional and local decentralization, and cultural autonomy and political representation for Korea and Taiwan. To a substantial degree, this allowed liberal constitutionalism and democracy to flourish and take root in Japan, and considerably eased the political assimilation and cultural co-existence of Korea and Taiwan with Japan in the Japanese Empire. However the military stayed a state within a state and radical dissent (especially of the far-leftist and radical or anti-Japanese nationalist kind) was not tolerated.

The Chinese civil war became a multi-sided struggle between the Nationalists, the Communists, and an array of opportunist warlords; the three blocs controlled roughly equivalent portions of territory, even if the KMT was the strongest side in terms of population and resources. The conflict also developed into a proxy war between the USSR and Japan. The Nationalist government resented China’s loss of several border territories but was too aware of its weakness to pick a fight with the USSR or Japan about them. It focused its attention and energies on fighting the communists, co-opting or subduing the warlords, and trying to build up its own economic and military strength in cooperation with the EL, Britain, and America.

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In India, the independence movement made greater and greater gains in influence and popularity, and the British found increasingly difficult to check it, also because of the support of the Comintern for the most radical and aggressive wing of the nationalists. Nonetheless London attempted to deal with the situation by a mix of token concessions, repression, and stalling. Instability in the Arab lands after the war, the potential threat of pro-Soviet Turkey, and the meddling of Comintern agents persuaded Britain and France to bury their previous partition plans for the region. They established the Arab Kingdom of Syria and Mesopotamia, with the Hashemite dynasty at the helm, as a client state under joint Anglo-French influence. It included Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Kuwait. Soon afterwards its creation it intervened in the war between the Saudi Sultanate of Nejd and the Kingdom of Hejaz, also controlled by the Hashemites. The Saudis were defeated and routed. The war led to the unification of Syria, Mesopotamia, Hejaz, and Nejd into the Kingdom of Hashemite Arabia. Palestine and Lebanon were established as homelands for Zionist Jews and Middle Eastern Christians respectively, with the Muslim population being strongly ‘encouraged’ to relocate to Egypt or Hashemite Arabia.

Soviet agents also attempted to fuel far-leftist and radical nationalist agitation and unrest in other areas of the world, such as Latin America, the rest of the Arab world, and Southeast Asia. As a rule, they reaped their greatest success in the regions where the growth of the anti-colonial movement and its potential radicalization had developed sufficient momentum, such as Egypt, French Indochina, and the Dutch East Indies. It was not enough to radically destabilize the status quo, but it created enough agitation and unrest to fuel the persistent tension and polarization between the capitalist great powers and the USSR.

The British enacted a number of measures to try and stabilize their empire. These included a union between Egypt and Sudan; South Africa’s annexation of Southern Rhodesia, South West Africa, and Bechuanaland; Newfoundland’s and the Bahamas’ merger with Canada; and the grant of a considerable measure of autonomy to India with independent legislative assemblies in all Indian provinces, a federal central government incorporating both the British provinces and the princely states, and the protection of Muslim minorities. This reform somewhat lessened nationalist unrest in the Raj, although it fell far short of the radicals’ demands for independence, or even the moderates’ calls for Dominion status. The British Empire took some meaningful steps to turn itself into an economic, political, and military union of Britain and the Dominions, on the model of the European and Nordic integration processes. They were partially effective, although the economic ties of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand with the USA were growing to outshine the ones with Britain and acted as a serious obstacle.

In Europe, persistent polarization between the Western and Communist blocs took a tangible form in the Iberian Peninsula and the Balkans when a sequence of right-wing and left-wing coups and uprisings plunged Spain and Greece into civil war. The Spanish conflict soon spilled over into and engulfed Portugal as well, and both civil wars became major cases of proxy war between the EL, backed by Britain, and the USSR. Both sides poured generous support to their proxies, but the tipping point occurred in Iberia when the British, French, Germans, and Italians deployed a naval blockade to stop Soviet shipping to the Iberian far-leftists. The Soviet leaders considered treating the blockade as a casus belli. However at the time the USSR was still in the midst of a massive industrial and military build-up effort and busy enacting a vast bloody purge of imagined political enemies and supposedly disloyal minorities. So in the end they opted for prudence.

The right-wingers won the Iberian Civil War and the conflict led to the restoration of the Iberian Union between Spain and Portugal. The new government had some authoritarian leanings and enacted harsh repression of far-leftists, but European influence allowed it to remain a democracy. It granted a measure of federal decentralization to appease the regions of Iberia with autonomy wishes, which helped post-war stabilization. However the conflict caused serious damage to Iberia, and left it saddled with an enormous debt, that it was utterly unable to pay, and in dire need of further European economic assistance, even with the generous terms Britain and the EL were willing to apply.

After some haggling, an agreement traded remission of Iberia’s debts and a generous economic aid plan for its reconstruction in exchange for the Iberians ceding their Southern African and Asian colonies. Germany got Angola, Britain got Portuguese India and Macau, the Netherlands annexed East Timor, and Mozambique went to a Franco-Italian condominium. Soon afterwards, Italy ceded its share of Mozambique to France in exchange for Tunisia. The French and the Iberians eventually agreed to cede French Morocco to Iberia in exchange for Portuguese Guinea and Spanish Guinea as a consolation prize. Iberia joined the EL.

In the Greek Civil War, opposite strategic conditions to the Iberian one applied that favored the Communists. The Soviets and their Balkan allies were able to pour abundant support to the Greek Communists through the long land border with the Balkan Federation, overwhelming the aid the Europeans could ship to the right-wingers by sea or through Italian Albania. The far-leftists hence won the civil war and overran mainland Greece. The EL and the British considered direct military intervention to turn the tide, but they were aware this risked escalation to a general war with the USSR. The Western powers deemed the state of their rearmament incomplete, so in the end they decided to back down. However they deployed their navies to shelter the defeated right-wingers that retreated to the Greek islands. Insular White Greece thus remained in control of the Ionian Islands, Crete, the Cyclades, the Dodecanese, and Cyprus. Mainland Red Greece joined the Balkan Federation.

Creation of the EL common market and monetary union brought a considerable degree of economic stability and prosperity to Western Europe. This fostered political stability, toned down nationalism and the bitter memories of WWI, fuelled consensus for European integration, sustained major industrialization of Italy and Iberia, and helped keep left-wing and right-wing extremists marginalized. Economic growth financed the extensive European rearmament program the EL countries felt necessary in order to counteract the massive military and industrial build-up of the USSR. Although the civil war and loss of colonies left some bitter memories in Iberia, the economic boom brought by European aid and integration in the EL common market helped dispel them, sustained reconstruction, and built consensus for the new regime and integration in the European system.

The economic baggage the Western world had accumulated since WWI eventually resulted in the Great Recession at the end of the 1920s. In Europe, the economic crisis acted as a major spur for the creation of the EL, which proved to be a quite effective counter to its effects. In the USA, it ultimately led to the “Fair Deal”, a major revival and extension of the progressive economic and social reforms that had been first enacted during the Progressive Era. In this period, America remained mostly turned inward, only really caring about its interests in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific. However, political instability and Communist encroachment in Latin America drove the USA into the Banana Wars, a series of military interventions in several Caribbean and Central American states.

Although the US military ultimately proved rather effective in putting down opposition, lingering concerns about stability and security of the region drove the Americans to the radical solution of putting most of it under their direct control as a protectorate, despite racist concerns. The Americans used bribes, diplomatic pressure, presence of their troops, and promises of investments (including a commitment to expand the Panama Canal and build the Nicaragua Canal) to persuade the governments and elites of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama to accept union with the USA. Racist concerns about annexation were appeased by making the new territories associated states instead of granting them US statehood. Puerto Rico, which America had acquired after the Spanish-American War, got the same political status. Because of racist concerns, Haiti was not included in this settlement, but was kept as a de facto US protectorate.

American victory in the Banana Wars smothered most of the potential for nationalist opposition to the annexations, and the US military effectively suppressed any subsequent flare-ups of armed resistance. Union with the USA brought a level of political stability and democracy the region had scarcely known since independence, and American investment fuelled remarkable economic growth for Latin American standards. Over time, this suppressed nationalist feelings and entrenched large majority support for continuation of the union. The Philippines were also granted autonomy and self-rule in domestic matters as an associated state and protectorate of the USA.

The Americans stayed suspicious of Soviet and Japanese attempts to dominate China, and wary of expansion of Communist influence or Japanese power in the Pacific. However they were satisfied with a status quo that left Japanese power mostly tied down into containing the Soviets in the Far East. The USA were quite sympathetic to British and European efforts to contain the Soviets in Eurasia, although they shunned any alliance commitments with European powers.

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By the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Soviet leaders deemed the industrial and military build-up of their empire was sufficiently advanced, despite the disruptive effects of the purges, to start using military force, not just destabilization and proxies, to expand their power. They identified the Far East as the most convenient area to use their increased strength, due to Japan’s lack of overt alliance ties with the Western powers, their CCP proxies in China, and their wish to avenge previous defeats. Soviet infrastructure development included track duplication of the Trans-Siberian Railway and its extension to the Pacific on a northern route that did not cross Japanese-controlled Outer Manchuria. The USSR picked the opportunity of a few border incidents to escalate the conflict into a full-scale invasion of Manchuria. At the same time, they increased their support to the CCP in the Chinese Civil War with the intervention of a large Red Army force in northern and western China.

Weapons and organizational superiority of the Red Army over the IJA and more so the Chinese Nationalists gave the Soviets the upper hand from the beginning, even if the effects of the purges made the Soviet military less functional than it could have been. The Japanese and the Chinese Nationalists fought back fiercely, but gradually the Red Army overrun Manchuria at the price of heavy casualties for both sides. However Japanese concentration of forces and entrenched resistance at the Yalu, as well as air-naval superiority frustrated all Soviet attempts to break out in Korea or land in Sakhalin. In China, the Soviets and their CCP auxiliaries occupied a large portion of the country, eventually reaching the Qin Mountains and Huai River, the traditional dividing line between northern and southern China, and the Yangtze River.

At this point, the frontline mostly stabilized, because of Soviet logistic fatigue and overextension complicated by Chinese guerrilla resistance, as well as KMT weakness and unwillingness to fight on the enemy’s terms. Up to this point, the Chinese Communists had enjoyed some important popular support, enough to make them a credible candidate to reunify divided China. Soviet intervention apparently gave them a big shortcut to power but in practice ruined their standing, since Chinese public opinion turned fiercely anti-Soviet and came to despise the Communists as traitors and stooges of foreign invaders. Resistance to the Soviets redeemed the KMT’s flaws in the eyes of the Chinese and cemented popular support for their cause.

Anti-Soviet resistance flared up and spread across northern China, driving the Red Army to repress it with their usual brutality. This contained the problem to a degree but it turned the Chinese even more hostile, starting a vicious cycle of repression, resistance, and infamous atrocities. Soon Communist power in China became dependent on Soviet bayonets to survive. The Red Army found itself trapped into a quagmire, since China was too vast and too populous for them to occupy entirely and crush all resistance – at least not without committing the bulk of Soviet military power to the task and leaving the USSR vulnerable in Europe. For a while, however, the Soviets remained confident their usual brute-force approach would eventually succeed and allow them to dominate China. The Chinese situation and the military stalemate on the Yalu, which both sides were apparently unable to break, however drove them to make peace with Japan. The Japanese accepted it since the conflict had got them persuaded they would not be able to defeat the Soviets without powerful allies and an extensive reorganization of their military and national resources.

The Soviets annexed Manchuria and Mongolia as SSRs and set up the CCP in charge of northern China as the People’s Republic of China. The Soviet intervention simplified the Chinese Civil War to a two-sided struggle since the warlords got crushed or absorbed by the Communists or the Nationalists. The Soviet-Chinese frontline mostly stabilized, even if conventional clashes occasionally flared and guerrilla war raged on. The Nationalists refused to give up and continued their stubborn resistance, their war effort being sustained and their military performance gradually improving thanks to support from Britain, America, the European powers, and Japan. Although ownership of Manchuria remained a serious issue of contention, the Chinese and the Japanese reluctantly aligned to form an alliance of convenience against the Communists. Soviet expansionism in the Far East further increased international hostility to the USSR and the Communist movement. It changed perceptions to clear up most issues of contention and suspicion between the Western powers and Japan, driving them to form a common front.

The result was the Anti-Comintern Pact being signed by the EL nations, the British Empire, and Japan. It included an anti-Soviet military alliance, a commitment to suppress Communist destabilization and the activities of the Third International, and a naval treaty. The signatories agreed to provide all help short of military intervention to Nationalist China. The USA did not join the alliance component of the ACP because of its wish to avoid foreign entanglements, but it signed the naval agreement and pledged support for the political and strategic objectives of the Pact. The naval treaty lessened tensions in the Pacific between the signatory powers and allowed their military resources in the region to be re-focused on the containment of the USSR. Tibet, already de facto independent after the downfall of the Qing dynasty, reasserted its independence from China and put itself under British military protection after the Soviet invasion. The Indian army occupied Tibet despite Chinese protests and the area became a British protectorate.

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This map shows the world in the early-mid 1940s. For simplicity, Hashemite Arabia is shown as a British protectorate instead of an Anglo-French client state, and the proto-EU outline does not extend to the European colonies.