1981: Red dawn

From Alternative History

Russia invades west Germany discovering an American plot to break down the wall. All countries of the world sign the Non-nuclear treaty, vowing not to launch missiles, however it is soon broken.

Contents 1 Prelude to war 2 War begins 3 Invasion 4 Occupation 5 Soviet-European war 6 China enters the war 7 Tide Turns 8 The Cease-Fire 9 Aftermath

[edit] Prelude to war

Months of tension and stress grows on the Politburo as the Soviet Union has the worst harvest in 55 years and food riots begin to start due to slow progress and the argricultural land of the Ukraine is yielding little. They have no choice the only way to save the Soviet Union is war. But in order to do that they must launch a KGB operation to split NATO by making it appear as if the United States attemped to launch an attack on the Berlin wall, followed by an invasion of Europe in response to that “attack.” It is a success and a massive explosion blows a hole in the wall causes thousands to cross over.

[edit] War begins

.On May 1, 1981 the USSR declares war on the United States of America and her allies. The Warsaw Pact builds up its forces and they invade West Germany. The battle becomes a war of attrition that the Soviets expect to win, having greater reserves of men and matériel. NATO holds the Warsaw Pact forces to small but continual advances, but only through unsustainably high ammunition usage, and as the Soviet success in destroying the Atlantic convoys begins things start to look grim for the NATO forces. One of the strategic masterstrokes of the Soviet Union's opening moves is its seizure of Iceland, capturing the NATO air station at Keflavík. This disrupts the GIUK SOSUS line (American seabed hydrophones), expected to prevent the Soviet Navy from operating effectively in the Atlantic by making it impossible for their ships and submarines to enter the Atlantic undetected. In addition, the Soviet Navy isolate and protect their SSBN fleet, freeing their SSN force. The Soviet Navy is able to act as an offensive weapon, and the Warsaw Pact seriously damages NATO's war effort by interdicting resupply convoys coming at North America with both aircraft and submarines. This advantage is put to immediate use, as a NATO carrier battle group, led by USS Nimitz, USS Saratoga and the French carrier Foch, is successfully attacked by Soviet Backfire bombers. Foch is sunk, the amphibious assault carrier Saipan explodes, taking 2,500 Marines with her, and the two American carriers are forced to spend several weeks in drydock at Southampton, England. With the aircraft carrier threat removed the Soviets can target NATO convoys at will. Even though the NATO ammunition stockpiles running out, the NATO forces inflict massive casualties on the advancing Soviets by utilizing their airpower. But, the Soviet forces end up destroying a lot of NATO aircraft. Within two weeks after the start of the war, Russian forces had reached the deep into West German territory, causing massive casualties among of NATO forces.

[edit] Invasion

A civil war in Mexico results in that country falling behind the Communist "Iron Curtain." In a parallel to Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Union now wants to invade its primary enemy, and thousands of troops from Soviet satellite nations augment their own armies to prepare for an invasion of the United States. The Soviets utilize a three-phase plan. First, they use strategic nuclear strikes(breaking the Non-nuclear treaty) to destroy key points of communication, including several major U.S. cities (Omaha, Kansas City and Washington, D.C. are specifically cited). Strategic nuclear weapons are also used to destroy ICBM bases in Montana and the Dakotas. In addition, it is hinted that Cuban infiltrators aid in confusing U.S. forces by raiding Strategic Air Command bases throughout the Midwest and Texas. Coupled with these nuclear attacks, Soviet transport aircraft containing elite Soviet VDV and Cuban paratroopers slipped through the U.S. radar disguised as commercial airliners. The second phase sees Cuban and Nicaraguan armies (with small contingents of Soviet forces) pouring across the U.S-Mexico border into the Great Plains of the United States. The third phase involved a Soviet invasion of Alaska across the Bering Strait from Siberia. They crossed into Canada occupying the Yukon, British Columbia and Western Alberta, most likely including Calgary, and cut the Alaskan Pipeline, but are decisively stopped at the U.S-Canadian border by U.S. forces(thus preventing a link-up with Soviet forces occupying the Great Plains). The Communist forces manage to occupy and control a large region of the central United States, extending as far West as the Rocky Mountains; North to Cheyenne, Wyoming; and across Kansas to the Mississippi River in the East. Denver is also under siege. Conditions in Denver are particularly bad, with people living on "rats, sawdust bread, and, sometimes, each other." The remaining holdouts most likely won't survive. The initial landings are made by airborne divisions and Spetsnaz (special forces) brigades. Their objects are to gain control of key military and government installations. Once the lines are stabilized, it quickly becomes a conventional war with both sides ceasing their use of nuclear weapons. The Soviets are reluctant to use any more nuclear weapons, as they want to conquer the United States, not destroy it utterly, and the U.S. government is unwilling to use tactical nuclear weapons on or over their own soil against the invading armies. The Soviets work through American collaborators at the local level to help them maintain order.

In response to the tactical nuclear attacks on Washington, Omaha and Kansas City, U.S. ICBMs struck the Moscow area, as well as Leningrad. The effect on the Soviet military was minimal, however, as Soviet military leaders abandoned Moscow in anticipation of a U.S. nuclear reprisal. 12 million civilians, however, died in the attacks. This fueled anti-Americanism across the Soviet Union, as civilians were told by the Soviet propaganda machine that there had been no use of nuclear weapons on the United States. Support for the occupation of the United States increased dramatically in response.

[edit] Occupation

The areas which are now occupied quickly spawn a Resistance movement against the Soviet-Warsaw Pact occupation. The Soviets knew it was important to use the best and most highly-motivated Soviet troops for the occupation, to permit rapid and effective response to any resistance, however with the overwhelming resistance that began, the Soviet field commanders had to abandon the plan. The Rebels proceed to attack the occupying forces using ambushes, booby traps, guerrilla-style bombings on Soviet positions, as well as raids on the occupiers' supply depots and convoys. The most elite units of the Soviet ground, sea, and air forces are used in the initial occupation. As a result of escalating guerrilla attacks, the Soviet field commanders now view the Resistance as a serious threat. Initially the occupiers had to try terror tactics, executing groups of civilians following every Rebel attack, to intimidate the local population and the rebels into halting their attacks. However, this tactic backfired resulting in the civilians lending increased support to the Resistance. Following a rise in popular support for the Resistance, Strelnikov, a Soviet counter-resistance specialist, arrives to declare that there will be no more reprisals against civilians. Instead the specialist sends Spetsnaz commandos into the mountains to eliminate the Rebels. This new strategy fails when the commandos are ambushed and killed by the rebels over a very short period of time.

[edit] Soviet-European war

Europe was falling, trying to hold West Germany against the Red army. The Soviet Union invaded all of Western Europe trying to establish the "Iron Curtain" on the entire continent. NATO aircraft manage to reduce Soviet ground superiority early in the war by using first-generation stealth planes and tactical fighter-bombers to eliminate five Soviet mainstay AWACS aircraft, several bridges, bridge equipment and crews, and Soviet tactical fighters, but this advantage is short-lived. In West Germany, the battle becomes a war of attrition that the Soviets expect to win, having greater reserves of men and matériel. NATO holds the Warsaw Pact forces to small but continual advances, but only through unsustainably high ammunition usage, and as the Soviet success in destroying the Atlantic convoys continues things start to look grim for the NATO forces.

[edit] China enters the war

Just days before the outbreak of the war, Soviet Union forged an alliance with China, supplying China with weapons, and enabling a Chinese ground invasion of Japan. With Soviet forces overextended in Europe and North America, the alliance with China was seen as key to keeping the United States from mounting reprisals on the Soviets from the Japanese homeland and the islands in the Pacific. The Chinese were particularly ruthless during their siege of Tokyo. More than 4 million civilians died during what became known as "the Battle of Tokyo". Chinese troops were ordered to eliminate all grown men in the city with bayonettes and other stabbing weapons in order better maintain order and reduce the possibility of civilian resistance.

However, less than two months into the war, the Soviets stopped supplying China with weapons due to depleting military supplies on the Western and North American Fronts. But while the Soviets discontinued exporting supplies to China, the USSR continued to oversee the importing of food and other raw materials from China. Food became invaluable after the nuclear annhilation of the Moscow area by U.S. ICBMs disrupted food production for a large part of the country. But as food became increasingly scarce in China as well, many of the rural poor began attacking Soviet supply vehicles and the Soviets shooting Chinese civilians in response, China demanded withdral of Soviet forces from China.

The Soviets refused and, expecting retaliation by the Chinese, began a preemptive nuclear strike on major Eastern Chinese cities and military sites, including Beijing and Shanghai. The resulting nuclear holocaust claimed the lives of nearly 400 million Chinese. Western farmlands were safe from fallout, as the nuclear clouds drifted East over the Yellow Sea. Hundreds of thousands died from fallout in Korea and Japan.

The Soviets anticipated a quick surrender by the Chinese after killing all its heads of government during the nuclear attacks, but remaining military leaders quickly regained control and China abruptly switched sides and withdrew from Japan, leaving the country in a state of anarchy, with no central authority. A military front with China was established, although the Soviet forces lining the front were intended more to keep starving Chinese civilians from seizing food supplies in the West. China reprised with several tactical nuclear strikes in Eastern Soviet cities, effectively destroying Soviet Pacific forces. In the ensuing months, this allows the U.S. to mount an effective campaign against Soviet-occupied territories in the mid-West from the their Western Front, as the supply of weapons and military personnel had been cut off from the Pacific. Because of the fallout from the Pacific nuclear strikes, the Soviets abandoned occupation of Alaska, and remaining Soviet forces surrendered.

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[edit] Tide Turns

When a brilliantly timed naval attack on Russian bomber bases with submarine-launched cruise missiles cripples the Soviet bomber force, the Soviets lose their most effective convoy-killing weapon. The Red Army proves unable to capitalize on its breakthrough, which leads the Politburo to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons at the front to regain the initiative. Alekseyev, realizing that a tactical nuclear exchange would almost certainly lead to a strategic nuclear exchange, seeks and obtains control of his theatre's nuclear weapons in order to ensure they would not be used. A captured Soviet pilot from the Iceland campaign also (under heavy “medication”) reveals to the NATO forces why the war was started. The NATO forces immediately re-evaluate their bombing tactics over the front and start blowing up every fuel depot they can find (which had been widely spaced and smaller than usual); this cripples the Soviet armored forces, keeping them from launching at least one major attack which would have caught the NATO forces shorthanded and allowing reinforcements to arrive prior to the battle, NATO forces slowly get ground while inflicting terrible losses on the Red Army.

Meanwhile, Soviet forces are being crushed as the tide in America has also turned. With guerrilla fighting throughout the occupied territory dwindling troop morale, and the Soviets abandoning their campaign in Alaska in response to the Chinese nuclear strikes, U.S. forces gain ground, especially on the Western Front. U.S. forces re-link through central Canada and Panama, resupplying the remaining Western U.S. military. The Soviet forces outside Los Angeles and in Arizona are quickly defeated, as supplies through Mexico are cut off after U.S. naval forces gain control of the Gulf of Mexico, because Cuba is crushed and surrenders after U.S. conventional bombing destoys much of the country.

With Soviet supply lines cut off from both the East and West, occupying Soviet generals order their troops to stand heir ground, until the momentous battle of Oklamhoma, where General Nobokov surrenders and nearly 16,000 Soviet troops are captured. The United States begins dropping leaflets over the occupied territories, promising Soviet troops merciful treatment if they surrendered, but death by forced drowning should they be forcibly captured. This results in many troops along the fronts surrendering, and, in Denver, a major uprising againt the commanding general. The U.S. quickly defeats the remaining Soviet forces outside Ft. Worth, Texas, on September 11th, 1982.

[edit] The Cease-Fire

On September 18th, 1982, the Soviet Union offered a cease-fire with the United States and NATO, including a complete withdrawel from Western Europe, including Germany, and the Western hemisphere. With much of the U.S. and Europe in ruins, and its people exhausted from the war, the U.S. and NATO reluctantly agreed. However, no formal treaty was signed. Military forces on both sides stayed on active alert, as both sides continued to re-man and re-arm themselves.

The war officially ended on January 5th, 1983. The total human cost of the war was nearly 650 million dead, and countless more injured.

[edit] Aftermath

The total losses from each country are as follows:

China: 450,000,000

Soviet Union: 70,000,000

United States: 50,000,000

Japan: 22,000,000

Korea: 10,000,000

India: 10,000,000

Germany: 8,000,000

Mexico: 6,000,000

United Kingdom: 5,000,000

Cuba: 4,000,000

Nicaragua: 3,000,000

Other: 15,000,000

The dust created by the nearly 400 megatons of nuclear explosions caused global temperatures to drop briefly, resulting in climatic anomolies that reduced the global food supply even further. Food riots became a common occurrence throughout the entire world until the Global Food Commission was established in 1988. But up to 100 million are believed to have starved to death in poorer countries up until the early 1990s.

A cold war between the Soviet Union and the West continued until the Communist Party was overthrown in a brief civil war on March 17, 1984, after widespread starvation claimed the lives of almost 10 million of their people. The new, democratically controlled, government surrendered to the West on April 13, 1984. NATO went in and disarmed the nuclear stockpile. The Soviet Union disintegrates in following months.

A major global economic depression continued until around 1993-94, when pre-war economic conditions finally returned. The invention of the Internet at the turn of the century marked the emergance of a new global community bent on peace and prosperity.

As of 2009, hundreds of nations have signed a disarmament agreement, including Russia, the United States, and all of Europe. This newfound global cooperation is fostering rapid economic growth, even in China, where much of the land is still uninhabitable due to the nuclear contamination.