A Fleeting Thought for the Cold War

So for the last couple of years, I've spent a lot of time researching and working on figures and whatnot for hypothetical Cold War battles set at various points during the Cold War.  Despite living through most of the cold War, I have learned far more about it in these last couple of years, than I did during the decades of experiencing it, and I have to say that my perspective of it has changed somewhat.

One of the reasons for my research was to look for windows of opportunity for either side to have initiated a hot war.  In the end, I've come to believe that two things are true, there was never a decisively favorable opportunity, and there was never a scenario that wasn't going to end in a nuclear glow.  Maybe that is why it played out as it did.

I've also come to see Able Archer as being the most dangerous situation during the Cold War, presenting the best example of what might have caused a hot war.  Neither side had an understanding of what was happening with the other side, and this type of mutual mistake sees to be the most likely scenario for hot conflict.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a calculated event, where both sides came to understand much of the situation, prior to de-escalating the situation.  Curiously, Khrushchev sacrificed his career to save humanity, and we killed our leader after America's greatest victory over the Red Menace. 

Anyway, back to my Cold War thought...

So my desire to play these Cold War era games is to pit interesting equipment and organizations against each other on the table top.  I have visions of Conquerors maneuvering against JS-IIIs, AMX30s countering T62s, and M60A2s sniping at the onslaught of T64s.  All very tasty from the the gaming perspective.  But, every scenario is haunted by that nuclear glow at the end.  

I want to fight out these conventional, WWII-ish type battles, with no interest really in dealing with atomic and nuclear weapons. Hard to do, when the real game was really all about the nukes.  Then, while considering hypothetical situations and alternate timelines, a thought came to me: What if atoms worked differently, and nuclear weapons weren't possible?

I know, ridiculously simple and utterly silly idea.  But I am working with alternate timelines, at least at the point where the battles begin to take place.  It is fiction right?  So why not give it a consideration?  So I did.

I start by ending with WWII.  No atom bomb, Operation Olympic takes place, allied losses are tremendous, more than doubling all US losses for the war.  Japanese losses are off the scale, starting to look more like those of the Soviet Union.  Japanese defeat takes longer than expected, and maybe drags on as a sort of guerrilla war.  Dewey does defeat Truman, and we're off.

The Soviets take a moment to regroup, stabilizing eastern Europe, the west reorganizes, stands down, at least initially, and things start off similar to our timeline.  But Stalin doesn't have to worry about B-29s and mushroom clouds, still feels the same way about Germany, and hugely outnumbering the west, starts off by taking West Germany.  

At this point (maybe 1948-1951), I've just got WWII all over again, briefly.  I mean Shermans, Comets, and T34s, a few Centurions and Pershings, JS-IIs, a few JS-IIIs, a few P-80s and Mig-9s, some Meteors, and lots of P51s and all the Soviet jobs.  Relative to my goal of follow-on technology, it is a loser.  Not enough time has passed. Next.

So lets say that for whatever reason, Stalin decides to let the west consume itself, maybe the Berlin blockade takes place, Stalin dies, Khrushchev takes power, maybe Malenkov has more sway, not sure. The Soviets outnumber the west big time, West Berlin and West Germany are a pain, why not invade to eliminate the problem.  How the frick does the west stop that steam-roller.  Huge conventional build up?  That slows the reconstruction of Europe, things suck longer, France and the UK piddle with their colonial conflicts. Socialists and communists across Europe are stirred on with greater effort by the Soviets.  De Gaulle is assassinated, Greece becomes a Soviet satellite, France goes communist with some subversive help, and it really gets weird.  Maybe Krushchev is done away with in '57.  The steamroller rolls and the game is short.  Where are we? 1956-1960 maybe.  

Okay, maybe Nixon and Khrushchev have a bromance, and things hold off until the 1960s.  Upstart Kennedy comes along, Khrushchev is sick of the US overflights in Soviet airspace, Korea went badly, Germany is a cancer, the Soviets gotta do something.  JFK carries a big stick and gets annoying, Nikita decides to whack him with his. Steamroller rolls a bit more slowly, but rolls none the less, and out of France...



Silly fun to try to imagine a world with no nukes, but the reality is that I think we get a big war quickly  (looking too much like WWII on the table for my purposes), and even without it, within a few years of WWII, everything gets so different, the names and faces and the direction of the evolution of  technology, etc, that the events and conventional weapons we know simply don't happen.  As we move away from WWII, it gets to be ever-imaginably fictional, and loses all touch with the conventional Cold War reality and technology that I want on the table top.

Other than gaining a slightly different perspective of the role of nukes in our world, the fleeting thought is lost.  

Back to the historical timeline. 

(I didn't even get to share Mexico joining the the Warsaw Pact and Emperor Putin's invasion of ...)

((See what happens with a lock-down and me having time to think?))