something i'm working on. FDR dies in January of 1945 before the dems can replace Wallace with Truman, and he finishes WW2 without dropping the atom bomb and works towards cooperation with the Soviets while alienating the old European colonial powers.
i have a general timeline that I'm cleaning up right now and doing more historical fact checking and adding more granular events (right now it's just month to month and general summaries). the timeline is coherent and has a theme. I'm nervous about doing the Soviet Union stuff (it's been very vague) because i don't want to sound uneducated (i am). so I'm welcome to any suggestions. i'll post the first couple years shortly
but i'm afraid to embarass myself too much and come across as too libshit
my biggest struggle is what (if anything) would Stalin do if he no longer felt under siege (immediate post war)? did he have plans to clean up the party bureaucracy and bolster the constitutional order? assume he has extensive economic support, no threat of hostile intelligence ops, and a friendly U.S. admin sincerely trying to build a "one world, two systems, one end goal" order.
just know that in the end the U.S. is going to be more or less market-soc/dem-soc with one party (multiple faction) dominance, and the Soviets will be mostly centrally planned, embracing cybernetics, but maintaining an NEP style consumer economy. Market socialism (with various levels of planning, from full Cooperative economies to Dengist-style) will become the dominant and median economic ideology of the Free World, with various strains of social progressivism (much accelerated from our own timeline)
also expect a lot of thematic inversions from our timeline, mostly done for narrative reasons. I still need conflict and a sort of "cold war" to make a good story, it's not just pure utopian wishcasting. yes the nationalists win in China, but Mao gets to take his forces to Korea and helps lead Sung's forces to victory
EDIT: I will post the first couple years in a separate post. i need feedback on the Stalin stuff. so far it's just a secret meeting between Eleanor Roosevelt and Stalin, mediated through Eleanor's bestie Lyudmila Pavlichenko. She delivers him a letter (may or may not be legit) from the late FDR telling him to put on a big show about rooting out "corruption" and "ensuring full democratization" for the world stage. With the letter is a list of names of British and French agents, as well as some promises and call backs to them making fun of Churchhill for being cringe. FDR admits to being a liberal capitalist at his core, but tells Stalin Wallace may be more ideologically aligned with him then he believes.
it's the main one. Franco-british alliance basically is the foundation for the entire anti-communist bloc. without dropping the whole timeline: basically there are two blocs by about 1950. U.S.-Soviet which includes Eastern Europe, GDR, Greece, Italy (eventually after elections), Indonesia (after revolution), Mexico, Cuba (eventually), Vietnam (eventually), Japan (later), People's Republic of Korea, and Manchurian Region.
Colonialist bloc is British Commonwealth, French Republic, Benelux, Spain, Portugal, North African states (forced), Middle East (puppet states), most of Africa (held as possessions), India, Brazil (through a coup and U.S. capitalists fleeing there), and a large chunk of China.
other nations remain neutral/non-aligned but shift over time (mostly towards the U.S.-Soviet bloc). nearly every colonialist bloc state has an active revolutionary movement at different stages of maturity. the U.S. becomes strictly "non-interventionist" (mostly just funding left wing electoral movements in it's hemisphere) while the Soviets actively and aggressively fund and support revolutionary movements. both work together in secret but publicly act shocked by their actions.
maybe a southern China rump state, centered on Hong Kong and supplied by the Commonwealth would make more sense?
Yeah, if the nationalists hold onto anything in China, it'd be a HK-based rump state. And I don't see that lasting past the end of the 99 year lease, if even that long. I could see Japan itself being more initially reactionary, but also more vulnerable to eventual Communist revolution, with a conditional surrender.
The Br*tish would definitely be trying to fuck us from Canada.
the only thing that saves the U.S. is MacArthur tries to coup Wallace with every loyal general he can gather up and anyone still alive from the Business Plot after the Korean unification (Wallace forces MacArthur to step down when he tries to go rouge)
marine General Evans Carlson, who fought with the PRC and was sort of an ideological comrade of Smeadley Butler, is only grazed during the Battle of Saipai in this timeline since his wounding occurs after the divergence. (butterflies!!) he's an interesting character I knew little about him at first
so he fully radicalizes the U.S marines, who happen to guard the White House. this guy founded the concept of modern special forces (and was tight with Mao) so they repel the coup attempt easily as loyal "constitutionalist" generals refuse to join, Wallace can purge and do a constitutional convention and go full mask off demsoc. U.S. marines become the unofficial Red Guard.
(also Canada eventually just goes neutral and quits the Commonwealth it's not worth the risk plus they can just be a nice socdem state and behave)
Hell yeah. MacArthur would be the one, guy was a fucking maniac.