World War Three 1946 Series Boxed Set: Stalin Strikes First

by Harry Kellogg

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  Things are not going well for the NATO Allies…Yet maybe they are.

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  Timeline for World War Three 1946

  Book One - The Red Tide - Stalin Strikes First

  May 2nd, 1895-Sergo Peshkova is born

  Aug 3rd, 1943 - Sergo attends a party where he meets Stalin, and their unusual relationship begins.

  Aug 13th, 1943 - Sergo becomes an advisor to Joseph Stalin, specializing in aerospace matters.

  Sept, 2nd, 1943 - Sergo is introduced to the spy apparatus, created and managed by Lavrenti Beria, who has managed to place agents in every major top secret weapons program of the Western nations, including their allies.

  Nov., 24th, 1943 - Sergo is given full control of Soviet aerospace research and development.

  Jan 4th, 1944 - Research on the German Wasserfal Ground to Air missile and the X4 air to air missile becomes a top priority under Sergo’s leadership using stolen materials from Peenemunde

  March 12th, 1944 - An abandoned USAAF guidance system falls into Sergo’s hands, and is developed into a workable system under his leadership

  Aug 1944 – Three USAAF B-29 Superfortress bombers fall into the possession of the USSR.

  Dec, 18, 1945 - Seventeen of the twenty-two members of an elite atomic bomb assembly team killed in a series of seemingly accidental events during the holidays. Fifteen die in a bus crash. These deaths delay the American Atomic Weapons program for six months

  May 1st, 1946 - May Day Parade in Moscow

  May 2nd, 1946 - World War Three begins with a surprise attack by the Red Army, consisting of sixty divisions and over seven thousand combat aircraft.

  May 13th, 1946 - The surprise attack is a complete success, with thirteen out of twenty-two US, British and French divisions having been overrun.

  July 13th, 1946 - France surrenders to the USSR.

  July 13th, 1946 - The Soviet Agent known as Delmar (George Koval) assassinates hundreds of American nuclear scientists using the world’s most deadly substance, Polonium, at conferences in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Dayton, Ohio. This cripples the US nuclear program for another twelve months, possibly for good.

  July 27th, 1946 - USAAF attempts to drop an atomic bomb on Leningrad. The NKVD and its stable of spies is instrumental in warning the Soviet Red Air Force VVS. With a combination of the new Wasserfal Ground to Air guided Missile, and hundreds of fighters, the raid is decimated and an atomic bomb is lost in the Baltic Sea.

  July 28th, 1946 - The Red Army is stopped temporarily on the Pyrenees Line, by a combination of US and Spanish divisions using the rugged terrain of this mountain range, located on the border of France and Spain.

  Book Two – The Red Sky –

  The Second Battle of Britain

  August 17th, 1946 - The Strategic Air Command is formed with Curtis LeMay named as commander

  August 20th, 1946 - The Soviet VVS continues a massive buildup of the Red Air Force on the Channel coast. It appears that a Second Battle of Britain is about to be fought.

  Sept. 14th, 1946 – The Soviets launch a massive airborne assault on all the major cities of Norway, Sweden and Finland. Within weeks the major Scandinavian cities are under Communist control.

  Sept. 15th, 1946 – The VVS launches two one thousand plane raids on the RAF Recovery and Maintenance units, or Boneyards. Thousands of mothballed British fighters are destroyed on the ground in a complete surprise attack. The RAF has tens of thousands of good, trained pilots but only 1500 serviceable fighters and they are now outnumbered 6 to 1.

  Sept. 16th, 1946 - A Mark One atomic bomb demonstration goes badly when it detonates prematurely in front of hundreds of reporters. The Mark One Thin Man is abandoned as a viable design.

  Sept. 16th, 1946 – The Second Battle of Britain begins with attacks covering the entire British Isles. Using captured US jammers, they defeat the proximity fuses that were supposed to defend the airfields of the RAF. The VT fuse was the third-most costly, and one of the best-kept secrets, of World War Two. The RAF is brought to its knees in a matter of weeks, as the VVS roams freely over the British country side, attacking targets of opportunity.

  Oct. 1st – SAC uses America’s last four atomic bombs, destroying 80% of the Soviet Union’s oil production facilities. This attack ends the Second Battle of Britain, as the VVS transfers units to the Caucasus, to help defend its remaining oil production facilities.

  Oct. 22nd – SAC is joined by the 15th Air Force, in an attempt to penetrate the missile and fighter shield defending the remaining Soviet oil production facilities, which are slowly being rebuilt.

  The Soviet Army is poised to invade Turkey in an attempt to overrun the airfields that are attacking from the south.

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  This addendum covers books One and Two so we will jump back in time in an attempt to fill in some of the gaps you may have been wondering about. We hope you enjoy the ride.

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  Part One:

  The Golden Dragon Rises:

  The Far East Theater

  General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur, in repose

  Chapter One:

  Filling The Void

  20-23 May 1946

  Delhi, India

  Before leaving for his long-planned vacation back home to Wisconsin, General of the Army, Douglas A. MacArthur, along with President Harry S Truman's special envoy for the Far East, General of the Army, George S. Marshall, secured a secret meeting with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. All parties agreed that these talks should occur on neutral territory, so that no one party had an advantage on the other.

  When they all met in Delhi, the tension was thick in the air. Chiang was obviously not happy with having to meet with his erstwhile supporters and allies in his fight against the communists, and his sole focus at this time was to smash Mao and his band of miscreants, with little room for anything else. To Chiang's way of thinking, this meeting was a mere formality, a show of solidarity with his allies and patrons.

  MacArthur was in no mood to brook Chiang's petulant behavior though, thinking that if he, General MacArthur, the American Shogun, could put aside his differences with George Marshall for the sake of this meeting, that Chiang Kai-shek could certainly take the time to hear them out. When they all finally sat down and got to business, an ungrateful Chiang set out his usual demands: money, guns, tanks, planes and training, so that he can destroy his enemies in the Chinese Communist Party. He seemed oblivious to the fact that the Soviets were the new patrons of his enemies and were no longer going to abstain from his war, but looked poised to jump in with both feet. He was certain that once he defeated the communists there, that Stalin would graciously withdraw his troops from Manchuria without so much as a by-your-leave. He could not have been more wrong. Even now, unbeknownst to Generalissimo Chiang, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky was planning to smash his army by using the assets of the People's Liberation Army, backed up his Far Eastern Command. As it stood today, it would be a rout of Biblical proportions.

  For three days, the negotiations, if one could charitably call them that, went on. Generals MacArthur and Marshall dickered with Generalissimo Chiang for his support in the war, which he consistently refused, all while trying to get more out of the American generals. The British and French representatives, General Sir William Joseph Slim, deputy commander-in-chief of all British forces in the Far East, and General de Armeé Philippe François Marie Leclerc de Hauteclocque, commander of the French Far Eastern Expeditionary Corps, graciously stood aside while the Americans dealt with their recalcitrant Asian partner.

  At the end of those three fateful days, they were farther apart in formulating a strategy to defeat the communists in Asia by opening a second front. In a rare moment of consensus, MacArthur agreed with Marshall that something drastic needed to be done with Chiang, and soon, if there was to be any hope of victory.

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  Three weeks after the Delhi conference, and a week and a half after General MacArthur's ignominious d
emise...

  The general sat at his desk, pondering the implications of the most recent events. Setback after setback rocked the US and Allied armed forces on their heels, and the most recent loss of SCAP (Supreme Commander, Allied Powers), General of the Army, Douglas A. MacArthur, in such an innocuous, even ludicrous, manner, was really the final straw. Something had to be done to stabilize the situation.

  He got to work drafting a policy proposal, utilizing all of the knowledge and research at his disposal to developing the best possible course that the President of the United States should follow regarding the looming continuation of the war in the Pacific, with an entire Soviet command of three Fronts sitting on Mongolia and Manchuria, comprising nearly eighty combat-tested divisions. Eighty divisions, he thought, our entire Army never surpassed ninety divisions in total, and there was never any planning to do so, except in the case of invasion. In that case, we'd just fall back on the tried and true organization of the citizen-militias to supplement the National Guard. And the Soviets have EIGHTY DIVISIONS organized into just those three Fronts in the Far East... He allowed himself to despair for just a moment more before going back to the work at hand, drafting the memorandum. At the end of his efforts, and after a long and agonizing process of typing, he had something that looked like this:

  12 June 1946

  Proposal to the President of the United States

  Regarding the Far East Theater

  --President's Eyes Only—

  Due to the untimely loss of General of the Army Douglas A. MacArthur, there is a void in leadership in the Far East that must be filled. The Office of the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief have had candidates under consideration, for just such an occasion. For the position of Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, based in Japan, OCSCC recommends former 6th U.S. Army Commanding General, General Walter Krueger, for promotion to General of the Army, to assume the position of SCAP and CICUSAFFE (Commander-In-Chief, U.S. Armed Forces, Far East). His exemplary service and keen strategic mind will be invaluable in this position.

  During demobilization, the assets (the 6th and 8th Armies) that Krueger will need, had been reduced to divisional-strength, and dispersed (6th Army was sent to the Presidio, in San Francisco, while the 8th was being maintained as the occupation force in Japan, with 1st Marine Division deployed to China). All efforts are being made to bring the assets to full strength. In the meanwhile, the leadership of these armies will have to be overhauled. OCSCC recommendations for the Army-level commanders are as follows: 8th Army – General William H. H. Morris, Junior, as Commanding General, Lieutenant General James Van Fleet as his Deputy Commanding General. For the 6th Army – General Mark W. Clark as Commanding General, with Lieutenant General Julius O. Adler as Deputy Commanding General. Corps and Divisional Commanders to be determined at a later time. Also, it is recommended that General Joseph H. Atkinson assume command of the USAAF's Far Eastern Air Forces from General George Kenney.

  As SCAP, one of Krueger's first assignments will be to search the Empire of Japan to find reform-minded Japanese politicians (hopefully, without the taint of the previous government on them) to draft a Constitution and form a new government. Time is of the essence, and this cannot wait. The Japanese people will have to stand on their own, and we cannot afford to spare troops for a protracted occupation.

  As for the Japanese soldiers being repatriated from all over Asia, OCSCC (Office of the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, U.S. Department of War) has been formulating a plan for their retraining and rearmament, and a way to make it more palatable to the U.S. and Asian populations that were locked in mortal combat with them, only less than a year ago. Another major issue that will have to be dealt with is the disintegration and suppression of the resurgent Japanese Communist Party. If left untouched, they would act as a very powerful fifth-column force, more than capable of supporting any Soviet push into Japan, either through the Kurile Islands, Sakhalin Island, or the Manchurian port of Dairen.

  To summarize, we must accelerate the peace process and rearmament of our former enemies, or risk having a second front opened where we are spread the thinnest.

  Satisfied with his work, he typed his signature to the document

  B/Gen. David H. Halderman, U.S. Army

  Assistant Deputy Chief Of Staff

  Operations & Planning Division

  U.S. Department of War

  He removed the document from the typewriter, separating it from the carbon paper and the copy below it, and set it in a folder, sealing it. Once that was done, Halderman applied the stamp to it “Top Secret – President's Eyes Only” and then called upstairs for the White House courier to come get it, filing the copy away in a locked cabinet. With that done, he readied himself to go home.

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  The Dai Ichi Bank Building,

  Tokyo, Japan

  24 June 1946

  0915

  Walter Krueger was thinking back on the events of the past week and a half. There was the moment that he had received that call from General George Marshall, asking him to come out of retirement, to the Senate hearings confirming him to his new rank of General of the Army and his new command billet, to his arrival at Atsugi Airfield, to the day when he had been helping Jean Faircloth MacArthur clear out the General's inner office in the Dai Ichi bank building. Krueger had the distinct feeling that he was filling some awfully big shoes and felt woefully out of his depth. He thought back to Mrs. MacArthur putting a consoling hand on his shoulder, as if reading his thoughts, and saying to him “You'll do just fine, Walter. Mac always thought that you were his natural successor in this command. He was disappointed that you retired after the last war.” General Krueger was not swayed by her genteel Tennessee manner and had known it was pure political bull, but was far too polite to say so. Though he had great respect for the General and his family, he had no illusions as to who they were, and what they were about.

  As the last of the General's belongings were taken out of the office, Mrs. MacArthur hugged General Krueger, and wished him and his wife well in the new posting. And then she was gone, off to retrieve young Arthur IV from their Chinese au pair, Ah Cheu, and see to the travel arrangements back to the United States. He was gracious enough to allow her the use of her late husband's Army Air Force C-54 transport aircraft, “Bataan,” one last time.

  General Krueger looked at the lacquered wooden box on the desk - his desk - that contained the two circlets of five stars, the physical manifestation of his new rank, and felt a weight far heavier than any he had felt before. He was no longer a mere Army commander; he was now the face and the voice of U.S. foreign and military policy throughout the Far East, answerable only to the President of the United States. For better or worse, he was the big cheese in these parts, and it was time for him to yet again slip on the mask, and play the role assigned him. There were so many important things to do, and so little time to accomplish them in.

  That first day, he received a steady stream of foreign diplomats, military commanders, and Japanese politicians wishing to curry favor with the occupation authorities...but the biggest surprise was the impromptu appointment near the end of the day: an incognito visit from none other than His Imperial Highness, The Emperor of Japan himself, Hirohito. In due consideration to this, General Krueger took pause, and had all his phone calls and visits canceled for the rest of the day, the only exception being for the President of the United States.

  And the two men talked. At the normal quitting time, General Krueger excused the SCAP staff, except for his chief of staff. He, along with the Emperor's personal aide, were the only other people present at the meeting. Bottles of the finest plum wine and single-malt Scotch whiskey were exchanged and mutually consumed; all the trappings of power were set aside. If only for that night, two men spoke frankly, not the leader of a vanquished empire and the representative of the victorious alliance that vanquished it, but two men sitting and drinking across a table from each other. They spoke of family, and of militar
y service (the Emperor had been an Army officer as Crown Prince), and spoke frankly of the war. Neither man avoided the subject, and each man spoke from his own perspective, received by the other with courtesy and respect. Having said all that was needed to be said on the subject, the topic of conversation inevitably turned toward the future. The future is what kept these two men talking all night, into the early-morning hours, and out of those discussions came a kernel of understanding, which became the seed of a plan. This plan would allow for Japan to earn time off its occupation 'for good behavior' and become a regional political and economic powerhouse (if not militarily; they both agreed that Japan's military should never again be oriented toward an offensive footing) in the region. However, before that could happen, there were certain criteria that must be met.

  To assure that the process of developing the plan continued, both men agreed to meet at the same time every week, duties permitting. They kept to that schedule and after working feverishly but thoroughly on it, were very nearly ready to unveil the plan, in a scheduled press conference, slated to be broadcast in both Japan and in the United States. General Krueger was nervous, having seen to the fulfillment of MacArthur's legacy that Japan should never again be an enemy, and forever be a friend.

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  The press conference began late, and had every likelihood of running long, as no question from US, Allied and Japanese press would be ignored. In an unprecedented move, the Emperor again appeared in public, for only the second time in his life, in his capacity as the head of state of Japan. And, to make matters more complicated, he appeared beside the Allied commander for the occupation authority, as equals, thus giving him legitimacy. This would not sit well with the remaining ultra-nationalists around the periphery of government, but it was they who had gotten them into this mess, with their arrogant ways. He would allow them the discomfort of seeing a different path being taken, one which had sufficient inertia, that it could not be changed.