To sum it all up…

Basically Stalin has found out that the US only has 3 very clumsy nukes on hand and decides to take a chance in May 1946. Historically his former allies had very few usable conventional forces left in Europe. In reality we only had 2 full divisions that were anywhere near combat ready at this time. Demobilization was wildly successful.

"Five months after VJ Day 8.5 million Allied soldiers had been demobilized. By June 1946 there were only two divisions ready for emergency deployment. When Truman tried to slow up the demobilization there were riots in the Armed Forces"

"The Western democracies and the Soviet Union discussed the progress of World War II and the nature of the postwar settlement at conferences in Tehran (1943), Yalta (February 1945), and Potsdam (July-August 1945). After the war, disputes between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies, particularly over the Soviet takeover of East European states, led Winston Churchill to warn in 1946 that an "iron curtain" was descending through the middle of Europe. For his part, Joseph Stalin deepened the estrangement between the United States and the Soviet Union when he asserted in 1946 that World War II was an unavoidable and inevitable consequence of "capitalist imperialism" and implied that such a war might reoccur."

"A series of studies by the JCS named Pincher presumed that the Soviets would swiftly overrun most of Europe and seize the channel ports within weeks."

So my storyline has the Soviets marching through the blasted hulk of Western Europe like a hot knife through butter. They turn north near Paris thinking that the newly formed NATO allies would be doing another Dunkirk. In reality the NATO forces where pulling back to a defensive line formed by the Pyrenees Mountains near the border of Spain and France.

By the time Stalin figures out what is happening they have formed a strong defensive line and have dug in using the mountains as an anchor. Stalin's forces hammer away at the Pyrenees Line and come to a crushing halt. Reinforcements on the way from the Chinese/Japanese theatre are ambushed at their staging areas of Minsk and Kovel by a pair of GO229 carrying nukes effectively destroying 50 divisions and the attack against the Pyrenees Line stalls in southern France.

The NATO allies start a bombing campaign aimed at the Soviet oil production facilities in the Caucuses launched from Egypt. Stalin invades the Mideast through Turkey in an attempt to stop the destruction of the oil production, his life blood. They make it as far as the Suez Canal when almost simultaneous amphibious invasions by NATO start to unfold.

Using the equipment, personnel and expertise developed by D-day and the cancelled invasion of Japan NATO invades. Beachheads are formed in Trieste, Italy, Murmansk and Riga in the Baltic and Beirut, Palestine. As the NATO forces march inland they cut off the supply lines of the Soviet forces in Southern France and along the Suez Canal then they counter attack on all fronts.

Another amphibious invasion occurs on the Black Sea far East of Sevastopol which has been nuked. This invasion force cuts off the Soviet defensive line formed in the Caucuses.

Thus a relatively small force of 50 NATO divisions has cut off hundreds of Soviet divisions in Southern France and the Mideast far from home unsupplied and starving by using the assets already on hand from the planned invasion of the Japanese homeland.

These forces drive almost unopposed towards Moscow and Stalingrad.

Any comments or questions are welcome.