Homepage > Articles > The River Rhine

Uploaded: November 29th, 2022.

Updated: November 29th, 2022.

Here's a short and hopefully not to boring alternate history scenario for you to read if you are interested.

This short scenario is set in 1945, a couple of weeks after the end of the war in Europe.

After the slow, gritty, and prolonged demise of the german war machine, peace in Europe was finally here. The Western allies and the soviets now draw a sharp and defined line through Europe, from the danish straights to the Macedonian mountains just north of the greek border. The continent now stands divided, and rightfully so. the ideological battle for global hegemony begins.

On the cold and bitter side of the iron curtain lies the soviet union and its many recently conquered puppets, all nodding in compliance to ensure the harshest reprisals don't come to it and its people who strive for a less authoritarian way of life. They happen to be much more paranoid in this alternate post-war world, and the first lines of gunpowder spill from the rolling powderkeg, the final and defining war of the 20th century seems like an inevitability.

The united states were holding a lit match and should've known better than to have hesitated on snuffing the fire in such a tense new order, but instead, it vied for global hegemony, and its pre-war days of splendid isolationism are now unrecognizable compared to the continent-spanning world power.

Then, an incredibly provocative move was made, without the consult of its western allies. They knew the soviets wanted all of berlin, and the only way to cut this starting contest short was to strike fast and decisively. The USSR and USA both fall into a tense and nervous atmosphere that filled berlin's rubbled streets. The tanks stare, the diplomats look on in awe, and the skirmish begins.

The USA and USSR begin to fight over the city of berlin and their forces pour around the outskirts of the war-torn city like a snake strangling its prey. all-out war breaks out in Europe, perhaps for the last time, to put and end to all these petty conflicts over pride and presitige.

the western powers immediately join the outbreak of war, and the overwhelming forces of the east push further west, up to the rhine river, where the west has built up almost impenetrable defenses to deter and keep the soviets at bay.

This war rages, and the worst is still to come. the united states and its relatively undamaged allies became the new bread basket of the world, and the soviets and their chained allies no longer had access to the plentiful bread the new world had to offer. mass starvation and mutinies break out over the months, and the American atomic bombs were pelted into the eastern grasp of Europe, decimating many soviet cities, and hoping to bring the war to an end, and oversee the collapse of communism in Europe.

The soviets were grinding themselves out at a faster pace than their western opposers, hoping to drive them out of mainland Europe through attrition. there was no such luck, as the previous war of 4 long spanning years dried the soviets of the majority of their willing or not civilians to hurl themselves into the war-torn cities they had seen only months ago.

Then, just as the west seemed unbeatable, the truth of the American's provokative actions in berlin shook the Atlantic bayed nations to their core. mass revolts began to pour out in each nation's major cities, even giving the soviets a run for their money. as the west began to push across the rhine, the soviet state and its puppets were in a state of mass collapse. the famines, the millions already dead from the patriotic war, and the now grinding attrition they were losing. Eastern Europe and surrounding soviet republics bit the iron fist of communism and fell to the ground only to shatter into outright chaos and separatism. The western allies began to fall apart as they learned about the united state's strike in Berlin, and the western people began to revolt in mass and demand an end to war, and a return to isolationism, fed up with the many relatives in a mass grave, and the endless shenanigans they had to endure. 

The united states itself fell into strife over the guilt of such an unjustified and provokative move to force the soviets to come to terms with its demands for eastern Europe, western forces disintegrated and Europe was embroiled in a pointless war the people had forgotten the meaning of. the shining beacon of freedom in North America fell to constant revolts, coups, and sepratist movements. before long new governments were set up by the fractured governments that once ruled from sea to shining sea. now the entirety of North America and Europe had fallen into anarchy, with some partially legitimate governments vying to control as much of the continental united states as they could.

Order in Europe collapsed, and the continent was now in a state of constant conflict and peril, each and every separatist state was as paranoid as its neighbors. The American-soviet war was forgotten, and the remaining people of Europe fell into a consistent rage of anarchy, and the counter coups became as meaningless and common as the breadlines of yesterday.