| June 25 |  |
Editor says, what if the Kuomintang had won the Chinese Civil War? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).
In August 1945, the Soviet Army established a Soviet Civil Authority to rule the northern portion of the Korean Peninsula until a domestic regime, friendly to the USSR, could be established. In 1949, a military intervention into South Korea was considered by Kim Il-sung, but failed to receive support from the Soviet Union, which had played a key role in the establishment of the country. The withdrawal of most United States forces from the South in June dramatically weakened the Southern regime and encouraged Kim Il-sung to rethink an invasion plan against the South. The idea itself was first rejected by Joseph Stalin but with the development of Soviet nuclear weapons, Mao Zedong's victory in China and the Chinese indication that it would send troops and other support to North Korea, Stalin approved an invasion which led to the Korean War..
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In 1950, fearing that the border clashes on the 38th parallel signalled an impending invasion by the Syngman Rhee regime in the South, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea appealed to the Soviet Union for urgent military support.
Pyongyang, 1950Only six months before the late Chairman Mao's followers had fled to the island of Formosa making Kim Il-sung's isolated regime in the North the only pocket of communism in Asia Pacific.
Thrilled by this outcome, the speeches from the Government in Seoul had become increasingly belligerent in tone.
The spectre of an imperialist plot to unify the peninsula, real or imagined, was enough to raise the tensions to boiling point. And now the two Koreas stood on the brink of war.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: Korean War, Kim Il-Sung, Syngman Rhee, Kuomintang, Mao Tse-Tung. Editor says, in this article we explore a point of divergence proposed on the Space Forums discussion board and have repurposed a significant amount of content from Wikipedia.
~ Nuclear war, to be more precise.
~ At least it would've been early nukes instead of widespread ICBM destruction we would've seen in the '60s.
~ The left party line is STILL that Rhee started the war in OTL.
~ How long would the Americans have tolerated a Communist island of Taiwan?
~ Would the USSR have given direct military support to North Korea under these conditions? I don't think so. It's a commonly held belief that Stalin gave his permission for an invasion of South Korea in 1950. Based on what I've read, I think it's safe to say that, in the end, Stalin did not disapprove the invasion, but he was not an enthusiastic supporter.
In the timeline above, I believe the primary issue is what would have happened to Rhee. He was VERY committed to re-unifying the two Koreas by force. Had he had American support, I have no doubt an invasion of North Korea would have been underway by 1950. What could Stalin have done? Attacked American troops directly? Maybe if China were a communist ally, but there's no way he would have sent the Red Army to an isolated, mountainous backwater (in his mind) of little value to Moscow. The most that would have come out of a South Korean/American attack is a strongly-worded condemnation leveled against the United States at the UN.
OR...the US/South Korean invasion of the North could have been seen by Stalin as a precursor to what the Americans wanted to do in Europe. This might have led to an accelerated military build-up in the Soviet Union, which would have been met with a similar build-up in the United States. Tensions may have remained at a much higher level than they did in real life, meaning that something like the Cuban Missile Crisis would have been much more likely to trigger a nuclear war. Now, we would all be living in caves and I would be chiseling this on a stone tablet for future generations.
~ I don't think Mao would have headed for Taiwan, and if he did, I don't think the US would tolerate him there for long. He'd have likelier forted up in the Northeast (Manchuria, to non-Chinese) or somewhere like that, along the Russian border where he could get help from them. And I take it also that this POD includes Chiang managing, somehow, to clean out the KMT enough to at least make them able to hold China...a lot of the Communists' victories in OTL were directly attributable to KMT inefficiency, incompetence and corruption.
~ MARK: Probably a long time. But a Chiang-Kaishek-controlled Beijing would have launched an invasion as soon as mainland China could get its act together.
Other than that, a Communist defeat in the Chinese Civil War changes EVERYTHING...
~ Either Manchuria or Mongolia for Mao. Not that Mao would take over Mongolia (Outer) but that Stalin would have leaned on the Mongolians to take Mao in.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
