Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

More of China tomorrow.

Good update James.

I think Colonel Tanner quote in the Red Dawn classic might come true: Six hundred million screaming Chinamen.

This is the thing, if, (according to Tanner's quote), there are 600,000,000 screaming Chinamen, then you've already lost 400,000,000. That exceeds my low end estimate of 300,000,000 and unfortunately leaves you 80% of the way to half a billion dead.


I'm actually hoping that Tanner's quote was hyperbole and that in practice, even at the most devastating, it's less than 100,000,000 dead, (although I think this is very close to the OTL population of Metropolitan France for scale). Still a huge loss of life.

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November 1984: China

Without any political authorisation – regional or national – nor any military permission from higher headquarters either, the acting commander of the Shenyang Military District used nuclear weapons against the Soviets. His previous commanding officer was recently dead and the armies he now led were near finished. Surrender was an option, but instead he chose to lash out instead. Control over tactical nuclear weapons was in his hands when all pre-war safeguards and separations had broken down in the face of the never-ending Soviet onslaught. He used all those which he had. Six were used on Chinese soil against nearby Soviet forces, strikes made using rockets fired with haste and almost no warning given to those Chinese troops fighting against those hit with these indiscriminate weapons. Two more nuclear warheads, fitted to missiles with longer range, raced eastwards and out of Manchuria.

The Soviet city of Vladivostok was struck by the both of them minutes later. Warning of their impact was extremely minimal. The sirens had only just begun to sound, surprising people who were used to tests occurring at pre-announced times. Workers, civilians and soldiers started to process of taking shelter where possible, just as they had done during those practice events. Then the sun exploded, twice in quick succession. The near-miss on Tashkent last month had hurt the Soviets as that city in the Uzbek SSR had soon to be evacuated and therefore effectively lost. The nuclear strikes which had hit the smaller Chita and Khabarovsk had caused immense damage to the war effort as both of them were important industrial sites in addition to the role they were playing supporting the war in China due to their positions on & near the border. Neither Tashkent, Chita nor Khabarovsk was as important as Vladivostok though. The loss of this city, which had an extensive port and military presence where it lay at the very end of the Trans-Siberian railroad on the Pacific coast, would really cause the nation and its war grave injury.

Previous authorisation had been given to the Soviet theatre commander to undertake tactical nuclear strikes in China in immediate retaliation to Chinese attacks. This lone marshal, not his subordinate front commanders, had that permission because back in Moscow it had been decided that these could come at any time and there could very well be a need to open fire back against Chinese strike platforms with speed. His commissar would have to be consulted and could veto any attack… and Moscow could also react pretty fast too. Still, the permission was there for tit-for-tat nuclear strikes. It should also be noted that this same permission was not granted to the Soviet supreme commander in North America. When the Chinese struck on the morning of November 10th, the reply was quick. It was ordered by Moscow, not the commanding marshal for the China War despite him being allowed to (he feared to take that decision), but the targeting inside China on a tactical level was left at his discretion: he had no involvement in the strategic-level counterstrike undertaken to make China pay for the destruction of Vladivostok. In Manchuria, the target list held by the Soviet headquarters for those they would like to eliminate with nuclear weapons if given the chance (a list updated twice daily as per standing orders) was worked down. Two dozen attacks were made with small and medium-sized detonations of nuclear weapons taking place all across northeaster China. There were pockets of Chinese resistance, big numbers of cut-off men, all over the place which were hit with a nuclear attack. In a couple of other places, Soviet nuclear weapons opened holes ahead of where their armies were soon planning to advance though as they carried on going south: this was simplified the task as what opposition would be in the way when the tanks were sent onwards had already been hit by devastating weapons.

Soviet strategic strikes took place against Chinese cities once again, this time six of them to add to the four blasted before. Canton, Chengdu, Chongqing and Shanghai were the targets in October; in November there came nuclear attacks to wipe Changsha, Kunming, Lanzhou, Wuhan, Xi’an and Zhengzhou from the face of the earth. Nanchang where Hu’s government was operating from and none of the big cities along the Chinese coast were touched in these attacks, something quite deliberate.


Soviet advances in the following days occurred where they gobbled up what was left of Manchuria worth taking including the Liaoning Peninsula. Dalian (known historically as Port Arthur: what Soviet victory announcements in Moscow called it like they had recently deemed Beijing as Peking) and its port facilities could, arguably, be a replacement for Vladivostok if the Soviets wanted to keep it for good. Away to the west, deeper into China past Beijing, all of Inner Mongolia and the overwhelming majority of Xingjian was occupied. This huge area of Soviet armed control was home to a massed series of field armies who were soon to be joined by many more troops arriving from across the Soviet Union. From an outsider’s perspective, the future for the China War from the Soviet military point of view looked promising for continued advances, especially back to the east down the North China Plain to gobble up Hebei, Shandong and even further – all the way to the Vietnamese border – without the Chinese being able to stop them. In every major fight, the Soviets had eventually had their way even if it had been by chemical or nuclear means. They looked capable of carrying on with that.

Doing that, taking most or all of China, wasn’t what Moscow wanted though. They’d been offering Hu a deal, not a brilliant one but still very reasonable, to end this war before and after Beijing was taken and it was one which he had left on the table while his insubordinate generals launched nuclear attacks. This war hadn’t been started to see China occupied. Huge security zones post-war were envisioned and a massive stripping of Chinese sovereignty in how it behaved internationally plus complete nuclear disarmament were all what Moscow wanted for the future. That would mean bringing the majority of Soviet troops out of China and leaving them available to go elsewhere. Having China as a battlefield for a never-ending war, one which kept needing more and more men wasn’t what was wanted. The Soviet casualties from the fighting, added to the loses taken in nuclear strikes on Soviet soil, was huge. Moscow had the numbers and when it came to military losses, it was sitting on a pile of death notices ready to be sent to families of those oh so many Heroes of the Soviet Union. The plan was to release them once victory in China was declared, when Hu or any successor who would see sense and get rid of him gave in and realised that they had lost. When that was announced, the losses would be revealed to families – no public numbers – but they would all understand that their sons, husbands and fathers had done their duty to the Rodina.

No contact came from Hu after this latest massacre of millions of innocent Chinese civilians. The KGB network spying on his government reported that there was an attempt to depose him but it had been weak and unsuccessful. His position was that of no surrender and it kept him in power. Assassinating him was possible, the KGB said, though whether anyone with any standing capable of bringing the war to a close would be in a position to replace him after so many important figures were already dead – KGB hits squads had been busy in war’s first days – was questionable.

The war would have to go on until Hu saw sense and Soviet forces would continue to flood into China, men not going elsewhere to other worldwide theatres.


Through late November, Soviet forces moved onwards. Hu would be made to understand that his country would continue to be overrun and his forces beaten, it was decided… which went against the overall war aim but done due to Chinese intransigence. Four whole armies advanced south of Beijing into Chinese forces located there who outnumbered them greatly. Another series of victories were won before the end of the month. The Soviets reached the edge of the Zhengzhou death-zone – that city had been flooded with refugees who’d fled ahead of Beijing’s fall – and took the area north of the Yellow River where the North China Plain had been exploited for all that it was worth. Soviet mechanised forces then raced across the river, going onwards and blasting dug-in Chinese forces everywhere as they seized a substantial amount of ground including the last of the Yellow Sea coastline in Chinese hands. These victories were amazing, far bigger in scope than anything done in North America. The casualties came though, lots of them.

Soviet reinforcements arriving in China were beginning to arrive in significant numbers as the tank armies from the western parts of the Soviet Union were moving through Mongolia and onwards: trains on the Trans-Siberian railroad went no further east than Ulan-Ude because of those earlier nuclear attacks but instead headed south. Ahead of them had been smaller groups of troops, men from central parts of the Soviet Union and of a lesser calibre than the tank armies. These men had been sent into the fighting south of Beijing and operated behind the lead units against dug-in pockets of resistance and fighting guerrillas too. The Chinese had had time to prepare here, through mountains either side of the rolling plains across which tanks had advanced and also all around the edges of the big towns and small cities. The incoming Soviet troops had a terrible time. In places, they were beaten in battle and whole units up to regiment size destroyed where Chinese numbers mattered in these engagements. ‘Destroyed’ here meant something that it didn’t when regiments were lost in battle in the fighting inside the United States. Regiments there were run-through by American counterattacks and shredded. There were also survivors, men who were reformed into battalions with little equipment so they could fight again later. That wasn’t the case here. Thousands of men and regiment after regiment from four complete divisions – enough to build a whole field army for major combat operations rather than a security role – were killed with no survivors returning to Soviet lines afterwards.

When Moscow found out, a necessary excuse was now available. Vorotnikov was in the process of getting ready to dismiss and shoot all of those generals and marshals due to ‘failure’ with regards to the war in North America. More failure was now being witnessed in the China War, failure seen among all of the victories won. The Soviet general secretary was shoring up his base of support with the party establishment and that given by the KGB with the armed forces being the sacrificial lamb for this. The new casualties only added to the numbers of held back death notices, increasing that problem greatly. The charges laid were that military officers in China had not adequately prepared their forces ahead of battle and judgement was given on that betrayal of the state in terms of their lives. In a few whispers, some back in Moscow spoke of a ‘new Stalin’ when it came to Vorotnikov so eager to see so many senior military officers shot. One among those executed, was the commander of the Chinese TVD: the theatre commander who had won the war in a military sense through China and only seen that not officially come due to politics. All that success on the battlefield ahead of late November, actions which would have ranked him among the greats in terms of military commanders for how he fought the war, mattered for nothing when dismissed, arrested, flown to Moscow and shot minutes after the court martial. The charge of not preparing his men was one though he also got the blame for not at once using nuclear weapons in Manchuria when the Chinese begun to fire. It was said that if he had done so, within minutes like he was allowed to rather than waiting for Moscow, Vladivostok wouldn’t have been lost. This wasn’t true but it was a good enough excuse to get rid of him: Vorotnikov hadn’t like the praise heaped upon the marshal beforehand for all that he had done in China.

Without him, the China War would go on afterwards. Moscow was still looking to end the conflict. Hu remained resolute in refusal to even open exploratory talks with the Soviet Union. Another option was being locked at though, one involving ‘other’ Chinese and why the latest round of nuclear strikes hadn’t eliminated cities all along China’s coastline.