And now to engage in a bit of storytelling of my own.
~~~
2300 May 1st, 1945.
Red Square, Moskva, Soviet Union
Comrade Stalin stood out on the wall of the Kremlin with his pipe between his lips, a thin haze of smoke trickling from the glowing embers within the chamber. His arms rested on the ancient battlement as he gazed out over this city, over
his city. He liked to pretend that he was alone, his own council to his private thoughts, but of course the security apparatus of the State followed him everywhere. His personal guards kept a respectful distance, but they were deliberate in their implicit menace to anyone who might pass by. The more covert agents couldn't be seen, but Comrade Stalin knew they were close by, keeping watch.
Normally such knowledge would have been of great comfort to him, but on this balmy night, the first night of May, he found their unseen gazes more irritating. The city slept, save for the churning smokestacks of heavy industry which ran at a continuous clip, had indeed been running for more than twenty years every day and night. Even when the Teutons from the West had been within sight of these very spires, the glorious Soviets had still bravely come to work for the betterment of themselves and one another.
Or so his propaganda ministry now said. Stalin's moustache twitched in a moment of private humour, an ironic smirk he shared with no one else. The embers in his pipe glowed red-hot, followed a moment later by a plume of smoke streaming from his nose. After all these years it still burned his nostrils, and he relished in the stinging pain, the tears trickling from the corners of his eyes. He felt alive then, with fire in his lungs. He burned with a passion to match his city, to match his people from Warsaw to Vladivostok.
His people who had so long yearned for peace. Four years prior, the Storm-Troopers had been within sight of this very wall upon which Stalin now stood. Four years prior, Stalin had fled from the city with his tail between his legs, lest he be killed or, worse, captured by the SS or paratroopers. No one dared to breath such a judgment upon his flight, at least within hearing of others; not even Stalin himself could be candid as to the terror he'd felt on his drive East.
What the Nazis had accomplished in six months it took the Soviets three years to do. Comrade Stalin knew that; he was perfectly aware of how his people had been bled--if not white, then at least very pale. Fresh memories of the previous year percolated in his mind; images of intense negotiations, Amaricans and Britons and Russians and the occasional Frenchman couching their threats in the most conciliatory of language. Diplomacy, the art of slapping one's fellow statesman across the face and having them ask for another.
Comrade Stalin's amusement soured quickly, as memories of the subject of many negotiations took hold in his mind. Even before the final collapse of the German Reich, the Western Allies had besseched--if not demanded--a joining of battle with Japan. At the time the proposal was utterly out of the question; more than four-fifths of the Red Army were West of the Urals. The Japanese forces in Manchuria alone would have taken over all of Kamchatka and much of Siberia before sufficient forces could be re-routed to turn them back, and so soon after the conquest of Eastern Europe such a depletion of forces could have led to a disastrous rebellion among the pro-Nazi criminals still infesting the soil.
The Allies had been quick to bring up their extensive accommodations to Stalin's own demands by opening up not one, but two fronts in Europe to distract the Germans and expedite the Soviet advance. When Stalin and his aides pointed out that their action had gained them rights over a large tract of Germany itself, he was reminded that his entry into the Pacific War would not be without its own benefits. While never outright admitted, it was hinted that at least half of Korea and the majority of China would be placed under Russian stewardship, just as many nations in Eastern Europe now answered to Moscow. Stalin and his delegation perservered then, and later when Roosevelt gave a more private entreaty. The secret meeting was one of Stalin's fondest memories of the post-war period, for it was conducted in English and without an interpreter, giving each man the measure of the other without that filter. Stalin won his time, against FDR and then later against Truman, whom Comrade Stalin found much less personable than his predecessor.
Time, though, had also conspired to work against a revival of the war. The Union was at peace now, for the first time in many years. The constituent nations were rebuilding their infrastructure, families were rebuilding their lives and communities, and everywhere prosperity seemed to be sprouting from the soil as free-range grass in spring. By now, a full year after Hitler's demise and the end of the Great Patriotic War, Comrade Stalin feared it was too late to resume the struggle against the sole surviving Axis power of any note. Over the intervening months he had been shocked at the stunning reversal of Japan's fortunes, with the collapse of the illegitimate Kuomintang forces followed by the fall of Chairman Mao. Initial fears of a rapid Japanese betrayal and a surge into Siberia proved unfounded, however; indeed, relations between Moskva and Tokyo were running higher than ever before.
Nevertheless, as Stalin was continually reminded by the Allies, the Japanes's newfound ferocity could not be underestimated. It seemed a near-certainty that they would sieze Burma within the month, and India soon after...what, then, would they focus their attentions on? Such refrains had encouraged Stalin to build-up his forces in Vladivostok as a forward-station to cut Korea off from Manchuria at the first sign of Japanese aggression, but then the Japanese took the unprecedented step of actually pulling back their forces from the Soviet frontier all along the border, save a strategic spot in far-western China. This move, coupled with increasing diplomatic overtures of trade and cultural exchanges, had led to an astounding amount of sympathy with Japan among the workers and the government of the Soviet Union. Comrade Stalin himself was not unsympathetic to their position, but an ever-growing chorus of shouts from Whitehall and Washington was becoming too great to ignore.
With a sigh, Comrade Stalin tipped his pipe over the wall, letting the ashes trickle out into the darkness below. His footsteps rapidly took him inside, up and down flights of stairs, to a large state-room where waited a British delegation with authorization to secure a promise of war.
"Welcome to Moskva," said Stalin in his much-improved English, though he refused to use the English term for his name. After the cursory introductions and banter ended, the Britons got down to business.
"Burma is a wash," said the diplomat. "June, mayby before, we'll be thrown out of Indochina altogether. From there we'll be thrown into a retreat in India unless a miracle occurs."
"I see," commented Stalin. "What is your proposal?"
"High Command has given us a timetable. If the situation isn't reversed by the middle of July, we're in serious danger of losing India entirely, as well as Iraq and Yemen. Australia could next, or they could negotiate a separate peace with Tokyo. Ditto for New Zealand." The diplomat's words came in such a rush that Stalin signalled an interpreter, who gave him the gist.
"So you wish our intervention by the middle of July?" He asked. The diplomat nodded.
"Before, if that's at all possible."
"Our forces are just now building up in Central Asia." Stalin knew that it wasn't an outright refusal. So did the Briton.
The diplomat nodded. "When can you be confident in your offensive capacity?"
"We can attack them," Stalin replied, "in August."