I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 189

“Hmm… How much work have you done on the military administration?”

Military administrations were set up in the former Axis countries, namely Germany, Japan, and Italy.

The current chief of staff, Basil Levsky, was expected to be appointed as the commander-in-chief of the Western Military Administration, and Colonel Tolbukhin, who was known for his prudence and meticulousness, was appointed as the commander of the North Japan Military Administration.

The Manchuria region was changed to the ‘Soviet Army in Manchuria’ under the command of Zhukov, who had been in charge of the Far East Military District.

“Yes! Well, we haven’t had enough time to reach a perfect level, but the occupied areas are being managed without any trouble. If you could give us a little more time and budget…”

They nodded their heads and looked through the documents nervously. But well, it would be a lie if they could take over the operation of a country in just a few months.

The exiled communists who were taken as collaborators, or the local communist forces or fascists who were brutally suppressed, had no power to govern. They couldn’t suppress their dissatisfaction with the hunger caused by the threats of guns and swords, or their worries about the future.

It was easier for the backward regions where they could win the hearts of the peasants with radical reforms such as free confiscation and distribution of land.

But the three Axis countries were all industrialized enough, and especially Germany had a history of providing various welfare measures to win the workers’ hearts, so it was not easy to control them.

“I see. Make sure, absolutely sure, that there is no trouble.”

“Yes! Comrade Secretary!”

The 1953 East Berlin incident was the precursor to the anti-Soviet protests in the Eastern European satellite states, leading to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the 1968 Prague Spring. 

They had to prevent such things from happening from the beginning, considering that the suppression of the East Berlin unrest caused resentment in other countries and turned the minds of the intellectuals in East Germany.

Fortunately, I didn’t push for industrialization as obsessively as in real history.

As he caught my eye, the bald Khrushchev blushed and was leading the expansion of light industry, that is, the production of necessities.

“We need to make sure there are no problems with the supply of necessities… We’ve been at war for the last few years, so we might be able to put up with rationing or low living standards, but we can’t keep that up forever.”

If not, we’ll import from the US. They added that and the Politburo members bowed their heads.

They felt good when they thought of the US imports.

“Hehehehe…”

The US had agreed to pay a huge price to the Soviet Union to get nuclear weapons. 

They had a lot left over from the Lend-Lease payments, and they also provided tens or hundreds of billions of economic aid under the name of ‘joint support for post-war recovery’!

And we had a huge amount of gold that we got.

“Shall we… go see it again later?”

“Yes? Yes! Hehehe…”

They laughed similarly when they realized what my laughter meant.

Even if it wasn’t theirs, they would feel good when they saw the huge amount of gold piled up.

The Nazis had plundered the gold that was stored in the central banks of the Western European countries they occupied, as they did in real history. 

The gold they plundered from places like the Netherlands and Belgium had created countless urban legends under the name of ‘Nazi’s secret gold’.

But here, Nazi Germany had prospered more and had more gold. 

They had trampled on Britain, the second in the world who would be sorry for their passion, and Germany had gotten over hundreds of tons of gold bars.

But now it was ours.

In the underground storage in Moscow, there was a gold storage where the huge amount of gold that Germany had stolen was stolen back and piled up. 

Most of the gold that Stalin had collected before the war had gone to the US for the Lend-Lease payments, but the gold that had been brought from Germany had filled the storage as if it would.

The few high-ranking officials of the Politburo who had witnessed the majestic and shocking sight seemed to have been quite impressed.

Now we could sell this slowly to the US, buy necessities or food, and pursue industrialization with the money left over. We’re rich!

“Then let’s hear how the elections are going.”

“Yes! Comrade Secretary!”

As I said that, Molotov snapped his fingers. The NKVD agents, who seemed to have become more humble, pushed in a huge blackboard.

On the blackboard, there was a huge map of Europe that included from the Urals to the North Atlantic.

“First, in the Fourth French Republic, the Communist Party won a landslide victory in the constitutional assembly elections, taking more than half of the seats. Following the Comintern’s order, they will form a popular front with the Socialist Party, which came in second in the constitutional assembly. If the current number of seats is maintained, a single-party government under the cabinet system will be possible.”

The Communist Party, which had driven out the German army from Paris, won the election as expected. But there was another reason why they ordered a coalition with the Socialist Party.

“As for the colonial issue, however, since there is a possibility of national backlash, we instructed them to cooperate with the Socialist Party, which is the only party that takes a conciliatory stance on this issue, and they seem to have reached an agreement within the front.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s their problem if they resist when we’re trying to do them a favor.”

The colonies were literally a deficit. Except for the capitalists who made a lot of money from the colonies and the few immigrants who found wealth there, the government had to spend a huge budget and the people had to pay taxes for it.

Nevertheless, the colonial empires were obsessed with the colonies because of the national pride issue. But now, as soon as the French Republic government was established, they would raise a torch.

The torch of decolonization.

In Algeria, the Algerian Communist Party, and in the Indochina colonies of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, the Indochinese Communist Party were already active under the Comintern’s order. 

The Soviet Union mediated between them and the home government to help the colonies peacefully become independent.

Inevitably, the Third World, which advocated decolonization and anti-imperialism, would lean toward the Soviet Union, which increased the number of countries. 

This meant the expansion of Soviet influence in the United Nations.

“If necessary, we should reduce the training TO of our officers in Frunze and expand the study abroad of the officers from the colonies. It’s time for us to start disarmament, too.”

“Yes! I understand.”

The students were the key mediators who spread the influence of the study abroad country to their home country. They couldn’t just chop off the bloated army, so they had to gradually switch to foreign education programs.

Just as the officers from the Whampoa Military Academy of the Chinese Nationalist Party had fought against imperialism in East Asia, the Soviet Frunze could support the anti-imperialist movements of the officers from Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

“Next is the British situation. Unfortunately, the Conservative Party seems to have the upper hand in the general election. But the Labour Party is not under the Comintern’s order either…”

“Hmm? You mean the Conservative Party won?”

“Yes, that’s right. The British people’s mourning for the dead Churchill is still quite high. The slogan to remember the ‘old lion’…”

Wow, this is unexpected.

In the actual history of the 1945 British general election, the Labour Party won a landslide victory against Churchill, the ‘war hero’. 

At Yalta, where the three leaders, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, discussed the post-war world after Germany’s collapse, the only one who could keep his seat at the next meeting in Potsdam was Stalin.

Roosevelt died of a stroke in the meantime, and Truman became president. Churchill lost the election and was succeeded by Attlee of the Labour Party.

Now, Attlee and Eden were leading the exiled British government in a two-man triangle, and I thought the Labour Party had a good chance of winning without the slogan ‘from the cradle to the grave’. But it seemed not. 

The graph that Molotov showed me showed that the Conservative Party’s support rate was far ahead of the Labour Party’s.

“Anthony Eden, the former foreign secretary, seems likely to succeed Churchill as prime minister. Anthony Eden is an imperialist similar to Churchill…”

Molotov was briefing based on the information that Kruglov had scraped from the NKVD, but I knew better than them.

Churchill, who had lost power in 1945, had another chance. 

The Labour government, faced with the outbreak of the Korean War, colonial rebellions, and cuts in welfare spending due to rising military spending, eventually lost the 1951 general election. 

Churchill retired in 1955 and handed over the prime minister’s office to Eden.

But Eden intervened militarily in the independence of the colonies, and joined forces with France and Israel to overthrow the Nasser regime that nationalized the Suez Canal, but it turned out to be a painful mistake.

I didn’t need much explanation since I knew his achievements as prime minister…

The world situation seemed to be moving in an unpredictable direction.

“Anyway, it seems that the US is not completely out of reach in Europe.”

“Yes… Also, the British Labour Party seems to be negative about the independence of the colonies.”

“Hmm…”

That made sense. Britain had been trampled and exiled before it could fully exploit the resources of the colonies on the German front.

This loss of prestige led to widespread rebellions in Britain’s colonies around the world. In India, the largest colony in the world, Indian nationalists led by Nehru and Gandhi staged protests almost every day.

It was still quiet, but Arab nationalists-socialists, black liberationists in East and South Africa, would flare up as soon as they had a chance.

‘It was the opposite in real history…’

Britain had relatively peacefully granted independence to its colonies, while France had lost its colonies after fighting the Algerian War, the Indochina War, and so on.

In the process, the US, which had supported France, the junior partner of Western Europe, had unwittingly stepped into the Indochina War.

France, on the other hand, had freed Algeria and withdrawn from Indochina after losing at Dien Bien Phu, under de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic, but the US, based on the ‘domino theory’, had invaded Vietnam, fearing the spread of socialism after China turned red.

This time, China became North and South, and India seemed to be turning red as well.

“The British army is rebuilding after retaking the mainland, but the British colonial army is still intact. However, whether they can use the colonial army to suppress the same Indian independence flag…”

As the debate went on, a messenger burst into the conference room door.

“Comrade Secretary! Urgent news!”

“What? What’s going on!”

“From the US… From the US…”

From the US? Did FDR die? I heard he wasn’t in good health…

“Dewey was finally selected as the Republican presidential candidate. The candidates decided to push Dewey as they were worried that MacArthur and McCarthy were too radical…”

“Hmm? Was that something to worry about?”

Dewey? He only left his name as a loser in history. He lost to Roosevelt the first time, and to Truman the second time.

MacArthur and McCarthy, who rose to power in a flash, were worrisome if they became the US president, but it wasn’t a big deal if they didn’t.

“Is that all? It seems like Roosevelt will win anyway.”

“No, no. That… The conservative faction of the Democratic Party in the South defected en masse to the Republican Party. Dewey nominated Truman, who led the southern conservatives, as his vice presidential candidate…”