The threat of hundreds of cities getting nuked made the Soviet Union to accept our conditional surrender proposal, placing the remaining Soviet Armies in the West under Marshall Antonescu's leadership, as they turned their sight on Nazi Germany.
With a temporary border based on the Ural Mountains, the Soviet Union was still the largest country on Earth, if somewhat less populated and armed. The bulk of Western Russia was to be made an Empire puppet, along Georgia and Ukraine, while the Baltic states were released from Soviet occupation and restored to independence.
Sadly, 80% of the Soviet fleet in Leningrad got sunk or otherwise flipped over by the 100 kiloton atomic bomb, and the radioactive crews that still lived wouldn't live for too long.
In Moscow, the Kremlin was now a 300 meters-deep crater as the 200 kiloton bomb wasn't a joke. Stalingrad was already a ruin, thus the 100 kiloton bomb was detonated at 800 meters altitude to make sure the radiation would hit every single troop in range. And it did. Those that still lived, had their eyes and skin melting off, and were given the final mercy as to not demoralize the rest of the army.
A smaller Romanian Army Corps struck towards Venice, liberating Croatia and Slovenia, while the bulk of the Romanian Army struck upwards, into the soft belly of the Nazi Germany.
Vienna, Prague and Warsaw were the main targets of the Army, while Romanian jet bombers struck at tank and planes factories in Germany.
In Western Europe, the Allies struck in two places, Normandy in the North and Marseille in the South, and began liberating France, while also conquering Italy at a fast pace. It helped that Romanian Archangels and torpedo bombers hits had reduced Italian Navy with a deadly blow, leaving the island garrisons of the Italians without supplies.
The Greek Sea Admiral liberated Rhodes as a first objective, and 50 Archangels were born and died along with the Italian Navy, then he turned around and landed our marine troops at Taranto and Bari to lock down the heel of the Italian fascist boot.
Follow-up British and American landings at Naples and Anzio signaled the surrender of Italy, as Benito fled to Spain in search for help. Franco was not amused for losing the Balearic island to Italian threats earlier, and promptly delivered Benito to London for trial.
Converging from all sides on lonely Germany, the Allies advanced rapidly. The British liberated the Low Countries at the cost of 500000 Indians and other colonial troops, the Americans and the Free French liberated Paris and the rest of France, while around 3 million Soviet POWs and 3 million Jews were rescued from concentration camps by the Romanian and the new Russian armies.
The Romanian front stopped 50 kilometers from Berlin, both for logistic and political reasons. Taking East Prussia wasn't easy, and in Austria and Southern Germany the Wehrmacht was putting a fierce resistance. Atomic weapons could have broken the dead-lock, but then again it would have turned public opinion agaisnt us for little gain. Atomic weapons were not a civilized weapon from better times.
Unlike the real Red Army in the other timeline, I didn't have 100000 tanks to throw at Germany, nor millions of troops. Well, I did have the newly liberated POWs, but they weren't fed or equipped for war. Barely a dozen new infantry divisions could be formed from the strongest Russians, using whatever captured equipment we could scavenge.
They helped hold the line and reduce loses for the more important Romanian troops, but they couldn't push.
And so we waited for a few months, until more American troops and weapons arrived. In the meantime, the rescued Jews were being healed and sent to Israel, while newspapers and cinema reels all over the world filled with accounts of Nazi atrocities.
Repaired Soviet tanks and new American tanks allowed us to create 10 new armor divisions, while the Americans breached the Siegfried Line in the West and began advancing into Germany. Leaving Berlin for last, Germany was occupied and more concentration camps and POWs liberated, and then reducing Berlin to rubble commenced.
The Allied navies had mostly moved away by now, reaching Okinawa and Taiwan in the South and taking the Kurile Islands in the North of Japan.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Landing in Hong-Kong, British, Dutch and American forces began pushing along to Chinese coast towards Beijing and Korea, while the smaller Soviet Army helped in Manchuria and Mongolia.
The fourth and fifth one-way-trip Romanian nuclear bombers landed in Iwo Jima to prepare for the American landings in Japan. However, only Nagasaki, the main military port of Japan, had to be fireballed by a nuke.
Losing the pride of the IJN, the battleship Yamato to an atomic weapon convinced the Japanese Emperor that his mighty Empire had encountered serious trouble and it was time to surrender.
A Chinese communist army under Mao decided that sticking around the mainland wasn't healthy, so they retreated to Hainan Island to continue the communist revolution. Lacking landing boats and transport ships, the sad retreat cost them most of their Soviet-made weapons and equipment. Hainan also lacked factories or strategic resources, so the dictatorship of the proletariat was only propaganda. They still had fish and garlic.
The final peace treaty was signed in Athens, under the guns of a dozen Allied battleships. It looked impressive, I admit, but battleships were kinda going out of style by now. Carriers, jet planes and atomic weapons made the battleship mostly obsolete.
The Finns won big from the peace, gaining the Kola peninsula including Murmansk and East Karelia for their efforts. Mannerheim, the Finnish Commander-in-Chief seemed happy.
The Baltic states got a minor border extension for their trouble, barely 20 kilometers of Russian land.
Poland got 80% of East Prussia, leaving the rest to Lithuania, and some bits of land in Russia that had Poles living on them. Or Polish mass graves for that matter.
Austria lost a bit of land to Hungary and Slovenia, but Cehia only got 40% of Sudetenland back. It made no sense to give 3 million Germans back to Cehia again.
Instead, Germany lost more land in the West, to France and Holland mostly, but also tiny bits to Belgium and Luxembourg.
Croatia gained the Italian Dalmatia, but lost 30 kms more littoral to Bosnia in the South.
Serbia got half of Voivodina back from Hungary, while Greece gained Cyprus and Rhodes.
Georgia tripled in size, gaining a lot of land in the Caucasus, while the Baku oilfields remained a Romanian territory for strategic reasons, much like Crimea.
Ukraine was a bit smaller in this timeline, as I took care to exclude Polish, Romanian and Russian people from their new state, for no reason at all.
My Russian puppet was still a giant, especially as their final territory line included the Ural mountains for strategic reasons. Not only mineral deposits, but also easy-to-defend mountain passes.
In Asia, Nationalist China took over Manchuria and Vladivostok from the Soviet Union, reaching the Amur River and its original Chinese border, while India gained the Tibet region as a protectorate. Korea was intact now, not split in two, under American occupation.
While Romania gained Iwo Jima as a naval base, America took over most of the Pacific in one swell move, gaining thousands of islands and atols. Poor things. They will get nuked to hell in the near future as America was eager to test its atomic weapons on ships and such.
Although Germany was occupied and demilitarized for now, I urged Roosevelt not to split it apart, despite French and British pressure. It was better to move populations around instead of bits of land and borders, right?
Roosevelt stared at me over the table, and tapped Romania with his finger, covering my country with ease.
"You still have negotiation power for now, King Carol. I would have expected you to grab Ukraine for yourself at least." he argued while pointing out how small my country was on the world map.
I simply smiled, then took a fistful of yellow pins and marked the Romanian islands on the map. "As the range of planes grows, each of these islands will generate thousands of kilometers of extended range for atomic weapons. Especially planes that are never intended to return."
"Ah, your Archangels are scary indeed. Men willing to die for their King and Country, while diving on their target with an atom bomb strapped to their backs." he admitted with a shudder.
"I think USS Iowa will make for a fine flagship in the Romanian Navy. No need to take off its radar either. I paid for a functional battleship, didn't I?" I asked a bit rhetorical.
"Yes, and three fleet carriers too, I remember. Now, what about this Israel idea?" the American President asked while poking the map again.
"Ah, the Jews. The British Mandate of Palestine (which included Jordan) will make for a nice Jewish country, with Lebanon and the Sinai as well. And we will need to support them with military aid, for a decade or two. The Arabs won't like a Jewish state in their midst." I argued with a sad voice.
"Very Biblical indeed." the man mused with a deep frown.
"And then there's the Soviet Union..." I added with a grin.
"I hate Molotov! Why was he the one to survive?" Roosevelt grumbled like an old man.
"Better than Beria at least. He ate my cousins and nieces." I answered with a grimace. I was cousins with all the royalty in the world though, so that wasn't saying much.
"...The Romanovs, I remember the articles. Was the garlic bit actually true?" he asked a bit more interested.
"The garlic remains a mystery, even now. But the vodka bit was certainly true." I said with a convinced voice. I do lie pretty well.
"That I can believe too. Fucking Russians." the American leader muttered with a sad tone.