Whilst I can sympathise with
@Japhy's reluctance to tackle John Milius' opus I am also one of those lefties who doesn't think it's entirely without merit and as such I've decided to have a go at
@Aznavour's request:
Die rote Flut
1974-1982: Helmut Schmidt (SPD)
1982-1983: Helmut Kohl (CDU)
1983-1987: Hans Hagen (ALD)
1987-1993: Petra Kelly (ALD)
1993-????: Tobias Tischbier (Die Antwort fur Deutschland '93)
The seventies have been really bad for the west ITTL, partially due to the Oil Crisis of OTL but also due to the islands of Japan collapsing into the sea that same year. The economic impact is already being felt by the time the geological cataclycism has subsided, and sixty million refugees have to find homes. The Eastern Bloc rides out the storm a bit better than the west and the developing world turns to the Soviets with great enthusiasm. Many American hawks react with alarm when Mexico becomes yet another domino but the President is Not-Jerry Ford from
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and nothing is really done about it. By the time Not-Jerry is replaced by not-George McGovern from
Superman II there are far too many domestic issues to care about to fight a Cold War, and when not-George in turn is replaced by Ron in '81, America is far weaker than she was ten years beforehand.
The destruction of Japan and the subsequent environmental impact will be felt for decades, and though its crescendo arguably comes in the form of the second Holodomor of 1986, it also gives the youthful Green movement the truly meteoric success it has never really been able to achieve in our world far earlier. Their success is particularly pronounced in West Germany, where the ecological-left Alternative List is already catching up on the CDU when a horrific accident at Ramstein AFB leads to the first nuclear weapon to be detonated on European soil. Support for the German anti-nuclear campaign becomes almost universal overnight and the Alternative List become the first party in the history of the Federal Republic to achieve a majority, although at the time this is overshadowed internationally by the first Jewish leader in German history, and his radical program.
The man who was too left-wing for the DDR is all too happy to listen to voters demands for an end to nuclear weapons on German soil, and uses the momentum to take West Germany out of NATO altogether shortly after. Following the rise of leftist regimes in France and Italy inspired by the Ramstein Disaster the western alliance becomes defunct shortly after. With their talking points about world peace having been largely achieved, the Eastern Bloc is in something of a limbo. Erich Honecker manages to enjoy a genuinely good relationship with Hagen but General Secretary Orlov remains silent to any talk of multilateral disarmament. The powerful albeit frustratingly homicidal leader of the USSR points to Ron's massive military build-up and secretly decides that if the Soviet Union wants to remain Best Superpower then he must find a more comprehensive solution to the arms race. A neutral Western Europe is no longer an end in itself, but merely an advantage.
West Germany grows confident with Hagen's leadership, non-alignment is good for an export focused economy and the prosperity that follows is secured by the expansion of economic democracy and interior investment. Unification itself doesn't seem to be a million miles away on a September morning in 1987 when the Chancellor is woken up by BND agents dragging him into a bunker deep underneath Bonn.
Washington D.C., Kansas City, Lawrence, and other strategic locations are consumed by nuclear fire. Cuban commandos cripple SAC. Soviet paratroops land throughout the South-West, and what had been identified as a joint Cuban-Mexican-Nicaraguan-Soviet war game turns out to be a million strong Comecon army marching through Texas. Before what's left of NORAD can react, every city from Anchorage to Halifax is hit by a second wave of Soviet bombers carrying something more Hirsohima-sized. The Red Army is careful to make sure that the three army groups that cross the Bering Strait won't be glowing in the dark by the time they pass over into the Dakotas. The United States military is beheaded and for all of Ron's best efforts is facing a disparity in numbers of men and the amount of material it can provide for them. In the first few weeks everything goes the Red Army's way and though resistance grows on the northern and southern fronts and behind the lines, by the spring of 1988 and Soviets and her allies have successfully split the United States in two.
The effects outside of the Americas are even worse than when Japan sank; China receives the same fate as Canada and whilst what's left of the politburo pledge a fight to the bitter end, losing 40% of their population overnight leaves them unable to wage any meaningful resistance. Hagen desperately tries to convince Honecker to apply pressure on Orlov with the aim of attaining a ceasefire but the man he had convinced himself could be made to see sense now merely regurgitates the Moscow line about putting an end to American imperialism once and for all. Hagen is left with a failed foreign policy agenda, in the knowledge that his optimism had left him far too naive to see the danger that now threatened to take over the entire world. What Europe really needs is an Iron Lady.
The United Kingdom doesn't desert the United States like the rest of Western Europe, but fighting alone in 1988 is not quite the same option that it was in 1940. Argentina never invaded the Falklands ITTL and the subsequent improvements to the British military have never taken effect. Fighting a Soviet Union that is powerful enough to fight a two-front war on the CONUS, the Royal Navy is quickly broken whilst the RAF is destroyed in a war of attrition. When Orlov makes it clear that the United Kingdom will share the fate of Canada and China if she does not capitulate, a shaken Willie Whitelaw informs a starving and terrified public that the war is over for them.
Petra Kelly takes power shortly after it became clear that Hagen had lost his legitimacy as a peacemaker. She goes out of her way to ensure that West Germany gives every kind of support it can to the United States short of war. Kelly is half-American herself, although she also has the more cynical motivation of making sure that the United States is able to survive the Soviet onslaught long enough to stand on its own two feet once more. Orlov is initially blase about this aid, joking that it will merely mean more West German commodities to collect when the Red Army marches into Philadelphia.
By the end of 1988 the Soviets have taken over a million casualties, the Cuban and Nicaraguan armies have been largely wiped out, and a rabid United States has survived its trial by fire. With European and particularly German assistance it now heavily outnumbers the Comecon forces on American soil and is beginning to contest the air once more. Stalemate gives way to American initiative. The two fronts meet in the emaciated ruins of Denver, before pushing south all the way to Chiapas to link up with the EZLN forces who had never been all that comfortable with the whole "World Domination" aesthetic the Soviets had been marketing.
The Red Army retreats across what had been known as Canada, and sets up fort in Alaska with the knowledge that it will be some time before the equally exhausted Americans can push them out. H.W, having taken over from a long spent Ron, informs them that global thermonuclear war will be the price for the Soviets not going home. Orlov blinks, and Kelly is there to host the peace conference that makes sure the world can go on after the Third World War ends.
Kelly is a hero, both at home and worldwide, but then some Christian Students decide that things would be better if they were in charge in Philadelphia, and in Moscow an alcoholic stands on top of a tank. The German people who previously couldn't think of anyone better to lead them decide that her idea for a Global Marshall Plan isn't worth bankrupting the country when a rundown DDR was finally willing to accept reunification.
Petra Kelly was glorious and she changed the world... and then Tobias Tischbier
fucked up the end game.