Doomsday 1962

In October of 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated into World War III between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact. This was a result of three major divergences in the timeline: The United States then responded by sending 10,000 soldiers from the four branches of the military. But as the American troops entered Havana, Fidel Castro shocked the world by firing a nuclear missile and striking Miami, Florida. Once President Nixon received new of this attack, he asked Congress to declare war on the Soviet Union; Congress unanimously voted to declare war the next day. This caused a cascade of declarations of war: After a month of war, the West Germans had had extreme success. In November 1962 the Bundeswehr 1st Armored Division captured Warsaw, Poland, after heavy battle across eastern Germany and Poland. The Treaty of Berlin formally ended the Second German Civil War, but fighting continued as both sides were combatants in WWIII (East Germany was clinging on to sovereignty because they controlled Leipzig.)
 * The First German Civil War between East and West Germany
 * East German Victory
 * West Germany dissolved
 * The Rhineland and Saxony ceded by the East to France and the Netherlands.
 * The remainder of West Germany was annexed by East Germany.
 * France and the Netherlands granted independence to their German territory, the new West German capital was Hannover.
 * Richard Nixon won 1960 Presidential Election in the House of Representatives
 * John F. Kennedy won 250 electoral votes; Nixon won 236, Harry Byrd appeared on the ballot and won 51 votes. Outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower endorsed Nixon in the House, and he was elected on the second ballot.
 * The Lockheed Martin U-2 was never developed
 * Unaware of surface-to-surface missiles in Cuba, the Cubans sacked Guantanamo Bay and declared war against "nations whose interests were against Cuba's."
 * West Germany declared war against East Germany, igniting the Second German Civil War.
 * Great Britain, France, the Low Countries, the Scandinavian states, Italy, Canada, and Brazil declared war against the USSR.
 * The USSR responded by ordering the Warsaw Pact to declare war on NATO.

The United States' offensive was initially considered the third biggest debacle in military history by many historians (behind Napoleon's invasion of Russia and Hitler's invasion of the USSR.) The US allowed Cuban troops to capture Guantanamo Bay, Atlanta, Georgia, and San Antonio, Texas before responding. Subsequently, the troops in Cuba retook Guantanamo Bay, then sacked Havana and deposed Castro. The National Guard was called in to take back Atlanta and San Antonio with great success.

The nations of NATO were advancing into Eastern Europe. Yugoslavia fell in November. The Baltics, Belarus, and the Ukraine surrendered in December. Scandinavian forces had captured Leningrad and laid siege to Moscow, and the Canadians were invading Siberia. Then, on Christmas Day, at 9:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, Nikita Khrushchev ordered all 17 Soviet ICBMs to be mobilized. Each one was launched, and at 12:00 noon EST, an ICBM struck Washington, D.C. By the end of the day, missiles had struck New York City, Chicago, Boston, Honolulu, San Francisco, Tokyo, Seoul, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Milan, Amsterdam, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Rio de Janeiro. The US ordered a counterstrike from its temporary capital, Los Angeles. The major cities of the Warsaw Pact nations were obliterated.