This is an incomplete TL that I started working on in 2007. It contains next to no research, has only got the barest clean up work done on it and is probably verging on ASB. Beyond "nuclear bomb comes early" I really don't know where this is going.
Feel free to tear it apart and to suggest a realistic alternative that isn't OTL or ASB.
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By Dawn’s Early Light – Timeline
1919 POD Communist uprising in Italy is more successful than OTL. Italian government collapses. Italian Civil War begins.
1923 Benito Mussolini is among those who flee into exile one step ahead of communist death squads. (IOTL he took over in 1922 and ruled until his death in 1945) People’s Republic of Italy proclaimed in Rome. The pope is executed by firing squad.
1925 Enrico Fermi flees communist People’s Republic of Italy. He ultimately settles in Montreal. Fermi opts to continue his doctoral studies at McGill University. (IOTL Fermi remained in Italy until 1938, then moved to Chicago in the USA where he worked on the American bomb project)
1927 Stock market crash in USA, Great Depression begins. (This happens early, not in 1929 as in OTL)
1930 Hitler named chancellor of Germany. (He is 3 years early here)
1931 Richard Bennett elected Prime Minister of Canada. (This is 1 year later than OTL, here it is Mackenzie-King who had 4 years to screw up his handling of the Depression whereas IOTL Bennett goofed for 5 years (1930-35) and let Mackenzie-King back into office)
1934 Dr. Fermi conducts an experiment where Uranium metal is bombarded with neutrons in an attempt at producing heavier elements. The experiment produces Element 93 in trace quantities as well as, oddly, Barium and Xenon. One of Fermi’s assistants, Walter Zinn, theorizes that nuclear fission has occurred. Repeats of the experiment confirm this, and give evidence of a powerful release of energy during the reaction. An increase in the level of neutron radiation is also observed. (IOTL this was not discovered until 1938, for the fission, or later (during the Manhattan Project) for Element 93(Neptunium))
1935 The discovery of nuclear fission and the associated chain reaction lead to the possibility of a new and virtually unlimited source of power… Or that of a terrible new weapon. (This had already been theorized, but was only confirmed later, after the discovery of fission (~1939-40 IOTL) here events are moving faster of course)
1935 The Canadian Government, seeking prestige, and a way to provide jobs for those left unemployed by the depression begins Project Aurora, the development of nuclear power. Secretly the project is developing a bomb to counter the threats of communism and Nazism. Project Aurora is placed under the command of General Andrew MacNaughton, a hero of the Great War. Dr. Fermi is placed in charge of the reactor project. (IOTL Canada has never had a nuclear weapons project, and the reactor program was a spin-off from the British Tube Alloys program. The first one, ZEEP, came online in 1945)
1935 German soldiers reoccupy Rhineland in violation of Treaty of Versailles. No real response from France or Britain. (IOTL this happened in 1936)
1936 after the collapse of MacDonald’s Government, Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain. (IOTL he had to wait until the fall of France in 1940 here Chamberlain is out of the picture sooner and Hitler’s Germany is joined by an equally hostile Communist Italy)
1936 The nations of the British Commonwealth, and the Empire begin a massive program of re-armament. Project Aurora’s true intent revealed to Churchill and to Australia’s PM, Menzies. Both agree to provide funds and personnel to the project, in return for access to nuclear reactors and if they work, nuclear weapons. (This is the OTL Tube Alloys, though greatly expanded and 4 years early, of course)
1937 Project Aurora comes to the attention of US president Roosevelt. The US Army is tasked with duplicating this achievement, the project is given the code-name Manhattan. (IOTL it was a bomb project from the beginning and it started in 1942)
1937 Aurora comes to the attention of the Wermacht who seek to duplicate it despite the reliance on what Hitler mocks as “Jewish Lies”. (Sort of like OTL, only sooner and fission was discovered by an Italian in Canada, not by Otto Hahn in Berlin)
1937 Manhattan project scientists conclude that nuclear weapons are feasible. To Col. Groves, the officer in command of the project, Aurora is obviously a British nuclear weapons program. (Groves got picked because the project seemed to be a little one and not all that urgent. IOTL he was a brigadier and had already built the Pentagon. This is 5 years sooner)
1937 An as of yet unnamed French bomb project is begun. The French government guesses correctly that both their allies, and of course their enemies have begun to do the same. For security reasons, the project will be based in Algeria. The French program will only come to light after the liberation of northern France. (IOTL this program merged with Tube Alloys when France fell in 1940) and France did not get a bomb until 1960)
1937 Thor, the German nuclear program concludes that nuclear weapons are possible, but that additional funds are required to build one. These funds are denied and will continue to be until it is far too late. The fact that Aurora and Manhattan are both weapons programs is missed. (The Abwehr is as competent and loyal as in OTL, so are MI5/MI6 and the FBI. Hitler is just as arrogant and blind as he was IOTL)
1938 Imperial Japanese Navy begins a nuclear weapons development program. The lack of new information in British, American, German, and French scientific journals is considered disturbing and Japan does not need to be left behind in this race. (This is sort of like OTL where nobody knows how far they actually got)
1938 People’s Republic of Italy starts work on a nuclear bomb of their own. They lag behind as most of their talent in this department has already fled. Similar issues plague the German program. Neither will ever complete a bomb. (Italy never had a bomb project IOTL because of this little problem. The German project simply wasn’t viable for the same reasons)
1938 USSR begins a nuclear project, hoping that the spies in the NKVD can find what has been left out of the foreign science journals, so as to supplement that rather dilute pool of talent found in the Rodina. Stalin begins to regret, secretly of course, having had so many of his academicians shot during that last purge…
(The NKVD is just as competent and ruthless as OTL. American security regarding communism is about as weak/arrogant as OTL. MI5/MI6 know better and don’t have the problem of the Cambridge 5 anymore. (Butterflies, one of them fucked up and MI5 did the rest.) Stalin is just as paranoid as OTL, some of the targets lower down were a little bit different. (Kurchatov lost a few of his OTL helpers and got an all-expenses paid trip to Siberia to cut 2x4s…by hand. Beria had a bitch of a time tracking him down due to some poor record keeping in the NKVD. Some poor secretary got a 9mm headache) Russia is in the same place relative to its rivals as OTL)
1938 Spanish Civil War ends, Nationalist forces led by General Franco, who have been backed by both the British and the Germans, crush the last of the communist Republican forces. (Britain never helped Franco in OTL; here he is another bulwark against communism. Italy helped the other side here.)
1938 Germany annexes Austria. (As in OTL)
1938 September 1st Germany invades Czechoslovakia, Second Great War begins. (Churchill decided to stand here because a: Britain was ready, b: Hitler has shown his true face, c: no one wants to wait and have a stronger Germany)
1938 September 3rd France and Britain declare war. (About the same time lag as OTL)
1938 September 4th Canada, Australia, South Africa and Poland declare war. (One of these nations (other than Poland), (I won’t name names) moves much faster than OTL-fewer pacifists and less internal discord)
1938 October 6th Prague falls, Czech forces surrender. (The Reich is somewhat stronger than OTL, the Czechs aren’t)
1939 April 3rd German forces invade Poland. (Well its neighbour to the south is gone, so what else do you expect?)
1939 April 17th Soviet Union invades Poland. (If Hitler is going to be your new neighbour, do you really want him right on your doorstep?)
1939 May 1st Italy joins war as an ally of Germany. French forces assault Sigfried Line. RAF Manchester (OTL Lancaster is the closest to it) bombers enter service. *Note Italy does so purely out of greed and a lust for power, along with the USSR, Italy intends to betray the Nazis shortly. (Except for the better bombers and the frogs not being timid, sort of like OTL)
1939 May 9th RAF launches first major air raid of the war, 400 planes over Hamburg. German and Soviet forces meet at Brest Litovsk. Poland surrenders. (Poland was pwnd, like in OTL, RAF has better planes and Churchill to let go of the leash for them (hell will follow from that though) so of course the bombing starts early)
1939 September 4th German armies invade Denmark and Norway. (Things are going like OTL here)
1939 September 7th British troops arrive in Norway, build large beachhead at Narvik. (At least they saw this coming ITTL; they moved faster/Quisling &Co. didn’t)
1939 September 16th Royal Navy sink most Kreigsmarine forces in North Sea. (For how much of a chance the poms gave ‘em, think of the ‘Death Ride of the Imperial Japanese Navy’ IOTL)
1939 October 21st front lines stabilize, Allies still hold Narvik and everywhere to the north. (Much better than OTL where they had lost before they even showed up)
1940 April 12th German forces invade Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg and France. All French gains from previous year are erased. (Just like OTL, only the frogs were on the German side of the Rhine and the limeys were in Belgium (an ally, not neutral here))
1940 April 16th German forces break through at Sedan and begin a drive to the sea. (Just like OTL. Gen. Fuller is Co. here and saw it coming, but he does not have as many tanks/AT guns as he needs to stop it. Gen. Crerar and the CEF are here too, unlike OTL, so they get f*cked too)
1940 May 6th British and Canadian Armies begin withdrawal at Dunkirk. (Dynamo happens here too. Churchill is lucky as he warned of this, so he gets to keep his job by the skin of his teeth. Some Generals get to spend more time with their grandchildren)
1940 May 10th Last Allied forces in Dunkirk pocket surrender. (As in OTL we couldn’t get them all out. Note that the Dutch and Belgians did not surrender as both nations were conquered completely first)
1940 May 16th Paris taken by German forces. Germans continue drive into southern France. (As in OTL, but about a week faster. Germany put every thing they had into this. If the Russians had backstabbed them, they would have been f*cked)
1940 May 17th Aurora projects first reactor achieves criticality. Element 93 is given the name Saturnium (St) (IOTL this is Neptunium, (Np)). As element 93 is also radioactive and undergoes beta decay, element 94 has been discovered. This element, with an atomic mass of 239 is fissile and more easily so than Uranium-235. Element 94 is named Jovium (Jv) as it is viewed as being the king of all the elements (IOTL this is Plutonium-239, (Pu)). (We’re 5 years early here. (Anglo-Canadian) (2 if you’re going by the OTL yanks’ clock))
1940 May 22nd After five weeks of heavy fighting and unending defeat France surrenders. The armistice is signed in the same railcar, as was the armistice that ended the First Great War in 1918. (About a week faster than the OTL campaign, but only a month before OTL)
1940 May 27th Battle of Britain begins, Luftwaffe begins air strikes against RAF airfields in south of England. RAF launches 600-plane strike on Cologne. Only 30 planes are lost. (As per OTL but for the British bombing raid. Oh, and Germany doesn’t have RADAR yet.)
1940 June 2nd Luftwaffe sends 800 bombers over London, due to choice of targets and warm, dry weather as well as light winds, central London is engulfed in a firestorm. 120,000 civilians are reported to have been killed and an equal number are wounded. RAF night-fighters and local AAA defences destroy 200 of the planes. (Like I said hell shall follow the limeys raids on Germany. Hitler’s rants on the subject are legendary ITTL. The toll here is equal to OTL Dresden. Hope Jerry stays shy about using poison gas)
1940 June 3rd RAF sends 1200 bombers-the entire strength of Bomber Command, including training units, as well as 300 from the RCAF Bomber Command and 400 from other Commonwealth forces, to Berlin. Air defences destroy 250 of the force’s 1900 aircraft. This raid triggers another firestorm and, along with a follow up raid on the 4th, kills 300,000 people. (Bomber Command and the RAF in general are much bigger than this point IOTL, more like how they were in 1944-45 OTL. The RCAF, RAAF, RNZAF and so on are similar to 1944/45 too. This raid is more like 1945 Tokyo for Casualties. Napalm came about five years early. Previous RAF raids had few incendiaries and lots of explosives. Berlin, despite not being a Japanese firetrap, got special treatment. And hell shall ride behind him—Revelations 6:8. Indeed.)
1940 July 1st Proposed invasion of Great Britain postponed indefinitely as the RAF and the Royal Navy are too powerful. Bombing campaign scaled back due to unsustainable losses. (Unlike OTL, the *Luftwaffe’s high command is not aware of RADAR and as Germany has only begun to experiment with this use for radio, doesn’t realise why the RAF is so successful at intercepting their bombers, and even the escorts. However they do realise that the Ju87 is too vulnerable, the Bf110 is far too slow, and that Bf109 hasn’t got the range needed to engage Fighter Command over Britain.)
1940 July 16th Construction starts on Aurora Projects first production reactor at Fort McMurray, Alberta. The bomb project is located here due to ease (or at least fewer difficulties) of access to the Uranium sources in Saskatchewan (Uranium City, El Dorado, Lake Athabasca) and the North West Territories (Great Bear, Port Radium), water supply (Athabasca River), as well as a reasonably remote location (*Fort McMurray, as in OTL is at the ass end of nowhere (and still is)). A Uranium processing plant (to refine the ore) is also built. (The OTL reactor was at Chalk River ON. The bomb factory never existed IOTL)
1940 July 20th British air campaign suspended due to shortages of ammunition and spare parts, RAF is estimated to have killed or maimed 1,000,000 people in Germany. (That is a lot of raids, a lot of bombs and lots of wear and tear on the equipment, along with a lot of casualties among the aircrew. And the Germans have started shooting the downed bomber crews on sight, rather than taking them prisoner.)
1940 July 20th Italian Forces Collapse in Libya, Abyssinia & Somalia. All Italian colonial forces will have surrendered by August 1st. (The Germans let the commies sleep in the bed they made for themselves)
1940 Summer Stalemate continues in Norway, will be as such for 3 years. (At least they are still there)
1940 August 12th, Anglo-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact signed in Tokyo. Army and naval forces transferred to Europe and/or North Africa. (Churchill is not stupid. He ignored China even though he got a lot of bad press, and now Japan has a free hand in Asia (whatever is not British or Allied anyways) and those soldiers can help crush the bigger threats)
1940 Autumn Military build-up begins in Libya in preparation for an assault on Sicily. This will take at least 8 months, mostly to get the landing craft built and delivered. The PRI has got itself well and truly stuck, instead of a short victorious war; Italy faces a humiliating defeat, and the end of their Revolution. (No one ever thought they would need ‘em so they weren’t built. Italy is f*cked even if they switch sides, communism is dead there. Limeys and frogs don’t forget betrayal and won’t feel like forgiving either)
1940 Autumn German High Command begins planning Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR. This a: keeps Hitler happy, b: aims the army at what seems to be a weaker target, c: doesn’t seem as crazy as Sealion, d: plays to Germany’s strengths. (This is just like OTL as is at roughly the same time. Yes Britain has done much more damage, but the raids have been greatly scaled back, the Germans finally have some RADAR, Stalin did just finish purging the Red Army as in OTL, yes Italy will follow Russia, but Italy has the British to worry about, so the south is secure. When Italy collapses, the Germans will turn on them too, just to contain Britain’s armies as far south as possible.)
Feel free to tear it apart and to suggest a realistic alternative that isn't OTL or ASB.
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By Dawn’s Early Light – Timeline
1919 POD Communist uprising in Italy is more successful than OTL. Italian government collapses. Italian Civil War begins.
1923 Benito Mussolini is among those who flee into exile one step ahead of communist death squads. (IOTL he took over in 1922 and ruled until his death in 1945) People’s Republic of Italy proclaimed in Rome. The pope is executed by firing squad.
1925 Enrico Fermi flees communist People’s Republic of Italy. He ultimately settles in Montreal. Fermi opts to continue his doctoral studies at McGill University. (IOTL Fermi remained in Italy until 1938, then moved to Chicago in the USA where he worked on the American bomb project)
1927 Stock market crash in USA, Great Depression begins. (This happens early, not in 1929 as in OTL)
1930 Hitler named chancellor of Germany. (He is 3 years early here)
1931 Richard Bennett elected Prime Minister of Canada. (This is 1 year later than OTL, here it is Mackenzie-King who had 4 years to screw up his handling of the Depression whereas IOTL Bennett goofed for 5 years (1930-35) and let Mackenzie-King back into office)
1934 Dr. Fermi conducts an experiment where Uranium metal is bombarded with neutrons in an attempt at producing heavier elements. The experiment produces Element 93 in trace quantities as well as, oddly, Barium and Xenon. One of Fermi’s assistants, Walter Zinn, theorizes that nuclear fission has occurred. Repeats of the experiment confirm this, and give evidence of a powerful release of energy during the reaction. An increase in the level of neutron radiation is also observed. (IOTL this was not discovered until 1938, for the fission, or later (during the Manhattan Project) for Element 93(Neptunium))
1935 The discovery of nuclear fission and the associated chain reaction lead to the possibility of a new and virtually unlimited source of power… Or that of a terrible new weapon. (This had already been theorized, but was only confirmed later, after the discovery of fission (~1939-40 IOTL) here events are moving faster of course)
1935 The Canadian Government, seeking prestige, and a way to provide jobs for those left unemployed by the depression begins Project Aurora, the development of nuclear power. Secretly the project is developing a bomb to counter the threats of communism and Nazism. Project Aurora is placed under the command of General Andrew MacNaughton, a hero of the Great War. Dr. Fermi is placed in charge of the reactor project. (IOTL Canada has never had a nuclear weapons project, and the reactor program was a spin-off from the British Tube Alloys program. The first one, ZEEP, came online in 1945)
1935 German soldiers reoccupy Rhineland in violation of Treaty of Versailles. No real response from France or Britain. (IOTL this happened in 1936)
1936 after the collapse of MacDonald’s Government, Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain. (IOTL he had to wait until the fall of France in 1940 here Chamberlain is out of the picture sooner and Hitler’s Germany is joined by an equally hostile Communist Italy)
1936 The nations of the British Commonwealth, and the Empire begin a massive program of re-armament. Project Aurora’s true intent revealed to Churchill and to Australia’s PM, Menzies. Both agree to provide funds and personnel to the project, in return for access to nuclear reactors and if they work, nuclear weapons. (This is the OTL Tube Alloys, though greatly expanded and 4 years early, of course)
1937 Project Aurora comes to the attention of US president Roosevelt. The US Army is tasked with duplicating this achievement, the project is given the code-name Manhattan. (IOTL it was a bomb project from the beginning and it started in 1942)
1937 Aurora comes to the attention of the Wermacht who seek to duplicate it despite the reliance on what Hitler mocks as “Jewish Lies”. (Sort of like OTL, only sooner and fission was discovered by an Italian in Canada, not by Otto Hahn in Berlin)
1937 Manhattan project scientists conclude that nuclear weapons are feasible. To Col. Groves, the officer in command of the project, Aurora is obviously a British nuclear weapons program. (Groves got picked because the project seemed to be a little one and not all that urgent. IOTL he was a brigadier and had already built the Pentagon. This is 5 years sooner)
1937 An as of yet unnamed French bomb project is begun. The French government guesses correctly that both their allies, and of course their enemies have begun to do the same. For security reasons, the project will be based in Algeria. The French program will only come to light after the liberation of northern France. (IOTL this program merged with Tube Alloys when France fell in 1940) and France did not get a bomb until 1960)
1937 Thor, the German nuclear program concludes that nuclear weapons are possible, but that additional funds are required to build one. These funds are denied and will continue to be until it is far too late. The fact that Aurora and Manhattan are both weapons programs is missed. (The Abwehr is as competent and loyal as in OTL, so are MI5/MI6 and the FBI. Hitler is just as arrogant and blind as he was IOTL)
1938 Imperial Japanese Navy begins a nuclear weapons development program. The lack of new information in British, American, German, and French scientific journals is considered disturbing and Japan does not need to be left behind in this race. (This is sort of like OTL where nobody knows how far they actually got)
1938 People’s Republic of Italy starts work on a nuclear bomb of their own. They lag behind as most of their talent in this department has already fled. Similar issues plague the German program. Neither will ever complete a bomb. (Italy never had a bomb project IOTL because of this little problem. The German project simply wasn’t viable for the same reasons)
1938 USSR begins a nuclear project, hoping that the spies in the NKVD can find what has been left out of the foreign science journals, so as to supplement that rather dilute pool of talent found in the Rodina. Stalin begins to regret, secretly of course, having had so many of his academicians shot during that last purge…
(The NKVD is just as competent and ruthless as OTL. American security regarding communism is about as weak/arrogant as OTL. MI5/MI6 know better and don’t have the problem of the Cambridge 5 anymore. (Butterflies, one of them fucked up and MI5 did the rest.) Stalin is just as paranoid as OTL, some of the targets lower down were a little bit different. (Kurchatov lost a few of his OTL helpers and got an all-expenses paid trip to Siberia to cut 2x4s…by hand. Beria had a bitch of a time tracking him down due to some poor record keeping in the NKVD. Some poor secretary got a 9mm headache) Russia is in the same place relative to its rivals as OTL)
1938 Spanish Civil War ends, Nationalist forces led by General Franco, who have been backed by both the British and the Germans, crush the last of the communist Republican forces. (Britain never helped Franco in OTL; here he is another bulwark against communism. Italy helped the other side here.)
1938 Germany annexes Austria. (As in OTL)
1938 September 1st Germany invades Czechoslovakia, Second Great War begins. (Churchill decided to stand here because a: Britain was ready, b: Hitler has shown his true face, c: no one wants to wait and have a stronger Germany)
1938 September 3rd France and Britain declare war. (About the same time lag as OTL)
1938 September 4th Canada, Australia, South Africa and Poland declare war. (One of these nations (other than Poland), (I won’t name names) moves much faster than OTL-fewer pacifists and less internal discord)
1938 October 6th Prague falls, Czech forces surrender. (The Reich is somewhat stronger than OTL, the Czechs aren’t)
1939 April 3rd German forces invade Poland. (Well its neighbour to the south is gone, so what else do you expect?)
1939 April 17th Soviet Union invades Poland. (If Hitler is going to be your new neighbour, do you really want him right on your doorstep?)
1939 May 1st Italy joins war as an ally of Germany. French forces assault Sigfried Line. RAF Manchester (OTL Lancaster is the closest to it) bombers enter service. *Note Italy does so purely out of greed and a lust for power, along with the USSR, Italy intends to betray the Nazis shortly. (Except for the better bombers and the frogs not being timid, sort of like OTL)
1939 May 9th RAF launches first major air raid of the war, 400 planes over Hamburg. German and Soviet forces meet at Brest Litovsk. Poland surrenders. (Poland was pwnd, like in OTL, RAF has better planes and Churchill to let go of the leash for them (hell will follow from that though) so of course the bombing starts early)
1939 September 4th German armies invade Denmark and Norway. (Things are going like OTL here)
1939 September 7th British troops arrive in Norway, build large beachhead at Narvik. (At least they saw this coming ITTL; they moved faster/Quisling &Co. didn’t)
1939 September 16th Royal Navy sink most Kreigsmarine forces in North Sea. (For how much of a chance the poms gave ‘em, think of the ‘Death Ride of the Imperial Japanese Navy’ IOTL)
1939 October 21st front lines stabilize, Allies still hold Narvik and everywhere to the north. (Much better than OTL where they had lost before they even showed up)
1940 April 12th German forces invade Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg and France. All French gains from previous year are erased. (Just like OTL, only the frogs were on the German side of the Rhine and the limeys were in Belgium (an ally, not neutral here))
1940 April 16th German forces break through at Sedan and begin a drive to the sea. (Just like OTL. Gen. Fuller is Co. here and saw it coming, but he does not have as many tanks/AT guns as he needs to stop it. Gen. Crerar and the CEF are here too, unlike OTL, so they get f*cked too)
1940 May 6th British and Canadian Armies begin withdrawal at Dunkirk. (Dynamo happens here too. Churchill is lucky as he warned of this, so he gets to keep his job by the skin of his teeth. Some Generals get to spend more time with their grandchildren)
1940 May 10th Last Allied forces in Dunkirk pocket surrender. (As in OTL we couldn’t get them all out. Note that the Dutch and Belgians did not surrender as both nations were conquered completely first)
1940 May 16th Paris taken by German forces. Germans continue drive into southern France. (As in OTL, but about a week faster. Germany put every thing they had into this. If the Russians had backstabbed them, they would have been f*cked)
1940 May 17th Aurora projects first reactor achieves criticality. Element 93 is given the name Saturnium (St) (IOTL this is Neptunium, (Np)). As element 93 is also radioactive and undergoes beta decay, element 94 has been discovered. This element, with an atomic mass of 239 is fissile and more easily so than Uranium-235. Element 94 is named Jovium (Jv) as it is viewed as being the king of all the elements (IOTL this is Plutonium-239, (Pu)). (We’re 5 years early here. (Anglo-Canadian) (2 if you’re going by the OTL yanks’ clock))
1940 May 22nd After five weeks of heavy fighting and unending defeat France surrenders. The armistice is signed in the same railcar, as was the armistice that ended the First Great War in 1918. (About a week faster than the OTL campaign, but only a month before OTL)
1940 May 27th Battle of Britain begins, Luftwaffe begins air strikes against RAF airfields in south of England. RAF launches 600-plane strike on Cologne. Only 30 planes are lost. (As per OTL but for the British bombing raid. Oh, and Germany doesn’t have RADAR yet.)
1940 June 2nd Luftwaffe sends 800 bombers over London, due to choice of targets and warm, dry weather as well as light winds, central London is engulfed in a firestorm. 120,000 civilians are reported to have been killed and an equal number are wounded. RAF night-fighters and local AAA defences destroy 200 of the planes. (Like I said hell shall follow the limeys raids on Germany. Hitler’s rants on the subject are legendary ITTL. The toll here is equal to OTL Dresden. Hope Jerry stays shy about using poison gas)
1940 June 3rd RAF sends 1200 bombers-the entire strength of Bomber Command, including training units, as well as 300 from the RCAF Bomber Command and 400 from other Commonwealth forces, to Berlin. Air defences destroy 250 of the force’s 1900 aircraft. This raid triggers another firestorm and, along with a follow up raid on the 4th, kills 300,000 people. (Bomber Command and the RAF in general are much bigger than this point IOTL, more like how they were in 1944-45 OTL. The RCAF, RAAF, RNZAF and so on are similar to 1944/45 too. This raid is more like 1945 Tokyo for Casualties. Napalm came about five years early. Previous RAF raids had few incendiaries and lots of explosives. Berlin, despite not being a Japanese firetrap, got special treatment. And hell shall ride behind him—Revelations 6:8. Indeed.)
1940 July 1st Proposed invasion of Great Britain postponed indefinitely as the RAF and the Royal Navy are too powerful. Bombing campaign scaled back due to unsustainable losses. (Unlike OTL, the *Luftwaffe’s high command is not aware of RADAR and as Germany has only begun to experiment with this use for radio, doesn’t realise why the RAF is so successful at intercepting their bombers, and even the escorts. However they do realise that the Ju87 is too vulnerable, the Bf110 is far too slow, and that Bf109 hasn’t got the range needed to engage Fighter Command over Britain.)
1940 July 16th Construction starts on Aurora Projects first production reactor at Fort McMurray, Alberta. The bomb project is located here due to ease (or at least fewer difficulties) of access to the Uranium sources in Saskatchewan (Uranium City, El Dorado, Lake Athabasca) and the North West Territories (Great Bear, Port Radium), water supply (Athabasca River), as well as a reasonably remote location (*Fort McMurray, as in OTL is at the ass end of nowhere (and still is)). A Uranium processing plant (to refine the ore) is also built. (The OTL reactor was at Chalk River ON. The bomb factory never existed IOTL)
1940 July 20th British air campaign suspended due to shortages of ammunition and spare parts, RAF is estimated to have killed or maimed 1,000,000 people in Germany. (That is a lot of raids, a lot of bombs and lots of wear and tear on the equipment, along with a lot of casualties among the aircrew. And the Germans have started shooting the downed bomber crews on sight, rather than taking them prisoner.)
1940 July 20th Italian Forces Collapse in Libya, Abyssinia & Somalia. All Italian colonial forces will have surrendered by August 1st. (The Germans let the commies sleep in the bed they made for themselves)
1940 Summer Stalemate continues in Norway, will be as such for 3 years. (At least they are still there)
1940 August 12th, Anglo-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact signed in Tokyo. Army and naval forces transferred to Europe and/or North Africa. (Churchill is not stupid. He ignored China even though he got a lot of bad press, and now Japan has a free hand in Asia (whatever is not British or Allied anyways) and those soldiers can help crush the bigger threats)
1940 Autumn Military build-up begins in Libya in preparation for an assault on Sicily. This will take at least 8 months, mostly to get the landing craft built and delivered. The PRI has got itself well and truly stuck, instead of a short victorious war; Italy faces a humiliating defeat, and the end of their Revolution. (No one ever thought they would need ‘em so they weren’t built. Italy is f*cked even if they switch sides, communism is dead there. Limeys and frogs don’t forget betrayal and won’t feel like forgiving either)
1940 Autumn German High Command begins planning Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR. This a: keeps Hitler happy, b: aims the army at what seems to be a weaker target, c: doesn’t seem as crazy as Sealion, d: plays to Germany’s strengths. (This is just like OTL as is at roughly the same time. Yes Britain has done much more damage, but the raids have been greatly scaled back, the Germans finally have some RADAR, Stalin did just finish purging the Red Army as in OTL, yes Italy will follow Russia, but Italy has the British to worry about, so the south is secure. When Italy collapses, the Germans will turn on them too, just to contain Britain’s armies as far south as possible.)