Change of Commander, or Death

[merlin]

At the start of a POD whose promotion, demotion, or indeed demise (whether by natural or foul means), would you instigate in order to have a meaningful change in the events of WW2?

For example:
- Yamomoto dies in a plane crash in the summer of 1940, result no Pearl Harbor attack. Do they seize the DEI & perhaps Malaya, - delaying US involvement, or do they also go for the Phillipines and War with the US?

- A royalist coup in Italy assinates Mussolini, result Italy stays neutral - no live desert training desert ground for the RAF & British Army. And Rommel joins Kliest on the Russian Front.

- Perhaps FDR losses the election (1941?) to 'America First' Wilkie, no Lend-lease, the US stays strictly neutral, Japan conquers China!
What a thought!

Any other minor commanders? Plausible ideas please, but no Hitler got shot in WW1 result no WW2! Where's the TL in that!?

[Suit_N_Tie]

How about: DeGaulle is killed during the invasion of France in May 1940.

[MrP]

Guderian on the first day of the invasion of France?
Monty before he can take command in Africa?
Viscount Slim?
Ike before Normandy?

[Wozza]

Dowding before he can stop the drain of aircraft to France.

Hitler and the near assassination of Nov 39 (that's a cheat though)

General Student.

Zhukov.

[Bulldawg85]

Churchill never becomes PM as he is killed or massively injured in the traffic accident in the US. Halifax becomes PM and reaches accomodation with Hitler.

Goering fails to sway Hitler to let the Luftwaffe go against the Dunkirk enclave alone so the Wehrmacht attack relentlessly. As a result only a small fraction are rescued in contrast to OTL and the Churchill govt falls. Halifax becomes PM and reaches accomodation with Hitler.

[Calgacus]

Maurice Gamelin in 1939. Depending who his successor is, France might fight better and last longer in 1940. Might also have a go at invasion.

[Bulldawg85]

Perhaps FDR losses the election (1941?) to 'America First' Wilkie, no Lend-lease, the US stays strictly neutral, Japan conquers China!

Elections are every 4 years with the inaugaration now taking place in January of the following year which means that the election was in 1940.

[Wendell]

Hitler is killed in World War I.

[Bulldawg85]

What if the Japanese had a policy of rotating some of their more skilled pilots back to the Home Islands to train the next crop of pilots like the Americans did?

What if MacArthur had been killed in his escape from Bataan in 1942 or alternatively WI he had been more proactive and gone after the Japanese airfields after the attack on PH and not let his B17's get the hell bombed out of them on the ground?

[M79]

-No or greatly reduced Soviet purges, look for Zhukov's mentor to break new ground in tank warfare
-LeClerc or DeGaulle in charge of French army when Germany invades
-Himmler dies in car "accident", Heydrich becomes leader of SS
-Heydrich, Speer, or Seyss-Inquart dies in 1939
-Stalin dies during bombings of Moscow
-Khruschev dies before Stalingrad
-Timochenko or Voroshilev dies in first week of Barbarossa
-Tojo dies in 1942
-Eisenhower gets his request to become an officer under Patton
-Monty dies in Palestine, Allies reach Berlin in November 1944, Iron Curtain runs along Vistula and Iasi rivers
-German General Wever survives his crash in 1936, Germany has Ural Bombers in 1939 and a sequel by 1941

[pacifichistorian]

-Nimitz gets into West Point?
-Halsey killed in pilot training? (Spruance wins crushing victory at Leyte Gulf & runs for President?)
-MacArthur elects to stay in P.I. & sends Wainwright out? (PacWar is 8mo shorter...)
-Monty gets captured at Dunkirk?
-Fletcher KIA at Guadalcanal?
-Nimitz tells Monty (oops, he's a POW) O'Connor & Patton to shut the hell up about Berlin until they've cleared the Scheldt; VE-Day 11 October 44.
-Murphy doesn't report contact with unknown ships at Midway, & Spruance continues pursuit, right into Yamato's guns? (He's posthumously nominated for a George W. Bush Ignoramus Award?)
-Ralph W. Christie pushed under a train for botching the design of the Mk 6 exploder? (OK, a car accident before it's started...?)
-Richard S. Edwards becomes ComSubPac when the new CinCPac (Stark? Not Nimitz, he's in the Army.) takes over?
-O'Connor doesn't go galivanting in the desert & doesn't get captured?
-Rommel goes galivanting in the desert, his Fi-156 crashes/is shot down, & does get captured?
-commandos raid Kerneval & kill Donitz?
-Dick O'Kane doesn't shoot his own boat out from under him with faulty torpedoes? (OK, no big effects...)
-Mush Morton isn't killed in the La Perouse Strait? (OK, no big effects...)
-H. A. Barnard isn't an idiot & doesn't sink Seawolf in a safety lane? (OK, no big effects...)
-H. A. Barnard is court martialed for being an idiot after sinking Seawolf in a safety lane? (OK, no big effects...)
-Frog Lowe isn't King's CoS, so the idea of launching B-25s off a carrier deck isn't suggested to FDR, & Doolittle doesn't get his Tokyo demonstration flight? (250,000 Chinese aren't butchered as a result....)
-in 1937, Germany steals the designs of the Mark 14 torpedo & Mark 6 exploder & copy them; in WW2, U-boats are completely ineffectual for the first year of the war... Ralph Christie gets a Medal of Honor. A disgruntled German submariner pushes him under a train on the way from the ceremony.
-Nimitz runs for President in '48, with Ray Spruance as VP?

[HJ Tulp]

1942: Then Colonel Spoor doesn't manage to evacuate to Australia at the fall of Java and becomes a POW. He's never promoted to Lt. General and commander of the KNIL. Probably a very different Dutch Police Action. Operation Crow is most likely alot less brilliant then it was.