raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
The @Nell_Lucifer & @Lalli Japan goes north before going south scenario - continued-
Despite attempts by the ‘ABDA’ countries (Americans, British, Dutch, Australians) to hold a line against the Japanese at the ‘Malay barrier’ of Timor, Java, Sumatra, Singapore, and Malaya, the Japanese breach this line and conquer several of these locations between December 1942 and April 1943.
The conquests of Java, Sumatra, and British and Dutch Borneo are harder fought than OTL, because the lack of initial jumping off points in Indochina in this ATL means the Japanese invasions of them start later to the opening of general hostilities, allowing more time for British and Dutch defensive preparations and sabotage than they had in OTL. Nevertheless, Japanese successes on Philippine islands like Palawan provide stepping stones to British northern Borneo, and Japanese successes in Mindanao provide a stepping stone to the Celebes and Moluccas, while launching points in the Palaus allowed for Japanese assaults on the eastern third of the DEI and Dutch and Australian Papua from the very beginning of general hostilities.
Turning to mainland southeast Asia, the occupation of northern Borneo by New Years 1943, places Malaya and Singapore under threat of Japanese land-based air attack, permitting thought of Japanese invasion operations against them. Fortunately for the British, the high-pressure Japanese diplomacy fails to persuade Thailand to join Japan in a formal or de facto alliance lending their territory for Japanese use of the assault.
In the December ’42 through February ’43 timeframe, this permits the British to send reinforcements of experienced Indian Army and Australian Army units from the North Africa theater to Malaya, Singapore, and Sumatra. [Some argue to this day, that if not for the Japanese general assault beginning in November, and the acute threat to Singapore emerging in Jan. 1943, forcing Britain to send Dominion reinforcements to the Far East, the Axis forces holding at the outskirts of Libya would have been utterly crushed or forced to surrender to later than March 1943. As it was, they held on several months longer]
The Japanese do continual air and naval raids on Singapore and inflict some embarrassing naval defeats on the British in those waters. On March 1 the Japanese launch their assault on Malaya, attempting to take the region, and then Singapore, from the landward side.
At some locations south of the Kra isthmus but north of the Malayan border, the Japanese Army violates Thai sovereignty and draws fire from Thai forces they encounter, but are able to penetrate into Malaya.
Thailand ‘defends its neutrality’ by fighting off Japanese penetrations but does not overtly declare war. It does however, increase secret joint planning and intelligence sharing with the British.
The Thai at this moment still seek to avoid a total breach with Japan because the regional outcome appears uncertain, and they want to maximize gains from declaring war upon the Japanese. Specifically, they demand lavish support and air protection, and they demand the Anglo-Americans support Thailand’s reclamation of its former Laos and Cambodian protectorates from French rule. Fearful of alienating global French opinion (Free and Vichy alike) and of pushing the Vichy French in Indochina into alliance with Japan, the Anglo-Americans refuse to commit.
The battle of Malaya and Japanese advance to Singapore continues through March and April 1943, with both sides reinforcing, but the Japanese, even as they gain ports and airfields, and press gang local labor, are rapidly depleting tactical fuel and ammunition reserves, losing quality pilots, pre-war SNLF troops and aircraft, and ships, including transports to British and Dutch submarines, and British Empire defenders on the ground.
The Japanese never make it to Singapore itself, and their stubbornness makes up for some of their material deficiencies. British forces reinforce, never as much as the theater commander wants, but enough to gain air and ground mastery. Nevertheless, it takes from May through September 1943 to finally wipe out the Japanese lodgment from eastern Malaya, and in the early part of that period, May, the Japanese complete their conquest of Sumatra.
At this point it would be helpful to review and clarify the situation in French Indochina between September 1940 and April 1943.
As you all should know by now, the Vichy French occupation authorities under Georges Catroux and his successor Jean Decoux did not accede to Japanese demands to station troops in northern French Indochina and host air and naval bases for Japan there in September 1940. The French do agree to other Japanese demands at this time, like cutting off rail and maritime traffic between French Indochina and Nationalist China. Vichy authorities also agree to export rice and rubber to Japan, and to accept Japanese manufactured goods and Yen in payment. A substantial factor in the Vichy French holding out against demands for actual occupation, and in deterring Japan from unilaterally attacking and occupying Indochina, is an alternate German diplomatic approach that opposes Japanese occupation of the territory and weakening of Vichy prestige, at least without a definite compensating commitment for Japan to go to war with Britain in return.
The delay of the occupation until the final winter months of 1940, past the Battle of Britain and its time of maximum danger, means Japan can no longer be certain of Britain not interfering against unilateral aggression toward French Indochina.
Because the French do not yield their effective sovereignty to Japan, Thailand does not perceive them as weak and launch the Franco-Thai war of November 1940. Therefore, FIC does not lose border regions of Laos or Cambodia, nor request Japanese mediation like OTL.
Because there is no occupation of Northern FIC, the US also does not impose the iron and steel scrap embargo on Japan in late 1940.
French prestige within the FIC is less impaired by wartime circumstances than in OTL in the absence of Japanese occupation and territorial cessions to Thailand, even though France remains a resented occupier.
The situation continues on into 1941. Vichy FIC remains a militarily neutral power, trading its commodity exports (rubber and rice) to both Japan and the west. The Americans continue their policy of turning down Vichy FIC authorities’ requests for American aircraft, because of concerns about reliability and limited supply, from 1940 into 1941.
The FIC authorities continue to trade with Japan heavily and keep the border with China closed in 1941, while Lend-Lease volumes going over the alternative Burma Road to China increase that year.
Because there is no Japanese occupation of northern Indochina and no Japanese commitment to war with Britain, there is no Japanese occupation of southern Indochina either in summer 1941, and therefore no US embargo and freezing of Japanese financial assets.
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union focuses all eyeballs in Tokyo north instead of south, and with that breathing room, in the second half of 1941, the US becomes agreeable to diverting a small share of the small arms, artillery, and vehicle Lend-Lease exports assigned to China via the Burma Road to go to the FIC forces instead, in exchange for valuable cargoes of rubber.
This situation continues into 1942, only on a larger scale as FIC asserts its neutrality with greater confidence after the Japanese declare war on the Soviet Union in June ’42.
At this point, Germany’s political objections to Japanese occupation of FIC begin to soften, but for the Japanese Army, the greater than expected demands of the Japanese-Soviet war, and the ongoing troop and garrison demands of the China war mean an additional occupation of a somewhat strengthened French Indochina would not be so easy. In fact under the new circumstances from June ’42 to Apr ’43, where the Soviets British Allies are not at war with Japan, but are embargoing it and could declare war at any time, the value of Vichy FIC as a neutral buffer from British Singapore and India increases in Tokyo’s estimation. Tokyo’s diplomats and soldiers focus on, and receive, guarantees of continued trade in rice and rubber, and FIC authorities neutrality and exclusion of Anglo-American forces from their territories.
As the embargo on Japan (started within weeks of its June 1942 invasion of the USSR) ultimately forces Japan to strike south against the ABDA powers by November 1942 to seize the oil of the Indies, the Japan versus French Indochina deterrence calculator must be rerun once more.
Japan is directing a small but potent share of its forces south for this strike. Ideally it would secure the use of bases throughout FIC from the onset of the campaign to support parallel advances down both sides of the South China Sea towards Singapore and all the DEI, and then to support a pivot west to occupy Burma and threaten India.
However, Japan lacks the forces for simultaneous drives, even with minimal or no opposition in Indochina, because of the brutal attrition of the Soviet front to Japanese air, ground and even naval forces and fuel reserves. So, Japan needs to stay focused on its original, Navy based, ‘clockwise’ wheel advance from the Philippines through the DEI back up to Malaya, leaving mainland Southeast Asia an afterthought.
The Vichy authorities need to take the Japanese threat more seriously now because of the Japanese redeployments south. But they have more means by late 1942 to defend themselves one or two years previously. Although it would not comport with Vichy policy in metropolitan France, there is a temptation to side with the Allies outright in Southeast Asia against the Japanese to finally do away with Japanese bullying, prevent Japanese encirclement, and assert western superiority. But cooler heads prevail. If FIC forces, through declarations or acts of war on on the Japanese, draw their primary attention, it may well upset Japanese plans for Southeast Asia and the DEI in particular, but Japan undoubtedly has the infantry and air strength to invade and occupy most of Vietnam and depose the Vichy regime and cripple its forces—if that jumped to the top of Japan’s priority list. In those circumstances, with metro France still under occupation, and Gaullists and Vichyites contesting French identity and loyalty globally, restoring French rule to Vietnam would not be an easy or quick task, and colonial rule could end up very destabilized even if formally reestablished at the end of the war. Therefore, Hanoi reluctantly concludes that neutrality and avoidance of conflict with Japan as long as it is a potent threat is the proper course of action. Despite gallant Allied resistance, Allied defeats in this region, and the lengthy, multi-year period it takes the Western Allies to return in strength, proves the pro-neutrality theory correct.
Therefore during the heyday of the Japanese strike south offensive from Nov-1942 through Apr 1943, FIC remains a neutral buffer and obstacle to strategic movement and mobility. It does not mean its waters and airspace are completely inviolate, or that its cities are not the scene of intrigues between competing Japanese, Chinese, and Allied intelligence services. Many lost and bailed out air and ships crewmen and escapees from both sides, though certainly more the Allied side in this Japanese-ascendant phase, make their way to French colonial territory, where the official policy is ‘internment’, but where enforcement is lax, and internee ‘escapes’ and eventual return to friendly territory are common.
….and so things stand in Indochina by late April 1943…
—Back in the USSR—
Turn your eyes northward. When we last looked at the Soviet Far Eastern front it was December 15th, 1942, and hard Japanese campaigning had secured a Japanese frontline reaching approximately the boundaries the old Civil War era Far Eastern Republic, Lake Baikal to the west, the Stanovoy mountains to the north, the Pacific the east. The Japanese also occupied eastern Outer Mongolia, and the Kamchatka peninsula.
From this point through August 1943, the Soviet-Japanese frontline largely stagnated, with both sides at the end of their logistical tether, fighting in an austere environment, working on higher priorities, or more urgent ones, elsewhere.
In the Japanese-occupied zone there was partisan and counter-partisan activity of note. But not matching the intensity of the occupied European parts of the USSR because of lower overall population numbers. The Japanese had minimally functioning, but not extraordinarily successful collaborationist administrations and police forces. In Mongolia, the Japanese have a bit more success propping up Buddhist-oriented anti-Communist Mongolians in their occupied zone.
The Soviets used scorched earth tactics to devastate and depopulate some of last areas conquered by the Japanese and some of the front-line areas most vulnerable to further Japanese penetration. This included summary executions of Gulag inmates at times. At other times, these were evacuated ahead of time. Survivors of these massacres often served collaborationist administrations.
In 1943, distance and air power reductions (dulled by both attrition, and redeployments to the strike south campaign) and transport attrition and fuel reserve depletion sharply restrained Japanese offensive campaigns. Diminishing returns, and diminishing faith that the ‘shock value’ of further losses of forces and land would cause Soviet collapse, also curbed Japanese offensive enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, Soviet offensive capabilities and ambitions in the Far East, Siberia, and Mongolia in the first half of 1943, other than raids, probes, and partisan actions, were restrained by simple material incapacity, starvation, being in resource poor areas at the far end of Soviet supply lines, while much higher priority battles were taking place to the west.
….in the western Soviet Union, Soviet southern and Caucasus front armies finally amassed sufficient reserves to attack the flanks of Axis-occupied Stalingrad a bit later than OTL, in Jan 1943. The Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian flank guards are nevertheless smashed, and the Germans in the city encircled, and eventually forced to capitulate after doomed attempts at rescue and break out.
The German capitulation at Stalingrad is followed by the Soviet rollback of the German salient in the northern Caucasus, pushing the Axis forces back to their starting point of spring 1942 in the Donbass. But here the Germans administer a sharp check to the Soviet forces.
While that ‘backhand slap’ heartens the Germans and embitters the Soviets, it masks to a degree the irreplaceable losses suffered by the Germans in armor.
This is proven out during the July-August battle of the Kursk salient, where the Soviets overwhelmingly defeat the Nazi forces. The difference compared with OTL however, is that while the Soviets launch a broad, front-wide offensive afterward, with a more austerely supplied population, industry, and motor pool [a knock-on effect of the lost Vladivostok Lend-Lease route], it does not chase the Germans all the to the Dnepr. Germany holds on to more of central Ukraine and Belarus for several months longer in this ATL.
By July-August 1943, greater investment in Persian corridor supply handling routes, and rail from Murmansk and Archangelsk had started to make up for lost capacity via the Pacific, but was still falling short. Only by the anniversary of the revolution in November 1943 was the capacity fully substituted.
….and over in the USA…
The USA uses the time it has in this TL between December 1941 and November 1942 when it is not at war steadily and substantially building up its armed forces, mobilizing its industry for war production, and raising Lend-Lease support to new heights. Of course this does not match the rising curve of OTL post Pearl Harbor, but some expansion can be more deliberate, rational, and less wasteful. More cargoes of vital natural rubber can be acquired from Southeast Asia. On the downside, the Japanese spend down more of their dollar reserves importing American and other western hemisphere oil to maintain their fuel reserve in the July 30 1941- July 4, 1942 timeframe.
The slower rise of economic & diplomatic tensions with Japan slows the US Pacific buildup slightly compared to OTL, but not in perfect proportion, so that at the point of outright conflict in November 1942, the US everywhere, in Hawaii, the Philippines, is better prepared than in OTL December 1941. Unfortunately in the Philippines, much of this is negated by MacArthur’s poor command decisions. However, there are also ‘invisible’ dividends to greater US preparedness that do little to lessen the sting of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the loss of the Philippines, but which pay off later.
The greater quantity of US and Philippine Commonwealth and Asiatic forces that the Japanese forces have to contend with in their strike south is a dominating factor in why the Japanese campaign ignores mainland Southeast Asia (to concentrate on the PI and DEI), ultimately fails to take Singapore and Malaya, and fails to take Burma or ever sever the Burma Road.
The actual US declaration of war in November 1942 allows US military mobilization and commitment to global military operations to skyrocket. The nascent Manhattan project is now boosted with nearly unlimited funds and resources, unlimited resources are put into programs for ASW, merchant shipping and , and fleet train support vessels to full support trans-oceanic advances of the two-ocean Navy that is being rounded out. Aircraft production and armored vehicle production increases. Restraints on detailed planning for the invasion and liberation of Europe and the blockade and defeat of Japan are lifted.
The Battle of the Atlantic reaches its most intense phase from Nov 1942 to September 1943.
The US strategic preference, and Soviet strategic preference and demand, is for the western Allies to invade France as soon as possible to establish a second front in Europe to decisively engage the Nazis and relieve the Soviet Union.
That is not really practical in 1943. What the Anglo-American forces can do, through epic feats of concentration, construction, and risk-taking with the existing pool of Allied supply shipping and landing craft, is land forces in French North Africa on or about June 1st.
The Allied landings quickly overcome local Vichy French resistance in Morocco and Algeria, with the Allies securing French surrender and occupying territory up to the Tunisian border. Unfortunately, because of quick German orders, and confusion among the local French, the Axis are able to quickly seize and then reinforce ports and airports in Tunisia and occupy the French colony. Hitler deems it vital to throw in forces to oppose the Anglo-American invasion to shore up the Mussolini government.
The Axis bridgehead in Tunisia is a godsend to Axis forces under Rommel who had been ground down and recently ousted from Tripoli by a mighty 8th Army offensive lasting all spring. With their ouster from their last positions in Tripoli, and the establishment of the Tunisian bridgehead in early June, the Afrika Korps forces do their best to break contact with the pursuing British and pull back to the Axis perimeter at the Mareth line in Tunisia.
Simultaneously with this Africa operation (and of course much larger operations on the eastern front) Germany and Italy execute Case Anton, the direct occupation of Vichy France and disarmament of its military forces on the French mainland and Corsica.
At the same time, heavy participation of US bombers and escorts in daylight bombing of German industrial targets begins, as a complement to the British nighttime bombing campaign.
Case Anton’s reverberations are felt globally as the Vichy government’s legitimacy plummets, and the Free French movement gains the support of nearly all French colonies in rapid succession. In occupied France itself, resistance networks expand operations for sabotage, rescue and recovery of Allied pilots, and above all, preparation to assist the eventual expected Allied invasion campaign. Pro-Free French and pro-Gaullist sentiment rises significantly even in French Indochina, but despite covert contacts between Hanoi and the Gaullists and Allies and more extensive intelligence and covert cooperation, as of June, July, August and September ’43 while Japan remains ascendant in the South China Sea and the battle of Malaya remains in the balance, the FIC authorities make no formal switch of loyalties, no formal alignments with the Allies, and no declarations against Japan. They do become more recalcitrant in trade negotiations however.
The Allies extinguish the Axis bridgehead in Tunisia by early December, 1943, taking a large haul of Axis prisoners.
Stalin and Roosevelt secure promises by this time that a second front in France, by June 1944, will be the priority operation of the year, with all other plans subordinated to that.
The Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff do approve plans for the Allied conquest of Pantellaria and Sicily however, to further ease Mediterranean shipping routes (the massacring of Axis air power and sea power in the Mediterranean has in fact, rendered that sea a much more usable supply line for the Allies since the middle of July 1943). Post-Sicily landings on Mediterranean Europe are not agreed to.
The invasion of Sicily is launched at the beginning of February 1, 1944 and involves American forces and the British 8th Army. The British remain engaged in the region and the effort despite the ongoing concentration of new and veteran troops and landing craft in England itself for the cross-channel invasion. The 8th Army, after the victory in Libya, is also notably virtually stripped of all its Australian, New Zealand, and Indian units, which are transferred back to the Far East theater. Some units all the way back to Australia for eventual reengagement in Papua New Guinea, but most to Malaya and Singapore for undetermined follow-on operations against the Japanese that definitely include raids on the occupied western islands of the DEI and later invasions as shipping becomes available, especially raids/invasions of Sumatra to secure communication lines to Malaya and Singapore.
Over the winter of 1943 to 1944, from December through February 1st, the Soviets finally thoroughly clear the Nazis from the occupied territory east of the Dnepr (except for Crimea). After February 1st and nearly coincident with the Sicily offensive, they widen the tiny corridor relieving the siege of Leningrad and over the next few months clear the Germans out of the territory they occupy west of Lake Peipus.
[edited for better legibility 3/22/2024]
—-to be continued—-
Despite attempts by the ‘ABDA’ countries (Americans, British, Dutch, Australians) to hold a line against the Japanese at the ‘Malay barrier’ of Timor, Java, Sumatra, Singapore, and Malaya, the Japanese breach this line and conquer several of these locations between December 1942 and April 1943.
The conquests of Java, Sumatra, and British and Dutch Borneo are harder fought than OTL, because the lack of initial jumping off points in Indochina in this ATL means the Japanese invasions of them start later to the opening of general hostilities, allowing more time for British and Dutch defensive preparations and sabotage than they had in OTL. Nevertheless, Japanese successes on Philippine islands like Palawan provide stepping stones to British northern Borneo, and Japanese successes in Mindanao provide a stepping stone to the Celebes and Moluccas, while launching points in the Palaus allowed for Japanese assaults on the eastern third of the DEI and Dutch and Australian Papua from the very beginning of general hostilities.
Turning to mainland southeast Asia, the occupation of northern Borneo by New Years 1943, places Malaya and Singapore under threat of Japanese land-based air attack, permitting thought of Japanese invasion operations against them. Fortunately for the British, the high-pressure Japanese diplomacy fails to persuade Thailand to join Japan in a formal or de facto alliance lending their territory for Japanese use of the assault.
In the December ’42 through February ’43 timeframe, this permits the British to send reinforcements of experienced Indian Army and Australian Army units from the North Africa theater to Malaya, Singapore, and Sumatra. [Some argue to this day, that if not for the Japanese general assault beginning in November, and the acute threat to Singapore emerging in Jan. 1943, forcing Britain to send Dominion reinforcements to the Far East, the Axis forces holding at the outskirts of Libya would have been utterly crushed or forced to surrender to later than March 1943. As it was, they held on several months longer]
The Japanese do continual air and naval raids on Singapore and inflict some embarrassing naval defeats on the British in those waters. On March 1 the Japanese launch their assault on Malaya, attempting to take the region, and then Singapore, from the landward side.
At some locations south of the Kra isthmus but north of the Malayan border, the Japanese Army violates Thai sovereignty and draws fire from Thai forces they encounter, but are able to penetrate into Malaya.
Thailand ‘defends its neutrality’ by fighting off Japanese penetrations but does not overtly declare war. It does however, increase secret joint planning and intelligence sharing with the British.
The Thai at this moment still seek to avoid a total breach with Japan because the regional outcome appears uncertain, and they want to maximize gains from declaring war upon the Japanese. Specifically, they demand lavish support and air protection, and they demand the Anglo-Americans support Thailand’s reclamation of its former Laos and Cambodian protectorates from French rule. Fearful of alienating global French opinion (Free and Vichy alike) and of pushing the Vichy French in Indochina into alliance with Japan, the Anglo-Americans refuse to commit.
The battle of Malaya and Japanese advance to Singapore continues through March and April 1943, with both sides reinforcing, but the Japanese, even as they gain ports and airfields, and press gang local labor, are rapidly depleting tactical fuel and ammunition reserves, losing quality pilots, pre-war SNLF troops and aircraft, and ships, including transports to British and Dutch submarines, and British Empire defenders on the ground.
The Japanese never make it to Singapore itself, and their stubbornness makes up for some of their material deficiencies. British forces reinforce, never as much as the theater commander wants, but enough to gain air and ground mastery. Nevertheless, it takes from May through September 1943 to finally wipe out the Japanese lodgment from eastern Malaya, and in the early part of that period, May, the Japanese complete their conquest of Sumatra.
At this point it would be helpful to review and clarify the situation in French Indochina between September 1940 and April 1943.
As you all should know by now, the Vichy French occupation authorities under Georges Catroux and his successor Jean Decoux did not accede to Japanese demands to station troops in northern French Indochina and host air and naval bases for Japan there in September 1940. The French do agree to other Japanese demands at this time, like cutting off rail and maritime traffic between French Indochina and Nationalist China. Vichy authorities also agree to export rice and rubber to Japan, and to accept Japanese manufactured goods and Yen in payment. A substantial factor in the Vichy French holding out against demands for actual occupation, and in deterring Japan from unilaterally attacking and occupying Indochina, is an alternate German diplomatic approach that opposes Japanese occupation of the territory and weakening of Vichy prestige, at least without a definite compensating commitment for Japan to go to war with Britain in return.
The delay of the occupation until the final winter months of 1940, past the Battle of Britain and its time of maximum danger, means Japan can no longer be certain of Britain not interfering against unilateral aggression toward French Indochina.
Because the French do not yield their effective sovereignty to Japan, Thailand does not perceive them as weak and launch the Franco-Thai war of November 1940. Therefore, FIC does not lose border regions of Laos or Cambodia, nor request Japanese mediation like OTL.
Because there is no occupation of Northern FIC, the US also does not impose the iron and steel scrap embargo on Japan in late 1940.
French prestige within the FIC is less impaired by wartime circumstances than in OTL in the absence of Japanese occupation and territorial cessions to Thailand, even though France remains a resented occupier.
The situation continues on into 1941. Vichy FIC remains a militarily neutral power, trading its commodity exports (rubber and rice) to both Japan and the west. The Americans continue their policy of turning down Vichy FIC authorities’ requests for American aircraft, because of concerns about reliability and limited supply, from 1940 into 1941.
The FIC authorities continue to trade with Japan heavily and keep the border with China closed in 1941, while Lend-Lease volumes going over the alternative Burma Road to China increase that year.
Because there is no Japanese occupation of northern Indochina and no Japanese commitment to war with Britain, there is no Japanese occupation of southern Indochina either in summer 1941, and therefore no US embargo and freezing of Japanese financial assets.
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union focuses all eyeballs in Tokyo north instead of south, and with that breathing room, in the second half of 1941, the US becomes agreeable to diverting a small share of the small arms, artillery, and vehicle Lend-Lease exports assigned to China via the Burma Road to go to the FIC forces instead, in exchange for valuable cargoes of rubber.
This situation continues into 1942, only on a larger scale as FIC asserts its neutrality with greater confidence after the Japanese declare war on the Soviet Union in June ’42.
At this point, Germany’s political objections to Japanese occupation of FIC begin to soften, but for the Japanese Army, the greater than expected demands of the Japanese-Soviet war, and the ongoing troop and garrison demands of the China war mean an additional occupation of a somewhat strengthened French Indochina would not be so easy. In fact under the new circumstances from June ’42 to Apr ’43, where the Soviets British Allies are not at war with Japan, but are embargoing it and could declare war at any time, the value of Vichy FIC as a neutral buffer from British Singapore and India increases in Tokyo’s estimation. Tokyo’s diplomats and soldiers focus on, and receive, guarantees of continued trade in rice and rubber, and FIC authorities neutrality and exclusion of Anglo-American forces from their territories.
As the embargo on Japan (started within weeks of its June 1942 invasion of the USSR) ultimately forces Japan to strike south against the ABDA powers by November 1942 to seize the oil of the Indies, the Japan versus French Indochina deterrence calculator must be rerun once more.
Japan is directing a small but potent share of its forces south for this strike. Ideally it would secure the use of bases throughout FIC from the onset of the campaign to support parallel advances down both sides of the South China Sea towards Singapore and all the DEI, and then to support a pivot west to occupy Burma and threaten India.
However, Japan lacks the forces for simultaneous drives, even with minimal or no opposition in Indochina, because of the brutal attrition of the Soviet front to Japanese air, ground and even naval forces and fuel reserves. So, Japan needs to stay focused on its original, Navy based, ‘clockwise’ wheel advance from the Philippines through the DEI back up to Malaya, leaving mainland Southeast Asia an afterthought.
The Vichy authorities need to take the Japanese threat more seriously now because of the Japanese redeployments south. But they have more means by late 1942 to defend themselves one or two years previously. Although it would not comport with Vichy policy in metropolitan France, there is a temptation to side with the Allies outright in Southeast Asia against the Japanese to finally do away with Japanese bullying, prevent Japanese encirclement, and assert western superiority. But cooler heads prevail. If FIC forces, through declarations or acts of war on on the Japanese, draw their primary attention, it may well upset Japanese plans for Southeast Asia and the DEI in particular, but Japan undoubtedly has the infantry and air strength to invade and occupy most of Vietnam and depose the Vichy regime and cripple its forces—if that jumped to the top of Japan’s priority list. In those circumstances, with metro France still under occupation, and Gaullists and Vichyites contesting French identity and loyalty globally, restoring French rule to Vietnam would not be an easy or quick task, and colonial rule could end up very destabilized even if formally reestablished at the end of the war. Therefore, Hanoi reluctantly concludes that neutrality and avoidance of conflict with Japan as long as it is a potent threat is the proper course of action. Despite gallant Allied resistance, Allied defeats in this region, and the lengthy, multi-year period it takes the Western Allies to return in strength, proves the pro-neutrality theory correct.
Therefore during the heyday of the Japanese strike south offensive from Nov-1942 through Apr 1943, FIC remains a neutral buffer and obstacle to strategic movement and mobility. It does not mean its waters and airspace are completely inviolate, or that its cities are not the scene of intrigues between competing Japanese, Chinese, and Allied intelligence services. Many lost and bailed out air and ships crewmen and escapees from both sides, though certainly more the Allied side in this Japanese-ascendant phase, make their way to French colonial territory, where the official policy is ‘internment’, but where enforcement is lax, and internee ‘escapes’ and eventual return to friendly territory are common.
….and so things stand in Indochina by late April 1943…
—Back in the USSR—
Turn your eyes northward. When we last looked at the Soviet Far Eastern front it was December 15th, 1942, and hard Japanese campaigning had secured a Japanese frontline reaching approximately the boundaries the old Civil War era Far Eastern Republic, Lake Baikal to the west, the Stanovoy mountains to the north, the Pacific the east. The Japanese also occupied eastern Outer Mongolia, and the Kamchatka peninsula.
From this point through August 1943, the Soviet-Japanese frontline largely stagnated, with both sides at the end of their logistical tether, fighting in an austere environment, working on higher priorities, or more urgent ones, elsewhere.
In the Japanese-occupied zone there was partisan and counter-partisan activity of note. But not matching the intensity of the occupied European parts of the USSR because of lower overall population numbers. The Japanese had minimally functioning, but not extraordinarily successful collaborationist administrations and police forces. In Mongolia, the Japanese have a bit more success propping up Buddhist-oriented anti-Communist Mongolians in their occupied zone.
The Soviets used scorched earth tactics to devastate and depopulate some of last areas conquered by the Japanese and some of the front-line areas most vulnerable to further Japanese penetration. This included summary executions of Gulag inmates at times. At other times, these were evacuated ahead of time. Survivors of these massacres often served collaborationist administrations.
In 1943, distance and air power reductions (dulled by both attrition, and redeployments to the strike south campaign) and transport attrition and fuel reserve depletion sharply restrained Japanese offensive campaigns. Diminishing returns, and diminishing faith that the ‘shock value’ of further losses of forces and land would cause Soviet collapse, also curbed Japanese offensive enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, Soviet offensive capabilities and ambitions in the Far East, Siberia, and Mongolia in the first half of 1943, other than raids, probes, and partisan actions, were restrained by simple material incapacity, starvation, being in resource poor areas at the far end of Soviet supply lines, while much higher priority battles were taking place to the west.
….in the western Soviet Union, Soviet southern and Caucasus front armies finally amassed sufficient reserves to attack the flanks of Axis-occupied Stalingrad a bit later than OTL, in Jan 1943. The Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian flank guards are nevertheless smashed, and the Germans in the city encircled, and eventually forced to capitulate after doomed attempts at rescue and break out.
The German capitulation at Stalingrad is followed by the Soviet rollback of the German salient in the northern Caucasus, pushing the Axis forces back to their starting point of spring 1942 in the Donbass. But here the Germans administer a sharp check to the Soviet forces.
While that ‘backhand slap’ heartens the Germans and embitters the Soviets, it masks to a degree the irreplaceable losses suffered by the Germans in armor.
This is proven out during the July-August battle of the Kursk salient, where the Soviets overwhelmingly defeat the Nazi forces. The difference compared with OTL however, is that while the Soviets launch a broad, front-wide offensive afterward, with a more austerely supplied population, industry, and motor pool [a knock-on effect of the lost Vladivostok Lend-Lease route], it does not chase the Germans all the to the Dnepr. Germany holds on to more of central Ukraine and Belarus for several months longer in this ATL.
By July-August 1943, greater investment in Persian corridor supply handling routes, and rail from Murmansk and Archangelsk had started to make up for lost capacity via the Pacific, but was still falling short. Only by the anniversary of the revolution in November 1943 was the capacity fully substituted.
….and over in the USA…
The USA uses the time it has in this TL between December 1941 and November 1942 when it is not at war steadily and substantially building up its armed forces, mobilizing its industry for war production, and raising Lend-Lease support to new heights. Of course this does not match the rising curve of OTL post Pearl Harbor, but some expansion can be more deliberate, rational, and less wasteful. More cargoes of vital natural rubber can be acquired from Southeast Asia. On the downside, the Japanese spend down more of their dollar reserves importing American and other western hemisphere oil to maintain their fuel reserve in the July 30 1941- July 4, 1942 timeframe.
The slower rise of economic & diplomatic tensions with Japan slows the US Pacific buildup slightly compared to OTL, but not in perfect proportion, so that at the point of outright conflict in November 1942, the US everywhere, in Hawaii, the Philippines, is better prepared than in OTL December 1941. Unfortunately in the Philippines, much of this is negated by MacArthur’s poor command decisions. However, there are also ‘invisible’ dividends to greater US preparedness that do little to lessen the sting of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the loss of the Philippines, but which pay off later.
The greater quantity of US and Philippine Commonwealth and Asiatic forces that the Japanese forces have to contend with in their strike south is a dominating factor in why the Japanese campaign ignores mainland Southeast Asia (to concentrate on the PI and DEI), ultimately fails to take Singapore and Malaya, and fails to take Burma or ever sever the Burma Road.
The actual US declaration of war in November 1942 allows US military mobilization and commitment to global military operations to skyrocket. The nascent Manhattan project is now boosted with nearly unlimited funds and resources, unlimited resources are put into programs for ASW, merchant shipping and , and fleet train support vessels to full support trans-oceanic advances of the two-ocean Navy that is being rounded out. Aircraft production and armored vehicle production increases. Restraints on detailed planning for the invasion and liberation of Europe and the blockade and defeat of Japan are lifted.
The Battle of the Atlantic reaches its most intense phase from Nov 1942 to September 1943.
The US strategic preference, and Soviet strategic preference and demand, is for the western Allies to invade France as soon as possible to establish a second front in Europe to decisively engage the Nazis and relieve the Soviet Union.
That is not really practical in 1943. What the Anglo-American forces can do, through epic feats of concentration, construction, and risk-taking with the existing pool of Allied supply shipping and landing craft, is land forces in French North Africa on or about June 1st.
The Allied landings quickly overcome local Vichy French resistance in Morocco and Algeria, with the Allies securing French surrender and occupying territory up to the Tunisian border. Unfortunately, because of quick German orders, and confusion among the local French, the Axis are able to quickly seize and then reinforce ports and airports in Tunisia and occupy the French colony. Hitler deems it vital to throw in forces to oppose the Anglo-American invasion to shore up the Mussolini government.
The Axis bridgehead in Tunisia is a godsend to Axis forces under Rommel who had been ground down and recently ousted from Tripoli by a mighty 8th Army offensive lasting all spring. With their ouster from their last positions in Tripoli, and the establishment of the Tunisian bridgehead in early June, the Afrika Korps forces do their best to break contact with the pursuing British and pull back to the Axis perimeter at the Mareth line in Tunisia.
Simultaneously with this Africa operation (and of course much larger operations on the eastern front) Germany and Italy execute Case Anton, the direct occupation of Vichy France and disarmament of its military forces on the French mainland and Corsica.
At the same time, heavy participation of US bombers and escorts in daylight bombing of German industrial targets begins, as a complement to the British nighttime bombing campaign.
Case Anton’s reverberations are felt globally as the Vichy government’s legitimacy plummets, and the Free French movement gains the support of nearly all French colonies in rapid succession. In occupied France itself, resistance networks expand operations for sabotage, rescue and recovery of Allied pilots, and above all, preparation to assist the eventual expected Allied invasion campaign. Pro-Free French and pro-Gaullist sentiment rises significantly even in French Indochina, but despite covert contacts between Hanoi and the Gaullists and Allies and more extensive intelligence and covert cooperation, as of June, July, August and September ’43 while Japan remains ascendant in the South China Sea and the battle of Malaya remains in the balance, the FIC authorities make no formal switch of loyalties, no formal alignments with the Allies, and no declarations against Japan. They do become more recalcitrant in trade negotiations however.
The Allies extinguish the Axis bridgehead in Tunisia by early December, 1943, taking a large haul of Axis prisoners.
Stalin and Roosevelt secure promises by this time that a second front in France, by June 1944, will be the priority operation of the year, with all other plans subordinated to that.
The Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff do approve plans for the Allied conquest of Pantellaria and Sicily however, to further ease Mediterranean shipping routes (the massacring of Axis air power and sea power in the Mediterranean has in fact, rendered that sea a much more usable supply line for the Allies since the middle of July 1943). Post-Sicily landings on Mediterranean Europe are not agreed to.
The invasion of Sicily is launched at the beginning of February 1, 1944 and involves American forces and the British 8th Army. The British remain engaged in the region and the effort despite the ongoing concentration of new and veteran troops and landing craft in England itself for the cross-channel invasion. The 8th Army, after the victory in Libya, is also notably virtually stripped of all its Australian, New Zealand, and Indian units, which are transferred back to the Far East theater. Some units all the way back to Australia for eventual reengagement in Papua New Guinea, but most to Malaya and Singapore for undetermined follow-on operations against the Japanese that definitely include raids on the occupied western islands of the DEI and later invasions as shipping becomes available, especially raids/invasions of Sumatra to secure communication lines to Malaya and Singapore.
Over the winter of 1943 to 1944, from December through February 1st, the Soviets finally thoroughly clear the Nazis from the occupied territory east of the Dnepr (except for Crimea). After February 1st and nearly coincident with the Sicily offensive, they widen the tiny corridor relieving the siege of Leningrad and over the next few months clear the Germans out of the territory they occupy west of Lake Peipus.
[edited for better legibility 3/22/2024]
—-to be continued—-
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