Stresa Revived - an Allied Mussolini TL

That's a nice update

A question: What happened with Mosley? OTL he was arrested, but in this timeline may he could be sent with his blackshirts to form a british division in the italian army or something like that
 

thaddeus

Donor
where is USSR in all of this?

certainly would not be in their interest to have Germany quickly defeated.
 
Chapter IV: The Battle of Italy, September 1940-January 1941.
Update time :D.



Chapter IV: The Battle of Italy, September 1940-January 1941.

From late June to August 1940, using Lend-Lease aid from the United States, the British managed to re-equip a total of 125.000 soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force out of the more than 198.000 that had been evacuated from Dunkirk. With France occupied, French pride had taken a dent and therefore Reynaud agreed to a joint “Allied Expeditionary Force” to Italy under British command, even though the French contributed a far greater number of troops (still commanded by General Maxime Weygand). This force of circa 625.000 men would be commanded by Archibald Wavell, who replaced the defeated General Harold Alexander. This force in turn would be subordinate to the Italian Comando Supremo under Marshal Pietro Badoglio. At sea, however, the French Navy and the Regia Marina formed a joint command that also included the British Mediterranean Fleet. The British left them in charge of the Mediterranean Sea and transferred units to the Atlantic (as well as the Pacific due to the possibility of war with Japan).

In the meantime, while Italy’s geography certainly lent itself for a defensive war, it did little to diminish German air superiority. The Luftwaffe was able to field 4.201 airplanes in September 1939: 1.191 bombers, 361 dive bombers, 788 fighters, 431 heavy fighters and 488 transports. The Regia Aeronautica fielded 3.296 during the same timeframe, of which circa 2.000 were fit for operations and of which 166 were modern fighters (it was the smallest air force among the European great powers). Increased defence spending had increased numbers, but only to 3.480 by March 1940. Even after aircraft factories had been mobilized for wartime production, production never got far above one hundred aircraft a month (in part also because the Luftwaffe attacked Italian industry). In September, the Regia Aeronautica numbered 3.922 aircraft, of which ~ 3.200 were combat-ready and of which 820 were modern fighters, which meant that they were still outnumbered. 300 British aircraft and 150 French machines somewhat amended this major strategic disadvantage. These reinforcements were sorely needed because superior German aircraft production had only widened the numeric and qualitative gap between the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica.

The modern Macchi C.200 fighters with a top speed of 504 km/h were slow compared to the Messerschmitt Bf-109, which had a top speed of 640 km/h; they also had weak armament with only two 12.7 mm machine guns. Their sturdy design and their agility, however, allowed them to effectively fight against the Germans, and German pilots found their adversaries to be more than competent. A handful of the novel Macchi C.202 were rushed into service in time to fight and, especially when they were piloted by experienced airmen from the Spanish Civil War, they easily matched their German opponents blow for blow. For example, in less than three days, Vittorio Mussolini managed to shoot down eleven German fighters in a C.202, which he partially did in order to earn the recognition of his father, who seemed to prefer Vittorio’s younger brother Bruno (Vittorio was successful, with the Italian press glorifying him as the greatest Italian ace, which earned him his father’s recognition). Later versions of the C.202 would sport Rolls-Royce Merlin engines since a lot of Italy’s industry was under occupation.

The German general staff knew that the German-Austrian border didn’t lend itself to an invasion, more so because Italy still held some buffer zones dating back to 1938. Hitler hoped that a strategic bombing campaign would soften Italy to the point of a separate armistice, but he was quickly disillusioned. The other options were to invade through the French-Italian border (which was difficult as the French still defended the Rhone Valley) or the Yugoslav-Italian border. Hitler figured that France would withdraw from the continent with an Italian defeat and he was willing to do whatever it took to make that happen.

Because pretty much every invasion route on the Austro-Italian border had disastrous geography for the offensive force, the German OKW focused on invading via Yugoslavia through the Ljubljana Gap. Unfortunately, Yugoslavia’s geography wasn’t much friendlier than Italy's, but on the bright side Belgrade would face a multi-front war if it chose to defy Germany: Germany and Hungary would come in from the north and Bulgaria from the southeast (Romania, on the other hand, was fuming because it had been forced to cede northern Transylvania to Hungary in the Second Vienna Award, prompting Bucharest to improve its relations with Belgrade). Hitler chose to use Yugoslavia’s hopeless strategic situation as a stick, while also dangling a carrot in front of the face of Prince Paul (the regent for the 17 year-old King Peter II). The carrot was that Yugoslavia would get Albania on a silver platter if it joined the Axis, which not coincidentally removed a threat to the Ploiesti oilfields in Romania on which Germany depended. Additionally, the Allies harboured Ustashe leader Ante Pavelic and Italian fascist leaders had violently opposed the existence of the Yugoslav state in the past: this, as well as the fact that Germany seemed to have the upper hand, further strengthened the pro-Axis faction.

On August 13th 1940, Prince Paul responded to restiveness in Croatia – surreptitiously stirred up by Italian agents-provocateurs working for the Ustashe – by declaring martial law on the advice of the Germans. General Milan Nedic, Minister of Army and Navy, was thrust forward to the position of Prime Minister and also got the Ministry of Internal Affairs: he now was the head of the Yugoslav armed forces, the head of the country’s police forces and head of government. The country effectively became a military dictatorship and Nedic’s regime responded brutally to Croatian demands for more autonomy and violence against ethnic Serbs, engaging in ethnic cleansing. On August 23rd, just ten days after the 1940 August Coup, Nedic allowed the Germans to invade Italy via the Ljubljana Gap after, momentarily at least, crushing the Croats with help from the Waffen SS (the latter started to forcibly recruit “racially superior specimens” from the German minority in Yugoslavia, which was soon also subjected to conscription by the Wehrmacht). The WW I vintage Royal Yugoslav Army simultaneously attacked Albania, but it got stuck not far across the border and was actually repulsed, suffering for Belgrade’s arrogance. Much to his annoyance, Hitler was forced to deploy a fighter squadron and a Stuka dive bomber squadron to assist them. The Yugoslavs, to their own annoyance and surprise, encountered civilian resistance from the Albanians, who didn’t see Yugoslavian control as an improvement over Italy’s (Albania’s resistance movement was among the few not supported by the Allies because it opposed both sides). The resistance to Yugoslavia, however, wasn’t surprising: news of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Serbs predictably alienated supposed “allies.”

Yugoslavia annexed Albania, but at the cost of becoming a satellite state to Germany and of Allied support for the Croatian Ustashe movement. Italy promptly declared war on Yugoslavia on August 24th 1940, followed by France and Britain a few days later, but they did little to back it up. In the meantime, Nedic was pressured to sign a commercial treaty that allowed Germany to purchase metallic ores for its war industry for advantageous, below-market-price prices. And Yugoslavia was well endowed with metals (and other materials that the German war machine required). Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Macedonia had major iron ore deposits and the country was also rich in non-ferrous ores: Bosnia and Herzegovina had bauxite, Kosovo had reserves of lead, zinc and chrome, Serbia provided copper and antimony, and Macedonia held chrome, manganese, uranium and mercury.

Nedic kept his part of the deal, allowing the Germans to invade Italy through the Ljubljana Gap. What also helped the Germans was the fact that the Italians were distracted by the simultaneous Yugoslav offensives on Fiume, Trieste and Pola, which had been cut off from the rest of Italy by the German breakout into the country’s northeast. These cities themselves were ethnically Italian, but the countryside around them was decidedly Slavic, and ethnic violence took place against the Italian minority. On September 19th, members of the Slovene militantly anti-fascist and insurgent organization TIGR killed a few dozen Italians, but not before raping the women. The entire event was broadly meted out by the Italian press.

On September 20th, an angry Mussolini ordered the Regia Marina to bombard the Yugoslav naval base at Kotor and to evacuate as many of the besieged Italian civilians as possible. The Royal Yugoslav Navy was equipped with one elderly ex-German light cruiser (suitable only for training purposes), one large modern destroyer flotilla leader of British design, three modern destroyers of French design, one seaplane tender, four modern submarines (two older French-built and two British-built) and ten modern motor torpedo boats (MTBs); of the older vessels, there were six ex-Austrian Navy medium torpedo boats, six mine-layers, four large armoured river monitors and various auxiliary craft. That afternoon Italian light cruiser Luigi Cadorna and escorting destroyers Alpino and Artigliere, drew out the Royal Yugoslav Navy by shelling the coastal town of Zanjic for twenty minutes with their eight 152 mm (4x2) and eight 120 mm guns (2x2, twice).

The obsolete, WW I vintage ex-German light cruiser, three destroyers, four motor torpedo boats and five patrol boats steamed toward the inferior Italian force and drove it off. The Luigi Cadorna and its escorts fled southwest and, with the setting sun they provided good targets for Yugoslav gunners. They didn’t realize that a taskforce – composed of Italian battleship Andrea Doria, heavy cruiser Zara and a destroyer escort – was coming in from the south and that they were being led to them. The Italian force crossed the Yugoslav T and could therefore bring all its guns to bear; besides, Yugoslav 152 and 120 mm guns didn’t do much to Zara’s 100-159 mm (3.9-5.9 inch) armoured belt. In the meantime, Zara’s 203 mm (8 inch) and Andrea Doria’s ten 320 mm (12.6 inch) guns had no difficulties in obliterating the Yugoslav force, while a raid by SM.79 medium bombers bombed Kotor, damaging several ships, docks and supply facilities. The September 22nd Kotor Raid was an Italian tactical victory and a major morale boost, but it was of limited strategic value. Italian dominance in the Adriatic Sea had already been a given anyway.

Firstly, feints on the Brenner Pass, the Lienz-Belluno route and several other mountain passes took place. Then the Luftwaffe started to bomb the somewhat neglected segment of the Alpine Wall on the Yugoslav border while simultaneously 2.200 artillery pieces opened fire on September 1st. Even though Italian troops on the Yugoslav border were thinly spread – leaving the entire region lightly defended by only a screening force – the Wehrmacht took until September 10th to push through the Ljubljana Gap against determined defenders utilizing the natural features as much as possible. Any effort to attrite the Germans ended after the breakout and the crossing of the Isonzo a few days later, for the time being. Before the German Panzer Divisions lay the wide open Venetian-Friulian Plain followed by the Po Valley (the flatlands of Veneto and Friuli do not drain into the Po, but they effectively combine into an unbroken plain and are therefore often considered a part of the Po Valley). Among them was the 7th Panzer Division commanded by a Lieutenant-General Erwin Rommel, which had been so wildly successful in France and was transferred to Italy precisely for that reason (as well as his experiences there in WW I).

The Luftwaffe started to attack Regia Aeronautica facilities all over northern Italy in the hopes of destroying as many Italian aircraft on the ground, but the Italians had the luxury of radar thanks to their British allies. The majority of Italian aircraft managed to take to the skies and fight the enemy, which they did surprisingly well. The modern Macchi C.200 fighters with a top speed of 504 km/h were slow compared to the Messerschmitt Bf-109, which had a top speed of 640 km/h; they also had weak armament with only two 12.7 mm machine guns. Their sturdy design and their agility, however, allowed them to effectively fight against the Germans, and German pilots found their adversaries to be more than competent. A handful of the novel Macchi C.202 were rushed into service in time to fight and, especially because they were piloted by experienced airmen, easily matched their German opponents blow for blow. For example, in less than three days, Vittorio Mussolini managed to shoot down eleven German fighters, which he partially did in order to earn the recognition of his father, who seemed to favour Vittorio’s younger brother Bruno (Vittorio was successful, with the Italian press glorifying him as the greatest Italian ace, which earned him his father’s recognition). Besides displaying a great deal of skill, the Regia Aeronautica in general fought much more aggressively than the French air force had done. As a result, Luftwaffe losses were significantly greater than in previous campaigns, but they still outnumbered the Italians and attacked columns of troops that retreated from the Austrian border to avoid being cut off.

On the ground, Von Rundstedt ordered his forces to advance carefully, but he didn’t count on Rommel, a general who seized an opportunity when he saw one. He advanced 35 km (22 mi) just on the first day, crossing the Tagliamento and Livenza rivers with little effort, successfully utilizing flanking attacks. He reached the left bank of the Piave River during the evening of September 11th, and he was again lauded as a war hero in German propaganda. Two days later his troops were in Venice and Hitler made him a full general while also awarding him the Iron Cross with the Oak Leaves for his successful leadership. Venice, Vicenza, Treviso and Udine among others were under German control while Trieste, Fiume and Pola befell Yugoslavia. Verona became a frontline city and was devastated by aerial and artillery attack. Rommel was later transferred to Army Group North as a corps commander for Operation Barbarossa for propaganda reasons: Hitler didn’t want him to be associated with the bloody stalemate in the Apennines.

In the meantime, Mussolini was royally pissed off that his army commander Marshal Pietro Badoglio had let himself be blindsided like this, failing to respond adequately the moment that Yugoslavia had entered the war by reinforcing that border. Mussolini fired him and sent him to London to become the military attaché there, although he spent his first two months on lessons in English from a tutor provided by ambassador Grandi (Churchill nicknamed him “Marshal yes, but” because Badoglio always said “yes, but” whenever Churchill complained about Italian performance or slow progress on the Italian front). His replacement was Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, who had been successful in the Italo-Ethiopian War, but who unfortunately was no miracle worker. He hastily organized a new defensive line on the Adige River. Sappers blew up most of the bridges across the river while Italian artillery and aerial attacks did so where they failed. The Regio Esercito dug trenches, placed machine gun posts, placed rolls of barbed wire, built Czech hedgehogs and other obstacles, and laid land mines while a concerted effort by Allied air forces challenged the Luftwaffe enough to distract them from preventing the consolidation of the Adige Line.

The Germans immediately noticed that Italian resistance noticeably stiffened after Graziani successfully managed to redeploy his forces to this new frontline while Anglo-French reinforcements arrived as well. German probing attacks were all easily repulsed while Luftwaffe attacks proved ineffective, both proving to be costly. Besides that, autumn rains that continued for much of October reduced many country roads to mud, hampering the German logistical situation. Hitler ordered the offensive to recommence once frost set in. After wearing down the defenders for weeks with an artillery and aerial offensive, the Germans broke through on December 6th, but still needed a week to reach the river Po, merely 24 km (15 mi) away. There was plentiful time for the Allies to destroy bridges across the Po, although their defences on the Po were more improvised than those on the Adige. The Wehrmacht crossed the Po in mid December but, with its resources depleted, they grinded to a halt the moment they got to the Apennines proper, where they encountered fierce opposition. The frontline stabilized on the Arno River over the course of December 1940/January 1941. The Battle of Italy ended in a stalemate, and it wasn't a total German victory since it had failed to achieve its goal of controlling the continent. The Italian Campaign, however, had only just begun.
 
Last edited:
The Battle of Italy ended in a stalemate, a tactical victory for the Germans but a strategic victory for the Allies. The Italian Campaign, however, had only just begun.

With most of italian industries (from what you posit Milano, Torino and Genova are in german hands) gone, Italy is to all practical purposes crushed and out of the war so this counts a strategic victory for the Germans. In this situation, I consider doubtful that the french would keep fighting.

To attain the final result you state, you have to stop the germans no further than the Adige.
 
With most of italian industries (from what you posit Milano, Torino and Genova are in german hands) gone, Italy is to all practical purposes crushed and out of the war so this counts a strategic victory for the Germans. In this situation, I consider doubtful that the french would keep fighting.

To attain the final result you state, you have to stop the germans no further than the Adige.
I second that.

At any rate,it seems that Italy is finally going to get Dalmatia after the war.
 
I said it in the former version of the Tl, and I'm going to repeat it now: Venice does not have streets but canals.

I'm also finding very hard to believe that the German offensive could not be stopped neither on the Piave nor on the Adige, and even more skeptic about the idea of the Germans forcing the narrows between lake Garda and the Po river to invade Lombardy. The supply train becomes truly too long for the invaders.

Leaving aside all of these German wanks, the Apennines run well north of Florence. If the front bogs down on the Apennines, Florence cannot be invaded.
 

Frankly once the German break up the defence line on the alps, i consider the Pianura Padana lost.
Now the Germans can play their game and the italian army is too ill equipped, ill trained and ill leaded (Badoglio and Graziani are not the brightest bulb in the world...to be kind) to offer a long resistance there.

Naturally you are correct about Venice and Florence, in the last case just change it with another city (like Bologna or MIlano) and it's ok, it's not that any italian big city is so deprived of cultural treasure that can be robbed.

In any case Barbarossa seem will have a troubled begun, not only i expect that the loss of the Germans in Italy will be greater than OTL Greece and Yugoslavian campaign but with France still fighting the general loss and expediture will much more than OTL for the Germans, plus no ARMIR and less gold (France has not give up her, Poland and Belgium reserve)
 
Shouldn't it be Bruno not Vittorio that is considered the Ace of Aces? I thought it was remarked that Bruno was the only "serious pilot" when discussing Mussolini's families military roles in The Invasion of Ethiopia and WWII. I apologize about such a minor nitpick :eek::D
 
How is this a strategic victory for the Allies? Germany has essentially destroyed Italy's warmaking potential by seizing the industrialised north. The Italian/French remnants combined with British troops may be able to pin down German troops by maintaining a presence in Italy, but that's about it right now.
 
Chapter V: The Italian Campaign and the Capri Conference, January-December 1941.
How is this a strategic victory for the Allies? Germany has essentially destroyed Italy's warmaking potential by seizing the industrialised north. The Italian/French remnants combined with British troops may be able to pin down German troops by maintaining a presence in Italy, but that's about it right now.

Well, Germany has failed to win. They're in a superior position, but they haven't won. IOTL the Allies got kicked out of the continent but not ITTL, which counts as a strategic victory to me. Anyway, here's an update:




Chapter V: The Italian Campaign and the Capri Conference, January-December 1941.

The Germans had suffered over 350.000 casualties, more than twice as many as in the Battle of France, and required fresh reinforcements. Besides that, Italy’s limited infrastructure, the hostile terrain and autumn rains that had reduced a lot of country roads to sludge (and there were many of those since Italy was a predominantly agrarian country) had caused the army to burn through supplies much quicker. Given the current manpower and supply situation, the campaign could only be resumed until next year according to Field Marshal Von Rundstedt. Hitler replaced him as commanding officer in Italy by Erich von Manstein, a proven excellent offensive general (though with little experience in mountain warfare).

In the meantime, the Regio Esercito had 300.000 troops stationed in the colonies and so far Mussolini had kept them there because he feared Italy’s colonial subjects would revolt in the motherland’s moment of weakness. Now, however, he decided to transfer half of them to Italy since “there has to be an Italy for there to be an Italian Empire” (the decision was made easier because South Africa offered some troops for policing duties in Italy’s colonies). Besides that, the British redeployed the 10th Indian Infantry Division, the 1st South African Infantry Division, the 1st African Division (part of the King’s African Rifles), the Canadian Corps and the Australian I Corps to Italy (shortly after its redeployment it was renamed ANZAC Corps since it also controlled the New Zealand 2nd Division, along with British formations). France, in the meantime, contributed three divisions and several brigades of colonial forces and started to bring in divisions that had been forced to leave France since the occupation of Northern Italy threatened their rear. All-in-all, the size of Allied forces in Italy (including Italy’s own) swelled by 30 divisions in early 1941 (among them were also the 1st and 2nd Libyan Divisions, which would fight for Italy with distinction). The German presence, by contrast, only grew by 21 divisions. Because of the bad situation, Mussolini sacked Graziani and appointed Ugo Cavallero to replace him.

Between February 17th and February 19th 1941 the leaders of the three Stresa Powers convened to establish common war aims and to engage in coordinated political and military planning. Mussolini met with Churchill and Reynaud during the Capri Conference in his villa on the island resort to formulate their war goals and strategy. All three agreed that none of them would open up separate peace negotiations without first consulting the others. Secondly, their stated war goal would be to return Germany to its 1937 borders and that they would do so via a “soft underbelly strategy”: i.e. liberating northern Italy and thrusting to Vienna via the Ljubljana Gap and from there into southern Germany. Mussolini emphasized the issue of restoring Austrian independence and in passing mentioned that territorial expansion at Germany’s expense wouldn’t be out of place. Churchill and Reynaud didn’t disagree, but wanted to put off that decision. So far, the conference was a resounding success for Churchill and Mussolini, who got what they wanted while Reynaud’s proposals for landings in northern and/or southern France were rejected. First and foremost, however, they could talk all they wanted about their goals and strategies, but knew that without the active participation of the United States it was all a pipedream.

Most of Italy’s small industrial base was located in the industrial triangle of Milan-Turin-Genua – an area of intense machinery, automotive, aeronautical and naval production – and all of it was under German occupation (including the incomplete hulks of battleships Roma and Impero, which the Germans used as storage space). Armaments and heavy industrial production in Italy’s colonies was practically non-existent, leaving the Italian armed forces no other choice but to loan money to buy weapons and later to apply for Lend-Lease aid. Italy became a recipient when Roosevelt expanded it to all three main Allied powers in late 1941 as tensions mounted between the US and Japan. He was reluctant to supply a regime he loathed because of its blatant imperialist war of aggression against Ethiopia, its use of mustard gas in that war in contravention of the Geneva Protocol, and its fascist dictatorial regime that at first glance seemed to be a lot like Hitler’s. However, he understood that many of the similarities were cosmetic. Mussolini, for example, had distinguished himself by accepting Jewish immigrants fleeing the Nazis, which earned him the sympathy of the strong US Jewish lobby (the all-powerful Mafia, on the other hand, hated his guts because he had virtually wiped them out on Sicily with an iron fist campaign, including 11.000 arrests between 1925 and 1929).

Roosevelt ultimately thought of Hitler as the greater evil. Between 1942 and 1945, under the Lend-Lease Act, Italy received 7.000 motor cycles, 9.500 jeeps, 60.000 trucks, 360 locomotives, 2.500 aircraft, 1.000 tanks, 100.000 rifles, 25 million bullets, 750.000 tonnes of food supplies, a quarter of a million tonnes of fuel and 25 million dollars (roughly $375 million in today’s money) worth of construction materials. Britain also helped by marshalling the resources of the Empire, but Allied forces in Italy still weren’t powerful enough to defeat Germany. They could merely pin them down there. Both efforts were patch-ups rather than long term war winners. Nothing short of an American war effort would do.

Mussolini, being an ardent Italian nationalist pur sang, absolutely wanted his country to contribute to the war effort: he renegotiated Italy’s WW I debts to Britain in order to free up money to stimulate industry in southern Italy (and to a lesser extent in Italy’s colonies). The effort delivered a minor contribution to the war effort. The much larger agrarian component of Italy’s economy was far more important, supplying Allied forces with sugar, citrus, wine, olives, grains, meat (cattle, pig, sheep and goat) and seafood. Desperate for anything useful, Governor-General Italo Balbo ordered a geological survey in Libya. For a long time the suspicion had existed that Libya possessed oil reserves, but nothing had ever been undertaken to ascertain the truth. Oil would be discovered at Zaltan in Cyrenaica in 1943, but the war delayed exploitation, and it wasn’t really needed either because Britain got plenty of oil for the Allies from the Middle East where it controlled a substantial “informal empire”. The US would also supply fuel upon its entry into the war.

Holding out on continental Europe would not only stave off a German invasion attempt of Britain, but Winston Churchill also hoped to convince the US government that the war wasn’t a lost cause and tried to arouse sympathy by portraying it as a fight between the Allied David and the Axis Goliath. Churchill, out of wishful thinking, thought the United States would join the war sooner rather than later, and when that happened the Allies would use American might to push into Germany’s “soft underbelly.” The Atlantic Charter, signed on USS Augusta in August 1941, provided only a faint hope of that occurring: it detailed the goals of Anglo-American cooperation for the cause of international security, but didn’t mention anything about US entry into the war.

In the meantime, Hitler, who was unwilling to postpone his invasion of the Soviet Union for yet another year, de-intensified his effort in Italy. Hitler believed the Wehrmacht would easily be able to hold the Allies at bay with a defensive effort in the Apennines and turn Italy into the “largest Allied internment camp” (much like Greece in WW I). He did launch a final offensive in the spring of 1941, moving the frontline somewhat further south. The new frontline by May 1941 went from Leghorn to Pesaro via Siena, Arezzo and the Foglio River. From now on, German forces wouldn’t do more than fight small operations to take control of good starting positions for “the final offensives of the war” that would take place once the Soviets were defeated. After the USSR was defeated, which Hitler arrogantly assumed wouldn’t take very long, the Western Allies would surely fold.
 
Last edited:
Well, Germany has failed to win. They're in a superior position, but they haven't won. IOTL the Allies got kicked out of the continent but not ITTL, which counts as a strategic victory to me.

That is not how you define a strategic victory.The allies got their arses kicked in this scenario.Italy lost most of it's industrial capacity and a large part of it's population centers.In this case,the strategic balance actually changed in favour of Germany because it now gained a large part of Italy's population centers and industry.
 
Last edited:
Well, Germany has failed to win. They're in a superior position, but they haven't won. IOTL the Allies got kicked out of the continent but not ITTL, which counts as a strategic victory to me.

I agree in that the Allied position is far better compared to OTL, the problem is the Allies don't know that. It's a little bit similar to A Blunted Sickle and The Whale Has Wings; we know that the Allies are doing much better and are much closer to victory, but within the timeline it looks like an unmitigated disaster.

The Stresa Revived allied leadership isn't comparing their situation to a hypothetical one where the Mediterranean is closed and Britain is stretched navally over two fronts. They're comparing it to when Italy held strong alpine passes against Germany, and Italian manufacturing could contribute to the war effort. They've lost both in this most recent campaign. Most people in ATL would consider this a strategic and tactical defeat for the Allies, it's just not the unmitigated disaster that evicting them from the continent would be.
 
I don't think that's physically possible.

Oops, forgot about them canals there.

That is not how you define a strategic victory.The allies got their arses kicked in this scenario.Italy lost most of it's industrial capacity and a large part of it's population centers.In this case,the strategic balance actually changed in favour of Germany because it now gained a large part of Italy's population centers and industry.

I agree in that the Allied position is far better compared to OTL, the problem is the Allies don't know that. It's a little bit similar to A Blunted Sickle and The Whale Has Wings; we know that the Allies are doing much better and are much closer to victory, but within the timeline it looks like an unmitigated disaster.

The Stresa Revived allied leadership isn't comparing their situation to a hypothetical one where the Mediterranean is closed and Britain is stretched navally over two fronts. They're comparing it to when Italy held strong alpine passes against Germany, and Italian manufacturing could contribute to the war effort. They've lost both in this most recent campaign. Most people in ATL would consider this a strategic and tactical defeat for the Allies, it's just not the unmitigated disaster that evicting them from the continent would be.

Duly noted. Made some changes.
 
I'll just say overall I'm really enjoying this timeline, that phrasing just stuck out as being a little incongruous. Will continue reading with pleasure.
 
The Battle of Italy ended in a stalemate, and it wasn't a total German victory since it had failed to achieve its goal of controlling the continent. The Italian Campaign, however, had only just begun.

Now it works. I imagine somebody in Britain commenting "this is not the beginning of the end but definitely the end of the beginning".

I had hoped for some military glory for Italy, I will have to settle for lemon and tuna providing :(.
 
This is all awfully exciting. Please keep going. :D

Wow, I thought this would inadvertently turn into a more favourable war for the Germans because Hitler would maybe decide to not invade the USSR if he had too many enemies in the West, allowing him to focus on Italy, Britain and France, but it seems Axis is in a significantly worse position than in our timeline.
 
Top