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The bigger question is why would Stalin do this in the first place. For reasons that we can guess at but never fully know, Stalin never considered Yugoslavia as a part of the defensive perimeter he was intent on setting up after WWII. Yugoslavia was a luxury like Greece (which Stalin hung out to...

This is probably not what you're looking for, but a joint attack on Taranto would be much more likely in a world where the RAF never formed. Additional funding could lead to expanded airfields on Malta to house the Wellington-esque bombers which would take part in this raid if the RNAS holds on...

Building off the comments made above, the plans for an attack on Taranto were made by the Royal Navy not the RAF and had their genesis all the way back in 1935. Now in OTL, Wellington's from Malta did attack Taranto on the day after Operation Judgement. IIRC they were the only Wellingtons in...

Though the above posters are right in that there is only so much one can do given the original specifications. However, I wonder if a different tail, something more along the lines of the X-27 Lancer could be developed earlier without sacrificing too much speed? IIRC the tail was a major cause...

Maybe, fuel is going to be an issue though. She needed to refuel in OTL on the 8th IIRC. At most I think the IJN loses a few dozen more aircraft as they ready their decks for a perceived counter strike. I'm more interested in the possibility of the US carriers refueling at Pearl earlier and...

In OTL the USAAF sent out a bunch of sorties to try and locate the IJN in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor but none succeeded in finding them. I know the odds are low, but what if one of the early ones did? I'm assuming that the USAAF would throw whatever they could at the fleet. A few B-17s and...

Like so much of Eastern Europe, Romania was really in a difficult position during the 1930s. In theory, the Little Entente could have replaced the Habsburgs and provided stability but without significant Great Power support it simply could not withstand pressures from a resurgent Germany and...

Montreal could have been 2-3x bigger IMO if the British had been more proactive building Canals in the early 19th century. Saskatoon and Edmonton could also have been bigger if the CPR took its original route. Similarly, New Westminster could have been the terminus of the CPR if it had beat...

I'm not so sure about that. There's a whole bunch of aircraft squadrons in the Eastern Mediterranean which aren't doing much of anything at that point. To have them twiddle their thumbs and await an Italian attack while completely abandoning Greece would do serious damage to their ongoing...

The Rolls-Royce Meteor was developed around the same time. Perhaps stick that in there instead of the Bedford engines to help with it being under-powered and a bit of the mechanical reliability?

In execution no, but on paper she certainly was and you have to admit that it was a unique design. The Panzerschiffe caused all sorts of panic well before their numerous deficiencies were revealed and was thus something of a success even before firing her guns. Perhaps if they came along to...

I'm aware of their OTL minelaying capacity, but they were hardly optimized for it in the same way the Pluton was. Would a decently fast long range mine layer be enough to cause the British to take notice while being sufficiently "defensive" to stay within the lines of the ToV? Granted, it...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cruiser_Pluton Maybe it's a bit off topic, but I always wondered if Weimar could have done something similar with their early cruisers. Such a move would have definitely caused the British to sit up and take notice regardless of how effective it was or was...

There's also the fact that the German populations were historically seen as agents of empire and were employed as such by the Nazis in WWII. Hungary was never able to mobilize its populations in quite the same way. In Yugoslavia, the survival of the Hungarian community there is largely due to...

Holly Case's book is particularly insightful for this question IMO. The Hungarians were dead set on keeping the entirety of Transylvania. Even after the Second Vienna Award, in 1940, they constantly pressed for more land. Case makes a persuasive argument that the Hungarians' eagerness to...

I think its also worth noting the mentality present in all Hungarian leadership factions in 1918. AFAIK no one, not even the Communists was willing to accept any kind of "truncated" ethnic Hungary. Pretty much everyone insisted on maintaining the Kingdom of Hungary's pre-war borders. The only...

It's also worth noting that the initial Japanese goal was only to take Rangoon and Southern Burma. Only when this was achieved ahead of schedule (along with objectives elsewhere) were reinforcements sent and the British driven out of Northern Burma. That's not quite the argument IIRC. Writing...

Now that the Albanian communist regime has fallen and we have access to the Albanian state archives we can see that despite all the propaganda, the Albanian communist party was continually frustrated with its ability to crack down on religious practice. Pretty much all the policy did was destroy...

So if I'm reading this article right, apparently Ron Artest had a couple of other candidates for a possible name change instead of "Metta World Peace" https://sports.yahoo.com/metta-world-peace-name-change-sandiford-artest-nba-023805023.html Obviously we are living in a better TL than one in...

I think you're right that Pavelic aren't getting into power in TTL and that the Croat/Serb violence isn't going to break out in 1941. That being said the tensions that led to the violence breaking out aren't going away which might push Macek to do something. If the Chetniks end up being more...