A Blunted Sickle - Thread II

pdf27

Decius00009 said:
Did the SS machine gun retreating conscripts towards the end IOTL? I thought only the Soviets did that
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One thing I'm trying to get across is how much the war changed Germany as it went along. In OTL the Hitler Youth defenders in Berlin for instance had known no other leader, and some of their most formative years were when the great German victories of 1940-41 were happening. Here, boys of the same age will have been born 4-5 years earlier - they'll be less fanatical and unquestioning, and this goes even more strongly for the older defenders. Meanwhile, the SS is a different organisation too - they've started on the Holocaust earlier, and the Nazi party feels much less secure in their grip on power so are using the SS to keep the armed forces in line. There are some aspects of the behaviour of the SS ITTL which will be even more extreme and darker than those of OTL as a result.
 

Pempelune

pdf27 said:
One thing I'm trying to get across is how much the war changed Germany as it went along. In OTL the Hitler Youth defenders in Berlin for instance had known no other leader, and some of their most formative years were when the great German victories of 1940-41 were happening. Here, boys of the same age will have been born 4-5 years earlier - they'll be less fanatical and unquestioning, and this goes even more strongly for the older defenders. Meanwhile, the SS is a different organisation too - they've started on the Holocaust earlier, and the Nazi party feels much less secure in their grip on power so are using the SS to keep the armed forces in line. There are some aspects of the behaviour of the SS ITTL which will be even more extreme and darker than those of OTL as a result.
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Nice touch! The thought you give to litterally everything in this timeline is what makes it so interesting.
 

avernite

pdf27 said:
One thing I'm trying to get across is how much the war changed Germany as it went along. In OTL the Hitler Youth defenders in Berlin for instance had known no other leader, and some of their most formative years were when the great German victories of 1940-41 were happening. Here, boys of the same age will have been born 4-5 years earlier - they'll be less fanatical and unquestioning, and this goes even more strongly for the older defenders. Meanwhile, the SS is a different organisation too - they've started on the Holocaust earlier, and the Nazi party feels much less secure in their grip on power so are using the SS to keep the armed forces in line. There are some aspects of the behaviour of the SS ITTL which will be even more extreme and darker than those of OTL as a result.
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How soon will mass formations of Germans start surrendering though? They're likely in much more of a WW1 'well we lost, time to surrender' mode without the bitterness of the extra war years (especially in the East).

As of now it's a few boys not up to throwing their lives away, but how soon for some of the generals to give up? Losing the Ruhr is game-over, the generals all know that much.
 

pdf27

avernite said:
How soon will mass formations of Germans start surrendering though? They're likely in much more of a WW1 'well we lost, time to surrender' mode without the bitterness of the extra war years (especially in the East).
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It's already happened, the most recent being 3rd Panzer surrendering en masse. The problem is that the Nazis have started taking reprisals against the families of those seen to have surrendered without having fought hard enough - so unless the position of their unit (as opposed to Germany as a whole) is clearly hopeless they aren't going to surrender.

avernite said:
As of now it's a few boys not up to throwing their lives away, but how soon for some of the generals to give up? Losing the Ruhr is game-over, the generals all know that much.
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The problem is essentially that they can't do so while Hitler/the Nazi Party are in power...
 

pdf27

Artaxerxes said:
"How many battles of the Isonzo can we get through before the war ends this time!"
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It needs to be remembered that nobody really sees the end of the war as imminent, just a foregone conclusion. It's currently the end of October, and everyone is thinking in terms of one last round if fighting before things settle down for the winter - with fighting starting again in the springtime. Germany certainly isn't showing signs of imminent collapse (at least not such as are apparent externally), and that means the Italians won't consider doing anything before the spring - probably a wise idea given how harsh the winter of 1941 was and how bad the alpine terrain they would have had to fight over.
 

naraht

The intended pocket includes less of Germany than I thought. If the south end of the pocket goes in between Cologne and the sleepy University town of Bonn, then the pocket only contains a slice of Germany less than half the size of the Netherlands. Also, not sure what of Belgium (and the Netherlands or Luxembourg) are inside the pocket...
 
Lascaris

Lascaris

generalurist said:
Speaking if intervention.... any chance Yugoslavia might join?
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Actually that's a pretty good question I think. The Balkan Entente should be still around and if Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia were willing to discuss a Balkan front in spring 1940, why not with Germany actually on the run?
 

Grinner

I think Italy extracted the right to move troops across Yugoslavia (to Romania) earlier in the TL, and this has had the effect of bringing Yugoslavia closer to Italy's sphere of influence. I expect that any Yugoslav move would be tied in with an Italian move, unless of course the Yugoslavs look to steal a march on Italy in order to move away from them and towards the Entente.
 

Ian_W

Banned
pdf27 said:
22nd October 1941

Ritchie continues his previous attack south-westwards through Hamm towards Unna, with the objective of further closing off the railway lines linking the Ruhr to the rest of Germany. The main line out of the Ruhr crosses the Lippe just north of Hamm and is already under his control, but there is an alternative route through Unna which also needs to be closed.
Meanwhile, Alexander's men continue to make good progress along the east bank of the Rhine, taking the area Walsum-Gladbeck-Dorsten by the end of the day meaning that his troops are starting to enter the built-up area of the Rhur itself. Many of his troops are surprised at how little resistance they are finding – many Volkssturm units facing them melt away when engaged, in some cases then being machine-gunned by SS units to their rear. They are also starting to find evidence of summary executions being carried out by the Germans, in once case finding three young boys hanged with placards around their necks proclaiming them to be cowards and traitors.

After spending the previous day in preparation, the French First and Sixth armies carry out successful assault crossings of both the Albert Canal and the Meuse to the north and south of Maastricht. The directive from GQG is that First Army is to advance towards the southern flank of the Ruhr in support of the British forces, while Sixth Army is to capture Aachen then head eastwards towards Cologne. Progress is surprisingly good, with the Germans still being engaged in withdrawing to the Westwall so the French troops are once again struggling as much with the effects of the weather as those of the enemy.
Further south, Second Army Group now has effective control of Saarbrücken and is starting to expand the bridgehead over the rest of their front, with the objective being to bring the Germans to battle rather than to take any particular piece of territory. Progress remains slow, but Blanchard is content with this in view of the overall situation.
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I should think Blanchard is happy - with the additional supplies from Operation Sealion, Alexander is only 160 km or so from First Army, while Ritchie threatens to turn the Ruhr into a pocket.

With the Rhine breached by Fortress Holland, the Westwall looks throughly outflanked - how far north does it go in this timeline ?
 
von Adler

von Adler

Oh, a thing I have forgotten to mention about Swedish iron ore - during this era it has about twice the iron content compared to continental ore. British. German and French ore were 30-32% in iron content, while Swedish was 60-65%. The Swedish ore was also very low in sulphur content, and the British steel mills on the east coast were set up to use Swedish low-sulphur ore. OTL they were required to not only set up more infrastructure to handle more ore weight for the same amount of steel product, but also install sinter beds to roast the domestic ore to remove the sulphur.

Since the British most likely keep importing the 5 million tons or Swedish ore per year of the Grängesberg agreement from 1927, the British steel industry in the eastern part saves a lot of money and effort not needing to retool to domestic ore.
 
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