Saphroneth
Banned
FWIW, I've faced a similar problem, and my guess has been that the best approach would be to drop back to month-by-month granularity OR to only highlight unusual days - if not both.
A Blunted Sickle - Thread II
- Thread starter pdf27
- Start date
Charles was mostly in the UK during the war. I wonder whether freeing Leopold would *hurt* Belgium at this time.
The Supply chain through Rotterdam is new, is it as fragile as the land supply chains through Belgium?
Lot more than a General Uprising done by the Home Army, and coordination even for a General Uprising could get complicated. The other thing that makes the Polish groups even more interesting is that they had groups on in both Nazi and Soviet controlled Poland. A general uprising just on the German side would be useful, one on both sides could be *very* dangerous.
How long did that bit of it last though? Most of winter in Europe is just wet and miserable, not frozen solid.Winter is good, it means the water gets frozen, so no inundations
1941 was a VERY cold winter in the Netherlands.
Close enough to make that a bit of a stretch - right now it's one German against one Dutch army, with the German army being a bit hollowed out but heavily dug in. The British are shifting men across as fast as they can, but it'll be October before they have enough men in place to even think about trying anything.
From the point of view of writing it, it **IS** dragging on already. Postwar the intention is to thin it out to a few updates per year, following particular threads that interest me for one reason or another because they illustrate things about the changed world - the development of Alaska, for instance, or British Rail.
To date, not much - the composition of the fleet in Singapore probably, and maybe shifting them further forward to Indochina (? - bad military move but would be driven politically).
That's pretty much the plan. 1968, for instance, has 7 lines in 2 paragraphs at the moment - mostly about the Channel Tunnel, actually.
Realistically the Belgians aren't going to make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, and it'll all come out in the wash after the war.
No way, about a thousand times more robust actually. It is a fraction of the length, there have been no demolitions on the route, the port is essentially undamaged and the rail network runs most of the way to the frontline.
Quite. There are other ways they could be dangerous too - from the point of view of the Entente at least. From the point of view of the Polish government in Exile, that danger is a good thing...
Deleted member 94708
And here I thought I was the only one who follows that comic on the board.
The Australians have already made several raids on it with some success: in my head it isn't as strong a fortification as it was in OTL, although I'd need to read up on it to confirm.
The real problem is one of terrain - only the northern flank of it actually leads you somewhere you want to go (the Ruhr), everything else is really a diversion from the North German Plain and the road to Berlin. If you're fighting a methodical battle against a German army that isn't ready to collapse, then you'd have to advance on a very broad front and fight your way through it - but that isn't really the situation they're facing given the parlous state of the German army.
The other issue is that the Siegfried Line only runs as far north as the Rhine, and the Entente are already across the Rhine in force. If they can attack down the east bank of the Rhine, then they have the options of either forcing the Germans to withdraw from Belgium and much of the southern Netherlands without a fight, or the option of capturing another couple of German armies in a giant kessel - all at the same time as ripping the heart out of German industry by taking the Ruhr. Both are attractive options - and both are ones that fighting your way through the Siegfried line makes harder rather than easier.
Well a Belgian Civil war might make things interesting, but as long as the Germans are actively in the field...
So the Armies with the worst supply lines are the British troops as they withdraw to go to Rotterdam and the Belgians?
I wonder if history iTTL will call M-R the 4th Partition...
A Year or so ago, I compared the Entente advance to a clock hand and I think still thing things are going that way. Now that Luxembourg City has been freed (Are there still Germans in North Luxembourg?), in pretty much every way, even though an advance along the coast is longer, almost everything that they want is on the coastal plain. I'm sure they'll cross the Franco-German Border in force before the Entente reaches pre-war Polish territory, but not by much.
Historically cold, and through March. See
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/europes-coldest-winter-of-the-20thc/
and
http://www.2030climate.com/a2005/03_22-Dateien/03_22.html
and
http://www.seaclimate.com/e/e4.html
(which contains the phrase ". In The Netherlands[1] e.g. it was the 3rd coldest on record, the further east it is more likely that it was even more exceptional.")
In short, the weather everywhere north of the Alps and east of the Urals (except for Atlantic Coastal France) was much colder than normal.
Driftless
Donor
With 1940's meteorological techniques, how well could the allies weathermen have predicted a colder than normal winter for the region? They certainly had some sophistication, but was it sufficient to predict a campaign season?
Donald Reaver
Donor
Will be a very hard winter for German civilians, lack of food and coal being transported. Shortages of electricity, petrol and just about everything else.
If you think it's bad for the Germans, what's it going to be like in the occupied territories? There is no way that Polish civilians are going to get more of a coal ration than Germans, even if they're in a coal producing region - let alone somewhere like Denmark or Norway.
Driftless
Donor
Some areas of Poland & Norway may be able to supplement their heating & cooking fuel with wood, though that may have layers of risk too. Just acquiring firewood may be dangerous and green wood of any variety and resinous pine aren't the cleanest or safest for inside the house usage.
As an additional note, we discussed this back on July 30 in the original thread...
And as an additional thought, increased Swedish/Finnish Coal needs might lead to more of a lean for the Union back to the Nazis if they can't get the coal they need through Narvik and more of a lean toward the Entente if they *can*.
And as an additional thought, increased Swedish/Finnish Coal needs might lead to more of a lean for the Union back to the Nazis if they can't get the coal they need through Narvik and more of a lean toward the Entente if they *can*.
With Entente airpower getting ever closer to Kiel plus the systemic attacks on German transport infrastructure plus multiple armies sitting on both banks of the Rhine, just how much can Germany actually export and have arrive in Swedish or Finnish ports?
If German civilians are shivering as coal barges go up the Elbe or Oder to send to Sweden, hints of 1917 come into play
Given the ability to fly from Dutch airfelds since the beginning of the war, I would expect that any extensions of bombable areas in Northern Germany would come from Technological advances rather than from closer launching points.
In 1917, did any of the CP particularly supply coal to the others?
Germany has several ports between Rostock and Königsberg the Entente can at best harass, and it would not be problematic, IMO, to ship goods from them to the south-eastern Swedish coast at least, and vice versa. Come late 1941/early 1942, anything north of Stockholm starts freezing up though, during a cold winter Finnish and northern Swedish ports will be harder to reach, requiring icebreaker assistance.
This is relevant, the ice cover on the Baltic Sea in March 1940. The situation would be as severe in early 1942.
Last edited: