None were featured (or mentioned) in AANW so I would say no. They did build 21 Maus tanks however, most of them after 1955.
AANW - Stalemate
- Thread starter CalBear
- Start date
Since even iOTL the Islands are nominally part of the Duchy of Normandy and toast "The Queen, our Duke", I'd suspect some people would think of merging them with the United Kingdom's new home nation of the Continental Crown Dependencies. Is that going anywhere iTTL?
It gets mentioned that the Channel Islands are administrated with the areas of northern France that joined the UK.
The Baliiwicks have maintained their status, tradition is a strong thing, but the actual Islanders themselves are different than IOTL. The oldest generation has a lot of resentment toward London for effectively destroying their world to an extent that it can never be properly repaired (ATL the Islanders are still finding "dud" shells every spring when farmers go out to plant, or when new roads are being built, much like French farmers in the Somme regularly find hundred year old shells still waiting to kill).
The pastoral nature of the countryside was more or less destroyed during the War, with both sides lobbing heavy shells at the other occasionally even during the Bombing Holiday. Utterly pointless violence almost for its own sake (usually justified by "suspicious construction activity") that only got worse once the war went "hot". Jersey was so well fortified that it is entirely possible that parts of the garrison would have survived a direct nuclear strike, with Guernsey not that far behind.
Sounds like they'd fit depressingly well in with the Continental Crown Dependencies.
(Speaking of which, it looks like you never gave their new Home Nation an official name? If I didn't miss it, I propose "Normandy.")
You know Cally, USS Alaska would have been perfect for this operation. Shame she wasn't built yet.
You mean instead of losing an actually useful warship like the Sheffield?
Probably right.
nbcman
Donor
Could USS Alaska turn in the 'confined' spaces of the English Channel? Or would she have to make one pass, turn around in the Atlantic, make another pass, turn in the North Sea and so forth.
Given that, from what I understood, ATL African Campaign was cut short by Hitler not trying to help the italians to hold Lybia, that rise two questions, that may be treated in future update:
- Rommel: If he wasn't sent to Africa, what did he do in the 1940-42 timeframe? Was he sent to the East Front and lost any chance to be considered as a "good german general" by being involved in the numerous war crimes/ crimes against humanity committed there ? I remember him still being around in the original TTTL at the time of the last defense of the Reich.
- Vichy: Was operation Attila enacted after the fall of North Africa to the Western Allies ? In short is still Vichy nominally independent or did the Third Reich occupied the Free Zone? I guess second option as the original AANW described France as going full collaborationist and made Laval looking like a moderate.
- Rommel: If he wasn't sent to Africa, what did he do in the 1940-42 timeframe? Was he sent to the East Front and lost any chance to be considered as a "good german general" by being involved in the numerous war crimes/ crimes against humanity committed there ? I remember him still being around in the original TTTL at the time of the last defense of the Reich.
- Vichy: Was operation Attila enacted after the fall of North Africa to the Western Allies ? In short is still Vichy nominally independent or did the Third Reich occupied the Free Zone? I guess second option as the original AANW described France as going full collaborationist and made Laval looking like a moderate.
They were pretty good at listening to people when the goal was to steal everything that could be moved.
OTL, Vichy government after Case Anton was left ruling the former Free Zone, while Darnand created the Milice on January 30, 1943 to crush the "terrorists;" they might became the Vichy equivalent of the SS and the French Secret Police (after fusing with several agencies such as the Anti-Communist Police Service) from the original thread. As for who would take over, along with Laval, I would take Philippe Henriot, Marcel Déat and Joseph Darnand.
Passing question: what happened to the French fleet in Toulon? And what happened to Admiral Darlan? Did he fled to North Africa to negociate a ceasefire, as OTL?
Maybe Henriot won't get assassinated like IOTL.
The Milice are estimated to have killed 2,000 to 3,000 out of the 39,000 French that were killed during the Nazi occupation IOTL (not including Jews deported to death camps) so I wonder if the number will be higher or lower ITTL.
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Almost certainly scuttled as in OTL Case Anton was still launched post OP TORCH
This Saturday's update. 
Comment very welcome.
3
The immediate aftermath of Operation Spider provided massive propaganda opportunities for both sides of the conflict. Depending on where one lived the operation was a stirring success or an abject failure, to the degree that motion pictures were released in both Berlin and London lauding the event while agreeing on virtually no factual point. Behind the scenes there was a very different reaction.
Hitler was almost shockingly outraged, even for a leader who rarely kept his emotions in check, over the loss of Guernsey. Had Hitler not been convinced by nearly unanimous advice from OKW that the time was not right, that the “English” were hoping that the Reich would turn away from the Soviets even as the defeat of the Communists was at hand, it is possible that Spider might actually have achieved at least part of its goal (although it is questionable if even the diversion of several divisions would have been enough to save the teetering Soviet state by April of 1943). Instead, Hitler settled for the dismissal of the Heer and Kriegsmarine officers responsible for the defense of the Islands, Goring managing to save his people, and his service branch, from the Fuhrer’s wrath.
The Allied reaction to the multiple leveled failure of Spider had both positive and what were probably negative results. While the “success” of the “liberation of the people of Guernsey” dominated the headlines for weeks, with breathless stories of individual heroism, both in success on Guernsey and in failure on Jersey inspiring children to dream of becoming paratroopers, behind the scenes more somber consideration dominated.
While there were a number of lessons learned from Operation Spider, most of them very positive in the long run, and despite the propaganda “spin” (including the huge popular, but historically empty, 1945 Academy Award winning romance/drama A Promise Kept) heads had to roll for the failures in planning that effectively destroyed two of the most highly trained divisions in the WAllied armies. The blade fell, perhaps unjustly, on the two General officers commanding the planning group and who “sold” the idea and the overall operational concept to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Both men had, prior to Spider, been marked for grand, perhaps even great things by their respective senior commanders; instead their careers effectively ended before the last elements of the Spider Task Force returned to port. History has been perhaps overly critical of Major (brevet Lt. G) Generals Mark Clark (U.S. Army) and Sir Bernard Montgomery (British Army) in that they were handed a bag of vegetable peeling and expected to spin gold, but they were, to switch services, “in command when the ship hit the sandbar” and therefore had to pay the piper.
To preserve the myth of success Both men were decorated publically, Clark with a Legion of Merit directly from the President, Montgomery with a MCB, with the sort of ceremony that only the British Empire can successfully display. They were lauded in the media, in Clark’s case breveted to Lt. General (a brevet rank Montgomery already held) and were then given positions that, to the public, seemed to be of tremendous importance. Clark was assigned as “special assistant to the Secretary of War” while Montgomery was put in charge of Northern Command (managing to somewhat resurrect his career later in the War, as will be seen). Clark never held an independent command again, spending the remainder of his career in a series of administrative positions, ending his career as Deputy Commander of the U.S. Army Service Force. In was, for both men, and perhaps their countries, a disappointment.
Even as the WAllies were trying to prevent the end of the Soviet Empire, rival groups were fighting over the dying body. Stalin’s death, from whatever cause, left a massive power vacuum, one that almost every surviving member of the Politburo sought to fill. There were, among the pretenders, two serious contenders, Georgy Malenkov and Lavernity Beria, head of People’s Commissariat for Internal Security (NKVD) with the other surviving member of the GKO (State Defense Committee) Vyacheslav Molotov seen as an unlikely successor.
Malenkov was the early front-runner in the eyes of the WAllied diplomatic delegations. Well know and well connected going back to the earliest days of the USSR (starting out as close advisor to Lenin), he was also something of a consummate survivor, being one of the few senior Soviet leaders to avoid being purged under Stalin. It was believed that Malenkov was well on the way to having all the levers of power in his hands when he died in an “automobile accident”, an accident that has remained controversial to this day among historians within the Soviet Union but virtually unknown outside of it. The primary reason for the controversy is who became Premier of the USSR upon Malekov’s accidental (or not) death, Lavernity Beria.
Beria was an almost cartoonish villain, brutal beyond easy description with a startling streak of cruelty mixed in, a sexual predator, serial rapist/occasional murderer of young, often teenage, girls/women whose predilections concerned all who knew him (Stalin is reputed to have come close to panic when he learned his daughter was with Beria outside of Stalin’s presence), and head of a secret police service that stands second only to the Reich’s Gestapo in infamous reputation. His control of the NKVD was seen as making him close to invulnerable once Malekov had been removed from the quest to replace Stalin, instead it proved his undoing.
As is often, and surprisingly, the case with groups like the Gestapo and NKVD, the rank and file membership tend to be extremely conservative, true believers in their responsibilities and remarkably loyal to their concept of the State with that mission overriding all other loyalty. Beside the Politburo and his myriad victims, the one group the most aware of Beria’s depredations was the rest of the senior leadership of the NKVD. Several NKVD colonels decided that having a “pervert” as Premier of the Soviet Union, a nation and Party meant to bring true freedom to all, was utterly unacceptable.
Four of these men, all of who had, at some point, been tasked to “gift” Beria’s victims with bouquets of flowers when he released them from his clutches, and were also some of the most trusted members of the NKVD, decided to act. On April 23rd, 1943, these conspirators forced their way into the Politburo’s chambers prior to a meeting and shot their erstwhile leader a total of 26 times, including each of the four firing one round into the base of Beria’s skull, killing him instantly. All of the conspirators, along with a number of co-conspirators not directly involved in the assassination, pledged their loyalty to Vyacheslav Molotov. In the wake of the Beria assassination several senior military officers, including the commander of the forces providing security for the Politburo, no longer having to look over their shoulder at their always lurking Political Officer, stated their support for the one-time Foreign Minister. Improbably the ultimate also-ran finished the winner, formally elected by his fellow Politburo Members on April 27th, 1943.
It was Molotov who signed the Treaty on Moscow on June 14th, 1943.
Comment very welcome.
3
The immediate aftermath of Operation Spider provided massive propaganda opportunities for both sides of the conflict. Depending on where one lived the operation was a stirring success or an abject failure, to the degree that motion pictures were released in both Berlin and London lauding the event while agreeing on virtually no factual point. Behind the scenes there was a very different reaction.
Hitler was almost shockingly outraged, even for a leader who rarely kept his emotions in check, over the loss of Guernsey. Had Hitler not been convinced by nearly unanimous advice from OKW that the time was not right, that the “English” were hoping that the Reich would turn away from the Soviets even as the defeat of the Communists was at hand, it is possible that Spider might actually have achieved at least part of its goal (although it is questionable if even the diversion of several divisions would have been enough to save the teetering Soviet state by April of 1943). Instead, Hitler settled for the dismissal of the Heer and Kriegsmarine officers responsible for the defense of the Islands, Goring managing to save his people, and his service branch, from the Fuhrer’s wrath.
The Allied reaction to the multiple leveled failure of Spider had both positive and what were probably negative results. While the “success” of the “liberation of the people of Guernsey” dominated the headlines for weeks, with breathless stories of individual heroism, both in success on Guernsey and in failure on Jersey inspiring children to dream of becoming paratroopers, behind the scenes more somber consideration dominated.
While there were a number of lessons learned from Operation Spider, most of them very positive in the long run, and despite the propaganda “spin” (including the huge popular, but historically empty, 1945 Academy Award winning romance/drama A Promise Kept) heads had to roll for the failures in planning that effectively destroyed two of the most highly trained divisions in the WAllied armies. The blade fell, perhaps unjustly, on the two General officers commanding the planning group and who “sold” the idea and the overall operational concept to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Both men had, prior to Spider, been marked for grand, perhaps even great things by their respective senior commanders; instead their careers effectively ended before the last elements of the Spider Task Force returned to port. History has been perhaps overly critical of Major (brevet Lt. G) Generals Mark Clark (U.S. Army) and Sir Bernard Montgomery (British Army) in that they were handed a bag of vegetable peeling and expected to spin gold, but they were, to switch services, “in command when the ship hit the sandbar” and therefore had to pay the piper.
To preserve the myth of success Both men were decorated publically, Clark with a Legion of Merit directly from the President, Montgomery with a MCB, with the sort of ceremony that only the British Empire can successfully display. They were lauded in the media, in Clark’s case breveted to Lt. General (a brevet rank Montgomery already held) and were then given positions that, to the public, seemed to be of tremendous importance. Clark was assigned as “special assistant to the Secretary of War” while Montgomery was put in charge of Northern Command (managing to somewhat resurrect his career later in the War, as will be seen). Clark never held an independent command again, spending the remainder of his career in a series of administrative positions, ending his career as Deputy Commander of the U.S. Army Service Force. In was, for both men, and perhaps their countries, a disappointment.
***
Even as the WAllies were trying to prevent the end of the Soviet Empire, rival groups were fighting over the dying body. Stalin’s death, from whatever cause, left a massive power vacuum, one that almost every surviving member of the Politburo sought to fill. There were, among the pretenders, two serious contenders, Georgy Malenkov and Lavernity Beria, head of People’s Commissariat for Internal Security (NKVD) with the other surviving member of the GKO (State Defense Committee) Vyacheslav Molotov seen as an unlikely successor.
Malenkov was the early front-runner in the eyes of the WAllied diplomatic delegations. Well know and well connected going back to the earliest days of the USSR (starting out as close advisor to Lenin), he was also something of a consummate survivor, being one of the few senior Soviet leaders to avoid being purged under Stalin. It was believed that Malenkov was well on the way to having all the levers of power in his hands when he died in an “automobile accident”, an accident that has remained controversial to this day among historians within the Soviet Union but virtually unknown outside of it. The primary reason for the controversy is who became Premier of the USSR upon Malekov’s accidental (or not) death, Lavernity Beria.
Beria was an almost cartoonish villain, brutal beyond easy description with a startling streak of cruelty mixed in, a sexual predator, serial rapist/occasional murderer of young, often teenage, girls/women whose predilections concerned all who knew him (Stalin is reputed to have come close to panic when he learned his daughter was with Beria outside of Stalin’s presence), and head of a secret police service that stands second only to the Reich’s Gestapo in infamous reputation. His control of the NKVD was seen as making him close to invulnerable once Malekov had been removed from the quest to replace Stalin, instead it proved his undoing.
As is often, and surprisingly, the case with groups like the Gestapo and NKVD, the rank and file membership tend to be extremely conservative, true believers in their responsibilities and remarkably loyal to their concept of the State with that mission overriding all other loyalty. Beside the Politburo and his myriad victims, the one group the most aware of Beria’s depredations was the rest of the senior leadership of the NKVD. Several NKVD colonels decided that having a “pervert” as Premier of the Soviet Union, a nation and Party meant to bring true freedom to all, was utterly unacceptable.
Four of these men, all of who had, at some point, been tasked to “gift” Beria’s victims with bouquets of flowers when he released them from his clutches, and were also some of the most trusted members of the NKVD, decided to act. On April 23rd, 1943, these conspirators forced their way into the Politburo’s chambers prior to a meeting and shot their erstwhile leader a total of 26 times, including each of the four firing one round into the base of Beria’s skull, killing him instantly. All of the conspirators, along with a number of co-conspirators not directly involved in the assassination, pledged their loyalty to Vyacheslav Molotov. In the wake of the Beria assassination several senior military officers, including the commander of the forces providing security for the Politburo, no longer having to look over their shoulder at their always lurking Political Officer, stated their support for the one-time Foreign Minister. Improbably the ultimate also-ran finished the winner, formally elected by his fellow Politburo Members on April 27th, 1943.
It was Molotov who signed the Treaty on Moscow on June 14th, 1943.
Donald Reaver
Donor
Not really a stalemate on the Soviet Unions part, as they will decrease in population drastically over the next 20 years or so.
Other than the CBO which will last until 47 and the guriella war in the east the war in Europe is finished with German Panzer divisions that will soon be transferred west any hope of an allied invasion into the continent have now been dashed