alternatehistory.com

For the POD here I'm going to go with the Battle of Moscow, specifically that the poor state of Soviet communications in December 1941 delays Stalin's demands for a general offensive sufficiently to the point that Army Group Center is completely destroyed by March of 1942. The attempt to repair the logistical and manpower losses weakens Germany across the whole of the front, and North Africa remains their primary theater to do well. The USSR tries general offensives and fails in 1942, but the Germans in restoring a stable front line weaken themselves further. The general offensive fails due to losses from the Battle of Moscow and due to German overall tactical, strategic, and firepower exceeding that available to the USSR, but there are losses of territory all along the front and the Germans to restore the line require both Herculean efforts and tremendous casualties in the summer of 1942, executing a fall offensive in the south that sees large initial gains but is contained and encircled by the USSR in its first successful battle of that sort.

In 1943 the Germans launch a larger offensive, their troops in North Africa have surrendered, the ones in Russia, meeting a more confident, more skilled, and more mobile Red Army fail to make significant gains in any individual sector though Soviet troops take heavier losses in the counterattack, then start their own offensives that clear Soviet territory by the fall, pushing through the Balkans and Baltic, knocking Finland out of the war and potentially re-absorbing it. The USSR by 1944 controls increasingly large parts of Europe, the Allies for logistical reasons identical to OTL are seeing major Soviet gains and the limited logistical abilities of the democracies at this point handicapping them. By 1944 the USSR is on German soil, by the fall of 1944 Berlin has fallen and the USSR is pretty much pushing to meet up with the democracies in Italy.

By 1944 the war in Europe ends with it being almost all USSR, the main democratic contributions being fighting in Italy and potentially the Aegean Sea. Then there's two questions: if the war in Europe has ended in 1944, what happens in this scenario in the Pacific, and what would the consequences be of this particular scenario for the ATL version of the Cold War, the Holocaust, and both US and Soviet history? Would this more rapid victory be as financially calamitous to the UK?
Top