AH Challenge: Switch France with Italy in WW2

With a POD after Versailles treaty, switch the positions of France and Italy in the alliances, id est you must have an Axis France and an allied Italy by 1939.

You have complete freedom of action, you can alter the political situation of the two countries as you prefere, butterfly away wars and so on so forth, but you can't alter the main objectives for the contendants (so Hitler will still want lebensraum, Japan will stll desire China etc...). You can not also alter the compositions of the two alliances (No Axis Russia!).

Bonus points if France is not run by a fascist goverment.
Bonus points if Mussolini is still Duce.
 
With a POD after Versailles treaty, switch the positions of France and Italy in the alliances, id est you must have an Axis France and an allied Italy by 1939.

You have complete freedom of action, you can alter the political situation of the two countries as you prefere, butterfly away wars and so on so forth, but you can't alter the main objectives for the contendants (so Hitler will still want lebensraum, Japan will stll desire China etc...). You can not also alter the compositions of the two alliances (No Axis Russia!).

Bonus points if France is not run by a fascist goverment.
Bonus points if Mussolini is still Duce.

Well, exceedingly difficult to get France allied to Germany even with a fascist France.

But an idea came to me during Viva Balbo:

POD: Mussolini, in one of his random insane troll moments of diplomacy, openly backs Hungary and Bulgaria on their territorial claims against Romania in early 1939. Germany, overtly reliant on Romanian oil, backs Romania and courts Yugoslavia. Some border incident leads to mobilization. France, not really wanting to back Germany in any way but seriously concerned over Italian expansion and hoping to honor their Yugoslav and Little Entente quasi-alliances, reluctantly goes to war against Italy.

The Soviets, in a deal with the devil, join the Italian bloc in return for Bessarabia.

How it expands from here is anyone's guess with Greece and Turkey very nervous, Poland totally caught in the middle, and ditto for Slovakia. Hitler's eyes remain East and so, still ultimately wanting Lebensraum and the death of "Jewish Bolshevism", use Soviet entry as reason to attempt this via Polish invasion, say, bringing the UK in on the Italo-Soviet side.

Takes the diplomatic disintegration of the young Axis, but if we assume Mussie and Hitler have some falling-out due to their rampant egos it's plausible.
 
Well, exceedingly difficult to get France allied to Germany even with a fascist France.

Yeah, I know it's a tough one, but what's the point of discussing the same. old, easy pods? ;)

Your idea is very interesting and should be converted in a timeline... if you catch my drift...

When I wrote the challenge I thought about a conflict over Austria in 1937, where Italy had not attacked Abyssinia, preferring an itervention policy in the Balkans, thus worsening her relations with both Germany and France.
As for the latter, I thought up a possible take over of the right (maybe because of a silent coup) with a more aggressive foreign policy which would in turn alienate the Great Britain (turning point: spanish civil war).
The world war would have happened as an escalation war: the tiny conflict between Germany and Italy would have quickly involved the rest of the world.

Not really plausible, I know, but the african campaign would have been awesome :D.
 
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