Soviets managed to get into Warsaw (or want to), Break to Dukla Pass with support of Slovak Army, which is holding at least Vah Valley, Romanians defect before they are beaten on the border and use their full force against Germans, Hungarian plans to defect work just perfectly too.With a Pod of June 6, 1944, without resorting to something like operation Valkyrie succeeding and triggering a German civil war, how could the Soviets and the Western Allies take Berlin by Dec 25, 1944?
With a Pod of June 6, 1944, without resorting to something like operation Valkyrie succeeding and triggering a German civil war, how could the Soviets and the Western Allies take Berlin by Dec 25, 1944?
With a Pod of June 6, 1944, without resorting to something like operation Valkyrie succeeding and triggering a German civil war, how could the Soviets and the Western Allies take Berlin by Dec 25, 1944?
Have the Wallies focus their strategic bombing on the German electrical grid and POL earlier, say 9-12 months earlier. Or do follow ups on the ball bearing factories and Moers dams.
What if we go back even earlier, with a PoD of say, January 1944 or so?Very difficult. OTL, Berlin fell on 2 May 1945, 330 days after 6 June 1944. 25 December 1944 is 129 days sooner.
I don't see how that much could be gained - bearing in mind that it took time not only to destroy the German army in battle, but to implement all the logistics arrangements required. The Western Allies did astoundingly well at this OTL, leaving very little room for improvement. (In Crusade In Europe, Eisenhower wrote that when he met Soviet officers at the end of war, the one thing they all wanted to know about was how the American and British forces had kept up supply to the leading elements during the great rush across France. It impressed them more than any feat of arms.) As for the Soviets, they did about as well as they could manage, given their own limitations.
Tasks such as getting Antwerp and Marseilles into full operation, or regauging hundreds of km of railroads in Poland, could not be "blitzed".
This is not to say that there was no room for improvement at all - but IMO, 15 February 1945 would be about the earliest possible date.
Maybe if the Slovak rising was more successful, and enabled the Soviets to break through into the Hungarian plain in September 1944...
Of course they'd resist hard, but strategic bombing was basically attrition warfare; the Allies used the resources IOTL to grind down the Luftwaffe by forcing them to fight to defend critical economic targets. Thing is if they pick better targets and follow up, the German economy could implode.Without a fundamental realization on the weakness of the German electrical grid and earlier escort fighters, I don't think this is possible; in particular, it was reasonably expected the Germans would resist fiercely any attacks on POL targets, which was later proven by the ball bearing raids.
Of course they'd resist hard, but strategic bombing was basically attrition warfare; the Allies used the resources IOTL to grind down the Luftwaffe by forcing them to fight to defend critical economic targets. Thing is if they pick better targets and follow up, the German economy could implode.
They didn't follow up quickly enough (2nd Schweinfurt was 2 months later and did some bad damage, but should have been done at least 1 month earlier) or hard enough; Speer was freaked out that they would follow up more and have caused a major crisis:They attempted to do just that with Ball Bearings, hitting first in August and then following up a few weeks later. End result was that, without escorts, the bombers getting slaughtered and the end of daylight strategic bombing over Germany for the most part until the following Spring when the Mustangs showed up.
Had they attacked again in September and/or focused more forces on it in the first place they could have done extremely serious economic damage.Albert Speer reported an immediate 34 percent loss of production,[26] but both the production shortfall and the actual loss of bearings were made up for by extensive surpluses found throughout Germany in the aftermath of the raid. The industry's infrastructure, while vulnerable to a sustained campaign, was not vulnerable to destruction by a single raid. Speer indicated that the two major flaws made by the USAAF in the August strike were first in dividing their force instead of all striking the ball-bearing plants, and second, failing to follow up the first strike with repeated attacks.[27][28][29]
Maybe a May Normandy landing?What if we go back even earlier, with a PoD of say, January 1944 or so?
Maybe a May Normandy landing?
Cancelling Anzio?
Combined with leaving a holding force on the Winter Line and using units wasted in Italy for Dragon/Overlord - well, France.
As mentioned - capture of Scheldt Estuary and being able to use Antwerp several weeks sooner?
Plugging the gap at Falaise and destroying 5th PzArmy?
As mentioned - a 1943 landing would be best.
No sane Allied commander would depend on the Channel being calm enough and weather co-operative enough for a launch in May. The later is especially important, as overwhelming air superiority over the region was a vital part of the planning in terms of preventing a potential German counter-attack while the beacheads were getting established and the logistics to supply the invasion force laid out.
Larger Dragoon is certainly in the cards, and politically viable to boot. Such a move would make the German position in Northern Italy increasingly untenable, liberate more of France, and prevent the Germans from staging a concentrated counter-attack in any one area.
No sane Allied commander would depend on the Channel being calm enough and weather co-operative enough for a launch in May.
They didn't follow up quickly enough (2nd Schweinfurt was 2 months later and did some bad damage, but should have been done at least 1 month earlier) or hard enough; Speer was freaked out that they would follow up more and have caused a major crisis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweinfurt–Regensburg_mission#Results_and_losses
Had they attacked again in September and/or focused more forces on it in the first place they could have done extremely serious economic damage.
A concentrated August raid with a focused September raid would have created huge problems for the Germans and not precluded other missions, just unescorted ones.Given they lost 60 bombers the first try, the delay is entirely understandable. The following efforts in October resulted in the loss of 10% of all bombers and the damage rate, both minor and major, was 42%; completely unacceptable losses. My point was that no amount of follow up or increased numbers will make up for the fact that unescorted bombers in '43 are going to get slaughtered by German defenses.
Add in the fact the Germans had enough of a stockpile to handle the short term disruption, as well as the fact a September raid would've given them an extra month of being free from daylight raids as well as additional resources to restore production (Since the Americans will have given up other targets), and this whole strategy becomes a wash.
A concentrated August raid with a focused September raid would have created huge problems for the Germans and not precluded other missions, just unescorted ones. If the losses of such a raid would have been too much too quickly, focus on POL in range.