AHC "From Danzig in the Baltic to Fiume in the Adriatic..."

How specifically can we get the Iron Curtain to run along the Vistula, the Czech-Slovak border, the Austrian-Hungarian border, and down to Rijeka/Fiume on the Adriatic?

"The Soviets do somewhat worse in the war."

Sure, but what specific PODs can delay the Soviet counter-offensives long enough to allow the Western Allies to reach the line in question? What battles? What decisions? What flukes?

What do you, the AHers at home, think?
 

TinyTartar

Banned
The easiest way to do this is to simply lessen the amount of L-L supplies given to the Soviets. Without them, and the vehicles and (very important!) spare parts given to the Red Army, they would not have NEARLY as much offensive mobility as they did OTL. It would have massively hampered their war effort, and in my view (but likely not shared by others), they might have starved without it.

Basically, the Russians do a lot worse in WW2 without all of these supplies and transport capacity given to them. Their army would be less mobile and would have less success in destroying large scale German formations like they were able to in Bagration OTL.

Other ways to do this would possibly include a more thorough purge of leadership pre-war that makes the surviving leaders even less competent than they were at the war's start, leading to possibly a more successful Northern attack during Barbarossa (remember, it was Zhukov who led the defense of Leningrad in fall of 1941, and his actions might have saved the city).
 
The only way to do it is to the coalition collapse over something and soviets making separatist peace with nazis. In any other case they are going to get their piece of Germany proper as their occupation zone , and full rule in Poland as it is the only feasible way to supply it.
 
The Germans have lots of options that may have changes things, enough to slow the Soviet advance.

These range from:

- take Leningrad in summer of '41 (not easy, but not impossible),
- more successful in the South '42 - e.g. east bank of the Volga at Stalingrad, settle for Maykop, only deny Baku oil to the Soviets,
- obey Hitler's request to up-gun the panzers in time for Barbarossa,

to
- catch the Soviet spies at the heart of the German High Command, someone was feeding the Russians with high-grade information, stop that and Kursk could be a success with high Soviet losses, which would put back the next offensive and advance.
 
Top