AHC: Have World War Two end with the Soviets taking France

I'm woefully under-qualified to give an exact answer, but maybe this'll get the ball rolling, anyways.

The immediate answer that I see is, have D-Day fail. Maybe the Germans catch onto the Allied efforts at deception, and discover the actual plan well in advance. If the Allies don't take Normandy then, it could delay fighting long enough for the Soviets to keep pushing in, and eventually be in a position to occupy at least some part of France by the end of the war.
 
I think more plausible than the Soviets themselves taking France (even with a failed Overlord) would be the French Communist resistance pulling an Albania/Yugoslavia and kicking the Germans out themselves, joining the Soviets in an alliance, then asking the Soviet troops to help protect themselves against the western Allies, seeing as this new Red France would be far and away number 1 on the Cold War hit list.
 
Some sort of failed D-Day, perhaps?

The real interesting thing is what happens to the French colonial empire if mainland France goes communist.
 
A USSR that isn't taken by surprise during Barbarossa? Losing a lot less land, material and man, thus allowing them to roll west sooner before the Western Allies can build up their own forces to land in Continental Europe?

Even then, though, I still don't think the Soviets would be able to take the whole place
 
Some sort of failed D-Day, perhaps?

The real interesting thing is what happens to the French colonial empire if mainland France goes communist.

Depends on what parts of the Empire we're talking about here. I'm guessing NATO props up a Taiwan-esque "Free Republic of France" based in Algeria and Corsica, with the pieds-noirs bolstered by a flood of anti-Communist refugees. Because of that Algeria probably stays white-ruled for a lot longer, even if Red France and the Soviets support the anti-colonial fighters. On the other hand, more marginal parts of the empire would probably achieve independence earlier- for example, without the French metropole to support the attempted colonial reconquest, Ho Chi Minh would probably be able to consolidate control over Vietnam before the US could carve out the south.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
I'm not sure you realize how ASB this is.

The Red Army was probably the most ass-backwards, slipshod, and incompetent military of all the major players of WW2 prior to 1942. Division for division, they're probably even below the Italians in capability.

The only way that they won was with absolutely ludicrous numbers of bodies so that they could just soak up vast numbers of casualties, and give Germany another 200,000 able bodied men OTL, and the Soviets would have started running into manpower problems. And that's WITH lend lease.

You need Poland, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Finnland, Yugoslavia, and basically everywhere between them and France to each slow them down as much as a speed bump.

Germany falls, and you've got the Allies pouring into France immediately after, and they will immediately halt the Soviets dead in their tracks.
 
I'm not sure you realize how ASB this is.

The Red Army was probably the most ass-backwards, slipshod, and incompetent military of all the major players of WW2 prior to 1942. Division for division, they're probably even below the Italians in capability.

The only way that they won was with absolutely ludicrous numbers of bodies so that they could just soak up vast numbers of casualties, and give Germany another 200,000 able bodied men OTL, and the Soviets would have started running into manpower problems. And that's WITH lend lease.

You need Poland, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Finnland, Yugoslavia, and basically everywhere between them and France to each slow them down as much as a speed bump.

Germany falls, and you've got the Allies pouring into France immediately after, and they will immediately halt the Soviets dead in their tracks.

It may be a little too harsh to call this ASB & I think FBKampfer the Soviet Army was a little more on
the ball than you say BUT you have a very good point when you draw attention to all the territory the
Red Army would have to travel to get to France(the German part would be especially troublesome).
Furthermore, as MketheLeftie98 & Indicus above point out, D Day would have had to have failed- &
making THAT happen in this ATL is a whole 'another post by itself(& I'm sure has already been covered
MANY times on this board).
 

FBKampfer

Banned
It may be a little too harsh to call this ASB & I think FBKampfer the Soviet Army was a little more on
the ball than you say BUT you have a very good point when you draw attention to all the territory the
Red Army would have to travel to get to France(the German part would be especially troublesome).
Furthermore, as MketheLeftie98 & Indicus above point out, D Day would have had to have failed- &
making THAT happen in this ATL is a whole 'another post by itself(& I'm sure has already been covered
MANY times on this board).

I think it's perfectly accurate. I mean there's a lot of mythos about Germany's mechanized Blitzkrieg into Russia, and how it was the German's powerful army that brought them as far as they came, but this is fairly inaccurate. The Germans didn't roll into Russia on tanks and halftracks, they marched on horse and on foot.

Two things let the Germans succeed. Firstly, they had practically invented modern mobile warfare, and were effectively the most experienced, practiced, and doctrinaly advanced military on the face of the earth.

Second, the Soviets were absolute crap on the battlefield. Their individual soldiers might have been brave, and stubborn, and resourceful. But the Soviet military as a whole was perhaps the greatest punchline in the history of human warfare. Knowingly or not, they managed to violate almost all of the basic tenants of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz simultaneously. Which highlights perhaps their most damming sin; willful ignorance.
 
I'm not sure you realize how ASB this is.

The Red Army was probably the most ass-backwards, slipshod, and incompetent military of all the major players of WW2 prior to 1942. Division for division, they're probably even below the Italians in capability.

The only way that they won was with absolutely ludicrous numbers of bodies so that they could just soak up vast numbers of casualties, and give Germany another 200,000 able bodied men OTL, and the Soviets would have started running into manpower problems. And that's WITH lend lease.

You need Poland, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Finnland, Yugoslavia, and basically everywhere between them and France to each slow them down as much as a speed bump.

Germany falls, and you've got the Allies pouring into France immediately after, and they will immediately halt the Soviets dead in their tracks.
I agree that the Red Army's competence in WW2 was substantially lower than it is given credit for. Even late in the war with things like the Kurland Kessel, they were tactically inferior in many instances to truly rear echelon German units, at least when you get outside of their Mechanized Guards Armies, which were pretty good.

However, consider for a moment that Germany when it invaded the Soviet Union had the resources of most of Eastern Europe and France behind it. They certainly looted the French motor pool, and needed occupied countries industrial centers, not to mention Romanian oil, to function. The Soviets I believe with the resources of Eastern Europe at its back, even with their very real manpower problems in 1945, might have been able to push through into Central Germany and trigger a collapse of the Nazi state, which was certainly under threat from the effects of its growing incompetence at the local level due to the war and the bombings. Basically, if the Germans cannot hold them at Oder, then don't expect them to do it at the Elbe, and don't expect them to hold them at the Rhine, as more and more of their infrastructure and industrial base gets taken, not to mention the issues of discipline that OTL set in badly once the German borders were breached. Desertions, refusal to obey orders, corruption, it all set in frighteningly quick for the Germans once their borders were breached.
 

Archibald

Banned
Failed D-day. But not before 1948 at best.

Couv_108704.jpg
 

Deleted member 97083

Would Francoist Spain have become more fascist in their policies, as a result of a Soviet-aligned France being right across the Pyrenees?
 

Deleted member 97083

Not necessarily, I think. What you would see them do is seeking closer ties with the West
The west might be less democratic too, though. Since France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Denmark are all behind the Iron Curtain.
 

iVC

Donor
The Red Army was probably the most ass-backwards, slipshod, and incompetent military of all the major players of WW2 prior to 1942. Division for division, they're probably even below the Italians in capability.

David M. Glantz looks upon you with the most displeasure. ;)
 
The west might be less democratic too, though. Since France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Denmark are all behind the Iron Curtain.

I never said anything about Spain going democratic. If anything the western powers would be more than willing to overlook that in exchange for a foothold in Europe
 

Deleted member 97083

I never said anything about Spain going democratic. If anything the western powers would be more than willing to overlook that in exchange for a foothold in Europe
Yeah I know you didn't say that. I mean that the West may be even more willing to tolerate totalitarianism in Spain than OTL. The Western powers themselves may be less liberal and more militaristically anticommunist.
 

iVC

Donor
Your POD most be after 1910

Maybe post-1939 POD would be just enough.

1. No 'Dunkirk stop' in our timeline, therefore no 'Operation Dynamo'. Britain is in need to rebuild the Army.
2. Soviet winter offensive of 1941/42 is planned more realistic and therefore Wermacht is suffering death of a thousand cuts while Red Army still bleeds but not so badly as in OTL.
3. Soviets are able to unfold their post-Stalingrad 'Little Saturn' offensive into the pre-planned 'Greater Saturn'.
4. Oberkommando der Wermacht decides to defend Italy and prepare the defence of France in a more scrupulous and fierce way (therefore giving free rein for the Red Army on the East). Maybe Hitler decides to use 'primary West' strategy again: he needs to ultimately crush the WAllies on the continent and then he could withstand Red Army one-to-one, in focused and open-ended way.
5. I still cannot find a way for Soviets to make all this through the Germany. One realistic scenario is the open communist rebellion in France after Soviets finally smash Berlin, Prague and Vienna.
 
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