AHC: No Sealion TLs
- Thread starter Winnabago
- Start date
ASB to my mind, you'd really have to make the changes much earlier, something like getting someone other than Leigh-Mallory in command of No. 12 Group, so that Park has the support he needs to give the Luftwaffe a right mauling, thus doing away with the perception "if only the Luftwaffe had push that little bit harder...".
Again ... it needs a POD earlier ... you need someone to write a decent well rounded book that sets out all the evidence in a clear and concise way that leaves no doubt in anyones mind as to whether or not SeaLion would have been successful or not. The book needs to steer away from stupid suggestions such as "the wake of British destroyers would sink the German invasion barges".
I agree with the bit about Leigh-Mallory, but where and what would he be doing instead, and who is in charge of 12 Group?
Not so sure about this one as there were only 3 squadrons available from 12 Group throughout the majority of the BoB. However if you want those 3 Squadrons to be under a leader who understood the importance of early interception rather than massed force just transfer the Duxford sector to 11 Group and put it under the direct control of Park.
Gamelin has a different reaction to the Dyle plan -
Ce n'est pas magnifique, ce n'est pa la guerre, mais vraiment, c'est de la folie.
The Battle of France is a strategic draw and a tactical Allied victory - the sickle cut is stopped and itself pocketed, leading to the surrender of Guderian and the panzerkorps.
Italy never enters the war.
There is a short break (the "Second Sitzkrieg" while both sides reorganise and, in the French case, press captured German AFVs into service). The war ends when French armor breaks through Luxembourg, shortly followed by the British seizure of inadequately-defended Ostend. The BEF and 7th Army push north through Nijmegen and Arnhem to circumvent the Siegfried line using 2 Commando to seize key bridges en route, while French armor destroys the bulk of Army Group C in a double-envelopment for which De Gaulle becomes justly famous.
With French troops on German soil, Hitler is deposed 22 August. There is a period of unrest in which many military and Nazi leaders are killed during coup and counter-coup. Hess flees to Switzerland, while Raeder ends up in charge to sign an armistice on 29 August.
Allied troops land at Danzig 1st September.
3rd September Chamberlain announces with regret that Premier Stalin has failed to withdraw his troops from Poland, and so a state of war now exists between Britain and the Soviet Union. France follows suit.
Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Japan, Romania, and Hungary all join the Paris-London Axis.
Nobody bothers with the sideshow that was the First Polish War, even here on AHC. The Second Polish War, and the Pacific War that will follow it, get all the press.
Ce n'est pas magnifique, ce n'est pa la guerre, mais vraiment, c'est de la folie.
The Battle of France is a strategic draw and a tactical Allied victory - the sickle cut is stopped and itself pocketed, leading to the surrender of Guderian and the panzerkorps.
Italy never enters the war.
There is a short break (the "Second Sitzkrieg" while both sides reorganise and, in the French case, press captured German AFVs into service). The war ends when French armor breaks through Luxembourg, shortly followed by the British seizure of inadequately-defended Ostend. The BEF and 7th Army push north through Nijmegen and Arnhem to circumvent the Siegfried line using 2 Commando to seize key bridges en route, while French armor destroys the bulk of Army Group C in a double-envelopment for which De Gaulle becomes justly famous.
With French troops on German soil, Hitler is deposed 22 August. There is a period of unrest in which many military and Nazi leaders are killed during coup and counter-coup. Hess flees to Switzerland, while Raeder ends up in charge to sign an armistice on 29 August.
Allied troops land at Danzig 1st September.
3rd September Chamberlain announces with regret that Premier Stalin has failed to withdraw his troops from Poland, and so a state of war now exists between Britain and the Soviet Union. France follows suit.
Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Japan, Romania, and Hungary all join the Paris-London Axis.
Nobody bothers with the sideshow that was the First Polish War, even here on AHC. The Second Polish War, and the Pacific War that will follow it, get all the press.
Craig_Truglia
Banned
Easiest POD is a French victory on the Western Front.
If you want more Sealion Threads, have the UK having devote many more planes to France, those pilots being killed and captured, and the Germans easily winning the battle of britain. The Germans still would have not attempted Sealion, but it would be a bigger "what if."
If you want more Sealion Threads, have the UK having devote many more planes to France, those pilots being killed and captured, and the Germans easily winning the battle of britain. The Germans still would have not attempted Sealion, but it would be a bigger "what if."
how about: August 20, 1940. 2000 Luftwaffe planes attack Britain, dousing all of Greater London in Mustard Gas, Chlorine, Lewisite and Sarin, in addition to the usual explosives, repeating this nightly.
In spite of spitfires and hurricanes, enough get through to cause tens of thosands of civilian deaths. Might Britain surrender from just this aerial bombing?
In spite of spitfires and hurricanes, enough get through to cause tens of thosands of civilian deaths. Might Britain surrender from just this aerial bombing?
1. Why, after fighting a war for the past year, do Britain and France immediately decide to start another? Seems contrary to their foreign policy. Perhaps conflicts would arise later down the line, but certainly not immediately after war with Germany concludes. (Also Molotov was the Premier at the time, not Stalin)
2. Why do Belgium or the Netherlands declare war on the Soviet Union when their states have been fought over for the past few months and their economies are likely ruined? Why does Italy get involved at all when Mussolini advised against war with the Soviet Union in the first place? Why does Spain, whose economy was still recovering from the civil war, decide to enter the war? Why do Rumania and Hungary, who hate each other and only avoided going to war because Nazi Germany forced the Vienna Awards, fight the Soviet Union rather than each other? Finally, why does Japan, which decided that fighting the US was a better option than a land war with the Red Army, decide to execute such a rapid shift in foreign policy?
I realize this was a top of the head scenario, but I dislike the assumption that the Soviet Union is going to end up at war with the entire world if Nazi Germany is defeated, even though there's no reason to believe that would occur.
Thats a neat trick, seeing that the LW didnt have 2,000 bombers at that point in time. And no available industrial effort to build them.
Any such attack will be followed by the RAF dousing German cities with Mustard gas and Lewisite, and anthrax on the countryside.
Both sides have some proection against gas, the germans have none against Anthrax.
I did say 2000 PLANES, not bombers. And yes, at the start of BoB, between fighters, light bombers (EG Stuka), and medium bombers, the Luftwaffe had about 2000 front line combat planes
Germans decide to name plans for invasion of Britain "Salamander".
Well, that's a completely out-of-the-box solution to the OP
Rubicon
Banned
Right... and RAF had weaponized anthrax at that point ready for wide-spread usage in large-scale bombing campaing?
In fact it didn't. In fact RAF never had enough anthrax cakes available at any time during the war to conduct anything close to Operation Vegetarian, a fact Astrodragon always either conviently doesn't know or always keep forgetting whenever he thinks it to be a viable solution when someone brings up German usuage of chemical warfare on British cities or troops.
Fun fact, googling Operation Vegetarian and the first link is to wikipedia, the second one is this board....
The main reason why chemical warfare was never used was because the interwar theory was that once the gas was broken out both sides would just destroy each other; sort of like a 1930s/40s MAD. That's why both sides built up massive stores of chemical weapons and gas masks yet never used the former; it was about deterrence and preparing for the other sides to strike. No one wanted a chemical war. This held true in Germany as well, where only a small minority of important Nazi figures (Himmler for instance) advocated using gas (Though only later in the war, not in 1940).
Basically the trauma of WW1 was so great that chemical warfare was a taboo that even the Nazis were for the most part unwilling to break. It's an odd bit of irony, but it makes sense in context.
Basically the trauma of WW1 was so great that chemical warfare was a taboo that even the Nazis were for the most part unwilling to break. It's an odd bit of irony, but it makes sense in context.
Well, that's a completely out-of-the-box solution to the OP
Agreed and the most neat!