An American Benedict Arnold in World War 2

The officer sat staring at his glass of whisky. He had been passed over for the field command and is now sitting behind a desk doing paper work. He wanted for years for the glory of helping to lead the charge to retake Europe and was denied it. He was angry and felt his country betrayed him after all his years of service to it and to make matters worse he lost all his wealth gambling and was deeply in debt.

He knew history would never record his name and he would be lucky if the army kept him on after the war and the mob will be after his head by then for their money back. He looks at glass of whisky in front of him and then looks at the confidential folders in front of him and he gets an idea.

In late April 1944 at Hitler’s military headquarters in Germany four men debate the treasure trove of information given to them for a mere 20 million dollars. All four men are weary of trusting this information as they have been burned badly before by Allied deceit. They had to decide if they were going to trust this information. Goring feeling nice and high after his injection early this morning told Hitler he felt they could trust this information.

He told Hitler that "We now know the Allies had broken the Enigma Codes and they are planning to invade Normandy and when the time is right for another 20 million our source will provide the exact date of the attack when he knows of it". Von Rundstedt sitting across the room felt more leery of their sudden gift of good luck, but the information seemed much more reliable than before and he argued to Hitler that they should take the information with great caution. Rommel having knew the benefit of having a good source in Africa told Hitler he saw the information and he believes we can trust this source. Hitler thought to himself quietly and told the group that he believes the source can be trusted and asks them their thoughts on how they can proceed.

The assembled group decides not to do anything that would compromise to the Allies they know that the Enigma Code had been broken yet. However, they put in motion a plan to secretly move troops and supplies into a position to be ready for battle knowing full well the movement would have to be very careful as to not raise suspicion of the Allies or the local French who would inform the Allies. Some troops were even secretly moved away from the Eastern Front to Germany in preparation for the battle.

The word that the Allies had decided to attack on June 6th had reached the ears of the German High Command in time for them to be ready. Rommel canceled his trip to see his wife on her 50th anniversary and prepared his troops for battle. What would be to come would end up being the bloodiest fight for the Anglo-American allies of the war.

Horrible fighting engulfed Normandy where it became apparent to both sides that the Allies might not be able to gain and hold beach heads. Back in Germany the Nazi High Command was ebullient, but in France the mood in Rommel’s HQ was quite grim. Rommel bluntly told his Chief of Staff Hans Speidel that even if they win today it would be a Pyrrhic Victory as the Anglo American bombing will continue, their support to the USSR will continue, and they will invade again perhaps next summer and by then their forces might be busy fighting the Soviet's in Germany itself and the whole of Germany might be swallowed up by the USSR. Both men agreed that peace with the Allies could not be achieved while the Nazi Party was in power.
 
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Hitler and much of the Nazi Party had planned to travel to France to witness the defeat of the Anglo American Allies. Would Hitler’s head, the end of Nazism in Europe, along with the Anglo-American occupation of all of Germany’s holdings in Western Europe along with the Allied occupation Poland appease them? They would soon find out. Rommel’s Chief of Staff personally surrendered to the Allies the next day and offered them the deal.

Within hours Churchill and FDR were on the phone with each other. Churchill saw the deal as a chance to guarantee the independence of France and Poland from Germany and the Soviet Union. FDR was opposed to the idea, but came around to supporting it when Churchill told him that once they had their troops firmly on French territory they could always turn on the Germans at any sign they are not holding up their end of the deal. The sticky part of the deal FDR and Churchill knew would be Stalin, but they would have to deal with that issue in time.

On June 20th 1944 Hitler, Himmler, Goring and much of the Nazi inner circle arrived in France to witness the total defeat of the Anglo-Americans. Rommel had given the Anglo-Americans the place and time that Hitler would be arriving. Large quantities of explosives were also placed by Germans loyal to Rommel in the cellar. Cement holes were cut in the floor and the walls where the explosives were placed and then filled in so Hitler’s personal security would have no idea they were there.

A film crew ordered by Rommel recorded Hitler, Himmler, Goring and many others entering the mansion and then promptly moved to a safe distance. In the sky dozens of American and English planes appeared without any warning sirens. Bombs started dropping and the film crew recorded it all. The castle the Nazi leadership was staying in exploded and on film for Germany and the world the Anglo-American Allies had killed Hitler and the Nazi leadership, however it was not known at the time if it was German explosives or English and American bombs that killed Hitler.

Rommel ordered German troops to pull back from the beaches and in the absence of conflicting orders from Hitler they did so. Rommel personally met with Eisenhower and Montgomery two days later as American and English troops were coming into France in large numbers.

In Germany the mood was beyond morose. Their leader was dead and they had no idea what was next to come. All the sudden over the radio it was announced that Rommel and the Anglo-American Allies had reached a peace deal the war in the West was over. The mood in Germany changed overnight with the news and if it meant peace Germans were by in large willing to go along with it. In England and the U.S. the chance for an easy peace and the film of Allied planes killing Hitler appeased the publics of Great Britain and America into accepting the terms.

In Moscow Stalin was furious and saw the Armistice as an alliance between Germany, the United States, and England against the Soviet Union. In his rage he openly denounced the Americans and the English over the radio and declared that Poland would be a part of the Soviet Union as would Germany.
 
In Great Britain Churchill denounced Stalin’s words and said that in 1939 we went to war against Hitler to preserve the independence of Poland. We are willing to do so again to preserve its independence against Stalin. In the U.S. FDR was more circumspect, but voices inside the government were telling him to stop Lend Lease to the Soviet Union.

The Field Marshals in the East seeing the writing in the wall agreed to a military junta government and to go along with Rommel for the time being and to continue fighting the Red Army.

As Allied troops and the German Army in the West filtered across France, Italy and into Germany virtually unimpeded one thing was clear and that was no one knew what would happen next. Would they end up along with their former enemy be fighting the Red Army, which had so recently been an ally to protect Poland?

Negotiations back and forth continued fast and furiously between the Germans and Anglo-Americans and the USSR. The question hung over the heads of all those involved if war would or would not be avoided.

Stalin met with his generals in a decisive meeting that would head off a third World War. His generals told him bluntly that he could not win a war against the three great world powers. Stalin having collected himself from his rage several days earlier agreed and within weeks an agreement was reached to divide Poland in half between occupation zones of the Anglo-Americans and that of the Soviet Union.

Rommel as acting Chancellor of Germany after Hitler’s death had immediately ordered all the concentration camps destroyed and the high level SS guards and camp leaders publically executed by the German Army in front of the detainees at the camps. That did not stop news of the camps from slowly going public and demands appeared in the United States and England for all high level Nazi’s involved in the deaths camps to face trial.

On December 24th 1944 Rommel announced that an international war crimes trial the first of its kind would be held in Germany to try those responsible for planning and orchestrating the Final Solution. He also to lend Germany more credibility to the Anglo-American Allies at this time of anger at Germany named the traitor in the U.S. government to FDR who was subsequently tried and executed.

On January 1st 1945 on the advice of Britain and the United States Germany declared war on Imperial Japan. Stalin seeing a chance to gain land in Asia declared war on Japan two weeks later. Quickly Japanese positions in Asia were over-run by Soviet troops who had been moved to the area in the fall and winter of 1944.

The declarations of war against Japan by its former ally Germany and by the USSR broke all hope of the Emperor and just as a massive wave of large-scale U.S. firebombing of Tokyo was ready to commence the Emperor of Japan issued orders over the radio that Japan would surrender. World War II offically ended with a formal signing of surrender on February 14th 1945.

FDR died on April 12 1945 happy with the knowledge that the world was at peace once more and that his actions helped save millions if not tens of millions of lives. With the war over and the air and seas safe once more for travel both Churchill and Rommel came to his funeral to pay their respects.

The End... or is it. ;)
 
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The Cold War begins in 1950 with the invasion of South Korea by the North and the testing of the first Atomic Bomb by the Soviet Union in late December of that year. America had publically tested its first bomb in 1946. The Manhattan Project was delayed somewhat by funds being taken away from their program because of the early end to the second World War.

Not to be outdone in 1949 Germany tested its first nuclear bomb. At the advice of Germany and the UK Japan's sea fleet was greatly reduced in power, but it was allowed to keep a sizable army as Rommel had convinced FDR in 1945 it was important to avoid the rise of a wave of Facism or Communism in the country given his own view that if the Germany Army had been kept larger after WW2 angry young men like Hitler would have been kept in it and the Nazi Party would have never rose to power.

A combined force in 1950 of international troops under the new United Nations gathered under the command of General Douglas Macarthur. The main members of his coalition force were the United States, Germany, and Japan. The UK had cut is war budget greatly after WW2 and played a role, but not a major one. In the war Douglas Macarthur pushed the North Koreans all the way up to near the border of China certain that China would not attack. But, they did and Chinese met stiff resistance from the the combined force of nations.

Germany and Japan contacted Truman and told him that they considered it an act of war by China against their forces and were willing to go to war against China if he was. Macarthur was also on the phone with Truman in November of 1950 and told him that given the Soviet's haven't even tested a nuclear bomb yet its likely they won't get involved, Truman considered his options and reluctantly agreed and asked the Congress to declare war on China which they did.

What was to come would be the bloodiest war since WW2 as the international force of nations went to war with Communist China and by 1953 with the destruction of several of China's cities and the massive invasion of mainland China by mainly Americans, German, and Japanese troops promoting the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek as the true leader of China. In 1954 the Communist Party in China agreed to peace where the country would be divided between Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek once more.

After the defeat of French forces in Vietnam the country was split in two with North Vietnam bordering the area of China was now controlled by Chiang Kai-shek. Ho Chi Minh decided that to try to take over south Vietnam would be fool hardy given its support by the United States and Chiang Kai-shek to the north. A potental second war in Vietnam was averted.

The space race began offically in 1955 when Germany sent the first satellite into space. Not to be outdone two years late the USSR send the second one and in 1958 the U.S. did the same. The race to the moon became a three sided endevor that was won by Germany in 1967. But, as a symbol of their appreciation and friendship to the United States the flag of Imperial Germany was joined by an American flag right beside it.

Events in the Middle East would boil over from time to time and border wars in China and Poland almost lead to a third World War, but the world would never again in the 20th century see another war between major world powers.
 
Interesting scenario there. An American traitor sells out D-Day, but it gets turned into a trap for the Nazi leadership and they all die a year ahead of schedule.

I'd have had the German Resistance (V.S. and company, if V.S. was part of the plot at this point) pull the trigger rather than Rommel, as his involvement in July 20 OTL I don't think was that large. TTL's Valkyrie could be triggered by "Hitler is dead in the bombing and the SS is trying to take advantage" or "the SS told the Allies where Hitler was and they killed him with bombs" rather than a standard SS assassination.

And do you mean "50th birthday"? If Rommel and his wife were celebrating their 50th anniversary, they're both a lot older than I imagined. :)
 
Interesting scenario there. An American traitor sells out D-Day, but it gets turned into a trap for the Nazi leadership and they all die a year ahead of schedule.

I'd have had the German Resistance (V.S. and company, if V.S. was part of the plot at this point) pull the trigger rather than Rommel, as his involvement in July 20 OTL I don't think was that large. TTL's Valkyrie could be triggered by "Hitler is dead in the bombing and the SS is trying to take advantage" or "the SS told the Allies where Hitler was and they killed him with bombs" rather than a standard SS assassination.

And do you mean "50th birthday"? If Rommel and his wife were celebrating their 50th anniversary, they're both a lot older than I imagined. :)

Yes, it was Rommel's wife's 50th B-Day.

As for Rommel and the plot to kill Hitler his main goal was not having his finger prints on the murder even though he told the plotters to kill Goring and Himmler as well according to survivors of the purge at the conspirators at the Nurnberg trials who were none too happy with him that he didn't give them any support more then that, he knew the German people would demand the heads of those who killed Hitler and figured that if Staffenburg and company killed the Nazi leadership they would soon be killed by the German people or the SS and then the Army could step in and take control of the country.

However, if Hitler is supposedly killed by the Allies on film it solves the problem. Rommel was very much aware of what happened when the Senate killed Caesar. The citizens of Rome went wild and burned down the Senate and drove his killers from Rome.

Rommel view was that it wasn't Hitler they should be afraid of when it came to trying to kill him it would be the response of the German people.

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Like I said if the Allies killed Hitler on camera it would solve the problem that no group of Germans who killed Hitler would be accepted as leader of Germany by its people. Hitler was too beloved in 1944 for that to happen and a real understanding of the extent of his evil simply wasn't known by everyday Germans then.
 
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And this will end once the Allies find out the magnitude of the concentration camps

By then the camps will have been destoryed and the SS guards shot in front of the survivors as it says in the OP. Of course word will get out slowly, but what are the Allies going to do go to war again against Germany for the crimes of Nazi Germany? Rommel already agreed to an international war crimes trial to be held in Germany to punish the high level SS responsable.

This won't be a situation where the Allies arrive in the summer of 1944 in Germany and Poland and see the death camps in operation and bodies everywhere. It would be more the case where by word of mouth stories spread over the next several months after the war ends of the Nazi's brutality to the Jews and others in the camps, but without the film footage of the camps and people starved nearly to death or dead everywhere the short term international reaction against Germany would be alot less severe then in the origional timeline.

Come the 70s and 80s the anger at Germany would be much greater then in the 50s and 60s in this timeline over the Final Solution as the world would be seeing the first films of what it was like there and a film is a thousand times more powerful then words, but even then people like Anne Frank would been saved in this timeline (whose film and diary were seen and read by countless millions), the worst of the Final Solution where the SS tried to finish the job and the Germans themselves would have ended the death camps so the anger at Germany would be closer to that of anger at Russia over the Gulags.

Self loathing and extreme pacifism wouldn't have taken place in Germany post war and The country would be a global military player today as well as a global economic power, but all the German deaths in Russia and the Nazi's mass killings would have humbled them to the level we wouldn't see anything like the Nazi Party come to power again in Germany.
 
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The Soviet Empire suffers badly in Afghanistan during the late 70s and 80s and because of a number of factors breaks apart in 1987. In 1991 Saddam invades Kuwait, the Allied force to oppose him is larger with Germany and Japan making up a third of the coalition forces. With the backing up Germany and Japan Bush Sr. decides to go to Baghdad and finish off the regime. With the Iraqi Army wiped out and hundreds of thousands of allied troops in the country there is only a minor terrorist threat in Iraq after the war supported by Wahhabis and some Shia extremist elements supported by Iran, but within ten years the country is back on its feet and an ally of the West.

Without U.S. troops on Saudi soil Bin Laden finds it harder to find followers, but he does and on September 11th 2003 al-Qaeda attacks the United States. The United States with help from its allies invade Afghanistan and suffer the same problems they have in the origional timeline with a slow low level insurgency based from Pakistan. Al-Qaeda is wiped out as an organization as in the origional timeline, but the Taliban continue to be a long term threat.

Without the personal hatred that Bush II had against Saddam present with Assad or the Mullahs, the neo-conservatives were unable to convince him after 911 to overthrow those governments. However, democratic elections that were held in Iraq in 2000 gave muslims around the region ideas and by the mid 2000s pro-Democratic revolutions were sweeping the Arab world. The regimes in North Africa and Syria fell, but the Saudi Kingdom and the mullahs of Iran continue to hold onto power.

In terms of global power Asia rises in the 60s thru 90s, but in China the West made the decision to open up markets to Nationalist China and kept Communist China boycotted. In the late 1990s Communist China finally fell and it was reunited with nationalist China. To this day Nationalist China continues spending large amounts of money to help develop Communist China and bring it up to par with the rest of the country.
 
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The Soviet Empire suffers badly in Afghanistan during the late 70s and 80s and because of a number of factors breaks apart in 1987. In 1991 Saddam invades Kuwait, the Allied force to oppose him is larger with Germany and Japan making up a third of the coalition forces. With the backing up Germany and Japan Bush Sr. decides to go to Baghdad and finish off the regime. With the Iraqi Army wiped out and hundreds of thousands of allied troops in the country there is only a minor terrorist threat in Iraq after the war supported by Wahhabis and some Shia extremist elements supported by Iran, but within ten years the country is back on its feet and an ally of the West.

Without U.S. troops on Saudi soil Bin Laden finds it harder to find followers, but he does and on September 11th 2003 al-Qaeda attacks the United States. The United States with help from its allies invade Afghanistan and suffer the same problems they have in the origional timeline with a slow low level insurgency based from Pakistan. Al-Qaeda is wiped out as an organization as in the origional timeline, but the Taliban continue to be a long term threat.

Without the personal hatred that Bush II had against Saddam present with Assad or the Mullahs, the neo-conservatives were unable to convince him after 911 to overthrow those governments. However, democratic elections that were held in Iraq in 2000 gave muslims around the region ideas and by the mid 2000s pro-Democratic revolutions were sweeping the Arab world. The regimes in North Africa and Syria fell, but the Saudi Kingdom and the mullahs of Iran continue to hold onto power.

In terms of global power Asia rises in the 60s thru 90s, but in China the West made the decision to open up markets to Nationalist China and kept Communist China boycotted. In the late 1990s Communist China finally fell and it was reunited with nationalist China. To this day Nationalist China continues spending large amounts of money to help develop Communist China and bring it up to par with the rest of the country.

Butterflies, my friend, butterflies; much of this will not happen in TTL.
 
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