As queer as a Clockwork Sealion

MrP

Banned
Hmm... makes sense. Although in the Napoleon example, I would argue there was no need for the "Spanish ulcer" to exist at all... AFAIK, Franco-Spanish relations were pretty friendly at the time, and certainly the Spanish would not have accepted British troops on their soil without the French already being there.

Not that I'm an expert...

Absolutely. My point is that there's a vast amount of time in which to fine tune Nappy into near-perfection.
 
Republicans win Spanish civil war, turn communist: WRONG
The communists were only a minority in a popular front dominated by socialists, anarchists and other far left groups, and that's without countring the trotskysts and the democrats...secondly, Stalin never tried nor would he have tried to set up a puppet in the Mediterranean,since it would have come off as antagonizing to the western nations, and it would have needed massive resources the USSR did not have...thirdly, even when the Communists tried to take over near the end of the war, when the moderate republicans were nearly crushed, the communists still got kicked when the moderates and socialists kicked them out of Madrid...

I wouldn't quite discount this one.
What you say is true however we're going into AH territory with the republicans winning- perhaps they do this by virtue of massive soviet help which then gets diverted solely to the revolutionary communists as the war is steadily won?

Even assuming the garden variety republicans winning I would still imagine Spain to be very soviet friendly until the 50s at least- when Stalinism is fully revealed.
 
Absolutely. My point is that there's a vast amount of time in which to fine tune Nappy into near-perfection.
Ooops! I never noticed this reply, for some reason... sorry!

Yes, there's all sorts of decisions which, with hindsight, seem ridiculous... the whole "invading the rest of Europe" thing seems a little silly, really. :p
 

Thande

Donor
Yeah, we should emphasise that "Nazi Germany Invades Britain in 1940" is not ASB, and is possible (though difficult) with a sufficiently early POD and planning, but Operation Sealion is a specific plan that was so half-assed that not even Hitler was crazy enough to try it.

As for Napoleon, I'd say there was maybe a 15-20% chance of success of a French invasion in OTL. The way to make that rise would be to back and alter the French Revolution so they don't lose so many well-trained aristocratic officers, and by extension a large part of their fleet from lacking them in the battles of the 1790s.
 
I wouldn't quite discount this one.
What you say is true however we're going into AH territory with the republicans winning- perhaps they do this by virtue of massive soviet help which then gets diverted solely to the revolutionary communists as the war is steadily won?

Even assuming the garden variety republicans winning I would still imagine Spain to be very soviet friendly until the 50s at least- when Stalinism is fully revealed.

Don´t forget the Czechoslovakian variant; Republican side wins with massive Soviet help, meaning a strong support of the USSR in the population and Establishment; then at some point later this support gets used and a pro-Soviet coup is launched, or possibly an election manipulated.
Although, it is rather improbable that it will be as successful as in Czechoslovakia 1948 given the distance and the amount of Soviet troops in Spain in comparison to CZ.
 
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