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In this thread I'd like to discuss what you think is arguably the best case scenario for the Axis in WW2 with a PoD on or after December 7th 1941, the date of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. I've come up with something of my own. Feel free to comment and post your own ideas. Might flesh is out into a TL some day if it catches on ;) (and once I have my laptop back :mad:).

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PoD: the night of December 6th/7th 1941: Admiral Husband Kimmel somehow receives warning about the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which isn't too ASB as Japanese codes had been cracked. Some were suspicious about where on Earth the Kido Butai was headed.

Anyway, his battleline steams out of PH proudly and engages the Japanese carriers somewhere north/northwest of PH in a fierce but very one-sided battle in which Japanese air power proves to be the winner. Even so, the Japanese lose 100 aircraft, almost a quarter of all their planes. It, however, comes at the cost of all of the US Pacific Fleet's battleships.

December 11th: Hitler reneges on his decision to go to war with the US which will be much more Asia focused for the time being. Already America's naval assets in the Atlantic are being moved. Nevertheless, America won't be able to respond for another six months although it won't matter in the end.

1942: British forces win a strategic victory at El Alamein and prospects are beginning to look bleak for Rommel who is at the end of a long and vulnerable supply line. In the meantime the Wehrmacht launches their summer offensive 'Fall Blau' (Case Blue) on the the eastern front with the aim of taking Baku. They bog down however at Stalingrad in a fierce battle from house to house with the Red Army. Zhukov begins Operation Uranus in November. Initially, the first attacks are repelled, but by November 23rd, Soviet troops link up at Kalach and cut off the Sixth Army, the Romanian third and forth armies and most of Italy's troops in Russia are surrounded as Hitler orders them to hold their ground. Some 290.000 men are now encircled east of the Don river.

In the meantime, a German U-boat engages USS Texas which is on neutrality patrol as one of the few American ships still in the Atlantic. The captain mistakes her for a British vessel. US congress declares war in June '42 although this is still symbolic for now.

America is still focusing on Japan, but increases Lend-Lease aid to Britain and the USSR, something which Congress fights tooth and nail against but FDR manages to push it through as Britain is allied to the US in the Pacific and because of guarantees that 'Germany would come first' made by FDR to Churchill. The Japanese are still riding high on their euphoric feelings from the destruction of America's Pacific Fleet and start an offensive against Midway. They win a hard-won victory and take Midway, but at a terrible cost, losses that will prove to be insurmountable, making it a Pyrrhic victory at best. By now, America's building program is well underway. With lessons learned from earlier encounters, the Montana-class battleships are cancelled. The four Iowa-class BBs will be the last American BBs ever. Already the first Essex-class carriers are nearing completion...

Operation Torch does not take place ITTL.

1943: Early February: the sixth army in Stalingrad surrenders with only a few tens of thousands of survivors taken prisoner. The rest had died of hunger, disease or enemy fire. Most survivors will not see Germany again. Instead of the battle of Kursk, the Germans go for Manstein's plan which commences in May 1943 and is known as the 'Backhand Blow' to western war gamers, leading to the postponing and cancelling of Operation Citadel. Soviet forces are lured into the Donets basin in the Ukraine after the desperately reforming Sixth Army. Manstein marches south from Kharkov, east of the Don, towards Rostov and traps the entire Soviet wing against the Sea of Azov. The Red Army loses almost half of its tanks and about one million men. Germany celebrates, but Goebbels sets a serious tone and prepares Germany for a long war asking if they are up 'for a war more total than anything before'. Speer takes over the economy.

Conference of Tehran takes place although ITTL, less progress from the Red Army means that Stalin can't squeeze much concessions out of the WAllies.

In Africa, Libya is now a lost cause and Rommel retreats further into Tunisia against orders from Hitler, but this gains them Vichy French support as Tunisia is a French colony. These forces are forced to surrender in Algeria in July 1943. Rommel leaves to prepare the defence of Italy. Britain is in no position to launch such an invasion yet. Sicily is still heavily defended and fortified and American support in Europe is much weaker and consists of an AEF. Naval support is limited to escorting duties, but that is to change and an Anglo-American invasion of Europe is only a matter of time Stalin, in the meantime, suspects that the Western Allies are letting him do the fighting and bleed the USSR white, something which is not entirely incorrect if it depends on Churchill.

In the Pacific, America had regained Midway by the start of 1943. It was too hard to defend at the end of such a long supply chain for the Japanese. Civilian resistance only worsened their problems. Their 'fight to the death' stance, however, is causing the Americans headaches already. This is seen as the turning point in the Pacific War and by now America has replaced all the losses suffered in 1941/42. Four new Essex-class carriers combined with the existing ones, battleships transferred from the Atlantic, the two new Iowas and British forces outnumber Japanese forces in the Pacific. This marks the beginning of a repetitive island hopping campaign which always follows the same pattern:
1. coastal bombardment
2. amphibious landing
3. fight to the death against the Japanese, Banzai charges.

1944/1945: The British launch the invasion of Sicily which is more heavily defended than IOTL but a poor Italian showing, knowledge of German codes and aid from the US gives the Brits the upper hand and they take the island with experience from the Pacific in amphibous operations.

American forces begin to approach the Home Islands and the choice is made to ignore the periphery of Japan's Empire, upsetting the British, Dutch and Free French. A campaign of fire bombing begins against Japanese cities while in Europe, a slow steady advance begins up the Italian peninsula. The Germans score a few local victories such as at Bari and Foggia, but this doesn't change the overall scheme of things as the arrival of large portions of the USAF ends German dominance in the skies.

In spite of German resistance, Rome falls without a shot fired and Mussolini is deposed although Hitler installs him as a puppet in N-Italy. As Britain as more of a say ITTL, Churchill pushes through what he wants and the WAllies opt for a soft underbelly strategy and land on the sparsely defended Albanian coastline. Yugoslavia at this point as a meagre garrison of ten divisions which aren't even meant as a defence force but as an anti-guerrilla force. The Axis presence in Greece crumbles and Tito openly sided with the WAllies, recognising that Stalin can't support him if he resists (he is a communist after all).

Soviet forces have recovered by now and in the spring of 1944 they liberate Smolensk and Kiev shortly thereafte and continue to advance in western direction albeit much more slowly than IOTL. In the meantime, Bulgaria switches sides to the WAllies in the hopes of escaping Stalin's wrath. They engage the Romanians in Dobrudja, but with strong German 'assistance', Romania stays an Axis power (Hitler insists on keeping the Ploiesti oilfields). Antonescu is replaced by Iron Guard leader Horia Sima after Hitler hears of Antonescu making overtures to the WAllies like the Bulgarians before him.

Germany begins to feel the pressure growing. Greece and Bulgaria are now in the Allied camp and the Anglo-Americans are pushing into Yugoslavia although the terrain proved to be as much a bitch to the Allies as it was to the Germans before them even with a friendly population. The rather mountainous Yugoslavia is a major obstacle and WAllied troops get stuck in the Dinaric Alps. Croat and Bosnian resistance aggravates this.

By the end of 1944, Allied forces are headed toward Austria while the Soviet Union cleans up the last vestiges of Soviet forces on their soil and reach their 1939 borders. Out of frustration for his lack of gains, Stalin orders an invasion of Finland which falls much quicker than the last time (1940) and is incorporated as the Finnish SSR. Romania crumbles with the looming of the Red Army on its doorstep and Hitler is forced to retreat to a beleagered Hungary. By spring of 1945, the Red Army stands on the Vistula and by summer they reach the Oder-Neisse line, taking Slovakia and Hungary. Soviet and Anglo-American forces meet at Lake Balaton. In July, the US test the atomic bomb in their Trinity test. With Hitler's adamant refusal to surrender, they use 'Little Boy' on Dresden. Hitler believes the Americans have only one such weapon and raves on about their evil and the destruction of Dresden. Dresden is followed by Nuremburg and the Heer coups Hitler and requests an armistice. Seeing the defeat of Germany by nuclear weapons, Japan fears for atomic devastation of the Home Islands. Japan had already been exposed to a fire bombing campaign and most cities had been reduced to ashes, their air force almost gone and their military-industrial complex destroyed and deprived of the so needed raw materials. The food situation was growing worse and by now Japan was limited to the Home Islands, Korea and Manchuria. In September 1945 they surrender, not knowing that the US wouldn't have a new Bomb until October.

THE END

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This is my take. What do you think? Idea, suggestions? Feel free to post your own scenario.
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