challenge: invade the U.S

I don't think it's asking much for someone to set up some ammunition factories in Canada. If we are going pre WWI then the requirement for vehicles is less. It would be very difficult but I think it could be done. If you had German forces in Mexico aiding their candidate in the civil war, that could be a reasonable pretext for having a large German force in Mexico. Invasion of New England from Canada, maybe after the Brits build up in the North with the US watching them then the Germans and Mexicans come over the border in the South. Couple with sea superiority then put an amphibious landing ashore to give them a third threat. One problem I thought of with my scenario is this - if Frederick lives longer and Britain and Germany are friends do you still have a dreadnought race?
 
What are these great logistical issues when facing an army of 212,000 men spread across an entire continent? The A-G armies would be advancing into some of the richest country in the world that is virtually undefended. If the Germany armies can live off the land during the advance in Belgium then it can be done in Wisconsin, Michigan and New York state.

American issues are solved by having the worlds best rail net, and a pretty high quality water transport system as well as adequate roads.

Armies do not just require food to advance. This isn't the 19th Century when an army could carry most of the ammunition it needed for a campaign. In the 20th Century with vast numbers of more complex machines including the rifles themselves a similarly vast amount of spare parts are needed, as well as huge quantities of ammunition, fuel for motorized vehicles (Canada has no oil production of note well into the century while Mexico had few refineries), and everything else from uniforms to medical supplies.

It has already been determined Canada can probably feed the troops. What is doubtful is whether it can provide everything else an army needs and whether the internal transportation of Canada or Mexico could handle the massive increase in traffic and thus stress an army needs.

For a 3:1 superiority, which is the typical ratio most generals want, You need around 750,000 to guarantee your 3:1 numbers over those roughly 250,000 US regulars and national guard troops.

That works out to be about 30 divisions at World War I or World War II levels of support (essentially a division slice of about 25,000 men). You would need a significant number of line of communications and other support troops as well.

Lets call it an even million because the numbers are easy to deal with.

A World War II era motorized division requires 350 tons a day including fuel, ammunition, spares and everything else. Assume a non motorized division, which would have a large number of horses and mules to haul everything from bakery wagons to artillery pieces is still going to need around 200 tons a day.

So a World War I era force of 30 divisions needs 60,000 tons of supplies per day. That is a huge amount of material to move through two ports and a single railroad line on a daily basis, and you are also talking about the need to have around 12 ships a day, every day, cross the Atlantic carrying that needed supply load.

It gets far worse in a World War II era situation, where the supply requirement jumps to 105,000 tons a day, and far more that is fuel. So several tankers and numerous transport ships must cross the Atlantic in a steady stream to ensure that tonnage reaches the armies.

The Mexican ports cannot handle anything like this tonnage, nor can the Mexican rail and road system. The Canadian ports are going to be heavily congested and during winter, only one of those ports is open (Halifax)

Good thing you are talking a multiprong invasion as logistically neither nation bordering the US could handle the needed strain on their infrastructure.

http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/JanFeb01/MS610.htm

Halifax as of present day can handle around 1.5 million tons a year of non containerized cargo (containers are a post World War II invention). Which works out to be around 4200 tons a day.

http://portofhalifax.ca/cargo/statistics/
 
Circa 1929, war plan red-orange is the most likely way that America could have been invaded Post 1900. The Japanese attack the American Philippines and other military installations across the Pacific. The British fight in the Caribbean while the Canadians swarm into Idaho and Maine. If the United Kingdom had went to war with the United States and Japan had honored their alliance, the United States would have lost. The United Kingdom was doing better, not with industry but with their economy. Japan's military was not as advanced but a surprise strike from three sides could compensate for that.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
The Anglo-Japanese treaty was officially dropped in 1923

Circa 1929, war plan red-orange is the most likely way that America could have been invaded Post 1900. The Japanese attack the American Philippines and other military installations across the Pacific. The British fight in the Caribbean while the Canadians swarm into Idaho and Maine. If the United Kingdom had went to war with the United States and Japan had honored their alliance, the United States would have lost. The United Kingdom was doing better, not with industry but with their economy. Japan's military was not as advanced but a surprise strike from three sides could compensate for that.


The Anglo-Japanese treaty was officially dropped in 1923; unofficially, it was dead when the US entered the war in 1917 and proceeded to send 2 million men to France, with 2 million more in the pipeline for 1919, along with the battle fleet, ASW and cruiser-transport force, and the air forces...

The US economy was roughly five times that of the U.K. and Japan in the interwar years.

Best,
 
A nuclear era invasion of the US

Years ago (in the 1980s) there was a roleplaying game called Twilight 2000, set in the aftermath of a Third World War. As the 1990s came to an end its timeline was overtaken by events and became obsolete

A friend of mine asked me to write up an updated timeline that was faithful to the source material for that game so I did. In this timeline, as well as the original timeline written by Frank Chadwick (a noted game designer of that era) the United States suffers not only a World War III nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, but a Soviet invasion of Alaska and a Mexican/Soviet invasion of the US Southwest (its complicated). Canada also gets hammered by nuclear strikes as does of course most of Eurasia

here you go if your interested.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=115670

the Invasion doesn't reach the heartland but it does result in the heartland being shattered pretty thoroughly and does result in the conquest of the Southwest including part of California as well as Alaska.
 
What are these great logistical issues when facing an army of 212,000 men spread across an entire continent? The A-G armies would be advancing into some of the richest country in the world that is virtually undefended. If the Germany armies can live off the land during the advance in Belgium then it can be done in Wisconsin, Michigan and New York state.

the logistical issues aren't so much 'making the war impossible for the AG to carry out' as it is 'it makes it pretty much impossible to do it out of the blue/by total surprise'. The buildup will be slow, it will be noticed, the US will prepare accordingly. How much that preparation helps is up for debate...
 
The OP specifies not just an invasion of any US territory, but one of its heartland specifically. Its also pretty heavily implied that its supposed to be a serious attack which has at least some chance of succeeding. IMHO the invader being the country that gets nuclear weapons first is by far the easiest way of bringing such a circumstance about.

Early atomic weapons won't be easy to transport or produce. By the time they are everyone will already have them.
 
Early atomic weapons won't be easy to transport or produce. By the time they are everyone will already have them.

I don't necessarily disagree, but as I said before to someone else, if you have a better way I'm happy to hear it. From what I can tell, the discussion on this thread regarding the prospects for a non-nuclear invasion is doing a very good job of proving that the idea is near-ASB. On the other hand, it is possible, although not likely, to construct a scenario in which another country gets enough of a lead in the nuclear race to gain a first-strike advantage.
 
I don't necessarily disagree, but as I said before to someone else, if you have a better way I'm happy to hear it. From what I can tell, the discussion on this thread regarding the prospects for a non-nuclear invasion is doing a very good job of proving that the idea is near-ASB. On the other hand, it is possible, although not likely, to construct a scenario in which another country gets enough of a lead in the nuclear race to gain a first-strike advantage.

Because it's a Post 1900 POD a US invasion TL will always be near ASB. I don't think it is ASB however. The way to invade is laid out already by geography. The problem is getting the right demographics. That's way I think the best time is in the 1930s in a ATL where WW1 doesn't happen, Smaller, or America just doesn't get involved. The global economy still tanks and the dust bowl still happens as well. Mexican population growth started to boom in the 1930s. All Invasions of the US will need Mexico and Canada. The goal would be to capture Chicago, and New Orleans. Control over the Mississippi River basin is then contested forcing Washington to the negotiating table. Diversionary raids would be taken on Southern California and Florida. Leave Washington and the Northeast alone to create a divide among Americans.

As to who could support all this...

Not to get all heartland theory but I think it would have to be some kind of Super national Eurasian hegemony. Maybe a surviving Three Emperors Alliance could do it while China is a state of civil war. France, and Italy will likely become permanently neutral. That is it, for possible rivals on continental Eurasia. The next phase is naval build up, and making friends in Americas. Start at the southern cone, and work your way up. Be proportionally aggressive to the size of your fleet.
 
the logistical issues aren't so much 'making the war impossible for the AG to carry out' as it is 'it makes it pretty much impossible to do it out of the blue/by total surprise'. The buildup will be slow, it will be noticed, the US will prepare accordingly. How much that preparation helps is up for debate...

It should also be noted that the more preparation the U.S. has the more difficult the invasion becomes, exponentially. We start out with a million men needed, so the alliance starts shipping in supplies and building up infrastructure, while relations steadily decline. Since the U.S. isn't run by blind imbeciles it starts building up as well. A year passes, and suddenly the U.S. has a million men under arms, and the original invasion force is no longer sufficient. Now even more men will be needed. Say three million. Now infrastructure has to be increased again.

Meanwhile the U.S. has had years to prepare, has a million man army, and more who have been rotated out, but are ready to come back. Going by U.S. plans in WWI they can put out four million men inside of a year from this point (taking into account preparation.

So what now, is this alliance going to shop in twelve million soldiers, more than the ENTIRE population of Canada? Where does the food going to come from? Canada might produce enough food to export previously, but what about now that it's infrastructure has been taken over to supply this massive force?

How long until Germany realizes "hey, France and Russia still exist...and I have no one to put along the border because they are all in Canada..."?
 
While Japan can take the PI in the interwar period, going much further east (certainly Wake/Midway/Hawaii) is going to be impossible unless the UK is providing naval and transport forces - now UK/Germany/Japan vs USA. Even then taking Hawaii would be difficult and forces the UK uses in the Pacific are not available elsewhere - once war starts UK/Japanese/German merchant shipping will be degraded, and the main effort is going to have to be keeping forces in Canada/Mexico supplied. While "unfortunate" the loss of all US possessions west of Hawaii does not do much of anything to degrade US military capabilities. Remember Japanese "logistic" abilities in WWII were pretty bad, and this was after a buildup of naval and merchant fleets from WWI to WWII so any attack before 1935-1940 is going to be less well supported.

If you have a prolonged period of US-UK (+ whomever) hostility like the Turtledove US-CSA series, then the US will be well prepared for any attack. If you have a sharp downturn in relations that eventually leads to war, the "enemy" buildup will take at least a year or two. Remember in WWI the transport of British Indian/Imperial forces was TOWARDS the base of supply not away from it. Furthermore a large chunk of Gallipoli ground forces (ANZAC) were diverted upon arrival in Egypt for this purpose - and were deficient in many support areas.

In the scenario being posited all forces are being deployed thousands of miles from their base of supply in to areas that can supply only a limited amount of the needed logistic support. For a modern equivalent think of Desert Storm - yes the 82nd airborne and a USAF contingent were on the ground very quickly, but with no heavy weapons and limited supply of ammo and food even with supplies that may have been in Saudi Arabia. The 82nd was rationed to 2 MREs a day (not 3) for a period.

For a non-nuclear invasion of the USA to succeed you need the USA to have a small military (especially navy which takes longer to build than an army), undefended borders (like OTL), and not responding to either a large permanent unfriendly military presence on the borders and/or not responding to the 12-24 month buildup on its borders. This is highly unlikely under and conceivable circumstance without major changes in US history well before 1900.
 
Because it's a Post 1900 POD a US invasion TL will always be near ASB. I don't think it is ASB however. The way to invade is laid out already by geography. The problem is getting the right demographics. That's way I think the best time is in the 1930s in a ATL where WW1 doesn't happen, Smaller, or America just doesn't get involved. The global economy still tanks and the dust bowl still happens as well. Mexican population growth started to boom in the 1930s. All Invasions of the US will need Mexico and Canada. The goal would be to capture Chicago, and New Orleans. Control over the Mississippi River basin is then contested forcing Washington to the negotiating table. Diversionary raids would be taken on Southern California and Florida. Leave Washington and the Northeast alone to create a divide among Americans.

As to who could support all this...

Not to get all heartland theory but I think it would have to be some kind of Super national Eurasian hegemony. Maybe a surviving Three Emperors Alliance could do it while China is a state of civil war. France, and Italy will likely become permanently neutral. That is it, for possible rivals on continental Eurasia. The next phase is naval build up, and making friends in Americas. Start at the southern cone, and work your way up. Be proportionally aggressive to the size of your fleet.

The Three Emperors Alliance broke up before 1900. In general, I find the idea of a grand Eurasian alliance for the purpose of invading the United States highly improbable, because it would involve countries which are located near to each other, and thus have a long history of hostility and which threaten each other, allying to attack a country which is far away and which poses little to no danger. Even if it did come into being, I am highly doubtful of its chances of success. The nuclear weapons route is both more plausible and more likely to work.
 
The Three Emperors Alliance broke up before 1900. In general, I find the idea of a grand Eurasian alliance for the purpose of invading the United States highly improbable, because it would involve countries which are located near to each other, and thus have a long history of hostility and which threaten each other, allying to attack a country which is far away and which poses little to no danger. Even if it did come into being, I am highly doubtful of its chances of success. The nuclear weapons route is both more plausible and more likely to work.

The USSR and the US had continents of manpower and resources to back up nuclear arms. For most (if not all) of the Cold War everyone else was too poor or too small, when compared to them. A nuclear armed Japan or Britain isn't going to nuke AND invade the heartland.

My idea of a surviving three emperors alliance can be boiled down to a Berlin/Moscow axis in the first half of the 20th century. Germany and Russia have plenty of places to expand beyond each other. Besides Nations putting aside hundreds of years of hostilities to fight a common enemy isn't unheard of.

Atomic bombs are a real "More Money, More Problems" kind of solution. Form a technology point of view, I think being the first to successfully development naval aviation would provide better returns on investment.
 
The USSR and the US had continents of manpower and resources to back up nuclear arms. For most (if not all) of the Cold War everyone else was too poor or too small, when compared to them. A nuclear armed Japan or Britain isn't going to nuke AND invade the heartland.

My idea of a surviving three emperors alliance can be boiled down to a Berlin/Moscow axis in the first half of the 20th century. Germany and Russia have plenty of places to expand beyond each other. Besides Nations putting aside hundreds of years of hostilities to fight a common enemy isn't unheard of.

Atomic bombs are a real "More Money, More Problems" kind of solution. Form a technology point of view, I think being the first to successfully development naval aviation would provide better returns on investment.

Britain, France, India, Israel and China all developed nuclear weapons during the Cold War. With a 1900 POD, I don't think its impossible to construct a scenario in which Anglo-American relations become so bad that the British wouldn't consider some kind of effort against the US heartland if they had nuclear superiority.

I'm not convinced a Russo-German axis would have the strength to invade the United States, even if we presuppose perfect cooperation.

Having either complete or first-strike nuclear superiority would be a massive advantage.
 
No one has even come close to finding a reasonable motivation for a coalition of countries to launch a preemptive invasion of the United States. Even in a world where US and British relations were really poor, there'd be little reason for Britain to do such a thing considering the insane risk and high costs of it. You'd need some sort of crazy authoritarian figure at the helm, I don't see how OTL's British political system would create leaders that would push for such a thing.
 
No one has even come close to finding a reasonable motivation for a coalition of countries to launch a preemptive invasion of the United States. Even in a world where US and British relations were really poor, there'd be little reason for Britain to do such a thing considering the insane risk and high costs of it.

It would not be a high-risk venture if the British or whoever have and use first-strike nuclear superiority. As for motivation, perhaps the US was rapidly catching up in the nuclear arms race and was on the verge of acquiring a second-strike ability. I'd like to emphasize again that I understand this is highly unlikely, but IMHO is still the best way to fulfill the OP.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
In a world that resembles ours enough to make "1900" a significant date, the answer

any time as long as it is after 1900,

In a world that resembles ours enough to make "1900" a significant date, the answer to the question "what country, or coalition of countries, would be able to invade the U.S heartland and how?" is:

None.

Military strength is created by:

a) Population
b) Money.

In 1900, the population of the US was ~76 million; using the ten percent rule, that yields 7,600,000 men available for active service in North America. (If the US choses to mount invasions of South America or the eastern hemisphere, those numbers will drop because of the need for shipping and crews, of course).

It is worth noting that in terms of population alone, the US was second in the world among the major powers (the Russian Empire was larger, with 136 million people). However, the US population was (in a relative sense) much more homogenous, had a single language, and was (generally) better educated and healthier than the Russians. Just as a point of comparison, the German Empire (third largest) had twenty million fewer people than the US in 1900 (56 million vis a vis 76 million). As a sidelight, Canada's population in 1900 was 5 million; New York had more than 7 million people the same year, and Pennsylvania more than 6 million; Illinois had 4.8 million. Basically, whatever forces the entire Dominion of Canada could have generated in 1900 could have been balanced by those raised in Illinois alone...

Along these same lines (source being Bairoch via Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers), the total industrial potential of the powers (in relative perspective, UK in 1900 being 100):

US - 128
UK - 100
GE - 71
RU - 48
FR - 37
AH - 27
IT - 14
JA - 13

Relative shares of world manufacturing output (1900):
US - 23.6 percent
UK - 18.5
GE - 13.2
RU - 8.8
FR - 6.8
AH - 4.7
IT - 2.5
JA - N/A

Steel Production (1900):
US - 10.3 million tons
GE - 6.3 million
UK - 5 million
RU - 2.2
FR - 1.5
AH - 1.1
IT - 0.11
JA - N/A

Given the distances, the realities of European power politics, and the obvious economic differential, the US was sacrosanct.

As Lincoln had said, more than six decades earlier:

All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

It was not hyperbole; the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are not rivers...:rolleyes:

Best,
 
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<snip>The US Navy post 1912 is the 3rd largest in the World, and post 1918 is the largest or second largest depending on which year you look at. That matters a lot too.

ITTL, you have no Washington Naval Treaty with Anglo-American hostility. That leaves the Royal Navy with a vast force of pre-dreadnoughts, worn out dreadnoughts (due to long term wartime steaming), and post-Jutland obsolete dreadnoughts. Granted, the USN's dreadnoughts will also be post-Jutland obsolete, but their BB force will be far fresher.

The British will only have the QEs as first class super-dreadnoughts, while they are faced with a post-WWI naval arms race that they can't possibly afford. Even Japan is well placed to catch up with the RN if this continues, and Japan really isn't in a position to do much against the US beyond the Western Pacific without aircraft carriers.

But why? You don't need to project an army into Des Moins, Iowa to force an American surrender.

I think you meant to say "Sues for peace/pleas for an armistice".:) A "surrender" is ASB.

Really pre-WW2 all you need to do is occupy chunks of the east coast.
The one area that the penny-pinching US Congress never stinted on regarding military spending was the US Coastal Artillery Corps. Every year Congress would issue a level of largesse upon coastal defense that was far greater than the army ever wanted, asked for, or needed. This was due to the idea of coastal defense playing into the natural Isolationist tendencies of the United States pre-Pearl Harbor plus the opportunity of House and Senate members feasting on federal spending directed at US coastal constituencies ($$$ for construction contractors and jobs).

The US had the largest most developed coastal defense system in the world all the way up to VJ-Day, when Congress could finally bring itself to turning off the spigot. One reason why Bataan held off the Japanese for as long as they did was due to the big guns on Corregidor (sp?:eek:). The day after the last gun on that island fortress was silenced (due to lack of spare parts) was the day the garrison surrendered.

The role coastal artillery would have to play in any ATL invasion of the USA is largely overlooked; outside of the Philippines and Fort Sumter the USCAC (AFAIK) never had a chance to fire its guns in anger in its history.

Taking the East Coast of the USA with the forces available to hostile powers in the 20th century is not ASB, but it IS Unspeakable Seamammal.

If the question is could any power or even reasonable coalition in the 20th century project an army across the ocean, supply it and then march it across the entire continental United States and occupy the whole country then the answer is a resounding NO, even all the major powers of Europe combined couldn't do that, not that they would have to to defeat the US.
Define "defeat". Every part of the USA was either overrun or devastated except Maryland and Delaware, yet neither the Second Continental Congress nor Washington ever seriously considered surrender.

Also a note on UK vs US shipbuilding capacity: Pre-WW1 it is actually far from certain that the USN would ever be able to catch up to the RN in a shipbuilding race as the UK at this time still posses the most shipbuilding capacity (in terms of major building facilities) in the world and has by far the largest amount of foreign investment holdings in the world which they could liquidate and use to fund a major, extended war and shipbuilding war (which they did in WW1, allowing them to heavily finance the whole Allied war effort).
If this is true then why were US war loans considered so critical? Granted, there ARE posters on AH.com who consider America's role in WWI to be completely superfluous, but they mostly include just the High Tories. Not unlike the American Exceptionalists who think that the USA was responsible for "winning":rolleyes: WWII.:mad::rolleyes:

Also considering the gross numerical advantage the RN has over the USN in all aspects of naval combatants I cant see the USN stopping it even in an extended war, especially if the RN is supported by either (or both) the German and French Navy.
Not THAT gross, depending on the chosen year. If its 1922, forget it. Even the USN's paucity of ASW assets will have been addressed. If its 1914, then standing on the defensive, its still "forget it". Too many of the USN's older pre-dreadnoughts will still be viable for home defense, while the Royal Navy's capacity for transatlantic warfare will be mostly neutralized by the awesome level of logistics required.

All the talk about what Britain accomplished in WWI on the European Continent is meaningless. They were entering a completely friendly French logistical system with many ports available and a good dense rail network. Not to mention that:

3,000 miles of North Atlantic > 7 miles of English Channel

There was good reason why the AEF grew so exponentially fast in France in WWI while the D-Day landings in WWII took a 2 1/2 year build up.

TBH, any ATL that has Germany on the same side as France is ASB, and frankly so is Germany on the same side as Great Britain. And that's not even considering Russia, which had historically a good relationship with the USA. Meaning that if I'm the Kaiser, and I'm looking at a USA that has as its second largest racial component (after WASPs) German-Americans, with a hungry Russia to my east and a revanchist France to my west...:eek:

I once read that the average prelude to a shooting war during the Cold War as 11 months. Outside of that, while a string of events can be traced back after the fact, things just happen in the course of normal international events.

Cold War =/= 1917

Either way, given the US only has 3 divisions in 1912 compared to over 100 for Germany and 24 for Britain even with a year's warning what will the US be able to do to stop the deployments of 50+ divisions to its borders in a period of a few months of a crisis?
By this logic Britain should have surrendered in 1940. And others here have done a better job than I could regarding the impossibilities of your redeployment numbers and timings.


What is the US going to mobilise, the 100,000 man Regular Army and the 112,000 man National Guard? This won't be enough to stop the sorts of forces an Anglo-German alliance would be able to put into the field within a few months of the start of the hypothetical crisis.

The time required for such a massive strategic redeployment of forces over such a restricted logistical network that would make Overlord look like a holiday ferry trip would have the "invaders" facing the same four million man army that the US Army/US Marines would have had available for 1919 OTL, without the transit times required for transiting to American ports, loading on ship, embarking to France, crossing the Atlantic, disembarking, railing to the front, reassembling their units, marching to the front lines, and engaging the enemy!

Thank you galveston bay

galveston bay said:
<snip>
Also the British have exactly two major ports that lead to the Canadian hinterland, both of which can easily be mined on a routine basis, inflicting further losses.

This is the real killer ITTL. logistics-logistics-logistics

While the close blockade tactics are of the 19th Century and will not work anymore against US ports and bases. It would be a difficult naval campaign in spite of the large numerical superiority the Anglo-German combined navies would have. The US East Coast is after all really long

Don't forget the Gulf & US West Coasts. Goodbye Vancouver.

Germany did indeed have a large merchant marine and would add significantly to any trans Atlantic sea lift However, presumably everyone would notice when huge numbers of British and German cargo ships and ocean liners are no longer available.. There would be no surprise attack.

This fact is all too often blithely ignored/handwaved in these threads, sad to say. So damned inconvenient. Without aircraft carriers, an area in which the Royal Navy scored a distinct third pre-WWII, power projection by the RN into American home waters is problematical at best (to put it mildly).

The more important issue is providing supply. In the 20th Century, generally speaking thousands of tons of supplies are needed on a routine basis for each corps of troops. This includes everything from fuel to food, ammunition to spare blankets. All of this has to funnel through two ports.. Halifax and Quebec (and Quebec is closed part of the year because of ice) and then be sent by rail to forward positions and logistics dumps.
Don't forget that Halifax is at the far eastern tip of Nova Scotia, while at the far western tip the province tapers down to a narrow isthmus, vulnerable to bombing, shelling, and amphibious invasion. IOW, a major source of interdiction. Any British campaign could face a continental scale of loss of supply in wintertime due to these factors.

In other words, a massive effort would be needed to expand Canadian railroad infrastructure to support this vast increase in traffic. That does take time, probably at least a year.


Which won't be happening during Canada's long harsh winters.

Otherwise, the Anglo-German invasion is not going to get very far into the US before they have outrun their supply infrastructure.


Agreed

The Americans just have to fight a delaying action while they build their armies and enlarge their naval forces. The Navy would certainly use submarines and cruisers to hit the invaders sealift, while the battlefleet would make sure that any Anglo-German offensive efforts at ports was terribly expensive and risky. Eventually the Americans are going to have at least parity with the Anglo-Germans and then it comes down to will.

As the Anglo-Germans are the invaders, I suspect the defenders are going to have a bit more will to win. But that too is conjecture of course.
Not much conjecture.:)

I understand what you're saying about mobilisation and agree that if the US has some time it will get ready with commendable speed. This is why I think that an invasion of the US heartland would require an absence of a prolonged rivalry with the US and Britain and Germany and be the result of some unexpected and sudden diplomatic flare up.

Bolts from the blue are beyond impossible. Not unless the Canadian Militia all the way down to every last man in the RCMP are ready to go straight from their barracks with only the bullets and rations in their backpacks, while waiting for the British to mobilize from 3000 miles away.

Such a scenario would play to the Anglo-German strengths of large military establishments and to the US weakness pre WW1 of a small army. The Anglo-Germans could mobilise their first line divisions and get them to North America long before the US could enlarge, train and equip their trained army from 212,000 to something that could match the A-G armies.
PLEASE read up on US mobilization times in the American Civil War, WWI, and WWII.

from what other people have been saying on here though, it would be a painfully slow process, funneling everything through two Canadian ports. The US has an advantage in that they don't have to send anyone overseas, and aren't so limited in logistics, having a pretty good railroad network. The AG might be able to get it done, concentrating a hell of a lot of their shipping and bludgeoning their way past the USN. They could get their men over pretty quickly, but assembling all the supplies is going to be time consuming. It sounds like it would be a close run thing...

GETTING there for defending the Maritime Provinces is one thing, transporting them in a combat capable sense across the length and breadth of North America to threaten or even invade the American heartland is another. And the Canadian LOCs along the Great Lakes (esp. in the western edges) are horribly vulnerable to severing by the US Army, which IMO will NOT be "paralyzed" by some mysterious force of inaction. Whether in terms of mobilization OR expansion.

Perhaps the Pacific could get greater use, IOTL a couple of Indian divisions got to France in October IITL they could cross the Pacific and use the CPR to get to their start line.

That involved friendly ports all along the way, not 12,000 miles:eek: of mostly empty Pacific Ocean waters! Much of it presumably patrolled by the US Pacific Fleet. BTW, if the IJN lacked the ability to power project even to the Hawaiian Islands beyond an air raid (the Kido Butai had three destroyers with only 3 hours of fuel left by the time they made it home), I would imagine things would be far worse in the 1910s-20s.

I'd also envisage that while the US heartland is the target the AG with a bit of Mexican help would launch offensives from the south both to capture territory in Texas and California and to tie down the tiny US Army.
Geographically, the US heartland is far less threatened by an invader from Mexico than the other way around.

From the south, Mexico is all but impregnable.

From the west, its not much better.

From the east, its tough, but doable. Though Cinco de Mayo proved that even the best France could offer could be curbstomped by well led Mexican peasants!

But from the north? Mexico has always been an open door, completely indefensible. Think of a wide open bowl. All an invader has to do is whip out a spoon and start scooping.

The logistics of Northern Mexico, the situation on the ground (Mexico has always had a lawlessness problem in the North, compared to the rest of the country), plus the political chaos of what was after all the Mexican Revolution, makes for using Mexico impossible.

Far more likely that the Mexicans will, in the name of remembering the Imperial French, turn on the "Alliance" members, should they show up. Whatever Mexico City might have to say about it.

<snip>
While the USA does not have as much space to trade for time as the USSR did, the USA in the first half of the 20th century has a decent road net (way better than the USSR in 1941), a very dense rail network, and a well developed internal waterways system. All of this works in favor of the defender.

:cool:

If you posit that the A-G alliance has been operative for some time and has been gradually building up in Canada, then the USA will have reacted by building its military, border fortifications, and so forth. Even the most "isolationist" USA will respond to this sort of hostile military build up.
The Zimmermann Telegram alone produced national hysteria, with formerly pro-Central Powers German-Americans in the Mid-Western States retreating over to the right side of their hyphens while facing terrible treatment at the hands of their fellow countrymen (no comparison to what happened to the Nisei in WWII of course). To this day, the use of the word "hot dog" over "frankfurter" still persists. Even lifelong Anglophobic Irish-American congresscritters were forced to launch extended speeches denouncing Germany while praising Britain's "long struggle against the Hun!":p

Assuming you go from peaceful relations to war, this process will be no less than a year and realistically 18-24 months before this A-G alliance can have adequate forces and supplies in the western hemisphere. There is no political party or leaders in US history who would sit there and do nothing in response to this. It would be hard for this alliance to get a 2:1 or 3:1 force on the ground before the USA had become pretty impregnable - sure coastal raids, air raids, some local advances possible even probable, but without two or three to one on the ground its not happening.
Even if Neville Chamberlain were President of the United States, he would have had the US military posture at DEFCON 2 within three months of this build up. At six months, general mobilization and an all out Peacetime Draft.

Remember, all these ideas about flooding Canada with British troops would be in violation of sacred treaties between the US and Canada/Great Britain that had lasted for some four generations. You could well see the rapid construction of destroyer squadrons on the Great Lakes, and Canada's abilities to respond to that would be most limited, unless they wanted to start an invasion preemptively.

Personally I think people are being very pessimistic about how long it takes to move a corps of troops across an ocean. It didn't take long for the Indian Corps to reach France in 1914, a couple of months, nor did it take long to gather up all the British regular army garrisons around the world and concentrate them into divisions for the western front.

Already answered.

What's more in April 1915, 8 months after war had broken out the British had assembled 4 divisions to invade Gallipoli as well as growing the BEF, conducting operations in Iraq and in Africa.
Friendly environments in France, facing demoralized Turks surrounded by Arabs that hated them, facing isolated colonial troops in Africa, and Britain LOST at Gallipoli.

Personally I don't find it a difficult stretch of the imagination to change the destination of these deployments to various points in Canada and Mexico.
Only if the Atlantic Ocean doesn't exist, and North America is connected to Europe at multiple points. But, uh, that would represent a POD somewhere in the Paleozoic Era:eek:

As for the Germans they don't have an example of global deployment, but given how well they moved their armies around Europe in WW1 I wouldn't think the problems would be insurmountable.
Railroads =/= ocean going ships

In fact the only insurmountable problem I foresee is how the US is going to deal with multiple divisions coming from at least 4 points excluding any amphibious landings with 100,000 regulars and 112,000 national guardsmen. Where are the training cadres going to come from to expand the Army if these troops are engaged on multiple fronts?
They won't have to. Again, you are postulating the "frozen US forces theory" so common to these threads.

What are these great logistical issues when facing an army of 212,000 men spread across an entire continent? The A-G armies would be advancing into some of the richest country in the world that is virtually undefended. If the Germany armies can live off the land during the advance in Belgium then it can be done in Wisconsin, Michigan and New York state.

*facepalm* Wisconsin is slightly farther away from Germany than Belgium:rolleyes:

<snip>If we are going pre-WWI than the requirements for vehicles is less.
And for horses, more.

It would be very difficult but I think it could be done. If you had German forces in Mexico aiding their candidate in the civil war, that could be a reasonable pretext for having a large German force in Mexico.
Total violation of the Monroe Doctrine. The only reason the Imperial French got away with this in 1861 was due to the American Civil War. Immediately after Appomattox General Grant sent Phil Sheridan straight to the Texas border with four Union Army corps (twice what the French had in all of Mexico IIRC) with the message "Get Out!" That's why in the ACW victory parades you don't see Sheridan depicted. He was busy elsewhere.:mad:

Invasion of New England from Canada
That's a very densely populated area, allowing for a well supported defense. With the level of defense factories there, no matter what military weaknesses this American Stupids ATL may have, in New England they will not be defeated.

maybe after the Brits build up in the North with the US watching them
And the US doing what in response, exactly?

then the Germans and Mexicans come over the border in the South.
Answered above.

couple with sea superiority
Where and when? Coastal Artillery remember.

then put an amphibious landing ashore to give them a third threat.
They don't HAVE an amphibious capability worthy of the name.
Not compared to the US Marines. The Royal Navy can't do everything under the sun in terms of naval warfare.

One problem I thought of with my scenario is this - if Frederick lives longer and Britain and Germany are friends do you still have a dreadnought race?
I think such questions are both outside the framework here and borderline ASB.

American issues are solved by having the worlds best rail net, and a pretty high quality water transport system as well as adequate roads.

Armies do not just require food to advance. This isn't the 19th Century when an army could carry most of the ammunition it needed for a campaign. In the 20th Century with vast numbers of more complex machines including the rifles themselves a similarly vast amount of spare parts are needed, as well as huge quantities of ammunition, fuel for motorized vehicles (Canada has no oil production of note well into the century while Mexico had few refineries), and everything else from uniforms to medical supplies.

Not to mention that Mexico doesn't have much of anything in the north.:( Except rebels.

It has already been determined Canada can probably feed the troops. What is doubtful is whether it can provide everything else an army needs and whether the internal transportation of Canada or Mexico could handle the massive increase in traffic and thus stress an army needs.
This discussion thread seems to be ignoring what a horrible mess Mexico was in at the time. The Diaz dictatorship was dying, and the Mexico Revolution was about to begin.

Circa 1929, war plan red-orange is the most likely way that America could have been invaded Post 1900. The Japanese attack the American Philippines and other military installations across the Pacific. The British fight in the Caribbean while the Canadians swarm into Idaho and Maine. If the United Kingdom had went to war with the United States and Japan had honored their alliance, the United States would have lost. The United Kingdom was doing better, not with industry but with their economy. Japan's military was not as advanced but a surprise strike from three sides could compensate for that.

The IJN lacks the ability to project beyond the Western Pacific. They are no threat to the US West Coast.

Idaho is in the Rocky Mountains. Maine allows concentration of USA naval and ground forces, while this scenario ignores Canada's own vulnerabilities. Such a strategy will be followed by the Canadians the day after never. The USN is free to concentrate what ever other forces it has in the Gulf Coast against a Royal Navy that is at the other end of a very narrow tether. The US has a number of bases in the Caribbean too. They are not disappearing any time soon.

Because it's a Post 1900 POD a US invasion TL will always be near ASB. I don't think it is ASB however. The way to invade is laid out already by geography. The problem is getting the right demographics. That's way I think the best time is in the 1930s in a ATL where WW1 doesn't happen, Smaller, or America just doesn't get involved. The global economy still tanks and the dust bowl still happens as well. Mexican population growth started to boom in the 1930s.

No WWI is a VERY different world than ours. If America doesn't get involved, the Entente goes broke, and at worst Germany gets a "stalemate" ante-bellum ending. I agree the Great Depression is inevitable. But with FDR you have the Good Neighbor Policy, preventing the poisoning of US-Canadian-Mexican relations. Unless you handwave him. But you'd have to handwave the policy too. Why?




All Invasions of the US will need Mexico and Canada.
Agreed. All else is ASBed ASB.

The goal would be to capture Chicago, and New Orleans.
Handwaving the US Coastal Artillery Corps, New Orleans, very temporarily, is not ASB. Assuming the river doesn't get mined. Chicago is ASB. Thing is, there's this really big lake...;) Detroit, at least, could face threats.

Control over the Mississippi River basin is then contested forcing Washington to the negotiating table.
Consider how long it took the Union to seize the Mississippi, they had the interior lines, and were coming from both directions. ITTL, you have a fully developed road and rail system, aircraft, rail guns, and troops shooting at your ships/gunboats all the way. No. Just no.

Diversionary raids would be taken on Southern California
Logistically impossible for anybody. Baja California is the ass end of Mexico, for everyone else Southern California is at the ass end of the world's largest ocean.:eek:

and Florida.
Was it even inhabited in the 1910s-20s?:p And...strategic objective? What are the Americans to make of any possible objective in Florida?

Leave Washington and the Northeast alone to create a divide among Americans.


Google "Pearl Harbor", to learn about how disunited Americans get regarding sneak attacks...:mad:*whew!*

edit: Riain, I highly suggest you check out an old discussion thread on spacebattles.com, called "War Plan Orange + Red" (or was it "War Plan Red + Orange":confused:). Its from way back in 2009, but its pertinent here. Our own Alamo goes a long way towards describing the impossibility of such a scenario (though its different in many ways too, set in 1942!). What's pertinent is the idea of the USA doing NOTHING while the British basically send everything including the kitchen sink to Canada.

Just watch out for the postings there of three particularly nasty trolls. You'll see who I mean pretty quickly. Very conducive of creating headaches, they were.
 
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