Different luck May 1940

i dare to say roads in western Europe where a lot better then in Eastern Europe(especially Russia) during WWI and WWII. Not all highways, but certainly brick roads, concrete and at least some asphalt here and there. Not all dirt roads like in Russia. I think, mostly brick roads. Though not immune, they where better resistant too rain.
The Ardennes is till today a mess to drive in bad weather and there are lot of place when it is still dirt road. Also the panzer used the road made by the forest exploitation to cross the ardennes and they are dirt road. It is not uncommon to have asphalt road covered by mud or even damaged or destroyed during great storm or heavy rain.
 
The WAllies would not need an overwhelming victory in the west - all tey need is a little time to "dig in". Once the steamroller is stopped its hard to get it started again ;)


About air strength I get to read so many different numbers (from Allies down 2-1 to Allies advantage 3-2), so I am not sure what is correct.

but overall the Germans seem to have had at least an edge in quality and doctrine ;)

Still the Allies ahd more guns - by far.

In a war that is more or less static the guns start to matter (you can't use your guns if you have to move constantly)

If the german advance is stopped somewher in Western Belgium/Northern France, Benny won't jump in - not that it would matter french troops in Southern France were insignificant overall.

But The Brits would be able to ship more troops and supplies into France which would tip the scales further.

In additon there still was fighting in Norway, so a longer stand in France might have seen more troops in Norway too (Aliied) - maybe ultimately winning that Campaign!

But as sson a stalemate would develop the public opinion might favor peace with Germany (not again a trench war lasting for a long time)

Not sure how a peace agreement would have looked like - Germany withdraws from France Belgium and the Netherlands (and Norway) Denmark demilitarized. Poland Nominally independent (corridor /Danzig to Germany - minor corrections is Silesia)...

This would give the Wallies (and Russia) time to modernize/expand forces. Same for Germany (only modernize).

From there much depends how insane Adolf gets ;)
 

King Thomas

Banned
If the French campaign had messed up, the Nazis are brown bread. Either Stalin stabs them in the back or the US gets involved.
 
Suppose all the luck went to Britain and France during the Nazi campaign against France, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands?

Does this produce a stalemate as WW1 or clear defeat?

From the German point of view, a WW I type stalemate is a defeat.

Germany is under strategic blockade by the Allies, and thus critically short of key materials, notably oil and food. The gap in this stranglehold is the stuff supplied by the USSR. That's a real comforting thought.

Britain and France between them have more manpower than Germany (far more if one counts the colonies), and equal manufacturing. (Germany has more steel production, but the Allies can match Germany in production of tanks, planes, small arms, vehicles, and all the other materials.

Germany is pretty much in the same situation as WW I - which ended with German exhaustion and defeat, despite knocking Russia out of the war. This time, they are deadlocked with France and Britain, and the untouched USSR is sitting right behind them.

Many leaders of the German Army thought that situation would be a recipe for inevitable defeat, and was the likely outcome of an attack on France. Among these pessimists were von Brauchitsch, the C-in-C of the Army, and Halder, the chief of the General Staff. In November 1939, they discussed a coup d'état to remove Hitler and end the war before it got any worse for Germany.

In the end, they gave up the idea, because Hitler was politically untouchable, due to his string of unbroken successes (Rhineland, Austria, Munich, Poland). Halder formed his "setback" theory - that Hitler would be vulnerable after he had a major military or diplomatic setback.

Unfortunately, the next year saw even more glorious successes for Hitler - first Norway, then the astonishing victory over France. After that, the minor setback of the Battle of Britain was of no effect. And it was followed by the Balkan victories, Rommel's desert victory, and the spectacular initial success of BARBAROSSA.

Had 1940 gone against Germany - even if the Norway campaign succeeds - Halder would have his setback. The Mann auf der Straße had obeyed Der Führer and marched to war, but with mixed feelings. When things went ugly, he'd be ready for a way out of the war.

By the end of July or so, I think most of the Army leadership would join or at least go along with a coup.

If the later how does the war end?
Hard to say exactly, but sometime in late summer, there would be a move. Hitler assassinated? Or arrested and deposed, along with the other chief Nazis. (If Hitler is dead, Goering takes over, and he never wanted a Great War, so he could form a deal with the Army, preserving Nazi power and his own privileges, and they jointly negotiate a peace. If Hitler is alive, Goering has to go too.)

Either way, the new German regime starts throwing out peace feelers. Chamberlain is still in charge, until his health collapses in September. His successor will still be Churchill, I think. However, Churchill will be under considerable pressure to end the war on favorable terms short of total victory.

Germany may start by offeriing to withdraw from Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and France. The Allies will not accept that: Poland must be restored. After some negotiation, Germany will agree to withdraw from Poland, provided that there is a new plebiscite over the status of Danzig.

All prisoners to be released, and no war crimes trials or reparations.

The Poles won't like that, but they can't insist on more. Beggars can't be choosers, right?

What happens about Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland?
That's a hard one. The Allies' defense guarantee should include defense against the USSR; they didn't apply it OTL because they had all they could handle from Germany (and even the Poles didn't press the issue then). With Germany out, they have to fish or cut bait: accept Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, or declare war on the USSR.

The latter is a very drastic step, but hard to avoid.

The USSR could be much harder to defeat than Germany: no blockade is feasible, and invading that vast country... everyone knew what happened to Napoleon.

OTOH: the USSR just fought the Winter War with Finland, and came out looking very weak (for its size). The Allies won't be as recklessly overconfident as Hitler was in 1941, but they shouldn't be afraid to move.

Stalin may yield. His plan (as he told the Politburo in 1939) was for Germany and the Allies to fight as long as possible, until the USSR was ready to move in on the weakened survivors. That hasn't happened - the war ended quickly, and the USSR's enemies may be even stronger. After the Winter War fiasco, he can't rely on the strength of the Red Army.

It would be difficult for the Allies to deploy against the USSR in strength, but Finland and Romania would probably join them - and perhaps even Japan, which tried it on with Soviet forces in Siberia in 1939. Germany may also join an anti-Soviet alliance, as might Italy.

If the Allies make a plausible threat of war, I think he yields.

He's gained some territory from Finland and Romania, and also occupied the Baltic states. He'll keep that regardless.

The Alllies threaten war. Stalin blusters a bit, then agrees to withdraw to the old border with some tweaking. (The transfer of Vilnius to Lithuania, for instance.)

The knock-ons get interesting. I think FDR still runs again. He apparently decided that in the world crisis, he had to stay on as President, and arranged the "draft" at the convention. ITTL, the war is going much better at that time, but it's still going on. Peace in Europe benefits him in November.

The great U.S. military build-up is checked. The 1940 draft may be cancelled or reduced in scope. Domestic affairs become the big political questions.

Japan's position becomes more problematic. Japan cannot take over Indochina - France and Britain will fight if Japan tries. As demented as the Japanese leaders were, I don't think they would take on Britain and France by themselves (while still enmeshed in China, to boot).

When Japan runs out of money to pay for oil imports in 1941, that could be the end of the militarist fantasy life. Or maybe not. Japan can continue the war without oil, but it gets ugly for them. Germany and the USSR may compete in aiding China against Japan.

That's as far as I can take it.
 

Cook

Banned
Suppose all the luck went to Britain and France during the Nazi campaign against France, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands?
‘Luck’ is the product of a lot of hard work, training, planning and preparation, summed up in the 7P rule: Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. The Germans were ‘lucky’ because they had trained their men to a high standard, had emphasised the importance of individual initiative and junior leadership that could exploit opportunities, they’d studied their opponents and had a thorough understanding of British and French methods and planning and moulded a plan that made the most of German strengths and Allied weaknesses. The French on the other hand were ‘unlucky’ because they made no effort to study German doctrine (Guderian’s book Achtung – Panzer! published in 1937 wasn’t even translated into French.), didn’t send reconnaissance flights to determine where the Germans would attack, had an army doctrine that emphasises the importance of rigidly adhering to a master plan dictated from above and actively discouraged individual initiative at lower levels and had spent the bulk of the six months leading up to May 1940 trying to make conditions as comfortable as possible for men of the French army.

I think someone suggested rain in the Ardennes while the Panzers were driving for Sedan and the Meuse crossings. Blinding thunderstorm type rain for days on end turning the roads (they were still dirt roads, right?) to mud and have rivers running in torrents.
The offensive in the west was postponed repeatedly due to weather and was then launched with the certainty of three days clear weather. The weather in north-west Europe in May is not prone to sudden massive storms, so blinding thunderstorms can be ruled out. In any case, most of the roads the Germans used through the Ardennes were metaled (bituminised), not dirt. And the weather is neutral; it falls on all equally and well-motivated and led troops will work through it far better than poorly led and undisciplined ones will.
…and since all but one of the German crossing attempts failed OTL...
The Germans crossed the Meuse at Anhee (5th Pz), Dinant (7th Pz), Montherme (6th and 8th Pz), and at Sedan (1st, 2nd and 10th Panzer divisions). Of these, the 5th and 7th skirted the northern edge of the Ardennes and crossed the Meuse virtually unopposed, the 6th and 9th were able to cross with remarkably little difficulty and at Sedan both the 1st and 2nd Panzer divisions were able to make good crossings on the 13th of May and even the 10th Panzer division effected a foothold across the Meuse on the first day of their attack. For the French, a German crossing attack on the Meuse on the 13th, after only reaching the river late on the 12th, was considered impossible; the commander of the French corps defending Sedan, General Grandsard told one of his divisional commanders that ‘the enemy would be unable to do anything for four to six days, as it would take them this long to bring up heavy artillery and ammunition and to position them.’

Each crossing point was far enough apart to be a separate battle, but close enough to rapidly support any other crossings that found difficulties, once across the river the forces were to consolidate and widen their bridgeheads, flanking any French and Belgian forces still blocking the other crossing points; this turned out not to be necessary because the French resistance collapsed faster than expected, but the need to do so had been anticipated.

They were VERY Lucky, since the allied Armies were at the wrong place at the wrong time for most of the time.
The allied armies were ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’, or in other words they were where the Germans wanted them because the deployment of the French armies and the B.E.F. on the Franco-Belgian border had been observed in great detail by Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft and confirmed by ‘Foreign Armies West’, the Wehrmacht’s intelligence branch responsible for the gathering and analysing information on the Dutch, Belgian, British and French armies, who by May 1940 not only knew where the Allied field armies were deployed, but also how little reserves the French army had and how weak those reserves were. Not only was an Anglo-French advance predictable from their prepositioning on the Franco-Belgian border, but the German plan of attack was designed to suck the allies into the trap in the north and clearing the way for the Germans in the south by the sequence of attacks, first in the Netherlands and northern Belgium, then in the Ardennes once the allies had started moving north. The Allied armies marching into Belgium were also completely unhindered by the Luftwaffe because the Germans wanted them as far north as possible, however, when the allies tried to redeploy they were repeatedly attacked by German dive bombers.

While the Germans knew in detail where the French forces were before the attack began, the French were completely blind as to German deployments; the French high command had forbidden reconnaissance flights beyond the German front lines following the shooting down of only four French aircraft. So while the French Air Force had 400 reconnaissance aircraft in May 1940, they might as well have had none.

They were better equipped too…


The allies were not better equipped than the German army; three quarters of the French tanks lacked radios, making coordinating any sort of complex armoured attack all but impossible. The French army in general relied on telephone communications, making very little use of radios.

While the French army overall had more artillery than the German army, most of it was tied up in the static defences of the Maginot Line where it was useless, the field armies in the north were short on artillery, and critically short on anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. The lack of anti-aircraft guns was decisive.
so with Lucky on their Side, they would crush the Germans.
The French army didn’t even have a doctrine of attack. The French doctrine was, when faced with a German attack on a section of their front, to reinforce the threatened section, taking care to secure the entire length and then to absorb the blows of the German attack until the Germans were completely exhausted, and then, after days of French artillery bombardment (the minimum considered being eight to ten days) to slowly advance with infantry supported by armour. It is safe to say the Wehrmacht wouldn’t be so considerate as to wait around while the French got ready.

I think the US would get involved and break the stalement.
There were no circumstances in which the United States would have entered the war in 1940 -41 unless attacked; even in November 1941, the majority of Americans polled were against American involvement in the war.

There were top quality units (EDIT: Molinié First Army ) which kicked the wermacht ass in Gembloux, Namur... later these units were trapped into the Dunkirk pocket. Still, they resisted in Lille for two days, inflicting terrific casualties to their adversary.
The attack by the 3rd and 4th Panzer divisions in the north, at the Gembloux ‘gap’ was part of the diversion to draw French forces north and keep them there while the Sichelschnitt thrust through to the coast further south. And later, as you said, the French First Army was trapped, unable to counterattack south and subject to continuous Luftwaffe attack.
Still the Allies ahd more guns - by far.
The Allies had more artillery only if you include the artillery trapped in the Maginot Line and they were critically short of anti-aircraft guns, while the Germans had replaced artillery with dive bombers.
But The Brits would be able to ship more troops and supplies into France which would tip the scales further.

The British army in 1940 was insignificant in comparison to the French army, the B.E.F. was smaller than the Belgian army and included two territorial divisions so poorly trained and equipped that they were considered too weak to be deployed in the British line and were held back in defence of the B.E.F.’s supply lines, where they were cut to pieces by the German Panzers on their drive to the sea. The British divisions sent to France as part of the ‘Second B.E.F.’ were poorly equipped and had had their training cut short, had the German attack not gone ahead in May it would have been July before the first of them had been sent to France. And in a battle between 75 German divisions against 63 French, Belgian and British divisions, another couple of under equipped and trained divisions, still lacking the necessary anti-aircraft guns, isn’t going to make a difference.
In a war that is more or less static the guns start to matter (you can't use your guns if you have to move constantly)
Since field artillery can leapfrog: one battery deployed and firing, while the other redeploying, this isn’t a problem. For the Germans it was even less than a problem because they used dive bombers where they needed it instead of field artillery anyway.

Quite simply, in May 1940 the French were refighting 1916, the Germans weren’t and the outcome reflects this.
 
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