Germany does not even consider doing Battle of Britain

The Battle of Britain was supposed to be the preliminary phase of an invasion, to gain air superiority. To abandon it would be tantamount, at least in the eye of public opinion (certainly on the allied side), to admiting "Germany can't invade"; this would be a massive morale booster for the UK. Any "peace ofering" would be laughed/kicked/shouted away.

As for Ireland, regardless of what Germany would offer: if the german navy couldn't even cross the channel, how was ot supposed to get to Ireland?...
 
This table is for 1941. I don't have the equivalent figures for 1942. However, I do have figures for Axis merchant shipping losses in the whole of the Mediterranean in 1942.

View attachment 385409

The losses to aircraft and submarines would be greatly reduced by putting ME110s or JU88cs on top cover over the ships. Presumably the first ships lost, were the best ships, with efficient and large cargo carrying capacity which could be unloaded quicker in the ports, preserving those good ships is important to the overall supply capacity if Germany is really trying to take Egypt by getting supplies all the way to Naples to the front in Africa.
 
The Battle of Britain was supposed to be the preliminary phase of an invasion, to gain air superiority. To abandon it would be tantamount, at least in the eye of public opinion (certainly on the allied side), to admiting "Germany can't invade"; this would be a massive morale booster for the UK. Any "peace ofering" would be laughed/kicked/shouted away.

As for Ireland, regardless of what Germany would offer: if the german navy couldn't even cross the channel, how was ot supposed to get to Ireland?...

Its all over by the end of September anyway OTL. Low level July 40 type operations could continue into August. It would probably be September 1st before the British would figure out that the Germans aren't making a serious effort. So the Allies come to the realization the Germans can't invade about a month earlier than OTL.
 
This table is for 1941. I don't have the equivalent figures for 1942. However, I do have figures for Axis merchant shipping losses in the whole of the Mediterranean in 1942.

View attachment 385409

Just on a tangent, has anyone else ever noticed how small ships were back in the day? I live in Geelong, work in Melbourne and regularly visit Portland, all port cities, and I can barely conceive of a cargo ship as small as 1500 tons let alone sending aircraft to attack it with an expected 30% loss rate.
 

hipper

Banned
Just on a tangent, has anyone else ever noticed how small ships were back in the day? I live in Geelong, work in Melbourne and regularly visit Portland, all port cities, and I can barely conceive of a cargo ship as small as 1500 tons let alone sending aircraft to attack it with an expected 30% loss rate.

Depends on the size of your port I visit Inverness a lot and I have regularly seen a small 1000 tonne tanker at the small docks there, which I ptesume is a better way of getting Petrol from Grangemouth than shipping it up the A9 in lorries.
 
The losses to aircraft and submarines would be greatly reduced by putting ME110s or JU88cs on top cover over the ships. Presumably the first ships lost, were the best ships, with efficient and large cargo carrying capacity which could be unloaded quicker in the ports, preserving those good ships is important to the overall supply capacity if Germany is really trying to take Egypt by getting supplies all the way to Naples to the front in Africa.


The invasion plan was based on ship to shore transport, with unloading via harbour supplementing this later.
 
Just on a tangent, has anyone else ever noticed how small ships were back in the day? I live in Geelong, work in Melbourne and regularly visit Portland, all port cities, and I can barely conceive of a cargo ship as small as 1500 tons let alone sending aircraft to attack it with an expected 30% loss rate.

What kind of ship? Afaik much of the ships under attack were coastal cargo ships, that worked around the UK or between the UK and shorter EU routes. The ships that sailed around the fast east, also doing small routes, stayed around 3000-5000 tons. For transatlantic transport, the Liberty had 15000 tons. Even today, if you go to these areas, you'll see a lot of small tonage ships doing these same routes.
 
Going back on topic. Say that instead of the BoB the Germans started the Blitz earlier and pursued a Mediterranean strategy for the duration of 1940 and the first half of 1941 to make itself look busy before Operation Barbarossa.

I was going to suggest that the Germans invade Greece from Bulgaria in the late summer-early autumn of 1940 possibly in concert with the OTL Italian invasion. That's in part because I thought the capture of Crete ITTL was likely to be less costly than the OTL version and it forces Yugoslavia into the Axis camp whether the Yugoslavs want to be in it or not.

Then I though would it be possible to bully the Greeks into joining the Axis as a non-belligerent member. They could be given the choice of being a satellite of Germany or a colony of Italy. AFAIK Germany had no territorial designs on Greece. It only wanted Greece to secure the southern flank of Operation Barbarossa. The Germans would want use of the Greek railway system, its ports and the Corinth Canal, but the only territory it would actually want to occupy was Crete. Within those constraints the Greeks Government could do what it wanted. Mussolini wouldn't be happy about it, but I don't see him to being able to do anything about it.

They would want Crete to use as a base to attack the BEC forces in the Eastern Mediterranean. That is to attack shipping and to bomb the ports in Egypt and Palestine that were within range. They would also want to move a fligerkorps to Sicily ASAP, but I'm not sure that Mussolini would allow it any earlier than he did IOTL.

The secondary reason for an early occupation of Greece is to make it easier to send supplies to Cyrenaica by sea and air. This is because the Germans should give the Italians as much help as possible for a successful invasion of Egypt in the second half of 1940/first half of 1941 or at least make the Italian forces in Libya strong enough to prevent Operation Compass from succeeding.

For political and practical reasons the help will be "limited" to logistical support. The political reason is to give Mussolini some glory by appearing to have done it on its own. The practical reason would be the limited capacity of the ports and inland transport in Libya. So what the Germans are going to send are trucks, spare parts, fuel, drivers and mechanics plus construction troops to build roads, air bases, extend the railways and increase the capacity of the ports.

Apart from the Luftwaffe forces that I want to base in Crete and Sicily the only combat forces deployed would be XI. Fliegerkorps. I want to use the paratroops and air landing troops for a coup de main on the railway that ran along the Mediterranean coast of Egypt from the Nile Delta to the border with Libya.
 
What kind of ship? Afaik much of the ships under attack were coastal cargo ships, that worked around the UK or between the UK and shorter EU routes. The ships that sailed around the fast east, also doing small routes, stayed around 3000-5000 tons. For transatlantic transport, the Liberty had 15000 tons. Even today, if you go to these areas, you'll see a lot of small tonage ships doing these same routes.

I know they existed, here's a pic of the one (SS Casino) that used to work the coastal route in western Victoria where I grew up, coming into Port Fairy in the early 30s.

Cassino600.jpg


But those days are long gone for us, that job is now done by B-double trucks with rail taking a long second place. Here's Port Fairy now.

Dusk-Moyne-River-Pt-Fairy.jpg


This is Portland, 70km west of Port Fairy, what I think of when I think small port and cargo ships.
RIGHTTOP.jpg
truck-tilt-sml.jpg
 
Just put the Fall of France and German Domination of the Continent as fait accompli, and while the Brit DoW was within their right, it serves no purpose now. Greater Germany will continue to defend against aerial incursions by the RAF.

The problem with all these 'Germany declares the war over' scenarios is that Germany's situation is not stable and they can't simply go on as they are. They are still facing massive shortages of food, and they still have to pay Stalin for the supplies they've received, and they don't have the resources to do this. This is usually where the hand-waving starts, with claims that Stalin will go on supplying raw materials on credit, or that Germany can pay with a few machine-tools and the plans of the Bismarck. However, even if Germany did manage to do this by dint of large-scale cuts in military spending, there's no guarantee that the flow of supplies would continue. It's been convincingly argued that Stalin was just waiting for the autumn of 1941 before turning off the tap, knowing that the Germans wouldn't be able to invade until May or June of 1942, by which time the Soviet armed forces would be much more formidable than in 1941: even if standards of training and leadership remained the same, a Red Army with hundreds of T-34's and KV-1's would be harder to beat than a Red Army mostly equipped with BT-7's and T-26's, and a Soviet Air Force with Yaks and LaGGs would be tougher than if it only had I-16's and I-153's.
 
The problem with all these 'Germany declares the war over' scenarios is that Germany's situation is not stable and they can't simply go on as they are. They are still facing massive shortages of food, and they still have to pay Stalin for the supplies they've received, and they don't have the resources to do this. This is usually where the hand-waving starts, with claims that Stalin will go on supplying raw materials on credit, or that Germany can pay with a few machine-tools and the plans of the Bismarck. However, even if Germany did manage to do this by dint of large-scale cuts in military spending, there's no guarantee that the flow of supplies would continue. It's been convincingly argued that Stalin was just waiting for the autumn of 1941 before turning off the tap, knowing that the Germans wouldn't be able to invade until May or June of 1942, by which time the Soviet armed forces would be much more formidable than in 1941: even if standards of training and leadership remained the same, a Red Army with hundreds of T-34's and KV-1's would be harder to beat than a Red Army mostly equipped with BT-7's and T-26's, and a Soviet Air Force with Yaks and LaGGs would be tougher than if it only had I-16's and I-153's.


I'm afraid most of the blunder busting -on this forum - over "France 1940" has more to do with passing of the cold war and the need for some European powers to elevate some past success to rehabilitate a future role. Like wise the elevation of strategic economy & money as "deciding factor of war' over operational art & military leadership...because those are German characteristics of war and were considers essential component of the PAST NATO cold war struggle. Of course the fact that most recent wars have featured 3rd rate opponents- easily handle by American lead military strikes...has nothing to do with this at all.

Likewise most of the blunder busting over "Barbarossa 1941" has as much to do with passing of the cold war as rehabilitating Russia as the main threat. The Bundeswehr is no longer essential part of European security - but Russia is an essential part of the threat...... so revisionist history can go in any direction it wants.
 
The problem with all these 'Germany declares the war over' scenarios is that Germany's situation is not stable and they can't simply go on as they are. They are still facing massive shortages of food, and they still have to pay Stalin for the supplies they've received, and they don't have the resources to do this. This is usually where the hand-waving starts, with claims that Stalin will go on supplying raw materials on credit, or that Germany can pay with a few machine-tools and the plans of the Bismarck. However, even if Germany did manage to do this by dint of large-scale cuts in military spending, there's no guarantee that the flow of supplies would continue. It's been convincingly argued that Stalin was just waiting for the autumn of 1941 before turning off the tap, knowing that the Germans wouldn't be able to invade until May or June of 1942, by which time the Soviet armed forces would be much more formidable than in 1941: even if standards of training and leadership remained the same, a Red Army with hundreds of T-34's and KV-1's would be harder to beat than a Red Army mostly equipped with BT-7's and T-26's, and a Soviet Air Force with Yaks and LaGGs would be tougher than if it only had I-16's and I-153's.

Stalin will act in his own interests certainly. He will increasing demand prompt and fair payment for his stuff, fall 1941. But Germany is a convenient trading partner. Compared to the OTL wastage of the eastern front and the production required to support that (and very little supply sources captured after sabotage), Germany should be able to manufacture enough goods with the industry of Europe to pay for some raw materials, oil, wheat cotton, manganese etc.. (She had to live without all of it anyway after 1941).

Agree that the Soviet army would become rather fearsome by 1942. However Germany has an incredibly fearsome military reputation, perhaps greater than reality. Hard to image Stalin is going to just attack one day unless their is an active western front.
 
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