Greater Anti-Comintern Pact

pike

Banned
1936
January 20 – King George V of the United Kingdom dies. His eldest son succeeds to the throne, becoming Edward VIII. The title Prince of Wales is not used for another 22 years.
March 1: Hoover Dam is completed
March 1 – Construction of Hoover Dam is completed.
March 7 – In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Nazi Germany reoccupies the Rhineland.
March 9 – Pro-democratic militarist Keisuke Okada steps down as Prime Minister of Japan and is replaced by radical militarist Koki Hirota.
April 19 – The 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine against the British government and opposition to Jewish immigration begins.
[edit]May
May 5 – Italian forces occupy Addis Ababa.
May 7 – Italy annexes Ethiopia.
May 9 – Italian East Africa is formed from the Italian territories of Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Italian Somaliland.
July 17 – The Army of Africa launches a coup d'état against the Second Spanish Republic, beginning the Spanish Civil War.
October 25 – Rome-Berlin Axis is formed.
November 3 – U.S. presidential election, 1936: Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected to a second term in a landslide victory over Alf Landon. Farmers support Roosevelt.
November 25, 1936
POD edit: The Anti-Comintern Pact was an anti-Communist pact concluded between Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan and Italy (later to be joined by other, mainly fascistic, governments)

POD: November 30

Germany under Hitler decides concentrate less on its failed efforts to increase relations with Britain sense it has taken no interest in joining the Anti-Comintern Pact. Instead Hitler takes more of an interest in Turkey seeing the country as the gate way to control of the middle east. Ataturk is invited to Berlin to talk about the future of economic interests between two countries. Germany being Turkeys number one economic trading partner. Hitler decides to use this fact to encourage Ataturk to become a full member of the Anti-Comintern pact. Ataturk brings up what he perceives to be the Italian threat to his country. Asking Hitler for a treaty to be signed between the two nation that would guarantee that Germany remain neutral in any conflict between the two nations. Before Turkey were to consider becoming a full member of the anti-Communist pact. Hitler agrees to sign Ataturk friend ship pact and Turkey becomes a fully fledged member of the anti-Communist pact. Hitler and Ataturk also agree to develop closer military cooperation to modernise Turkeys WW1 military but agree to commit nothing to paper in fear of upsetting Italy. France, Britain and the USSR are most upset with development and cut back ties accordingly.

POD base off TFP IN 1930s PDF doc

[edit]December
December 1 – Hitler makes it mandatory that Boys 10 to 18 join Hitler Youth
December 11
The British Parliament passes His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 on behalf of the UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
The King performs his last act as sovereign by giving royal assent to the Act.
Prince Albert, Duke of York, becomes King, reigning as King George VI.
The abdicated King Edward VIII, now HRH Prince Edward, makes a broadcast to the nation explaining his decision to abdicate. He leaves the country for Austria.

Turkeys acceptance into the Anti-Comintern Pact will be a great encouragement to other small countries who are think of joining the Anti-Comintern Pact later.

Bulgaria[12]
Croatia[12]
Finland[12] (attacked by the USSR on 30 November 1939, starting the Winter War)[14]
Hungary[12]
Romania[12]
Slovakia[12]
Spain[12]
 
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pike

Banned
Well thanks for the comment.:p

I did not add in much about Italy because i was not really sure how it would react to greater cooperation between Turkey and Germany.
i am pretty sure that Italy would make a total break from the Axis.
But I am not sure how these events would effect the build up of Italian military or just generate a lot of white noise from the high command.

I sure hope that if Italy had extra competition for the attention of Germany then all effects would be positive and more constructive build up of military power by Italy.
 
What you basically want here is that Germany in general and Hitler more specifically show more diplomatic shrewdness than could realistically be expected of them. Nazi regime is a lot like a bully in the school yard and will steal lunch money here and there until somebody stronger shows up and they get beaten.

Turkey is not going to enter Axis under any foreseeable set of circumstances. Turkey has very little to gain or hope from Germany. Besides, they tried it once already. Didn't really work out for the best. Germany also had zero advantages to gain with Turkey over Italy. Italian fleet looked like it may be useful in Med, while Turkish (dare I call it) fleet offered nothing. Italy also offered prospect of engaging Britain where it hurt - Suez. Best Turkey could offer is to amuse French and British for a while in wastes of Syria, Iraq and Persia in war.
 

pike

Banned
What you basically want here is that Germany in general and Hitler more specifically show more diplomatic shrewdness than could realistically be expected of them. Nazi regime is a lot like a bully in the school yard and will steal lunch money here and there until somebody stronger shows up and they get beaten.

Turkey is not going to enter Axis under any foreseeable set of circumstances. Turkey has very little to gain or hope from Germany. Besides, they tried it once already. Didn't really work out for the best. Germany also had zero advantages to gain with Turkey over Italy. Italian fleet looked like it may be useful in Med, while Turkish (dare I call it) fleet offered nothing. Italy also offered prospect of engaging Britain where it hurt - Suez. Best Turkey could offer is to amuse French and British for a while in wastes of Syria, Iraq and Persia in war.

If Turkey starts modernising it military properly under Germany in 1936 assuming they do a better job than Italy at modernising. Turkey should have more than enough land military power in the middle east to challenge the pitifully weak allies forces in the Middle east at the time. Along with the other Anti-Comintern Pact members. Theres a little thing like Holy war against the infidels that may help Turkey as well. Did anyone think of that?

I do not think Hitler was a bully in a play ground he just wasted alot of trying to courting GB. Instead of concentrating on gain more allies were he could.

I am not sure how butterflys would effect Italy and Yugoslavia ANY ideas.

Thanks for commenting Shaby it is a great relief to have at least one commenter. I will be able to put in enough effort at this rate to post an update next weekend.:D
 
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If Turkey starts modernising it military properly under Germany in 1936 assuming they do a better job than Italy at modernising. Turkey should have more than enough land military power in the middle east to challenge the pitifully weak allies forces in the Middle east at the time. Along with the other Anti-Comintern Pact members. Theres a little thing like Holy war against the infidels that may help Turkey as well. Did anyone think of that?

I think 1936 POD is way too late for Turkey to start modernizing the army if war starts in 1939. It is too short a time for modernization that would be required. Even a few dozens AA guns and two squadrons of fighters British delivered to them in 1941 were considered a major improvement of their forces. Germany would lack capability to equip Turkish forces with modern equipment even on a more modest scale than British were able. 1936 to 1939 Germany needed everything their industry could deliver to equip their own forces. They could not spare very much for Turkey. Perhaps a squadron or two of fighters. Besides, infrastructure on the only possible front for Turkey was abysmal (for lack of better word). Even the modest forces Allies had there would have been more than enough to counter Turkish threat in the event of war.

Holy war was pretty much a non starter. Turks had no desire to wage one. Arabs had even less desire to see Turks rule over them again. They fought against Turkey in WWI.

"Inönü knew very well the hardships which his country had suffered during 11 years of incessant war between 1911 and 1922 and was determined to keep Turkey out of another war as long as he could. Inönü also wanted assurances on financial and military aid for Turkey, as well as a guarantee that the United States and the United Kingdom would stand beside Turkey in case of a Soviet invasion of the Turkish Straits after the war." says a short passage on Turkey during WW2 in Wiki.

Turkey entered the war eventually once absolutely any threat from Germany was far removed from their border. I can see them doing the same thing in case of Germany. They would hold their horses until Germany found the way to remove or neutralize Allied and Soviet forces from Syria, Caucasus, Persia and Iraq.
 

pike

Banned
So Its basically ASB to say that Turkey would have any chance in the middle east even with the allies throwing everything at North Africa and suffering unrest in the Mid East already?

Thinking loads of german military advisors might help Turkey get off the ground as well.
If Turkeys is not flat broke then it might pay for then to look to buying arms off some other power than Germany.
I will look into this. Who had alot of obsolete weaponry before WW2 hanging around and be willing to sell to a Anti-Comintern Pact Turkey? Other than the Brits, USSR or France.
I will try and lock in a military expedition from Turkey to Spain for some modern warfare experience.
 
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Well thanks for the comment.:p

I did not add in much about Italy because i was not really sure how it would react to greater cooperation between Turkey and Germany.
i am pretty sure that Italy would make a total break from the Axis.
But I am not sure how these events would effect the build up of Italian military or just generate a lot of white noise from the high command.

I sure hope that if Italy had extra competition for the attention of Germany then all effects would be positive and more constructive build up of military power by Italy.
Well, heck. That OP was a mixed bag after all!

I don't see why you and Shaby have this shared impression that bringing Turkey in means Italy must go out. It would hardly be a "Greater" ACP to trade off Italy for even all that rather odd grab-bag of candidate nations after all!

I might be ignorant of something rather widely known about Italian/Turkish antipathy here. Certainly there would be lots of places where they might potentially conflict, beginning with some rather sweeping claims of Turkish territory even IIRC extending to tracts on Anatolia itself Italy tried to press after the Great War. Of course Mussolini's dreams of a New Rome in the Med and Africa generally are largely designs on territory the Turks had ruled under the Ottoman dynasties.

However, both Turkey and Italy also have other rivalries going with other nations in the region and these seem far more relevant in the context of the 1930s. All that is needed, I'd think, to get both Turkey and Italy in, as far as the conflicts between the two of them go anyway, is to mediate some agreements between them about bounds and spheres of influence, at the expense of third parties. The Duce's project in Ethiopia for instance doesn't intrude on anything the Turks could see as their traditional scope (though their base in Eritrea does, but that's very old bad news for the Turks by now!)

No, the real objection is, how would Turkey dare to get that far out of step with the general world powers this early in the game, a problem Shaby pointed out of course. OTL even Franco, despite his owing so much so recently to the Fascist powers, never dared to cross Britain even in the darkest days of 1940 and '41 when the British stood alone against an apparently unstoppable Hitler. Even if the Spanish, or the Turks, felt that the eventual victory of Hitler was inevitable and they'd better get on his good side pretty soon, until Britain (and later, the Soviets) were clearly down for the count, they'd suffer a world of hurt in the interim before the Axis finally prevailed.

As I think I've alluded, the OP was very confusing anyway. How does Denmark for instance fit in a list of what I presume are meant to be nations that might be attracted into the ACP before Hitler's armies start rampaging? (After that, "membership" in the ACP was an irrelevant frill, the Germans increasingly doing what they wanted with the territories they controlled without a lot of respect for even the regimes they approved of, and of course simply smashing the ones they didn't. So presumably your list refers to nations that you imagine might line up with the Germans before overt war breaks out.

I really don't see the Danes ever doing that; Hitler might have marginally better luck luring in the Swedes but even that would lead straight to very nasty civil conflict there. (He was better off with the Swedes nominally neutral anyway, as long as his overwhelming power and geographical surrounding the place meant they had to pretty much lean his way).

I do realize the Danes had some rather pointed conflicts with the Soviets, what with the Romanovs being related to their own royal family and offering refuge to some of them. But aside from that, Denmark was almost the textbook case of a conventional Western European liberal parliamentary constitutional monarchy profoundly uninterested in military adventurism, certainly not in Europe, muddling actually pretty well through the Depression with the soon-to-be-textbook Scandinavian socialist-Keynesian welfare state. OTL the Danes, despite being quite helpless against the German war machine, are famous for their courage in defying the daftness of the Nazis.

Other small states on the list like Slovakia can't even exist until Hitler has already done a lot of meddling to break Czechoslovakia. By then, Hitler hardly needs them, except as compliant fig-leaves soon to be mulched into outright provinces.

Quite frankly, I have no clue at all what this part of your OP even means:
POD base off TFP IN 1930s PDF doc

Um, what?

This can be an interesting discussion--OTL it is quite depressing how many nations, and far more, how many factions within a far greater group of nations, were more or less interested in jumping on Hitler's bandwagon, especially if it is touted as basically a Holy Alliance against the Soviets. I don't even think it's ASB for Hitler to be a bit more subtle diplomatically. Sure, I think the man himself would have been on thin ice trying to manage the right tones personally, in most cases--but that's what professional diplomats are for after all! While it's ASB to have the Nazis adhering to liberal norms of diplomacy, it isn't to have the contemporary states desperately clinging to the hope the Reich might shake down to behaving somewhat normally. And Hitler routinely "managed" things in the Reich the way many absolutist rulers do--by setting up conflicting, rival organizations charged with overlapping tasks, in deep secrecy, so that only he could untangle the inevitable traffic jam of conflicting policies.

A Nazi "charm" offensive in the later '30s would amount to setting up a respectable-looking ministry of foreign affairs and giving them the leeway to operate in a normal-seeming fashion for some years, meanwhile maneuvering under cover as it were with secretive missions from other arms of the schizophrenic Nazi machine--covert direct military-to-military meetings for instance, quiet gifts from the Trade ministry, stuff like that.

Unfortunately I find this particular thread a bit hard to understand in terms of what you are actually saying, nor does my understanding of what I think you're saying make perfect sense.
 

pike

Banned
Well, heck. That OP was a mixed bag after all!

I don't see why you and Shaby have this shared impression that bringing Turkey in means Italy must go out. It would hardly be a "Greater" ACP to trade off Italy for even all that rather odd grab-bag of candidate nations after all!

I might be ignorant of something rather widely known about Italian/Turkish antipathy here. Certainly there would be lots of places where they might potentially conflict, beginning with some rather sweeping claims of Turkish territory even IIRC extending to tracts on Anatolia itself Italy tried to press after the Great War. Of course Mussolini's dreams of a New Rome in the Med and Africa generally are largely designs on territory the Turks had ruled under the Ottoman dynasties.

However, both Turkey and Italy also have other rivalries going with other nations in the region and these seem far more relevant in the context of the 1930s. All that is needed, I'd think, to get both Turkey and Italy in, as far as the conflicts between the two of them go anyway, is to mediate some agreements between them about bounds and spheres of influence, at the expense of third parties. The Duce's project in Ethiopia for instance doesn't intrude on anything the Turks could see as their traditional scope (though their base in Eritrea does, but that's very old bad news for the Turks by now!)

No, the real objection is, how would Turkey dare to get that far out of step with the general world powers this early in the game, a problem Shaby pointed out of course. OTL even Franco, despite his owing so much so recently to the Fascist powers, never dared to cross Britain even in the darkest days of 1940 and '41 when the British stood alone against an apparently unstoppable Hitler. Even if the Spanish, or the Turks, felt that the eventual victory of Hitler was inevitable and they'd better get on his good side pretty soon, until Britain (and later, the Soviets) were clearly down for the count, they'd suffer a world of hurt in the interim before the Axis finally prevailed.

As I think I've alluded, the OP was very confusing anyway. How does Denmark for instance fit in a list of what I presume are meant to be nations that might be attracted into the ACP before Hitler's armies start rampaging? (After that, "membership" in the ACP was an irrelevant frill, the Germans increasingly doing what they wanted with the territories they controlled without a lot of respect for even the regimes they approved of, and of course simply smashing the ones they didn't. So presumably your list refers to nations that you imagine might line up with the Germans before overt war breaks out.

I really don't see the Danes ever doing that; Hitler might have marginally better luck luring in the Swedes but even that would lead straight to very nasty civil conflict there. (He was better off with the Swedes nominally neutral anyway, as long as his overwhelming power and geographical surrounding the place meant they had to pretty much lean his way).

I do realize the Danes had some rather pointed conflicts with the Soviets, what with the Romanovs being related to their own royal family and offering refuge to some of them. But aside from that, Denmark was almost the textbook case of a conventional Western European liberal parliamentary constitutional monarchy profoundly uninterested in military adventurism, certainly not in Europe, muddling actually pretty well through the Depression with the soon-to-be-textbook Scandinavian socialist-Keynesian welfare state. OTL the Danes, despite being quite helpless against the German war machine, are famous for their courage in defying the daftness of the Nazis.

Other small states on the list like Slovakia can't even exist until Hitler has already done a lot of meddling to break Czechoslovakia. By then, Hitler hardly needs them, except as compliant fig-leaves soon to be mulched into outright provinces.

Quite frankly, I have no clue at all what this part of your OP even means:
Quote:
Originally Posted by pike
POD base off TFP IN 1930s PDF doc
Um, what?

This can be an interesting discussion--OTL it is quite depressing how many nations, and far more, how many factions within a far greater group of nations, were more or less interested in jumping on Hitler's bandwagon, especially if it is touted as basically a Holy Alliance against the Soviets. I don't even think it's ASB for Hitler to be a bit more subtle diplomatically. Sure, I think the man himself would have been on thin ice trying to manage the right tones personally, in most cases--but that's what professional diplomats are for after all! While it's ASB to have the Nazis adhering to liberal norms of diplomacy, it isn't to have the contemporary states desperately clinging to the hope the Reich might shake down to behaving somewhat normally. And Hitler routinely "managed" things in the Reich the way many absolutist rulers do--by setting up conflicting, rival organizations charged with overlapping tasks, in deep secrecy, so that only he could untangle the inevitable traffic jam of conflicting policies.

A Nazi "charm" offensive in the later '30s would amount to setting up a respectable-looking ministry of foreign affairs and giving them the leeway to operate in a normal-seeming fashion for some years, meanwhile maneuvering under cover as it were with secretive missions from other arms of the schizophrenic Nazi machine--covert direct military-to-military meetings for instance, quiet gifts from the Trade ministry, stuff like that.

Unfortunately I find this particular thread a bit hard to understand in terms of what you are actually saying, nor does my understanding of what I think you're saying make perfect sense.

Thanks for commenting Shevek23. I see you have taken alot of time to post and i will see that there will be alot more editing today for your efforts.
I will spend this whole week editing the TL so I may be lucky enough to update on the week end.

Struck off Denmark from list of ACP to join early as you say. It might be a bit ASB to have Turkey join the ACP before Italy with out really upsetting Italy. Is there any chance that Italy could become part of the original ACP along with Japan and Germany.

I just dont think that it would be impossible for Turkey to drive Italy out of the Axis just because Turkey has decide to become a full member of the Anti-Comintern Pact. It was an observer in OLT after all.

Economically i still dont fully understand what is happening in Turkey other than the effect of WW1 must be starting to ware off. This is another interesting area I will have to update myself on in order to make the TL less ASB.

I see i have a bit more work to do. Nothings impossible.
 
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pike

Banned
What is the impact of russia being closed off from black sea trade with the allies when the Turks decide to join the war against them.

Having problems with editing previous posts.:confused:
 
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