Hitler Goes For Moscow-Spring 1942

[Blair152]

Meanwhile, back on the battlefield, without British help on the ground, the Poles are pushed back out of Lvov. Tens of thousands of Polish civilians flee the area to escape German vengeance. The Poles lick their wounds, then begin rebuilding their divisions. The escaped civilians and home army people help that process. The situation is not entirely a loss for the allies. The British make good progress in their Hungarian offensive, then push into Austria. The Germans receive a small but humiliating setback as the Italians launch an unexpected offensive and push a short distance into Austria. That's made possible by the situation in Lvov, and by the British offensive in Hungary, but the Italians celebrate it as a major victory.



In mid-June, US and French efforts in the west open new possibilities in the south. As German troops are drawn to the west, the British offensive begins to roll. Most of Slovakia falls, then a southeastern corner of the Czech portion of Czechoslovakia.



The Poles get foothold on Polish territory in Central Poland, and start expanding it as the Polish home army stages revolts in towns close to the front to tie down German troops and prevent them from using scorched earth tactics as the Poles advance. The British would really prefer not to advance that way, but the Poles have won moral authority from the Lvov situation and they use it to push liberating Poland up the allied list of priorities.


Western front-May to July 1945: The US has to secure crossing over the Rhine river, then capture the Ruhr--heart of German industrial power. After that, the road to Berlin should be easy. The American Sherman tanks took a pounding up against the heavy German tanks in the German offensive, but the first few American units are now being re-equipped with the new Pershings. The Pershing is almost as good as a Panther. A few experimental Pershings are being equipped with a new long-barreled high-velocity 90mm gun that should give them the firepower of a King Tiger. There are even Sherman prototypes armed with that gun. US jet production is still on schedule. A few pre-production ones are already in Europe. Mass deliveries won't start until October 1945. Until then, the newly upgraded P51's will have to do. The latest version of the P51 cuts the German jets' speed advantage nearly in half, which helps quite a bit. If the war lasts until June or July, the German jets may cause serious problems, but the Germans shouldn't last that long.


In early May, US troops force their way across the Rhine in several places. That puts Hitler into the dilemma described earlier. Does he use the half-trained reserves he has built up, or does he lose one of Germany's industrial heartlands without a major fight? In our time-line he reacted with near hysteria, ordering the use of poison gas and the killing of all allied POWs. Fortunately those orders were rescinded.

In this time-line he would have sent in any reserves he had.



The result: An extremely hard-fought battle. The German jets enter the war in big way. Germany has built around 2500 ME262 fighter and fighter-bomber jets, along around 400 Arado 234 light bomber/reconnaissance jets--nearly twice the number they built before the end of the war in our time-line. Many of those jets have already been lost to air raids on factories or rail-lines. Others have been lost in training accidents or in combat. The German jets are by no means invulnerable to US air power. In our time-line, the ratio of jet kills versus jets shot down is somewhat in dispute. One source says that the Germans lost around 100 ME-262's to air combat. They shot down around 150 allied planes in the process. Another source claims that the US lost a little over sixty planes, including only ten fighter planes, to the ME-262 while claiming a possibly somewhat exaggerated toll of 200 ME-262's. In either case, when you count in jets lost to non-combat causes or destroyed on the ground, the ratio would have actually favored the allies.

Better training and more even numbers would have helped that ratio, but the jets were not a magic bullet to destroy US air power. Very few US fighters were destroyed by ME-262's in our time-line. If they got lured into a dogfight, the jets usually lost. The ME-262 was best used purely as a hit-and-run anti-bomber weapon--making a quick pass, unloading on the bombers, then getting out of the area before the fighter escorts could respond. In this time-line, the Germans have hoarded just over a thousand ME-262's, and nearly 250 Arados. They intend to use those planes to neutralize US air power over the battlefield. Unfortunately for them, the planes are not well suited for that role.



An air battle over Germany in this time-line illustrates the power and weakness of the German jets. In early May, well over a thousand US B17 bombers head for a bombing raid over Germany. They are accompanied by over six hundred P51 fighter planes. The Germans are determined to make the bombing too costly for the Americans to keep up. On this day they are prepared to put up a little over 200 fighter jets, four times the number that they ever put up on a single day in our time-line. The jets don't have a great deal of range, so they have to wait until the bombers are fairly close. The jets require special runways, so the US knows where they will be coming from. US fighters deploy at high altitude near those runways.



The German jets take off. It takes a while for them to build up speed. As soon as they are out of range of the airfields flak guns but before they can build up much speed, American fighters swoop down, using their altitude to generate speeds that even the jets can't match. Many jets go down, but the sheer numbers coming up lets many more get through. They go after the B17's, going in fast enough that the escorting fighters can't intervene. The B17's are tough and well-armed, but forty of them go down. They take some Germans jets with them. The jets are vulnerable for the same length of time the B17's are, and the B17's can sling a lot of lead. The US has a surprise waiting for the Germans. Dozens of US fighters are several thousand feet above the B17's. They come flashing down as the Germans make their pass at the bombers, shooting down more jets. Some inexperienced German pilots make the mistake of trying to dogfight with the US P51 fighters. That doesn't work. The P51's are more maneuverable and their pilots are more experienced. The surviving jets make another pass at the bombers, then run short of fuel and have to head for home. US fighters are waiting for them when they slow down to land, and more jets are lost before they get to the cover of the runway flak guns.



The German jets open the German offensive. Me-262's and Arado 234's try to knock out pontoon bridges and the few relatively intact American-held bridges over the Rhine. They try to keep American fighter-bombers from intervening in the ground battle. German armored division roll forward, trying to crush US bridgeheads over the Rhine, and push the troops back into the river. For five days in mid-May the battle see-saws back and forth. The Germans are bringing in troops from the eastern front, and Truman becomes more and more furious as he sees US troops dying and no new offensive on the eastern front. The Germans launch hundreds of V1's and V2's at key areas in the US rear. They cause a lot of fear, but do little damage. In our time-line, the German V-2 rockets caused between one and two allied casualties per rocket launched at England. They do a little better in this time-line, but not much. Guidance isn't good enough, and the warhead isn't big enough to make either weapon a major factor.



US Ultra intercepts play a role in the battle. The US knows where the Germans are coming and in what strength. That, and allied air power, turn the battle into a loss for the Germans. Their jets give the Germans some air strength, but those jets are not effective against the fighter-bombers that the US uses so effectively. The Germans lose at least as many jets as the US does fighter-bombers in the dogfights. The US can afford to lose a lot more. The German guided anti-aircraft missiles play little role in the air fighting. In our time-line, German missile experts privately said in mid-1944 that it would take at least two more years to get them working properly due to guidance and other teething problems. In this time-line, they have been deployed in spite of severe lingering problems, and have little impact on the battle. German low-tech unguided rockets are actually more of a threat due to the sheer mass of flak they can send up. Those rockets don't alter the course of the battle, but they do make allied pilots fly a little higher and faster. German pilots quickly learn to respect allied anti-aircraft guns. The US has perfected a proximity fuze that dramatically increases their chance of actually hitting an aircraft



The US also learns to respect the Panther II's, especially the ones equipped for night-fighting. The Germans also tried to equip some of their infantry with infrared scopes for their rifles. At this stage the equipment is too bulky to be practical for an infantryman. Many infantrymen discard it. The US captures a few of the infrared scopes and the rush is on to develop a US equivalent. The rush is also on in the US to up gun its tanks again.



Overall, the US is like a fresh young heavyweight climbing into the ring to fight a slightly better heavyweight who has already gone fifteen rounds against a tough, tenacious opponent. The Germans desperately need time to recover. The US can absorb punishment and come back quickly with devastating attacks of it's own.



The Battle For the Rhine is essentially over by early June. Hitler has burned up his last reserves. German lines in both the west and the south collapse once the allies break through. Dozens of German division are encircled in Western Germany and in Hungary. So why is the German army suddenly advancing again on the eastern front?

Dale, I love your timeline. What's next?

 

[Bavarian Raven]

please keep it coming

 

[mikegold]

Seconded! I'm like an addict with this timeline.

 

[DaleCoz]

Eastern front--May-July 1945: Stalin has been desperately trying to keep a secret. It is a big one. Since early May, the Soviet army on the southern part of the front has not been a fighting force. With the breakdown of Soviet logistics, the factors that had kept epidemics at bay have broken down too. At least two forms of dysentery are rampant in the Soviet army, and Typhus is spreading out of control. Stalin needs US help in the form of trucks, food, and medicine desperately, but he doesn't think he can afford to admit that. He also can't afford to provoke the Germans into any kind of offensive, because even a limited one would reveal that the Soviet army has been hollowed out by the epidemics, with most of its soldiers too sick to fight.



The Soviets keep their secret for a while, with the few Soviet soldiers capable of fighting keeping up a good bluff, but anti-Stalin defectors tell the Germans. The Germans launch a few cautious probes and the Soviet front starts to collapse. The Germans are too busy in the west and south to fully exploit the situation, but they move quickly to destroy the stricken Soviet armies, cutting off and capturing hundreds of thousands of sick or dying Soviets. The situation overwhelms the German medical supply, and many of the prisoners die. The epidemics spread to the German army, and several hundred men die before modern medicine brings them under control.



With his secret out, Stalin quietly appeals to the US for help. The Truman administration responds in a big way once it understands the situation and is convinced that the Soviets are genuinely in trouble, but it takes a while to gear up the logistics to fight the epidemic, especially given the poor state of the Soviet transportation system.



The Germans finally have an opportunity to knock the Soviets out of the war, but they can't. By the time they realize the magnitude of their opportunity, the Battle for the Rhine has chewed up their reserves, and the fighting on the southern front keeps them from shifting forces from there east. German forces on the front roll forward with little opposition in the southern part of the front, capturing thousands of tanks, artillery pieces, and US-built trucks, but they aren't strong enough or mobile enough to exploit the situation properly. Stalin is trying to shift forces from further north, but the logistics situation makes that slow, and he fears that the epidemic will spread to those force too, so he relies primarily on a delaying action by the surviving part of his southern armies.



Allied leaders conference - July 1945:

Stalin's view: Stalin stalls for a while on another conference to discuss the future of Europe. He would rather not go to such a conference with his forces retreating and in urgent need of American help. On the other hand, if he waits too long, the issues will be settled on the ground without his input. The Americans and British are already joking about having to chase Hitler and company across Siberia. Stalin wants to make very sure no troops from the western allies cross the Soviet 1939 borders.


He also wants to make sure the fate of the regions he seized between 1939 and 1941 are not settled at this conference. As long as they are still in negotiations, he can still win. The Americans will eventually get tired of Europe's squabbles and go home. France and England will come out of the war too poor to remain major powers. Germany will be crushed eventually. Italy has always been the weakest of the major powers. It will be weaker than ever after the war.



Stalin has taken the Soviet Union from a poor, weak, defeated country to a great power once. Given time, he thinks he can do it again. He just needs to keep as much territory as he can after the war, and rebuild quickly while the Americans are going home, and the Soviet Union will eventually emerge as the only real power left in Europe.



If the western allies don't give the Soviet Union a part in governing Germany after the war, Stalin can use resentment at the occupation to build up a new, more disciplined and loyal German communist party. If they give the Soviets a part in governing Germany, Stalin can loot it to rebuild the Soviet Union. Either way, Stalin still has options. Even weakness can be a source of strength if it is used correctly. Stalin is very good at using his strengths.



Stalin desperately needs to make sure the west returns Soviet POW's who are fighting in the German army. He needs those people to replenish the Gulags which have been almost emptied by starvation. He also needs to make sure they don't become a threat to the regime after the war. In our time-line he was able to use rescued American and British POW's as pawns to get the west to agree to return those men. In our time-line he doesn't have that leverage to any great extent. The allies are willing to let the fate of those men be undecided until after the war ends, but they aren't willing to make a commitment to send them back.



Even leaving their fate undecided hands the Germans a huge propaganda advantage. Soviet citizens in the German army suddenly start fighting harder on the southern and western fronts.


US view: Inter-allied squabbling has become the biggest single obstacle to allied victory. The US wants to keep the allied coalition together, while not allowing itself to be used by it's allies to gain postwar power and influence. US officials increasingly view the other allies as squabbling children, to be politely but firmly kept on the task of defeating the Axis. The other allies consider US single minded focus on defeating Germany dangerously naive.



Britain and France also increasingly resent their subordinate role in the alliance. The US administration considers allied squabbles over the shape of the postwar world dangerously premature.



The US has it's own agenda within the allied coalition. At this point, it is pretty obvious that the US Manhattan Project has succeeded. Atomic bombs will be ready within a matter of a month--two at the most. That leaves Truman with several dilemmas.



First, with the war in Europe apparently winding down, should he still order atomic bombs to be used? He knows that the Germans are aware of the project. He suspects that the Germans have their own atom bomb project and that it got a major push when the Germans found out about the US project. He notes that the Germans are pouring a disproportionate amount of their remaining military power into holding the uranium-rich areas of Czechoslovakia.



Truman has to weigh two opposing factors. Using atomic bombs might speed the defeat of Germany. On the other hand it might speed up the German atomic program by removing any doubt that such a bomb is possible. Also, the US will have a limited supply of bombs for the foreseeable future. Truman weighs the option of holding them in reserve. Germany seems to have a great deal of ability to recover from defeat. German armies have put the US army at risk of losing a great deal of men and material twice after they seemed to be almost defeated. If that happens a third time, a well-placed bomb could mean the difference between defeat and decisive victory.



A second dilemma is that Truman needs the allies to finish defeating Germany. He also wants Europe to be economically strong enough to be stable. At the same time he is constantly reminded of the many emotionally charged disputes between the European allies. Looking down the road, Truman does not want to leave any of those allies in a position to quickly get their own atomic bombs. That means that the US should quietly make sure that none of those allies leave the war too strong and self-sufficient.



Truman isn't particularly worried about Japan. The Nationalist Chinese are advancing a lot more slowly than Truman thinks they should be given the size of their army, but they have retaken several major cities, including their capital Nanking. The Nationalists are gearing up for a second battle for Shanghai. This time they have a huge advantage in firepower and they dominate in the air. They should be able to push the Japanese into the sea. The Chinese have already done that to several Japanese enclaves in southern China.



Meanwhile the US is systematically firebombing Japanese cities. In the last 5 months that bombing campaign has destroyed nearly 40 percent of the total urban area of Japan. The campaign is accelerating. If the Japanese don't surrender, before the end of the year their cities will be entirely destroyed.



The US has also sunk the bulk of the Japanese navy, along with most of it's merchant shipping. The Japanese are starting to starve on their home islands, and Japanese forces throughout the Pacific theater are running out of food, medicine, and ammunition.



The Japanese still fight hard, usually almost to the last man. They are capable of inflicting a lot of US casualties. Truman does not want to think about the job of invading the Japanese home islands. That will be a mess. He is tempted to solve that problem with the atomic bomb, but the same considerations that make using it in Europe a bad idea also operate in the Pacific.



The US is getting sucked into the strange politics of an obscure little part of the world called Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). The French ruled Indochina before the war, and until recently the Japanese have paid lip service to the myth that they are Indochina as guests of the Vichy French. The equivalent of two divisions of French colonial troops were still in place until recently. The French governor of Indochina has done a great balancing act, trying to convince the Japanese that he is useful and loyal to them, thus keeping the Japanese from crushing his forces long enough for help to arrive.


Ironically, the Germans help him. They are still trying to promote a collaborationist faction as the government of France, and the fact that French Indochina is still loyal to that government, at least on paper, gives it some legitimacy that it would otherwise lack.



The balancing act collapses on the eve of the conference. The French government has landed several hundred special forces men in Indochina in an effort to establish a guerrilla force there to help kick out the Japanese and reestablish French rule. The French also insist on contributing a division to the allied force in Burma. As Germany weakens, the Japanese balance the German interest in having them maintain the fiction of French rule in Indochina against the risk of having several thousand armed potential enemies behind their lines. On the eve of the conference, the Japanese try to lure French officers away from their men, kill them, then round up and kill the leaderless men. They succeed in some cases, but the French rally and several thousand men fight their way toward the Chinese border.



The French want a massive effort made to rescue those men and reestablish French control of Indochina.



The Truman administration is not particularly interested in the fate of weird little places like Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Some low-level people in the US OSS have been helping a Vietnamese nationalist named something like Ho Chi Minh in a guerrilla fight against the Japanese. Truman has no great desire to help the French reestablish a colonial empire in the area, but he needs continued French support in Europe. Truman orders some air support for the fleeing French, and gives logistic support to a French effort to link up with those forces.

 

[DaleCoz]

The rest of 1945 is kind of anti-climactic. The allies continue to advance into Germany from the west and the south. As they do, German resistance slackens. On the fronts where Germans face the western allies, armistice fever sets in. Most Germans are reluctant to be among the last to die in a lost cause. POW camp for a few months seems like the wiser alternative. Some Germans still believe that Hitler's miracle weapons will save them. When good officers and experienced men still believe in their cause, fighting is still vicious and the Germans are still formidable opponents. There is hard fighting around Berlin, but it falls to the US, British, and French forces in August 1945.



For the most part, the hard core Nazis are headed east, along with the best remaining army units, key industrial equipment, scientists, and a large number of young German boys, down to age twelve. By the end of 1945, the bulk of Germany is in allied hands. Hitler and his close associates are still in charge of a large army though, and they have built up a formidable line of defenses near the current day border between Germany and Poland. They also still hold a large part of Czechoslovakia, including its sources of uranium. A large part of Poland has been liberated. It forms a huge bulge up into German-held territory. The British and Poles are pushing an offensive up toward Prussia in an effort to cut the remaining piece of Germany in two and take German defenses in the west from the rear.



The war is getting deadlier as both sides bring on new weapons. The German jets keep improving. The allies respond by bringing a very heavily armed version of the B29 Superfortress Heavy Bomber into the air war over Europe. In our time-line B29's were used only against Japan. They were never used in Europe, though the Germans were deathly afraid that they would be. The US brings out a new version of the P51 Mustang fighter plane which cuts the speed advantage of the German ME-262 almost in half, though it is still substantial. The allies also have some secret weapons of their own, including a US radar guided air-to-ground missile nicknamed the Bat, which could be launched twenty miles away from its target. In our time-line the Bat was used to a limited extent, but very effectively, in the last few months of the war in the Pacific.



German conventional weapons keep getting better. They put a 75 mm anti-tank gun in an aircraft and use it in extremely effective tankbusting missions, especially on the eastern front where allied air superiority is less overwhelming. The British counter by putting an even bigger anti-tank gun, the 32-pounder, into an aircraft on a limited basis. The Germans also produce a very effective 55 mm rapid-fire anti-aircraft gun which makes allied pilots very nervous.



The Germans still have over a hundred thousand troops in Norway. Thousands more are in Finland. The relatively compact core of German-held territory is still held by well over three million men, with new divisions being formed and equipped from factories in eastern Germany and the Ukraine. The quality of German manpower is sinking, with at least forty percent of the front-line troops non-German. Anti-partisan forces are also heavily non-German, with Ukrainians and men from the various Baltic states most prominent.



Several Ukrainian and Russian factions have been trying to convince the Nazis to sponsor anti-Soviet governments and turn the war into an ant-communist crusade or into a war for the independence of the various non-Russian Soviet nationalities. Hitler's racial ideologies makes that impossible, though he does make propaganda use of anti-Stalin Russians and he has been forced to use large numbers of them in his armies. The Germans do allow various small self-governing enclaves to arise, primarily because they are useful in the fight against the partisans.

 

[Bavarian Raven]

nice. keep it coming.

 

[DaleCoz]

Japan surrenders in October 1945--at least officially. Well over half of Japanese urban areas are burned out, and the Japanese have no way of preventing the US from burning out the rest. The home islands are cut off from the rest of Japanese-held territory and from each other by US submarines. The physical survival of the Japanese as a people is at stake.



In those circumstances, the Japanese leadership surrenders. Japanese fanatics don't give up though. With Germany still in the war and without an atomic attack, many individual commanders and their troops are still fighting at the end of 1945. There are major groups of holdouts in Manchuria, the Phillippines, Indochina, Indonesia, and several Pacific islands. It looks like fighting in the Pacific will go on for several months or even years on a small scale.



Fast forward to mid-1946: Nazi remnants are retreating into a weakened Soviet Union and trying desperately to build real war-winning secret weapons. The US desperately wants the war to be over. The US army is enlisted for "Duration Of War". But when is the war going to be over? When Berlin falls? That happened almost a year ago. When the last remnant of German territory falls to the allies? That's happening. The Germans still hold a few pockets of territory on what is now the Polish/German border, and a dwindling corner of eastern Prussia. That's in the Polish occupation zone, and is considered primarily a Polish problem, though there are a few American and British divisions involved, and US air power is playing a role. Most German-held territory is in areas claimed by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is in no position to retake that territory yet, though at least they've stopped the German advance.



The territory that Stalin got from the Hitler/Stalin pact in 1939 is a major issue. The Poles want all of the territory they held in 1939 back. The Soviets bitterly oppose that. To paper over the issue, the allies have given a "United Nations" force composed mainly of French and part of the newly rebuilt Czechoslovakian army the job of liberating the southern part of that region, while the Poles have the job of taking the northern part. Neither force is finding their task easy, even with US and British air support.



The Ukrainian guerrillas of the UPA play a major role in helping the French and Czechs take the southwestern part of the area, but they also set up a provisional government in the area, which infuriates both the Soviets and the Poles.


The Czechs and French are somewhat sympathetic to the UPA, and they need its help in taking the rest of their assigned area and govening the part they hold. At the same time they don't want to get caught in a political battle which doesn't concern them. They recognize the UPA as a "provisional local government" while pressuring it not to ask for more. The Polish underground "home army" is weak in the area after being defeated by the Germans at Lvov, but the Czechs and French find themselves devoting much of their time keeping tensions between the Poles and Ukrainians from flashing over into a full-fledged war behind their lines.



The Ukrainians of the UPA also pose another dilemna for the "United Nations" force. Supplying their forces behind German lines with weapons could save a lot of French and Czech lives--especially important as the war winds down. At the same time, those weapons will probably get used against the Soviets and Poles once the Germans are defeated. The "United Nations" force compromises by quietly allowing German forces to surrender to the UPA and not asking questions about where captured weapons go. Many of the "Germans" in the area are actually Ukrainians in German uniform, so they are generally more willing to surrender to the UPA anyway.


Both the Czechs and the Poles are fighting guerrilla wars along their western borders. There are still German holdouts in the Sudetenland and in the Polish occupation area. In its last-ditch effort to hold onto those areas the Germans enlisted thousands of local ethnic Germans into "local defense militias", then pushed them to commit atrocities against local Poles and Czechs. That was a deliberate effort to make it impossible for those Germans to live at piece in any postwar Czechoslovakia or Poland. As German conventional power in the area was defeated, the bulk of the local German population either headed west to British-held territory or went underground to continue the fight. Poles and Czechs responded to German atrocities with their own atrocities, at least partly as an effort to get the local German population to leave. Both states had bitter experiences with German minorities in the leadup to world war II, and by mid-1946 they have succeeded in pushing most Germans out, and are actively trying to push the rest out.



Truman thinks that the allies might be stalling a little on destroying the last few pockets of Germans outside the Soviet Union. The US congress has cut off Lend-Lease to any country not actively involved in front-line fighting, and is only supporting the armies which are actually involved in the fighting. Given the desperate financial position of most European governments, there is an incentive to keep that Lend-Lease flowing. With a mid-term election coming, there is enormous pressure in the United States to demobilize at least part of the army, cut Lend-Lease to the bone, and go back to a peacetime economy. The European allies are desperate to keep that Lend-Lease aid flowing. None of them can afford to maintain the armies they have built up without American financial help. They are afraid that the end of Lend-Lease will mean tossing hundreds of thousands of hastily demobilized troops onto economies which are already hard-pressed by war damage. If they have to wind down war production at the same time, some countries, especially France and Britain, are afraid that they will fall into another depression.



The war appears to be winding down to a whimper, with die-hard Nazis and die-hard Japanese gradually losing their grip on remote hellholes. Yes, Nazi and to some extent Japanese submarines are still hitting allied shipping. Yes, Nazi jets still launch small-scale bombing raids into Poland and Romania. The first jet versus jet air combats have happened. The US claims that the US P80A fighter jet is easily a match for the German ME-262. Neutral observers aren't so sure. In actual combat with ME-262's, the US jet scores a lop-sided victory ratio, but US pilots are much better trained and more experienced. In the hands of experienced pilots, the ME-262 is very formidable. It is also constantly being improved.



France and the Czechs vote for the ME-262 by putting a slightly modified copy of it into production. The French have a large occupation zone in western Germany. That zone includes some of the places where the German jet was manufactured, which partly explains why they go that route. Large numbers of ME-262's were produced in Avia aircraft factories in Czechoslavakia both in our time-line and in ours. In our time-line the Czechs actually did produce a few ME-262's for their airforce before they were pushed by the Soviets into standardizing on Warsaw Pact equipment. In this time-line, ME-262's and Czech variants of it remain in Czech airforce for many years.



The French are attempting to rebuild their industrial power by stripping their zone of anything movable and worth moving. At least some of what they bring back to France was looted from France by the Germans to begin with.

Italy and now Britain are heavily involved in the Balkan civil wars. They aren't always on the same side. Italy wants independent Slovenian and Croatian republics. The British want a unified Yugoslavia, though they have waffled back and forth on who they back to govern it. They recently switched back to an anti-communist faction after backing a communist faction under Tito for a while.



In Asia, the inevitable Chinese Civil war is on, in spite of the fact that die-hard Japanese troops still hold most of Manchuria and Korea. France and Holland are trying to root Japanese holdouts out of their colonies of Indochina and Indonesia respectively. Those wars are actually multi-cornered affairs, with various local nationalist factions trying to gain independence from the colonial powers--sometime fighting the Japanese, sometimes tacitly cooperating with them, sometimes trying to get them to surrender their weapons to help arm the nationalists. US Lend-Lease money is supporting the French and Dutch in this fighting, but the US congress is looking at that very skeptically. The US doesn't want to finance colonial empires.



The world is settling in for a slow wind-down of the war, shifting focus to economic problems and the shape of the postwar world. Then German missiles start hitting London and New York.

And that's where the story goes.


So, what do you think? Where do things go from here? How long to the allies have before Hitler starts putting nukes on long-range missiles or bombers? What happens if they don't get to him first? How does the politics of western troops fighting inside the borders of the Soviet Union play out if they are forced to go there? Does the Marshall Plan happen? Is there another Great Depression? Who wins the Chinese Civil War? Who wins the Yugoslav and Greek Civil Wars? What do the western allies do with thousands of Soviet citizens who fought with the Germans and ended up as allied POWs. How will the US cope with the dozens of petty boundary disputes between a large and small European powers? How long the US and other allies stay on a war footing in this situation of twilight war? How do the politics inside the German-held enclave play out? Hitler would probably be deteriorating rapidly from Parkinson's Disease by now. Himmler, Goering, Borman, and others would be jockeying for position inside the Nazi power structure. Ukrainian nationalists, along with nationalists from the Baltic states and the Soviet Caucasus have forces both inside and outside the Nazi power structure, as do anti-Stalin Russians. Some of those forces are undoubtedly becoming aware of Nazi atomic research. If Hitler and company completes an atomic bomb, every one of those factions will want it. If they succeed in getting it, along with a delivery system, they suddenly promote themselves from bit players struggling for hopeless causes to players that even the great powers will have to listen to. How will that play out? What does the world look like in 1950? In 1960? In 1998?

 

[DaleCoz]

Quibbles and possible problems with the scenario:
Question: Wouldn't the German Jets have had a bigger impact than you assign them? I doubt it. Even if Hitler hadn't made his "turn them into bombers" decision, the ME-262 couldn't have been produced in large quantities before October 1944 because the engines couldn't be reliably mass-produced before then. When they finally did get into the air in fairly large quantities they were formidable in the hands of good experienced fighter pilots, but Germany didn't have many of such pilots left by 1945, and allied air superiority ensured that most new German pilots died before they became good, even if they were flying a jet. Given time they could have rebuilt a good corp of pilots, but there was always a crucial battle where a few planes might make the difference, and chances are that through 1945 and early 1946 they would not have had a decisive impact. After that, well we'll have to see.

Question: Why are the Germans always almost successful against the western allies, but never quite inflicts a major defeat on them? The western allies have three trump cards. They have Ultra. They have overwhelming air superiority. They have an enormous advantage in manpower, both in quantity and quality by 1945. They keep forcing the Germans to toss half-trained divisions into battle before they get good enough to become effective. By late 1944, the German are not capable of defeating the western allies unless the allies give them several months of recovery time.

Question: Would the US army really have been as effective as you have them being without the North African and Italian campaigns to help them get their act together? That's probably the single greatest flaw in this scenario. I'm not sure they would have been. The battles of early 1944 in France would have helped, as would the time spent fighting the Japanese, and minor participation in the British North Africa campaign. At the same time, the US learned a lot from fighting the Germans in 1943. In this scenario, most of that fighting wouldn't have happened. That might have made for a longer and bloodier learning curve in France in 1944. I really don't know.

Question: I'm not sure I buy the Soviet collapse in spring 1945. Isn't that a little too convenient? Convenient, yes. Implausible? No. In our time-line the Soviets pushed their armies and civilians to the breaking point. Infectious disease did rise among an increasingly malnourished population. The US did do a lot to keep the Soviet infrastructure from breaking down. Take that prop away in a situation where the Soviets had been fighting even more desperately for the last several years, and things could easily work out this way. The spring thaw would probably be the time for any breakdown to happen.

Question: But what about German secret weapons? I've heard that they had this gizmo that... The Germans had a lot of Gizmos in the laboratory or on the drawing board. Unfortunately for them, it takes a lot of time to get something from the drawing board into a usable, mass-producable weapon in the hands of troops--usually several years for something like a new missile or new aircraft. Also, a lot of German weapons ideas were frankly not very practical. I've mentioned the German secret weapons which I think were likely to actually make it into action and actually have a significant impact on the fighting. I may have missed some, but I did try to be as complete as I could. I would be interested in hearing about any you think I may have overlooked Also, stuff developed in early 1946 may be being held back until it is produced in large enough quanities to make a difference. If I ever write the story we'll see about that.

The further forward I take this scenario, the more difficult it gets to come close to reality. There are so many imponderables in terms of political decisions and technology development. For example, I have the Germans mass-producing Panther II's. They might very well have decided to skip the Panther II and go straight to the E-50 and E-75 series tanks. It depends on how fast the development of the two lines went. Would the Germans have really gone forward with planes like the HE-162--a desperation effort that was intended to be flown by people trained on gliders, or would they have put their effort into a more rational single-engine jet concept? Would things like the Natter have shown up a world where the Germans still had a rational chance of winning? I don't know.

Question: Would the Germans really have long-range rockets by mid-1946? Frankly, I'm a little skeptical. They would have more resources to put into it, and an extra year-and-a-half of research time. I think that if they did it would be because they got lucky. Sometimes that does happen in development projects. The Germans did have very good rocket scientists and they were putting almost unlimited resources into the project.

Question: Why do you spend so much time on the politics, especially the stuff about minor powers--Poland, Romania, the Ukaine? Because given the right circumstances, those minor powers can play a major role in the outcome of the war, and in the world which comes out of that war. In some cases you can already see that. In other cases, the really important role is still to come. For example, why do I keep mentioning the Ukrainian nationalist guerillas movement--the UPA? Because I have an important role in mind for them at some point in the scenario. Poland will probably also play a major role.

Question: Are you really going to write a story set in this time-line? I would love to. It's not my next project, but I would like to do it sometime in the next year or so.

Question: Why did you write over twenty-five thousand words on this thing? Well, I got a little carried away, to say the least. World War II alternate histories fascinate me, as you can probably tell. I try to avoid getting sucked into them to this extent, and I usually manage. This one sucked me in and took way too much of my writing time. On the other hand, I learned a lot in the process of writing this, and knowledge usually has a way of being useful in the long run.

 

[DaleCoz]

And that's it. I wrote the scenario in the spring of 1998. I never did get around to writing the story this was supposed to be the background for. It's still on my list, but it keeps getting bumped down the list by newer ideas. I've turned 3 of those ideas into novels and am almost done with a couple of others. Will I get back to this one? I don't know. I hope so.

I rewrote the scenario four or five years ago to get rid of the Torch stuff, which would not have happened as I wrote it, and to take care of some other implausibilities. I may revise that version and post it here at some point.

Thanks to everybody who enjoyed this and asked for more. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Feel free to fire away any perceived weaknesses. There definitely are some.

 

[Adam]

German rockets hit New York? Not saying how unrealistic that would be in first place, but that would probably harden American resolve to finish the war quickly - and savagely. Can we say atomic sunshines over what's left of Nazi industry and command?

 

[DaleCoz]

German rockets hit New York? Not saying how unrealistic that would be in first place, but that would probably harden American resolve to finish the war quickly - and savagely. Can we say atomic sunshines over what's left of Nazi industry and command?

Agreed on the unrealistic (at least in that time-frame--the Germans could have done it, but I suspect it would have taken them another year or more)

On atomic bombs as a response: Maybe, but that would be complicated by the fact that much of the remaining Nazi industry and command would be in territory claimed by the Soviet Union. That wouldn't stop the US from responding, but would complicate matters.

 

[chris N]

Dale, always some of the best and most realist alternate WWII history comes out of your writings. Keep it going.

 

[DaleCoz]

Belated response. Sorry.

I love eastern front TL's

but I must interject and at least put brakes on the madness (god help me im channeling Bill and Calbear)

1. The Germans only had the strategic strength and quality divisions to conduct an offensive with one army group. I consider Army Group A and B seperate army groups. You will note that during case blue in OTL that army group north and center had to sit supine, and that without the assistance of the 4th panzer army (the only full strength panzer army in 1942's early days) neither army group A or B could conduct headlong advances too well.

Yep. A strong offensive in one section of the front was all the Germans could muster in summer of 1942. Other section of the front were capable of defense and local counter-offensives, but not strategic offensive.

2. If you have the forces in place for Kleist's/Paulus victorious counter attack it would take MONTHS to reorient those forces to the central front and relocate the necessary stocks of fuel and ammunition, wasting precious summer months

I wouldn't say months, but shifting the focus would certainly take time, and time was of the essence, partly due to the weather and more importantly due to the rapid improvements in the arms and training of the relatively new Soviet divisions. I thought about that quite a bit. There are two possibilities: (a) The forces for the German counter-attack in the south aren't there, or at least aren't as strong because the Germans are gearing up for an attack on Moscow. That would presumably mean that the Soviet attack advanced further and caused more serious heartburn for the Germans. It would probably run out of steam and in all likelihood be crushed by local German forces because the Soviets were too inexperienced and too ambitious at this stage to avoid pushing too far and exhausting their forces, leaving them vulnerable to a counterattack. The further they went, the more difficult it would be to extract them from the resulting pocket. If the Germans were lucky, a more prolonged success in the Soviet southern offensive might embolden Stalin to launch a more ambitious set of general offensives across the front. Historically his generals barely talked him out of doing that.

There is a possibility that Army Group South couldn't handle the offensive without pulling forces from the buildup of Army Group Center. In that case, you get the worst of both worlds in that mobile divisions have to rush south and then head back north. I don't anticipate that happening. The Soviets simply weren't that good at mobile warfare in early summer 1942 and didn't have the force structure to pull it off. There is also a possibility that fewer or no significant forces from the Soviet attack would end up cut off. Again, I think that's unlikely due to the structure of Soviet forces, the ambitiousness of the attack, and the skill of the Germans at mobile warfare.

(b) The German forces are where they were historically and then move north. That creates the problem of time to move them that you mention and also raises the question of why you would have such strong forces in the south if you're going to attack in the center.

3. Moscow, and the defensive lines in front of it, where well defended by blooded divisions that would have given army group center all it could handle.

It would be a massive struggle. I honestly don't know who would win. I think the Germans would have a shot at winning, given the quality of their troops and commanders and the relatively poor training and equipment the Soviet forces would have in the crucial months.

Remember, the Germans were going to have to face those forces eventually. Was it better to face them in the summer, or to face them six months later when they had six months more time to train and six months more of massive tank and artillery production?

4. Moscow, is a HUGE city, bigger than Stalingrad, with massive concrete buildings that don't break up in artillery strikes or air strikes. How could the Germans take this city with 250k fanatical Soviet defenders inside it when they couldn't take Stalingrad which was a weaker position?

If the Germans can surround it and keep it cut off, presumably the city eventually falls as the people inside starve/run out of ammunition. That wasn't possible, or at least wasn't done at Stalingrad, and the Soviets kept feeding reinforcements across the Volga.

5. This allows the Russians, to mass ALL of their 1942 winter counter offensive strength (Mars and Uranus) against an overextended enemy (ie army group center isn't sitting in the powerful Oka river defensive line), perform a double envelopment and annihilate army group center after they have exausted themselves

Actually, the idea behind this is to force the Soviets to use up the forces they historically used in Mars and Uranus in trying to hang on to Moscow. The Germans pretty much had to suck those divisions into the fight before they were completely trained and equipped and destroy them. If that didn't happen, the Germans were going to lose the war in all likelihood.

I hate to agree with Hitler, but taking out their oil supplies, and interdicting lend lease routes from Iran through the Volga made a lot more sense and was more achievable... by a lot

Granted, going after the south could have been done a lot more competently, but it meant depending on Italians and Romanians to protect a lengthening flank. When the Soviets could mass thousands of T34s, there was simply no way the Italians and Romanians could hold a line against a major Soviet attack.

 

[imperialaquila]

One thing I noticed; you never mentioned the Holocaust. Given that essentially all of Germany and Poland have been occupied by the US and allies by the end of the war, shouldn't they have found the death camps? That would have hardened the US resolve to crush the Nazis quickly.

 

[seraphim74]

A map of Europe 1946 would be a good thing. Only Europe, since Japan is out of war.

Originally posted by DaleCoz

How long to the allies have before Hitler starts putting nukes on long-range missiles or bombers?

Very long. Allied and Soviet intelligence will do everything to find the place in which Germans are working on their Wuderwaffe and then it is visited by 1000 B-29s. Or a single one with the Little Boy.

How does the politics of western troops fighting inside the borders of the Soviet Union play out if they are forced to go there?

Since the Allies actually do not need USSR anymore I can see them making deals with Baltic and Ukrainian nationalists. However Ukrainians will have very bad reputation as Hitler's henchmen who helped with the Holocaust. Therefore, the Allies must find an Ukrainian leader who did not collaborate with Hitler and organize an army around him - perhaps from POWs. There is still problem with Poles who will be angry as hell, and with good reason: after all Ukrainians had helped Germans against Polish resistance and murdered thousands of Polish civilians. The allies will probably promise Poles 1939 borders, "resettlement" of Ukrainians from western Galicia, tribunal for war criminals, generous military and economical help, and whole Silesia and Eastern Prussia "cleared" from Germans as bonus.
Lithuanians will demand Vilnius, but Poland has much stronger position among the Allies, so all they can count on is Memel (nobody will object to that).

How will the US cope with the dozens of petty boundary disputes between a large and small European powers?

Well, Germany often was on one side of such disputes pre-war, therefore every border correction is against Germany. Polish border problems in the east are mentioned above, in the west - just like I said, woe to Germany. Whole Upper Silesia, East Prussia, Danzig, part of Pomerania goes to Poland. The only Polish border problem remaining is Tesin, but Poles might agree to leave it to Czechoslovakia - they have a lot of new lands to settle (Germans are expelled, even more brutally than IOTL) and less people - with war lasting longer Polish human losses are even more terrifying than in IOTL.
Romania will be able to keep all its gains. It is not a matter of justice, it is a matter of being useful. Romanians still have relatively strong army and oil fields supplying Allies' war affort, therefore they can demand quite a lot. And so it will go. It does matter, if you are right, it does matter, on which side you were during most of the war, but it also matters how useful you are now. And ethnic minorites... well, there are much less people in Europe now, more space everyhwere, so massive "resettlements" will happen.

How long the US and other allies stay on a war footing in this situation of twilight war?

To the end of it, especially if they find out Hitler is building an atomic bomb. And since US is not famous for its patience, western Allies will enter former Soviet territory to finish Nazis once and for all and then get the boys home. Or even better - they will find Hitler's HQ and turn it into a lake or new valley with massive conventional and atomic bombing. The rest of German army will get a message: "Surrender, and you will go home, we will not give you to Stalin. This does not include SS and war criminals."

Frankly, I have serious doubts if the Nazis will be able to keep their armies supplied with modern equipment for long. Even controlling much of Soviet territory they still need some raw materials western USSR simply does not have - and any import is naturally out of the question. There is alo a matter of German human resources - they will not allow Ukranians and Russian on key positions, so they will quickly run out of men. Not to mention that Nazis racial policy make them extremely unpopular among Slavic people in their enclave. If their Ukrainian and Russian yanissaries hear they can choose not only between Hitler and Stalin they will rally to Allies' side. Stalin will be furious, but he can do nothing about it, or Truman will completely end any help for the USSR. In my opinion, the war will end in 1947 - or earlier, if Truman drops the bomb.

 

[Astronomo2010]

well, interesting, let´s see the US drop atomic bombs on industrial areas controled by nazy , and then Sureender of Germany,

 

[seraphim74]

Since I'm uncurable Polonocentric, who's in charge in Poland in 1946? Is general Sikorski still alive or did his plane still crashed in Gibraltar or somewhere else? If he's alive, he is most probably still in charge, as the Prime Minister and Commander in Chief.

 

[Typo]

With US aid, wouldn't the Soviets be able to recover in a few years to the point where they can take out the remaining Nazis? If you arn't writing a story...it would be awesome if you can continue this TL to 1950 or so.

 

[Adam]

Originally posted by DaleCoz
Very long. Allied and Soviet intelligence will do everything to find the place in which Germans are working on their Wuderwaffe and then it is visited by 1000 B-29s. Or a single one with the Little Boy.

I also have serious doubts the German atomic program could even produce a nuke after they've poured all those resources into the V-series rockets and jets.

 

[DaleCoz]

I also have serious doubts the German atomic program could even produce a nuke after they've poured all those resources into the V-series rockets and jets.

I agree, at least in the short-term. Give them four or five years to work on it with minimal disruption and they might produce a nuke. I don't see anyone giving them that much time, though it would be interesting to play the scenario out and see where it ends up.