If Italy joins the Allies during the German Invasion of Poland, does France fall?

If Italy joins the Allies during the German Invasion of Poland, does France fall?

  • Yes

    Votes: 16 16.7%
  • Probably, but it depends on the specifics

    Votes: 21 21.9%
  • Probably not, but it depends on the specifics

    Votes: 47 49.0%
  • No

    Votes: 12 12.5%

  • Total voters
    96
They'd need more than 85k to prop up Italy. At least 100k.

Maybe, maybe not as the border with austria it's guarded by the Alpini aka specializated mountain troops and Italy had control of the Brennero pass; in any case Germany cannot fight a two front war as they don't have the mean
 

Pax

Banned
Maybe, maybe not as the border with austria it's guarded by the Alpini aka specializated mountain troops and Italy had control of the Brennero pass; in any case Germany cannot fight a two front war as they don't have the mean

They don't really have to. Just keep five-fifteen divisions sitting at the Austrian border in case Italy decides it wants to lose a couple dozen thousand men.
 

SsgtC

Banned
They don't really have to. Just keep five-fifteen divisions sitting at the Austrian border in case Italy decides it wants to lose a couple dozen thousand men.
Except Germany needed every division it could get its hands on IOTL to make Fall Gelb work. Taking 5-15 divisions out of the order of battle means France has a real chance to win the fight
 
How many men in Africa bordering Italy can Britain/France free up?

In Egypt the Brits had the 'Western Defense Force, which amounted to a understrength corps. There were some other regiments. brigades, & division HQ scattered about Egypt & on the Sudan/Ethiopian/Somali borders

On the Franco Italian border there were some fortification regiments blocking the mountain passes. Assorted reservist divisions & corps HQ/support groups did their post mobilization work up in the region, so technically they were in reserve, until they were moved north. When Italy attacked across the border the fortress regiments & some Alpine battalions stopped the Italian attack with little assistance from the regional reserve.

In Africa, on the Tunisian/Lybian border initially there was a corps HQ & three divisions of reservists. I don't know what mix of 'Active, second wave or A Series, & third wave B Series they were. They were installed in a fortified or entrenched zone, and were described as having limited mobility. Some additional formations of fourth series mobilization were formed in Tunisia and technically were in reserve for the border defense. But, those were hardly formed, little trained and, unequipped in May 1940. They weren't really expected to be ready for combat until the end of the year or later.

My take is the Allied forces deployed to face Italian armies in May 1940 were a mix of units capable for the situation there, but of limited value in the battles on the Franco/Belgian plain. In terms of raw manpower a couple hundred thousand. In terms of equipment and training not a lot.

The Italians did have a couple of armored divisions, and a 'Fast Corps' of motorized infantry divisions. These were obviously not in the same class as the French DLM or the German Panzer divisions. Still Hitler ordered halts four times for the mechanized thrust to the Channel. the first three times harder got the orders canceled quickly. A corps of a couple motorized divisions and some tanks counter attacking could have caused one of the earlier halt orders to stick, giving the French and Brits a couple of badly needed days. More likely tho the senior French commanders would have dithered and canceled any Italian attack until too late.
 
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Italy could buy new weapons and supplies from the US. Either they can buy direct or use France or GB as a middle man if there remains legal problems for them to buy direct. Even the crappy tanks the US was using at the time was better than the tankettes Italy was using.
Actually on the note of importing from America, how about welding equipment? Some Italian designs like the M16/43 and P26/40 were pretty advanced in all but their construction.
 
I don't see Germany advancing west in this scenario. Denmark and possibly Norway, sure, but I would imagine Germany just tries to wait it out until peace comes along. They just want Poland right now, after all. The Winter War could possibly lead them to try and get peace, with concessions, so they can turn on the Soviets in the belief that they'd have Allied support
 
Maybe, maybe not as the border with austria it's guarded by the Alpini aka specializated mountain troops and Italy had control of the Brennero pass; in any case Germany cannot fight a two front war as they don't have the mean

They certainly don't have the time either. Germany needed to win and quickly. There was a reason they used training tanks in France. They didn't have the time to scrap them and use better tanks.
 
I don't see Germany advancing west in this scenario. Denmark and possibly Norway, sure, but I would imagine Germany just tries to wait it out until peace comes along. They just want Poland right now, after all. The Winter War could possibly lead them to try and get peace, with concessions, so they can turn on the Soviets in the belief that they'd have Allied support

Only if they are suicidal. The French and Brits have more money and can buy weapons and ammo from the US market. If Germany waits a year they are buried under French, British and American production.
 

Pax

Banned
Except Germany needed every division it could get its hands on IOTL to make Fall Gelb work. Taking 5-15 divisions out of the order of battle means France has a real chance to win the fight

Not if the French put the 1st army in Breda like they planned to.
 
not understanding the timeline here? ok, most of events of 1930's occur?

my thought would be though if Italy is moving away from Germany they would be forceful during Winter War? so things would start to move away from OTL at THAT point?
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Even if France does fall, with Italy in the Allies France probably will keep fighting on from Africa and Corsica instead of surrendering.
 
not understanding the timeline here? ok, most of events of 1930's occur?

my thought would be though if Italy is moving away from Germany they would be forceful during Winter War? so things would start to move away from OTL at THAT point?

I very much doubt M is still in power in this scenario, probably dead.
Still, given the circumstances, it has to have been replaced by a hothead.
 
The Germans had 157 divisions at the time of Fall Gelb, of which only 135 were used in the attack. Of these 135, 42 divisions were kept in reserve. These were not used in the decisive initial phase of the campaign. The Germans would thus have had about 40 divisions to hold a mountainous and narrow front against the Italians. A third line German division managed to beat off a counterattack by 4 Allied divisions in a vulnerable bridgehead at Abbeville. French divisions there included a large number of tanks such as the Char B and Somua which were under most conditions invulnerable to the standard German 37 mm gun. It is scarcely conceivable that the much inferior Italian army, whose standard tank at the time was the obsolescent M11/39, could have made any significant inroads against the Germans in mountainous terrain. What is more likely is that a German attack would have caused a Caporetto type rout which would have resulted in the diversion of large Allied forces to the Italian front, thus smoothing the progress of the German blitzkrieg in France.
 
Lots of different PoD have been done that have resulted in Italy joining the Allies, with Italy usually declaring War over Poland officially, instead of staying neutral and later joining Germany. How big of an impact would it have?

I don't quite understand the "lots of different PoD." For Mussolini to even consider actually joining the Allies over Poland in 1939, he presumably would have to maintain his Stresa-front opposition to Hitler. But if he did that, the things that formed the indispensable background to OTL's German-Polish war crisis of 1939--the Anschluss followed by Germany gaining the Sudetenland and then getting control of the rest of Czechoslovakia--would very likely not have occurred as we know them.

In short, "Mussolini stays anti-Hitler after 1935 but everything else in Europe in September 1939 is exactly as it was in OTL" seems implausible to me.
 
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