Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942

Garrison · Jun 4, 2022

23rd September – 30th October 1942 – Sicily – Operation Malamute – Part II – Securing the Beachhead

There were four landing zones designated for the initial assault on the 23rd of September, each assigned to one of the available Corps, with the American and British Corps being grouped together to make co-ordination and supply easier, in theory at least. From west to east the deployment was, US I Armoured Corps landing at Licata and II Corps between Gela and Scoglitti. XXX Corps landed around Pachino, with XIII Corps landing around Avola. X Corps was not involved in the initial assault and did not make its landing until the 26th, coming ashore just south of Catania. This was a deliberate strategic choice on the part of the Allied planners and was something of a risk, one though that promised considerable rewards if it succeeded. The Axis forces would be on high alert after the initial landings but there was an expectation that this would mean Axis reserves would be pulled south, which would allow X Corp to make a rapid thrust into to the Italian rear areas and severe their lines of communication. If on the other hand the defenders heavily reinforced Catania, then X Corps could face heavy losses. All five corps would only be landing their leading divisions in the first wave, the rest would follow once the beachheads were secure and if possible, a working port seized to ease the constraints of having to bring men and supplies over the beaches, which was another reason for trying to draw away the defenders around Catania, no one wanted a repeat of the devastation inflicted on the port at Dieppe. The gamble largely paid off and while the port facilities at Catania were damaged, they were rendered usable with in a week, partly owing to the reluctance of the Italians to destroy part of their homeland [1].

There were also a number commando attacks and airborne landings included in the plan for the opening phase. The larger formations were tasked with seizing bridges and road junctions, in the expectation that they would be rapidly reinforced from the beachheads. Small squads of Commandos were assigned to carrying out acts of sabotage, targeting defensive positions, radio stations and telephone communications to spread chaos and confusion amongst the defenders. The airborne attack in particular met with mixed success, as the Allies faced the same issues of parachutists missing their targets and becoming scattered that had affected German airborne operations. The paratroopers dropped by glider did somewhat better overall and along with Commandos they did create considerable disruption and prevented the destruction of several important bridges that would otherwise have slowed the Allied advance [2].

The paratroopers and commandos were not the only ones to sabotage the defence of the island, because for once the idea of a Fifth Column was not mere propaganda. Unfortunately for the longer-term future of Italy this came in the shape of the Sicilian Mafia. With the Mafia in New York being heavily involved with the docks and the dock workers union the US authorities had found it expedient to make an under the table deal with the mobsters to keep the docks and the flow of the supplies across the Atlantic flowing smoothly. The OSS had built on this by persuading American Mafiosi to use their connections in the ‘old country’ to aid the Allies. Since the Fascist regime had done much to crack down on the criminal gangs in Sicily the local mobsters were only too willing to help, in the expectation that the aftermath of the removal of the Fascists they would have far more breathing room, and that the Allies would turn a blind eye to some of their activities. This unwritten agreement provided vital intelligence about Axis defences on the island resulted in supplies and equipment being stolen from the forces on an industrial scale, alongside arson, murder, and certain villages in the heart of the island becoming virtual no-go zones to Italian soldiers [3].

The main amphibious landings on the 23rd were anti-climactic as the beaches were only lightly held, the Axis forces had decided to adopt a defence in depth strategy, intending to draw in and exhaust the invading force before counterattacking and destroying them. This plan was undermined by the fact that the Allied deception plan had been an unequivocal success and even as the landings took place German units were still being dispatched to Greece. Even by the time X Corps landed on the 26th many in Berlin were convinced that the Sicily landings were only part of a larger plan, and that an attack on Greece was still imminent. Intelligence from Rome that contradicted this view was dismissed for several vital days as being ‘self-serving’. This is not to say the troops on the beaches came away unscathed with some Italian units once again putting up stiff resistance even when outnumbered and outflanked. These instances served as a sobering reminder of what might have happened if the Axis had not dispersed so many units to Sardinia and Greece and further emphasized the importance of keeping the Axis from focusing their attention on the chosen landing ground for Operation Millennium [4].

Even after X Corps were driving inland from Catania, cutting off at least two Italian divisions, and it was clear that there were no Allied forces heading for Greece neither the Abwehr nor Adolf Hitler believed that they had fallen victim to a deception, they chose instead to believe that the British had realized that the documents had been compromised and the Allies had thus adjusted their plans accordingly. This refusal to contemplate that they had been misdirected by the Allies meant that they did nothing to review the conduct of Abwehr operations or the security of their thoroughly compromised spy network in Britain [5].

The continued focus on Greece also hampered the Regia Marina’s plans for a response to the landing, not that even an immediate response by the naval forces the Italians could muster would have offered any likelihood of obstructing the invasion given the imbalance of naval forces in the Mediterranean, even after a substantial part of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet had been dispatched to the Pacific. The Regia Marina taskforce that did set out for Sicily on the 29th of September was led by the battleships Vittorio Veneto and Giulio Cesare, the latter having returned to service in May 1942 after being damaged during Operation Judgement, though the repairs were far from satisfactory. She had been plagued with mechanical issues ever since leaving dry dock and there was unease in the Regia Marina about sending her on such a high-risk mission. There was no choice in the matter however, once the Germans accepted that there would be no invasion of Greece in the near future, they did a complete about face and insisted that the Italian fleet intervene immediately in the battle for Sicily. The Ciano regime, desperate to appease Berlin, ordered the Regia Marina to attack the landings with all possible speed. The battleships were supported by two cruisers, four destroyers and five MAS boats. They were also expected at the last minute to escort a group of transports delivering equipment and supplies to the defending forces, potentially limiting the entire force to the speed of the slowest transport, flatly contradicting the earnest insistence on a swift naval response. This illustrated the disorganization that was gripping the Italian High Command, exacerbated by the fact that not everyone was looking to the Ciano government for direction [6].

Some sense of realism led to a modification of the orders, meaning that one destroyer and two of the MAS boats would provide minimal cover for the transports while the rest of the force pressed on at best speed, though at this point the landing forces were firmly entrenched and the Allied naval forces knew they were coming. The Royal Navy carriers Victorious and Glorious and the USN carrier Wasp had carried out air attacks in support of the landings and they had now been repositioned to intercept the approaching Italian force. The outcome was all but inevitable given the absence of air support for the Regia Marina ships and the fact that the three carriers successfully co-ordinated their strikes on this occasion, which went in at 0830 hours on the 1st of October. The Giulio Cesare took three torpedoes delivered by FAA Barracudas while the Vittorio Veneto took one torpedo and three bomb hits hit courtesy of the Wasp’s air group. The cruiser Bolzano was also hit by a British torpedo, blowing off the ships bows, and she sank in under ten minutes. The Giulio Cesare went down at 1000 hours, while the Vittorio Veneto somehow stayed afloat and was towed back to port, by the cruiser Luigi Cadorna in concert with the destroyer Antonio da Noli. The transport convoy however managed to evade the attentions of the Allies, at least until the cargo ships had docked in Palermo, at which point the RAF intervened and sank one of them before it could be unloaded and damaged another. The rest of the group finished their unloading and departed under cover of darkness. Though no one taking part knew it this was the last major surface action of the Regia Marina, and it was another defeat that achieved nothing of any strategic value, it did not even successfully appease the Germans as other events served to bring down the full weight of the Wehrmacht on Italy [7].

A far greater threat to the success of the invasion than the Regia Marina emerged from the ranks of the Allies own senior commanders as General Fredendall’s inadequacies threatened to allow the Wehrmacht to split the American and British forces, potentially turning the initial Allied success into a disaster [8].

[1] Catania is something of a test for tactics to try and take a port with reducing the place to burning rubble.

[2] The Allies need the experience of mounting airborne assaults and they are certainly getting it on Sicily.

[3] As reprehensible as dealing with the Mafia was if it saved the lives of the soldiers going ashore them the Allies were bound to take the opportunity.

[4] it’s a case of ‘hit the enemy where they aren’t’ and making sure that the Axis forces aren’t in Normandy.

[5] Right through the war the Germans seemed unwilling to contemplate the idea that they were being so consistently outplayed by the Allies, perhaps inevitable given the size of some of the egos in Berlin.

[6] There are some big cracks opening in the Italian leadership over what direction Italy should take.

[7] We are not done with political machinations in Rome.

[8] And Fredendall’s poor decision making will be at the centre of the next update.

Garrison · Jun 7, 2022

23rd September – 30th October 1942 – Sicily – Operation Malamute – Part III – Triumph and Humiliation

Alexander’s ‘right hook’ with the landing at Catania achieved most of its objectives. With the Italian defences focused on XIII Corps, X Corps was able to isolate and take Catania within a day, aided by some of the more successful airborne operations. X Corps had also moved out to flank and cut off the 207th and 208th Coastal Divisions as XIII Corps advance frontally and the easternmost elements of XXX Corps moved to close the trap. Most of the 208th were successfully cut off, however about half of the 207th managed to retreat as the Italian rear-guard put up a determined fight to hold open the line to allow their comrades to escape. Even so the British Corps had defeated these rear guards and completed their encirclement by the 29th of September. An attempt by the remnant of 207th, supported by the 29th Infantry Regiment ‘Assietta’ and two brigades of the 17th CC.NN. Legion ‘Cremona’, to open an escape route for the trapped troops and to drive the British out of Catania was mounted on the 2nd of October. The Italians had underestimated the strength of the forces landed by X Corps and along with repeated Allied air attacks the offensive was broken up into a series of poorly co-ordinated assaults easily repulsed by the British forces. With this effort at relieving them having failed the Italian troops in the Catania pocket surrendered on the 3rd of October, a major blow to the defence of the east of Sicily [1].

The overall plan of battle called for the establishment of a solid line anchored by the landings at Licata in the west and just north of Catania in the east, taking control of everything south of that line and landing reinforcements and supplies to support a drive north towards Palermo and Messina. With I Armoured Corps having moved rapidly to fan out and seize Licata, as well as driving back the defenders east and north of the town, the western and eastern anchors of the line were secure. Indeed, the major issue Alexander faced in the west was to restrain Patton, who was eager for a rapid armoured thrust to seize Palermo, naturally with him entering the city at the head of his forces in a moment of triumph. Alexander wasn’t interested in a race to Palermo, especially as the far more serious problem he faced was with II Corps. It was supposed to be holding the line between I Armoured and the three British Corps, but it was advancing at a worryingly slow pace that threatened to delay the entire plan [2].

After II Corps had landed it had initially advanced much as the British Corps had to their east, however by the 28th of September their advance had slowed to a crawl, showing reasonable caution as Fredendall’s defenders would have it, or ‘plodding and timid’ as General Leese characterized it. Far from driving forward as his compatriot Patton was inclined to do Fredendall seemed almost pathologically concerned about a possible counterattack. This was exemplified by the amount of attention Fredendall put into the construction of his forward headquarters, though it was not very far forward by the standards of the other Corps and whereas the likes of Patton or Leese set up what were clearly temporary facilities Fredendall’s HQ seemed to be intended as a permanent residence, so heavily built up with air and ground defences that it was soon referred as ‘Fort Fredendall’, surrounded by barbed wire, sandbagged gunnery positions tank traps and trenches. Fredendall’s distraction with his HQ meant that he had lost focus on developments at the front. He had initially insisted on a dispersed broad front advance, with every potential enemy strongpoint to be reduced methodically, even if the enemy consisted of nothing more than a couple of platoons of infantry that could easily have been isolated and bypassed in the same way as those on the flanks of II Corps [3].

This stuttering advance was intensely frustrating for Alexander, and yet he could hardly protest Fredendall’s insistence that he was proceeding cautiously in the interests of minimizing casualties amongst his still inexperienced troops. Nonetheless Alexander did his best to prod Fredendall into stepping up the pace, while passing his concerns up the chain of command in the hope that someone in Washington might be persuaded to apply pressure. Patton was far less diplomatic in his views of the sluggish advance. He visited Fredendall’s HQ on the 1st of October, and his low opinion of the commander of II Corps was not improved by the site of his ‘bunker’. Details of the meeting have proven hard to come by even with the release of masses of documents on the Sicilian campaign, suffice to say though that Patton left in a foul mood and informed one aide that Fredendall was ‘going to get us all thrown back into the sea’. As was his wont Patton took practical action to prevent this possibility, ordering units to prepare for action to the east rather than the north. He started these preparations well before Alexander’s HQ sent a message advising Patton that he should act to protect the flanks of his position, without directly mentioning any concerns over Fredendall. The same advice was issued to XXX Corps [4].

Some, particularly those who have attempted to defend Fredendall have chosen to interpret this advice as a deliberate plan to use II Corps as the bait in a trap for the Axis forces, and XIV Panzer Corp in particular. This requires one to believe that Fredendall was deliberately put in a bad position, as if his compatriots and superior officers were willing to hazard two US Divisions in such a huge gamble. The facts support the interpretation that Alexander and Patton were simply responding to the developing situation as best they could, given that it was not possible to relieve Fredendall at that time. There is also the fact that deliberately using II Corps as bait risked the lives of far too many American soldiers for Alexander to have contemplated such a scheme. Instead, Alexander kept trying to encourage Fredendall to push forward and align II Corps with the forces to the west and east of it. Even as he did so the Axis forces, and General der Panzertruppe Hans-Valentin Hube, commander of XIV Panzer Corps in particular, had already noted the crawling progress of II Corps and saw an opportunity to drive through this ‘second rate’ enemy force and split open the junction between the British and American Corps [5].

Hube’s low opinion of the Americans was only partly informed by the desultory performance of II Corps. There was also some influence from Hitler’s view of the Americans as decadent and weak, as well as Hube’s own memories of the steep learning curve faced by the US army in the battles of 1918. Regardless of its origin this view of the US forces persuaded Hube that the best, indeed only, chance for victory on Sicily lay in breaking through II Corps and sending it back to the coast, while at the same pinning I Armoured in place with an attack to its front before having the forces that broke through II Corps pivot to attack I Armoured in the rear and unhinge the entire western flank of the invasion. It was a plan fuelled as much by the need to do something after the losses in the east and the British seizure of Catania.

Hube was under no illusions about the chances of driving the Allies back into the sea, regardless of the demands from Berlin and Rome. Even if I Armoured proved as hesitant as II Corps in responding to the attack on its frontage there was little prospect that the three British Corps would simply stand around doing nothing while the Germans decisively defeated the Americans. The best hope was that any British attempt to pivot could be blocked by follow up forces advancing behind the Axis spearhead, which was mostly composed of XIV Panzer, with two Italian divisions in support [6].

As risky as the plan might be it still seemed more attractive than the alternate of trying to simply establish a defensive perimeter and slow the Allied advance, especially with it becoming clear that there would be no landing in Greece or Sardinia and that Sicily would be the main allied effort in the Autumn of 1942. This meant that all available Allied reinforcements and supplies could be expected to be directed to Sicily, while the defenders could expect to receive the undivided attention of Allied air and naval units in the Mediterranean. In light of this it was inevitable that Hube’s counterattack was supported by the Italian commander on the island Generale d'Armata Alfredo Guzzoni, even if it did relegate Italian forces to little more than a supporting role, and the counterattack was set for the 4th of October. When it was launched the counteroffensive certainly provoked alarm bordering on panic for the Allies at times but unfortunately for XIV Panzer Generals Patton and Leese were made of sterner stuff than Fredendall and responded with far more energy and decisiveness than Hube had anticipated [7].

[1] Again the Italian troops are every bit as capable as any other nations, they just lack decent leadership and equipment.

[2] As was all but inevitable.

[3] The problem is that Fredendall was a ‘golden boy’ in Washington, bound to get a major field command, and equally bound to make a mess of it.

[4] The only good news here is that at least Patton and Alexander aren’t going to be taken by surprise by Fredendall’s failures.

[5] Hube doesn’t really have a lot of good choices, since any chance of relief or major reinforcement is out of the question as Stalingrad is becoming the focus of Wehrmacht plans.

[6] It’s a long shot but the other option is to wait while the Allies pour in reinforcements and supplies, not to mention building forward airbases to boost their air superiority.

[7] And the fate of Hube’s operation will be discussed in the next update.

Garrison · Jun 9, 2022

23rd September – 30th October 1942 – Sicily – Operation Malamute – Part IV – Hube’s Counterattack & the Drive for Palermo

On the 4th and 5th of October Hube’s offensive matched his most optimistic hopes and seemed to confirm his poor opinion of the US Army. As Hube would soon learn the failures of II Corps had little to do with the fighting ability of US soldiers and everything to do with poor leadership. Despite warnings that XIV Panzer was concentrating on his front Fredendall he had done nothing to prepare for a counterattack, other than slowing the already plodding advance of II Corps. This abundance of caution achieved little as forward elements of II Corps hit by strong German attack were in many places overrun or sent reeling in head long retreat. Still, even at the height of this success there were those units that held their ground and gave Hube’s forces a bloody nose. Junior officers commanding at the platoon and company level successfully rallied their troops to dig in and hold, offering up fierce resistance that forced the Axis troops to either reduce their positions or try and bypass them to maintain their momentum, which was not always possible and even where it was led to overcrowding and traffic jams on side roads that were not suited to military traffic, which opened the Axis forces up to the threat of air strikes. Despite desperate pleas for support these holdouts were largely left to their own resources, meaning they had to either evacuate, or in some cases surrender when their ammunition ran out, though not all of those who chose to lay down their arms were taken as POWs and the discovery of these local massacres enraged the US troops who retook the ground later [1].

The failure to aid to these forward units’ rests entirely with Fredendall. His response to the counterattack can only be described as panic mixed with a sort of mental paralysis, in terms of the ‘fight or flight’ response to a critical situation Fredendall embraced flight. Some have tried to characterize his actions as nothing more than an attempt to shorten lines and regroup his forces, however this is an extremely generous interpretation and accounts from some of his staff point to a man more worried about his prestige than the men serving under him. Fredendall basically endorsed those units who had fled and, on the 6th, issued orders for a wholesale withdrawal to what he had arbitrarily decided would be II Corps main defensive line, which did indeed seem to be nothing more than a line arbitrarily drawn on a map with little to recommend it over other further forward positions.

This plan provoked what amounted to a mutiny among the divisional and regimental commanders of II Corps, who were being asked to give up ground that had yet to be attacked by the Axis and expose their infantry to potential attacks on their rear from fast moving Panzer units. Brigadier General Troy H. Middleton, commanding the 45th Infantry Division found himself leading the resistance and arguing fiercely for a more organized series of much shorter withdrawals. Whether Fredendall would have reconsidered in the face of the almost universal opposition from his subordinates will never be known as news reached Fredendall that Patton and I Armoured Corps had intervened in the matter, with units of 2nd Armoured division attacking the flanks of the axis advance around 14:30 hours on the 6th [2].

By the 7th of October II Corps actions had escalated into a full-blown counterattack of their own, limited only by the need to hold off the Italian attacks by the 28th Infantry Division ‘Aosta’ that were supposed to pin down the Corps reserves. Confident in the resolution of his frontline troops, and in receipt of substantial air support, Patton did not hesitate to enact his contingency plans and turn his forces east, intent on breaking through and encircling the advancing Panzers. Hube’s initial response to these attacks was dismissive, believing that the Italians covering the western flank of his advance were overreacting to small scale local efforts by isolated units of II Corps. He had also weighted his screening force heavily in favour of covering against an attack from XXX Corps, with grave consequences for his forces. It was not until the 8th when German infantry had been committed to support the Italians, and reports were received from them of the scale of the actions by I Armoured Corps that he realized the gravity of the situation, reinforced by the fact that the British 51st (Highland) Infantry Division of XXX Corps was now also probing from the east. With the Axis forces now facing heavy air attacks and Fredendall having finally amended his orders so that the advance elements were now facing a far stiffer defence by II Corps Hube had to accept that there was no longer any hope of a breakthrough and that in fact his entire Corps was in danger [3].

Elements of the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division intended to reinforce the advance of XIV Panzer were now hastily redirected to halt the advance of I Armoured while what had been the vanguard of the advance against II Corps suddenly found themselves in the position of acting as a rear-guard, ordered to hold off any frontal attacks at all cost. In this respect Hube needn’t have worried, II Corps and its commander were in no condition to attack the Axis positions, despite Alexander calling on Fredendall to commit his reserves and increase the pressure on XIV Panzer, since there was now the clear opportunity to turn the tables and destroy the cream of the Axis forces on Sicily. In the end while Patton’s troops demonstrated considerable energy, they were still inexperienced, and the Wehrmacht troops were able to take advantage of this to blunt their attacks. They were also more than willing to abandon Italian forces in order to make good their escape, which did nothing to improve relations between the two Allies. There was also some friction between the British and Americans, which was not entirely caused by Fredendall’s actions. Patton was probably guilty of a lack of co-ordination with Leese and XXX Corps, seeking to make the battle an American victory rather than Allied one, though Patton saw things rather differently, claiming it was the slow response of XXX Corps that allowed the Axis formations to escape before they could be encircled. A more accurate assessment would be that XIV Panzer had to sacrifice the bulk of its strength to save the rest. Between the fighting on the flanks, the fact that the forward most units were cut off and forced to surrender before they could disengage, and the constant air attacks by the RAF and USAAF, XIV Corps had been reduced to barely a third of its starting strength, with especially heavy losses to its armoured units, limiting its mobility for the rest of the fighting in Sicily [4].

By the 11th Of October the Axis forces were back where they had been on the 4th, indeed they were worse off as X Corps and XIII Corps had launched an attack towards Messina on the 10th that had forced the Italians to rapidly give ground. With the situation stabilized for the Allies the question of who to blame for this near disaster loomed large, though there was never any real doubt as to who was going to be held accountable. Fredendall was relieved of his command on the 12th of October and replaced by General Omar Bradley, though even now Fredendall was not in disgrace, at least not in the eyes of his supporters in Washington. Bradley proved to be a far superior soldier to Fredendall and from this point on the fighting in Sicily was a series of Allied advances that the ever more depleted defenders could do little to prevent, reinforcements were non-existent as the Germans were now completely focused on Stalingrad and the Italians were plunged into chaos by events on the mainland after the 19th of October [5].

One area of controversy that arose after the battle was that while the Italians were unable to reinforce Sicily, they were able to evacuate a large part of the surviving defenders despite the looming presence of the Royal Navy and the Allied air forces. The most reasonable explanation for this is that Alexander had no interest in cornering the Axis troops and forcing them to fight to the bitter end. Giving them a bolt hole spared Allied casualties and if the remains of XIV Corp were withdrawn to Italy, then that suited the Allies larger strategic plans, though there was a considerable reluctance to commit such thoughts to any written records either at the time or after the war. The numerous memoirs of the battle either gloss over the Axis evacuation or point accusing fingers at Alexander, Patton, Bradley during his command of II Corps, or the Royal Navy [6].

Patton do get his triumph and entered Palermo on the 22nd of October. Given the hard fight that I Armoured Corps had endured it was an honour they were surely entitled to, though this is not to say that political considerations did not rear their ugly head. Fredendall still had friends in Washington and allowing I Armoured its moment in the sun largely allowed Fredendall’s failures to be ignored. He returned to the USA without any overt action being taken against him, he was instead assigned to a training command and was even promoted a few months later, however he never returned to a combat command [7].

Patton on the other hand saw his stock rise considerably, and he would soon move front and centre in the preparations for Operation Millennium, even though he still rubbed some people in the US High Command up the wrong way. The British commanders also reinforced their already solid reputations and many of them would also find themselves commanding forces on D-Day. The experiences in Sicily would add to those from Dieppe and helped to shape plans for future operations. Possession of Sicily put the Allied air forces in easy range of targets in Italy and southern France, creating fresh headaches for the Luftwaffe’s already heavily committed fighter squadrons.

On the Axis side Sicily was another failure the Wehrmacht could blame on the Italians and one they were keen to put behind them as they now had to worry about where the Western Allies might turn next, as well as the looming prospect of a far worse military disaster in the East. For the Italians, well they had other issues to concern themselves with. Those issues were also why any idea that victory in Sicily might be used to leverage the Americans into an invasion of the Italian mainland despite it being rejected previously were swiftly abandoned. The ‘soft underbelly’ had turned into a ‘tough old gut’ [8].

[1] The Wehrmacht is indulging in petty vengeance, deciding that troop who fought to the last round don’t deserve to simply put their hands up.

[2] Fredendall is not making any friends here and an odd little detail about 45th Infantry, prior to the 1930s their emblem was a yellow swastika on a red background:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45th_...of_the_45th_Infantry_Division_(1924-1939).svg

[3] Fredendall may be destroying his reputation, Patton is making his and putting down a claim for a substantial role in another amphibious assault.

[4] Hube gambled, and he lost. The fact that there was little else he could have done will cut no ice in Berlin.

[5] Those events will be the subject of the next two updates.

[6] The Allies see no reason to take losses against battered divisions that are just going to sit in Italy waiting for an invasion that isn’t coming.

[7] He probably winds up with an office next to MacArthur’s.

[8] If Ciano and co. thought things were bad already they are about to get much worse.

Garrison · Jun 11, 2022

19th October – 25th November 1942 – Italy – German Intervention – Part I – The Vatican Intercession

For several months after the death of Mussolini it seemed that the Ciano government had stabilized the situation in Italy. Preparations for the defence of the country in the event of an Allied invasion had gone ahead, with Italian troops being redeployed from the Balkans, essentially acknowledging the reality that the region would inevitably fall under German control, assuming the war could still somehow be won. Not all these troops had returned home, the less fortunate been released to fight with the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, with Fascist Blackshirt unit being disproportionately given this ‘honour’. These troops suffered terribly, not only being at the back of the queue when it came to the distribution of supplies, but also treated as little better than cannon fodder by the Ostheer Generals in overall command of the front. The Russian Front was soon seen as a punishment detail by both ordinary Italian soldiers and officers alike, and they were not entirely wrong in this view. Ciano and his cabinet were perfectly aware of the treatment being meted out, they simply had no choice if they wanted to appease the Germans and retain at least some control in their own country. Despite the blow inflicted by Operation Malamute it seemed he was keeping the various factions that had emerged since the assassination under control, nothing could have been further from the truth. What he did not know, or pretended not to know according to some sources, was that the King was conspiring with the Pope to undermine him by seeking a separate peace with the Allies [1].

King Victor Emmanuel had tacitly approved the actions of the Ciano government in public while in private he had been increasingly anxious about his country’s fate, especially as it became clear that Sicily would fall, despite promises to the contrary, and it seemed likely that the mainland would be next to be invaded, with Allied air forces already bombing industrial targets in Italy. The King was hardly an ardent opponent of fascism. He had kept silent during all the excesses committed by the Mussolini regime, including the atrocities in Ethiopia, in no small part because they seemed to be succeeding. The disasters of 1941 and early 1942 had exposed how hollow those earlier successes really were and now the prospect of large-scale bombing and outright invasion had convinced him that Italy had to exit the war. With the Germans so heavily committed to Case Blue it seemed to Victor Emmanuel that there might be an opportunity to make a deal with the Allies, after all if they were going to land in Italy anyway why not welcome them as liberators rather than invaders? Especially as it seemed increasingly likely that they would be the winning side in the war. His appraisal of the likely outcome of the war was reasonable, his belief that the Italian army would follow his lead and hold off the Germans in the north until an Allied army came to the rescue was anything but.

Ciano had certainly considered the idea of strengthening Italy’s northern defences against the Wehrmacht. He however was acutely aware that doing so in the current climate of distrust from Berlin making such a move would be likely to provoke the very German assault he feared. He also had grave doubts about the likelihood of making some sort of bargain with the Allies that would not see Italy treated as a defeated enemy. This ambivalent attitude contributed to the belief that he might have allowed the King to act in the hope that the monarch could be disowned in the events his machinations came to the attention of the Germans. If this was his plan, then Ciano would be every bit as disappointed as King Victor Emmanuel [2].

The King had no way of directly reaching out to the Allies, what channels Italy still had open with neutral countries were all controlled by Ciano’s government and some of those neutrals still felt the need to ingratiate themselves with Berlin in 1942. There was only one channel that Victor Emmanuel and his courtiers could turn to, that being the Vatican and Pope Pius XII. Discrete discussions over the possibility of a diplomatic intercession by the Pope had begun in September, only days before the Allies landed in Sicily. This raised the urgency of seeking out a peace deal, but it was only in early October that it seems to have made an genuine progress as the Pope had to be convinced that King Victor Emmanuel was genuinely interested in peace and that a diplomatic deal with the Allies was the best route to saving lives in Italy and the rest of Europe. The Pope had a strong affinity with Germany, though not its current regime, and the idea that Italy might be able to lead the way to a more comprehensive settlement to the war in Europe certainly appealed to Pius XII. There were those in the Vatican, more exposed to the realities of earthly politics, who saw this diplomacy for what it really was, naïve optimism from a man who might be god’s right hand on Earth but was somewhat ignorant of the way the war had developed. The Allies had no desire to let Nazi Germany slink away and lick its wounds, letting it launch a fresh war once it felt strong enough, they were not about to repeat the mistakes of 1918, this time Germany would have to be crushed, especially as the Allies also knew that atomic bomb was a realistic possibility by 1943 and the idea of the Nazi’s acquiring them and unleashing them in World War III was not one they would willingly contemplate. Thus, the Pope’s attempts to link a deal with Italy to a larger settlement effectively doomed the plan to failure regardless of his good intentions [3].

A formal document to be communicated by the Vatican to the Allies was agreed by the 19th of October, Victor Emmanuel was aware that Ciano would be furious when he found out what was going on, however the King calculated that presented with a fait accompli Ciano would have no choice but to support the plan and develop a strategy for Italy to defect to the Allies, essentially handing off the hard part of the plan to Ciano and his ministers. Whatever had been communicated to the Pope the King was clear that the war would not be ended by this deal, his hopes reached no further than the possibility that the Allies might be persuaded to treat the new Italian regime as friend rather than a foe, at the very least they might enter into the sort of ‘marriage of convenience’ they had with the Soviets given the paramount desire to defeat Nazi Germany as quickly as possible. Given Churchill’s talk of Italy as a soft underbelly it might have been expected that London would have supported such a plan, but when it was raised in cabinet there was a consensus that the Italian’s could not be ‘let off the hook’ and that with the commitment to a landing in France the military requirements of the plan were roundly rejected by the General Staff. There was slightly more interest in Washington, who had less of an axe to grind with Italy, but even here there were grave doubts about the ability of the King to deliver the support of the Italian Army.

Whether these doubts could have been overcome is debatable, the Allies had already agreed that invading Italy was no longer a priority and efforts had to be focused on France. Dieppe had done nothing to change this priority, indeed it had amply demonstrated the scale of the operation that would be required to establish a successful bridgehead on the Continent. They might still be happy to encourage the idea that they were contemplating operations in Italy to divert Axis resources, putting boots on the ground, especially to defend what was still a Fascist regime, was out of the question for the time being [4].

What rendered the Vatican intercession a subject for little more than academic debate was that the supposedly secret discussions between the King and the Pope leaked. That Ciano and his government received reports was bad enough, worse was that reports also reached Berlin. This inevitably provoked a violent reaction from Hitler in the face of ‘this act of treason by a senile king under the thumb of international Jewry’. Who exactly revealed the King’s plan to the Nazi’s provoked heated accusations and counteraccusations as to the guilty party and the identity of the culprit or culprits remains almost as much of a topic of debate in Italy as who really killed Mussolini? One obvious candidate was Count Ciano, though his anxieties about precipitating a German intervention suggest he had little incentive to share information with Berlin, even if he was not secretly sympathetic to Victor Emmanuel’s efforts. Some have pointed fingers at the Vatican, claiming there were parties who were sympathetic to the Nazi’s because of their strident anti-Communism and fearing that an Italian betrayal might lead to the USSR sweeping west, perhaps even reaching Rome, or indeed conspiring with Italian Communists to establish a puppet state that would not respect the sanctity of the Vatican. Some have even gone so far as to accuse Pius XII of being pro-Nazi and deliberately sabotaging the plan. Weighing against this is the evidence that the Pope had taken considerable risks with his office in laying the groundwork to establish communications between Victor Emmanuel and the Allies, and only the threat of a backlash inside Germany itself dissuaded Hitler from seizing the Vatican and removing the Pope to Berlin [5].

Nothing in any records that have been made available in the succeeding decades have provided a definitive answer, and the most likely explanation is that there were multiple leaks along the lines of communication between the King’s court and the Vatican. Regardless of who was responsible the damage was done, and Hitler ordered an immediate response in form of the dispatch of troops to ‘assist’ the Ciano government in suppressing what was regarded as an imminent coup d’état, with said government being given no say in the matter. The German divisions sitting on the Italian border had been preparing for just this eventuality and they moved into action too fast for anyone in Rome to try and stave off the German invasion [6].

[1] If anyone thought Ciano could really hold this mess together, well they were as wrong as he was.

[2] It’s a forlorn hope, especially as the Allies are looking to move resources away from the Mediterranean.

[3] So I don’t really buy the notion that the Pope was a Nazi sympathiser, he was however far too willing to let his affinity to Germany blind him to the worst of what was going on and his fear of Communism just compounded matters.

[4] So the Allies are basically willing to entertain the Vatican diplomacy as part of their deception plan.

[5] Sure they may be reducing large parts of the USSR to rubble and killing on an epic scale but there are still plenty of German soldiers and politicians who think of themselves as good Catholics.

[6] And the Allies are getting in the popcorn and putting their feet up to watch…

Garrison · Jun 14, 2022

19th October – 25th November 1942 – Italy – Part II - Operation Arminius

Everyone in Berlin had their theories about who was really responsible for the death of Mussolini, the Abwehr, the SS and von Ribbentrop’s ministry all compiled their own reports and naturally they all pointed the finger in different directions. The only thing they did agree on was that the assassination could not simply be the work of a lone knifeman. These conflicting reports simply heightened Hitler’s paranoia and he had insisted on a plan being put in place to secure Italy against further treachery. There was more to Hitler’s intentions than just the fear of treachery, however. Count Ciano’s efforts to reassure the Germans about his intentions by offering more troops and dispersing materials from the reserves Mussolini had denied Italy possessed simply convinced many in Berlin that the Italians was able to contribute far more to the Axis war effort than it had previously claimed. Victory would require that Germany embraced the idea of ‘Total War’, meaning every resource being directed to the military without any concern for the impact this would have on the civilian populations under Nazi rule. Total War necessitated that the whole of the Axis industrial base be fully integrated and run with maximum efficiency, which of course meant it all needed to be placed under the control of superior German managers and administrators [1].

This line of reasoning was pressed vigorously by Albert Speer, Fritz Todt’s long time deputy and a personal favourite of Adolf Hitler owing to his designs for the rebuilding of Berlin after the war and his talent for turning out propaganda that emphasized the superior quality of German weaponry. He was peddling a vision of a completely integrated European industrial system where the flow of raw materials and the allocation of production would all be co-ordinated in a manner that would guarantee maximum production of the weapons that the Wehrmacht needed to win the war, a plan that was every bit as overblown and baroque as his designs for post-war Berlin. This system would ensure the efficient distribution of slave labour to the most vital industries as well as the food needed to squeeze as much labour out of them as possible, there would be nothing wasted on what were referred to as ‘useless eaters’ in this system, in practice meant that children, the elderly and those burnt out by hard physical labour would be left to starve to death. This system also embraced the concept of using food as a reward. High achievers would be rewarded with extra rations at the expense of those who fell behind. Todt himself was sceptical, believing that trying to create such an elaborate system would consume much in the way of transport and raw materials and offer no gains for years, if ever. This disagreement was a large part of the reason that Todt chose to retire in 1943 and was replaced with Speer. In 1942 the desire to extend this system to the Italy provided a powerful motivation for intervention in Italy regardless of who held power in Rome [2].

The plan for ‘stabilizing’ Italy was codenamed Operation Arminius, after the leader of the Germanic tribes who defeated the Roman legions at the battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE. On this occasion the General Staff and Hitler were in accord. Von Kleist and his staff were deeply concerned about an Allied invasion of Italy, and that Italy might either surrender or defect wholesale. The last thing the Wehrmacht needed was another front to fight on and a swift decisive intervention now might avoid having to commit larger forces later in response to an Allied invasion. This was especially important as the General Staff had concluded that the Western Allies would land somewhere in Northwest Europe in 1943, and the outcome of Dieppe had done nothing to reduce such anxieties. Given the desperate need for men and equipment on the Eastern Front shutting down a possible line of Allied advance was seen as worth committing troops to Italy, regardless of the economic arguments, though naturally they expected the lion’s share of whatever resources could be squeezed out of the Italians to find their way to the Wehrmacht. This accord between the military and economic leadership wouldn’t last but for now the General Staff laid out a plan involving seven divisions. This consisted of two Panzer divisions, 1st Fallschirmjäger Panzer Division Hermann Goering (hastily returned from Greece after it became clear there would be no Allied landing there) and 26th Panzer Division, which was a cobbled together formation originally intended for security duties in the west and not up to full strength in October 1942. This armoured spearhead was supported by 3rd Motorized Infantry Division and there were four infantry divisions allocated to follow up and secure the rear areas while the armoured units rushed to Rome. This force was named Battlegroup Alaric, after the Gothic leader who sacked Rome in 410 CE, much like Arminius this choice was not designed to calm the nerves of anxious Italian leaders, more to remind them of the potential consequences of resistance [3].

Once news of the Victor Emmanuel’s attempts to negotiate with the Allies reached Berlin the word for the execution of Operation Arminius was given and the German troops began to advance from Austria on the 26th of October. Count Ciano was awoken in the early hours of the 27th to receive a message delivered by the German ambassador, detailing German knowledge of the King’s actions and that the Wehrmacht was dispatching forces to assist in putting down any possible uprising by monarchists, communists, and Jewish provocateurs. Despite the diplomatic language this message was not framed as an offer, the Germans were coming and Ciano’s only options were to either welcome them or order Italian troops to resist. For all his efforts to try and prepare defensive positions that could either hold off the Allies, or the Germans, Ciano knew there was little chance of stopping the Germans, and that trying to do so would be catastrophic. There was also the consideration that not all the army would obey such orders and issuing them could lead to Italian troops fighting one another. Ciano thus chose to graciously accept the German ‘offer’ and issued orders that Italian forces should co-operate with the German reinforcement, though in some cases these orders arrived too late [4].

There were no major battles with the Wehrmacht forces, most Italian units either assisted the Germans or simply stood aside, regardless of whether they had received Ciano’s orders or not. There were some local skirmishes, prompted largely by German efforts to take control of supply dumps or in a few cases Italian troops who saw this as an invasion and fought back. The Germans did not see those they took captive in such cases as POWs, but mutineers and most were summarily executed. Both the Germans and the Italians denied these events at the time, and it was only years after the war that survivors managed to get their stories heard, which did little to bolster diplomatic relations between Germany and Italy [5].

The lead German units motored down open roads, in scenes reminiscent to some of the old hands of the Manstein Sweep in 1940, and forward reconnaissance elements reached Rome on the 29th of October, which was where they halted. This was not because of any logistical or tactical constraints, more that with the industrialized northern part of Italy and the capital ‘under their protection’ there was little south of Rome that was of immediate concern. Ciano made a great show of welcoming the German forces, claiming that they had arrived to help deter any allied plan for invading Italy. Most chose to publicly accept this blatant lie and any who genuinely believed it soon had reason to change their mind because of the way the Wehrmacht troops threw their weight around, making it clear that this was an occupation. One piece of bad news Ciano had no choice but to share with General der Panzertruppe Hermann Black, in overall command of Battlegroup Alaric, was that the King had fled from Rome before he could be placed under ‘protective custody’ by the authorities. The porous nature of Italian communications worked both ways and meant that Victor Emmanuel had received just enough warning of his imminent detention to slip away with a small entourage and his whereabouts were currently unknown, at least to the Italian Government and the Germans [6].

The Vatican had managed to maintain contact with Victor Emmanuel and this time they somehow managed to keep that fact a secret, though it seems more plausible that some in the Italian government scrupulously avoided becoming aware of the contacts and having to act. Around the 25th of November the King of Italy found himself in squeezed into a cramped corner of the Royal Navy submarine HMS Thorn, en route to Alexandria. There have been suggestions that elements of the Mafia in Naples were involved in smuggling the King out, aiding a group of British Commandos put ashore to act as his escort. Whether or not the government in Rome was aware of the King’s travel plans it is worth noting that his movements, and those of his rescuers, went undiscovered despite the large-scale manhunt undertaken to find the errant monarch. Once they were certain that the King had fled the country the official position was that Victor Emmanuel had betrayed Italy and de facto abdicated his throne, with his son now declared King as Umberto II. The new King was nothing more than a figurehead and he was kept under constant watch, only being allowed out in public for propaganda opportunities designed to show how closely the Germans and the Italians were co-operating [7].

In the immediate aftermath of the German intervention the general atmosphere in Italy was shock, slowly giving way to a sullen acceptance of the reality of their changed circumstances. Within a few months however the increasingly onerous nature of the German demands on Italy began to tip some people over into outright resistance, which the SOE and OSS were only too happy to encourage. Besides opening up a new area of operations for covert operations the German intervention in Italy finally killed off any talk of Italy as the soft underbelly of Europe, and the only plans worked on for an invasion were those intended to be uncovered by the Axis as part of the large-scale deception scheme supporting the preparations for D-Day. To all intents and purposes, the Axis ceased to exist with the occupation of Italy. Japan remained a member in name only, fighting its own desperate war in South East Asia, and the British were preparing to seize the initiative there even as Battlegroup Alaric was imposing control in Rome [8].

[1] And it totally is not just an excuse to loot their Allies as well as the occupied territories.

[2] The concept of ‘performance feeding’ was adopted by the Reich and was every bit as appalling as it sounds. The only group excluded were the Jews, who were simply to be liquidated.

[3] As subtle as a sledgehammer and it’s not the best forces the Germans have, but more than adequate in the circumstances.

[4] Ciano was made an offer he couldn’t refuse…Sorry…Not sorry.

[5] This doesn’t even allow for the impact of German behaviour in Italy after the occupation.

[6] The Italians might as well forward all their military communiques direct to London and Washington at this point.

[7] Another display of Italian ineptitude or taking the chance to stick it to the Germans by letting the King get away, a matter for debate.

[8] Churchill has finally had to stop badgering the General Staff about Italy and the Balkans, at least until the end of 1943. And the last major battle of 1942 will be fought in Malaya and Thailand.

Garrison · Jun 16, 2022

12th November – 28th December – Burma & Malaya – Operation Buttermere – Part I – Taking the Initiative

After Operation Yari had been decisively beaten back and the naval victories at Singapore and Wake Island had helped secure the sea routes to Burma and Malaya the initiative in the Pacific and Indian ocean had definitively passed to the Allies. Whilst Europe still remained the highest priority for men and material the Pacific theatre of operations was not starved of resources, regardless of what some advocates for a greater emphasis on fighting the Japanese liked to claim. The Americans in fact were able to take to the offensive first with the launch Operation Watchtower on August 4th. The Japanese had been reinforcing the island and building an airfield that the Americans were keen to seize and put to their own use. The battle for Guadalcanal would become the main focus for the US Navy in the Pacific for the rest of the year, as it soon became clear that despite its heavy losses the IJN was not simply going to sit in port and do nothing in the face of Allied attacks [1].

There was some anxiety in Lo ndon that the USA had launched an offensive while the British forces in Burma and Malaya appeared to be doing nothing, but Auchinleck and his subordinates in Burma and Malaya were not inclined to launch any precipitate offensives, they were determined that when they struck it would be decisive and that they would be able to sustain a high operational tempo throughout the battle. There was also the not so small matter of the Monsoon season to be considered. Usually running from June to September it was prudent not to plan for any major offensives in the region before the latter part of October. As plans were being prepared General Orde Wingate was called upon to contribute his ideas about guerrilla warfare. The success of the irregulars and the desert patrol groups in North Africa had shown the value of having forces operating behind enemy lines. Targeting installations in the Japanese rear, especially airfields, would disrupt their ability to resist future British advances out of Malaya and Burma. If airfields could be seized, even temporarily, then these ‘Chindits’ as they would commonly be referred to, could be resupplied, or withdrawn if need be. The hope was that these forces would be able to link up with advancing troops and speed the progress of the offensive [2].

One critical objective for operations in Malaya was the relief of Penang. This small island had been garrisoned as far back as November 1941. The elements of the British Indian Army 3rd Corps and 3rd Battalion Penang and Province Wellesley Volunteer Corps dispatched to defend Penang were intended to prevent the Japanese using it as jumping off point for amphibious attacks and to delay the Japanese advance into Malaya. What was supposed to be a temporary holding action had instead turned into a siege as the British were able to keep resupplying it from the sea and while the Japanese did try to take the island on several occasions, they never committed the kind of manpower necessary to overcome the British and Indian troops who were unwilling to abandon the position after having taken so many losses holding it. Despite their stubborn resistance the troops at Penang were increasingly exhausted and in need of either being evacuated or relieved, the British had decided on the latter. If this push was successful and the Japanese were forced to abandon their positions, then Montgomery had contingencies in place to extend the drive and push the Japanese all the way back into Thailand [3].

Slim had now been given command of the forces operating out of Burma and those forces were not going to be excluded from the plan to attack the Japanese. Their objective would be Mae Sot, the original jumping off point for the Japanese 55th Division during Operation Yari. This would provide a base from which to harass Japanese lines of communication and potentially pave the way for an attack in the direction of Bangkok, which in fact the British had no interest in pursuing in the short term, the Japanese though would have no choice but to deploy forces to protect the Thai capital. The fact was that if Burma and Malay could be finally secured then the next objective for the British was going to be the DEI. A collection of Australian, British, Canadian and Dutch troops, commonly known as ABCD for obvious reasons, had been clinging on to a foothold in the island for months, demonstrating the same stubborn determination as those at Penang, and the British recognized that cutting Japanese lines of supply and retaking the islands would be a huge blow to the Japanese, removing the only potential source of oil open to them [4].

There were also political considerations behind the drive into Thailand. Indian troops had proven invaluable to the fighting not only in Burma and Malaya but in the Middle East as well and if the British were to continue their campaign in South East Asia it was inevitable that many more Indian troops would be needed. Some in India were openly opposed to this, some even voiced the opinion that a Japanese victory might be a preferable outcome. These voices had been quieted by the military successes of the British but not silenced. It was hoped that the securing of the lines of communication and commerce that ran through Rangoon into India would help appease the Indian nationalists, as well as maintaining a vital route for the shipment of Lend-Lease supplies to China. Whether the offensive did anything to dissuade the more ardent Indian Nationalists is debatable, it did however contribute to alleviating the Bengal famine of 1943 as large quantities of rice were shipped from Burma [5].

From a practical point of view both Slim and Montgomery’s forces had been quite generously provided with equipment and manpower, a large part of the former being of American make. Montgomery had been glad to accept as many of the M3 Stuart tanks as London was willing to pass along and he was more than happy to receive the new M3 Lee mediums as well. This tank might be viewed as obsolescent in a European context, but it would prove to be a leviathan in South East Asia. Its powerful 75mm gun was invaluable and given the limitations of Japanese armour and anti-tank weapons there was little to stop it making full use of its capabilities [6].

The RAF and RAAF units had also been reinforced with additional bomber and fighter squadrons, even finally receiving Spitfire squadrons, armed with 20mm cannons which did not have to contend with the technical issues that had taken some time to resolve in cooler climates. Another boost to the forces in Malaya was the arrival of HMS Prince of Wales in Singapore harbour on the 3rd of July. Royal Navy warships and submarines had been operating out of Singapore in increasing numbers since the destruction of the Japanese carrier force in April, but this marked the formal redeployment of the HQ of the British Indian Ocean Fleet from Ceylon to Singapore. Montgomery was there along with various local dignitaries to greet Admiral Cunningham as he came ashore. Cunningham was in full agreement with the plan to cut off the DEI and clear it of Japanese forces. If these efforts drew out the remaining capital ships of the IJN, then so much the better in Cunningham’s view [7].

The British, Australian, and Indian troops who had been regarded as green and of dubious quality in December 1941 had been transformed by months of hard fighting and hard training into confident effective units, now with the supporting arms needed to mount an offensive against the Japanese. Using terms like eager can be misleading, but the British forces were ready and willing to fight, believing in their commanders and expecting to win through despite the setbacks that were inevitable in any battle. The same confidence was markedly lacking in their opponents [8].

[1] Guadalcanal is not going to be a focus of the TL, but it is going on in the background. It kicked off a little earlier than OTL and it will end sooner as well.

[2] Wingate is going to put the rather haphazard operation of the irregulars on a far stronger footing.

[3] So yes Penang has been holding for months, a sort of Malayan Tobruk.

[4] ABCD will have to wait until the Spring of 1943 for their relief.

[5] So the famine is averted and there will be more progress on the political front in 1943.

[6] So the Lee/Grant is not going to see a lot of use in Europe, and most will end up in the Pacific.

[7] And Cunningham will get his wish, off Borneo, next year.

[8] So a lot of notes about 1943, but that is when the payoff for a lot of developments will come.

Garrison · Jun 18, 2022

12th November – 28th December – Burma and Malaya – Operation Buttermere – Part II – The Drive to Penang and the Thai Border

The opening moves of Operation Buttermere began on the 12th of November with the dispatch of detachments of what Wingate’s Chindits. Some were dispatched by glider, though the majority made their way through the central mountain ranges of Malaya, with native guides directing them down narrow tracks to bypass Japanese positions and conduct raids in their rear areas. The effectiveness of these operations was mixed, those carried out by glider borne troops in particular suffered badly, landing off course and frequently being unable to locate their targets. Overall though the Chindits did achieve their objective of sowing chaos in the Japanese rear area and did destroy about twenty Japanese aircraft on the ground [1].

Chaos was also created by the Royal Navy’s contribution to the battle. Two battlegroups, one led by HMS Prince of Wales and the other by the recently commissioned HMS Lion, proceeded from Singapore on the 13th of November and over the following ten days bombarded coastal targets in Thailand and the Dutch East Indies. Both groups were supported by carriers that carried out a series of strikes against the Japanese airfields in Thailand and Borneo. These attacks supported Buttermere and provided cover for a substantial convoy heading for Java. The convoy brought supplies and fresh troops for the ABCD forces and evacuated most of the wounded. Over the next two months the Royal Navy conducted several more bombardments missions and more small convoys made their way to Java. These were largely made up of fast destroyers in what were referred to as ‘whippet runs’ and greatly bolstered the ABCD position in Java. Conversely the Japanese position in the DEI was badly weakened as not only were shore facilities attacked but convoys trying to bring supplies to the Japanese troops were intercepted and many of the transports sunk. The losses were severe enough that the Japanese command were forced to suspend further supply runs until they could replace the transports and arrange for much stronger escorts, a task that would take several months given the demands of engaging the US Navy off Guadalcanal, and essentially end any remaining Japanese hopes of securing the DEI. If the naval actions off Java and Borneo had been the whole of the achievements of Operation Buttermere then it would still have been regarded as a success, these however were simply the prelude to the attacks in Malaya and Burma [2].

Slim’s forces, once again with 10th Indian Division and the 1st Cavalry in the vanguard, began their advance in the Thailand on the 18th of November, retracing the path taken by the retreating Japanese 55th Division in April, though in far better circumstances, being well supplied and able to take advantage of motorized transport where the terrain allowed. 1st Cavalry had also been making the acquaintance of the M3 Stuart tank and if it didn’t quite take the place of the horse in the hearts of its soldiers it came close, proving every bit as valuable in Thailand as it did in Malaya. The Japanese forces facing Slim’s advance on the other hand were in only slightly better shape than they had been after the disastrous retreat in April. Still short on food and ammunition they faced an opponent who had an abundance of both and Slim was more than happy to expend as much of that ammunition as it took to break down the defences before committing his men to the attack, a strategy that made Slim popular with those who served under him [3].

The idea that martial spirit could overcome material superiority was once again exposed as a fantasy as Slim’s divisions pressed forward, destroying every attempt to counterattack or establish a fresh line of defence. They reached Mae Sot on the 9th of December and despite bitter resistance from the remnants of the Japanese forces who made their stand there it fell three days later, marking the final destruction of the partially reconstituted 55th Division, as well as the remnants of several other regiments foolishly committed to bolster the defence. The rest of the forces the Japanese could muster were now deployed to the south, intended to block any advance on Bangkok. This was precisely the conclusion the British had hoped the Japanese would draw and forces that could have been used to bolster Malaya instead sat at the end of overstretched supply lines while Slim’s troops rested and reorganized at Mae Sot. One unfortunate consequence of Slim’s successful attack was that the Thai’s, also unaware of his true intentions, launched a sporadic series of uprisings in Thai towns and cities in the expectation that the Japanese were on the brink of being expelled from their country. These acts of resistance were brutally supressed by the Japanese and caused some later bitterness on the part of the Thais towards the British, though ultimately they did co-operate when the British did turn their attention to the liberation of their country [4].

In Malaya Montgomery had an even larger hammer with which to strike the Japanese, his advance was carried out with four divisions, including the Australian 7th Division and 8th British Indian Army Infantry Division, and was well supported by armour, artillery, and air power. The opening action in Malaya on the 20th of November was a series of raids by the RAF and RAAF on Japanese airfields. Lacking radar and with too few fighters to mount proper combat air patrols lost between 60 and 80 aircraft on the ground. Combined with the actions of the Chindits these losses tipped the balance of air superiority over Malaya firmly in favour of the British and helped pave the way for the ground advance that kicked off on the 21st.

The Japanese forces in Malaya were in better shape than their counterparts in Thailand, though this is not to say they were well prepared to receive an attack of the magnitude that Montgomery delivered, especially with their senior commanders in Thailand constantly looking towards Slim’s advance. They might have fared better had they been willing to contemplate simply going over to the defensive in Malaya, instead they insisted, under strong pressure from Tokyo, that the focus remain on a future offensive that would destroy the British, which did not mean that the resources for such an offensive were being provided. What it did mean was that any plans for building a solid defence in depth of their positions in Western Malaya were rejected out of hand, relying instead on attempting to shore up what were officially the outposts of a temporary holding action [5].

Stretched in so many directions the Japanese were doling out reinforcements in a piecemeal fashion, often reflecting the latest apparent threat to their defence perimeter or simply the whims of the leadership in Tokyo. This meant the forces that were supposed to be guarding the approaches to Penang were poorly dug in and had no counter as they were faced by an attack with M3 Lee tanks taking on the role of infantry support and proving far more effective in that role than the purpose-built tanks the British had favoured. The 75mm gun was devastating against the light defensive positions of the Japanese and they had little choice but to fall back or fight to the death. That so few chose the latter option speaks to the declining morale of the Japanese troops and the retreat soon took on the character of a rout, inflicting such humiliation on the Japanese officer corps in Malaya that the practice of Seppuku had to be prohibited order of the high command [6].

The official relief of Penang took place on the 19th of December. The pictures taken a few days later of Montgomery being cheered by troops when he visited the island did not have to be staged on this occasion. If Montgomery was not loved by his troops, he was certainly respected and the successful relief of Penang combined with the disintegration of the Japanese defensive line spurred the British forces on to what had always been Montgomery’s ultimate objective, the eviction of the Japanese from Malaya altogether.

As the British pressed forward the Japanese were reduced to human wave attacks to slow them, though some on the British side referred to them as ‘human ripples’ owing to limited manpower available. By this point the British forces were familiar with the tactic of the Banzai charge and even sought to take advantage of it, baiting Japanese troops into launching a charge only to find themselves drawn into a killing ground filled with machine gun and mortar fire. These desperate attacks only served to further deplete Japanese ranks and they were forced to fall back time and again until even the most die-hard fanatics in Tokyo were forced to accept the reality that the remaining forces had to be withdrawn into Thailand, though of course only temporarily. This was justified by the frontline commanders with the ostensible reason being the necessity of repulsing the apparent threat of a thrust towards Bangkok, though how much the bedraggled survivors of the Malaya forces could have contributed to that defence if Slim’s force did launch an assault was highly questionable.

The official end of Operation Buttermere, and of the fighting in Malaya as a whole, was declared on the 28th of December, with the British frontline crossing into Thailand in some areas. It was a clear triumph for Montgomery, Slim, and Admiral Cunningham and although it would take some months before they were ready, they would in due course turn their attentions to the defeat of the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies [7].

[1] So not as successful as might have been hoped but lessons will be learned for the future.

[2] The Royal Navy is basically softening up the Japanese in the DEI and keeping them from focusing all their attention on Malaya and Thailand.

[3] Slim is building up a highly respectable profile, Monty even finds him tolerable…

[4] The Thai’s have jumped the gun, but they will have to be realistic when it comes to kicking out the Japanese.

[5] The Japanese haven’t quite grasped that they are losing the war yet, either having been denied information about the big picture or choosing to ignore it.

[6] The order itself was a bit hysterical and any officer who felt their dishonour was irredeemable could go out fighting instead, with the British forces happy to oblige any Japanese who chose death rather than surrender.

[7] No dramatic set piece battles because the Japanese just don’t have the manpower for it or anywhere to solidly anchor their defences. They are after facing fighting in Thailand, Java, Guadalcanal and China, not to mention insurgencies in Indochina.

Garrison · Jun 21, 2022

31st December 1942 – Germany - Black Christmas

On Christmas day 1942 a radio broadcast went out to the whole of Germany, with voices from all over the Reich and the occupied territories. It was intended to remind the people of the scale of the Wehrmacht success and that so long as they remained resolute victory would come, even if it was taking rather longer than had been promised in 1940 and 1941. One highlight of this roll call of the Reich was when the announcer called out ‘Stalingrad’ and received a stirring reply from the 6th Army, still holding off all that the Red Army could throw at them. This was a piece of pure fiction; 6Th Army had no means to make such a broadcast and if they did, they would doubtless have been calling for supplies and/or relief. They were not a bastion of the Wehrmacht’s advances in the east, they were instead a trapped and desperate army for who relief would not come as Hitler had explicitly ordered that they hold the city at all costs and refused to countenance any operation intended to allow them to breakout and evacuate the city [1].

Case Blue had been an unmitigated disaster for the Heer, falling far short of its goals despite how many losses it had inflicted on the Red Army and the territory it had seized. However high the cost for the Soviets it had been worse for the Wehrmacht. The best of their weapons had been thrown into the fight in the east. The earliest versions of the Panzer VI Tiger had faced the inevitable teething problems when it was deployed but those had gradually been worked out and the tank had proven formidable. Likewise, the latest models of the Panzer IV had proven itself a match for the T-34 one-on-one, except it rarely found itself operating on such equal terms, instead often having to face odds of two and three to one, or worse as the Soviet Union appeared to possess an infinite capacity to churn out tanks and soldiers. The same story went for the rest of the Wehrmacht arsenal, much of it was superior to its Soviet counterparts, but they had lost the production war and that margin of superiority, both in machinery and the quality of the men manning them, was being rapidly eroded [2].

Compared to the fighting on the Eastern Front Dieppe and Sicily might have seemed little more than pinpricks. Dieppe however was the clear harbinger of worse to come in North-western Europe. Everywhere from Narvik to Rome had to be defended against the threat of Allied invasion and any suggestion of consolidation or withdrawal in the west was no more acceptable to Hitler than abandoning Stalingrad. The Channel Islands for example had been extensively fortified and reinforced, even though many in the General Staff agreed with the British assessment in 1940, that the islands lacked strategic value and were almost indefensible. The Reich did its best to find the manpower and resources for all these garrisons, but they inevitably fell short and whatever Hitler’s views some unofficial prioritization was put in place. This may have reduced the strain a little, but the Heer faced a basic and arguably insurmountable problem, they had to be everywhere, the Allies could choose to concentrate their forces and overwhelm even if the Reich could have delivered on the massive lines of fortifications that Hitler demanded [3].

While the Heer was contemplating the prospect of war on two fronts the Luftwaffe was facing the reality of it. The arrival of the USAAF in Europe was increasing the load on the fighter squadrons in the west, even as the Luftwaffe was also expected to continue the fight in the east. The arrival of four engine strategic bombers in the arsenals of Bomber Command and the US 8th Air Force meant that they would soon be able to drop a weight of bombs on targets in Germany that dwarfed anything the Luftwaffe of 1940 had been capable of. The Luftwaffe had finally received its own strategic bomber the He 177 Greif, but only 130 had been produced in the whole of 1942 and its handling characteristics were poor and it was still plagued with technical issues that limited its operational use. This meant that the Soviet factories that had been relocated beyond the Urals could work unimpeded by the Luftwaffe [4].

This along with other failures of 1942 had done little to bolster the reputation of the Luftwaffe, or Hermann Goering. Despite best efforts to place the blame for what happened on Malta on the Italians the grave losses among the Fallschirmjägers, and the propaganda the Allies milked from images of captured troops and wrecked Me 321 gliders, mean that Goering couldn’t escape some of the fallout. Combined with the failure to resupply 6th Army from the air at Stalingrad the reputation of the Luftwaffe was at a low ebb, just at the moment when it desperately needed more resources and more investment in new models of aircraft to replace those that were starting to look long in the tooth. The failure to replace certain models sooner had placed the Luftwaffe in a serious dilemma as the need to maximize the number of airframes available mandated in favour of freezing designs as they were to reap the benefits of long series production, while the inadequacies of these models meant that losses would be higher for the crews operating them. Replacing these aircraft would mean a sharp drop in production while factories retooled and learned how to streamline the manufacturing process for the new designs, which would mean potentially weakening the air defence of the occupied territories and the Reich itself. The harsh truth was that what had been the world’s premier air force in 1939 and 1940 was becoming an also ran, outclassed by its enemies on all fronts [5].

For the Kriegsmarine December of 1942 proved to be the darkest month in a bitter winter. Through a combination of high-grade ULTRA intercepts, aggressive escorts and a certain amount of good fortune the Allied navies had achieved their highest number of U-Boat kills in any month since the start of the war, with the loss of some 22 U-Boats. In one particularly fierce engagement between convoy HX211 and a wolfpack of eight U-Boats the Kriegsmarine ships sank three transports and damaged an escort vessel, in exchange for the loss of four U-Boats and another damaged by a patrolling Liberator after withdrawing from the fight. These results were a cause for celebration in London and Washington given the pressure to build up the manpower and materials to meet the requirements for Operation Millennium, and this increased security of the Atlantic sea-lanes also meant that those trying to pry free more men and equipment for the Pacific theatre were able to achieve some modest successes. This meant the Allies could plan for operations in the Dutch East Indies in the spring of 1943 even as the preparations for D-Day accelerate [6].

In Berlin this setback left Doenitz in a state of shock, and he felt a desperate need to do something about this situation. His response took the form of both efforts to exhort greater efforts from his already hard-pressed U-Boat crews and to press even harder for technical fixes to their problems, the latter being driven by the belief that the December losses must reflect some new technical improvement on the part of the Allies rather than intelligence failures or bad luck. When it came to his crews Doenitz took a carrot and stick approach, showering commendations, decorations and promotions on those of the new generation of U-Boat commanders Doenitz felt had distinguished themselves, while issue dire warnings to those who did not meet these high standards of the consequences if they did not show the proper aggressive spirit. The problem was that the dividing line between the successful and the unsuccessful U-Boats all too often came down to being in the right place at the right time and Doenitz’s efforts to drive his crews on generated more resentment than anything else. Even those crews lavished with rewards regarded it as a cynical exercise, keenly aware that their luck could run out and they would return empty handed from a patrol, or not return at all as seemed increasingly likely [7].

The technical solutions ranged from continued work on the Type XXI U-Boat to acoustic homing torpedoes and anechoic tiles, the latter a rubber coating that reduced or eliminated the sonar returns from a U-Boats hull, though turning this into something that could be used on an operational U-Boat would be a slow, painful process. Conspicuously absent from the list was the issue of signals security. The Kriegsmarine still placed great faith in Enigma and while the system did receive periodic upgrades no one chose to question the underlying integrity of the coding system used. This was a huge failing on the part of the Kriegsmarine and the rest of the Wehrmacht as by the end of 1942 Bletchley Park and its American colleagues were turning breaking Enigma codes from an art into a science, with pen and paper being replaced by machines that could grind through the processing of finding the right key to decipher a message at a speed no human could match. There was little point to giving the U-Boats new abilities to evade detection if the Allies knew exactly where they were. The U-Boats at the end of 1942 were apt to run into strategically placed mines, hunting groups, or patrol aircraft, at which point how well equipped the U-Boat was or the skills of its crew were rendered moot [8].

Few in Berlin would say it out loud, but the sense was growing in some quarter that even the hopes for some sort of stalemate and a negotiated peace had gone. The Allies were beginning to talk in terms of unconditional surrender by the Reich, and it no longer seemed far-fetched that they could impose such terms. Some saw this as a reason to fight even harder, convinced that they would not survive if the Nazi regime fell. Others were beginning to wonder if the removal of Hitler himself might open the way to a more lenient peace from the Allies, or at the very least secure their own personal survival. Such thoughts were a long way from being turned into concrete plans, however. It would take more setbacks and military disaster in 1943 before the desire for self-preservation lead to a serious effort to overthrow Adolf Hitler [9].

[1] That is thing that happened in OTL, the fake message from Stalingrad was just the most obvious lie in a pure propaganda exercise.

[2] The Heer of 1942-43 is starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for replacement manpower. Already starting to take younger and older men into their ranks and steadily losing experience Officers and NCOs.

[3] The Pas De Calais is one of the priority areas, Normandy is not.

[4] The Allied bombing campaign will really start to take off in 1943.

[5] Goering is going to survive, though his standing is rather diminished. He is still utterly loyal to Hitler, which counts for more than competence.

[6] So this very bad month for the U-Boats is happening now rather than in the spring of 1943, and part of it is just luck and some particularly aggressive escorts getting kills.

[7] And most of them will not be coming back sooner or later.

[8] Technical fixes just are not going to cut it for the Kriegsmarine, they need far more U-Boats, and they are not going to get them.

[9] Yeah they are not going to try and overthrow Hitler out of any noble motives.

Garrison · Jun 23, 2022

31st December 1942 – Britain - The End of the Beginning

The war that consumed all of Britain’s energies had taken a very different course from that which anyone in September of 1938 had envisioned. Those who thought it could be avoided had naturally been the most bitterly disappointed of all, but by and large they had recognized the necessity of opposing a Nazi regime that had proven itself brutal and untrustworthy in equal measures. Those among the opponents of war who had been motivated by some sympathy towards the goals of the Nazis had seen their farfetched schemes to remove Britain from ‘The wrong war’ fizzle out in the face of determined opposition and their fundamental misunderstanding of the attitudes of the great mass of the British people. Among those who had believed war was inevitable the pessimists had been proven wrong in their belief that the bomber would get through and that the country would be in ruins in mere weeks. They were though correct in their assessment that only the outside powers, the USA and the USSR, would benefit from another war. The optimists, if one could call those who expected a major war to break war out optimists, had anticipated something akin to the Western Front of World War I and been shocked by the Fall of France. This single stunning blow meant the war had become an existential crisis for Britain, a matter of survival rather than such abstruse matters as the balance of power, and it had finally, shockingly, expanded to a truly global conflict as Italy and then Japan had joined the war. It was hardly surprising the some in the dark days of 1940 had felt Britain had little choice except to make peace, even if meant negotiating with Adolf Hitler. Fortunately for Britain and the world those defeatists had been soundly rebuffed by more determined souls. The price of such resolution had been high, but it was one that the country had proven willing to pay in ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ [1].

By the end of 1942 Britain was no longer exercised by the question of whether the country could survive. The focus had shifted to the question of how victory over the Axis was to be achieved and if/when it was then who would dictate the terms of peace? Would the USSR hold the upper hand, something which seemed unlikely but possible at the end of 1942, or would it be the Western Allies? And if it were the Western Allies would Britain help set those terms as an equal partner or would the USA be able to impose its own vision for a post-war world? The United States was an ally every bit as determined to destroy Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as Britain was, Roosevelt was not however an admirer of the British Empire, and neither were the captains of US industry. The Empire closed off markets and resources that the USA wanted to access, and it was expected that it would use it massive contribution to the British war effort as leverage in opening the Empire to American commerce, something that Churchill and even many of his political opponents were determined to resist [2].

Some in Britain were more concerned with the shape of British society post-war than the shape of Europe or the Empire. The Labour Party had fully committed itself to the war and its representatives in cabinet had proven themselves quite able to govern, despite much pre-war scepticism. They were however still committed to making sweeping changes to the status quo ante that had existed before the war and in this they were finding increasing support from the British public. Whether on the frontlines or the Homefront the ordinary citizens of Britain had made tremendous sacrifices for the war effort, and they expected that would be reflected in the post war settlement, they would not accept the ‘land fit for heroes’ promised after World War I being tossed aside once more when it proved inconvenient a second time. Sacrifices had also been made by the people of the British Empire and they too expected some reward for their efforts, especially in India, where Nationalists and representatives of the British administration would have to thrash out some modus vivendi to move forward [3].

That Britain had the luxury of concerning itself with such matters could be traced back to the decisions taken by Neville Chamberlain after his near-death experience at Hendon. The question that has vexed historians ever since the war is, in the crudest terms, just how much credit does Chamberlain deserve? There is a school of thought that what more sympathetic historians referred to as the Chamberlain Mandate constituted the bare minimum that could have been done and that Chamberlain was forced into even these inadequate measures by circumstances beyond his control, contributed to by a clinical depression brought on by his physical injuries after the crash, as well as the undiagnosed cancer that took his life in 1940. In this interpretation it was only after Chamberlain’s departure that the improvements wrought in the British military were finally put to good use, leading to the victories in Crete, Libya, and Malaya. This is usually referred to as the ‘Churchillian’ interpretation of events, with Churchill’s own history of the war being far from flattering to Chamberlain and his rearmament efforts.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are those who argue that the mandate made all the difference in Britain’s survival in the early years of the war. In this interpretation without the rearmament and training efforts made in 1938 and 1939 the critical men and equipment that reinforced the BEF in 1940 would not have been available, thus France would probably have fallen sooner, and with the Wehrmacht on the French coast in June or July the chances of a German invasion increased exponentially. The threat alone would have immeasurably strengthened the hand of those who wanted to seek terms from Germany and likely would have forced the government to make peace, with grave consequences for the USSR and probably leaving the USA isolated in a world dominated by the Third Reich and its Axis partners [4].

What both these interpretations miss is that Britain enjoyed a considerable amount of good fortune in the progression of the war between 1939 and 1942, however absurd that might have seemed to those in Britain who lived through the setbacks of those years. Had the Germans embraced the Manstein Sweep in May rather than July and achieved the same level of success it did, something which most Churchillian historians deny is possible, then Britain would at the very least have had to commit far more resources to the defence of the British mainland, which would in turn have encouraged the Italians and the Japanese to act [5].

It is possible to go round and round in circles arguing the merits of the different scenarios, and it is best to focus on the practical situation the British faced at the end of 1942. The government still had to balance the needs of pushing the Japanese back to their home islands against what was still the key priority, the defeat of Nazi Germany. The arguments over the best strategy to achieve the latter had finally coalesced into Operation Millennium, the overarching plan for the invasion of Normandy. Everything would now build to the D-Day landings in the Summer of 1943, though not without a few diversions along the way.

As Operation Jubilee had amply demonstrate improved tactics and weapons would be needed to take and hold a bridgehead in Normandy. The A24 Churchill and the A27 Centaur would provide the armoured spearhead and the Gloster Comet would usher in the jet age, but the key to victory would lie in the less glamourous needs of logistics and transportation. A vast flotilla of landing craft would have to be built, and a mass of supplies and equipment to be carried aboard them would have to be stockpiled. At the end of 1942 these existed mostly on paper, but as the new year opened those plans would be translated into steel, oil and flesh as a great army was assembled in Southern England and aimed at the beaches of Normandy [6].

The Japanese threat would not be ignored as this build-up went ahead. Any invasion of Japan lay far over the horizon at the end of 1942, so the objective for 1943 was to strangle their war machine, cutting it off from the resources of the territories it had conquered in 1941 and destroying its merchant marine, essentially the same plan that Germany had sought to carry out against Britain, but it would be executed out on a scale that Doenitz and his U-Boats had never come close to achieving in the Atlantic. US Navy and Royal Navy submarines would prowl the Pacific in ever greater numbers as the USA pressed on with its island-hopping campaign and the British would push the IJA ever further back in South East Asia, establishing bases from which Allied strategic bomber could reach out and deliver on the warning delivered by the Doolittle Raid, that the cities of Japan were not beyond the reach of the Allies [7].

All of this would come at a great cost, both in resources and lives, but there was no turning back now for the British and their allies, they would see the war through to a victorious end, in the east and the west [8].

[1] So this is the finale of Munich Shuffle, and an overview of where Britain stands, and where its going in 1943 and 1944.

[2] So yes Anglo-American politics is going to get a little rougher in 1943, not a falling out as much as an attempt by the British to secure a larger say in the way the peace is made. Much will of course depend on just how long the war in Europe lasts and where the armies from the East and West meet…

[3] So yes Labour is still making gains politically even if they won’t appear at the ballot box for some time and as for India, well things will be different.

[4] So Chamberlain either did nearly nothing or he saved Britain, anyone suggesting something like OTL would be laughed at by serious historians.

[5] There have been more than a few butterflies ITTL, however I have tried to limit them to small singular events impacting individuals and the larger changes I have tried to make plausible as the consequences of earlier decisions, how well I have succeeded is up to the reader to decide.

[6] And no surprise that much of the emphasis in the 1943 parts of Millennium Shuffle will be on the build-up, execution, and aftermath of D-Day.

[7] The Dutch East Indies and Thailand will also have their own series of updates, and the former already exists in draft form in fact.

[8] And with that we come to the conclusion of what has easily been the largest project I’ve undertaken on AH.com to date, though of course there is much more to come.

Garrison · Jul 2, 2022

Addendum I – Rudolf Hess

For almost fifteen years there was no great mystery surrounding the fate of Rudolf Hess. On the morning of the 13th of May 1941 there was a solemn announcement broadcast across the Reich stating that that Deputy Fuhrer Hess had been flying to Berlin in his personal plane and had been killed when it crashed enroute. Naturally there was speculation in Britain and the USA that Hess might have been executed for some offence against Hitler, but in the absence of hard information this fizzled out as events in the Soviet Union captured everyone’s attention and those who knew the truth kept silent, content to let the truth remain hidden. After the war there were accounts from inside the fallen Reich that claimed that Hess had not died crashed in Germany. While he had indeed taken off in his plane, a modified Bf 110, he had simply disappeared after that, and Hitler had decided to keep this minor mystery from the public in case it affected morale. The common opinion of these German sources was that he had been shot down, either deliberately by the RAF or accidentally by the Luftwaffe, or that he gotten lost and crashed unnoticed into some deep body of water.

Given that most of these stories came from men facing war crimes trials they weren’t given much attention and it was not until 1954 that it was finally revealed that Hess had not crashed in Germany lake but in Scotland, while undertaking a personal mission to make peace with the British. On the morning of the 11th of May a platoon of soldiers were dispatched to investigate a report that a plane had crashed during the night. Since no RAF flights had been scheduled it was assumed it was German, but a lone aircraft in a rather isolated spot was not considered a critical priority. After several hours of searching the platoon finally located the shattered wreckage. The pilot was found still strapped into the remains of the cockpit and a briefcase was found nearby. It was battered and scorched and yet still largely intact. When the corporal in charge of the platoon opened it. he discovered a cache of documents which were swiftly passed up the chain of command and on the 12th of May the orders came back down to suppress the entire incident. The soldiers of the platoon, the mortuary attendants at the funeral home where the body had been taken, and anyone else who might have heard anything about the incident were instructed in no uncertain terms that they were to never discuss the matter and that officially it had never happened.

The pilot was of course Rudolf Hess and the documents he carried related to a peace proposal that he had apparently intended to deliver to a Scottish aristocrat, who was quite bemused when he found himself being interviewed by MI5 as to why Hess might think he was a suitable candidate to contact. Given the potential political impact if this event became public it was little wonder that Churchill ordered the entire thing to be covered up, and it continued to be supressed until some rather lurid theories began to circulate, intended to raise the profile of a rather lurid book about missing Nazis, suggested Hess had escaped to Latin America, possibly with the collusion of the British in exchange for valuable intelligence about the workings of the Nazi regime. To kill off these scurrilous stories the authorities decided to reveal the truth, only to provoke a welter of further fevered speculation. Was Hess’ mission sanctioned by Hitler or was he acting on his initiative? Had he simply crashed, or had he been shot down? Perhaps Churchill had learned of the mission and ordered his plane to be intercepted? Most of those who might have answered these questions were either already dead or simply refused to discuss the matter, including Churchill himself. The field was thus left clear for conspiracies theories to thrive, and to this day some argue that it wasn’t Hess who crashed at all, and he did indeed live out his life somewhere in Argentina, probably in the company of Adolf Hitler and Martin Bormann.

Garrison · Jul 9, 2022

Addendum II – Chamberlain – MS vs. OTL

This is an out of the TL post because given how much he featured in the early part of the TL the big question regarding Chamberlain is how does his reputation in the MS world stack up against his reputation IOTL? First thing to say is I am not a fan of Chamberlain and early plans for Munich Shuffle envisioned just bumping him off, until I was persuaded in various discussions that his most likely replacements would have been worse, likely to continue trying to appease Hitler after Nazis entered Prague and not embracing the limited efforts to prepare that were taken in the spring of 1939. Trying to write a rather more sympathetic view of Chamberlain in Munich Shuffle was a challenge at times, but it might be expected that the fact of the Munich Agreement being explicitly a play for time would enhance his reputation. I suspect things would be far more complicated than that, however. Certainly, you will have those who will talk enthusiastically about the Chamberlain Mandate saving Britain, and it certainly did help the BEF in 1940 as they were able to hold a larger perimeter and get more of their heavy equipment out of France. It also meant a quicker deployment of better aircraft for the RAF, and better weapons such as the 20mm cannon, and the Royal navy got Escort Carriers sooner than OTL, a major boost in battle of the Atlantic. The thing is that a lot of the improvement in British performance came from the ‘shuffle’ aspect of the TL, the butterfly effect changing the timing of certain events, such as the Italians attacking Egypt later than OTL, preventing the dispatch of British troops to Greece and meaning that Barbarossa was at its height when the Italians got into trouble, so the British get to finish them off with minimal German intervention.

Still the fact that Chamberlain did increase military spending at the same time as signing the Munich Agreement does give his defenders more to work with, however it also allows for another interpretation to take hold besides ‘he saved Britain’ and ‘he made war inevitable’. This other interpretation, which I would imagine is popular in France in particular, is that far from being a well-meaning man out of his depth, naively believing that he could achieve peace with Hitler, Chamberlain was a cold ruthless political manipulator, playing the European powers off against one another by means of making concession to Germany via appeasement, and willing to betray any ally if it served the British interest. Germany was allowed to rearm knowing that it would seek revenge against France and then the sudden rapid build-up of British rearmament was designed to position the country as arbiter of peace in Europe after a protracted conflict between France and Germany. This has echoes of British plans in WWI and of course of Stalin’s hopes when he signed the M-R Pact. So in the MSTL Chamberlain may well be seen not as a fool or a saviour but in certain quarters as the embodiment of ‘perfidious Albion’ and a master schemer, with Munich a byword for cold blooded political calculation.

Garrison · Jul 16, 2022

III – Spain

Spanish neutrality during the war was very much a variable rather than a constant. General Franco’s sympathies undeniably lay with the Axis, which did not mean that he entertained any of Hitler’s ideas about the weakness and decadence of the Americans, or that the British would ‘come to their senses’ and make peace. This was why despite the efforts of Hitler and Himmler Franco resisted efforts to have Spain join the Axis, even at the height of Germany’s successes in 1940. That the Reich had clearly abandoned any hope of mounting an invasion of Britain in September of 1940 further reinforced Franco’s determination to remain neutral. That the Germans had abandoned plans for Operation Sealion was not mere supposition on Franco’s part, he was receiving advice from Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr. In theory Canaris was charged with using his relationship with Franco to persuade the dictator of Spain to enlist in the Axis, in practice he used his connections to furnish Franco with accurate information about the strategic situation, since Canaris was an ardent opponent of Hitler and the Nazi regime he was happy to affirm Franco’s instinct to remain neutral.

Franco’s stance on axis membership was validated in 1941 by the series of setbacks suffered by the Axis in the Mediterranean and North Africa. He shrewdly observed that the only successes for the Axis had come in Greece and Yugoslavia, places where the Wehrmacht had intervened, and the British had declined to respond in kind with boots on the ground. Wherever the Axis forces, particularly the Italians, clashed directly with the British things had gone badly for them. ‘I will reconsider my position when there is a Swastika over Alexandria’ he allegedly told one member of his personal staff in response to yet another effort to persuade him to join the war and attack Gibraltar. The rapid Wehrmacht advance in the USSR elicited no change in Franco’s stance, he was far more focused on the collapse of the Italian position in North Africa, followed by the capitulation of the Vichy colonies. After all, with the Mediterranean and North Africa firmly under British control there was little to nothing Spain could do about it if the British felt motivated to occupy Ceuta and the other Spanish controlled islands off the coast of Morocco, or the Canary Islands for that matter. There was also the matter of food imports, which Spain was heavily dependent on, all of which came from Allied controlled sources. There was no prospect of the Axis being able to make up the food deficit that would follow if the Allies added Spain to their embargo and there seemed no prospect of Spain gaining any material benefit from entering the war.

Spain nonetheless did provide valuable assistance to the Axis, acting as a conduit through which certain critical raw materials could be purchased and shipped to Germany, bypassing the blockade. They also provided intelligence information to the Axis, which backfired spectacularly prior to the invasion of Sicily thanks to Operation Mincemeat, and there were persistent claims that U-Boats were using the Canary Islands for resupply and refuelling, as well as reports that German spies operating out of the island were relaying information about Allied shipping movements. It was these allegations that came close to provoking the Allies into taking action against Spain in 1942. In the aftermath of the invasion of Sicily it was made clear to Franco through diplomatic channels that any further assistance to Germany would see the Allies revoke their recognition of Spain’s neutrality, with all the consequences that would flow from that. Franco made the only possible response in the circumstances, he shut down the limited support for U-Boat operations from the Canary Islands, which had little practical effect on Kriegsmarine operations given that the U-Boats had largely been forced out of the region by the Allies. He also throttled back, but did not entirely stop, the flow of raw materials passing through Spanish ports enroute to Germany.

Hitler was far from pleased with these actions and naturally his thoughts turned to an occupation of Spain. Fortunately for the Spanish, and for the Wehrmacht, the commitment to Case Blue and the occupation of Italy meant that Hitler was persuaded that the time was not right for such an operation, and that Franco would doubtless have a change of heart when the strategic situation took a turn for the better. Franco survived this delicate balancing act and went on to be the only one of the Fascist dictators to die in bed of old age, with Spain swiftly returning to democracy after his death.

Garrison · Jul 23, 2022

IV - Erwin Rommel

General Erwin Rommel was the commander of the 7th Panzer Division in 1940 and had the unwanted distinction of being the most senior German officer captured by the Allies prior to 1942. Rommel was an aggressive, driven commander, or simply a reckless one with no regard for the finer points of operational strategy such as logistics depending on which of his former comrades’ you chose to ask. In the days prior to his capture his tanks had been reduced to refuelling at civilian petrol stations as the 7th had far outrun their own supply lines, as well as their infantry support. This though reflected the general limitations of the Heer’s support infrastructure rather than any personal traits of Rommel. Nonetheless the 7th Panzer outrunning its infantry played a large part in the capture of Rommel at Arras, providing the high point of the military careers not only of the tank crews involved but arguably of the Covenanter tank itself. To this day the Covenanter on display at the Bovington Tank Museum is painted as the vehicle on which Rommel was carried into captivity, along with a display of photos taken after Rommel’s return to British lines.

Rommel’s meteoric rise to command the 7th Panzer was largely due to his close personal association with Hitler, including commanding his bodyguard at one point during the early years of the Reich. The fact that he remained a personal favourite of Hitler explains why German propaganda insisted that Rommel had been killed rather than captured, dying in a suitably heroic manner for the Fatherland. Picture of Rommel with British officers that appeared in US newspapers and other neutral sources were completely censored and even formal notifications from the British as to his POW status were buried, leaving Rommel’s family uncertain of his fate until the end of the war.

Rommel’s relationship with Hitler, as well as his working knowledge of German strategy and doctrine, naturally led to considerable British efforts to persuade him to co-operate with interrogators, mostly by offers of a far more comfortable incarceration than that enjoyed by ordinary German POWs, though this carrot was balanced by the stick of suggestions that a refusal to co-operate could see him shipped off to a camp somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. Throughout the remainder of 1940 Rommel resisted the blandishments and veiled threats of his captors, still believing that after the fall of France Britain would soon either make peace or be invaded and occupied. Transcripts of conversations he had with his interrogators and other German officers indicate he was confident that their roles would soon be reversed and that he retained his faith in Hitler and the ultimate superiority of the Wehrmacht. It was not until the autumn of 1941, with the prospects of repatriation and German victory receding into the distance, that Rommel began to offer some co-operation with the British. Though he still refused to discuss military matters he did provide insights into Hitler and his inner circle. This suited the British initially, though they soon began to realize that much of what Rommel had to be taken with more than a grain of salt as his view of Hitler skewed towards idolatry, while the war was still going well for Germany at least.

By the end of 1942 Rommel was attempting to rewrite his own history, suggesting that he had supported Hitler out of pragmatism and that if he had still been in Germany he would have sided with those who sought to remove the Fuhrer, which was an easy claim to make when one was residing in a manor house in the English countryside rather than in Berlin or on the front lines in the USSR. At the end of the war Rommel was repatriated and proceeded to join many other surviving senior German officers in writing a memoir of his experiences, and like so many of the others his biography not very subtly argued that the fate of the Third Reich might have been different if he had been in a position to shape German strategy. This generated a war of words with some of his former comrades in arms, which boosted their book sales while providing little real insight to the conduct of the Nazi war machine. Rommel was given a role in the newly formed Bundeswehr, but his unpopularity with many of the senior officers of the new German army meant his career stalled and he retired in 1955.

Rommel dabbled in German politics though the latter half of the 1950s, however his personal closeness with Hitler and his later co-operation with the British meant he that could find no party that was willing to put him up as a serious candidate and there were rumours that he even flirted with neo-Nazi elements, though little in the way of hard evidence of such contacts was ever found. Rommel died quietly in 1960, succumbing to a heart attack and being buried in a family plot with only his children and a few old comrades from the 7th Panzer in attendance. That he has not been entirely forgotten in the decades since his death is down to the fact that his efforts to portray himself as the man who might have won the war for Germany became far more popular posthumously than they ever had while he was alive, perhaps because unlike so many of his contemporaries he never had the opportunity to demonstrate his flaws and limitations when the war turned decisively against Germany.

Garrison · Jul 31, 2022

V – France – MS vs. OTL

In a direct comparison with OTL France did rather better during the battles of 1940, fighting on for the better part of four months rather six weeks. The question is does that make a difference to how the French performance in the first year of the war is perceived in the Munich Shuffle universe relative to the real history? My own take on it is that they probably come off worse overall. In OTL they were taken by surprise by the German strike through the Ardennes and never had a chance to recover their balance, not helped by the chronic issues of the French High Command. Sickle Cut was a massive gamble and courtesy of the Mechlin incident the French apparently had all their beliefs about how the attack would be carried out confirmed, so there was a rationale for dismissing the idea of a major attack through the Ardennes. In the Munich Shuffle world on the other hand the French had plenty of time to consider their next move and given the balance of forces among the Allies the decisions did rest with the French ultimately. The Allies had contained the initial German attack in the MS TL, only to then sit there from May to July 1940 without taking any offensive action, allowing themselves to be outflanked and cut off by the Manstein Sweep when Hitler decided to take the gamble.

Overall then some historians will almost inevitably see the French High Command as complacent and almost criminally negligent in the discharge of their duties. The question is how fair is my representation of the French reaction to the situation the find themselves in during the alternate summer of 1940? Obviously, there was an element of narrative choice at work, I simply didn’t want to cut off the bulk of the rest of the events in the war, which a better French response, in either 1940, would certainly have led to. The Germans probably should have been defeated in 1940, but that’s a TL for someone else to write. That being said I think the strategy that Gamelin pursues after containing the Germans is consistent with what we know of French plans for defeating the Wehrmacht in the event they struck west. The essence of Gamelin’s plan was to halt any German offensive before it reached French soil and then hold them in place while German resources ran down and the Entente’s built up, the latter ideally achieved with the help of the USA. In some respect they wanted a rerun of the Hundred Days in 1918, intending to launch a series of offensive moves against an exhausted and overextended army and forcing them to capitulate, all the while minimizing French casualties, which would inevitably be high in any sort of premature, overambitious offensive, with the costly Nivelle offensive of 1917 that provoked mutiny in the French army doubtless looming large in Gamelin’s mind.

Would a different commander have done better? Maybe, but Weygand seems to have been rather fragile mentally and I’m not at all sure he would have been any more willing to gamble the lives of French soldiers on a quick offensive in June 1940 than Gamelin, whatever certain British generals might have called for. In the end I think that the French response to the situation in 1940 that I created is a reasonable guess as to what would have happened. The reputation of the French military is still probably going to be better than that of the Italians, though I admit that is a very low bar to clear.

Garrison · Aug 9, 2022

VI – Britain’s Best General?

In the inevitable discussions of who was the best British General, especially in the period between 1939 and 1942, certain figures tend to be ignored, Gort or Alanbrooke’s contributions are usually overlooked in favour of those Generals who achieved major victories in the field, which means the discussions tend to centre around William Slim, Bernard Law Montgomery, and of course Richard O’Connor. Those argue in favour of Slim as they ‘greatest ‘ tend to centre on his achieving so much in South East Asia with relatively limited resources compared to his counterparts elsewhere. His successful counteroffensive that drove into Thailand during Operation Buttermere was carried out with forces that were far thinner on manpower and heavy weapons than those commanded by Montgomery and still achieved impressive gains against the Japanese. The inevitable counterpoint to this is that it was Montgomery’s forces in Malaya that did the ‘heavy lifting’ and that Slim’s successes were simply in a supporting role while Montgomery faced the primary axis of the Japanese advance. The fact that the Burma front might have been secondary to both the Japanese and the British does not diminish the skill Slim showed in taking troops, including troops only recently raised in Burma and distinctly lacking in experience and morale, and turning them into an effective fighting force that drew the Japanese into a trap that destroyed them when they attacked into Burma. This opened the way for the drive into Thailand during Operation Buttermere and substantially weakened the Japanese position, leaving them vulnerable to the British offensives in 1943.

In Malaya it is arguable that Montgomery faced even more of an uphill task than Slim, taking a command that was poorly organized and fractured by disputes between the British, the Australians, and the local civilian administration, and pulling it together in to a force that held off the initial Japanese assaults and before reclaiming the initiative and beginning the series of campaigns that drove them out of South East Asia. Montgomery’s energy and meticulous planning can hardly be denied, though some of the credit for the early planning and strategy undoubtedly belongs to General Percival, and the major complaints about Montgomery centre on the size of his ego rather than his strategic skills. Certainly, Montgomery did engage with the press in a way that some of his counterparts didn’t and he wasn’t afraid to draw attention to himself, this however has to be placed in the context of the forces in Malaya being treated as the poor relations when he arrived and the need to extract more support from Britain to prepare the defence of the country, and indeed to continue operations in the face of the constant demands of operations in the Mediterranean and the Northwest Europe. However egotistical Montgomery might have been it was put to good use in securing the victories that prevented the British being thrown out of Malaya and Burma, with potentially disastrous consequences for the conduct of the Pacific War.

Richard O’Connor may not have sought out publicity in the way that Montgomery did, but his victories in North Africa inevitably brought him into the public eye as they offered the first successes the nation had enjoyed since the dark days of 1940. He further enhanced his reputation in Sicily, where he had overall command of the British Corps involved as one of Harold Alexander’s deputies, a success which put him line for an even more important role in 1943. That O’Connor had to contend with the Wehrmacht and the SS is often seen as a distinct plus for his credentials as the best British Generals, since after all Slim and Montgomery ‘only’ had to face the Japanese. O’Connor himself rejected such ideas, correctly asserting that the Japanese were a dangerous and determined opponent who had to be respected for their determination and fighting spirit.

None of the above provides a clear answer to the question of who was the best British General? That is because it is a meaningless question in the context of Slim, Montgomery, and O’Connor. The fact is that each of them made a substantial contribution to advancing the British cause of defeating the Axis and if anyone of them had been rendered unavailable it would have been a huge blow to the British and might have seen the war in the Middle East and South East Asia become far more protracted and costly, with inevitable consequences for China, India, and the liberation of Europe. In short Britain was eminently fortunate to have the right men in the right place at the right time.

Garrison · Aug 16, 2022

VII – Italy – MS vs OTL

It’s hard to imagine that OTL Italy was in anyway lucky given the military catastrophes they suffered IOTL but as we’ve seen in the MS universe things could have gone a lot worse. Their good fortune was that the British thought the job was all but done in 1941 and that sending troops to Greece was not going to create any problems, since the Afrika Korps couldn’t possibly take to the field before the summer. That decision meant that Italy would stay in the fight in North Africa for the next two years, drawing off British manpower that could have been put to use elsewhere and at least allowing Mussolini to maintain the illusion that there might be a victory to be had for Italy. In the MS universe the Italian hesitation over attacking Egypt robbed them of that, though it could be argued that it saved a lot if Italian lives that would have been wasted over the next two years, though events after 1942 may offset that somewhat.

In the MS universe the weaknesses of the Italian military and political leadership were exposed even more rapidly than in OTL, and it almost certainly came as something of a shock in both realities to realise just how poor the Italian Army was. Back in the mid-1930s it was Italy that was seen as the leading Fascist nation and one whose support Germany had to court. Mussolini played a major role in bringing about the Munich conference, and they had displayed their ruthlessness in Ethiopia. Hardly surprising then that for a little while that Hitler’s Germany was seen as the ‘reasonable’ dictatorship. In Munich Shuffle the post war view of Italy circa 1942 is basically going to be even greater derision than OTL, the industrial and political factors that wrecked any possibility of Italian success are in full force and with the British avoiding a couple of serious mistakes they’ve essentially brought Italy to a state of collapse in less than two years of war and the only reason they aren’t advancing on Rome is that they decided their forces were better deployed elsewhere.

The German intervention in Italy is even more fraught than OTL and with the Allies notably failing to invade many in Italy are questioning who is actually the bigger threat, their enemies or their allies? Italy is becoming ever more restless as the Germans extend their influence and impose their rules, and it won’t take much to turn that into open conflict.

Garrison · Aug 31, 2022

Millennium Shuffle 1943-1945

1st January 1943 – The Turning of the Tide – Part I – Japan & Italy

By the start of 1943 whatever the propaganda emanating from Tokyo and Berlin might claim about how victory would still be theirs so long as the people were willing to give their all to the war effort it was obvious to many that recent events were no mere temporary setbacks, the war had firmly turned against the Axis partners. Japanese forces were being slowly pushed back in the Pacific and South East Asia and the powerful carrier force which had struck the shocking blow at Pearl Harbor that opened the Pacific war was gone and could not be replaced by Japanese shipyards, indeed Japanese industry as a whole was struggling in the face of shortages of fuel and raw materials. Their Germans allies could offer little in the way of aid. A trickle of critical raw materials was transported between the two nations courtesy of submarines making the long hazardous journey from Europe to Japan and back and the missions also carried technical blueprints and samples of the latest equipment being put into service. The Germans were largely dismissive of Japanese technology, but the Japanese did take inspiration from some of the information provided, especially jet and rocket technology. Despite what some have claimed the number of instances where the Japanese simply copied a German design outright were rare [1].

Few details of the battles being fought by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy reached the Japanese public, or at least few accurate ones. With Japan’s defeats happening in far flung corners of Asia and the Pacific and no access to alternative accounts of the progress of the war the Imperial authorities retained a much tighter grip on the flow of information than even their counterparts in Berlin. And yet the many citizens involved in war industries, especially the naval shipyards of the Home Islands, and those who received the notices that their sons or husbands had fallen in battle could hardly help but see the increasingly grim situation Japan faced {2].

The official propaganda focused on sending the message that the sacrifices of the Japanese soldiers across the Pacific were guaranteeing Japanese victory, so long as their sacrifices were matched by those made on the home front. This meant yet more deprivations for the Japanese citizenry, already struggling with inadequate supplies of basic necessities as the military got first priority for what was available and expedients such as using rice to make alcohol that could be used to supplement their dwindling fuel stocks were also put into practice, meaning even less food for the civilian population. The great lie at the heart of this propaganda was that even if such sacrifices could have replenished the ranks of the Japanese Army and Navy and gotten Japanese war factories running at full capacity it would have made little difference to Japan’s situation. Raw recruits were no substitute for the experienced sailors, pilots, and soldiers lost during the first year of the war in the Pacific, with the effects on the quality of Japanese naval aviation being especially acute. Likewise putting out a few more tanks, aircraft, and warships would do little in the face of the tidal wave of US production that threatened to drown Japan, even worse new equipment coming out of US factories was addressing the deficiencies that had been identified during the battles of 1942 [3].

The much vaunted Zero fighter was no longer a mystery to the Allies after crashed examples had been repaired and tested. They knew its weaknesses, particularly the fact that so much of its vaunted agility came from being extraordinarily light, lacking the armour and self-sealing tanks that the Allied air forces regarded as a basic requirement for their fighter. An entire new class of Fleet Carrier, the Essex was due to come into service in 1943 as well as new classes of Escort Carrier. In the same time frame the Japanese could expect to commission a single carrier to replenish their losses, and replacing their lost air groups was an even bigger challenge. Ways of compensating for this degradation in the quality of their air and naval power were being discussed, and it wouldn’t take long before individual acts of sacrifice committed in the name of honour would be converted into a doctrine that wholeheartedly embraced suicide tactics [4].

The closest thing to a realistic strategy being discussed in Tokyo was to fight a series of battles that cost the lives of so many enemy soldiers that the Allies would grow weary of the war and seek to end it on terms that, even if the fell short of Japan’s ambitions at the start of the war, would at least preserve the integrity of the Japanese Home Islands and retaining the position of the emperor. How many Japanese lives would be lost to achieve even this limited goal was barely even considered, likewise the probability that the USA in particular would accept anything less than the complete crushing of Japan, given their powerful desire to avenge the ‘sneak attack’ at Pearl Harbor, was not a topic for discussion among the Japanese leadership [5]. Such was the atmosphere in Tokyo that even these conservative war aims were fiercely opposed, as there were still prominent figures clinging to the idea that one decisive battle could still turn the tide and see Japan being the one to set the terms of peace. For the likes of Tojo and Yamamoto it was not a matter of realism versus delusions, simply a matter of differing degrees of self-deception.

The only way that Italy could claim to be in a better position than Japan was that no one still entertained any illusions that Italy could win the war, and many doubted the nation could even survive. Italy was still a member of the Axis and it was still a combatant, though at this point it would be hard to find anyone bar a few diehard Fascists who were happy about that. Italian troops remained in the Balkans, fighting against the various partisan groups that had sprung up and guarding the coasts against Allied commando raids, with Crete acting as staging ground for all sorts of Allied ‘mischief’. The army was also deeply involved in preparing for the defence of Italy, continuing the plans originally laid out by the Ciano government to create a series of fortified positions covering the ports and beaches that might be used by the Allies as landing zones, which was now being supplemented by further defensive lines further inland, though work on any such defences facing north had naturally ceased. The Regia Aeronautica was still occasionally bombing Crete and attacking shipping in the waters around the island, with intermittent support from the Luftwaffe and They were likewise tasked with intercepting Allied bombing raids on targets in Italy itself as well as Greece and elsewhere in the Balkans, with the Germans being particularly eager to stop any raids that might be directed against the Ploesti oilfields. A casual inspection of the situation might then lead one to imagine than nothing much had changed after the German intervention. While this was certainly the public position of the Ciano government it was far from the truth, and no amount of propaganda could keep the Italian people from realizing that they were now to all intents and purposes an occupied nation, with the added burden of being expected to keep their armed forces in the field [6].

One of the most tangible signs that Italy was no longer being treated as an ally was the logistical support that Italy was required to provide to the German forces in the country. The Wehrmacht forces stood at around ten divisions by 1943, backed up by Luftwaffe bomber and fighter squadrons, all of whom the Italians were expected to provide them with food, fuel, and other supplies, and to do so even at the expense of their own armed forces. The issue was made far worse by the fact that the demands made by the Germans could have generously supplied thirty or forty divisions, and it was no secret that most of the supplies made their way to Wehrmacht forces in France or on the Eastern Front. Providing these supplies was a significant burden to the Italians, especially as industry and agriculture were being significantly impacted by the demands for labour and construction materials imposed by the construction of the defensive positions. The Germans magnanimously agreed slave labour from Eastern Europe, though the Italian government was expected to pay for such labour in the same way that German companies were, and at a considerably higher price than that charged by the SS to German industry for access to concentration camp labour. The Germans made it clear they would be happy to offset Italy’s new debts by taking a controlling interest in some of the most notable Italian companies, with FIAT being top of their shopping list. Ciano deployed his best diplomatic efforts to fend off these suggestions, but it could only a matter of time before Italian industry was reduced to mere subsidiaries of the most prominent German conglomerates [7].

If the Army and the Air Force had survived the German intervention had been a deathblow for the remaining surface fleet of the Regia Marina. They had been largely confined to port even before Operation Alaric and now even the idea of maintaining a fleet in being had been abandoned. The resources needed to keep the fleet running, especially fuel, could be put to better use elsewhere, and this was not simply the opinion of the Germans, the Italian Army and the Ciano government largely agreed with this decision and the guns of the remaining warships of the Regia Marina would be demounted and used in shore emplacements. The remaining Italian submarine forces would remain in action, for as long as they survived in hostile waters, but even this would be hampered by fuel supply issues [8].

As stated, the Italian Army remained in the field, this did not mean though that it had not suffered after the intervention. Logistical support for the Italian forces had always been poor and in the winter of 1942-43 it nearly broke down altogether. Troops were in some cases reduced to begging for food, if they happened to be stationed in Italy. In Greece and Yugoslavia, they simply seized whatever they could at gun point, not that there was all that much to take after eighteen months of Italian occupation. Desertion was an increasing problem in Italy and while most soldiers who fled ditched their uniforms many kept their weapons and joined one of the nascent partisan groups, with many making a sudden conversion from Fascism to Communism [9].

Whatever deprivations might have been faced by Italian soldiers and even the luckless slave labourers it was nothing compared to the fate of those Italian Jews who couldn’t flee or hide. They were now subjected to being rounded up and deported to the Nazis death camps and much of this round up was carried out by the Italian authorities, not the SS or the Wehrmacht as some Italians claimed later and attempts to pretend that anyone believed that the Jews were being detained or resettled are flatly contradicted by those records and reports that survived the attempts to burn them when the war ended. Ciano and many of the senior military leaders were perfectly aware of the Holocaust, whether they colluded because they agreed with the goal of destroying the Jews or simply from fear of the consequences of opposition varied from person to person [10].

The situation in Italy was clearly miserable and yet the Ciano government knew it could be worse, certainly for them personally. There was ongoing anxiety about an Allied invasion and a strong belief that as burdensome as the Wehrmacht presence might be it was at least acting as a deterrent to the Allies who would hopefully turn their attention elsewhere. By 1943 then the ambitions of the Italian government had been reduced to simply avoiding Italy becoming a battleground, and even this was dependent on forces beyond their control [11].

[1] The Kikka jet fighter of OTL was certainly inspired by the ME 262 but the visual similarities were just a product of the limitations of designing a twin engine jet fighter with the technology available. And their version of a flying bomb was a very different beast, mainly of course because it was manned.

[2] However hard the Japanese government clamps down on information it’s kind of difficult to hide the fact that some very large warships never come into port anymore, or how your loved one serving on the frontline never sends letters home anymore.

[3] So for those in Washington calling for a higher priority for the Pacific it’s a good news bad news situation. The stronger Allied performance in the Pacific and SEA makes it easier for them to lobby for a bigger share of US military output, but the plans for full invasion of Europe in 1943 creates pressure in the other direction. Overall, there will be more men and equipment for the Pacific than IOTL, but still less than they want.

[4] The Japanese are going down that road much faster than OTL because of course things are getting worse for them faster.

[5] The sort of people who tried to stage a coup to stop the surrender in our 1945 are still prevalent in Tokyo.

[6] With friends like these…

[7] The Nazis behaved very oddly when it came to taking over control of companies in the west, taking what be generously seen as a legal approach, and being rebuffed on multiple occasions.

[8] The surface fleet didn’t dare take to sea and of course the Germans aren’t convinced that some warship at sea might not just sail to an Allied port and raise the white flag.

[9] These are the sort of men who are drawn to the extremes, so not surprising that when one fails them they turn to another.

[10] The Allies staying out of Italy might end the war sooner by focusing on North-western Europe but there is a price for that plan.

[11] It could be worse, and it will be in due course…

Garrison · Sep 3, 2022

1st January 1943 – The Turning of the Tide – Part II – Germany

In Germany Hitler’s loudly stated view was that Germany’s destiny was still in its own hands and victory could still be won if the country dedicated itself to ‘total war’. If few in the Wehrmacht shared this bombastic view, there was still a general feeling that Germany could emerge from the war if not wholly victorious then at least with its borders intact and perhaps even retaining some of its territorial gains and most importantly perhaps without those had served the Reich facing any consequences for the brutality with which they had conducted themselves before and during the war. Achieving this would almost certainly mean splitting their enemies apart, persuading either the Western Allies or the USSR to make a separate peace with Germany and leaving the other side with little choice but to follow suit or face continuing what was now an unwinnable war. This did not seem such a farfetched idea in January of 1943, certainly 6th army was trapped in Stalingrad and seemed doomed to destruction, but the USSR had already paid a terrible price for its few victories and to date not one British or American solider had set foot in mainland Europe. It was no great secret that Stalin was deeply unhappy about this fact, and it did not seem impossible that the two sides could be prised apart. On the other hand, it was a source of ongoing bafflement to Adolf Hitler that the British Empire in particular had chosen to align itself with the USSR. Communism was antipathetic to the existence of the British Empire, and he was correct in his belief that many in the British establishment detested Communism and might have been sympathetic to a crusade against the USSR under certain circumstances. Hitler blamed this seemingly contradictory situation on his favourite scapegoats, the Jews. He could not accept that his own actions were responsible for the grim determination of the British to destroy Nazi Germany [1].

While Hitler would have preferred to make peace in the west and give Germany a free hand against the USSR this did not mean that he was completely unwilling to consider resurrecting some version of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, at various times the Nazi government did indeed consider this option, though it seems unlikely that they would ever have seriously committed to such a course of action when it came to the crunch, or that such a peace would have amounted to anything more than a temporary ceasefire. The problem with either of these options was that they all but demanded inflicting some sort of major defeat in either the east or the west. Whether this took the form of repulsing a major amphibious assault by Anglo-American forces somewhere on the continent of Europe or crushing a Soviet counteroffensive no peace could be obtained some sort of success on the battlefield [2].

Finding the means to achieve such a victory was another matter since by this stage of the war the Allies and the USSR could equip and deploy far larger forces than Germany could ever hope to regardless of how far they extended the draft and how hard they worked the slaves the German war industries were increasingly dependent on. It was still taken as a matter of fact among the Wehrmacht that German soldiers were individually superior to those of their enemies, and it seemed to many in Berlin that the key was to provide their superior soldiers with superior weapons that would act as a force multiplier and make victory inevitable, or at least create the breathing space needed for a negotiated peace. The most obvious expression of the philosophy of superior weapons was the recently introduced Panzer VI Tiger tank, and the still in development Panzer V Panther. These tanks certainly offered a qualitative leap over previous models, but both came with a high price tag and were plagued with technical issues on their introduction. They were also complicated to manufacture and in terms of streamlining production to maximize output both were at the very start of the learning some in the Wehrmacht, with support from Fritz Todt before his forced retirement, were keen to see more squeezed out of existing weapons [3].

Vehicles such as the StuH 38(t) and the recently introduced StuG 38(t) Hetzer had proven that allegedly obsolete vehicles could be given a new lease of life, creating effective weapons while reusing components already being manufactured and taking maximum advantage of existing production lines without completely retooling them. Creating an assault gun/tank destroyer version of the Panzer IV akin to the StuG III fitted with the version of the 75mm anti-tank gun intended for the Panther was an obvious development, though the resulting Jagdpanzer IV was something of a disappointment in service and regardless assault guns weren’t enough, the Wehrmacht was adamant that what it needed was more tanks, not just allegedly better ones. It was to this end that Todt chose to support the Panzer III/IV project. This design finally recognized the folly of having two semi-identical tanks in production with the inevitable division of labour and complication of the supply chain, and by 1943 the arbitrary dividing line between their intended roles had ceased to exist. The Panzer III/IV would merge elements of the two tanks into a single vehicle, enabling the use of proven components and minimizing disruption to production. As a bonus the merged design could incorporate some modifications to the chassis and turret that incorporate a greater use of sloped armour while still keeping the major mechanical components identical to the tank’s predecessors. This would in theory allow a full merging of the production lines and increase overall owing to efficiency gains. This fitted in with the narrative that became the obsession of those directing Germany industry in the latter half of the war and was fully embraced by Albert Speer when he replaced Todt, or at least it was embraced as a propaganda tool. The endless infighting and desire for the next wonder weapon continually undermined efforts to rationalize war production and while the Pz III/IV did enter service it never fully replaced the Panzer III or IV as originally intended, though it did produce some modest gains in production and proved useful in combat, refuting the naysayers who were demanding ever bigger tanks with thicker armour and bigger guns. Those who might have been tempted to say ‘I told you so’ kept silent because of course Hitler was the leading proponent of the bigger is better philosophy. A later revision carrying a larger turret and the Panther gun was simply a step to far for the beleaguered German arms industry, though arguably it would have easier to build and more mechanically reliable than the early Panthers [4].

One area where rationality and efficiency were utterly ignored was in the prosecution of the Holocaust. Not only was the mass murder being carried out at Auschwitz and other places an atrocity, but it was also an absurdity. A nation where the propaganda spoke of ‘total war’ had constructed vast a vast mechanized system of murder that consumed huge amounts of material resources and vitally needed transportation. Trains that might have might have moved coal or iron, or supplies for the Ostheer, were instead carrying helpless men women and children to a brutal death. Many of those people so gleefully murdered by the Nazi state might have laboured in German factories instead, though given the treatment of slave labour in German industry this would just have been a slow death for most of the Jewish population selected for work rather than immediate murder. With so many involved in some capacity in carrying out the Holocaust the notion that the ordinary German people were oblivious about what was going was clearly nonsense, and if some did manage to be wilfully ignorant of what was going on with the Jews, they could hardly ignore the slave workers that made up an increasing part of the workforce, or the brutal treatment handed out to them [5].

The slave labour system did operate its own macabre logic and could be seen as meeting the desire of the Nazis for the efficient use of resources, so long as one was a Nazi and unconcerned about whether these labourers lived, so long as useful work could be wrung out of them before their demise. The labourers were treated in the manner of components rather than workers, something to be used until it was worn out and then replaced with another essentially identical part. Slave workers who exceeded their targets would have their rations increased, those who fell short had their rations cut, putting them into a downward spiral that could only end with them dying in place or being discarded and returned to the concentration camps many of them had been extracted from. This system of distributing rations was known as ‘performance feeding’ and was soon codified as best practice for German industry. Much like parts or raw material this slave labour did not come for free, Germany industry was expected to pay the SS for each ‘unit’ obtained from the concentration camps, which were progressively expanded to ensure a steady supply of labour to the factories and mines [6].

Not everyone was content to stay silent about the fact that Hitler was leading Germany to ruin, but dissent or resistance to the Nazi state came with huge risk as the Gestapo wormed its way into every area of German life and the court system was simply a rubber stamp where accusation equalled guilt. Groups like the White Rose who tried to tell the truth and force people to confront reality paid the ultimate price for their actions, convicted in show trials designed to dissuade anyone from following their example. As noble, and even heroic, acts of resistances by ordinary citizens might be the only hope of any significant change of direction for Germany lay with those who held real power, the very same political cronies and military officers who had willingly colluded with Hitler for so many years. Expecting principled opposition to Hitler from these quarters would be asking too much, though there were those who had never been convinced by Hitler’s grandiose plans and had come to despise him personally, so it came down to a matter of what they felt would guarantee their personal survival and that of Germany. A few were toying with the idea that the country would better off without the Fuhrer, however as discussed previously many of them still retained hopes that there might still be a way out of the war for Germany if things turned their way on the battlefield. It would only be when it became clear that there was nothing facing Germany except abject defeat that they would finally take action [7].

[1] The fundamental problem for Germany is that at any point where Hitler would consider peace the Allies are in the ascendancy and have no motivation to negotiate, not to mention he’s completely untrustworthy.

[2] In practical terms that is going to mean repelling the D-Day landings, crushing the not-going-to-happen invasion of Italy or victory in what will be Operation Citadel, so its quite the longshot at this point.

[3] Todt’s plane crash didn’t happen, and he remains in office essentially until Speer’s greater enthusiasm for Hitler’s flights of fancy seems him ousted.

[4] So this all emerged from previous discussions and designs provided by Cortz#9. The Germans are a little bit better off armour wise given the earlier arrival of the Hetzer, which is not the OTL version, the Pz III/IV and the fact that this Tiger has sloped armour. I’ll put the images Cortz#9 created up again in the next post.

{5] They will not stop the mass murder until someone puts boots on the ground and makes them stop, that will happen sooner rather than later ITTL.

[6] A brief encapsulation of the horrors of the slave labour system, I would again recommend Tooze’s ‘The Wages of Destruction’ for a full accounting.

[7] So there will be an alt-Valkyrie, with some alt consequences.

Garrison · Sep 7, 2022

1st January 1943 – The Turning of the Tide – Part III – The USA

The USA entered 1943 with the arguments over the balance of resources to be allocated to the Pacific and Europe still not settled and compounded by the somewhat different strategic priorities of their allies. That the USA had been seen as the junior partner in the Sicily and Dieppe operations did aid those determined to ensure that Germany first remained the cornerstone of American strategy. There was a determination that in future major operations the US must take the leading role and that those operations had be mounted sooner rather than later, meaning that if anything the share of military resources being allocated to the European theatre should not simply be maintained, but increased. In Europe the prospect of outright Nazi victory had receded dramatically, that however opened the door for what many saw as an equally undesirable prospect, of Stalin sending the Red Army sweeping west and imposing a ‘Pax Sovietica’ across the whole of Eurasia. Whatever warm words might emanate from the Whitehouse in the name of Allied solidarity there still a great deal of fear about Communism in Washington and its potential to spread to the Americas. The USSR was a crucial ally for the time being, but once Nazi Germany was defeated the Soviets could not be allowed to dictate the future of Europe, the USA had to be in position to protect its own interests and ensure that as much of the continent as possible was ‘made safe for democracy’.

This desire to shape the post war world according to American desires was also a source of tension with the British. It would be wrong to say there was any danger of an open rift between the two major Western Allies, there was however a clear sense that the British were pushing back against ideas that might weaken their position in the world, they needed the support of the USA to be sure but they were no longer in a position where they were prepared to ‘sell the family silver’, as one British politician put it, to obtain that support [1]. A particular source of friction was the conduct of the war in the Pacific and South East Asia. This was show most clearly by the arguments over plans for retaking the Dutch East Indies, where elements in the State Department were raising concerns about the prospect of returning the islands to their colonial masters. Although US troops had been dispatched after the relief of Wake Island the Allied forces on Java were still mainly composed of the Australian, British, Dutch and Canadian troops (ABCD) [2].

The resistance to co-operation could be largely traced back to Admiral King, whose Anglophobic tendencies had become harder and harder to ignore as 1942 had worn on and this reached a head with the planning for the liberation of the DEI. Questions about restoring it to colonial rule were, in the eyes of the British, completely secondary to its importance as the sole potential source of oil for the Japanese war machine and in truth most of the military leadership outside of Admiral King agreed with them. The efforts of Allied submarines and Royal Navy warships might have all but cut off what oil was flowing from the DEI, but the trickle that got through was still helping to keep Japan going and the British were also determined to relieve the troops who were maintaining the Allied foothold on Java. The obvious place from which to stage such an assault was Singapore and the British were prepared to fully commit to the DEI and they expected the Americans would do the same, and it was his refusal to embrace this logic that marked the end of the road for Admiral King.

King pointed to ongoing operations on Guadalcanal and several other targets that should in his opinion be of higher priority for the USN as reasons to postpone or deny an American involvement in an attack on the DEI, he was even willing to consider the idea being vigorously put forward by Douglas MacArthur for an immediate drive towards the Philippines, MacArthur being desperate to escape his Washington ‘imprisonment’ and redeem his reputation. Siding with MacArthur was an ill-advised move and King should have probably been more concerned with ensuring his counterarguments were going to be supported by the senior USN commander in the Pacific, Admiral Nimitz. While he wasn’t inclined to badmouth his superior Nimitz felt that the DEI was the next logical target for a major operation, and he didn’t try to hide his views. This falling out, however polite meant that at the beginning of March 1943 King was given the choice to either quietly stand down or be fired. He chose the former and the navy grandly promoted him to the rank of Fleet Admiral, before promptly retiring him though he technically remained a serving officer. His replacement as Commander in Chief of the United States Fleet was none other than Chester Nimitz, which lead to some bitter recriminations and unfair accusations of disloyalty on Nimitz’s part [3].

Despite the internal politicking the USN was continuing to make progress on increasing the quantity and quality of hardware available to it. The Essex Class carriers were entering frontline service alongside an increasing number of Escort Carriers. There were also new fighter aircraft such as the F6F Hellcat that would be able to meet the Japanese Zero on more than even terms, especially given the loss of so many experienced Japanese naval aviators. For the other branches there was arguably far more work to do as they faced the challenges of 1943 and not all of those challenges were fully apparent yet.

The USAAF were confident that the self-defence abilities of the B17 would allow them to operate in daylight, carrying out precision bombing raids deep into Germany. Finding out that they were wrong in their assumptions would cost the lives of many bomber crews and it would take time to embrace the need for escort fighters, though the aircraft that could fulfil that need already existed. The P 51 Mustang had been designed and built to meet the needs of the RAF in the dark days of 1940. Built around the Allison V-1710 engine, the same powerplant as the P-40, it had acceptable low-level performance but was subpar at altitude and somewhat lacking in range. When the Allison engine was replaced by a Packard built Merlin engine the performance of the fighter was transformed, as was its operational range. Escorted by squadrons of P-51s the bombers of 8th Air Force would be able to fully co-ordinate in the goal of bombing Germany ‘around the clock’, but not for many months as the USAAF stuck to its guns and continued with unescorted bombing missions long after it should have accepted the inevitable [4].

If the USAAF would eventually realize the importance of escort fighters, they were far more stubborn about jet engine technology. They were well aware of British work in the field; however the British had suggested that their designs should be provided to the USA under commercial terms, that is US industry would produce engines under license from the UK and respect certain patent rights. This idea was greeted with horror in the US aero-engine industry, even Packard who were building their own version of the Merlin baulked, unconvinced by the merits of what was still seen as exotic technology of uncertain usefulness. This dubiousness about the value of jets extended into the hierarchy of the USAAF where even among those who felt the technology had merit there was a bullish belief that Germany would be bombed into submission long before jets could be made useful. This explains why the US jet engine program proceeded in parallel to the British rather in co-operation with them lagged behind until after the first Gloster Comet began seeing service and reports reached the USA of new and even more exotic designs being pressed into service by the Luftwaffe. Once they were fully committed the USA was able to catch up quickly, though not without many in the British aerospace industry suggesting that the US had engaged in espionage against its ally to speed up its own program [5].

For the US Army the most contentious issue was almost inevitably tanks. By the beginning of 1943 the A24 Churchill was entering service with the British and they had been only too happy to show it off to the Americans, alongside the prototypes of the new cruiser tank the A27 Centaur. Both would be equipped with a 75mm gun, though there was 77mm High Velocity weapon in the pipeline and plans to install a 17pdr on the A24 as well as possibly the A22 Black Prince, which was proving a solid workhorse for the British. To add insult to injury for the Americans the Canadians had once again chosen to build their own designs, including a vehicle based on the A22, revised with a far more powerful engine and a modified turret as well as considering an assault gun based on the now obsolete Wolverine/Valentine chassis. The M4 Sherman had acquitted itself well in Sicily and the tales of it being prone to fires that circulated were largely a result of selective memory, that is the spectacular and horrifying occasions when one did catch fire stuck in the mind while the far more numerous times when the Sherman either survived a damaging hit or was simply knocked out tended not to make for good stories.

There were though some genuine anxieties as while there had been few Tigers assigned to the defence of Sicily those that had been encountered had proven formidable opponents, whose successes had been enhanced by the relative inexperience of American tank crews. The StuG and the Hetzer had also proven dangerous opponents when able to operate from concealment and it was clear that the latest generation of 75mm guns mounted by the Panzer IV was fully capable of penetrating even the thickest armour of the current models of Sherman There were newer revisions of the Sherman in the pipeline, these though did not satisfy everyone. Suggestions that the US Army needed a heavy tank ran into a formidable obstacle in the shape of General Leslie McNair and the ‘tank destroyer doctrine’. McNair firmly believed that the role of tanks was to rapidly exploit breakthroughs and that tank-on-tank engagements were unlikely. The role of killing enemy armour would primarily fall on towed anti-tank guns and tank destroyers, relatively light armoured vehicles with powerful guns, somewhat akin to the StuG but mostly designed with fully rotating turrets, many of which were open topped, leaving the crew vulnerable to shrapnel and HE shells. This doctrine raised more than a few eyebrows in the British camp, but their views were ignored given what was perceived as the very different roles they used their armour for [6].

In fact the Tank Destroyer doctrine was simply a version of the same strategy the British and Germans had used of baiting the enemy on to a gun line with an armoured force that attacked and then withdrew. The limitations of this strategy became apparent when either the attacker was advancing rapidly and the anti-tank guns had to try and keep up, or the defender declined to counterattack and were able to turn the tables. The highly mobile Tank Destroyers supposedly addressed this issue but, they magnified the issues the British had encountered in their early Cruiser Tanks, that is they had inadequate protection and were highly vulnerable if caught in a direct engagement with enemy armour. This happened far too often as American Tank Destroyers were pressed into service as frontline armour to counter German forces.

McNair’s influence was so entrenched that multiple tank projects were delayed as he threw up one argument after another as to why new models such as the M6, T20 and the M26 Pershing Heavy Tank, with one favourite being that they were too large and would limit the number of tanks that could be shipped. With the Sherman also having plenty of supporters a compromise was reached, or rather a plan was hatched to get a more powerful tank while working around McNair’s objections. This plan became the M4A5 ‘Thomas’, named after yet another Union general of the American Civil War. This design adapted elements of the M6 Heavy Tank project for incorporation into a Sherman with a significantly modified turret to accommodate a larger gun and an enlarged hull, hence the new designation. Suggestions of using a British 17pdr were rejected in favour of a US 90mm gun and while the Thomas would not arrive in time for D-Day it was deployed by September 1943 to provide a powerful counter to the German Panther and Tigers, though the ranks of the US Armoured Divisions would continue to be dominated by the Sherman [7].

Despite all these political and technical issues the US priorities for the spring and summer of 1943 were finally clear, the DEI would be the main target in the Pacific as Normandy would be in the European theatre of war and the success or failure of the latter would determine the course of the war [8].

[1] The USA isn’t a fan of Soviet Communism or European colonialism. There are some idealistic notions of freedom and self-determination being advanced in Washington, but they are somewhat tarnished by the need to secure the USA’s economic interests.

[2] The butterflied equivalent of ABDA in our history.

[3] Names keep getting crossed off that little list.

[4] Each major bomber force seemed to have a particular fixation, for the USAAF it was making unescorted raids work.

[5] The British are not as inclined to just give their tech away ITTL and the USAAF is being a pain, so US jet fighters are going to be delayed.

[6] No McNair isn’t going anywhere; they will have to work round him.

[7] This was based on a discussion about the M4X and the name came from a discussion with @marathag.

[8] And of course both will be the subject of multiple updates.

Garrison · Sep 10, 2022

1st January 1943 – The Turning of the Tide – Part IV – The USSR

The USSR had held out in the face of the largest military operation in history when they defeated Operation Barbarossa and faced another titanic series of battles as they fought to contain Case Blue. By January 1943 the German 6th Army was surrounded at Stalingrad and doomed to destruction, whatever the propaganda from Berlin might say to the contrary. These victories had come at a high price and even as the soldiers of 6th Army starved and froze at Stalingrad the citizens of Leningrad faced the same threats as their city remained besieged, and the Germans remained in control of the most productive farmlands in the Soviet Union, meaning that even as the Soviet leadership demanded ever greater output from their industries the workers went hungry on a regular basis. Despite the losses inflicted on the Wehrmacht in 1942 the Soviet leadership had to consider the possibility that Germany would somehow muster the means to launch another major campaign in 1943 and there was no certainty that they wouldn’t succeed this time, however confident Stalin might be in public about the superiority of the Communist system over their Fascist enemies and the inevitability of victory privately they could not ignore this possibility. In addition to extolling the virtues of the Soviet system the efforts to bolster the spirit of the population turned to much older rhetoric, with calls to fight for ‘Mother Russia’ being sprinkled in amongst the Marxist dialectic and even the Orthodox Church, long despised by the Communists, was partially rehabilitated to rally those who still secretly placed their faith in God rather than the Socialist revolution [1].

The massive effort to relocate industry from western Russia to place it beyond the reach of the Germans had been completed, but the movement of raw materials and finished goods beyond the Urals were serious issues that increased the constraints on Soviet production. Even if they had been able to run at maximum efficiency Soviet industry would have struggled to provide the volume of weapons needed to build up the Red Army and replace its combat losses, never mind all the ancillary items needed to support its operations and as for civilian production it came a distant third, when it was considered at all. The Katyusha rocket system has become one of the famous weapons used by the Soviets during the war and it became so ubiquitous in no small because it didn’t demand the high-quality steels and fine manufacturing tolerances required in the production of large artillery pieces and it was symbolic of much of Soviet arms production, where quantity was always a higher priority than quality. Better after all to put a poor rifle in the hands of a soldier than no rifle at all. This also explains why the Soviets accepted large quantities of British and American hardware that were regarded as out of date or inferior, at least according to the official reports of the Red Army, which were usually written by officers who had the NKVD breathing down their necks. In many cases the tanks and aircraft shipped to the USSR, at great risk to the crews of the merchant ships on the Arctic convoys, were as effective as their Soviet equivalents and helped maintain the strength of the Red Army. Even where Soviet equipment was truly superior there were still problems [2].

The T-34 became the iconic symbol of the war in the east and the Soviet fightback against the Nazis, forging its legend in the counterattack at Moscow. Like most legends while there was a substantial kernel of truth to the accounts there was a great deal of mythology that grew up around its prowess on the battlefield in the name of propaganda. The sloped armour of the T-34, broad tracks, and a decent 76mm gun made it a capable machine, it must be noted though that one of its major advantages during the counterattack at Moscow had lain in the fact that it was well adapted to the conditions of the Russian winter where its opponents were not. It was also a fact that most of those opponents had been obsolescent Panzer Is and IIs. Even the Panzer III, the tank intended to make up the bulk of the German Panzer Divisions once enough could be produced, was usually equipped with the then standard German 37mm gun anti-tank gun, with the 50mm armed version a rarity in the winter of 1941 and the long-barrelled 75mm armed Panzer IV even more so [3]. The armour arrangement of the T-34 was certainly an improvement over the square and rather boxy layout of many western tanks, but it should be remembered that the Pak 36 37mm anti-tank gun struggled just as much against the Matilda and the Valentine in 1940 as it did against the T-34 in 1941. By the latter half of 1942 the Red Army was encountering 50 and 75mm anti-tank guns mounted on German armour on a regular basis, and the German tanks had also received armour upgrades that negated some of the power of the T-34’s own main armament. The T-34 might have become a legend, but it was one in serious need of some upgrades and improvements in 1943 if it was to remain effective on the battlefield. There was also the need to produce newer revisions of the KV/IS series of heavy tanks, to counter the expected arrival of tanks like the Tiger in large numbers, not to mention to demonstrate the Soviet Union could overmatch new western models like the A24 Churchill [4].

All of the above provides the context for why the Soviets were so eager to see more materiel supplied via Lend-Lease and the opening of a second front in Europe. It is easy to think of the Soviets demands for the second front as being mostly political posturing on the part of Stalin. This though is to ignore the fact that there was though a genuine resentment in many quarters that the Western Allies were ‘doing nothing’ while the Red Army fought and bled to destroy the Wehrmacht. In 1938 and 1939 Stalin had chosen to side with the Germans not simply because the Nazis were willing to offer more, but because he feared that the Allies simply wanted to use the Red Army as cannon fodder, allowing them to sit to one side while Germany and the USSR exhausted themselves and paved the way for the British and French to carve up Germany and Russia between them. As 1943 opened it did not seem unreasonable to believe that the capitalist nations were still pursuing the same plan, leaving the Soviets to carry most of the weight of fighting the Nazis while they concentrated on protecting their colonial possessions. from this viewpoint the campaigns in North Africa and the Mediterranean were an irrelevance, minor distractions at most to the Germans and ones that had not stopped Hitler launching Barbarossa and Case Blue. The attack on Dieppe was likewise regarded as a dismal failure and the reassurances from London and Washington that there would a major landing in France in 1943 were greeted with considerable scepticism in the Kremlin. The war in the Pacific was regarded as an even greater folly, the product of the Western Allies gravely underestimating the Japanese war machine [5].

The Soviet Union had fought its own battles with the Japanese but for now they were content to respect the non-aggression pact they had signed with the Japanese after the fighting at Khalkin Gol and the Japanese were happy to reciprocate neither party needed the complications of fighting on a second front and Stalin would rebuff any calls from the Americans and the British to repudiate the pact and declare war on Japan. Stalin was not going to be distracted by secondary concerns, the Japanese could be dealt with in due course if the Americans and British didn’t finish them off first. The primary goals of the USSR were the destruction of Nazi Germany and the seizure of territory in the west to create a buffer zone between the USSR and their capitalist enemies. Stalin was not, despite claims to the contrary later, planning a wholesale conquest of Western Europe. If it was possible to export the revolution to the likes of France and Italy, Stalin would not pass up the opportunity, he had no intention however of driving his nation to the brink of collapse trying to reach the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. If the Western Allies finally bestirred themselves and drove the Germans out of France and restored it to capitalist control then he was content to accept that outcome, his ultimate goal was Berlin, not Paris [6].

What the Soviets wanted above in 1943 was for the Western Allies to provide them with the tools needed to destroy the Nazis, which meant not only weapons and equipment, but also British and American troops fighting in the main theatre of the war [7].

[1] Stalin is willing to embrace anything to bolster fighting spirit and save his own hide, once the war is won you can expect a backlash. The average Soviet worker is only better off than those working as German slaves in that Stalin doesn’t actually want to work them to death, that’s reserved for those in the gulags.

[2] Basically pretty much as per OTL, they are desperate for every tank, gun, and airplane they can get, even if they don’t show a lot of official gratitude for it.

[3] It’s a good tank, but its capabilities were overstated in OTL, in the same way that the Sherman was greatly underrated.

[4] So overall Soviet armoured losses were worse ITTL 1942 and German losses that bit lighter, and with no Afrika Korps there will be some extra men and equipment for the Eastern Front in 1943. The balance of events will therefore see some incremental changes that build up towards the time of Operation Citadel.

[5] While the Soviets do have a point to some degree about the need for a proper second front Stalin’s complaining after the Allies made it clear there will be a full-scale landing in 1943 is not making him any friends.

[6] So no, I don’t accept the idea that Stalin was prepared to go all in on a conquest of Europe, once the Germans are done the rest can take care of themselves and if they should happen to look to Moscow for leadership, so much the better.

[7] Coming soon to a beach, or five, in Normandy…

Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942

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