Of lost monkeys and broken vehicles
- Thread starter Lascaris
- Start date
Hi @Lascaris, sorry to disturb you by I have several questions about TTL naval war:
Why is Andrea Doria not in port like in OTL?
Why are battleships Littorio and Vittorio Veneto not in Taranto? If both ships were completed in December 1939 then going by OTL timetable would have been declared fully operational by May 1940 and then be assigned to the first battleship division based in Taranto. Vittorio Veneto was not even built in Genoa but near Trieste.
Why were both Littorio class battleships left undamaged if there are more aircraft than in OTL?
Why is Andrea Doria not in port like in OTL?
Last edited:
No disturbing at all. If a TL is not generating discussion what's the point?
Due to political reasons both the alt-Littorio and Vittorio Veneto were laid down and completed about 7 months ahead of OTL, so as you say should be fully operational at the start of the war. If fully operational where would be the most likely place to employ them? If the 4 older battleships have been left mostly unchanged then at the start of the war you have Duilio refitting in La Spezia, Cavour and Cesare in Taranto and Doria refitting at Trieste. There is a case to be made to have them at Taranto has concentrating all available battleships in a single force. On the other hand what are enemy force dispositions at the time of which I expect the Supermarina has pretty good intelligence? You have 4 French battleships in the west, including Dunqerkue and Strasbourg. Three RN ships in Alexandria with one more in drydock. And Lorraine is in Constantinople.
So I decided that the Supermarina with two more battleships over OTL and in view of looming operations against France placed the Littorios west, particularly with political pressure from on high also at play. Could had been the wrong decision. But it did work out pretty well, as the Marina did score a pretty big victory against the French.
I'll add an entirely OOC reason, I'm not impressed at the Regia Marina and the Italian common soldier in general being underrated, particularly when compared with the Germans and Japanese. So if a treated is to a moment or two in the limelight, in a plausible way... well I did.
Are there more aircraft? I did not write anything about the actual number of aircraft involved in the attack.
As it happens in OTL the Swordfish of Eagle had been transferred to Illustrious for the attack in OTL.Why is should be? Our point of divergence has been in late 1920. 20 years have passed by the time of the POD and Italy has been affected in various small and less small ways since the time of the POD. arguably it has been one of the places outside Greece and Turkey most affected by the changes given its proximity and involvement with both countries. The general outline of history may not have been altered much but various smaller or bigger butterflies are not just inevitable, arguably they must be there if you want things to be plausible.
Feel free to. As already said if there is no discussion what's the point of writing a TL?Alright I love this update. For those who are not familiar with modern greek history this is a list with almost every significant personality of the 1940s and later decades. I have so many comments to make but I will restrict myself
Leaving aside Christophilos being a fellow electrical engineer he was a very talented man. With Greece fighting on I really doubt he'd be left making elevators. After all before its fall in OTL Greece DID have a reasonably good experimental radar operating and the navy had even tested a guided rocket. Though given the reported method of guidance for the latter I very much doubt anything at all could had come out of it (points for the originality of the method though)
Gyparis had his loyalties ad abilities...
I can't possibly comment...
Sofoklis has no children. In a country where family connections DO play a role he is the natural successor to the Venizelist leadership. Particularly when no matter his other faults he was a very capable man.
If she was she was probably dark blond. I must note of course that Vaso Papandreou was not blonde.
No comment till he shows up if he shows up.
Seeing this makes me wonder if Greece could see some sort of a tech/economic 'boom' post war, since the Greek economy is liable to look a good bit better than otl a lot faster. Right now it's poised to be one of the only countries in Europe barring Switzerland, Sweden, Ireland, and the UK to avoid being completely occupied/looted/bombed to hell by the Axis. Athens's industry should be more or less intact and Smyrna, while it would probably be a little rough after a few years of siege, should also be pretty intact. Even if they've got the northern half of the country to rebuild that's still better than most of Europe from Spain to Russia.
Well maybe that but also i suspect that ttl greece will be getting much more money ittl marshal plan
They'll have an easier time than anyone else (Smyrna shouldn't be bombed to bits) while everyone else in their vicinity (other than the USSR) won't be able to contest them in them in their playground (UK + US+ France would have goodish relations at least) so Greece will quickly become more and more powerful even if Yugoslavia manages to survive (which I hope they do) as they dominate the Middle East and the East Med through Cyprus.
I wonder, if Romannia flips sides in the war - could you see units of the free Polish army in Greece pushing up into Galicia and liberating parts of the southern Poland? That would have some big butterfly potential for the government and borders of Poland.
Free Poland as Galicia and more of Germany being free (+ Austria being part of Germany) would be fun. Also wpuld Bulgaria be part of USSR ittl?
IMAO this is a bit too much. I can however see something like this: Austria, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Czechia, and Albania in NATO. Hungary and Romania as neutral states. Slovakia, Poland (maybe with a large-scale insurgency at the start of the Soviet occupation of the country that is then brutally repressed), and a smaller East Germany running along the Elbe and stopping at Schleswig-Holstein but retaining Silesia south of the Oder and Stettin in the Warsaw Pact. West Germany retains instead Thuringia and western Saxony.
Last edited:
In such a case I can also easily see the soviet directly annexing Finland after refusing to sign their surrender proposal in 1944
Poor Pomeranian Germans, you'll always get fucked in (basically) alt WWII tls. I hope the US and co. hold Pomerania because it really shouldn't have been depopulated by the USSR. Prussia I can understand but Pomerania had been German for a long time.
PS: I do think Austria should be part of Germany though. Maybe the Austrians never revolt ittl?
Last edited:
Why would either the Allies or the Soviets let the Germans keep Austria，the First Nazi Conquest？
We like Germany so much three of them are not enough. Lets have an independent Bavaria as well. Just saying!
Maybe Operation Valkyrie takes place later than in OTL and after being nominated President of the new government Field Marshal Erwin Rommel accept unconditional surrender to allies in exchange for the 1937 borders. East Prussia and Danzig become the Soviet occupation zone. The Americans occupy the lion’s share of the country, namely the remainder of Prussia, Saxony, and the other north German states. The British occupy Bavaria and Austria while the French occupation zone consist of Baden, Württemberg, the Palatinate, the Saar region, and Hesse-Darmstadt.
Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechia, and Albania join NATO. Warsaw Pact consists of Poland, German Democratic Republic (East Prussia), Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania.
Then a communist uprising happens in Austria and after the Allies express their doubts about whether Austria would remain pro-Western given that it had two communist neighbors they allow a second referendum on the Anschluss
Last edited:
As stated by the former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti shortly after OTL Reunification: "I love Germany so much that I preferred when there were two."We like Germany so much three of them are not enough. Lets have an independent Bavaria as well. Just saying!
Last edited:
I would caution against seeing the Iron Curtain further to the East than OTL.
The war in the East is going somewhat worse than OTL for the Germans already. Soviet strategic blunders such as the Kiev encirclement may not happen TTL either, which could see the Germans in the East decisively defeated in 1941 as opposed to 1942. All bets are off if something like this happens and we could even find the Iron Curtain further to the West than OTL.
A lot can happen between now and 1945.
The war in the East is going somewhat worse than OTL for the Germans already. Soviet strategic blunders such as the Kiev encirclement may not happen TTL either, which could see the Germans in the East decisively defeated in 1941 as opposed to 1942. All bets are off if something like this happens and we could even find the Iron Curtain further to the West than OTL.
A lot can happen between now and 1945.