Of lost monkeys and broken vehicles
- Thread starter Lascaris
- Start date
Larcaris could this ittl color magic ferry be greek? It could connect Piraeus to Smyrna
It would make a certain degree of sense. Of course at the moment the two sides have rough air parity in the Near East and the Caucasus...@Lascaris I wonder if ITTL Cyprus has been home to some bomber units targeting transportation infrastructure in south Turkey, distances from Turkey are not very big.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1GXKoRqKq7afQmA_-l_cUuh9V4mw&msa=0&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=34.1038450621359,34.299316679687514&spn=0.899241,1.672668&z=7&output=embed
After all Cyprus had IOTL a raiway line until 1951 that had been used in WWII to transfer men and equipment between the port of Famagusta and the Nicosia airport. and thus the logistical support for a bomber wing could be easier.
Cyprus Government Railway - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Infrastructure improvement was a thing the Western Allies were extremely good at. I'm having the Greeks and Turks expanding railroads, if by... different means, at a rate of about 1 km a day, as much as the Japanese managed in Burma. I don't think that's implausible. Of course the British, or rather the New Zealanders. managed triple that in Libya but the terrain in Greece is rather more challenging.
It was massive that's true. Then PQ 17 a few months later in OTL lost 24 ships. So have the Germans been lucky or unlucky here... from having more long range aircraft thanks to Wever? On the upside they massacred one of the Murmansk convoys. On the downside by now they are down to a single battleship. It's true the RN has also suffered heavier casualties TTL, both Renown and Repulse were sunk, but overall attrition seems to be clearly to its favour even if one forgets the French and the single Greek battleship.
A beachhead could well bring half a dozen panzer divisions down the Yugoslav and Bulgarian railways. Now the Germans would not quite like doing this, they are preparing the offensive against the Soviet Union that will finish it off, rilly believe us this time, but IT IS, within their capacity to do so in early 1942.
In the end it is a battle of attrition. And the German surface fleet has kept being attrited since Norway...
Slim has hit the Kurdish mountains here and for good measure roads are not exactly abundant there. But as you mention he's not the only one who is going to be facing problems here...
Iran is IMO immensely better off TTL, so far. Got rid of the Pahlavis, a good oil deal and not gotten occupied for good measure. Now what happens to the Kurds (and the Assyrians) will be interesting question for Teheran. On one hand they have a biggish Kurdish minority. On the other hand any potential Kurdish state is likely to be landlocked and so would Assyria. Turkey and Iraq can be assumed would be hostile, so...
Thank a lot!
There is an interesting question how the relation between the communist and the non-communist resistance goes. In Yugoslavia IMO it's still civil war, the only question is how less stuck in their posterior, to put it politely the Chetniks are, Mihailovic will be getting told from Athens to start doing something about the train going south Serbia or they'll be finding someone who can do the job, with 200,000 mostly Serb troops retreating to Greece there are options. In Greece proper, Athens won't be exactly happy if the Communist resistance gets frisky, can put pressure on the Party leadership directly, they are in Athens after all, and is not dependent on SOE either...
I don't think it's worth the effort. You can use the rail to Patras and then ferry things across. For that matter you can sail ships through the Corinth canal straight to the north coast ports.
That would be making sense yes.
Geography is not exactly helpful for Greece which is usually forgotten.
Piraeus was already known as the Manchester of the East and Greek industry post war had 3 decades of pretty rapid growth along the rest of the economy. Here if Central Greece/Athens survive 1942-43 it will be starting from a higher base.
I'm not inclined to answer since well spoilers. But as of 1940 Constantinople had 408,000 Greeks, Athens 700,000, Smyrna 567,000 and Thessaloniki 200,000. By comparison OTL Athens had 1,124,000, Thessaloniki 284,000 add there were about 110,000 Greeks in Constantinople.
Shipping lines going Athens to Smyrna (and I say Athens as the ships are more likely to go from Laurion or Rafina than Piraeus) are pretty certain to exist. It would be ~7 hours by ship, no worse than Piraeus to Crete. A slightly more interesting question is whether you'll still have Piraeus or Laurion-Constantinople line. Without high speed rail that would be... about 32 hours in the 1940s, call it 16 hours by the 21st century. Ship would be about the same. But I nevertheless doubt it.
Hopefully ttl Greece will have high speed rail..at least in Athens-thessaloniki-Constantinople axis
And speaking of cities, I imagine Sivas to be one of the biggest cities in the world ITTL as the Anatolian peasantry which IOTL moved to Istanbul or Ankara migrate there.
Not really a coastal or near coastal city like adana or attalia will attract more immigrants
I'd think Sivas would be the biggest city since Ankara is the second biggest city in otl, and since Turkey doesn't have Constantinople ittl I'd think the capital would do well. The other big cities should be Samsun and Trabzon (trade with the Soviets) and Adana. Antalya would be too close to the Greeks for med trade and Adana would do that job well without being close to the enemy.
Assuming it isn't part of the Georgian or Armenian SSR, of course.
Yeah, considering the Laz (who are basically Muslim Georgians) are the only sizable minority left (and Stalin being Georgian), it is likely that Pontus is given to the Georgian SSR.
Tbf true. I think if anything a black sea port would be in among the most populous cities in Turkey ittl.
Sinope makes sense too.
Adana would be one of the big cities in Turkey. It's so cursed considering that Symrna and Prusa are like the biggest cities in Turkey and ittl are most likely going to be Greek. Tbf most of the biggest cities are in western Anatolia otl.
The question is for which Turkey will Sinop be the main Black Sea port. We may see 2 Turkeys after the war, a Soviet aligned one and a Western Allies aligned one. Unless Turkey becomes something like Finland IOTL.
I think if we have two Turkey's we're going to see a civil war type situation. And I think the soviets will win.
It'd be on the black sea coast since the straits of Marmara are Greek ittl and Prusa should be Greek too.