Postponed/Failed D-Day - Future of Occupied Germany?

They were running out of food, hence the famine of '46-'47, though that wasn't really a problem in '45. I'm given to understand they were also running out of navigable railways somewhat, due to the different gauges, although this doesn't seem like that sort of thing either.
 
Sustainable casualties

Thats what they were running out. And since they were puting all they had on war production, pretty much everything else.
If their BIG FINAL PUSH offensive was beaten to a halt, they would have to stop for a (long) while to regroup and restrenghen. That's when the Wallies would hit, and the Germans would be so worn out they would just let them roll into Berlin nearly unopposed.
And if the two PzA and hundreds of fighter aircraft that were wasted on the Ardennes had been in the right place at the right time, they might get stopped.
 
They were running out of food, hence the famine of '46-'47, though that wasn't really a problem in '45.

And it really only became a problem in '46-'47 because of the end of Lend-Lease before the Russians could get their agriculture back in order. So long as the Soviets keep getting their cans of Spam from the Americans, a famine isn't going to happen just yet. The war will probably still end in '45 anyways.

I'm given to understand they were also running out of navigable railways somewhat, due to the different gauges, although this doesn't seem like that sort of thing either.

I doubt that. The Soviets were laying railways in the wake of their advance, even across Poland.

Thats what they were running out.

Which? The manpower, the food, or the rail lines? Because in actuality, they weren't running out of any of that yet...

they were puting all they had on war production, pretty much everything else.

:rolleyes:
The Soviets were still getting everything they needed, if not from their own sources then from the Western Allies via Lend-Lease.

If their BIG FINAL PUSH offensive was beaten to a halt, they would have to stop for a (long) while to regroup and restrenghen.

The Soviets only had to stop for five months after Bagration because they had conducted an advance of roughly 400 miles in two months. And even then they were able to spend the Fall of '44 smashing through the Balkans in an additional 400 mile advance. Hell, the Vistula-Oder Offensive was supposed to be this BIG FINAL PUSH* offensive you keep harping on about, as its original objective was too head all the way to Berlin. They didn't quite make it, but it didn't take them anything like a "long while" to regroup for the Berlin Operation.

hundreds of fighter aircraft

By January of 1945 point, 99% of the Luftwaffe's aircraft was being flown by newbies with only a few hours of flight training ("the take-off and landing school") if they were lucky. Soviet Frontal Aviation, on the other hand, was manned by men who had at least a hundred hours of flight training at minimum and many of whom were veterans to boot.

Suffice to say, ground flak was a greater threat to the Allied Air forces (east and west) then the Luftwaffe.

that were wasted on the Ardennes had been in the right place at the right time, they might get stopped.

That would be a mighty impressive feat given that the Soviets were able to constantly lead the Germans around by the nose in '44 and '45 when it came to the location and timing of their offensives.
 
The USA nukes Germany for absolute sure; Leipzig, Munich, Berlin are targets.

If D-Day fails, FDR is probably defeated in November 1944 and Churchill himself might be gone as well. We probably get President Dewey and PM Atlee trying to win the war.

We get a scenario that's at least halfway to For All Time. The United States makes a second shot at landing in Europe or has to fight its way up from Southern France and Italy. There will be plenty of time for Germany to do things like raze Paris in this effort.

If Germany is eating nuclear hits, I think Von Stauffenberg and Company act to kill Hitler. With nukes being used, I think the plotters have a better chance of gaining political support; they probably succeed at least partially and perhaps fully. The Allies might have done the deed themselves if they take out Hitler via nuclear blast.

Much depends on where Germany throws down the towel against the Allies. A Soviet Advance to the Rhine is likely. If the United States struggles to make to it to the Low Countries, you've got a very different cold war.

I think the Soviets simply advance to Denmark/Netherlands/Rhineland/Baden/Venice and build their sphere of influence at that point. Communist Denmark and Netherlands is likely to cause similar problems that Communist Poland did OTL--a large group of people with no home they want to return to.

Stalin was a creative mapmaker, and his ideas basically followed three ideas:
-Make the Soviet Union Larger and Stronger
-To that end, make other nations move West.
-Punish Germany territorially.

The Soviets will make Denmark and the Netherlands Communist Dictatorships, but they'll also redraw borders to expand both at the expense of Germany. Poland migrates West, as OTL. The Czechs might get a peace of Germany and Austria; I can see a Soviet "Northeast Italy" being built around Venice and also leading to a majorly favored Italian area after removing Austrians from Tyrol.

It's one thing to beat up on peoples who were forced into fighting them (The Balkans) or those who basically have no problem with (The Dutch, Czechs, Bulgars, Danes), another entirely to seek punishment of that which tried to kill everyone! Germany is going to be stripped bare of industry; it will be comprehensively looted with something between deliberate approval and passive indifference by Stalin. OTL's record of things like war rape is likely worse, given the greater territory and the lack of a need to even try to build any kind of friendship with the German people.

Stalin will probably preside over horrible famines and loss of life in Germany with either not caring or being entirely proud of it. I'm not sure what having a really screwed, potentially Balkanized Germany does to the Cold War. Stalin's successors will probably try to do something with broken former Germany, although a nation (or potentially several nations) being much more than a particularly abused vassal seems unlikely.

Post Soviet Union (probably close to similar times in OTL), Germany is not the leader of Europe. There is probably a reunion of various states into some kind of Unified Whole (which might leave some pieces out, like Bavaria and Austria or might include those) and some prospect for rebuilding industry instead of being agrarian state. It does have major prospects for economic growth, but it also has the legacy of being ruled for decades by oppressive toadies in the employ of a vengeful overlord. With Communists rejected for their abuses and outright exploitation, and Traditionalists painted with the same colors of Nazism, Germany has little choice but to head down the Democratic path.
 
If D-Day fails, FDR is probably defeated in November 1944 and Churchill himself might be gone as well. We probably get President Dewey and PM Atlee trying to win the war.

You have a failed D-Day and a President Dewey he is going to have campaigned on a Japan first strategy... lets get the people who attacked us first and FDR took his eye off the ball by focusing on Germany first over the people who attacked us and such a line would be popular in the time line much like Obama's lets focus our military might on the country who attacked us line was popular in 2008, though a policy being popular doesn't in fact make it a good idea.

But, its important to realize on the German side you aren't just dealing with Hitler, you are dealing with the Field Marshal's in the West. Rommel didn't think Germany could win the war, but believed something short of an unconditional surrender could be achieved depending on how well German forces did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDAxuExWOXg

The problem with the Valkyrie plot is they believed that just changing the German government alone could get them something short of unconditional surrender, they were wrong, they need military success and a great deal of it along with regime change to get the Western Allied governments to even consider cutting Stalin out of the post war plans for the division of Germany. Your President Dewey and PM Atlee would certainly consider it if Churchill and FDR did not.

Mind you FDR might not survive the stress of a failed D-Day, his health was already failing by the summer of 1944. He might not be able to take the stress of a massive military setback.
 
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True. But when? A quick google suggests that the IDEA of occupation zones was agrred on at Tehran in 43, and that the final borders, carving a french zone out of the us and uk zones, was agreed at yalta in early 45. What, precisely was agreed on by Dday, and how firm was it? If Stalin makes it all the way to the Rhine, he is NOT going to accept as little as he did iotl. Maybe austria ends up his, or greece?

The final borders were essentially decided once the Overlord deployments of the British/Canadian and American armies had been decided in 1943.

Reading this source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/other/us-army_germany_1944-46_ch09.htm shows that:

- The Americans (particularly FDR) had an unrealistic conception of maintaining an occupation zone for themselves in the northwest, for the British in the south and for the Soviets in the east which would have required the wholesale switching of the British and American positions after landing in France or before the landing in France (because if the Americans land in the west of Normandy and the British land in the east then when both armies swing to the east to head into Germany then the Americans will be south of the British and will naturally end up in southern Germany while the British will end up in northwestern Germany. So the Roosevelt proposal looked like this around 1943:

us-army_germany_1944-46_map3.jpg


- The British had been proposing what essentially turned out to be the historical occupation zone boundaries between the American and British forces from the time of the first Quebec Conference in August 1943 (this is before the Tehran conference incidentally). They didn't attempt to determine boundaries between the British, Americans and Soviets until October 1943 (again, before the Tehran conference). This final British proposal was drawn up by the Armistice and Post-War Committee, which had no less a person than "Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee as its chairman and included the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary for War in its membership".

- The Soviets then proposed nearly identical occupation zones to what the British had proposed in February 1944.

So the Anglo-Soviet proposed boundaries as shown below were first drawn up in October 1943 and reinforced by the Soviet proposal of February 1944:

us-army_germany_1944-46_map2.jpg



So unless the postponement or failure of D-Day leads to a fundamental reorganization of the intended deployment of British and American forces in France then the Anglo-Soviet proposal is the one that was for all events and purposes fixed by the time D-Day occurred. Even then, by May 1, 1944 Roosevelt had essentially agreed to the Anglo-Soviet proposed zonal boundaries but kept insisting on having the northwestern zone of occupation be the American zone of occupation while the southern zone of occupation would be the British one.

Thus on D-Day itself the zonal boundaries were essentially firm and everyone agreed on the Soviet zone. The only disagreement left was who would occupy the northwestern zone and who would occupy the southern zone. And that was sorted out at the Second Quebec Conference in September 1944. Yalta as best as I can understand was only about formalizing what had been essentially agreed on over the course of 1943-1944 and including a new zone for the French.

And despite what some seem to think I have little doubt that Stalin would pull back from areas outside of the designated Soviet zone. Stalin still had ambitions in the Far East (and was being courted by the Americans to enter as early as possible) and would definitely not scupper those ambitions so as to continue occupying parts of Germany outside of the agreed upon areas. Additionally he still held out hope of obtaining stuff from the West in order to rebuild the USSR and its military. Again, I don't see him throwing that away just to occupy more of Germany when simply uprooting and removing industrial material and foodstuff from central and western Germany before a withdrawal and leaving in place strengthened local communists (with any members not considered loyal to Moscow having been purged) would serve to further his goals in much the same way.

Plus it isn't like the Soviets didn't withdraw from other areas that they had not been intended to occupy by agreement - northern Norway and Bornholm Island are examples of this.
 
Thank you, chris. That was very helpful.

Certainly, the soviets pulled out of nortthern norway, but the wallies pulled out of czechoslovakia. So both sides yielded territory they had taken/were holding. So it was 'fair'. If the soviets are the only ones withdrawing, it wont be 'fair', and i dont see stalin agreeing to it.

Maybe if he got all of greece, and an occupation zone in italy, i dont even think he would demand as much in exchage, but im sure hed demand something. Big.
 
Thank you, chris. That was very helpful.

You're welcome.

Certainly, the soviets pulled out of nortthern norway, but the wallies pulled out of czechoslovakia. So both sides yielded territory they had taken/were holding. So it was 'fair'. If the soviets are the only ones withdrawing, it wont be 'fair', and i dont see stalin agreeing to it.

No. That's not correct. The Soviet pull out of northern Norway had literally nothing to do with the American pullout of parts of Czechoslovakia. The Soviets pulled out of northern Norway and handed it over to the Norwegians (who were shipped over from Britain) long, long before the western Allies even crossed the Rhine in force in February 1945; the Norwegian force was landed in October 1944 and the Soviet commander in the area actually wanted the Norwegians to come in to take over the Soviet positions. All that was left from what I understand was a small force to back the Norwegians up in case the Germans decided to launch a counteroffensive to retake Finnmark.

Despite popular conception (or rather misconception), World War II was not a game of Risk played with live people. It was a real war with leaders having real objectives and interests. One of Stalin's primary interest was to get as much as he could out of a Far East settlement. He was never going to throw that away simply to keep some more square mileage of a completely devastated and gutted Germany. His interest in Germany were in order of priority:

- ensuring Germany never became powerful enough again to invade the USSR, possibly through a division of Germany into multiple states or at least with Germany divided among the Allies

- putting in place a friendly (communist) government in Germany


Refusing to pull back to the agreed zonal boundaries would result in the first interest being put at risk as that would be pushing his western Allies to align with Germany (or rather the parts of Germany not occupied by the USSR). Once that happens it is only a matter of time until rump Germany gains strength enough again (with the USA, UK and France backing them) to challenge the Soviet position in the rest of Germany and then perhaps challenging the Soviet Union once again. Stalin had lived through the 1930s and 1940s in paranoid fear at the prospect of the capitalist powers uniting with fascist Germany against the USSR. So why would he then intentionally piss off those same capitalist powers who are now his allies over some German land (land which by the way would be essentially useless once he had already extracted industrial material and foodstuff from it as reparations) and throw away the chance of getting southern Sakhalin, the Kuriles and increased influence in Manchuria and possibly Japan under an Allied agreement?

Sure when it came to places like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania Stalin preferred exclusive Soviet control (even then he supposedly agreed with Churchill's "percentages agreement"), but those countries differed from Germany in a substantial number of ways; they all bordered the USSR (and Germany would not do so after being stripped of territory under Allied agreements) and were therefore essential for defence of the USSR; some were not considered enemies (Czechoslovakia for instance) and so the Soviets would have no interest in keeping them weak by having them divided; and they only possessed a fraction of the potential war-making power of a united Germany (Romania contributed to the invasion of the USSR, but Romania by itself or even in concert with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary was never capable of conducting anything like Operation Barbarossa).

Maybe if he got all of greece,

The liberation of Greece had nothing to do with D-Day. The Germans retreated in order to prevent themselves from being cut off and local Greeks took over, aided by British landings. A failed or postponed D-Day is very unlikely to change that and in any event Stalin seemed quite willing to leave Greece to the British (which supports Churchill's claims concerning the percentages agreement):

- the Red Army didn't bother to liberate Greece even though it could have done so at around the same time it was moving through Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and utilizing the Bulgarian Army to carry out offensives to help it liberate parts of Yugoslavia

- he did not encourage the Greek communists to take over or to fight the British (Tito on the other hand did and this contributed to the Tito-Stalin split)

- he even basically forced the Greek communists to either follow his line (and thus give up the fighting) or Tito's line (and thus continuing fighting) in 1949 and thus essentially contributed to the end of the Greek Civil War.


and an occupation zone in italy,

That would be rather difficult to do considering that Italy was:

- now on the Allied side

- had no occupation zones by the Allies

- and this would go a long way towards denting the popularity of the communists in Italy (and remember that in Italy, Stalin held out the hope that the communists would actually win via elections in 1948). With the communists already in the government from 1944, the Soviets would essentially be demanding a zone of occupation in country which had been in the Allied camp since 1943 and which already had communists in the government as opposed to getting a zone of occupation or being totally responsible for the occupation of a country which was an enemy right up to the end (Germany) or had been an enemy until only a few weeks (at most) before unconditional surrender (Romania and Bulgaria).

i dont even think he would demand as much in exchage, but im sure hed demand something. Big.

Why would he have to? Having already occupied central Germany and stripped it of stuff that could be use in the USSR and left behind loyal communist elements he would have gotten plenty already (and probably more than he could get out of his allies via negotiations anyway). He might attempt to delay discussing a withdrawal while the details of an Allied agreement concerning the Far East are hashed out, but such an agreement (on withdrawal) would have been reached within a month of the total defeat of Germany anyway...so at worst we probably see the reverse of OTL (where the western Allies handed over areas they occupied between July and November).
 
Despite the American version of history portrayed so often by Hollywood, it was not D-Day that hastened the beginning of the end for Germany. As early as the beginning of 1943 with the battle of Stalingrad, the writing was on the wall for the third Reich. They had lost a pivotal battle to an enemy that had more man power, more resources and a far greater industrial base that from then on was always going to win in the war of attrition.

It was the USSR that wanted a second front in the west more than the western Allies, so as to further weaken the Germany defences and so lead to less Soviet casualties in the invasion of eastern Europe and the German homeland.

If D-Day is postponed for any length of time or cancelled for whatever reason, the overall outcome of the war is not in doubt. Time-scales may change somewhat, and Soviet casualties are going to increase where British and American are going to reduce, but the USSR is still going to take Berlin, Hitler is still going to kill himself a few years later than he really should, and Donitz is still going to surrender at the first opportunity.

The only question then is how far have the Soviets managed to get? Will the occupation zones for Germany largely decided in 1943 as Chris points out above, there is no question of all of Germany and even France being occupied by Soviet forces, but there is little doubt that the USSR would seek to strip western Germany of as much industry and wealth as it could.

The only real changes I can see in a post war pre cold war Europe, is a weaker West Germany for some years that does not necessarily move so far ahead of East Germany so early on, and maybe a weaker western allied presence in Europe initially due to the absence of large conquering armies during the war.
 
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