With a gigantic firecracker. The US is in for a world of hurt. I can guarantee that Europe will band together to take them on. Sure, they have differences with each other, but one nation has just given them all a kick at the same time. They will find a way to put differences aside (For now, we can fight later they'll say!) and strike at their joint enemy(s).
The Dogger Bank War - how a North Sea battle changed the course of the 20th century
- Thread starter Onkel Willie
- Start date
Wow!
I am not challenging anything just curious - why does the Commonwealth have 200.000 men in Malaya?
Is this because they get wind of the Japanese intentions and reinforce
And while it may be too much information is this force based around the 2nd Australian Imperial Force?
And perhaps you could give us a run down of the RN - how big is it, how modern and was their a force in the Far east?
looking good so far.
I am not challenging anything just curious - why does the Commonwealth have 200.000 men in Malaya?
Is this because they get wind of the Japanese intentions and reinforce
And while it may be too much information is this force based around the 2nd Australian Imperial Force?
And perhaps you could give us a run down of the RN - how big is it, how modern and was their a force in the Far east?
looking good so far.
How did the native peoples greet the Japanese invasion? Did they naively see the Japanese as "liberators" only to learn the truth they were brutal occupiers or resist them from the start or did the reception the Japanese initially recieved from the locals depend on the policies of the European colonial power which occupied?
Dolan
Banned
Maybe, due to different Great War happened, the Japanese ITTL actually really act as liberators.
If the Japanese are even a little bit smart they can set up nominally free and allied regimes in the fight against the Europeans. Those governments would easily fall under Japan's sphere, after all who else is going to invest and trade with you when one half of the world wants to re-colonize you and the other half is busy waging war.
I agree that the US lit off one giant firecracker, and pissed off all of Europe. But realistically what can they do? I don’t see any possible way for Europe to strike back at the US. Sure they can engage the US Navy on the high seas, but they don’t dare get within range of land based bomber groups. The Atlantic Ocean is an impassable defensive wall against any attack to the American Heartland.
Maybe, maybe not.
Iceland is still Danish (I think Danish) (Or at least used to be fairly recently). Makes sense to reinforce there for starters. From there, Greenland and then Canada.
Flipping hard work, but possible.
Then of course there is the other route:
Take on Russia, defeat Russia, invade Alaska via Russia.
Neither prospect is attractive really is it, but in reality both have a good chance of success.
Keep in mind that the WHOLE Atlantic or Pacific seaboard is a VERY LARGE AREA to protect. You cannot defend it all, and once you take out the surface navy (Yes subs will be an issue, but are limited in endurance to perhaps 24hrs underwater) and develop CV's and proper sea airpower, you can in theory defend an invasion fleet to attack the East or West seaboards.
Messy either way, but then again I don't see Europe taking his lying down..... Maybe invade through South America? Many nations are friendly to various European nations and will now be looking with very cautious eyes North. They may be scared and worried enough to support a land invasion of the USA. Heck if I was in Mexico I would be crapping myself..... the USA and Mexico have a long and unfinished history after all.....
There is also going to be a large number of very dissatisfied Americans in the US plus very likely a large number of Americans who fled the USA when it went communist
Now if only there was a country who excelled a creating vast numbers of resistance groups!
All of Europe? Really, only the colonizing powers since I doubt Italy, Germany, Poland and so on would have that much interest in American affairs.
Also, ya’ll need to quit thinking the USSA is like the USSR. They’re quite different.
I’m not sure how friendly South America is to Europe, but I don’t think that many are and seriously, Mexico? Mexico had a complicated relationship with the US sure, but I’m not sure they have much love for Europe either.
Also, ya’ll need to quit thinking the USSA is like the USSR. They’re quite different.
I’m not sure how friendly South America is to Europe, but I don’t think that many are and seriously, Mexico? Mexico had a complicated relationship with the US sure, but I’m not sure they have much love for Europe either.
The Europeans could bribe the Mexicans, even tell them that they would get California back
The Europeans could bribe the Mexicans, even tell them that they would get California back
Really, the only people who would have any reason to get involved would be the colonial powers, so that's pretty much Western Europe. France got their halibut kicked so that leaves the British and the Dutch who would have any reason to fight the Americans. I don't anyone else of Europe would want to get involved here.
Mexico would not have much love toward Europe either and really, most of the Americas would not have much love toward the British and who else would join them
The only one I could see possibly getting involved is Brazil and that's likely out of opportunism that would likely result in the rest of their neighbors turning against them.
The British and French probably can seize back the West Indies, probably Hawaii and also Alaska, Panama may be vulnerable. I agree retaking Canada wont be easy, at all.
You mean the France that just got mauled in a war?
You shouldn’t discount the actual people living in the former colonies
That may well be one reason that these territories can be recaptured. If sentiment has not changed from OTL too much there should be strong pro-British feelings in the West Indies, which are likely to be enhanced by the actions of an authoritarian brutish communist dictatorship. If conventional forces are insufficient, although I still think some of these territories can be taken with naval assets (including marines) then the British need to invent the SOE. whilst this could be a tricky plan in Bermuda or Grenada, it should be eminently feasible in former maroon country.
Yeah, though this is quickly changing from OTL and additionally, you are still thinking this US functions like the USSR.
Given how this all started on civil rights and equality alongside with the imperial ambitions of Europe and their past actions?
Let’s see what happens, but the amount of people thinking the US is done for when really only part of Europe will get involved, the rest is wounded and the rising China would either divert their attention or possibly become reluctant allies with the US had to be taken into consideration.
Chapter X: The Second Great War, 1937-1945. Part 4: Russia First, January 1942-December 1943.
Part 4: Russia First, January 1942-December 1943.
With the surrender of France in late 1940, Germany and its allies had managed to stabilize the Eastern Front and keep the Russians from crossing the Oder and the Danube. A stalemate developed as the Russians maintained a slight numerical superiority and successfully fortified their positions, repelling enemy counteroffensives. Use of chemical weapons like chlorine, mustard gas and phosgene didn’t produce the desired breakthrough. The German army adopted a new kind of armoured car that had tracks instead of wheels and a gun turret on top that performed very well off-road, even in exceptionally slushy soil. The Germans called them Panzers, a term later adopted worldwide for such vehicles. The use of longer range bombers against Russian cities for strategic bombing was also tried, which included the use of primitive radar aircraft to vector escorting fighter planes toward interceptors trying to stop the bombers. All these novel technologies and tactics produced some spectacular tactical successes, but no strategic breakthroughs and of course some of these methods provoked retaliation (like Russian bombers targeting eastern German cities).
After over a year of this, meaning by the end of 1941, Russia was ready to talk about German proposals to make peace based on a restoration of Russia’s 1914 border (disregarding Polish protests). They found that German support for such a peace had evaporated the moment the British Empire with all its might was dragged into the war by American and Japanese aggression in the spring of 1941. After this, Germany was willing to talk about Russian claims on Bessarabia at the most, but nothing more. That fell far short of the initial goals Russia had gone to war over and they cut off the informal talks taking place through their embassy in neutral Sweden. When China declared war on Japan and Russia, any room for a negotiated peace vanished as German commanders sensed they now had the strategic advantage because Russia had to divert a large number of troops east to defend their long border with China. They found themselves locked in a two front war.
In June 1942, the German navy and army conducted a joint operation under the overall command of Admiral Raeder (the highest ranking naval officer) and Marshal Manstein (the army’s Chief of Staff) in response to the reduction of Russian frontline strength. German battleships, the latest and biggest of which sported 460 mm (18.1 inch) guns, covered the landing of ten divisions in the Danzig Bay area. On land, the Germans launched an enormous offensive across the Oder, with the left wing crossing the river near Stettin in the north being the strongest. The left wing under the command of innovative General Heinz Guderian for the first time implemented blitzkrieg on the Eastern Front, breaking through Russian lines thanks to these novel and superior tactics as well as the fact Germany now enjoyed a numerical advantage. They advanced toward Danzig and The German centre fought a diversionary action in Posen while the much stronger right wing formed the southern arm of the pincer. By the end of summer Poland west of the Vistula River had been liberated.
In November 1942, delegations led by German Chancellor Franz von Papen, Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, Italian Prime Minister Ciano, Ottoman Grand Vizier Ismet Inönü, Chinese ambassador to Germany Cheng Tien-fong and representants of the smaller Central Powers met in Salzburg, Austria, in the Hohensalzburg Fortress. In this ten day summit the leaders of the Central Powers (again called this, this time because the war centred on Europe and its colonies) convened to determine their collective war goals. Under the aegis of a German-British-Austrian-Ottoman quartet an unconditional surrender policy was adopted that was aimed at Russia in particular. They believed that if Russia was allowed to get away with a status quo ante bellum peace, Russia would just continue to grow stronger militarily and industrially and try again later (the unconditional surrender was also applied to Japan on Chinese insistence as they wanted to end Japan’s ability to interfere in Chinese affairs). In theory this policy applied to all three remaining Quadripartite Powers (Russia, America and Japan; France had already surrendered). However, all of the Central Powers’ leaders realized that enforcing unconditional surrender on the industrial and military behemoth that was Communist America would be exceedingly difficult at best. Already American naval power was wreaking havoc with commercial shipping, particularly in the northern Atlantic (while Japan did the same in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean) and only the combined might of the Royal Navy, the Imperial German Navy and the various Commonwealth navies was sufficient to act against it. Meanwhile its army was swelling and would reach a strength of 11 million men by 1945.
How to deal with America after Russia and Japan were defeated was not talked about in detail during the Salzburg Conference. Germany had an experimental weapon in development that might be the answer, but could not divulge this. Meanwhile, a “Russia First” policy was also adopted with Germany and its European allies attacking from the west and China agreeing to join from the east after finishing their Korean Campaign. Europe could consider itself lucky that the USSA’s ambitions were now still primarily contained to the Americas. After taking European Caribbean possessions and still in the process of bringing vast unoccupied areas of Canada under their control, they seemed more concerned with fomenting communist revolutions in Latin America than with supporting Russia and Japan any more than was necessary to let them distract America’s enemies.
American funded Marxist parties were active in most Latin American countries by the late 30s. Successful revolutions took place in Cuba, which decided to become a member state of the USSA after decades of being an American vassal state, while Colombia became the Socialist Republic of Colombia. In the smaller Central American countries (Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala) a mix of fraudulent elections, intimidation of the opposition and American backed military coups brought Marxists into power. Mexico had been enjoying a remarkable period of stability since its own revolution ended in 1917 and now benefited from high oil prices as a result of the war. The communists enjoyed little electoral success, attempts to infiltrate the army and carry out a coup also didn’t succeed and the American regime didn’t wish to openly invade. In South America, the military junta in Brazil was the greatest opponent of American sponsored communism and watched with growing concern how the groundwork was being laid for communist revolutions in all their neighbouring countries.
The Salzburg Conference, in the meantime, ended with an incident: a discharged German officer of Austrian birth, named Adolf Hitler, tried and failed to get into the Hohensalzburg Fortress with a bomb. Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 and had lived in poverty in Vienna after spending his inheritance and failing to enter the prestigious Viennese art academy several times. He was first exposed to ultranationalist and virulently antisemitic ideas. In the meantime, he was declared unfit for military service by Austro-Hungarian authorities and was therefore exempt from conscription in his home country. Upon finally receiving the final part of his father’s estate, Hitler moved to Munich, volunteered for the German army and served in the First Great War (1913-1914). After the war he stayed in the army and remained an effective drill sergeant for much of his career, but was reprimanded multiple times for his harsh treatment of Jewish recruits. In 1939, he shot a Jewish recruit in the leg after the latter had assaulted him, unable to restrain his anger after months of humiliations, insults and generally unfair treatment. Hitler could choose between a trail, which would likely result in a demotion and/or disciplinary charges, or a compromise which involved him being honourably discharged. He saw this as a humiliation caused by “Jewish capitalists” and came to believe the entire political system was infested with “Jewish influencers” leading on all the mainstream politicians. His line of thought was so outrageous that the judges questioned his sanity. That ultimately saved him from the death penalty: he was sentenced to thirty years in prison in 1943, but was released on medical grounds in 1951 and died of the consequences of Parkinson’s disease in 1953.
In the meantime, the war continued. The Chinese, under the overall command of Field Marshal Chiang Kai-shek, spent much of 1942 driving the Japanese out of Korea, which was a lot more difficult than the Manchurian Campaign had been due to the mountainous terrain of the peninsula. In the northern half of Korea, with the 38th parallel used as the dividing line, successive mountain ranges crisscrossed the country and in fact 80% of the north was made up of mountains and uplands separated by deep and narrow valleys. In northern Korea, the Chinese faced twelve consecutive defensive lines. Each had bunkers, concrete reinforced gun pits and trenches, thousands of machine gun nests with interlocking fields of fire, hundreds of artillery guns and mortars, hundreds of kilometres of barbed wire and many a kilometre of anti-vehicle ditches. The narrow front also meant the Chinese couldn’t bring to bear their superior numbers as effectively. Inevitably, the Chinese broke these lines as they just kept coming: no matter how many Chinese soldiers perished – and the Japanese indeed inflicted massive casualties – they could be replaced. The Japanese didn’t have this luxury. After crossing into the southern half of Korea, things got easier as the Chinese moved into a region of broad coastal plains, rolling hills and river basins. By the end of 1942, the Japanese were confined to the mountainous southeast, controlling an area of 450 kilometres long from north to south and 100 kilometres wide. This area was steadily reduced by the Chinese and a newly created Korean National Army serving the Republic of Korea proclaimed in Seoul (China would have preferred a monarchy, but many of the members of the Joseon Dynasty were too involved with the Japanese, making them deeply unpopular). By May 1943, the Japanese were confined to coastal slivers and had to evacuate. The only part of Korea still under their control was the island of Jeju.
After agreeing to a Russia First policy and unable to invade Japan as the Imperial Japanese Navy was still superior by far, China upheld its commitments and launched two offensives in the summer of 1943. This didn’t conflict with Chinese ambitions: at the minimum, they wanted to undo the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and restore the border determined by the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, pushing the Russians back across the Stanovoy Range. In June 1943, the first Chinese offensive was launched from Ulaanbaatar, located in Outer Mongolia, to capture Irkutsk and sever the Trans-Siberian Railway. In August, the Chinese attacked Vladivostok and were forced to lay siege to it due to its powerful defences. As the siege continued and ultimately culminated in the fall of the city in December 1943, as a result of supplies of food and ammunition running out, Imperial Chinese forces took control of the entire length of the Trans-Siberian Railway east of Irkutsk.
Chinese success in the Far East relieved pressure on Germany and Imperial China’s other European allies. Under the aegis of Germany, and supported by a British Expeditionary Force that swelled to 2 million men, the armies of the Central Powers slowly advanced into the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine. In the summer and autumn of 1942, the Germans were received enthusiastically in the United Baltic Duchy and the Kingdom of Lithuania. They’d been subjected to Russification policies that included criminalization of speaking and writing non-Russian languages in public, violent pogroms against Jews, and discrimination of Muslims and Christian denominations outside the Russian Orthodox Church,. As a result, contrary to earlier expectations, the Germans were heralded as liberators as they advanced further into Russia. Only now did they learn how much resentment existed against the totalitarian Russian regime and its Russification polices imposed on ethnic minorities, even fellow Slavs like Ukrainians. Millions of people who resisted those policies were locked up in hundreds of concentration camps, spread out across the country, doing forced labour for the regime along with other dissenters.
Popular uprisings took place in the Ukraine in particular in advance of the arrival of German troops. The Ukrainian Campaign began in earnest in the spring of 1943 as German commanders decided against a winter offensive in order to recuperate. They’d suffered serious losses due to fierce Russian resistance. On May 1st, the offensive commenced and the rapid German advance was facilitated by nationalist Ukrainian forces, which launched attacks against Russian troops, carried out false flag operations, derailed supply trains, disabled command and communications installations, spread disinformation and carried out counterintelligence. In the meantime, German success in Ukraine threatened to cut off Russian forces in the Balkans. That and an Ottoman offensive across the Danube drove the Russian occupiers out of Romania and back across the Dniester River. In support of their allies, who faced continuing heavy resistance, the Ottoman Navy carried out an amphibious landing on the Crimean Peninsula. They also launched offensives into the Caucasus.
These combined efforts led to the capture of Kiev on June 5th 1943. The very same day the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) proclaimed the Republic of Ukraine. The next day, the Crimean Tatar Republic was proclaimed under the auspices of the Ottomans who had taken the Crimea (even though Tatars numbered only about one third of the population). The new Ukrainian government formed a Ukrainian National Army that swelled to 1 million volunteers and the Tatars did the same. They supported the German advance, which reached the banks of the river Volga in December 1943.
On the Eastern Front, Germany and its allies didn’t advance much further east. In their spring offensive in 1944, they took Astrakhan and reached the western shore of the Caspian Sea. After that they advanced south and the Russian forces facing them were easy pickings as they barely received supplies (some cargo ships brought in supplies from across the Caspian Sea, but not nearly enough). At this point, Germany and its allies managed to form some volunteer divisions from Russian dissidents freed from concentration camps.
Ottoman forces were subsequently successful in breaking through on the Caucasus Front and supported Georgian, Azerbaijani and even Armenian declarations of independence. Up north, German forces advanced and took St. Petersburg, on the central part of the front conquered Minsk and Smolensk (the independence of the Republic of Belarus was proclaimed) and in the summer even took Moscow.
The Chinese, in the meantime, tried to advance further into Siberia and took bitesize chunks, but the absence of infrastructure ensured they advanced very slowly. The greatest challenge to the Chinese was building roads and railroads under Siberian conditions and not so much Russian resistance. The Chinese patiently continued their efforts as their ambitions grew beyond restoring the 1689 border. Their goals transformed into a desire to annex much of the Russian Far East.
Meanwhile, the Russian regime moved to Yekaterinburg as it temporary capital and Morchenko announced a state of “permanent war” in a radio broadcast speech: this meant that, knowing Russia was too big for anyone to conquer, Russian forces would continue to fight skirmish battles and guerrilla campaigns until the foreign invaders got tired, gave up and agreed to conditions acceptable to the National Solidarist regime. To support the struggle, teenagers aged 12-18 and old men aged 50-60 were organized into a “People’s Militia” to support the army. The enemy advance indeed grinded to a halt and propaganda exalted the role of the People’s Militia, but in reality the advance stopped because of Russia’s vastness. Russian forces weren’t that effective anymore because, after losing the most productive agricultural regions, the Russian Empire was facing a famine that would ultimately cost the lives of 1 million people. Soldiers still got 2000 kilocalorie a day diets, but civilians suffered. American cargo ships delivered supplies of bread, canned meats, canned fish, dairy products and sugar over to Russian Pacific ports and mitigated the worst of the famine. Otherwise there would’ve been three times as many casualties, most likely. Unable to push further east into Russia, the German strategy now shifted to supporting minorities suppressed by the Russian regime.
At a strategic summit in San Remo, Italy, it was decided to further isolate Russia by removing the ally that was geographically closest to it: Japan. China had already made a great effort by driving the Japanese out of their country and liberating Korea after more than three decades of colonial rule. The difficulty for China in pressing forward was that its navy was much smaller than Japan’s. Fortunately China’s Western allies assessed the chances of a trans-Atlantic invasion by the USSA to be exceedingly low. The naval discrepancy was therefore solved by the German and British decision to deploy much of their naval strength to the Orient to deal with Japan.
Great update. Really enjoying this TL - the abbreviated First Great War made me expect it would be more peaceful than OTL, but the USSA and Fascist Russia dashed those hopes! This would make a very fun HOI4 mod.