I agree, for all we know Farouk might remain as king of Egypt ITTL.
The Footprint of Mussolini - TL
Depending on what the Fascists do to meddle in Serbia's internal affairs, it occurs to me Serbians that end up inside a neutral democratic Hungary might be better off.
With Franco having aided in the Liberation of France, how will this affect his reputation in the West? The Nazis were his allies in the Civil War but here he did turn against them and aid the Allies in battle.
What is the Spanish military doing now by the way?
What is the Spanish military doing now by the way?
Dolan
Banned
This would end up badly as even Hungary being democratic, the Serbs would end up thinking the Hungarians as invaders and conquerors, no matter what. Italian ambition in Balkan will definitely made Italian being unpopular with the Serbs.
The Fascist Bloc countries in general are living high on their newfound ‘at least you fought Hitler’ rep. The Spanish have a few token divisions in Germany but that’s about it. The actual Fascist Bloc fighting by now are pretty much just Italy and a touch of Croatians in Southern Germany.
You know in Spain, Franco had purged the Falangists and had expelled Fascists and National Syndicalists from its ranks. It saw the Falange no longer embracing Fascism and National Syndicalism where he had it's membership replaced by Military Officers, Monarchists, Carlists and Traditionalists.
There was heavy opposition by Fascist Falangists who opposed Franco. It saw things like the Grenade Assassonation attempts on Carlists by Falangists and the arrest of many Falangists like Manuel Hedilla who was a prominent Falangist.
Thus the turned the Falangists changing them from Fascists into a Traditionalist Party.
Considering the changes with Italy fighting for the Allies, would Franco keep Fascism?
There was heavy opposition by Fascist Falangists who opposed Franco. It saw things like the Grenade Assassonation attempts on Carlists by Falangists and the arrest of many Falangists like Manuel Hedilla who was a prominent Falangist.
Thus the turned the Falangists changing them from Fascists into a Traditionalist Party.
Considering the changes with Italy fighting for the Allies, would Franco keep Fascism?
Dolan
Banned
That's kind of obvious, but at the same time, Spanish brand of Fascism would be even more entertwined to Catholicism.
Liberating France and attending the mass at Lourdes, while Pope end up condemning Naziism would do that.
Won't be surprised if and when Infante Juan or Juan Carlos took the Throne, they would ask for Medieval style ceremony which The Pope is the one who crown the new monarch.
But at the same time, when Jose Antonio Primo Dr Rviera died Franco took over the Falange, he made the Falangists replace Fascist National Syndicalism with his own Ideology Francoism.
I mean it's argued that Franco wasn't really a Fascist, just an Authoritarian Conservative. I would argue Francoist Spain to be less of a Fascist State and more of a Military Junta.
The reason why the Falangists/Francoists abandoned Fascism was due to the Axis Powers losing.
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I find it odd/sickening how the Ustashe, of all people, are on the side of the Allies. Their own crimes against humanity probably won’t be brought to light anytime soon I’d imagine.
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They join Stalin and Mao for company.
Regardless, Croatia already has perhaps the worst reputation in the Fascist Bloc (Portugal probably the best).
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In the end, the nazis managed to be more evil to counterbalance the addition of the fascist Bloc, which they triggered.
Plenty of antisemites fought the Nazis - not that many of them did it for purposes of helping Jews. Pavelic however does have an interest in ‘let's send the Jews far away' as a concept, due to several conversations with Mussolini.
Downfall
Hey all, thus ends the war in Europe. The next post will deal with the war in Asia up until now. Then it'll get into the Potsdam Conference, elections in Europe and the progress of the Asian war.
There will probably be a much slower schedule over April, at least until roughly the 20th because I have seminars and tests all throughout the first two thirds of the month. Then I should be back to roughly old pace.
“I’d fought all over France and Germany, but I’ll never forget Berlin as long as I live. That place was different – and not in a good way. We were walking into this bombed out, gassed wasteland. We wore our masks for most of the time – even then, the thought of that Sarin was one of the few things that made us afraid. We’d walk down the street and see our guys and theirs lying dead in the middle of the road because they got caught without a mask. I saw one guy dead with his hand just out of reach of one. This had stopped being a war long ago – this was Hell. I don’t think I saw one building that looked close to livable as we fought inside. The Nazis did everything we could imagine. They would use children as shields, send children with rifles to try and fight us – God knows what you’re supposed to do in a situation like that – and booby-trapped half the entrances of wherever you needed to go. I got pretty depressed after a while – I couldn’t believe these guys were still fighting after all that happened. I couldn’t believe they could fight for something so evil. We saw Auschwitz and Belsen and Buchenwald and all the rest – did they really support that? Did they believe it? If they did, I wondered if they worshipped the Devil, or maybe the Devil worshipped them.
But at the same time, I saw the guys in the FGA [1]. We fought with resignation - they fought with anger. All our ‘I’m gonna be the one who shoots Himmler’ talk didn’t fire us up as much anymore after everything in the last few months. But those guys? They fought the SS as if to say, ‘Look! Look at what you’ve done to my country!” To be honest, call my cynical, but I don’t think it was the anger of Auschwitz or anything like that. I think it was the anger that they knew they’d lost the War – and now their country was going to have to go through the whole sorry mess again, like in 1919. I talked to a few that could speak English – nice guys usually. But some of what they said was pretty chilling.
I remember talking to one as we were taking a break underground where we were basically safe from the gas. He could speak English so we all got along swell. We talked about how weird it was that we were fighting not too far back and now we were on the same side. We laughed at how crazy it all was. He said how lucky we were that the Nazis were in charge because if it weren’t for them, “We’d be marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, Trafalgar Square and Red Square by now”. Then he got up, wished us well and went back to fighting. I just thought to myself, ‘Are these the guys we’re going to put into power in Germany?'
The best summary of what Berlin was like was when we heard our guys were about to take the Reichstag. We were excited for the first time in weeks. We wanted to climb up on top of one of the buildings, look over the miasma of gas, rubble and smoke that enveloped Berlin and see the Stars and Stripes flying bravely. We were told on the afternoon of October 25th that it was going to happen – the last guys in the Reichstag were about to fall. We were miles away but we still had a line of sight. We got the binoculars for the occasion. We waited in anticipation – then we heard a bang. In war, you learn soon enough how far away a shell is by hearing it. After a while, you don’t care anymore, because you know if you hear it, you’re still alive – it’s the one you don’t hear that gets you. One of our guys on the binoculars said he actually saw the Reichstag shake – plenty of rubble was falling off it too. We looked down – and when we saw the gas stream out of the dome, we realised to our horror what had happened. We didn’t put all the pieces together until later, but Himmler or Goebbels or some other one of those sons of bitches had loaded the Reichstag with all the Sarin and gas they could their hands on. When it looked like we were about to take it, they let if off. Their own guys were there. I don’t know if they knew about it or not, but given how suicidal those SS guys were, I wouldn’t put it past them. It was their final act of vengeance. They’d stuffed so much of it in and around the Reichstag that 1000 of our guys died in that one release – God knows how many Germans they killed.
And that’s where you got your picture. We were going to raise Old Glory on the top of the Reichstag. Instead, you got the picture of the Reichstag bursting with gas out of every crack and hole. It goes to show you how war has different plans from what you have in mind.
The Battle of Berlin was every bit as terrible as American commanders feared, with Eisenhower darkly calling it ‘Churchill’s revenge’ owing to Churchill’s fears of getting involved in a major operation too soon, only this time there were no British troops. The pictures that came out of Berlin looked like nightmares – with gas-masked squads walking through the mists of a chemical wasteland over rubble and corpses. The Reichstag Trap was only the most notorious example, where the building was deliberately stocked with masses of chemical agents that killed almost everyone close to the Reichstag when it went off. It was supposed to be a symbolic victory against the Allies, organized by Himmler, as if to suggest that the Nazis would fight on. Von Leeb had been given the thankless task of being left to defend the city while Himmler and Goebbels went, and did as best he could to hang on. It was a scene of such unrepentant brutality that the Americans suffered nearly 100,000 casualties – the Free German Army suffered some 75,000, which is impressive given its smaller size. It’s estimated that some 120,000 defenders were killed with more than twice the number wounded by the end.
Elsewhere, the Italians had cleared all territory south of the Danube and the Anglo-Jewish Army had seized Dresden, which had declared itself an open city – with fears that the latter would begin a persecution campaign against Germans proven unfounded. Thus, Dresden would be the picturesque frontier of the Cold War, compared to Berlin’s austere militarism. These would be the last conflicts of both parties in Europe in the War. The Soviets, meanwhile, were in a fight to take the German city of Stettin – this would be as far as they would ever advance against Germany. Stalin’s dream of raising a sole Red Flag from a battered Reichstag would prove in vain. Despite all the chaos around them, the SS and Wehrmacht elements held together in the face of the Russians just long enough to save their capital from Soviet bombardment.
The question was beginning to drive Allied High Command up the wall – where were Goebbels and Himmler? German radio had announced nothing except that the two were ‘safe and fully committed to reversing the current peril’. There were fears that the Nazis would never surrender. Thankfully for mankind, Germany especially, the pair would not escape justice forever.
Interviewer: “Can you describe what it was like to be in that room when the surrender took place?”
Balbo: “I almost felt pity for Von Leeb. Despite all that he did, I almost felt pity seeing his sole figure come up to the table with all of us on one side. Patton sat in the centre with Montgomery and Rommel at his sides. I was next to Montgomery and Dayan was next to me. De Gaulle was to the side of Rommel and Chuikov was on the side of De Gaulle. I remember that the Soviets were outraged over it, that they weren’t at the centre of the table and looked like a minor power. But in reality, we did it for the sensibilities of everyone there. We couldn’t put him beside Patton because Patton hated the Russians, we couldn’t put him beside Rommel because Chuikov thought Rommel was a War Criminal, he couldn’t sit beside me because I was of course a terrible ‘Fascist’, he couldn’t sit beside Dayan because Dayan was outraged with the Soviets clamping down on Zionism and we couldn’t put him beside Montgomery either.”
The 1944 Presidential Elections would be sealed up by V-E Day. While it was always unlikely Dewey would triumph, the defeat of Nazism made it a certainty. Wallace won the election with 57% of the vote and kept comfortable majorities in both Houses of Congress for the Democrat Party. Despite many Americans wishing that the following four years never happened, Dewey would remain adamant that his decision to not release the papers detailing Wallace’s religious eccentricities, arguing that the risk of an undermined President in the midst of the Big One was worse than even the upheaval of the Wallace Presidency. With the nightmarish visions of Berlin finished, Americans celebrated the news of victory, more determined than ever to finish the job with Japan.
On October 29th, word was going around at Zhukov’s HQ that Von Leeb was interested in surrendering. As Zhukov was farther west than any Russian commander, he was confused why he had received no official communication from Moscow. He was further confused when word started to travel around that Chuikov would represent the Soviets in Berlin. He began an angry tirade about being passed over – of course, that would have been much more preferable over what happened.
On the evening of October 29th, word finally came through from Moscow … through two political commissars. They ordered Zhukov to come along with them, alone, in their car. According to one of the Commissars, who defected to the West years later, Stalin had grown certain that Zhukov had deliberately held back the attack on Germany to allow the Americans time to take over Germany before Stalin could anywhere close to Berlin. Why Zhukov would try to help the West by have them absorb the causalities needed to take a city like Berlin is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, wild conspiracies involving the Italians, British and “Zionists” had led Stalin on a wild mental goose chase. More likely, fears over Zhukov gaining military credit from his defence of Moscow led Stalin to fear a growth of Bonapartism in the Red Army.
Zhukov went along with the Commissars, having now resigned himself to what was going to happen according to witnesses – Zhukov even going as far as to tell his subordinates that they didn’t see the Commissars arrive. He was taken to a secluded location the woods miles from the front and told that evidence had proven he was a British agent in charge of sabotaging the Soviet war effort. He was given two options: take a painless cyanide pill and allow the Soviet press to report he had valiantly died in the fighting at Stettin with his family and subordinates kept safe, or be publicly dragged through a show trial and have his family and subordinates tortured to reveal the further extent of ‘the spy-ring’. Zhukov pondered for a few seconds before sighing. “Dying's probably easier than taking orders from that son of a bitch, so just give me the fucking thing,” he said, grabbing the cyanide capsule. “When Stalin comes after you, you’re not going to get any nice capsule,” were Zhukov’s last words as he bit the cyanide and died instantly. The first political commissar would die in the Second Great Purge in 1949. The second would defect to the West and relate the story, before being killed by Soviet agents in 1952.
[1] – Free German Army
[2] – Full list of those at the Nuremburg Trials ITTL in alphabetical order: Bormann, Eichmann, Frank, Frick, Freisler, Funk, Goebbels, Hess, Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, Ley, Muller, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Schacht, Seyss-Inquart, Streicher, Von Leeb, Von Neurath, Von Papen, Von Ribbentrop, Von Shirach.
[3] – Mussolini’s friendly policies, an earlier ending of the war, smaller range of German occupation and a wider range of escape destinations lead to an extra million Jews surviving the War. They are disproportionately Hungarian and German, wealthy, Sephardic, right-wing and educated.
I would like to re-iterate my thanks to everyone who has read and helped with this Timeline. It's been a great adventure and hopefully will continue to be one.
There will probably be a much slower schedule over April, at least until roughly the 20th because I have seminars and tests all throughout the first two thirds of the month. Then I should be back to roughly old pace.
Downfall
‘To Hell and Back’ by Audie Murphy
“I’d fought all over France and Germany, but I’ll never forget Berlin as long as I live. That place was different – and not in a good way. We were walking into this bombed out, gassed wasteland. We wore our masks for most of the time – even then, the thought of that Sarin was one of the few things that made us afraid. We’d walk down the street and see our guys and theirs lying dead in the middle of the road because they got caught without a mask. I saw one guy dead with his hand just out of reach of one. This had stopped being a war long ago – this was Hell. I don’t think I saw one building that looked close to livable as we fought inside. The Nazis did everything we could imagine. They would use children as shields, send children with rifles to try and fight us – God knows what you’re supposed to do in a situation like that – and booby-trapped half the entrances of wherever you needed to go. I got pretty depressed after a while – I couldn’t believe these guys were still fighting after all that happened. I couldn’t believe they could fight for something so evil. We saw Auschwitz and Belsen and Buchenwald and all the rest – did they really support that? Did they believe it? If they did, I wondered if they worshipped the Devil, or maybe the Devil worshipped them.
But at the same time, I saw the guys in the FGA [1]. We fought with resignation - they fought with anger. All our ‘I’m gonna be the one who shoots Himmler’ talk didn’t fire us up as much anymore after everything in the last few months. But those guys? They fought the SS as if to say, ‘Look! Look at what you’ve done to my country!” To be honest, call my cynical, but I don’t think it was the anger of Auschwitz or anything like that. I think it was the anger that they knew they’d lost the War – and now their country was going to have to go through the whole sorry mess again, like in 1919. I talked to a few that could speak English – nice guys usually. But some of what they said was pretty chilling.
I remember talking to one as we were taking a break underground where we were basically safe from the gas. He could speak English so we all got along swell. We talked about how weird it was that we were fighting not too far back and now we were on the same side. We laughed at how crazy it all was. He said how lucky we were that the Nazis were in charge because if it weren’t for them, “We’d be marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, Trafalgar Square and Red Square by now”. Then he got up, wished us well and went back to fighting. I just thought to myself, ‘Are these the guys we’re going to put into power in Germany?'
The best summary of what Berlin was like was when we heard our guys were about to take the Reichstag. We were excited for the first time in weeks. We wanted to climb up on top of one of the buildings, look over the miasma of gas, rubble and smoke that enveloped Berlin and see the Stars and Stripes flying bravely. We were told on the afternoon of October 25th that it was going to happen – the last guys in the Reichstag were about to fall. We were miles away but we still had a line of sight. We got the binoculars for the occasion. We waited in anticipation – then we heard a bang. In war, you learn soon enough how far away a shell is by hearing it. After a while, you don’t care anymore, because you know if you hear it, you’re still alive – it’s the one you don’t hear that gets you. One of our guys on the binoculars said he actually saw the Reichstag shake – plenty of rubble was falling off it too. We looked down – and when we saw the gas stream out of the dome, we realised to our horror what had happened. We didn’t put all the pieces together until later, but Himmler or Goebbels or some other one of those sons of bitches had loaded the Reichstag with all the Sarin and gas they could their hands on. When it looked like we were about to take it, they let if off. Their own guys were there. I don’t know if they knew about it or not, but given how suicidal those SS guys were, I wouldn’t put it past them. It was their final act of vengeance. They’d stuffed so much of it in and around the Reichstag that 1000 of our guys died in that one release – God knows how many Germans they killed.
And that’s where you got your picture. We were going to raise Old Glory on the top of the Reichstag. Instead, you got the picture of the Reichstag bursting with gas out of every crack and hole. It goes to show you how war has different plans from what you have in mind.
The Madhouse: Germany After Hitler, Before the Occupation, by Ronald Hines
The Battle of Berlin was every bit as terrible as American commanders feared, with Eisenhower darkly calling it ‘Churchill’s revenge’ owing to Churchill’s fears of getting involved in a major operation too soon, only this time there were no British troops. The pictures that came out of Berlin looked like nightmares – with gas-masked squads walking through the mists of a chemical wasteland over rubble and corpses. The Reichstag Trap was only the most notorious example, where the building was deliberately stocked with masses of chemical agents that killed almost everyone close to the Reichstag when it went off. It was supposed to be a symbolic victory against the Allies, organized by Himmler, as if to suggest that the Nazis would fight on. Von Leeb had been given the thankless task of being left to defend the city while Himmler and Goebbels went, and did as best he could to hang on. It was a scene of such unrepentant brutality that the Americans suffered nearly 100,000 casualties – the Free German Army suffered some 75,000, which is impressive given its smaller size. It’s estimated that some 120,000 defenders were killed with more than twice the number wounded by the end.
Elsewhere, the Italians had cleared all territory south of the Danube and the Anglo-Jewish Army had seized Dresden, which had declared itself an open city – with fears that the latter would begin a persecution campaign against Germans proven unfounded. Thus, Dresden would be the picturesque frontier of the Cold War, compared to Berlin’s austere militarism. These would be the last conflicts of both parties in Europe in the War. The Soviets, meanwhile, were in a fight to take the German city of Stettin – this would be as far as they would ever advance against Germany. Stalin’s dream of raising a sole Red Flag from a battered Reichstag would prove in vain. Despite all the chaos around them, the SS and Wehrmacht elements held together in the face of the Russians just long enough to save their capital from Soviet bombardment.
The question was beginning to drive Allied High Command up the wall – where were Goebbels and Himmler? German radio had announced nothing except that the two were ‘safe and fully committed to reversing the current peril’. There were fears that the Nazis would never surrender. Thankfully for mankind, Germany especially, the pair would not escape justice forever.
The Second World War – Christopher Armlong
In such a desperate state, one would have thought that Himmler and Goebbels were planning on going undercover for life. Perhaps going undercover and hiding in an obscure corner of the world until the day they died. Remarkably, that’s not what they intended at all. Himmler and Goebbels intended to catch a submarine stationed on the Baltic, escape the Allied Naval blockade from Scandanavia, loop around Russia and end up in friendly Japan, where they would ‘rally the forces’ from abroad. Himmler assured Goebbels that the Japanese system of honor would ensure they would never succumb to treasonous mutiny, and the Americans would be forced to cut terms, especially given the new strategy Japanese leaders had decided on.
The pair left Berlin in mid-October, just before the pincers sealed shut. Magda Goebbels had originally intended to commit suicide (along with murdering her children) but Himmler convinced her that a suitable deal could be reached if they waited it out in Japan – the family would survive the war, though with varying fates. Himmler assured her that it would be no time whatsoever until the ‘Unholy Alliance of Bourgeois Capitalsm, Judeo-Bolshevism and Negroid Fascism’ would rip each other apart. Then, there would be an opening for National Socialism to come again in glory in Germany. Right until the noose, Himmler invented a new reality for himself that psychologists have debated for decades. Was he suffering from a brain tumour? Stress? The debate goes on.
Himmler, Goebbels dressed and blended in with a column of SS soldiers and took a truck, disguised in gas masks. Any sort of conspicuous presence would instantly earn them the unfriendly glare of the RAF, American Air Force, and even the Regia Aeronautica. A submarine was waiting at Kiel to take them away. After staying low-key for a time, they proceeded back on their way, totally cut off from the outside world (or more so than before). On the final movement towards Kiel on October 26th just outside Boksee, the truck was struck by artillery fire and flipped on its side. Himmler broke several ribs and Goebbels received a serious concussion. They were pulled out of the truck by their SS helpers … only to find themselves surrounded on all sides by British soldiers angrily pointing sub-machine guns at them. Himmler and Goebbels had planned to kill themselves if caught, but they were thoroughly searched and stripped of their cyanide capsules while in their incapacitated state. The British had made Herculean progress in the final days of the War, and had already taken Kiel by the time Goebbels and Himmler had met with their unfortunate accident. While the Americans contented themselves with being the liberators of Berlin, the British announced triumphantly to the world that they had captured the terrible duo on October 27th.
Other leading Nazis would soon be caught. The Americans in Berlin captured Roland Freisler on the same day Himmler and Goebbels fell into Allied hands. Martin Bormann had already been captured after trying and failing to bribe the Italians to let him take a passage to Argentina. Perhaps most notably, Adolf Eichmann had been captured by the Jewish Army in the Sudetenland after trying to pass himself off as a Free German Army soldier – despite obvious reasons for vengeance, the Jewish Army handed Eichmann over to higher authorities. Robert Muller, head of the Gestapo was captured when a vengeful Wehrmacht soldier, whose brother had been suspected of being a Valkyrie supporter and executed by the Gestapo, betrayed Muller when their truck was stopped by American soldiers. Others captured included Alfred Rosenberg, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and the only military leader at the Nuremburg Trials, Ritter Von Leeb. [2]
Himmler had entrusted Von Leeb to be in charge of administration of the Reich ‘until further orders’. Himmler and Goebbels would be temporarily going off the grid to reach Kiel – from there, they would send out the final commands to hold out. However, with Himmler and Goebbels both in Allied custody, the chain of command had been broken. This left Von Leeb the most powerful man in the Third Reich – a position he never expected to say the least. At long last freed from his Führerprinzip principles, he began the outreach for unconditional surrender. On October 29th, the guns fell silent and Von Leeb opened communications, announcing that he was both the head of the Reich government and interested in ending the War. Sufficient time was given for British Field Marshall Montgomery, Soviet General Chuikov, French General De Gaulle, Italian Marshall Balbo and even Moshe Dayan of the Jewish Army to arrive in a relatively clean area of Berlin to join Patton and Rommel in accepting Von Leeb’s surrender. On November 1st 1944, V-E Day was declared over Europe – one half of the Pact had been defeated. It only cost tens of millions of lives, including almost five million Jews in the Holocaust. [3]
Himmler had entrusted Von Leeb to be in charge of administration of the Reich ‘until further orders’. Himmler and Goebbels would be temporarily going off the grid to reach Kiel – from there, they would send out the final commands to hold out. However, with Himmler and Goebbels both in Allied custody, the chain of command had been broken. This left Von Leeb the most powerful man in the Third Reich – a position he never expected to say the least. At long last freed from his Führerprinzip principles, he began the outreach for unconditional surrender. On October 29th, the guns fell silent and Von Leeb opened communications, announcing that he was both the head of the Reich government and interested in ending the War. Sufficient time was given for British Field Marshall Montgomery, Soviet General Chuikov, French General De Gaulle, Italian Marshall Balbo and even Moshe Dayan of the Jewish Army to arrive in a relatively clean area of Berlin to join Patton and Rommel in accepting Von Leeb’s surrender. On November 1st 1944, V-E Day was declared over Europe – one half of the Pact had been defeated. It only cost tens of millions of lives, including almost five million Jews in the Holocaust. [3]
Interview of Italo Balbo for the BBC’s ‘World At War’ (1973)
Interviewer: “Can you describe what it was like to be in that room when the surrender took place?”
Balbo: “I almost felt pity for Von Leeb. Despite all that he did, I almost felt pity seeing his sole figure come up to the table with all of us on one side. Patton sat in the centre with Montgomery and Rommel at his sides. I was next to Montgomery and Dayan was next to me. De Gaulle was to the side of Rommel and Chuikov was on the side of De Gaulle. I remember that the Soviets were outraged over it, that they weren’t at the centre of the table and looked like a minor power. But in reality, we did it for the sensibilities of everyone there. We couldn’t put him beside Patton because Patton hated the Russians, we couldn’t put him beside Rommel because Chuikov thought Rommel was a War Criminal, he couldn’t sit beside me because I was of course a terrible ‘Fascist’, he couldn’t sit beside Dayan because Dayan was outraged with the Soviets clamping down on Zionism and we couldn’t put him beside Montgomery either.”
Interviewer: “Was this out of resentment for British friendliness towards Italy?”
Balbo: “No, no one could stand Montgomery. Myself and Patton took one for the team.”
The Red and the Dead: How the Wallace Presidency Changed America by Ben Rushmore
The 1944 Presidential Elections would be sealed up by V-E Day. While it was always unlikely Dewey would triumph, the defeat of Nazism made it a certainty. Wallace won the election with 57% of the vote and kept comfortable majorities in both Houses of Congress for the Democrat Party. Despite many Americans wishing that the following four years never happened, Dewey would remain adamant that his decision to not release the papers detailing Wallace’s religious eccentricities, arguing that the risk of an undermined President in the midst of the Big One was worse than even the upheaval of the Wallace Presidency. With the nightmarish visions of Berlin finished, Americans celebrated the news of victory, more determined than ever to finish the job with Japan.
Similar scenes of joy repeated themselves over Europe. In Britain especially, the thought that their own soldiers had captured the ringleaders of the Nazi movement had brought an upsurge in pride. The streets swelled with revelers and celebrations up and down the country. The streets of London were near impassable from people in the midst of ecstacy. Churchill briefly considered calling an election but decided to delay, giving a radio address to the nation saying, “The most evil creatures mankind has ever seen, and perhaps will ever see, are now locked in British army cells, and will receive all the justice they so cruelly denied the European Continent”. He reiterated Britain’s commitment to finish the Japanese Empire’s own monstrous government.
In Rome, the celebrations were just as large (not hurt by Fascist organisations intimidating anyone who was suspected of being subversive) but the tone was different. The mood was that Italy had now confirmed itself as one of the greatest countries on the planet, struggling with Britain for the title of the third greatest country on Earth (they considered themselves far beyond the occupied and war-torn France). Mussolini would deliver an address to the faithful in Rome announcing, “Today, we have done what not even Caesar could do – we went to Germany and we obliterated their barbarian armies!” To the average Italian, the war was the birth of a superpower – for so long an ignored, abused and forgotten country. They weren’t to be pushed around any more.
To the Russian, things were very different. Celebrations were muted and even actively discouraged. V-E Day would not be celebrated in the USSR under Stalin. He was furious with the situation – angrily screaming at Khrushchev “Tens of millions of our countrymen died only for us to barely move from where we started”. Of course, this was partially due to the national mourning that had swept over the Soviet Union, in memory of Zhukov. Though it was reported at the time that Zhukov died due to a rogue artillery strike from the Nazis, by the late forties, people knew the truth.
In Rome, the celebrations were just as large (not hurt by Fascist organisations intimidating anyone who was suspected of being subversive) but the tone was different. The mood was that Italy had now confirmed itself as one of the greatest countries on the planet, struggling with Britain for the title of the third greatest country on Earth (they considered themselves far beyond the occupied and war-torn France). Mussolini would deliver an address to the faithful in Rome announcing, “Today, we have done what not even Caesar could do – we went to Germany and we obliterated their barbarian armies!” To the average Italian, the war was the birth of a superpower – for so long an ignored, abused and forgotten country. They weren’t to be pushed around any more.
To the Russian, things were very different. Celebrations were muted and even actively discouraged. V-E Day would not be celebrated in the USSR under Stalin. He was furious with the situation – angrily screaming at Khrushchev “Tens of millions of our countrymen died only for us to barely move from where we started”. Of course, this was partially due to the national mourning that had swept over the Soviet Union, in memory of Zhukov. Though it was reported at the time that Zhukov died due to a rogue artillery strike from the Nazis, by the late forties, people knew the truth.
The Death Spiral: Stalin 1941-1953 by Alexi Ivanovitch
On October 29th, word was going around at Zhukov’s HQ that Von Leeb was interested in surrendering. As Zhukov was farther west than any Russian commander, he was confused why he had received no official communication from Moscow. He was further confused when word started to travel around that Chuikov would represent the Soviets in Berlin. He began an angry tirade about being passed over – of course, that would have been much more preferable over what happened.
On the evening of October 29th, word finally came through from Moscow … through two political commissars. They ordered Zhukov to come along with them, alone, in their car. According to one of the Commissars, who defected to the West years later, Stalin had grown certain that Zhukov had deliberately held back the attack on Germany to allow the Americans time to take over Germany before Stalin could anywhere close to Berlin. Why Zhukov would try to help the West by have them absorb the causalities needed to take a city like Berlin is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, wild conspiracies involving the Italians, British and “Zionists” had led Stalin on a wild mental goose chase. More likely, fears over Zhukov gaining military credit from his defence of Moscow led Stalin to fear a growth of Bonapartism in the Red Army.
Zhukov went along with the Commissars, having now resigned himself to what was going to happen according to witnesses – Zhukov even going as far as to tell his subordinates that they didn’t see the Commissars arrive. He was taken to a secluded location the woods miles from the front and told that evidence had proven he was a British agent in charge of sabotaging the Soviet war effort. He was given two options: take a painless cyanide pill and allow the Soviet press to report he had valiantly died in the fighting at Stettin with his family and subordinates kept safe, or be publicly dragged through a show trial and have his family and subordinates tortured to reveal the further extent of ‘the spy-ring’. Zhukov pondered for a few seconds before sighing. “Dying's probably easier than taking orders from that son of a bitch, so just give me the fucking thing,” he said, grabbing the cyanide capsule. “When Stalin comes after you, you’re not going to get any nice capsule,” were Zhukov’s last words as he bit the cyanide and died instantly. The first political commissar would die in the Second Great Purge in 1949. The second would defect to the West and relate the story, before being killed by Soviet agents in 1952.
[1] – Free German Army
[2] – Full list of those at the Nuremburg Trials ITTL in alphabetical order: Bormann, Eichmann, Frank, Frick, Freisler, Funk, Goebbels, Hess, Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, Ley, Muller, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Schacht, Seyss-Inquart, Streicher, Von Leeb, Von Neurath, Von Papen, Von Ribbentrop, Von Shirach.
[3] – Mussolini’s friendly policies, an earlier ending of the war, smaller range of German occupation and a wider range of escape destinations lead to an extra million Jews surviving the War. They are disproportionately Hungarian and German, wealthy, Sephardic, right-wing and educated.
I would like to re-iterate my thanks to everyone who has read and helped with this Timeline. It's been a great adventure and hopefully will continue to be one.
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I'm thrilled to see Audie Murphy is still covering himself in glory - I hope without the Colmar Pocket, he still finds a way to earn that last medal, the MOH. Perhaps, without losing so many of his friends on Anzio beach, he won't be so haunted post-war either.
That said, looks like Wallace and Stalin are about to make a muck of things.
That said, looks like Wallace and Stalin are about to make a muck of things.