The Mers-el-Kebir resolution

Part 71: The Road to Downfall?

With the end of the war in sight in Europe, the allies are shifting resources,
particularly transport, eastward to begin the final campaigns against the Empire
of Japan.

By the end of March, the US Eighth Army has taken Taiwan and operations are underway
to expand the infrastructure, particularly in terms of airfields in order to provide air cover
for the China Convoys.


With the Support of Task Force 26 under Vice Admiral Collins, US Army and Marine Corps
begin their campiagns aginst Iwo Jima and Okinawa in Deceber 1944. By March of the following
year the Islands are secure and preparations underway for basing Tiger Force, the Commonwealth
heavy bomber force for the Far East.

March 1945 also sees the final push in Malaya with the 12th Army siezing Port Swettenham with an airborne
assault from 50th Indian Parachute Brigade followed by an amphibious assault. By mid April Japanese
forces in Malaya are effectively pocketed. Slim's Armies continue to push southward, while the 12 Army
turns North to Kualalumpur, hoping to decapitate the Japanese command structure in Malaya before
turning south to Singapore.

Chinese forces have consolidated along the Yangtzee river to lay siege to Shanghai and to push northward.
The Soviet Union has declared war on Japan in April and are staging an army for the invasion of the Japanese
puppet territory of Manchuria.

Plans have also been drawn up for the invasion of Japan. Scheduled for September 1945, Operation Downfall
will be under US overall command with the assignments allocate to the First, Sixth and Tenth Armies.
The Commonwealth ground contribution consists of a Division each from India, Britain, Canada and Australia,
to be expanded into Corps level formations in due course.

However, the death of President Roosevelt the day after the opening of the United Nations Conference in April 1945 heralds
a drastic change in US leadership and strategy.
 
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Part 72: Its hour come round at last
With Spring of 1945 drawing to a close, plans to end the war are beginning to unfold.
Shanghai and Singapore are under siege, while Japan itself is being blockaded by air and by sea.
French forces in Vietnam, now reinforced and under the overall command of General Leclerc,
are gaining the upper hand against Japanese forces and local collaborators, although tensions
with communist forces are running high.

The Soviets have been building up a massive concentration of troops and aircraft along the borders
of Mongloia and the puppet state of Manchukuo since the end of the war in Europe. The invasion
itself commences at the end of June. With poor communication with their under equipped "allies"
and the ressignment of most of their best equipped and trained troops in the pacific, the Japanese
are unable to to mount an effective defence against an army with air and armoured support.

By the second week of July, Soviet forces have reached the Korean border and amphibious operations
are underway against Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands. Mounting concern of a Soviet landing in Japan
preempting operation downfall prompts the new US President, Harry Truman, to one of the most drastic
and controversial decisions in the history of warfare.

On August the first and second , the cities of of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively, are attacked
with atomic weapons. With an intensification of the conventional bombing and promises of further nuclear
strikes from both the United States and Britain. Despite the fact that both the UK and France have had full
access to data from the Manhattan project, neither country posess much, if any, of the infrastructure
for making nuclear weapons, although this fact is not known to the Japanese government.

Japan formally surrenders on the 26th of August 1945, bringing the Second World War to a close.
 
What happened to Finland ?

Also, will you continue the TL ? It would be interesting to see if Stalin (having conquered less) try harder to hold on Manchuria and north of Iran. And how China and Indochina will turn. And how the French Africa will be affected by the changes.
 
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