On a side note, I've been wondering a lot about a few things.
- It seemed more likely to me that the US would have just created an "independent" Canadian and Quebec republics, maybe annexing some border lands to help keep an eye on things.
- How exactly does the US keep fighting the war by the time of the Battle of Pittsburgh? I know that the USA has a lot of people and all that...but the Confederates don't just occupy Ohio and western Pennsylvania, they occupy the majority of US coke, and steel production, as well as a sizable amount of it's coal and oil production to boot. Pittsburgh alone IIRC produced something like 40-50% of US coke, without that your steel production is cut way down. Without the rich coalfields in Ohio and western PA, the US coal production is probably cut in something close to a third I'd think, especially as there's no western coalfields developed yet IIRC. The only domestic sources of coal for the US at this point are in West Virginia (likely under heavy Confederate air attack, not to mention the fact that there's only a handful of US controlled rail lines out of the region and thus no extensive way to get the coal out of the mines), western Maryland (where production has been decreasing for decades now and in no way capable of making up for the losses in Ohio and Pennsylvania), eastern Pennsylvania (which again isn't enough to offset the loss in the western fields), and the Illinois basin, which can't reach the factories in the Northeast. With such a crippling loss in coal the entire US war effort in the Northeast would be ground to halt as you now can no longer heat homes, make coke, fuel trains, etc.
At the same time, the Northeastern US now has pretty much no oil supply. IIRC the only domestic sources of oil in the US in the 1940s not in Confederate hands ITTL are Ohio, California, and possibly some in New Mexico, I forget when exploration in the Permian Basin was begun. Of those production in Ohio was pretty small, and now in Confederate hands, and Californian oil can't reach the Northeast, at least not in large enough quantities for everything that oil is vital in producing, which is more than just gasoline. Meanwhile the Confederacy's swimming in oil from the Gulf and from Mexico. How can the US continue it's offensives if it's largest industrial area is under Confederate occupation and it's factories in the Northeast are running out of steel, coke, coal, and fuel?
Moving beyond that, how does the US get the copper from Arizona to the factories in the Northeast? Without coal and oil, how do they have enough fuel to create enough brass parts? Their gold, lead, silver, tin and zinc production is also going to be way down.
On the topic of resources, where is the US getting it's rubber from? It's chromium? It's aluminum? It's coffee? It's sugar? It's tobacco? It's cotton? The Entente pretty much has a monopoly on world aluminum production right now, without that how does the US manufacture air planes? The US isn't a domestic producer of tin, nickel, and zinc, at least in any meaningful quantities, how do they get these metals necessary for production of specialty parts? IOTL most US tin and zinc came from South America, but with Mexico and Argentina being at least pro-Entente if not openly in the war, are US-Bolivian or US-Peruvian relations good enough for the US to be getting these critical resources? If they are, how much is able to get past the Entente submarines and navies, which are far larger than any Axis equivalent IOTL? How does the US get uranium to fuel it's a-bomb project (on that note, how does the CSA?) if the uranium is in the Congo and it's a-bomb site is in Washington? Wouldn't that involve the US moving it across waters crawling with British, Japanese Mexican, Argentinian, or Confederate ships and possibly losing a good amount of it to Entente raids? What about rubber, how do they get it into their factories if most of the rubber production that the US would theoretically have access to is going to Germany and Austria-Hungary instead? How would morale at the home front be if there are drastic shortages in coffee, sugar, tobacco, cotton, wine, etc. (okay, not that serious, but I've always wondered about it)?
You can't just write it off and say "well the US transports it across Canada" because, as Turtledove is clear to note, there a little roads and rail lines in Canada, and those that do exist are likely under heavy Confederate air attack. It is all one big clusterf***. Can the limited infrastructure that does exist handle the constant shipment of raw materials from the West to the East and the constant shipment of tanks, guns, and other finished goods from the East to the West? I mean, one little bomb from the Canadian resistance and your railroad is out of action for a few hours at least, which would cause massive backups in all directions. Considering the sheer size of the materials needed to be transported (not even factoring in troops or civilian traffic) the railroads would see massive traffic jams, and that's not something you can easily fix. You can't transport a tank division by truck, it must be by rail. You can't just build new railroads - your coke and steel production has been cut in half, and that would severely limit your tank production. I'd even imagine them having problems finding enough fuel for their steam trains if the Confederates occupy the coalfields!
I know it's a massive rant, but I think Turtledove seriously downplayed the significance of the CS occupation of Ohio and western Pennsylvania.
