Traitor Rommel

By this time it's too late for any chance of an early end to the war. Even if you have the most optimistic scenario for Valkyrie there are simply too many people who have been affected by Nazi propaganda that the German race will be extinguished and far too many people associated with the regime's crimes for it to be anything other than a fight to the death.

This would likely butterfly away Valkyrie, as the resulting purges would likely kill off the German Resistance or force them to keep their heads down and out of trouble for the foreseeable future.

However, this might put the Allies on the Rhine much earlier than OTL. If enough German troops defect with Rommel, that's potentially another army the Western Allies have at their disposal a la Fox on the Front. That could end the war early and possibly put the dividing lines further east.

Rommel would have to finesse his defection very carefully--OTL he committed suicide (being a Catholic, this is a VERY big deal) to ensure his family and staff wouldn't be murdered, so he wouldn't want to put them at risk.

If he started bringing relatives into France and Belgium, that would look really strange and might tip off the Gestapo that something's up.
 
Rommel would have to finesse his defection very carefully--OTL he committed suicide (being a Catholic, this is a VERY big deal) to ensure his family and staff wouldn't be murdered, so he wouldn't want to put them at risk.

If he started bringing relatives into France and Belgium, that would look really strange and might tip off the Gestapo that something's up.

Good point, something I had forgotten.
 
Would the US let Nazis fight Nazis?
Ironically, Ted Rall did a cartoon (obliquely) commenting on the Taliban soldiers' switching sides in Afghanistan that deserves reprinting...
1-7-02.jpg
 
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Would the US let Nazis fight Nazis?

German does not necessarily equal Nazis, although the ideology had spread among the Wehrmacht as well as the SS.

I imagine as a precaution, rank-and-file defectors would be put in internment camps or something like that (if there is a mass defection or surrender, as opposed to Rommel trying something, provoking a mutiny by the Nazi hard-cores, and having to flee on a Storch).

Maybe a new anti-Nazi German army could be recruited from the most reliable prisoners, much like how the Japanese recruited their Indian collaborators from Indian British POWs.
 
I very much doubt the Allies would use German troops. Remember the trouble Patton got in from using juniorNazi administrators after the war.

I think that if Rommel could have pulled off the surrender of the Seventh Army the Western Allies would have been AT LEAST two months ahead of their OTL schedule. Remember, by this time the 7th included a large part of the 15th Army.

I say "at least," because after Falaise there was still a large part of the 7th and 15th that escaped to form cadres for the rebuilt forces that defended the Siegfried Line (thanks to Monty.) If Rommel surrenders, he's probably going to bring everything he knows about the western forces, including the dispositions of the 15th and their stand-fast orders, allowing the Allies to put them in the bag as well. Then what is between the Allies and Berlin? Fantasy armies that Goering, Himmler and Doenitz will conjure up to impress Hitler, who will then be (temporarily) satisfied (until he hears that the Allies are already thru the Siegfried Line, crossing the Rhine/Elbe, etc., by which time it is too late.)

Where are the Soviet forces when this is happening? Still trying to get past Warsawa. Best possible result for them is that they meet the Anglo-Americans on the Oder-Niesse line, and more likely further east.
 
Would the US let Nazis fight Nazis?
Ironically, Ted Rall did a cartoon (obliquely) commenting on the Taliban soldiers' switching sides in Afghanistan that deserves reprinting...
1-7-02.jpg

Rall is comparing apples and oranges. A lot of Taliban were lesser warlords forced into submission by the Taliban or hapless rural peasants dragooned into the army, not brainwashed Nazis.

(Some American soldier compared the masses of Taliban POWs taken earlier into the invasion with the die-hards at Shah-i-Kot--he called the former "Third World country bumpkins" and the latter "ninjas.")
 
Proably Rommel and all the other defectors stay in allied camps till the end of the war.
But more important is that Rommel survives, could he be made head of the Bundeswher or perhaps even a given a political position.
 
Forget not the Minesweeping Administration...

...Essentially Kriegsmarine sailors aboard their disarmed ships, sweeping mines till 1952 and the re-foundation of the German Navy. Luftwaffe and Army veterans served during the Berlin Airlift, even if in comparatively minor positions.

Frankly, Rommel is one of the few heroic commanders who had a chance of pulling such a defection off. After they had been sure he was telling the truth, I see the Allies making him into a De Gaulle clone as leader of the Free German Forces. Hitler would need more brown trousers. An advance to the Rhine would be much faster and the postwar German scenario much improved. Who knows? Maybe Stalin's forces would have to halt short of Warsaw.:D

Long live the Republic of Poland!
 
Where did you get this so called "fact". It seems very unlikely that Rommel or anyone else would write such a letter to Hitler and if someone did they they would end up in a concentration camp at best.
 
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What would be slowing the Soviet armies down in this scenario?

Speeding up the Western Allies does not mean the Germans are doing any better against the Soviets.

Well, it dont mean they do worse either. What stoped the Red Army OTL in 1944 was that they ran to far ahead of their supplies and i think that would happen here also.
 
Defect is the wrong word to use here. Rommel had no plan to have Germans fight Germans for the Allies. His idea was for a battlefield surrender in the West to get the Western Allies to Berlin before the Soviet's... in his words.

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Where is that text from?

The Rommel Papers 1953 by Liddell-Hart.

What is the most logical way for a battlefield commander to end a war?

He viewed the July 20th plot though well meaning as almost certain to fail for a variety of reasons and the best way for an early end to the war is through a mass surrender in the West by German forces.
 
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ITTL the US and UK liberate Prague and Warsaw. p Poland and the Czech Republic ( With the Soviets occupying Slovakia, there is a not so velvet divorce.) are the front line nations in NATO. With the occupation zones set by agreement, there is still an East Germany, but it is surrounded on all sides by NATO nations.
 
ITTL the US and UK liberate Prague and Warsaw. p Poland and the Czech Republic ( With the Soviets occupying Slovakia, there is a not so velvet divorce.) are the front line nations in NATO. With the occupation zones set by agreement, there is still an East Germany, but it is surrounded on all sides by NATO nations.

If I recall occupation zones were agreed to occur, but offically hammered out at Yalta early 1945. The negotiation for the zones in a timeline where Western Allied forces reach Berlin by the late of 1944 would be very different. The Soviet's would likely get occupation zones, but the zones likely would be quite different then OTL.

FDR very well might not have had his stroke yet and Churchill would be telling FDR at this point they can't trust Stalin we need to contain Communism in Europe with Germany gone as a threat. How much he listens I can't say.
 
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