WI British double-agent kills Hitler in 1943?

Eurofed

Banned
Though I wonder wha t would happen next. The 1944 plan was peace with the western Allies to focus on the war with the Soviets, though that was rather unlikely to have happened. What would the plans be in 1943?

More or less the same. Achieve a favorable compromise peace with the Soviets and the Western Allies, if this is no immediately feasible by diplomatic means, concentrate the Axis' residual strength on bleeding the Allies white with a resource-sparing attrition war till they accept the same kind of peace.

The main difference was that in July 1944 the Axis military situation was screwed enough that even under non-ASB optimal conditions, "favorable peace" would have amounted to little more than achieving a Japan-style de facto conditional surrender with the Western Allies that left Germany united with post-Anschluss borders under WA, not Soviet, occupation. If the Valkyrie leaders entairtained (sp?) different overconfident expectations, they would have quickly realized the truth, and, not being madmen like Hitler, they would have scaled down their demands.

In March 1943, everything is different. There are rather good chances that with the residual power of the Axis optimally wielded, the Soviets may be stalemated and bled white since Summer-Fall 1943 with elastic defense (and Manstein's "backhand blow") until Stalin hits the bottom of the manpower barrel with the Wehrmacht still deep within the Soviet borders and has to accept a separate peace with the 1939 or 1941 borders in 1943-44. As for the Western Allies, the landings in Italy and France were close enough things IOTL that with a better German strategy it is easy enough to see them fail. The tricky thing, in this scenario, as always, would be to avoid being nuked by the Americans into surrender since 1945.

It is however conceivable that Anglo-American governments may be forced into a compromise peace by the political pressure arising from a combination of Axis conventional military victories and moderate public peace offers. If the Allied landings in Europe are bloody failures, Stalin throws the towel at some point, and the Axis makes reasonable peace offers with the great warmonger, the Nazi regime, gone, Churchill and Roosevelt would be quite politically vulnerable if they kept pushing for a total victory (since their public opinion cannot know that the nukes are coming).

Feasible terms in this scenario would include the Axis countries keeping their political independence, with no Allied occupation, and January 1939 borders, plus Danzig and the Corridor for Germany, the two Vienna Awards for Hungary, and southern Dobruja for Bulgaria (on a stretch even Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, and the 1914 borders for Germany, Nice, Savoy, Corsica, and Dalmatia for Italy, and Vojvodina for Hungary, but it requires everything going well for the Axis and bad for the Allies), even if the Axis would have to withdraw from all the countries they occupied since March 1939 (including at this point Vichy France, which was turned into a political empty shell by Axis occupation in 1942) and the Italian colonies would be lost. The borders of Finland and Romania would be of course dependent on whether the Axis is able to secure the 1939 or the 1941 borders from Stalin. Slovenia and Croatia may easily be able to keep their independence in a negotiated settlement, even if the genocidal Ustasha regime would have to be ousted of course (we can bet that the Heer junta removes it as soon as Hitler is gone, they were no lovers of Pavelic's murderous sprees).

The Holocaust was in its first steps in early 1943, as soon as the Heer takes over, they would disband the operation and destroy the evidence, with a quite limited body count at this stage (the best thing ever from an early 1943 Nazi overthrow). When the Allies make unhappy rumors about war crimes at the peace table, the German junta can corral a bunch of Gestapo, SS, and assorted Nazi characters, which they would have little love or usefulness for anyway, and throw them at the Allies as scapegoats, sparing the Wehrmacht. The Italian junta (which we can totally expect to take over on the German model very soon after Hitler is gone) would do the same with some Blackshirt fascist characters, sparing the regular army.

If Stalin signs a separate peace in 1943-44, and the WA landings in Italy and France fail, and the post-Nazi peace demands are moderate (see above), it is quite feasible for a "peace Republican" candidate to emerge and win the Presidential elections in 1944 with a "bring the boys home, peace with honor" platform, which would bring this kind of settlement to fulfillment. The FDR Administration was the main obstacle to a negotiated peace.
 
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How about a political domino in Germany after Hitler is blown up by a rogue agent? Abwehr would be hugely discretided then... Remaining Nazis would have hung Kanaris and his staff before being neutralised by Valkyrie plotters... As i said above less "loyal" SS troops could defect to army Generals while some fanaticals could choose to resiste the new regime causing mayhem to the heart of Germany... Though i dont know if this is bad or good for the Allies...
 

Eurofed

Banned
How about a political domino in Germany after Hitler is blown up by a rogue agent? Abwehr would be hugely discretided then... Remaining Nazis would have hung Kanaris and his staff before being neutralised by Valkyrie plotters... As i said above less "loyal" SS troops could defect to army Generals while some fanaticals could choose to resiste the new regime causing mayhem to the heart of Germany... Though i dont know if this is bad or good for the Allies...

DG, the Abwehr may well be discredited (not that they had much of a case for themselves anyway, pretty much the main contribution they gave to the best interest of Germany was that they provided a comfy nest for anti-Nazi plotters to get organized, as a military intelligence service they performed abysmally bad overall). This, however, is not going to significantly reflect on the immense prestige of the Wehrmacht at large in the eyes of the German people, which would still be the institution the overwhelming majority of German soldiers and civilians would rally around above all others in a constitutional crisis. The residual prestige of the other Nazi potentates in 1943 with Hitler dead does not even begin to compare.

At the first whiff of domestic crisis in wartime, with the legitimate supreme authority dead, and the Wehrmacht freed of its personal oath of loyalty to do what they deem best for the Fatherland, pretty much all the Heer officer corps shall be united in staging a takeover, with the overwhelming support of the enlisted men and the civilians. Even the vast majority of the Waffen-SS in the end shall regard themselves as German soldiers first and Nazi pretorians second with Hitler dead, by enemy hands no less. Pretty much all the power base the Nazi diehards would have is the Gestapo and the civilian SS. Abysmally inadequate to do anything more than staging a patchwork of minor unrest across Nazi Europe that the Wehrmacht can efficiently mop up in a few hours or days, and the Nazi diehards would fail as bad as the Soviet diehards in 1991, with Himmler & co. quickly having to pick a choice between a swift flight to Switzerland or Sweden, suicide, or the firing squad. This is surely not going to cause a serious German civil war and collapse of Axis military standing.
 
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Blair152

Banned
Would this before Field Marshal von Paulus surrenders the Sixth Panzer Army
at Stalingrad? That would mean pushing Operation Valkyrie up by almost a year. Would Eddie Chapman do it himself, or would he be helping Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg? Good premise. We need more information.
 
I remember hearing of a similar scenario. Operation Foxley, planned by MI6 in 1944 I believe. Airdrop in an agent and german speaker, sniper Hitler at his chateau in Austria.

However it was called off as it was decided that Hitler was Germanys greatest weakness.

With the death of Hitler I'm guessing a civil war in the Reich. Whertmacht (is that spelt right?) vs SS. Such a thing could really help the Allies blast through the west and maybe even take Berlin before the Soviets.
 
As many others above have said, there would be no civil war. During OTL Valkyrie the Waffen-SS in Paris and other cities stood down without a fight against the coup plotters. This would be even more true ITTL, they wouldn't fight their fellow German soldiers for Himmler, especially when Hitler wasn't even killed by a German plot ITTL.

With Hitler dead, the generals who sat on the fence would be freed of their personal oath and would gladly join the more dedicated anti-Nazis in removing Himmler, Goring, Goebbels, etc.
 
As many others above have said, there would be no civil war. During OTL Valkyrie the Waffen-SS in Paris and other cities stood down without a fight against the coup plotters. This would be even more true ITTL, they wouldn't fight their fellow German soldiers for Himmler, especially when Hitler wasn't even killed by a German plot ITTL.

With Hitler dead, the generals who sat on the fence would be freed of their personal oath and would gladly join the more dedicated anti-Nazis in removing Himmler, Goring, Goebbels, etc.

I didn't read the other comments.
 
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