WI: The Allies had invaded the Balkans?

"And once again in WWII the state that made the mistakes least damaging to itself on a strategic scale was the USA, not the UK or the USSR."

True, but the US was also the only contender in this competition buffered by an ocean from any rival. This gave it a nice big safety net in terms of the political and military disasters the UK, USSR, France etc played out from the 30's till 1941. So how much was good luck as opposed to good management I think is difficult to define.

I personally wouldn't use the term "disgusted" but as an Australian I have little fondness for Churchill, he was willing to throw us to the wolves in both world wars. In Churchill's worldview, the British Empire consisted of good old Blighty and a bunch of possessions to be used at his whim.
 
I'm going to see if I can put this in the simplest possible terms:

Where are the Allies getting the spare troops to do this? And the shipping? And the planes? And the naval strength? And the supplies?

The Allies don't exactly have a great army cooling its heels in Africa or anything.

If you read the OP he said that it would occur in place of Operation Dragoon, which was met with little resistance and turned out to be unnecessary anyway. That frees up upwards of 150k men with all the necessary equipment and logistics for an amphibious/airborne operation in the Mediterranean. Given the balance of forces I think it could easily have been accomplished, though it would leave the allies in France in a slightly weaker position.

Since this is taking place in mid to late August of 1944, Romania will still fall to the Soviets, but the invasion would almost certainly give the Allies control of Greece and Yugoslavia. Hungary and Bulgaria would be up for grabs. I'm not sure how many Germans were occupying Greece, Albania, and southern Yugoslavia at the time, so I'm not sure whether or not the allies will capture more Germans than they did in Southern France.

This was probably a better option than what the allies chose OTL. The Germans weren't going to be putting up much resistance west of the Vosges after the breakout from Normandy. I can hardly imagine the Germans trying to hold Southern France with an understrength third-rate Army Group, and if they'd tried they would have been trapped by September anyway. You have to wonder how Tito would have responded to allied occupation.
 
So 150,000+ men versus . . .

How many Germans and allies?

I'm not sure simply using the forces OTL employed in Dragoon would be sufficient to accomplish something better, assuming its successful at all.

Not to mention that southern France is less demanding than the Balkans in terms of logistics.
 
One other thing I'd like to know is how a invasion of the Balkans is supposed to hurt Germany more than an invasion of southern France. Remember, the bad transport cuts both ways, and it's a longer distance as the crow flies from Split to Ploesti than from Caen to Frankfurt.
 
Land in the balkans, concentrating on thrace. Convince turkey to join the allies. Sail through the bosporous, and land troops in romania, getting them to switch sides. Advance up the danube.
 
Land in the balkans, concentrating on thrace. Convince turkey to join the allies. Sail through the bosporous, and land troops in romania, getting them to switch sides. Advance up the danube.


Get routed by the 500,000+ German veterans coming from the other direction, be saved by the soviets, communist Balkans.

no thankyou.
 
Land in the balkans, concentrating on thrace. Convince turkey to join the allies. Sail through the bosporous, and land troops in romania, getting them to switch sides. Advance up the danube.

You mean the way the British repeatedly tried to do and failed? How are they going to advance up the Danube with a measly 150,000 troops without any concept of those soldiers' logistical bases when they're facing Nazis in open terrain?
 
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