After taking somewhat more than a mild interest in one of Emperor Palpatine's threads, I got to wondering, is there any PoD or list of PoDs that would see Italy staying neutral (no conflict in NAfrica, no British/German intervention in Greece), but the rest of the war in Europe playing out as per OTL? And what effects would this have on the Pacific theatre? Without Taranto would the Japanese make a strike at Pearl, and without North Africa soaking up resources, would the British be able to put enough troops into Malaya to prevent its fall?
AHC/WI: Italy Neutral in WW2
- Thread starter MattII
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usertron2020
Donor
Germany will be seriously hurting for occupation troops all over Occupied Europe, especially Yugoslavia and Russia. They'll also miss the crack divisions the Italians sent to the Russian Front for combat. The Hungarians and Rumanians were already stretched to the limit, and the Bulgarians won't travel outside Thrace and Macedonia. So where do the Germans get all these extra second (security) and third (static) class troops so early? Using Ukrainian and Russian mercenaries for camp guard duty was one thing, but they simply won't do for garrisons and anti-partisan operations, never mind fighting on the front lines.
This is one idea that really truly does offer great promise for the British and Free Dutch to hold on in the South China Sea/Malaya/Singapore/DEI. I've always thought that the discussion thread chat and TLs about the British doing better in the Far East was mostly wishful thinking, whatever the problems for the Japanese regarding the scheduling of their operations (1).
1) The Japanese would always have the advantages of a beaten USA unable to power project/advance into the SW Pacific for many months and even years. The level of forces the British/CW/Dutch had on the ground were just too weak, and the situation at sea and in the air was even worse. Blow up the oil wells and refineries in time? Sure. Hold on till the IJN and IJAAF run out of fuel? No. Not OTL.
OTOH, with no need to use the Cape of Good Hope convoy route, the Med is safe for traffic with the U-Boats unable to penetrate. Once a U-Boat enters the Med, there's no getting out again, so without Italy OR Greece OR France (Vichy) Or Albania OR Yugoslavia (no port worthy of the job) they are kept out for good. So once a convoy passes Gibraltar, they're safe.
This means a tremendous alleviation of the strains of the U-Boat War for Britain and it allows them to concentrate on the North Atlantic at first, and only later the Caribbean, South Atlantic, and the Murmansk Convoy Route (which will only be a non-summer route anyway).
No war in North Africa, Greece, Crete, Sicily, and Italy means a tremendous level of effort saved there, but it also means that the British Army could find itself blocked off from any means to engage Germany in a land campaign prior to an invasion of France. Which in any world they won't be ready for until 1944. Roundup can never be a practical reality without a full US commitment AND air supremacy established. That will take time and effort. Its really Overlord or nothing. Which threatens to have a much greener Allied ground force while the Germans are getting all the experience they could ever want in Russia.
I think Yamamoto was enough of a genius to figure out Pearl Harbor himself without the example of Taranto.
The question is how many eggs will Churchill (and for that matter FDR) be willing to put in the Pacific basket BEFORE any possible attacks? Because redeploying AFTER the attack will be too late. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt were very sanguine at the idea of re-inforcing the Pacific when the U-Boat War was raging.
Possibly a better commander at Malaya and better equipment like better and larger number of fighter planes at least?At the very least,the British won't just send the PoW and Repulse to the Far East?Churchill seems to have a clear idea that the Japanese needs to be deterred from attacking through some show of force,and this was the intention of Force Z.Given the circumstances,wouldn't have have sent out a few more capital ships to the region?
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Here is a link to the same discussion from a month ago.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=315729
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=315729
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Well they won't need troops in NA, or Greece, or Yugoslavia
might not get shallow-running torpedoes though.
They will still likely need troops for Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was not invaded so Germany could help out Italy in Greece. It was invaded because the Yugoslav government that signed the Tripartite Pact was overthrown in a coup. Hitler wanted the Balkans pacified before he invaded the Soviet Union, and he was afraid the new government would cause trouble.
I'm pretty sure there will still be a Tripartite Pact even without Italy joining in the war. Japan signed after all as did other countries not at war. So the diplomatic crisis involving Yugoslavia will play out as IOTL.
I don't see Churchill sitting by for three years without doing anything in Europe. While Britain may mostly be building up Bomber Command, he'll look for something for the army to do. I foresee several possibilities.
First, an invasion to liberate Norway. This definitely becomes possible after the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
Second, placing an Expeditionary Force in the Soviet Union to help Stalin. While laughable 1943 and later, and unlikely in 1942, in 1941 it's possible Stalin agrees to a British force on a specific front. There are two options - one is a British force in southern Russia supplied through Iran to fight in the Caucasus/Ukraine. I think this is the least likely. The other option is to send troops through Murmansk to keep the polar Lend Lease route open and defend Leningrad. This could be combined with a Norway operation and keeps better control of British supply lines. Stalin may later regret allowing the British in, but he can always limit the scope of their participation once the crisis has passed.
I think there is a real possibility for a "Northern Front" happening ITTL. It has all the Churchillian trademarks. An aggressive, dubious move to help an ally. Geostrategical possibilities to knock out a minor ally of the main foe (Finland - very real chance it'll drop out and join the Allies at some point) and possibly bring in a new ally (Sweden). It would repair the botch Norway operation of 1940, and provide new airbases in Scandinavia to strike at Germany's heartland.
Most likely scenario is London makes plans for an operation in Norway. They don't happen, but Churchill does send an expeditionary force to Murmansk in August 1941. Norwegian plans are revised accordingly awaiting for an opportunity. Britain has the main responsibility for defeating Finland so Stalin can move Red Army units away to meet the Germans elsewhere. After Japan attacks, there may be a Torch analogue as US forces invade Norway in summer/autumn 1942 before the US Congressional elections.
Depending on what kind of diplomacy happens and how bad the fighting in the mountains are, Allies have a Scandinavian campaign better, as bad, or worse than their experience in Italy IOTL.
In 1941 it certainly is the weaker option. Looking at the capacity of the Persian railroad then, and the ports it connected to not much more than a corps & a air group could be moved and supplied. maybe they would send a small corps on general principle, but rebuilding the Persian RR took over a year and capacity for a army or army group size supply was not practical until early 1943.
Now perhaps if Turkey can be convinced to allow British naval forces into the Black Sea, the amphib ops might be stepped up in 1943 with several British corps & a army HQ. Maybe commando ops if the ships can be provided in 1942?
The deeper reason for invading Norway is to alter Swedens stratigic position. For the entire war they were effective surrounded & military nuetrality was the best the Swdish government could do. If the British can take control of the North Sea coast of Norway & open ground communications with Sweden. By the start of 1943 the US could provide at least three corps & a army HQ for the 'Scandinavian front & the Brits could offer a similar size ground force. To put it another way; instead of delivering a army group to Tunisia in December 1942 it can be sent to Norway.
The Germans can reinforce southern Sweden, and/or make a preemptive strike against Sweden. If they do not act against Sweden it is likely the Swedes will succumb to Allied bribes and threats and at a miniumum comply with British blockade standards, thus cutting off Germany from whatever it was receiving from Sweden, including iron ore. If Sweden is sucked into war then a Scandinavia front becomes a major thing & endless resources are sucked into those forrested hills.
No doubt Churchill would drawing big blue arrows on his maps of Scandinavia. Brooke, Eisenhower, & many others would have to hear out his ideas for striking at the heart of Germany via the 'Danish Bridge'
usertron2020
Donor
Impossible. Against real resistance you can't take Norway through any port except Oslo, the other ports are all too small to support any major efforts. Even against a scattered politically divided Norway fighting with defenses dating back to the 19th century the Germans STILL got the shit kicked out of them and only subversion within Norway and their paratroopers made the invasion work. With all the forces Hitler poured into Noway its a complete nonstarter.
This just needs one thing to make it happen: Stalin's Dead Body. Once his troops see what the British are enjoying as "field rations"...so much for "starving westerners" propaganda.
This has all the trademarks of Churchill losing his job.
The LOCs up there make Finland untouchable and Sweden isn't interested in joining either side. This early in the war gaining air superiority is not only not assured, its unlikely. Where will Allied airpower be based? Not carriers. They'll all be in the Pacific or Indian Oceans. If the entire US carrier force in 1944 plus the USMC were made available, it STILL wouldn't be enough to defeat the numbers of troops, the Luftwaffe, the terrain, and even the Kriegsmarine operating in what would be very defensible waters.Does the term "PQ-17" mean anything to you?
This is Arctic Swamp terrain that is NEVER, 12 months a year, good for warfare using the motorized infantry of the Allied armies. And there are NO appreciable rail lines running in Northern Finland. Just on the Baltic coast. There is a reason why the front lines up at Murmansk went little changed in WWII. Even the vaunted "all weather" capability of the vaunted Red Army were strained beyond the breaking point in that sector.
Over George Marshall's Dead Body.
Arctic swamp, heavy forest, mountain ranges, no rail lines, no major ports anywhere north of Oslo and Copenhagen in the Atlantic, much of this north of the Arctic Circle
, and virtually no campaigning season whatsoever (6 weeks, maybe?) The worst day to campaign in Italy all year is still a better day to fight than the best day of the year in an arctic swamp. It would be not unlike trying to fight through the Qattara Depression in Egypt.After having their fingers receive 3rd degree burns in WWI no way was Turkey entering WWII. They only DoWed Germany on 2/23/45 because the Germans had been driven so far back that the nearest Axis controlled territory was in Northern Yugoslavia. They only did so to join the UN, and DoWing the Axis was a requirement for entry. If Russia had collapsed they would have probably DoWed the Allies just to save themselves.
No doubt Churchill would drawing big blue arrows on his maps of Scandinavia. Brooke, Eisenhower, & many others would have to hear out his ideas for striking at the heart of Germany via the 'Danish Bridge'
No doubt Ernest J. King would be drooling over the prospects of getting his precious "Japan First" strategy in the face of this Churchillian nonsense.
Sadly, its obvious Gallipoli hadn't taught Winston a damn thing.This isn't the cold war. Both the Soviets and the Western Allies during the war had relatively good impressions of each other. During 1941, Stalin has much more important things on his mind than what the peasants think about the British are eating; if it raises the change of the USSR surviving when its survival seemed in doubt, he'd go for it.
Even if it was the cold war, it isn't hard to come up with propaganda dealing with that. "In the West, food is taken from the starving proletariat and is only available to the soldiers, while in the USSR, we may be hungry due to the genocidal imperialist racialist Nazis taking the Ukraine, but we share what we have so that nobody truly starves"! Or talking about how the decadent westerners need so much food to survive in Russian winter, or how they hoard food to themselves instead of helping the poor starving Soviets, ect. ect. It isn't hard for a good propaganda arm to deal with a localized British presence like that, especially over such a minor thing as what they eat.
And if I recall, did not he actually ask the British for an expeditionary force during the panicked beginnings of Operation Barbarossa? Looking it up a seemingly credible source. Another one I found. Neither have citations though so maybe they're not accurate. If those are at all right though Stalin wasn't just willing to accept a British expeditionary force, he asked for one.
Stalin would have to see the USSR's position as very, very bad ITTL to approve a British Expeditionary Force to take control of Murmansk and the surroundings. Uncle Joe has bad memories about the Allied intervention in Northern Russia during the Civil War, in this very area. In the run-up to the Winter War Stalin grilled Finnish diplomats about the Finnish support to the Allied intervention in 1919 - he remembers those days and the Western aggression very well. Let us also remember that one of the main reasons of ending the Winter War early in 1940 was to avoid Western Allied troops to put their boots on the ground in Scandinavia. One more reason for Stalin to reject British troops in Murmansk/Northern Finland is that he wants the Petsamo nickel all to himself. This is the USSR's backyard - Stalin wants Finland and he wants the British to stay the hell away.
I believe, too, that Churchill might want to send British troops to both Norway and Murmansk/Finnish Lapland. But I also think that even in a pretty desperate situation, Stalin would only accept the Norwegian option. Too much paranoia there and distrust of the ultimate British aims, combined with seeing Finland as his own playground.
There is a part of me, though, that would want to see the British fighting the Germans on the Arctic coast and in Finnish Lapland. In January. In the waist-deep snow. In temperatures down to -30 degrees Celsius. Seeing such battles unfold from the local Finnish or Soviet perspective could be quite priceless if written well.