Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942

[Garrison]

1st January 1943 – The Turning of the Tide – Part V – British Empire​

As 1943 opened the British government could indulge in a certain sense of satisfaction in the country’s situation. The British Isles and the Empire’s most important possessions were finally secure from the threat of invasion and now it was the Japanese and Germans who had to worry about where the British would attack next. Hong Kong might still be in Japanese hands, which was keenly felt in certain quarters, everywhere else from Singapore to Cairo was firmly under control and convoys could ferry civilian goods and military equipment via the sea-lanes with near total impunity as the IJN and Kriegsmarine were steadily reduced to impotence. It was arguable that in some respects the empire was stronger than it had been at the start of the war as the British were also in control of the Italian colonies in Africa, leaving their armies penned up in Europe, waiting for an invasion that was no longer part of British plans. The Germans still occupied the whole of Europe of course, but like the Italians they were now wholly on the defensive, in the west at least, hastily building the defences needed to protect what was referred to in some circles as ‘Fortress Europa’, though Goebbels forbade the use of the term as it implied that Europe was surrounded and besieged by its enemies. The Germans had the advantages that naturally accrued to the defender, which was balanced out by the fact that only the British and American knew where along that vast stretch of coastline they intended to strike [1].

Creating the conditions necessary to successfully carry out that landing in 1943 was now the highest priority for the British, meaning that further operations against the Japanese in Asia had been relegated to a definite second place, though not by any means abandoned. Thailand and the Dutch East Indies sat at the top of the list as far as British priorities were concerned, which did not please De Gaulle and the Free French as they were keen to see Indochina liberated. It was not an argument the French could win as they were still dependent on the British and Americans for support and neither was willing to make this a priority, especially as the Americans had their own plans for the war in the Pacific, which did not align with those of the British, let alone the Free French [2].

This consensus in London on strategic priorities had not been reached easily in Whitehall. Churchill had continued to be a supporter of the idea of a thrust into the Reich via Italy, or a landing in Greece to threaten the Balkans. The experience of operations Malamute and Jubilee had shown that the Allies just what would be required amphibious assault, and that there was no way that an operation in the Mediterranean could be done ‘on the cheap’ while preparations were also underway for Millennium. The Battle of the Atlantic might have been largely won and the build-up of men and materials in Britain was proceeding apace and reached levels that far exceeded even the most pessimistic Abwehr assessments in the middle of 1943. Even so it would not be enough to support two fronts in Europe and the USA was adamant that the road to defeating Germany lay through Northern France, not the Italian Alps. Events in Italy had conspired to undermine the argument for an attack on Italy even further. The death of Mussolini and the attempt at diplomacy via the Vatican had given considerable pause to those arguing for an invasion, and the German intervention spelled the end of the idea of Italy as a soft target [3].

This did not mean that the Mediterranean was being completely ignored. The SOE continued to work in Greece and Yugoslavia and had been tentatively building up contacts in Italy, even though some of those opposing the German occupation had distinctly Fascist leanings, the British were willing to turn a blind eye to this so long as stirred up trouble for the Germans. Italy was also a prime target for the British disinformation campaign codenamed Fortitude Med. This used the various plans for an invasion of Italy to create a plausible fiction that would convince the Wehrmacht that the Allies remained committed to carrying out a landing somewhere in south or central Italy, or Greece, or both. There were also other elements of Operation Fortitude aimed at suggesting that the Allies intended to attack Norway or land in Calais, or perhaps southern France, essentially any plausible location that could tie down German troops and dilute the resources available to build defences in Normandy. This deception would also be greatly boosted by the actions of the Free Greek government. The British might not be in a position to mount a full-scale liberation of their homeland, but Churchill was able to persuade his military chiefs to support some rather more limited actions by the Greeks [4].

If Churchill was disappointed about the rejection of the idea of invading Italy he was seriously unhappy about one consequence of the British campaign in South East Asia, the opening of serious discussions about the future of India in the British Empire. Given the fact that Britain and Canada were having to focus their energies on Millennium and the increasing Australian reluctance to commit men for offensive operations there was only other ready source of manpower and that was India. There was already a consensus growing in Britain that the country could not return to the pre-war status quo, though this was something else Churchill was reluctant to accept, and it seemed evident that it would no more acceptable to the people of India. Churchill was at the end of the day an unreconstructed imperialist, but in 1943 he was somewhat isolated in his views on India. There were no rampant supporters of Indian National in the cabinet but there were strong pragmatic reasons to support negotiating on the future of India now rather than risking the threat of insurrection and humiliating retreat later. There were of course voices in India stridently insisting that nothing short of full independence would do, but they were divided over exactly what that meant. Some wanted a single united India; others wanted the construct that was British India broken up along ethnic and religious lines. Given this some important leaders concluded that negotiating some interim arrangements with the British was the lesser evil [5].

Among the lessons learned from Operation Jubilee was that invading force would need vehicles that could clear obstacles and crush defensive positions, not to mention get off the beaches. It would also be better if armoured support could be landed as part of the first wave rather than following on behind. The question was which of the available tanks would make the best platform to meet these needs? The A24 Churchill tank was entering service in early 1943, though not in large enough numbers to see any of them converted into the ‘oddities’ that were being proposed to support the landings on D-Day. The A22 Black Prince was seen as much better candidate for conversion by the British since despite issues at Dieppe it had come to be seen as solid and reliable, if unspectacular in its performance. It was deemed sufficiently useful that were plans to retain production and fit newer models of the Black Prince with a more powerful gun than the current 6pdr, either a 75mm like the early model Churchills or possibly a 17pdr. The Canadians had been working on a replacement for the Wolverine, including a true assault gun based on the chassis of the tank with a larger gun capable of lobbing even heavier high explosive shells to break down fortifications and with upgraded armour capable of resisting heavier calibre anti-tank rounds [6].

It was also a given that air superiority had to be achieved to maximize the chances for a successful landing, which put a great deal of focus on the question of when the RAF’s new generation of jet powered aircraft would be available for combat. The RAF’s initial disdain for the radical new technology had slowly given way to a genuine enthusiasm as the twin engine Gloster Meteor took shape and demonstrated the true potential of the technology, there was even talk of breaking the sound barrier with future jet engines and new airframes based on testing carried out by the research establishment at Farnborough, though that was viewed as very much a long-term objective. The most optimistic projections suggested the Comet might be available by the summer of 1943, however such estimates were deemed wildly unrealistic, and the late autumn seemed more likely. Under the circumstances the RAF could not assume it would be available to assist in defending the beachheads on D-Day and would have to rely on the aircraft currently available to themselves [7].

Two highly effective aircraft that had entered frontline service were the De Havilland Mosquito and the Avro Lancaster. These planes in combination with advances in airborne navigation and the creation of Pathfinder squadrons, specialist units tasked with marking targets for the main bomber forces, meant that Bomber Command’s effectiveness would steadily increase across 1943. This would be vital to the preparations of D-Day, both in disrupting the transportation network in France and targeting the German war industries in the Ruhr. These priorities did not sit well with everyone in Bomber Command, especially its commander Air Marshall Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris. He believed that the war could won by an air campaign directed against Berlin to break the spirit of the Germans, despite all evidence from other air campaigns that contradicted this opinion. The clashes over the direction of bomber campaign, as well as the continuing requirement to release aircraft to Coastal Command for long range patrols in the Atlantic would lead to Harris being replaced at the beginning of 1944 [8].

For the Royal Navy the priority remained the Battle of the Atlantic, though after the heavy losses the Kriegsmarine had suffered across the Autumn and Winter of 1942 it was perhaps less of a battle and more of a rout as the U-Boats were now the the hunted rather than the hunters as the Royal Navy and the RAF were now looking to destroy they before they could get near the convoys, preferably before they even left port. ULTRA decrypts that had been used to avoid U-Boat wolfpacks were being used to target them, especially the ‘Milchkuh’ (milk cow) resupply U-Boats that had become vital to keeping the wolfpacks on station rather than having to return to base. Destroying one Milchkuh could cripple the operation of up to a dozen combat U-Boats, and the ranks of the Milchkuh had been decimated by targeted attacks. At the same time the RAF was going after the U-Boats in in their bases on the Atlantic Coast, now deploying bombs that could penetrate the concrete and steel of even the most powerfully built U-Boat pen. While the Atlantic was still the most important concern for the Royal Navy they were also targeting the Imperial Japanese Navy and the lines of communication between the Japanese Home Islands and its scattered garrisons in the Pacific. Cutting off the Dutch East Indies was the primary focus of this interdiction effort as the DEI was the only potential source of oil available to the Japanese. In combination with the US island hopping campaign and the British forces pressing into Thailand this interdiction was putting the Japanese forces under heavy pressure and they were looking increasingly threadbare as they sought to hold on to the territory they had occupied from China to the Philippines [9].

For the British then 1943 was the year when they were determined to go on the offensive on all fronts and break the Axis. Doing so would come at a cost, but one they felt they had to pay, there could be none of the half measures that had allowed Germany to rise again as threat to the peace of Europe after WWI [10].

[1] Even if the Allies are weaker in some areas than if they waited until 1944, they are going to face weaker defences as well and the Germans are trying cover everywhere from Athens to Oslo.

[2] Indochina is on the to do list, it’s just not going to be anytime soon.

[3] Churchill keeps bringing it up, it keeps getting rejected.

[4] The Greek operation will be discussed later; it may not be colossal but it’s not tiny either.

[5] Success has made it easier to negotiate, not to mention that the Bengal Famine will not become a stick to beat the British with and the Indian National Army never really got off the ground and won’t make any impact on post war politics.

[6] Have not designed this yet and it might even turn out to be a Churchill inspired StuG equivalent instead.

[7] The Comet is basically a Mark I Meteor and there a better engines and aircraft being developed, they just aren’t likely to see wartime service.

[8] Basically with the Allies planning to land in 1943 and the British strategic position much stronger Harris’ ideas about bombing Berlin into submission create even more friction than OTL and even before his removal he will be under tighter constraints, which will lead to some serious issues for the Germans.

[9] The British do not know how bad the Japanese situation really is and they are determined to tighten the screws, of course building a working A-Bomb is still going to take until 1945, so that creates its own issues…

[10] The war being shorter won’t spare the Germans any of the OTL consequences, though who controls what when the time comes to carve up the Reich and its conquests is another matter.

 

[Garrison]

1st March – 8th August 1943 – War in the Air – Part I – Bombing by Night​

There were many things that had to come together to make D-Day possible. Men, materiel and a detailed knowledge of the terrain and defences in the chosen landing zone were all vitally important. Arguably however one thing that had the greatest potential to undo all this careful preparation would be a failure to secure air superiority, not only to protect the landing zones but also to allow allied bombers to provide the maximum possible support as the troops pressed inland. That the Luftwaffe had been able to maintain a high operational tempo during the Dieppe raid, and the fact that the latest German fighters had demonstrated a clear superiority over their opponents was alarming to say the least. Formulating a strategy to ensure this state of affairs was not repeated over Normandy was a complex business, even deciding what would constitute an adequate margin of superiority was a subject for debate. In an ideal world the Luftwaffe would be swept from the skies and the Allies would have complete mastery of the air. Achieving this ideal was considered impossible if the landing were to take place in the summer of 1943, indeed it was projected that it wouldn’t be possible to clear the Luftwaffe from the skies until the Spring of 1944 at the earliest. Given this the planners had to aim for a more limited objective, specifically the ability to suppress the Luftwaffe over the landing beaches and push far enough inland to allow for the creation of forward airbases that would allow for a high enough sortie rate to provide adequate air support [1].

One of the objectives of the Allies extensive deception operations was to have Luftwaffe resources scattered to Norway, the Mediterranean and the Balkans, diluting the fighter and bomber strength in northern France. This however was not enough for the D-Day planners, they wanted to force the Luftwaffe to strengthen its deployments in the Ruhr heartland of German industry and this could only be achieved by launching a bombing campaign aimed at crippling the Reich’s war production, which since this would disrupt aircraft production would produce a double benefit for Operation Millennium. This was no small challenge for the RAF and the USAAF, as the RAF’s early attempts at bombing Germany had been largely ineffectual beyond their morale boosting effects, owing to lacking both heavy bombers and the ability to deliver their bombs with any sort of accuracy [2].

By 1943 Bomber Command had large numbers of powerful four engine bombers at its disposal, in shape of the Stirling, which had a relatively short frontline career owing to the introduction of the Halifax and the legendary Lancaster Even with the introduction of aircraft that could deliver the weight of bombs required for a true strategic bombing campaign there were still issues with accuracy. These were addressed in part by the introduction of the Pathfinder squadrons, specialist units who would mark targets for the main bomber forces following behind. These squadrons had been formed into No. 8 (Pathfinder Force) Group in November 1942. They made extensive use of the De Havilland Mosquito and while they faced a steep learning curve by 1943 they were becoming highly effective, aided in no small part by the introduction of the H2S ground scanning radar at the beginning of January 1943. This not only allowed the Pathfinders to locate targets at night but also through cloud cover, allowing for all weather bombing. The Germans were unaware of this major step forward in RAF technology until a plane carrying an H2S set crashed on the night of 27th March 1943 and they were able to piece the set back together, provoking great alarm in the Luftwaffe and a hasty program to deploy the FuG 350 Naxos radar detector, which proved of only limited use [3].

An unexpected threat to the campaign against the Ruhr came from the head of Bomber Command, Arthur Harris. He was a firm believer that the war could be won from the air, despite years of evidence to the contrary provided by the Luftwaffe. Harris argued that his bombers could be put to better use attacking Berlin, breaking the morale of the German people by reducing the city to ruins. Perhaps if Millennium had been postponed until 1944 Harris might have gotten his way, but as it was this plan encountered fierce opposition from the other service chiefs and those entrusted with the detailed planning for Operation Millennium. They were deeply dubious about the theory behind the plan, and they warned that such a diversion of resources would risk tens of thousands of losses on D-Day if air superiority could not be achieved, as they believed the impact on Wehrmacht strength from bombing Berlin would be limited. It might force the Luftwaffe to redeploy assets to protect Berlin, but it would do little to disrupt the flow of guns, tanks and aircraft to arm the defences in France. Alanbrooke as CIGS was deeply unhappy with Harris, seeing in his attitude the embodiment of the lack of willingness to co-operate with ground forces that had cost the BEF so dear in 1940. Only when the RAF had been forced to direct their bombers at the German supply lines had they proven effective and the Ruhr was the hub of the German supply system in 1943, it should be bombed into oblivion in Alanbrooke’s opinion [4].

Harris’s stubborn resistance to the Ruhr campaign came in the wake of his attempt to block the creation of the Pathfinder squadrons and according to accounts in the diaries of Churchill and several senior RAF officers Harris came very close to being relieved of his duties in the spring of 1943. In the end he knuckled under, unwilling to see ‘his’ bomber crews placed under the command of a less capable officer, though this was simply postponing the inevitable for Harris. One after effect of this argument was that Harris was forced to commit to follow-up conventional raids in the event that Operation Chastise, better known as the Dambusters Raid, proved successful. This was another operation that Harris had been against mounting, and the success of the Dambusters in breaching the Möhne, Edersee, and Sorpe dams, on the night of 15th/16th May 1943 did nothing to strengthen his standing in the eyes of his superiors [5].

The attack caused massive disruption as the huge drop in water levels not only impacted the movement of goods along the industrial but cutting off the vital supply of hydroelectric power from the plants associated with the dams. The follow up raids, dropping conventional HE bombs, took place on the nights of June 16th and August 8th. These raids killed many of the thousands of workers that had been rushed into undertake repairs and destroyed much of the infrastructure put in place to carry out the work. These attacks meant that the dams were not fully restored to service until Christmas 1943, and the repairs were only completed because Harris finally got his wish and opened the ‘Battle of Berlin’ in September of 1943. This proved to be every bit as much a failure as the Luftwaffe’s effort to bomb Britain into submission three years earlier and the heavy losses taken during the campaign are credited with finally ending Harris’ tenure at Bomber Command. Nonetheless the damage to the dams was credited by some in the Nazi leadership with causing the fall in production of armaments that plagued the Luftwaffe and the Heer during the summer of 1943, with Albert Speer going so far as to claim that its impact was greater than all the other air raids on Germany in 1943 combined. With the Eastern Front still receiving the highest priority for equipment in the summer and autumn of 1943 this forced a scaling back in the build-up of defences in France and Normandy fell even lower in the priority list [6].

Many have argued that the relatively modest decline in industrial output in Germany in the latter half of 1943 is evidence that the Ruhr offensive was a waste of resources and that the men and materiel invested in Bomber Command could have been put to better use elsewhere. Such analyses fail to account for the factors that worked against the RAF bombing effort. New manufacturing capacity that had been laid down under Nazi economic programs in 1939-40 was finally coming online in 1943. At the same time there was a drive to rationalize the German aircraft industry, undertaken by the Luftwaffe and not the Speer ministry despite claims to the contrary, imposing greater control over the various companies and at the same time taking advantage of the increased productivity resulting from long series production. Manufacturers inevitably found ways to streamline the manufacture of a particular model of aircraft over time, what is commonly referred to as the learning curve. The downside of exploiting this experience was the necessity of freezing designs and keeping potentially obsolescent models in production to avoid the drop in output introducing new ones would engender. Before the Ruhr campaign was in full swing the men in charge of the Reich’s war economy were expecting a significant rise in production, thus the drop that actually occurred was a devastating blow to the Wehrmacht’s plans [7].

Assessing the impact of the Ruhr campaign one also has to take account of the resources diverted by the need to rebuild or defend Germany’s industrial heartland. Every 88mm cannon deployed in the anti-aircraft role was one less sitting in an emplacement in Normandy or fitted to the fearsome Tiger tank. Rebuilding dams and factories, or building new factories underground consumed raw materials and manpower that could have been used strengthening the Atlantic Wall. Consumed should be taken literally where the manpower is concerned as most of it was slave labour worked to death in appalling conditions. The Ruhr offensive not only degraded the flow of new aircraft to the Luftwaffe but equipment to the whole of the Wehrmacht and weakened the defences the troops coming ashore on D-Day would face, it was then a successful battle and one that in the end justified the losses suffered by Bomber Command in pressing it home night after night [8].

[1] So basically, they will have to live with air superiority, not supremacy. There are trades with an earlier D-Day.

[2] It was bad to say the least, it was estimated that they were lucky to drop bombs within 5 miles of their intended target.

[3] You may be able to tell I was recently reading up on the subject of electronic warfare in WWII.

[4] IOTL the RAF threw away their bombers on pointless missions and never touched the German supply columns. Here they hit them hard and Alanbrooke has not forgotten how important that was in securing the survival of the BEF.

[5] Yes, they got Sorpe as well this time, a pure butterfly effect sees 617 get just that bit luckier on the night.

[6] There is no ‘armaments miracle’ because this time the RAF aren’t wasting their time trying to turn Berlin into finer and finer rubble. The follow up raids were planned out but never executed because of Harris’ attitude to Chastise and the whole Ruhr campaign.

[7] You can tell I’m not a fan of the Speer as a miracle worker mythology, can’t you?

[8] The OTL campaign was also successful, the one ITTL is more so and its easier to see that success in the impact on the war.

 

[Garrison]

1st March – 8th August 1943 – War in the Air – Part II – Bombing by Day​

The first elements of the USAAF VIII Bomber Command, later renamed 8th Airforce, arrived in Britain in June 1942, and conducted their first small scale operations in July. The doctrine of the USAAF strategic bomber force differed in several aspects from that of Bomber Command but the most significant was their commitment to daylight bombing. This was driven by a firm belief in the importance of precision bombing rather than the area attacks the RAF had been forced to embrace for its night raids. Bomber Command’s accuracy had been considerably improved by the creation of the Pathfinders and the development of the H2S radar, but there was still no substitute for being able to see the terrain and identify targets visually, at least in the opinion of the USAAF. To pursue this philosophy the USAAF placed a great deal of faith in the Norden Bombsight, which was, according to its manufacturers, able to deliver bombs with pinpoint accuracy from high altitude. Such was the perceived importance of this device that it was given a similar classification level to the US nuclear weapons program, despite detailed information about the design having been passed to the Germans pre-war in a rare example of a successful Abwehr intelligence operation. In practice the bombsight did not live up to its PR and the USAAF would have no choice but to veer towards the use of area bombing and their own equivalent of the Pathfinders, though this did not persuade them to abandon daylight operations [1].

Even without German espionage efforts the technology of the Norden sight was not as secret as the Americans believed, with the RAF and Luftwaffe both being in possession of very similar systems, in the form of the Stabilized Automatic Bomb Sight (SABS) and the Lotfernrohr 7. The reasons for these devices not achieving the prominence of the Norden were relatively simply. When it came to precision attacks the Luftwaffe preferred dive bombing and later in the war the use of guided munitions. The RAF, or more precisely Arthur Harris, had a limited interest in precision bombing and when they did engage in it, they relied on purpose designed weapons and small elite squadrons. Above all however all these devices were optical and bitter experience had shown the Luftwaffe and Bomber Command that daylight strategic bombing was far too costly to sustain, a problem the USAAF believed it had solved [2].

As stated even heavily escorted bombers had suffered in the skies over Southern England and Western Europe during the opening years of the war, but the USAAF was confident that they could solve the problems of providing adequate protection for their bombers and deliver fatal blows to the Third Reich from the air without the need for ground operations. It was an old refrain, one however that proved remarkably robust in the face of repeated failures. The most obvious solution to the protection problem was to create an escort fighter with the range, performance, and numbers, to provide adequate cover. This though was easier said than done if the fighters were required to protect bombers flying from bases in England all the way to Germany and back, in fact some in the USAAF thought it was practically impossible and the most enthusiastic supporters of the creation of a strategic bomber force were against any diversion of resources from building the largest possible force of bombers and the proponents of this viewpoint had the upper hand until well after VIII Command went into combat. This meant that almost no fighters were designed with the necessary equipment to carry drop tanks, meaning they could not easily be pressed into the long-range escort role even if a need for escorts was acknowledged. The exception was the P-38 Lightning, whose designers included the capability regardless of the official specification, which proved invaluable in the Pacific and allowed its use as an escort in the European theatre, however it still lacked the performance of single engine fighters and was not an ideal candidate to engage the current generation of Luftwaffe fighter in 1943 [3].

What the so-called ‘bomber mafia’ believed in was the concept of self-defence, meaning large formations of bombers so heavily armed with defensive weapons that they would be all but invulnerable to fighter attacks. This idea was embodied in the B-17, which even reflected the concept in its nickname, the Flying Fortress, and much of the USAAF’s hopes for victory from the air were pinned on this aircraft. The B-17 was an excellent bomber and would deliver heavy blows to against the Axis, it would not however do so unescorted as USAAF optimism about the power of self-defence would be crushed as they sought to push deeper and deeper into Germany. It was essentially the ultimate expression of same ‘The bomber will always get through mantra’ that should have been discredited long before VIII Bomber Command took to the skies over Europe [4].

The issue wasn’t fully exposed until the aircraft of VIII Bomber Command tried to follow the RAF into the Ruhr, attempting to put into practice the concept of round the clock bombing being advocated by those who remained committed to the idea that Germany could be beaten from the air regardless of what might happen in Normandy. The weight of these daylight attacks certainly took a toll on German industry and on the Luftwaffe fighters, achieving one of the goals of the Allied planners by forcing the redeployment of Luftwaffe fighter squadrons and anti-aircraft guns to Germany. The crews of VIII Bomber Command paid a high price to achieve this and arguably the costs exceeded the benefits, losses steadily escalated and efforts to hastily retrofit drop tanks to existing fighter models exposed the problems inherent in this approach. When an escort fighter had to engage in combat the first thing it did was jettison its drop tank, meaning that they would often have little choice but to turn for home after engaging in high energy manoeuvres. This meant that if the Luftwaffe fighters engaged in multiple waves, a tactic they were readily able to deploy against bomber missions into German airspace, the escort fighters would be rapidly stripped away [5].

This did not mean there was no value in drop tanks or in deploying aircraft like the P-38 and the commander of VIII Bomber Command, Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz, had never been a supporter of the bomber mafia and had played a significant role in putting into practice the idea of P-38s being flown across the Atlantic using drop tanks to accelerate the build-up of the USAAF in Britain. As the losses among his crews steadily rose in the face of improved air defences over Germany Spaatz made no bones about the need for escort fighters, regardless of the resistance in some quarters in Washington. Some other senior officers of the USAAF still believed that the answer lay in newer models of the B-17 with heavier defensive armament, even the concept of dedicated gunships was seriously considered. Fortunately for the crews of VIII Bomber Command the concept of self-defence was becoming discredited by the spring of 1943 and what the supporters of strategic bombing had once claimed was impossible was already being developed, an escort fighter that could cover the bombers all the way to Berlin and back, the P-51 Mustang. The initial versions of the aircraft had had been distinctly underwhelming, lacking performance and range. It was only when the excellent airframe was combined with the Merlin engine that the full potential of the aircraft was realized and turned it into arguably the finest piston engine fighter of the war. The Mustang though would not be available for many months and in the meantime VIII Bomber Command would have to depend on the interim solution of the P-38 Lightning and the P-47 Thunderbolt operating with drop tanks [6].

One interim solution for the problem of escorts fighters was to limit the operational range of VIII Bomber Command, meaning not sending it into Germany until such time the escort issue could be adequately resolved. Part of the plan to pave the way for Operation Millennium called for the bombing of transportation network in France to disrupt the movement of troops and supplies. This effort would see far more bombs dropped on targets around Calais than in Normandy, all done in the service of deceiving the Germans. Having the USAAF focusing its efforts on France, with targets in easy reach of fighter escort, made some sense, but it was a bitter pill to swallow for many in the USAAF and they argued that the cold logic of the battleplan worked against this. It was still essential after all to degrade German military output and pin down as much of the Luftwaffe as possible in Germany and bombing by night alone would allow fighter units that had been transferred back to Germany to be deployed back to France. This meant that although the operations into Germany were somewhat scaled back until after D-Day, and still constrained even then by the need to support the breakout from Normandy, VIII Bomber Command would continue operations into the Ruhr until September, when severe losses in a raid against Schweinfurt on the 11th of that month would see them suspended. It was not until January of 1944 that what was now 8th Airforce returned to Germany, this time with its bombers protected by the first operational models of the P-51 [7].

[1] The Norden Bombsight seems to be up there with the T-34, the Tiger, or the Spitfire in terms of a mythology that seriously overstates its real capabilities.

[2] It’s a fine military tradition to believe that a plan may have failed before, but our side has figured out how to do it right and continue to believe that even as the losses mount.

[3] Twin engine day fighters just seemed doomed to struggle over Europe.

[4] It was a myth that just wouldn’t die despite the terrible losses racked up by the Luftwaffe and the RAF since 1939.

[5] It’s better than nothing but it’s not a real solution.

[6] The Mustang may arrive a little sooner than OTL, but we are talking weeks not months. Given the amazingly rapid development cycle of the P-51 there’s not a lot that can be done to speed it up.

[7] Overall 8th Airforce losses are a bit lower than OTL, because they are being pulled back to attacking France where they can get decent fighter protection.

 

[Garrison]

1st March – 8th August 1943 – War in the Air – Part III – The Mediterranean and the Eastern Front​

Bombing operations from bases established in Sicily, Egypt and Crete were certainly regarded as secondary to those carried out from Southern England, but they still had plenty of strategic targets in range, with Italy being an obvious one, but not as high on the priority list as it might have been if the Allies had been intent on a landing. The attacks on Italy were focused on forcing the Luftwaffe to defend the rest of the Wehrmacht and on the coastal shipping around Italy. While some industrial targets critical to the Italian war efforts were targeted, others went noticeably untouched. This was because of the ongoing behind the scenes communications with those elements in Italy increasingly unhappy about the German presence on Italian soil. To those determined to find a way for Italy to exit the war the bombing that did take place served as a clear warning of the price that their country would pay for continued support of the Axis. Even in Count Ciano’s inner circle of advisors there were people beginning to wonder which would be worse for Italy, the death and destruction that would inevitably rain down as the Allied air forces grew ever stronger if the nation chose to see things through to the bitter end with Germany or the price that would be paid if they turned against the Reich [1].

For the Allies there was no great rush to come to some arrangement with these parties inside Italy, especially as they assumed that their channels of communication were every bit as compromised as the Vatican efforts of 1942. From their perspective if the Germans feared the Italians defecting, then that would just tie down more Wehrmacht resources and with airbases in Sicily it was far easier to provide fighter support for bombing missions against Italy, meaning that daylight raids were far better protected and the deployment of the P-47 Thunderbolt, as well as newer model Spitfires and Typhoons took their toll on the Luftwaffe fighters protecting Italy. The latter also filled the role of fighter-bomber, replacing the now obsolete Hurribomber, proving highly effective in conducting low level attacks against Axis airfields since the Luftwaffe struggled to establish the integrated fighter control system that proved so effective over Germany [2].

The fact that the RAF and USAAF formations in the Mediterranean were far lower down the priority list for squadrons and aircraft than the forces in Britain was another major constraint on their operations over Italy, exacerbated by the fact that at the same time as targeting Italy they were tasked with attack on targets from Corsica all the way to Romania. The Ploesti oilfields, vital to the continued functioning of the Wehrmacht, were regarded as an important target, though its true strategic value was repeatedly underestimated. Despite large and expensive efforts at developing synthetic fuel plants Germany remained heavily dependent on Ploesti, especially after the invasion of the USSR cut off supplies. Despite this Ploesti had not received the attention from Allied bombers that its importance probably deserved. The fundamental issue was that the Allies failed to appreciate just how vital Ploesti really was to the Third Reich. The British and the Americans were ‘oil rich’, they had huge sources of oil that they had built up reserves that Germany could only dream of. This however distorted their thinking in terms of what constituted acceptable reserves for mounting operations, and they consistently overestimated Germany’s stocks, even in the face of intelligence that painted an accurate picture of the real situation the Allied high command still refused to believe that the Wehrmacht could be conducting major mechanized operations with such thin margins of fuel reserves.

Hitler was acutely aware of the importance of these oilfields and protecting them from any threat was the reason he had been willing to commit so many troops to operations in the Balkans, and in 1943 any suggestion of the Allies strengthening their forces was enough to provoke an anxiety attack. Ploesti, and the entire region around it, was heavily defended by Luftwaffe fighters and anti-aircraft guns. These defences provide a further explanation as to why Ploesti had seen only sporadic attacks, and the distance from many of the airbases capable of supporting Allied strategic bombers was also a factor as it meant they were once again required to operate with limited fighter escort. It was not until November of 1943 that the Allies finally elected to devote the bomber resources needed to seriously disrupt operations at Ploesti. This on top of the crippling of Ruhr Industry after the Dambuster Raid and its follow ups simply added to the chaos that afflicted Germany in the latter half of 1943 [3].

One aspect of air operations that had a crucial impact on the balance of power over France was the fighting on the Eastern front. The Soviet Air Force, Voyenno-Vozdushnyye Sily (VVS), is often overlooked when it comes to aerial combat, especially given the disaster that overwhelmed it during the opening of Operation Barbarossa, where much of its available strength was destroyed on the ground. Things had not improved much in the months after this since despite the best efforts of Soviet industry the VVS remained outclassed, owing to a lack of trained pilots and obsolete models in production. In 1942 the aircraft that would help redress the balance were either not yet in production or like the IL-2 Sturmovik not yet operating in large numbers and hampered by Luftwaffe fighter superiority [4].

Things began to improve as lend lease provided access to more modern British and American designs, though the Soviets primarily received aircraft that were no long considered suitable for the cutting edge of the Allied fighter forces, or indeed that had never been considered fit for that role in service for the Western Allies. Still the Hurricane, the P-40 Warhawk and the P-39 Airacobra all proved quite effective in Soviet hands, especially in the ground attack role. The P-39 in particular found a place with the VVS that it never enjoyed in US service, racking up more air-to-air kills than any other US fighter model despite seeing limited service with the USAAF [5]. The Soviets were particularly enamoured of the 37mm cannon mounted in the nose of the aircraft, firing through the propellor spinner. This influenced the design of several soviet fighter models, though this was vehemently denied during the war and after.

The reality was that the Lend-Lease aircraft not only fleshed out the ranks of the VVS but provided valuable technical information about airframe and engine design that fed directly into the Soviet aero industry and by 1943 the VVS was producing aircraft that could match the capabilities of their Luftwaffe opponents such as the Lavochkin La-5 and the Yakovlev Yak-9. This shift in the balance of technical capabilities was compounded by a closing of the gap in terms of pilot skill and experience between the Luftwaffe and the VVS. Much of this was due to qualitative in improvements in the abilities of the Soviet pilots, but it also reflected the steady erosion of the standard of the Luftwaffe crews. What had once been the most experienced and tactically sophisticated air force in the world was feeling the effect of too many crew losses and the curtailment of pilot training as limitations on fuel and the pressing need to put men in the air saw the required flight hours for new recruits to enter frontline duties steadily reduced. It did not help that many of the fighter pilots who should by rights have been training these recruits in the tactics of aerial combat were instead still carrying out combat sorties. This would lead to some of them racking up incredible numbers of kills, making them some of history’s leading aces, most though simply died when their luck ran out, taking their skills and knowledge with them [6].

By the spring and summer of 1943, the Luftwaffe was locked into a war of attrition in the East, one that it was slowly losing. With Hitler still determined to resume the offensive even after the failure of Case Blue the Luftwaffe was unable to concentrate its resources against the Allied bombing offensive in Northwestern Europe, and the damage caused by the campaign over the Ruhr impacted the Luftwaffe’s ability to maintain its overall strength, weakening its effort against the Red Army and the VVS, creating a down spiral for the Luftwaffe it couldn’t escape. Being forced to fight on so many fronts simultaneously drained Luftwaffe strength and the situation only became worse in the second half of the year as they faced a new generation of Allied fighter technology [7].

[1] A question that will be answered in due course.

[2] Differences in development cycles mean this isn’t quite the Typhoon of OTL and it’s a reasonably effective fighter.

[3] It’s a very bad summer and autumn for the Germans.

[4] No not every Soviet aircraft was bad, but they seemed to have more than their share of clunkers even when they started producing monoplane fighters in real numbers.

[5] Yes that is an OTL statistic, the P-39 racked up large numbers of kills, mainly because of its longevity and the scale of the fighting on the Eastern Front.

[6] The Japanese likewise kept pilots at the front but refused to reduce training hours until far too late, creating the same shortage of trained pilots and crews.

[7] And this is not a reference to the P-51, there is something far worse for Luftwaffe morale coming in the latter part of 1943.

 

[Garrison]

12th March – 20th May 1943 – Europe – A Bodyguard of Lies​

The build-up of men and material in Southern England during the spring of 1943 was the necessary precursor to the cross channel invasion and despite the scale of the forces being accumulated no one in charge of the planning was in any doubt that if the Germans could bring the full weight of the forces available in the west against Normandy then at the very least a successful landing would be a far costlier affair, at worst the Allies might be repelled altogether, with incalculable consequences for the course of the war. Such a defeat still would not lead to outright Nazi victory, but it could well persuade Stalin that a separate peace was an acceptable option or force the Western Allies to consider their own deal with the devil in Berlin. The massive intelligence and counter-intelligence operations conducted to ensure this did not happen have been mentioned in passing but given their scale and importance it is worth discussing them in greater detail [1].

The overall codename for the Allied intelligence efforts around D—Day was Operation Fortitude, which was by the spring of 1943 broken down into four major sub-groups, Fortitude North, Fortitude South, Fortitude Med, and Fortitude Aegean. North was focused on fostering the idea that the Allies were seriously contemplating a landing in Norway and made extensive use of radio traffic from non-existent army units and the construction of what appeared to be new airstrips and base facilities in Scotland that Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance were occasionally permitted to photograph. As with all the best deception plans Fortitude North played into the expectations and fears of the enemy. Hitler was deeply afraid that the Allies would target Norway and Narvik in particular to cut the vital flow of Iron ore from Sweden, without which the German steel industry would be crippled, in effect a repeat of the plan that had come close to succeeding in 1940. The success of Fortitude North meant that not only were requests to reduce the large garrison force in Norway to release troops for other duties rejected by Hitler but he insisted that the garrison be reinforced, and extensive new fortifications built. The garrison in Denmark was also maintained at full strength and would remain stationed in the country well after the Allies were already ashore, meaning they made no contribution whatsoever to the defence of Western Europe or the Reich itself [2].

If Hitler was obsessed with a threat to Norway, then von Kleist and the General Staff were just as focused on the prospect of a larger scale repeat of the Dieppe Raid, with Calais or Cherbourg being considered the most likely targets for a full-scale Allied assault against the Atlantic Coast and reinforcing this belief was the purview of Fortitude South. This naturally used the same tactics of false radio traffic and false bases but on a far larger scale than Fortitude North. These bases were built close to Dover and the shortest route across the English Channel from Calais and were graced with wooden mock-ups of aircraft and even inflatable tanks, all convincing enough when seen from the cockpit of a fast-moving reconnaissance aircraft. As part of this deception the Allies created AUSAG, the Advance United States Army Group, with a detailed order of battle that documents captured later proved that the Abwehr had laid out in intricate detail for the General Staff. One tricky issue for Fortitude South was that the obvious and most likely commander for AUSAG was General Patton. To draw attention away from Patton a rumour was spread that he was in disgrace because of some unfortunate lapse of judgment carried out in full view of the press. So effective was this rumour that Patton had to bite his tongue when offered sympathy or assistance over his predicament, though he apparently found the episode fairly amusing in later years [3].

Fortitude South did not simply concentrate on Calais, it also encompassed another of Hitler’s strategic obsessions, the Channel Islands. The only part of the British Isles to be occupied by Nazi Germany has supplied many disconcerting images of Wehrmacht troops interacting with the locals, giving some flavour of what might have been if Operation Sealion had ever been successfully carried out. Hitler was convinced that given the humiliation suffered by the British in abandoning the islands and allowing them to be occupied they would seek to take them back as soon as they could. This had led to a program of fortification building on Jersey and Guernsey that bore no relation to their real strategic value. The British had concluded in 1940 that the Channel Islands were too easily isolated and they had no intention of trying to retake them when doing so would get them no closer to their goal of driving the Germans out of Western Europe and taking the war into Germany itself, they would still have to cross the Channel after all and the islands would make a poor staging area. As in so many other places the fortification were built on the backs of slave labour, starved, and worked to death in the construction of massive works of concrete and steel that still litter the islands decades later [4].

The deception operations for Fortitude Med and Fortitude Aegean faced an added complication when it came to disguising troop movements as they had to cover the fact that entire divisions were being withdrawn, either as part of Millennium or for service in South East Asia whereas the Fortitude operations based in the UK had the slightly simpler task of misdirecting the Germans as to where the troops massing in Britain were to be unleashed. In North Africa and the Middle East the planners fell back on the old standard of having units moving openly and visibly in one direction by day, while quietly moving in the opposite direction by night. In the case of Fortitude South this meant convoys arriving in Alexandria and Tunis and unloading by day, only to be reloaded by night and columns of trucks and tanks driving the same loop of roads multiple times while radio traffic levels were gradually increased. These operations also made use of yet more dummy vehicles to deceive aerial reconnaissance. Perhaps more than any of the other Fortitude operations those in the Mediterranean relied on the biases of the German high command for their success. Information certainly reached Berlin pointing to the existence of the fake convoys, but it was this information that was dismissed as a deception by a General Staff all too willing to believe that the British would not feel secure in the Mediterranean until they had removed Italy from the war. Indeed, there were still those in London agitating for an invasion of Italy after Millennium had pinned down German forces in the west as an alternative to the proposed follow up landings in the south of France. Churchill did not let go of his hobby horse until the Autumn of 1943.

In some ways Fortitude Aegean had the easiest time of the deception plans because even as the British were working to persuade the Axis that an attack on Greek territory there was an actual operation in the works, though this had little to do with Churchill’s grand ambitions. Fortunately the plan for Operation Jasper was able to work in tandem with Fortitude Aegean to ensure it retained the element of surprise and its execution helped to persuade the Axis of the veracity of the misinformation being passed to them [5].

Underpinning all these deception efforts was the information being relayed to the Abwehr by their network of agents in Britain, a network in fact being run by MI5. The terrible performance of the Abwehr operations in Britain have been advanced as evidence of where the true sympathies of Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr, really lay. He was no supporter of Hitler and the Nazi regime but even so there are rather more mundane explanations for the subversion of Abwehr operations by the British than sabotage by Canaris and much of the unravelling of the German network can be traced back to the invasion scare of 1940. While fear of Fifth Columnists and German paratroopers led to any number of luckless innocents being harassed and arrested it also made life all but impossible for the genuine agents Germany attempted to deliver to Britain, especially as their language skills and local knowledge fell far short of the standard required to go unnoticed. Once arrested these Abwehr agents were offered a simple choice, be shot as a spy or work for the British, a large number chose the latter and as further agents were dispatched with orders to contact their predecessors they were also scooped up and either imprisoned or turned [6].

Not every Abwehr agent had to be coerced into co-operation, perhaps the most famous example of this was Eddie Chapman. A petty criminal who had been locked up for several criminal offenses on Jersey when the Channel Islands were occupied Chapman volunteered to work for the Germans and after some reluctance he was accepted by the Abwehr, trained, and parachuted into Britain, where he promptly turned himself into the authorities and was recruited by MI5 and eventually sent back to occupied Europe. He was a valuable operative for the British while being highly regarded by the Germans also, to the extent that he was even awarded with the Iron Cross for his efforts. His codename of Agent Zigzag reflected the complexity of the operations he was involved in but also suggested that MI5 was never entirely certain where his loyalties lay.

Perhaps the most extraordinary agent of the war was Juan Pujol Garcia, who started out not as an MI5 or Abwehr operative but as independent motivated by little more than his detestation of the Nazis. Pujol was a Spaniard and offered his services to the British as an agent, only to be rejected. Undeterred he created his own fictious identity as an ardently pro-Nazi Spanish official and began passing false information, much of which was based on guesswork about Britain and its culture that was almost hilariously inaccurate. Nonetheless he became a trusted agent and when the British became aware of his operations MI6 finally brought him into the fold and gave him the codename Agent Garbo. Agent Garbo became the centre of a cottage industry of fictitious agent and informants who became the source of a wealth of false information passed to the Germans and Pujol played a major role in reinforcing the German belief that the Pas de Calais was the main allied target. He achieved a unique distinction in that he was awarded both an Iron Cross and the MBE, the Germans never realized that their master spy spent the entire war deceiving them [7].

Allied plans depended on more than just the flow of false information to the Germans but the information flowing from the Germans to their agents. The questions they were asked to answer about Allied preparations revealed their own preoccupations and the ULTRA decrypts revealed much about how effective the false information being sent to the Germans was. Importantly by 1943 the Allies were also making strides in breaking the Lorenz cipher. Used at the highest levels of the Nazi regime this was a far more complex system than Enigma, nonetheless through a combination of human error on the part of German users and the ingenuity of the code breakers they were able to not only read the code but mechanize the decryption process, culminating in the creation of one of the earliest digital computers Colossus at the end of 1943, though this came too late to warn the Allies of the Germans final gamble in the west [8].

Between Fortitude and ULTRA the British ‘had the Germans coming and going’ and this massive advantage in intelligence operations was vital to prospects of success on D-Day, proving so successful that some in the German high command still hesitated to fully commit the available reserves to Normandy for fear it was simply a diversion from the ‘real’ invasion [9].

[1] It is massive topic and this just going to be an overview of the alt version.

[2] Norway was a much closer run thing here than IOTL, so Hitler’s paranoia is worse, if possible.

[3] So what did happen with Patton IOTL is just a cover story here, and the fake army is AUSAG rather than FUSAG.

[4] of course these ludicrous structures are still to be found all across Europe since destroying them would be simply too expensive and/or dangerous.

[5] And Operation Jasper will have its own updates soon.

[6] I honestly think that whoever was running the Abwehr the British network was doomed to failure with a poor pool of potential agents and a hostile suspicious population.

[7] It would have been criminal to let these two be butterflied away.

[8] Which will also of course have its own updates in due course.

[9] And naturally there are a lot more updates on Millennium to come.

 

[Garrison]

14th – 17th March 1943 – The Tunis Conference – Part I – Diverging Interests​

The first meeting of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, the ‘Big 3’, in Tunis was as much matter of symbolism as it was of strategic discussion, though there was to be plenty of that as well. The three great war leaders coming together was meant to send a message of unity and solidarity, dispelling any hopes the Axis entertained of somehow splitting the allies apart and making a separate peace in either the east or the west. Of course, this made little impression with Hitler or his innermost circle. To the Fuhrer it simply served as proof that the Fuhrer had been right all along, and the world was against Germany, under the direction of the vast Jewish conspiracy of course. In some respects the symbolism may have backfired as it discouraged those in the Third Reich who entertained hopes that that they might save Germany, and themselves, by overthrowing Hitler, though some continued with their schemes, feeling Hitler had to be removed regardless of what the Allies might or might not do [1].

On the Allied side the individual who was least happy with the conference was almost certainly Charles De Gaulle. He had persistently agitated for France to have a seat at the top table to ensure that its interests were protected and in this respect selecting Tunis as the venue might have been intended as something of a sop to French pride, though if it was it did nothing to stop De Gaulle’s complaints about being excluded from critical discussions on the plans for the European theatre of the war. This did nothing to endear De Gaulle to the Americans, who had not completely given up on the hope of finding some credible alternative to De Gaulle as the leader of Free France, but efforts to try and elevate the status of one or other of the senior former Vichy representatives all fell flat in the face of De Gaulle’s resolute stance and the fact that their own country regarded them with suspicion precisely because of their actions while serving Vichy. Those who had served Free France from the beginning might have had better credentials, but there was no appetite among them for the sort of political manoeuvring the US was trying to engage in, especially as it was obviously intended to place France into a subservient position [2].

Through the lens of later history, or even indeed in the eyes of some members of Congress at the time, it would be easy to imagine that the conference would be divided along the lines of the democratic west versus the Communist east, with both sides seeking to impose their will on the other. The situation was rather more complicated than this and while this divide would come to dominate later discussions the lines between east and west were distinctly blurred at Tunis, greatly annoying the British who feared the Americans were being far too accommodating with Stalin. It would be wrong to say relations between Britain and America had fractured, more that the sense of relief in the British camp after the USA entered the war had long since dissipated and they were now starting to think about the possible shape of the post war world, and where Britain would be ranked in the new world order that would inevitably emerge from a world war that had seen an even greater disruption of the established order than that of 1914-18. It was one thing to accept that the USA was the senior partner in the alliance and that they would emerge as a world power, or indeed a superpower after the war was won, it was quite another to simply accept the USA attempts, often rather heavy handed, to draw nations such as Australia and Canada into their sphere of influence at the expense of Britain. The heavy handedness, combined with the unfortunate behaviour of the likes of Douglas MacArthur and Ernest King had effectively derailed such efforts, but not ended them. It had though led the Canadians and Australians to make a great show of loyalty to the ‘mother country’ precisely to send a message to the Americans, while at the same time looking to redefine their own relationships with the British [3].

If these efforts to influence the White Dominions had annoyed London it was as nothing compared to the British grievances over the conduct of the war in the Pacific. Fairly or not at the beginning of 1943 the British felt they were still carrying most of the weight in fighting the Japanese, while at the same time having their ideas for a co-ordinated strategy being largely ignored by the USA. This improved somewhat after the departure of Ernest King, but even so the possibility of a drive towards the Philippines continued to be floated by various US politicians and military officers, even as the British were clear that the seizure of the DEI would achieve far more strategically. That this had finally been accepted was a small triumph for the British, and a massive relief for the ABCD forces on Java, but the arguments still rankled with senior British officers such as Auchinleck and Montgomery [4].

The conference itself created yet another source of British unhappiness as it became clear that their fears were justified and Roosevelt was focused on improving relations with Stalin, even if this came at the expense of the Anglo-American relationship. All of this led to considerable pressure on Churchill to reign in his Americophile tendencies and focus on a hard-headed pursuit of British interests, something made easier by personal slights dealt out by Roosevelt as he tried to build his relationship with Stalin. Some in Washington certainly sympathised with the British over Roosevelt’s attitude to the Soviets, which did not mean they were fans of the British Empire. Still the two Western Allies were fully committed to Operation Millennium and recognized the importance of maintaining co-operation in the most critical areas. This cooling of relations led to a distinct tailing off in several aspects of Anglo-American co-operation in regard to technology sharing such as jet engines, radar, as well as a greater emphasis on an independent British nuclear program [5].

From the US perspective there were excellent reasons to strengthen ties with the USSR and the keeping the British in the war was no longer a critical consideration in 1943, after all there was no prospect of Britain suddenly deciding to make a separate peace with Nazi Germany, a possibility that still exercised the minds of the US leadership when it came to the USSR. The withdrawal of the Red Army from the conflict, leaving the Nazis access to the resources of the territories already under German control and possibly restoring the flow of Soviet oil might well make any offensive in the west all but impossible and reduce the war in the west into a bloody stalemate, at least until the inevitable collapse of such a cold peace or the Manhattan Project bore fruit [6].

Beyond merely assuring continued Soviet commitment to the war in Europe Roosevelt was also keen to obtain a pledge from Stalin that the USSR would enter the war against Japan. In the aftermath of the battle Khalkin Gol in 1938 the USSR and Japan had concluded a non-aggression pact, and despite Japan being at war with the Western Allies and Germany being at war with the USSR that pact still stood. This was clearly advantageous to the Soviets since it meant they only had to worry about war on one front and the Japanese were hardly enthusiastic about adding to their list of enemies, hence why they had resisted German efforts to persuade them to enter the war against the USSR. Stalin was almost equally reluctant to enter the war against Japan and obtaining a commitment from him would inevitably come at a price.

There was also some genuine sympathy in the US administration towards the USSR, most notably in the shape of the Vice-President Henry Wallace. In the years after the war Wallace has been portrayed as something akin to a Soviet mole in the heart of the US and even at the time his perceived communist leanings meant that there was already a groundswell of opinion in the Democratic Party to see him replaced in 1944 as Vice-President, and any idea that he might become the Presidential candidate if Roosevelt chose not to run for a fourth term was out of the question. Wallace was not a Soviet agent, he did however have a rather distorted view of the reality of life in the USSR and was eager to see them receive all possible support, despite objections from elsewhere in the government [7].

To achieve his strategic goals at Tunis Roosevelt felt had little choice but to prioritize Soviet concerns over those of the British, though the degree to which he openly snubbed Churchill to ingratiate himself with Stalin raised some eyebrows even in the US delegation. Despite this disquiet Roosevelt did achieve one of his goals, Stalin agreed to a declaration that not only would none of the parties to the anti-Nazi alliance make a separate peace, they would only accept the unconditional surrender of Germany. There would be no room for a repeat of the ‘stabbed in the back’ myth to take root as Germany would be broken and remade by the victorious powers, though what form that remaking would take was still a matter of debate. Some in the USA were considering the wholesale destruction of Germany industry, turning to clock back to before the Industrial Revolution, this would coalesce into the Morgenthau Plan, named after Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, and it would seem an attractive idea as more came to be known about the scale of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany [8].

Roosevelt was rather less successful in persuading the USSR to break with Japan. Stalin was adamant that the USSR would not enter the war until Nazi Germany had been defeated, and that Western Allies must focus their efforts on assisting the USSR in achieving that goal. The best that Roosevelt could obtain was an agreement the USSR would join the war against Japan no more than four months after the end of the war with Germany, which meant that for the foreseeable future the Japanese would still be able to focus all their resources on defending against attacks from the Americans and British. Some cynically concluded that Stalin were expecting the Allies to have finished off the Japanese before the Soviet Union had to make good on his promise. From the perspective of many in the Western Allied leadership it appeared that Stalin left Tunis the undisputed winner in the negotiations, Stalin however saw things very differently, and not without reason [9].

[1] Some German officers really do just hate Hitler by this point, and this will be discussed in more detail later.

[2] Not all the French are admirers of De Gaulle, but the ones who would be willing to take his place are basically too tainted to be acceptable and he has largely succeeded in cementing his position.

[3] In the simplest terms with the pre-war boost to the Canadian arms industry and the British victories in North Africa and South East Asia their standing with the White Dominions is higher and there isn’t the sense they need to look to the Americans for security.

[4] To call it a disagreement is putting it mildly, the tug of war over the DEI and the Philippines has become a fight over who exactly is in charge in the Pacific?

[5] In this timeline the phrase ‘special relationship’ will probably only be used sarcastically.

[6] And which of those would be worse for the future of Europe is hard to say, but the reality was that for all the occasional suggestions in Moscow and Berlin a peace was never going to happen.

[7] Of course what happens in 1944 will largely come down to the degree of success achieved in Normandy.

[8] With the war moving at a faster pace the questions are being asked sooner and so there will still a recognizable version of the Morgenthau Plan put forward.

[9] which is the subject of the next update.

 

[Garrison]

14th – 17th March 1943 – The Tunis Conference – Part II – Stalin’s Miscalculation​

Stalin had initially been reluctant to attend Tunis, officially because the battle of Stalingrad was still raging, however the truth was that outcome there was all but certain by the end of 1942 and Stalin’s paranoia about being away from Moscow and worries about making such a long trip across the Mediterranean. In the end Stalin’s fears about the British and Americans setting their plans for operations in 1943 without giving due weight to the situation of the USSR. To put it another way Stalin feared the Allies would waste yet more time on the Mediterranean, invading either Italy, Greece, or both instead of engaging on the European mainland where the outcome of the war would obviously be decided. After the conference the official Soviet position was that Stalin had secured everything, he wanted from the discussions. It was only in the years after Stalin’s death that anyone in the USSR was willing to put on record that Stalin had in fact fallen short of his goals. He had miscalculated his strategy to a degree and was far from pleased with the outcome. His belief that the Western Allies were planning to focus on Italy and the Balkans, fuelled by certain intelligence the USSR had acquired about Churchill’s constant push for exactly this strategy, as well as the outcome of Operation Jubilee meant that he leaned rather too heavily on the idea that the British and Americans would not mount an offensive in North-western Europe until 1944, which was a serious error. At the same time whatever he said to Churchill and Roosevelt during the conference Stalin was aware that for all the grievous losses suffered by the Soviets during Case Blue the offensive had failed, and the initiative was swinging towards the Red Army, with the German 6th Army encircled and doomed to destruction at Stalingrad. They simply needed the means to exploit this shift in momentum and deliver the killing blow to the Wehrmacht [1].

What Stalin therefore focused on was obtaining a commitment from the British and Americans to a significant increase in both the quantity and quality of Lend-Lease supplies to the USSR, with the quality aspect meaning Stalin wanted the latest models of tanks, artillery and aircraft included in the supplies, as opposed to what some in Soviet delegation insisted on calling second class equipment. This tone, as well as Stalin’s misapprehension of Allied intentions for 1943, inevitably created some friction during the discussions and even reduced Roosevelt’s ardour for a rapprochement with Stalin, if only temporarily. The British were particularly irritated as they had agreed to keep open a production line for the Valentine tank precisely because of Soviet demand for the vehicle, they had even arranged for delivery of Canadian built Wolverines to the USSR, so they were not happy that on the one hand the Soviets were demanding as many of these tanks as they could get while on the other, they derided their quality and usefulness. The idea that the British should also provide the Soviets with A24 Churchill and A27 Centaur tanks, the latter of which was still months away from operational service, when these were vital to equipping British and Canadian forces for D-Day was simply a step to far in British eyes. For once the British and the Free French were more or less in accord. They might not have a place at the top table, but de Gaulle’s representatives were emphatic that nothing should delay the liberation of their homeland, certainly not in support of the country which, they rather undiplomatically reminded everyone, had been an ally of Nazi Germany for the first two years of the war! [2]

Roosevelt was far more inclined to be accommodating, even while making it clear a landing in France absolutely was going to take place in the summer of 1943. This created further friction with the British, whose view was summed up as ‘every tank sent to USSR now is one less for France’. This viewpoint was also echoed by some on the American side. US industry was by now fully geared up for war production, but it was not limitless. With operations in the Pacific, the build-up for D-Day and supplying equipment to Britain, the USSR and China there was a fear in some quarters that more could only be supplied to the USSR at the expense of US forces either already in battle or those soon to be. There was also a measure of cynicism that Stalin might not be unhappy if Allied advances were slowed, after all if the USSR were the undisputed victor over Nazi Germany, then it would be in a strong position to dictate the terms of the peace. Most though were willing to accept Stalin’s account of the strategic balance in the east, though by the time of the post D-Day conference held at Tehran the cynical view had gained considerable ground [3].

In the end a relatively modest increase was offered to Stalin, largely supplied at the expense of the British and the Chinese, alongside assurances that the Germans would have little choice but to honour the threat in the west and transfer resources, indeed courtesy of intelligence intercepts the British and Americans knew these transfers were already taking place. In what would have come as a considerable shock to the British and Americans Stalin was also in receipt of some of this intelligence, largely courtesy of Soviet spies lurking inside MI5, though they were confirmed by independent Soviet sources monitoring German plans [4].

Overall then the plans agreed at Tunis were almost the perfect political compromise, in that they satisfied no one. The British felt they were being side-lined in favour of a new Washington-Moscow alignment that they became convinced was doomed to failure, and that if it wasn’t then no good would come from it for Britain and its empire. The Americans felt that the British were being truculent and were more interested in keeping their empire under control than winning the war. Stalin saw the Allied commitment to a second front in 1943 as a mixed blessing at best. Certainly, it would draw off a substantial part of the Heer’s reserves, if it actually took place and if succeeded, but a major advance in the west might impinge on the shape of a post war Soviet sphere of influence and he was no more eager to have the Americans and British with armies in Central and Eastern Europe than he was the Germans. This would lead to Stalin insisting on plans for fresh operations on the Eastern Front to drive the Germans back being accelerated, something that his Generals had little choice except to enthusiastically endorse [5].

It is arguable though that the key to the success or failure of these plans lay with the reaction of the man whose downfall they were ultimately aimed at, Adolf Hitler. The Fuhrer of Germany was becoming increasingly erratic as Germany suffered one setback after another on the battlefield, would the Third Reich respond as the Western Allies and the Soviets expected or would it latch on to some new ‘master plan’ to turn the tide of the war? That such a plan would work was vastly unlikely, that it might increase the already terrible toll of the war was a far more plausible proposition. There was one nightmarish possibility that exercised the minds of the Western Allies more than any other, the prospect of a Nazi atomic bomb [6].

[1] IOTL the Allies were slugging it out in North Africa and their next moves were clearly aimed at the Med, so no real motivation for Stalin to overcome his fears and attend.

[2] The better performance of British tanks, and just better tanks, have made them less willing to accept criticism from the Soviets, not to mention their stronger strategic position is making them less accommodating.

[3] Stalin isn’t the only one capable of being a little paranoid. With the prospect of landing in Europe this year there are people already thinking about the post war carve up of the continent.

[4] Overall the flow of Lend-Lease to the Soviets in 1943 won’t be as large as OTL, and of course there isn’t a German army surrounded and on the brink of surrender in Tunisia. The forces that would have been lost there will turn up elsewhere in due course.

[5] It’s good news/bad news for the Red Army. Allied plans in the west will draw off more of the Wehrmacht, but at the same time that means Stalin is getting anxious.

[6] Also to be discussed in due course.

 

[Garrison]

18th April – 4th August 1943 – Dutch East Indies – Part I – A Thankless Task​

The Allied troops fighting on Java would later describe themselves as the forgotten army and there was some truth in their complaints, they had after all started as little more than a hastily assembled force intended to slow the Japanese down as they tried take control of the Dutch East Indies and for the next two years there always seemed to be somewhere else that captured the attention of the British in South East Asia. They first of what became the ABCD force (Australian, British, Canadian, and Dutch) had been deployed at the end of 1941 to hold the line in Java and buy time to prepare the defence of Sumatra, which had to be held if Singapore was to remain viable as a naval base. As the threat of an attack on Sumatra receded troops intended to hold that island were intermittently dispatched to reinforce Java, turning it in almost World War I type stalemate with both sides sitting in their defensive positions and neither having the available resources to achieve a decisive advantage. For the Canadian troops who had been bogged down in the miserable fighting on Java throughout 1942 the only small consolation was that they had initially been scheduled to be dispatched to Hong Kong, where they would inevitably have become POWs and subject to all the brutality the Japanese meted out to their prisoners [1].

While conditions on Java were bad for the ABCD troops they were undoubtedly worse for the Japanese, faced with constant demands to force the allied troops out of Java and pave the way for an assault on Sumatra, from where Japanese air and naval power could blockade Singapore, not only rendering the port useless to the Royal Navy, but cutting the flow of supplies to Malaya and unhinging the entire British defensive position in South East Asia. That this had ceased to be a strategic possibility after the second battle of Wake Island did not stop a series of attacks across the autumn whenever the Japanese thought they had scraped together enough reinforcements to overwhelm the entrenched ABCD forces and took heavy casualties in the process as they consistently underestimated the defenders. That Java continued to hold throughout this period after the strategic threat to Sumatra had receded was in due no small part to the fact that the defence of the island had taken on a tremendous symbolic importance to the Dutch, and also because some of those planning Allied operations in the Pacific were looking to the relief of Java and retaking Borneo as the next logical step in the campaign against the Japanese. Once Borneo was secured then Sulawesi and the Moluccas could be cleared, finally completely clearing the sea lanes to Australia and striking a serious blow to the Japanese Empire as it cut off their only source of oil [2].

Securing agreement to the plan, meaning securing a commitment from the Americans to support it, had taken some time but across the spring of 1943 forces were building up for a two-pronged assault under the umbrella of Operation Gawain. The relief of Java would fall to British and Commonwealth troops, along with a Dutch and a Free French contingent, and was scheduled for the last week in April, codenamed Operation Stonemason. In the first week of May a force consisting of US Marines and Commonwealth troops would make landings on Borneo, supported by major elements of the Royal navy and the USN, codenamed operation Redwood [3].

Prior to the landings there was a steady increase in allied air activity over the DEI, aimed at destroying the remaining IJAAF assets in the islands, matched by an uptick in British, Dutch, and American submarines interdicting the Japanese supply lines, as well as preventing the shipping of oil from Borneo back to Japan. The latter had already been reduced to a trickle by the toll taken on Japanese shipping by previous Allied efforts, the flow was cut off altogether by the end of March, with the majority of the tankers the Japanese possessed now resting on the bottom of the Indian Ocean [4].

All this allied activity meant that the Japanese defenders on Borneo, commanded by General Kiyotake Kawaguchi could be in little doubt that the Allies were planning a landing in the DEI. Kawaguchi had commanded the 35th Infantry Brigade during the initial Japanese landings in British Borneo, modern Sarawak, and his appointment to command the forces in Borneo was no reward. He had opposed the execution of members of the civilian authorities as ‘violating the Bushido code’. This earned him the enmity of the influential Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, the man responsible for ordering multiple atrocities in Japanese held territory. Tsuji had Kawaguchi given command in Borneo as a punishment, hoping that he would either die in battle or be sufficiently disgraced that he would have no choice but to give up his life for having failed the emperor. By the spring of 1943 Tsuji himself was in disgrace after the failure of Operation Yari and the success of Operation Buttermere, though he had powerful friends who protected him from the most extreme consequences of such a failure. Kawaguchi had no such good fortune and now faced the thankless task of trying to defend Borneo [5].

Kawaguchi did his best to mobilize his forces and build up defences around the most likely landing grounds, but the Allied interdiction hampered these efforts. The lack of replacements and equipment available saw the local populace, and the unfortunate POWs still held on Borneo, being driven to build positions, with the inevitable toll on those conscripted to these tasks. Kawaguchi may have objected to what he saw as senseless acts of revenge, he was though quite prepared to do whatever it took to give his men some semblance of a fighting chance against the Allies. Despite this ruthlessness the defences that Kawaguchi built were far from satisfactory and their effectiveness was further undermined by the strategy behind them. Kawaguchi had elected to build his defences covering the beaches and position his reserves immediately behind the landing zones, in the hopes of driving the enemy back into the sea before they could establish a foothold. Opposing the landing in this manner had its obvious appeal, the problem was that this exposed the defenders to air and naval bombardment that could inflict heavy damage before the defenders could even engage the landing forces. Allowing the enemy to come ashore and drawing them into well prepared defensive ambush positions to whittle away their number, while remaining out of reach of naval fire support was certainly a viable alternative, in theory, and arguments over the best approach would carry on throughout the war, above all affecting planning for the defence of the Atlantic Wall [6].

The truth was that neither strategy was likely to succeed if the invading force possessed air and naval superiority and had the means to continually reinforce and resupply its troops. The invader could also choose where and when to concentrate their forces, while the defender who wished to stop them at the beaches had to disperse themselves across multiple potential landing zones. The defence in depth approach suffered from the obvious problem that once the invading force had a bridgehead, they were unlikely to give it up absent counterattacking formations powerful enough to break through their perimeter. It was this last consideration that persuaded Kawaguchi to try and stop the allied forces on the beaches, he simply did not possess the manpower to mount such counterattacks [7].

If defending Borneo was a challenge holding Java was all but impossible for the Japanese, since the Allies were already in possession of a bridgehead, one held at great cost during 1942 and one that they were now able to exploit to the fullest. Vitally the ABCD forces had held a perimeter well to the east of Jakarta, and the port of Jakarta saw a steadily increasing flow of naval and merchant ships bringing men and equipment to the island and evacuating many of the wounded and exhausted troops that had been on the island almost since the beginning of the fighting. The Japanese had no such luxury, especially since what supplies that did reach the DEI were hoarded to defend Borneo. All the Japanese troops had was determination to make taking back Java as expensive as possible for the enemy, and by the spring even this was crumbling despite exhortations to show the true Bushido spirit and defend the honour of the emperor. The Allies had no intention of allowing the Japanese forces the opportunity to make any noble last stand, they intended this final battle for Java to be swift and decisive and they would bring all the force they could muster to deliver that victory [8].

[1] The Canadian troops dodged a bullet ITTL, though they may not see it that way given conditions on Java during 1942.

[2] Not that the Japanese have been getting a lot of oil out of DEI.

[3] And this is the last time until well into 1944 that the US and British forces will carry out joint operations in the Pacific.

[4] The Japanese merchant marine is faring even worse than the IJN.

[5] IOTL Tsuji faced no consequences whatsoever for his actions and even made it to the Japanese parliament, things may be different here.

[6] It’s an argument that won’t be settled in the course of the war.

[7] Without naval superiority the Japanese can’t really adequately defend any of these outposts.

[8] And the battle for Java will be the next update.

 

[Garrison]

18th April – 4th August 1943 – Dutch East Indies – Part II – Java – The End of the Long Road​

The increased tempo of transport ships heading for Jakarta did not go unnoticed by the Japanese, who still had some submarines prowling the waters off the DEI, though poor doctrine and Royal Navy ASW capabilities limited the toll they could take on the Allied shipping. There was nothing the IJA force on Java could do about this effort. Even so the British did their best to make it appear that shipments were largely about the relief of some of the long-suffering units on Java rather than a major build up. The main force that was delivered to the existing perimeter was the 5th Canadian Division, whose major units consisted of 11th Canadian Infantry Brigade, 13th Canadian Infantry Brigade, 5th Armoured Brigade and two regiments of field artillery, the 8th and 17th. While this was the most important numerically the arrival of roughly two thousand troops under the banner of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) could hardly be ignored in a more political context. These soldiers had been undergoing intensive training on Sumatra, with the Dutch government in exile insistent that they be given a prominent role in Operation Stonemason. This was seen as a much-needed moral boost for the Dutch exile community, acutely aware of the deprivations being suffered by their countrymen. More cynically there was a desire to ensure that it was the Dutch flag that was raised when Java was liberated and not that of the British or Australians [1].

The Amphibious assault element of Operation Stonemason consisted of 7th Indian Infantry Division supported by the Australian 1st Armoured Brigade. While the Canadian 5th Armoured was primarily equipped with late model Crusaders, Wolverines, and a scouting contingent of M3 Stuart tanks 1st Brigade was entirely equipped with American tanks, fielding large numbers of the variant of the M3 Lee modified to British requirements, known as the Grant. The major modifications included a ‘bustle’ at the back of the turret to house a wireless set, the addition of thicker armour on the turret and the accommodation of a seventh crew member. Even with these modifications the British were less than enthusiastic about fielding the tank in Europe but it was regarded as adequate for the Pacific and was available in considerable numbers as the Americans were already converting their forces to the M4 Sherman. A far more difficult problem of availability was faced with providing the needed tank landing craft to support the amphibious operation and in the end there were simply not enough available for the entire 1st Armoured Brigade to be put ashore and there was some debate over which regiment would have to be held in reserve. The 2/6th Armoured Regiment drew the short straw and was placed in reserve for the operation, eventually being deployed via Jakarta [2].

The Japanese forces on Java were primarily composed of the 18th ‘Chrysanthemum’ Division, commanded by Lieutenant-General Renya Mutaguchi, reinforced with the 228th Infantry Regiment and the 1st Field Artillery Battalion. There were a few other detachments that had been added piece meal over the course of 1942, all were badly understrength however and the 228th Infantry had been almost entirely broken up to provide troops for other units, to the point where it could only muster company strength in April 1943. Even plundering the 228th had not stopped the attrition of 18th Division and it was at less than 65% strength owing to combat losses and sickness, the latter being made considerably worse by the shortage of rations plaguing the Japanese forces as the Allies tightened the blockade around Java and Borneo [3].

It was not simply food that was in short supply for Mutaguchi, there was also a chronic shortage of construction materials to fortify Japanese defensive positions. Concrete and steel were all but impossible to obtain, with what supplies did reach the Dutch East Indies being retained for Borneo. The same went for air support, with the few airfields available in Java containing only a handful of aircraft. The problem was compounded by the fact that most of the Japanese defences had been mapped out for the Allies, rendering efforts at concealment largely irrelevant. Much of this information came from Javanese natives, who had found being ‘liberated’ from Dutch rule to be simply a change of masters, and the new ones made their predecessors appear as paragons of virtue [4].

The attack from the west of Java was launched on the 18th of April, with the 5th Canadian Division and 5th Armoured Brigade in the vanguard. The forward Japanese positions were swiftly overrun and in a rare display of restraint the Japanese units did their best to fall back in an organized manner, trying to exploit a series of layback positions, all the while coming under sustained air attack. Mutaguchi was about to commit his meagre reserves against this assault when the amphibious assault took place at dawn on the 21st near Parangtritis. The local beaches would become an idyllic tourist spot in later years, on the day of the landing they were the scene of brutal but brief fighting as the Japanese forces came under heavy bombardment from the naval fire support group led by HMS King George V and air attacks from the carriers HMS Formidable and HMS Indomitable. The weight of this firepower combined with the ferocity of the advance by 7th Indian division and their armoured support left the Japanese no choice but to fall back. The sudden dislocation of Mutaguchi’s plans and his decision to try and repel the amphibious forces at the beaches first meant that no serious counterattack was put in in the west until the 23rd and this was a complete failure as individual companies of Japanese soldiers attacked as soon as they reached their intended jumping off points. Whatever local successes some of these attacks achieved were soon reversed, often by the intervention of Australian tanks. Overall, they only served to further deplete Mutaguchi’ s limited reserves [5].

The need to slow the Allied advance from the west and south drove the Japanese to adopt ever more desperate tactics, and there have been fierce arguments over where these ideas originated, whether they were ordered from on high, or carried out by local commanders determined to fulfil the exhortations from Mutaguchi and Kawaguchi for the troops to ‘fight to an honourable end’. Whoever was responsible for them the practical result was that Japanese troops went from conducting near suicidal Banzai charges to outright suicidal acts designed to kill as many of the enemy as possible. The advancing allied troops no longer merely had to worry about surrendering Japanese troops hiding a blade or a grenade but soldiers throwing themselves into foxholes or under tanks with demolition charges strapped to their bodies. Initially the Allied commanders dismissed such reports as exaggerations and did their best to suppress ‘gossip mongering’. It wasn’t until the invasion of Borneo that they would have incontrovertible proof that these reports were not mere gossip [6].

The imbalance of forces and firepower meant that such suicide attacks could do little to change the inevitable outcome of the series of battles fought over towns and villages in western and central Java. Bandung, Kuningan, Yogyakarta, and Salatiga all saw heavy fighting and Mutaguchi himself was killed during the fighting to clear the latter somewhere around the 9th of May, though the exact circumstances are open to debate as few survived on the Japanese side to bear witness to events there. On the 16tt of May the KNIL troops and the 7th Division symbolically linked up near Blora. This caused much ill-feeling from the Canadians who had borne the brunt of the fighting advancing from the west but for political reason it was the Dutch who had to be given this moment of pure propaganda and according to most accounts the real link up had taken place on the 13th somewhat to the south [7].

Japanese resistance in Central Java did allow some survivors of the fighting in the west to withdraw east and north, finally establishing defensive positions on Madura around the town of Bangkalan and there was also a pocket in the southeast centred on Probolingo. Both of these were surrounded and completely cut off by the 27th of May, the day on which combat operations under Operation Stonemason were finally suspended. The Allied forces were exhausted and needed time to reinforce and regroup. They were in no rush to assault the completely isolated Japanese pockets, rightly fearing that a swift attack would be greeted with fierce resistance and high casualties. Instead, the Allied forces settled into besieging the Japanese forces, letting artillery and air attacks, mounted from new forward airfields on Java, grind them down as their food and supplies run down. On the 7th of June the defenders of Bangkalan, reduced to less than two hundred exhausted and hungry men, chose to lay down their arms, much to the relief of the Allied troops.

There was no such display of sense at Probolingo, and it fell to 7th Indian Division, supported by Canadian and Australian armour to launch a final attack, and overrun the position on the 12th/13th June. The losses for the Indian troops were not as high as had been feared, mainly because the Japanese troops were too malnourished and sick to put up much of a fight, though there were still a number of incidents where Japanese troop too sick to move tried to kill the men sent to bring them in for medical treatment. Java was officially declared liberated on the 15th of June, though there were reports of sporadic fighting against Japanese holdouts all the way into August. The Dutch were elated by this victory, but the multitude of medals and commendations handed out to the Indian and Canadian troops made it clear where the British Empire felt the credit was due. As fierce as the fighting had been on Java it would reach a new intensity as the Allies sought to secure a bridgehead in Borneo, where Operation Gawain was launched on the 24th of May, and this time it would be an Anglo-American venture [8].

[1] Colonial politics is an issue in the liberation of the DEI, it will be worse when the TL reaches Indochina.

[2] I’ve done my best to select units that either were, or might have been, available for the operation. In a couple of cases, it does mean units that were either not fielded or disbanded IOTL because of manpower and equipment issues.

[3] Likewise using Japanese units that were in this theatre of operations but differently deployed.

[4] The Japanese continuing their track record of alienating people who might otherwise have supported them.

[5] We are of course well into the realm of fictional battles at this point and the Japanese positions all across the Pacific are overstretched.

[6] The Japanese are desperate enough to embrace Kamikaze tactics early.

[7] Another carefully staged PR photo in the Pacific.

[8] Borneo will not be a place for happy co-operation between the British and Americans, especially at sea.

 

[Garrison]

18th April – 4th August 1943 – Dutch East Indies – Part III – Borneo – The Kuching Landings​

Ideally Operation Redwood would have been mounted in parallel with Operation Stonemason, to maximize the element of surprise and prevent any attempts at reinforcing Java from Borneo, though the latter was unlikely given the Japanese position in the DEI. Simultaneous attacks were ruled out by the limitations of the available resources, above all landing craft. The Americans had agreed to take part in Operation Gawain, this did not mean that the operation received top priority, even in the Pacific theatre. Indeed, the limitations of the co-operation between the Allies meant that the entirety of the US Marine Corps was reserved for the continuation of the Americans island hopping campaign in the Pacific, pursuing the axis of advance opened by the victory at Guadalcanal, and of course the plans for the liberation of the Philippines. The US contribution of troops to Operation Gawain took the form of US I Corps, consisting of 32nd and 41st Infantry Divisions [1].

The British contribution was again drawn from the Empire, consisting of 7th Australian and 11th (East Africa) Division, the latter a division that had come close to being disbanded at the beginning of 1943, but had instead been sent to Malaya to participate in operations there, initially earmarked for an invasion of Thailand. These divisions were formed up as I Provisional Corps. Armoured support came from the 3rd Armoured Brigade [2], another unit that been threatened with being dissolved before it was dispatched to Malaya, where Montgomery had now assumed theatre command in SEA as Auchinleck had returned to Britain to take up a role in organizing the ground forces for Operation Millennium.

The naval component of Gawain featured two task groups. The Royal Navy group was centred around the same battleship and carrier force that had supported Operation Stonemason with the addition of the newly arrived carrier HMS Ark Royal, which had returned to service in January of 1943 after a major refit. The USN group had four fleet carriers divided between two groups. Taskforce 63.1 was based around the USS Hornet and USS Enterprise, Task force 63.2 contained USS Lexington and the brand-new USS Essex, first of the class of the same name and the most powerful class of carrier to see service in the war. The bombardment group was led by the USS Nevada, one of the battleships that been refloated, repaired, and modernized after being heavily damaged at Pearl Harbor. She was not entirely suited for keeping with the fast carriers in the Pacific, but she was well equipped for the fire support role assigned to her in the invasion of Borneo. In addition to the fleet carriers Taskforce 63.1 included a trio of escort carriers, USS Independence, USS Suwannee, and USS Princeton. This was expected to give the taskforce more than adequate air cover, and it almost certainly would have, if it had not been confronted with a radical change in tactics by the remaining Japanese aircraft on Borneo [3].

The Dutch contribution to Gawain was minimal, consisting of a pair of destroyers acting as part of the Royal Navy taskforce and two companies of KINL troops, who did not take part in the initial landings. The Dutch had put their main effort into Java, believing it was their best opportunity to make an impact in the campaign. This was a political calculation rather than a military one and later in the battle their contingent was significantly reinforced as the advance drove deep into what had been Dutch territory.

On the morning of 24th May the invasion force approached the coast of British Borneo, a broad area that occupied most of the northern coast of the island. The landings were aimed at Sematan, west of Kuching which was the capital of the protectorate of Sarawak. The initial plan called for a swift drive inland to seize Kuching and open up its port facilities. There had been several small airborne landings carried out by Chindit forces west of Kuching. These glider borne troops were intended to create a distraction for the defenders of the city, drawing off enemy reserves and disrupting communications. They were supported in this by local guerrillas, armed and organized by SOE teams that had been infiltrating Borneo, and British Borneo in particular, over the previous year. These landings were successful in distracting the Japanese, although General Kawaguchi had no intention of mounting an all-out defence of Kuching.

This decision led to a great deal of criticism of Kawaguchi in Tokyo, despite his plan having been previously agreed, and this criticism has been repeated in the years since the war, with suggestions that Kawaguchi could have turned Kuching into a version of Stalingrad, draining the Allied forces and holding them off for months. The problem with this idea was, as Kawaguchi foresaw, that the Allies could simply bypass and isolate Kuching, leaving a large part of the Japanese forces trapped and useless, starved and bombed into submission just as the last holdouts in Java would be [4].

Kawaguchi decision to put his main defensive positions further inland, well out of reach of naval artillery fire, which helps explain why the initial landings went so smoothly. Aside from a few sacrificial defensive positions the major obstacles encountered were mines and booby traps and despite these ‘speedbumps’ the leading elements of I Provisional Corps and I US Corps reached the outskirts of Kuching on the 26th of May. The 24th was a far tougher day for the naval forces standing off Borneo, who became the first to face the formalization of Japanese suicide tactics, the beginning of the Kamikaze. Who first proposed the use of the available aircraft on Borneo as suicide bombers has been somewhat obscured by post-war efforts to shift blame among the Japanese leadership, as well as the fact that so many of those involved did not live to give their accounts of the decision-making process.

Regardless of who originated the plan Kawaguchi had endorsed it and on the 24th 137 aircraft, everything the IJAAF could muster that was remotely airworthy, took off with bomb and fuel loads that meant most of them were making a one-way trip regardless of whether they carried out a successful attack or not. The brunt of the Japanese attack fell on the US taskforce, whose fighter cap and anti-aircraft guns decimated the incoming aircraft, a turkey shoot as one enthusiastic fighter pilot put it. Despite this some attackers did get through, aided by the fact that the attackers had no interest in survival as they dived towards their targets. USS Hornet was hit by two Kamikazes, one struck the ship’s hull forward on the port side, doing only moderate damage the other though ploughed through the flight deck and exploded in the hangar below, setting off a raging fire. Only the quality of her damage control systems and the heroic determination of her crew saved Hornet. She would be forced to limp to Singapore for emergency repairs and would then spends months undergoing repairs in San Diego, but she did return to service in 1944, in time to take part in the final operations of the Pacific Campaign.

The USS Suwannee wasn’t as lucky. The lightly built escort carrier was hit amidships and unlike Hornet her crew was unable to contain the fire that broke out. The Suwannee had to be abandoned at 14:30 hours and she capsized and sank at around 17:00. The kamikazes also damaged two other warships and sank two transport ships, though luckily not any of the troop ships. Things could have been much worse for the transports if the kamikazes had stuck to the original plan. They were supposed to concentrate their efforts against the ships carrying the men and equipment of the landing force, but when they spotted the warships of the USN taskforce and were intercepted by the CAP fighters they concentrated their attacks there. Overall, this saved lives, though this was little comfort for the crews of the Hornet and the Suwannee [5]. For the Japanese it was a pyrrhic victory. Only 14 aircraft survived to return to their airfields and these crews came under intense pressure to follow the example of their comrades, regardless of how futile this might have been. A series of fighter sweeps by the FAA and USN carrier planes destroyed these survivors before they got the chance. This new tactic caused great alarm among the Allied High Command. The Japanese didn’t have the aircraft on Borneo to maintain the pressure on the invasion force, but what would happen if and when the Allies drew closer to the Japanese Home Islands? If a further demonstration of Japanese determination to fight on regardless were needed it came with the naval action off Borneo as the IJN committed themselves to repelling the invasion at any price [6].

[1] The Americans are here in body, not so much in spirit.

[2] These units were indeed disbanded IOTL.

[3] Things are going to get messy offshore.

[4] Having the Japanese troops try to dig in Kuching would have been a net gain for the British, whatever some in Tokyo might have thought.

[5] Overall the Japanese threw away their opportunity to do real damage here.

[6] And as it happens Halsey is commanding a taskforce off Borneo.

 

[Garrison]

18th April – 4th August 1943 – Dutch East Indies – Part IV – Borneo – The Last of the Kido Butai​

On May 26th the Imperial Japanese Navy dispatched the largest fleet it had assembled in nearly a year, all targeted towards Borneo in an attempt at attacking the Allied invasion force, sinking the transports and decimating any Allied troops in the landing zones with the weight of fire from the IJN’s most powerful battleships. The IJN had begun planning its response to a potential allied attack on the DEI in the Autumn of 1942, though this effort was considerably disrupted by the ongoing fighting at Guadalcanal that saw continuous, and costly, efforts by the Japanese to dislodge the US forces throughout the latter part of the year. The Japanese had finally been forced to abandon these efforts in December of 1942 and evacuate their surviving forces at the beginning of 1943, with the Americans able to declare Guadalcanal secure on January 5th 1943 [1].

The losses in the attritional struggle at Guadalcanal, taken without producing any tangible result, were a significant blow to the IJN and they suffered another serious blow to their morale with the death of Admiral Yamamoto. The Admiral flew to Thailand on the 9th of February to inspect naval facilities, and ironically to review plans for operations in the DEI, when the airstrip he was due to land at was raided by the RAF. A force consisting of eight Typhoons escorted by six Spitfires came into attack at almost exactly the same time that Yamamoto was due to arrive. He and his staff were in two transport planes escorted by four Zeros. When the aircraft were sighted by the RAF pilots they immediately attacked, shooting down both transports and two of the escorting Zeros without taking any losses of their own. To the Japanese this was another stroke of misfortune, in reality the British had learned of Yamamoto’s itinerary and organized the ‘raid’ as cover for the interception [2].

His successor, Admiral Mineichi Koga, was in no position to make any significant shifts in IJN operational plans, the DEI was the only major source of oil available to Japan and stockpiles of bunker fuel for Japan’s warships was already at critical levels. The loss of Borneo would mark the end of even the trickle of oil that evaded Allied interdiction efforts. The IJN was in essence facing the reverse of their decisive battle doctrine, with the Allies creating the strategic threat that the IJN had no choice but to respond to. The plan Koga endorsed was a recognition of the desperate situation that the IJN found itself in 1943. It called for a carrier strike force to attack the enemy fleet off Borneo and draw them into an engagement that would focus their attention on the carriers while a powerful battleship bombardment group taking a more circuitous route slipped past the distracted Allies and attacked the beachhead. The forces being committed to this operation appeared formidable. The carrier group consisted of Kaga, acting as flagship, Hiyō, Jun'yō and Zuihō. The surface group contained both Yamato and Musashi, the most powerful battleships afloat, according to Japanese propaganda at least.

The carrier force was far less impressive than it seemed. The slow pace of pilot training in Japan meant that the light carrier Zuihō only carried twenty-two aircraft rather than its rated compliment of thirty. The balance of the airwings on the other carriers had been altered during 1942, with the proportion of fighters to bomber moving in favour of the fighters, to the extent that half the airwings were now fighters. What had not changed was the aircraft being deployed by the IJN, the carrier flightdecks were still occupied by A6M Zero fighters, Aichi D3A dive bombers, and Nakajima B6N torpedo bombers. By contrast the Allies had continually upgraded their fighter and bomber compliments. The FAA now had fighter compliments equipped with the Seafire and the latest model of the Barracuda had airborne radar and greater engine power courtesy of the Griffon engine that significantly improved the aircrafts performance [3]. The USN might still be deploying the Dauntless SBD, in no small part because of the questionable performance of its successor the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, but there were no such complaints about the TBF Avenger that replaced the Devastator, and the F6F Hellcat was a substantial upgrade over the Wildcat. It was more than a match for the Zero whose weaknesses were now well known to the Allies who had developed their tactics accordingly.

The senior officers of the IJN knew their carrier force could no longer claim any superiority over its opponents and the plan to strike before anyone knew it was coming and then draw off the Allied naval forces was potentially a suicide mission, and yet it was embraced with little dissent or debate, even when things began to go wrong almost from the start. On the 28th of May the carrier group was spotted by a patrolling submarine, USS Flying Fish. The submarine made a successful attack on the Hiyō, with two torpedoes striking the aft of the ship. One of the torpedoes badly damaged Hiyō’s port propellor shaft, drastically reducing her speed in addition to the list caused by flooding that the crew struggled to contain. There was little choice except to detach Hiyō and a small group of escorts to try and limp back to a port where emergency repairs could be carried out. Destroyers from the carrier escorts also tried to hunt down Flying Fish, but after some tense hours of running deep and silent the submarine escaped their attentions and was able to surface and send a report on its encounter, identifying a force of three carriers, one of which the captain of the Flying Fish, Lieutenant Commander Glynn Donaho, believed they had sunk. The loss of Hiyō was a setback to the battle group, however the fact that they had been detected was not seen as a disaster, they were after all supposed to draw the attention of the Allied naval forces off Borneo and so they pressed on regardless [4].

When the news of the encounter between Flying Fish and the IJN reached the Allied naval forces it provoked a profound disagreement between Admiral Halsey, commanding the US naval forces and Admiral Holland, who was commanding the Royal Navy taskforce. The suicide attacks on the USN force had done nothing to temper Halsey’s usual aggressive attitude and even with USS Hornet out of action he could still muster three fleet carriers and seven escort carriers. Halsey was determined to engage the IJN carriers before they could close and potentially threaten the landing zone or carry out the sort of attack that had crippled the Hornet while the Allied ships were close to the shore and unable to manoeuvre. Admiral Holland was concerned that going chasing after the IJN based on the limited information also risked exposing the landing zone to attack by other as yet undetected enemy naval forces and wanted to acquire more intelligence before taking his three carriers off in pursuit of any enemy that might well have taken evasive action and changed course precisely to avoid such a pursuit. Both arguments had merit and given the substantial numerical advantage enjoyed by the Allied naval forces it was possible to pursue both options without unduly compromising the security of the landing zone. What created a serious threat to the landing forces was Halsey’s failure to clearly communicate to Holland, or his own superiors, that he had already dispatched his fleet carrier force to intercept the Japanese, splitting off a small group of his escort carriers and destroyers, designated as Taskforce 63.3, to provide support for the assault forces. When Holland did learn of this division of Halsey’s force, he was still left with the impression that TF 63.3 was far more powerful than was actually the case, though defenders of Halsey insist this was a case of Holland making a faulty assumption [5].

As Halsey’s carrier left in pursuit of the IJN force on the afternoon of the 28th they faced a frustrating couple of days of cat and mouse as they sought to pin down the enemy. Knowing that they had been detected the IJN carriers were maintaining a constant, overlapping scouting effort, meaning that on this occasion they detected Halsey’s carriers before his scouts located them. As this occurred around 1700 hours The IJN force turned north and then east, only turning back towards Borneo after nightfall. This meant that the US carriers weren’t able to re-establish contact until after 0900 hours on the 29th and as Halsey was preparing his strike the first frantic calls from TF 63.3 and Admiral Holland were received. Halsey made the decision to continue with his attack, a decision that was controversial at the time and the subject of fierce debate ever since. Nimitz certainly took a dim view of it and Halsey was barred from advancement for a decade because of it, though he continued operating in front roles throughout the war. The strike itself was anti-climactic. Japanese manoeuvring threw off the US attack with the aircraft from Enterprise and Lexington failing to make contact with the Japanese ships. The Essex airwing did find the Kaga and the last ship of the original Kido Butai was all but torn to pieces by bomb and torpedo hits. She went down at 1135 hours, less than ten minutes after the attack began and only a handful of survivors were rescued from the water [6].

The strike launched by the IJN force before the Essex airwing attacked Kaga achieved even less. Launched from too far out even the aircraft that survived running the gauntlet of the American CAP and anti-aircraft fire ended up ditching on the way back to their surviving carriers and they failed to land any hits on the US carriers. On this occasion the IJN pilots did not resort to Kamikaze tactics, as this still had not been adopted as official policy in Tokyo, but with their decimation off Borneo the IJN was reduced to using their remaining carriers as platforms for suicide attacks [7].

Taskforce 63.3 was conducting routine operations in support of the beachhead when they detected the approach of the IJN battleship group around 0915 hours on the 29th. There was a certain degree of panic at first, but this was swiftly replaced by a grim determination to engage the enemy force despite the massive disparity and firepower. They also sent out a series of want amounted to mayday messages, expecting Halsey’s carriers to swiftly move to support them. They were not aware of just how far out of position the US fleet carriers actually were, which also contributed to the criticism of Halsey later, even if they had known the truth it is doubtful this would have affected the decision on the destroyers and escort carriers to engage the enemy force.

Admiral Takeo Kurita commanding the battleship group from the Yamato was taken aback by the fierce response from TF 63.3, launching aircraft, engaging with guns, and manoeuvring to launch torpedo attacks despite their clearly hopeless situation. He began to believe that TF 63.3 was expecting the imminent arrival of some powerful reinforcements and even began contemplating withdrawal, however he soon received confirmation that the US carrier forces were engaged in battle well to the north and chose instead to press on. The Japanese ships began to inflict heavy casualties, the light carrier USS Independence exploded in a spectacular fireball as she was hit by fire from the Musashi and other ships were taking heavy damage. For a brief time, it seemed that TF 63.3 was doomed and the transports and landing grounds beyond would be exposed to massive firepower at Kurita’s command. What prevented this was the fact that the Royal Navy carriers had remained on station and the FAA airwings were finally on their way to support TF 63.3 [8].

Admiral Holland had not responded immediately to the urgent reports from TF 63.3, expecting a swift response from Halsey’s fleet carriers and concerned there might be other IJN surfaces forces trying to approach the landing zone undetected he only sent out scouting forces instead. Once he finally realized that the USN fleet carriers were in no position to respond Holland immediately ordered a full strike by all three of his carriers and this arrived over the beleaguered TF 63.3 at 1110 hours. The two Japanese superbattleships drew the full attention of the three airwings and in the absence of any Japanese fighter cover the FAA Barracudas were able to execute near perfect attacks, divebombing and torpedoing their targets in several waves of attacks. Yamato took the worst of it, hit by at least seven torpedoes and 6 bombs, while Musashi ‘only’ took three torpedoes and five bomb hits. Admiral Kurita was killed during the attacks and fire and flooding rapidly overwhelmed Yamato, with the pride of the Japanese navy going down at 1245 hours. Musashi on the other hand lingered on as her crew and escorts fought desperately to save here, however a second attack by the FAA at 1600 hours delivered the fatal blow and she sank at 1900 hours. This second attack also accounted for the cruiser Myōkō, hit by two torpedoes as she lay alongside Musashi rendering assistance and evacuating wounded crew. Even as this second attack went in the IJN surface force was withdrawing, now convinced that TF 63.3 was simply the flanking element of much more powerful force. Holland had also detached part of his surface force to support TF 63.3, but they were unable to engage and were under clear orders that their job was to aid the survivors of the TF 63.3 [8].

After the modest success of his attempt to destroy the IJN carriers Halsey finally attempted to intercept the remains of the surface group, however nightfall and evasive manoeuvres by the IJN force allowed them to evade the American carrier force and any further pursuit was rendered impossible as Halsey was ordered in no uncertain terms to return to Borneo, the Kaga was not seen as a reasonable trade for the destruction wrought on TF 63.3 and the grave threat to the landing zones. Holland was largely exonerated of any blame, primarily because it was evident to the Royal Navy that Halsey had failed to communicate his intentions to either his superiors or subordinates in the USN, let alone to Holland. Halsey sought to place the blame on Holland, claiming that he had misunderstood Halsey’s intentions and unnecessarily imperilled TF 63.3. What credit there was for the Allied naval actions on the 29th went to the heroic actions of TF 63.3 and the FAA crews who had come to their rescue [9].

The 29th had almost been a disaster for the Allies, in the end though it had instead inflicting devasting damage on the IJN from which it never recovered and drove the leaders in Tokyo to fully embrace the tactics of the Kamikaze.

[1] This is a few weeks earlier than OTL, reflecting the greater strain on Japanese resources.

[2] A different scenario, but the same outcome for Yamamoto, in some respects it’s the British doing a small favour for the Americans.

[3] This upgraded version of the Barracuda is based on discussions earlier in the thread.

[4] Yes this is a variant of the Leyte Gulf plan from OTL, which will have consequences when we get to the Philippines.

[5] One of those arguments that raged on for decades after the battle.

[6] The IJN is running out of flight deck to fly from, but there is one more to be added to their fleet.

[7] This will be an increasingly fraught issue as the prospect of invading Japan without the A-Bomb being ready looms larger.

[8] So this isn’t the day for the last great clash of the surface ships, that will have to wait.

[9] TF 63.3 is obviously an amalgam of OTL Taffy 2 and Taffy 3 at Leyte.

 

[Garrison]

May - September 1943 – My Enemy’s Enemy -Nationalism and Resistance - Part I – The Axis​

Both Nazi Germany and the militarists running Imperial Japan had a deeply racist worldview that coloured all their plans and shaped much of their strategy, especially when it came to China and the USSR. The Germans had found it useful to make certain accommodations, most notably in the shape of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with those it saw as inferiors and targets of future conquest, without in any way altering their long-term goals. The Japanese proved far less ‘pragmatic’ even when doing do might have reaped large dividend. Much of the territory they wished to take was under the control of the colonial powers. They could perhaps have reached out to nationalist elements in Malaya or Dutch East Indies, they simply had no interest in doing so, believing they would soon have full control over these territories and had no need to make any accommodations or seek any allies among the native peoples of South East Asia. Their treatment of the Koreans and Chinese prior to the outbreak of global war was swiftly repeated in Hong Kong, Thailand, and the Philippines. In light of the setbacks encountered in 1942 even the Japanese had to look for new options to provide troops to reinforce their armies. Rather than turning to the populations of the DEI or Philippines they chose to follow the urgings of Major Iwaichi Fujiwara, the man in charge of the intelligence unit charged with establishing contact with the most extremely anti-British elements of the Indian nationalist movement [1].

Some Indian nationalists had seen the prospect of a Japanese victory in South East Asia as offering the best prospect of ejecting the British Empire from India, choosing to believe that the Japanese would be content with their conquests elsewhere, or at the very least that India would be able to drive them off if they did attack. The Japanese had tried creating what they called the Indian National Army under the exiled Indian nationalist Rash Behari Bose. This incarnation of the INA had collapsed in acrimony during 1942. Now faced with the deteriorating military situation in 1943 they sought to revive the idea under new leadership and the man chosen to fill this leadership role was Subhas Chandra Bose, who had been seeking to create a force to fight against the British even before the Japanese had entered the war.

Bose was an ardent nationalist who had opposed the British Viceroy declaring war on India’s behalf in 1939 and staged mass protests, even without the support of senior figures in the Indian National Congress. He was arrested after this, then released after a hunger strike, before fleeing to Germany via a circuitous route that took him via Afghanistan. He hoped to obtain aid from the Third Reich in the struggle to overthrow the British. Politically he believed in a fusion of Fascist and Socialist ideas, which could at least be superficially spun as being something akin to National Socialism. He was permitted to create an Indian Legion but given the paucity of Indian POWs this never mustered more than one hundred soldiers, most of whom were exiles like Bose rather than members of the Indian Army taken prisoner. With the end of the fighting in North Africa any possibility of further recruits was cut off and by 1943 Bose had become disenchanted with the Germans, realising that they would happily guarantee the integrity of the British Empire to make peace with them. It was also obvious by this time that a German victory was increasingly unlikely [2].

This was why when the possibility of travelling back to Asia and leading a nationalist force that could fight the British in a theatre where they might actually be able to rally support among Indian nationalist Bose embraced the idea, though how enthusiastically is uncertain. He evinced an air of enthusiasm about this new opportunity to his acquaintances in Germany, privately however he seems to have been far more anxious, fearing that he might be wearing out his welcome in Berlin and treating going to Asia as an escape rather than a chance to fight the British. Whatever his true attitude to the endeavour Bose soon discovered that he had traded one hopeless task for another. In Malaya and Burma there was a substantial Indian expatriate community, potentially fertile ground for recruitment as there was plenty of resentment of the British among them. Unfortunately for Bose by 1943 Burma and Malaya were firmly back under British control and those of the Indian community who had collaborated with the Japanese had come to regret it. On top of this Bose once again faced a scarcity of POWs to recruit from, and he suffered a considerable setback when what amounted to an entire company of INA soldiers deserted and went over to the British en masse, claiming to have only agreed to serve in the INA as a means of escaping captivity [3].

The INA project floundered throughout 1943 and by 1944 Bose found himself at odds with Fujiwara over the mission of the force and struggling to obtain the equipment needed to arm his troops. In practice the INA was reduced to nothing more than a labour corps, rarely consisting of more than a few hundred men, many of whom took any opportunity to desert, often fleeing to British lines and happily sharing whatever information they had about the Japanese situation as proof that they had never been turncoats and had simply taken the chance to get out of the Japanese POW camps. As for Bose himself his fate remains something of a mystery. He remained with the Japanese as they went through numerous retreats and may even have been dispatched to Tokyo, willingly or otherwise. By some accounts he died in accident while travelling either by truck or airplane. Others suggest he was indeed aboard a submarine, and it was sunk en route to Japan. The most credible accounts suggest that he was summarily executed by the Japanese after relations between himself and Fujiwara had turned sour. Whatever the explanation there is no record of Bose after March 1944. With his demise the INA saga came to a close and the only foreigners serving with the Japanese after this date were slave labourers and what were euphemistically called ‘comfort women’ [4].

The Germans were of course no strangers to slave labour. the appetite of German industry for new workers was voracious, especially as their slave labourers were worked until they were used up or died. While this accounted for the vast majority of those foreign nationals who served the Reich in the course of the war, the Germans did try to recruit soldiers from other nations for what Goebbels propaganda portrayed as an anti-communist crusade, and they tried on multiple occasions to foment rebellion and disorder in the British Empire, and to try and ignite a fresh insurgency in Ireland, both north and south.

Stirring up trouble in Ireland had been a German project back during World War I, it was hardly a surprise then that the Third Reich would contemplate stirring up a fresh campaign of violence by the IRA. There was a huge difference between 1943 and 1918, however, politically and militarily. The Irish Republic was an independent political entity and while it was still committed to the reunification of the whole of the island of Ireland this was more of an aspiration than a coherent plan. Certainly Irish politicians evinced a firmly neutral stance publicly, but away from the public eye a more sympathetic approach was adopted and quiet deals were done with the British. While any return of access to the former Treaty Ports was ruled out the RAF was allowed to construct a secret airfield on Irish soil, intended as a last fall back in the event of a German invasion of Britain. Hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens had gone to work in British war industries and five thousand soldiers of the Irish Army had deserted to enlist in the British Army and fight against Nazi Germany. Even if there had been those in the political leadership of the Republic who were sufficiently hostile to the British to sympathize with the Nazis the last thing any Irish politician wanted to see was the IRA, by the 1940s a largely moribund organization with a few hundred members at best, being reinvigorated [5].

The Germans were ignorant of this reality and believed that they had found sympathetic Irish men and women north and south of the Irish border willing to gather intelligence and commit acts of sabotage. This network only existed in the minds of the MI5 officers who created the detailed work of fiction that was the Abwehr’s spy network in Britain. These fictious agents also allowed the British to identify any genuine threats and where necessary the Irish government was discretely informed of these potential troublemakers so that the authorities in Dublin could prevent any potential diplomatic embarrassments.

In terms of targeting the still current colonial interests of the British Empire the Third Reich faired no better. While they had managed to stir up some anti-British elements in the Middle East the lack of practical support on offer had doomed the pro-German governments that had taken control of Iran and Iran for a time. With the Italian and Vichy colonies in North Africa firmly in Allied control in 1943 even the most ardent nationalists were unwilling to tie themselves to Germany, preferring to wait for the end of the war, eager to avoid anything that might bring down the wrath of a British Empire that seemed anything but tired and feeble [6].

The failed Indian Legion experiment was far from the only effort to recruit foreigners to fight for Germany in the European theatre, though since the efforts to recruit among the peoples of occupied Europe were led by Heinrich Himmler and the SS, reflecting the insistence that only those who met the standards of racial purity set down by Nazi law should be allowed to don a German uniform, with the Indian Legion being one of the few exceptions and that only so long as there seemed a prospect of Germany continuing the fight against British in North Africa.

The SS inevitably targeted Scandinavia as a recruiting ground and created the Norwegian Legion. This saw service in the east before being disbanded and merged with SS Division Nordland, a formation dedicated to winter and mountain warfare. Despite the titles of these units the truth was that even by resorting to conscription it was not possible to recruit the numbers needed to sustain divisional combat formations and all the SS foreign units struggled to raise even regimental strength. The problems the SS faced is clearly illustrated by one of the most infamous such foreign formations, the Britisches Freikorps, or British Free Corps (BFC). This was a unit recruited from among British and Commonwealth POWs, with recruiting focusing on the crusade against Bolshevism and the fact that all the white peoples of Europe and the British empires should be allied against the Slavic hordes. These ideological exhortations cut little ice with the POWs and most who joined up did so in the hopes of better food and conditions. The BFC never even reached three figures in strength and after the war all of those who faced British court martials over their involvement with the BFC claimed to have only joined in the hopes of being able to escape or to wreck the organization from the inside. Such arguments rarely worked and one of the men involved, John Amery, faced the extraordinarily rare charge of high treason. Amery was the son of Leo Amery, a Conservative MP and cabinet member who had ardently opposed appeasement. In contrast his son was an ardent supporter of fascism before the war and was living in France when it fell to the Germans, immediately offering his services to them and becoming the architect of the BFC. Given these circumstances his treason conviction was entirely reasonable and in the context of the time his execution all but inevitable [7].

Men such as Amery and the recruits of the Indian and Nordic Legions were very much the exception, few of those who had fought against the Germans and lived under their oppressive rule were eager to serve. Of course, there were always some in the Baltics and the Ukraine who either saw themselves as having common cause with the Nazis or were simply desperate enough to put on an SS uniform. Those who survived the fighting and fell into the hands of the Soviets paid a heavy price for their choice. The Soviets were even less sympathetic to the excuses of those citizens of the USSR who fought for the Germans than the British, with execution being the default punishment for those who had betrayed the USSR.

One nation where at least some government members were willing, even eager, to send men off to fight the ‘Bolshevik hordes’ was Vichy France. It was no secret that men like Pierre Laval had sympathised with the authoritarian regime in Germany and saw Communism as a far greater threat to the French way of life than National Socialism. Ironically In the case of Vichy this desire to join the anti-communist crusade foundered as much on the lack of enthusiasm from the Germans as it did on the difficulties of recruiting men to serve under the Wehrmacht or the SS. Hitler was hardly alone among the upper echelons of Nazi Germany in wanting to see France broken as a European power, even German officers who had little interest in the rest of Nazi policy agreed with this, harbouring a deep hostility going back to the humiliation of the Armistice in 1918. These men had no desire to rearm the French and given the activities of the Free French, and the ‘betrayal’ of the Marine Nationale, there was a concern that such troops would simply defect or desert at the first opportunity. With the deteriorating situation in 1943 such concerns were less of an issue than the desperate need for manpower, but by this point the fall of Vichy and the increasingly onerous burdens placed on France by the occupation meant that only the truly ideologically committed, or the truly desperate were willing to enlist, and efforts at drafting Frenchmen only served to drive more of them into going underground and joining the resistance [8].

As a member of the Axis Italy had with varying degrees of willingness dispatched troops into the meatgrinder of the eastern front. In the spring of 1943 recruitment for the Italian army, especially in the Wehrmacht occupied north, was increasingly difficult and the Germans had concluded that the only way to exploit Italian military manpower effectively was to have Italian troops trained and commanded by the Wehrmacht, or rather some had drawn this conclusion, there were others who expressed the view that it would be best just to disband the Italian army wholesale and send the men freed up to build defensive works in the west or work in German factories. This plan was overruled, for the time being at least. What was christened the Mussolini Legions after the ‘martyred’ Italian leader proved to be a source of irritation for both Berlin and Rome. The Germans found the Italian recruits were remarkably innovative in finding ways to avoid training and pilfer supplies to sell on the black market. The Italian government on the other hand found the existence of the Legions made recruitment to their own forces even harder and it seemed ever more young men simply disappeared into the countryside, often taking army issue small arms with them and joining the growing band of partisans who felt the government in Rome had betrayed Italy and were more interest in fighting the Germans who had actually invaded their country rather than defending against a hypothetical Allied invasion that some would have welcomed. Some figures even suggest that the increased need for the Italian Army and the Heer to police this problem outweighed any gains made from recruiting the Mussolini Legions, which were quietly disbanded in December 1943 and the manpower released used as civilian labour instead [9].

In the end the policies and ideology of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany precluded using the large pools of foreign manpower they could access for anything more than slave labour. For them to have been able to draw manpower from China or the Ukraine they would have had to be very different states, ones that might not have needed such foreign legions in the first place [10].

[1] Fujiwara wasn’t a great success in his task IOTL, and that was in far better circumstances than ITTL.

[2] Bose’s Indian Legion is even more dismal failure than OTL because of the British success in North Africa.

[3] Overall the soldiers who signed up for the INA will be seen as putting one over on the Japanese rather than as traitors.

[4] Bose and the other leaders of the INA were either dead or missing after the war, so no one for the British to put on trial after the war and thus no cause for the Indian Nationalists to rally round. Though the fate of Bose may impact relations with the Japanese in later decades.

[5] This part is as per OTL, despite some of De Valera’s public actions the Republic was in fact fairly helpful to the British.

[6] The North African campaign hasn’t exactly invigorated the cause of Arab nationalism and owing to butterflies some prominent figures in the region will never come to power, or even be born in some cases.

[7] The BFC was even smaller and more shambolic than OTL, but Amery’s actions were still reasonably defined as treasonous, especially as with France holding out longer Amery had ample opportunities to escape before it fell.

[8] Mers El Kebir did nothing to strengthen the hand of the more overtly fascist elements of Vichy, which does nothing to reduce the punishment they will face post war.

[9] This of course is purely a creation of this timeline, a product of the increasingly awkward relationship between the Germans and the Italians.

[10] In other words the Nazis would have to have stopped being Nazis and if they did that they probably wouldn’t have started WWII in the first place.

 

[Garrison]

May -September 1943 – My Enemies Enemy -Nationalism and Resistance - Part II – The Allies​

For the British recruiting manpower from their empire was a huge boon to their ability to field large scale armies, by the 1940s though doing so had become increasingly politically complicated as the Dominions and the Empire could no longer be expected to simply follow diktats from London. The White Dominions expected their voices to be heard when it came to the deployment of their troops and in the case of India recruiting and war production became tangled up in the questions over the future of the country, made worse by the fact that Churchill had something of a blind spot when it came to the status of India. Where Churchill had been willing to go so far as to offer an Anglo-French Union and even contemplated compromising on the sovereignty of Northern Ireland to gain Irish support during the war, though with little success in either case. he firmly believed that India was still the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the Empire and should remain so, though many others in the cabinet and the Foreign Office took a renegotiation of India’s position in the empire as inevitable, with the alternative being an unseemly withdrawal in less than favourable circumstances [1]. This predicament had the potential to create serious issues for the British, or at least more serious than they actually faced during the war. They were spared largely by the ineptitude of the Japanese in establishing relations with Indian Nationalists.

Regardless of Churchill’s reluctance others saw an opportune moment to secure a future roadmap towards Dominion status for India, and they had the increasing need for Indian troops to serve in South East Asia to use as a counter to Churchill’s views. The build-up for D-Day meant that British, and Canadian for that matter, forces had to be prioritized for the European theatre. Australia and New Zealand were reaching the limits of what they could provide and becoming increasingly sensitive about losses. With operations in the DEI and plans for a drive north to liberate Thailand and Indochina to provide towards Hong Kong and Japan itself the only credible source of troops was India and the leaders of the Nationalist movement were no less determined than the politicians in Canberra or Ottawa that the sacrifices of those troops should be honoured with a change in the political relationship of their country to the empire and a refusal to budge on Dominion status and autonomy simply played into the hands of those who were determined that nothing less than full independence was acceptable, though these parties had their own issues to deal with. Arguments that the Empire was a tottering edifice, and the British could not hold onto it had been left looking more than a little hyperbolic after British victories since December 1941, however those voices would soon reassert themselves if the British tried to cling to the status quo. Whatever Churchill’s instincts he could sometimes be argued out of some of his worst ideas and in 1943 he finally conceded that the demands of winning the war outweighed his romantic notions of the British Empire’s past. There could be no question of a wholesale revision of India’s status while the war raged on, but a process was put in place that shaped post-war planning and gained a momentum that Churchill could not stop [2].

The territories conquered by Japan and Germany offered fertile ground for raising resistance forces, though such work was never less than perilous for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), with their agents operating in hostile territory and facing the constant risk of betrayal if they sought to recruit the wrong people to the cause. They also had to face the problem that when operating in South East Asia India was not the only place where nationalism was a powerful driving force, many of those who wanted to see the back of the Japanese had little enthusiasm for the return of their previous colonial masters, and this created some friction between the Free French and the British over organizing resistance in Indochina, though as with India there were more pragmatic elements in the French leadership who saw that antagonizing the nationalists was simply storing up trouble for the future and if they did not get the nationalists onside then that might mean greater French losses when it came to driving the Japanese out of Indochina.

The Dutch were even less enthusiastic than the French about stirring up nationalist sentiments in their colonial territories. They were in a far weaker position than the French, who in 1943 had at least been able to reclaim territories such as Algeria and Madagascar, but the Dutch remained as little more than a government in exile until Java and Borneo were cleared and they were determined to reassert their control as a matter of national prestige rather than of pragmatic interest and their actions in the DEI after reclaiming control did nothing to strengthen relations with London and Washington [3].

Even in the colonies that had not been occupied by the Japanese and had instead chosen to side with the Vichy regime there were issues with ‘restless natives’ who saw the fall of France as an opportunity and the changes in administration as the colonies hastily declared for Free France after Case Anton did nothing to change their opinions. In many of these colonies far from the frontlines of the war there wasn’t much in the way of outside support, meaning that these nationalists could achieve little while the war raged but this did little to quench their aspirations and the example of other colonial possessions served as a source of inspiration. Some of these colonies looked to the USA for support and encouragement, after all the USA was no fan of the colonial empires. Pragmatism would win out for the USA in the post-war period, where stability and keeping Communism at bay overrode considerations of self-determination and democracy [4].

Thailand having been an independent nation before the Japanese invasion provoked far less debate and indeed the Thai resistance movement was arguably the most effective in the whole of South East Asia. The Thais had put up fierce, albeit brief, resistance to the Japanese invasion of their homeland. There had been some resentment that the British had not come to their aid in 1941, but by 1943 this had evaporated as the British hosted a Thai government in exile based in Singapore. The British even went so far as to recruit Free Thai regiments. These soldiers were rarely used in front line service, they were deployed behind the lines alongside Wingate’s Chindits who by this time were well supported by the RAF, providing resupply and even evacuating wounded and sick troops. The attachment of Thai soldiers meant the Chindits were able to create a network of contacts, providing a source of supplies and intelligence, and a conduit for weapons flowing in the opposite direction to arm Thai resistance groups [5].

Arms and equipment were also funnelled directly through Slim’s force, still encamped on the western edge of Thailand and they made the occasional raid helping to tie down Japanese troops and encourage the resistance groups. Much of the equipment flowing through this pipeline had been diverted from the those intended to travel along the Burma Road to the Kuomintang in China. The senior British Generals had been deeply unimpressed with the performance of the Kuomintang and had noticed that Lend-Lease equipment intended for the Chinese Nationalists had repeatedly found its way into Japanese hands or be used to prosecute the bitter rivalry between Nationalists and Communists. Since China appeared to be a bottomless pit into which vast quantities of arms and equipment disappeared, the British had no qualms about making sure some of it ended up where it would do some good. This ultimately became another source of friction between the British and the Americans, though the latter could hardly argue against the results. The Thai resistance was also helped by the Japanese attempting to move units from Thailand to Borneo, and having to run the gauntlet of Allied air and naval attacks meant that a large proportion of these troops ended serving in neither theatre and merely weakened the overall Japanese position [6].

The question of supporting resistance movements might have been expected to be less fraught in mainland France and the other occupied nations of Europe as opposed to their distant colonies, but here a different dilemma arose in that many of the most effective resistance movements that sprang up were Communist, who may have been willing to accept aid from the Western Allies to fight the Nazis but aimed at continuing with their revolutionary goals after the war was over. The Allies tried to counterbalance this by helping to build up resistance forces that were ideologically opposed the Communists, however in France this meant an antipathy between different resistance networks that rivalled that they felt towards the Nazis. Sometimes they went so far as to attack and betray one another, creating considerable headaches for the Allies [7].

Italy created even greater problems for the Allies. To begin with Italy was still technically an Axis nation in 1943 and some of those who chose to oppose the German intervention were still ardent supporters of Mussolini’s brand of fascism, and then there were the outright bandits and organized crime families who attacked the Italian forces loyal to the Ciano government and robbed the Germans at every opportunity. On top of all this there was the discrete contacts between the Allies and elements in the Italian government looking for an exit strategy and there was a real possibility they might turn on the Germans if the opportunity arose. What constituted such an opportunity was one of the sticking points in these contacts, the Allies after all had no intention of sharing any details of their actual plans for 1943, leaving their Italian contacts thinking that a landing in mainland Italy was still on the card. This encouraged the Italian authorities to turn a blind eye to certain sabotage activities directed towards the Wehrmacht forces, while some were also being bribed to allow Mafiosi to operate unimpeded, which would prove every bit as much of a problem after the war as the threat of communist revolution [8].

The threat that loomed over all resistance groups was that of retaliation by the occupying powers. Neither Imperial Japan nor Nazi Germany had any qualms about making innocent civilians pay for acts of sabotage and attacks on their troops, or even in the aftermath of setbacks that had nothing to do with resistance actions. These punishments ranged from simply rounding up fresh tranches of slave labour to mass murder, with the village of Lidice in Czechoslovakia being the most infamous example of German retaliation. The entire population of the village was executed, and the village razed to the ground in retaliation for the death of Reinhard Heydrich, killed when an SOE agent lobbed a bomb into his car. The retaliation for Heydrich’s death discouraged the Allies from other assassination attempts, as well as the consideration that the removal of certain elements of the Nazi leadership might improve the performance of the Wehrmacht [9].

The atrocities committed in response to other acts of resistance may have been less grandiose than the attempt to wipe Lidice from existence, which failed in the end as other places adopted the name to ensure it was always remembered, but they were no less savage. This placed a terrible burden on those who chose to resist and posed a tremendous moral dilemma, were attempts to undermine the occupying power justifiable in the face of such brutality, if the alternative of doing nothing invited the continuation of occupation and oppression? By and large the resistance movements chose to believe the price had to be paid to see the back of the Axis, and also the necessity of working with the Allies, regardless of differing agendas [10].

[1] Or OTL as we call it.

[2] So yes, a different trajectory for India and South East Asia if the more realistic elements in London have their way.

[3] As discussed in the TL the French will feel a little stronger and a little less intransigent when it comes to the future of their colonies, the Dutch much less so.

[4] American politics will be different as the are going to be some butterflies owing to the timing of the end of the war in Europe.

[5] The battle for Thailand will be along shortly.

[6] Yeah China is still a quagmire, a different quagmire, but still.

[7] An example of something that is theoretically simple but incredibly difficult.

[8] And the Mob are still the beneficiaries of Allied expediency. On the bright side The Godfather and the Sopranos probably still exist.

[9] Heydrich dies outright here during the attack.

[10] The dilemma of the resistance groups everywhere, and one without a good answer.

 

[Garrison]

28th June – 4th August 1943 – Dutch East Indies - Borneo – The Drive to Samarinda​

After the Kamikaze attacks and the engagement, it took until the 11th of June to secure British Borneo, largely because of small pockets of Japanese troops that had to be destroyed one by one and the temporary disruption to the movement of supply convoys owing to the fear that they might come under attack from elements of the IJN surface force that had survived the fighting off Borneo. With Sarawak secured the Allied forces called a temporary halt to operations to regroup and reinforce before striking into the heart of Borneo, where their intelligence sources indicated a much harder battle ahead [1].

There were even suggestions in some quarters, notably in Washington that in the aftermath of the latest defeat inflicted on the IJN that the remaining Japanese troops on Borneo could be left to ‘wither on the vine’ cut off from support and resupply they could simply be worn down by a mixture of air attacks and starvation. These suggestions received short shrift from the Dutch government in exile and most of the military professionals who been forced to deal with the fanatical determination shown by so many Japanese troops. What amounted to a siege strategy would take many months to complete and leave the Allied forces exposed to Japanese counterattacks. However weak the IJN might seem in June 1943 and however beleaguered the defenders of Borneo were the deployment of Kamikaze tactics meant that they could still inflict disproportion damage on the Allied forces before they finally collapsed. There was also the matter of the fate of the civilian population that remained in the hands of the Japanese, a particular concern for the Dutch who expected to continue ruling over the territory when the war ended. This was a legitimate worry and horror stories about the Japanese treatment of the locals on both Java and Borneo could have filled several volumes. Simply leaving the civilians to suffer in a siege would inevitably create antipathy towards the Allies and the last thing they wanted was the guerrillas they had encouraged, again over Dutch objections, to turn on them. In light of all these arguments the second stage of Operation Gawain would go ahead, with a planned date of 26th June 1943 [2].

While the ground troops were regrouping there was no respite for the Allied air forces. Airfields in Sarawak and on Java were rapidly improved to be able to handle medium bombers and make them more resistance to bad weather. This allowed for air attack to be staged into southern Borneo and the Japanese faced attacks from almost every model of fighter bomber, light bomber, and medium bomber in the Allied arsenal in 1943. There have even been accounts of the experimental use of Napalm in Borneo, even though official records state that the first actual combat deployments of napalm were in Europe after D-Day. Even if the Japanese were spared the destruction associated with that incendiary, they were subjected to daily air attacks, interrupted only by those days when the weather prevented the bombers flying [3].

General Kawaguchi could do nothing to halt these attacks. He had a handful of aircraft available after the strikes on the landing forces and those surviving aircraft had been a priority for Allied fighter-bomber sweeps, with most destroyed on the ground, though a few achieved a more ‘honourable’ death, attacking bombers and their fighter escort even though they were hopelessly outnumbered. The determination of the remaining Japanese pilots allowed them to score some successes despite the odds, however by the time the ground troops were ready to advance once more the only aircraft in the skies over Borneo belonged to the Allies. Kawaguchi was thus completely dependent on the strength of his defensive fortifications to resist the renewed attacks, though whatever he might have told his subordinates he had little confidence in their ability to hold off a major offensive. His plan called for a layered defence, with his units progressively falling back and bleeding the Allied troops every step of the way. This was a sound strategy given his limited resources, but Kawaguchi faced a fundamental problem in that this sort of co-ordinated retreat went against the doctrine that had been drummed into his troops, retreat was seen as almost as dishonourable as surrender to some officers and all too often during the Allied advance Kawaguchi’s frontline troops failed to disengage according to the battleplan, leaving companies and even entire regiments cut off and overrun [4].

The battle opened on the 28th of June, delayed for two days by a series of small spoiling attacks mounted by the Japanese, which annoyed Kawaguchi as much as it did the Allies since it went against his orders to hold on the defensive. He had allowed his local commanders some latitude in responding to enemy action and several chose to respond to Allied patrols by attacking some of the jumping off points for the Allied offensive. The delay this caused was outweighed by the losses to the Japanese and the consumption of ammunition and supplies that were already stretched thin. The main axis of advance was to be a sweep through the west and into central Borneo, aiming for the Mahakam River and the city of Samarinda on the southern coast of the island, securing the port there to shorten the supply lines of the advancing troops. I Provisional Corps was in the more central position, now reinforced with elements of the 5th Indian Infantry Division, which had the distinction of having fought all three Axis powers after having served in North Africa in 1941. In due course 5th Indian took over completely from 7th Australian Division, which became a recurrent theme in the latter half of 1943 as Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian divisions in the Pacific theatre were increasingly withdrawn, either for refit or moved to the European theatre of operations. The British Empire forces in South East Asia took on an increasingly Anglo-Indian flavour, tying India to the Empire or strengthening the hand of the Nationalists depending on whether you were talking to politicians in Whitehall or New Delhi. Elements of 8th Indian Infantry would also join I Provisional Corps during the latter stages of the battle [5].

US I Corps would advance further to the west, mopping up the smaller coastal towns, again improving supply lines, and hopefully punching through the Japanese lines and making a swift advance towards Samarinda, taking advantage of I Provisional Corps pinning down the enemy to their east and cutting the lines of communications for the elements of the Japanese forces facing the Americans. These defending forces were primarily composed of a badly understrength 35th Infantry Brigade, operating in terrain that didn’t afford much in the way of high ground or other solid natural defensive positions they could exploit. I Corps would need all the advantages it could get as unlike I Provisional Corps it had not been given a high priority for reinforcements, something that caused a great deal of bitterness among those who served in I Corps during the Borneo campaign. This decision had been taken because those in Washington who had been incessantly lobbying for an assault on the Philippines were finally getting their way. It would take months to fully prepare for the assault, it was however already being given the highest priority for men and equipment in the Pacific, which in addition to creating in the ranks of the US forces did nothing to improve relations between the British and the Americans [6].

When the initial Allied attacks went in on the 28th they made steady if unspectacular progress as they dislodged the Japanese from their forward positions. This was assisted by the fact that in this initial phase of the battle most IJA units did follow Kawaguchi’s orders to fall back while slowing down the Allies and inflicting the maximum possible casualties. The Allies however had also learned to be cautious when dealing with Japanese soldiers and they increasingly relied on armour and artillery to break down the defences to conserve the infantry as well as using infiltration tactics to work around the flanks and rear of those defensive positions that could not be crushed by superior fire power. By July 7th the advance began to slow and become more ragged as they encountered the main line of Japanese resistance and Kawaguchi committed what reserves he had available. Jungle terrain made it harder for the supporting aircraft to spot targets on the ground and attack them while at the same time slowing the advance of the artillery units, meaning that the infantry was sometimes left with little choice but to directly assault positions that couldn’t be bypassed, and these assaults inevitably proved costly even as they succeeded in unhinging the Japanese defensive positions.

Common sense prevailed and a brief halt was called on the 12th of July to allow reserves and supplies to catch up before a series of smaller actions were launched to eliminate several strongpoints that still threatened the cohesion of the advance. Despite some anxiety that the halt would allow the Japanese to regroup when the attack resumed on the 17th of July it began to make rapid progress. The Japanese were running short on ammunition and supplies and some units began to break with Kawaguchi’s plan, fighting on to the point where they were bypassed and cut off. A general breakdown in communications made matters worse and soon the entire defence began to crumble, falling apart and becoming a series of local skirmishes where the Allied forces could inflict a defeat in detail on the Japanese forces. Things got considerably worse when a fresh front was opened in the east, where the British had finally gathered enough forces, courtesy of 8th Indian, to assault the defences along the coast that had been increasingly thinly held as Kawaguchi tried to hold off the assault in the west and south.

Kawaguchi’s troops had put up a stiff fight, but by the 20th of July they were running out of everything, including manpower, and they were unable to mount a prolonged defence of Samarinda when the first elements of I Corps reached the outskirts on the 22nd, with 5th Indian approaching from the north on the 24th. The city finally on the 30th of July, with the last shattered remnants of the IJA forces falling back, losing most of their remaining supplies in the process. With Samarinda taken and the Japanese reduced to a few isolated pockets in the east the island of Borneo was declared secure on the 4th of August. Coming at the height of the fighting in Normandy this achievement went almost unnoticed in the British and American media. It was also arguably a premature announcement as skirmishing continued until the end of October, when the last pockets of Japanese resistance were crushed, though rumours persisted of lost Japanese platoons hiding out in the jungle for years after the end of the war [7].

Whatever the truth of these rumours Kawaguchi was not among those who hid out in the jungle, nor did he see the need to atone with his life for his failure to do the impossible and hold Borneo. He surrendered to Indian troops on the 3rd of August just east of Samarinda. His post war memoirs were scathing about the performance of his superiors in Tokyo and contributed to him becoming something of an outcast in the circles of Japanese veterans [8].

A few scattered garrisons survived in the outlying islands of the DEI into early 1944, largely because British resources in South East Asia were now focused on targets to the north, with Thailand acting as the prelude to a drive into French Indochina, while the American prepared to land in the Philippines [9].

[1] Split this off from the rest of the DEI operation to reflect the delay between the naval battle and the renewed Allied advance.

[2] A microcosm of the arguments over invading Japan later.

[3] Napalm may or may not have been used in Borneo, I leave that argument up to alt-historians.

[4] All that zealous indoctrination is not helping when you need your troops to follow a decidedly more pragmatic plan.

[5] On the one hand the Australians are asserting their own interests, on the other they are potentially weakening their influence by reducing their involvement on the front lines.

[6] On of the problems of greater Allied success is that some people feel they can indulge in ‘normal’ politics, and they have their eyes on the post war world rather than winning current battles.

[7] There will indeed be the odd Japanese soldiers emerging from the wilderness even as late as the 1970’s, though the degree to which they still thought the war was still on is debatable.

[8] Not popular but alive at least.

[9] Detailed accounts of those battles still to come once the little matter of D-Day has been dealt with…

 

[Garrison]

1st May – 30th June 1943 – The Road to D-Day - Part I – Taking Command​

The matter of who would command the Allied forces during the D-Day landings can easily be seen as a clash of egos and ambition, with those eager to make their mark on history jockeying for overall command and engaging in personal feuds characterised by more than a few temper tantrums. While these accounts make for entertaining reading, and there was some truth in it, they do tend to distract from the overall reality, which was a rather less melodramatic mix of politics and the balance of power between the Western Allies. The Supreme headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) was established at the end of 1942 and this Supreme Headquarters needed a Supreme Allied Commander who would oversee every aspect of organizing and executing Operation Millennium. That this commander would be an American was a given when SHAEF was established. It was not simply a matter of the balance of forces for D-Day itself but of sustaining a campaign that was intended to advance from the beaches of Normandy all the way to Berlin, and possibly beyond depending how things developed on the Eastern Front. There was also a requirement for the Supreme Commander to be possessed of considerable political skills, both to deal with the civilian leadership in Washington and London and a group of subordinates from multiple nations [1].

The first name put into the ring was that of George C. Marshall the US Chief of Staff. His existing role might have seemed to make him fully qualified for SHAEF however he was quietly dissuaded by Roosevelt who argued that he was far too valuable in his current role. This was true, but there were also questions about how well he would have handled the multinational coalition that was SHAEF. With Marshall set aside the next logical candidate was General Dwight David Eisenhower, who had already filled the role of US Commander in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations (METOUSA) [2], directing the build-up of US forces for Operation Malamute, and playing a significant role in planning the strategy for the operation. This role meant that he had worked with many of the most senior British officers in Europe and generally built-up good relationships with them and as a concession to the British Air Marshal Tedder was appointed as his deputy, which also reflected the importance of air power in securing the success of the invasion. Eisenhower’s ability to balance the conflicting demands of Allied nations and keep some of the more egotistical members in check would be highly valuable in the endlessly complicated balancing act required for the assembly of American, British, and Canadian forces for D-Day, though the thorniest subject was dealing with the French, whose country after all was the one being liberated.

De Gaulle rapidly earned the enmity of Eisenhower by his constant attempts to enlarge the French role in the planning of D-Day and his attempts to have a French officer assigned to one of the senior command roles, something that neither the British nor the Americans would countenance given their own contributions to the landings. Free French forces would of course be involved in D-Day, but they would be attached to other Allied formations or engaged in commando operations, with significant numbers dropped behind the lines to co-ordinate with elements of the French Resistance. Many in Washington and London would have dearly loved to have found a viable replacement for De Gaulle as leader of the Free French, however the available candidates were tainted either by association to Vichy or were unwilling to engage in the political gamesmanship required to displace De Gaulle and besides, by the spring of 1943 De Gaulle was simply too well entrenched to be replaced, which did not stop some in Washington from scheming to do so. De Gaulle’s ongoing efforts to increase French influence over Operation Millennium were rebuffed and he would have to settle for having General Marie-Pierre Kœnig as a French representative on Eisenhower’s staff [3].

Deciding who would command the British forces on D-Day was a rather more straightforward matter, though Anglo-American politics did rear their ugly head. Harold Alexander was the first candidate and would certainly have gotten the role except that certain people in Washington, including General Marshall, still felt he had somehow deliberately placed General Fredendall in an invidious position on Sicily, clinging to the idea that Alexander had deliberately risked American lives, and tarnished Fredendall’s reputation, to lure the Germans into a trap. In private Eisenhower dismissed these suggestions, however he felt it was not worth expending the time and energy to endorse Alexander when he had some many other battles to fight with Washington. The British could probably have insisted on Alexander and gotten their way, but Like Eisenhower Churchill decided it wasn’t worth spending the political capital to press the matter, especially as there was an acceptable alternative. General Richard O’Connor had been the man leading the charge in North Africa and he had served as Alexander’s deputy during the invasion Sicily, in overall command of the British Corps involved. Though he would probably have preferred to be commanding one of them on the front and another staff position was hardly his ideal choice, nonetheless he understood the importance of the task and put all his energy into carrying it out. If Alexander was perhaps less than happy with this outcome General Auchinleck made no secret of his displeasure. Believing that he had been recalled from South East Asia to fill this role he found himself instead playing a part in the deception plans around the intended landing site for D-Day. In his memoirs he makes it clear that his recall had less to do with Operation Millennium than it did with Montgomery’s manoeuvring to assume overall command in advance of the operations in the DEI, Thailand and Indochina [4].

Sicily also impacted on the selection of the officers assigned to command the American troops on D-Day. General George Patton had emerged from Operation Malamute with his reputation substantially enhanced, and with certain rumours about his conduct away from the battlefield remaining nothing more than that he felt it was almost his right to command one of the Corps scheduled to go ashore on D-Day. Some in Washington were less than enthusiastic and General Omar Bradley was seen in some quarters as the more dependable, less flamboyant choice. On the other hand Bradley was technically junior to Patton at this point and Patton certainly did have his supporters. In the end Patton got the job and Bradley found himself assigned to the command of an entirely fictious US Army supposedly intending to land in the Pas de Calais, in what the Germans were increasingly persuaded would be the main assault mounted by the Allies in the west. With the command structure of the real invasion force resolved these officers could focus on the crucial business of getting the troops ashore on D-Day and just as importantly getting them off the beaches and into France proper to establish a bridgehead the Germans couldn’t break [5].

[1] It really was a political role as much as a strategic one and of course here at least a couple of the biggest egos are elsewhere.

[2] An alt name for that organization.

[3] The French still can’t quite accept that they aren’t simply one nation among equals.

[4] Auchinleck is rather badly treated here, suffering at the hands of Montgomery’s ambitions.

[5] And much more on D-Day still to come.

 

[Garrison]

1st May – 30th June 1943 – The Road to D-Day - Part II – The Funnies​

In the months since Dieppe much had been done to ensure there would be no repeat of the issues that had left so much of the armoured support for the Canadian and American troops marooned on the beaches to become trophies for the Germans after they withdrew. One crucial part of this plan was an intensive study of the beaches of Normandy, which was blended into a larger study of conditions all along the coast of Northern France to maintain the fiction the Allies were planning to attack the Pas de Calais. Photography played a large part in this project of course, with postcards and holiday snapshots being rounded up in their thousands to be used alongside far more recent pictures taken at great personal risk by the French resistance and smuggled out to Britain. The Allies were not content to merely study images of the beaches of France, submarines and commando operations were mounted to covertly visit the beaches, acquiring detailed knowledge of the shoreline geography. The ‘souvenirs’ these troops returned with included samples of beach sand, meticulously labelled as to where on the beach it had been taken and even pieces removed from various beach defences with nothing more sophisticated than a hacksaw. This allowed the defences to be assessed metallurgically and mechanically. All of this analysis ensured that the beaches where the new vehicles and equipment intended to aid the troops in landing were tested in conditions as close to those of Normandy as possible, though again a number of far less secure tests were conducting in and around ports, helping to reinforce the notion that Calais or Cherbourg were the most likely targets, though some of these exercises existed only in the fertile minds of officers at MI5 [1].

When it came to the armoured vehicles some of the changes were relatively obvious, with production of the new Napier derived engine now reaching levels that were more than adequate to meet the requirements of the A24 program the decision had been made to modify the later model A22 Black Prince tanks with the Napier in place of the lacklustre Nuffield Liberty. This posed fewer engineering challenges than might have been expected as the manufacturers had allowed for the possibility of this change, and indeed had been discretely lobbying in favour of it as it became clear just how drastically the Napier had transformed the expected performance of the A24 Churchill. In terms of the A22 this new engine improved the power to weight ratio of the tank and gave it a greater ability to manoeuvre on the beaches while providing only a modest improvement in top speed [2]. This however was not the only measure intended to help men and machines get off the beaches. The special equipment evaluated at Dieppe had been considerably improved and new items added to the roster. The most useful of these was probably the flail, a rotating drum fitted to the front of a tank fitted with chains and heavy weights designed to detonate mines and clear a path, they also proved useful in tearing up barbed wire and if chains were blown off they could be easily replaced. There was also a selection of other mine clearing devices, as well as plough blades, drums of fabric designed to be laid down on the sand to make it easier for vehicles to cross beaches, and bundles of fascine that could be used to fill trenches and ditches and bridging equipment to cover larger gaps. While useful most of these devices were not going to aid the troops in making it ashore or breaking down the fortifications that sheltered the German defenders and the heavy weapons that could wreak havoc on the landings.

A development intended to help with ‘bunker busting’ was rather more controversial, this being the T-34 Calliope rocket system. This was originally envisioned as a sophisticated system that would carry sixty rockets in an array of tubes attached by heavy duty mounting arms on either side of the turret. Its aiming system would be linked to the elevation of the tanks main gun. This highly sophisticated system would however not have been ready until 1944 and given the perceived need for such capabilities a radically smaller and simpler system was designed, one that more closely resembled the Soviet rocket system known as the Katyusha or ‘Stalin’s Organ’. The Katyusha amounted to little more than a set of launch rails fitted to the bed of a truck. The Katyusha variant was undeniably far simpler and easier to make than the original T-34 design but it lacked the aiming capability and the version adopted for tank use in 1943 had the additional problem that the much lighter and shorter mounting system could obstruct the commander’s hatch depending on exact angle the rack had been set to, something that had to be pre-set before a tank went ashore. This reduced system also carried only sixteen 4.5in rockets, which could be fired in pairs or a ripple fire that could discharge the entire rack in a few seconds. Several options were tested to address the issue with the hatch, including a spring-loaded device triggered by a small explosive charge that would release the spring and pivot the launcher out of the way. This was found to be unsatisfactory, which is a highly sanitized version of the opinions expressed by those who tested it. Despite reservations Calliope was fitted to a number of Sherman and Black Prince tanks deployed on D-Day and did prove somewhat useful, though the mechanism was frequently removed in the field in the days and weeks after landing. Later testing of what was regarded by the US Army as the true Calliope showed that its weight and height above the turret would have made it extremely hazardous to transport on a landing craft, so the reduced version was probably the lesser of two evils, whatever the crews who operated it might have thought [3].

An even more radical plan was to create amphibious tanks that could swim to shore and support the first wave of troops directly. This was not the first time such vehicles had been proposed. In 1940 the Wehrmacht had experimented with modifying tanks to drive along the seabed, connected to the surface by an air hose. The practicality of this when operating in the waters of the English Channel remained untested, probably fortunately for the crews who would have been expected to man them, as plans for a cross channel invasion were abandoned by the Germans and the Allies decided it would better to have their tanks function as improvised boats rather than improvised submarines and this took the shape in the form of the Dual Drive (DD) tanks. These were designed by Major General Percy Hobart, who was in fact responsible for many of the specialist vehicles already described and collectively known as ‘Hobart’s Funnies’ [4].

Hobart had been retired in 1940 because certain senior officers did not appreciate his ‘eccentric’ ideas about armoured warfare. He did still have influential friends, including Basil Liddell Hart, and once his ideas came to Churchill’s attention he was recalled to service and despite further attempts by some opponents to have him retired on medical grounds he was placed in charge of the creation of first the 11th Armoured Division and then the 79th Armoured Division. With the recognition of the need for specialist vehicles to mount amphibious assaults the 79th became an experimental force, heavily involved in testing and refining Hobart’s designs, especially the DD tanks. The early experiments centred around the Valentine tank, fitting it with canvas ‘skirts’ and a propellor connected to the tanks drive system, as well as other modifications to prevent the engine ingesting water. While the tests with the Valentine were successful there was a significant problem in that the turret had to be turned to face the gun rearwards accommodate the skirts and this was seen as a serious issue if the tank was engaged while driving onto the beach. Consideration was given to other British tank models, and the Canadian Wolverine, but these were rejected in favour of the American Sherman, whose profile permitted it to have its turret faced forward while making for shore and allowed it to engage as soon as it hit the beach. Around 200 Valentines were produced nonetheless before the change was made and given the time pressure around 70 of these saw service on D-Day. Despite the considerable apprehension about their suitability, they performed about as well as the Shermans in practice, though unlike the Shermans they were swiftly withdrawn from service during the fighting in Normandy, largely replaced by the newly deployed A27 Centaur [5].

The utility of the various funnies varied greatly, but the best of them made an invaluable contribution on D-Day and afterwards. It might not be true to say that the landings would have been impossible without them, however their absence would undoubtedly have made the landings far more perilous and increased the Allied losses during the landing and the breakout phase of the battle in Normandy.

[1] This painstaking work took place IOTL, though under a little less time pressure than is the case here.

[2] So the Liberty engine is finally dead.

[3] I decided the full-scale Calliope was just too complicated for the accelerated timeframe and besides the simplified version may actually be more useful.

[4] It wouldn’t be D-Day without Hobart’s funnies.

[5] IOTL the Valentines were produced but were only deployed as training vehicles.

 

[Garrison]

1st May – 30th June 1943 – Defending Europe - Part I – Building the Atlantic Wall​

Whatever difficulties with resources and command arrangements the Allies had experienced in preparing for D-Day they were an order of magnitude worse for those charged with building the Atlantic Wall rather than breaking it. General Erich von Manstein had been to hero of France in 1940 and after this he had the filled the gap in Hitler’s coterie of favourites vacated by Erwin Rommel, a situation that von Manstein did not object to, regardless of what his post-war memoirs had to say on the subject of his relationship with Hitler. This status had its obvious perks in that it meant that von Manstein could have his opinions heard by the Fuhrer while officers who were technically more senior had to go through the increasingly labyrinthine channels created by Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary and a man fiercely determined to maintain his position as the gatekeeper of access to the Fuhrer. Manstein’s privileged position inevitable bred resentment, but von Manstein was unfazed by this. A far greater problem was that being trusted by Hitler meant he was at the head of the line for an assignment he was far from happy with, overseeing the construction of the Atlantic Wall and the defence of Northern France. Von Manstein could hardly refuse this assignment and he was duly appointed to the role in October of 1942 [1].

After the General Staff completed their preliminary appreciation of the conduct of the battle of Dieppe Manstein found himself burdened both with Hitler’s optimistic expectations about the speed and scale of the defences that could be built and the multitude of cautionary notes emanating from von Kleist about the probable capabilities of the Allies in 1943 and the strategy they were likely to pursue. This created a series of contradictory demands, and this was exacerbated by the fraught relationship between Manstein and Field Marshal von Rundstedt, the man in overall command of Wehrmacht forces in France. There were some pragmatic reasons for the disagreements between then, centred around a by now familiar strategic argument, whether it was better to concentrate forces at the potential landing sites to defeat amphibious troops as they came ashore or concentrate a mobile reserve further back that could be directed to mount a decisive counterattack after the enemy had revealed where they intended to land. This veneer of pragmatism was simply laid over a far more basic issue, which was the struggle between Manstein and von Rundstedt over who should control the reserves regardless of where they were deployed, or the strategy chosen to engage the Allied landings. Where Eisenhower did his best to contain the egos of his senior field commanders, no mean feat when dealing with the likes of Patton, the German command structure positively encouraged such clashes when everything depended on who could gain the approval of Hitler rather than any considerations of sound strategy [2].

Regardless of the clash of egos both men were perfectly well aware that creating an unbroken line of defences all along the French coast was out of the question in 1943 and that a nodal approach would be required, with enough of the foundations laid for a more comprehensive set of fortifications to appease Hitler to be constructed in 1944, though only the most optimistic thought that the Allies would give the Reich the time to complete this project. Von Manstein was hardly the man to object to a flexible approach to defence emphasizing speed and tactical responsiveness and at the same time von Rundstedt was well aware that fixed defences, however impressive, had done nothing to save the French in 1940. The nodal approach of covering the most like zones with the heaviest fortifications positively invited the Allies to look to put their troops ashore elsewhere, fortunately for Von Rundstedt the Abwehr’s espionage network provided ample reassurance that the British and Americans had dismissed such possibilities, and no one in the Wehrmacht was inclined to seriously question the quality of this intelligence. Despite the clash of egos there was a genuine disagreement was over the placement of the mobile reserves that went beyond mere power politics. Von Rundstedt favoured maintaining the reserves in a central location, out of reach of the naval firepower and air support covering that would inevitably be deployed to aid the invasion force. A centrally placed force would also be able to respond to a landing wherever it took place. Manstein saw this as far too conservative and far from protecting the reserves it would expose them to the weight of Allied firepower as they made the long journey to the landing zones. There was also the issue of how much of the French transportation network would still be functional by the summer of 1943. The rail network in France was already being pounded by Allied air forces in the spring of 1943, with the Pas de Calais receiving the largest share of air attacks, drawing German attention away from how many bombs were being dropped in the Normandy region. This was also, quite intentionally, taking a toll on the Luftwaffe fighter forces as daylight bombing raids over France were in easy range of Allied fighter escorts and the arrival of new models such as the P-47 and Spitfire Mark IX had erased the advantage enjoyed by the Fw190 in the latter half of 1942 [3].

Given the information at his disposal it was inevitable that the Pas de Calais was where von Manstein would give the highest priority for the construction of fortifications, and it was also where he wanted to concentrate the Panzer Divisions that were intended to crush the landing forces after they had been delayed and disorganized by the forward defences in the landing zone. What he got instead was a deeply unhappy compromise, the Panzers would be positioned closer to Calais than von Rundstedt was happy with, but von Rundstedt wanted to retain final approval over their dispatch. Manstein was deeply unhappy about this and tried to play his Trump card by appealing direct to Hitler. These appeals however backfired badly and made matters considerably worse as Hitler chose to reserve decisions over the use of the Panzer reserves to himself, making the command loop even longer and more complex, far from ideal when a rapid response to an allied landing was a necessity [4].

By itself this divided command structure would have been enough of an impediment to an effective defence, far worse was Hitler’s insistence on committing resources to a variety of other projects, most of which were of dubious value. The revived German atomic bomb program might have been a war winner; if the war was likely to last until 1946-47. In 1943 creating the nuclear facilities at Auschwitz and expanding rocket development at Peenemunde consumed substantial quantities of concrete and steel, as did the strengthening of anti-aircraft defences in the Ruhr in response to Allied bombing. All of these materials had to come from somewhere and even the highest priority areas on the French coast could not be entirely protected from Hitler’s other pet projects. The reserve divisions in the west did not fare much better than the fixed defences because Hitler also refused to abandon his ambitions in the East.

Far from accepting the necessity of adopting a fully defensive posture in 1943 the Fuhrer was adamant that while the Allies were being crushed on the beaches the Wehrmacht must also inflict a major defeat on the Soviets. With these goals accomplished then at the very least some temporary accommodation might be achieved with Stalin, assuming Stalin survived if the face of yet more setbacks for the USSR, or alternately the Western Allies might recognize the futility of trying to assault Fortress Europe. Such thinking was doubtless encouraged by reports reaching Berlin after the Tunis conference that Stalin was still threatening to seek a separate peace in the absence of a true second front. By the time summer was approaching Stalin had thought better of the idea, assuming it was ever a serious prospect, but Hitler was unaware of this and his views on the war in the east veered wildly between pursuit of this ‘reasonable’ approach and still seeking outright victory in 1943. Whatever the hoped-for outcome Hitler was insistent on a fresh offensive aimed at the Kursk salient, a bulge in the Soviet lines that Hitler wanted to pinch off, encircling and destroying a large piece of the Red Army in the process. That even a fully successful operation would only have a modest impact on the strength of the Red Army was not something Hitler wanted to hear, and he certainly wasn’t going to listen to any pleas that his grand offensive be postponed, let alone abandoned, until the threat in the west had been dealt with [5].

This determination to engage in a further thrust at the Soviets meant that the divisions in the west were not the first to receive the latest models of tank and assault guns and when they did arrive it wasn’t in anything like the numbers that Manstein and von Rundstedt felt were needed, though even if they had received all the available production of Tigers and Hetzers it would still not have met their needs. As it was some Panzer Divisions in the west were still using recycled French equipment from 1940, whose sole advantage was that they could be maintained from the output of French industry rather than further burdening the overstretched factories of the Reich. The commanders in the west might have been able to press their case for the latest armour more vigorously if they had not fallen into the trap of assuming that the armour encountered at Dieppe in 1942 was typical of what they would face when the Allies attacked in Northwest Europe, an opinion reinforced by the fighting in Sicily, where the A22 Black Prince had still been the main British infantry tank deployed, alongside late model Crusader cruiser tanks. The first units equipped with the far superior A24 Churchill had only become operational in February of 1943, a month after the first US armoured regiments had begun replacing their M3 Lees with the M4 Sherman, though they would have to wait some additional months to receive the M4A5 Thomas. Given what they thought they knew the Germans were sure that that the Panzer IV and late model Panzer III tanks would be adequate to counter the available Allied tanks, assuming they could engage them in equal or superior numbers, which was also assumed to be relatively likely as it would surely take the Allies some time to get supporting armour ashore. This would prove to be another flawed assumption [6].

[1] Rommel being unavailable von Manstein has become the new golden boy among Hitler’s General’s, and now von Manstein is finding out the price of that favourite status.

[2] If it weren’t so serious the German high command would make for a marvellous farce, maybe an alt ‘Allo ‘Allo.

[3] The closest anyone came to repelling an amphibious assault IOTL was probably Salerno, which never took place ITTL and is not likely to be repeated anywhere in Europe in 1943.

[4] This is as per OTL, Hitler just can’t help himself.

[5] So there will be an Operation Citadel, but a somewhat different one, von Manstein won’t be in the east for one thing.

[6] The A24 Churchill is going to be as big a shock to the Germans as the OTL Tiger was to the Allies.

 

[Garrison]

1st May – 30th June 1943 – Defending Europe - Part II – The Unfriendly Seas​

Overall von Manstein and von Rundstedt were far more worried about the Allied navies that could be expected to gather near any landing zone and provide fire support than they were about whatever ‘second-rate’ British and American tanks might make it ashore. If Dieppe was a victory for the Wehrmacht the cost of winning had been considerably increased by the guns of the Royal Navy battleship HMS Warspite and its supporting cruisers that had wrought havoc upon the Heer troops defending the town. It was to be expected that when the Allies launched their main assault on Europe, they would have an armada of warships sitting offshore to pound defensive positions on the beaches and troops in the rear areas. It would obviously be desirable for the to engage these ships at sea, not to mention sinking as many transport ships and landing craft as possible before they could put their troops ashore. In an ideal world the Allies invasion force would such heavy casualties at sea that they would be unable to mount an effective attack on their intended landing zone and would be either forced to withdraw or stranded ashore and crushed by the Wehrmacht counterattack [1].

Of course, by the summer of 1943 it was anything but an ideal world for the Germans and such a favourable outcome was beyond the powers of the Wehrmacht to create. The most obvious problem was that the Kriegsmarine was in no position to mount any sort of major response to an Allied invasion. The surface fleet was a shadow of even the heavily outnumbered force of 1940, with the few warships left reduced to acting as a fleet in being and drawing off Allied resources to destroy them at anchor that might have been better spent elsewhere, but which had little real impact on the preparations for D-Day. For the U-Boats attempting to operate in the confined waters of the English Channel with the full weight of Allied Anti-Submarine Warfare resources brought to bear against them was tantamount to suicide and Doenitz was adamant that the best place for his U-Boats was still the Atlantic, although they did not return to action there in full force until February 1943 and while they did enjoy a brief uptick in sinkings owing to some gaps in ULTRA decrypts by April their situation was every bit as bad as it had been in December of 1942, though this time there would be no question of withdrawing to regroup. The U-Boats would be left to fight to the bitter end, regardless of losses [2].

The Luftwaffe was the other force that could actively hunt the enemy warships and transport, but as discussed previously the Allies had drawn a large part of their strength into Battle of the Ruhr and the Luftwaffe was also heavily committed to preparations for Operation Citadel during the spring and early summer of 1943, meaning that far from reinforcing their presence in France Luftwaffe squadrons were being withdrawn to engage elsewhere, over the protests of von Manstein and von Rundstedt. Added to this anti-shipping warfare had never been a high priority for the Luftwaffe and while they had expanded their capability to support operations in the Mediterranean these specialist units had suffered badly both during operations in support of the Afrika Korps and the ongoing efforts to disrupt allied shipping around Crete. Some of these specialist squadrons were dispatched to France, but the toll taken on their experienced crews degraded their ability to carry out effective attacks, as did the failure to provide adequate replacements for their losses in aircraft, which was a problem not limited to these specialist anti-shipping squadrons. One thing that did offer some hope of improving the Luftwaffe’s anti-shipping capability was the use of guided weapons, essentially the ancestors’ of modern smart bombs and guided missiles. These certainly appealed to German penchant for wonder weapons and as a result there multiple competing projects in progress, all jealously guarding their progress. This forced each program to solve the same technical issues independently and led to a considerable waste of time and resources. These programs all suffered from the issues encountered by all the Reich’s wonder weapon programs, being riddled with teething problems, difficulty in getting them into mass production, and a fundamental inability to compensate for the inferiority of numbers suffered by all branches of the Wehrmacht [3].

Not even the most enthusiastic marine engineer would have described midget submarines as wonder weapons, they had been used by several of the combatants throughout the war, the Royal Navy X-Craft perhaps being the best known, and if their results had been mixed this had more to do with poor tactics and their deployment in overambitious missions, a problem that certainly affected the German midget submarines. Being far cheaper to produce than a conventional U-Boat and requiring only a minimal crew they were an attractive option for countering an allied invasion force, where their short range and limited weapon capacity would be far less of an issue, especially if one assumed that they would probably be making a one-way trip when they went into battle against the Allied armada in the English Channel. Several models had been under development and when Albert Speer took over from Fritz Todt a crash production program was launched, though it was not accompanied by the sort of propaganda blitz associated with some of Speer’s other programs, midget submarines did not make for compelling newsreel footage. That this rushed program turned into one of the worst disasters of Speer’s efforts at ‘rationalization’ also doubtless contributed to their being largely ignored by the propagandists in Speer’s ministry. The Hecht and Neger models both suffered from flaws that were the result of having been designed and approved in a matter of months, none of which had been addressed before they entered production. Quality control during manufacturing was poor to say the least, not helped by the fact that so much of the work was done by poorly trained German workers and slave labour. About 80 midget submarines of various types were available on D-Day, but no more than 20 were sent into action and at most five survived to engage in combat and claims that they sunk one or more allied ships are generally dismissed by mainstream historians [4].

The one naval weapon that the Wehrmacht could deploy to good effect was the sea mine and they had a variety of types available, from basic contact weapons to advanced magnetic and acoustic models. There were even versions that could be triggered by the pressure wave created by a passing ship, but these would not be available in any numbers until the autumn, too late to influence the outcome of D-Day and indeed all bar the contact models were not available in the numbers called for in the plans for Fortress Europe. One piece of good news was that unlike other weapons mines were not in great demand for use in the east, though this advantage was significantly offset by the fact that there was a lot of coastline to be protected, with Norway, Greece and Italy all making demands on the available stockpiles. Efforts to step up production foundered for all he familiar reasons of limited resources and competing production priorities. A further issue was that the Germans had made extensive use of mines throughout the war, both defensively and offensively, and something of an arms race had developed as the Allies came up with ingenious ways to sweep them, though none of these methods were full proof and with the size of the naval armada being assembled for Millennium casualties would be almost inevitable, if they were in the right place. Still these minesweeping capabilities meant that the number of mines required to provide adequate coverage had to be continually revised upwards, while production remained largely static.

The Allied deception plans helped considerably in further mitigating the threat from naval mines. Not only were mines being sewn to protect Norwegian and Italian harbours the Allies had no intention of landing on, but in France priority had to be given to what von Manstein and von Rundstedt both believed would be the target of any Allied landing, the Pas de Calais. Thus, while the waters around Calais and Cherbourg were liberally sewn with dense belts of the most modern types of mine the Normandy region were only guarded by relatively thin minefields, and heavily dependent on less effective types. Von Manstein had plans prepared for substantially improving all the defences of the Normandy region, as well as the Mediterranean coast of France, but these were not expected to be completed until 1944, and that was time that the Wehrmacht did not have because the Allies had settled on a day in July for the opening of the liberation of Europe [5].

The overextension of the Wehrmacht resources and the prospect of full-fledged campaigns having to be fought on two was not met with equanimity in Berlin and some had begun to conclude that only a change of leadership could save Germany.

[1] They are obviously underestimating the number and capability of Allied tanks on D-Day, but they are also falling short in their estimates of the weight of naval firepower being deployed, there is after all no need to maintain a huge fleet in the Mediterranean at this time.

[2] Hitler is losing faith in the Kriegsmarine and Doenitz; he is not likely to be the last Fuhrer ITTL.

[3] So weapons like the Fritz-X are being developed by with things like the nuclear weapons program getting more resources they are proceeding more slowly than OTL, they are not going to influence D-Day

[4] The German midget subs were not great IOTL, they are considerable worse here. Death traps is not putting too strongly.

[5] And now you know D-Day will be in July 1943.

 

[Garrison]

6th May – 1st July 1943 – Germany – Targeting Hitler​

Hitler and the Wehrmacht had always had something of an ambivalent relationship. Hitler’s willingness to pour almost unlimited resources into rearmament had certainly won him support from the military professionals, however many continued to regard him as a ‘jumped up little Corporal’ and felt that he should leave strategic matters in their hands, which Hitler never had any intention of doing. The situation escalated to a point where the Heer actively considered his overthrow in 1938, Ludwig von Beck went so far as the resign his post as Chief of staff and was involved in the plot but abandoned it when it seemed that Hitler might suspect the Heer was planning to move against him and the momentum for action completely dissipated in the aftermath of the Munich Agreement. A year later and the Wehrmacht raised only muted objections to Hitler’s renewed plans to go to war, the only meaningful attempt to remove Hitler from power at this time was the bomb planted by Georg Elser in November 1939, an attempt thwarted only by Hitler’s decision to depart the Bürgerbräukeller where it was planted far earlier than anticipated. From 1940 through 1942 the Wehrmacht was remarkably supine. Some outside the regime certainly did attempt to stir opposition, such as the White Rose group, and all too often paid with their lives. Such principled opposition remained rare in Germany, and even more so within the ranks of the Wehrmacht. The idea that the officers Heer in particular were somehow a group of apolitical soldiers who simply did their duty and obeyed their oaths was one that those officers certainly did their best to promote after the war but the death of millions of Soviet POWs and the organized looting of food under the Hunger Plan were actions in which the Heer was directly complicit and to which few if any objections were raised. Only when it became clear that Germany was losing the war and that their own personal survival and the survival of the nation was at stake did some among the ranks of the Wehrmacht decide to finally take concrete action and even then, much of their preparation was marked by hesitation and a reluctance to translate planning into action. Even in 1943 there were still some who entertained the idea it might be possible to retain Hitler as a figurehead stripped of his power, or even that if only the inner circle of cronies around him could be removed, especially the quack doctors who plied the Fuhrer with all manner of dubious concoctions, he could be restored to his old self and put the conduct of the war back on a sensible footing. A few were clearer sighted and realized that only the death of Hitler could save Germany, and some chose to take matters into their own hands without worrying about what might come after the death of Hitler [1].

The early months of 1943 saw multiple independent schemes hatched to kill Hitler, and yet the same perverse luck that had saved him at the Bürgerbräukeller still seemed to be with him, ‘The devil protects his own’ as one exasperated would-be assassin commented. A disillusioned army officer Henning von Tresckow tried to place a bomb aboard Hitler’s personal aircraft during a visit to Smolensk. The bomb was in a package supposedly containing two bottles of brandy and von Tresckow gave it to a member of Hitler’s staff as supposed gift for the Fuhrer. The staffer accepted it and thirty minutes later the bomb went off, in a deserted corner of a hanger on the airfield. The staffer later profusely apologized to von Tresckow for being in a hurry and forgetting to load the package aboard, promising to ensure the delivery of the brandy if von Tresckow sent it on. As tempting as it may have been to try again von Tresckow chose to send the brandy on this occasion [2].

Rudolf von Gertsdorff was another army officer, and one willing to sacrifice his own life to end Hitler’s. Only days after the failure of the von Tresckow attempt von Gertsdorff also planned to kill Hitler with a bomb, this time intended to be planted at an exhibition of captured Soviet battle flags that the Fuhrer was scheduled to attend. Discovering that security at the exhibit was too tight to plant the bomb on the premises von Gertsdorff chose to secret the bomb on his person and get close to Hitler before it went off and killed both of them. What thwarted the plan was the fact that the bomb had a time fuse and despite von Gertsdorff’s best efforts Hitler chose to leave before the fuse reached ran down its ten-minute delay. This left von Gertsdorff to hastily find a quiet bathroom and disarm the device [3].

There may have been an element of black comedy in these accounts, but both had come remarkably close to killing Hitler and demonstrated that the security around the Fuhrer was anything but airtight. Both attempts contained the obvious flaw already mentioned that even if they had succeeded in eliminating Hitler neither von Tresckow nor von Gertsdorff had any plans for securing the transition of power after Hitler’s demise. Without such a plan for the more ‘rational’ elements of the Heer to swiftly fill the power vacuum it was more than likely that Goering or Himmler would seize control, outcomes which were unlikely to improve Germany’s situation, especially as both of them would inevitably unleash a deadly and wide-reaching vengeance on anyone even suspected of colluding in the death of Hitler [4].

Such considerations explain why some of those conspiring to kill Hitler were hoping the Allies might be persuaded to do the deed and allow them to maintain a certain plausible deniability, especially if yet another attempt were to fail and the Fuhrer was looking for a culprit to punish. The idea of killing Hitler had certainly been considered by the Allies, with MI6, SOE, the OSS, and even the Free French all having devised plans of varying complexity. The circuitous approaches to the Allies from inside Germany led to some of these ideas being re-examined but they were soon quashed at the very highest level. Churchill vetoed the idea after some discussions with Roosevelt and his reasoning for opposing an assassination was sound. Firstly, there was the question of how reliable these contacts in Germany were, there had after all been multiple occasions when the Wehrmacht appeared on the brink of turning on Hitler only to baulk at the last minute. There was no reason to suppose this time would be any different, and if the Allies were to target Hitler why risk trusting a group of Heer officers who might be acting as agent provocateurs, seeking to expose Allied intelligence assets in Western Europe? More fundamentally there was the question of whether killing Hitler would be a net benefit to the Allies. It might, only might, have slowed the dreadful toll of the death camps, if the plotters could take power and kept their promises to put an end to the Judaeocide, something that no one in Whitehall was willing to place much faith in. On the other hand, without Hitler’s interference the German ability to prosecute the war might well be considerably enhanced, which was indeed something the plotters were hoping for, and an assassinated Hitler might well become a martyr and create a legend akin to the ‘stabbed in the back’ mythos that had helped the rise of the Nazis. Since no one in the Allied High Command had any interest in drawing out the war, or fighting Germany again in another twenty years, the Allies decided that whatever the moral issues they were better off with Hitler in charge of Germany [5].

After his failure in March von Tresckow soon became involved in a new and far more elaborate plan to not only kill Hitler but to take control of Germany away from the Nazi regime altogether, with Himmler, Goering, Speer, and others in the inner circle taking the fall for the assassination and leaving the plotters clear to take control of Germany and seek some reasonable terms from the Allies, meaning the Western Allies. This was Operation Valhalla and ironically it had not originally been created to overthrow the Nazi regime, but to preserve it if some disaster befell the Fuhrer. Valhalla was a piece of contingency planning on the part of Hitler and his inner circle that recognized that in the eventuality of Hitler’s death it would be vital for the Wehrmacht to move to ensure stability and continuity, especially if the Fuhrer’s death was the result of hostile action. The importance of the plan for Hitler and his inner circle was emphasized by the assassination of Mussolini and the cracks that had opened in the Fascist government in the aftermath of his death, such disorder in the Reich was simply unthinkable. The framework of Valhalla allowed those plotting Hitler’s downfall to layout their plans for the aftermath of his assassination almost in plain sight. There were even areas where the conspirators agreed with Hitler’s strategic plans, for example they had no intention of budging one inch in the east and were instead committed to withdrawing troops from places such as Denmark and Norway and shipping them to the USSR to shore up the defence against the Red Army, and it would be a defence, the Valhalla plotters diverged from Hitler’s vision in their recognition that further conquest in the East were impossible, better to stand on their gains and force the Soviets into bloody and exhausting offensive action [6].

Such ambitions for the future of the Reich of course required that the plotters have a workable plan to kill Hitler in the first instance and despite the previous failures the Valhalla conspirators once again chose planting a bomb as the best option. Using a knife or gun to assassinate the Fuhrer, assuming that one was allowed to carry such a weapon in Hitler’s presence after the fate of Mussolini, carried too much uncertainty, and it would be completely impossible to hide the identity of the perpetrator in such a personal attack, making it difficult to pin the blame for the Fuhrer’s death on one of the other parties the conspirators wished to be rid of. Poison would allow the murder to be carried out from a distance, but von Trescow’s prior experience persuaded the plotters that anything that had to pass through multiple hands outside of the circles of Valhalla was too haphazard, and what if some other party sampled the poisoned food or drink before Hitler? So, a bomb planted in a location Hitler would be visiting was still the best option in spite of all prior experience. Translating this basic idea into a detailed plan proved a fraught business. Finding a suitable opportunity, and someone reliable willing to carry the bomb into Hitler’s presence was no easy feat. The issues were compounded by the skittishness of some of those involved, any hint that Hitler, the SS, or the Gestapo might suspect something was afoot was enough to induce paralysis that saw weeks go by as the plotters sought to lay low. There were, even after having apparently deciding that Hitler must go, those who questioned whether they should rush to carry out the plan. After all, if Operation Citadel succeeded and/or the Allied landing, wherever and whenever it took place, failed as Dieppe had the previous year then Germany’s strategic situation would be radically changed regardless of who was in charge and events in the Mediterranean did nothing to encourage their plans [7]. This was wishful thinking but given that hesitation had carried the planning for Valhalla into June there was a very real fear that if the Allies landed while the conspirators were still trying to secure their hold over Germany, or Berlin at least, then it would all too easy for others to brand them as turncoats. There was also the problem that if the Wehrmacht were caught up in the chaos of a coup when the Allies landed, then they might well achieve their objectives in Western Europe without the need to deal with the new leadership in Berlin. All this handwringing meant that the days continued to tick down to the launch of Operation Citadel and Operation Millennium with Hitler still firmly in charge. Only after the disastrous outcomes for Germany of the renewed fighting in the east and the west would the Valhalla plan finally be put into effect [8].

Even if Valhalla had been put into effect in May, or if any of the earlier attempts of 1943 had succeeded there was little chance of the death of Hitler achieving any of the would-be assassin’s goals beyond his death. The Allies hadn’t rejected plans to kill Hitler simply because they saw him as impeding the German war effort. They had also concluded that to ensure the peace of Europe in the future Germany would have to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch, and there were those arguing against any rebuilding, preferring to ‘salt the earth’ and destroy Germany as an industrial nation. A successful Valhalla would have been met with the same simple, stark response to any request for terms from the Allies, the only acceptable terms were the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany [9].

[1] I don’t have a very high opinion of the OTL Valkyrie plot, half-assed and largely carried out to try and save Germany from the consequences of its actions.

[2] The plan here is authentic, just a slightly different failure mode.

[3] This one however is precisely as per OTL, Hitler’s randomness seems to account for most of his luck in avoiding assassination attempts.

[4] Both plans seem to have been fuelled by personal animosity towards Hitler rather than any larger political objective.

[5] It’s cold-blooded logic, but it’s sound logic.

[6] Fundamental problem for the plotters is how to create a situation where someone will be willing to make peace.

[7] What events? That will be revealed shortly.

[8] So no assassination attempt yet by the Valhalla plotters and other things will get in the way too.

[9] The Allies might not have formalized everything yet, but unconditional surrender is pretty much all they will offer.

 

[Garrison]

June 12th – June 28th 1943 – Greece - Operation Jasper - Part I – Reclaiming the Dodecanese​

Operation Jasper has almost inevitably been overshadowed in histories of World War II by the preparations for D-Day and of course the Normandy landings themselves. It is sometimes dismissed as little more than an overly elaborate diversionary tactic, or as merely a politically motivated stunt that drew resources away from other theatres of operation. Certainly, there were political motivations involved in planning Operation Jasper, but the same could be said of many of the other offensives mounted by the Allies in the latter half of the war and it didn’t mean that this renewed action in the Aegean was misguided or without practical benefits. The Greek government in exile had been agitating for an effort to liberate their country practically since the day they were forced to evacuate, and they used every means at their disposal to obtain support from the British in particular. The government in exile pressed the dubious idea that Greece had been abandoned or betrayed by the British in 1941, provoking exasperation and anxiety in equal measures in Whitehall, which created the opposite effect to that the Greeks had hoped for, making the British less inclined to assist. With other strategic priorities taking precedence the Greeks had been forced to settle for an effort to create a Free Greek army, which eventually mustered four full divisions, primarily tasked with taking over the defence of Crete during 1942 and providing garrison forces in Palestine and the Levant. In the aftermath of the invasion of Sicily and the German occupation of Italy there was a greater willingness to support the Greeks in reclaiming at least part of their homeland, partly it must be admitted because it would play into the Allies deception plans. One other matter of concern for the Greek government in exile as the war went was the nature of the resistance groups that had sprung up on the Greek mainland, with an alarming number of them being Communist affiliated, alarming at least to the government exile and certain politicians in London and Washington. The government in exile raised the spectre of a communist takeover of Greece if the forces of the legitimate regime continued to do nothing in the eyes of Greek people while the communists fought the invader, and these communists might even take over if the Axis position in Greece collapsed in the aftermath of a successful invasion of continental Europe [1].

How realistic such fears were, or indeed how genuine they were remains uncertain and how much of an impression this argument made in London and Washington is equally unclear. What is certain is that the Allies saw an opportunity to enhance their efforts to persuade the Germans that a more general offensive aimed at the Balkans was still being prepared and continue to pin down Wehrmacht forces in the region. From the practical perspective taking Rhodes would potentially unhinge the Axis defence of the whole of the Dodecanese Islands. There was also certainly a sense that by the spring of 1943 Rhodes constituted ‘low hanging fruit’ when it came to liberating Axis held territory, meaning that it wouldn’t be necessary to commit massive resources to carry out an effective invasion.

The garrison on Rhodes was composed entirely of Italian troops and it had steadily deteriorated in both numbers and quality over the years of the occupation. After the fall of Greece Rhodes had swiftly become a backwater as far as military importance went and the threat from aircraft and submarines operating from Crete and Egypt made it increasingly difficult to supply. The garrison’s overall strength peaked at around four thousand troops, and this had decreased to less than three thousand by 1943, owing mostly to what was referred to as natural wastage, troops who had to be repatriated to Italy because of injury, illness and disciplinary offences, simply not being replaced. Even maintaining this number had required the withdrawal of units from several of the smaller islands of the Dodecanese, and as a result many of these had been quietly picked off by British and Greek forces operating out of Crete, in or two cases these actions amounted to little more than Allied troops simply coming ashore and accepting the surrender of the occupying forces.

As pleasant a place as Rhodes might have been for a holiday conditions for the locals and the occupying forces became increasingly grim and with the German intervention in Italy the already shaky morale of the troops had plummeted, with a noticeable uptick in accidents and disciplinary infractions, to the point where the order came down from Rome that soldiers would only be repatriated for the most serious of disciplinary violations and criminal acts. Any soldier suffering a self-inflicted wound would automatically be charged with desertion and cowardice, both of which carried the threat of the death penalty being imposed if found guilty and with the Germans looking over their shoulder it was all but guaranteed that the Italian High Command would impose and carry through such sentences. Desertion was in way a better option as fleeing into the countryside simply left Italians soldiers exposed to the vengeance of the embittered and angry locals.

The constant looting and criminal acts carried out against the Greeks, which notably rarely attracted punishment, simply made matters worse, as did the fact that the Italians could not prevent the populace from learning of the seemingly endless setbacks the Italians had suffered in the war. When small teams of Free Greek troops were landed to prepare the way for the liberation, they had little difficulty securing aid from disgruntled Rhodians, though the risk of betrayal remained omnipresent and one team was caught by the Italians, who executed them alongside half a dozen locals who had been aiding them. This incident did nothing to raise an alarm on Rhodes about a possible attack, such operations were taking place along the coasts of mainland Greece and Yugoslavia and there was nothing to set the missions on Rhodes apart from the others. The thin supply lines connecting Rhodes to Italy meant that little had been done to build up any sort of defences that might have impeded an attempt at an airborne or amphibious assault, with few artillery pieces or anti-aircraft guns being supplied and those that were on Rhodes were old, poorly maintained, short on ammunition. A few tankettes had been provided to the garrison for security purposes. These would have been all but useless in combat even if a lack of maintenance and spare parts hadn’t meant all of them were immobilized by April of 1943 with the same being true for what little motorized transport the Italians had available [2].

Arguably by this point in the war these furthest surviving outposts of the Italian empire should have been abandoned. The provided no sort of defence perimeter for either the Greek mainland or Italy given Allied dominance on the sea and in the air. In the aftermath of Mussolini’s death and the occupation of Sicily there were plenty of people in Rome who would have supported such a move, except that the Ciano regime had little choice except to fall in line with Hitler’s mantra of not one step back and hold fast even in places where there was no longer any strategic logic to remaining. The Nazis might have been concerned about an Allied landing in the Balkans, but this simply served to pin down the Wehrmacht already in the region, it did not result in the dispatch of any fresh troops and if it had they certainly would not have been wasted on the defence of Rhodes [3].

The troops who would face the dispirited Italian defenders had suffered their own dark days during the fall of Greece, stripped of weapons and equipment and forced to abandon their homes and family as they were evacuated to Crete. However, by the time of Operation Jasper the available Greek troops had been reorganized and re-equipped as part of the reconstituted 6th, 7th and 10th Infantry Divisions to the same standard as their British and American counterparts. While the troops of the 6th Infantry Division had been denied a major role in any of the Allied operations in the Mediterranean, mostly owing the government in exile not wanting to squander its limited resources detachments up to the regimental level had served with British forces during the North African campaign and contingents had seen combat in Syria, Lebanon, and Libya. In August of 1942 the 10th had taken over garrison duties on Crete, releasing a British division for service elsewhere. This transfer was only temporary as they were soon tapped to join the invasion of Rhodes alongside the 6th, indeed they would make up the bulk of the Allied forces involved as one of the limitations on Operation Jasper was that it could not draw any resources away from Operation Millennium [4].

Despite the demands of other forces, the Greeks had also formed an armoured regiment, though its total strength was well below the establishment of any British equivalent. The 4th Independent (Greek) Armoured Regiment (the number was chosen to conceal the actual strength of Greek forces) consisted of only three companies of tanks. Alpha Company deployed 3 platoons (the Greeks had eschewed the use of terminology such as Troop or Squadron) of M3 Stuart while Beta and Gamma Companies had one platoon of Stuarts and two of Crusaders. There was also an attached company containing Dingoes and some Universal Carrier to tow light anti-tank guns. 4th Independent could perhaps deploy seventy tanks at best, but this was still a formidable force when one compared it to the support available to the Italians on Rhodes. The initial landing force would consist of about four thousand men of the 6th Infantry Division going ashore near Ialysos with a small force of tanks being deployed by landing craft, the rest of the armour would have to await the seizure of port facilities, with the plan calling for the Greeks to capture facilities in Ialysos itself within seventy-two hours of the landing. Given previous experience in amphibious assaults this might have seemed an ambitious goal but on Rhodes it proved to be rather conservative [5].

Naval fire support would come from a contingent of eight Royal Navy ships and one Free French destroyer, the MN Léopard. The force was led by the light cruisers HMS Ajax and HMS Edinburgh and had single escort carrier attached, HMS Stalker, with a complement of twenty-two aircraft, eight Seafires and fourteen Barracudas. In addition to providing fire support the naval force was also tasked with guarding against any attacks by the Regia Marina. There were several Italian patrol boats in the area, but the real concern was submarine attacks, though in reality the remaining submarines of the Regia Marina were afflicted by the same fuel shortages that crippled the remaining surface warships and the Regia Marina was in an even worse position to defend Rhodes than the troops deployed on Rhodes [6].

[1] So this a fairly massive butterfly, more of a Kaiju really, that has come about because of the radically different course of the war.

[2] Rhodes is the end of a very long supply line for a country that’s more worried about the Allies landing in Italy itself or the Germans completely taking over the country.

[3] The Italians weren’t crazy, they knew Rhodes was untenable, but they were no longer masters in their own house.

[4] These seemed like the most logical choices for rebuilt divisions and there are rather more weapons and equipment available than there would have been IOTL.

[5] It’s not the most powerful invasion force ever assembled, but then it doesn’t really need to be very powerful to overmatch the Italians.

[6] And we will see how the Greek and Italian forces perform in the next update.