WI Allied invasion of the Balkans in WWII

[PsihoKekec]

Where did you read about this pledge from Tito to Stalin.

It was in a Tito biography I read some years ago.

I wonder what the Luftwaffe strength and German held airfield infrastructure was like in the Yugoslavia region

Luftwafe strength in Yugoslavia was constantly fluctuating, there were some transport/liason units and whatever bomber squadrons that could be spared from other fronts to support the operations.
There was also NDH airforce that was a mixed bag of surviving Yugoslav aircraft and whatever they could get from Italians and Germans. There were also one NDH fighter and one bomber squadron on the Eastern front which returned to Croatia in 1944.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

... it is so far beyond the range of western airpower. (I wonder what the Luftwaffe strength and German held airfield infrastructure was like in the Yugoslavia region-

The Axis had over 2,500 aircraft based across Italy & the Balkans in late June. I am guessing the airfield capacity was triple that, and the ground support able to handle over 3,000. In September the Italian AF was off the table & the Germans were rebuilding in Italy/Balkans/South France with roughly 1000 aircraft (need to check that). Technically there were over 1,300 available in Germany, Norway & western Europe, but man of those were unsuitable for ordinary operations (night fighters), or were defending Germany against the daylight bombers raids that were ramped up at the moment Italy surrendered.

t... Granted, the one part of the invasion of Italy that did go outside of fighter aircover in OTL, the British invasion of Apulia (Italy's "heel") actually did come off without problems and in fact had the easiest time exploiting inland and northward, ...

IIRC the Germans identified the Salerno beach head as their priority and made a decision to concentrate there.

 

[MernStahl]

I read that as 'WI Alien Invasion of the Balkans in WWII"

 

[Deleted member 1487]

We'd get to waste even far more lives and time on repeated mountain
siege the way we did in Italy.

Probably worse, but it opens on Ploesti to a lot more attacks.

 

[CDurham]

PsicoKehec -

Where did you read about this pledge from Tito to Stalin. The most similar thing I ever read was in Gerhard Weinberg's "A World At Arms", but he described it as Tito's own plan to hang back while the Germans defeated the Western Allies, and it was not discussed with reference to Stalin in that instance.

Indeed, I doubt this is what Stalin would have wanted to hear, or at least not what he wanted Tito to actually do either. Stalin wanted an additional front, and never wanted the French, Italian or Greek communists to impede western allied advances, both because it wouldn't want to slow the destruction of the Germans, and wouldn't want communist guerrillas to embarass him in his dealings with the west. According to Milovan Djilas in "Conversations with Stalin", Stalin got mad at the partisans only when he thought they were making compromises with the *Germans*, and in fact he told the Partisans to get western help when the Partisans asked him for help. I think it was only after the fall of Berlin that Stalin found it expedient to start calling British-Partisan contacts somehow "disloyal".

So, I think Stalin would not want Tito to sabotage the WAllies.

But even if opposing the WAllies was Tito's own stated plan at sometime, direct or obvious sabotage does seem stupid and "boneheaded". I would think that the incentives for all groups, Partisans, Chetniks, non-diehard Croatians, would be to be seen as helpful to the WAllies and to exploit German vulnerability/disintegration to the fullest, while balancing that against the need to preserve their own factions' forces, meaning that they won't be too keen to stand up and bear the brunt of the Germans in any self-sacrificial moves.

I have a feeling that if Tito said that to Stalin in the thoughts that it was what Stalin wanted to hear then Stalin would find some way to have some NKVD agents pay a visit to Tito to have a nice little chat...

 

[David T]

PsicoKehec -

Where did you read about this pledge from Tito to Stalin. The most similar thing I ever read was in Gerhard Weinberg's "A World At Arms", but he described it as Tito's own plan to hang back while the Germans defeated the Western Allies, and it was not discussed with reference to Stalin in that instance.

I discussed this with Doug Muir in soc.history.what-if at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/nNcBC-mfAMk/anYLQf7jlsoJ

Tito did urge the Germans to give him a free hand vis-à-vis Mihailovic, and said that if they did that, he would cooperate with them against the Wallies. To my question of whether he meant that or was just "bulljiving" (to use an expression of a late Chicago alderman) the Germans, Doug replied:

***

Bulljiving, I think.

Oh, Tito was very worried about the idea of an Allied landing, no
question. He repeatedly told the British that it was a bad idea, and
at one point he even told Stalin that the Partisans would resist it.
However, this seems to have been bluff. Djilas and others say that he
was resigned to the possibility, and convinced that Communism would
prevail anyhow. After all, he had the men with the guns. And by the
time an Allied invasion was seriously in the air (summer '43 onwards),
the Royalist government had lost almost all credibility in Yugoslavia
outside of Serbia. So Tito would have been able to spin them as a
Serb nationalist regime "arriving in the baggage" of the Allies.

Note that young Prince Petar was an unknown quantity outside of
Serbia, and not particularly popular. The fact that he'd assumed the
throne by means of a coup by hardline Serb nationalists did not make
him particularly attractive to non-Serbs.

 

[Halagaz]

An overall sensible analysis, but strange in some ways.

The coup by which King Peter assumed the throne was not by Serbian nationalists, even less hardline ones, but by a pro-British officer clique. The first thing the coup did was to invite the Croatian and Slovenian parties (back) into the cabinet, which they accepted and stayed there before and during the exile. One of the coup government's acts during its brief reign was also to increase the autonomy of Croatia.

Tito's troops were around 40% ethnic Serbs, so he would not find it very easy or effective to accuse the government-in-exile of overt Serbian nationalism...unless the point is to do it after the war as part of a political campaign.

I do believe Tito was probably bluffing and if push came to shove he'd side with the Allies. To fight against them would be suicidal from a military and political point of view.

 

[TFSmith121]

ANVIL got the Allies Toulon, Marseilles, a mostly intact

ANVIL/DRAGOON got the Allies Marseille, Toulon, a mostly intact rail net heading north, a flank for SHAEF, the 6th Army Group, and what ultimately became the third largest Allied field army in the West in terms of combat divisions, and all by 1944-45...

The Balkans got the Allies the 1943 Dodecanese debacle and (in 1944-45) Greece.

If the objective was to destroy the Germans in the west and take the Ruhr in 1944-45, then a Balkans offensive would have contributed zero to that goal.

ANVIL/DRAGOON contributed significantly to the Allied victory in the West in 1945; nothing the Allies could have gained in the Balkans in 1944-45 would have done so...

Best,