DBWI: Allied successes in 1942

[Tom_NUFC]

What would have happened if the Soviets had been able to keep up momentum after they halted the Germans west of Moscow?

Supposing after that, they were then able to advance west, and forced the Germans to slowly retreat, preventing the Germans' 1942 offensive in the Caucasus.

Let's also suppose that there is also a second POD, in which German intelligence failed to spot that the British had cracked the Enigma code.

Would these two events have led (or at least played a significant part) in an Allied victory during the second world war?

In OTL, the fall of the German Reich began in 1964, after that American Journalist in Berlin smuggled documents to Switzerland, relating to the final solution and photographs showing the mass-execution of Jews by the Nazis.

In this alternative time line, would the world have known about these horrors, or would the Germans have been able to suppress or destroy them?

 

[zhqaat]

I don't know if the Soviet Army could have held a victory. This is impusable. You know that.

 

[Nekromans]

I fail to see how the Reich would just not notice that their secret plans had been entirely exposed to the enemy - to me, that just screams of the old "Aryans aren't the master race, they're stoooopid!" propaganda from the less scrupulous of the left-wing. Surely anyone with some common sense would notice, and no matter how self-absorbed the Reich's bureaucracy is, they would not have simply dismissed it.

Maybe if the Reich had never developed Enigma in the first place...

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

Well, you also have to take into account the guerilla actvities of Fyodor Tolbukhin (a.k.a. "The Phantom") starting in 1947, along with Nikita Khruschev in the Ukraine until c. 1964. Their ability to adapt against a larger and better equipped German force has been the source of OSS lore for decades. The photographs of the last German helicopters flying off from Minsk in 1968 are proof of the Russian tenacity. A Societ push in 1945 would have drastically altered the course of the war....

My guess is that in such an ATL, the Soviets may have been able to emerge as a regional power. Their biggest test would be after 1945, in whether they could obtain the atomic bomb from either the Germans or the United States....

 

[~The Doctor~]

(OOC: This sounds suspiciously like Fatherland...)

I'm more interested in how the African campaign would fare. Stalin was pushing for an US-Anglo offensive against the Vichy French and the Germans. If the Soviets succeed in halting Hitler's offensive, perhaps Operation Torch can be pushed forward?

This might lead to an earlier invasion of Sicily, earlier than 1944, and might actually free up some troops for the aborted "Operation Overlord" that the Americans were planning. Of course, we don't really know. By 1944 Sicily was a goddamn fortress: imagine what the Germans would do to Normandy!

 

[Constantinople]

(OOC: Yeah, but thats interesting. I wish someone would do a detailed TL of Fatherland. Describing the russian east, and how it works would be interesting.)

Yeah, I dont know, the Germans had it all pretty well planned out, and the Russians were pretty wornout. But yeah you never know, the russians odd sucess in the 60's could tell us something about them.