Next installment
Before I go on with the time-line, I'm going to briefly look at the situation as of the beginning of 1944 from several perspectives--first as an objective observer, then from the perspective of some of the major and minor players.
January 1944 - Objective observer: If a keen-eyed and objective observer could travel freely among the various fronts in my time-line's January 1944, he or she would be hard-pressed to pick a winner. The struggle is huge and complex, with many major and minor players. A smart enough observer would figure out that with the balance as precarious as it is, minor players can tip that balance. That is true in spite of their decreasing military power. In this time-line as well as ours, technology is moving extremely quickly. Combatants who can't keep up quickly became almost irrelevant on the front lines--a minor distraction for more modern forces.
A few examples point out how fast the technology is changing. Front-line fighter planes in major power air forces increased their speed by roughly 100 miles per hour between 1941 and 1944. Planes like Vichy France's Dewoitine 520's which had been reasonably modern in 1941 are flying coffins if they encounter modern fighters in 1944. Tank design progressed just as fast. The relatively small powers like Italy, Romania, and Hungary are chronically two years too late in re-equipping their forces. For example, in my time-line, 1944 Italy has a few hundred new P26/40 medium tanks with medium-velocity 75mm guns--tanks roughly equivalent to an early Sherman except for an unreliable engine. It is already becoming obvious that P26/40's will be obsolete before Italy produces enough to replace the M14/41's that still make up the bulk of Italian armor. With their medium velocity 47mm guns and light armor, the M14/41's are essentially target practice for Sherman crews.
With their obsolete technology, why do the minor powers still matter? Because the war isn't just a matter of the major powers with modern equipment hammering each other. The Axis controlled part of Europe contains well over a million square miles of territory. Continued Axis control of that territory depends on the front-line armies, but it also depends on large numbers of occupation forces--second or third-line troops or security forces armed with obsolete infantry weapons and a few obsolete tanks--many of them captured French tanks. The minor powers still play a major role in that behind-the-front-lines battle. The minor powers can also deploy more strength in their own limited sphere of influence than the Germans can without fatally weakening their front lines.
In this scenario, that rapid technology development makes traveling from front to front in January 1944 seem like traveling in time as well as in space. On the eastern front, German Panthers and Tigers barely hold off swarms of Russian T34's. In the American beachhead in northern France, and along the British beachhead in Southern France, Sherman tanks duel with late model Panzer III's and IV's. Panthers and Tigers are extremely rare, but feared on both of those fronts. In central France, improvised German forces armed with captured 1940-era French tanks and even a few World War I Renault FT's fight hastily mobilized Vichy French forces armed with slightly improved versions of those 1940's era French tanks. The battle for Central France is a war of improvisation, with both sides using unlikely combinations of equipment to gain some degree of mobile firepower. French armored personnel carriers bring everything from a single machine gun through 6 pounders (57mm anti-tank guns) to suspension-busting 75mm anti-tank guns or heavy howitzers into battle for both sides. Over 400 American-built M22 light air-transportable tanks join the battle on the Vichy side, most of them loaded down with add-on armor. Their 37mm guns and light armor limit their usefulness, but they are better than nothing, at least until they run into modern German armor. The US army is happy to find a use for the things. (They never did in our time-line.) The few Panzer III's and IV's are devastatingly effective in this environment. Vichy's reasonably large (more than 600 combat planes) but obsolete air force plays a major role as long as the Luftwaffe doesn't.
January 1944--German view: Hitler thinks German can essentially win the war in 1944. He sees the Soviet winter offensive in the east as the last gasp of a desperate regime. It may take another year to clean up, but once the current offensive is broken, the Soviets will be through. In the summer of 1944, Hitler plans to take the rest of the oil fields, then push through into Iran, and on through into the rest of the middle east. Germany then would be swimming in oil, while the allies would face shortages, especially if the Germans can revive the U-boat campaign and keep American oil from flowing across the Atlantic. To Hitler, the entire French theatre is an annoyance. As he looks at the map, he sees two important forces there. The US beachhead in northern France is important. It has to be eliminated before spring or it will threaten the rear of German forces when they concentrate to push the British out of southern France. Hitler is willing to divert badly needed divisions from the eastern front in order to destroy the beachhead. He is confident that it can be done quickly, with a relatively small force, and that destroying the beachhead will pay large dividends by reducing the US will to fight.
The German forces in southern France are outnumbered by the British, and they are being pushed back. Some of their supply lines have been cut by the Vichy French. Hitler scrapes together a few divisions to restore the supply lines--second rate divisions from the Balkans and Norway. He considers the Vichy French forces annoying but of little consequence--slightly larger and better armed than the Yugoslav partisans, but no more effective. The Germans quickly cut Vichy France into three parts in their initial assault. Hitler figures that the rest of Vichy can be cleaned up essentially at his leisure. He is more concerned with the long term cost of occupying southern France.
Under Vichy, the 12 million people of southern France had been kept under control with very little German effort. Vichy had even been a net plus for the German war effort in some ways. In both this time-line and our time-line, when Vichy asked permission to rebuild an air force, Hitler made them produce eight transport planes for Germany for every plane they built for the Vichy French air force. In this time-line, Hitler made a similar deal for tanks--eight tracked personnel carriers to Germany for every tank that went to French forces in the Soviet Union or North Africa. The Vichy French seized a lot of that production of personnel carriers, but Germany still got over a thousand vehicles out of the deal, and France got a hundred or two obsolete tanks.
Hitler is optimistic. Yes, the Russian campaign has taken much longer than expected, but in this time-line the Germans have never been permanently pushed out of any territory that they have occupied--with the minor exception of North Africa. North Africa was mainly an Italian problem anyway, and the Germans can take it back after they have seized the middle east.
January 1944--Vichy France's view: Vichy France in 1944 has great power aspirations and minor power means. The people who now dominate the government are French nationalists of a sort. They have been working to preserve as much of France's great power potential and it's empire as they can in the aftermath of France's defeat in 1940. From 1940 to 1943, that meant being useful enough to Hitler that he wouldn't occupy the rest of France, while not being useful enough to Hitler that the British decided to seize the rest of the French empire. In our time-line that balancing act fell apart in November 1942 after the Torch landings in North Africa. In this time-line, the balancing act lasted almost another year. During that year, the Vichy government tried desperately to stay out of the war--at least the part between the Germans and the western allies. Vichy officials dreamed of brokering a compromise peace between Germany and the western allies, with France being restored to most of it's prewar territory and status. Neither the Germans or the western allies were interested in that kind of peace.
In this time-line the Vichy French were forced to make some tough choices in late 1943. While a few people in the Vichy government wanted Germany to win, most of the government went along with the Germans from mid-1940 until late 1943 because they didn't see any way the allies could win. As 1943 rolled on, that view gradually changed. The Germans were still bogged down in Russia, and the French could see the toll that war was taking in terms of the power of the German army. In northern France, the German occupying army visibly declined in quality, as the strong, disciplined young Germans were replaced by middle-aged soldiers, often sick, and poorly equipped. That visible decline had a major impact on public opinion in France. So did German defeats in North Africa. The French saw swarms of powerful new American-built tanks and planes swamping Axis forces, and they gained confidence that the Germans could be beaten. The question was, could the Germans be beaten without turning all of France into a battleground, and without exposing France to the full wrath of the Hitler's occupation forces? The French reluctantly decided in late 1943 that they had to risk that, or lose their empire and their chance of regaining great power status.
In January 1944, the French are scrambling to build an army capable of standing up to the Germans. That'll take some doing. The various clandestine program, plus transfers of units and equipment form North Africa, give the Vichy army 10 to 12 divisions with some combat power. The American airlift filled in some gaps there. The French also have another 15 or so divisions with very limited equipment-small arms and some obsolete light artillery. Some of those divisions get captured Italian equipment as a stopgap. The French want American Lend-Lease equipment for those divisions, along with 10 more that are being trained. The French are also pushing their own arms production. With Germany occupying more than half of France, and fighting for the rest, French production capability is limited.
The French are producing small arms and various types of artillery, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. They are also producing small amounts of armor--mostly light vehicles based on a pre-war personnel carrier, but also a few improved S35's (based loosely on the S40 prototype but with a longer-barreled 47mm gun in a larger turret), and the turret-less version based on a modified S35 chassis and a fixed 75mm modified anti-aircraft gun. New models based on the S35 and the B1 but with turret-mounted 75 mm guns are on the way, and the French are even starting to design a tank meant to beat the Shermans and late model Panzer IVS that impressed French armor experts in North Africa. The first of the new models is only a few months away, but the Vichy army needs tanks now, so S35 variants keep rolling off the assembly lines. The Vichy air force is getting a few new fighter planes--improved models of the Dewoitine 520 line, but most pilots fly the original obsolete Dewoitine 520's and hope they don't run into any modern German fighters.
The Vichy French have another problem: the Free French under DeGaulle. The Free French have gradually built up a considerable army--well over 100,000 men. That army is getting bigger as the Free French recruit in the British held part of France, and to some extent in Corsica. Free French and Vichy French actually fought each other briefly in Syria in 1941. Vichy officially views the Free French as traitors, while the Free French consider Vichy tainted by its collaboration with the Nazis. Neither side can afford to actually fight the other, but both sides claim to be the legitimate government of France, and both sides are trying to make their claims stick. That is becoming a problem in the British-held part of southern France. Vichy forces made the British landings possible by holding off the Germans long enough for the British to land. Vichy leaders consider their army the legitimate army of France. Free French forces challenge that.
The British have a war to fight. They have been arming the Free French because the Free French were willing to fight. The British government has no love for DeGaulle, but they don't entirely trust the Vichy French. British troops act more like an occupation force than guests in an allied country. British shipping gets priority at scarce port facilities. French civil authorities are brushed aside whenever there is conflict. Most annoying to the Vichy French, several divisions of Free French land with the British and begin claiming to be the government of the liberated zone.
The Free French have several major advantages. They are well supplied by the British with reasonably modern weapons. They have been fighting the Germans for the last 3 years--attracting highly motivated, adventurous men. That gives them a moral authority with the French people that the Vichy government lacks. They have also built up a large underground organization that can quickly surface to become a government and the basis of an army when circumstances warrant it. They are a new army, built from the ground up, without the dead weight of World War I era generals. They are supplied by the British, which gives them a short-term advantage. The British partially control the southern ports and can arm new Free French formations if they choose to do so.
Vichy has some advantages too. It controls the large French Fleet and merchant marine. That let's them move material to France from the French colonies in North Africa. The British allow that, as long as it doesn't interfere with their shipping. Vichy is supplied by the US, which could give them an advantage in the long-term. The Americans have more and better equipment to give. The problem is getting it to the Vichy French The airlift helps some, but there is no easy way to get massive amounts of US supplies where they are needed most.
The French communists complicate matters by trying to take over Vichy territory in the name of the Free French. Stalin squelches that. He doesn't want them to pull Vichy forces away from the fight with Germany. The US and Britain do some major arm-twisting to paper over the Vichy France/Free France divide. The two sides reluctantly agree to a unified command and a provisional government that includes both Vichy and Free French representatives. Both French groups continue to maneuver for advantages within that framework, but both sides are aware that French status within the alliance, as well as liberation of France is dependant on keeping the struggle political rather than allowing it to turn into an actual civil war.
January 1944 - US view: The US has finally escaped the bonds of British fears and is actually doing something useful in the war against Germany. Yeah, the landing was at the wrong time of the year, with inadequate forces, but the fact that a mere large-scale raid could rout German defenders and turn into an invasion showed how wrong the British had been to stall throughout 1943. Sure, the Germans are hitting the US held part of France with heavy, powerful forces. Sure there is some danger that the US force will lose. That's just part of war though. The American force is gradually getting stronger. In the spring it will get strong enough to break out, forcing the Germans to withdraw from southern France if they still can. Then France can come back into the war in a big way, and help push into Germany, then on into Central and Eastern Europe if the Soviets don't get there first. The Germans need to be defeated soon. Top US leaders know that the US is making good progress toward an atom bomb. They don't know if the Germans are making similar progress. The US leadership does know that US war production should be able to swamp the Germans in the first half of 1944. After that, things get tougher.
In the Pacific, the Japanese are on their way down. American submarines are choking off the Japanese economy, while American planes destroy Japanese cities and the American surface navy bypasses tough Japanese island bases, landing American troops on weakly held islands, then using those islands as bases to choke off the bypassed Japanese forces. In Burma, one more good push will let the allies link up with the Nationalist Chinese. Then the huge, but poorly equipped and trained Chinese army can be rearmed and re-equipped. Once that happens, the Chinese can roll up Japanese control of China, then Japanese control of Manchuria. By the end of 1944, the Japanese should be isolated on their home islands and starving.
January 1944 - Stalin's view: The Western allies have finally done something moderately significant. That helps the Soviets some. It's time for the Soviets to start retaking territory. The Soviet army still outnumbers the Germans and their allies combined. Sure, several hundred thousand men are trapped in a weakening Leningrad pocket, but those men still tie down German troops. The offensive in southern Russia is not going perfectly, but it is inflicting large numbers of casualties on the Germans. It may or may not result in a decisive victory, but it will retake territory and shake German confidence.
The Soviet army is improving. Man-for-man it still isn't as good as the Germans, but it has gotten a lot better. Hundreds of thousands of US trucks give it mobility, while Soviet-built armor gives it power. The Germans are actually declining as time goes on. Sure they have the new Panther and Tiger tanks, but those tanks are islands of technical superiority in an army that is becoming less and less mobile as truck and tank losses continue to exceed German production.
The Soviet army isn't growing anymore. The massive casualties of the war, plus the large area controlled by the Germans, have finally exhausted the Soviets' manpower reserves. New classes of men come up to draft age and replenish the army, but the era when the Soviet army could take millions of casualties in three months and still grow are gone. On the other hand, the Soviet army has learned enough that it is no longer taking that kind of casualties.
How will the war end? Stalin obviously wants the Soviet Union to emerge stronger than it was when it started the war. That will take some doing. The Soviet army is still deep in it's own territory. Stalin wants the Germans defeated, but not in a way that leaves an exhausted Soviet Union facing the victorious western allies on its 1939 borders. From the Soviet viewpoint that would be only slightly less disastrous than being defeated by Germany. Stalin wants the Germans defeated, but he is perfectly willing to make a separate peace with the Germans as long as that peace puts the Soviet Union back at its pre-German invasion borders. The Germans aren't willing to go along with that, partly because they don't think they need to, and partly because they don't trust the Soviets not to reenter the war after the Germans and the Western Allies have exhausted each other. The Russian people have suffered enough at German hands that the idea of a separate peace with the Germans would not be popular, but Stalin has the tools to make public opinion irrelevant.
Stalin looks at the year ahead and figures that red army victories will increase his options. Maybe the Germans will finally be exhausted and the red army can push them out of the Soviet Union, then hopefully into Eastern Europe, Germany, and maybe even France and Italy. If it looks like the western allies are going to get too much of the fruits of victory, some sort of short-term deal could be arranged with the Germans--either a tacit agreement to stop offensive operations for a while so the Germans can concentrate on the allies, or a separate peace. Either way, the Soviet Union needs victories, and it needs them now.
January 1944 - German minor Allies: The Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, and others all entered the war on Germany's side in 1940-41. At that time Germany looked unbeatable. Becoming German allies seemed like a way to avoid the fate of Poland, and possibly even to gain some territory at the expense of neighbors. By January 1944, that didn't look like such a good idea anymore.
All of Germany's allies have lost heavily in the eastern front battles. Their armies are less and less capable of dealing with the Soviets. It is becoming more and more obvious that the Germans may lose. It is also becoming more and more obvious that Hitler is increasingly irrational. In essentially all of these countries at least some elements in the government are quietly making contingency plans for exiting the war or switching sides if that becomes necessary and desirable.
Italy is by far the strongest of the minor allies. In Italy, the loss of Libya hit public opinion hard. Many Italians, including some in the government, are quietly asking what Italy has to gain from staying in the war when Italy's African empire is lost--apparently for good.
The Romanian government is furious with Hitler for allowing Romanian troops to be trapped by the Soviets in the recent offensive when they could have escaped if they had retreated when the Romanian generals wanted to.
The Hungarians have never been enthusiastic about the war. They're just in it so they don't lose out in border disputes with Romania. All of these countries are still in the war mainly because they don't know how to get out without having the Germans simply take them over. Given the right circumstances, all of them are capable of switching sides.
January 1944--British view: Like it or not, British troops are back on the continent. At least they are far enough away from the center of German power that the Germans are unlikely to unleash the full fury of their power on British troops. England is not ruled by cowards, but it is ruled by people who have felt the full power of Germany at first hand in two World Wars. Churchill knows German military power, and he doesn't believe that the British empire can survive the losses involved in a head-on collision with that power. He wants to keep fighting at the periphery of Germany, where German forces are at the end of long and insecure logistics lines.
The Americans keep wanting to go in and slug it out with the Germans toe-to-toe. Churchill spent 1942 and most 1943 keeping them from dragging Britain along with them on that course. Now the Americans have their slugfest with Germany in northern France. Let them enjoy it. Of course England and the US are allies, so England will do everything in it's power to support the Americans with air and sea power, while focusing it's main effort on the battle for southern France. Once that battle is won, it might be possible to drive through northern Italy, then into Austria and the Balkans. That kind of right hook would leave Britain in a strong position for the postwar world, keeping the Soviets out of the Balkans and hopefully out of the southern part of Central Europe.
Churchill is very tired of the Free French. DeGaulle's ego and constant promotion of France's post-war position has made him a thorn in Churchill's side. Churchill would love to replace him with another French leader. While that can't be done directly without undermining French will to fight, it might be possible to do it indirectly by pushing the Free French into joint committees with the Vichy government.
Churchill has to balance two competing British interests. First, the war still has to be won. Hitler has to be brought down. That is by no means a sure thing. Second, the British empire has to be preserved in the postwar world. That means keeping Stalin from gobbling up central and eastern Europe. Yes, Stalin is an ally too, but he is also a potential threat--almost as dangerous as Hitler in the long run. Churchill has met with the man--dealt with him. He has no illusions about his ally.
