Saphroneth
Banned
All fair points, but because they're related to logistics I don't expect they'll convince anyone who already thought the Germans could use Tunisian ports to invade French North Africa...
Hitler has a "smarter" 1941
- Thread starter goodguy777
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All fair points, but because they're related to logistics I don't expect they'll convince anyone who already thought the Germans could use Tunisian ports to invade French North Africa...
I am curious about something though. Assuming it gets that crazy, could the Germans and Italians do the mammal which shall not be named thing on Spain? I mean the build up in would look a lot like massive reinforcements for North Africa which could decive Allied intelligence. Or did I just turned German tanks into water tanks? I don't have enough information on shipping capabilities to say one way or another.
You'd be brave to take barges through the Med. After Second Sirte in March 1942, two Italian destroyers were lost in a storm - Lanciere and Scirocco.
If Spain joins the Axis - and it's hard to see how Franco could avoid doing so if Berlin insisted - then it is also reasonable to assume that the Axis would occupy the Azores and Canaries.
If Turkey is partitioned the British are done in the Middle East. Therefore, the British have every incentive to try and convince the Russians not to fulfil their historic destiny at the Straights.
If Suez falls it's hardly a 'devastating' defeat of the British. Their core position - communications to India and America would still be intact.
Crevald is correct - Libya appears not to have had the logistics to conquer Egypt. But Libya and Tunisia combined did.
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It could take anywhere from 3 to 6 months would be my guess.
.
Airpower.
Wouldn't matter either way - the Axis could take the major Iberian ports, and Gibraltar and Malta would fall.
All fair points, but because they're related to logistics I don't expect they'll convince anyone who already thought the Germans could use Tunisian ports to invade French North Africa...
No one said the Axis would use Tunisian ports to invade Tunisia. It was stated that the Tunisian ports were necessary to augment Libya in order to take Suez.
In 1943 the Axis seized Tunisia on the backfoot after the Allies invaded Morocco. If you want to argue that what the Axis did in 1943 could not occur in 1940, knock yourself out. I concluded a couple of German divisions landed at Tripoli could advance overland to Tunis, augmenting by land a sea and air invasion of Tunisia undertaken simultaneously.
Saphroneth
Banned
Possibly a major factor in the use of triremes (which were rather "coasters" in any case) was that, and this is going to sound stupidly obvious... wood floats.
Ehh, don't worry about it. They'll cross the Mediterranean on them and utilise modern slave power to do the rowing, while escorted by the rest of the fleet. No worries about petroleum there!
Here's where, everything else aside, there's a problem: Franco has to have reasons Franco wants to join the Axis, not reasons why Franco joins the Axis because it makes a "better" story from some points of view.
Franco is a in position where he's getting oil from the United States, as well as many other things. Considering Franco is running a country that's been ravaged by three years of a particularly vicious civil war, he needs the resources, and the peace and quiet. He also seems to have realized that after the Battle of Britain, the Nazis were going nowhere slow, which, let us be honest, was largely accurate. He probably has the counsel of Admiral Canaris, whose view on Hitler by that point was that Hitler was a madman who was going to get them all killed. Additionally, there's the fact that while Franco was a fascist despot, he as a Catholic fascist despot, with his following of other Catholic fascists. You can guess about how well they liked the mysticism that the Nazis were so fond of.
So Franco is ruler of a country that is flat on it's back. He has a more clear-eyed view of the Germans than many other did at the time, due to Canaris and others. He's watched the British see the Germans off at the Battle of Britain. He got to watch the results of fights between a larger Italian fleet with a lot of state of the art ships, and a His Majesty's fleet with its training, its tradition, and its back to the wall. After December 1941, his main trading partner is the colossus. What possible reason does he have to join the Axis?
I'm not defending Glenn's arguments, but he did say that if Hitler couldn't convince Franco, he'd just coerce Spain into providing ports for Germany. Probably with an invasion.
Ah! That's where the discussion of what a fun time fighting through the Pyrenees, and then across a mountainous country filled with people who just got done fighting a vicious, through, guerrilla war came from. Got it.
Not this myth again.
The German Yugoslav campaign did not create any appreciable delay to Barbarossa. The pro-longed spring Raputitsa and German industrial production schedule did. If the Germans ignore Yugoslavia and attack in May then their advance bogs down in the mud and they throw away the element of surprise that was so vital in destroying the Red Army's frontier forces so decisively. In the mean time, the British land in Greece and evict the Italians from Albania before moving to support the Yugoslavs. Suddenly, Germany's major supply of oil (Ploesti) is in range of British bombers.
Meanwhile, by the time the mud dries up and the Germans can move again the Red Army will have manned its defensive positions, mobilized, reinforced heavily, and received the taste of battle experience it needed. The Germans will still force a breakthrough but it will be so exhausting that they will be unable to fully exploit it, meaning the Soviets avoid major encirclements and are able to withdraw to the old Stalin-line. And by now its probably approaching the end of August. The Germans are only half-as-far in the center and north as they were IOTL and taken much heavier losses in manpower and equipment terms. The Soviets are much stronger and have suffered fewer losses. In all probability, the Germans attempt to break the Stalin line in the autumn and likely fail. Major sources of Soviet resources, industry, and manpower that were lost IOTL are still in their hands. The Red Army has not suffered the disastrous losses in trained personnel that forced them to restart from scratch and have gained valuable battle experience.
The Germans lose by 1943, with the Red Army in Berlin and probably further west then the Elbe, but holding onto less of the Balkans.
Only if you pretend that the Tunisian port (singular) are many times larger then they were and the infrastructure between said port and the frontlines were significantly better then they actually were.
But they were not. So basically you are saying that "taking the port of Tunis will give the Axis enough logistics capability in North Africa by magic!"
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Tunis is 1600 miles from Alamein.
That's like using Antwerp as a port to supply an attack on Moscow, except that the African road and rails are much worse than the European ones, and you have the option of outflanking Moscow.
Assuming for some reason Franco is not coerced into the Axis, the German army could have taken Iberia in late 1940 and there wasn't a damn thing Spain could have done about it, because the Spanish military was a joke.
Posters arguing that partisans could somehow have done something to interfere beyond harrassment attacks I assume must be joking.
Tunis is 2800km from Alexandria.
Tripoli is 2100km from Alexandria.
Sure, if the Red Army is 8 divisions instead of 600.
My apologies, it's 1750 miles.
Six or six hundred, it hardly matters if you can't supply your own army.
The entire idea that Tunis is the solution to the supply problems is absurd. I'm fairly sure that Van Creveld states that the biggest problem wasn't the capacity of Tripoli, it was the ability to move stuff to the front. Opening up another port another 450 miles further to the rear doesn't help at all. Even if they build an unsinkable trireme fleet.
Six or six hundred, it hardly matters if you can't supply your own army.
The entire idea that Tunis is the solution to the supply problems is absurd. I'm fairly sure that Van Creveld states that the biggest problem wasn't the capacity of Tripoli, it was the ability to move stuff to the front. Opening up another port another 450 miles further to the rear doesn't help at all. Even if they build an unsinkable trireme fleet.