tonycat77
Banned
No 1943 unconditional surrender thing.
Japan attacks hours after Dow, treats western POWs like they did in 1904, 1914, gets the sympathy of the colonial people's to set up puppet governments, India falls to the FIA.
Japan loses in the sea but wins in the land, eventually the invasion of Japan is a impossibility due to high losses projected and the inability to supply china due to a neutral indian state and the moral dubiousness of restoring a colonial administration in Asia makes the war fizzle out.
Germany doesn't attack the URSS, Hitler dies somehow and Goering takes over, Britain economically can't keep it up bombing Europe, or maintaining the U-boat war, both sides accept a truce and maintain a cold war until the 50s.
Maybe Italy has a better performance? Takes Malta and stops at Alexandria, can't go on because the British blows up everything and the canal.
Post war would be very interesting, the URSS would quickly become the leading industrial and Military power, with 20+ million people alive and well, and no disruption of the agricultural and industrial heartlands in the west.
We would have a 3 way cold war between the Axis, the allies and the Comintern.
Japan attacks hours after Dow, treats western POWs like they did in 1904, 1914, gets the sympathy of the colonial people's to set up puppet governments, India falls to the FIA.
Japan loses in the sea but wins in the land, eventually the invasion of Japan is a impossibility due to high losses projected and the inability to supply china due to a neutral indian state and the moral dubiousness of restoring a colonial administration in Asia makes the war fizzle out.
Germany doesn't attack the URSS, Hitler dies somehow and Goering takes over, Britain economically can't keep it up bombing Europe, or maintaining the U-boat war, both sides accept a truce and maintain a cold war until the 50s.
Maybe Italy has a better performance? Takes Malta and stops at Alexandria, can't go on because the British blows up everything and the canal.
Post war would be very interesting, the URSS would quickly become the leading industrial and Military power, with 20+ million people alive and well, and no disruption of the agricultural and industrial heartlands in the west.
We would have a 3 way cold war between the Axis, the allies and the Comintern.
Yes, this is indeed most plausible scenarioo.
Another one would be that on some reason Britain and France declare war Soviet Union too after invasion of Poland. France makes better and it doens't fall. At some point Allies manage push themselves to Rheinland but Germans manage to stop Allies and so war is totally stuck.
Dagoth Ur
Banned
Germans capture 300,000 allied troops at Dunkirk. That's a huge amount, especially considering most of them are British from a nation of only about 45,000,000 people total. The Germans offer a peace conference as they did in OTL with the explicit expectation one term will be the release of all their allied prisoners. With domestic opinion running against the war (who wants to leave 300,000 young Briton men to languish just so the UK can spend more resources to save France yet again, just like in 1914) Parliament has no choice but to attend and make peace. Without a leg to stand on, the French must do the same. Germans take Luxemburg and Alsace-Lorraine and maybe a few other French lands, but maybe even not, and install Fascist dictatorships in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway, plus concessions and "legalization" of German takeover of Poland. Now there is peace between the Allies and Nazi Germany, and Germany is free to deal with the USSR. Might even get some allied support to ostensibly "liberate" the peoples of eastern Europe from Bolshevism.
Munich showed that Nazi treaties were worthless, so a peace agreement would take more than loss of the bulk of the BEF. Initial predictions were for evacuation of roughly 30,000, but there was no intention of stopping the fight when that was the expectation because against someone whose agreements are meaningless the choices really were win or be destroyed.
Getting a stalemate isn't easy because the German economy is weak and can't withstand prolonged wars, so the high level view is that they must win fast or lose. OTL, they got lucky a lot (aided by poor decisions by their opponents) so it's difficult to do better without pushing credibility, and anything worse is not going to help.
Maybe a neutral or unfriendly USA rather than a friendly USA in 1940 and 41 would have hindered British warmaking ability enough so that they essentially have to delay invading Europe for a long time. But even if only threatening to invade, the threat should tie up enough German troops so that the Soviet forces are strong enough to win even without Lend Lease. There is then the big questions of how far west Stalin stops, and how much longer it takes to win.
So a longer slower war with more local stalemates as resources are built up after big combats. But the longer war results in more casualties and more destruction, but still very likely to be an allied win.
Getting a stalemate isn't easy because the German economy is weak and can't withstand prolonged wars, so the high level view is that they must win fast or lose. OTL, they got lucky a lot (aided by poor decisions by their opponents) so it's difficult to do better without pushing credibility, and anything worse is not going to help.
Maybe a neutral or unfriendly USA rather than a friendly USA in 1940 and 41 would have hindered British warmaking ability enough so that they essentially have to delay invading Europe for a long time. But even if only threatening to invade, the threat should tie up enough German troops so that the Soviet forces are strong enough to win even without Lend Lease. There is then the big questions of how far west Stalin stops, and how much longer it takes to win.
So a longer slower war with more local stalemates as resources are built up after big combats. But the longer war results in more casualties and more destruction, but still very likely to be an allied win.
Eh, it wasn't so much that as the fact that Hitler was unlikely to offer acceptable terms. A negotiated peace was viewed to be a palatable option if that were to occur, but they did not believe he would do it.
Britain and France were verry close to sending troops -- or quite a few armed volunteers at the least -- to help Finland against the Soviets, until the German occupation of Denmark & Norway blocked their route: Have Britain & France act more quickly, or Germany not invade Scandinavia (not then, anyway), and...
thaddeus
Donor
to create a stalemate it would take more than one POD (just IMO)
the German KM could sort out their torpedo issues prior to war https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1599&context=etd that would have affected both Norway campaign and (any) Dunkirk and subsequent Allied evacuations.
they also fumbled away the magnetic mine technology, and might have had six months (or more) use from that without the British having effective countermeasures.
the Nazi regime could have settled into another Phoney War almost if their u-boats and mines were able to inflict greater attrition on Allied shipping, so no BoB air war and no use of their surface fleet in the Atlantic (but hold the warships in Norway, the strategy with Tirpitz only on a grander scale)
with the USSR it seems they needed to solve their most immediate fuel problems prior to invasion rather than depend on reaching some of the furthest points deep inside Soviet territory as the solution?
my speculation is always for a joint German-Soviet-Hungarian division of Romania (with the old WWI Kingdom borders, which contained the oil production, becoming a German puppet state) and a more coherent synthetic fuels program (earlier, smaller scale.) also the invasion, if and when it does happen, needed a mad dash for the oil shale of Estonia.
the German KM could sort out their torpedo issues prior to war https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1599&context=etd that would have affected both Norway campaign and (any) Dunkirk and subsequent Allied evacuations.
they also fumbled away the magnetic mine technology, and might have had six months (or more) use from that without the British having effective countermeasures.
the Nazi regime could have settled into another Phoney War almost if their u-boats and mines were able to inflict greater attrition on Allied shipping, so no BoB air war and no use of their surface fleet in the Atlantic (but hold the warships in Norway, the strategy with Tirpitz only on a grander scale)
with the USSR it seems they needed to solve their most immediate fuel problems prior to invasion rather than depend on reaching some of the furthest points deep inside Soviet territory as the solution?
my speculation is always for a joint German-Soviet-Hungarian division of Romania (with the old WWI Kingdom borders, which contained the oil production, becoming a German puppet state) and a more coherent synthetic fuels program (earlier, smaller scale.) also the invasion, if and when it does happen, needed a mad dash for the oil shale of Estonia.
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Garrison
Donor
Except that even when the expected to lose the BEF the British were still planning to fight on, in fact even as the troops were being evacuated from Dunkirk there were plans to send more divisions to France. Almost as many British troops were evacuated from France after Dunkirk as during it, including troops evacuated after the Armistice. The idea that the loss of the BEF would lead automatically to a British surrender is a worn out trope.
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Probably need to butterfly away Tube Alloys too. Maybe there's a massive accident early on and a bunch of scientists die and the UK government gets scared off from further development?
Garrison
Donor
Except the threat if the Germans succeed is too great, they almost have to push forward. Also given reactor design the Germans are far more likely to suffer such an accident.
The thing to remember about this plan is that public and secret intentions were completely different. Britain and France viewed Finland as a lost cause militarily but a very convenient excuse nonetheless. They had every intention to send troops "to Finland" via Norway and Sweden only to have them make a detour and secure the Swedish Iron mines to deny a major strategic resource to Germany. There was never any intention to actually fight the Soviets in Finland. Even at that stage, it was Perfidious Albion at her perfidious best.
Admittedly Wikipedia is not the most detailed (or always reliable) source but it's something that I've come across in a LOT of other places as well. I'm at work or I'd get you a better source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_R_4
Thank you.
H'mmm, not just a case of "Perfidious Albion", then, but one of "Perfidious Gaul" as well...
thaddeus
Donor
understand you are rushing in to correct what you (rightly) consider misinformation or lack of context, but in the process you are downplaying what would have been a grievous loss. also without knowing the circumstances of a failed Dunkirk evacuation we cannot assume that subsequent Operation Cycle and Aerial would proceed as historical.
if not a miracle the Dunkirk operation certainly was daring and heroic, absent that it could have taken them months or year(s) to reconstitute themselves for offensive operations. (for example the Greek invasion might have received lesser or no British intervention)
Dunkirk took place in the original timeline before Italy declared war and mainland France being lost but going Vichy instead of fighting on. A Dunkirk disaster puts more pressure on the British further on down the line once Italy declares and France (apart from de Gaulle) goes Vichy and gets cozy with the Axis.
That said, it does seem to me that a UK which gets out in 1940 (and presumably has a General Election with the British part in fighting on the continent over for now) is still relatively 'fresh' in terms of economy and manpower and may be looking to come back for round two a couple of years down the line, so probably not a true stalemate...