Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942
- Thread starter Garrison
- Start date
An interesting thought is whether, considering their relative speeds, the allies make it into modern day western Poland before the Soviets
This would then raise the dilemma as to whether the allies would allow Germany’s eastern border to be set at the Oder, as it would be ceding land to a communist state
Or whether the Soviets would, having less control over modern day Germany, create an East Germany which constitutes more of pre-WW2 Germany’s east
That whole scenario would of course be irrelevant if the Soviets get there first
This would then raise the dilemma as to whether the allies would allow Germany’s eastern border to be set at the Oder, as it would be ceding land to a communist state
Or whether the Soviets would, having less control over modern day Germany, create an East Germany which constitutes more of pre-WW2 Germany’s east
That whole scenario would of course be irrelevant if the Soviets get there first
Garrison
Donor
They have and we will get to see a bit more of them in 1944, but honestly It's not a theatre of the war that I'm truly familiar with so I've saved things for a point in the war when any errors can just be called butterflies.
Well the question is just how East is East Germany...
Honestly I just appreciate that you didn't do what's been done here a few times and dismiss the KMT as eternally corrupt and uselessThey have and we will get to see a bit more of them in 1944, but honestly It's not a theatre of the war that I'm truly familiar with so I've saved things for a point in the war when any errors can just be called butterflies.
While I surely appreciate that there will be many more posts to this story, the utopian in me was hoping that the Nazi war effort would collapse in the West so that the death camps could be liberated before New Years and the US/UK could drive into Warsaw and Budapest. There’d be a lot fewer deaths and a weaker Soviet bloc could curb some of the excesses of anti communist meddling done by the West.
Look More Closely Later
Gone Fishin'
Once the Russians are in the war, Poland is geographically on the wrong side of Germany to be liberated by anyone coming in from the west. The 'Blunted Sickle' timeline is currently managing to pull off an Anglo-French liberation of Poland, solely on the basis that Russia hasn't been involved in the fighting with Germany and isn't ready to make a move on German occupied Poland as the Germans unexpectedly finally collapse. (France and the UK weren't expecting the collapse and neither was Stalin but at least France and the UK had troops already fighting and moving and in position to make a quick dash.)
18th – December 1943 - 27th January 1944 – Ardennes – Part I – Reliving Past Victories
Garrison
Donor
18th – December 1943 - 27th January 1943 – Ardennes – Part I – Reliving Past Victories
By the beginning of December, the battle lines in the east and the west had largely ground to a halt, not because of any change of fortune for the Wehrmacht on the battlefield but because the Western Allies and the Soviets were reaching the limits of their supply lines and needed to time rebuild their stockpiles before launching fresh offensives, and the onset of the winter weather made everything that much harder. For the British and Americans, the autumn had been a time of frustration despite their successes. They had taken Antwerp ‘on the bounce’ before the Germans could reinforce the Scheldt. The Germans had however learned the lesson of Cherbourg and the port of Antwerp was rocked by a series of spectacular explosions that crippled the facilities. It would take some weeks to restore the port to even a moderately operational state and even as this work was being started the Western Allies faced two further blows to their supply lines. The overworked Mulberry harbour had been showing signs of wear and tear even before the major storm that struck at the beginning of October. This sank part of the Mulberry and put it out of action until the middle of November [1].
The Luftwaffe also contributed to the Allies problems as they launched a series of air raids against Cherbourg between the 7th and 10th of October, alongside raids on Allied airbases across France and Belgium. These raids involved both the largest deployment of the Luftwaffe’s only strategic bomber, the He-177 and the deployment of ‘Duppel’ the German equivalent of the Window radar jamming system. Unsurprisingly this represented a maximum effort on the part of the Luftwaffe and while it did do considerable damage to the port and the supplies transiting through it the price the Luftwaffe paid exceeded the gains. At least fifty percent of the He-177s deployed were lost, although a large part of this could be attributed to the unresolved mechanical issues that still plagued the aircraft. The losses among the medium bombers, fighter-bombers, and fighters that took part in this ‘blitz’, called Operation Grundlinie (Baseline) could be laid squarely on Allied fighters and anti-aircraft weapons. Far from crippling the Allies these attacks played a significant part in finally swinging the balance of air superiority firmly in favour of the Allies and they were dwarfed by the damage wrought on Germany as what was now the US 8th Air Force resumed full scale operations with the benefit of fighter cover and joined the increasing Bomber Command attacks to bring about true ‘round the clock’ bombing. In the short term however the attacks on Cherbourg did contribute to the drastic slowdown of operations by the Western Allies as autumn turned to winter. Grundlinie had been Goering’s personal brainchild, designed to impress Hitler in the aftermath of his return and Goering did his best to exaggerate the successes and play down the losses, with some success as Hitler wanted to believe it had been a spectacular success [2].
The Soviets logistical issues were if anything worse in the autumn of 1943 than those of the Allies. The Soviets having to contend with the awful ground conditions and the fact that both sides had done their best to destroy the available infrastructure as the tide of battle swung back and forth between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht. The sea of mud that came with the Autumn rains was not the only reason the Red Army was struggling to move those supplies that were available to the front. One of the most critical items to come from Lend-Lease were American trucks, which had become every bit as important to the Red Army war effort as tanks and guns. The supply of these trucks had been throttled back during the build up to D-Day and it had not returned to former levels as the Western Allies needed them in prodigious numbers to support their own advances. This at least was the official explanation, and Stalin regarded it with great suspicion, fearing that the Allies were trying to restrain the mobility of the Red Army as they grappled with the Ostheer. Stalin had been unwilling to simply accept the limitations this imposed on the Red Army with the Western Allies inexorably advancing towards the Rhine and the heartlands of Germany. Stalin had driven his Generals to keep up the pressure and the Soviet operations had cost the Wehrmacht dearly, battering it back all along the Eastern Front, but this effort had taxed the Red Army to the limit and by December even Stalin was forced to accept a halt to allow time for the exhausted troops to recover and their commanders to prepare their strategy for the new year [3].
These developments offered a breathing space for the Wehrmacht to do some regrouping of their own and shore up their defences before their enemies could launch a fresh onslaught. Hitler saw the situation quite differently, this lull in the fighting was a golden opportunity to launch a counterattack in the west, driving to the coast and cutting off the British and Americans from the ports that their logistics depended on, and of course it would be mounted in the place where Germany had enjoyed its great victory in 1940, the Ardennes. To call this a mad plan was not mere hyperbole at this point. Contemporary accounts indicate Hitler had almost completely lost whatever connection to reality might once have tempered his actions by this point, though naturally no one would have dared voice such an opinion openly. Hitler was determined to drive the allies back into the sea and no one could gainsay him even as it was clear to everyone that such a counteroffensive was both futile and wasteful. This was not after all 1940, the Allies had connections to the sea in multiple directions, air forces that could overmatch the Luftwaffe in both numbers and quality and of course their navies had an iron grip on the Atlantic trade lanes, not to mention the Wehrmacht was fighting on two fronts, with the Red Army steadily preparing for fresh attacks the Ostheer would be hard pressed to slow down never mind stop. If by some twist of fate Hitler’s drive to reach Antwerp succeeded, it would be the Wehrmacht and not the Allied forces who would be cut off and surrounded [4].
The burden of carrying out the offensive would fall mainly on the Waffen SS, still seen as more reliable and ideologically committed than the Heer despite Himmler’s alleged betrayal, at the very least the commanders of these formations were true believers, and perhaps the only people who were willing to take Hitler’s gamble seriously. The spearhead of the attacking force would the 6th SS Panzer Army, whose divisions were given then highest priority for new equipment in the build up to the assault, meaning they were outfitted with a large number of Panther and Tiger tanks, though this was a double-edged sword given the ongoing mechanical issues with both models and the rushed efforts to replace the initial Ausf D model of the Panther with the improved Ausf A version. It was not simply a matter of the ongoing mechanical issues that were still being ironed but also that these new heavier tanks also had limitations as to the terrain they could operate on and the bridges they could use. They also used a prodigious amount of fuel, especially when being deployed for what was intended to be a high-speed advance. The 6th SS Panzer was supported by 5th Panzer Army, with 7th and 15th Armies assigned to cover the flanks, though both formations had taken significant losses in the fighting during the Autumn. The limitation of the existing fuel supply and the Wehrmacht’s limited ability to move it to the front meant seizing Allied supplies was built into the plan from the beginning, with no allowance for the consequences if the Panzers failed to do so. The operation was named Winteruhr, Winter Watch, with the intention that if the Allies did hear the name, they would assume this was intended as purely defensive plan, though as it transpired the Allies did not learn the name of the operation until they interrogated prisoners in the aftermath of the battle, indeed they were remarkably ignorant of the entire operation until it was launched [5].
One aspect of Winter Watch that has gained notoriety out of all proportion to its actual effect was the deployment of German troops in US uniforms to infiltrate Allied lines and carry out acts of sabotage and create confusion, slowing down the response to the attack. The idea of such infiltrators had been doing the rounds in Berlin for several years, most originating with Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, a man whose legend far exceeds his actual successes. Early versions of these plans envisioned dropping disguised troops into England to assassinate Churchill, or kidnap members of the royal family, and to this day there are those who believe that such paratroopers masquerading as Polish soldiers did indeed land in 1942, targeting either Chequers or Sandringham. As was typical of the man Skorzeny refused to deny or confirm these stories after the war, but the idea of German troops running around East Anglia is farfetched to say the least [6]. Later versions took on an even more sinister air, as it was suggested that such infiltrators could be deployed in Italy to target members of the Italian government or even the Vatican, creating the impression that these attacks had been carried out by US Commandos. These plans were all quashed by cooler heads in the Wehrmacht, but finally at the end of 1943 the latest version of Skorzeny’s plan was put into effect, with the logic being that at this point there was little left to lose by trying it and if the infiltrators were fortunate perhaps they could seize control of Allied fuel dumps to aid the Panzer Divisions [7].
In practice the infiltrators fell far short of Skorzeny’s plan, or the many renditions of their operations in works of fiction. Finding men who could speak English to a standard that would fool the average GI was a challenge and even finding serviceable uniforms proved a struggle as those taken from deceased POWs had usually been marked with a large ‘P’ for easy identification of prisoners. Vehicles and weapons were slightly easier to come by, but even so the groups that were sent west were a rag tag bunch and it didn’t require a detailed knowledge of baseball or US Presidents to spot infiltrators who had terrible accents and often lapsed in German syntax when speaking English. They certainly caused some confusion and a few incidents of mistaken identity among Allied troops, however most US and British soldiers, long familiar with the sort of rumours about fifth columns and paratroopers that tended to spread during combat largely ignored the reports when they heard them, and the infiltrators found themselves in almost as much danger from their comrades as from the enemy [8].
The Allied response to the preparations for Operation Winter Watch can be concisely summed in a single sentence, there wasn’t one. As Winter Watch was being discussed in Berlin, orders were sent out and troops deployed the British and Americans were utterly unconcerned about the possibility of a German counterattack. The usually highly effective intelligence gathering apparatus of the Allies was stymied during the build up to Winter Watch by several factors. Most of the high-level traffic discussing the plan was sent using the Lorenz system, a far more complex cypher machine than the Enigma and one that in the autumn of 1943 the Allies were still struggling to crack. Making matters harder still was that much of the communication about the preparations for Winter Watch was done either by telephone or written dispatches. Some of this was down to Hitler’s paranoia about secrecy, much of it though was the fact that the proximity of the forces involved to Germany and to one another meant that it was not necessary to rely on radio communications and thus there was far less material for the code breakers to work with than had been the case for previous Wehrmacht operations [9].
The movement and concentration of forces for the operation did not go completely unobserved, though the winter weather did impede aerial reconnaissance in exactly the way Hitler had hoped. Much of this movement could be dismissed as simply units being pulled out of the line for rest and refit, the Germans taking advantage of the lull in the fighting to do exactly what the Allies were doing at the same time. The Germans certainly did their best encourage this appearance, but as with so many deception plans its success rested on presenting the enemy with what they expected to see. There was a strong belief in the upper echelons of SHAEF that the Germans were spent, winning the war was simply a matter of rebuilding Allied stockpiles of fuel and ammunition and then launching one last assault to deliver the knockout blow. Thus, there was far more focus on matters of the movement of supply ships, trains, and trucks than there was on a few German divisions ‘parked’ in the Ardennes. Not everyone was so sanguine about the situation, Patton for one was not inclined to believe the Germans were simply going to ‘roll over and play dead’ in the face of the Allied threat and he had been vehemently against to decision to halt, insisting that the available supplies be concentrated on his divisions to allow them to mount a swift thrust to the Rhine and cut off the German forces, including those in the Ardennes. These suggestions did not endear Patton to his superiors or his British compatriots such as General O’Connor who had their own plans for advances. O’Connor had rejected plans for an ambitious attempt to launch a combined ground and airborne assault into Holland as overambitious, he was inclined to reserve the airborne forces until the Allies were crossing the Rhine, with plans for a swift drive across Northern Germany in the direction of Poland also being mooted. Given this it is unsurprising that warnings about a possible German attack emanating from Patton’s HQ were ignored, though Patton did quietly make some contingency plans, which proved to be a fortunate development for the Allies [10].
The closest the Americans came to ‘preparing’ in the Ardennes was the dispatch of 12th Armoured Division to this quiet area for a refit and training as they were receiving M4 Thomas to form what were classed as assault companies, mainly owing to the fact that calling them heavy companies was still a taboo. They were transferred to the Ardennes precisely because no one expected any action in that sector and the 12th had only partly completed their reequipping when Winter Watch was launched, but their presence would prove a serious impediment to the German plan [11].
[1] The Allies are still struggling for port facilities even though they are somewhat better off than OTL, the taking of Antwerp will have a positive effect, but not until the new year.
[2] This is the alt-Bodenplatte, about as bad for the Luftwaffe as OTL’s equivalent and meaning they won’t be able to contribute much to the coming battle.
[3] Stalin is slipping back into bad habits as he fears that the Allies might claim the victory he thinks belongs to the USSR.
[4] Patton would apparently have been happy to provide them with the fuel to make this happen IOTL.
[5] This is partly the same issue as OTL, the Allies are convinced that the Germans are beat and they simply don’t think an offensive is possible, and of course it wouldn’t be if Germany was being run by someone reasonably sane.
[6] But it did make for a decent movie, featuring a very cleaned up version of Skorzeny.
[7] On the other hand the ‘Battle of the Bulge’ movie is not great and gives way too much credit to Skorzeny and his infiltrators.
[8] This is the reality of Skorzeny’s bright idea, with the added point that the Allied troops have become jaded about these sorts of stories and ironically ignore them the one time they are true.
[9] Lorenz was still a problem in late 1944 IOTL, so its still mostly secure ITTL 1943.
[10] So no Market Garden and thus more airborne troops to support crossing the Rhine later.
[11] And this bit is pure invention, the division is real but of course IOTL it wasn’t receiving new tanks and so wasn’t detached for refit.
How much different are the frontlines in Eastern Front from otl 1944?
Also the title should be January 1944
Garrison
Donor
Edited the title, thanks. The major difference in the east is that about 1/3 of Army Group Centre survived after Citadel and with Hitler temporarily out of commission and Model in charge they've done a better job of stabilizing their lines, so they are being pushed back more slowly than OTL. So the Soviets will gradually fall behind their OTL rate of advance, offset somewhat by the rapidly deteriorating situation in the west and events alluded to in a previous update in Eastern Europe during the spring of 1944.
So I was asking more about what extraparts of USSR have liberated by the Red Army than otl Jan1944 or what extra parts of USSR do Germany occupy than otl Jan 1944.
Great update! So I take it most of France is liberated now, it wasn't explicitly stated but with Paris captured, I figured the mopping up didn't really need a post.
Garrison
Donor
Well the answer is none, given that the Wehrmacht had a slightly less disastrous Citadel than OTL.
It's similar pace to OTL, just a year earlier and without Market Garden putting a spanner in the works.
Cool update, interesting things to come I'm sure.
One minor critique "Operation Grief" was not Skorzeny's idea, it was Hitler's, he heard of Allied troops using similar tactics and ordered Skorzeny to do the same.
Since there was no rescue of Mussolini ITTL I don't think Skorzeny would have ever come to Hitler's attention, there still may have been an Operation Grief but it most likely would have been planned by Brandenburg or Luftwaffe personal IMO.
Another great update. Really curious how the war will go for Germany's European allies, especially for Finland for obvious reasons.
So, nothing new there then. OTL Finnish government too quickly started to 'reconsider their priorities' after Stalingrad, but were mostly stopped from any meaningful progress because of the heavy reliance on Germany and Soviet demands.
Considering that this excellent timeline of yours has, at times, pulled some amazing moments, for a moment I thought you might even go for a successful U.S.-mediated Finnish withdrawal from the war, which was a suggested OTL, but then realised that it might be too crazy of a thing to pull off.
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