Stresa Revived - an Allied Mussolini TL
- Thread starter Onkel Willie
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The sickle cut was already a close call in OTL 1940. In this one the Germans would probably fail, without forces diverted to Italian Front. I wonder how Regio Esertico would fare in a war they have prepared for all those years. Also would Wasserubung be played as OTL? Germans did great job in 1940, thanks to their fleet, and their mountain troops. ITTL German Alpine Units would be in Austria, so at least Narvik would stay Allied. (unless allies do something immensely stupid as attacking Norway first). In truth the German advance could stop in many other places as well.
Also I look forward to see Merlin powered Macchi 202
Also I look forward to see Merlin powered Macchi 202
Uff Da the optimist
Donor
Superduper cool!
While WW2 Italy isn't famous for winning every battle, I imagine in this conflict they would be on par with the German army?
Their mountain corps are well-known fighters, should kick some ass in the alps.
I love this TL, an allied Italy is an too unexplored POD!
While WW2 Italy isn't famous for winning every battle, I imagine in this conflict they would be on par with the German army?
Their mountain corps are well-known fighters, should kick some ass in the alps.
I love this TL, an allied Italy is an too unexplored POD!
Well, frankly it's not that Benny need to to much except join the Wallies in the Phoney war, the mere presence of the italian troops at the south border basically put all the German plans in the dustbin.
Some forces (both ground and air) will need to be move from north to south to face the possible new front and this can really mean that the OTL invasion of France will fail.
The interesting thing is the developement of the nuclear weapons, OTL Fermi and other of his groups left Italy due to the racial laws...well here i don't see Benny go to this road as he don't need/want to appease Hitler and so it's very probable that the italian phisicist are still there.
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I've always thought that Mussolini fighting with the Allies is a great idea for a timeline. If you find yourself rooting for a fascist, you know this timeline is special.
That said, I have serious doubts that Italy is going to be able to stand up against Germany in this war. I mean, they were exhausted from the wars in Abyssinia and Spain, and in our timeline they performed remarkably badly against the French in comparison to the Germans. I think early on, an Italian invasion of Germany for example is completely out of question. The best the Italians can do at the moment is hold the line, especially considering that one of its military's more impressive assets, the navy, is not of much use against the Nazi land juggernaut. I think it is possible for this timeline to somewhat alleviate the program by introducing reforms into the Italian military that didn't happen in our timeline, such as increasing co-operation between the air force and the army, as well as a Lend-Lease program for the Italians to provide them with proper tanks and monoplanesp), and supplies.
The ideological and political consequences of this timeline are also strangely pleasant. Now the Italians don't have to persecute Jews against their will, their intellectuals don't have to deal with an inferiority complex towards them irritating Nordicsp), now being able to embrace Mediterraneanism, and people like Farinacci are out of the picture.
I also don't doubt that Germany will still be defeated, despite having been largely released from having to commit troops to the Balkans due to Italian overconfidence. The post-war period must be fascinating. Will Italy be a bit like Francoist Spain, or completely different?
I've always thought that Mussolini fighting with the Allies is a great idea for a timeline. If you find yourself rooting for a fascist, you know this timeline is special.
That said, I have serious doubts that Italy is going to be able to stand up against Germany in this war. I mean, they were exhausted from the wars in Abyssinia and Spain, and in our timeline they performed remarkably badly against the French in comparison to the Germans. I think early on, an Italian invasion of Germany for example is completely out of question. The best the Italians can do at the moment is hold the line, especially considering that one of its military's more impressive assets, the navy, is not of much use against the Nazi land juggernaut. I think it is possible for this timeline to somewhat alleviate the program by introducing reforms into the Italian military that didn't happen in our timeline, such as increasing co-operation between the air force and the army, as well as a Lend-Lease program for the Italians to provide them with proper tanks and monoplanes
p), and supplies.The ideological and political consequences of this timeline are also strangely pleasant. Now the Italians don't have to persecute Jews against their will, their intellectuals don't have to deal with an inferiority complex towards them irritating Nordics
p), now being able to embrace Mediterraneanism, and people like Farinacci are out of the picture.I also don't doubt that Germany will still be defeated, despite having been largely released from having to commit troops to the Balkans due to Italian overconfidence. The post-war period must be fascinating. Will Italy be a bit like Francoist Spain, or completely different?
Subscribed!
I've always thought that Mussolini fighting with the Allies is a great idea for a timeline. If you find yourself rooting for a fascist, you know this timeline is special.
That said, I have serious doubts that Italy is going to be able to stand up against Germany in this war. I mean, they were exhausted from the wars in Abyssinia and Spain, and in our timeline they performed remarkably badly against the French in comparison to the Germans. I think early on, an Italian invasion of Germany for example is completely out of question. The best the Italians can do at the moment is hold the line, especially considering that one of its military's more impressive assets, the navy, is not of much use against the Nazi land juggernaut. I think it is possible for this timeline to somewhat alleviate the program by introducing reforms into the Italian military that didn't happen in our timeline, such as increasing co-operation between the air force and the army, as well as a Lend-Lease program for the Italians to provide them with proper tanks and monoplanes
The ideological and political consequences of this timeline are also strangely pleasant. Now the Italians don't have to persecute Jews against their will, their intellectuals don't have to deal with an inferiority complex towards them irritating Nordics
I also don't doubt that Germany will still be defeated, despite having been largely released from having to commit troops to the Balkans due to Italian overconfidence. The post-war period must be fascinating. Will Italy be a bit like Francoist Spain, or completely different?
There are ample ways Italy helps out:
1. More Allied forces available
Knowing they don't have to keep forces on hand in case Italy gets ideas, the Anglo-French can deploy stuff that OTL was kept in the Mediterranean against the Germans - troops, aircraft, warships (useful for the Norway op) etc. Even if France still falls, there are bound to be butterflies, with e.g. Norway holding out longer or increased German casualties
2. Less German forces available
With millions of Italians right across the border, Hitler can't really afford to leave nothing there as OTL. Infantry, equipment, aircraft - all would be needed to deter an Italian offensive. The biggest potential butterfly is that the Austrian Mountain divisions, OTL crucial for Op. Weserubung, may not be readily available for deployment in Norway on such short notice, forcing the Germans to use bog-standard infantry instead (again, potential for a worse showing in Norway)
3. Italian forces available to fight the Germans
In the closing days of the Battle of France, German panzer spearheads reached the Swiss border, cutting off the French armies manning the Maginot Line - which arguably made the choice of surrendering or fighting on a whole lot easier. Put an Italian corps of two tank and a bunch of infantry divisions in their path, and the French will have ample time to disengage and re-form a line along the Rhone valley.
4. A much harder time for the LW
Due to the high tempo of operations, conducted over hostile territory and operating from makeshift runways, LW strength was down to only 2400 aircraft at one point. Unfortunately, the French blinked and transferred their modern fighters to Africa. Here, they can keep on fighting, and the balance in the air might just swing in favor of the Allies (by that time though, France was already lost, but this will have consequences later on)
5. Less chance of a French surrender
With Italy fighting alongside them, the French will have the readily available option of conducting a fighting retreat towards the Alps instead of the prospect of leaving all their equipment behind whilst they board ships bound for Africa.
6. A loop-sided Battle of the Atlantic
Italian destroyers and light cruisers can now be used for convoy defence. Italian shipping is available to the Allied cause. The Mediterranean is open to shipping, shaving off thousands of miles and thus saving up tonnage by the boatload
Also, with no Mediterranean theater siphoning Royal Navy warships, German surface raiders are well and truly screwed.
All in all, the Battle of the Atlantic is over before it even begins.
7. No (or much reduced) British freakout over a possible Sealion
With increased Kriegsmarine losses in Norway, a dragged-out campaign over France, generally more assets available overall, and with the ability to carry out imports at will and elements of the Italian and French navies on hand to be deployed to Britain, the probability that Britain makes OTLs mistakes due to fear of Sealion (e.g. continuing production of crappy AT guns) is not quite zero, but close.
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British had put a lot of effort into fortifying possible landing sites. ITTL this effort would be put in other places. If the German offensive is stopped, or at least Entente holds Provance, Bretagne and possibly Calais.
The comments to that YouTube video are revolting.
That's a problem I've noticed with a fair few songs on Youtube, if it was used by some wretched ideology then you are going to get supporters of it or trolls acting like supporters in the comments section.
Well, at least Italy had a small advantage - I didn't foresee the occupation of snippets of Austria. Plus, should France will fall as OTL, the country will count over French soldiers evacuated in the North of Italy.
The main problem for Italy will be the aerial defence - Even with the Alps as partial natural obstacle, I doubt the UMPA will be able to face the Luftwaffe... but at least, the Geranns will be forced to split their airforces between Britain and Italy. The former country should be less devastated but the latter one more that OTL from air bombings...
The main problem for Italy will be the aerial defence - Even with the Alps as partial natural obstacle, I doubt the UMPA will be able to face the Luftwaffe... but at least, the Geranns will be forced to split their airforces between Britain and Italy. The former country should be less devastated but the latter one more that OTL from air bombings...
It won't be THAT critical. One, maybe even two more months of high-tempo operations over France, coupled with a still fighting French air force AND the Italian air force, should severely diminish LW capabilities.
Even so, it's likely Hitler will try to go with the Battle of Britain, hoping to win the war while he still has the initiative - this means any attack on Italy won't come until November at the earliest. By that time, if the Nazis still want to go with Barbarossa, they will be pretty weary of committing their airforce too much over northern Italy
The air campaign is dramatically changed in favour of the allies. From the Veneto airfields to Munich is just 250 km so the whole south of the Reich is fully reachable by bombers with fighter escort.
My prediction is that the sickle cut will fail and Germany will likely be down by 1943.
My prediction is that the sickle cut will fail and Germany will likely be down by 1943.
The 'ironic' fact is that the only air force aggressive enough to lauch a true bombardment campaing against Germany it's the less equipped to do so.
The italian air forces bombers (first among them the SM.79) have too little payload to make really a dent
Chapter III: The Battle of France and Fortress Italy, April-September 1940.
How about now
?Chapter III: The Battle of France and Fortress Italy, April-September 1940.
In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to protect shipments of iron ore from Sweden, which the Allies were attempting to cut off by unilaterally mining neutral Norwegian waters. Denmark capitulated after a few hours, and despite Allied support, during which the important harbour of Narvik was temporarily recaptured by the British, Norway was conquered within two months. British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the replacement of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, with Winston Churchill on May 10th 1940.
May 10th 1940 was also the day that the Battle of France commenced, based on the so-called Manstein Plan, devised by General Erich von Manstein. General Franz Halder had devised a plan similar to the Schlieffen Plan with an advance through middle Belgium, but it didn’t intend to deliver a knockout blow. It had the limited goal of throwing the Allies back to the river Somme, which would cost an estimated half a million casualties; Germany’s force would then be spent and the main attack would only begin in 1942. Hitler was disappointed with Halder’s plan and initially reacted by deciding that the German army should attack early, ready or not, in the hope that Allied lack of preparedness might bring about an easy victory. This led to a series of postponements, as commanders repeatedly persuaded Hitler to delay the attack for a few days or weeks to remedy some critical defect in the preparations, or to wait for better weather. Hitler also tried to alter the plan which he found unsatisfactory, without clearly understanding how it could be improved.
Whilst von Manstein was formulating new plans in Koblenz, Heinz Guderian, commander of the XIX Army Corps, Germany’s elite armoured formation, happened to be lodged in a nearby hotel. At this moment, Von Manstein’s plan consisted of a move directly north from Sedan against the rear of the main Allied forces in Belgium. When Guderian was invited to contribute to the plan during informal discussions, he proposed a radical and novel idea. Not only his army corps, but most of the Panzerwaffe should be concentrated at Sedan. This concentration of armour should subsequently not move to the north but to the west, to execute a swift, deep, independent strategic penetration towards the English Channel without waiting for the main body of infantry divisions. This might lead to a strategic collapse of the enemy, avoiding the relatively high number of casualties normally caused by a Kesselschlacht (“cauldron battle”). Such a risky independent use of armour had been widely discussed in Germany before the war but had not been accepted as received doctrine. Halder removed Von Manstein from his position on January 27th, but the latter’s indignant staff brought the case to Hitler. He proved enthusiastic about the Manstein Plan. The objections of other generals were ignored because, as Hitler argued, the slightest chance of decisive victory outweighed the certainty of defeat implied by inaction, given Germany’s hopeless strategic situation.
The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes and then along the Somme valley to cut off and surround the Allied units that had advanced into Belgium. When British and adjacent French forces were pushed back to the sea by the highly mobile and well-organized German operation, the British government decided to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) as well as several French divisions at Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. After the withdrawal of the BEF, Germany launched a second operation, Fall Rot (Case Red), which was commenced on June 5th. While the depleted French forces put up stiff initial resistance, German air superiority and armoured mobility overwhelmed the remaining French forces. German armour outflanked the Maginot Line and pushed deep into France with German forces arriving in an undefended Paris on June 14th 1940. In the meantime, the Regia Aeronautica deployed two fighter wings and one bomber wing for a total of 144 aircraft and they distinguished themselves through their aggressive fighting style, which was decidedly uncharacteristic for the Allies. Luftwaffe pilots came to respect Italian pilots more than other Allied pilots.
Despite the fall of Paris, the French government decided not to surrender and the remnants of the French Army, roughly half a million men, withdrew to the French Alps and the Massif Central while about 90.000 BEF troops out of the original 198.000 redeployed by way of Marseille. By early July much of south-eastern France, roughly a third of the country, was still under Allied control and the situation was stabilized by 80.000 Italian reinforcements. Nonetheless, the situation looked grim: most of France’s population centres, most of its industrial areas and most of its coal and iron ore reserves were under German control.
The question one could ask was what had been happening on the Italian front, which wasn’t much. The Regia Aeronautica had launched several small-scale bombing raids against Bregenz, Innsbruck, Salzburg and Klagenfurt, later followed by Graz, Linz, Munich and Vienna (primarily using the SM.79 medium bomber, which was a very popular aircraft in the Regia Aeronautica). The latter four cities meant a lot to Hitler because he had lived there and he was outraged because the Luftwaffe hadn’t managed to prevent them from being bombed. He treated Hermann Goering to several temper tantrums and the stress induced the Luftwaffe leader to give into his morphine addiction even more. Goering could only mumble in response that the Luftwaffe couldn’t defend southern Germany’s airspace with the bulk of its strength deployed to support the blitzkrieg in France. Strategically, the bombings were of limited value, but the propagandistic value, particularly of symbolic targets like Munich and Vienna, was great. Mussolini said “these attacks are small, but they’re pinpricks right into the heart of the German. This is vengeance for the sinking of the Roma.” The retaliatory raid on Milan was of limited success, but nonetheless angered Mussolini, who stepped up Italy’s efforts to aid France.
Italy did well, despite its many shortcomings. During the interwar years and 1939, the strength of the Italian military had dramatically fluctuated due to waves of mobilization and demobilization. In response to the Anschluss, Italy had increased its defence budget by 50% in 1938 and by another 50% in the 1939 fiscal year; additionally, France had allowed Italy to produce a few dozen Renault R35 tanks under license while the British had sold them fifty Vickers 6-ton tanks for a bargain price. But despite these substantial investments, the Italian army wasn’t expected to be ready for war before 1941-’42. By the time Italy entered the war, over 1.55 million men had been mobilized in what was a painfully slow mobilization. The Regio Esercito (Royal Italian Army) had formed 75 divisions out of this influx of men. However, only twenty of these divisions were complete and fully combat ready by the time France fell. A further 32 were in various stages of being formed and could be used for combat if needed, while the rest were not ready for battle at all. So in total, the Regio Esercito could muster 52 divisions, of which three fifths were of mediocre quality (and the rest not much better). On the upside, Italian soldiers were highly motivated as the government had painted the picture of being enslaved by Germany in the event of a defeat. Mussolini, however, knew better than to attempt an invasion of Germany across the inhospitable border and instead played it safe by safely keeping his army behind his Alpine shield and sending support to France.
German success in summer 1940 after only about eight weeks of combat profoundly changed the geopolitical landscape. The French Army had previously been thought of as the strongest army in the world and France as the dominant continental power, but in two months’ time it had been supplanted by Germany. What hope could there be for Italy, a country with a developing and still predominantly agrarian economy and with a largely non-mechanized, obsolete army?
Indeed, Italy’s situation looked hopeless: though considered a great power, Italian industry was lacking in critical military areas like automobile production, which didn’t equal more than 15% of that of France or Britain. Italy still had a predominantly agricultural-based economy, with demographics more akin to a developing country (high illiteracy, poverty, rapid population growth and a high proportion of adolescents) and a proportion of GDP derived from industry less than that of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Sweden, in addition to the other great powers. In 1940, Italy produced 374.000 cars compared to the roughly 2.5 million in Britain and France. Besides that Italy produced, 4.4 million tonnes of coal, 10.000 tonnes of crude oil, 1.2 million tonnes of iron ore and 2.1 million tonnes of steel that year. By comparison, Great Britain produced 224.3 million tonnes of coal, 11.9 million tonnes of crude oil, 17.7 million tonnes of iron ore, and 13 million tonnes of steel in 1940. Germany annually produced 364.8 million tonnes of coal, 8 million tonnes of crude oil, 29.5 million tonnes of iron ore and 21.5 million tonnes of steel. Most of Italy’s raw material needs could be fulfilled only through importation, and no effort was made to stockpile key materials before the entry into war (stockpiling commenced only in March 1940).
Italy, however, did have at least one factor working in its favour, namely geography: the Italian border was ridiculously easy to defend. In 1931, work had commenced on the “Alpine Wall”, and after the Anschluss the defences on the Italo-German border were emphasized (those on the Swiss, Yugoslav and French borders, on the other hand, were somewhat neglected. The Alpine Wall was composed of three zones: the first zone was only intended to slow down the enemy and inflict casualties; the second zone consisted of heavier fortifications capable of resistance in isolation; the third zone, the “zone of alignment”, was an assembly area for counterattack, into which the enemy was to be directed. Three types of fortifications were provided: “Type A”: the largest fortifications, generally built into mountainsides; “Type B”: smaller point-defence fortifications; and “Type C”: widely distributed shelters and rallying points.
These border defences were manned by the elite of the Italian army: all six Alpini divisions and all twelve Bersaglieri regiments. They were interspersed with regular divisions, the idea being that the presence of elite units would improve the performance of the rank and file ones. The Alpini were forces especially trained for Alpine warfare. The Bersaglieri were composed of recruits selected for their above-average size and stamina, their ability to endure intense physical training and their qualification as marksmen. Only very few men qualified for the Alpini divisions, and they gave equally sized elite SS units a run for their money whenever an equal confrontation took place. During the course of the war, no matter the reverses Italy experienced, the requirements to join the Bersaglieri weren’t relaxed and so their quality wasn’t diluted.
Though British officers, especially in the early war years, generally and not completely without justification, dismissed the Italians as mediocre, they often spoke respectfully of the Alpini and the Bersaglieri. These units fought valiantly with plenty of examples of courage and acumen when the Wehrmacht invaded. They inflicted higher casualties than German generals, who had a dismissive attitude of Italian strength due to their WW I experiences, had anticipated. They had expected Italy to fold quickly, and Hitler was frustrated when that didn’t happen. Churchill spoke of “Fortress Italy” as “a foothold against the forces of evil” when he met with French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud between July 23rd and 26th 1940 in the so-called Ajaccio Conference (Ajaccio being the capital of Corsica and the interim capital of France). They agreed that Italy would form the cornerstone of the Allied war effort.
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Now with Italy firmly in the Allied camp, wonder what the long-term effects on the war will be?