Should we assume that the Soviet attack on Manchuria basically went the same as in OTL?
That failed assassination might help the Germans almost as much as a successful one. A bomb was placed in Stalins bunker by an inside job and no way of knowing for sure how many others were involved. This might very well put Stalin in "Purge them all and let the gods of communism sort them out" mode.
Stalin authorised the Red Army’s plan to overrun the Yalu River and invade the Korean peninsula and the Japanese island of Hokkaido, knowing that in doing so he was directly contravening the Tripartite Pact signed between Germany and Japan. The Red Army in the West was placed on high alert and the Stavka was set to have an emergency meeting in the Kuybyshev Air Raid Shelter, best known as “Stalin’s Bunker” [11]. As expected, Weber furiously declared war on the Soviet Union on July 20th as the first Soviet forces landed on Hokkaido from the Kuril Islands, announcing that “[Stalin’s] intentions to spread the Third International were now apparent for the world to see” and that “Soviet domination of the Western Pacific is almost inevitable, unless the free forces of the world unite in their commitment to oppose the Comintern’s intentions”.
wait wait wait where did the Soviets get the naval assets to conduct an invasion of Hokkaido? Much of the Soviet Navies amphibious capability was gained from the American delivery of a number of specialized assault ships and landing craft to the Soviet navy as part of Operation Hula which allowed for the Soviet assault against Japanese positions in the Kuril Islands and the like but the Soviets aren't gonna get those ships ITTL and that means their sealift capability is virtually nil which means they can't take Hokkaido unless they massively invested into building a bluewater navy which considering the presence of German troops in the West is likely not the best idea
The Japaneses are probably even more distracted, with the invasion of Kyushu. The soviets probably need very little to get going.
IIRC France is not occupied so a D Day should be unnecessary.After Shogun, we ain't seeing a D Day any soon
I'm talking of an American landing of European mainland itself to invade Germany, not necessarily on France thoughIIRC France is not occupied so a D Day should be unnecessary.
I'm talking of an American landing of European mainland itself to invade Germany, not necessarily on France though
Given the hints so far, we're likely going to see a "reversal" of OTL: the Reich and the Soviets slowly grinding it out in Eastern Europe (the Reich has a shorter front, but the Soviet's still have a lot of clay to trade for time and once the Russian Bear gets going it's hard to stop), while the WAllies re-enter the war via France and push hard into Germany, likely occupying all of it before the Reich is totally crushed. It's also entirely possible that the Reich falls into civil war once the writing is on the wall; IIRC a few members of the "military resistance"/Valkyrie plotters are still alive and kicking, including the ones like Henning von Tresckow who had a genuine moral antipathy towards Nazism (as opposed to figures like Stauffenberg, who only wanted to kill Hitler because they thought he was fucking things up).
Basically, we're probably going to see American and Soviet troops shaking hands over the Oder or the Neisse instead of the Elbe.
Somehow, I really don't see that concerning STAVKA too greatly.... but even then it'd be a very bloody affair.
Missives offering to renew the lapsed Quadripartite Nonaggression Pact to Churchill and Pétain, which were ignored by both parties; nevertheless, neither country opted to declare war on Germany as the majority of British and Imperial military assets were tied up in Asia and France would have been powerless to act on its own, notwithstanding the looming threat of the thermobaric bomb. Given that the nucleonic bomb was not tested until August of that very year, precluding any meaningful countermeasure at that point. Millions upon millions would be dead, with horrific tales of barely-armed Japanese civilians throwing themselves en masse at the Anglo-American military machine haunting occupying forces for many years, before peace finally came to the Asian Pacific coast; even then, they were too late to prevent the entrenchment of Soviet-backed Communist rule in Manchukuo, Korea and Hokkaido.
Stalin himself had barely survived, with his clothes torn off him by the force of the detonation and suffering from partial deafness due to two perforated eardrums to the end of his days. However, these facts were totally unknown to Tomarov, who had reported to the Abwehr that the operation was a “total success” upon hearing of the detonation of the bomb within the Stalin Bunker. Little did he and they know that far from being the death of Stalin, that this was just the beginning of one of the worst continuous periods of suffering in human history [13].
Nope. Tom Colton already made it clear that this 3rd Reich will collapse from within. With the situation as it is ITTL, no American government would actively enter the war except economically by propping up UK, and Weber is too cautious to just issue a DoW on USA as Hitler did.
Thanks for the praise, everyone, and yes, I suppose some explanations are due.
As has been guessed, especially by @Kung Fucious , in addition to an exploration as to how much longer you could conceivably extend the Reich's lifespan, also takes a look at how the Eastern and Western Fronts of our Second World War could undergo some ironic reversals and parallelisms, including a division of East and Southeast Asia much more similar to OTL's Eastern Europe, with Japan and China both divided into "North" and "South". The Red Army not having amphibious capability is something which I honestly didn't know, and don't have an easy fix for.
And, of course, Weber as always needs a good casus belli before acting, and an obvious cheat for weakening Russia enough (and also distracting the Western Allies) for Nazi Germany's second offensive to be as devastatingly effective as it will be is for all of them to be tied up in the East. My use of the Asia-Pacific War in this particular role has been criticised before, namely its entire existence as sans a concurrent Western Front it's extremely unlikely that Japan, even pushed into a corner by sanctions and pressed into seeking resources to continue the Second Sino-Japanese War, would actually expand their operations into attacking the US.
Still, faulty as these assumptions are, they're essential preconditions for the subsequent events to play out the way they will, so, uh, essentially, sorry about that, I'll need to figure something smarter out for Weber's Germany redux.