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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Mad Max
– WW1 The POD is
the spring of 1916 - I am starting with my favourite device - a German
auto wreck. I need the Kaiser, Tirpitz, PM, and head of the army
dead Reasons: 1. no idiot attempts at risking war with the US - no dealings with Mexicans/Zimmerman, no unrestricted submarine warfare 1917 - no US entry as Wilson is denied an excuse - you can let the Villa expedition escalate into a US-Mexican war or just leave the US playing holier than thou on the sidelines - US stays out of the European War 2. Verdun is left as a bleed out the French exercise - add 20% to French casualties and take 25% off German - the original idea was good but Falkenhyn never could leave well enough alone - so we want the original plan on autopilot as the HHL team take over a few months earlier 3. Have HHL concentrate on driving Russia from the war - do the 1918 advances in 1917 driving the government to Moscow - you want the Russian empire in a worse Mad Max state and you want Lenin marginally weaker 4. Have enough extra put into Caparetto so that the Italian collapse carries past the initial rout to the Po 5. Have the French mutinies be worse - kill Petain with artillery fire at Verdun so there is no one left to restore the morale of the French army - put a gung ho idiot like Magnin or Foch in charge - mutinies turn to some Soviets, roving bands of red partisans in allied rear 6. Make the Germans concentrate everything on the first attack on the Somme in 1918 - British Army Group driven into channel bridgehead and much of French army dissolves into revolutionary chaos. Core holds out below Loire but red flag over Paris, Lyons 7. Revolution spreads to Italy and from there to AH - both armies and states implode 8. British impose blockade on Italy, revolutionary ports in France 9. Now have the flu epidemic hit full force with the troops still in the field, revolution /blockade over most of continent - triple the number of deaths and every army dissolves except British who face severe mutinies and red risings in Glasgow, Liverpool, a few industrial cities 10. Now have the credit charade with British-Morgan-Dupont exposed. US financial meltdown. Food supply from US dries up. Argentina insists on gold payment. There is no relief for Europe. UK will survive. Mutinies, small local Soviets and perhaps an Irish rising. US does a worse 1929. Continent gets the worst aspects of the Russian CW from Vladivostok to Lisbon to Damascus All for low probability but no ASB's Mad Max
– WW2 My POD is
1936-39 I need to go prewar to make this work because I need to change some German production decisions - they do not build a new battlefleet but instead buy more Ju-52's, a few special purpose landing craft [they envision the Baltic for use], and fund the He-100 as well as the ME-109 so they have a few fighters with the proper range. Also add a few extra wings each of Ju-87, Ju-88 with naval aviators, anti-ship training Next Winnie gets full credit for his part in the debacle that was Norway - King and Tory caucus make the constitutional changes they did with Hume so that Halifax becomes PM - we need a weaker PM who is less sympathetic to FDR. Winnie fobbed off with some ministry of Home Defense Next Jodl does for Dunkirk what he did for Narvik - holds the Fuhrer order and has the poor dear given a sedative. Entire BEF bagged. So in early July Sea Lion comes off. Essentially 3-4 divisions of light infantry [mountain troops with even fewer heavy weapons] get ashore. RN and RAF do fractionally worse [naval air, HE-100, landing craft, Halifax instead of Winnie]. British use gas. Some effect on German troops. Bigger effect on Channel ports. Vichy sees this as act of war and declares war on UK. Germans gas London and other British cities. Gas war barrier is breached. The prewar dread of using gas as terror tactic comes to pass. Now two changes in the US - wilkie plays the isolationist card from the get go instead of in October and Chicago Tribune runs full expose on FDR's health [leaked documents from anti-FDR naval officers with access to his doctor's files]. We get another election of 2000. FDR wins popular vote narrowly {Dixie was still monolithically Democrat in 1940] but loses electoral college as GOP sweeps small western states by narrow margins plus winning contested counts in Illinois and Ohio [US politics was a rough game and ballot box stuffing happened in both directions]. Wilkie was at heart an internationalist but he was elected as an isolationist. He also inherits a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress out to castrate him the way they did to Hoover in his last two years. Add to that popular hatred of Wilkie by liberals when FDR dies of a broken heart shortly after leaving office. Lend Lease will be less generous and no aid to Soviets later. No ultimatum to Japanese in 1941. German bridgehead around Dover slowly beaten in over November-December 1940. Operation Compass still happens but instead of Eritrea Empire takes Syria, Lebanon, Madagascar. Empire loses interior regions of Sierre Leone, Gold Coast, Nigeria to Vichy forces. Also all of Gambia. With French Fleet to help Italians take Malta. No support by Empire for the Greeks but still a Greek War and still 2-3 weeks lost off Barbarossa. Now the fun starts. Gas is a better terror weapon than bomber command was 1940-42. More civilian dead/fled. More production losses. It is a total chaos factor in Russia. More dead on both sides, far more civilian dead. Repulse from Moscow worse because thanks to gas Axis supply lines in worse shape. In reverse overextended Russian spearheads suffer worse come spring from gas and lack of Lend Lease. Can keep writing battle by battle but what is the point 1. UK survives - usual black market and deserter gangs in some city cores and wild areas but it is the survival of a besieged city. Everything rationed and ersatz. U-boats and some German air make the naval war expensive for both sides. Unloading cargo under gas attack is a bitch. 2. Empire survives. No war with Japan so no giant losses in Malaya, East Indies, Burma, HK. No need for ANZACS to go home. Eventually Empire will take all of French territory below Sahara and Italian East Africa. Sea line of supply. Once driven to the Alamein line they will hold Egypt. However they will lack the ground strength to advance further. 3. Air war will simply be killing. No ability to do more. Gas, fire, bio, arms to anyone who will oppose Hitler. 4. Resistance will discover modern suicide bombing tactics. British propaganda will make clear German exterminationist aims against many {Slavs, Romani...], not just Jews. Again the idea will quickly become revenge/nihilistic terror. 5. East war will deadlock late 1942 into a broken back war. Without lend lease and a 2nd front in the Med both sides will be able to keep playing meatgrinder against each other and the civilians they control. Both will back partisans in each other’s rear that will include increasing numbers of deserter gangs - essentially this is a 30 years war type scenario - both sides burn out the war zones and degrade their civilian economies to keep flailing at each other - each burns through cadre faster than new can be trained so ever more use of mass assaults by barely trained press-ganged cannon fodder with punishment regiments in the rear to make them fight. Troop concentrations invite gas attacks. War grinds on into the 50's as both sides starve and weapons quality degrades towards pistol and bayonet. Fewer and fewer areas actually controlled by central governments - partisan, local warlords, local commanders turn independent and hoard resources 6.Japan in china is this only worse and faster as without a blockade the Japanese still run out of oil and rubber from lack of cash so are forced back on ever more primitive ways of war Scott
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