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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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The Missing Year© Final Sword Productions 2002 In our history Hitler essentially wasted the year between the Fall of
Paris and Barbarossa. His navy and
air force had other ideas. This
explores Adolph the idiot delegating to Goring the twelve months.
The first point was accepting that invading Britain was too big a
gamble. There are current theories
that allow Sea Lion to work. It
might have, barely. However, in the
realms of statecraft, as opposed to the fantasies of wargaming, it was simply
too big a risk. Germany’s biggest
asset was its newfound reputation for invincibility.
Even a draw against the British would erode this. The second point is that waiting for Britain to sue for peace was a poor
strategy. Germany had all to lose
and nothing to gain by not actively pursuing the war. If Britain made peace, the campaign could always be
suspended. If Britain reacted as it
had to Napoleon, it was necessary to do something. The third point is that for better or worse, Germany was stuck with
Italy as an ally. Italian defeats
would reduce Germany’s prestige and create disasters that Germany would have
to bail Italy out of. Far better to
take direct charge of Italy’s colonial wars before the Italians could ruin
them. Doing this would also steer
Italian action towards Britain and thus away from potentially destructive
adventures in the Balkans or the Western Basin of the Mediterranean. The fourth point is that a closely fought blockade against Britain was
stupid for several reasons. First
Germany did not have enough surface ships, U-Boats, or long-range aircraft to
effectively do this. Producing
those could only take industrial production away from making the tanks, trucks
and close support planes needed for Barbarossa (we will treat the decision to
invade Russia as a given – I do not actually believe this, but that is a
separate discussion). Second, a
major naval war in the Atlantic might give America a pretext to enter the war.
As this would be a disaster for Germany, best to proceed cautiously.
Third, a blockade would take years given Britain’s inherent economic
and naval strength. With Barbarossa
scheduled in under one year, there simply wasn’t time for both a long naval
war and a major ground war in the East. The fifth point is that trying to put a Latin Alliance against Britain
together was a long-term prospect not worth pursuing at this time.
Italy, Spain and France all had competing territorial claims in Europe
and Africa. Spain, France and
Portugal all would be hesitant to enter a war against an undefeated Britain with
the US and Russia still standing on the sidelines.
Finally, this level of diplomacy required Hitler’s concerted attention. The man had the attention span of a truck stop whore on a
crack binge. He had made his mark
manipulating short crisis situations. Patient
statecraft, governance and administration simply clashed with his personality
and lifestyle. So concentrate on
Italy and leave the others to come around when circumstances dictate. So what we are left with is a campaign against British interests in the
Eastern Basin of the Mediterranean. If
successful, it could be expanded to include the relief of Italian East Africa
(by taking Sudan) and a drive on the oil fields. Step one involves pacifying the Italians. Have Goring fly to Rome immediately. Pound the table in private, with Goring threatening to invade
Italy if necessary. Do not allow Il
Duce’s ego to allow him his ‘parallel war’.
The Italians can keep public command but will in private take German
orders. As a pacifier offer Il Duce
control of Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Sudan, Malta and Cyprus.
He can also be offered a share of ownership of Suez.
Immediately transfer Kesselring’s Second Air Fleet to Sicily.
Its job is to destroy the Malta defenses and then provide cover for the
Italian occupation. This Air Fleet
deployed from Belarus to Sicily in one month in December of 1941.
It should be able to move in 3 weeks now.
So by July 15th they are attacking Malta and by August 5th
they have escorted the Italian occupation convoy.
At this time Malta had no major garrison and almost no fighters or AAA.
The fortification work was barely begun.
With German air cover it’s an occupation, not a real invasion. In the meantime move Guderian and four mobile divisions to Libya.
With air cover, no Malta to get in the way, and some use of French ports
for supply traffic this should take about six weeks.
Hypothetically give Guderian a corps under Rommel – 7th and
10th Panzer Divisions - and a corps under Hoth – 1st
Panzer and 3rd Motorized. All
were available after a brief refit. Presume
you get them to full strength by stealing tanks, trucks and personnel filler
from the remaining 13 mobile divisions. While still is happening send a good staff team to Libya to sort out the
Italians. We’ll let Balbo have
his death by air accident. We will
accept that Grazianni was hopeless. Leave
him in Tripoli. Create an Italian
mobile corps with their artillery (goods troops with lousy guns), engineers,
tanks, armored cars and the best few infantry battalions. Form a mixed corps under Messe so there is an actual field
commander. Create a real division
out of the Blackshirts in Libya. They
are untrained and badly officered, but using them will help pacify Rome.
Use the rest of the large Italian garrison as support troops to keep the
three corps (which we will label the Italo-German Panzer Army) supplied forward
on the Egyptian border. So September 1st you have the Panzer Army on the frontier
with total air superiority back as far as Cairo, Alexandria and Suez.
Faced with this, London will pull Cunningham’s Mediterranean Fleet out
through the Canal before it is mined shut.
They will leave a few light ships but basically the German air force and
Italian Navy will own the Basin from the first serious effort to mine the Canal.
The British had almost no air force in theater.
What they had was spread everywhere from Basra to Kenya.
There were some bombers, mostly obsolete types that the Germans had
easily blown out of the sky in the French campaign.
In OTL there were no modern fighters.
With no real Battle of Britain beyond prestige fights over the coastal
harbors, I’ll allow them a few squadrons.
Realistically it is unlikely the War Cabinet would have let Churchill
take the risk. Point is that it
doesn’t matter. So your September campaign sees a British Corps (7th UK
Armored Division, 6th Australian Division, 4th Indian
Division and about a division’s worth of brigades and small bits) against an
Italo-German Army with decent supply and complete command of the air. It is a
walkover. The British can fight good rearguards and pick off the odd German probe,
but must in the end retreat over Suez after destroying their base areas in Egypt
and leaving block ships in the Canal. I
think it could be done in four weeks. However,
O’Connor, the British field commander, was one of their best so make it eight
weeks. O’Connor gets his
divisions over the Canal at 60-70% of strength together with a horde of rear
area types, Imperial officials, Imperial peoples (British retirees,
administrators, Indians, Jews, businessmen and those Egyptians too linked to the
occupation to survive the rampaging street mobs). The German air units have a field day strafing the panicky
road columns across Sinai. The plentiful Italian engineers get to work rebuilding Alexandria
harbor, clearing the Canal and generally rebuilding the base structure.
The Egyptian Army comes out for the Axis (there was a conspiracy in
reality led by Nasser and Sadat). Il
Duce can ride his white horse in the victory parade in Cairo.
Let him work out the details of the new protectorate with the Egyptian
Free Officers. Let the main Italian
army from Libya come forward by sea to chase the British up the Red Sea coast
and up the Nile. With a little
German air support they can spend the next six months clearing Upper Egypt and
Sudan. It’s their Army
Group trapped in their East African Empire.
As long as the British are not allowed to defeat them, it matters little
to the Reich where the ultimate front in East Africa is.
Luxor or Mombassa serve equally well in this regard.
I personally believe the Italians are capable of chasing the British back
to Kenya and Uganda. However, if we
are feeling pro-British, leave a British remnant in Equatoria and Nubia in
Sudan. You can even allow
Cunningham’s campaign to clear what is now Somalia.
It’s a sideshow. The
British probably won’t waste the effort as they will have bigger problems
elsewhere. The Italians lack the
industrial or logistical ability to sustain a major advance from East Africa
much past the Kenyan frontier. The real front is in Sinai. Rommel
will have gotten bridgeheads across the Canal straight on the heels of the
British retreat. It will be less
difficult than his push across the Meuse at Sedan.
So it is the first week of November 1940.
O’Connor’s corps is screening the massive British retreat through
Palestine. It is down to under 50%
strength. Its supply line, such as
it is, runs from Basra across the desert to Amman.
From there it runs through the miserable road net of Jordan and
Palestine. The few planes will be
flown back to Iraq. There’s no way to supply them in Palestine.
The port of Aquaba will be useless from air attacks and mines.
Essentially British shipping will be confined to the southern Red Sea to
avoid loss from air attack. Undoubtedly
the RN will run a few fast light ships a up to Sinai and Port Sudan to get
important folks and key people out. We
are talking a few dozen out of hundreds of thousands. Palestine will be a disaster. Prewar
it had a large garrison policing the endless civil strife between Arabs and
Jews. With the collapse of Egypt,
this armed strife will only get worse. Essentially
O’Connor will have no choice but to send the Palestine garrison back to Iraq
as fast as he can while stripping it of enough men and guns to keep his corps as
some fighting strength. Rear area types, over one hundred thousand Palestinian Jews, and another
horde of hangers will hamper the retreat again.
Policy was to keep the Jews out of the retreat, at gunpoint if necessary.
Presume that they are largely successful but only at the cost of further
armed clashes and even more chaos. Add
to this the Arab Revolt flaring even brighter as they will now be scenting
victory. My presumption is that O’Connor sacrifices his corps to buy six weeks
for the retreat to clear Amman. I’ll
give him a 10,000-man rear guard (including the Arab Legion and whatever Palmach
the Brits let come along) clearing Amman for H5 (the desert air base that is the
part way point to Baghdad). One
Hundred thousand Empire servicemen go into the bag.
More than one hundred thousand hangers on die, while a final hundred
thousand are strung out from H5 to Baghdad, creating logistical and
administrative chaos (see the campaign in Burma in 1942 for a concept of what
would have happened). Rommel gets command of the combined Army. Guderian is rotated back to Germany and will get an Army
Group for Barbarossa instead of a panzer group.
Italy gets Palestine and Jordan as Arab protectorates of the New Roman
Empire. Il Duce leads a Christmas
day parade through Jerusalem. The
Jews of Palestine (or the survivors of the battle and chaos) are evacuated by
the Italians to the Canal Zone. They
will be resettled in Ethiopia, the first of millions. Ethiopia will become the Madagascar of the German
resettlement schemes. The Italian
navy sends an occupation convoy to stranded Cyprus.
The very small British garrison mostly flees to Turkey on fishing boats
and interns themselves. You can end the campaign here. I
chose not to. In OTL there was an
Iraqi Revolt in 1941. I will bring
it forward a few months and make it New Year’s Day. The Iraqi Army rises, basically running the British out of
Kurdistan and contesting Baghdad. Rommel’s orders were to defend Amman.
Instead he creates a small mobile group out of pieces of the six
divisions (say an oversize division with everybody’s 88’s and armored cars)
and pulls one of his famous dashes. He
has no supply line beyond what he can capture and air drops from Kesselring.
However, he was a master of fluid battle and it would have been enough.
He hustles into and through the retreating British columns. They are at this point basically armed supply convoys, unit
and administrative organization having broken down in the endless retreat across
the desert. Rommel pulled this
several times in North Africa, in France in 1940, at Caparetto in 1917 and in
Rumania in 1916. He hustles through
to Baghdad, helping the Iraqis seize the city and the key airfield outside.
The British retreat turns into a stampede to Basra.
So March 1st, 1941 finds Slim (who historically landed with
reinforcements from India to put down the Iraqi Revolt) and O’Connor holding a
shaky perimeter around Kuwait, Basra and the adjacent Iranian Gulf coast oil
fields. The British have ignored
Iranian neutrality. There are some
300,000 British and Imperials at Basra. Most
are civilians or rear area types. By
press gang and force of personality the two generals have stitched together two
weak divisions with very few heavy weapons, no ammo depots, and (yet again) no
air force. The overstretched Royal
Navy is frantically evacuating people. The
local Arabs are engaging in both banditry and guerilla attacks (often there
being little to distinguish one from the other).
Rommel has his division up observing with another two divisions of mixed
Germans and Italians slowly coming up. Kesselring
had gotten a few wings forward deployed to Baghdad.
Iraq has joined the Axis and is now a German protectorate.
The oil of Kirkuk and Mosul is flowing through the rebuilt pipelines to
Haifa and Beirut. Two of the four
German divisions have been pulled out for Barbarossa. Let us survey where we stand. Instead
of their finest hour, the British have undergone a series of Imperial disasters.
This may drive Churchill from office.
If so, Britain will make peace. If
not, FDR will certainly be in no hurry to rescue a drowning British Empire.
FDR’s concerns are the defense of the British Isles and the
preservation of the British Fleet for future American use.
This threatens neither. Instead
of the British desert victories of OTL, Germany will look even more invincible.
Britain will have fewer resources and more inconvenient places to fight
from – Kenya, Aden, Oman, Karachi. There will have been no Greek war to make trouble.
Yugoslavia will join the Axis without Belgrade coups to take it back out
the next day. Greece will stay neutral, but will cooperate with Hitler much
as Turkey and Spain did. There will
be no desert war to divert attention from Barbarossa. The Basra pocket will shrink under air attack.
The British will retreat up both sides of the Gulf to Oman and Karachi
with further loss of prestige, material and men.
India is much more likely to rebel if Burma collapses (it almost did in
OTL). Italy would be a much stronger and more enthusiastic Axis partner. Put
down two Italian armies for Barbarossa instead of one corps.
The Italian initial losses in Libya and Greece destroyed what weapons
stocks they had and trashed their morale. Here
the reverse happens. The rest of Europe cooperates much more fully with Germany, seeing them
as a likely winner instead of hedging their bets after the Sea Lion failure.
Hungary and Rumania give full mobilization for Barbarossa instead of the
historical forces. So it’s four
Rumanian armies and three Hungarian instead of two Rumanian armies and a
Hungarian Corps. The Western
Europeans actively encourage the recruitment of the volunteer legions for the
East. Add another half dozen divisions that in OTL came into
existence 1942-44. They also try
harder on war production so give the Germans more trucks and armaments. Stalin is even more frightened. I
do not see how this affects the run up to Barbarossa but it does mean a slightly
greater chance that the Soviet government will come apart under the strain of
the first six months.
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