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World War II Scenario Hitler Doesn't Declare War On the US After Pearl Harbor (part 3) As summer and fall of 1942 wear on, the war is entering a decisive phase. By: Dale R. Cozort |
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Artemus Twiggley Book Review: "Rising Sun Victorious" Return To Table of Contents |
As this time-line's World War II heads toward the middle of 1942 the war is entering its decisive phase in both the European and the Pacific fronts. In both areas the key to victory is control of oil. The Germans are gambling that they can effectively knock the Soviet Union out of the war before winter. They don't have to occupy the entire Soviet Union to do that. They don't even really have to capture the Caucasus oil fields that provide the bulk of the Soviets' oil supply and most of their refining capability. They just have to deny the Soviets access to or use of that region. The Soviet economy of 1942 is extremely dependent on that oil. Without it, arms production would quickly wither to a fraction of what it would otherwise be. Factories are powered by it, buildings heated by it, raw materials transported to factories by it. The oil is also the feedstock for Soviet synthetic rubber production. Rubber is vital for producing trucks and tanks, but the Soviets don't have access to natural rubber. Soviet synthetic rubber is of extremely poor quality. It has less than half the strength of natural rubber, and doesn't hold up well when exposed to oil or sunlight. Synthetic production is already far too low but it is better than nothing. The Germans would like to take the oil fields intact. Their own economy and especially that of Italy are starving for oil. If the Germans can divert Soviet oil to the European Axis economies, Axis war production can expand, though inefficiency rather than shortage of resources is the main reason German war production has remained low compared to the Allies. More importantly, that oil would restore mobility to the German and Italian armed forces that are increasingly losing mobility. Much of the fairly good Italian navy is sitting in port because the Italians simply don't have fuel to move their major ships. Even the German panzer divisions have to allocate fuel carefully. If the Germans can't take the oil fields, they still have two cards to play. First, they can try to block the routes from the oil fields to the rest of the Soviet Union. Second, if they get within range of the oil fields they can try to knock out production or refining with a sustained bombing campaign. The Soviet tendency to build giant facilities leaves them vulnerable to that kind of attack. If the Soviets hold on through 1942 and remain a major power, it is difficult to see how the Germans can ultimately win. If the Soviets are knocked out of the war or are reduced to a minor factor it is difficult to see how the Germans can ultimately be defeated, especially without the United States in the war against them. Meanwhile in the Pacific, the United States is being forced into two gigantic gambles that the Roosevelt administration would rather not take. The US is being forced to gamble that the Soviets and British can hold out against Germany with minimal US aid long enough for the US, Dutch, and British Commonwealth forces to stabilize a line and contain the Japanese in what is now Indonesia. The US is also being forced to gamble that forces to hold that line can be supplied in the face of Japanese sea power. The US and Japan both find more and more of their power being sucked into the battle for the Netherlands East Indies with its vital oil and other natural resources. US, Commonwealth and Dutch forces hold out on Java, in spite of frantic Japanese efforts to take the island. Unfortunately, winning land battles on Java isn't enough for the Allies. The Japanese have already landed on the neighboring islands of Sumatra and Bali. That puts them on both sides of Java, with the potential to dominate the sea-lanes to Java if they are allowed to consolidate their hold on those islands. For the Allies, defending Java means contesting the Japanese invasions of Sumatra and Bali. Contesting those islands leads to further commitments on the part of the Allies. The Netherlands East Indies form a chain of islands north of Australia. If the Japanese fail to cut through that chain at Java, or Bali, or Sumatra, they can still cut through it at other points of the chain. Japanese troops and planes are sucked from China and Manchuria into the southern war zone, as the fight for Java expands down the island chain. The US is pouring men and materials into the campaign as fast as available shipping will allow them to. Shipping is actually the bottleneck for both sides. The Japanese simply can't supply all of the troops that they are pouring into the battle zones in the long run. The US can't move and supply all of the troops they need in the war zone and still supply massive quantities of Lend Lease to both the British and the Soviet Union. The Roosevelt administration still considers Germany the most important enemy. At the same time, the US is not officially war with Germany. That makes it very difficult to divert scarce resources, especially shipping, to deliver supplies to the Allies. Sufficiently vital Lend-Lease items get shipped. The bulk of Lend Lease gets deferred until the current crisis passes. Unfortunately, the crisis shows no sign of easing as the first half of 1942 drags on. The US has much more power available for the Pacific theatre in this time-line than in ours. It is fighting one war, not two. The bulk of US naval power, air power, and shipping are concentrated in the Pacific. That may or may not be enough to hold the East Indies.
The problem isn't the ground war. The Japanese army has a lot of
fanatically dedicated, brave, well-trained troops, but it doesn't have
the logistics base or the firepower to
succeed in offensive operations against US troops if those troops get a
chance to set up
coherent defensive lines. US M3 medium tanks come as a major shock to
the Japanese, and even
US light tanks give the Japanese army a great deal of trouble. The
Japanese do score victories on the ground against green US troops, but
generally US firepower makes Japanese
offensives very difficult. The US has several major problems in the Pacific. First, they don't really control the sea-lanes they are using to supply their forces in the area. Second, the Japanese air and naval forces are very very good. Those forces are initially much better trained than their US equivalents, and US air and naval power takes a real beating in the first half of 1942. Third, much of the area being fought over is extremely unhealthy, with nasty strains of malaria and other tropical diseases. Tropical heat and disease erode the power of even units that don't face Japanese attack. On the other hand, the tropical heat and diseases are even harder on the Japanese than the Americans, at least part of the time, mainly the Japanese don't have the logistics structure to get food and medicine to their troops, even where they do control the sea lanes. By May of 1942, the Pacific theatre is a crazy quilt of competing forces. The Japanese by-passed several significant Allied forces in their initial attack, just as they did in our time-line. In this time-line the continued battle for Java has prevented them from going back and mopping up like they did in our time-line. In the Philippines, US and Filipino forces still hold out on Bataan peninsula and the island of Corregidor. They are getting a trickle of supplies by submarine and aircraft, and from a few fast surface ships that brave the Japanese blockade. As in our time-line, the Japanese have by-passed some islands in the southern Philippines like Cebu and Mindoro, and US/Filipino forces are still in control there. Ironically, the US has a great deal of food and medicine stockpiled in the southern Philippines. The trick is in getting it to the besieged and starving men in Bataan. British, Dutch and Australian forces still hold the northern half to two-thirds of Sumatra, though the Japanese have seized the important airbase and oil fields in the southern part of the island. Japanese and Allied forces are fighting over Java, Bali, and half-a-dozen other islands in the area including Flores and Timor, with uncertain supply lines, with numerous air and naval battles large and small determining whether or not food, ammunition, and medicine reaches the combatants. The Pacific War is not the war the US government wants to fight, at least not in this way. On the other hand if they stop the Japanese on Java, then push back into Sumatra and reopen a route to the Philippines, the Japanese will cease to be a major power in fairly short order. The Japanese have to have East Indies oil, or their economy will shut down, and their highly trained navy and air force will become essentially useless. That highly trained Japanese navy and air force have given the US a series of painful lessons in how to fight a naval war in the first part of 1942. The Japanese are better trained at night fighting. They are superior in important equipment categories like torpedoes and fighter planes. The US loses a lot of ships, planes, and trained men in the first part of 1942. At times the ratio of US to Japanese losses is humiliatingly high, just as it was in our time-line. On the other hand, as the first half of 1942 draws to a close, the US has some major advantages. They can replace ships, crews, planes, and pilots far more quickly than the Japanese can. They can increasingly read Japanese codes, and use the knowledge they gain to apply scarce resources where they count the most. They also still have a reserve of naval strength in the Atlantic-much smaller than in our time-line, but still formidable and available in case of a severe enough emergency.
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| Course of the Pacific War-(May-November 1942):
The Japanese command wants to do four things.
The Japanese are somewhat divided as to which of those objectives should be given the most weight. Isolating Java and cutting off Australia take priority initially, with the other two objectives to be pursued later. The US and its allies want to finish the Japanese as a major power by the end of 1942 so that the US can swing the weight of its military production against the Germans while the British and Soviets are still holding out. That's a lot easier to want than to do. The battles of the first months of 1942 have produced very heavy casualties for the Allies, and especially the US. On the other hand, the Japanese have lost enough of their small, highly trained band of pilots that the quality of their air power is already noticeably lower than in December 1941. Japanese pre-war pilots were the product of over four years of training, and most of them had actual combat experience in China. Japan can't replace those men at the rate they are being lost. The Australian government is desperately trying to train an army capable of taking on the Japanese if they break through the defense lines in the East Indies and invade northern Australia. The best Australian divisions are in North Africa, and the British are very reluctant to release them, given the desperate situation there. The Australians are also desperately trying to ramp up weapons production in case the Japanese succeed in cutting off the sea-lanes to Australia. The Australians are designing fighter planes and tanks with a reasonable amount of combat potential, just as they did in our time-line. They just need to get those designs into production in time for them to be useful, and that isn't proving to be easy. The Allies are for the most part still on the defensive, though they are actually retaking ground on Java. The Japanese respond by pouring more men into that battleground, moving divisions in from China. The naval battle for the East Indies is still fought mainly by cruisers and destroyers, with land-based aircraft playing a strong role. Carriers don't like operating in the kinds of narrow seas that they would need to in order to play a role in that struggle. Carriers do clash repeatedly in the other arm of the Japanese offensive, the one attempting to isolate Australia. As noted in last installment, there are carrier battles in this time-line. One corresponds roughly with our time-line's Battle of the Coral Sea. Land, air, and sea battles swirl around New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The Japanese still score tactical victories, and they still have an edge in actual combat in the air and at sea. That gap is rapidly narrowing though, and the US edge in production, damage control, and ability to rapidly get damaged ships back in action makes its weight felt. As the summer wears on, the tide turns slowly but definitely against the Japanese. They can't win a war of attrition against the US, and that is what they are being forced into on nearly a dozen battlefronts. As in our time-line, US pilots devise strategies to neutralize the advantages of the very maneuverable Japanese fighters, while the US navy keeps closing the gap between themselves and the Japanese navy. As in our time-line, the US has managed to salvage and repair some of the battleships sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor. With reinforcements from the Atlantic, the US Pacific fleet is numerically coming closer and closer to matching the Japanese. The Japanese know that they have to win big and soon. That means forcing the US fleet to fight a showdown battle, and then destroying it. With the East Indies still in play, the Japanese simply don't have the manpower or transports to attempt an attack on Midway, at least not without giving up their attempt to cut the sea-lanes to Australia. At the same time, they need to bring the US carriers to battle. The US doesn't necessarily need an all-out naval battle at this point, and is only willing to accept one if it holds most of the cards, or if it absolutely has to. If the Japanese can't force a battle at Midway, they need to find some other way to force it. They decide to do so by an all-out carrier-supported push down the Solomons and to New Caledonia. That would finish isolating Australia, something the US can't allow. US code-breaking gives ample warning of the push, and of the typically over-elaborate Japanese plan. That plan involves feints against the Australian east coast and Port Moresby in New Guinea, and a series of landing along the Solomon Island chain. As at Midway, US code-breaking allows the US to concentrate their carriers at the crucial point and score a victory of sorts in August 1942. Unlike Midway, that victory is not decisive. Midway was a matter of both luck and skill, unlikely to be reproduced in a different time-line. The US loses two carriers, with another one severely damaged. The Japanese lose four carriers in the battle itself and another light carrier as Japanese forces rush back from their diversionary attacks to join in the battle. For the time being, the Pacific War has suddenly stopped being a carrier war. Both sides are very close to out of carriers for the time being, and are unwilling to risk their remaining carriers. Battleships and heavy cruisers come into their own for a time, though they still have to worry about ground-based aircraft. The US has also scored an important moral victory, which has an unexpected downside. The US takes advantage of the Japanese preoccupation with the fleet battle to run a small fleet of fast transport ships and a destroyer escort through directly from Hawaii to the besieged garrison on the Bataan peninsula. The US actually planned to do something like that in our time-line, but Bataan fell before they could get it organized. The downside of the blockade-running episode quickly becomes apparent. The Japanese had been content to starve the Bataan garrison out. They have now lost face and retaliate by moving quickly to crush that garrison, diverting three more divisions from China and Manchuria to do so. The Japanese plan to clean up each of the little pockets of bypassed Allied troops in turn, starting with Bataan. Bataan's defenders are sick, half-starved, and low on ammunition, but they still put up a good fight. The garrison finally surrenders in early September, though Corregidor still holds out. The new Japanese divisions are battered enough in the fighting that they are not immediately usable for additional attacks. On the other battlefields, the war rages on. The Japanese have been pushed back to a tiny toe-hold on Bali, but they dig in and pour in reinforcements. They are also losing ground in Timor, as the allies gain air superiority over much of the region. The biggest battle is on Java. The Japanese have poured more and more troops onto the island, and by now have over 150,000 men there. The Allies have partially matched that buildup, and have far more firepower on the island. US casualties have been very heavy. Those casualties, plus the loss of Bataan are a major blow to morale at home. Midterm elections are coming in November. The Roosevelt administration can't totally ignore the electoral impact of its decisions. It also can't ignore the impact of those decisions on US morale. The US needs to off-set the loss of Bataan with a victory. They actually get two in mid-October. The US has built up a force of several hundred M3 Medium tanks and M4 Shermans on Java. Java is not ideal tank country, but there are places where the US tanks can be effective. An allied offensive led by those tanks simply rolls over Japanese defenses and kills nearly forty thousand Japanese, nearly as many as Japan used to conquer Java in our time-line. That victory, nice as it is, is just the first of two punches. The second one comes in the form of a US landing in northern Sumatra to support British and Australian forces that are holding out there. That threatens vital air fields and oil installations that the Japanese hold in southern Sumatra. As winter approaches, the two sides in the Pacific War are frantically trying to rebuild their carrier forces, fighting and dying or surviving on or around nearly a dozen island battlefronts, and trying desperately to keep those forces supplied. The Japanese control more territory than they did at the beginning of the summer, but they are in a far weaker position. The core of their carrier force is gone, along with irreplaceable highly trained pilots. They have lost ground on the key island of Java. They are locked in a battle of attrition with an enemy that can out-produce them by a wide margin in every category of weapon, and is doing so. They have access to some of the East Indies oil fields that they needed, but that access is nowhere near secure. Allied air forces on Java are already raiding Japanese-held oil facilities on Borneo and Sumatra. The Japanese desperately need help. The Germans are not in a position to give that help just yet. The Germans have consistently met Japanese requests for action against the US with demands for Japanese action against the Soviet Union. The Japanese are in no position to meet those demands. The War on the Eastern Front (May 1942-November 1942): By May 1942, the war on the Eastern Front in this time-line has already diverged subtly from its path in ours. Front lines are in roughly the same place. Soviet casualties from their winter offensive are a little higher than they were in our time-line--fifty to a hundred thousand additional dead, wounded, or captured. The additional casualties are the result of reduced Lend-Lease compared to our time-line-fewer US tanks, planes, and more importantly fewer Lend-Lease boots, uniforms, field telephones, and less Lend-Lease food. The Soviet food situation is disastrous. The Germans have captured territory that produced more than half of the Soviet food supply before the war. In our time-line, the US shipped enough food to the Soviet Union in 1942 to feed at least a million men. In this time-line some food has been shipped, but the shipping requirements of the Pacific War take priority. There is always a crisis, and the Soviet Union does not have priority over the urgent requirements of US soldiers. As in our time-line, the Soviets deal with the food crisis in an extremely ruthless but utilitarian way. Soldiers and workers in war-related industries get enough food to stay alive and keep doing their jobs. Anything left after those requirements are met goes to the rest of the population. Less Lend-Lease food has meant several hundred thousand additional Soviet civilian deaths from hunger or malnutrition since December 1941. That toll will go a lot higher before the next harvest without more food aid. Soviet troops are somewhat less mobile in this time-line's May 1942 than in ours due to the fact that they have fewer Lend-Lease trucks. They are somewhat less capable of coordinating large-scale offensives than they were in our time-line because they have fewer Lend Lease radios and field telephones. They have about twenty percent fewer combat aircraft to work with, because the US and Britain have sent fewer planes and less aluminum. As in our time-line, the Germans are concentrating their forces for an offensive in the southern part of the Eastern Front. They don't have the resources for a broad offensive like the one they launched in 1941. As in our time-line, the Soviets make a German offensive easier by throwing away their reserves in that area by launching an ambitious early summer offensive. The Germans manage to cut off several hundred thousand Soviet troops. Some of those men break out of the pocket, but generally without their heavy weapons. The German offensive follows quickly. It takes essentially the same form that it did in our time-line initially. The Germans intend to do a two stage offensive. Stage one should take them to the Don River, cut Soviet river traffic at the Volga at some point (not necessarily Stalingrad), then set up defensive positions to protect the northern flank of the second stage. The second stage should then head south into the Caucasus to capture the Soviet oil fields and refineries. In our time-line Hitler switched from a two-stage offensive to a simultaneous one after the offensive had started-a decision that made what had been a long-shot offensive into an i mpossible one. We'll look at whether or not he makes that same decision in this time-line later in the scenario. The Soviets have a very significant card up their sleeve. They are building up a huge strategic reserve of men, artillery and tanks. Those divisions are being trained and armed for use only in decisive operations-operations with the potential to win the war quickly. Stalin is still thinking in those terms. He thought he could essentially crush the Germans in the winter of 1941/42. Now he is thinking in terms of essentially winning the war by the end of 1942, and he is ruthlessly starving front-line troops of equipment and manpower to give him the tools to do that. The German high command should be aware of the Soviet strategic reserve. As in our time-line, some of their intelligence people have a pretty good idea what it consists of. Hitler and some of the people around him are already starting to engage in the kind of wishful thinking that cost the Germans so much in our time-line though, and reports of Soviet strategic reserves are essentially ignored. The German offensive proceeds pretty much the way it did in our time-line in late June and the early part of July. The Germans capture a few thousand more prisoners and a few more heavy weapons because the Soviets have fewer trucks, which makes them a little less mobile than they were in our time-line. The Luftwaffe has somewhat more of a free hand to destroy communications and supply lines than they did in our time-line because the Soviets have fewer planes to oppose them. That makes it harder for the Soviets to keep a strategic withdrawal from becoming a rout. It also reduces the attrition rate for the Luftwaffe somewhat. Ironically, German ground casualties are higher during this period than in our time-line, because Soviet forces find themselves forced to fight their way out of encirclement or near encirclement more often. Of course, that also means higher Soviet casualties during this period, which may become important later. Hitler is impatient with the relatively slow progress in the offensive, but less so than in our time-line. The British aren't a significant threat in the west by themselves, and it looks like the US will be fully involved in the Pacific for at least another year or two. That calculation leads to some serious divergences from our time-line. The Germans make the intended broad front offensive toward the Don and the Volga. As a result, they manage to cut off and destroy the bulk of the Soviet forces that would have fought them in Stalingrad in our time-line. Stalin isn't ready to let 'his' city fall without a fight, but the crisis arises too quickly for the Soviets to move forces from their strategic reserve in an organized manner. The Soviets move some reinforcements into the city and improvise a defense that does inflict a considerable number of casualties on the Germans, but Stalingrad falls by the end of July. The more rapid advance of German troops also nets the Germans a propaganda windfall. The Germans capture equipment that appears to be designed for bacteriological warfare. At the same time, as in our time-line, an incapacitating disease called tularemia hits soldiers in German panzer divisions, and also sickens nearly a hundred thousand Soviet civilians. The Germans show off their finds to a skeptical world. Hitler authorizes a major German effort to find and produce bacterial weapons. That will take a while though, and the Hitler wants to find some way to retaliate immediately. He very reluctantly authorizes use of war gases against the Soviets, starting with bombing raids on Leningrad. The raids start using World War I-style gases, but the Germans begin preparing to use nerve gases too. After taking Stalingrad, the Germans pause to regroup, then launch the second stage of the offensive. They make good progress in early August, but by the end of that month their offensive strength is starting to fade. The offensive slows to a crawl as the Soviets pour in reinforcements to protect the oil fields. The minor oil fields around Maykop fall to the Germans around August 19. The Germans do score a major victory in the eastern part of the front, breaking through and sweeping to the Caspian Sea near Astrakhan. That cuts the Caucasus off from overland communications with the rest of the Soviet Union, though Soviet forces there can still be supplied across the Caspian and through Persia. Persia is officially neutral but is jointly occupied by the Soviets and British. The Germans also reach Grozny, partly due to revolts against the Soviets by the Chechens and related ethnic groups. They reach the Caspian Sea again not far from Grozny, cutting off nearly 150,000 Soviet troops from overland contact with the rest of the Soviet forces. The Germans do bog down well short of their objectives of Baku and Batumi though. The failure of the Caucasus part of the offensive leads to Hitler personally taking command of the German forces, something he did a month or so earlier in our time-line. That in turn leads to a series of blunders that squander September and early October with only tiny German gains. The stalemate in the Caucasus does leave the Germans close enough to the remaining Soviet oil facilities that even the short-range tactically oriented Luftwaffe can easily hit those facilities. They do so in a series of heavy raids that go on through October and early November. Soviet oil production is very vulnerable to those raids because of the Soviet tendency to build huge concentrated facilities. The Germans have captured areas that contained a great deal of Soviet refining capability and some small oil fields. The Soviets have managed to destroy or at least temporarily put out of commission almost everything that can't be moved from the German occupied areas, so the Germans aren't able to get much use out of their gains in the short term. On the other hand, the Germans have captured or destroyed a substantial portion of the Soviet oil refining capacity, and made getting the remainder of the Caucasus oil to Soviet armies and factories very difficult. That will start having an impact quickly if the Soviets can't get the Germans out of the Caucasus and repair the damage. Lack of oil is already starting to cut Soviet production a little. The British supply some refined oil from their giant refinery at Basra, but that oil has to travel a round-about path to get to most of the Soviet Union. As November 1942 begins, the Soviets are ready to launch their winter offensive. Stalin finally releases a substantial part of the strategic reserve he has built up. The offensive is fairly close to what they launched in our time-line. It will come in two stages. First, the Soviets will attempt to break through German forces and regain contact with the Soviet forces trapped against the Caspian sea. When the Germans react to that offensive, the Soviets will attempt to break through Romanian forces near Stalingrad and attempt to encircle any Axis troops in the vicinity of the city. They will then attempt a drive on Rostov, hopefully cutting off the bulk of the German army fighting in the Caucasus. As in our time-line, the Soviets also plan an even larger offensive against German Army Group Center. They plan to cut off a bulge in the German lines near Rze???, then follow with an offensive intended to destroy the bulk of that Army Group by the end of the winter, effectively winning the war before spring. That's extremely ambitious, maybe too ambitious. The situation on the eve of the Soviet offensive: The Soviets have managed to pull off a miracle of production and training. Even without much in the way of Lend-Lease they have trained and equipped enormous new armies to replace the ones the Germans destroyed. From October 1941 through October 1942 they have produced nearly 20,000 military aircraft, while the Germans have produced maybe 15,000. The Soviets have produced nearly 10,000 heavy and medium tanks (T34 and KV1) so far in 1942, along with over 8,500 light tanks. For a country that has seen much of its most highly developed territory fought over or occupied, that is an incredible feat. Production is a little lower than in our time-line because Lend Lease shipments of key materials like rubber, copper, and aluminum have been delayed, and because oil to run Soviet factories and transportation is starting to dry up, but Soviet production of key weapons like tanks and aircraft are still 80 to 90% of what they were in our time-line. The Soviets have a lot to be proud of. At the same time, Soviet forces are considerably weaker at the start of their offensive than they were in our time-line. Slightly lower production adds up over time. So does the absence of Lend Lease production. For example, in November 1942, the Soviets have nearly 3000 fewer light tanks than they did in our time-line. More importantly, they have nearly 2000 fewer T34s and KV-1s than they did in our time-line. They have about 70 percent of the light tanks and a little over two-thirds the number of T34s and KV-1s that they had in our time-line. They have several thousand fewer military aircraft available to them.
Soviet forces are also considerably less
mobile. Lend Lease trucks are beginning to show up
in small quantities, and are very much in demand, however they have not
arrived in the quantities the Soviets need due to shortages in
shipping. Without those trucks, the Soviets
will have a difficult time supplying troops in a mobile battle,
especially given the state of
the Soviet railroad network. The Soviet production miracle has come at
a cost. The Soviet
railroad system has been running far beyond its sustainable capacity,
and is breaking down in
the fall of 1942. The US has promised to ship hundreds of locomotives
and thousands of railcars, but so far that equipment has not
materialized. The US has more pressing requirements elsewhere. The Soviet production miracle hasn't extended to mundane items like boots, uniforms, and spare tires, all of which are in short supply. It also hasn't extended to radios, field telephones, and reliable telegraph wire. All of those things are in short supply, and they are just as vital to an army as tanks and planes. In our time-line Lend Lease filled most of those gaps. In this time-line the Soviets simply have to do without many of those items. A year-and-a-half of war hasn't just worn out the Soviet rail system. It has also worn down the Soviet people. Extremely hard work in harsh conditions without enough food or the right kinds of food are wearing Soviet workers down. Defense workers don't face actual starvation yet, at least outside of Leningrad, but people not vital to the war effort are starving. Compared to our time-line, the Soviets have lost over a million additional civilians due to starvation, and several hundred thousand additional civilians to disease by November 1942. The Germans are in somewhat better shape than in our time-line in some ways, but worse off in others. The quick capture of Stalingrad means that their forces are in somewhat better fighting shape than in our time-line. Their air force is in much better shape because they don't have to deal with anywhere near as many Soviet planes, and because they haven't had to pull hundreds of fighters, bombers, and transports out of the eastern front to deal with Operation Torch (the Anglo-American landing in French North Africa). Their army has substantially more reserves because men aren't being poured into Tunisia to fight the Torch landings, and because the Germans haven't had to send ten divisions to occupy Vichy France. Also, German forces aren't concentrated in Stalingrad in a position to be easily cut off. On the other hand, too many German panzer divisions are too deep in the Caucasus, and too many miles of their flanks are covered by low quality Romanian or Italian divisions. They are also commanded by Hitler, and Hitler is an amateur at commanding armies. The use of poison gas has also backfired to some extent. Both the Soviets and the Germans are routinely using gas now. The British have refrained from joining in that so far, and the Germans have reciprocated by not using chemical weapons in North Africa or on hit-and-run air raids on Britain. That restraint is going to be very difficult to sustain over the long run though. Both the Germans and the Soviets officially deny using germ warfare. Both are apparently using it to some extent. Leningrad suffers a typhus outbreak that looks suspiciously like a germ warfare attack. The Soviet Union as a whole sees the spread of several epidemic diseases, though that is primarily due to malnutrition and large-scale populations movements. Areas where pro-Soviet partisans are strong find themselves with more disease problems than normal. Those areas are also prime targets for German chemical weapons. The Germans see more outbreaks of tularemia, along with another disease called Q-fever. Both sides clamp even tighter than normal controls on movements of their populations to prevent large-scale spread of epidemics. From the German point of view, chemical warfare creates more problems than biological warfare. In spite of their image as a modern mechanized force, they are very dependent on horses to move supplies and heavy equipment to the bulk of their army, especially infantry divisions. Horses are almost impossible to protect from chemical weapons, and the Germans are losing more horses than they can replace. The Soviets are having the same problem to some extent, but the Germans suffer more if they lose mobility. The Germans may get a boost in the long run because the air campaign against the Soviet oil wells has highlighted the German failures in the heavy bomber department. Hitler demands that something be done about that, and the Germans put higher priority on getting their long- delayed and problem-plagued heavy bomber-the Heinkel 177--truly operational or replacing it. That may pay dividends in a year or so, if the war goes on that long. The Soviets are very vulnerable to a long-range heavy bomber. That's the state of affairs in early November, when the Soviets launch their offensive. North Africa-Summer/Fall 1942: North Africa is England's major battlefield in 1942. The Italians also have most of their strength there. The Germans have more men and equipment in the area than they want to, but not much by Eastern Front standards-a couple of divisions, a few hundred tanks, and a few hundred aircraft. In the summer of 1942, the Allies are significantly weaker in North Africa than in our time-line. The flow of Lend-Lease tanks to North Africa has been slowed by the US emphasis on the Pacific theatre. In our time-line, Lend Lease Stuarts and Lee/Grants made up as much as half of the British tank force in the summer of 1942, and the most effective and reliable part of it. Just as important, the Axis is stronger in North Africa. In our time-line, British forces on Malta made the flow of Axis supplies to North Africa very precarious. The Germans and the Italians responded in both time-lines by using air and sea power to cut Malta off from British reinforcements and starve the island out. In our time-line, the British kept the island functioning as a base by fighting through convoys and flying fighters off the decks of carriers to reinforce the island's offensive power. In our time-line, keeping Malta operational was a very close-run thing in early-to-mid 1942. In this time-line things are much worse for the British. Their navy is stretched to the limit in the Atlantic, and the US is not in a position to help them. In our time-line, the US actually sent an aircraft carrier close enough to Malta that British Spitfire fighters could fly off of it and land on the island. In this time-line, the US is not in a position to do that. As a result of all of this, Malta can't regain offensive capability quickly like it did in our time-line. The flow of battle goes back and forth much as it did in our time-line until late June. Then, between June 20 and July 7, 1942 Rommel's German and Italian forces cut the bulk of the Commonwealth forces in North Africa to pieces, trapping the remnants in front of El Alamein. The Axis troops advance toward the Suez Canal. The British don't have much left to stop them. British troops hastily move west from Iraq and Iran, and the US suddenly gives the task of shipping tanks to the Middle East the high priority that it didn't have earlier in the summer. In spite of the belated buildup, Axis troops reach the Suez canal. British ships in Egyptian harbors sail for Gibraltar. The weak Egyptian army switches sides. Arab nationalists revolt in both Palestine and Syria. Arab nationalists in Iraq watch carefully for a chance to revive the revolt that the British crushed there in 1941. Nationalists in Iran also weigh their chances of throwing out British and Soviet occupying forces. The British can no longer use the Suez Canal and that makes the British position in the Eastern Mediterranean very precarious. Cyprus is vulnerable, and Turkey feels a great deal of pressure from the Germans to join the Axis or at least to allow German troops to transit the country. The Turks generally evade those German demands but do give the Germans increased supplies of some strategic natural resources. The British still control the southern part of Egypt and the Sudan. The Germans and Italians can't advance much further without dealing with British forces in southern Egypt. The crisis in the Middle East eats up scarce shipping space through August, September, and October of 1942. Hitler would love to grab the Middle East and attack the Soviet Union through Iran and/or Turkey. Unfortunately for the Axis, the Italian and German troops at the Suez Canal are at the end of a long and precarious supply line that can barely keep them in food and ammunition even without further advances. Access to Egyptian ports helps, and the Axis ships some supplies from Greece across the Eastern Mediterranean to those ports. That route is vulnerable to attacks from British-held Palestine, Syria, or Cyprus though. The Germans and Italians consider an airborne assault on Cyprus, but the heavy losses the Germans suffered in Crete in 1941 make Hitler reluctant to authorize that. An airborne assault on Malta is more likely. As in our time-line, the Germans and Italians have been planning such an assault for some time. Overall balance November 1942: Much more than in our time-line, this is still a war that could go either way. The Japanese have to win soon, or they will quickly run out of oil and cease to be a major factor. The Soviets face a long, cold winter with too little food and too little oil. Soviet war production will drop dramatically in the next few months, no matter what happens on the battlefield. Their industry is dependent on oil, and the supply will not come close to meeting their needs until they kick the Germans out of the Caucasus and then rebuild the damaged oil infrastructure. Rebuilding oil production will take months, maybe even a year or more. The Germans have made some major gains, but they are still a long way from knocking out either the British or the Soviets. Hitler figures that he has another six months before US production weighs in decisively, maybe a little more if the U-boat campaign cuts British shipping enough. Hitler sees the US as Germany's main enemy in the long run, and his U-boat commanders are champing at the bit to go after vulnerable US shipping. At the same time, the Germans are gradually becoming aware of the huge amount of arms that the US is producing. Until the Soviets are out of the war, the Germans are not going to attack the US, no matter how much Hitler would like to. The entry of biological and chemical warfare into the equation is frightening. The Germans had not pursued offensive biological warfare to any great extent until the summer of 1942, but they are now working hard and ruthlessly to make up for lost time. They are also working hard to produce nerve gases in large enough quantities to make their use decisive if the Germans decide to go that route. Biological and chemical weapons are a wild card. No one knows exactly who they will hurt the most, but decision-makers on both sides have to keep their potential in mind.
And that's about it for now.
Where do we go from here? The key is still shipping.
The US can out-produce Germany, Japan, and Italy combined in every
major weapons category. So far in 1942, the problem has been getting
those weapons where they are needed. Training
the people to operate those weapons has also been a problem, but that
should go away by mid-1943. If the British and Soviets hold out, and
the Allies solve their shipping problems,
the Axis will probably eventually lose. If the Germans can sink enough
Allied shipping to isolate Britain and keep significant Lend Lease from
getting to the Soviet Union, they still
have a shot at winning the war. So, what happens next? Quibbles and potential problems so far: I try to let scenario segments cool for a while, then go back and look for implausible events and other flaws. I also look for areas where cause and effect relationships aren't clear. Potential weaknesses: Would the US really cut back substantially on Lend-Lease shipments if it was only fighting in the Pacific? The US probably wouldn't set out to cut back on Lend Lease shipments, but stopping the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies would take an all-out national effort, with shipping and naval power as the main bottlenecks. Given that, it would be very difficult for the US to divert shipping urgently needed for the Pacific War to fronts of a war the US isn't even in. Once the US makes a major effort to keep the East Indies out of Japanese hands, the stakes become very high for the United States. The US can't afford to lose. If they do, thousands of US troops will be killed or subjected to very cruel Japanese captivity. Once US troops are on Java and Timor, and Bali, and the other islands in force, it becomes very difficult to extract them if they lose. The first half of 1942 is a time of crisis for the US in the Pacific. Just as that crisis starts to ease, the British defeat in North Africa creates another crisis that requires that maximum possible forces and material be sent to meet it. Could the Allies really hold the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies? That's a tough one. Even with the entire US national effort focused on the Pacific that would be a very close run thing. The Japanese were very formidable in 1941 and 1942. They had a lot of divisions in China and Manchuria that could intervene in the East Indies battles if necessary. The Allies would have a major advantage in firepower and armor, but would have a horrible time on both land and sea. The Japanese would find it nearly impossible to dislodge US troops from prepared positions. They had no real answer to the sheer number of machine guns, artillery and tanks that US forces could muster. I suspect that would be the decisive factor, especially once US forces gained combat experience. Stopping Japan in the East Indies would be very costly for the US, both in men and materials, probably more costly than any campaign in our time-line, but I think it could have been done if the US was fighting a one-ocean war. Isn't having Hitler go for Stalingrad, then the Caucasus a second point of divergence? I don't know. Hitler's decisions often appeared irrational, and some of them were. At the same time, they weren't usually totally out of the blue. Hitler had to look at the economic and political impacts of his decisions, as well as the military considerations. He also had good reason to believe that the German generals by and large under-estimated the capabilities of the German army, and over-estimated the capabilities of opponents. That had certainly proven true in France. Hitler also engaged in strategic wishful thinking as the war turned against Germany. Things needed to be a certain way in order for Germany to win, so he tended to convince himself that they were that way. In our time-line Germany had to effectively knock the Soviets out of the war in 1942, or they would ultimately lose the war. In this time-line there wouldn't be that kind of urgency. The Germans have pushed the British off the continent rather easily twice, and there is no reason to believe that they can't do it again. The Germans don't absolutely have to knock out the Soviets in 1942, so Hitler doesn't need to convince himself that the Soviets are finished. Also, the Soviet army has fought harder in the south, mainly because it hasn't had the mobility to get away from the Germans to the same extent it did in our time-line. Ironically, that both weakens the Soviets, and prevents Hitler from concluding that the Soviets are weaker than they actually are. What about this Germ Warfare business? Isn't that a little out there? I'm not sure. Ken Alibek, a former Soviet bio-war bigwig claims that the Soviets did use germ warfare against the Germans in 1942 and again in 1943 in our time-line. I can't verify that completely, and I obviously can't be sure that a more rapid German advance would lead to the Germans capturing bio-war equipment. It's a wild card. Real history is full of wild cards, but I try to limit them in my AH scenarios. I went with this one because it leads to some interesting consequences down the road. I wrote that section before September 11 and before the Anthrax scares. I thought about eliminating that portion after the attack, but decided that if it was legitimate alternate history before September 11, it is still legitimate alternate history. But would Hitler allow chemical warfare? Under normal circumstance, no. If he is looking for a way to retaliate against biological warfare, maybe. He doesn't really have many other options in the short run. The Germans apparently did not have much of an offensive biological warfare capability. Hitler would definitely want to retaliate immediately. Chemical weapons would be about the only option that they weren't already using. Comments are very welcome. Click to e-mail me.
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Copyright 2001 By Dale R. Cozort |