What has happened so far:This time-line started out with a US triumph. US planes based in the Philippines retaliated for Pearl Harbor by launching a successful raid on Japanese airbases on Taiwan, rather than dithering for hours and finally getting caught on the ground by Japanese air raids. The success of the US air raid was exaggerated by US military and political leaders desperate for a triumph during a period of adversity. 

That has had major adverse long-term consequences for the alliance against Hitler. It pulls US resources into the Pacific for two reasons. First, the US raid rekindled Hitler’s doubts about Japanese fighting ability, leading him to postpone a declaration of war. Germany’s deteriorating position in the Soviet Union turns that postponement into a long-term thing. Germany has its plate full, and Hitler decides to concentrate on knocking the Soviet Union and Britain out of the war before taking on the US. Second, the US triumph in the Philippines makes the Philippines too important politically to write off. 

Militarily the US would be better off if they could simply write the Philippines off. US forces there are pawns that the US would be better off sacrificing from a military point of view. From a political point of view, the early US victory there, combined with the lack of a German declaration of war has upgraded the Philippines from pawn to major player, as Roosevelt finds out in the November 1942 Congressional elections.

Defending the Philippines means making a major effort to defend the Dutch East Indies, and that effort has pulled US strength into the Pacific and away from aid to Britain and the Soviet Union. Moving troops and equipment across the Pacific in numbers large enough to stop the Japanese in early 1942 strained US resources to the limit. That’s especially true of US shipping. 

In our time-line every Allied move in 1942 and the first half of 1943 was constrained by one question: Is there enough shipping? In this time-line, the US has a great deal more shipping available to it because German subs have not had an opportunity to run amok against unprepared US shipping in early 1942. On the other hand, those subs have taken a somewhat greater toll of British shipping than they did in our time-line because that’s where they have been concentrating their efforts. US shipping is pulled to the Pacific, more than offsetting the additional shipping available. 

The Japanese have to take the Dutch East Indies or they will run out of oil and lose the war. They pull out all of the stops to do so, and in the spring and summer of 1942 they are very close to more than the US can handle, even without a two ocean war. With the US facing a series of crises in the Pacific, Lend-Lease doesn’t go away entirely, but it does take lower priority than the needs of US forces fighting for survival. 

The lower level of Lend-Lease hurts Britain and the Soviet Union directly in that they have fewer US tanks, planes, and trucks. It also hurts them indirectly in that their own production of tanks, planes and trucks faces bottlenecks that US took care of in our time-line. 

As a result of the decreased Lend-Lease, the Germans do considerably better in 1942 and early 1943 than they did in our time-line. In the Soviet Union, they have reached some of the small and medium-sized oil fields of the Caucasus. They have also cut off land access from the remaining Caucasus fields directly to the Soviet Union. 

The Soviets are forced to take oil from their remaining fields across the Caspian Sea by tanker ships or across Iran by trucks. The Soviets don’t have enough trucks or tanker ships to maintain the flow of oil. Also, the Germans are close enough to the remaining oil fields to attack the oil fields and refineries from the air, as well as the tanker ships and trucks trying to get the oil out. 

The Caucasus oil accounted for about 85% of Soviet oil production. Soviet factories depend on that oil to keep running, especially since the Germans took areas producing around 65% of Soviet coal earlier in the war. As the flow of that oil slows to a trickle, Soviet war production also slows. Soviet armies become much less mobile. That is a major factor in the failure of this time-line’s equivalent of the Soviet Stalingrad offensive to achieve strategic as opposed to tactical success. 

In this time-line’s North Africa and the Middle East, the Germans have achieved what looks like a smashing success, but really isn’t—at least not so far. In the summer of 1942, the Germans and Italians routed British forces in a series of battles in North Africa. They then pushed on through Egypt to the Suez Canal and then beyond it, finally sweeping through Iraq with the help of Arab nationalist revolts. 

That’s sounds much more impressive than it actually is. The Germans are a few mobile divisions at the end of an extremely tenuous supply line. They have only gotten as far as they have by living off of captured British supplies and because of the extreme weakness of British forces. Once they stop moving, which they are forced to at the Iran/Iraq border, they are in a very difficult position, with British forces in upper Egypt and the Sudan threatening a long, weakly held flank. 

On the other hand, the Germans have disrupted the flow of oil to the British forces, adding another complication to allied logistics. 

Shipping and oil: Logistics has been and will continue to be vital to this war. The flow of oil, ammunition, and food to the front is ultimately at least as important as the fighting ability of troops or the brilliance of commanders. Shipping has been a constant problem for the Allies, while lack of oil has been a constant problem for the Axis. The Allied shipping shortage started to ease a bit by late summer of 1942, but the crisis in the Middle East tightened things up again, especially when German sabotage cut off most of British oil refining in the area. The US is ramping up the building of new merchant shipping. It is also substituting other means of transportation for shipping whenever possible. For example, oil that used to be shipped by tanker from one part of the US to another now goes by pipeline, and raw material that would have been shipped is often sent by rail. The Axis countries are also trying to eliminate their oil shortages. The Germans are working frantically to get captured oil fields back into production, and expand their coal gasification plants. Oil is vital. The course of the war in the Pacific in 1943 illustrates that. 

March 1943-January 1944: Pacific theatre. The Japan of late 1941 and 1942 was very powerful, but without a great deal of staying power. Japan can’t afford to fight a war of attrition with the US, and that is exactly what it has been forced to do. 

As the Japanese weaken, the US is also building up naval superiority. Both the US and Japanese navies were severely weakened in the battles of late 1942, but the US is able to rebuild more quickly. As the first half of 1943 wears on, the US navy becomes numerically stronger than the Japanese. It still isn’t quite up to the Japanese level in terms of night-fighting skills, but it has closed the gap considerably. US production is the decisive factor. In 1942/43, the US builds 18 new aircraft carriers to 5 new Japanese carriers. That doesn’t even count the 39 new US escort carriers. In that same period, the US builds 212 new destroyers, compared to 20 new Japanese destroyers.

 With the increasing naval power, the US is also becoming bolder in a strategic sense. The US is reinforcing bypassed US and Filipino forces in the southern Philippines. That threatens to totally cut off Japanese troops in Java, Sumatra and Borneo, not to mention the more remote islands where the Japanese and Americans are locked in battle. 

The US is also using its airpower to go after Japanese held oil installations in the Dutch East Indies, along with tankers taking oil from those installations to the home islands. That’s a war-winning strategy. The Japanese started the war with an oil reserve that they thought would last them somewhat over a year and a half. War time oil consumption has been much higher than expected, and Japan’s prewar reserves have been used up by February 1943, though oil from the East Indies has added in a one or two month supply. 

Oil production from the East Indies fields has been much lower than expected. The Japanese don’t control all of those fields and the ones they do control are close enough to Allied-held territory that the Allies can harass them with bombing raids. By April 1943, the Japanese are totally dependent on new oil production, and living hand-to-mouth on less than 20 percent of the oil their war-time economy needs. That’s disastrous militarily. Military production tumbles from levels that are already too low. The Japanese navy has to carefully build up oil stockpiles before every major operation. 

The Japanese oil shortage gives the US navy more and more a free hand in isolating and picking off Japanese garrisons. It also makes it difficult for the Japanese to move troops around, or even escort the crucial oil tankers. By May of 1943, Japan’s power has slipped enough that the US pushes Japanese forces out of southern Sumatra, recapturing the oil wells there, and making the Japanese oil problems even more severe. The US also pushes the Japanese out of Bali, and compresses the remaining Japanese forces on Java into two die-hard pockets. The US now controls the air over the southern Philippines, and is flying in specialists to build up US and Filipino forces there. The Japanese still hold Borneo and several other islands between Java and the Philippines, but US air power has been able to suppress Japanese naval and air power in the area enough that US aircraft and occasional fast ships can make a still-dangerous dash through to the Philippines. 

The US now has B17s based in the southern Philippines, where they fly support missions against Japanese forces around Corregidor. The Corrigedor garrison is still in a desperate position, but the US can now get a much needed trickle of aid through to that garrison.

 By June 1943, the Japanese appear to be on the ropes. Lack of oil cripples military production and renders its navy nearly useless. Taking capital ships out to battle requires an enormous amount of oil, so Japan has to carefully plan and stockpile oil for any major operation. That in turn makes it easier for the US to interfere with oil production and shipments, which leads to a downward spiral. The Japanese desperately try to expand their small coal-gasification program, and find substitutes for oil in their increasingly starving economy. 

The US takes advantage of the Japanese weakness to launch a major amphibious landing on Halmahera Island between New Guinea and Celebes. At almost the same time, a joint British and American force from Sumatra lands on the Malaysian peninsula, trying to cut off Japanese troops in Singapore and in the lower peninsula. The US forces quickly take Halmahera, opening the way to the southern Philippines. As the US builds airbases on the island, land-based US airpower dominates the oceans along the eastern edge of Borneo. 

The US quickly consolidates its hold on the southern Philippines, and uses airbases there to dominate the sea lanes north from Borneo. The Malaysian landing has a more difficult time because the Japanese can reinforce their troops over land rather than water, at least in the early stages of the campaign. The last Japanese troops aren’t cleared out of southern Malaysia and Singapore for several months. 

With the shipment of oil becoming more and more difficult, the Japanese are in a desperate position. Barring outside help, their position appears hopeless. They do have some aces up their sleeves though. As the Allies prepare to close in on the Japanese home islands, the Japanese begin kamikaze attacks. Those attacks are mainly aimed at US shipping, but some are aimed at the garrison of Corregidor which has frustrated the Japanese for so long. 

The Japanese still have large ground forces in China and especially Manchuria. They also have fairly large forces in Burma, Indochina, and upper Malaysia. They can’t get those forces to the decisive battles in the Pacific and the East Indies due to lack of shipping, but they can still take offensive action on the mainland of Asia, though even that capability is weakened by lack of fuel. 

In some ways, the Japanese are even more dangerous on the Asian mainland than they were in our time-line because fewer of their forces are tied down in Manchuria to defend against a potential Soviet invasion. We’ll look at the course of the war on the mainland to some extent later. 

The Japanese are cornered, and very dangerous. The US fights a series of hard, brutal battles through the second half of 1943 as they retake the rest of the Philippines and also launch an island-hopping campaign in the Central Pacific. The island-hopping campaign may or may not be necessary militarily, but the US navy strongly supports it. The Philippine campaign is becoming more and more an army affair, dominated by Douglas MacArthur, and the navy wants its independent part of the action.

 By November 1943, the US has bases from which B-29s can bomb the Japanese home islands, though the planes themselves still need some work before they can play the role that they later did in our time-line. By this time the Japanese economy is breaking down and the Japanese are close to starvation. To make matters worse, the US navy has finally launched an effective anti-shipping effort with its submarines, threatening to choke off the trickle of oil and raw materials that is still making it through to Japan. By late 1943 the US is facing much the same problem that it faced in our time-line after the defeat of Germany in 1945. At this point, Japan is defeated, but it shows no sign of wanting to surrender. 

How can the US end the war? In our time-line that problem was solved by use of the first atomic bombs. In this time-line development of those bombs is proceeding at roughly the same schedule they did in our time-line—which means they won’t be ready to be deployed for over a year and a half. The US has to invade the Japanese home islands in order to end the war. In our time-line people have long wondered whether dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was justified. In this time-line, the US spends the next year answering that question. 

The Eastern Front (March 1943-January 1944): At the end of March 1943, the Soviets are in bad shape and looking for a way out of the war. They’ve taken enormous losses while their ally Britain has escaped relatively intact. In spite of the best efforts of some very experienced economic planners, Soviet war production is dropping rapidly as oil supplies dry up and their transportation system falls apart from overuse. Soviet war production is around half the level that it was during the same period in our time-line. 

That production is almost certain to fall even further as the frantic and unsustainable efforts to maintain production wear out machinery and men, and as remaining oil stocks are depleted. As I note earlier, the Germans have taken or are interdicting areas that produced around 85% of the Soviet oil supply before the war. Through the winter the Soviets have worked frantically to conserve and replace that oil. Areas around industrial areas have been stripped bare of trees and the wood burned as a source of energy. Millions of Soviets have spent the winter freezing in the dark so that available fuel can keep the military and industrial machinery going. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens have died of starvation, disease, exposure, or a combination of the three. 

Leningrad is especially hard hit. It was difficult enough to keep Leningrad running without the fuel shortage and transportation problems. Those problems make Leningrad’s prospects even more dismal. The Soviet arms production problems have a more immediate affect on their fighting power than it would on most armies. Soviet weapons are designed around the strengths and weaknesses of Soviet industry. Soviet industry is good at producing large numbers of items. It isn’t good at making those things reliable or long-lasting. Soviet tanks, trucks, and planes are not designed to last a long time. They’re designed to be used up and replaced. For example, even if it isn’t knocked out the Soviets figure that a tank will be worn out in four months.

 The Soviets have received some help from the west, but only a trickle compared to what they need. As the shipping crisis eases a bit for Britain and the United States, political problems are making it increasingly difficult to get key materials to the Soviet Union. As I noted last issue, the Roosevelt administration and the new Republican-controlled Congress have locked horns over aid to the Soviet Union. The Republicans don’t necessarily oppose aiding the Soviets in principle, but they are emphatic that US and British forces take priority. They want the same kind of controls on aid to the Soviets that have imposed on Britain, including proof that aid is needed for the war effort. The Soviets have no intention of giving away that kind of information if they can avoid it. 

The Republicans also want Soviet concessions on postwar boundaries and accountability for Soviet-held Polish prisoners of war. The discovery of executed Polish prisoners of war that have apparently been executed by the Soviets complicates efforts at getting Lend Lease to the Soviets even further, especially since the Roosevelt Administration had certified that all Polish prisoners of war held by the Soviets had been accounted for. 

As noted in the last section, the Roosevelt administration has maneuvered to keep the aid flowing in spite of those political obstacles. The Soviets can still buy US goods as long as they pay for them in dollars, pounds, or gold. The Soviets are very reluctant to give the US any information on how long they can keep paying for weapons in that way. The Roosevelt Administration quietly arranges to take some of the economic pressure off of the Soviets by substituting US-made weapons for British ones that are then sent on to the Soviet Union. 

Those ploys keep some aid coming to the Soviets, but nowhere near enough to replace the lost Soviet production. It is getting harder and harder to physically get products to the Soviets. The Germans are in a position to interfere with Artic convoys from their bases in Norway. They have cut off the bulk of the Soviet Union from the easiest routes through Iran. German warplanes and commandos are working to interdict the remaining routes through Iran. That leaves the trans-Siberian route, which is safe but slow and relatively low-capacity, especially as the Soviet rail system deteriorates. 

As the spring muddy season ends, the Germans are in much better shape than they were in our time-line. Their tank and aircraft production is higher than Soviet production by a substantial margin—almost half again as high in the case of tanks. They have most of the manpower that they lost at Stalingrad in our time-line. Just as importantly, they have most of the artillery, trucks and other motor vehicles that they lost at Stalingrad in our time-line. That’s vital. In 1942, the Germans stripped divisions along most of the eastern front of much of their transport and firepower in order to make the offensive in the south possible. That meant that when the Germans got trapped at Stalingrad in our time-line they lost an enormous amount of artillery and transport. Richard Overy estimates that the Germans lost around 60,000 vehicles and 6,000 artillery pieces at Stalingrad. In this time-line most of that material is still available. That makes the Germans much more mobile and gives them a lot more firepower than they had in our time-line. 

On the other hand, the Germans have their problems. Hitler still thinks he’s a military genius. He’s really an amateur with a certain degree of tactical flair but no real understanding of how to run an army. His understanding of logistics is especially weak. The German army Hitler commands is nowhere near as good as it was in 1941. The German way of war is efficient in the short-term, but it gets a lot of bright, aggressive junior officers killed by putting them closer to the front than most armies would put them. Many of the bright, aggressive young officers that made German victories in 1940 and 1941, and 1942 possible are dead or invalids now. They aren’t available to rise through the ranks. In their place men with the right political connections or the ‘right’ ideology are rising through the ranks. 

The Germans have to stay on the offensive if they are going to win the war. In order to do that they need to remain more mobile than their opponents. They need to be able to keep their opponents off balance to keep superior numbers from wearing them down. The forces they are rebuilding don’t very well suited for that. For example, the new Tiger and Panther tanks are technological marvels and can outgun anything the Allies have in early 1943. At the same time, they are maintenance nightmares, not well suited for a continuing campaign of rapid movement. 

The Germans are also failing to produce enough trucks to keep up with losses. They are becoming less and less mobile as they are forced to substitute horses for trucks for more and more transport needs. The ongoing chemical and bacteriological warfare on the eastern front is making both sides less mobile. No one has figured out how to protect horses against chemicals or germs. Chemical attacks have killed tens of thousands of horses on both sides. Since truck shortages have made both sides increasingly reliant on horses, that means that both the Soviets and the Germans are having horrendous supply problems even when the lines are static. 

The chemical and bacteriological warfare part of the equation is about to get much nastier. The Germans have been working hard to get nerve gases into mass production. They’ve also been trying to catch up with the Soviet germ warfare program. The nerve gas part of the equation should be ready to take the field in mid-to-late summer of 1943. Most of the germ warfare materials will take longer, with the nastiest stuff not available in mass quantities until at least mid-1944. 

The Germans and Soviets are secretly in contact, and have explored the possibility of a peace treaty of some sort. The Soviets want that very badly. There is no prospect of an early end to the war, and without US involvement there is no realistic chance of a second front. That means that the Soviets will probably have to defeat the Germans pretty much on their own. Even if they can do that, Stalin has to think about what happens after the war. It isn’t enough to win the war if the Soviet Union is totally devastated while its potential enemies emerge relatively unscathed.

Also, lower war production means that the Soviets will have to continue substituting manpower for firepower in order to stop the Germans. The Soviets can’t do that forever. As a matter of fact they probably can’t continue to accept the current casualty ratios much more than another six to eight months. The Soviets don’t have a bottomless supply of manpower. Much of the manpower they do have available is from the Moslem Republics. The Soviets have to worry about political reliability of people from those areas, as well as the low education levels.

Hitler isn’t as interested in peace. He still thinks that he can simply take what he wants. There are good reasons not to stop until the Soviets collapse. Hitler knows that Stalin would resume the war if the Germans ever got in serious trouble in the west. At the same time, at some point there has to be an end to the war. The Germans can’t occupy the entire Soviet Union, and they don’t want to even if they could. They need to eventually come up with some mechanism to end the war. Hitler is willing to negotiate with the Soviets, but at the moment the two sides are very far apart on what they’ll accept.

 Stalin’s choice: For the first time in the war time is not on the Soviet side. Every day that the Germans can keep the flow of oil from the Caucasus restricted is a day that the Soviets get weaker. Stalin has to worry about a downward spiral developing. As Soviet war production and mobility goes down, the Germans will be able to seize more and more key territory, which in turn would reduce Soviet resources and ability to fight still further. 

The Germans are choking the life out of the Soviet Union. Stalin has two choices. He can sit back on the defensive and let that process continue, or he can make an all-out effort to break the German hold. The all-out effort is risky. The Germans are very good at turning Soviet offensives into fiascos and then taking advantage of the resulting Soviet weakness. The Soviets have yet to launch a strategically successful offensive against the Germans in the summer. On the other hand, the Soviets have had time to train new armies at the kind of highly mobile warfare that the Germans have been beating them with. 

The Soviets don’t have the kind of resources that they really need to launch another major offensive, especially after their failures in the winter of 1942/43. On the other hand, they are in a desperate situation. There are times when patience is a virtue. Patience is not a virtue when an enemy is choking you. The only response that won’t leave you at your opponent’s mercy is to strike as hard and as quickly as you can. Stalin is realistic enough to understand that. 

Starting in February 1943, the Soviets put all of their remaining resources into two things. First, they work to eliminate the stranglehold the Germans have on Caucasus oil. Second, they get ready for a go-for-broke offensive to be launched in early April 1943. To eliminate the German stranglehold, the Soviets have both a short-term and a long-term strategy. In the short term, they give absolute priority to mass-producing small, flimsy merchant ships to get the oil across the Caspian Sea. They also modify river craft that had been transporting goods along the Volga River to move oil across the Caspian. Both types of craft are very vulnerable to storms as well as the German interdiction efforts. 

For the longer term, the Soviets pour enormous amounts of manpower into building a pipeline across northern Iran to the other side of the Caspian Sea. The terrain there is difficult to say the least, but the Soviets throw masses of manpower, machinery, and explosives into making a way to get the oil to their armies and industries.

 In spite of all of the effort the Soviets are putting into it, the pipeline through Iran is a backup plan. The Soviets intend to retake the direct land connection, and they also stockpile supplies to repair any damage the Germans do to their transportation network there. None of that will help much if the Germans are able to take the rest of the oil fields, or stay in easy bomber range of them. At absolute minimum the Soviets have to hold at least the ground they currently hold and push the Germans back out of easy bombing range of the oil fields. 

The Soviets really need to push the Germans out of their positions across the land routes from the oil fields and keep them out. That’s where the Soviet go-for-broke offensive comes in. The Soviets impose a simple rule for use of oil: if something can contribute to the success of the coming offensive it gets oil. If it won’t, it doesn’t get oil, no matter how desirable it is in the long term. Production of finished tanks, planes, and artillery pieces has absolute priority over putting parts in the pipeline for production in June or July. Stockpiling oil and transport for the coming offensive takes priority over getting food to all but the most essential personnel. 

The Soviets ruthlessly comb out forces from all over the Soviet Union for usable manpower or firepower. Soviet divisions and tanks flow from the Soviet Far East and from the Soviet occupation forces in Iran to the planned offensive. Partly trained divisions head to the battlefield, getting the rest of their training on the way. Air force trainees are either sent to the front for air combat or grounded to save scarce aviation fuel. 

The Soviets also tailor their requests for Lend-Lease aid toward the immediate needs of the offensive. They urgently request communications equipment, trucks, and aviation fuel. The allies come through to the extent that their shipping allows them to. 

The Soviets intend to make two major attacks. First they’ll attack again in the center of the front, scene of bitter fighting in the winter. Second, they will attack the German-held corridor to the Caspian from both north and south. Both offensives are much simpler than the ones of the past winter. They rely less on wide-ranging movement and more on good intelligence on weaknesses in the German positions. The Germans can’t be strong everywhere, and the Soviets have better and better intelligence on where the Germans are weak. Part of that intelligence is supplied indirectly by Ultra. 

German plans: The Germans intend to take the offensive as soon as the ground firms up. It is just a matter of where. The Caucasus seems like a reasonable target. The Germans would like to take the rest of the Caucasus oil and swing down into Iran to finish off the British position in the Middle East. That’s actually a more realistic possibility than it was in 1942. Unfortunately, a Caucasus offensive would mean pushing through mountainous areas where the Soviets have had all winter to dig in. It also means a delayed offensive since the mountain passes take quite some time to become passable. 

Leningrad is another possibility. Taking the city would free up a substantial number of German divisions that have been tied up besieging it. The Germans haven’t had the Stalingrad experience to make them extremely wary of city fighting with the Soviets. The Germans could also make another try for Moscow. They are less than 200 miles away at some points. On the other hand, Soviet defenses are massive in that area. 

Hitler figures that he has one more chance to knock the Soviet Union out of the war. If he can do that, he figures that Britain will fold, at least in the Middle East. The US will probably not enter the war if the Soviets are out of it, and if they do they will have little chance of winning against a Germany capable of concentrating its forces in the west. Hitler doesn’t make hard and fast decisions on the long term course of the German war effort, but he does authorize some preliminary efforts in the south. 

Course of the war: The Germans strike first. In early April 1943, the Germans launch an offensive to clear Soviet forces out of an area they still hold along the Black Sea. That offensive puts the Germans on the Turkish border by the end of April. That has a significant impact on the Turks, as we’ll see in the Middle East section. 

The Soviet offensive kicks off in May, and comes as a total surprise to the Germans. Hitler has convinced himself that the Soviets are on their last legs again. The Soviets prove that isn’t true as their offensives hit the Germans hard both in the center and in the south. The Germans had held the Rzhev salient projecting toward Moscow very strongly against the Soviet attacks of the winter, killing more than a hundred thousand Soviet troops and wounding hundreds of thousands more. This time the attack is much more skillfully carried out. The Soviets have managed to mass over a million men, 15,000 artillery pieces and over 2,500 tanks for operations against the salient. 

The Germans are initially very hard pressed to hang onto the salient. The battle for the Rxhev salient leads to a huge battle between armored forces—the biggest tank battle of the war so far, with over a thousand tanks from the two sides involved. It is similar in many ways to the huge tank battles that ended the German attempt to take the Kursk salient in our time-line. In this time-line, the German tanks are fighting on the defensive, and they haven’t had to fight through belts of elaborate Soviet defenses. The Soviets are nearing the end of their logistics ability. 

The battle results in a bloody near-draw. The Soviets lose a little over 450 tanks and the Germans lose around 300. The Germans hold the battlefield though, and will be able to salvage many of their knocked out tanks. The Germans are able to retake most of the lost ground, but they have taken a major pounding and emerged from the experience with a lot of respect for the fighting ability of the Red Army. That respect doesn’t reach as high as Hitler, but it does permeate the German army. 

The Soviet offensive in the south has one simple objective: to break through the German forces cutting the Caucasus off from the rest of the Soviet Union. The Soviets attack from both the Caucasus and from the main body of the Soviet Union. The result is a wild series of battles that rages through the second half of May and into early June. The Soviet forces briefly carve out corridors though the German forces twice, but are pushed out again both times. The Soviet air force starts out very strong, but fades as the stockpiled aviation gas runs low. 

By June the Germans are in a position to take the offensive again in the south. They are helped by a German-encouraged revolt of Azerbaijani nationalists. Rommel also contributes by pushing into northwest Iran from northern Iraq. 

By early July, the Germans have taken all but a tiny corner of the Soviet Caucasus, and pushed into northern Iran to link up with Rommel’s forces. The victory proves somewhat empty though. The bulk of Soviet forces in the Caucasus are able to pull back into northern Iran. The Soviets have had several months to prepare a very thorough effort to sabotage the oil fields. The Germans take oil fields with every piece of equipment removed or destroyed. Oil wells are burning and the areas around them are thoroughly mined. The Soviets have deliberately left elite commando teams hidden in the mountains ready to sabotage any efforts to get production going again. Means of transportation in and out of the areas have been thoroughly destroyed. 

Getting major production out of those fields will be a matter of several months at least for the Germans. On the other hand, Soviet war production falls quickly in June and July of 1943. The emphasis on production for the May offensive is now starting to come home to roost. The trickle of Caucasus oil that the Soviets had been able to ship is now gone, and that cuts Soviet production more. Soviet production in June and July 1943 is down to roughly one quarter of our time-line levels. The Soviet Union can’t afford those levels of production. 

The Germans are already probing Soviet defenses and finding weakness. In July, the Germans fight their way into Leningrad, after a heavy bombardment by the Luftwaffe that includes the first mass use of nerve gas. The Germans take a ruined city, with its infrastructure sabotaged, large areas mined, and with Soviet troops fighting from street to street until they run out of bullets. 

The fall of Leningrad and the Caucasus pushes aid to the Soviets up on the list of Allied priorities. The shipping crisis is easing to some extent, though events in the Middle East and India are having an impact on that. The political battle over Lend-Lease to the Soviets is still keeping that off the agenda, but the Soviets are able to pay for what they need in gold, pounds, or dollars so far. 

The next objective for the Germans is Moscow. They have two months left in the campaigning season to get there, and are less than 150 miles away at some points. On the other hand, the Soviets have had time to build up very formidable defenses. They also have access to disguised summaries of Ultra intercepts, along with their own formidable spy network. That means that they can begin building forces at the point the Germans are going to attack almost as soon as the Germans decide to attack there. That’s a vital advantage given the declining armored forces and airforce that the Soviets can muster. 

There is a debate in the Soviet high command over strategy. One school of thought wants to use superior Soviet intelligence to build massive in-depth defenses that the Germans can wear themselves out against. The other school of thought wants to go back to using the Soviet Union’s vast spaces to wear out the German army. That school of thought sees battles of attrition as self-defeating given the fact that Soviet production of major weapons now averages well under half of German production and the gap is widening as German production increases and Soviet oil shortages hobble production more and more. British aid shipments and purchases from the United States make up some of the difference, but US and especially British tanks aren’t really competitive against Tigers and Panthers in the long-distance tank duels that are common on the Eastern Front. US and British aircraft are reasonably competitive, but the Soviet Union doesn’t have enough aviation fuel to use them effectively, or to train large numbers of pilots. 

Stalin initially chooses the massive defense belt strategy. Using space to wear down the Germans probably means losing Moscow and the political and transportation implications of that are bad enough that Stalin doesn’t want to face them if he doesn’t have to. The Soviets don’t have the resources to build defenses on the scale they did at Kursk in our time-line, and the Germans don’t give them the time to do so anyway. The Soviets make the start of the offensive very difficult for the Germans, but once the Germans break through the initial two defensive belts, they break out into relatively open country. The Soviet advantages go away to some extent as the rapid flow of battle makes the Ultra summaries less valuable. 

The Soviets have moved their most formidable divisions into position to counter the attack. They fight well, and the initial result is a lot like Kursk, as some German panzer divisions burn themselves out against the defenses. Unlike Kursk though, the Soviets don’t have an over four-to-one manpower advantage. They actually have fewer tanks than the Germans, and many of those tanks are British or Canadian-built Valentine tanks that have no business going up against Tigers or Panthers. 

The Germans break through Soviet defenses, chewing up Soviet divisions and opening the way to Moscow. They take few captives. Soviet troops either fight until they die or work hard to escape to fight again. As the German attack gains momentum, Stalin has to make a choice. If he goes for another all-out fight for Moscow he risks losing the core of the rebuilt Soviet army at a time when Soviet material shortages give the Germans a major advantage. The Soviets don’t have unlimited manpower, not after their huge losses of the past two years, and not after losing a large percentage of the Soviet and especially of the ethnic Russian manpower of the prewar Soviet Union. 

Stalin now has little choice but to try to use Soviet distances to wear down the Germans. Soviet troops fight to slow down the Germans while interior forces troops work to create a logistics desert in front of them. The Soviets try to evacuate all able bodied men and women. They blow up houses and bridges. They poison wells, evacuate or kill cattle, burn fields, and thoroughly demolish railroads. They mine or booby-trap anything that can’t be moved or destroyed. 

Stalin is not willing to give up Moscow without a fight, but he wants that fight to be a city-fight inside Moscow if at all possible. The Germans push their way to the suburbs of Moscow by early September 1943. After the fight for Leningrad, the Germans want no part of city fighting against the Soviets. German mobile forces swing around the city and encircle it.

 The Soviets have moved most of their mobile forces out of the city, along with most of the city’s population and much of its industry. They leave behind over a hundred thousand highly motivated men trained in street-fighting and supplies of ammunition and food for several months of fighting. 

News that the Germans have surrounded Moscow finally ends the debate over whether or not the Soviets should be eligible for Lend-Lease. They will be. The question then becomes how to get the aid to them. The Roosevelt administration has already been taking a much more aggressive stance in the Battle of the Atlantic. As the war in the Pacific becomes much more manageable, US naval power flows back into the Atlantic and the US does everything in its power to make sure merchant ships get to Britain. US ships escort convoys to Britain and hunt down German submarines. 

Roosevelt wants to goad Hitler into declaring war on the US before the end of the war with Japan. The US hasn’t actually started escorting convoys to the Soviet Union yet, but Roosevelt has actually considered doing that. He hasn’t done it yet because he’s afraid it will provoke a fight with the Republican-led congress. Hitler would prefer not to go to war with the US, at least not until the Soviets are finished off. Avoiding war with the US is becoming increasingly difficult for the Germans though. German U-boats are being chased down by US destroyers and depth-charged. If they fight back Hitler is afraid that Roosevelt will use any US casualties as a reason to ask for a declaration of war.

 US navy involvement in the Battle for the Atlantic, massive US production of “Liberty Ships”, and other merchant shipping, plus somewhat reduced demand for shipping in the Pacific means that by mid-October of 1943 US and British aid to the Soviets is becoming much more substantial. Unfortunately, much of that aid is not able to reach the bulk of Soviet forces. After the fall of Leningrad, German forces have pushed east and disrupted supply lines from Murmansk to the rest of the Soviet Union. Soviet forces in the far north are well supplied but not the bulk of the Soviet Army. The Iranian route is no longer available to the Allies for reasons that will become clear later. 

The Allies are working hard to help the Soviets rebuild the Soviet rail system and make the trans-Siberian route a more viable option for aid. In the meantime much of the US and British aid goes to cut-off Soviet forces in Iran. US trucks, tanks, and communication equipment give those Soviets forces a great deal of mobility and fighting power. 

The Germans leave a blocking force to screen Soviet forces in Moscow, and then continue their offensive. The fall muddy season slows them down in mid-October. So does the logistical desert that the Soviets are creating. Also, the Soviets still hold Moscow, which is a key transportation hub. As the German advance slows, the Soviets are able to implement an even more thorough scorched earth policy. 

The continuing German advance creates political problems for the Soviets. German-supplied nationalist revolts break out in the Moslem Soviet Republics of Central Asia. Within the Soviet leadership itself, doubts about Stalin’s leadership are becoming more common, though there is no way to express those doubts without quickly being executed. Stalin senses his potential weakness and launches another round of purges. 

Stalin steps up the ruthlessness and effectiveness of his scorched earth tactics. Those tactics, plus the accumulated stresses of dealing with huge Soviet distances, takes the steam out of the German offensive in late 1943. The Germans establish a reasonably coherent defensive line and go over to the defensive. 

The Soviet scorched earth policies are not without their cost to the Soviets. Loss of food-growing areas and the movement of millions of people put enormous stresses on the remaining Soviet economy. Over five million Soviet citizens die of starvation in the last half of 1943, while more die of exposure as they are moved into inadequately prepared refugee camps. The US and British are forced to substitute food shipments for arms aid to keep the situation from getting even worse. 

The Soviets launch token attacks in December 1943 and January 1944, and their propaganda paints those attacks as a major offensive. They aren’t. The Soviets are too busy trying to survive to do much militarily. 

Hitler is reasonably satisfied with the situation on the eastern front by January 1944. He has the oil fields, or at least what it left of them. Moscow hasn’t fallen yet, but it will eventually. The Soviets have lost the territory that made the pre-war Soviet Union a Great Power. While it would be more satisfying to round up and execute Stalin and the rest of the Soviet leadership, Hitler is reasonably content to essentially exile them deep into the interior of the old Soviet Union. The Germans now devote their energy to exploiting key Soviet natural resources. The huge coal and iron deposits of the Donets Basin are finally being exploited. The Soviets thoroughly sabotaged mines and infrastructure in that area, but the natural resources are still there and the Germans are finally starting to bring them back on line. The Caucasus oil fields will still take a while, but they’ll eventually go back in service. 

Turkey in 1943: The German economy gets another boost from its advances—increased access to Turkish chromium. Germany has been putting a lot of pressure on the Turks to enter the war on the Axis side. The Turks aren’t eager to do that, but they have less and less maneuvering room as the Germans advance. The Germans are already on the Turkish border in Europe, and in Syria and part of Iraq. They are also building up forces on the Italian-held islands like Rhodes that are spread along the Turkish Mediterranean coast. Now they’ve arrived on the Turkish borders with Iran and the Soviet Union. The Axis has Turkey surrounded, and Turkey is increasingly dependent economically on the Axis.

 Germany has both a carrot and a stick for Turkey. The Turks wouldn’t mind getting back some of the territory they lost in the Balkan wars and at the end of World War I, as long as they don’t have to risk too much to get it. They also wouldn’t mind grabbing Cyprus if they could get away with it. The Germans can make a lot of that happen if the Turks cooperate. The Germans also have the stick. They could simply refuse to supply the Turks with goods that the Turkish economy needs to function. They can also threaten invasion, though there are formidable geographic obstacles to actually carrying that out. 

Starting in the spring of 1943, the Turks are forced to bend a lot more than they would like to. They have already been allowing a trickle of German supplies to flow through Turkey to the Middle East. That trickle expands, though there are limits due to the rickety state of the Turkish rail system. The Turks are forced to sell the Germans considerably larger quantities than they want to of several strategic minerals, especially chromium. Chromium is vital in making high-quality steel, and Germany has never had a large enough supply, so extorting it from Turkey helps German war production a great deal. The Germans also get airbases in southern Turkey from which they can suppress British air and naval activity in Cyprus.

 In exchange, the Turks get a revision of their borders with Greece. They get quite a few obsolescent weapons. They get to hang on to the oil fields they grabbed in northern Iraq, and get German technical help in keeping them running. They also get to incentives for deeper involvement with the Axis. The Germans quietly indicate that they are willing to give the Turks parts of Syria, larger parts of Iraq, and Turkish-speaking slices of the Soviet Union if they come in fully on the Axis side. They are also willing to see Turkey end up with part or all of Cyprus if they help the Axis take the island.

 North Africa and the Middle East (March 1943- January 1944) The German offensive has finally stalled at the Iran/Iraq border. Part of the problem is that Rommel has no way to get large forces across the Shatt-al-Arab waterway on the border between the two countries. British gunboats control the waterway. British planes contest the skies over the waterway, keeping the Germans from using their airpower to force those gunboats out of the area. The Germans can and have slipped raiding parties across to sabotage British oil installations, but they can’t get significant forces across without air superiority. 

The other part of the problem for the Germans is that they are ridiculously over-extended. They have vulnerable flanks extending all the way back to Egypt, where British forces retreated up the Nile and regrouped in southern Egypt. Those extended flanks didn’t matter all that much in the summer of 1942, when the British were weak and the Axis had the initiative everywhere. The over-extended flanks matter a great deal more in the spring of 1943. 

For the last several months, British forces in the Middle East have been receiving US Lend Lease at very high priority. They’ve gotten Sherman tanks even before most US units. They’ve also received a large number of US light tanks—much less useful but still competitive against the Italian M13/41 series tanks. The British air force has also been given high priority. 

Roosevelt knows that the British are very close to collapse in the area, and is doing everything he can to shore them up. A US division is in Iran, theoretically to protect Lend-Lease supplies, but in reality to free up British troops that were tied up guarding supply lines. Roosevelt would love to send more US troops, but is worried about how the newly elected Republican-led congress will react. 

In order to shore up the British, Roosevelt comes up with a scheme that is typical of the way he deals with events. There are several weak divisions of Polish exiles in the Middle East—former Soviet POWs. Roosevelt pressures the Soviets to release more Poles, and combs the US army for experienced Polish-American soldiers, especially officers and NCOs who can be released to serve as ‘volunteers’ in the Middle East. The Polish-Americans flesh out the existing divisions, and provide the core for new ones. 

British problems: With all of the US help, the British still have serious problems holding their current positions, much less advancing. There are three main sources of those problems. First, Indian and Iranian nationalist unrest is a major problem. Second, British forces are having trouble getting enough refined oil to operate effectively. Finally, the situation on the Eastern Front forces the British to keep forces in reserve to counter a possible German thrust through the Caucasus and into the Middle East. 

Indian and Iranian Nationalism: One of the reasons the British have not been able to respond more effectively in the Middle East is that they are increasingly uncertain of their control over India. British defeats in the Middle East, and the approach of German troops encourage anti-British factions among Indian nationalists. 

In our time-line, Indian nationalism was a major problem, with the Indian National Congress running a “Quit India” campaign and attempting to make India ungovernable. That campaign was at its peak in our time-line between August and November of 1942. British forces killed at least 1000 Indian Nationalists. Indian sources claimed 4000 to 10,000 Indian deaths. Most of the leadership of the Indian National Congress, including Gandhi, were jailed for their part in the unrest. 

While the protests were theoretically non-violent, Indian nationalists sabotaged railroads, destroyed telephone and telegraph lines, and burned public buildings, including over 200 police stations. The British responded with every kind of military force at their disposal, including machine-gunning rioters from armored cars and airplanes. In our time-line, the British maintained control of India but only by use of military forces that they badly needed in the Middle East. In this time-line, the need for those forces in the Middle East has been even more urgent. 

The British have faced a dilemma in India. Every British defeat and Axis advance destroys a bit more British prestige in India, encouraging nationalists and discouraging British supporters. That means that every British defeat increases the amount of force the British have to use to control India. At the same time, those forces are needed to stabilize British defenses in the Middle East and prevent further British loss of prestige. 

In this time-line, the British have at times totally lost control in parts of India. They are very hard-pressed to maintain control of the strategically vital parts of it. The longer series of British defeats have strengthened anti-British sentiment in India. More importantly, it has pulled British troops away from putting down unrest in India. That means that in hundreds of small struggles around India, little groups of British and Indian soldiers or police are overrun rather than being rescued. Each of those little victories gives Indian Nationalists more momentum, and to some extent more weapons. 

Oil shortages also make the British situation in India even more difficult. As noted earlier, the Germans and Italians have taken some of the Middle East sources of Britain’s oil supply. More importantly, they put the huge refinery complex at Abadan in southern Iran out of action for the time being. That means that until supplies can re-routed from the United States or the refineries can be repaired, British forces are very short on oil. That in turn means that it is difficult for the British to move forces around quickly to deal with threatening situations. 

Much of the British army in the Middle East is actually Indian, and the British are very afraid that unrest in India will spread to the Indian soldiers in the Middle East. If that happens on a large scale, the British position would probably become untenable. 

Not all of India is in ferment. The princely states are reasonably calm, as are most of the Moslem areas. Indian soldiers seem to be remaining loyal for the most part, as are most Indian members of the police forces in India. The primarily Indian bureaucracy that keeps India running has kept working so far. There are subtle signs of shifts in loyalty in all of these organizations though. The British increasingly look like the losers in this war. Educated Indians are quietly looking at their options if British rule in India ends. That re-evaluation is ultimately more dangerous for Britain than rioters or damaged railroads. 

To make matters worse for Britain, the Japanese have gone back onto the offensive in Burma.  Starting in May 1943, they have also put radical Indian Nationalist leader Chandras Subhas Bose to work at subverting Indian troops and civilians. In our time-line, Bose initially tried to work with Hitler and Mussolini to gain Indian independence. Mussolini didn’t have enough power to help much, and Hitler admired the British Empire in India too much to be enthusiastic about destroying it. Bose was eventually transferred to Japanese-held territory via German submarine, where he tried to revitalize the Indian National Army (INA), a failing Japanese attempt to create an anti-British force out of ex-Indian POWs captured in the fall of Malaysia and Singapore. 

In our time-line the INA never played much of a role in World War II, partly because many of its roughly ten to fifteen thousand soldiers were half-hearted in their support for their cause. That was true at least partly because the Japanese made their view of the INA as puppets very clear with a lot of petty affronts. Part of the INA’s problem in our time-line was also that by the time Bose took charge in mid-May 1943, the Axis had clearly lost the war. Also, in our time-line the worst of the unrest in India was over by November 1942. 

In our time-line, the Japanese trained 1200 INA saboteurs and landed many of them on the coast of India by submarine. Most were picked up by British troops or simply went home to their villages. Around 6000 INA troops played a minor role in a failed Japanese attempt to invade India in 1944. Bose did make powerful propaganda appeals to India, especially to Indian soldiers, and he worried the British government a great deal. 

Overall, in our time-line Bose and the INA had little impact. In this time-line, conditions are considerably more favorable to Bose and the INA. Indian unrest has continued and grown in the winter of 1942/43, feeding on initial successes and apparent British weakness. It is by no means clear that the Axis has lost the war. As a matter of fact, the Germans superficially appear on the verge of winning their part of it. INA sabotage teams are able to operate much more freely in that environment. In some cases they are able to entrench themselves in communities where Indian nationalism is strong. They then train more militants. 

In some areas the “Quit India” campaign develops into a low-level guerilla war. In other areas India lapses into chaos. The INA recruits new members wherever British control is weak and Indian nationalism is strong. The Japanese funnel a trickle of British weapons captured in Malaysia and Singapore to the emerging guerrilla movement. Hindu/Moslem communal violence breaks out in areas with mixed populations. Even more British troops are tied down keeping that violence from escalating into a full-scale civil war. 

As in our time-line, India impacts the British war effort in another way. In our time-line, a major famine broke out in Bengal in 1943. Somewhere between 3 million and 5 million people died before the famine ended, and Britain was forced to belatedly divert scarce shipping to import rice into the area to keep even more people from dying. In this time-line, the famine is even worse because of the prolonged unrest in India and the shortage of gasoline to transport food.  The famine spawns even more chaos in British India, and forces the British to divert even more shipping that they desperately need elsewhere.

 As 1943 wears on, Indian nationalist guerrillas become more and more of a problem for the British. Indian nationalists blame Britain for the famine. That bit of propaganda has started to resonate with Indian troops from hard-hit areas, and the British are hit with some small-scale mutinies and group desertions. The Germans try to recruit Indian prisoners of war to slip back into India and stir up trouble 

Iranian nationalism: British and Soviet troops have occupied Iran since the summer of 1941. Their hold on that country has become increasing precarious as German and Italian forces arrive on the Iranian border. German agents infiltrate across the porous borders and train and equip anti-British and anti-Soviet Iranians. The situation in Iran is often very complex, with Iranian nationalists of various kinds competing with local warlords, or separatist groups like the Kurds while trying to make Iran untenable for the British. Even within the Iranian nationalists there are splits between religious and secular groups and between groups favoring and opposing the deposed Shah of Iran. 

Iranian nationalists are nowhere near the threat that Indian nationalists are, but they do force the British to reinforce garrisons along vital supply lines. 

The British Oil Shortage: The Germans and Italians have captured or temporarily denied to the British oil sources producing a little over 5 percent of the world’s 1943 crude oil supply. That doesn’t sound terribly significant, but those supplies were ideally placed to supply British forces. Now that fuel has to be replaced by oil from as far away as Venezuela or the United States. The shortage can eventually be made up, but the huge amounts of oil needed to run a modern army and maintain a transportation system can’t be replaced overnight. 

Again, shipping capacity is a major problem. The oil shortage also impacts the Battle of the Atlantic, because the British convoy system now has to extend to convoying tankers around Africa. That diverts scarce destroyers from keeping the Atlantic sea lanes open. The Soviets have plenty of oil in the vicinity of the Middle East, and in theory some of that could be diverted to help the British. Unfortunately, the Soviets are short of refining capacity, and the oil they can refine is low-octane, not suitable for British made engines without further manipulation. There is also the problem of how to get the oil to British forces. The Soviets are desperately trying to get oil to their own forces by trucking it through Iran, and their transport capacity is stretched to the limit. 

The threat of a German offensive through the Caucasus: German forces are still deep in the Caucasus and Soviet lines there don’t appear too stable after the winter’s fighting. Britain has to maintain reserves to counter a German breakthrough. 

The British political situation: Surprisingly enough, the Churchill government has survived the series of defeats with no significant political challenges so far. That can’t last forever. The Churchill government has been severely weakened politically already. There is a great deal of discontent in the upper levels of the British government with Churchill’s running of the war. In our time-line that surfaced in the summer of 1942 in an attempt at a vote of no confidence in Parliament that Churchill easily defeated. In this time-line, the discontent has remained publicly unstated because of the need to maintain an image of national unity in the face of the more serious defeats. The discontent is still there though, and more dangerous for Churchill because of the longer series of defeats. 

The Churchill government is a coalition of the Conservatives and the Labour party. The Conservatives could theoretically govern alone, but they have brought several Labour leaders into the cabinet. Clement Atlee, head of the Labour party, is actually acting as deputy prime minister even during the times he doesn’t officially hold the title. The Churchill government has weathered the political impacts of defeats at least partly because Labour supports the war effort at least as strongly as the Conservatives. 

Labour party leaders have supported Churchill to avoid any disruption of national unity behind the war effort. That support is getting more difficult. Public discontent has led to election of several independents to Parliament in by-elections. If the war continues to go badly, Labour may be forced to pull out of the coalition in order to avoid sharing the blame for the continuing series of defeats. 

The course of the war: Rommel has a problem. His supply lines stretch back from Iraq through part of TransJordan, the southern part of Palestine, and finally to the port of Alexandria in Egypt. So far he’s been able to keep his army going on captured British supplies, an inadequate trickle from Alexandria, and supplies that the Turks can be bribed or bullied into allowing through their country.

 Rommel needs more secure supply lines. The port of Haifa in northern Palestine would be ideal, but British defenses in northern and central Palestine are strong. The British still hold part of Syria, but their grip there has been weakened by nationalist rebellions. Rommel very reluctantly diverts some of his mobile forces to strike into Syria. He quickly cuts the British pocket along the Mediterranean coast in two and captures Beirut. The British manage to destroy some of the port facilities, but German commandos prevent a lot of the planned demolitions. 

Rommel now has a much more usable port. He also has a potential problem. British-held Cyprus could become another Malta if the British can build it up. Right now the British on the island are isolated from all but a trickle of supplies, and they appear to be effectively suppressed. Some people in the German military want to attempt to take Cyprus, but Rommel chooses to try to starve it out, while concentrating on the Iranian front. The Soviets aid that decision by launching an offensive from Iran into Northern Iraq, taking advantage of German weakness in the area. 

Rommel switches his mobile forces to face the Soviets, cuts off almost half of the three division force, and pushes into Northeastern Iran, where he links up with German forces pushing down from the Caucasus. 

The direct route to the oil fields of southern Iran is blocked to the Germans because they can’t cross the Shatt-al-Arab waterway in the face of British air and naval power. The central part of the Iran/Iraq border is mountainous, and the British are dug in at the vital passes. Rommel doesn’t want to put his main effort there because he is afraid of getting into a war of attrition. That leaves the northeast of Iran. Rommel already has a large part of his mobile forces there. He launches a two-stage offensive in June of 1943. The first stage is a push south from northeastern Iran toward Kermanshah in west Central Iran. That would put the Germans behind the British forces defending the key Paitak Pass near the central part of the Iran/Iraq border. The second stage is a push directly toward that pass by German forces on the central part of the Iran/Iraq border. 

That offensive gives Rommel a victory of sorts. His forces take the pass, force another British retreat, and knock out almost twice as many British tanks as they lose. At the same time, his first major encounter with Sherman tanks is a very unpleasant one for Rommel. His mobile divisions are down to a total of under 100 working tanks, about half of them Italian M14/40s that are totally inadequate against Shermans. With the crisis in the Pacific waning, the British can quickly replace their losses from US Lend-Lease and their own production. The Germans and Italians can’t replace their losses as easily. Rommel compounds his problems by launching a weak follow-on offensive in an attempt to break through British defenses before they recover from their initial defeat. That attempt fails, and there is lull of a couple of months as both sides try to rebuild their forces. 

The British have been building up forces in upper Egypt. In June they launch an offensive north toward Alexandria. The Germans and Italians stop it, but at the cost of diverting reinforcement from the Iran/Iraq front. 

The British are also still trying to get supplies to their troop in Cyprus and Palestine. That can only be done by air because the British no longer have major surface vessels in the Mediterranean. A major part of the Italian fleet is now operating in the Eastern Mediterranean, using bases in Egypt and using Middle Eastern oil. 

The supply effort for Cyprus and Palestine illustrates the power and the limitations of the logistics capability that the allies have been building up. So far they’ve been able to keep Cyprus and Palestine fed and with some degree of fighting power, but they haven’t been able to do much more, even with an all out effort that diverts British heavy bombers and transport planes that are desperately needed to get supplies over the Hump to China. 

The British sabotaged the Suez canal fairly effectively before the fall of Egypt, but the Germans and Italians are working to clear it and use it to transit submarines and light surface vessels into the Indian Ocean where they can harass British supply lines.

 In spite of all of their problems, the British are now benefiting from two things. First, both Britain and the US have geared up production rationally for total war. Even without Soviet production, in 1943 Britain and the US are out-producing the Axis by a fairly wide margin in every major category of weapon. The Germans are still ramping up their production from low levels, and most of their production is going to the eastern front. Second, the Allies are now in much better shape on shipping. As the Japanese economy and war-making powers implode, the Pacific gets a much lower priority. That frees up part of the US shipping that was not destroyed by German submarines back in late 1941 and early 1942. Also, the US has a massive merchant ship-building program which is now far outpacing the losses to German submarines. 

The Axis now has a major shipping problem too. The Italians and Germans simply don’t have enough shipping to supply Rommel’s army effectively. The Germans can ship goods through the Caucasus, but the transportation network there is in bad shape after the fighting and the Soviet scorched earth efforts. In spite of those problems, the Germans push deeper into northern Iran, cutting the trans-Iranian railway and taking the Iranian capital of Tehran. They start to head south along the railway, but quickly encounter a diplomatic problem. The southern part of the railway is guarded by a US infantry division. The Germans pause for the time being and concentrate their efforts further west. 

The British have had some breathing room. They’ve used it to build up a massive amount of men and material in southern Iran and upper Egypt. They still aren’t as good at mobile warfare as the Germans though, and the Germans are getting reinforced by tough veterans of the Eastern Front in the latest German Tiger and Panther tanks. That’s a major problem because the US has been somewhat spoiled by its war with Japan and still considers light Stuart tanks viable fighting vehicles and Sherman tanks armed with 75mm guns as good as anything in the world. 

The Germans now have maneuvering room, and they use it demonstrate the superiority of their armor. They break through to the Persian Gulf, cutting off over a hundred thousand British troops in Abadan. The British manage to evacuate most of those men and systemically destroy the oil and port facilities, but they lose almost all of the heavy equipment from most of four divisions. The British still hold most of southern Iran, but German troops hold most of the oil fields and have penetrated as far as the Afghanistan border in northern Iran. 

Anti-British forces in India are encouraged by the German advances. Frontier tribes in northwestern India take the opportunity to raid their more settled neighbors, especially Hindus. The anti-British riots have become a guerilla war in some parts of eastern India. That threatens to spread to the west of India. The British are forced to rely more and more on the princely states as a relatively stable base for their operations. 

The US rushes more tanks and aircraft to the Middle East. They finally conclude that the light Stuart tanks aren’t worth shipping, but they don’t have any alternative but to ship more Sherman tanks armed with the now inadequate 75 mm guns. The British are able to regain air superiority, which decreases the impact of the German heavy tanks, and the front line in Iran stabilizes. 

The British institute a crash program to up-gun their Shermans with 17 pounders, and the US also works frantically to add more firepower to the tanks in its army. The British have an easier time in North Africa. They advance methodically down the Nile toward Alexandria, overpowering the mostly Italian forces with superior firepower if they stand and fight or methodically following the Axis forces if they retreat. This isn’t fancy or exciting warfare, but it also doesn’t give the Germans a chance to use their superiority at mobile warfare. By the end of the year, the British have retaken a large part of Egypt. That makes the air link to British forces in Palestine easier, and threatens to cut Axis forces in the Middle East in two. 

And that’s about it for this time: Where does it go from here? The Japanese are still fighting, but they are no longer capable of generating major power. The Soviets are actually still in somewhat better shape, though it doesn’t look like it at the moment. They face even more mass starvation with the worst of the Russian winter coming on. The Moslem republics of Central Asia are now in full revolt, with the German army supplying arms and the Luftwaffe giving air support. 

Soviet war production has declined with their oil supply. In a few fall months as they evacuated war production from around Moscow, Soviet aircraft production fell to levels not much higher than Italy’s. War production is inching back up again in January 1944 though. 

US Lend-Lease is keeping the Soviet army fed, though not the rest of the Soviet population. It is also rebuilding railroads in the Eastern Soviet Union. Once the railroad system is rebuilt, the Allies can help the Soviets rebuild their army and war industry. 

The Germans are even more over-extended in January 1944 than they were in March of 1943. They hold huge new areas of the Soviet Union that they have to police, and most of that area has been given a very thorough scorched earth treatment. That’s not an altogether bad thing from the German point of view. Soviet partisans can’t hide out among or recruit peasants because for the most part there aren’t any. 

The Germans are proving that they have a genius for turning potential friends into enemies. Arab nationalists have had a taste of how the Germans operate, and have for the most part decided that they prefer the British and French if those are the only choices. Part of the problem is that the Germans have to balance the interests of Turkey against those of the Arabs. The Turks ruled most of the Arab lands before World War I, and at least some elements in Turkey would like some if not all of that land back. The Arabs adamantly oppose ceding any Arab lands to Turkey. The Germans also alienate the Arabs by exploiting them economically and treating them like a conquered people rather than like allies. 

The Roosevelt Administration wants to get into the war against Germany. Roosevelt looks at the progress the US is making on atomic weapons and is very afraid that the Germans are ahead in that area. German science has a very impressive reputation. Roosevelt wants to take the Germans out before Hitler ends up with atomic weapons. It is unlikely that the British and Soviets will be able to take the Germans down on their own, even with Lend-Lease. 

Roosevelt has to walk a careful line. He needs to take effective action to defeat the Germans, hopefully maneuvering them into starting a war with the US before they are ready. The US is becoming more and more aggressive. As noted earlier, Polish-Americans “volunteers” are driving American-built tanks in the Middle East against the Germans. Polish-American “volunteer” pilots are flying US-built planes in the Middle East against the Germans. In both cases the markings are British, but both men and material are American. 

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Germans and the US are going to bump heads. The only question is when and in what form. Japan, Britain, and the Soviet Union are all no longer truly independent Great Powers. That leaves Germany and the US. Will their conflict continue to be essentially a proxy war, with the Soviets and British propped up by US production and financial power? Will the conflict evolve into something like the cold war, with the US and Germans as main antagonists? Will it become a full-fledged US/German war?