What has happened so far: Last issue, I suggested a point of divergence where Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa is delayed by two or three weeks. That puts it after the Soviet offensive that cut off the Germans at Stalingrad. That immediately puts World War II on a different trajectory. When the Stalingrad offensive occurs, the Germans haven't sent 400-odd transport planes, 200-odd bombers from the Stalingrad front, and several hundred fighter planes to Italy to support the building of an Axis army in Tunis. They haven't sent on the order of a dozen divisions to build that army and/or to occupy Vichy France. More importantly, the timing of the Torch landings gives Hitler political cover to attempt to withdraw the trapped men from Stalingrad without as much loss of face. That in turn leads to a wild mobile battle on the southern part of the Eastern Front. 

The Germans end up controlling less territory than they did at the beginning of the Soviet offensive, but Soviets aren't able to trap large numbers of German troops and end up with a substantial part of their mobile forces in the area trapped by the Germans. End result: the Germans are in a substantially stronger position on the Eastern Front than they were in our time-line.

 They pay for that stronger position in the west. The Axis loses North Africa early. The Allies are able to grab and hold the Vichy French island of Corsica. On the other hand, the Allies aren't able to hold onto the ports of Southern France when Vichy tries to re-enter the war, and thousands of primarily British troops pay for that failure with their lives or freedom. 

Where do we go from here? The big picture stuff that applied in our time-line still applies in this one. The Allies are collectively out-producing the Germans by a wide margin. They have much greater access to raw materials. They have a much larger pool of manpower to draw on. The Germans are trying to offset those advantages by using the U-boat campaign to isolate the United States and its manpower and production. They are also pushing to make the masses of tanks and planes that the Allies are producing obsolete by pushing next generation weapons into production. The Germans got a late start in mobilizing their industry for mass production, but even without a massive defeat at Stalingrad they are still very aware of the fact that they are in for a long war, and they are gearing up for it.

 Summer/Fall 1943 – Western Front: The Allies have some problems and some opportunities. The big problem is that after being pushed off the continent by the Germans three times, the British have no particular desire to rush in again. The Americans aren't as eager to go toe-to-toe with the Germans as they were before the fiasco in Southern France either. Some good things come out of the fiasco from an American standpoint. American training standards go way up as the army absorbs the lessons of defeat. Also, the inadequacy of the Sherman's main armament against heavy German tanks like the Tiger is made very apparent. The rush is on to move to a more powerful main gun. The 76mm gun is used as a stopgap, while a new turret with 90mm armament roughly comparable to that of a Tiger is quickly developed, and development of heavier tanks like the T25 and T26 is accelerated.

 The Allies are chronically short of shipping. They are trying to rebuild the Allied divisions that left their heavy equipment in Southern France. They are also trying to build a credible army in England for a possible invasion of France in 1944. The French are clamoring for equipment to rebuild their army in North Africa and Corsica. They have ambitious plans to build 16 divisions, 5 of them armored, out of the French army in North African and the part of the Vichy French army that managed to escape from Southern France. They also want the Allies to re-equip a strong French airforce and help the French modernize their large navy. The Allies need the manpower, and would like to see the French taking an active role in the war, but they simply don't have the shipping to do everything the French want.

 In July of 1943, the Allies are by no means in a position to launch an attack on the mainland of Europe. They lost a lot of equipment in the attempt to hold the ports of Southern France. They have to rebuild units and absorb the lessons of defeat. At the same time, they need to take the offensive somewhere. They can't sit by through the entire summer. There are two logical choices for that offensive. An attack on Sicily is attractive because it helps to open up the Mediterranean to Allied shipping and sets up a direct threat to Italy. An attack on Sardinia is attractive because it lets the Allied air and naval superiority play a bigger role. As bases in Corsica are developed, the Allies can come very close to shutting down the flow of reinforcements into Sardinia. An Allied seizure of Sardinia would threaten the entire Italian coast. An offsetting factor: Axis forces in Sardinia are much stronger than those in Sicily, because Germany reinforced them in a failed attempt to push the Allies out of Corsica. 

The Allies decide on an invasion of Sicily. They build up on Corsica as a cover while preparing to invade Sicily. The invasion of Sicily comes in mid-August, and catches the Germans off-guard. Hitler remains convinced for several days that the invasion of Sicily is a ruse to pull the Germans out of position so that the Allies can hit Sardinia. That delay helps the Allies win the Battle for Sicily. Remaining Axis forces are pushed out by mid-September. 

There is an ongoing air and sea battle around Sardinia. The French navy has rejoined the Allies and plays a prominent role in this battle. It is badly in need of modernization, but the French Battleships and Cruisers make it very difficult for any Italian surface vessels to venture out without air cover. By the end of September, the Italian and German garrison of Sardinia is beginning to starve. The Italian merchant marine has been virtually annihilated by Allied planes, ships, and submarines. 

The Americans are content to let the Axis forces wither. They are still looking to do a Normandy-style landing in mid-1944, and they don't want to be distracted by what they consider side issues. The French and English want to go after Sardinia as a final step to knocking Italy out of the war. 

The Italians are wavering after the losses of North Africa and Sicily, but Mussolini remains in power—barely. He would like to get out of the war, but without a German defeat at Stalingrad it is by no means obvious that Hitler has lost the war. Mussolini is also very aware of the power that Hitler could and would bring to bear on Italy if it attempted to switch sides. Italy is cautiously sounding out Romania and other German Eastern Front Allies on the possibility of switching sides as a bloc, but Mussolini still believes that a German victory is possible. He won't move as long as he believes that. The rest of the Italian power structure won't move against him as long as Germany continues to look strong.

 The French and British have a strong argument for an invasion of Sardinia. The Soviets are screaming for a second front. In late 1943, there are no ground forces from any of the Western Allies fighting Germany. At the moment Sardinia is one of only two places where the Western Allies can realistically move against Germany in the remaining months of 1943. The other option would be going directly from Sicily to the boot of Italy. After the fiasco in Southern France, the British have no stomach for challenging the Germans again in 1943 anywhere that their supply lines can't be interdicted by air and sea power. 

The Western Allies end up a moderately good last half of the year by a successful invasion of Sardinia, with the Americans going along very reluctantly with a primarily British and French effort. Fighting goes on until mid-December, and the shipping requirements of the invasion do delay the build-up of Allied forces in England somewhat. The official schedule for landings in northern France slips from mid-May to early June at the very earliest. 

Summer/Fall 1943 – Eastern Front--Strategies: The Germans are in a stronger position than in our time-line, but they aren't really up for another 'war-winning' offensive. Hitler picks three successive comparatively minor objectives. First, he wants to make Leningrad untenable. After Stalingrad, he has no desire to take the city. He just wants to make it unlivable. That should give the Germans a relatively cheap but substantial victory. Second, if he can't grab the Caucasus oil for Germany, he wants to at least deny it to the Soviets. That means getting back to the point where the major Soviet oil installations are within range of German bombers. Finally, he wants to cut river traffic on the Volga river, which will let him claim to have reached the strategic goals of the Stalingrad offensive. 

Stalin has no desire to leave the initiative to the Germans for the last half of 1943, but he also thinks he has learned some lessons from the costly fiascos of ambitious Soviet offensives in late 1941, spring 1942, and winter 1942. He thinks that he has discovered that Blitzkrieg-style deep thrusts into enemy territory only work if the enemy is demoralized and/or has little in the way of mobile reserves. Against a determined and mobile enemy like the Germans, Stalin has a different strategy in mind. He would like to see the Germans strike first and wear out their armored reserves like they did in 1942 in the lead-up to Stalingrad. If they aren't obliging enough to do that, he intends to attrition those German reserves through a series of strong local attacks shifting along the front—attacks aimed at gaining miles or at most tens of miles, not hundreds of miles. 

Stalin looks at the Soviet army of mid-1943, and he is realistic enough to see a huge ponderous war club, not a rapier. He intends to use the bulk of that army as a war club, while building mobile reserves to take advantage of the time when the Germans falter under a continuous series of Soviet attacks. Those mobile reserves are reorganized to make the eventual breakthrough more effective, drawing on the lessons of the Stalingrad offensive.

 The course of battle: In July 1943, the Germans concentrate the bulk of their air strength on the Eastern Front against Leningrad, attempting to turn it into the same kind of ruin that the Luftwaffe made of Stalingrad. The Luftwaffe also targets the tenuous Soviet supply lines into the city and tries to help German troops take more of the area around the lake. Massed artillery pounds the city, while the German army probes the outer defenses, tightening the German siege of the city. 

As noted earlier, the Soviets would rather wait until the Germans attack and then counter that attack, but they don't want to let Leningrad be strangled without a Soviet response. That response can be either in the form of a direct attempt to relieve Leningrad or in the form of an offensive elsewhere. Stalin chooses to make his offensive against the Germans in the south, with the intention of eventually retaking Kharkov and the industrial region around it. 

Toward the end of July the Soviet offensive jumps off. The Germans are hampered by Hitler's 'hold at all cost' orders, and the Soviet offensive initially does well, surrounding several small pockets of Germans. The Soviets are cautious though. The Germans have been rebuilding their armored forces, and Soviet offensive is carefully limited so that is unlikely to turn into the kind of mobile battle that the Germans have done so well at. 

The Soviet offensive runs out of steam by late August and a German counter-offensive tosses the Soviets back to approximately where they started. The offensive does inflict heavy casualties on the Germans, but at a very high cost to the Soviets. The new German Tiger tanks prove to be very effective in a defensive role. Stalin is reasonably satisfied with the results of the offensive in spite of the extremely high Soviet losses in men and tanks. He can make up his losses. The Germans can't. Also, the offensive does pull German air assets away from Leningrad.

 The Germans are unable to follow up on their defensive victory. Part of the reason for that is the casualties the Germans have taken. Another part is that the much anticipated Panthers tanks have initially been disappointing, with frequent breakdowns sapping their effectiveness. That in turn reduces the effectiveness of the panzer divisions. The Soviets move additional forces up, and take the offensive again in early September, this time going after Kursk and Orel, which in this time-line are still held by the Germans.

 The Soviets again make moderate gains while sustaining heavy casualties. This time the Germans aren't able to completely push them out of their gains. That pattern continues through the fall of 1943. The Soviets aren't willing to risk deep breakthroughs while the German panzer forces are still relatively strong, but they keep up a tempo of heavy, crushing attacks on the German lines. The Germans aren't strong enough to launch a renewed offensive of their own, though they do attempt to maintain the pressure on Leningrad. 

The Soviet offensives continue through the rainy season, as the Soviets attempt to wear the Germans down enough to allow more potent assaults. Finally, in early December, the Soviets make their biggest push yet—with simultaneous heavy attacks in the South near Rostov, and in the Center. Finally, as the year ends they launch a very heavy attack on the cordon around Leningrad. 

And that's about it for 1943. We are now through 1943. The impact of the Torch delay is gradually compounding itself. That impact goes beyond just the fact that over 200,000 Axis troops are not captured or killed at Stalingrad and that several hundred thousand additional Soviet troops are killed or captured in that campaign. Without a decisive German defeat at Stalingrad, Germany's Axis allies are still in the war, though often reluctantly. Italy hasn't changed sides, at least not yet. There are no more than 6 German divisions in Italy, including the remnants of the German force that was recently pushed out of Sardinia. That compares to 25 German divisions there in our time-line. The Italian army is still contributing the bulk of the Axis occupation force in the Balkans. That frees up more German troops for the eastern front. 

The Germans are substantially stronger on the Eastern front than they were in our time-line, and the Soviets are substantially weaker. At the same time, the balance of power on that front is shifting slowly but inevitably to the Soviets. They have lost several times as many men and tanks as the Germans in their late summer offensives, but they can afford to. The Germans can't afford to continue to take those kinds of losses.

 The losses of the last two and a half years have gradually decreased the skill level of the German army, as the exceptionally well-trained junior officers and non-coms of the pre-war army are killed and replaced with less effective men.

 The Germans have never had the opportunity to launch the second and third part of their planned summer offensive. The first part, against Leningrad, may or may not bear fruit in the coming winter.

German weapons production is somewhat below its levels for our time-line. In our time-line, German industry received an influx of 600,000 ex-Italian soldiers when Italy tried to change sides. Those men helped solve a chronic German labor shortage. In this time-line, Germany is forced into greater reliance on Poles, Ukrainians, and captured Russians. On the other hand, Germany is still holding considerably more Soviet territory than they did at the end of 1943 in our time-line, and they are finally restoring production in some of the resource-rich parts of that territory. 

In the west, the Germans are both stronger and weaker than they were in our time-line. Allied control of Corsica and Sardinia gives the Allies some options that they didn't have in our time-line: easier access to Southern France, and the ability to easily threaten most of the west coast of Italy. On the other hand, the Allies have not yet lodged in Italy. 

The British are very reluctant to go head-to-head with the Germans anywhere on the continent, and especially in Northern France. Churchill has revived talk of invading Norway or attacking the Axis-held islands near Turkey, along possibly with Crete. He doesn't feel that the Allies are anywhere near ready to take on Germans on the continent yet. If the Allies do lodge on the continent, he wants it to be in the South of Italy, where presumably the Allied forces on Sardinia and Corsica would deter the Germans from sending too large of a force so far south. 

The French are trying to become a major voice in Allied counsels. First they have to sort out their own political situation. Vichy supplies the vast majority of French forces, but it is blamed justly or unjustly for the French defeat in 1940. The Free French have a much smaller armed forces, but they are perceived as free of the taint of defeat. The Allies have forced a cobbled together joint governing structure on the French, but that structure has barely kept the two French factions from actual shooting conflicts. By the end of 1943, the Free French have managed to outmaneuver their Vichy rivals and are starting to dominate French counsels. 

The French want to make another try at Southern France. The French resistance is strong in southern France. Remnants of the Vichy French army still hold out in the mountains, along with other elements of the resistance. 

The Americans just want to get the war over with. They still see a landing in Northern France as the most direct way to do that, though they are not as enthusiastic about that option as they were in our time-line. The US is becoming the dominant member of the coalition, though more slowly than in our time-line. The fighting quality of the US army is still a question mark in minds of all of the combatants. US forces have taken only a minor role in the fighting, with the exception of the invasion of Sicily. They did well there, but against a mainly Italian force backed by only three German divisions. 

Winter/Spring 1944—Eastern front: Leningrad is starving, freezing, and starting to run out of ammunition as the third winter of the German siege falls upon it. The German air and artillery attacks throughout the summer have taken their toll on food stockpiles and munitions production in the city. Leningrad desperately needs a rescue. Stalin is trying to oblige with a massive attack on the German siege lines. Hitler is determined that the city will finally be starved into submission this winter. 

The Soviets can get some supplies across a frozen lake to Leningrad. In January 1944, they are faced with a choice. They can continue to arm the city or they can feed it at starvation levels. Stalin makes a ruthless choice. The Soviets concentrate on bringing in ammunition, while supplying only enough food to keep front-line troops alive. As a strong Soviet offensive makes some progress toward opening up a corridor to the city, the Soviet high command orders the starving defenders to make a desperate attempt to break out and link up with the outside. Both sides pour resources into the battle.

 The battle rages through January and February, as civilians inside Leningrad starve by the hundreds of thousands. The Soviets evacuate skilled workers by the thousands across the frozen lake. The Germans hold onto their positions and inflict hundred of thousands of casualties on the Soviets, but the battle to relieve Leningrad is ideal for the Soviet attrition tactics. The German lines have very little depth and there is very little room for maneuver. The Germans show themselves to be marvelous defensive fighters, but they simply can't lose men and equipment at the rate they are being consumed around Leningrad. On the other hand, the Soviet army inside of Leningrad is a spent force. The Germans are able to launch a series of counterattacks that push it back deeper into the city. 

Even the Soviets don't have a bottomless supply of manpower, and losing the hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers trapped in the Leningrad pocket would be a major blow. The Soviets begin quietly evacuating specialist troops from the city. 

In March 1944, the spring thaw comes, and the Germans wearily look forward to a much needed time to rest. That doesn't happen. Soviets launch yet another offensive, initially shifting their focus to a renewed offensive against Army Group Center. As that offensive gains momentum and pins down German reserves, the Soviets launch yet another offensive to relieve Leningrad. The Germans lose some territory in the Center, but they are able to hold around Leningrad. The balance of manpower and firepower has shifted decisively against the Germans by now, and they are holding on along the huge front by frantically shifting reserves back and forth. They are also being forced to build up new armies for the new fronts that they fear will open up in the west in mid-1944. 

Finally, in June 1944, the Soviets are able to open up a narrow corridor to Leningrad. By that time the city has lost much of its value. Less than half a million civilians are still alive in the ruins, along with a little under 200,000 Soviet soldiers. At the same time, the Soviet breakthrough has some of the symbolic value that their victory at Stalingrad did in our time-line. Germany's minor allies are looking for a time to exit, especially Italy.

 January/June 1944—Western front: The Western Allies have a problem in January 1944. Once again they are not in the field against the Germans anywhere in the world. The long-promised second front will not happen until June 1944 at the earliest, with early July looking more likely. They politically can't go an entire six months without being in combat with the Germans. Italy is the logical target, but the US high command puts its collective foot down. The scale of a landing in Italy would require too much shipping. It would almost certainly make for a further postponement of the proposed landing in Northern France.

 The US is not totally against a landing in Italy. They just want it to make sure it doesn't interfere with the buildup for the second front. That would delay it until early summer of 1944—too long to go without attacking the European Axis somewhere. Churchill pushes the Italian option, then proposes a compromise. He suggests that the Allies do an island-hopping campaign through the Italian and German-held islands like Rhodes and Crete off the coast of Greece and Turkey. That would threaten the Balkans, while possibly opening up a more direct route to supply the Soviets through the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In our time-line the British tried such an offensive on its own and got their heads handed to them. In this time-line, the US sees this campaign as the lesser of two distractions and endorses a limited version of it as dress-rehearsal for the landings in northern France. 

The US transforms the campaign into a relatively small-scale feint to draw Germans forces south away from the coming thrust into France. The forces involved are very small potatoes compared to the ones fighting on the Eastern Front—a few hundreds or thousands Germans stiffening a division or two of Italians on most of the islands involved, against a couple of divisions of Allied troops. On the other hand, the fighting does draws more German power—especially air power—away from the main fronts. The battles of the Eastern Mediterranean are not trivial to the participants. They are hard-fought on the part of the Germans, Americans, British and French troops involved, and occasionally on the part of the Italians. Essentially they are intended as a sideshow, and however hard-fought they are, they remain that through June 1944. 

In the Western press, the Battle for Rhodes is a big deal. In reality it involves about half a German division. As the battle for Leningrad rages, Stalin rages too. He rages at the Western Allies for not opening up the Second Front that they promised him back in 1942. As 1944 goes on, the Allies feel increasing pressure to give him that front. After a great deal of argument, they decide on an early June landing in Southern France to hopefully pull German forces south, followed shortly by the main landing at Normandy. 

The Allies decide to bypass Italy entirely, over Churchill's vehement protests. The US argues that Italy is not a threat by itself and has no capacity to project power outside of Italy. If Germany falls, Italy will shut down due to lack of raw materials. Why fight the large number of admittedly poor quality Italian divisions when they can be bypassed and left to wither? On June 12, 1944, British, US, and French forces land in Southern France. 

And that's when Hitler is assassinated. In June 1944, shortly after the Soviet breakthrough at Leningrad and the Allied landing, a member of the German underground opposition to Hitler manages to place a bomb in Hitler's bunker. The German leader is killed when that bomb goes off. In our time-line, Hitler avoided assassination by almost miraculous good luck. In one case the opposition actually succeeded in placing a bomb on his plane. It failed to go off. It is certainly reasonable that in a diverging time-line like this such an attempt might succeed. The timing of a successful attempt is unknowable, but June 1944 is certainly quite reasonable.

 The Allies have mixed emotions about Hitler's death. Hitler had become increasingly erratic in his leadership as his early Parkinson's progressed, so he was starting to become a major detriment to the German war effort. Also, he was a major asset for Allied propaganda efforts—an easy focus for hatred. On the other hand, his death strikes a major blow at German morale. It also opens up the possibility of disruption in the German government as potential successors struggle for power. 

Goering is Hitler's official successor, but he is in reality only one of several powers inside of Germany. Himmler has a strong power base in the SS. Borman has been accumulating power. No one man has anywhere near the power that Hitler wielded. As the struggle for real power goes on behind the scenes, Goering takes on the official roles of Hitler's successor. 

Subtly, a bit of urgency goes out of Allied war efforts. That's an unfortunate side-affect of previous propaganda efforts, which had portrayed Goering as a bit of a buffoon. It is difficult to instill the kind of fear and hatred of Goering that Allied populations had for Hitler. 

And that's about it for this issue. I'll almost certainly continue this next issue. For now, I'll leave you with these questions: What happens next? Will Goering claim real power? If so, what will he do with it? If he doesn't take real power, who will? Will the Allies be able to bring their advantage in production to bear on the Germans before the Germans bring the next generation of weapons into production? How long will Mussolini stay in power? How long will Italy stay in the war? 

Some controversial issues: I'd be very surprised and a little disappointed if this scenario doesn't generate some controversy. I let it sit for a day or two, then went back over both parts with a skeptical eye. I asked myself: 

Would the Germans really be able to extract their people from Stalingrad if Torch was delayed? That's the key issue in this whole scenario, and I have to admit that after doing a great deal of reading on the issue I still don't know. The Germans would have a lot more resources to apply to the problem initially:

• Hundreds more bombers to attack the Soviet build-up before that offensive started, to delay Soviet capture of key airports, and to help any rescue column break through. 
• More fighters to protect the transports from Soviet attack 
• Hundreds more transports, especially in the early stages of the airlift. (At one point in the first couple of weeks the Germans only had 30 Ju52's that could actually be used to supply the pocket. The rest of their transports in the area were tied up keeping the Luftwaffe functioning.)
• Around a dozen additional divisions that could be used in the rescue effort.
• Political cover for the Germans in Stalingrad to try to break out.

 Would that be enough? I honestly don't know. I'm not sure anyone does.

 Hitler gets assassinated? Isn't that kind of out of the blue? Isn't that a second point of divergence? Actually, it's something that almost any alternate history scenario should be expected to deal with. A determined, unsuspected would-be assassination with a great deal of access to Hitler came very close to assassinating him at least twice in our time-line. He was saved by frankly rather improbable events both times. In this time-line, things have been diverging for months. I would give a successful assassination attempt better than a 50-50 chance. I was frankly a bit torn on this issue. Initially I put the successful assassination attempt in late 1943, but that felt wrong. It turned the scenario into “what would have happened if Hitler had been assassinated” instead of what I really wanted to explore. It may still do that, but putting it later makes that somehow feel like less of a problem. We'll see next issue. 

If you are enjoying this scenario, or if you are disappointed with it, please let me know. I always read and enjoy any feedback I can get.