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Point Of Divergence is an amateur press magazine and also a forum for discussing AH and AH-related ideas. Here is my comment section. |
Without
the very poor initial Soviet performance in Finland, I doubt that the
Germans would have invaded the Soviet Union in quite the same way if
they did it at all. That poor performance played to Hitler's
prejudices and led to unrealistic expectations in terms of ease of
taking down the Soviets. I suspect that in the absence of that war,
the Germans and Soviets would have remained in quasi-alliance for
somewhat longer.
Other impacts: (1)Finland would not participate in any German invasion of the USSR, thus releasing substantial Soviet forces for other fronts. (2) Finland would not be a potential pretext for the Allies to get involved in Norway, which might abort the German invasion there to the extent it was a reaction to Allied moves toward Norway. (3) Ironically, Italy would be considerably stronger in the early going of World War II. Long train of consequences here: (a) The Italians sent quite a bit of reasonably modern war material to the Finns, especially some modern (by Italian standards) warplanes. That material could have been useful in North Africa/Greece later. (b) As a result of those shipments to Finland, the Soviets cut off oil shipments to the Italian navy, which meant that the Italians started World War II with considerably less oil for their battleships than they needed. Those battleships spent a good hunk of the war in port after mid-1941 simply because the Italians didn't have the oil to fuel them. (4) Without the disastrous showing in the Winter War, the Soviets might not have felt the need to appease the Germans to the same extent that they did. Advantages to the Soviets: they would probably ship the Germans less oil and grain that would later be used against them. They would probably be more willing to risk war by going on the alert if it looked like a German invasion was imminent. Disadvantages: A more self-confident Soviet military would be less aware of deficiencies and thus less reformed. They would have less combat experience. They might be more willing to get into other adventures like attacking Turkey or Iran. They might even try a preemptive strike against the Germans, which would be a fiasco in all likelihood. Posted on Feb 4, 2012.
More Stuff For POD Members Only What you see here is a truncated on-line version of a larger zine that I contribute to POD, the alternate history APA. POD members get to look forward to more fun stuff.
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