(Part 2)

In September I took the scenario up through early June. The Battle for France is overdue. It started on May 10, 1940 in our time-line. In this time-line, Hitler has set a deadline for it to start by June 14. That gives the Germans a week to shift forces north from their border with Italy and get them ready for the attack on France.

In the September scenario I pointed out several factors that would make a German attack on France in this time-line much more risky than the one in our time-line. Now it looks like it is time to find out what this time-line's Germans are capable of. Looks can be deceiving though.

1. The French in Early June: The French have been expecting a German attack since November 1939. They are starting to get a little complacent--not as complacent as in our time-line because the war has turned hot at times, but too complacent. As they did in our time-line, they have diverted scarce airpower to French-held Syria, preparing for an air strike on Soviet oilfields. French airpower is also diminished temporarily by the fact that they are upgrading 500 Morraine Saulner MS 406 fighters to the MS 410 standard as those planes are brought back for repairs. That upgrade is quite extensive. It involves replacing the wings and nearly doubling the firepower. That's a good thing in the long-term, but it does take hundreds of somewhat obsolete but still usable French fighters out of action at a crucial point. In early June the upgraded fighters are just beginning to trickle back to their units. In our time-line only 75 of the planned 500 conversions were ever finished. On the other hand, hundreds of the new Dewoitine 520's are becoming available, and the French are finally getting some, but not all of their Bloch 151/152 fighters in usable condition. Initially, hundreds of the Bloch fighters arrived without gun sights, without guns and even without propellers. In our time-line, hundreds of them were still sitting on training fields without armament as late as mid-June. In our time-line, the Germans caught the French with around one-quarter of their fighter groups in the process of re-equipping, and not immediately available for combat. Now, with some decent planes finally available, the French find themselves with barely enough pilots to fly them, very short on ground crews to service them, and spare parts to keep them flying. The pilot shortage is helped a little by bringing Polish exile pilots into the equation. New French pilots are also starting to arrive in larger, but still insufficient numbers.

On the ground, morale is bad. Field defenses are poorly done. Tens of thousands of French soldiers routinely go home on leave for weekends, reflecting complacency throughout the ranks. On the other hand, the French are producing a lot of fairly good tanks--well over a thousand since September 1939. Anti-aircraft guns are in short supply, but a nice new 90 mm gun is finally arriving in small quantities. Captured German anti-aircraft guns from North Africa are actually pressed into service to some extent, though they are of limited use due to limited ammunition and spare parts. French prime minister Reynaud has finally replaced French commander Gamelin with General Weygand. In our time-line Reynaud made a major push to replace Gamelin on May 9, 1940, one day before the German offensive. In this time-line that push has long since succeeded. In both time-lines, prime minister Reynaud is a major advocate of armored divisions. In this one he finally has the power to make their formation a major priority. In our time-line, the French had formed some armored divisions on paper, but in battle generals often dispersed them, in one case scattering their armor in penny packets to guard bridges.

Defenses in the areas along the Meuse river where the Germans broke through in our time-line are rapidly becoming stronger. In both time-lines, a secret French commission issued a scathing report on the state of those defense in spring 1940, and lit a fire under the effort to fortify the area. In this time-line the French have had another month and a half to actually get those fortifications in shape. In both time-lines, they also brought in younger, more active soldiers to supplement the high percentage of middle-aged reservists in that area. In our time-line, those new soldiers may actually have been counter-productive because they broke down unit cohesion. Given another month-and-a-half that wouldn't have been as much of a problem.

In both time-lines, French artillery is expected to play a major role. The French artillery is older than the German pieces, but still very usuable. The French have a lot more of it than the Germans do.

As I mentioned earlier, in this time-line the French commander, General Gamelin, has been forced out. General Weygend takes over. He isn't perfect, but he is an improvement. The disastrous French plan to advance into Belgium was Gamelin's baby. Weygand would either not do that, or be much more cautious in doing it. As in our time-line, French Premier Reynaud has appointed a World War I hero--Marshal Petain--as vice premier.

2. The English: By early June, England is finally beginning to see the results of their airforce expansion plans. Units are re-equipped with new Hurricane and Spitfire fighters. They're beginning to get the hang of using those fighters now, though British tactics still leave a lot to be desired. Both the Hurricanes and the Spitfires are about to be retrofitted with a new propeller which dramatically increases performance.
3. The Germans: The 1940 Germans are like a compressed spring--very powerful in a short war, but without much endurance. Their economy is not designed to keep up with the demands of an army at war. At this point, without the raw materials and manpower that they later conquered in our time-line, the Germans have to fight short wars, then rebuild their logistics over a fairly extended time. Now the Germans are trying to fight a major war a week after fighting a smaller one. The battle with Italy was one-sided, but it consumed a lot of material. Tanks and aircraft are in need of maintenance, stocks of ammunition are lower than they should be. Damaged trucks need to be repaired or replaced. Without them, the panzers simply can't play their role. Oil is also in shorter supply than it should be at the beginning of a major offensive.

Allied Strategy: The British and French have a fundamental problem. They can't afford to fight another World War. They can't really even afford to remain great powers. Why?

MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) Warning: We're going to talk economics here for about two paragraphs. I'll make it as short and painless as possible. They say that amateurs discuss tactics, while professionals discuss logistics. I think that there is another level above the professionals discussing logistics. That level consists of people talking about how to produce and pay for all of the things that go bang in a war.

In the Allied camp, the people who discuss those things know that the Allies can only stay in the war for a relatively short time. Even without active fighting, British war production and purchases would run them out of gold and dollar reserves by February 1942. Active fighting would accelerate that immensely. In our time-line, Britain actually ran out of gold and dollars by late 1940 and had to be bailed out by a loan from Belgium's government in exile. The French aren't in much better shape. What happens when the Allies run out of gold and dollars? In our time-line the US bailed the British out with Lend-Lease--essentially giving them the weapons and materials they needed. In this time-line Lend-Lease probably won't happen. I'll talk about why later. With no Lend-lease in the offing, the Allies can either import food or import key American parts and raw materials for war production. They can't do both. The choice would be starving people or war production at a trickle.

So how do they plan to win? By conserving cash--avoiding offensive actions--until the British blockade starves the Germans into submission by cutting off food, raw materials, and especially oil imports. Unfortunately for the Allies, Soviet trade with the Germans makes the blockade much less effective.

End Of MEGO Alert. Back to the chronology of the scenario.

Hitler Decides To Wait Another Week: The logistics situation makes the June 14 deadline impossible to meet. The new deadline is set for June 21--and even that is iffy. Early World War II tanks are good for no more than a couple hundred miles between breakdowns. The ones used in Italy are only beginning to be available. That delay proves to be crucial. As in our time-line, the Allies have been plotting to strike at Germany's oil supply by attacking the Soviet oil fields and refineries in the Caucasus. The strike has been postponed repeatedly, partly because Churchill doesn't think it's a good idea. He is proven right. The strike finally goes ahead on June 17, 1940. It is actually more successful than it has any right to be, causing fires and temporarily reducing production. At the same time, it is by no means decisive. The Soviets can still supply oil to the Germans if they want to.

The Soviets now have to make some choices. Stalin's ideal would be to see the Allies and the Germans wear each other down in years of World War I-style fighting, while the Soviets keep building up their military. At the same time he can't allow the Soviet Union to be attacked without consequences, especially after the Red Army's poor performance in Finland. The Soviet hold on some areas of the Caucasus is not that firm. Appearing to be weak there could lead to anti-Soviet revolts. Stalin would prefer to make his response at a time when the Allies are tied up with the Germans. Stalin's intelligence indicates that a German move is imminent.

Hitler also has to make some choices. Having the French and British fighting the Soviets would be great for the Germans. Hitler is willing to wait a bit to see if the situation flares up into full-scale war. That delay will ease the logistics situation anyway. He knows that there are some circles in France and Britain where a war against the Soviets would be much more popular than one against the Germans. He puts his army on the defensive in Norway and starts cautiously sounding out the French on their attitudes toward peace. He is willing to offer to reinstate a rump Polish state in exchange for peace. That offer is not as unacceptable to the Allies as it would have been later. Churchill is uninterested, but some British circles see the offer as reasonable, as do some French ones.

The Soviet response is initially measured. They move more aircraft and men into the area and start putting diplomatic pressure on the Turks, and also on the nominally independent but actually British dominated Iraqi government. The air strikes are actually coming from bases in Turkey and Iraq. The Soviets also step up support for Kurdish and Armenian separatists inside of Turkey, and start rapidly developing contingency plans for more energetic action. As air-raids continue, a medium-sized air-war develops in the Caucasus region. The Soviets respond with sabotage and extremely ineffective air strikes in the oil fields around Mosul in Iraq. The Turks are getting nervous. They push for either vastly expanded arms aid, or an end to the air raids. The Allies respond by giving the Turks more captured Italian weapons, which is all they can currently spare.

June drags to an end without a German attack on the West. Stalin is getting very worried about the possibility of the 'capitalist' countries uniting against the Soviet Union. He works very hard to prevent that from happening. He offers the Germans vast increases in access to Soviet raw materials, while quietly having his diplomats offer the Allies a cutoff of all raw materials to the Germans. He also tries military persuasion, massing troops in Soviet Central Asia--too close to India and Iran for British comfort. None of that works. Both the Germans and the Allies class the Soviets as maybe one step above the Italians. They don't take them seriously.

Stalin decides that the perception of weakness is too dangerous to be allowed to continue. The air strikes continue and become more effective as the French deploy American-made Glen-Martin bombers. The Soviets don't have radar, so the bombers get through rather effectively. Stalin decides that further action is required. He envisions something on the order of the border war the Soviets fought with Japan in 1939--a limited but painful application of Soviet power to deter future attacks. He begins moving several of the best equipped and led Soviet divisions into the Caucasus, and puts Zhukov in charge of them.

Stalin chooses his target carefully. He will send his divisions through a corner of northern Iran to capture and destroy the British air bases around Mosul in northern Iraq, and if possible oil fields in northern Iraq. Then they will withdraw from Iraq and if possible use their presence in northern Iran to force out the pro-German shah of Iran. The logistics of the operation are shaky, especially the Iranian part of it, but the Iranians have nothing capable of stopping Soviet armor and the Iraq part of the operation is intended as a smash and grab operation, not as a conquest. The operation starts in mid-July, catching the British and French off-guard as Soviet tanks, truck-borne infantry, and horsed cavalry (Yes, the Soviets did still have horsed cavalry--they used them as late as at least 1942) pour across northern Iran. The Soviets are taking no chances. They have massed between 120,000 and 150,000 men for the offensive. The Iranians have a little over 35,000 infantrymen in a position to oppose them. This isn't a panzer attack. As in our time-line the Soviets have dismantled their tank divisions and spread the tanks out among the infantry. It does move fast though, and the Soviets have a lot of powerful tanks.

The Iranians would have had trouble against Italian tanks. The Soviets have KV-1's and even a sprinkling of very early model T34's just off the assembly lines. The British scramble to get a force together to defend Mosul. Most of the readily available forces are essentially glorified colonial police forces, not suitable for modern warfare. The French have around 70,000 men in Syria, but the British are reluctant to bring the French into the fighting because the French have long coveted the oil-fields around Mosul. The Turks also have had their eyes on those oil-fields, and the British are wary of Turkish ambitions too.

As the Soviets smash their way into Iraq, the British realize the seriousness of the situation and belatedly ask for French help. The French send the most mobile of their Syrian divisions, along with a few R35 light tanks. Russian columns crash through the Allies, routing them. The R35's are essentially worthless against KV-1's and T34's, as are the few light machine-gun armed tanks the British manage to get to the area. The Soviets occupy Mosul easily, as British Wellington bombers hastily fly of threatened bases, and ground crews flee for their lives.

Stalin now makes a crucial mistake. He overestimates the impact of the Allied rout in the battle for Mosul, and orders his forces to overrun French airfields in Turkey. That's the same kind of mistake he made several times in the early part of the German invasion of Russia in our time-line--pushing a successful offensive too far and turning victory into defeat. That's what happens in this case. The Soviets outrun their logistics, and especially their air cover. Soviet tanks break down. A significant fraction of the Soviet force is still horse-mounted cavalry. The cavalry quickly slows down in the face of the machine guns of the Allied rear-guard. Allied plane have been trying ineffectively to catch fast moving Soviet columns in mountain passes. As the Soviet advance slows, the Allies rush more equipment to the area, including more modern French tanks like the Somua S35.

The Soviet advance brushes aside any Allied opposition, but it finally stalls, more due to lack of fuel, munitions, and spare parts for broken down tanks than to Allied power. The Turks have been sitting on the side-lines, waiting to see if the Allies can stop the Soviets. They would love to 'liberate' Mosul from the Soviets, but they are not sure it is safe to do so. When the Soviet advance stalls inside Turkey, the Turks attack the Soviet flank in northern Iraq, cutting off the bulk of the Soviet divisions in the area. The Soviets try to turn their divisions around to meet the new attack, but they are in no shape to break out. KV-1's are formidable, but not when they are broken down and out of ammunition. With the Soviet divisions stationary and with no air cover, British and French aircraft start pounding them, ineffectively at first, then more and more devastatingly as Allied pilots gain experience. Starving and out of ammunition, Soviet troops surrender in droves and the Soviet divisions disintegrate.

Stalin has been getting more divisions ready to break through the Turks, but he realizes that it is too late to save his divisions, so he writes them off. Soviet forces that can get out retreat to Iran. Stalin decides that he has made his point and that it is time to wind things down before they get out of hand. Hitler has not made a move against France yet, and Stalin has no interest in having the power of the Allies redirected against the Soviet Union. Churchill is willing to negotiate. He dislikes Stalin, but he fears and hates Hitler. The British are also eager to remove any excuse for Turkish or French forces to remain in Mosul. The French are willing to follow Britain's lead. They've encountered the new Soviet tanks up-close, and in spite of the outcome of the campaign they have no desire for future encounters.

'Lessons' learned from the Mosul campaign: As the diplomats try to find a way to wind down the Mosul campaign, armchair generals and real ones try to sort out the lessons to be learned. The decades-long battle over whether tanks should be tied to infantry or used in special mechanized divisions heats up again. Even though the Soviet tanks involved were actually spread out among the infantry divisions, there were a lot of them and they were used aggressively in a fast-moving campaign. Most observers, including many German ones, use their successes and failures as indicators of how Panzer divisions would do. Given that mindset, most military observers come away with the following 'lessons':

1. Massed tanks can be decisive in winning battles.
2. Forces using those tanks still have to be concerned about their flanks, and are very vulnerable to being cut off if they are too aggressive.
3. Logistical limitations would keep panzer divisions from winning strategic victories as opposed to tactical ones.
4. Control of the air is absolutely vital if one is going to use massed tanks and mechanized infantry offensively. Without it they get shot to pieces.
5. The bomber will always get through. The Soviets didn't have radar, and their early warning systems are primitive. As a result, unescorted bombers are able to strike them at will, though the few times Soviet fighters do manage to intercept, they wreak havoc on the bombers.

All of those 'lessons' contain some truth, but together they lead people to underestimate the potential of the panzer divisions again, and to overestimate the potential of bombers. The Germans are less affected than most European armies by those 'lessons', but even they buy into some of them. Hitler is haunted by the thought of losing his panzer divisions like the Soviets lost their divisions in the Mosul war. That is not an unreasonable concern. In our time-line, airpower often shot mechanized or armored divisions to pieces when those divisions were caught on the move. That fear of Hitler's will come to play a major role in future campaigns.

In both our time-line and this one, the Soviets used the Winter War with Finland to test out new tank designs. They tried out some multi-turret monster tanks, as well as the first few KV-1's to come off of the assembly lines. In both time-lines, the intelligence services of the rest of Europe missed the debut of the KV-1 because none of the KV-1's were knocked out. The KV-1 was also used in the Mosul war, along with the first few of a brand new design which came off the assembly line for the first time in June 1940: the T34. In the Mosul war, several examples of both the KV-1 and the T34 are captured by the Allies. The T34's are a very early model. Their main gun is shorter, with a lower velocity than the ones the Germans encountered in 1941 in our time-line. Their transmissions are truly bad. At the same time, they make the French R35's and even the handful of newer S35's that made it over before the Mosul war ended look like antiques. The French and English rush captured KV-1's and T34's home to be studied by their tank designers. The Germans don't have that kind of access, but they do have numerous agents in Iran so they get good intelligence on the KV-1, and they are vaguely aware that the T34 exists.

The Mosul war winds down: There is a period of skirmishing along the Iran/Iraq border. The Soviets do very well in those skirmishes, which discourages the Allies from trying to push them out. The Iranians restrict themselves to hit and run raids into Soviet-held Iranian territory. The shah of Iran is pro-German and has a large German colony of technicians inside the country, though apparently no official military advisers. His forces are fairly good for a third world country, with a lot of obsolete aircraft and some reasonably modern Czech-built tanks and artillery. In our time-line, Iran was invaded by the British and Russians in August 1941 in order to open up a route for western aid to the Soviet Union. The shah's forces usually folded rather easily during that invasion, with corrupt senior officers deserting their men and heading toward the safety of Turkey--sometimes after commandeering army trucks and making troops throw away the ammunition they were carrying in order to move their house-hold furniture. Some elite units did rather well though, and more would have probably done so if the invasion had been only on one front. The shah needs to recoup his prestige, which he does to some extent as his forces do reasonably well against the Soviets in small-scale raids. He wisely don't try to push the invaders out. The Soviets use their position in the Kurdish portion of Iran to arm Kurdish nationalists and stir up trouble in mainly Kurdish territory in Iraq and Turkey. That is primarily a ploy to put pressure on the British and Turks to end the war. They also encourage seperatism among other Iranian groups and set up local communist-led governments in occupied Iranian territory.

The war appears to be ready to officially end in early August 1940. The Soviets agree to move out of northern Iran, though not immediately. A prisoner exchange starts and becomes a major point of contention. Many of the captured Soviets don't want to go back because they fear that they will be executed as traitors. Stalin wants them all back so he can punish the 'traitors'. Most of the 'British' and 'French' prisoners he has to exchange are actually native auxiliaries. The Allies push a hard bargain on prisoner exchange, getting the Soviets to exchange Polish prisoners captured in 1939 for Soviet soldiers captured in the Mosul war, and forcing a high ratio of Poles to Soviets. They do, however, quietly do a wink-and-nod agreement to repatriate all Soviet POW's. That happened at the end of World War II in our time-line, with the western Allies turning hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens that had been in Germany or France over to Stalin.

The Allied/German war heats up: Hitler realizes that the Allies are not going to get bogged down against the Soviets. He decides to take advantage of the fact that a considerable amount of their power is tied down in the Middle East. The impact of air power on his Panzer Divisions worries him. During the period of "Phony war" the Luftwaffe has been testing French air defenses. In May the Germans knew that they had a pretty decisive edge. By August, things are much more balanced. The appearance of Spitfires over France is an especially nasty surprise. Hitler has finally decided on an attack through the Ardennes in this time-line. He is very concerned about Allied airpower catching his Panzers on the scarce and narrow roads in that area, and about French planes warning the French in time for them to move troops into position to stop the thrust. He decides to let the Luftwaffe win control of the skies over northern France before he unleashes the Panzers. In early August, the Luftwaffe launches a major air offensive, starting with attacks on over forty French airports in Northern France. That's a replay of what they did in our time-line. In our time-line they were able to destroy a considerable number of planes on the ground, and force the French to move planes back to auxiliary fields, disrupting maintenance and reducing French capabilities. In this time-line, the air battle is fierce. In our time-line, the French were just starting to deploy British-made mobile radar stations in May 1940. They also had one station up using a similar but less capable French-built system called DEM. They didn't have the command and control structure set up yet to take advantage of the information from the few stations they did have. In this time-line, they have had three more months to get their acts together. They have been mass-producing fairly good modern fighters. French and British pilots have had precious months to learn how to use their more modern fighters. And now the Allies are reading a great deal of Luftwaffe Ultra traffic. Both sides have diverted part of their airpower to other theatre. The Germans have planes tied up threatening the Italians. The Allies have planes tied up in the Middle East.  

 In this time-line, the initial airfield attacks are a disaster for the Germans. They bring in the bombers unescorted, just as they did in the early stages of the battle of France in our time-line. French and British fighters are alerted by intercepts and radar. They give the Germans a very serious bloody nose for the first two days, until the Germans start using fighters to escort their bombers. Then numbers start to take their toll, as the Germans simply wear down the outnumbered French pilots. The British are reluctant to bring in too much of their airpower, but they are forced to do so as the battle wears on and the French are hit harder and harder by German airpower.

Then all hell breaks loose: No, the Germans don't launch their attack on France. Instead, a political fiasco erupts on the Allied side. The French government gets hit by a series of scandals. First, news leaks out about forced repatriation of Soviet prisoners of war. That comes after a couple of months of anti-Soviet propaganda during the Mosul war. As in our time-line, communists in French arms factories have been caught sabotaging tank and aircraft engines so that tanks would stall and planes crash after a few dozen miles of use. In this time-line, the Mosul war combines with those reports, and have put France on the edge of a full-blown red scare. The forced repatriation fuels that scare. The alleged poor performance of the French airforce, combined with rumors about modern fighters sitting unused at rear airfields also fuel the paranoia. Returning Polish ex-POWs help matters along by their horror stories about the Soviet Union. Finally, using information from Soviet POWs, the French secret services break a real Soviet spy ring inside the high echelons of the French Air Ministry. (There was one there, but in our time-line it went undetected through the fall of France, and was unknown until the fall of the Soviet Union).

The prisoner exchange is suspended. The Soviets have been looking at the Allied position in the world in view of a hot war in France. Stalin has already decided that the time is ripe again to make gains while the Germans and the Allies are embroiled. As soon as the air battle in France starts in earnest, he puts plans to destabilize the Iranian government into high gear. The Soviet position in northern Iran makes that easier, making the shah look weak and giving the Soviets easy access to discontented Iranians. As stories about Iranian generals deserting their commnands circulate, the shah looks vulnerable. He shakes up the military, but that leaves him more vulnerable in some ways as ousted military men look for a way back to power. A complicated series of coups and betrayals ensues. A pro-Soviet group grabs a tenous hold on Tehran long enough to call in the Red Army. The shah and his family escape and flee south as the Soviets move in. Stalin is not totally thrilled with the timing of events. He would have prefered to wait until the Allies and Germans were more totally embroiled. However, this is an overwhelmingly important opportunity for the Soviets, and it comes less than a day after the suspension of the prisoner exchange.

In France, the Reynaud government falls. Marshall Petain comes into power with a mandate to clean house, and a strong feeling inside France that they were fighting the wrong enemy. Petain at this point is not the defeatist he was in our time-line, when he sought an armistice with Hitler. He is, however, a realist. He knows that the Soviet threat the Iranian oil is potentially lethal to the Allies. Iranian oil fuels the French and British empires. He knows that the Allies can't successfully fight both the Germans and the Soviets. He immediately begins sounding out Hitler on the possibility of a compromise peace settlement.

The fall of Reynaud and the Soviet push has an impact on British politics too. The scandal over the forced repatriation of Soviet POWs taints Churchill too. He is weakened, which makes the opposition bolder. Top British politicians have been very aware of the fact that dollars and gold are flowing out of the country at an unsustainable level. The Mosul war accelerated that flow. The air battle for France is making matters even worse. Churchill has made the flow worse by expanding the British army far beyond what the British can pay for long-term. In our time-line Lend-Lease made that irrelevant, but even after the fall of France it took over six months for the US to pass Lend Lease. In this time-line, it is an even harder sell. Americans simply don't feel threatened. Top British politicians know that they can sustain the current rate of military spending only until November 1940--less than three months. The American political situation--it's an election year--makes loans from the US impossible. The pro-Soviet coup in Iran puts the icing on that cake

The French spy scandal, the Mosul war, and now the coup in Iran have hardened British attitudes toward the Soviets. There is a strong element within Britain which feels that Churchill is bankrupting the empire fighting the wrong enemy. They use the Soviet POW repatriation and the Iranian coup to force a vote of no-confidence, replacing Churchill.

Hitler's choice: Hitler now has a choice: He can launch the attack on France, or he can negotiate. He sees the political events in France and Britain, followed by the Iranian coup and Allied peace feelers, as a sign of weakness. On the other hand, the air battle for France is by no means won. The French are bringing in more and more Polish pilots to fly their increasing numbers of modern fighters. The Bloch 155 starts appearing, as do more modern American planes.

The French have been desperately trying to build up their numbers of fighter pilots since before the war began, but it takes years to train a pilot. The results of that effort start to show up in June and July of 1940, but the French still have several months to go before they have a truly comfortable supply of pilots. The French are facing an out-and-out shortage of technical personnel--the mechanics and other ground crew necessary to get planes flying and keep them flying. On the other hand, the war of attrition has weighed on the Germans heavily too. In our time-line the Germans lost close to 1500 planes in the battles for Norway and France. Around 400 German pilots were captured by the French alone (and released after the fall of France to fight in the Battle of Britain). Those loses were against an enemy without a usable radar system. They were against an enemy without (for the most part) Spitfires and the modern French planes, an enemy operating on the run from the Panzer divisions. In this time-line German losses are even heavier. Just substituting Dewoitine 520's for Moraine-Saulner 406's makes a major difference. In our time-line the French lost 400 MS-406's while those planes shot down less than 200 German aircraft. The Dewoitine 520 apparently had a better-than-even kill ratio. The Germans have also discovered the limitation of several of their airplanes. The ME-110 is no match for a Spitfire, though the 109 is. The Stuka dive-bomber is extremely vulnerable to enemy fighters. The Luftwaffe is still very powerful, but Hitler is by no means sure of air superiority.

Hitler is also concerned about Iran. There are nearly a thousand German citizens inside of Iran, and Germany has important commercial ties there. Hitler classifies the Iranians as fellow Aryans, which makes watching them go down harder. There are several incidents where German citizens are killed by one faction or another inside Iran, sometimes by pro-Soviet factions. Also, as in our time-line the Soviets have taken advantage of German and Allied fighting to make demands on Romania. In our time-line they actually seized border areas from Romania in summer of 1940. In this time-line they haven't done that yet, but they are putting increasing pressure on the Romanians. That upsets Hitler because Romania is his major source of oil.

Petain is quietly offering some of the pre-World War I German colonies in return for the re-establishment of a rump Poland without Danzig or the Polish corridor, and an independent Czech state. Hitler wants at least Germany's pre-World War I borders on the east. He is willing to establish a technically independent Polish state, as long as it agrees to limits on its military. He knows that any such state will be economically dependent on the Germans and easily retaken if need be. Petain knows that too, but he needs a fig leaf to make any peace treaty palatable. The outline of a settlement is there. As the air battle for France goes on, and as anti-communist sentiment in France increases, private channel negotiations work to iron out the details. The United States is still available as an avenue for such negotiations, but the Roosevelt administration is reluctant to support them. Roosevelt doesn't trust Hitler, nor does anybody else outside of Germany. That's a major obstacle to any peace settlement. Hitler has casually broken so many agreements that even though strong elements in the French and British governments want peace at almost any cost, they are very wary of seeking an agreement.

Italy is in a very weak position. The new government desperately needs oil to keep the country alive. The Allies are driving a hard bargain on oil shipments. They want a formal declaration of war on Germany and active Italian participation in the war. The Italians aren't willing to attract any more German attention. The Germans quietly allow some oil to trickle into Italy. In exchange, the Italians quietly fail to notice as the Germans send transports over Italian airspace to supply Malta.

The United States is in the middle of a very close election. I debated a bit as to whether or not Franklin Roosevelt would run for a third term without a French collapse. I'm still not sure which way that one would go, but for plot purposes, I'm going to go with Roosevelt seeking a third term. Without the sense of crisis in Europe that the fall of France and the blitz against England provided in our time-line, Roosevelt is facing a very tough fight for re-election. The French red scare,the Mosul war and especially the Iranian coup have stimulated US fears of communist infiltration and that has played against the Roosevelt campaign. Roosevelt is fighting for his political life and has no political capital to spend on getting something like Lend-lease through Congress. As a result, the French and British have to live with a cash-and-carry policy. That means that Britain's ability to actively carry on the war ends in November 1940, while France could theoretically carry on a few more months.

On the oceans: The U-boat war is ongoing. The British are in better shape than they were in our time-line. The French fleet can still help them out, and the Italian fleet is not a factor anymore. On the other hand, the Germans are sinking a lot of tonnage, and the British have not received the fifty 'overage' destroyers that would have been getting by this time in our time-line. German possession of Malta also hurts the British, essentially denying them the ability to go through the Mediterranean. The U-boat war is probably not going to turn into a stake through the heart of Britain, but it does make their financial crisis worse.

So, what do you think? Is this still a plausible AH so far? Should I keep going with it? Do you think Hitler would make peace and try to channel French anti-communism into support for an invasion of the Soviet Union? Or would he sense weakness and attack? Do you want me to see where it goes from here or go on to the next Turkish intervention scenario? Where do you think this scenario would go from here? Comments are very welcome. Note: There is a part three to this. I'm not sure it ever got uploaded, but hereit is.