(Part 3)

What has happened so far: Part One of this scenario goes through early June 1940. I had Turkey joining the Allies in September 1939 due to Turkey's rivalry with Italy. The Allies try to polish off Italy while the Germans are otherwise occupied. That works rather well. Italy is essentially out of the war and trying to change sides by Spring 1940. A little less than a division of German troops have been captured by the Allies during the fall of Italian North Africa. On the plus side from the German point of view, they have captured Malta, the result of the world's first large-scale airborne assault--successful but extremely bloody. Mussolini is gone. The Italian empire in Africa is gone. The Germans and Italians have fought a fierce, but rather one-sided three-week border war along their Alpine border. Hitler toyed with the idea of going after the Italians and trying to restore Mussolini, but decided that France is the more decisive target. The battle for Norway didn't go as well for the Germans as it did in our time-line, partly because their invasion plan did not include a role for their airborne forces. In this time-line, those forces were very badly bloodied in Malta.

By the end of part one in early June, the Battle for France was overdue. It started on May 10, 1940 in our time-line. In this time-line, it is delayed by about a month by the German/Italian border skirmishes. That makes a huge difference in part two.

In part two of the scenario, the French and British launch air attacks on the Soviet Union's Caucasus oil fields. Hitler decides to wait and see if his two sets of potential enemies get into a shooting war before he goes after France. He has logistics problems anyway, which is a major factor in that decision. The Soviets and the Allies end up fighting a medium sized war in Iran, Iraq, and eastern Turkey called the Mosul War. The Soviets initially crush the Allies, but overestimate the decisiveness of their victory and end up throwing it away by pushing too far and getting the bulk of their forces trapped.

Stalin decides to wind down the war, as do the Allies. Hitler decides that he needs to take out the French while they are still embroiled in the Middle East. Unfortunately for him, he has learned a "lesson" from the Soviet defeat: Enemy air power must be neutralized before it is safe for mechanized forces like his panzer divisions to take the offensive. The French and British airforces have gotten a lot stronger since May. Goering says he can regain total control of the skies in a week, so the air battle from France starts. It is a very hard fought battle, by no means over in a week.

Meanwhile, the French and British governments have both fallen victims to a Red Scare resulting from the Mosul War and discovery of communist spy and saboteur rings in France. The new government of France is headed by an aging hero of World War I--Marshall Petain. The new governments in the Allied countries are interested in a negotiated settlement with Germany, partly because there is a strong element inside France and Britain that feels they are fighting the wrong enemy, and partly due to looming national financial collapse. That feeling gets stronger when Soviet-inspired plotters grab a tenuous hold on the capital of Iran, and call in the Red Army.

Britain Responds To the Iranian Coup: The British have long had contingency plans for a Soviet invasion of Iran. Those plans were updated during the Mosul War. The British immediately move two divisions into southern Iran, and begin trying to help the Shah rally his army. The Shah's army is a mixed bag--partly a corrupt internal security force and partly a fairly good third world national army. It has some good but nearly obsolete Czech-made tanks, some good artillery units, and a large but obsolete airforce. Part of that army is in revolt against the shah. Part of it disintegrated in reaction to the initial Soviet invasion, with top officers deserting their men. The British intervention gives loyal troops reason to believe that they have a chance against the Soviets, and they begin to form up in the southern half of Iran.

Soviet and British aircraft clash, as do advancing ground forces. British Matilda II infantry tanks clash with a mixture of old and new Soviet tanks--Bt-7's and T26's on the one hand, KV-1's and T34's on the other. Iranian rebels and loyalists fight each other, and try to stay out of the way of the battling Great Powers. That doesn't always work.

The British have more troops to draw on than they would have in our time-line because the battle for North Africa is over, as is the battle for Italian East Africa. They get some help from the French and to a minor extent the Turks. The Turks have a large (around a million men) army, but it is mostly tough infantry with little long-range offensive capability. The French have a considerable force in North Africa, but they consider it to some extent a reserve for the looming land battle for France.

Hitler's decision: The air battle for France has turned into a war of attrition. Hitler still thinks he can win it, then unleash his Panzers. The Iranian war gives him two possible opportunities. First, he could try to take advantage of the continued Allied distraction to knock France out of the war. On the other hand, he could take the settlement that the Allies have been quietly hinting at--redirecting them against the Soviets and letting his real and potential enemies wear each other down. The problem with that second strategy is that it would take patience. Hitler in 1940 is a man anxious to play the world role he sees for himself--to set the Germans on the road to conquering most of Eurasia--before he gets too old.

Hitler decides to continue the effort to break the Allies--to in essence be Stalin's military ally for the time being. That is not an unalterable decision. He keeps his options open to some extent. He simply decides to push the air battle, while being ready to start the land battle if and when attrition and the battle for Iran brings Allied air forces low enough to make that safe. Continuing the battle should encourage Stalin to commit himself further in Iran, making it harder for the Soviets and the Allies to stop their war there.

Goering has a plan to make German control of the air possible. He feels that the French air force is on the ropes. The problem is that the British have been sending more and more of their air force into the battle for France. Force the British fighters home, and the Allied air effort collapses. The way to do that is to threaten the British home islands. There are some risks involved. Without airbases in France or the low-countries, the Germans are limited in terms of the direction they can come in from, and fighter escorts are of very limited duration, if they can be performed at all. On the other hand, German intelligence estimates indicate that the British have committed the overwhelming majority of their air power to France, so initial raids should see little opposition, and if the British pull back fighters, the road to France will be open.

That road will depend on control of the air, and on deception. An initial German attack will target apparent weak areas in the Maginot line, hopefully pinning French troops down along that area, hopefully scoring some propaganda victories if some minor parts of the fortifications can be taken, and hopefully bringing the French airforce into the battle so that it can be attritioned. That step will happen at the same time the air raids on Britain begin. Step two will be an attack through Holland and Belgium to try to pull the French army north. Finally, the bulk of the German army, including nearly all of it's panzer divisions, will slice through the Ardennes into southern Belgium and Northern France, cutting off the best and most mobile part of the French army and the bulk of the British. With minor detail changes that is the plan the Germans executed in May 1940 in our time-line.

Hitler feels that he has to have nearly complete control of the air in order to pull the decisive parts of this off. There are several reasons for that--some valid and some only partly so. First, the decisive southern thrust is through a heavily forested area with few roads. The Germans can get through the Ardennes on schedule, but only if they go on a very tight, almost nothing can go wrong basis. It wouldn't take many Allied planes shooting up truck convoys to turn that schedule into chaos. The Germans also have to move faster than their heavy artillery, which means that they will arrive at French defenses very dependant on Stukas for heavy support. If they have to wait for their big guns to catch up, surprise is lost and the French have ample time to reinforce the threatened area. The Stukas would also act as German artillery during any breakthrough. Not only that, but the Germans have to keep Allied air reconnaissance from detecting the size and direction of the thrust before it is too late. Those are all good reasons for insisting on nearly compete control of the air, but Hitler is also very impressed by exaggerated reports of Allied air successes in the Mosul War. He understands the importance of his Panzer Divisions and he doesn't want to get them shot to pieces. Air strikes on Britain should give him air superiority, and let him knock France out of the war.

This all makes a great deal of sense, but the Germans are missing some important things. First, the British and French have been out-producing the Germans in aircraft, especially single-engine fighters, by a very wide margin throughout the spring and summer of 1940. The British alone are out-producing the Germans by more than two-to-one, while the French are coming very close to matching German production themselves--producing close to 100 new Dewoitine 520's every month, along with a considerable number of Bloch 155's and miscellaneous other types, including some good, modern bombers. The Allies don't have an abundance of pilots, but since the air war is being fought over Allied held territory, many shot down Allied pilots live to fight again, while shot-down German pilots end up in POW camps if they survive.

The Allies think that the Germans are still out-producing them, and are trying desperately to catch up. The Germans think they are still out-producing the Allies too, and are not really pushing production to the extent that they should be. In our timeline, the British production surge, and the lack of a corresponding German one, won the Battle of Britain in spite of massive British aircraft losses in the Battle for France. In this time-line, it makes German air superiority simply impossible to achieve through a war of attrition. British fighter command still has a considerable number of squadrons ready for any German attack on Britain.

A second problem is that the French have reconsidered the Breda variant of the Dyle plan. In early 1940 in both time-lines, French Commander Gamelin pushed through the idea of taking seven of the best, most mobile French divisions out of central reserve and committing them to rushing through Belgium to southern Holland if the Germans invaded Holland. That plan cut the number of divisions the French had in reserve behind their central front in half. Since these were some of the best French divisions, it cut the real strength of that reserve by more than half. The Breda variant was universally opposed by other French generals, and rightly so. The new government is much more wary of committing French assets for Allied goals than the old one was. They have also looked at the Soviet fiasco at the end of the Mosul War and concluded that sending their most motorized forces forward into southern Holland when they can't provide adequate air cover is just plain stupid. In our time-line, the Luftwaffe did hurt advancing French motorized divisions badly, so that was a realistic fear, especially given the French army's dramatic shortage of anti-aircraft guns. The French have pressed German and Italian anti-aircraft guns captured in North Africa and Soviet anti-aircraft guns captured in the Mosul war into service to protect low-priority targets and quiet areas of the fort-lines, but ammunition is short for those types and their use just complicates French logistics. The French have also produced or bought over 600 new light anti-aircraft cannon since May 1940, but they are still very short of anti-aircraft guns.

The rush forward into Belgium and southern Holland was Gamelin's baby--very much out of character for a French army that emphasized a cautious methodical approach to battle. Gamelin is now long gone, and so is his approach. The French government is quietly pressuring the Belgians to allow joint military planning. They are also making it clear that if Belgium doesn't allow that planning, the French army won't risk catastrophe by rushing to Belgium's rescue. The French do plan a modest deployment into Southern Belgium when the Germans attack, but the most risky part of that movement is delegated to the British Expeditionary Force.

The British Expeditionary force has gradually grown over the four months since May, in spite of the diversions of Mosul War and the Iranian coup. The British now have fourteen infantry divisions, some of them partly mechanized, in France. That's up from ten useable ones in May. They also have an armored division with around 300 tanks, along with the tanks in the infantry divisions.

The course of the Battle: The attacks on Britain are met by fighter command, and given a very bloody nose. They go on for two weeks, but the Germans see little or no difference in the air war over northern France. In reality, the diversion of German air power gives the French vital time to rest their pilots and get ready for the next round. The German diversionary attack on the Maginot line is moderately successful. As in our time-line, they take a few outlying defenses with a great deal of difficulty, and pump that up into a propaganda victory.

Goering looks at German air losses and realizes that they are unsustainable. He decides to shift strategy to night attacks on cities to crack French morale. Hitler aborts that. He reluctantly decides to switch the main German thrust back north, through Holland and Belgium. The southern thrust is just too risky without total air superiority. Strengthening French defenses in the area also play a role in the decision. In both time-lines, the French had far too many active divisions and tank battalions behind the Maginot line in May 1940. By September 1940, much of that manpower has been reallocated. The number of French tank battalions behind the Maginot line drops from 17 to 8, with only 3 of them modern. That adds a lot more heft to French defenses in the north. The Panzers finally get unleashed in mid-September 1940.

In this time-line, unlike ours, the Belgian airborne operation turns into a fiasco. The Belgian army is very aware of the airborne threat after Malta, and has good anti-aircraft assets around key installations. The glider-borne assaults fail, and the Germans have to use conventional means against the fortress. Both Belgium and Holland hold out longer than in our time-line, which has the ironic affect of forcing the Allies to move further forward to help them. When the Germans do break through in Belgium, they cut off more than two-thirds of the British Expeditionary force, along with several Belgian divisions and a French one. The Allies launch a furious counterattack, both from outside the pocket and from within it, but by the end of September it is obvious that those forces are not going to get out.

The Germans have by no means won the war at this point. The French army is still pretty much intact. The subsidiary German southern thrust through the Ardennes has been stopped at the Meuse river with heavy losses. German attempts to cross the river are thrown back. (Three out of six of the crossing attempts failed in May in our time-line in spite of the fact that the bulk of the panzer divisions were up against the weakest part of the French army--the aging and poorly equipped reservists of series-B French infantry divisions). French artillery plays a very effective role in foiling those attacks. Holland has flooded a large part of the country, and is still holding out in a part of their country that they have designated as fortress Holland. The Dutch are proving to be extremely good fighters. That was true in our time-line, though it is obscured by the fact that they went under so quickly. For the size of their army they inflicted a lot of casualties on the Germans. In this time-line they don't have to cope with the demoralizing impact of German airborne assaults, and they are in very good defensive country. The Luftwaffe has ground itself down in the war of attrition to the point where it is in danger of losing control of the air, especially since the British are going all out to support their threatened army. The British army has no place to go, and it is fighting stubbornly inside a shrinking pocket.

The Allies are regularly decoding the Luftwaffe version of Enigma by this time. That gives them some insight into army operations. Ultra keeps the fiasco in Belgium from being any worse, and helps the French target the panzers divisions for a series of counter-attacks at a moments where they are exhausted and temporarily less mobile. Those counter-attacks put the Germans on the defensive and makes them much more wary of French power.

Stalin has been watching the fighting in Belgium and Holland carefully. He has been trying to contain the war in Iran, and possibly negotiate a settlement. He is very cautious. However, he now sees a major opportunity. England is about to lose almost all of its army. That leaves a lot of very valuable territory up for grabs--the entire Middle East and India. It also leaves British allies like Turkey very vulnerable. He figures that given the circumstances, he can grab essentially anything British that he wants to, and the British will have no choice but to let him keep it in the resulting peace treaty. The Soviet army has been building up logistics capabilities in Central Asia. Now it goes all out after traditional Russian goals in the area. The Soviets push into Iraq and Turkey again, with thrusts from Iran and amphibious assaults against Turkey. They also push into southwestern India (now part of Pakistan) from Iran, and across a corridor of Afghanistan into northern India. Soviet ambitions are emphasized as they set up a series of new puppet states. There is now a Kurdish People's Republic, and a Baluchistan People's Republic.

Hitler now has another choice to make. He wants to bring the French down--to get revenge for World War I, but that is just a minor part of his overall strategy. His main concern is that the Allies be neutralized before he heads east. The French army is still undefeated, but it is under a great deal of pressure to make peace. The British want peace on just about any terms at this point, and the French have always been the more reluctant of the two Allies to fight. Hitler can have peace on pretty close to his terms if he wants it. On the other hand it would be nice to finish off the British army then try to knock off the French army. It is a close call for him. One factor is that it is getting late in the year to tackle the French. By the time the Germans can mop up the British and the Dutch, then get themselves into a position to attack south it will be close to November. Bad weather could ground the Luftwaffe and bog down the panzers, leaving the Germans to fight a World War I-style infantry war in the mud--and that's a war that the French are thoroughly prepared for.

The French army is now pretty much on its own, but it has built up a lot in the months since May. The French have produced over 800 new tanks since May, compared to around 400 for the Germans. The German tanks are in many ways better, but the French are getting better at using tanks. They have formed more of their rather poorly structured but powerful armored divisions (DCRs)--for a total of five. The French DCRs are slower but more powerful than German panzer divisions--built for smashing through defenses rather than slaching through weak spots then exploiting the breakthrough. The French also have five light mechanized divisions (DLMs) now. The DLMs are not equivalent to a Panzer division, but they can move quickly and in theory have well over 100 tanks. The French are beginning to figure out how to use their armor in units instead of as individual tanks. The French have had over a year of fighting to discover and patch weak spots in their training, equipment, and doctrine. The Germans have been battered by the heavy fighting in Belgium and Holland, while the French are still relatively fresh.

There are two deciding factor on peace versus war. First, Hitler has no interest in doing all of the hard fighting while having Stalin collect the bulk of the British empire. Second, he has no problem with breaking any treaty that gets signed if he sees an advantage to it. A surprise attack in Spring 1941 is certainly a strong possibility if the French leave him an opening. True, he doesn't get to bag the British Expeditionary Force, but he gets back several thousand Germans captured in Africa, and several thousand high-quality men from the airborne force trapped in Malta. He also gets back considerably more than 500 Luftwaffe pilots who are currently POWs. Those are very valuable men.

In mid-October, World War II ends--at least the German versus Allied part of it. German gets to keep the parts of Czechoslovakia it has seized. It gets to keep most of the Polish territory it has seized. It gets back several of the German colonies it lost after World War II--Tanganyika, Togo, Cameroon, and Southwest Africa. Hitler isn't very interested in African colonies, but they are available for the asking, so he takes them. He does allow a technically independent rump Poland. German troops are allowed to stay in occupied parts of Belgium and Holland for up to five years, though the treaty does limit their numbers. In return, surrounded Allied troops are allowed to leave the pocket with their personal weapons. The Germans pull out of Malta and parts of Norway. The U-boats return to base. German troops also pull out of some areas of Central Poland. Polish POWs are being released.

Commentators are casting around for something to call the just ended war. World War II seems to be a bit too grand for a confused slightly over one-year-long series of campaigns. The War of the Polish Corridor seems a little too small, and reminds people that the settlement leaves Poland without that corridor.

Churchill is appalled by the terms of the settlement, as are many other Englishmen as well as many French. He points out that the German troops in Belgium and parts of the Netherlands make it much harder to guard against a German surprise attack against either France or England. He points out that Hitler has a history of violating treaties. The majority of the population in both countries feel that the treaty is unfortunate but necessary given the threat to English oil supplies from the Soviets.

Stalin's reaction: Stalin is also appalled at this turn of events, though he hopes that it is just a temporary truce. Britain is weak, but it's remaining strength can now be turned toward the Soviet Union.  The British government doesn't really want to continue the fight against the Soviets, even given the end of war with Germany. The British don't trust Hitler to abide by the terms of the just-completed treaty, and are reluctant to commit too much of their remaining power to the Middle East. They also still have their economic problems to contend with. Britain is a financial basket case, and it urgently needs to rebuild its army. Most of its troops are coming home with nothing but their rifles. All of the heavy equipment stocks have to be rebuilt. At the same time, peace with Hitler is being sold to the public as a way to fight Stalin more effectively, so peace with Stalin is politically difficult.

War with Stalin isn't quite as expensive in terms of foreign exchange as war with Hitler, but it still can't go on forever. The shah of Iran is paying through the nose for British help, which makes some difference financially. The US has major oil interests in Saudi Arabia that are threatened by the Soviet thrust. There is also a great deal of sympathy in the US for Iran and Turkey as victims of obvious aggression. Isolationists who would have opposed loans to France or England go along with major loans to Iran and Turkey. Much of those loans get recycled to England for war supplies. The English re-equip the Iranian airforce with later model, but still obsolete planes: Gloster Gladiators and Fairey Battles. That revenue helps. So does the fact that the end of the war with Hitler frees up older aircraft and tanks for the world arms market in general. Finland gets a big order of early model Hurricanes. Gloster Gladiator bi-planes show up in large numbers in the Turkish airforce, as well as the Iranian air force, while other obsolete British planes make their way to South America and China. British production of new aircraft stays high, but the British scale back their orders of aircraft and engines from the United States to some extent. That helps the British financial situation quite a bit.

The world arms market is suddenly a buyer's market. Germany has economic problems of her own, and is willing to sell older model tanks like the Panzer I and Panzer II. Iran and Turkey both end up with some. France is selling and/or upgrading many of the older Renault R35 tanks. Britain gets two-hundred of the R35's on loan until they can rebuild their tank force. They turn the chassis into turretless tank destroyers, initially with 2 pounders, then later with 6 pounders. France also sells some older aircraft, especially Morraine Saulner MS406's. The Finns and Swiss get a number of those. Italy is selling off Fiat CR-32 and CR-42 bi-planes to just about anyone who is interested. Not too many people are unless the price is very low. The Nationalist Chinese buy quite a few CR-42's. That leads to some very interesting dogfights over China, with Italian and Japanese planes fighting it out.

The Polish government in exile feels very betrayed by the settlement with Germany. However, most of the anger is toward England rather than France. The Poles do see an opportunity in the Allied/Soviet war. Around a hundred thousand Polish ex-POW's are still in the Middle East, left there from the controversial prisoner of war trade with the Soviets. The Poles want those men armed and sent into the war for Iran, along with the Polish divisions within the French army, close to another hundred thousand men. That will circumvent the restriction on the number of men in the revived Polish army, while reinforcing the Allied forces in the area. Some Polish POWs released by the Germans quietly flow through Romania and arrive in France or the Middle East, where they try to join the French army's Polish divisions.

The Allies are going to need that reinforcement. The Soviets can only deploy a limited number of men in Iran for logistics reasons--around 150,000 men. On the other hand, the new Soviet tanks outclass anything the Allies have to throw against them, and the Soviets have a great deal of firepower and mobility compared to the Allies. Without threats from the Germans or Japanese, the Soviets can throw their best troops into the battle, including some of the tough Siberian divisions that rescued Moscow in 1941 in our time-line.

The Allies are handicapped by having to fight a coalition war. The shah of Iran is an ex-military man who thinks he knows how to fight a war, but doesn't. The Turks, and Iranians and French all have their own agendas. That makes coordination very difficult.

The Soviets made a major push to knock the Iranians out of the war while the French and British were tied up in their war with Hitler. They continue that push, trying to push the British out of Iran before they can reequip and shift troops from Europe. The British are hampered as much as they are helped by their Iranian allies. Allied forces get pushed back to a few coastal enclaves, including a major one around the oil complex at Abadan.

Stalin is looking for a way out of the war. He would really prefer to negotiate his way out, but not on the terms the Allies have set. He doesn't really see a way to knock the Allies out of the war. Seizing the oil-fields in Iran would be a start, as would going on to grab the Iraqi oil-fields. Stalin doesn't really trust that plan though. He knows that the west can't allow him to hold on to those fields, even if he grabs them. With peace in Europe, his grab for India is unsustainable.

Winter of 1940-41: Fighting continues in Central Asia. Stalin is looking for native allies to carry some of the load of the fighting. He has established Kurdish and Armenian puppet states in parts of Iraq, Iran and eastern Turkey. He is working on setting up Moslem-governed states in the parts of India the Soviets have taken. He also has his puppet Iranian government set up. In Europe, Stalin is pressing the Greeks to come in on his side against Turkey. The Greeks want the islands that the Turks seized from the Italians, but they don't trust Stalin, and are staying out so far. The Soviets open up a new front against Turkey by moving through Bulgaria with the Bulgarians' reluctant consent, and launching an assault on the European part of Turkey. The British rush some of their few remaining reserves to help the Turks there.

The Soviet army is huge, and has some very good equipment, but morale is bad, and it is generally poorly led. At the same time, its opponents are nothing like the Germans in 1941. They are mostly World War I type armies--a lot of riflemen with little mobility. Throughout the winter, the Soviet continue to make gains, though not decisive ones. As the high-quality manpower in the first wave of Soviets is killed off, the Soviets start buying victories by sheer mass--taking casualties that no western army could sustain, but gradually wearing their opponents down.

In India, the Soviets start out with quite a bit of good will as parts of the population view them as liberators. That doesn't last very long, at least in occupied areas. The Indians are still divided on the war, but with the fighting going on inside the country the British start looking more and more like the lesser of two evils. The Soviets do put together an India People's Army and do a very good anti-imperialist propaganda campaign, but the British do a good job of getting the word out on deportations and Soviet atrocities in the areas that the Soviets do hold.

Germany is rebuilding after the war in the west. Their economic problems are being solved to some extent by looting or extorting resources from Holland and Belgium. Holland signs a long-term contract to sell Germany East Indies oil at low prices in order to get German troops out of Holland as soon as possible, and with as much of the country intact as possible. Belgium gives similar concessions to the Germans in using the resources of the Belgian Congo.

Hitler warms to the idea of African colonies, though Nazi tactics and attitudes quickly lead to serious revolts in some of those colonies. The natives are generally not happy to see the return of the Germans--at least not after the first month or so. Hitler is not happy to see German military resources diverted in this fashion, but he does take advantage of the revolts to secure a new source of labor that he can work to death.

In the US, Roosevelt is trying to be the first US president elected for a third term. He is running reluctantly, and after much more Democratic opposition than in our time-line. The tradition of not seeking a third term is very strong, and without the sense of crisis in Europe that was brought on by the fall of France in our time-line, his campaign is facing its most serious reelection challenge yet. He has a credible opponent in Thomas Dewey (who ran for but did not receive the Republican nomination in our time-line), and his campaign tends to rise and fall with the amount of tension in Europe. Roosevelt justifies his attempt to overthrow the traditional two-term limit for Presidents by pointing to the unrest in Europe. That looks good in September and early October, but the bottom falls out of that argument when the war in Europe ends in mid-October 1940. Roosevelt is a much better campaigner than Dewey, but the sudden end of the war in Europe is a disaster for his campaign. The war in Europe suddenly looks like just another European quarrel-a few weeks of real fighting, then a couple of little scraps of land and a few colonies exchange hands. Dewey makes the most of that viewpoint, and it leads to a late Dewey surge and a Republican victory in November 1940.

Roosevelt is still in charge until early 1941 when Dewey's will be sworn in. His political power is fading quickly though. He is able to get some foreign policy initiatives through though. The Polish government in exile gets a good-sized loan to rebuild Poland's economy and army. Roosevelt knows that some of that money will filter to England. The Poles, Turks, and Iranians take over some of the British and French contracts for American aircraft. The Allies are more worried bout getting high quality for their limited financial resources than they were when they signed those contracts. The American industry is very afraid that they have over-expanded. The lesser powers like Iran, Turkey, and China take up some of the slack, though they get mostly obsolescent airplanes.

Roosevelt discovers that American isolationism is to some extent selective. Many of the isolationists leaders feel that England and France conned the United States into World War I, used its money and young men to win the war, then ignored US wishes at the peace treaty, and at least in the case of France, defaulted on billions of dollars of loans from the United States which helped pay for that war. Isolationists don't want to repeat that experience. At least some of them more willing to help when the war involved is the clear result of aggression rather than power politics and when the opponent is Japan or especially the Soviet Union. Loans to England or France are politically impossible. Loans to Poland, Turkey, Iran, and China are doable. Some elements inside the Roosevelt administration are not too happy about help for opponents of the Soviet Union, but the loans do go through.

Meanwhile The Italians: have also signed a peace treaty. They will eventually get most of their colonies back, mainly because they British and French see them as being more trouble to administer than they are worth. The colonies will be returned over a period of five years. The Italians don't get the islands near Turkey back, nor do they get Ethiopia. The Allies impose restrictions on Italian army sizes in their colonies. Germany keeps part of what it has seized in northern Italy.

Potential Weaknesses in this Installment: The weaknesses I see in this part of the scenario are primarily in figuring out what the major player would do and how the politics would play out. Would England fold if the bulk of their army was trapped, or would they keep fighting the Germans even if it led to bankruptcy and the loss of their empire? Would Hitler stop without trying to exploit his victory in Belgium further? Would Roosevelt run? Could Dewey beat him? Would Stalin be as aggressive as I have him being? I don't know. I've tried to figure out the goals of the major players and their decision-making patterns, then pick the most rational response given those goals and the situations they find themselves in. I am undoubtedly wrong on at least one of these calls. I don't know which one or ones though. I suspect that the weakest link here is Stalin. He was very cautious about taking on enemies who could fight back during this time frame.

Part of the French problem was lack of communications. French industry couldn't keep up with army and air force demand for radios, and the French hurt themselves by restricting the use of what radios they had more than they should have in the name of communications security. They also failed to adopt mechanical coding devices like the German Enigma, which may have been a good thing given what happened to the Germans when they adopted the Enigma system.

Part of the French problem in our time-line was that the Germans were able to pit some of the best German divisions and a large part of the Luftwaffe against a couple of overextended French division composed primarily of older reservists with essentially no anti-aircraft capability. Many men in B-series divisions last served between 1918 and 1925, then were called up in September 1939. They spent most of their time in the next 8 months building urgently needed fortifications instead of getting equally necessary training. It isn't surprising that they broke under attack from Germany's best.

The best German divisions were very good in 1940, at least for a short campaign. I can't really think of any army in the world at that time which could have stopped their initial thrust. The US army certainly couldn't have in May 1940. The Soviets almost certainly couldn't have. The British were decent on a man-for-man basis, but had fewer divisions on the continent than Belgium. Prior to May 1940, the French army had the reputation of being one of the best armies in the world. They may actually have been the second best army in the world at that time. Unfortunately, in our time-line they got hit by the full strength of the best army in the world.

So, what do you think? Is this still a plausible AH so far? Should I keep going with it? Is it still close enough to reality to be useful? What will Stalin do next? What will Hitler do next? Where do you think this scenario would go from here? Comments are very welcome.