Europe 1941

t. buttblasted bong

>1917-18
What specifically?
>of course 1940 sealed the deal for the bongs
But it didn't. It started badly for them and ended well. The German failure in the Battle of Britain meant that from that point on, the Germans had no way to militarily improve their situation vs. the UK, whereas the UK still had ways to militarily improve their situation vs. Germany. In the Pacific theater, the Japanese could militarily hurt the UK, but only in peripheral ways, and every military action the Japanese launched in the Pacific risked making the US want to step in more actively.

The bongs submitted to the US in 1917-18, and agreed to pay denbts seemingly forever, thus ending their sovereignty in effect if not in fact. In 1956 they found out that their masters would spank them, if they were naughty.

Again, the bongs were bankrupt in 1940, and you cannot prosecute war when you're bankrupt. Only on US whim could the bongs stay afloat. Absent that, they're submitting to Hitler.

>the Japanese could militarily hurt the UK, but only in peripheral ways
Goodness, is there no longer education in this world?

The entire Nazi economy was a sham held together by devaluing the currencies of occupied countries. Pay the troops in those countries with an exchange rate set in Berlin.

If bankruptcy would have ended war-economy Britain's ability to fight, things would probably get pretty lairy in the reich and Stalin could just sit back until the time was ripe to strike.

>The bongs submitted to the US in 1917-18, and agreed to pay denbts seemingly forever, thus ending their sovereignty in effect if not in fact.
Not the same thing as what I was talking about.
>Again, the bongs were bankrupt in 1940, and you cannot prosecute war when you're bankrupt.
Sure you can, as long as there's public support for war. And by bombing the UK for months, the Germans had made sure there would be plenty of that.
>Only on US whim could the bongs stay afloat.
And why would US whim change after 1940?
>Absent that, they're submitting to Hitler.
I think you greatly underestimate the British resolve to fight.
By the end of 1940, the Brits were beginning to see progress. The Battle of Britain had failed for Germany. The Axis attempt to dominate North Africa was in trouble. Britain still ruled the waves. Key British resources were out of German reach. On the other hand, the Germans were vulnerable in Sweden (iron ore) and Romania (petroleum). Also, Mussolini's hold on power was much weaker than Hitler's, as 1943 ended up proving. If the Brits drove the Axis out of North Africa, questions would arise in Rome about whether joining the war had been a good idea and whether Mussolini was the right leader for the moment.

What key resources could the Japanese threaten in the Pacific theater that would endanger the British war effort and couldn't be replaced elsewhere?

Rubber was a pretty big one

>1917-18 could be considered such an event,

Only if you undergo such mental gymnastics as to make black white and up down.

I'm not sure you know what you're talking about, but the discussion was about submitting to others' will and surrendering sovereignty, and in 1917-18 the bongs did this, in addition to the other events mentioned.

No, you cannot prosecute war when you're bankrupt. Sorry, lad, but you're barking at the moon here.

The US whim would change whenever it whimmed, which is the whole point of this discussion. Others' fate rests on that whim, not on their own. They're bankrupt afterall.

Resolve means nothing if you're bankrupt, as revolution soon follows that as you should know.

In 1940, the bongs were bankrupt. They were fully cucked, and were going to submit to somebody, Hitler or otherwise. That is all.

The Japanese could threaten whatever they wanted, when it came to the bongs, because the bongs were unable to mount any kind of action against them. The only limitation on the Japanese Empire was their own logistics and desires, as far as their dealings with the bongs.

So, no argument then? You'll fit in well here, lad.

you cant keep a country forever in war
occupation costs money and manpower, your soldiers have to be present

yugo, greece, poland, belgium, holland, norway, denmark, large parts of france

even if you consider the germanic nations friendly these are still occupations, the britshit government have manouvering places, supporting exiled government, fuel resistances, you need perfidious england to be put down before you can consolidate your gains

and the commies are there, with claims over bessarabia, potentially invading romania or even the boshoprus

and the blockade of the continent along with your ally being in africa, you cant pretend that island just doesnt exist in your backyard

>you need perfidious england to be put down
Correct, and in 1940 they were put down and bankrupt, and absent US involvement there was no way to get back up.

>Resolve means nothing if you're bankrupt, as revolution soon follows that as you should know.
Kek, you're seriously trying to argue that 1940 Britain could have experienced a revolution because of being bankrupt?
Read more.

>Spring/summer 1940
>France just defeated
>Let the Soviets into the Axis (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Axis_talks)
>Give the Soviets influence in the Balkans and help them with Finland in return for support against Britain
>Win the BoB by spamming Soviet aircraft and pilots in addition to the German and Italian planes
>Convince Franco to join the Axis or murder and replace him
>Take Gibraltar
>Bring the Regio Marina, Soviet Navy and Kriegsmarine to the channel, protect against the Royal Navy through airpower
>invade and conquer Britain
>genocide the Anglos
>world peace
rate

The Soviets would be a dubious silent partner at best. On the German side, there's all the baggage about the evils of Bolsheviks and the NEED for expansion into the Slavic lands; on the Soviet side there's a millennia worth of anxiety about invasion from Germany and constant tension with the other major player in the axis, Japan. Trying to placate Russia with influence in in the Balkans throws Romania , Hungary and Italy under the bus, which makes them less cooperative in exchange for an unreliable pattern in Russia.
Why in earth would Russia take an Active part in a war against GBR? They have nothing to gain and would be weakening themselves for no profit.
I don't know how popular Franco was in '40 but I expect a German puppet would be far less so and require the occupation of Spain, a costly enterprise for little profit.

Peoole ITT saying a bankrupt natiom state cannot prosecute a war have zero understanding of the fundamental differences between a kingdom operating on real wealth vs a nation operating on fiat currency the value of which is determined based on the nation's continued existence. The amount of debt you'd have to see wartime Britain go into before it would have seriously impacted war efforts is unknown to history, as far as I know. So long as people are willing to bet on Britain it will continue to fight. It might not fight well, and it might not fight with anything other than internally-produced materiel, but it will fight. Look at Japan circa late 1945.

It's not an argument, lad. It's reality. The bongs were worried about revolution throughout the first half of the 20th Century, even before they went bankrupt in 1940.
Read more.

The Russians have FOREVER wanted a warm water port, thus The Great Game business. If they can finally get down to the Indian Ocean they're in business, and that means taking down the bongs. This alliance would have worked, but Hitler was too autistic and it was time to destroy commies in his mind.

Literally in what world does Hitler not want to destroy the Soviet Union.

You're going to have to explain how a Soviet invasion of the Indian Sub-continent is possible before I can consider this sound reasoning.

I did it on hoi4 once.

The entire point of Nazi ideology was invading the USSR to get muh lebensraum, there is no scenario in which they don't invade the USSR
>but what if Hitler wasn't Hitler, the Nazis weren't the Nazis, German wasn't Germany!
Fuck off wehraboo trash

In the wierd bizarro world Hearts of Iron takes place in where the Second World War still starts even though the German government are Nazis in name alone and don't follow any Nazi policies or war aims.

Sure. The Indians wouldn't have been able to blunt a Sov attack, certainly. If they acted as ruthlessly as they did everywhere else, no reason they couldn't murder their way to the Indian Ocean. The enabler is dealing with the bongs, and Stalin and Hitler together would have been able to accomplish that.

Heck, the Sovs invaded Afghanistan 40 years later, softshoe as that invasion was. Stalin wasn't so kindhearted as the sweet, sensitive, numale Brezhnev.

>Fuck off wehraboo trash
Wehraboo is literally the only correct ww2 fandom and if you don't agree you're a commie literal faggot phonefagging from a gay pride parade in between sex fests with fat hairy bald men.

Here's what should have happened:
>1940, Germany sets up Goering's plan to cut off the British
>late 1940 Germany and Italy invade Gibraltar and Malta to cut off the main British posts in the region
>early 1941 Germany and Italy move across N. Africa to stress British supplies. Germans move a force through Egypt to hold and cutoff the Suez. Italians garrison it later that year.
>Middle Eastern allies supply additional oil.
>late 1941 step up the air game over Britain. The British think they were the be all end all of air power but Germany took it's largest losses due to red air force, not the RAF, by the end of the war.
>early 1942 set the naval bombers over the channel. The RN, and all navies at this point, are weak to torpedo attack. They can't do anything against proper air support. This assumes that German one and two engine bombers can be fitted for torpedoes or modified to do so. Use French transport and civil ships to land troops across the southern coasts. The Germans would probably go straight for London, but I would fake London and send the main buildup to Cornwall.
>mid 1942 lap the rest of the main isle. Liberate Scotland,Wales, and N. Ireland.
>late 1942 holiday period for rest and refitting the armored and air force. Move units over to the eastern border. Get ready for a war with the USSR in early - mid 43. This plan doesn't work if the USSR invades earlier than 43. An alternate rout to invasion would be to use the Turkish border on the Caucasus, but it's terrible terrain to fight over.

HOI4 would suck without options.

Also, Japan should've attacked Vladivostock to cut off the USSR from lend lease.

>Hey Japan,I know you had a whole internal debate about where you should attack, and you really need the resources in the South before your empire comes to a sputtering halt, but you should really attack the country who blew you the fuck out in the last ground engagement for no real short term gain after they've had to time to reform their army. Also, wait two more years of doing nothing but getting bogged down in China, its for the best

>Also there's a chance the USSR has troops deployed near your border because of Stalin's paranoia but who cares! Ends justify the means.

You missed a couple things:
>Japan would've already initiated conflict to meet their own demands in this timeline
>After the historical invasion of the USSR, they moved their mass of troops west. That would've been the time Japan could seize region if they'd chosen.
>They literally only need one fucking city. Nothing else in the region is connected.

That one's outright wrong. Those troops were mobilized west during the middle of 41. The Japs would've had to wait all of 6 months to attack.

We need a document to see if the USSR mobilized "all" of its units westwards or left a division or two there, otherwise we're resorting to speculation. Can't seem to find any, though.

>We need a document to see if the USSR mobilized "all" of its units westwards or left a division or two there, otherwise we're resorting to speculation. Can't seem to find any, though.

Literally read any book. I came here for discussion not to teach children. Start with Fuller's Second World War if you're desperate for a jumpstart. It really grinds my gears faggots on here either a)Don't read at all and all their "knowledge" comes vidya and tv or b) they read one obscure thing and they think they've been endowed with sacred knowledge

Well first of all that's pretty rude and this is my first post in this shitshow. I was just saying a document would clarify some things. Mind citing Fuller's book to get this out of the way, then?

There's virtually no chance Britain would have experienced a revolution after the Germans had spent months bombing it and pissing everyone off, when the fact is that there was little chance Britain would have experienced a revolution even before the war. If you want to claim otherwise, you'd better start coming up with some arguments.

He sort of has a point, the USSR did leave units there on the defense, as stated by Glantz in "When Titans Clashed":
>Nevertheless, throughout World War II, trust never characterized Soviet-Japanese relations.Both countries reluctantly kept considerable forces facing each other in northeast Asia, while drawing off their best troops to fight elsewhere.
>considerable forces
Japan is in no fucking way devoting resources to the USSR when it has combat engaged in other theatres.

>he hasnt read Icebreaker
Hitler beat Stalin to the punch by 3 weeks. If he delayed it, all of yurop would be red both literally and metaphorically to this day.

A few things for your brainlet brain to absorb:
>German troops encountered Russian aircraft less than 2km from the border
>Russian armor was clumped into large dense clusters
>Russians had amphibious tanks
>Russians had tanks that could remove their treads and drive on wheels at 40+km/hr on good roads (hint: central Europe)
>LITERALLY 1 MILLION PARATROOPERS which Stalin purchased the silk for the parachutes with all the grain in the Ukraine and starving millions of them in the process
>Russians were not not entrenched in good defensible positions and were all massed at the front
>enormous supplies of equipment were concentrated at the front
In case you don't get the point, all that is a prime example of what you do when preparing for OFFENSIVE operations. That's why the Soviets got so buttblasted; they were in the exact opposite position for a good defense.

>As for operations in the North, behind the fiction of major army maneuvers - code-named Kantokuen - troops were building up in Manchukuo. The plan called for sixteen divisions to be readied for the assault, and for a logistical base created for six more. During July 1941, a force of around 850,000 men was assembled in Manchukuo, and there they waited for the "persimmon to ripen," for Stalin to pull enough troops out of the Soviet Far East to give a Japanese attack a hope of success. But Stalin withdrew only a limited number of troops during July, and on August 9 any thought of attack during 1941 was abandoned.
> But Stalin withdrew only a limited number of troops during July
>Hurr they could've easily dealt with the commies when they were moving mass troops west
>hurr I totally know what I'm talking about, not like you!!!!
Harries, Meirion and Susie Harries. Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. p.104

>LITERALLY 1 MILLION PARATROOPERS which Stalin purchased the silk for the parachutes with all the grain in the Ukraine and starving millions of them in the process
LOL. You seriously believe this? The whole Soviet military was only a few million strong.

>Japan would've already initiated conflict to meet their own demands in this timeline
So the US is swinging into this(because only a brainlet would leave the Philippines alone to threaten their lines) No matter how the European front goes, the outcome of the Pacific war is unchangeable. If the axis somehow take Britain and Africa, through magical air superiority and magical logistic bottleneck expansion respectively, then the US will just push on the pacific front even more.

>late 1940 Germany and Italy invade Gibraltar and Malta to cut off the main British posts in the region
>early 1941 Germany and Italy move across N. Africa to stress British supplies. Germans move a force through Egypt to hold and cutoff the Suez. Italians garrison it later that year.
What makes you think that seizing Gibraltar and Malta would have let the Axis take Egypt? It would have improved the Axis supply situation a bit and hurt the British, but the Brits weren't putting their maximum effort into holding Egypt anyway, from what I understand. They could have made up for the losses by sending more stuff the long way around. In my view, the Brits would still have beaten the Axis in N. Africa, at least enough to hold on to Egypt. They could have sent enough extra naval and air power into the theater via the long way around to keep inflicting heavy losses on Axis supply lines to N. Africa.

Reminder that people who make "what-if" posts should cite their statements and provide reasonings why it would work via those citations. Not out of their ass "It would just work if everything was perfect, trust me."

It would have improved the Axis supply situation a bit and hurt the British, but the Brits weren't putting their maximum effort into holding Egypt anyway, from what I understand.
They were, actually. The problem was that the desert cut both ways, and it limited the amount of force they could meaningfully project there due to their own supply constraints.

>They could have made up for the losses by sending more stuff the long way around.
There wouldn't be losses. They were shipping just about everything to the WDF the long way around anyway.

> In my view, the Brits would still have beaten the Axis in N. Africa, at least enough to hold on to Egypt.
Oh, for sure.

>over 5 million in June 1941 with 18 million reservists
>not even mobilized
>only a """few million"""

>There wouldn't be losses. They were shipping just about everything to the WDF the long way around anyway.
Hmm. That actually makes a lot of sense. Why risk going past southern Europe when you can ship the long way around. Once the supply chain is going around S. Africa, you're not actually spending any more time shipping from the point of view of the destination, since one way or another there is a continuous stream of supplies arriving. The only downsides are using more fuel, which wasn't much of an issue from what I understand, and spending more time sending really urgent stuff in case of emergency - which could be dealt with by making sure that sort of stuff would be there in advance.

You think 1 million paratroopers out of 5 million actives is a reasonable estimate? Reservists don't count in this context.

>Suvorov meme
Read this
sci-hub.la/10.1080/13518049708430298
and
sci-hub.la/10.1080/13518040590914136
Mainly the first one.

Second one*
Fuck, first one focuses more of "in general Suvorov".

It's also because some (although not all, especially certain types of ammunition and more advanced vehicles) of their logistical tail came from India, not the UK itself; stuff like food, water, tea (The WDF consumed more tea by weight than artillery shells in 1941), small arms ammunition, etc. could just as easily come from the subcontinent, which gives you both a shorter distance and virtually no risk of attack.

>Stalin assigned the mission of providing covering forces for the border to Beria’s NKVD. The mission of the NKVD border guards then was twofold; to prevent any provocation to the Germans, and provide the critical time—in the event of a German attack—to blunt and halt the enemy and allow the time for the rear echelons to advance to the “ukreplennyye raiony” or fortified forward areas, implement Tukhachevskii’s “Glubokii boi” and “Glubokaya operatsiya,” and go over to a strategic counteroffensive before the Germans reached the Dnepr River. But, as Glantz and House observed, “the actual border was thinly manned by NKVD security troops, and the forward defenses were in many instances overrun before they could be manned on 22 June
>However, not only were the key defensive forces ordered to blunt and halt the German attack understrength, but General Staff planning had fatally mis-estimated the axis of the main German blow. The weak line of Soviet covering forces was not only concentrated too far forward in positions defensibly untenable with their exposed flanks, but the General Staff expected the main German thrust south of the Pripet Marshes.
>Militarily, Stalin’s 1940–1941 Red Army was struggling in the aftermath of the purges, in various transition stages trying to implement the General Staff’s new plans and directives, and stretching to protect dramatically expanded borders with poorly trained, newly recruited soldiers. Politically and diplomatically, appeasement and the projection of Russian traditional attempts to secure his vulnerable southwest frontier and to extend Soviet interests in the Balkans drove Stalin’s policy toward Germany, and not to spread revolution as Suvorov asserts.
Also there's the, y'know, fucking Molotov line.

Ah, that also makes sense.
Yeah, these what-if ideas about the Axis seizing Egypt seem to me to be wishful thinking. Rommel fought well, but that was in the context of open desert maneuvering against British Empire forces that were trying to launch their own attacks and thus exposing themselves. At the end of the day, there is only one narrow route into Egypt, at El Alamein, and it's near to the British supply base and far from Axis bases. For the Axis to seize Egypt would have required the large-scale equivalent of a siege operation, with a lot of work to build new bases or expand existing ones and to bring a necessary concentration of forces up forward towards El Alamein - and all along, the British would have been reacting with their own moves.

The problems go further than that. I would recommend these two essays if you're seriously interested in the subject

dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a348413.pdf
dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a220715.pdf

But the tl;dr is that it's really fucking hard to operate in a desert, especially if you say, are waging your offensives some 1,000 kilometers away from your biggest port in the region, which cannot unload enough supplies even in the best conditions to fully kit out your force, nor can you easily move those supplies forward in a country with almost no railroads.

If the Axis want to win, they need to be able to seize and ship to ports closer to the front line as it advances eastwards. That, however, is quite difficult to do; the Regia Maria while impressive on paper had a shitty combat record like pretty much every other branch of Italian service, which would mean supply transfers for the Axis to North Africa need to be protected by air. That howeve,r brings its own set of problems: If you base your planes in North Africa, they start consuming their own supplies, which are of very limited availability. If you base them in places like Sicily, southern Italy, Greece, etc. you run into constraints of operational range, they simply cannot protect shipments to places like Benghazi, let alone further to Tobruk or Bardia.

I'd say the second paper makes it dead clear that the logistical demands would've been too much for the Wehrmacht:
>The Axis were completely dependent on sea transport even for their most elementary requirements. Every single ton that was consumed by Rommel's troops had to be laboriously crated in Italy. then shipped across the Mediterranean - ammunition. petroleum. everything was brought up this way. Added to this problem were the enormous distances that were out of all proportion to anything the Wehrmacht had been asked to deal with In Europe. From Brest-Litovsk. on the German-Soviet demarcation line In Poland. to Moscow was only some 600 miles. This was approximately equal to the distance from Tripoli to Benghazi. but only half that from Tripoll to Alexandria
Good paper, I recall recommending it once in a thread.

>hurr durr there's no way the bongs would have a revolution even though the bong navy did revolt multiple times in the 30's and bong factories had major strikes and the government engaged numerous times in actions putting down street violence and civil unrest, not including the Irish revolt just years earlier

It is you that really needs to start making arguments, lad. You're barking at the moon.

>the Brits would still have beaten the Axis in N. Africa
Not without US involvement and supply. They got beat like a drum without it.

>bong navy did revolt multiple times
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invergordon_Mutiny
Literally once, in a few ships, over a 25% pay cut for the lower ranks that was solved peacefully, and with the sailors still carrying out essential duties and remaining respectful of the officers. It was more a pay dispute then anything
>bong factories had major strikes
Essentially fuckall since the general strike of 1926 visual.ons.gov.uk/the-history-of-strikes-in-britain/

>government engaged numerous times in actions putting down street violence and civil unrest
You've got the hunger march of 1932 and the battle of cable street, and apart from that not much

>Irish revolt
Why would England revolt because the Irish did? They're two completely different kettles of fish any way you look at it.

You make it sound like there was about to be another October revolution, when the communist party itself had a peak membership of 60,000 members, and a whopping two seats in Parliament by 1945. It wasn't going to happen at all,and I don't know why you insist on it.