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

 

As Allied forces roll through southern France toward a collision with Rommel and his panzers, the politics of France suddenly pushes itself forward as a major issue. Now that parts of France are available to govern, the question of who does that governing can no longer be easily papered over. 

There are four reasonably serious factions contending for the right to govern France as of mid-1944. The Free French under Charles DeGaulle still exist as a separate faction. Their small army is officially part of the overall French army. Unofficially, it is still a separate force, and the bitter animosity generated between the Free French and the Vichy French during the period between June 1940 and late 1942 still exists. The Allies quietly make sure that the two forces are never placed next to one another on the lines. The Free French have only three divisions of combat troops, plus a few smaller formations. Since Vichy re-entered the war, the Allies have been squeezing the Free French somewhat. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt particularly like or trust DeGaulle, though the British are somewhat more tolerant of him than the US. The Free French do have considerable support inside France though, and their well-equipped British-supplied divisions are supplemented with thousands of poorly armed men from the French resistance as they advance into France.

 At least on paper, the ex-Vichy French are much more formidable. They have a surprisingly large army—over 400,000 men in 20 divisions. That army is built around the French troops that escaped the fall of Vichy, the Vichy French army of North Africa, and the Corsicans who fought against the Italian invasion. Some of that army actually is reasonably formidable. Twelve of its divisions, three of them armored, have been re- equipped with modern US equipment. The rest of the ex-Vichy divisions are still making do with 1940-era French equipment supplemented with cast-off British, or US equipment. Some of those divisions are considerably under-strength and have little combat value against front-line German forces. 

The ex-Vichy forces also have resistance units inside France, most of them formed around Vichy army units that retreated into the hills and mountains of southern France in 1943. As the Allies advance, those units add nearly 100,000 poorly equipped men to the French army. Patton has pressed three weak divisions of those troops into service guarding his lengthening western flank as his advance outpaces that of the British troops to the west of him. 

Politically, the old Vichy French government has been reorganized. It is now officially a government of national unity. Marshall Petain is head of state, but theoretically almost powerless. Under him is an Allied-imposed council-of-state composed of French General Giraud, DeGaulle, and young Vichy general named Tassigny who became somewhat of a national hero for his leadership during the German invasion of Vichy in 1943. The council is more a legal fiction to satisfy Allied insistence on French unity as a condition for rebuilding the French armies than an effective government. At least initially, real power in the ex-Vichy areas flows from Petain to the governors he has appointed, though Giraud and Tasigny do lead the ex-Vichy part of the French military effort.

 The French communists play less of a role in this time-line than they did in ours. They provide the bulk of the resistance in some areas, but are usually over-shadowed by Vichy or Free French groups. 

The Germans have managed to piece together a weak collaborationist French government out the small French Fascist parties and the more collaborationist elements of the old Vichy government. That government quickly collapses anywhere the Germans retreat. 

As parts of France are actually re-occupied by the Allies, French political rivalries become scrambles for power on the ground. That is dangerous, not just because it raises the possibility of French-on-French violence, but also because it may distract the 14 well-equipped French divisions that make up nearly half of the Allied force in Southern France from their primary goal of defeating the Germans. 

French rivalries threaten that goal in another way. A large number of German auxiliaries from the Soviet Union or from Poland have surrendered to the ex-Vichy French based on promises that they would not be sent back to the Soviet Union after the war. Those promises speeded up German defeat in southern France, and netted the French quite a bit of serviceable equipment, but they create a problem. Stalin wants those people, at least the Soviet citizens, back. 

Those problems are still only potential ones. In mid-July of 1944, the Allies are on the move in southern and central France, with the German forces opposing them reduced to trying to slow down the onslaught while keeping their divisions from being cut off. In the southeast of France, ex-Vichy French forces have pushed the Italians back across the pre-war French-Italian border in most places, while pushing north over a third of the length of France. Patton's American divisions have been outpacing the French divisions slightly in the central area of southern France. In southwest France, the British and Free French are facing the toughest opposition and making the slowest progress. 

The Allies have recaptured roughly the equivalent of Vichy France. They've gone a little beyond the old borders in the east and are considerably short of them in the west. As they advance they become both stronger and weaker. The Allies become stronger as thousands of resistance fighters flock to the French armies, as do thousands of Frenchmen who sat on the fence during the German occupation and now want to establish their resistance credentials. The Allies become weaker as supply lines get longer and the ports of southern France become the life-line for millions of liberated French civilians as well as for the Allied armies.

 The Germans are getting somewhat stronger as their supply lines get shorter, and as troops tied up in occupation duties are freed up. On the other hand they get weaker as tired troops are forced out of position after position, often barely escaping encirclement and leaving heavy equipment behind. The captured ex-Soviet troops are stirring up trouble in the German camp too. Himmler uses their surrender as a tool to regain the offensive in his struggle to intimidate the army. An already overstretched German army can't afford to lose the hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens that are serving the German army in various ways. Himmler is pragmatic enough to know that, but he is enough of a political animal that he can't resist using the fact that those men are not reliable against the western Allies as a weapon against his political enemies.

 The German army is already redeploying most of their ex-Soviet troops back to the Eastern Front, though a substantial number end up in Yugoslavia fighting against Tito. The issue of the ex-Soviet troops cuts to the heart of a central issue dividing post-Hitler Germany. Elements of the army and some of the more pragmatic Nazis want to turn the war in the east into a genuine anti-Soviet crusade, enlisting Soviet citizens tired of Stalin's purges under nationalist and/or anti-communist banners. More ideological Nazis bitterly oppose that. From their twisted point of view they aren't entirely wrong. They have built the German war economy on expendable labor and unrestrained exploitation of the Ukraine's agricultural and mineral resources. In mid-1944, switching it to a mode compatible with the aspirations of anti- Communist Russians or Ukrainians or Poles would not be an easy task. Giving any of those groups real autonomy or independent armed strength would eventually put German access to those key inputs into doubt. 

At the same time, Germany desperately needs fighting men, and the German army wants more rather than less ex-Soviet manpower to fill out its ranks. Post-Hitler, German policy gets a little more flexible. Even Himmler is pragmatic enough to agree to a few local experiments in the Ukraine and ByeloRussia where the locals are given a considerable degree of autonomy in exchange for keeping Soviet partisans out. Renegade Soviet General Vlasov is actually given limited control of a ragtag Russian Liberation Army consisting of one reasonably combat-ready division and several independent anti-partisan battalions. That's intended mainly for propaganda purposes, but even that is far more than Hitler had allowed at this stage of the war. 

Use of ex-Soviet manpower in the German army quietly sky-rockets in spite of the controversy. Ukrainian nationalists increasingly become the backbone of anti-partisan efforts both in Ukrainian areas and increasingly in other German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union. That trend may prove significant as the war wears on. 

On the battlefield (West): As I mentioned last issue, a duel between two of the war's most colorful commanders is brewing. Field Marshall Rommel is leading two well-equipped panzer divisions and several motorized or partially motorized German infantry divisions south to meet an American spearhead of eight divisions, two of them armored, that is charging into central France, led by General Patton. These are by no means the only forces that could influence the battle. The battered survivors of the German divisions that have been retreating across southern France are sprinkled in the path of Patton's divisions, while also trying to keep 14 ex-Vichy and Free French, and six British or Commonwealth divisions in check. Rommel also has some third-rate divisions which can be pulled off of occupation duty or guard duty along the central or southern parts of the French Atlantic coast. 

At the rate he is going, Patton has a realistic though distant shot at getting to Paris within a week. Rommel thinks he sees a way of stopping that, and possibly bagging a sizable number of American divisions. Patton has driven far ahead of the British and Free French divisions to his west. His long flank is covered mainly by French 'divisions' armed with a motley collection of 1940-era French equipment, supplemented with captured German and Italian small arms along with a few captured tanks and artillery pieces, and any US or British equipment that they borrow or steal. Rommel intends to swing southwest of Patton's army, then hook in, slicing through that weak flank and cutting off the bulk of the American divisions.  Rommel is aware of the impact Allied air power can have, and he is hoping (correctly) that Patton has outrun most of his tactical air cover. The key to German success is to move and attack before the Americans can re-base their fighter-bombers closer to the new front lines. That's a very narrow window of opportunity. 

Patton is a shrewd general. He also has access to Ultra. That means that he has a pretty good idea what Rommel is up to. The prudent course of action would be to slow or stop his advance and move his armor south to meet the attack. Patton decides to gamble instead. He pushes his advance even faster, crashing through German lines. He plans to wheel west, toward the French Atlantic coast, then south, cutting off Rommel's armor.

 Patton is foiled, ironically, by the French. He expects the improvised French divisions to be pushed back or overrun, and is counting on that to get Rommel in position for the counter-attack. It doesn't happen. French combat performance in World War II was unpredictable—ranging from collapses through unimaginative but stubborn defenses, and at times to very competent actions. Competently led and motivated, the French of World War II were not opponents to be taken lightly. 

The improvised French divisions on Patton's flank are much more formidable on the ground than they are on paper. They are built around a core of ex-Vichy officers who stayed behind and fought as guerillas after the fall of Vichy. That core has been filled out by highly motivated but unevenly trained volunteers. The ex-guerrillas are used to making war on a shoe-string and acquiring weapons through unorthodox channels. They've recently managed to get their hands on a large number of semi-obsolete 6-pounder anti- tank guns, some bazookas, and even a handful of 17-pounder anti-tank guns. It takes a brave man to face a Tiger or a Panther over the barrel of a 6-pounder. The French prove their bravery over the next two days. They take heavy casualties, and don't completely stop the Germans, but they slow Rommel's offensive enough that he is forced to re-evaluated his situation. He's a smart man, and he switches his forces north. They run head-on into Patton's armor.

 Both sides claim victory in the resulting clash. Rommel extracts his forces from Patton's trap, and inflicts heavy enough casualties on Patton's armor that the US forces are not in a position to resume the offensive in the immediate future. On the other hand, Patton retains the battlefield with its crippled but repairable armor. Also, US airpower manages to catch up with the front lines enough hit one of Rommel's armored divisions on the move and cripple it. 

As August of 1944 approaches, the fronts in central and southern France have stabilized temporarily. Part of the reason for that is Rommel, but the main problem from an Allied standpoint is that they simply don't have enough shipping or port capacity to supply the needs of close to one-third of the population of France, plus the needs of a major offensive. Southern France needs food, medicine, trucks, and gasoline, along with locomotives and railcars to rebuild its badly damaged rail system.

The western Allies are sharply split on what to do next. The US still wants a major landing in northern France, though much less strongly than in our time-line. Churchill is adamantly opposed to that unless the Germans shift more of their forces south and away from the coast. He is quietly moving more divisions into southern France as fast as port facilities can be rebuilt to supply them. The chances of an Allied landing in northern France became much slimmer in mid-July of 1944. In order to understand why, we'll look at what is happening on the eastern front. 

Eastern front: June-August 1944. Hitler was by no means the military genius that he thought he was. He could best be categorized as an extremely well-informed, moderately gifted amateur. Faced with a continuing Soviet war of attrition, Hitler came up with, and began secretly implementing, a solution worthy of a moderately gifted amateur. Manstein has taken the core of that plan and modified it into something more workable. We'll get to that solution in a bit, when it is implemented. 

As noted last issue, a Soviet late spring offensive punched a moderately large bulge into the German lines in the center portion of the eastern front. The Germans are gearing up to take that territory back. As the Germans build up, the Soviets move men and equipment in. Stalin is hoping to get the Germans to wear out their armor on strong Soviet defenses, then unleash his increasingly powerful armored forces and their increasingly impatient commanders on a blitzkrieg-style offensive to finally push the Germans out of the Soviet Union. Both sides build up until mid-July, then a portion of the Soviet lines simply disintegrates in a tremendous explosion. The force is great enough that it shows up on Richter Scales as far away as London. The Soviets rush reserves to the threatened flank, then Manstein launches his attack, ignoring the sides of the bulge, and attacking its center. That's what he wanted to do at Kursk in our time-line, or at least he claimed that after the battle. 

In this time-line, the combination of the huge explosion on their flank and Manstein's attack tears a major hole in the Soviet lines. The Germans pour through, cut off Soviet defenders inside the bulge, then move to exploit their advantage. The Soviets move up massive armor reserves, and the largest tank battle in history begins. As German Panthers, Tigers, and Panzer IV's square off against Soviet T34/85s and JS-II's, several hundred thousand cut-off Soviet troops try desperately to escape the pocket they are in. Some do. Most are trapped, and fight until they run out of water and/or ammunition. 

The Germans claim to have killed or captured 600,000 Soviet troops by the middle of August. That's an exaggeration. The real number is about half that. Whether or not the Germans have won a great victory depends on the final outcome of the great battle or complex of battles being fought between the Panzers and the Soviet armor. That's still in doubt. German propaganda is very vague about how they engineered the initial explosion. Allied analysts are almost certain that the explosion was conventional rather than nuclear—the result of an enormous mass of conventional explosives like the one the Allies used at one point against the Germans during World War I. If that's true, the Germans managed to bring in the explosives, plant them, and then retreat to lure the Soviets into place, all without detection by Ultra intercepts. That would have some nasty implications in and of itself. 

The other option is even worse. The United States knows that German science is capable of making an atomic bomb. How far they are from doing so is one of the great unknowns of the war from the US standpoint. If the Germans have an atomic bomb, a landing in Northern France becomes very difficult to pull off. 

The explosion has another impact. It stops a movement toward the exits by Germany's minor allies. Until it is clear that the Germans don't have a truly effective super-bomb of some sort, the Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, and others will stay put. 

The Germans are prying away at the foundations of the alliance against them. They may not have the power to win the war anymore, but they can decide who comes out of the war relatively intact and who emerges from it with their country in ruins. They give the French and Soviets a not- very-subtle reminder of that. They withdraw from the southern-most portion of the French Atlantic coast, but not before thoroughly destroying port facilities and mining them. The Germans also remove trucks, railroad engines and cars, and as much food and gasoline as they can extract. They put the burden of feeding nearly two million French civilians on an already overstrained Allied logistics system, straining it past the breaking point. However, they carefully refrain from destroying infrastructure outside the ports. Bridges, roads and factories are left intact. 

The Germans also withdraw from a small salient on the eastern front. The destruction there is even more thorough—to the point that the area is almost devoid of human beings or the works of man. Again, the area is heavily and cunningly mined. 

German diplomats make contact with the French and Soviet governments through channels that they have quietly maintained and point out that Germany has the power to leave either country an impoverished desert. The French get a three–stage offer: First, the Germans will immediately withdraw from areas with around 2 million additional Frenchmen. Second, in three months they will withdraw from the southern and central two-thirds of France, and from Paris. They will do that without any further scorched earth tactics if the French keep additional US and British troops out of the part of France they control for those three months, and refrain from further offensives. After that withdrawal, the two governments will negotiate a final agreement for the withdrawal of German forces in return for French neutrality or at least agreement not to allow use of its soil for offensive actions against Germany. The Germans attempt to sweeten that offer a bit by implying that the French can hang on to the southern, French-speaking part of Belgium if they want to. 

The Soviets also get an offer. The Germans are willing to withdraw from all territories they control in the Russian SSR, but retain control of the Baltic States, the Ukraine, and ByeloRussia. In exchange for that withdrawal they want the Soviets out of the war. Both of those offers come with an implied or-else. German scorched-earth tactics could remove either country from the ranks of the postwar great powers, whether or not the Germans are ultimately defeated. 

And that's when I ran out of time. So what happens next? Both France and the Soviets are going to be tempted, but the Germans have stored up a lot of hatred for themselves. Also, the French, and to a lesser degree the Soviets, are dependent on US Lend-Lease. That ends if they get out of the war. Then there is the still-unresolved possibility of a German atomic bomb. The French were doing some preliminary research on atomic bombs before the fall of France, and they have continued that research on a small scale. They are very aware of the possibilities. Stalin has thoroughly penetrated the US atomic bomb project, so he is very much aware that an atomic bomb is possible. How will the possibility that the Germans have one play out? 

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

Note: I'm still planning to start an 'e-mail to the editor' section--hopefully next issue.  If you do e-mail me, please indicate whether or not I can use your e-mail in that section.