[IW] Patton-2

[Phil Masters]

The revolutions and large-scale strikes would be another problem. Sure, you can put them down with sufficiently brutal application of martial law (assuming that sufficiently few of your troops say "What?" and "Screw this"), but then you're forcing your dockers and railwaymen back to work at bayonet-point. That's not a recipe for great logistics, even if you keep the sabotage level down to manageable proportions (and good luck with that, in countries where the Stalinists were running a significant fraction of the Resistance a few months before).

I know, anything that's theoretically possible must happen somewhere in the Infinite Worlds -- but this one just sounds more like a recipe for a "Dystopian 30 Years War m.II Europe" clusterfudge than an actual win for either side.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Michele

Thank you for the input.
- The nuke supply wasn't magical or unlimited. If you just move the July forecasts to March, as mentioned upthread, you see 3 nukes in March, 5 in April, 7 in May, 10 in June, and 10 per month after that. Don't look at the actual output in our timeline, which was dialed back immediately upon VJ.

Of course, there will also be Timeline Zhukov, where the Manhattan Project wasn't accelerated quite so successfully, and the production line never did really kick in. Patton burned through his very finite A-bomb supply without knocking Russia out, and found himself going toe-to-toe with well-fuelled T34s. It's, say, 1960, the Iron Curtain runs along the Rhine, and France is formally non-aligned...

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

To be honest, this timeline looks to bear the same relationship to Patton’s fantasies as Reich-5 bears to Hitler’s. On which basis, you might as well go the whole hog and have the world ruled by a gleaming Macarthyite Pax Americana.

Well, yes! That's Patton-3, the "successful" parallel described above. Feel free to make use of it if you prefer it, of course. Personally, I give it shorter shrift because I find it less interesting. I mean, it's a full dystopia for anyone who is not a white, comfortable, conservative, heterosexual man. On top of that, it seems to have one uniformly disagreeable world government, and worst of all, at least from a distance, it also seems to be working! I find it a bit depressing and boring, too.
Patton-2, OTOH, has three different great powers pursuing their conservativism in different ways. Yet at least two of them have significant internal tensions, from terrorism to insurgencies to liberation movements. And a "soft" opposition too, which resembles the "apolitical" stance taken by young people at the end of the life of the DDR. And there are three different bright spots, one of them a great power (Brazil). There's scope for diversity and for adventuring.

But if the above means that you think somebody must really have wanted Patton-2 to exist - maybe you are right. That's what an Infinity analyst wrote in a recent report. He pointed out the following:
- the divergence was the disappearance of a ship. These things do happen, but this one had a crucial cargo. US decision makers on Patton-2 thought it was the work of a German submarine, but until now, no evidence of that has surfaced, even though the Westerners eventually managed to acquire the Kriegsmarine's files. And in 1940, most U-Boats lacked the range, and those that had it were mostly deployed close to the Western Approaches of the UK. So the doubt arises that some other player may have made that ship disappear.
- the other turning point was that firefight near Pilsen. Maybe it was a Soviet unit attacking, having mistaken the 3rd Army troops for Germans. Maybe it was a German unit, possibly led by fanatical officers who wanted exactly what then ensued. But how can we rule out the intervention of an unknown third party?

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

The revolutions and large-scale strikes would be another problem. Sure, you can put them down with sufficiently brutal application of martial law (assuming that sufficiently few of your troops say "What?" and "Screw this"), but then you're forcing your dockers and railwaymen back to work at bayonet-point. That's not a recipe for great logistics, even if you keep the sabotage level down to manageable proportions (and good luck with that, in countries where the Stalinists were running a significant fraction of the Resistance a few months before).

The revolutions took place in Greece, Italy and France.
For Greece, we have a neat example from our own timeline. When ordered to fire at the Communist Greek partisans in Athens, the British paratroopers did not say "What?". Of course the Greek government also had loyal, royalist troops of its own to go on with the job, with a pause in 1945.

This brings me to Italy. The Italian co-belligerent government contributed only six brigades to frontline combat, but it also had second-line troops, as well as the Carabinieri military police, to deal with Communists, and would only be too happy to both get rid of that problem and to win points with their new allies. Again, describing what happened in our timeline, under Mussolini, it never happened that anybody deemed it necessary to order soldiers to fire on unarmed civilians (in Italy - let's ignore atrocities in Ethiopia). After Mussolini, it did happen. The soldiers did not say "What?".
Of course Communist partisans, in our timeline, took to hiding a Sten or a pistol. Sometimes, when a wall is brought down in an old building, these come out. But with how much ammo? Enough for one engagement, or two. In other words, enough for a revolution that succeeded immediately, not for one that met with serious opposition. The same was true on Patton-2.

In France the situation was similar, with the added factor that yes, it was the main rear area of the Western armies. So replacement depots were mobilized, and those soldiers poured in the streets. Some were used to unload the trains and ships.

The above applies to Britain, too. There was a division's worth of soldiers who served by working in the coal mines. Units that were not trained for deployment yet, but could be put to work, and they were under military discipline.

Sabotage? Yes, there was sabotage. The same had applied to French and Czech factories under German occupation. And the same happened along the Polish rail lines on Patton-2 in 1945, given that the AK had not been entirely dismantled by the NKVD.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Of course, there will also be Timeline Zhukov, where the Manhattan Project wasn't accelerated quite so successfully, and the production line never did really kick in. Patton burned through his very finite A-bomb supply without knocking Russia out, and found himself going toe-to-toe with well-fuelled T34s. It's, say, 1960, the Iron Curtain runs along the Rhine, and France is formally non-aligned...

Well, yes. But I'm not inclined to detail it, considering that we already have Lenin-1, other Lenins, and Campbell as part of the canon. The end results are similar.

[adm]

Originally Posted by Michele

Thank you for thinking about this.

I like WW II alternates, particularly unexpected changes.

Originally Posted by Michele

First thing, the advance was virtually unopposed. "Virtually" means occasional casualties to die-hards, yes, but that was barely above the base level for having an army in campaign in a UXO-dotted landscape.

As to the reason for the advance, it's in the timeline description, though I probably was not clear enough. Hitler was killed by some generals, but they were in turn killed by the SS. Goering came to power, but his command was shaky, ineffective and nobody could say whether he'd remain in the saddle. Nobody knew where Himmler was.
Meanwhile, the resistance against the Soviets was stiff as ever and they were advancing only slowly.

Getting them while they are disorganized* does make a lot of sense.
*As the Allies would see it.

Originally Posted by Michele

What if a vacuum had come into being in Berlin, with some fanatic stepping in who would order the troops in the West to resume fighting?

I think that's a maybe, once the order was given to not oppose the Western Allies, I expect that a significant number of troops would try to be shifted East to slow the Russians more. Only suicidal fanatics would try to fight everyone at this point, and without Hitler pushing for it, I don't think that you could restart resistance in the West. Of course the Western Allies will not be sure of this, and could send everyone forward while they had an opening.

Originally Posted by Michele

Additionally, there was the German propaganda. The Allies didn't know that it was 95% just that. There were rumors of Werwolf guerrilla (note the above-mentioned occasional losses to die-hard Nazis seemed to confirm that this was a real danger, and therefore the faster the country was entirely occupied, the better). There was the danger of a redoubt somewhere.

The US in particular were worried about the Alpine Redoubt, insuring that the collapse in the West was not a planned withdrawal into it would also likely drive troops forward.

Originally Posted by Michele

And what about the often-mentioned secret weapons? The USAAF had just shown that new weapons were a real possibility. What if the Germans were on the brink of deploying theirs?
Advancing quickly all the way, or at least for as far as no resistance was met, would reduce the chances of any of that. That was the decision that Eisenhower took.

Easily the best reasoned argument on the list, if V2s and ME 262s were just preliminaries, the Allies would not want to see what might be next.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by adm

Easily the best reasoned argument on the list, if V2s and ME 262s were just preliminaries, the Allies would not want to see what might be next.

Thank you, I'm glad the reasons provided seem reasonable and realistic.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Well, here's things I noticed on first pass:
- Parallels can't be shifted only echos can; Centrum has no chance of moving this timeline, but they can hope to bring it towards there point of view.

Actually as Krypton-1 (I.S.T. Dark) shows Centrum can move parallels but they seem to be limited to "close" echoes and this world has diverged too much for that work. Besides, given how much a disaster trying to move Krypton-1 back to Quantum 6 (it went to quantum 3 instead) was it is unlikely Centrum would even try.