potski
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quote:
ORIGINAL: kahta
Historical Overview
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Facing the threat of Axis success in North Africa, on October 31st, 1942, Germany and Italy signed the 1942 Treaty of Versailles with the Western Allies.
The treaty included the following provisions:
Finnish/Soviet peace agreement
Axis withdrawal from Western Europe and Norway, to be replaced with puppet governments.
Western Allies can continue to provide lend-lease to the Soviets
Changes to the scenario include:
Axis allies have a slightly better starting position in the Stalingrad area
Western Europe, Norway, Finnish, and North Africa theater boxes are closed. All units sent to Map or Axis reserves.
Strength requirement for Italian theater set to zero
Removal of Transcaucus and Northern Front for the Soviets
Larger starting pool of LL reinforcements
Changes to Soviet Mech Corps OOBs to accomodate increased LL stockpile.
Increased Soviet pilot pool
I am in favour of alt-history scenarios. However:
- Finland was a co-belligerent with the Axis powers, it wasn't part of the Western Allies nor the Axis. Any 1942 Treaty of Versailles couldn't have brought peace on the Northern Front. Under the terms of the Treaty of Moscow in 1940 the Winter War ended with Finland giving up Karelia to the Soviet Union, and this territory was regarded as part of Russia, and had been before Finnish independence. The Finns invaded Karelia in the Continuation War in 1941 to try to win it back. Since the Soviets couldn't possibly be party to this 1942 Treaty of Versailles, then they couldn't possibly agree to any outcome either way, and the Finns could also not be party to this treaty. Historically it is an interesting fact that the Finns were never at war with UK and USA, despite them entering into a secret agreement with Germany to invade a UK/USA ally and allowing Finland's territory to be used to engage in attacks on UK forces in the Barents Sea. Whatever agreement is made between the Western Allies and Axis could not have resulted in peace in Finland, unless there was a separate treaty between Finland and the Soviet Union to give up Karelia and restore the 1939 borders. I don't see any motivation for this by either of them, nor from the Germans to give up the pressure on the Murmansk railway and the hope that this would be severed to stop the LL from that route. Even if there was peace treaties, this doesn't mean that the TB's should be closed - there would (same as Far Eastern) still be a requirement to garrison these fronts with some forces.
- No peace treaty with the Western Allies could have concluded with the agreement that they become neutral countries but still provide supplies to an enemy of the Axis. That's not how neutrality works. In fact, this makes things even worse, and is of course the reason why Hitler declared war on the USA, because if the LL convoys are flying "neutral" flags (and are protected by the Treaty) then the Axis cannot attack them. The whole purpose of their occupation of Petsamo and much of their garrisoning of Norway was to be able to attack the convoys heading for Murmansk, the peace treaty (and any separate peace between Finland and Soviet Union) would prevent that and require Germany who have "won" the war in the west due to their apparent victory in North Africa [on the very eve of their most devastating defeat IRL] to accept worse terms. Any attacks on the convoys would enable the western allies to attack German ships with immunity, as happened throughout 1941 with the US destroyers sinking German subs, but the German subs couldn't attack US/UK shipping. And, if the allies are not providing so much LL to North Africa/Italy and other theatres, they could even increase the volume to the Soviets, using them as a proxy to continue the war they had "lost". No, the Axis diplomats would have required at the bare minimum that the Western Allies cut-off all LL supplies to the Soviet Union. We need hardly point out that there was also a war going on in the Pacific with the third main power in the Axis, and the possibility that the Western Allies would have signed a peace with Germany and remained at war with Japan is ridiculous. Still, in this scenario, the idea is that the Soviet Union is simply left to fend for itself, standing alone against a Germany which is freed by some miracle from fighting the two front war it decided to engage in on 22 June 1941. And freed from its own decision to declare war on the USA six months later, without even deploying any additional forces to the North Africa TB to ensure that Rommel wins, and freed from having the inconvenience of the allied forces defeat him at Alamein and Torch, finally ending with a defeat nearly on the scale of Stalingrad, so that those forces were utterly destroyed. The entire forces in the TB! Yet you have NA and other forces presumably teleported fit and well to the Eastern Front, and presumably in plenty of time to reinforce the Romanian and Italian forces on the flanks of the Sixth Army to guarantee there is no defeat at Stalingrad. They don't have to provide a garrison force to occupy Libya, Egypt and the Middle East etc. There's alt-history and fantasy.
So, if you are going to engage in fantasy, at least make it consistent - there would still be the Continuation War (even if by 1942 the fighting in the TB is at low intensity with the Finns satisfied with their advances to the 1939 borders and the Soviets concentrating on the Eastern Front) and there would be no Lend Lease at all.
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