I wonder if either the Allies and particularly the US, would see Norway and the possibility to help the Swedes and cutting out the German division withdrawing to Germany. And, to use their (even if stretched out) still enormous amphibian landing capacity and sent the Marines across the North Atlantic to Norway.
Also, if the British would think about or decide that, providing that would be enough time (as for to plan it and deploy) and if combat worthy to reach out to the Norwegian resistance and the Swedish government. Raising the possibility to send, (among others, I'd guess) the 1st Airborne to Norway to link up with the advancing Swedish Army...
Or, if perhaps, the Allies, would, if considered worth enough, the possibility to trap there those veterans Germans divisions, as for perhaps, they'd contemplate, to combine the two above mentioned hypotheticals operations in an Allied operation in Norway...
I would expect air support has been provided, flying from Britain a few fighter and bomber groups to Sweden shouldn't be too difficult although keeping them in supply and providing spare parts would be more difficult, in effect at the moment you need to move supplies through Murmasnk and the Soviets have to agree to this. For real, not just agree and then have the supplies delayed till 1946 due to "transportation problems". Sending ground troops to Norway on the other hand... where are the spare divisions to send? And how much of the Allied amphibious capacity has been retained to Europe?
Another failed Market Garden(or is it Meteor Comet TTL), alas. Did the Brits think to involve the Dutch resistance this time? IIRC the resistance had the telephones working for them.
Did not go to that detail so can't possibly comment.
Market Garden failing as IOTL is a lot less significant than the Danube becoming the de-facto border between the Soviet and Allied spheres of influence.
For now the Danube is a convenient demarcation line between Soviet and Western armies. What happens longer term...
So Meteor is a failure, but no where near as costly a one as OTL Market Garden. All things considered that’s likely the best probable outcome. It’s good to see that the British 1st airborne and the Polish airborne weren’t completely gutted. That could have ramifications going forward.
I short of doubt a complete success was practical. Throwing light infantry into the face of heavy mechanized formations even gutted ones tends to be... problematic.
The Danube being the border would have interesting effects if it more than just most of Bulgaria and and Serbia. I don’t think it’ll go farther than that though.
I don't think that, this is very practical for most of the course of the river. How do you make the Danube a border in Austria and Germany? Or even Romania?
so the Danube is the agreed future iron curtain? does this mean Bulgaria will seize the entire Dobruja region or what?
No and no.
also Vojvodina will stay to communist hungary?
Not fully liberated yet but any part liberated is administered by the AVNOJ.
A Danube Iron Curtain would be a massive divergence, for one thing it would be much for difficult to secure and would make emigration to the West much, much easier.
If Bulgaria does not become a Soviet satellite then de facto it will be the border between a likely communist Romania and Bulgaria given how most of the border between the two runs along the river. Which brings interesting questions if the Bulgarian government is supposed to be neutral.
On that note, guess Yugoslavia would be TTL's equivalent to Greece, with that in mind, now you mentioned it.
There is an obvious similarity in the existence of rival communist and nationalist factions in the resistance both of which are too strong for one to easily dominate the other.
yes and no.
soviets are in Bulgaria but only on the black sea. the Wallies have occupied central-west Bulgaria and already said no to soviet troops entering said area.
they also control belgrade now. unless a korea happens to Bulgaria.
Bulgaria has a non communist government and an army not controlled by the communists. Post that...
I mean, the trade-off might be "the USSR retreats from controlled areas in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and West Constantinople, in exchange of which the US retreats back to the agreed-upon occupation borders in Germany".
Stalin has informally agreed with Churchill on 50-50 control in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. How that actually plays out, if it plays out...
i guess so.
i also think that Bulgaria would still be able to flex and meme about being the only losing country ever to gain stuff after the war. a bit more then otl? since they get the entire dobruja region instead of the southern part.
No chance they get northern Dobrutja. Even keeping the southern one is very much dependent on the Soviets supporting Bulgaria diplomatically. Which means the Soviets having reasons to do so.
Honestly idk if the Americans would take that, German territory is a lot more useful than Balkan territory, no matter what the greeks think about it...
I do like how the conflict between the partisans and Chetniks are still very much fighting each other, and post WWII they would fight each other easily post war. As we know from otl the USSR probably has political feelers in Bulgaria and co too. It may be better (and easier) writing off Bulgaria as (at most) a neutral ally, and keeping more of Germany so if WWIII is to be fought they could move through Poland quicker.
Why Yugoslav has a single government now. It also has two armies and de facto areas administered by AVNOJ and areas administered by the Royal government depending on who liberated them first but hey it's one government!
For me Dobrujas fate is the biggest question mark here? I wouldn’t be surprised if Dobruja was used as a carrot to get the Bulgarians to align themselves with the West instead of being neutral.
The same applies on the reverse for the Soviets and if anything the West is at a disadvantage here, since Greece and quite possibly Yugoslavia will have territorial demands on Bulgaria.
I get the vibe this one is more of an in-between update, with most of its content being either OTL or logical continuation of the butterflies. The except to that is, of course, the WAllies beating the Soviets into Belgrade.
Usually, that would be mostly it, as who got to what first was the most important factor for where the Iron Curtain will be drawn and the Soviets simply don't hold enough of Yugoslavia to create their version of it.
They don't... but Tito does have 350,000 under arms and the Soviets are all too capable to supply him with enough weaponry to turn them or twice as many into modern, for 1945, armies with armor and air support.
At most, they could try to somehow get enough of Bosnia and/or Croatia to turn these into Soviet puppets but even that strikes me as unlikely. The one caveat is that we are talking about the Chetniks and Tito here... ITTL the former were utterly outmaneuvered by the latter and even in a scenario where the Brits would have liberated Belgrade I could see them being able to snatch defeat from the jaws of history... Here they seem to be better organized and lead to some extent, although I get the sense there is still a clear gap to their disadvantage in that regard.
And Tito already directly controls large areas of Croatia and Bosnia. The map
below from OTL September 1944 is indicative. The one notable difference in OTL is of course that TTL in Serbia it is Chetnik units that have grabbed the territory first. TTL they were under much closer outside scrutiny from early on given the active front in Greece. Which meant the Chetniks were strong armed to action and had Michailovic brought to Greece and replaced by people who would follow the orders from Athens in that regard.
Yeah, but the Americans are going to retreat from occupied German territory anyway, since they did IOTL. Once they have agreed on occupation zones, they're not going to change them.
Extracting concessions from Stalin in exchange for sticking to the agreement, however, is just smart.
I'll note he did not invade Greece OTL... now what he would had done if he thought he could stand up to the Royal Navy in the Aegean...
Bulgaria before WWII split the territory with Romania, and both sides were happy with the agreement. I've no idea why ppl say the USSR was placating the Bulgarians by allowing them to retain southern Dobruja. It's not like the Romanians wanted it.
I really doubt Romania was happy with it. It was part of the Vienna awards after all. True Antonescu concentrated on retrieving Moldavia and Transylvania but I'm pretty certain that after the Romanians were done with Hungary, and a Romanian-Hungarian war over Transylvania at some point would had been a certainty it would be Bulgaria's turn.
It's more that I see royalist Yugoslavia very much being a greek puppet to keep their borders from touching communist borders.
Greece even the larger TTL one has comparable population with Serbia and considerably less than Yugoslavia. In GDP terms IMS Yugoslavia had a per capita income of $106 in 1938. Which meant a GDP of about $1.7 billion. TTL Greece was at about $1.5 billion. These are not numbers making it particularly easy for one to make a puppet of the other.
It's not really the Americans who matter when deciding the borders in the Balkans, the British and Greeks are the ones with most of the troops on the ground.
Arguably the Americans do matter given how both the Greeks and the British are completely dependent economically on them.
Considering Wever is still alive and Goering has been assassinated, what would happen to Wever after the war ITTL? It is near-obvious that he’d be at Nuremberg (similarly to Keitel, Jodl, Donitz, and Raeder), but still, would he be sentenced to death here?
Kesserling and Donitz were not so chances are he escapes the noose I'd think.
Albania being a Greek puppet to some degree after the war seems possible.
If Enver Hoxca is brought down which is not a given, he has n army of 40,000 at the moment more than all Albanian pro-allied nationalist factions combined. And the Greeks likely won't directly intervene militarily, their armies are fighting for four years non stop and the Communist party even if much weaker would be trying to oppose this. Add for good measure that Albanian nationalism has a strong anti-Greek and anti-Serb strain.
The Greeks will certainly provide material aid and possibly volumes in a civil war scenario but I can’t see the Greeks allowing their army proper to get involved in a Serbian civil war. Most of their country has been ravaged by war after all, they need time to heal.
I could easily see things similar to what is going today in Ukraine with the Greeks providing readily available material from their war stocks while the Americans are replacing it.
On that note, considering the Chetniks were Serb nationalist as opposed to "Yugoslavist", I could see them proclaim a Kingdom of (Greater) Serbia instead of "restoring" the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after a Yugoslav Civil War divides the country.
The Chetniks are already filling up the ranks of the army in exile as it advances north, just as the FFI was attaching itself to French units. The partisans on the other hand are keeping independent of the army in exile in their own formations.
Maybe they'd want to but the WAllies would put a kibosh on that idea pretty quickly, as the Chetniks depend on them, IMO. Its just not a good look internationally and if, which is a big if, Yugoslavia does end up divided the sponsors of the pro-Western regime would want their Yugoslavia to claim the whole thing and do what they can to mess with the Communist version of Yugoslavia.
If there are two rival Yugoslavias another fun question us which one gets the UN seat, given how Yugoslavia is a charter member of the organization.
Honestly it would be interesting to se a Greater Serbia Kingdom ( Serbia, Bosnia,Montenegro) and a Croatian-Slovenian dual republic on the other side. both kingdoms would actually be able to survive.
i did not include for a reason:
- there is no Macedonian identity yet. they feel like Bulgarians. so if a Yugoslavian civil war happens, i can see Macedonia exploiting as a way to secede and join Bulgaria.
Without Tito the pro-Bulgarian elements are not suppressed, at least to the same extend, for certain. And it will not be politically expedient for for a Royalist Yugoslavia to support Macedonianism for the obvious reason their closest ally in Athens is going to have kittens and in a scenario of two rival Yugoslavias Belgade likely needs Athens more than Athens needs Belgrade. Now supporting a separetist Slavomacedonian identity is an obvious way for the Communist Yugoslavia to mess things up with the Royalist one. But the likely diasporas in Canada and Australia will be Bulgarian dominated I would think.
The big loser in a split Yugoslavia is I suspect the Bosniaks. If Bosnia is part of the kingdom theit are a minority in what's effectively greater Serbia. If it is part of SFRY Tito will have reason to have a viable Serbian republic in his SFRY. The more practical way to have one is putting together Krajna and most of Bosnia with Herzegovina going to the Croats. The Bosniaks are at best getting an autonomous republic as part of either Serbia or Croatia...
i mean they could sure intervene but for what? TECHNICALLY it is a group of people doing auto determination
Sure there is bad blood with Bulgaria but going to enforce them to be part of a country that has openly repressed them would be seen badly from the UN
In 1946 say a group of people that actively cooperated with axis Bulgaria, rise up against the government of allied Yugoslavia. I'm inclied to believe this will be going about as well as the Sudeten Germans hypothetically rising up to stop their deportation from Czechoslovakia in the same year.
Most likely there will not be a successful secession. However, if
Vardar Macedonia can not remain part of the Greater Serbia kingdom, it might be divided in 4 pieces. Greece would get Strumitsa (besides the Monastir area), for defensive reasons, and the rest would be divided between Serbia, Albania and Bulgaria. Of course this is not
Greece and Serbia in such a case would be doing their level best to secure a land connection. And given that at a pinch, if for example Bulgaria tries to actively intervene, Greece mobilizes and jumps in turn with her entire end of the war army, call it about 600+ thousand soldiers with armor and air support when Bulgaria will still have mostly what survived 1944...
