I don’t think that the US/NATO/Anyone with a brain would ever let that photo be taken. It’s one thing to have them both in charge. It would be another to hand the Soviets that kind of diplomatic nuclear weapon. Might as well throw Chancellor Rommel in the picture as well.
Of lost monkeys and broken vehicles
- Thread starter Lascaris
- Start date
I don’t think that the US/NATO/Anyone with a brain would ever let that photo be taken. It’s one thing to have them both in charge. It would be another to hand the Soviets that kind of diplomatic nuclear weapon. Might as well throw Chancellor Rommel in the picture as well.
And on that note, Kishi never visited Europe IOTL during his tenure as Prime Minister anyways.
I would love that picture just for how bonkers it is lol, especially if Rommel gets POWed in Normandy.
In this case, Turkey's football clubs would be playing in European Football Championships and not in Asian or Middle Eastern Football Championships. And yes, Turkey did participate in Eurovision in otl. The UN mandate in the straits would have international such as football sports teams.
If we’re going for the ultimate cringe photo, let’s get Chancellor Rommel and PM David Ben-Gurion shaking hands.
Since we’re discussing Nazis and Jews though, I would love if Schindler did a little better post war. I have this image of him using his remaining ill gotten gains to get his foot in the door of West German politics instead of trying and failing at business again. Him being given the first German ambassadorship to Israel would be both ironic and poetic. The man certainly wasn’t a saint but he deserved a better life than he had OTL post war.
Pre-war TTL the Greek clubs of Constantinople were playing in the Greek championship and the Turkish clubs in the Turkish championship. For the Greeks I more or less had them following practices since Ottoman times although I got inspired by Cypriot champions playing in the Greek first league in the 1960s as well. In the Turkish case without them the rest of Turkey wouldn't have much of a championship...
Which led to fun like this in TTL 1939.
Now after the City is liberated someone might get the idea of resurrecting the "Constantinople champion game" as a way of improving relations but I short of suspect the atmosphere in the stadium would be ehm... tense.
Nah just seeing past axis officials meeting for a pic under American auspices is just ironic to a stupid degree. A German, Japanese, Italian, Israeli, greek and American picture of all the heads of state would be cool though (celebrating Israel becoming a state?)
It would be fun to see things going differently than otl, Rommel and a few others didn't have to die I think especially if things went differently. Rommel defo could be POWed since he's on the front and I don't think Hitler would've had the time to act before Rommel was captured in Normandy.
Part 152
Philadelpheia, Greek-Turkish border, August 10th, 1944
The train stopped once more. But this time the NKVD guards start barking for everyone to get out of the wagons immediately. The Greek families within, start wearily picking up their meager belongings and getting out. A week earlier NKVD had ordered them to pick up any belongings they could carry within two hours and then had shipped them out of their village in the Crimea. Then they had been boarded on the train and the train had start its trek eastwards, apparently on their way to central Asia. None had been allowed to leave the train even when it stopped to take more coal and water.
The deportees start looking around the train station. A town could be seen at the distance, with mountains rising further south. And it was hot. Quite a bit more hot than Crimea this time of year. The lead NKVD was talking with someone in a differently cut and colored khaki uniform, wearing a kepi hat of all things. More of his ilk totting rifles and sub-machine guns were around although it seemed as if they were more wary of the NKVD men than the deportees. But then who wasn't wary of the checkists? The chief checkist and his counterpart were finally satisfied and the deportees were ordered forward changing guards. An area close to the station had been fenced over with oddly shaped huts with red cross signs on them. One of the younger women dared to ask one of the new guards, in Russian of course, where they were. The new guard gave her a suspicious look.
"You don't speak Greek?" he asked her in Greek, not just Greek but her own Pontic dialect.
"Of course I speak Greek." she answered automatically. Her question whether that was allowed, was cut short as a light breeze made the flag on the flagpole flap. You couldn't mistake the Greek flag there for a Soviet one.
The gendarme saw her looking at the flag, did a double take and start laughing. "Welcome to Greece. The damn Russians didn't even tell you they were sending you off to the motherland?" He didn't get an answer. The woman, she was reminding him of his sister he thought absentmindedly, was too busy laughing. Then she fell on her knees and kissed the ground.
The doctor in charge in the nearest Quonset hut was already at work, to process this newest bunch of refugees. The process was not new. Inspect everyone for diseases, then to the delousing stations, then the refugees could be given clean clothing and some food, plenty of that now unlike the early years of the war. The doctor had been a member of Alexandros Svolos socialists and somewhat sympathetic to the great Soviet ally, as many others, Triandafillov and his exploits in the Caucasus had been featuring prominently in Greek newspapers after all. Thus he hadn't been expecting to be treating Soviet Greek refugees of all things. But that was what he was doing for the past two months. Stalin had apparently decided the Greeks were "reviving private trade" and were a dangerous national element tied to the west. At least thankfully many of the Crimean Greeks had been holding Greek passports and the Greek embassy had taken wind of the deportations and informed Athens. Sofoklis Venizelos, the Greek foreign minister had offered instead for Greece to take any of the Greeks the Soviet Union did not want and asked for Hull and Eden to intercede with Molotov. Apparently they had caught Stalin in a good mood. Or he had decided it did remove the problem from his hand while getting the goodwill of Athens and more importantly Washington and London...
Wolfschanze, East Prussia, August 10th, 1944
Ion Antonescu had met Hitler for the eleventh time just a week ago when Hitler had summoned him in the aftermath of the July 15th plot. Now he was back in a hurry in view of the deteriorating situation in the Balkans. No spare divisions were available in Germany to shore up the crumbling Axis defenses in the Balkans. Reserves could come only from Romania but this would be impossible on the current front. Hitler had refused Antonescu's proposal to pull back on a shorter front that would free up forces in the previous meeting and had kept doing so afterwards. Which had brought Antonescu back to Germany and now even Hitler had to agree it was the only way. Army Group South Ukraine was ordered to pull back on a line from the Carpathians to Foscani, Namoloasa and Braila on the Danube. As soon as the retreat was complete the four mobile divisions in the army group reserve and the four divisions of the German XXXXIV corps would move south to reinforce the Bulgarians.
Stockholm, August 10th, 1944
The Swedish cabiet under Per Hansson was in session for the whole night. Contacts in the Finnish government had admitted that the news broadcasted from Moscow that Hamina had fallen two days ago were true. The Finnish army was still fighting hard and inflicting disproportionate casualties on the Soviets. But it appeared clear on the Swedish general staff that it had failed to stop them so far. Which was a problem. The last thing Sweden wanted was Soviet forts and ships in Aland. But Sweden's position was delicate. Under no circumstances could the Allies be alianeted...
Sofia, August 11th, 1944
Konstantin Muraviev was unhappy. He had become prime minister of Bulgaria, with the explicit goal bringing the war to a stop just the previous day. Now Bogdan Filov the stronger of the three regents had summoned him to happily announce to him that seven German divisions and one Romanian would be redeploying in support of the Bulgarian army to stop the Allied offensive. Which was good news if one forgot said divisions would first have to pull back to the new defensive line in Romania and then redeploy. This was all taking time. Did he have the time? The news that Dupnitsa had fallen to the Greeks removed any doubts. The Greeks were now less than seventy kilometers from Sofia. Over difficult ground with about 150,000 Bulgarian soldiers between them and the capital. Only, general Trifonov the chief of the army staff had admitted to him that the army had suffered over a hundred thousand casualties since the start of the current battle. Muraviev didn't need to be told what that meant, he was a veteran of the Balkan wars and world war 1 and a graduate of the Bulgarian military academy himself. Something had to be done and fast. He didn't lose any time clandestinely contacting Kimon Georgiev...
Ravna Gora, August 12th, 1944
Zaharije Ostojić read the radio message, just received from prime minister Jovanovic. "Skopje liberated by French Armee D' Orient. Army group continuing advance in direction of Kosovo and Nis. Initiate operation Beli Orao with all possible haste." He didn't need more explanation. Since he had replaced general Mihailovic in command of the Chetniks he had pursued both tasks he had been given by Jovanovic before living Greece. He had led a much more vigorous campaign of raids and sabotage against the German supply lines to the south despite the increased German and Bulgarian reprisals against the civilian population. His second inadmissible task was to keep Serbia and Montenegro Chetnik dominated. His active campaign, unlike Mihailovic's passivity, had brought him recruits, he now had more than 50,000 men in Serbia, three times as many as the partisans and his 20,000 men in Montenegro also outnumbered the partizans if by a much smaller margin. His Chetniks had maintained a precarious relationship with the partisans, at times clashing openly, other times working together or at least not killing each other while the AVNOJ and the government in exile in Athens remained separate. But now the orders from Athens said that the time for a general uprising had come...
Albania, August 12th, 1944
Tirana was liberated. With Allied armies advancing further east the Germans had finally decided to evacuate Albania. But they were not doing that either very fast or without a fight.
Falaise, Normandy, August 12th, 1944
Fifteen German divisions, or what remained of them after more than two months of constant fighting, were in threat of destruction as the Canadian 1st army and the US 3rd army pushed from north and south threatening to cut them off. Rommel would request an immediate withdrawal. Hitler would fail to agree...
The train stopped once more. But this time the NKVD guards start barking for everyone to get out of the wagons immediately. The Greek families within, start wearily picking up their meager belongings and getting out. A week earlier NKVD had ordered them to pick up any belongings they could carry within two hours and then had shipped them out of their village in the Crimea. Then they had been boarded on the train and the train had start its trek eastwards, apparently on their way to central Asia. None had been allowed to leave the train even when it stopped to take more coal and water.
The deportees start looking around the train station. A town could be seen at the distance, with mountains rising further south. And it was hot. Quite a bit more hot than Crimea this time of year. The lead NKVD was talking with someone in a differently cut and colored khaki uniform, wearing a kepi hat of all things. More of his ilk totting rifles and sub-machine guns were around although it seemed as if they were more wary of the NKVD men than the deportees. But then who wasn't wary of the checkists? The chief checkist and his counterpart were finally satisfied and the deportees were ordered forward changing guards. An area close to the station had been fenced over with oddly shaped huts with red cross signs on them. One of the younger women dared to ask one of the new guards, in Russian of course, where they were. The new guard gave her a suspicious look.
"You don't speak Greek?" he asked her in Greek, not just Greek but her own Pontic dialect.
"Of course I speak Greek." she answered automatically. Her question whether that was allowed, was cut short as a light breeze made the flag on the flagpole flap. You couldn't mistake the Greek flag there for a Soviet one.
The gendarme saw her looking at the flag, did a double take and start laughing. "Welcome to Greece. The damn Russians didn't even tell you they were sending you off to the motherland?" He didn't get an answer. The woman, she was reminding him of his sister he thought absentmindedly, was too busy laughing. Then she fell on her knees and kissed the ground.
The doctor in charge in the nearest Quonset hut was already at work, to process this newest bunch of refugees. The process was not new. Inspect everyone for diseases, then to the delousing stations, then the refugees could be given clean clothing and some food, plenty of that now unlike the early years of the war. The doctor had been a member of Alexandros Svolos socialists and somewhat sympathetic to the great Soviet ally, as many others, Triandafillov and his exploits in the Caucasus had been featuring prominently in Greek newspapers after all. Thus he hadn't been expecting to be treating Soviet Greek refugees of all things. But that was what he was doing for the past two months. Stalin had apparently decided the Greeks were "reviving private trade" and were a dangerous national element tied to the west. At least thankfully many of the Crimean Greeks had been holding Greek passports and the Greek embassy had taken wind of the deportations and informed Athens. Sofoklis Venizelos, the Greek foreign minister had offered instead for Greece to take any of the Greeks the Soviet Union did not want and asked for Hull and Eden to intercede with Molotov. Apparently they had caught Stalin in a good mood. Or he had decided it did remove the problem from his hand while getting the goodwill of Athens and more importantly Washington and London...
Wolfschanze, East Prussia, August 10th, 1944
Ion Antonescu had met Hitler for the eleventh time just a week ago when Hitler had summoned him in the aftermath of the July 15th plot. Now he was back in a hurry in view of the deteriorating situation in the Balkans. No spare divisions were available in Germany to shore up the crumbling Axis defenses in the Balkans. Reserves could come only from Romania but this would be impossible on the current front. Hitler had refused Antonescu's proposal to pull back on a shorter front that would free up forces in the previous meeting and had kept doing so afterwards. Which had brought Antonescu back to Germany and now even Hitler had to agree it was the only way. Army Group South Ukraine was ordered to pull back on a line from the Carpathians to Foscani, Namoloasa and Braila on the Danube. As soon as the retreat was complete the four mobile divisions in the army group reserve and the four divisions of the German XXXXIV corps would move south to reinforce the Bulgarians.
Stockholm, August 10th, 1944
The Swedish cabiet under Per Hansson was in session for the whole night. Contacts in the Finnish government had admitted that the news broadcasted from Moscow that Hamina had fallen two days ago were true. The Finnish army was still fighting hard and inflicting disproportionate casualties on the Soviets. But it appeared clear on the Swedish general staff that it had failed to stop them so far. Which was a problem. The last thing Sweden wanted was Soviet forts and ships in Aland. But Sweden's position was delicate. Under no circumstances could the Allies be alianeted...
Sofia, August 11th, 1944
Konstantin Muraviev was unhappy. He had become prime minister of Bulgaria, with the explicit goal bringing the war to a stop just the previous day. Now Bogdan Filov the stronger of the three regents had summoned him to happily announce to him that seven German divisions and one Romanian would be redeploying in support of the Bulgarian army to stop the Allied offensive. Which was good news if one forgot said divisions would first have to pull back to the new defensive line in Romania and then redeploy. This was all taking time. Did he have the time? The news that Dupnitsa had fallen to the Greeks removed any doubts. The Greeks were now less than seventy kilometers from Sofia. Over difficult ground with about 150,000 Bulgarian soldiers between them and the capital. Only, general Trifonov the chief of the army staff had admitted to him that the army had suffered over a hundred thousand casualties since the start of the current battle. Muraviev didn't need to be told what that meant, he was a veteran of the Balkan wars and world war 1 and a graduate of the Bulgarian military academy himself. Something had to be done and fast. He didn't lose any time clandestinely contacting Kimon Georgiev...
Ravna Gora, August 12th, 1944
Zaharije Ostojić read the radio message, just received from prime minister Jovanovic. "Skopje liberated by French Armee D' Orient. Army group continuing advance in direction of Kosovo and Nis. Initiate operation Beli Orao with all possible haste." He didn't need more explanation. Since he had replaced general Mihailovic in command of the Chetniks he had pursued both tasks he had been given by Jovanovic before living Greece. He had led a much more vigorous campaign of raids and sabotage against the German supply lines to the south despite the increased German and Bulgarian reprisals against the civilian population. His second inadmissible task was to keep Serbia and Montenegro Chetnik dominated. His active campaign, unlike Mihailovic's passivity, had brought him recruits, he now had more than 50,000 men in Serbia, three times as many as the partisans and his 20,000 men in Montenegro also outnumbered the partizans if by a much smaller margin. His Chetniks had maintained a precarious relationship with the partisans, at times clashing openly, other times working together or at least not killing each other while the AVNOJ and the government in exile in Athens remained separate. But now the orders from Athens said that the time for a general uprising had come...
Albania, August 12th, 1944
Tirana was liberated. With Allied armies advancing further east the Germans had finally decided to evacuate Albania. But they were not doing that either very fast or without a fight.
Falaise, Normandy, August 12th, 1944
Fifteen German divisions, or what remained of them after more than two months of constant fighting, were in threat of destruction as the Canadian 1st army and the US 3rd army pushed from north and south threatening to cut them off. Rommel would request an immediate withdrawal. Hitler would fail to agree...
How many greeks are coming back to greece..i can hardly expect greece to be able to Build new villages or in this case a new Mariupol to accommodate the new refugees as was done before..also does AHEPA exist ttl?
How many are the Greek refugees from Soviet Union?
I foresee Yogoslavia partitioned wit Serbia and Montenegro (and parts of Bosnia) being held by the government in exile(soon to be ended) and the North being a battleground between communists and loyalists.
I foresee Yogoslavia partitioned wit Serbia and Montenegro (and parts of Bosnia) being held by the government in exile(soon to be ended) and the North being a battleground between communists and loyalists.
Which I think the Allies would agree to, even the Americans. Particularly if the Swedish framed it as joining the war effort or some such. Still think the Finn’s might be able to turn this around though.
Yeah I don’t think Bulgaria is gonna get those reinforcements in time.
Yeah I guess at this points the Bulgarians have decided they want to end up in the Soviet camp when this is all over.
If Rommel is feeling the heat for January 15th this is his best chance to escape death. Or if Hitler refused to let him leave to prove his loyalty, that could have essentially the same effect of preventing any from escaping the pocket. That being said I’m expecting him to more or less suffer Kluges fate.
Honestly I’m assuming the Soviets are shipping literally any person of Greek descent they find on their soil, and probably some other folks from “undesirable groups” that got rounded up by “mistake”, to Greece. Not just the Crimean Greeks. They were ethnically cleansed otl as well but seeing as Russia and Greece already have a more rocky relationship I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re more thorough this time around.
The only thing that can save Rommel at this point would be an interrogation mark next to his name I think. That's what saved Speer, right?
Well, that depends. On the one hand there are more points of friction in foreign politics, and TTL Greece looms larger in the Kremlin‘s analysis as a dangerous British puppet, but otoh this is a Greece that is national-bourgeois rather than monarch-fascist, as the communists would call it. The monarchy is gone, the virulent anti-communism of OTL hasn’t emerged (yet), and perhaps a pragmatic modus vivendi could be reached that might even over time help disentangle Greece from her Western alliance. Depends on what fish Uncle Joe thinks he can catch….
You aren’t wrong, but I feel like Uncle Joe has already decided to give up on Geece for a easier fish in Turkey. I’d also argue that while I don’t think the Greeks will be nearly as anti-communist in this timeline (baring future events of course), I do think they’re quickly heading towards being very very anti-Soviet specifically. This is the second cleansing of Soviet Greeks, the first adding to the mess of the population transfers post Greco-Turkish war. They were the architect of the peace that prevented the Greeks from getting key territories. The significant Circassian minority have issues with the Russians in general. Plus Constantinople is already home to a significant White Russian population, likely to have a huge Polish exile population, and is probably going to become one of the target destinations of folks looking to escape the iron curtain.
So I think Greece is destined to be Anti Soviet at this point, but I can see them allowing communism though. Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to separate the Soviets from the Russians in general in their academic discourse. Not only to help Integrate any White Russians in Constantinople, but also for the sake of their own national story. “The Russians helped us against the Turkish menace, the Soviets stabbed us in the back. The Russians were a great empire, the Soviets are a psychotic teenager that killed their father and are now pretending to be him by wearing his clothes. They may look similar at first glance but it’s only a skin deep resemblance”
mapuche lautarino
Banned
There is a Serbian puppet government here because if so Serbia could fall much faster.
Just for clarity, what does “Serbia and Montenegro” actually refer to? The Axis puppet states or everything outside of the Banovina of Croatia and Drava Banovina? As the first is significantly smaller than the latter.
Just want to say that the first part of the last update was well-written and very touching, I enjoy seeing @Lascaris' forays into more narrative bits.
Methinks this is a question that will pop up more formally in the eventual peace conference. Might end up coming down to how local Bosniak and Croat uprisings split up things in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
66,715. Where they would be settling? Why someone might think of a place or two... AHEPA certainly exists. Why would it be disbanded? And so does the Greek War Relief Association.
Yes, no... back in 1922 TTL a rather higher proportion of Caucasus Greeks ended up in Greece. Just like OTL the Soviets wanted them out and unlike OTL Greece was much better positioned to take them in. So in TTL 1939 you have about 45,000 Greeks in Georgia as opposed to 90,000 in OTL.
In Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia the partisans overwhelmingly outnumber the Chetniks by something close to 30 to 1 not unlike OTL. Now OTL you did not have 138.000 mostly Serb Yugoslavs marching north from Salonika nor the Chetniks in Serbia and Montenegro pulled kicking and screaming to the right side of history.
Maybe. But framing it a joining the Allies needs... more than "hi we've just decided to jump Finland for a bit and with their closet collusion."
Not necessarily. Muraviev himself is an Agrarian. Georgiev was "mr coup". In this capacity he was very useful to the communists even if he was not a communist himself... but in said capacity he is useful to more people...
Dunno. He never looked to me like the kind of man who would willingly defect and staying in the pocket to be taken POW does amount to defection. Besides what would happen to his family in this case? The man committed suicide to secure his family OTL. He'll leave it to the gestapo's tender mercies while he deliberately stays in the pocket to be captured?
The deportations are historical, the TTL difference is the Greek government learning of them and intervening. Now TTL Soviet Union had about 197,000 Greeks I'm assuming it is deporting as many people as OTL here. Rounding up some non Greeks as certainly possible one would note the Greeks are wary of this as hinted. The Greeks might turn a blind eye to the occasional Armenian or Pole... Crimean Tatars though? Not really.
Or so Speer claimed post facto?
Greece has no reason to be more anti-communist than Britain and USA, or for that matter France does it? Yes the Soviet Union is antagonistic sure. But it is still part of the United Nations and an ally. For now.
When all is said and done Greece is always dependent on the seas. Which in turn means sticking with the side with the larger navy...
There is a Serbian puppet government under Milan Stojadinovic. How well it is going to be faring in the not too distant future is something of a different question...
That's... something to be seen.
Thanks a lot. I'm never entirely too happy with my dialogue and characterization, my characters have this tendency to turn too realistic/logical in the attitudes for one thing but hey that never stopped me from inflicting my writing on others.
I can't possibly comment of course...