What if France was connected to Britain via a land link?

@king_of_tanks

Good point.

to me it would have to the junkers ju-87…that sound it made when coming in for the attack was deafening and it would terrify you on the ground

Awesome! Thanks for sharing :)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17390290

19 March 2012

A British general kept Winston Churchill and Free French leader Charles De Gaulle in the dark about a top secret 1942 plan to arm Vichy France, recently discovered documents reveal.

1 of the battle of britain games:http://www.arcadeprehacks.com/game/10312/Spitfire-1940.html This version is hacked. If you want, you can play it unhacked

@legion3:

Naturally though, I voted for the USSR,  :wink: the opportunity to knock them out of the war or at least to take and hold Moscow, a major road, rail and communication hub with no equal in the Soviet Union, was available in the early fall of 41 had the Germans not been diverted and thus delayed in the turn south into the Ukraine. Another Hitler directive.

I take a few issues with this, It is VERY common to overestimate the value of moscow. Because moscow was such a hub, it would be very easy to link the railroads behind moscow, they are not that far apart. The russians built ALOT of railroad in WW2, and this would have been a very small challenge for them. They could probably have made Gorky their new capitol. losing moscow would not have been the end of russia by far.

As long as the russian army is alive and well supplied, russians would win this showdown. What the hitler directive did was to divert the panzers south, to help with the capture of kiev, What this move did was to encircle 700 000 russian soliders and to hasten the capture of Kryvbas and Krivoy Rog, which where the main prodcution of russian steel, dealing another devestating blow to the russian economy. This move severy reduced the resuplyment of the red army and encircled alot of the russian prewar division. This means that the 700k soliders they encircled was among the best equipped and best trained russian divisions. I could very easily argue that if the germans had gone for moscow instead, then these divisions and the increased russian production could have made the summeroffensive of 42 impossible, and the russian winter counterattacks in the winter of 41/42 that much more devestating. It was already devestating because of the of the 18 siberian divisions (guessing about 500K soliders). If you double the number of trained soliders, then the germans would probably have been lucky to even hold moscow, and if they tried, a stalingrad situation might have developed.

I haven’t gotten to “Day of Battle” yet, I am just finishing up “An Army at Dawn.”  With the template he uses, he gathers a lot of personal journal entries and witness accounts. So I think it would be fair to say that there will be a high probability that he will shed some light on Italian battle plans he may have had.  I know he goes in depth about Operation Husky which would be a given. Even if there is not that much substantial info about that specific topic, I would still suggest buying and reading the books.  Its probably one of the best historical war narratives I have ever read.

The real prize was the fleet at Toulon under Admiral Jean de Laborde. Even with Darlan’s ceding of his fleet to the Allies, Toulon had 77 available french ships.  Darlan tried to barter with his old rival to throw his lot in with his, but laborde remained silent over the topic  In occupying Vichy France after the African landings, the Germans stopped short of Toulon  demanding the surrender of the fleet.  Soon the German’s grew tired of waiting for a reply and moved in to take the fleet by force.  Quoted as “one of the greatest acts of self immolation in military history”, Laborde scuttled his fleet and sabatoged it before it could get into German hands. In all 3 battleships, seven cruisers, and thirty-two destroyers were lost amongst the fleet.  Eisenhower had mixed feelings, he was dismayed that the fleet was gone, but relieved the prize was not in German hands.