Nice TL Lascaris!
My biggest hope is that instead of being bullied into the axis Romania actualy fights against Germany and Bulgaria,
and that Yugoslavia doesnt fall like a house of cards.
The Germans could divide a good amount of Resources to Yugoslavia and Romania makin it alot easier for the greeks.
Maybe the Greeks could drive themselve into a stalemate with the nazis along the border of Albania and North Macedonia with British reinforcements and the remains of the yugoslovaian army.
Also wouldnt France and Britain attack Turkey through Syria and Iraq?
I think those fronts will be way more Important ITTL
One can hope...
Romania is an interesting question. Romania first failed to resist the Soviets and on purely material terms Romania was in a far superior position than Finland to resist. Then they accepted the Vienna awards when even with the lost of Moldavia the Romanian army could likely had beaten back Hungary and Bulgaria combined and there was little chance of the Germans or Italians jeopardizing Romanian oil deliveries to openly support Hungary and Bulgaria over Romania. Not certain though how you can plausibly alter inter-war Romanian politics to change any of this.
Greece likely won't be in great shape from the stress of the war since she'll either be fully occupied after a bloody fight or be a battleground for the whole war, but she will certainly play a much bigger part.
It wasn't in any great shape OTL. GDP was down by half by 1944. hundreds of thousands had been starved or outright massacred by the Germans and Bulgarians (and Italians but at a comparatively MUCH lesser extend), the merchant navy had taken a massive hit, most infrastructure had been destroyed between the Germans and the partisans fighting them... and for good measure 4 years of open civil war were just around the corner.
Thank you for treating us to this TL Lascaris!
A TL is as good as the comments it generates. If it fails to generate any...
For the record the use of Hazemeyer directors by the Vasileus Georgios class DDs is very much historical. The ships OTL were completed with German 5in guns though due to similar reasons and the availability of German clearing. With even more trade between Greece and the US TTL and 5/38 already put in the cruisers ordered in the US yards they should be an obvious alternative option to British guns. And since the US was exporting them at the time (case in point the Acre class destroyers)...
KGV's that I suspect will actually be Lions and completed a year early? Sign me up!
The
two ships laid down in January 1937 will not be Lions. They won't be standard OTL KGVs either.
Overall some of the Italian, French and German ships are ahead from between 3 to 12 months compared to OTL, Mussolini announced construction of the two Littorios in October 28th 1933 and they were laid down in early May 1934, 6 months ahead of OTL, trigerred to no small extend by construction of Salamis. As a result on the French side Strasbourg went ahead in the 1933 budget as originally intended getting laid down a full year ahead of OTL while Richelieu was laid down 6 months ahead of OTL. This in turn affects the Germans, Scharnhorst amd Gneisenau are built from the start with 380mm twins, Bismark and Tirpitz are laid down 3 months ahead with no controversary over the calibre of their guns and Graf Zeppelin is also a month ahead of OTL. This in turn triggers a French response with Jean Bart starting 3 months ahead of OTL. Now how the French used the slip of Strasbourg? Checks ... Joffre.
The independence of Syria this early is also a very interesting change from OTL and will have some very interesting effects on the region. Alexandretta looks like its gonna be a major point of contention with Turkey in the upcoming war and Lebanon looks like it'll be a little more Christian ITTL, which could upset the careful balance of power there. Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure what else is going to happen, but it looks like its gonna become a big mess in the near future. Either way, I'm excited to see where this all goes.
The treaty is historical. TTL it is delayed by three months and differs in the French refusing to incorporate the Alawite, Druze and TTL Kurdish states outright to Syria thanks to the much worse Syrian revolt in 1925...
It seems all goes worse for the republicans in TTL.
By the way, is not Brunette but Brunete.
An ironic side effect of Franco not being around TTL. His military strategy during the war was in many ways questionable/ breaking standard military practice. Of course this in many ways had to do with his political strategy of utterly crushing internal opposition and maximizing the death toll on the republican side...
This sets up a very useful tradition that hasthe potential to become a major factor of political stability. God knows that Greece needed (and needs) complete terms and no snap elections when they suit the governing party.
So far it is mostly accidental... Venizelos had no reason to resort to snap elections when he controlled parliament. Neither dd Stratos in 1932 when he knew that due to the repression an early election would only mean he lost power early.
First of all, less turkish infrastructure will be beneficial to Greece and the allied war effort in the war to come. One light cruiser and 4 submarines are a drop in the bucket when it comes to the naval war in the Mediterranean. The Axis war effort would have been served better by a railroad to Diyarbakir. This is actually a significant butterfly. Without a railroad, the chrome deposits of Guleman won't be developed, not until a railroad reaches Diyarbakir. That means that the overall turkish chrome ore production will be reduced. Less pre-war income from ore exports and less chrome available for the Axis war effort.
One of the reasons TTL Turkey could build railroads to the extend it did was that the cost of nationalizing railroads was much lower... for the simple reason it had to pay for rather fewer railroads. But its capital is finite. OTL it built 3275km of railroads, call it on average 32.75 million pounds, spent 24.21 million pounds on nationalizations (seen from a different viewpoint without etatism it could had built another 2421km of railroads instead) and spent something like 5.7 million on naval construction till 1938 with orders worth 2.86 million in 1939.
TTL it is 7.88 to the navy so far, 2,266km of rail were built (22.66 million) and 11.64 million went to nationalizations. Part of the naval spending comes from the air force given her limitations by treaty.
It seems to me that the turkish chrome ore production in TTL could be significantly lower. Moreover, a huge chunk of the existing production will be in Fethiye, where is is very vulnerable to air attacks from Crete or Cyprus. Not to mention, that they would have first to build a railroad there, because there is no chance the Axis could sneak convoys carrying ore.
This depends on what happens with the war but I suspect Bursa mines would be more prominent in German strategic calculations. Diyarbakir... needs the Turks to complete 500km of railroads to be practical...
