Will the Allies take a chance and create an Albanian government in exile with King Zog?
The Spirit of Salamis- A Short Allied Victory in Crete TL
- Thread starter phil03
- Start date
In other circumstances they might but Zog isn't too popular at this stage...
Even the Legaliteli, who where Royalists on paper, where more something of a coalition of all opposition to the Axis occupation who where neither communists nor fascists.
Just one more: Will the Greek fight in other fronts outside of the Mediterranean? OTL, two Flower-class corvettes operated by the Free Greeks where operated at Normandy and Georgios Averof escorted convoys in the Indian. If Fighting Greece as enough troops (and rotate them once in a while), could we see a fighter squadron and a regiment fighting from Normandy (post D-Day) to the Western Germany? (They could take once more the '1st Greek light Infantry Regiment' from the Napoleonic War era unit)
Honestly, I do not see why ITTL.
OTL there was no Aegean Theater of note so the Greek Government proposed the services of what few units it had post-Cairo mutiny for various theaters, as it was the only way to get them battle experience and contribute to the Allied cause. ITTL they have a front where the Allies seek to liberate at least some Greek lands and close to where they were originally recruited or evacuated, so both politically and militarily it makes more sense to simply have them take as big a share of the burden as possible in the Aegean and leave the other fronts to others.
Maybe post-liberation you might see a few small units send elsewhere for symbolic and political purposes but that is pretty much it I am affraid.
I think it is fine to end this time line here - with perhaps a very high level view of the changes it had on the war - but even that would be daunting!
Rounding Up The Timeline
Not sure if anyone would still be interested but I was reading another timeline that was left unfinished and I thought ''I fully understand and I am grateful to the author for what we got but still... A roundup would have been nice. Therefore, I decided to do one for my very own timeline, to provide closure if anyone would like to get it. Not that what is below is all the info I am willing to provide either: as long as anyone might have questions on the world ITTL I will be willing to answer them. The bar remains open until the last customers are ready to go home, so to speak.
Thank you to all who read, liked, and commented. This is what make writing timelines worth it at the end of the day. Right, without further ado...
End Game in Greece and the Aegean
-Operation Uppercut, the ITTL version of the raid on Ploeisti, still faced significant obstacles, as the airfields in Crete weren't ideal for a strike force of this size and Ploeisti remained a well-defended installation deep in enemy territory, losing 36% of its battle order and failing to significantly reduce production on the oilfield in the mid to long run. Nevertheless, the raid managed to cut the production by almost half for no less than two months and the casualty rates, while still high, were nonetheless significantly lower than in OTL. ITTL historians still debate whether Operation Uppercut was a success or not.
-In the Aegean the Greeks' pocket island hoping campaign continued, with Samos, Ikaria, the rest of the Southern Cyclades, Chios and Lesbos being liberated until Germany evacuated Greece in early fall 1944 due to the progress of the Red Army creating a domino effect in the Balkans, like in OTL.
-The Government of Fighting Greece returned home to the same iconic scenes of popular joy that were seen across Europe in 1944 (well, except some of the places ''liberated'' by the Soviets'') as the Allied tide carried all in its path.
-While the Holocaust still made many victims in Greece ITTL 35,000 of Greece's Jews would survive, as opposed to only ten thousand in OTL, thanks to a collaborationist government with less means at its disposal, a war in Europe finishing a bit earlier then OTL, an even stronger resistance overall with better means of coordination with the true government and the ability of the later to create escape roads through naval means and a Turkey that proved open to it later in the war, when it had become clear that the Allies would win and that the Greeks would be able to quickly transfer the evacuees to the territory they held.
Still greatly traumatized by the experience, many would end up choosing to move to Israel in later years. Among them were the parents of Ezra Tzon, who still holds the record for the most caps with the Israeli Men's Football Team ITTL, and is fondly remembered by Juventus' fans, and Isiah Weidensfeld, a physician and later aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who would save the Prime Minister's life after he was wounded in an assassination and thus allowing him to carry his peace policy to a successful conclusion.
-Despite Stalin's strong advice to the contrary, the EAM surmised that their position would only deteriorate with time, and with resistance groups being disarmed, and opted for an uprising. After a few rocky days, it was put down with relative ease. Instability will persist in some corners of Greece until the end of 1946 but broadly speaking the government in Athens had a good grip on the reins of power.
-While the above was going on Athens decided to send forces to Northern Epirus, ostensibly because of the instability in Albania and to protect ethnic Greeks in the area but in reality to set the stage for a good old annexation. Athens had surmised that London and Washington wouldn't welcome the move but would grudgingly accept the accomplished fact. They proved right on both grounds. Wider geopolitical events would delay things a bit but a referendum in 1954 would ratify the situation on the ground and pave the way for Northern Epirus' Enosis.
-A referendum in late 1945 would set the stage for a new Greek Republic. In his last public act Georges II, alongside his brother Prince Paul, would absolve his former subjects from their oaths to his house and exhorted them to be faithful to the new regime, ending on a more honorable note a career tainted by his collaboration with Metaxas.
-Just like in OTL the peace treaty with Italy would formalize the Dodecanese's Enosis.
-The true last note of Greece's WWII history would be played many nautical miles away, however. The Cypriot Turkish community had become increasingly alarmed in the immediate aftermath of the War, as it had seen the British allow the exiles of the 1931 revolt back on the island and close their eyes to the earlier then-OTL foundation of the EOKA, a guerilla group dedicated to the Enosis of Cyprus, alongside a core of veterans of the Greek army having been recruited on the OTL. Correctly surmising that Britain had given its agreement to an eventual Enosis, or at least to some kind of referendum or constituent assembly that was bound to bring it due to the island's demographics and believing that time worked against them they setted the stage for a confrontation. Unfortunately for them, the moment they chose to take up arms proved also to be the moment the Soviets chose to escalate the Straits Crisis, leaving Turkey unable to take the risks of too direct an intervention in what remained a British possession.
In those conditions, the few crates of weapons Ankara managed to provide could not change the final outcome, and the TMT, the Cypriot Turkish organization hastily founded, proved unable to withstand both the British garrison and the EOKA for very long. In 1948 the island would vote for Enosis by a strong majority and sovereignty over Cypris was transferred to Athens in 1950. Thanks to American mediation the Turkish minority was provided significant guarantees, including a degree of local governance and reserved seats in the Greek parliament. This arrangement has managed to ensure peace on the island until the current day ITTL.
The Rest of WWII
-In Europe, things progress under broadly OTL lines (except in one regard...), with a somewhat stronger position than OTL for the WAllies compared to the Soviets and a somewhat worsened German position overall.
-The war in Europe would end in late March, and the need to stop and deal with supply issues proved the main roadblock for the Allies in the later stage of the conflict like in OTL.
-The key difference is that the memories of Crete would ensure that no Market Garden equivalent would come into being ITTL and the Allies would prioritize the clearing of the Schedt instead, which went far more smoothly than OTL, thanks to the Germans not having nearly as long to prepare for the assault, thus somewhat speeding up the WAllies' advance eastwards.
-Thanks to this situation, and with the 1st Airborne Division being available for Churchill for a politically expedient drop in the waning moment of the conflict due to not having been sent to Arnhem, the WAllies managed to beat the Soviets to Vienna and Prague ITTL. This would set the stage for Austria to join the Western Bloc and leave Czecoslovakia's status in a bit of a blur...
-In the Pacific itself the island hoping the campaign will proceed mostly as OTL.
-In Asia, however, butterflies are afoot. Thanks to Monty's crisis management the Allies were able to limit the damages in Burma in 1942, keeping Rangoon alongside much of the country and setting the stage for an Allied counteroffensive which proved to be as successful as in OTL and a bit ahead of schedule, although not enough to allow it to land in Malaya before the Atomic Bombs where dropped.
-That is not to say that the Allies' performance in Burma had no effect elsewhere, however, for it had managed to keep the Burma Road open, therefore preserving the flux of weapons and advisors going to China that was cut in OTL.
-Combined with lesser Chinese losses in Burma, the survival of the Burma Road would allow the Nationalists to capitalize on their victory at Changsa and continue to rebuild their forces, winning the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign and generally giving more trouble to the Japanese forces then in OTL. The ITTL version of Operation Ichi-Go, which was to also take place throughout most of 1944 like its OTL counterpart, would result in a hard-fought Japanese victory, and not in the disaster for the Chinese Nationalists of OTL.
The Cold War and Beyond
-Without having to deal with a civil war of its own Greece can give more attention to the political situation of its neighbors, and so does the Western Bloc as a whole for that matter. The result, alongside the butterflies of a less successful version of Operation Alaric (Operation Geiseric ITTL), was an Albanian Civil War between Communists and Anti-Communists, with the West also trying to modify the balance of the Anti-Communists forces at the expense of the once-collaborationist Balli Kombetar and toward the far more palpable Legilateli. The conflict proceeded to degenerate into a four-way fight following the Staline-Tito Split and the faling out of the Ballists and Legaliteli (not that the former prevented Tito from collaborating with the West against Staline in other ways like in OTL because that's the Cold War for you). The Legaliteli emerged victorious in early 1949, anchoring Albania to the West.
-Unsatisfied with the country's fuzzy status between East and West and seemingly heading toward Finlandization, the Soviets prevailed on the Czechoslovak Communists to launch the ITTL equivalent of the Prague Coup, which failed and pushed Prague westward instead after a tense diplomatic-military standoff between Moscow and Washington won by the later. Just like in OTL, it would set the stage for the creation of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
-Thanks to a military in better shape and far more prestige due to its better wartime performance the KMT won the Chinese Civil War ITTL and after that we are in a whole new world.
-Broadly speaking the West was in a significantly stronger position throughout the Cold War. The world of the last seven decades, and the present day, has been kinder and fairer ITTL, still quite flawed and not lacking in terrible injustices and atrocities, but better than OTL nonetheless.
-With Market Garden having never taken place A Bridge Too Far never existed ITTL and was replaced by The First Victory, a film on the Battle of Crete.
-Every year on May 25, the anniversary of Case Ares, the bloodiest day of the Battle of Crete, a formal ceremony is held at the Monument to the Creforce. As years have passed the ranks of the veterans attending the ceremony have grown ever tinner, as it is the case for all such ceremonies. The Cretans still come in large numbers though, and when asked why they say that these men had been willing to go through hell and endanger their very lives to save their island and help their fellow humans live in a kinder world, so coming every year and tending to the graves of those who never left the island was the least the Cretans of today could do.
Thank you to all who read, liked, and commented. This is what make writing timelines worth it at the end of the day. Right, without further ado...
End Game in Greece and the Aegean
-Operation Uppercut, the ITTL version of the raid on Ploeisti, still faced significant obstacles, as the airfields in Crete weren't ideal for a strike force of this size and Ploeisti remained a well-defended installation deep in enemy territory, losing 36% of its battle order and failing to significantly reduce production on the oilfield in the mid to long run. Nevertheless, the raid managed to cut the production by almost half for no less than two months and the casualty rates, while still high, were nonetheless significantly lower than in OTL. ITTL historians still debate whether Operation Uppercut was a success or not.
-In the Aegean the Greeks' pocket island hoping campaign continued, with Samos, Ikaria, the rest of the Southern Cyclades, Chios and Lesbos being liberated until Germany evacuated Greece in early fall 1944 due to the progress of the Red Army creating a domino effect in the Balkans, like in OTL.
-The Government of Fighting Greece returned home to the same iconic scenes of popular joy that were seen across Europe in 1944 (well, except some of the places ''liberated'' by the Soviets'') as the Allied tide carried all in its path.
-While the Holocaust still made many victims in Greece ITTL 35,000 of Greece's Jews would survive, as opposed to only ten thousand in OTL, thanks to a collaborationist government with less means at its disposal, a war in Europe finishing a bit earlier then OTL, an even stronger resistance overall with better means of coordination with the true government and the ability of the later to create escape roads through naval means and a Turkey that proved open to it later in the war, when it had become clear that the Allies would win and that the Greeks would be able to quickly transfer the evacuees to the territory they held.
Still greatly traumatized by the experience, many would end up choosing to move to Israel in later years. Among them were the parents of Ezra Tzon, who still holds the record for the most caps with the Israeli Men's Football Team ITTL, and is fondly remembered by Juventus' fans, and Isiah Weidensfeld, a physician and later aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who would save the Prime Minister's life after he was wounded in an assassination and thus allowing him to carry his peace policy to a successful conclusion.
-Despite Stalin's strong advice to the contrary, the EAM surmised that their position would only deteriorate with time, and with resistance groups being disarmed, and opted for an uprising. After a few rocky days, it was put down with relative ease. Instability will persist in some corners of Greece until the end of 1946 but broadly speaking the government in Athens had a good grip on the reins of power.
-While the above was going on Athens decided to send forces to Northern Epirus, ostensibly because of the instability in Albania and to protect ethnic Greeks in the area but in reality to set the stage for a good old annexation. Athens had surmised that London and Washington wouldn't welcome the move but would grudgingly accept the accomplished fact. They proved right on both grounds. Wider geopolitical events would delay things a bit but a referendum in 1954 would ratify the situation on the ground and pave the way for Northern Epirus' Enosis.
-A referendum in late 1945 would set the stage for a new Greek Republic. In his last public act Georges II, alongside his brother Prince Paul, would absolve his former subjects from their oaths to his house and exhorted them to be faithful to the new regime, ending on a more honorable note a career tainted by his collaboration with Metaxas.
-Just like in OTL the peace treaty with Italy would formalize the Dodecanese's Enosis.
-The true last note of Greece's WWII history would be played many nautical miles away, however. The Cypriot Turkish community had become increasingly alarmed in the immediate aftermath of the War, as it had seen the British allow the exiles of the 1931 revolt back on the island and close their eyes to the earlier then-OTL foundation of the EOKA, a guerilla group dedicated to the Enosis of Cyprus, alongside a core of veterans of the Greek army having been recruited on the OTL. Correctly surmising that Britain had given its agreement to an eventual Enosis, or at least to some kind of referendum or constituent assembly that was bound to bring it due to the island's demographics and believing that time worked against them they setted the stage for a confrontation. Unfortunately for them, the moment they chose to take up arms proved also to be the moment the Soviets chose to escalate the Straits Crisis, leaving Turkey unable to take the risks of too direct an intervention in what remained a British possession.
In those conditions, the few crates of weapons Ankara managed to provide could not change the final outcome, and the TMT, the Cypriot Turkish organization hastily founded, proved unable to withstand both the British garrison and the EOKA for very long. In 1948 the island would vote for Enosis by a strong majority and sovereignty over Cypris was transferred to Athens in 1950. Thanks to American mediation the Turkish minority was provided significant guarantees, including a degree of local governance and reserved seats in the Greek parliament. This arrangement has managed to ensure peace on the island until the current day ITTL.
The Rest of WWII
-In Europe, things progress under broadly OTL lines (except in one regard...), with a somewhat stronger position than OTL for the WAllies compared to the Soviets and a somewhat worsened German position overall.
-The war in Europe would end in late March, and the need to stop and deal with supply issues proved the main roadblock for the Allies in the later stage of the conflict like in OTL.
-The key difference is that the memories of Crete would ensure that no Market Garden equivalent would come into being ITTL and the Allies would prioritize the clearing of the Schedt instead, which went far more smoothly than OTL, thanks to the Germans not having nearly as long to prepare for the assault, thus somewhat speeding up the WAllies' advance eastwards.
-Thanks to this situation, and with the 1st Airborne Division being available for Churchill for a politically expedient drop in the waning moment of the conflict due to not having been sent to Arnhem, the WAllies managed to beat the Soviets to Vienna and Prague ITTL. This would set the stage for Austria to join the Western Bloc and leave Czecoslovakia's status in a bit of a blur...
-In the Pacific itself the island hoping the campaign will proceed mostly as OTL.
-In Asia, however, butterflies are afoot. Thanks to Monty's crisis management the Allies were able to limit the damages in Burma in 1942, keeping Rangoon alongside much of the country and setting the stage for an Allied counteroffensive which proved to be as successful as in OTL and a bit ahead of schedule, although not enough to allow it to land in Malaya before the Atomic Bombs where dropped.
-That is not to say that the Allies' performance in Burma had no effect elsewhere, however, for it had managed to keep the Burma Road open, therefore preserving the flux of weapons and advisors going to China that was cut in OTL.
-Combined with lesser Chinese losses in Burma, the survival of the Burma Road would allow the Nationalists to capitalize on their victory at Changsa and continue to rebuild their forces, winning the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign and generally giving more trouble to the Japanese forces then in OTL. The ITTL version of Operation Ichi-Go, which was to also take place throughout most of 1944 like its OTL counterpart, would result in a hard-fought Japanese victory, and not in the disaster for the Chinese Nationalists of OTL.
The Cold War and Beyond
-Without having to deal with a civil war of its own Greece can give more attention to the political situation of its neighbors, and so does the Western Bloc as a whole for that matter. The result, alongside the butterflies of a less successful version of Operation Alaric (Operation Geiseric ITTL), was an Albanian Civil War between Communists and Anti-Communists, with the West also trying to modify the balance of the Anti-Communists forces at the expense of the once-collaborationist Balli Kombetar and toward the far more palpable Legilateli. The conflict proceeded to degenerate into a four-way fight following the Staline-Tito Split and the faling out of the Ballists and Legaliteli (not that the former prevented Tito from collaborating with the West against Staline in other ways like in OTL because that's the Cold War for you). The Legaliteli emerged victorious in early 1949, anchoring Albania to the West.
-Unsatisfied with the country's fuzzy status between East and West and seemingly heading toward Finlandization, the Soviets prevailed on the Czechoslovak Communists to launch the ITTL equivalent of the Prague Coup, which failed and pushed Prague westward instead after a tense diplomatic-military standoff between Moscow and Washington won by the later. Just like in OTL, it would set the stage for the creation of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
-Thanks to a military in better shape and far more prestige due to its better wartime performance the KMT won the Chinese Civil War ITTL and after that we are in a whole new world.
-Broadly speaking the West was in a significantly stronger position throughout the Cold War. The world of the last seven decades, and the present day, has been kinder and fairer ITTL, still quite flawed and not lacking in terrible injustices and atrocities, but better than OTL nonetheless.
-With Market Garden having never taken place A Bridge Too Far never existed ITTL and was replaced by The First Victory, a film on the Battle of Crete.
-Every year on May 25, the anniversary of Case Ares, the bloodiest day of the Battle of Crete, a formal ceremony is held at the Monument to the Creforce. As years have passed the ranks of the veterans attending the ceremony have grown ever tinner, as it is the case for all such ceremonies. The Cretans still come in large numbers though, and when asked why they say that these men had been willing to go through hell and endanger their very lives to save their island and help their fellow humans live in a kinder world, so coming every year and tending to the graves of those who never left the island was the least the Cretans of today could do.
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You are very welcome
I am glad and humbled that there still appear to be interest for it after all this time It isn't in the cards right now but as the old saying goes, never say never!
I probably leaned on the pleasant side when thinking of the development but as you said, why not? Overall no clear-cut negative butterflies is coming from the POD that I can think off and overall an Allied victory in Crete cost Germany precious resources, preserved key Allied resources, save the island itself, make Greece's political divisions more manageable, probably butterfly away Market Garden and broadly speaking make Hitler's obsession with the USSR even more of a problem for the Axis war effort. It is an inherently positive knock-ons-producing POD IMO.
On the Cold War, I can see where you are coming from but I respectfully disagree. The Albanian Civil War is there to cause tensions, even if it doesn't as much as the Greek Civil War in OTL, the Turkish Straits Crisis, the Chinese Civil War, the Iran Crisis of 1946, the Prague Coup (although with a different form and outcome) and, most of all, the fact that the Soviets still blatantly broke promises made in binding treaties to organize free and fair elections in countries who where instead turned into Moscow's satellites are all still there to ensure a clash between the White House and the Kremlin.
Oh there will definitely be a Cold War, but potentially no Truman Doctrine. i.e. We handle each crisis individually rather than making an overarching Communist conspiracy to fight. We care less about the dominos, recognize the difference between Communist regimes, eat popcorn while Mao and Khruschev yell at each other, etc...
To be fair...Mao could be in exile, and he has plenty of time to shout at Khrushchev personally..before he being sent to a shooting squad...