Chamberlain Grows a Spine and a German-Soviet Truce: Two WWII Alternate Timelines

The premiere alternate history forum on the Internet once again doesn't disappoint, with two interesting new timelines for your entertainment. Both are set during World War II, one beginning before the war actually starts and the other in 1942 or so. Here goes...

Defying The Storm-The mighty CalBear, the gear-head who wrote a post on this blog about the failure of the Iraqi Army against ISIS and a book-length alternate history on how the Nazis taking Stalingrad could have extended the war into the 1950s, came up with a somewhat more subtle scenario. The divergence is that Dr. Morrell, Hitler's doctor who was feeding him all sorts of drugs, is killed by Allied bombing and Hitler's new doctor discovers just what his predecessor was doing. Hitler is weaned off the various drugs and is much more clear-headed and not so nuts. Meanwhile, Stalin develops a kidney infection, ignores his doctors' advice, and dies just as the Soviets win the Battle of Kursk. As a result, the vague talks of a separate peace in 1943 that didn't go anywhere result in a compromise peace. Germany keeps the Baltics and parts of Ukraine and returns some territory to the Soviets, who in turn resume their pre-war trade with Germany. There's also some puppy-kicking by both sides--the Germans agree to return all Soviet prisoners of war, with those who fought for the German army specifically identified, while the Soviets in turn deporting all Soviet Jews into German-occupied Poland (!!).

(Just in case we forgot just how malignant the totalitarians were. CalBear's book depicts what the Nazis wanted to do to the Russians if they won, which would have been vastly worse.)

Now Germany is able to rely once more on Soviet oil and grain and can move its forces into Italy to contest the Allied advance and into France to deter a large-scale invasion. But the United States is about to unleash the atomic bomb and neither the Germans nor the Soviets think this peace will last. Things are about to get very interesting. This whole scenario was inspired by this depiction of a naval battle between the 1945-level U.S. Navy and what the Germans could have had if they'd won--or at least not lost--the war in the East, so we might be seeing that scenario at some point.

(EDIT: Owing to some forum drama about whether the USSR would have made such a peace treaty, the thread may have been moved to a members-only section. If you click on the link above and you go to a log-in screen, that might be what happened.)

Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942-This one diverges from our history during the Sudetenland Crisis. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is injured in a plane crash upon returning from a diplomatic visit to Germany. This delays the Munich Conference until after the Nazis' infamous Kristallnacht, which disabuses Chamberlain's notions that Hitler could be reasoned with. Although Czechoslovakia cannot be saved, British rearmament starts earlier than in real history and this has consequences, most obviously when the Germans attack Norway. The Germans also don't get Czechoslovak assets in British banks, something that will likely have some negative economic consequences for them.

(The book Wages of Destruction describes just how much of the early Nazi economy was smoke-and-mirrors nonsense kept going by loot from their earliest conquests, like the Austrian and Czechoslovak gold reserves.)

So if you're interested in World War II and in particular things that could have gone differently, these are both worth a read.

Two WWII Alternate Timelines: Sweden Attacks Germany In 1945, Smarter German Defense Post-1942

Even though I'm still self-banned from the Internet's premiere alternate history forum, I still check out cool stuff in the public forums. Here're my latest finds:

Footsteps In The Snow: The Swedish Intervention, April-May 1945-Historically Sweden was neutral during World War II and over the course of the conflict had built up a large military for a country its size to deter or fight off an attack by either Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. However, this neutrality involved selling the Germans iron ore and even allowing the passage of German soldiers through Swedish territory, something that raised eyebrows among many in the Allied camp. The Swedes also trained Norwegian and Danish exiles as "police troops," provided intelligence to the Allies, hosted Jewish refugees, and allowed U.S. planes to use Swedish airbases, so it wasn't like the Swedes were semi-allies of Germany either. 

(This article describes Sweden's WWII policy in more detail and includes some rather critical commentary from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.)

It's not early on why Sweden chooses this time around to break neutrality to attack the weakening German army in Norway, but it's hinted the goal is to strengthen Sweden's position in postwar Europe and in particular give them a say in what's done with Norway. The Swedes also assist with the ejection of the last German forces from the Nazis' former ally Finland--perhaps this time around, the Finns will avoid getting, well, Finlandized. And the timeline's author suggests that Soviets could have been the ones liberating Denmark from the Nazis and it took conniving between the Germans and Western Allies to keep them out. Keeping Denmark out of Soviet hands might be another reason.

Prolonging the Futility-Hitler dies in 1942 after a bite from his dog (with whom he was playing too roughly) becomes infected, much like how a king of Greece died twenty-odd years before after being bitten by a monkey. However, the Germans still lose at Stalingrad. The Allies are coming and they're angry. Without Hitler's micromanaging and bad military decisions, how long can the Axis drag things out? The author admits the Germans in some cases are rolling sixes and the Allies are rolling ones, which might explains how the Germans are doing better than expected even without a drug-addled lunatic in charge, but it's not completely without reason. If you've read An Army At Dawn, you'll see how incompetent the U.S. Army was early in the war and how skilled the Germans were, even with the Germans running their North African operation on a shoestring and with the Allies' massive materiel superiority and control the air. And it's Goering, more flexible and less fanatical than Hitler (IIRC he was the only top Nazi diagnosed as a sociopath, which would explain his being self-seeking rather than serving a Goal greater than himself), who succeeds Hitler and that would explain a lot of it. I think some of the events later in the timeline are starting to stretch disbelief, but that's my main quibble.

"Remember the Texas," Or WWII Starts In The Atlantic

Here's another fun alternate timeline from the public section of the alternate history forum: "Remember the Texas! The United States in WWII." It diverges from real history in June 1941 when a German U-Boat captain mistakes the American battleship USS Texas for a British battleship and sinks it. Although the U.S. and Germany had an undeclared naval war going at this point, this represents a truly massive escalation. The United States declares war on Germany (even the isolationists are not going to tolerate this), despite the U.S. military being absolutely nowhere near ready.

(If you read An Army at Dawn, you can see how horrendously unprepared the U.S. was for Operation Torch, and that was much later against a much less motivated and less competent opponent.)

Highlights of the timeline include:

*Different British generals commanding in different theaters, which almost certainly means a more competent defense of Singapore when the Japanese come south. The author argues that Japan will attack Western colonies in Asia due to the same issues that drove their attack in our world, and with the Pacific undermanned they might have an easier time. In this world, that war begins in the Far East and there's no Pearl Harbor, so American society as a whole is not going to be as vengeful. Hopefully no Japanese Internment in this history--even J. Edgar Hoover thought that was a bad idea and he wasn't exactly a champion of civil liberties.

*A lot of experienced personnel are pulled out of the Philippines for the European war, which will make the islands' almost-inevitable fall much less severe for the U.S. in terms of personnel and equipment losses.

*Per the above, Douglas MacArthur commands U.S. forces in China. Given his blunders in the Philippines (this paper makes a strong case that the Japanese conquest was largely due to his mistakes), this is going to be another improvement on real history, although one wonders how an ego the size of MacArthur's would coexist with an ego the size of Chiang Kai-Shek's. Hopefully they can keep each other's yes-men away--as someone points out in the thread, MacArthur when he didn't have cronies telling him what he wanted to hear could come up with pretty clever stuff like the Inchon Landings.

*Operation Chariot, in real history the St. Nazaire Raid, gets beefed up with U.S. aircraft carriers and battleships into a much larger operation intended to hash the German fleet based in French ports and eliminate (or at least greatly diminish) the U-Boat threat. Most of the timeline so far consists of this world's Operation Chariot and discussion about how plausible this would be.

Go Big Or Go Home: Thoughts on KING ARTHUR (2004)

Back in 2004, I saw the historical epic (well, it tried to be) King Arthur with a friend from the Boy Scouts. I remember liking it, although even then I thought that the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot love triangle was poorly done (it seemed to consist of people staring at each other) and even then I knew that the Catholic Church didn't have that much power in that time period.

Well, between then and now the film podcast Myopia Movies came to be, and this was one of the movies I really wanted to do. We watched it in late December. Here's the podcast. Let's start with some general commentary...

*For starters, the concept is sound. Most Arthurian stories depict a society more like medieval Europe with armored knights, chivalry, etc. but Arthur, if he were real, lived much earlier. Setting the story during the fall of Roman Britain--a "last helicopters out of Saigon" type of thing--is much more creative. They also went with the Sarmatian hypothesis that Arthur's knights were based on Sarmatian auxiliary cavalry, which is pretty cool. However, the fact they get the time period right means that all the stuff they get wrong (see this TVTropes "Artistic License--History" for more) sticks out even more.

For example, Arthur's "knights" are supposed to be Samartians, but their battle-cry of "RUS!" invokes an ethnic group that didn't even exist until centuries later. Furthermore, the Sarmatians were kindred to the Persians. Although they wouldn't be Asian in appearance like Turks or Mongols, they wouldn't be British either. Giving people who are supposed to be Middle Eastern the Welsh/Celtic (or in the case of Lancelot, French) names of the legendary knights and having them played by British actors gets sillier the more you think about it. I wouldn't put up there with "John Wayne Playing Genghis Khan" levels of ethnic miscasting the way Nic did, but it's getting there. 

Since Arthur (Clive Owen) is supposed to be a descendant of Lucius Artorius Castus, a Roman officer who commanded Sarmatian cavalry in Britain, they could have made his "knights" (who would have been called "equites" or something similar--"knights" is a much later term) descendants of the original Sarmatians and British wives who've kept up the family tradition. This could explain their Welsh names, being played by British actors, etc. but also explain why they have very Asian or Middle Eastern-looking equipment. The decaying Western Roman Empire (or if they go with the right time period, the abandoned remnant of Roman civilization in Britain) is running out of money, they're required to provide their own gear, and this is what they've got.

*Although the "love triangle" still consists of a lot of staring like I remembered, Guinevere does have meaningful conversations with both Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) and Arthur--she and Lancelot engage in snarky banter before a really fun battle on the ice with a group of Saxons and she and Arthur talk about politics--and Lancelot is clearly depicted as the kind of man who goes after women who are already spoken for. He claims one of Bors' many illegitimate children is really his, (I think) paws at Bors' girlfriend, and jokes that another knight will be fortunate to have children who all look like him rather than their purported father. Had Lancelot not been killed like in the film and remained Arthur's second-in-command, I could easily imagine this being a problem.

*The film does get it right that the Western Empire was a Christian state when it collapsed--the "heathen orgies and decadence" period was hundreds of years prior--but they overstate the power of the Church. Church officials are not going to be giving Roman soldiers orders and there were no "papal armies" for Arthur to threaten to fight through to get to Bishop Germanus (Ivano Marescotti) if things go wrong. It would have been better if it was a Roman general giving Arthur and his remaining "knights" the orders for one last mission to get their promised discharge papers, and when Arthur complains, the general can tell him privately that the Pope is behind this. The Pope at the time would have been subordinate to the Emperor, but that doesn't mean he couldn't pull strings for his own schemes.

*The film also gets the Augustine/Pelagius issue wrong. Pelagius was not some early version of a Renaissance Christian humanist and Augustine was not some grim-bot obsessed with human sinfulness who wanted people to just sit around and suffer. Pelagius taught that since people could theoretically not sin, if they did sin they have no excuse. Augustine's belief in Original Sin is merciful in comparison because it at least acknowledges human imperfection. Pelagianism was a very ascetic creed that became popular in Britain as a reaction to the lax "Christian in name only" attitudes of most people once the state officially became Christian. Rather than being toadies of a corrupt and overly-political state church, the zealous monks who have themselves walled up alive with the "Woad" prisoners to convert them to Christianity before they all starve to death would be Pelagian true-believer types. 

(It's also described that Arthur hasn't put in much if any effort to convert his pagan soldiers to Christianity--an Augustinian could theoretically believe in predestination to the point they think it's all in God's hands and they have no responsibility to evangelize, but a Pelagian wouldn't.)

*I refer to the Saxon king Cerdic (Stellan Skarsgård) as "medieval Nazi Gandalf" at least once in the podcast. Not only is he anachronistically racist (he kills one of his men for trying to rape a Celtic woman on the grounds that "we don't mix with these people" and then kills her too, plus he sadistically tells a British traitor that they're going to kill his people and make him watch), but he sounds like he's a chronic smoker who's asleep half the time. Per TVTropes the actor was trying to play him as someone who was bored and finds in Arthur "a man worth killing," but that wasn't impressive. I've seen Skarsgård in other movies--surely he could do better than just sadistically mumble.

*Although not everybody in the podcast agreed with me, Arthur is the one with a character arc in the film. He starts out believing in the ideals of Rome and the Church, but seeing the Roman government break promises to his men, seeing Roman officials misuse Christian ideals to justify abusing the common people he feels obligated as a Roman officer and as a Christian to protect, and finally learning that the Church has executed his religious mentor Pelagius for heresy totally destroy his faith in Rome. He also has the Celtic rebel Guinevere (Keira Knightley) and her father Merlin (Stephen Dillane) trying to get him back in touch with his British heritage through his mother. This explains his decision to essentially desert the retreating Roman army and lead the Celts against the Saxons.

(Guinevere is pretty blatantly a honey-trap, by the way. Her idea of flirting with Arthur is to harangue him about politics, Merlin is conveniently around to try to talk him out of his grudge for his mother's death, and when Arthur's broody and emotionally vulnerable after the death of Dagonet and learning that Pelagius has been executed, Guinevere straight-up climbs on top of him and they go at it. Once Arthur rescued Guinevere from the odious Roman landlord, it is totally plausible Merlin and/or Guinevere saw an opportunity to recruit their greatest enemy to fight for them.)

*Bors is hilarious, by the way. He has so many illegitimate children he can't remember their names and has to rely on numbers and he's not keen on marrying the mother of at least the youngest one. Arthur is the most admirable character, but Bors is the most fun.

However, although the movie proved disappointing, it's easy to complain. In the podcast I mentioned that this could have been a Lord of the Rings-style trilogy or at minimum a three-hour mega-movie. As-is, it could stand to be tightened further (Bors' girlfriend has a musical number I thought was kind of stupid), but there's so much potential here for more. More battles to show that this is the last stand of a whole civilization, plus Arthur's arc and the Lancelot/Guinevere/Arthur triangle could have been better developed if there was more screen-time.

Phase One (Movie #1 or the first hour): We meet Arthur and his "knights" and see them fighting the "Woads," anti-Roman Celts led by the druid Merlin who've been emboldened by the Roman military withdrawal a generation earlier. They return from a hard-fought battle to find Bishop Germanus from Rome waiting for them. Given how Arthur would have lived after the Roman armies left Britain, Germanus is there as a Roman government envoy or an unofficial ambassador (think Rev. Jesse Jackson getting American POWs released) promising aid from Rome to the besieged Romanized Celts if they rescue a well-connected family whose villa is under threat from the Woads, Saxons, or (depending where it's located) both. If he's not there officially but promises to use his pull with the Pope to get the emperor to send reinforcements, this would represent the role of the Pope more realistically.

Already strained by having to deal with the "Woads" and having been on the receiving end of Saxon raids before, Arthur and the remnant Romans in Britain agree. Lancelot, Arthur's closest friend and second in command, is skeptical, but the more experienced Arthur points out that with the Saxon raids they're fighting a two-front war and need all the help they can get. If the Saxon raids are being launched from coastal enclaves established a generation or two earlier, Arthur can emphasize the importance of not conceding the invaders any more land. However, Arthur finds the Roman landlord Marius (Ken Stott) abusing his proto-serfs and killing Woad prisoners in horrific ways and justifying it in the name of Christianity, something he finds absolutely horrifying. The meet-cute with Guinevere still happens and the film (or this segment of a single film) ends with the Saxons arriving sooner than they'd thought. Arthur, his knights, Marius's family, and their abused peasantry have to beat a hasty retreat. Cerdic sends his son Cynric (Til Schweiger) after Arthur to earn his spurs and perhaps take Marius and his family hostage for ransom (this is where the British traitor can show up) while he takes the main army out for "land-taking."

(Arthur being ignorant of just what Rome really was like is much more believable if he were born after the Roman armies left and this is all based on nostalgia--an active Roman officer, even one in a isolated area like Britain, would know better.)

Phase Two (Movie #2 or the second hour): The retreat back to the coast with the Roman family, pursued by Cynric's Saxon detachment. This is where we see Arthur's faith in Rome beginning to erode, the love triangle between Guinevere, Arthur, and Lancelot begin to form (the director's cut has much more interaction between her and both men), and several deaths. Meanwhile, the main Saxon army under Cerdic is killing or driving out the native Britons (both the Romanized and non-Romanized), claiming attractive women as war prizes, etc. and Cerdic is gruffly commenting on how this is good land and his people will make good use of it. It's a lot clearer why the Saxons are there and what they'll do to the people if they're not stopped. We still have the battle on the ice because this shows off Arthur's cleverness and the banter between Lancelot and Guinevere, plus more overt assistance from the Woads on the grounds that the Saxons are the enemies to all Celts, not just the Romanized ones. Arthur also learns about the Church's torture and execution of heretics (this happened for the first time in 385), something that clashes mightily with his Christian beliefs and his nostalgia for Rome. Most of this film (or this part of a single film) will be the prolonged Saxon pursuit, with the climax being the battle on the ice and the humiliation of Cynric.

However, when they meet back up with Germanus, he takes the family and leaves, promising to return with help in such a way that the increasingly-disillusioned Arthur thinks he's either lying or simply not able to fulfill his promises. In his despair he turns to Guinevere and, well, bow-chicka-bow-wow ensues.

Phase Three (Movie #3 or the third hour): Using Guinevere as a go-between, Arthur and the Romanized Celts make a truce with Merlin and both Celtic factions gather their armies to fight Cerdic and Cynric. Nic suggested in the canonical film that Arthur should have shown the Woads how to make the trebuchets they deploy for the final battle, since this is something the Romans would know how to do but the more primitive and disorganized anti-Roman Celts wouldn't, and a longer movie would allow this. They set up the trebuchets atop Badon Hill and bombard the Saxon armies, baiting them to attack uphill against dug-in infantry while Arthur's cavalry harry their flanks, hit and run to draw Saxon forces out of formation, etc. If this is a whole separate movie, it's basically a post-Roman version of Gettysburg or The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Arthur and friends are ultimately victorious, at the cost of many lives. Arthur and Guinevere marry in a ceremony mixing both Celtic (the standing stones) and Catholic (the wine cups and perhaps a convenient baptism for her) elements to secure the alliance against future Saxon attacks. Arthur is hailed as the new High King in a Celtic fashion, with the Roman elements throwing in "Imperator."

However, a surviving Lancelot obviously still infatuated with Guinevere is an ominous sign. If Cerdic is killed but Cynric survives as a POW, he can witness the alliance being made and sent home with a warning of who'll be waiting if he tries anything funny, But rather than becoming a sadder but wiser man smart enough not to tangle with the Celts again, Cynric pretty obviously plans to continue the plan to conquer Britain--and also avenge his father's death. Given how historically Arthur and the Romanized Celts were doomed, this would be dropping more hints that this victory will not last.

A Hungarian Byzantine Dynasty? Venetian Revival? Italy (Mostly) United in 1848?

Although I'm still self-banned from the alternate-history forum and have no inclination to go back (cutting down on Twitter usage to free up time and avoid social media anger fatigue as well), I still drop in on the public forums. The pre-1900 section has some fun stuff lately.

A History of the Oungrikos Dynasty of Roman Emperors: The Six Emperors – 1180 to 1330-My first professional publication was an article in a military history magazine on the Battle of Manzikert, so the Byzantines during their early decline (after Manzikert, before the Fourth Crusade) is a period of particular interest. Apparently there was an episode of Byzantine history in which seemed a dynastic union of the Byzantine Empire and the kingdom of Hungary was possible--sometime last year someone wrote a timeline called "The Turul on the Bosporus" that covers the same ground (and has a more entertaining narrative besides). In this version, the personal union allows for a revival of Byzantine fortunes in Anatolia and a formal alliance with the Mongol Ilkhanate, which benefits my favorite maybe-heretical Christian branch the Nestorian Church of the East.

(They established the first large-scale presence of Christians in China under the Tang Dynasty, a Japanese Nestorian may have been the inspiration for the alleged grave of Jesus in Japan, and the Mongol ruler Sartaq Khan was either Nestorian or Orthodox.)

The Lion of St. Mark: Venice and the Morean War-The divergence from our history seems to be the early death of Louis XIV, who in real life died in 1715 but in this timeline dies in 1683. This in turn affects The Great Turkish War and leads to a very different Louis XV--the Sun King's adult son, not his real-life grandson. I think the overall "point" of the timeline is that the decline of Venice is averted and its Mediterranean empire continues. I once read a book called City of Fortune about the medieval Venetian republic and although they were oftentimes very unpleasant people (the Fourth Crusade comes to mind, as does their chronic mistreatment of the Greeks under their rule), they were masters of trade and the inspiration for the city-state of Everett in my steampunk novel Battle for the Wastelands.

(Although Grendel, first lord of the Northlands, is the master of the land, Everett controls the sea and thus the majority of the trade with the lands beyond the Iron Desert. They play quite a role in the future of the series.)

The timeline seems to have only just started, but the Hapsburg dynasty of Austria in particular seems to be doing better. No Bourbon dynasty in Spain will also have plenty of effects on Latin America.

Italico Valore - A more successful 1848 revolution in Italy - a TL-The revolutions of 1848 were a major lost opportunity in terms of human freedom, with the kings ultimately suppressing the people and maintaining some form of the monarchical regimes for another generation or so (longer if you count the imperial government in Germany). This time around, the Italians are more decisive and effective when the Austrians are at their weakest and northern Italy is unified in a sort of federal constitutional monarchy, with the son of the Sardinian king as the new king of Sicily. Only Naples remains under the old regime. Side effects include the permanent legal exclusion of the Bonaparte family from power in France, so there's no Second Empire. Good riddance.

Alternate History Scenario: A Secret German Atomic Bomb?

Here's the latest interesting scenario from the alternate history forum--what if Germany had a secret nuclear arsenal? Given how anti-nuclear much of the German public is to the point they'll shut down nuclear plants and go back to coal, even if it means increasing carbon-dioxide emissions, and anti-military, plus the absolute fury that would result from countries Germany ravaged during World War II if this was discovered (the treaties that allowed German reunification renounce forever nuclear weapons, for starters) it seems unlikely. That said, democratic states can be swayed by popular opinion, but a dictatorship has much less reason to care.

So behold "Die Atombomben der Bundesrepublik: An Oral History of Germany's Nuclear Weapons Program," in which the new chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany learns that the reason the East German leadership was treated so leniently after the fall of the Wall is because they bequeathed a secret East German nuclear arsenal to the new united Germany. Unlike South Africa, the new leadership decided to keep said weapons rather than dismantle them. And given the drama that would result if this ever became public, only a few top military officials and the chancellor themselves are aware of this--the new chancellor receives a special one-hour briefing upon their ascension.

(That reminds me a lot of the reveal in I think Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that the Muggle Prime Minister is only informed of the existence of a secret magical society in Great Britain when they take office and it's a massive shock for them.)

The author has gone into a lot of detail about the suppression of the Prague Spring, the East German internal political situation, East Germany's infamous espionage apparatus, etc. It's a really interesting read.

Prussian Generals In Austrian Service and a Tougher Italian Fight for Ethiopia

Awhile back I posted about an alternate timeline featuring our world's Frederick the Great defecting to Austria and having a major impact on world history (early ending of serfdom in Russia, earlier and larger American Revolution, and much more). It was a pretty good timeline and it's still going.

Well, here's another alternate timeline featuring a real-life Prussian general in Austrian service, "The Great Silent One: Moltke the Austrian." In this one, the Prussian military genius Moltke the Elder moves to the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a child. Instead of serving on first the Prussian and then the German Imperial general staff, instead he enters the Hapsburg army and makes his way to their general staff instead. Nothing really significant differs from our world until the Austrians battle the French in the Sardinian War. Then things start getting really, really different. Highlights of the timeline include the humbling of Prussia, the continued survival of Napoleon III's regime in France (and its increasingly anti-British turn), a wiser Nicholas II of Russia influenced by his reformist grandfather and not his reactionary father, and French interfering in the Spanish-American War.

Things aren't looking good for the British as Europe seems to be developing an alternate-timeline version of the Three Emperor's League of Napoleonic France, the enlarged Hapsburg Empire, and Romanov Russia, but given how the French have annoyed the Americans already, it's possible an Anglo-American rapprochement will happen at around the same time.

Moving onward, there's another interesting timeline, "The New Conquering Lion of Judah, Ras Imru!" Ras Imru was a cousin of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie and one of Ethiopia's most successful generals during the second Ethiopian-Italian war, at one point menacing the Italian rear before his army was wrecked by aerial bombardment using poison gas. Although many often think of the second war as being a one-sided beating of the Ethiopians by Mussolini and company, the Italians weren't doing too well early on. Heck, even later on the Ethiopians had the chance to inflict a major defeat on the Italians that they lost due to feasting before battle for a week.

(I'm MerryPrankster, although I haven't posted in years because the site--especially the political discussion forums--are time sinks.)

In this scenario, the timeline's author uses my suggested point of divergence that the Ethiopians attack the Italians at Maychew earlier and beat them. Despite winning the battle, the Ethiopians know they won't be able to defend the capital against the Italians once the rainy season ends, so they set up a provisional capital at Gore, more defensible against the Italians, and begin implementing long-run plans for a guerrilla war in areas under Italian occupation. The success at Maychew and Ethiopian diplomacy at the League of Nations convinces the League to end the arms embargo to "both sides" that benefited the somewhat-industrialized Italians (who could manufacture their own weapons) but kept the Ethiopians disarmed. Weapons ordered by the Ethiopians but impounded in other European colonies start flowing in, while foreign journalists have more freedom to cover the war (and thus publicize the Ethiopian cause).

In the last update the Ethiopians have abandoned the capital of Addis Ababa (with the exception of some stay-behinds who bushwhack Italian and Eritrean troops entering the city), but the war's not over yet...

Frederick the Great an Austrian General and Marc Antony Surviving: Two Cool Alternate Timelines

Although to avoid wasting time in arguments I've had myself banned from the alternate-history forum for probably close to three years now (the exception being a window where I could alert them to the release of The Thing in the Woods last spring/summer), I do browse the public forums quite a bit. There are some cool ongoing timelines I follow and I just found a couple interesting new ones.

The first is "Dionysus Lives: A Mark Antony Survival Timeline." It diverges from our history with Marc Antony winning the Battle of Actium by leading his army in person and keeping the sixteen legions from abandoning his cause. With his army and fleet intact, the war with Octavian, the future Caesar Augustus, is prolonged and ends up in a negotiated truce where Antony is dominant in the East and Octavian in the West. Antony wages wars against the Parthians and others, but has to deal with the rivalry between his Egyptian wife Cleopatra and his powerful client Herod the Great. It's pretty interesting, especially for enthusiasts of the Late Republic and the personalities of that era.

(One of the few shows I watched after high school was HBO's Rome after all.)

The second is "Odyssey of Fritz, the Turncoat Prince." In real history, the young Prussian prince who would become the warrior-king Frederick the Great ran away from his father with a "friend" (possibly a homosexual lover), but was caught. In this story, he flees on an alternate route south and ends up in Austria, where he befriends (friends only, much to the latter's annoyance) future Empress Maria Theresa and ends up becoming a major Austrian general. Without Frederick's genius organizing Prussia the state runs into...some trouble (not going into more detail for reasons of spoilers), but Frederick rises high in Hapsburg service and has all sorts of interesting adventures. Highlights include a more brutal subjugation of Scotland and Ireland foreshadowing an earlier American Revolution, an earlier emancipation of the serfs, and the woman who in our history became Catherine the Great of Russia marrying into the British royal family.

Both timelines are ongoing, so check back often. I know I will.

A Red-White Civil War in Post-WWI Germany?

In our history, although there were Communist uprisings in various parts of Europe after the First World War, when people think of Reds and Whites they think of the Russian Civil War in what became the Soviet Union.

However, there was a Communist uprising in Germany (and even a short-lived Communist regime in Bavaria) that got scotched pretty quickly.

But what if they hadn't? That's the plot of the alternate timeline "Rosa's Reich," in which Communist leader Rosa Luxemburg's people manage to seize power in parts of Germany after the fall of the Kaiser and the end of the war. Luxemburg, to her credit, strongly opposed Lenin's authoritarianism and gangster tactics and seemed to really believe in workers' democracy, so if her Reds manage to defeat the German Whites, such a regime would be much more humane than the Russian one.

And it would be a useful way to remove a young Adolf Hitler from history. Some historians think he briefly served the Communist regime in Bavaria, while other material I found suggested he remained part of the regular German military, joining the embryonic Nazi party to spy on them and drinking the Kool-Aid. Either way, a German civil war would allow for plenty of opportunity to kill him, disable him (which would likely prevent his historical political career), or send him down a different life path altogether. Even if the Communists ultimately lose, a German equivalent of Admiral Horthy in Hungary would be much better than what ended up happening.

Highlights:

*Although Rosa and friends don't go so far as to allow the embryonic Strasserists into their coalition and ultimately don't allow the Social Democrats (SPD) either, there are all sorts of interesting characters who are part of it. Christian Communists, anarchists, etc. Germany's Overton Window hasn't shifted as far to the left as Russia's and leaving out democratic parties like the SPD isn't cool, but this could lead to a very interesting Red regime.

*The battle sequences are quite interesting and well-crafted. So far they're pretty small-scale owing to Germany's military collapse, but they can always get bigger.

*The successful Communist revolutions (and even the less-successful ones) were confined to Eastern Europe in our history (Hungary had a brief Communist dictatorship, there was a Red-White war in Finland, the Freikops helped prevent the Bolsheviks from taking over the Baltic states). However, with the Communists gaining strength in Germany and a strong reluctance of the Allies' tired soldiers to intervene, it's possible the revolution could spread into Scandinavia and possibly even France. Europe could look very different this time around.

*Luxemburg was partly Jewish and partly Polish, so her ruling Germany is particularly ironic given it's actual history. I'm not aware of any non-monarchical female world leaders until after WWII at least, so this is even more interesting.

AH Scenario: The U.S. Nukes Dresden...And Others

I'm still self-banned from the alternate-history forum I've been a member of since high school in order to focus on my day job and more important projects (like finishing my planned sequel to The Thing in the Woods), but I still visit the public sections fairly regularly. There's a relatively new scenario that might be of interest to World War II enthusiasts.

Behold "The Atomic Bombing of Germany, 1945." According to The Good War, an oral history of WWII that I read for AP U.S. History in high school, the atomic bomb was always intended for Germany, although the European war ended before it was ready. In this alternate timeline, the Trinity atomic bomb test takes place in 1944--how the bomb is ready a year earlier isn't discussed in detail, but a memoir by a Manhattan Project scientist on how it could have gone faster is cited--allowing for Germany to be targeted soon after the Battle of the Bulge.

Germany hasn't gotten nuked yet, but the B-29s are gathering in Britain and a lot of faux historical articles in the timeline indicate when the hammer is about to fall. Dresden is going to suffer its historical fate (albeit somewhat worse, if it suffers Hiroshima level casualties as opposed to the real-life ones), and a couple other German cities are on the target list.

I'm not going to apply for readmission to the site just to post on this (and probably get sucked into endless discussions about Star Wars, Donald Trump, etc. in other sections of the forum), so I hope it gets updated soon.

Book Review: FIELDS OF FIRE (2017)

Marko Kloos' saga of young infantryman--now an officer--Andrew Grayson and his pilot wife Diana Halley unleashed another installment at the end of February with Fields of Fire, the fifth book in his awesome FRONTLINES series. I've read it twice so far (it's a very fast, engaging read) and now it's time for the review...

The Plot

Having defeated an assault by the alien Lankies on Earth (and apparently a couple more probes since then), the time has come for the nations of Earth to attack Lanky-held Mars and take it back from the aliens. Grayson returns to his role as a "pod-head," launched from a spaceship to call in orbital or nuclear bombardment on the ground, while Halley, having recovered from injuries incurred in the previous novel Chains of Command, will help fly in other forces once the beachheads are established.

But the Lankies have had a year and more to fortify Mars, and it won't be easy...

The Good

*Like the other books in the series, it's a very fast and engaging read. The first time I read it, it took only a couple days, in multi-chapter chunks. The second time around it was mostly gym reading, with a few bits done outside of my local LA Fitness. No more than four to six hours either time, with the second time probably less. Time flies when you're having fun, and I was having fun indeed.

*Per the above, once Grayson leaves Earth, this start rolling really fast and never let up. We have the Crowning Moment of Awesome battle in orbit, then the landings begin. Things go well, but then they go into the crapper real fast. And I kept reading to see what happened to Grayson and Halley.

*In one of my earlier reviews I pointed out that the Lankies in one of the books weren't described physically very well, but that's not a problem here. The descriptions are a lot more vivid and that's great.

*Some of the nasty surprises the Lankies unleash on Mars are foreshadowed early on.

*Kloos expands the world by introducing the reader to the EuroCorps, the German-dominated European federal military. The EuroCorps focuses on advanced, elegant technology, much like the efficient German engineering of today. The united Europe is also strongly anti-nuclear, a cultural continuity from Germany today that was no doubt amplified by the limited nuclear conflict that occurred around 100 years before the story began. It was very interesting to read about them, especially since Kloos was born in what used to be West Germany and served in its military during the Cold War.

*There are so many cool little details that one doesn't get them all on the first read. I didn't notice an interesting new characteristic of Lanky seed ships until the second read.

*The book explicitly ties itself in with the Frontlines Requiem comic series that tells what was going on in the Earth system during the events of Lines of Departure and Angles of Attack, including the Lanky conquest of Mars and the desertion of the North American Commonwealth's political elite with the most advanced military equipment.

*There are some amusing inside jokes, like the Battle of 47 Northing. 47 North is Amazon's science fiction imprint that picked up the FRONTLINES series after Kloos experienced remarkable success self-publishing it, and "northing" and "easting" is a way of marking coordinates on a map. During the Gulf War, there was the Battle of 73 Easting, for example.

*We finally learn why Halley is alienated from her family, to the point she hates her own first name.


The Bad

*There are repeated references to aircraft losses, some of them quite substantial, but the Lankies groundside don't have any sort of ranged attacks, let alone antiaircraft capability. The only time "on-screen" we see Lankies taking out aircraft is if they're close enough to grab them, although in the first book Terms of Enlistment an aircraft that made an attack run on a Lanky terraforming tower is taken out by something.

The Verdict

Chains of Command I didn't like enough to review it (it wasn't bad, it was just okay), but this is an excellent return to form. 9.0 out of 10.

Two New Cool Alternate Timelines For You...

I'm still self-banned from the alternate-history forum until sometime in June at least, and I might re-up said ban until the end of the summer at least in order to focus on finishing Little People, Big Guns over the summer (the small press I've been in contact with says 30,000 words max). However, I do drop in from time to time just to read and found a couple cool ideas.

*Here's the first one, Twilight of the Valkyries. This is a super-detailed account of what have happened if the July 20 plot had successfully killed Adolf Hitler. A former member of the site (he got banned, although I can't remember why) proposed that the ultimate beneficiary of the plot would not have been the Schwarze Kapelle anti-Hitler conspiracy within the military but the ambitious Panzer commander Heinz Guderian, who had a substantial force of tank trainees nearby and could crush the SS and Home Army both. The timeline's creator has clearly done his (or her, although almost all site members are male) research. There are hints that he's using the "Salt the Earth" scenario I posted about earlier as a model--the French Communist resistance leaders in Paris are watching the inter-German fighting eagerly.

I'm using a Guderian-rides-Valkyrie-plot-to-power scenario as the basis for a dieselpunk world I'm fiddling with, so I'm definitely watching this one eagerly.

*This is a more obscure one, based on a little-known mutiny by the Force Publique against King Leopold's rule in the Congo. It's called Mameluke Congo and postulates that if the mutineers had a single charismatic leader, they might have been able to eject Leopold's regime from the Congo completely. It turns out the Force Publique in this period was ludicrously heavily armed and Soverihn makes the case they could maintain control of the entire ex-colony and deter outside intervention, especially if the European Great Powers are all trying to keep others from taking the Congo rather than uniting to crush a challenge to white power in Africa.

(In case you're wondering, the Mamelukes were a slave military caste that ultimately took control of Egypt. The Force Publique in this scenario would adopt a sort of collective identity of their own that would transcend the tribes from which they'd been recruited.)

At present the timeline goes all the way into a delayed WWI in which the Congo is allied to the Central Powers and proceeds to ravage the Allies' African colonies--until the Royal Navy swoops in and cuts off their trade. It's not clear at this point whether the Congolese will survive the wider war, even though it does look like the Central Powers are winning.

"Salt The Earth," Or How The Valkyrie Junta Could Undermine American-Soviet Alliance

On the Facebook alternate history group this morning, someone posted a question about how World War II could end with Germany retaining at least some territorial gains made under Hitler--think Austria (the most morally defensible, considering this), the Sudetenland, the Polish Corridor, etc. Some people thought that was basically impossible, while others posted various scenarios about the German Resistance toppling Hitler, either in 1943 (when Germany is still winning major battles) or 1944 (when the Nazis are clearly closing the war). The latter coup attempt, for the record, is the subject of the movie Valkyrie.

To contribute to the discussion, I posted a scenario I found on the alternate history forum I've been a member of since high school (that I've had myself blocked from posting on until June due to real-life obligations) entitled "Salt The Earth."

The gist of the scenario is that the military branch of the German Resistance (the only ones that had a realistic chance of actually toppling the Nazis) manages to overthrow Hitler and the Nazis. The timing of the plot doesn't seem important--supposedly the 1943 plot would also take out other top Nazis and Hitler's cronies in the military, allowing for an easier seizure of power, while in 1944 the war is obviously lost and so there's less risk of a "stab-in-the-back" myth developing afterward.

The war ends (in Europe at least) and it's all sunshine and rainbows, right? Wrong. If the 1944 coup attempt succeeds, the US, Britain, and the Soviets have all agreed the war will go on until unconditional surrender and the policy has been in place for some time. There will be no negotiated peace, no chance for Germany to rearm and do it again in another generation. And the Soviets, given the really awful stuff that the Germans did (and what they wanted to do), are going to be absolutely out for blood.

In 1944, Germany is already clearly losing, with Operation Bagration absolutely wrecking the German army in the East (80% of the German army was defeated by the Soviets) and Anglo-American-French forces already advancing in Western Europe. Even if the Germans go totally defensive and avoid screw-ups like the Falaise Pocket, the Battle of the Bulge, etc., the sheer power of the Red Army and the coming of the atomic bomb (originally intended for use against the Germans) means that a purely military solution won't save Germany. 1943 is more favorable, but the odds are still rapidly growing against Germany and some version of the following solution might still have to be put in place.

So if the Valkyrie junta wants some kind of negotiated peace, especially a peace that leaves them with any of Hitler's gains, they're going to have to earn it. And the "Salt the Earth" scenario explains how:

*Pull back to more defensible positions. River lines like the Rhine in the west or the Alps in Italy. Put as much of Germany's remaining fighting power in the East. That's something any post-Hitler junta with half a brain would do if the Allies aren't going to negotiate. Better to be occupied by the US and Britain than the totalitarian Soviets who (as I have already pointed out) also have very, very legitimate reasons to be vengeful.

Now comes the clever parts...

*Allow the Polish Home Army to take control of much of Poland, which would put the Soviets in a position where in order to take Poland for Communism they would have to openly attack the Polish government-no-longer-in-exile. In real life the Soviets fought alongside the Home Army and then betrayed them and deliberately allowed the Germans to crush the Warsaw Uprising.

(Some have made the case the Soviets at this point were not capable of helping the Home Army in Warsaw, but that doesn't explain why the Soviets forcibly prevented American aircraft based in the USSR from dropping supplies to the Home Army, which Thomas Fleming writes extensively about in The New Dealers' War. If you don't want to read a book with an obvious ax to grind against much of Roosevelt's administration if not Roosevelt himself, the Wikipedia article has both sides.)

In this scenario, the Soviets would either have to respect the independence of Poland or openly make war upon a state that is theoretically their ally that is fulfilling one of Britain's original war aims (preserve the independence of Poland), which would be much more difficult to cover up.

*Deliberately arm Communist resistance movements in non-Communist countries. Imagine the problems that would happen if the Communist French Resistance took control of Paris before Charles De Gaulle. Ugliest and sneakiest of them all would be putting them in charge of prisons full of anti-Communist resistance members whom they might be tempted to murder. Even if Stalin orders them not to, all it might take to generate a massive PR problem is one or two incidents.

Of course, the leadership of the Big Three is going to do their best to squash this. Roosevelt insisted the Katyn Massacre had been perpetrated by the Nazis, not the Soviets, and hid the evidence gathered by the Polish government-in-exile during the war. The U.S. had press controls during WWII; although a lot of it was based on the presumption of reporter patriotism, there was still an Office of Censorship. Britain had press censorship as well. Although this was focused on keeping the enemy from finding out about military movements ("loose lips sink ships"), I could easily imagine the government attempting to cover up anything that could threaten the alliance with Stalin. And the Soviet people aren't going to know anything Stalin doesn't want them to know.

However, though absolute tyrant like Stalin doesn't have the PR concerns of a democratic leader, he was also ragingly paranoid. Convincing him the Western Allies had betrayed him is quite plausible, even if a wartime American public fed propaganda like Mission to Moscow still believes in "Uncle Joe." If the Valkyrie crew can set Stalin against the West, that alone is a significant improvement over their position even if they can't successfully turn U.S. or British public opinion against Stalin.

Even if the gambit ultimately fails to significantly change the outcome of the war, the post-war division of Europe, etc., once the soldiers start returning and spreading word of stuff that had been kept from the U.S. public, there could be political hell to pay. The Democrats might never get the Polish-American community's vote back if FDR's government successfully covered up a betrayal of the Poles far more blatant and with a much higher body count than in our history, only for the cat to get out of the bag in 1946. Depending on how things shake out in Italy, France, and Greece, that's more voting blocs whose inclinations might be different than in our history, even temporarily.

A Timeline of the World of "Coil Gun" and "Picking Up Plans In Palma"

When I first became interested in alternate history in high school, one of the early books I read was The Domination and its sequel Drakon, both of which are part of S.M. Stirling's Draka series. The series is controversial in the AH community--although it's considered one of the major founding texts of the sub-genre (alongside Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South, which is more a time-travel story), its plausibility is somewhat lacking to say the least. Stirling himself said the point of the series is that everything that can go wrong does.

On the forum, the user whose handle is reddie suggested a "realistic quasiDraka"--a cold war between the United States and "the apartheid juggernaut" (a sort of super-South Africa under white minority rule). That got the creative wheels turning. I wrote an embryonic timeline that served as both a homage to and critique of the Draka world and within a few years wrote "Coil Gun" (my first professional sale; it first appeared in Pressure Suite: Digital Science Fiction #3) and later "Picking Up Plans in Palma." I've got some ideas for additional short stories and even a trilogy of novels depicting the events of WWIII from the perspectives of, among others, some (surviving) cast members of "Palma," but I'm focused on other projects right now.

However, since SM Stirling has the appendices and timeline from the three books that went into The Domination available online, here's the current version of the timeline where the two stories take place. It's still a bit patchy in places and it's a work in progress. After all, this is the sixth iteration of the timeline and I might well end up making a seventh, especially if I end up writing novels set in the universe.

Some highlights:

*Although a point of divergence in the late 16th Century might "butterfly" the United States completely, I still need it to be there for story reasons. However, we have a completely different cast of Founding Fathers and a very different war. The same with the U.S. Civil War.

*One of the first major enemies the Afrikaners face is the Sultanate of Oman. They don't get a lot of notice in most histories I've read, but they get their due here. And having taken a class where Oman's history was explored in greater depth, I'm revising that aspect of the story. Hint: Just because two nations are enemies at one point doesn't mean they can't become allies later, especially if one experiences a major problem.

*The French Revolution isn't corrupted or ultimately repressed. However, there is a proto-fascist Bourbon pretender who causes trouble later. Furthermore, the French ally/puppet the Batavian Republic remains in existence for much longer than in our history. Although I haven't integrated that into the existing TL or v.7.0, basically the Dutch East India Company forsakes Amsterdam for Cape Town, giving the Afrikaners the Netherlands' Asian possessions right away. This helps explain their rapid expansion, which the disease environment in Africa would make very, very difficult to say the least.

*The 1848 revolutions are much, much more successful. However, that doesn't mean the French Republic and the newly-united Germany are going to be friends...

*There's a more successful analogue to the Taiping Rebellion. Thanks to the influence of the Afrikaners, it's more orthodox in its beliefs. Instead of being Jesus's brother, the leader of the rebellion believes himself to be something akin to Jehu, only called by God to destroy the Qing Dynasty rather than the House of Ahab.

*There's still a Soviet Union, but Leon Trotsky ultimately succeeds Lenin and not Stalin. Why I use real-life personalities for this when I don't for the American Revolution or Civil War is beyond me. This will require some changes...

*Project Orion. Oh yes. If you want more information, here's a really cool book.

Independent French Equatorial Africa After Limited Nazi Victory?

Here's another goodie from the alternate-history forum. The member whose handle is Jonathan_Edelstein came up with the idea that in the event of a German-British peace early in WWII (his idea is that Hitler dies in 1941 before the invasion of the Soviet Union and his successors decide to postpone the plan to finish Britain first), not all of France's colonies would submit to the Vichy regime even if it was recognized as the legitimate government of France as part of a compromise peace.

In particular, he suggested French Equatorial Africa might rebel against the new government and ally with the Free French. The basis for this is that the governor of French Equatorial Africa was Félix Éboué, the only black French colonial governor in the French Empire at the time and possibly the only black colonial governor anywhere, ever. Éboué decides he has no future under Vichy and rebels using Chadian troops, gambling on Vichy France's lack of a navy to avoid immediate invasion.

According to Edelstein, Éboué's government wouldn't be a fully decolonized state, but a sort of paternalistic limited-franchise regime with a lot of French government officials and a strong influence by the Catholic Church. He also suggested the different factions within the state could be at odds with each other, including the Catholic civilian government on the coast, the Muslim Chadian soldiery, etc.

The user whose handle is Pikers3 said he doubted it would last long. In order to maintain its legitimacy, the Vichy regime would have to claim all of France's colonies and could not tolerate a rival French state anywhere. With Britain at peace with Germany and (Vichy) France, the Germans and what remains of the loyalist French navy will invade Éboué's state (possibly with the support of Franco, who is no longer deterred by the threat of British attack) and quickly take control. There might be Free French troubles in the interior, but that'd be it. He said historians would remember this as the last gasp of the Free French.

However, there is a way around this. Depending on how long it takes until Britain is brought to the table, the German and Vichy surface navies could be totally wrecked in the meantime. The German fleet took heavy losses invading Norway and the British waged war against the Vichy regime as a co-belligerent of the Nazis, including at one point attacking and sinking much of the French navy lest the Nazis get it. If the Germans and the Vichy allies bring the British to the table by fighting a war of attrition at sea and in the Middle East and North Africa, they might have no surface navy left by the time this is done.

In that case, although the Germans could blockade French Equatorial Africa's ports with submarines, no surface navy means no immediate invasion of FEA. FEA could putter along for years as some kind of blockaded unrecognized state in the vein of Rhodesia.

I'll send this to Jonathan_Edelstein and see what he thinks...

The Imperious Chairman, Or Someone Other Than Stalin Takes Command

My alternate-history forum has produced another interesting road not traveled. It's called "The Imperious Chairman" and diverges from our history when Yacov Sverdlov, one of the early leaders of the Bolshevik movement, survives rather than dying in 1919. The author (whose handle is Napoleon IV) goes with the idea that the official story of his death--he got the Spanish flu coming back from a trip to Kharkiv--was accurate. He doesn't go to Kharkiv, and so he survives.

The main thrust of the timeline is that someone other than Stalin becomes leader of the USSR. I find the notion that Stalin's horrors were necessary to defeat Hitler rather aggravating--the book Bloodlands shows Hitler actually used the horror stories coming out of Stalin's USSR as fuel for his demagoguery and I posted a friend's essay on Bukharin (part one here, part two here) to show another realistic path--and Napoleon IV gives this leader a chance to prove his mettle against the Great Evil One.

Some highlights...

*With a surviving Sverdlov, the internal factional politics of the Bolsheviks are rather different. I did take a class on Modern Russia at the University of Georgia, but I don't remember if we ever got into that much detail.

*Sverdlov's survival in turn causes some other earlier Soviet leaders to die--not due to anything he does specifically (like warning them about an assassination plot or inviting them all to dinner some night so they avoid a doomed plane), but due to the butterfly effect (changes spawning more changes). This makes the period between Lenin's death and what would have been the rise of Stalin more complicated.

*The Soviet Union pursues a more aggressive foreign policy during the interwar period. Although the isolationism of "socialism in one country" is greatly exaggerated--in We Know Now, historian John Lewis Gaddis describes it as something more akin to Russian imperialism than something truly international--someone other than the very cautious Stalin at the helm could done some serious meddling. This will have its consequences, both in the short-term (the lead-up to WWII) and presumably in the long term.

*Hitler still comes to power in Germany, albeit rather differently than in our history.

*With no Stalin we have no purges, meaning the Soviet military isn't the "stumbling colossus" that the Nazis spent the first years of the Eastern Front kicking around. There's still collectivization, although it's done in a more competent and less insane fashion. Many, many people still die, but no Holodomor. Not only does the USSR have millions more soldiers to fight the Nazis, but there won't be so much hatred for the regime for the Nazis to gather allies with.

*There's no cult of personality comparable to Stalin's--the alternative leader seems to view the adulation he gets as kind of a joke.