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[–] HarlandKornfeld14 ago 

Stalin delayed his plans to launch a preemptive strike against Germany because he thought Rudolf Hess was going to broker an alliance with the British.

If German troops have to fight the British in North Africa then they are going to vulnerable to that Soviet first-strike, considering the loses they already suffered at Crete impeded Barbarossa.

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[–] DukeofAnarchy ago  (edited ago)

Fighting in the Mediterranean theater was on an completely different scale from the Eastern Front. The Afika Korps was two (later three) divisions, and the Germans committed 19 divisions to the invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece. Compare these numbers to the 153 divisions required for Barbarossa.

German casualties in Crete were about 6,500, including 4,000 killed. The effect on Barbarossa was negligible.

 

In my scenario, Hitler doesn't envisage Barbarossa, or else his generals (or time-traveling Voaters!) manage to talk him out of it. This is in late July, 1940. The Germans had just recently dissuaded Mussolini from invading Yugoslavia. Romania had recently asked Germany for a defense pact (after the Soviets annexed Bessarabia), but the Hungarians were pressing their claim on Transylvania. This dispute would be resolved as it was historically, by German-Italian arbitration, in August. The Romanians would then get a German defense guarantee, again as happened historically. But all this would be done with more urgency.

Simultaneously the Italians would be informed of a change in German policy toward Yugoslavia. Italy's irredentist ambitions would be satisfied by force, but the Hungarians and Bulgarians would also be offered territorial gains in return for their participation. If the Italians could be persuaded to return the Dodecanese then Greece might be brought into the Axis as well.

With German help, Malta and Gibraltar would be seized in September, closing off the western Mediterranean to the British. The invasion of Yugoslavia would take place in October 1940. If Greece had to be conquered as well, then that would be accomplished by the end of 1940. In 1941, Turkey would be invaded and the British pushed out of the Middle East.

The 1940 operations would require at most five German divisions in the southern Mediterranean, twenty in the Balkans, and perhaps ten divisions to reinforce northern Spain. That's 35 divisions in total. In 1941, the total might rise to 45 divisions. But compared to historical deployments this would only divert at most 23 divisions from the Eastern Front (assuming none of the additional forces could have been taken from anywhere else.) That still leaves 130 German divisions to face any Soviet attack, together with the entire Romanian, Hungarian and Finnish armies.

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[–] HarlandKornfeld14 ago 

Yeah, the invasion of Crete wasn't a disaster in absolute manpower, it was a disaster in terms of loss of parachutists and aircraft that could've been used in Barbarossa.

Then why have Yugoslavia get invaded at all? They almost joined the Axis, invading them was a waste of time and the Italians couldn't handle their occupation zone. If they were in the Axis, they would contribute troops instead of bogging them down.

Anyway, invading Turkey isn't very simple. I mean Stalin was at least eyeing up Kars, if not Greater Armenia. Some power-sharing agreement would probably have to be worked out.