U.S./UK forced to implement something like the Victory Plan of 1941

[T. A. Gardner]

Germany needs a fleet of transport ships, cargo ships, masses of landing craft, etc., etc., etc. They don't have that either.

And once more you won't put in even a modicum of effort to analyze the actual cost of producing such resources, you just handwaive their in-feasibility.

Sorry, this is not up to a minimum standard of discussion.

Actually, it's about as accurate as your statement about S-boote, R-boote, etc.

But, historically, the Germans built two types of landing craft:

The Siebel Ferry of which a couple hundred were assembled
The Marinefahrpahram (MFP) of which about 700 were manufactured.

How many are necessary to land the invasion force? How many are necessary to support this force in the event that supplies have to arrive over the beach. I'd also be interested to read what you propose to support the initial landings with as far as naval fire support. Or, will that be more handwavium about how the Luftwaffe will suddenly have the capacity to be on call, near real time for close air support, something they never actually managed to achieve?

Since you don't give the size of the landing force per wave, or details about the landings, I can't respond to what would be potentially necessary in terms of shipping to support it.

I'd also expect by 1943 - 44 that the British and US could easily assign 100 destroyers and more destroyer escorts to anti-invasion work. The RN assigned 40 destroyers in 1940 to that purpose and both the RN and USN have grown significantly since. That doesn't even begin to include all the smaller craft they could assemble for countering an invasion without even changing historical levels of construction.
Against what you suggest the Germans would use to invade, the Allies need not assign anything larger than a destroyer really.

[T. A. Gardner]

Oh, as for "heavy equipment" being manufactured in India... No, this didn't happen. But, Central Aircraft Manufacturing, later Hindustan Aircraft, was the largest repair and overhaul operation in Asia by 1944.
The Australians continued throughout the war to ramp up their production of aircraft and even tanks. The later didn't go into production because shortages didn't materialize. But, they had and were increasing the capacity to manufacture these.
South Africa likewise had a robust light armor manufacturing capacity with Marmon-Herrington.
Of course, Canada had serious manufacturing going on. Canada was the major supplier of trucks to the Commonwealth for example. They produced several thousand tanks as well.

[Aber]

Germany needs a fleet of transport ships, cargo ships, masses of landing craft, etc., etc., etc. They don't have that either.

And once more you won't put in even a modicum of effort to analyze the actual cost of producing such resources, you just handwaive their in-feasibility.

Sorry, this is not up to a minimum standard of discussion.

Special rules apply to arguing for a successful Operation Sealion.

[TheMarcksPlan]

Germany needs a fleet of transport ships, cargo ships, masses of landing craft, etc., etc., etc. They don't have that either.

And once more you won't put in even a modicum of effort to analyze the actual cost of producing such resources, you just handwaive their in-feasibility.

Sorry, this is not up to a minimum standard of discussion.

Actually, it's about as accurate as your statement about S-boote, R-boote, etc.

But, historically, the Germans built two types of landing craft:

The Siebel Ferry of which a couple hundred were assembled
The Marinefahrpahram (MFP) of which about 700 were manufactured.

How many are necessary to land the invasion force? How many are necessary to support this force in the event that supplies have to arrive over the beach. I'd also be interested to read what you propose to support the initial landings with as far as naval fire support. Or, will that be more handwavium about how the Luftwaffe will suddenly have the capacity to be on call, near real time for close air support, something they never actually managed to achieve?

Since you don't give the size of the landing force per wave, or details about the landings, I can't respond to what would be potentially necessary in terms of shipping to support it.

I'd also expect by 1943 - 44 that the British and US could easily assign 100 destroyers and more destroyer escorts to anti-invasion work. The RN assigned 40 destroyers in 1940 to that purpose and both the RN and USN have grown significantly since. That doesn't even begin to include all the smaller craft they could assemble for countering an invasion without even changing historical levels of construction.
Against what you suggest the Germans would use to invade, the Allies need not assign anything larger than a destroyer really.

Hey this is progress. At least you're not just declaring a landing impossible without mentioning one iota of evidence. You're actually discussing a few factors that will be addressed in due time.

I envision this thread to be a months or years-long project investigating how the war would end after Germany defeats Russia in '42.
I encourage you and others to post your ideas/objections, so long as those postings are not simply handwaives re impossibility.
I can't promise timely response to all points, however. For the moment (and as laid out in my upthread "road map"), my research is focused on a first-order approximation of the size of the Grossraum economy and of German/Axis munitions production following full deployment of conquered resources in, say, mid-'44.

[Terry Duncan]

A post from TheMarcksPlan that offered nothing to the topic was removed by this moderator.

Terry Duncan

[T. A. Gardner]

I just noticed this one on pg 4 of this thread.

Quick sketch of the causeway idea, with reference to this chart: http://fishing-app.gpsnauticalcharts.co ... 813/1.3117

As you can see, we could very roughly ballpark average depth of the Channel at 100ft for the 20 miles from Cap Gris to Dover.

• 500ft-wide causeway
• 20mi long
• 100ft deep
• = 5.3bn ft3 of material
• density of crushed stone and sand/soil: ~100 lb/ft3
• = 240mn tons of stone/earth

Build 500 cement barges with deadweight of 10,000t at Liberty Ship price of ~5mn RM = 2.5bn RM. Still cheaper than the French A-wall and uses largely the same materials (concrete and steel, plus engines).

That fleet has carrying capacity of 5mn tons; ~50 roundtrips per ship to build the causeway. 1 RT/week gives ~1 year to build the causeway.
...that ignores landward building from Cap Gris... but we'll stick with a year to be safe.

Start in early '44 and defend the Channel during construction with:

This is a non-starter. I've done cut and fill grading of lots that have to meet building standards. This isn't going to happen.

First, you need a rough trapezoidal shape to this "causeway." The gradient of it can't exceed the sheer of the soil / material used to construct it.
Next, you have the problem of doing this in the Channel. First, there are currents and tides that will effect the material as it is laid down. Then there's the change in compactability and sheer strength when the material is wet.

Next, given the depth of the construction, you have to consider the ability of the material used to take the weight of material on top of it, along with the ability of the soil on the bottom of the Channel to support this massive weight. Therefore, it'd be likely you'd have to start by dumping a mass of granitic boulders along the proposed path as much as ten times the width of the top of the causeway, possibly more. These would require fill and some sort of compaction to ensure they don't shift as the fill above is poured onto them.
There is no available ultrasonic vibration system like is used today for compaction. Rodding the pour in cement back then was the norm.

This is roughly the equivalent of building an earthen dam across the Channel. It would have to be strong enough not to wash away under tidal currents, wave action, and during a storm. A 20 mile + earthen dam over 100 feet high would take decades to build, not a year or two. The amount of material involved would easily exceed by 10 to 50 times what you propose as fill. It would dwarf the Three Gorges Dam in China.

Of course, the builders can expect to have to do much of this under attack, then as they approach England, under artillery fire. That's going to make it really expensive in terms of equipment and manpower as the casualties mount.

Basically, this isn't going to happen.

[TheMarcksPlan]

Thanks for your input. If it's really true that this is technically unfeasible, I'll admit so. But I'm not convinced yet and look forward to further discussion.

First, you need a rough trapezoidal shape to this "causeway."

Yes I figured. An *average* cross section of 50,000ft2 (500*100) doesn't mean a 500*100ft rectangle. 100ft width at the top is sufficient to carry several rail lines and/or roadways across the deepest parts of the fill (~180ft for 4-5 miles).

As much of the fill is only 60-80ft deep, the cross-sectional area of the deeper parts can be larger than the smaller. Say 100,000ft2 cross sectional area for the deepest 5 miles. Note that we can also increase the total value of the fill by increasing the number of barges built or assuming something more ambitious than 1 trip per week.

A trapezoid with height 180ft, with top side 100ft, and area 100,000ft2 has a base 556ft wide. The slopes of that trapezoid are ~38 degrees [ tan-1 (180/228)].

currents and tides that will effect the material as it is laid down.

It would have to be strong enough not to wash away under tidal currents, wave action, and during a storm.

Sure, that's why I specified a rock substrate.

A 20 mile + earthen dam over 100 feet high would take decades to build, not a year or two.

Under normal circumstances yes. But this is war. I'd rather treat the subject analytically than by analogy.

Build 500 cement barges with deadweight of 10,000t at Liberty Ship price of ~5mn RM = 2.5bn RM

So far the cost of my rough sketch is less than the cost of the French A-wall alone. As I've said upthread, Germany doesn't build an A-wall in this ATL because a Wallied landing should be welcomed as a donation of POW's.

That's not the only concrete savings in this ATL, however. Per O'Brien's How the War was Won (p301-2), in the second half of '43 Germany was pouring monthly 100,000t concrete in France/Belgium, 90,000t in the East, and 130,000t in Germany for aircraft production facilities alone. Organization Todt spent 4-4.5bn RM on such projects in 1943 alone.

If similar spending occurred in 1944, that's ~8bn RM.

Just re-purposing that spending is sufficient to >triple the barge fleet I sketched upthread from 500 to 1,600 barges of 10,000t DWT.

So far the fleet of barges for the causeway is "free" in this ATL: it comes entirely from resources deployed for reasons that will not exist ATL.

But what would a successful cross-channel invasion be worth to Germany? An extra 5% of GDP? 20%?
If it wins the war there's virtually no limit to its value.

If we add to our 8bn RM only 20% of a German munitions spending that is 50% higher than OTL, the annual "cross-channel fund" is now ~20bn RM.

That's enough to build 4,000 of my big barges or, say, 1,500 big barges and thousands of MFP's (anyone know the price of an MFP btw?).

-----------------------------

And that brings me around to a point you made earlier. I couldn't find it scrolling back but you mentioned something about fire support for the landing craft.

Having built hundreds of giant concrete barges to haul rocks into the Channel, you can re-purpose them for fire support once they've laid the base for the causeway. Mount dozens of 120mm mortars of 15cm sFH's on them and you've got way more fire support than the Wallies had on D-Day.

Of course, the builders can expect to have to do much of this under attack

Each of the big barges would carry lots of heavy/light Flak, which was quite deadly to Wallied planes on the battlefield. Sure you'd lose some of the barges along the way, but they're relatively cheap and would shoot down hundreds or even thousands of planes.

[TheMarcksPlan]

then as they approach England, under artillery fire.

Ok here's another feature of the idea.

On the image below, the causeway's rough path would be the blue line from Cap Gris to ~Dover.
The green doodle circles a feature called "The Varne," an underwater ridge over which the sea is 6-13ft deep.
The Varne is ~8 miles from the coast.
Once the causeway reaches the Varne, you fill it over and make it a giant platform for artillery that would counter-battery guns aimed at the causeway construction and support landings from Dungeness to Dover.





As you can see, there's also another ridge further south that could be filled in and used for longer-range fire support earlier in the causeway construction process.

[TheMarcksPlan]

There's another fortuitous circumstance for the Germans:

Only 6 miles southeast of Cap Gris is a massive stone quary: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dover ... d1.3134027

As long as the Germans are going to the trouble of building this causeway, they might as well build an artificial harbor off Cap Gris and load stone from this quarry for dumping in the Channel. They could build a bomb-proof "barge pens" for quick-loading of barges within this harbor, similar to their massive Uboat pens.

With this system set up, the barges only have to travel a few miles between loading and dump sites. They could make multiple trips per day, greatly reducing both the time and expense of causeway construction.

EDIT: Stone from the quarry is also only ~10 miles from Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer ports, so maybe you don't need to build an artificial harbor. Unless you want to really crank up the pace of construction.

Heck if they average only one trip per day that means building the causeway can occur in a couple months, which is a level of strategic surprise that would absolutely preclude the raising, training, and shipping of the >200 divisions America would need to send to stop the Heer in England.

[Aber]

Heck if they average only one trip per day that means building the causeway can occur in a couple months, which is a level of strategic surprise that would absolutely preclude the raising, training, and shipping of the >200 divisions America would need to send to stop the Heer in England.

And very special rules apply to invading the UK via a causeway across the Channel. :roll:


Hint: work out the volume of the tidal flow in the straits and work out the average flow rate when you have narrowed the gap to 1 km.

[Terry Duncan]

then as they approach England, under artillery fire.

Ok here's another feature of the idea.

On the image below, the causeway's rough path would be the blue line from Cap Gris to ~Dover.
The green doodle circles a feature called "The Varne," an underwater ridge over which the sea is 6-13ft deep.
The Varne is ~8 miles from the coast.
Once the causeway reaches the Varne, you fill it over and make it a giant platform for artillery that would counter-battery guns aimed at the causeway construction and support landings from Dungeness to Dover.





As you can see, there's also another ridge further south that could be filled in and used for longer-range fire support earlier in the causeway construction process.

This idea is rather a non-starter. For example, look at the storms soon after D-Day. Such a storm would wreck any causway and whilst that storm was severe, the Channel is not exactly unknown for rough weather several times a year despite its relatively shallow nature. There is also the rather 'small' concern that the Channel is more of a tidal river, with the overall flow into the North Sea being equal to replacing all the water there every 500 days;

https://www.britannica.com/place/English-Channel

Such a project is rather like trying to dam a 21 mile wide river with the added benefit of open water storms added in. Rather more possible is a tunnel, as tried from Napoleonic times, but that is hardly suitable for an invasion.

[Terry Duncan]

Exactly what I discussed: unlike Germany, Britain/US doesn't have a labor substitute for drafted men.

Technically they can mobilize 100% of their men, they just will see a precipitous drop in war production.

The US hardly needs a substitute, it has far more manpower than Germany and didnt come close to total mobilisation. The US could probably double its actual historical armed forces and cope without any drop in output. Britain has a very large manpower pool if it wishes to use methods similar to those Germany used, there is no reason to suspect it could not draw on it far more than it did.

Not true. Germany executed several successful amphibious operations during ww2 (Dodecanese campaign, Baltic islands, Kerch).
They would have had about as much experience as did the Wallies during Husky.
And they can gain further experience by invading Sweden, launching a landing across the Strait of Gibraltar in the rear of the Tunisian forces, or across the Red Sea during '44.

All rather small scale and nothing like what was involved in D-Day. The Germans considered it impossible for the Allies to create such a force. Germany had nothing similar to the specialist ships like LST's that proved so crucial.

Them's just the breaks in this ATL. It's not up to Stalin whether Germany can destroy him.

It is perfectly obvious that it is 'up to Stalin' how he feels and reacts. He is most unlikely to accept a situation such as you suggest and not plan to change it. The Russians will simply rebuild their forces, and that alone will force Germany to maintain a force in the east.

Britain had a manpower crisis OTL and didn't do this.
The loyalty and combat effectiveness of millions of Indian soldiers is dubious. Education/development levels and military effectiveness were and are closely correlated; India was dirt poor and its populace mostly illiterate.
The divisions actually deployed in ETO consisted mostly of Ghurkas and other segments of the Indian populace considered to be elite.

Britain only had a 'manpower shortage' because Churchill restricted the areas from which men could be conscripted. If Britain uses the same methods as Germany the number of available men rises significantly. The War was being won without altering this policy - US and Russian troops doing the dying still works as long as the result is achieved - so there was no need to resort to shipping troops from India on such a scale, but it is an option to consider if it were seriously needed.

The loyalty of the troops was hardly suspect, these men volunteers and were proud to do so, they were not conscripts and were quite reliable. The education of troops doesnt matter greatly beyond the ability to understand commands and military training. Universal (or close to it) literacy was not achieved by many nations until after WWII, and the Indian troops would be no less effective than the 'Volkssturm' units Germany needed to rely on by late 1944, and they are many times more numerous. Quantity has a quality of its own, as Stalin noted, except in this case these men can be supplied with all the arms available to the Allies, including aircraft.

The reason that there was not greater use of the Indian troops in Europe is that they had been used in WWI and many did not like the cold conditions as they were unused to such a climate and there were other theaters they could be used in that they were more suited to. However, thinking it is 'a bit cold and unpleasant' is not a barrier to being able to be used. Indian troops did fight in Europe and performed well. The same applied to the French Senegalise troops in WWI, they enlisted in large numbers and performed well.

There is a funny cartoon from the war, with two Tommy's on a cliff looking over the channel, commenting that 'we are all alone now, all 500 million of us'. Whilst the number is a total for the Empire and not combat troops, just as Germany drafted slave labour from where it could, Britain has a far larger pool to do so if it wished even without using US manpower. It is a numbers game, and whatever rules are applied evenly, the Allies have far more manpower available by large margin.

[T. A. Gardner]

The US and Britain have one other big advantage when it comes to utilization of manpower. They can substitute mechanization for manpower in most industries. Both also make far greater use of women in industry than Germany under Nazi policies is willing to do.

The US also has a resource in importing labor from South of the border. The US in WW 2 had the Braceros program for example importing large numbers of Mexican workers in agriculture.

German farms are simply too small to make efficient use of most farm machinery. Both Britain and the US saw farms increase substantially in size during the war. US farms in particular, could be far more efficient as they covered hundreds and even thousands of acres of land and could make full use of tractors, combines, and the like in farm production.

So, in a large construction project, the Germans would employ thousands of men using primarily hand tools to accomplish it. The US would do the same project with hundreds using far more heavy machinery and power tooling. Thus, they could get more done with less manpower than the Germans could.

Show me where the Germans built airfields like this:



Even building things like a pontoon bridge took far less manpower and could be done more quickly.



Here US engineers lay a pipeline. This is something that the Germans never did on any scale. Had the US taken over the Russian oil fields they'd have laid one ASAP to move the oil rather than use trains except in the interim.



This is the sand and gravel plant the US opened on Omaha Beach on D+3 for making roads, concrete, and other construction uses. The Germans could not have come close... Things like this weren't even considered in their campaign planning.



Cherbourg harbor by the officers in charge of its demolition thought their destruction of the same was so thorough it would never open as a port. The US Navy and Army had the port open in under 60 days, at capacity in 90 and increased beyond pre-war capacity at 120 days.



The train and ferry terminal Cherbourg.



Within days of the US Army starting to clear the debris

USN salvage operations Cherbourg

[TheMarcksPlan]

Channel is more of a tidal river, with the overall flow into the North Sea being equal to replacing all the water there every 500 days;

No way that's right. Your link has to refer to replacement of water *in the Channel*, not in the entire North Sea. No sea that large replaces its entire water volume in a year and a half. Actually, with circulation from the much-larger apertures in the north that would suggest the North Sea recycles itself every few weeks, which is impossible.

In any event, the problem of tidal flows is obvious and would be addressed by the following:

• At the base of the causeway, immediately off Cap Gris, would a channel for German ships and for some of the tidal flow. Over that channel would be multiple emplacements for bridges or the Germans would build a "cut and cover" tunnel during causeway construction.
• Interspersed throughout the causeway would be culverts to allow for tidal flows.

With these measures in place, there would be no "dam" effect to the causeway.
These measures would be a small portion of the 5-10bn RM cost of constructing the causeway: you just build large concrete culverts, float them into place while the causeway is being constructed, then build over the top of them.

They can substitute mechanization for manpower in most industries.

This is another example of posters believing that U.S. resources were functionally unlimited. To state the obvious, mechanization isn't free. Production of machines for X means fewer machines for Y. Please read "How the War Was Won," the U.S. Army's "Global Logistics," or really any other history of the war for discussion of the tradeoffs that the U.S. actually had to make. https://history.army.mil/html/books/001 ... ub_1-6.pdf

Rather more possible is a tunnel, as tried from Napoleonic times, but that is hardly suitable for an invasion.

As with all things, I'd rather treat this analytically than by analogy to Napoleon or WW1. I've set forth some rough parameters for causeway construction, they seem reasonable to me, I'll stick to that judgement unless someone can present a countervailing analysis of the costs etc. (a discussion I welcome, as it's pretty fascinating to me).

[TheMarcksPlan]

The US could probably double its actual historical armed forces and cope without any drop in output.

Do you have any evidence or analysis suggesting that this was possible? I've given a direct quote from the U.S. Army's study of grand strategy saying that putting 25mil men under arms would undercut war production. It seems that you should have at least some objective source countervailing that official U.S. analysis to support this claim.

To repeat, U.S. resources were finite and tradeoffs were definitely made.

Britain only had a 'manpower shortage' because Churchill restricted the areas from which men could be conscripted.

And why did Churchill restrict manpower recruitment? It was because of the need to protect war production.

Again, Allied resources were finite - though large - and tradeoffs were constantly made.

The reason that there was not greater use of the Indian troops in Europe is that they had been used in WWI and many did not like the cold conditions as they were unused to such a climate and there were other theaters they could be used in that they were more suited to.

Do you have any proof that the British avoided tripling the size of their army out of concern for Indian aversion to cold weather?

just as Germany drafted slave labour from where it could, Britain has a far larger pool to do so if it wished even without using US manpower.

But there is zero evidence that Britain ever considered, or would have been willing to consider, importing millions of Indians and Africans into Britain. Same with the U.S. and Latin American labor - we brought in a few thousand and deported them as quickly as we could. Any analysis of the war that ignores how racist the Allies were - recall that America was still segregated, even in the armed forces - is missing something big.

The education of troops doesnt matter greatly beyond the ability to understand commands and military training.

There is an immense literature finding the exact opposite of this statement. Just for example: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... ode=vsoc20