If the Allies Had Fallen: Sixty Alternate Scenarios of World War II

The weight of evidence suggests that Sweden's German policy was only marginally influenced by events elsewhere in Scandinavia. Though public opinion was markedly anti-Nazi, the government saw no merit before or after Operation Weser in provoking what was clearly a hopeless fight. Swedes entertained no significant delusions about Hitler. But neither did they perceive any feasible alternative to supping with the devil and using the longest possible spoon. Germany was too close; the Baltic was too small; potential allies were too far away to facilitate heroic defiance.

A Scandinavian operation was extremely tempting to French and British governments that initially sought large returns for small investments. Almost from the war's beginning Winston Churchill had proposed to block shipments of iron ore to Germany from Sweden through the north Norwegian port of Narvik by mining Norwegian territorial waters. On February 16,1940, the British destroyer Cossack boarded a German tanker in Norwegian waters to rescue seamen captured by the Graf Spee. And the allies did finally lay mines in Norwegian waters on the night of 7/8 April, independently of German movements and expecting a German response.

During the summer of 1942 three plans were under consideration by the western allies: SLEDGEHAMMER, a limited invasion of France in September 1942 to aid the Russians should they be in need; ROUNDUP, a full-blown invasion of France to be launched in 1943; and GYMNAST, a plan to invade North Africa.
Churchill favored GYMNAST, fearing heavy casualties in a premature invasion of France, while Chief of Staff Marshall and Secretary of War Stimson based their planning of the American war effort on an invasion in 1943.

Bradley had immediately passed Hodges' report to Eisenhower, who had, in turn, notified Truman and Churchill. The reaction to the news of Soviet actions south of Trebbin was simultaneous on the part of all three Allied players. Messages dispatched to Stalin lamented the actions, underscored the joint nature of these final operations, and conveyed a thinly veiled threat of the consequences of further such incidents. All three ended their transmission with suggestions for coordinated measures to be worked out between Eisenhower's, Bradley's, Zhukov's, and Konev's headquarters.

The psychological impact is another important consideration: mention already has been made of Halder's belief that a successful air and land offensive in the west might have pushed German opinion to recognize the disastrous consequences of Hitler's policies. Whether such a military defeat would have been enough to topple Hitler's regime remains at least open to question. Still, dictators most often do not survive military defeat, and on paper the prospect of an allied victory with an attack in the west was a good one.

What in our previous scenario must undergo alteration if the war in the summer of 1940 had climaxed with military action against the British Isles rather than with political accommodation? The weight of historical opinion is certainly arrayed against the success of an assault upon the British Isles following Dunkirk or the French surrender. The loss or immobilization of much of the German fleet during the Norwegian adventure is one factor that speaks against this. That, however remote, it was still a possibility is supported by the contemporary urging of a number of German military leaders.