I think Greece would be much better off just getting bithnyia and Caria more than anything.
Tbf it's an automatic Turk screw when Turkey loses its most industrially capable lands but it's a more plausible Turk screw if anything? I could see sinope and more importantly Cilicia be it's main regions industrially speaking.
That Turkey loses Smyrna... well it's baked in the POD and I'm willing to argue that TTL is more plausible than herbivorous monkeys going around biting people in a country without monkeys. Overall from the likely outcomes OTL is not the worst plausible outcome for Greece though it tilts that way, nor TTL is the best plausible outcome for Greece though it tilts that way. Reverse for Turkey since most plausible outcomes in that era are something of a zero sum game.
Are many Greeks even aware of the Griko population in Italy at this point? Seems a bit far fetched that anyone would push for this.
Interesting question. The first mention to the Griko I've seen is in Paparigopoulos "History of the Greek Nation" but I cannot remember if it's written by Paparrigopoulos itself or in the commentary added by Paul Karolides for the 1930 edition. Either way this was a set of books (the Karolides edition runs at 8 books) that could be found in many homes among the educated classes. So there is at least some awareness that "hey there are still some Greek speaking villages out there in Magna Greacia".
Too good to be true... Perhaps we are looking at TTL's
Operation Mincemeat ?
Are we? Perhaps we are. Then perhaps we aren't?
Very cool,
hope this TL continues into the alt-Cold War (if there is one!)
In the broadest outline I have an idea where Greece and Turkey roughly are in the modern day. And certain other aspects of the world. Obvious issue as you keep getting away from the POD butterflies inevitably keep multiplying...
If it’s not I’m going to be incredibly surprised. I suppose it cold be accurate though.
The uhm beauty of the thing is that someone can very easily picture Winston Churchill making this very argument, why I expect he DID make the argument TTL. So has he managed to convince everyone of putting a knife in the soft underbelly of Europe? Or he failed and the proposal is a deception?
To be honest I had forgotten about the Polish considering the Greeks have kinda claimed the secondary power spotlight for the Allies. I wonder if you’re going to change the ill fate of Sirkorski? I guess it depends on wether you think it was really poor maintenance or sabotage, one being significant easier to butterfly away easily. Because even if the sabotage was corrected there would likely be later attempts to get him out of the picture. I’m not sure how much his survival would change in reality sadly. He would have the best chance of negotiating at least a partially free Poland.
If he survived, I can see Poland's eastern border following Curzon line B thus retaining Lwow. This could well come at the cost of Breslau in the west though. Now was he assassinated? That the likes of David Irving support the conspiracy theories do not predispose me very well on them. That Britain apparently still keep classified documents on his death 80 years after the fact on the other hand is... concerning.
Amazing update and a lot faster than I expected to!
At least in Epirus the Greeks are really pushing up close to the pre-war border.
The OTL pre-war border the TTL border is somewhat further north but yes.
I wonder if they make an attempt to retake Corfu as they start to take more ports along the Adriatic coast. It would be risky but if they can pull it off and hold it it long enough to build an airbase or 3 it would cripple Axis supplies lines in the southern Adriatic.
In naval terms things are distinctly brighter for the Allies in the Mediterranean and they weren't exactly bad by this place even in OTL. Between Free France and Greece you have 3 more modern battleships, about a dozen modern cruisers and a large number of cruisers and destroyers around. Which starts having impact elsewhere, frex the US had one more battleship at Guadalcanal than OTL...
How convenient that this lowly secretary would be contacted by a major who has all these plans and was able to smuggle them out and I'm sure make sure he was able to lose any and all tails. /s
Hey a lowly secretary, particularly one not British, given the racism of the time is the right low profile agent you want...
I think this shows more than anything how desperate Turkey's position has become. Most importantly they don't even seem to be trying to cross reference being given a literal gold mine in intelligence where before they have had minimal to no success. All war Turkey's intelligence services have been minimally effective and now suddenly they just randomly found out not only where the allies are planning to attack next but even in their strength!
Correction, the Turkish and the Italian secret services have been reasonably effective throughout the war, the Turks in particular given former imperial contacts and religious affinities, the caliphate is still around after all, have been well placed both in the Arab countries and in the Caucasus. Granted on the other hand "better than the Germans in intelligence" is a pretty low bar.
That last line though reminds me of the saying "It takes only one to make war but everyone to make peace". Turkey would gladly accept ante-bellum peace at this point I'm betting but doesn't want to accept further losses of territory or restrictions and I am guessing the allies demanded some type of restrictions that Turkey is not ready to accept. Honestly I could see this spiral slowly right to the end of the war where every time Turkey is ready to accept the peace deal from 3 months ago their position has deteriorated so much since than that the previous deal is off the table. Turkey keeps trying to accept deals that are just beyond what the allies are demanding over and over in a cycle until Turkey ends up having to surrender unconditionally because there is no one left to fight and all their cities are occupied.
Turkey at this point controls significant Greek and Soviet territory, never mind Constantinople much of which it considers part of the fatherland. At the same point both the Soviets and the western allies are probably making demands not just on full return of that but also additional territorial concessions, the Greeks will want Constantinople and almost certainly a more defensible eastern border, whether they get any of that is a different question, the Soviets even in OTL wanted access in the straits and various degrees of territory east from their 1914 border to all of Sevres Armenia, the British back in the desperate days of 1941 had to make promises to the Kurds, unleashed Lawrence and the SOE in Kurdistan and have armed a Kurdish army, it will not look well to the British and American public if they throw the Kurds to the wolves after two years of propaganda about the gallant Kurdish freedom fighters. Overall Turkey's situation is not unlike OTL Finland in this regard.
Well that is for the Albanians chams
TTL there is also an even more sizeable Albanian minority in North Epirus, close to 95,000 people. And given OTL it seems pretty certain to me they would be receiving the Italians as liberators or at least as a better alternative to the Greeks. Which is pretty likely to backfire once the Greek army marches back to the area.
Ares is being his OTL self. In any case, he will soon be out of job, since after the Italian Armistice, the only obvious line of defence for the Axis will be roughly the pre-war greco-jugoslav border.
Depending on holding part of the Olympus or not, in theory you can put a line of defence at mount Vermion, then further east on the Axios river before falling back on the WW1 lines. Of course the problem of these are that the defending forces have their backs to the sea and the Aegean is an allied lake by this point, the Turkish navy at the start of 1942 had a light cruiser and 8 destroyers, but the Greeks alone had a battleship, 2 cruisers and 17 destroyers. And while the Greeks lost 5 destroyers during 1942 they've also received 8 more, while the Turkish navy has no source of new ships.
I agree with the guys above, I think we just saw the TTL Mincemeat. And this is where things get interesting: I take it for granted that the Allies will manage to capture Sicily and an armistice will follow. However, in contrast to OTL the Mediterranean Theater barrel has more holes than the Germans have divisions to plunge in the gaps. They will have to prioritize, since there are more active fronts than the OTL single one (italian landings). There will be Allied armies in Italy, advancing north from Ioannina to Albania, breaking through Macedonia and Turkey is facing three different fronts and a kurdish uprising.
For the moment the Germans have as many divisions in the Balkans as they did in OTL plus 5 divisions not destroyed in North Africa. All of which are being attrited to hell of course but that's a different question. After all the German forces in the Balkans in OTL peaked to something like 700,000 men and 25 divisions, so you could see 30 divisions committed in the Balkans just with the OTL forces. Of course these 30 divisions need to handle TTL both partisans and an active front...
I think the easy part will be Albania: there is no railroad connecting it to Jugoslavia and after the armistice the Germans won't be able to use the ports to supply an army there. Hence I think Albania will be a total right off. I have no idea of the internal albanian politics of the era, but with an Allied occupation things will be very interesting.
Albanian politics are... an issue. You have the Communist LNC and the nationalish Balli Kombetar. And some loyalists to king Zogu who are apparently negligible in numbers and outright collaborators. Technically BK supposedly start as a resistance organization against the Axis with contacts with the British. Only problem, it wanted to retain the borders of greater Albania created by Italy and viewed the Greeks and Yugoslavs as the primary enemy for this, nevermind Greek claims to North Epirus. End result when the Germans showed up at the time of the Italian surrender it threw its lot with the Germans. So whom are the Greeks supposed to be working with TTL? The Ballists are just as likely to turn against them as the reverse. The LNC are communists, Greece would not much like a communist Albania if they can avoid it. The Zogists who are outnumbered by everyone else by huge margins? Stop on the TTL Albanian border and let any retreating Axis forces alone?
Genuine leak or deception ?
Yes.
Given the hindsight we have as readers, just because of the needed shipping for 5-7 divisions, it's reasonable to assume a deception.
The shipping s available in the Mediterranean.
I’m just wondering why though? Isn’t it just territory for territories sake?
Sazan, or Sason island for the Greeks is useful as a naval base, it was a Soviet submarine base in OTL. Also there are some politics involved, the island had been part og the Ionian state, when the latter united with Greece in 1864 everyone forgot about it, till 1912-13 when it became an issue when the Greeks advanced north and Italy and Austria-Hungary realized that the Greeks had a legal claim on it and it could be used as a naval base, which meant a British naval base in wartime. So pressure was extended, the Greek government gave up its claim... and was promptly accused by the opposition that it was relinquishing national territory.
