Third Reich Victorious
HIRD
R
EICH
V
ICTORIOUS
Alternate Decisions of World War II
Edited by
Peter G. Tsouras
Copyright © 2012 by Lionel Leventhal Limited
This electronic format is published by Tantor eBooks,
a division of Tantor Media, Incorporated,
and was produced in the year 2012.
Hitler and the German Navy, 1939
Wade G. Dudley
The Defeat of Britain, 1940
Stephen Badsey
Triumph of the Luftwaffe, 1940
Charles Messenger
Zhukov Strikes First
Gilberto Villahermosa
Alamein to Basra, 1942
Paddy Griffith
The Turkish Attack on Russia, 1942
John H. Gill
Sicily and Kursk, 1943
John D. Burtt
Defeat of the Allied Bomber Offensive, 1944-45
David C. Isby
Target: London and Moscow
Forrest R. Lindsey
Decision in the East, 1944-45
Peter G. Tsouras
- “A Date Which Will Live in Infamy”
- The German Breakthrough
- The German Invasion
- Luftwaffe Assault on Group 11
- Operation Storm
- Operation Whirlwind
- El Alamein
- North Africa
- Turkey’s War
- Plans for Kursk
- Kutusov and Rumianstev Offensives
- Sicily
- Operation Suvorov
DR. STEPHEN BADSEY M.A. (Cantab.) FR.Hist.S. is a senior lecturer in the Department of War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He is a specialist in military theory and in media presentations of warfare. He has written or contributed to over fifty books and articles about warfare, as well as appearing frequently on television and in other media.
JOHN D. BURTT is the editor of
Paper Wars
magazine, an independent review journal devoted to war games, as well as a nuclear engineering contractor for the United States Navy. However, his real love is military history. A former Marine sergeant and a veteran of Vietnam, he holds a master’s degree in military history and is pursuing a Ph.D. in the same field. He contributed a chapter in
Rising Sun Victorious: The Alternate History of How the Japanese Won the Pacific War
and has written for
Command
,
Strategy & Tactics
, and
The Wargamer
, and was the original editor of
CounterAttack
magazine.
WADE G. DUDLEY holds a master’s degree in maritime history and nautical archaeology from East Carolina University (1997) and a doctorate in history from the University of Alabama (1999). He contributed chapters to Sarpedon’s
Great Raids in History
and Greenhill’s
Rising Sun Victorious.
Two of his books—a short biography of Sir Francis Drake, and an examination of the British blockade of the United States in the War of 1812—were published in 2002. He is a visiting assistant professor of history at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.
COLONEL JOHN H. GILL, U.S. Army. Jack Gill is the author of
With Eagles to Glory: Napoleon and His German Allies in the 1809 Campaign
(Greenhill, 1992) and the editor of
A Soldier for Napoleon
(Greenhill, 1998). In addition to numerous articles and papers on Napoleonic military affairs and a chapter in
The Peninsular War
(Spellmount, 1998), he has contributed chapters to three speculative history collections:
The Hitler Options
,
The Napoleon Options
, and
Rising Sun Victorious
. He received his B.A. from Middlebury College in 1977 (double major: history and German) and his M.A. from George Washington University in 1987 (international relations). He resides in Virginia with his wife, Lt. Col. Anne Rieman, and their two sons, Grant and Hunter.
PADDY GRIFFITH is a freelance author and publisher. His books include
The Viking Art of War
,
Battle Tactics of the Civil War
,
Battle Tactics of the Western Front
, and
The Art of War of Revolutionary France
. He is currently writing a book about the desert war, 1941-42.
DAVID C. ISBY is a Washington-based attorney and national security consultant and adjunct professor at American Military University. He has a B.A. in history and a J.D. in international law. A former editor of
Strategy & Tactics
magazine, he has also served as a congressional staff member. He has designed nineteen conflict simulations and been awarded two Charles Roberts awards for excellence in this field. He has written or edited twenty books, including several dealing with World War II:
G.I. Victory
,
The Luftwaffe Fighter Force: The View from the Cockpit
, and
Fighting the Invasion: The German Army at D-Day
.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL FORREST R. LINDSEY, USMC (ret.) served nearly thirty years in the United States Marine Corps, including combat in Vietnam. His special assignments included nuclear weapons testing with the Defense Nuclear Agency, United Nations Truce Supervisor in Egypt, and arms control treaty Inspection Team Leader in the former Soviet Union. His regular duties included appointments as battalion operations officer, regimental logistics officer, and commanding officer of the 5th Battalion, 11th Marines. Upon retirement from active duty in 1996, he continued working with the Marine Corps as senior engineer for the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, responsible for weapons experimentation and precision targeting. He has written several articles on professional military issues in the
Marine Corps Gazette
and contributed a chapter to
Rising Sun Victorious.
CHARLES MESSENGER was a regular officer in the British Royal Tank Regiment for twenty years before beginning a second career as a professional military historian and defense analyst. He is the author of numerous books, including
The Art of Blitzkrieg
,
“Bomber” Harris and the Strategic Bombing Offensive against Germany, 1939-1945
,
The Commandos 1940-1946
,
The Century of Warfare
, and biographies of SS General Sepp Dietrich and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. He is also the editor of
The Reader’s Guide to Military History
. He has carried out numerous historical studies for the British Ministry of Defense and written and helped to direct a number of TV documentary series.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL PETER G. TSOURAS, U.S. Army Reserve (ret.) is a senior analyst for the Battelle Corporation in Crystal City, Virginia. He was formerly a senior intelligence analyst at the U.S. Army National Ground Intelligence Center’s Washington office. He served in the army as a tank officer in the 1st Bn/64th Armor Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, in Germany, and subsequently in intelligence and Adjutant Generals’ Corps assignments from 1970 to 1981. He retired from the Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel in 1994 after serving as a Civil Affairs officer. His assignments have taken him to Somalia, Russia, Ukraine, and Japan. He is the author or editor of twenty-one books on international military themes, military history, and alternate military history, including
Rising Sun Victorious
,
Disaster at D-Day
,
Gettysburg: An Alternate History
,
The Great Patriotic War
,
The Anvil of War
,
Fighting in Hell
,
The Greenhill Dictionary of Military Quotations
,
Civil War Quotations
,
Changing Orders: Evolution of the World’s Armies
, and
Warlords of the Ancient Americas
. He has also written numerous chapters in other books and many journal articles, and has been interviewed frequently on television and radio.
COLONEL GILBERTO VILLAHERMOSA is a historian with the U.S. Army’s Center of Military History at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C. A twenty-two-year veteran, he is a West Point graduate, Armor officer and Master Parachutist. Colonel Villahermosa was a senior graduate fellow at the Soviet Ministry of Defense Center for Military History in Moscow under Col. Gen. Dmitrii Volkogonov in 1990, when he first worked with the actual document upon which his chapter is based. He has served with the Armored Cavalry in Germany and the 82nd Airborne Division’s light armor battalion at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He was also a Soviet analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, U.S. military representative to Georgia and Tajikistan, and adviser on Russia and Eurasia to the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Colonel Villahermosa holds master’s degrees in international affairs and philosophy of political science from Columbia University, as well as a certificate in advanced Soviet studies from the university’s Harriman Institute. He has published articles on the Napoleonic Wars, the Soviet Army, and the U.S. Army in
Armor
,
Army
, and
Napoleon
magazines. He has also authored a series of entries on the U.S. military for
Dictionary of American History
(Scribner’s).
The Germans win World War II. It is an unsettling, even horrifying proposition for a book. It is also thought-provoking. All too often history, and especially military history, is seen as running down an already approved and well-worn groove. We won World War II because we were meant to win it. It is a gratifying but dangerous road to travel. If we have learned anything about history it is that we hold it in our hands like a lump of wet clay.
The actions of not only great men and women, the warlords, heroes, and geniuses, constantly shape our history, but also the actions of countless nameless people. The guard who is so bone weary but also so resolved to do his duty that he must rest his chin on his bayonet to stay awake, in his own way, is a mighty shaper of history. An army consisting of such men will do great things. A soldier who carelessly falls asleep on guard, and the leadership that lets him, will also make a mark in history. Decision, reason, and character are mighty ingredients in the makeup of history.