More good debate - you may recall my original thinking was for around a full expeditionary Corps (up to five divs + HQ) in addition to any marine landing spearhead to make something like Sicily work, with the hope of the US joining but no expectation. Syria could be cheaper and also has the land border with Turkey, so it would be a pincer move (bit of a naval Market Garden). But brings in Vichy, of course.
North Africa would need at least a small mobile Corps to exploit, including armour/mot. Perhaps with smaller 3-4 bde divs in order to spread the troops out a bit. With two screens currently deployed (Central Asia and eastern Romania) to bolster the partners, my strategic reserve is now just the marine divs.
Those missing units clearing up Afghanistan and holding the Japanese off are going to be missed, for sure. I think it would be prudent to be pessimistic about bringing Vichy into the war, and assume that we would need that many troops for fighting them too, purely because of the homeland connection, the huge size of their African holding and just the stuff it would allow the Axis to do or not do when they join them.
Which in turn means waiting for it to play out, a new line established and seen to be sustainable against any Axis counter-offensive. Then the amphibious project needs to be seen and better strategic value than using the troops on the main front.
As I said previously, it's looking more and more like we can and should be planning for all of these operations, it's just that the order must be decided upon first.
You can perhaps see why I’ve been arguing that a Sicily operation would probably not be before early 1943 - perhaps when I was getting closer to breaking into northern Italy by land. Anything before then would have to be a lot more limited - where the marines could do most of it themselves.
Yeah so here's the timing thing again. We go after the Italians in Africa, defeat them there and conquer Libya. That shouldn't take too many people or resources away from the battle of the bulge, which would be occurring at the same time. Hopefully both campaigns end around the same time too, which means we can take stock of the situation in Africa and in the Balkans. If we smashed through the Italians in Africa quickly and have all our men left, plus new airstrips, we should be secure there. If the bulge is taken, it depends on how the Axis react. If they do nothing, we keeping pushing until they stop us. If they make a solid defensive line, then we can hold position and focus on Vichy teritoy. And I forget they redirect an army or something and seriously start pushing us, we can retreat back to a defensive line and hold out there.
The other thing is, if you think on it, the equivalent in WW2 was the Torch landings. The US, with additional forces to those the British were throwing into North Africa as they drove from Egypt. And they didn’t start Sicily until North Africa was wrapped up all the way to Tunisia. Meaning they could operate as actual operational Allies (which you can’t do with an AI partner in this game), with both their armies available, plus the naval and air support they commanded. My capacity is dwarfed by comparison, so needs to be carefully employed.
Mm, yes I think what would be planned in universe and asked for by our allies would be this:
1) force the Balkan front back as far as we can, to take pressure from Russian and Romanian forces. The closer we get to Italy, the better as they'll pressure the Axis to defend them and Hungary over fighting Russia.
2) everyone will want us to invade Italian North Africa. The British have already asked for support, and the Us and Russians will want both someone else running that land and also force the British to commit to a serious front in either Europe or Asia. The US would in universe probably support us with troops and naval assists...in game we have their marines and maybe a naval escort. The British would probably go from pleased to angry when they figure out we meant to keep that land and not give it to them, and that we're pressuring everyone's else to let us take Egypt and the Middle East later on.
3) Vichy France...hard to say. The French probably want them dealt with, which means the British presumably want it done too, if only because they'll have troops there after finishing Italy off. I suspect the Russians wouldn't mind us attacking a neutral nation for land and to remove fascism, especially as they have hopes for France later on. Some Americans won't like it though and I'm worried about what they may or may not do, since we're hoping they are going to be our 'sponsor' in the Middle East against the empires. Basically, we'll do it with the Russians, but only after distracting everyone else by gaining libiya and a place to launch a US and British naval invasion of Italy's and France from. Hopefully they'll be too busy/distracted to raise too much of a fuss, though we'd have to grovel a bit with the US ,after on to make up for it I think. Basically, hoping that they're hoping we'll be their gobetween for Russia after the war, and they'll let us get away with it at least in practice.
4) If we pull all that off, I imagine we'll be expected to keep pushing through the Balkans, help clean up Vichy North Africa and perhaps help take Sicily but I suspect this all would be whaTTL meeting would argue or revolve around.
