"What would have happened if Turkey declared war..." Topic

… on the Allies in WW2?.

"The timing matters here.

If it's prior to the invasion of the USSR, it opens several doors for Germany.

The old Berlin-Baghdad rail project will bear fruit, since German troops, fuel, and supplies can be transported through Turkey into the Levant…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I'm not sure it would have been that much of a benefit to Germany. It is over twice as far from Berlin to Suez via Turkey as it is from Berlin to Moscow, and over transportation lines far, far worse. Also considerably farther to the Caspian Sea via Turkey than the direct route through Russia--and over transportation lines that are almost non-existent.

Ultimately Turkey might have become another route for the Allies to attack Germany than vice-versa.

It would have sucked up Soviet troops and forced them to fight in some TERRIBLE terrain (see WWI).

I think the British would have had a cow because now Wavell has yet ANOTHER active front to deal with (poor guy) and it's one that can directly threaten Egypt. That would have given the Germans a way to support the Vichy French forces in the Levant and threaten Iraq (and support those rebels too!).

The question is whether the Germans would have had the resources to support yet another front. Africa was a serious shoestring and I'm not sure just how effective the Turks would have been at this time. Better fighters than the Italians, I'm sure, but what about their gear and logistics? WWI showed a VERY mixed performance on their part and I'm not so sure that a Turkey of 1940-1942 vintage would have been terribly effective.

Agree with Tgunner!.

Amicalement
Armand

I think the real question is could Turkey have made a difference on the eastern front in the summer of '42? Personally I doubt it.

I see two effects:

1) A lot of dead Turks.

2) The soviets get a new port in the med.

Does it stop the Germans from invading Russia and put their efforts into the Mid East /Africa?

What's in it for Turkey? An attempted recapture of Egypt? Turf in the Balkans. Keeping Turkey and Italy on side would have been interesting.

VCarter +1

I think it is less a question of what "would" have happened, and more a question of what "could" have happened.

Turkey as an active Axis partner brings some very real potential. Whether that potential would have been realized is a different question altogether.

As I understand it (welcome corrections here) Turkey in 1939 had what would best be described as a WW1 army. A body of infantry, and the ability to call up more infantry, but no real motorization, tanks, or air power worthy of consideration by WW2 standards. We're talking boots on the ground, with rifles, machine guns, artillery, and horses to pull it all.

The German-led Axis activities in 1939 – 1941 were not short of infantry. The German-led Axis activities in 1944-45 were VERY short of infantry, but honestly who cares -- by that time the game was up, and everyone knew it but Hitler. In 1942-43 more infantry might have helped, if it was usefully skilled and led, and most importantly in the right places at the right times. This is where I think the difference could have been made.

What was always missing was any coherent plan by Germany to bring their European Axis allies up to higher levels of capability. Germany quite simply didn't have enough German resources to supply their Axis allies to a useful level, and didn't have the inclination / skills / orientation to orchestrate multi-national industrial cooperation to rationalize their allies' resources effectively so that Italian, French, Austrian, Czech, Dutch and Romanian industry could bring the entire Axis block up.

So to prevent this what-if from becoming too great a flight of fancy, I will assume that the Turks don't magically get all the stuff in 1941 that they didn't have in 1939.

Still … there were several places and times when a half-dozen to a dozen infantry divisions, even if on foot and of indifferent quality, might have made a big difference. Could the Turks have made a difference? I think they could. Would the Turks have made a difference? I doubt it.

A few corps of Turkish infantry in the Levant, and more critically perhaps in Iraq and Persia, could have made a substantial difference.

The British in Egypt would have been greatly distracted from the western dessert campaign, which was repeatedly a near-run thing until late 1942. If they had diverted more forces to try to prevent the Turks from marching on the Suez Canal from the north, they might not have succeeded in preventing Rommel from marching on the Suez Canal from the west. So I can see a realistic scenario where the Suez Canal is lost. And maybe where the British presence in North Africa is lost. That's a game-changer.

More significantly, the Allied effort of opening up Persia as a supply route to the Soviets was very much a shoestring operation, and a Turkish field army of 50,000 or 60,000 foot infantry marching into Persia might easily have turned that whole process upside-down. No Persian supply route probably means the Germans get to at least cut-off, if not actually lay their own hands on, Soviet petroleum by the end of 1942. That turns the battles of the Eastern Front of 1943 and 1944 updside-down, and so turn the entire sequence of events of the land war in Europe upside-down.

Now, is there any reason to believe that a declaration of war by the Turks would have led to this kind of campaigning by the Turks? I can see it as possible, but don't know if or why it would be likely. They might have just sent a corps of men into the Barbarossa campaign (as the Italians did), which would have just meant more bodies to be buried somewhere on the steppes. Or they might have satisfied themselves with some activity in the Balkans, which was such a mess to start with that more stirring of the pot does not produce a noteworthy change, as far as I could see.

One possible interesting additional side-effect might have been shifting German strategic vs. tactical decision-making. Hitler frequently over-ruled his Generals based on his political concerns, and I believe that getting more allies to his side (most important among them being the Turks) was top of his list. He might have been less close-minded to military priorities in 1941 and 1942 if the Turks were already in the bucket.

Might have been. Would have been? Who the h3ll knows.

At least that's my read.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Good thread Mark 1!.

Amicalement
Armand

By coincidence, at the last RECON in Orlando, one of the vendors had a back issue of the S&T Press issue 49. The feature article, and game, was Operation Gertrud, a plan for the German invasion of Turkey. What makes the issue worth while is all the information on the Turkish military.

In 1941 the Turkish Army consisted of 17 army corps, 43 infantry divisions, three independent infantry brigades, two cavalry divisions, one independent cavalry brigade and two mechanized divisions. This represented some 300,000 troops. At full mobilization the army would have a strength of 1.5 million men. However, as the article points out, even the standing army was made up mostly of poorly trained conscripts.

Armor strength consisted of 26 T-26s, 16 British Vickers Mk VIB and 100 French Renault R.35 tanks. In attempt to woo the Turks, or at least keep them neutral, the western allies sent military aid. By 1943 the armor force had grown to 25 Shermans, 220 Stuarts, 180 Valentines, 150 of the Mk VIs and 60 Universal carriers.

The main reason for wanting to keep Turkey neutral had nothing to do with a possible threat to Russia and everything to do with trade in critical raw materials. In 1938 Germany got some 16,600 tons of chrome from Turkey, about a third of their imports. In 40-42 this shrunk to zero. Interestingly enough it then increased to 4,600 tons in 1943 and 12,000 tons in 1944.

The Turkish Air Force in 1941 was a real hodge-podge of aircraft from Poland, France, Germany, Britain, the US and Czechoslovakia. The Turkish Air Force was relatively well trained with Britain providing most of the training of Turkish pilots. Their best fighters were two squadrons of Hurricane Mk Is. They had two squadrons of He-111s. Logistics must have been a real nightmare.

The biggest problem for the Turks would have been logistics. They would be hard pressed to provide support to their defenses let alone project power such as a march into Persia.

Turkey survived by playing one side off against the other. Up until the end of the war Turkey was receiving ground equipment and aircraft from both the allies and the Germans.

Turkey finally declared war on Germany on 23 February 1945. The reason was that only countries at war with Germany as of 1 March were to get a seat at the peace conference in San Francisco.

Good intel … didn't know what the Turks Armor inventory was.

Didn't know that S&T did an article either ! Will look for that !

Its in their World at War magazine, not their S&T magazine :)

Sorry for not making that clear.

Good to know ! Thanks !