[Hermann the Cherusker]

For some perspective on invading the Balkans and preventing a Soviet capture of Europe, I went and got out my month-by-month battlefront atlas.

The Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and the Italian Boot in September of 1943. By the end of November, they had driven up against the first German fortifications - the Gustav line (roughly a line in front of Gaeta-Cassino-Ortona). At the same time, the Russians were on a line from the Dnieper to Leningrad.

In January of 1944, the Allies made an amphibious assault on Anzio from Naples, a distance of about 125 miles by sea. The comparable distance from Bari to the Albanian coast to strike through Kosovo and Nis to the Danube valley (Bucharest and Ploesti Oil fields) was also 125 miles, with a 400 mile inland drive needed to capture the source of Germany's oil. From Nis, one could also drive north to Belgrade (~150 miles) then Budapest (~250 miles).

An alternative assault on Istria to capture Fiume and Trieste, then drive to Zagreb, Vienna, and Budapest was a distance of 175 miles from the Italian coast up the Adriatic. This compares distancewise to a 200 mile assault made from Livorno to Marseilles and Toulon in August 1944.

Looking it over now, it would seem the assault from Bari was the most practicable in Janaury of 1944. The Soviets did not reach Romania until April 1944, with the taking of the county occuring in August and September of that year. A two prong Allied advance here in January would likely have met the Russians on the Siret and Pruth rivers in Moldavia in April of 1944 and advanced to the Carpathian mountains above Budapest to occupy the entire Hungarian basin by July of 1944, simultaenous with the great Russian advance on Minsk and Warsaw in June through August of 1944. The Allied line would run from Trieste to Ljubiana to Bratislava and along the Carpathians to the Black Sea. Simultaneous with a smaller landing in France or the Netherlands or Belgium, a large drive could then have been made across the lower part of the Carpathians to Silesia and Cracow then up the Oder to Berlin behind the main body of the German Army facing the Russians on a Riga-Warsaw line.

If the Allied drive was done right, Berlin would be captured before winter, and the war would be over, with all of Europe south and west of the Oder and Carpathians in free hands. That is, if the Allied attack had not provoked a more successful outcome to the July 1944 von Stauffenberg assassination attempt and a negotiated surrender to the Allies, with the Russians prevented from venturing beyond the Vistula into Prussia, annexed Poland (Wartheland) or historic Germany.

Of course, this is predicated on having a Commander In Chief interested in winning, rather than interested in serving Stalin.