General George S. Patton, who was billed to be the commander of the forces coming ashore at OMAHA Beach on D-Day, pays a visit to an Army Air Force hospital to speak to the wounded men and reassure them with the sheer magnitude of his presence. The naval contingent offshore simply flattened the three German destroyers and five U-Boats that happened to be caught between Britain and Normandy on the night of the 5; the only casualties were men wounded in the rush of firing. But these signals were different. The airborne side of the operation, the landings in late June 4 and early June 5, worked perfectly well until the paratroopers actually touched ground, and were confronted with the three panzer divisions that Intelligence had dismissed as an error. Bill Mauldin who put it best when he said: "Early on the 7th, I realized I was actually running back across the Channel. It was about that time I started to think we'd lost." Despite heroic fighting, regiments dying to a man to cripple German brigades, it is obvious by the morning of the 7th of June, when the infamous "Five Tigers" made it onto the actual sand at UTAH, destroying a dozen Lees and Shermans before being taken out themselves, that it was obvious the invasion had failed.
Finally, President Wallace finds his man for the War Department in the Navy Department, with Under-Secretary Frank Forrestal, who assumes office in early September. Secretary of War Robert Wagner resigns; it was his New York that was bombed, and his Department that will take the fall. To replace him, Taft picks long-serving New York Congressman and isolationist Hamilton Fish; fresh from a narrow re-election victory in the 1944 election. Fresh from the crushing at the Coral Sea, the Japanese pilots are much more aggressive, determined to avenge their brethren, and the Americans don't get the good luck of catching much of the enemy air cover on the deck, refueling. Churchill, in conference with Montgomery on the Tunisian border on the 8th of May, formulates a plan for an invasion of Italy in 1944 or '45, once Sicily is secured in late 1943. General Henry Arnold assumes command of American air forces in Europe and Britain in particular; his opposite number on the British side is "Bomber" Harris, the two like each other about as much as any other set of American and British generals in this war. Despite the different losses, Midway winds up with the same final result; a battle that is a tactical draw is a strategic victory, the Japanese invasion fleet turns about and heads for home, thoroughly chastened by the Americans in two battles in a row, now.
War is, after all, a mightily complex thing, and the greatest seaborne invasion in history, up to that time, was perhaps the most complex undertaking of the Allied armies up to that time. The Food for Victory Commission is in; most people not opposed to an expanded government in general like the idea of consolidated agriculture, it promises quite a bit of profit. The Wallace administration is not a pleasant place for Republicans, of which Stimson is a titan of, and Wallace's antipathy toward professional politicians has made relations with a man who has been involved in government since the Taft administration cool at best. With both the recent British victories in Libya and the tentative approaches made by the Darlan government in Algiers freshly in mind, the Allies pledge to recognize any French government that becomes hostile to the Germans, Vichy or Free French. D-Day. Serling will manage to draw both hate and praise. The US fleet loses the Yorktown as per OTL, but the more aggressive Japanese pilots manage to slip through the American screen and sink the Hornet, while the heavily damaged Enterprise barely manages to limp back to Pearl Harbor.
While the American island-hopping campaign will continue, none of the powers will take the offensive into Burma or another area of jungle, instead the British will move into China, to keep supply lines open that way. Even more reluctantly, Wallace agrees to step up aid to British forces in North Africa, that they can do some of the work that the Americans won't be doing. El Alamein goes largely as per OTL, though less US Lend-Lease aid means that the British take heavier casualties; it's just not enough to change the outcome of the battle. It's true, but not really true. It's a gamble, but if it can make the United Kingdom as strongly allied as the United States, who is he to complain? Secretary of War Henry Stimson takes the opportunity to resign in July; pleading health issues and that he's unnecessary, now that the United States has won two reasonably excellent victories in short order. In August, bitterly disgusted, Wallace gives up on Congress, which has long since given up on him. A fuming Guderian roars bloody murder at the de jure SS chief (Guderian is the only man not afraid of him) and retires, like a sulking Achilles, to his tent.
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