1941 — The May Offensive

March 1941. A coup in Belgrade threatens to pull Germany into another Balkan campaign.
But what if the coup never succeeds?
Without the diversion into Yugoslavia and Greece, Germany begins its eastern invasion weeks earlier. Three million soldiers cross the frontier while Soviet preparations remain incomplete, the roads are more favorable, and the crucial autumn timetable has been transformed.
The question is no longer whether Moscow can survive until winter.
It is whether winter arrives too late to save it.
German armored formations race toward Smolensk and beyond. Soviet commanders struggle to reorganize shattered defenses while desperate evacuation trains carry civilians and industry eastward. Leningrad faces an earlier crisis. Kiev becomes a shadow hanging over the Soviet command. And as the German advance accelerates, Stalin and his generals confront a terrifying possibility: the capital itself may fall before the Red Army has recovered from the opening blows.
Yet an earlier campaign brings its own dangers. Supply lines stretch across hundreds of miles. German formations outrun their logistics. Soviet resistance stiffens. Every lost vehicle, every damaged railway, and every day of fighting becomes more important.
This is an alternate Eastern Front where five weeks change the weather, the battlefield, the political calculations—and potentially the fate of Moscow.
If Barbarossa had begun in May, would the Soviet Union have survived?