A Rhineland setback could split the war into smaller conflicts

A serious Anglo-French mobilization over the Rhineland is proposed as a way to force a German withdrawal and slow Hitler's timetable. The economic interpretation is that the government's own incompetence helped drive its pace of expansion, leaving how it could sustain a long delay unresolved. With Britain building toward an expected war in 1942 and no European conflict absorbing British or American fleets, Japan would face far more opposition in the Pacific. A northern attack on the Soviet Union becomes an alternative in this scenario. Germany could use support for Finland in a Winter War, on the model of its involvement in Spain, to justify further rearmament. The expected outcome is a sequence of limited conflicts, although the political route to a decade's delay remains uncertain.