If you hang on every word of the published setting then yeah, I can see some major disappointments with the alpha, particularly (and most of this giant thread about "rules and mechanics" has actually been bitching about the setting).
I'm personally amazed to find that people do that, though. The setting is the easiest thing in the world to tweak. You could have changed it to anything you wanted, from day one, and I don't think I know any GMs that run games in 100% the setting the book tells them. Tweaking that to suit your own tastes is a big part of the fun!
In fact, with lack of OOBs and so on until now, my own campaign has moved forward almost entirely using 1st edition maps, timelines, and so on. I had issues with a number of aspects in the alpha setting, so I changed them, and had a crisis in Poland itself be the flashpoint for the war at large. Maybe they liked this idea from me personally, I don't know -- but I'll note that it is actually now the official background in the revised setting. The French background has been revised based on feedback from French players. The UK background has been revised... blah blah blah. It is all much, much better now and aside from a few small details, I wouldn't hesitate to put right in front of players as written. Those objectionable details that remain truly do not matter. My players don't need to know whether there's an aircraft carrier in the Baltic! It's a non-issue. Bugs on the windshield.
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