What about it?
Quoted text was about axis car industry becoming world-eating after the war...
Except Italy's
What about it?
I really strongly recommend The Economic Cost of Strategic Bombing here - it's well worth reading the whole thing to get an appreciation of just how much was spent. Overall his figure is £2.78 billion ($11.2 billion - the Manhattan project cost under $2 billion and the total given in Lend-Lease was around $30 billion), with much of it being in unexpected places. The magnitude of the civil engineering works involved in building the various airfields, for instance, cost the equivalent of just under $800 million, required huge numbers of men and left the British with a huge road-building capacity after the war.I think you’re very right to repeatedly underline the ”missing” Bombercommand in this TL (seriously reduced anyway). In OTL it sucked resources really beyond our comprehension. In Churchill’s memoirs he quotes a calculation made by the British (IIRC early war or just before) that the cost of building and keeping operational 40 medium bombers was equivalent to the cost of building and keeping operational one modern battleship! If we instead put the OTL heavy four engine bombers into the equation I guess we will get less than 30 bombers for one battleship and OTL Bombercommand had roughly 1000 operational bombers!
It is, but you've got to be very careful here. You can't just turn a factory making bombers into one making tanks or artillery - even just switching from machining aluminium to machining steel is a problem nowadays, to the extent that firms will often stick to one material per factory and accept the overhead of having two sites to get around the issues. You can shift the expansion from one area to another, but all the plant in the prewar shadow factories is going to be used for what it was designed to do - and at least a part of that is building heavy bombers.In short this factor alone will open up a huge “treasure chest” available for the British war effort. This can be put on top of the OTL production, where Britain alone (excl. Empire) by 1941 outproduced Germany in all important areas. Add to this the French production which probably will be close to the British excl. Empire. BTW the 7000 planes and 5200 tanks delivered by the British to USSR in OTL is about twice of what the Wehrmacht sent against USSR at Barbarossa!
Worse trouble than you perhaps realise. With France still in Entente hands, the U-boats are entering the Atlantic from Norway, whereas in OTL they were entering it from France. That pushes the convoys away from the U-boat bases - in OTL they were heading a very, very long way north and skirting the Greenland ice pack, while ITTL they're a long way south and so not subject to weather problems (and a LOT of shipping was under repair in OTL after weather damage).Next there is shipping. In OTL this was the constant constraint on allied operations. In this TL, with strongly reduced German access to the Atlantic and with an open Med. this problem has been marginalized and the effect is a multiplier for the allied war effort – but especially so in the Far East. Japan is in serious trouble.
It's very tempting to overdo things here, so I'm trying very hard to restrain myself. The Covenanter for instance I think I can justify doing away with since the British will at least take the time to test things out, and a very similar design was available that the same factories could produce instead in the Crusader. Getting rid of that too, however, would be too much, as would be getting rid of the Liberty engine (in fact, it's being licensed to the Italians).It has been a distinct pleasure to see your analysis of the effects of the missing panic after Dunkirk. A world with 1700 less Covenanters has been a dream of mine for many years
They can, but at what cost in blood? Remember both are still deeply traumatised by memories of the Western Front, and aren't willing to repeat it. That means this has to be a war of machines rather than men, and must also be a relatively short one. In turn, that means spending money and lots of it in the US, as the only available major supplier of armaments.Anyway, I think it is plausible, that the British and French in this TL by themselves can equip, deploy and operate forces strong enough to thoroughly defeat the Germans and keep the Japanese at bay. No need to be desperate to buy American, but I take any US government with common sense will find a way to lend money to the British and French on favorable conditions. If not for other reasons then because important markets and US jobs otherwise will be lost (on the background of a decade with unemployment).
Remember that a large part of the debacle in Paris was due to the Panzer commanders exceeding their authority and cracking on down the road without worrying too much about where they were supposed to be (a problem in OTL too). IIRC (without reading back all of it) that was actually in contravention of a direct order from Hitler, who was worried about the counter-attack that cut them off. So it won't necessarily count against him too much - some in the army at least will blame the Panzer troops for pressing on too far and not worrying about their flanks, while some will certainly blame Hitler. The real problem in OTL was that the opposition never really got their act together, while the Gestapo did and were pretty ruthless with it. Add in a belief that Preussische Feldmarschälle meutern nicht coupled with the personal oath to Hitler sworn by all German officers (which most seem to have taken very seriously indeed), and once the war starts the idea of a military coup removing him starts to become something of a stretch.IMHO opinion Hitler would have been “dealt with” latest by the surrender of the encircled army in Paris. In OTL he survived because he in early WWII so many times had overruled the military establishment and been proven right by events (if ever so lucky) – the stunning success of Fall Gelb was the jewel in Hitler's “GröFAZ” crown. Short of that jewel he will just wear a tinfoil hat! But of course, I can’t exclude, that on a “good” day the Gestapo could keep the opposition at bay for some time – if not for other reasons then because you have produced an extremely exciting TL which otherwise would have ended much before
Yes. I still haven't made up my mind about that - there are lots of long-term trends that I can easily identify in terms of logistics, raw materials, production and the like but working out how the Japanese would behave is rather harder. Maybe I should buy a crystal ball!BTW I look forward to your execution of a coming war in the Far East. I guess a war going on in the area between Japan and Singapore will be very different from the OTL Pacific one. The Japanese had a difficult strategic situation in OTL 1941 but here it is much worse – they will need all their fool hearted craziness to do anything but hide under the bed
That's one alternative. They have others - assuming a war starts. It would certainly be primarily a naval war however at least until Germany is defeated, coupled with using the Cavalry of St George in China to tie down the IJA as much as possible.Anyway it will be interesting to follow the British plans for a naval blockade of Japan with a combination of surface, air and submarine forces. Might very well have Japan starve a couple of years ahead of OTL.
In particular note where the U-boats are going to be coming from - in OTL it was a stretch to conduct war patrols off New York from bases in France. Here, it's going to be a stretch to conduct war patrols in the Mid-Atlantic from bases in Norway for similar reasons, at least until the Milch Cows come along. That vastly reduces the disruption caused by the convoys (along with being able to use the Med unescorted, versus escorted convoys to Cape Town) - meaning the ton-miles each ship does will be greatly multiplied.
If war does start in the Far East, it's going to involve the US. The US won't stand for Japan trying to undermine it's embargo against them and the Japanese (in their mind) can't risk the threat to their SLOCs the Philippines represent. But France still being a power in the region, and a larger British naval presence, and the lack of a staging area in Indochina complicates the Japanese attack plan immensely. It is conceivable, in that case, that the Anglo-French largely play defensive in the Far East while finishing off Germany and letting the US break Japanese power. As in Europe, though, the USSR will likely capitalize by playing vulture on the carcass of Japan.
I'm still mulling that one over. The Philippines are a major potential threat, but at the same time the Japanese saw the US as cowards and profit-hungry - with little benefit to them from declaring war on Japan. That makes it possible that they would decide to leave the US for later, planning on a sequence of victorious battles that would leave them with only the US to fight. Not a great plan viewed objectively, but it fits with the Japanese mindset.If war does start in the Far East, it's going to involve the US. The US won't stand for Japan trying to undermine it's embargo against them and the Japanese (in their mind) can't risk the threat to their SLOCs the Philippines represent.
Yep. No Arctic or Mediterranean convoys, no need to protect amphibious operations, and being as there isn't presently a war in the Far East they might well have skimped a bit on Destroyers as escorts. Finally, there will be a number of French escorts available as well, while the U-boat numbers actually in their patrol areas will be reduced due to longer transit times. The U-boats are still a major bogeyman, but the actual situation is much less bad than OTL.see this Numbers are Essential": Victory in the North Atlantic Reconsidered, March-May 1943
for even more drivers against u-boats
The only issue I have with this is that that reasoning should apply to OTL too; The US was always going to be the biggest potential adversary Japan faced in OTL from about 1920 on, especially with France and the UK tied down in a (More successful, but they can't see OTL to know that) land war. If Japan was going to go the safe route, than the weakened Empires should have been an even more inviting target to pick off alone in OTL, but Japan went and DoW'd the US anyway in a spectacular fashion. ITTL as well, the US isn't in military overdrive mode, so, to the Japanese mindset, might appear a fair bit weaker.I'm still mulling that one over. The Philippines are a major potential threat, but at the same time the Japanese saw the US as cowards and profit-hungry - with little benefit to them from declaring war on Japan. That makes it possible that they would decide to leave the US for later, planning on a sequence of victorious battles that would leave them with only the US to fight. Not a great plan viewed objectively, but it fits with the Japanese mindset.
If Japan doesn't hit the US though, I think you're right here. Without lots of nasty massacres, the US public is not going to be particularly sympathetic to the plight of Imperialists, while that attitude might change due to Franco British propaganda, they'll be working against the natural inclinations of the electorate.From the US point of view, it needs to be remembered that without the shocks of 1940 the electorate is still pretty isolationist. Going to war to protect European colonies in the Far East from being taken over by another bunch of colonisers was deeply unpopular in OTL - it's hard to see it being any more acceptable ITTL, and almost certainly not by itself enough to form a casus belli.
Meanwhile Stalin lits up his pipe, reads the news from the Western Front, and grins like a fox eating shit from a barbed wire fence.
I wonder if it still go with the same pattern as OTL, with the Americans swaggering in at the end, claiming they did all the work.
When you spent 45 Billion Dollars for Lend Lease, well, He who pays the piper, calls the tune.
and 45B was a lot of music for Billy Yank to listen to, while being overpaid and oversexed, in the ruins of Italy, Germany and Japan.
This TL, however, you won't probably get that whole 'Without US, you would all be speaking German'
But ' another goddam European War... glad we were out of it'
When you spent 45 Billion Dollars for Lend Lease, well, He who pays the piper, calls the tune.
and 45B was a lot of music for Billy Yank to listen to, while being overpaid and oversexed, in the ruins of Italy, Germany and Japan.
This TL, however, you won't probably get that whole 'Without US, you would all be speaking German'
But ' another goddam European War... glad we were out of it'
He-he
But it is just because they don't understand the true potential of the Axis. Start exporting VW, BMW, Toyota etc. and you'll end up running British industry
What about Fiat!
What about it?
My point. Fiat's not much of a threat to the British industry, or at least is WAY down the list of threats.Quoted text was about axis car industry becoming world-eating after the war...
Except Italy's
He would do what he did every other time that things went his way---
Started another Purge.
The traitors and wreckers are out there......
Not until the international situation has stabilized. He wants a competent army to take advantage of the opportunities and the Winter War has shown that is not something he has yet. Come 1942, it will be another story.
Stalin was Purging in 1941, with the Air Force and munitions officials, right up to Barbarossa.
And it was zilch compared too the scale of 1938, which is indicated by the results: the 1940-1941 purge doesn't really appear to have had any effect, positive or negative, on Soviet forces. On the whole, the Red Army and VVS were undergoing a wholesale program of reform and rearmament to transform it into a modern fighting force.
My point. Fiat's not much of a threat to the British industry, or at least is WAY down the list of threats.
I know China had good public relations in the U.S., what was Japan's like? Could they do better?
The US re-arming at high speed gave the Japanese a time limit they had to win by - if they left it too long, even they didn't think they could win. That meant that if they were ever going to take on the US, it had to be as early as possible, i.e. as soon as their new carriers were finished.The only issue I have with this is that that reasoning should apply to OTL too; The US was always going to be the biggest potential adversary Japan faced in OTL from about 1920 on, especially with France and the UK tied down in a (More successful, but they can't see OTL to know that) land war. If Japan was going to go the safe route, than the weakened Empires should have been an even more inviting target to pick off alone in OTL, but Japan went and DoW'd the US anyway in a spectacular fashion. ITTL as well, the US isn't in military overdrive mode, so, to the Japanese mindset, might appear a fair bit weaker.
From the Japanese perspective, *if* they strike at all, I think it still makes more sense to hit all their potential adversaries at once, rather than hitting the stronger ones and tipping off the nominally weaker one, letting it potentially fortify and cut the Japanese SLOCs.
Big difference between help and a declaration of war however - armaments are easy to supply (profitable, too), loans less so and troops deeply problematic.If Japan doesn't hit the US though, I think you're right here. Without lots of nasty massacres, the US public is not going to be particularly sympathetic to the plight of Imperialists, while that attitude might change due to Franco British propaganda, they'll be working against the natural inclinations of the electorate.
Yes. Fortunately it'll probably be a bit shorter and less bloody, but it's very hard to see the US getting involved unless they get dragged in kicking and screaming. Even Roosevelt isn't pushing nearly as hard against the Germans ITTL, because there's nothing to make him think they will win without US intervention.This TL, however, you won't probably get that whole 'Without US, you would all be speaking German'
But ' another goddam European War... glad we were out of it'
I think so. To some extent it was cyclic anyway, and the recovery was well underway. With money coming in from Europe, instead of being soaked up by the government and used for armaments it'll most likely stay in the economy and be spent on consumer goods. Growth will probably be a little slower, but I can't see the US economy not growing.Will the U.S. economy be coming out of Depression if they don't participate in the war?
Without Acheson the embargo would probably have been completely toothless - and Japan might well not have gone to war at all. That's something I'm looking at - I'm not at all sure Acheson would have ended up in government ITTL.If Dean Acheson can be kept from messing with the embargo and Japan still has enough oil for the civilian economy they only need to power the military. Can they manage with oil alternatives and creative rationing?