your reasoning is sounds there good arguements for both, will be interesting which one you pick.
Es Geloybte Aretz Continuation Thread
- Thread starter carlton_bach
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Deleted member 94708
I would add the DEI were stupidly big and populous. It's very possible it's shattered like French Africa, into 'Atjeh', 'Java', 'Bali', 'Moluccas' etcetera.
I genuinely don't know. I can see a few scenarios, but I'm not sure at all.
Actually occupying Russia would be a bit much for any state. But I would imagine that Integralist Russia is a criminal enterprise of mammoth proportions that needs dismantling. The question is whether Germany and its satellites are actually capable of doing that and have the political will.
I'm guessing they don't, or that any de-Integralization of TTL's Russia is going to be incomplete - specific aristocrats may be disgraced, reform mandated by treaty and reconstruction funds or in-kind assistance determined by ability to meet certain milestones - this is where TTL's Germany, with a rich quantitative tradition unmatched in-universe, is positioned to enact a kind of cyberneticized Versailles Treaty on Russia; provide the data we need, Or Else, and then using that data and the resulting control outputs to steer Russia towards a desired end-state - Nuremberg meets Cybersyn. Lots of ways for this to go wrong or prove out as a pipe dream, but more interesting to imagine than a WW2 Allied Control Commission with the serial numbers filed off.
So what this might come out to in the end is a kind of cybernetic tyranny, the rough and ready organs of Integralist Russia given a thorough and painful enema by German technocrats and several major bits of plumbing snipped, stapled, and medicated into a more... pleasing... arrangement.
I'm guessing they don't, or that any de-Integralization of TTL's Russia is going to be incomplete - specific aristocrats may be disgraced, reform mandated by treaty and reconstruction funds or in-kind assistance determined by ability to meet certain milestones - this is where TTL's Germany, with a rich quantitative tradition unmatched in-universe, is positioned to enact a kind of cyberneticized Versailles Treaty on Russia; provide the data we need, Or Else, and then using that data and the resulting control outputs to steer Russia towards a desired end-state - Nuremberg meets Cybersyn. Lots of ways for this to go wrong or prove out as a pipe dream, but more interesting to imagine than a WW2 Allied Control Commission with the serial numbers filed off.
So what this might come out to in the end is a kind of cybernetic tyranny, the rough and ready organs of Integralist Russia given a thorough and painful enema by German technocrats and several major bits of plumbing snipped, stapled, and medicated into a more... pleasing... arrangement.
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If they want to keep russia down break off Novgorod as its own state. Or maybe keep the main russian cities under threat of nuclear assault to pass a more harsh peace and occupation maybe.
I think it has been implied that Russia has the upper hand in conventional combat throughout the war and advances far to the west of the prewar borders. Withdrawing to the prewar border, or even ceding border regions, is one thing. But if Germany's demands are so far-reaching, I would think that Germany would face the danger of Russia deciding to continue the war.
Fast forward one year. The nuclear strikes on Moscow and Petrograd were damaging, but proved insufficient to turn the tide. The war has just ended because Britain, concerned that a complete Russian victory would skew the balance of power too much in its favour, threatened to intervene on Germany's side if Russia did not halt its advance on Berlin. Diplomats in Paris are negotiating the distance to which the Russian armies will withdraw from their current positions on the Oder. Germany is currently in the process of dismantling its nuclear infrastructure and transferring it Britain - this having been the price of the British ultimatum.
No, that is a misreading of the situation. Russia does a lot better in the war than anyone expected, but that does not translate into overwhelming victory. The problem is that early in the war it turns out German technology and doctrine are not as good as everyone thought. That puts Germany and its allies on the back foot for the first year or so, giving the Russians some significant propaganda victories, but they're not steamrolling into Berlin (in fact, not even Warsaw, though they do come close). What the nuclear strike does is put an end to the nightmare scenario of German troops having to fight their way to Moscow in a war the country cannot afford in terms of resources, cash, or casualties. the Great general staff never had any doubts about the military feasibility of that advance, though. By the second year of the war, doctrine had been adapted and industrial output retooled, and new weapons were coming onstream that could deal with what the Russians were throwing at them. In another year, the German army would be ready for the conquest, but it takes time to turn around a Fordist production system, time to design and test the tools that soldiers need, and time was something Berlin didnt have.
Yeah, I find that much less plausible than Germany turning Russia into a captive consumer-of-last-resort for the products of German industry - a low-wage, low-tax ultra-fief invisibly dominated by German commerce and finance - this time carefully managed by a basement full of electromechanical Zuse cabinets in Berlin.
(Thinking more about how this might work; German industrial planning is unmatched in the world, and so is German data analysis. It would be fairly trivial to shape a plan of FDI that concentrates German investment in the regions of Russia that have the least reason to be loyal to the Great Russian center - for example, using investments in Ukrainian ethnolinguistic foundations, media, targeted industrial encouragements, and political movements, laundered through a dizzying network of confusingly-named departments - in order to create and sustain internal discord. Would it work? Maybe, but it would look a lot more attractive than finding the boots to keep Moscow stomped down into 1975.)
(Thinking more about how this might work; German industrial planning is unmatched in the world, and so is German data analysis. It would be fairly trivial to shape a plan of FDI that concentrates German investment in the regions of Russia that have the least reason to be loyal to the Great Russian center - for example, using investments in Ukrainian ethnolinguistic foundations, media, targeted industrial encouragements, and political movements, laundered through a dizzying network of confusingly-named departments - in order to create and sustain internal discord. Would it work? Maybe, but it would look a lot more attractive than finding the boots to keep Moscow stomped down into 1975.)
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I love this idea, but I don't think it is believable at the time. By the end of the war , the technology level is still roughly where it was in the Second world war IOTL. Computers are real and useful, but they are also limited to predefined systems where you have access to comprehensive data gathered the oldfashioned way. Germany uses them for public policy extensively, so the government understands their limitations.
Realistically, I can certainly see a concerted effort to kneecap the Russian economy in the long run, and that could well involve both the forfeiture of assets (can you imagine the German state becoming the biggest shareholder in every publicly listed Russian company?) and the placement of observers to enforce specific bans. But the biggest thing is likely going to be a more traditional approach of carving out satellite states, extorting reparations, and now requiring changes to government.
The reason I mention Project Cybersyn is that it ran in large part on telex machines, which dates to 1933 and was originally administered by the Reichspost. I'm using 'cybernetics' in the sense of postwar management cybernetics - none of the tech required for this is all that advanced or complex by modern standards and most if not all of it is 1930s-1950s vintage or could be substituted. I could see this Germany ITTL going all-in on a telex-like network even earlier than OTL, with links for military, governmental, news service, and business use sprouting up. During the war it might see expansion into war-economy management.
But a hybrid of the two approaches might be more plausible. I can certainly see concentrations of telex reporting stations in major industrial centers and transport nexii, as well as breaking off multiple satellite states, enclaves, and Special Economic Zone-type regions. It might evolve from a simple program to calculate reparations that target vital war-making econometrics into a full system of cybernetic control over time.
But a hybrid of the two approaches might be more plausible. I can certainly see concentrations of telex reporting stations in major industrial centers and transport nexii, as well as breaking off multiple satellite states, enclaves, and Special Economic Zone-type regions. It might evolve from a simple program to calculate reparations that target vital war-making econometrics into a full system of cybernetic control over time.
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Cybersyn was very innovative in concept, but IMO was scarcely feasible as a mechanism for planning during its time - in fact, I would argue that the technology necessary to make such a project really feasible is only just coming online (literally) in 2020. It's not the idea of networking computers that's key here, or the idea of automating the transmission and computation of information, it's the technical limitations on the quantity of information computers are able to process and hold, and how fast that information can be processed, and on both counts Cybersyn fell far short of that required to manage a developed economy. As a result, the economy of Chile when Cybersyn was in effect actually not substantially different from a primarily human-planned economy, which happened to use computers to perform some of the calculation and communication processes that human clerks would have done in other countries. In fact, the success of almost all computerization projects has much less to do with innovative architectures and designs, and much more to do with practical and technical limitations such as computational speed or available space for storing memory (ok, that does depend somewhat on new architectures and designs). Both of these tend to advance gradually, without the flashy innovations that are paradigm-changing outside the specific field. This is as true in 2020 as it was in 1973, as it was in 1945.
Put it another way, Cybersyn was less capable of directing the management of a large and modern economy as your laptop is right now, and I think few would argue that you could plan an entire economy using only the resources available on your laptop without abstracting a large part of the process to traditional human-powered management mechanisms.
Put it another way, Cybersyn was less capable of directing the management of a large and modern economy as your laptop is right now, and I think few would argue that you could plan an entire economy using only the resources available on your laptop without abstracting a large part of the process to traditional human-powered management mechanisms.
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So in conventional terms it's a stalemate where neither Russia or Germany have the industry and resources to penetrate into the other's territory to any significant extent (Germany's satellite orbit must be thrilled about the implications of this), but Germany can wage a nuclear war of attrition to which Russia has no counter. Germany's nuclear monopoly will have interesting consequences. The rest of the world will certainly want nukes of its own asap, especially if they see harsh peace demands against Russia as an attempt to integrate the vast Russian Empire into the German economic sphere using nuclear blackmail. This will be a scary prospect, but how strongly will countries like Britain and France dare to intervene in the negotiations? This risks suffering nuclear strikes, but on the other hand the nuclear gap will only increase in the near future if nothing is done.
I would say it's simply the stronger side being caught on the wrong foot and needing time to re-assert its obvious primacy, and deciding to short-circuit that with nukes. Using early nukes requires massive superiority anyway, since you need to be pretty sure your bomber will get through.
Absolutely. In this case I'm not explicitly saying it would do a good job of managing the Russian economy; I'm thinking more and more it would do a good job of hobbling it.
On a possibly unrelated note, Germany might be unwilling to try this out of fear that the Russians might master what is considered cutting-edge management techniques and profit from them. The way German investments in Russia made in order to extract reparations after the previous war had the unintended effect of better preparing Russia for the next one.
According to the post I was replying to, the initial Russian successes were damaging enough to make the enemy's economy and manpower reserves no longer enough for a march all the way to Moscow.
If the nukes are the only way of avoiding an extremely expensive and deadly offensive, even a 50% or so risk of the bomber going down before it can complete its mission may be deemed acceptable.
It also said "the Great general staff never had any doubts about the military feasibility of that advance (to Moscow, red.), though. "
In other words, Germany crushing the Russians militarily was not really in doubt, the only question was how much it'd cost. A normal advance was deemed maybe unbearably expensive (but unbearable for who? The nation, the economy, or just the popularity of the government?), while nukes were a cheap alternative.
ITTL, they were unprepared but by the time of the nuke, they are clearly winning.