A Blunted Sickle - Thread II

Well there are still:
  • Graf Zeppelin - being used for timber storage in Gotenhafen as per OTL.
  • Lützow - tied up in Kiel, crew drafted into the Heer.
They can be thrown in to! Any Destroyers, Light Cruisers or Submarines available?
I don't think the issue of actually 'purchasing' them will come up. Reparations and all of that.
Not sure how expensive it would be to run them.

I don't think the British would object to the Netherlands getting them. At least not any surface ships. They are allies and they are not rivals. Would the French have any interest in obtaining them for themselves? I'm sure the three navies all have the same potential enemy in the Pacific in mind.
I think Lützow in particular would be very useful to the Netherlands - the combination of long cruising range and heavy armament would be ideal for the Pacific.
Though they would probably want to up the AA if possible.
And some extreme air conditioning.
 

RyoSaeba69

Banned
People keep thinking this is an X-wank timeline. It isn't.
2020 OTL France certainly has some issues with racism - but still, there is a major, huge difference with the 30's.

In the 30's, standard newspapers could make their headlines with overtly racist, insanely antisemit caricatures of Leon Blum or George Mandel with the classic "youpin" traits - big nose, pointy ears, yellow eyes, witch-like hands, and sitting on a pile of gold and money... and drinking baby blood, too, for good measure. Sickening. At least that kind of horror has become widely banned nowadays... any non-fringe publication doing that would end universally burned.

...also Roger Salengro suicide, after an awfully dirty press campaing against him - based on unfounded rumours he had deserted in WWI.

People complain from living in 2020. I use to think "go live in the 30's, knowing what will happen in May 1940 and over the next five years. Still complaining, afterwards ?"
(I realized recently, my grandmother was born on November 16, 1918 and my uncle, on May 19, 1940. At both ends of the Interbellum - 5 days after the 1918 armistice, and right in the middle of the 1940 quagmire: the exact day the panzers reached Abbeville, dooming France for good. Makes one thinks)
 
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All this talk of the disposition of the German Navy is entertaining to me considering I've recently been running into some of those ships in an MMO that makes some effort to be historically accurate. It's called "World of Warships", and the German Navy is well represented in it. You can run ships like the Graf Spee, Scharnhorst, Grosse Kurfurst, and Gneisenau; you can even run ships the Germans had plans for but never built, like the aircraft carrier Odin.

Despite limitations imposed by the need to make the game playable and balanced, the developers have done a pretty good job of capturing the strengths and weaknesses of national design styles. The German ships, as befits the strategic posture of the German Navy, excel at close-range brawling in narrow seas rather than long-range power projection. The game environment actually favors this, for interesting reasons that are related to how the game veers away from history.

Historically, most WWI and WWII fleet engagements took place in open ocean. WoW maps, by contrast, are almost all rather complex archipelagos that create lots of opportunities to sneak and shoot or to disengage by running behind a handy island. Has to be this way because the players aren't disciplined naval officers and don't have much interest in emulating historical formation tactics and command structures; thus, open-water battles tend to turn into chaotic slugging matches that aren't a lot of fun for anybody.

The ahistorical maps mean that German ships adapted for close-range engagement punch somewhat above their historical weight. Conversely, designs like the Iowa or Yamato meant to be standoff gun platforms in blue-water battles are a bit disadvantaged.

Personally, I haven't worked my way very far up the German tech tree yet. I've mostly been exploring the American battleship and cruiser likes - my best ship is the Iowa, which suits my playing style as I am good at coaxing the game's ballistic model into putting shots where I want them even at extreme long range. I am thus a sniper rather than a slugger. German ships don't have the gunlaying accuracy to do that; on the other hand, letting them close to their preferred engagement range tends to lead to....a vivid educational experience.
 
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I'm on the fence about the future political evolution of France. On the one hand, there will be no post-Vichy cleanup, nor will there be the resistance-forged consensus which critically held up in 1944 to allow some sweeping reforms. On the other hand, there won't be a strong PCF, which was a major pain in the back for the IVth republic, and the attraction of TTL "gaullism" - the idea of a sweeping reform of the State along, hm, "executive-favouring" lines - will be made weaker by the absence of a de Gaulle, precisely. And many of the drivers that OTL led to the reform of the State will be present: the reinforcement of the executive was well underway by 1939; and the war will have given a shot in the arm to the partisans of State intervention in the economy, like OTL.

I don't know if a post about that era's french politics is a good idea, feel free to skip if it's getting too long - but in a nutshell the problem is that OTL the war caused a temporary but drastic clarification of french politics, and that there is no easy answer to what other paths this clarification could have taken. Of the three major forces that dominated french politics in 1940 - the socialists, the "radicals" (centrists) and the new right around La Rocque - only the first had survived in 45, and having undergone a good deal of ideological transformation - and two new ones had risen: the Communists and the Christian-democrats. So, what of them ITTL?

1. The socialists
Before the war, the SFIO was marked by a degree of undecisiveness caused by the tension between the party's traditional/radical wing, which preached revolution and mistrust of the state, and its mainstream, which had embraced social-democracy in all but name. This was exemplified by Blum's rhetorics in 1936, explaining that the left had not "taken power" but was merely "exercising power", which meant that he unfortunately couldn't put into practice the proposals of the far-left. That said, the SFIO experienced the first really executive-led government in France in 1936, and some among them had really clear ideas about the future of the economy. OTL, the war led to a shift towards embracing humanist social-democracy among much of the leadership - exemplified by Blum's publication of À l'échelle humaine in 45, written in german prisons, where he conjured his fellow socialists to engage in democratic reform. But the pressure of the PCF on its left wing led to a backlash: post-46, the SFIO began coating its reformism in revolutionary rhetorics again.
TTL, my opinion is that the same evolution as OTL will more or less take place. During WW1, the experience of state interventionism in a war economy kickstarted many soc-dem ideas about interventionism; if I'm not mistaken, in WW2 it also gave credibility to Labour's plan. TTL, the SFIO will have been co-steering a de facto mixed economy for two years, will have had increased contacts with their Labour peers, won't have the PCF on their shoulder, so I strongly believe they will endorse the mantle of reformism with a clear-enough program. One point for stability.

2. The radicaux
Radicaux used to be radicals, but that was in the XIXth century. By 1940 they're basically a party of the small bourgeoisie which claims to defend left-wing value: their spirit is embodied by the idea of defending "les petits contre les gros", ie small (shopowners, landowners, businessowner) against big (industrialists, etc.). They kept a strong appeal both because of their comittment to the Republic and because there was no other party really defending the interests of the middle class, with the SFIO focussed on workers. Problems started to arise when their economic conservatism and their narrow understanding of the republic got in the way of genuine reform: they wanted neither strong state intervention, nor a strong executive... However, OTL they went a long way towards modernisation between 36 and 40, with the "young-turcs" of the party (that's really how they were called) gaining audience (cf. Reynaud) and Daladier embrassing Blum's ideas of executive-led parliamentarism. They were savagely crushed in the first elections after the Liberation because they had so strongly associated themselves with the IIIrd Republic, and had been in power in 1940.
TTL... I think a lot hinges on their capacity to renew themselves and clarify their position. After the war, they will certainly agree to a degree of reform - be it only because, well, the brunt of it has already taken place between 1936 and 1942, with stronger state intervention in the economy and a stronger executive. But they will certainly be crushed to some extent between the SFIO and the right, unless they manage to embrace a more liberal modernism than the SFIO - which demands they shed some of their conservatism, which I'm not sanguine about their odds of. OTL, their most brilliant postwar politician was Pierre Mendès France, who... well, didn't really prove up to the task.

3. The right
This one's a bit of a wild card.There has been much historical debate to know whether the cristallisation of the french right in 36 - 40 around La Rocque's PSF - which was the first really big french right-wing party - was the symptom of fascist infestation, or a forebearer of the christian-democrat party that would feature prominently in postwar french political life. The PSF was tainted by its ambiguous attitude under Vichy (ambiguous as in: we expected to be in government but aren't), and disappeared afterward. Without giving a definite answer, I'll simply remark that while the Vichy period was a catalyst for the right's swing towards moderation and the abandonment of antisemitism, there can be a similar if weaker evolution ITTL: pre-war, La Rocque had already moved a lot to distanciate himself from fascism and antisemitism, and one can expect the TTL events will have produced a similar effect.
The first question mark is whether they will have embraced the same ideals of social justice that the christ-dems embodied after 1945. I think there will be something of that: christian democracy in France didn't spring up from thin air. That said, they will be significantly more conservative than OTL christ-dems. The second question mark is about their commitment to republican institutions. OTL, there was a split within the right between the christ-dems, who supported the IVth republic, and the gaullists, who rejected it. TTL, I think this can only be avoided if there is a convincing degree of reform of the republic, since OTL the Right had been making calls for it since 1929 at least.

My personal opinion is that since a lot of the ideas and trends which drove the 1944 refundation of the republic were in place in 1940 and since the jolt of victory will be there as well to provide impetus, we would still end up with a reform at the end of the war: the PSF will be in favour of it, the SFIO probably if they can tie it to social reforms, and a part of the radicaux as well. I think we will have a reform of the republic that formalises the empowerment of the Président du Conseil, the prime minister, and gives a stronger role to the President of the Republic as well - something a bit like Auriol's activism OTL, but mayber stronger if the right get a say; tied in with a welfare package closely similar to OTL's one, and to all the same packages seen in western europe at the same time.
As well, french politics will be both more consensual and more conservative than OTL I believe. If reduced to the Hexagon, this "IIIrd republic and a half" could probably stand for a while...

... but the decolonisation will be a pain, probably even more than OTL.
 
I think Lützow in particular would be very useful to the Netherlands - the combination of long cruising range and heavy armament would be ideal for the Pacific.
Though they would probably want to up the AA if possible.
And some extreme air conditioning.
Funny you should mention the AA. One of the big differences between the Scharnhorst class and the last design the Netherlands had was to have one caliber of dual purpose secondary armament. They didn't think the Scharnhorst had good enough AA for the clear skies of the Java sea.

Extreme AC. Yea, I think the equator is pretty consistently warmer than the North Sea or the North Atlantic.
 
On Post War France, I think as discussed in the first thread that far right fifth columnists might be blamed for some of the worst defeats France suffered. An example of this was Georges Bonnet and Camille Chautemps being charged with treason for surrendering Paris without a fight

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Also on post war speculation. I'm curious about TTL's version of the five eyes. Considering the majority of members are dominions in the Commonwealth I think a similar group would likely to exist in TTL. The main question being who else outside of the UK and Dominions would be members.

Given the sharing of Bletchley Park intelligence with the French during the war I think France is likely to be a member ITTL especially with previous discussions about some blaming the war in the breakdown of Anglo-French relations in the post war period. Furthermore, Poland would likely be a member. As its intelligence agency did contribute to cracking enigma and for the immediate future would have a network in the USSR, even if limited to area held by Poland in the inter-war period.
 
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... but the decolonisation will be a pain, probably even more than OTL.
This will be true. Syria and Lebanon to start with. A French govt flush with victory is not likely to countenance independence. What happens will also depend what happens to the mandates - will the League of Nations continue, be replaced by another organisation that inherits the mandates as the UN did. If there’s no war in East Asia, France has no reason to think about immediate independence in IndoChina. And then Algeria - no Setif massacre. Would any government give French citizenship to Muslims?
 
This will be true. Syria and Lebanon to start with. A French govt flush with victory is not likely to countenance independence. What happens will also depend what happens to the mandates - will the League of Nations continue, be replaced by another organisation that inherits the mandates as the UN did. If there’s no war in East Asia, France has no reason to think about immediate independence in IndoChina. And then Algeria - no Setif massacre. Would any government give French citizenship to Muslims?
Muslims who had served in the military (and possibly the civil service) and displayed an appropriate degree of assimilation, maybe; there's the precedent set by the Senegalese tirailleurs. Otherwise, I doubt it.
 
They're likely to be welcome to them - pretty sure everyone else is either not interested or can't afford to run anything that big (Norway).
The Belgians can afford them, theoretically, but any pressures to build up their navy seem in the short run to be similar to OTL. And like OTL, the major friendly naval powers will be willing to be willing to give them obsolete ships.

The Portuguese might be an option, they haven't had to lean as far toward Neutrality to balance the Spanish the way that they did iOTL. And they also have East Indies lands to defend from the Japanese (East TImor).

Not sure on the Danes or the F/S Union, depends on how useful it would be in the cramped spaces of the Baltic.

The Americans *might* want one to study. Not sure what favors or money would be worth it for them to get it.

Another option are the Canadians/Australians/NZ (well maybe not NZ)
 
Also on post war speculation. I'm curious about TTL's version of the five eyes. Considering the majority of members are dominions in the Commonwealth I think a similar group would likely to exist in TTL. The main question being who else outside of the UK and Dominions would be members.

Given the sharing of Bletchley Park intelligence with the French during the war I think France is likely to be a member ITTL especially with previous discussions about some blaming the war in the breakdown of Anglo-French relations in the post war period. Furthermore, Poland would likely be a member. As its intelligence agency did contribute to cracking enigma and for the immediate future would have a network in the USSR, even if limited to area held by Poland in the inter-war period.
I would be amazed if Poland were a member, she was not exactly trustworthy pre-war (constant tech stealing, licensing disputes with everyone and the whole 'taking part in the Munich carve up on the German side' issue) and has very little to contribute right now. The pre-war work was very useful obviously, but that was then and you don't stay a great power if you are sentimental. There is also the issue of Polish-Japanese intelligence co-operation, bound by their mutual hatred of the Soviet Union they did work together very closely in the 30s. Given that any Five Eyes organisation will want to keep an eye on Japan this is another big concern.

I can see a small core group (UK, Dominions, France) sharing lots of intelligence with each other on global concerns, while the other nations like Poland are only shared some intel about their region. A lot of overlapping groups and some stressed UK and French analysts trying to work out who gets what, without over-sharing or sharing so little they get nothing back.
 
Funny you should mention the AA. One of the big differences between the Scharnhorst class and the last design the Netherlands had was to have one caliber of dual purpose secondary armament. They didn't think the Scharnhorst had good enough AA for the clear skies of the Java sea.

Extreme AC. Yea, I think the equator is pretty consistently warmer than the North Sea or the North Atlantic.
Can you remember what the Netherlands Scharnhorst was going to be called, or if they had a number designation? I'd like to look them up.
 
I'm not sure Norway would really want a Hipper class cruiser - they had a very large crew size (nearly twice that of the largest RN cruisers), which would be challenging for the Norwegian navy, and they would require expensive expansion of Navy docks.

The largest type of ship Norway would want would be light cruisers, tying into pre-war plans for a navy organised around coastal squadrons each made up of one light cruiser, one destroyer, and three torpedo boats/escort destroyers; the Norwegian pre-war building program of two destroyers and six Sleipner class 550 ton torpedo-boats ties into these plans. In @ these plans, while being continually refined by the Norwegian government in exile, did not survive the need to reconstruct Norway - that may well be the case in ABS, as well.

To my eye, the German ship types that would be most beneficial for Norway to receive as prizes would be M1935 minesweepers, submarines, S-boote (E-boats), R-boats, and some of their tenders (if the aviso Grille is seized in Norway, maybe she ends up as the new Norwegian royal yacht instead of MY Philante - or maybe not). I think for the main surface units - escorts, destroyers, cruisers (if any) - Norway would prefer units that are compatible with British equipment and logistics, although if there are German fleet torpedoboats within Norwegian waters, Norway may well want those.
 
This will be true. Syria and Lebanon to start with. A French govt flush with victory is not likely to countenance independence. What happens will also depend what happens to the mandates - will the League of Nations continue, be replaced by another organisation that inherits the mandates as the UN did. If there’s no war in East Asia, France has no reason to think about immediate independence in IndoChina. And then Algeria - no Setif massacre. Would any government give French citizenship to Muslims?

Syria is going to be a whole lot of fun.
The syrian national movement was well-established since at least 1918, and the french had been forced to allow a semi-independant political life in the 1920s, with an elected syrian parliament and presidency. In 1936, the Front Populaire government signed a treaty granting independance to Syria... But after Blum's downfall, the french government failed to present it to the Parliament for ratification, under pressure from the right. In 1939, the French insulted the Syrians by granting Antioch to Turkey; shortly after, with the outbreak of war, martial law was instated and the syrian national instances dissolved.

OTL, the results were unpleasant enough; TTL... There is no way in hell the Syrians won't demand independance right at the end of the war. Remember that the country has been running a parliamentary system for two decades at that point, that the French openly disregarded their nationalism (trying to foster separatisms all over the place and giving away part of their territory to their former opressors), and that France just lost the pretext for martial law that war was.
Sooner or later, matters are going to come to a head. Be it when syrian protesters demand the end of martial law, or when a new syrian parliament is elected, or when the new syrian government demands independance, there are going to be a dozen different occasions for french colonials to fuck up and try to quash this "dissent" with violence; given France's prewar record in dealing with Syria, I am very pessimistic that the French will be reasonable at each and every step of the independance process. That said, it is possible that TTL France will be slightly less violent than OTL: post-45 french ruthlessness in the region was in part fueled by a fear that the Brits were using the nationalist movements to oust them from the Middle East (talk about priorities & talk about acknowledging arab agency.), TTL imperial paranoïa won't completely disappear but will be weaker due to lack of a 1942 invasion. Moreover, a point that I have already touched upon is that it is possible that postwar France will be less obsessed with keeping its empire as the last vestige of its great power status, but that is far from certain.

Honestly, my best guess is that we are going to see in Syria something broadly similar to what happened in both Morocco and Tunisia OTL. In both countries, there was the same depressing sequence:
1. Local government makes reasonable proposal for independance, backed by reasonable french elements
2. Some prominent french idiot does something prominently idiotic like dissolving the local government, deposing the bey/sherif and pouring troops all over the capital; backed by the right in Paris, makes sure everyone will hate France post-independance by a measure of blind violence
3. A more reasonable government comes to power in Paris, realises that since the Tunisians/Moroccans are not going to back down and that we don't want a war, the only way out is giving them what they want - and France gets a slightly worse deal than she had in (1).

Of course, there is also the possibility that confrontation could escalate and make Syria France's TTL Indochina. But in my humble opinion, Syria lacks some key elements which led to OTL escalation in Indochina: the communist threat, the absence of a local governement, a strident need for prestige reasons to reinstate direct rule, and a nationalist opposition which was actually ok with going to war, all elements which led to the breakdown in negociations in Indochina. Trust the French to fuck up whatever they can tho

In all... this TL has motivated me to keep reading on decolonisation, good job pdf.

EDIT; having thought this a bit further through, I think a lot will depend on the relative timing of the military repression and of the coming to power of a left-wing government in France (which I think very likely to happen postwar). If a left-wing government comes to power quickly and grants independance swiftly, there's a chance bloodshed can be avoided and a path set for future independances. If, however, elections are long to come, or the government becomes embroiled in institutional reform for too long, or the military/colonialists act very quickly, then there is a possibility that the government will backtrack on a repression/escalation already in progress -- which could foster a myth of "betrayal" in the army similar to what happened post-Indochina OTL.
 
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To my eye, the German ship types that would be most beneficial for Norway to receive as prizes would be M1935 minesweepers, submarines, S-boote (E-boats), R-boats, and some of their tenders (if the aviso Grille is seized in Norway, maybe she ends up as the new Norwegian royal yacht instead of MY Philante - or maybe not). I think for the main surface units - escorts, destroyers, cruisers (if any) - Norway would prefer units that are compatible with British equipment and logistics, although if there are German fleet torpedoboats within Norwegian waters, Norway may well want those.

I think you're actually underestimating the utility of the torpedo boats!

Of course, it doesn't make either strategic or economic sense for Norway to field major surface vessels; they simply don't have the wealth, resources, or position to win a naval arms race with their larger neighbors - indeed, OTL they very sensibly don't float anything bigger than a heavy frigate. What makes sense for them is basically a coast-defense navy with some subs for interdiction of nearby chokepoints.

Torpedo boats fit this kind of posture well because of the geography of Norway's Atlantic Coast - all those fjords and barrier-island chains are an ideal environment for sneak-and-shoot by small, nimble shallow-draft ships. And they're cheap to buy and run, too, not requiring large crews.

So if I were a Norwegian naval planner I'd grab every German torpedo-boat capture I could get my lunch hooks on, and then see if I could talk the British into selling me their war prizes for cheap. Even if I have to do some retooling to build workalikes of German parts, that will certainly be less expensive than new hulls; one could probably field two dozen of these things for less than the cost of a new destroyer.
 
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