The Anglo/American - Nazi War - The on-going mystery

[Gokbay]

Was it really unneeded?

According to this:

Polish and Philippine forces seem to be gaining the upper hand against the rebels

I would say yes.


No need to murder a city when you can win conventionally.

But I suppose to A4 German lives are worth less than lives of other people. So they saved the lives of Peacekeepers who would have died in further conventional fighting and at the same time killed more Germans (both combatant and non-combatant) than the deaths that would occur from further conventional fighting.

 

[CalBear]

According to this:


I would say yes.


No need to murder a city when you can win conventionally.

But I suppose to A4 German lives are worth less than lives of other people. So they saved the lives of Peacekeepers who would have died in further conventional fighting and at the same time killed more Germans (both combatant and non-combatant) than the deaths that would occur from further conventional fighting.

A valid position. Of course even in a conventional house to house fight there would be considerable civilian casualties.

Then, of course, is the question left unasked but implied by the ever tricky author - Was this a one off, or was it meant to be much more until Stettin was obliterated.

Only the author knows and he isn't saying.

He is, however, very happy that this issue is finally getting kicked around.

 

[Jim Smitty]

According to this:


I would say yes.


No need to murder a city when you can win conventionally.

But I suppose to A4 German lives are worth less than lives of other people. So they saved the lives of Peacekeepers who would have died in further conventional fighting and at the same time killed more Germans (both combatant and non-combatant) than the deaths that would occur from further conventional fighting.

My take on Stettin being simply glassed by rods from the gods is the A4 decided to make a point.

While they could have won conventionally if they wanted to, the position I take is those in power have a bad case of PSTD. They were having flash backs to the Hot War of the 50s and 60s and decided to teach the Germans to stay the fuck down after asking if the nuking and bio weapon attacks weren't enough to keep them down. This is to make sure they don't ever get any ideas to do this again. IIRC Calbear had stated even if aliens invaded they wouldn't rearm the Germans to help in the fight.

 

[Interdimensional Nomad]

There're also two more scenarios, since (let's remember) the Cabal have set themselves a very hard task:

• The Cabal's biologists can't figure out how to make the racially-targeted plague their masters desire. The world putters along without the Next Big War. Maybe asteroid mining works; maybe it doesn't and the A4 need to figure out where to go with that.
• The Cabal's biologists can't figure out how to make the plague right, but they or their masters don't fully appreciate it. The Not-Quite-Plague gets released. How horrible this is depends on which way they got it wrong; at least we can hope the Cabal themselves are among the dead.

I strongly doubt the Chinese leadership would ever be able to make a racially targeted disease that works within the parameters they want it to work in. Especially given that their definition of "racially Chinese" was confirmed to be pretty arbitrary. Not that I can't believe they would go this route; dictatorships, especially racially motivated ones like theirs, do tend to be very hard-headed and set in their ideology (just like the Nazis constantly making things harder for themselves for arbitrary reasons in this very TL). If they continue going this route, I imagine they'll eventually be forced to give up since something in their political system will have to give sooner or later.

On the other hand, how long is it gonna be before someone in the Cabal suggests that a better course of action might be to develop an extremely and indiscriminately deadly disease (which would be way easier to develop), and then develop a vaccine against it to be distributed only to China's population (or at least the part of the population that they want to survive)? Seems like the logical course of action at least, and the Cabal, despite their rigid ideology, seem to have a certain pragmatic streak at times. If this happens (god forbid), I hope it at least happens after self-sufficient Lunar and undersea colonies are built, so freedom can live on somewhere.

Either way, I certainly do hope they fail; the 21st century in the AANW-verse actually seems to be looking up for the world at large, as long as the A4 and India can keep on trucking. The German states are, if still on a short leash, at least developing a good standard of living, and their people enjoy a good degree of personal freedom. France is moving towards joining the UN and seems to be growing economically (hopefully they can finally get around to rebuilding Paris). The world as a whole will probably suffer a whole lot less from climate change than OTL. If I lived there, I'd certainly be more confident about living through the coming decades than here (not least because the average A4 citizen has no idea what China is up to). And yet there's the constant threat that China could tear it all down within the century.

 

[brooklyn99]

Was it really unneeded?

Let's review

1. Prussian Uprising begins on April 11th with carefully planned attacks on Polish occupation forces. 2. Rebels are found to be using weapons originating in China, although tracing their movement from Asia to Stettin proves to be impossible. 3. After five days of fighting, as Polish and Philippine forces seem to be gaining the upper hand against the rebels, all Treaty troops suddenly withdraw from Stettin at sunset on April 16th.

1, Carefully planned attack (i.e. professional) attack against Peacekeeping troops (who actually function more like a U.S. State Patrol or State Police primarily, but not exclusively aimed at ensure the Treaty prohibitions on Weapons and weapon tech are being followed, while also serving as a "heavy SWAT" team for local police in case of bank robberies or hostage situations). The Poles, especially, are good, their forces rotate between working in the Statelets and as peacekeepers as requested through the UN elsewhere, including on the Chinese/Korean Border. Despite that they were taken completely by surprise attacks against multiple locations across the entire region.

2. The rebels were not using WW II surplus weapons or double barreled hunting shotguns and bamboo spears. They were using thoroughly modern weapons including a lot heavier gear than a few assault rifles, that match the standard issue of Chinese forces (which are very similar to Soviet weapons). There is no reasonable explanation for how the weapons made their way to the Stettin area that doesn't include serious, high level, smuggling. There is also no really reasonable explanation for how men and women who should never have any practical knowledge of using militarily quality weapons simply by watching TV.

3. These supposed amateur untrained, poorly led rebels fought what amouned to a BRIGADE of combat veterans ( equipped with, drones, LAV, Helicopters, and access to real-time satellite intel to a standstill for FIVE DAYS


This wasn't some college kids tossing rocks. It was WAY beyond that.

It wasn't even the Muj in Afghanistan. Closer to Hezbollah without artillery and armor. How would that look to SACEUR? How would his report be seen by the A4 Command Council?

Who was behind it? I never said, not going to now. Does seem really unlikely that it was cooked up by a few Poli-sci Grad Students over some cheap booze and some weed.

The German Statelets are prevented for producing weapons and dual use tech. Full Stop. They are solid economies, yes they have to pay reparartions, guess what, their predecessors burned Europe to the ground. Even then the Reparations are far from onerous, by GDP they are actually lower than either the FRG and GDR spent on Defense during the Cold War. There is no conscription in the German Statelets, overall spending on police service are a fraction of OTL, Are the various German statelets utterly prohibited from forming a larger pan-Germanic state? Yep. The A4 looked at World History between 1870 and 1960 and decided that three times was enough, especially since it was more than likely that the next time would be an Extinction Level Event. Not sure exactly how far that goes into oppression or, especially, maltreatment, but it is very real.

The insurgents of Fallujah weren't armed with that sort of primitive weaponry either and they were fighting against a division worth of US troops for over a month. Yet in those circumstances, the top brass didn't consider just dropping a nuke on the city and be done with it. tactical unnecessity aside, it would've probably also been recognized as grossly, morally reprehensible by the public. Even the most questionable conduct like the use of white phosphorous was directed against enemy positions. In all, "just "under a thousand civilian Iraqis died in the second battle of Fallujah, which the coalition won.

I believe that barring circumstances of total war (even then, within reason), morality ought to take precedence over ruthless pragmatism in conflicts, specifically when a great deal of civilian lives are at stake. So yes, mass murdering over 100,000 innocents(which probably would've also meant a fairly sizeable % of whatever statelet Stettin was located in, not to mention economic repercussions that would've been burdened on said statelet) was really unneeded.

What were the casualties in those five days of engagement anyway? Because it doesn't seem like the rebels were pulling a Stalingrad, dragging the peacekeeper force through the grinder that they just had to resort to such catastrophic measures.

 

[CalBear]

The insurgents of Fallujah weren't armed with that sort of primitive weaponry either and they were fighting against a division worth of US troops for over a month. Yet in those circumstances, the top brass didn't consider just dropping a nuke on the city and be done with it. tactical unnecessity aside, it would've probably also been recognized as grossly, morally reprehensible by the public. Even the most questionable conduct like the use of white phosphorous was directed against enemy positions. In all, "just "under a thousand civilian Iraqis died in the second battle of Fallujah, which the coalition won.

I believe that barring circumstances of total war (even then, within reason), morality ought to take precedence over ruthless pragmatism in conflicts, specifically when a great deal of civilian lives are at stake. So yes, mass murdering over 100,000 innocents(which probably would've also meant a fairly sizeable % of whatever statelet Stettin was located in, not to mention economic repercussions that would've been burdened on said statelet) was really unneeded.

What were the casualties in those five days of engagement anyway? Because it doesn't seem like the rebels were pulling a Stalingrad, dragging the peacekeeper force through the grinder that they just had to resort to such catastrophic measures.

Of course they didn't even give it any consideration.

That is sort of the point. When you stare into the Abyss and the Abyss stares back you are changed. The people of the ATL saw the Abyss staring back and punched it in the face, then dragged it behind the building and beat it with a 2x4. The world is changed The countries are still Australia and Canada and India and Japan etc. they are, broadly, the countries we all recognize, but they are not OTL's countries. They are not the guys in the White Hats. There are no White Hats. They are the guys who defeated Evil incarnate, by being less evil, and the decided that making sure that they didn't have to drag the Abyss 'round back again, and maybe lose the whole damned house in the attempt, we not going to allow 190 million people to have died for no reason at all.

Yes, the A4, including the United States (using a U.S. launch facility on Luna) destroyed Stettin, killing more than a quarter million people. On the other hand the U.S. did not fight a war in Vietnam which saw a total of over two million deaths (on all sides), didn't fight the Gulf War (50,000 KIA), or Iraq 2003 (90,000 KIA on all sides) or Afghanistan or have to support Far Right dictators (who killed thousands of their own citizens) to "prevent the spread of Communism". The ATL version of the U.S. would puke reading this last couple sentences; millions dead, for no damned reason at all.

There was no Iran/Iraq War (1.2-1.5M dead), None of the territorial Wars in Africa (no Biafra with its million+ deaths.happened. None of the three Indo-Pakistani Wars happened. No Bangladesh War. The List goes on and on and on. ATL, there is no long list.

The A4 are not the good guys in this story, as far as good guys go, the closest thing we have is India (who, to be clear, would have been more than happy to have been part of an A5, if the other major Allied powers hadn't been dicks about the whole Nuclear Weapons thing). The entire time line is a dystopia, the post war section is a semi-hopeful possible future written starting from a European Continent that had been poisoned and burned to the ground.

There are no Unicorns, and not all that many rainbows to be had.

 

[Whiteshore]

What about the question of the death tall during the five days of conflict before the Stettin rebels got destroyed (along with the rest of the city)?

 

[Brahman]

Could Jinnah, if he had lived long enough, turn Pakistan into a functioning nation, or is Pakistan a nation that was broken from the moment of conception?

Nope, he himself was something of a soft Islamist, it would not have happened, instead Pakistan could have develop if Ayub Khan did not declare war on India in 1965 and just choose to develop the nation, because Pakistan was doing pretty well due to the war

 

[Bookmark1995]

Nope, he himself was something of a soft Islamist, it would not have happened, instead Pakistan could have develop if Ayub Khan did not declare war on India in 1965 and just choose to develop the nation, because Pakistan was doing pretty well due to the war

I don't understand. Was Pakistan's descent into fundamentalist madness inevitable, or were there several turning points when it could've avoided that?

 

[Brahman]

I really feel people have a very narrow view when they say this world is worse than our world

If you ask anyone in Africa, Asia, Latin America, anywhere but Europe and China, they would absolutely agree that A4 had provided them with safety and security as well as help them develop economically

I mean think about it, even today we have countless brutal and horrific conflicts in Middle east, Africa, Latin America etc, for them, this world would be a heaven compared to our world

 

[Brahman]

I don't understand. Was Pakistan's descent into fundamentalist madness inevitable, or were there several turning points when it could've avoided that?

Pakistan's creation was based on the fact muslims were different than non muslims, even the first law minister, who was a Hindu, left the country realizing the rising Islamism. The only thing that could have prevented Pakistan being an full blown Islamist country is by having it develop much faster

 

[Captain Homicide]

Besides less conflict and warfare I’m sure there’s a lot less poverty and preventable deaths from starvation, disease etc compared to OTL.

 

[Emperor of Pennsylvania]

preventable deaths from starvation, disease etc compared to OTL.

There are fewer deaths from disease, for now. That's an important specification

There're also two more scenarios, since (let's remember) the Cabal have set themselves a very hard task:

• The Cabal's biologists can't figure out how to make the racially-targeted plague their masters desire. The world putters along without the Next Big War. Maybe asteroid mining works; maybe it doesn't and the A4 need to figure out where to go with that.
• The Cabal's biologists can't figure out how to make the plague right, but they or their masters don't fully appreciate it. The Not-Quite-Plague gets released. How horrible this is depends on which way they got it wrong; at least we can hope the Cabal themselves are among the dead.

The second option seems more plausible than the first. Remember the Soviet disease outbreak from 2015 and how that was implied to be the work of the Cabal?

If that really was true, then that would suggest that the Cabal has gotten so confident in their bioweapons capabilities that they are already testing their weapons on the rest of the world.

I strongly doubt the Chinese leadership would ever be able to make a racially targeted disease that works within the parameters they want it to work in.

Well, a disease that reliably kills 100 percent of non-Chinese people while leaving 100 percent of Chinese people unharmed is implausible, obviously.

But the Cabal wouldn't need a virus that powerful and specific to "win" by making the world majority Han and destroying the A4 while also retaining some political power over the survivors in China.

On the other hand, how long is it gonna be before someone in the Cabal suggests that a better course of action might be to develop an extremely and indiscriminately deadly disease (which would be way easier to develop), and then develop a vaccine against it to be distributed only to China's population (or at least the part of the population that they want to survive)?

That might be more likely than you would think. The Cabal has already deemed a vast percentage of its population to be "acceptable casualties."

 

[Captain Homicide]

I would like to read a TL where China gets destroyed by the A4 after the Cabal’s bioweapon kills a significant percentage of the world population, all hell breaks loose globally and the A4 desperately tries to pick up the pieces and return things to the status quo.

 

[Emperor of Pennsylvania]

I would like to read a TL where China gets destroyed by the A4 after the Cabal’s bioweapon kills a significant percentage of the world population, all hell breaks loose globally and the A4 desperately tries to pick up the pieces and return things to the status quo.

I once jokingly thought that Station Eleven was actually a sequel to the Anglo American Nazi War, with Georgia being unlucky enough to be the spot where the Cabal released their ULTIMATE WEAPON.

 

[Bbone91]

I would like to read a TL where China gets destroyed by the A4 after the Cabal’s bioweapon kills a significant percentage of the world population, all hell breaks loose globally and the A4 desperately tries to pick up the pieces and return things to the status quo.

I’d rather read a chapter where a disgruntled scientist unleashes the virus on the Cabal, destroys the labs working on it, then goes to the A4 or India to inform them of what’s going on.

 

[brooklyn99]

That is sort of the point. When you stare into the Abyss and the Abyss stares back you are changed. The people of the ATL saw the Abyss staring back and punched it in the face, then dragged it behind the building and beat it with a 2x4. The world is changed The countries are still Australia and Canada and India and Japan etc. they are, broadly, the countries we all recognize, but they are not OTL's countries. They are not the guys in the White Hats. There are no White Hats. They are the guys who defeated Evil incarnate, by being less evil, and the decided that making sure that they didn't have to drag the Abyss 'round back again, and maybe lose the whole damned house in the attempt, we not going to allow 190 million people to have died for no reason at all.

In the old and new thread, I have seen this argument parroted that Nazism's death toll mean that the A4 are rationalized in their actions, at least from the A4's POV. Now and then, I never find myself to be convinced and am very confident that I never will. Because it's not like the alternative outcome to the A4 practicing basic restraint and not callously dropping that superweapon to win a battle that they were already winning, dooming thousands of non-combatants, would be the rebels instantly turning the tables around and doing the Vlad Tepes challenge on everyone ( I find the Stettin rebels the more sympathizing side, as they were sovereigntists who wanted freedom from the A4's debilitating yoke, rather than neo-nazis looking to build a 4th reich). That much should be obvious to any amateur analyst in the A4 not diseased with copious Germanophobia. At this point, I have come to see that the memory of 190 million souls have become more of a flimsy pretext for the A4 (and perhaps a number of users on this forum) to excuse their unignorable excesses rather than an actually noble, moral obligation.

Yes, the A4, including the United States (using a U.S. launch facility on Luna) destroyed Stettin, killing more than a quarter million people. On the other hand the U.S. did not fight a war in Vietnam which saw a total of over two million deaths (on all sides), didn't fight the Gulf War (50,000 KIA), or Iraq 2003 (90,000 KIA on all sides) or Afghanistan or have to support Far Right dictators (who killed thousands of their own citizens) to "prevent the spread of Communism". The ATL version of the U.S. would puke reading this last couple sentences; millions dead, for no damned reason at all.

There was no Iran/Iraq War (1.2-1.5M dead), None of the territorial Wars in Africa (no Biafra with its million+ deaths.happened. None of the three Indo-Pakistani Wars happened. No Bangladesh War. The List goes on and on and on. ATL, there is no long list.

There are many quotes regarding how one terrible deed is enough to wash away all the good. Hypothetically how would you feel if say, hard evidence was to be discovered that Mr Rogers had at one time brutally tortured and murdered a child in secret?

 

[Captain Homicide]

I’d rather read a chapter where a disgruntled scientist unleashes the virus on the Cabal, destroys the labs working on it, then goes to the A4 or India to inform them of what’s going on.

That would good too though the scientist would be killing large numbers of his fellow citizens, friends and family.

 

[CalBear]

In the old and new thread, I have seen this argument parroted that Nazism's death toll mean that the A4 are rationalized in their actions, at least from the A4's POV. Now and then, I never find myself to be convinced and am very confident that I never will. Because it's not like the alternative outcome to the A4 practicing basic restraint and not callously dropping that superweapon to win a battle that they were already winning, dooming thousands of non-combatants, would be the rebels instantly turning the tables around and doing the Vlad Tepes challenge on everyone ( I find the Stettin rebels the more sympathizing side, as they were sovereigntists who wanted freedom from the A4's debilitating yoke, rather than neo-nazis looking to build a 4th reich). That much should be obvious to any amateur analyst in the A4 not diseased with copious Germanophobia. At this point, I have come to see that the memory of 190 million souls have become more of a flimsy pretext for the A4 (and perhaps a number of users on this forum) to excuse their unignorable excesses rather than an actually noble, moral obligation.


There are many quotes regarding how one terrible deed is enough to wash away all the good. Hypothetically how would you feel if say, hard evidence was to be discovered that Mr Rogers had at one time brutally tortured and murdered a child in secret?

I don't really disagree with any of this.

The A4 simply is what it is. It is based on what I believe could be a very possible, even likely, reaction to the War as shown in the overall T/L. The A4 is the result of what is best described as a collective case of PTSD. Others may disagree.

 

[brooklyn99]

I would like to read a TL where China gets destroyed by the A4 after the Cabal’s bioweapon kills a significant percentage of the world population, all hell breaks loose globally and the A4 desperately tries to pick up the pieces and return things to the status quo.

Admittedly, just as a matter to indulge in catharsis factor through power fantasy. I would love to read an A4 screw. Something like this. Where the A4 are ISOTed to a world with a more equitable balance of power, are unable to utilize their rods of god, then knocked from their pedestal and made to eat shit.