A Blunted Sickle - Thread II

Asian Jumbo

Monthly Donor
Would the rules on Surströmming be affected by the Swedish/Finnish Union? The Royal Ordinance of OTL 1949 would have only affected the Swedish part of the Union, but as far as I can tell, the Finnish fishermen would also bringing up the Baltic Herring. Could they process the fish in the same way the Swedes do and then sell it in Sweden prior to the beginning of August? It is
I was under the impression that “bringing it up” is the point of surstromming? A (the) feature, not a bug…
 
  1. The League of Nations is a dead letter, but some form of collaboration between the Entente powers is pretty much a given. I'm envisioning it as something of a cross between NATO, BENELUX and the European Coal & Steel Community, growing out of the wartime military and economic arrangements between the Entente powers which I suspect will prove hard to untangle.
The LoN was moribund in 1939, although by then it was just essentially the Entente + China (no Germany, Japan, USSR, Italy, USA). But OTL it handed over some organisations/responsibilities to the UN - e.g. colonial mandates; the International Labour Organisation which would be difficult to simply scrap. Someone will have to deal with the Palestine mandate. But yes, those deep European military and economic ties will likely turn into some form of organisation - Keynes, Monnet, Spaak, even Churchill might already be thinking about it.
 
Let me note that post-WW2 Germany was occupied for half a century, divided for as long and had about a quarter of its territory annexed permanently and depopulated. In comparison Versailles was a slap in the wrist. So arguably the lesson to be had from OTL is not that Germany was treated lightly in 1945, unlike 1918 and that's why it turned peaceful but rather the reverse, that it had not been treated harshly enough in 1918 to get the lesson to heart.
Germany was also formally occupied by the allied powers into the 1990s. I'm very cautious about taking lessons from future history however - that's a route to turn this into an X-wank. What I'm trying to do is figure out what lessons the people of the time would have taken from their history, and having them apply them. I **think** I'm doing OK.

Don't feel pressured by us.
Things are improving slightly. I managed to write a paragraph on armoured fighting vehicles of the 1960s yesterday - doesn't get any closer to an update, but at least it's writing. My brain has been much less scrambled over the past month or so which is helping a lot.

In case I haven't said this before, thanks for the great timeline and please don't feel pressured to add to it (although I think we would all be grateful).

A few comments on this (please feel free to ignore, and sorry if none of this is news to you)
1. I believe occupation costs were imposed in the aftermath of WW1 (could be wrong though) but that they were pretty minimal as the forces were mostly token (until the occupation of the Ruhr). They were eventually rolled into the whole ball of confusion about reparations and how much Germany had paid and should pay.
2. During the cold war Germany made payments to the UK and the US to offset the foreign exchange costs of the Anglo-US occupation/defence against the USSR. These were always highly contentious though as they needed German agreement.
3. One of the issues that massively divided the UK and France was reparations and the UK is unlikely to agree to reparations of any great duration
4. There was a Franco-German proposal after WW1 for the Germans to do the reconstruction of NE France (coal mines etc) as a form of reparation in kind. This would have avoided the transfer problem (how to change large quantities of marks raised through taxes into gold without Germany running a large export surplus to earn the gold). It was partly scuppered through British opposition (how would the UK get a share of these reparations?) This might get looked at again in this situation, especially if the UK doesn't have such large debts to the US to repay.
What I have in mind is that they would be able to use "occupation costs" for rather more than just direct occupying forces, provided they keep sufficient forces in Germany. These "occupation costs" would essentially be set at what the German defence budget would otherwise have been, and in return Germany is forbidden from having armed forces and the occupying powers will base forces in Germany to protect it and treat any attack on Germany as an attack on themselves. That gives them a strong incentive to keep the occupation going, since it would provide rather more money than it actually costs once Germany starts to work as a country again.
The cash transfer from Germany wouldn't be set to any particular cash value, but rather would be a small percentage of GDP - I'm guessing about 3% or so - and paid in Germany currency to ensure they can't cheat with inflation, etc.
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I'm thinking along the lines of 3% since it's the approximate peacetime military spending of the UK and France so is hardly an unreasonable cost of defence, and the Germans have been spending many times that for a decade now so can't claim it's unaffordable. If they can make Germany work as a country again, it's also worth shedloads of cash - in current day money it would be over $100 Billion. They're also assuming a long-term commitment, so ITTL would still be paying it right now.

In any post war settlements the Allies will first want to put hammer to head on Germany but more realistic heads will prevail and see a unified economically strong Germany is in their best interests but disarmed enough not to be a threat later on but still able to defend itself.
Whatever happens to Germany the same terms will apply to Austria as the won’t be seen ITTL as “Hittler’s First Victim” but as willing accomplices to the war.
After the German State Archive is secured the documents of the various agreements that Germany and Soviet Union had with each other will be published and the Soviet Union will be seen as enablers to Germany because without Soviet grain, raw materials, oil, and trucks, Germany could have never gone to war in the first place.
Also the extent of Soviet control over the various Communist Parties in other nations will be exposed and that will allow countries to suppress the Communist Party in their countries, plus with a look back at how much the KPD cooperated with the Nazis in the Reichstag before Hitler took power the KPD may be banned and any members that are in the Soviet Union at this time may not be allowed to return to Germany.
I agree with a fair bit of that, but not all:
  • Weimar Germany was supposed to be able to defend itself only. Look how well that turned out - and if the Entente get the archives they'll be well aware that Germany was trying to cheat on it from the get-go. At the moment I can't see Germany being allowed any armed forces at all, and I'm still debating whether or not the police will be permitted firearms or not.
  • The Austrians won't get away with the "first victim" mythology, but at the same time I think they'll still be treated rather differently. Treating them the same as Germany is only going to encourage a future Anschluss, and while I'm not convinced about the arguments for breaking up Germany they certainly aren't going to want it to grow. There are also regional actors who have their own influence - London and Paris aren't really in the driving seat nearly so much, particularly with the Hungarians already in Vienna.
  • Communist parties were already largely suppressed in Europe, and I don't see that changing. The main impact is that any affiliation or link with a communist party isn't going to be overlooked in the way it was in WW2 - so for instance Klaus Fuchs is still interned in Canada as an enemy alien, and Kim Philby is still working for the Times. That isn't just paranoia about Reds under the Bed - it's also a reflection of them being under much less pressure from Germany, so more able to check things out and when in doubt not recruit people.

Is there any way by which one can read OP's posts in sequence? There's no index here.
This story predates threadmarks by about 5 years!

The LoN was moribund in 1939, although by then it was just essentially the Entente + China (no Germany, Japan, USSR, Italy, USA). But OTL it handed over some organisations/responsibilities to the UN - e.g. colonial mandates; the International Labour Organisation which would be difficult to simply scrap. Someone will have to deal with the Palestine mandate. But yes, those deep European military and economic ties will likely turn into some form of organisation - Keynes, Monnet, Spaak, even Churchill might already be thinking about it.
The simplest answer for organisations like the ILO is probably to make them independent treaty organisations. The precedent for that is already there - the US joined the ILO on condition that it could do so without joining the League of Nations, for instance.
The Mandates will be a headache, but TBH they are going to be one whatever happens...
 

Ramontxo

Donor
Is there any way by which one can read OP's posts in sequence? There's no index here.
I know it is hard work reading it from the beginning (it took me several weeks) but you end liking the comments (and pdf27 answers) nearly as much as the updates
 
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That said, it would be nice if an abstract existed. After so many years, I tend to forget what happened earlier in the timeline. I wonder how the author copes with that problem himself.
 
At the moment I can't see Germany being allowed any armed forces at all, and I'm still debating whether or not the police will be permitted firearms or not.
Silly question, but what about hunters? In rural parts of Europe, it's a not insignificant part of the population. And if you have guys with guns on one side...
Doesn't mean it's anything more than a side arm though
 
Silly question, but what about hunters? In rural parts of Europe, it's a not insignificant part of the population. And if you have guys with guns on one side...
Doesn't mean it's anything more than a side arm though
If they cannot live without killing animals, they should learrn to use snares
 
That said, it would be nice if an abstract existed. After so many years, I tend to forget what happened earlier in the timeline. I wonder how the author copes with that problem himself.
Seconded, although that would be a big task in itself. But even a bullet-point type summary would be good.
 
If they cannot live without killing animals, they should learrn to use snare
It doesn't really work for deers, boars and wolves though.
I don't imagine they had many supermarkets for meat then and it might be a big part if protein intake for some population
 
It doesn't really work for deers, boars and wolves though.
I don't imagine they had many supermarkets for meat then and it might be a big part if protein intake for some population
Deers and boars, yeah, they would hunters to shoot them, but I dont think there are many wolves in Germany

They have butcher shops, ntm that small time farmers kept pigs and other animals for their own use back then.

For some population, as in single digit percents
 
Silly question, but what about hunters? In rural parts of Europe, it's a not insignificant part of the population. And if you have guys with guns on one side...
Doesn't mean it's anything more than a side arm though
What did the rules look like for civilians and guns for civilians in the UK at the time? Note, by *USAian* standards, *that* represents obscene levels of Gun control.

Note, a member of my wife's church grew up and spent a good chunk of his life in East Texas and *has* used an AR-15 style rifle for hunting. When the feral hogs can reach and exceed 150 kgs and can run faster than you, military grade weaponry isn't completely unreasonable. (And they are a completely invasive species, the environmentalists are out there cheering the hunters on) I'm not sure what species are found in Germany that get to that level (150kg and human speed).
 
What did the rules look like for civilians and guns for civilians in the UK at the time? Note, by *USAian* standards, *that* represents obscene levels of Gun control.

Note, a member of my wife's church grew up and spent a good chunk of his life in East Texas and *has* used an AR-15 style rifle for hunting. When the feral hogs can reach and exceed 150 kgs and can run faster than you, military grade weaponry isn't completely unreasonable. (And they are a completely invasive species, the environmentalists are out there cheering the hunters on) I'm not sure what species are found in Germany that get to that level (150kg and human speed).
Boar. But their population is controlled by hunters (and poachers) pretty well. In Poland in the thirties they had no protection whatsoever and their population was brought down to 16,000. In Germany it was extinct in many regions.
 
That said, it would be nice if an abstract existed. After so many years, I tend to forget what happened earlier in the timeline. I wonder how the author copes with that problem himself.
I have the whole thing as a Word document, and frequently re-check bits or relevant keywords against each other.

Silly question, but what about hunters? In rural parts of Europe, it's a not insignificant part of the population. And if you have guys with guns on one side...
Doesn't mean it's anything more than a side arm though
The problem isn't Germans having guns, it's <organised> Germans with guns. One guy with a gun isn't going to get many eyebrows raised, being a member of a hunting club is going to get you on all sorts of lists but is likely to be legal, while anything that even slightly sniffs of being a Freikorps is going to get a tank driven through their front door and have everybody arrested on the spot and detained forever more.

What did the rules look like for civilians and guns for civilians in the UK at the time? Note, by *USAian* standards, *that* represents obscene levels of Gun control.
Pre-1920 the laws were pretty loose: you had to be over the age of 14 and pay a 10 shilling tax at the post office if you wanted to take your gun anywhere. They were significantly tightened up in 1920 and then 1937 - you needed a license from the police to own a pistol or rifle, and self-defence wasn't allowed as a reason after 1937. Shotguns were still unregulated however.
 
Germany was also formally occupied by the allied powers into the 1990s. I'm very cautious about taking lessons from future history however - that's a route to turn this into an X-wank. What I'm trying to do is figure out what lessons the people of the time would have taken from their history, and having them apply them. I **think** I'm doing OK.




The simplest answer for organisations like the ILO is probably to make them independent treaty organisations. The precedent for that is already there - the US joined the ILO on condition that it could do so without joining the League of Nations, for instance.
The Mandates will be a headache, but TBH they are going to be one whatever happens...

A long occupation is the strongest argument against grabbing the Saar - why bother grabbing a chunk of territory when you've already got control of the whole thing?

OK, looks like I need to do some actual writing on an update before you guys get to the next stage and start talking about Surströmming.

My view (which is feeding into the writing, obviously) is that there are several major factors driving the Entente plans for after the war:
  1. Germany completely subverted Versailles, and tried the same thing again 20 years later. Whatever post-war settlement is adopted will be designed to be hard for the Germans to subvert and they won't be trusted to implement it.
  2. A major factor in the Germans being able to subvert Versailles - and launch the war that followed - was the British and French having different views on how to implement it. The French occupation of the Rhineland is a classic example of this, so any settlement will seek to avoid such flashpoints.
  3. Associated with this, I suspect a poor Germany is going to be seen as a problem - if you're planning on a long occupation (driven by #1 and #2), you need to make sure Germany is in a position to fund it and ideally ensure that the occupation isn't burdensome on you.
    Some sort of "occupation tax", to be paid in Germany currency as a percentage of GDP to the occupying powers - if they stop occupying, the money stops. Likely to be based off pre-war German military spending as a fraction of the economy.
  4. "Prussian Militarism" rather than Nazis or Reds under the Bed is likely to be the major bogeyman - ITTL I think Hitler is likely to be seen as more of a figurehead for the General Staff and less as the root cause of everything. Add in with no Japan or US joining in, this will be seen as much more of a replay of the Western Front, which will serve to emphasise certain WW1 attitudes/prejudices.
  5. "Population Transfer" won't cause anybody to blink after what the Germans have just got up to. If you're on the Deutsche Volksliste then unless you were also working actively for the resistance you're about to find yourself and all your family involuntarily moving house.
  6. They don't want the Poles starting a war with the Soviets, so they're going to get territorial compensation for their losses from Germany. At the same time, the German problem is heavily identified with Prussia (see #4) - so completely disposing of East Prussia by giving it to Poland without the population and eliminating the Junkers as a class by turning their tenants into factory workers spread across Germany is very attractive indeed. Handing over other bits of Germany, much less so.
  7. The League of Nations is a dead letter, but some form of collaboration between the Entente powers is pretty much a given. I'm envisioning it as something of a cross between NATO, BENELUX and the European Coal & Steel Community, growing out of the wartime military and economic arrangements between the Entente powers which I suspect will prove hard to untangle.

So far I think you have been doing a great job of trying to get into the thinking of people in your own timeline without necessarily doing a comparative. Many will say that the destruction in the Netherlands and France for instance isn't as bad in TTL as in OTL, but for the people in your timeline, they wouldn't know that. They would only know what they experienced. They won't have OTL to know that, it could have been a lot worse, and therefore we don't need to be as harsh on the Germans.

In terms of post war planning I think it would best to find the post-war plans of the French, British, Dutch, Belgians and Luxembourgers as they stood in OTL in 1939-1941 and then extrapolate from there. The 1944-1946 plans can be useful as some sort of guide, but using the earlier plans and building from there would be more organic.

On that note I would imagine that the French have every reason to want to annex the Saarland. In OTL they envisioned a long occupation of Germany (which happened in OTL) and separated the Saar officially from Germany and turned it into virtually a French protectorate. That goes against your question of "why bother grabbing a chunk of territory when you've already got control of the whole thing?" since in OTL the French saw no reason not to do both. Would they want to annex the entire Rhineland? Doubtful. But I suspect the Saar is small enough and symbolic enough that they will push for it and in ITTL not meet too much resistance from the other allies.
 
I have the whole thing as a Word document, and frequently re-check bits or relevant keywords against each other.


The problem isn't Germans having guns, it's <organised> Germans with guns. One guy with a gun isn't going to get many eyebrows raised, being a member of a hunting club is going to get you on all sorts of lists but is likely to be legal, while anything that even slightly sniffs of being a Freikorps is going to get a tank driven through their front door and have everybody arrested on the spot and detained forever more.


Pre-1920 the laws were pretty loose: you had to be over the age of 14 and pay a 10 shilling tax at the post office if you wanted to take your gun anywhere. They were significantly tightened up in 1920 and then 1937 - you needed a license from the police to own a pistol or rifle, and self-defence wasn't allowed as a reason after 1937. Shotguns were still unregulated however.
Except in NI where, to this day, the Home Secretary can sign you off for "concealed carry" of pistols (and I think technically anything up to an SMG but I'm not 100%) for self protection. I've a couple of family members from the wife's side who still have their police PPWs despite being long retired.
 
"Occupation costs and reparations"
It's your timeline so do what you like, but I don't see that as being a practical possibility for long. An ongoing, indefinite transfer of that magnitude is unprecedented and would run into exactly the transfer problem of WW1 reparations, while being higher than post WW1 reparations (as a % of GDP). As for the argument that German spent that much on defence so it is affordable, that ignores the nationalism issue and that spending money inside a country is fundamentally different from giving it to foreigners (money given to Germans leads to higher spending in the country and so higher incomes and tax revenue, money given to foreigners doesn't, or at least much less so). This is why Britain could repay its domestic war debts but not its much lower foreign debt, and Germany struggled to pay reparations despite the debt burden being much less than France or the UKs domestic war debt.

Aside from that I don't see anyone agreeing to it voluntarily for long after the war: if it is to suppress the Germans then the Germans won't agree to it and it seems unnecessarily large. If it is to defend the Germans then the Germans would prefer to do it themselves and it's unlikely the British or French would actually be willing to shed much blood in that cause, meaning it lacks credibility, which is critical for deterrence.

As I say though, it is your timeline and I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
 
I don't think Germany is likely to be divided into separate states, though it's certainly losing territory.

One thing that might be interesting is seeing what happens in Southern Germany once Austria regains independence; there's an outside possibility that you might see a movement in Bavaria that's in favour of secession from Germany (and possibly even unification with Austria) as a way of getting out from under the restrictions on 'Prussian' government.

I don't think it will be particularly strong, but I think it's arguably more likely than the French or British letting the Wittelsbachs set up shop in Munich again.
 
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