A Blunted Sickle - Thread II

There's a very simple answer to that - rapid mobility. In OTL, this was one of the driving forces behind Sandystorm - the UK couldn't afford the big conventional forces needed by the existing strategy. To his eternal credit, Mountbatten realised this - he offered Marines and Carriers for East of Suez duties, a "cheaper" alternative to the V-force, and to scrap the rest. The other two services went in trying to do business as usual, and got cut off at the knees.

ITTL, things are slightly different - they've got a lot more money, but the manpower constraints are if anything tighter (bigger economy and full employment hitting earlier) and they've got an even more widespread set of commitments. I think that means an earlier move to air mobility instead of sea mobility, and the V.1000 was also intended to do double-duty as a tanker for the V-force which would be a critical requirement ITTL since the Soviets aren't the only peer threat. So I think we'll end up with something like this in significant numbers, a relatively small professional army and lots of nuclear weapons to make up for the size of the army if they ever have to fight a peer competitor.

View attachment 615366
The British, depending on how decolonisation in Africa goes, might end up going for what was suggested in OTL and replacing the British Indian Army with a British African Army, which might push the problem into the 1960's/1970's.
 
At this point has the Pacific War been entirely butterflied? Does this mean going into the post-war period, Britain is going to see the USA as a rival power rather than an ally?

Also, what’s the likelihood of this timeline‘s Franco-British Union morphing into a British dominated European Union once they are done rearranging Post-Nazi Europe?
Whether there will be a Pacific War (In this case defined as either a full State of War between Japan and the UK or between Japan and the USA) is still up in the air according to the author (at least as of a few months ago). He has indicated that the IJN doesn't even think it would work in the short term between the UK being completely *undistracted" *and* not having control of FIC. My Guess is that if the IJN "rolls well", then they might manage to keep a fleet in being after the big fight in the South China sea, but it would leave the IJN massively inferior to the USN. (In short, they *might* be able to take on *one* of the US and UK, but that would leave them *completely* vulnerable to the other and perhaps not even have enough Navy to take the Dutch Oil, which is the real prize. (Frankly at this point, I expect that the IJN would find it easier to fight the IJA than the RN and the author is considering *that* as well).

Presuming no Pacific War, there will essentially be 5 Great Powers over the next decade or so:
Entente
USA
Italy
Japan
USSR.

While Italy and Japan lack any area that they clash and a common dislike for the USSR, I think the Italians know that if Italy and Japan declare war on the Entente together, the Italians would be first to fall. (As far as I can tell, there is *no* area of the Italian Military were their army is superior to the French army or the Italian Navy is superior to the British Navy.

As for the US and the Entente, they really don't have that many areas politically where they clash. The primary place they would clash would be economic, *especially* if the British and French empires are on the inside of the economic areas. The primary issues is the following chain...

USA --- Canada --- UK --- France.

OTL Post war all of these tarriff barriers were low to keep the free world together. The question is, iTTL by say 1955, which of the barriers are high and which are low?

Also, it would *probably* be more France dominating Western Europe, depends on how well their govermental structure changes. The British can probably make it all the way to the 21st century without changing theirs. The French, probably not.

(Not sure on the major differences in British Political structure between 1935 and 2015, but they are several orders of magnitude smaller than the French changes.)
 
(Not sure on the major differences in British Political structure between 1935 and 2015, but they are several orders of magnitude smaller than the French changes.)
OTL? Fairly small, and many boil down to formalizing things that were already basically in place. Off the top of my head:
- The House of Lords is far less important. Most hereditary and religious Lords are out, with only a representative few remaining, and life peerages dominate now. The Law Lords have been moved out to a separate Supreme Court. And their power to block legislation from the Commons was cut back even further, to only a six month speed bump, by the Parliament Act 1949.
- The last of the weird specialized constituencies are gone - there's no more university MPs, for example. That fully equalized voting rights for everyone.
- If 2015 is your endpoint, the EU is obviously quite noteworthy. But from the perspective of 2021, that's less of an issue.
- [Edit] As stated below, devolution of powers from Westminster to subsidiary governments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
 
Last edited:
Hm, it seems to me that the idea that the British political system hasn’t changed much since the war is only plausible if you conflate « British » with « Westminster ». Sure, the way the London government operates internally is broadly the same as you outlined, but its place within the broader UK Union State has radically changed, especially in the 80s. The London government is still the heart of a centralised State, but this State is *England*, no longer the UK. It must now compose with limitations of its power by constituent nations of the UK, and also by the looming presence of the EU power & legal order. Almost each word of this last sentence - limitations of the parliament’s power, an overarching legal order, autonomous nations within the UK, etc., would have been undiluted iconoclasm in 45. I also take issue with your notion that the EU’s influence on British internal politics eventually disappears post-2015. In all, the notion that « nothing has changed » is an english myth more than the British reality, imho.
 
Last edited:
Crap, devolution. (I was worried I might be forgetting something.) Yes, that one might be the biggest change of the lot up to 2015, and definitely the biggest change up to 2021.

And while the EU's informal influence will linger for quite a while, its formal role in British governance is at this point not much larger than that of an important treaty. Still noteworthy, but no longer the first thing you'd tell the ghost of Stanley Baldwin or Ramsay MacDonald. Now Holyrood, Stormont, and the Senedd are at the top of that list.
 
Last edited:
Crap, devolution. (I was worried I might be forgetting something.) Yes, that one might be the biggest change of the lot up to 2015, and definitely the biggest change up to 2021.

And while the EU's informal influence will linger for quite a while, its formal role in British governance is at this point not much larger than that of an important treaty. Still noteworthy, but no longer the first thing you'd tell the ghost of Stanley Baldwin or Ramsay MacDonald. Now Holyrood, Stormont, and the Senedd are at the top of that list.
Stormont, at least, they'd have no trouble with, or at least no more trouble than is inevitable with Stormont. The Good Friday Agreement stuff, not so much.
 
Stormont, at least, they'd have no trouble with, or at least no more trouble than is inevitable with Stormont. The Good Friday Agreement stuff, not so much.
Maybe not that much. The Partition was not meant to be permanent and all-Ireland co-operation in many fields. Just never happened due to ill feelings and political intransigence on both sides.
 
OTL? Fairly small, and many boil down to formalizing things that were already basically in place. Off the top of my head:
- The House of Lords is far less important. Most hereditary and religious Lords are out, with only a representative few remaining, and life peerages dominate now. The Law Lords have been moved out to a separate Supreme Court. And their power to block legislation from the Commons was cut back even further, to only a six month speed bump, by the Parliament Act 1949.
- The last of the weird specialized constituencies are gone - there's no more university MPs, for example. That fully equalized voting rights for everyone.
- If 2015 is your endpoint, the EU is obviously quite noteworthy. But from the perspective of 2021, that's less of an issue.
- [Edit] As stated below, devolution of powers from Westminster to subsidiary governments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Was the Parliament Act of 1949 likely to happen in a Britain which is feeling good about itself, or is it more or less inevitable at some point by 1960 (Presumably with Labor in charge)
When did the last of the specialized constituencies go away? (that seems like something that would happen iTTL as well.

The Entente alliance will somewhat take the place of the EU with the Brits as one of the Pillars, so *extremely* unlikely to leave.

Devolution, OTOH, I have *no* idea how that plays out. As for Canada, the France/Quebec relationship is likely to be different.
 
A thought, iTTL Catholics in Northern Ireland or those in Ireland who support them might have a ready source of funding and equipment: Italy. While I doubt that Mussolini would lower himself to that (any sort of shenaningans similar to that by Mussolini would be in the Balkans, or North/East Africa), if the successor to Italy was someone less "full of himself", the discovery of Italian equipment in Northern Ireland could make things ugly between the Entente alliance and Italy.
 
Huh. I wonder, what are the Himalayan hermit kingdoms of Bhutan and Nepal doing ittl? They aren't called the secret allies of the Burmese front for nothing. Thousands of Nepalese and Bhutanese soldiers died protecting the British Burmese territories. The Royal Nepalese Army and Royal Bhutanese Army played a massive role in the Battle of Imphal otl.
 
Thinking about the world post war, where would the US and the Entente be most likely be on different sides on a proxy war? Persia? China?
 
Thinking about the world post war, where would the US and the Entente be most likely be on different sides on a proxy war? Persia? China?
I'd very much doubt it in china. Who would the entente support that the US wouldn't? AFAIK both will be pretty happy to stomp the PLA into the ground.
 
Thinking about the world post war, where would the US and the Entente be most likely be on different sides on a proxy war? Persia? China?

I'd very much doubt it in china. Who would the entente support that the US wouldn't? AFAIK both will be pretty happy to stomp the PLA into the ground.
South America or Africa would be the most likely candidates. South America if the Entente was allied to one nation and the US to another, e.g. Chile & Argentina. Africa if the US decided to back an independence movement. The Middle East over oil resources is a possibility. But the Soviet Union would still be a player ITTL as well.
 
Thinking about the world post war, where would the US and the Entente be most likely be on different sides on a proxy war? Persia? China?
I'd very much doubt it in china. Who would the entente support that the US wouldn't? AFAIK both will be pretty happy to stomp the PLA into the ground.
South America or Africa would be the most likely candidates. South America if the Entente was allied to one nation and the US to another, e.g. Chile & Argentina. Africa if the US decided to back an independence movement. The Middle East over oil resources is a possibility. But the Soviet Union would still be a player ITTL as well.


I think that if an Abadan Crisis were to happen the US would be more sympathetic with the Iranians TTL. The US did agree to 50-50 deal on profit sharing from the Arabian Oil Company that the British tried resisting with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company prior to nationalisation becoming popular in Iran.

While the US probably would not support nationalisation it would be sympathetic of a 50-50 split.
 
Last edited:
a future Abadan Crisis could maybe see the French also having something to say about it in this timeline as they are likely to still be in Syria and Lebanon, even if its just supporting Britain.

The one that is going to be really interesting is if there is a potential Suez Crisis because you could see the Entente deciding it is a big enough threat to their members territory of the French Metropole in Algeria or Syria/Lebanon that it triggers some sort of war clause in the Entente.
 
9th January 1942

In the north of Germany, 1st Army continues its rapid advance. The troops occupying the Baltic coast have now reached Köslin, while those who have crossed over into Poland have crossed the river Warta either side of Poznań and are advancing towards East Prussia as fast as they can. This advance is by now something close to a road march – the area has a mere handful of German die-hards left who are barely even able to slow the advancing troops down while the break in the weather has allowed the RAF to fly in significantly more petrol and even small drop quantities of it by parachute. This uses an adaption of the A Mark II parachute mine, with the mine body replaced by a 100 gallon petrol tank which uses a balsa-wood crate on the nose to cushion the shock of impact.

Fighting continues in the Berlin suburbs – I Corps is making gradual progress, with the rate mostly constrained by priority for supply being given to II and III corps. This means that only limited fire support can be made available, and the natural reluctance to be the last person killed in a war that has clearly been won means that attacks are rarely pressed home. The German troops – while armed with little more than small-arms ammunition – are suffering far less from desertion than other units elsewhere. As a result of this they are able to put up stiff resistance in the absence of British tanks and artillery, although they tend to fold rapidly when this is available.

With little or no prospect of being able to spare substantial forces to reduce the remaining German forces in much of Poland for some weeks yet, the Whirlwind and Auster liaison aircraft from the British 2nd and 4th armies are deployed to Poland in order to provide the ZWZ with a rudimentary forward air control capability. To achieve this the normal RA FOO is replaced by an RAF FAC. While this is nothing like as capable as what the RAF can provide to the British Army, it should enable them to use medium bombers in direct support of pre-planned Polish operations against German hold-outs.

The French Seventh Army (Giraud) completes the elimination of the German pockets in front of them. In the process they capture two Army headquarters (6th at Marburg and 2nd Panzer at Jena) as well as OB West at Schloss Osterstein, just outside Gera. They face very limited resistance in the process, with even the most senior officers seeming to be in shock at the completeness with which the German Army has collapsed on the battlefield in the past few weeks.

After several days of preparation to re-open the railway, Czechoslovak Army runs enough trains into the Wilson, Masaryk and Nusle-Vršovice Stations in Prague to deliver a divison before dawn, with strong support from the ÚVOD to ensure the Germans do not become aware of them. By the time fighting starts just after 7am the Germans are heavily outnumbered on the east bank of the Vltava and are unable to prevent follow-on trains arriving during the day.

Meanwhile (and following on from a political directive to allow the Czechoslovak forces to liberate their own capital), further west Prioux and Ritche make contact at Pilsen, occupying the town without firing a shot. This occupation degenerates into a massive party later in the afternoon, after the Měšťanský pivovar brewery throws its doors open to the newly arrived troops. While the beer is a pale imitation of what it made before the war, the troops know that the two armies having met on Czechoslovak soil means that the war is all but over – and that their part in it almost certainly is. The result is a massive party which despite the best efforts of the military police snowballs until it finally breaks up in the early hours having drunk the town dry.
Richie’s left flank has been given priority for petrol supplies, and as a result is able to make excellent progress. Light units are able to make contact with Czechoslovak forces in Hradec, while the majority of the force wheels left and is able to occupy Bautzen and Gorlitz.

The French Fourth Army enters Munich after it is declared an open city by the mayor. The handful of soldiers not to have deserted are locked behind the wire at the Dachau concentration camp after the prisoners there are released. Their weapons are destroyed by the simple expedient of driving a tank over them, and then all but a battalion resume the advance trying to keep up with their advance forces. These have already reached Salzburg and Berchtesgarten, although they are starting to have some supply difficulties and Requin has ordered them to halt in place for 48 hours to allow their petrol supplies to catch up.

Troops from Sixth Army (Touchon) occupy the north side of the Brenner Pass and make contact with the Italian customs post. While one Brigade is detached to move towards the Swiss border, the majority of the force will continue down the valley of the river Inn towards Jenbach. They are having severe problems with extreme cold and heavy snowfall, however, so progress has significantly slowed.
 
Last edited:
Apologies for the very slow rate of updates - I've been having some health problems which the medication is just starting to get on top of. I'll try to take less than 6 months to write the next update, but no promises.
 
No surprise that nobody wants to be the last telegram sent out at the end of the war, especially fighting to try and clear a city with very little heavy support. Ironically, that should make things better for the German civilians too, since they won't be living under artillery bombardment or having to deal with too much house to house fighting (plus the other unpleasant after affects they had when the Soviets rolled through in our timeline).

Glad to see this is (and you!) is still living PDF. Good luck with the health and recovery!
 
Great job @pdf27 and stay healthy! Don't worry about the updates, we will patiently wait.
This seems like a solid endgame for the Third Reich. I have to say, the idea of the Slovak National Uprising as well as the Warsaw Uprising (or rather it's TTL equivalent) actually succeeding is a nice touch!
I'm also glad I finally caught up with the updates, it's been quite a read!
 
Top