A Blunted Sickle - Thread II

The Austro-Hungarian Empire hiding behind a false moustache then?

Pretty much!

Can't see Poland and Czechoslovakia going along with it in any TL really. Military alliance or at least military assistance treaty between Poland and Hungary, sure. Full blown Austro-Hungarian...sorry..Danubian Confederation...that's another story.
 
Looks like the vultures are circling alright. I can't imagine Britain or France would be too impressed with Italy or the USSR sticking their oar in at this point, especially with Mussolini's past actions. How are the high command in both countries viewing Poland right now? Still a valued ally or annoyed for forcing their hand due to their uprising?
ITTL, Italy being hostile to Germany is the natural state of the world - of course, there was that bit of a thaw between 1938 and 1939, but everything had reverted to the original condition after a while.
 
One interesting aspect of the post-war world is Keynes - he is likely as influential in this timeline as he was in OTL and maybe not as overworked and exhausted, so he might die later than 1946. He really had rather brilliant economic plans for the global economy that were largely thwarted by the more orthodox US which held sway over impoverished Britain.
 
One interesting aspect of the post-war world is Keynes - he is likely as influential in this timeline as he was in OTL and maybe not as overworked and exhausted, so he might die later than 1946. He really had rather brilliant economic plans for the global economy that were largely thwarted by the more orthodox US which held sway over impoverished Britain.

I'm shuddering at the thought.

In the real world, "brilliant plans" by economists have a very bad track record. People like Keynes tend to have serious cases of what Nassim Taleb calls "fragilista" thinking, and Keynes himself certainly did.

Taleb, from the book "Anti-Fragile: Things That Gain from Disorder": "[The fragilista] defaults to thinking that what he doesn’t see is not there, or what he does not understand does not exist. At the core, he tends to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent." The fragilista overestimates his capacity to plan, and even when his plans are sound in the face of known pressures they tend to be extremely brittle under unanticipated stresses. Thus, the typical result of fragilista thinking is short-term superficial optimality followed by a disaster that might have been averted by more humility.

OTL the world has suffered quite enough at the hands of overconfident men like Keynes who meant well but lacked wisdom. I think we should be grateful when circumstances prevented them from doing more damage.
 
OTL the world has suffered quite enough at the hands of overconfident men like Keynes who meant well but lacked wisdom. I think we should be grateful when circumstances prevented them from doing more damage.
I think it's the implementation of Keynes plans that has been most conspicuously lacking - it's tended to the economics of Viv Nicholson, rather than the counter-cyclical activity Keynes envisaged.

I'm not sure how you can remedy that, though.
 
Tank snip
Generally what I was thinking too. OTL, Yugoslav AFVs were predominately French, starting with FT-17s, and later on they also acquired some R-35 tanks, as well as Tank Destroyers of all things, 8 Czech Š-I-D tankettes carrying 37mm AT gun. FTs were a mix of both originals and model 1928, though how many of them were in actual working condition is hard to say, and there were 54 of them in total. R-35s numbered 56 vehicles, and they were the most modern tank availlable to Yugoslavia at the time.

Now what vehicles Yugoslavs might get their hands on from the French is an interesting question. I really do not see them going for B-1s, putting aside its combat performance, it is a large, complicated and expensive vehicle, not really something Yugoslavia would choose IMHO. There is also a question of mobility, since Yugoslav Infrastructure was not as well developed, and considering rather harsh terrain in some parts of the country, these B-1s could easily end up immobilised without a railway nearby. More likely option might be various French Light Tanks, such as R-40 and H-39, simply because they would be cheaper to operate then alternatives, and French could likely sell them at rather low prices, if only to restore some of their lost influence in Yugoslavia. Another AFV that might catch their eye is the Armored Car, and French Panhard 178 or its successor the Panhard EBR, as a decent option to mechanize their cavalry formations.

Other vehicle that may also end up in Yugoslav service is the humble Renault UE, to serve as artillery tractor, and to mechanize AT and light artillery batteries. Here France is not the only option, as Romania had a license to produce them as well, and without France falling the production would continue for a longer time then IOTL, and some may yet end up in Yugoslav hands.

Of course, they still need something heavier, more heavily armed and armored, and couple of years after the end of the war, we could see Somua S-40/Renault G-1 (or was it G-2?) series of tanks entering into service, as French army is demobilised fully and reequiped with more modern arms.

Banovina Snip

I would argue that it was not so much of a mistake, since Banovina was merely a more autonomous province of Yugoslavia. It did have much larger freedoms then some other nationalities and regions, but it was still firmly suborned to the Yugoslavia. Though, ITTL we may see some further developments occur, as Maček and some of his compatriots hoped that Croatian Homeguard of WW1 vintage may end up revived, and serve as a distinct part of the Royal Yugoslav Army.

The basis of this new Homeguard was to be armed detachments of HSZ, Hrvatske Seljačke Zaštite (Croatian Peasant Protection), an paramilitary wing of the HSS, Hrvatska Seljačka Stranka (Croatian Peasants Party), which numbered roughly 200 thousand members in 1941. True fighting strength though, was the HGZ, Hrvatska Građanska Zaštita (Croatian Civil Protection), a mixed regiment sized force composed out of 3 infantry batallions, numbering roughly 1000 men each, as well as a cavalry squadron and a company of motorized infantry. They were exclusively armed with light weapons, and motorized company used motorcycles with sidecars.

Once political tensions calm down, and war ends, we could see not only Croatians getting their own units, but also Slovenes, perhaps in their own Slovene Homeguard. The height of irony is that Draža Mihailović, the man who led Četniks OTL, argued in late 1930ies that Croats and Slovenes (and Serbs OFC) should serve in their own ethnic units, and we could really see something like that happening in the postwar period, as Yugoslavia liberalizes somewhat.
 
I think it's the implementation of Keynes plans that has been most conspicuously lacking - it's tended to the economics of Viv Nicholson, rather than the counter-cyclical activity Keynes envisaged.

Public-choice economics explains this. There's an agency problem; the brilliant plan gets gradually subverted in ways that serve the planning bureaucracy and its political allies rather than the original objective of the plan.
 
Public-choice economics explains this. There's an agency problem; the brilliant plan gets gradually subverted in ways that serve the planning bureaucracy and its political allies rather than the original objective of the plan.
Eh, they also get subverted by the will of the public. Because Keynes' plan is fundamentally about taking pain in times when there is no (immediate) need to. And that doesn't sell well.
 
I'm shuddering at the thought.

In the real world, "brilliant plans" by economists have a very bad track record. People like Keynes tend to have serious cases of what Nassim Taleb calls "fragilista" thinking, and Keynes himself certainly did.

Well, I disagree in this particular case. What we had in OTL was not too bad a plan wrought by the Americans and to a lesser degree by Keynes. It was kind of a watered down version of Keynes' full proposal which likely would have been much better. And even in that truncated form it was a stable foundation for the postwar boom. Not all economists are the same...
 
If there was an outbreak of hostilities between the Soviet Union and entente how would the allies fare?

The Red Army was an absolute shambles in June/July 1941, presumably because of the haphazard way Stalin handled the plethora of reports stating a invasion by Germany was imminent.
 
Well, I disagree in this particular case. What we had in OTL was not too bad a plan wrought by the Americans and to a lesser degree by Keynes. It was kind of a watered down version of Keynes' full proposal which likely would have been much better. And even in that truncated form it was a stable foundation for the postwar boom. Not all economists are the same...
OTL was a good plan if you were American , pretty bad for nearly everyone else, ( favored the dollar mightily giving competitive advantage to the US and access to markets which really needed some protection while they repaired damage following the war )
 
OTL was a good plan if you were American , pretty bad for nearly everyone else, ( favored the dollar mightily giving competitive advantage to the US and access to markets which really needed some protection while they repaired damage following the war )
It was also quite beneficial for West Germany and the Benelux, maybe also Italy and a few other European countries . Probably not the UK, but bY 1945 it was difficult to save its economic Position
 
It was also quite beneficial for West Germany and the Benelux, maybe also Italy and a few other European countries . Probably not the UK, but bY 1945 it was difficult to save its economic Position

Yep, while whitout doubt the USA get out from the plan the best and the most, it turned pretty good for western europe too and regarding the dollar well it made official the fact on the ground aka that had already taken the place of the pound as the world commerce currency
 
Yep, while whitout doubt the USA get out from the plan the best and the most, it turned pretty good for western europe too and regarding the dollar well it made official the fact on the ground aka that had already taken the place of the pound as the world commerce currency

Another factor in the inevitability of this result was that most of the world's industrial production capacity outside the U.S. had been bombed flat. It took decades for anybody who'd been what we'd now call a "developed country" to really recover from this. It meant the U.S. was a price taker in just about every volume market for finished goods until around 1970.

That circumstance would have made it difficult to avoid the U.S. dollar as a de-facto world reserve currency even if the volume of dollar transactions hadn't already swamped the pound sterling before the war.
 
3rd January 1942

The first trainload of Petrol from Hamburg reaches Stendal, where work immediately starts to offload it onto every road tanker available. Even before it has actually arrived, Wavell's First Army launches an assault crossing over the Elbe knowing that the fuel is on the way. Bailey bridges are in place at Tangermünde by mid-afternoon and troops will go on to take the Havel bridges at Radenow by nightfall. British troops are now only 40 miles from Berlin.

Further north Indian troops successfully occupy Hamburg against limited resistance – most of the handful of German troops present surrender on the spot, but there are sporadic sharp engagements, notably at Stadthausbrücke 8 where a brief firefight develops before the Indians bring up a Burney Gun and promptly knock the building down on top of the defenders.
While this is happening, the Australians of 6th Division reach the Kiel Canal at Osterrönfeld, where they seize the Rendsburg High Bridge without incident. Indeed, 16th Brigade's only engagement of the day was with an elderly policeman who was on traffic duty in Nortorf and tried to refuse passage to the Recce platoon of 2/2nd Battalion. After a brief scuffle he was left locked up in his own cells and the platoon was able to push on.

Stalin gives orders for the recovery of the Klaipėda territory, to take place on the 6th of January and to be completed in one day. The NKVD are ordered to allocate sufficient special troops to the operation to handle all prisoners taken by the RKKA and transport them to holding camps in Kazakhstan.

Czechoslovak troops reach the line Česká Třebová – Jihlava - Jindřichův Hradec against almost nonexistent resistance, with the Germans mostly trying to get across the Austrian border into “friendly” territory. Meanwhile, south of Brno the Hungarian forces invading Austria make contact with the Czechoslovaks at Laa an der Thaya. This is a very tense meeting – largely thanks to the rumours of Hungarians flying Hapsburg flags during the invasion of Vienna – and ends with the officer in charge of the Hungarian troops deciding to withdraw at least 1km from the border to avoid getting into a war by accident.

French troops start advancing again in the south, heading towards Stuttgart and take Pforzheim against very light resistance. Rate of advance is noted to be better than the British have been achieving despite generally worse road conditions because their Lorraine 37L fuel tractors have proved significantly more able to keep up with the leading vehicles than the British wheeled fuel tankers. Additionally, the on-board fuel pumps have much greater pumping capacity after being refitted earlier in the year which significantly reduces refuelling time and allows them to serve significantly more vehicles.

The Bristol Buckingham enters service with a raid on Dresden railway station. This is a developed version of the Type 161 design, using the new Centaurus engines to carry a 4,000 lb bombload at over 300 mph.
 
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