Depending on how threatening the Soviet Union is perceived to be the British may find it in their interest to assist the U.S. in developing nuclear weapons. It would allay U.S. fears on British intentions and help foster common defense treaties against the Soviets.
Short term I would expect something similar to the agreement whereby they assisted each other by facilitating fallout sampling flights from each other's tests, plus possibly some of the "twenty questions" routine from OTL - both of which happened despite the McMahon act.
Longer term I could also see a substantial trade in fissile material between the two blocs (much as OTL) - given where Canada is, they can't really afford to be hostile competitors and their interests are mostly aligned.
In this case, the fleet can use its aircraft carriers. Maintaining the level of precision bombing is very important for the Kido Butai dive bomber squadrons. If they can't even hit a stationary target the size of the Ministry of the army, how can they expect to hit a moving battleship at sea?
The problem isn't so much hitting the ministry, it's the blast radius of the weapons they're hitting it with. It's a large compound, less than a mile from the Imperial Palace where the Ministry of Defence is currently based. The blast radius of them isn't too bad, but the Imperial Palace would probably still be hit by shrapnel. Given the mindset of the time, I would expect it to be much smaller weapons if it ever happened - SNLF tanks at most, despite how appealing the idea of a FOO calling in 18" artillery is.
Of course, they'd dealt with it before. The previous time "they had to deal with it", it ended up with Navy restrictions and "open doors" in China. What is the price of American friendship now? The USA economy needs markets. The existence of the Entente in the form it has acquired in this TL keeps these markets closed to the Americans. And there is nothing to divide, except the USSR, which will object (and which has an atomic bomb), and two colonial empires.
<shrugs> It's still cheaper than a war, cold or hot, for both of them - and in OTL they managed to find an accomodation between their ideologies good enough to be formally allied. The reality is that by this point the USA is the biggest market in the world by quite some margin, and indeed is in a better place than it was in OTL with far less money spent on non-productive military kit choking off the civil economy. GDP is smaller in paper terms, but I'm not convinced this is actually that serious a problem.
Yes, with a possibility of Japan continuing to be a threat, there would be much more urgency in actually keeping the large fleet as a deterrence. Still, that is unlikely to save a lot of older ships from fulfilling their one last duty, by becoming part of annual British Steel Production, as the newer ships enter service. Gradually, as time passes we will see reductions, as financial realities do require them. R-class (-1 ship) is already in reserve, QEs, Renowns, Nelsons and Hood are likely to follow, as are old CVs and the oldest Cruiser and Destroyer dregs dating back from WW1 or early Interwar period.
R-class is pretty depleted -
Royal Oak was sunk at Scapa as in OTL,
Ramillies is damaged and being sold to the Union and
Revenge was sunk in shallow water off Dunkirk. That just leaves
Royal Sovereign at Scapa and
Resolution at Alexandria, both of which will be heading to Inverkeithing for scrapping as soon as the war ends.
Hood has had a very serious engine room fire in Gibraltar, which will require a major refit - in the circumstances I would also expect that she would be scrapped, since she would require a major refit/rebuild anyway and the RN is getting
Lion and
Temeraire.
Escorts, while not built anywhere near the numbers of OTL, are also going to free up some more manpower, things like Flower class are the first to go, perhaps not scrapped, but sold off/transfered to Dominions or friendly governments. There seems to be plenty of fat to cut away, and even with Japan still presenting a threat, RN could still be able to field a very powerful force, especially once augumented by more powerful surface units of MN.
It needs to be remembered that in peacetime, the enemy is to be found on the other side of the Foreign Office building rather than the other side of the world. Traditionally the RN did pretty well in peacetime, although here the RAF are a very significant threat which will only grow as nuclear weapons arrive.
Though, once TTLs version of Blackburn Buccaner (or whatever they come up with) makes its maiden flight, alongside something like OTLs Red Beard, that is likely it for Battleships and many other large surface combatants, and they are not likely to linger in service for much longer.
The Red Beard analogue and amphibious ships are also their major weapon against the RAF in the postwar battle for budgets. That's something Mountbatten did supremely well.
I mean, would it really be all that bad for the RN to have its CVs undergo Victorious style modernizations? TBF, hopefully avoiding the utter disasters that were made during it would be helpful, as would not having to pay 6 times as much as was initially assumed, or having the refit last for 7 years, but some mistakes are still likely to be made. A year per CV for a refit, would be a reasonable estimate IMHO, and while it could be argued back and forth would it be better to simply build a new design from scratch, the existing ones would still be seen as having plenty of service life left, and Treasury is not too likely to budge.
One issue is that they're just that bit too small - the most advanced jets they could take would be Buccaneers, and that's only due to the very high level of engine lift (blown flaps). There is no prospect of flying anything more complex off them, and indeed anything more complex than a Sea Hawk probably needs expensive modification to fly off. In the OTL world which was extremely budget-constrained then modernisation is the order of the day. With a bit more money, I'm not so sure.
Though, while I (and many others) have been wishing for some more info on some other small nations, and what are they been up to, I very much understand that OP does not have enough time or info on his hands for something like that. So, would Pdf perhaps accept if somebody else provides the info, sends it to him in PM, and then he incorporates it into his TL? That would please those that constantly ask for info on country X, and they would have to put some work in, while OP would avoid the likelyhood of getting it wrong and getting crucified for it.
I'm happy to discuss it on this thread, but I don't want to bring it into the story. Essentially the more parts of the world the story covers, the slower I end up writing it - and it's already glacially slow, although that should pick up a little after the end of the war.
Alternatively they can just do the OTL method of warcrimes tribunal > five years of house arrest > rehabilitated > new uniform > "never actually was a Nazi, at most merely a preemptive Cold Warrior" > nice retirement package buttressed by revenue gained by publishing their book titled Heer is what made the German Army so cool, and its sequel, Look Over Heer, as well as their tell all memoir, Heer Is Wehr I Stand.
Now some would raise a moral argument against OTL's somewhat half baked denazification, but I think Germany still turned out alright.
I think it'll be simpler than that - on release from a PoW camp, everyone will get a very short briefing:
- If you even think about forming any sort of Freikorps, you'll be back in here for good before your feet even touch the ground.
- Germany will not have any armed forces again in your lifetime, so go do something useful with your lives.
- We'll be watching, so make sure you behave yourselves.
As the author wrote, the Entente does not want de-Nazification. London and Paris need de-militarization. This means that the Germans who were military, becoming them by choice, in Germany should become much less. Ideally, such people should disappear altogether. As a heavy legacy of Prussian militarism, which infected the tender soul of the average German with all these disgusting tales of shiny boots, goose-stepping cohorts, the crackle of drums and the roar of guns. Such motivations should be erased from the collective unconscious of the German people, except for the feeling of slight shame when the corresponding thoughts occur while watching a TV report on the military parade on Bastille Day.
I think that overstates the problem. The fact that Germany lost so badly this time around helps a lot. They just need to ensure that no German government or broadcaster/publisher is allowed to spread any form of Dolchstoßlegende v2, and that they aren't allowed to keep the corporate knowledge required for an effective military.
The Germans who have the wrong, Prussian-militaristic way of thinking must be transformed - which is difficult and expensive. Or they should be removed from the population to stop them spreading this way of thinking.
Ideas don't spread by osmosis - provided they keep their thoughts to themselves or their immediate acquaintances that isn't a problem. The real threat is a second version of the Reichswehr or former soldiers using positions of power or influence to spread their ideas. Both of these are relatively easy for an occupation force to deal with.
Well, and also in order that if suddenly some movement of the type of skirmish begins (for example, after the exchange of nuclear strikes between the USSR and the Entente), it would not find for itself militarily competent field commanders.
Why would they regard any of the German field commanders of TTL's WW2 as especially competent? They've got their own field commanders who they (rightly or wrongly) regard as rather more competent.
Not deport, no. We offer the Chinese government a package of services that includes the supply of equipment, highly qualified service and administrative personnel, and instructors for training local personnel... And all this for a long time, under the guarantee of the Great Powers and for absolutely ridiculous money!
No chance the occupation forces would permit that - they would regard it as the Reichswehr in glasses and a fake moustache. If the Kuomintang wants to recruit former soldiers to serve in China and offer them citizenship afterwards that would probably be accepted, conditional on renouncing their German citizenship, but any involvement by a German government would be totally unacceptable.
True, I also imagine there will be fewer new uniforms to hand out as Germany isn't the West's border march against Bolshevism iTTL (Poland presumably has that distinction).
It's worth remembering that without Barbarossa and the resulting enormous Red Army followed by the occupation of Soviet client states/buffer zone in Eastern Europe, they really aren't seen as nearly as big a threat. Essentially the view from Paris and London is a mix of "creepy political system" and "the Bear is playing the Great Game again". The risk of a fight with Poland along the border is a concern, but nothing like the level of tension across the inner German border in OTL.
Nuclear weapons change this somewhat - my view is that they'll be broadly equivalent in effect to the Dreadnought races with Germany 40 years earlier in that they mean the Soviet Union suddenly poses a threat to them directly which was absent beforehand (this of course works both ways, but don't expect the Mandarins in Whitehall or the Quai D'Orsay to see it like that).
Yes, they were. But I wasn't talking about German battleships. The English and French have several old ships that, if they are covered with a new layer of paint and screwed on the deck and roof of the towers a few "Bofors" and "Erlicons", can look quite formidable.
A contract for the permanent maintenance of these monsters-spare parts, ammunition, gun liners, etc.-can even slightly keep someone's shipbuilding industry afloat.
Not happening. The Japanese occupy most of the coast so the Chinese really don't have anywhere to base them - and in any case the only sensible mission for a Chinese navy which needs anything bigger than a river gunboat is blockading the Japanese enclaves along the coast. That requires either submarines (highly complex warships which need first-class dockyard support, and giving German sailors U-boats will set off bad memories) or a fleet which can go directly toe-to-toe with the Japanese. Repainted scrap ships won't do this.
There is also the issue that not going to war with Japan is vastly more important than tying them up in China. Shipping "scrap iron" and allowing recruitment of mercenaries isn't too big a deal - direct dockyard support is a much bigger one, particularly as it will be local to the area so the Japanese can do something about it.
