AHC: Optimal outcome of WWII for British?

So, starting in, say, 1934, what are the *best* decisions the British could have made (working within then-current political, economic, and technological constraints) with regard to the Second World War (which I think we can fairly confidently predict will happen here, since Hitler and Mussolini are already in power and the Japanese have just grabbed Manchuria) that will lead to the best possible post-war outcome for them, and the best possible war itself?

And what is the best possible post-war outcome for them, in any case? The Empire, aside from the Dominions and the African colonies (perhaps) is probably lost by this point; certainly India isn't going to take "no" for an answer by 1934. Still, it seems that the Dominions, at least, could have been better tied to the motherland, and the post-war austerity could be avoided, no?
 
Theres a chance the Allies could either have Italy onside or neutral, which not only frees up lots of men and ships for the Pacific, possibly enough to make the difference in Malayan, but means the Germans send even more men into Russia, leading to higher German casualties, obviously less British casualties, and, as a long term, postwar benefit for the UK, a Soviet Union that is slightly weaker,at least in the short term. Maybe this means the Western Allies get further into Germany or maybe even Poland before they meet up with the Soviets, which is again going to lead to a stronger position for the West, including Britain.
 
Maybe the best bet is to fully support the French when Hitler tried to re-occupy the Rhineland. Failing that, refuse to do Munich.

If you can head off WWII, or keep it from happening (as iOTL) when Germany was at its peak relative to the Allies, the UK will be in far better shape.
 
Maybe the best bet is to fully support the French when Hitler tried to re-occupy the Rhineland. Failing that, refuse to do Munich.

Those do both sound good, but were they possible in the context of the then-current British political scene?

If you can head off WWII, or keep it from happening (as iOTL) when Germany was at its peak relative to the Allies, the UK will be in far better shape.

Indeed, simply avoiding it is best, or at least fighting it out earlier (or later) than IOTL. How much better a shape are you talking about here?
 
Stresa...

In 1935, Italy was closer to Britain and France and indeed the Stresa Pact recognised that. Italy had come close to conflict with Germany in 1934 following the abortive pro-Nazi coup in Austria and the death of Dollfuss.

We need Stresa to be part of a wholesale re-engagement between Italy and the west and that probably means preventing Italian involvement in Abyssinia (not sure how).

Mussolini might then encourage Britain and France to be more assertive toward Hitler pointing out the success of that policy in Austria so, as has been argued, the re-militarisation is postponed or is a humiliating failure for Hitler.

That in itself probably butterflies away WW2 as we know it as the new United Front forestalls further German attempts to de-stablilise Austria and Czechosolovakia and indeed a more successful diplomacy toward Hitler might encourage other east and central European states to gravitate toward the west and Italy.
 
Those do both sound good, but were they possible in the context of the then-current British political scene?



Indeed, simply avoiding it is best, or at least fighting it out earlier (or later) than IOTL. How much better a shape are you talking about here?

truth is life

Dathi has probably pointed out the key points for a very quick defeat of the Nazis. The Rhineland option is the easiest as Britain would probably only give political support to such a move.

The down side to this is that later pacifists would probably complain about how such actions had caused a military coup against an democratically elected government. More seriously that it would suppress German military revanchism but not crush it so you might find it recurring, possibly more dangerously because better led and also there is greater resistance to opposing revanchment.

For fighting to defend the Czechs it would be more costly but still a lot cheaper than WWII and would show that the Nazis were not to be trusted. Also at this point Italy would almost certainly stay out and it's far too early for Japan to be a serious threat to the western powers. Germany gets knocked back and probably the restoration of Austria and renewed military limitations on Germany.

Would still leave a lot of problems, the Soviets, the Japanese and possible later German revanchism. [After all seeking to add German areas to Germany, with their consent, doesn't seem too extreme. It's only really that we know what came later. Since pacifism and appeasement survived even WWII and re-emerged in the 50's a new military attempt to upset the balance of power could be more successful later].

However, in the short term at least, this would remove or greatly reduce the chances of a major world conflict and save several tens of millions of lives.

In terms of a POD which means fighting after 1-9-39, the generally accepted start of the war:
a) France and Britain decide to attack into Germany immediately. They would still face opposition but the German defences were largely propaganda at this point and the German forces were overwhelmingly in the east. It would be difficult to extract their forces from Poland and you could easily see most of the Rhineland liberated before the Germans could form a defencive line.
b) A bit better organisation and command and control for the allies in spring 40. This enables a counter-attack which cuts off the German armouered units involved in the dash to the channel, seeing their destruction and heavy losses elsewhere. Could probably still take a year or two of brutal slog to defeat the Nazis unless a coup takes Hitler out but still save a lot of blood and money.
c) As OTL until June 40 but Britain makes peace. The defeat prompts serious social and economic as well as military reform to revitalise the economy and industrial base. Before Britain can join in a conflict in Europe between the Nazis and Soviets Japan attacks in the pacific. Their defeated by ~44 with the bloody American invasion of Japan. The following year, with both titans in Europe largely exhausted Britain intervenes to prevent a final German breakthrough and the Nazi empire quickly collapses. If the US becomes involved in a war with the communists over control of China and Korea if you really want to egg the cake for Britain. [Since that ties up both remaining great power economic or military threats to some degree].

Steve
 
Britain could follow the lead of the fascists and stimulate the economy by modernising the armed forces. They could rebuild captial ships, refresh the army's armoured equipment and update base facilities, nothing too outlandish just getting people working and stimulating heavy engineering and building industries. by 1939 this should give Britain the tools she needed to conduct an agressive start to the war. Perhaps the Saar offensive would become an armoured raid deep into the Rhineland with a couple of British armoured divisions and the 3 French armoured cavalry divisions. With a better RN Norway could be better for the British, and the Battle of France could too.

All in all with a better WW2 Britain's postwar position could be transformed with very long lasting effects indeed.
 
A Greater Britain kinda covers this territory, but I believe it starts before 1934. Still, it has the French, Italians, and UK on the same side in an abortive european war against Germany. So look into that for some ideas? It's very well researched.

edit: also, prior to Molotov-Ribbentrop, the UK would have the support of a significant portion of the political left for any action against Germany. just another little thing to consider.
 

Stephen

Banned
The best decission would be to stay out of the way and let Hitler and Starlin have at each over.
 
One relatively easy (if cynical) thing to do would be to persuade the Czeks to fight in 38 - which was their original intent. With Britain not pushing them to effectively surrender (indeed, behind closed doors encouragning them to fight, even with promises of help as long as France and Russia kept to their committments).

Germany would be far weaker without the CZ armaments they captured, and the losses that would have occurred in fighting them. Even if France and Russia stayed out, that alone would be a big boost. If Germany keeps to its original schedule, the weaker forces might not manage France in 1940. If it holds off till later to build up strength, Britain and France are stronger, and the German economy is still coming apart at the seams.

Keeping Italy at least as not an enemy, if not an ally, would be a huge help. As would a few simple things - training the far east troops properly, and building more subs to defend the east (assuming the main fleet is busy). These would probably kill off Japanese efforts to take Singapore, it was close as it was.
 
Strengthen ties with Italy and France so that, when Nazi Germany tries to re-militarise the Rhineland in 1936, they join in to drive Germany out of the region. Even if the struggle is tough, they'll succeed in that endeavour. For Italy, one could easily use the obvious German intentions with Austria as a reason for Mussolini to be against Hitler.

Hitler may or may not be overthrown by the result. His domestic reforms are appearing to bolster Germany at the time, so popular support might maintain his hold in-country. The Rhineland will definitely be re-de-militarised; Saar might be annexed by France. The Wehrmacht will be curtailed by treaty, which might be circumvented anyway.
Either way, the weakening of Germany and the Nazi regime on the world scale would probably turn Hitler into being merely the tin-pot dictator of Germany. Which later collapses due to the Nazis not knowing how to run an economy at all.

Britain is then able to concentrate most of their late 1930's and 1940's preparedness and war effort in the Far East. Joined later by the US eventually, since Japan's intentions on the Philippines and Marianas are as obvious as Hitler's on Austria.
 
I'd agree that the best case for Britain would be to avoid WWII altogether. And the easiest way to do this would be to take on Nazi Germany earlier, when the Western Allies alone would have a decent chance. Doable until 1938 with the Czechs - they had a good defensive position and it would be well possible to get Poland in as well. In the meantime, I like Riain's idea of better economic growth through armament.

Now the main problem I see with this is the Soviet Union. With the rest of Europe weakened, who would stop the Soviets?
 
...With the rest of Europe weakened, who would stop the Soviets?

Their own inertia.

Seriously,I believe that de facto, Stalin would be a stabilizing force, unless someone tried to organize an attack against him.

The various Leninist regimes that have developed the world over don't have much of a track record of adventurous conquest. The Russians got entangled in Afghanistan, a little country peripheral to the Western World save as a buffer state, and it was like catching their beards in a buzzsaw. Mao did swallow up Tibet and there were sporadic flare ups with India. One can see the Korean war as joint proxy aggression of both Stalin and Mao--but if you get into examining recently exposed Soviet archival evidence, one can see that actually Stalin viewed Mao as a dangerous loose cannon stirring up trouble where he didn't want it, and Mao had a similar view of the North Koreans they were sponsoring. Also during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Castro proved far more gung-ho about risking a nuclear blowup than the Soviets--not only did the Russians pull out the IRBMs the Americans knew about, they also yanked some tactical nukes out of Cuban hands that the West never knew about until some Russians told Western scholars at a conference in the 1990s.

In general, Leninist regimes, and the Soviets in particular, were very risk-averse. This conflicted with their rhetoric of world revolution, but when push came to shove, Leninists generally preferred to stick with ruling what they already had control over rather than risking it in the hope of getting more. In Stalin's case--it wasn't that he didn't want successful Communist revolutions in places like Germany and China, but he did want to have control over these regimes, and purging the leaders he couldn't rely on and imposing directives on the local Parties that were more aimed at Stalin's preoccupations as ruler of the USSR than advancing toward revolutionary victory in those countries pretty much precluded these parties from taking power. Whenever Leninist Communism did advance, it was either under the aegis of the Red Army advancing against Hitler (and the Japanese, in the endgame) or it was a victory of loose cannons like Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, who came to power pretty much because the Soviets had no effective leverage in their settings whatsoever.

So--would Stalin have launched an attack on Eastern Europe unprovoked? I imagine he would have spent his life building up a military machine with that plan in mind--then tear it apart again every 7 or 8 years or so to purge it for disloyalty. I doubt he'd ever get around to actually launching the attack unless some hothead regime with more guts than brains struck first. Perhaps Stalin would arrange for that to happen--more likely unwittingly though, by sponsoring some revolutionary party in Poland or Rumania or Hungary that gets out of hand (and this might happen more than once and true to form, Stalin would move to suppress them himself lest they get too provocative, but once they might move faster than he could stop them) and the reactionaries that crush them decide they'd better strike at the Red Menace in its homeland.

But with Britain and France holding the upper hand against Hitler, with Hitler replaced in Germany by some other kind of dictator and curbed from developing sufficient power to threaten the West, the Germans would perforce lack the power to threaten the Soviets either, even if they cobbled together a sweeping alliance of all Eastern European regimes against Russia. The likely result would be stalemate, and that's just how Britain, as well as Stalin and his successors, would want it. Even if the Germans did organize a Mitteleuropean coalition, given these great-power realities the coalition would probably serve mainly to restrain its members from doing anything rash.
 
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