HeavyWeaponsGuy
Banned
In the 1930s, France has a League of Nations mandate over Syria. And ethnic cleansing is more OK than it is in the 1950s. France can do what Stalin is doing and "resettle" the Arabs of Algeria (and perhaps Morocco and Tunisia as well) in Syria, perhaps diverting water from the Tigris to the Khabour River in Eastern Syria to create arable land for those resettled.
Mussolini might attempt to follow suit by resettling Arabs in Eritrea or Somalia--if the British did not interfere at the Suez Canal. But France could permit Italy to resettle Libyan Arabs in Syria too, creating butterflies galore in the Mideast.
Yes, Syria was a Class-A Mandate, which meant that the idea behind it was to release the mandate as an independent state soon. Syria wasn't some backwater hunk of Africa, it had a long-established society that was and is one of the oldest inhabited areas of human civilization. And to say that Syria was a little restless under the rule of the Ottoman Empire is like saying that Alaska in the winter is a little cold. The French were smart there, they made few waves, played divide-and-rule games with local elites, and when the time came they basically left it without much real incident. Things like this are going to make Syria a very costly place for the French to keep. They have no reason to do it.
Overlooking the tech imbalance in the 30's between insurgents and government forces, and the lack of outside support that exists OTL in the 50's but not in the 30's.
Quite simply if the Algerians start in the 30's - then there resistance movement gets destroyed in the late 30's early 40's. And Algeria would likely still be part of Metropole France today.
You underestimate the sheer volume of demographic change that occurred IOTL in the 1950's: advances in medicine and agriculture that really allowed for the inherent population growth potential in parts of the developing (including colonized) world to start increasing at an explosively high rate, Algeria was not an exception to this, and there was pretty much no saving French Algeria by the early-to-mid 20th century, no matter what the French do. This was the rule for almost all settler-style European colonies towards the end of colonialism: native population growth outstripped the settler community, and also pushed the colonial system to the breaking point. It was easy to set up systems of deliberate exploitation, deprivation, and in-general things that enriched the Europeans or their favored proxies at the expense of the natives, as early-on their numbers were small and manageable, and a significant gap in military strength existed between themselves and the Europeans. As time went on, this gap closed, and population growth among the local people made it impossible for the system to continue on. People literally faced a choice between revolt and starvation. They used all the dirty tricks IOTL: repression, relocation, torture, brutal suppression of the rebels. The problem is thinking that a rebellion of the nature that happened in Algeria can be "defeated" in a conventional sense is basically the exact thinking the French used, and in the end it resulted in their defeat. A rebellion like that doesn't have to win, it just has to tire out the enemy.
That's not how it works. Firstly, do you have any idea of the logistics involved in moving 23 million people? It's not simply a case of shipping them over there on boats. Secondly, there is the international reaction. This is the whole ethnic cleansing of fairly large nations. Even in times such as the 30's this would raise more than a few eyebrows, not least in France itself.
Secondly, Syria's population is 20 million, not 30 million. Assuming that Syria could support its current population in the 30's is a rather foolish statement, as it ignores all the advances in agricultural technology and the like that have occurred since the 30's.
This pretty much sums up all the inherent flaws in the idea of a mass population transfer on such a scale.
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