Yes, but not in the massive way that would require nothing less than war. This is still a 'pre-WWI' world where the idea that great powers require concessions of small nations is commonplace, and really, Finland used to be part of Russia. Enough people can totally see how they are being reasonable only demanding the lease of a naval base and even offering concessions on disputed areas in return. Same as with China, this is what you can still do (unless a big kid has something against it).
Es Geloybte Aretz Continuation Thread
- Thread starter carlton_bach
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Yes, but not in the massive way that would require nothing less than war. This is still a 'pre-WWI' world where the idea that great powers require concessions of small nations is commonplace, and really, Finland used to be part of Russia. Enough people can totally see how they are being reasonable only demanding the lease of a naval base and even offering concessions on disputed areas in return. Same as with China, this is what you can still do (unless a big kid has something against it).
He was never the brightest of sparks, and he is quite elderly by now. He spent his life in the shadow of the great man he looked up to. Now, he is determined to prove worthy of the great empire he has inherited, and so far it's working out great...
Turkish nationalism as a potent unifying ideology died well before that. This is the government trying to hold its shit together as best it can. And technically, they have not been occupied. The Russian government merely has diplomatic representations in many areas to facilitate its duties protecting the Orthodox churches and is entitled to send sufficient troops there to defend their exterritorial status and protect them from the kind of mob violence that Ottoman Muslims are unfortunately prone to... (Partly, this is the Young Turk claim that "we can't be held responsibler for what the mob does" coming home to roost, but mostly it is how the British saved face)
Mongolia isn't done yet. The Russians have laid the groundwork for its occupation and in the process created a good deal of unhappiness in the region, but they have not secured it. As of now, it's a bunch of local collaborators, a squadron of superannuated bombers and a handful of armoured cars. Technically, even Chinese 'suzerainty' continues as yet.
And, as the Russians themselves have established so successfully, in this world you do not need to be at war with someone in order to do military things to them. The Chinese government may be weak, but they are very far from stupid.
Jiang Jilie? I admit that was originally where I was going, but that's not really how warlordism worked. People had to have connections, local power bases. China in the early twentieth century is too complicated to write a lazy "this guy starts a new dynasty and rulez".
Chang Hsuehliang (Zhang Xueliang) is in Japanese pay. He is effectively next in line as the shogun of Manchuria and his presence as a 'friendly visitor' is to ensure the world knows this has the blessing of the local boss.
Ah that of been so cool (doesn't he have military connections, could the new model army not be his powerbase?) but this could of been on of those events that were almost impossible to happen like a Georgian leading the ussr, teacher coming to lead china.
'Preparedness'
The one thing everyone purports to know about the Second Russo-German War is that it found Germany unprepared – 'unvorbereitet', like a schoolboy facing a pop quiz after a holiday weekend. The German army, as the popular narrative has it, was equipped with outdated gear, underfunded, understrength, and not trained for the rigours of fighting in an Eastern European winter. In a rare show of unanimity, conservative and left-wing history writers largely agree on this, diverging only in whether the blame must be laid on decade-long misallocation of funds under a conservative regime eager to militarise the home front at the expense of a modern military, or at the feet of a centre-left coalition government hesitant to commit to a confrontation they were too eager to avoid until it was forced on them. The facts, as ever, are different.
Any serious comparative study of military spending must conclude – as all so far have – that even at the worst of its economic crisis, German military spending never fell below adequate. In most years, it was comparatively lavish, though having to support a large force, the individual soldier was less generously fed and clothed than his British counterpart and less well equipped than the poilu he faced across the border. The charge of having starved the military was always levied against any Social Democratic or Zentrum government by the right, but it was never close to justified. In 1941, the last year on anything like a peacetime footing, Germany's military budget was on par with France's in nominal terms.
The idea that German soldiers went to war with substandard and outdated equipment is less easy to comprehensively refute, but also not borne out by the numbers. It is true that German military planners underinvested in innovative technology in the late 1930s. This was largely a product of the Goltzian mindset, the political plan to maintain a military force based on a broad pool of conscripts and reservists that brought to bear the strength of the entire nation in a conflict. The emphasis lay on strategic depth, and this programme required more investment in a large arsenal of conventional weaponry than in the tools of ultramodern warfare. However, the problem has been overstated in the past.
Part of the problem was that Germany's replacement cycles were out of alignment with the Russian one. Much of the army's equipment had been designed and built in the lean years of the late 20s and early 30s, replacing the generation of weaponry that had come out of the war in 1908. The Russians meanwhile had their largest military buildup in the mid to late 1930s, producing equipment that was often several years ahead of their German counterparts by default. In the face of this development, German manufacturers and the Wehrtechnisches Amt turned out their own weapons and rushed them into production in the frantic years before 1944. These white-hot innovations are often credited with winning a war almost lost by cheeseparing parsimony and hidebound conservatism. In fact, neither narrative stands up to scrutiny.
The most important point to remember is that while the Russian military were equipped with more modern weapons than the German in 1944, it did not have very many of them. While it is true that the TAR was unmatched in firepower by anything the Germans could produce until well after the war, it was only ever available to first line units, and rarely in the intended establishment strength of one per squad. That was roughly the rate at which the Prussian army issued light machine guns. German armoured units were often stopped dead in their tracks when they encountered Svyatogor chars, but with a mere six regiments of these fearsome beasts in service in 1944, this happened far more rarely than legend suggests. Most of the Russian army still fought largely with the tools it had had in 1908, and once the Germans had chewed their way through the elite forces, this disparity increasingly told in their favour.
By contrast, the impact of Germany's innovation is widely overestimated, not least for self-serving reasons. Under the impression of the Greco-Turkish war, the army began a crash rearming programme in 1942 that involved commissioning many of the weapon systems today considered wartime innovations. The GKW 'Nashorn', often seen as the German answer to the Svyatogor, went to prototype six months before its purported adversary, but did not see widespread service until mid-1945. The same is true for many of the wagons and chars, planes and guns the German army paraded after the war: They were used at the kill, but came too late, at least in large numbers, to have turned the tide of the battle. German soldiers beat Russia largely with the bolt-action K35 and almost the same 10cm howitzer that their fathers had taken all the way to Kiev and St Petersburg. By the time they had enough turbine-jet fighters, Puma chars and self-propelled Sturmgeschütze, the war was close to won.
The one thing everyone purports to know about the Second Russo-German War is that it found Germany unprepared – 'unvorbereitet', like a schoolboy facing a pop quiz after a holiday weekend. The German army, as the popular narrative has it, was equipped with outdated gear, underfunded, understrength, and not trained for the rigours of fighting in an Eastern European winter. In a rare show of unanimity, conservative and left-wing history writers largely agree on this, diverging only in whether the blame must be laid on decade-long misallocation of funds under a conservative regime eager to militarise the home front at the expense of a modern military, or at the feet of a centre-left coalition government hesitant to commit to a confrontation they were too eager to avoid until it was forced on them. The facts, as ever, are different.
Any serious comparative study of military spending must conclude – as all so far have – that even at the worst of its economic crisis, German military spending never fell below adequate. In most years, it was comparatively lavish, though having to support a large force, the individual soldier was less generously fed and clothed than his British counterpart and less well equipped than the poilu he faced across the border. The charge of having starved the military was always levied against any Social Democratic or Zentrum government by the right, but it was never close to justified. In 1941, the last year on anything like a peacetime footing, Germany's military budget was on par with France's in nominal terms.
The idea that German soldiers went to war with substandard and outdated equipment is less easy to comprehensively refute, but also not borne out by the numbers. It is true that German military planners underinvested in innovative technology in the late 1930s. This was largely a product of the Goltzian mindset, the political plan to maintain a military force based on a broad pool of conscripts and reservists that brought to bear the strength of the entire nation in a conflict. The emphasis lay on strategic depth, and this programme required more investment in a large arsenal of conventional weaponry than in the tools of ultramodern warfare. However, the problem has been overstated in the past.
Part of the problem was that Germany's replacement cycles were out of alignment with the Russian one. Much of the army's equipment had been designed and built in the lean years of the late 20s and early 30s, replacing the generation of weaponry that had come out of the war in 1908. The Russians meanwhile had their largest military buildup in the mid to late 1930s, producing equipment that was often several years ahead of their German counterparts by default. In the face of this development, German manufacturers and the Wehrtechnisches Amt turned out their own weapons and rushed them into production in the frantic years before 1944. These white-hot innovations are often credited with winning a war almost lost by cheeseparing parsimony and hidebound conservatism. In fact, neither narrative stands up to scrutiny.
The most important point to remember is that while the Russian military were equipped with more modern weapons than the German in 1944, it did not have very many of them. While it is true that the TAR was unmatched in firepower by anything the Germans could produce until well after the war, it was only ever available to first line units, and rarely in the intended establishment strength of one per squad. That was roughly the rate at which the Prussian army issued light machine guns. German armoured units were often stopped dead in their tracks when they encountered Svyatogor chars, but with a mere six regiments of these fearsome beasts in service in 1944, this happened far more rarely than legend suggests. Most of the Russian army still fought largely with the tools it had had in 1908, and once the Germans had chewed their way through the elite forces, this disparity increasingly told in their favour.
By contrast, the impact of Germany's innovation is widely overestimated, not least for self-serving reasons. Under the impression of the Greco-Turkish war, the army began a crash rearming programme in 1942 that involved commissioning many of the weapon systems today considered wartime innovations. The GKW 'Nashorn', often seen as the German answer to the Svyatogor, went to prototype six months before its purported adversary, but did not see widespread service until mid-1945. The same is true for many of the wagons and chars, planes and guns the German army paraded after the war: They were used at the kill, but came too late, at least in large numbers, to have turned the tide of the battle. German soldiers beat Russia largely with the bolt-action K35 and almost the same 10cm howitzer that their fathers had taken all the way to Kiev and St Petersburg. By the time they had enough turbine-jet fighters, Puma chars and self-propelled Sturmgeschütze, the war was close to won.
NotBigBrother
Monthly Donor
Nickname 'poilu' IOTL was born in trenches of the Great War. How it came ITTL?
Colonial warfare, I assume. A reflection of the cult of 'Frontschwein' combined with the fact that these troops frequently did not bother shaving and the fashion spread to the metropolitan army.
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Not even quite. Not enough time to cycle the entire inventory unless you're the United States.
Tula Automatic Rifle - the Russian army's choice of squad support weapon. The Germans use the Madsen, replaced later in the war by the first GPMG. The inviduious comparison that 'the Russians have an automatic rifle, the Germans only have bolt-action mausers' misconstrues the situation.
Deleted member 94708
Even that, IOTL, was more down to the fact that all branches of the US military except the Navy (sorta) were genuinely underfunded and underprepared going into WWII. I doubt we would have proceeded to reissue equipment from scratch had the US Army had 50 well-equipped divisions in 1941, for example.
The US industrial effort in WWII actually parallels the German one seen here in some ways. For example, by the time the sophisticated Midway-class carriers were commissioned, the war was effectively won. The avalanche of industrial goods pouring from US factories from 1943 on saved American, British, and Soviet lives and won the war faster, but the comparatively threadbare support the US offered 1940-42 was what actually tipped the balance from defeat to victory.
I was preparing for a Diplomacy joke: How about Ruthenia ?
Some map suggestions showed her with a coast at Odessa -- or does Russia border Romania at one of the river lines ?
I think the point specifically is that the Indian National Congress was founded in South africa
One of the early divergences in TTL was the British acquisition of the Katanga and the construction of the Cape-Cairo railway. So instead of SWA --semi-precious stone in the German Crown-- Southern Rhodesia might become the Fifth Province of the Union of South Africa. That should strengthen the Anglo element, or alternatively, might make it more vicious.
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit: You go, sister!
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit: You go, sister!
Got a question whats the situation with the catholic church and italy? No facist italy means no vatican city, so has the catholic church moved to another country?
The Catholic Church shall have to deal with the Kingdom of Italy as they have done since 1870.
But you are right , haider, we could do with an update on the Papacy: succession, liturgy, doctrine, encyclicals. That would be a challenge.