Interesting AH ideas that aren't commonly used
- Thread starter lerk
- Start date
-
- Tags
- alternate history
Wolf of Badenoch
Donor
That's the conventional view informed by the Mandarins of the FO, not by the people on the ground. Although 'London didn't care about HK is the absolute fundamental truth'
The issue of water was demonstrated by the fact that HK was on water rationing for most of the summer of 1967 and there was a fear that when the new supply contract was due to start, the Gwangdung authorities would not turn on the taps; but they did! China was in considerable chaos and it was not clear from day to day just who was in charge. The HK red cadres were firmly disciplined after they failed to generate the revolution sought and even on the other side of the border, it was not clear.
There is strong evidence that when the 1997 settlement was agreed Beijing could not believe its luck when the UK delegation's opening position was to give the whole colony back. There are clues to this is various memoirs, Mrs T was advised by Sir Percy Craddock who was well-known to be not a fan of HK and considered Cantonese to be a gutter dialect. It will be interesting to see what the papers at Kew say when they are finally released. There is certainly one school of thought which believes that the Chinese would have been happy to offer a further 99 year lease on the New Territories if the UK agreed to give back HK Island and Kowloon.
I still believe that a Singapore option was feasible given the chaos and distractions inside the CP in Beijing.
I respect that belief although there is not a single piece of evidence speaking for it, and you ignore the Chinese side as it was all up to Whitehall. Guess that's the spirit of AH.
China simply have to take Hong Kong and the New Territories in 1997. Any, and all post-Qing government legitimacy is rooted in undoing the Century of humiliation, with Hong Kong on top of the list. Not doing that will cost them a ton of creditability in the eyes of the people, and risk instability, which is something China can't risk. They won't go for another 99 years. (And Hong Kong with the New Territories is worthless, so it would be a lose-lose for China.)
In various forms there have been a lot of discussions on Germany's war in the East e.g. peace in the West & no Lend-lease, but I don't remember seeing any ATL exploring this - is the lack of L-L crucial or do the planes & tanks churned out by the factories east of the Urals still overwhelm the Germans?
Likewise, on the question of Moscow first or deal with the Kiev 'pocket' - any ATL with Moscow first?
In OTL Dieppe was a fiasco where lessons were learned though at a cost. Could they have been a successful Dieppe, would the Germans learn more from one that worked?
If Germany had less trouble in the Balkans - Yugoslavia stayed pro-Axis, and Greece didn't ask for British help via boots on the ground, how would the German paratroop be used in Russia? Things like securing bridges, capturing airfields, or sealing large pockets to enable the Panzers to continue east?
u
Likewise, on the question of Moscow first or deal with the Kiev 'pocket' - any ATL with Moscow first?
In OTL Dieppe was a fiasco where lessons were learned though at a cost. Could they have been a successful Dieppe, would the Germans learn more from one that worked?
If Germany had less trouble in the Balkans - Yugoslavia stayed pro-Axis, and Greece didn't ask for British help via boots on the ground, how would the German paratroop be used in Russia? Things like securing bridges, capturing airfields, or sealing large pockets to enable the Panzers to continue east?
u
What if Squaresoft entered console market instead of spending all its money on Spirits within?
IMHO, as I understand it, once the Germans had lost at Stalingrad, that was it. They were on the back foot and retreating until the bitter end after that.
Meanwhile, Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union was indeed massive, but it took time to build up. Looking at tonnages or any other numerical index of value of goods shipped there, it rose pretty much linearly between the weeks after Barbarossa was launched (USA sent nothing to USSR directly until we entered the war, but Churchill diverted much of the goods being sent to UK along with some British products almost immediately) until some months before V-E Day when the USA abruptly pulled the plug. Quarter after quarter, the goods shipped to (arriving at I mean...quite a lot was lost to German raiding along the way) the Soviet Union increased steadily.
Therefore some elementary calculus shows us that the cumulative mass of goods arriving in the Soviet Union went as the square of elapsed time. Therefore the cumulative total shipped to the Soviet Union as of the Soviet victory at Stalingrad was only a fraction of the total, a small fraction, less than a quarter by far, of the total mass shipped.
I conclude that while this kit was useful already to the Russians (bearing in mind that it also took time for the Americans to get on the same page with the Soviets as to what kind of stuff to send, initially we were shipping stuff not particularly necessary or useful to them, so that discounts the importance of early LL as well) it probably was not crucial to their survival. Taking terrible damage and losing vast swathes of their most valuable territory and people to German control, they nevertheless retained enough force and productive assets to stop the advance and start pushing it back pretty much all by themselves.
I conclude further then that had the Western Allies given the Soviets zero support of any kind, ignoring their efforts completely, the Soviets would still have stopped and then begun to reverse German advances before losing too much of their own assets, and then after that the Reich was doomed. Fundamentally, it was a fatal mistake for Hitler to attack the Soviets at all. Conceivably if he had restricted himself to limited advances, say taking all of Poland's eastern territories and chosen a strategic line somewhat beyond the prewar Soviet border, then dug in there, or taken just Ukraine and the Caucasian oil fields perhaps, and dug in there, with a suitably conciliatory policy encouraging the conquered peoples to positively support the Reich hegemony, it might have worked OK, but then of course he'd have a long bitterly contested border with the Soviet remnant. Establishing a track record of "better ruled by Germans than Stalin's Bolsheviks" might have undermined Soviet morale enough to make this sort of feasible, but the cost/benefit of trying to hold that border against remaining Soviet power would be quite dubious despite the rich resources a southern strategy would win him. And of course being conciliatory would go directly against the grain of Nazi notions; a cynical enough alternate version of Hitler might feasibly order it but it strikes me as hideously unstable. Given Hitler's true character, and that of many of his Nazi acolytes and general German arrogance, practically ASB. A different German regime might do it but I suspect such a regime would be deterred by a more rational cost/benefit calculus from attempting such grandiose schemes despite near success in the Great War.
No matter how we slice it, conquering Russia is a dubious prospect at best.
Now I have seen it argued that once LL shook down to be pretty much what Russians were ordering and not a random grab bag of what Americans quarreling over whether we should be doing this at all and grudgingly giving them leftovers from American priorities as was the case early on, much of the tonnage was trucks. Generically speaking, then, motor vehicles that were not heavily armored nor intended for front line combat, but vital toward giving the Red Army the rapid mobility that enabled them to keep the pressure on the various Axis forces (mainly Wehrmacht and Waffen SS, but the latter involved lots of generic European recruits, and alongside were brigades from various subjected European puppet regimes and Italy) and advance to Berlin and other points far west. It is argued that without these crucial supplies, the Soviets would have perforce had to either do without motor mobility almost completely or to achieve a more balanced force, cut drastically down on what their industry did concentrate on--so they'd have fewer tanks, artillery, rocket batteries, planes, and other OTL Soviet made munitions and kit to enable the trucks to be made.
Slowing Soviet advances in this way could, I suppose, be argued to give the Reich sufficient respite to match Soviet production and slow their westward advance quite a lot, and given the deep cynicism of both dictators I suppose a separate truce with the Reich continuing to hold large swathes of former Soviet territory might not be ruled out.
It hardly seems like a slam dunk to me though.
Overall, the Soviets accounted for about 2/3 of all Euro-Axis losses. Even if we assume the British threw in the towel and the USA never engaged the European Axis at all, focusing exclusively on Japan or sitting out the war completely (surely if Britain had a truce with Hitler, nothing would stop them from reinforcing their holdings in the Pacific theatre and this would make the Japanese project of late 1941 look very dubious indeed--they might feel they would do better to pile on to the general assault on the Soviet Union perhaps despite the plastering Zhukhov gave them in their brief skirmish some years before--therefore no plans to take the Philippines, no invasion of SE Asia generally, no Pearl Harbor) I think the USSR could, especially if the war were drawn out several more years, eventually muster 50 percent more capability to be expended. Taking more time implies lower intensity and fewer losses in any given period, so it is not right to simply extrapolate OTL loss rates and calculate Soviet exhaustion from that. Time bought wins both sides extra strength. A truce with Britain would open the sea lanes to Reich hegemonic territory to import vital goods. But the question is, would the Reich be able to purchase such goods? They have the French colonial territories under Vichy...perhaps. It is a question of what terms it would take to get Britain to bow out and cease violent combat. Given British balance of power conventional wisdom I can see the British driving a hard bargain in which Vichy France must relinquish colonial control, or perhaps a tacit understanding that they can claim control on paper all they like but British efforts to subvert that control and switch administration over to a "Free French" authority would not be regarded as a deal breaker.
Such concessions by the Western powers to Reich legitimacy might make the Soviet struggle that much more stark and brutal. But it is not clear to me that they were nearly so close to breaking as many Monday morning quarterbacks assume. I think their collective desire to resist German conquest was pretty tenacious and that their control of resources in the more eastern reaches of their territory was sufficient to give them the means of driving the Germans out. And once the steamroller got rolling, it would keep rolling, prewar borders be damned, and so even Britain opting out and thus preempting the USA from ever being involved at all would merely postpone the fall of Berlin, not prevent it. And the Reds would just keep rolling west with nothing to stop them short of the Atlantic. It might take them into the 1950s to finish the job, but certainly if Hitler could not break them, they aren't going to be stopped by anything short of the Western powers allying with Hitler. If even that would work.
So no, I don't think denial of LL would tip the balance. And any gains Hitler got temporarily by delaying the Soviet recoil would, if the war in the west continues, be diverted to more ability to fight on that front, meaning higher losses for the Anglo-American led struggle there.
Given the co-belligerence of both Western Allies and the Soviets, formal inclusion of all into a Grand Alliance and cooperation in the form of Lend Lease aid to the Soviets was far and away the most rational policy. Americans had productivity out of proportion to our ability to field fighting men on the ground (we could have had a bigger army had we lavished less on air power to be sure, nor did our domestic mobilization come close to maximum capacity either) and the Russians had personnel (men and women) who were starved for kit, so putting US made kit in Soviet hands was quite efficient, and saved western lives on a considerable scale. A policy of cold separate co-belligerence with no coordination would be pretty stupid, as Churchill saw plainly despite his visceral anti-Communism, nor would FDR be inclined to just let the Soviets twist in the wind. A different American President might have dictated a different result, but the kinds of Republicans most likely to win elections in the Depression era USA tended to be New Dealers Lite and probably would at least reluctantly listen to the wisdom of Lend Lease. Perhaps an untimely death for FDR might have placed some Democrat more inclined to hard-shell conservatism such as the two-term VP Garner of Texas into office--but I daresay Garner would either have let himself be ushered to lead the New Deal parade if he knew what was good for his electoral prospects or bow out or be shoved out of the way if he were too stubborn to listen to reason.
Lend Lease was the smart thing to do, and asking for it not to happen is demanding Western leadership be handed an Idiot Ball IMHO.
I really don't think Bush was turned out due to the tax thing. He fell between stools on this to be sure, but I doubt he was blind to the political optics of it all, and would do the same regardless of who was advising him.
Bush hired Atwater to perform a role, and when Atwater was taken out of circulation (and wound up repenting a number of things he had done, including the whole Willie Horton bit of racist theater, which the elder Bush never apologized for) he hired others. He won and lost by the Reagan era Republican playbook. The economy had to take a downturn because it was against Reaganism to intervene in the ways that would have been necessary to make life softer for ordinary Americans, in the paramount long term interests of the people who mattered to these plutocrats. He probably figured the glory of his noble Iraq crusade were laurels enough to rest on, and would do it all again anyway out of his notions of what passed for principles.
Arguably he might have been reelected had he not personally alienated H Ross Perot. I have my doubts. I think had the election been a simple two way struggle between Bush and Clinton, Clinton would have won an honest near 50 percent plurality, or even majority. I think more of Perot's voters would prefer Bush over Clinton, but they were disaffected people grateful for a third alternative to vote for who might just have stayed home in a more traditional race, whereas the portion of Perot's supporters who favored Clinton over Bush would show up and vote for Clinton in larger proportion.
There is such as thing as partisan fatigue. In my personal judgement, this is mainly a phenomenon of the powers that be, the shapers of national dialog, who parrot a conventional narrative. Even if I am wrong about that and it lies deep in the public, or relates to the inability of one faction to correct for the adverse side effects of their narrow policy preferences which the public reacts more or less rationally against, it is an observed phenomenon. Given the objective situation on the ground, there was little reason to doubt that after 12 years of Reaganism, the nation wanted a change of some kind. Bush would have had to take steps to make the situation on the ground objectively far better and more worth clinging to for a lot of people who OTL felt little reason for enthusiasm.
Fooling around with PR flacks hardly seems like the ticket. Not pissing off Perot is much more likely to make a difference and I am not convinced that would have done the trick.
Meanwhile if Atwater is miraculously given a reprieve I daresay he'd keep up with his old black magic, no more effective if no less than the people Bush used OTL, and have more to apologize for on his death bed. Or drop dead before coming to Jesus with his too late apologies.
George Lucas is killed in his car crash and Star Wars is never made, completely changing the landscape of pop culture.
Wolf of Badenoch
Donor
I don't disagree with any of that analysis as far as 1997 is concerned - but here we are talking of a PoD of 1968/9 when it would be quite credible for HK to be considered for independence as part of the 'East of Suez' withdrawal. As I said, I believe that the internal situation inside the CCP was such that the UK could offer a quick plebiscite on the proposed city state and then look to the US and UN to support 'self determination'
And I'm afraid many think you're beating a dead horse - at least in the eyes of sinologists. China 1968/9 was not that politically decapitated as you'd like to suggest. Red Guards held no grip over the PLA; the leadership was consolidated (and functional) against external enemies, not least in the border conflicts with both Soviet and India (China lost at Nathu La, but clearly it was clearly not going to be pushed around by India - hard to see how it would be pushed around by Britain). It raised hell across entire SE Asia promoting marxist insurgencies, e.g. Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand. China was organised enough to advance its peripheral interests but too disorganised to tend to its fundamental core national interests?
However you do point at an interesting point. This would have been within a 500 day period (post-Soviet split, pre-US rapprochement) where no P5 country would automatically exercise its veto to help China. More the reason to act swiftly and unilaterally by force against HK independence. ROC would be the closest ally - it would have argued HK is an integral part of China and exercise its veto in the same way Taipei used the veto against the admission of Mongolia as a sovereign state which it deemed to be a part of China.
The Militant Doberman
Banned
1) I would need to look into the details of the process but while (IIRC) in theory the Netherlands could evoke Article 5 I don’t think any of the other members would ratify it. Accidentally downings of civilian airliners isn’t unprecedented and already occurred in the 21st century before the MH17 incident. It’s a tragedy, but not a “let’s risk WW3 by sending NATO troops to a war-zone on Russia’s boarder” event.
2) The front-lines were active at this time period. You can’t send peacekeepers to patrol the demarcated deescalation zone of such a zone doesn’t exist.
3) Russia is focusing on Asia OTL for its future gas export destinations (no surprise as Asia’s demand for the stuff is growing fast — indeed the work on the Russia-China gas deal & the Russia-Korea gas deal began years before any Ukraine conflict) without any “NATO sends troops to Donetsk” scenarios:
https://www.rt.com/business/160068-china-russia-gas-deal/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...reappears-but-challenges-remain-idUSKBN1JP0UN
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...eline-idea-amid-easing-tensions-idUSKCN1LR0XR
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Japan-and-Russia-plan-LNG-hub-in-Far-East
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...apanese-indian-partners-sources-idUSKCN1MX1UN
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/putins-pivot-russians-are-coming-asia
(As an aside, I always find it funny when people try to claim “OMG! Europe is a slave to Russian gas. Brussels is scared to act against Moscow because Putin can turn off the LNG flow to the E.U.” given that Russian gas’s share of the “Western Europe’s energy sources” Pie is lower now than it was back in the 1980s during the Cold War
)It's ASB to consider that Great Britain, of all, people would renege on the 99 year lease.
1 + 2. You're absolutely right here. My bad editing garbled the order. NL (high strung on MH17, one of the strongest proponents of Ukraine-EU DCFTA) calls for intervention. Whether they're advisors or peace keepers, EU gets caught up in a confrontation with separatists, escalating to a direct conflict. This (obviously) didn't happen - AH is alternative for a reason.
3. East Asia could not replace European markets for Gazprom, not by a longshot. Germany alone buys about 1/3 of Russia's production (but Russia accounts for just 15% of Germany's energy use), so there's definitely a mutual dependency there, which is why Russia never shut the taps in OTL. However, for Finland, Austria, CEECs & Baltics the dependency on Russia is 60-100%. Brussels definitely goes into full crisis mode for half of its member states even if they are "just" Eastern Europeans and Nordics. Besides, even a 10% price hike in energy prices in Germany leads to a severe manufacturing competitiveness issues and direct loss of export revenues. Hence in OTL there was/is no interest from either EU or RF to boat. But the situation was severe enough for President Juncker to appoint a special commissioner in charge of creating an Energy Union - the subsequent status quo made that however a lower priority...
Perfidiousness is a privilege of rule-makers, not rule-takers.
The Militant Doberman
Banned
Umm...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Dutch_Ukraine–European_Union_Association_Agreement_referendum
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ject-closer-eu-links-to-ukraine-in-referendum
Well, if you want to talk about Russian gas & Germany...
https://www.wingas.com/en/raw-material-natural-gas/where-does-europe-get-its-natural-gas.html
So ~35 billion cubic meters per year of Russian gas is expected to Germany. Now if we look at China...
http://tass.com/economy/1021946
China alone is expected to need 400 bcm of gas in 2020 vs the 550 bcm projected for the WHOLE of Europe. So yeah, Asia could replace Gazprom’s European market if the infrastructure & pipes were laid down to in place. Unsurprisingly, it is something Russia is working on.
Given that their “whiteness” and the US’ abundant natural resources and fertile land (a unique combination since factors that create young soils almost always destroy mineral resources) has given white Americans unique economic advantages and an environment where free markets breed relative equality of opportunity, I cannot see that the white majority in the US would have become less racist under pressure from militant black activism.
Historically, greater black militancy has always entrenched social conservatism among all but the richest and most urban whites. This was seen both in the late 1960s and after the late 1980s rap revolution. (In fact, in my opinion, today’s growing US political divide is substantially produced by the different cultural backgrounds of those growing up in urban and rural America during the late 1980s and early 1990s – something I relate to very easily from my own childhood in the early 1990s being utterly insulated from cutting-edge culture). This is why I believe a relatively moderate Civil Rights movement was the most likely to be effective, and that MLK had been assassinated earlier than he was, it would have created a situation where the Civil Rights movement might have lacked a leader at a critical time, resulting in even more hostility among whites.
One POD concerns Ronald Reagan and PATCO. Remember that labor union actually supported Reagan in 1980 because he promised to have a better relationship as management than Carter had. I wonder what it would have meant for the labor movement if Reagan had carried over his 1980 stance on at least some unions, instead of the mass firings which he did do (which OTL made it clear that much of organized labor was not going to find a good faith partner where the Government, or management generally, was concerned.)