Considering that we'd most likely get a military junta with a Kaiser post civil war how would this change the cold war? Even with no WWII I'd think nuclear bombs would still be invented in the 1950s at least.
It's A Long Way To Nagasaki: The Anglo-Japanese War
- Thread starter SealTheRealDeal
- Start date
Well, didn't expect a German civil war. At least it will spare the neighbors some suffering, but whatever comes out of it seems it will still by sympathetic to Hitler given the censorship of the documents relating to his assassination.
Well Hitler was a remarkable man. He achieved peace through strength. He was the second coming of Bismarck, who united and expanded the nation. What took Bismarck three wars, Hitler did in none. However the country went off the rails after his rule was short, you can be sure that wouldn't have happened with his sure hand at the helm. [would be the in-universe perspective for most Germans, for generations]
Fatboy Coxy
Monthly Donor
SealTheRealDeal, Looking forward to it, I love the depth of detail on the many and varied historical figures you have woven into your tale. I think the photos and drawings are an excellent addition, and the notes at the bottom, most helpful. Roll on November!
That unfortunate realisation that in this timeline, Hitler is the German Sun Yat-sen
Unfortunately, given Sun Yat-sen's quite limited success at the time of his death, compared with the German leader at the time of his in this TL, the comparison is not quite adequate.
In this TL, Hitler far outdoes Sun Yat-sen. He outdoes the Chiang Kai-shek of OTL. He is Germany's Ataturk, only much better in territorial terms, Anschluss makes him sort of a latter-day German King James I. He is Bismarck 2.0, he is Helmut Kohl 0.9, even though that reference will be unbeknownst to people in this timeline.
Looking forward to seeing the next steps in the Anglo-Japanese War in the Southwest Pacific (and Central Pacific) and South China Sea here, and also the Sino-Japanese War.
Also, about how the two fit together. Obviously, the British Commonwealth's first priority is protecting its own imperial peripheries, defeating the Japanese fleet, and rolling the Japanese back at the fronts, but with production and logistics ramped up, I wonder what they are able to spare in terms of providing motor vehicles, artillery tubes, aircraft, and possibly tanks to the Chinese forces. I wonder what impact any British aid has on battlefield events and what gets wasted or stored for later Civil War. Additional, will Britain in this war be getting bomber mania, and therefore get an interesting in basing British bombers from Chinese airfields to hit Japanese shipping lanes or core parts of the Japanese empire? How much, quantitatively, can Britain invest in boosting a brutal submarine campaign against Japanese shipping lanes?
On a side-note, side-show, has Italy or will Italy soon occupy/annex Albania?
Also, about how the two fit together. Obviously, the British Commonwealth's first priority is protecting its own imperial peripheries, defeating the Japanese fleet, and rolling the Japanese back at the fronts, but with production and logistics ramped up, I wonder what they are able to spare in terms of providing motor vehicles, artillery tubes, aircraft, and possibly tanks to the Chinese forces. I wonder what impact any British aid has on battlefield events and what gets wasted or stored for later Civil War. Additional, will Britain in this war be getting bomber mania, and therefore get an interesting in basing British bombers from Chinese airfields to hit Japanese shipping lanes or core parts of the Japanese empire? How much, quantitatively, can Britain invest in boosting a brutal submarine campaign against Japanese shipping lanes?
On a side-note, side-show, has Italy or will Italy soon occupy/annex Albania?
25. One Year On
Strategic Situation: Stalemate or the Calm Before the Storm
The year 1939 had seen both island empires fighting tooth and nail over a handful of jungle islands flanking the Dutch East Indies. To many observers it seemed that the conflict had already bogged down and that some sort of negotiated peace was likely. Certainly, pint sized armies were bogged down in positional warfare or paralyzed by logistical shortcomings, while most troops in theatre had little to do but twiddle their thumbs while waiting to be rotated into combat. Likewise, one major engagement aside, the clash of two of the largest navies on the planet had so far amounted to little more than a convoy war. One French paper even called the conflict “une grande déception”. That may have remained the case had Germany not imploded.
For many countries in the European neighbourhood the German Civil War was cause for great alarm and, after the Saxon and Silesian Campaign, the assumption of a defensive posture. France, Italy, Denmark, the low countries, and Poland all undertook partial mobilizations to guard against possible spillover. Britain though, insulated as ever on its Islands and delighted to see the Kriegsmarine scurry off into internal exile, was temporarily freed from its continental concerns.
A tidal wave set forth for Japan.
There’ll Always Be An England: Operational and Overspending
Britain was not quite on a total war footing, but the effects of government spending were being felt on the ground. New assembly lines were established, improving both the quantity and quality of British armaments. Early wartime experience informed what was ordered. The severely disappointing performance of the Skua, outperformed by even a Canadian biplane, led to a rush order for a navalized version of the Hurricane. The experience of gunners on bombers informed the decision to not deploy the Roc “turret fighter” outside of a training/target tug role. Blackburn’s reputation as an aircraft manufacturer was severely tarnished by these developments, few of the roughly 10,000 aircraft built in the UK that year would come from them.
The nuances of what was being built mattered less so to the previously unemployed who now found themselves riveting or screwing bolts on an assembly line, or being measured for uniform size. For the majority of Brits, there was cause to be optimistic. Further, Atlee’s labour party tried to keep accusations of “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” to a minimum. This presentation of unity helped mask some of the uglier economic realities emerging from the War.
HMS King George V fitting out in Vickers' yard
The British Admiralty had long used its own productive capacity as the measuring stick for determining how much it would pay for contract work from private firms. This had the benefits of reigning in forces that may drive ship costs up and establishing a “floor” for the efficiency of the private firms. This was the system that had maintained British naval paramountcy during the 1800s, the UK’s massive building programs during the Anglo-German Naval Arms Race, and the production surge during the Great War. In the times since then, budget cuts, international disarmament treaties, and the blasted 10 Year Rule had seen the Admiralty’s in-house production capabilities atrophy to a far greater extent than the private sector had. The system that had once held the great industrial firms of Britain to razor thin margins was now awarding companies like Vickers contracts with profit margins in excess of 30% of actual production costs. In time questions would be raised about this, reforms to the contract awarding process would be discussed, and Great War Era taxes on profits would be revisited. For the meantime, national unity kept such discussions from the public consciousness.
Empire Too We Can Depend On You: The Tensions and Trials of the Dominions
The wartime fortunes of Britain's Empire and Commonwealth had so far been far from uniform:
Australia bore much of its fight by itself, and had proven largely successful given the resources at its disposal. This was a point of both pride and tension. Australia was able to cover its own security needs, as well as those of the United Kingdom, or so the story went. A frequently cited statistic was that Australians constituted the majority of British Empire soldiers “in theatre”.[1] Many Australians felt this entitled them to greater strategic input. Hardy frontiersmen from down under clearly knew best about these parts, and they would ensure that Churchill’s Admiralty couldn’t repeat Gallipoli.
As Australia’s Militia Myth was being born, Canada’s was rearing its head once more. The 1st Canadian Division had fought nearly to annihilation on New Britain. Despite few Canadians ever taking an interest in the military during peacetime, there was a strong expectation that it perform exceptionally during wartime. This expectation stemmed in part from the Militia Myth[2] and in part from the more recent experience during the Great War where the Canadian contingent proved one of the best amongst Entente forces. The high losses in the Southern Pacific were cause for national outrage. That the Canadian Militia was understood to be the worst fighting force in the British Empire did not register with Canadians, nor did many understand that the Canadian Expeditionary Force of the Great War had been its own organisation intentionally distinct from the Militia which predated and now perpetuated it. Similarly, little blame fell on Churchill, despite the First Lord of the Admiralty’s best efforts to reenact Gallipoli. A domestic culprit for the poor state of the Canadian military was sought, and the sitting government of Mackenzie King was holding the bag while an old rival with actual experience in wartime governance returned from the political wilderness.
Britain’s largest colony seemingly had little issue with the war itself. If anything, India’s literate population found the reports of distant battles to be a good change of pace from the disheartening domestic news. The deteriorating security situation in Burma, the occasional violence between India’s otherwise irrelevant socialist factions, the mounting roadblocks to greater autonomy, all made for comparably dreary reading. The Indian National Congress had issued a demand that India’s participation be rewarded with Dominion status, but efforts to politicize the war effort bore little for the time being. Fundamentally, the Indian Army paid, it is debatable how well it paid but it reliably did so, and India wasn’t lacking able-bodied poor willing to volunteer. Further, seeking to do the opposite of whatever the INC did and incensed by reports that the Japanese had made Muslims on Borneo pray towards Tokyo rather than Mecca, the All India Muslim League promoted enlistment.
New Zealand’s year began poorly with their partial division finding itself on the frontline during what was supposed to be tropical acclimatisation training. That it recovered well enough to participate in subsequent operations to halt and rollback the Japanese on Borneo was something to be proud of. Still, the close call shook the little Dominion. The redeployment of their division closer to home, and the incorporation of other British colonial units into their command structure were both part of a wider policy to reduce the risks associated with contributing to a land campaign. The wider picture saw New Zealand’s parliament redirecting funding and personnel towards the Navy and Airforce, which were presumably safer postings that would also allow little New Zealand to contribute more to the Imperial war effort.[3]
Japan’s New Policies: Reigning In The Zaibatsu or Biting The Hands That Feed It?
Pre-War Japanese society was anything but equal. Japan’s industrialization had produced a relatively small set of primary beneficiaries. The Zaibatsu[4] were a handful of family-owned industrial and financial conglomerates of immense size, power, and wealth. The eldest of them, Sumitomo traces its lineage back to the early 1600s, and had developed into a major metal working, financial, and transportation interest during the peaceful isolation of the Edo period before neatly transitioning to the new industrial order following the Meiji Restoration. The youngest of them, Nissan, had only risen to prominence with the conquest and exploitation of Manchuria. In scale and function these vertically integrated organisations were like entire economies unto themselves within Japan. Given the amount of land they owned and the number of tenants paying rent to them, they surpassed even the Daimyo of old.
The Board of the Manchurian Industrial Development Company, a joint venture between Nissan and the Kwantung Army
The accumulated wealth of these groups lent itself to economic distortions and a measure of plutocracy even during the so-called Taisho Democracy. In the 1920s these groups underwent a degree of financialization, which further increased the amount of wealth concentrated with the upper echelons of these groups. On any given day billions sat idle in company or family vaults, all in a country where many still eked out a living through unmechanized agriculture. Public sentiment had been souring towards the Zaibatsu for some time already, and the economic hardship that befell Japan following the Great Kanto Earthquake and intensified during the Great Depression[5] only accelerated matters. Like most radical causes in this period of Japanese history, this was a matter eagerly embraced by the young officers. Liquidating the Zaibatsu was a cornerstone of Kodoha thought. The destruction of these social parasites and a restoration of the traditional relation between lord and peasant[6] was a precondition to ridding Japan and East Asia of Euro-American subversion.
The Zaibatsu, as agents of national policy, producers of arms, and patriotic patrons, had their own allies within the military. The victory of the Toseiha over the Kodoha was in many ways the victory of the Zaibatsu over their critics. With the appropriation of their wealth temporarily off the table, the Zaibatsu exercised their plutocratic powers to support and benefit from the military’s expansionist agenda. The exigencies of war ensured that this would only be a temporary arrangement.
In early 1938 the National Mobilization Law had already nationalised or regulated many of the industrial pillars of the Zaibatsu. Wages and commodity prices came under state regulation. Limited land redistribution was carried out to improve domestic food production. News outlets were nationalised to further the government’s control over information.
The outbreak of the Anglo-Japanese War, and the frustration of Japan’s early efforts to secure a quick victory ensured that the government would double down on these measures. On the 7th of November 1939 a law was passed enabling a further round of nationalisations, a revocation of the earlier promise to compensate the Zaibatsus post-war, and a 90% tax on the wealth of select personnel. This yielded 9 billion yen in cash, and another 14 billion worth of corporate assets. The government justified these measures not only as wartime necessity but also publicly denounced the Zaibatsus’ short sighted and self-centred pursuit of profit over social good. This rhetoric was eerily similar to that employed by the Kodoha.
---
[1] the basis for this was an actual report drafted by Imperial General Headquarters. Though it only represented a snapshot from February 1939, before many British and Commonwealth contingents had arrived. Further, it counted the Continent of Australia as being “in theatre” but did not count New Zealand or India despite those areas also being reasonably close to the front.
[2] the popular notion that Canadians had won the War of 1812 with little assistance from the mother country, largely discredited by actual historians on the basis of the significant British involvement throughout the war.
[3] aka what Canada did iOTL
[4] Financial Clique.
[5] That the Mitsui Group was engaging in disruptive market speculation while the global economy collapsed did not improve appearances.
[6] No doubt a rose tinted view of pre-industrial Japanese society.
OOC: Sorry for the delay, really thought I'd have this out sooner. I guess writing an MRP took more out of me than I'd guessed, butI have my MA in history now so that’s lit. Next update will be China-centric.
The year 1939 had seen both island empires fighting tooth and nail over a handful of jungle islands flanking the Dutch East Indies. To many observers it seemed that the conflict had already bogged down and that some sort of negotiated peace was likely. Certainly, pint sized armies were bogged down in positional warfare or paralyzed by logistical shortcomings, while most troops in theatre had little to do but twiddle their thumbs while waiting to be rotated into combat. Likewise, one major engagement aside, the clash of two of the largest navies on the planet had so far amounted to little more than a convoy war. One French paper even called the conflict “une grande déception”. That may have remained the case had Germany not imploded.
For many countries in the European neighbourhood the German Civil War was cause for great alarm and, after the Saxon and Silesian Campaign, the assumption of a defensive posture. France, Italy, Denmark, the low countries, and Poland all undertook partial mobilizations to guard against possible spillover. Britain though, insulated as ever on its Islands and delighted to see the Kriegsmarine scurry off into internal exile, was temporarily freed from its continental concerns.
A tidal wave set forth for Japan.
There’ll Always Be An England: Operational and Overspending
Britain was not quite on a total war footing, but the effects of government spending were being felt on the ground. New assembly lines were established, improving both the quantity and quality of British armaments. Early wartime experience informed what was ordered. The severely disappointing performance of the Skua, outperformed by even a Canadian biplane, led to a rush order for a navalized version of the Hurricane. The experience of gunners on bombers informed the decision to not deploy the Roc “turret fighter” outside of a training/target tug role. Blackburn’s reputation as an aircraft manufacturer was severely tarnished by these developments, few of the roughly 10,000 aircraft built in the UK that year would come from them.
The nuances of what was being built mattered less so to the previously unemployed who now found themselves riveting or screwing bolts on an assembly line, or being measured for uniform size. For the majority of Brits, there was cause to be optimistic. Further, Atlee’s labour party tried to keep accusations of “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” to a minimum. This presentation of unity helped mask some of the uglier economic realities emerging from the War.
HMS King George V fitting out in Vickers' yard
The British Admiralty had long used its own productive capacity as the measuring stick for determining how much it would pay for contract work from private firms. This had the benefits of reigning in forces that may drive ship costs up and establishing a “floor” for the efficiency of the private firms. This was the system that had maintained British naval paramountcy during the 1800s, the UK’s massive building programs during the Anglo-German Naval Arms Race, and the production surge during the Great War. In the times since then, budget cuts, international disarmament treaties, and the blasted 10 Year Rule had seen the Admiralty’s in-house production capabilities atrophy to a far greater extent than the private sector had. The system that had once held the great industrial firms of Britain to razor thin margins was now awarding companies like Vickers contracts with profit margins in excess of 30% of actual production costs. In time questions would be raised about this, reforms to the contract awarding process would be discussed, and Great War Era taxes on profits would be revisited. For the meantime, national unity kept such discussions from the public consciousness.
Empire Too We Can Depend On You: The Tensions and Trials of the Dominions
The wartime fortunes of Britain's Empire and Commonwealth had so far been far from uniform:
Australia bore much of its fight by itself, and had proven largely successful given the resources at its disposal. This was a point of both pride and tension. Australia was able to cover its own security needs, as well as those of the United Kingdom, or so the story went. A frequently cited statistic was that Australians constituted the majority of British Empire soldiers “in theatre”.[1] Many Australians felt this entitled them to greater strategic input. Hardy frontiersmen from down under clearly knew best about these parts, and they would ensure that Churchill’s Admiralty couldn’t repeat Gallipoli.
As Australia’s Militia Myth was being born, Canada’s was rearing its head once more. The 1st Canadian Division had fought nearly to annihilation on New Britain. Despite few Canadians ever taking an interest in the military during peacetime, there was a strong expectation that it perform exceptionally during wartime. This expectation stemmed in part from the Militia Myth[2] and in part from the more recent experience during the Great War where the Canadian contingent proved one of the best amongst Entente forces. The high losses in the Southern Pacific were cause for national outrage. That the Canadian Militia was understood to be the worst fighting force in the British Empire did not register with Canadians, nor did many understand that the Canadian Expeditionary Force of the Great War had been its own organisation intentionally distinct from the Militia which predated and now perpetuated it. Similarly, little blame fell on Churchill, despite the First Lord of the Admiralty’s best efforts to reenact Gallipoli. A domestic culprit for the poor state of the Canadian military was sought, and the sitting government of Mackenzie King was holding the bag while an old rival with actual experience in wartime governance returned from the political wilderness.
Britain’s largest colony seemingly had little issue with the war itself. If anything, India’s literate population found the reports of distant battles to be a good change of pace from the disheartening domestic news. The deteriorating security situation in Burma, the occasional violence between India’s otherwise irrelevant socialist factions, the mounting roadblocks to greater autonomy, all made for comparably dreary reading. The Indian National Congress had issued a demand that India’s participation be rewarded with Dominion status, but efforts to politicize the war effort bore little for the time being. Fundamentally, the Indian Army paid, it is debatable how well it paid but it reliably did so, and India wasn’t lacking able-bodied poor willing to volunteer. Further, seeking to do the opposite of whatever the INC did and incensed by reports that the Japanese had made Muslims on Borneo pray towards Tokyo rather than Mecca, the All India Muslim League promoted enlistment.
New Zealand’s year began poorly with their partial division finding itself on the frontline during what was supposed to be tropical acclimatisation training. That it recovered well enough to participate in subsequent operations to halt and rollback the Japanese on Borneo was something to be proud of. Still, the close call shook the little Dominion. The redeployment of their division closer to home, and the incorporation of other British colonial units into their command structure were both part of a wider policy to reduce the risks associated with contributing to a land campaign. The wider picture saw New Zealand’s parliament redirecting funding and personnel towards the Navy and Airforce, which were presumably safer postings that would also allow little New Zealand to contribute more to the Imperial war effort.[3]
Japan’s New Policies: Reigning In The Zaibatsu or Biting The Hands That Feed It?
Pre-War Japanese society was anything but equal. Japan’s industrialization had produced a relatively small set of primary beneficiaries. The Zaibatsu[4] were a handful of family-owned industrial and financial conglomerates of immense size, power, and wealth. The eldest of them, Sumitomo traces its lineage back to the early 1600s, and had developed into a major metal working, financial, and transportation interest during the peaceful isolation of the Edo period before neatly transitioning to the new industrial order following the Meiji Restoration. The youngest of them, Nissan, had only risen to prominence with the conquest and exploitation of Manchuria. In scale and function these vertically integrated organisations were like entire economies unto themselves within Japan. Given the amount of land they owned and the number of tenants paying rent to them, they surpassed even the Daimyo of old.
The Board of the Manchurian Industrial Development Company, a joint venture between Nissan and the Kwantung Army
The accumulated wealth of these groups lent itself to economic distortions and a measure of plutocracy even during the so-called Taisho Democracy. In the 1920s these groups underwent a degree of financialization, which further increased the amount of wealth concentrated with the upper echelons of these groups. On any given day billions sat idle in company or family vaults, all in a country where many still eked out a living through unmechanized agriculture. Public sentiment had been souring towards the Zaibatsu for some time already, and the economic hardship that befell Japan following the Great Kanto Earthquake and intensified during the Great Depression[5] only accelerated matters. Like most radical causes in this period of Japanese history, this was a matter eagerly embraced by the young officers. Liquidating the Zaibatsu was a cornerstone of Kodoha thought. The destruction of these social parasites and a restoration of the traditional relation between lord and peasant[6] was a precondition to ridding Japan and East Asia of Euro-American subversion.
The Zaibatsu, as agents of national policy, producers of arms, and patriotic patrons, had their own allies within the military. The victory of the Toseiha over the Kodoha was in many ways the victory of the Zaibatsu over their critics. With the appropriation of their wealth temporarily off the table, the Zaibatsu exercised their plutocratic powers to support and benefit from the military’s expansionist agenda. The exigencies of war ensured that this would only be a temporary arrangement.
In early 1938 the National Mobilization Law had already nationalised or regulated many of the industrial pillars of the Zaibatsu. Wages and commodity prices came under state regulation. Limited land redistribution was carried out to improve domestic food production. News outlets were nationalised to further the government’s control over information.
The outbreak of the Anglo-Japanese War, and the frustration of Japan’s early efforts to secure a quick victory ensured that the government would double down on these measures. On the 7th of November 1939 a law was passed enabling a further round of nationalisations, a revocation of the earlier promise to compensate the Zaibatsus post-war, and a 90% tax on the wealth of select personnel. This yielded 9 billion yen in cash, and another 14 billion worth of corporate assets. The government justified these measures not only as wartime necessity but also publicly denounced the Zaibatsus’ short sighted and self-centred pursuit of profit over social good. This rhetoric was eerily similar to that employed by the Kodoha.
---
[1] the basis for this was an actual report drafted by Imperial General Headquarters. Though it only represented a snapshot from February 1939, before many British and Commonwealth contingents had arrived. Further, it counted the Continent of Australia as being “in theatre” but did not count New Zealand or India despite those areas also being reasonably close to the front.
[2] the popular notion that Canadians had won the War of 1812 with little assistance from the mother country, largely discredited by actual historians on the basis of the significant British involvement throughout the war.
[3] aka what Canada did iOTL
[4] Financial Clique.
[5] That the Mitsui Group was engaging in disruptive market speculation while the global economy collapsed did not improve appearances.
[6] No doubt a rose tinted view of pre-industrial Japanese society.
OOC: Sorry for the delay, really thought I'd have this out sooner. I guess writing an MRP took more out of me than I'd guessed, butI have my MA in history now so that’s lit. Next update will be China-centric.
One disturbing side effect of this twist is that it's going to be a lot more acceptable in this timeline to view Adolf Hitler as a flawed hero than it is in our timeline where he is straightforwardly a genocidal monster. Yes, Kristallnacht and the various antisemitic decrees have already happened and the Reich has been sterilising disabled people since 1933 (but I don't think it started the large scale killing of them before Hitler's death), but on the other hand - he's ended the occupation of the Rhineland, overturned the treaty of Versailles and brought Austria and the Sudetenland into the Reich. There will be people who say the bad stuff was sadly typical of the time and the good stuff deserves remembering.
Probably.