Science and Technology in a WW1 peace by exhaustion

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Deleted member 1487

Based on a question posed in my other thread on science and technology, what would the progress of research be in a world where WW1 ends with a peace by exhaustion in 1917? That would mean of course that the US stays out and stops loaning money in 1917, as per the OTL path. The reason why the US stays out is unimportant, other than to say that the pre-war powers pretty much stay intact externally. There is no Brest-Litovsk, but Poland and Lithuania are taken from Russia. France is intact except for some minor border changes, Luxembourg is annexed into Germany, and Belgium is free. Germany loses her colonies.

So after the period of political and social upheaval following WW1, things settle down and the powers that be remain in power, except for the Czar, who is replaced by the Provisional government and eventually a republic.
The major powers are all in debt, but there are no reparations.

How does science and technology progress with the major pre-war political powers still intact? Obviously there are still rivalries and hostilities after the war, so there is competition, but still a period of detente driven by everyone being broke. Big Science has been demo-ed during the war, so the major states have seen the effect of major investment into science and research.

With a competitive political environment in Europe, you research be driven more than IOTL?
 
The major POD re: R&D in WW2 was the national government (whether German, American, British, or Soviet) trying to funnel resources and accelerate develeopment.

There's a cool short story by Fritz Lieber- "Catch That Zeppelin!" positing that WWI was fought to the last. Germany fought to the end with no Dolchstosslegende and was freely readmitted to the community of nations with no repearations or war guilt over their heads distorting their economy or politics.
A big POD is that Edison and Marie Curie (nee Skoldowska) got married and their son advanced electric power and storage by quantum leaps beyond even OTL tech.
Of course, there were Zeppelins, with Adolf Hitler(!) being a pilot with Lufthansa or somesuch meeting his son studying at CCNY.

Anyhow, re: post-WWI R&D, you run into an issue vs OTL.
Research was primarily an academic venture, and didn't have the capital or the government funding to develop it into commerically viable products though you had some corporate research (but more from an applied standpoint) as well.

Even if WWI doesn't gut the German economy and cause the massive OTL brain drain of the 1920's and 1930's- AFAIC Germany had issues of disconnects between commercial interests (Siemens as the electrical trust, IG Farben as the chemical trust, etc) and the magnificent research done by a lot of inconveniently Jewish, Slavic, or baseborn and/or politically nonconfromist researchers in German, Austrian, Czech and Polish unversities.

OTL WWI forced the Germans to massively scale both the Fischer-Tropsch
gasification of coal and Haber air-stripping of nitrogen to make nitrates to replace Cilean bat guano b/c the German government ordered it.

Solve OTL's cultural disconnect between the commercial and scientific interests to make Germany (and the rest of Mitteleuropa) competitive in the world market and you've got a good chance of peaceful technological development doing splendidly. Co-developments between the US and German firms might be fruitful.

A big economic POD is the Briitsh Empire going protectionist and forcing the rest of the world to find ways to trade with each other and compete with that juggernaut.
I'd like to see the German, Polish and American mathematicians in competition with the UK's mathematicians to advance computational science by fifty years as Catch That Zeppelin advanced electric power and storage.

I hope this helps Wiking.
 

Deleted member 1487

What you are describing is the difference between 'pure science', that is theory, and applied science (engineering, design). That has always existed, its not something that only existed in Germany. 'Big Science' is done by academic and research institutions, getting the theory right, which then engineers turn into workable items.

So Max Planck Institute develops the theory of science, working out principles and doing some basic research into various pieces of equipment, while Siemens and IG Farben turn that basic research into designs for equipment or products.

Radio wave research is basic research, while the radio and radar are the designs and products that result from applied science.

So I'm not seeing a problem with what you are suggesting, rather its just a description about how science works from theory to end product. Different parts of the process are handled by different entities.


The following book written by Col. Leslie Simon about German research in WW2 lays out the process for how science produces items from theory to finished product and then analyzes how the Germans did in WW2 in organizing their R&D (spoiler: they only lived up to 10-50% of their capabilities in his estimation).

http://www.amazon.com/German-research-world-war-II/dp/B0006AR5DY

http://www.tintinologist.org/forums/index.php?action=vthread&forum=2&topic=1235

Also the US experience:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Organizing_Scientific_Research_for_War.html?id=3oJfrNgVjHgC
 

BlondieBC

Banned
If you shorten the war, you have faster technology development. And you also change which countries are doing research, so you have a change in focus and funding. To me, it looks like WW1 set technology back about 10-15 years or so, so if we end the war a year early (1/4), I would start a TL with a ballpark of moving up technology items about 2-4 years faster. To be honest, there is no way to know for sure, but when writing a TL, one has to make choices. So what I am doing for my TL is that things that I don't follow , will use this rule of thumb. So I will start thinking about the 1933 OTL discovery of fission to start in the 1929-1931 time frame. Or say the 40mm Bofor type gun might show up earlier. For the few things of importance or greater personal interests, I do research and move the items up the same amount, but I am trying to limit this to a handful of technologies mostly related to guide weapons, radar, U-boats, and ASW warfare.

Now for things you are looking at based on earlier post, I would look into the following items.

1) German navy is not disbanded, so you should probably fund 2-4 technologies and move them up a decade or more. Four engine heavy metal naval bombers, 18" guns, magnetic mines, etc. Just whatever you fell would be funded.

2) UK probably has about the same amount of funding, so it is just moving items around. So maybe instead of "Bomber Harris" you have "ASW Charles" or "Fighter Bob".

3) France will get gutted, but I can't tell you off the top of my head what they funded interwar.

4) USA will have save 22 billion USD, so you have lot of everything. My guess it is more civilian oriented and we see little increase in military research.

5) German lead the world in physics, and post war they could not afford to fund a prewar levels. You have outside chance of moving nuclear technology up a good bit, if the right parts are discovered earlier. One could find plutonium a couple decades earlier with the right field experiments.

6) I don't see big changes elsewhere really unless you see something big in A-H or Ottomans that was a regional favorite. For example, maybe A-H lead the world in mining technology development.
 
I don't see any reason for technology in general to advance a lot faster but I think that more favorable conditions mean that there could be more talent in Europe and less in the USA. Devlopment of the atomic bomb for example, might not be faster and in fact, without WWII it would very likely proceed slower (the huge devotion of resources and the pooling of so many scientists from all over the world made the Manhattan project possible and such circumstances do not seem as likely in this scenario).

This is not to say however, that domestic industries would not be different. The biggest differences would very likely be seen in Germany because its conditions in this outcome seem to be the most different from OTL.


Every industry and sector of research in Germany would likely be much less damaged but especially noticible would be the development of the aircraft industry in Germany, which I see you adressed in another thread. I certainly think that Germany would stand a chance of leading the pack in heavy bomber development and would rival the British in engine design.


I also expect Germany to make significantly more progress in electronics, a field which I feel that they never fully lived up to their potential in.
 

Deleted member 1487

I also expect Germany to make significantly more progress in electronics, a field which I feel that they never fully lived up to their potential in.
As a result of the very poor organization of research by the Nazi state, Germany lagged considerably behind in this field from about 1935-1945, despite having a very strong electronics industry before the war. It would be interesting to see what could have been developed had the brain drains of the interwar era first from the economic and then political situation, plus the lack of poor organization in the Nazi police state and kleptocracy with competing bureaucracies and general incompetence.
 
In any of these technology TLs, Asia is the big wildcard. Can China ever become politically unified, Will Japan become the technology / industrial powerhouse, will India / Malaysia / Singapore etc. achieve independence and become software and industrial and electronics powerhouses or will they always be relegated to just sources of raw materials.

The 20th century will be better, but the 21st century is supposed to be the Asian century. I can see a world stagnating at some point, 1950-1970 ish then at some point OTL passes this TL.

In this TL: A big chunk of the earth is held under colonial control or purposely kept weak (China). The European powers not so exhausted in wars, have the money to develop these places for raw materials, but never really become popular places for emigration.

Perhaps the world becomes a place where you have these spoiled staid European colonial powers, without reason to inovate, customs controls setup to protect everybodys inefficient industries, socialist countries with high taxes and generous social programs, government / university research where lots of money is spent but little achieved, populations content to be entertained on their radios and TVs but not really work hard, expecting the dole from their government.

At least in our TL the Indians and Chinese are still working hard and innovating.
 
For starters, here's a good summarizing article from Cathryn Carson in "A Companion to Europe 1900-1945: http://books.google.fi/books?id=UZg...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

There might be a single, but far-reaching change in weapons technology:
Without the restrictions from the Versailles treaty, there is a chance that the pioneering work of Karl Gast will be looked upon after the war, and weapons similar to OTL Russian GSh-23s are mounted to WW2-era German combat aircraft and also used in ground vehicles:
800px-GSh-23L_cannon.jpg
 

Deleted member 1487

In any of these technology TLs, Asia is the big wildcard. Can China ever become politically unified, Will Japan become the technology / industrial powerhouse, will India / Malaysia / Singapore etc. achieve independence and become software and industrial and electronics powerhouses or will they always be relegated to just sources of raw materials.

The 20th century will be better, but the 21st century is supposed to be the Asian century. I can see a world stagnating at some point, 1950-1970 ish then at some point OTL passes this TL.

In this TL: A big chunk of the earth is held under colonial control or purposely kept weak (China). The European powers not so exhausted in wars, have the money to develop these places for raw materials, but never really become popular places for emigration.

Perhaps the world becomes a place where you have these spoiled staid European colonial powers, without reason to inovate, customs controls setup to protect everybodys inefficient industries, socialist countries with high taxes and generous social programs, government / university research where lots of money is spent but little achieved, populations content to be entertained on their radios and TVs but not really work hard, expecting the dole from their government.

At least in our TL the Indians and Chinese are still working hard and innovating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
The Japanese would probably never get to meet Edward Deming, who created the modern corporate culture in Japan that gave them the tools to succeed.

Also the Japanese would be hostile to the US, not friendly, wouldn't have their inefficient economic structure swept away by the war, wouldn't have all the US investments made in them, nor the US money flowing from having US troops and naval units stationed there, nor would they save money by not having to have a full military like they do now.

If anything Japan would probably end up stuck in a longer term conflict with China that would be their version of the 100 years war.
And Korea would not rise to be the economic power it is today.
 
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