moral superiority as compared to the nazis lost? Probably a stretch, but up there with Stalin and Mao. Was googling for Rapier but didnt find it. Was this an OTL plan and if so was some link provided?
Sixes and Snake eyes Rommel's luck in an alternate 1942 desert war
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in the posts it becomes clear that his location is surrounded by 10 thousands of civilians, protecting him
Yes, and the British were willing and capable of action to keep Farouk in line IOTL, here he’s openly come out against the British, they’re in a desperate position, the Germans are attacking and the British have already taken brutal actions to fend off the Axis that have alienated Egypt, why are they allowing the Egyptians to coordinate through the King? Why hasn’t this odd state of revolutionary upheaval and inaction been broken in one direction or another, whether suppression, independence or open war?
David Flin
Gone Fishin'
Because of the lead paint the British have been drinking throughout this TL.
JLan1485
Banned
TBF I can totally see HQ deciding not to commit a precious division's worth of troops to cleave through 40,000 civilians when they've been desperately needed to carry out Rapier elsewhere in Egypt, especially in Alexandria.
cardcarrier
Banned
Rapier as built is this timeline is probably about 1/3 otl considerations 2/3 fiction arising from the story. Histories of the war describe the Alexandria Harbor and other facilities, including dams/dykes/sluices being prepared for "extensive demolitions" in the event Rommel's motoring time to Alexandria got below 4 hours. "To deny Rommel a first class harbor for the Italian battlefleet"
In real life, Fellers had been plugged by then, and Auchinlek was getting greater priority to decrypting Rommel's traffic after the failure at Tobruk, which resulted in him being able to tell the Navy (who where preparing the "extensive demoltions") to hold their nerve, so that even though the fleet did evacuate temporarily when Rommel reached El Dabba, and GHQ was burning papers, Auchinlek himself was confident that Rommel was at the absolute end of his rope, and would be stopped. So history never provided us an opportunity to figure out what "extensive demolitions" actually would have meant for the people of Alexandria and the Delta.
In my timeline, Auchinlek has fallen victim to ~super gazala~ and had the army and it's supply system completely consumed, rendering his stand (and the Navy's belief in his ability to hold since they where the prime mover for the initial demolitions) considered vastly more uncertain, as Rommel would be attacking the line at parity in, infantry and with more tanks, which ripples into the Navy having a collapse of nerve, and forcing the demolitions to proceed when Rommel reaches the red line. Those "extensive demolitions" in my timeline leak into the consciousness of the Egyptian public/army/royal court. Axis flags where starting to appear at some homes in Alexandria in the first week in July, rumors in Egypt spread like anywhere else
For as awful a human tragedy Rapier or even a scaled back version of it would be, in the 1940's people thought this way about war, and not just Nazi's and Stalinists, if one looks at the defensive plan the dutch inteded for their "fortress holland" schemes, it bears a lot of resemblance to what Rapier could be, that also goes for Switzerland for their planned Alpine fortress strategies; or as we have discussed recently on this forum, the demolitions the British planned to do in Kent in response to a major landing of German divisions. A variation of the fortress Holland plan was effectively implemented by the Germans in 1944 and 1945 to try and facilitate their defense on that sector, which coupled with.... less than benevolent allied bombing of certain infrastructures lead to mass hunger in Holland; 20k ish Dutch civilians died, had the flooding/railway stoppages started 90 days earlier, or the war lasted another 90 days it could have been hundreds of thousands of even millions.
Terrible axis food confiscation policies, coupled with a powerful allied blockade inflicted much similar suffering in Greece from 1941-42, so much so that the Greek exile community (including many soldiers/sailors serving under GHQ) applied so much pressure to the British government that they lifted the blockade in February 1942, and allowed chartered ships from Turkey and Sweden to deliver food to Greece, and the German's permitted them safe passage to Greek harbors; but over 150k Greek civilians died before the policies where changed and 300k+ died overall from famine related issues
The early 1942 arrangements for Greece and the below for Holland do suggest that the western allies and the axis could potentially work things out to... slow down some of the explosive manmade genocides they where creating across the battlefronts
Operations Manna and Chowhound - Wikipedia
The question of course is, would London, Berlin and Rome be able to put their swords down to do something like that for the Egyptians like they did for the Greeks; given what Turkish sensitivities would be to towards their Egyptian cousins, I would regard it as possible
The unfortunate thing is that thirst is a much faster killer (especially in the Egyptian summer) than just hunger
Farouk 1942, is vastly more popular among his subjects than Farouk 1952 after the failure of the 1948 war. The Abdeen palace incident was a powerful national kindling among Egyptians, including Saddat/Nasser/Amer and their older mentors in the free officers club; but at that time they where humiliated they couldn't protect Farouk, and had not become explicitly anti monarchy.
Farouk got the drop on Auchinlek/Lampson by the nature of Rapier leaking into his court via Anwar Saddat's contact with Eppler, Saddat/Nasser where friendly with very senior members of the Egyptian military, including some who served as advisors to Farouk.
Farouk, who had this time (after the Abdeen incident) was at his most anti British (he wrote Hitler a letter in 1941 saying he would move Egypt to the axis once Rommel would take Alexandria and Cairo), would not just accept Rapier, the man was vain and horny, but was well aware of who was working his fields and building his palaces, and at that time was very sensitive towards keeping public affection, the army would want to resist and co-opt the people; Farouk in that circumstance, especially with Rommel perceived to be on the doorstep, would let them
So when Farouk got the drop on Auchinlek his people captured the Radio Cairo exchanges and he was able via those transmission and word of mouth to get 100k+ furious civilians to heed his call to surround the radio exchange and the palace. It is noted earlier in the timeline, that GHQ has scouted both locations and found them surrounded by 40 and 90k civilians respectively; which would require them to massacre the civilians to either shut Farouk's messages down or to get at him. And to the point even though Lampson would want to line Farouk against closest wall (because Lampson was an incredible asshole), Auchinlek and Fellers are worldly enough to know that crushing Egyptian civilians with tanks and then shooting their King.... would make their situation, which is already bad; worse. If anything Farouk calling on ~all Europeans~ to leave Egypt instead of immediately declaring for the axis (which he still might do later) is still better for the British than it could be
In terms of the issue being settled; it's only been going on 3-4 days inside of wild chaos in the big cities, the British retreat and Rommel's advance; nothing can be settled that quickly inside of that sort of chaos
The board used to have standards of plausibility. That was what made it worthwhile.
kham_coc
Banned
Because at this point it wouldn't help - The second coming of Muhammad couldn't calm down the egyptian people.
cardcarrier
Banned
I believe I explained adequately in the TL why action couldn't be taken against the King at the moment his subjects swarmed the radio station and the palace. Taking action against the King, the civilians who have begun squatting at the palace grounds at his express national request to protect him could only have far worse consequences than have already been happening; not that someone like Lampson wouldn't want to settle that score, but I believe Auchinlek and Fellers and hopefully London (although Churchill was a close personal friend of Lampson) would not risk what that might do to their entire position in the Muslim world
The demolitions in Rommels face can be justified as a war necessity, crushing Farouk's subjects with tanks and then shooting their king, those would be... difficult orders to carry out
All the British need to do is clean out Farouk's bank accounts and any money the Egyptian government has access to.
Also removed anything that could be used to print money.
I wonder could the Germans start using fake Bank of England 5£ notes?
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I mean they already have the printers for the failed effort to destroy the Pound back during the blitz. But I think both the Germans and the Egyptians would prefer to use marks instead of Pounds in this case.
And honestly taking Egyptians money isn't going to do a lot, Egypt economy is already destroyed, what else could go wrong?
kham_coc
Banned
Yes - apart from the fact that they did (see colonialism in general), the psychology is rather well researched, they would obey.
JLan1485
Banned
I think you're not lending the average British soldier any credit.
Even on the Eastern Front, whether it was the Wehrmacht or the SS there were morale issues when it came to murdering civilians on a mass scale like what it would take the British in order to clear out Farouk. And this is Germany we're talking about, the nation that was built on the back of not questioning orders and total faith in the military and the superiority of it's people, on top of a decade of Nazi propaganda campaigns designed to render not just outsiders but fellow Germans into subhuman creatures not worthy of any consideration.
Come on.
The author has already written that the British army is suffering from an almost debilitating morale situation in the aftermath of rapier--that's not all on their battlefield defeats but rather on the horrifying things they've done to the Egyptian people. I think the British army at this point would refuse orders/mutiny before carrying out such a command. Even HQ knows this.
cardcarrier
Banned
in terms of understanding the sorts of directives that might emerge from the axis, in the face of rapier; we should acknowledge that there was a sustained effort by the Nazi government to co-opt muslins, 10's of thousands from Bosnia served in the SS
the Nazi party made sustained propaganda efforts to weaponize the Koran/Islam against Jews/Soviets/British; this was expounded upon in Hitler's meetings with the Grand Mufti. specialist labor battalions followed behind Army Group A in the caucuses and began rebuilding Mosques/Prayer Halls which had been demolished by Stalin's government.
it applied in Africa too, not only via the radio Berlin broadcasts aimed at Egypt; but Rommel's troops where all handed a "pocket book on Islam" when they would land at Tripoli, which was intended to teach them proper manners and customs around arabs; to certain degress this worked as Rommel recruited arab soldiers as a custom, to fight in the 90th light division, and they performed well by most war accounts
so even though Rommel himself might not care at all, about the plight of civilians in Alexandria and Cairo (he wouldn't because he was a cold blooded killer), his masters had significant political goals that they might force upon him in this situation
the Nazi party made sustained propaganda efforts to weaponize the Koran/Islam against Jews/Soviets/British; this was expounded upon in Hitler's meetings with the Grand Mufti. specialist labor battalions followed behind Army Group A in the caucuses and began rebuilding Mosques/Prayer Halls which had been demolished by Stalin's government.
it applied in Africa too, not only via the radio Berlin broadcasts aimed at Egypt; but Rommel's troops where all handed a "pocket book on Islam" when they would land at Tripoli, which was intended to teach them proper manners and customs around arabs; to certain degress this worked as Rommel recruited arab soldiers as a custom, to fight in the 90th light division, and they performed well by most war accounts
so even though Rommel himself might not care at all, about the plight of civilians in Alexandria and Cairo (he wouldn't because he was a cold blooded killer), his masters had significant political goals that they might force upon him in this situation
cardcarrier
Banned
If they didn't mutiny in 1917 (the grumbling got loud but that was it) it was never going to happen; however, there has been an escalation of the pervasive morale, discipline and desertion problems of the 8th army due to the combat failures and rapier, I had mentioned in that corresponding chapter that Auchinlek and Smith didn't have the stomach to go shoot their way through the crowds of civilians protecting Farouk's palace, I kept this vague on purpose because it's a disclosure to Fellers, but they might have felt the troops wouldn't be reliable in that kind of operation
Operation Bernhard - Wikipedia
it was an option; but probably only on smaller scale in June 1942
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