Thanks, everyone!
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Hey there, just discovered this TL recently, read it over the last week. The idea of effectively a sane Hitler is awesome and terrifying; love your work and look forward to seeing more...once a month of people's random guessing has passed
Thank you! It's a pity you found this thread just as I'm going on hiatus though. Hopefully I'll get time to consolidate my ideas regarding the current
Pax Germanica and churn out Part 5 even more quickly.
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Re: President Hull
It's interesting to see Cordell Hull and not guys like Garner and Wallace become POTUS for a change. I would really enjoy seeing what he does with regards to the war.
Wow.
Interesting with Hull as President. Wonder what kinds of foreign policies he'll use, and who'll be his replacement at state.
Ever heard of the Nazi take on the titanic? Wonder if Goebbles tries to make his blockbuster here.
Nice update. FDR not running for a 3rd term surprised me quite honestly. Wonder how Hull is going to handle the Japanese expansion and the Manhattan Project.
Author's comment: The initial plan was for Wallace to become President after Roosevelt runs for a third term and promptly collapses during a fireside chat in late 1941, akin to
For All Time, but
Ariosto convinced me otherwise, and it'll be his analysis in PM form of American politics that I'll be tapping on.
LiberatePalestine, Cactus Jack as president? It's almost as if you
want for
The Man in the High Castle to happen!
That said, Hull appears to be doing a Reagan, age-wise exactly forty years early. Thankfully, I have his term as Secretary of State to draw on regarding foreign policy. Hull will definitely be aware of the Manhattan Project, and
is gearing up for rearmament already given the rustlings in Southeast Asia.
Arguably the largest obstacle to Hull being an effective president is that speech impediment of his, famously dramatised in-universe in the historical dramedy
The Amewican Pwesident, starring George MacReady as Cordell Hull and Simon Oakland as reknowned speech therapist Charles Van Riper, who helps him overcome his impediment in the face of a multitude of caricatures of Hull as Elmer Fudd attempting to hunt Japanese aggressors.
Figure ??: (Cropped film still) President Cordell Hull played by George MacReady in
The Amewican Pwesident (1971).
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Re: British politics
It's also great to see Attlee opposing the armistice by the Western Allies and Germany. I don't know what stance he would have taken IRL, but since the war is quite a non-partisan issue, it's good to see the leader of Labour taking the hard line with regards to it. Now that there's a peace of sorts between the Western Allies and the Axis, will there be an election, and who's going to win if so?
Thanks for the acknowledgement
You are of course (extremely) welcome to use the term. Think I've seen "Phoney Peace" (TM) also used in another TL in which Britain negotiates with Nazi Germany, so with any luck it will become the default term for relations between the two in such circumstances
I believe a British election is due, and was only postponed OTL because of the war and the national unity government. I suspect a Labour victory (dissatisfaction with the Tories because of appeasement) but without an overall majority.
Boy, you have no idea how difficult it is editing multiple quotes on an iPhone
I intend for Halifax to stick around a while more, because Britain will still be in crisis mode pretty soon if the Asia-Pacific War begins on schedule, and the butterflies regarding the (attempted) peacemaking ex-Viceroy of India will have large ramifications down the road regarding Indian involvement in the war and subsequent implications for Indian self-determination.
Well, as I said, the generic term for confrontation
sans hostilities will still be "Cold War", but the Phoney Peace will be the one extending from this point onwards until the inevitable return to arms.
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Re: Atomic strategy
Of course, having made peace with Germany, all Britain has to do is sit back, keep Fighter Command and the RN well-equipped, and develop Tube Alloys and a high-speed, high-altitude bomber that can deliver the end-product. No need for much in the way of land forces, just need to defend Egypt against the Italians, and definitely no other strategic bombers - don't want the Germans developing any air defences
The handful of a-bombers required will be seen as no threat by the Germans (whose intel is so crap they won't know anything about the bomb, unlike the Russians). Goering will think they're just prototypes for that distant day when Britain thinks it can resume hostilities.
The problem is that here it's not Canaris running the Abwehr but Reinhard Heydrich, who's not exactly prone to actively undermining the government he's meant to be serving. This doesn't mean that the Abwehr is now the KGB, but it does mean they're going to get a boost in production.
Will Tube Alloys/Manhattan even be on the docket here? They were only pushed forward OTL because Britain and America were at war with Germany and there was a non-zero chance the A-Bombs would be needed to soften up German defenses/flatten Berlin. Here there's no ground war, and as you said all members to the peace treaty know that the next ten years are going to be time to rearm and rearm hard. There's no desperate need for the A Bomb when Britain, America, and to a certain extent France aren't on the ropes like they were OTL.
Some stuff about Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, from when it was independent...
From: RAF Nuclear Deterrent Forces, Humphrey Wynn HMSO 1994, ISBN: 9780117728332
Final decision to proceed 8 Jan 1947
Test explosion Monte Bello 2 Oct 1952
First delivery of production bomb to RAF 7 Nov 1953
Ballistic store not carried by Vickers Valiant until July 1955 due to non-availability of aircraft earlier - Avro Lincoln (basically an improved Lancaster) 'could be so modified' to carry bomb if necessary - Herod Committee first meeting 22 Nov 1948.
...which might or might not be useful. There were a few people, including Penney, who led, who were on Manhattan, and of course they knew it could be done, but the country was still in a pretty bad way financially. Biggest obstacle to independent development from 1940 is whether they would have known to go for a Pu implosion device, which is probably the cheapest and technically easiest at that time. Basically Manhattan threw dollars at every possibility. If/when the USA comes on board then that becomes possible, that's up to Tom of course. The big worry was no-one was sure how far along the Germans were (hardly at all, as it turned out). That should add urgency
Forgot that it was Heydrich not Canaris in TTL, but still the same MI5 (who turned every German spy in OTL - admittedly perhaps not so easy in peacetime), and the same Bletchley codebreakers.
In general, atomic research ought to proceed apace much like OTL, as people are beginning to realise the massive power achievable through such means, but as I've said before, atomic weapons are going to be slightly less
immediately relevant than what most people seem to be thinking. The USA will definitely be investing in Manhattan soon if Japan keeps saber-rattling, that's for sure. Germany's nuclear programme is going at the exact same pace, though, so good luck to those chuckleheads.
Enigma was cracked by the Poles much like they did in OTL, but Heydrich has instituted much more stringent regulations and doctrines regarding the use of the code machines and coded messages, so some of the stupidest blunders are being avoided, like using
wetter for all weather reports. The
dumbkopf who sent a message full of the same letter because he got bored got a jackboot up his ass pretty promptly, too. The
Abwehr should be operating at the efficiency of at least the SD in OTL. It's no SOE or NKVD, though.
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Re: Indonesia
Nice move, great politicking on the part of Indonesia. I would've though the Dutch would've gone for some sort of Monarchy for Indonesia, instead of a Republic though.
Am I correct in my understanding that basically all continental Dutch armed forced are being funneled into Indonesia?
Whoops, I didn't realise the term "Indonesian National Army" would imply that. Indonesia basically now has Dominion status, with an independent Governor-General. Something like the
Rendel Constitution is in the works, to at least give lip-service to local self-governance.
Yup, practically all of them. Some military police are left in the Netherlands, as the Treaty of Gutenberg is interpreted to at least leave enough forces for the "enforcement of internal security". Some of the rank-and-file are grumbling about being sent to that mosquito-ridden colony, others are looking forward to the tropical climate.
seriously?
INDONESIAN'S FLAG IS DUTCH POLISH FLAG???
please MAKE IT DUTCH MONACO INSTEAD
It looked weird when I swapped the red and white stripes, and if you cover the top white stripe, you get three
Sang Dwiwarnas.
The Dutch aren't letting the Indonesians use the
Merah-Putih because they aren't being exactly 100% sincere with the whole "Independence" thing.
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Re: Lenin/Petrograd
Cool beans, the renaming of Leningrad seems to reaffirm that Bolshevism is on the way out. President Hull should be interesting too.
It could also just mean that in current time (i.e. 2014) USSR has fallen like OTL, but instead of renaming it St. Petersburg they renamed it Petrograd, because they really don't want to have anything German sounding. Could be signs that the Germans were even worse in the USSR TTL than OTL.
yourworstnightmare is closer to the mark here; the permanent change to Petrograd's name isn't a
direct consequence of events here and now. Also, I like the sound of "Petrograd" more, mmkay?
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...And the rest!
Now all I can imagine is
this song being the theme of the
Weber's Germany.
Just imagine a beautiful serenade between Weber and Mussolini...
Let them say "We're crazy", I don't care about that
Put your hand in my hand, baby, don't ever look back
Let the world around us just fall apart
Baby, we can make it if we're heart to heart
And we can build this dream together, standing strong forever
Nothing's gonna stop us now
And if this world runs out of lovers, we'll still have each other
Nothing's gonna stop us, nothing's gonna stop us now
And then Antonescu, Boris III, Horthy, Quisling, Tiso and Tojo step out of the wings to join in the chorus...(It's Springtime for Weber and Winter for Everyone Else!)
Doh. Must. Stop. Posting. On. AH. Other stuff to do...
One of us! One of us!
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Thanks, all! As I said, I'll try to post some supplementary information to fill in the gaps. Till then, feel free to ask any questions about the state of the world by ~June 1940.
PART 5
THE CALM BETWEEN THE STORMS
COMING SOON
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EDIT: Index has been updated too.
EDIT 2: This is apparently reply #666 in the thread. How 2spooky4me.
