Weber's Germany: The Veterinarian Totalitarian
- Thread starter Tom Colton
- Start date
I'm partway through this excellent TL but again I think that the main inspiration for Pearl was not Taranto but rather the 1932 fleet exercise during which Admiral Yarnell made a high speed run north of Oahu and struck and the naval base shooting up the airfields and striking the battleships here are a couple of good sites
https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/b...u-2005B-HIST-Wadle.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
go to page 85 for the exercise in question
or this site
http://www.military.com/navy/pearl-harbor-first-attack.html
and Wikipedia link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_problem
Figure 63: Dr. Mario Zippermayer, chief architect of the Vergeltungswaffen project. Late 1944. [4]
"You cannot stop us, Captain. Herr Weber's dream lives on." - Dr Zippermayen, 2017
Probably an Italian-led fascist (lite) block; sure i doubt that will be big and scary enough to fight directely the other two but probably strong enough to tip any balance or at least not isolated politically and military by the post-war powers
Could be a loose "unaligned" block, that isn't a block in the same way as alt- NATO and alt- Waszaw pact, more of a paper tiger that likes to make statements to preserve their independence from the two main blocks.
If all the hints dropped so far play out, we might see a USSR that comes up short from OTL's bloc, but NATO would only include the Anglo-American bloc (and possibly France). What this Cold War (if a three/two-and-a-half-way struggle can be called that) might play out is in de-colonization. Italy is going to want to hold on to its African holdings by hook or by crook, so I can see them buddying up with other fascist/diet-fascist powers (definitely Portugal, but Spain could get in on the action) to dig their claws into Africa. Whatever Soviet-led block is going to want to foster friendly regimes there, while NATO is (ostensibly) going to be about "peaceful and orderly transition of power".
Basically, Africa is going to be a mess.
Even worse due to the fact that in Libya there will be a significant italian civilian presence (as in the Horn of Africa) making things much more complicated and post-war the premiere example of African nationalism will be probably Cameroon...and that will not be a very nice example to win friend and influence people
That's definitely one possibility I can see, with Italy backing the "unholy trinity" of South Africa, Portugal, and Rhodesia, having avoided the dismantling of its empire ITTL and seeking allies to preserve its power in Africa. Spain could also be an eager supporter of this alliance, as could a Metaxas-like dictatorship in Greece, and they might try to prop up an apartheid-esque regime in Algeria if France still decides to pull out. The Arab nationalists are a wild card; I remember reading that they get swept out by the British after the resumption of hostilities, but movements opposed to both the Anglo-Americans and the Soviets might still have support in some quarters, even if aligning with the colonizer of Libya will undoubtedly provoke backlash from both Islamist and communist factions.
A bigger question, though, is whether or not China still goes communist, especially with the USSR taking a greater drubbing. If not, I can imagine the Kuomintang regime, after the discrediting of the party's left wing by Wang Jingwei's collaboration with the Japanese, aligning itself with the Italians, with the third power bloc (after NATO and the Soviets) being a fascist axis of Beijing and Rome that includes various right-wing dictatorships and colonial states. Latin America's likely to be an... interesting place, with right-wing dictators that, in OTL, fell in with the Americans because they had no other choice instead having the option of aligning with the fascists instead. Your free-marketeers like Pinochet and Fujimori will still eagerly rally to the US, but people like Peron and Vargas might think twice about such.
I don't see any big problems with the Germans getting good fuel-air explosives.
I'm a bit more worried though that it seems as if the Soviet military equipment was basically stagnant during the armistice while Germany somehow jumped five years in the same time period!
I'm guessing these escort carriers are meant to support operations in the arctic and baltic coasts? Because not in two decades can Weber's Germany hope to catch up to the UK.
I'm a bit more worried though that it seems as if the Soviet military equipment was basically stagnant during the armistice while Germany somehow jumped five years in the same time period!
an equivalent to Nunavut of sorts?
I'm getting the impression that Germany gets the jump on the USSR (again), probably pushing up to their OTL farthest line of advance, only to freeze to death.
Why's there less reason? There's supposedly a three-way cold war, that's reason enough to make nuclear deterrents.
NATO/WAllies, USSR, and.... IDK.
I'm guessing these escort carriers are meant to support operations in the arctic and baltic coasts? Because not in two decades can Weber's Germany hope to catch up to the UK.
The Germans have advanced the weapons technology but it had not filtered down to all sections by the time of the second German-Russian war. Combined with the sheer logistics and size of the Soviet Union most gains will have been used up quickly. The Soviets are trying to hold things together so weapons development may have been pushed to a lower priority. It sounds like the Germans may land the knockout blow but will be unable to follow up, especially if the Allies start hammering on them.
I realise that it's a horrible death toll even by ORLs standard but I kind of hope for a mutual kill between Stalin and Weber. It would be quite a twist if post-war Russia collapses too.
This would definitely be a best-case scenario, but unlikely given the stated three-way nuclear standoff which claims the soviets as one side. One can still hope that the nazis successes prior to allied intervention translate to a soviet union which remains within more or less ethnically russian borders this time around, with a great many more neutral nations that manage to retain their independence and status via trading with and being courted and influenced by two or more sides similar to Finland in OTL.
Just saying i really don't think Japan will survive longer than OTL, as a matter of fact, the war might be shorter by a full year. The US probably won't pursue the utterly massive 2 ocean navy act but you can and will expect a larger naval build considering Cordell Hull is F.D.R s successor I'd expect the USN to be undergoing expansion from the war in Europe with fast carriers and battleships under construction that will only be expanded by the war with Japan and the UK's ability to focus army and naval assets that would have gone to the Western desert ANZAC troops mainly would I think make for a much shorter war.
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Pretty interesting entry, Tom! Don't rightly care if it's 'implausible' but thermobaric weapons for the Reich? That's, to me, a pretty original change from the nuclear weapons that some timelines have done. Solid entry and well-researched!
