jolo said:
I admit I don't know enough about Canada to know how likely a fusion with the US is, or would have been at the time. But I'm pretty sure British and American leadership could have brought the idea across in a way that would be acceptable to most Canadians. As it is, we'll probably never agree...
No we won’t, just can’t see Canada being pawned off on an isolationist US who wouldn’t be interested anyway.
It's not necessary to assume it - I only see such things as possibilities.
A very long shot possibility that doesn’t really flow from the POD I could just as easily say the US would collapse into anarchy because…….
I'm not sure if Churchill was such a benevolent and altruist personality...
There isn’t anything altruistic about it, the French fighting on was in Britain’s best interests.
The part of the US getting some of the Arabian peninsula was probably phrased badly, as it was misunderstood not only by you. I meant the US getting the land from Britain without fighting for it, only maybe annexing some more desert around it, if there's a good opportunity - isolationist doesn't necessarily mean pacifism, and it might also be started by US civilians engaging there on their own (investment in oil fields, for instance).
Well I have already pointed out the problems with the UK handing over territories to the US but beyond that the Desert you are talking about annexing contains 7 million people at this point and is about 1 million miles square.
It is also home to the most scared place in Islam, good luck getting infidels walking around there.
Are you sure they didn't buy lots of oil fields and other interesting places after the war? Also, Ford Germany was founded in the 1920s afaik - among many other American investments.
Investments are not a prelude to annexation and as for those oil fields being bought you need to bring evidence to prove your point.
It appears to me you are closing your eyes to any development that might have harmed Britain even more than the actual TL.
And it appears to me you are interested in artificially expanding the US for no reason.
I'm actually drawing on real world examples - governing posts *were* sold IOTL,
Such as?
lots of people did move to developing countries, many of them with other ideas than (just) exploiting them, and so on.
And did any of these idealists attempt to buy up enough land in the country to enable a revolution?
How much land did they buy?
How many were there?
You still aren’t showing anything to support your wild ideas (which are so far – US gets Canada, US gets middle east oil, US gets Africa – you can see why I have suspicions about the common thread).
A complete mess up on my side, apparently. I don't know where I got that from...
Fair enough, are you going to revise your earlier ideas which you were basing upon the Alaska precedent?
They couldn't have done that as efficiently without US boats and ships.
Doesn’t matter, it could still be done.
Also, the u-boats didn't have a "resurgence", they only had an increased success rate.
What pray tell would you consider a resurgence?
They would have had some successes around Britain, too, if they had been there.
Only at a horrendous cost in U-boats which would have hurt them, like it or not the US was inexperienced in U-boat warfare and the allies paid for it.
There were ups and downs caused by breaking codes, new technologies, and the likes - but for both sides. More of them towards Germany, if Britain would have had less ressources at hand.
What vital resources to the U-boat campaign did the US provide?
What technological and tactic innovations?
You also ignore the fact once again that the battle of the Atlantic had already been won, U-boat loss rates were climbing and tonnage sunk was declining.
Still not without US help, and not without some increased success rates for Germany too, every once in a while.
And?
I’m not arguing that Britain is going to go off and invade Saudi Arabia or some such, I am arguing Britain was winning the battle of the Atlantic and would win the battle of the Atlantic, anything besides that is immaterial and pointless except to try and talk up the US.
Actually, it doesn't prove that much - only that there was some capacity left for that. It doesn't answer why that was the case.
That would be a separate question.
You said the British were about to lose their ability to pay, I showed they continued to pay after that point ergo you were incorrect, so it does prove everything on that point.
As for why it happened, it happened because Britain was able to accrue dollars throughout the war.
It's just an example of what increased sub production due to fewer destroyed sub building sites and fewer sub losses due to fewer British navy vessels and fewer technical problems on long distance journeys might have lead to.
Why don’t you tell me what the historical sinking rate was and then explain why you think this increase would occur, saying “it could” is no argument and is a waste of time in any factually based discussion.
Aliens “could” be living on Mars but I’m not about to go around claiming such.
The air superiority of the allies played an important role in that - and it wouldn't have been nearly as much without US help. Also, US ships sank quite a few German subs - those would probably have sunk a few ships more before sinking, otherwise.
The second happy time was also instrumental in getting Hitler to sign off on the U-boats, without that its quite possible less U-boats get built.
As for the US sinking a few U-boats, they certainly did but if those U-boats are instead going after UK convoys then the UK will sink more U-boats.
Finally this is once again irrelevant, the U-boats sinking a few more does not equate to the Germans winning the battle of the Atlantic.
As faik, the 50 or so destroyers Britain kept did lower losses a lot.
Proof? or is that just what you hoped happened.
The ones given to Canada, Norway, and Russia were probably intended to keep Germany from attacking close to those harbours. Furthermore, ships in construction aren't really helpful at a given time.
They were under construction in 1939, they would have been available before the Town class destroyers.
Without US help, I suppose there would have been quite some problems in some areas, thus limiting availability of other things - if only mines, torpedoes, bombs, fuel, and so on.
You suppose but you are only guessing and you are making these suppositions because they support your conclusion.
You have made your conclusion and make suppositions to support that conclusion, which is the backwards way of doing things.
And again Britain was already winning the battle of the Atlatnic.
But more costly also means Britains starts with less after the war. Don't forget that Britain was still leading in lots of technologies and a few markets at the end of wwii, afaik. 20 years later, they weren't anymore. The reasons must be in the period after the war, obviously.
Wrong, the UK was leading before the war as well that the gap closed just indicates that the war had a damaging effect on British industry.
You are also creating a false dichotomy by assuming that the war even had total effect or no effect (a Black and White fallacy).
They *did* get away with all this stuff up until the end of 1943 according to wiki, though at high losses.
Quotation?
And if U-boats were being traded for ships at a disadvantageous rate them they weren’t getting away with it they were cutting their own throats.
They would *definitely* have achieved more against Britain with less tavel times, less technical failures, less US hits, and so on.
You are again wasting time, nobody is arguing Britain won’t take increased loses (whether these loses will counterbalance the loses caused by US entry could be argued) so saying they would has all the purpose of arguing that the sky is blue.
As for less technical failures etc, there is no reason they would be less that logically follows from the POD.
But the British would have had dwindling supplies, an even more ruined economy, more shortages, and so on.
10% of war spending is not a great deal to lose, especially when you probably aren’t fighting in Asia and then later in France and Italy and why will a Britain that can actually export have a worse off economy.
While the Germans would have had considerably fewer of those problems than IOTL. Consider that Britain was never able to get the subs completely under control before the war ended - even in 1945, when Germany was in shatters.
Loses were at about .3 million in 1945, that is well under control, in 1944 loses in the Pacific were about equal to those in the Atlantic.
Still the Indians were kept from processing their own textiles by British laws, up until some time around that.
The calico law was repealed in 1774, some time around that is in fact out by a factor 17.
All impediments to Indian textiles were gone by 1820, by 1850 textiles mills were running in India and by1920 tariffs were actually in place to protect Indian textiles from British imports.
The Indians had steel mills by this point (before the first world war actually).
Now since your knowledge of what exactly was going on was flawed are you going to admit your argument was flawed.
I do believe market access should be similar on both sides, and I don't mind "retaliating" in kind if another country has high hurdles - but I'd allow a little bit of unevenness to keep my own industries "lean and mean" and to lead by example even if the others don't grasp that.
Which is the exact opposite of what the US did.
The US success was also pretty much in line with its human and material ressources - therefore probably unavoidable without major changes in European attitude.
Ah the mysterious attitude again, care to define it?
I believe the war was inevitable - lots of Germans were demanding changed borders even before the fall of the Weimar Republic. Most conservatives still believed in "might makes right". And so on. Germany going through an intense crisis before might even have helped weakening it enough for the Allies to win.
I doubt they would have gone rampaging like they did, a lot of Germans weren’t exactly thrilled with another world war.
But I agree that the US protectionism did add to the problems - a lot.
Well it’s nice to see that.
Wiki once more: "Unlike the loans of World War I, the transfers were gifts that were not to be repaid" - plus what I said above.
See my post above.
As I see it, there was always a possibility for Britain to get out of that - even on a product by product base, afaik.
As far as you know?
You gave every impression earlier of the concept being completely alien to you but know you know Britain could have avoided it, please share what you know which led you to this conclusion.
Therefore, I suppose the British let the US mainly disrupt the markets they didn't have anyways anymore.
Another supposition based upon nothing other than convenience.
Also, the US wasn't the country which invented the "Balance of Power" policy. And this shift of power probably only represents a part of what would have happened otherwise, because the British wouldn't let more than necessary happen in this regard.
The British allowed it because Churchill was willing to sweat blood to defeat the Axis and the US was willing to squeeze out all the blood it could.
Without that option the British won’t have a reason to commit economic suicide.
I agree that the US played power politics. I just say that Britain only played along to avoid an even worse fate - they could have chosen differently.
That even worse fate was letting the Axis rule Europe, which would have been bad for Europe and bad for Britain’s security (although Hitler probably could have been satisfied, we were a kindred race after all).
I don't know about the US curtailing other British purchases - but I suppose they could only have enforced this when Britain needed to use US shipping or escorts for that. Which means the US had a legitimate point.
Wrong again, the US had an official policy of undermining Britain’s attempts to get dollars (initially a limit set at $300 million and after 1942 it was set at $1 billion), the US did this to keep Britain using lend lease.
During this time Britain spent most of its dollars on Tobacco, wheat, etc, important purchases the US dictated, had to be done with lend lease and they would push British exports to the US into lend lease as well to prevent the Britsih getting too many dollars.
In fact the British spent a considerable sum of money in the US on frivolous products (including all outstanding French orders, $ hundreds of million’s wasted there) in order to convince them to get involved, if there is no chance of them getting involved here then Britain will be able to save that money.
I’m sure I have said that already.
Your view of Britain looks a little bit idealistic and single sided to me.
When I suggest Britain ends up owning Finland because of the war then we can talk.
At the time Britain declared war, Germany hadn't started the holocaust yet, they allowed persecuted minorities (which existed in some parts of the British Empire, too) to leave the country, there weren't nearly the purges the SU was known for at the time, and the Germans hadn't started conquering large parts of Europe yet (the Australian Hitler
Crikey, Hitler was from down under?
I do agree with you that Hitler Germany was even worse than communist Russia. But most of that was simply not known in Britain at the time. Which leaves only the more down to earth reasons why the war started.
You are once again failing to look at what I was addressing, you said that Britain was foolish to accept lend lease if strings were attached (which leads you so suppose those strings didn’t exist) and I pointed out that Britain was focused on destroying the Nazi’s.
What started the war has nothing to do with this, although what Hitler was about was plain to see by 1941 (the Pope was certainly shouting it from the roof tops).
Why could other countries capture those markets? Most of them had even bigger disadvantages - more limited ressources, technologically behind, Allied caps on developing high tech against former Axis countries, and so on. The reasons must obviously be somewhere else.
Other countries didn’t the US did.
You can make this about evil lefties and economic mismanagement as much as you want but the fact remains that the US deliberately crippled Britain’s exporting economy.
I don’t care if Labour doused the country in petrol and set it alight afterwards it has nothing to do with what is under discussion.
Don't you think that such a policy of rationing everything might have been part of the problem? In the fifties, it was definitely not done out of necessity anymore. Probably more to make people believe they needed the state to help them survive.
It was done because Britain still didn’t have the necessary dollar reserves because the US government had deliberately undermined our efforts to get them and that policy was far more ruinous than they expected.
More advantageous deals for Britain would simply have meant subsidizing that country. It was an empire, the US a republic. Nuff said.
Ah, so you have moved on from arguing it didn’t happen to justifying it one some rather silly ideological grounds.
The Soviet Union was an Empire too, why didn’t the US try to cripple them?
Hell the US republic had some rather imperial tendencies with regard to South America, but I guess as long as you have an elected head of state and good PR everything is kosher.
It's extremely primitive to keep other countries from developing just to keep a slight advantage for the British homeland by concentrating production there. It's also not really fair towards countries meant to be parts of the same empire.
Does the United Fruit Company mean anything to you?
How about that lend lease was doing exactly what you are accusing Britain of, except to Britain.
Finally let’s see Britain repressing colonial industry, considering India had had steel mills for decades I find it a tad unlikely.
The fact that India also had the biggest university on the planet doesn’t seem to indicate that Britain was all that serious about stopping them developing.
I'm just saying there were still differences between those 2 countries.
So this is another attempt to justify the US’s actions – they weren’t American so it was ok to knife them in the back.
I don’t care whether you think it was the correct action, I don’t even care if it was morally justifiable for the US to do it, I care that they took said action and that the consequences of said action were negative and won’t be felt in this ATL.
Anything beyond that is commentary.
But why do you think the Soviets couldn't pull that off with, say, the US west coast? Or with Australia? Because those states/countries weren't supressed, or at least didn't feel like being supressed (I admit that many poor countries aren't poor because of their colonial past).
Why do you think they were able to influence Greece, Italy, independent Italy, Persia etc in that way, it wasn’t because the people were oppressed it was because the people were poor and poor people will listen to some communist agitator who comes along and tells them he will rob form eth rich and give to the poor.
Afaik, they did - lots of countries get much of their foreign currency this way. Also, they didn't have that much client and colonial states where there would have been the same to consider.
At the time, but if you can show me evidence they did reciprocate then lets see it.
If Britain had been weaker and the US, thanks to not "breaking that oyster shell" had also been considerably weaker, how much havoc could the SU have wrecked then? How many more poor countries would have fallen for communist propaganda had there not been at least some reforms?
A stronger Britain is much better for anti-communist work; let’s not forget that Britain won its battle with communism in SEA and defeated other guerrilla movements in it Empire.
Britain also stood up to Arab nationalism (which has transmuted into religious fundamentalism and come back to be our bane) at Suez and was forced to back down by the US holding a gun to the pound.
Maybe even such a TL exists somewhere...
Yes but I’m not going to argue it is likely.