Me, *standing here*, *the joke wheezing trough at mach 15 over my head*Thus, why I said "Whoops."
To the Victor, Go the Spoils (Redux): A Plausible Central Powers Victory
- Thread starter TheReformer
- Start date
Still in Africa, would be possible that the Boers in South Africa become more pro Germany? The germans, well Willy 2, supported them during the second Boer war and now that SA controls Namibia, which still has a german minority, we could se them using a closer relationship with Germany as leverage against the UK to get more concessions.
I just want to chime in that TheReformer has an excellent writing style. There is some dramatic flair that is wonderful. In particular I loved the line in the Hapsburg post
“The Empire may have won the war on paper, but was defeated in the hearts and minds of most of its citizens.”
That was very poetic, and helped paint a compelling picture.
“The Empire may have won the war on paper, but was defeated in the hearts and minds of most of its citizens.”
That was very poetic, and helped paint a compelling picture.
The US’s relationship to Europe will be very interesting I feel. The public, and even the political elite may lean towards a more isolationist stance, at least as long as the only options seem to be German hegemony or socialist takeover, but east Asia, particularly the pacific, is still their number one priority I’d imagine, and with Japan + China becoming more involved in the European alliance system, the US position feels a bit paradoxical. Telling Europe to shove off and fighting Japan to preserve US pacific dominance is essentially an alliance with the USSR de facto, which will likely piss off Britain and Germany, something the US would like to avoid, but they also can’t really just let the Japanese take over east Asia, as that will be seen as a Gun pointed straight at the US pacific possessions. I know I’ve said it before, but the US-UK-JAPAN relationship is going to make the global geopolitical situation extremely tricky to navigate, and could have extremely far-reaching implications for the future of the US, Europe, and east Asia.
This true. On the other hand, they got German East Africa, and there be diamonds there. And German Southwest Africa has diamonds too, I think? So if britain finds them... hey, that's cash money right there.
There’s a somewhat whacky but entertaining story from years ago on this site about an “Axis China” and a very different WW2. Now, the relevant part for here is how Japan igniting WW2 by invading China, and being backed by the UK and France, then Nazi Germany attacking to aid Hitler’s personal friend Chiang Kaishek (like I said, a whacky story) is that the USA takes a schizophrenic “Pox on Both Your Houses” foreign policy combined with a “Merchant of Death” economic policy that makes them very prosperous in the 1940s, but begins to make the populace feel more and more uncomfortable as they feed, arm, and bankroll both sides of the war that kills millions of people. In the postwar world, many people in all the formerly warring countries hold a grudge against the USA.
I could see something like that schizophrenic combo of foreign and economic policies taking route in this story.
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I found it buried in my subscribed timelines list.
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Chiang wasn’t a fascist but there was definitely an undercurrent of that in the KMT (the Blueshirts) and considering how fluid factions in the KMT could be it wouldn’t be the most surprising thing to see a more robust Blueshirt ascendancy that the Green Gang just shrugs along with. So it’s plausible!
Maybe I made a bit too much light of Britain's colonial gains.
The problem really is this, though: How many Britons will think they were worth the cost?I struggle to find an analogy from British history that really fits here, but I am tempted to say that this looks like a much more intense version of Amiens: You got more real estate, but you paid vastly, vastly more in blood and treasure for it, and you have even less prospect of unravelling the continential hegemon you just spent years failing to destroy. And hardly anyone is going to want to holiday in Berlin next summer.
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I think it depends on how Britain propagandizes it. I mean, I'm sure the UK's leadership won't do it, but if they find the Diamonds soon, one way to make britons think it was worth it is to give every citizen in the British Isles (or at least, every voting one) cut of the value of the diamonds, or something. Just throw money at them to shut them up.Maybe I made a bit too much light of Britain's colonial gains.
I struggle to find an analogy from British history that really fits here, but I am tempted to say that this looks like a much more intense version of Amiens: You got more real estate, but you paid vastly, vastly more in blood and treasure for it, and you have even less prospect of unravelling the continential hegemon you just spent years failing to destroy. And hardly anyone is going to want to holiday in Berlin next summer.
Charles Williams, "The Preliminaries of Peace", 1801. "Oddzooks - If this is the beginning, what will be the finish of the business?"
Thinking about Amiens, I wonder what an alt-1918 version of this would be? I'm not quite sure, but aside from the obligatory swapping of Boney with Picklehaub Willie, I might start with drenching his lordship in blood, and all the landscape behind him, too, which would have to be planted with endless rows of military graves. I don't think Siegfried Sassoon would settle for anything less.
Yeah expanding the empire at Germany’s expense will certainly help with *some* of the feeling of having lost the war. But at the end of the day Britain is still a European country and the British people are Europeans. They can’t look across the channel and see east Africa or the Middle East. But they can look across the channel to see a continent under the German yoke. Beyond the on the ground geopolitical reality, which the British government can more than deal with, part of Britain’s pathological fear of a continental hegemon was the brits assuming that if such a thing were established, they would inevitably be next in line to be dominated. It’s an interesting psychological factor, and will become even more interesting if the British government becomes convinced that an alliance of convenience is necessary with Germany in order to protect India. India really is the lynchpin of Britain’s status as a great power. As soon as India is lost, the UK will begin its OTL slide into glorified US vassal. Consenting, and more importantly, defending German dominance of continental Europe will never be horribly popular in Britain itself, but I’d imagine (hope?) that parliament would recognize that the importance of Europe is effectively moot if India is lost. Of course this will be tricky for London to pull off, and could even lead to a revanchist anti-establishment movement in Britain growing, but those are really just the cards as they’ve been dealt. It’s really indicative of how TTL’s geopolitical situation is so much “trickier” than OTL’s. The US-UK-Japan situation, in addition to the UK-Germany-USSR situation is something that will require all involved governments to make significant compromises on seemingly non-negotiable points, or risk isolation in a conflict they either won’t win, or will suffer from long term.Maybe I made a bit too much light of Britain's colonial gains.
I struggle to find an analogy from British history that really fits here, but I am tempted to say that this looks like a much more intense version of Amiens: You got more real estate, but you paid vastly, vastly more in blood and treasure for it, and you have even less prospect of unravelling the continential hegemon you just spent years failing to destroy. And hardly anyone is going to want to holiday in Berlin next summer.
The big variable here really is the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Does it stick?
Because if it does, I think that's going to have to have a significant impact on how Japanese foreign policy plays out. And maybe, more to the point, it will have some impact on Japanese military culture, too. There were a number of reasons why Japanese culture in the interwar period rapidly birthed a . . . let us call it, a rabidly militaristic funhouse bushido weltanschauung, but Britain's abrupt abandonment of the Alliance at the behest of the U.S. was a not insignificant factor. It was seen as a deep insult within the military and political leadership, deepening an already mounting sense of racial resentment of perceived shabby treatment by western powers. "You are in the club, but you are not of the club."
But even setting that aside, a Britain that remains in alliance with Japan could have some influence over Japanese policy. It might also be able to act, too, as a kind of go-between between Tokyo and Washington, tempering Japan's worst impulses in exchange for certain strategic accommodations.
Of course, it could be that even without a Washington Naval Treaty, that the frictions inherent in divergent interests would end up forcing an abandonment by the treaty by one party or the other before long: a pretty significant chance of that, actually, especially if the Americans play hardball and insist on passing the 1924 Immigration Act in some form. But then again, if Germany decides to ratchet up its relationship with the KMT, certain Japanese generals might have a stop-and-think moment about the whole thing. Similarly, the U.S. and British navies are going to be a good deal bigger (and more modern) here, and Japan simply can't build to match.
I agree. In the face of a hostile USSR and the downright massive gulp that is China, it’s not impossible that the Japanese are forced into a bit of reasonability and compromise with the Americans. It will not be an easy compromise, and it will likely be somewhat resented on both sides, but it can be done, especially if the British really force the issue, which they almost certainly will. There is also China itself to consider. Japan can wreck China something terrible, and occupy large swathes of the country, but I really doubt whether Japan can hold on to the whole or even majority of China forever. There’s just too many people who see themselves not only as not-Japanese, but above-Japanese, and if Japan’s treatment of their new subjects is anything like OTL, that will only make matters worse for them. Korea and possibly even Manchuria can probably be held, but China proper, especially the inland regions, seems to me as just too much for the Japanese to keep, much less assimilate.
None of that was enough to keep the Army of Kwangtung colonels out of China in OTL, though!
Neither 1931 nor 1937 were really....rational acts by a rational elite.
[And those were downright Brainiac moves compared to Pearl Harbor.]
But a European Hegemon Germany that's aggressively acting as economic and political sponsor of KMT China - and I am not saying this will happen, only that it's a live possibility given the history and what we know happened in the Interwar Period - might act to cause some hesitation, because strength is something even the most irrational militarist can comprehend - and respect.
Likewise, U.S and British navies that haven't been hacked down by the WNT may force a little more caution, too. The British won't be able to send much beyond home waters, but the Yankees will have no such need. Imagine South Dakotas and Lexingtons making regular port calls all around the Pacific Rim. They'd be hard to miss.
Oh I think Japan, especially if backed by both the UK and the US, can win a war in China, and swallow a good amount of it. But the Chinese, with or without foreign help, whether that be soviet or German, will not take that laying down. It may take years, but without an ethnic cleansing that is functionally impossible to complete in a country as populous as China, japans grip on a good amount of the mainland will falter eventually, and that will impact their relationship with the US and UK in the future. Maybe not in the next “world war,” but certainly in whatever wars happen in east Asia *after* that war. An independent China would be ideal for the Americans, it’s a check on Japan without the European entanglements of the USSR, and will be poor enough for the Americans to drag around for a while. I don’t expect this to impact the immediate post-war situation so much, but after the next war it will become important. Of course a strong China is possibly a greater long term threat to the US than a strong Japan, but China having developed enough to get to that point is still a number of decades away, Japan is the one CURRENTLY impeding on American interests, and Americans are notorious for their political short-sightedness. Ofc a communist China like OTL complicates this tremendously, as it would make any Brit with their eyes on India grow borderline apoplectic, and communist China will, at least at first, be most likely aligned with the soviets. But a capitalist, underdeveloped, independent China will look to the average American policy maker in the wake of alt-WWII as something to hope for. Whether they’d fight for it idk, that could threaten the British relationship, but if China frees itself, the Americans will be first in line to take advantage of that I think.
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All of the above brilliant speculation really shows how TheReformer has struck a gold mine with his use of a totally-last-minute POD for German victory in The Great War.
But it should be remembered that Germany isn't defeated ITTL like it was IOTL, so they might not support KMT China as much as they did IOTL.