The Big One

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm pretty sure after the High Seas Fleet is destroyed, Germany is able to pour more resources into aircraft and infantry, and is able to equalize the air power disparity over the eastern front.

On that note, is there a 'what if the Germans in the TBOverse had concentrated on building carriers instead of cruisers and battleships' thread somewhere (e.g. Hilter became convinced carriers were a wunderwaffen early on and plan Z featured 20 carriers instead of the BBs, BCs and heavy cruiers)? Even if there is, maybe the question could do with being reexamined in the light of the events in Winter Warriors. If all that German tonnage had been carriers with a destroyer escort the battle would presumably have been less one-sided.

Thing is, most German battleships were far older than the American carriers. There's no way the would have been able to match American carriers in any sort of number. They also didn't know about the power projection capabilities of carriers, and were constantly fighting naval engagements in their 'backyard'.

[Starglider]

They also didn't know about the power projection capabilities of carriers, and were constantly fighting naval engagements in their 'backyard'.

Germany certainly didn't benefit from anything like the fleet exercises and planning the US could do in the 1920s and 30s, something which showed in their somewhat outdated designs and tactics in OTL. So I suppose we might see some pretty bizarre notions about carrier design and tactics. Still, it would be interesting. The destruction of the German fleet in Winter Warriors is morbidly gripping, because the descriptions and characterisation is so vivid, but it's not really interesting (the way that the Ride of the Valkyries battle was), because the outcome is so predetermined given the omniscient viewpoint and the knowledge contemporary readers have. A superior US carrier fleet versus an inferior and rather odd German carrier fleet would be harder to predict (in the specifics, obviously not the ultimate outcome).

[Stuart]

On that note, is there a 'what if the Germans in the TBOverse had concentrated on building carriers instead of cruisers and battleships' thread somewhere (e.g. Hilter became convinced carriers were a wunderwaffen early on and plan Z featured 20 carriers instead of the BBs, BCs and heavy cruiers)? Even if there is, maybe the question could do with being reexamined in the light of the events in Winter Warriors. If all that German tonnage had been carriers with a destroyer escort the battle would presumably have been less one-sided.

This is a PoD problem. The PoD for the TBOverse is Noon, June 19, 1940 and everything remains the same up to that date, for good or ill. Now, the Z-plan that controlled German naval construction was formalized in 1938 so that is still the operational guide. Z-plan envisaged the construction of 13 battleships and battlecruisers, 4 aircraft carriers, 15 Panzerschiffe, 23 cruisers and 22 so called "Spähkreuzer" which were basically large destroyers and quite a few destroyers. Now, that is still very obviously a battleship fleet so the type of fleet Germany could build was strictly limited. Also, many of the construction programs envisaged under the Z-plan were cancelled and the assembled material scrapped in 1939/1940 (for example, the sister ship to Graf Zeppelin was scrapped on the stocks in January 1940 so she isn't around in June. That was a big problem, hence the appearance of a captured British carrier to make up the numbers. Basically, all the naval construction plans were stopped although the first four battleships of the H class weren't formally cancelled until 1941. The plans to rebuild the Scharnhorst class weren't abandoned either - in fact Gneisenau started her rebuild - so they're still available.

So, the decision on how to restructure the German fleet must take into account what was available in June 1940. Now, the interesting thing is that the Germans painfully obviously had no concept of how carrier operations were changing naval warfare. There are no viable plans at all for new aircraft carriers around in 1940, the Germans just didn't think of them. What they did come up with was combining the panzerschiffe and aircraft carrier roles with a carrier/cruiser hybrid. THere were a lot of such designs but none were really plausible. Also, we have to get the ships designed, built and into service in the time available - five years. The lead time for a first of class in those days was around eight years so we have a serious time mismatch.

Only, there are other problems. Let's suppose the Germans did try to build a carrier fleet. They also have to get suitable aircraft and there aren't any. Note that in WW, the German fleet is flying Ju-87s. That isn't me being nasty, I really looked hard for an alternative carrier-based strike aircraft. Not only isn't there one, there aren't even any dirty pieces of paper purporting to be a design for such an aircraft. The "Ta-152F" the German carriers use in WW is my own invention, I know that a carrier-based fighter version of the FW-190 was proposed so I created the Ta-152F by analogy. Honestly, I'm not sure if its practical or not.

Then we have training and operational development; the Germans are developing from scratch. Note in WW their operations are slow and clumsy compared with the slick, professional operations of the U.S. Fleet. That's because the U.S. had been operating aircraft from carriers since the early 1930s and by 1940 had a lot of experience in doing just that.

So, in building the German Navy for 1945 we really have to work with what was available in June 1940 and that gives us the fleet described here. To get a carrier-based fleet, we'd have to set the PoD a lot earlier and doing that would mean rebuilding a lot of other factors as well. So, a carrier-based German fleet just isn't a practical entity for the TBOverse, the dates and timings imply work against it. The High Seas Fleet described in the story really is the best the Germans could do and then some - just like the situation on land is the best the Germans could do - and then some.

That's the whole point really. I've set the situation up so that teh Germans have everything running for them, they have their wunderwaffe (or as I prefer to call then, napkinwaffe since most of them were outlines sketched on the back of beer-hall napkins), they have a fleet that;s better than anything they could really manage, they advanced further into Russia than is really practical and it all doesn't matter. The Germans are going to die because they're simply hopelessly outclassed. In some ways the Battle of the Orkneys is an example of the same thing that destroyed Germany 18 months later, the U.S. is racing ahead of Germany in both quality and quantity and they simply don't fight the Germans on even terms. They ruthlessly exploit every possible advantage they have so that the Germans are destroyed by weapons they can't answer (aircraft carriers in WW, B-36s and nuclear weapons in TBO itself).

That's the big difference and one that underlies TBO. All the talk about German wunderwaffe ignores the fact that the Americans (and British, and Russians - did you know that in 1945 indigenously designed Russian jets had higher power outputs and longer lives than their German equivalents) had their wonder weapons too. Only the Americans built theirs and actually put them into service, the German ones were just outlines on paper.

[Starglider]

This is a PoD problem. The PoD for the TBOverse is Noon, June 19, 1940 and everything remains the same up to that date, for good or ill.

I know; my question wasn't realistic in any alternate-history sense, it was just a tactical 'what if', not a stratetic one.

There are no viable plans at all for new aircraft carriers around in 1940, the Germans just didn't think of them. What they did come up with was combining the panzerschiffe and aircraft carrier roles with a carrier/cruiser hybrid. THere were a lot of such designs but none were really plausible.

This is what potentially might have it so interesting; the Germans trying to use completely bizarre tactics and ship designs and discovering the hard way that they don't work. The theme in Winter Warriors is more that the Germans are just hopelessly outdated.

They also have to get suitable aircraft and there aren't any.

Yes, I had a feeling that would be a problem.

I suppose the (slightly) more historically realistic scenario is the Nazis capturing nearly all the UK fleet intact, and finding some combination of carrot and stick tactics that lets them retain some UK tactical expertise and the ability to produce carrier fighters (albeit not all that good ones). I suppose the question that comes out of that is 'just how much bigger a force would the Germans have needed in Winter Warriors to make it to the US carriers with enough ships still fighting to do serious damage. How many more ships does it take to substantially change the outcome? How many more does it take before the US would seek to avoid the engagement entirely - or can they not afford that under any circumstances?

That's the whole point really. I've set the situation up so that teh Germans have everything running for them, they have their wunderwaffe (or as I prefer to call then, napkinwaffe since most of them were outlines sketched on the back of beer-hall napkins), they have a fleet that;s better than anything they could really manage, they advanced further into Russia than is really practical and it all doesn't matter. The Germans are going to die because they're simply hopelessly outclassed.

Winter Warriors certainly does make that point on the naval front, and as usual stacking the deck even more (e.g. handing the Germans the whole UK fleet on a platter) can only postpone the inevitable, but I'm considering the tactical situation here.

[Stuart]

This is what potentially might have it so interesting; the Germans trying to use completely bizarre tactics and ship designs and discovering the hard way that they don't work. The theme in Winter Warriors is more that the Germans are just hopelessly outdated.

It's a bit more than that, they are hopelessly outdated certainly, but the key is that they don't know that they are hopelessly outdated. They're looking at everything through their own preconceptions and assumptions and assuming that they have got it right, that battleships at sea cannot be hammered into destruction by airstrikes and that eventually they will get the carriers under their guns. In OTL, that was a very widely held assumption right up (almost) to the end of WW2, it was hurt by the sinking of Repulse and Prince of Wales but wasn't really savaged until the Yamato went down. Even then, battleships didn't really fade away until the 1950s when it became apparent that the carriers really could look after themselves.

In TBO, there was no real naval surface war until 1945. The U.S. carriers had been pounding on land targets, the Germans had been using their submarines, but there hadn't really been a fleet engagement. The nearest possible case history was when Scharnhorst and Gneisenau got Glorious under their guns and sank her. So, on that very limited basis, the Germans had cause to believe that their battleships were a viable fighting alternative to the carriers. Of course, we know otherwise so we get the Greek tragedy of the German battleships sailing North to engage in a battle that they think they can win but we know they cannot (although it was a closer-run thing, by strike Nan, the carriers were running low on ship-killing munitions - note the Corsairs are dropping 1,000 pound HE bombs by the end),

I suppose the (slightly) more historically realistic scenario is the Nazis capturing nearly all the UK fleet intact, and finding some combination of carrot and stick tactics that lets them retain some UK tactical expertise and the ability to produce carrier fighters (albeit not all that good ones).

The problem is, that doesn't help them very much. It would add Ark Royal, Illustrious, Victorious, Formidable, Indomitable and Furious to the carrier fleet - total around 200 aircraft. They're still outnumbered ten to one (and the US carriers can operate their aircraft much more efficiently). The Germans would get a few more battleships, a lot more cruisers and destroyers but that wouldn't really change the equation. The aquisition of a British carrier aircraft base wouldn't get them very far, British carrier aircraft in WW2 really were not very good.

suppose the question that comes out of that is 'just how much bigger a force would the Germans have needed in Winter Warriors to make it to the US carriers with enough ships still fighting to do serious damage.

They'd need a Japanese-style Navy at the very least, and that would still be defeated. It would just be a bloodier battle. Remember, the U.S. Navy in OTL swamped the Japanese fleet and that was many times larger and more powerful than any fleet the Germans could have realistically built. Probably to face off the Americans with a reasonable chance of success, the Germans would need to add teh British and Japanese navies to the fleet they had in WW.

How many more ships does it take to substantially change the outcome? How many more does it take before the US would seek to avoid the engagement entirely - or can they not afford that under any circumstances?

The answer is no imaginable number. Remember, the U.S. has production capacity coming out of the wazoo, building stuff isn't a problem. If they see a Navy building that challenges them, they outbuild it. They can do it from surplus capacity. If the Germans want to match that, they would have to slash their land and aircraft production totals - and they can't do that without being overrun on land.

Winter Warriors certainly does make that point on the naval front, and as usual stacking the deck even more (e.g. handing the Germans the whole UK fleet on a platter) can only postpone the inevitable, but I'm considering the tactical situation here.

I understand, but in putting this together, I've tried to work pretty strictly from what was plausible and could be achieved using whatw as actually available at the time. It really makes a point as to just how outclassed Nazi Germany was, there are no options they have (other than an alien space bats miracle) that can help them. At best, they can delay the inevitable and hope that the bloodbath on the Russian Front so sickens the Americans that they give up. Which is basically their TBO strategy - and its not a bad one. One of the subtexts in TBO is that war-weariness is getting to be a real problem in America.

[Starglider]

I imagine there is a basic conflict here between writing interesting tactical battles and an interesting and realistic overall strategy. Battles are most interesting when the forces and objectives are such that there is real uncertainty as to the outcome, making the decisions of the commanders as to how to employ their forces critical, and allowing the tide battle to swing from one side's advantage to the other.

However at the strategic level the motive is very much to avoid these sorts of battles, as of course an attacking commander will always seek to concentrate their forces and enter engagements they're confident they will win. In WWII in particular this combines with the development of weapons that are difficult or impossible to defend/retaliate against. I am not a writer, but from reading a lot of military fiction, the (better) authors usually contrive to have an interesting tactical battle occur by having one side make a serious strategic mistake, such that they're facing more defenders than they thought, some of their attacking force doesn't make it to the engement or some new weapon unexpectedly evens the odds. This happens enough in real history to be ok as an exceptional, set-piece scenario, but in most campaigns it just isn't realistic to have it keep happening.

I suppose an example of this contrivance on a grand scale would be Sir John Hackett's Third World War books; he has NATO and the Warsaw Pact go at it at a moment in time where (in his view) they're equal enough in capability to make the fight for europe an uncertain one. He rationalises the leaders of the USSR going for this even though they know they might not win with politics (of the 'use it or lose it' variety - as applied to the whole USSR) and some wishful thinking. Both sides scramble to concentrate forces to achieve overwhelming victories but because it's a small front with modern equipment they counter each other's moves relatively quickly. The outcome was close enough that a good chunk of the second book consists of a 'USSR wins' scenario that the author claims is nearly as plausible as the main narrative. Of course there's additional huge contrivance involved in keeping the nuclear exchange down to five missiles fired and two cities hit (for me this seemed like the least realistic part of the books).

TBO is mainly a strategic narrative and your single biggest theme is that German defeat is inevitable given any even vaguely plausible combination of circumstances, and as you say you have been reflecting that at smaller scales. Overwhelming US force is maintained through the 20th century such that no even vaguely plausible combination of circumstances can defeat the US at the strategic level either. The fun of reading your tactical narratives largely comes from other sources than the battle of wits and tactics between the commanders involved - the power of the imagery, the tragic element and seeing characters discover (or try to deny) things that are now 'conventional wisdom' (e.g. the supremacy of CVs over BBs). As such any complaint about the battles being tactically uninteresting (though there is of course still a lot of thought involved in destroying the enemy with a minimum of losses) is kind of missing the point. I am not personally complaining; I am just fantasising about historically impossible scenarios that present interesting tactical challenges. Though perhaps you have spoiled us with the exciting battles between minor players (such as the ROTV naval battle I keep mentioning).

It's a bit more than that, they are hopelessly outdated certainly, but the key is that they don't know that they are hopelessly outdated.

I suppose the questions that implies are, a) if you sent Admiral Lindemann a few days back in time right before he was blown up before a 2,000 pound bomb, what would he have done differently, b) if the Germans had realised that there fleet was hopelessly outmatched, was there really anything more useful they could have done with it, and c) was it a waste of time even trying to build a fleet in the first place? I suspect the answer is 'yes' in last case because the usual virtual attrition argument doesn't apply; building the fleet did not force the US to divert a lot of resources to counter it, because the US would've built their carriers anyway as floating airfields to attack the European mainland.

The answer is no imaginable number. Remember, the U.S. has production capacity coming out of the wazoo, building stuff isn't a problem. If they see a Navy building that challenges them, they outbuild it. They can do it from surplus capacity.

That has to have a cost otherwise the US would have done it anyway; I get the impression from Seer's comments that it would be a serious postwar crash.

EDIT: Accidentally wrote 'I suspect the answer is no' when I meant to write 'I suspect the answer is yes', fixed.

[Stuart]

I imagine there is a basic conflict here between writing interesting tactical battles and an interesting and realistic overall strategy. Battles are most interesting when the forces and objectives are such that there is real uncertainty as to the outcome, making the decisions of the commanders as to how to employ their forces critical, and allowing the tide battle to swing from one side's advantage to the other.

The problem is that in order to be able to create a realistic engagement at the tactical level it has to be set in a strategic environment. What are the forces on either side? Why are they there? What are they trying to achieve? All those questions have to be answered if the account of the tactical engagement is to make sense. That means the strategic environment has to come first and the tactical operations flow from that environment.

However at the strategic level the motive is very much to avoid these sorts of battles, as of course an attacking commander will always seek to concentrate their forces and enter engagements they're confident they will win.

This is the trouble, once we have defined a realistic strategic environment, or inserted an engagement into the genuine strategic environment, its a given that one or both commanders thinks they have an absolute advantage and the engagement will be pre-ordained. So, if the strategy works, the tactial engagements that flow from that strategy are going to be one-sided. Thus in any realistic accounting of an event, the mystery and confusion really do lie at the strategic rather than the tactical level.

In WWII in particular this combines with the development of weapons that are difficult or impossible to defend/retaliate against. I am not a writer, but from reading a lot of military fiction, the (better) authors usually contrive to have an interesting tactical battle occur by having one side make a serious strategic mistake, such that they're facing more defenders than they thought, some of their attacking force doesn't make it to the engement or some new weapon unexpectedly evens the odds.

That's more or less what has happened here. The Germans have made a massive strategic error in assuming that their 1930s battle fleet was still a viable entity. As we have already covered, they weren't alone in making that mistake - and there are still those out there who are making that mistake today. The Canadians have made a serious strategic error, the consequences of which are only just becoming apparent.

This happens enough in real history to be ok as an exceptional, set-piece scenario, but in most campaigns it just isn't realistic to have it keep happening.

The problem is that if it doesn't then the campaign consists of one side walking towards the gallows.

TBO is mainly a strategic narrative and your single biggest theme is that German defeat is inevitable given any even vaguely plausible combination of circumstances, and as you say you have been reflecting that at smaller scales.

That's right, that's what kicked the whole thing off four years ago. TBO started life as a reaction to the "Erwin Rommel and German uberweapons conquer the world" school of alt-hist by showing that other people had super-weapons to and that U.S. production capacity pretty much made everything else inevitable. In TBO, the Germans pretty much have the most favorable combination of circumstances possible and it still doesn't help them.

Overwhelming US force is maintained through the 20th century such that no even vaguely plausible combination of circumstances can defeat the US at the strategic level either.

The later books explore the "if then what" line. If the Americans have an overwhelming supremacy in strategic warfare, then how do other nations cope with that? If conventional large-scale warfare is out of consideration then how do international affairs adjust to that. If Japan succeeds in occupying China then where does the situation go from there and what would happen over a longer period of time. If people like the Taliban and OBL get there way and form a unified Moslem state then how could such a state be made to work gven the divisions and tensions within the Moslem world. Quite a few more If/then questions asked throughout the books.

That has to have a cost otherwise the US would have done it anyway; I get the impression from Seer's comments that it would be a serious postwar crash.

That's right, the fact that in OTL the US didn't mobilize anywhere near the full war-making production capacity of its industry (the generally accepted figure is 44 percent) saved the US from a worse post-war crash than was actually the case - and the post war crash that did take place was bad enough (in passing, another of the myths of history, that the US demobilization post WW2 was unnecessary and a bad mistake. In fact, the US faced an economic melt-down in the late 1940s and had to demobilize). In TBO, the same thing is happening, the strategists running the US war machine are looking beyond the end of the war and trying to ameliorate that post-war crash. They know they can't avoid it completely but they want to limit it.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Eye of the Deceiver - Two

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Eye of the Deceiver - Three

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Eye of the Deceiver - Four

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Eye of the Deceiver - Five

[Stuart Mackey]

Australia Australia was unique that it already had a reasonably large and capable Navy including two County class cruisers, three improved Leanders and two normal Leanders that had been part of the New Zealand Navy prior to that country's absorption into Australia as their eighth state.

No offense mate, but you have got to be joking. What was your rational for this?

[Stuart]

No offense mate, but you have got to be joking. What was your rational for this?

Most of the Australian politics and military background comes from one of teh members of the team putting the background to TBO together, a guy called Shane Rogers (posts as The Argus on Ezboard). I've emailed him for a detailed explanation of the rationale for the incorporation of New Zealand into Australia and will post it when it arrives (this may take a few days).

In a more general sense, one of the precepts that commonly occurs in alt-hist that deals with the early days of WW2 is that, in the event of a British collapse, the Commonwealth fights on. Now, there are problems with that concept, not the least being

A - How?
B - Where?

So, in putting the backstory of TBO together, we decided to have a look at what would be involved in the Commonwealth fighting on. This immediately gave rise to a third question.

C - Why?

It very quickly became apparent that none of the three questions could easily be answered. For example, why should India fight on in the event of a British collapse in 1940? And if they did, what would they do? The answers to those turned out to be so complex that they form the subject of the next book in the TBO series - "A Mighty Endeavor".

One of the major problems that quickly becomes apparent is that the Commonwealth was a fairly tightly integrated whole with the UK as the central prop. Kick out that central prop and the whole system falls apart. The complexities of that issue are enormous and I can't go into them in a shortish post like this but in essentials, Australia and the rest of the Commonwealth are left with the wreckage of an economic system that was never designed to operate to their advantage and which severely distorted their basic economic structure.

New Zealand is a pretty good example. It produces agricultural products, butter, cheese, lamb, few other things. Who is going to buy them? The U.S. certainly isn't.

So, if we make the standard alt-hist assumption 'the Commonwealth fights on' then we have a lot of economic restructuring to do. The factfiles dealing with TBO give quite a bit of background on this and help to fill in some of the details. It's one of those If/Then questions, if we make a basic assumption, then what are the consequences and how do we make that assumption work.

I don't have detailed knowledge of Australian cultural or economic history so I turned to people who do for advice. Shane was one of those who stepped forward with input (early on, I validated what he was saying a gainst other people with specific knowledge of the areas under discussion and and their verdict was an enthusiastic approval). Shane came up with the rationale for the incorporation of New Zealand into Australia based on the dire economic situation (I can't stress enough just how bad the economics are; the situation if we remove the UK from the center of the Commonwealth at that time is utterly catastrophic) and I accepted that. Frankly, it isn't that important, its a backstory detail that has utterly no effect on the timeline.

Another reason, by the way, behind the way the events in the Far East was structured was a desire to get away from the standard fare of alt-hist stories. I was tired of seeing Japan, China etc etc etc being the major world powers, I wanted to ask the question, what would happen if somebody arrives from out of left field, a country (or countries) which were previously of little or no account suddenly find themselves moving towards the center of the world stage (much as, for example, the UK did in the 17th and 18th centuries - NAM Rodgers Sovereinty of the Seas and Command of the Oceans look at this process in great and very readable detail). How do those countries cope with the problems? More fundamentally, what is their response to moving to the center of the world stage, more precisely how do they do it?

In setting the situation up, I was sorely tempted to use the Philippines as the Asian country that finds itself in the center of world affairs and has to step up to the plate. In the end, I settled on Thailand for a wide variety of factors, not least being its a country I do have detailed knowledge of and have many well-placed friends there. From the need to restructure much of the world's economy caused by the (temporary) removal of the UK from the Commonwealth and the need to create a political structure in that part of the world grew The Triple Alliance. New Zealand is one not very important part of that process.

As I said earlier, I've asked Shane for a more detailed account of the whys and hows of the New Zealand incorporation into Australia and will post the response when I get it. As I recall, it was essentially a result of the economic catastrophe that left very little in the way of alternatives.

[Stuart Mackey]

No offense mate, but you have got to be joking. What was your rational for this?

Most of the Australian politics and military background comes from one of teh members of the team putting the background to TBO together, a guy called Shane Rogers (posts as The Argus on Ezboard). I've emailed him for a detailed explanation of the rationale for the incorporation of New Zealand into Australia and will post it when it arrives (this may take a few days).snip

As I said earlier, I've asked Shane for a more detailed account of the whys and hows of the New Zealand incorporation into Australia and will post the response when I get it. As I recall, it was essentially a result of the economic catastrophe that left very little in the way of alternatives.

Thanks for that. I look forward to is reply.
{If he happens to be an Australian himself, please inform him that Phar Lap is a New Zealand horse.}

[Stuart]

please inform him that Phar Lap is a New Zealand horse.

I have been asked to advise you that

Phar Lap was a Kiwi horse, until, like so many New Zealanders, it emigrated to a better country.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Eye of the Deceiver - Six

[Alan Bolte]

I'm really liking EotD. Nice change of pace.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Eye of the Deceiver - Seven

[Stuart Mackey]

please inform him that Phar Lap is a New Zealand horse.

I have been asked to advise you that

Phar Lap was a Kiwi horse, until, like so many New Zealanders, it emigrated to a better country.

Well, the best horses in Australia always were imported. But, I suppose, some things must travel to that great nation of their own free will and for legitimate reasons.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Hat tip to XaLEv.

Eye of the Deceiver - Eight

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Eye of the Deceiver - Nine

[The Argus]

Sorry about the delay, moving house

First a minor correction, NZ becomes the 7th state, not the 8th. I dare say Stuart was just repeating (in good faith) an earlier muck-up of mine, so mea-culpa on that.

No offense mate, but you have got to be joking. What was your rational for this?

Of course I'm joking! Newfoundland would never become part of Canada... Oh that's right we're talking about NZ.

Why merge NZ with Aust...?

The long and short of it, is that in the post Halifax world of TBO NZ is simply not a viable nation as far as I've been able to work things out.

I realise this isn't very palatable, but then its not a very nice climate for any of us under TBO. The coup does one nice thing for Dominion finances in general. In repudiating Britain, we get to ignore majority of our national debt's which were held on the London market. However the down side is we (the Dominions) also lose access to our capitol reserves banked in London, all our primary trades go for a Burton and in general we're stuffed six ways from Sunday.

Just because we sold a lot of agricultural produce to the UK doesn't mean we antipodians had any great lock on the world market. Quite the reverse, once perferential trade evaporates and we factor out the Imperial shipping system, subjecting our trade to real accounting on transport, (as like the 50's/60's @) being on the far side of the world has its problems. Take grain and beef, the UK/Europe could source both from (North and South) America and Russia (grain) at far better terms than from down here.

Historically the British Government went on a huge international buying spree in the early war, that really heated up after the Battle for France turned pearshaped. This didn't really play much on Aust or NZ as our production was already covered, but basicly London ran around buying up every stockpile of strategic raw material (oil, ores, raw metals, food stuffs, fibres, rubber etc etc) they could get their hands on in Europe and Abroad. Firstly to keep it out of German hands, and secondly to add it to their own reserves. It also had a third impact, in that the UK absorbed the international surplus in primary production generated by the overnight collapse of European markets (as the Germans took them over).

In TBO this program hardly has time to get started , and then drops off pretty quickly, leaving the 'free' world awash in primary produce and generally engaged in expanding production (in anticipation of increasing wartime demand). Woops! Queue a global depression.

Under these circumstances NZ is in the position of being largely debt free but flat broke and out of work. At the same time your ecconomy was heavily dependant on imports in all areas beyond primary production. NZ could feed itself a dozen times over, but a bit of coal aside, fuel and manufactured products came in from overseas - or would if you could pay for them. I haven't actually crunched the numbers to work out what NZ's wool clip would have been worth in 40-42 TBO. But it can't come to much, the wool trade is still very much a buyers market under these conditions.

Now Australia has a bit of diversification to our ecconomy, a little manufacturing, financial services on a local level, but most particularly in making military kit. This isn't to dismiss South Africa and India, but for a well rounded manufacturing sector , the Cw's production base has just shrunk to Canada and Aust.

It's just turned 5am and I'm yawning. So more later.

shane

[Andras]

EotD Ten

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Hat tip to XaLEv again

Eye of the Deceiver - Eleven

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Unto the Tenth Generation - Six[/url]