To Shep and the Drakafic guys: After the Domination Falls

[MKSheppard]

Here's a nice comparison between Comparable 2 x 4 Trucks; basically maximum weight limitation is 9-10 metric tons.

Steam Powered 3.5 Ton Truck (2 x 4)

70 hp Triple Expansion Steam Engine (1.2 metric tons for engine)
125 Gallons of Diesel
5.75 tons empty
3.5 tons of cargo

38 MPH top Speed unloaded
990 mile range unloaded

24 MPH top speed loaded
617 mile range loaded

-------------

Diesel Powered 4.5 ton Truck (2 x 4)

70 hp Diesel Engine (0.289 metric tons for engine)
125 Gallons of Diesel
4.8 tons empty
4.5 tons of cargo

46 MPH top Speed unloaded
2082 mile range unloaded

24 MPH top speed loaded
1074 mile range loaded

[Big Orange]

Again, though, as for elevation of the best and brightest - I'm not sure on how it would work, if it'd happen at all. Obviously, the smarter serfs who grasp the workings of the factory and so forth end up elevated to foreman and whatnot. Ones who are even smarter intellectually-wise get taught to read and do the company's basic paperwork. Beyond that, I don't know.

The main roadblock is that Drakan society does not want their native serfs to be too educated to think more for themselves, but they could risk having a minority of native serfs to be scientists and engineers through select education programs. And they still need educated serfs to conduct aircraft and tank repairs or operate complicate systems on naval vessels.

We'd have to tally that up. However, we were talking about this last night, Shep and I, and we more or less hashed out what a "Police Legion" (for holding conquered territory) would look like. It'd be a mix of Citizens, OrPos, and Janissaries. Primarily, of course, it would be mainly foot- or motorized Janissary infantry, who go out and patrol and such. If shit hits the fan, though, the Citizens are the ones who do the majority of the reacting, and start suppressing things hard. These Police Legions citizens wouldn't be grade-A CF material - they'd probably be the ones who have flat feet or are somewhat nearsighted, and so forth.

The Security Directorate forces would do the vast majority of internal security and serf repression with it's Order Police Legions with little Citizen Force or Janissary Corps involvement (they're under the jurisdiction of the WarDir, right?), but does the SirDir have a growing a frontline military of it's own like the SS did? The Intervention Units are supposedly a Security Directorate forces that act as elite internal response troops and also as overseas Special Forces commandos.

It DOES make sense, to introduce the abstract wings-only marking earlier, but not so universally.

The Draka are narcissistic in the extreme. If it's a 'personal' piece of military equipment - like a tank, or an airplane, or a staff car that Citizens use, they'd want it with the full Dragon, Shield, and Chains.

I can imagine Drakian tank aces and maverick pilots painting up their war machines with showy murials of dragon wings, shields, claws, snarling dragon faces and swords (in the same manner that RAF pilots painted their planes with pictures of pinup girls and Soviet tank crews painted slogans on the side of their tank turrets). Sorry, but I like MKSheppard's idea of the abstract Yellow Star set in abstract Snake Wings "brand" being the universal Drakian military insignia far better. The original Drakian coat of arms would only work as a seal for a divisional headquaters and in simpler form for a universal sown tunic badge (like the Nazi German eagle).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Remember that the most educated serfs would invariably be household majorodomos who by virtue of their position are likely to be the most loyal of all the serfs, treated in the same way you'd treat your beloved family dog. They would probably have an education quite equivalent to an executive secretary in our modern society.

Punch-card girls with mathematics skills are certainly another large subset of trained serfs, and as Shep speculates they'd be transferred around between the combines and generally well-treated. I suspect that in general only female serfs are given higher education because they would be considered more docile and less able to organize a revolt, and they could be controlled through sexual use somewhat more easily, or at least so it would be thought on a broad basis. You want the weakest and least apt to revolt of serfs to be those who are given knowledge. Another thought that it occurs to me is that many select boys might be castrated (primarily for sexual uses) and these eunuchs could later be given more trusted positions; without families they have less reason to desire freedom and lacking even the testosterone that females produce would be the most docile of them all.

[frogcurry]

I'd have thought that the education of young Draka would be by serfs as well, similar to the old idea of having your household greek slave educate your kids in (rich) roman times. Obviously that would need an educated serf to do, although only to the extent that they can teach basic reading, maths etc to a child.

One issue: with a 5 year conscription period at 18 then further education afterwards, your engineers are going to be 27 by the time they graduate, and your PhD scientists are going to be around 30. Thats a pretty horrific statistic, and I just can't see it making sense to conscript every Citizen into military service for that reason.

[KlavoHunter]

I'd have thought that the education of young Draka would be by serfs as well, similar to the old idea of having your household greek slave educate your kids in (rich) roman times. Obviously that would need an educated serf to do, although only to the extent that they can teach basic reading, maths etc to a child.

Most likely not. Draka children are educated in state-run schools, which are run by Citizen instructors.

One issue: with a 5 year conscription period at 18 then further education afterwards, your engineers are going to be 27 by the time they graduate, and your PhD scientists are going to be around 30. Thats a pretty horrific statistic, and I just can't see it making sense to conscript every Citizen into military service for that reason.

Not *ALL* Citizens are conscripted. Those who have the inclination and talent to pursue a non-military career, IE science or engineering or the like, are probably able to attain an exemption of some form.

[MKSheppard]

One issue: with a 5 year conscription period at 18 then further education afterwards

Do any of the military guys on here have any better ideas for a conscription period? Two years simply won't work out in reality, as you'll constantly be losing the troops just as they get good at their job.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

One issue: with a 5 year conscription period at 18 then further education afterwards

Do any of the military guys on here have any better ideas for a conscription period? Two years simply won't work out in reality, as you'll constantly be losing the troops just as they get good at their job.

The Draka receive such extensive training in childhood that I'm not sure this is entirely true, especially in the less complex military environment of the 1930s period. I would say that in that context a 3-year period of enlistment would be perfectly acceptable.

Everyone must serve, but I would also say that deferments for important educational fields are available, and then the people who complete those educational fields (if their elective courses are devoted entirely to military study, which would be usual), are commissioned directly as officers. Basically, the university system would be organized so that, say, if you decided to get a Ph.D. in chemistry, you'd take all the classes you needed for that, but the general studies and elective couses would be replaced by courses on military operation and theory and drill and so on, and all of your vacations during the school year are when you get sent with the other cadets into a rigorous field training programme. So by the time you're done with college you've spent about 1/3rd of the normal coursework time studying military subjects instead of random personal enrichment junk, and you've had six three-month long summer "vacations" of heavy field drill and training, along with the two smaller two-week courses at winter and spring per year.

You're twenty-four, and you're an Army officer who is assigned to a military research lab somewhere for at least three years before beginning a civilian career. Or five years: With that greater investment in you the Army would probably want to keep you longer.

[Big Orange]

Could the relatively brief term of service for many young Drakians in the WarDir and SecDir branches be remedied by having a sizable hard core of lifetime citizen soldiers? And aren't most Janissaries in it for life anyway, with even retirement communities set up for them? And having a very long, very massive and very bloody war rapidly whittling down the original reserves of full time professional soldiers in the Citizen Force and Janissary Corps would prevent any form of National Guard/IDF enlisted men rotation policy within the Drakian military...

And one thing that's been bothering me about the conduct of frontline CF troops is that they're not above brutalizing innocent civilians while in the middle of a vital combat mission (in one of Shep's stories you had CF paratroopers rounding up local girls in a seized mountain village and raping them - that seemed a little camp and OTT, since in real life history it was often the follow up "security" units that committed most of the war crimes rather than the crack units who were conducting a operation).

[Setzer]

IIRC, didn't they have that village secure, and were simply awaiting reinforcements?

And if you've had "We are the Draka! Masters of the wolrd by our indomitable will! It's our right to do as we please, blah blah blah"

Pumped into you from early childhood, atrocities would come naturally to you. It's not like the assault fell apart because some troops stopped to loot a house and rape all the women.

[Big Orange]

The conduct of the frontline Citizen Force soldiers whether tank crews, mortorized infantry or para/shocktroopers would easily be comparable to the immoral conduct of the Nazi military on the Eastern Front and would do many "combat" war crimes like lock up many POWs inside a big building then torch it etc, but I imagine 90% of the time most citizen soldiers would ignore bystanders as "sport" until they're off duty and even then they would be the inherent sadists anyway (most humans are not naturally cruel and sociopathic, even in the face of pervasive propaganda about treating the “enemy” as subhumans).

I would say the terror of Drakan occupation would not start proper until the Rear Echelon Motherfuckers from the Security Directorate would conduct their pacification and enserfment operations or other political terror "duties" similar to the SS's Einzatgruppen...

[PeZook]

The conduct of the frontline Citizen Force soldiers whether tank crews, mortorized infantry or para/shocktroopers would easily be comparable to the immoral conduct of the Nazi military on the Eastern Front and would do many "combat" war crimes like lock up many POWs inside a big building then torch it etc, but I imagine 90% of the time most citizen soldiers would ignore bystanders as "sport" until they're off duty and even then they would be the inherent sadists anyway (most humans are not naturally cruel and sociopathic, even in the face of pervasive propaganda about treating the “enemy” as subhumans).

I would say the terror of Drakan occupation would not start proper until the Rear Echelon Motherfuckers from the Security Directorate would conduct their pacification and enserfment operations or other political terror "duties" similar to the SS's Einzatgruppen...

It's not just propaganda, young Draka are witness to serf abuse every day. They watch people get brutalized, raped, beaten to death etc. as a matter of course. Coupled with the incessant brainwashing, it really isn't very surprising they view anybody but themselves as animals to do with as they please.

[KlavoHunter]

It's not just propaganda, young Draka are witness to serf abuse every day. They watch people get brutalized, raped, beaten to death etc. as a matter of course. Coupled with the incessant brainwashing, it really isn't very surprising they view anybody but themselves as animals to do with as they please.

You say that like the average Draka kills off his serfs on a regular basis, which is untrue. Someone who starts doing that starts to get known for it, and people start getting wary of them, to the point of no longer selling them more serfs

[Imperial Overlord]

It's not just propaganda, young Draka are witness to serf abuse every day. They watch people get brutalized, raped, beaten to death etc. as a matter of course. Coupled with the incessant brainwashing, it really isn't very surprising they view anybody but themselves as animals to do with as they please.

You say that like the average Draka kills off his serfs on a regular basis, which is untrue. Someone who starts doing that starts to get known for it, and people start getting wary of them, to the point of no longer selling them more serfs

No, most Draka don't kill serfs on a regular basis, but they do torture and execute rebellious serfs publically and display the bodies. In the main timeline, the Draka have a torture and execution channel. A Draka growing up might not see anyone they know kill a serf, but they will witness serfs being beaten or sexually used by their relatives as well as seeing public and official displays of brutality designed to cow the serf population.

[Big Orange]

It's not just propaganda, young Draka are witness to serf abuse every day. They watch people get brutalized, raped, beaten to death etc. as a matter of course. Coupled with the incessant brainwashing, it really isn't very surprising they view anybody but themselves as animals to do with as they please.

I don't know how keeping a brutalized serf workforce to be callously abused at random would do nothing but earn the Drakan "overlords" sullen obedience with a undercurrent of resentment against them that would explode into outright violence in their faces at the first decent opportunity; no, as some posters have said earlier the Drakans are going to be more subtle and relatively fare towards many of their serfs, if they already trust many of them as soldiers, policemen, adminstrators, artisans and servants (important and skilled occupations in "free" society).

But it is safe to assume that many of the POWs and freshly enserfed civlians drafted into menial labor would be badly mistreated, but that would be well away from the Drakian homeland so to speak, in newly conqured territories where the Security Directorate is "breaking" the populace and seizing all available resources of any kind. And would all the mass impalings, shootings, hangings and gassings have a severe psychological strain on Drakan citiizens and their serf collaborators with a normal personality?

[montypython]

But it is safe to assume that many of the POWs and freshly enserfed civlians drafted into menial labor would be badly mistreated, but that would be well away from the Drakian homeland so to speak, in newly conqured territories where the Security Directorate is "breaking" the populace and seizing all available resources of any kind. And would all the mass impalings, shootings, hangings and gassings have a severe psychological strain on Drakan citiizens and their serf collaborators with a normal personality?

Presumably Draka social conditioning would minimize possible stress among Citizens wrt punitive activities.

[KlavoHunter]

Sorry, but I like MKSheppard's idea of the abstract Yellow Star set in abstract Snake Wings "brand" being the universal Drakian military insignia far better.

Sumptin' like dis?

[Big Orange]

Presumably Draka social conditioning would minimize possible stress among Citizens wrt punitive activities.

In Austria and Germany, you had many decades/centuries of extreme militarism combined with racist sentiments of various forms and strengths permeating those two societies, yet you still had people who loathed to carry out mass executions and people who felt that was wrong.

[Big Orange]

Sumptin' like dis?

Now that is what I'm talking about!

[Zor]

Another thing i was thinking about, considering that the second biggest continent on earth, which is far more developed and industrialized than OTL is going to be divided up between the Soviets, Americans and Europeans and the fact that the soviets are going to get a very big chunk of it thanks to sheer number of men they can field for occupation, would not the cold war in the Drakafic universe be hotter than in OTL?

Zor

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Another thing i was thinking about, considering that the second biggest continent on earth, which is far more developed and industrialized than OTL is going to be divided up between the Soviets, Americans and Europeans and the fact that the soviets are going to get a very big chunk of it thanks to sheer number of men they can field for occupation, would not the cold war in the Drakafic universe be hotter than in OTL?

Zor

That is not precisely how things will go.

[Sea Skimmer]

A large portion, probably the majority, of Draka industry will be useless except as scrap. It will have too much disruption of the transportation and raw materials processing system, all the management and overseers are dead or in concentration camps, many factories tooling would have been blown up or hauled away and hidden by the Draka ect..

Beyond that, many empcipiated serfs are simply not going to want to go back to work at first, and by the time something resembling an economy is sorted back out in each of the occupation zones a lot of factories that could have been salvaged will have rusted to ruins.

[KlavoHunter]

A large portion, probably the majority, of Draka industry will be useless except as scrap. It will have too much disruption of the transportation and raw materials processing system, all the management and overseers are dead or in concentration camps, many factories tooling would have been blown up or hauled away and hidden by the Draka ect..

Beyond that, many empcipiated serfs are simply not going to want to go back to work at first, and by the time something resembling an economy is sorted back out in each of the occupation zones a lot of factories that could have been salvaged will have rusted to ruins.

In addition, the Draka's industry could be at best described as obsolete. Their most advanced machine tools are refurbished German machine tools from the 20's, smuggled in via the Dutch Gold Coast, after all. By the 1950s and beyond, nobody's going to consider the Draka's industry a great prize, because it only worked by applying massive amounts of slave labor, something nobody is willing to get the liberated Serfs to try and do. Besides, what are you going to get, but the stuff the Draka have already gone through the painstaking process of getting the factories set up to build, and the serfs trained to do it?

If any factories are running postwar, it'd probably be ones that make consumer goods or other civilian-applicable stuff.

As for Draka wundertech, , that which the Draka don't manage to destroy themselves (and that that the Americans didn't burn in '46 with atomics), will be quickly snapped up and shipped back home to be analyzed and so forth, just as OTL's WW2 had Peenemunde's facilities and such dragged back for research. Not that the Draka have any special interest in rocketry the way Germany did (German interest in long-range rockets being fuelled by the banning of any long-range artillery by Versailles, IE Paris Gun).