RED and PURPLE

[KingSargent]

As mentioned in another thread, I am reading a book on warplans worked out as student projects at the Army War College 1934-40.

 

For "practicals," classes were split into study groups and given a scenario in which they must design a war plan. The nations were color-coded, and every year there was a Plan RED assigned. RED was the UK.

 

RED: Many students balked at the idea of US-UK war. They were told it was an academic study and if they were to examine the defence of the US Eastern Seaboard (each group got a different area and threat to plan against), RED was all there was that could realistically ever pose a threat, so they were the hypothetical aggressor. (Incidentally the planning did turn out to be of value; during WW2 when the US took over Imperial bases in the Western Hemisphere ["Destroyers For Bases"] the US knew exactly what they would be meeting up with when they moved in, and it saved a lot of time and bother.)

 

So I ask this group, under what circumstance would RED become possible? The only circumstance I can see is the UK surrendering to Hitler and the RN and other UK assets being used against the US. FDR worried about that too, one reason he propped Britain up after France fell despite an Isolationist Congress. Can anyone come up with another one?

 

PURPLE: was South America, specifically Brazil in the 1936-40 problems. The scenario presented was a Fascist-backed revolution (there were many Germans and Italians in South America) and intervention by Germany and Italy in violation of the Monroe Doctrine. The students were to plan a US Expeditionary Force to keep the EEVVUULL Yurruppeens off the Americas.

 

The AWC students grumbled at this one too, not being able to conceive of the UK and France permitting Fascist military expeditions to leave Yurrup for America.

 

My scenario to make it possible:

Having gobbled up all the scattered "Ethnic Fascists" (the hypothetical enemy was an unidentified 'Fascist Coalition') in the Old World, Fascist Coalition (FC) leaders start making noises about bringing Ethnic Fascists in the New World into the Brave New Order. The UK and France, in an orgy of appeasement, allow and abet the FC in its American Adventures in order to keep peace in Yurrup. After all, the AWC students had watched while the UK and France had permitted the FC free rein in gobbling up "ethnic territory" in Yurrup and Africa. Why wouldn't they stand aside when the FC transferred its attention away from their sandbox?

 

Okay, it's cynical and hardly flattering to the Allies, but there was no reason to be flattering at that time.

 

BTW, this planning also bore fruit as the students realized the necessity to plan for MilGov agencies, POW facilities, organizations to gather and distribute local and Aid resources. They discovered that the US Army was going to have to take its own government with it when operating in a (probably devastated) foreign country, and the planning they did was the basis for US MilGov operations in WW2. Imagine the chaos of getting to North Africa and Italy and having to make it up on the spot.

 

They also developed the concept of providing weapons and advisors to countries in trouble rather than doing their fighting for them.

 

Comments?

[R011]

So I ask this group, under what circumstance would RED become possible?

It isn't inconceivable that either the UK or the US could have gone Communist or Fascist between the wars. Highly unlikely, but not impossible.

 

I don't think Communists ever had much of a chance in the US, but some of the leftier elements of the Labour movement were at least sympathetic in the UK. There was Mosley and his crew in Britain, and some fascist leaning groups in the US. Certainly the possibility of a Fascist coup was credible enough that Smedley Butler didn't get laughed at out of hand (though perhaps they should have done so).

[Archie Pellagio]

It is not completely unfeasible (if unlikely) to imagine both the Quisling/Vichy style UK government as well as a neutral and / or cowed UK.

 

Not to mention the possibility of UK/French ships falling into German hands.

 

If that was the case Axis support and a sort of cold war from South America could be feasible, in which case, a need to defend the ports and harbours of the eastern US would become a real issue, even if the likeleyhood of Sturmtruppen landing in Savannah was about as likely as soviet marines in the 60's.

 

This scenario would also make possible the loss or bargaining of all sorts of British and French colonial possessions.

 

A scenario that was entirely possible as late as 1940.

 

So were that sort of cold war with the nazis to happen it is entirely feasible that there would be a need to draw up plans for the defence of Eastern CONUS, as well as all manner of Carribean and atlantic islands, as well as trade defence, and all sorts of similar fascist (instead of communist) basing issues with South and Central America and the Carribean.

 

Imagine the Azores, Jamaica, Argentine etc all being potential U boot and cruiser bases, the possiblility of there being a nazi sword of damacles swinging over the Panama Canal etc. It would give the Nazi's complete access to (and control) of the indian ocean as well via bothe the Cape of Good hope and Suez Canal.

 

Not hugely likely, but certainly possible, and there have certainly been far more rediculous war plans drawn up and taken very seriously...

Edited February 18, 2008 by Luke_Yaxley

[KingSargent]

Hey Luke, did you get my PM about the magazine and the pdf.s?

[Nick Sumner]

As well as the possibility of a Nazi/fascist dominated Europe starting up revolution in South American countries using ethnic Germans Italians and perhaps even those who consider themselves to be ethically Spanish, there also seems a possibility that simple annexations of Dutch or French territory in the New World (I'm thinking of Caribbean islands, Suriname and French Guyana) could spark diplomatic or military conflict.

 

Outright annexation might not be necessary, if for instance the 'Dutch' began the construction of a large naval base near Paramaribo that to could sound the alarm in Washington.

 

I am assuming a late 1940 situation where the Germans and Italians are in control of the continent and Britain has made peace.

[KingSargent]

As well as the possibility of a Nazi/fascist dominated Europe starting up revolution in South American countries using ethnic Germans Italians and perhaps even those who consider themselves to be ethically Spanish, there also seems a possibility that simple annexations of Dutch or French territory in the New World (I'm thinking of Caribbean islands, Suriname and French Guyana) could spark diplomatic or military conflict.

 

Outright annexation might not be necessary, if for instance the 'Dutch' began the construction of a large naval base near Paramaribo that to could sound the alarm in Washington.

 

I am assuming a late 1940 situation where the Germans and Italians are in control of the continent and Britain has made peace.

If the British and French continued their pre-Munich levels of appeasement, the Germans and Italians would have effectively controlled Yurrup west of the USSR in 1939.

 

FDR made a "Destroyers for Bases" deal with the Brits, what are the odds of Hitler wringing a "Peace in Europe for Bases" deal with British and French governments that are easily characterized as pusillaminous? From the appeasers' point such a move would transfer the Nazi Menace to the New World and allow them to keep their heads in the sand.

[Nick Sumner]

If the British and French continued their pre-Munich levels of appeasement, the Germans and Italians would have effectively controlled Yurrup west of the USSR in 1939.

 

FDR made a "Destroyers for Bases" deal with the Brits, what are the odds of Hitler wringing a "Peace in Europe for Bases" deal with British and French governments that are easily characterized as pusillaminous? From the appeasers' point such a move would transfer the Nazi Menace to the New World and allow them to keep their heads in the sand.

 

It depends how far you want to go in changing the timeline. There is a certain air of duplicity in Anglo-French dealings with the Germans after Munich. While both governments continued to make soothing noises both went on massive armaments spending sprees belying their apparently supine acquiescence to the Germans. Chamberlain for instance is often vilified as an appeaser but this is not entirely fair as he approved and pursued the greatest buildup of the British Armed Forces in history.

 

Having said that I do think it is possible to find a plausible route to the kind of ' America alone' scenario I think you might be aiming for here. I am actually halfway through writing an alternate history where a very similar scenario comes about. France surrenders in 1940, Churchill doesn't come to power in Britain (he died in 1931 because of some bloody careless New York driver), the incumbent Prime Minister (Clement Attlee) makes a reasonable and dispassionate analysis of the military situation and his conclusion is 'We're f*cked'.

 

There is no hope of help from America (FDR lost the 1940 election to Wendell Wilkie) and the Battle of Britain has come to a much more decisive conclusion with a British victory allowing the British government to claim ' we've won'. This leads to a treaty where the British agree to leave the Germans alone and the Germans agree to leave the British alone.

 

If you are interested it is here

 

http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion...ead.php?t=73592

 

I don't like the title much but it is a work in progress and that will be one of the things I intend to change. I've been bogged down in other projects but I hope to get to this one under way again in a few weeks.

Edited February 19, 2008 by Nick Sumner

[KingSargent]

It depends how far you want to go in changing the timeline. There is a certain air of duplicity in Anglo-French dealings with the Germans after Munich. While both governments continued to make soothing noises both went on massive armaments spending sprees belying their apparently supine acquiescence to the Germans. Chamberlain for instance is often vilified as an appeaser but this is not entirely fair as he approved and pursued the greatest buildup of the British Armed Forces in history.

The problem was the French were too politically unstable to get a coherent rearmament going. They were apparently making progress in 1940, but they had appeared to make progress before and always fallen back to Square -1.

 

The British had started to shovel money but had no strategy except "Believe in the Bomber," and they had no idea how to effectively use their bombers. The massive run-down of their armaments industries (IIRC there were something like 19 plants producing armor in 1919; in 1936 there was one) meant that throwing money did little good.

 

And 1938, as we all know, was a bit late. Only Churchill appeared to recognize the danger but my cynicism asserts that WSC said so much about so many things, he had to be right sometime.

[Ken Estes]

The problem was the French were too politically unstable to get a coherent rearmament going. They were apparently making progress in 1940, but they had appeared to make progress before and always fallen back to Square -1.

 

The British had started to shovel money but had no strategy except "Believe in the Bomber," and they had no idea how to effectively use their bombers. The massive run-down of their armaments industries (IIRC there were something like 19 plants producing armor in 1919; in 1936 there was one) meant that throwing money did little good.

 

And 1938, as we all know, was a bit late. Only Churchill appeared to recognize the danger but my cynicism asserts that WSC said so much about so many things, he had to be right sometime.

 

 

Ding, ding; cue Andrew Gordon, British Seapower and Procurement Between the Wars: A Reappraisal of Rearmament (Annapolis, 1988)

 

 

[p.165] British policy between 1933 and mid-1939 executed a complete, and from some points of view embarrassing, ‘U turn’. It was all the more remarkable for the continuity of government and it would have been extremely difficult to expedite without reversing the ebb-tide of pacifist feeling at home and robbing appeasement of credibility abroad. It is all too easy to forget, with the selective memory of hindsight, that, as Churchill said in August 1938, war was ‘certainly not inevitable.’

 

The compatibility of diplomatic, economic, fiscal and procurement policies is striking, as is the completeness and soundness of the whole package. It was an extremely creditable – even almost brilliant – attempt to square the tightening circle of Britain’s strategic predicament. Few historians have spared the time of day for appeasement or for the notion that Britain ‘depended upon the resources of finance for the successful fighting of a war as much as upon the production of munitions’. Even recently, historians, notably American, have vied with each other to pour scorn on Britain’s leadership of the 1930s:

 

“the Chamberlain government’s record…is unpardonably dismal. The prime minister and his advisers made the wrong choice on almost every single strategic and diplomatic question that they faced.”

 

Or, of ill-defined patent remedies attributed rather freely to Churchill:

 

“Winston Spencer Churchill, in virtue of his intellectual power and political sagacity, understood the threat of German imperialism…whereas the amateur Machiavellis around Baldwin and Chamberlain….”

 

These extracts are little more than the recycling and regilding of received opinion, and actually do Churchill the incidental disservice of making him appear less sensible of contemporary issues than was really the case.

In their task of assessing Britain’s pre-war endeavours, historians are blinking through the dazzle of “the Finest Hour” which discolours and refracts the image of the less incandescent statesmen of the 1930s. It is difficult, while half-anticipating the momentous, nightmarish, attractive events of 1940, to consider objectively the preceding years when the battle for peace had yet to be lost, when (even after Munich) three out of four Britons approved of appeasement, three out of five were satisfied with Chamberlain as Prime Minister, and only one out of twenty-five would have had him succeeded by Churchill. ‘When the policy of Munich failed, everybody announced that he had expected it to fail…in fact no one was as clear-sighted as he later claimed to have been.”

 

 

[p. 250] The Hansards of 1933 and 1934 are not replete with Churchillian demands that the nation’s ‘so very meager resources’ be spent in this profligate and highly controversial manner. At the time Britain was publically committed to arms limitation and collective security; indeed Churchill himself continued throughout the 1930s to avow faith in the peace-keeping potential of the League of Nations with a credulity which, had it come from Chamberlain, would have been cited by historians as evidence of diminished responsibility.

 

In “the Gathering Storm,” the first volume of his war memoirs, Churchill took care to place the Government in the wrong for making no attempt ‘to introduce emergency conditions into our munitions production’ and cites a memorandum he sent to Inskip in June 1936, In fact that paper shows that at the time he fully understood that ‘it is neither necessary nor possible at this moment to take wartime powers and apply wartime methods’; and that he visualized a supply ministry subdivided in a manner not dissimilar to the Supply Committees, which implies that he was either ignorant of the breadth of the PSOC system or somehow scornful of its competence.

 

It is a matter for regret that few historians have looked beyond those of Churchill’s pre-war statements which lead most consistently into his heroic wartime leadership – statements made while he was free of the chastening responsibilities of office. The consequence has been a set of readily-acceptable but tendentious orthodoxies which have deterred proper analysis of the rearmament years and which have led to the commission of a monumental injustice to those who formulated Government policies

[KingSargent]

Gollygosh Ken, and I haven't even read that book! I should have but always missed it somehow. <sigh> Not even I can read everything, much as I try....

 

Talk about agreeing with me (or me wiith them, but as I hadn't seen it from my POV they're agreeing with me )!

 

As for WSC thinking the League of Nations could keep the peace, people thought very highly of the UN in the 1940s and '50s (before they let the ex-Colonial riff-raff in and it turned into a corrupt debating and platitude-mouthing society). The touching (if based on post-WW1 penury) faith of the British in Disarmament Conferences had an unlooked-for side-effect. R&D was abandoned Between The Wars because there was no point in building new tanks when tanks were going to be outlawed as 'Offensive Weapons' at the next Conference, or of developing ASW weapons and techniques when submarines were about to be abolished.

 

If the Foreign Office hadn't been as inept as the Ministry and Staff levels of the military, the British might have actually succeeded in their policy of Peace Through Scrapping Everything.

[Nick Sumner]

Gollygosh Ken, and I haven't even read that book! I should have but always missed it somehow. <sigh> Not even I can read everything, much as I try....

 

Talk about agreeing with me (or me wiith them, but as I hadn't seen it from my POV they're agreeing with me )!

 

As for WSC thinking the League of Nations could keep the peace, people thought very highly of the UN in the 1940s and '50s (before they let the ex-Colonial riff-raff in and it turned into a corrupt debating and platitude-mouthing society). The touching (if based on post-WW1 penury) faith of the British in Disarmament Conferences had an unlooked-for side-effect. R&D was abandoned Between The Wars because there was no point in building new tanks when tanks were going to be outlawed as 'Offensive Weapons' at the next Conference, or of developing ASW weapons and techniques when submarines were about to be abolished.

 

If the Foreign Office hadn't been as inept as the Ministry and Staff levels of the military, the British might have actually succeeded in their policy of Peace Through Scrapping Everything.

 

King, WADR I think you are oversimplifying. It is very hard to make a case that British military aircraft and warship design was anything other than state-of-the-art before World War II, in the case of aircraft it was even by and large, ahead of the curve. Even British tank design was quite respectable until the death of Carden Lloyd in the mid-30s. The Anglo-French debacle of 1940 was by and large a failure of tactics and strategy, not materiel.

 

Until 1934 or 35 I can't agree that the idea that war could be avoided was demonstrably false. Yes British and French rearmament was late in starting by two or three years but the world just didn't seem that menacing a place until Hitler started getting antsy and the Marco Polo Bridge incident occurred etc.

 

WADR to GAH Gordon, Churchill was a lot less sanguine about the prospects of peace than almost anyone else in British politics particularly after 1934, remember also that he was a backbencher, I'm not sure how many intelligence reports he was getting.

 

To say the R&D was abandoned between the wars is not correct, certainly it wasn't pursued as vigorously as later events show that it should have been, but you are in danger of looking through the wrong end of the telescope, the threats of 1933 and 1934 and even 1935 looked far more containable than the threats of 1937 or 1938.

[KingSargent]

King, WADR I think you are oversimplifying. It is very hard to make a case that British military aircraft and warship design was anything other than state-of-the-art before World War II, in the case of aircraft it was even by and large, ahead of the curve. Even British tank design was quite respectable until the death of Carden Lloyd in the mid-30s. The Anglo-French debacle of 1940 was by and large a failure of tactics and strategy, not materiel.

Nick, I agree that most of the new British equipment was not only state-of-the-art, it DEFINED the art. It was in employment doctrine that the British sucked. Their carriers were good structurally, but designed to fit a doctrine imposed by an outside agency that had control over the airplane supply. Aside from experiments by Henderson, the RN's CVs never had enough planes to develop the operational strike doctrines used by the USN and IJN (and by the RN as soon as the US suppled aircraft and deck-operational training). The RN lacked AA guns capable of defending against dive-bombing because the RAF assured them there would never be operational dive-bombers. Some very promising 1918-19 vintage ASW weapon developments were discarded because the submarine would be "banned at the next Conference." The RN's DDs were first-rate, but lacked AA weapons because the RAF said they wouldn't be needed and lacked ASW because there were not going to be submarines to use them on.

 

Thr Air Ministry built some good bombers, the RAF did not teach them to find their targets. The British designed some good fighters (and many dogs) but would not have had Fighter Command or radar-control if it had not been for Hugh Dowding. RAF officers who attempted to cooperate and/or train with the Army or RN on exercises were disciplined. Bombs were left over from WW1 (many were duds) and the RAF conducted NO research into the actual hit probabilities of bombing, nor the effect of the bombs on the targets.

 

The British developed radar, it took the US electronics industry to manufacture enough for WW2. The British Army trained to police the Empire - which was all their Lords and Masters told them they would have to (or be allowed to) do. The US Army was an undertrained understrength pittance of a military, but it THOUGHT about war and developed new doctrines and training methods to be ready for mobilization. The Army developed new Artillery techniques, new electronics, and new vehicles, and developed plans for industrial mobilization to produce them. The Industrial Mobilization Plan was updated every three years - as training exercises at the Army War College. They developed new rations and new medical techniques. They planned how to go from nothing to superpower status in a few short years, and they did it. Men who had been Majors became excellent Generals practically overnight.

 

Thr RN had nice simple dependable machinery that an untrained monkey could use, and they kept it. It was heavy, bulky, drank fuel, and required 25% of service time being 'down' for maintenance, and the RCNC went bonkers trying to fit the antique machinery into Treaty-limited hulls. The USN and USian industry developed new power plants that made USN ships more efficient (tonnage others wasted on propulsion went into weapons and control systems), reliable, and longer-ranged.

 

The poor French had no coherent guiding authority, their politicians were terrified of their military, their generals had no retirement and remained clogging the promotion ladder after senility had set in. The French developed an Army and Air Force stuck in 1919, and a Navy that looked good but didn't work.

 

Until 1934 or 35 I can't agree that the idea that war could be avoided was demonstrably false. Yes British and French rearmament was late in starting by two or three years but the world just didn't seem that menacing a place until Hitler started getting antsy and the Marco Polo Bridge incident occurred etc.

It was pretty obvious to the students at the US Army and Navy War Colleges. They had about a 90% prediction success factor without even using Intelligence - just from reading open news sources.

Of course they wouldn't even have studied the scenarios if they hadn't been assigned to do the Services' research as 'class tasks,' and a lot of the scenarios they studied were off-the-wall. But some of the off-the-wall stuff turned out to be very valuable.

 

WADR to GAH Gordon, Churchill was a lot less sanguine about the prospects of peace than almost anyone else in British politics particularly after 1934, remember also that he was a backbencher, I'm not sure how many intelligence reports he was getting.

WSC was pretty smart, even if a bit strange. If junior officers at the US War Colleges could figure it out without spies, I don't see why he couldn't.

 

To say the R&D was abandoned between the wars is not correct, certainly it wasn't pursued as vigorously as later events show that it should have been, but you are in danger of looking through the wrong end of the telescope, the threats of 1933 and 1934 and even 1935 looked far more containable than the threats of 1937 or 1938.

Much of this I covered above (I got a bit ahead of myself), but like I say the US military studied situations and planned. They were not funded to prepare, but they planned to prepare and knew what to when given the green light and the open purse.

 

The US military by no means had a lock on military brains and innovation. The British and French had officers as prescient and capable; the difference was they were shunned as mavericks and troublemakers by their command authority while the US institutionalized research and planning. How many British innovators who we regard now as 'Pioneers and Saviours of the Empire' had any Staff or Ministerial backing or support? Most were shunned and evicted from the Services ASAP - consider Dowding and Hobart for sad examples.

[Nick Sumner]

King, I mostly agree here, it is certainly true that the US forces demonstrated a greater depth of intellectual rigour than all their European counterparts with the possible exception of the German army in its tactical planning.

 

I think the key to understanding the apparent European malais -, their slowness to respond to the worsening world situation - can be found in the traumatising effects of World War I. The Americans could look at World War I and see that it had been bought to a successful conclusion. The British and French could not - yes they had won and won convincingly but the price they had paid was frightful, the damage to their economies, their status in the world, their population base and their national psyche was profound. It just seemed incredible that anyone would be insane enough to start another war after the ghastly experience of the first one.

 

I think that Churchill deserves the credit for figuring it out before almost everyone else in Britain did. There has been a bit of a debate on how much he actually did and just how loud his ' voice crying in the wilderness' actually was, but my understanding is that he did an awful lot, working almost alone (and remember that at this time he had very little political credibility being something of a maverick and a distinctly second rate ex Chancellor) to shake Britain out of its complacency.

[KingSargent]

King, I mostly agree here, it is certainly true that the US forces demonstrated a greater depth of intellectual rigour than all their European counterparts with the possible exception of the German army in its tactical planning.

 

I think the key to understanding the apparent European malais -, their slowness to respond to the worsening world situation - can be found in the traumatising effects of World War I. The Americans could look at World War I and see that it had been bought to a successful conclusion. The British and French could not - yes they had won and won convincingly but the price they had paid was frightful, the damage to their economies, their status in the world, their population base and their national psyche was profound. It just seemed incredible that anyone would be insane enough to start another war after the ghastly experience of the first one.

 

I think that Churchill deserves the credit for figuring it out before almost everyone else in Britain did. There has been a bit of a debate on how much he actually did and just how loud his ' voice crying in the wilderness' actually was, but my understanding is that he did an awful lot, working almost alone (and remember that at this time he had very little political credibility being something of a maverick and a distinctly second rate ex Chancellor) to shake Britain out of its complacency.

Agreed, but many Yurrupeen people at the time "Everlasting Peace" was signed made comments like, "Well, Phase One is over...."

 

Germany had no intention of it being over, and the USSR was rightfully paranoid about everybody messing with them. The Anglo-French Malaise is understandable, but lots of people (including some in the UK and France) saw past it. Whether it was excusable or not is left to the student.

 

Rather than abandoning their armaments industries, for example, measures could have been taken to cut back but keep R&D and some plant capacity active. Had the Washington Treaty not proclaimed a total 'Holiday' but allowed for scheduled construction of limited numbers of ships (say one a year to replace older ships) there would have been challenges for the designers to meet (tonnage limits would remain) and judicious awarding of contracts would have kept industries alive. It might even have been cheaper than all the "Reconstruction" Frenzy that occurred. This is getting way out in left field, maybe a separate thread in Gen Naval and Air would be interesting.

[Grant Whitley]

PURPLE: was South America, specifically Brazil in the 1936-40 problems. The scenario presented was a Fascist-backed revolution (there were many Germans and Italians in South America) and intervention by Germany and Italy in violation of the Monroe Doctrine. The students were to plan a US Expeditionary Force to keep the EEVVUULL Yurruppeens off the Americas.

 

The AWC students grumbled at this one too, not being able to conceive of the UK and France permitting Fascist military expeditions to leave Yurrup for America.

 

My scenario to make it possible:

Having gobbled up all the scattered "Ethnic Fascists" (the hypothetical enemy was an unidentified 'Fascist Coalition') in the Old World, Fascist Coalition (FC) leaders start making noises about bringing Ethnic Fascists in the New World into the Brave New Order. The UK and France, in an orgy of appeasement, allow and abet the FC in its American Adventures in order to keep peace in Yurrup. After all, the AWC students had watched while the UK and France had permitted the FC free rein in gobbling up "ethnic territory" in Yurrup and Africa. Why wouldn't they stand aside when the FC transferred its attention away from their sandbox?

 

My question here would be whether Getúlio Vargas had any viable opposition in Brazil that was also likely to go Axis if it gained power. Vargas' own regime had fascist qualities and he seemed to be pro-Axis for a time, but ultimately the Germans poisoned the well of popular opinion in Brazil and she went in whole hog for the Allies.

 

Also worth considering is the response of the Spanish speaking countries in South America- even though Argentina was relatively pro-Axis itself, an Axis takeover of Brazil would probably push Argentina into the arms of the Allies.

[Ken Estes]

....<sigh> Not even I can read everything, much as I try....

Well, WTF, King, let's get a move on! It's not like you're sitting up there waiting for the sun to rise,

er, maybe in another month??

[dpapp2]

Rather than abandoning their armaments industries, for example, measures could have been taken to cut back but keep R&D and some plant capacity active. Had the Washington Treaty not proclaimed a total 'Holiday' but allowed for scheduled construction of limited numbers of ships (say one a year to replace older ships) there would have been challenges for the designers to meet (tonnage limits would remain) and judicious awarding of contracts would have kept industries alive. It might even have been cheaper than all the "Reconstruction" Frenzy that occurred. This is getting way out in left field, maybe a separate thread in Gen Naval and Air would be interesting.

 

If you look at the WNT, the plans were to resume construction in 1931 with laying down battleships. For Britain, that was a mere three year's break after Nelson and Rodney had been commissioned. Limited reconstruction works could sustain the industry for the remainder. No one was planning for the depression, which delayed new construction another 6 years. Shipyards and industries that might have survived the lean years of the 1920s went bankrupt.

[Nick Sumner]

If you look at the WNT, the plans were to resume construction in 1931 with laying down battleships. For Britain, that was a mere three year's break after Nelson and Rodney had been commissioned. Limited reconstruction works could sustain the industry for the remainder. No one was planning for the depression, which delayed new construction another 6 years. Shipyards and industries that might have survived the lean years of the 1920s went bankrupt.

 

The problem in 1931 was that it was the absolute bottom of the recession, whatever plans the Europeans (Yurrupeens) might have had to recommence battleship construction foundered on lack of money.

 

This I think was another reason for the hesitant rearmament by Britain, France and the other democracies. The depression had been so deep and so far reaching that they just didn't want to saddle newly growing economies with any more government spending and they absolutely had to.

 

The dictatorships saw military spending is an economic stimulus, in purely economic terms the democracies got it right, but the economic view ignores the strategic reality by which measure they got it wrong.