Kriegsmarine 1946, second approach

[DER386]

I agree that it would be nice to have the other navies (at least European ones) included in the AH. What kind of ships would Italy have?
Would the German's have converted/rebuilt any French designs?
I like this thread. It is nice to see this kind of AH carried out though many years.

[WhyMe]

Very interesting story line.
Have you given a thought to what happened to French, Dutch and Italian colonies in Asia and Africa after the WW2 in your AU? Was there a decolonization process like in the real history?
Also what about German Antarctic expeditions and the New Swabia?

[SrGopher]

I like it. So I guess Japan beat the US at some point? I really like the idea of no Hitler or Nazi party. I've been trying to figure out a way to work that into my own AU, although I can't really seem to figure a good catalyst to lead to the next Kaiser instead of following history's path. I have the Germans being defeated in 1922, with most of their major fleet units being dispersed between the world's countries either because of a war prize or won in a bidding war. Most of Germany's battleships and battlecruisers are sold to minor navies friendly to the Allied Powers instead of being scuttled in Scapa Flow. That's where it ends. The intention of arming navies to the point where it becomes essential for every other competing power has to follow suit. I may have to have a look at the chain of events that led to your Germany defeating the Allied Powers. My own AU might have t o have a similar outcome in WWI.

PS, sorry about your friend, Ashley. He had a great idea going.

[bezobrazov]

Mackensen as a new emperor? I'm sorry, but that's very unlikely. I did once, at PanHistoria, in the novel "One Last Dance", about an alternate historical line of imperial Russia, besides writing the Russian historical outline, also created a German and Austro-Hungarian one, where crown prince Ruprecht of Bavaria was selected as German Emperor while the Dual Monarchy evolved into a Trialistic monarchy with the Slavs on an equal power basis as the Germans and Magyars.
That, I believe, is far more plausible than some of the above, in my view, quite unrealistic scenarios you've described.

[TimothyC]

1941: a short period of unstable peace in europe, Japan attacks USA
1942-1944: war rages at pacific, revolts at USSR, Ukraina declares independence
1945: Germanian diplomats endow peace at pacific, USSR decays
1946: the Germanian Empire invades the british isles, the UK is lost

I'm going to be honest and say that your events in the Pacific are not reasonable. The sheer industrial capacity of the US, combined with the intensity of the hatred for those who attack the US preclude anything other than the destruction of the Japanese Empire by 1947. There is no way that the US would have been willing to sign a peace treaty - it was always going to be Japan signing surrender documents. Even without a nuclear weapon, the US submarine campaign would have starved out the home islands. The US was fully capable of fielding a full 100 division army (and equipping it to the level that in other nations would have been considered motorized if not mechanized) and a two ocean navy (that never finished the FY44 build plan per history much less the nascent FY45 plan) at the same time. When forces from the rest of the Americas are brought into the fold (by economic force if needed) the numbers grow even higher, and all that much worse for any opponent. Even if the US doesn't develop an atomic bomb until 1947, the delivery vehicle (in the form of a B-29 or a B-36 class aircraft) is still also coming off the line by then, and you're back to a Fortress America that just can't be stopped by anyone.

If Germany is considered a hostile neutral, the US would be forced to keep forces in the Atlantic but the industrial might of the US forces a victory in the pacific - even if the carriers were lost at Pearl. Yes it could have been a long hard slog, but once the US got involved in the Pacific the outcome was set. Once the Pacific is relatively secured, US attention would turn east to the Atlantic basin, and there you end up with a possible rehash of the Cold War. I think in Europe you have underestimated the costs of unifying the European industrial base*.

If we're going to look even earlier, the US deployed roughly 2 million troops out of a population of 90ish million. The total US losses were about 0.13% of the US population - or one tenth of the total population loss suffered by the rest of the Entente powers. The US had another 3+ million troops still in the US, and even with the 1918 flu outbreak, could have probably supported another million troops in Europe.

Think about that - one million fresh troops with the industrial capacity to back them up. You get it correct that for the Germans to not-lose they have to push the US out of the war, but I'm doubtful that they could.

*Look at the economic costs for the reunification of Germany post 1989, and ratchet that up to 11 to get the minimum base line - for there you had only one language and a common history - something that doesn't exist outside of Germany.

I can buy a not-Nazi aggressive Germany in the late 1940s, but if it exists, the cold war is going to be with the US not with Japan. Japan gets, at best, to be a third, minor player in such a cold war if they don't attack the US. If they do attack the US, then best case is a US vassal state, worst case is Halsey's prediction comes true ("Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell").

[bezobrazov]

I'm with Tim on his accurate analysis of the Pacific theater. Japan, was in fact, very much like Italy in the Mediterranean, a sort of Great Power on Grace, i e, if you cut it off from its natural resources or hampered or strangulated its commerce it'd falter - exactly as the two did in 1943 and -45 respectively. Note that Yamamoto's prediction before Pearl Harbor that he could roam free for six month before the US responded was, in fact, a veiled threat to his own army collegues that the war could not be won. Little did they listen to him, however.
Germany and Britain and France too, had their own resources, so they were able to be great powers by their own right. Besides, with France, I simply cannot understand how and why it would lose and become a part of a greater Germania. It simply doesn't make sense! France was a very strong power. What happened in 1940 was in no way indicative of the real potential of the French military might; only of the inherent weaknesses in their strategic and tactical outlook and implementation. With another leadership - another result; very much how you envision your AU viz. Germany!

[Rhade]

I simply cannot understand how and why it would lose and become a part of a greater Germania. It simply doesn't make sense! France was a very strong power. What happened in 1940 was in no way indicative of the real potential of the French military might; only of the inherent weaknesses in their strategic and tactical outlook and implementation.

It was a strong power, but only on paper. In real France was tired and it's morale, fighting spirit was destroyed after WWI. They fight well in trench hell and lost probably most of warriors. In 1940 France was arrogant and under illusion of it's own might and Maginot Line. A year back Wehrmacht invade and destroy our army, many of the soldiers retreat to France. When polish officers, now veterans say that german army can cross river like Meuse in very short time as they do in Poland, french officer say "don't be ridiculus, this is France not Poland". We see first hand the new german army and superior tactic she use. We see that and pay a price in blood to deliver that information to our "allies". France did not fall because wehrmacht has better equipment, better tactics or experience... she fall beacuse she was arrogant and stupid.

[Satirius]

I don't know if "arrogance" is the right word here. "Defeatism" yes, but having the majority of your young men killed or crippled is not conducive to national hubris

[Rhade]

True, they lost many. But look at germans or brits who also suffer heavy losses, still they have a power to rise again. One as part of nazi regime and second as lonely defender of it's freedom in WWII. I still think they where arrogant bast****, defetism is also good word ... it comes from french word défaitisme if I'm not mistaken. So they know something about this.

[Portsmouth Bill]

Ahem....Gentlemen, lets not get personal here (and off topic). We need to keep a perspective, no nation has clean hands, apart from maybe Luxemburg