Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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alecsandros
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Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

Post by alecsandros »

Hello,

Been thinking (again) about this topic.
What if Germany obtained better results in 1918, and more favorable peace conditions, including keeping a part of the HSF.

What if they would get 1.75 to 5 ratio of capital ship with Britain/USA... They could modernise several battleships/battlecruisers, and use them... in the oncoming war.
I'm thinking Derfflinger, Moltke, Seydlitz, Bayern, Baden, Von der Tann could be good candidates for modernisation of the power plant, gunnery control and electronics.

IMHO, such a force, in addition to what the Germans built in the 30s and 40s, could mean a different outcome for WW2...
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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alecsandros wrote: What if they would get 1.75 to 5 ratio of capital ship with Britain/USA... ...
This is the same proportion as agreed in the 1934 Anglo-German naval agreement, and LESS in terms of submarines as agreed in 1934 (assuming the Treaty of Versailles ban on subs continues which I would expect if 1.75 ratio od capital ships is agreed after 1918).

In that scenario my view is that a Z Plan to 35% RN strength was needed - scrap everything from HSF and build anew. Remember the HSF was a short ranged North Sea/Baltic force, what is needed is a longer range North Atlantic force.

In 1934 that would allow five heavy battleships/battlecrusers and three or four fleet carriers.
Smaller vessels also need to be looked at, with a German equivalent of the RN Royal Marines being created, along with fast attack/landing assault craft to land them on raids on the east coast of the British Isles.
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

Post by alecsandros »

I know,
But I don't see the resources to start from scratch. They barely, barely, built 2 Scharnhorst's in 4 years, and 2 Bismarck's in 5 years.
That's why I guess modernization of several older battleships/battlecruisers could be usefull. Those 2 Bayerns at least.. would match 2 Queen Elizabeths... And Von der Tann and Derfflinger/Lutzow also had potential, IMHO.

Even positioned in Norway, as fleet in being, those ships would have tied down nearly the entire Home Fleet... meaning no shps left for Mediteranean, Far East, mid-Atlantic, etc.
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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alecsandros wrote:
But I don't see the resources to start from scratch. They barely, barely, built 2 Scharnhorst's in 4 years, and 2 Bismarck's in 5 years.
That's why I guess modernization of several older battleships/battlecruisers could be usefull. Those 2 Bayerns at least.. would match 2 Queen Elizabeths... And Von der Tann and Derfflinger/Lutzow also had potential, IMHO.
One aspect of Nazi Germany that is frequently overlooked, but highlighted well in The Wages of Destruction, is the lack of proper co-ordination of the economy and efficient allocation of resources. During WW2 Britain, the Soviet Union and the USA were each so much more efficient in war production than Nazi Germany.
Naval construction was a particular feature here, with poor labour productivity in shipyards and constant shortages of materials. With proper organisation and motivation a much quicker construction programme could have been achieved. In reality even the mass produced U-boats took a ridiculous time to build and commission.

As a graphic illustration just compare the economic record of Adeneuer with that of Hitler. Yes, Adeneuer had the benefit of Marshall Aid, but its what the Germans did with it that mattered. West Germany on its own could easily have outproduced the Third Reich.......
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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... There is to much bibliography orienting the modern reader towards the definitive conclusion of "nazis were retards".
While there must have been tremendous waste, overall resource allocation COULDN'T have been poor (it was probably mediocre). If it were so (poor), they wouldn't have been able to switch to war production, invade all Europe and fight 3 global powers for 4 years.

COmparing them to the USSR is not correct - USSR received huge amount of aid from Britain and USA. ( for ex - Practically 80% of used alluminum in the USSR came from Lend-Lease. Without it... no more 80% of aircraft production ).
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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alecsandros wrote:... There is to much bibliography orienting the modern reader towards the definitive conclusion of "nazis were retards".
.
I am aware of that.

My view (which will be influenced by the fact that I am an economics graduate majoring on the economics of growth, international economics and political economy) is based on a synthesis of actual evidence.

Germany was not mobilised for total war until September 1944 - and then under conditions of heavy bombing. Germany started its war against each of Britain, USSR and USA being unprepared for war. Empirically the German Army was the best military force of WW2. In terms of time, with the advantages of stripping the occupied countries of everything useful - itself done in an inefficient way - the time period of defeat is reasonable given the facts of the situation.
Hitler used the talents of Guderian, Rommel, Manstein etc to achieve the victories of Nazi Germany and claimed the credit. Hitler then personally led Germany to total defeat.
With respect to the economy - the only person who was allowed to do his job properly was Speer - by which time defeat was inevitable.

With respect to naval construction - the facts are there. There was no German equivalent of Henry Kaiser.
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

Post by alecsandros »

... Agreed, with the cave-eat that UK and USSR economies would also have succumbed without unlimited US support...
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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Yes.

The UK could not have survived without US support. Anglo-American material support to the USSR was very substantial, delivered at great cost - and the Red Army benefitted greatly from the effects of the Allied carpet bombing of German cities, not least in the number of heavy flak guns that were diverted from the eastern front.

Note however the military conferences in spring 1941, concerning the planning for Barbarossa, where figures for Soviet tank production was quoted - 1,500 tanks per month against 600 in Germany, which sent Hitler into a temper tantrum. Remember also the T34 tank - a Soviet invention so good that the Germans had to copy it. Note also the several different designs of Soviet machine guns that the Germans greatly prized on capturing so that they could use them against the Russians.
The Soviet Five Year Plan in the early 1930's in building up Russia's railway infrastructure and heavy industrial base was as important in the Soviets surviving the onslaught of 1941/1942 as the aid provided by Britain and the US. After 1942 even without the help from Britain/USA the Soviets had built up a formidable war machine that gave them an overall tank superiority of some five to one. Even with Hitler's stand fast tactics it is a remarkable tribute to the German Army that they held out until 1945, fighting not just the Russians but the Allies in western Europe and also in Italy as well, together with a large force of troops in Norway that took no part in these campaigns.

Coming back to naval construction- in the 1970's Iread Ghost Cruiser HK 33 by H J Brennecke, the story of hilfskreuzer Pinguin. In it was a comment about the conversion of the Norwegian tanker Storstad into the minelayer Passat. Pinguin's chief engineer oversaw a job that took seamen on Pinguin three days to do - the chief engineer stated that a shipyard in Germany would have taken two weeks to do the job.
What does that say about German shipyards and naval construction - that a job of ship conversion can be done by ordinary seamen in three days cut off from home in the middle of the Indian Ocean, whereas a fully equipped shipyard, before the days of heavy Allied bombing, takes two weeks!
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

Post by alecsandros »

Certainly production facilities of all sorts lacked in many aspects, including experienced men... Germany was still suffering from the first war, when it started the second...

Regarding Russian production - it was tremednous, as they did have vast amount of resources , extracted from own soil, or imported through LEnd-LEase.
I think Liddell Hart once wrote that the World Wars were won by geology more then by military power...

An interesting hypothetical would involve giving nazi Germany the same deposits of minerals, including fossil fuels, as historical USSR (pre-1939) had.
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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alecsandros wrote: An interesting hypothetical would involve giving nazi Germany the same deposits of minerals, including fossil fuels, as historical USSR (pre-1939) had.
Or simply switch Hitler and Stalin and put Hitler in charge of the USSR in 1933. Could Hitler have conquered the world with the USSR at his disposal?
Actually I doubt it. If Hitler's control technique of putting party apparatchiks and gauleiters in charge of running things, where their jobs all overlap and they end up competing against one another the USSR would not have achieved the level of efficiency that Stalin and Gosplan achieved.
And Stalin in Germany would have made that country far more productive than the DDR under Honnecker could ever be. In a war between a Stalin led Germany and a Hitler led Russia, my money would be on Stalin.
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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... It can't work, Hitler was born and raised inside his "people", and his "people" supported him fanatically.

I do not see "efficiency" in Stalin's work more then I see in Hitler's.
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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Well, if you look at the economic history of the Soviet Union the highpoint of communism was under Stalin - the USSR became a global superpower under his direction.
Look at the production figures - yes it had vastly more resources than Germany, a bigger population and a huge size, but superpower it did become. A lot of the technology was imported but it was put to effective use. Under conditions of wartime - The Great Patriotic War - the USSR was an efficient war machine.

It was after Stalin that the USSR started to decline, particulary in technological development, firstly with Kruschev but more particulary under Brezhnev until Reagan finally won the Cold War and Gorbachev and Yeltsin presided over the fall of communism.
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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I disagree strongly.
THe USSR was built on the blood of millions killed , starved , tortured. A country or commuynity of states can't be a "superpower" while it's people is starving.

If Hitler would have killed 25-30 million Germans (to equal Stalin in genocide of USSR populations), there would have been no world war at all.
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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Well it depends how you define a superpower.

The USSR was a superpower during the start of the Cold War by virtue of its geopolitical position and influence and its nuclear weapons arsenal. Whether it can feed its people doesn't come into issues of firepower.

Germany in WW1 had severe problems in feeding its population, especially in 1918. Before the armistice the food shortages and the flu epidemic did not deny the fact that Germany was a great military power.
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Re: Germany get 1.75 to 5 on Washington treaty and keeps part of HSF

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... The USSR would not have become superpwoer without US and British help in technology and raw materials , and know-how, supplied during the WW2. It wouldn't have become superpower also, without the powerfull spy ring that managed to transfer atomic knowhow to Stalin. On it's own, the USSR was a stumbling, crumbling giant , led by a collection of psychopaths, supervising a terrorised population.

Germany did not exterminate 20 to 30 million Germans in WW1 or WW2.
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