CT The Death Star Ruined the Empire

So I wrote up why I think the Death Star ruined the Empire:

1.Shattered Ideology:

Perhaps the most important problem with the Death Star was that it implemented an ideology that was crucial to the Empire’s survival: the Tarkin Doctrine. This doctrine was summed up by Grand Moff Tarkin himself: “Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.”

Essentially, the principle taught by Tarkin and exercised by the Empire was that, in building a weapon so terrifying, one would never have to use it. However, the counterargument is that building such a weapon would terrify citizens to the point of rebellion—that they would rather fight against this possibility instead of cowering under it. Princess Leia summarizes the results of this effect when she states, “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

However, the Empire removes any debate on this subject by enacting its ideology. It destroys the planet Alderaan and, according to Tarkin, will then destroy the Rebellion in “one, swift stroke.” His assumption is that the demonstration of the DS1 has permanently eliminated any other faction’s resistance against the Empire.

That assumption couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Almost immediately after the Death Star’s display, it’s actually destroyed by the Rebellion—showing to the public that the Tarkin Doctrine clearly did not work. Fear brought about desperation, not conformity, in the Rebels, a desperation that backlashed horribly against the Empire, killing the very man for which the core ideology behind the Death Star was named.

2.Wasted Resources:

The Death Star was built on a scale that was absolutely unnecessary, and calculations aren’t even required to understand this. The main purpose of the Death Star was to frighten enemies by destroying any opponents on a planet, but it didn’t just destroy all life on Alderaan in Episode 4—it annihilated the globe. This kind of firepower wasn’t necessary at all. An asteroid that destroys all major lifeforms on Earth wouldn’t need to make the entire planet explode; it would only need to send a powerful shockwave across the surface. And even if a superlaser needed to melt everything on the surface, remove the atmosphere, and ravage the crust, it wouldn’t need nearly any of the power it took for the Death Star to instantly disintegrate Alderaan.

Because the Death Star was ludicrously overpowered, this space station only served as a public demonstration of the Empire’s tactical redundancy; a much smaller yet equally destructive station could have been built, yet they attempted to flaunt this gaudy overcompensation as a sign of the Empire’s brilliance—in a way that would only make the galactic population more appalled at their government’s insanity. Then, when the Death Star was destroyed in the Battle of Yavin, it’s loss of 2 million civilians and hundreds of thousands of pilots and stormtroopers (along with several Admirals and of course, the highest-ranking Imperial officer, Grand Moff Tarkin) made it appear especially foolish, and showed once again how the Empire was completely misusing valuable resources in this war over the galaxy.

3.Betrayed Supporters:

The destruction of Alderaan also shows a betrayal against another core ideal of the Empire: the Human High Culture, an idea praising humans that (while also explicitly stated in the Legends EU) is heavily hinted at in the films through the Nazi-esque structure of the Empire’s army and the fact that all their officers are human. However, in the case of Alderaan, the Empire no longer treated humans like first-class citizens. All of them, regardless of species and Imperial status, were destroyed. This entrenched a feeling of betrayal within those humans who were once considered special under the superweapon’s grip…

The full argument’s here: https://therehasbeenanawakening.wordpress.com/2016/06/22/the-death-star-destroyed-the-empire/ but, as usual, you DON’T need to read that to get the main points of this argument. I just got a lot of feedback when I posted previously about my thoughts on Luke as a character, so I thought I'd see what you all at CT think. Any comments? Disagreements? Weaknesses or strengths I’m completely ignoring? Or was the Death Star just a minor setback for the Empire? (Reasoning from the original films is awesome but I'd love any evidence that comes from the EU, too)

 

I can see the point. The Death Star is the ultimate WMD, and the first planet that dares open rebellion is the first one that get's destroyed. Yet, the Alliance was smart enough to fight a proxy war for all those that couldn't or wouldn't risk open rebellion. Hence it became so important for Tarkin to find the hidden Rebel base and destroy it, so he could end this proxy war.

As a matter of fact I believe the Galactic Empire had a personnel problem. As word about atrocities made the round, less people were inclined to join the Imperial Forces or - worse - defected to the Alliance. Biggs mentioned he wouldn't let the Empire draft him into service, which tells us that the Empire was probably running out of volunteers to man its ships.

I don't buy these conjectural figures about personnel lost in the destruction of Death Star I. The way I see it it was essentially a large flying antimatter / hypermatter reactor, mostly producing the exotic materials necessary to destroy an entire planet with only a skeleton crew for defense and operation.

Alderaan had been suspected to be a strong supporter of the Alliance (and actually was the Alliance's central gatherer of information). As such it was a traitor in the eyes of the Empire and a legitimate target.
And the Imperial propaganda certainly made sure that was the official reason for destroying Alderaan, first.

 

"Your overconfidence is your weakness."

Luke spelled this out in ROTJ but it's true for Palpatine and the Empire at large. The Emperor had spent all those years being meticulous and careful in assuming full power that he become clumsy and arrogant. The Death Star was a weapon of pride and a showing of raw power; with it, the Empire were in complete control and would have no room for fear. But they already had complete control. Destroying a peaceful planet with two well liked politicians (Bail and, of course, Leia who survived) that provided plenty of resources surely didn't leave a good taste in anyone's mouth. It also made them more likely to gain enemies once the Rebels were able to destroy the battle station - the great superweapon failed. Years of resources were incinerated and wasted in a matter of seconds. The previously secure Empire was vulnerable. It started the cracks that kept shattering till the end of Jedi that lead to their demise.

 

Lukers wrote

But they already had complete control.

But the Galactic Empire was starting to loose that control because of politics a lot of members of the Imperial Senate were dissatisfied with it. It remains my firm conviction that the Imperial Starfleet (less than a thousand ships according to Solo in ANH) was first and foremost a police force /national guard that could have extinguished the increasing "fires" of Rebellion only up to a certain point.

I.e. once enough members of the Imperial Senate would have joined forces and their own fleets, they would have defeated the Imperial Starfleet with ease.

So there were only two options from the Emperor's point of view:

• to build more ships to prepare for that eventuality or
• to build a battle station that would immediately destroy any planet with rebellious or secessionist tendencies

In the first case, I believe the problem would have been personnel and manpower. I think the shortage of enough suitable (and trained!) personnel was a major factor not to pursue building more ships (although and undoubtedly strongly propagated by General Taggi).

Instead, the Death Star as the ultimate WMD and representative of the Deterrence Theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory - discouraged anybody to openly join forces against the Empire.

This inevitably forced all rebellious members to secretly and united support the Alliance. However, this provided the Galactic Empire conveniently with a clear target (rather then to deal with multiple ones) and a possibility how to end that rebellion with "one swift" stroke.

Except this failed when aforementioned target actually destroyed the Death Star.

After the Battle of Yavin it became hard if not impossible for the Empire to re-consider the first option. Following the destruction of Alderaan the Empire's reputation was at an all-time low. And with any personnel drafted for the Imperial Starfleet, probability was high they'd rather sabotage than efficiently perform their onboard duties.

Thus the Empire had to built a second Death Star to give their original strategy a second chance.

 

The complete phrase would have been "it'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than has ever existed" going by the novelization.

If each ship needs more firepower than has ever existed" for the thousand ships to do the job - then there's plenty of room for there to be a lot more than 1000 ships with lesser firepower than that - as both the EU and newcanon have gone with.

 

Iron_lord wrote

The complete phrase would have been "it'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than has ever existed" going by the novelization.

...which is overruled by the actual George Lucas screenplay from January 1, 1976 which clarifies "than I've ever seen".

"The entire starfleet couldn't destroy the planet. It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've ever seen."

Anyway, with the conjectural 25,000 EU figure in mind and in plain English, that's what Han supposedly said:

"[The 25,000 ships] couldn't destroy the planet, It'd take a 1,000 ships with more firepower than I've ever seen."

?!?!?

This just simply doesn't make any sense, regardless which way you try to spin-doctor it.

There must be at least 25,000 ships "with more firepower" to make sense. Solo's ANH statement clearly provides an upper limit for the Imperial Starfleet (i.e. 1,000 ships with less firepower) that is ultimately illustrated by the size of the Imperial fleet participating (and loosing!) at the Battle of Endor.

To claim otherwise is an invitation to rather believe what EU conjecture tries to tell us in contrast to what we can actually learn and conclude from absolute canon (i.e. the films).

As I've tried to illustrate earlier the (foreseeable) relative small size of the Imperial Starfleet was probably one of the decisive factors to even seriously consider building the Death Star in the first place.

 

"A thousand ships each with more firepower than I've ever seen" is compatible with the notion that there's more than 1000 ships in the whole fleet.

Super Star Destroyer types, in short.

 

The Death Star was meant to be a statement of power, but it just became putting most of your eggs into one basket.

 

Or Han might've been referring to the notion of just getting a thousand ships together anywhere, for any reason. Considering how big the Empire is, and how many ships are on assignment, it'd be practically impossible to gather that many ships for one job.

 

In hindsight, building many more Star Destroyers, TIEs, AT-ATs and other vehicles would've been much better for them. Spreading them more heavily throughout the galaxy. There would have been more than just one Battle of Jakku.

 

Good point, themoth. The Empire would have been ubiquitous that way, and far more dangerous. The Death Star may have been intimidating, but it was not the trump card the Empire needed.

 

The Empire did build two Death Stars so they were well capable of building even more not to mention they were fairly effective at eradicating the Resistance movement and ostracizing the Rebels to the point of forcing them to become illicit black market merchants.

It was more the absolutism of the Empire and weakness of core elements of the Imperial Star Navy that undone them. The admiralty were soft. The mass numbers of soldiers at their command lacked any leadership structure lower down the command chain. It was telling the Rebels had far superior Generals & Admirals in combat.

The Empire did a competent job in suppressing slave revolts and keeping the Crime Lords in check however when it came to meaningful battles and routine soldiering they relied on the Sith Lord Vader and the rogue Bounty Hunters.

The Rebels had a key advantage the Galaxy was open to their vision of new post Imperial era. Despite the technological and physical hard power of the Empire the Imperial Star Navy would have ben far better as a small dedicated elite force perhaps with the occasional Death Star.

 

It's analogous to manufacturing way too many nuclear weapons and not having enough soldiers.

 

Economically, two Death Star destructions would have collapsed the Empire into a Great Deep Depression.

 

SateleNovelist11 wrote

It's analogous to manufacturing way too many nuclear weapons and not having enough soldiers.

I agree that's how it turned out for the Empire, but I'm pretty certain the Tarkin Doctrine intended differently, i.e. more like an analogy to end the rebellion like the Allied Forces ended their conflict with Japan in WW II:

In the final year of the war, the Allies prepared for what was anticipated to be a very costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. This was preceded by a U.S. firebombing campaign that obliterated many Japanese cities. ... Together with the United Kingdom and China, the United States called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945—the alternative being "prompt and utter destruction". The Japanese response to this ultimatum was to ignore it.

IMHO the Empire just wanted to save manpower like the Allied Forces did, but because neither the Enola Gay nor the Bockscar were shot down the nuclear horror of Horoshima and Nagasaki made the Japanese unconditionally surrender.

Had the Rebels not managed to destroy the Death Star in ANH, the Tarkin Doctrine may have worked, despite Leia's claims to the contrary.

Bernie Skywalker wrote

Economically, two Death Star destructions would have collapsed the Empire into a Great Deep Depression.

IMHO, the first Death Star could have been largely assembled with the help of POW, i.e. plenty of reprogrammed battle droids.

The second one, however, had to be accomplished with much less manpower, suggesting it was the Empire's last ditch effort to keep control.

Interestingly, the first draft for ROJ featured two Death Stars under construction orbiting Coruscant (Had Abaddon, then, see image on top).