JCC Senate Has the Sun Set? A Discussion of the British Empire and Legacy

No realistically you can't, but the vernacular had always said it was the USA, and then as gormless youth get the leftist learner's permits online the pendulum's swung back to the Soviets. My contention is the British actually matter more than they get credit for, perhaps more than the other two big picture.

For example, what stops Hitler from pressing his strength advantage on the Russians after the Russian winter? Having troops split across two fronts, the second being North Africa where we're fighting the Hun with the Brits.

 

It’s a bit of a weird counter factual argument to have. None can practically continue the war without the others. I’d argue that the Soviets get the least credit compared to their contribution however.

 

"bombed a bit" ? Interesting definition. It was quite a lot more than that.

"Who cares where the rockets come down? That's not my department says Wernher von Braun"

To borrow Hudson's line - "I don't know if you've been keeping up on current events but we just got our ass kicked pal."

 

Well, I wouldn't argue that. The US was busily stomping all over the top step of the podium beating its chest; and then if you look at reddit where NEET kids have decided they're "socialists" or full blown Stalinists, it's all basically USSR single handedly winning the war. Britain's a footnote to the US pomp, but I just don't think there's any real basis to argue that's how it should be.

 

The lesson is that you shouldn’t take Twitter leftists as general consensus.

 

No but if you did take the pulse of the general public they'd say the US.

But to the points made earlier:

* Without Britain holding out the US has no way to establish a beachhead in Europe
* Russia's fighting a full strength Wehrmacht without winter to protect them.

 

One of the most interesting political science questions of last century is why Japan ****ed up so badly on that. Nobody quite agrees on why, but the prevailing view is that some very particular bureaucratic cultural inertia within the Japanese government led to it, as opposed to any kind of strategic thinking.

ETA: The best I’ve read on the subject is Morton Halperin’s “Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy.”

 

There's a good case study we use in management training and risk training, around a Korean air flight that crashed because the artificial horizon failed and hierarchy got in the way... Though not the same culture, there is a similarity in the unquestioning response to authority is such that I would not be surprised if someone had the silly idea and nobody who disagreed felt they could voice their dissenting view.

 

Just as an aside much of the problem with commercial airliner flight crews from Korea and Japan is that they were sourced from the military and so had a military culture of unquestioning obedience to orders from superior officers. It’s also one of the reasons why captains rarely land the aircraft nowadays as previously first officers were reluctant to provide ‘suggestions’ to captains who were making a dogs breakfast out of the landing and so the flight crew quietly looked on as the captain crash landed the aircraft killing all on onboard. As first officers now land the aircraft most of the time, the captain can criticise away!

 

Edit: to tired for this ****

 

Relevant:

 

@Jedi Knight Fett. You just summed up my entire JCC career!

 

There’s a joke here, but I think it’s too dark.

 

You can’t tease us like that. Hoping for dark jokes is the only reason I’m here.

 

I was going to say that’s clearly the reason Hitler went after the Romani.

I’ll cancel myself now.

 

Actually, did any of the conventional fighting in WWII even matter? Suppose Britain surrendered, then the Soviets surrendered. America completes the Manhattan Project and deploys the atom bomb. America wins.

 

That’s if America just wouldn’t use it as a deterrent. But seeing as they used it on Japan with little hesitation maybe.

 

The Nazis were also developing the Atomic Bomb, but weren't able to get there before the US did and then lost the war anyway.

I've never bought into the grandstanding from any of the Allied nations about how they won WW2, IMO the Nazis lost it themselves as opposed to the Allies winning because they were better.
War on too many fronts, lost Italy as an ally, no support from Japan because they were bogged down in Asia, overengineered unreliable technology vs allied mass production, Hitler not listening to more experienced military commanders.

 

American completes the Manhattan project. The Germans have radars too. German territory isn't accessible without very long flights through hostile areas, and getting a carrier close enough to launch a bomber with the A-bomb is already putting them in range of the Luftwaffe - on its home soil, capable of deploying twenty fighters to every plane the USA's carrier fleet can send. The USA don't have so many A-bombs they can afford to lose one either, and they can't bomb non-German cities without destroying the Allies.

And here's the kicker: IRL, there's evidence a first test of a tactical nuke happened in Thuringia in April 1945. The Germans didn't get enough Uranium to try better, in the closing stages of the war, but there's a real possibility they were that close. Give them a couple of years, the Nazis also have the A-bomb, and neither country can strike the other. But the Germans have the best rocket scientists.

Guess who launches the first ICBM on the other side of the ocean?

 

To be fair, the book that alleges this has been severely criticised.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4348497.stm

"Karlsch displays a catastrophic lack of understanding of physics," wrote physicist Michael Schaaf, author of a previous book about Nazi atomic experiments, in the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.
"Karlsch has done us a service in showing that German research into uranium went further than we'd thought up till now, but there was not a German atom bomb," he added.

There was also a theory that Japan had tested a nuke as well:

https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/japanese-atomic-bomb-project

which, again, is severely lacking in evidence.

 

Those two things are both true, and related. The Allies won AND the Axis powers lost...

 

The Nazis were nowhere near the nuclear bomb.

 

It certainly has been severely criticized.

Still, a world where the Soviets and Britain have already lost is a world where Germany has much more free hands, and not one where American atomic research can stay hidden forever. It wouldn't have taken a decade to catch up. And it's also a world where Americans don't get the head start on rocketry which the Germans managed, nor get their better thinkers and empirical research.