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But Won't The Other Side Notice?

Of course there are those occasions when people really did seem to be suffering from terminal idiocy.

'But won't the Soviet Union notice that there's a massive military build-up by Germany and so react accordingly'

'No, because Stalin's convinced it's not going to happen.'
 
I'm having horrible flashbacks to that bloody timeline on the other site where Hjalmar Schacht magically fixes the German economy, they build up the navy without cutting anything else, carry out anschluss and the annexation of Czechslovakia five years early, turn Italy into a devoted ally (and have enough resources to modernise its military at the same time) and... what was the other thing, oh yes, they turn Spain fascist almost bloodlessly.

When anyone suggests that perhaps all this happening between 1932 and 1936 might change French, British and Soviet policy just a little, Gudestein got rather shirty.
 
Plan Z would definitely get a reaction.

But the British were willing to overlook a lot OTL so more modest changes on the German side may well change almost nothing in the opposition's reaction.

On land or in the air I think the Allies were reacting more to their own conception of how the next war would play out than to anything the Germans did so you could probably do quite a bit with the Luftwaffe or the Heer without changing anything on the allied side because they already ignored most developments that didn't suit them OTL.
 
In WIAF, Chinese intelligence did notice Japan's mid-1930s military buildup, but it was riven by factional infighting between the prime minister's cronies and the old hands, which led to sensitive information being deliberately withheld--those who have worked in large administrations know how vicious bureaucratic grudge matches can get. The PM being too full of himself to give what was forwarded to him due importance did the rest, stop me if you've heard that one before.
 
Of course there are those occasions when people really did seem to be suffering from terminal idiocy.

'But won't the Soviet Union notice that there's a massive military build-up by Germany and so react accordingly'

'No, because Stalin's convinced it's not going to happen.'

Real history's got the advantage here - nobody can say "nobody would be THAT DUMB" about a character if it's a real dumb person! Meanwhile, everyone knows how they'd totally keep a level head at age 18 if Jason Voorhees was chasing them through the scary dark words.
 
Of course there are those occasions when people really did seem to be suffering from terminal idiocy.

'But won't the Soviet Union notice that there's a massive military build-up by Germany and so react accordingly'

'No, because Stalin's convinced it's not going to happen.'

Whilst this is one of the great examples of OTL being implausible there were at least still reasons for it being the case that the writer of the OTL could produce if challenged, or hopefully provide initially.
 
Whilst this is one of the great examples of OTL being implausible there were at least still reasons for it being the case that the writer of the OTL could produce if challenged, or hopefully provide initially.

Oh yes, if you can justify it, it changes things a lot.
 
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