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2019 Britain ISOT to November 1944?

More on topic, regarding Trident guidance; would the star maps still be useful due to stellar drift?

Not sure, due to alarming tendency of HMG keeping the guidance methods of its nuclear weapons secret. I did my uni dissertation of UK nuclear deterrent and still know few technical details about Polaris and Trident that you can't now find via Wikipedia.
 
The technical term is reciprocal behavior, but yes I can very well understand why it's annoying. Almost like you don't like getting called something wrong based on where you live.
Have I, or anyone else on the board done this to you? If not, then my point still stands- you’re being needlessly antagonistic, “reciprocating” annoying behaviour that no one here is guilty of. If they have, then the mature response would be to politely ask them to stop, rather than deliberately being as annoying as they are.
 
Well this is definitely an interesting operational/strategic dilemma.

You're on a timescale of days/weeks, I think, for HMG to go through a full OODA loop of earth-shattering scale.
1) the war must be ended ASAP, both in Europe and the Pacific.
2) quite apart from the moral effect on the armies in the field of their nation having disappeared from under them, munitions and other supplies cannot be produced in useful quantities on the timescale required. Winning the war conventionally is likely to be a bust.
3) available, deployable forces in the UK are extremely high-impact compared with 1944 forces, but also small in number. They cannot fill the gap left by 1944 UK forces only having the logistical support that had reached the European mainland or comes direct from the US, even if their stocks would hold out. (e.g. would the RAF have sufficient AAMs to shoot down the remaining Luftwaffe?)
4) the nuclear deterrent exists

4) is where things get tricky. I would expect HMG to end up opting to use the deterrent...while deeply divided on the question and with severe misgivings.
Because we fight hard enough over the morality of conventional bombing, and it will be hard to find any worthwhile targets which can be hit by a Trident without causing (by 2019 standards) significant collateral damage.

Is it possible to do sufficient damage to the Nazi state to enforce unconditional surrender, short of going full TBO?
If yes, how far do you have to go?

The "easy" answer is probably to start with RAF strikes on key targets with conventional munitions, run up a list of nuclear targets, then start working down them until a surrender is communicated. But frankly making that decision and enacting it would leave me a psychological wreck.
 
A combination of things come to mind.

1. Do the 1944 laws still apply? Corbyn/sedition laws. Need I say more. Or maybe send him andhis friends on a fact finding tour to the Soviet Union...

2. A few strategic nukes and some strategic bombing of the Concentration camps.

3. Decolonisation and Eastern Europe can be done in a much better way now. We have these super weapons with which to focus minds.

4. Parlay our massively advanced peacetime and military tech into some significant reductions of Peacetime debt to the US. "Oh you want this Internet technology? About thatLend Lease thing. Let's call it even shall we?"

5. Europe. Lance the European boil before it becomes on. Remake post war Europe on British lines, not Franco German ones. Free trade without political integration being the order of the day
 
A combination of things come to mind.

1. Do the 1944 laws still apply? Corbyn/sedition laws. Need I say more. Or maybe send him andhis friends on a fact finding tour to the Soviet Union...

2. A few strategic nukes and some strategic bombing of the Concentration camps.

3. Decolonisation and Eastern Europe can be done in a much better way now. We have these super weapons with which to focus minds.

4. Parlay our massively advanced peacetime and military tech into some significant reductions of Peacetime debt to the US. "Oh you want this Internet technology? About thatLend Lease thing. Let's call it even shall we?"

5. Europe. Lance the European boil before it becomes on. Remake post war Europe on British lines, not Franco German ones. Free trade without political integration being the order of the day
1. On what grounds are you going to be trying to prosecute the Leader of the Opposition? Leading the Labour Party? Not having brought back Clause IV, the 2019 Labour party is significantly further from communism than the 1944 Labour party was...

2. Nukes where? Is strategic bombing of sites that hold significant numbers of civilian prisoners a good idea? If so, why?

3. Or what, we're going to nuke the Soviet Union?

4. The debt issue is an interesting one - the 2019 UK has paid all the war debt to the US in it's timeline, but the 1944 US obviously hasn't seen the payments. Send in the diplomats, the ultimate settlement will doubtless be swayed one direction or another to settle other issues.

5. Europe had quite a bit of free trade in 1913, it didn't help (enough) to prevent continental war, thus the addition of political integration in the post-WW2 efforts. Maybe it doesn't have to be political integration, maybe there are other ways to achieve the same ends, but something more than free trade is likely to be needed. Any ideas as to what?
 
1. On what grounds are you going to be trying to prosecute the Leader of the Opposition? Leading the Labour Party? Not having brought back Clause IV, the 2019 Labour party is significantly further from communism than the 1944 Labour party was...

2. Nukes where? Is strategic bombing of sites that hold significant numbers of civilian prisoners a good idea? If so, why?

3. Or what, we're going to nuke the Soviet Union?

4. The debt issue is an interesting one - the 2019 UK has paid all the war debt to the US in it's timeline, but the 1944 US obviously hasn't seen the payments. Send in the diplomats, the ultimate settlement will doubtless be swayed one direction or another to settle other issues.

5. Europe had quite a bit of free trade in 1913, it didn't help (enough) to prevent continental war, thus the addition of political integration in the post-WW2 efforts. Maybe it doesn't have to be political integration, maybe there are other ways to achieve the same ends, but something more than free trade is likely to be needed. Any ideas as to what?

1. A joke. Although it might be informative to send the Corbynistas to see the USSR they so love in action.

2. A demonstration off the German coast and an ultimatum. Surrender within 24 hrs or the next one is for Berlin. Same with Japan. A few cruise missiles to cut the rail to the camps and some SAS insertions to release and arm the inmates.

3. If the UK is back in 1944, the Soviets are not a nuclear power and much of Eastern Europe is still salvageable. The UK has the nuclear monopoly and if Germany did surrender, it would be surrendering with its armies still intact across much of Eastern Europe. Obviously the UK would expect full German withdrawal and denazification in short order, but not in the immediate post surrender period, Germany would be reasonably expected to hold its positions. That includes in the East. The eastern front thus freezing much further east and the implicit threat that the UK can pose to the Russians with its nukes gives much more bargaining power in regards to post war Soviet positions in Eastern Europe.

Decolonisation? It will still happen partly due to our uptime values but also, frankly, the empire is an economic drain to a 21st century economy and beyond the maintainance of some bases, won't serve much strategic utility.

However is needn't happen at the same pace or in the same way.

Take India? Partition itself wasn't in itself a bad idea, nor was it a British demand-if the people of India and Pakistan wanted partition, fair enough. But it needn't have been so rushed if the British had just said to Nehru "just slow down", and given time to actually give effect to the practicalities of partition in a less rushed, chaotic manner.

And of course African decolonised should have disregarded arbitrary colonial boundaries and given greater attention to tribal and cultural boundaries.

5. Realistically, the previous examples of free trade lacked what eventually emerged, and was/is an often willfully overlooked factor in ensuring European peace, the fact that all of western Europe was merged under one military alliance. As long as the UK still ensures that happens with the US, free trade is the only extra bit you need. Political integration has never been necessary, as long as you have free trade and a continental military alliance.
 
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And of course African partition should have disregarded arbitrary colonial boundaries and given greater attention to tribal and cultural boundaries.

This ones a bit of a meme that needs to die. Mainly because 'cultural' borders are basically impossible to draw in most areas due to the lack of compact discrete populations, and things are wildly inconsistent when it comes to whether they actually help or not (Rwanda's basically got the same borders as the pre-colonial state, Somalia's ethnically far more uniform than Ghana but the latter is much more stable, whether borders need to be 'ethnic' or 'tribal' appears to change on the whim of the day, and they're not the same thing).
 
This ones a bit of a meme that needs to die. Mainly because 'cultural' borders are basically impossible to draw in most areas due to the lack of compact discrete populations, and things are wildly inconsistent when it comes to whether they actually help or not (Rwanda's basically got the same borders as the pre-colonial state, Somalia's ethnically far more uniform than Ghana but the latter is much more stable, whether borders need to be 'ethnic' or 'tribal' appears to change on the whim of the day, and they're not the same thing).
Wasn't literally the first thing the Organisation for African Unity agreed on "leave the borders where they are for now"?
Admittedly partly because in practise the alternative would have been everyone claiming bits of their neighbours and refusing to give up an inch of their own territory.
 
Wasn't literally the first thing the Organisation for African Unity agreed on "leave the borders where they are for now"?
Admittedly partly because in practise the alternative would have been everyone claiming bits of their neighbours and refusing to give up an inch of their own territory.

Arguably the most artificial borders on the continent prior to 1993 were those of Ethiopia.
 
A combination of things come to mind.

1. Do the 1944 laws still apply? Corbyn/sedition laws. Need I say more. Or maybe send him andhis friends on a fact finding tour to the Soviet Union...

2. A few strategic nukes and some strategic bombing of the Concentration camps.

3. Decolonisation and Eastern Europe can be done in a much better way now. We have these super weapons with which to focus minds.

4. Parlay our massively advanced peacetime and military tech into some significant reductions of Peacetime debt to the US. "Oh you want this Internet technology? About thatLend Lease thing. Let's call it even shall we?"

5. Europe. Lance the European boil before it becomes on. Remake post war Europe on British lines, not Franco German ones. Free trade without political integration being the order of the day

No, no, and how does the possession of nukes help decolonization? They didn't exactly help the first time, since overwhelming force doesn't solve social and economic issues. Likewise, future money and future technologies are a rather insubstantial payment next to the very real tons of supplies and war material that's been spent- trying to bargain will require equally concrete sacrifices, especially considering Montgomery's efforts in the Low Countries just got kneecapped by his supply line vanishing into thin air. Unless there's some significant tech production companies in the UK I don't know about, they're going to be bartering a very limited resource, which hurts their ability to keep a technological advantage. Remaking Europe on British lines, meanwhile, is a pipe dream when the Soviets are there and more than willing to do a two-step over how, exactly, the bounty of booty is distributed. After all, a United Kingdom of the future is not the same United Kingdom that signed things before the shift, which is a perfectly reasonable reason to... renegotiate.
 
For a 2019-Britain's course of action entering WW2...
My immediate suggestion would be to drop a nuclear bomb on some German military site; aim to choose it such that there aren't civilian deaths (or at the very least minimize them), but so that it's still utterly clear to Germany what power the UK has... and then send Germany a message saying "unconditionally surrender to us immediately or we'll start dropping these on your cities".

Hopefully that'd work.
This ones a bit of a meme that needs to die. Mainly because 'cultural' borders are basically impossible to draw in most areas due to the lack of compact discrete populations, and things are wildly inconsistent when it comes to whether they actually help or not (Rwanda's basically got the same borders as the pre-colonial state, Somalia's ethnically far more uniform than Ghana but the latter is much more stable, whether borders need to be 'ethnic' or 'tribal' appears to change on the whim of the day, and they're not the same thing).
If there's anything 2019-Britain can do to help African success after decolonization... I'd be pushing for a federal united Africa. Start with using the colonial divisions for internal divisions, but there'd still be the option for making more culture-based subdivisions in the future. Maybe have the Ethiopian Emperor become a titular/constitutional Emperor of Africa... and for the government of this federation, have a bicameral structure in which one of the two houses is elected by the African people from the start; and the other house is initially people appointed by the UK, the various ex-colonizer countries, etc, to ensure that there are still experienced administrators to look after the development of Africa at first, but these would slowly be phased out such that within 30 years' time or so, this upper house becomes entirely under African control and the influence of the ex-colonizer countries disappears.

I'm thinking this might just enable Africa to become about as developed and stable as India is, which would be... better than OTL.
 
If there's anything 2019-Britain can do to help African success after decolonization... I'd be pushing for a federal united Africa. Start with using the colonial divisions for internal divisions, but there'd still be the option for making more culture-based subdivisions in the future. Maybe have the Ethiopian Emperor become a titular/constitutional Emperor of Africa... and for the government of this federation, have a bicameral structure in which one of the two houses is elected by the African people from the start; and the other house is initially people appointed by the UK, the various ex-colonizer countries, etc, to ensure that there are still experienced administrators to look after the development of Africa at first, but these would slowly be phased out such that within 30 years' time or so, this upper house becomes entirely under African control and the influence of the ex-colonizer countries disappears.

This is sweet in it's naivety.

Basically this appointed house is going to end up being seen as a tool to prevent real independence by both the locals and every other European power even if Britain's actually honest about it, Haile Selassie was respected but I doubt he'd be all that content with only ceremonial powers and a continent wide federation where even the western educated locals all speak different languages is going to be very ambitious.
 
No, no, and how does the possession of nukes help decolonization? They didn't exactly help the first time, since overwhelming force doesn't solve social and economic issues. Likewise, future money and future technologies are a rather insubstantial payment next to the very real tons of supplies and war material that's been spent- trying to bargain will require equally concrete sacrifices, especially considering Montgomery's efforts in the Low Countries just got kneecapped by his supply line vanishing into thin air. Unless there's some significant tech production companies in the UK I don't know about, they're going to be bartering a very limited resource, which hurts their ability to keep a technological advantage. Remaking Europe on British lines, meanwhile, is a pipe dream when the Soviets are there and more than willing to do a two-step over how, exactly, the bounty of booty is distributed. After all, a United Kingdom of the future is not the same United Kingdom that signed things before the shift, which is a perfectly reasonable reason to... renegotiate.

I didnt actually say nukes help decolonization-they will however help the post war eastern Europe question.
 
This is sweet in it's naivety.

Basically this appointed house is going to end up being seen as a tool to prevent real independence by both the locals and every other European power even if Britain's actually honest about it, Haile Selassie was respected but I doubt he'd be all that content with only ceremonial powers and a continent wide federation where even the western educated locals all speak different languages is going to be very ambitious.

My understanding was when the debate between a federal Africa and an economically connected but politically separate one was raging, Ethiopia argued for the latter. As did Senegal, Nigeria, Liberia, Ivory Coast etc.

The UK arriving from 2019 saying, look this is the somewhat grim future of Africa when pan Africanism wasn't tried, lets try something different this time and so throwing all it's political capital behind Nkrumah and the Casablanca block is interesting as a concept. If Corbyn is PM and has the right advisors I could even see it as possible.

Someone from the government will have to have long conversations with Selassie, Senghor, Boigny, Azikiwe and the other prominent members of the Monrovia block to convince them to change their mind on this. Maybe sit Selassie down with whoever in his family is still in England and a history book.
 
My understanding was when the debate between a federal Africa and an economically connected but politically separate one was raging, Ethiopia argued for the latter. As did Senegal, Nigeria, Liberia, Ivory Coast etc.

The UK arriving from 2019 saying, look this is the somewhat grim future of Africa when pan Africanism wasn't tried, lets try something different this time and so throwing all it's political capital behind Nkrumah and the Casablanca block is interesting as a concept. If Corbyn is PM and has the right advisors I could even see it as possible.

Someone from the government will have to have long conversations with Selassie, Senghor, Boigny, Azikiwe and the other prominent members of the Monrovia block to convince them to change their mind on this. Maybe sit Selassie down with whoever in his family is still in England and a history book.

I can see a Federal Africa emerging if enough of a push is given for it, and enough contacts are cultivated.

I just can't see one which has some sort of Technocratic House of Lords appointed by the colonial powers as part of the government.
 
I can see a Federal Africa emerging if enough of a push is given for it, and enough contacts are cultivated.

I just can't see one which has some sort of Technocratic House of Lords appointed by the colonial powers as part of the government.

Oh, yeah that's a non starter. So for that matter is the Emperor of Africa title, pan africanism was primarily a left wing/socialist thing. Selassie might think the new leaders of free Africa would listen to an old aristocrat ex slave owner but he was wrong in otl about that and he'll be wrong here.

Selassie is probably the single person I'd be most interested in, in this scenario because 44 is before he made most of his mistakes and early enough that he can course correct if he listens.

I think any attempt at creating a federal Africa would obviously run into massive problems regardless but the structure of it has to be left up to African people to decide not dictated from the Uk or it'll be stillborn.

Of course most of the pan africans aren't actually in charge yet. Nkrumah's still studying law in the states, Nasser's an instructor in the Egyptian academy etc. So who do you talk to?

The UK could put forward a plan for independence for most of their colonies pretty quickly after they'd dealt with ww2 and feeding the home islands. They could probably even do some things about Rhodesia and Sudan or releasing Biafra by itself. But there's a lot of other stuff that they'll only be able to advise on. Libya, somalia, eritrea, drc, the portuguese colonies, western sahara, south africa, algeria.

Possibly the best bet would be loudly call for all colonies to be made independent, you could probably get both the usa and the ussr to support that and then offer any new countries a place in the federal africa you've constructed, with the understanding that a lot of the french colonies will say no at first to joining what looks like an anglophonic organisation (though again Ethiopia would be helpful for that).
 
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