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Old 02-28-2019, 01:17 AM   #11
Michele
 
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Default Re: [IW] Patton-2

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Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2 View Post
What is the status of space flight on Patton-1 in 1978? Who has it and who has done what with it?
Thank you for asking!

As mentioned, the space race began later, and it's between the USA and China. What with the belated end of active warring, the initial focus on high-altitude bombers as weapon platforms, and the fact that for most of the 1950s there was no other power able to send things in space, the USA took to that challenge much more slowly. Things changed in 1965, when the Chinese placed their first satellite in orbit. As of now, both space agencies brought manned vehicles in orbit, and landed unmanned probes on the Moon. The next big step will be a manned lunar mission, and the USA are poised to launch it next year. It's unclear whether the Chinese are trying to beat them to the punch.
The British focused on less glamorous but still essential orbital satellites, and the Brazilians are only now following suit. A joint French-German effort is in the making.
Note that some Infinity analysts think the overall technological progress on Patton-2 is behind that of Homeline in the same year exactly because of this delay in the space race.

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What is the status of Catholicism vs. Protestantism in the Western nations?
The main factor affecting religions and churches on Patton-2 is that the regimes that persecuted them on Homeline are in power only in small marginal areas (Siberia and Sinkiang). Therefore, the Catholic Church is literally thriving, in comparison, in places like Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Cuba, China, Korea, Vietnam. It is also much more influential in countries where Communism was not in power, but a Communist-influenced rationalist school of thought opposed the Catholic Church: Italy, France, Mexico, for instance. The same is true, of course, for the Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe, which have even more social and political weight in their countries: Russia, Romania, Bulgaria.
The Catholic authorities are swift to discipline priests who come under suspicion of having Communist inclinations. This happens, especially in South America. Brazilian priests (and even a few bishops) only have to worry about their own hierarchy; in other countries, death squadrons and paramilitary organizations occasionally target such priests. The life of the bishop of San Salvador is known to be in danger, for instance.

In the USA, the Catholics are slightly less influential, and the Protestants - if we look at the the more conservative, well-established and "respectable" denominations - slightly more so. Being a WASP, including the P, still is key to being an important person. There are slightly fewer Catholics overall, too, because there's less immigration from South America. In particular, visitors from Homeline would ask, in Miami: "where are all the Cubans?".
Militant Protestant Churches from the USA are enthusiastically proselytizing abroad, especially in the Philippines, China, and a few central African countries. Some say they are supported by the US government.
The so-called "Black Churches", for instance many Baptist Churches, are in a different and more difficult situation. Arson is a common solution when a local church becomes the meeting point of "uppity" African-Americans. In recent years, several pastors who were gaining popular support in their communities had their reputations tarnished by allegations of embezzlement or sexual scandals. Their supporters claim they were framed up.

In the BCE, all forms of proselytism, by anyone, are unofficially discouraged. The British authorities already find it difficult to keep the lid down on multiple other issues (especially in Western India and Malaya), so they don't need that additional headache.
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Old 02-28-2019, 01:10 PM   #12
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Default Re: [IW] Patton-2

An interesting idea, but I keep coming back to your having significant troops cross the Elbe*. In our timeline, General Eisenhower** halted Western Allies at the designated stopping points, both to reduce closing Allies accidentally firing on one another, and to not spend Western Allied lives on land that the Russians were going to occupy anyways. What changed here that would have troops cross the Elbe in strength here?


*Using the Elbe for short hand for the various stop lines.

**I will note that there was pressure from Washington DC too minimize casualties in Germany so that more troops would be available to invade Japan, it was not just Ike saving men because he though it was the right thing to do.
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Old 02-28-2019, 03:25 PM   #13
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**I will note that there was pressure from Washington DC too minimize casualties in Germany so that more troops would be available to invade Japan, it was not just Ike saving men because he though it was the right thing to do.
I think you answered your own question here. The Americans probably ended up figuring that they could demolish Japan with nukes and racing onwards to Berlin was just fine in that case.
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Old 02-28-2019, 03:40 PM   #14
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What I’d be looking for are the higher-probability Patton timelines with the same divergence point...

* The one where the negative reactions among the western allies weren’t unexpected. Churchill, having spent the last three or four years making positive references to Stalin in the House of Commons, flattered himself that some people might have believed him. For that matter, he felt a sneaking sympathy for anyone who having been told that victory over Germany would bring peace and security, had been looking forward to that. So when the Labour members of his war cabinet came to him to say that this turn of events would not be popular, and that they could not support it, he took a deep puff on his cigar, contemplated his whisky, and then got on the scrambled line to Washington to suggest that military enthusiasm among field commanders was all well and good, but sometimes had to be tempered by those with a more strategic viewpoint. As Roosevelt was just reading an intelligence report that noted that DeGaulle actually seemed marginally more likely to try to out-bid his rivals in the Communist former Resistance than to go along with an American policy, Patton was requested to return to Washington on the next flight.

* The one where the Americans didn’t have a magic unlimited supply of A-bombs, or maybe the Soviet Air Force just got lucky in the art of shooting down B29s and leaving radioactive craters. The Red Army worked around the one hit their logistical chain did suffer, most German soldiers surprised Patton by telling him where to put his offer of a chance to kill more Russians, and the North German Plain turned into a killing ground, Zhukov schooled Patton in the way that quantity has a quality of its own, and by the end of 1945, the T-34s were rolling into Paris. And being cheered more than a little.
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Old 02-28-2019, 05:40 PM   #15
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Default Re: [IW] Patton-2

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**I will note that there was pressure from Washington DC too minimize casualties in Germany so that more troops would be available to invade Japan, it was not just Ike saving men because he though it was the right thing to do.
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I think you answered your own question here. The Americans probably ended up figuring that they could demolish Japan with nukes and racing onwards to Berlin was just fine in that case.
Maybe, There was a very real concern that they would have to kill virtually every single Japanese to defeat Japan, a concern that did not kick into high gear until after the April invasion of Okinawa. Given that that was in April, they might not have been worried enough, yet, to pressure Ike that much.
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Old 02-28-2019, 06:19 PM   #16
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Default Re: [IW] Patton-2

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What I’d be looking for are the higher-probability Patton timelines with the same divergence point...

* The one where the negative reactions among the western allies weren’t unexpected. Churchill, having spent the last three or four years making positive references to Stalin in the House of Commons, flattered himself that some people might have believed him. For that matter, he felt a sneaking sympathy for anyone who having been told that victory over Germany would bring peace and security, had been looking forward to that. So when the Labour members of his war cabinet came to him to say that this turn of events would not be popular, and that they could not support it, he took a deep puff on his cigar, contemplated his whisky, and then got on the scrambled line to Washington to suggest that military enthusiasm among field commanders was all well and good, but sometimes had to be tempered by those with a more strategic viewpoint. As Roosevelt was just reading an intelligence report that noted that DeGaulle actually seemed marginally more likely to try to out-bid his rivals in the Communist former Resistance than to go along with an American policy, Patton was requested to return to Washington on the next flight.
Interesting twist, while Churchill was easily the highest ranking individual on the Allied side that would like to see the Soviet Union ended once and for all, he also had to know of the cost to do so, especially in a UK close to 1917 levels of economic stress. He would have been aware that a protracted campaign in Russia would not only weaken the economy of the UK, but also their stature on the world stage.

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* The one where the Americans didn’t have a magic unlimited supply of A-bombs, or maybe the Soviet Air Force just got lucky in the art of shooting down B29s and leaving radioactive craters. The Red Army worked around the one hit their logistical chain did suffer, most German soldiers surprised Patton by telling him where to put his offer of a chance to kill more Russians, and the North German Plain turned into a killing ground, Zhukov schooled Patton in the way that quantity has a quality of its own, and by the end of 1945, the T-34s were rolling into Paris. And being cheered more than a little.
Given the initial setup, I don't think we are working with a "magic" supply of atomic weapons, since this timeline relies on US weapons all being made with New Mexico based uranium, I doubt that you would have the lag between the first three weapons, and serial production starting in late 45/early 46, as they did on our timeline.

B29s; The was B29 generally able to fly higher and faster at altitude than virtually all WW II Russian aircraft*, I doubt the Russians will catch very many B-29s.

*Even in Korea, B29s flew 21,000 sorties, and only lost 34 B-29s to all causes.
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Old 03-01-2019, 01:41 AM   #17
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Default Re: [IW] Patton-2

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What I’d be looking for are the higher-probability Patton timelines with the same divergence point...

* The one where the negative reactions among the western allies weren’t unexpected.
Thank you for the input.
This is, indeed, more likely. It will be out there somewhere.

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* The one where the Americans didn’t have a magic unlimited supply of A-bombs, or maybe the Soviet Air Force just got lucky in the art of shooting down B29s and leaving radioactive craters. The Red Army worked around the one hit their logistical chain did suffer, most German soldiers surprised Patton by telling him where to put his offer of a chance to kill more Russians, and the North German Plain turned into a killing ground, Zhukov schooled Patton in the way that quantity has a quality of its own, and by the end of 1945, the T-34s were rolling into Paris. And being cheered more than a little.
This will be out there somewhere, too, given that with infinite worlds there is no limit; but IMHO it really can't be called more likely than Patton-2.

- The nuke supply wasn't magical or unlimited. If you just move the July forecasts to March, as mentioned upthread, you see 3 nukes in March, 5 in April, 7 in May, 10 in June, and 10 per month after that. Don't look at the actual output in our timeline, which was dialed back immediately upon VJ. Granted, from June onwards, about half of the production is implosion designs but fueled by uranium. That gives less yield, but still a nuke.

- Part of the attack on the Soviet LOCs was conventional. Once German bases were repaired and the infrastructure strengthened, Bomber Command and the USAAF could reach deep into Soviet territory, and even before that, the flimsy Soviet logistics across Poland was attacked from existing bases.

- The VVS really wasn't the force for intercepting Western bombers. It was large and impressive at doing what it was designed to do - which was tactical and CAS assistance to the Red Army on the battlefield, and interdiction against the German counterpart, equally low-altitude operations. Even their best fighters worked well at low to medium altitudes, and badly (with the exception of rare, experimental, small-batch variants) at high altitudes. Where by "high" I mean the upper end of standard Western bombers' altitude; the B29s were simply out of reach.

- Bomber Command, in turn, was virtually unopposed. Remember they went in at night, and the Soviets were essentially radar-blind at this time.

- German soldiers were indeed less than enthusiastic about invading the Soviet Union all over again, yes. But they were totally determined and fought to the last day while the Soviets were on German soil, in order to defend their towns from the Red Army and their families from the Soviet soldiers. They shouldered a not insignificant part of the burden over the first weeks of the new war, when the Soviets were still advancing.

- While we're talking about unexpected allies, let's remember that 10% of the force committed to the final Soviet attack towards Berlin was made up by the LWP, with Soviet officers, Communist Polish NCOs, and Polish soldiers who saw no better alternative. On Patton-2, there were widespread mutinies that made this force unreliable. The Romanians also changed sides.

- With all of that, yes, the Soviets initially advanced. Then they ran out of fuel, ammunition, and replacements. Sure, they had hundreds of rifle divisions - each of them about a third, in size, of a US division at average strength including its normal attachments. They largely did not manage to send them up front along their wrecked rail lines, and when they did, the privates were 17-year-olds who were half-starved, and in some of the divisions nearly all the men were sick, weak and losing hair. They had spent some time waiting for the trains close to the wrong place.
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Old 03-01-2019, 01:54 AM   #18
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Default Re: [IW] Patton-2

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Originally Posted by adm View Post
An interesting idea, but I keep coming back to your having significant troops cross the Elbe*. In our timeline, General Eisenhower** halted Western Allies at the designated stopping points, both to reduce closing Allies accidentally firing on one another, and to not spend Western Allied lives on land that the Russians were going to occupy anyways. What changed here that would have troops cross the Elbe in strength here?


*Using the Elbe for short hand for the various stop lines.

**I will note that there was pressure from Washington DC too minimize casualties in Germany so that more troops would be available to invade Japan, it was not just Ike saving men because he though it was the right thing to do.
Thank you for thinking about this.

First thing, the advance was virtually unopposed. "Virtually" means occasional casualties to die-hards, yes, but that was barely above the base level for having an army in campaign in a UXO-dotted landscape.

As to the reason for the advance, it's in the timeline description, though I probably was not clear enough. Hitler was killed by some generals, but they were in turn killed by the SS. Goering came to power, but his command was shaky, ineffective and nobody could say whether he'd remain in the saddle. Nobody knew where Himmler was.
Meanwhile, the resistance against the Soviets was stiff as ever and they were advancing only slowly.
What if a vacuum had come into being in Berlin, with some fanatic stepping in who would order the troops in the West to resume fighting?

Additionally, there was the German propaganda. The Allies didn't know that it was 95% just that. There were rumors of Werwolf guerrilla (note the above-mentioned occasional losses to die-hard Nazis seemed to confirm that this was a real danger, and therefore the faster the country was entirely occupied, the better). There was the danger of a redoubt somewhere. And what about the often-mentioned secret weapons? The USAAF had just shown that new weapons were a real possibility. What if the Germans were on the brink of deploying theirs?

Advancing quickly all the way, or at least for as far as no resistance was met, would reduce the chances of any of that. That was the decision that Eisenhower took.
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Old 03-01-2019, 01:57 AM   #19
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...Churchill was easily the highest ranking individual on the Allied side that would like to see the Soviet Union ended once and for all ...
Which in itself is an issue with the probability of this timeline. I mean, while someone like Churchill might have sympathised with Patton’s urge to take a swing at the Soviets, politicians tend to be pragmatists — and while Churchill losing the 1945 election seems to have been a surprise for many people, it must have been clear even before then that his fandom in the British population wasn’t so huge or unconditional. Plenty of other politicians, not all on the left, would have been thinking “good, we’ve won this one, time to consolidate and clear up the mess (and reinforce our electoral prospects)”.

To be honest, this timeline looks to bear the same relationship to Patton’s fantasies as Reich-5 bears to Hitler’s. On which basis, you might as well go the whole hog and have the world ruled by a gleaming Macarthyite Pax Americana.
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Old 03-01-2019, 04:06 AM   #20
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Which in itself is an issue with the probability of this timeline. I mean, while someone like Churchill might have sympathised with Patton’s urge to take a swing at the Soviets, politicians tend to be pragmatists — and while Churchill losing the 1945 election seems to have been a surprise for many people, it must have been clear even before then that his fandom in the British population wasn’t so huge or unconditional. Plenty of other politicians, not all on the left, would have been thinking “good, we’ve won this one, time to consolidate and clear up the mess (and reinforce our electoral prospects)”.
There were some ineffective attempts at reaching a political solution. The Labour Cabinet members went to Churchill pleading for a ceasefire early on, but at the time it seemed the Soviets had suddenly opened fire on their long-time allies, and Churchill replied that if they wanted to look anti-patriotic if not treasonous, that was their choice. Going for a no-confidence vote at that moment was deemed suicidal by Attlee and Bevin.

Truman had practically stepped into Roosevelt's shoes the day before. He was not soft on Communism and he had this brand new weapon that had forced the Nazis out of the fight in two weeks. He did make a last-ditch attempt at opening peace talks, but he timed it badly - it arrived to Stalin's ear when the Western vanguards had been forced to withdraw from Berlin, and the Soviets were breaking through in the Erfurt area. Stalin did not reply immediately. He thought the reports about the new bombs were exaggerated, and suspected Truman's offer to be a ruse to temporarily halt the T-34s. Then, in a few days, the conventional bomber offensive came into full swing, and the generals began telling Truman they could win.

Slightly later, it was Stalin's turn to look for a way out; as mentioned, he soon was desperate for a ceasefire (and he was also trying to come to an alliance with the Japanese, which was not lost on Truman, since he was reading the Japanese ambassador's mail). But once the revolutions began in Italy, France and Greece, and strikes, rioting and disorder elsewhere, a settlement became impossible.
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