Fu Manchu at Munich

[Clonus]

One of the last foiled operations in Fu Manchu's timeline was some kind of attempt to disrupt the Munich Conference in 1938. Now his goal was to first ensure China's unity and independence and to make it a great power.

 

Bearing that in mind, what do you suppose the scheme that Nayland Smith foiled was?

[assault]

Good one! Liked.

 

Clearly his plan was to ensure that the European powers went to war... Fortunately Nayland Smith was able to ensure peace in our time.

[GhostDancer]

Good one! Liked.

 

Clearly his plan was to ensure that the European powers went to war... Fortunately Nayland Smith was able to ensure peace in our time.

Heh.

 

Mar 12 Mussolini is grateful for Hitler's support concerning his invasion of Ethiopia. He has agreed to give Hitler a free hand in Austria, and German troops march into that country.

 

Mar 13 Germany annexes Austria.

 

Jul 2 In Austria, nearly 40,000 Jews are taken into "protective custody."

 

Jul 12 In Turkey, for months war has been raging between government forces and Kurds, who have been complaining about discrimination and injustices. At Dersim, in the middle of eastern Turkey, the Turks attack the Kurds with a ferocity that some will claim to be genocide.

 

Sep 29 Responding to Hitler's demand for the annexation of the Sudetenland, British and French leaders meet Hitler at Munich. Mussolini is also there. Neville Chamberlain agrees to give Germany the Sudetenland. He returns to Britain and declares "Peace In Our Time." General Halder, one of the German generals plotting a coup, believes that the best chance for overthrowing Hitler is lost.

 

Oct 1 German troops march into the Sudetenland.

 

Oct 12 After months of bombing, Japanese troops occupy the southern port city of Canton (Guangzhou), hoping to cut China off from the rest of the world.

[IndianaJoe3]

Splitting Japan off from the rest of the Axis powers would make sense.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Japan came pretty close to going to war with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom simultaneously in the summer of 1939. If Zhukov hadn't kicked so much arse up in Nomonhan, maybe it would have, and the result would have been Japan being kicked out of China. I can see the Devil Doctor being down with that. The tricky part would be to steer Munich towards that outcome.

 

So if the upshot is that his plan nearly succeeded in the summer of 1939, maybe his scheme for Munich worked?

[assault]

Japan came pretty close to going to war with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom simultaneously in the summer of 1939. If Zhukov hadn't kicked so much arse up in Nomonhan, maybe it would have, and the result would have been Japan being kicked out of China. I can see the Devil Doctor being down with that. The tricky part would be to steer Munich towards that outcome.

 

So if the upshot is that his plan nearly succeeded in the summer of 1939, maybe his scheme for Munich worked?

Very interesting. Unfortunately, it would have taken time for Britain to have sent much of a force to China, and the Polish crisis would have impacted on it. So Fu's plan would have had to involve discouraging war in Europe for a while...

 

Land forces wouldn't have been too much of a problem for Britain - they could have mainly sent troops from the Indian Army (the British army in India - a mix of British and Indian regiments). Naval and air power would have been more difficult, especially in the face of a war threat in Europe. Still, they could have deployed more than they historically had present in late 1941 - those were the forces left over after everything else had been sent off to fight the Germans and Italians.

 

Unfortunately, at that point, Britain would probably have had to focus virtually its entire naval power to beat the IJN, since it still had a battleship oriented navy, rather than one based on carriers.

 

A crushing enough defeat of the British navy could have tipped the balance in a subsequent European war, which is why Britain would have been careful about what they risked sending.

[GhostDancer]

There are multiple items to suggest that yes, Dr. Fu Manchu succeeded, including China's world's fastest supercomputer, http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknap...test-by-a-lot/

I suspect it would surprise no one that Dr. Fu Manchu may have taken the long view, and deliberately arranged an apparent failure while achieving a covert victory, that did not bear fruit until generations later.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Splitting Japan off from the rest of the Axis powers would make sense.

Actually, Britain was building carriers and carrier aircraft and training Fleet Air Arm pilots like mad in 1939. The First Lord set a target of 600 carrier aircraft in active complements. And in case you're wondering, it had the planes. The Fleet Air Arm already had, IIRC, 200 Swordfish and an additional 200 Sharks cleared for service, and was readying another 400 Swordfish and 120 Skuas for active duties, with older types for the front line.

 

Now, in general, the UK was spending on defence like a drunken sailor, so that admittedly doesn't prove very much. Still, Ark Royal entered service a few months before the Tientsin Incident, giving the RN by a wide margin the most carriers in service (7) and the most building (4+1 ordered but not laid down and 1, I think expected to be ordered in the supplementary estimates in the summer. I'm not going to go through the IJN inventory, but, from memory, it can't have been more than 5, with, of course, aircraft much older than the ones in service at Pearl Harbour.

 

Meanwhile, Norman Friedman has turned up a fascinating contingency plan in the National Archives, estimating the maximum number of planes that could be shipped aboard the entire RN carrier force if all spaces were taken, and then flown off to attack a fleet base 1500 miles from the carrier strike force's forward operating base. Distance from Hong Kong to Kure, you do the math....

 

Which isn't to say that the Admiralty was planning a Taranto against the IJN in the spring of 1939. "Main Fleet to Singapore" was a much more cautious strategy than that, and the land forces would have had to come from the UK. The day of India providing an "Imperial" expeditionary force was over, although the British had very reluctantly agreed in the spring of 1939 to modernise the Indian Army so that it could assume that role in the future, again.

 

Where the Devil Doctor's plan really shines is his realisation that if Japan manages to get embroiled in a war with Russia and Britain simultaneously, the situation in Europe will cool down spontaneously, since there is no way that Germany and Italy are starting trouble over Poland with the Triple Entente intact.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Japan came pretty close to going to war with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom simultaneously in the summer of 1939. If Zhukov hadn't kicked so much arse up in Nomonhan, maybe it would have, and the result would have been Japan being kicked out of China. I can see the Devil Doctor being down with that. The tricky part would be to steer Munich towards that outcome.

 

So if the upshot is that his plan nearly succeeded in the summer of 1939, maybe his scheme for Munich worked?

Oops, answered in the wrong thread above. Okay, let's see how the new board software likes cut-and-paste formatting from MSWord:

 

Aircraft Carriers in 1939

United Kingdom Japan

Name Year in Service Name Year in Service

Argus (training carrier) 1918 Hosho 1923

Furious 1925 Kaga 1927

Eagle 1924 Ryujo 1933

Hermes 1924 Soryu 1938

Courageous 1930 Hiryu 1939

Glorious 1930 (Shokaku) 1941

Ark Royal 1938 (Zuikaku) 1941

(Illustrious) 1940

(Formidable) 1940

(Victorious) 1941

(Indomitable) 1941

 

Answer: Not very much, but the point is reasonably clear. Note that Hosho was about as useless as Argus.