William the Marshall… the Greatest Of All Time (Athlete and Sportsman)

(This is a bit of tongue in cheek fun, but I wanted to sneer a the idea that the world’s best athlete ‘obviously’ has to have been around within living memory… what self satisfied twaddle.)

The Australian newspaper is having fun at the moment with a debate over who should be calledthe  GOAT – Greatest of All Time – of professional athletes.

As with most such polls, it concetnrates almost exculsively on people from the last century, and mostly from the last 40 or 50 years, and completely fails to consider anyone not in those narrow bounds.

The current top 10 list includes:

Michael Jordan

Don Bradman

Muhammed Ali

Pele

Serena Williams

Usain Bolt

Roger Federer

Tiger Woods

Jack Nicklaus

Babe Ruth

Now Don Bradman I can almost understand. Cricket is one of only a few genuine world sports (soccer being the only better standout). They are both played as ‘national sports’ by countries ammassing up to a third of the world’s population. Those two games are also played by people of all classes from a wide variety of cultures, from the playing fields of Eton to the slums of Bombay. And Bradman has a genuine claim to top his game, being statistically about 50% better in his record as a batsman than his next nearest competitor from any period… a percentage advantage no one else on the list could come close to in their sports.

In fact my problem with much of the rest of the list, is the paucity of competition within those sports. Baseball is basically still an American sport, and can’t be considered a proper world game. Who else plays it seriously? Japan and South Korea I think… Of the other place the American have conquored and occupied in the last century I don’t think Afghanistan is any more likely to adopt it as their national sport than Germany? 

Tennis and particularly golf are even worse. The words ‘pretentious middle class games’ spring to mind, and it is hard to take them seriously as competitive sports, no matter how much money some of those people have made. Even in the countries that do play them, only a fraction of the population would ever get involved. They will never be ‘national sports’ anywhere.

When I present to school groups on where the Olympic Games came from, I always get the students to nominate which were the original competitive sports. Usually they come up with boxing, wrestling, javelin, athletics, and perhaps discuss or shotput. They also tend to identify swimming and horseriding, which weren’t original olympic sports, but certainly fit the pattern of proper ruling class sports in an age of warrior cultures… who can run, jump, hit, and shoot, harder and more successfully… Real competitive sport began, in all cultures, with warrior games… not with dancing.

When asked to identify modern additons to the Olympics that the Greek military aristocracy would probably be happy with, they identify shooting (even the ski and shoot version), fencing, judo, even wightlifting etc.

When asked to identify what the Greeks would think is ridiculous about modern Olympics, they focus on the completely unnacceptable… rhythmic gymnastics (the ribbon and ball stuff), beach volleball, table tennis and sychronised swimming! Sports? Games?

But some of them also identify that the Greeks would have thought that any team sport is irrelevant… (paritcularly sports like basketball and baseball which have only been shoved in to the modern Olympics to give the Americans more medals). Again I note that soccer or cricket would be far more acceptable additions.. if any team sport could be considered acceptable… which they probably can’t.

So I note that although Pele and Bradman and Jordan might stand out from the crowd in their team sports, they and Babe Ruth are awarded points for being the ‘hitters’ in a group game… You can’t actually imagine the goalie or shortstop ever being nominated as GOAT, despite the fact that the above 4 ‘stars’ would have got nowhere without powerful teamwork required to support them. 

So having written off the pretentious middle class ‘game players’, and everyone in the team sports. What it left?

One of the writers in the Australian – Will Swanton -  notes that on pure winning grounds Pakistan squash player Jahangir Khan, with 555 wins in a row, would outshine everyone on pure results. (Who? What sport? Pretentious middle class anyone?) I am sure he is better than Michael Jordan at his limited exposure little game, but I can’t take either of them seriously as a GOAT athlete.

Muhammed Ali and Usain Bolt are the only ones left. One a truly worthy fighter, with a possibly unsurpassed record, and a reputation for competitiveness that apparently makes him an outstanding joy to watch. The other a short term freak of performance, who has briefly held a few world records (but at least in one of the proper olymic showman event… though Michale Phelps can claim the same…)

So here’s my candidate.

William the Marshall is almost universally recognised as ‘the best knight that ever lived’, by all those who consider his extraordinary career as a fighter, warrior, war leader, political leader, guardian, and shining light of courlty and knightly achievements at the height of the chivalric and troubadouring shift (that moved culture from adoring thugs who hit hard, to adoring all round ‘renaissance men’ who could dance, sing, write poetry, play chess, fight, and negotiate treaties that bought peace to generations). He was one of the men whom the word ‘paragon’  - a person or thing regarded as a perfect example of a particular quality - was invented for.

But he was also the GOAT athlete and sportsman.

Tournament fighting and jousting were the Olympic Games of the medieval world, and – far from being an elitist sport, or an act of middle class pretention – tournament fighting in both it’s foot and horseback forms is a sport common to all classes from all cultures throughout most of human history… From the Olympics and Gladiatorial combats, to the foot combat of Fencing and Kendo and Judo, to the horse archery of most of the nomadic tribes of Asia and Africa and even the American Indians: combat games are virtually the only universal human sport there has ever been.

William the Marshall was competing at a sport – armed combat – that is universal, worldwide, and largely classless. Admittedly he was competing at the most elite level (only the Sumarai or Persian or Eastern Roman Cataphracts really come close ot European kinghts for an equivalent dedication to a lifetime of training and specialist equipment and expense). But you can confidently say that here was a sport whose experts could face any other expert in any other combat sport in the world without confusion or fear.

And you could confidently predict that William the Marshall could defeat the equivalent character in any of those other combat sports… (As he apparently did when he fouht Muslim horse archers or Mameluke foot soldiers in his brief years on crusades.) 

As a man whose prowess in his chosen field could adapt to all equivalent fields, he certainly outranks Muhammed Ali: who is the closest competitor on the above list to a world class showman and rough and tumble performer for the crowds.

As a person who statistically outperformed even Donald Bradman in comparison to his competition. He comes out in front there too.

As a winner above all others – his deathbed comment that he had bested more than 500 knights in hs career from all over Europe and the Middle East is not something that a squash player with 555 wins is likely to compare.

And as an athletic freak, even Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps – with their scant decade or so of dominance, could dream of competing with.

William the Marshall won his first international class tournaments in his teens, and was still winning them in his 60’s. His unsurpassed competitiveness lasted not a few years, but several decades. He beat the GRANDCHILDREN of his previous conquests. And did so in a deadly serious full contact sport, not a namby pamby game like tennis or golf!

Even in terms of prize money, the modern ‘sports stars’ who make tens or hundreds of millions in their life are put to shame. In a period where defeated opponents in tournament had to pay ransoms… perhaps the equivalent of a war horse or a suit of armour (read nice Ferrari or Porsche for cost comparison)… William often defeated a dozen opponents in an afternoon. On the battlefield the ransom could be immeasurable greater, and in some case might bankrupt nation states like England and France when the king was captured.

Some estimates suggest that William the Marshall’s winnings over his career would properly translate into the billions today. Let alone the fact that his mastery of his trade got him the ultimate prize, the grant of the hand in marriage of one of the greatest heiresses in Europe…. Whose estates across England, Wales, Ireland and France easily outclassed all but a half dozen European kingdoms at the time. Williams prize money over his career are more comparable to a major nation states’ GDP, than to some golfers private jet.

Finally there is sheer class. William the Marshall was SO dominant in his sport, that just one of the hundreds of unbelievable anecdotes about his career should put him above the list of parochial competitors above.

As a loyal follower of Henry II, William was a bit vexed when Henry’s unruly son the Count of Poitou  – later to be known as King Richard the Lionheart – tried to revolt against his father. The next time they met in a (real war ) skirmish, Richard – who was never defeated by any other knight or warrior in his long career – was so easily overcome that William made a point of killing his horse in a clear statement of who he might have chosen to kill instead. Richard later had the grace and humility to welcome William to his service, and to entrust him with the vital safegaurding of the kingdom while Richared himself went on crusades..

Both of them behaving not only as world class athletes, but world class sportsmen.

When it comes to choosing an athlete whose range of ability, breadth of achievement, longevity of competitiveness, and unsurpassed affect on his entire peergroup, cannot be equalled (let alone surpassed by any of the people on the above list): then there is only one choice.

Wiliam the Marshall was the Greatest Of All Time.

Types of Empires: Security, Conquest, and Trade

(A reflection on the nature of empire, actually bought on by China's current aggressively imperialistic stance... which I will discuss at another time. But this goes to a light rumination on the purposes of empire... Enjoy.)

I once made a joke, at a gathering of historians, that the most successful post colonial states could be considered a tribute to the Protestant Work Ethic. A very earnest lady tried to point out that there had been many Catholic Colonies as well, (which I thought was my whole point).

Nobody commented on post Muslim Colonies of course… as there aren’t any.

What I didn’t do was go into the issue of the Catholic Colonies being largely ‘robber baron’ states (see most of South and Central America and the Catholic belt of Africa such as the Congo for instance), whereas the Protestant Colonies were largely ‘trade’ states (see most of North America and Asia, and the more Protestant bits of Africa). But it did cause me to reflect on the different reasons Empires develop, and the different results.

So let's look at the difference between Empires founded for different reasons...

1. Security Empires

The earliest ‘empires’ were Security oriented. A band of hunter-gatherers -  who had no concept of individual property, and just took whatever they needed from the environment - finally settled, and became farmers. Fencing and cultivating and irrigating, and building surpluses which could be traded for items that would improve living standards. (Farmers in areas that CAN’T store surplus – mainly tropical areaswith year round crops – never made it further than village level agriculture, whereas farmers in areas with storable annual crops like grain – which can be stored and TAXED – went on to found empires…)

Unfortunately the initial problem with being farmers surrounded by hunter-gatherers who don’t understand property, is that such hunter-gatherers look at those nicely fenced grains and enclosed cows and sheep and goats as wonderfully convenient places to hunter-gather… (There is a reason the boundaries between hunter-gatherers and farmers are violent places, and all the crap written about ‘frontier wars' and extermination and the rest is just a shorthand for  - these two cultures cannot co-exist peacefully… Nomads are different.. they trade, therefore they understand property, therefore they can co-exist with farmers – though they will still raid where they can, be they Mongol or Viking!)

So farmers immediately face a law and order issue, which can only be solved if there is enough surplus available to provide a tax base that will allow an authority figure (chief, king, emperor, etc) to employ people to provide protection. At village level that is usually a warrior caste who can keep the competition at bay, but once surplus gets to a level that allows higher tech, that will mean states or empires.

To put that in perspective, if your local community collects a surplus, and can afford a local chief/lord/king to provide protection, the resulting tax system is almost always (in recorded human cultures) based on a percentage of production. (In fact the earliest versions of written communication are almost always record keeping for crops and taxation.) This means that the local lord immediately has both the majority of excess funds locally, and a strong incentive to increase local production so his take will increase.

When I ask the average class of secondary school students what sorts of things the local lord could invest in to improve productivity, they get the idea pretty quickly. Irrigation for fields; animals for farm work; blacksmiths for tools and axels; wheelrights; roads; bridges; mills; markets; guards; etc. This list is common to most parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, Central and South America and Australasia. The only places it never developes are the very early farming communities in places like New Guinea that have no storable or taxable food items to allow such a development.

So all early farming societies that can tax – without exception – become tax based hierarchical cultures. Some are even referred to as kingdoms or empires. And they are based on the idea of keeping the farmers safe, so they can be taxed. 

These early empires are all Security empires. In the Middle East they are often shown as large sprawls across the map, but such sprawls are fairly fanciful. In practice they usually refer to rich farm based river valleys, with an extended hinterland based on nomadic tribes that are trading with/employed by/or paid tribute to by the ‘imperial authority’ simply to keep other outsiders at bay.

Traditionally they fall when their hinterland nomadic allies are not strong enough to keep outsiders at bay, or become strong enough themselves to try a bit of conquest. At which point of course the conquerors find that they have to adopt the systems of the despised lowlanders they have just conquered if they are to keep the loot coming in and the system going. (One of my favourite historical analogies is the nomadic conquerors crucifying the old king on the walls of his palace and sneering that he could watch his city burn, only for him to point out that it isn’t his city anymore, it’s their city that’s burning…)

But such empires are limited. Even in cases like the Aztecs and Inca’s, they are empires limited to communication systems that can be walked, and to people’s that have no technology suitable to challenge the sheer numbers of warm bodies that can be provided by the ruler.

2. Conquest Empires

Empires can turn to becoming conquest empires on any scale only with the development of technologies that can overcome sheer numbers. 

Specifically, metal.

Soft metals are not for conquest empire. Gold, silver, copper, tin, etc, may be used for plates or posts or jewellery or skin scrapers, but they are not war fighting metals. Even the lightest leather armour or layers of feather padding makes them practically valueless for war fighting. Metal only becomes an imperial material when it can be made hard enough for combat purposes.

The first such metal is Bronze, which is made by combining different metals in compounds. Copper compounded with enough tin (usually 5%- 10%  percent) makes Bronze. Bronze can make armour and weapons and even axles and bearings. But copper (mined in mountains) and tin (usually from swamps) and the charcoal needed to melt them (from forests) combined in sufficient quantities for mass production (cities supported by taxed farmers), require extensive trade routes, and probably a stable currency of some sort. But once these elements can be combined, empires can give up on mere Security, and enter Conquest.

All the early Sumerian, Egyptian, Hittite, Persian, Greek, Roman, Indian and Chinese empires that we now scrawl across maps with lines to show how they conquered the territories of other empires are based on this simple concept. The Hittites with their Bronze, Egyptians with their chariots, and Romans with their Steel: being only different developments from the same basic 'metal technology' roots.

Yet this is where motive becomes uncertain. All these empires got into conquest, but in many cases they did it either to continue their security (by pushing the dangerous boundaries ever further), or to protect the trade that made their system work.  Conquest for the sake of conquest was certainly an element – particularly with rulers like Alexander the Great – but the original reason why Phillip of Macedon and his predecessors had developed the world’s most efficient fighting machine had more to do with constant threats from Persians and Greeks and other ‘barbarians’ than with any desire to get into the conquest game itself. Sometimes things done for security lead to expanded boundaries for  security, which then lead to expanding further for conquest. (Often because the system developed for paying those fighting for security requires conquest to pay them off… See Julius and many later Ceasar’s!)

3. Trade Empires

The final (and possibly ultimate) sort of Empire is the Trade Empire. These develop more because exploring traders have a need for safe bases and secure lines of communication to make their trade work. Theoretically trade empires could be land based (and both the American West and the Chinese spread down the Silk Road argue the case that they started as trade security rather than conquest… no matter how they finished). But in reality the main casue of and reason for trade empires is the devleopment of water transport. Specifically ocean transport.

So let us consider the motives of Empire in a few cases.

The Phoenicians had a magnificent trade empire, though with a few elements we find familiar from the more recent Viking version, or indeed the Venetian ‘Republic’ – namely a bit of raiding, and quite a bit of slave trading. All three broadened into a bit of conquest – Carthage, Normandy and the sack of Constantinople in the 4^th crusade come to mind – but all those offshoots were by products of the original cultures, and none of them became the norm for the ongoing home culture (each of which faded away as circumstances changed and they failed to adapt). So we could say that they were essentially trading empires.

Greece and Carthage and Rome were also trade empires, initially letting their security concerns drag them into a bit of conquest on the side. The difference in their cases was that the conquest element became dominant and completely changed the ‘homeland’. The city states of Greece becoming the world conquering hordes of Alexander, and completely undermining the vibrant city state cultures that had proceeded them. The Phoenecian trading city of Carthage becoming an expansionary conquest state that eventually pushed Rome too hard. And the Roman's overseas campaigns in Spain and North Africa completely undermining the independent farmer/citizen/soldier class of the Roman Republic, and replacing them with a system of professional troops whose loyalty could only be bought by ever increasing conquests by the emperors.

Naturally every expansion eventually reaches limits, and the concern reverts to trying to secure what you have, and hold the outsiders further away. Which is why, amusingly, people like the Romans and the Chinese came through their expansionary conquest phase, and then found themselves back in the position of having to protect the fringes through deals with tribes that can be traded with/employed by/or paid tribute. Cue Attila the Hun and his ilk.

So empires on the way down may also be considered trade and security empires I suppose, though many still had a conquest impulse (for fame or fortune or simply to pay the defenders off) built in, or tried to act as if they were still conquering hordes. Cue Constantinople and Belisarius.

In fact most empires will go through a variety of stages, though I think it fair to say that most empires have a core purpose and attitude, no matter how they tinker at the edges to deal with specific circumstances.

The Portuguese Empire for instance can be considered predominantly a trade empire for most of its influence on the world, though its possession of Brazil certainly would count as conquest. Though it could be suggested that Brazil was the aberration, as both before and after Brazli the majority of Portuguese effort went into trade, and most of their imperial possessions could be best described as trading posts, with minimal control of the hinterlands, and minimal interest in changing the social structures of those it was trading with in Africa and Asia.

Similarly the Dutch Empire was largely a trade empire, with its eventual domination of the Indonesian archipelago being more a consolidation of the many trading posts servicing the many different tribes and kingdoms of the area than a conscious plan to conquer a large part of the world.

The British Empire is similarly placed, and the description of one 19th century historian of it having been acquired “in a fit of absent mindedness”, is quite fair. The endless trading posts led to endless relationships with local tribes and principalities that eventually consolidated into states. But the British system of empire through treaties and arrangements with local governments and principalities bears little relationship to a serious conquest empire. The endless efforts of the British central government to avoid further responsibilities; diminish those they already had; and offer (abandon to) independence any state they thought might make it on its own: is not the usual perspective of a conquest empire.

The real conquest empires are as obvious as those of Alexander and the Ceasar’s. The Arab Muslim Empire is straight conquest, as was the Russian empire, and of course the American Empire.

The United States is a particularly good example. The ‘Declaration of Independence’ was in opposition to two things the British government was keen to enforce. An end to slavery, and an end of expansion into the land of the Indian tribes that the British had treaties with. In other words, the primary motive for the northern states was expansionary imperialism, while the primary motive for the southern states was slavery.

The expansion across the north American continent can be considered no less imperial than the Mongol or Russian expansions of similar vast areas in their time. An emphasis on imperial conquest that is not diminished by the insistence of re-conquoring the Southern States after the ‘Confederacy Declaration of Independence’. (Either both the 1776 and 1860 declarations of independence are reasonable and should be justifiable, or neither are. Only idiots can imagine that there could be any logic to the proposition that the first is acceptable and the second unacceptable. In both cases the arguments by the individual states remained exactly the same –  with the Northern states expanding into Indian Territory and the Southern states wanting to keep their slaves, being the cause of both conflicts.)

The US expansion to Hawaii by coup, and the Philippines by conquest, is straight expansionary imperialism in anyone’s language.

Interestingly the ‘opening’ of Japan by the US by force is more familiar to Trade Empires, and directly comparable to Britain’s ‘Opium Wars’ against China. But the repeated tendency for the US to invade its Central and South American neighbours and set up puppets (sorry democracies that would inevitably become dictatorships, usually requiring further intervention within a decade or so), set a bad precedent for indulging in the ‘gunboat diplomacy’ that has always been a fatal attraction to trade empires.

Trade becomes security.

The eternal problem for trade empires is that they almost inevitably reach a point where they become security empires wether they like it or not.

Britain for instance inherited responsibility for a century of the ‘Pax Britannica’ by the simple expedient of being the strongest economy standing after the Napoleonic Wars. (The United States – the only potentially economically healthy rival post the devastation of Europe – having shot itself in the foot by joining in briefly on Napoleons ‘anti-British coalition’ movement in 1812, and having it’s trade smashed and most of it’s ports and the capital reduced to smoking ruins as a result. Bad timing.)

The British government spent most of the next century being dragged – reluctantly – into being arbitrators of conflicts they wanted nothing to do with. Finishing with being stuck with the Great War, and then responsibility for some of the most hopeless basket case states handed over to ‘Mandate Powers’ by the Versailles peace… As one British minister presciently pointed out, no one wanted Palestine, and it would be nothing but a disaster for whoever gets stuck with it… (Fortunately for the US, their Congress repudiated Wilson’s ridiculous League of Nations before the plan to lumber the US with the Mandate for places like Georgia – the Russian bit on the Black Sea that is! – could be put through.)

It is unsurprising that the British taxpayer spent the next 50 years trying to get out of international police-keeping obligations. With the sole exception of reluctantly agreeing to fight against the expansionary dictatorships in World War Two, British taxpayers voted for disarmament and de-colonisation whenever they could. (Abandoning some states – particularly in Africa – that might eventually have developed into safe and secure states, way before they were ready for independence… Much to the cost of world peace and security since…)

The United States has had a similar experience more recently. Having inherited responsibility for maybe 50 years of the ‘Pax Americana’ by the simple expedient of being the strongest economy standing after the Second World Wars. (Their only potential rival being the British Commonwealth of Nations – who between them had 5 of the next 10 biggest and healthiest post war economies - being more than happy to let the dumb Americans have a go at being world policemen for a time, and see how they liked being blamed by everyone else for absolutely everything.).

The Americans discovered pretty quickly that the things they had been complaining about the British doing for the last 200 years were exactly what they had now signed up for, and finding even quicker that their taxpayers simply weren’t willing to carry the can, and take the blame, for very long at all. 

Arguably the US’s fun with being world policeman was already pretty much over after Korea, and certainly after Vietnam. It is notable that the first Gulf War was NOT paid for by the US taxpayer… the US troops turned up, but only if Saudi Arabia and Europe paid for them to do so. (And preferably with a British Division on one flank, Australian warships on the other, French special forces leading the assault, and NATO fighters overhead…) none of this ‘we will carry the can and our taxpayers will just cope’ crap for post Vietnam American taxpayers.

But the interesting point is the results.

Security Empires come and go. While they serve a purpose, their citizens are willing to pay the cost. When they become too expensive to maintain, they simply fold, or get ground under. They work to purpose, or stop.

Conquest empires rarely outlive their founders, or only last a few generations. Alexander’s generals, or Charlemagne’s children and grandchildren, dividing and subdividing into smaller and smaller units, is the norm for such empires. (If not straight collapse when the dictator holding it all together vanishes.) 

The only ‘conquest’ empires that have held up are those that send settlers into the lands of hunter -gatherers or nomads. The United States, Russia and Australia being good examples. (But the only reason they can hold up is if the captured territory can be converted into a functional part of the state and society.. something the US and Australia have largely managed… Russia’s attempts to enforce this unity by repression of it’s more developed conquored peoples have not been so successful over the last few centuries, and it is unlikely that China will do much better long term no matter how much repression it introduces into its recent conquests of established societies like Tibet and the Uyghurs.)

Which leaves only trade empires as potentially successful long term options. And only because their success is not measured by sustaining the political unity of the ’empire’, but by sustaining its economic goals.

The most successful empire in world history is the British empire, which could delightedly declare itself obsolete in the 1920’s, and again (after having to work mostly co-operatively to fight World War Two) in the 1950’s. Both times it encouraged the member states to go look after themselves (some successfully and some less so), and yet it still managed to leave an almost completely secure legacy for its existence… relatively safe international free trade routes. (The almost complete elimination of both piracy and slavery world wide just being minor side benefits of the British Empire.)

For an empire developed ‘in a fit of absent mindedness’, and as a byproduct of trying to develop free trade around the world: the measure of success has to be the Commonwealth of Nations – comprising 54 nations with about 1/3 of the world’s population, getting together to play cricket every year and hold a Commonwealth Games every 4 years.

This is not an empire that collapsed, or was destroyed. This is an empire that over a century or so (from granting independent Dominion status to Canada in 1886, Australia 1901, New Zealand and South Africa pre great War, Ireland and Egypt interwar, India and Pakistan post war, large parts of Asia and Africa in the 60’s and 70’s etc); nonetheless developed and secured the international free trade system that the world has embraced. (Including a re-integration by an early exit-er from the empire… the 13 out of 35 British north American colonies that became the United States… and who finally inherited the title of world policeman when the rest of the Commonwealth nations had got sick of the whole thing.)

In praise of trade...

In fact trade empires have really been the only successful basis for empires over time. Conquest Empires like that of Alexander or the Mongols cannot work unless the underpinnings of trade make them functional enough to do so. The reason that the Roman Empire(s) lasted so long was that their borders were the logical trading boundaries of the Mediterranean littorals, and they never really tried to incorporate the German forests, African deserts, or Persian plains which simply would not work into the trade and tax structure of their society. (Even the Rumanian plains or British forests were too isolated to work in their Mediterranean shipping grid structure long term.)

Trade empires work because their structure relates to the logic of real world interactions between peoples, and usually in a mutually beneficial way. 

Which means that while it is possible to be dubious about the long term effects of conquest empires; and simply accepting of the long term failures of security empires: it is impossible to be dismissive of the long term achievements of trade empires. 

Without trade empires in human history, we would not have such world order as does exist.

Which Powers could afford to ’do it all’ in World War Two

There’s an old saying that David and Leigh Eddings paraphrased in one of their fantasy books: “any fool can raise an army,  but you start running into trouble around suppertime.” 

(Which is just a simplified way of saying that amateurs discuss tactics, but professionals think logistics.)

So let’s consider World War Two from the ‘who can afford what’ perspective.

Any fool politician can promise Lebensraum, or a Mare Nostrum, or a Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere: the problem comes when your nation lacks the resources to buy the equipment you need to make your plan stick.

It would be correct to suggest that the most rag-tag of ‘governments’ can raise and equip an infantry force, and possible give it some artillery support. Mao and Tito spring to mind, but the Hungarians, Bulgarians and Iranians wouldn’t be far off. (One particularly entertaining description of the vast Operation Barbarossa - the Axis invasion of Russia – describes hundreds of gaily painted peasant carts masquerading as the Rumanian logistics column.) 

Perhaps your government is a bit more advanced in both your tax collection and your industrial base, and you can manage a few armoured cars or tanks, and maybe even a nominal number of fighters and bombers. Think Nationalist China, Finland, Belgium, Greece and Turkey. That still doesn’t mean that you can also manage more than a token number of destroyers or coastal defence ships to manage defensive support. Frankly Canada, Australia, India and possibly even South Africa were greater 'powers' than any of those.

The actual capacity to project power to other parts of the world in your own right – rather than under the auspices of your allies - requires not only a developed army and air force, but a naval element of – at a minimum – a good balanced cruiser force with adequate resources to back it up. Think Spain and Brazil... and, again, Australia.

Actually protecting far flung imperial possessions requires even a bit more than that. (Spain had discovered this while losing a brief war with the United States - which had run out of land to imperially conquer from the French, native Americans or Mexicans, and – after a couple of abortive attempts to invade Canada - therefore turned a quick takeover of overseas bits. Mainly Spanish possessions like the Philippines, but also including otherwise independent states like Hawaii.) 

In fact the best defence of a far flung empire if you couldn’t match other people’s battle fleets was a good submarine force. Think the Netherlands, and particularly it’s half dozen cruisers and two dozen submarines protecting the Netherlands East Indies.

But it is a big jump from a token overseas empire, to being able to play with the big boys. The financial and industrial resources necessary to developing military forces capable of fighting other major powers is simply beyond the resources of more than half a dozen nations at any time. Which is why the term ‘Great Powers’ has always come down to those capable of standing their ground against other great powers.

Personally I have always found the idea of a ‘Superpower’ to be complete bunk. Even Alexander, Octavius, Genghis  and Napoleon had their limits. Admittedly there was a time post the Napoleonic war when the British could use the brief economic and industrial break they had managed to open on everyone else to pretty much do what they want. But that was only if what they wanted didn’t conflict with the goals of any two or three of the other Great Powers of the day. (The Crimean War being an excellent example of the limitations of power projection regardless of your economic and naval superiority…) Britain was ‘Primus inter pares’ (first among equals) rather than a super-power. 

Similarly the idea that either the United States or the Soviet Union were able to dictate to each other during the Cold War (when the stupid term 'suerpower' was invented) is obviously laughable. More recently I remember one US Admiral - visiting the University where I was doing a ‘Strategic and Defence Studies Scholarship’ - stating that the days when the USN could influence India on it's own by parking a carrier battle group off the coast were long gone…. that was in 1991!

At this point the US would be hard put to face challenges simultaneously from China, Syria, and Iran. Throw in issue with Russia, Libya and North Korea, and the US position would start to look like Britain alone facing the three Axis powers in 1941. But in fact the Vietnam war (US), and 1980’s Afghan war (USSR) proved what Britain had known since the previous centuries Afghan war… that the idea of a superpower has always been a bit of a fantasy. (Or as France had known since Napoleon; or the Ottomans had known since Vienna; or the Romans had known since Emperor Valerian was captured by the Persians at Edessa and spent the rest of his life as a footstool to his captor… I could go on…). 

Frankly, if you can’t beat a third world peasant force, you should stop pretending to be anything other than merely ‘Great’.

Being ‘Great’ in the ‘Great War’ just meant being powerful enough that it would take two or three other great powers to push you around… and by that I mean militarily defeat and forced to surrender. By that definition the Turks were clearly no longer a great power (joining the Spanish in the ‘ex’ league). Meanwhile the Russians, Italians and Austro-Hungarians were hard put to make a convincing case, all of them needing significant propping by their allies to even hold their ground against a single other great power. France too struggled to hold the line, but arguably managed to contribute on land, sea and in the air in a way that the first three could not.

Which leaves Britain, Germany, and the United States as the undisputed great powers, with France a shade behind, and – interestingly – Japan overtaking the collapsed Austria-Hungary and Russia, to have a chance of overtaking Italy…possibly even France… in the Great Power stakes. (I hope everyone has seen the prophetic cartoon from the Versailles conference where the ‘Class of 1939’ baby is heard crying in the corner…)

So let’s have  a look at what it took to be a truly ‘great’ power in the Second World War.

The great powers have always had an interesting balance of land power versus sea power. But if you take ‘great’ to imply ability to project power and influence from a distance , it is clear that there needs to be elements of both. Britain was a great power in Europe for centuries because her navy allowed her to interpose her small (pre- Great War) army, or to supply allies armies: not because she always had large land forces. Russia was always a great power because she had large land forces, regardless of usually having weak naval forces. But only a few powers could attempt it all.

So let’s assess.

Russia (the Soviet Union if it makes you feel better), deployed large and technically advanced land forces during the World War II, and backed them up with a tactical air force second to none. But its naval forces were almost insignificant, and it didn’t even attempt a strategic air arm. As usual, it’s claim to be a great power was based on almost limitless supply of poor bloody infantry to throw into the meat grinder. As such it could threaten other continental powers, but had no ability at all to threaten sea powers like Britain and the United States, except in as much as they wanted to fight in mainland Europe. Realistically, it survived more due to vast allied support. (Not just the planes and tanks to survive in 1941, but the trucks and fuel to take the offensive in 1944. Up to half the food being eaten in Russia in the second half of the war was provided by the Allies.) 

In practical terms Russia was the World War Two equivalent of Italy in World War One. An also ran that could not have survived without significant support.

In WWII by contrast, Italy tried to have an army with tanks (fail), a balanced air-force (not too bad),and a powerful navy. But again Italy lacked the scientific resources to keep up in the air; the economic resources to make her army competitive; and the overall industrial resources to build aircraft carriers or strategic bombing forces on top of what was already straining her abilities beyond breaking point. Italy could not compete with real great powers – even when supported by Germany - and had to give it up. 

Italy, was the Turkey of World War Two.

Japan made a better fist of it. With surprisingly limited resources, Japan militarised its economy to the point where they had a first rate army, navy and air force, and could genuinely compete with everyone else. Japan even got aircraft carriers off the ground as well as battleships, a more impressive achievement than France or Germany could manage – in that one limited field where their interests were more actively involved. But the army could not get proper tanks off the ground, let alone mechanisation; and the air forces only attempt at strategic bombing was hot air balloons armed with incendiaries released in the general direction of US forests. 

Japan’s air-force and aircraft-carriers make it look more impressive than it really was. The Japanese economy and industrial base was not really up to the kind of war it attempted, and it was clear to many apart from Yamamoto that if the dice throw didn’t go perfectly, there was no chance of long term success.

France is more interesting. France had one of the best armies on earth, with probably the best armoured equipment on earth (though bad tactical development of its use, that was not corrected in time.) Shame about the collapse of morale amongst the conscripts that didn’t allow such development to take place. 

France also had a fast developing air force with good technical abilities, and certainly the fourth strongest navy. France even had an aircraft-carrier in service, with another couple on order. Only strategic bombing was not on France’s agenda… (hardly surprising since tactical bombing would work just as well against her two most immediate threats, her next door neighbours…)

Had France withstood the initial assault, she remained capable of giving at least as good account of herself as Japan. Indeed France was probably still a better representation of a ‘great power’ than Italy – which collapsed as soon as two allies could concentrate their efforts for a moment, or Japan… ditto (though Japan had used it’s huge initial conquests to delay this collapse longer than could have been expected.). 

So France could be considered unlucky. Which is not to say that France in the Second World War was any better off than Russia or Italy in the first, or than Russia or Japan were in the Second. But France did have the potential to stay in the great power club, had that potential been properly applied.

Which brings us to Germany. Germany is an interesting contrast. Certainly had the energy to be a great power, even if the economy was not a shadow of the potential that their Great War economy had brought to the table. The Third Reich simply could not afford the same army, high seas fleet, and air-force, that had been within its grasp in the Great War. As one You-Tube reviewer comments on the Z plan for a naval build-up, the kind of High Seas Fleet that Germany possessed in World War One was beyond Germany’s power in World War Two, no matter how often Hitler got away with Anschlussing other people’s economies.

It was not just the fact that the Germans could not get aircraft carriers to happen, let alone get a strategic bombing force off the ground (pardon the pun). They couldn’t even get a balanced cruiser and battleship force to happen while simultaneously producing an adequate submarine fleet…it was an ‘either-or’ situation. Worse, despite some of the best armoured and mechanised units of the war, the Germans never got the vast majority of their army beyond foot slogging, with horse drawn artillery! Their successes came from the 20% of their high tech or elite (read Panzer, or  Para, or Mountain, or SS) troops. Their 80% standard infantry troops finished up bearing the brunt of the failures, particularly on the Eastern front. (Interestingly the Japanese had the same breakup of numbers, and the same results- just replace the word ‘Eastern front’ with ‘Chinese front’…)

Germany lacked the resources, even with most of Europe to loot, to get it’s army adequately mechanised, or it’s air-force adequately modernised, or it’s navy competitive: let alone to master all the scientific experiments in jets and rockets and atomic bombs it was pursuing. 

Which brings us to the real big boys. Britain and the US.

These two countries were the only states that could, and did, do it all. 

First rate fully mechanised armies, where every single front line division (with a little bit of combat experience) could face the absolute elite any enemy might muster with a reasonable chance of success.

First rate air forces with every category, including strategic bombing and strategic air-lift, being developed to it’s full potential.

First rate navies, with every category: including aircraft-carriers and submarines, fully resourced. Navies with logistical support to potentially enable long term operations across the entire surface of the world (though it took a long time to turn the tide and get everything moving properly). Navies capable of power-projecting major invasion forces to any point on the planet. (It is notable that they also managed the only proper development of landing craft, with Germany and Japan unable to manage more than a few inadequate specialist craft that were really only acceptable against unopposed landings. Neither Germany or Japan could have mounted a D-Day style operation, or even a smaller opposed landing against anything resembling a proper defensive force... and Britain in 1940 was only marginal on that level of defensive force!)

Britain and the US also both had a range of Research projects not only outpacing every opponent except Germany in jets and rockets, but opening entirely new areas like cavity radars, proximity fuses and atomic weapons. With the resources to bring every project into action, rather than the one or two Germany could manage if she shut down her major fleets and cutback her bomber production…

To be honest, no nation could really do it all. Britain was happy to send her radar and atomic weapons equipment to participate in the US program, just as the US was happy to receive both to get her own programs bootstrapped. Either alone would have taken much longer. Likewise there was a lot of sense in some specialising. Britain dropped most of her transport aircraft production for most of the war on the assurance of adequate US supplies. (Only getting back into it with the Avro York and similar after the concentration on fighters and bombers had achieved complete air superiority.) While the US let its jet-fighter program lapse until post war in the comfortable knowledge that Britain was covering that element. 

Meanwhile Britain slowed it’s escort carrier program to concentrate on surface escorts once the US committed to mass producing jeep carriers, and later slowed her fleet carrier production to produce more landing craft in the comfortable knowledge that the US was producing carriers to spare. Another sensible decision was to let the expanding new US yards mass produce the basic ‘Liberty’ design the British had prepared, leaving some of the more skilled of the British workforce to produce more specialist ships.

Just because they could pretty much do it all themselves, certainly didn’t mean that it wasn’t more sensible to share resources more effectively. In fact they compromises they did make were far more about efficiency than incompetence. Though arguably Britain’s relying for too long on the barely adequate Sherman tank instead of pushing the development of the Centurion a bit faster could have ended badly. Or the United States relying on the barely adequate British Meteor as adequate effort in the jet space, while dropping the jet fighter ball until post war. 

(Actually the American P-80 was in service during the war, it just never saw combat. To me this makes it a wartime design, but I get constant claims that the contemporary Centurion was NOT a wartime design, because -- although they were in Belgium when the German surrender was signed - they didn’t see combat,. So I presume the same people would argue that the P-80  - which was in Italy at the same time - wasn’t a wartime design either? Mind you if neither they – or the Type XXI and XXIII U-boats were ‘wartime designs’, I still wonder what time designs they were supposed to be?)

Which brings up what Britain and the US couldn’t do… Manpower.

Every single nation ran into a manpower crisis after 3 or 4 years of conflict, and every one of them had to make hard decisions as a result.

Germany and Japan were operating on slave labour for much of their workforce by 3 or 4 years into the war, and from then on the decline in quality of front line troops was noticeable. Towards the end of the war the Russian combat units included substantial numbers of women, and conscripts from newly conquered parts of eastern Europe, and their industry could not have coped without basic supplies and finished equipment like trucks and aircraft from the western allies. 

The British and Americans were better off, but both had infantry crises during the advance on Germany, with the British stripping anti-aircraft units to make up numbers , and the Americans having to resort to using black troops stripped from logistic units! (The ever practical Patton was in favour of using black troops of course, but the unreconstructed racists like Eisenhower and Bradley were appalled at the idea of black troops in the front line.)

This manpower shortage is something that many people consider a sign of weakness. (In fact the encroaching US manpower crisis is only marginally recognised by many historians, as the US was only just pushing 3 or 4 years in the war, so what it was facing was no-where near as obvious as to those nations who had fought harder – Russia - or longer – Germany and Britain). 

Nonetheless many so called historians make much -  inaccurate – commentary on the fact that the British lack of infantry in Normandy was a sign that they lacked the resources to be a great power any more? 

In reality of course Britain still had 115,000 fully trained replacement infantry in camps in Britain in late 1944 that could have been used to keep numbers at the front line up. But Britain was reluctant to use them up when it still looked like a long war ahead. No one knew at that point that Japan was only months from collapse. (And the smarter Allied leaders  – Churchill, Brooke and Patton amongst them - were already nervous about what Russia might do after the German defeat, and already considering how to husband resources to be on the safe side.) 

Britain had been fighting for years longer than the US, Russia, or Japan - or even France (which had taken a 4 year break, and was back in the game with more than 20 divisions deployed before Germany surrendered.) Conserving and making the most of available manpower was just as vital to Britain as to Germany or Russia. So Britain’s real priority was enough skilled factory workers to arm and equip the millions of Russians and now French troops that could take some of the load. 

In fact – of course - the idea of using skilled workers as cannon fodder is the height of stupidity. Those countries that were forced to do so - particularly Russia, Germany and Japan – automatically conceding that they could not ‘do it all’.

Actually for both for both Britain and the United States, prioritising factory production over PBI (poor bloody infantry), is a sign of strength, and a sign of sensible choices. 

Britain’s contribution to the ‘Balance of Power’ in Europe for centuries had been concentrating on arming and equipping her allies (with a limited number of elite troops under Marlborough or Wellington or Montgomery to work with those allies). Only during World War I had Britain made the mistake of providing a mass of cannon fodder to hold, and then win, a major land campaign or three. The appalling cost to skilled labour and leadership of that over the top effort had demonstrated why it was a stupid idea to provide mass PBI when you are better providing mass equipment to arm other people’s PBI. 

Which was why Russian infantry entered Germany wearing British boots, and riding in US trucks, which were supplied by American built Liberty ships escorted by British built escorts. And why Chinese troops used British Middle Eastern fuel resources and American ammunition to play games with the Japanese using their American supplied planes and vehicles which had come via the same ships and escorts.

That’s the sensible way for countries with highly skilled workforces to assist countries with large numbers of poorly skilled and under-equipped peasants.

(To be fair Germany had done her best to equip the peasant levies of Italy and Hungary and Rumania, just as the British and Americans did with the Russians, Chinese, Indians and Free French troops from North Africa… It’s just how technically advanced countries maximise the effect of working with less advanced ones…)

But still some historians don’t really understand this process… Partly because some of the countries concerned don’t seem to have understood (or perhaps aren’t willing to admit) that this is what they were actually doing? British historians still understate the idea that it has always been a better idea to provide equipment for other people to die using, and US historians still pretending that the US had no limits on how many soldiers they were willing to sacrifice.

In fact the pretence  that the US could do all the industrial tasks and also provide the sort of mass conscript force the British Empire had used in World War One is still inherent in much of the literature. (Despite Marshall’s appalling ‘replacement’ system of ‘slot in’ soldiers, which was perhaps the most manpower wasteful system ever devised by a Western Democracy.) 

Still, by late 1944 it was apparent to anyone with sense that the United States could not throw unlimited cannon fodder around either. 

Marshall’s original design for an expeditionary army had been about 300 divisions! This was a fantasy based on his vague understanding of PBI, and not understanding the resources required for a modern industrialised and mechanised force. His more realistic follow up plan was for about 150 divisions. The final plan fizzled out at less than 100, and in fact only 88 made it overseas (and half of those only in the last few months of campaigning on their respective fronts in Europe and the Pacific).

Again, this is pure sense. Better to have 80 odd top end highly mobile units to take on the enemy’s elite forces while letting other people’s PBI distract the mass of the enemy’s PBI, than to pretend that you can do both at once.

In fact, by 1944 the British Commonwealth had already joyfully reduced the 100+ divisions – many of them garrison troops of course – from their defensive low point in 1942, and were only fielding about 50 elite divisions for offensive purposes. (Almost all of them fully mechanised, and some  - 78th^thArmoured Division with over 2,000 specialist armoured vehicles for instance - equipped to standards unimaginable by any nation that could not ‘do it all’.)

So the correct definition of those who could ‘do it all’, really comes down to those who had the potential to do almost everything, the resources to be able to pick and choose, and the smarts to concentrate their efforts to best effect.

The Anglo-sphere powers – Britain, her Commonwealth of Nations, and the United States - not only had the ability to do it all, they also had the interoperability and trust to choose the best places to specialise to maximum effect. Britain sending her radar research and atomic bomb project to work with the US team was sensible when the US was relying on British PBI to hold the line and British escort production to stop the slaughter in the Atlantic. The US concentrating on aircraft carriers and Liberty ships while Britain slowed its carrier production to concentrate on escorts and then landing ships also worked for both. Likewise the US providing airlift while the British worked on sea lift. Etc.

So really the Great Powers break into 3 ranks. The two that could do it all – Britain and the US; the 4 that could struggle, and almost succeed, against the odds – Germany, Russia, France and Japan – but could in no way ‘do it all’; and the inevitable also ran – Italy.

The problems with 'wargaming' history. (Particularly WWII.)

I had a good comment on my 'Ten Myths about the Phoney War' post from a Swedish respondent called DIREWOFLx75.

He makes some fair points, and of course some that I disagree with. I think he is oversimplifying some things, but that's fair, he thinks the same of many of my points.

His arguable points include, for instance, the idea that a British 'intervention' might forcing Sweden and Norway into Germany's arms. (Not convincing I'm afraid... I note that the German invasion didn't automatically sweep Sweden into Britain's arms? Or into Germany's arms?)

But most of what he said was just interesting commentary that is worth reading.

However he did say that one of my points (about Russia staying on Germany's side for the rest of the war) could only be held by "an arch idiot who left his brain behind".

He justified that statement with the line: "Analyse it, war-game it, the conclusion is..."

Now I love a good war-game, and have played many versions of World War Two boardgames: from the stupendous Europa (so large scale, with so many pieces, that you need hundreds of hours to play a single front), to the more manageable World in Flames (where a game can take merely scores of hours, not hundreds...) Though I admit I haven't had time to play for years, so some of the following is possibly dated... but I digress.

All of them had the same problem. The rules pre-suppose certain outcomes, and force certain responses to make sure you can't avoid those outcomes.

In World War Two games the most obvious problem is that they force the sides to fit the way they actually worked out, regardless of the fact that far more realistic alternatives were in fact more likely.

For example:

1. Who would believe that Yugoslavia would voluntarily join the (currently losing) British team in 1941? Yet it happened.
2. That Hitler would attack his best ally and supply source - Russia -while still fighting on 2 other fronts in 1941? Yet it happened.
3. That Japan would suddenly attack the US in 1941? Yet it happened.
4. That Hitler would voluntarily declare war on the US two days later? Yet it happened.
5. That Italy would side with its WW1 opponent Germany, to attack it' long term ally and protector Britain in 1940? Yet it happened. (With the same results for Italy as when Turkey had made the same poor choice a war earlier...)
6. That Brazil would decide to enter the war at all? Yet it happened.
7. That fascist Spain - in huge debt to Italy and Germany - would sit out the war? Yet it happened.

I could go on and on, but please note that all these unlikely things are built into the structure of every major World War Two game. The rules are written to force such things to happen 'correctly'.

Even the Days of Decision pre-game for World in Flames only allows minor things like Spain changing sides (if you can get the Republicans to win instead of the fascists). It never considers the infinitely more likely case of Italy NOT changing sides and remaining in the British camp. It never even considers the option of Japan joining Germany in conquering Russia (the plan when the Japanese army was dominant) INSTEAD of the much stupider Japanese attack on the United States (when the IJN was dominant).

I sometimes managed to talk some other players of these games into trialling more realistic scenarios. (I am being quite serious, the things that actually happened - Yugoslavia for instance - were hardly logical, let alone inevitable.)

Italy joining the allies against Germany was actually not only reasonable, but even very likely during the Finnish crises. (Mussolini had threatened war with Germany in 1934, and all Italy was incensed at Germany having a treaty with the hated Soviets in 1940. Italy was working hard to get military supplies to Finland, and Britain and France were seriously trying to engage the Italians. Talk of a deal between France and Italy to reclaim the old Baku oilfields that had been nationalised by the Soviets saw stocks in the old company's rising on the Paris Bourse. The American ambassador to Russia cabled that the Russians were desperate to get the Finns to negotiate to get troops down to the border with French Syria where a large French army was gathering. The German's were helping the Russians put mines in to defend Black Sea ports. The British and French despatched a large force of bombers to Syria to prepare to destroy the Baby oilfields... The Japanese army was showing interest in getting revenge for the only recently failed campaign in Mongolia against Russia... None of this is fantasy...I can go on extensively!).

The German/Soviet alliance of nasty dictators versus everyone else in Europe (possibly including Italy and Japan on the allied side) is actually very realistic.

Japan co-operating with Germany to squash Russia is far more realistic than wandering off to attack the US! (In fact Japan NOT co-operating with Germany to pressure the allied position in the Middle East in 1942 was not even unlikely, just plain dumb!)

These are just some of the things that you can easily war-game to see how it might have worked. And despite DIREWOLF's assumptions, Germany and Russia in 1940 were not a lay down Mozaire over Britain and France supported by... Finland, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Rumania, Turkey and Japan (with the US still in the background).

That combination was in fact quite possible, and indeed, much more likely, than the eventual campaign that saw even Finland (Finland!) forced into the Axis camp against Russian aggression! (Finland was the allied hero of 1940, and the League of Nations expelled Russia and urged all nations to support Finland. Italy was one of the strongest supporters! Yet in 1945 one of the first actions of the UN was to accuse Finland of being the aggressor against Russia! Let's discuss inevitability?)

Unfortunately many gamers believe that the rules that force certain sides to develop in certain ways reflect political inevitability. Crap.

I have even had gamers insist that I follow the exact letter of the way the rules are set up, and only do what the rules let me do, with no discretion at all.

I found a fun way to screw such over-simplistic stupidities over. (Or I could 20 years ago... hopefully some changes have taken place since.)

If you ever want to test the stupidity of following the rules of a game that pretends everything can be fixed, then give World in Flames (say version 4 or 5) a go from the British players role.

Turn 1, rebase most British forces to Canada.

Turn 2 & 3, invade and conquer US.

Turn 4 & 5 rebase all British forces to bolster France before European spring.

Rest of war Britain only has to protect the 4 sea links to the US (and link up Australasia with India)  to beat the U-boats and have effectively unlimited US resources to share with it's allies. (Which can include Russia if you keep following the stupid rules? The allied supply route to Russia also becomes much easier to defend under this scenario.)

Even if France can't be saved (unlikely the way the rules are set up, unless a lucky coup in Yugoslavia and a couple of sacrificial air drops or invasions to undercut German factories are successful), Britain can still build a factory somewhere in the Commonwealth every turn for the rest of the game, and have the resources to use them. By the time Japan is supposed to enter the war in late 1941, you can have some real fun with the fact that there are not enough pieces in the British forces mix, and you have to co-op pieces from their new colony... the US... to continue playing. (In fact the best chance for the 'Axis' under this scenario is to have Japan attack Britain in 1940, which of course the rules are working to prevent...)

This utterly stupid and wildly unrealistic scenario nonetheless fits within the letter of the rules of the game.

I have played it that way a couple of times mostly to demonstrate the stupidity of playing purely by using rules written specifically to get a fairly unlikely historical outcome.

But it's bloody good fun if you like playing with history!

So when I "analyse it, war-game it, the conclusion is..." I find that the conclusion is far more affected by assumptions about how things must have worked - because people are assuming that such a route was inevitable... than is is by historical realities.

Dear DIREWOLF. Game it by all means... just check your pre-assumptions at the door, and REALLY look at all the possibilities.

The deeper you go into what might have happened, the less what actually did happen will seem 'inevitable'.

And it can be really fun.

New Quadrant article: Republics - The least stable form of Government

It's a bit embarrassing to note that the last post I did was announcing an article in Australia's Quadrant magazine over a year ago.

Unfortunately my wife had a serious injury last year, and many items have consumed by time since, meaning that I have not even had a chance to reply to the many excellent comments I have had during the year.

Can't promise much, but will try to be better.

Meanwhile my latest article, also in Quadrant (March 2018, Volume LXII, Number 3, No 544) is another little discussion about the flaws of Republics as a system of government.

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/03/republic-least-stable-form-government/

Unfortunately it's behind a paywall, so you have to buy the magazine to get the whole article, but Quadrant is worth the subscription if you like magazines that value freedom of speech and expression. Another of my Quadrant articles was re-printed in Canada's Dorchester Review, which has a similar ethos.

(Amusingly when Quadrant was set up way back in the 1950's - in Australia that is called the Menzies era - it's commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of opinion was considered pretty left wing. Now of course, the same position is regarded by politically correct crowd as being extremely right wing. That is a comment on the way the society has changed, not the magazine...)


The articles main points are:
1. 95% of all 'republics' collapse into dictatorship, repression, or civil war, within about 20 years. Very few make it to 50 years. (France has only just got to 50 years under it's fifth republic - plus 3 monarchies and 2 empires - in the last 2 centuries or so, and Germany effectively has a new constitution dating from re-unification 2 decades ago - after 3 republics and a dictatorship causing two invasions in the last century, and is showing signs of being quite Italian in it's 'success' as a system of government since then...)
2. The wold's 44 Monarchies or Constitutional Monarchies - some of them quite new startups - have about a 17 times greater life expectancy than the world's 140 odd - some very odd - republics and peoples republics and soviet socialist republics etc. (Note that the longest lasting republics are mostly 'Soviet Socialist' style dictatorships, with a few limited exceptions).
3. Republics can last for 50 years or more, but apparently only if they are mono-cultures (like Finland and Botswana) or under constant threat of invasion and destruction (Israel, Germany, Italy and South Korea) to focus the mind.
4. The only 'long term' success anyone can identify (ignoring its foundation as a slavery state, it's failure to give much of it's population a vote until 50 odd years ago, and a minor civil war with 600,000 dead) is the one that 90% of the of the PRO-republicans in places like Australia think has completely unacceptable politics, system, or leaders! (Repeat after me, 'Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump... my evidence for wanting a republican system???')
5. More importantly, just note that 70% of the world's richest and healthiest places to live are Constitutional Monarchies, and 99% of the world's most horrible places to live are Republics. (The one monarchy that - barely - makes it into the bottom 100 being Morocco at about 97 from the bottom... Morocco!)
It was a fun article, and has received a lot of good comments.

Ten Myths about the Phoney War - new Quadrant Article

A new one of my articles has just been published in the Australian Quadrant magazine (Vol. 61 No.1-2,  January-February 2017 edition), that attempts to kick the crap out of the historians who write off the 'Phoney War' as a period where nothing happened.

It is based on the proposed Allied March 1940 plan to move troops through Norway and Sweden to assist Finland against the Soviet invaders they had been remarkably successful in resisting for several months.

The 10 issues I cover are:

1, The Myth that the Soviet Union was strong in 1940.
2. The Myth that Germany was strong in 1940.
3. The Myth that the British were flailing for a strategy in 1940.
4. The Myth that Poland's collapse made everyone believe in 'Blitzkreig'.
5. The Myth that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact could not last.
6. The Myth that the sides were already fixed.
7. The Myth that intervention would not improve the Allied situation.
8. The Myth that intervention would be militarily foolish for the Allies.
9. The Myth that the Allies could have chosen not to help Finland.
10. The Myth that Norway and Sweden would oppose an intervention.

The fun part is the reason behind the story.

Orders were actually given by the British and French Chiefs of Staff at 6.30pm on March 12, 1940, for the landings in Norway to go ahead the next day. Only last minute duplicity by the Socialist Foreign Minister of Finland Vaino Tanner to hide this information from the cabinet while he forced through a surrender before midnight, prevented the war from developing into a Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact war against Britain, France, and probably their new allies - including possibly Italy, Japan, Turkey, Scandinavia and the Balkans countries...

If you want the full reasoning, you'll have to get the article.