How to downgrade the fleet without upsetting the public?

Hitler won’t get reincarnated and the rest of the world won’t watch from the sidelines as he builds the fourth Reich. If you insist on referencing Star Wars at least try to stick to the not insanely stupid plots.

Brigade XO wrote:Humm,

ONE of the contributing factors to WW I was the interlocking treaties between the nations of what ended up as the two sides. Initialy Austria-Hungray made moves which triggered sections of those treaties. Those were essentialy set up to mobilize troops to either block expected adversarial advances into their own or their allies territory or to gather troops/supplies to attack external targets. What is now preceived as a signifcant problem was that, once started, the mobilization and movement to staging areas could not be called off or stopped until everybody got their people to the PLANNED locations. The transportation was primarily based on rail and everybody's transportations systems were taken over by the governments to move the troops.

Specifically I recall reading that the German mobilization plans were inextricably linked to their Von Schlieffen plan attacks. They literally didn't have places for the next wave of mobilized troops to go if the preceding wave hadn't already advanced into Belgium or French territory - the schedule called on the proceeding wave to advance while the train cars that brought them to the mobilization point were shuttling back to bring the next wave to that same point.

They, as far as I know, didn't have a plan for mobilization for defense. So they hadn't left themselves a way to call up their army without launching attacks with it.


And because the mobilization was rail based and carefully scheduled down to the last car, carefully considering the large number of bottlenecks in the system they couldn't really change it on the fly like you'd be able to decades later for units moving in their own attached motor vehicles.

Jonathan_S wrote:Specifically I recall reading that the German mobilization plans were inextricably linked to their Von Schlieffen plan attacks. They literally didn't have places for the next wave of mobilized troops to go if the preceding wave hadn't already advanced into Belgium or French territory - the schedule called on the proceeding wave to advance while the train cars that brought them to the mobilization point were shuttling back to bring the next wave to that same point.

They, as far as I know, didn't have a plan for mobilization for defense. So they hadn't left themselves a way to call up their army without launching attacks with it.

And because the mobilization was rail based and carefully scheduled down to the last car, carefully considering the large number of bottlenecks in the system they couldn't really change it on the fly like you'd be able to decades later for units moving in their own attached motor vehicles.

That was my recollection as well. Defense vs offense was not spelled out, they had plans for what they intended to do if war broke out or it appeared that it was imminent. Offence was the defense. The players were known, the places that were expected to be the targets of any opening moves of actual war were also known. If X was going to attack, they were going to start by going to Y, by way of Z and then it flowed depending on "our" stopping them. The options were to get a predetermined number of troops and equipment (other than what might be essentialy prepositioned in fortresses near/at the borders and chokepoints) and to typicaly attempt to smash the incomming attack in the process of getting to your own target on the other side.
Cities, fortresses, transportation hubs etc. The Von Schlieffen Plan (essentialy the same idea in both I and II) was used to go around the French fortress line which ended at the Belgium boarder and encircle the French troops manning the line and so take them out of effective use while driving for Paris amoung other places.

The rail networks were the fastest way to move units (long since selected and built into a detailed call-up moblization plan) on a tight timetable using existing rail equipment. Nobody seems to have though of making any kind of demobilzation plan. That would include any sort of staged withdrawal to lower troop concentrations.

Apparently the thinking was that you had to go full out because any partial mobilization would telegraph your intentions and at least your general plan and the other side would respond with full mobilization. There was also the problem that for AT LEAST the duration of the initial mobilization and then the immediat follow on of the logistics train behind the troops/artillery etc, your major transportation (the railroads) were going to be 100% committed to military transport to the fronts and support. Unwinding that would wait for a satisfactory resolution of the crisis.
Again, apparently, they were all watching what their advisaries and their allies advisaries were doing and once the mobilzations started they all (in sequence as others moved) had to launch their own mobilizations. They couldn't take the chance that the other side(s) were doing anything but setting the armies in motion to cross boarders and capture territory or and destroy your own ability to at least defend your boarders.

The politics and what the actual intentions were are all over the place. It appears that the Austrian-Hungarian original intent was to "settle" their problems with both their own Slavic trouble spots and the countries around them which they blamed as source of the assignation and internal Slavic Nationalism........you get the idea. They expected most of that would not raise tensions to a war level with the other major powers but......they both dithered about when and how to do this and the diplomatic conversations and internal politics of both allies and "the other sides" went badly off the rails.
They were wrong, many people misread or intentionaly used things to push their own advantage and Everything Went to Shit. At that point they had no way of stopping and now way to bring diplomacy back into play as every power involved at the start might get to a place where they could feel secure from a positon of military strength.

tlb wrote:Very interesting, but it is somewhat artificial to separate the war from the treaty that ended the war.

Also, it may be true that a war (such as WW1) had a certain historical inevitability. But that still leaves the question open of why the war that started in 1914 was not just another Balkan War, instead of the resultant global conflict.

Germany was allied to Austro-Hungarian empire while Russia stepped in to protect Serbia. If this was between any of the smaller powers it might have remain a Balkan war, once the great powers got involved a global war was almost inevitable. Like I said earlier, this spark happened to start the wat but it didn't cause the war.

Historical inevitability is not the same thing as strict determinism, there can still be contingent factors. Which might be why we mostly talk about inevitability after the fact, to reassure us that there was nothing that could be done (and it certainly may be true that there really was nothing that could be done). There is a suspicion that those who talk about inevitability before the fact, see an advantage in something happening and are trying to talk it along.

It was inevitable because of decisions made in the dacades before the war made it unavoitable. Everybody makes decisions every day, some of those decisions will guide you to make more decisions that will eventually lock you in a path a month, a year or a dacade down the line and the same goes for countries because those countries are led by people who make decisions that will lock them into a certain path days, months or years down the line.

kzt wrote:The assumption that the SL has a strong central government is unsupported by any evidence. The SL has a very weak central government that is in charge of nothing that the Leage member states consider important.

Except the one thing that the member stated don't have...a strong military.

Maldorian wrote:
Well, there was no big direct fight between the NATO and the East Block. They support some wars and conflicts but try to avoid direct confrontation.

Different dynamic when you know that a defeat means death for you and your people and victory means death for you and your people. When both sides are aware that no matter who starts the war and who wins the war both sides die they may be more cautious in pulling the trigger, as are the people on all levels of the government and military on both sides.

Sigs wrote:

kzt wrote:The assumption that the SL has a strong central government is unsupported by any evidence. The SL has a very weak central government that is in charge of nothing that the Leage member states consider important.

Except the one thing that the member stated don't have...a strong military.

And they need that why?

tlb wrote:Very interesting, but it is somewhat artificial to separate the war from the treaty that ended the war.

Also, it may be true that a war (such as WW1) had a certain historical inevitability. But that still leaves the question open of why the war that started in 1914 was not just another Balkan War, instead of the resultant global conflict.

Sigs wrote:Germany was allied to Austro-Hungarian empire while Russia stepped in to protect Serbia. If this was between any of the smaller powers it might have remain a Balkan war, once the great powers got involved a global war was almost inevitable. Like I said earlier, this spark happened to start the wat but it didn't cause the war.

tlb wrote:Historical inevitability is not the same thing as strict determinism, there can still be contingent factors. Which might be why we mostly talk about inevitability after the fact, to reassure us that there was nothing that could be done (and it certainly may be true that there really was nothing that could be done). There is a suspicion that those who talk about inevitability before the fact, see an advantage in something happening and are trying to talk it along.

Sigs wrote:It was inevitable because of decisions made in the dacades before the war made it unavoitable. Everybody makes decisions every day, some of those decisions will guide you to make more decisions that will eventually lock you in a path a month, a year or a dacade down the line and the same goes for countries because those countries are led by people who make decisions that will lock them into a certain path days, months or years down the line.

Ultimately the argument about historical inevitability becomes a semi-religious discussion about free will, so I will not pursue that anymore.

But I find it interesting that you can state that WW1 was the result of decisions made over the decades; but contrariwise state that WW2 was NOT the result of decisions based on conspiracies and resentments from WW1.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:
Except the one thing that the member stated don't have...a strong military.

And they need that why?

Well because the weak central government can force the league members to do whatever they want because they control the military. Before the GA it would be a thank you for your service and forget they exist because few member systems were touched by the SLN, after the war with the GA where the SLN delivered all the messages the Mandarins wanted them to deliver everyone would get the message and I would hope at least be smart enough to avoid giving the central government of the League the means to threaten it's own citizens.

The Core and shell worlds will want nothing more then to get the security of a competent SLN without giving the SLN the means to destroy their industry and potentially slaughter their citizens in buccaneer 2.0.

Putting a powerful navy in the hands of the government that just demonstrated that they cant be trusted seems like a terrible idea, putting the only real organized fleet in the hands of the navy that demonstrated that they will follow any order no matter how illegal just shows me that maybe just maybe the member systems should have their own fleet and have what essentially amounts to a defensive alliance, when someone in the League is attacked they go to the aid of the member in question but otherwise they stay out of wars.

tlb wrote:But I find it interesting that you can state that WW1 was the result of decisions made over the decades; but contrariwise state that WW2 was NOT the result of decisions based on conspiracies and resentments from WW1.

By 1939 all of the restrictions from the Treaty of Versailles were gone ad Germany had gained all of their lost territory and then some except for their colonies. The biggest contributions that World War 1 made to Wold War 2 were that the French were gunshy in 1936-1940 so they let the Germans do as they please and Germany wasn't saddled with a victorious Army stuck in 1919.


The decisions of Germany, France and England in 1933-1939 led to only a handful of options in 1939, go to war or let the Germans do as they please which would have just led to a war in 1940 or later...with every decision to appease Germany and with every decision to not confront Germany the French and British limited their options further because Germany became stronger and hungry for more conquests while being less likely to backdown when a confrontation finally did emerge. Germany in 1936 might have backed down relatevly quickly and a war would have been avoided, harder but more manageable in 1938 but with every chance they threw away their options were cut further and further because war between them and Germany was a matter of when, not if.