ghost
commented
3 years ago Being explored in the rework,though not at this detail. Enjoyed the read though.
Closed Twyxted-F8 closed 3 years ago
ghost
commented
3 years ago Being explored in the rework,though not at this detail. Enjoyed the read though.
Describe the change you would like:
Before even the divergence, the naval situation in Germany is complex; Unlike in the British situation where they had the First Sea Lord who can single-handedly dictate the course of naval development, the German naval offices are split into four, sometimes competing, sometimes cooperating offices; The Inspector-General Office, the Admiral Staff, the Naval Cabinet and the nebulous Naval Office.
In 1936, I think that the most powerful of these agencies would most probably be the German Imperial Naval Office, the already featured Reichsmarineamt. As this office was originally created to make sure that Admiral von Hipper's plans of world domination by literally outproducing the U.K. of battleships and later on of dreadnoughts happen, I think that this office would still be the most influential of the naval branches, given that Tirpitz is generally still considered to be very popular KRTL. I envision that the head of this branch would most probably be Erich Raeder since he is an avid glorifier of Tirpitz himself and sadly because Hipper is already dead before 1936.
Essentially, going down the Naval Office path would make the navy focus more on battleships; not only refitting the current battleships of the navy but also potentially making new ones.
Politically, this is of course not the wisest move; An empire beset by Black Monday would have a high tendency to not appreciate building expensive battleships. So, depending on how the overall German rework goes, choosing the continued dominance of the Naval Office would be political suicide for the liberals, so I envision that only the more conservative and less than savory parties can choose this path, so DkP or DVLP. This may also dovetail well with the fact that the Junkers behind the DkP, or the myriad of factions represented by Hugenberg, von Schleicher and the DVLP, would all be interested in keeping the navy loyal to them in case of any DkP/DVLP takeover and Schleicher's Camarilla scenarios, if they are still in the future German rework.
The more liberal-accommodating part of the navy I think would be the German Imperial Admiral Staff, or the Admiralstab. In 1936, I think that it would be led by Adolf von Trotha, though if there is a scenario wherein there would be an SPD dominated gov't, he might be replaced by the more innovative admiral Karl Donitz. I justify this as per the KRTL post WWI realities, submarines didn't really have any junker or noble proponents, so the only other choice that Donitz may have is naval aviation or more likely trade protection. Thus, as Donitz doesn't have a sponsor for his ideas in the government, and as the SPD wouldn't jive well with Trotha's authoritarian tendencies, Donitz and the SPD can make an unlikely but forced alliance of convenience.
In terms of gameplay, Trotha would probably still continue the battleship focus of the Imperial Naval Office and that of the Tirpitz cult, but rather than expand it, he would most likely focus on trying to improve its tactics and clean off the cruft; bonuses in number of ships in first engagement and naval org, in short. This would be amenable to the center parties as it would mean less expenses for a cash-strapped empire thus making the government more able to deal with the economic issues.
Going down the unlikely alliance of Donitz and the SPD would certainly mean a downsizing of the navy in favor of destroyers and cruisers. This would be an unpopular measure with the established nobles who still follow the Tirpitz cult, but given that this is the SPD, what else is new. This would yield greater benefits to an SPD run as it may allow the player more resources to fight Black Monday, at the cost of a probable coup by the hardline conservatives.
The right parties may also go down Trotha's path if they think that Black Monday calls for it, but it must be said that doing so would be unpopular for the DkP and dangerous for the DVLP, in that it may allow a Raeder countercoup if they do coup the government.
The last path would involve both the posts of Inspector-General and the Naval Cabinet. The post of Inspector-General would essentially be a Hohenzollern scion representing the Kaiser's will to directly control the navy. So essentially, normally a figurehead until given a direct command of a fleet, so maybe Prince Eitel Friedrich. Meanwhile, the office of the Naval Cabinet is nominally responsible for insignificant matters such as personnel affairs, pay and promotions, and is led by Georg Alexander von Müller. However, as these posts really didn't espouse anything but boring menial matters, I think that you shouldn't be able to go down this path "normally", as in that you select a focus for this. However, what is interesting in these posts is that both heads of these offices would personally be loyal to the Kaiser; Muller is a close friend and Eitel Friedrich, is well, a son. So if for example, Hugenberg wins the office either by ballot and/or by using certain parts of the German army using von Schleicher, if Hugenberg would forcibly make the Kaiser retire, what could happen is that Raeder could pull off said countercoup situation on Hugenberg and von Schleicher with the help of these offices, almost mirroring the Tirpitz-on-Ludendorff standoff over a decade previously.
Also, I think von Mucke should go back to the German Empire proper. For one, von Mucke is a rather popular figure within the empire due to his exploits in the Emden; it would be a waste sending him off to the colonies a-la Goring when you could have him become the spokesperson of either Raeder's plan to expand the navy, Trotha's plan to improve its tactics, or more importantly, Donitz' rather controversial plan. Lore-wise I think that as a captain of a German cruiser, he would be one of the first people to gush on how much damage a cruiser can do to both raid and defend sea lanes, plus building a rather shaky but still considerable base for the unlikely alliance between the SPD and Donitz.
So to replace von Mucke, I would like to introduce a rather obscure captain named Adalbert Zuckschwerdt who was the other, less popular survivor of the East Asia Squadron shenanigans. Another interesting quirk in his story is that since the U.S. never declared war on Germany it meant that that he didn't have to scuttle his ship the Cormoran, which meant that either Zuckschwerdt would have been repatriated to a victorious Kaiserreich as a minor but still legendary survivor of the East Asia Squadron, and perhaps this fame would be enough to get him assigned as one of the foremost offices of the Reichsmarineamt, or he could've done a von Mucke himself and sail all the way to the Heimat, giving him close, if not the same, fame to that of von Mucke.
Explain the reasoning behind this change: Right now, naval choices in GER is very basic and somewhat unexplored, given its rather interesting situation.
Additional context or comments: