"WWIII: Germany vs US, Brits, etc." Topic

Now. I could tell you a good story about pool loungers and beach towels and our German pals. But I won't, in the interests of international amity.

A friend from the Netherlands (works at the World Bank) once complained to our friend from Germany (University professor) about German behavior on Dutch beaches. He said they're very aggressive in staking out the best and largest spots! :-) Both men, being very professional and courteous, had a big laugh over it! (Our friend…the engineering professor from Stuttgart…is very easy going…he even listens to Ramstein!)

Which reminds me of an incident at a military trade show back in the early 90s. A colleague commented on a German AFV's ground clearance. The German soldier standing next to the AFV joked with him, "The mud in Russia is very deep." :-)

Good, that they still remember it ;)

I remember a conversation with a Polish officer who opined in a repeat of 1939 they'd concentrate on the Germans first then the Russians because "business comes before pleasure".

Anyhoo, I've always been tempted by a 'Scandinavian' league against he European powers to thweir south. Look to history and base it on, say, a Dark Age or early muddy-evil lineup.

What is more likely is the current nation states breaking up.

Belgium is already seemingly held together only through apathy… and the Italian Northern League seems to be gaining in popularity.

Catalonia in Spain is always itching for more autonomy, if not independence.

As for Germany, the very first thing a unified Germany did was confirm its border with Poland… but the Balkans always have explosive potential.

Since Scandanavians were mentioned, there's a couple of possibilities.

If Russia ever did (heaven forbid) collapse in on itself, there's the idea of Finland wanting to return to its 1939 borders.

Or of course, if Russia ever did become sufficiently strong and nationalistic, there's the possibility of it wishing to return to its 1918 borders… or at least reclaim the bits not in NATO..

I noticed that back in the bad days when Mad Vlad Zirinovsky (apologies for spelling Barin) was seemingly popular, the Finns quietly bought up an awful lot of the East German army…

If this happened in a sufficiently cold winter, the Russians could blackmail Europe to stay out of it via the gas-link leaving the Norwegians, Swedes and British (who don't use Russian Gas) to help out….

<<<If this happened in a sufficiently cold winter, the Russians could blackmail Europe to stay out of it via the gas-link leaving the Norwegians, Swedes and British (who don't use Russian Gas) to help out>>>

I work in the energy industry. 50% of the gas the UK uses is imported, ~15% comes from Russia. It wouldn't pay to be too complacent about continuity of supply here. You might also want to consider that many of our energy companies are in foreign ownership. German (Eon) and French (EDF) companies potentially have their hands on a large part of our supplies already. EDF are 80% owned by the French government…

That percentage imported will increase year on year BTW, as the North Sea fields wind down.

A war over dwindling energy resources could be a likely scenario.

Gee Markup, thanks for such lovely thoughts. News from Europe has on the so happy good side. Now you have to bring in a dose of reality.

That could be the spark that could make things interesting. The Russians have the big supply of energy and a rising interest in using it to support their return to superpower status. They are already sore at the US et al for the NATO expansion in recent years. A Russia seeking to reassert itself could bring up a new East vs. West fight, but this time the whole economy thing is on Russia's side!

Maybe the spark to set this off could be Russia reasserting control over the Ukraine and seeking to do the same to Poland. Maybe with a side order of Georgia being swallowed up by a rising Russian tide.

Would NATO/US go to war over Georgia? Would it go to war over Poland? The first, well, things did get very interesting a couple of years ago. But Poland, which is now part of NATO, would be a given. If NATO didn't stand-up for Poland then it is as useless as the UN. And at least the UN is helpful for trade…

How about another Mid-East war with Russia supporting the Arabs/Iranians and US/Britain supporting Israel? Might spill over into Europe.

Again, you over-estimate exactly how friendly Israel and the UK are….

Unless military action is required to contain Iran, I think the UK would stay out of any war involving Israel.

We do, traditionally, tend to be more supportive of the Arabs.

The very correct arguments about how unrealistic a big WW3 would be are completely true, but irrelevant to the point of this thread, which supposes "what if".

Suspend your sense of disbelief and go with the proposition, just for the sake of discussion…

"I think the UK would stay out of any war involving Israel. We do, traditionally, tend to be more supportive of the Arabs."

Except in '56.

Well yes, but Israel has done a few things since then….

And indeed we tend to be supportive of the Arabs just so long as they aren't nationalising vital strategic infrastructure assets which we thought belonged to us… :)

But if you do want to stray off the reservation of sanity, then Franco-Dutch tensions over a break-up of Belgium (who gets Bruseels?) are another possibility.

The Spanish have recently had to kick Moroccans off a small islet in the Mediterranean.

If you want WW2 redux, then I'd go for a resurgence of far-right nationalism following an implosion of the Euro. The Germans might get the blame for that for failing to bail the weaker members out. Add in attacks on German citizens, ambivalence by lcoal authorities and let the events spiral.

If you want to involve Israel in a major war, all she has to do is repeat her screw up of last month with the Turks and she could very easily end up fighting the one Muslim nation that has a chance against her.

Or, as I said, a Winter War II with the Finns facing off the Russians…

Let's not forget:

"Some fellow named Archy Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry".

If you want a ficticious spark to get things cooking quickly between Russia and Poland, then propose surfacing of top secret Russian documents confirming that crash of Kaczynski's airplane wasn't an accident at all. I bet that would set off a rather significant -storm.

If you want a more realistic scenario, propose that regime of Belorus cracks down on Polish minority even harder than they do 'for real'. Polish goverment protests, situation escalates, Russia backs the Lukashenko… There is enough idiots with an itching trigger finger on all sides for a scenario like that being slightly plausible.

"We do, traditionally, tend to be more supportive of the Arabs".

I imagine that is true, at least until their first use of a nuke in the region, and threats to shut down the Persian Gulf again to oil shipments.

I agree on the Polish plane crash scenario.

Other than the use of oil as a weapon of diplomacy, I think the steep economic downfall scenario is the most likely one to lead to a war anytime soon in Europe.

On the North American continent, it is the narco-traffickers taking on the Mexican government, and/or US border personnel. Smuggling of Muslim terrorists in the mix only exacerbates the situation, which could lead to an intervention by the USA, and tensions/hostilities with others, e.g. Venezuela, Cuba, Pakistan, Iran, etc., and various other nations taking sides in support of, or against those actions.

Karabakh territory is a very possible place of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Armenia has (morale) international support and powerful lobbies, on the other side Azerbaijan has lots of cash and fast growing military.
This conflict can escalate from regional scale.
There's another frozen conflict in eastern Moldavia, where you have pro-Russian unclave, they wanted to join RF several times but so far their pleas were rejected. If Modavia agrees to merge with Romania (so far very unlikely, but who knows…)it might lead to potential conflict with NATO involvement.

Disclaimer: I think Karabakh is more real of these two, but the subject is very complicated, so the stalemate can actually continue for decades…

Barin. Both very "real" and very good suggestions.

Back in the early '90s when my local gaming group was playing "Seek and Destroy" and "Challenger 2000" one of my primary opponents had built Germans while my primary force was Brit(ish). Our favorite scenario to justify us pitting them against each other was as follows:
Some far Right ultra-nationalist party wins the most recent German general election. The first acts of the new goverment are to withdraw from NATO, expell all foreigners from German soil, and to demand the imediate closure of all NATO bases in the country. Of course this is resisted and a hot war amongst the former allies develops.

The other alternative is to simply declare that this is a NATO training exercise!

TR

I disagree with Barin here. I think Nagorno-Karabakh is a non issue- Armenia is just dirt poor now and has no real resources to start something. On the other hand Azeris are doing very well- especially in tourism and trade. I seriously think they will NOT throw away their recent accomplishments.
On Moldova it is a bit more complicated. They do want to chew up TransIstria- but again are not really prepared for any fight. Russians have peacekeepers in TransIstria- so they will be involved if something starts. As much as Moldova wants to join with Romania- Romanians want nothing to do with Moldova. "Anshluss" would be devastating for Romania and have severe consequences for EU- since hordes of hungry Moldovans will leave their country and with screams "Feed Me!" Flood EU. Benefactors of this would be Ukrainians and Russians since both countries sport large numbers of Moldovan illegals. Maybe THAT can be a good gaming scenario?

"Europe now has so many mechanisms to ensure things don't get out of hand that any kind of major conflict seems unthinkable"

It's unthinkable, alright, but they only mechanisms they have are their heads in the sand and appeasement.

Sergei, Armenia is not going to escalate the conflict, but Azerbaijan recently stated that they're ready for military solution if world community is not helping them to solve the conflict peacefully (i.e. kicking pro-armenian militants from Karabakh). They have one of the highest increase in military budget spending in the region. As USA still needs them for all their pipeline ideas, Armenian lobby will have to work really hard to prevent conflict.
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BTW, biggest Romanian party (and second Moldavian party) have unification in their political programs…

Number6 – also known as diplomacy.

And I don't see the British, Dutch, Poles or Danes doning much appeasement in Afghanistan.

And the army that refused to do any fighting in Bosnia was, IIRC, the American one.

Apologies folks, but ignorant comments like that annoy me. Europeans will fight when they have to. But, given we managed to devastate our continent twice in a century, we have a longer fuse than some.

Ukraine and NATO:

I think you'll find they had actualy applied and have only recently withdrawn it following (blue fez territory)

However:

"The door still remains open for Ukraine to join NATO"
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So, if Ukraine joins and Russia threatens a NATO member…

Slightly older now but:
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The problem with getting the US involved in a major rumble is convincing Congress (err, the American public).

In a 'peacekeeping' thing like in the Balkans, the US had this whole image issue that they were trying to maintain. It may have been UN-imposed, I'm not sure (before I was really paying attention to such events).

I know for a fact that US forces really didn't like getting stuck under UN command (to the extent of Marines refusing to wear the UN helmet colors!), since the troops have had no authority to shoot, even if lives are threatened (see also the start of Blackhawk Down). I don't know if that is still an issue.

Options to kick off a major european conflict:
After elections, the winning party in (pick a country, France, Germany, and Italy are my favorites) throws out the old constitution and all foreign presences. Foreign presences are significantly upset at this, and any armed forces refuse to leave peacefully. Shooting starts, and no-one wants to stop it (until the winning party has been removed from power).

Ukraine (or Poland) gets picked on by Russia.

I honestly like the idea of Winter War 2, may have to explore that one a bit.

Given other troops in the Balkans had no problems in opening fire on the Serbs – notably the Danes who took Leopard IIs, and used them – the problem was IIRC an American aversion to casualties, which got a suitably caustic remark from the French which I shall not repeat here.

Of course if the Russians want their old Empire back, they might like the idea of a land border with Canada… :)

How about the Irish…can we have the Irish too?!

They'd join both sides.

"If you want a ficticious spark to get things cooking quickly between Russia and Poland, then propose surfacing of top secret Russian documents confirming that crash of Kaczynski's airplane wasn't an accident at all. I bet that would set off a rather significant -storm.

If you want a more realistic scenario, propose that regime of Belorus cracks down on Polish minority even harder than they do 'for real'. Polish goverment protests, situation escalates, Russia backs the Lukashenko… There is enough idiots with an itching trigger finger on all sides for a scenario like that being slightly plausible." Minondas

Easy to add the British to this as they carry out armour training in Poland – or at least until recently they did? So either a Nato response or just a self defence reaction by UK forces who are mistaken for Polish units.
I must admit I quite like the Nato training excercise scenario as you can then use any combination of forces. It was not uncommon to have a nation with forces on both blue and green sides in some of the bigger excercises. Aaah that would be the Irish ;o)

I know I'm missing the point and ruining the fun but if you want to play the scenario just play the scenario! You don't need a grounded, realistic backstory, just put the units on the table and play.

Yes, I know, coming up with a plausable backstory is at least half the fun. I also suppose to some folks it separates "what if" historical gaming from fantasy gaming although since I'll play both I don't see a big need to do so.

YMMV,
Jason
Stafford, VA

Re. Armenia / Azerbaijan

I am currently working in Baku, so this is of special interest to me. As I understand it, Armenia currently occupy a large chunk of Azerbaijan (rightly or wrongly – I'm not getting into all that) and, as a result, over a million Azerbaijanis are termed as 'internal refugees'. So I would suggest that sooner or later Azerbaijan is going to try and get back what they claim as their own – whether by diplomatic means or something a little more dramatic.
The fact that their Caspian oilfields are immensely important to foreign oil companies (BP has a 20 year exploration program here and the reserves are staggering) only adds to the intrigue.

Not sure how this will lead to Germany fighting the US and Brits though.

I served in Ulster but like being refered to by the shorthand 'Brit'. Advise for all: don't take such things so seriously. Sticks and stones can break my bones…

How "modern" does it have to be? I can see 2 plausible times during and shortly after WW2:

1. As Germany collapsed the Russians might have collided with the western Allies and maybe decided to push on to the Rhine or beyond.

2. During the confrontation that led to the Berlin airlift, in 1948, there might well have been a shooting war over access to Berlin.

Austro-Hungarian reunification under a nationalist regime?

Russians weigh in asserting dominance over Hungary, Germans back up their neighbours.
American financial interests seized by new government of Austria-Hungary, who drag Britain along for the ride…

Throw in the usual east European ethnic mess just for fun.

A multi-sided Russian civil war with Germany/France backing one side and US/UK supporting another?

Here's a few links regarding the current state of Austro-Hungarian reunification and the reaction of AHs neighbours.
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What if the Swiss try to annex Lichtenstein?

"2. During the confrontation that led to the Berlin airlift, in 1948, there might well have been a shooting war over access to Berlin." – donlowry

Berlin 1961 when the wall went up was even closer to a full blown conflict with US and Soviet forces facing off, both sides having orders to return fire if fired upon it would not have taken much to set things alight.

good one.