As is, or failing that should be, tradition, I return with only the finest in slower-than-real-time commentary. Which is not to make any statement about the quality of said commentary, rather on the lack of competitors in the category. As such, we begin with:
In hindsight the great public emphasis given to the aero shadow factories was perhaps a mistake, the scheme never had a chance to be a deterrent as it had barely stared before war with Italy broke out, while domestically it's high profile merely made the later problems trickier to solve.
It must be a rule of political theater that whatever is given the highest public profile must also have the greatest odds to fail hilariously, or at least strike several amusing speed bumps.
This was very much in line with British strategic thinking of the time which held that the economy was the 'Fourth Arm of Defence', this was on the basis that any sustained conflict would be decided as much by industrial and financial factors as strength of arms.
A rare moment of clarity and wisdom in British strategic thinking.
Naturally all of this carefully calibrated policy was hurriedly discarded at the outbreak of the Abyssinian Crisis and the country switched over to a semi-war economy.
Naturally.
However there were alternative options which promised the possibility of keeping full production at the shadow factories while not impacting the wider economy. Naturally the cabinet expected there would be a catch to these plans and so it proved.
But of course.
That two such bitterly ideologically opposed states both implemented Fordism speaks to the hidden similarities between the two regimes and perhaps to the practical realities of Fordism; as preached by Ford it had a heavy emphasis on centralised planning and control, heavily suppressed change or deviation from the plan, and relied upon a small managerial and technical elite overseeing the unskilled masses on the lines.
The operative word in that last phrase being "small", a qualifier largely forgotten by the bloated administrative machines of modern-day corporations, dragged down at the waist by legions of useless middle-managers who contribute nothing save to seriously call into question the definition of the word "elite".
The details and principles of his system need not detain us at this point,
Heresy!
In their losing rear-guard action against the shadow factory scheme the Society of British Aircraft Constructor (SABC, the aircraft industry trade body) had argued that aircraft changed too rapidly for mass production to be appropriate. The Air Ministry, looking at the thousands of aircraft required by the defence plans and rearmament schemes, had dismissed this as self serving and disregarded it. Subsequent experience proved that SBAC may have had a point,
This is my surprised face.
As the Air Ministry reviewed the previous years and looked to the future they found themselves agreeing with Heraclitus that 'change was the only constant', in which case a flexible production system seemed not merely a wise precaution but positively vital.
And again with the rare moment of clarity and insight. Has El Pip come down with a case of protagonist syndrome?
A more technocratic government may have discussed the matter and considered the pros and cons of the various methods, but then a more technocratic government would never have got into this particular problem, though only because it would have gotten into a different but doubtless far larger one somewhere else.
Indubitably.
Another slightly larger than intended chapter, but one that easily could have gone very badly off course. I think I've kept it (mostly) on the straight and narrow and not gone off any egregiously unrelated rabbit holes and I would argue there is a bit of plot in this one.
You could, indeed, make the argument; furthermore it is doubtless that an argument would be had.
The Ford approach really was popular in the USSR and Nazi Germany, which should have made those involved a bit more doubting about it but apparently not.
Most of all Ford, who if he had realized his mistake could have averted his course before giving us the unmitigated disaster that was Robert McNamara.
But the problem remains that, outside of OTL luck and near-perfect decisions from them, and terrible calls from everyone else, they will not win a war in France.
So they will win a war in France, is what you're saying?
This did not compare well with the car industry who were seen as heavily involved with the tank side of things and that was.... not seen as a success, hence more pressure to 'reform' the car industry.
Which is hardly fair, as most of the problems with tanks had more to do with the Army's silly and antiquated ideas about what tanks should be. The industry was hardly at fault, any more so than the national industry of any other tank-using nation.
The most important thing of course is not the system itself, but making sure the lowest paid worker in the system can afford to buy whatever it is they are making. Otherwise, mass production only leaves you with items, not product.
Someone should tell Wall Street.
I must also say I am pleased to written about industrial relations in such a way that has not led you to close the browser in utter disgust at what you have just read, which was a very real concern I had at various points.
It was a close call at points, overall on the drier side of "recent" updates, but it did ultimately get to where it meant to go which makes it a better update than several era-specific aircraft designs, at the very least.
I have started a new page with an important message. Pretty much no-one has voted in the elite Other category of the
Q3 2022 ACAs, so if just two of you could go over and vote we should be able to
steal a win see this work get some much deserved recognition.
I dunno, I think this work is plenty recognizable as it is. Certainly I would never mistake it for, say, a Turkish Misery Work of some form.
Meanwhile the radical left are getting suckered into owning the libs rather than punching nazis or something.
spanishcivilwar.jpg
Yes, let the hate Florida rules flow through you. Though I gather this should now be updated to Arizona rules.
(Don't) stop the steal! (Don't) stop the count!
I've got 2,000 words of an update, but I'm assuming you'd prefer one that is finished rather than one that just stops abruptly mid-sentence?
It would be an interesting change of pa
For the more serious events there has likely been a degree of 'frog boiling', that is to say a chronic problem getting constantly worse but so slowly that the true scale of the predicament is not apparent, for these cases the return from summer with fresh eyes can prompt a realisation of how bad things actually are and so initiate the crisis.
This summer break actually seems like a useful and natural counter to the frog-boiling phenomenon, quite apart from the whole thing about short-term economic losses (one might argue "corrections", but accurate reflection of reality has never been to the benefit of the stock markets).
The solution was typically French, use regulation and heavy taxes to encourage all gold holders to sell their gold to the Bank and then require all transaction in gold to be approved by the Bank of France. Paris could therefore state that the franc was still theoretically convertible with gold and thus conformed to the letter of the gold standard, if the Bank never actually gave permission for any gold transactions that was a mere irrelevant detail.
Leaving aside any moral objection to this approach the challenge was to getting the rest of the Bloc to accept it. This ties in neatly with the other pressing concern, getting international agreement and support on defending the new value of the franc and not setting off a round of currency wars and competitive devaluations.
"Mere irrelevant details" indeed.
While such measures were doubtless satisfying to the government and parliament as a way to punish those seen to profit from France's misfortune, it also prompted another exodus of traders and business to New York, Amsterdam and above all London.
Such is the French way: put a stick up one's and then act surprised when no one wants to stay around.
As with the failure of Paris' previous attempts to be a financial centre the French were unwilling, or perhaps psychologically unable, to pay the price required to be a serious financial centre.
My money, erm gold, is on the psychology angle.
The United States may have been in a period of semi-isolation and disengaged from most international forums, but that did not mean they had lost all their diplomatic skills or their ability to spot a hustle.
As one would expect from the country which practically has P.T. Barnum as its patron saint.
After many years of effort by the State Department and US Treasury the Dollar Bloc consisted of the US, the Philippines, and a smattering of smaller Central American states that had been on the receiving end of a US Marine intervention during the Banana Wars.
This sounds about right for a typical U.S. government foreign policy scheme.
To that end it was the US Treasury that came up with the final scheme adopted by the Gold Bloc, the plan should not be to devalue the franc or any other currency, instead the Bloc should say they were revaluing gold. If the entire Bloc all changed the exchange rate of their currencies to gold at the same time they could maintain it was the value of gold itself that had changed not their currencies.
Cute. Very cute. I look forward to seeing how badly it backfires in 7 1/2 years.
A Soviet gold mine in the mid 1930s, the crude approximations of a uniform and the pit pony indicate this is one of the more modern mines in the country at that time.
Truly a shining example of Soviet industrial efficiency and modernity.
Global gold production increased almost 70% between 1929 and 1937 due to massive increases in US, Canadian, Australian but above all Soviet output. This should have led to a slump in the gold price as extra production flooded the market, yet the London gold fix had jumped from around £4/oz to over £7/oz in the same period. It was this disparity between the price of gold and both production and the size of the global economy that was the justification for the revaluation.
How convenient.
in the grandest French tradition the first draft had a system whereby the Bank of France decided what interventions should be carried out to support the franc and the Bank of England would then unquestioningly implement their part.
Naturally.
As their more realistic colleagues tried to warn them such a rose tinted view would only lead to disappointment, as it duly did later in the autumn during the Straits Crisis.
This is the problem, these poor colleagues are trying to be realistic about economics, and as we have already discussed this cannot possibly work out.
Look, plot! That's a good thing I'm told.
Ostensibly.
I feel confident if I am not correct on that then someone will soon say, hopefully sparking some lively debate.
Hell, I feel confident that you could be fully correct and someone would still spark some lively debate. Possibly even on a related topic.
However I think making a purchase explicitly because it is economically useless is perhaps a step too far for the government of the time.
Indeed, governments only ever do such things entirely on accident.
It does appear though that actual plot has not proven popular with the commentariat. I did fear this would be the case, it seemed unlikely that readers who actually liked plot would have persisted this long with this work. Lessons have been learnt.
angrily mutters in "Holiday"
I think we've learnt over the years that if you aren't England or Germany, you have to pray Paradox added a meme option for your country. Otherwise, you're going nowhere or at best just staying where you are.
The USA is usually straight-up broken in any Paradox game it is in. To compensate for this, Paradox usually kneecaps the AI, as the USA is only dominant if it leverages its economic strength which the AI is quite happy not to do just prior to being invaded by Ireland or whatever.
You know, when i was reading this an insane thought popped in my head about where this AAR is actually going. France is getting more and more desperate, Germany are looking weaker and weaker . . .
Pip, you're not actually going to have France declare war and invade Germany are you??
Nonsense. France will declare war on England, it is only fitting.
All questions are always welcome. Not literally all, for instance questions about the correct Latin translation of My Little Pony are best addressed elsewhere or perhaps not asked at all, but all questions on relevant and even tangentially related topics should be raised at your earliest convenience.
What about questions regarding the correct Greek translation for Dora the Explorer?
The relationships between these two and gold will be featuring in a future update. Though I note that Germany was and is technically on the gold standard and officially never devalued, the reality of course being very different.
"Nazi Germany", like "economics" is a term not often used in close proximity with the words "accurate" or "reality".
The UK always gets counted twice in Pip AARs.
I return to my earlier comment about argument.
A Denmark with dreams of controlling the North Sea and the route to the Atlantic would be a sight to behold, though I fear they would once again end up being Copenhagened by the Royal Navy who are unlikely to tolerate such schemes.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the world would be generally more exciting were it not for the British policing things which are frankly none of their business.
I... I guess it's only fair that @El Pip took the top of the page...
Indeed.
If this was the sort of AAR where updates matched up with real world events I'd have tried to put one of the trade updates around now, because then the Empire Christmas Pudding recipe would be relevant. Alas we live in a fallen world where such wonders are not possible.
You could always make use of the mystical art of "buffer", which I am lead to understand means writing extra updates so that one can maintain a consistent posting schedule over irregularities in writing schedule, however it should work equally well to produce convenient irregularities in the update schedule if that is preferred.
However i am utterly against HoI4 even existing, let alone bastardising the great name Hearts of Iron.
A man of culture I see.
I've never been wildly fussed by gameplay, which is the only style I think really benefits from being a video. You can string together some ridiculous memes and call it comedy I suppose but that's not really an AAR and didn't need to be a video.
Even before YouTube AARs and streaming became the dominant forms of what passes for "art" amongst the masses, this exact format was basically what most Reddit/Imgur "AARs" were, so the only real change over time has been the medium I think.
Work on the next chapter continues and as @nuclearslurpee has forsaken this work I can skip over the chemistry bit, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the readership is unlikely to mourn it's absence.
I once again remind you never to make such reckless assumptions.
We shall have this update then in the post after the next person, then, eh,
@El Pip?
Perhaps.
