Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "HMS Malta - Guide 246 (NB)" video.

@beedrillbot121 I don't understand what claim Germany could have on former Spanish possessions that the US held. The US paid Spain something like $12M to give up it's claims on the Philippines and Guam, while Germany paid Spain something on the order of $4M for the Marianas and Carolines. Cuba was a US protectorate, self-governing, as long as the governing suited the US. The UK would not be on Germany's side. iirc the UK's alliance with Japan was intended to make the Japanese UK proxies to keep an eye on Russian and German ambitions in the Pacific. Chew on this possibility: when President Wilson snubs President Victoriano Huerta of Mexico, Huerta embraces an alliance with Germany. (Germany, along with the US under Taft, had supported Huerta's coup.) The Tampico affair, and Admiral Mayo's and Wilson's determination to escalate the situation, could have had the US at war with a Mexican/German alliance months before the Archduke was killed. Would the UK and France rush to the US' aid? Would WWI start at Veracruz, Mexico?
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@Knight6831 what-ifs abound. The other day, I asked myself what if the USN, instead of spending years trying to get the 1.1" to work, embraced the 37mm AA gun John Browning designed in the 1920s for the US Army, then leveraged the Browning's side, belt-fed, loading machine to adopt it to the multiple mounts developed in the UK and Japan for the Vickers.
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@beedrillbot121 I didn't know that. Of course, the Kaiser sitting in his palace, dreaming of being a global player, urged on by the sycophants around him, and actually making it happen, are two different things. They didn't even project power from their colonies around the Bismark Sea after the US exterminated the Spanish Asiatic squadron to take the other Spanish colonies. Germany bought them. But an alliance with Huerta, and German intervention provoked by the US invasion of Veracruz, would be something that would have repercussions. The USN only had 8 modern battleships. No modern cruisers. No significant airforce, or artillery, or machine guns.
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@beedrillbot121 I could see the Germans making the same offer to Mexico that they made in the Zimmerman telegram: help Mexico recover all the territory the US took from them, and German troops help knock off the rebels. Oil was just becoming valuable, and there was a lot, not only in Mexico, but also Texas and California, and Germany could place itself first in line to buy it, at an advantageous price. All the first line US battleships appear to have been in the Atlantic, so the Philippines would be rather naked and exposed. I'm thinking the Germans might what to have a go at them at the same time. i'm not sure Japan would move on the Philippines or Guam They were still aligned with the UK. Whether Veracruz is the match that starts WWI really depends on whether the UK, France or Russia gets an idea of exploiting Germany being distracted by beating on the US.
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@beedrillbot121 one other thought occurred to me: Italy had a mutual defense treaty with Germany. Historically, Italy did not join Germany as it was a "defense" treaty, and Germany was seen as the aggressor. If the UK or France attacked Germany, Italy aligns with Germany and Austria, probably bringing more assets to the German war effort than Germany would have had deployed in Mexico. Italy had several pre-dreadnoughts in commission in 14, plus there would not have been an Otranto barrage, so the Austrian fleet would not have been bottled up in the Adriatic, plus Italy had an army of over 1 million in the summer of 14.
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@beedrillbot121 I haven't give an alternate WWI as much thought as you. Given that Germany already held most of the Marianas, I would say it's guaranteed that von Spee would head his squadron to Guam and knock it off, which would give von Spee a home port Germany could call it's own. There is a possibility that, with Germany declaring war on the US and intervening in Mexico, the other European powers say "oh, that was random", sit back for a while and see what develops. If Huerta told the Mexican population that, while the US started the war, Mexico (with Germany's help) is going to retake all the territory the US stole from it and restore the Mexican borders of 1824. would the rebels put their revolution on hold, and line up behind Huerta for the greater good of Mexico? Hispanics constituted a large part of the population of the SW US, but the Angeloes often treated them as badly as African-Americans. Would the Hispanics be loyal to the US, or form a fifth column to aid the Mexicans? Germany would be in it for oil concessions. The UK would be looking at it's primary economic rival, Germany, and it's up and coming economic rival, the US, bleeding each-other. The UK may choose to sit back and watch, while selling war material to both at a tidy profit. Would the US put up a fight, or sue for peace? The German army had 4.5M men, the US Army had 200,000, so a small portion of the German army could overrun the US Army. Most of the US population and industry wee outside of the disputed area, but most of the oil was in the disputed area. The reason the US was so hopped up about Tampico was that it was the site of the first Mexican oil boom, and US oil companies wanted that oil.
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@beedrillbot121 the more I roll this over in my mind, the more I think you are right. Mexico was so fouled up that Germany really would not want to get officially involved. The next guy didn't seem to do much better than Huerta, and the US invaded, again, on his watch. Of course, by the time Pershing made his incursion, the window for German intervention was long closed.
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@Knight6831 my take is the attack would have gone the same for the Japanese, because the Americans didn't want to believe they were being attacked. The officer who received the report from the Ward didn't want to act. The officer who received the report from the radar station didn't want to act. I think it's in "Day of Infamy" where there is a mention of a crewman trying to remove an awning that obstructed an AA gun. The man was trying to untie the knots in the ropes, rather than cutting them, because he couldn't get his brain into war mode. I have mentioned before how Second London had a vague tonnage escalator clause, requiring treaty members to negotiate an increase in tonnage, if a nation that was not a party to the treaty built a battleship that exceeded treaty limits. As soon as the UK and US figured out how large Yamato was, they started negotiating. The world is catching fire, the US and UK are the only ones still pretending the treaty meant anything, and they wasted six months arguing over 42,000 vs 45,000 tons.
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