Pax's Alternate History Snippet repository.

[ATP]

Yup,you need to live with steam engines at least one generation.Probably more.
And airfields - for planes of your times,you really do not need much.And you would not need till you get B.17.

P.S soviets blaming jews for Lenin death...you knew,it could help world.In OTL jews in West helped soviets,here it could stop.And even if WW2 do not change in Europe nytching,soviets could still do not get A bomb here,and,as a result,get it in 1953 or 1954,not 1951/in 1949 they had only warhead,not bomb in which they could drop it/

 

[Imperator Pax]

June 1923
Li's grasp as president of the republic had always been tenuous. He'd been a compromise candidate for the Beiyang and the last few months would have been trying for anyone. Truth be told his choice had still been controversial given he had invited the pony tail general into the capital in 1917, and now was back in office so soon after the recent struggle. The papers could wag their tongues about that sort of thing, but the truth was he was a compromise candidate because he was toothless.

... thus realistically he probably couldn't have done anything for that alone. Toothless was not what the Republic needed.

"What do you make of it?"

"Of Li leaving?"

"No, the idea of a war against the Russians, we gonna tell Iseburo," It was funny how Cole said we, when what he really meant was 'are you gonna tell him'... not that Allen really had a problem with that. "Don't get me wrong I agree a lot more with Bill's idea of using the geography to our advantage a lot more than with Percy's parliamentarian, but Mackinder isn't completely off his rocker either."

"You see a problem with the strategy?"

"The russians got knocked out the war by the Germans. I could see the bolsheviks collapsing but only if petersburg and moscow both fall. We're not the ones to do that. Neither is Japan." Both men understood and for that matter the staff graduates understood why the Russo-Japanese war had stalled out, "I figure there is a good chance Germany and the Reds are going to make good on Rapallo and team up, where that leads... I figure that its going to be bad for everyone."

The best hope was to apply the lessons learned from the European war, but there were limits to that.

The Western Siberian Plain lay east of the Ural Mountains. It was the geographic expanse that the Bolsheviks had seized after Omsk had fallen. The Whites in Central Asia, popularly Kirghiz to Xian's vernacular, controlled the south, which included the spur of steppe that by passed the Urals and that needed to be reinforced and defended even if it was never used as a springboard for offensives.

"Which is exactly," Cole remarked to the observation that France and England will ask for if we all get into it, "We don't have the manpower, and frankly the Whites are going to want something even if we can't drive the bolsheviks out of power entirely." He paused, "Look this'll sound devious but we'd be best off agreeing in principle that they take and administer Western Siberia and that we hold defensively killing grounds against well the bayonet charges from the reds that we can rightfully expect to come in a fight." Despite the thrashing at the Lake doctrine had not changed.

Iseburo had told him of the lake battle, what he had not expected was that the Japanese had taken film of the battle. It was as surprise, and something of a novelty and frankly the real work had been done by artillery, but Iseburo had let the red cavalry try a brazen cavalcade action before opening them up with shot and machine gun fire from three sides.

It was a brutal display, but one to be commended. Iseburo had enveloped them in a textbook maneuver and settled the business. After chasing all the way from Omsk the Bolsheviks had to run all the way west for fear of a few japanese divisions. What railways that the Whites hadn't torn up in retreating the Reds did or Iseburo did in his forays to clear his frontier. It was also why the Japanese aligned whites, smaller and more fragmented didn't question Iseburo's 'advisory counselorship' to their various local governments.... and in the years since particularly as Japanese and Koreans and chinese workers brought their families in to settle or work in towns first it had been railways and post offices then it had been other civil administration... after Kolchak after Omsk there just hadn't been anyone influential enough to knit the patchwork together and Iseburo's railways brought stability and control to the region, and law followed. Even though Akashi had passed away, Iseburo took his cues from the dead colonel, and from his father on how to establish local administrations which as a result reported to his centralized administration in Irkutsk. That in turn had lead to some reported problems with the Kwantung administration south of Iseburo... which was ironic since Iseburo had been in a slot to be in charge of them but now it was parochial departments squabbling.

Regardless of Iseburo's age, the status of elder statesmen was not hereditary, but he might if he cared be able to be prime minister one day. The problem was Allen couldn't see Iseburo doing that willingly, not with the old man dead. It would have been one thing if Yamagata was alive but even then Iseburo was willing to break the government over budget issues... and the thought of Iseburo ending up in the Foreign Office was potentially a good thing, but also not likely to last long. Iseburo supported the Washington Naval Treaty for fiscal reasons, wanted an Anglo-AMerican-Japanese entente for the obvious economic and military benefits the alliance would provide but all of that boiled down to balance book calculations and he'd didn't really understand other view points.

"We have time, and Iseburo won't support his officers haying off and starting something." Allen remarked, "But we have time because Lenin's dead." Even if he hadn't been the Bolsheviks were in no position to restart the civil war and most of the credit there was probably for the Poles in the west showing the Bolshies away from the Vistula. So for at least now whether anyone liked it or not they had to accept the current status quo as the borders and boundaries.

Those were certainly boundaries Allen could live with. "Right now there is a buffer state, whether there is oil there or not for now the west siberian plain keeps the bolsheviks having to look in three different directions." They didn't have to look north it was just ice up there... then again the Germans had taken the third largest city in the Tsar's empire by amphibious action the Mission they had called Albion, so maybe the reds should look warily at the north... "They have to look east against Japan, against Iseburo, they have to look South to Kirghiz, and they can't leave their western border unwatched."

It was a balancing act. It was grand strategy. "Kirghiz makes a fine buffer for us, but I shouldn't tell you that in the long run, and Bill, and Vickers before him is sure there is oil in that basin, it will be available eventually."

"They'd need foreign investment."

"Ford is making them tractors, and his deal with them isn't much different from ours."

Allen nodded acknowledging the point. They needed to make the most with the time that they had. "Waite will never agree to a foreign service body, he'll stamp his feet, and drag his heels for as long as he can," much as he seemed to want to delay on the matter of staffing the supreme court.

"What's our alternative then, not have an official foreign service?" Cole replied, "The trade missions are just that, and besides Peking is falling apart." Li leaving the presidency presented a problem, because he had been harmless, a compromise candidate who didn't have the resources to be Duan never mind Yuan Shikai. Cao was talking about wanting the presidency and leading China, but that was about policy... Zhili's dujun had no plan to bridge the divide across the Beiyang factions. He didn't appear to feel he needed to.

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1923
Xian's discussions ... well the public eye was somewhere else entirely than the issue that dominated in Shanghai, and Tietsin. It had only been a matter of time before the broader General Staff started adding their opinions to the talk. That Bill had not opened his study with oh the bombers will always get through had been a minor mercy. There were no Billy Mitchells in Xian, but on the other hand everyone knew who he was, and they also to a lesser extent knew Churchill's man Trenchard.

The easiest rebuttal was that aircraft could not effectively carry sufficient bombs. Until new engines became available talking of the bombers getting through was premature.

Allen put the papers aside and started to help himself to the bowl of chillied buckwheat noodles. It was not quite as hot as he would have liked it, but it was lunch, and he had a lot to do with summer here in force. Currently speaking Xian's major summer exercise entailed forty four thousand troops in the field for drill. First and Third Regiments were rotated back from their divisions divided into instructional cadres and together with second division here in force were working to familiarize National Guard units and reservists with practices and equipment.

As a result the 8th​ Division was shouldering much of the border duty, looking warily across the border with Szechwan. Even the 8th ​under Shang was getting new things the shiniest were new caterpillar excavators from Holt's company back in the states. Holt's manager had written that they had plans to merge with Best if only they could get the details worked out. The new excavators were earmarked for 8th ​Divisions Heavy Combat Engineer Battalion.

Holt's diesel powered excavator was excellent, though the truth was they had largely used steam engines to build the railways. Steam Excavators were maintenance intensive though and while they were coal fired the same as the railways they were just not suited to modern war. There were concerns and had been for several years now about the safety of using them in the coal mines... deep ones anyway since for surface mines they were great.

If Holt and Best merged that had a number of potential benefits... they would presumably rationalize their designs on offer, and with no war for the states in sight well Holt and Best would continue to sell old stock. That would help the MAK and the work in Liberia, and it would help here.

Just as steam power had allowed them to build the railway here, in combination with dynamite, it would facilitate other projects demand less men and for Powell that was important. Unlike here, where even though they had still used money to buy machines to make the work easier there less people and other reasons. "You think his interest in excavators is a canal?"

Griswold questioned. The engineer was wearing his day uniform, the lighter material summer uniforms for the field which while still sewed with patches weren't quite the same as the dress uniforms that most of the cadre in senior leadership roles wore daily. Then again Griswold had almost certainly spent the majority of the morning at the State Military Works.... and if not to ask about the MAK then he might well have been talking about the continued direction from a minority of the cadre to examine a 6.5 cartridge for an autoloading rifle with the aim of replacing 35 Remington.

"I'd say no, but only because I think he recognizes that its not feasible..."And the panama canal had taken so long to build. It would help probably Powell's support for a united states in central america which the state department supported, but he doubted that State's support was so enthusiastic that it would provide even the political capital for a canal... unless someone at the Navy was really worried about needing to ferry hither and to from the oceans that formed the state's first real defense.

It wasn't that the project for whic h so many men had talked about was an impossible to surmount engineering challenge. It wasn't. It was a capital, both monetary and political question to surmount. "Where are we on the submachine gun project?'

"Rationalization?" Griswold said, "Lewis already recognized we needed to go to an open bolt, and to a blow back," There were trade offs to both changes but by and large the pros outweighed the cons, "I think what we will have to do is moved to a stamped metal design. Lewis likes milling machines, the complaints we got out of 3rd ​were they'd take the guns and they could deal with snow up until the guns melted the snow and then they'd refreeze the action shut."

"How do we deal with that?"

"I'm working on it. I figure we need to keep the bolt from getting mud and dirt out of it as well, which is a much more year around problem than the white stuff," Griswold replied, "Other problem I see is we're going to need a robust enough magazine to feed it, especially with all the interest Yan has in the project." Yan liked Thomspons, but those were even more expensive than the Lewis Griswold 45s that they had already, and those weren't cheap relatively speaking... but Taiyuan's arsenal already manufactured 45 caliber Mauser Broom handles, which in contrast to the other provinces were the service pistols of the Shansi Gendarmes, a provincial level police force and one which employed detachable shoulder stocks. "I have someone working on that as well, and we're going to keep an eye abroad to see if anyone comes up with anything that we can use." For this or other things, that was how things worked.

"Specialist troops will need specialist weapons. Our heavy combat engineers by and large do not need to be lugging rifles, which originally we planned to do by giving everyone 20 inch Universals, but sub machineguns are possibly a better option."

Griswold gave the the man a scowl, "Not if we can't keep them working. I'm working on it." He stated, and grudgingly pulled out a series of reports, the good news is the chemical industry in Taiyuan is coming online. SMB," Shansi Machine Bureau, "is expanding ammunition production. That will help with testing, but Yan is talking about wanting a removable and or collapsing stock like his broom handles. Which, I can do, but magazines and the action. The action, I think if I can get it sealed off from the rest we can keep water or mud from getting in, but that is a tolerance and heat treatment question. I'll do what I can to keep weight down."
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Notes: Theproblem Griswold is describing here, is he's coming from anengineering standpoint where milling is the primary manufacturingtechnique thats really where tolerance and expense comes into play.Once stamping, and forging parts can be done for the design its a lotmore simple, with a milling based most likely the way you woulddisassemble a gun like this is probably a sprign detente or catch tohold the bolt handle in. The bolt handle as in the owen gun would beconnected to an extension that operates charging of hte system butotherwise isolate the internals but again after that problem is dealtwith its getting magazines to be truly interchangeable (again this is1923 where lots of guns are still being fitted for their magazinesdespite detachable box magazines being something from post US civilwar rifles, as an interchangeable parts concept execution of the idealagged across lots of guns including the Winchester 351 caliberrifles)


On other notes I have some tentative plans to update some Jumpchain stuff over the summer but beyond this story updates are tentative at best.

 

[ATP]

They work on pm which could work in harsh conditions and is cheap - good,they could invent something like Owen,or at least Sten,before WW2.

 

[Imperator Pax]

July 1923

Allen had gotten on a train the Friday evening, and arrived at Lhasa station this morning after a brief day stop at Qinghai. The Lake though had a permanent cadre presence though, and with Hodges's passing Tibet did not. Hodges had of course retired first and had left instructions and plans for furthering productive economic development, but he had also put an outline for more grand ideas. That had included things beyond his recommendation to the Cadre that a civilian university be prioritized here; given the existing merchant community. Quite frankly if one were being honest he'd left so much for the others to work through that well it taking almost eight months to get through it all was understandable.

The railway was as Mackinder put it an answer to landlocked countries for moving goods, and of course also projecting power. If the soviets could conquer back the extent of the old tsarist realm it was bad for everyone... if only they could convince Hoover, the President and the Senate to see that... it was obvious that the maritime nature of the States disinclined them from seeing the obvious.

That wasn't to say the state department hadn't recognized Kirghiz, which Powell trumpeted as a venue for which capital might move in without being beholden to London. The slump as the states had rushed to demobilize after the European war looked to be correcting so they would see if that might be. The Soviets might MacKinder thought adopt the same geostrategic ambitions as Peter the Great, with wishing to wash their boots in the Persian gulf.

Whether he was on the money or not it was a useful stick to agitate for support Kirghiz as a buffer state for England to thus shield the Jewel in the Crown. That effort was stymied by the penny pinching of bean counters who didn't or willfully refused to see that they only had breathing room before the conflict resumed.

That was the conclusion the Cadre had come to. It was thus the policies for which papers were written about by both staff officers, as well as up and coming managers in arguments for new and better machinery to produce tools and further elements. It was that logic for which Cullen seemed to have secured votes for an Arsenal in Urumqi for the production of the 122mm Krupp guns of the old Tsarist artillery park as well as an improved version. Kirghiz was transitioning away from the Russian rimmed cartridge in favor of the 8mm Mauser but artillery was going to be a different story was always a different story... and as a result the 122mm threw a larger high explosive charge than the lighter 105 that served as the mid range field gun of Xian's standards.

Powell still exercised enough influence and there were enough other reasons that the 105 would remain in a modernized form as well. Part of that was fiscal in origin, there were enough of them in service. Dawes favored a transition to a larger 155mm from the old 15cm cannons. His support meant that upgrade had priority in terms of procurement and the new 155 guns would receive priority funding to complete.


Lhasa was a merchant's town, the economic malaise which the Qing had been had been suffering over had been undone by bringing the railway here. It also undercut the idiot foreign secretary from trying to treat Tibet as independent. Hodges had been able to see to that, and before Curzon had expressed that intention Duan had years earlier recognized their representatives in the senate for the province when'd called for the legislature to hold elections.

All of this as he read through the papers in front of him, scanning the type, was of course going to be an issue. Allen was making an appearance here to show the flag as it were, even if he wasn't here to directly take command over any of the projects. That would likely be delegated by the expected establishment of the Army Industrial College to be built the Lake, but for whom subordinate commands would be posted to each provincial capital. That subordinate office would be headed by a colonel, and total staff would be likely a battalion of signals and engineer men supported by civilians.

It was going to be a busy fall season if summer was any warning... which again underscored the need to make this appearance in Lhasa. He looked at the brigadier general, "Hodges ordered a water resources report eighteen months ago, is that right?"

"Yes sir. The source waters for Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong rivers."

Hypothetically that meant Hodges had been skirting his official authorities as the area in question while geographically apart of the Tibetan Plateau was apart of Qinghai. Oddly managing not to go over budget for his command, which Allen decided not to mention... he'd review the discretionary budget but most likely Hodges had been holding training marches for his engineer companies to handle the surveying, "Did he elucidate why?" He asked Hodges's former chief of staff.

Hodges had been in agreement with the general cadre consensus that locally the most immediate security challenge was 'the bandit world' that was to say Szechwan to their south. The need to project influence along the silk road was the other major policy security question and was made possible by the railway along that ancient thoroughfare.

Hodges however had been looking both to the south east, as well as hoping to check Curzon from coming east from India. Hodges's writing outlined challenges in both procurement planning, but also showed MacKinder's influence in writings about the geostrategic consideration... in this case in looking at the great rivers.

Having engineers look at the river in depth would spark rumors about canals, which would start other chatter... but if Hodges had seen a threat he should have brought it up to the General Staff, or if in the interest of discretion at least the cadre. "Were War planning studies drawn up?"

The man shook his head, there had not been... though he was unsure if that had been in consideration but at the time no such plans had existed when Hodges had retired... and Hodges had not left expansive documents just outlines really. Most of his focus had been on textile production and efforts to support the local presence... which of course had been his primary purpose

Allen stood up, Percy had recently updated the cadre on what the Legation estimated the total number of soldiers in China to be. It was a number that had ballooned and since the legation was really only counting Beiyang armies... and not the 'southern rebels' as 'real soldiers' the real figure for real figures was likely approximately four million according to Cole.

He relayed as much to the general. "You'll need to prepare the documents for further review by the general staff, If Hodges believed there was a threat to the country or national importance in regards to studying the rivers it will need to be pushed on." The European war had established the importance of supply if previous wars hadn't made that clear enough. There was no question that the General Staff would take Hodges proposal and suggest further expansion of the army, and its base of supply even if that might take five more years.

The Cadre had taken the lesson from the states the bureau could not run rough shod over central command thus the General Staff had commanding authority to manage a centralized network of districts rather than allowing something like the Quartermasters Corp to act in a parochial manner as if they were their own fiefdom from Ordnance or the Corp of Engineers or the Medical Department. That meant that in practice after 1920 Xian had been building up both a civilian side municipal, county, Province apparatus, and on the army side systems that were similar but more important were uniform across the uniformed service. Standardization and Rationalization of resources and also protocol were the centerpiece of reform efforts even though usually that meant wholesale foundational construction typically by either soldiers or railway men changing jobs and serving as the nucleus of new cells.
--
Notes: This is mostly a brief glance at Tibet as we move into the end of this 'arc' the next will begin with 1924 but when we get to the interwar years one of the things that will be touched on will be the Tarim mummies as well Tocharian as a language, and also will foreshadow events of those whacky nazis wanting to visit Tibet.