Recycling the axis economies

[Hecatee]

Both Italy and Germany lacked resources at the beginning of the fascist and nazis rule for their industry, one of those being metals. Yet they had tons of steel rusting unused in their ports, including battleships and battlecruisers weighting some dozens of tons.

So let's see what Mussolini could get if he decided in 1928 that he needs a better economy more than a fleet and decides to turn the Regia Marina to scraps in order to start with a fresh fleet from 1936 onward, thinking he won't go to war against France or Italy for at least 20 years...

2x Cavour class ( 28800t each )
2x Duilio class ( 28700t each )
1x San Giorgio class ( 10167 )

Note that in this timeline Italy does not buy the 2 Tarento class ex-german light cruisers and does not build the 3 Trento and 4 Zara class heavy cruisers. The Condotieri class light cruisers are built later and immediately at the Montecuccoli standard, but we'll speak about that later.

In order not to loose all capacity to protect it's trade to the colonies 3 more Leone class destroyers are built ( for a total of 6 ) and the design bureau are kept working in order not to loose all the italian know-how in naval design.

This means that Mussolini gets 60000t of steel for his industry in the late 20's.

When Hitlers get to power in 1933 he decides to take the same course as Mussolini and recycle the Kriegsmarine :

5x Braunschweig class ( 14,167t )
2x Deutchland class ( 13,200t )
7x Gazelle class light cruisers ( 2,700t )

This gave Germany some 160000t of steel for it's industry.

Both countries also saved a lot of money from those decisions for it was thus able to save on the maintenance costs.

 

[Croesus]

So let's see what Mussolini could get if he decided in 1926 that he needs a better economy more than a fleet and decides to turn the Regia Marina to scraps in order to start with a fresh fleet from 1936 onward, thinking he won't go to war against France or Italy for at least 20 years... In order not to loose all capacity to protect it's trade to the colonies 3 more Leone class destroyers are built ( for a total of 6 ) and the design bureau are kept working in order not to loose all the italian know-how in naval design. This means that Mussolini gets 60000t of steel for his industry in the late 20's.

This is a cool WI.

First thing that came to mind is the matter of 80% of Italian imports coming via the Suez or Gibraltar. So three more destroyers isn't going to protect the colonies/trade in the even of a conflict. Unless that conflict is with France only. Second thing is he's not just making physical savings in raw materials, he's making savings in currency which is going to help him during his impending budget crises.

I'm not clear on your steel calculations and I've done no work around it to date. I understand the main point that RM upgraded old battleships as well as making new ones. The material and cost savings seem to be in three categories: the savings made by non-renewal; the gains made by selling for scrap (if that's what you're proposing); the savings around x ships not being built. Returning a realistic ballpark figure could be challenging (but a lot of fun).

So what does he do with it all? Fiscal prudence is not a Fascist trait so I'd imagine it goes straight into either war production, technical development or Fascist 'feel-good' projects. As Italy sold a lot of it's war material, this in turn gives hard currency that can help buffet the coming economic shocks. Of course you could just end up with truckloads of biplanes and machineguns that jam.

Croesus

 

[Hecatee]

The economies made by Mussolini ( and later Hitler ) are indeed many fold : first they save money not needed for maintenance. Second they gain money from selling the scrap. Third they keep money inside the country as they do not need to buy as much foreign steel since they get thousands of tons from their old ships.

I don't have books here and haven't seen on the internet any figure allowing me to make estimations on the saves but they must be rather high.

In 1928 Italy was still not industrializing much, with many fascist programs being of a more agricultural kind. Thus the money and steel will go to tractor factories and tractor production for a greater mechanization of the agriculture, leading to bigger fuel needs that will have to be resolved. Since Mussolini does not like to depend on foreigners and since the oil in the desert of Libya has not been found he'll need to find another solution. He'll go toward coal conversion for coal is a cheap resource. Thus he improves his petrochimical industry with the help of foreign engineers, mainly German ones.

Also his shipyards stays free to build more merchant ships for importing the coal and the resources from the colonies. This project leads us up to 1934 and the meeting with Hitler.

Hitler and Mussolini like and dislike each other a lot. The main problem is the Austrian question, but this is not all. Yet Hitler finds an example in Mussolini's politic toward his navy and he needs Italy to go around the Versailles treaty restrictions on military designs.

So in may 1934 both leaders decide to pool their resources in naval design to create a common class of light cruisers to be built from 1936 onward.

Thus the situation is a slightly more industrialized Italy by 1934 with more available manpower and a greater land vehicles production capacity.

 

[Riain]

Building a capital ship fleet is a peacetime task, when wartime shortages are not a major problem. If Mussolini provides the money prior to WW2 then the steel can be purchased from anywhere. But far more importantly, why do people think navies and major warships are so expendable? The main result of not building major warships is that the British would be able to run convoys through the Med at will.

 

[Hecatee]

Indeed the British navy as free rule of the waves, as do the French by the way. The whole rationale is that lacking money and having an old fleet which cost a lot to operate and will cost a lot in upgrading is not a good investment and that investing in the economy and building a whole new fleet from scratch when the economy has improved is better, especially since one does not see any war coming before quite some years.

The Italian decision also had consequences on the French and British fleets by the way since the lesser amount of battleships in the world means that the French first, then the British, will cancel some ships programs or retire their oldest ships earlier, providing money for more modern ships. We'll see the consequences later as I'm currently leaving home for a few hours

 

[Hecatee]

The decisions of Italy and Germany were looked at with both surprise and interest in the French and British admiralties. Less battleships meant that they needed less and could save some money too by not building new ships and retiring some of their older ones. France decided in 1934 to disband it's 3 Courbet class battleships, relying on it's 3 Bretagne class ships, already 21 years old, and using the money to finance 4 Dunkerque class battle cruisers instead of two as well as two carriers of the Joffre class design. It was planned that at least 2 Richelieu class battleships ( and up to 4 ) would be built after the Dunkerque while the Bretagne would be scrapped, the main threat being Japan.

In the UK the admiralty was more circumspect because it still wanted to keep ahead of all the world's navies and still had to compete with the US Navy and the IJN who had not adopted the italo-german policies.
Still they decided to scrap all the ships older than the Queen Elizabeth class, keeping 12 battleships of the Queen Elizabeth ( 5 ), Revenge ( 5 ) and Nelson ( 2 ) class. They used the money made available to build newer and faster light cruisers as well as to improve their existing ships.

South America was very interested in all those ships that were suddenly decommissioned, Brazil and Argentine buying 2 Iron Duke ships each while Chili bought the 5th ship of the class.

 

[paxau]

Very interesting this.
And i don't see why Japan wouldn't follow soon after considering that Yamamoto probably was the smartest navy officer of that time.

 

[Hecatee]

Up to the French and British decisions of 1934 and 1935 were looked at with contempt by most officers, yet some argued that the IJN could dismantle the 4 old Kongo battleships for they had been conversions in the first place and were rather old. Also scrapping those four 35000t monsters would provide much needed steel for the new Yamato project for which the designs were giving a weight of some 60 to 70000t. Some even argued for the scrapping of all the battleships save the 2 Nagato class, to be modernized, the canceling of the Yamato class and the building of 8 new modernized Nagato.

Finally it was decided that only two of the Yamato giants would be built along with 4 modernized Nagato and 4 new carriers built on the modernized Akagi design on the design board at the time while the Kongo and Fuso class would both be scrapped for a total of some 175 to 200000t of scrap.

 

[esl]

To what extent can old steel be recycled into new armored warships? The germans conducted tests on the Lineinschiffe armor in the late 1930s and found it could barely resist 5" shells. By my calculation thats about 2/3 of the LOS thickness. It would be like the armor being made of 'mild steel' instead of 'cemented armor'.

As I proposed elsewhere , the germans historically diverted a considerable part of their warship building capability in the 1930s to build a fleet new of support ships like 6 x 3000-5000 ton 'Fleet tenders' , 5 x 22,000 ton 'Fleet tankers', 3-4 x 2000-3000ton 'Training ships' ,25-30 x 900 ton 'Minesweepers' & ~ 75-100 x 100 ton 'coastal craft'. In effect it consumed 1/2 of their ship building.

This was done because Hitler convinced Raeder that war would not come until the mid 1940s or later so he had time to build a major fleet. Most other nations facing the same requirments simply adapted obsolete [WW-I] warships or adapted civilian vessels , to fill these roles. The Germans could have done the same and doubled their warship fleet size by focusing on fixed price batch production, instead of cost plus financing. That would have freed up enough financing to cover both the doubled fleet size and rehabilate the older warships/civilian vessels to fill the vacated support roles.

Better use of existing ship building would not have hurt!

 

[AMF]

Dear Hecatee,
there are some problems with your suggestions.

First of all, raw materials (with the exception of oil) were generally not the critical bottleneck for the German wartime industry, but manufacturing capacity.
Of course, Germany had much less raw material than the US, not to mention the coalition of the US, USSR and UK.
But finding a way of making more raw materials available to Germany would not at all have solved the problem of her armament industries, because she lacked the manufacturing capacity to turn raw materials into weapons even more than she lacked raw materials.

Second, it usually does not make sense to scrap ships in order to get the raw material for new ships if the ships-to-be-scrapped still have useful jobs. A ship that can still play a useful role and weighs, say 10,000 tons is a lot more valuable than
10,000 tons of shipbuilding steel and other materials that can be extracted from it if it is scrapped. 10,000 tons of steel and other materials have, unsurprisingly, only the worth of these 10,000 tons of steel and materials. But the ship, if still performing a useful duty, has the value of these 10,000 tons plus the value of a zillion manhours of construction work, of engineering efforts, the money spent for occuppying a dock, the time spent on sea trials and so on. Scrapping a ship that can do a useful job in order to get the raw materials is spending a lot of time and money (for the workers who are doing the scrapping job itself) in order to convert something valuable (a functioning ship) into something much less valuable (raw materials). And big warships do not become obsolete very quickly in the timeframe that is being discussed. There are quite a number of battleships that saw distinguished service in both World Wars. Iowa class battleships saw action in the Second World War, the Korean and Vietnam wars and the first Gulf War.

Imagine you own a building company and you have just built a number of luxury villas. Now you find out that with other types of buildings, say high-rise office buildings much more money can be made. Of course you do not dismantle the luxury villas in order to salvage the building materials, because the building is much, much more valuable than the materials.

You suggest that the Braunschweig class pre-Dreadnoughts should be scrapped, but this is largely what happened in our timeline: Preussen and Lothringen scrapped in 1931, Braunschweig in 1932, Elsass in 1936. Only Hessen was not scrapped in the thirties, because it was used as a target ship. If you scrap her in order to get the raw material, it is quite probable that building a new target ship costs more than what you gain in the way of raw materials.

Scrapping the Deutschland-class Panzerschiffe does not seem very useful either.
(We are not talking about a timeline here in which these ships are not built in the first place).
Two of the three ships of this class had not even been launched when Hitler came to power and none of them had been commissioned, so they were brand-new then.
Of course they were much inferior to battleships in firepower (that could be said for many ships) and naval air power had made big-gun surface ships obsolescent. Despite this obsolescence I have so far not heard of a battleship that was seaworthy at the beginning of the Second World War and that was scrapped (if not severely damaged in battle before) during this conflict. The US even took the effort of raising some of the older battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor and recommissioning them. All this proves that a ship that can still fight (which the Deutschland-class certainly could) is much more valuable than the mere raw materials that have gone into it, even if the design of the ship is no longer optimal. So I am not saying that building Panzerschiffe is an optimal way of using steel. I am just saying that they are not so bad as to remotely justify their scrapping in the time-frame considered here.

By the way, Grand Admiral Doenitz, had to talk Hitler out of this very idea of scrapping the large surface ships, and he certainly was not a battleship fan, having been the commander of the U-boat arm of the German Navy before he became commander-in-chief of the whole navy.

 

[AMF]

Dear Hecatee,
what I have written in my earlier post still holds true, but I did not take into account that in this timeline Mussolini thinks he will not go to war for twenty years (of course a POD that is in itself much more important than the scrapping of warships).
I must correct myself insofar, that the measures you suggest could make sense - but only if the countries which scrap the ships do not start a war and do not have a war forced upon them - a very major POD in itself.

 

[Hecatee]

Indeed the whole assumption here is that Mussolini thinks he won't be at war for a while and can thus use the resources of the scrapped ships better. And his policy was not to use the resources to build new ships but to put it in other industrial products, thus not using it to build armor for new ships for example. It is the other countries who might be using scrap steel in their building programs but even that is not absolutely sure : they may or may not decide to use the scrap in other industrial projects and thus free higher quality steel for their shipbuilding programs.

While Italy made the decision for economical reasons and with peace for 20 years in mind and Germany did the same with war to their mind a 10 to 15 years distant possibility France and the UK do it only in order to save on the running costs of their navy, money later to be put into their naval construction projects, a move also taken by Japan, but without the strategical thinking of the two first. They do it because they see the others do it, consider they have a period of quiet and can proceed since the Washington treaty is still in force and forbids new naval constructions for some time.

I understand AMF's posture, especially relative to the Deutschland class. But you must also remember that we are just past the 1929 crash here and for Germany this project is also a way to employ many peoples and thus feed them and make them happy, like the autobahn projects and many others. And while I do agree that ships are more than simply the sum of the raw materials built into them it is only valuable as long as the immediate need for a navy is perceived. Which here is not the case : no one could, in 1928, predict WW2. And even in 1934 it was only a dim and far away possibility, it is only by 36 that one could begin to see it coming.

Also the late 20's early 30's are a period of massive changes in naval construction and thus starting a navy from scratch with designs built from start for oil fueled propulsion and triple or quadruple mounts of 16" guns can provide the participants with better ships. Here the collaboration between Germany and Italy in the design of their future ships will lead to improvement to both nation's design ( even if they won't be the same ships ).

About the oil problem you'll have seen that Mussolini's been thinking about it since he launched a petrochimical industry for coal to oil conversion that will greatly help him, at least as much as the greater experience in heavy vehicles designs and production gained by his engineers through the tractor production.

 

[David S Poepoe]

In the UK the admiralty was more circumspect because it still wanted to keep ahead of all the world's navies and still had to compete with the US Navy and the IJN who had not adopted the italo-german policies.
Still they decided to scrap all the ships older than the Queen Elizabeth class, keeping 12 battleships of the Queen Elizabeth ( 5 ), Revenge ( 5 ) and Nelson ( 2 ) class. They used the money made available to build newer and faster light cruisers as well as to improve their existing ships.

Thats what happened historically, tho one can argue that they should have scrapped the Revenge class, if not also the Queen Elizabeths and concentrated on building new battleships. But all that was done because of treaties.

 

[Hecatee]

I'm not sure the UK would have had the money to build a complete, modern fleet of BB during the 20's and early 30's, they had to make many sacrifices to get as far as they did during the late 30's. Here they'll save money and will only launch a new construction program around 1936, first keel laid in 38, so some two years later than the French plan, mostly in answer to the Italian and German projects.

 

[Hecatee]

In 1935 after one year of collaboration the Italians and the Germans saw that their navies had very different priorities : whereas the Germans wanted ships able to raid the British commercial lines in the Atlantic the Italians wanted mainly to establish control of the Mediterranean with ships of lesser range but with better protection than the Germans.

Thus both countries decided to build their own ships but with common guns to save on costs : the heavy guns would be built by Krupps and the lighter ones would be Italian produced. All the design would include German built fire control systems as well as radars.

The 1935 Italian Ship Construction plan stated that 16 light cruisers of a 12 000t design ( OTL Duca degli Abruzzi design with radar ) built 4 at a time, 8 heavy cruisers of a 14 000t design ( OTL a Zara class with heavier armor and radar ) built 2 at a time and 4 battleships of a 45 000t design ( Littorio design with some German inspired armors and using the same guns as the Bismark, also with the same radars and fire control ). The first ships were laid down on the first of January 1936, the first light cruiser to be ready by 1939, the first heavy cruisers by 1940 and the first battleships by 1941. Along with those heavy ships 24 destroyers would be built to take the place of the 12 older ones, at the rhythm of 6 ships a year.

The German plan Z also drawn in 1935 was built around 8 light cruisers ( earlier M class ships ), 4 heavy cruisers ( Hipper class with 11" guns ), 2 battlecruisers ( Scharnorst class design ) and 4 battleships ( modified Littorio design with better range ) as well as 24 destroyers to be built at the rhythm of 4 ships every two years.

These decisions would have a huge impact in th e UK, especially the Italian one for the German plans were kept well hidden from the western powers.

 

[Croesus]

In 1935 after one year of collaboration the Italians and the Germans saw that their navies had very different priorities : whereas the Germans wanted ships able to raid the British commercial lines in the Atlantic the Italians wanted mainly to establish control of the Mediterranean with ships of lesser range but with better protection than the Germans. Thus both countries decided to build their own ships but with common guns to save on costs : the heavy guns would be built by Krupps and the lighter ones would be Italian produced. All the design would include German built fire control systems as well as radars.

Erm... sorry, just caught up on this one. You're going to need to disappear the Italo-French Rome Agreements Jan 7 1935. Specific to the agreements were that France and Italy promised to consult together in the case of a [German] threat to Austrian independence and to consult if Germany should 'modify by unilateral [German] actions here obligations in the matter of armaments'. Italy obtained the surrender of France's interest in Abyssinia and was the final piece of diplomacy required to give Mussolini confidence to invade.

As Italian designs on Abyssinia became apparent the Anglo-French were forced to draw Italy into the Stresa Accords Apr 11 -14 where each affirmed their Locarno commitments to oppose 'by all practicable means any unilateral [German] repudiation of treaties which may engender the peace of Europe'. Mussolini used the two agreements to further his own agenda and, significantly, at this time still considered Austria in the Italian sphere. It was only as a result of trying to untangle himself from the League of Nations sanctions that Mussolini cut a deal with Hitler over Austria in 1936 that the two powers grew close.

So, you'll either have to come up with a diplomatic situation that has Italy and Germany resolve the touchstone Anschluss issue without bad blood developing; or delay your schedule such that your first sentence above reads 'In 1937 after one year of collaboration...'

It is easy to look back and assume the two regimes were cuddling up early, but it really wasn't until mid-late 1937 that Mussolini conclusively threw his lot in with Hitler [well, according to my research anyways]. Until that time Italy was pursuing a policy of 'equidistance' and playing off the various powers against each other.

Croesus

 

[David S Poepoe]

I'm not sure the UK would have had the money to build a complete, modern fleet of BB during the 20's and early 30's, they had to make many sacrifices to get as far as they did during the late 30's. Here they'll save money and will only launch a new construction program around 1936, first keel laid in 38, so some two years later than the French plan, mostly in answer to the Italian and German projects.

On another website an individual did prove that historically the British Government could have built the G3 class battlecruisers in the 1920s if they had wanted to - and if there had been no Washington Naval Treaty.

 

[Hecatee]

Well here the Italo-German cooperation is only on the naval side, the one which does concern Austria the less, and it is the consequence of negociations made as early as 34, before the Austrian question became such a thorn in their relations.

The other treaties are still taking place for two reasons : first the Germans plans are kept rather secret, even from Italy, and the public part of the program is officially inside Versaille's limitations in tonnage since only 4 destroyers, 4 light cruisers, 2 battle cruisers and 2 battleships are launched on the first year, which is close to what Versailles forced on the Germans.

Real close cooperation between Italy and Germany will only be taking place after 1937's Anschluss with cooperation in aircraft design, especially maritime patrol and attack plane design. What happened until now was only naval ships design cooperation and an agreement to buy some equipments in the other country ( which is mainly a way for me to give Italy radar, fire control and efficient guns )

 

[ThomasG]

Hecatee, the Italian Radars were far superior to anyone else's sets. They just didn't use them due to all the bureaucratic bullshit different Government Agencies demanded before it would be approved for use.

 

[Wozza]

Hecatee, the Italian Radars were far superior to anyone else's sets. They just didn't use them due to all the bureaucratic bullshit different Government Agencies demanded before it would be approved for use.

Do you have any evidence for this whatsoever?