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Guns into Butter (BROB disarms the Third Reich in September 1939)

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The Response Abroad, Part 1
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    • The first reports of what happened reached London and Paris before the day was out, but were dismissed, reasonably enough, as impossible and delusional. The French and British governments, impelled by the inertia of martial diplomacy, declared war on the 3rd of September.

    The first crossings of the German border in the west were by photo reconnaissance pilots whose work, undisturbed by flak and fighters, brought a terrifying credibility to the intelligence reports. Tentative infantry probes across the border into the Saarland went unopposed, and were followed in turn by larger troop movements.

    In the east, the Polish army, having swept aside the panicking would-be invaders, moved to secure Danzig and the mountain passes across the Tatras and the Carpathians. The Danziger police, SA, and SS units were captured, and a sizeable Polish military garrison was established in the city to protect various extraterritorial facilities provided for by treaty. A slower advance into Pomerania, East Prussia, and Silesia would follow in the coming days.

    The USSR was somewhat slower to react. The pervasive paranoia created by Stalin's purges was not conducive to timely reporting of true, but utterly implausible, facts. Once it became clear that, acts of God or no acts of God, the Wehrmacht had suffered an absolute rout on all fronts and Germany was on the verge of capitulation, the planned Red Army invasion was deferred for reconsideration.
     
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    • Japan does not mess with the Soviets, during the OTL the Japanese outright refused to launch attacks against the Soviets and attack lend lease ships loaded with cargo for the Soviets. I think if Stalin could make a pact similar to the one he had made with Germany but with the Japanese, one in which they cut up uncolonized Asia between the two powers and so long as they don't attack the western powers they should be good.
     
    I foresee a lot of changes to various drill manuals. Present...toast! Just doesn't have the same ring too it...
     
    Red Shirt said:
    Japan does not mess with the Soviets,
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    The final engagements of the battles of Khalkhyn Gol occurred on the 31st of August, 1939, when Soviet and Mongolian forces under the command of komkor Zhukov completed the destruction of the 23rd Infantry Division of the Imperial Japanese Army (which had been encircled several days earlier).

    General Komatsubara started planning a further counteroffensive, which was cancelled OTL when an armistice between Japan and the USSR was signed in Moscow on the 15th of September 1939, two days before the USSR invaded eastern Poland under the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

    In a Butterunglück timeline, there is the reasonable prospect that either Komatsubara would have attempted a further counterattack or – with the invasion of Poland deferred due to incredible circumstances – Stalin might have greenlit a Red Army advance into Manchuria.
     
    This presents some...interesting religious implications. This is basically divine trolling.
     
    Oh my! I really hope you continue this, because I love it when people take a silly premise seriously. Plus, it is rare for premises about truly bored ROB trolling to actually get explored. You're on fertile ground here I think.

    I do think the degree to which vehicles get turned into butter should be tuned down though, so we don't drown too much Kriegsmarine personnel.

    Since the BROB only destroyed Germany's weapons and not the factories, I wonder how long it will take before at least some divisions are re-armed with small arms? Not a real army of course but it will stop the poles from getting to Berlin within a day. Speaking of offensives, in OTL France 'launched' a half-assed attack into the Saarland on September 7. Perhaps it will be more eventful than in OTL? More generally, what is Germany's monthly production of tanks and aircraft at this time?

    On a more worrysome note, how many metric tons of butter *has* germany just acquired? And is there any risk of infection spread by butter left rotting in the sun?
     
    Nyvis said:
    Japan can't not piss off the west because they still need oil.
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    They have a lot of oil in conqered Manchuria - but nobody discovered that. Just like Italian in Libya. interesting, how WW2 would be affected, if both Axis countries discovered that ?
    P.S i like butter idea,becouse it is dealing with enemy in unorthodox way. I one read one book, in which some people could rearrange reality - for example, turn enemy army into your loyal minions,who always worshipped you.
    I love stories, when you could act in that way. Becouse cutting enemy down is just...boring, i think.
     
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    General_Urist said:
    I do think the degree to which vehicles get turned into butter should be tuned down though, so we don't drown too much Kriegsmarine personnel.
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    It's a difficult one. I specifically wanted the situation with vehicles to be "restoring naval, air, and armoured combat ability is not a simple case of building new guns and attaching them".

    There are a couple of other facets of the destruction of vehicles which are problematic. Coal, fuel oil, kerosene, and ordinary petrol do not fall under any of the listed categories.

    I would certainly be open to adding "fuels and lubricants transported on the affected vehicles" to the list of transformed materials, and a comment to the effect "air, armour, and naval crews were transported unharmed to the nearest settlement in Germany".
    Since the BROB only destroyed Germany's weapons and not the factories, I wonder how long it will take before at least some divisions are re-armed with small arms?
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    While it didn't destroy the arms factories, one or two of them seem likely to suffer from fires (from things like part-completed tank hulls turning into paper and butter halfway through having things welded onto them), and the ones that don't would still face a certain amount of logistical chaos from things like "Finished Goods is now packed to the rafters with butter".

    (Conservation of mass, and the Pauli exclusion principle, were honoured at all times, and a Kar98k's weight in 4oz sticks of butter won't fit in the space occupied by a Kar98k.)
     
    I wonder, how much if any do we know what Franco-British-Polish plans OTL were in the case where Germany was defeated really quickly after Sep 1939 with Poland never falling? I'm guessing we wouldn't see as aggressive an ethnic cleansing in the east but I may be wrong.
     
    General_Urist said:
    I wonder, how much if any do we know what Franco-British-Polish plans OTL were in the case where Germany was defeated really quickly after Sep 1939 with Poland never falling? I'm guessing we wouldn't see as aggressive an ethnic cleansing in the east but I may be wrong.
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    They were no such plans, becouse Polish generals expected to be massacred to give time for France to defeat Germany. And France, sadly, never seriously planned to take over entire Germany. So, in this scenario, they would capture Germany territory and then ask themselves "what next" .
    Considering, that nobody expect Germany planned such thing as ethnic cleasing in 1939, there would be no such things. Even when poles discover Eizetzgruppens with plans of murdering all polish elites, they would do nothing except imprisoning them - becouse nobody was killed yet.

    P.S ploughs would be better then butter - becouse crews of planes could save themselves using parachutes/ do not work well covered in butter/ , and crews of warships could at least try to swim. Against, fat chance for that after being covered in nasty stuff.
     
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    ATP said:
    ploughs would be better then butter - becouse crews of planes could save themselves using parachutes/ do not work well covered in butter/ , and crews of warships could at least try to swim. Against, fat chance for that after being covered in nasty stuff.
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    The butter is in the form of American-standard 4oz. sticks, wrapped in greaseproof paper, at the approximate temperature of the equipment it used to be. Your plane, for the most part, falls apart around you rather than melting.

    If I was going to do a scenario involving ploughshares, it'd probably be themed around the wrath of YHWH descending upon sinful man, filtered through the mercy of the Son (hence "your swords are now ploughshares" rather than "the Ten Plagues revisited"), rather than a BROB trolling the Reich.
     
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