British debt from WWI

Funnily enough it wasn't the pork from Denmark that was a problem - at least I don't recall it being one. (Denmark was pretty dependent on exports to the UK). The more important emotional symbols were the rationing of bread (grain cost hard currency, not kronor) which had never been rationed during the war, and the great coal shortage and power shutdowns of 1947 (for instance cinemas were only allowed to open in the evening, not in the morning). The latter wasn't due to lack of ability to pay for imports, since Britain has always had plenty of coal.

Originally posted by gcle2003   As for Soviet tanks in the '20s, that's not the impression one gets from http://www.irvania.com/downloads/TBOTRus1.pdf http://skoblin.blogspot.com/2009/02/russian-renault-ks-10-m-tank.html http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/Italy/italy.html http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/quarters/1975/g_tnkita.htm

i have it from the books Armoured units of the Russian Civil War (volumes 1 + 2) and it was actually Britain herself (and France) that contributed to this ranking. other than tanks, armoured cars and armoured trains are also counted to the total number of armoured vehicle assets posessed by the Soviet Union. Italy under Mussolini concentrated strongly on tanks even more so than France and at the eve of ww2 they had more tanks (mostly tankettes though) than Britain. you're right the inter-war period is long and i basically mixed both facts together i think. Germany didn't increased the standing army until 1935 when the Wehrmacht was created.

It weakened it slightly. On the other hand it recognised that Britain should continue to have the world's most powerful navy.

Not al all actually Pike, Germany was no longer a threat in the Naval department (and never really was again) and from 1919 to 1936 the RN IIRC considered the Japanese to be its main threat, in the event of war, the RN would be dispatched en mass there. The RN could no longer dominate every ocean at the same time, but it could dominate any ocean it chose to.

You are looking at the situation from a US-Centric position. The US did not have dozens of bases world over which could be activated at a moments notice, as opposed to the US which needed its fleets physically near the center of the action. Pretty standard operation for the RN (and indeed the British Army), during the second world war, the British routinely moved formations between the theatres, un,ike the US.

Originally posted by Sparten You are looking at the situation from a US-Centric position. The US did not have dozens of bases world over which could be activated at a moments notice, as opposed to the US which needed its fleets physically near the center of the action. Pretty standard operation for the RN (and indeed the British Army), during the second world war, the British routinely moved formations between the theatres, un,ike the US.

Edited by pikeshot1600 - 21-Apr-2009 at 23:43

Edited by pikeshot1600 - 23-Apr-2009 at 14:22