OOH, I’M ‘BOUT TO ACT A FOOL

[u/-FantasticFoxx-]

Twitter/X has recently been debating as to whether modern Africa could beat 1939 Germany in a war

…Found the hypothetical rather amusing

[u/ElectroNikkel]

Africa steamrolls the first 2 weeks.

After that...

[u/Player420154 → u/ElectroNikkel]

They continue steamrolling because they aren't idiot and can produce at least at 1980 quality level of weapons which is largely enough to crush 1939 Europe. which by the way has no way to invade Africa. while Africa can build its invasion force in peace. Once the oil field are sized, the marvellous European logistic will mostly neigh.

[u/ElectroNikkel → u/Player420154]

As long as no tech gets captured or gets observed by the Europeans to them move manufacturing to the Urals if the rest of the continent gets too damaged to keep waging conflict? Yeah, specially if the African Datacenters have repositories with the information of where each factory in Europe back in the day is to make good use of their limited stockpile of precision ammunition or their about to become unserviceable high end vehicles.

As long as they cripple Europe in the first round, Africa wins.

Otherwise it would become a horrifying war of atrittion where suddendly Europeans would be starting to catch up, developing at an unpredictable rate with unpredictable new stuff (Even if primitive), and that is no bueno if Africa degrades itself to Cold War era levels because of lack of satellites and locally sourced precision guidance systems (Among other things) and Europe is left standing enough to catch up to at least that.

So, basically, if Africa doesn't cull them off quick, i'll be a race between Europe modernizing and increasing their existing industrial capacity at huge leaps (Like seen in WWII but at a random, hastened rate thanks to reverse engineering) and Africa setting up the capabilities and foundries to locally source replacement parts (And ammunition) for their equipment in general.

Albeit in that case Africa SHOULD still win because it has basically all kinds of raw resources (Some of which Europe relied on even back in the day), and 1.5 billion people is still a fucking shitload of people, and already equipping them all with self procured Cold War era equipment should be enough to keep pressure up to make Europe capitulate. Eventually.

If that doesn't work, Southafrica could roll up the nuke program again. By this time Germany had already shooed off most of the scientists that could actually help with making nukes of their own.

[u/Frech_Toast_King → u/ElectroNikkel]

what people forget when assuming that finding a rusty AK means that you'd instantly copy it is that you don't just need the tool, you need the right materials, to develop the right alloy, the precision tooling, the manufacturing process, find the right propelant mix, the steps of making it... and that's before testing, phasing, producing, distributing... also all of that could at any time be undone by an air raid going too fast and too high to ever be stopped

[u/ElectroNikkel → u/Frech_Toast_King]

Counterargument: In that era they were already ad portas of exactly these breakthroughs. The AK was literally issued in the 47 and the Sturmgewehr 44, its inspiration, already had previous prototypes, with the design tracing back right into ~1939 by the C.G. Haenel company. Same thing with radar, transistor technology and other important advancements. All existed theoretically, and now you will be giving 60% of the world's manufacturing capability of the era proof that their concepts are actually possible.

Albeit I already explained that it would be hard if they are bombed into oblivion before they can actually do anything with this.

[u/Frech_Toast_King → u/ElectroNikkel]

okay fair enough for the ak, bad example, but it's everything from electronics, battery technologies, plastics, etc... this is equivalent to saying that since people in 1953 could build an IBM 701 they could easily build El Capitan, we've had decades of accumulated knowledge in between that you can't subsidize by a few stolen finished products

[u/ElectroNikkel → u/Frech_Toast_King]

EASILY!?

XD lol, lmao, that's gonna be the whole drama of how the war is gonna play.

It IS everything, Europe at the time had the R&D and capabilities as to start their research, but that's gonna take them YEARS. Captured tech is gonna help em make incredible leaps by getting insight in what solutions were taken and what constraints, margins of error and material strength will have to match, but that is still just shortening development from decades to years.

Africa on the other hand, has barely any foundries and steelmaking plants to make new steel to replace their components compared to even 1939 Europe, but now they will have the incentive to ramp this production up. And this will take them, you guessed it! YEARS!

Would be an interesting fight provided Europe survive the first strike without capitulating and manages to adapt the actually batshit insane strategies Africans are known for to do with civilian stuff.

[u/achilleasa → u/ElectroNikkel]

Absolutely not, you think a 1939 level civilization could copy a microprocessor if they got their hands on one???

[u/ElectroNikkel → u/achilleasa]

Not a microprocessor (They would at least get the gist of them but not copy them), but the transistor! But even that would be YEARS of hard work only to get basic transistors, thing that would look like this:

• Look at their circuit boards! They have these strange rectangles with pins that are interconnected to the board and all of these new components!

• Oh, well, what are you waiting for? Put them on a microscope!

• Uh, the details seems too small for a normal microscope...

• Well, use the new electron microscopes then! And what the spectrography analysis says they are made out of?

• Silicon. Almost pure silicon. And there are some traces of boron? phosphorus?

• So it is a semiconductor! The theories were right! It is possible! But silicon... Well, Germanium kinda does the same according to our science and is easier to melt, so that will have to do.

And after the electron microscope results showing that is basically a scaled up Z3 computer but in miniature, they will know what the deal is with these.

That or they just find and kinda get insight from MOSFETs or diodes or stuff more macro from our modern circuit boards. 

Keep this line of work for several years and you will have them develop the first transistor a couple years prior to Bell Labs at the very least. Very uesful for microwave radar technology and basic computers to make artillery shooting tables to be more precise and cheaper!

Also very important to miniaturize proximity fuse flak ammunition, the bane of modern drones, tech that was in development back then.

[u/achilleasa → u/ElectroNikkel]

I mean sure but if we are allowing the Europeans to get a few years of RND by then Africa will have actual nukes. If we are keeping things fair.

[u/ElectroNikkel → u/achilleasa]

Of course. I think I mentioned it in other response.

Would be a race between R&D to catch up for Europe vs establishment of local industrial capacity by Africa to refine their raw resources into steel, silicon and other raw materials to feed their industry, carried mainly by South Africa and Egypt.

[u/bearded_wizard_qwert → u/ElectroNikkel]

This is the only true answer. Everyone else is wrong.

[u/NCD_Lardum_AS → u/ElectroNikkel]

As long as no tech gets captured or gets observed

They can make all of none of it.

1939 Europe has none of the manufacturing technology and if presented with a modern rifle (much less a tank) would be unable to mass produce them for the exact same reason they didn't in history.

Literally nothing about the AK was new. It simply just wasn't feasible to make a million of that kind of weapon at the time.