NationStates Jolt Archive

(ATTN: Carloginias)

"Praise to King Samukhan!" the presidents of Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Faroe Islands roboticly told the King.

"Good morning, gentlemen." King Samukhan said to his four presidents.

They were in an ancient war room, with dust floating around with warcharts that have remained unused since the invasion of the Faroe Islands, that Samukhan's father had mounted. After given the required salute, the presidents st down in their chairs.

"As you know, for some time now I have been planning an invasion of Finland, and we have just heard that Carloginias is invading Belarus. If their plan is what I think it is, they want to control the Baltic Sea. Exactly what I was hoping to do."

"Well, our Navy is all along the East Coast of Sweden. Maybe, from Stockholm, we land at Lithuania and help the Russians in Belarus." replied the Swedish President, John Reinfeldt.

"No! Our plan is not to help the Russians- but to beat them to it. We have some powerful allies. We can do it."

Laughs of amusement echoed around the long, patronising, war-room, before fading when they found Samukhan was serious.

"How do you expect do beat the Russians?" said Terry Eidesgaard, the Faroe Island President. "They have a 1.3 million man army- a tenth of our total population! 500,000 men are invading Belarus!"

"Forced recrutment is a wonderful thing, Mr Eidesgaard. We simply force a quarter of our population to recrit in the armed forces. Men can fight, women can work. All I have do do is pass a law..."

After a long pause, Eric Stoltenberg, Norway President, stood up to speak.

"That's 3.5 million people! We'll have the biggest Army in the world!"

"And what about the children?" questioned Micheal Ragnar, Iceland President. "What will they do?"

"I have thought of a perfect solution for that problem. We can train in our education system. Training future soldiers for a career in the Armed Forces."

"I have the law here...", continued Samukahn, "All you have to do is sign it, and the sea shall be ours!"

The presidents all knew to do what Samukahn says. They remembered Terry's scars, cuts and bruses.

"Praise to King Samukhan!" the presidents of Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Faroe Islands roboticly told the King, signing the law to increase the armed forces to 3.5 million.

OOC: Basicly, Samukhan is planning an invasion of Finland, increasing his army to 3.5 million to do so. From there, he is planning to go south to control the Baltic Sea, just like the Russians.

OOC: You know you can't sustain those numbers? You'll go bankrupt, starve your people and destroy your society, in that order.

Yeah. A 1936 society certainly can't support the same numbers that, say, a agarian society can, simply because there's more infrastructure that supports your army. You don't have men making swords and spears who then go to the army, you have factory workers who make particular gun parts, designers who improve weaponry.. with improved technology comes far greater complexity. If you remove too many of one group of skiller workers, the economy comes tumbling down.

Yeah. A 1936 society certainly can't support the same numbers that, say, a agarian society can, simply because there's more infrastructure that supports your army. You don't have men making swords and spears who then go to the army, you have factory workers who make particular gun parts, designers who improve weaponry.. with improved technology comes far greater complexity. If you remove too many of one group of skiller workers, the economy comes tumbling down.

OOC: OK. How many would you suggest?

OOC: Well, for starters.. it really depends. The larger your army, the harder it is to maintain, to put it simply. You've got one less person producing food, whilst still eating it, and using supplies without creating any. And, more importantly, a massive army upgrade can't be sustained like that - to mobilize a quarter of your people, you have less people making guns and bullets and supplies, and more people using them. So you could recruit a quarter of your population - but they'd be starving, underarmed, and likely have low morale.

Considering, though, that this is the period in which numbers started to mean less. The over-the-top trench warfare of WW1 is gone, and hyper-effective weapons such as planes, panzers, and the like have appeared. Considering this. The French Army, and Polish Army were both larger than the German one of the times. And yet Germany conquered half of Poland, and all of France, with minimal casualties.

I'd consider 10% to be an absolute upper limit that you can sustain - although you'll slowly drive your economy into the ground, and your soldiers will be poorly armed. 5% is the upper limit for non-emergencies - simply because you can sustain that, even though it costs a lot.

Also, conquest in this age wasn't necessarily entirely military. Take Hitler's annexation of Austria - the Anschluss, in which he used minimal military force, and was met by cheering people. You can annex a nation through economic threats, slowly eat up its territory piece, or sign agreements with them to unify your nations, bit by bit - military occupation and annexation sparks rebellions, revolt, and certainly doesn't get the maximum effort out of your conquered populace.

Um. Considering I haven't yet finished the post entering Belarus I am not entirely sure that it is relevant. If you want a meeting with a Russian delegate, feel free (Over your issues with the baltic). And please note that your nation really can't know about the size of my army right now, unless you have sent spies in.

OOC: The size of your army is sufficiently evident that anyone who is interested can know it. You can conceal a certain number of special forces or whatever, but the broad size of your army, to the nearest 10,000 or so, can't be kept secret.

IC: The Incognitian government has expressed concern over expansionist tendencies amongst the Baltic nations which will inevitably lead to conflict.