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PaperclipPerfector
11hr ago
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The new nerd-sniping question is circulating on Twitter. Who would win in a war: 1939 Europe or 2026 Africa? As usual, both camps are 100% their side would win.
My bet is on 1939 Europe. As the Russo-Ukrainian and the US-Iran wars show, ammunition stockpiles run out in a couple of weeks. Africans won't have missiles for their fighter jets and shells for their MBTs, while Europeans will be cranking out bombs and strategic bombers to turn Cairo into Dresden. When German subs destroy whatever boats Africans have, French and British navies will perform naval landings, their troops armed with reverse-engineered AKs.
I think a lot of people who are heavily in Camp Europe forget about North Africa (which has, at least on paper, hundreds of F-16s and even a few more advanced aircraft, such as the Rafale and Su-57.) Algeria in particular would be a huge threat, as their Su-24s, 30s, 34s, and 35s have pretty good range. The entire Mediterranean would be a shooting gallery overnight; modern strike aircraft can sink or disable pretty much any combatant of the time with comparative ease.
German submarines (most of which I don't think can reach the Med in '39) will not help; the Egyptian navy (which has a number of ASW ships) would almost certainly eat them for lunch. You're trying to kill a ~modern ASW ship with straight-runners that can reach 4 miles on a good day, and even the least experienced destroyer commander can probably just turn his massive sonar on, spot you, and kill you before you can even get a firing solution.
People are going to tell me that the Egyptians are incompetent; likely this is true (certainly what I have read about them in the past indicates this; I don't know if they've gotten better since) but what we're talking about here isn't that much more advanced than "can you drive a boat and push a button" - even employing the weapons in the most brain-dead way possible will shred European navies of the day.
The case for Europe is that they will outlast Africa's modern munitions and equipment and crush them on the other side. I do think that's plausible. In actual ground battles, I am not sure that Africa will end up being favored if they run low on their qualitative edge (air cover, long-range missiles, etc.) But Africa actually does have its own defense industry; I think it's mostly for small arms but African countries have been able to make (for instance) jet engines and smart munitions in the past, and a quick Google shows they even have some domestic semiconductor production. It seems plausible that the actual end scenario is that African strategic bombers with chemical or even nuclear weapons are hitting Berlin long before the Europeans figure out how to push past the Suez (defended by more than 1,000 M1A1s!) On the other hand, it could be a situation where the Russians churn out so many T-34s that the qualitative edge doesn't end up mattering.
There's a lot of things that the scenario doesn't really specify (including the "win" condition and if countries would magically forget preexisting tensions or not). If 1939 Europe is transported to our world, then their trade networks get totally upset. But if it's modern Africa that gets transported to 1939 Europe's world, their trade (to say nothing of communications networks, etc.) gets tenderized. If the idea is "put them both on an infinite featureless plain" then I do think it advantages Europe relatively, since they will likely be able to produce what they need for their supply chain domestically.
Given this scenario it would mostly be North Africa vs. the Third Reich, the USSR, and the UK (are we including the latter two or not)? Against the Third Reich they maybe could win. Maybe. There's about 250 million North Africans in 2026, the Third Reich had only 80 million people. Against all 3 powers probably not.
The real question is if the North Africans can compel al-Ahhswidæt to be cannon fodder. Then maybe they could win against all of Europe. Is that allowed in 2026? Do they have a mechanism for it? Would it work even if tried? It would be a tight war, and with very heavy casualties for the Africans even if they win.
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Africa is not realistically building postwar-capability strategic bombers on their own (and I've commented below on nuke capacity), but a Boeing 777 modified to drop barrels of chemical weapons from above the ceiling of early-war fighters is definitely within the realm of possibility. The European naval strategy would have to be "go where the enemy isn't" - U-boats were raiding Cape Town by 1941, so the African navy would be pinned to defending key ports.
What makes you say this? Egypt and South Africa have both built jet engines. That's going to be the hardest part of, say, a 1960s-era bomber.
U-boats in 1941 get easily pwned by even Cold War ASW destroyers with helicopters. "Who would win: a pre-war U-boat with limited underwater capacity, poor speed, and terrible quieting, or an ASW destroyer with active sonar, a helicopter, and a towed array meant to detected nuclear submarines with rafted machinery" is the "nuclear bomb versus coughing baby" question of this scenario. Very plausible for a single African destroyer to detect and destroy these submarines at 60 miles. The main risk is running out of ammunition (assuming basic technical competency and that the normal ASW equipment has been retained on these ships, which might not be the case.)
I think the only more uneven match-up is African strike aircraft against the European surface fleet.
I have some experience in African aviation. I may be underestimating the Egyptians, but Apartheid South Africa's jet engine work was building (sophisticated!) parts for foreign jet engines, and South Africa no longer has any capacity like that (they're still struggling to build their own drone). Team Africa does have a lot of civilian jet engines and airliners they can repurpose, but that would take a lot of time and testing. Scaling things is also much harder in Africa than in Europe, whether it's precision technology or building roads, for cultural and presumably HBD reasons.
60 miles seems like a long range but Africa is really big and the ocean is even bigger. A 60-mile radius of Cape Town barely even covers False Bay. But you don't even want to use U-boats in this scenario - they needed them back in WWII, but here you use surface commerce raiders as disposable assets and Africa is toast (their aircraft are too rangecucked to fight a Battle of the Atlantic). Willingness of the crews is an issue but OTL U-boat service was also largely a death sentence, and if we put that into the scenario we also have to ask how many African soldiers would be willing to charge machinegun nests. Note also that per Claude, Africa has ~17 ships capable of modern ASW, plus a comparable number of their own submarines. These would have to be put in a basically defensive posture imo to keep key ports safe and stop raiders from rounding the Cape.
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