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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.
I think the real question is what the UK decides to do. (The USSR really isn't "Europe"; if anything, they'd be on the side of Africa- how do they benefit from a strong Europe? Not that they're in any position to attack in '39.) If they intervene on the Continental side, Europe wins; if they intervene on the African side, Europe loses.
Europe has all the manufacturing power but no resources; Africa has all the resources but no manufacturing power.
Nuclear weapons make manpower irrelevant and they can be delivered ballistically into North Africa from European positions (and Germany is famous for this capability); in a world whose neutral countries do not know what they do, there's no taboo against their use (outside of the Africans, but they're at war, so their protests don't matter, not that they would to the average European in 1939).
Once European scientists figure out that it's not only possible, but relatively trivial, to build them (especially if they have colony resources to draw on) the war goes cold the minute Cairo and Tripoli are erased by atomic power. The Africans will have a harder time with it even though they straight up start with a reactor that has already been used to do this, but that has more to do with South Africa than anything else (and the defection of any remaining sympathetic South African scientists will be a huge problem for the Africans- a joint UK/NL expeditionary force securing modern scientific knowledge would be catastrophic for the African position- and European survival is also dependent on who else recognizes this, and by that I mostly mean the Americans).
Something people forget about modern Africa is that currently they have literally zero ability to actually invade Europe (currently their idea of an 'invasion' is a civilian vessel or a Castaway-tier raft; scary in the Bronze Age or maybe Europe ca. 2026). They have no naval forces, no heavy lift aircraft, and very little ability to build them. Sure, they could do an air war as a Pearl Harbor-style shock and awe campaign, but once they're out of ammunition (and more importantly than those things, jet/diesel fuel) they have zero ability to replace them.
By the time they've built that capacity, 1939 Europe is a nuclear state.
They do have naval forces, surprisingly, but very limited combat experience. British commandos operating from Gibraltar would probably be able to hijack a couple frigates from Morocco or Algeria.
You're not unloading troops or tanks from a frigate, though. You need lots of landing craft and a place to land at for that, and it's apparently geographically unfavorable to land in Europe on the Mediterranean coast (Spain doesn't really count, by the way; you're not driving through the mountain border to France).
If you want to conquer territory and impose your law, you have to get your men there so they can occupy it (and enforce that claim). If you can't get your men there, you don't control the territory, simple as, and that's as true in 1939 as it is in 2026.
No, you're not. The question is how long can Africa use whatever modern vessels they have to block European landings? If they had a capability to make naval drones, then practically indefinitely, but they do not, so they would have to use their limited pool of fighters to bomb European ships first, then use anti-ship missiles and torpedoes, then they would be screwed.
They might be able to do that indefinitely, but this seems to presuppose the framing of "they literally start a D-Day assault on day 1", and I don't think that's what would happen. Just because two 'nations' are at war doesn't require them to do the equivalent of immediately running full speed at each other with spears.
It turns out that it's really, really hard to invade by sea. The last time a state that could reasonably claim to be a European Union conquered North Africa you only needed 2 digits to write the year, and the
EUSPQR had pushed their territory so far east they could literally just walk from Rome to the [ruins of] Carthage without crossing any borders. It would take them a while, and you're better off by ship, but you could do it.I think the best Africa could hope for in the limited time (and with the limited number of modern weapons) they have is a quick conquest of Spain. Spain has been conquered [via Africa] before, and 1939 Spain has just been (quite literally) decimated by a civil war. Toppling Franco might be all that's needed to extend Africa's borders to the Pyrenees, and that's easy for the weapons modern Africa has.
Once they have that, theatre goes cold (and now Africa can disrupt shipping in the Mediterranean). Maybe Britain's crazy enough to try landing but I think they get Dieppe'd if they do.
Come to think of it, if there's any "run with spears out at each other lol" going on it's happening in the Near East, because invading through Macedonia doesn't require a navy Africa doesn't have. Though even being able to blockade at Gibraltar creates one more problem and requires answering "is the rest of the world in 2026 or 1939"? Because a 2026 Israel is nuclear, so game's over for the side they ally with, which is probably going to be 1939 Europe mainly because 1939 Europe would let them get away with conquering the entire Levant in a way 2026 America (or 2026 Africa) would not tolerate.
Or maybe that's moot because the other nuclear powers all agree to turn 1939 Europe into a wasteland for the exact same reasons they went to war with 1939 Europe back in 1939, so...
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