SPECULATION State of the Empire

Yep poetry.

 

Well seeing how they named their new comic "shattered empire" and the description of "aftermath", I came to a simple conclusion that the empire may still have influence but they are probably going through political turmoil. Remnants of the empire may be controlled by their moffs that have their own interest at hand. Kinda like the legends timeline. The moffs will probably have more influence then the politicians on coruscant which are slowly losing grip over the empire. Each moff may upgrade their armies and navy to meet their individual needs making each regional military unique. Rebals will def use this to their advantage.

 

Empire wasn't defeated. They had a galaxy; the entire fleet wasn't around a remote moon.

 

Let's all give @Bluestreaking a round of applause on an amazing article touching on this thread!

 

NO

 

Bluestreaking, bravo on your blog editorial about this! As I mentioned in the comments there, I agree with all three main points you raised there.

First off, the death of the Emperor was undoubtedly a huge blow to the Empire, but it wouldn't have made the Empire crumble overnight. While Palpatine held central power and his regional governors reported directly to him, those governors were (as Tarkin noted in ANH) granted direct control over their territories and would have had everything in place for quite awhile once things went sour for the Imps at Endor.

That's one thing that really fell by the wayside in the OT, and that a lot of us tend to forget about. By ESB, the focus was almost all on the personal drama between Luke, Vader and the Emperor as well as the Rebels' goal of taking down the Emperor once and for all. We never really saw anything more about operations at the regional/territorial level.

But yeah, though supply lines would have probably gotten fouled up pretty badly, I don't think the regional governors would have simply packed up and gone home after Endor. And I think that's probably a big part of what we'll see as the Imperial threat in TFA - those governors whose territories didn't rise up against them probably banded together and grew into something pretty formidable.

A large portion of the Imperial Navy was indeed wiped out at Endor, but I cannot imagine that the Emperor would have pulled every last star destroyer off of their stations and sent the entire Imperial Starfleet to Endor. With all of the worlds under the Emperor's control, that fleet would have had to have been composed of hundreds, even thousands of star destroyers. What we saw at Endor numbered in the dozens, at most.

And even if we assume that every star destroyer at Endor was destroyed or captured by the Rebels (and I never got the impression that this was the case) the Empire was simply too large and powerful for that to have spelled the end for the Imperial fleet. As you point out in your poker analogy, the Empire was far and away the big stack player in that game.

Pearl Harbor is a great example. The Japanese damaged all eight battleships in the harbor, and sank four of them (though all but one eventually were returned to active duty) and I think eight or ten smaller ships were damaged as well, though I think just about all of them were eventually repaired and put back into service as well.

But it wasn't a crippling blow to us, especially since none of our carriers were there. And even though they nailed most of our battleships, several of them were back in service in 1942, and we had such a prodigious manufacturing capacity that Pearl Harbor only ended up being a temporary setback. Six months later, we hit the Japanese back hard at Midway.

I cannot imagine that the battle of Endor, as costly as it was to the Empire, came anywhere close to wiping out the Imperial Navy or its capacity to wreak havoc on the Rebels.

Now, the power vacuum in the wake of the deaths of the Emperor and, to a lesser extent, Vader... THAT'S where the wild card comes in, IMHO. Palpatine was still at the top of the food chain, and his death would not only have disrupted production and supply lines, but it would also have undoubtedly begun internecine struggles between various governors and other military leaders as they jockeyed for position to take over control of the Empire. That probably did as much damage as the loss of the Death Star and all of those capital ships.

As for everyone in the galaxy turning on the Empire en masse after Endor, that never seemed too realistic to me either. Granted, there was a necessary "happily ever after" vibe at the end of ROTJ since Lucas didn't plan on making more sequels. But really, there were still the regional governors controlling their territories, which would have prevented a lot of worlds from rebelling, and then there were probably also plenty of worlds where the citizens tended to prefer the stability that the Empire brought them. Maybe they weren't free, "but at least the trains ran on time and there was food on the table."

I was recently re-reading a manuscript I have by a Goodyear employee who was sent to Germany in the mid 1930s to work with the Zeppelin company. In it, there is a lot about the socio-political scene in Germany circa 1935-1936, and one thing struck me. The author talks about how the populace reacted to the Nazi government, and while it was largely the younger Germans who got caught up in the whole thing, a lot of older Germans who weren't crazy about the thuggish attitudes of the Berlin government and their supporters also found themselves liking the fact that the country was out of economic squalor for the first time in almost a generation. The quote that the author reported hearing variations on repeatedly was, "We've never had it so good... if only it doesn't lead to war."

I would imagine that in the GFFA, a similarly misguided but pragmatic viewpoint may well have prevailed among the various Imperial-held systems. The Empire was oppressive, true. But I can see a lot of worlds thinking that without the Empire, what would happen to trade and security throughout the system? And certainly, the regional governors would have ratcheted up their propaganda, warning of pirates, terrorists, and what have you if these worlds were no longer under the Empire's protection.

In a realistic sense, this whole situation would have been a far more complex dynamic than a lot of people might assume.

 

We need a rating for "you broke my heart" haha

I feel it is almost superfluous of me to add anything on to what I wrote for the article so I'll just say I'm here to elaborate on any points I made and discuss any counterpoints.

I must say I'm a little overwhelmed with all of the positive feedback I'm getting haha

 

We know the Empire is very alive in The Force Awakens. Just because the Empire lost a big battle, doesn't mean it's dead. Look At the Rebels they lost a big battle at Hoth, and lost a few planets from the death star one. The Empire only lost it's leader, a deathstar and a super star destroyer along with a few normal sized ones. But the large part of the imperial fleet at Endor still survived. Thus the Empire still had all its star systems under it's control.

 

That's a very good point. Yeah, the Death Stars were essentially the Empire's "Fat Man and Little Boy", and taking them out didn't necessarily take out the Empire. The death of the Emperor... that was the real blow there. And it was a perfect justification for the "happily ever after" ending of ROTJ when there were to be no more sequels. But since there are now sequels, I think it's logical to assume that the Empire, without their planet-killers and their Sith Lord of an Emperor, probably had to settle in for the long haul, as did the Rebels.

Of course, as far as the atomic bombs went, Japan was right on the brink of economic disaster anyway. Yes, a mainland assault would have been bloody, but I'm not sure it'd have been as long a haul as is often assumed that it would have been. Remember, the main reason that Japan attacked us in the first place was over an oil embargo that they could ill afford as of 1941. 3 1/2 years and a massive expenditure of resources later, I'm not so sure they had it in them to hold out for all that much longer.

Near as I can tell, the intended audience for the atomic bombs was probably more the Russians than the Japanese.

 

The main draw for most of the scientists, such as Einstein whose theories the whole project was basically built on was that "if we don't make it first, the Nazi's will." By the time Germany surrendered the project was too far along to scrap and yes the realization of the Russians as a major threat was looming on the horizon.

I am of the minority that think the reason Truman dropped the bomb is because he feared one day getting blasted as someone who let thousands of GI's die because he was too scared to use the ultimate weapon, and "Roosevelt would've used it." Nuclear diplomacy is something my father studies, he actually knows grand military strategy theory whereas I have just read Clausewitz and know history. If you want to know about Cold War Europe I'd direct you to him, his master's thesis was about the early days of West Germany. I'm here for Ancient-Classical Mesopotamia/Mediterranean, 18th Century Western Society, 19th Century European Politics, and American Civil Rights history.

 

And should you, for some reason, ever need to know anything about the history of the Zeppelin airship (and some of the accompanying business and political dealings) I'm your go-to guy on that one. (Talk about an area of historical expertise that's practically guaranteed to yield no professional or financial fruit!)

And yeah, the old crack about us winning WWII because "our Germans were better than their Germans" has a lot more to it than a lot of folks recognize. Ever read Stephen Fry's "Making History"? It touches on something that I've always believed, which is that had Hitler not been such a boorish head-case, had he actually possessed a more refined type of charisma that allowed him to motivate people via something more than just a glorified lynch mob mentality, the world might have ended up far more thoroughly screwed than WWII made it. As it was, Hitler ended up running many of his best and brightest scientists out of the country, and we got a lot of them. Had that not happened... well, I mean, I dig beer and Schweinefleisch as much as the next guy, but...

As for Truman, I know he had a hell of a judgment call to make as far as using those bombs on Japan. And I can't imagine that his future legacy wasn't high on his mind at the time. I also don't get the sense that his decision was just about that, though. I really don't think that Truman wanted to have to deal with the Russians over post-war Japan, especially after we'd just gotten steamrolled by the Russians in Europe. Plus, I think it was probably pretty obvious at the time that the Soviets would develop a bomb of their own sooner than later, and the only way our atomic weapons were going to deter them was if they knew that we were crazy enough to actually USE the damned things.

But I digress... a lot. (Sorry, folks!)

 

What about their precious bodily fluids?

 

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the WAR ROOM!!"

 

Sarah Connor is in the war zone, her storm is coming & she knows it.

 

What about internal strife amongst the rebels/new republic for 30 years being one of the reasons why the Empire is still around.This subject seems like A natural course of things.This is A Topic of the Thwran Trilogy.While not cannon any more I see similar themes being written in the new cannon

 

I still have a feeling that Darth Sidious made the death stars for some reason. I read the book tarkin and it explained that Darth Sidious and Darth Vader had their own goals for the sith and that the empire was not their priority in reality. After they died the empire really doesn't know these goals so I assume the empire will be developing their new strategy.