Talk:Dwight Greenhill

From Gineipaedia, the Legend of Galactic Heroes wiki

A doomed effort?

I'm not sure whether Greenhill would have succeeded in his goal of strengthening the Alliance even if he had by some miracle won against Yang's fleet. The Alliance would still have lost yet another fleet. Even if Yang had hypothetically joined the coup, the NSMC's policies were essentially a "military first" policy, further cannibalizing the already weakened civilian sector. The final result might have been like a lesser version of North Korea, with the military increasingly being the only viable sector in society. Iracundus 07:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

It might just be the way that Greenhill's character was portrayed, but I have doubts that he truly wanted things to go as far as they went. He implies he joined the coup partly to try and moderate its worst aspects, its clear he had no wish for civilian casualties, and he rebelled against using the people of Heinessen as shields against Yang. He seems to have been a military officer embittered by the way the civilian leadership had thrown the lives of so many soldiers away. Yang himself understood where they came from, although he completely disagreed with the means.

I agree that the coup, as it was, wasn't meant to succeed in the long run. Then again, we don't know how LONG Greenhill would have maintained it. It wasn't in place long enough for us to be able to tell what he'd have done.

Whats interesting is that Lohengramm also pretty much seized his position as Prime Minister by force. He was always backed by the might of his fleets. And he stole - by force - the Imperial Seal, pretty much hoarding legal power to himself. I remember Mittermyer actually telling an imperial citizen who protested to the theft that they, with their might, decided now what would be right. Lohengramm, of course, used the power to enact several reforms, bettering the lives of the citizens. However, given how bad it was for the imperial citizenry, we don't know how great those changes actually were. I mean, even a little freedom would have seemed like a lot to these people. While the NSMC was a totalitarian military state, the Lohengramm government was a benevolent military state. But a military state nonetheless. Frankly, the only government I really liked by the end was the Iserlohn Republic. FPA Forever

The Iserlohn Republic was hardly a government and was a military state at heart. Its leaders were never selected by elections. They may have held the ideal of a republic, but in order to be unified and survive, they did not practice it.

As for Greenhill, yes he was the "senior statesman" trying to rein in the hotheads of the coup from doing anything too rash (and he failed as seen by the riot and massacre). While the disgust of the Alliance military at the disaster of the invasion and Amritsar was understandable, it seems the NSMC's only goal was to regenerate the military at the expense of the rest of society, and then to continue with the war instead of seeking some kind of peace. If there had not been a civil war, then the Alliance might have retained enough forces to defend the exit from the Fezzan Corridor adequately, giving the possibility of a weakened Alliance still existing in a defensive stance against the Empire. The other key opportunity missed of course was the Alliance should never have accepted the Goldenbaum in exile government. Reinhard even had a plan B of allying with the Alliance and carving up Fezzan together. That might have given the Alliance an extension on life, even if corrupt politicians siphoned off some of the gains from Fezzan for themselves. Iracundus 15:39, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I suspect much of the coup was motivated by the immediate need to rebuild the Star Fleet from its post-Amritsar state. Coupled with the disastrous results of the Amritsar campaign, it seems certain that the politicians could not be trusted to properly rebuild the military, especially if they were paying attention to things like the national debt. Greenhill may have been hoping for a somewhat temporary regime, to strengthen the military before transitioning things back to the civilian government, albeit likely one with military oversight, like Egypt's presently, or the influence Turkey's military has exerted on state affairs. But he had a hard time dealing with the hardliners, since he couldn't be everywhere at once. It does seem that he hoped Yang would join the coup, or if not, that he could spread Yang's fleet out all over the place and then smash just Yang's command squadron, leaving most of the fleet intact.

It is interesting to consider though what might have happened had the civil war not been fought. With the 11th Fleet intact, perhaps Bucock could have made a strong enough stand at First Rantemario to buy time for Yang to arrive from the rear. As it stood, Yang was late by only minutes it seems, just in time to cover Bucock's retreat. Or Yang may have had the manpower to add a third force to his Vermilion plan, entrapping the Imperial fleet with his original two forces, and sending the third immediately after the Brunhild, giving him the seconds' advantage he needed to kill Reinhard. The one092001 17:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Whats interesting about LOGH is that, because the world is so well-crafted, there are a lot of very plausible what-ifs. One interesting one would be what would have happened had, through happenstance rather than design, what Schenkopp had urged Yang to do: allow for the political purge to happen, then remove the coup and use the resulting public goodwill beneficially. What if the NSMC, bypassing the moderate Greenhill once more, had purged most of the corruption from political circles out of panic as Yang's forces would prevail over theirs? What would Yang have done in such a climate, where even the best decision would mean at least some compromise to his dearly-held (in many ways to a fault) principles? FPA Forever