Kuropatkin's Disaster

The POD here is a fairly simple one- that a deserter tells the Germans that the Lak Naroch Offensive of 1916 is coming, and they get ready. And the Russian catastrophe of OTL is even worse-most of the events in this first installment are based on OTL. But the thing that might confuse you all is that this ATL will be centred more on Italy...

Anyway, here's the first installment:

12th March, 1916: After observer reports seem to confirm a Russian deserter's reports of a coming offensive, German commander von Eichhorn decides to order all troops under his command onto a defensive stance at high alert, all around Lake Naroch.

16th March: Just before dawn, the Russian forces are preparing to launch an artillery attack on German forces. However, chaos ensues as German guns launch their own barrage before the Russians. 400 Russian troops are dead within an hour, but the Russian bombardement continues, albeit somewhat less effectively than they expected.

17th March: The barrage continues, but it is wildly ineffective and a dozen guns were lost in the German surprise attack. Meanwhile, a German detachment sent out by Eichhorn ambush and destroy a detachment from Baluyev's 2nd Army. This sets back Baluyev's plans, and sets him on edge.

18th March: Russian troops go over the top. In their thousands they die in the mud, under German machine gun and mortar fire. German artillery relentlessly batters the front trenches, meaning 100s of Russians go to their deaths in utter confusion, or before they have even gone into battle.

19th March: Baluyev tries an offensive but is repulsed. In 2 days, over 8,000 Russians have died.

21st March- Kuropatkin advances from Riga himself with his men but is repulsed, losing 10,000 men [as in OTL]. Baluyev tries again but is again repulsed, this time losing 5,300 men in one day.

25th March: A follow-up frontal attack is launched on the German trenches. This is an unmitigated catastrophe: demoralised, tired and (in some regiments) decimated, this offensive is repulsed with 1000s of casualties. As the evening falls, the German guns turn on the trenches-they bombard all night through.

26th March: At dawn, Eichhorn's men plus reinforcements assault the Russian trenches. The front trench, smashed by artillery to an extent that dozens of men have been killed through the night and dozens more have fled, is secured by 3:04pm.

1st April: To his intense fury, a telegraph reaches General Brusilov to tell him that several of his regiments will be sent north to fill the gaps left by the huge losses. A day later, Baluyev's plans for a new assault fail as half of a regiment desert en masse.

4th April: Kuropatkin tries again out of desperation. This time, he gains 0.9km- with 7000 dead.

12th April: The Lake Naroch Offensive is called off by the Tsar. 24,000 German casulaties are dwarfed by the 170,000 Russian casualties. Russia has managed to lose ground to boot.

Soon, Italy was calling for Russian action to relieve the pressure on her Alpine Front. Brusilov presented an offensive plan to STAVKA, but it was rejected: the loss of 170,000 men was causing havoc in the North, the Germans trying to press home their advantage and now threatening Riga.

Haha, what a foil to my Russian WWI ATL!

A likely turn of events. I would say that, with a worse Lach Naroch Offensive on the side of the Russians, a defensive take to the Eastern Front will hold. The Allies will be very dissapointed in the Russians, and you can expect the Germans to successfully take Verdun, and be able to be much more successful in the Italian Front.

What I am concerned with is that this catastrophe might prompt an earlier Russian Revolution. If not in February, certainly in October and November. Furthermore, Rumania will never enter the war, giving Austro-Hungary more men to put down into the Italian Front. Bulgaria will not have to invade Rumania.

A Russian peace treaty with the Central Powers is imminent. Lenin is going to be late in arriving to lead the Bolsheviks, so the Central Powers will be negotiating with the Provisional Government. Not much better. The Russians are going to lose a lot of land so that the Germans can make puppet monarchies out of them... especially if the Germans capture Riga.

If the Americans still enter the war, there is a pretty good chance the Allies will still win. But the Western Front is going to be a disaster, and the Central Powers might knock Italy out of the war. Then again, maybe the Central Powers get lucky, are able to make land gains in France and subjugate Italy, and sign a peace treaty before American intervention. Very possible. Then again, the war might last until 1919 and find a much more devestated Europe after the Central Powers lose.

Also, the Russian scene is going to be very different just from butterflies. You can still go with the Bolsheviks, but if you want to there is the Provisional Government, a resurgent Tsardom, the Mensheviks, Kornilov's military dictatorship, and a number of other paths for Mother Russia. Have fun!

Good timeline. Good luck; I will be reading.

Cheers, Darkest90, glad you enjoyed it. Just read your thread, very good work. I like your suggestions, and some of them will be in the next part (which is pretty much written up- once I've done a bloody translation for work, grrr...).

The way this is going to go will be strange. I'm envisioning the CP still losing- and Austria-Hungary will be the cause. I won't say any more yet, but for now what I will say is that Italy will still hold the key to the rest of this TL, even though it will not be fighting...

Oh fun. I have trouble fabricating completely unique movements in WWI, just because I can't get in the head of the generals very well on what they would do if there were other circumstances. I love it when someone comes up with something completely new to toss into the ring.

BTW, Charles Hughes was only a few thousand votes from winning the US Election in 1916. It was a very close election, Hughes vs Wilson. You have enough butterflies in this ATL that, if you wanted, you could just 'say' Hughes won the US election.

The thing with Hughes is that he wasn't as utopian as Wilson. You won't get a League of Nations. Nor will you get an earlier entry into the war. But you can bet that Hughes will advocate more American troops in Europe as soon as he can get them.

With Wilson, you have American troops in Europe sooner, because he was more persuasive, but he will also take any peace treaty he can get, and will push his Fourteen Points and League of Nations ideas as much as he can. And he probably won't put together as many troops as Hughes.

That's my opinion, anyway.

We move now to the Italian Front...

15th May, 1916: Austrian forces launch the Battle of Asiago. The Italian centre breaks quickly, and Austrian troops pour through.

The offensive was a stunning success. Within 2 weeks, Austro-Hungarian forces were 15 miles from Vicenza. Salandra's government in Rome fell in early June. No support was forthcoming from Russia- the Germans had used the Lake Naroch disaster to take the offensive. Further south, German troops were using Naroch tactics to harry Brusilov's forces without a full-scale offensive.

Finally, on the 18th June, the Italian lines buckled near Asiago itself. Marostica fell three days later. Two days later, the Italian troops at Cittadella junction surrendered, breaking the railway connections between Isonzo and Trentino. The Italian counter-offensive in Isonzo was already breaking down.

The 24th June saw the beginning of the Siege of Verona. The Italian commander, Cadorna, was between and rock and a hard place. Verona and Vicenza were both in danger, and he could not defend both. He plumped for Vicenza, hoping to keep Venice secure. Verona thus fell on the 29th June, with 9,000 Italian soldiers captured. The new Boselli government held crisis talks in Rome. Italian soldiers meanwhile were deserting in droves.

The clincher that claimed Cadorna's head came on the 12th July, just as his men were in freefall on two fronts. A-H troops took Brescia with little effort, Boselli decided to sue for peace- the Austrians now threatened Lombardy.

On the 18th July, 1916, Interior Minister Orlando met an Austrian plenipotentiary at Udine. An armistice was thrashed out, taking effect at 1pm the next day.

Elsewhere in this period-

7th June- Kitchener arrives in Arkangelsk for diplomatic talks with Russia. The sense of urgency is high after recent Russian problems.

10th June- Charles Evans Hughes selected by the Republic National Convention to challenge Woodrow Wilson.

21st June- The English writer, Saki, is shot in the left arm near Beaumont-Hamel. He will be invalided out of the rest of the war.

1st July- Battle of the Somme opens.

3rd July- Poet Robert Graves shot in the shoulder and survives [in OTL, he was so badly injured that his parents were told he was dead, and his lungs were damaged permanently. An even healthier Graves will have artistic repercussions later].

With Italy out of the War, and the CP powers on a winning streak.
There would be no reason to send Lenin back to Russia in that Sealed Train.
Austro-Hungary can move troops from the Italian Front.
Germany then has more troops avalible.

President Hughes.
?Whould his State Dept pressure the Papers not to print the German Warnings, about the Lusitania carring Ammo?
If these Warning had been printed ?Would American reaction to the sinking, have been as strong?

DuQuense said:

With Italy out of the War, and the CP powers on a winning streak.
There would be no reason to send Lenin back to Russia in that Sealed Train.
Austro-Hungary can move troops from the Italian Front.
Germany then has more troops avalible.

President Hughes.
?Whould his State Dept pressure the Papers not to print the German Warnings, about the Lusitania carring Ammo?
If these Warning had been printed ?Would American reaction to the sinking, have been as strong?

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Lusitania is too early, but all of your other points are crucial. And the most crucial point is, as you say, A-H: but soon you will see why....

Very interesting.

What would have happened if Kitchener arrived in Russia and had not drowned due to that German mine sinking his ship? Would it help Russian confidence in the war? I'm not quite sure.

The Allies were furious that the Italians had given up. Clemenceau publicly said he would make no concessions to Italy in the event of an Allied victory, and that if she lost ground to Austria-Hungary, she deserved all she got. The Treaty of Brescia in August provoked outrage in Italy and the Allied nations alike.

Italy was to surrender all her claims on A-H territory, and even lost land: her entire eastern frontier as far as the eastern suburbs of Udine. Friulia was to be demilitarised. Boselli hung on in Rome, mainly by blaming Cadrona and Sardana, a strategy that worked. Cadrona was assasinated three days after the treaty was signed, by a discharged soldier named Benito Mussolini. The death penalty was requested, but under public pressure the King commuted it to 10 years in gaol.

But not all was rosy for A-H, despite the massive celebrations in Vienna and Budapest. The Germans were back in stalemate on the Eastern Front, and after massive casualties on the Somme, they were stretched thin. A-H was of course now occupying former Italian territory...and this was soon proving a massive headache, with a Resistance soon organising...

The Italian surrender had profound effects elsewhere. Former Austrian MP Cesare Battisti, who had fouhgt for Italy, went to America to drum up support amongst Italian-Americans for his irridentist views, hoping that they might help create a more robust pro-war movement in the US, in the hope that Italy might recover its land through a Central Powers defeat.

And so it was that on the 7th November, 1916, the Republican Charles Evans Hughes narrowly defeated incumbent Woodrow Wilson. The key was California, taken by just 2284 votes, widely attributed to Battisti's agitation. The president-elect immediately made pro-war noises but was cautious enough not to be too explicit.

Meanwhile, over the pond, things were looking up for Britain. At Jultand in June, a triumph of British intelligence had allowed Jellicoe to destroy the German High Seas Fleet [in OTL, intelligence failed to pass on a crucial telegraph]. Admiral Scheer was captured. Now, Germany was being forced to turn back to submarine warfare, British ships were nearly freely raiding the coast, and worse was coming. Kitchener, under new orders from London, was in Stockholm, negotiating Swedish entry into the war. Sweden seemed tempted, despite some pro-German noises in the past. After all, the Russians were holding the Germans in the East, the High Seas Fleet was gone, America seemed more likely to intervene, and in the West Germany was making no headway.

In Berlin, the Kaiser was fuming. The Somme had sapped his western armies, the Russian defensive approach was giving him headaches, and Austria-Hungary was unable to send him any of her troops to the West. Italian volunteers were rampaging round Friuli and Trentino, holding down a huge number of Austrian forces. Franz Josef was dead, adding to A-H's internal strife. Out of desparation, on the 12th October, the Kaiser ordered unrestricted submarine warfare to resume.

Nice timeline also is wonderful read this timeline and after read the timeline of Darkest90 is like seeing two different worlds originated in one same point of divergence.

Originally posted by SteveW
And so it was that on the 7th November, 1916, the Republican Charles Evans Hughes narrowly defeated incumbent Woodrow Wilson. The key was California, taken by just 2284 votes, widely attributed to Battisti's agitation. The president-elect immediately made pro-war noises but was cautious enough not to be too explicit.

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Charles Hughes no doubt in that two timelines you are a man very afortunate winning Wilson in two diferent circunstances.

Nice and Nice read this two timelines

Iñaki said:

Nice timeline also is wonderful read this timeline and after read the timeline of Darkest90 is like seeing two different worlds originated in one same point of divergence.



Charles Hughes no doubt in that two timelines you are a man very afortunate winning Wilson in two diferent circunstances.

Nice and Nice read this two timelines

Click to expand...

Many thanks- there will be another update tonight or tomorrow, depending on net connection!

SteveW said:

Kitchener, under new orders from London, was in Stockholm, negotiating Swedish entry into the war. Sweden seemed tempted, despite some pro-German noises in the past. After all, the Russians were holding the Germans in the East, the High Seas Fleet was gone, America seemed more likely to intervene, and in the West Germany was making no headway.

Click to expand...

Why would Sweden enter the war against Germany ?

Andrei said:

Why would Sweden enter the war against Germany ?

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Don't worry, I will explain soon.