True, but can they afford that? Remember, at this point there is a lot of pressure back home to stop the war, and a blockade isn't gonna cut it.
REDUX: Place In The Sun: What If Italy Joined The Central Powers?
- Thread starter Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth
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they indeed can keep up the blockade, but if they can't land in Europe and defeat the CP the war will be a total stalemate.
the common British citizen will ask for a truce and call it a day since they would also start to feel the absence of certain products from their markets.
Also, if France and Russia have fallen at least 50% of the entire CP forces are free to go in Libya and OE land to push for Egypt and down the rest of Africa.
Not UK territory, so long as France isn't losing "too much", not their issue.
Next update(s) will concern the Naval War in the Mediterranean. Might need more than one to get it done which is fine by me.
Calling all naval experts-- what strategies do you see both sides belonging? How can Germany and Austria-Hungary best exploit having Italian bases and a safe Adriatic? How can the Entente best minimise the damage and keep the trans-Mediterranean supply lines open? I have ideas but want to hear yours....
Calling all naval experts-- what strategies do you see both sides belonging? How can Germany and Austria-Hungary best exploit having Italian bases and a safe Adriatic? How can the Entente best minimise the damage and keep the trans-Mediterranean supply lines open? I have ideas but want to hear yours....
The British position in Malta is now absolutely critical (and to a lesser extent so is France at Algeria’s naval stations) and the Entente will do everything they can do entirely destroy Italy’s ability to reach and project power out of Libya in order to keep convoys in the southern Med safe.
Just trying to figure out - why is the Ethiopian emperor not falling in this TL?
Sure, the British may not have as many hands free to meddle, but they also have more incentive to meddle in a place near the warzone - plus Iyasu was OTL pretty much a dead ringer for 'just asking for a coup'.
Sure, the British may not have as many hands free to meddle, but they also have more incentive to meddle in a place near the warzone - plus Iyasu was OTL pretty much a dead ringer for 'just asking for a coup'.
Prewar the plan was for the Italians and Austrians to combine at Augusta on the east coast of Sicily, with Austrian Anton Haus in overall command. While this arrangement might briefly occur at the start, unless the combined Austro-Italian fleet can catch the French in a pincer off the Strait of Otranto where they were patrolling to keep the Austrians bottled up and the Montenegrins supplied, the overriding Italian concern is going to be to protect their coasts against French attack. Most likely the Italians decamp to either Naples or Sardinia.
This may actually suit the Austrians quite well. Though they rejected a proposal in 1914 to move their fleet to the Black Sea and are going to do so again, now they have far less worry about the French and British blocking their path with the British mostly gone and the French tied up in Bizerte by the Italians, and a juicy target in the form of all the Dardanelles shipping and bombardment vessels. An intervention by Yavuz would add to the desirability of such a scheme.
The French concern is going to be to preserve their fleet and protect sea lines from North Africa to the Metropole. Threatening the Italians by staying in Bizerte suits them just fine. Bizerte also allows them to threaten Italian SLOCs with Libya and help the Brits in Malta cover trans-Mediterranean shipping, though both they and the Brits are going to be stretched thin covering two sets of convoys from Austrian and Italian cruiser raids. This especially because the Brits still aren’t as strong in the North Sea as they’d like. The German high-water mark has passed, but there must have been a lot of clenched butts in the fall of 1914 and winter of 1915. The Brits aren’t going to be eager to repeat the experience by releasing ships into the Mediterranean.
^ This, though it is most definitely likely that all but the last one would be acquired (as a matter of fact, I would say all as a trade off for losing their colonial possessions, as I'm not as sure that Britain would be willing to budge on Africa or Asia.
Couldn't german and italian bombers attack Bizerte? Both the Gotha IV and Caproni have the range to fly from Palermo to there. Also with the situation on the central med this much better would Germany deploy more or less subs there?
Two of these are definites.
Agreed.
This is a fair criticism. Proximity to the warzone was exactly why Britain didn't meddle here- they reasoned that if they failed Ethiopia was pretty much guaranteed to declare war. The last thing they needed was Ethiopian intervention in Somalia, or worse, an attack into Sudan or Kenya.
Instead, with hatred of Italy nicely counterbalancing ties to Ottoman Turkey, Britain reasoned there was a very good chance of Ethiopia staying neutral if they minded their own business. Good diplomacy (for once) was rewarded with neutrality.
Lij Iyasu could easily have fallen, agreed. Don't know enough about Ethiopian politics of the era to write an informed, well-detailed arc set in the country so I kept him.
Without too many spoilers, I can say hostilities with the three main Entente powers will conclude at different times. So "the end of the war" is less clear-cut than OTL.
That said, no Zimmermann Telegram ITTL.
This is fantastic-- thanks so much. Will use it all.
Yes they could... this is something we may see, thanks for bringing it up.
There is also the matter of Cyprus, which is definitely isolated at the moment.
I'm thinking about the post war years. Mexico and Germany were partners in weapons development, Mondragón's semi auto rifle was built in Germany and some adopted by them for testing. Without the telegram the germans can maybe, if they do it stealthly and don't raise much alarm in the US, eventually get Mexico in their economic sphere. IIRC some germans even considered supporting Huerta back into power when he was in Sapin, that would be interesting to see.
EDIT: CORRECTION SIG were the ones building Mondragón's rifles, the germans bought some in 1915 for their flying corps.
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Now I kind of miss the old trope where a CP victory always involved a second Mexican-American War
A fun concept, yes- obviously part of 1.0- but more rooted in fun than plausibility.
Did Kaiserreich have such a conflict?
I can actually see a 2nd Mexican-American war pretty easily in a CP victory world without even a hint of Zimmerman.
The US was mostly able to stay out of Euro great power games until WWI. This was massively profitable for the US because it was able to maintain a seriously small military for its size. However if Germany becomes the hegemon of Europe, which it will if it's allowed to digest a fair bit of Eastern Europe and perhaps a little of the Low Countries, the US's basic algorithm will need to change. The US's basic algorithm from independence till WW1 was to gradually pick off any Euro powers or open doors to Euro powers in the Western Hemisphere. When it could, it'd buy they out. When it couldn't, it'd provoke a war. The most recent one was the Spanish-American war, which resulted in a substantial reduction in Spanish power in the Western Hemisphere. If the US sees its position threatened by a united Euro hegemon, it is probably going to become quite a bit more aggressive in occupying the Americas, if only to prevent them from allying with another great power. That means stuff like actually trying to digest Cuba and going back for another bite of the apple on Mexico, especially the thinly inhabited parts with mineral resources. It probably won't eye Canada too hard, unless the UK looks to be too weakened. It's interests would lie with trying to prop up the UK while it does its operation to secure the Western hemisphere.
The problem IRC was that there were no agreement about a joint command as both side were extremely relucant (let's say this way) to give command of their units to the other