It began as simple challenge: devise a plausible alternate history, based on a single counter-factual, in which airships become the dominant form of aviation while airplanes languish in obscurity. As often happens with innocent-seeming ideas of this sort, one thing led to another – in this case an online story arc that’s been going on for several years. We’re happy with the picture for Asia and the Pacific, but questions remain regarding how things might play out in Europe, America, and the Balkans. It’s been suggested that I revive my cherished but almost-forgotten membership in AlternateHistory and post a copy of the scenario here to solicit input from the experts. I hope this meets the approval of the moderators and I thank you in advance for any comments and suggestions.
The counterfactual is, ‘Arthur Zimmerman gets hit by a bus in September 1916’. It plays out as follows.
Woodrow Wilson's Peace
By 1916, the world had been at war for two long terrible years. Fighting stretched from the jungles of Africa to the islands of the Pacific, and millions had died on the battlefields of Ypres, Gallipoli, Verdun, and the Somme. No one knew when the nightmare would end. The German triumph at Tannenberg and British victory at Jutland had done nothing to shorten the war. Some pessimists predicted it might last until 1918, leaving Europe devastated, with scars that would take generations to heal.
Alone among the Great Powers, America remained neutral. Protected by two oceans, the United States was able to resist involvement with either side. From this privileged position, President Woodrow Wilson worked tirelessly to mediate an end to the conflict. It was a thankless task. The belligerents, embittered by their sacrifices, emboldened or dismayed by the changing tides of war, were unwilling to entertain any alternative short of total victory. But as 1916 drew to a close two events happened to tilt matters in President Wilson's favor.
The first was the failure of the summer's offensives. As the stalemates of Verdun and the Sommes ground to their bloody conclusions, responsible parties on all sides realized that a military victory was no longer possible. The second was the death of Germany's Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Arthur Zimmerman, in an automobile accident that September. His replacement, the industrialist Richard von Kuhlman, was a diplomat and pragmatist who was willing to make compromises his more militant predecessor might have disdained. His secret communiqué to American Secretary of State Robert Lansing -- the so-called Kuhlman Telegram -- prompted a flurry of negotiations between the two men and their English and French counterparts, Sir Edward Grey (later Viscount Grey of Falloden) and Rene Viviani, who'd replaced the ardently anti-German Theophile Delcasse as France's Foreign Minister.
These negotiations led to the Armistice of 11 November 1916, a document that will forever be known as Woodrow Wilson's Peace. Under its terms, the belligerents were to terminate hostilities six hours after signature and return as expediently as possible to their pre-War borders. Armies were allowed to withdraw in good order, with all of their arms and equipment, with penalties for any units that despoiled the territory through which they retreated. Cases where it was no longer possible to restore the pre-War state of affairs, such as Germany's West African colonies and parts of the former Russian, Austria-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires, were to be resolved by international adjudication. The fates of the disputed former French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were to be decided by plebiscites to be held among their people in 1927.
Not everyone was happy with the settlement. The governments of Austria, Turkey, and Italy felt, quite rightly, that their interests had been neglected in favor of England, Germany, and France. The Japanese, who had benefited from the conflict, were reluctant to return some of the territories they'd taken in the Pacific. In Germany and France, nationalists felt they'd been betrayed, and extremist groups in both countries denounced what they termed `appeasement'. But overall, particularly among the soldiers in the trenches, the Peace was greeted with a mixture of gratitude and disbelief. Airman James Morris described the moment in his memoir, Silence Falls Over the Western Front.
"The Armistice was supposed to take at 1100 hours on the morning of 11 November. As the moment approached, Lieutenant-Commander Michaelson ordered our ship out on patrol. It was stiff work, walking Number 23 from her shed out into the chill, and those old Rolls-Royce engines were the very devil to get started on cold winter morning. But at last we were aloft and headed toward the front.
"I always felt a shiver when I looked down on the lines. No trace of green remained -- everything had been ground into poisonous hues of grey and brown by the ceaseless pounding of shells. Villages, forests, and fields, were gone, with nothing left except an angle in the dirt that might have been a foundation, shattered stumps of trees, and an endless sea of craters. Even at this late hour, fighting still continued, and we could see flashes of light from the trenches below where troops were firing at us.
"At the eleventh hour, the flashes ceased. From 6000' above the battlefield we could feel the hush as the terrible guns fell silent. Below us, haggard faces peered out from the trenches. Slowly, disbelievingly, they began to emerge, taking timid steps into the world of the sun. They lay down their weapons and began to move, stumbling across the ruined terrain, toward the men they'd been trying to kill just a few minutes before. From the air it was impossible to tell them apart -- two ragged lines of figures covered with dirt and streaked with mud. As we watched, the lines met and mingled, exchanging handshakes, embraces, and one imagines a few tears."
The World After the War
The world greeted the Peace with relief and celebration. No one wanted to imagine what might have happened had the War continued another two years -- it might have been a disaster from which Europe could never have recovered. Celebration was followed by an outburst of prosperity, as industry, which had ramped up to meet the demands of wartime production, was suddenly released to take advantage of the opportunities of peacetime. It was a time of plenty, as returning soldiers provided a ready labor force as well as a ready market for an unprecedented period of expansion.
It was also an unprecedented time of change. The Austria-Hungarian Empire was gone forever, dismantled by the Treaty of Trianon (1918) into a collection of independent nations with no desire to be ruled by a central authority. The Ottomans had fared even worse, ceding most of their possessions to Britain under the Mandate of Palestine in 1917. In Russia, the Czarist government -- aging, decadent, discredited by its many failures during the War -- was swept aside by the October Revolution that placed Leon Trotsky in power.
In Germany the transformation was more subtle. The Kaiser remained as head of a constitutional monarchy, but his power and will had been broken by the War, Crown Prince Wilhelm was neither willing nor prepared to take his place, and power devolved to a succession of Chancellors, beginning with Bethmann-Hollweg. Across the Rhine, they faced a succession of French adversaries, beginning with the wily George Clemanceau.
One big cipher was the Sleeping Giant, America. This nation had stirred in its sleep toward the end of the War, giving a barest hint of what it might do if awake, and then returned to its slumber. What might happen if it woke fully, no one could say. Another cipher was Japan. Its armies had moved with unexpected efficiency and skill to capture German colonies during the War. The Japanese had returned these under duress, but the skill and efficiency remained, along with a dangerous ambition.
Some people worried about the future, for the Armistice had left many questions unresolved. For all of its success, it was merely a cease-fire, not a formal treaty of peace. Hostilities might have ended, but some of the belligerents -- most notably France and Germany -- were still technically in a state of war. The Peace might have required nations to return to their pre-War boundaries, but in some cases this was no longer possible because the nations involved no longer existed. In other cases, such as the disposition of Alsace and Lorraine, those boundaries were themselves a source of contention. This particular issue was supposed to be resolved by a plebiscite in 1927, but no one knew what France or Germany might do if they were unhappy with the outcome.
There were also the disaffected. On both sides of the Rhine, ardent nationalists felt they'd been betrayed by their own governments, and some even advocated a return to hostilities. In Russia, Trotsky's revolutionaries sought to extend the dubious 'benefits' of communism to other nations. And in every nation, embittered veterans, unable to adapt to a world at peace, provided ready fodder for extremists.
The Roaring Twenties
The decade the followed the War was a time of unprecedented growth. Spurred by new technologies, such as wireless, the automobile, and advances in farming, mining, and manufacturing, fueled by exciting innovations in finance, the world's economies grew by leaps and bounds. This was the setting for an era unlike any before: the 'Roaring Twenties'.
The Twenties were a time of prosperity. Freed from the shadow of war, people were free to become wealthy, which they did in large numbers, investing in stocks, inventing new technologies and new careers, and bursting the confines of the old social order. Even the poorest did well, and the richest did very well indeed.
It was an era of innovation, where Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on electromagnetic radiation while D. H. Lawrence shocked the world with his controversial novel Women in Love. In nightclubs, flappers and their beaus swung to the jazz of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Lois Armstrong. In sports, Babe Ruth broke the home run record. In academia, Hedigger reinterpreted Western philosophy with Being and Time. In cinema, Rudolf Valentino set women's hearts athrob in The Sheik while Charlie Chaplin made the whole world laugh with his silent comedies.
The Twenties were a time of massive social change. At its root lay a profound change in people's attitude toward Authority. Prior to 1914, people accepted authority without hesitation, following their leaders with unquestioning respect. But the War had exposed those leaders as men like themselves, with human foibles and failures, and a dangerously human incompetence. As some pundits put it, "God died in the trenches." In the vacuum that this left, people had to learn to think for themselves -- a difficult task, but one that most handled well.
Among these changes was the new position of women. Women had joined the work force in large numbers to run their countries while their men were away at war. Many continued to work after the War was over. With salaries came freedom and demands for equality. In some of the more progressive nations, such as Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, and Hungary women even demanded, and won, the right to vote -- America followed their lead in 1920 when Congress ratified the Nineteenth Amendment. Women's new-found freedom extended to their personal lives as well, in ways that somehow failed to bring about any of the disasters that conservative critics and religious zealots predicted.
The spirit of the Roaring Twenties was best summed up by financier Harold Vincent in his commencement address at Wheelman College.
"These past ten years have been a time of optimism, when anything seems possible. Science and industry run at full blast, turning out a never-ending stream of wonders. The miracle of electricity powers our factories, lights our homes, preserves and cooks our food. Modern medicine has triumphed over age-old killers such as diptheria and cholera. Fleets of airships link the nations of the world, traveling in hours distances that might have required days by ship or train. Commercial radio brings music and entertainment to everyman's home, and may soon transmit pictures as well.
"How long can this astounding progress continue? A few nay-sayers suggest that financial markets may come under pressure in the unlikely event of some unforeseen strain on the banking system. But most intelligent people agree that in our New Economy, the old rules no longer apply, and prosperity will continue forever"
The Royal Naval Airship Service
The Royal Naval Airship Service was formed during the Great War to meet the threat of German submarines and mines. Prior to the War, the Admiralty scorned the effectiveness of these new underwater weapons. The loss of the HMS Pathfinder, Aboukir, Houge, and Cressy in the opening weeks of the conflict taught them the error of their ways. In search of countermeasures, they turned to aerial reconnaissance. Initial experiments were encouraging. Submarines and mines that might have been invisible from surface ships were plainly visible from the air. But the primitive seaplanes of the day lacked the range and endurance needed to accompany a fleet, and England had little experience with rigid airships, so the Navy was forced to rely upon blimps.
Dozens of these craft were built during the course of the conflict. They scored several notable successes, such as the destruction of two German U-boats in 1916 by the 'Coastal' Class ship, C-9. But blimps had serious limitations. With top speeds of 40 MPH or less, they were simply too slow for many missions, and it was not unknown for airmen to find themselves traveling backwards, even with engines at full power, in the kind of winds that prevailed in the North Sea.
Meanwhile, the German Army and Navy had been scoring successes with their growing fleets of zeppelins. Their rigid structure and larger size made these craft significantly more capable than blimps. Recognizing this fact, the Admiralty commissioned Vickers to build a succession of rigid airships, in imitation of their adversary. Their first products, HMA 1 Mayfly and HMA 9, were experimental vehicles with no practical utility, but by the end of the year, they'd begun to produce vessels comparable to the smaller German craft. Several of these ships, including the HMA 23 -- a predecessor of the famous R33 Class -- saw limited service on the Western Front during the final months of the War.
The Great War demonstrated that aviation is here to stay. Different nations have responded to this challenge in different ways. In Germany and France, the airship arm is constituted as a separate service, the Luftschiffwehrflotte and Service De L'Aviation, respectively. The British, ever respectful of tradition, organize their airship arms as branches of the regular Army and Navy. In the Army, airships are used primarily as transports, but the Royal Naval Airship Service functions in a variety of roles, ranging from reconnaissance and patrol, to transport and communications, to bombing and anti-shipping missions. It also serves the cause of diplomacy, carrying envoys and showing the flag throughout the world, and the RNAS motto, 'Si Vis Pacem Pare Volatum', has become a comfort, reassurance, and source of inspiration to subjects of the Crown.
A Quick Summary
The counterfactual: Zimmerman gets hit by a bus in the fall of 1916 (Beep beep! “Scheisse!” THUMP! Et cetera). This is the tipping point that allows the European nations to accept an armistice two years early.
Some details of the Peace
1) Nations return to their pre-War boundaries.
2) Japan has to give back all those islands. This means the Germans are still stuck with the Marshals and parts of New Guinea. To their dismay.
3) The fate of Alsace and Lorraine is to be determined by referendum.
4) The Germans apologize to Belgium. “Gosh,” they say. “We’re sorry about that. If there’s anything we can do to make it up to you – rebuild your forts, fill in those trenches, pay for some new cities to replace all the ones we broke – just let us know.”
5) The Belgians aren’t convinced.
Some political consequences
1) The czarist government of Russia still collapses, because it was pretty much doomed.
2) The Bolsheviks still take power in Russia, but since Lenin is still an anonymous bookseller in Geneva, it’s Trotsky who takes the helm.
3) The Ottoman Empire still collapses, because it was also pretty much doomed.
4) Britain takes over the administration of the Palestine, because it’s right next door to the Suez Canal, and who else is going to do it?
5) Germany becomes a constitutional monarchy, because what else could possibly happen?
6) America’s emergence onto the world stage is delayed.
Some social consequences
1) The Roaring Twenties begin in 1918. But they still call it the ‘Roaring Twenties’ because ‘Roaring Teens’ could have some questionable interpretations.
2) The world is more prosperous, and develops many technologies 2-4 years earlier.
3) While most people were happy to see an end to the war, some nationalist groups feel betrayed by the peace, and hope for a renewal of hostilities. “This time we’ll win!” they claim. Right. Sure thing. And that worked so well in our world.
4) Aeroplanes remain an impractical novelty while airships, with two decades of commercial and military success to their credit, dominate the skies.
Some major unanswered questions
1) What would happen to Austria-Hungary in the War ended in 1916? Like czarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire, it seems pretty much doomed – among other things, those chappies are fresh out of heirs to the throne – but what would replace it?
2) Which way would Japan go? On the one hand, it was arguably one of the world’s most liberal democracies during when the Twenties began. On the other hand, they might figure, “Hey, those undefended bits of Russia and China are just sitting there. If we don’t invade them, it’s a cinch some other rising Asian power will.”
3) What would America do if the War ended before it became involved in the conflict? Would it lapse back into isolationism or become more engaged?
