Noooo! You promised the Great War by the end of 2008! It's '09 already, at least down here!
Seriously though, that sounds good, and happy new years btw!
Napoleon's Victory [LONG]
- Thread starter Zach
- Start date
Noooo! You promised the Great War by the end of 2008! It's '09 already, at least down here!
Seriously though, that sounds good, and happy new years btw!
Dr. Strangelove
Banned
And this is why I adopted a "next update will be up when it's done" policy some time ago.
The long awaited Second Great War update. It's funny how I spent a bit of time looking for visuals but not proofreading, so I apologize for any grammar, spelling or passive voice errors.
Also, the war is not done and that update may have to wait longer still. Hopefully not as long as between this and the last update but you never know, unfortunately. Coming soon, a map of the war in Europe and a postwar map of Europe.
Enjoy!!!!
The Second Great War Continued...
As somber New Year’s celebrations died down in the capitals of the world, political and military leaders could see the situation looked quite different than a year before. Prussia was suddenly vulnerable but Russia stood triumphant over much of the Balkans. It was a mixed situation for the two alliances but perhaps the happiest man was Morchenko. His forces were in firm control of the war against the Ottomans and his ally Prussia was increasingly weakened. Perhaps it was a case of schadenfreude, but Morchenko was reportedly pleased about the news of the Battle of Silesia.
The war in Prussia and Poland increasingly turned against the Prussians in the spring of 1937. The breaking of the Mueller Line was an early death knell for Prussia, as their meticulous plans had only conceived this situation only in the most dire of times for the ancient kingdom. Compounded with the failure of the Mueller Line to hold back the huge Allied armies (comprised mainly of French and Germans but also included Spanish, Portuguese, Lusitanian, Italian and Neapolitan divisions) was the Prussian defeat in the Battle of Warsaw. It was not a traditional defeat but rather a withdrawal of the Prussians away from the heavily fortified Polish capital. This allowed thousands of Polish troops to turn east and face the increasing Russian pressure.
It must be noted that the Allied victory in the Battle of Silesia and subsequent land connection with Poland severed a large chunk of Prussia away from the rest of West Prussia. Approximately two fifths of Prussia was deemed as lost by Berlin by early summer when attempts to re-establish land contact with the area were beat back by Allied armies. There were Allied attempts to pacify the remainder of Prussia Silesia but for the most part, the Franco-German armies turned their attention north to the rest of West Prussia and also to help the Poles drive the Prussians out from the rest of Poland.
The Battle of Breslau (see last update) was a turning point in the war against Prussia. From then on, Prussia was on the defensive and increasingly concerned with holding enemies from invading Prussia itself.
In the June 5th “Warsaw Pact” between Polish, German and French military leaders, the three nations agreed to a generalized strategy. Poland would commit approximately 75% to the east to attempt to drive the Russians out of Poland, or at least defend against further encroachment. Meanwhile, French and German armies within Poland would attack northwest from Warsaw to drive Prussians out of Poland. Simultaneously, the Franco-German armies would strike north from occupied Silesia into West Prussia. It would be a coordinated offensive, largely ignoring Prussian Silesia to the south and East Prussia. Plans to implement it in a week were put on hold as Prussia launched a large counter-offensive on June 8th, aimed at severing the Franco-German forces from the Polish armies. In the largest tank battles of the war, the Prussians showed off their technological advantage but ultimately succumbed to a few contributing factors including Allied numbers, Allied anti-armor gunnery and the new French char, the Chasseur Deux. The new French tanks were a match for the Prussian panzers but were relatively few in number. However, their presence brought morale to the Allies and fear into the Prussian tankers, who had always viewed the French to be an armor-deficient fighting force. The Battle of Lipno ended in an Allied victory as the Prussian counter-attack faltered.
Thus, the offensive against Prussia began on June 18th with the aim of the total defeat of Prussia. In Eastern Poland, Polish forces were fighting a vicious war with the Russian military. The invading Russians were second or third-rate troops as the best soldiers were put into the Ottoman fronts. Nevertheless, they proved tough foes for the Poles and the endless Russian reinforcements made the Polish Eastern Front a tough front to be victorious on. Increasing numbers of Allied divisions came to Poland’s aid on their eastern front. For example, a Neapolitan brigade gained notoriety and fame when it held out against a Russia assault by itself for three days before any reinforcements arrived. At times, the multinational armies were difficult to coordinate but the vast majority of officers spoke at least a rudimentary form of French.
In August, 1937 the Swedish Navy launched an ambitious campaign to capture Iceland from the Kingdom of Denmark. Despite strong warnings from Great Britain to leave Iceland alone, the Swedes landed 15,000 men on the island and quickly secured it from the Danes in an almost bloodless campaign. The Swedish in campaign had almost reached its close by August, 1937. The fall of Oslo the following year had ended heavy resistance to the Swedish invasion but a small, hopeful resistance remained in the north in the vicinity of Narvik. Denmark was more or less helpless against the Swedes, but numerous Allied divisions in Denmark itself discouraged an actual Swedish invasion of the country. Copenhagen was shelled numerous times but King Christian XI repeatedly rebuffed the Swedish leader Lund’s attempt for a peace.
Further south, the war in the Balkans took on a more serious turn against the Allies with the St. Valentines Day Betrayal. On February 14th, Greece severed ties with France and other Continental Alliance countries and declared war on the Ottoman Empire. This declaration of war was followed by a rapid invasion of Ottoman territory north of Greece, specifically Macedonia. The Greek betrayal reverberated throughout Europe, especially in the Ottoman Empire. The already stretched forces in the Balkans had now a southern enemy to fight and in Macedonia, the few Turkish soldiers in the vicinity fled before the organized new adversary. The “betrayal” was the result of an intense courtship between King Alexander of Greece and Anton Morchenko, a relationship fostered throughout the 1920s by a desire for both parties to use each other. Alexander had an ambitious expansionist agenda that involved spreading Greek territory at the expense of the Ottoman Empire.
The spring and summer months saw the Ottomans slowly withdraw from the Balkans. In July, the armies north of the Russian swath, numbering about 220,000 surrendered to the Russians after hundreds of thousands of local Slavs volunteered for service against the Ottomans. These South Slavs were more or less united regardless of their nationality. However, there were internal battles between Muslim and Christian Slavs. Thousands of Muslim Slavs realized their precarious position under future Christian domination and either desperately fought for the Ottomans or quietly converted to Christianity. They were heavily outnumbered by hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians, Serbians, Macedonians, Albanians, Christian Bosnians and Catholic Croatians who showed up in force to oust the Ottomans. Many of these nationalities had secret national ambitions of their own but nevertheless saw the Russians as liberators from the Ottomans. The inundated Russian recruitment offices in the newly conquered lands appealed for aid and in April, Moscow gave the newly occupied Slavs permission to take up arms against the Ottomans. As many as a million answered the call, the majority against the Ottoman armies north of the Russian occupied zone that had been cut off the year before. A brutal, brief campaign was waged against the Turks leading to the formal surrender of the enclave to the Russians on July 9th.
Meanwhile, the outnumbered Ottomans withdrew southeast in the face of Russians, Greeks and Slavic partisan. Demoralized and defeated, they hoped to stop the advance at Constantinople. In Russian occupied territory, the military ruled over a generally jubilant population of a dozen ethnic groups. Many were armed. For the moment they were united against their common enemy. And that fight was going quite well, as the Ottomans were in rapid retreat to the Constantinople Peninsula. There, massive defenses ringed the ancient city and trenches plowed the rough landscape of the Peninsula. The Turks were prepared to make a stand at their capital rather than fight in the fields of the Balkans against a more numerous enemy. At the gates of Constantinople, they figured, the enemy would be ground to a halt.
To the east, the Russian advance across Asia Minor met success as the second-rate Ottoman troops were again and again forced to withdraw. In particular, the Ottomans were particularly weakened by the dominance of Russian field artillery that was portable and effective in the rough terrain. In short, the Ottoman Empire was being squeezed by a gigantic pincer movement. Constantinople would be a tough nut for the pincer to crack. However, as the Russians continued to advance, Constantinople would be the remaining Ottoman territory of a once vast empire.
Indeed, the Ottoman Empire was threatened everywhere. While regular Russian armies moved in from the northwest and the east to close in on Constantinople, Russian agents stirred up trouble in Ottoman Arabia. There, the famous Nikolai Porfiryevich Petrovich (also known as “Nikolai of Arabia”) roused popular support against the Turkish regime. A musician by training, Petrovich had traveled through the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East for many years studying Turkish, Persian and Arabian music before getting involved in political affairs. Recruited into the Russian Foreign Service, he was assigned to the Ottoman Affairs Bureau where his first-hand knowledge of the Ottoman Empire proved useful in the early campaigns against the Turks. In later 1935, he had the idea of instigating a rebellion in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which stretched from Asia Minor, down the Mediterranean all the way to the Arabian Peninsula. In doing so, he would distract tens of thousands of Ottoman soldiers from more pressing fronts such as the Balkans and Asia Minor.
The Russian Foreign Service responded enthusiastically, agreeing this would advance Russia’s own geopolitical situation by creating warm feelings with the Arabs. Perhaps, even the French-allied Kingdom of Arabia would be likely to ally with Russia. With full government backing, Petrovich traveled to Arabia and the Holy Land where he began to stir trouble against the Ottomans. With a firm grip on Arabic and also the gift of music, Petrovich managed to convince and coordinate numerous local Arab leaders to rise against the Ottoman garrisons in the area. Under his supervision and guidance, Arab bands attacked Ottoman railroads, garrisons and supply lines. They also roused support among the common people against the Turks with the support of the strong Russian propaganda machine. With phrases such as “Arabia for Arabs” and “Oust the Turks!” such conflicts took on an ethnic tone. This took a turn for worse when an isolated garrison in Palestine was slaughtered by an Arab band rather than be taken as prisoner. Nevertheless, the Russian plan succeeded in that between March 1937, with the first major revolt, and June 1940, when the last Ottoman outpost fell, around 115,000 Ottomans were sent to Arabia from other fronts. Such a large number may very well have changed the outcome of the brutal Battle of Constantinople.
Japan’s entry into the Second Great World was not a surprise to any nation but its ferocity and speed shocked the Allies. On September 10th, 1937 the Empire of Japan struck targets on British and French colonies across East Asia, the result of years of planning. The surprise attacks against the two former enemies immediately put France and Britain into an unlikely alliance, one that had not existed for centuries. Japan’s situation in 1937 was very much in their favor. Their close ally, Russia, was victorious against the Ottomans and the Imperial Japanese Navy was the second largest in the world. Indeed, they had by far the largest navy in the Pacific because the largest navy in the world, France, was stretched globally. The American Navy in the Pacific was growing but still inferior to the Japanese Navy. Indeed, the second largest navy in East Asia was a tie between the Royal Navy, already stretched thin because of Copenhagen Treaty requirements and international interests, and the Chinese Navy, which the Japanese had defeated numerous times.
On the morning of September 10th, Imperial Japanese forces struck French Indochina, British East Indies and the British Sandwich Islands. The following day, Emperor Guangxu of China, issued a declaration of war against Japan and thus East Asia was thrust into the Second Great War. The Chinese looked favorably at their entry to the war and were confidant in their abilities to defeat the Japanese on land and sea. Backed by not one but two Western powers, a stronger military, a more potent industrial sector and a young, strong leader, the Chinese believed the Second Great War would indeed turn in their favor. It must be noted that no state of hostility existed between China and Russia; Morchenko was far too preoccupied with European affairs and was not interested in committing many millions of troops against China. Despite Japanese demands that he declare war on China, Morchenko declined. This was the first of many sour points in the Russo-Japanese alliance.
Japan’s ambitious September attacks occurred in three areas: the Sandwich Islands, French Indochina, and the British East Indies. The broad range and objectives of each of these three campaigns demonstrated the scope of Japanese planning. The simultaneous attacks all achieved a degree of surprise despite the large-scale naval movements across the Pacific. The first and most successful campaign, the Sandwich Islands, commenced on September 10th with a surprise naval attack on small Royal Navy squadron based in Pearl Harbor. Japanese airplanes, based from aircraft carriers miles away, achieved surprise and the squadron was devastated with minimal Japanese losses. As a Dominion of the British Empire, the Sandwich Islands was more or less responsible for its own defense without aid from Britain, however, as a very new Dominion as well as the smallest, a small contingent of British forces remained on the archipelago to provide defense against such a threat. With the native soldiers, the Dominion’s defenses numbered only some 60,000 soldiers against an invading force of 150,000. The primary landings focused on Oahu, the most populated island, and the large island of Hawaii, which possessed a large airfield for the Royal Air Force. A brief air war took place over Hawaii but there were simply more and better Japanese planes. The land campaign on the Sandwich Islands took roughly three weeks and the Dominion officially surrendered on October 13th, 1937. The Battle of Honolulu was the largest battle in the campaign, pitting the Dominion forces centered on Fort George against the invading Japanese. When Fort George fell on October 10th, the rest of the Dominion’s resistance collapsed and Japan raised its banner on the islands.
Indochina was a more complicated affair. After the November (of 1935) Crisis in which the Japanese consulate in Hue was burned to the ground, it seemed as if Asia would erupt into war. France, already embroiled in Europe, did not wish to have another war across the globe and compromised with Japan by removing the Indochinese Emperor Duy Tan from the throne and replacing him with his much younger brother, Minh Ti. Minh was indifferent to politics as he was only nine years old. The staunch pro-Japanese member of the court, Ngo Duc, who lived in exile in Japan, viewed the new child emperor as a less threatening opposition to his own ambition. Thus when the Japanese invaded Indochina on September 10th, he joined the troops and with great pomposity and self-importance entered Hue on September 29th as the true Emperor of Indochina. With full Japanese backing, he was declared Emperor of Indochina and young Minh Ti was put into house arrest with Duy Tan. Indeed, the countryside palace became known as the House of Former Emperors.
The actual invasion of Indochina proved to be a relatively easy affair. The 105,000 French soldiers there offered significant resistance, yet the quarter million Indochinese soldiers were oftentimes struck with internal divisions that mirrored the internal divisions at the imperial court in Hue. Even despite aid from the Chinese, the invading 600,000 Japanese had an easy time of subduing Indochinese resistance. The French navy in the area did succeed in sinking some transports but they were simply too outnumbered to offer a serious resistance to the IJN. The fall of Saigon in early October broke the morale of many local soldiers and ended any serious hope of defeating the Japanese. Although the majority of the French soldiers retreated in an orderly fashion across Indochina and into the Dominion of India, the majority of Indochinese soldiers either were soundly defeated, defected, surrendered or simply dropped their arms and went home. By June of 1938, the Japanese and pro-Japanese Indochinese units had secured the area and French power in East Asia ended.
The campaign in the British Dominion of the East Indies proved to be the most difficult campaign for the Imperial Japanese forces. This was probably due to the sheer size of the Dominion, whose 16,000 islands, strong fortress at Singapore, and proximity to Australia and New Zealand made it far more difficult to conquer than the Sandwich Islands and Indochina. On the other hand, the Dominion was the most draconian of the British dominions. The government based in Singapore based its policies on favoring wealthy landowners rather than the millions of common people. As a result, sentiments were generally anti-British and anti-Singapore so when the Japanese invaded, they were widely greeted as liberators.
Because of the size of the Dominion, the Japanese only invaded certain areas of the archipelago in September, saving the more populous islands such as Java and Sumatra as well as the city of Singapore for the following year. Nevertheless, the British and Dominion forces put up a strong resistance in Borneo, Celebes and New Guinea, the three largest islands that the Japanese attacked in late September 1937. The heat and humidity of the islands were very intense but both sides were equipped with appropriate gear for the weather. As winter came along, the heat subsided only minimally. Approximately one million Japanese soldiers were committed to invading the various islands of the East Indies, the majority landing on Borneo, which would later be a staging ground for the invasions of Java, Sumatra and the Malaya Peninsula. It was a massive undertaking, the largest amphibious campaign the world had ever seen. Transports ferried soldiers and supplies from Japan to the Philippines and from the Philippines to either Indochina or the East Indies.
These transports were prime targets for the Imperial Chinese Navy, who, despite numerous beatings from its Japanese counterpart, still itched for a fight against the IJN. However, foreign navies failed twice in their endeavors to halt the Japanese. The first occurred a week after the Chinese entry into the war on September 18th when the Chinese Silver Fleet sailed southwest to attempt to disrupt the numerous Japanese transports moving south. The Silver Fleet was China’s second largest but most modern fleet, shadowed in size only by the Golden Fleet. The fleet was under the command of Admiral Zhao Yun and comprised of three modern battleships, three heavy cruisers and numerous smaller cruisers and destroyers. After significant success sinking and capturing straggling Japanese transports and merchant ships, a large contingent of the Imperial Japanese Navy arrived late on the 17th of September. The Battle of Batanes occurred the following day and resulted in a Japanese victory because of the presence of two Japanese aircraft carriers. The Japanese fleet was ahead of its two carriers by about three hours when the Chinese commenced the battle. Although about equal in force, the ambitious Admiral Zhao Yun urged his ships to fire quickly and accurately. Perhaps it was Japanese over-confidence or lack of respect for their traditional punching bag enemies, but for the first stage of the Battle of Batanes, it seemed as if the Chinese would win the battle. However, the arrival of eighty Japanese planes was damaging to the Silver Fleet, and a torpedo bomber hit the Chinese heavy cruiser Dingyuan in the magazine. The loss of this cruiser prompted Admiral Yun to retreat but he conducted a brilliant and aggressive retreat that discouraged the Japanese from pursuing. Although technically a narrow Japanese victory, the Chinese fleet had managed to sink numerous small Japanese craft and inflict heavy damage on many transports before being driven away. In addition, Admiral Yun was a hero in China for a successful retreat. The Chinese navy remained a thorn in Japan’s side and the addition of three new carriers in 1938 only added to Japanese worries.
The Battle of Batanes.
The limited Chinese success on the sea showed a promising future for the young Imperial Chinese Navy and its Admiral Zhao Yun. Chinese successes were less prominent in Korea where a hasty invasion commenced on September 13th. Aimed at ultimately driving the Japanese off the peninsula, the Chinese Army threw itself on the Japanese defenses in a tactic that had caused millions of deaths in the last war. Indeed, the theatre commander was a member of the old school, one of the few that had survived Emperor Guanxu’s modernization by his sheer age and experience. His military strategy, however, had a lot to be desired and the heavy losses the Japanese inflicted on the Chinese resulted in no more than a dozen miles gained on the entire front. Indeed, a Japanese counter-attack even succeeded in gaining Chinese territory. With the unsuccessful invasion in mind, the Emperor replaced the old commander with a younger general who had impressed the Emperor on numerous occasions with creative tactics on paper. General Xu Huang thus took command in Korea in December 1937 with full imperial backing and the hopes of his troops resting on him.
The sudden invasions of various points across East Asia shocked and alarmed the United States whose own interests in the Pacific were growing. President Walter Kirkwood issued a strongly worded condemnation and asked the Japanese ambassador to leave Washington. There was serious discussion of joining the war to aid the British and French and to limit the extent of Japanese conquests. More publicly, Japanese-Americans particularly on the West Coast were subjected to discrimination and even blatant attacks in the streets. Japan’s popularity in the United States dropped to new lows and in a magazine poll conducted in November 1937, over 80% of Americans favored going to war with Japan. Kirkwood and congressional leaders decided to not go to war but give aid to the Allies and Britain in their fight.
As the war reached its third year, the war in Europe seemed to be ending just as the war in Asia was beginning. The outcome of the European war was not really in doubt; the traditional French-led Allies stood triumphant over a broken Prussia while Russia stood victorious over the Ottoman Empire. It was an odd mix of victories, to have one country in both alliance camps be defeated and the others to remain victorious. Both Prussia and the Ottomans still had some fight left in them as 1938 rolled around, yet the contests seemed all but decided. The only question was if, when, and where Russia and France would clash. On the one hand, the war was going on for quite long, losses were mounting, but France could not stand to see Russia triumphant in Europe nor could Russia stand to see France dominating Western Europe.
Turkish soldiers advance to the front to meet the Russian threat.
The beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire began on August 28th, 1937 when the remaining Ottoman soldiers in the Balkans withdraw behind the heavy defensive lines that marked the peninsula on which Constantinople stood. The siege officially began that day. The whole of Ottoman Europe, save for this small peninsula and this magnificent capital, was in Russian control. The Turkish military, Sultan and nation were by no means willing to give up a fight. Much as they themselves had laid siege to the city nearly a half millennium before, the Turks found themselves on the receiving end on such a siege by the reincarnation of the Byzantines. With their defensive lines, known as the Suleiman Line, the Ottomans believed they could halt the Russian waves like an ocean breaks on rocks. Indeed, the defenses were very modern, having been built in the last three years. They contained deep bunkers, hidden machine gun nests, and the heaviest artillery Turkey could come up with. Booby traps dotted the land in between lines and snipers strategically took positions. In addition to weaponry, the entire peninsula, including the city of Constantinople, was well-stocked with munitions and food. The Turks believed if they survived a year at most against the Russian onslaught, Morchenko would come to terms. And besides, if the battle turned sour, the Ottoman Navy was still a force to be reckoned with against the weak Russian Black Sea Fleet. They could still supply Constantinople by sea if necessary.
Facing the powerful Suleiman Lines was an army of two million, armed to the teeth with weapons ranging in size from grenades and mortars, to giant guns which had to be assembled in pieces shipped from Russia in trains a mile long. Reinforcements of artillery from every size and caliber strengthened the already powerful Russian artillery force. By far the largest gun was an 800 mm monster with a range of twenty-five. Known as the “Turk-Slayer”, it, along with two smaller counter-parts nicknamed “Mehmet’s Assassin” and “Constantine XI’s Revenge” (after the last Byzantine Emperor who lost Constantinople in 1453 to the Turks), was situated behind Russian lines where it rained devastation on the Turkish lines. In addition to land artillery, the Russian Black Sea Fleet, although formerly limited by treaty, was distorted from a traditional fleet into a single-purpose fleet. The single purpose was to smash the Turkish defenses outside of Constantinople. The existing fleet was moved to escort duty while newly launched ships, made for the special purpose of bombarding Constantinople, made up the mainstay of the Black Sea Fleet. Comprised primarily of “mortar ships” and ships armed with a single heavy gun, the fleet stationed itself north of the peninsula and rained death. Constant transports provided for ever-present ammunition and there were always a dozen of these ships firing in any given minute.
All of these heavy weapons were of tremendous assistance to the rank and file Russian soldiers. Despite their aid, the Russian advance toward Constantinople was slow and costly. Turkish resistance was always stiff and oftentimes verged on fanatical. Outnumbered by approximately two to one, the Ottomans were nevertheless assisted by their modern defensive works. However, the devastation that fell from thousands of Russian guns served to rattle the Turkish soldiers. He was never allowed to rest because of constant artillery fire. His supplies had to traverse a lunar landscape churned by hundreds of thousands exploded bombs and a constant storm of shells. His own attempts to counter Russian artillery fire was cut short due to the predominance of the Russian Air Force, whose reconnaissance airplanes and airships could pinpoint where the Ottoman batteries were. The non-existent Ottoman Air Force offered no help. In addition, the Russian Air Force bombed the defensive lines. Any existing forays against the Russian Black Sea Fleet were meet with bloody noses due to the heavy cruisers that defended the mortar ships. In addition, the Greek Fleet was applying pressure from the Aegean and it was widely expected that at any moment Greek soldiers would land in western Anatolia. Already, major Ottoman islands in the Aegean had been taken over by the Greeks.
The Siege of Constantinople began on August 28th, 1937 and ended exactly 400 days later on October 2nd, 1938 with the fall of the city. It was a dramatic fall. The capital of the ancient Ottoman Empire lay in ruin after months of bombardment and battle and hardly a building stood intact. Even the famous Hagia Sophia, the Emperor Justinian’s great cathedral, lay ruined, the result of a Russian bomb. The Russian advance up the peninsula was slow but they were never halted or reversed. Although a Russian soldier was lost for every few square feet gained, the endless reserves of Morchenko’s armies and his ambition to capture Constantinople meant that every soldiers’ death was not in vain. Another soldier would just replace him. Indeed, losses amounted to nearly a half million by the time the city fell. The beginning of the end for Constantinople began in September as food and supplies began to run low and the Ottomans were forces to retreat to the city gates themselves. The walls and gates had not been an actual defense for centuries but their presence was very symbolic. The heaviest defensive line was located there at the gates of the city and only a determined Russian assault would break through.
From September 4th to September 17th, a dozen Russian waves stormed the last Suleiman Line in assault after bloody assault. The quarter million or so Turkish soldiers left or so could only keep firing in the face of the two million Russians charging at their line. It was a brutal battle, reminiscent of the first Siege of Constantinople in its medieval ferocity. Each assault gained some ground but the losses were so heavy the limited gains were immediately offset by the amount of losses. Finally on September 17th, a lucky Russian shell landed on a foolishly-placed Turkish magazine causing a massive explosion and a temporary hole in the Suleiman Line. Like water seeping through cracks, the Russians stormed through the hole. For the next two weeks it was an urban battle in a city of rubble. It no longer resembled its imperial past and the pile of rubble of the historic city was all that was left of a half millennium of Ottoman rule. In his bunker, Sultan Mustafa V made the decision to surrender the city. However, he and his top generals would flee to Asia Minor to continue the fight with hopeful Allied aid. Under cover of darkness and with a heavy naval escort, Mustafa V fled to Asia Minor on the night of October 1st. Along with him, tens of thousands of Turks attempted to do the same yet the Russian Air Force did their best to sink as many transports as possible. With thousands of flares and tracers lighting the night sky, thousands of Turks died as a result of accurate strafing and bombarding.
White flags popped up on October 2nd and Constantinople fell to the soldiers of the Empire of Russia. All of Ottoman Europe was under Russian control. It was a magnificent victory for Russia, especially for the veterans of the Constantinople campaign in 1902-03. One of those veterans now controlled over Russia and Anton Morchenko made his first visit to the ruined city a week after its fall to bask in its former and future glory.
Before the fall of Constantinople, in April of 1938, the Greeks launched an amphibious invasion on the western coast of Asia Minor. Already they had taken large chunks of land in the Balkans as well as most notable Aegean islands but the invasion of Asia Minor was an ambitious assault. It was a poorly planned and disorganized effort because it had little military value. Rather, the Greeks just wanted a piece of Asia Minor for their empire. The Turkish divisions in the area were second-rate but put up a stout defense in the area of Smyrna, which did not fall until mid-September. The triple fall of Smyrna in September, Constantinople in October and Ankara in December were the three death knells for the Ottoman Empire. The fall of Ankara was the result of the Russian push all the way from the Caucuses that had made significant headway the last three years but was still a slow-moving and rough campaign. The government of Mustafa V was forced to flee to Antioch after the fall of Constantinople, a long and demoralizing trek but was nevertheless a necessary move to a safe city. By this time, however, the Ottoman Empire was nearly overrun: the Balkans and western Asia Minor were under Russia control, Greece occupied bits of eastern Anatolia while the Arabs in Palestine and Arabia revolted against Turkish rule. All that remained was central Asia Minor and most of the Arabian territories not in revolt.
It was in this environment that Napoleon IV made the controversial decision to commit soldiers from Egypt to aid the Ottomans. Previously, Mustafa V had refused aid but the two leaders viewed that if the Allies gained a victory against Russia, the peace treaty terms would not be as harsh. About 150,000 French soldiers moved from Egypt to Antioch without much trouble from the Arab rebels and from there took positions to counter-attack the Russians who had recently surrounded the central Turkish city of Kayseri. The Battle of Kayseri was fought from November 12th to 15th of 1938. It was the first highly mechanized battle between two modern forces in the Middle East and resulted in a clear victory for Russia. Significant reinforcements from other sectors simply overwhelmed the smaller French force and when a division of Ottomans broke and ran, the French position fell. The city soon fell to the Russians and the battered French force retreated down to Antioch. The Ottoman Empire had all but fallen yet Mustafa V refused to surrender.
A similar situation occurred in Europe when Allied forces began to close in on Prussia. In Poland’s eastern region, the war devolved into a fluid battle between two large infantry forces. Poland’s superior weapons and training matched against the vast numbers of Russia’s second-rate soldiers. However, increasing numbers of Russia armor and first-rate troops began to call for some levels of Western aid to help battle the Russians. The war in the area was a stalemate of sorts, since Russia was never able to smash the Poles nor were the Poles able to ever drive the Russians out of Poland.
The battle against Prussia turned sour for the Prussians following the Battles of Silesia and Warsaw. A coordinated French-German-Polish offensive (supported by Spanish, Italian and Neapolitan soldiers) in the spring of 1938 capitalized on the successes of the 1937 offensives and actually succeeded in driving the Prussians out of western Poland and into Prussia itself. Although the Prussians still occupied northwestern Poland and the port of Gdansk, the rest of Western Poland was completely free of Prussians and West Prussia was beginning to feel the physical torments of war. In the summertime, the Allied armies faced northwest and struck into the heart of Prussia. The armies bypassed occupied northwestern Poland and East Prussia completely and instead focused on capturing the lifeblood of Prussia: Berlin.
The offensive was largely successful due to the size and strength of the Allied force. If the Allies had been fighting another enemy, they would have declared victory by the end of summer yet the Prussians were a tenacious enemy. They offered stubborn resistance and behind their own lines, even civilians worked to construct defensive structures. Throughout the summer and fall, the Allies advanced slowly against the rough Prussian resistance. Frequent bombings on Prussian factories seriously diminished their ability to create new tanks and ammunition and in late autumn, supplies reached a critical point. Many Prussian soldiers were actually on the verge of mutiny and many surrendered to the Allies just to escape the inadequacies that plagued the Prussian Army at the time. By the onset of winter, the propaganda that shouted that Russian aid was coming fell on deaf ears. In the last two months of 1938, the Allies had occupied large swaths of Western Prussia. In December the Battle of Berlin began. It was the beginning of the end for Prussia.
A relatively minor campaign was fought in distant Iceland when a British landing force landed and defeated the occupying Swedish forces in a brief campaign. The liberation of Iceland was actually the largest British operation in Europe. In Sweden, the defeat was met with a mix of cold feelings toward the authoritarian government but also with sadness as thousands of Swedes were taken prisoner.
Japan’s victories in 1938 rivaled the fall of Constantinople as the most disturbing for the Allies and most glorious for the Quadruple League. Japan’s entry into the war in September 1937 resulted in stunning victories for the following year. Its military spread across the Pacific across thousands upon thousands of square miles and many nations fell to its conquering sword.
By the end of 1937, with less than three months of campaigning, the Japanese had already secured Hawaii, Indochina and much of the East Indies and was poised to take over the rest of the East Indies in a few months. Furthermore, the powerful Japanese navy and armies suddenly threatened British India, Australia and New Zealand. The conquest of the Indies began in September 1937 with swift Japanese conquests of various smaller islands. The largest contested areas were New Guinea, Celebes and Borneo. New Guinea held out for nearly a year because it was so hilly and full of dense jungle but constant Japanese reinforcements and air superiority wore down the local soldiers there. There were significant reinforcements of Australian and New Zealand troops, known as ANZACs, in the Port Moresby area and the city was heavily fortified. In the summer of 1938, the Japanese launched an invasion of the city from the sea (as the IJN was only opposed by a handful of Australian ships). Coordinated with land diversions, Port Moresby fell in a week and soon the entire island’s resistance collapsed. Celebes fell much earlier, before New Years Day 1938 in fact. After the Battle of Makassar, the island fell.
The battle over Borneo was less prolonged than the fight in New Guinea because of the significance of the island. The East Indians and British rightfully knew that Borneo’s fall would mean an immediate attack on Sumatra and Java. This was exactly what the Japanese had in mind and over 350,000 Japanese invaded on the island throughout September 1937. They landed on various points throughout the island with the aim of subduing the major population centers so that the Japanese Navy could secure some closer ports and airfields for the invasion of Java and Sumatra. They even used armor in some of the flat river valleys in the southern portion of the island that had devastating effect on the armor-less Dominion force on Borneo. The Battles of Kuching and Sibu were particularly important battles that resulted in clear Dominion defeats. Major resistance on the island ended in March 1938 when the British failed to send reinforcements to the beleaguered island, although unofficial resistance against Japanese control lasted for the duration of the war.
And thus the fall of Borneo spelled the imminent invasion of Java and Sumatra. Even before the fall of Borneo, the Japanese began to apply pressure on the two islands, particularly Java, as early as September with air raids and long-range strategic bombing from airfields as far away as Indochina. Java, as the core of the Dominion of the East Indies and home to the capital of Batavia, was the prime target for the Japanese. After a severe aerial bombardment based from numerous airfields in Borneo and a number of aircraft carriers, the Dominion lost most its remaining air force and was crippled. It was in this state that over 300,000 Japanese soldiers converged on the island in April. Facing them was a slightly smaller force of British, Indian, ANZAC and Dominion soldiers. The titanic struggle for the island devastated the land. The Allied forces fought against the Japanese invaders but Japanese air superiority and naval predominance resulted in a bloody victory in July. The Royal Navy, or what remained of it in the Far East, was successful in evacuating over 100,000 of the fighters on Java onto Sumatra, where a more successful battle was occurring. There, the predominantly ANZAC held out against the ferocious Japanese invaders. The invasion of Sumatra was carried out more or less simultaneously with the Battle of Java, so from April to June Japanese armies were actually stretched quite thin as 300,000 battled in Java and 400,000 invaded Sumatra. The latter proved to be a more difficult campaign and Japanese attempts to conquer the entire island by thwarted. By August, when the Japanese Empire was at its height, the majority of the island was in their hands but a small holdout in the Western portion remained under ANZAC control and was being reinforced almost daily by soldiers from the Indian Dominion. The Battle of Sumatra never resulted in a clear Japanese victory, as it was never totally conquered, despite many smaller victories on the island itself. The fall of Singapore in July 1938 was the greatest Japanese triumph against the East Indies. Founded and built by the British, the fortress city was thought to be unconquerable. However, a land assault and invasion and subsequent siege proved doubters wrong and after only two months the seemingly impregnable Singapore walls fell to Japan.
To the north, Japan launched a quick offensive against Thailand in the spring that coincided with a pro-Japanese coup. The new pro-Japanese government announced an alliance with Japan as Japanese soldiers began to swarm into the country to the confusion of many Thai onlookers. As part of Japan’s grand strategy, Thailand would only be utilized as a Japanese springboard for the future conquest of India. It was a quiet affair unlike the invasion of Burma that formed the easternmost area of the British Dominion of India. That invasion was launched from the jungles of Indochina and Thailand. Facing swarms of Indians, as India possessed the largest land army of all British Dominions and the third largest in Asia after China and Japan, the Japanese stumbled early but soon quickly made progress after a few early defeats. The height of their advance peaked sometime in later summer when their invasion began to stall out due to very long supply lines. Their closest supply base was in Indochina and even the occupation of Rangoon failed to alleviate Japanese supply concerns, as it was a constant target for Royal Indian Air Force bombers. By the end of 1938, the Japanese land invasion had stalled as Japan focused on the fight against China. Japanese strategists, however, vowed that once China was dealt a major defeat, India would next be conquered.
Japanese warriors through the jungle toward the conquest of Burma.
The fight against China involved the Korean front, naval invasions of several major coastal cities and the battle between the two navies. After the Chinese Silver Fleet managed to escape defeat in the Battle of Batanes, they were more or less holed up in various harbor, untouched by the IJN but unwilling to battle their more powerful foe. In the spring of 1938 the Japanese launched an invasion of Formosa, a large island to the east of China that had been a Chinese possession for many years. The two navies fought another battle, the Battle of Taiwan Straits, this time ending in a tactical Chinese victory but a strategic defeat because it failed to deter the Japanese from landing soldiers on the island. The conquest of the island was fairly swift, lasting two months as the Chinese mainly wrote it off in favor of defending their homeland against inevitable Japanese amphibious attack. By June, all of Formosa fell to Japan.
The Chinese failure to make any headway in Korea actually weakened them and paved the way for the Japanese to launch a counter-offensive in May 1938. Suddenly, the Japanese grand strategy took on a “China First” slant, aiming to subdue China soon after conquering the Pacific. This was evident by the stalled drive in Burma, where soldiers were actually diverted to participate against the Chinese Empire. In an ideal situation, Japanese armies would slice through China via Korea and meet in the middle with soldiers landing from the sea. But the Japanese counter-offensive from Korea met very stiff resistance and huge masses of Chinese soldiers. Their offensive stalled despite a slight technological advantage. The imperial Chinese soldiers were determined to not allow any more shame to their country. Defeated many times by the Japanese, they viewed their eastern neighbor with such hatred that the Korean front became one of the most brutal theatres of the war. The combatants rarely took prisoners and committed atrocities on a daily basis.
As the Japanese offensive ground to a halt in the middle of summer, new attention was given to various Japanese assaults onto Chinese coastal cities. The Japanese targeted three particular cities due to their close proximity to Formosa, an ideal staging ground for the invasion. They were Xiapu, Fuzhou, and Xiapen. In addition, although the assault on Shanghai never occurred, the Imperial Japanese Navy blockaded the city and bombarded it on many occasion. The small Chinese naval detachment there was never able to break out of the city and it would not be a year before the Chinese Golden Fleet boldly defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Shanghai Harbor. The Japanese invasions from Formosa met limited success. The three cities fell in quick succession in early August and the Japanese quickly extended their control to the countryside surrounding the cities. Some bold Chinese generals at first argued that they should allow the Japanese to advance deep into their country, “like a foolish traveler is drawn deep into a mysterious cave only to find it is a bear’s lair”. They were defeated by a faction they argued for an immediate expulsion of anything Japanese from China. In September, the Chinese launched a massive counter-attack with over a million men involved against a mere 250,000 Japanese soldiers. Japan was forced to send massive reinforcements to the area but even then the Chinese were successful in pushing the Japanese back almost to the sea. By November, the imperial dragon had replaced the rising sun in Xiapen and the campaign was called off. The Japanese quietly withdrew by December 10th so when the Chinese launched their final assault, they were met with their own prisoners, gagged and bound in Japanese uniforms in a dirty trick. The re-capture of Xiapu, Fuzhou and Xiapen were hailed as spectacular Chinese victories and the imperial propaganda milked them for all they were worth.
Overall, the Empire of Japan’s lighting strike into the war resulted in tremendous initial victories but by the end of 1938 it became clear that Japan had overplayed its hand. Its assaults on the Sandwich Islands, Indonesia, the East Indies, its cajoling of Thailand, and their joint foray into Burma were all highly successful ventures. Their navy forced the powerful Imperial Chinese Navy to remain in harbor for many months and defeated the relatively small British, Dominion and French navies in the area. Japan was simply beginning to feel stretched thin with ambition. It could not conquer China and India simultaneously. By the time 1938 was coming to a close after a string of Allied defeats in the Pacific, Japan’s situation looked precarious. Its China First strategy contained many flaws because China was indeed a powerful and vengeful enemy who had not been defeated. If anything, it had gained from Japan’s summer mistake to invade China. In addition, Japan had not yet felt the full might of France, Britain and potentially the North American republics.
Britain was, of course, allowed to make more ships by France. In the 1937 Treaty of Southampton, France and Britain agreed that any restriction on each other’s navies during the wartime was not beneficial for defeating the Quadruple League and thus lifted any limitations on navies. They agreed that they would not use their navies against each other and that after the war there would be a general disarmament. Thus, it was somewhat ironic that the power that limited the Royal Navy in 1813 allowed it to once again. And rise it did! By 1939, the Royal Navy had doubled in size and had added ten new aircraft carriers to its fleets. New recruits flocked to naval offices and immediate training centers had to be set up. It was as if Admiral Nelson’s ghost had awakened and inspired the Royal Navy to go out and retake the seas.
Japan’s sudden entry into the war threatened the United States to a large degree. On September 10th, 1937 the United States released a blistering condemnation of Japan’s aggressive actions. Later that month, the Japanese ambassador was dismissed from Washington and diplomatic ties between the two countries ended. With this diplomatic situation present, it was no surprise that the United States called for an international embargo on Japan. The Confederacy and most Latin American nations were quick to comply except for the right-wing republics of Quito and Peru. The United States’ muscle flexing was viewed as mere talk in Japan but President Kirkwood and congressional leaders began to discuss the feasibility of warring on the Japanese Empire. First, however, they had to contend with a more immediate threat.
Russia and Japan’s triumphs over the Allies had strong international repercussions. To their junior allies, Peru and Quito, the Russian and Japanese victories seemed like a vindication of the militaristic Zavtra ideology they embraced. More importantly, these victories provided an opportunity for the two South Americans to flex their military muscle and fulfill their leaders’ territorial aspirations. General Francisco Herrera, the ambitious leader of Quito, was a total dictator of his country. He looked to the north at Gran Colombia in disgust, remembering for a brief time the time when his successor, Quito native Raul Castillo, ruled all of Gran Colombia (but failing to remember his ineffectiveness in governing). President Benito Posada of Peru was an even more ambitious leader who was probably the weaker of the two. Peru had been defeated by Quito in 1909-1910 in the Maranon War and had since attempted to modernize and militarize under various military regimes. Poor and destitute, the country could not afford going to war yet its president fancied himself as a modern day Incan emperor who could only efficiently modernize if his “crownlands” were under his control. His delusions stretched across many aspects of policy with oftentimes disastrous consequences. For example, he refused to build a navy because the Incans lacked a navy and he also moved the capital to the ancient city of Cuzco. The two countries were together quite power but had potent militaries. Herrera and Posada had poured money into their respective militaries and looked for an opportunity to jump into the world war.
When it seemed like Japan would take over all of Asia and after Constantinople had fallen, the two South American leaders met for only the second time and agreed to declare war on France and the British Empire in the next few months. Only Quito had any striking power but Posada of Peru believed if victorious he could still gain support from his allies. On June 11th, 1938 Quito declared war on France and Britain followed by Peru’s declaration of the same on June 13th. The two Allies were shocked but Napoleon IV reportedly was amused. “Well, surely this works in our favor more than theirs,” he said. The Australian Prime Minister was less amused, declaring to the King that “we are surrounded by enemies to the north and now to the east. I do not know if I will have the honor of writing to you in a years time.”
Quito’s navy immediately made an impact on the war by invading an occupying Dominion and French islands in the Pacific. On June 23rd, they invaded the Pitcairn Islands who formerly surrendered by June 27th. Formerly a member of the Sandwich Island Dominion, they had been transferred to New Zealand after Honolulu’s fall in late 1937. Occupied by a skeleton force and defended by only two destroyers, the outlying British holdings were easy prey for the marauding South American navy. Next to fall were certain islands of French Polynesia, most notable Tahiti. A brief resistance lasted on Tahiti for a week, but the 5,000 Quito Army soldiers overwhelmed the small garrison of 1,200. Last to fall were the Cook Islands, occupied from July 12th to the 16th. The largest land battle in the south central Pacific occurred at Avarua in the Cook Islands. Roughly 8,000 soldiers were involved and resulted in a fairly difficult takeover of the island for the Quito troops. Thus, within a month of entering the war, Quito had expanded its control deep into the Pacific. At the same time, Japan was moving its way south into the Solomon Islands and there was legitimate fear that the two forces would link up and block any lane for potential American aid from Australia and New Zealand.
This fear was negated in the Battle of Norfolk Island. Quito’s main naval fleet, flushed with victory but without any serious resistance behind it, ambitiously steamed toward Norfolk Island to occupy the island. The plan was to use the island as a staging ground for an utterly impractical invasion of either New Zealand or Australia. However, facing the South American fleet (which was made up of many old Japanese ships and even a Great War era Brazilian battleship) was a combined Australian-New Zealand naval force. On August 16th, the last naval battle of the war not involving heavy use of aircraft was fought in favor of the Allies. Quito was forced to turn back to the Avarua and the two Dominions down under were safe from an invasion from the east. For the remainder of the war, Quito did not venture west but was content to hold its conquered islands. The two Dominions were content to leaving these islands alone due to their overall strategic unimportance, especially as Quito itself came under direct threat.
Despite this setback, General Francisco Herrera turned his attention to his true goal: Gran Colombia. His army, numbering around 175,000 and including a number of tracked armored cars and a few wings of airwagons (as airplanes were known in the Americas), invaded Gran Colombia without warning on October 3rd. Unprepared at first, the Gran Colombian forces were dealt major blows in the first couple days of fighting. The large country pleaded for aid from its northern neighbors. The Confederate States, long a benevolent peace-keeping force in Latin America, looked in horror as its trading partner and friend was indiscriminately invaded. On October 6th, President Ernest W. Marland of the Confederate States asked the Confederate Congress for a declaration of war on the Republic of Quito and the Congress overwhelmingly complied. For the first time since 1864, the Confederacy was at war. As early as November, the Confederate Expeditionary Force began arriving in Gran Colombia and even before the end of the year Confederate troops were seeing action against Quito.
Peru, meanwhile, launched an offensive against Argentina in September but the war quickly turned unfavorably as Argentina rushed troops to the border. The large nation, which covered most of the southern portion of the great continent, expected the attack due to Posada’s bombastic rhetoric. The two South American countries spread the war to another continent and expanded the participants. It was truly a global war as violence stretched from Africa to Australia. An American newspaper joked in 1935 that the South American dictators viewed themselves as “Pizarros Reincarnate” but so many people wrote in response that such an idea was ridiculous. In 1938, the article was re-published but instead of public scoffing, many wrote that the United States should get involved against Quito and Peru. Under intense public pressure and especially from foreign pressure, the United States executive and congress began to seriously ponder the possibility of war.
The fall of West Prussia was actually a speedy affair considering the amount of resistance offered in the last few months. When the Allies neared Berlin in mid-December 1938, the commander of French Tenth Army (which bore the brunt of the Battle of Berlin) remarked “we better get use to this because we will be here for a long time, possibly till the next decade”. In actuality, the Battle of Berlin lasted until February 19th when the last Prussian stronghold surrendered. Indeed, it was a bloody, tough battle between one side, which was holding on for dear life, and another side, which was fighting against an almost perpetual enemy. Involving the largest concentration of Prussian troops in West Prussia, Berlin was supposed to be a veritable fortress against enemy attack. However, it was facing essentially the brunt of all Western European militaries, including powerful France and its allies Germany, Spain, Naples and Italy. Involving close to a million soldiers, the Allies moved in against Berlin deep in the winter of 1938 and fighting continued in and around the city for two months. The city was surrounded in late January and all hope was lost for West Prussia when the under-manned Mueller Line in the north was broken through by another French force. They rushed toward Berlin and the addition of another half million men against the city meant its eventual surrender on February 19th. In 1904, the city was spared the flames of war on special order by Napoleon III. Now, Berlin was a city of ruin. For the remainder of February and March, the Allies conquered the rest of West Prussia, often encountering fanatical resistance.
A Prussian tankman surrenders to the Allies as West Prussia crumbles.
The old Prussian King William II, who had stoked the Frommist movement that ultimately led his country to such destruction, was once again in an unenviable position. As the leader of Prussia in the dark days of 1903-1904, he had ordered the surrender of Berlin. Now, he had fled to East Prussia where he vowed to continue fighting. Somewhat delusional, the seventy-four year old monarch believed that his “Fortress Konigsburg” would hold out against Allied resistance. Thus, for the second time in his life, he saw the Prussian nation destroyed by war.
With West Prussia conquered and the majority of Poland free from League control, save for Gdansk and areas of eastern Poland, the Allies decided instead to focus their full energy on Russia. They viewed Prussia as defeated already and instead of finishing it off, they would focus on driving into Russia whose main focus was still conquering the rest of the Ottoman Empire. In a way, it was a belated attempt to save the Ottoman Empire even though the Allies knew that the ancient empire was finished. “We shall strike his pride,” Napoleon IV bombastically pronounced at a meeting of Allied military leaders to decide the next course of action, referring to the invasion of Morchenko’s Russia, which had thus far been totally unscathed in war. Thus, the Spring Offensive was launched on May 17th, 1939 comprising of over two million French, Polish, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Neapolitan, Lusitanian and even a British soldiers. Supporting them were over 4,500 tracked armored cars, armored cars and char de combats, 1,500 airplanes and airships, and over 8,000 pieces of artillery. It was a massive offensive, aimed at causing as much damage to Morchenko’s Russia as possible.
Meanwhile, Morchenko’s Russia was finishing off the Ottoman Empire. Closing in from the east and with the Greeks advancing slowly from the Aegean Sea, the Ottoman Empire was quickly shrinking. Furthermore, Arab insurgents stoked on by the Russian N. P. Petrovich wrecked havoc in the Palestine. In short, the Ottoman Empire was little more than central Anatolia and Antioch. The government under Mustafa V was situated in the ancient city of Antioch after his flight from Constantinople. The Russians in early 1939 did not wish to capture Antioch, however, but to gain as much of northern Anatolia as possible so the inevitable peace treaty would be favorable to them. The majority of their soldiers involved in Constantinople were either transferred to the Anatolian front or to Russia itself, which was now under invasion. The primary Russian operation became the conquering Anatolian front and in the spring and summer it swept through the remaining Ottoman holdouts in Asia Minor and in late August met the less-capable Greeks on the western end of the peninsula. The Russian drive effectively ended Ottoman control of Asia Minor for the first time in centuries. The last major Ottoman force, a 70,000-strong army near the city of Batman, was defeated on August 7th, 1939. The Battle of Batman ended effective resistance outside of Antioch and its surrounding area. By this time, Russia was seriously sending out peace-feelers through neutral nations and it seemed as if the Ottoman Empire would respond.
Russia, however, faced a more immediate problem in the form of a massive Allied invasion. The two million-strong multinational invading force with large reserves, however, faced a sizeable Russian force, complete with many veterans of the Ottoman campaign. As the Ottomans collapsed, hundreds of thousands of Russians were transferred to Russia to defend their motherland. The population was mobilized for total war and total defense. The Russian propaganda ministry churned out literature and films urging all Russians to resist the European invasion. Most people met the call with a huge patriotic fervor. After all, the Russians had just liberated the Balkans and totally defeated their traditional enemy. The Russians called their long-idle reserves for the great battles ahead and huge Russian armies moved to meet the advancing European armies.
Russian soldiers train for the Allied invasion.
At first, the Allies enjoyed considerable success. French and German tracked armored cars, grown more advanced based on Prussia panzer designs, spearheaded the great invasion. The Russians were swept out of Poland and for the first time the war was fought on Russian soil. It was spared significant invasion during the Great War but ravished during the eight-year long Russian Civil War and subsequent political consolidation. The Russian state had rebuilt under Zavtra rule and included many modern highways to connect the major cities of the empire. Now, these highways were prime targets for the Allied mechanized forces. The invasion comprised of two army groups. The first, Armée nordique, was aimed north toward St. Petersburg. It was the most multi-national army, having significant numbers of German, Danish and Spanish soldiers. It was about 50% French. The Armée moyenne, or Middle Army, was aimed at attacking Moscow and defending the invasions southern flank. It was the large of the two army groups and was about 75% French. Together, the invading two army groups was known as the Grande Armée. Together, the armies would strike from Poland and bypass East Prussia. A number of divisions would finish off East Prussia as the invasion force marched into Russia.
Crushing the second-rate soldiers that comprised the mainstay of the Russian soldiers in Poland proved to be an easy task but as more experienced soldiers arrived in western Russia, the initially rapid Allied advance became slowed down. At first, the muddy spring roads caused some hold ups for the Allies but their mechanized divisions poured across the paved roads quickly. By June 5th, the town of Pinsk around fifty miles from the Polish border fell to French and Polish divisions. A few days later, the town of Baranavichy surrendered after a brief battle. However, the Russian army concentrated a large army near Minsk and the Battle of Minsk commenced on June 22nd, 1939. Involving over a half a million soldiers, it was the largest pitched battle of the Russian campaign. The large defensive works outside of the key transportation hub of Minsk was enough to deter the Allied armies to surround the city rather than directly assault it. Moving to the north and south of the city, the Allies attempted to surround it on June 26th but were defeated by a bold Russian armor thrust from the city in between the two Allied armies. They were less than five miles apart by this time. The Russian thrust bought the city some time and reinforcements from the east arrived the next day, thus saving the city from encirclement. More Russian reinforcements made it necessary for the Allies to pour more troops into the area so by mid July, the fifty square miles around Minsk was a chaotic jumble of divisions, attacks and counter-offensives. The month-long Battle of Minsk ended when the Allies ordered a general withdrawal to a more organized line thirty miles to the west of Minsk, thus allowing the city to remain in Russian hands. The Russian victory was milked for all it was worth and the country rejoiced.
To the north, the Allies made considerable gains in the Baltic territory, driving around East Prussia and invading the Lithuanian and Latvian-speaking provinces of the Russian Empire. The Armée nordique drove quickly and reached Riga in mid-June. The brief Siege of Riga ended in an Allied victory and the multinational forces advanced to the Dvina River before halting before a large Russian army from St. Petersburg. The Battle of Ogre, named after the Russian town nearby, commenced on June 30th, just as the Battle of Minsk was in full swing to the south. Here, however, the imperial German divisions proved themselves as superior fighters and forced a crossing of the Dvina River. The Battle of Ogre was a decisive Allied victory and opened the way to Tallinn and Pskov. Thus, for the remainder of the summer and fall, the Armée nordique made significant progress across the Baltic provinces, sometimes even being greeted as liberators.
The Allied setback at Minsk was offset by the Russian defeat at Slutsk to the south of Minsk. After that victory, however, the drive began to stall and on three occasions the Russians thwarted Allied attempts to advance or outflank their defenses. Likewise, Russian counter-offensives gained minimal amounts of ground against the Allies. Morchenko launched a directive to “bleed the Allies dry and await the winter”. Indeed, as the temperatures began to drop, Russian activity began to increase against the Armée moyenne. Allied commanders wishing to advance deeper into Russia without capturing Minks began to worry that such an action would be impossible until next spring, if possible at all. In November, the northern Allied armies captured Tallinn and launched a determined attack on Pskov but numerous Russian defenders dealt the Armée nordique its first defeat.
In December, Morchenko ordered a general Russian offensive across the entire front, aimed at utilizing the first heavy snows to Russia’s advantage. Achieving little to no surprise, the offensive met a well-dressed and well-armed enemy who had retreated only a few miles against the massive Russian attack. Involving some three million men, the Russian offensive only met the same number of Allies. The counter-attack did sweep the Allies away from the vicinity of Pskov and even further away from Minsk, but it did not even come close to sweeping Russia toward victory. As the offensive stalled out in late December, the armies settled down for their fifth winter at war and for a very chilly stalemate.
That stalemate would not last long, however. As Allied armies closed in on Eastern Prussia and the temporary Prussian capital of Konigsburg, the France and Russia were establishing diplomatic channels through the neutral United States. As 1939 turned to 1940, the Russian front quieted down. Both sides recognized the fruitless stalemate and after five years of war there was a feeling that the war may actually end quite soon. On January 8th, 1940 Napoleon IV directly ordered that French soldiers across the front approach the Russian lines with flags of truce the next day. On January 9th, a general cease-fire was announced across the entire Russian front effective at noon. This ended any hope for Prussia, who had counted solely on a Russian victory and subsequent advance into Europe. The war between the Western Allies and Russia was over. In the Ottoman Empire, a cease-fire was announced on January 18th, just as Russian forces were reaching Antioch.
The fighting in Europe was over.
The end of the fighting meant the beginning of peace negotiations. On January 17th, French diplomats, representing the Allies, headed by French Foreign Minister Michel Vitoux arrived in the small Russian town of Borodino. Russian Foreign Minister Vladimir Voloshin met them. The two men had met before, negotiating intensely during the “Battle of the Vs” in the 1933 Romanian Crisis. Now, the situation was different.
The negotiating was relatively short and straightforward. The two parties agreed to stop fighting and the French agreed to withdraw all Allied troops from Russian territory. There would be no exchange of land between Russia and the Allies. The border would remain at their 1937 borders. Most importantly, Russia acknowledged the Allied victory over Prussia and France recognized the Russian victory over the Ottoman Empire. Both parties agreed to sever their alliances with their respective defeated allies and allow the other party to negotiate with them without interference. The Treaty of Borodino thus ended the largest fighting on the European continent and was signed on January 19th, 1940. There was still, however, much negotiating to be done.
The Treaty of Reykjavik was signed on February 2nd, 1940 between Denmark and Sweden. It was monitored by France and Russia. The two countries agreed that Norway would remain in Swedish hands but Sweden would pay fifteen million francs for the land. Iceland would be returned to Denmark from British control.
The Treaty of Tannenburg ended the war against Prussia on March 5th, 1940. King William II, by now an embittered old man, delegated his authority to negotiate to his foreign minister and son, the Crown Prince Frederick. Prussia viewed Russia as a backstabber for many reasons; they did not help enough against France or Poland and most importantly they abandoned their “Bond of Trust” in the Treaty of Borodino. The bitter Prussian leadership was even more angered by the strict terms imposed by the victorious Allies. The Allies called for the dismemberment of Prussia as a sovereign nation. This included the abdication of King William II, the exile or renunciation for royal rights by the House of Hohenzollern, the dismemberment of the Prussian military, bureaucracy, government and every institution. Prussia would be divided between Germany and Poland. As Prussia was totally occupied except for a sad few doze square miles around war-torn Konigsburg, the Prussians had no choice but to protest and sign. And thus, Prussia, after two failed attempts in less than half a century at invading Poland and France, vanished into the pages of history.
The Treaty of Ankara was signed on March 31st, 1940. In much the same situation as Prussia, the Ottoman Empire was nothing more than Antioch, its surrounding area and loyal areas of its Arabian provinces. The Balkans, the Caucuses, Constantinople and most of Asia Minor lay under Russian or Greek control. The Ottomans had little bargaining power so they could only accept the Russian and Greek terms. These terms included the division of the Ottoman empire as follows: the Balkans would be transferred directly to Russian control and further division and governance would be up to Russia in the future. The Caucauses, the Black Sea shoreline on both the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor would be annexed to Russia proper. Greece would annex the western shore of Anatolia. Most importantly, a new country would be formed, based in Constantinople and controlling central Asia Minor as well as most of the Anatolian Black Sea coast. It was aimed to be a Russian puppet and Morchenko planned to make it a revival of the ancient Byzantine Empire but under Russian domination. The Zavtra ideals would spread to the new country, named Byzantium. Thus, Russia finally gained control of the coveted straits. The remaining areas of the Ottoman Empire would remain a rump Ottoman Empire under the rule not of Mustafa V but of his brother, the former pro-Russian Sultan Mehmet VII. The various independent Arab cities that had revolted against Turkish rule during the war and under the guidance of Russian N.P. Petrovich were not mentioned in the treaty to the great anger of the Arab nation and Petrovich himself. His personal protest to Morchenko was denied and a huge anti-Russian backlash enveloped the Arab world. Even the Holy Land remained under Ottoman control, much to the anger of Russian religious leaders who had hoped they would be annexed or at least freed from Muslim control. The Treaty of Ankara effectively divided the Ottoman Empire into two new countries (Byzantium, and yet to be determined Slavic Balkan land), an enlarged Greece and Russia, and a rump Ottoman state. The latter was already facing great problems as Mehmet VII took over the reigns of government following his brother’s forced resignation. The Arab provinces were already in open revolt and the broken Ottoman Army could do nothing about it.
With the Treaty of Ankara signed, the wars in Europe came to an official end. While the war was still going on in South America and Asia, Europe could breathe a sigh of relief. Their war was over and any immediate threat to their peace was now in the past. While most of Europe lay unscathed, large swaths of land lay in ruin. Specifically, Prussia and Poland were nearly totally destroyed. Constantinople was a sea of rubble. Even the eight month-long campaign in Russia brought devastation to the land. Millions of soldiers lay dead and millions more were wounded. For the second time in forty years, the nations of Europe looked forward to an immediate future of rebuilding. Yet this time, their threats remained. France failed to decisively defeat Russia and Russia failed to sweep into Europe. Anton Morchenko and Napoleon IV still eyed each other warily, yet it was the world’s expectation that never again would the two men fight again. Too much blood had been shed for another protracted war. The year 1940 brought about the era of Uneasy Peace in Europe.
Also, the war is not done and that update may have to wait longer still. Hopefully not as long as between this and the last update but you never know, unfortunately. Coming soon, a map of the war in Europe and a postwar map of Europe.
Enjoy!!!!
The Second Great War Continued...
1937: Turkey and Prussia Beleaguered
As somber New Year’s celebrations died down in the capitals of the world, political and military leaders could see the situation looked quite different than a year before. Prussia was suddenly vulnerable but Russia stood triumphant over much of the Balkans. It was a mixed situation for the two alliances but perhaps the happiest man was Morchenko. His forces were in firm control of the war against the Ottomans and his ally Prussia was increasingly weakened. Perhaps it was a case of schadenfreude, but Morchenko was reportedly pleased about the news of the Battle of Silesia.
The war in Prussia and Poland increasingly turned against the Prussians in the spring of 1937. The breaking of the Mueller Line was an early death knell for Prussia, as their meticulous plans had only conceived this situation only in the most dire of times for the ancient kingdom. Compounded with the failure of the Mueller Line to hold back the huge Allied armies (comprised mainly of French and Germans but also included Spanish, Portuguese, Lusitanian, Italian and Neapolitan divisions) was the Prussian defeat in the Battle of Warsaw. It was not a traditional defeat but rather a withdrawal of the Prussians away from the heavily fortified Polish capital. This allowed thousands of Polish troops to turn east and face the increasing Russian pressure.
It must be noted that the Allied victory in the Battle of Silesia and subsequent land connection with Poland severed a large chunk of Prussia away from the rest of West Prussia. Approximately two fifths of Prussia was deemed as lost by Berlin by early summer when attempts to re-establish land contact with the area were beat back by Allied armies. There were Allied attempts to pacify the remainder of Prussia Silesia but for the most part, the Franco-German armies turned their attention north to the rest of West Prussia and also to help the Poles drive the Prussians out from the rest of Poland.
The Battle of Breslau (see last update) was a turning point in the war against Prussia. From then on, Prussia was on the defensive and increasingly concerned with holding enemies from invading Prussia itself.
In the June 5th “Warsaw Pact” between Polish, German and French military leaders, the three nations agreed to a generalized strategy. Poland would commit approximately 75% to the east to attempt to drive the Russians out of Poland, or at least defend against further encroachment. Meanwhile, French and German armies within Poland would attack northwest from Warsaw to drive Prussians out of Poland. Simultaneously, the Franco-German armies would strike north from occupied Silesia into West Prussia. It would be a coordinated offensive, largely ignoring Prussian Silesia to the south and East Prussia. Plans to implement it in a week were put on hold as Prussia launched a large counter-offensive on June 8th, aimed at severing the Franco-German forces from the Polish armies. In the largest tank battles of the war, the Prussians showed off their technological advantage but ultimately succumbed to a few contributing factors including Allied numbers, Allied anti-armor gunnery and the new French char, the Chasseur Deux. The new French tanks were a match for the Prussian panzers but were relatively few in number. However, their presence brought morale to the Allies and fear into the Prussian tankers, who had always viewed the French to be an armor-deficient fighting force. The Battle of Lipno ended in an Allied victory as the Prussian counter-attack faltered.
Thus, the offensive against Prussia began on June 18th with the aim of the total defeat of Prussia. In Eastern Poland, Polish forces were fighting a vicious war with the Russian military. The invading Russians were second or third-rate troops as the best soldiers were put into the Ottoman fronts. Nevertheless, they proved tough foes for the Poles and the endless Russian reinforcements made the Polish Eastern Front a tough front to be victorious on. Increasing numbers of Allied divisions came to Poland’s aid on their eastern front. For example, a Neapolitan brigade gained notoriety and fame when it held out against a Russia assault by itself for three days before any reinforcements arrived. At times, the multinational armies were difficult to coordinate but the vast majority of officers spoke at least a rudimentary form of French.
In August, 1937 the Swedish Navy launched an ambitious campaign to capture Iceland from the Kingdom of Denmark. Despite strong warnings from Great Britain to leave Iceland alone, the Swedes landed 15,000 men on the island and quickly secured it from the Danes in an almost bloodless campaign. The Swedish in campaign had almost reached its close by August, 1937. The fall of Oslo the following year had ended heavy resistance to the Swedish invasion but a small, hopeful resistance remained in the north in the vicinity of Narvik. Denmark was more or less helpless against the Swedes, but numerous Allied divisions in Denmark itself discouraged an actual Swedish invasion of the country. Copenhagen was shelled numerous times but King Christian XI repeatedly rebuffed the Swedish leader Lund’s attempt for a peace.
Further south, the war in the Balkans took on a more serious turn against the Allies with the St. Valentines Day Betrayal. On February 14th, Greece severed ties with France and other Continental Alliance countries and declared war on the Ottoman Empire. This declaration of war was followed by a rapid invasion of Ottoman territory north of Greece, specifically Macedonia. The Greek betrayal reverberated throughout Europe, especially in the Ottoman Empire. The already stretched forces in the Balkans had now a southern enemy to fight and in Macedonia, the few Turkish soldiers in the vicinity fled before the organized new adversary. The “betrayal” was the result of an intense courtship between King Alexander of Greece and Anton Morchenko, a relationship fostered throughout the 1920s by a desire for both parties to use each other. Alexander had an ambitious expansionist agenda that involved spreading Greek territory at the expense of the Ottoman Empire.
The spring and summer months saw the Ottomans slowly withdraw from the Balkans. In July, the armies north of the Russian swath, numbering about 220,000 surrendered to the Russians after hundreds of thousands of local Slavs volunteered for service against the Ottomans. These South Slavs were more or less united regardless of their nationality. However, there were internal battles between Muslim and Christian Slavs. Thousands of Muslim Slavs realized their precarious position under future Christian domination and either desperately fought for the Ottomans or quietly converted to Christianity. They were heavily outnumbered by hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians, Serbians, Macedonians, Albanians, Christian Bosnians and Catholic Croatians who showed up in force to oust the Ottomans. Many of these nationalities had secret national ambitions of their own but nevertheless saw the Russians as liberators from the Ottomans. The inundated Russian recruitment offices in the newly conquered lands appealed for aid and in April, Moscow gave the newly occupied Slavs permission to take up arms against the Ottomans. As many as a million answered the call, the majority against the Ottoman armies north of the Russian occupied zone that had been cut off the year before. A brutal, brief campaign was waged against the Turks leading to the formal surrender of the enclave to the Russians on July 9th.
Meanwhile, the outnumbered Ottomans withdrew southeast in the face of Russians, Greeks and Slavic partisan. Demoralized and defeated, they hoped to stop the advance at Constantinople. In Russian occupied territory, the military ruled over a generally jubilant population of a dozen ethnic groups. Many were armed. For the moment they were united against their common enemy. And that fight was going quite well, as the Ottomans were in rapid retreat to the Constantinople Peninsula. There, massive defenses ringed the ancient city and trenches plowed the rough landscape of the Peninsula. The Turks were prepared to make a stand at their capital rather than fight in the fields of the Balkans against a more numerous enemy. At the gates of Constantinople, they figured, the enemy would be ground to a halt.
To the east, the Russian advance across Asia Minor met success as the second-rate Ottoman troops were again and again forced to withdraw. In particular, the Ottomans were particularly weakened by the dominance of Russian field artillery that was portable and effective in the rough terrain. In short, the Ottoman Empire was being squeezed by a gigantic pincer movement. Constantinople would be a tough nut for the pincer to crack. However, as the Russians continued to advance, Constantinople would be the remaining Ottoman territory of a once vast empire.
Indeed, the Ottoman Empire was threatened everywhere. While regular Russian armies moved in from the northwest and the east to close in on Constantinople, Russian agents stirred up trouble in Ottoman Arabia. There, the famous Nikolai Porfiryevich Petrovich (also known as “Nikolai of Arabia”) roused popular support against the Turkish regime. A musician by training, Petrovich had traveled through the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East for many years studying Turkish, Persian and Arabian music before getting involved in political affairs. Recruited into the Russian Foreign Service, he was assigned to the Ottoman Affairs Bureau where his first-hand knowledge of the Ottoman Empire proved useful in the early campaigns against the Turks. In later 1935, he had the idea of instigating a rebellion in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which stretched from Asia Minor, down the Mediterranean all the way to the Arabian Peninsula. In doing so, he would distract tens of thousands of Ottoman soldiers from more pressing fronts such as the Balkans and Asia Minor.
The Russian Foreign Service responded enthusiastically, agreeing this would advance Russia’s own geopolitical situation by creating warm feelings with the Arabs. Perhaps, even the French-allied Kingdom of Arabia would be likely to ally with Russia. With full government backing, Petrovich traveled to Arabia and the Holy Land where he began to stir trouble against the Ottomans. With a firm grip on Arabic and also the gift of music, Petrovich managed to convince and coordinate numerous local Arab leaders to rise against the Ottoman garrisons in the area. Under his supervision and guidance, Arab bands attacked Ottoman railroads, garrisons and supply lines. They also roused support among the common people against the Turks with the support of the strong Russian propaganda machine. With phrases such as “Arabia for Arabs” and “Oust the Turks!” such conflicts took on an ethnic tone. This took a turn for worse when an isolated garrison in Palestine was slaughtered by an Arab band rather than be taken as prisoner. Nevertheless, the Russian plan succeeded in that between March 1937, with the first major revolt, and June 1940, when the last Ottoman outpost fell, around 115,000 Ottomans were sent to Arabia from other fronts. Such a large number may very well have changed the outcome of the brutal Battle of Constantinople.
1937: Rising Sun Strikes
Japan’s entry into the Second Great World was not a surprise to any nation but its ferocity and speed shocked the Allies. On September 10th, 1937 the Empire of Japan struck targets on British and French colonies across East Asia, the result of years of planning. The surprise attacks against the two former enemies immediately put France and Britain into an unlikely alliance, one that had not existed for centuries. Japan’s situation in 1937 was very much in their favor. Their close ally, Russia, was victorious against the Ottomans and the Imperial Japanese Navy was the second largest in the world. Indeed, they had by far the largest navy in the Pacific because the largest navy in the world, France, was stretched globally. The American Navy in the Pacific was growing but still inferior to the Japanese Navy. Indeed, the second largest navy in East Asia was a tie between the Royal Navy, already stretched thin because of Copenhagen Treaty requirements and international interests, and the Chinese Navy, which the Japanese had defeated numerous times.
On the morning of September 10th, Imperial Japanese forces struck French Indochina, British East Indies and the British Sandwich Islands. The following day, Emperor Guangxu of China, issued a declaration of war against Japan and thus East Asia was thrust into the Second Great War. The Chinese looked favorably at their entry to the war and were confidant in their abilities to defeat the Japanese on land and sea. Backed by not one but two Western powers, a stronger military, a more potent industrial sector and a young, strong leader, the Chinese believed the Second Great War would indeed turn in their favor. It must be noted that no state of hostility existed between China and Russia; Morchenko was far too preoccupied with European affairs and was not interested in committing many millions of troops against China. Despite Japanese demands that he declare war on China, Morchenko declined. This was the first of many sour points in the Russo-Japanese alliance.
Japan’s ambitious September attacks occurred in three areas: the Sandwich Islands, French Indochina, and the British East Indies. The broad range and objectives of each of these three campaigns demonstrated the scope of Japanese planning. The simultaneous attacks all achieved a degree of surprise despite the large-scale naval movements across the Pacific. The first and most successful campaign, the Sandwich Islands, commenced on September 10th with a surprise naval attack on small Royal Navy squadron based in Pearl Harbor. Japanese airplanes, based from aircraft carriers miles away, achieved surprise and the squadron was devastated with minimal Japanese losses. As a Dominion of the British Empire, the Sandwich Islands was more or less responsible for its own defense without aid from Britain, however, as a very new Dominion as well as the smallest, a small contingent of British forces remained on the archipelago to provide defense against such a threat. With the native soldiers, the Dominion’s defenses numbered only some 60,000 soldiers against an invading force of 150,000. The primary landings focused on Oahu, the most populated island, and the large island of Hawaii, which possessed a large airfield for the Royal Air Force. A brief air war took place over Hawaii but there were simply more and better Japanese planes. The land campaign on the Sandwich Islands took roughly three weeks and the Dominion officially surrendered on October 13th, 1937. The Battle of Honolulu was the largest battle in the campaign, pitting the Dominion forces centered on Fort George against the invading Japanese. When Fort George fell on October 10th, the rest of the Dominion’s resistance collapsed and Japan raised its banner on the islands.
Indochina was a more complicated affair. After the November (of 1935) Crisis in which the Japanese consulate in Hue was burned to the ground, it seemed as if Asia would erupt into war. France, already embroiled in Europe, did not wish to have another war across the globe and compromised with Japan by removing the Indochinese Emperor Duy Tan from the throne and replacing him with his much younger brother, Minh Ti. Minh was indifferent to politics as he was only nine years old. The staunch pro-Japanese member of the court, Ngo Duc, who lived in exile in Japan, viewed the new child emperor as a less threatening opposition to his own ambition. Thus when the Japanese invaded Indochina on September 10th, he joined the troops and with great pomposity and self-importance entered Hue on September 29th as the true Emperor of Indochina. With full Japanese backing, he was declared Emperor of Indochina and young Minh Ti was put into house arrest with Duy Tan. Indeed, the countryside palace became known as the House of Former Emperors.
The actual invasion of Indochina proved to be a relatively easy affair. The 105,000 French soldiers there offered significant resistance, yet the quarter million Indochinese soldiers were oftentimes struck with internal divisions that mirrored the internal divisions at the imperial court in Hue. Even despite aid from the Chinese, the invading 600,000 Japanese had an easy time of subduing Indochinese resistance. The French navy in the area did succeed in sinking some transports but they were simply too outnumbered to offer a serious resistance to the IJN. The fall of Saigon in early October broke the morale of many local soldiers and ended any serious hope of defeating the Japanese. Although the majority of the French soldiers retreated in an orderly fashion across Indochina and into the Dominion of India, the majority of Indochinese soldiers either were soundly defeated, defected, surrendered or simply dropped their arms and went home. By June of 1938, the Japanese and pro-Japanese Indochinese units had secured the area and French power in East Asia ended.
The campaign in the British Dominion of the East Indies proved to be the most difficult campaign for the Imperial Japanese forces. This was probably due to the sheer size of the Dominion, whose 16,000 islands, strong fortress at Singapore, and proximity to Australia and New Zealand made it far more difficult to conquer than the Sandwich Islands and Indochina. On the other hand, the Dominion was the most draconian of the British dominions. The government based in Singapore based its policies on favoring wealthy landowners rather than the millions of common people. As a result, sentiments were generally anti-British and anti-Singapore so when the Japanese invaded, they were widely greeted as liberators.
Because of the size of the Dominion, the Japanese only invaded certain areas of the archipelago in September, saving the more populous islands such as Java and Sumatra as well as the city of Singapore for the following year. Nevertheless, the British and Dominion forces put up a strong resistance in Borneo, Celebes and New Guinea, the three largest islands that the Japanese attacked in late September 1937. The heat and humidity of the islands were very intense but both sides were equipped with appropriate gear for the weather. As winter came along, the heat subsided only minimally. Approximately one million Japanese soldiers were committed to invading the various islands of the East Indies, the majority landing on Borneo, which would later be a staging ground for the invasions of Java, Sumatra and the Malaya Peninsula. It was a massive undertaking, the largest amphibious campaign the world had ever seen. Transports ferried soldiers and supplies from Japan to the Philippines and from the Philippines to either Indochina or the East Indies.
These transports were prime targets for the Imperial Chinese Navy, who, despite numerous beatings from its Japanese counterpart, still itched for a fight against the IJN. However, foreign navies failed twice in their endeavors to halt the Japanese. The first occurred a week after the Chinese entry into the war on September 18th when the Chinese Silver Fleet sailed southwest to attempt to disrupt the numerous Japanese transports moving south. The Silver Fleet was China’s second largest but most modern fleet, shadowed in size only by the Golden Fleet. The fleet was under the command of Admiral Zhao Yun and comprised of three modern battleships, three heavy cruisers and numerous smaller cruisers and destroyers. After significant success sinking and capturing straggling Japanese transports and merchant ships, a large contingent of the Imperial Japanese Navy arrived late on the 17th of September. The Battle of Batanes occurred the following day and resulted in a Japanese victory because of the presence of two Japanese aircraft carriers. The Japanese fleet was ahead of its two carriers by about three hours when the Chinese commenced the battle. Although about equal in force, the ambitious Admiral Zhao Yun urged his ships to fire quickly and accurately. Perhaps it was Japanese over-confidence or lack of respect for their traditional punching bag enemies, but for the first stage of the Battle of Batanes, it seemed as if the Chinese would win the battle. However, the arrival of eighty Japanese planes was damaging to the Silver Fleet, and a torpedo bomber hit the Chinese heavy cruiser Dingyuan in the magazine. The loss of this cruiser prompted Admiral Yun to retreat but he conducted a brilliant and aggressive retreat that discouraged the Japanese from pursuing. Although technically a narrow Japanese victory, the Chinese fleet had managed to sink numerous small Japanese craft and inflict heavy damage on many transports before being driven away. In addition, Admiral Yun was a hero in China for a successful retreat. The Chinese navy remained a thorn in Japan’s side and the addition of three new carriers in 1938 only added to Japanese worries.
The Battle of Batanes.
The limited Chinese success on the sea showed a promising future for the young Imperial Chinese Navy and its Admiral Zhao Yun. Chinese successes were less prominent in Korea where a hasty invasion commenced on September 13th. Aimed at ultimately driving the Japanese off the peninsula, the Chinese Army threw itself on the Japanese defenses in a tactic that had caused millions of deaths in the last war. Indeed, the theatre commander was a member of the old school, one of the few that had survived Emperor Guanxu’s modernization by his sheer age and experience. His military strategy, however, had a lot to be desired and the heavy losses the Japanese inflicted on the Chinese resulted in no more than a dozen miles gained on the entire front. Indeed, a Japanese counter-attack even succeeded in gaining Chinese territory. With the unsuccessful invasion in mind, the Emperor replaced the old commander with a younger general who had impressed the Emperor on numerous occasions with creative tactics on paper. General Xu Huang thus took command in Korea in December 1937 with full imperial backing and the hopes of his troops resting on him.
The sudden invasions of various points across East Asia shocked and alarmed the United States whose own interests in the Pacific were growing. President Walter Kirkwood issued a strongly worded condemnation and asked the Japanese ambassador to leave Washington. There was serious discussion of joining the war to aid the British and French and to limit the extent of Japanese conquests. More publicly, Japanese-Americans particularly on the West Coast were subjected to discrimination and even blatant attacks in the streets. Japan’s popularity in the United States dropped to new lows and in a magazine poll conducted in November 1937, over 80% of Americans favored going to war with Japan. Kirkwood and congressional leaders decided to not go to war but give aid to the Allies and Britain in their fight.
1938: Quadruple League Triumphant – Russia
Russian columns advance deeper into the Balkan Peninsula.
Russian columns advance deeper into the Balkan Peninsula.
As the war reached its third year, the war in Europe seemed to be ending just as the war in Asia was beginning. The outcome of the European war was not really in doubt; the traditional French-led Allies stood triumphant over a broken Prussia while Russia stood victorious over the Ottoman Empire. It was an odd mix of victories, to have one country in both alliance camps be defeated and the others to remain victorious. Both Prussia and the Ottomans still had some fight left in them as 1938 rolled around, yet the contests seemed all but decided. The only question was if, when, and where Russia and France would clash. On the one hand, the war was going on for quite long, losses were mounting, but France could not stand to see Russia triumphant in Europe nor could Russia stand to see France dominating Western Europe.
Turkish soldiers advance to the front to meet the Russian threat.
The beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire began on August 28th, 1937 when the remaining Ottoman soldiers in the Balkans withdraw behind the heavy defensive lines that marked the peninsula on which Constantinople stood. The siege officially began that day. The whole of Ottoman Europe, save for this small peninsula and this magnificent capital, was in Russian control. The Turkish military, Sultan and nation were by no means willing to give up a fight. Much as they themselves had laid siege to the city nearly a half millennium before, the Turks found themselves on the receiving end on such a siege by the reincarnation of the Byzantines. With their defensive lines, known as the Suleiman Line, the Ottomans believed they could halt the Russian waves like an ocean breaks on rocks. Indeed, the defenses were very modern, having been built in the last three years. They contained deep bunkers, hidden machine gun nests, and the heaviest artillery Turkey could come up with. Booby traps dotted the land in between lines and snipers strategically took positions. In addition to weaponry, the entire peninsula, including the city of Constantinople, was well-stocked with munitions and food. The Turks believed if they survived a year at most against the Russian onslaught, Morchenko would come to terms. And besides, if the battle turned sour, the Ottoman Navy was still a force to be reckoned with against the weak Russian Black Sea Fleet. They could still supply Constantinople by sea if necessary.
Facing the powerful Suleiman Lines was an army of two million, armed to the teeth with weapons ranging in size from grenades and mortars, to giant guns which had to be assembled in pieces shipped from Russia in trains a mile long. Reinforcements of artillery from every size and caliber strengthened the already powerful Russian artillery force. By far the largest gun was an 800 mm monster with a range of twenty-five. Known as the “Turk-Slayer”, it, along with two smaller counter-parts nicknamed “Mehmet’s Assassin” and “Constantine XI’s Revenge” (after the last Byzantine Emperor who lost Constantinople in 1453 to the Turks), was situated behind Russian lines where it rained devastation on the Turkish lines. In addition to land artillery, the Russian Black Sea Fleet, although formerly limited by treaty, was distorted from a traditional fleet into a single-purpose fleet. The single purpose was to smash the Turkish defenses outside of Constantinople. The existing fleet was moved to escort duty while newly launched ships, made for the special purpose of bombarding Constantinople, made up the mainstay of the Black Sea Fleet. Comprised primarily of “mortar ships” and ships armed with a single heavy gun, the fleet stationed itself north of the peninsula and rained death. Constant transports provided for ever-present ammunition and there were always a dozen of these ships firing in any given minute.
All of these heavy weapons were of tremendous assistance to the rank and file Russian soldiers. Despite their aid, the Russian advance toward Constantinople was slow and costly. Turkish resistance was always stiff and oftentimes verged on fanatical. Outnumbered by approximately two to one, the Ottomans were nevertheless assisted by their modern defensive works. However, the devastation that fell from thousands of Russian guns served to rattle the Turkish soldiers. He was never allowed to rest because of constant artillery fire. His supplies had to traverse a lunar landscape churned by hundreds of thousands exploded bombs and a constant storm of shells. His own attempts to counter Russian artillery fire was cut short due to the predominance of the Russian Air Force, whose reconnaissance airplanes and airships could pinpoint where the Ottoman batteries were. The non-existent Ottoman Air Force offered no help. In addition, the Russian Air Force bombed the defensive lines. Any existing forays against the Russian Black Sea Fleet were meet with bloody noses due to the heavy cruisers that defended the mortar ships. In addition, the Greek Fleet was applying pressure from the Aegean and it was widely expected that at any moment Greek soldiers would land in western Anatolia. Already, major Ottoman islands in the Aegean had been taken over by the Greeks.
The Siege of Constantinople began on August 28th, 1937 and ended exactly 400 days later on October 2nd, 1938 with the fall of the city. It was a dramatic fall. The capital of the ancient Ottoman Empire lay in ruin after months of bombardment and battle and hardly a building stood intact. Even the famous Hagia Sophia, the Emperor Justinian’s great cathedral, lay ruined, the result of a Russian bomb. The Russian advance up the peninsula was slow but they were never halted or reversed. Although a Russian soldier was lost for every few square feet gained, the endless reserves of Morchenko’s armies and his ambition to capture Constantinople meant that every soldiers’ death was not in vain. Another soldier would just replace him. Indeed, losses amounted to nearly a half million by the time the city fell. The beginning of the end for Constantinople began in September as food and supplies began to run low and the Ottomans were forces to retreat to the city gates themselves. The walls and gates had not been an actual defense for centuries but their presence was very symbolic. The heaviest defensive line was located there at the gates of the city and only a determined Russian assault would break through.
From September 4th to September 17th, a dozen Russian waves stormed the last Suleiman Line in assault after bloody assault. The quarter million or so Turkish soldiers left or so could only keep firing in the face of the two million Russians charging at their line. It was a brutal battle, reminiscent of the first Siege of Constantinople in its medieval ferocity. Each assault gained some ground but the losses were so heavy the limited gains were immediately offset by the amount of losses. Finally on September 17th, a lucky Russian shell landed on a foolishly-placed Turkish magazine causing a massive explosion and a temporary hole in the Suleiman Line. Like water seeping through cracks, the Russians stormed through the hole. For the next two weeks it was an urban battle in a city of rubble. It no longer resembled its imperial past and the pile of rubble of the historic city was all that was left of a half millennium of Ottoman rule. In his bunker, Sultan Mustafa V made the decision to surrender the city. However, he and his top generals would flee to Asia Minor to continue the fight with hopeful Allied aid. Under cover of darkness and with a heavy naval escort, Mustafa V fled to Asia Minor on the night of October 1st. Along with him, tens of thousands of Turks attempted to do the same yet the Russian Air Force did their best to sink as many transports as possible. With thousands of flares and tracers lighting the night sky, thousands of Turks died as a result of accurate strafing and bombarding.
White flags popped up on October 2nd and Constantinople fell to the soldiers of the Empire of Russia. All of Ottoman Europe was under Russian control. It was a magnificent victory for Russia, especially for the veterans of the Constantinople campaign in 1902-03. One of those veterans now controlled over Russia and Anton Morchenko made his first visit to the ruined city a week after its fall to bask in its former and future glory.
Before the fall of Constantinople, in April of 1938, the Greeks launched an amphibious invasion on the western coast of Asia Minor. Already they had taken large chunks of land in the Balkans as well as most notable Aegean islands but the invasion of Asia Minor was an ambitious assault. It was a poorly planned and disorganized effort because it had little military value. Rather, the Greeks just wanted a piece of Asia Minor for their empire. The Turkish divisions in the area were second-rate but put up a stout defense in the area of Smyrna, which did not fall until mid-September. The triple fall of Smyrna in September, Constantinople in October and Ankara in December were the three death knells for the Ottoman Empire. The fall of Ankara was the result of the Russian push all the way from the Caucuses that had made significant headway the last three years but was still a slow-moving and rough campaign. The government of Mustafa V was forced to flee to Antioch after the fall of Constantinople, a long and demoralizing trek but was nevertheless a necessary move to a safe city. By this time, however, the Ottoman Empire was nearly overrun: the Balkans and western Asia Minor were under Russia control, Greece occupied bits of eastern Anatolia while the Arabs in Palestine and Arabia revolted against Turkish rule. All that remained was central Asia Minor and most of the Arabian territories not in revolt.
It was in this environment that Napoleon IV made the controversial decision to commit soldiers from Egypt to aid the Ottomans. Previously, Mustafa V had refused aid but the two leaders viewed that if the Allies gained a victory against Russia, the peace treaty terms would not be as harsh. About 150,000 French soldiers moved from Egypt to Antioch without much trouble from the Arab rebels and from there took positions to counter-attack the Russians who had recently surrounded the central Turkish city of Kayseri. The Battle of Kayseri was fought from November 12th to 15th of 1938. It was the first highly mechanized battle between two modern forces in the Middle East and resulted in a clear victory for Russia. Significant reinforcements from other sectors simply overwhelmed the smaller French force and when a division of Ottomans broke and ran, the French position fell. The city soon fell to the Russians and the battered French force retreated down to Antioch. The Ottoman Empire had all but fallen yet Mustafa V refused to surrender.
A similar situation occurred in Europe when Allied forces began to close in on Prussia. In Poland’s eastern region, the war devolved into a fluid battle between two large infantry forces. Poland’s superior weapons and training matched against the vast numbers of Russia’s second-rate soldiers. However, increasing numbers of Russia armor and first-rate troops began to call for some levels of Western aid to help battle the Russians. The war in the area was a stalemate of sorts, since Russia was never able to smash the Poles nor were the Poles able to ever drive the Russians out of Poland.
The battle against Prussia turned sour for the Prussians following the Battles of Silesia and Warsaw. A coordinated French-German-Polish offensive (supported by Spanish, Italian and Neapolitan soldiers) in the spring of 1938 capitalized on the successes of the 1937 offensives and actually succeeded in driving the Prussians out of western Poland and into Prussia itself. Although the Prussians still occupied northwestern Poland and the port of Gdansk, the rest of Western Poland was completely free of Prussians and West Prussia was beginning to feel the physical torments of war. In the summertime, the Allied armies faced northwest and struck into the heart of Prussia. The armies bypassed occupied northwestern Poland and East Prussia completely and instead focused on capturing the lifeblood of Prussia: Berlin.
The offensive was largely successful due to the size and strength of the Allied force. If the Allies had been fighting another enemy, they would have declared victory by the end of summer yet the Prussians were a tenacious enemy. They offered stubborn resistance and behind their own lines, even civilians worked to construct defensive structures. Throughout the summer and fall, the Allies advanced slowly against the rough Prussian resistance. Frequent bombings on Prussian factories seriously diminished their ability to create new tanks and ammunition and in late autumn, supplies reached a critical point. Many Prussian soldiers were actually on the verge of mutiny and many surrendered to the Allies just to escape the inadequacies that plagued the Prussian Army at the time. By the onset of winter, the propaganda that shouted that Russian aid was coming fell on deaf ears. In the last two months of 1938, the Allies had occupied large swaths of Western Prussia. In December the Battle of Berlin began. It was the beginning of the end for Prussia.
A relatively minor campaign was fought in distant Iceland when a British landing force landed and defeated the occupying Swedish forces in a brief campaign. The liberation of Iceland was actually the largest British operation in Europe. In Sweden, the defeat was met with a mix of cold feelings toward the authoritarian government but also with sadness as thousands of Swedes were taken prisoner.
1938: Quadruple League Triumphant – Japan
Japan’s victories in 1938 rivaled the fall of Constantinople as the most disturbing for the Allies and most glorious for the Quadruple League. Japan’s entry into the war in September 1937 resulted in stunning victories for the following year. Its military spread across the Pacific across thousands upon thousands of square miles and many nations fell to its conquering sword.
By the end of 1937, with less than three months of campaigning, the Japanese had already secured Hawaii, Indochina and much of the East Indies and was poised to take over the rest of the East Indies in a few months. Furthermore, the powerful Japanese navy and armies suddenly threatened British India, Australia and New Zealand. The conquest of the Indies began in September 1937 with swift Japanese conquests of various smaller islands. The largest contested areas were New Guinea, Celebes and Borneo. New Guinea held out for nearly a year because it was so hilly and full of dense jungle but constant Japanese reinforcements and air superiority wore down the local soldiers there. There were significant reinforcements of Australian and New Zealand troops, known as ANZACs, in the Port Moresby area and the city was heavily fortified. In the summer of 1938, the Japanese launched an invasion of the city from the sea (as the IJN was only opposed by a handful of Australian ships). Coordinated with land diversions, Port Moresby fell in a week and soon the entire island’s resistance collapsed. Celebes fell much earlier, before New Years Day 1938 in fact. After the Battle of Makassar, the island fell.
The battle over Borneo was less prolonged than the fight in New Guinea because of the significance of the island. The East Indians and British rightfully knew that Borneo’s fall would mean an immediate attack on Sumatra and Java. This was exactly what the Japanese had in mind and over 350,000 Japanese invaded on the island throughout September 1937. They landed on various points throughout the island with the aim of subduing the major population centers so that the Japanese Navy could secure some closer ports and airfields for the invasion of Java and Sumatra. They even used armor in some of the flat river valleys in the southern portion of the island that had devastating effect on the armor-less Dominion force on Borneo. The Battles of Kuching and Sibu were particularly important battles that resulted in clear Dominion defeats. Major resistance on the island ended in March 1938 when the British failed to send reinforcements to the beleaguered island, although unofficial resistance against Japanese control lasted for the duration of the war.
And thus the fall of Borneo spelled the imminent invasion of Java and Sumatra. Even before the fall of Borneo, the Japanese began to apply pressure on the two islands, particularly Java, as early as September with air raids and long-range strategic bombing from airfields as far away as Indochina. Java, as the core of the Dominion of the East Indies and home to the capital of Batavia, was the prime target for the Japanese. After a severe aerial bombardment based from numerous airfields in Borneo and a number of aircraft carriers, the Dominion lost most its remaining air force and was crippled. It was in this state that over 300,000 Japanese soldiers converged on the island in April. Facing them was a slightly smaller force of British, Indian, ANZAC and Dominion soldiers. The titanic struggle for the island devastated the land. The Allied forces fought against the Japanese invaders but Japanese air superiority and naval predominance resulted in a bloody victory in July. The Royal Navy, or what remained of it in the Far East, was successful in evacuating over 100,000 of the fighters on Java onto Sumatra, where a more successful battle was occurring. There, the predominantly ANZAC held out against the ferocious Japanese invaders. The invasion of Sumatra was carried out more or less simultaneously with the Battle of Java, so from April to June Japanese armies were actually stretched quite thin as 300,000 battled in Java and 400,000 invaded Sumatra. The latter proved to be a more difficult campaign and Japanese attempts to conquer the entire island by thwarted. By August, when the Japanese Empire was at its height, the majority of the island was in their hands but a small holdout in the Western portion remained under ANZAC control and was being reinforced almost daily by soldiers from the Indian Dominion. The Battle of Sumatra never resulted in a clear Japanese victory, as it was never totally conquered, despite many smaller victories on the island itself. The fall of Singapore in July 1938 was the greatest Japanese triumph against the East Indies. Founded and built by the British, the fortress city was thought to be unconquerable. However, a land assault and invasion and subsequent siege proved doubters wrong and after only two months the seemingly impregnable Singapore walls fell to Japan.
To the north, Japan launched a quick offensive against Thailand in the spring that coincided with a pro-Japanese coup. The new pro-Japanese government announced an alliance with Japan as Japanese soldiers began to swarm into the country to the confusion of many Thai onlookers. As part of Japan’s grand strategy, Thailand would only be utilized as a Japanese springboard for the future conquest of India. It was a quiet affair unlike the invasion of Burma that formed the easternmost area of the British Dominion of India. That invasion was launched from the jungles of Indochina and Thailand. Facing swarms of Indians, as India possessed the largest land army of all British Dominions and the third largest in Asia after China and Japan, the Japanese stumbled early but soon quickly made progress after a few early defeats. The height of their advance peaked sometime in later summer when their invasion began to stall out due to very long supply lines. Their closest supply base was in Indochina and even the occupation of Rangoon failed to alleviate Japanese supply concerns, as it was a constant target for Royal Indian Air Force bombers. By the end of 1938, the Japanese land invasion had stalled as Japan focused on the fight against China. Japanese strategists, however, vowed that once China was dealt a major defeat, India would next be conquered.
Japanese warriors through the jungle toward the conquest of Burma.
The fight against China involved the Korean front, naval invasions of several major coastal cities and the battle between the two navies. After the Chinese Silver Fleet managed to escape defeat in the Battle of Batanes, they were more or less holed up in various harbor, untouched by the IJN but unwilling to battle their more powerful foe. In the spring of 1938 the Japanese launched an invasion of Formosa, a large island to the east of China that had been a Chinese possession for many years. The two navies fought another battle, the Battle of Taiwan Straits, this time ending in a tactical Chinese victory but a strategic defeat because it failed to deter the Japanese from landing soldiers on the island. The conquest of the island was fairly swift, lasting two months as the Chinese mainly wrote it off in favor of defending their homeland against inevitable Japanese amphibious attack. By June, all of Formosa fell to Japan.
The Chinese failure to make any headway in Korea actually weakened them and paved the way for the Japanese to launch a counter-offensive in May 1938. Suddenly, the Japanese grand strategy took on a “China First” slant, aiming to subdue China soon after conquering the Pacific. This was evident by the stalled drive in Burma, where soldiers were actually diverted to participate against the Chinese Empire. In an ideal situation, Japanese armies would slice through China via Korea and meet in the middle with soldiers landing from the sea. But the Japanese counter-offensive from Korea met very stiff resistance and huge masses of Chinese soldiers. Their offensive stalled despite a slight technological advantage. The imperial Chinese soldiers were determined to not allow any more shame to their country. Defeated many times by the Japanese, they viewed their eastern neighbor with such hatred that the Korean front became one of the most brutal theatres of the war. The combatants rarely took prisoners and committed atrocities on a daily basis.
As the Japanese offensive ground to a halt in the middle of summer, new attention was given to various Japanese assaults onto Chinese coastal cities. The Japanese targeted three particular cities due to their close proximity to Formosa, an ideal staging ground for the invasion. They were Xiapu, Fuzhou, and Xiapen. In addition, although the assault on Shanghai never occurred, the Imperial Japanese Navy blockaded the city and bombarded it on many occasion. The small Chinese naval detachment there was never able to break out of the city and it would not be a year before the Chinese Golden Fleet boldly defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Shanghai Harbor. The Japanese invasions from Formosa met limited success. The three cities fell in quick succession in early August and the Japanese quickly extended their control to the countryside surrounding the cities. Some bold Chinese generals at first argued that they should allow the Japanese to advance deep into their country, “like a foolish traveler is drawn deep into a mysterious cave only to find it is a bear’s lair”. They were defeated by a faction they argued for an immediate expulsion of anything Japanese from China. In September, the Chinese launched a massive counter-attack with over a million men involved against a mere 250,000 Japanese soldiers. Japan was forced to send massive reinforcements to the area but even then the Chinese were successful in pushing the Japanese back almost to the sea. By November, the imperial dragon had replaced the rising sun in Xiapen and the campaign was called off. The Japanese quietly withdrew by December 10th so when the Chinese launched their final assault, they were met with their own prisoners, gagged and bound in Japanese uniforms in a dirty trick. The re-capture of Xiapu, Fuzhou and Xiapen were hailed as spectacular Chinese victories and the imperial propaganda milked them for all they were worth.
Overall, the Empire of Japan’s lighting strike into the war resulted in tremendous initial victories but by the end of 1938 it became clear that Japan had overplayed its hand. Its assaults on the Sandwich Islands, Indonesia, the East Indies, its cajoling of Thailand, and their joint foray into Burma were all highly successful ventures. Their navy forced the powerful Imperial Chinese Navy to remain in harbor for many months and defeated the relatively small British, Dominion and French navies in the area. Japan was simply beginning to feel stretched thin with ambition. It could not conquer China and India simultaneously. By the time 1938 was coming to a close after a string of Allied defeats in the Pacific, Japan’s situation looked precarious. Its China First strategy contained many flaws because China was indeed a powerful and vengeful enemy who had not been defeated. If anything, it had gained from Japan’s summer mistake to invade China. In addition, Japan had not yet felt the full might of France, Britain and potentially the North American republics.
Britain was, of course, allowed to make more ships by France. In the 1937 Treaty of Southampton, France and Britain agreed that any restriction on each other’s navies during the wartime was not beneficial for defeating the Quadruple League and thus lifted any limitations on navies. They agreed that they would not use their navies against each other and that after the war there would be a general disarmament. Thus, it was somewhat ironic that the power that limited the Royal Navy in 1813 allowed it to once again. And rise it did! By 1939, the Royal Navy had doubled in size and had added ten new aircraft carriers to its fleets. New recruits flocked to naval offices and immediate training centers had to be set up. It was as if Admiral Nelson’s ghost had awakened and inspired the Royal Navy to go out and retake the seas.
Japan’s sudden entry into the war threatened the United States to a large degree. On September 10th, 1937 the United States released a blistering condemnation of Japan’s aggressive actions. Later that month, the Japanese ambassador was dismissed from Washington and diplomatic ties between the two countries ended. With this diplomatic situation present, it was no surprise that the United States called for an international embargo on Japan. The Confederacy and most Latin American nations were quick to comply except for the right-wing republics of Quito and Peru. The United States’ muscle flexing was viewed as mere talk in Japan but President Kirkwood and congressional leaders began to discuss the feasibility of warring on the Japanese Empire. First, however, they had to contend with a more immediate threat.
1938: Pizarros Reincarnate
Russia and Japan’s triumphs over the Allies had strong international repercussions. To their junior allies, Peru and Quito, the Russian and Japanese victories seemed like a vindication of the militaristic Zavtra ideology they embraced. More importantly, these victories provided an opportunity for the two South Americans to flex their military muscle and fulfill their leaders’ territorial aspirations. General Francisco Herrera, the ambitious leader of Quito, was a total dictator of his country. He looked to the north at Gran Colombia in disgust, remembering for a brief time the time when his successor, Quito native Raul Castillo, ruled all of Gran Colombia (but failing to remember his ineffectiveness in governing). President Benito Posada of Peru was an even more ambitious leader who was probably the weaker of the two. Peru had been defeated by Quito in 1909-1910 in the Maranon War and had since attempted to modernize and militarize under various military regimes. Poor and destitute, the country could not afford going to war yet its president fancied himself as a modern day Incan emperor who could only efficiently modernize if his “crownlands” were under his control. His delusions stretched across many aspects of policy with oftentimes disastrous consequences. For example, he refused to build a navy because the Incans lacked a navy and he also moved the capital to the ancient city of Cuzco. The two countries were together quite power but had potent militaries. Herrera and Posada had poured money into their respective militaries and looked for an opportunity to jump into the world war.
When it seemed like Japan would take over all of Asia and after Constantinople had fallen, the two South American leaders met for only the second time and agreed to declare war on France and the British Empire in the next few months. Only Quito had any striking power but Posada of Peru believed if victorious he could still gain support from his allies. On June 11th, 1938 Quito declared war on France and Britain followed by Peru’s declaration of the same on June 13th. The two Allies were shocked but Napoleon IV reportedly was amused. “Well, surely this works in our favor more than theirs,” he said. The Australian Prime Minister was less amused, declaring to the King that “we are surrounded by enemies to the north and now to the east. I do not know if I will have the honor of writing to you in a years time.”
Quito’s navy immediately made an impact on the war by invading an occupying Dominion and French islands in the Pacific. On June 23rd, they invaded the Pitcairn Islands who formerly surrendered by June 27th. Formerly a member of the Sandwich Island Dominion, they had been transferred to New Zealand after Honolulu’s fall in late 1937. Occupied by a skeleton force and defended by only two destroyers, the outlying British holdings were easy prey for the marauding South American navy. Next to fall were certain islands of French Polynesia, most notable Tahiti. A brief resistance lasted on Tahiti for a week, but the 5,000 Quito Army soldiers overwhelmed the small garrison of 1,200. Last to fall were the Cook Islands, occupied from July 12th to the 16th. The largest land battle in the south central Pacific occurred at Avarua in the Cook Islands. Roughly 8,000 soldiers were involved and resulted in a fairly difficult takeover of the island for the Quito troops. Thus, within a month of entering the war, Quito had expanded its control deep into the Pacific. At the same time, Japan was moving its way south into the Solomon Islands and there was legitimate fear that the two forces would link up and block any lane for potential American aid from Australia and New Zealand.
This fear was negated in the Battle of Norfolk Island. Quito’s main naval fleet, flushed with victory but without any serious resistance behind it, ambitiously steamed toward Norfolk Island to occupy the island. The plan was to use the island as a staging ground for an utterly impractical invasion of either New Zealand or Australia. However, facing the South American fleet (which was made up of many old Japanese ships and even a Great War era Brazilian battleship) was a combined Australian-New Zealand naval force. On August 16th, the last naval battle of the war not involving heavy use of aircraft was fought in favor of the Allies. Quito was forced to turn back to the Avarua and the two Dominions down under were safe from an invasion from the east. For the remainder of the war, Quito did not venture west but was content to hold its conquered islands. The two Dominions were content to leaving these islands alone due to their overall strategic unimportance, especially as Quito itself came under direct threat.
Despite this setback, General Francisco Herrera turned his attention to his true goal: Gran Colombia. His army, numbering around 175,000 and including a number of tracked armored cars and a few wings of airwagons (as airplanes were known in the Americas), invaded Gran Colombia without warning on October 3rd. Unprepared at first, the Gran Colombian forces were dealt major blows in the first couple days of fighting. The large country pleaded for aid from its northern neighbors. The Confederate States, long a benevolent peace-keeping force in Latin America, looked in horror as its trading partner and friend was indiscriminately invaded. On October 6th, President Ernest W. Marland of the Confederate States asked the Confederate Congress for a declaration of war on the Republic of Quito and the Congress overwhelmingly complied. For the first time since 1864, the Confederacy was at war. As early as November, the Confederate Expeditionary Force began arriving in Gran Colombia and even before the end of the year Confederate troops were seeing action against Quito.
Peru, meanwhile, launched an offensive against Argentina in September but the war quickly turned unfavorably as Argentina rushed troops to the border. The large nation, which covered most of the southern portion of the great continent, expected the attack due to Posada’s bombastic rhetoric. The two South American countries spread the war to another continent and expanded the participants. It was truly a global war as violence stretched from Africa to Australia. An American newspaper joked in 1935 that the South American dictators viewed themselves as “Pizarros Reincarnate” but so many people wrote in response that such an idea was ridiculous. In 1938, the article was re-published but instead of public scoffing, many wrote that the United States should get involved against Quito and Peru. Under intense public pressure and especially from foreign pressure, the United States executive and congress began to seriously ponder the possibility of war.
1939: “We shall strike his pride”
The fall of West Prussia was actually a speedy affair considering the amount of resistance offered in the last few months. When the Allies neared Berlin in mid-December 1938, the commander of French Tenth Army (which bore the brunt of the Battle of Berlin) remarked “we better get use to this because we will be here for a long time, possibly till the next decade”. In actuality, the Battle of Berlin lasted until February 19th when the last Prussian stronghold surrendered. Indeed, it was a bloody, tough battle between one side, which was holding on for dear life, and another side, which was fighting against an almost perpetual enemy. Involving the largest concentration of Prussian troops in West Prussia, Berlin was supposed to be a veritable fortress against enemy attack. However, it was facing essentially the brunt of all Western European militaries, including powerful France and its allies Germany, Spain, Naples and Italy. Involving close to a million soldiers, the Allies moved in against Berlin deep in the winter of 1938 and fighting continued in and around the city for two months. The city was surrounded in late January and all hope was lost for West Prussia when the under-manned Mueller Line in the north was broken through by another French force. They rushed toward Berlin and the addition of another half million men against the city meant its eventual surrender on February 19th. In 1904, the city was spared the flames of war on special order by Napoleon III. Now, Berlin was a city of ruin. For the remainder of February and March, the Allies conquered the rest of West Prussia, often encountering fanatical resistance.
A Prussian tankman surrenders to the Allies as West Prussia crumbles.
The old Prussian King William II, who had stoked the Frommist movement that ultimately led his country to such destruction, was once again in an unenviable position. As the leader of Prussia in the dark days of 1903-1904, he had ordered the surrender of Berlin. Now, he had fled to East Prussia where he vowed to continue fighting. Somewhat delusional, the seventy-four year old monarch believed that his “Fortress Konigsburg” would hold out against Allied resistance. Thus, for the second time in his life, he saw the Prussian nation destroyed by war.
With West Prussia conquered and the majority of Poland free from League control, save for Gdansk and areas of eastern Poland, the Allies decided instead to focus their full energy on Russia. They viewed Prussia as defeated already and instead of finishing it off, they would focus on driving into Russia whose main focus was still conquering the rest of the Ottoman Empire. In a way, it was a belated attempt to save the Ottoman Empire even though the Allies knew that the ancient empire was finished. “We shall strike his pride,” Napoleon IV bombastically pronounced at a meeting of Allied military leaders to decide the next course of action, referring to the invasion of Morchenko’s Russia, which had thus far been totally unscathed in war. Thus, the Spring Offensive was launched on May 17th, 1939 comprising of over two million French, Polish, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Neapolitan, Lusitanian and even a British soldiers. Supporting them were over 4,500 tracked armored cars, armored cars and char de combats, 1,500 airplanes and airships, and over 8,000 pieces of artillery. It was a massive offensive, aimed at causing as much damage to Morchenko’s Russia as possible.
Meanwhile, Morchenko’s Russia was finishing off the Ottoman Empire. Closing in from the east and with the Greeks advancing slowly from the Aegean Sea, the Ottoman Empire was quickly shrinking. Furthermore, Arab insurgents stoked on by the Russian N. P. Petrovich wrecked havoc in the Palestine. In short, the Ottoman Empire was little more than central Anatolia and Antioch. The government under Mustafa V was situated in the ancient city of Antioch after his flight from Constantinople. The Russians in early 1939 did not wish to capture Antioch, however, but to gain as much of northern Anatolia as possible so the inevitable peace treaty would be favorable to them. The majority of their soldiers involved in Constantinople were either transferred to the Anatolian front or to Russia itself, which was now under invasion. The primary Russian operation became the conquering Anatolian front and in the spring and summer it swept through the remaining Ottoman holdouts in Asia Minor and in late August met the less-capable Greeks on the western end of the peninsula. The Russian drive effectively ended Ottoman control of Asia Minor for the first time in centuries. The last major Ottoman force, a 70,000-strong army near the city of Batman, was defeated on August 7th, 1939. The Battle of Batman ended effective resistance outside of Antioch and its surrounding area. By this time, Russia was seriously sending out peace-feelers through neutral nations and it seemed as if the Ottoman Empire would respond.
Russia, however, faced a more immediate problem in the form of a massive Allied invasion. The two million-strong multinational invading force with large reserves, however, faced a sizeable Russian force, complete with many veterans of the Ottoman campaign. As the Ottomans collapsed, hundreds of thousands of Russians were transferred to Russia to defend their motherland. The population was mobilized for total war and total defense. The Russian propaganda ministry churned out literature and films urging all Russians to resist the European invasion. Most people met the call with a huge patriotic fervor. After all, the Russians had just liberated the Balkans and totally defeated their traditional enemy. The Russians called their long-idle reserves for the great battles ahead and huge Russian armies moved to meet the advancing European armies.
Russian soldiers train for the Allied invasion.
At first, the Allies enjoyed considerable success. French and German tracked armored cars, grown more advanced based on Prussia panzer designs, spearheaded the great invasion. The Russians were swept out of Poland and for the first time the war was fought on Russian soil. It was spared significant invasion during the Great War but ravished during the eight-year long Russian Civil War and subsequent political consolidation. The Russian state had rebuilt under Zavtra rule and included many modern highways to connect the major cities of the empire. Now, these highways were prime targets for the Allied mechanized forces. The invasion comprised of two army groups. The first, Armée nordique, was aimed north toward St. Petersburg. It was the most multi-national army, having significant numbers of German, Danish and Spanish soldiers. It was about 50% French. The Armée moyenne, or Middle Army, was aimed at attacking Moscow and defending the invasions southern flank. It was the large of the two army groups and was about 75% French. Together, the invading two army groups was known as the Grande Armée. Together, the armies would strike from Poland and bypass East Prussia. A number of divisions would finish off East Prussia as the invasion force marched into Russia.
Crushing the second-rate soldiers that comprised the mainstay of the Russian soldiers in Poland proved to be an easy task but as more experienced soldiers arrived in western Russia, the initially rapid Allied advance became slowed down. At first, the muddy spring roads caused some hold ups for the Allies but their mechanized divisions poured across the paved roads quickly. By June 5th, the town of Pinsk around fifty miles from the Polish border fell to French and Polish divisions. A few days later, the town of Baranavichy surrendered after a brief battle. However, the Russian army concentrated a large army near Minsk and the Battle of Minsk commenced on June 22nd, 1939. Involving over a half a million soldiers, it was the largest pitched battle of the Russian campaign. The large defensive works outside of the key transportation hub of Minsk was enough to deter the Allied armies to surround the city rather than directly assault it. Moving to the north and south of the city, the Allies attempted to surround it on June 26th but were defeated by a bold Russian armor thrust from the city in between the two Allied armies. They were less than five miles apart by this time. The Russian thrust bought the city some time and reinforcements from the east arrived the next day, thus saving the city from encirclement. More Russian reinforcements made it necessary for the Allies to pour more troops into the area so by mid July, the fifty square miles around Minsk was a chaotic jumble of divisions, attacks and counter-offensives. The month-long Battle of Minsk ended when the Allies ordered a general withdrawal to a more organized line thirty miles to the west of Minsk, thus allowing the city to remain in Russian hands. The Russian victory was milked for all it was worth and the country rejoiced.
To the north, the Allies made considerable gains in the Baltic territory, driving around East Prussia and invading the Lithuanian and Latvian-speaking provinces of the Russian Empire. The Armée nordique drove quickly and reached Riga in mid-June. The brief Siege of Riga ended in an Allied victory and the multinational forces advanced to the Dvina River before halting before a large Russian army from St. Petersburg. The Battle of Ogre, named after the Russian town nearby, commenced on June 30th, just as the Battle of Minsk was in full swing to the south. Here, however, the imperial German divisions proved themselves as superior fighters and forced a crossing of the Dvina River. The Battle of Ogre was a decisive Allied victory and opened the way to Tallinn and Pskov. Thus, for the remainder of the summer and fall, the Armée nordique made significant progress across the Baltic provinces, sometimes even being greeted as liberators.
The Allied setback at Minsk was offset by the Russian defeat at Slutsk to the south of Minsk. After that victory, however, the drive began to stall and on three occasions the Russians thwarted Allied attempts to advance or outflank their defenses. Likewise, Russian counter-offensives gained minimal amounts of ground against the Allies. Morchenko launched a directive to “bleed the Allies dry and await the winter”. Indeed, as the temperatures began to drop, Russian activity began to increase against the Armée moyenne. Allied commanders wishing to advance deeper into Russia without capturing Minks began to worry that such an action would be impossible until next spring, if possible at all. In November, the northern Allied armies captured Tallinn and launched a determined attack on Pskov but numerous Russian defenders dealt the Armée nordique its first defeat.
In December, Morchenko ordered a general Russian offensive across the entire front, aimed at utilizing the first heavy snows to Russia’s advantage. Achieving little to no surprise, the offensive met a well-dressed and well-armed enemy who had retreated only a few miles against the massive Russian attack. Involving some three million men, the Russian offensive only met the same number of Allies. The counter-attack did sweep the Allies away from the vicinity of Pskov and even further away from Minsk, but it did not even come close to sweeping Russia toward victory. As the offensive stalled out in late December, the armies settled down for their fifth winter at war and for a very chilly stalemate.
That stalemate would not last long, however. As Allied armies closed in on Eastern Prussia and the temporary Prussian capital of Konigsburg, the France and Russia were establishing diplomatic channels through the neutral United States. As 1939 turned to 1940, the Russian front quieted down. Both sides recognized the fruitless stalemate and after five years of war there was a feeling that the war may actually end quite soon. On January 8th, 1940 Napoleon IV directly ordered that French soldiers across the front approach the Russian lines with flags of truce the next day. On January 9th, a general cease-fire was announced across the entire Russian front effective at noon. This ended any hope for Prussia, who had counted solely on a Russian victory and subsequent advance into Europe. The war between the Western Allies and Russia was over. In the Ottoman Empire, a cease-fire was announced on January 18th, just as Russian forces were reaching Antioch.
The fighting in Europe was over.
1940: Treaties of Borodino, Tannenburg, Reykjavik and Ankara
The end of the fighting meant the beginning of peace negotiations. On January 17th, French diplomats, representing the Allies, headed by French Foreign Minister Michel Vitoux arrived in the small Russian town of Borodino. Russian Foreign Minister Vladimir Voloshin met them. The two men had met before, negotiating intensely during the “Battle of the Vs” in the 1933 Romanian Crisis. Now, the situation was different.
The negotiating was relatively short and straightforward. The two parties agreed to stop fighting and the French agreed to withdraw all Allied troops from Russian territory. There would be no exchange of land between Russia and the Allies. The border would remain at their 1937 borders. Most importantly, Russia acknowledged the Allied victory over Prussia and France recognized the Russian victory over the Ottoman Empire. Both parties agreed to sever their alliances with their respective defeated allies and allow the other party to negotiate with them without interference. The Treaty of Borodino thus ended the largest fighting on the European continent and was signed on January 19th, 1940. There was still, however, much negotiating to be done.
The Treaty of Reykjavik was signed on February 2nd, 1940 between Denmark and Sweden. It was monitored by France and Russia. The two countries agreed that Norway would remain in Swedish hands but Sweden would pay fifteen million francs for the land. Iceland would be returned to Denmark from British control.
The Treaty of Tannenburg ended the war against Prussia on March 5th, 1940. King William II, by now an embittered old man, delegated his authority to negotiate to his foreign minister and son, the Crown Prince Frederick. Prussia viewed Russia as a backstabber for many reasons; they did not help enough against France or Poland and most importantly they abandoned their “Bond of Trust” in the Treaty of Borodino. The bitter Prussian leadership was even more angered by the strict terms imposed by the victorious Allies. The Allies called for the dismemberment of Prussia as a sovereign nation. This included the abdication of King William II, the exile or renunciation for royal rights by the House of Hohenzollern, the dismemberment of the Prussian military, bureaucracy, government and every institution. Prussia would be divided between Germany and Poland. As Prussia was totally occupied except for a sad few doze square miles around war-torn Konigsburg, the Prussians had no choice but to protest and sign. And thus, Prussia, after two failed attempts in less than half a century at invading Poland and France, vanished into the pages of history.
The Treaty of Ankara was signed on March 31st, 1940. In much the same situation as Prussia, the Ottoman Empire was nothing more than Antioch, its surrounding area and loyal areas of its Arabian provinces. The Balkans, the Caucuses, Constantinople and most of Asia Minor lay under Russian or Greek control. The Ottomans had little bargaining power so they could only accept the Russian and Greek terms. These terms included the division of the Ottoman empire as follows: the Balkans would be transferred directly to Russian control and further division and governance would be up to Russia in the future. The Caucauses, the Black Sea shoreline on both the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor would be annexed to Russia proper. Greece would annex the western shore of Anatolia. Most importantly, a new country would be formed, based in Constantinople and controlling central Asia Minor as well as most of the Anatolian Black Sea coast. It was aimed to be a Russian puppet and Morchenko planned to make it a revival of the ancient Byzantine Empire but under Russian domination. The Zavtra ideals would spread to the new country, named Byzantium. Thus, Russia finally gained control of the coveted straits. The remaining areas of the Ottoman Empire would remain a rump Ottoman Empire under the rule not of Mustafa V but of his brother, the former pro-Russian Sultan Mehmet VII. The various independent Arab cities that had revolted against Turkish rule during the war and under the guidance of Russian N.P. Petrovich were not mentioned in the treaty to the great anger of the Arab nation and Petrovich himself. His personal protest to Morchenko was denied and a huge anti-Russian backlash enveloped the Arab world. Even the Holy Land remained under Ottoman control, much to the anger of Russian religious leaders who had hoped they would be annexed or at least freed from Muslim control. The Treaty of Ankara effectively divided the Ottoman Empire into two new countries (Byzantium, and yet to be determined Slavic Balkan land), an enlarged Greece and Russia, and a rump Ottoman state. The latter was already facing great problems as Mehmet VII took over the reigns of government following his brother’s forced resignation. The Arab provinces were already in open revolt and the broken Ottoman Army could do nothing about it.
With the Treaty of Ankara signed, the wars in Europe came to an official end. While the war was still going on in South America and Asia, Europe could breathe a sigh of relief. Their war was over and any immediate threat to their peace was now in the past. While most of Europe lay unscathed, large swaths of land lay in ruin. Specifically, Prussia and Poland were nearly totally destroyed. Constantinople was a sea of rubble. Even the eight month-long campaign in Russia brought devastation to the land. Millions of soldiers lay dead and millions more were wounded. For the second time in forty years, the nations of Europe looked forward to an immediate future of rebuilding. Yet this time, their threats remained. France failed to decisively defeat Russia and Russia failed to sweep into Europe. Anton Morchenko and Napoleon IV still eyed each other warily, yet it was the world’s expectation that never again would the two men fight again. Too much blood had been shed for another protracted war. The year 1940 brought about the era of Uneasy Peace in Europe.
Wow! That was a magnificent update!
The Battle for Constantinople was truly epic and it's results are so too, the revival of Byzantium! Really looking forward now to see the development of Russia's new Slavic dominion, although it would probably be at the expense of the Turkish peoples in Anatolia. Could this be Morchenko's Holocaust?
Also, can't wait to see what happens in Asia and if the US gets involved. Maybe Russia could declare war on China now that Europe is at peace?
Keep up the amazing work!
The Battle for Constantinople was truly epic and it's results are so too, the revival of Byzantium! Really looking forward now to see the development of Russia's new Slavic dominion, although it would probably be at the expense of the Turkish peoples in Anatolia. Could this be Morchenko's Holocaust?
Also, can't wait to see what happens in Asia and if the US gets involved. Maybe Russia could declare war on China now that Europe is at peace?
Keep up the amazing work!
I agree with Hamburger: nicely done! I was wondering how Russia could possibly be defeated, and now I know it's impossible!
By chance, are there any maps of the post-war Europe in the works?
By chance, are there any maps of the post-war Europe in the works?
My dead father would be proud of this update. If only it was posted sooner he would have lived to see it.
I am RAF general JR by the way, my father left me the password to his account in his will.
I am RAF general JR by the way, my father left me the password to his account in his will.
Hey, what about having Nikolai of Arabia found his own Arab state in Palestine and surrounding lands? The Arab rebelion is still on I guess and the rump Ottoman Empire is too weak to do anything. Because of the Arab resentment at the Russian betrayal, the Allies could probably use it as a satelite state in the Middle East in the new postwar scenario.
LittleSpeer
Monthly Donor
For 2 and a half months i waited and this update made it worth all that time. THIS IS THE BEST TIMELINE ON THIS SITE. This needs to be made into a book cuz its already over 200 pages long.
Great update for Second Great war
I like the development of the Second Great war (Russia triumphant, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Turkish Ottoman Empire destroyed, Japan overstretched).
How long will it take to end the war in Asia and Oceania?
It is time for Russia to regain the lost Russian Pacific Territories and to improve the relationship with China, the future most powerful Asian nation.
I see why the Arabian rebels do not like the Treaty of Ankara but "great anger" and "huge anti-Russian backlash" is not very plausible because the Russians did not betray the Arabian rebels like the OTL British.
They neither replace the Ottomans overlords nor stop the support of the rebels against the nearly finished rump-Ottoman state ("not mentioned in the treaty").
Quite the opposite. The support for the Arabs who could be useful future allies against France will likely increase after the war's end in Europe.
I hope the new peace in Europe will last.
I like the development of the Second Great war (Russia triumphant, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Turkish Ottoman Empire destroyed, Japan overstretched).
How long will it take to end the war in Asia and Oceania?
It is time for Russia to regain the lost Russian Pacific Territories and to improve the relationship with China, the future most powerful Asian nation.
I see why the Arabian rebels do not like the Treaty of Ankara but "great anger" and "huge anti-Russian backlash" is not very plausible because the Russians did not betray the Arabian rebels like the OTL British.
They neither replace the Ottomans overlords nor stop the support of the rebels against the nearly finished rump-Ottoman state ("not mentioned in the treaty").
Quite the opposite. The support for the Arabs who could be useful future allies against France will likely increase after the war's end in Europe.
I hope the new peace in Europe will last.
Dr. Strangelove
Banned
Awesome. Simply awesome. It was worth the wait. Bravo! I don't know what was cooler: revival of nazi Byzantium or South American navies trying to invade Australia.
I now look forward for the nuclear arms race between napoleonic Europe and Zavtra Russia.
I now look forward for the nuclear arms race between napoleonic Europe and Zavtra Russia.
There was a mention of war in Africa, how can that be, neither Prussia nor Russia nor Sweden or Japan have territory there.
The mentioned states have neither any territory in the Americas.
The war in Africa could be a major colonial uprising.
Thank you for the kind words!
That update may take awhile, unfortunately. It will certainly be shorter than this one but I simply don't have anymore time since my winter break is nearing its end.
I am sorry! I wrote that part a few weeks ago and then later I checked to make sure that I had the Hagia Sofia survive but when I saw I had already written that, I decided a destroyed Hagia Sofia would be more dramatic.
Yes, I definitely considered this and the post-war Ottoman Civil War and subsequent Middle East problems will dominate the next few decades.
Greece has territory in Africa.
The Russian-backed rebellions in Arabia, led by Petrovich, oftentimes promised independence from Turkey. Why else would the Arabs fight? So, when the treaty makes them remain part of the Ottoman Empire (and so much more is taken away) it is natural the Arabs feel a little betrayed. At any rate, it is necessary that there is resentment between the Arabs and Russians for the future of the timeline!
Hamburger said:
That update may take awhile, unfortunately. It will certainly be shorter than this one but I simply don't have anymore time since my winter break is nearing its end.
Nikephoros said:
I am sorry! I wrote that part a few weeks ago and then later I checked to make sure that I had the Hagia Sofia survive but when I saw I had already written that, I decided a destroyed Hagia Sofia would be more dramatic.
Hamburger said:
Yes, I definitely considered this and the post-war Ottoman Civil War and subsequent Middle East problems will dominate the next few decades.
Roberto said:
Greece has territory in Africa.
Grand Prince Paul II said:
The Russian-backed rebellions in Arabia, led by Petrovich, oftentimes promised independence from Turkey. Why else would the Arabs fight? So, when the treaty makes them remain part of the Ottoman Empire (and so much more is taken away) it is natural the Arabs feel a little betrayed. At any rate, it is necessary that there is resentment between the Arabs and Russians for the future of the timeline!
Titus_Pullo
Banned
The French Peace continues
Too bad for the Prussians. 200 years of a proud military tradition has vanished under French and German boots.
Looks like the Pax Gallica continues. Will we still see France and Russia fighting each other through proxy wars anywhere around the world?
Too bad for the Prussians. 200 years of a proud military tradition has vanished under French and German boots.
Looks like the Pax Gallica continues. Will we still see France and Russia fighting each other through proxy wars anywhere around the world?
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