I'm guessing the Russian Republic's latest campaign against Germany is going to go badly - very, very badly. Maybe this is just the influence of China in Twilight of the Red Tsar, but I'm wondering if Russia's won't explode into a Sengoku Russai situation. Of course, if this should result in a reactionary imperial state...well, I wouldn't complain.
A Day in July: An Early 20th Century Timeline
- Thread starter Zulfurium
- Start date
markus meecham
Banned
or it works and gives the recognition amongst the allied powers the soviet republic sorely needs.
This is a possibility of course, but I'm really not sure. Not saying all you have to do is kick the door in for the rotten structure to fall, but it's obvious the walls have pretty bad termite problems.
markus meecham
Banned
it's 1917, i guess all these developments depend on other developments in other fronts, but you have a point.
i say let's see what happens, our boy @Zulfurium has a plan hahah
The fate of the Romanovs will be a major focus of Update Six, so you won't have to wait too long before getting answers. I will say that while their fate won't be quite as grim as IOTL, it will be quite grim.
There is one place that is more of a priority than Italy, but other than that you are looking in the right direction. We will be getting to Italy as well and Caporetto with it. I spent a while reading up on the war plans and discussions prior to the offensive so there will be a number of changes to it ITTL.
I am happy to hear you think so. Regarding Finland, it will take a while before we get there but it will be the topic of an upcoming update.
Well IOTL Russia basically did turn into a warlord state during the Civil War. I will say that the Russians have had several months to rebuild their army's capabilities and that I think some might be surprised by its capabilities.
Russia is in for an interesting time in the Chinese sense, the more important part is, as markus pointed out, what the impact of all this is on the legitimacy and authority of the Russian Republic and whether it succeeds in triggering revolutionary conflict elsewhere.
I have a lot of stuff in the oven, but it help a great deal to know what people are interested in and focused on. Every once in a while someone also mentions a thing or three that I haven't come across before.
Well worse than OTL it's doable...but difficult, so better be optimistic; plus even in case of knocking off Italy (worst case scenario and highly difficult as the monarchy perfectly know that revolution await them in case of surrender)
the restart of the hostility by Russia will cause enough problem expecially with the americans already in the war
Well for the moment the communist are playing by the rules (more or less) and in the last update have even re-entered the war, so for now are allies (or at least co-belligerant) and so both side will probably avoid any serious conflict, frankly i doubt that ITTL the soviet press had revelead all the entente secret Treaty. This has some 'peculiar' consequences, while by one side socialist and co. will be slightly more tollerated due to political necessity and the fear of revolution and consequences will be slightly less on the other side, more moderate socialist will have more support, as working in and with the system seem doing good and faction like the Massimalist in Italy will be at disadvantage (ironically this in Italy can bring a national unity goverment more easily), plus protesting the war will be more problematic with the Russian Republic in
I won't really comment too much on Italy other than that from everything I have read Italy was on its last legs near the end of the Caporetto Offensive and it was only the fact that Diaz got nearly two thirds of a year to rebuild morale and combat efficiency - combined with significant Allied reinforcements - that allowed them to press through to the end. I will get into this quite a bit in the next update.
The really interesting thing about the American forces in France prior to the Spring Offensives is that they were actually limited to between 40-60,000 men transfered a month. Once the Spring Offensives began this number climbed to over 120,000 within two months and had reached a climax of more than 200,000 by July. The Americans were working hard to build a framework in France before they bulked up their forces, sorting supplylines and the like. Furthermore, the Americans were extremely reliant on access to British shipping in order to expand their ability to transfer troops - which the British demanded premium payments for - with the British basically dropping everything to ship Americans over the Atlantic once the Spring Offensives began - with the conversion of almost their entire merchant fleet to that purpose until the threat was ended in July, whereafter troop transfer numbers fell rapidly once again.
There are other heinous things the RSDLP can cook up to piss off the Allies, but you are right in that the entente secret treaties haven't been revealed.
The lack of a Bolshevik revolution does have some interesting consequences for revolutionary socialism which will be one of the things examined as we move forward - however, given how utterly divided Italy was politically at this point in time I don't think national unity is more likely under the circumstances.
Keep in mind that the Bolsheviks in Moscow still openly oppose this renewed push to war and that the decision of the RSDLP to press for a continuation of the war serves as a major strike against them in the eyes of the anti-war socialists around the world. The fact the Russian Republic, and the RSDLP with it, are continuing the war is something that pushes the anti-war coalitions across Europe to look more to the Bolsheviks - who have previously been overshadowed by the RSDLP and its predecessors.
The significant Allied reinforcement were around 15 division, coming after first Piave, that seen limited fight and were retreated very quickly, they were more a show of political support and for morale, otherwise we were almost alone, as usual; in reality Caporetto was a blessing in disguise, before there were serious doubt about the war and in general the population was very tired...a defeat of this kind and the fear of A-H full invasion scared everyone (socialist included) and bring unity on the political and popular side. On the last legs it's a little too harsh, first Piave victory was basically the 'You shall not pass' moment of the Regio Esercito and was a surprise even for the high command (that was already to further retreat, but not to surrender); sure there were the CP troops at the extreme of their logistic line, but it was also the italians regrouping in autonomy and deciding to make a stand (and a broke army don't do that).
Better take in account that the 12th battle of the Isonzo was launched because also the A-H were in bad shape and was feared that they were not ready to resist another offensive
I am aware of the Allied reinforcements having little direct impact on the fighting during Caporetto, and I agree with you that First Piave was likely as far as the Caporetto offensive could have gone. However, you are overlooking the fact that there are likely to be quite significant German reinforcements available for almost the entirety of the OTL offensive. The question becomes one of how they could be used.
I also think that your read of the 12th Battle of the Isonzo is inaccurate, given that the Austro-Hungarians demonstrated their ability to resist the Italian assault and their ability to support Caporetto thereafter. The 12th Isonzo was yet another miscalculation from Cardona - the 12th of its kind - and didn't really rest on much more than the fantastical hopes that the previous offensives had rested on as well. From what I have read, it was the eight months between Caporetto and the Italian offensive in 1918 where the A-H army experienced a complete collapse in its morale and ability to resist the Italian advance - as well as the immense improvements in army morale and capabilities that occured under Diaz. So much of the A-H's morale collapse was bound up in the new propaganda offensives of 1918 which were built on the Conference of Oppressed Nations in Rome in late 1917 as well as the defeat of the German Spring Offensives. The Austro-Hungarian army was hard pressed in 1917, just as the Italian, Bulgarian, Russian, Romanian and French armies were, but they still had plenty of fight in them as they amply demonstrated.
I am going to start spoilering the remainder of my answer because it gets into a lot of my thinking for the next update.
The thing is, Ludendorff IOTL wanted to have a two-pronged offensive rather than the single blow that Caporetto constituted. If sufficient forces are available, then he would likely have added an offensive on the Trentino front at the same time as Caporetto was ongoing. If the Austro-Germans can successfully take the Asiago Plateau and Monte Grappa Massif, then the Italian position in north-eastern Italy completely collapses. From Monte Grappa they would be able to cut into the rear of the Piave Line and would basically be able to completely shut down the area. However, once the Italians are forced onto the Venetian Plains they really can't be expected to hold the line when they are facing German troops of the caliber we are talking about. The loss of Venice would force the Italian fleet to move to the southern Adriatic, allowing the Austro-Hungarians to attack up and down the Italian coastline. The Austro-German advance might be halted at the Po River but the fact is that with the last class of Italian conscripts being thrown into the line with barely any training - the Italian army is quite simply going to collapse. By that point, if not significantly earlier, the Italian government would have been forced to surrender.
The analysis of the situation of the A-H army, it's from the A-H own command when they requested additional German troops to launch an offensive; the 11th battle of Isonzo was very bloody for both side and the italian had come very near a breakthrough, so take it as you wish.
The German reinforcements also mean a stronger logistic strain and if you want to waste them in Trentino, the first time worked because nobody though was capable (or stupid enough) to launch a serious offensive there, now the italian army was more prepared there in defensive term...plus the terrain it's really horrible, IRC the austrian tryed that move but failed even with the italian route they failed, more germans troops mean also more possibility to be discovered
The German reinforcements also mean a stronger logistic strain and if you want to waste them in Trentino, the first time worked because nobody though was capable (or stupid enough) to launch a serious offensive there, now the italian army was more prepared there in defensive term...plus the terrain it's really horrible, IRC the austrian tryed that move but failed even with the italian route they failed, more germans troops mean also more possibility to be discovered
The Trentino Front might be next to impossible to take if it is properly defended, but during Caporetto the CP were able to take much of it with very few troops. If there is an actual offensive force in the region, then they would be able to make the push. Keep in mind that Caporetto is still going as per OTL and required the greater part of their troops, as such the resistance in Trentino would be rather limited. The Asiago Offensive actually took most of the plateau but were forced to retreat when the Brusilov Offensive launched to the east. The OTL push into the region happened weeks after Caporetto began and with extremely limited A-H forces, the Germans deciding to pull out of the region rather than support this push.
Hnau
Banned
Zulfurium, the prose was great, actually. You did deserve some compliments for writing it. 
I hope you write more vignettes like this. It would be very confusing for a Kronstadt sailor to see young cadets die for a counter-revolutionary like Kornilov, I liked the character and the action scene was pretty awesome.
Great to see the election go so well. Of course, what happens at the level of national leaders is going to matter the most with the Great War ongoing. Yet, the multiparty struggle in the Assembly is going to mean a lot for the long-term. I'm wondering what Germany is going to be able to succeed in grabbing from Russia, if at all. With no war loot (mostly food) from Ukraine, the Germans are going to face a lot more starvation back home... yet they also won't have to organize and feed a huge number of German troops acting as occupiers either.
You made the right call with showing how the Georgian Mensheviks would oppose the reunification with the RSDLP. The Mensheviks in Georgia really were just a front for Georgian nationalists, and at some point that might necessitate a reorganization or rebranding of the party there.
I hope you write more vignettes like this. It would be very confusing for a Kronstadt sailor to see young cadets die for a counter-revolutionary like Kornilov, I liked the character and the action scene was pretty awesome.Great to see the election go so well. Of course, what happens at the level of national leaders is going to matter the most with the Great War ongoing. Yet, the multiparty struggle in the Assembly is going to mean a lot for the long-term. I'm wondering what Germany is going to be able to succeed in grabbing from Russia, if at all. With no war loot (mostly food) from Ukraine, the Germans are going to face a lot more starvation back home... yet they also won't have to organize and feed a huge number of German troops acting as occupiers either.
You made the right call with showing how the Georgian Mensheviks would oppose the reunification with the RSDLP. The Mensheviks in Georgia really were just a front for Georgian nationalists, and at some point that might necessitate a reorganization or rebranding of the party there.
Zulfurium, the prose was great, actually. You did deserve some compliments for writing it.
Great to see the election go so well. Of course, what happens at the level of national leaders is going to matter the most with the Great War ongoing. Yet, the multiparty struggle in the Assembly is going to mean a lot for the long-term. I'm wondering what Germany is going to be able to succeed in grabbing from Russia, if at all. With no war loot (mostly food) from Ukraine, the Germans are going to face a lot more starvation back home... yet they also won't have to organize and feed a huge number of German troops acting as occupiers either.
You made the right call with showing how the Georgian Mensheviks would oppose the reunification with the RSDLP. The Mensheviks in Georgia really were just a front for Georgian nationalists, and at some point that might necessitate a reorganization or rebranding of the party there.
Thanks. I have been planning for short Vigenettes every three updates or so, but I might increase how many I write out for every narrative break. That was my thought in regards to Arkady. He is one of the older sailors on Kronstadt and probably had a career in the navy before the war, but followed most of the others in the navy when they joined the February Revolution. The fact that a bunch of boys are throwing their lives away for someone like Kornilov just doesn't make much sense to him - and this is likely some of the fiercest close-quarters combat he has ever experienced so there is likely a dollop of shock in there as well.
I really wanted to explore what having the Constituent Assembly be seated would actually look like, given the absolute shitshow Russian politics were at the time I have a hard time believing it would have been all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns. I will get into the food and supply situation for the Germans in the next update. One thing to keep in mind is that while the TL in Russia is up to around January 1918, the rest of Europe still has a ton of stuff happening in 1917 that I just haven't gotten to yet. The Germans already have largely secured the Ukraine by backing the Rada's declaration of independence - so their food supply is still in order there.
The Georgian Mensheviks are honestly some of the most fascinating figures of the 1917 Revolutionary period. They were an absolutely dominant political force within the Menshevik Party and provided several of their most important leaders, but at the same time the Georgian Mensheviks were mostly interested in securing independence for themselves. The entire Menshevik-Bolshevik struggle over the Caucasus in the pre-Revolutionary period is honestly riveting and features a young Stalin - playing bank robber, pirate and revolutionary. Stalin, while a deeply flawed figure in history, is honestly one of the most fascinating historical personas of the 20th century is really one of the people I wish I could have kept around for TTL for his sheer potential as a character to play around with. However, having him around would have shifted so many important dynamics that I wanted to explore that I just couldn't get it to work.
Not at all
I am trying to figure out if it actually read well or if it was incomprehensible. I can usually figure that out when it is in history book style, but for some reason I can't really get a read on my prose. It feels weird for me to write, but so did writing of in general before I started my first TL, so it is a matter of aclimatizing myself to writing in that style and then steadily building up an idea of what works and what doesn't.
Update Five: A Reduction of Theatres
A Reduction of Theatres
German Forces at Caporetto
Romania Delenda Est
The slackening pressure in the east now allowed the Germans to turn their attention to other fronts, several of which were nearing their climax. The closest of these was the Romanian Front where, in early July 1917, one of the largest concentrations of combat forces and war material assembled during World War I were martialed: nine armies, 80 infantry divisions with 974 battalions, 19 cavalry divisions with 550 squadrons and 923 artillery batteries, whose effectives amounted to some 800,000 men, with about one million in their immediate reserve.
German Forces at Caporetto
Romania Delenda Est
In 1916 the Romanians had been forced from Wallachia and were bottled up in Moldavia where the Central Powers now hoped to crush them. The three great battles that followed the buildup, at Mărăști, Mărășești and Oituz, represented a turning point in the war on the Eastern front and forced the Romanians squarely onto the German High Command's (OHL) list of priorities. The Battle of Mărăști began on the 24th July 1917 as a complement to the wider Kerensky Offensive to significant early success. Initiated by surprise with three divisions, the offensive succeeded in disrupting the well-organised enemy defences and compelled the Austro-Hungarians and Germans to retreat, however by the second day of operations the Russian command called for a unilateral halt to the offensive actions as their own offensive to the north began to stall in the face of mass casualties and a collapsing situation in Galicia and Bukovina.
The Romanian General Headquarters saw itself compelled to discontinue the otherwise successful offensive throughout the entire region between the Eastern Carpathians and the Black Sea. In the Mărăști zone, however, the Romanian units continued the offensive until July 30 upon the request of their commander, General Alexandru Averescu. This marked the end of the Battle of Mărăști. It inflicted important losses upon the Austro-Hungarians and Germans, who relinquished a 35 km-wide and 20 km-deep area and sustained heavy casualties and losses in military resources. The salient created by the Romanian troops in the enemy lines at the junction between the Austro-Hungarian First Army and the German Ninth Army forced the High Command of the Central Powers to bring forces from other sectors on the Moldavian front and changed the main direction of the offensive initially planned for the Focşani-Nămoloasa region.
After the Battle of Mărăști had been discontinued, the Central Powers tried to implement their own offensive plan in the summer of 1917. Pursuing the offensive, the German troops aimed at occupying the whole of Moldavia, thereby knocking Romania out of the war and, together with an in-depth penetration of the Austro-Hungarian troops on the front in Bukovina, to push the Russian forces eastwards beyond Odessa. The offensive of the German Ninth Army, from the Army Group Mackensen, started on the 6th of August 1917 when the units of the Russian Fourth Army on the Siret River in southern Moldavia were expected to leave their positions to reinforce the front in northern Moldavia, whereafter they would in turn be replaced by the divisions of the Romanian First Army.
For 29 days, until 3rd September, this region was the scene of one of the most important battle fought by the Romanian army during the 1917 campaign. The Battle of Mărășești had three distinct stages. During the first stage (6th-12th August), the troops of the Romanian First Army, together with Russian forces, managed to arrest the enemy advance and forced the Germans to change the direction of their attack toward the northwest gradually. In the second stage (13th-19th August), the Romanian Command completely took over the command of the battle from the Russians, whereafter the confrontation reached its climax on the 19th August, with the result that enemy's attempts to advance were completely thwarted. The third stage (20th August - 3rd September) actually saw the last German attempt to at least improve their positions in view of a new offensive but this assault also found itself confounded by the Romanian response. Starting on 8th August 1917, the fighting on the Mărășești front combined with an Austro-Hungarian-German offensive at Oituz. Holding out against superior enemy forces, the Romanian troops by 30th August had stemmed the advance of the Gerok Army Group.
The end of the general offensive on the Romanian front by the Central Powers on the 3rd September 1917 marked a strategic defeat and a considerable weakening of their forces on the South-Eastern front in the immediate term. As a result of these operations, the remaining Romanian territories remained unoccupied. Nearly 1,000,000 Central Powers troops were now tied down on the South-Eastern Front. The situation, however, once again took a turn for the worse for the Entente in mid- and late September 1917 when first the Kornilov Coup sent shockwaves through the Russian army, only worsened by the subsequent struggles of the September Rising. The situation turned disastrous for the Romanians when the new Soviet Government signed a month-long truce with the Germans in late-September 1917 (1).
During this period of quiet on the Eastern Front, the German Eastern Front Command, headed by the talented Max Hoffmann, set in motion a series of highly ambitious and swiftly-planned operations, rushing the troops and naval deployments required for Operation Albion into place, dispatching the initial forces for the planned Caporetto Offensive in Italy and most immediately, shifted vast numbers of men south to the command of Felix Graf von Bothmer, the Südarmée on the border to Sucevea in northern Romania, in a bid to get in one final blow against the Romanians before the end of the year. The plan was for the Südarmée and their Austro-Hungarian allies in the 3rd Army to launch an assault into Suceava while Army Group Mackensen and the other forces in the south launched demonstration attacks against the Romanians to hold them in place.
The 150,000 men dedicated to the Suceava Offensive were ready two weeks into the ceasefire period and slammed home against the completely outnumbered Romanian defenders, overrunning their positions swiftly and beginning a general collapse of the Romanian Northern Front. When the Romanian High Command sought to shuffle troops northward to counter the push into Suceava, Mackensen saw an opportunity and committed to the attack. Having already fought several intensive engagements against the Germans, the distracted and weakened Romanian defenders proved significantly easier to crack the second time around. With their positions crumbling, the Romanians threw in the towel on the 10th of October 1917, signing the Truce of Suceava and began negotiations for a final peace treaty. Over the course of the next several months, the troop concentrations in Romania were reduced immensely - reaching some 200,000 by mid-1918.
The resultant Treaty of Bucharest was harsh, demanding the transfer of Dobruja south of the Cernavodă-Constanța railroad to Bulgaria, though leaving the Romanians in control of the Danube delta, as well as the transfer of all passes through the Carpathians to Austro-Hungarian suzerainty. In addition, Germany was given a 90 year lease on the Romanian oil wells as well as significant access to Romania's food stock and raw resources, while German civil servants were given broad powers to veto Romanian ministerial decisions and the right to fire Romanian civil servants as they pleased - in effect making Romania a vassal state of the German Empire. Finally, the Bessarabian Union with Romania was accepted by the Central Powers - ironincally achieving one of the major goals outlined in nationalist hopes of Greater Romania. While the Romanian Prime Minister Alexandru Marghiloman signed the treaty at Buftea, near Bucharest, on the 3rd of December 1917 and it was ratified by the Chamber of Deputies on the 18th of December 1917 and by the Senate on the 5th of January 1918, King Ferdinand I of Romania refused to sign and promulgate the treaty. As panic at what a failure to secure royal approval of the treaty would mean swept through the Romanian government and court, tensions with the occupying forces rose dramatically. This would culminate in a German-sanctioned coup which saw Ferdinand I's deposal in favour of his son Carol II, who was widely viewed as a hedonistic playboy and who showed little interest in actually ruling. Carol would sign the treaty when it was presented before leaving matters of state to the Germans and his Prime Minister (2).
The second front to secure significant support in the Autumn of 1917 was Italy, following the brief distraction of Operation Albion. The Central Power's Autumn Offensive in Italy which resulted from this intervention was the only occasion in which the Germans participated in strength in the Italian theatre and was decided on short notice, as a fire-fighting operation in response to an Austrian plea for assistance. The Austrians were hard pressed during the eleventh Isonzo battle in August–September when fifty-one Italian divisions with 5,200 guns attacked nineteen defending ones. Like their German counterparts in Flanders, the Austro-Hungarians were demoralised by endless defensive fighting, and Krafft von Delmensingen, a German mountain warfare expert who visited the front in the summer, reported to OHL that they could not withstand a twelfth such battle.
On the 26th of August Emperor Karl informed Kaiser Wilhelm that Austria-Hungary wanted to launch an offensive and asked for German troops to replace Austrian ones in Russia so that he could move heavy artillery to Italy. Wilhelm ordered Ludendorff to examine the problem, but the latter doubted that the Habsburg troops, unschooled in the new tactics that had secured success on the Eastern and Romanian front, could stage a successful offensive and he feared an Austro-Italian separate peace if they did. On the other hand, after the major military successes at Riga, and particularly following the second truce with Russia in the aftermath of Operation Albion, OHL had significantly troops available for an Italian operation before the winter than they had expected. The resultant operation was planned as a temporary deployment with limited aims. In the first instance the objective had been to simply prop up the Austrians by driving the Italians back to the river Tagliamento, depriving the latter of their expensively won conquests, but these goals were rapidly expanded as the sheer number of troops released from the Eastern and Romanian Fronts became clear.
The battle would consist of an ambitious pincer attack from both the Isonzo and the Tyrol, for which Ludendorff judged he had enough men following the arrival of further reinforcements from Romania and points east. Beginning in September, the Germans moved twelve divisions to the Italian theatre, incorporating eight of them in a new Austro-German Fourteenth Army at the Isonzo under the leadership of Otto von Below and with Krafft von Delmensingen as his CGS, while the remaining four divisions were incorporated into a second joint Austro-German Eleventh Army under Oskar von Hutier on the Trentino Front - Konrad von Hötzendorf finding himself subordinated to German command. Austria-Hungary moved five divisions to the Isonzo from the Eastern Front and reinforced the Trentino with another couple of divisions. Overall command of the new offensive was given to the rapidly redeployed Field Marshal August von Mackensen, who had transferred command of the situation in Romania to General Hermann von Eichhorn. To match this new task, Eichhorn would in turn be promoted to Field Marshal soon after receiving his new command (3).
Footnotes:
(1) Up until this point events are largely following OTL. The major point to keep in mind here is that the Romanians have been fighting almost exclusively in the south and west of their country and by this point all of Wallachia has fallen to the Central Powers and only Moldavia remains free. The northern parts of Moldavia have largely escaped military conflict and as such are very weakly garrisoned, the Romanians having relied heavily on the Russians to shield them in the area. However, the tail end of the Kerensky Offensive saw the Central Powers advance to the Moldavian border by the 3rd of August 1917. As such, Romania now finds itself threatened from the north and the south at the same time and doesn't have the manpower to cover both fronts.
(2) This is the result of the Germans securing a truce with Russia one month earlier than IOTL. Here they are able to shift forces south to the battered Romanian front and make a quick push, which sends everything tumbling. IOTL, and ITTL, the Germans exploit the forces becoming available to them in the East to finish what subsidiary fronts they can before turning westward. The removal of Romania from the war in October is incredibly important because it allows for the redeployment of large parts of the forces in the region there, allowing the Austrian-Hungarians to strengthen the Italian Front, the Bulgarians to strengthen the Salonica Front and the Germans to redeploy their forces to where they can do the most good. Furthermore, the resource windfall which IOTL came in early-mid 1918 instead hits earlier - allowing the Germans to ease some of their food shortages and other resource crunches during late 1917. The reduction in forces to an eventual 200,000 is based on the number of troops under Mackensen at his surrender to the Allies in late 1918 IOTL, which would seem to indicate that that is the number of forces required to retain control of Romania. The Treaty of Bucharest is also completely based on OTL, though adjusted in its timeline. The deposal of Ferdinand in favuor of Carol II happens because of the changed circumstances of Romania's surrender - having been defeated in the field - and as such the Germans are more willing to force the situation with Ferdinand - who is transferred to Berlin for the time being alongside his wife and most of their children, where they are kept under a loose house arrest while largely being treated as guests of the Kaiser.
(3) This is five more divisions for the Germans and five more Austro-Hungarian divisions than OTL, almost all of them coming from amongst the forces previously dedicated to the conquest of Romania, with many of the additional troops coming from the German 9th Army. One important note is that rather than transfer forces from Trentino, the Austro-Hungarians are drawing forces exclusively from Romania and the Eastern front - leaving the forces in the Tyrol significantly stronger. The larger number of forces available to the Central Powers after Romania's fall allows Ludendorff to go with his original plans for a double offensive on both the Trentino and Isonzo fronts rather than the single thrust of OTL. Finally, the decision to transfer Mackensen comes from the fact that with the Romanian front closed, he is moved to where he can do the most good. This had already happened multiple times during the war, with him controlling independent army groups in Poland, Serbia and Romania. Having him transferred to Italy on the eve of the Italian Offensive is hopefully not too great of a leap and represents the greater German buy-in to the offensive.
Monte Grappa from the Venetian Plain
The Venetian Campaign
On 24th of October, the Caporetto offensive was launched and quickly achieved overwhelming success, capturing or routing a large part of the Italian army and advancing more than fifty miles. In the theatre as a whole the Germans and Austrians had thirty-three divisions against the Italians’ forty-one, but in the northern Isonzo attack sector they concentrated fifteen against six. They took pains to achieve surprise, camouflaging their artillery and moving up the assault infantry by night. Because the Austrians still held bridgeheads west of the Isonzo, the Germans could break out without having to cross the river. The Italians had followed staff college practice and garrisoned the heights above, enabling the German forward commanders to drive forward at their own rapid pace until the valleys converged, not waiting for the artillery to follow them but by-passing the enemy positions. The German infantry were equipped with the new Maxim 08/15 light machine-gun, and the A-line Troops additionally carried mortars and mountain guns. Many had already experienced mountain warfare in the Carpathians and the Vosges; others were given time beforehand to train and to acclimatise to the thinner air.
Advancing ten to fifteen miles on the first day, by 25th October they were out of the mountains altogether and advancing rapidly across the Veneto plain. The Second Asiago Offensive came under way on the 26th, with a large bombardment and a rapid advance, mirroring the assault on the Isonzo. Slamming headlong into the Italian First Army under Brusati, they forced their way forward in a quick series of attacks, driving back the Italian defenders, who seemed powerless to stop this implacable attack despite the incredibly harsh terrain. By the 28th of September the Eleventh Army had begun its assault on the massive defensive positions on Monte Grappa. After the 28th the rain began, the troops grew weary, and supply from their distant railheads was increasingly difficult, leading to a significant slowing of the pace of the Caporetto Offensive, before it came to a halt in front of the Piave River on the 12th of November (4).
The Italian army was ill prepared to meet this onslaught. Its commanders had failed to reinforce it in the crucial sectors, and the Supreme Commander Cadorna seemed complacent. After suspending the eleventh battle of the Isonzo he envisaged renewing it in the spring, discounting intelligence warnings of German intervention. Even after enemy ranging shots and interrogation of deserters had disclosed the location and date of the attack he had doubted it would come and had been confident that if it did, he could deal with it. Cardona had been determined to hang on to his gains from the summer and the Italians had remained in their conquered positions, too many of them crammed too far forward and their reserves kept too far behind. He had ordered the line to be organized for defense in depth, but General Capello, who commanded the Second Army in the threatened sector, had ignored the instruction, apparently hoping to deal with the offensive by a flank attack. Yet on his left Capello had placed recently conscripted munitions workers involved in the August uprisings in Turin.
When the blow fell, Capello's army proved highly vulnerable to the bombardment, and the Germans easily infiltrated it. Cadorna described Caporetto as ‘a kind of military strike’ and blamed it on ‘subversive propaganda’. He advised Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of this, accusing the Second Army of failing to fight. It suited Cadorna and Capello to disseminate this view, which gained wide currency. It indeed had some basis, although Cadorna’s aggressive strategy and indifference to his soldiers’ welfare bore much of the blame for their mood. While several units did fight during the retreat, and inflicted quite significant casualties, these were dwarfed by the scale of the surrendering soldiers and the immense losses in artillery, munitions and supply stores. The shock of the bombardment and the speed of the breakthrough left masses of soldiers cut off and leaderless, but German accounts make clear that many Italians gave up quickly and without resistance, abandoned their rifles and uniforms, and cheered the victors, while others abused units moving up.
The surrenders began at once, the German Twelfth Division taking 15,000 prisoners on the first day. Cadorna had no contingency plans for a withdrawal and was slow to authorize one; nor could the Italians manage what became an unprecedented traffic jam. Once the retreat began it snowballed out of control and the troops streamed south-eastwards alongside 400,000 civilian refugees, looting abandoned farms. In the face of this disaster, Orlando was quick to ask for aid from his allies and worked to strengthen their resistance, building up a new defensive line behind the Piave River, which was promptly flooded to prevent pursuit. By early November more than eleven Allied divisions were on their way to Italy in hopes of stabilising the front in Italy.
However, it was in the context of defending on the Piave that the Asiago Offensive truly began playing havoc with the Italian defensive plans. Having captured the Plateau by the 31st of October, the focus had turned eastward to the Monte Grappa Massif. Monte Grappa was a massive fortress built into the rock of the mountain, seemingly impenetrable to artillery of the period. As such, the focus of the assault on Monte Grappa had focused on the south-western most peak of Monte Asolone, wherefrom a vital supply road ran south-west behind Italian positions. It was this peak that became the focus of some of the fiercest fighting of the campaign, as Cadorna, and eventually his successor Armando Diaz, threw everything they could into its defence. There was little finesse to the fighting, it becoming little more than a meatgrinder. However, with control of the Asiago Plateau, the Austro-Germans were able to bombard the positions of the Italians fighting on the side of Monte Grappa - including the road supplying the fortress. By the 8th of November, in growing snow and rain, the fortress was forced to surrender, having run out of supplies in the intense fighting.
The capture of Monte Grappa was an absolute disaster for the Allied positions in Italy, with a follow-up offensive from Asiago and Monte Grappa slamming home a scant 50 kilometres from Venice on the 22nd of November in absolutely horrendous weather. This was the Padua Offensive, which saw the Austro-Germans utilize their control of the Alpine heights to bombard Italian positions indiscriminately while troop transfers north to the positions on the Asiago from the Piave front soon meant that the Eleventh Army was able to go on the offensive again. The assault slammed home against the barely trained conscripts of the Class of 1899 who had been rushed to the front to plug the gaps caused by the Autumn Offensives. They were completely unprepared for the offensive when it slammed home in late November and collapsed in a route which swiftly grew to engulf the entire Italian army. By the 2nd of December, Prime Minister Orlando saw himself forced to sue for peace, though it would take over a week before the offer was accepted by Field Marshal Mackensen, who used this period to press ever further into Northern Italy - accepting surrender only after Venice had fallen to the Central Powers. Italy was thus the second Allied state driven to defeat within a two-month period (5).
Footnotes:
(4) The Asiago Offensive likely has less impact ITTL than it would have actually had, but the Caporetto Offensive largely runs as per OTL. I am unsure if the Piave would actually have been used as a defensive position with the Asiago Plateau captured, but I hope you will bear with me.
(5) Losing both Asiago and Monte Grappa is an unmitigated disaster which leaves the entire Italian front completely indefensible. While the Allies rush troops south to Italy to help in the defence, by the time the Central Powers launch the Padua Offensive, the Italians are collapsing in on themselves. I am aware that IOTL the Italians experienced a major resurgence in morale following the end of Caporetto, which was part of why they were able to hold onto Monte Grappa IOTL, however ITTL they never quite find the leverage they need to hold their ground given the pressure and added challenge of stopping a two-pronged assault. The assault on the Trentino Front is significantly less successful than that at Caporetto, partly due to the more difficult ground they have to cover, but they are able to capture the points they needed to for events to turn properly in their favour.
Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy
Italy's Fall
The British XIV Army Corp under Earl Cavan would find themselves forced to abandon their supplies, artillery train and countless other vehicles, planes and lorries in their rush to escape envelopment, having only recently come into positions in the line alongside newly drafted Italian conscripts who promptly collapsed during the Padua Offensive. The British forces in Italy were forced to flee as swiftly as they could, losing a division-worth of men before they could break free. Their rush to escape took them on a path further north than the French and they were able to successfully cross the Adige despite an Austro-German thrust along the Lago di Garda. The Italian March as it would come to be known in British military legend saw Earl Cavan engage in a game of cat and mouse with their pursuers, turning twice - at Goito, north of Mantua, and at Crema, near Lodi - to fight them to a stop. In the process of the retreat another division and a half were lost, but Cavan was able to make the most of it, shepherding any Italian soldiers who wished to continue fighting despite Italy's surrender. By the time the XIV Army Corp arrived in Turin, the Allied papers were filled with tales of daring and courage - turning an unimaginable defeat into a seeming victory against all odds.
The Austro-German alliance rushed into Northern Italy as negotiations proceeded with Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, securing control of the vast industrial and agricultural resources available in the region. During the negotiations, which took place near simultaneously with those in Russia, Orlando was forced to accept the demobilisation of the Italian Army, with the exception of a minor peace-keeping force to be kept south of Tuscany, while the Central Powers were given the right to secure and garrison Italy north of the Tuscan line. Venice, Florence, Milan, Verona and countless other cities were garrisoned, primarily by Austrians, while Italian conscripts were disarmed and set to work in fields and factories. German factory bosses were brought in to take control of Italian industry across Northern Italy, placing them under military law for the duration of the conflict, while forces were rushed westward to establish a defensive line in the Piedmont against a potential Allied assault.
Further negotiations on a final settlement would be left to wait until after the end of the war, as part of a general peace treaty, but for the time being Italy's resources would be put at the service of the Central Powers' war machine. It was here that the decision made by the French to secure Turin and Italian Libya began Italy's turn away from the Allies, and led to Orlando actually receiving significant support in his decision to bring peace to Italy. The French decision to occupy the lands of their Italian allies was met with incredible outrage by Italians of all stripes who thought the action a horrible example of Gallic perfidy.
Benito Mussolini, the former Socialist-turned-Far Right Nationalist, turned the full wrath of his paper, Il Popolo d'Italia, against the Allies - decrying them as worse than enemies, as traitors to Italy and as cruel exploiters of Italian misfortune. The French occupation of Turin would come to symbolise the Italian Right's firm belief that they had been goaded into joining the war on the side of the Allies under false pretences, and that the people of Italy had been made to bleed on Allied behalf for years on end, while the Allies had plotted to exploit their resultant weakness. The trauma of the German and Austro-Hungarian occupations of northern Italy were too great to properly encompass within a political message, and the relatively firm and decisive military governorship of Field Marshal Mackensen would come to be compared favourably to that of the former Italian Supreme Commander Cadorna. As a result it became this lesser event, this betrayal of Italy by its allies, that entered the national consciousness of the Italian Right (6).
While minor skirmishes and slow-paced artillery duels came to dominate the Piedmontese Front, almost exclusively garrisoned by replenished and buoyant Austro-Hungarian forces, the Germans began withdrawing what forces they could from Italy in preparation for the coming Spring Offensives which were already then being planned. The Germans would lean heavily on the Austro-Hungarians for garrison troops across Northern Italy, Russia and Romania, but would decide to provide the garrison for Venice, a move to lessen Italian fears of an Austro-Hungarian annexation of the region, and in Milan, where they secured complete control of the countless factories of the city. August von Mackensen would bring a vigorous discipline to his governing of Northern Italy, chasing down and disarming deserters and bandits while steadfastly enforcing military law. His rule would come to be remembered as a period of stability and peace during the hard years to come.
Despite this impression, Mackensen ruled with a harsh hand and was more than willing to punish sabotage and banditry ruthlessly. He unleashed the Austrian navy into the Adriatic, catching the Allies by surprise in mid-December with a raid designed to temporarily cut the supply lines to the Salonica Front. Half a dozen ships were caught unaware before a British ship got a warning out and the resultant deployment of British Fleet forces to the Adriatic eventually bottled the Austrians back up. However, during the month it took to accomplish this, the Austrian fleet was able to inflict severe supply shortages amongst the forces around Salonica - causing a major spike in disease and forcing the abandonment of a planned campaign in early 1918.
The withdrawal of German forces from Italy happened with relative rapidity, primarily making their way towards the Western Front. However, just as OHL began planning for a post-war Eastern Front, events began spinning completely out of control. Following significant internal disagreement over war terms within the German camp, the extremely harsh terms set out in early January 1918 caused the collapse of negotiations with the Russians and, as the Russians launched their offensive into the Baltic states, German soldiery suddenly found itself rushed back to the East. The Russians were not out of the Great War just yet.
Footnotes:
(6) I thought all the requisite parts for a stab-in-the-back myth were present in Italy following their defeat. Under these circumstances, what was IOTL the "Mutilated Peace" becomes a myth of French, English and American perfidy - with the Right conveniently forgetting the Allied reinforcements sent to support them during Caporetto. Where IOTL the Italian Right had the annexation of Fiume to rally behind, here it is the return of Turin and Libya that becomes an initial centre point to their propaganda and ideology. At the same time, the French view their occupation of parts of Piedmont and Libya as a temporary measure to prevent the Central Powers from opening a front in southern France and to prevent the creation of a threat by the Central Powers to the Southern Mediterranean.
Erich Ludendorff, First Quartermaster General of OHL
Ludendorff’s Folly
Even Germany’s own leaders were fiercely divided on the question of war aims. Hindenburg and Ludendorff still expected to win, and therefore they had no interest in peace terms not dictated by Berlin. By contrast, Count Georg von Hertling, the aged Bavarian Catholic and former professor of philosophy who had become chancellor on 1st November 1917, said he wanted a place in history as the “reconciliation chancellor.” However, even for him reconciliation meant a peace that brought gains to Germany - Luxembourg and Liège, perhaps, as well as France’s Longwy-Briey basin with its rich deposits of coal and iron. In this he was supported by Richard von Kühlmann, who pursued negotiations in many directions so energetically and ingeniously that Hindenburg and Ludendorff came to regard him as another of their problems. But he never did so with the intention of ending the fighting; his objective was to get any one member of the Entente to drop out of the war, freeing the generals to finish off the others.
It was this divide, between the central leadership of OHL and their subordinates in the east, combined with the struggle between the military and civil states of Germany that came to a head in the negotiations over peace with Russia. The conflict centred on the rapidly growing rift between Ludendorff and his rival, certainly the clever, and possibly most brilliant, general officer in the German army, the recently promoted Major General Max Hoffmann. In late December, when Hoffmann returned from the peace talks in with the Russians for a meeting of the Kaiser’s Crown Council, Foreign Minister Kühlmann invited him to lunch. Kaiser Wilhelm invited himself to join them. He asked Hoffmann for his views on what Germany should claim as the spoils due to it as the victor in the east. Hoffmann, mindful that Ludendorff had forbidden all officers to talk with the Kaiser without first consulting him, tried to avoid answering, but when Wilhelm insisted, he was, after all, the monarch to whom every German officer swore obedience, Hoffmann had little choice except to comply. He explained, knowing that everything he said was in direct opposition to Ludendorff’s thinking, that in his opinion it would make no sense to take permanent control of large expanses of territory in the east. Adjustments along the frontier with Poland could have military value, he said, but absorbing substantial non-German populations would bring only trouble.
After lunch Hoffmann attempted to telephone Ludendorff and explain what had happened. However, he was unable to reach him: Ludendorff was in transit, en route to the next day’s council session. When that meeting began, the Kaiser launched into a lecture about the inadvisability of demanding too much from the Russians. Then, with an unsurprising lack of judgement, Wilhelm proudly declared that he was supported in this matter by a general of unquestioned ability: Max Hoffmann. Ludendorff and Hindenburg were almost apoplectic. Soon Ludendorff was demanding Hoffmann’s dismissal and sought to undermine him through a press campaign - claiming that the ideas set forth by Hoffmann actually came from Hoffmann's wife, a well-known artist from a family of Jewish converts. Soon after, Hoffmann would find himself ordered to refrain from direct participation in the negotiations, serving primarily as interpreter and mouthpiece for the Supreme Commanders - an action he bitterly resented.
Ludendorff was blind where the settlement with Russia was concerned. He could see only that Russia no longer seemed capable of defending herself, and he took this as Germany’s opportunity to become master of everything east of Berlin. What he did not see, or more likely did not care about, was that stripping Russia bare would persuade the surviving members of the Entente that there was no possibility of negotiating an acceptable end to the war and that Russia had spent its months-long grace period slowly piecing their army back together. Ludendorff's demands could well convince them that Germany wanted nothing less than the destruction of her enemies and dominance of all Europe. Such worries had no meaning for Ludendorff. He did want the destruction of Germany’s enemies and he intended to achieve exactly that.
He was opposed not only by Hoffmann but by Kühlmann and Chancellor Hertling, both of whom urged restraint. Kühlmann in particular understood that if Ludendorff’s demands were satisfied, Germany and Russia could never be other than enemies. He wanted to lay the groundwork for postwar friendship—albeit with a Russia that had been seriously weakened. He hoped that at least a gesture in the direction of generosity would encourage Britain to enter into negotiations. A week after the Crown Council meeting, Woodrow Wilson delivered an address to Congress in which he unveiled his Fourteen Points. These were a loftily idealistic expression of what America sought to achieve in the war: self-determination for all peoples, open covenants openly arrived at, and other notions that fundamentally broke with European conventions and interests. Characteristically, the president had not deigned to consult with his allies in preparing his speech. When news of the speech reached Berlin, it strengthened Ludendorff. Wilson the would-be peacemaker, by indicating that such fraught questions as Belgium and perhaps even Alsace-Lorraine might not even be open to discussion, had given Ludendorff new ammunition to use in insisting that the war had to be fought to a conclusion.
The mercurial Kaiser Wilhelm had once more altered his thinking on an eastern settlement by the time the next round of negotiations with the Russians began in late January. Ludendorff was aggressive as always, urging not only that Estonia, Livonia, Finland, and Ukraine should be taken from Russia but that the German army should be granted vast sums of wealth. The Kaiser went even further. He proposed breaking what had been the Romanov empire into four separate entities: a truncated Russia proper, Ukraine, Siberia, and a Union of the South East. Such skeptics as Hoffmann, Kühlmann, and Hertling were not only powerless but by now essentially voiceless. The Russians were shocked by what was demanded of them in the aftermath of this meeting. The Russian delegation received these terms two days after the Constituent Assembly had voted to restart the war and Trotsky was therefore able to deliver the declaration of a resumption of war to the Russian delegation under General Hoffmann at the exact same meeting, to his own distinct pleasure.
The colossal disaster that the reignition of war in the east represented to Berlin prompted a major crisis at the Crown Council's next meeting in early February, as Russian forces continued their advance, with both the Kaiser and Ludendorff finding themselves squarely to blame for the collapse in relations with the Russians. It was here that Wilhelm's survival instinct found itself brought to bear once it was made completely clear to him that if he were to take the blame for this failure he might well be forced to abdicate. With the backing of Hertlingen and Kühlmann, Wilhelm was able to shift the blame squarely onto Ludendorff already stressed shoulders - who soon found his political position collapsing around him. It was during the Crown Council's deliberations on the failure of the negotiations, and how to proceed, that Wilhelm brought up that if the council had just agreed with him during the previous meeting in late December, when he had proposed following Hoffman's thoughts on a treaty, this would not be happening. Ludendorff, who was already under incredibly pressure from the preparations for the Spring Offensives in the west and the political fallout from the fraught positions in the east, threw a fit of epic proportions. In an almost hour-long harangue he attacked the Kaiser's meddling in military and civil affairs, the perfidy of Hoffman, the subversive actions of Hertlingen and Kühlmann and much more. By the end of the harangue, Wilhelm angrily demanded Ludendorff's resignation. Hindenburg, having been surprised at how unhinged Ludendorff seemed, quietly suggested that his friend take a step back from active service and get some much-needed rest. Bitterly, Ludendorff agreed to step down. Hindenburg, feeling that he could not continue without Ludendorff and to make way for his successor, announced his retirement soon after.
In their place came Max Hoffmann, to the quiet curses of Ludendorff, who became Chief of the German General Staff on the 11th of February 1918. Hoffmann brought a sense of boundless energy with him, moving swiftly to counter the Russian assault in the Baltic while immediately beginning to address the current plans for the coming Spring Offensive (7).
Footnotes:
(7) From what I have been able to learn of events in early 1918, Ludendorff and Hindenburg seemed in a surprisingly vulnerable political position, having gambled that the Russians would bow to their demands at the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. Under these circumstances, and with the Spring Offensives rapidly nearing, having the Russian Northern Front suddenly reignite under a Russian Offensive could well have destabilised Ludendorff's position enough to force him from his post. Furthermore, Ludendorff's mental health in 1918 seems to have been rather tenuous as he neared the end of his tether. The sheer level of stress he was under broke him a couple months later IOTL and led to him asking for an armistice at a particularly bad point - either too early or too late depending on what you are aiming to achieve. Furthermore, the events of TTL are occurring just before some of his subordinates called on a doctor to see to him IOTL, so I think that under the circumstances having Ludendorff go on a long-winded rant when provoked beyond measure doesn't seem too unlikely. Once that happens, the questions of his fitness for command become overwhelming, resulting in his removal.
End Note:
There are a ton of events that play out in this update which significantly reshuffle the board. It is important to note that while Romania and Italy are now under occupation, a final peace treaty with either power remains to be written. There are several important impacts from this series of events.
First of all, the Central Powers now gain access to resources from both Romania and Italy which help alleviate the serious shortages in Austria-Hungary and Germany. Furthermore, there are significantly more forces available to the Central Powers this time around. The occupation of Romania takes up around a fifth of what an active war-zone requires, which allows Germans, Austro-Hungarians and Bulgarians to redeploy significant forces - particularly strengthening positions in Macedonia, Italy and Russia. The occupation of Northern Italy is a larger drain on resources and manpower, but the front in the Piedmont with France remains relatively lightly manned and quiet. The French are forced to dedicate several divisions to the effort, which weakens their pool of reserves by around five divisions. The fact that there are fewer troops stuck in the Isonzo trenches also reduces how many losses the Austro-Hungarians are taking from sickness and disease.
The final big impact from the Fall of Italy is that the Rome Congress of Oppressed Nations doesn't happen in early 1918, instead happening in the US in mid-1918. This is particularly important because of the crucial role played by that congress in facilitating a massive propaganda campaign aimed at worsening nationalist sentiments in Austria-Hungary. While the nationalists in Austria-Hungary do experience a rise in popularity, it isn't at nearly the same levels as IOTL. This has important consequences for the retention of Austro-Hungarian morale and for the post-war period.
Finally, the replacement of Ludendorff with Hoffmann is probably the single largest shift to have immediate effect on the course of the war to have happened in the TL so far. First, Hoffmann was far more comfortable working with the civilian state than Ludendorff and had a good working relationship with both Hertlingen and Kühlmann. Second, he is far more moderate in his demands than Ludendorff or Hindenburg, which makes him much more able to negotiate with the Allies in the longer term. Third, he brings with him much more immediate experience from the Eastern Front than Ludendorff or Hindenburg and is much more aware of what men like Bruchmüller, Hutier and others are capable of accomplishing. In the preparations for the Spring Offensives he also had wildly different ideas than Ludendorff, and aligned much more closely with some of the other plans laid out during the preparations for the Offensives. We will therefore see a number of major shifts and changes to the Spring Offensives when we get to them.
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Hardly a complete victory in any case. The Ottomans are doomed one way or another, I don't see Austria-Hungary surviving in a recognizable form, and there's millions of Americans pouring into France.
I think the PoD is far too late to save the Central Powers - but soon enough to make Europe look quite different and definitely draw out the war substantially. If a stronger German position necessitates an allied push into Germany itself, perhaps that will kill the stab in the back myth?