'A Liberal German Empire? Not While I'm King of Prussia!' - an 1848 TL.

[Jimbrock]

I don't think Zeppelin would be butterflied away. He was born before the PoD AFAIK and his immediate surroundings wouldn't be too different. As far as the German navy is concerned, Wilhelm II was not the only one who wanted a big navy. There were anumber of important people in Germany at the time who wanted a navy. I'd argue that with a large colonial empire and lots of prestige (and a possible rematch against Britain), the impetus to build a navy would be even bigger.

Of course, everything I complain about is plausible and technically all correct, but I just think that a bit of creativity might be nice. Im not familiar with the late nineteenth century German- or Italian! Hungarian! or British, even- engineering scene but it is a little odd that exactly the same person would invent the Airship.
On navies, I agree that Germany would build a larger navy but I heartily disagree that Italy would have half as many ships as its larger ally.

 

[Gladi]

Hungary was supported by their own Slovak, minorities.

Like really?

 

[Onkel Willie]

Of course, everything I complain about is plausible and technically all correct, but I just think that a bit of creativity might be nice. Im not familiar with the late nineteenth century German- or Italian! Hungarian! or British, even- engineering scene but it is a little odd that exactly the same person would invent the Airship.
On navies, I agree that Germany would build a larger navy but I heartily disagree that Italy would have half as many ships as its larger ally.

I'm not that familiar with the engineering scene either so I don't know who to pick besides Zeppelin. As for the navy, I edited it for you . Is it acceptable now?

 

[Jimbrock]

I'm not that familiar with the engineering scene either so I don't know who to pick besides Zeppelin. As for the navy, I edited it for you . Is it acceptable now?

Good point. As for the navy, I guess these are all 'plans' for now and ultimately youre the writer so they're fine by me.

 

[Onkel Willie]

Like really?

Originally from Wikipedia (not the most reliable source, I know). The Hungarians were supported by the vast majority of the Slovak, German and Rusyn nationalities, as well as by the Jews of the kingdom, and by a large number of Polish, Austrian and Italian volunteers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1848

 

[Eurofed]

As for the navy, I edited it for you . Is it acceptable now?

The 2:1.5 ratio is far more acceptable for various reasons, but you left the edit half done.

and so Italy adopted a 2:1.5 fleet ratio with the Germans, meaning that Italy would maintain a navy of half the size of the Imperial German Navy

is contradictory, it should read

and so Italy adopted a 2:1.5 fleet ratio with the Germans, meaning that Italy would maintain a navy of three-quarters the size of the Imperial German Navy

 

[Eurofed]

Map Update time.

 

[Onkel Willie]

In the meantime, I did my best to make a map of Africa (drawn over a modern day map btw).

Grey = Germany
Brown = Italy
Yellow = Spain
Pink = British Empire (duhh )
Blue = France
Green = Ottoman (de jure, anyway).

 

[Jimbrock]

ITTL is seeing a Greater Italy, thats for sure. How is it that Malta remains in British hands? Also, is that a speck of Green in OTL Dibouti?

 

[Onkel Willie]

The base map was green. I tried to colour Djibouti, but MS Paint stubbornly refused . Djibouti is supposed to be Italian. As for Malta, Britain still had naval superiority over the Regia Marina at the end of the war and Italy didn't have any real claims on it. Next war will yield more results.

EDIT: that blotch of green in the west I forgot to colour, but it is as in OTL.

 

[Onkel Willie]

Update time everyone.

Chapter V: Turn of the Century, the Rise of the Asian Tigers, a New Naval Race, a Resurgent Russia & France and the Formation of the Alliances, 1899 – 1912. ​

1899 ended and the year 1900 began, thereby heralding the dawn of the century, but this wasn’t a joyful event as the world was still split between the two alliance blocks. Tension was building between the two alliances and this showed in the rising tensions between their respective proxies in Asia, China and Japan. After the Japanese had allied themselves to the Central Powers and had defeated China in a matter of months in the Sino-Japanese War of 1891, the Entente powers saw fit to support China to prevent the influence of their enemies to spread across Asia. After this defeat, the Guangxu Emperor also seen the need for reform, but he had to face determined opposition from the conservative clique in his court led by Empress Dowager Cixi who relied on the armies of Ronglu and Yuan Shikai for military support. The Sino-Japanese War had convinced the Emperor that he was right about the reforms and began leaning more and more on Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao who he enlisted to help him carry out his reforms. Among the goals of the Guangxu Emperor were modernizing the traditional exam system, eliminating sinecures (functions that required little work, but provided an income), creation of a modern education system based on studying mathematics and science instead of Confucian texts, change the government from an absolutist monarchy to a democratic constitutional monarchy, apply the principles of capitalism to strengthen the economy, reform the army to western standards like the Japanese army and rapidly industrialize China through western investment, commerce and so on. The Entente powers of Russia, France and Britain grabbed the opportunity to woo China into their camp and put abundant military advisors, economic experts, financial support and so on at the disposal of Beijing. These reforms were radical and were not received well by the Dowager Empress and her supporters, not to mention the increasing number of foreigners in China, even though the Guangxu Emperor strived to carry out these reforms within the relatively conservative framework of Japan’s Meiji Restoration. He was a strong personality and he resisted the political manoeuvres of the Dowager Empress. When many officials started to complain to her, including members of the Grand Council, after having lost their jobs due to the reforms, she decided to act. The Emperor got wind of the fact that something was going to happen, but he didn’t know what and so alerted his western allies.

Troops under Ronglu and Yuan Shikai surrounded the Forbidden City on Cixi’s orders, but the latter invoked help from Britain and France. The former dispatched warships and troop transports from Hong Kong. The plotters’ coup was now threatened by the almighty British Empire which they knew they couldn’t defeat. The troops loyal to Cixi numbered less than 15.000 men which were underequipped, poorly led and poorly trained. British troops landed near Tianjin with fire support from the Royal Navy. These landings went unopposed since the Chinese navy couldn’t hope to challenge the British even if they wanted to. The plotters were forced to surrender as their troops did not feel much for fighting a battle that was predetermined to end in a massacre. Empress Dowager Cixi was placed under house arrest while the Emperor resumed with his reforms and had Ronglu and Yuan Shikai executed for treason. He approved the founding of a university in Beijing and made work of the educational changes. His goal was to wipe out illiteracy within a decade which he claimed was necessary if China ever wanted to become a developed nation. He proceeded to purge the Grand Council of conservative opponents, thereby reducing it to a mere tool in his hands although his intention was to create a democracy in the long term. The most important achievement was that China was now open to the west and allowed foreign investment. French and British entrepreneurs were allowed to establish factories and mines in China and build railroads, roads and networks of modern communication. It turned out after a few years that China possessed massive coal deposits, the largest of the entire world in fact. The Chinese Empire also had deposits of iron ore, manganese, antimony, tin, nickel, tungsten, copper, molybdenum and lead which it would use for industrialization albeit at a slower rate than Japan since China was so enormous. A steel and metal industry emerged on the east coast fuelled by coal that was dug up by an increasing population of Chinese mineworkers. Coal and steel were to become the pillars of China’s economy as the Guangxu Emperor emphasized arms industry and heavy industry first. He also tried to electrify China’s major cities with coal-fuelled power plants, but also hydroelectric plants that made use of China’s mountainous landscape and many rivers and so power lines rose up to light China’s cities by night. Notwithstanding his stimuli to these sectors, a small consumer sector was allowed to develop as well. These economic changes went hand in hand with changes in the school system. A western model was introduced and school was made obligatory for everyone up to the age of thirteen. The increase in literacy led to increases in living standards through labour diversification as well a growing national consciousness, more so with certain intellectual figures emerging by means of the University of Beijing into this changing society. An industrialized economy that traded heavily with the Entente as well as an educated Chinese populace were taking shape, but this was understandably a long process. By 1909, a decade and half after the first reforms however, China was noticeably different. The revitalized Chinese Empire had overtaken Japan as the largest producer of steel and electricity in Asia. China exported heavy machinery, ships, weapons, textiles, chemicals, raw materials, coal and steel instead of rice and grains and competed heavily with Japan for markets. A war was deemed inevitable at some point by both countries, especially since China was rearming at a rapid pace which meant that Japan couldn’t postpone a war for long. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a war to begin with.

The Chinese army was reorganized to a structure similar to the French army with armies, corps, divisions, regiments, brigades, battalions and platoons and similar ranks to imitate the French chain of command which would make the Chinese army a more effective fighting force than it had been before (although admittedly slightly less than the Japanese army which was based on the Prussian model, but China had massive numbers to compensate). With an emerging indigenous arms industry, China started to produce the British-made Lee-Enfield rifle under license. They also purposefully began producing machine guns since they deemed them useful against the Japanese army which still emphasized the courage of the individual soldier. The Japanese therefore frequently stormed enemy lines; they had done so in the Sino-Japanese War with success, but at that time China had been a weak, inferior enemy. The Chinese artillery corps adopted the French 75 mm gun as its mainstay as it had the advantage of a hydro-pneumatic recoil system that allowed it to fire at a high rate, higher than any other contemporary artillery gun anyway. The navy followed at a slower rate since Chinese military theoreticians deemed that China was primarily a land power (in spite of China’s long coast). Nevertheless, a deterrent against Japan was built under orders from the Emperor with Anglo-French expertise. This deterrent would include a number of modern battleships. By the early 1900s, some had also seen the potential for air power to play a role in warfare, however small it may have been. In 1901, a German engineer Gustav Weisskopf had invented the first motorized heavier-than-air flying machine powered by an internal combustion engine and inventors from other western powers followed his example. Obviously, China’s industry being mostly heavy industry and mining, was a little crude to build early 1900s aircraft. The preceding years of change however, had led to the emergence of Chinese aeronautic engineers coming from Chinese academies. In 1904, the first Chinese aircraft flew and in 1910, China’s army would receive an aerial reconnaissance unit equipped with airships and primitive planes, the beginnings of the Imperial Chinese Air Force. Japan and China militarized further and further against each other, China to overtake Japan and Japan to stay ahead of its Chinese competitor. The Asian Tigers were on the move.

In the meantime, a new concept in the naval world would spark a new naval race between the great powers, namely the concept of the all-big-gun battleship. Surprisingly, the idea was suggested by an Italian and not a German or a Brit as Germany and Britain were considered the top tier naval powers. Italian engineer Vittorio Cuniberti proposed what he called his ideal battleship which would have between eight and twelve guns with a 305 mm (12 inch) calibre in double or triple turrets, 12 inch belt armour, a weight of 17.000 to 18.000 tonnes and a speed of thirty knots. The Italian admiralty, being very able to realize this type of ship since Italy had enough industrial power of its own, adopted the radical idea in which they saw a future in 1900. This colossus of the seas would have significant advantages over contemporary battleships. These usually had multiple different gun calibres which made determining distances by means of splashes from shells difficult. The gun ports of these many small calibre guns also tended to take in water in high seas which posed a risk, not to mention the fact that these guns usually fired faster than the four 11 inch (280 mm) guns that these ships usually carried for a main armament. To determine distances, the gunners had to wait which rendered the advantage of the rapid firing smaller guns useless while an all-big-gun battleship could fire its guns in one salvo without needing to wait for other guns and at the same time a ship that carried between eight and twelve large guns had advantages over the vessels of the day which usually carried only four. The first was named Carlo Alberto after King Charles Albert of Savoy who was seen as the founder of the modern Italian state and the second one that was laid down shortly thereafter was the Vittorio Emanuele II, named after his son King Victor Emmanuel II. A third would be built two years later in 1903 and would be named after the reigning king of Italy, Umberto I. This class had eight twelve inch guns in double turrets, a twelve inch armoured belt, a thirty knot top speed and a weight of roughly 17.000 tonnes just like Cuniberti had envisioned it. This fast, powerful and modern new design made all other existing battleships obsolete and the top tier naval powers of the world all followed Italy’s example. Great Britain, Germany, America, Russia, Japan and later China and to a lesser extent the Confederacy all began building warships of the ‘Charles Albert type’ as they were called with all preceding designs being disparaged as ‘pre-Charles Albert’ battleships. This way, the Italians had unwittingly sparked a new naval race which further increased tensions between the power blocks to always have the best and the biggest weapons.

Italy by now was unmistakeably a great power in its own right with a powerful army that had distinguished itself in combat and a strong navy that safeguarded Italian interests in the Mediterranean Sea. The Italian colonial empire was not as large of those of Britain and Germany, but was similar in size to that of France, a fallen great power. Italy was not as powerful as their German ally, but was strong enough not to be hindered by any kind of crippling inferiority complex. Northern Italy had industrialized with German investment as well as resources from Italy’s colonies. Italian emigration from the south of the country to the US shifted in favour of emigration to the much richer and industrialized northern half of the country. Italy’s industrial sector was strong in its own right and had enough markets in Europe to sell its products while the Italian populace itself had become one of the most affluent and well-educated peoples in the world educated by schools comparable to Germany’s superb educational system. Whereas illiteracy had been common in especially southern Italy in the 1840s and 50s, it had all but disappeared by 1900.

Russia, by this time, was growing more aggressive again. They had reformed their army and a revanchist nationalist streak had taken a hold of the Russian people who were being fed nationalist propaganda by the Tsar’s regime. By now, Michael II had ascended to the throne of Russia as Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias. Alexander II had died in 1889 at the quite remarkable age of 71 and had been succeeded by his son Alexander III who had often clashed with the Duma. In his last years, Alexander II had created a parliament known as a Duma and had written up a constitution for the Russian Empire which limited the sovereign’s powers to an extent. The Chancellor and his cabinet were still responsible to the Tsar, but the latter couldn’t just disband the government in a whim and issue new elections which posed a problem when the reactionary Alexander III ascended the throne. He clashed with more reform-minded ministers frequently and tried to use his remaining powers to stop further reforms, but the events that his father had set in motion could not be undone so easily. Fortunately, his reign was short. He died in 1894, some say out of sheer frustration, after kidney failure and he was succeeded by his son Michael II who had been groomed by his grandfather, Alexander II. He had moulded his grandson into an ideological copy of himself with liberal and pro-reformist ideas. He would prove to be a powerful ruler, but also keen on modern reforms that would lead to Russia catching up on the west. More openness had already led to a great deal of industrialization in the Moscow-St. Petersburg area, the Donets Basin and the Urals. Russia’s enormous mass of unskilled labour (Russia was the most populous country of Europe) combined with massive amounts of natural resources (coal, natural gas, oil, iron ore, gold, silver etc.) made investment in Russia attractive and foreign French and British entrepreneurs were easily convinced to come and build the Tsar his factories, roads and railroads he wanted. The major cities saw electricity long after the west had already seen it and large production increases took place while the Tsar also sought to educate his people with an educational system that purposefully copied the British system. By 1910, illiteracy in the Russian Empire would have dropped to a mere 15% which was an enormous leap forward. The Russian armed forces were also modernized, especially the army which finally changed to more modern tactics and doctrines and bought modern weaponry. Russia was on its way to join the ranks of the world’s dominant powers again after the humiliation in the last war against Germany. Russia’s ally France, in the meantime, moved to more conservatism as opposed to Russia. France, thanks to Boulanger, was now known as the Kingdom of France again, ruled by King Louis-Philippe II although Boulanger was the power behind the throne. He introduced a three year mandatory military service for every male who reached the age of eighteen while fortifying France. Heavy defensive lines with powerful fortresses dotted the borders, making the country ‘Fortress France’ as Boulanger called it. He also expanded the offensive capabilities of his armed forces. France had much more machine guns per battalion than any other army to give French soldiers as much firepower as possible to negate enemy numbers. An expanded infrastructure was built for faster troop transport and communications were state of the art to make the French army a very effective fighting force. The shipyards continued to crank out battleships, making them bigger and bigger. Internal dissent was brutally stamped out while Jews, Protestants foreigners and inhabitants from the colonies were pressed into a second-class citizen status. French society was becoming more and more militarized as time passed. Per capita, France had more soldiers than Germany did although the question was if that was enough.

The world’s alliance blocks were finally solidifying into the shapes in which they would enter the next war. The Central Powers now consisted of Germany, Italy, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, Spain, Hungary and the United States which had finally broken isolationism seeing how the vengeance war against Britain they longed for could not be done alone as it would automatically involve France and Russia as well. The Confederacy, in the meantime, joined the Entente powers which now consisted of Great Britain, France, Russia, China and the Confederate States. Both sides had their advantages and disadvantages against each other. France was a major weakness in the Entente powers since it was surrounded by three enemy powers and was therefore likely to fall first. Russia and China had modernized a great deal and could bring to bear massive numbers which would give them a numerical superiority in any battle no matter who they fought. Germany and their Hungarian allies could bring to bear only much smaller forces in the eastern front, but their armies still had qualitative superiority over all. Japan, at this time, still had the best army and navy of all Asian powers although China’s economic power was overshadowing them more and more. Perhaps the Entente’s largest advantage and asset was having Britain with its Empire that covered a quarter of the world and the Royal Navy that still reigned supreme, at least to the observer. Sure, the British Empire had enormous resources and manpower at its disposal, but its naval supremacy was being threatened more and more by the combined navies of the Empire of Greater Germany, the Kingdom of Italy and the United States which had become Britain’s main competitors for power and dominance. Eventually, a war of some kind that resolved the issues between the power blocks was inevitable. The war started not in Europe as expected, but in Asia where the two Asian Tigers clashed. The Chinese Empire now felt strong enough to reassert itself as the dominant power in Asia and even a great power, like Japan but even more powerful in Beijing’s eyes. In 1912, Beijing pressured the Koreans into giving Chinese companies mining and forestry concessions in northern Korea near the Yalu and Tumen rivers which infuriated the Japanese who had regarded Korea to be in its sphere of influence ever since the Sino-Japanese War of 1891, greatly enhancing Japan’s sense of security since ‘the dagger pointing at their heart’ was gone. Tokyo demanded that the Chinese gave up their concessions in northern Korea and pointed to the peace of 1891 in which China had accepted Korea to be a Japanese tributary state. Beijing, however, sought a confrontation with Japan, confident with their newfound strength that upstart Japan would back down over the issue. The Japanese refused to back down and declared war on the Chinese Empire to the great surprise and shock of the Chinese leadership. Seeing how Japan had little chance in winning all by itself, Germany decided to jump in to assist. This invoked the alliance and in a spiral of declarations of war, the two alliances of the world went to war once again in that faithful summer of 1912.

 

[EmmettMcFly55]

I like Japan actually being on the good side for once. I'm not really a fan of Japan, but seeing Japan being in the Axis in most of the World War II TL's makes me wish for a Japan-wank (a moderate one, though, so no Japanese Australia or Siberia or China, but just satisfying it's major claims).

Also, while the USA is on the good and most likely the winning side, it is quite likely that they will be in a lot of trouble at first. After all, they're fighting a two-front war, with neither of their allies being in a real good position to help.

Well, anyway, this looks like it'll be a very interesting war. A final question: would this be TTL's first 'World War', or will the equivalent to the Franco-Prussian War be called that, as it did, after all, involve nations with empires on many continents, and did change, even though not very significantly, the map of Asia?

 

[MerryPrankster]

Here's a way to increase Russia's numerical advantage even more.

Extend the Trans-Siberian Railroad into China. Lots of Chinese troops could be moved westward to provide some extra oomph to the Russian armies.

Although the Chinese troops might be needed in China, it looks like the Japanese are going to be cruisin' for a bruisin', if they try elan charges against machine guns. That might free up some manpower for a Chinese Prussian Expeditionary Corps.

 

[Eurofed]

Well, a rather interesting build-up to a major rematch, this WW is certainly going to engulf the world in a massive way, and the blocks look rather balanced. I sense a major carnage ahead.

On the economic note, I notice this world is certainly going to become much more and much earlier industrialized than OTL, with Italy, Spain, Russia, China, and Japan developing into First World economic giants several decades earlier.

I like Japan actually being on the good side for once. I'm not really a fan of Japan, but seeing Japan being in the Axis in most of the World War II TL's makes me wish for a Japan-wank (a moderate one, though, so no Japanese Australia or Siberia or China, but just satisfying it's major claims).

Well, this TL looks like it shall satisfy your urges, I see no problem with the other CPs recognizing Japanese hegemony in its "Near Abroad": Korea, Inner/Outer Manchuria, Sakhalin, and Taiwan, even if they shall have to share South East Asia and the Pacific with their allies.

Also, while the USA is on the good and most likely the winning side, it is quite likely that they will be in a lot of trouble at first. After all, they're fighting a two-front war, with neither of their allies being in a real good position to help.

To a degree, true, but let's not forget that the Union looks like it spent the last decades really building up its military might, while the Confederacy is burdened with an exploited and unhappy underclass to keep subjugated. The British have to spread their military might over several theaters, especuially to support the encircled French, they can only deploy some in Canada, and Canadian manpower is not that much impressive by itself.
.

Well, anyway, this looks like it'll be a very interesting war. A final question: would this be TTL's first 'World War', or will the equivalent to the Franco-Prussian War be called that, as it did, after all, involve nations with empires on many continents, and did change, even though not very significantly, the map of Asia?

Even if it was not a true World War, I assume that TTL historians shall come to see the combo of the ACW and the Second Spanish Succession War as *WWI, and the current one as *WWII, given that they saw most of the same actors and theaters.

 

[Onkel Willie]

The war has begun . I split this update into two parts because of its size.

Chapter VI: A War to Engulf the World, 1912 – 1916.​

1912 – 1914. ​

The greatest conflict in human history as of yet had finally begun in June 1912. The two alliance blocks – the Entente, consisting of Great Britain, France, Russia, China and the Confederacy, and the Central Powers consisting of Germany, Italy, Hungary, the United States and Japan – had gone to war in an epic clash of titans. Both sides set their war plans that had formed over many decades into motion. In Europe, the Germans, Italians and Spanish went on the offensive immediately in accordance with Prussian military doctrine and war plans formulated in joint general staff meetings. Their strategy was very obvious as there was only one country that all three shared borders with, namely the Kingdom of France where King Louis-Philippe II summoned every able-bodied man to arms to fight the upstart Italians and the barbarous Huns with their Spanish lackeys. France had been heavily fortified with enemy strategies like this in mind and the French would inflict high casualties before their heroic last stand. German troops went on the offensive all along the Franco-German border and first encountered French fortifications near Verdun. These triangular or quadrangular bulwarks were made out of armed concrete and steel and armed with many artillery guns of varying calibres, machine guns and the rifles of the large garrisons which were prepared to fight tooth and nail for the Fatherland. German forces arrived on the eastern bank of the Meuse with little trouble, but the heavy belts of defences here would inflict horrific casualties. Bunkers, trenches, machine gun nests and barbed wire defended the places where the Germans were most likely to cross (the bridges had been blown up by French sappers). Italian troops encountered similar resistance in the French alps in south eastern France. Spanish forces had to face this too in the Pyrenees although all three powers made headway regardless. A more worrying development was the eastern front. The massive Russian army went on the offensive in the Balkans, Poland and the Caucasus. The Federal Army of the Federal Republic of Hungary-Croatia-Romania fought well. In Bessarabia, they used the hilly landscape to mount an effective delaying campaign for the first month of the war, but the Russian army overwhelmed their lines and advanced toward the Prut river and toward the Carpathian mountains. Further north, Russian troops overran Lithuania and Lithuanian troops retreated into East Prussia. Russian forces invaded East Prussia and gained a sound victory in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, the first major engagement on the eastern front. This made Germany more determined to defeat the French and shift more troops to their eastern frontier, more so when Russian troops broke out of Bessarabia and advanced toward the Danube river where they would find the Ottoman army. The Danube-Carpathian line would hold the Russians for now.

By August, after at least six weeks of intense combat, German forces destroyed the last remnants of the Verdun fortresses by means of 420 mm Krupp siege howitzers and 305 mm Skoda guns in a very bloody engagement. This massive engagement showed that battles would no longer be fought with tens of thousands, but with hundreds of thousands of men. An entire German army consisting of several corps had fought this bastion on the Meuse. Similarly, Italy and Spain broke French defences regardless of a valiant effort on the part of the French army. In the Battle of Verdun, they had managed to inflict a two to one casualty rate. Machine guns mowed down wave upon wave of German soldiers, but eventually the first Germans reached the inside of the French forts and trenches; and once there was a whole in the line, it would only swell in size as German soldiers poured through. Due to the threat of the Germans outflanking them, French troops were forced to abandon the Meuse Line and regroup behind the next defensive line, the river Somme, while conducting delaying battles between the Meuse and Somme to stall the Germans. By now, a British Expeditionary Force of eight divisions had arrived to bolster the French, although Britain was preoccupied on other fronts too. The British fleet was forced to fight the German, Italian and Spanish navies while they also had to defend overseas possessions from the United States and Japan. America had mobilized an army of eight million men and troops were massing on the Canadian border as well as against the border with the Confederates. The Confederacy mobilized as many men as possible, but even so their army amounted to a mere 3.8 million men, less than half of the US Army. By the end of June, Union troops had launched a number of spoiling attacks into the Indian and New Mexico territories of the CSA while preparing for offensives into Virginia, Missouri and Kentucky. The US Navy, in the meantime, placed a blockade on Confederate ports again. Several indecisive naval engagements between the Union navy and the CS Navy took place, but Confederate naval officers knew what kind of numerical disparity they were facing. The CS Navy would not be a decisive factor in the war as it remained in port, and the army wouldn’t be either.

While German forces broke the French army in the Battle of the Somme in September, Union forces finally crossed the Potomac into Virginia, severely hindered by Confederate fortresses and defensive lines. Southern generals had realized the angle of attack the Union would choose in any war and Virginia had the largest garrisons and most dense fortifications of the entire Confederacy. They failed to fall for American diversions in the Indian and New Mexico Territories and so the US Army would face stiffer resistance than expected. At Bull Run, where the US Army had been defeated so many years ago, the Union army broke tough Confederate defences made of multiple layers of trenches. Southern machine guns cut down many Northerners, but powerful US artillery fire devastated southern defences and allowed for the Union army to penetrate their forward positions. As Union forces advanced upon Fredericksburg, Confederate troops were finally forced to retreat from Bull Run to avoid Union forces cutting off their supply lines. They fell back, but fought fierce rearguard battles with the vanguard of US forces. Such indecisive rearguard skirmishes took place at several locations, most notably Shenandoah. The second large engagement of the war was the Battle of Charlottesville where another, bigger defence in depth was constructed under the leadership of general Robert E. Lee Jr. who had been recalled from retirement by his brother, president George W.C. Lee. The city of Charlottesville was surrounded by three concentric belts of defences with sandbag and concrete reinforcements, plentiful artillery support and a large number of troops although at the expense of other border states. Lee was determined to stop the Union advance in its tracks before it reached the Confederate capital of Richmond and so he aimed to bleed the US Army dry in the hopes of the North accepting a status quo ante bellum peace. Lee knew full well that the United States had a much larger industrial capacity and would therefore win any protracted conflict. A number of weakly defended concrete and sandbag machine gun emplacements had been built in front of the main lines at several points to slow and weaken advancing Northern infantry. The real lines were strengthened by minefields, bunkers, fields of barbed wire hundreds of feet deep, machine gun nests and were garrisoned by the Confederate army’s first tier units, making it the bloodiest battle in American history. 130.000 Confederate forces stood against 160.000 Union forces at the start of the battle in late October 1912 and it would not be the quick battle Northern generals had envisioned. Union troops ran into a stubborn defence as their powerful artillery had failed to destroy enemy forces who hid out in their underground rooms. Union commanders quickly figured out that frontal attacks against Southern defences were not a good idea and so they surrounded it and settled in for what would become the Siege of Charlottesville. In this siege, brutal trench warfare would be the norm with many examples of bayonet fights and even fist fights when rifles got clogged up in the mud.

In Asia, the war was in full swing as well with Chinese and Japanese troops engaging each other in battles that were even bloodier which was not surprising considering the massive numbers involved. The newly reformed Imperial Chinese Army launched two offensives, one on the Shandong Peninsula and the other into the Liaodong Peninsula, to first eliminate the Japanese presence in China proper before turning to Korea since the Chinese general staff considered the existence of these beachheads a threat because they could serve as staging grounds for further expansion into China. Besides this, nationalist reasons were a main motivation for this choice. Japan had anticipated that Beijing would want to settle its major irredentist claims first. Because these areas were peninsulas, they were narrow and the coastlines of both would channel the Chinese advance into a certain direction and so defending them was fairly easily, similar to how the Spartans had defended Thermopylae against the Persian army of Xerxes, but on a much greater scale. Here too, trench warfare would prevail as Chinese human wave tactics played into the hands of the Japanese defenders. Chinese offensives and Japanese counteroffensives were rather fruitless, but a dormant Chinese nationalism had been awoken. In bloody battles portrayed as heroic by state propaganda, countless Chinese soldiers gave their lives to regain Chinese soil under the boot of the Japanese occupier. The year closed as German troops swarmed out into the plains of Champagne and toward the French capital of Paris.

Italo-Hispano-German overwhelming numerical superiority had broken French lines and by late 1912/early 1913 Germany stood poised to take Paris. This time around, the advance was much slower for the Germans even with Spanish support. Six months into the war with a concentrated Alliance effort, France was still fighting even if she was losing, losing badly. The eastern front was partially to blame. In spite of the official battle plan agreed upon before, Germany had redeployed five corps to assist the beleaguered Poles who couldn’t handle the Russian army, even with Hungarian assistance. In February 1913, Paris finally fell after a long battle in which large parts of the city were destroyed. The King and the government were evacuated to Brest while Italo-Spanish forces converged upon Poitiers. The BEF fought fiercely, but yet again failed to prevent a French collapse although Britain was less than willing to give in with its other allies still in the race. King Louis-Philippe II, Boulanger and the government left France along with the remnants of the French army and the French navy while Boulangist militias were left behind with weapon stocks in occupied territories for a guerrilla war as the French were determined to resist to the bitter end as opposed to the last time. The Alliance occupiers would respond brutally to guerrilla resistance and the occupation led to France being a burnt out shell of its former self by the end of the war. In early March 1913, France had been defeated once again and just in time too. Russian troops had taken Warsaw and had broken Hungarian-Romanian lines in the Carpathians to march down the Tisza river in the hopes of splitting the Hungarian-Croat-Romanian republic in two. Italian and German troops were sent to the Danube region as the Ottomans couldn’t hold the surge of Russian forces by themselves either, more so since they had the Caucasus front to contend with as well, not to mention British forces in Egypt and Persia. The Ottomans were the most beleaguered of the Central Powers with so many fronts. Germany counterattacked in the east and retook Warsaw from an overextended Russian army. The Russians had made the mistake of wanting to strike decisive blows on multiple fronts (Germany, the Balkans and the Caucasus). The Carpathian-Danube line was restored after a number of (indecisive) Russian defeats. Bucharest was liberated from the looting Russian army as was Königsberg, the East Prussian capital. The eastern front stabilized after a series of German counteroffensives near the pre-war border. Russia, however, wasn’t about to give in as a nasty anti-German, anti-Ottoman crusading mentality had taken root over the past decades as nationalists wanted to restore Russia’s position in eastern Europe and establish the Russian Empire as the protector of the Holy Land. Russia was also more powerful and not yet defeated decisively in any way. Russian patriotic propaganda called upon every able-bodied man to fight for the Motherland in a ‘Great Patriotic War’. Defences in western Russia were ready to face the German army, defences such as the Michael line. This line consisted of a number of ‘fortified regions’ with heavy fortresses, bunkers and defence in depth all along the Russo-Polish border. It was named after Tsar Michael II.

The Central Powers scored another victory in the Americas as Union troops broke Confederate defences at Charlottesville in April, after a six month battle. The number of troops in the region had increased substantially, also outside the city as Southern armies had attempted to break the siege with some success, but had failed to regain the initiative in the battle as Union troops closed the encirclement again every time. The most bloody battle in American history ended with 147.000 Confederate fatalities and 156.000 for the Union army, a decisive victory in the war for the Union which could sustain these losses much better. Contrary to the intention of Confederate generals, the battle had become the standing execution of the Confederate army. In the north, Union troops held the defensive for the time being, but Commonwealth forces were disembarking in Canada and so the US would have to do something about it sooner or later, but reuniting with the Southern states was the primary war goal for the Union, Canada was secondary for now. Williamsburg and Lynchburg had fallen by now and the US Army was about to close the trap around Richmond in a great example of manoeuvre war which strangely existed alongside trench warfare in this war. The government moved the capital to Charleston, South Carolina, in June. In the meantime, Canadian and British forces attacked into Maine to relieve their Dixie ally only to encounter Union forts. The fact that they lacked numerical superiority didn’t help; they had a numerical equality at best and the Appalachian Mountains provided excellent natural defences.

Chinese forces, in the meantime, simply overwhelmed Japanese defences at Qingdao albeit at a high death toll. By August 1913, 211.000 Chinese had perished in this brutal campaign that had gone on since the beginning of the war intermittently, casualty rates that were over double those of the Japanese. Imperial Chinese forces, however, could wage a war of attrition and Chinese generals were willing to do so against a qualitatively superior enemy. Japan could not sustain as high losses as the Chinese could. China had over 400 million inhabitants while Japan had approximately 45 million inhabitants at this time. The Imperial Japanese Army fielded a five million man strong army when fully mobilized against the Imperial Chinese Army that fielded at least twice as many by mobilizing a mere fraction of its population while Japan had mobilized over eleven percent of its population to achieve victory. Chinese troops, however, failed to break Japanese lines on the Yalu and Tumen rivers in Korea, good natural boundaries and the superiorly trained Japanese artillery corps made minced meat out of advancing Chinese troop columns. The Liaodong Peninsula, on the other hand, had to evacuated as Japan’s position had become untenable against a 4:1 Chinese numerical advantage by summer 1913. These troops were redeployed to keep at least the Shandong Peninsula where one defensive line after another had been built. The Imperial Japanese Navy, in the meantime, had to contend with the reinvigorated Imperial Chinese Navy which contested supremacy over the seas east of China. Fortunately for Japan, they held a clear superiority here and Germany, Italy and Spain were willing to reinforce the Shandong Peninsula with colonial troops from Vietnam, Laos-Cambodia and the Philippines respectively. British naval forces stationed in their naval bases Hawaii and Singapore were too busy to intervene. The combined naval might of the Central Powers was proving a problem for the almighty Royal Navy. Squadrons were redeployed to break the Union blockade against Confederate ports, the Grand Fleet was divided between fighting the High Seas Fleet, the Spanish Navy and the Regia Marina and in Asia they had to fight the Imperial Japanese Navy and the German, Italian and Spanish Far Eastern Squadrons. Needless to say, fulfilling all of Britain’s strategic priorities was becoming a problem for the Royal Navy.

The British could not prevent the fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond in July 1913 which led to a drop in morale and also several revolts by blacks who saw the Union army as their liberation. Revolts by black factory workers against their exploiters took place in several cities on the eastern seaboard although white militias hired by the bourgeois factory owners put the revolts down. Even so, they spread to countryside and so valuable CS Army units had to be used to pacify the ‘upstart negroes’. Martial law was instated to maintain order in the Confederacy. At this point, the Confederate government in Charleston offered a conditional surrender to the US as they took Missouri and Kentucky which were now quite meagrely defended. These states had always been somewhat lukewarm about the Confederacy and had been the first states to abolish slavery anyway. These peace offerings were rebuffed; only a total unconditional surrender would be accepted by the US government which had triumphantly returned to Washington DC from Philadelphia.

1913 ended with the Americans holding the initiative over the Confederacy while stalemating British Commonwealth forces. In that same year, the joint power of Germany, Italy and Spain had defeated Boulangist France and had stopped the Russian advance. In the Middle East, however, the Ottomans struggled to ward off British advances into Egypt and Iraq. The British took Alexandria and Baghdad while Ottoman troops were already engaged in a brutal mountain war in the Caucasus as well. Asia was the only place where the Entente was ‘winning’ apart from the Middle East as hordes of screaming Chinamen battered the weakening Japanese army in an attempt to regain China's pride. They had also seized German, Italian and Spanish concessions. At sea, the Royal Navy struggled to maintain dominance and some saw that the Central Powers had already achieved naval parity. The war seemed to be going equal with victories for both sides.

 

[Onkel Willie]

Second part. Enjoy .

1914 – 1916. ​

In Europe, Germany and its allies focused on defeating Russia which was easier said than done against a nation of almost 180 million inhabitants, mobilized against its perceived aggressors. Russia was also notably good in conducting a defensive war by using its massive strategic depth. At the start of 1914, Tsar Michael II in his authority of commander-in-chief authorized the use of scorched earth policies. Russian forces destroyed roads and railroads, blew up bridges, burnt down forests that could be used for firewood, stripped the areas they left from industry and took harvests with them rather than leaving them for the German army to find. Russia’s production of armaments had substantially increased since 1870 as the reforms of Alexander II and Michael II, with a brief interruption by the reactionary Alexander III, had led to Russia industrializing to western standards. Its massive potential of labourers and soldiers easily matched that of Germany alone. Russia mobilized an army that was even larger than the Chinese army, approximately thirteen million men which was an enormous number compared to the eight million strong German army. Germany fortunately had its allies to rely upon. Russia had been thrown back to pre-war borders and in early 1914, the German general staff had two options. Heading for St. Petersburg and taking the Russian capital was option number one; it was the administrative nexus of the highly centralized Russian Empire, the economic centre in western Russia and an infrastructural centre. The other option was taking the Ukraine which had manifold benefits for Germany: the nationalistic and anti-Russian majority Ukrainian populace would provide soldiers, farmers and workers as well as an example of how ‘good’ Germany treated liberated minorities. Besides this, the Ukraine (also known as the Southern Resource Area) would provide grain, coal, iron ore and steel for the German war machine an deny it to Russia. The Ottomans were very much in favour of this as it would reduced pressure on them in the Caucasus. The German general staff chose the latter strategy while the Italians agreed to go on the offensive in north Africa to further relieve the Porte. German offensives into the Ukraine together with Federal troops from Hungary-Croatia-Romania advanced through Bessarabia with Russian forces staging a fighting retreat in February 1914. Their scorched earth tactics severely limited Central Powers successes as they could only move forward a little and then consolidate before moving on. Foraging only had so much results and so supplies had to come over a damaged infrastructure. The hundred kilometre advance to Odessa alone took over a month to complete although the Russian defenders suffered heavy casualties in the process too. As a secondary diversionary offensive, attacks toward St. Petersburg had been launched, but these had yielded little as the Russians had failed to fall for them. By July 1914, a frontline running roughly from Riga to the Crimean Peninsula had been established and independent Latvian and Ukrainian states had been proclaimed. Russians now formed the core of the resistance as certain minorities were reconsidering their position because independence under German tutelage seemed an attractive prospect. The sacred unity of the Russian Empire was therefore under threat. The Russian general staff persisted in its strategy of wearing their enemies down. When they were in Russia deep enough with overstretched supply lines and a long indefensible frontline, Russia would attack although some questioned the viability of this strategy since it would wreck Russia in the process.

On the American continent, things continued to follow the trends set in 1912 and 1913 with Union troops advancing into Tennessee and North Carolina, taking Knoxville and Wilmington by the end of 1913. Moreover, the Southern economy was feeling the effects of the blockade as their British trade partner was gone. In January 1914, the military situation for the Confederate States was looking bleak as the US Army advanced into Georgia and South Carolina, putting them less than a hundred kilometres away from Charleston. The US followed the example set by Germany, using airships to bomb Charleston as Germany did London although these attacks were more symbolic than anything else. The general idea behind the current campaign was that the loss of the eastern industrialized states would cripple the South’s war machine and end the war. Confederate forces resisted heavily, most notably in the Sandhills and swampy low regions of South Carolina where they fought hit-and-run skirmishes and guerrilla campaigns against the rear of the US Army, disturbing the supply flow. This would slow the Union army, but in a propaganda stunt they raised black militias (not that they had any love for them or anything) to hunt down Confederate Army Remnants fighting their guerrilla campaign in the region. By now, a distinct Southern nationalism separate from the American Continental Nationalism that had taken shape in the North had emerged and Southern soldiers fought hard for their idealized vision of their country. They failed to see the enormous socio-economic injustice that still existed in the CSA, even among certain segments of the white population. By May 1914, Charleston had fallen after a protracted struggle, making it abundantly clear who the victor was to be. As of yet, the Confederacy clung onto the promise of British aid, but scepticism arose. American forces had succeeded in establishing the frontline on the Saint Lawrence River and taking New Brunswick, thereby cutting off the peninsula of Nova Scotia that was connected to the mainland with a narrow isthmus. Here, the US Army’s numerical advantage was negated. The British and Canadians were determined to make ‘their Thermopylae’ here, except with a victory for themselves in mind. The last Confederate defensive line was on the Savannah River. Here, some 200.000 remaining Confederate troops held the last line of defence, facing 450.000 US soldiers in a valiant, but in vain effort. These were the best the CS Army had to offer as a lot of CS forces had been scattered. After inflicting severe death tolls upon Union armies, the line was broken and Confederate forces were dispersed in a chaotic aftermath. For the Confederacy, the defence at Savannah River had been an unmitigated disaster in that it had failed to break the US Army while destroying whatever military capacity the Confederacy still had, rendering it defenceless against Cuban-Spanish troops who took the opportunity to land in Florida and kick in the door to bring the whole structure down, reaping Spain some glory. Northern numerical superiority along with a massive industrial potential that dwarfed the potential of the CSA had achieved a victory for the US. The militarization over the past decades had proven useful and this would determine the American stance toward use of brute, military force for a long time to come.

On August 13th 1914, in Albany, Georgia, the Southern delegation signed the peace treaty in which it allowed the CSA to be annexed back into the Union. This was the Treaty of Albany. It ended a period of 52 years or over half a century in which the Confederate States of America had been an independent state. Resistance would be continued by Confederate Remnants and Southern militias for years to come as the South’s identity and Southern nationalism could not be erased as much as the North tried to reintegrate its Southern brethren into their desired Pan-American empire. American Nationalism proved to be but a meagre substitute for many Southerners except for the blacks and the lowest of the white populace who were easily turned by the affluence the north brought. The South’s identity extended to before 1861 and this mentality was not easily exchanged for a uniform American one. Nationalist antics as well as armed resistance argued and would continue to argue for a re-established South and a fair peace. For all intents and purposes, however, the Confederacy had ceased to exist. The US Army therefore made it clear what happened to those who resisted further uselessly and illegally after the surrender of the legal government. Martial law was instated and resistance fighters were shot on the spot while a military governor took over from the pre-war administration. Many anti-nationalist measures of these administrators were seen as draconian, but the occupation authorities justified them by labelling the original secessionists as traitors and the secession as unlawful. Legally, the Confederacy had therefore never existed to the US government and it was now made official. The second Entente power had been knocked out of the war. The Confederacy was no more.

Surprise and shock on the part of Britain at this collapse signals how they had underestimated the strength that the United States had gained from several decades of industrialization and militarization in preparation for such a conflict. The British military leaders had fully expected to be able to discipline the ‘upstart’ Americans by application of Britain’s superior naval might. Reality said otherwise as the US Navy had been able to challenge the Royal Navy in its attempts to break the Union blockade of Southern ports, also because Britain was tied up elsewhere. Britain had fully expected to be able to do what it had done in the Southern War of Independence (or Third Anglo-American War) and had received a bloody nose for their hubris in return. American forces, now freed from the Southern front, invaded Quebec and tried to force Nova Scotia again. Britain was not used to not having the upper hand and London was not too happy about it. Beating the Americans in a leisurely style like five decades before was never going to happen again, ever.

By now, the stalemate on the Shandong Peninsula was beginning to frustrate the Chinese. Because of the arrival of German, Italian and Spanish troops and naval assets, Japan would be able to hold onto its defences for a very long time and it would take a lot of Chinese lives to break them. The Chinese Emperor responded by mobilizing even more men out of his massive population and gearing to total war production. This was a new occurrence in history, the mobilization of a country’s entire economy and means for a war. The idea of total war spooked some in Japan as they feared that the sleeping giant had now truly awoken. All factories that could be used to serve the war effort were put under state supervision and three eight hour shifts were made the norm so China could produce weapons twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Patriotic propaganda stirred up the masses against the imperialistic colonial powers who supported Japan in its quest to make China but a mere vassal. The Imperial Chinese Army had conscription, but many men joined voluntarily to create the largest army in the world to once and for all evict foreign powers from Chinese soil. China’s massive steel and coal mining industry provided the cornerstones for the war economy, a war economy that dwarfed Japan’s although Germany’s still superseded it in production as did the American and British war economies. China also began churning out increasing numbers of modern, British-designed warships with large shipyards that had been built before the war. One such ship was the large, powerful Guangxu, named after the late Emperor. This ship was one of the first battleships in the world to bear 15 inch (381 mm) guns as its main armament and she carried no less than nine of them in triple turrets and weighed in at 35.000 tonnes. China’s navy would equal Japan’s in a few years at most if given the opportunity and Japanese admirals feared this above all other things as it would definitively make China the dominant power over Japan. A renewed offensive led to the battle of Weifang where a numerically superior Chinese force soundly defeated a combined Japanese-German force in battle, dispelling the idea that Asian powers were weaker than European ones and also raising Chinese morale. In this battle, the Chinese also broke the stalemate although they had sustained large death tolls already, giving room for the Chinese cavalry to play its part. The experiences with gigantically wide, sweeping cavalry movements would eventually lead to the development of the modern doctrine of the Chinese army. In a wonderful example of manoeuvre warfare, Chinese cavalry forces overwhelmed Central Powers defences in series of multiple successive or parallel offensives following the decisive breaking of the stalemate at Weifang by an enormous infantry force. Due to sheer numbers (giving Chinese troops a 5:1 advantage), German and Japanese armies had little of a chance to be victorious again this time. Ironically, China was probably doing the best of all Entente powers since Britain and Russia were keeping Japan’s allies too busy on the other side of Eurasia to deploy more troops to this theatre. By summer 1914, the foreign presence on the Shandong Peninsula had been reduced to a heavily defended pocket on the tip. The Chinese offensive petering out gave these troops time to dig in and so trench warfare ensued once more although this time much more numerous Chinese forces faced a much shorter (if also deeper) line which was held by less troops. Here, Japanese, German, Italian and Spanish forces constructed no less than six belts of defences which had all the usual ingredients from bunkers to minefields. This was a bulwark, but with China concentrating its war effort with the sole purpose being the eviction of Japan from mainland China, this beachhead couldn’t hold forever.

Back in Europe, the last defenders of the Sevastopol fortresses surrendered as they were cut off on land by the German army and at sea by the Ottoman Black Sea Fleet which had seen a substantial boost over the preceding two decades. They had been besieged for several months on end and they resisted to the best of their ability for the Tsar and the Motherland. Kiev had fallen into Central Powers hands and now Russia could not deny the power of the resources of all of Europe arrayed against it anymore. The new frontline ran along the Dnieper river and in November 1914, German and Hungarian forces reached the city of Donetsk, a major regional industrial centre, to find it largely desolate once again. Thanks to pressure applied by its European allies, the Ottomans had succeeded in securing the Caucasus oil again and shifting their attention to Mesopotamia (Italian troops were engaging the British in Egypt for Constantinople). Russia too switched to total war, moving many factories and large parts of the population in the areas close to the frontline to the Urals and Central Asia. As for Tsar Michael II, he remained in his capital St. Petersburg. Britain, in an attempt to assist, deployed troops to Russia which the Tsar all too happily accepted although they had to come in through Central Asia and rail connections in the region were poor so it took quite some time to actually get them to the front. Britain, however was in trouble. The combined ship production of Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan and the US (which now had former Confederate vessels and naval facilities at its disposal) outstripped British production. Russia wasn’t really a help; they only prevented the Germans and their allies from attempting to invade Great Britain. If Europe’s entire ship production was utilized, that goal seemed feasible.

Using French ports such as Calais, German ships sailed out into the Atlantic to meet the US Navy and attack commerce headed for the British isles. German battlecruisers also shelled British coastal towns on several occasions. The harassment and eventually sinking of a lot of the British merchant fleet would severely damage Britain’s economy. As an island it was very vulnerable to the loss of naval supremacy. American, German and Spanish ships maintained their policy to sink anything headed for Britain or sailing under British colours very strictly which led to rationing in Britain. The populace was growing somewhat uneasy about the course of the war, more so when Spanish and American forces seized British possessions in the Caribbean and the US Army advanced further into Canada where the populace, seeing how overwhelming American power was, were seeking to get out of the war with or without their British motherland. The Canadians moved their capital to Edmonton to avoid the government being captured as the Americans conquered the Great Lakes Region and advanced in the west as well, taking Vancouver in autumn 1914. Another attempt to take Nova Scotia ended in a stalemate and bloodbath again in what was known as the Third Battle of Amherst. At least two more would follow (depending on how one counts) and this theatre would see the first use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas and chlorine gas by both sides.

The Asian theatre would also see use of chemical weapons by the Chinese as they tried to remove the last foreign presence from the Shandong Peninsula. They broke the first line as a cloud of chlorine gas caused a five kilometre wide gash, but in a daring action the Japanese navy landed a corps size force behind the backs of the advancing Chinese. Sadly, the force was too small to make any real difference and in January 1915, the bulwark was finally evacuated by the last Central Powers troops under cover from the guns of the Imperial Japanese Navy. They were redeployed to Korea and Japan decided to go on the offensive. They launched an aggressive offensive toward Shenyang and Vladivostok, taking the former, but being forced back by the guns of the Russian navy at the latter. Instead, Vladivostok would have to be besieged and blockaded by the more numerous Japanese war fleet. These troops also tried to retake Port Arthur which Chinese troops had fortified after they had taken it. Their offensive grinded to a halt about twenty kilometres from the city in early February 1915.

Russia, Britain and China held on and the last one even scored successes thanks to its enormously huge army that dwarfed all others, even the not so small Russian army. In Russia, things had come to the point that enemy forces couldn’t advance much further into the Motherland due to logistical realities. Russia was just too big and the massive empire seemed to be settling in for a very protracted war, the great fear of many German generals. They didn’t want to get swallowed up by Russia’s enormous depth. They stalled before the river Volga which was a bridge too far for them. The Russian army, fighting for Russia’s unity, beat them decisively at Tsarytsin and had driven them back at least a hundred kilometres by April 1915, inflicting losses in the order of 200.000 men in the spring mud. A Russian offensive toward Riga didn’t take the city, but did move the frontline more westward. Russian forces scored a minor victory on the Berezina River and retook bits of Belarus. The generals agreed on holding the Riga-Rostov line while conducting only small offensives and counteroffensives in the short and medium term while the Ukrainian National Republic was built up by Germany. Infrastructural, it was still a mess despite extensive repairs by the German army. German forces prepared for consolidation and defence against the Russian army that fought to move Germany away from the Volga even further. In the meantime, American forces slowly advanced up the Canadian west coast and launched the unsuccessful Fourth Battle of Amherst against the British forces at the time of the Battle of Tsarytsin, a defence that held up British morale. The defence of this narrow isthmus had lasted for twenty-three months by now. The endgame was setting in as victory was no longer really in doubt anymore. In Britain, the people were slowly turning against the war out of war weariness, recent defeats and also due to rationing of more and more products. By June, the Central Powers naval campaign was so effective that bread was being rationed which led to discontent and a drop in morale. Most families in Britain were living on potatoes by now and meat, vegetables, fruit and bread had largely disappeared from the diet of the average Brit. They constituted a small part of the diet in Britain and they were usually hoarded for certain events such as birthdays which was indicative of how hard it was to get them. Rationing had been in place for nine months by June 1915 and food and fuel were becoming scarce, leading to high prices for both. Inflation and a recession set in as a result of the increasing decline in the Royal Navy’s ability to keep shipping lanes open. This, however, was not the only contributing factor to the events of late 1915/early 1916.

In September of that year, an American force of half a million men attacked Nova Scotia, preceded by only a short artillery bombardment of several hours. The bombardment was made up of normal shells, chemical shells, amour piercing shells, incendiary shells and shrapnel shells. This relatively short bombardment gave the Americans the element of surprise as they carried out new tactics known as infiltration tactics. Squads, heavily armed with machine guns and portable mortars, infiltrated the weaker segments of the enemy line covered by a creeping barrage and held them as regular infantry attacked conventionally after them when machine gun nests and artillery batteries had been taken out. In this Fifth Battle of Amherst, they broke through and took all of Nova Scotia by the end of the month. Most of Canada’s major ports had been taken and to the shock and anger of London, Canada opened up separate peace negotiations. They offered to ally with the US and break free from the British Empire, but America wasn’t planning on letting them get off that easy although complete annexation and a subsequent guerrilla resistance wasn’t what they wanted either. The Americans offered a more tightly bound version of what Canada had with Britain. Canada would be incorporated as an American Dominion with self-rule in internal matters while the US maintained foreign relations and defence. Canada would get non-voting representation in US Congress and the president replaced the monarch of the Empire as the head of state. Canada had complete autonomy regarding its internal affairs and would see only a very limited occupation; although they had autonomy, the Canadians had to reach consensus on matters that concerned both countries and could not engage in any diplomatic affairs whatsoever and no longer had armies of their own as they were disbanded as Canada now enjoyed the protection of the US Army. Part of the deal that came with this was an economic and monetary union between the US and Canada. This was decided in the Treaty of Calgary signed by American and Canadian diplomatic representatives on December 1st 1915 thereby founding the Republic of Canada.

Britain was in dire straits and so was Russia. They were the only two combatants left of the European Entente countries and both were crumbling. In Manchester and Liverpool, anti-war protests erupted and food riots took place in which warehouses were looted by civilians. The Home Guard was ordered to put the protests down; on December 7th, they executed six civilians for looting and the day after another eight were executed in Liverpool. This did not lead to a decrease of the protests, but to an increase. A few days later, protestors were demanding an end to the war, chanting anti-war songs before Buckingham Palace. Most were peaceful protests although a few violent convulsions took place in a number of industrial cities as Marxists tried to bring about the revolution. They lacked support as most Brits still supported the monarchy and their country, just not the war. December was a crisis month for the British Empire and the government was forced to look to the option of peace. The sun was setting over the British Empire, the E,pire in which the sun had never set before. King Victor I, son of the late Edward VII, refused to abandon his Empire and wanted to fight on from Britain’s overseas territories and Dominions as long as Britain didn’t receive a status quo ante bellum peace, an illusion by this point. He abdicated out of resentment over the decision to request peace, leaving the throne to this son Leopold I. Britain had been cast down and now the British people could only look back on the pre-war period, the height of British power nostalgically known as the Edwardian Age. Russia’s last-ditch offensive took Rostov and gave Russia one last victory to lean on before following Britain. Again, Russia perceived by itself to have been abandoned by its allies, made peace as they could never win the war alone. China, having settled most of its major irredentist claims, officially requested an armistice on February 17th 1916. After nearly four years and close to twenty million casualties, the war was over.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Interesting. Given China's massive numerical advantage and willingness to use gas, I was wondering if they'd liberate Korea. Or at least try.

Also the arrangement with Canada seems a little weird, with the quasi-British "Dominion" status and the US president being head of state, but Canada being a Republic.

It would be easier if the US grabbed some choice morsels in the east and west, perhaps set up an independent Quebec, and recognized the rest as an independent state (or states, if Quebec divides Canada geographically) that is part of some Warsaw Pact-esque alliance with the US.

France is in ruins, Britain is humbled, and the Russians have lost territory.

I can imagine the Russians trying again and more trouble in Asia, but France looks to have been defanged forever and I don't think Britain is likely to try anything anytime soon.

Also, how long until the Confederate issues are dealt with? If anything, I can imagine the US encouraging people from elsewhere to settle in the former Confederacy in order to further bind the territories to the US.

And what about Alaska?

 

[Gladi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1848

Well modern Czech and Slovak historiographies disagree. And while ambassador seems a credible source, the name of the presentation would set up ire of Slovaks. Plus it is totally not a historical source but a political one and a single one at that.

Also check out this, which is the Czech wikipedia article listing Slovaks on pro-Austrian side. And here is Slovak wikipedia article talking about Slovak counterrevolution.

 

[Vince]

Very nice TL.

I noticed in a Onkel Willie TL it really sucks to be France.

 

[Summoner]

Great TL. Liking the twists especially the short lived confederacy. Very thoughtful. Cant wait to see the peace treaty...Am I smelling a partition of France? Will be interesting to see Ukraine after this mess as well as the concessions the Ottomans will extract from Russia. I'm very curious about the other victorious central powers...