AHC: Stronger Austro-Hungarian K.U.K Marine and its role in the great war.

Deleted member 94680

However there may be a way. Not a way that I can promise would work, nor is it elegant in fact it is at best rather clunky. However there is just the slim possibility if you compensate the Croats with their own parliament then they might only sulk a little. So you end up with Austria-Hungary-Croatia in an all new Triple Monarchy (I did warn you this is not elegant). So there you have it an AHC for an AHC.

You might then be able to afford some more ships but it will take a lot of negations.

@RodentRevolution but then Bohemia might heavily protestbeing left out and not receiving a similar treatment. A quadruple monarchy would however be so unwieldy as to make most naval expansion projects moot.

I take it you guys have seen this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria

A federal solution to the problems caused by the Dual Monarchy "solution".

Would this resolve the issues of the Ausgleich and allow Vienna to have a more rationalised defence policy?
 
I take it you guys have seen this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria

A federal solution to the problems caused by the Dual Monarchy "solution".

Would this resolve the issues of the Ausgleich and allow Vienna to have a more rationalised defence policy?

I am not sure about this: it seems to me like one of those projects that look great on paper, but are very difficult to actually implement.
Much depends on the degree of authority that the central government would keep, because turning the Empire suddenly into a confederation runs the risk of disintegration, especially if each consituent state has a clear ethnic majority. Possibly a better idea (but requiring an earlier POD) is some sort of limited devolution of powers to the historical (non strictly ethnical) entities. Initially it would be a conservative solution, meeting the hostility of nationalists, but this could be mitigated by universal suffrage and the likely developement of Christian- and Social- Democrat parties. When things become a bit to hot, the nationalities question can be "solved" by introducing something similar to Otto Bauer's National Personal Autonomy.

Back to the topic, my question is really: does A-H (or A-H-B/United States of Greater Austria) really need more and bigger battleships? An idea could be a bold plan of having a powerful fleet to chase the Italian Navy away from the Upper Adria and do a naval outflanking of the Italian defenses on the Alps with a landing in Veneto or Romagna, but this smells a bit of Sealion to me, probably it would be logistically impossible (unless the war is only between A-H and Italy, which seems less than likely).
 
I think, recalling what this thread is about, that the issue of developing a stronger AH+ Navy is that it is not impossible but the internal political solution is actually fearfully complicated. Further you then run into the issue that a stronger navy, as Germany found, does not necessarily achieve the political diplomatic ends it is intended.

If the KKM (or maybe GKM in an AHB scenario) is perceived by Italy to be aimed at it then what happens is more likely that Italy moves closer to the Entente (with Britain being relied on to stop French bullying). That way the Italians gain an ally who can supply extra ships and naval guns cheaply and italy supplies the men, plus the naval forces of both the French and British then being additional support.

It is worth remembering that rather than scaring the British into obedient surrender the HSF simply sent them seeking the loving embrace of Miss France.

I am wondering that a KKM somewhat stronger than OTL might not be impossible but as I and Yanez de Gomera have pointed out the political concessions required to achieve the extra funds would be fearfully complicated.

Which probably would not surprise students of the relationship between Crown and Parliament in England and later the UK come to think of it.

Edit cos evil typos
 
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Oh dearly :(

See here is the thing, you had a wonderful chance to attempt your AHC with and AHC and you blew it. I'll ignore the handwaves about the Dual-Monarchy having more spare cash than the United Kingdom and attempt to address the issue of how you even get to trying you KKM super fleet.

First off when you so breezily handed over Dalmatia to Hungary you may heard a noise, that was Zagreb going boom...I won't do the capital letters but suffice to say you were probably deafened and stunned. So I'll sort of forgive you for ignoring the mess as the Croats go ballistic, which they would. Of course the problem is that the Croats while kaisertreu were not exactly keen on coming under the Hungarians nor of having bits of what was considered Croatia's sphere come under Hungarians. Now even assuming the Dual-Monarchy can put out the fires the cost of military action or bribes basically result in a smaller fleet than OTL.

However there may be a way. Not a way that I can promise would work, nor is it elegant in fact it is at best rather clunky. However there is just the slim possibility if you compensate the Croats with their own parliament then they might only sulk a little. So you end up with Austria-Hungary-Croatia in an all new Triple Monarchy (I did warn you this is not elegant). So there you have it an AHC for an AHC.

You might then be able to afford some more ships but it will take a lot of negations.
Dearly doesn't mean that. The fleet I proposed is a bigger and better fleet, but it's not a super fleet. I hadn't done any handwaves about the Dual-Monarchy having more spare cash than the UK. If anything I had in posts 36 and 37 established that A-H was not as rich as I had originally stated and therefore its going to be more difficult to find the money.

I'll accept what you wrote about the Croats not accepting Dalmatia going to Hungary, because I don't know very much about the internal politics of the empire at the time, although I'm still not pleased with the way you wrote it. It was only a suggestion. But if it did result in a smaller fleet then that might be better than the OTL situation which was A-H had a second class fleet that was bigger than needed for coast defence, but smaller than needed to be a first class naval power. AHC from AHC, that's more like it :), but then it is more likely that Dalmatia becomes part of Croatia, instead of remaining part of Austria as it did IOTL or transferred to Hungary as I suggested.
 
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