An Alternate History of the Netherlands - 2nd Edtion

[The Kiat]

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[The Kiat]

VIII) Commonwealth

(1886-1913)

The Dutch Commonwealth of Nations

Negotiations began on-and-off in 1886. Dutch generals tried to lay terms for surrender on the Boers. The Boers, under the command of Erik van Delft, continued their stance that the Boers would not surrender. Negotiations went nowhere in 1886 and as 1887 started, King Frederick III stepped in. He ordered the army to cease operations and only fire in self defense. Frederick suggested that perhaps they should take the same approach with the Boers as they did the Brazilians; personal union.

The Boers agreed to the self-governing status but refused to have a king. For decades, their republics were ruled by assemblies and presidents, all of which were elected. The Boers did not like the idea of having somebody in power who could not be removed, a throwback to memories of VOC rule. It was van Delft that made his own proposal, via telegraph, to Frederick III. The Boers would be ‘self-governing republics within the commonwealth’. His five words changed the history of the Dutch empire.

When the idea of Commonwealth came before the Staaten-General, it met with resounding support. Though the American Revolution long since passed from living memory, the effect on the British did not. If the Boers continued their rebellion and succeeded in winning independence, it might prompt India, the Indonesian islands and Abyssinia from declaring independence. It was but a minor alteration to personal union plan. The Boer Republics would remain in commonwealth with the United Provinces and Brazil, though they would not have a monarch.

The idea further developed into a league of Dutch states, all equal in status, bound together by common language, currency and market. Each member state would send their own delegation to meet in Amsterdam at least once a year. By 1888, delegates from Brazil, the United Provinces and the Boer Republics met to draw up a charter for the commonwealth. The member states need not be in personal union with the United Provinces, but the Dutch monarch would be recognized as the head of the commonwealth. This the Boers could agree to. Since the Commonwealth Charter declared that the Commonwealth Assembly would decide a common foreign policy, the Boer Republics were technically protectorates of the Commonwealth. As was the case, their texts referred to the reigning monarch as either Lord of Lady Protector.

In effect, the Dutch Commonwealth was an imperial federation. After the Boer Republics achieved statehood, Kapenstaaten soon followed. It was the only state that did not fight against the Hague or Recife during the Boer Wars. After its admission into the Commonwealth, it was soon discussed that perhaps other colonies should be granted statehood. Ceylon, Java and Formosa were at the forefront of possibility, and would all achieve statehood within sixty years, along with several other, less outstanding colonies.

With the potential to achieve autonomy, the colonies began to strive to improve their own infrastructure and governments. Like most political innovations of the Dutch during the Nineteenth Century, it stemmed from American ideals. Ironically, it was the United Provinces and their method of preserving Provincial powers that drove framers of the American Constitution to federation, along with the diverse nature of each of the original eleven states. The formation of the Dutch Commonwealth of Nations is the key factor for preserving Dutch unity to the present day, unlike disintegration enjoyed by British, French and German colonial empires.



Berlin Conference

Following the Boer Wars, the United Provinces entered into a monumental agreement with other European powers. The sole purpose; to carve up Africa. In 1884, European empires sent delegates to Berlin. Germany, Britain, the United Provinces, Austro-Hungary, France and Spain divided the continent into their own private playgrounds. Germany and Austria were both new to the colonial game and were granted the smallest portions. The Dutch received nothing new, only insured the Boer Republics, Angola, Mozambique and Abyssinia stayed within their sphere of influence.

The British stretched their empire across southern and eastern Africa, following both the Congo and Nile rivers. They expanded their holdings in western Africa, taking up the southern half of West Africa. The northern half was annexed to Algeria and left under the direct rule of Paris. France also gained suzerainty over Madagascar. The Germans were sandwiched between British West Africa, Central Africa, and Egypt-Sudan. The Austrians gained a small section of western Africa, which upon its independence, would make up the states of Nigeria and Biafra. Spain’s big keep was Morocco. Along with Puerto Rico, the Marianas, Marshals and Caroline Islands consisted of what remained of their once world-straddling Empire.

The Berlin Conference marked the last terrestrial burst of colonialism. After Africa was carved up, there was no land on Earth, save frozen Antarctica, that could be divided between European World Powers. With no more room to expand, conflict was inevitable. Two major wars would be fought by Europeans in Africa during the Twentieth Century. No matter the victors, it was the Africans who lost. Europe’s drawing of borders cut tribes in half and contained mortal enemies into the same colony. This marked the end of peace in Africa. Even after the next two world wars, Africa would be rocked by violence during decolonization and waves of nationalism in the newly independent nations.



King William VII

Two years after the Berlin Conference, Frederick III’s health began to decline. By 1888, his son, Willem Maurice van Oranje took up the role as regent. He ruled in the name of his father. Frederick’s body might be ailing him, but his mind was still sharp. He made certain his son did not take the throne until after he died. He resisted pressure from his own family and the Staaten-General to abdicate and allow his son to rule as King. All in good time was his response. Not until January of 1891 did Frederick finally relinquish the throne and his own life. Four days after his death, his son was crowned King William VII.



Canals

By 1913, the world saw two more canals, these linking Atlantic and Pacific. The northern one was built by the French in the colonial Mexican department of Nicaragua. Though not the shortest possible route from the Carribean to the Pacific, Lake Nicaragua offered a convenient gap to allow for shipping. All that was require was a bit of dredging and some locks to connect the lake with both oceans. In 1879, the French began construction of the Nicaragua Canal.

Though completed first, its construction took far longer than the Panama Canal. The French spent twenty-six years working on their colossal project. IN truth, the French simply supervised, planned and designed the canal. Tens of thousand of their colonial ‘citizens’ toiled in the jungles of Central America, upwards to thirty percent dying during the time of construction. By annexing Mexico, France’s canal opened several years before the American’s project. Since the Confederates were allied with France through Britain, the French monopoly on canals was viewed as a threat to American national security.

In 1899, a year after the tremendous victory over Spain, and six years before the Nicaragua Canal opened, the United States pressured Grand Colombia to sell the province of Panama to the Americans. The province was quickly annexed to the state of Costa Rica. The Isthmus of Darien offered the shortest distance between the Carribean and the Pacific. It was the ideal choice for a multi-lock canal, but the Americans could not afford the project alone. They spent until 1903, searching for fiscal support.

Their strongest ally, Germany leant them support, however their arms race with Britain consumed too much of the budget. Though Germany would assist in the defense of the Panama Canal, they could ill afford to help pay for it. The Dutch, on the other hand, were friends but not allies, and were interested in a short cut to the Pacific. Though the Commonwealth had no holdings in the eastern Pacific, various Dutch interests saw they could profit from the amount of traffic that would flow through the canal. It also gave Dutch ships an alternative to paying the French or taking the long way around.

The two canals in Central America were vital to the war efforts of both alliances, though neither side attacked their opposite’s waterway. The Panama Canal was protected merely by the Dutch interest. Interfering with Commonwealth shipping was the surest way to get the Dutch Commonwealth into the Great War, and the Dutch long since learned there was little profit in war. During the Great War, each of the world’s greatest canals were given a wide berth by all the belligerents.



Emperor of India, King of Ceylon

By 1911, Ceylon were ready to take its place a nation among equals. Its economy flourished over the past fifty years, though industrialization was minimal. The Ceylonese established its own Staaten-General, which held its initial session on September 3, 1907. Though it formed its own government and written its own constitution, the Ceylonese Staaten-General entered a debate whether or not to petition for admittance. For the Commonwealth’s part, the Commonwealth Assembly had to accept the petition. The Boer Republics were concerned that Ceylonese admittance might disrupt the balance of power between the Republicans of South Africa and the Monarchists of Brazil and the United Provinces.

A minority of politicians on Ceylon wanted to establish a republic, but the majority were in favor of personal union with the mother country. In 1910, an island-wide referendum voted overwhelmingly for the creation of a monarchy, and the Staaten-General made quick to ratify the vote and elect Frederick III to be Frederick I, King of Ceylon. In January of 1911, Ceylon was granted the status of a realm within the commonwealth.

Given its location, Ceylon was the natural overseer of India, which the Indians were keenly aware of. Since the establishment of the Dutch Commonwealth, the land owners and vassals sent India into a crash course of modernization. The elite of India would do anything to not become a colony of the upstart Ceylonese, even if it meant reforming the system that gave them power. IN 1894, princes and governors of the Indian provinces met in Delhi, a city conquered only thirty years prior, to form a provisional self-government for the colony.

Up until the Delhi Conference, India was ruled directly from the Hague, and the Staaten-General appointed governor-generals over the provinces not under the rule of allies. Even the allies obeyed the commands of the Staaten-General, else they would lose all power they still retained. By 1894, though India was still sunk in poverty, the elite were determined to gain statehood for India. The issue of whether or not India would be a single nation was not much of one. Apart, the provinces and principalities were weak, and easily picked off (which was how the Dutch managed to conquer the sub-continent in the first place), but united they could stand up to any power, even their colonial master, the United Provinces of the Netherlands.

Before the dawn of the Twentieth Century, the Indians managed to slap together a coalition government, which representatives from each of the princely states and provinces. The initial Indian Staaten-General was the first unicameral parliament in the Dutch world. This did not sit well with the Hague. The Netherlander Staaten-General was determined that each parliament within the Commonwealth should be made in its own image. Though there was some opposition in the House of Electorates, India clearly fell under a matter of state and not the people. The Senaat, seeing the determination exported from India, decided to ‘aid’ their counterparts in India.

In 1905, the Staaten-General wrote a constitution for India, not to debate or discuss, but to simply accept. For the most part, it differed little from the Brazilian Constitution, including installing Frederick as the Emperor of India. The decision of republic or monarchy was stripped from India, which had not officially been granted self-determination in the first place. It is fortunate for the Dutch Commonwealth that India’s elite took the task of forming a state upon themselves. If India had remained a colony like the Indonesian islands of Formosa during the Second World War, it is entirely possible it would have followed them on the path to republic, or perhaps severed all ties from the Netherlands with the act of declaring independence.

Establishing democracy in a country that was still largely illiterate proved a daunting challenge. For decades, Commonwealth authorities struggled against election fraud throughout the provinces, or states as India soon called its own divisions. The Indian House of Electorates, between 1911 to 1941, was largely populated with Electorates that cheated their way into power. Unable to read, the voters had only the word of attendants to take for whose name they checked. Furthermore, those same Electorates blocked attempts at universal education; a literate voter might not vote for them.

Such liberties and irresponsibility made many in the Commonwealth Assembly skeptical as to whether or not India was ready for admittance. Delegates from Brazil, and of course Ceylon, argued that the more mature colonies, Java and Formosa, should be admitted before India. In April of 1911, the Assembly deadlocked on the vote, leaving the decision in the hands of the head of the Commonwealth and the tie-breaker; Frederick III.

Frederick was more than ready to have another jewel in his crown. He placed his one vote in favor of India, and on May 1, 1911, India achieved the status of realm within the commonwealth. To the average India, little changed. They were still poor, dispossessed and had little in the way of say in their lives. They would not see the fruits of statehood for decades to come. To them, the illusion of having a say in their government did not outweigh the near famine conditions across the countryside. Land was still owned by a minority who were more interested in cash crops than growing food.

Sadly, these same land owners were the largest block of India’s House of Electorates. Land reform bills were also blocked, as the minority, the legitimately elected Electorates struggled for the betterment of their country against the rural aristocracy. It took a war with Japan, when the peasantry rose up for promises of liberation by the Japanese to force the Indian Staaten-General to change. Most of this change was a combination of improved education, and a wave of assassination of landing owning elite by the poorly paid laborers under their employment. Had reforms not occurred, it is entirely likely that when the People’s Dynasty took power in China, that the masses in India would have transformed India into the Commonwealth’s only communist member.



Genesis of a New Kingdom

Following the conquest of Abyssinia, the Dutch came to realize the severe disadvantage of the Emperor of Ethiopia’s traveling court. With no fixed capital, there was no place in Abyssinia from where to govern the newly unified colony. On the other hand, Theodore’s nomadic capital also made the conquest that much more difficult. For the Dutch, governing from a fixed location were the colonial assemblies could convene was essential. Though the United Provinces had a long history of decentralization, they found that centralizing their colonial possessions was advantageous. Suggestions that the capital be placed at one of the long standing coastal cities was considered and rejected. Governor-General Johann van Oranje wished a more geographically centralized location, in which to bring the conquered provinces into a closer union.

After two years of surveying, a spot was decided upon in 1888, at the foot of a mountain in central Abyssinia with hot mineral springs in the vicinity. The capital was named Addis Ababa, from the Oromo words that mean “hot springs”. The location was ideal for controlling the conquered provinces, but suffered from its remoteness and the fact that it sat some two kilometers above sea level. For the natives and locals, the thin air was little trouble, but for people coming in from the coast, a great deal of acclimatization was required. In the first few years, one had to travel on horseback or by wagon to the city, giving plenty of time to adjust. However, when the Massawa-Addis railroad was completed, some passengers suffered from altitude sickness upon arriving in the new capital.

The city was planned out in a simple and efficient grid. In the middle of the city was lain the cornerstone of the Abyssinian Colonial Assembly building, a two story structure made from stone quarried from the nearby Entono Mountains. The governor’s mansion was built higher up on the slops of the mountain. The brick structure was designed in the Ceylonese colonial fashion, and was modeled after numerous estates on Ceylon and in India. Much of the city’s initial design was influenced by Ceylonese and Indian architecture. The design made the natives feel like aliens in their own homeland. Despite this, many of the former Ethiopian aristocracy that swore allegiance to the Hague had their own manors built in the city of the same fashion. Along with colonial design, they soon found themselves wearing Netherlander-style clothing and eating more seafood.

In its first year, Addis Ababa had a small population of 5,000, most of them native workers. The construction of the Colonial Assembly took some three years to complete, and the first assembly did not convene until 1893. Of that, more than half were white, and an addition twenty percent Somalis from the coastal regions. By 1898, the population had swelled to 30,000, as the newly finished railroad allowed easier access to the city. Despite its native name, Addis Ababa was most decidedly a Dutch city, with 63% of its population either from Europe itself or from Brazil.

After the founding of Addis Ababa, the issue of how to reach the new capital was first and foremost. For the first couple of years of the capital and its construction, the only way to reach the centralized capital was overland, and over treacherous roads. When Governor-General Johann established the capital, he also commissioned the construction of a railroad linking the capital to the sea. Between 1888 and 1890, three rival plans were designed and presented. The first would start in Mogadishu, and had the advantage of starting in a city that has long since been under Dutch rule. The second plan would link Addis Ababa and Djibouti, which would eventually be constructed. However, the topography that the planned line would pass over was also the mostly costly. The last plan was the one that was accepted, a railroad linking Massawa with the new capital.

The new railroad was constructed by the VOC, the largest freight shipper in the world, and largest railroad owner in the United Provinces, along with Ceylon, Java and Formosa, between the years 1890 and 1892. For the most part, labor was done by natives workers overseen by engineers from the United Provinces. Thousands of natives flocked to VOC camps along the proposed line, seeking employment and pay that far exceeded any they could earn in their villages. This high pay was what kept laborers flocking to the railroad, even as hundreds of natives died during the construction of the Massawa-Addis Ababa Railroad. Only a relatively small portion of these deaths were caused by workplace accidents. Most were a result of poor sanitation in the work camps coupled with crowding. The biggest death toll arose from an influenza outbreak in March of 1891, claiming at least 1,100 native workers and five Dutch engineers.

The development of the Dutch Commonwealth’s newest colony shifted into full gear during the decade of 1891 to 1900. During the span of ten years, more than eight thousand kilometers of rail were laid, most ending at Massawa, Djibouti or Mogadishu. For the first time in its history, the land once known as Ethiopia had the ability to transfer food from fertile and abundant regions to those of shortages. The transportation of food was no a humanitarian aid effort but rather the first step in trade; to get one’s goods to where they are in demand. The new network of rail also transported the 500,000 colonists that arrived in Abyssinia from the United Provinces, Brazil, and even some non-Dutch states in the same decade. Abyssinia is seen as a new land of opportunity as a land rush of the likes that have not been seen in over a century. The influx of immigrants begins the process of Dutchification of the conquered Ethiopians.

To make communication more efficient, especially with the capital and the coastal ports, two thousand kilometers worth of telephone cable was lain. Addition lines reached across the ocean; the first Abyssinia-India cable was lain in 1897. With this new link, communication between the United Provinces and its eastern colonies could be accomplished with the telegraph and telephone in a matter of minutes, instead of hours (by being routed through foreign cables) or weeks by messenger. The centuries old irrigation system of Abyssinia was modernized. Wind mills were installed to pump water from below grown, while steam engines pumped water through pipes that ran hundreds of kilometers. To further ensure a steady water supply for agriculture, and as a source of power, the Dutch began in 1899, to dam the Blue Nile, much to Egypt, and their British masters, protest. In 1894, the first electrical power plant was constructed in Massawa. The electricity was used to power the few start-up factories in Massawa, such as canneries and textile mills, fed by coffee plantation and wool from the native’s goats and sheep.

The first elections held in Abyssinia were held in 1905, and where for the newly established colonial assembly. Unlike the Staaten-General, these assemblies had no legislature power. They were instead advisory councils for the Governor-Generals appointed by the King. The Governor-General could easily overrule the assembly, or simply ignore them altogether. Most of Abyssinia was under the control of the Hague and the colonial ministry. The Abyssinian Budget was ratified by the United Provinces’ Staaten-General. The real purpose of the colonial assembly and its elections was to prepare the Abyssinians for self-governing. In 1901, when the colonial assembly was conceived in the Hague, an estimated thirty years would be required for Abyssinia to be ready for statehood and to form its own government.

Eligibility for voting was based on manhood suffrage. All Netherlands, Brazilian (and to be blunt, white Abyssinians) along with long loyal Somali citizens were immediately able to vote. For the regions that was once Ethiopia, the Dutch were more careful who they gave the vote to. Those who actively oppose the Dutch government, or served the last Ethiopian Emperor were disenfranchised. Loyal former-Ethiopians who could prove their residence were allowed to vote in their districts. Each of these districts were divided by population, with one assemblyman for every one hundred thousand people. In the firmly Dutch districts, voter turnout was high, upwards to 90%. In the conquered interior, turnouts were as low as 20%. Many who could vote, refused to participate in the new government. IN some cases, entire tribes boycotted the elections in 1905 and 1910.

In the coastal districts, cases of voter fraud are now apparent. New voting machines were set up in Djibouti and Massawa, with delegates under the control of the Abyssinian Rail Company relieving a disproportionally higher percentage. It has now been proven that not only did they buy votes, they also bribed voting officials to stuff the ballot boxes. In the interior, more voter trouble came up. The Dutch authorities refused to speak any language but Dutch, the international language of trade. However, many of the interior population could not speak Dutch, or even read, despite a recent effort to bring education into the Highlands. This caused them to rely upon Dutch-speaking neighbors to aid them in the election, and relied upon the election officials to read the choices to them. In this case, it is easy to imagine that officials.

The candidates were not selected by the people. Instead, the Governor-General selected two to four candidates from each district to serve as advisors. In the coastal districts, many of the candidates were merchants and corporate interests. In the interior, no native candidates were available, and to upset the natives more was that they were all Dutch, all white. The only Africans who served on the first colonial assembly were elected from southern districts by the Somali tribes and urbanites.



VOC Consolidation

By 1877, the VOC climbed to the number one spot for shipping in the world. Its climb back to the top included absorbing two smaller shipping companies, and more importantly, their ships and contracts. The first was in 1870, followed by the second in 1883. By the time of its second acquisition all VOC ship were steam driven, with masts and sails only as auxiliary. Given a good wind, captains would still rather have a free push from the air than to burn through fuel. The Company approved of still using sails, but mostly for cost-effectiveness than from nostalgia of a by-gone age. Its return to the top in 1877, also made the VOC the first billion guilder company in the Dutch Commonwealth.

Another bit of technological progress that the VOC grabbed originated in America. The telegraph (and later telephone) were quick in supplanting written messages. The VOC formed VOC Communications to take advantage of this new form of communication. In 1861, the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable snaked its way from Dunkirk to Cayenne, in northern Brazil. More cables were lain by the VOC, on both the land and in the sea, linking states and colonies of the Dutch Commonwealth by the 1880s. The VOC was not the only communication company, but because of its diverse portfolio, quickly became the largest. The company purchased a copper mine in Brazil in 1874, to secure a steady supply of the metal for its cables.

By the end of the century, more than 30% of all Dutch commerce was being shipped by the VOC. Lower rates undercut the competition, and though bad for competition, low rates always go over well with the consumer. The VOC’s own private navy, though small by its predecessor’s standards, still offered the protection in dangerous waters that smaller companies just could not manage. Along with telegraphed messages, the VOC opened its own private post office as part of VOC Communications in 1892.

The VOC almost always caught on to new technologies quickly. However, in the case of oil, it was slower to take. Standard Oil of the United States already dominated the kerosine market in America before the VOC began to investigate it. Before, oil was processed from whales. It did not take a modern marine biologist to understand that whaling on an industrial level was not sustainable. Thus, the VOC paid little attention to oil. When oil began to be extracted from the ground in Pennsylvania, the Company saw it as a fluke. When oil fields were found all over the world, the Board began to pay attention. When a kerosine byproduct, gasoline, began to show promise, the VOC moved into action. In 1895, the VOC managed to purchase Royal Dutch Shell, and renamed it VOC Oil, occasionally still referred to as VOC Shell. It proved a wise move, though the VOC was unable to dominate the oil industry, it did secure for itself a fuel source, as well as a product for sell throughout the Twentieth Century.



Reformation of the American Republic

Following the disastrous defeat of the Third Anglo-American War, the United States was confronted by a recently united Germany. Their own victory over the French in 1875 left Germany the preeminent power in Continental Europe. Germany had much in common with the United States. Like the Americans, the Germans were surrounded by rivals and enemies; France in the west, and the Swedish Empire in the east. In the event of war, it was highly likely that either nation would come to the aid of the other, just as the British would aid the Confederates.

Unlike the United States, whose army consisted of mostly militia and poorly trained volunteers, the German Empire had a powerful, professional army. Again, unlike the United States, Germany lacked many native resources to support a first-rate world power. Germany expanded its colonial empire, from its Eighteenth Century colony o Rio de la Plata, into Africa and the Pacific during the Nineteenth. The United States had no need for a colonial empire, for it already had the resources within its own borders.

In 1887, the German ambassador approached the State Department with the proposal of an alliance. The Germans required raw materials, and the Germans knew that America required more order and discipline in its society. The Democrat Majority in Congress saw the advantages of an alliance, however, traditions of isolationism brought much debate. The recently established Socialist Party was against the alliance and apparent militarization of the United States. Many compromises would be reached as German methods were adapted to American society.

Once the alliance was ratified, a series of laws were passed during the 1890s aimed at strengthening America. In 1891, the American Draft Act, in which all men over eighteen years of age, regardless of color, must serve two years within their state’s militia (later National Guard). The goal of conscripting the population into the part-time army was that in the event of a major war, America would have a vast pool of trained men in which it could call upon. Conscription into the regular army could only happen, by law, in the event war was declared.

Training of the militia would be done by the regular army and its German drill instructors (at least until enough American sergeants could be trained as D.I.s). Militias would receive the same basic training as the regular army, and would be required to serve and train one week per month. They would also be called up in the event of emergency. Not only would America have a pool of reserves, but a sense of national pride would be ingrained into most of America’s men. Further laws were passed allowing women to take many of the non-industrial jobs that men would fill during peace time.

During the 1890s, the United States underwent a series of reforms under the Prussian and German model. There was a great deal of resistance to these changes, who viewed anything foreign with suspicion. There was no desire among the American population to become Europeans. Unlike the Confederate States, who were willfully turning themselves into an imitation of the United Kingdom. Ironically, the Confederacy had a central government with more power than that of the Americans, including rationing, conscription, and control of strategic resources by the state.

In 1894, the American Congress passed the Wartime Conscription and Rationing Act. This act would give the federal government extended power over both after war had been declared. Clauses in the bill ensured that war must be declared, for even some of the politicians feared misuse of this. The Socialist Party was in favor of expanding the rationing to permanency, which drove the Democrats in Congress to insert the war clause. Both parties favored conscription; the Democrats for the expanded manpower and Socialists because it applied to all citizens. Attempts to allow draft substitutes, as existed during the Civil War, was removed from the bill.

The necessity of the bill was another effect of the disaster of the Third Anglo-American War. The United States was trapped between two enemies; the British and Canadians to the north and the Confederates to the south. America had enemies on both sides in common with the Germans, and this was part of the German-American alliance. America’s loss in the past two wars, and Germany’s success in its last two also prompted the United States Army to learn from the Prussian model, though with American twists, such as the militia (later renamed National Guard).

The Socialist Party began back in the 1870s, during a second wave of industrialization in the United States. The divide between haves and have-nots vastly increased during this time, as did ramped exploitation of the workers. Attempts to unionize and strike by miners in Pennsylvania were usually put down by violent means. Some radical miners supported the overthrow of government. The majority turned to the newly formed Socialist Party to advance their causes.

Between 1864 and 1886, the United States was effectively a one-party state, with a constant Democratic presence in the Presidency and dominance of Congress. Following the Third Anglo-American War, and the Democrat’s rather jingoistic response, many of the American voters turned away from them. The Republican Party did not survive Lincoln on a national scale, though it still thrives in the Midwest to this date. The Depression following the Treaty of Boston caused the Socialists to meteorically rise on the national stage.

Another byproduct of the war was a wave of immigration into the United States, from the Confederate States. With the expansion of the land-owning aristocracy, small farmers left Texas and Oklahoma to try their luck in Kansas and Nebraska. Many of the immigrant families would have decedents that would deeply impact the history of the 20th Century. Names such as Eisenhower.

The first test of the United States Army’s German-style training came in 1898. For a decade, the last Spanish colony in the Americas, Puerto Rico, waged a war of independence. Atrocities upon Atrocities were reported by journalists covering the war on the island. The sensationalist journalism did much to sell papers, and though the Spanish did execute rebels, it was far from the genocidal campaign reported. However, the fact that a colonial power was so close to the United States (not counting French rule in Mexico) outraged many in the public. Many felt it was America’s duty to liberate its fellow republic.

The debate in Congress and the streets was about whether America could defeat Spain. After two lost wars, the damage to America’s confidence remained. Many thought a quick war would do much to restore national pride. Furthermore, many in the government, including future President Theodore Roosevelt, believed in using the war in Puerto Rico as an excuse for a wider campaign to seize control of the Marianas. The United States already had control over Midway and Wake, both as coaling stations. The Marianas would extend American interests into the western Pacific.

America did, already, have interests on Puerto Rico. With Cuba under Confederate control, and many other islands in British hands, Americans held a sizable investment in Puerto Rico. With war tearing the island apart, sugar interests were hurting. Several American ships were sent to patrol the waters, to keep an eye on interests. Some claim that certain elements in power were attempting to incite a war. Whether this was true or not matters little, since on April 3, 1898, the U.S.S. Maine blew up off the coast of the island. The cause was a coal fire near the magazine, but at the time, the most plausible cause was a Spanish mine. As a result, three weeks later, Congress moved to declare war on Spain.

On May 1, Commodore Dewey, based in the German port of Tsaingpo, in China, received orders for his squadron and its marines to attack the Marianas and land on both Guam and Saipan. The small Spanish fleet based at the islands, mostly antiquated ships, were all but destroyed after a three hour battle. The Spanish governor of the Marianas surrendered to Dewey on June 12, 1898, after a short land campaign on Guam.

The war on Puerto Rico lasted for three months, most of the time was spent assembling the United States Army in Baltimore and New Amsterdam, and sailing down to the island. The Spanish fleet at Puerto Rico was trapped at San Juan for the duration, except for one sortie on June 4, where it was beaten back by American cruisers. Eighteen thousand Americans aided (rather ordered around) the rebels and defeated the ten thousand man Spanish garrison.

The war was an excellent test for the new reforms in the United States Army. Not counting the Indian Wars, the Army performed with better efficiency than any previous war. It also suffered proportionally fewer casualties, most of which were from tropical disease. The war was quick and victorious, and restored much of America’s pride to its people. The material rewards from the war came in the form of the Mariana Islands. The Spanish War was a test run for the Army, many lessons learned here would be applied to the two-front war that would break out fifteen years later.

During his lifetime, Abraham Lincoln was vilified. Such character assassinations followed his death in 1866, and continued until after the Third Anglo-American War. By 1899, the intellectuals in academia began to reevaluate Lincoln’s contribution. His stance against the Confederacy and the British was considered visionary by 1900. He went from demonized to deified in the view of the public. Buildings, ships and cities were renamed in his honor. Even the capital of Nebraska, McClellan, was renamed Lincoln. His stance against the Confederate States would inspire future fights against the Confederacy.

When Roosevelt became president, after McKinley was killed at the 1900 World’s Fair by an anarchists (the first president to be assassinated), he credited Lincoln in started the struggle against Southern Imperialism. If not for his stance, the southern states would be dictating the affairs of the entire country. During his first two terms (1900-1908) Roosevelt would build the country towards the war he knew was approaching. The United States joined the arms race that consumed a sizable amount of resources of both Britain and Germany.

Though he was a Democrat, Roosevelt fought against the large trusts that had a stranglehold on the nation’s economy. Monopolies in coal, steel, oil and rail were broken during his presidency. Though he was very aggressive in foreign affairs, he was the first president to be progressive domestically. Roosevelt’s history on fighting political corruption and business interests date back to his time as New Amsterdam Police Commissioner, and later governor of New Amsterdam. After his short bout in the Spanish War, Roosevelt returned to New Amsterdam to continue his fight. Enemies within his own party conspired to rid themselves of him, and thus the Democratic Party gave him the Vice Presidency in hopes of keeping him quiet.

Once in Philadelphia, Roosevelt did not stop fighting against both corruption and big business. Roosevelt’s fight against trusts was not so much out of compassion for the little guy, but he believed that strategic resources in the hands of a few went against National Interests. Furthermore, he was all for competition, and having the better business win. A wave of scandals within the Democratic Party during his presidency stemmed from those very trusts that were broken. Dozens of representatives and governors were financed by the likes of Standard Oil and JP Morgan.

In 1903, Roosevelt traveled to New Grenada (the first president to leave the country while in office) to negotiate the purchase of Panama. To prove how serious he was on the matter, he was accompanied by the United States Navy’s Carribean Squadron (based out of Port Lincoln, formerly Port Limon). Thousands of soldiers poured into Costa Rica to make the clear impression upon Colombia that Roosevelt would not take no for an answer. On October 8, 1903, the United States purchased Panama from New Grenada for fifteen million dollars. The acquisition was annexed to Costa Rica, and the United States entered a joint-venture with the Dutch Commonwealth in the construction of the Panama Canal (to rival the Entente controlled Nicaragua Canal).

Roosevelt, from his time in Montana, was keenly aware that the wild areas of America were rapidly vanishing. Though he did not establish the first National Park (that would be Yellowstone in 1871, he vastly expanded the concept of conservation in America. His views on equality in the law continued to push him out of Democrat favor. He even pushed a Constitutional Amendment through Congress that gave the vote to all men. He reasoned that if a man (black or Indian) could shed blood for his country, then he should vote for who ran the show. This by no means meant Roosevelt was color-blind.

By 1908, Roosevelt felt that he accomplished his mission and was set to retire. He hand picked his successor, William Taft of Ohio, his vice president. He believed Taft capable of maintaining the new status quo, but lacked the initiative to alter it. Roosevelt was proven wrong when Taft led the Democratic Party back to its business of supporting big business. They even rolled back many of the reforms Roosevelt championed. When 1912 came around, Roosevelt decided to run for a third term, and re-establish his legacy. When he tried to gain the Democratic nomination, he was quickly shot down.

Instead of giving up, Roosevelt left the party with many like-minded individuals and formed the Progressive Party. With no serious contender on the Socialist ticket, it was a fight against Roosevelt and Taft. With tensions rising in Europe, Roosevelt’s hard-line against America’s enemies clinched the election for him. In 1913, the Progressive Party took the presidency along with New England governorships, Senate seats, and sixty-three seats in the House of Representatives.

Sweden on the Mend

The Swedish church is an evolution of the Russian Orthodox Church following the Swedish seizure of the Russian crown. It is a mostly Orthodox Christian sect with a great deal of influence from Lutheranism. The birth of this branch of Orthodoxy has its beginnings in the later Eighteenth Century when King Charles XV of Sweden converted to Orthodoxy, and changed Swedish laws to allow all of his subjects. The reasoning for his conversion was to bring the King closer to his Russian and Ukrainian subjects. It caused much stir amongst his native and Finnish subjects. With so many language barriers, the King sought a way to unite all his subjects, and religion was the only other option.

As more Swedes converted, more Lutheran teachings were being absorbed by the new church, and accepted by the Patriarch of Moscow. By 1870, the new Swedish Orthodox Church was proclaimed, with its religious center in Moscow. By the start of the Twentieth Century, it was declared Sweden’s state religion. Its conception and continued existence shows that though Sweden might control the Russian lands politically, Russian culture seeped back to Stockholm, gradually assimilating the ruling people.

The vast Swedish Empire was nearly torn asunder in the 1870s. Revolutions were sweeping through the Slavic populations of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. Both empires ruthlessly crushed the revolutions, imprisoning or exiling tens of thousands of revolutionaries. The same fervor swept across the border into Sweden’s Ukrainian and Russian provinces in 1878. At the time, Sweden had a strong king and relatively weak parliament which was dominated by the nobility of Sweden. These were of primarily Swedish decent. The nobles in Russia were descended from officers in the Army of Charles XII, which conquered the Russian Empire and took the crown of the Tsar for Sweden. Elections were limited to land owners. In this case it was not a solely Swedish affair, though ethnic Swedes did have a disproportional high percentage of the votes.

Some of the more radical revolutionaries sought independence of their own states and even reviving the Russian Empire. A majority of the dissatisfied desired more home rule and a new constitution. Only a few years earlier, the Swedish King, Charles XV had proclaimed the founding of the Swedish Orthodox Church, an attempt to unite his subjects, to bring unity to a diverse population. Swedish Nobles wished to quash the revolution, but the King, being a recently converted Orthodox, was sympathetic to the peasants. When petitioned, the King granted an audience to representatives from the east. On August 24, he opened and presided over a Constitutional Convention. For three months, delegates from Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and the Ukraine met in Stockholm to debate over a new government. The in-fighting within the convention was almost as fierce as any civil war.

Many of the finer points of the new Constitution borrowed from the established Constitutions from the United States and the United Provinces. The Constitution abolished all hereditary titles save that of the King. It further established universal manhood suffrage for those above the age of twenty-four. Most critical is that the unicameral elected parliament would have complete control over the budget and can no longer be dissolved arbitrarily by the King. Parliament must vote its own consent to be dissolved. It was not a perfect solution, but it did prevent Sweden from collapsing the way of the Austrians and Turks would in 1916.

The Cossacks became an essential part of the Swedish Army during the Great Northern War, when they sided with Charles XII against Tsar Peter. Upon defeating the Russians and taking the crown for his own, Charles ended serfdom and stripped the boyas of their lands. The Cossacks were freed, and swore undying loyalty to the Swedish crown. They fought valiantly in the wars of the Eighteenth Century, and against Napoleon in the early Nineteenth Century. The horsemen were cut to pieces during the initial days of the Great War, when attempting to ride forth into German machine gunfire. The Cossacks were relegated to reserves, in the event that a breakthrough allowed cavalry to roll up the lines.

Today, the Cossacks still serve the Swedish Crown. All Cossack men volunteer for service, and serve in their respected Armor Division for at least one tour of duty. Horse riding is still popular in the towns on the steppe where the Cossacks live, but mechanized transportation has largely supplanted any applications. Whereas Cossacks could once ride by the time they could walk, they are now able to drive a car by the age of ten, and are adept mechanics. They know their cars and tanks as well as they know their horses. When not at war, the most skilled Cossacks participate in various races around the world, including the Jacksonville 500.

Cossack society is a warrior society. Their communities value bravery, honor and loyalty. One’s honor is so important in Cossack communities, the slightest insult can spark off a feud. They view not taking revenge as weakness, and this sometimes brings them into conflict with Swedish law. Cossacks also have problems when dealing with the more liberal elements of Swedish society, including pacifists. After decades of peace in the Twentieth Century, questions have been raised by the Swedish government as to what is the point in retaining the Cossacks’ service.



Taking Sides

By 1901, the start of the Twentieth Century, European nations were steadily moving towards one camp or another. On one side, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Sweden and the Confederate States of America banded together by 1910 to form the Quintuple Entente. The Entente evolved out of a British-Confederate pact dating back to the mid-1860s, adding both Spain and France to their alliance after German tromped the French during the Franco-Prussian War. A strong Germany dominating Central Europe was seen as a threat to Britain. Sweden was convinced to sign on in 1910 when it found itself in direct competition with Germany over the Polish-Lithuanian throne.

Germany formed its own alliance to face off against the Anglo-French hordes on its western frontier. Austro-Hungary and Italy were allied with Germany, forming what would be called the Central Powers by 1900. The fourth member, the United States of America, reluctantly signed an alliance with Germany in 1905. Since the days of George Washington, the United States made it policy not to get entangled with European affairs. However, like Germany, the United States were in the center of the continent, trapped between foes. Since the Confederates made no qualms about signing alliances with America’s oldest nemesis, the United Kingdom, the Americans had little choice but to seek outside aid. This was all too clear after the disastrous Third Anglo-American War of 1882-85.

The United Provinces were allied with neither side. Instead, they formed the Dutch Commonwealth with their own allies. Nominally neutral, the Commonwealth would not hesitate to engage in warfare should their interests ever be threatened. As far as European wars were concerned, the Dutch long since learned of the profit of neutrality. They also learned what happened when they aligned themselves with a foreign power, as was the case with Britain during the Eighteenth Century.

The fourth component lay in the aging and ailing Ottoman Empire. They were non-aligned but far from neutral. Given tensions that occasionally rise in the Balkans or on the Black Sea, the Turks could quickly find themselves at war with either the Austrians or the Swedes, or both. The Entente and Central Powers both had the Turks in consideration should war between the two alliances erupt. Both sides will use every diplomatic tool in their arsenal to get the Turks to declare war on their opposite number.

Neutral nations factored little into international policy before the Great War. The Latin American nations were of no real consequence, nor was Siam. By 1910, China’s Manchu Dynasty came to an end, and China plunged into a warring states period. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s own stance of neutrality made for an excellent buffer zone between Sweden and Germany. The only real contender was that of Japan. By 1910, they had considerable colonial gains

in Korea along with Kamchatka. Though the far northeastern reaches of Asia were frozen on their best of days, they were rich in mineral wealth. The Japanese brought Korean laborers into the deadly environment by the tens of thousands, many of which never saw home again.

Germany and Britain played a dangerous game in the build up of arms during the first decade of the Twentieth Century. This build up is primarily what allowed the World Powers to wage war between 1913-16. Though it was not the casus belli, it did allow many nations to expend the surplus of ammunition stockpiled during the decade. The German High Seas Fleet spent twenty years trying to elevate itself to the level of the Royal (British) Navy with little success.

In 1905, the British severely upset the balance of naval power by deploying the HMS Dreadnaught. It was a battleship unlike any before, an all big-gun warship. Its three hundred millimeter guns could easily blast lesser warships out of the water. The launching of the Dreadnaught Class battleships did more than drive the Germans into a production frenzy. This new type of warship was of great concern to the Dutch Commonwealth.

By 1907, the Brazilians built their own ‘dreadnaught’, the HMBS Emperor of Brazil. Its main turrets sported three hundred fifty millimeter guns, and was the first of many Brazilian and Netherlanders dreadnaught to be built by the start of the Great War. The Commonwealth expended a great deal of capital in building newer, more powerful ships.

The Americans added a new dimension to the arms race in 1903, with the advent of the first functional flying machine. Though the United States Army saw the airplane as little more than a novelty, both Germany and the Britain saw its potential for intelligence gathering. The Dutch took longer catching on. It was not until 1907 that the Fokker Aeronautical Company was established, and in that same year they only produced six airplanes. Hardly enough to cover a globe spanning commonwealth.

By 1913, the year the Great War erupted, both Germany and Britain supported an impressive military infrastructure. Both were equally matched in aircraft, however the High Seas Fleet only operated half as many vessels as the Royal (British) Navy. Furthermore, the British could call upon their own self-governing colonies, their own ‘commonwealth’. Though pale in comparison with the Dutch, the British could rely upon the Australians, Canadians, Filipinos and the Patagonians. Germans had fewer colonies, and those were mostly inhabited by natives. They invested most of their colonial efforts in Rio del la Plata, north of Patagonia; and Kaiserwilhemland, north of Australia.

The rest of Europe did not sit back idly as the two giants armed themselves. France kept up a steady pace, though always behind the both. The one disadvantage to its republican government was that France was always at the mercy of its people. Austro-Hungary too build up its forces, but its army was segregated between the various ethnic and national groups within its borders. As we will later seen, a less-than-fully integrated army was not a good army. Sweden used a similar practice, though only concerning its more elite forces, the Cossacks for example.

The Italian Federation spent more of an effort on its navy and its own air force. Its own expansion into Libya, coupled with the fact the nation was a series of islands and a peninsula made the maritime forces more valuable. Italy’s northern frontier sported one of the most formidable defensive barriers in the world; the Alps. Spain was forced to deplete its own resources in a navy to rival the Italians. Long gone were Spanish days of glory, the last of their American colonies liberated and their Pacific possessions lost in the wake of the Spanish-American War.

Across the Atlantic, it was the United States who built a military to be reckoned with. With enemies to the north, south and on the Pacific, the Americans poured their vast economic might into a two-ocean navy along with an army that could take on both British and Confederates simultaneously. Though humiliated during the Third Anglo-American War, the Americans built themselves back up, allying with Germany and adopting much of its Prussian institutions. The army was not the only one to benefit from foreign ideas. For decades, the Americans had hired Dutch captains and admirals to teach at the Naval Academy in Baltimore. Importing the discipline of the mightiest army in Europe, and the mightiest navy in the world, the Americans regained their confidence, especially in the wake of the triumphed victory over Spain.

The Confederate States strained themselves to keep up with the Americans, though they could never afford an army or navy as mighty. They were forced to rely upon British intervention and support. They long since adopted British tactics and discipline, and this aided them against the Americans during the Third Anglo-American War. The real advantage of the Confederates lay in the fact that they would almost certainly be fighting a defensive war. Extensive fortifications combined with knowledge of the terrain made attacking the Confederate States a challenge. With the armies and navies built, and contenders itching for a fight, all that was needed was a spark to ignite the tension and plunge the world into a war unlike any before; a war to end all wars.



The World in 1912

By 1912, all but two of the Great Powers have bound together in two large alliances, the Entente and the Central Powers. The Entente began its existence in 1890, when France and Sweden signed a defensive alliance agreeing to come to the other’s aid in event of war with the recently ascended German Empire. Sweden was in little danger from the Germans directly, but with a German (and an Imperial cousin) on the Polish-Lithuanian throne, there was concern that Poland-Lithuania might go to war with Sweden at German’s insistence. The Entente grew when the British signed on in 1898. The Confederate States were never an official signatory of the Entente, but were staunch allies of the British. If the United Kingdom went to war, the Confederates would follow. Britain had no provision guaranteeing they would enter into the war with France or Sweden if they went to war with Germany. However, should the Germans violate another country’s borders in said war, then the British would join the fight. Spain was the last to join the Entente; the Spanish Republic signing the alliance in 1907.

The Quadruple Alliance, called the Central Powers because its two chief members were surrounded by enemies, was formed in 1889 as the agreement of Two Emperors, between Germany and Austro-Hungary. The Italian Federation was also in alliance with Germany, though separate of this Two Emperors agreement. Should Austro-Hungary find itself in war with Sweden, or Germany in war with France, the other would stay out as long as the enemy’s ally would stay out. Since Sweden and France have pledged to aid each other, both of the German Emperors would soon be at war. Germany was at a disadvantage in that Austria was old and decrepit and the Italians were not viewed as wholly reliable. Germany needed an ally who could tip the balance against the British. They approached the United States, recently humiliated by the British and Confederates, in 1887 for an alliance. The Germans saw great potential in America, if only some Prussian Military Discipline could be bestowed upon them. The Americans did accept a defensive alliance in later 1887 against the British, but it was not until 1899, that the Quadruple Alliance was signed between the four World Powers.

Two neutral powers existed on the eve of the Great War. One was the Old Man of Europe, the Ottoman Empire. They continued to exist only at the sufferance of Austro-Hungary and Sweden. Especially Sweden. Should the Swedes ever take an active interest in the Balkans of Bosporus, it would spell doom for the Turks. The most powerful collection of nations on Earth, the Dutch Commonwealth, saw no profit in alliance, though the Germans sought one during the 1890s. The Dutch were interested in trading with all, not fighting them. As long as the United Provinces and Brazilian Empire’s commerce was not threatened, the Dutch were content to sit the war out and reap the benefits of neutrality.

The alliances covered both the political and military realm. The economy of the world was almost as tied together in 1912 as it would be in 2012. Large colonial empires of the centuries before were under mercantilism. By the twentieth century, free markets had replaced the medieval concepts of mercantilism, with commerce flowing across both sea and borders, albeit still faced with revenue-raising tariffs. At the time, the economies of the world were so interlinked, that some economists believed that not only was war between the Great Powers impossible, but obsolete.

Of all the Powers, it was the Dutch Commonwealth that controlled the largest share of world trade. The United Provinces were not the most productive of industrial states, but Brazil’s economy was nearly as large as the United States’. The Commonwealth also went as far as to build industries in its colonies where the resources are located. The British followed suit, as did the Germans. France, however, preferred to keep the bulk of its industry at home, and to harvest its colonial resources, ship them to France and process them. Afterwards, French companies would sell the products back to its colonies. France’s strategy hurt them somewhat. For example; Mexico, a French colony since the 1860s, could purchase some manufactured goods from the Confederate States, or even United States, for less than what the mother country was selling.

Not all trade was so benign. The Great Powers of Europe, save Sweden, exploited their colonies to fuel their own war industries. Iron, coal, oil and rubber were stockpiled by the European nations as an arm race rocked the first decade of the 20th Century. This arms race started when the Germans attempted to build a navy to combat the British. The Royal Navy, in turn, developed the doctrine that it should be large enough, and strong enough to take on enemies on both sides of the Atlantic, simultaneously. When both nations began to produce new ships, the United States felt it might be left behind, and began building up its own navy. Previous Anglo-American Wars have taught the Americans the threat posed by the Royal Navy.

When the Americans began to produce new battleships and cruisers, the Confederates attempted to keep pace. The C.S.A. was the least industrial developed of the Great Powers. Its land-owning aristocracy, trapped in a tradition a century out of date, perpetually controlled the central government, with the chief interest in maintaining their posting in life. As such, industry was stifled in the Confederacy, and they did not begin industrializing until after slavery faded, in the 1880s and 90s. Most of its industry was built by British capitalists, eager to exploit the mineral wealth of the Confederacy. As such, native investments did not start until after the economic slump following the death of King Cotton.

The Swedes had the largest challenge. After two centuries of integration, and the merging of Swedish and Russian cultures, the Swedish “Empire” was fully industrialized around the Baltic, in Sweden Proper, as well as Finland, Estonia and Latvia. Their biggest problem was getting raw materials to market. In 1903, a transcontinental railroad was finally completed, with the last Swedish stop at Lake Baikal (and the Pacific terminal within the crumbling Manchu, or Qing, Empire). This one line ran through the southern parts of Siberia, far from the iron, coal and oil deposits believed to be in the taiga and tundra. Much of the shipping east of the Urals was done on the rivers, and only when seasons permitted it.

At the start of the Great War, there were two Grand Strategies in place the moment war broke out. As with all plans, these did not survive contact with the enemy. Grand strategies were designed by both the Central Powers and Entente, in order to direct their armed forces to a common goal and victory. Both plans took a Europe-first approach.

For the Central Powers, the war would start out with Plan 6, the German invasion of France. The German General Staff projected three months to take Paris and force the French into a favorable cease fire. The reason for knocking France out first was two-fold; 1) They shared a land border with Germany and 2) the Germans believed them the easiest to defeat. After France sued for peace, the divisions in the west would be shifted to the east, to force the issue in Poland-Lithuania. Taking Stockholm was never seen as a viable plan, and the Germans aimed to force the Swedish king to concede the Polish-Lithuanian Throne to the German candidate. In the meantime, the Americans would put the bulk of their forces into defeating their southern neighbor. Both America and Germany agreed the Confederates would be easier to defeat than Britain, especially with British resources divided in several theaters. Since Canada was almost totally cut off from the Atlantic by a neutral Quebec, and completely so in the winter by the frozen Hudson Bay, they were viewed as a minimal threat. Rightfully so, as it was later discovered all Canadian war plans would be defensive and dependent upon reinforcements from the Empire. The British would be the last to fall, as the United States Navy and High Seas Fleet would strangle the island into submission.

The Entente also had their plans focusing on Europe. Their first goal would be to either knock out or prevent the Italians from entering the war. Italy had national interests on both sides of the alliance boundary, and it was believed they could be convinced to neutrality. Austro-Hungary was viewed as a rickety house that would be easy to topple. This did prove true, but it was done by internal reactions not the Entente. The British and Swedes believed these first two goals could be met within three months. After which, Germany would be squeezed from all sides, and Sweden, with their Polish and Lithuanian allies, would breakthrough to take Berlin. While the fight raged in Europe, the Confederates would trade land for time, slowly giving ground to the Americans. Once Germany was defeated, British and Swedish soldiers would flock to North America and turn the tide. The Confederates were not thrilled by this plan. Despite their staunch loyalty, the independent southern streak had to ask; “what if they don’t come?” That would leave the C.S.A. taking on an opponent with (not counting their black population, which the Confederates seldom did) more than three times their population.

Plan 6 is the sixth out of eight war plans the German General Staff designed in event of war with France. Each of the plans concerns certain scenarios, such as if the United Provinces side with Germany, France or remain neutral. Plan 6 involves a war with France, where both the United Provinces and Switzerland are neutral. In this plan, the bulk of the German Army in France, numbering over a million, will march westward across Alsace and Lorraine. Two smaller armies, of at least one hundred thousand each, will move in wide flanking maneuvers to the north and south of the so-called iron drapes. These smaller armies would flank the fortification line and attack it from the west, while the larger army would crash into it from the east. It was planned that this would open a wide enough breach in the fortifications to allow the German Army a mostly unopposed march towards Paris. It was planned that France could be knocked out of the war within two to three months, where afterwards the German Army could be moved East to deal with the war in Poland-Lithuania. As the General Staff would soon discover, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and the French were not about to play their anticipated role in Plan 6.

War Plan Red is one of the United States’ color coated war plans. This particular color was given to the British Empire. The bulk of any war against Britain would be fought in Canada, however the navy would have to contend with the Royal Navy. When these plans were drawn up in the 1890s, it was hoped that the German Empire would also declare war on Britain, dividing the Royal Navy. At no time were there any plans to invade the British Homeland. The plan did call for reconquest of western Washington, the Red River Valley and northern Maine.

Of the color coated war plans developed by the United States, gray was one of the more obvious colors. This was the plan developed to fight the enemy to the south, the Confederate States. The War Department believe a bulk of the fighting would be done east of the Mississippi. The region was divided into two fronts by the Appalachian Mountains; the Potomac Front and Ohio Front, named after rivers that served as natural barriers. The Potomac Front has the eventual goal of overrunning Virginia, forcing it back into the Union, and most importantly, capturing the Confederate Naval Base at Norfolk.

The Ohio Front would have to storm through both Kentucky and Tennessee. Taking the coal deposits in these regions would weaken Confederate industries, the smallest of the Entente. The ultimate goal of the Ohio Front was to take the Confederate Capital of Birmingham, in Alabama. West of the Mississippi, the region was divided into another two sectors; the Midwest and the Colorado Front.

The Colorado Front, named after the river that would see little combat, had the primary goal of closing the Pacific Ocean to the Confederacy in the capture of Port Sinoloa. Being so sparsely populated, Arizona Territory would never have the trenches and static warfare seen in the east. The Midwest Front’s goal was to take away Confederate oil in Oklahoma and northern Texas. This was believed to be the easiest goal since the Indians forced into Oklahoma might have sympathies more with the United States, whom left the Five Civilized Tribes alone before the Civil War.

Operation Python was one part of the overall War Plan Gray. It would prove a vital part of the war effort, in that the blockade of the Confederate States would strangulate their war effort. Python could not be moved forward until the Bahamas were under American control and the liberation of Cuba began. Python did not require the whole state of Cuba, but rather Guantanamo Bay as a base of operations. Python was divided into three sectors. The Atlantic Sector would stretch from Baltimore to Guantanamo. The Gulf of Texas Sector spanned from the Rio Grand to Guantanamo. In both of these sectors, the United States Navy was authorized to sink any ship attempting enter Confederate ports. Both sectors the USN declare unrestricted naval warfare, with more than half the shipping sunk by submarines. The Caribbean Sector was a little more complicated and took too much politics into account. The USN would patrol the Caribbean and seal of the Caribbean access to the Nicaragua Canal. Ships were cleared to sink Confederate, British or Spanish shipping heading to Mexico on sight. However, since France and the U.S. were co-belligerents and not officially at war with each other, ships flying the French flag could not be sunk on sight. Instead, the ships would be stopped and searched. Ships with arms on board would be escorted to port and have its arms removed. Those without weapons will be allowed to pass unmolested. However, if the ship is found to be flying false colors, such as a Confederate ship with a French flag, the ship will be seized and the crew treated as pirates.

What follows is the manpower within the standing armies a month before the start of the Great War. It describes land forces, and excluded the World Powers’ navies.

Central Powers

Germany: 4 million

Astro-Hungary: 2.8 million

United States: 2.7 million (includes Standing Army and Guard)

Italian Federation: 2.2 million

Total: 11.7 million

Entente

Sweden: 6 million

France: 4 million

Britain: 1.3 million

Confederates: 1.8 million

Spain: 1.1 million

Total: 14.2 million

The cases of Sweden and Britain are misleading. In the case of the former, they had a long frontier with China, Japan, as well as Central Asia and Turkey to defend. Only half of their forces were readily available in 1913, with more pulled away as the war continued. In the latter case, Britain’s army was the army of its entire Empire and Commonwealth. 300,000 soldiers alone were Canadians and Empire soldiers stationed in Canada. The Home Army was not even a quarter of a million in 1913.

The American Army was the most unusual of the Great Powers. Before the start of the Great War, the United States had a standing army of 1.3 million. Since its founding, the United States Government and the American people have always been suspicious to standing armies. It was not until well after the Civil War, in fact not until the Third Anglo-American War, that the United States built up a permanent standing army. This decision was not a popular one, but a wise one; when it became surrounded by enemies, Americans took the pragmatic course and built it up its army. However, the regulars account for between 40% and 45% of the total army strength. The rest of the official army lay in the States’ militias, which were reorganized into the National Guard.

These more than 1.4 million citizen-soldiers serve for their states. The National Guard trains heavily in irregular warfare. Guerilla warfare by Americans is a tradition that dates back to the Revolution. How the National Guard units are organized is totally dependant upon the States involved. Some states, such as Maine, New Hampshire and Missouri, have their entire male populations eligible for the National Guard. Up to ten percent of these citizens are called up said states for terms of service of one year. Though conscription was law in the United States in 1913, it was relegated mostly to the National Guard units, with the Federal Draft able to call upon those Guard-trained soldiers and entire units. The National Guard can call up its soldiers on short notice. Unofficial citizen’s militia, called Minutemen, can call up faster. However, not being part of the legitimate army, these armed civilians are not protected under international law. Neither State or Federal Governments will call upon these private volunteers unless the area in question is invaded. Old State laws still require all men with arms to defend their homes in time of war.

The officer corp of the Standing Army is largely Fort Arnold trained and educated. With the National Guards, college graduates are automatically sent into Reserve Officer Training Corps. When soldiers in the standing army finally resign, they are immediately shifted into the National Guard of their home states. There, they will be liable to being called back to duty in time of war. The Federal Army has a more definite term of service, with enlistment periods of four or six year per term. The Federals are on duty year round, while the Guard stands down for most of year, minus training periods and times when the States decide to call them up.

Now what follows is the naval strength of the Powers.

Central Powers

Germany: BB- 22; BC-13; C-47

United States: BB-26; BC-7; C-38

Austro-Hungary: BB-12; BC-3; C-14

Italy: BB-19; BC-12; C-20

Entente

Sweden: BB-20; BC-10; C-31

France: BB-18; BC-5 C-39

Britain: BB-39; BC-22; C-58

Confederates: BB-13; BC-8; C-20

Spain: BB-5; BC-12; C-18

The numbers concerning the United States and Britain are a bit misleading, for both nations have to cover multiple oceans with their navies. The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet was actually smaller than the total shipping of the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet. The Royal Navy’s intent on ship building was to be able to take on both their primary enemies on the high seas. Aside from protecting Britain from invasion, which was unlikely to be launched by either, they were also forced to keep open supply lines from their colonies; most important being the food from Patagonia, followed by industrial resources from Africa.

The United States was in a similar position as the British, that in fighting two enemies at once off their coasts. Of the two, the Confederate Navy was considered a joke by many in the Department of the Navy, but they would combine with Britain’s western Atlantic force and be under British command. Absent from above are the two neutral powers, the Turks and Dutch. Of these two, the Turks were a non-factor. The Dutch Commonwealth, however, had a fleet larger than even Britain’s. Their entry into any large-scale war would tip the balance against whomever antagonized them.

 

[The Kiat]

The world in 1912.

 

[The Kiat]

I could really go for some whole punching in the plot here. Well, something aside holding up a butterfly crucifix and saying "oh the butterflies!".

 

[artha]

What's with Abu Dabi and the Ducth Antilles, did I miss some thing?

War is in the air.......

 

[The Kiat]

What's with Abu Dabi and the Ducth Antilles, did I miss some thing?

War is in the air.......

Excuse me while I hit my head against the wall. No, I missed something. Those islands in the Carib are not so essential, just left overs that were overshadowed by the colonization of Brazil.

Now the Gulf States.... that is something I entirely neglected to mention. Actually, I never even wrote anything about them.

 

[artha]

Excuse me while I hit my head against the wall. No, I missed something. Those islands in the Carib are not so essential, just left overs that were overshadowed by the colonization of Brazil.

Now the Gulf States.... that is something I entirely neglected to mention. Actually, I never even wrote anything about them.

Okay, do you have anything in mind for them? Perhaps something to do with trade or pirates? It's a bit early for oil, right?

 

[The Kiat]

Okay, do you have anything in mind for them? Perhaps something to do with trade or pirates? It's a bit early for oil, right?

Yeah, it would be too early for an oil rush, though I'm sure they know oil is in the area. Trade seems to be the most likely answer. Trade with who... that's another matter. With Abyssinia and India, would it be worth while to hold a few Gulf States?

 

[artha]

Yeah, it would be too early for an oil rush, though I'm sure they know oil is in the area. Trade seems to be the most likely answer. Trade with who... that's another matter. With Abyssinia and India, would it be worth while to hold a few Gulf States?

If I remember correctly Abu Dabi was an important trade hub for inter-Arab trade.

 

[The Kiat]

If I remember correctly Abu Dabi was an important trade hub for inter-Arab trade.

Well the Dutch do love their trade, but how much is too much? More importantly, how much of the global trade would be Arab at the turn of the last century? I'm starting to wonder if it would be enough to warrant placing a protectorate over the area.

 

[artha]

Well the Dutch do love their trade, but how much is too much? More importantly, how much of the global trade would be Arab at the turn of the last century? I'm starting to wonder if it would be enough to warrant placing a protectorate over the area.

Perhaps a (civil) war in which they sought Dutch protection or they worked together with the British or French during a war. Those the best options I can think of.

 

[The Kiat]

Perhaps.

Ok, on to the next chapter.



IX) A World in Flames

(1913-1917)

War Clouds

The initial spark of the Polish-Lithuanian succession crisis of 1913, was the start of the Great War, but the fuel was added to the fire long before this one spark set off the world. By the turn of the century, the United Kingdom and Germany found themselves in a dangerous arms race. Germany wanted a fleet powerful enough to protect its African colonies and to blockade Britain itself. The Royal Navy’s mandate was to be powerful enough to fight two wars at once; i.e. able to handle both the German Empire and the United States. The British Admiralty believed the Americans would take advantage of a war with Germany to exact its own revenge upon the former mother country. After dragging America’s collective face through the mud during the Nineteenth Century, it was a wonder why the Americans would be so eager for vengeance.

The British and Germans were not the only ones to build up their fleets. When they started, the other World Powers took to building their own fleet. The Dutch Commonwealth was intent on maintaining its domination of world trade, and had the capital from the United Provinces and resources from the Empire of Brazil to keeps its navy ahead of the British. The French and Italians soon were locked in their own arms race, one that almost lead to war when Italy took Libya from the weakening Ottoman Empire. Since both were in opposing alliances, this could have lead to a general war.

The web off alliances between the Entente and Central Powers was also a leading factor to war. By 1910, Germany and the United Kingdom were viewed as leaders of their respective alliances, even though the British were not bound to aid the French or Swedes. Austro-Hungary and Italy would follow Germany, and both the Germans and Americans have pledged to aid each other if the other is attacked. As stated already, the Italian Federation’s expedition to Libya nearly sparked a war, but in 1903, a German cruiser squadron visited Morocco. According to the French, the Germans had intent on extending a protectorate over Morocco, which was nominally under Franco-Spanish (mostly Spanish) protection as of 1899. The fact that Spain did not sign on to the Entente until 1907, was the only reason war did not erupt in 1898, when Spain and the United States went to war.

In some cases, old fashion nationalism could have sparked off a war. If not for their alliance with Britain, the Confederacy would have come under the wrath of Americans who wanted to destroy them simply because twice in the previous century the southerners humiliated the United States. If not for protection, then the Confederates would have fallen under the sword of 7th Cavalry instead of non-compliant plains Indians. Some French had similar feelings towards Germany, wanting to avenge the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian war some decades before. Though France lost no land in that war, they lost much face.

One class that did not want war, despite revisionism of today, where the world’s industrialists. War would divide the world and cut off half their potential civilian customers. Though many American, British and German companies would follow their country, those who profited from it would prefer the open markets of peace. The VOC, company of the neutral Dutch, loathed a navy war for it would mean the construction of more warships, which carried little to no cargo, for defense of their own shipping. If they entered the war, then the VOC navy would be obliged to fight along side their own nationals. The Dutch governments stated before the war started that shipping flying the United Provinces, Brazilian or any other commonwealth flag would only be safe in Commonwealth territorial waters. International waters were to be entered at ones’ own risk.





Succession Crisis of 1913

The spark that ignited the world struck on February 11, 1913, when King Gunther II of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth died. As was the law of Poland-Lithuania for centuries, the parliament went about the process of electing a new king. Gunther II had requested that Frederick Georg Wilhelm, a distant cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II be named his successor. He was made a candidate, but the Poles and Lithuanians would decide for themselves who would sit upon their throne, which was far more constitutional than the one Germans were use to sitting upon. A second serious candidate, Erik Gustav, brother of the King of Sweden, was put forth to thwart German influence in the Commonwealth.

The German choice happened to be the cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II, while the Swede was the brother of King Charles XVII. With each election, the two choices were tied, and with no end in sight, the Kaiser decided to act. Since the previous king was a German, the German Empire felt it was entitled to have one of its own ruling over the nation to the east. Furthermore, Litho-Poland always offered the perfect buffer between the two Empires. The succession crisis caused much alarm across Europe, and France, Britain and Italy called up partial mobilizations of their military base. France in particular feared German ambitions, as it was humbled by Prussia fifty years prior.

Through the month of March, Parliament held vote after vote, each time deadlocking between the two candidates. Attempts to break the deadlock by introducing a third candidate failed, as one strong enough could not be found. One attempt to put a Bourbon, living in Quebec, upon the throne was met with laughter from the pro-German bloc of parliament. It was met with a famous and sarcastic quote “why not nominate a Bonaparte while you’re at it?”. However, outside force continued to pull at the blocs. Neither the Kaiser nor the King wished Poland-Lithuania to be pulled into the alliance of their rival.

To combat this, radicals in the Parliament move to have the Regal Election reformed to allow the people to decide who will be their king. The radicals could not gather strength for they were divided as well, with Socialists wanting to abolish the monarchy altogether. Further infighting brought parliamentary processes to a grinding halt. By the middle of May, the Kaiser had lost all patience. He decided that within a month, if the Polish-Lithuanian had not resolved the issue of the throne, then Germany would force the issue. On May 20, he ordered his General Staff to be ready for war against Sweden and France. Two days later, Charles Zimmerman sent a war warning telegram to the United States.

On May 22, 1913, a telegram arrived at the War Department in Philadelphia from the German Foreign Minister, Charles Zimmerman. The six page message stated that the German Empire was preparing to invaded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to resolve the succession crisis.. Germany outlined their plan in the telegram stating they would invade Poland-Lithuania and install Frederick on the throne. This would obviously mean war with Sweden, which was part of the Entente. Since the United States was Germany’s strongest ally, the Kaiser decided to warn Roosevelt so that the United States could be prepared in case general world war broke out. Because of this telegram, the U.S. Army quietly mobilized during the month of June and began to move up units to the front. When the alliances were activated, and Congress declared war on June 25, the Americans were in a position to move against their enemies before the British in Canada and the Confederates were fully mobilized. This telegram is often credited for allowing the United States to be the closest thing to a total victor in this otherwise status quo ante bellum war.





Invasion

On June 22, 300,000 German soldiers, divided into five corp, entered the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in force. For the first hour, they met no resistance, for the Poles had no idea they were being invaded. Only when reports of German regiments and divisions returned to central government, did the Poles and Lithuanians begin full scale mobilization. The Poland-Lithuanian National Assembly immediately convened and declared a state of emergency. At 14:04, the Swedish Assembly and King went one step further, and declared war upon Germany, which the Germans returned in kind.

Before the 23rd, France had declared war on Germany, Italy on France and Austro-Hungary on Sweden. Britain declared war, and the Confederates followed suit. As soon as this happened, the United States declared war on Britain, the Confederacy and Sweden, in that order. The three states returned the favor. Oddly enough, though on opposing sides, France and the United States did not declare war on each other. Given their long history together, both nations went out of the way to avoid fighting each other, with the United States not invading French Mexico, and France not attacking southern California, though both had the ability. Clashes on open seas between the two were inevitable, but aside from that, they remained co-belligerents and not official enemies.

On June 26th, the United States activated both of its war plans, invading the Confederacy and Canada. Armies crossed the Ohio (under the command of John Pershing), the Rappahanock (under the command of Clarence White Water) and the Columbia with initially minimal resistance. Alexandria, Virginia was entered and occupied before the day was out, as were key rail crossings of the Ohio River. With advance warning through Zimmerman, the Americans were already fully mobilized, while the Confederates were only partially so. Birmingham ordered an immediate call up of all of its soldiers.

France was in a similar state, as part of Alsace and Lorraine were conquered without a shot being fired. Several border fortresses were simply entered and taken by the Germans. Once the realization that a major war was on their hands, the French began to throw its forces into the gap between the United Provinces and Switzerland, trying to slow the German juggernaut. France would be on its own for three weeks, before the first regiments of what would be known as the British Expeditionary Force began to land in Calais. Spanish soldiers crossed the border to aid France in the Rivera against an Italian invasion. Spain was the last of the Entente to declare war, the republic taking a full week to deliberate and vote on a war that had little of their own national interest at stake.



Siege of Lodz

According to the initial planned invasion of Poland-Lithuania, the city of Lodz should have been overran within a week. This was not to be destined. Lodz and its defenders put up a stiff resistance, and continued to hold out as the front moved eastward. Lodz became an island in a rapidly advancing German tide during the summer of 1913. The fortresses surrounding the city held continued to repel German attacks, and some in the General Staff wanted to bypass the city and leave behind just enough soldiers to keep the defenders bottled up. The Kaiser would have none of it. He wanted no potential for attacks from the rear as the German Army slugged it out with Sweden over control of the Polish-Lithuanian throne. Even after Germany invaded Poland-Lithuania, the parliament remained undecided on whom should ascend the throne.

So instead of bypass the city, the Germans invested it. The eight month long siege of Lodz drew away critical resources from both fronts, East and West. The hundred thousand soldiers surrounding the city could have been used to complete Plan 6 or cut Poland-Lithuania off from the sea. The former would have gone a long ways to altering the outcome of the war, while the latter would do little. With Sweden as an ally, or at least claiming to protect the Commonwealth, the Poles had access to the sea via the vast Swedish Empire.

At the end of February of 1914, the city had already suffered millions of shells and tens of thousands of casualties. Tens of thousands more suffered through the siege as food supplies diminished. Dogs, cats, any birds and even the local zoo were slaughtered by the inhabitants who were desperate for food. The defenders of Lodz were lionized as heroes by the Entente, especially British, press. Attempts to aid the city were thwarted, and even the Red Cross was turned away by the German besiegers. Lodz would get relief after they capitulated. On February 27, able to suffer no longer, General Stefen Wolenski formerly surrendered the city. That should have been the end of the story.

The frustration of an eight month long siege, and the loss of a quick victory angered the German soldiery. What followed was not a civilized surrender, but rather a classical conquest. Discipline in the German Army broke down after the defenders laid down their arms, and the soldiery sacked the city. Officers struggled for four days to bring order to the mob. When order was restored, a portion of the city was burning and an estimated 22% of the surviving civilians were dead. In response to this atrocity, the German High Command executed over a thousand of its own soldiers, including the perceived ring leaders. Entente response was quick and to the point. The press declared this action the Lodz Massacre, and a prime example of how the barbarians were once again threatening civilization. The massacre even strained relations between Germany and the United States, its strongest ally. In response to the sacking of Lodz, the Polish-Lithuanian parliament broke its deadlock and unanimously elected the Swedish candidate, who was crowned Erik Gustav as King Christian I on April 29.



Opening Moves in the Pacific

The United States was at a disadvantage in the Pacific. The west coast was potentially cut off from the Pacific possessions of the Marianas and Wake by an Entente triangle of Seattle, Pearl Harbor, Port Sinoloa. In order to break this potential blockade of its western shores, the Navy Department moved forth its own part of War Plan Red; ejecting the British from the Hawaiian Kingdom. Hawaii entered the war on Britain’s side in July of 1913, using its small navy only in defense of its own shores and the British naval base on Oahu. The United States had no real interest in the rest of the Hawaiian Islands, and it was determined they would be ignored. However, the Pacific Fleet, as soon as supplied, set sail to eject the British from the strategic island of Oahu.

On August 3, 1913, the United States Pacific Fleet encountered a combined fleet of the Royal Navies of the United Kingdom and of Hawaii. Plans for the battle date back more than a decade. In the event of war, with the British to the north and west, and Confederates to the south, there was a good chance the United States could have its Pacific Coast blockaded. This would cut off America from its few colonies in the Pacific, but more importantly, to a large portion of its commerce. While offensives drive into Canada and the Confederacy, a third attack would head westward and drive the British off Oahu. With a base at Pearl Harbor, the British were in the perfect position to destroy American commerce.

At the command of the Pacific Fleet was forty year Naval veteran, Admiral Frederick Ruyter flying his flag from the USS California. Along with the California, seven more battleships; the Ohio, Iroquois, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Maryland, Idaho, and Kansas along with twelve cruisers and twenty destroyers, along with ten thousand Marines. Facing him with eight battleships and four battlecruisers, along with ten cruisers, sixteen destroyers and five Hawaiian destroyers was Sir Edmund Ralley.

The two fleets made their first pass at each other at 1003, a little more than two kilometers off the coast of Maui, between that islands and Hawaii. Gunnery during the first pass was poor, with less than ten percent of the shells finding their targets. This was still enough to damage the HMS Revenge, and sink two British destroyers, one American destroyer, and the USS Portland. Each American and British battleship suffered near misses, with straddling shots causing buckling in the hull. After the first pass, both fleets attempted to outmaneuver the other, coming at another pass at 1036. The USS Ohio lost its number two turret during the exchange, and two more American cruisers were knocked out of the battle. Not sunk, but damaged enough they were forced to drop out of the fight. On the British side, the Lion was dead in the water and a cruiser listing severely. The cruiser capsized at 1044.

The third pass occurred at 1101, with more minor damage to big guns. Kansas was reduced to 2/3 speed as one of its boilers was flooded. The HMS Majesty lost power, and could no longer turn its turrets. The British battleship withdrew from the battle to rescue survivors from the first two passes. Even when ships were not giving broadsides, they were still exchanging fire. Before the fourth pass, the HMS Vendetta took four hits, one puncturing its forward hull and blowing off five meters of its bow.

The fourth pass, 1149 hours, was the climax of the battle, where Ruyter managed to “Cross the T”. In the exchange, British guns could fire only a few rounds, two of which breached the Ohio’s hull. In the British lines, three battleships were further damaged, and the HMS Warspite simply exploded as a three hundred millimeter round penetrated its magazine. Wounded, Ralley ordered the British fleet, badly damaged, to retreat to Pearl Harbor. He had no intent of staying there, for it would be a bottleneck for his own fleet when the Americans arrived.

Instead, he would evacuate British nationals from the island and retreat to Manilla to repair the fleet. Before he could make good his escape, Ruyter ordered destroyers to close in and launch torpedoes on the dreadnaughts. A squadron of American destroyers closed in on the retreating ships and unleashed their payloads. Four destroyers were damaged, with one crippled, but in exchange, the Majesty broke in half, and a cruiser joined her.

To cover his retreat, Ralley ordered a torpedo run by his own destroyers. Three British destroyers were lost, but in exchange, the Maryland lost its forward turret, and the main British Fleet was able to successfully withdrawal to Pearl Harbor. Ralley is often criticized for giving up the battle, but had he pressed the attack, he could very well have lost the Royal Navy’s entire Pacific fleet. That fleet was required to defend the Philippines, Australia and Malaysia, and attack the Americans in the Marianas along with German Marshals and Kaiserwilhemland, and have sufficient forces to defend British holdings in the Pacific against possible Dutch attacks.

By August 5, the British evacuated their nationals from Oahu, leaving behind a rearguard force of Royal Marines and ships too damaged to survive the voyage across the ocean, to aid the Hawaiians. During the months of August and September, the Americans conquered Oahu, sending the Hawaiian royal family fleeing to the island of Hawaii.

Back in North America, a force of twenty thousand soldiers moved from southern California into the Confederate State of Durango, across the Gulf of California. Port Sinoloa was first attacked by a cruiser squadron out of San Diego, leading the Confederate Pacific Fleet on a chase. While they were pursing the ships, which were reinforced by some of the fleet from Hawaii in September, the first of America’s naval invasions of the war took place. Some ten kilometers south of Port Sinoloa, the fifty thousand Americans hit the desert beach with minimal resistance. Real resistance did not take place until August 30, when Confederate garrisons and American invaders clashed just outside the city. In the course of the next three weeks, the Americans moved northward, fighting block-by-block to seize the city. Finally, on October 8, the Confederate commander at Port Sinoloa surrendered. The city was not the Confederate’s only outlet to the Pacific, but with it in American hands, it was not the Confederates who were blockaded.



The Great Lakes Campaign

Along side the reconquest of the Red River Valley, in later 1913, early 1914, the United States Navy on the Great Lakes did much to secure America’s northern border. Control of the Lakes would insure supply lines for both the Red River Valley and the York Peninsula. The British knew this as well, and decided to make the first move at the Battle of Mackinac.

Also called the Battle of Mackinac Strait or Battle of Fort Mackinac, this battle was the first British-Canadian counter-offensive following the declaration of War. Part of Britain’s own war plan against America called for it to drive American Naval forces from the Great Lakes. This called for bottling up much of the American Great Lakes’ Fleet on Lake Michigan while the British took control of the other four lakes. Not only would this allow the British, and the Canadians, uninterrupted supply lines for armies operating on American soil (none at the time), but it would also force the Americans to withdraw from the York Peninsula and cut off their iron mining regions in the west from the steel mills in the east.

Under the command of Vice Admiral Walter Cowan, a British fleet of two battleships (on BB and one BC), three cruisers, nine destroyers and ten smaller vessels, sailed ahead of a marine flotilla destined to occupy Mackinac Island. The British plan called for surprise, which was shattered on June 30, 1913, when the submarine Swordfish, commanded by Commander Edward Fitzgerald, spotted the British fleet and moved in to attack. A torpedo managed to hit the battlecruiser Leopard, but caused only slight damage, a rupture in the midship that was easily patched. In return, British destroyers hunted down the primitive submarine and sank it. At the time, Cowan was not aware if U.S. subs were equipped with the newly invented wireless transmitters. Though primitive, they were capable of transmitting a morse code pulse to warn that the British were coming.

On July 2, the British fleet entered Mackinac Strait and began to bombard the fortress upon Mackinac Island at 1133. A century ago, a British fleet made the same move and forced the fort to surrender before taking control of Lake Michigan during the Second Anglo-American War. Fifty years later, during the Third Anglo-American War, the British again attacked the fort, but this time took it by assault. Cowan planned to be the third to take the island in just over a century. Unbeknown to the British, Fitzgerald did get a signal back to Chicago, and the American fleet stationed their sortied.

The United States Navy split its forces on Lake Michigan into two columns. The western column, commanded by Rear Admiral Charles Vreeland, consisted of two battleships, two cruisers, four destroyers, seven frigates and torpedo boats. The eastern column, commanded by Commodore Robert Doyle, consisted of a lone battlecruiser, another lone cruiser, three destroyers along with a dozen torpedo boats. When the two columns converged on Mackinac Island, midday on July 3, Vreeland took overall command for what would turn out to be a short battle.

Given British superiority in overall firepower, Vreeland played his own gambit. He would send ahead the torpedo boats and smaller craft to launch their torpedoes at the British. He expected to loose many of the boats, after all, Destroyers were designed to destroy torpedo boats. However, he had hoped to open a breach in the British formation to exploit. At a distance of ten kilometers, the British guns began to open up on the Americans. At that distance, their aim was poor, and only a handful of near misses gave the Americans cause for alarm. The U.S.S. Columbia, a battlecruiser, did have a shell land close enough to cause minor damage to its hull.

In design, the British and Canadian Great Lakes Battleships were fifteen percent larger than their American counterparts, and sported 300mm guns, as opposed to the 203 and 253 mm used by American Great Lakes Battleships and -cruisers. Their armor was thicker as well. British cruisers had close to the same advantage against their American counterparts. American warships were lighter armed and armored, but also traveled faster than their enemies. American gunnery tended to be better on the Great Lakes, as was shown when shells from the Oregon made contact with a British destroyed that strayed too close, and tore it to pieces.

Before the opposing capital ships could get into more effective range, Cowan had to run the gauntlet of small torpedo boats. As was typical of a Royal Navy man, Cowan looked upon these lightly armed, glorified fishing boats with disdain. The idea that a boat could damage, much less sink, a Royal Navy battleship struck the Admiralty as absurd. This did not, however, prevent the Canadians from building their own torpedo boats to ply the Great Lakes. Cowan’s pride was about to receive a deep bruise when the American boats entered firing range. As was doctrine, the larger ships ignored the boats while the destroyers dealt with them. Two torpedo boats were destroyed before they could launch their torpedoes, but an addition thirteen breached British lines and launch two torpedoes each before retreating. Of these, and addition three boats were destroyed.

Many of the torpedoes missed, either be dodged, or simply sailing beneath the enemy bows. However, the bulk of the torpedoes were aimed at the largest ships; battleship Port Royal, battlecruiser Leopard and a cruiser steaming close to them. Seven torpedoes did hit, including one that took out the Leopard’s rudder. Two more torpedoes ruptured the battleship’s hull, reducing its speed by half. The cruiser received such a lashing, that it began to list. Before the day was out, it would be abandoned and capsized. With one capital ship mortally wounded and the other crippled, Cowan now had to face the Americans at a disadvantage. No British admiral had ever retreated from battle against the Americans on the Great Lakes, and Cowan did not wish to be the first.

When the American battleship and battlecruiser came into range, they quickly changed his mind. Shells from the Oregon and Susquehanna destroyed three destroyers and broke an addition cruiser in half. British shells caused their own damage, sinking an American destroyer and crippling two more, along with a cruiser Columbia even received hits, knocking out one of its two turrets. It was the fact that the Royal Marine transports would be within range of American guns within a day that caused Cowan to retreat. The transports were lightly armed, fast destroyers that would have stood little chance against the Americans. He would not condemn so many marines to their death just to save his own pride. At 1605, Cowan gave the order to withdraw. Not retreat, but to withdraw. He had every intend on returning as soon as his ships were repaired, and reinforced by ships from Lake Superior and Huron.

The Americans would not give Cowan, or any British admiral, a second change to seal Lake Michigan. Within a week, addition torpedo boats have arrived on seen, and damage to most of the ships was repaired. The Columbia did have to return to Chicago for repairs, but it would be replaced by ships arriving at Mackinac from Lake Superior. Addition soldiers were rushed to reinforce Fort Mackinac, and a small airstrip was built on the island. It could not project power against the Royal Navy, but would serve to base scouts. Addition guns were placed on the island in the following month, as were fortifications on either side of Mackinac Strait. Admiral Vreeland would not give the British a second chance to take Mackinac. As soon as he was reinforced, he took the fight to the British on Lake Huron.

Following their victory at Mackinac, the America Great Lakes Navy took up pursuit of their British counterparts once Mackinac Island was reinforced. By September of 1913, Vreeland set his fleet out, reinforced by two cruisers and the battleship Minnesota, across Lake Huron to hunt down what was left of Cowan’s fleet. Seaplanes launched from the northern shores of Michigan scoured the lake for the British fleet for a week before the first signs were detected. On September 7, Cowan’s fleet was spotted nearing Georgian Bay. Cowan had hoped to shelter in Owin Sound and repair the damage his ships sustained. At this point in the war, scouting planes were, if armed at all, very lightly armed. Bombers did not come into serious play for a couple more years. Had the Americans had these bombers, they might very well have sunk the British fleet from the air.

Instead, Vreeland ordered his fleet to sail across Lake Huron towards Georgian Bay. Cowan’s own scouts learned of the American’s approach. A squadron of five torpedo boats made runs on the Americans, missing the battleships at the cost of three of their own. One ship was eventually abandoned, but the fifth returned to Owin Sound with word of an American fleet approaching. The term fleet is used very loosely on the Great Lakes, for what Vreeland commanded would have been a glorified squadron on the high seas. Cowan had little choice but to put his whole fleet to sail, including the damaged Leopard. The British Admiral had no reinforcements aside from a few gunboats that nominally defend the naval base at Owin Sound. These followed Cowan towards their destined fate.

On September 15, 1913, just a few days over a hundred years since the Battle of Lake Erie, the American and British Great Lake Navies clashed some twenty kilometers of the northwest tip of the Bruce Peninsula. The battle was joined at 1103, when the Port Royal fired the first shots of the battle. British torpedo boats charged the Americans under the cover of the big guns. The shells fell short and wide, hitting a destroyer, ironically named the USS Oliver Perry. The destroyer was knocked out of action by hits from the British battlecruiser’s functioning turret, and began to list at 1108. The torpedo boats finished off the Perry and hit three more destroyers. The destroyer screen was tight enough that British boats could not penetrate to threaten the two American battleships and two battlecruisers.

By 1145, the playing was over and both formations began battling each other at ranges less than two kilometers. A British and American destroyer destroyed each other at under 300 m distance. Just before midday, Vreeland passed between Bruce Peninsula and the British Fleet, crossing Cowan’s ‘T’. All heavy caliber guns fired upon the lead ship, the battleship Port Royal. Of the shots fired, seven hit the battleship, including one just below the bridge’s superstructure. Cowan and his command staff were killed in the explosion. More hits punctured the aft and destroyed the rudder. The Port Royal began to turn to the port, no longer under human control. Seeing this, the following ships changed course, not realizing just what happened.

Both fleets lined up broadsides against each other. Several of the British shots hit their mark, damaging the Minnesota and killing its own captain. Over a hundred were killed when a boiler exploded onboard the Susquehanna. The damage to the Americans was painful, but not life threatening. Three destroyers were gutted during the exchange, with the loss of several hundred more sailors. The British losses were far worse. The earlier wounds on the Leopard were opened again by a torpedo run by one of the American destroyers lost. Explosions below the water line broke the back of the battlecruiser, which snapped in half at 1205. Only a handful of survivors, and none of them officers, were plucked from the lake. The out-of-control Port Royal was hit five more times, with two shots ripping open spontoons and causing the ship to enter a dangerous twenty degree list to its port. At 1211, the battleship capsized and went down. An addition royal cruiser and four destroyers were lost in the fight. By 1300, the Battle of Lake Huron ended with the bulk of British fleet on the lake effectively annihilated, and the remaining wounded ships limped away from battle. Two destroyers steamed towards Detroit in hopes of breaking through to Lake Erie, but the remainder of the ships headed towards Owin Sound.

The two destroyers were sunk by shore batteries attempting to cross over to Lake Erie, and the remaining ships were bottled up in Owin Sound. Vreeland sailed his own fleet within range of the Sound and began bombarding the naval base. Little damage was caused to the base, and none of the warships suffered any more serious damage, though a light cruiser was hit and ended up beaching itself. Vreeland sailed back towards Lake Michigan, victorious in clearing Lake Huron of British forces. Several American submarines set up a blockade of Owin Sound, and supply ships used the Huron side of the York Peninsula to resupply American forces in Canada. The Great Lakes were cut in half, and British and Canadian naval forces on Lake Superior remained isolated. American warships sortied into Lake Superior and hunted down the British cruiser and destroyers stationed upon it by the middle of 1914. Taking control of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario would not be as easy.



War in the Atlantic

After winning control over Lake Huron, and securing the northern flank of the York Peninsula, the Navy and War Departments shifted their attention towards the Atlantic. A key part of War Plan Gray was to liberate Cuba and restore its rightful Union government. This was partially a political goal, of restoring a state, and partially a military goal, to use Havana and Guantanamo as naval bases to succeed in blockading the Confederacy. The move against Cuba did not happen until the Great War was already several months old. On December 1, 1913, the United States Atlantic Fleet departed New Amsterdam in route to Cuba. The fleet was commanded by one Vice Admiral Hugo Osterhaus, veteran of the Spanish War, and now commander of six of the Atlantic Fleet’s ten battleships. Along with the Vermont, Nevada, New Amsterdam, Indiana, Nebraska and Wyoming sailed some eight additional cruisers and twelve destroyers. The fleet carrier with it some four thousand marines, not for retaking Cuba, but for clearing the Bahamas of British presence before the invasion force could leave port.

On December 7, the American fleet sailed into the islands from the northeast, attempting to lure the British and the Confederate fleets into decisive combat. The two Entente fleets combined outgunned the Americans, but Osterhaus was gambling on catching the Confederate fleet before the British were to link up with it. The Confederate Atlantic Fleet comprised of four battleships; South Carolina, Sonora, Mississippi, Congress, along with the battlecruiser Manassas, six cruisers and seven destroyers. Upon learning of the American departure from New Amsterdam, Confederate Rear Admiral Robert Lawrence Hunley Jr. departed Augusta with the entire fleet. Messages have been sent to Kingstown in Jamaica to British Vice Admiral Doveton Sturdee, who immediately put to sea with his two battleships, three battlecruisers, ten cruiser and thirteen destroyers. If he could link up with his Confederate ally, then the American fleet would be easily repelled, if not destroyed.

American cruisers steaming ahead of the main fleet, bombarded a British outpost at Hopetown. Ten minutes of bombardment destroyed much of the small outpost, and let the British know the Americans were here. By setting up for battle this far north in the Bahamas, Osterhaus knew that the Confederates would be the first to respond. However, Hunley was no fool, and would wait off the Floridian coast until the British steamed within range. To find the American fleet and coordinate a two prong attack, Confederate sea planes took to the air. These slow aircraft, with minimal range, spotted the Atlantic Fleet at 931, steaming off the eastern coast of Grand Bahama.

It was here that the actual battle was decided. The seaplanes had primitive radio transmitters on board, and transmitted coordinates back using Morris Code. The information was passed on to both Confederate and British. Unfortunately, the pilot and lookout who spotted the Americans were recent volunteers, and transmitted the distance in statute miles instead of the nautical miles the British used, and marked the American’s course off by fifteen degrees. Upon relieving this intelligence, Sturdee ordered his own fleet on a course that would intercept this faulty data, and leave the British well away from the actual battle. The Confederates coming in from the northwest, however, found the Americans at 1305.

Osterhaus ordered his own fleet into action, taking his line of battleships along side the Confederate line. Hunley, who expected the British to show up from the south at any moment, obliged, and traded the first broadside at 1323. This first exchange resulted in many misses, despite hard gunnery training. Two battleships, the Nevada and the Congress received damage from the exchange, but not enough to knock either from battle. For the next two hours, both fleets maneuvered, attempting to cross each other’s “T”, while exchanging pot shots at each other. A Confederate destroyer strayed too close to the American line of battle, and was reduced to a new corral reef in a matter of minutes.

At 1423, the fleets lined up and exchanged another broadside. The C.S.S. Sonora took severe damage, forcing it to fall back in the line. After more than an hour of combat, Hunley began to wonder if his allies had not abandoned him to a numerically superior American fleet. One-on-one, the Americans could carry the day against either the Confederate Atlantic Fleet or the British Carribean Squadrons. Combined, the Americans stood less-than-even odds. Hunley’s luck changed at 1440, when the Confederates managed to cross the “T” on the Americans, and bring their broadsides to bear on the American lead ship. The Nevada took fifteen hits from shells larger than 300 mm, and dozens of smaller hits. The American battleship was torn to pieces during the exchange, taking most of the Confederate’s broadside. At 1442, the captain of the Nevada, Charles O’Baley, ordered abandon ship. Three hundred sailors escaped the rapidly sinking Nevada, and the captain and command staff were not among them. The sinking of the battleship forced the Americans to break formation to avoid collision with either sinking ship or floundering crew.

After the humiliation of being crossed, Osterhaus made his own gambit, copying some of the moves that took place at Mackinac. He ordered eight of his ten remaining destroyers to make torpedo runs on the Confederate battleships. This was usually a job reserved for lighter torpedo boats, but the Americans lacked any that day. Instead, the destroyed dodged Confederate gun fire to close into range. The most celebrated destroyer of the day, the Tomahawk closed into firing range of the Confederate flagship, the South Carolina. At 1510, the Tomahawk released its torpedo salvo just as a 300mm shell slammed amidship, destroying the destroyer with all hands. Three of the torpedoes hit the South Carolina. One was a dud, but the other two hit amidship on the South Carolina, ripping into its hull and breaking its beam. The Confederate battleship was lifted clean of the water, the explosion breaking the ship in half. The aft half sunk in a matter of minutes, with the bow half remaining afloat long enough for fifteen sailors to escape. With its sacrifice, the Tomahawk decapitated the Confederate fleet, killing Hunley and all his staff. Two additional cruisers and the Manassas were damaged during the run, while the cruiser Atlanta was also sent to the bottom.

Now in chaos, the Confederates attempt to withdrawal and reform their lines. The Americans pressed on the attack, making another broadside exchange, causing addition damage to Confederate battleships, with the Sonora losing electrical power. One of the earlier damaged cruisers, the New Orleans capsizes due to damages. The Americans were not immune from damage, the USS Wyoming had its aft turrets knocked out and was reduced to half speed. At 1800, the Confederates began to retreat south, remaining ships rallying around the Mississippi, the least damaged battleships in their fleet. Osterhaus ordered a cruiser and two destroyers to remain behind to pick up survivors, from both sides, while the bulk of the Atlantic Fleet pursued the Confederates through the night.

The battle continued at 700 on the following day, when Osterhaus orders his fleet to split into two squadrons. The first squad will run up along side the Confederates, while the Vice Admiral will take his squad and cross the Confederate “T”. At 716, Osterhaus trapped the Confederates in his box, unleashing maximum firepower. The Congress began to list at twenty degrees and the Manassas capsized. Sonora simply exploded when rounds pierced its magazine. The explosion was powerful enough to severely damage a Confederate destroyer steaming too close. At 843, with three Confederate battleships sunk, Sturdee finally found the battle. The British were outnumbered and outgunned, but caught one of the American squadrons away from its fellows. The British pass resulted in minimum damaged to the HMS Lionheart, and one American cruiser sunk.

As the battered Confederate remains joined the fresh British forces, the British Vice Admiral ran up colors calling for a truce. Sturdee wished to fish survivors from the water, now very bloody and infested with sharks. Osterhaus agreed to a four hour cease fire, after which, he would continue his attack on the Confederates and the British. During this break, the Americans managed to get what fires that burned under control, and repaired one of the Wyoming’s damaged turrets. Sturdee assessed the damage to the Confederates, and determined that he could not hold the Bahamas without the loss of most of his own forces. Under such circumstances, he had orders from the Admiralty to yield the islands for the time being, until a naval force could be assembled to retake the Bahamas. At 1030, the British and remaining Confederate ships limped back to Kingstown, leaving Osterhaus victorious.

The following day, Osterhaus began his own attack on Nassau. One of his own cruisers were sunk and the New Amsterdam damaged by Nassau’s coastal defenses, including torpedo boats. Three thousand marines made it ashore on the island and continued to battle the few British defenders in Nassau until December 11, when the British surrendered the city and island. With Nassau secure, Osterhaus has cleared a path to Cuba and secured a base to raid the Confederate coast and tighten the blockade.

The United States Navy continued its operations, landing twenty thousand soldiers in southern Cuba on January 9, 1914. Guantanamo Bay was heavily defended by Confederate soldiers, and the city was not taken as easily as Port Sinoloa. It would require a further two months of conflict until ‘Gitmo’, as the United States Marines and Soldiers dubbed it, surrendered. Only the fact that the United States Navy, and others, controlled the waters around Cuba did the city surrender. Without naval control, they might very well of held out for months. The role of the Navy is obvious, but the role for “others” on the side of America as well as other nations is a more privatized part of warfare.

Privateering, a practice that has largely died out during the latter half of the 19th Century made a sudden revival with the outbreak of the Great War. The United States Congress issued more than seven hundred letters of marque during 1913, mostly against Confederate commerce, but a few wealthier ship owners were issued letters against Spanish, Swedish and even British shipping. The U.S. Congress did not issue any against France, since it had not declared war on the French Republic. The French, likewise, returned the favor. For Americans, a bond of some $100,000 dollars must be posted for the “good behavior” of the privateers, and to keep them from exceeding the bounds of their letters of marque. In 1913, there were no specialized privateering vessels in existence, and most would-be privateers took to modifying their own fishing boats, cargo tramps and even a few yachts. These ships worked well against Confederate commerce along the coast, and even raiding Canadian ships off the coast of Newfoundland. However, against British merchants they quickly lost effectiveness with the rapid implement of the convoy system. Any privateers that steamed within range of the Royal Navy escorts were simply destroyed.

Against the British, by 1914, the United States Navy took to Commerce Raiding. The difference between privateering and raiding is that in the former case, the goal is to capture the ship, and in the latter it is to simply sink it. Some American battlecruisers, and even the battleship Montana sailed lone missions, set on destroying Britain’s vital link to the rest of the world, especially its beef producing empire in Patagonia. Cruiser divisions of two to four cruisers also hunted primarily British shipping in the North Atlantic, Pacific and Far East. American submarines squadrons played a lesser role, however they operated further away, using German ports in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean as bases of operation.

The Confederate Congress issued its own letters of marque, some three hundred in 1913 alone. Confederate privateers focused almost solely on American shipping, with German merchants simply being out of range. Confederates operated along the Atlantic Seaboard, using Bermuda as a base, as well as up and down the Pacific, operating out of French Mexico. Confederate privateers took some fifty American ships in the first year of the war, compared to the Americans’ two hundred and five ships, and tens of millions of dollars worth of trade goods. For the most part, neither side netted much currency or specie from the raids, instead the privateers profited by selling captured goods and ships. When a privateer took a ship they believed better than theirs, they would modify it into another privateering vessel. The largest take by an American privateer was the C.S.S. Huxley, a Confederate Frigate. The most powerful privateer of the war was Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts; he used his family’s wealth and political clout to purchase an old destroyer recently decommissioned by the navy. The ship was obsolete in naval action, but served well for taking Confederate ships. The Luck of the Irish as the ship was called, even tangled with a Confederate light cruiser and destroyer, evading them through a series of maneuvers in the Florida Keys.

In Europe, privateering was banned by the 1856 Declaration of Paris because the difference between a pirate and a privateer was a little on the subtle side. Instead, the European participants took to simply destroying the other side’s commerce. The two biggest players in the game were Germany and Britain. The German High Seas Fleet did sent sorties of cruisers after commerce of Sweden and Britain in the North Sea and North Atlantic, with some using Boston as a base, but the biggest impact in commerce raiding was the U-Boat. These submarines operated either alone early in the war, but with the implementation of the convoy system, they began to sortie in squadron strength. The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet tended to interdict most commerce heading into Germany under belligerent flags, but this was not enough to blockade Germany. The Royal Navy also had to divide their forces to both sides of the Atlantic, and neutral powers still traded with Germany. Though Britain could stop many, it dared not provoke the VOC, which had its own convoy system. To combat U-Boats, the British introduced the Q-Ship. These were armed freighters that lay in wait, looking harmless, and waiting for U-boats to commence surface attacks before revealing the 200 mm guns hidden on the deck. The Germans countered this by attacking more and more beneath the waves.

The French raided and destroyed what they could, but they had too much of their resources devoted to the war on land. The Italian Federation dominated the Mediterranean, not only destroying Spanish, French, and latter Ottoman, shipping, but Italian Marines raided the Spanish coast. With its limited coast line, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had fewer opportunities to engage in economic warfare. The Austrian Antilles were lost to the British early in the war, taking away their base in the western Atlantic. Several private commerce raiders operated out of Austrian West Africa, and were little more than pirates plaguing all shipping in the Gulf of Guinea, including their allies. The Swedes had their own raiders, plaguing any German shipping in the Baltic Sea. Their raiders were far fewer, since the Swedish Navy devoted itself to battling the German Navy, and interrupting the resupply of German soldiers on the west coast of Sweden.

All powers in question took an active role in the so-called “Battle of the Atlantic”. The over all naval strategy of the Central Powers was to cut-off Britain from its empire and to link up in the North Atlantic. Millions of tonnes of British shipping were lost in the battle, along with hundreds of thousands of German, American along with French and Confederate shipping. Tens of thousands of merchant men died in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. Only on occasion would commerce raiders be bothered to pluck crews from the water. Privateers generally took the crews captive, delivering them to authorities in their home ports. Though the German and British raiders were ruthless, American and Confederate commerce raiders did take great pains to rescue their victims, and returned them to internment camps back home. These internees were traded between the United States and the Confederacy, one for one. Upon returning home, they often enlisted right into their navies for payback, either as sailors or as decoys or North America’s own version of the Q-ships.



Air War

The Great War was the first major war to see the use of air power. In 1913, this was hardly powerful. The United States, Britain, Germany and Italy used heavier-than-air machines to survey and scout over the network of trenches that began to appear in the fall of 1913 along narrow fronts. The use of aircraft as weapons was not until later. During 1913, the most that was exchanged between enemy scouts was the shots from pistols and carbines at distances to great to matter.

Starting that same year, when the aeroplane took a greater and greater role in the skies during the Great War, a sort of war profiteering rose outside of the City of Luxembourgh. The airstrip was totally make-shift, and at first was nothing more than a straight stretch of flat grass well outside of the city. The only remarkable features was a roadside pub some three hundred meters from the field. On November 12, Flight Lieutenant Samuel Winston, his observation plane shot up, made an emergency landing in the neutral Grand Duchy. Once on the ground, Winston hiked to the pub, ordered a pint of bitter and asked about local mechanics. Two days later, with his aeroplane repaired, Winston returned to the British Aerodrome on the French side of the border, telling his story.

Despite the fact that the United Provinces were neutral at the time, both British and German aircraft overflew the Grand Duchy of Luxembourgh. The French veered well clear of antagonizing the Dutch, but the British reckoned that if Germany was allowed to fly over, then so would they. At the time, and for many years after, Dutch law had clear definition of territory when it came to the sky, so legally speaking, there was no conflict. Provided that the war stayed outside of his Province, the Grand Duke would look the other way as two rival powers fought each other. During the course of 1913 and 1914, more damaged planes made landings at the airstrip.

By 1914, several more pubs have risen to service the influx of Entente and Central Power pilots making stops at Luxembourgh. Often after patrols, both German and British pilots would land at the airport at Luxembourg in search of unauthorized rest and relaxation. Discipline was tight around the combatant’s own aerodromes, and lacked in the way of entertainment. Beer was plentiful, but tightly rationed do to the war effort. Dutch breweries had no such limitations. Before the year was out, dozens of pubs, bars, casinos and even the odd brothel materialized around the airstrip. Workshops began to appear as well, as mechanics rushed outside of the city to work on the aircraft from both sides of the war. Even aviation fuel was sold.

At first, the Luxembourger officials turned a blind eye to the occasional landings, but as word about Luxembourg spread, the locals soon faced the prospect of both Germans and British ending up at the same pub. When the stories were told and the songs sang, the pilots would bid farewell, wishing the other luck in a may-the-better-man-win spirit. A few pilots would even seek out worthy opponents to challenge in the skies over the trenches. The city police force was tripled around the airfields, but to little avail. While in neutral territory, the two opposing forces had little interest in fighting, and more so in fraternizing. They traded stories about combats, about home life, and even the odd bottle of booze from each respective nation. British scotch was highly prized by the Germans. There was plenty of card playing to be had, and again the officials made absolute certain no cheats were permitted access to casinos. With a de facto truce in effect, the last thing anyone wanted was for bad blood to be spilt. Since these detours were without authorization, technically the pilots were absent without leave. Should their commanding officers ever learn of their stop over, and their fraternizing with the enemy, severe punishments would be met out. Never had any of the pilots been executed after being caught, for skilled pilots were very rare in the early days of flight. Instead, they were often transferred to alternate theaters of the war, one lacking a neutral power to cater to them.



Grinding into a Second Year

Though some predicted short wars, and a war that would end by the New Year, the Great War was far from over by late December. The Germans had ran smack into France’s Iron Drapes, coming to a halt and digging in as reinforcements were trained and rushed to the front. On the Eastern Front, Germans and Swedes were locked into more dynamic warfare as the more open spaces made trenches fewer and far between. Around key cities, such as Warsaw and Krakow, trenches were plentiful as both sides, with the Poles aiding the Swedes, fought ferociously for control.

Further south, the Swedes held the advantage over Austro-Hungary, in that this front was within Hungarian territory exclusively. Germany had to divert their own forces to prop up their southern ally. Italy also came to the aid of the Austrians, as well as held their own on the Western Front, though were still far from taking either Monaco or Nice. The Italian Navy did hold the advantage in the Mediterranean, but not to the point of keeping out the British. A naval battle between Italy and Spain resulted with a decisive Italian victory off the Catalonia Coast in November of 1913.

In North America, the Americans were totally on the offensive, with all their armies occupying enemy territory. The Red River Valley was in American hands, as was much of northern Maine and parts of the York Peninsula. Advances in the west have pushed further west and north from the Columbia River. In the south, American forces close in on the Rappahanock River as well as marched up the Tennessee River. The Confederates put all their resources into hold on, and the American blockade was just starting to take its toll when 1914 began.

At the start of 1914, the Central Powers’ star was apparently on the rise. With the exception of the ineptitude within the decrepit Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Central Powers had the bulk of their armed forces on the soil of their enemies. In Europe, German forces in the west were camped upon French territory. Much of Alsace-Lorraine was already under their thumb. The French, with the aid of the British Expeditionary Force, managed to establish themselves along the Iron Drapes, dug in and not about to allow the Germans to breakthrough. The Italians were also on French soil, though the front only extended, at most, nine kilometers inside France’s border.

The Eastern Front saw the Entente’s sole victory streak. Swedish forces moved across Poland-Lithuania and occupied parts of Austrian Galicia. Poland-Lithuania itself it divided between Swedish and German forces. After electing a Swede to its throne, Poland-Lithuania was fully in the fold of the Entente. The Kaiser’s primary goal of the war, to put an imperial relative upon the throne, was now out of reach. In a way, Germany has already lost the war, for they could no longer force the Polish parliament to elect the Kaiser’s cousin. However, this did not mean the Kaiser could not depose Christian I and replace him with a German.

The British and Canadians were holding the line against American aggression. By early 1914, despite poor weather, the Red River Valley was now fully under American control, as was northern Maine. The Americans made little gains on the York Peninsula, American advances outside of Iroquois stopped at Stoney Creek. Advances on the other side of the country have pushed slowly west and north of the Columbia River.

Gains against the Confederacy have been costly east of the Mississippi. In the far western deserts, the Confederates have been forced back, with a good portion of the Confederate State of Arizona in American hands, as well as parts of Durango. Landings on Cuba have yet to secure Guantanamo Bay, but the blockade of the Confederacy was in place and slowly taking its impact. With the lowest industrial output of the Entente, the Confederate war effort was most susceptible to blockades. However, this does not equate success on the battlefield, since the Confederates have held against the American tide on both the Ohio and Potomac Fronts.



Life in the Trenches

The euphoria and optimism of 1913, has been washed away by the winter rain and snow. The Great War differed from other wars in that, for the first time, the very landscape has been altered for hundreds of kilometers in length. A thin network of trenches, separated by a devastated no-man’s lands, served as the frontier between warring powers. Not all of the fronts had trenches. Along the Colorado Front, and in Poland-Lithuania, large areas made static warfare impossible. Any dug-in location could be bypassed. However, on narrow fronts, such as the Western or Potomac Fronts, a few defenders well dug in could hold of a much larger aggressor.

War, what was seen as a grand adventure by those too young to remember the last big war. The generation of the Franco-Prussian War were old, and those still serving were now Generals and Marshals. The United States Army had many of its higher ranking officers serving in the Spanish War, some fifteen years previous. That was paled in comparison, as the Spanish were easily pushed aside. Though with Spain in the Entente, no doubt they had their eyes on regaining territory lost to the Americans, and not just the Marianas in 1898. For the rest of the nations’ youth, war was something desirable.

The enthusiasm quickly drowned in the morass of mud collecting at the bottom of two meter deep trenches. The reality of war was, when not terrifying, very, very boring. Siting in the trenches for days and weeks on end, with the only sunlight hitting them when the sun was more or less overhead. Life inside the trenches was dark, dank and lice-infested. The parasites, that many combatants from middle class upbringing have never seen, plagued the soldiers more than enemy artillery. Soldiers rotated off the lines would undergo delousing, only to have the pests crawling all over them the moment they went back to the front.

In some areas, the frontline remained stagnant long enough for some comforts of home to make their way in. Soldiers in the trenches had little to do, and a bored soldier did command no good. Many were put to work inside the trenches, digging out bombardment shelters and underground barracks. Along with the barracks came other aspects of a normal army base, including mess halls and even recreation halls. Cards were the most popular way to pass the time. Few sections of the trenches even had motion picture projectors, though electricity was spotty.

At first, the dreaded call for “over the top” was just that, dreaded. But after months of sitting idle in the shells, taking cover only when the other side decided to lob rounds their way, even the most timid soldier was eager to charge. Anything was better than the endless monotony. Death was preferable over stale air, muddy beds and another round of beans from the mess. Even if they were not killed or mangled in the mad dash across no-man’s land, an order over-the-top could lead to the sought after breakthrough, and bring the soldiers one step closer to returning home.



The Western Front

Germany’s Plan 6 was slowed to a crawl, but not defeated. The largest obstacle in the path of France’s Northern Wing, was that of Verdun. The fortress of Verdun served as the northern most flank in a formidable obstacle along Germany and France’s common border. Construction on Verdun dated back into the 19th Century, following the disastrous defeat during the Franco-Prussian War, which ultimately lead to the founding of the German Empire. In 1891, the French government allocated the funding and resource to build a wall of fortresses from Verdun to Besancon, to prevent the German from ever penetrating deep into French territories again. In future wars, the French Army developed the strategy of trading land for time in Alsace and Lorraine, while the so-called iron drapes were being lowered into place over that window of invasion.

The Germans knew the fortifications were not solid, and developed several of their own plans on how to deal with it. Plan 6 would have the Imperial Armies move to flank both the northern most and southern most of the Iron Drapes, and then proceed to attack the line from east and west. Their original plans called for several weeks of fighting before France’s defenses were pummeled into submission. This failed to come to fruition in 1913, when the French Armies were in place at both northern and southern most extremities. This move by the French insured that the Great War would last for years instead of months. Initial advances by the Germans devolved into trench warfare throughout 1913, and by the start of 1914, the Germans were looking to break the deadlock.

By May 1, over two hundred thousand German soldiers were massed to the southeast of Verdun. German strategies have changed from pounding the line to conquering it one fortress at a time. An hour before sunrise on the 1st, tens of thousands of pieces of artillery on a stretch of the front more than twenty kilometers long, opened up on Verdun and the surrounding fortifications. Over the next seventy-two hours, more than a hundred thousand shells fell on the French lines. Some German officers were confident that nothing could survive. They were sadly disappointed when, on May 4, the German front along that same length of the trench swarmed out of safety and across no-man’s land. At 06:15, the French proved themselves very much alive and able to fight.

The initial swarm was turned back, and with the Germans on the run, the French went over the top in an attempt to overtake the Germans before they reached their own trenches. This back-and-forth charging, so common in the Great War, lasted for the better part of the day. By sunset, the Germans were firmly in the forward most trenches of the French, with twelve thousand of their own and eleven thousand French dead between the lines. The commander of the German Forces at Verdun, Crown Prince William, was quite pleased by the day’s actions. Following the actions of the 4th, and the disappointing survival of the French, a further two days of bombardment were ordered before the German continued the attack. These two days did little to damage the French positions and gave them more than enough time to bring up reinforcements.

The delay was so disastrous, that a further hundred thousand soldiers from both sides lay either dead or wounded between May 7 and May 13. Of his initial 200,000 soldiers, William had only 130,000 able to fight by the 14th. The French losses were even greater, with General Philippe Petain having only 103,000 soldiers able to fight. Of those, tens of thousands suffered from fatigue and shell-shock. Moral on the French side was eroding faster than the German’s. On the 14th, further shelling was launched at Verdun and surrounding French batteries. William made use of aircraft to drop bombs on French guns, and upon Verdun. On May 15, the Germans made their breakthrough.

At dawn, yet another offensive swarmed over the Trenches, much closer to the city than when they started. Several of the forts ringing Verdun were in ruins, one of which, Fort Douaumont, had its entire eastern face destroyed. German soldiers easily breached the fallen wall and captured the fort. Fort Vaux was taken by a similar storming, though at a much higher cost. Fort Souville fell the following day. Petain and his staff were in the process of planning counter-attacks when an aerial bomb found his headquarters. Petain was severely wounded and several key members of his staff were killed. This lone bomber did more to win Verdun than did all the German dead laying on the wounded lands east of the Maas.

Fort Belleville was stormed on May 16, thus breaching the final ring around Verdun. The French government, after hearing news of Petain’s wounding, ordered that the French Army move west of the Maas, else risk being cut off from retreat by the Germans advancing on Verdun from the northeast. William did hope to take the city and encircle the tens of thousands of French soldiers and either force a surrender or annihilate them. Many French soldiers were reluctant to retreat, but hearing news that the British Expeditionary Force was moving from the central sectors of the Western Front, mainly from further south along the Maas, and between it and the Moselle River. The movement of British forces from here weakened the line, but was deemed an acceptable risk considering the amount of reserves the Germans depleted in taking Verdun.

The first German units marched into Verdun, only an hour behind the retreating French, on May 17. To rob the Germans of any possibility of following up their victorious advance, the French destroyed the bridges linking Verdun to the lands west of the Maas. The Crown Prince ordered boats to be captured or brought up to the Maas, and planned to attempt the crossing on the 19th. However, orders from Berlin delayed this advance until May 20, then May 25, then the first week of June, and finally indefinitely. The German High Command sited the lack of reserves on the Western Front, as well as need for them in Poland-Lithuania as reasons for stopping the advance at Verdun. Though the advance came to a halt on May 17, the actual battle continued until the start of August, as French, British and even Spanish units attempted their own crossing of the Maas, with disastrous results. Upon taken their new forward positions, the German guns had the Maas targeted for such an eventuality. All large scale attempts to cross ended in blood baths, but smaller raids were successful

On June 16, the British attempted a crossing of the Maas thirty kilometers to the south. After establishing a beachhead, the Crown Prince moved his own forces into position against the beachhead. The battle for control of the Maas continued until June 29, when the British finally withdrew across the river. The Fall of Verdun did not end the war in favor of the Germans, but it did force the iron drapes a little more open, as well as force Entente forces on the east bank of the Maas, south of Verdun, to withdrawal to the south and east, further adding to German advances, to thirty-seven kilometers on some portions of the central sector. After a little more than three months of fighting, more than a hundred thousand lay dead and three hundred thousand more wounded. It was one of the most costly defeats for the French, and costly victories for the Germans.



Poland-Lithuania

The Eastern Front had far more open spaces, and allowed for cavalry to be put in use. In the Trenches of France, Kentucky and Virginia, Cavalry did not even exist. Those horse soldiers in these fronts fought dismounted, and in the trenches. More commonly, in the North American Theater, cavalry fought out west. France did make use of Cavalry in North Africa, in their failed invasion of Libya.

German and Swedish cavalry units fought in small unit skirmishes. Any attempt to bring cavalry to bear in force on the enemy only resulted in thousands of horses and men being chopped up by entrenched machine guns. Between the cities of Warsaw and Lodz, cavalry ranged far and wide. In an attempt to make better use of cavalry, the German army armored several automobiles, mounted them with machine guns, and used them as a vanguard. This prospect failed, as cars tended to bog down in the snow of the Polish winter and mud of the Polish spring.

In April of 1914, the German Empire began its disastrous attempt to invade Sweden Proper. Controlling the waters around Germany’s Danish states, the Imperial Army massed hundreds of thousands of soldiers around Kopenhagen. On April 13, an armada of transports crossed the straits, landing near Landskrona. On a seven kilometer long beach front, a hundred thousand German soldiers attempted to break out and capture the port of Helsingborg to the north, and race across southern Sweden towards the south.

The Swedish campaign was intended to knock Sweden out of the war. With most of their army in the lands that were once Russia, the German High Command believed that if they could get a hold on the northern shores of the Baltic Sea, they could race to Stockholm and force the Swedes out. As we all know, this was a spectacular failure. Sweden did not leave its coast undefended, especially on their side of the ‘Oresund’ (the Sound). German forces did not simply wade ashore in the cold water. Instead, they were greeted by only a few thousand, well dug in defenders and their machine guns.

The Swedish Campaign lasted for three months, with Germans unable to extend their front lines much further than day one. Additional Swedish forces moved into to bolster defenses. The German High Seas Fleet was of little use, for only a week after the landings occurred, their guns were soon turned back to sea. Even shelling fortifications with three hundred millimeter guns failed to destroy the Swedish defenders. Answering Sweden’s call for aid, the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet set out in the North Sea to engage the High Seas Fleet.

The two main bodies did not engage each other in 1914. Instead, a series of squadron-sized battles took place: Dogger Bank on April 29, and Dover Straight on May 17. The former was a German victories, with three British cruisers sunk, while the latter was a decisive British Victory, where the Home Fleet annihilated a German cruiser squadron. Both navies attempted to gain the advantage on the North Sea and force the other side to fight on their own terms. Arguably, the Home Fleet could have won, and won decisively if not for the fact that the Royal Navy had a fleet half the size of the Home Fleet guarding the Western Atlantic. The German-American alliance successfully divided the attentions of Britain’s admiralty. Attempts to recall ships from Canada would only endanger their main base at Halifax.

On July 17, the German Army began to evacuate its Landskrona pocket, conceding victory in the North to Sweden. The Swedes never made any attempt to invade northern Germany, mostly due to their lack of a large, blue water fleet. Sweden had a sizable naval force to defend the Baltic Sea, but even it was no match for the High Seas Fleet. The only reason Germany did not destroy the Swedish Navy is, because like Britain, the Germans were also divided between two foes on the seas.



Colonial Wars

The wars in the European colonies were more of an after though that anything else. Despite the attempts to block each of the warring nations’ ports, attempts to strip them of their colonies was not pursued as eagerly. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had lost the Austrian Antilles to the British by 1914, as well as parts of Austrian West Africa. As with their heartland, the Germans were forced to take up the slack in West Africa, which it too had lost land to the British. The Germans and British again clashed in the Coral Sea, with British designs on Kaiserwilhemland thwarted on February 9, 1914. Likewise, a German invasion of Australia was highly impracticable.

The Pacific islands holdings of the two, such as the Marshals and Samoa, were largely ignored. If not for the news reports coming in from around the world, an inhabitant of these islands would not even know a war consumed the Great Powers. The Polynesians living upon these islands were indifferent to the wars of the foreigners. Actions in North Africa were far from successful for any attacker. The French invasion of Italian Libya failed, and likewise did the Italian invasion of Egypt.

By far, the largest theater in the colonial war was that of South America. With the Germans in their River Platte Colony, and the British in their Patagonian Colony, the south of that continent faced extensive campaigning. The region was most vital for the British, for it was a pastoral region, with large ranches of both cattle and sheep. Much of the island nation’s meat came from Patagonia. Miniature trench warfare took place on the coasts of the colonies, while the interior was more open to cavalry, which existed in small numbers away from the major fronts. The Germans did not want the beef (for they received much of their own from the United States) as they simply wished to deny it to their enemies.

For the first year of the war, beef from British Patagonia continued to flow across the Atlantic to supply the British Expeditionary Force, as well as the British people. As part of their plan of action against the British, the Germans were intent to cut off this trade. For the most part, they succeeded along the South American coast. Operating out of their River Platte colony, the German navy had control of the coast line between Patagonia and southern Brazil. However, this was not to stop the British from simply sailing across the South Atlantic to southern Africa and sailing north from there. Many U-boats operated out of Germany West Africa, but they were far from controlling the coast. In order to bottle up Patagonia, the German Navy made a move for the Falkland Islands. These islands were situated far off the Patagonian coast, and controlling them would severe Britain’s supply line.

The attempt was made on August 4, 1914, more than a year after the war began. A German fleet of cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats encountered the local British squadron at 11:47, local time. What followed was an utter disaster for the Germans. In the space of seven minutes, the German South Atlantic Fleet lost four cruisers and three destroyers along with the senior staff, with an additional twelve ships damaged, effectively reducing their forces by more than half. The British suffered only one cruiser damaged and four dead, seventeen wounded. The British pursued the Germans, forcing three of the damaged German ships to surrender. A fourth was scuttled off the coast of Patagonia, with its crew taken prisoner. The Falklands engagement was a decisive British victory, and lead to Germany losing control of the South American coast. The surviving Germans ships would remained bottled up in the River Platte until 1916.



The Ohio Front

Under the overall command of General John Pershing, the American forces on the Ohio Front had crossed the Ohio River and advanced into Kentucky following the declaration of war. However, the Confederates quickly threw up defenses to slow the Americans and eventually stop them. Like in Alsace-Lorraine, Kentucky was a mess of trenches. The western parts of Virginia (west of the Appalachians) fell much quicker before the Confederates could stop the invasion. The Ohio Front was critical for the Confederate war efforts, for western Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee were the store houses for much of the country’s coal reserves. The Americans wanted it for the very same reason. Coal mines in Virginia were quickly turned over to private business by the United States government and put into use.

On a more personal note for the soldiers, Kentucky was also home to the finest whiskey the Confederates produced. The corn fields were put to the torch rather than be allowed to fall into American hands, but distilleries in Wheeling, Virginia and the world famous Daniel Boone Distillery in Owensboro were captured, with barrels of booze still in tact. It was a moral boost early in the war, but the soldiers had consumed the stockpile long before 1913 was out. When trench warfare took over from the general advance, morale crashed and the alcohol was needed now more than ever. With many coal fields (though far from all) in American hands, Pershing began to set his sites on overrunning Tennessee and entering Alabama to take Birmingham. The Confederate capital was built after the Civil War and was named in honor of the first Confederate President, David Birmingham. Taking the capital would be the easy part, reaching it would not.

One of the bloodiest battles of the Great War occurred in western Tennessee between July 3, to October 21, 1914, between the United States of the Confederate States. The origin of this campaign occurred the previous year, when war was declared, and the United States First Army crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. The drive through western Kentucky met with little resistance, for the Confederates were not fully mobilized by the time the U.S. declared war. The crossing of the Ohio was done completely by boat and barge, with the United States Navy’s brown water fleet holding off Confederate gunboats. Though not fully prepared for war, the Confederates managed to destroy ever bridge crossing the Ohio River. The 14th Division, 1st Army entered the city of Paducah without opposition only two days after the war started. By the time the 1st Army reached the Tennessee Border, they ran into Confederate fortifications. Attempts in September of 1913, to dig out the entrenched Confederate Army of the Ohio met with over ten thousand American soldiers dead. The 1st Army dug in a few kilometers south of the Kentucky-Tennessee border and waited.

For the “Big Push”, 1st Army commander, General John ‘Black Jack’ Pershing (called ‘Black Death’ by the Confederates) brought forth the 14th Infantry Division and 21st Cavalry Division (dismounted) to the front lines in Benton County to spearhead the assault. Commanding these divisions were Lt. Generals Newton Baker and Samuel Arnold respectively. Both generals served in the Spanish War, along with Pershing, during the invasion of Puerto Rico. Baker distinguished himself by winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, while Arnold was the heir to the Arnold Legacy, stretching back to Benedict Arnold of the Revolution and Second Anglo-American War. On the Confederate side, the Army of the Ohio in the vicinity of the Tennessee River had two divisions; the 31st South Carolina and 12th Sonora, commanded by Major General James E. Sylvester III and Lt. General Robert Samson respectively.

On July 3, 1914, the United States army massed some forty thousand soldiers on a stretch of trenches five kilometers wide. In that same sector, the Confederates had only half. At 06:00 hours local time, over a thousand pieces of artillery, ranging from 75mm field guns to a 250 mm battery, opened up on this thin section of the front. For three days, several thousand tonnes of high explosive and shrapnel rained down on Confederate lines. General Pershing hoped the intense bombardment would rip the heart out of Confederate defenses. In his headquarters, kilometers behind the line, the Dutch War Correspondent, Hermann Overkirk wrote that soldiers believed the push would be as simply as walking across No-Man’s Land and jumping into the enemy trenches.

On July 6, at 08:00 the whistle was blown, and tens of thousands of American soldiers went over the top and charged into No-Man’s Land. Not only had the bombardment failed to destroyed the Confederate lines, it also failed to even break the barbed wire obstacles. When the offensive reached half-way to Confederate trenches, Confederate machine guns opened up on the advance. Thousands of American fell in that first advance. Some soldiers dug in, while others retreated. With a general retreat in order, the Confederates went over the top in hopes of running down the Americans before they re-entered their trenches. They failed, and fell by the thousands as well.

On July 7, a second bombardment, this one lasting from 21:00 to 06:30 on July 8. This time, Pershing held off the advance until after the Confederates poked their heads up. At 06:50, the bombardment started back up, catching many Confederates manning their machine guns. This second bombardment stopped after fifteen minutes, after which Americans went over the top again. This time, Americans entered the Confederate trenches, capturing the first two lines. An assault against a third line was broken, but the Americans held the second line. On July 9, the first reinforcements, the 103rd Nevada National Guard Brigade, the first of several brigades that would be thrown into the grinder.

Two more advances, on July 15, and July 24, managed to push the front line southward by almost a total of one kilometer, at the cost of ten thousand American and seven thousand Confederate casualties. A third assault on August 4, was broken by Confederate artillery, which was followed by a Confederate attack that retook a section of the front, one hundred meters deep. The front remained static for most of the month of August while both sides brought up reinforcements and munitions. During this lull in the battle, both sides raided and counter-raided each other’s lines. Above them, American and Confederate aircraft dueled at altitude of hundreds of meters. On the Tennessee River itself, the brown water fleet pressed against Confederate defenses and gunboats.

On September 3, 1914, Pershing ordered a new weapon deployed. In the early morning hours, dozens of canisters of chlorine were opened above the trenches, the gas carried southward by a breeze. One hour after the gas attack, General Arnold’s 21st Cavalry (dismounted) lead an assault of fifty thousand men along a several kilometer wide stretch of the front line. A majority of the Confederate defenders were incapacitated or killed by the Chlorine, which allowed Arnold to break through the lines and push further south. His attack was not a route, however. The effects of the chemical weapons were not as wide-spread as originally planned. Confederate artillery slowed the advance, but not before it punched through to a depth of ten kilometers.

On September 8, more Chlorine was deployed, and this time the breakthrough reached as far as Camden, the county seat for Benton County. The advance was once again stopped, this time only one kilometer short of Camden. When the Americans attempted a third chemical attack on September 27, the Confederates have already deployed counter-measures. They wore crude gas masks, an idea borrowed from the Western Front in Europe, where Germany was also using chemical weapons. The Americans were so surprised by Confederate resistance, that the Confederate actually managed to push them back two kilometers.

The last big push of the battle occurred on October 12. Again chlorine was used, along with two days worth of bombardment. By this time, Pershing had seriously depleted his war stocks and knew he could make only one last push before the winter began to creep upon his army. On October 14, seventy thousand Americans went over the top, and, with the help of a rolling barrage from artillery, managed to sweep over the Confederate lines. On October 15, the 124th New Hampshire Brigade along with elements of the 14th Infantry Division, entered Camden. The bombardment of the city was so severe, that Confederate General Samson was wounded during the attack. He was unable to be evacuated from his position and fell into American hands that day. Attempts by medics to save him failed, and Samson died the following day.

The offensive did not stop until it was ten kilometers south of Camden. By October 19, the Americans were exhausted, and Pershing made the decision to halt the advance and dig in. On October 21, he called a halt to all offensive operations. He would spent the winter of 1914-15 replenishing both his army and its weaponry. The battle cost some one hundred thirty thousand American casualties (of which twenty percent died). A further seventy thousand Confederates were recorded as casualties during the Battle of the Tennessee River. As a result of the battle, the United States Army was firmly entrenched in western Tennessee and in control of the lower Tennessee River. The Confederates were never able to dislodge Pershing from his gains. Any dreams of taking the capital, much less cutting the Confederacy into two were dashed as a result.

Though neutral, the Dutch public was still interested in how the war progressed. Newspapers across the Provinces, and the whole of the Commonwealth related the exploits of armies, generals and even the common soldier. For the Dutch media, gaining access to the front was difficult. The French wanted no part of the idea, and there was little love-loss between Britain and the Netherlands. Even Germany was wary of reporters, fearing they were either spies or would accidently pass along valuable information to spies. The only nation that openly welcomed Dutch reporters was the United States.

In fact, the United States, after a century of humiliation, was more than eager to show the world its power. Reporters imbedded at the front, or near it, gave the war in North America excellent documentation, as was the case with Brazilian reporter Hermann Overkirk. Overkirk managed to get himself attached to the 1st Army along the Ohio Front, and to the offices of its commanding officer. His reports gave readers across the Commonwealth a detailed account of the horrors of modern warfare.

Throughout 1913, a static line developed within the Confederate State of Kentucky. It was not until 1914, at the Battle of the Tennessee River that the initial dead lock was broken. Over a year leading to the battle, Overkirk wrote and wired his stories of despair back home. One side would shell the other side all week, in vein hope of smashing a hole in the line. When the dust cleared, and the attackers ‘went over the top’, the defenders would crawl out of their well fortified subterranean homes, take up machine guns, and mow down the attackers. When the attackers retreated, the defenders attacked, only to get cut down by the attacker’s machine guns once they were safely back in their trenches. Tens of thousand of lives were thrown away in these futile charges, that seldom managed to take the first line of trenches. War had gone a long way since the days of Napoleon, and industrialization made man a far more efficient killing machine.

In 1915, before the Commonwealth was drug into the conflict, Overkirk wrote the most preposterous story to ever see publication. He stood within view of the front, invited by Pershing, who wanted the world to witness this great breakout. What he saw, nobody believed at first. He saw large, noisy, armored beasts crawling across no-man’s land. ‘Armored cavalry’ they were called. This was an allusion to the desire to open a gap in the lines for more traditional cavalry to route the enemy as they had in previous wars. Horses stood little chance against machine guns, as was most devastatingly learned by the Cossacks in the Eastern Theater. The Americans gained several kilometers of front before the Armored Cavalry all suffered mechanical breakdowns.



War and Technology

The United States unleashed the first chemical weapons of the war, but these were far from the last. Chlorine would turn out to be the more benign of weapons unleashed upon humanity. By the start of 1915, all the Great Powers were using the element. Instead of opening canisters and being at the mercy of the wind, shells full of chlorine were soon being fired back and forth. In the United Kingdom, British engineers developed a far more dangerous agent, called mustard gas. This did not even need to be inhaled; it could burn on contact with skin, rendering newly developed gas masks only marginally useful.

The British were also the first to deploy truly armored vehicles in combat. Armored cars were tried in 1913, but with little success. The British designed a land ironclad, a “tank” they called it for it looked much like a water tank. These mobile pill boxes bristled with guns and had a crew of twenty. They terrorized the first German infantry to ever encounter them, but not the artillerymen. Every gun in range quickly turned on these new weapons, and most were destroyed with relative ease. The same story would repeat itself on all fronts as all combatants developed their own tanks. Simply introducing a new weapons was of little use unless the tactical doctrine to use it had yet been invented.

Airplanes, which started as simple observation craft, quickly evolved during the Great War. To combat scouts, most opposing scouts were armed to shoot down their opponent. The Americans designed the first airborne gun platform, dubbed a pursuit plane since it was designed to pursue scouts. In response, scouts grew faster. A new type of plane arrived when the first scout dropped a grenade upon enemy trenches. The bomber quickly grew from a single-engine, single-seat aircraft to a multi-engine platform capable of dropping several bombs on enemy targets. By 1915, small fleets of these aircraft began to appear over the trenches. Like artillery, they did little against the ground-pounders, but they were used with some success in destroying targets behind enemy lines. Pursuit planes were soon adapted to shoot down bombers.

Submarines, which were simply ships at the start of the century, soon turned out to be the ideal commerce raiders. The first to use submarines in combat was the Confederacy. With many of their capital ships sunk or crippled, the Confederate States desperately needed a way to strike at American shipping, and even in breaking the blockade. The CSS Copperhead was the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, when it torpedoed the frigate USS Pallas some thirty kilometers east of Hilton Head Island. Germany took to the idea and began to use its own underseeboots to sink British shipping.

Even before the war, there was concern in the world navies on how to track such ships. In 1907, American President Theodore Roosevelt (who was re-elected in 1912 after a four year absence) ordered his Secretary of Navy to find a way to track submarines. The idea of sonar came about from learning how dolphins track their prey, but was not as easy as bouncing soundwaves off targets beneath the sea. Early sonar sets were bulky and unreliable. When tripped, the ship simply sent a scattershot of depth charges, set to the estimated depth, and hoped for a kill. Many submariners died horrible deaths, but far more escaped these early submarine destroyers.





The Potomac Front

While western Virginia was overran, northern Virginia came under American occupation. Lands north of the Rappahanock were almost completely in American hands by the start of 1915. This narrow stretch of land between the Potomac and Rappahanock cost most than a million casualties, including over three hundred thousand killed, to conquer. Confederate losses were absolutely smaller, but proportionally slightly higher. The Confederate tendency to charge machine gun positions in trenches longer than Americans would, is what lead to the higher percentage of losses. Southern culture did not permit a man to run from certain death as easily as Yankee society.

Many of the Confederate States’ more able officers died this way, because up to the rank of Colonel, Confederate officers believed in personally leading charges. They sought personal glory more than their northern cousins, and paid the ultimate price for this. As General White Water would later say “Glory in battle died when war was industrialized.” From the start of the Great War until well into 1915, the Potomac Front slowly crawled from Alexandria to the north bank of the Rappahanock River. Here it stalled in 1914, when an attempt to bridge the river by the VII Corps failed, with the loss of twelve thousand lives. In March of 1915, as part of the spring time offensive, the III Corps and XI Corps, under the command of General Clarence White Water, was tasked with bridging the river at Fredericksburg. White Water was born in the state of Iroquois and graduated from Fort Arnold in 1885. Like all Great War Generals, he participated in the Spanish War and fought on Puerto Rico.

Opposing White Water, was the Central Corps of the Army of Virginia, under the command of A.H. Stevenson III, the son of a wealth plantation owner and Senator from Georgia. On conclusion of the war, Stevenson was expected to take his father’s place in the Senate while A.H. II retired to running the family estate. At his command were some one hundred fifty thousand soldiers to oppose the Americans’ two hundred seven thousand.

At 0400, on March 21, 1915, White Water ordered a four hour bombardment of enemy installations and trenches on the south bank of the Rappahanock. Along with high explosives and chlorine, a new weapon, mustard gas, was used to soften up the Confederate defenses. The lingering affects of mustard gas caused minor blistering to the first wave of Americans, who crossed the river in hundreds of rafts, at 0815. The Confederates were far from obliterated, despite having some twenty thousand shells land on a length of the frontier no more than two kilometers in width.

After the end of the first day, and the loss of ten thousand American soldiers wounded and killed, White Water managed to secure a beachhead a kilometer east of Fredericksburg. Through the night of the 21st and all of the 22nd, Americans bombarded Confederate positions while engineers threw up several pontoon bridges. Barges delivered heavier equipment, such as the newly developed tank. American tanks were little more than giant rhomboids with tracks and cannon and machine guns pointing out of several openings. Seven of these tanks were delivered to White Water to use in breaching Confederate lines and pushing further in land.

On the 24th, the tanks lead the assault against Confederate trenches. The first line of trenches was overran with minimal difficulty; the Confederate soldiers panicked and flew at the sight of these land ironclads. Secondary and tertiary trenches were captured, at the loss of two tanks. Both broke down due to mechanical failure. One that failed was targeted and destroyed by Confederate batteries. The tanks proved effective weapons of terror, but the early models left a lot to be desired for combat. By March 29, the last tank broke down and was destroyed by Confederate barrages.

On April 1, the Stevenson attempted to organize a counteroffensive to “drive the Yankees back into the river”. The Confederate attack failed, and allowed the Americans to gain several hundred more meters of ground. White Water launched attacks on the city of Fredericksburg on April 2, April 3 and April 4. The first two assault were repulsed, with thousands of American casualties. The third attack breached the city’s defenses. From April 5 to April 8, street fighting claimed thousands of more lives on both sides. Artillery from American and Confederate batteries reduced much of the city to rubble in attempts to destroy their opponents. Civilian deaths in the Battle of Fredericksburg are inconclusive, but it is believed nearly 30% of the city’s remaining population perished.

General White Water called an end to the offensive on April 15, when severe rains hampered advancement. At the end of the nearly month long battle, the United States took the town of Fredericksburg and expanded the front in that area some five kilometers south of the Rappahanock River, securing the crossing and pushed Confederate guns far enough south to prevent them from destroying the pontoon bridges that connect the new front with the rest of American occupied territory. On the Confederate side, thirty thousand soldiers were killed, and twice as many more wounded. The Americans lost sixty thousand dead, most during the crossing and storming of Fredericksburg.

The biggest single tragedy of Fredericksburg was the American charge up Marye’s Ridge. An entire American brigade charged up that ridge, where Confederate trenches could rain down fire on them, and the rest of the battlefield. Out of three thousand American soldiers to charge on April 9, only three officers and seventeen enlisted men were able of walked off the killing fields under their own power. The Ridge was not taken that day, and required a second, division-sized charge the next day. One of the surviving officers, a Captain Dwight Eisenhower, was permanently scared by the lessons of his suicidal superiors. In later wars, Eisenhower would anguish over his own command decisions in later wars, knowing that his own planning would cost many young men their lives.



The Turkish Decision

On May 1, 1915, the Ottoman Empire entered the Great War. Unlike the other combatants, they did not take sides. Instead, they launched an attack against Austro-Hungary in the Balkans, and against Sweden in the Caucasus. The Turks were not interested in balances of power or global politics; they simply saw two bordering powers that have been weakened by nearly two years of war, and planned to grab as much of their land as possible. From the outset, the Turkish Decision was a poor one.

In May of 1915, the Turks crossed into Bosnia, and were easily repelled by local militia and Bosnian units of the Austrian Army. The Turks had planned on liberating their co-religionists from Habsburg oppression. As it turned out, the Bosniaks did not desire liberation from one empire into another. Along the Danube, Balkan nationals would end up fighting and dying for two ancient and despotic regimes that cared little about their own plight.

In response to their attack, the Austro-Hungarian Empire readily crossed the Danube and seized Belgrade. Less than a month into their war, the Turks were already humiliated as the garrison commander of Belgrade simply surrendered when his cavalry were cut to shreds by machine guns. Apparently the Ottomans had not been paying close attention to the Great War, as they employed pre-1913 tactics in 1915. The Turkish Army of 1915, was even less modern than the rest of the Great Powers in the year 1900. Turkey also had only limited industrialization, and still existed partially in the feudal state of the rest of Europe several centuries earlier.

The Turks fared far worse against Sweden. The Black Sea had once been an Ottoman Lake. This lake was easily entered by Swedish gunboats and torpedo boats. These torpedo boats ambushed the Ottoman Black Sea fleet outside of Sevastopol, sinking a full half of the vessels in the dawn twilight of May 5, 1915. The surviving vessels, outdated and damaged, limped back to the Anatolian coast of the Black Sea. Had the Swedes possessed a Black Sea fleet of their own, they could very well have landed their soldiers near Constantinople and ended Turkish involvement in the war before it really began.

Fighting in the Caucasus Mountains consumed a great deal of Sweden’s resources, which could have went to battling the Germans. Ottoman attempts to invade were turned back with minimal loss to Sweden. When Sweden went on the offensive, they quickly took losses, more from the locals than from the Ottoman Army. At the Battle of Grozny (May 20-July 5), the Swedish Army did more battle with Checnyan partisans than the Turks. The nationalities of the Caucasus saw the early Turkish losses as an opportunity to rise up against their own oppressors. Normally, the Swedes could have sat back and watched their enemy disintegrate. However, the possibility that this rebellion would spread into the Swedish Ukraine could not be ignore.



The Home Front

Civilians felt the impact of the Great War as it dragged on into its second year. Rationing was commonplace in all countries, including the United States. Americans accepted this intrusion into their lives by the state as a sacrifice of war. Rationing lessened as Confederate coal fields were put into American use. In many New England cities, homes were still heated by coal-fired stoves, as well as food cooked. Electricity was still a novelty, and would not even be commonplace nation-wide for more than a decade to come. Conversely, Confederate civilians had their own coal rations cut down to the point where large tracts of forest began to vanish in search of fuels for their own stoves. Of course, a Georgian winter was no where near as harsh as a Vermonter one.

In Europe, where rationing and government management of life was commonplace before the war, tightening of supplies was just part of life. Many countries would have “Meatless Mondays” (or whatever the non-Americans called their own days), but the British were forced to go without meat for two days out of the week. Bread was also rationed, as the British Expeditionary Force consumed a great deal of food. To compensate, park lands and former prized flower gardens were ploughed under and put to use cultivating turnips, potatoes and anything else British civilians could grow.

In North America, where the majority of the overall population still lived on farms, food shortages were rarer. In the United States, who had not even a single square meter of their own land occupied, rural Americans would not even know there was a war going on, if not for the shortage of decent quality tobacco. Luxuries were rationed even here, such as sugar, coffee and any foodstuff that had to be imported. Rationing was also less severe, Meatless Mondays aside, because American soldiers could partially live of the land in occupied territories.

Policies of occupation differed from front to front. General Pershing insisted his army pay fair market value for everything they seize from those under their occupation. White Water did not have this option, for much of the Virginian countryside was ploughed by artillery since 1913. On the York Peninsula, with its appalling cost in life, American units simply took what they wanted. The Columbia Front was unique, in that at the outset of the war, it was the only piece of territory planned to become American again (aside from the Red River Valley and northern Maine), thus it was the State Department’s policy that the civilians not be looted.

Conscription, low in 1913, started to take its toll on the civilians by 1915. Even Americans were subject to being drafted during war time. When the stream of volunteers began to dry up, nations began to conscript on masse. The British government immediately let every unmarried young man know they were up for the draft. The United States extended this too all men between 18 and 30, for fathers and childless men were all Americans equally. Germany and France practiced large scale peacetime conscription, so additional drafting did not have quite the same impact on their populations.

To take the places of many young and able-bodied men who were sent off to the front, women entered the workforce in the largest numbers ever. Munition and arms factories, many with assembly lines perfect for unskilled labor, brought in women workers by the millions. Only certain industries that require high strength, such as the steel industry, exempted women employees. The Confederacy had an addition labor pool in their underclass of black Confederates (which comprises around 30% of their total population) which lay largely untapped.

The situation in the Confederacy was so bad in 1915, that the Confederate Congress debated whether or not to allow their blacks to enlist in the Confederate Army. When they finally permitted it, albeit in segregated units, a surprisingly large number of blacks enlisted. They might be second-class citizens, but their nationalism was as strong as the whites, and fought just as hard. The American government attempted to exploit the discrimination of the south by offering amnesty to any black who surrendered to them. The ploy attracted a few deserters, but only a few. Despite the equality of the north, where skin color was treated largely with indifference (partly due to the small percentage of black Americans in comparison with the Confederacy), the black Confederates remained loyal to their own nation.



Unrestricted Naval Warfare

By the Spring of 1915, the naval powers of the world have declared unrestricted submarine warfare upon each other. Before, warships would have to warn their victims that they were going to be sunk. Afterwards, submarines could sink of sight. This caused a spike in destruction of combatants’ shipping and commerce. The Germans were first in declaring the waters around the British Isles as an unrestricted warzone. The Americans followed by declaring the same of their blockade of the Confederacy. The Swedes were next, doing so in the Baltic and North Seas.

The Mediterranean soon was declared an unrestricted zone by all belligerents. Unrestricted warfare was also extended to surface ships, where commerce raiders could sink ships on sight. The raiders above the waves were not as feared as those beneath. With an enemy cruiser, lookouts on a freighter could spot them before they entered gun range. Submarines were far harder to locate, for only their periscope was visible in the choppy waves. This represented a decentralization of war on the high seas. However, engagements between enemy fleets was still a possibility, as the British and Americans proved. Despite the amount of ship required to defend Britannia, the British still proved able to defend their own Commonwealth as well as shipping lanes.

What has become known as the Battle of the Grand Banks was little more than a skirmish between the Royal (British) Navy and United States Navy on April 8, 1915, off the coast of Newfoundland. The American plan was to cut off Halifax from its naval supply lines, and then have the army storm the city. At the time of the battle, the front lines were well outside of Nova Scotia, in New Brunswick. Halifax was the key to Britain’s entire war effort inside of Canada. Without a base in the western North Atlantic, Canada would surely fall. Leading up to the battle, and following it, the United States put political pressure on Quebec to either enter the war against the British, or at least to close the Saint Laurence to British traffic.

The big push by the Army towards Halifax commenced on March 23, and quickly bogged down as British and Canadian trenches were easily resupplied from British factories. Even German successes in the North Sea and raiding commerce had yet to sever the link between Britain and its colonies and dominions. The U.S. Atlantic Fleet sortied from Boston shortly after the offensive began, and circled to the east and north of Halifax. Under the command of one Admiral James McKinnon, the fleet was poised to interdict shipping and intercept the inevitable relief. However, McKinnon did not know that the Royal Navy was already patrolling off Newfoundland. On April 8, as a dense fog flowed over the North Atlantic, the British with five battleships and seven battlecruisers ambushed the American squadron of six battleships and six battlecruisers.

The battle was evenly matched, however the visibility was so poor that neither side could accurately sight the other. In this day long battle, not a single ship was sunk, and only a few suffered light damage. Compared to other naval battles of the Great War, the Grand Banks was relatively bloodless and a rather anti-climatic battle for dominion over North America. By nightfall, the American ships, spent on ammo and frustrated by visibility, withdrew towards the south and back to Boston to take on more ammunition and hopefully hunt down the British another day. Tactically speaking, the Battle of the Grand Banks was a draw. Strategically speaking, it was a British victory, for they kept the maritime highway open into Halifax and the rest of Canada, at least until Quebec finally entered the war some months later.



The Van Der Weld Incident

Unrestricted submarine warfare took a devastating toll on the merchant fleets of the world during 1915. The Staaten-Generals of all the Dutch states, along with the Commonwealth Assembly told Dutch companies and merchants that they would enter combatant’s territorial waters at their own risk. Once it was clear the Royal (Dutch) Navies would not protect any other nation’s trade, the fear of reprisal diminished and ships flying Commonwealth flags were fair game. All sides still avoided antagonizing the might Royal (Dutch and Brazilian) Navies in international waters– unless they had proof the ships were aiding their enemy, and could get away with it.

However, the Commonwealth made it perfectly clear that it would not tolerate attacks on its nationals while in Commonwealth or international waters. Within British, American or German water were one thing, but the Dutch considered international water vital to their trade and commerce. As many nations have learned throughout history, the quickest way to get the Dutch involved was to threaten their commercial empire. However, the Dutch Commonwealth claimed a territorial water limit of twenty kilometers, while most international treaties limited it to sixteen point one kilometers (ten miles). In this case, territorial claims often overlapped, such as with the United Provinces and Germany, Brazil and British Guyana, and so on.

It was also in these disputed zones, while the war was in its third year of stalemate, that one of the greatest controversies of the Twentieth Century occurred. In the waters between Germany and the United Provinces, at a point where coasts angled and the Dutch expanded their claims into German waters, did the Dutch finally get drawn into the conflict. The Kapenstaaten freighter Van Der Weld sailed, destined to Bremen, and behind it a submarine tracked. As soon as the Van Der Weld entered what the international community considered German waters, the submarine sped into an attack run.

From all account, the Van Der Weld was struck in the forward hold. Since the ship was carrying ammonium nitrate to sell to the Germans, the ships erupted into a monestrous fireball, killing all on board, and through pieces of the hull some twenty-five kilometers distance. The explosion was so powerful, that the HMS Grendal, a United Province destroyer not only spotted it, but felt the concussion. At once, the captain of the Grendal, Simon van der Hague, ordered his ship to pursue the submarine in Dutch waters. With primitive radio equipment, the Grendal sent word to near-by Dutch ships to coordinate in a sub round up.

In the afternoon of July 3, 1915, a squadron of two Dutch destroyers and three frigates, force the Swedish submarine Narwhal to beach itself on a German beach opposite the bay from the Province of Ommelanden. The Dutch captured the submarine and detained its crew. When word reached the Hague, the Staaten-General went into a frenzy, an emergency session of the Commonwealth Assembly was called, and Frederick III stormed the Swedish embassy demanding to speak with the ambassador. When the ambassador refused to see him, the King had the embassy closed, Swedish nationals expelled from the country, minus the ambassador, who would speak with the King.

The meeting lasted for a few minutes, for with each protest from the Swede, the King’s anger grew. When the ambassador finally acknowledged Swedish submarines operated in that area of German waters, Frederick rebutted by saying it was Dutch water, and by sinking a Boer freighter in Dutch waters, Sweden had doomed itself to a war it could not win. With those last words, the ambassador from Sweden was unceremoniously ejected from the United Provinces.

Since international affairs are decided by the Commonwealth as a whole, the Netherlander Staaten-General was understandably frustrated. The best it could do, was for the hereditary members of the Senaat to call up the militias of their respective Provinces. The VOC, was not tied to any state formalities, and its fleet was put on alert, though it took some time. It was not until all ships made port could they learn that the Dutch Commonwealth was now at war. Even during unrestricted attacks, the belligerents avoided attacking any ship that waved the orang-white-blue with big bold black VOC labeled across them. Only property of the VOC could wave that flag, and nobody could register under them. Even if they could, it was not likely that the VOC would give the ships back.

On July 17, 1915, as soon as he representatives could either be round up, or in the case of Brazil, sail in, the Commonwealth Assembly made the monumental decision. For once, there was little debate and no rivalries. What happened in the United Provinces could happen everywhere else if the Swedish menace was not confronted. In one of their few unanimous votes, the Commonwealth declared war upon Sweden.



The Commonwealth Goes to War

At the start of Dutch involvement in the Great War, the bulk of their army was not even in the United Provinces. Soldiers were scattered between Commonwealth states, such as Brazil and India, as well as the colonies, the oil rich Indies quickly reclaiming their spot as the most import of Dutch possessions. In order to bring a large enough army to bear in Europe, divisions of soldiers and volunteers would have to be shipped in from Brazil and the Boer Republics. Over the next year, more than a million men would volunteer for service, though many of the colonials would be used in garrison duty due to the government in the Hague not confident of their reliability.

The United Provinces made immediate use of their strategic locations, in opening their railroads to use by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of Germans previously held in reserve stormed into northern France, along with over a hundred thousand Netherlander soldiers. The Entente was forced to commit all their reserves, as well as pull units off the Western Front in order to plug this breach. British units rushed across the English Channel in order to bolster Calais, which the German Army reached within ten kilometers of it before stopping.

The British were also forced to recall some of their colonial units from less threatened colonies, or at least those not vital to Britain’s own empire, in order to reinforce the British Army in Britain itself. The threat of Germany or America invading the islands was laughable, but the threat of the Dutch making an attempt was taken very seriously by London. The Admiralty was force to abandon less vital seas, such as most of the Pacific, in order to strengthen Britannia’s defenses. With the High Seas Fleet and the Royal Dutch Navy joining forces, the idea of the Home Fleet being destroyed in a single, decisive battle was no longer hypothetical.

The Commonwealth’s naval forces took to dominating maritime choke points, easily blockading Sweden, as well as the French Atlantic Coast. Neither of those states had sufficient naval forces to easily break the blockade (though the French still had access through her southern coast, while British control of Gibraltar prevented a total blockade). The British resisted the blockade, and even attempted a blockade of its own against the United Provinces, whose confined coast line made it less difficult on paper than in fact.

Dutch victories on the ground were almost immediate. Following the declaration of war on Sweden, and the Entente’s declaration against the United Provinces and Brazil, the Dutch General Staff enacted War Plan Violet. Though the city was long since relinquished by the United Provinces, taking Mons was key to War Plan Violet. Along with a general advance into northern France, the Royal Navies would close off the English Channel to French traffic, and incidentally British traffic. In August of 1915, four Dutch divisions, the 1st Holland, the 5th Brabant, the 8th Liege and the 4th Brazilian Division, under the command of Field Marshall Albert van Meinrad, crossed the French frontier and encircled Mons. For three weeks, the Dutch Army laid siege to the city.

The Dutch crossed the border largely unopposed, along with German divisions that have been shifted with the United Provinces’ entry into the war. Germany was allowed limited movement through Dutch territory to attack France. In August of 1915, the bulk of France’s army was dug in along the German and Italian frontiers. Only old men and militia defended the border with the Dutch. These garrison units were swept aside by nearly one hundred thousand Netherlander and Brazilian soldiers. Resistance within the city was minimal. However, van Meinrad was a conservative and cautious general, deciding to reduce the city in hopes of forcing a surrender. He foresaw a bloodbath should Mons degenerate into a street-by-street brawl.

During the siege, the Dutch Army slowly crept into the suburbs. It was during these slow advances against militia that lead to the battle’s greatest tragedy. On August 19, the Grand Prince of Norway, heir to the throne, Captain Frederick Henry van Oranje, was shot by a partisan in the chest. The bullet lodged in his lung, and required extensive surgery to remove. For months afterwards, the Prince’s survival was in question. He never fully recovered from the wound, but managed to walk out of the hospital in the summer of 1916. In retaliation, the Prince’s company avenged their fallen leader by torching the entire neighborhood and summarily executing one hundred able bodied Frenchmen. The city itself surrendered on August 23, when it was apparent that no relief would come to the city. German flanking maneuvers through the United Provinces hit the British Expeditionary Force, forcing them to retreat or risk being cut off from the Channel, which in turn forced the French around Verdun to withdraw to new lines further west.

Across the Atlantic, the Royal Brazilian Navy was taking its toll on British supply lines. The Germans, confined to the River Platte following their disastrous attack on the Falklands, could never manage the same level of destruction as the Commonwealth. Even sailing across the South Atlantic did not offer the British security. Though Boer Republics, such as Kapenstaaten, lacked strong navies of their own, they did (along with Angola) offer bases from where the Royal Brazilian Navy could operate. Brazilian cruisers and battlecruisers operated as individuals during the destruction of British shipping. Even battleships participated. The KBS Recife alone sank some seventy thousand tonnes of shipping during 1916.

The British responded by strengthening their convoys, which were put into place to protect against U-boats. However, the destroyers escorts, which were apt at killing submarines, proved less than ideal to tackle battlecruisers. The Dutch did commit to large-scale attacks as well. On October 1, 1915, the Royal Brazilian Navy struck at the British squadron at the Falklands, destroying it in a two hour engagement. The British commander put up a valiant fight, but the small colonial force was simply outclassed. Curious enough, the Brazilians did not follow up with an invasion of the islands.

This stress in the South Atlantic soon forced the British to abandon the Indian Ocean as well, for what point was defending a distance ocean when their own homeland lacked sufficient food to fight its war. The French Navy, when not battling the Italians in the Mediterranean or escorting French shipping to Mexico, did attempt sorties against Java with their small fleet in Indochina. The naval engagements off Indonesian Coasts were slightly more successful than the British defense of the Falklands, only in that the French were not annihilated. The French were able to elude the Dutch among hundreds of smaller islands. After one attempt in force, the French commander simply decided to split his forces into individual ships and raid Dutch commerce with moderate success. The French even raided the coast of Hainan, with some success.

Overall, the British were losing ships faster than the Dutch, but there was one key exception. The KNS Half-Moon, fought its last battle on November 17, 1915. It was the single largest loss of life in the history of the Royal (Dutch) Navy before the advent of a integrated Commonwealth military command, including the death of Lieutenant Mandrick van Oranje, second-in-line for the Dutch Crown. Only three sailors survived the legendary duel between Half-Moon and the HMS (British) Resolution. During November of 1915, the British and Dutch navies had not commenced in a decisive battle. The British Admiralty wished to avoid such a battle, for the loss of the Home Fleet would spell a quick doom for the British Empire. Instead, the British reverted to a tactic of commerce raiding, attempting to hamper the United Provinces’ industrial capacity and economic health.

In October, the United Provinces lost some 43,000 tonnes of shipping to commerce raiders, far smaller than what her enemies were losing. This loss caused the Royal (Dutch) Navy to draw off some ships from blockade duties against Sweden and the French coast to patrol against British raiders. Even before the Dutch Navy began to send battleships and cruisers on patrols, the VOC took to convoying and escorting these convoys with company cruisers and destroyers. The United Provinces’ own commerce raiding managed to close the British Expeditionary Force from easy reply across the English Channel.

By the start of November, five Dutch battleships, six battlecruisers and twelve cruisers were patrolling the North and Norwegian Seas, hunting down the British raiders. On November 15, the KNS Half-Moon learned that two Dutch freighters were sunk off the coast of Bergen. Captain Maurice Steinert gave the order to turn West by Northwest to intercept what he believed to be a lone British cruiser. Aircraft launched from Norway spotted two ships, instead of the one, and reported them as a cruiser and battlecruiser. Steinert continued the pursuit, believing his battleship could take both British ships, or at the very least, damage them to the point of them retreating.

The ships entered visual range early in the morning of November 17. It was only when spotters on board the Half-Moon had visual confirmation did Steinert learn he was facing a British battleship and heavy cruiser. After two days of pursuit, he could not easily abandon the chase. At 0912, the British spotted Half-Moon and turned to engage. The first shots were fired by the cruiser Excelsior at 0917. These shots fell short, causing only fountains of water to spray the Dutch battleship.

Over one hundred shots were traded in the first hour of the battle, with only near misses to show for the effort. At 1002, shots from the Half-Moon straddled the Excelsior, causing damage to its engines. With Excelsior slowing down, Steinert focused his ship’s guns on the Resolution. Shots between the two battleships scored hits on each other once they closed within ten kilometers of each other. Two shots ruptured the aft hull of Half-Moon and took out a smoke stack. One well placed shot from Half-Moon blew open Resolution’s forward turret. It was only dumb luck (or perhaps inefficiency of munition loaders) that prevented the forward quarter of the British battleship from vanishing in a large flash.

Excelsior attempted to cross the stern of the Half-Moon and bring all of its turrets to bear on the Dutch ship’s engines. One shot did hit Half-Moon in the stern, breaking open several square meters of hull well above the waterline, and knocking out one of the ships screws. The Dutch responded with both aft turrets, knocking out one of the Excelsior’s turrets, and ripping open the super structure. Fires raged on the cruiser as it was forced to withdraw from combat while it fought to prevent flames from breaching the magazine. Steinert could have turned to finish the cruiser, but decided to focus on the greater threat; a still living battleship.

At 1044, the two battleships closed within five kilometers of each other, and unleashed broadsides. The Half-Moon knocked out the second of Resolution’s forward turrets, causing fires to break out across the forward deck. With two turrets out of action, the British battleship was forced to withdraw from battle. However, it made one last pass at Half-Moon before steering westward. Again the Half-Moon punched holes into Resolution. However, the Resolution scored two direct hits on the Dutch battleship. The first hit knocked out two port-side spontoons. The second hit penetrated the aft magazine. Within a second of that hit, the Half-Moon erupted into a fireball, the after third disintegrating, and the rest of the ship ripped open. Debris flew more than three kilometers of the explosion, which was probably why there were any survivors at all. The shockwave of the explosion rocked Resolution and threatened to capsize the damaged battleship.

Half-Moon quickly sank under eighty meters of water, taking over twelve hundred sailors and officers to a watery grave. The Resolution made a quick pass across where the ship sank, and found three Dutch sailors floating in the water, all dazed. News that the Half-Moon sank hit the United Provinces like a dagger to the heart. Following the wounding of the Crown Prince of Norway at Mons, the death of his brother opened a potential succession crisis when King William VII dies. The loss of the battleship also forced the Dutch Navy to send patrols out in force; no longer would lone battleships patrol the North Sea. This, in turn, allowed the British to run the blockade of their forces on the continent with a little more regularity.

The British took one more hit in their war effort in 1916, when Quebec finally entered the war on the side of the Americans. This completely cut off the Canadian interior from shipping directly from the Atlantic. Now, if Ontario was to be resupplied, it would have to be via the Hudson Bay, and this could only happen when the bay was not frozen over. If the war drug into another winter, the High Command in London expected Canada would be lost.



The Last Push

Dutch entry in the war weakened the Entente and allowed the Central Powers one last push. By 1916, the United States had effectively reconquered all territories ever lost to the British, and had control over the Confederate States of Kentucky, Durango and Cuba, with Union governments already reinstated. A new front in France threatened to outflank previously held lines, and the Swedes were growing tired in Poland-Lithuania. The Dutch entry also did much to boost morale for the Central Powers, and crush it for the Entente.

Germany had already pushed the Western Front further west than it had been through the whole war, but the Entente were going to make one last push. On the morning of February 18, 1916, at 0230, hundreds of Confederate guns along the Potomac (or more accurately the Rappahanock) Front opened up upon American trenches. The first offensive of 1916 went to the Confederate States, and the government in Birmingham demanded that the Yankees be pushed back across the river that they crossed the previous year. At the command of the dwindling Army of Virginia, A.H. Stevenson III, discovered a relatively soft spot in the American lines at Chancellorsville, a town west from Fredericksburg. Chancellorsville fell to the Yankees the previous fall, and attempts to retake it before rain and snow made offensives impractical failed miserably.

During the winter of 1915-16, the Confederates stockpiles a majority of their industrial output of ammunition along the Potomac Front, in hopes of doing exactly as Birmingham commanded. With entry of the Dutch Commonwealth into the war against the Entente, it was only a matter of time before the Central Powers were victorious. Knowing they could no longer win outright, the Confederate government intended to hold as much land as possible.

After two days worth of bombardment, at 0800, on February 20, some eighty thousand Confederate soldiers went over the top and charged into the lines south of Chancellorsville. Unlike the early days of the war, the soldiers had no illusions that the Americans would have been wiped out in the bombardment. Sure enough, machine guns soon began to mow down advancing Confederates. However, unlike early attacks, the Confederates now had their own tanks. After pushing the Americans back several lines of trench-works, American tanks soon arrived on the battlefield to match Confederate Armor.

This early armored battle proved a disaster for both sides. With sufficient firepower and inability to maneuver, both sides effectively annihilated each other. The tanks accomplished their task, and punched a small whole in American lines, allowing Confederates to regain several hundred meters of front, at the cost of tens of men for each meter. The following day, the Confederates launched a second early morning assault, this time without tanks for support. The Americans were ready for it, and blunted the wave of Confederates against their new front-line trenches. Confederates managed a well organized retreat. The Americans attempted no counterattack.

On February 26, the Confederates commenced a second, day-long bombardment of American positions around and even in Chancellorsville. The city sat only two kilometers behind, and served as a supply depot for this section of the front. However, knowing the Confederates were on their last leg, General White Water ordered American forces to fall back north of Chancellorsville during the second bombardment. He would make the Confederates come to him, throwing themselves on a new network of trenches and fortifications constructed on the northern and eastern outskirts of the city.

Much to the Confederate soldiers’ surprise, on February 27, it appeared that the bombardment did in fact kill all the Yankees. Only a few Confederates were killed during the mad dash across no-man’s land, killed by mines and unexploded shells littering the field. The town itself was abandoned, its inhabitants refugees fleeing north to where the war was already a bad memory. White Water ordered the town to be zeroed in by American artillery during the second Confederate bombardment. As soon as Stevenson’s forces moved into the city, they were subjected to bombardment. Those Confederates the made it north of the city, ran into a wall of pill boxes and trenches, cutting them down in the hundreds. American aircraft joined in on the attack, strafing Confederate ranks advancing on the new front line.

The Battle of Chancellorsville ended on February 28, when Confederate soldiers retreated to lines south of the town. Chancellorsville was soon reduced to ruins as it remained no-man’s land for the duration of the war. Thus marked the final offensive of the Confederate Army along the Potomac Front. The Confederate Army was utterly spent, and from here on out could do little to prevent American advances, save to make them “take every mile only after its soaked in Yankee blood”, as one Captain George Patton would later say, though with slightly more color. The American Army was so tired after this battle, that it failed to follow up the attack, and knock Virginia out of the war.

Worse than the tactical defeat, Chancellerosville proved to be start of the Confederate downfall. General Stevenson’s apparent ineptitude served as a symbol, that the officer corp was comprised of nothing but the land-owning elite. This was far from true, for many middle ranking officers, such as the forementioned Patton, did work their way up in the world, first to get into the Confederate Military Academy, followed by earning their rank.

The merit of these Captains and Majors did nothing to ellivate the Confederate enlisted man’s anger. Many of the soldiers began to wonder just why they were fighting the North. After all, were Yankees not Americans– albeit misguided ones, too? With morale shattered from one too many blue-blooded planned attacks, sections of the Confederate Army in Virginia and Tennessee organized and went on what could only be called a strike. Soldiers refused to leave the trenches when ordered, nor would they go on patrol, nor risk their necks for the Southern Aristocracy. Hundreds of these soldiers ended up in court-marital, charged with mutiny. More than half were executed as a result.

Confederate soldiers would still fight for their States, but refused to do so for Birmingham. Soldiers from Texas, Kentucky and Sinoloa began to wonder why their own States did not make a separate peace with the Union. Kentucky was already lost, and gained nothing by having its people suffer from occupation. Discontent did not remain at enlisted levels for long. Within weeks, it spread to junior officers, who joined the strike.

Confederate censors must be commended for their job in covering up the mutinies. Had the United States known of them, then the Army might well have smashed into the lines. Roosevelt did learn of the mutinies, as did a number of officers in the General Staff. The division was not exploited. The end of the Confederate government was in sight. Roosevelt predicted that in a month, states would be secede from the Confederacy, an appropriate ending to a nation that formed by breaking away from another. Perhaps it was time to bring the wayward children home.

The government in Birmingham stared down the barrel of a total loss should the war drag on for another year. Confederate President Woodrow Wilson attempted to make contact with the Roosevelt Administration through the embassies of the one of the few neutral states; Chile. Chile had warm relations with both of the American nations, though were far warmer to Britain’s enemy than her ally. Wilson proposed a truce followed by a negotiated peace. Roosevelt was not about to make a separate peace, despite his failing health. He already surrendered any re-election bid in 1916.

Instead of making peace, Roosevelt would bide his remaining time on Earth. He wanted desperately to end the war while still President, to bask in glory one final time. If it was to be a final victory, than he was determined it shall be the bulliest victory of all time. His legacy would be to finally bring peace to the North American continent.



Peace Feelers

Paris was looking at a similar situation, though different problem. Their problem was not lack of resources or manpower, but lack of will. Where the Confederate soldier may fight for their home States even after the end had passed, the French were not likely to die for Paris. It was the French soldier who was breaking as victory looked further and further over the horizon. Despite the obvious, French Generals and Politicians labored under the delusion that patriotism alone would carry the day.

Attempts to bring the colossal struggle that consumed two continents to an end began as early as August of 1915. It was made by France through their Swiss Embassies. The negotiations were short and ended before they truly began. At that stage in the war, Germany demanded more from the French, in the form of their North African Protectorates and colonies, than they were willing to give. It would take another year, and more than two million more dead before war weariness hit Germany. The French were desperate for an end, and one more victory on the scale of Verdun in the fall of 1915 might have forced them to accept the loss of North Africa.

The Communist underground across Europe became active in the Spring of 1916, including elements within the French Army, largely among its non-commissioned officers. The Revolutionaries did have ties with those in the Balkans, however the French soldiery was more interested in ending the war than in great social and political reforms. The common soldier did begin to wonder why they were dying in droves and the arms manufacturers were untouched by the horrors of the trenches. Officers in the trenches dealt with the rumblings as best as they could, but the French High Command and Government dismissed such troubles, wanting to believe all soldiers would do their patriotic duty to France.



Balkan Revolution

The Great War pushed two ancient empires to their breaking points and beyond. It is highly unlikely that the Balkan Revolution would have been successful had the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empires not have already bled themselves white. This single event altered the face of Europe more drastically than any event in centuries. Out of the ashes of two ancient empires came the experiment in communism.

The causes of the Balkans Revolution are many, and stretch out decades before the last year of the Great War. Chief among them is the partition of the Balkan Peninsula between the Austrians and the Ottoman Turks. Nationalistic and Pan-Slavic sentiments alone would have inevitably lead to uprisings, as it had during the Nineteenth Century. During the same century, the doctrines of Marx and Engels reached across Europe. Marx always predicted that the socialist revolution would take place in the industrial west.

Though industrialization barely reached the Balkans at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, suppression of the workers was not the reason communism took hold. For three centuries, the bulk of the Orthodox Balkans were held under the thumb of Muslim Turks. Though some peoples, such as in Bosnia and Albania, eventually converted, the majority of the Balkan people were subject to the Jizya (religious tax for non-Muslims) and oppression that came about as result of the rise of nationalism during the 19th Century. In response to rebellions in Greece in 1848 and Serbia in 1878, entire towns and cities were depopulated, their inhabitants forcefully relocated, and in rare instances, enslaved. Along with slavery, forms of serfdom were still found in the Balkans up to the eve of the Balkan Revolution.

Reforms following the Napoleonic War sought to spread a uniformity across the Ottoman Empire. Before the reforms, the Orthodox and Catholic populations were governed by their own codes of law, using their own languages. The reforms sought to standardize laws across the Ottoman Empire, as well as imposing Turkish as the sole official language. In many cases, the Ottoman government tried to force assimilation.

North of the Danube, problems leading to the Balkan Revolution were opposite of the Turks. The Austro-Hungarians Empire lacked any cohesion, to the point that its army was comprised of ethnic units. Outside of Austria and Hungary, the majority of the Empire was impoverished, with taxes ruining the provinces. In both cases, the subject populace were treated as less than the ruling ethnicities. This inequality is also a leading contributor to the Balkan Revolution. Marxism’s supposed doctrine of equality and of a classless society appealed to the educated in the Balkans.

During the Great War, these subject populations found themselves fighting and dying for their rulers in Vienna and Constantinople. With the Ottoman entry, the war in the Balkans became a three-way struggle, with the Balkan peoples caught in the middle. The peasants under both Austrian and Turkish rule were conscripted and found themselves fighting over their own land for foreigners. The Austrians overran much of Serbia by the start of 1915. Belgrade was fought over in three separate battle between the Ottoman’s entry into the war and the Belgrade Uprising.

Like the French Revolution, the Balkan Revolution was formulated not by the masses of peasantry, but rather by the middle class and educated. In these circles, Marxism was all the rage, with talks of abolishing classes and privileges and turning their respective empires into socialist federations of equals. Some nationalist cells simply wished to break away from their long time overlords and not look back. In the underground movements that formed since the start of the 20th Century, the Marxist infiltrated all but a handful.

The founder of the Union of Balkan Socialists Republics is a Serb named Peter Karadordevic. Born in Belgrade on June 29, 1844, into a minor functionary family, Karadordevic had no want. In 1870, he spent several years in Paris, where he was introduced to the philosophies of Karl Marx. The idea of a classless society appealed to him. The middle class of the Balkans were enthralled by socialism, and they would eventually form the bureaucracy of the Balkan Unions.

Karadordevic served in the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War. After the defeat of France, he left the army and returned to his homeland to ferment revolutionary fever. He called for a Serbia ruled by Serbians. His participation in the 1895 Revolution saw his family’s estates seized by the Turks and himself exiled. He returned from exile in Vienna in 1903 under the alias of Mrkonjic, where he founded the Serbian People’s Party. From 1904 to 1916, the Party was outlawed by the Ottoman Empire, with suspected members facing imprisonment and even being sold into slavery.

With the Great War sending millions of young Europeans and Americans to an early death, the loosely confederated International Brotherhood of Workers began to take action. Their propaganda brought more members into their ranks, and angered the lower classes. The I.B.W. created a class division across Europe, strongest in the Balkans. The idea of wealthy industrialists and arms manufacturers pushed corrupt governments to wage war in order to increase the shareholder’s profits feed the conspiracy machine. The poor, certainly the non-German or non-Turkish poor began wondered why they were fighting.

For the Slavs of the Balkans, the question was why was brother fighting brother in the name of non-Slavic peoples. The image of the Red Revolution as a Pan-Slavic device would play into the future of the Union, and its demise, along with some of the great atrocities of the 20th Century. The first shots of this Slavic socialist revolution would take place in Belgrade, on the border between empires.

Belgrade Uprising

By February of 1916, both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire battled to the point of exhaustion. Since its fall in 1914, the Turks made no serious attempt to retake Belgrade. The city fell to an Austrian assault shortly after the Ottoman Empire declared war upon them. Its situation, on the Danube River, which in turn served as border between the two dilapidated empires made it contested in the centuries past. The land of the Serbs was long since divided between the two empires, and during the Great War, Serb fought Serb in the armies of opposing Empires.

With both Empires war weary, the leader of the Serbian People’s Party, Peter Karadordevic, sensed an opportunity to throw out the hated Austro-Hungarians and secure for the peace-loving peasants and workers of Serbia their freedom. Karadordevic and his fellow Serb Revolutionary, Dusan Simovic spent the last months of 1915, smuggling in arms and caching ammunition in the neighborhoods of Belgrade. They each headed a division of the Serbian Worker’s Liberation Army, with several thousands in each division.

On February 12, 1916, the first blow of the Balkan Revolution was thrown in Darcal neighborhood, when a cell lead by Gravilo Princip, launched a grenade attack on Austrian Field Marshall Oskar Potiorek, killing him and the other passengers of the staff car. Within an hour, a bombings killed patrolling Austrian soldiers, and destroyed their post office, killing the Post Master. Simovic lead an assault against the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army’s headquarters, capturing the building and massacring its occupants.

By February 15, Belgrade was under the control of S.W.L.A. and the victors began to dish out revolutionary justice. Any person in Belgrade suspected of collaborating with the Austrians was summarily executed. In some estimates, over 5,000 Serbs were victims of this justice in the few days Belgrade remained ‘free’. The revolutionary army quickly degraded into a mob, attacking any institution, business or even building that represented the old order of the Sultans or Habsburgs, including the Ottoman built University of Belgrade. The University was raised and captured professors were executed as collaborators and traitors.

Belgrade’s liberty was short lived. After hearing of the uprising and assassination of the Army’s Field Marshall, that the Austrian General Chief of Staff Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, released reserves from the Ottoman Front for immediate redeployment to Belgrade. By March 3, 50,000 Austrian soldiers, including many Croatian, Slovakian and Bosnian units, had the city encircled. After two days of siege, the Austrians stormed Belgrade.

Knowing immediately that holding off the attack was impossible, Karadordevic ordered the S.W.L.A. to scatter, and continue the struggle in the countryside. Of the estimated 13,000 revolutionaries, only 3,212 are known to have escaped. The two leaders of the uprising where among the escapees. Simovic escaped across the border in Sarejavo, and Karadordevic escaped across the front lines (some said smuggled in a coffin), down the Danube and into Sofia. It is from these two cities that revolutionary flames were fanned.

Fanning the Flames

The seeds of two more uprisings, more succesful uprisings, hatched on March 15, 1916. When Karadordevic and Simovic reached their respective destinations, they contacted cells of revolutionaries that were poised to act once Belgrade was free. Pieces were moved into place. By the time similar uprisings were in place across the Balkans, the Belgrade Uprising was thoroughly crushed. On March 13, Karadordevic contacted the Bulgarian People’s Army, ordering the uprising to take effect. Simultaneously, Simovic launched the uprising in Bosnia.

In the early hours of March 15, the Bulgarian People’s Army and Bosnia Liberation Front launched attacks against the garrisons of Sarejavo and Sofia. The Turkish garrison in Sofia was massacred after their surviving high ranking officer surrendered. During the uprising, Albanian units in the garrison switched sides, descending on their Ottoman overlords. The success of the Sofia Uprising sparked off rebellion across Bulgaria and Wallachia. In the streets of major towns, Ottoman governors and mayors were victims of Revolutionary justice.

By March 19, the lower Danube was completely under the control of the Revolution. The Bulgarian People’s Army and Wallachian Liberation Army decisively defeated an Ottoman army at Serevin, near the Serbian border. The Austro-Hungarian Army attempted to exploit this rebellion, which caused the uprising in Sarejavo to succeed. Serbians in Sarejavo linked with surviving units of the Serbian Worker’s Liberation Army, and spread the revolution into Zenica and Tuzla.

On March 21, 1916, in Sofia and Bucharest, Revolutionaries declared independence from the Ottoman Empire, establishing the Bulgarian and the Wallachian People’s Republics. On March 22, the Bosnians declared independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Bosnian Socialist Republic entered into an alliance with Wallachia and Bulgaria, and launched an invasion into Serbia. Both Austrian and Turkish armies inside Serbia were trapped by the invading Revolutionaries. Bulgarian units in the Ottoman Army rose up, killing their Turkish officers and captured much of the artillery.

Ante Trumbic, leader of the Croatian Socialist Army, captured Zagreb on March 28. He was a colonel in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and a secret member of the International Brotherhood of Workers. Once Bosnia declared its independence, Trumbic and his Croatian legion mutinied along the Balkan Front and marched on their homeland. Along with thousands of soldiers, a Croatian squadron flying Petrel D. IVs based in occupied Serbia joined Trumbic’ mutiny.

Greek Mutiny

While ethnic units were defecting and mutinying in piece meal, on April12, the entire Greek contingent in the Ottoman armed forces rose up against the Turk. Revolutionaries in Athens, Thessaloniki and even Constantinople drove the Turks out, forcing the Sultan across the Bosporus. Soon after, the Greeks declared independence with the Revolutionaries declaring a Hellenistic Socialist Republic. In the Ottoman Navy, Greek officers and sailors took control over several ship, including the Battleship Sultan Selim (which was renamed Leonidis).

Ottoman loyalist, under the command of Turkish Admiral Musha Seydi Ali intercepted the mutineers at their assembly point off the coast of Rhodes. Under the command of Pavlos Konstantinos, a high ranking member of the Greek Communist Party, two Revolutionary battleships, four cruisers and seven destroyers engaged a Loyalist force of nearly double the size. Key to winning the battle, Konstantinos credited the defection of several ships during the battle. The Crimean executive officer of the Turgut Reis seized control of the battlecruiser during the middle of the fight and turned its two hundred fifty millimeter guns on Seydi’s flagship, killing the admiral and effectively breaking the back of the Ottoman Navy. Since the ethnic content of the Ottoman Navy had a disproportionally high number of Greek and Crimean sailors, the surviving Turkish ships were held up in port while the Ottoman government commenced purging it of revolutionary elements.

Fragmentation

By May 1, 1916, the armies of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire were in an advanced state of decay. Forces were pulled away from the fronts to deal with ethnic uprisings and revolution. The state of Austria was in crisis by May 4, when a combined force of the Hungarian Revolutionary Army and the Croatian Socialist Army crossed the frontier into Austria Proper. Loyal Austrian soldiers were pulled from the front with the Ottomans (who had their own problems) and from the Swedish Front (who took advantage of the Revolution to push into Crimea and Moldova).

Two events prevented Vienna from falling to the Revolutionaries. One was the fact that discipline within the Hungarian and Croatian armies were poor, and the soldiers took to pillaging towns and seeking revenge for centuries of oppression. The second factor was that the Kaiser saw the writing on the wall and ordered units of the German Army to occupy German Austria along with Bohemia, to prevent the Revolution from spreading into Bavaria. At this point, the Germans had no intention on reconquering the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Instead they sought to contain the revolutionary plague well outside the Fatherland.

By July, the situation within the armies of both empires is utter chaos. No longer do the Turks or Austrians have an army. Austrian and Turkish units within their respective armies have abandoned the front lines and have retreated into their heartlands to defend their homes and families from the vengeance the repressed people tend to deliver. The newly formed Hungarian army, under the command of Revolutionary Zoltan Tildy, has even stepped beyond the Balkans and made incursions into Poland-Lithuania.

End of Empires

With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German Empire relocated its own soldiers from the Eastern Front (since Sweden was having its own problems with Revolutionary incursions into the Ukraine) to hold on to German Austria and Bohemia. The German Empire would annex both of these territories. The German Army would clash with Croatian forces under the command of Ivan Mestrovic. Mestrovic was born in Split in 1883. Through most of his early life, he dabbled in the arts, and even trying his hand at sculpting.

In 1905, his career was cut short when he found himself conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. Like many Croatians, he resented having to serves masters in Vienna, even if he would not have minded attending art academies there. It was while in the army that he met Ante Trumbic. It was from Trumbic that he became enthralled by socialism and the ideas of classless society, though he was never a member of the I.B.W. His Revolutionary zeal grew during the Great War, and more so when the Ottomans entered the war. He saw the injustice of his people dying for aristocratic elites and arms dealing capitalist in Vienna.

When the Revolution came, Mestrovic found himself thrust into a position of authority. It was not a position he wanted; after all, he only wished to be an artist. However, it was a position that he excelled. Mestrovic was not so much a tactician as a leader of men. He lead by example and his fellow Croatians would follow him into battle. He also had sense enough to listen to his inferiors in rank, especially since they knew more about tactics than he. One of his advisors had even attended the Military Academy in Vienna.

With charisma to lead and sense to listen, Mestrovic is known as one of the greatest Revolution. His victory over the German Army while at Graz. The Croatians took the city on July 17, after defeating a weak Austrian garrison. On July 30, the German Army sent a division against the Croatians defenses. The Croatians captured enough machine guns to turn back the German assault, forcing them into their own network of trenches. For the moment, it appeared a new front would form during the Great War.



Cease Fire

On August 2, 1916, German, Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth agreed to a cease fire in order to combat the Revolutionaries within their respective territories. The Austro-Hungarian Empire ceased to exist by August, and the Ottoman Empire received its final nail with the Janissary Massacre at Skopje on July 28. The last of the Janissaries in the Balkans were holed up in Macedonia, surrounded by Greek, Albanian and Serbian armies. Upon breaching the defenses of Skopje, all Turkish soldiers were killed by the Revolutionary Armies. No quarter was given, nor asked for, as the Janissaries fought to the last man. Those too wounded to fight were bayoneted where they fell.

When German annexations were recognized in the Treaty of Versailles, the Croatians withdrew from Austria and returned to their own frontiers. Croatia itself was starting to come apart with tensions between Serbs and Croats living within its borders. In Bosnia, fighting was already happening. Once the last of the Austrian holdouts surrendered, Serbs, Croats and Bosnians began fighting for control of the country.

While Balkans were fighting Balkans, the outside world looked towards the Balkans with a land-rush mentality. The threat of outside invasion did little to curb the violence. It was not until the Italian Federation invaded Slovenia, annexing the country in 1918, that made the Balkan nationalities to pause and take notice. At the start of 1919, the Balkan states knew that socialist states would have to work together, or they would be picked off one by one.



Armistices

The first of the armistices leading to the Peace Conference at Versailles came on August 2, 1916, when Sweden and Germany ceased hostile actions towards each other. In the wake of the sudden and violent collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, both combatants withdrew from Poland-Lithuania to wage war against Revolutionary elements that have crossed their borders. In the case of Germany, the German Army marched in German Austria, securing Vienna on August 12, as well as securing the Habsburgs. The Swedes were a more heterogenous state than Germany, and some concerns in Stockholm was that Revolutionary fervor might sweep up the Ukrainians, and other ethnic groups near the former Ottoman border. As per the cease fire, Germany began to immediately repatriate Polish-Lithuanian prisoners of war, and all parties involved began to trade prisoners. Partly to release resources from guarding them, and partly so these captives could be put to use fighting the Revolution.

Weeks later, on August 29, France and Germany signed an additional cease fire at Sedan. The same Revolutionary illness that plagued the Balkans began to infect the French Army. On August 20, units of the French Army west of Verdun refused to go over-the-top, and several officers were arrested by their own men. This mutiny began to spread, and the fact that Germany was already involved in German Austria kept them from exploiting this chaos and breaking through the Western Front. What was not known to the French government at the time, was that similar Red ideologies were beginning to ferment within the Imperial German Army. Had the French not mutinied, it is quite likely the Germans would have in the following months. Generals and Governments have a difficult time fighting wars when their soldiery is on strike. The cease fire between Germany and France called for the evacuation of British and Spanish soldiers from France within one week.

Italy, though not as susceptible to the Revolution as its neighbors, unilaterally withdrew from the war and back into its own borders. King Manuel recalled his soldiers into the urban areas of Italy, to break strikes that began shortly after the Balkan Revolution erupted. The King and his government believed, quite falsely it turned out, that these strikes were of Red sympathies. This was caused due to the teste di rosso, the redheads as they were called, named such due to either red scarves wrapped around their heads or of dying their hair red. Strikes in the steel industry were also seen as a general threat to national survival. Hundreds were killed when the army attempted to break the strike. However, with millions already dead in the Great War, the other nations did not seem to overly care about a few hundred extra.

With the war in Europe falling apart, the British looked to get out of the war entirely, and with its empire still intact. Though Europe remained a stalemate, North America was going badly. After Quebec entered the war on the side of America, supply links to Canada were forced to go through Hudson’s Bay. The Canadians were making the Americans pay for every kilometer of land they took, but the American advance continued relentlessly. On September 1, through the neutral embassies of the Swiss, the British sought terms with the Americans. Initial demands called for the cession of vast tracks of Canadian territory, which was rejected. Roosevelt did accept a cease fire, pending a peace conference between American and Britain.

By September 5, the United States and Confederate States were the only combatants left in the war, and the Confederates were already teetering on destruction. Roosevelt dreamt of a restored Union, and a crumbling Confederacy was going to play into his hands. Without the industrial base of Britain or France, the Confederate States found themselves at a disadvantage when the war began. As it came to an end, Confederate supplies evaporated. Their largest source of income still came from cotton exports, exports that dried up due to American blockades, and ended by the Dutch Commonwealth’s entry into the war.

The first meeting between American governments was not between Philadelphia and Birmingham, but rather Philadelphia and Richmond. With so much of its state torn up by war, the governor of Virginia took the extraordany step of entering into separate negotiations with a foreign government, in clear violation of the Confederate States Constitution. Virginia was not the last state to seek terms. Kentucky’s government-in-exile found itself declared illegitimate by its own constitutients. Kentuckians elected a new government, which immediately sought terms of surrender from General Pershing.

Arizona and Tennessee were next to follow. Birmingham declared martial law and attempted to send soldiers to hold down States it declared rebellious. Units from Tennessee mutinied when they were ordered to storm their own capital. The Confederate States were on the verge of civil war while facing their greatest defeat. So disastrous was the month of August, that Secretary of War Phillip James Moisure committed suicide, and the Confederate Secretary of State simply vanished. With the situation on the home front worsening by the day, the Confederate people began to protest. Protests that quickly evolved into riots.

Charolette and Jackson were simply shut down by city-wide strikes and rioting. Wilson was now facing a possible coup by his own Army. With both heavy heart and desperation, Wilson sued for terms. American and Confederate delegates met on September 11, at Memphis. Though the Confederate States would not formally end until Versailles, Wilson’s signing the terms of surrender was the last act of any Confederate President.



Treaty of Versailles

In October 1916, after various separate cease fires and armistices, the surviving belligerents of the Great War met in the Palace of Versailles to draw up a peace treaty to end the war. For most of the combatants, years of war followed by recent revolutions upon their borders has weakened resolve for decisive victory. Instead, the combatants in Europe would settle upon a largely maintenance of the balance of power. For Germany, Sweden, Italy, the Dutch Commonwealth, Britain and Poland-Lithuania, the war would end in a status quo ante bellum. Poland-Lithuania would abolish its monarchy as a result of the war, becoming the Republic of Poland-Lithuania.

Nothing gained, nothing lost, and nothing achieved after four years of conflict and millions dead and maimed. France would lose Alsace-Lorraine to the German Empire for a period of twenty years. After which, a plebiscite would be held in the provinces for the locals to determine their own fate. Despite the status quo, Sweden agreed to pay the worth of the van der Weld to its owner, and the King of Sweden formally apologized for the sinking of the ship.

In related terms, all parties agreed upon a new maritime boundaries at fifteen kilometers from the shores of the country in question. In cases were territorial waters overlap, all parties involved would have joint sovereignty over the waters. It was hoped that this would prevent a replay of the events that brought the Dutch into the war. This, of course, turned out to be a pipe dream. Further in European affairs, Germany was permitted to annex German Austria from the ruins of the Habsburg Empire. The fate of the Balkans was not resolved at the peace conference, but no World Power desired to be drawn into the civil war that raged across former international boundaries.

Though the Great War was often seen as a pointless exercise in nationalism in Europe, the only true winner to come out of the war was the United States. At Versailles, international recognition for the Anglo-American Permanent Peace Treaty, which was still in the works at the time, was achieved. In the previous month, delegates from Birmingham met in Philadelphia to discuss the Confederate terms of peace. The terms were simply; the Confederate States national government would disband and the former States would submit to military occupation and governing until such time as they were suited to rejoin the Union.

The biggest accomplishment to come out of Versailles was the establishment of the League of Nations. This was the dream of former Confederate President Woodrow Wilson. The League would be a place were nations could meet to resolve their differences before an arbitration of global community. It was hoped that a repeat of the succession crisis in Poland-Lithuania that sparked the war could never happen again. The idea was met with acclaim and included within the treaty. The Treaty of Versailles was signed October 18, 1916, formally ending the Great War. Within six months, all combatants would ratify the treaty. However, in the case of the League of Nations, the Dutch Commonwealth opted out of it. Wilson would not live to see his dream come to fruition; he was found dead on May 21, 1917, at his home in Tennessee. Death by poison, whether it was suicide or murder has never been determined.

Following the Balkan Revolution and end of the Great War, what would become of the Austro-Hungarian Navy was a serious question. By annexing German Austria and later Bohemia, the German Empire claimed a great deal of the Austrian ships. However, several warships were seized during the Revolution by Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. When the Italian Federation annexed Slovenia, they captured only a few of the ships. The rest were scuttled in the Adriatic Sea. The ships under the control of Croatia and Bosnia were handed over to the Union of Balkan Socialist Republics. Only one battleship and three cruisers ever ended up in the hands of the Kaiser. Those Austro-Hungarian ships not captured by mutinies remained in the hands of loyalists, and too were scuttled in the northern Adriatic rather than be surrendered to the Balkan Union, or to Austria’s German cousins. Today, many reefs have developed among the wreckage scattered in an arc stretching hundreds of kilometers south of Venice.



Enemies no More

There were some lessons learned from the Great War. The most oblivious lesson was the follow of two nations being enemies without end. It took the Great War to make the United States and United Kingdom to put aside their differences and put behind them nearly a century-and-a-half of hostilities. To achieve this, the two nations made a separate agreement along with the general peace of Versailles.

The peace treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States ended an on-again, off-again state of warfare between the two nations since the days of the Revolution. Following the cease fires that swept across the world in 1916 following the Balkans Revolution, the United States and Britain attended the peace conference at Versailles, as well as a separately in Halifax to work out a separate, lasting peace. The British recognized that the United States was the dominate power in North America and they would have to do business with them. The Americans, with honor satisfied in their victories during the Great War, also sought to end the belligerence within the Anglo-sphere. Both sides recognized that peace would benefit all. Several disputes between the English-speaking powers were resolved with Permanent Peace Treaty. The points of the treaty are as follow:

1) The northern border of the United States would have both northern Maine and the Red River Valley restored to the Union. The border would follow the 49th parallel to the Continental Divide, where it would then extend north to include all of the previous Oregon Country territory.

2) The Great Lakes would be demilitarized.

3) Canada would be guaranteed right of passage through Québécois controlled waters.

4) The Grand Banks fishery would be neutralized, allowing fishing vessels from signatory nations free access.

5) Cession of the Bahamas to the United States in exchange for twenty-five million dollars.

6) Free Movement of nationals across the U.S., Canadian and Québécois borders, including

extradition.

7) Rights of citizens in ceded territories would not be abridged.

8) Open (but not free) trade between the United States and British Empire.

9) A pact of non-aggression between signatory nations.

The United States Senate ratified the bill on February 28, 1917, and President Theodore Roosevelt signed the bill the next day, one of the last bills he signed into law.

 

[artha]

I've been thinking about Abu Dabi and came up with a couple ideas:

1) During (or after) the first Anglo-Dutch war the English pay/encourage some Arab nations to attack Dutch ships. The VOC burn most privateer fleets and occupy Abu Dabi in order to control Arab trade in order to use it as a political weapon.

2) Shortly after the VOC starts pushing the British East India Company out of the continent, the BEIC sponsor Arab pirates to hurt to the VOC. (Same idea as 1 but a different setting.)

3) After the fall of the first VOC and the annexation of the VOC holdings a lot of local powers see this as a sign of weakness. In order to give off a strong message the Dutch attack and occupy Abu Dabi.

4) Not really an idea as more an add-on on the other ideas, but anyway.
Some powerfull merchant or major nobleman (based around Abu Dabi) decides it´s easier to attack and loot ships than peaceful trade. The wannabe pirate-king is killed, his fleet destroyed and Abu Dabi occupied.

I would make a note somewhere about the Dutch Antilles.

Hope it´s useful to you.

Btw haven´t been able to read the new chapter yet.

 

[The Kiat]

Let's see if I can't find a map of the World circa 1920. Ah the Restored Union and all the headaches that go with it.

Oh, and can't forget about Oahu.

 

[The Kiat]

The Great Lakes Campaign, 1913.

 

[The Kiat]

X) The Changing World

(1917-1948)

Reconstruction

Bringing the Southern states back into the Union proved to be a far more formidable challenge that first believed. Some in Congress wondered if it was even worth the effort. With the exception of the Bund, whose surviving top members were either executed or sentenced to long terms in prison, the southerners kept their own political parties. The Democratic Party, who was far more socially conservative than either Progressive or Socialist, saw many prominent southerners joined its ranks. This caused much discontent among the fiscal conservative Democrats, who broke away to form the Libertarian Party in the 1970s.

The level of poverty in the south, coupled by the devastation inflicted by a short and brutal war, forced the loyal Union states to subsidize reconstruction for decades. Northerners feared a black diaspora, were black refugees would flood northern cities. Many blacks did migrate north during the war, after the Confederate surrender, to take over factory positions abandoned by potential men-at-arms. Many of the Confederate blacks flooded black American neighborhoods, especially in Haarlem after war’s end. The industrial cities of the north also saw an increase in black population. There was a great concern over the fact that they might not assimilate into American society. These fears were unfounded, for the black southerners proved to be more loyal and cooperative than their white counterparts.

All white men within former Confederate states were subjected to loyalty tests. Those who would serve in the American Foreign Legions during the 1930s and 1940s were automatically made United States citizens upon discharge, but the civilian populace proved far more difficult to administer. If anything, it was Dixie, not former slaves, that took decades to assimilate into the fusion of European and West African (along with native influence) that comprised American culture. This was most extreme when southern Representatives and Senators returned to the capital. In 1920, as a symbol of reunification, the capital returned to the city of Washington.

Cooperation between State governments and the Federal Government was far from smooth. In the cases of some states, such as Virginia and Arizona, regions within the state were divided as to how to relate with the new reality. Western Arizonans proved more reliable than their eastern comrades. So reliable in fact, that the Federal Government divided the state in half, transforming the west into Jefferson Territory. A similar happenings occurred in Virginia. Lands west of the Appalachians were never happy with the Confederacy. Those counties formed a Constitutional Convention of their own, calling for succession from Virginia. Counties north of the Rappahanock River joined the convention. The end result was a new territory. Perhaps as one final slap to the Southern States, Congress named the new territory Lincoln.

In 1952, the southerners fielded their first candidate for United States President, South Carolina statesman Strom Thurman on the Democratic ticket. Though he carried the southern states, he was easily defeated by Progressive candidate, Dwight Eisenhower. Despite not winning a single electoral vote from the southern states readmitted at the time, Ike still had a plan to reunite the nation. His pet project was called the Interstate Highway and Commerce Act. When passed in Congress, the act allowed for the construction of a network of freeways to allow rapid transportation of military and commercial traffic across the country. In twenty years, over ten thousand miles of freeway were laid down across the restored United States.

In reuniting the nation, the Progressives continued with their closed border policy. With the task of integrating millions of former Confederates at hand, the nation could not afford to allow an influx of immigrants. The most extreme of hard-core confederates called themselves the Ku Klux Klan, the pro-white anti-black brotherhood started out as a social club, but soon devolved into a violent, terrorist organization, that still plagues the south.



The Union of Balkan Socialist Republics

During March and April of 1920, Belgrade hosted a convention of leaders from throughout the Balkans. Presiding over the convention was the man who started the Revolution; Peter Karadordevic. Rapidly approaching eighty years of age, his health was further taxed by keeping the unruly Balkans under control. It was through his force of personality that the Congress of Belgrade occurred at all. Despite the clear threat from outside powers, the Balkan nations could not come to consensus on how to approach it. Nationalist wanted to create a loose confederation, or even just an alliance. Karadordevic had other ideas. His faction of the Congress moved for political unification of the Balkans into what would nominally be a federation of socialist republics.

His staunchest ally in the Congress was the Croatian Ante Trumbic. Near the end of the Congress, he gave a speech that clearly outlined that if the Brotherhood of Workers did not hang together, they would most certainly hang separately. Furthermore, he was a Croatian, and Karadordevic was a Serbian. If Serb and Croat could put their histories aside for the cause of progress of man, then any nationality in the Balkans could. It was with this Congress that the nation of Balkans was established.

On May 1, 1920, the delegates signed the Articles of Federation, a document that forged a union between the Balkan states. It was on May Day that the Union of Balkan Socialist Republics was founded. This is not to say that the Congress was without debate. Many resisted unifying the Balkans and surrendering their sovereignty to Belgrade. The loudest of the opposition also failed to show up the day following their anti-union speeches. It is believed that the I.B.W. quickly purged these delegates; the first of many purges that would plague the communist Balkans.

After the articles were signed, and quickly ratified by the communist parties in their respective nations, the new Supreme Soviet elected its first Premier, none other than the General-Secretary of the I.B.W. Peter Karadordevic. His reign was short lived; in late 1920, he suffered a massive stroke, and shortly into 1921, the first Premier died, leaving a power vacuum that threatened to tear the Union apart. Ante Trumbic quickly promoted himself to General-Secretary, and Premier of the UBSR.

The Karadordevic legacy was more than uniting fractured peoples. His pet project; government control over food supply, is credited for diverting famine on more than one instance during the 1920s and 1930s. The plan called for the state to purchase excess grain while prices were low, and stockpile it. When prices rose or production dropped, the excess grain was dumped on the market, thus controlling prices. State control over farms, and collectivization of said farms was also hoped to maintain high productions. Though the process of collectivization caused shortages, it was the Ministry of Health that prevented famine from ravaging the Balkans.

More damaging to the populace of the Balkan Union than collectivization, was that of crash industrialization during the late 1920s and ‘30s. To industrialize, the I.B.W. virtually enslaved the people it claimed to liberate. Under the regime of Trumbic, the first step in industrialization was undertaken. To build factories, one must be able to deliver raw material to the factories. With this in mind, Trumbic designed plans to improve, or rather create, an infrastructure uniting all the Balkan nations. Tens of thousands of kilometers of rail and road were laid down between 1922 and 1927. To supply the road gangs with a constant stream of workers, Trumbic ordered a series of purges to weed out counter-revolutionary elements.

The first to be sent to forced labor camps were everybody who benefitted under the old regime. Oddly enough, this included the very middle class that supported the Revolution to begin with. Anybody with ties to the old regime’s administration were immediately sentenced to hard labor. Tax collectors were simply shot. Some of Trumbic’s own comrades found themselves in labor camps. Dusan Simovic was sentenced in February of 1940, and would have likely died in the work gangs, if not for the counter-revolutionary crusades of the 1940s.

Conditions in the road gangs were brutal for even the healthiest of individuals. One stretch of highway through the Carpathian Mountains became known as the Road of Skulls, for the numbers of workers who died during its construction. During the winter of 1925, on a road that would connect the Transylvanian BSR with the Wallachian BSR, some twenty thousand workers died of exposure. Some of the dead’s only crime was being born to parents who worked for the Ottomans.

No matter how bad the road gangs were, the miners suffered even worse. Those sentence to the mine seldom lived to see freedom. In the coal mines of the Bulgarian BSR, a tight quota system was in use. Those who did not meet their quota of coal did not receive their quota of ration. When they did meet their quotas, the quotas were often increased due to mine management believing the miners could worker harder. Similar quota systems were used in the forestry gangs of the Hungarian BSR.

By 1927, steel mills sprung up across the Balkans like mushrooms. Workers who toiled in these mills lived longer lives and received better treatment, but it was just as hazardous as the mines. Safety inspection was unheard of, and when workers suffered injury they were removed and replaced. In the Novi Sad Iron Works, an average of one worker per week was killed during 1928. Oil production was not as hazardous on average, but an explosion at the Ploesti fields claimed the lives of some three thousand workers on September 11, 1929.

Five-Year Plans

Trumbic’s first five-year plan called for the full scale industrialization of the Balkan Union. Before the Balkan Union was founded, some ninety percent of the Balkan population worked in agriculture. The first five-year plan in 1922, called for this to be reduced to fifty percent by 1932. The forceful relocation of hundreds of thousands of peasants further disrupted food production. To compensate, the second five-year plan called for mass production of agricultural machinery to replace the lost workers. Though production dropped, government food rationing prevented famine from taking hold. The time between 1922 and 1932 were a lean time for the Balkans.

Furthermore, Trumbic called for the production of steel to reach one million tonnes by 1932. Coal and oil would both reach two million by the same year. Electricity was planned to be in fifty percent of Balkan homes by 1932, but this quota fell short. In 1932, a purge of the Ministry of Energy removed some of the Balkan’s more capable administrators. Dams were built across the Balkans, leading to a further displacement of peoples. These were rounded up and sent to training camps, were they would be trained in industries such as steel, fabric and machinery.

The third five-year plan, 1932 to 1937, called for a five hundred percent increase in the production of agricultural machinery. By 1936, each collective farm had at least one tractor. The tractors were of poor quality, and a trained mechanic had to be provided by the state. Upon learning of the design flaw in the Model 1931 Tractor, Trumbic purged the entire design board of Mikail-Grosniv Industrial Bureau. Along with farming equipment, the production of automobiles was to increase by two hundred percent.

In the same five-year plan, Trumbic called for the establishment of a military-industrial complex in the Balkans. Before 1932, the Balkan Union had no armor, a few Great War aircraft, some rusting ships based in the Greek BSR, and only limited manufacture of bolt-action rifles. Several bureaus were established, chief among them was the Belgrade Arsenal. The Belgrade Arsenal was expected to deliver fifty thousand pieces of artillery by 1937. It exceeded it quota by one-point-three percent.

Trumbic’s death in 1938, disrupted the fourth five-year plan. During the months of July and August, members of the I.B.W. vied against each other for power. The position of Premier devolved into a more ceremonial role, where a new premier would be elected out of the Supreme Soviet once every two years. The real power remained the general-secretary. By 1939, Ivan Mihailou, from the Macedonian BSR, seized control of the Party. His reign would be the shortest. Within a year, the first of the Crusades against communism would strike the Balkans.



Life under the New Regime

For the peasant in the Balkans, the Balkan Union offered some improvements in their quality of living. By 1940, electricity and indoor plumbing were in a majority of towns and all the cities. Some of the positive acts of the I.B.W. is to enact universal education in two dozen languages across the entire Union. Education became mandatory, and the literacy rates tripled from 1920 to 1930. Along with education, the state provided health care. Before the Revolution, most Balkans relied upon folk remedies and superstition to combat ailments. By 1940, modern medical care was universal, albeit a generation behind the rest of Europe.

For the average Balkan, the State and the Party was everywhere. The State not only planned the economy, but the way its people would live out their lives. Religion, which is diverse in the Balkans, was suppressed for that very reason. Churches and mosques were seized by the states and converted into schools, courthouses and even offices for the secret police. The Haiga Sofia in Constantinople became the headquarters of the Red Navy. With ancient beliefs suppressed, the people only had the state to look to for guidance.

For food and other daily supplies, the average Balkan was forced to wait in queues for hours just to get their weekly ration of meat or dairy, or even for a new pair of shoes. The same waits accompanied a Balkan no matter where they went. If they wished to visit the doctor, they had to wait in line. If they wished to ride the rail, the same. A Balkan spent much of their life waiting. The rest was spent worrying. They dared not complain, for nobody was certain whether the person in the next flat was an informant. The secret police ran off anonymous tips. Sometimes the threats were real, but more often or not, they were imagined by the informant, and the state (especially under Trumbic) was more than willing to believe the worse. A Balkan’s life was a mixed blessing compared to their parents; a higher standard of living, but quite possibly, a shorter life.



Pre-war Year

The Union of Balkan Socialist Republics was still a third-rate military power by 1940. Despite Trumbic’s attempts to force industrialization, the Union still lacked the industrial power to match any of the world powers in military hardware production. The Belgrade Arsenal produced more than enough artillery pieces to defend the frontier, however, ammunition production was lagging due to Trumbic’s purges. The practice of mass executions of entire departments do to lack of satisfactory work was halted by Mihailou. He saw the logic in keeping experienced hands, even if they do error from time to time.

At the start of November, 1940, the Red Navy had refitted the ships captured during the Balkan Revolution. Only a handful of new ships were built, no larger than a destroyer. Trumbic did not believe any war would be a naval war. Instead, he focused industry on Army production. This includes the Macedonian Tank Works, which produced some seven thousand Red Star tanks. The Red Stars were of high quality, the Red Army lacked the tank doctrine to use them properly. The Tank Works survived the Crusades, despite air raids from all sides, and continued to produce tanks for all sides during the Balkan Wars.

At the time of invasion, the Balkan Union’s GNP was a third of that which Germany possessed. Multiple embargoes against it hurt its economy. It did have trade with Kurdistan, Armenia and the Arab Republic. By 1940, it also had diplomatic relations with most countries, the notable exceptions being lack of ambassadors from Madrid, Paris and Berlin. Its largest export was the Revolution itself. Advisors from the Balkan Union were embroiled in the Chinese Civil War, supply Mao with weapons and aiding in combating other factions and the Japanese.

Overall, by the time of the German Invasion, the Balkans were finally starting to climb out of the Dark Ages and join the modern world.



Reforms at Home

During the Great War, the lack of cohesion in Commonwealth Armed Forces greatly distress King Frederick III. How was the Commonwealth suppose to survive a serious threat if each nation had its own army, navy and now air force, along with independent chains of command. In 1918, Frederick launched his own campaign to fully integrate the Commonwealth’s military. The various Staaten-Generals around the Commonwealth resisted the idea, arguing their militaries were internal affairs. However, the King argued that since the Commonwealth had a united and common foreign policy, including declaring war, then it should have a common and united military.

The King had his allies across the Commonwealth. The King always has allies. No matter the state, whether it be Brazil, Transvaal, India or even the United Provinces, there were always those Electorates and Senators that looked toward their common monarch (though minus the monarch part in the Boer Republics) for leadership. Though political parties were illegal in some states, that did not stop ‘monarchist’ organizations from forming.

More nationalistic elements opposed these so-called Monarchists. They claimed that by integrating the Commonwealth’s armed forces, they would be stripping the member states of their sovereignty. First the military, then taxes and domestic laws. Where would the Commonwealth Assembly stop? Until all the members were reduced to colonies of the Hague? The King had no desire to strip his kingdoms and empires of their status as realms. Brazil and Ceylon would keep their own academies, and all the states would have their militias, but the Commonwealth as a whole could not afford to have its armies divided along national lines.

The United Provinces were in favor of it, if for no other reason than it gave them a vast number of recruits to use in defense of the Provinces. That alone made the proposal suspect. Brazilians had little desire to be stations in the Provinces, and the Indians certainly did not wish to defend their former overlords. Strangely enough, all the Boer Republics were in favor of integration. The Boers might have been a powerful voting block, if they could ever agree on anything. During the Great War, Kapenstaaten refused to send soldiers to aid Johannestaaten in beating back British raids. If all the states were to pool their military manpower, then perhaps they could better defend Commonwealth members.

When the vote came up before the Commonwealth Assembly, there were eight in favor, and India and Brazil opposed. Though against it, once the Act of Integration and Armed Forces Reform was passed, they grudgingly abided by it. By 1920, the Commonwealth established a common chain of command, with the King at the top, and various generals stations around the world. It was not until 1922, that the actual armies began to pool their resources, and merged into new divisions. The 1st Royal Guards Division, based in the County of Holland, and under the command of the Count, lost half of its Netherlander manpower, and saw it replaced by an influx of Brazilian, Ceylonese, Boer and Indians soldiers. Thanks to Frederick’s ‘If One Falls, the Next Will Follow’ propaganda campaign, not all soldiers were dissatisfied by the monumental shuffling of up to two million men at arms throughout the 1920s.

The navies had an easier time of integrating. Aside from shuffling of crews on board the ships, and transfer of those ships, the only cosmetic change was that the nations flag was lowered to second place, and the Commonwealth flag fluttered at the top. Also, gone was the HMS, to be replaced by DCS (Dutch Commonwealth Ship). Unlike the armies, the navies’ territorial boundaries were the oceans of Earth. Brazilian and Ceylonese ships could sail into each other’s harbors just as easily as they could Amsterdam or Rotterdam. Integrations of Commonwealth forces lasted until 1935. Frederick III saw his visions of a united Commonwealth Armed Forces fulfilled just shortly before his own death.



Kingdom of New Holland

By 1919, the colony of New Holland grew substantially from its gold rush days. Gone were the mining camps, the saloons and the outlaws. When the gold was either depleted or taken over by companies, the rift raft eventually blew out of town, looking for the next big strike. Gold was again discovered in American and northern Canada, and the adventures chased after it. Gold changed everything in New Holland. Before its discovery, the inhabitants were content just herding their sheep and living the simple life.

After its discover, New Holland’s economy rapidly expanded and transformed the backwater province of the Indonesian colonial department into a separate entity. Revenue from mining was spent to build roads and rails, to provide water and irrigation and generally improve the colony. It had been a long standing Dutch philosophy stating government’s only real duty was to instigate public works, roads, aqueducts and so on. That was precisely what New Holland did, and its standard of living surpassed the rest of Indonesia, with the exception of Java.

By the end of the Great War, in which many New Hollanders fought with Indian and Ceylonese divisions against the British in both India and Australia. Fighting in their own backyard, the New Hollanders felt they earned their right to be a full member of the Commonwealth. New Holland was no longer satisfied with the limited self-determination granted to them by the United Provinces. They now demanded full self-governing as a realm within the empire.

In late 1918, delegates met in Apeldoorn to draft a constitution for New Holland. For the most part, these delegates were the higher ranking New Hollander officers along with a few influential members of the rural society. The prospect of the military writing a constitution left many in the Hague unsettled. After hearing about the convention, the United Provinces send their own delegates to oversee the writing, to ensure the constitution was up to Commonwealth standards.

To the observer’s surprise, the New Holland Constitution was far more progressive than any other. It called for equal rights for all inhabitants of New Hollands, European and Aboriginal, citizen and resident alike. It went even further, making New Holland the first member of the Dutch Commonwealth to insure universal suffrage for all citizens over the age of nineteen. Universal suffrage in New Holland would have ramifications across all Commonwealth members across the decade of the 1920s.

Satisfied that the New Hollanders exceeded expectations, the observers returned home, bringing with them the petition to join. In July of 1919, summer in the Hague yet winter in Apeldoorn, the Commonwealth Assembly approved New Holland’s admittance into the Commonwealth and bestowing to it statehood, full self-governing and making it another realm within the empire. The biggest debate within the constitution convention was what to make New Holland. There was little desire for a republic and much love for the King. Some believed New Holland was too small to be a Kingdom and proposed adopting a Principality, yet Frederick III was not a man to take a demotion. September 7, 1919, Frederick visited Apeldoorn in a tour of the Indian Ocean, and was crowned King of New Holland by its own Staaten-General.



Amendments

The biggest change in Commonwealth society, for all the states (except India, which was later in following) was giving women the franchise. For most of the history of the United Provinces, it was only the men who could vote, and not until the post-Napoleonic constitution that it was guaranteed in writing for all men. Women began to wonder that since they were citizens as well, why could they not vote? After New Holland became a fully independent member of the Dutch Commonwealth, the female population of other states looked on with envy as their counterparts on the Australian continent passed their votes.

Between 1920 and 1926, each member, with the exception of India, passed amendments to their constitution allowing for universal suffrage, starting with the United Provinces in December of 1920. India, given its deeply patriarchal history and conservative nature, has always been one of the slower members to progress with the rest of the world, but not without resistance from the Princes and Mullahs scattered across the subcontinent.

In the United Provinces, a series of colonial acts were passed, granting more self-governance to the colonies. By the time Frederick took the additional title of King of New Zealand in 1922, it was clear to those in the Hague that all the colonies would one day gain independence and membership into the Dutch Commonwealth. The Dutch believed it better to give the colonists the tools and experienced advisors to make it possible. For the most part, the colonies welcomed self-governance. They did not have full control over their own internal affairs, still having a governor-general appointed by the Staaten-General, and still subject to taxation from the Hague.



Iceland; the Nineteenth Province

By 1927, the future status of the closest of the United Provinces’ colonies, Iceland, came into question. Originally settled over a millennia ago by Vikings from Norway, the island was inherited by William II after the death of the last Danish King in the Seventeenth Century. For centuries, the Dutch gave little regard to the possession, using it as an excellent fishery and before the advent of petrochemicals, for whaling stations.

When Denmark regained its independence after the Congress of Vienna, the United Provinces held on to the island, along with Norway. However, Norway was one of the United Provinces immediately after the Act of Union in 1705, while Iceland remained a colonial possession, with no self-determination or regional government to mention. Its proximity to the Hague made it easy to control every aspect of the island’s management directly, without the need to appoint a governor-general.

Along with no consent over their own rule, the Icelander also lacked any say in the issue of taxation. Though low in population, Iceland paid its share of taxes to the mother country. Though the quantity of taxes were low, the key fish tax impacted the lives of everyone on Iceland. By the time distant New Zealand obtained independence, the Icelanders were looking forward to their own future. Should they not be independent.

Iceland lacked the population, even compared to the five hundred thousand inhabitants of New Zealand, to ever hope to remain a viable nation. If the Dutch did not rule over it, then only a matter of time would pass before the British or Swedes took possession of the island. Its location in the North Atlantic, along with Greenland and the Province of Norway gave the United Provinces a half-ring around Britain and a stranglehold on the much larger Swedish Empire. The Staaten-General would not give up control over Iceland.

The Icelanders could not very well stop eating fish, however, they boycotted any imports for the Dutch Commonwealth. Since Commonwealth ships were nearly exclusive in importing commerce onto the island, 1927 became a year of shortage in Iceland. With only fifty thousand inhabitants, Iceland could not hope to even scratch the Commonwealth’s economy, however traders were vexed enough by the boycott that they went to the Hague and petitioned the Staaten-General to force open the door.

To do so would likely cause the volcanic island to erupt into violence. With the exception of the Boer Wars, the Dutch nations have evolved without bloodshed. The current members of the Staaten-General were not about to be the first to revoke the sacred Dutch right to protest. However, they could not simply appease the Icelanders, for concern it might encourage other colonials to start their own embargoes. Iceland might not mean much to the economy, but if Formosa or Java did the same, it might prove problematic.

It was Otto, Duke of Bergen, who came up with the proposal in the Senaat. His own Province, Norway, was once a simple crown possession until it was admitted as a Province. Grant it, Denmark-Norway was an entire nation in personal union with the United Provinces, and Provincial status was stipulated in the treaty, whereas Iceland was but an island in the Atlantic. Otto proposed that Iceland should either be made a Province or annexed by Norway. The annexation was immediately rejected by every other member of the Senaat. For three hundred years, the First Chamber of the Staaten-General struggled to ensure no Province became overwhelmingly more powerful than the rest.

Before the decision could be made, the issue of who would represent Iceland in the Senaat was razed. Would Otto take the additional title of Duke of Iceland? No member of the Staaten-General would approve that. There was nobody qualified to take on such a title. The King might bestow it upon one of the generals or admirals during, but the Great War produced no Ernst van Bohr or Michel de Ruyter.

It was the Regent of Liege who came up with an acceptable compromise. The Bishopric of Liege had no hereditary ruler. Thanks to the deal made between the Bishop and Maurice van Oranje, Liege was eventually permitted to elect a regent. Perhaps Iceland should be the same. Whether the regency would be for life, or a limited term would be left for the Icelanders to decide. In 1927, the Staaten-General agreed to make Iceland the second nineteenth Province. The Icelanders, however, took an additional two years to form a government, elect a regent and gain admittance into the United Provinces.



Kingdom of Abyssinia

Between 1915 and 1916, the time of Dutch involvement in the Great War, some 50,000 Abyssinians served in the Royal Netherlands Army. Of those fifty thousand, only ethnic Dutch and Somali were allowed to serve overseas. They served with distinguish in Europe during the Siege of Mons and further action against the French. Ethiopians and other ethnicities in Abyssinia were stationed in Abyssinia itself on garrison duty. This was a great disappointment to many young Ethiopian men who wished to serve the crown and to seek adventure in the nightmare known as the Western Front.

The reason for this decision was that the Netherlander and Brazilian Army brass had great concerns the Ethiopians might dessert. The presence of British colonies all along the Abyssinian frontier lead some generals to believe Ethiopians might flock to the British in hopes of regaining their lost homeland. Little did the General realize, that by 1915, most Ethiopians were quite content with their Dutch rulers, and many began to consider themselves Dutch. More over, the Ethiopians and other natives liked the British even less than the Dutch. At least with the Dutch, the natives were left their own religion, and not subject to missionaries.

The entry of the Dutch Commonwealth into the war severely hampered the Abyssinian economy. Once war was declared, the British closed the Red Sea from the north and the Dutch from the south, effectively cutting off all commerce into the area. Any ships that did set sail were subject to attack by commerce raiders, or even pirates flying the colors of one Entente member or another. In respect to the Royal (Dutch) Navy, Ethiopians were allowed to serve, though their percentage was always kept in the single digit per ship. They served enthusiastically.

The closing of dams in the Ethiopian Highlands cut into the flow of the Blue Nile, and had devastating impact on Egypt. The missing of the annual flood in 1916 cause small scale famine across the country, forcing the British to divert resources to feed the populous and keep them from rising up during London’s time of crisis. This also lead to an abortive attempt by the British to invade Abyssinia and take control of the dams. Dutch units based along the northern frontier entered the Sudan and handily defeated an Anglo-Egyptian army under the command of Sir William Haig, taking some five thousand prisoner.

The southern border of Abyssinia remained quiet through the whole war, with no official action taking place. The British did, however, encourage natives to raid across the border. In response to this, some enterprising Dutch and Somali living along the southern coast, took to the sea in their boats as “privateers”. In reality they were little more than pirates, raiding the East African coast. As long as they did not attack Dutch shipping, the Hague looked the other way. However, after peace was declared, they still continued to raid, and had not their dens burned out by the Commonwealth Navy until 1920.

Following the conclusion of the Great War, the Hague enacted a program to make Abyssinia a self-sufficient colony, requiring no imports in order to function as a modern nation. Through the 1920s, various industrialization programs were pushed through the Staaten-General. Canneries were constructed across Abyssinia to boost the coffee industry. Powered looms were built to turn wool from sheep and goats into clothing on a massive scale. Steel mills were built to churn out the steel for railroad tracks yet unlaid.

Along with becoming self-sufficient, attempts were made to have Abyssinian produce cheap products for consumption in the United Provinces. Of all the Commonwealth and colonies, Abyssinia had the lowest wages. There were two factors in this; it was only slightly more developed than the southern African colonies of Angola and Mozambique, but possessed a much larger population. Millions of unskilled labor fueled the supply side of the market in favor of large businesses ready to exploit the labor pool. Simply goods, such as pots, pans, chairs and other mass produced items in demand had their own factories set up in Abyssinia. Airstrips in Addis Ababa, Mogadishu and Djibouti serviced the flights and acted as a hub between Ceylon/India, the Boer Republics and the United Provinces. Given the limited range of aircraft at the time, several stop-overs were required along the route between Amsterdam and Colombo or Delhi.

In 1928, VOC Auto began construction on an automobile factory for domestic use of the Abyssinians, as well as VOC operation across Abyssinia. Newly paved roads opened a path for VOC Freight to begin operating trucks to and from railroad depots. The automobile factory produced far more than the VOC required, and the surplus was sold off to the natives. By 1930, parts of Abyssinian were transforming into little chunks of Holland or Brabant, transplanted in this fertile, eastern African land. Though standards of living have skyrockets in the previous fifty years, Abyssinia’s economy remained predominantly agrarian-based. Vitals were now in every village across the country, though electricity was still novel in rural communities. Nonetheless, before achieving statehood, Abyssinia was the most modernized area of East Africa.

By 1935, the Staaten-General in the Hague decided it was time for Abyssinia to hold a Constitution Convention. The organization of the both the Constitution and a series of referendum following it took up the entire year. The first debate between Dutch, Somali and Ethiopian delegates was whether or not to follow the example of Brazil or the Boer Republics. Will Abyssinia be a republic within the Commonwealth or in personal union with the United Provinces as a new monarchy. In June, the first of the referendums were held as first drafts of the Constitution for a monarchy and republic. Though it was modernized by African standards, almost a month passed before all the votes were round up and counted. Some 74% of the voters (of the half of eligible voters who actually voted) were in favor of monarchy. This was a proportionally high in the Dutch and Somali camps, where as more than half of the Ethiopians voted against the Dutch monarch. Even after decades, resentment still existed against the government in the Hague.

The second referendum, held in September of 1935, would decide the fate of the Constitution. Writing the monarchal Constitution was a quick affair. The Constitution of Abyssinia was based of that of Brazil, the United Provinces, Ceylon, New Holland and New Zeeland. As with most elections, the turnout was low compared to other Commonwealth states, with more than half of the Ethiopian population boycotting the election. This, of course, handed the election over to the Dutch and Somali, who passed the Constitution with 81%. The Constitution was slated to take effect on January 1, 1936. King Frederick III arrived in Abyssinia before that date. On his last world tour, the Commonwealth Fleet stopped in Mogadishu, where Frederick III was crowned King Frederick I of Abyssinia in an old colonial governor’s mansion in Mogadishu. He was the only monarch of Abyssinia to not visit the capital of Addis Ababa.



Succession Crisis of 1936

Near the end of his reign and life, Frederick III took one last title under his belt; the King of Abyssinia. For the most part, following the toppling of Emperor Theodore Abyssinia changed little. By 1935, only a small percentage of the population came from the United Provinces, and they bought up land to build coffee plantations. The Abyssinians resented the foreign conquest and occupation, yet reaped the benefits of improved trade and infrastructure.

Frederick’s coronation in the old governor’s mansion in Mogadishu represented the King’s last voyage overseas. It is not known exactly what the King died from, but it is believed to be from complications of tropical diseases. Frederick managed to outlive his brothers, and their sons, the last one dying indirectly from wounds received during the Great War. By 1935, the question of who would succeed Frederick to the throne was up in the air. One faction of the Senaat supported bringing a distant cousin into the core of the House of Oranje. Very few were in favor of simply declaring the House of Oranje extinct.

When the King finally died in early 1936, the United Provinces’ Staaten-General continued the debate, as did the Brazilians and Indians. The Boers cared little who their ‘lord protector’ was since that position was little more than ceremonial. The real power laid in the hands of the elected officials. Ceylon held off debate, waiting to see what the United Provinces would do. The decision of who would be head of the Commonwealth was not in the hands of the largest members, but its smallest.

Days after the King’s death, the New Holland Staaten-General nominated Frederick’s only surviving child, Juliana, to become Queen of New Holland. New Zealand followed suit in March. Before Juliana could accept, she would have to receive the approval of her own Staaten-General. Though Salic succession was not law in the Provinces, it was long standing tradition. Juliana was beloved by the people and had the full support of the House of Electorates, but this was a matter of state not the people, and thus the responsibility of the Senaat.

Over the course of the Spring of 1936, the Staaten-General was eventually won over to Juliana. By then, Ceylon and Brazil offered their crowns to her as well. In August 1936, Juliana took the crown and became the first Queen of the United Provinces. She was not Empress of India until late December, due to opposition of the native princes. In fact, she was almost crowned Princess of Java before Empress of India.

Java gained its own independence within the Commonwealth in January of 1937. While the debate for the monarch raged in national assemblies, the Commonwealth Assembly debated to status of Java. Should it be admitted as a single island, or should it be grouped with the rest of Indonesia. New Holland already broke away from the archipelago, and without Java, the islands were far poorer– that is until the discovery of petroleum around the island.

Java had less oil than Borneo or Sumatra. The Sultan of Brunei struck a deal with the VOC’s new division, VOC Oil. VOC Oil started off as Dutch Royal Shell in the early 1900s. Like with rail and steam, the VOC risked large sums of capital on unproven technology. When they bought Shell in the 1920s, it was still unknown if automobiles would run on petrol or electric. Inventors in Edison Labs in New Amsterdam continued to improve battery technology, making it almost on par with the inefficient engines. VOC’s own automotive division, VOC Auto, made headway in improving the efficiency of early Twentieth Century internal combustion engines.

They bet on gasoline and diesel as the fuel of the future. During the late 1930s, the gross colonial production of the remaining Indonesian islands doubled before 1940. The islands welcomed the reign of Juliana with high hopes for its future. Future division of the islands was put on hold until they developed to the point to be granted the status of a realm within the empire. However, Juliana’s reign did not start on a completely positive note. Enemies of the Dutch Commonwealth began to rebuild after the devastation following the Great War.



Mechanization of the VOC

In 1911, the VOC saw a new potential source of expansion. The aeroplane (or airplane) was a new invention, less than a decade old. It originated in the United States, though American engineers competed with Europeans to develop the first heavier-than-air ship. In the United Provinces, Willem and Georg Fokker established a small shop to produce aircraft in 1907. Fokker Aircraft was a marginal success, barely keeping ahead of their debts as they sought out customers. They entered a partnership with the VOC in 1911, where Fokker Aircraft was purchased and renamed VOC Air, with the brothers left in charge. With the VOC’s capital and the Fokker brother’s engineering, the venture was to meet with success.

The VOC first used and sold aircraft as fast messengers in the years before radio communication (soon adopted into VOC Communication) became reliable. For customers who were willing to pay premium prices, VOC Air offered fast delivery of air mail between the Provinces. After the first year of the Great War, the Dutch governments soon were looking for aircraft of their own. VOC Air was but one of the companies they contracted, and did not even receive the largest contract. The VOC produced hundreds of scouting and recon aircraft for the Commonwealth throughout the war.

After the Great War, consumer interest in air travel came to the Company’s attention. The first VOC airliner was design in 1920, a fourteen seat, four engine, biplane. VOC Air started its first airline route in 1922. It was not in the United Provinces or Brazil, where railroad was still the preferred choice of motion, but between Transvaal and Johannestaaten. Air traffic between the distant towns of the five Boer Republics comprised the bulk of the VOC Air’s income for the 1920s, reaching out to towns too important to be isolated, but too small to justify the expensive of their own railroad line. In 1934, the VOC’s first flying boat began to carry passengers between the United Provinces, Brazil and the Boer Republics, with stop-overs between the U.P. and Brazil in the Azores, and between the Boer Republics and the two others in Cape Verde (though each had to refuel at more than just this one stop). Both islands were home to VOC-owned hotels where passengers were put up for the night.

The VOC was slow to catch on to the automotive industry. Though the railroad could not deliver goods directly to all points, the company believed that it more than made up for it volume and cost efficiency. The automobile during the last decade of the 19th Century and first of the 20th, the automobile was seen as a rich man’s toy. Not until Henry Ford perfected his assembly line approach, which lowered the cost to make automobiles marketable, did the VOC take notice. The VOC purchased a number of ford trucks to augment VOC Rail. These trucks worked for teamsters under VOC contract to deliver goods from the rail depot directly to the store.

It was not until 1924, when the company established VOC Auto and built its first plant in Brazil. VOC Auto was never intended to mass produce motorcars for the public. Instead, it produced thousands of trucks, mostly for company use but also sold to other trucking companies as well as freelance teamsters. There was some debate in the Board about going into the mass consumer market, but by the middle of the 1920s, the market was becoming saturated. The automobile industry, with its reliable and long-lasting vehicles, was a bubble just waiting to burst.



New Enemies

While the Dutch Commonwealth experienced an economic boom along with the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, several other nations faced turmoil. The French economy was heavily taxed by the Great War and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, that coupled with the Balkans Revolution saw the rise of extreme rightist and nationalistic parties, though never to the extent that hit Germany.

The Republic of Spain faced a major downward spiral during the 1920s. Weak central government and the loss of the Great War prompted various nationalities of the Iberians Peninsula to rise up. In 1921, Portugal rose up for the first time if fifty years. The rebellion in Lisbon and Porto was violently crushed by the Spanish Army. Catalonia and Grenada rose up in 1922, followed by Asturias in 1923. All three were crushed, though Catalonia managed to gain temporary independence. The Spanish Army was weaken severely by the uprisings and the aftermath of Versailles.

In 1924, the Basque, original inhabitants of Iberia predating Rome, rose up and declared independence. Again the Spanish Army attempted to crush the uprising. However, the Basque learned from the earlier uprisings, and spent years planning their rebellion. In the Pyrenees, near the French border, the Spanish Army was defeated by the rebel Basques. The Army faced a near complete defeat at the hands of the Basque four weeks later.

By 1925, the Basque Republic was established, and the Spanish parliament entered into negotiations with the rebels. Furthermore, Spanish politicians pushed forward a new constitution, this one allowing autonomy for all nationalities. These concessions were more than a cadre of junior officers within the Spanish Army could stand. In their eyes, the reason the Basque defeated the Spanish Army was not do to will of the soldiers, but ineptitude of the commanding officers. Generals and colonels in Spain were, for the most part, political appointees.

Some officer, lead by Don Carlos de Vega, approached the eldest member of the exiled House of Bourbon, Carlos Bourbon, offering to restore the Bourbons to the Spanish throne. In the eyes of the junior officers, restoration of the monarchy would be the first step to restoring Spain’s greatness. And by installing Carlos as King, the junior officers would gain his favor, not to mention advise him and help remake the Spanish Army into a fighting force to make the Duke of Parma proud.

August 8, 1925, the junior officers simultaneously stormed the parliament building and the Spanish High Command. Members of parliament were all placed under arrest and removed from office. The generals who brought so much disgrace to the country were unceremoniously shot. Many of the parliament were sentenced to hard labor in prison, while the rest fled to France and the Italian Federation. On August 15, after the mass executions and sentencing, the officers roused the bishop in Madrid, ordering him to crown the new king.

That evening, King Carlos V restored the monarchy, and on the advisement of the junior officers, he abolished parliament. Condemnation of the rebirth of absolutism rang out across the continent, and further fueled the fires of revolution in the Balkans, and gave leftist parties in each country a new target to blast. As for the junior officers, they were promoted by the King of Spain and formed a Council of Generals to advise the new absolute monarch. Their first act was to crush the Basque Republic with such force, tens of thousand of refugees fled into France and across the Atlantic.

Turmoil did not strike further until the 1930s. In 1935, unrest grew within the German Empire, much of it fomented by the Steel Helmet League. This quasi-political, paramilitary organization consisted of hundreds of thousands of veterans of the Great War. Many veterans returned to their lives after the war, feeling cheated of victory. By all rights, Germany should have achieved the same level of success as the United States. Quitting so close to victory felt like a betrayal of the people by the Kaiser and the German upper classes.

One soldiers, a disgruntled and unemployed sergeant by the name of Reinhert Heuss, rose through the ranks of the organization. His status as a non-commissioned officer did much to help in his rise to power. He wore it as a badge of honor, proclaiming to the German people that he was more trustworthy than any blue-blooded officer. Following the demobilization of the German Army, Heuss, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers like him, were discharged to face the world alone. With so much of the Germany industry geared for war in the process of winding down, these soldiers joined the masses of unemployed.

Heuss was one of the many, with no home or job, depending on the charity of others for a living. As a former soldier, one who fought to preserve the Fatherland, he thought he was entitled to more than destitution. The Steel Helmets formed after the war ended, as such a charity. Made up of better-off soldiers, the Steel Helmets were determined to assist their former comrades. The fact that the State seemed to care little of those who fought in its name, sometimes made the Steel Helmets appear to be the only ones who cared.

Their status as a helping hand did not last. Being made of former soldiers, the Steel Helmet League was a fiercely nationalistic. Heuss might not have had much in the way of trade skills, but he was a master orator. He used this nationalism as well as the feelings of betrayal to catapult himself to the forefront of the organization. He could not come out and accuse the Kaiser of treason, for the Kaiser could easily have him arrested. Instead, he focused his fellow Helmets’ anger on a more politically acceptable target; the Slavs.

Heuss was not the only one who was convinced the Central Powers would have won had the Reds not risen. From 1927 onward, it was the Slavs who were the traitors. They rose up under a communist banner and stabbed the German-speaking world in the back. Never mind that the Slavs of the former Habsburg Empire were not there by choice. Fear of communism did much to drive Germans into the arms of the Steel Helmets. Heuss made Slav and Communist interchangeable. As far as he was concerned, they were one in the same.

Through the early 1930s, more and more members elected to the Reichstag were also members of the Steel Helmets. A great portion of the German Army joined the Helmets, for after all, what harm could a nationalistic organization do to its own country? What it could do was shown on February 13, 1935, when after a year of planning, Heuss made his move. It all began as a general strike in the larger cities of Germany. The Kaiser’s government sent out soldiers to attempt to break these strikes. To the Kaiser’s dismay, more than half of the army sent out turned their weapons in favor of the Steel Helmets.

In Dusseldorf, Nuremberg, Munich and Vienna, Steel Helmets stormed government buildings. The Kingdom of Bavaria was the first of the German states to succumb to the Steel Helmets. The King attempted to flee north at first, only to find his path blocked. South was a better option, even if it meant fleeing to Italy. He was not the first monarch to find himself deposed by the Steel Helmet Revolution.

By April 20, the Steel Helmets were in charge of most of the German states, with a mob of over a million marching on Berlin. As they were mostly former or current soldiers, the mob marched with great order. They faced off against soldiers loyal to the Kaiser at Dresden on April 23. Though lighter armed than the German Army, the Helmets nonetheless outnumbered them by ten-to-one. Through great losses the Helmets pressed on their march, only to be stopped against outside of Berlin. On April 30, the Kaiser was advised to evacuated.

Though much of the Army had joined the Helmets, the High Seas Fleet was staunchly loyal to the Kaiser. On May 3, the Kaiser boarded the battleship Baden, where he and many officers loyal to him, left for exile. Along with the Kaiser, almost the entire High Seas Fleet, as well as most of the Luftwaffe, and some of the Empire’s most brilliant generals, departed their homeland and steamed for the River Platte Colony.

Heuss wasted no time in declaring a German Republic, and calling for an immediately constitutional convention. Naturally, this convention will controlled and ran by the Steel Helmets. It was to nobody’s surprise that Heuss was elected the first President of the German Republic. Nor was it a surprise when the new constitution abolished all privileges and nobility. What was a surprise, though one not noticed at the time, was a clause within the constitution that allowed the President to rule by decree in the event of emergency. With parts of Germany still in chaos, emergencies were not hard to find.

The international reaction to this coup was mixed. The French Republic rejoiced in seeing their old enemy the Kaiser removed from power. They were the first in Europe to recognize the new republic. Most of the European monarchies refused to recognize Heuss’s government, with the notable exception of Spain. Reaction across the Atlantic were far sharper. The United States government refused to recognize the new state, despite the fact it was a republic and that the U.S. often supported fledgling republics. President Victor Abrams declared his nation would stand firmly behind their ally, the Kaiser.



The Crusades

Heuss spent the next three years placing Germany back into order. This is a rather clinically sterile way of saying he used the time to eliminate all opposition to his role. The purges of 1937 proved to be nearly as bloody as the purges in the Balkan Union. The Army suffered as any and all of the Imperialists were systematically removed from power. Heuss’s quick and brutal actions prevented a full-scale civil war between Imperialists and Nationalists by several years. Once threats were removed and the Steel Helmets consolidated their power, Heuss turned southeast towards his greatest enemy.

On November 30, 1940, the Union of Balkan Socialist Republics was introduced to modern warfare. In the morning of November 30, thousands of aircraft crossed the border and bombarded every major city within a thousand kilometers of the northern border. Budapest suffered severe firestorms on the nights of December 2 and 3, reducing five square kilometers of the city to ash and rubble.

By December 1, over two hundred thousand Nationalist German soldiers crossed the northern frontier. Three main thrusts were in the works; one to Budapest, one to Zagreb and a third to Bratislava. Zagreb was the first to fall, on December 8, when the 1st Panzer Group (12th Army) rolled into the city with minimal opposition. Bratislava was declared an open city and occupied on December 10. Budapest was a tougher nut for the Germans to crack. Two divisions of the Red Army, under the command of Vladka Macek, denied the city to 5th Panzer Division and the 2nd Steel Helmet Division Das Reich for two weeks. During this period, the city suffered continuing aerial bombardment, despite already having its heart burned out days before.

The Battle of Budapest was a vicious fight, with Nationalist German forces leveling entire city blocks to dislodge the Red Army. The city in ruins finally fell on December 23. During this same period, three German divisions had the capital of Belgrade surrounded and under siege. The Siege of Belgrade lasted between December 13, 1940 to January 7, 1941, when the city surrendered. Most of the higher echelons of the I.B.W. melted away into the population. A number of them were captured, including Ivan Mestrovic, who died in the Kotor concentration camp in 1942. Once in Nationalist German hands, the city of Belgrade was renamed Prinzeugenestadt, and the Steel Helmets went to work preparing the general vicinity for future German colonization. During 1941-1942, over a hundred thousand people were deported from the city to the camps.

The Closest the Red Army came to stopping the Nationalist Germans came on January 28, during the Battle of Pristina. Two German armored divisions squared off against three armored divisions of the Red Army, in what came to be known as the largest tank battle of Operation Krusader. The Red Army, lead by General Nikos Zachariadis, blunted several drives by the Germans during the course of the morning. One counterattack even managed to push back a panzer brigade several kilometers.

In the end, what decided the battle was not the quality of armor or armor tactics, but control of the air. The paltry Nationalist Luftwaffe dominated the skies over the Balkan Union. Stuka divebombers, obsolete as they were, still we more than capable of knocking out Balkan tanks. Most Balkan tanks were taken out this way. Once the Germans were clearly in control of the battlefield, Zachariadis ordered a general retreat, after which, what tanks that could not be hidden were scuttled. The battle offered the last great resistance of the Red Army, and the Nationalist German forces, after the battle, continued into Greece, taking Athens.

The last holdout of active resistance in the Balkan Union was at Sofia. The city fell to the enemy on February 27, 1941. With it, the Balkan Union was under the control of Nationalist Germany. On March 1, the Balkan government officially surrendered to the Reich, thus ending the existence of the Union of Balkan Socialist Republics. Those officials attending the surrender were put under arrest and either shipped off to prison camps or shot. The Balkan Union was dismantled in short order.

Croatia, Bosnia and much of Serbia was organized into a puppet state, along with Greece. The former was slated to be colonized by Germans after the war ended, and after the area had been ethnically cleansed. “Non-Slavs”, at least by National Socialist reckoning, were organized into independent vassals. The states of Hungary, Bulgaria, Dacia and Crimea were created, and locals of a more conservative persuasion were placed in power. The states were nominally independent, and in control of internal affairs. However, these junior partners answered directly to the Nationalists.

The Fascists in command of the vassals were ultra-nationalistic in attitude, many were exiled from their homelands after the Balkan Revolution. When restored to their nations, and placed in power, they began to purge their nations of communists. The blood letting the commenced was on the same scale as post-Revolution purges. All non-nationalities within the nations were expelled, and in some cases, sent into concentration camps. The fact that, on a genetic scale, that all the Balkans had Slavic blood in them to some extent did not factor into the Nationalist’s Final Solution to the Slavic Problem.



The Camps

A large portion of Steel Helmet doctrine revolves around an anti-Slavic attitude. The Great War effectively came to an end with the Balkan Revolution, with no clear cut winner. This was one of the tools the Steel Helmet used to come to power; they claimed the Slavs betrayed them, cost them victory. At first, the solution to the Slavic Problem was to enslave many and expel the rest. Centuries before, they migrated into Europe from the East, and to the east they would be sent again. However, The East, was under Swedish control, and they had no desire to accept millions of refugees. The possibility to expel the Slavs all the way east of the Urals was discussed, but found infeasible for the immediate future. The refugee problem eventually lead to some Swedish intervention in the Balkans.

The Nationalists demanded results, and demanded them immediately. The Slavs would be removed from the land, but where would they be stored? The first concentration camp was opened north of Srebrenica, which was home to fifty thousand Slavs and other undesirables. The idea of mass extermination was not at first visited. Instead, the Slavs would be reduced to slavery, put to some use for the Germans they betrayed. To the Nationalist, that was all the “under-men” were good for. Labor camps were constructed within the boundaries of Germany, near mines and factories, where the Slavs would be used for menial labor.

A second camp was opened in Macedonia, nominally under Bulgarian control. However, the Nationalist Germans seized control of the monestrous Macedonian Tank Works, and put Slavs to use building new tanks for the Nationalists. All the industrial giants of Germany were quick to jump at the prospect of free labor. Hundreds of thousands of Slavs in labor camps across the Balkans and Germany were worked to death building weapons for the Nationalist and his henchmen.

Labor camps were just the beginning. In early 1942, a new camp was constructed five kilometers south of Srebrenica. This camp had little in the way of forced labor. The healthy and able bodied prisoners were separated from the rest. The laborers were loaned out to companies as free labor. The rest went into gas chambers. Millions of Slavs were killed in this fashion, their corpses sent into the ovens, along with other enemies of the Reich. The first people to go to the death camps were Communist Party officials, including the Revolutionary, Ivan Mestrovic. After the party leaders, came functionaries. After them, any village or town that displayed the least bit of resistance was depopulated and deported to the camps.



Operation Arctic Thunder

Heuss faced serious threats to the west, diverting him from further crusading actions against the Slavs. Though France supported the new Republic, they were not so much in favor of the invasion of the UBSR. Italy was quite the opposite, strongly supporting the elimination of the Red Menace across the Adriatic. Despite these attitudes, neither was willing to get involved in internal German affairs on a military level. This did not hold true for the United Provinces. The Dutch Commonwealth declared itself neutral in the war, though not neutral towards the Kaiser.

Heuss saw threats everywhere, and in the case of the Dutch, it was far from paranoia. The United States already made its position clear; it would overtly act to restore the Kaiser. America’s former enemies, the British, joining in this declaration. Despite their differences, the British considered the Kaiser a better deal than the Steel Helmets. With the High Seas Fleet in South America, Heuss had no chance at invading Britain. The United Provinces were another story, one that could potentially end as a springboard for the Kaiser to return to Germany.

On April 1, 1942, National Luftwaffe units began to hammer away at the cities of the United Provinces. On April 2, armored units diverted from the Balkans crossed the border. The invasion took both France and Britain by surprise, raising alarm within these countries. Paris began to wonder if it would be next. Their recognition of the German Republic saved them from invasion. The Dutch people were not so fortunate.

Following the invasion, an emergency session of the Commonwealth Assembly was called, though would be delayed by a day due to the time it would take Brazilian delegates to fly via airship to Amsterdam. Queen Juliana immediately ordered the fleet in the North Sea to move on Norway, to first stop any further invasion, and secondly to destroy the paratroopers occupying Oslo. Commonwealth ships in the North Sea came under immediate fire by U-boats, with the loss of one cruiser (traveling alone) and several other ships were damage.

Before the Commonwealth could officially declare war, some fifteen German divisions crossed the frontier. First to fall was the town of Oldenzaal, closest to the German border. The city put up no resistance and panzers simply rolled through the town continuing onward into Drenthe. The Lord of Drenthe ordered the Provincial militia to take to the field immediately. Only minutes after the first German soldier crossed the frontier, hundreds of airplanes hit serval Dutch cities, from Rotterdam to Luxembourg.

The worst hit city was that of Liege. The attack was such a surprise, that bombs were falling before either the Regent or Bishop of Liege knew the Germans crossed the border. However, the Regent did deploy some air defenses after hearing about the attacks across Norway. The meager air-defense battalion did little against German bombers. After the wave flew over, much of the city was burning, and the ancient cathedral, the same place where coronations of Kings (and Queen) took place.

By April 5, German forces entered Maastricht, sweeping aside the Provincial garrison, and by nightfall the same day, a second prong of the invasion took the ruins of Liege with little difficulty. When attempting to advance on Amsterdam on the 6th, the Hollanders breached several levies and dikes, flooding the fields and seriously impeding German advances. This did not stop a northern flanking maneuver from Drenthe, taking Harlingen and nearly cutting Amsterdam off from the North Sea.

On April 7, four days after the invasion of the low countries began, Germans surrounded Amsterdam with one thrust from the north, and another two divisions quickly bypassing the flooded fields. The Hague fell on the night of April 7, completely encircling Amsterdam, which surrendered the next day. Within five days, the northern Province fell into the control of Fuhrer Germany. As soon as the Hague fell and Amsterdam surrendered, the Germans pursued escaping Dutch officials to Middelburg in Zeeland.

It was here that the House of Oranje boarded the battleship DCS Prinz van Oranje, bound to Recife. It was a repeat of the Napoleonic War, where the Dutch royal family again were forced into exile. German generals were under orders to capture the Dutch queen and head of the Commonwealth, and this pursuit delayed actions in the southern Provinces. At 0100, on April 8, 1940, the Prinz van Oranje left port, escorted by three cruisers and eight destroyers and the (light) aircraft carrier Rotterdam.

When the Kaiser fled Germany in 1935, most of the High Seas Fleet went with him, leaving Nationalist Germany to rebuild its navy. Heuss had no carriers, one battleship and three battlecruisers, along with ten cruisers, and dozens of submarines. Only two U-Boats were in place to intercept the royal entourage, both sunk quickly by leading destroyers. The greatest threat to Juliana’s safety came from the air.

JC-13s from the Rotterdam fought off many of the German aircraft, but the light carrier could only field twenty fighters. The Luftwaffe came after them with over a hundred aircraft, though many were level bombers. And those missed the target. Dive-bombers faired worse, for they were viewed as the greatest threats. Dutch fighters downed many of them, but not without the loss of a cruiser, the DCS Maas.

A few of the German bombers flew low, equipped with torpedoes. Two torpedoes sunk a destroyer, and three more were dead on for the Prinz van Oranje. One torpedo hit the ship at the bow, but proved to be a dud. A second missed, but the third proved to be quite live. The third torpedo was intercepted by the destroyer Trident, which passed in front of the torpedo, taking the hit for the Queen. The ship was struck amidship, split in half and sank quickly. Only seven survivors made it to British shore.

While the royal family made its escape, fighting continued in the southern Provinces. Luxembourg was overwhelmed on April 5. Namur fell on April 7, and those German divisions linked with the force out of Luxembourg, and continued into France along with several divisions that entered the Duchy of Luxembourg after the city fell. All of the United Provinces were under German control by April 10, with the exception of Brussels.

Commonwealth and German forces fought fiercely around the city. No matter the valor of the Commonwealth soldiers, the Germans were slowly pushing them back into the besieged city. Germans spared little in the way of artillery and aircraft to neutralize Brussels; the bulk of their forces storming through France. The people of Brussels suffered greatly during the siege and latter during occupation. During the siege, every able-bodied Netherlander in the city pitched in to help in the defense, from building breastworks to cooking for the soldiers. No matter its defiance, Brussels fell seventeen days after the invasion started, on April 22.

Provinces under Nationalist control suffered the most severe crackdown on liberty since the nation’s founding, over three centuries previous. Newspapers were shutdown, radio stations placed under the control of the German Army. Military governors were placed in power over each Province. Most of the Provincial rulers went into exile with the rest of the Staaten-General and the Queen. Only the Countess of Artois missed the boat. Countess Jeanette had the means to escape, but refused to leave while her subject suffered under the Nationalist occupation. For her troubles, the Germans placed the Countess under house arrest, and General von Beck attempted to rule the County of Artois in her name. The Artoisers did not buy the farce.

Occupational authorities heavily rationed goods that the Dutch people long since took for granted. Sugar and coffee were confiscated for use by the Germans, leaving little to none for Netherlanders. At first there was protest, for it was a long standing Dutch tradition to speak out at perceived injustices. For their troubles, the occupying authorities threw them into the one of many detention centers erected around the Provinces.

At first, the resistance did everything it possibly could to make the occupation force’s stay in the United Provinces as difficult as possible. Some actions were of downright defiance to the Germans, such as on the night of February 5, 1943, some brazen Netherlanders managed to infiltrate a German airbase near Lier, steal sugar from the pilot’s mess, dump it into the fuel tanks of the pilot’s planes, and just to make absolutely certain the Germans knew who was responsible, the perpetrators rose the orange-white-and-blue banner of the United Provinces over the airfield. Needless to say, those Germans responsible for security that night were severely punished.

Any and all attempts at normalcy the Dutch people attempted to create failed. Netherlanders continued to tend the fields and work the factories. The United Provinces faced a partial economic collapse during the Occupation Years. Many foreign speculators who made fortunes on the Amsterdam Stock Market, sold off their shares and commodities the day Germany launched its attack. When they fled the United Provinces, they took with them the largest single-day transfer of wealth in Dutch history. Companies were ruined and the banks of Amsterdam faced a run.

The Bank of Amsterdam, a bank that weathered centuries of economic ups and downs, would sooner face a world-wide depression than what the Germans did to that institution. To fund the German war machine, Heuss ordered the banks plundered, billions of guilders in gold and silver were stripped from the financial capital of the world and shipped east across the Wesser. The Nationalist Government did not stop with the banks, cultural artifacts were pillaged, including some of the greatest works of Van Gogh.

For a nation that long since depended upon trade for its survival, German occupation of the ports and harbors found many traders and merchants instantly out of work. Larger traders, with offices in other Commonwealth states, would survive the occupation, but the small, individual trader, a long standing Dutch tradition, was wiped out before New Year’s of 1943. Many factories were taken under the control of occupational authorities, and put to use for the German war effort. Many loyal Netherlanders quit rather than build bullets and bombs for the enemy.

Despite the nationalistic spirit of the Dutch people, so strong it drove many to go hungry rather than assist conquerors, the Netherlands faced the same bane as all occupied nations; collaboration. When not harassing the Germans, the Resistance targeted any and all that overtly aided the Germans. Workers in factories were spared the retaliation, for there were still families than needed feeding, but those who worked with and for the Gestapo were often found in the morning, quite dead.

Though many individuals would rise up against the occupiers, the Resistance did its best to keep a low profile. It specialized in both sabotaging the enemy, and aiding fellow Netherlanders left unemployed and destitute by the occupation. It was not until the middle of 1944, that the Dutch Resistance rose up against the occupiers.



Resistance

Even before the mass murder of the Slavs, Balkans resisted German occupation and the puppet vassals. The International Brotherhood of Workers melted away into the crowd after the Balkan Union fell. Most of these were part of the original Revolutionary cells back in 1916. New cells were formed. However, these cells were not all communistic in nature. Many cells drifted towards the inherit nationalism that plagues the Balkans. These cells attacked their neighbors just as readily as they attacked the occupiers.

Chief among the resistance leaders was Joseph Tito. Born in Kunrovec, Croatia in 1892, Tito participated in the Balkan Uprisings. He was a young officer in the Croatian Socialist Army, serving under Trumbic during the capture of Zagreb. He spent the immediate years after the formation of the Balkan Union as a party official in the Croatian Soviet. During the Trumbic Years, he was elevated to the Supreme Soviet of the Union, as were many of Trumbic’s fellow Croatians. He was part of Croatia’s representation during every Party Congress between 1936-1940. When Nationalist Germany invaded the Balkan Union, Tito melted away into the Croatian countryside, along with units of the broken Red Army.

Tito’s partisans began their attacks against the occupiers in mid 1941. Their raids were minor at first; small unit patrols vanishing, road side bombs knocking out trucks, even one stunt were a partisan smuggled a fine, itchy powder into a laundry frequented by the Germans. Tito’s campaign picked up in pace when his partisans assassinated Nationalist strongman Reinhard Heydrick in Split, on August 4, 1943. In retaliation, the Steel Helmets deported more than sixty percent of the city’s population to camps scattered across the Balkans.

His reign of terror did succeed in dragging more soldiers into the Balkans to pacify the region, soldiers that could be headed for the Eastern Front. Partisans were some of the first outside of the Steel Helmets to learn of the existence of the camps. Once it became clear that his countrymen were being butchered by the thousands, Tito ordered general attacks against any and all Steel Helmet personnel. Any Helmet man captured would be swiftly executed. He shifted his attacks away from the German Army and on to servants of the Nationalist.

The greatest blow against the Slavic Genocide came on May 18, 1944, when Tito personally lead a raid against a train stuffed full of Croats and Bosniaks destined for Sarejavo. More than five thousand people were crammed into a couple dozen cattle cars. Many died during the escape, but the surviving adults were recruited into Tito’s army. Again, the Helmets retaliated for this attack. They massacred four thousand men, women and children outside of Sarejavo, dumping their corpses into a pit and setting it ablaze.

Aside from Marshall Tito, another of the old guard lead resistance, Zoltan Tildy. Instead of fighting Nationalist Germany directly, he remained in his homeland of Hungary, and did battle with the vassal government installed by the Nationalist. Tildy’s campaign did not have the magnitude of bloodshed that Tito knew, but he did prove successful in throwing a monkey wrench into the Hungarians works. His raid on the Hungarian Air Force’s Szolnok, and destruction of numerous fighters warranted this comment from an analysis in the RAF; “Monkey wrench nothing, Tildy threw the whole monkey into the work.”

Reprisals within the Hungarian state were nowhere near as brutal as within territories directly occupied by Nationalist Germany. In truth, the Hungarian Secret Police were amateurs when compared to the Helmet’s security apparatus. Many were quietly sympathetic with the resistance. There were no longer any overt communists within Hungary’s government. Like in the occupied territories, the vassals also purged themselves of I.B.W. members, handing them over to Nationalist Germany, as per the one-sided treaties the Nationalist forced upon his vassals.



War against Japan

A month after the Germans launched their assault against the United Provinces, the resource-starved Japanese moved against Indonesia. In order to secure a supply line to the oil rich islands, they first landed soldiers on Formosa and Hainan. With millions of soldiers already based in .China, the Japanese had a nearly inexhaustible invasion force after they won control of the Strait of Taiwan. The bulk of the Commonwealth Pacific fleet was based around Java, and the few ships in Formosa were sunk or disabled while still in port.

Commonwealth forces only numbered some five divisions on the island, far more than the initial invasion. However, with control of the seas and air, the Japanese continued to funnel reinforcements and supplies. Formosa held out far longer than the United Provinces, Taipei, the final holdout, surrendering on September 8. Hainan faired worse, surrendering after three weeks of heavy fighting. On both islands, the Japanese attempted to present themselves as liberators.

But liberators to what? Japan said ‘Asia for the Asians’, but the Chinese on both islands long since considered themselves Dutch. They spoke the Dutch language, adopted Dutch personal names, and knew nothing but Dutch liberty for centuries. For being liberators, the Japanese were quick to suppress any dissent on the island. When the Formosans attempted to protest Japanese policy on food rationing, the crowds were met not with reassurances but the rattle of machine guns.

The Japanese Navy and Army were very divided, so much so that it was a wonder they advanced as far and as fast as they did. With the Army gaining much glory, the Navy set out to best them. The Japanese Navy sought out and found the Commonwealth fleet in the Java Sea. In what would be the first case of naval warfare without ships actually seeing each other, Japanese carriers launched an attack against the Commonwealth.

By September of 1942, the Dutch Commonwealth was facing defeat in the East Indies. The Japanese were already in control of the ports on Sumatra and Borneo, and sought to add Java to their Empire, along with the oil fields of the East Indies. The Japanese had spent the previous month pounding away at airfields on Java, and managed to destroy the dry dock facilities in Jakarta. The Commonwealth Navy in that part of the world was not as high as in the Atlantic, where the bulk of the Commonwealth Navy was massed in Brazil, participating in the Battle of the Atlantic. Limited Commonwealth Naval forces were divided between Ceylon and Jakarta, the forces on Formosa being destroyed in 1942.

The Commonwealth fleet, under the command of Admiral Karl Doorman, with his flag on the DCS William IV. Accompanying him, the battlecruiser Tanhausen, the carrier Delft, along with cruisers Java, Delphi, and Flores and five destroyers. Commonwealth carrier doctrine stress air cover over the fleet to allow the big guns to enter range of the enemy. As such, the Delft carried fighters and scout planes, and had no ability to project its power beyond the horizon. This tactic proved effective against Nationalist Germany, but only because their navy was shriveled since the bulk of the German Imperial Navy supports the Kaiser.

The Japanese Navy, on the other hand, utilized air power in ways that European and American navies had not considered. The Japanese used carrier-based air craft in attacks on Formosa and British Luzon. The British Far East fleet was destroyed in Manilla Bay by the Japanese Navy. The Japanese fleet, under the command of Admiral Takeo Takagi, from his flagship the Hiryu. Hiryu was accompanied by the carrier Soryu, along with battleship Yamashiro, cruisers Tone and Takeo along with five destroyers. Behind this fleet was the invasion force of one carrier, four battleships, seven cruisers and a mess of destroyers, along with twelve thousand soldiers.

The Commonwealth fleet maneuvered along the north shore of Java, never moving one hundred kilometers away from the shore, and its additional air cover. The Japanese fleet moved down the Makassar Strait, into attack range on September 16, 1942. At 0500, both Japanese carriers launched a risky night-time attack against the Commonwealth fleet. The fighters and bombers would have returned long after sunrise. Accompanying the attack, two hundred Japanese medium bombers took off from bases on Borneo, and struck diversionary attacks at airbases surrounding Jakarta, cratering the runways. Additional air strikes severely damaged the port, making it virtually impossible, or at the very least impractical for the fleet to make call. It is not known precisely, but is believed that Doorman considered this the main attack of the day, and he ordered half of his fighters to intercept the Betty bombers.

At 0820, the first wave of 10 Japanese torpedo bombers struck at the Commonwealth fleet. Three were downed by anti-aircraft fire, and four more by the remaining air cover. However, the torpedo bombers drew the too few fighters down low, while Japanese dive bombers struck at the fleet. At 0826, the first of the Vals struck the Delft. Minutes later, bombs struck the DCS Tanhausen, knocking out its forward turret. A second attack from above hit the Delft at 0831. This strike knocked out the carrier’s elevators and destroyed the bridge superstructure. A second wave of torpedo bombers homed in on the carrier at 0837, destroying its rudder and rupturing its bow. The end of the Delft did not occur until 0903, after the first Japanese attack had departed, when fires raging through the carrier engulfed an armory, setting off numerous one hundred millimeter anti-aircraft artillery. At 0910, the surviving senior officer ordered abandon ship. A destroyer running along side the carrier during the battle also sunk, as result of taking two torpedoes intended for the Delft.

Doorman now had no choice but to retreat closer to Java, and hope that it had enough fighters to provide air cover. Two destroyers broke from his fleet to rescue survivors of the doomed carrier, while the rest of the fleet steamed towards the southwest. The few fighters that Java managed to get airborne, were outclassed by the Zeros when the second attack arrived at 1411. While the Commonwealth fighters were picked off by the zeros, Kate torpedo bomber homed in on the King William IV, while Vals attacked the battlecruiser. The damaged Tanhausen was hit by four more bombs, the last of which penetrated the aft deck and into the magazine. With one tremendous explosion, the Tanhausen broke two-thirds of the way to its stern at 1418. The rest of the ship sank within ten minutes, with most of the crew on board.

At 1422, torpedoes ripped open the starboard hull of the King William IV, causing the battleship to list severely. Java exploded in a giant fire ball at 1426, and Delphi was crippled by repeated attacks. The Japanese ended their attack at 1431, with two additional destroyers on fire, and the King William IV further damaged by addition bombs. Admiral Doorman was killed during the last bombing run, when the bridge was strafe, and then toppled by a bomb impact below it. The King William IV capsized at 1541. By night fall, when it was clear no further attack was on its way, Captain Hans Vermen of the DCS Flores took command of the fleet, and ordered the survivors of the disastrous battle to be retrieved by night fall. Following sunset, the remainder of the fleet limped eastwards towards Ceylon, since Jakarta’s port facilities were no longer able to take on the ships.

The Battle of the Java Sea was the first naval battle in history were the fleets never actually saw each other. The battle also shattered Commonwealth carrier doctrine, and propelled the Commonwealth to design and produce its own carrier-based bombers and attackers. The battle also allowed the Japanese to land on Java, and occupy Jakarta. Like the other major islands of the archipelago, the Japanese were easily able to control the cities and oil fields, but failed to pacify the rest of the island, though not from lack of effort. The Commonwealth Navy was out of the East Indies for the better part of a year, until the first of the Ernst van Bohr class carriers were launched. Commonwealth ground forces did not return to the islands until 1944.

As bad as life under enemy occupation was for Netherlanders, it was far worse for Formosans and Javans. The Principality of Java was never fully subjugated by the Japanese. Though they occupied ports, airfields and coastal area, but never the interior. They were only interested in controlling the island and seas around it, for the even larger oil fields of Sumatra and especially Borneo. Though Japan would continue to proclaim Asia for the Asians, they simply could not spare the resources to bring Java into full compliance, at least not while fighting multiple enemies on multiple fronts.

Formosa, however, was another story. As was stated earlier, when the Formosans attempted to protest the Japanese the same way they would the Commonwealth, the Japanese replied with the rat-tat of machine guns. That was just the start. To the Dutch, race meant little, but to the Japanese it meant everything. Those ‘racially’ European, were interned in camps across the island. However, after centuries, and mostly Dutch male colonization, there was little that could be called ‘white’. What the Japanese did not understand was that ‘race is skin-deep, but nations go to the heart’. The racially Asian, i.e. those whose ancestors came from southern China, considered themselves Formosans, and ‘as Dutch as the next man’.

While the Europeans were interned, the Japanese, claiming to liberate the Chinese, repressed them with the same vigor as they did on mainland Asia. Japanese nationalism in turn sparked Dutch nationalism for all the islanders. The love of nation was so strong, that one monk gave up obtaining Nirvana this lifetime for the sake of his country. Like most Buddhist monks, Singhanda Mantama attempted to resist Japanese occupation through non-violent means, including civil disobedience. The Japanese would crush any and all disobedience, and further retaliate by destroying several Theravada temples, along with Catholic and Protestant churches.

Born in India, Mantama, like most Indians, was at first suspicious of the Dutch. Unlike Ceylon, Java and Formosa, who were made Dutch over the course of centuries of colonization and assimilation, India was conquered in a relatively short time. Aside from southern India, which was inherited from Portugal following United Provinces’ independence, the rest of the subcontinent was brought under Dutch rule by military force between 1783 to the 1870s. Some Indian states allied themselves with the Dutch, and thus kept their own languages and cultures (though Commonwealth culture would slowly filter in). The states brought into compliance by force, in turn had the Dutch language, law and customs forced upon them. This odd arrangement makes India the most cosmopolitan of Commonwealth states, and the most prone to instability.

Mantama grew up in northern India, in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. Even as recent as the 1930s, when Mantama left India for Formosa, India was still backwards compared to the rest of the Commonwealth. Because of its diversity, India was always the slowest Dutch nation to adapt. Industrialization, which occurred in the United Provinces, Brazil and Formosa during the Nineteenth Century, is still occurring in India of the Twenty-first Century. However, Mantama did not leave in search of a better life, but in search of Enlightenment.

His quest for Enlightenment came to an end when Japanese bombs began to rain near his monastery in 1940. His, along with the Formosans’ world, was turned upside down when the Japanese overran the island, and forced the Commonwealth surrender. Though the politicians surrendered, many of the Commonwealth soldiers went to ground and fled to the hills, to continue to fight against the occupiers. However, unlike the Germans, the Japanese were not about to tolerate any dissent.

When one of Mantama’s fellow monks went to the Japanese authorities in protest over the seizure of rice from farmers without compensation, the Japanese guards ran him through with bayonets. Monks that tried to block traffic with their bodies were simply ran over. Another, refusing to bow to ‘savages’ was beaten to death by a Japanese patrol. It was these events that forced other monks to realize they would have to fight back with force.

Knowing he could not stop the violence, Mantama endeavored to control and direct the violence. His strategies in luring Japanese patrols into traps and minimizing Dutch deaths, improved his own standing within the resistance. By 1943, Mantama was effectively the head of the Dutch Resistance on Formosa. With each ambush, the Japanese were forced to increase size of patrols, until entire platoons were patrolling the streets of Taipei and New Antwerp.

Killing of Japanese soldiers did not go without reprisal. The Japanese resorted to random executions, adding that to policies of forced labor, reeducation, so-called comfort girls and genocide. Each murder in the sake of retaliation weighed heavily on Mantama. Perhaps it was his consciousness, but Mantama never made a decision lightly. He would prefer to have no killings at all. His reluctance brought much criticism against him by the more radical resistance cells. They wondered why should they not strike at the enemy. Nobody asked the Japanese to come to Formosa, they just forced their way in, and it was the resistance’s job to drive them out.

It was not until the dawn of 1945, when a Commonwealth invasion loomed over the horizon did Mantama unleash the resistance upon the Japanese. As soon as bombs fell and smoke cleared, the resistance slipped into damaged barracks to slit the throats of any surviving Japanese. Nor was it until Commonwealth soldiers set foot on Formosa did the resistance wheel out artillery and a few tanks hidden away in the hills. If not for Mantama’s temperance, various resistance cells might have piddled away resources until they had nothing to face the occupiers on the day of liberation.



Liberation

In October of 1944, War Plan Tulip unfolded as the Commonwealth landed an invasion force in Zeeland, north of Middelburg. Middelburg was not the first choice of cities to be liberated, but Queen Juliana insisted the invasion plans be changed. It was the port she left her homeland years before, and she wished it to be the first city to be free, and the port of her re-entry.

Germany did not anticipate an invasion of northern Europe so early. By the middle of November, Zeeland was all but liberated, and Commonwealth forces were now on both sides of the mouth of the Rhine. Any hope of keeping the Dutch, or any other ally, on the far side of the river. Bridges across the Rhine soon became the heaviest fortified positions in all of Europe.

Nationalist Germany managed to hold this line until April of 1945, when the Commonwealth provided a breakout along the Rhine. The Hague was cleared of occupational forces on May 7, 1945, with Delft liberated one day later. Whilst be forced from Amsterdam, the Germans attempted to breach levies and dikes all along the Holland coast. Only two breaches occurred, and those were patched within a week. The Queen condemned the actions of the Nationalist German government, but as she and the world would soon learn, these were far from the most heinous crimes of the Nationalist regime,

The liberation of the Balkans began in August of 1944, with the Swedish invasion of Crimea. Sweden brought itself into the war for the sake of humanitarian reasons, for it was the Red Cross that informed the King of the genocide, as well as to remove the Nationalist Germans from the Balkans. Though Sweden had no love for the Kaiser, they preferred him vastly over the rapidly destabilizing Heuss. Leading the drive into Crimea were Sweden’s legendary armored cavalry, the Cossacks. The Crimean vassal lasted only twenty-three days against the Swedish invasion, before capitulating. On the twenty-first day, when victory was all but assured, the Crimean people rose up in a spontaneous rebellion, ousting the hated puppet dictator. The leader of this Fascists state, Revik Gzorny, was lynched in the courtyard of the People’s Court in Sevastopol. Though Crimea fell easily, the Nationalist German Army constructed elaborate fortification across Dacia.

Bulgaria was the next vassal to fall. On January 17, 1945, the government in Sofia fell, and was replaced by the Bulgarian Socialist Party. On January 20, the Bulgarian Balkan Socialist Republic joined the Swedes in their drive through the Balkans. Greek partisans joined the Bulgarians in liberated Constantinople from the Nationalist’s grasp. Closing the Bosporus effectively cut off any pockets of German resistance along the Black Sea.

By April of 1945, the Red Army came out of hiding in force. Before, they were but partisans, bloodying the Nationalist wherever possible. With Swedish forces grinding through the Balkans, the Red Army retrieved all the heavy equipment if had cached away, including more than two hundred surviving tanks. The Red Army struck south through Greece, and met German armor in what could only be called a reverse battle of Thermopylae. It was the Greeks who charged into the now widened pass, breaking the garrison and driving on Athens. No front line soldiers of the Reich were based within Greece since the fall of the Balkan Union. This fact was what allowed the reborn Red Army to achieve victory.

By June of 1945, the Swedish Army crossed the Carpathian Mountains into Transylvania, at the time occupied by Hungary. With the Swedish Army rolling over the Nationalist’s Hungarian vassals, the Hungarian people seized the moment and rose up against the installed government. Tildy lead his partisans in the most overt action of his carrier as a guerilla; a full scale assault on Budapest. His attack was premature, and broken by the Germans garrisoned in the city.

Though the attack on the capital failed, the general uprising succeeded in taking control of the countryside, while the Hungarian nationalists remained in command of the major cities. Partisans hit each convoy that ventured between cities, massacring the soldiers and looting their supplies. City by city fell to Swedish sieges, unable to resupply do to partisan activity. Tildy linked up with the 55th Kiev Infantry and 5th Cossack Armored Cavalry south of Budapest, and attempted to take the city again in late September. Though the Hungarians fought fiercely to take back their capital along side the Swedes and the Cossacks, it was not Tildy who accepted the surrender of the German garrison on October 3. It was Ivan Drenekovich, commander of the 5th Cossacks.

Liberating the Camps

The true horror of the crusades, was not on the battlefields, were over ten million soldiers were killed. It was not even in the cities across Europe where tens million were killed in sieges and air raids. It was in the concentration and death camps scattered across Eastern Europe. When soldiers go into combat, they accept the fact they could die. When civilians die during the battle, they are collateral damage. When they were placed in the camps, it was murder on an industrial scale.

The first camps liberated were a shock to the Swedish Army. Tens of thousands of emaciated inmates, tens of thousands more dead.. Two more months fighting in the Balkans, and a dozen more camps were liberated. Swedish officials carefully documented the camps and captured Steel Helmet documents. The Helmets were methodical about keeping records. Executed inmates were written down with inhuman accuracy. The job was too big for the Swedish Army to handle alone. The Red Cross rushed to the Balkans in the wake of Swedish advances, attempting to save those who were not beyond hope. It is estimated that nearly seven million Slavs were killed in the camps.

When partisans and remnants of the Red Army liberated their first camp, the Balkans no longer gave quarter to the Nationalist’s henchmen. Any soldier, whether regular army or Steel Helmet paramilitary, were killed on sight. The Balkans took out revenge upon the Nationalist Germans. A contingent of Serbian partisans, under the command of General Stephan Filipovic, launched their own attack against a Swedish ran POW camp. The Swedish guards stood back helpless, as eight thousand Serbs slaughtered every prisoner in the camp.

Most Balkan units and partisans remained in the Balkans, hunting down German holdouts and collaborators. Filipovic’s Brigade followed the Swedish Army northwest, raiding into Austria and Bohemia, taking their revenge to the German people. On the march north, the Swedes liberated more camps, this time labor camps. Hundreds of thousands more Balkans were liberated from these camps. Freeing the prisoners slowed the Swedish Army’s advance, but the fate of Nationalist Germany was sealed by 1946. It was the Cossacks who spearheaded the final thrust into the heart of the Reich.

It is said that when the Kaiser returned to his palace in Berlin, and saw the city in ruins, he fell to his knees and wept. For all the devastation in Europe, one can not forget that at the core of the conflict was a German civil war. For years, German fought fellow German, all of them subjects of the Kaiser. So many of his people died in the conflict, and so much stress ate away at the Kaiser’s health, that he died just over a year after the war’s end.

 

[The Kiat]

The restored Union. Map is around 1950, as one could tell about the independent Kamchatka.

 

[The Kiat]

And my precious Balkan Union map.

 

[artha]

Haven't had time to read the last chapter.
Did you see my last comment about Abu Dabi? Haven't heard anything .

 

[The Kiat]

Haven't had time to read the last chapter.
Did you see my last comment about Abu Dabi? Haven't heard anything .

I can see some logic in countering the British in the region, though I'm not sure if the Dutch would expend the resources there. Now suppressing piracy would work, since that's why I had the Dutch go into Ethiopia, because the local emperor wouldn't stop them. But in that case, Portugal had some trading posts in what's now Somalia, that the Dutch took over. Mogadishu was an important coaling station, and had Dutch influence long before then. The Somali were on relatively good terms (as good as terms could be between African and European) with the Dutch. Way better terms than the Dutch were with their own Boer cousins.


Maybe the next time around (3rd Edition) I'll just have to delete that part of the map.