The solution to this apparent condundrum lies in the fact that ITTL victory comes to the CP somewhat earlier (in 1916-17 over Russia & France, in 1917-18 over Britain) but not early enough to make them stick to a lenient peace. Two-three years of fighting are still quite enough to radicalize their war aims. CP Italy in 1915 and (optionally) CP Sweden in 1914 are very good, but they are not enough to provide a CP victory in 1915, which would be required to produce a really lenient peace.
I'm not so sure about that. France didn't have any spare troops. What can they do? The Entente are going to start looking for terms as soon as they're losing, and if they can't oppose Italy on a whole front, how can they imagine themselves to be winning? At any rate, they
won't survive 1916, when the French army buckled visibly; and what really put the hard-line faction into the driving seat in Berlin was Bethmann's failed 1916 attempt to make peace with Russia. The terms he was offering, though sensible (there's nothing for Germany in eastern Europe, and Russian treachery would doom the other Entente powers) were certainly leniant;
any peace whereby Russia maintains some of its prime economic real-estate is not "leniant".
As it concerns Ukraine and Egypt, there are specific reasons for them. As it had been said previously, ITTL CP war aims in Russia get somewhat expanded to include at least western Ukraine because they have the concern of feeding a rather expanded CP rooster, with Italy, Sweden, and Romania in it. If someone has any good idea of how to make this not a significant concern for the CP, I'd very happy to embrace it, and let Russia keep most of Belarus and Ukraine, even I'd still enforce the OTL Interbellum border, in Europe at least
The Germans weren't
starving until 1917/18. Romania, by the way, is also a large wheat exporter. If Germany makes peace with France and Russia in 1916, I don't food is a particular concern. They didn't ask for Ukraine in early 1918, even though the food problems were by then more severe. Any problems from other CPs (and like I said, Romania was an exporter: the Germans were eating that export after they occupied the country, true, but it's more than capable of feeding itself) would likely be balanced out by the early food situation being less dire. Was Italy a large food-importer? I don't know.
(IMO there is no apparent good reason why ITTL Soviet Russia would keep Transcaucasia).
Soviet Russia, given Trotsky and Lenin's whacky negotiating strategy, wouldn't even keep Ukraine or Estonia. My scenario is based on Russia making peace under the republic or possibly even the Tsar (although he's still on the way out). Kerensky let the country fall apart underneath him because he was hoping that Britain and France would win the war and he could sit at the victors table (his epynonymous offensive showed the Russia was just abrely capable of defending its own frontline, in Europe, anyway); if they're obviously losing, peace is an obvious move. Even the Tsar might be persuaded to make a peace by Sturmer if the military situation is really awful, although he'd still fall eventually, no doubt.
If that's the case, the Russians are at any rate holding in the Caucasus (OTL, they were winning, fat lot of good that it did them); if not, they're losing the lot.
Egypt gets lost because a big point of TTL is that Britain remains defiant to the initial CP peace offer, so the war continues and they lose several more bits of their empire, including Egypt.
That France would cease to be a great power if defeated, and that its existance as a great power was indispensible to British security, was the reason for having a war in the first place. The Britain of 1916 was not that of 1941. It had neither the USA, nor the USSR, nor a sense of apocalyptic fatalism to call on. As in France, the men of total victory only took over here in 1916: I'm not sure if that will even happen.
I do. The Middle East campaign would be the main focus of the combined CP war effort in the final year of the war. It's not like they have anything else to do in Europe besides occupation duty. As you acknowledge, even IOTL the Ottomans reached the Canal, so the logistics issues were not that problematic.
A small Ottoman force, through extensive planning and with the help of camels (and rather low on ammo IIRC) were able to get to the canal and get shot to bits. That was when Britain
wasn't expecting an attack and prepared for it.
Besides, by this time France has fallen and Spain has gone CP, which casts supremacy in the Mediterranean to the CP. They can land troops to retake North Africa (and take Malta and Cyprus) and strike at Egypt from both sides.
They can what? I don't believe Spain had a fleet worthy of any particular consideration. I'm not sure what the Italian navy was like, but I somehow doubt that it - at first facing the French navy as well - would be in fit shape to defeat the RN all by itself so casually.
I would assume that by the time Britain gets at the peace table, its overall situation has deteriorated enough that they can be successfully pressued to hand over Yemen and Oman.
We
are more-or-less unassailable. Sure, making peace is the sensible option (and hence we'd do it early), but there's very little to hold over us once our allies are beaten.
My expectation as well, even if the Reds don't implode. With a victorious Ottoman Empire, I don't see the Soviets as able to retake Transcaucasia. Hence, Georgia remains independent, and Armenia and Azerbaijan go Ottoman.
I wasn't referring to the "Reds" imploding, but to "Russia". After the February Revolution, the Russian army in the Caucasus began to filter home, but it would still be some time before the Ottomans organised an offensive back to the pre-war border and beyond. If, as in the scenario I sketch, Russia makes peace before total collapse, the Ottomans would probably receive only Kars and Batum - as at Brest-Litovsk, which (although distant from realities on the ground, where there was no Soviet power and lots of Ottoman troops) showed that the Germans didn't care much about Azerbaijan.
I suppose some butterfly management would be necessary to let the Reds defeat the MNC, then.
They never actually fought. National autonomy and de-Cossackisation went over well with the Circassians, who had been fighting a struggle for existance against Denikin. Some villages apparently turned out with red flags. Once the establishment of Soviet power at gunpoint set in, there was an insurrection of the more Islam-motivated elements likely to be more pro-Ottoman; but unlike those faced by Stalin and the Tsar, it was ended quickly and without ethnic cleansing, and pro-Circassian policies continued.
The Ottomans, however, sent detachments as far as Petrovsk (Makhachkala) to clear out Russian garrisons even IOTL. I don't see any way to avoid a Shamilist state if the Ottomans cross the Caucasus.
But the CPs could easily conquer it in the final phase of the war, and at the peace table Britain's standing would not be good enough to enforce all their interests like that. They would be forced to focus their efforts on the really important stuff, like avoiding revolution at home, a Afrikaner uprising, keeping control of rebellious India, and the (futile) attempt to keep Ireland.
I find it interesting that even though there's no terribly realistic threat to Britain (not in CP hands, anyway), we're still the ones unable to insist on minor concerns - even though I don't think the Ottomans ever expressed interest in Khuzestan, so it's a minor concern for
them.
Oh, and there
was an Afrikaner uprising. Smuts and Botha put it down without calling on a single British soldier, decapitating the (small) radical pro-German element among the Afrikaners.
The Irish conflagration began after the election: with a war, there is of course no election and no opportunity for SF to organise an alternative legislature. Britain's policies in wartime Ireland were absurdly heavy-handed, but if there
had been a German plot (and there wasn't) it would have been repressed pretty ruthlessly. When the news was all from France and young men dying in horrible ways was a fact of the times, nobody spared much notice for large-scale internment of innocent civilians in Ireland.
India is probably more plausible than the other two, but I still consider it unlikely: German attempts to stir up India appear to have been small and mismanaged. The British Indian Army was mostly reliable throughout the war: unsurprising, given that at that point there was still a lot of hope riding on the promises given to India of autonomy after good war-service, which didn't really materialise post-war. Although notably, even after this disillusion and the coming-of-age of the independence movement, which by the latter 30s was pretty much unstoppable, Indians seeing their colonial overlord in dire straits overwhelmingly preferred the British Indian Army to revolt.