Here is the next chapter. I agree that it is a bit unrealistic compared to OTL, but it could've been worse. At least I didn't have Austria-Hungary defeat it's opponents at the start of the war after one month.
Here's the story. Enjoy.
There could be pointed out several reasons for the fact that Austria was the first country to send an army to enter another country. They had sort of been expecting it, having actively declared war, they were the most aggressive, they wanted to show off to Serbia before the Serbs got a chance at their own offensive plans, and they had been the first ones to actually declare war. Anyway, after having mobilized two armies, each containing a miserable but acceptable 150.000 men, who were willing to fight for the empire and especially for the popular and well-liked Emperor Rudolph I and his poor son Karl, the revenge-willing Austrians marched over the Serbian border, ten miles west of Belgrado, on November 30, 1912, at 11:00 PM, five hours after the Russian war declaration had been received, two days after the Serbian War started, and two days before Prussia would declare war itself.
The Serbians had the biggest shock of their lives when they woke up to see the Austrian army had surrounded their city on the morning of December 1. But they weren’t about to give in yet, and, convinced that Austria was still one of the weakest of the Great Powers, they fought hard against the foreign troops. Days passed, and the Austrians, who couldn’t take the city as easily as expected, began to get a little nervous. Up in the north, Austria had enemies as well, and the mere purpose of sending two small armies to Serbia was getting it conquered quickly. Luckily, a Third Army arrived on the fifth, consisting of 225.000 men, and the total of 525.000 men, along with some planes that dropped bombs, managed to beat the walls and resistance of the determined Serbians. On the morning of December 8, the walls had gone down, and the Austrian flag rose above the former capital of Serbia.
However this was an enormous boost to the Austrian morale, Serbia wasn’t beaten just yet. Even without help from their allies, they were determined to defeat Austria, or at least keep the Austrians back from conquering Serbia until the war, which was hoped to be short, was over. Peter I, the king, had fled to the south, and set up a new government in Nis in the south-east from which he ruled over a Serbia that was almost the same size as it had been before the Austrian attack. Therefore, the Austrian army travelled south, and also, they got help. The Austrian navy, which Rudolph had ordered to be constructed back in 1893, had sent a fleet down the Adriatic Sea, which attacked the Montenegrin city of Kotor to get a base to operate from and easily landed on December 8 on the coast, and within days the troops from the fleet marched up to the capital. Within the span of just a week and a half, on December 19, all of Montenegro was taken. Austria ruled over Montenegro and had made sure there was one place the Serbians couldn’t escape to.
In the meantime, the Austrian armies raced over the Serbian territories. On Christmas day, a frightened Nis surrendered, but again, the royals had fled. Both armies met up with each other by Pec, and they raced into Kosovo, effectively blocking Peter I from a way to flee through the Albanese mountains. The Austrians arrived at Pristina on December 30, and made a camp outside the city. It took them little time to get in. On January 2, 1913, the last Serbian city had fallen after the Austrian ‘Blitzkrieg’ taking little more than one month. Peter I of Serbia was captured and transported to Austria. He would never see his homeland again.
In Pristian, the government of Serbia formally surrendered and Austria placed it’s peace treaty on the table, which was quite harsh. Here’s what it said:
-The kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro will give up their independence and become a state within the Federal Empire of Austria-Hungary.
-Serbia will, before February 15, 1913, form an army of at least 125000 Serbian men, that will become the Austrian Twelfth Army (the other eleven were already in the progress of being mobilized). Montenegro will add at least 30000 men to that army.
-Serbia and Montenegro will cease all support to the Central Powers.
And with that, Serbia and Montenegro became what they are now – members of the Federal Empire of Austria-Hungary. And the Austrians immediately continued their journey south. There was more to do. Getting Bulgaria out of Greece, for example.
The Empire of Bulgaria had joined the Axis in the war on the ninth, as previously said, and had managed to bring it’s armies on the borders on December 13, when Austria had already conquered half of Montenegro and two thirds of Serbia. Trying to help the Serbians wasn’t really an option – the Austrian army had advanced too far already. The Ottomans and Romanians were allies, so the only country that remained was the kingdom of Greece.
Greece had been a relatively minor Balkan nation for quite some time now, ever since it’s creation in 1830, after the Greek rebellions in the 1820s. The Greek king was George I, who had been ruling ever since March thirtieth 1863. George was a good king, and had decided to join the Allies in the World War, hoping to gain some more Balkan territory than only Ottoman Thessaly, and expand in Greece north of the Peloponnesus. A Greek army had established itself and was raging through Epirus as, from Bulgarian Macedonia, the Bulgarian army attacked on December 20th, beating the Greeks. Racing through the lands, the Bulgarians were able to push Greece back to Thessaly, which was occupied by Bulgarian troops on January 17. Athens was just being surrounded by Bulgarian forces as the Austrians attacked from the north.
Never had Greece been so relieved. The Austrians attacked Bulgaria, and defeated them in a decisive battle in North-Greece on January 25. Soon, the Bulgarians moved back into their own borders. Leaving the smallest Austrian Second Army behind to fight the Bulgarians and push them out of Macedonia, the other two merged, forming a greater Austrian First Army of 350.000 men, that went north. Unlike the Greek, Austria had more to do.
The United Empire of Greater Prussia had immediately started it’s complicated war plan, the ‘Von Schlieffen Plan’. The plan was to crush France by moving through Belgium and the Dutch province of Limburg, in a half-circle movement racing past Paris and smashing the French armies, which were focused on Baden. After a quick victory around mid-January, the Prussians would then be transported on rails towards the Bavarian border, taking no more than a week and a half to smash through it, no matter that it was taking the Austrians even longer to go through Serbia, and then attack Vienna before the Austrian troops could’ve withdrawn from Serbia, while the Russians would attack from the east. After taking Vienna, which was to be done around early to mid-February, the Austrians would surrender for sure, and the Prussians would take their time to frighten away the Scandinavian allies… and surely the British wouldn’t go to war with them. Anyway, by early March 1913, Prussia would’ve won the war, and would be ruling over Bavaria, Austrian Tyrol and perhaps Bohemia, and Alsace-Lorraine, forcing everyone else to recognise a Prussian-dominated German Empire, over forty years after the initial plan had been tried to become reality in the early ‘70s. Von Moltke, the leader of the army, had wished to change the plan to his wishes, but William II of Prussia realized correctly that Prussia didn’t have any hopes but the original Von Schlieffen Plan, and as they lacked support in the south and didn’t want the Von Moltke revisions to become reality, they went with the original plan, but taking away a few armies from the centre to aid in the east. After all, with a lack of Bavarian armies, Prussia didn’t have that much soldiers: 3 million, half a million less than scientist would later calculate that Prussia would’ve had if Bavaria had been a part of Prussia from the beginning on. That lack of armies would mean the end to Prussia.
In the beginning, all went well. The Prussian troops attacked the Belgian and Dutch borders, smashing through them like they didn’t exist, on December sixth, the first day. A British withdrawal order followed on the seventh, which of course was ignored. To the Prussian surprise, though, war was declared by the British on the ninth, and, bribed by Great-Britain and Austria, the Dutch declared war, too, a day later, since the Prussians had attacked their borders. An annoyed army, the First Prussian Army which contained 300.000 men, was sent north. It easily raced through the Dutch lands and easily defeated a Dutch army on December 13 whose weapons hadn’t been improved since Napoleon. This battle, the Battle of Den Bosch, was the first Prussian victory in the war, and gave a smallish boost to the Prussian morale, taking away their annoyance at the British and Dutch. A boost, however, wouldn’t make them win the war in the end.
The Prussians kept attacking, and soon raced through North-Brabant. Trying to break the dykes along the Rhine and Waal didn’t really slow the Prussians down, as they simply moved back to Limburg and attacked through Kleve instead, one half of the Prussian army going with boats over the IJssel river, and one half going north. On December 17, Arnhem fell, and on December 20, Utrecht did the same. As a short pause was made on Christmas Day, all of the Dutch provinces of North-Brabant, Limburg, Gelderland and Utrecht were Prussian-occupied.
The Dutch weren’t ready to give up yet though. They managed to flood big parts of the border between North Holland and Utrecht, therefore effectively stopping the Prussians from attacking the border between the two provinces and capturing Holland. The Prussians ignored it, and, after Christmas, they headed north instead.
The provinces soon collapsed as they fell into Prussian hands. Zwolle, the capital of Overijssel, fell on January 2. Drente’s capital Assen did the same on January 5. Groningen tried hard to resist Prussia, but the capital fell on January 10. Then, the Prussians attacked the Frisians. They fought hard back, having some advantage through their lakes, and the annoyed Prussians, not having time to play around, sent airplanes towards Harlingen, Leeuwarden, Drachten, Sneek and Dokkum. The cities were bombed, and a Prussian victory was soon established. On January 21, everything in free, Non-Prussian hands was North-Holland, as the other provinces had soon fallen. Late January therefore saw fruitless Prussian attacks to conquer North-Holland that kept failing. In mid-February, they eventually gave up, left behind a small occupation army, and headed down, where their friends were in serious trouble in Belgium.
While the other armies raced through the Netherlands, the Prussians in the south soon attacked Liege, or Luik, the capital of one of Belgium’s most eastern provinces. Luik, however, was fortified, and however the city fell on the eleventh, the forts fought and fought up until the day before Christmas. The other Prussian armies had in the meantime moved on, and finally reached Brussel on the sixteenth. At that point, the army was severely exhausted from marching through Belgium, but it still easily managed to defeat the troops in the capital of Belgium. Marching farther west, though, was because of limited manpower going to be a hard task. Albert I of Belgium, realizing that, acted upon that information and sent a message through free Belgium to fight back as hard as they could, to weaken the Prussians more. And it worked. The remains of the Prussian armies didn’t reach the border with France until December 27, when they were weakened. There still were four armies left, though, consisting of 750.000 men all together. What they did not know, although they could’ve expected it from the recent developments, was that a French army was waiting for them.
The French attacks from Alsace-Lorraine towards the Kingdom of Baden had initially been very successful, taking over major parts of the land. When about to attack Karlsruhe, though, the news of the Prussian intentions came, from both Rudolph I, suspecting something similar all along, and Albert I of Belgium. The French immediately withdrew their forces out of Baden, losing their territorial gains, and with the fastest moves the world had ever seen up until 1912, the French raced towards the border. They eventually came a little too late, and met up with the main German forces in Picardie, in the department of the Aisne, on January second, 1913. The French realized they could not win a direct battle and grudgingly backed off, although doing that in a slow way. The French army allowed the Germans to race further through the region, but attacked at night with swift but deadly moves. Burning locals’ houses delayed the Germans also, causing it to be on the eleventh when they finally reached the border with the Champagne region. On the same day, British and Spanish forces had arrived, and even an Austrian army, the Austrian Seventh Army. Along with the British Force, one Austrian army and the two Spanish armies, five French armies finally stopped their withdrawing on January thirteenth. The region was the region of the city La Fère, a fortress city which the Prussian Second Army was about to catch and that the French did not want to have fall. The date was Monday, January 13th, 1913, at 7:30 AM. It was time for a battle. Or should I say…
the battle.
The Prussians had now advanced very far into their scheme, and were supposed to have the ‘job’ done in just a few days from the present day. But they couldn’t. The Von Schlieffen Plan had not considered that the French might get help from the British, that Belgium would give so much resistance, and that the Dutch would declare war as well. The only thing in which he had been right was that Luxemburg had stayed quiet and had allowed the Prussian Fourth and Fifth Army to occupy and, on December fifteenth, formally annex it without much resistance. The grandduchess, Marie-Adélaïde, was enraged with the course of events but could not do much. From that, Luxembourgian people later accused her of allying with the Prussians, while the young grandduchess really couldn’t do much about the situation. Anyway, the grandduchy of Luxemburg was occupied by Prussia easily, but that was about it for the good news, or at least, the good news for the Prussians. The combined French/Austrian/Spanish/British army attacked the Prussian armies on January 13. It was a decisive defeat for the Prussians, stopping their advance through France. The Entente armies far outnumbered the Prussians, and Russian help, though requested by Emperor Wilhelm II, had not arrived yet, instead still being transported through Russian Poland, from where it would be taken through Germany and through French Alsace, to finally end up at the battlefield. As the Prussians knew, though, the Russians weren’t fast at mobilizing their troops. Therefore, the Prussians, upon withdrawing their troops from the Champagne region on January 16, decided to try a counter-attack.
On January 24, after slowly moving the armies there, The Prussian Sixth and Seventh Army attacked Alsace-Lorraine from the east, at the spot the French had expected them to attack much earlier, at the start of the war. Right now, they were unprepared, and the Prussians easily raced through Alsace and besieged Strasbourg, one of the major cities in the region. But, as soon proved, Strasbourg was a fortress, and a fortress was never easy to take, even with weakened resistance. Some historicists even claim that, if Strasbourg would’ve given in to Prussia easier, it might’ve given the Prussians a chance to win the war in the west. This statement is of course by the majority declared ridiculous, since the Prussians didn’t have much of a chance anyway, and they hadn’t had from the start – they even hadn’t managed to provoke war on France in the 1870s under Bismarck, so they surely couldn’t win this war without him. Anyway, Strasbourg kept standing, until the fortresses finally fell on February 2. The Prussians soon advanced past it, but they were too late. Despite attacks at Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, and hopes to march up to Picardie and help the other troops, the offensive wasn’t a success. On February 7, two French armies and one Spanish army defeat the Prussians a few miles west of Nancy, and managed to make them go back into Alsace, and, eventually, Baden. The French were victorious in the east. Now, all they had to do was push the Prussians out of the north.
The Western Front was not really stabile at the time. The large French/ British/ Spanish/ Austrian Army tried to push Prussia to the north. But Russian reinforcements, finally arriving on February 17, stopped that short. While in France, the Prussians only managed to occupy the east of Picardy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg were all occupied except for North Holland and a piece of ground west of the river IJzer in Belgium. This front was the front that would eventually stabilize, around April, and form the basic of the Western Front for the next two years. It wouldn’t be until early 1915, that the front would really start moving again.
In the east, in the meantime, Austria had mobilized all it’s troops and was now with eleven armies, one of which (the second) was in Greece, and one of which was in France (the seventh). The other armies, though, were ready to fight the Prussians. And fight they would. There was, actually, another ally to the Entente: the Kingdom of Bavaria. After some hesitation, Bavaria had finally declared war on Prussia on December 27, and had attacked Württemberg. By mid-February, when the reinforcements had arrived, the Prussian First and Seventh Army managed to leave the main army and move away through Prussia. In the meantime, on February 21, Russia, after months of preparation and mobilization, finally opened it’s first major offensive in Galicia. The strong Austrian troops managed to beat them back quite easily, beating them by Premysl on the twenty-eighth, and even pushing them north and into Russian Poland on the fifth of March, where the Austrians pushed up towards Lodz before they turned around. The Austrian-Hungarian army initially didn’t really understand why this offensive was even made without solid Prussian support, or at a more fortunate time. They would know soon.
Within days, the Austrians found out that the real intention wasn’t conquering Galicia – it was providing a distraction. On March 1, when the Austrians were busy pushing back the Russians, the Prussian First and Seventh Army crossed the borders with Bavaria, and attacked Nurnberg. The weak Bavarian First Army (their only army at the time – they would form a second a few days later) didn’t stand a chance and had to give up the city on the twelfth, after heavy fighting, allowing the Prussians to advance into the south, while the remaining parts of Württemberg and Baden attacked from the west. It was official. The WFGU (Wars For German Unification) had began.