Bad decisions

[West]

Alfred Peter Friedrich von Tirpitz

What's the point of having a navy if you never use it?

Those words were in my opinion what led to the great war, 12 words that showed that the Kaiser simply did not understand anything about war. The following ones were, "This will all be over by Christmas."

The aim of the war was to make Cuba a German colony, and the original plan was crafted in 1898, the idea was a great German fleet would sail across the atlantic defeat the American navy in a decisive battle attack Norfolk and then blockade the American's a german diplomat would arrive with our demands and we would emerge victorious from the conflict.

It was pure wishful thinking and we were able to successfully convince the Kaiser that the plan wouldn't be prudent because we simply put did not have enough ships to make the plan work. So then the second plan was hatched, a two pronged invasion of Boston and New York city. The plan called for 60 warships, at least 60 cargo ships, 75,000 tons of coal and a hundred thousand troops. I dismissed it at first and just hoped the Kaiser would develop another fancy as he often did we all thought it was a done topic by 1900. We were wrong.

The Kaiser looked at the Russo-Japanese war and concluded that a surprise attack could easily cow the American's and that their lack of military preparedness would mean an easy victory. At the time Germany was in the mists of a massive naval building spree with us spending 60% of the nations budget on the military. There were plans to scrap the older ships to make way for the new ones. This is when the Kaiser let us know of his plan.

We would take the older ships, sail them to north America and attack Boston and New York in a sneak attack.

When I asked him how we would supply our troops with supplies he simply stated they would live off the land, he thought the American's had a weak will and that their leadership would capitulate to us utterly once a proper show of force and german might had been made. So in 1907 we send out 5 wittlesbach class battleships crusiers, transport ships, the entire invasion fleet ended up being half of the warships that were initially called for and half cargo ships to hold the troops, who numbered less then the 100,00 men the plan required, how much fewer? 50,000 men.

The element of surprise, lack of preparation, the weakness of the American government would be more then enough to get them to fold with in months, demands grew as the plan was hatched going from just Cuba, to the entire east coast of the united states, we convinced him to settle for just demanding Florida. So we set sail in the dead of night determined to finish the war quickly, after all how much fight did this Theodore Roosevelt have in him?

 

[West]

Alfred Peter Friedrich von Tirpitz



Operation wishful thinking was in my opinion a bad idea, a really bad idea and normally it would have been blocked but the elections had brought in people who were patrotic who belived in the strength of germany in other words bootlicks. We were able to limit our losses by only giving up older ships the plan was to limit our losses and then just pay damages once the brief conflict was over.

As for operation wishful thinking it of course required absolute secrecy so officially the fleet was sailing for other reasons and we told the British and French some nonsense about showing some colonials who truely held the power. Our spies were confidant that they bought the ruse and we sailed out into the atlantic with just enough coal to make a round trip, there was little to no margin of error and we were confident that we had the element of surprise.

Our fleet split into two and attacked the cities of Boston and New York, there was just one slight problem.

The american's knew, the american fleet who had been absent for the entire trip proved that they did exist at the worst possible time. We attacked in the dead of night in Boston harbor, then found our ships trapped in said harbor by the american navy. Other then some minor damage to the docks Boston did little damage and in return every ship we sent was sunk. The only troops and sailors who survived were the ones rescued by the yankees.

New York went both better and worse, the American plan was to meet our troops with a contengent of Marines, and trap our forces in the hudson, we had though by accident attacked the wrong position and attacked Manhatten, with 30,000 troops. Our ships bombarded the island, giving away our position to the Americans who promptly redeployed to cut us off and easily trap our forces. Our ships may have been more advanced but they had more of them and all of our ships were destroyed but not before our troops landed. Their maps were innacurate, because we landed in the wrong place but our men decided to press their advantage and attack and ended up getting seperated in the darkness fire and unfamilar terrain.

Unable to see targets of milatary value the men decided to make due and attack at will this led to some decisions that in retrospect were unwise. Such as the attack and slaughter of Saint anthony's covent. In the darkness the men thought it looked like some thing of value and attacked it, by the time they figured out it was a religious insitution the nuns were already dead and the place was on fire.

There were incidents like that through out the night and when daylight hit the americans fought back. Police officers, milatary personal and enraged civilians started hunting our troops and we had more or less expended all of our ammunition by this point resupply from ship was not possible because the ships had been sunk. Our troops were slaughtered by angry mobs there were no survivors of the New York campain.

When the news of the disaster got back to us, most of the general staff was not surprised. The Kaiser was in a rage about the murder of German troops in New York city and went on a tirade, about spies and demanded we find them. And we did, a lady of easy virtue from Lorraine named Marie Martin. Rather then buckling like most would she was defiant in the public trial referring to our troops as murderers who stole land that rightfully belonged to france and said her actions were done to protect innocent women and children from our evil empire.

Well with a public confession like that the Kaiser ordered her to be dealt with publically, personally I doubted it was just one spy who leaked the plan to the Americans but we dutifully followed his orders Marie made a show of the event by singing La Marseillaise before we ended her life. Unknown to us of course was the fact that there was a french journalist in the crowd. Who of course relayed the story to French newspapers, which then went global.

The Kaiser then went on a rant infront of the troops and gave them access to the bars around berlin on the crown, the milatary police found out that some of our troops were thinking about attacking the american embassy so we quickly moved to protect it and searched the city for the idiots before they hurt anyone, however very drunk and not native to berlin the group of 5 men did attack an embasy. The Russian one, when we got there several embassy workers were dead including the diplomat and his small child.

Those of us in the general staff decided that we needed to contact the Russians at once, and try to smooth things over, and we likewise were able to convince the Kaiser to try to talk to the americans. We belived they were reasonable if weak people and we could settle this all with some money and apologies.

Well the Russian matter blew up in our faces with the russian press calling for blood they declared war on us, the french soon followed screaming out some nonsense like for Marine Martin, this was bad but we were confident we could end this by simply invading France through Belgium and then turn over and defend in the east until Russian honor was satisfied.

As for the americans it turned out that they were not a reasonable people at all....