Not sure what you’re referencing; may as well tip my hand that GAW breaks out in 1913 and Part VII will cover the buildup to it
Cinco de Mayo
- Thread starter KingSweden24
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Taking this from the AmeriPol chat.
I'm enjoying the timeline! Since I'm catching up I'm having a little difficulty keeping everything straight dates wise, but that is on me for reading from the start and ending at the same time!
Is there a quick rundown of the situation in Scandinavia?
This sort of runs parallel to an idea I had for a French-led diplomatic intervention. If France can bring some other minor powers on board, my thinking is at least the Dutch and Spanish, then I think Napoleon III would've been more willing to intervene if given a window. I've thought it a very plausible idea that goes overlooked in favor of an Anglo-American confrontation.
It doesn't get as much attention as the Trent Affair, but I've been curious about Benjamin Butler's occupation of New Orleans and how he treated the foreign nationals there. One of the events that led to his dismissal from the post was when he ordered troops into the Dutch Consulate and apprehended the Consul Amedie Conturie, who was a French national. They were after (and found) coins seemingly confiscated from the New Orleans mint and were being hidden there under the Dutch flag. Conturie tried to get a letter to the French consul Comte Mejan, but the Union soldiers refused to. If the French intervene (they had a small warboat in harbor, the aviso Milan, maybe Conturie or Mejan scurry aboard for safety) or one of the consuls is accidentally hurt (certain accounts say Conturie was "roughed up", maybe a pistol accidentally goes off?) then the French have an excuse for diplomatic recognition of the CSA.
This has also gotten me to read more about the French intervention in Mexico, in particular a WI where France is thoroughly embarrassed after the Battle of Puebla and Juarez is more secure in his Republic. There was a possibility of the French troops being thoroughly defeated, or at least lose all morale. There isn't a lot about the Battle of Cerro del Borrego in English, but this book suggests the Mexican Republicans could've pushed the French out of Orizaba and back to Veracruz before reinforcements arrived. My idea was if Mexico looks like a lost cause, the French had already accepted the loans agreement like the other parties. They could've used these troops and the incoming force under Forey as a threat against the US if the opportunity presented itself. Without the years of war, Mexico is better off like ITTL.
Keep it up!
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Thank you!
Scandinavia will in fact be much of the upcoming focus! 1905 is kind of a crucial year there.
Too late to go retcon but Butler’s shenanigans in New Orleans almost certainly I would say could have been regarded as part of the whole for Nap 3’s considerations in recognizing the CSA
Hearst is pretty lucky then. Hughes would have to deal with the Great American War. It could rebound to the Dems benefit. It'll be Wilson without WW1. I think without WW1 Wilson's reputation might have improved though his racism would still have weighed him down.
I think a war-time Hearst would be pretty interesting (I've certainly never seen it in any TL before). Obviously he was pretty hawkish in his younger years, but as he aged he began to grow more dovish (although that might be due in large part to him trying to be contarian to FDR). I'd be interested to hear (and I'm sure we will hear about) his take on the Great American War.
Hearst was just a really weird (very eccentric) man, especially politically. He made some remarkable moral stands in his time (being the only major newspaperman to stick is neck out of WJB in 1896, especially so early into his career, took serious cojones and his belief in the righteousness of Cuban liberty was genuine despite his equally genuine desire to sling more copy than Joe Pulitzer could) and also was very craven in a lot of ways (his pacifism in 1917 was most definitely influenced by his pandering to his Irish and German readership when only a year earlier he'd been trying to stir up a war with Mexico when the revolutionaries threatened to confiscate his farm, and he spent much of his later years a grumpy reactionary who tried to destroy politicians who piqued him personally (Al Smith successfully, FDR not so)).
Odd but fascinating man. Hopefully my attempt to do a rendition of him will do him some justice. My suspicion is his media personage influenced a lot of that and that a Hearst who was always just in politics would have been a fair bit mellower (that's also why Teddy Roosevelt is much more of a cartoon character version of himself ITTL)
Scandinavia: The Birth of Union
"...Hagerup's government hung by a thread; Oscar II was adamant, however, that all efforts to preserve the narrow pro-Union majority in Norway be exhausted and thus refused Hagerup's private resignation in March of 1905, instead taking the more drastic measure of appointing Johan Ramstedt the Prime Minister of Sweden when Bostrom offered to be the sacrificial lamb who would resign to see the New Laws through the Storting. The King next dispatched the Crown Prince Gustaf [1] to Christiania, appointing him Regent, meant to demonstrate the seriousness with which Sweden took the unfolding crisis over the passage of the new organic acts, hoping that the Norwegian nationalists would see it the same way and the compromise would finally be passed in their original form.
They did not. The Crown Prince was met with boos from the galleries as he implored the members of the parliament to pass the laws "and cement the equal footing our brother states stand upon." It was not enough; months of propaganda against the New Laws and infighting within Hagerup's coalition had left the Norwegian popular opinion polarized and frustrated, especially in the poor economic conditions of 1905. Only the conservative aristocracy of Norway and the upper echelons of its army and navy were uniform in their support of the Union; Hagerup was seen as their tool, and the tool of Swedish autocracy. Hagerup thus introduced the New Laws to the Storting as the Union Act of 1905, but committed a grave political sin in doing so - his split Cabinet had promulgated a bill that they did not know for certain could pass. Even worse, Hagerup presumed a win-win in doing so. If the New Laws he had helped draft with little Parliamentary input passed, the crisis of the Union would end instantly. If not, he had his evidence to go to the less hardline Ramstedt and the King and begin the process of amending the new organic laws of both states and could do so in a process that had more support of his full Cabinet.
Hagerup's assumption that that was how the potential aftermath of a defeat would play out was grossly misjudged. He had entirely failed to account for what a triumph the defeat of the reforms would be for the absolutists, and he had also neglected to inform Crown Prince Gustaf of his gambit and instead fed Stockholm and the regency a host of tall tales about how the passage was imminent and he had only to sway the Cabinet. Nearly half of his Cabinet voted against the Union Act and much of his own party, and the opposition in lockstep, voted it down, an ignonimous defeat. Hagerup announced his resignation from the floor of the Storting before voting was already done and pro-independence, republican democrat Christian Michelsen earned the confidence of the Storting to form an emergency cabinet.
Though Oscar and his advisors had braced for a defeat, the margin stunned them and put paid to Hagerup's pretty lies, and only further turned the Swedish establishment against parliamentary democracy if "mob rule" would precipitate such international crises at the whim of an "uninformed majority." The Swedish Army was quietly asked to begin preparations to mobilize as Christiana descended into chaos, and then the second thunderbolt struck the Norwegian capital - this time, it was the Swedes who had misjudged, in entrusting the reactionary Crown Prince [2] with the unilateral power of the Regency. In previous crises - 1884, 1895, 1898 - Oscar had always had time to deliberate with his ministers (more often than not Bostrom) and consult his iron-willed wife, the Queen Sophia, on what to do next. Gustaf very much sought to be his own man, however, and had more than once considered his father's deference to his mother's input as less a patient man seeking out the more measured thoughts of a woman he trusted but rather a wife who overly dominated her cowed husband. The Crown Prince instead requested the Norwegian Cabinet behind Michelsen resign (in his cloistered view, resign in disgrace) due to the "unprecedented" nature of the "crisis at hand" of the Union Act being rejected and Michelsen, who had hoped for such an overreaction, tried not to contain his delight as he agreed and advised the King to dissolve the Storting in order to call early elections, which would be viewed at home and abroad as a referendum on not only the New Laws but Norway's continuation in the Union itself..." [3]
- Scandinavia: The Birth of Union
[1] OTL's Gustaf V
[2] Very pro-German and the one who encouraged his father not to yield IOTL; Queen Sophia's advice won out, as usual.
[3] Granted, rejecting a constitutional reform of the Union by a healthy majority is precisely the thing that dissolving a Parliament for early elections is for but there's a big distinction, etiquette-wise and politically, between Michelsen calling for said elections first and the conservative Swedish Regent dissolving Parliament after it rejects his preferred constitutional settlement, even if in practice what he did is appropriate
They did not. The Crown Prince was met with boos from the galleries as he implored the members of the parliament to pass the laws "and cement the equal footing our brother states stand upon." It was not enough; months of propaganda against the New Laws and infighting within Hagerup's coalition had left the Norwegian popular opinion polarized and frustrated, especially in the poor economic conditions of 1905. Only the conservative aristocracy of Norway and the upper echelons of its army and navy were uniform in their support of the Union; Hagerup was seen as their tool, and the tool of Swedish autocracy. Hagerup thus introduced the New Laws to the Storting as the Union Act of 1905, but committed a grave political sin in doing so - his split Cabinet had promulgated a bill that they did not know for certain could pass. Even worse, Hagerup presumed a win-win in doing so. If the New Laws he had helped draft with little Parliamentary input passed, the crisis of the Union would end instantly. If not, he had his evidence to go to the less hardline Ramstedt and the King and begin the process of amending the new organic laws of both states and could do so in a process that had more support of his full Cabinet.
Hagerup's assumption that that was how the potential aftermath of a defeat would play out was grossly misjudged. He had entirely failed to account for what a triumph the defeat of the reforms would be for the absolutists, and he had also neglected to inform Crown Prince Gustaf of his gambit and instead fed Stockholm and the regency a host of tall tales about how the passage was imminent and he had only to sway the Cabinet. Nearly half of his Cabinet voted against the Union Act and much of his own party, and the opposition in lockstep, voted it down, an ignonimous defeat. Hagerup announced his resignation from the floor of the Storting before voting was already done and pro-independence, republican democrat Christian Michelsen earned the confidence of the Storting to form an emergency cabinet.
Though Oscar and his advisors had braced for a defeat, the margin stunned them and put paid to Hagerup's pretty lies, and only further turned the Swedish establishment against parliamentary democracy if "mob rule" would precipitate such international crises at the whim of an "uninformed majority." The Swedish Army was quietly asked to begin preparations to mobilize as Christiana descended into chaos, and then the second thunderbolt struck the Norwegian capital - this time, it was the Swedes who had misjudged, in entrusting the reactionary Crown Prince [2] with the unilateral power of the Regency. In previous crises - 1884, 1895, 1898 - Oscar had always had time to deliberate with his ministers (more often than not Bostrom) and consult his iron-willed wife, the Queen Sophia, on what to do next. Gustaf very much sought to be his own man, however, and had more than once considered his father's deference to his mother's input as less a patient man seeking out the more measured thoughts of a woman he trusted but rather a wife who overly dominated her cowed husband. The Crown Prince instead requested the Norwegian Cabinet behind Michelsen resign (in his cloistered view, resign in disgrace) due to the "unprecedented" nature of the "crisis at hand" of the Union Act being rejected and Michelsen, who had hoped for such an overreaction, tried not to contain his delight as he agreed and advised the King to dissolve the Storting in order to call early elections, which would be viewed at home and abroad as a referendum on not only the New Laws but Norway's continuation in the Union itself..." [3]
- Scandinavia: The Birth of Union
[1] OTL's Gustaf V
[2] Very pro-German and the one who encouraged his father not to yield IOTL; Queen Sophia's advice won out, as usual.
[3] Granted, rejecting a constitutional reform of the Union by a healthy majority is precisely the thing that dissolving a Parliament for early elections is for but there's a big distinction, etiquette-wise and politically, between Michelsen calling for said elections first and the conservative Swedish Regent dissolving Parliament after it rejects his preferred constitutional settlement, even if in practice what he did is appropriate
Bound for Bloodshed: The Road to the Great American War
"...the Army Staff Office prided itself on its planning and the first wargames were carried out in the spring of 1905 modelling "HHH," with few if anyone imagining even at that time of grudges over Yankee battleships and the contest for the Caribbean fruit and sugar markets that in eight and a half years the Confederacy's carefully devised strategic war plan would be executed to the letter.
HHH's assumptions were built on a series of Confederate strategic assumptions, some correct and some horribly wrong. In its original incarnation, the Army Staff Office presumed that they would fight the Union alone or, at best, with overt Chilean support at sea; explicit alliance from any other powers besides the Chileans was not considered and it had no political gamesmanship, instead existing solely as a wargaming exercise. In other words, if France or, in a less likely case, Britain were to assist the Confederacy, it would be quietly, as they had done in the initial eighteen months of the War of Secession. Spain's recent defenstration by Japan also eliminated them as a potential ally to the Union and thus it was seen as a likely fight between "brothers." The benefit of this presumption was that it made ASO use more conservative estimates of manpower, mobilization, and logistics; the downside was that ASO still presumed that HHH could produce a head-to-head victory.
This assumption was built on a cracked foundation of flawed data and extreme prejudice. It was no secret that the Union had elected to develop itself as a naval power after Havana (whose expiry in 1913 Confederate politicians had started discussing well in advance, already leery of the inevitable negotiations to come) had rendered the Monroe Doctrine a dead letter which they were reliant upon other Great Powers to enforce, and had thus neglected its Army for a variety of reasons. These reasons included a fear of standing armies leading to autocracy, politicians in coastal states enamored with feeding their campaign donors juicy naval contracts, rapprochement with the Confederacy in the 1880s creating a sense that a land war in North America was unlikely and, perhaps most importantly, a political class reluctant to reward an Army establishment that had proven in the War of Secession and in the Indian Wars, Utah Uprising and Boxer Intervention to be comically corrupt, incompetent and craven. A handful of staff level reforms had been successfully pushed by the late President Custer and some administrative changes had been implemented in the brief tenure of War Secretary Elihu Root but the US Army of 1905 was still the infighting, poorly-equipped Indian constabulary that had had to be bailed out by the Japanese at Tangshan when fighting off Chinese civilians with pitchforks and spears. The only positive that had come out of the Boxer War for the United States was that its forces had not been drawn down; it retained its postwar strength of 76,000 men [1], primarily in its six cavalry regiments of about a thousand men (including officers) apiece in the territories or harbor garrisons. This was partly as a sop by the US Congress to insistence by the Army that having an army smaller than that of Norway was a disgrace. Still, it was the Navy that was lavished and US war planners had made it all but public that they presumed that in the event of a conflict in the Americas - either with the Confederacy or Chile again, potentially both - their plan was to rely on the Navy to secure all major ports and then choke off all commerce from there, and dare the Royal Navy or Marine Imperiale to stop them.
ASO had considerable doubts that the "damned Yankees" could or would actually do this and though they could not dismiss the Union naval building plan as bluster (nor the very competent US Marines), they were confident that the British or French could successfully stare down a Union blockade if it came to it, and thus the war would really be won on land, hence HHH - Hit, Hold, Harass. [2] Between Kentucky and Virginia alone, the state militias of those critical border states could mobilize close to 40,000 men within days of a conflict breaking out; North Carolina's additional 17,500 strong state militia could be transported by rail to northern Virginia days later, and a force nearly as strong as the entire US Army would ten days in be ready to cross the Potomac at several key points, in particular Harpers' Ferry, to perform the Hit - an offensive incursion into Maryland to threaten Washington DC from west, north and south. Confederate spies in Baltimore were well aware that Maryland, despite being a border state, was one of the most tax-averse and conservative in the Union and thus had one of the smallest and most poorly trained and equipped state militias in the Union; before the US Army could properly mobilize its small professional force, Maryland would be mostly overrun.
In Kentucky, the key was to perform the Hold - preventing crossings of the Ohio, primarily at Covington and Paducah, while bringing up the rest of the 100,000-strong Midlands state militias to bear and repelling the Union on the advantageous defensive. As veteran and green volunteers alike poured in - not to mention that ASO estimated as many as 100,000 reservists and militiamen from the southeastern coastal states and also members of the professional core of the 25,000-strong "direct" CS Army based at its various forts that [3] would be ready to fight - their most conservative estimate suggested that between the eastern and central theaters of war, the early weeks of a campaign would have close to a quarter million men ready to do battle, and tens of thousands more conscripted or volunteering to fight who would be ready within months.
The last part relied on the militias of the Transmississippi warding off land attacks into Arkansas, Texas and Arizona (where much of the professional CS Army's elite cavalry was stationed) across vast, difficult terrain by the Union Army in what was anticipated to be a distant theater of the conflict, where they would be drawn to the end of their logistics and attacked aggressively in a hybrid conventional-guerilla campaign that would bleed them of resources and morale before being surrounded and destroyed at a time of a commanding officer's choosing. This was the last "H" - Harass. The three-pronged plan was innovative in its considerations of a multi-theater war, utilizing the state militias as the mobilization tree of the Army as a whole after the forces were federalized in the immediate hours after a declaration of war, and using train timetables and careful studies of geography to assume how far their armies would advance on what days. ASO was particularly confident that, by gaming out a variety of contingencies in their campaigns and designing defensive and offensive logistical lines in advance, in addition to the overhauls of doctrine at the military academy in Montgomery, a poorly-planned debacle such as the intervention in Cuba would not repeat itself. The CS Army was a very different beast than the ragged expeditionary force of thirty years prior and was continuously improving by the year.
Of course, even terrific war plans collapse under white hot heat of actual battle, and HHH for all its modern innovations that were being repeated in Europe by German, French and Austrian military planners was nowhere close to terrific. Its data correctly assessed the numbers of the professional US Army and the Yankee state militias but as those charged to execute it eight years later discovered it grossly underestimated how rapidly American volunteers could be gathered, taught to shoot a rifle and then sent off to kill Dixiemen, and its attention to logistics was based more around the length of supply lines (it never envisioned a Confederate advance beyond central Maryland, for instance, at least in its initial versions, because it correctly deduced that much further would be difficult to sustain and wrongly presumed that the Union would sue for piece the moment "God Save the South" could be heard in Washington) than around the armaments production capabilities. And this was part and parcel of its most fatal flaw - ideology. Industrial production, logistics, training, all these things were not considered outside of the initial ninety-day campaign ASO envisioned because they could not fathom that the feckless, urbane and incompetent Yankees would not simply collapse under the fire of the chivalrous and martial Confederates marching on their soil and fight on any longer against such a plainly superior - militarily and indeed morally - foe..." [4]
- Bound for Bloodshed: The Road to the Great American War
[1] If you can believe it, the OTL US Army that included the Southern states was about half this size pre-WW1
[2] Consider this the initial development of the Deep-Friend Schlieffen Plan, built just as much on optimistic assumptions and navel-gazing as the real item. Can also call it "Dumb Schlieffen"
[3] Recall that the Confederacy has robust and strong state militias that serve as the backbone of their army in a way the underfunded, labor union-shooting state militias of the Union do not, but there is still a professional core (primarily cavalry), and there are strong societal expectations to serve in the militia either actively or as a reservist to be a "real man" etc
[4] This is your brain on a combination of navel-gazing victory disease built on the same insufferable Lost Cause tropes from OTL only worse, since here they won
HHH's assumptions were built on a series of Confederate strategic assumptions, some correct and some horribly wrong. In its original incarnation, the Army Staff Office presumed that they would fight the Union alone or, at best, with overt Chilean support at sea; explicit alliance from any other powers besides the Chileans was not considered and it had no political gamesmanship, instead existing solely as a wargaming exercise. In other words, if France or, in a less likely case, Britain were to assist the Confederacy, it would be quietly, as they had done in the initial eighteen months of the War of Secession. Spain's recent defenstration by Japan also eliminated them as a potential ally to the Union and thus it was seen as a likely fight between "brothers." The benefit of this presumption was that it made ASO use more conservative estimates of manpower, mobilization, and logistics; the downside was that ASO still presumed that HHH could produce a head-to-head victory.
This assumption was built on a cracked foundation of flawed data and extreme prejudice. It was no secret that the Union had elected to develop itself as a naval power after Havana (whose expiry in 1913 Confederate politicians had started discussing well in advance, already leery of the inevitable negotiations to come) had rendered the Monroe Doctrine a dead letter which they were reliant upon other Great Powers to enforce, and had thus neglected its Army for a variety of reasons. These reasons included a fear of standing armies leading to autocracy, politicians in coastal states enamored with feeding their campaign donors juicy naval contracts, rapprochement with the Confederacy in the 1880s creating a sense that a land war in North America was unlikely and, perhaps most importantly, a political class reluctant to reward an Army establishment that had proven in the War of Secession and in the Indian Wars, Utah Uprising and Boxer Intervention to be comically corrupt, incompetent and craven. A handful of staff level reforms had been successfully pushed by the late President Custer and some administrative changes had been implemented in the brief tenure of War Secretary Elihu Root but the US Army of 1905 was still the infighting, poorly-equipped Indian constabulary that had had to be bailed out by the Japanese at Tangshan when fighting off Chinese civilians with pitchforks and spears. The only positive that had come out of the Boxer War for the United States was that its forces had not been drawn down; it retained its postwar strength of 76,000 men [1], primarily in its six cavalry regiments of about a thousand men (including officers) apiece in the territories or harbor garrisons. This was partly as a sop by the US Congress to insistence by the Army that having an army smaller than that of Norway was a disgrace. Still, it was the Navy that was lavished and US war planners had made it all but public that they presumed that in the event of a conflict in the Americas - either with the Confederacy or Chile again, potentially both - their plan was to rely on the Navy to secure all major ports and then choke off all commerce from there, and dare the Royal Navy or Marine Imperiale to stop them.
ASO had considerable doubts that the "damned Yankees" could or would actually do this and though they could not dismiss the Union naval building plan as bluster (nor the very competent US Marines), they were confident that the British or French could successfully stare down a Union blockade if it came to it, and thus the war would really be won on land, hence HHH - Hit, Hold, Harass. [2] Between Kentucky and Virginia alone, the state militias of those critical border states could mobilize close to 40,000 men within days of a conflict breaking out; North Carolina's additional 17,500 strong state militia could be transported by rail to northern Virginia days later, and a force nearly as strong as the entire US Army would ten days in be ready to cross the Potomac at several key points, in particular Harpers' Ferry, to perform the Hit - an offensive incursion into Maryland to threaten Washington DC from west, north and south. Confederate spies in Baltimore were well aware that Maryland, despite being a border state, was one of the most tax-averse and conservative in the Union and thus had one of the smallest and most poorly trained and equipped state militias in the Union; before the US Army could properly mobilize its small professional force, Maryland would be mostly overrun.
In Kentucky, the key was to perform the Hold - preventing crossings of the Ohio, primarily at Covington and Paducah, while bringing up the rest of the 100,000-strong Midlands state militias to bear and repelling the Union on the advantageous defensive. As veteran and green volunteers alike poured in - not to mention that ASO estimated as many as 100,000 reservists and militiamen from the southeastern coastal states and also members of the professional core of the 25,000-strong "direct" CS Army based at its various forts that [3] would be ready to fight - their most conservative estimate suggested that between the eastern and central theaters of war, the early weeks of a campaign would have close to a quarter million men ready to do battle, and tens of thousands more conscripted or volunteering to fight who would be ready within months.
The last part relied on the militias of the Transmississippi warding off land attacks into Arkansas, Texas and Arizona (where much of the professional CS Army's elite cavalry was stationed) across vast, difficult terrain by the Union Army in what was anticipated to be a distant theater of the conflict, where they would be drawn to the end of their logistics and attacked aggressively in a hybrid conventional-guerilla campaign that would bleed them of resources and morale before being surrounded and destroyed at a time of a commanding officer's choosing. This was the last "H" - Harass. The three-pronged plan was innovative in its considerations of a multi-theater war, utilizing the state militias as the mobilization tree of the Army as a whole after the forces were federalized in the immediate hours after a declaration of war, and using train timetables and careful studies of geography to assume how far their armies would advance on what days. ASO was particularly confident that, by gaming out a variety of contingencies in their campaigns and designing defensive and offensive logistical lines in advance, in addition to the overhauls of doctrine at the military academy in Montgomery, a poorly-planned debacle such as the intervention in Cuba would not repeat itself. The CS Army was a very different beast than the ragged expeditionary force of thirty years prior and was continuously improving by the year.
Of course, even terrific war plans collapse under white hot heat of actual battle, and HHH for all its modern innovations that were being repeated in Europe by German, French and Austrian military planners was nowhere close to terrific. Its data correctly assessed the numbers of the professional US Army and the Yankee state militias but as those charged to execute it eight years later discovered it grossly underestimated how rapidly American volunteers could be gathered, taught to shoot a rifle and then sent off to kill Dixiemen, and its attention to logistics was based more around the length of supply lines (it never envisioned a Confederate advance beyond central Maryland, for instance, at least in its initial versions, because it correctly deduced that much further would be difficult to sustain and wrongly presumed that the Union would sue for piece the moment "God Save the South" could be heard in Washington) than around the armaments production capabilities. And this was part and parcel of its most fatal flaw - ideology. Industrial production, logistics, training, all these things were not considered outside of the initial ninety-day campaign ASO envisioned because they could not fathom that the feckless, urbane and incompetent Yankees would not simply collapse under the fire of the chivalrous and martial Confederates marching on their soil and fight on any longer against such a plainly superior - militarily and indeed morally - foe..." [4]
- Bound for Bloodshed: The Road to the Great American War
[1] If you can believe it, the OTL US Army that included the Southern states was about half this size pre-WW1
[2] Consider this the initial development of the Deep-Friend Schlieffen Plan, built just as much on optimistic assumptions and navel-gazing as the real item. Can also call it "Dumb Schlieffen"
[3] Recall that the Confederacy has robust and strong state militias that serve as the backbone of their army in a way the underfunded, labor union-shooting state militias of the Union do not, but there is still a professional core (primarily cavalry), and there are strong societal expectations to serve in the militia either actively or as a reservist to be a "real man" etc
[4] This is your brain on a combination of navel-gazing victory disease built on the same insufferable Lost Cause tropes from OTL only worse, since here they won
Wait, are they still on the whole 1 Confederate is worth 5 Yankees or something? I mean, these are the guys who thought Spanish and slaves were so incompetant they could beta them, but they lost badly....but somhow its still, Confederate ingenuity will beat them...as well as us being better.
Oh man the South has a rude awakening in store for them.
This plan is basically the Schlieffen Plan combined with the mentality the Japanese had in 1941. "Hey guys, all we have to do is show the colors and those craven Americans will fold like a cheap suit."
This plan is going to be a bad time for Marylanders and I've no doubt the CSA will win several victories early but any plan that doesn't target the industrial heartland is doomed to failure no matter how many sledgehammers Triple H hits the North with.
This plan is basically the Schlieffen Plan combined with the mentality the Japanese had in 1941. "Hey guys, all we have to do is show the colors and those craven Americans will fold like a cheap suit."
This plan is going to be a bad time for Marylanders and I've no doubt the CSA will win several victories early but any plan that doesn't target the industrial heartland is doomed to failure no matter how many sledgehammers Triple H hits the North with.
Could the Confederacy even target the Industrial Heartland of America if it tried?
Nope! Which is probably why you shouldn't antagonize and launch a war of agression against the North in the first place.
mortonofski
Donor
Agree completely - it's all about the game and how you play it; more specifically, it's all about control (of the industrial heartland) and if you can take it (which the CSA won't even attempt).
Hey now they learned their lesson from Cuba! The lesson "don't go to Cuba." As long as you don't repeat Nathan's Groovy
Not even close, @Curtain Jerker is correct. This is my biggest bugbear about TL-191, there's no way a Confederate offensive successfully reaches Sandusky Ohio without being surrounded and annihilated at the far end of its logistical tail.
Throw in a bit of "kick the door, rotten edifice" thinking behind Barbarossa for good measure, too. Note that Kentucky and Tennessee - the Confederate industrial heartland - are much closer to the Union than Chicago, New York, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc. Only Cincinnati, Cairo (IL), and to a much lesser extent St. Louis are in any real risk to raids or attack in the Union. (Baltimore of course is another matter but not really part of the "heartland")
An Age of Invention: The New Technologies that Shaped the Modern Century
"...France's true pride in the late 1900s, however, was her automotive industry, which remained the world's best and biggest. The Paris Motor Show was the event for aspiring young automobile innovators to come and see the greatest marques in the very young, exciting new industry. The great firms Peugeot, Delage and Renault were behind much of its organizing; the Delahaye's technical achievements put the others to shame, while the Panhard - in existence for less than twenty years and already the admired grand old lady of French automotive firms - focused on its reputation for a more comfortable, luxurious vehicle than her more simplistic competitors. But the big fish in France was Bouton, the world's largest automobile manufacturer which was so large it built engines for its competitors under licensing because it was expanding its operations and sales faster than it could sustain the volume of its hand-built cars [1] [2] and cast a long shadow over an industry in its native land which, combined, already manufactured close to 60% of the world's automobiles at its peak between 1905 and 1910. The French aristocracy and bourgeoisie came to be obsessed with the motorcar, and the country's vast country roads and open terrain became a playground for zipping around on sunny weekends in the magnificent new machine that already seemed to promise a thrilling new hobby for those who could afford it..." [3]
- An Age of Invention: The New Technologies that Shaped the Modern Century
[1] One major butterfly that I'm not sure I covered is Ford's own car company failing in the Panic of 1904 and the assembly line thus being delayed by a few years; keeps cars expensive longer and America less prominent in the industry until much later
[2] Also, expanding faster than you can sustain is, to say the least, poor corporate practice
[3] Recall that in 1905 cars were both extremely expensive unavailable to all but hobbyists and the rich, and also complete death traps
- An Age of Invention: The New Technologies that Shaped the Modern Century
[1] One major butterfly that I'm not sure I covered is Ford's own car company failing in the Panic of 1904 and the assembly line thus being delayed by a few years; keeps cars expensive longer and America less prominent in the industry until much later
[2] Also, expanding faster than you can sustain is, to say the least, poor corporate practice
[3] Recall that in 1905 cars were both extremely expensive unavailable to all but hobbyists and the rich, and also complete death traps
Rendering Ford a historical footnote has major ramifications both industrially and politically.
You should have someone else popularize the idea of a two-day weekend since before Ford Americans worked from Monday to Saturday and went to church on Sunday.
Through the Chapel: The Life of Eugenie de Montijo, Empress of France
"...Boulanger's nationalistic toast to "sovereign German kingdoms, born in the mutually spilled blood of brotherhood between France and their rightful sovereigns to taste freedom and modernity" went over so poorly in Berlin that even the typically affable, even-keeled and apolitical Kaiser Heinrich was reportedly so angry his face went "tomato red" and he personally demanded an explanation from the French ambassador; the Emperor's commemoration of the centenary of the Treaty of Pressburg and the concurrent dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the establishment of Saxony and the South German states as Kingdoms was considerably more diplomatic, but a celebration in Paris of the defeat of Prussia in 1805 featuring non-Prussian monarchs was bound to be taken with substantial alarm by German authorities and the "Pressburg Party," as British papers gleefully called the faux pas, was alternatively mocked both as a diplomatic disaster and demagogued as a breach in decorum so major in threatened Franco-German relations.
There was a second reason why the otherwise milquetoast and perfunctory banquet was held, however, and that was to get Bavaria's Crown Prince Ludwig and his family to Paris under normal auspices, for the Emperor had identified the Wittelsbachs as his preferred house to find the Prince-Imperial a bride from. Ludwig was feted aggressively at the banquet, and the son of Regent Luitpold - who, 84 years old and in poor health, did not make the trip - was alarmed at the sickly state of the Emperor and understood the urgency with which the Tuileries desired to find their heir a wife, as though Napoleon had become quite good at hiding his state in public appearances, when meeting privately with others his terrible respiratory disease was harder to obscure and it seemed as the ailment that seemed incurable [1] could take him imminently. Alphonse-Napoleon was introduced to all three of Ludwig's daughters who were roughly of an age with him - Wiltrud, Helmtrud and Dietlinde - and the shy pious young man seemed most taken by Helmtrud. Their one awkward dance became the talk of Paris, but still a thing of rumor; with the diplomatic snafu still fresh in German minds, it fell to Eugenie to travel to Munich, ostensibly to visit the grave of Austrian Empress Elisabeth to pay her respects after having been too ill to travel to the funeral with the official French delegation, to seal the marriage pact.
By 1905, fully arranged marriages were becoming a thing of the past among European royalty; parents could exercise a veto over their children's choice if deemed insufficient but courtships were generally left up to the young princes themselves. Eugenie and Luitpold hit it off, however; they were both products of a bygone age, children born and reared in the shadow of the Congress of Vienna before 1848 had irrevocably changed Europe for good. Widow and widower struck up a firm friendship having been courteously acquainted for years that would last through Luitpold's death in late 1912, two people increasingly alone in a world they increasingly did not recognize in their twilight years. Their bond of friendship made the decision to push the marriage through much easier despite its political complications in both France and Prussia; the decision to make Princess Helmtrud of Bavaria the future Empress of France was sealed at Nymphenburg in the spring of 1905, and preparations began to announce the engagement and wed them in Paris by summer's end..."
- Through the Chapel: The Life of Eugenie de Montijo, Empress of France
[1] I think I said COPD earlier, which I'll stick with, though lung cancer works just as well. COPD of course was way less treatable with 1905 tech
There was a second reason why the otherwise milquetoast and perfunctory banquet was held, however, and that was to get Bavaria's Crown Prince Ludwig and his family to Paris under normal auspices, for the Emperor had identified the Wittelsbachs as his preferred house to find the Prince-Imperial a bride from. Ludwig was feted aggressively at the banquet, and the son of Regent Luitpold - who, 84 years old and in poor health, did not make the trip - was alarmed at the sickly state of the Emperor and understood the urgency with which the Tuileries desired to find their heir a wife, as though Napoleon had become quite good at hiding his state in public appearances, when meeting privately with others his terrible respiratory disease was harder to obscure and it seemed as the ailment that seemed incurable [1] could take him imminently. Alphonse-Napoleon was introduced to all three of Ludwig's daughters who were roughly of an age with him - Wiltrud, Helmtrud and Dietlinde - and the shy pious young man seemed most taken by Helmtrud. Their one awkward dance became the talk of Paris, but still a thing of rumor; with the diplomatic snafu still fresh in German minds, it fell to Eugenie to travel to Munich, ostensibly to visit the grave of Austrian Empress Elisabeth to pay her respects after having been too ill to travel to the funeral with the official French delegation, to seal the marriage pact.
By 1905, fully arranged marriages were becoming a thing of the past among European royalty; parents could exercise a veto over their children's choice if deemed insufficient but courtships were generally left up to the young princes themselves. Eugenie and Luitpold hit it off, however; they were both products of a bygone age, children born and reared in the shadow of the Congress of Vienna before 1848 had irrevocably changed Europe for good. Widow and widower struck up a firm friendship having been courteously acquainted for years that would last through Luitpold's death in late 1912, two people increasingly alone in a world they increasingly did not recognize in their twilight years. Their bond of friendship made the decision to push the marriage through much easier despite its political complications in both France and Prussia; the decision to make Princess Helmtrud of Bavaria the future Empress of France was sealed at Nymphenburg in the spring of 1905, and preparations began to announce the engagement and wed them in Paris by summer's end..."
- Through the Chapel: The Life of Eugenie de Montijo, Empress of France
[1] I think I said COPD earlier, which I'll stick with, though lung cancer works just as well. COPD of course was way less treatable with 1905 tech
Oh yeah, huge ones.
Yeah, though the maximum work hours movement had already zeroed in on the forty-hour week even before Ford's changes took off; five 8s is a pretty natural mathematic devolution of that in time, though of course nothing is ever inevitable
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