Dagger held at the throat of England
- Thread starter Riain
- Start date
BlondieBC
Banned
You do not know how much that has hurt me over the years. Even when I refused to deal with issues below the corp level, often below the army level, scope creep is inevitable in WW1 or WW2. Unless you just ignore butterflies. But eventually you get where you have 200K extra troops doing nothing for 6 months, so you have to add one more theater to the stuff you are writing. And pretty soon, nothing looks the same.
Since you have done the research, I would like to suggest that you do a reboot that is purer naval action. You really seem to enjoy the details of where individual ships are located and battles between half squadrons of ships. The following changes would greatly simply the ATL.
1) If you can argue both side of "It happens like OTL" and "It happens differently", take the OTL version.
2) In this spirit, keep Italy as OTL. I have been in threads running to many tens of pages discussing Italy's motivations. And at the end, it is plausible Italy was one very small detail from not joining the war. Maybe Pemberg falls a week later. Or you can argue it was almost inevitable. Great case for these positions and everything in between. With this change, you can hopefully not deal with Russia to mid 1916, maybe even late 1916. Also remember, the eastern front is vast, so it is easy for a couple extra corps not to make a big difference. Just think in terms of taking say 15 regimental size formations and adding them as reserve to an army. And this is about the right ratio.
3) Don't be afraid of the Germans making a few mistakes when convenient. Or the Entente having a brilliant stroke. There was so much of both mistakes and brilliance IOTL.
4) If you have the ports fall slower, you get a simplier ATL to write. You probably need to play with the POD a bit, but if you will go slower at the beginning, it works better. You end up with a lot of writing because you break the supplies to London so rapidly. It does have a huge impact on the land. If you wait until the battles of Ypres start happening and have the Flanders ports fall after this event, you get a much easier ATL to write.
That is my two cents worth.
BlondieBC
Banned
By debt. Promises of post war payments, and of course, by paying well above market. To give an example of why merchants were not worried about bad debt, we can to the USA metal industries. Often prices jumped about 6 to 1 at the start of the war. So in today's terms, you take a company selling it goods for a billion a year. Two weeks later, it is selling at the rate of 6 billion a year. Exact same production. Credit risk does not look so important.
Or perhaps take it to a more personal level. I come to you and offer to hire you at 6 times your current hourly rate. You can work unlimited overtime. I may go into financial difficulty in 3-5 years. Do you stay at your current job or take my offer.
Also, where does Romania sell the wheat to? Russia? Otherwise it has to export thru an CP country. The other choices is to let the wheat rot in the field, unharvested.
Despite my niggles, this was an enjoyable and plausible timeline, with a very interesting point of departure. Easily one of the most interesting Great War timelines I have ever seen. How you work out the peace settlement in a timeline like this is less interesting - and more fraught - than how you handle the point of departure.
Good story Riain - well done
However I have to query this version of events
The hits on 5th BS happened when it was 5th BS vs the HSF and scouting group - at a time when Beatty had turned and ran off north as soon as he saw the HSF in effect taking them well out of range of the German ships and OTL 'helpfully' giving Adm Evan-Thomas the signal equivalent of an sharp intake of breath and 'I wouldn't go there if I was you' leaving the 4 QEs as the sole target.
So if 5th BS are not there then the BCs would be long gone before those additional hits could be scored.
Riain
Banned
Thanks, your feedback was good. The politics was one thing I would flesh out if I redo it, there were a lot of peace offers throughout the war that I didn't know about until I was way too deep. Also the Kaisers Easter Message which came hard on the heels of the Turnip Winter and the fall of the Tsar could plausibly have an effect on peace initiatives in the west if it was put into action.
I didn't go into it because I think the butterflies of having a different German recon scheme, leaving the 2nd BS behind, having no CAs with the GF, having faster BCs rather than slower BBs with Beatty etc, etc, etc would make Jutland significantly different in terms of movements of squadrons and detachments if not with entire fleets.
That said I think I did have to justify the loss of so many BCs. I looked at when shells hit what and the Germans did well at the start of the battle but terribly at the end, so I thought it was fair enough to allocate the hits at the start of the battle from ships that weren't there ITTL to ships that were. I'm not enough of a researcher or writer to invent an entire scheme of manoeuvre that TTL Beatty would make, that would give me a nervous breakdown.
Thanks for reading it, I enjoyed writing it and learned a lot in the process and am at a loss about what to read now
So I know I am late to the party, but I have just thoroughly enjoyed your TL.
I do have some notes regarding the Antwerp '14 situation. Or more specific the retreat by the Belgian field army + 20k fortress troops along the 10 km wide strip between Gent and the Netherlands. As this is literally in my backyard my attention was drawn to this route.
First of most of the troops were on the Eastern side of the river Schelde, meaning they would have to cross(no bridges or tunnels yet). However the Belgian army had planned for this eventuality and a company of engineers with equipment was in place. In OTL they build this bridge
It was mostly used by the masses of refugees trying to get into the Redoubt. In this TTL it would have been used by the retreating Army, as you can see this would already mean abandoning their artillery train, and most likely almost all their supplies.
Then they would entrain on a local and single spur train line to Zelzate and from there to Eeklo and on to the coast. See the map underneath.
Railroad map of the area around Antwerp in 1914, taken from a excellent paper by Paul van Pul 'De Belgische militaire onderwaterzettingen rond de Versterkte Plaats van Antwerpen in augustus en september 1914' it is however in dutch.
As you can see if the Germans own Dendermonde and the slightly of map Gent, the only rail route out of Antwerp, passes through St-Gilles-Waas and then on to Zelzate.
Now Zelzate was a small town along the Gent-Terneuzen canal with two new bridges.
One for road and rail traffic each. As you can see without the bridges the canal would be a major barrier to troop transport going across. And as all the pontoons had been used to cross the Schelde, no easy fix is possible if the bridges are gone.
Please note that those two bridges would have been within reach of the forces in Gent. They would have to commandeer one of the cargo ships in Gent and sail down the canal for about 5km and open fire on the bridges with one of their 60mm Bts KL/21 cannon. Something well within the capabilities of a Naval detachment.
Any commander who would not undertake such a simple and basic encircling maneuver, would be shot for treason.
So even if you did not intent to write a wank, with a capture of the King and army, POD you chose still would have lead to one. Now I wish to reiterate that you wrote a most enjoyable TL, I just wanted to drop some local knowledge on you.
I do have some notes regarding the Antwerp '14 situation. Or more specific the retreat by the Belgian field army + 20k fortress troops along the 10 km wide strip between Gent and the Netherlands. As this is literally in my backyard my attention was drawn to this route.
First of most of the troops were on the Eastern side of the river Schelde, meaning they would have to cross(no bridges or tunnels yet). However the Belgian army had planned for this eventuality and a company of engineers with equipment was in place. In OTL they build this bridge
It was mostly used by the masses of refugees trying to get into the Redoubt. In this TTL it would have been used by the retreating Army, as you can see this would already mean abandoning their artillery train, and most likely almost all their supplies.
Then they would entrain on a local and single spur train line to Zelzate and from there to Eeklo and on to the coast. See the map underneath.
Railroad map of the area around Antwerp in 1914, taken from a excellent paper by Paul van Pul 'De Belgische militaire onderwaterzettingen rond de Versterkte Plaats van Antwerpen in augustus en september 1914' it is however in dutch.
As you can see if the Germans own Dendermonde and the slightly of map Gent, the only rail route out of Antwerp, passes through St-Gilles-Waas and then on to Zelzate.
Now Zelzate was a small town along the Gent-Terneuzen canal with two new bridges.
One for road and rail traffic each. As you can see without the bridges the canal would be a major barrier to troop transport going across. And as all the pontoons had been used to cross the Schelde, no easy fix is possible if the bridges are gone.
Please note that those two bridges would have been within reach of the forces in Gent. They would have to commandeer one of the cargo ships in Gent and sail down the canal for about 5km and open fire on the bridges with one of their 60mm Bts KL/21 cannon. Something well within the capabilities of a Naval detachment.
Any commander who would not undertake such a simple and basic encircling maneuver, would be shot for treason.
So even if you did not intent to write a wank, with a capture of the King and army, POD you chose still would have lead to one. Now I wish to reiterate that you wrote a most enjoyable TL, I just wanted to drop some local knowledge on you.
Riain
Banned
Thanks for the info and the pictures are fantastic, I'm glad you enjoyed the TL.
The detail movements in the siege was difficult as I was trying to sift through multiple sources that often contradicted each other and could be frustratingly vague, the route the army used to evacuate seemed particularly torturous but now I know why. If I update it I'll add this info in and see where it leads.
how would the butterflies flow from here?
(also, how many like notifications did you have in your inbox?)
Riain
Banned
76 this morning.
Paul Kennedy in Rise of the Great Powers wrote that WW1 would be a long grind due to the balance between the alliances. With that in mind I tried to construct a grind that tilted Germanys way in the end.
do you think that ITTL a three-way Cold War would set in? Germany and allies, UK and allies, and the US?
Riain
Banned
3 or 4 way, Anglo-French, recovered Russia, USA and Greater Germany. However is a cold war even possible with so many huge power blocs, I don't know?
It could be a thing were at any given time a given bloc is in detente with 1-2 blocs and hostile with 1-2 blocs. In flux and all that.
It would seem, to me anyway, to have certain parallels to Renaissance Italy and the shifting web of alliances and enmities between the city states.
Indeed. However this decision will have medium and long term effects; lower morale, poorer health and worker productivity, fewer young men suitable for cannon fodder, et cetera.
Great TL @Riain ! I wonder how the German colonial empire will fare in the short and long term. It can't be easy to expand a colonial empire like that. The Belgians and French will probably 'forget' a lot of their weaponry and loyalty isn't always tramsfered so easily. I also don't see anything really stopping Japan from taking over German Indochina and when it has taken it a German counterinvasion will have to be staged out of Africa!