Darker WWI

This will be my attempt at a WWI which is even more destructive and bloody than OTL thanks to a bit of inspiration from Darker World War II


1914

The assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo, Bosnia by a Serb Nationalist would wreck havoc on the world to come. For the most brutal war in history was to begin. The assassination was a minor news story in most news papers the next morning in 1914. It soon became clear Austria was serious about this. A ultimatum was placed on the tiny country sparking a chain of events which lit the world on fire.


Following the ultimatum placed on Serbia for the mighty Slavic uniter Russia began mobilization to deter Austrian aggression against little Serbia. Germany two days later declared their unilateral backing of Austria against Russian “aggression” to Austria. The Balkans began to be lit again. More chains lead to Romania fabricating claims on Hungarian land in Transylvania. Bulgaria readied its army. Greece prepared to invade Bulgaria once more. Montenegro and Albania stood on the sidelines but more pro-Serb. The Ultimatum expired on the 28th of July, 1914, a full month after the Archduke’s death. The first Austrian artillery rounds fell on Belgrade as the Serbian government evacuated the capital. Soon in the west, after a month of negotiating, Holland allows German troops though its country simultaneously joining the war on the Triple Alliance side. The Central Powers forces quickly overran the whole North of the country in a matter of weeks. However atrocities committed by the Germans soon lead to the British entry into the conflict.


The Central Powers continued to blow through the overconfident French army in their bright blue uniforms thinking it would be like the days of Napoleon 100 years before. The battle of the frontier showed the power of machine guns to old tactics. In Belgium the entire country by early August has been overrun. Dutch troops were marching on Calais threatening to cut off the British supply lines into Northern France.


The British home fleet took a major action by moving out of port. Many battleships and battlecruisers were drawn away to sit in Calais harbor and patrol the low countries coast. Many lighter warships bombarded coastal Dutch towns. A battlecruiser, HMS Lion and several smaller warships sailed a tiny bit up the Rhine and bombarded Rotterdam. Other British heavy warships hit The Hague and several coastal towns. The British throughout the entire war would do this to coastal cities and towns that belonged to the Netherlands.


The Dutch advance finally reached Dunkirk were a major life or death battle ensued. British, French, and Free Belgian forces were all used in this battle. Further south the German advance passed the Wheat Fields of the Marne to a town called Labosse. The Battle of Labosse raged for a week until the Germans were pushed back in a humiliating defeat following the Failure of their Dutch allies to take Calais. By September both side’s on the Western Front had dug into the ground. Vast layers of trenches stretched from Calais to Lorraine.


On the Eastern Front, the Russians moved against Austria and Germany, sending its large army to Galicia and East Prussia. Most Russian soldiers are illiterate and poorly trained. But it is made up for it in large numbers. The Germans, portrait the advancing slavs as the “Russian Rapist” mercilessly raping women and killing men at a enormous rate. The Russian army was finally stopped at Tannenberg and forced a Russian withdraw Eastward after an offensive by Germany which captured Lodz. The Austrians counterattacked in Galicia but failed. This would show the Russian high command, the Stafka that the Austrians were weak and could be beaten. The Russian capture of Lemberg would all to inspire the Romanians who in October began to mobilize on behalf of the Russian promise that Romania would gain Transylvania and the low lying Hungarian plain in return for joining the war.


Far beyond the plains of Poland and France things were heating up to the south. German ambassador’s had given the leaders of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, and Spain rewards of territory and weapons for joining the war. It was announced soon after the Battle of Labosse that Spain had placed claims on France and its colonies. The South American powers wasted no time fabricating claims on their smaller neighbors. Colombia mobilized for a invasion of Ecuador. Meanwhile a unprepared Peru-Bolivian army quickly attempted a invasion of northern Chile desperate to take back the Atacama Desert. The offensive failed leading to a Chilean declaration of War on Peru and Bolivia. Meanwhile the Argentinian's began building up a sizeable naval force to and marine force to take the Falklands and South Georgia.


German influence reached to Sweden who joined the war attacking Russian Finland, Norway, and Denmark. The Swedish advance was totally unexpected. Swedish ambitions to regain its old Scandinavian empire it once had at the beginning of the 20th and 18th Centuries. The Swedish General Olof Thornell led his men into the almost undefended region of Lapland in northern Finland. The Swedish joined the German and Dutch navies in the Baltic and North Sea’s quickly attacking British and Russian ships stationed in Scapa Flow and Riga. Norway fell to Swedish forces in November of 1914 with Denmark a month before. The Ottoman Empire also entered the war in November following the British seizure of a Battleship which was pressed back into British service.


In December the war expanded and stopped. On Christmas British and German/Dutch forces held a truce on Christmas on the British section of the line. Also in that month Spain and Romania joined the conflict. Spanish forces in the winter couldn’t pass through the Pyrenees in snow so most attention was in Morocco where Spanish forces under Jose Sanjurjo and naval vessels took Casablanca and other major cities. Romania joined the War as well attacking down into the Transylvanians and Hungarian Plain. Bulgaria needed to react. Tsar Alexander began to mobilize the army for a two front war.
 
Darker WWI Battle of Lobasse.png

Here is the map of the world on January 1st 1915
 
Faction Members January 1st 1915

Entente Powers (Allies):
  • Britain
  • France
  • Serbia
  • Belgium (Free Belgium)
  • Russia
  • Chile
  • South Africa
  • Canada
  • Newfoundland
  • Australia
  • New Zealand
  • Romania
  • Denmark (Free Denmark)
  • Norway (Free Norway)
  • British Raj
Central Powers:
  • Germany
  • Austria-Hungary
  • Sweden
  • Netherlands
  • Spain
  • Ottoman Empire
  • Peru
  • Bolivia
  • Colombia
 
Netherlands probably will lose its colonies quickly. And if Italy and United States still join to war...

And probably Japan and China decide soon do something with German Asian and Pacific colonies.
 
Spanish Flu strikes a year earlier.
Rats spread bubonic plague among trenches.
Returning soldiers share new strains of "social diseases"'with their families.
Returning soldiers are booed resulting in millions of cases of shell shock, depression, suicide, wife-beating, drug addictions, etc.
Massive riots by unemployed veterans grow into revolutions that try to overthrow capitalist politicians.
 
Spanish Flu strikes a year earlier.
Rats spread bubonic plague among trenches.
Returning soldiers share new strains of "social diseases"'with their families.
Returning soldiers are booed resulting in millions of cases of shell shock, depression, suicide, wife-beating, drug addictions, etc.
Massive riots by unemployed veterans grow into revolutions that try to overthrow capitalist politicians.
You devious bastard ;)
 
I'm curious as to how exactly you could make WWI "darker." I'll follow along.
the idea was to make a WWI version of Zoibergs Darker WWII, so what better way than making more countries join via shady deals, that causes more bloodshed, and more countries probably make the war go longer. In hoping the war will last till the 1920s becuase both sides have so much men and are so wide spread. I am open to suggestions though.
 
"Spanish" flu striking a year earlier requires that specific mutation to happen a year earlier, and also the US being in the war a year earlier since the strain started in the US, went to Europe with US troops and then mutated further to become the highly fatal version. As far as disease OTL typhus epidemics in the east both in Russian and Serbian troops and civilians was a big problem. This sort of thing was less of an issue in German, A-h, British, and French troops where there was a well organized medical system, relatively well supplied, and with public health measures enforced with troops. As far as bringing social diseases home this did happen, however unlike after Vietnam where you had "superclap" coming to the USA and elsewhere, due to folks misusing antibiotics, you won't get this "new" disease or "untreatable" disease problem as antibiotics were not out so antibiotic resistance can't happen.
 
"Spanish" flu striking a year earlier requires that specific mutation to happen a year earlier, and also the US being in the war a year earlier since the strain started in the US, went to Europe with US troops and then mutated further to become the highly fatal version. As far as disease OTL typhus epidemics in the east both in Russian and Serbian troops and civilians was a big problem. This sort of thing was less of an issue in German, A-h, British, and French troops where there was a well organized medical system, relatively well supplied, and with public health measures enforced with troops. As far as bringing social diseases home this did happen, however unlike after Vietnam where you had "superclap" coming to the USA and elsewhere, due to folks misusing antibiotics, you won't get this "new" disease or "untreatable" disease problem as antibiotics were not out so antibiotic resistance can't happen.
are you saying to have the US enter earlier basically
 

1915 Pt.1



The winter of 1914/15 would see continual fighting in the Southern Hemisphere. For South Africa had invaded German Southwest Africa. On the other side of the Indian Ocean, ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) from Australian South Papua invaded the Dutch East Indies and German North Papua. The Dutch subjected the Indonesians to a state of soldierhood. Most men from Papua and the surrounding Islands were quickly conscripted into the military to fight the Aussies and New Zealanders. The Fighting for Papua would end in 2 months for the Dutch in Indonesia were on the rope of defeat of stopping the Allied advance.


In South America the Peru-Bolivia Coalition failed to take several more miles of Chilean territory. For Chile was able to defend a few mountain passes and obliterated Central powers advances. Further north Ecuador was overrun. Colombia reinstated itself as Gran Colombia. The gran Colombians turn their attention Eastward for conquering their old nemesis Venezuela. Large numbers of Brazilian and British advisers arrive in Caracas along with tons of British weaponry flowing in. In a move against hawkish media, President Wilson would essentially give the British, French, Venezuelans, and Free Danish a “free hand” in the Caribbean. Wilson had in return for the Free Hand to the Entente, was given hundreds of millions of dollars by the Entente powers for American factories to produce firearms and ammunition for the Entente. The American army itself had been gutted by Taft and later Wilson himself, as a shadow of its former self with only about 200,000 marines at the ready under the command of Douglas MacArthur, John Pershing, and George Barnett. Venezuela officially joined the Entente after its military occupied the ABC islands off its coast, these were controlled by the Netherlands and was officially a declaration of war. Already then Dutch forces in Guiana had been fighting the British and French since the beginning of the war in a campaign later seen in German East Africa.


In Africa the Allies pressed on the German colonies . The South African forces were dealing with 3 fronts. One was German Namibia, another was German East Africa, and the third was at home with the Maritz Rebellion. Many tactic employed by the British in the Second Boer War were used on the Afrikaner population during the rebellion. While ending in February of that year it had cost both sides more than 100 men. Many would see this insurrection as the inspiration to the Irish Revolution of 1916. The Allied campaign in East Africa would be one in which future commanders in the century would use the tactics from this war to their advantage. For the commander of the German forces in Tanzania, General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck chose not to attack the British colonies but decided to wait for them. German troops only met when they had to against the British. In Kamerun, British troops from Nigeria and French troops from French Congo attacked into the German colony and also took the southern part of Spanish Equatorial Guinea. Other French marines captured the islands off the Equatorial Guinean coast. British forces in Ghana also took German Togoland with extreme ease, the tiny colony only had a small garrison meant for defense.


In the Middle East, Persia and Afghanistan with Ottoman arms and supplies revolted against Allied rule. Ottoman forces declared their “intervention” in the aforementioned countries. At least 300,000 Ottoman soldiers moved into Persian Azerbaijan. Ottoman forces also launched a invasion of British held Kuwait. The Ottoman offensive into the Sinai failed however due to the failure of the Central Powers forces to utilize reconnaissance aircraft. The Ottoman capture of Kuwait would put the final nail in the coffin to British Mesopotamian plans.


Japan was the tipping point from peace to conflict in the Pacific. Japan desired Tsingtao but a secret German message in September 1914 as the battle of Labosse came to an end the Japanese made certain diplomatic moves that would assure them control of any German pacific colony in exchange for joining the war. So it happened. On April 25th, 1915, Japanese troops in Korea were ordered to cross the tiny land border connecting them and Russia, and seize Vladivostok. Other Japanese warships gathered troops from Formosa for a quick seizure of northern French Indochina (Tonkin). The French and their colonial soldiers were surprised by this sudden move. With China in political chaos other Japanese forces seized northern Laos and combined they marched on Hanoi. Fighting would also rage navally in the South China sea as the local French and British warships. In the North Pacific Japanese marines would take North Sakhalin and start the conquest of Kamchatka.


It would be ironic, for ANZAC forces in Europe had landed in the Dardanelles. This would be the beginning of the campaign in Gallipoli. The offensive would get nowhere for the entire year.


The US had remained neutral up until this point with President Wilson supporting the Entente in secret. The Germans however had declared Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. On May 7th, the British cruise liner RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat who claimed it was carrying weapons (this would later turn out to be true).


Tremendous outrage filled the US public who demanded the 300 Americans not be forgotten. President Wilson saw this time to take the US into the war, that this rule wouldn’t end. On May 9th, President Wilson consulted congress, and got his wish for a declaration of war on the Kaiser.
 
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