Ich Bin Ein Frankfurter - The Revolution of 1848 Unites Germany (actual timeline)

[Aussie Guy]

Who here thinks I should get Germany to try and invade Hokkaido? On one hand, the place is fairly sparsely populated and right next to the Kurils. On the other hand, in OTL amphibious assaults before WWII tended to be horrific failures nine times out of ten (see: German West Africa, Gallipoli, etc.). Maybe the Germans could do a few bombing raids with their zeppelins and planes?

 

[LittleSpeer]

Im just glad the central powers will win this war as there is showing discontent among the members.

Who here thinks I should get Germany to try and invade Hokkaido? On one hand, the place is fairly sparsely populated and right next to the Kurils. On the other hand, in OTL amphibious assaults before WWII tended to be horrific failures nine times out of ten (see: German West Africa, Gallipoli, etc.). Maybe the Germans could do a few bombing raids with their zeppelins and planes?

I think the Germans should try to mount a bombing raid and then try an amphibious assaults but right before it happens, they use there zeppelins to transport all the troops they can just behind the beaches to confuse the Japanese and then invade. You can decide if it will work or not, your the writer. Either way its a giant step forward to airborne landings.

 

[Aussie Guy]

Bump. Any other suggestions/comments/etc? I'll be updating again in the next 24 hours.

 

[Aussie Guy]

For the war segment, I'll devote posts entirely to a particular theatre of war, rather than going over every theatre at once.

...

European Theatre:

The war in Europe broke out shortly after a dispute in the Far East between Germany and Japan over the Kuril Archipelago. This dispute drew in the allies of the two nations - including every major power in Europe. The first shot fired in the West was from the French, who, in April of 1905, invaded the German territory of Alsace-Lorraine. When Germany called upon its allies, Russia and Italy, for assistance, Russia shipped large numbers of troops to the German frontlines - the French were pushed back, but still occupied portions of Alsace-Lorraine. Italy launched a spearhead offensive into southern France. With aerial support from Zeppelin dirigibles (purchased from Germany in the 1890s), combined with heavy use of armored vehicles, the Italians were able to strike quickly, coming within 250 kilometres of the French capital. Additionally, the Italians had covertly been planning an offensive against France ever since the Kuril Incident began to conflagrate, so many of the resources needed were already in place.

However, once the French were able to divert enough resources to fight the Italians, the fighting on both European fronts was reduced to a near-standstill. The two sides both attempted to out-flank one another, extending their battle lines north and south. However, this was to no avail - their battle lines were merely extended, running parallel to one another from the Mediterranean Sea in the south to the North Sea in the north. The two fronts, the Italian and the German, merged into a single line, passing just west of Switzerland and carving the continent in two. With the ability to out-flank one-another now eliminated, the two sides were soon embroiled in the massive siege that is trench warfare.

When Italy launched its attack on France, Britain, Belgium and the Ottoman Empire were drawn into the European conflict via their alliance agreements. The Netherlands, however, would remain neutral for the rest of the war. Within two months, Britain had deployed hundreds of thousands of its troops to the trenches. Many more troops were to arrive from across the British Empire in the following months. Whilst this had the effect of tipping the balance somewhat, it was still nowhere near enough to make any decent breakthroughs in the German-Italian-Russian line. The Ottomans also deployed a token force to the front; however, their main contributions would be naval - disrupting shipping to Germany from the officially-neutral United States, as well as assaulting Italian ports in Dalmatia and Tunis (the latter a key stopover point on the supply route running from Germany's African colonies, through Italy's colonies and into Europe).

The war in the West would rage for another four years. By mid-1908, the casualties had already exceeded 6 million killed on both sides. Several major battles had taken place - the Battle of Strassburg, the Battle of Metz and the Battle of Lyon to name a few. However, each was a pointless expenditure of human life and material resources, as thousands of men on both sides were mown down by machine-gun fire every day of every offensive. Both sides were feeling the effects of attrition; however, the Anglo-French forces were most certainly the ones worse for wear.

Not everything on the Western Front was all doom and gloom, however. In the wake of what was possibly the most devastating battle of the entire war, the Battle of Metz (December 8 - December 20, 1906), both sides had, on the first day alone, each suffered the deaths of over 100,000 of their fighting men. The losses were so severe that the two sides agreed to a 24-hour ceasefire, from 11:59pm December 24 to 11:59pm of December 25, in order to bury their dead.

The truce became much more than that, however. A strange camaraderie between the German-Italian and Anglo-French forces emerged. Small gifts of cigarettes, alcohol and chocolate were exchanged between the two sides during the efforts to retrieve and bury their dead. Whilst technically limited to the area near Metz, the truce spread along the entire front-line; in some areas, the cessation of hostilities lasted up until New Year's Day.

Regardless, going into 1907, the truce was allowed to expire, and fighting resumed once more. However, for the length of the war, there would never again be any battle more costly than that of Metz. The very name of the city would send shivers up the spines of all Europeans for generations to come.

The tipping point of the war came in November of 1908. Ottoman ships, operating in tandem with a British fleet in the Atlantic Ocean, had spotted a large vessel steaming towards the North Sea. The Ottomans identified the ship as an American cargo vessel, and had reason to believe that it was carrying war materiel and headed for German docks in the North Sea. Without waiting for a second opinion from the British, the Ottomans fired upon the vessel, sinking it with a single barrage.

The ship, however, was not a cargo transport. It was in fact an American passenger liner, and had no war materiel on board. However, it was carrying over 200 American citizens, of which only a handful survived. The sinking infuriated the American public, snapping them out of their isolationist approach to global affairs. Within a month, the United States had declared war on the Ottoman Empire and her allies, and in less than a year, had mobilised and shipped over 180,000 troops to fight overseas - mainly in the European Theatre.

This diplomatic development came on the heels of two important technological developments which would help to break the deadlock of the trenches. The first of these was in vehicle design. The Germans had heavily modified their armored vehicles, equipping them with continuous tracks instead of wheels, as well as improving the engine design. This allowed the vehicles to handle well in the shredded and muddied plains of No Man's Land, as well as trample barbed wire and cross trenches. Due to the heavy use of Krupp steel in construction, the new vehicle design became widely known as the "Kruppmobil". The development was quickly copied by the British and French, who deployed their own tracked vehicle designs, using the tried-and-tested Hexamotive platform as the base for the new design. Their designs, however, retained the moniker of "land-ironclad".

The second development was in personal weaponry. In the beginning of the conflict, all the major powers involved in the fighting in the European Theater were equipped with modern, bolt-action rifles fed from box-magazines and firing a cartridge of roughly .25 to .35 caliber. However, whilst these rifles were useful for long-range engagements, they were very slow-firing compared to the machine-guns, and overpowered for close-range engagements in the trenches.

A solution emerged when, in mid 1908, the engineers at Waffenfabrik von Dreyse, working together with Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken, were able to redesign the standard rifle of the German Army, the Dreyse G97. A special device, called a "Luger Gadget", was developed which, when inserted into the rifle's action, allowed it to feed and fire .30-caliber handgun ammunition [6]. Designed to fire fully-automatically at a cyclic rate of over 500 rounds per minute, the gadgets were adopted by the German Army and distributed amongst the front-line troops in Western Europe, where they quickly picked up the nickname of "trench brooms" amongst the soldiers.

Enterprising commanders would develop new tactics to match these new devices. By combining the rapid fire capability of the new weapons with the cover provided by the new track-equipped land-ironclads, German "Stoßtruppen", or "shock troops" could advance quickly towards enemy positions before neutralising them and allowing the rest of the soldiers to move forward.

These tactics, combined with the additional pressure brought on by the arrival of American troops on the side of the Germans and Italians, brought fluidity back to the conflict. Before long, the Battle of Paris, the last major action in the European Theater, had begun. The first attack caime from the sky, when German aerial forces launched a series of three raids on the city. Using their dirigibles and aeroplanes to drop large quantities of ordnance on high-value targets, such as railway stations and factories, they were able to disrupt and demoralise the defenders before initiating the first ground offensives.

By the end of 1909, it was all over. Paris had fallen, the British had been worn down to the breaking point through years of attrition, and the Ottomans, facing down the Russian bear on their home front, were forced to withdraw from the European Theater a year earlier. A ceasefire was declared along the whole front on November 12, 1909, and the Paris Armistice was signed before the end of the month. War continued to rage in the Far Eastern Theater for another few months, but the Japanese would no longer have the support of the French or British. A seperate armistice between Germany, Russia and Japan would be signed on June 12, 1910, marking the final day of the First World War.

[6] - Think of it like the Pedersen device, but with a full-auto switch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedersen_device

 

[Aussie Guy]

Which theater should I focus on next? Choose one of the following:

Central African
Boer Front
South Pacific
Far East
Balkan
American

 

[MerryPrankster]

I would think the presence of armored vehicles would prevent trench warfare entirely, or greatly reduce it.

Perhaps the trenches include lots of land mines to use against vehicles and the "turning point" is not putting treads on vehicles but instead the invention of fuel-air bombs to detonate mines en masse?

 

[Aussie Guy]

I would think the presence of armored vehicles would prevent trench warfare entirely, or greatly reduce it.

Perhaps the trenches include lots of land mines to use against vehicles and the "turning point" is not putting treads on vehicles but instead the invention of fuel-air bombs to detonate mines en masse?

Armored cars work well normally, but once someone decides to rain down artillery, the ground gets torn up something chronic (that, and a wheeled vehicle has problems crossing a trench, unlike a large enough treaded vehicle). That's why armored cars IOTL were only used in any great numbers on the Middle Eastern front, despite the fact they had existed as usable weapons for over a decade prior (they were used to a limited extent on the Western front, such as in the Race to the Sea, but it really didn't change the face of the war so much). Something similar would probably happen ITTL once the French start getting ideas.

 

[Aussie Guy]

Any other comments?

 

[Aussie Guy]

Quick question - who here thinks it'd be realistic for Russia to get the Turkish portion of Thrace as an exclave in a peace settlement?

 

[Cylon_Number_14]

I really liked the detailed info you provided for the development of the prototype automatic rifle. Short but sweet technical histories are some of my favorite parts of timelines.

 

[Aussie Guy]

I updated the post on page 4 to include some stuff about America.

 

[Cylon_Number_14]

I'm not the most informed here on the Thrace issue, but I get the impression that the British would do everything in their power to prevent it.

On your American update, that may be the longest life that Lincoln has lived in any ATL. There was a lot of potential for improved race relations in the last quarter of the 19th century if things had gone just a little bit better. In OTL African Americans made up about 1/5 of the whole army by late 1864. Perhaps the longer and more complex ACW you described led to even more black veterans and even more white veterans whose cognitive dissonance over race issues were stripped away, plus an improved early Reconstruction with Lincoln in charge and then playing the role of moral leader after his term. Plus Liberalism as a whole is stronger due to the more successful 1848 Revolutions. I don't see African Americans being treated as full equals for several more decades, but definitely the worst of violent segregation and massacres of urban blacks in the 1900-1930 era will never occur. Just don't get to starry eyed and have a black president before mid-century, for that is about as unlikely as a woman president in the 1930s.

 

[TheRageMachine]

I noticed there isn't much on what the Americans did aside from sending a bitch-slap delivery of troops.

 

[Aussie Guy]

I noticed there isn't much on what the Americans did aside from sending a bitch-slap delivery of troops.

Americans have always been isolationist - they needed a significant event to occur in order to get them to fight. And, much like in OTL, they only made their move towards the end of the war.

However, there is another reason why America sent comparatively few troops to Europe. Consider the fact they've just declared war on the Ottoman Empire and her allies. Currently, the British Empire is one of those allies. Now, when war is declared on the British Empire, and the British declare war back, all their colonies, realms and commonwealths tend to follow suit. Now, think about it - are there any significant British colonies or realms near the United States?

 

[Aussie Guy]

Just don't get to starry eyed and have a black president before mid-century, for that is about as unlikely as a woman president in the 1930s.

I know - I'm not that much of an idealist. Though, a black congressman this early ITTL isn't too ASB, is it?

Edit: It seems that, even in OTL, there were quite a few black congressmen and senators at around this time.

 

[Aussie Guy]

Balkan Theatre

...

The Balkan Theatre of the Great War was fought primarily between the Russian and Ottoman Empires. After the first few months of the European conflict, the Ottoman Empire was drawn into the fight, where it bombarded Italian positions in Tunis and Dalmatia. This resulted in Italy calling upon its alliance with Russia under the terms of the Berlin Treaty.

In response, Russia - already fighting on two fronts - opened up a third front in the Balkans, as it moved its troops southward from Wallachia in July of 1906. As the Russians moved in, unrest in the Ottoman-occupied Balkans overflowed into revolution, as many of the regions declared independence. As Ottoman garrisons were redirected from these areas to slow the Russian advance or driven out by the insurgents, these regions were able to consolidate their independence.

Once their independence was secured, they joined with Russia and the other independent nations of the Balkans (Serbia, Montenegro, Romania and Greece) in pushing back the Ottomans. The number of insurgencies, combined with the sheer number of incoming soldiers, made the construction of trenches for the Ottomans nigh-impossible, at least until they were pushed back to Thrace.

As the Russians and their allies began moving in on Constantinople in mid-1908, the advance slowed down to a crawl. With the land forming a bottleneck, and with no more insurgencies or rebellions to handle, the Ottoman forces were able to halt the Russian advance by December of 1908 - 35 kilometres from Constantinople. However, in order to gather the manpower needed to stop the Russians, the Ottomans were forced to withdraw their troops from the European Theater, as well as pull back their ships from the Atlantic.

The frontline of the Balkan war became much like that of the war between the Germans and French - a mess of blood-stained trenches, lined with machine-guns and barbed wire. The line went from advancing a few kilometres on a daily basis to advancing three or four kilometres a month, at the cost of an average of four thousand troops a day. Naval strikes on the Ottoman front-line by the Black Sea Fleet were becoming a regular occurance, and air attacks on Constantinople were also carried out.

Eventually, by August of 1909, the Russians had forced the Ottomans back all the way to Constantinople, where they began to lay siege to the city. Tired of the war of attrition with Russia, and their allies also overstretched fighting Germany and Italy in Europe, the Ottomans surrendered in less than three months; the ceasefire between themselves and the Russians took effect at roughly the same time as the ceasefire in the west. The Ottomans joined negotiations with the other European powers in order to establish the terms of the armistice.

 

[Aussie Guy]

Bump? Sorry if the Balkan update is a bit bland.

 

[Omnibus]

Bump!

Did anything happen in North America during the War? What about South America?

If not, I await the Far East update earlier.

 

[Aussie Guy]

Bump!

Did anything happen in North America during the War? What about South America?

If not, I await the Far East update earlier.

I planned on having Canada and the US wage war on each-other, but I'm working out some of the finer points in another topic on this board.

 

[Onyx]

Gentlemen, BEHOLD!

A MAP OF AFRICA ITTL, CIRCA 1904!

</caps>

I hope the borders make sense. Dark green's Italy, yellow is Germany, dark blue is France, light blue Spain, light green Portugal and red is the British. Grey is independent, and includes Liberia, the Orange Republic and Ethiopia.

*Plays with Victorian Mustache*
I dare say that is a splendiferous map old bean!! Now good day sir!

btw, Holy ****, the Orange Free State exists, finally I see an alt history in which it exists, shouldn't they be allies to the German since they supplied the Boers with Mauser rifles and such during the Boer War?
It'd be also cool seing Natal or the Zulu Kingdom still existing.