Malê Rising

[Falecius]

Hurrah for a happier Dreyfus!

Yeah, no matter how overextended Austria and France are in Italy, I think the've knocked the BOG's little partner out of the fight. The Italians surely can't avoid a collapse if the bulk of their industry and a huge part of their population is occupied.


Though with the French so overextended I wonder if Paris might consider very quietly extending peace feelers? There can't be much love lost between the Liberal Bonapartist regime and the despotism of the Romanovs, after all.

It depends on how much the British are able to prop up Italy I think. I suppose they'll be willing to go a fairly great length at that, just for the sake of keeping the French bleeding and stretched.
However, British resources are stretched pretty thin too.

 

[Julius Vogel]

It depends on how much the British are able to prop up Italy I think. I suppose they'll be willing to go a fairly great length at that, just for the sake of keeping the French bleeding and stretched.
However, British resources are stretched pretty thin too.

Does anyone recall how easily the British can act in the Med? Can they freely supply most of the southern ports?

 

[Falecius]

Does anyone recall how easily the British can act in the Med? Can they freely supply most of the southern ports?

Probably they can to some point. Malta, Suez and Gibraltar are secure and the Turks are supportive. OTOH, most of the North African coast west of Egypt is in French hands, though their hold might not be very secure everywhere, and while the BOGS are firmly holding Suez, the Bab al-Mandeb in its rear is... problematic. I doubt that France, even while controlling Tunisia to some extent, has the resources to interdict shipping in the Channel of Sicily or threaten Malta.

 

[Faeelin]

Are the BOGs winning anywhere? It doesn't seem like it.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Remember the line about how the Italians have men, theyy dont have industry? Well, britain and north german HAVE the industry.

Besides, the Brits have a not quite complete conrol of the worlds supply of nitrates atm, and the French and russians are going to find it real fun when their soldiers have 10 bullets a day, and the BOGs ccan fire machineguns and semi automatics all they want.

The Russians, in particular, should be in a world of hurt really soon.

 

[Badshah]

Are the BOGs winning anywhere? It doesn't seem like it.

The war at sea....Southeast Asia....and it's slowly bleeding FAR out.

 

[Admiral Matt]

I don't know whether Milan can sustain a long siege. If it happens, is going to be a massive hell of urban warfare, à la Leningrad in WWII (well, maybe not that hellish).

I don't know that much urban warfare would need to be involved, really. Merely letting the Milanese run out their supplies, while keeping the areas beyond the siege lines well fed, would probably be much more effective than attacking the place. And the French would know, too, having Cologne to remind them of the point....

 

[Falecius]

Remember the line about how the Italians have men, theyy dont have industry? Well, britain and north german HAVE the industry.

Besides, the Brits have a not quite complete conrol of the worlds supply of nitrates atm, and the French and russians are going to find it real fun when their soldiers have 10 bullets a day, and the BOGs ccan fire machineguns and semi automatics all they want.

The Russians, in particular, should be in a world of hurt really soon.

If all the Padan plain is lost, men can start to be a problem. Esp. with all the unholy Platine mess on the verge of explosion. A lot of people there have close relatives in Peninsular Italy.

 

[Faeelin]

Besides, the Brits have a not quite complete conrol of the worlds supply of nitrates atm, and the French and russians are going to find it real fun when their soldiers have 10 bullets a day, and the BOGs ccan fire machineguns and semi automatics all they want.

A good point actully. Hasn't this war been going on for years?

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

A good point actully. Hasn't this war been going on for years?

Oh. You're right. It looks like 2 years now, 93-95 Hmmmm... i would have thought the nitrate bottlenecks would have kicked in hard by now.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Thanks for all the comments! Sorry if I miss anything.

Italy's in deep shit.

Well, the new frontier in Italy seems to be defensible, but realistically speaking, just how able is Italy able to defend it? They must have lost a huge portion of their industrial areas, and I can't imagine the moral shock their armies must have suffered.

What I posted above is under the assumption that "Milan and Parma under siege" refers to pockets, not a frontlines and the Appennines where the fight is going on now are the Tosco-Emilian Appennines. There are some North Italian cities north of this assumed line that you have not mentioned, most notably Genoa, Bologna and Brescia.

Yeah, it's not surprising that the FARs could break into Italy, nor that a reformed line would be on the Apennines. What is surprising is that a reformed line would be made up of Italians at this point, that there's no mention of the Italian government, and that there would be cities holding out behind the lines.

For the former, not only would Italy be stripped of the majority of its industry and rail net (exacerbated by the placement of the capital), but there are also the people to consider. Evacuating Italy's military strength successfully would be a Herculean task even if all the civilians stayed home, and in practice they'll have flooded the roads south. Given a sizable population and industry behind them, armies in this time period were effectively indestructible in a stand-up fight. This was largely true even in a salient flanked slightly. But when fronts collapsed it became a different matter entirely - then an army could cease to exist in a matter of days.

As I understand it, the Italians are managing this stand only because their opponents are really bootstrapping their offensive with barely adequate forces and got terrible losses in the process of breaking through. I agree that an Appennine line cannot be held for long, though. If the Italians somehow manage to resist through the summer (which is not going to be pretty) they can make a hell for their enemies in winter and regroup enough to resist again next spring. Still, a lot of Italian manpower, industry, rail network will be lost, and the Franco-Austrians too can use the winter to fill their holes. Then, the line will be tenable only with major British (read Indian) commitment when the likely offensive comes in 1896.

The way I envisioned things working out in Italy was that the French made the initial breakthrough in the Western Alps using the same tactics that got the North Germans through the Austrian trench lines in Silesia: storm-trooper infiltrations to neutralize the gun positions at strategic points along the Italian line, followed by massed human-wave assaults that swamped those points and flanked the rest of the line. France bagged much of the Italian western command, and there weren't enough second-line Italian troops in the theater to do more than slow them down, but the French army took heavy losses.

At that point, the northern Italian command was still holding against the Austrian offensive, but it realized that if it stayed in place, it would be caught between the French and Austrian armies. The decision was made to disengage and retreat south, and because the northern army hadn't yet been defeated in battle, it was able to do so in relatively good order. It initially tried to establish a new front running from Genoa through Milan to Brescia, but didn't have enough time to dig in, and was in danger of being flanked by the Austrians moving south through Venetia. It again retreated in relatively good order, but a couple of divisions were pocketed between Milan and Lake Como, resulting in the siege. The current front line is approximately Genoa-Piacenza-Parma-Modena-Bologna-Rimini; Milan is a pocket, but Parma is a front-line city.

The retreat wasn't what anyone would call smooth, for the reasons stated by Admiral Matt, but it also wasn't a pell-mell flight by a broken force one step ahead of the invaders, so the bulk of the northern army managed to reach the Apennines intact.

Italy's in a world of hurt right now, not only due to the loss of industry (some of which is now churning out widgets for France) but, as Nassirismo said, due to demoralization. On the other hand, the Anglo-German industrial capacity, while strained, isn't spread nearly as thin as Anglo-German manpower, so Italy is receiving emergency supplies of war materials. The Franco-Austrian forces will need time to regroup after their losses in the initial invasion. The RN, while strained, is strong enough in the Med to prevent a FAR landing in the Italians' rear, especially when combined with the still-intact Regia Marina. And it's also just a matter of time before the BOGs find out how many French and Austrian divisions are in Italy and realize that the FARs really are fully committed, enabling some of the British expeditionary force to divert to the Apennine front (which also puts them in an excellent position to attack the rear of Austria's Balkan army via Albania).

As Falecius says, the key will be whether the Italians can hold out until the cold weather comes. The next few months will either be remembered as one of the most heroic periods in Italy's history or as one of its most humiliating defeats.

(And there is an Italian government - the royal family, the parliament and the upper civil service decamped from Turin to Rome - so there's someone coordinating the operations on the Apennine front.)

Also.... How does a major modern city like Milan sustain a siege, even in the short term? Totally out of local supply for everything but water, sheltering huge numbers of refugees, defended by haphazard military formations, and everyone eats. It'd take some serious Swiss cooperation to prevent an immediate humanitarian disaster, and even in the short term it seems pretty hopeless.

As stated above, the pocketed area includes not only the city of Milan but some of the agricultural land and hill country to the north. (This is a partial retcon, which is why I didn't say so in the update.) The French and Austrians are hesitant to attack the city directly, given the recent example of Cologne/Köln, but they're trying to tighten the noose around the city and cut it off from its hinterland. Once they do that - and it's only a matter of time given the balance of forces in the region - the siege will get very ugly.

Very cool. Interesting to see how Piratini's being tugged at by both sides....definitely something that will no doubt cause problems.

Hmm... whilst part of me wonders whether France and/or Brazil have taken a leaf out of Russia's book after the events in Persia, I suspect the BOGside have a diplomatic disaster on their hands. Assuming they survive the war intact, I wonder if Paraguay and the Gaucho Republics might pursue a more independent foreign policy in the aftermath (insofar as that's possible in the wider geopolitical climate).

There will be plenty of accusations and angry denials about the source of the leak, but it's real. The information is slightly exaggerated - Britain hadn't yet made any formal promise to let Argentina annex Entre Rios - but informal assurances had been put on the table, and an Argentine diplomatic staffer made them public in order to force Britain's hand. It's about to backfire spectacularly.

Given the circumstances, the gaucho states probably won't wait until after the war to start developing a more independent foreign policy - they want to keep in with Britain, but they also won't let one of their number get swallowed up by Argentina without a fight. If war breaks out - and the next month or two of frantic diplomacy will tell - the gaucho republics will avoid committing to any formal alliance with Brazil, but war between them and Argentina will still serve Brazilian interests and lead to a de facto partnership. That will, as noted, put them on both sides of the Great War at once, or possibly on a third side all their own.

(Incidentally, with all the subsidiary wars that are taking place on the side, there are few parts of the world still untouched by war. The United States, Mexico, Chile, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Mongolia/Xinjiang, Korea and a few corners of the Pacific - that's about it, and some of those might not last much longer.)

Good to see *Alfred is having a considerably better time in this TL.

Dreyfus is doing better than OTL.

Its hard for him to not to do atleast a little better.

Hurrah for a happier Dreyfus!

In TTL, Dreyfus (or more accurately, his ATL-sibling) never had a staff job, so he never came under suspicion. However, he hasn't had a stellar career either. He's competent and hard-working but unimaginative and a bit of a cold fish, somewhat like his OTL personality, and his superiors regard him as neither brilliant nor well-connected. He's also Jewish, which isn't a problem for all or even most French officers (anti-semitism isn't as widespread as OTL because the hothouse atmosphere of the Third Republic wasn't there to nurture it) but is objectionable to enough of them to have slowed the pace of his promotions.

At the moment, he's 36 years old and still a captain, which is one reason why he was chosen for the military police - he was considered better for the job than a hothead in his twenties. This will keep him relatively safe for the rest of the war, but will also ensure that he finishes the war a captain just like he started it, unless he does something spectacular like, say, catch a spy.

Are the BOGs winning anywhere? It doesn't seem like it.

The war at sea....Southeast Asia....and it's slowly bleeding FAR out.

As Badshah mentioned, the BOGs are winning the naval war and have just about wrapped things up in Southeast Asia, and they're also pushing the French back in West Africa. They were winning in central Africa before the Omani civil war broke out, and even with the subsequent chaos, they aren't doing too badly there.

We're also reaching the point where the Anglo-German industrial superiority will begin to tell, although that may be slowed a bit by what's about to happen in India.

Oh. You're right. It looks like 2 years now, 93-95 Hmmmm... i would have thought the nitrate bottlenecks would have kicked in hard by now.

Chile and Peru are neutral, and the sea lane to Valparaiso is one of the places where the French and (to a lesser extent) Russian navies have concentrated their strength. Thus far, they've been able to keep the routes open enough to ensure a steady, albeit occasionally interrupted, supply. Some nitrates have also been reaching them through neutral shipping, although the BOGs are putting the squeeze on Spain not to accept such shipments and are going about as far as they can go in interdicting Spanish-flagged military traffic without committing any outright acts of war.

The FARs, especially Austria, are hurting for nitrates but aren't yet at a critical point. If the RN can get firm control of the sea lane to Chile, though, all bets are off.

Though with the French so overextended I wonder if Paris might consider very quietly extending peace feelers? There can't be much love lost between the Liberal Bonapartist regime and the despotism of the Romanovs, after all.

Leclair isn't ready for that yet - he still sees a chance for victory. If his government were to fall, though...

 

[Faeelin]

Why shouldn't he see a chance for victory?

I get that this is a world war, and we see it as such. But:

1) Milan is about to fall; the Italian industrial heartland.

2) The Rhineland has fallen, save Cologne which is in hte midst of house to house fighting.

The BOG navies, for all their superiority, can't even stop the flow of resources which have to sale from Western South America, along the coast of Brazil, past the United Kingdom...

(How are things even getting to Russia?)

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Why shouldn't he see a chance for victory?

I get that this is a world war, and we see it as such. But:


The BOG navies, for all their superiority, can't even stop the flow of resources which have to sale from Western South America, along the coast of Brazil, past the United Kingdom...

(How are things even getting to Russia?)

Ya. Youd think theyd be able to do better job stopping the flow of nitrates. Oh well, not our tl. And the ocean is a BIG place.

But,, how is ANYTHING getting too Russia? The Ottoomans have tthe Black Sea closed off, the Germans pretty much have the Baltic closed. Good luck getting needed supplies to Murmansk. Is there rail there?

Russiaa can probably land just about anythiing it wants at Vladivostok - has the TSR been built yet, ittl? If not, those gooods are essentiialllyy useless.

 

[The Sandman]

Russia's probably getting things shipped in via Sweden, railed across the Finnish border. Which the Swedes are no doubt charging a pretty penny for, but it's still better than the alternative.

Also, probably a whole lot of American shipping being used, because things are stretched too thin on both sides to risk provoking the Americans into the war, and neither side is quite desperate enough yet to not care about that.

I'm amazed that the Japanese haven't attacked Korea yet, given that all the powers who might complain are thoroughly distracted.

I also wonder if the FAR have quietly made plans to somehow put the Chilean nitrate industry out of commission for an extended period of time if it looks like they're on the verge of being cut off by the BOGs anyway.

Xinjiang is probably going to have the Central Asian rebellions against the Russians spill across the border as soon as the crackdown in Kazakhstan proper begins in earnest.

The Swiss will eventually come under pressure to join the war, given that they're sitting on a potentially vital line of communications and transportation for both sides.

The Dutch are probably going to end up on the wrong end of an 1890s version of Market-Garden once the French feel they've run out of better options.

And if nothing else, the Spanish are likely to join in once it becomes obvious that FAR is going to lose the war, in the hopes of grabbing some spoils and a seat at the peace conference.

 

[Shevek23]

...
The Dutch are probably going to end up on the wrong end of an 1890s version of Market-Garden once the French feel they've run out of better options.

I'm amazed the whole Belgian situation hasn't blown up spectacularly yet; what precedent is there for a nominally neutral country to allow armies from one belligerent to cross its territory on foot to attack another?

Honestly I can think of one off the top of my head, but it's very anachronistic--Cambodia under Prince Sihanouk during the Vietnam War. But of course Nixon's eventual response to that was to sponsor a coup that threw him out and brought the Cambodian government in on the US side--only to be overthrown by its own homegrown insurgency of course. Sihanouk was in a position to disavow any connivance with the Viet Minh. How can the current Belgian government do the same?

I presume the main reason North Germany and the UK have not declared war on Belgium is that they feel they have their hands rather full at the moment and don't need yet another helping of open warfare on their tables--but the current Belgian government is on very very thin ice with them I'm sure and the moment the two northern powers feel they can afford to they're going to be making some stringent ultimata to Brussels. Or look very very very favorably on a change in government there. If the BOGs win through to a peace that is anything more than a draw, the current regime in Belgium is going to find itself with very little diplomatic capital.

And I got the sense when last we hearing about it, that the government's choice to turn a blind eye to an army marching through was very controversial and quite unpopular with a lot of people.

So the French might decide it would be brilliant to sweep through the Netherlands and strike yet another vulnerable flank of Germany--which would bring the Dutch in on the BOG side of course, unless the monarchy decides to order a surrender to French occupation a la Vichy and even then there is the question of whether Dutch holdings overseas would obey or not.

But first they have to move an overwhelming army to strike with surprise--the current Belgian government might assist them with that (and surely have to figure they are openly on the FAR side after that)--but I'm not sure the government could rely on all the Belgian people standing aside and letting that happen without protest, perhaps even fighting it openly. If civil war breaks out in Belgium over the question of French troops crossing it, that's a warning to the Dutch; they can probably hold for a little while, long enough for North German and British reinforcements to come in. And perhaps under the circumstances, be rewarded for turning their poor country into a battlefield with the promise that Belgium is going down and Flanders will wind up a Dutch territory. (That would create an awkward post-war problem though; the Francophone part of Belgium would surely then gravitate toward being annexed to France, a peculiar "penalty" for France to suffer for losing! Trying to maintain a rump Walloon mini-state would be a thankless task; they'd be trying to Anschluss to France and in lieu of that, acting as French proxies as long as the separation was enforced.)

So--the current regime in Brussels has pushed it about as, um, FAR, as they can dare short of openly joining the FAR alliance. If the Belgian people overwhelmingly wanted that they'd probably have done so. I don't know if more "Papal Legionaries" are going to cross into Germany via Belgium--but I don't think the French can quietly move a sufficient army to rapidly subdue the Netherlands across Belgium without an alarm going off.

They could of course make a pretense of conquering Belgium with that same overwhelming force, which the current regime might surrender to with unseemly haste and yet claim plausible deniability. But that process, however well-orchestrated, will still take some time and its start is the signal for the Dutch to mobilize. If they haven't already, citing a need for armed defense, pointing precisely at the precedent of Belgium allowing the Papal Legions to cross into Germany.

And if nothing else, the Spanish are likely to join in once it becomes obvious that FAR is going to lose the war, in the hopes of grabbing some spoils and a seat at the peace conference.

I'm not so sure that it would even be in Spain's rational, cold-blooded interest to do that. Just what would they be looking to grab so opportunistically? Territory in North Africa, perhaps? Don't they have a handful of that already? The British are not going to offer any deals regarding Gibraltar. There are some territories which have oscillated back and forth between Spain and France.

But I'm not sure any of that is worth infuriating France, even when France is defeated for the moment. Spain is in the same position Franco's Spain was in in WWII, it looks to me--she really can't afford to piss off either bloc. Unlike Falangist Spain, which brutally suppressed dissent, there are probably strong voices on both sides--but anyone advocating open alliance with the BOGs is probably in the minority.

I'm admittedly projecting backward from the OTL Civil War that was 40 years later and in our timeline, not this one--but if there is anyone in Spain who is not going to line up with the clericalist, reactionary side that wanted to commit to FAR years ago, they strike me as unlikely to be comfortable with the staid powers that be of the BOGs either. They'd more likely be countryside, urban, and separatist radicals who are much more against Madrid than they are for the interests the northern (and Protestant) allies of BOG are. They might be anti-clerical--to Britons and Germans, they would be perhaps to a fault. These explosive social elements won't be conducting a cold-blooded policy of coming late to the war to win spoils for the Madrid regime; they'd be revolutionaries, half committed to destroying Spain as a unified nation, the other half committed to so transforming it their rightist foes would deem it tantamount to the destruction of Spain wholesale.

I suspect that maybe in this time period so much earlier, radicalism might not have evolved nearly so far yet and there might be a substantial liberal bloc. But their interest would be to stand pat, profit as neutral middlemen, keep their tenuous grip on their distant colonies secure by not offending the British--and as much as their more reactionary counterparts also committed to Spain as a nation, keep whatever degree of radicalism as might already have fermented in check.

These hypothetical liberals might be currently holding a tense and uneasy balance between these radicals and the ultramontaine clericist Right, that boils over in anger over both the treatment of the Pope (currently residing among them and spewing venom and anathemas against the unholy BOGs) and Spain's long-held grievances against British ascendency. Never mind the Peninsular War, nowadays the FAR alliance, conveniently ignoring the ancient schism with the Eastern Orthodox (who also after all call themselves Catholic, and are currently fighting, as the rightist would have it, for Right Reason) is, a Holy Alliance of true religion and conservative order against depraved modernity and apostasy. We've all noted before that religious allegiance is more of a factor in this timeline at this point than OTL. In Spain, I think this means that it would be impossible for Spain to war against France without civil war. Not only are the two north European mainstays of BOG Protestant, and Italy the victim of wayward folly of her liberals damned and doubtless by now formally excommunicated by the Pope they betrayed, the third core member of BOG is of course the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

The crusader faction has not got its way, but I do think they would veto any thought of actually attacking the FARs and consider it a shame and scandal they aren't aiding them.

The radical faction is perhaps not yet sufficiently developed to fight and win a civil war, and if they were the BOG powers would be reluctant to invoke them. If the clerical-crusader faction did get their way and plunge Spain into war against BOG, damn the rational considerations, the British just possibly might try to set that bomb off, in the same spirit the German General Staff OTL sent Lenin to Russia. But they might be regretting it for decades to come.

Aside from these hot-blooded factors, Spain just can't afford long-term animosity with either side. They need British tolerance to keep their empire and indeed to import sufficient goods--and for that matter the French would much rather they stayed neutral so they could go on channelling trade goods to them as well. And they can't afford, even if domestic politics would not forbid it, to earn the long-term hatred of France either; France is right there on their border and will be for as long as either nation lasts.

Either Spain goes nuts and goes FAR, or they stay neutral to the end, is my take on it. They can't go BOG and stay in one piece.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Why shouldn't he see a chance for victory?

I'm not saying he shouldn't - this thing is still far from decided in the European and Middle Eastern theaters. On the other hand, he probably has good enough intelligence to compare British and North German war production for May 1895 to the same month in 1894. More and more of the BOGs' latent strength is coming online.

The BOG navies, for all their superiority, can't even stop the flow of resources which have to sale from Western South America, along the coast of Brazil, past the United Kingdom...

Ya. Youd think theyd be able to do better job stopping the flow of nitrates. Oh well, not our tl. And the ocean is a BIG place.

The battle for the nitrate shipping lanes is a contest between a navy that is supreme but spread very thin, and one that recognizes its overall inferiority, concedes most of the sea to the enemy (with the exception of commerce raiding) and concentrates all its strength in three or four key routes. The RN could potentially sit on the nitrate routes with enough force to prevent any French or Russian shipping from getting through, but to do that all the time, they'd have to uncover areas they need to cover. There are also several routes the RN would have to sit on if they want to interdict the nitrate shipments - if they establish a choke point at Cape Horn, the French could route their convoys around southern Africa, or if it becomes impractical to land the shipments in France or Spain, they might be landed in Dakar and brought overland to Algiers.

This isn't to say that the RN isn't trying: they've probably managed to grab a few nitrate convoys, or at least pick off stragglers, and mount a watch over the Chilean coast (although there's a limit to how much force it can keep in that area if it doesn't want to alienate the Chileans). But given that it has to cover the entire planet while the FAR navies don't, I'd say it's plausible that the FARs would be able to maintain enough of a lifeline to continue fighting.

There's also the issue of whether the FARs can just make the stuff. In OTL, the Haber process wasn't discovered until 1909, but people were working on nitrogen-fixing during the late 19th century, so synthetic nitrates would be on the radar. Presumably the FAR militaries would be throwing money at nitrogen-fixing experiments as well as improvements in engines or shipping designs, and if something like the Haber process is discovered, it would only take a short time to scale it up to industrial levels (in OTL, it took four years, and a military crash program could probably shorten this time considerably). It would be a very lucky break for the FARs if this happened, but as far as I know, there's no reason why something like the Haber process - or maybe the less efficient Birkeland-Eyde process, which would still be better than no nitrates at all - couldn't be achieved with 1890s technology.

(For that matter, could either of the processes described by LeConte in the 1860s be scaled up to industrial levels? My gut feeling is no, but did anyone try?)

(How are things even getting to Russia?)

But,, how is ANYTHING getting too Russia? The Ottoomans have tthe Black Sea closed off, the Germans pretty much have the Baltic closed. Good luck getting needed supplies to Murmansk. Is there rail there?

Russiaa can probably land just about anythiing it wants at Vladivostok - has the TSR been built yet, ittl? If not, those gooods are essentiialllyy useless.

I was thinking Vladivostok or Seoul - the TSR was completed before the war due to increasing Russian interests in Manchuria, and was extended to Seoul because of Russia's involvement in the Korean court. That's still a very long supply line, though, and with Central Asia in rebellion, the Russians might soon realize just how vulnerable it is.

There's also the possibility of getting goods from France via Switzerland (or the southern German states) and Austria-Hungary - again, a fairly long journey, but once the goods get to France, a safe one.

Russia's probably getting things shipped in via Sweden, railed across the Finnish border. Which the Swedes are no doubt charging a pretty penny for, but it's still better than the alternative.

Also, probably a whole lot of American shipping being used, because things are stretched too thin on both sides to risk provoking the Americans into the war, and neither side is quite desperate enough yet to not care about that.

Both sides are certainly using American shipping, but would there be a rail connection between Sweden and northern Finland at that point? Hmmm, according to Wikipedia, the OTL Swedish rail network got as far as Boden by 1894 - assuming that it made similar progress in TTL, it might build the line the rest of the way during the war, especially if Russia supplied part of the funding. Was there a railhead yet on the Finnish side?

I'm amazed that the Japanese haven't attacked Korea yet, given that all the powers who might complain are thoroughly distracted.

Russia has major interests in Korea in TTL, and the Japanese aren't sure they're ready for a war with Russia, especially since they're still engaged in China and consolidating their gains in Taiwan.

The Dutch are probably going to end up on the wrong end of an 1890s version of Market-Garden once the French feel they've run out of better options.

The Dutch won't let the French army pass through the way Belgium did, though - the French would have to fight their way through, and by the time they got to the North German border, if they got there at all, they'd have lost any advantage of surprise. I tend to agree with Shevek23 that the French wouldn't be able to get across the Netherlands fast enough to prevent the North Germans from either intervening or digging in, especially since the Dutch are already keeping a close watch on the Belgian border.

Also, Leclair prefers to fight by the rules - he may interpret the rules differently from the way everyone else does, but something that's clearly unlawful, like violating a nation's neutrality, would be beyond the pale unless France is in extremis.

I'm amazed the whole Belgian situation hasn't blown up spectacularly yet; what precedent is there for a nominally neutral country to allow armies from one belligerent to cross its territory on foot to attack another? [...] I presume the main reason North Germany and the UK have not declared war on Belgium is that they feel they have their hands rather full at the moment and don't need yet another helping of open warfare on their tables--but the current Belgian government is on very very thin ice with them I'm sure and the moment the two northern powers feel they can afford to they're going to be making some stringent ultimata to Brussels.

At this point, many British and North German policymakers consider Belgium to already be at war with them. That opinion is debatable, which has prevented a formal declaration of war thus far, but if the Anglo-Germans force the French army to retreat across the Belgian border, they'll certainly have no compunction about following it. And yes, in that event, they might hint strongly that a change in Belgium's government would be in order.

But I'm not sure any of that is worth infuriating France, even when France is defeated for the moment. Spain is in the same position Franco's Spain was in in WWII, it looks to me--she really can't afford to piss off either bloc. Unlike Falangist Spain, which brutally suppressed dissent, there are probably strong voices on both sides--but anyone advocating open alliance with the BOGs is probably in the minority.

I'd tend to agree. There is a substantial liberal bloc - the successful 1866 coup and the establishment of a liberal monarchy has entrenched that faction - but they're caught between the clerical conservatives on the one hand, and the urban radicals and anarchists on the other. I think you're right that, while the liberals wouldn't be pro-FAR in the way the clerical conservatives are, they'd also have no interest in fighting for the Anglo-Germans or becoming long-term enemies of France. Not only would any overtly pro-BOG stance touch off a civil war, as you say, but the French will always be there, and they'll always be closer than the Germans or British. Spain may well be one of the powers that stays neutral to the end, although it will continue to supply recruits for the Papal Legion.

 

[The Sandman]

And, of course, the Spanish have the US staring at their colonies and licking their chops.

When I suggested that the Spanish might join the BOGs, it would be rather like Turkey joining the Allies in OTL WWII; nominal, intended to get a seat at the table and to get on the good side of the people about to win a nation-shattering war.

As for invading the Dutch, it would be more along the lines of "those troops that were supposedly heading through Belgium to the Rhineland front turned north instead and now they're pouring across the border". It'll turn into a disaster, of course, but it's still something the French are likely to try for lack of better options to reach the Ruhr and strike a decisive blow against the NGF.

And yeah, Belgium is fucked post-war, but given that when they granted transit rights to the French it looked like the FAR was about to win the war, they probably saw it as their smartest option. Especially if Leopold got a more honest appraisal of Belgium's ability to resist invasion than Albert did at the start of WWI IOTL; if you see the choice as letting the French pass through and attack the Germans or trying to stop them and getting your country burned down before they pass through anyway, you're not going to think resistance is such a good idea.

Both sides are certainly using American shipping, but would there be a rail connection between Sweden and northern Finland at that point? Hmmm, according to Wikipedia, the OTL Swedish rail network got as far as Boden by 1894 - assuming that it made similar progress in TTL, it might build the line the rest of the way during the war, especially if Russia supplied part of the funding. Was there a railhead yet on the Finnish side?

I'm not sure, but it's possible; even if there wasn't before the war, there would certainly have been the incentive to extend it to the border once it became obvious that the Baltic was closed.

Russia has major interests in Korea in TTL, and the Japanese aren't sure they're ready for a war with Russia, especially since they're still engaged in China and consolidating their gains in Taiwan.

On the other hand, China is an unstable basket case and can easily be kept that way for a while. Russia, meanwhile, has pretty much all its forces committed to a major war along its entire western border, along with suppressing insurrections throughout the empire; unless the Japanese anticipate a complete collapse of the Russian state, there probably won't ever be a better time to make a play for Korea and Manchuria than now.

The Dutch won't let the French army pass through the way Belgium did, though - the French would have to fight their way through, and by the time they got to the North German border, if they got there at all, they'd have lost any advantage of surprise. I tend to agree with Shevek23 that the French wouldn't be able to get across the Netherlands fast enough to prevent the North Germans from either intervening or digging in, especially since the Dutch are already keeping a close watch on the Belgian border.

Also, Leclair prefers to fight by the rules - he may interpret the rules differently from the way everyone else does, but something that's clearly unlawful, like violating a nation's neutrality, would be beyond the pale unless France is in extremis.

Hence the Market-Garden comparison. It's a terrible idea, but there are enough reasons why it might end up seeming like a good idea that I think the French would try it once it's obvious that they're not getting to the Ruhr any other way.

 

[Admiral Matt]

Both sides are certainly using American shipping, but would there be a rail connection between Sweden and northern Finland at that point? Hmmm, according to Wikipedia, the OTL Swedish rail network got as far as Boden by 1894 - assuming that it made similar progress in TTL, it might build the line the rest of the way during the war, especially if Russia supplied part of the funding. Was there a railhead yet on the Finnish side?

It's a really long rail line for 1890s Russia. Better connections through Central Europe would probably offer the better returns on investment.

Hrm. There might even be some Russians operating away from the country's fronts - after all, they have the bodies that are lacking among their allies, but lack the industry and logistics to apply them effectively. Ship a few divisions to southern Germany and northern Italy....

The Dutch won't let the French army pass through the way Belgium did, though - the French would have to fight their way through, and by the time they got to the North German border, if they got there at all, they'd have lost any advantage of surprise. I tend to agree with Shevek23 that the French wouldn't be able to get across the Netherlands fast enough to prevent the North Germans from either intervening or digging in, especially since the Dutch are already keeping a close watch on the Belgian border.

Also, Leclair prefers to fight by the rules - he may interpret the rules differently from the way everyone else does, but something that's clearly unlawful, like violating a nation's neutrality, would be beyond the pale unless France is in extremis.

Didn't pretty much every European nation think it was fighting for its very survival during the OTL Great War? Why not here?

At this point, many British and North German policymakers consider Belgium to already be at war with them. That opinion is debatable, which has prevented a formal declaration of war thus far, but if the Anglo-Germans force the French army to retreat across the Belgian border, they'll certainly have no compunction about following it. And yes, in that event, they might hint strongly that a change in Belgium's government would be in order.

Hrm. I'd have thought London would have long since taken the opportunity to wipe out the Belgian merchant marine. They'd be feeding the French, after all. And that'd obviously force the Belgians in.

 

[Jord839]

(Incidentally, with all the subsidiary wars that are taking place on the side, there are few parts of the world still untouched by war. The United States, Mexico, Chile, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Mongolia/Xinjiang, Korea and a few corners of the Pacific - that's about it, and some of those might not last much longer.)

Now, this hint leads to interesting thoughts.

We've already seen how the US is feeling, and you've hinted that Korea's somehow going to get involved or otherwise end up in the Russian sphere regardless of who wins, but the others are more iffy.

In Switzerland, I'm sure that the dominant feeling is "Hopefully they just ignore us and we can sit this whole mess out like usual", but if the chips are down, which side is there more sympathy for and which side would they likely end up joining? I think the answer to that is dependent completely on FAR actions at this point.

Did we ever establish how popular opinion towards union with the NGF is in Baden or Wurttemburg? If it's a majority against union, then you have two culturally similar south German states(and as I mentioned earlier, many of those unique cultural traits being emphasized by the monarchies have a lot in common with the Swiss) trying to maintain their independence against German interlopers, which the Swiss might be sympathetic towards even if Bavaria clearly is not the same bag. If the situation is more like Bavaria though, with a majority wanting to join Germany but being stopped by the monarchies, I think the BOGs win the sympathy points there due to desire for self-determination. This alone wouldn't get them to join the war, but it may swing government sympathies from benevolent neutrality to a more even-handed one(which, given the need to get materials to Austria and Russia, is practically hostile in and of itself).

Italy would be a whole other issue though. The majority of the Swiss are protestant, of course, but there's still a large minority of catholics, so the debate between a right of self-determination of Italy and the Pope's rights are going to be pretty politically volatile in certain corners. I'd expect at least a few volunteers for the Papal Legions coming from areas like Luzern, but can't guess the extent. I think if the FAR is less sympathetic in the southern German states, the Swiss gov't will use that as an excuse to cut down on volunteers and potential provocations on both sides and secure neutrality.

On the other hand, with the fall of most of Northern Italy, Switzerland is completely surrounded by FAR-aligned powers. No BOG pressure is going to get Switzerland to fight against that, barring some huge diplomatic and/or military screw-up caused by the FARs. So, if there's no screw-up, the FARs keep a pretty secure line of supply between France and Austria(and they'd better hope to Russia from there or else). If something catastrophic did occur though, the BOGs would have the ultimate wrench in the works, with the Swiss fronts being right in the heart of the supply lines and able to wreak havoc for a while. The French and Austrians have the men to deal with the Swiss but the cost in manpower and time of even a wildly successful mountain campaign and occupation would almost certainly break their war effort against the Germans and Italians.

Chile must be making a fucking mint off the nitrates, and there will be a lot of desire to keep that money flowing in without further problems. At the same time, if war breaks out in the southern cone, how tempted are they to take advantage? I'd lean on the side of not wanting to get involved, because I don't recall anything more than the usual antagonism between Chile and Argentina in this time period, but a lot could've changed ITTL. Also, it sounds like the southern cone war might be a technically separate conflict, which complicates things futher.

I'd guess that Scandinavia is sympathetic to the BOGs through Germany, but they're also going to be making a lot of money as neutral shipping lines to Russia. I can't see them giving that up, again barring a huge diplomatic SNAFU from one side or the other.

Is Diaz in power in Mexico? If so, I imagine he'll be studiously staying this one out unless he knows for sure what the US is going to do and who's going to win. There are enough factions he's keeping the lid on right now before adding in a major war. If the Porfiriato is similar to OTL, there's going to be some sympathy for the FARs(there was a fascination about French culture among many urban circles, and of course you've got the catholic conservatives around), but time as a neutral allows further economic development as demand for raw materials increases. I see Diaz staying out, personally.

Lastly, Mongolia/Xinjiang. I think this could go any number of ways, and it all depends on situations in Russia and China. We know that somehow, eventually, Korea's going to end up in the Russian orbit(although not necessarily Czarist orbit the way things are going...), and I'd guess that the odds are at least one of these two will go the same way. I'd guess that Xinjiang and Mongolia might get some secessionist fervor coming from the rest of central Asia and in peace time it would be in Russia's interest to support that, but I don't think they have the resources here and now. Which, hell, might be the appeal. If whatever Russia comes out of this war is seen as an absentee overlord that'll protect them from China but is not in a position to interfere themselves, Mongolia and/or Xinjiang might pick the lesser of two evils after the war. Maybe the Kazakh revolution leads to a general blow-up in Central Asia and Japan's distraction with Korea and Russia leads to China trying but failing to keep its hold in the territories?

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

When I suggested that the Spanish might join the BOGs, it would be rather like Turkey joining the Allies in OTL WWII; nominal, intended to get a seat at the table and to get on the good side of the people about to win a nation-shattering war.

As for invading the Dutch, it would be more along the lines of "those troops that were supposedly heading through Belgium to the Rhineland front turned north instead and now they're pouring across the border". It'll turn into a disaster, of course, but it's still something the French are likely to try for lack of better options to reach the Ruhr and strike a decisive blow against the NGF.

I'm not sure Spain would join the BOGs even nominally, given the hundreds of thousands of Spanish citizens fighting as volunteers on the FAR side, and given that France will still be just across the border long after the Spaniards have digested their meager spoils. We'll see how things develop, though - a lot will depend on who wins and on how decisive the victory is.

And the Dutch are guarding their southern border like Fort Knox, to protect themselves against exactly this sort of surprise move - they're as aware of their strategic location as the French are. Nothing's impossible, especially if France considers itself in extreme danger, but the odds of success are low, and the French staff knows that.

Didn't pretty much every European nation think it was fighting for its very survival during the OTL Great War? Why not here?

Fair point - if anything, it would be more so here. The legalities have certainly been increasingly compromised since the war started, and will become more so, but there are still a few things that are beyond the pale, especially to someone who prides himself (justly or not) on being more civilized than his enemies.

Hrm. I'd have thought London would have long since taken the opportunity to wipe out the Belgian merchant marine. They'd be feeding the French, after all. And that'd obviously force the Belgians in.

I was assuming they'd have refrained from doing that in order to avoid the Belgian army joining the French assault on the Ruhr - Belgium might not be a major power, but even a moderate increase in military pressure could potentially be devastating. That's becoming less and less of a consideration, though, and the days of the Belgian merchant marine might be numbered.

Now, this hint leads to interesting thoughts.

It does indeed, and your assessment of the pressures on the neutrals is pretty good, but I don't want to give too much away just now. Suffice it to say that nothing - nothing - should be ruled out in Central Asia, and that both Chile and Mexico (the latter of which is undergoing something like the Porfiriato, but also remembers Maximilian and has no pressing reason to fight) will stay out. That shouldn't be taken as a statement on what anyone else will do, especially since not everything about the endgame has been decided.