No GNW (or “Peter goes South”)

alexmilman · May 25, 2023

351. Getting modern #3

“Prince Wellerheim: Now I’m a liberal not only in a foreign but in a domestic policy as well.”
‘Silva’, movie, 1981
“Of course, I would not give you permission to marry but I’d explain that you don’t need it.”
Leskov, ‘Russian secret marriages’
“Do you agree to live not in it but kind of in it?”
Saltykov-Schedrin, ‘The unique one’
“Many strange things can happen, it is just that I can’t marry you.”
C.Goldoni, ‘Truffaldino from Bergamo’
“You must not get married without a dowry. Getting married without a dowry is like honey without a spoon.”
“Medicine teaches that the bachelors usually die being insane, while married people die without having enough time to go insane.”
A. Chekhov, ‘Instructions for those who want to marry’

Revolutionary situation.
Historic reference. As was formulated in OTL by Lenin, the revolutionary situation is being defined by three main objective factors:

The upper classes cannot govern in the old way - the inability of the ruling class to maintain its domination unchanged.
The lower classes do not want to live the old way - a sharp aggravation above the usual need and disasters of the oppressed classes and their desire to change their lives for the better.
A significant increase in the activity of the masses, attracted both by the entire situation of the crisis and by the "tops" themselves to an independent historical action.

To avoid accusation of anachronism , even in OTL Lenin did not come, yet, with this definition (its earlier version, without the 3rd component, is dated by 1913 and this one is circa 1920) and ITTL he is too busy doing useful physical work to write political articles. However, by 1911 the revolutionary situation was, undeniably there, no questions about it…

As you understand, I’m talking about the marriage rules for the Russian Imperial Family.

The oppressed lower class were the Princes and Princesses of the Imperial Blood (simple “Highness”): unlike the “top”, they were getting the order of St. Andrew (boys) or St.Cathetine (girls) not at baptism but at the age of 20 or after marriage and the financial perks were much lower. So there is no argument about them being oppressed but the oppression did not stop there: while not getting the same benefits, they were subjects to the same restrictions regarding the “equal” marriage. What was even worse, this restriction was not there at the “foundation” created by Emperor Paul I (which, taking into an account Paul’s place in the Russian history, was almost as good as “God-given”) but just an amendment unilaterally made decades later by Alexander I and could be considered a rather frivolous attempt of parroting the foreign habits while, in the opinion of Prudentov, one of the greatest Russian legal authorities [1], “due to its great size Russian Empire may serve as a legal example to the others”.

Well, anyway, it was there, the Article 188 of the Laws of the Russian Empire:
“A person of the Imperial Family who has entered into a marriage union with a person who does not have the appropriate dignity, that is, who does not belong to any reigning or equal house, cannot transfer to the offsprings from this marriage the rights belonging to the Members of the Imperial Family.” What was worse, in 1889 Alexander III himself amended this article by prohibiting such (non-dynastic) marriages to all members of the Imperial Family, i.e. such a marriage could not be considered legal at all, even in the case of a church wedding unless the Emperor personally permitted such a marriage. Article 139: “For the marriage of each person of the Imperial Family, the permission of the reigning Emperor is necessary, and the marriage, without this permission, is not recognized as legal.”

Of course, the “lower class”, with few exceptions, did not care too much about succession issue, with a big number of the “upper class” being around even after Alexander III decreased their number, its members did not have a realistic chance to the succession anyway, but the marriages were a different issue because the imperial prohibition could stay on a way of, for example, improving financial situation or just a case of a true mad love. So the unwilling lower class was there.

The upper class being being the Grand Dukes and Duchesses (addressed as “Imperial Highness”). Problem of the members of this class was that within couple generations the descendants of its current members would be automatically downgraded to a lower class so the members of this class who had (admittedly not obvious) combination of having both children and more than one functioning brain cell, were rather sympathetic to the plight of the lower class. Even worse, the ultimate arbiter, an Emperor himself, ended up being burdened with all types of applications and a need to decide which candidate can qualify and which can’t, which was not always easy.

Now, the third component, behavior of the upper class, already was there. In 1891 Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich married without permission of the Emperor and his own parents to a daughter of Prince Nicholas Wilhelm of Nassau. Alexander declared this marriage non-existed and expelled MM from Russia. In 1901 the marriage was recognized. Michael was restored in military service and left with the rights of a private person with the preservation of the title, but without the privileges of a member of the imperial house. He did not return to Russia.

What was even worse, Alexander’s own brother, Grand Duke Paul, in 1902 married (after death of his first wife, daughter of a King of Greece) to an ordinary divorcee noblewoman O.V.Karnovich.

He was expelled from Russia and his children from the first marriage had been placed in custody of Grand Duke Sergey.

Alexander could ignore situation for a while but not forever so in 1911 he decided to call the meeting of the Grand Dukes to discuss some possible changes in the Institution of the Imperial Family related to the possibility of allowing previously prohibited morganatic marriages for members of the Dynasty. The first meeting was held at the Winter Palace on February 21, the second - on February 23. At the first meeting, the participants considered the proposal to supplement the Institution of the Imperial Surname with an article that would specifically stipulate that "Princes and Princesses of the Imperial Blood may, with the permission of the reigning Emperor, marry a person who does not have the appropriate dignity, i.e. do not belong to any Royal or sovereign house but in this case, neither the specified person nor the offspring that may arise from this marriage are granted any rights belonging to the Members of the Imperial Family.” After prolonged discussion the meeting’s members found out that this was already stated in the Article 188. So the real question was about the rights associated with these marriages. Most important, titles and families.

Some participants of the meeting, primarily Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, proposed to divide the marriages of members of the Imperial Family into three categories:

Equal (i.e. dynastic, the only one assigning the rights to the throne to the offspring),
Non-equal but of appropriate dignity: with representatives of aristocratic families (here were called Russian families Shakhovsky, Sheremetev, Liven, and foreign from the 2nd and 3rd parts of the "Gothic Almanac")
Not appropriate - with non-nobles, unknown nobles. In the case of marriages with completely unknown persons, it was even proposed to deprive Princes and Princes of Blood of their titles and financial support from the estates of Imperial Family.

Unfortunately, consultation with the Heraldic Department of the Senate revealed that there are no valid criteria for separating the aristocratic families from the old noble ones and the idea was abandoned.

There was a proposal to deprive members of the Imperial Blood , in the case of unequal marriage, of their title and succession rights but it was pointed out by the Minister of Justice that that the members of Imperial House can be deprived of these rights only by their voluntary abdication passed through the Senate. After that, at the meeting it was decided to formulate this recommendation in a different way: to offer the Princes and Princes of Imperial Blood wishing to enter into an unequal marriage, before marriage, voluntarily renounce the right of succession to the throne. Thus, they retained freedom of choice, and the renunciation of the rights to the Throne was not a consequence, but a condition for the consent of the Sovereign to an unequal marriage.

This being agreed upon, the next big issues were the family names and titles for the spouses and offsprings of the “unqualified” marriages. This was quite complicated and some of the ideas had been shot down by the Minister of Justice as either illegal or providing advantages to which these persons are not entitled (hint to a link to the Imperial House if family contains “Romanov” as its part). As a part of promoting its own “class interests”, some meeting members proposed that the title of Grand Duke should be automatically given to an older son of a Grand Duke regardless of the distance from the throne (by the current law the title was given only to the sons and grandsons pf a reigning emperor, the proposal would make it hereditary). Then, a majority of the meeting members expressed support for morganatic marriages for the Grand Dukes.It was pointed out that some of the Grand Dukes in a line of succession could be coming after the Princes of Imperial Blood regardless their higher title. This, however, did not work out.

The final document approved by Alexander III allowed unequal marriages to the Princes and Princesses of the Imperial Blood (but not the Great Princes and Princesses) with the imperial agreement and with preservation of their personal titles and rights but before the marriage they’d have to repudiate their right to succession. Family name, coat of arms and the title of a wife and offsprings of a Prince of the Imperial Blood will be defined by the emperor on case per case basis. The Princesses of the Imperial Blood will take family of their husband. In each specific case the Emperor may appoint Family Council to discuss permissibility of this marriage before making the final decision. On the issue of passing the title of Grand Duke to the following generations the Emperor ordered an additional discussion.

The revolutionary situation was diffused…. Well, at least for a while because the “upper class” also wanted ..er.. “equal rights” with a resulting ability to pursuit a personal happiness. At the moment there were two potentially “revolutionary” cases:

Grand Duke Michail Alexandrovich, the third person in a succession line after Tsesarevich and his son Alexei, was deeply in love with Natalia Sheremetevskaya, who was as much “unequal” as it goes and twice divorced. They already had a son, George. Which, of course, was not a problem of its own but Michael was a honest young man with a heart prevailing over the brain and one could expect any kind of a stupidity, which could easily escalate into a major scandal.

Second case was much less troublesome. In 1902 Matilda Kshesinskaya gave birth to a son, Vladimir. Nobody, including, seemingly, herself, could tell for sure if he was a son of Grand Duke Sergey Mikhailovich or Grand Duke Andrey Vladimirovich. However, “incomparable” Matilda was famous not only for her dancing skills but also for her brain. Both Grand Dukes involved had been seemingly quite content with the situation. Moreover, the Emperor who highly valued both he skills, granted her son in 1911 a hereditary nobility. Any problem coming from this triangle looked unlikely. Unless, of course, there was some bad example.

Not troublesome or even scandalous was marriage of the Prince Felix Yusupov to Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, which took place in 1913. Besides being the wealthiest man in Imperial Russia, Felix was kind of a royalty: Yusupov family (his mother’s family, his father was permitted to adopt this last name so that family continued) descended from a Khan of the Nogay Horde [2] and included a ruler of Kazan Tsardom; so he was almost equal but not quite and Irina had to gave away the succession rights (rather theoretical) and to become a “simple” Princess Yusupov.

Neither he nor Irina appeared to have objected to the morganatic terms of the marriage. Irina wore a 20th-century dress rather than the traditional court dress in which other Romanov brides had married, as she was a princess of the Imperial House, not a Grand Duchess. She wore a diamond and rock-crystal tiara that had been commissioned from Cartier and a lace veil that had belonged to Marie Antoinette.

________
[1] Personage of “The modern Idyll” by Saltykov-Schedrin. Clerk in a district police office.
[2] Not sure if Nogay Horde, being a vassal one, had a proper “Khan” but this does not really matter.

alexmilman · May 28, 2023

352. A series of unfortunate events #1

“I know the reasons for the revolution in Mexico, but I don't know anything about the reasons for the quarrel with my closest neighbor. This property of modern man is called cosmopolitanism and is developed by reading newspapers."
Karel Čapek
“Humble people like me fight for justice and for better luck.”
“Armies are the props of tyranny. There can be no dictator without an army.”
Pancho Villa
“Government or individual who delivers national resources to foreign companies, betrays his country.”
Lazaro Cardenas
“The merit of an ideology does not lie in its logic. Whether it is good or bad depends on its suitability to a certain circumstance. It is good if it is beneficial both to China and to the world, otherwise it is bad.”
Sun Yixian
“The Revolutionary Army is again ascendant… Our army constantly exchanges fire with the revolutionary army so I cannot act rashly.”
Yuan Shikai, 1911
“If we want to achieve great things, building up Guangxi and restoring China, first we need money… to get money we must rectify our finances… to rectify finances we must first get hold of opium… Opium makes up almost half our revenue, once it is controlled the rest will follow.”
Li Zongren, Guangxi warlord
The history of China should be considered in terms of China (hanguan 汉紋).
Some modern Chinese historian [1]

1910s, everywhere
A prompt legislative action helped to diffuse revolutionary situation in the Russian Empire [2] but the troubles were coming all over the world.

Mexico.

President Porfirio Diaz, who came to power under the slogan “no reelections” [3] and ruled Mexico for 30 years, finally managed to piss off everybody by doing seemingly the right things. These decades were period of socio-economic development known as El Porfiriato and on paper things looked just fine:

By the start of his rule Mexico had 893 kilometers to the railroads and by 1910 more than 19,000.
Population of Mexico increased by 25 percent between 1885 and 1900 and in some of its states this rate was much higher [4].
By 1911, the yearly average cargo crossing the border between Mexico and the US reached 776 million pounds. [5]
Mexican cattle export increased from 10,000 in 1887 to 310,000 in 1897.
The Laguna region started importing cotton into the US [6].
Besides cotton, rubber production also boomed in La Laguna from an abundant desert shrub known as guayule.
There were considerable investments into the mining industry.

However, with the exception of few lucky families, pretty much all of the rest were somewhere between “unhappy” and “very, very unhappy”.

The railroads construction resulted in a massive redistribution of a land, predictably not in a favor of the peasants who found themselves at the mercy of the big landowners in serf-like status. Situation was made worse by the fact that the native Indian tribes owned their land since well before the Spaniards came and did not have any papers proving their ownership. Even worse, they had been sticking to a communal model and succession of the progressive liberal presidents was not approving of such an anachronism and tried to get rid of it.
The railroad workers were unhappy with the fact that the companies (predominantly American) had been hiring American nationals on the better positions, paid them more than the Mexicans and conducting all operations in English. Contrary to the idea of international solidarity of a working class, the American unionized force had been quite supportive of these attitudes. Eventually, Diaz caved to the demands for “Mexicanization”, and nationalized most of the railroads. Under the pressure from now unionized Mexican workers, most of the Americans left. Not that this ended turmoil on the railroads because the issues of salaries, working conditions, etc. still were there and bargaining with a government was an activity less productive and more dangerous than with their former employers.
The rubber thingy resulted in a protracted conflict between owners of huge latifundia including the desert areas in which the plant grew and the peasants who were illegally collecting it.
Increased production caused water shortages thus hurting the peons on their small plots.
The provincial caudillos were not too happy with the government’s easy access to their provinces.
The wealthy latifundia & factory owners wanted a greater freedom for their business and, understandably, a bigger piece of a political pie.
The foreign investors (mostly those North of a border) were unhappy with the Mexicanization which forced some of them to get out of a profitable railroad business. Those in agriculture & mining were doing OK (in Baja California more than two thirds of a land had been owned by the American companies) but one can always wish a better business deal.
The educated class was generally unhappy by definition.

Diaz seemingly could rely upon his army. It’s officer corps had been trained by the Prussians and there were career opportunities fir the cadets from middle class.

However, there were serious problems with this army:

It was quite small, something around 25,000.
Being used to the modern conveniences of transportation, its operations greatly depended upon properly functioning railroads and this could easily became a big problem both because the railroad workers could be hostile or intimidated by opposition and because sabotage of a railroad was an extremely easy thing.
Morale of rank-and-file was low. They mostly consisted of Indian and mestizo conscripts, forced into service under the random leva system. Some were enlisted as a means of punishment or because of social discrimination, and a number of future revolutionary leaders received their initial military experience in the ranks of the Federal Army.

To make the long story short, when a wide-spread anti-Diaz movement kicked in, its forces had been too numerous and too well-armed for the federal troops to crush them, especially in a situation when the railroads ceased to function properly. First, things went smoothly because leader of the revolutionaries, Francisco Madera (member of a very rich landowning & manufacturing family) wanted to preserve as much of a system as possible with himself and some members of his family moving to the top. He got a wide support, domestic and international, after few encounters Diaz fled, Madero made a deal with federal army and lawmakers, disbanded revolutionary armies, ignored demands of the peasants and was ready to rule happily ever after or at least until the end of his term (if he was serious about this). Unfortunately, both the peasants and the military were not happy and he was overthrown and executed by general Huerta. Huerta became a president and even implemented some progressive reforms:

Spending on education, which was 7.2% under Diaz and 7.8% of the budget under Madero, was increased to 9.9%.
The Huerta government has started developing programs to help Indians - medical specialists and teachers were sent to their villages.
An employment agency was established, the regime did not suppress economic strikes, and the state actively participated in arbitration proceedings.
In April 1913, 78 Yaqui and Mayo Indian communities were returned to the lands taken under Diaz.

His government was recognized by pretty much everybody who was somebody except for the US because W.Wilson considered himself a defender of the “democratic values”. However, the regime was not recognized by the Northern states of Mexico and Huerta’s attempt to get himself re-elected initiated a new and bloody phase of the Revolution, as a coalition of northerners opposed to the counter-revolutionary regime of Huerta and the Constitutionalist Army led by Governor of Coahuila Venustiano Carranza entered the conflict with Zapata's peasant army continuing its rebellion in Morelos. Then Pancho Villa (whom Huerta almost managed to executeu during presidency of Madero) returned from his exile in the US accompanied by eight people and within few days he had under his command an army few thousand strong and the real fun started with the military leaders fighting each other in the changing combinations.

Possession of the main railroads had been a critical element in the ongoing fighting greatly defining its geography and tactics. The “armies” had been routinely moving by the trains filled by the troops and all types of the “followers”. Taking into an account that this practice resulted in a wide-spread sabotage, the trains had been routinely using flat platforms hooked in front of a locomotive to prevent it being blown: forces on both sides seemingly never run short of the explosives.

And, of course, the cavalry can’t be forgotten. On more than one occasion cavalry troops of Pancho Villa performed quite remarkable fits of successfully storming the well-entrenched positions (eventually, this tactics proved to be self-defeating when he tried it against Obregon and lost his best troops).

Initially, Russian government paid little to no attention to what was going on but the ensuing mess raised the reasonable concerns regarding security of the Russian-owned property in California. Formally, it was run by Russian American Company (RAC) which had nothing to do with the original one except name. The main settlement, Fort Ross, was on a coast but the place was not suitable for any meaningful naval base and the whole enterprise was series of farms and small food-processing plants. Their produce, as well as one bought in the nearby area, had been transported to San Francisco and from here shipped to Alaska.

San Francisco had been frequently visited by the Russian naval and merchant ships and there were warehouses of RAC and some other trade companies and, while in a general schema of things scope of both the businesses and physical presence was quite limited, but security of the Russian citizens and their property was a valid consideration.

Fortunately, San Francisco area was so far almost untouched by revolutionary turmoil but who could guarantee that the ongoing mess will not spread there? So far, relations with the local administration and the neighbors were quite friendly, based upon the mutual interest but with a big part of Mexico being engaged in what was increasingly looking as a multi-sided civil war, one could not be too cautious. Just in case, a fast protected cruiser had been stationed in San Francisco Bay and shipment of weapons had been discretely sent to Fort Ross.

Rather unsurprisingly, permanent presence of a Russian warship in Mexican port caused a minor hysteria North of the US-Mexican border as a potential danger to the Monroe Doctrine and it took certain diplomatic effort to convince the US public that Russia is not planning to expand its influence on American continent beyond its existing possessions and just protecting its property and actually would be glad to see an US warship also being stationed in SF Bay as an additional security guarantor. Getting confrontational with the US did not make sense in a view of a much greater trouble developing in China.

China.
The trouble had been brewing since the death of Li Honghzang in 1901. He was replaced by Yuan Shikai, who took on Li's appointment as Viceroy of Zhili and as Minister of Beiyang. Yuan had been given command of the brigade-sized New Created Army in 1895, which had 7,000 soldiers at the time and would expand to 20,000 by 1902. By the autumn of 1905 the Beiyang Army consisted of six divisions of 10,000 men each. It was organized into infantry, artillery, cavalry, and auxiliary troops, as well as maintenance and engineering. A seventh division was established in 1907 at Jiangsu. The Army's training instructors were mostly Japanese and Germans.

The Saozhzhan camp near Tianjin became the base for the new army being created. The officer and non-coms cadres had been coming from the newly-created military schools. As a result, the Officer General Group began to form in the Tianjin area - the embryo of the future Beiyang militaristic clique led by the "father of the new army" - Yuan Shikai. Without too much noise he was steadily putting his clients into the leading positions and all of them had been Chinese. By the time Qing government figured out what is going on it was too late: the army was commanded by the Chinese and sending Yuam Shikai into retirement did not help.

Meanwhile, Beijing's control over troops in the South and in the Yangtze Valley was even weaker. There were many people from the old troops in the Nanyang Army, discipline was weaker. Among the soldiers and non-commissioned officers there were many members of secret societies or just opponents of the dynasty. Anti-Manchurian sentiments were organically intertwined with regionalist sentiments. Nanyang divisions and brigades became increasingly unreliable, gradually becoming a potentially anti-Qing explosive environment.

The Chinese provincial bureaucracy, especially the nomenclature of South China and the provinces of the Yangtze basin, was becoming a potential opponent of the central authorities. This silent "southern opposition" was no less dangerous for the Manchus than the threat from the "new army." "Boxer indemnity" placed a heavy burden on local treasuries and the population, dramatically increasing social tensions in the provinces. Already in 1902, there was a conflict between the dynasty and governors who refused to raise land tax rates. By strengthening their special relations with the Powers, the governors of the provinces ensured de facto independence from the center. In words, declaring their devotion to the Qing Empire, they actually became more and more independent. During the reorganization of the administrative apparatus of 1906-1907, Cixi tried to limit the omnipotence of regional rulers. However, more than 30,000 local senior, middle and lower-level officials have demonstrated their readiness to defend the old order and skillfully minimized all the efforts of Beijing. The silent battle for power of 1906-1907 formally ended in a draw, and in fact - a major defeat of the Manchu dynasty. Without strengthening its position, the Qing regime alienated the provincial bureaucracy and accelerated its own fall.

After the death of Cixi in 1908, the Manchu government (led by Prince-Regent Chun because the Emperor was two years old) laid all the costs of creating and maintaining "new troops" in the Yangtze basin and southern China on the shoulders of peripheral leaders and local treasuries. In Beijing, it was believed that these divisions and brigades would be fed by the provincial bureaucracy, and the Manchu princes would command the troops. In practice, the situation has developed differently: the divisions and brigades of the Nanyang Army, as well as the "security troops", equipped with modern weapons, were essentially subordinate to the governors of the provinces, not the center. Thus, military reform did not weaken, but strengthened the independence of local rulers from Beijing, thereby undermining the positions of the Manchus. Those of them who still had some functioning brain cells started fleeing to Manchuria expecting Japanese and Russian protection.

In an attempt to fix the situation, Qing government promised to convene a parliament in 1916, and in 1909 to organize elections to provincial advisory committees. Only about 2 million people out of 420 million Chinese residents participated in the elections. Committees could only discuss purely local issues without addressing political and legislative topics. In the autumn of 1910, the Advisory Chamber, a kind of "pre-parliament", opened in Beijing.

Not to lag behind the trend, China had its own revolutionary organizations: 兴中会, 華興會 and 光復會 [7]. The first one, led by 孙逸仙 [8], was the most popular one because its hieroglyphs were easiest to write. All of them had been engaged in (what they considered to be) the sinister plots, chanting the party slogans and other revolutionary activities. In 1905 they joined into an alliance named 中國同盟會 , which soon enough fall apart because by the time its members staging some local revolution [9] were finishing writing alliance name on their flags, the central government usually not just learned about a planned rebellion and sent the troops by the train but these troops had time to arrive to the conspirators’s headquarters which were easily identifiable because, following the venerable tradition, such a building would have a nice calligraphic placard over its door implemented in a beautiful calligraphy and explaining which secret society is preparing a revolution in this building to avoid possible confusion. After few spectacular failures prestige of the alliance and Sun Yat-sen fell almost to the same level as one of the government, which was really low. What can one expect if within just two years he managed to organize 9 failed uprisings [10] and kept trying with the same result.

Anyway, in 1911 the government nationalized a joint-stock company for the construction of Huguang Railways (it was a giant project for the Chinese to create the Chengdu-Hankou-Guangzhou railway), which hit millions of taxpayers in four provinces [11] and s—t hit the fan in the Southern China with the troops located there joining the rebellion. Strengthened by the volunteers they had been expanding area under their control killing in a process the local Manchus by the tens of thousands.

An independent republic had been proclaimed with its leaders being smart enough to immediately recognize all unequal treaties. The Qing government sent part of the Beiyang army to crush the rebellion and assembled “pre-parliament” which immediately demanded a constitution and removal imperial family members from the government. The loyal Beiyang troops kept beating the crap of of Nanyang troops and inexperienced volunteers burning the rebellious cities and executing their population but results were opposite to the expected, just as the following political concessions. The Powers declared their neutrality and the only solution was to invite Yuan Shikai back. To make the long story short, he became a Prime Minister (and got immediate support from London and Washington). After arrival to Pekin at the head of 2,000 loyal troops and removal the last Manchu from the command positions he intensified advance against the rebels while making it clear that he is not against making a deal with their liberal leadership. Balancing between the monarchy and the republic, between revolutionaries and liberals, between the dynasty and revolutionaries, Yuan Shikai did everything to ensure that neither of these sides strengthened to the detriment of his ambitious plans. Yuan Shikai intimidated the Manchus with a possible massacre by revolutionaries, and at the same time blackmailed the Republicans with the possibility of his deal with the dynasty. In order to force the Republicans to make concessions, Yuan Shikai stubbornly defended the idea of a constitutional monarchy under the nominal power of the emperor. With the assistance of British diplomats, on December 3, a truce was concluded in Wuchang, which, in fact, confirmed the division of China into two states.

A republic was formed in the South, a monarchy with a Manchu emperor at the head was preserved in the North. At that time, neither the republican South nor the monarchical North wanted civil war. The only reasonable way out was to compromise on the basis of unification around a "strong personality", that is, Yuan Shikai, who was "our SOB" for both monarchists and Republicans. Soon enough he was in a complete control of the North, which gave him an advantage in negotiations with the South with its 14 provincial governments and numerous political groups. South was ready to declare Yuan Shikai President of the Republic but he was, for a while, sticking to the idea of a constitutional monarchy so the South invited Sun Yat-sen who, quite conveniently, just returned from Japan. He was made a provisional President with no power and on condition of an immediate removal iv Yuan Shikai accepts an offer.

Finally, Yuan Shikai decided that enough is enough and presented the Empress-Regent with an ultimatum. The emperor abdicated on February 12 1912 but preserved a “honorary” title, big annual income, palace complex of the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, all personnel and security of the imperial property. In exchange he recognized a constitutional republic. By the last imperial decree Yuan Shikai was ordered to form a republican government. The South kicked Sun Yat-sen out and elected Yuan Shikai President of the Republic of China. Sun Yat-sen declared “the second revolution”. Predictably, it failed and he fled to Japan.

Russian Empire remained rather indifferent toward these events but when the dust settled there were, seemingly, two ticking time bombs:

More than 250,000 Manchu fled from various parts of China into Manchuria. Most of them ended up in the Southern Manchuria but sizable numbers went all the way to a North and quite a few even asked to be admitted into the Russian-owned Sungari “triangle”. They were welcomed as a balance to the local Chinese but there was a broader issue: with its nationalist program the new government of China failed to specify its position regarding the Manchu in Manchuria over which it was still claiming a sovereignty. Formally, a principle of the Five Races Under One Union had been proclaimed but so far the Manchu massacres were not quite encouraging in the terms of brotherly love. During the revolution Manchuria remained calm but influx of the fleeing Manchu brought a clear possibility of a military action by the new government and this would not be good for the Russian and Japanese business.
While there were, so far, no clear indications that a new government is going to try to denounce the territorial concessions of Qing regime, there was no clear proof to a contrary, either. And Inner Mongolia looked as a perfect target, geographically and demographically, for an action of a government stressing a national idea. Mongolian Empire itself was too weak to defend it and it was far away from Russia for a fast reaction. So the defensive measures had to be taken well in advance with a need of a permanent significant Russian military presence there. Which, in conjunction with an ongoing strengthening of the Russian military and naval buildup on the Far East, may produce one more round of the American-British hysteria.

_____________
[1] An attempt to find spelling of his name in English failed. Just as an attempt to understand all depth (width, height, weight, etc.) of the quoted statement. But hieroglyph looks cute, which was the main reason for quoting.
[2] Well, there were also some labor laws but they are rather irrelevant to the revolutionary situation described in the previous chapter and can be omitted (at least for now).
[3] His predecessor wanted to run for the second term, which was unconstitutional.
[4] Which means that in some it was lower but why to quote the pessimistic data which I don’t have anyway?
[5] And El Paso became the major point of the weapons smuggling from the US.
[6] The leftovers were then turned into dynamite and glycerin. Things that proved to be quite handy: as you understand, glycerin (among other applications) was used for making soap and personal hygiene is important.
[7] “Alliance of rebirth of China”, “Alliance of renewal of China”, “Alliance of rebirth of glory of China”
[8] Sun Yat-sen.
[9] List of only the later major revolutionary events on wiki is excruciatingly long so probably the earlier minor ones was not possible to record.
[10] To avoid misunderstandings about him being a lucky SOB to escape, after leaving China in the early 1890s he was making funds raising trips around the world (the British press promoted him to a hero status and he got a fake birth certificate in Hawaii to bypass the Chinese Exclusion Act and to do fundraising in the US) and finally settled in Japan from where he kept directing the uprisings. His political program was beautifully simple: 1. Expel the Tatars (Manchu), 2. Establish the republic and 3. Distribute land equally among the people.
[11] I have no idea how exactly.

alexmilman · May 30, 2023

353. A series of unfortunate events #2

“Now this is the Law of the Muscovite, that he proves with shot and steel,
When ye come by his isles in the Smoky Sea ye must not take the seal,”
R. Kipling, ‘THE RHYME OF THE THREE SEALERS’
“Only a bad ruler takes away from his subjects something he does not need.”
K.Miksat, ‘The magic coat’
«Мы не поклонники разбоя:
На дурака не нужен нож,
Ему с три короба наврешь
И делай с ним, что хошь» [1]
B. Okudjava
“Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.”
Will Rogers
“The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten.”
Mark Twain
“If it's wrong when they do it, it's wrong when we do it.” [2]
Noam Chomsky

Intermission. One of the big differences between OTL and TTL is “Jewish question”. Due to the not getting the Baltic Provinces and a big chunk of the PLC ITTL Russian Empire has very limited Jewish population and, due to more reasonable policies of the first emperors, and absence of Empress Elizabeth who officially started the whole thing, there is no Pale and most of the OTL antisemitic laws. However, to keep things more or less on Planet Earth, there are some restrictions caused by a general antisemitism like percentage quotas, rights of land ownership and limited rights to live in the capitals. Even if the government does not allow the violent excesses (AFAIK, there were no pogroms during Stolypin’s tenure), situation is still can be considered oppressive causing emigration and resulting ill-feelings and diplomatic US-Russia tensions which in OTL caused abrogation of an old trade treaty during Konx’ tenure as a Secretary of State; this was formally over an issue of not recognizing the American (or any other) passports of the former Russian Jews who (by the reasons unknown) decided to go to the RE - they were treated as the Russian Jews in the terms of restrictions. In OTL both Witte and Stolypin were advocating abolishment of the restrictions but neither quite antisemitic NII not the “progressive” 1st Duma wanted to act upon the issue. ITTL I’m going to remove it from the table and thus to fix some international and domestic problems before getting to the nasty international stuff.

Russia 1912.

Resolving the “issues”. In general, Witte and Stolypin did not like each other both personally and politically but there were two issues on which they acted in a rather surprising unison:

Rights of the Russian Jews.
“Death to the communal model!”

On the first issue both had been agreeing that having a sizable underprivileged minority is counterproductive and only attracts its members to the revolutionary movement instead of productive activities. At some point Witte bluntly told to Alexander III that, as an Emperor, he has two options: either to drown all Russian Jews in the Black Sea or to give them the full rights. Stolypin was pointing out that the Russian constitution implies equality of all subjects and that to a great degree the oppressive practices are result of the “creative” interpretation of the laws by the local administrations, like was the case with the late Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovich who expelled from Moscow the Jewish army veterans by narrowly interpreting the law and pretending that while they personally could live in Moscow, their families could not, etc. Not serving any practical purpose except for caving to various antisemitic organizations, these regulations kept causing problems domestically and internationally and promoted a bad image of the regime. Alexander himself tended to sin in this area but a dedicated push from two unlikely allies finally got him convinced and he signed a manifest without even bothering to send it to the Duma [3]. The “patriots” had been making unhappy noises for a while but then found some other sources of entertainment. Domestically, it produced an expected effect in the terms of switching from revolution to the productive occupations [4] and internationally it killed complaints about not respecting the foreign passports of the former Russian Jewish subjects: they were treated as everybody else.

As an additional tool for improving relations with the US (and to save a lot of a headache related to catching to poachers), in 1911, upon initiative of P.C. Knox, the international conference regarding restrictions upon preserving the seals had been called [5] resulting in a treaty signed by RE, US, Japan and UK (for Canada) ending the unrestricted killing of fur seals on the high seas and providing a formula for sharing the kills made on rookeries.

The quote had been set for hunting on Pribilof islands group in the Bering Sea about 300 miles off the Alaska coast and the CommanderIslands off the Asian coast. The owner country (RE) was entitled to 70% and the rest was equally distributed between three other signatories. On one hand, the foreign operators had been officially permitted into the Russian territory but OTOH, the strict regulations were expected to prevent already shrinking seals population from the extinction and put on each signatory state an obligation to control activities of its own sealers. Knox and the public opinion in the US had been quite happy and even took easy the Russian warship placed in SF Bay.

Of course, the issue of an alternative RR in Manchuria and “transportation rights” on TransSib was dead but this was business, nothing personal, but contracts on few hundreds locomotives and few submarines of Holland 602 class [6] whipped out the remaining hard feelings and traditional mutual love was back in place.

On the second issue both of them insisted on universal right to get identification document directly from a local administration on individual. Situation looked as following: to travel outside his gubernia and for many other purposes subject of the RE needed an identification document , which could be obtained in a local administration. However, in the community-based settlements this application had to go through the “community leaders” who may recommend or not recommend issuing of the document on individual basis. Understandably, this provided communal leadership with a great power of retaining community members under their control which extended to the peasants who exercised their right to get individual farm land - formally, they remained the community members.

Things not too nice.

In 1911 Italy decided that the time is ripe for finally realize its claims to Libya. In 1908, the Italian Colonial Office was upgraded to a Central Directorate of Colonial Affairs. The nationalist Enrico Corradini led the public call for action in Libya and, joined by the nationalist newspaper L'Idea Nazionale in 1911, demanded an invasion. The Italian press began a large-scale lobbying campaign for an invasion of Libya in late March 1911. It was fancifully depicted as rich in minerals and well-watered, defended by only 4,000 Ottoman troops. Also, its population was described as hostile to the Ottomans and friendly to the Italians, and they predicted that the future invasion would be little more than a "military walk".

The main (besides the OE) opponent of this idea, the French Empire, was in a process of putting its newly-acquired colonial empire into an order while having a quality time trying to “pacify” the annoying tribes of the Southern Algeria and in a process slowly conquering additional parcels of sand in Sahara Desert. Besides this, the Empire enjoyed the Belle Epoque and there was little will to get seriously involved into the serious military confrontations, which did not really touched French interests. Emperor Charles III was quite satisfied with a role of a (very rich) “father of the nation” staying above the political fights, the press was thoroughly corrupt, the banks were powerful and the Radical Party was the most important power favoring progressive income tax, economic equality, expanded educational opportunities and cooperatives in domestic policy. In foreign policy, it favored the maintenance of peace through compulsory arbitration, controlled disarmament, economic sanctions, and perhaps an international military force. However, political coalitions collapsed with regularity, rarely lasting more than a few months, as radicals, socialists, liberals, conservatives, republicans and monarchists all fought for control. To make a long story short, the French public was in a rather indulgent move regarding the Italian designs: they want Libya? Let them have it.

British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey stated to the Italian ambassador on 28 July that he would support Italy, not the Ottomans. On 19 September, Grey instructed Permanent Under-Secretary of State Sir Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock that Britain should not interfere with Italy's designs on Libya.

Germany was then actively attempting to mediate between Rome and Constantinople so Italian PM Giolitti and Foreign Minister Antonino Paternò Castello agreed on 14 September to launch a military campaign "before the Austrian and German governments [were aware] of it".

An ultimatum demanding removal of the Turkish forces from Libya in 48 hours was presented to the Ottoman government, led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), on the night of 26–27 September 1911. Its content was a diplomatic “jewel”:

It began with a statement that Turkey keeps Tripoli and Cyrenaica in a state of disorder and poverty. Then there were complaints about the opposition of the Turkish authorities to Italian enterprises in Tripoli. The conclusion was stunning: "The Italian government, forced to take care of protecting its dignity and its interests, decided to proceed to the military occupation of Tripoli and Cyrenaica." Turkey was offered no more and no less how to contribute to the seizure of its territory by taking measures to "prevention any opposition" to Italian troops.

Through Austrian intermediation, the Ottomans replied with the proposal of transferring control of Libya without war and maintaining a formal Ottoman suzerainty. That suggestion was comparable to the situation in Egypt, which was under formal Ottoman suzerainty but was under de facto control by the French. Giolitti refused, and war was declared on 29 September 1911.

The Ottomans who did not have any serious force in the province and did not have a navy. In 1910 the Ottoman Navy Foundation was established by the Ottoman government in order to purchase new ships through public donations. On the funds raised the Ottoman Navy purchased two old battleships from Germany: SMS Weissenburg and her sister ship SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm (both launched in 1891). These ships were renamed Turgut Reis and Barbaros Hayreddin, respectively. The day before Italy declared war, the ships had left Beirut, bound for the Dardanelles. Unaware that a war had begun, they steamed slowly and conducted training maneuvers while en route, passing southwest of Cyprus. While off the island of Kos on 1 October, the ships received word of the Italian attack, prompting them to steam at full speed for the safety of the Dardanelles, arriving later that night. The following day, the ships proceeded to Constantinople for a refit after the training cruise and afterwards remained there. The Ottoman Navy was too weak to transport troops by the sea.

It goes without saying that, with all preliminary preparations and time table of its own choosing, Italy found itself unprepared. The Italian fleet appeared off Tripoli in the evening of 28 September but began bombarding the port only on 3 October. The undefended city had been occupied by 1,500 sailors and on October 10 landing of 20,000 troops (a force considered adequate for occupation of Libya). Having no prior military experiences and lacking adequate planning for amphibious invasions, the Italian armies poured onto the coasts of Libya, facing numerous problems during their landings and deployments. Tobruk, Derna, and Khoms were easily conquered. The first true setback for the Italian troops happened on 23 October at Shar al-Shatt, when the poor placement of the troops near Tripoli led them to be almost completely encircled by more mobile Arab cavalry, backed by some Ottoman regular units. The attack was portrayed as a simple jihadist revolt by the Italian press although it nearly annihilated much of the small Italian expeditionary corps placed in Tripoli.

Officially, out of approximately 1,500, 21 Italian officers and 482 soldiers died at Shar al-Shatt, 290 of them massacred after surrender. There was an outcry about post-battle massacre but to an outside world it sounded as “the Italians stepped into it … again”. While the Italians had been speedily transporting more troops, French public got out of its self-indulging state for long enough to demand from the government to declare an official neutrality and to close Suez canal for the ships of belligerent nations thus eliminating Italian possibility to transport its arguably best troops from Eritrea and Somali. Russian government sent squadron with a vaguely formulated task to “guarantee security of the Straits and other Russian interests” [7] but Kaiser Wilhelm upstaged everybody else by ordering two ships of the German Mediterranean Squadron, heavy cruiser Goeben and light cruiser Breslau to go to the Ottoman service [8].

This was a serious change of the game: with the newest Italian battleships only in a construction, Goeben could probably sunk all 4 most modern Italian Regina Elena class battleships simultaneously with a minimal risk to itself: 25.5 knots vs. 22 knots, ten 28 cm (11 in) SK L/50 guns range 18 km) vs. 2 305 mm 40 calibers guns (one forward and one aft, range 14 km) and a better armor (KCS 3-11 inches vs Harvey 6 inches). Not that Goeben alone could win a war but Italian control of the sea routes was over and Wilhelm did not even create casus belli.

To make things more complicated, Italy’s main baker, the UK, found itself in a rather messy situation on a wrong end of Africa. [9] When representatives of the “civilized powers” had been drawing borders on the map of Africa it was, by their own admission, a rather abstract exercise because most of these territories were pretty much unknown geographically and demographically. As a result, an agreed upon border between the Dutch and British possessions in South Africa was by Orange River.

The agreement is an agreement but the Brits got themselves distracted conquering other places which looked more promising and when they finally captured everything except the territory between the Orange and Limpopo rivers they found that the Boers (Dutch farmers from the Cape Colony) not only grabbed territory between the Orange and Vaal Rivers and created Orange State there but, not being gentlemen, spread across the Vaal, subduing the natives and settling all the way to Limpopo creating Transvaal Republic. Both these states were declared independent so that the Dutch government could not be blamed.

The Brits were generally inclined to let it be because the lands looked not very good for anything besides farming and this was not what they were looking for. However, as a matter of principle, they wanted two republics to recognize the British sovereignty. The Boers refused and the Brits moved troops from their possessions West and North of the republics but the Boer militia proved to be a hard opponent and in the first serious encounter British troops lost, within few minutes, 120 men killed and wounded vs. 2 killed and 5 wounded Boers.

British tactics of advancing in small widely separated columns proved to be a failure and after few defeats of its troops the British government recognized the Boers full independence and self-government although still with British control of foreign relations.

Unfortunately, in 1810 it was found that the ridge, known locally as the "Witwatersrand" (literally "white water ridge" – a watershed), contained the huge deposit of gold-bearing ore. This discovery made the Transvaal, which had been a struggling Boer republic, potentially a political and economic threat to British supremacy in South Africa. In the early 1912 the Second Boer War started and the Brits found themselves too busy to get actively involved elsewhere.

To make things more complicated, the arrogant French, in the best traditions of a virtuous demagoguery so favored by the British politicians, extended closing of the Suez canal to the participants of this conflict as well getting a broad European support and public applause: the Boers were now everybody’s heroic darling underdog and the Brits - its opposite.

______________
[1] We are not fans of brutality:
You don't need a knife for a fool,
You'll tell him an outrageous lie
And do to him what you want.”
[2] IMO, he would better stick to his main profession.
[3] In OTL NII bumped Stolypin’s project that was eliminating some of the restrictions to the Duma where it “died”.
[4] In OTL Witte was answering to the international criticism by pointing to a high percentage of the revolutionaries among the Russian Jews. Quite obvious, a person as intelligent as he was could not confuse the reason with the consequences but he was representing NII who was strongly antisemitic. On a personal level Witte left some, let’s say, “questionable” remarks (not sure if they were inspired by his marriage or other experience 😂) but his position as a statesman was a completely different issue.
[5] It really was and this has nothing to do with …. well, never mind. 😂
[6] In OTL 2 first subs of that class had been built in 1911 for Chili but ended up being sold to Canada. Russia bought two of this series in 1914 so why not earlier?
[7] There is still Russian-Ottoman protectorate of the Septinsular Republic.
[8] In OTL they entered service only in 1912.
[9] Unlike most other things, this one is well behind the schedule. I hoped to avoid it altogether but now it starts looking handy.

alexmilman · Jun 1, 2023

354. A series of unfortunate events #3

“The traditional friendship between Italy and Great Britain, and the important influence which the existence of a powerful Italian fleet must exercise upon the maintenance of our position in the Mediterranean, make it a matter of the highest importance that Italy should not decline from her position relatively to other Mediterranean powers, or lose the place that has been so hardly and honourably earned amongst the war-fleets of the world.”
Sir W.H.White, 1909
“Libya. Trenches. Italian unit receives an order to attack. Its brave commander jumps out of the trench, brandishes his sword and shouts to his troops: ‘Avante! Avante!’. Soldiers in the trench are applauding him and shouting ‘Bravo, bravo, capitano!’ but remain in the trench.”
A nasty contemporary joke.
“This was a great reward for us. We had not had the good fortune to meet the enemy in force.”
General Emilio De Bono

It was not a surprise that the landing operation and capture of the ports went quite well but then the Italian ground forces, with all their numerical and technological superiority got stuck and the war smoothly drifted into a trench phase. Which meant that slowly but steadily the Italian army had been drifting back into a traditional position of being laughingstock of Europe. Which was bad because a lightening campaign of conquest was OK with pretty much everybody in Europe but a protracted war had repercussions: the attitudes changed.

Text on the French cartoon below: “Menelik: Seigniora, he is even a greater bugger than I am”. The government of France and French public started realizing that acceptance of the British-Italian idea regarding “sharing” North African coast may be not as innocent as it looked because there were large Italian communities in the French owned/controlled Tunisia and Egypt. Plus, after the battle of Kunfunda Bay on the Red Sea (Italy: 1 protected cruiser, 2 destroyers; OE: 6 gunboats, 1 armed tugboat and 1 armed yacht, all destroyed or captured) the Italians proclaimed a blockade of the Arabian Red Sea coast and began seizing vessels carrying contraband. And this was a clear violation of a power balance on the Red Sea that was directly concerning French, German and Russian interests in the region: after the Abyssinian fiasco Italy was permitted to preserve its presence on the Red Sea, not to make the rules.

The Navies on the Med
Principal naval bases for Ottoman naval forces in 1914 were Alexandretta, Basrah, Canakkale, Beyrut, Djeddah, Hocliecla, Jaffa, Samsoun, Izmir, Sinope, Smyrna, Trebizond, and the main arsenal at lstanbul. The main Ottoman coal port was Zonguldak, roughly 150 miles from the Bosporus Strait on the Black Sea. The Ottoman navy did have a marine unit of about 4,000 men. As far as the ships were involved (all of them being more or less old), it had 2 battleships (both obsolete), 1 coastal defense ship, 2 protected cruisers (old) and few small ships of various types. During the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid the navy practically was not training, number of personnel was severely cut and most of the bigger guns were not operational. Sultan did place some orders in Britain and Germany but his main idea was to avoid paying the money due so the results were predictable. After he was deposed, the new government was trying to change situation by introducing the naval programs drawn up by the British mission along with British tactics to utilize such plans. By 1912 the Ottoman Empire did not, yet, get any noticeable results of these efforts, except for a drastic reduction of its personnel from 31,000 in 1908 to 7,000 in 1912, and it is anybody’s guess how these programs would work out: they were influenced by both Alfred Mahan's view on empire building and British experience in empire seizing. In neither scenario was the true problem of the Ottoman Empire confronted: that of empire protecting.

Italian fleet had 12 battleships, 19 cruisers, 40 destroyers, 90 torpedo boats and 10 coastal defense ships. In other words, the naval forces were incomparable, especially taking into an account that Italian Navy included 4 recently built battleships of Regina Elena class, each with 2 inch /40 calibers and 12 8 inch/45 calibers Armstrong guns made by Elswick Ordnance Company. The ships had modern engines but traded protection for speed and rather questionable firepower: only one of main caliber guns could be deployed at any position but broadside and the range of their relatively short guns was not impressive. Actually, even in the terms of speed they were already behind ships made after 1909. But none of the above mattered in confrontation with the Ottoman fleet, if it was going to happen. Which, at least on a major scale, was extremely unlikely because as soon as the war was declared the main force of the Ottoman fleet withdrew for the safety of the Dardanelles.
The Italian Mediterranean fleet was divided into two squadrons with two divisions in each squadron (one of 4 battleships and one of 4 cruisers). Smaller ships were attached to each of these units.
The detachment of small Italian war ships was based in Somaliland at Mogadishu being augmented by the cruisers: R.I.S. Piemonte, R.l.S. Artigliere, R.I.S. Calabria, and R.I.S. Puglia.

Austrian Fleet.

10 battleships including just completed Tegetthoff (20,000 tons, 20.4 knots, main caliber 12 - 12” guns, armor - 279 mm)
three armored cruisers
three protected cruisers
1 fast cruiser
13 destroyers
36 torpedo boats
6 submarines
3 coastal defense ships
numerous old ships still afloat

British Mediterranean Fleet:

battlecruisers "Inflexible", "Indefatigable" and "Indomitable"
four armoured cruisers of the 1st Cruiser Squadron,
four "Town" class light cruisers,
flotilla of destroyers

French Mediterranean Fleet:

six old battleships,
eleven pre-dreadnoughts,
dreadnoughts "Jean Bart" and "Courbet"
11 armoured cruisers,
four protected cruisers,
43 destroyers and 17 submarines.

German Mediterranean Squadron, consisting of the heavy cruiser Goeben and light cruiser Breslau, by Wilhelm’s order went to the Ottoman service.

Russian Black Sea Fleet. By 1911 it was not too impressive because most of the new ships were going to the Pacific and Baltic fleets. Now most of it had been sent for “Straits protection” operation on the Med:

Ship of the line “Empress Maria” - 23,000 tons, 21 knots, and 12 12” guns of main caliber.
7 old style battleships:
- 4 with displacement 13,000 tons, speed 16 knots, main caliber - 4 12” guns and various combinations of 8”, 6” and smaller guns
- 2 with displacement of 10,000 tons, speed 14-15 knots, 6 12” guns and 6 6” guns. Left in the Black Sea.
- 1 with displacement 8,000 tons, speed 14 knots, 4 10” and 8 6” guns. Left in the Black Sea.
2 cruisers - 6,500 tons, 23 knots, 12 6” and 12 75 mm guns.
Destroyers:
- 4 - 600 tons, 26 knots
- 13 - 350 tons, 26 knots
- 4 - 240 tons, 26 knots (left in the Black Sea)
4 gunboats - 1,250 tons, 12 knots, 8”,6”, 75mm, 47mm (2 left in the Black Sea)
12 torpedo boats (left in the Black Sea)
6 transport ships
4 submarines
1 hydroplane transporter.

Intermission. Common features of the concept of aircraft carriers were proposed in the report of the U.S. Naval Attaché in France in 1908. The concept of aircraft carriers was described in more detail in Clément Ader's book L'Aviation Militaire, published in 1909. The first takeoff from the deck was made on November 14, 1910 by American Eugene B. Eli from the light cruiser Birmingham. (Eng. USS Birmingham (CL-2)). In 1909 captain of the naval engineer corps L. Matsievich made a report in St. Petersburg on the need to create aircraft carriers, and then six months later proposed a project for the construction of an aircraft carrier for 25 aircraft, with preliminary experiments on one of the destroyers. In the spring of 1910, Lieutenant Colonel K. Konkotkin, was offered a much cheaper project to convert the outdated ship Admiral Lazarev into a real aircraft carrier with a flight deck and hangar. They were not rejected, just put on hold until future times due to the shortage of funds.
It was decided to implemented a much more modest project: to convert steamships Empress Alexandra, Emperor Alexander I, Emperor Nicholas I, Romania into hydroplanes transporters [1]. They were not real carriers because its hydroplanes were operating off the sea surface. Electric winches and Temperley booms were installed to lift and lower hydroplanes.

“Empress Alexandra" was renamed "Orlitsa" and became the first ship of this project. It served on the Baltic, had speed 12 knots, armament of eight 75 mm guns and two machine guns and was carrying 4 hydroplanes.

“Alexander I” served on the Black Sea. It had speed of 15 knots, 6 120 mm and 2 57 mm guns and carried 8 hydroplanes capable of carrying bombs up to 50 pounds.
“Nicholas I” also served on the Black Sea, had speed of 15 knots, and 6 120 mm, 2 75 mm guns and 2 machine guns, carried 7 hydroplanes of the same construction as “Alexander I”.
All these transporters actively participated in WWI. Both “emperors” with two more converted ships and 2 land-based air brigades (32 hydroplanes) formed air division of the Black Sea Fleet. In total, during the First World War, the combat composition of the Russian Navy included 12 aircraft transporting ships (originally planned - 24): eleven - in the Black Sea Fleet and one in the Baltic Fleet.

Even the squadron of 4 old battleships (3 older and slower ones had been left in Sevastopol) was more than adequate for preventing Italian cruisers from penetrating the straits but addition of a new ship-of-the-line would make such an attempt even by the whole squadron rather suicidal. 4 of the old Russian battleships had been lacking in speed but had a heavier armor (229-356mm vs. 102-250mm on the most modern Regina Elena class ) and more 12” guns per ship (4 vs. 2) than their Italian counterparts and, after the recent modernization, these guns were 50 calibers vs. 40 of the Italians and the armor was the same KCS as on the newest Italian battleships. So, in the case of an open confrontation the Italians could run but not fight and with the addition of Empress Maria they would be lucky to run.

As far as a broader operations had been involved, the Italians had advantage in the armored cruisers but not after the Ottoman fleet got an addition of Yavuz Sultan Selim (admiral Wilhelm Souchon and his crew looked cute in their new uniforms 😉).

Austria was taken somewhat by surprise by the whole thing but now its government started grumbling: the last thing Austria wanted was change of the status quo in OE because this could give some wrong ideas to the Turkish and Austrian Serbs. And Hungary was holding exactly the same opinion. The Duke of Abrussi, commander of the cruisers division of the 1st Italian Mediterranean squadron, placed a blockage on the Ottoman Adriatic coast and immediately created a diplomatic incident. Blockadirng the coast upset the status quo, and Austria objected to warfare being injected into the volatile Balkans. Italy reacted by moving the Duke's force to the vicinity of the Dardanelles in order to combat any sortie attempted by the Ottoman fleet. They even fired at the Ottoman fortifications of the Dardanelles. Which was a big mistake. Not because this barrage did not cause any damage but because the whole episode (admittedly blown out of proportion) provided the Ottoman government to declare a temporary closure of the Straits (with over 180 merchant ships of various nations being stuck in the Black Sea) and to invoke an article of the Russian-Ottoman agreement by which, upon the Ottoman request, Russia had to provide help in providing security of the straits. It was, of course, just a lucky coincidence, that a big part of the Black Sea Fleet was just hanging north of the Bosphorus and could response immediately…

The British government found itself in a somewhat ambiguous situation. On one hand, Italy was kind of an ally - it was encouraged to take Libya and there was a vague assurance that the UK is going to help if it is attacked by a third party in a process of doing so. OTOH, there was no formal military treaty, Italian operations went beyond the outlined scope and, as was the case with the straits, which the Ottomans had been threatening to close, inconvenienced the British trade. Plus, so far, the third parties were not directly involved in operations in Libya. On a broader geopolitical scale situation was getting increasingly complicated. Germany, besides pro-Boerish demagoguery, launched the big naval exercises in the Northern Sea while France put its Mediterranean Fleet on a high alert and now the Russian Black Sea Fleet was positioned outside the Dardanelles. Put together, they could create serious problems for the British Mediterranean squadron and, what’s worse, the Suez canal being closed for the warships and military cargo, was creating serious problems with conduct of the Boer war forcing the British ships with the troops and cargo to sail along the western coast of Africa, where they did not have too many supply bases and where the Dutch in the Cape Colony were predictably unsympathetic. Any serious military offset, together with the supply problems, could destabilize situation situation on the East coast of Africa and, who knows, maybe there would be problems even in India.

Of course, the British Empire had enough shipping and naval capacities to handle the problem but in the case of an escalated conflict the resources would have to be allocated for protection of the sea routes and this may expose the British Islands. Of course, in the ongoing naval competition Britain was still ahead of Germany but not so much, if at all, of Germany plus France plus Russia and its dependence upon supplies from the abroad had been much higher than one of the continental opponents who, in combination, were pretty much self-sufficient and had a much greater industrial potential. So, it looked prudent not to escalate the situation more than absolutely necessary and, if push comes to shove, leave Italy on its own.

However, it would be worth trying to create a diversion for Russia on the Far East. Japan was an unlikely candidate but an ongoing mess in China could provide some opportunities: if not Yuan Shikai then perhaps one of the nationalist republican leaders could stir up trouble in the Northern Manchuria or provide a push to return the lost Mongolian territories. This should not be too expensive and complicated to organize.

Now, in Libya the land war had been, seemingly, going nowhere. The Italians hold the coastal area and gradually increased number of their troops up to 100,000. They even brought few airplanes and one of their pilots conducted first in the world aerial bombardment by dropping few hand grenades from his plane and, to a somewhat greater effect, the same way done from the dirigibles.

Now the Italians were undisputed pioneers in the most innovative warfare and could demand at least some respect.

On the opposite side the numbers had been growing slowly. The ports had been closed so the Ottomans couldn’t bring reinforcements by the sea and, with France declaring a neutrality, they could march them across Egypt. However, the volunteers were a completely different issue. Well over 10,000 soldiers from the Egyptian army volunteered to go an fight in Libya and got a leave from Khedive. Him being …ah, yes… ruler of the Egypt, the French authorities there did not see any reason to interfere. An unusually big number of doctors, journalists and simply tourists from various parts of Ottoman Empire also travelled across Egypt at that time ending up in Libya, and great sums of money had been raised by the Muslim communities to purchase and smuggle the weapons. So far there were no planes and heavy artillery but it looked like this could be just a matter of time. Still, most of the fighting troops were the local Beduins under command of their tribal leaders and the Turkish officers.

Supply situation of the Italian troops in Libya was not too good after Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli accompanied by few armed Ottoman steamers sunk or captured a number of the Italian transports. How they risked to travel only in the caravans guarded at least by a cruiser division. The whole thing became something of an entertainment: Yavuz Sultan Selim was sailing back and forth of the Eastern Med hunting down Italian supply ships and single warships while Italian battleship squadrons had been trying to catch up with him. Couple times they even got lucky but usually these encounters were short and, after making few shoos from a big distance, the participants would disengage with the minimal damage or not at all.

On the Red Sea.

There was also a steady flow of the French, Russian and German weapons going to Ethiopia through the Red Sea ports and then by railroad and caravans. Menelik was old and incapacitated by the numerous strokes but his designated heir, Lij Iyasu, looked as a good candidate for making trouble in Italian Eritrea: “He was bright, but also impulsive, cruel, lascivious, prone to depressions and egocentricities, and politically inept. Despite his vision of an Ethiopia in which religion and ethnic affiliations made no difference in a man's political or private career, he had no clear comprehension of the power realities in the empire, nor of his own position as its ruler.” Absence of the excessive comprehension was just fine as long as he was listening to the right (French, Russian and German) advisors and had a military backing of his father, Ras Mikael, ruler of the Wello Province. Besides them, there were quite a few prominent local figures, like Dejazmatch Tafari Makonnen, who were all for getting Eritrea back under Ethiopian control. Taking into an account that Germany had a naval base in Inghel and possessed Dahlak Archipelego, which pretty much controlled entry to Mitsiwa, the Italian port in Eritrea, it strongly looked like the Italian activities on the Red Sea may come to an abrupt end without the British support.

The task was to assemble an adequate force needed for an assured destruction of 4 fast protected Italian cruisers with 6” guns of a main caliber. Routinely, none of three “interested parties” had permanently stationed in their naval bases on the Red Sea any reasonably big ships - there simply was no need. And now they had to get them from elsewhere without negatively impacting their other interests.

Russia dispatched from the Black Sea Fleet 1 armored cruiser (7,000 tons, 24 knots and 10 6” guns of main caliber) and 2 gunboats, each with 2 8” and 1 6” guns, they were slow but the 8” guns could be useful for a coastal bombardment or as an extra fire power if the Italians decide to fight a naval battle. As a security measure, on their way to Alexandria they were escorted by the Battleship Squadron of the Black Sea Fleet (this was also expected to dissuade Italians from any adventurous ideas like attacking coast of Anatolia).
Germany sent from its East Asia Squadron the armored cruisers Fürst Bismarck (11,000 tons, 18.7 knots, 4 - 9.4” and 10 - 5.9” guns), Prince Adalbert (9,875 tons, 20.4 knots, 4 8.3” and 10 5.9” guns) and 2 light cruisers of Ariadne class (3,000 tons, 21.5 knots, 10 - 10.5cm guns).
France sent two Gloire class armored cruisers (each 9,996 tons, 21 knots, 2 - 7.6” and 8 - 6.5” guns) and one Edgar Quinet class armored cruiser (13,800 tons, 23 knots, 14 7.6” guns). They’d have to sail together with the Russian ships from Suez.

The Italian Red Sea squadron was going to be squeezed between two forces, each strong enough to deal with it without noticeable problems.

Of course, there was a wild card - the British ships of the Northern Patrol based in Port Sudan and those of the Southern Patrol based in Aden. However, these two forces were extremely unimpressive, except for Euryalus (Southern Patrol), an armored cruiser of 12,000 tons, 21 knots, 2 9” and 12 6” guns, and Juno (Northern Patrol), 2nd class protected cruiser of 5,600 tons, 18 knots and 5 6”guns. The rest were much smaller ships (armed sloops, 3 3rd class cruisers, armed tug and a boarding ship). However, their interference was not really anticipated both because this would mean a full scale war and because it was officially announced that the Italian ships on the Red Sea had been engaged in piracy stopping and searching the neutral commercial ships for no obvious reason, confiscating not military cargo and detaining the Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca. At least the last was patently untrue but there were “escaped victims” interviewed by the French press with a resulting stench spreading well beyond the area of fighting. The Brits definitely did not need a religious conflict with the Muslims. At least not right now, when they already had other problems.

When it became clear that the enemy comes from both ends of the Red Sea and that escape is impossible, the Italian Red Sea squadron tried to hide in the port of Masawa but it was practically lacking the coastal defenses and the odds were too unequal so within couple hours the squadron ceased to exist and the city was on fire.

Ethiopian troops entered Eritrea and advanced toward Asmara facing strong resistance from the Italian and local Eritrean troops. The defenders situation was not good: they could not expect reinforcements and supplies by the sea so their best option was to retreat to the North as slow as possible in a hope that they’ll be eventually able to escape to the safety of the British-held Sudan where the Ethiopians would not dare to follow. Ethiopian advance was slow due to the problems that were always plaguing operations in the area: almost a complete absence of the roads and low population density, which meant that moving even a reasonably light artillery was a nightmare and that as soon as the supplies that soldiers carried with them had been exhausted, getting food became a major problem that could not be easily resolved by a looting. The caravans of camels and mules had to be organized, food collected in the not yet exhausted provinces of Ethiopia and carried to the army. Capture of Massawa somewhat improved the supply situation because the defenders had to abandon Asmara and some food and ammunition could be received by the sea. But the Italian-Eritrean troops retreated to the Eritrean Highlands and at least for a while the operations deteriorated to the level of the occasional skirmishes. Lij Iyasu, who had been hanging with an army to get credentials of a military leader, decided that he got enough of those and returned to Addis Ababa leaving in charge his father.

The allies soon enough figured out that their force is too big for any practical purpose but did not risk to leave the area completely out of fear that the Brits from Aden and Port Sudan would use their departure for recapturing Masawa. So the Russian gun boats and one French cruisers remained in the ports, the Germans moved to their nearby base on Dahlak Archipelago and the rest sailed to their bases guarding entrance to the Red Sea from Bab el Mandeb.

Back in the trenches. In December 1911 the Italians had been fortifying their positions on the Nadura Hill near Tobruk while waiting for reinforcements. Captain Mustafa Kemal was in command of Tobruk region and foresaw that the consolidation of Italian forces would jeopardize his position. As such, Kemal ordered Sheik Muberra, leader of the local volunteers, to attack as soon as possible to prevent the reinforcement of the Italians on Nadura Hill. At the same time, Turkish soldiers and Tripolitanian volunteers under the command of Enver Pasha were ordered to attack the Italians on Nadura Hill. Enver Pasha's force approached Nadura Hill just before dawn and attacked. The Italians were surprised and responded in a disorganized fashion without the benefit of cannon fire. Nadura Hill was captured in two hours and the Italian Bersaglieri retreated to Tobruk while leaving three machine guns along with munitions.

The event prevented further Italian advance beyond Tobruk: even after receiving reinforcements they remained at the beacheads.
_________
[1] In OTL converted in 1915 and participated in WWI. ITTL at least one is functional by 1911.

alexmilman · Jun 4, 2023

355. A series of unfortunate events #4

“they were of much the same stock, and their creeds could only be distinguished by their varying degrees of bigotry and intolerance.”
Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Great Boer War’
“A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it.”
Gilbert K. Chesterton
“Mere pluck in advancing shoulder to shoulder no longer counts for as much as skill in open order fighting, in taking cover and in the use of the rifle, and as power of acting on individual initiative.”
T. Roosevelt
“Only friendship with Anglo-Saxon can be worse than enmity with him.” [1]
A.E.Edrihin-Vandam
“Curiouser and curiouser!”
“We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice's Adventures in Wonderland’

The Med and beyond.
The whole Italian colonial adventure began looking “Curiouser and curiouser”. As presented to the Italian public before it started, the whole thing was going to be a very brief demonstration of a superior military power with a monthly price tag of no more that 30 million liras and a need of approximately 20,000 Italian troops. Internationally, there was seemingly a consensus of all European powers which really mattered on this subject, Britain and France, with Austria being generally agreeable, providing it is going to be short, Russian obligations toward the OE being limited to the protection of the Straits and Germany being too far away to matter seriously. The “military chest” was 1,000,000,000 liras, which should be much more than adequate for the task at hand.
Italy had an overwhelming naval superiority, its troops were better equipped, all the way to having aviation, the Ottoman military presence in Libya was quite limited and what the local Bedouin tribes could do?

Now, the monthly cost was running over 80 millions and, because the ongoing conflict already lasted longer than expected, the total expenses already exceeded 1,300,000,000 liras and the end was not seen. The Italian troops, already approximately 100,000, had been sitting at the coastal area not being able to get deeper inland or to prevent the constant small-scale attacks on their positions. Their supply was barely adequate: not only the OE got two modern cruisers with the experienced crews but there were also the armed steamers of a dubious origin sailing under the Ottoman flag ready to attack the unprotected Italian transports. What was worse, France and Russia under pretext of protecting commerce on the Med banned operations of the Italian Navy not only from the Straits but from the whole Eastern Med threatening to attack any Italian naval force found East of the eastern border of Libya, which prevented any ability to chase the Ottoman “raiders”.

The Red Sea squadron was eliminated by the German-French-Russian force under pretext of it being engaged in the piratic activities and Massawa was under “temporary” occupation as a piracy base but none of these countries was formally at war with Italy and neither Victor Emmanuel III not his Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti were crazy enough to declare a war on any of these states, not to mention all three of them.

The Brits were not coming with too much of anything beyond a moral support and promise that, if push comes to shove, the Italian contingents fighting in Eritrea will be permitted to retreat to the British-held Sudan.

Britain could not, at that time, to commit major resources on the Med but it still had enough funds to subsidize some seemingly crazy schemas and, in its present status, with a number of not quite reasonable players coming into the picture, the Mediterranean “theater” could easily explode into something big, which probably none of the sides involved really wanted.

The Ottoman Serbs, with their usual bad timing, decided (perhaps with some British spare change being distributed but perhaps on their own) that an ongoing war is a good time to start one more rebellion in a hope to turn their autonomy into independence. The idea was not very good on two accounts:

Thanks to the Italian naval superiority, OE managed to move only few troops to Africa and could use an overwhelming force for dealing with the rebellion.
A fear that this uprising may spread into their own Serb-populated areas, Austria and Hungary immediately assumed active pro-Ottoman positions moving troops into the endangered regions and offering a more direct help within the Ottoman borders, if asked.

However, they went ahead with their usual bravery and this corner of the Balkans soon turned into a bloody mess which kept going on with no clear end in sight.

It came as not a big surprise that Austria accused Italy of inciting the Serbs and, just in case, ordered mobilization of its army and put its navy on a high alert thus forcing Italy to recall the 1st squadron of its navy to the Adriatic to address a potential Austrian attack. The further reinforcement to Libya became impossible by the same reason.

An additional potential source of trouble was the Septinsular Republic or rather the Russian-Ottoman naval base on the Corfu, just at the entry into the Adriatic. So far, there was an usual minimal Russian and Ottoman naval presence there, just a few gun boats and a couple of destroyers stationed there and backed up by the equally “mighty” fleet of the Republic itself. But Corfu was well fortified and, if conflict expanded, could serve as an operational base of a much greater naval force thus creating a very unpleasant situation on the Adriatic and beyond. Obviously, an attack on it would be a clear casus belli bringing Russia into the war and, perhaps France and Germany as well. OTOH, a dual Russian-Ottoman sovereignty could be considered a convenient loophole if someone managed to figure out how to attack the Ottomans without attacking the Russians.

One more wild card was Greece. Its King, George I, was “everybody’s cousin” (his sisters were married to Alexander III of Russia and Edward VII of Britain and he was married to Olga, daughter of king Szilard I of Hungary and sister of its current king Miklos I. To make things even more confusing, his heir, Constantine, was married to Alix of Hesse, granddaughter of Queen Victoria who, while not being blessed with a lot of brains, was quite persuasive in the domestic life, hated Wilhelm and loved her British relatives. Her importance as British agent of influence could not be discounted.

On the top of this political salad, there was influential Prime Minister Venizelos who made his political career on Crete during the rebellion and was actively anti-Ottoman and could be expected to advocate a very “patriotic” course of revenge for a defeat in the last war (Constantine, who was commander-in-chief at that war could join him in this course). The fierce rhetoric kept him popular and influential. In 1911 Greece bought Italian-built armored cruiser Georgios Averof (9,956 tons, 23.5 knots, 4 9.2” guns, 8 7.5” guns and 16 3” guns, protective belt 80 - 200mm), which was at that time the most powerful ship on the Aegean. In 1910, a British naval mission arrived, headed by Admiral Lionel Grant Tufnell, in order to recommend improvements in the organization and training of the navy. The mission led to the adoption of the British style of management, organization and training, especially in the area of strategy. After debacle of the Ottoman war the Hellenic Army also was modernized, getting new rifles and artillery and overhauling a mobilization system so that it could field 125,000, with another 140,000 in the National Guard and reserves. Economic situation improved: in 1911 the state budget showed a surplus, the tax on sugar was cut by 50% and a progressive income tax introduced, 300,000 arpents (100,000 ha) were distributed to 4,000 farm families in Thessaly, raise of a socialist movement prevented and a new constitution was adopted. The only thing missing was a military glory and it was reasonable to expect that the enemy is going to be Ottoman Empire. Which, taking into an account its rather pathetic current condition and problems both on the Balkans and in Arabia, would require much more extensive than so far “external” intervention to prevent it from falling apart and producing a huge mess on the Balkans and Near East.

Situation in Eritrea was somewhat similar to one in Libya but in a reverse. The allied navies had been controlling situation on the Red Sea with no real opposition from Britain: a direct involvement could easily endanger its ability to supply the troops in Sudan and transport cotton from it by the Nile and the same goes for the commercial traffic via Suez. OTOH, the allied help to Ethiopia was limited to the military and food supplies and some “volunteers”. No French, German or Russian troops had been involved in the land operations. During the reign of Menelik Ethiopian army got few modern regular units (if you look closely, the infantry is barefoot).

However, most of its military force still were a traditional tribal militia, just with the better rifles than in previous war, and the same issues of a discipline, military tactics, logistics, etc.

So it is not a big surprise that Ethiopian offensive in Eritrea stalled in a highland area with both sides getting supplies from their corresponding “allies” but not being able to achieve any meaningful success. The Italian force, mostly the Eritrean troops, was of a good quality and the Eritreans did not expect anything good from the Ethiopians so they fought much better than the Italian troops in Libya. But the Ethiopians also were the tough fighters and for the war in the mountains the irregulars were just as well suited as the regular troops.

Britain.
In the broad geopolitical terms, British reasoning for starting war with the Boers was perfectly formulated (much later and in OTL) in a short verse:

“Плачет киска на заборе.
У нее большое горе:
Злые люди бедной киске
Не дают украсть сосиски» [2]

Intermission: As an option, you can find a much longer itemized list of the reasons (from cat’s point of view) made by Arthur Conan Doyle in “The Great Boer War” (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3069/3069-h/3069-h.htm). It boils down to pretty much the same: there was something valuable which the Brits wanted for themselves and it was very nasty of the locals not to cooperate fully; the nasty Boers forced the kitty …oops… the Brits to pay high taxes on the income they were getting from extracting the natural resources while not providing them with the full citizenship rights (why should they have any, being the foreigners who came on their own initiative?). Perhaps there is something somewhere about nobody forcing the poor oppressed Brits to go there but I stopped reading in a middle of the justifications for invasion.

Objectively, the Boers were not exactly a bunch of angels or even excessively pleasant people: they occupied the territory by killing big numbers of the natives and a lot had been said about them being too conservative and too religious for other people to digest. However, their main problem was in a plain fact that they had a misfortune on sitting on a great mineral wealth without any wish to process it themselves and with not enough brains to figure out that if they allow unrestricted numbers of foreigners to come to their territory doing pretty much everything from mining to running the railroads while they were quite reluctant to get engaged in anything besides farming and hunting, these foreigners will eventually cause a problem, especially taking into an account that most of them had been from a major colonial power owning territories just across the river. And, taking into an account that the companies extracting all these natural resources, snd building and running the highways, had a lot of clout back home, was it a real surprise that the stench about poor oppressed Brits was really great and that invasion was practically inevitable?

While, the Boers perhaps were not as sophisticated as their European counterpart but their political leadership was not completely dumb or blind. Well before the invasion started it bought huge numbers of most modern German rifles and tens millions rounds of ammunition. They also purchased tens of the Krupp’s artillery pieces and dozens of Maxim machine guns [3]. After the conflict started, the increasing amounts of (mostly German) weapons and ammunition were going to the Boers through the Cape Colony: the damn farmers had plenty of money (which they kept collecting from the British companies functioning on their territory throughout the war) to pay for them. Not to mention a steady flow of the volunteers from various parts of Europe; the Boers being a clear underdog and the Brits being traditionally ham fisted and, so far, spectacularly unsuccessful, the Boers turned into the gallant heroes with all related results.

In France some ill-advised British tourists not just had been refused a service but were, with a great noise, expelled from certain “educational centers” [4] in Paris. This being a clear vox populi, the French government had no option but to assume a firm pro-Boerish position, approving numerous fundraisings (their efficiency was described in Bel-Ami) and closing Suez to the British warships.
Kaiser Wilhelm went as far as voicing a readiness for the direct German military involvement after which the German Foreign Ministry had to issue a long and convoluted denial claiming that this statement had been made when the Kaiser was suffering from one of his fits of logorrhea and can’t be held responsible.
In Russia the street-organs had been playing a tearful song “Transvaal, Transvaal, my country, you are all in fire…” the schoolboys could know the map of the Transvaal better than their native province and quite a few serious, even if not advertised, military professionals, like colonel Gurko and lieutenant Edrihin, travelled there to fight and collect useful information.

The RN could not afford its favorite system of searching the neutral ships because France threatened to close Suez (and the Nile) to all British traffic and the “Baltic League” promised to do the same with the Baltic.

What was probably even more important, they had enough of a common sense not to imitate the British system of the compact units but rather rely upon the hit and run tactics, open formations, using natural or artificial cover and other dirty tricks unworthy of a brave regular soldier.

On a negative side, they did not have a regular army with the professionals capable of formulating sophisticated operational plans with the elaborate maps and carefully formulated instructions. Neither did the have the nice-looking uniforms, which under the normal circumstances would doom their cause even before the hostilities started.

On a positive side, being too conservative and uneducated, they did not know that their cause is doomed and behaved accordingly causing huge problems to their more civilized opponents.

Of course, eventually, Britain was doomed to win. It could mobilize more troops than there were Boers around, enough ships to transport them and they could produce their own weapons. However, the whole thing started within a wrong geopolitical framework. Britain was in the midst of a naval buildup competition with Germany, which had been enormously expensive. German-French-Russian alignment created additional problems of transportation and, potentially, could create a new war theater in China if participants of what was informally referenced as “Dreikaiserbund” decides to act against the British interests in Southern China by supporting Yuan Shikai vs. governors of the Southern provinces.

As of now, Germany was the main subject of concern by the obvious reasons:

Germany was the main British naval competitor and its ongoing naval programs were not allowing Britain to redeploy a significant part of the RN out of the Northern Sea region. Which already led to a considerable loss of the British position on the Med and could easily impact its position on the Far East.
Out of three emperors Wilhelm was the most active in his support of both the Ottomans and the Boers and held the most anti-British position. .
The naval race already looked very taxing financially.
Britain had very serious issues with some German colonial projects and the Baghdad Railroad.

It was decided that the time is ripe for the diplomacy, which was not easy because in Germany the “naval party” demanded approval of a new naval law while in Britain the politicians had been trying to prevent the new huge naval expenses by pointing out that expansion of the German fleet is incompatible with the improvement of the German-British relations. In their speeches the British ministers had been emphasizing willingness to do everything possible to preserve the existing superiority of the RN. How to reconcile these mutually exclusive position nobody knew but Wilhelm expressed agreement to start communications with the British government with a purpose to establish some general common political thinking which would then allow to get to the more detailed agreements. Conversation of the German Ambassador to Britain with Sir Edward Grey looked promising and then Berlin was visited by a well-known British financier Sir Ernest Kessel who unofficially delivered to Wilhelm memorandum from some members of the British government. It contents boiled down to the following: acknowledgement of the British naval superiority, cessation of the expansion of German naval program and perhaps even one reduction of it. In exchange Britain promised not to resist further German colonial expansion, discussion and support of the further German colonial desires, support of various projects boiling down to the mutual promise not to participate in the aggressive plans against Britain and Germany.

Kessel took away the answer, which welcomed all the steps aimed at improving relations, and expressed German consent to these proposals, with only a restriction that in the issue of the fleet, shipbuilding program plus the draft law remained German platform. It was pointed out that Sir Edward Grey’s visit would be desirable in the near future.

Further unofficial diplomatic exchange followed in which Germany made it clear that some concessions regarding the naval program are possible if there will be adequate guarantees of the friendly British policy in a future.

The British Minister of War, Holden, arrived to Berlin and had rather friendly conversation with the Chancellor, Theobald Theodor Friedrich Alfred von Bethmann Hollweg, and von Tirpitz. The German side agreed to postpone construction of the three already approved battleships, first - till 1913 and the last two until 1916 and 1919. Germany presented a text of the treaty regarding a strict mutual neutrality between Germany and Britain:
“If one of the high contracting parties is involved in the war against one or more powers, the other Contracting Party shall observe at least benevolent neutrality towards the first involved in the war and strives to localize the conflict.”

Holden countered with a different formula stating that “neither side would launch an unprovoked attack against other, will not participate in an alliance planning an attack against it and would not go into an agreement regarding any naval or land attack against it, neither alone nor together with any other state.”

The rest of the draft contained generous promises regarding the colonial issues including compensation for the German concession on the issue of Baghdad Railroad, agreement on German purchase of the Portugal Angola, etc. During the following discussion Holden agreed that his proposal is quite weak on the British obligations but kept insisting that the German formula is too vague.
On the naval issue discussion, on which Wilhelm participated, he agreed that Germany may need the 3rd squadron as per the new naval law, even if it will force Britain to increase its naval presence in the Northern Sea. “He attached the most importance to the fact that England was not forced to respond with a double number of new vessels to the super-program construction of dreadnoughts.”
Everything was seemingly going well … for a short while. The British Admiralty looked at the proposed agreement and found it unsatisfactory. The issue of a delayed dreadnought construction was declared to be insignificant comparing to other items, especially increase of the ships’ crews. Admiralty insisted that if the project is accepted, the British naval expenses will increase by £18,000,000. The German naval leadership also expressed an opinion that their navy is going to suffer.
Then the disagreements extended into a political spectrum: the British side declared that it will not attack Germany unless being provoked and is not going to participate in an agreement planning such an attack.

The Germans considered that, while rejecting a direct attack, this formula says nothing about not being hostile in the case such an attack is made by somebody else and Britain refused to add a clause regarding friendly neutrality “if Germany is involved into a war against its own will.” [5]

In the German opinion the whole Holden’s mission had the only purpose of, under disguise of the fictional diplomatic discussions to prevent implementation of a new German naval plan while Britain will keep going its preparations for a coming war. This opinion could be wrong and it is possible that the attempts had been sincere but the British government clearly did not want to go beyond certain degree of commitment in its obligations and the whole thing fell apart. Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg held an opinion that the British government actually was sincere and that a work on the minor issues may eventually create enough of a mutual trust to diffuse the hostility and agree on a fundamental issue but on this he was not getting too much support on either side.

__________
[1] A popular short version of his original statement: “Finally, it's China's turn, which, after its various experiments with the British and Americans, could safely say now - "it's bad to have Anglo-Saxon as an enemy, but God forbid to have him as a friend!"” , ‘Our situation’, 1912. He considered it necessary to create a coalition of land powers - Russia, Germany and France - against the "sophisticated despotism of England" and believed that in alliance with France and Germany, Russia could facilitate the solution of its geopolitical problems. Disclaimer: Until today I had no idea about his existence, not to mention the ideas.
[2]
“Poor kitty is crying on a fence
It is very unhappy:
The evil people don’t allow the poor kitty
To steal sausages.”
[3] The Boers' Maxim, larger than the British Maxims,[48] was a large calibre, belt-fed, water-cooled "auto cannon" that fired explosive rounds (smokeless ammunition) at 450 rounds per minute. It became known as the "Pom Pom". The British Maxim of that war had been mounted on field gun carriages. The concept was that each carriage could be pulled by a single horse. Two of the gunners had seats on the carriage on top of heavy ammunition and stores boxes suspended over the axle as per standard British practice. The horse between the shafts was led by a rider on his own horse whilst the remaining members of the section would be mounted on their horses. This concept worked well supporting infantry manoeuvres on England's Salisbury Plain given the short distances and benign countryside. Photo below, being from OTL, has a”wrong” date but gives an idea. The Boers seemingly used similar monstrous setting but with a defensive shield.

In South Africa the thinking was soon revealed as flawed. Not only were the distances extreme and the country and climate rough but fast-moving mounted columns often left their artillery and support vehicles floundering in their wake. What was worse was that the general condition of horses was appalling. Instead of one horse four often had to be used and still could not keep up.
[4] For the educationally-/geographically-challenged, Paris used to be the most important educational center in civilized world: striptease was allegedly invented on Place Pigalle, Paris, and Moulin Rouge (which made can-can popular) is also located on that square; of course, there were also numerous other educational pkaces in other parts of Paris and being thrown out of them by political reason (as opposite to getting the same treatment for a rowdy behavior or inability to pay for education) was an ominous sign of the really bad international relations. 😜
[5] In OTL this was about the German fear of the French-Russian attack. ITTL this can be linked to the potential Far East colonial conflicts potentially involving Japan and the US.

alexmilman · Jun 8, 2023

356. From “unfortunate” to “very unpleasant”

“But although the general public was silent when chauvinists trumpeted around the world about hatred and destruction, and the pacifists preached a peace agreement, Germany, with its growing power, seemed to England to be an uninvited and burdensome alien who invaded the shrine of unilateral British rule over world trade and the seas. This mood was getting stronger or weaker, but in general it gave the tone everywhere, despite the diverse and not unprofitable deals that were made with the cousin on the other side of the North Sea.”
von Bethmann Hollweg, ‘Betrachtungen zum Weltkriege’ (‘Reflections on the World War)
“Having become the sole owner of sea routes and extending its political and economic domination to most of the globe, England has strained and continues to strain all its efforts to keep this exceptional situation behind, and looked at any attempt by other continental powers to go to sea and continues to look at as an attack on its vital interests.”
“Having become a maritime power, Germany boldly opposed the powerful and innocroachment on its life interests of the Ocean Empire and thus marked the beginning of a whole hurricane of events.”
A.E.Edrihin-Vandam
“Wherever the German eagle seized possession and dig its claws into the ground, there the land becomes German and German will remain.”
Wilhelm II, 1898
“Wherever the Russian flag is raised, it should never go down.”
Nicholas I, 1850
“Why should we not form a secret society with but one object, the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo Saxon race but one Empire? What a dream, but yet it is probable; it is possible.”
Cecil Rhodes
“Commanders and senior officers should die with troops. The honour of the British Empire and the British Army is at stake.”
Lord Randolph Churchill
“The professional officers must be kept at the rear for the breeding purposes.”
Gashek, ‘The Good Soldier Schweik’.

“Unsere Zukunft liegt an der See” [1]
While a lot could and had been said about Wilhelm’s pubic speeches, the fact remains that they were reflecting an objective reality. Germany was facing a serious problem. Its population within a short period of time grew from approximately 40,000,000 to over 65,000,000 within the same borders. Shift to the industrial economy did not produce a miracle in the ability of a remaining rural population being able to feed the rest and the large-scale imports of agricultural products had been needed creating dependency upon Russia and Poland as far as meat and grain were involved. German manufacturing was, indeed doing great but, again, it was heavily dependent upon the imports: more than 30% of iron ore, practically 100% of alloys, oil, rubber, cotton, etc. All this cost money and, within Europe, could not be balanced by the exports of the German industrial products.

The traditional European way was to get the markets in Asia and Africa, including the colonies from which the valuable natural resources could be extracted for free. Which meant that Germany needed to have a huge merchant fleet, which it was building. But an “objective reality” was that the #1 sea-dominating power was quite reluctant to let the newcomers to get to the markets it already controlled and this was making a merchant marine almost useless without it being backed up by a strong navy. But for Britain this also was a vital issue because it was pretty much in the same situation as Germany: it could not fed its population or supply source materials for its industry using exclusively its own domestic resources. Of course, Britain got itself into this situation much earlier but it already “was there” as the #1 colonial and naval power by the time Germany became a competitor. And, of course, there was not a single reason for Britain to give away some of its possessions and “zones of interests” just because Germany needed to expand. So the ongoing naval buildup, crazy as it may look, was just a reflection of an objective reality: loser in that game was almost doomed to suffer dire economic consequences even if the whole thing ends up without a shot being fired. So far, few attempts to address the issue on the international disarmaments conferences failed miserably and the race kept going on.

A.E. Edrihin about the German drive to the seas:
“Unable neither to exist by means of their own territory nor to spread on a crowded continent, the rapidly growing German people changed the system of their labor, that is, from bread-growing to factory activities, rebuilt a network of internal communications in accordance with new requirements, equipped sea coasts and, having created an excellent commercial fleet, rushed to get additional means of living overseas. In other words, having become a maritime power, Germany boldly opposed the powerful and incurring attacks on its vital interests of the Ocean Empire and thus marked the beginning of a whole hurricane of events.”

From the opposite side of an equation, Fieldmarshal Roberts regarding the factors which changed geopolitical situation:
“The rapid increase in the number and combat qualities of foreign fleets, which is a previously non-existent threat of joint action against England. Huge growth in commercial tonnage of German ships, especially the cargo and people carrying capacity of the latest types of passenger steamers, making it possible to make easier large overseas expeditions with fewer transports. Healthy growth of forces of Germany and its allies on land and at sea. The stationary state of the population and military forces of France. The skillful work of German diplomacy to attract small states of Western Europe to its side and, finally, most importantly, Germany's successful desire to dominate the European continent.”

Which implied that the immediate measures had to be taken to restore uncontested British naval supremacy which, in the opinion of British politicians, will automatically guarantee the British dominance in Europe and other places.

So far, outcome of the competition was anything but obvious because each side had its own advantages and disadvantages:

Germany was getting a big part of its vital supplies from the continent, which meant that its strategically important routes had been invulnerable for the British attacks (subject to the German ability to pay or to get credit and suppliers being friendly and reliable enough).
Britain could not survive without supplies coming by the sea routes but, as a colonial power, it owned sources of many strategically important materials. It was an open question if, with a general British naval superiority and a huge merchant marine, it would be realistic for the German Navy to close these routes effectively.
German manufacturing and trade were more “dynamic” but in Asia and Africa this was more than compensated by the Brits being better “established” in these areas, with all necessary connections and infrastructure. For example, in China Germany controlled a single Shandong province while Britain controlled all southern provinces (except those on the extreme South) and, as a result, had a huge political leverage in the post-Qing China.
Germany was building its navy fast but Britain had bigger ship-building facilities.
German navy was actively training but the RN had an overall greater experience of operations and a better administrative structure. Plus, it had much more bases all over the world.
While the British naval routes were potentially vulnerable, Britain had an advantage of being able to use its Atlantic-side ports while establishing blockade of the German ports on the Northern Sea or simply mining the approaches. Anyway, it was almost inevitable that in the case of a confrontation Britain would be able to cut access to the German colonies and perhaps even capture some of them.
Germany was promised a friendly neutrality by France, Russia, Denmark and Sweden if it is being attacked. Which meant that the Baltic Sea would be pretty much closed to Britain in the case of war while Germany’s Baltic trade, including all important supplies of iron ore from Sweden, is going to be secure.

Besides all these pros and contras, it was also reasonably clear that in the case of a serious direct confrontation one against another, both sides will end up considerably weakened. Perhaps even to a degree allowing some third country to become #1 naval power. This consideration was so obvious that, while continuing with a mad naval competition, none of the competitors was ready to make the first aggressive move. There were also certain differences in the British and German approach to the major ships. The Germans, expecting the attack of a stronger, English fleet near their shores, focused on increasing armor and the number of guns, neglecting to a certain extent even the speed of travel. The British attached paramount importance to the speed and caliber of the guns (up to 15” vs. German prevailing 12”) so that it was possible to deprive the enemy of the initiative in choosing the time and place of battle.

Both sides had been actively building the destroyers while neglecting the specialized ships for installing and clearing the minefields: it was assumed that the mobilized merchant ships would be just fine for this task. Almost the same was situation with the submarines: they would not easily fit into the prevailing Mahan’s idea of a naval war. However the RN had 76 of them (including those of the obsolete types) while Germany only 28. The naval aviation was acknowledged as being useful for reconnaissance so each side had hydroplanes but so far not of the types allowing serious combat applications.

Blind trust to the “authority” [2] kept leading the German naval command (starting from Wilhelm who was a supreme naval commander) in a rather questionable direction. If the real chance to hurt Britain was in cutting its supply lines, wouldn’t it make sense to build a navy capable of acting on these lines and to take care about it having enough supply bases? But so far the stress was on a competition in the area where Britain had very serious advantage except for few narrow but not unimportant areas. Anyway, it was anybody’s guess how exactly a side which wins a battle of the dreadnoughts is going to win a war but nobody asked this stupid question: it must be so because Mahan Almighty said so.

South Africa.

Contrary to the expectations, the Boer war kept going with no clear end in sight. Which, actually should not be a big surprise because the Brits grossly underestimated complexity of the task. They started campaign with approximately 13,000 and serious problems with mobilization while the Boers had over 30,000 and no problem with mobilizing more. Moreover, the Boers were ready high-quality soldiers with their own weapons and horses and perfect knowledge of the area while the Brits had to train the new recruits.

Of course, in a long run the Brits were almost doomed to win due to the immeasurably greater resources in their disposal but the whole thing was clearly going to be long and costly. What was equally bad, or probably worse, was the fact that “everybody” was sympathetic to the Boer’s cause. Taking into an account that at that time the British diplomacy was actively trying to build anti-German coalition, being a “bad guy” (and not very successful one) did not make this task easy. Especially in the cases when the volunteers from these countries had been fighting on the Boers side.

To be fair, the Boers had been making mistakes: more than once they got themselves engaged in the pitched battles under the circumstances which, generally, favored the better organized Brits, even if they cost them dearly, and even in the sieges, for which they did not have the necessary skills. Their generals had been good in organizing and conducting a guerrilla campaign but none of them was a good strategist. The same goes for their ability to fight a full-scale modern war was quite limited: except for their Staatsartillerie (artillery corps), they did not have regular troops, modern staff organization, etc. So they could win the field battles but never knew how exploit results of their victories.

The Brits also had been making pretty much all mistakes possible operating by the relatively small far spaced detachments and, quite often, sticking to the traditional tactics of the compact formations and bayonet charges.

The existing infantry, besides not being used to the African climate, was ill-trained for war: the troops stationed in Britain had been conducting some kind of the maneuvers couple month per year and the rest of the time they were busy with the parade ground activities and various barrack duties. Raising the new troops had caused unexpected recognition of the seemingly obvious fact that, due to the miserable living conditions, at least half of the assembled recruits had been physically not fit for a military service. And, of course, none of them had been used to the African climate and all of them had to be trained from the scratch due to a complete absence of any experience with the firearms and, in the case of a cavalry, shortage of the experienced riders.
The cavalry was overburdened with a ceremonial garb that looked nice on the parade but was worse than useless on the African battlefield. The cavalrymen had no idea how to tend to their horses in the field and the horses themselves were of a “parade ground” type: too big, too slow and requiring more food than could be easy obtained under the circumstances. As a result, they were dying by the thousands by the “natural causes”. The traditional obsession with a sword charge had been causing additional losses when the British cavalry tried to engage an enemy who had faster horses, was shooting well from a horseback and had no intention to get into a sword fight by a simple reason (well, among many other reasons) of not having the swords.

As a result the British troops also suffered their share of the defeats which forced the government to start taking things seriously and send reinforcements, which would eventually increase their numbers up to 180,000. Of course, transporting all these troops and the needed supplies would take a considerable time and in a meantime the British troops suffered few more defeats. To which there was an immediate international gloating reaction.

Anyway, all that effort had been quite costly. Price tags for the first year was £23,000,000 and the second £63,737,000 with most probably even more for the year(s) to follow. For comparison, cost of a dreadnought class battleship was around £2,000,000. But the whole thing now was a matter of a principle and Britain had to win, no matter the costs and methods. And, due to a clear shortage of the military geniuses in the British high command, the methods had to be methodical, wasteful, slow, cruel and, eventually, quite effective: squeeze the opponent out of his territory by using overwhelming numbers, scorched earth and cruelty to the civilian population. With all necessary resources assembled and transported and the methodical approach being systematically applied, the eventual victory is going to be guaranteed. The negative international reaction can be ignored: nobody is going to get into a war on Boers behalf and later all these bad feelings will go away.

North Africa.

The Italian-Turkish war clearly became a stalemate economically exhaustive for both sides but much more so for Italy because most of the fighting in Libya had been done by the local Bedouin tribes and the Ottoman coasts in Europe and Asia had been protected by the French and Russian navies with a good chance for the Austrian navy and army also getting into the picture if Italy tries to steer trouble on the Balkans.

There were already attempts of international mediation with a proposal that, as was the case with Tunisia and Egypt, the Ottoman Sultan is going to retain a formal sovereignty while de facto control will be in the Italian hands. The Ottomans were OK with this schema because this was what they were offering from the very beginning but Italy still was insisting on full-scale possession: if the offer is accepted, there will be inconvenient questions at home about the reason for all these expenses and fighting.

The Balkans were as unstable as always and probably even more so. The ongoing Turkish-Italian war had been used its Slavic vassals to try turning their autonomous status into a full independence. While Walachia remained quiet, Bulgaria and Serbia rebelled accompanied by a recently-proclaimed Kingdom of Montenegro (in 1910 it upgraded its status from principality to a kingdom) and it was looking increasingly probable that Greece will join them to revenge its earlier defeat and realize its great patriotic dream of conquering Thrace and, with some luck, to kick the Ottomans out of Europe altogether. So far, King George I of Greece was against the war but there was a powerful political and military pro-war coalition led by Prince Constantine and PM Venizelos and, not too secretly, backed up by the British financial and help (and the naval advisors helping to modernize the Greek navy).

Taking into an account present condition of the Ottoman army and navy, and seriously improved Greece’s military and naval power, preservation of the status quo on the Balkans would, most probably, require a direct military interference of Austria, Hungary and Russia. Which could result in escalation of the whole thing into a full-scale international military conflict. Members of the anti-Ottoman coalition had been getting warnings but choose to ignore them in a semi-religious belief that Russia will not go against the Orthodox brethren, especially in alliance with a Catholic Austria and that all these warnings are just a diplomatic smoke screen.

For a while, the Russian, German and French diplomatic efforts had been able to keep Greece out of war but then, in the late 1912 [3], during his visit to Thessaloniki King George was assassinated….

Eritrea.
Fighting in Eritrea also reached a stalemate state:

On the Ethiopian side the main focus now was in the court intrigues and succession disputes in anticipation of Menelik's coming death. Each side (and those uncommitted and waiting for the situation to develop) needed their troops and resources to be at hand rather then fighting in Eritrea.
The remaining Italian-Eritrean troops were too few and lacking supplies to launch a counter-offensive and regain the lost territory and the Brits in Sudan could not (or did not want) send their troops to Eritrea. Actually, in a view of the latest Italian activities, the opinion in Britain was that perhaps Italy got too big a foothold on the Red Sea and this may actually endanger the British position in Sudan.

As a result, in a rare case of a consensus, Britain, Russia, France and Germany offered a mediation in Italo-Ethiopian conflict. The fighting sides got an offer they could not refuse: Italy was going to retain part of its colony on a base of “who holds what” at the moment. In other words, it lost Asmara and port of Massawa but retained territory to the north of them with a chance to develop one or few of the northern coastal settlements (Mersa Gulbub, Mersa Teklay or Hashmet) into a meaningful port. Asmara and Massawa were returned to Ethiopia on condition that the permanent consular presence of the powers-mediators and Italy would be established there as well as their settlements and warehouses. However, none of these countries would have its warships permanently stationed in Massawa.

At least one pain in everybody’s posteriors had been gone. Unfortunately, this was a very minor one comparing to everything else.
_________
[1] Germany’s future is on the seas. Wilhelm II
[2] Why Mahan was authority on anything I can’t figure out: as a naval commander he was a minor figure with, to put it mildly, unimpressive record. His book was definitely appealing to the old school naval professionals who stuck to the idea of big ships firing at each other but technology and many other things did change since the XVII century and not only in an ability of a naval artillery to make a louder “boom”.
[3] Ahead of OTL schedule.

alexmilman · Jun 11, 2023

357. From “very unpleasant” to “absolutely lousy”
“If a patient does not take a proper medical treatment and refuses to follow doctor’s instructions, the illness progresses into the second stage, the final one.”
General medical wisdom [1]
“Be firm and courageous, never show weakness. Listen to everyone, there is nothing shameful about it, but listen only to Yourself and Your conscience. In foreign policy, hold an independent position.”
Alexander III, From the Testament to the heir.
"Everyone knew about Emperor Alexander III that, without wanting any military laurels, the emperor would never tolerate the any attack upon honor and dignity of Russia entrusted to him by God."
S. Y. Witte
"Alexander III led the Russian state ship on a different course than His father. He did not believe that the reforms of the 60-70s were an absolute blessing, but tried to make the amendments to them that, in His opinion, were necessary for Russia's internal balance."
S. S. Oldenburg
"Alexander III should not be portrayed short-sighted and dumb, he was a bright personality. Before us is a man who fits into the circumstances of his time. He ruled the state surprisingly easily and naturally, fully aware of the full responsibility of the monarch. The strongest point of his personality is honesty and decency."
A. Bokhanov
“Вы в канаву упадёте,
Вы утонете в болоте.
Не ходите, погодите,
Воротитеся домой!” [2]
K.Chukovsky, ‘Fedora’s Grief’
“In the midst of perfect peace the enemy surprises us. Therefore to arms! Any dallying, any temporizing would be which our fathers founded; to be or not to be, is the question for the empire which our fathers founded. To be or not to be German power and German existence.”
Wilhelm II

Russia. November 1912.
In January 1912 Emperor Alexander III got what he was considering a “boring influenza” which progresses into a pneumonia but by the end of a month his health improved and he stopped taking a prescribed treatment and paying attention to advices of his doctors. He did not look healthy but by the early summer his condition was seemingly stabilized to a degree that allowed his presence on traditional maneuvers near St.Petersburg during which he suddenly felt a sharp pain in a back. The doctors were called again and diagnosed noticeable kidney problems and recommended to move in a dryer climate of Białowieża hunting estate, which was done but as soon as he began feeling better Alexander went hunting, got cold and his condition began deteriorating again aggravated by the neglect of the doctors’ advices and overburdening with state work. More medics had been invited and upon their recommendation he moved into a warmer climate of the Crimea but it did not help. On November 1st the shocking new came from Livadia Palace: Emperor Alexander III died.

Timing of his death was extremely unfortunate: so far, the ongoing military conflicts had been kept reasonably localized (or “compartmentalized”) to a great degree thanks to his strong foreign policy but accession of Nicholas created uncertainty and speculations in this area because nobody was certain about his views on a foreign policy and existing alignments.

What was known abroad about the new Emperor? Well, not too much:

He was seemingly a good-natured person and almost definitely a less stronger and resolute figure than his father.
Unlike his father, he was traveling abroad extensively.
He was a prominent patron of the Russian movie industry and a ballet, was interested in the automobiles but hardly was deeply involved in the Russian domestic affairs. However, seemingly, he highly valued Witte and Stolypin.
For a while, he was deeply involved in the Far Eastern affairs and, notwithstanding the unfortunate accident, was supporting Russian-Japanese alignment.
In the military and naval issues he was an outspoken supporter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and other proponent of the technological innovations while making warranted and unwarranted critical remarks about the old generation of the Russian admirals and generals.
Pobedonostsev considered him too frivolous and not religious enough.
Russian intelligencia did not have any clear opinion beyond the famous epigram referencing incident in Japan [3] and a general approval of his movies-related activities.
Was friendly but not too close with his German brother-in-law.
It was known that Alexander, when his health already seriously deteriorated, had few conversations with his heir but substance of these conversations was not known and it was anybody’s guess if Nicholas is going to follow his father’s course or to chose one of his own.

It was expected that, with the pending funeral, the year-long mourning, coronation and all types of the domestic and international adjustments related to accession of a new monarch, Russian Empire, at least for an year, is not going to be active internationally. Based upon this scant information and a wishful thinking, the wrong conclusions were almost inevitable.

Optimistic expectations

The first wrong conclusion was made by King Constantine of Greece and his PM Venizelos who decided that the new regime in Russia is not going to interfere into the Balkan affairs or, perhaps, is going to be sympathetic to the idea of breaking the Ottoman Empire. After all, there was a vocal court party led by the Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich (married to Princess Anastasia of Montenegro) and Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich (married to Princess Milica of Montenegro), which preached breaking of the OE and the direct Russian annexation of the Straits. Grand Duke NN was inspector-general of the Russian cavalry and in this capacity proved to be quite competent and even popular. He was also considered the top military authority in Romanov family, which was not really a big compliment. Grand Duke PN and his wife were known only as the adherents of a mystic cult nick-named "the black peril", a group interested in the occult and characterized by Felix Yusupov as “the central point of the powers of evil”. Two Montenegrin sisters, together with their husbands, had been routinely referenced at the court as “Montenegrin Gang” and behaved accordingly.

Alexander III was keeping them in check but it was expected that a new emperor would not be able to stand up to the pressure and purely physical dominance of NN: while it was pretty much impossible to physically dominate a huge person like the the late emperor, NII was rather short and NN was over 2 meters tall.

Based upon all these considerations, Greece joined the League even if there was no agreement with Bulgaria regarding sharing of the future spoils.

Russia
Now the “Gang” was making very loud noises regarding the need to help the Slavic brothers and to put a cross back on the St.Sophia and giving some unwarranted assurances that this is what is going to happen in a near future. This was their first mistake: NII considered himself the only person entitled to making any statements on behalf of the Russian Empire. The second mistake was making too much noice about Empress Alexandra being German: being a good family man, Nicholas was not going to tolerate attacks on his wife.

Contrary to the expectations and speculations, NII did not cave under pressure from the “Gang”. His was not a naturally strong character like his father but he was not stupid and absolutely hated an idea of being pressured into doing something by the people to whom he did not feel any respect, no matter how tall and loudmouthed they are. The members of the “Gang” had been ridiculed in the press for their occultism and attempts to turn the Russian Empire into a vassal of Montenegro. The inconvenient questions about financial aspect of NN’s activities as inspector general of the cavalry had been raised in the Duma and, “to avoid scandal”, Grand Duke NN was sent to inspect cavalry in the Asian military districts and PN, due to his complete uselessness, was just ordered to stay, with his wife, in his estate near Moscow until further notice.

The German, French, Austrian, Hungarian and Ottoman ambassadors had been reassured in the Russian adherence to the existing course and readiness to support the Ottoman territorial integrity by all means necessary, including the military ones. These assurances had been followed with the secret discussions regarding the plan of the future actions.

General situation.
Austria and Hungary were ready to move troops into the Serb-populated OE territories, and, as the only domestic success of the Ottoman government, the Albanians settled for just an autonomy and the Rumania remained loyal: Prince of Romania, Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, already was de facto independent ruler, had nothing tangible to gain by joining the rebellion but could lose if a stronger victorious Bulgaria will try to take from him Dobrogea with its port of Constanta and control over mouth of the Danube. Plus, he was much closer aligned to the German and Russian foreign policies than members of the Balkan League.

By 1912 both Serbia and Bulgaria used their broad autonomy status (which was pretty much e facto independence) and a general ineptitude of the governments of Abdul Hamid II and then Mehmed V to get strong armies of their own and were looking for both a complete independence and territorial expansions. Bulgaria was planning to get Macedonia and Serbia was going to expand all the way to the north of the Shar Mountains. The intervening area was agreed to be "disputed" and would be arbitrated by the Tsar of Russia in the event of a successful war against the Ottoman Empire (which was taking Russian pro-Slavic position for granted and, moreover, was making it a dog wagged by its tail). It was different with Greece, which also wanted (among other things) Macedonia, but this issue was left in a diplomatic limbo with each of the interested parties expecting to get there first and declare possession by the right of occupation.

Armies of the League (immediately available):

Bulgarian army - 300,000 people 624 guns (could raise up to 100,000 more).
The Greek army -150,000 people with 336 guns (approximately the same number of the reserve troops available).
Montenegrin Army - 22,000 48 field guns, 40 siege guns (approximately 30,000 more were in a process of being mobilized).
Serbian army - 160,000 men, 624 guns.
Total: 632,000 people with 1,632 field and 40 siege guns

Naval forces of the League:

Bulgaria - 6 torpedo boats on the Black Sea.
Greece - one modern armored cruiser, 3 old battleships of Hydra class and 14 destroyers, including 6 new ones.

Aerial forces:

Bulgaria - 14 airplanes and 1 dirigible.

As a cherry on the top, there was an ongoing rebellion in Albania: the Albanians hated the Serbs but wanted to get autonomy and return of Abdul Hamid.

Ottoman Empire, in theory, could raise up to 750,000 troops with 2,318 guns but its mobilization was slow, only few divisions from Asia Minor came in time and the army itself was, once again, passing through the reforms which should be completed only by 1915. When the League attacked, it had ready between 445,000 with 898 guns and these troops were stretched over a very long defensive perimeter with, not a big surprise, fortifications mostly being incomplete. It also had anywhere between 388 and 566 machine guns of a wide variety of types.

Ottoman Navy:
Before arrival of Goeben and Breslau, Ottomans acquired two old Brandenburg-class pre-dreadnought battleships, which became Barbaros Hayreddin and Turgut Reis. Along with the cruisers Hamidiye and Mecidiye, both ships were to form the core of the Ottoman battlefleet. By the summer of 1912, however, they were already in poor condition because of chronic neglect: the rangefinders and ammunition hoists had been removed, the telephones were not working, the pumps were corroded, and most of the watertight doors could no longer be closed. Even with the hasty repairs the Ottoman Empire could rely upon the two former German cruisers and good graces of the Russian Navy. On a cheerful side, each of these two components would be enough to destroy everything that the League had afloat.

The Balkan War.

The hostilities started on March 25 when the Montenegrin troops without declaration of war successfully attacked the Ottomans. Other members of the League followed and had been quite successful. It became clear that the Ottoman troops in their present condition are hardly capable of a successful fighting. As one of their generals put it, “It's not troops, it's bastards! Soldiers only think about how to get to Istanbul as soon as possible, where they are attracted by the smell of Constantinople cuisines. It's impossible to defend yourself successfully with such troops...”
Of course, in some places the Ottomans had been putting a stubborn resistance and even tried to attack but they had been outmanned, outgunned, outgeneralled and, quite often, out of ammunition.

The League looked as a certain winner. For a while…

On April 25 the Greek army was approaching the city of Thessaloniki, a major trading port where there were many foreign consuls. Upon learning of the approach of the Greek army, they asked the commandant of the city to surrender without a fight, as they feared the destruction and looting of Thessaloniki. Commandant, in charge of a garrison 25,000 strong, was inclined to follow the advice but decision was taken out of his hands: the approaching Russian squadron, without bothering with any communications, started shelling the Greek camp located close to the coast. Commander of the Greek Army of Thessaly, Lieutenant-General Panagiotis Danglis [4], had in his disposal up to 100,000 men and considerable part of that force was near the city but an active involvement of a Great Power raised a number of questions. To start with, was Russian Empire at war with Greece? Probably it was but the general did not have any information on this account.

If one keeps waving a white flag long enough, this would be noticed sooner or later and eventually the Russian barrage stopped and a destroyer approached the coast to take the Greek messenger and transport him to the Empress Maria, a flagship of Admiral Ebergard, Commander of the Black Sea Naval Forces. The news which the messenger brought back were not very cheerful; the war was, indeed, declared and the Russian admiral is intended to keep shooting at the Greek troops as long as they are within the range of his guns. And, in case general Danglis did not yet got these news, the cruiser Georgios Averof had been sunk by Yavuz Sultan Selim and France is at war with Greece as well. And, just FYI, if the Greek troops are going to enter the city, by storm or due to the garrison’s capitulation, the admiral will order bombardment of the city as a fair target and the Greeks will be held responsible for the civilian and especially international losses. Anyway, the commandant already received an order to defend the city.

Commandant, indeed, received such an order (the admiral being top ranking allied commander on the spot) together with a gentle warning that disobedience will be treated as a treason by the Ottoman government. The garrison troops, watching chaos in the Greek camp and being stimulated by a promise of execution on the spot, also displayed at least some willingness to fight. On the other side of the equation an idea of storming the city under barrage of a heavy naval artillery did not look very attractive but general Danglis still was ready to try, reasonably expecting that if he procrastinate, the Bulgarian forces will reach the city and it is going to be lost for Greece. However, as the first step he had to relocate his troops placing them on a land side of the city. Of course, they were still within a range of the reasonably big guns but the fire, even corrected by a naval aviation, which was as of now flying over the Greek camp dropping small bombs, would not be too effective. Not that the whole thing looked now too important in a changed geopolitical situation. General decided to inform the government and wait for the instructions.

In the Athens two main proponents of the war were desperately trying to figure the way out of the existing situation while Piraeus was shelled by the Ottoman squadron. By itself this was not such a big deal but, with more information arriving, situation started looking quite bleak even if the direct attack on Greece’s mainland looked unlikely. But if Bulgaria is going to be kicked out of war, then the Ottomans, with the reinforcements from Asia Minor and a naval support, can invade Greece. Chances are that the Crete can be lost: now the powers may disregard the humanitarian considerations and allow the Ottomans to conduct a wholesale slaughter of the active opposition.

The Bulgarian army, having approximately 2:1 numeric advantage and better armed and trained troops, had been spectacularly successful in their advance along all front and already besieged Edrine when the 2nd Squadron of the Black Sea fleet led by just completed battleship Alexander III (second ship of Empress Maria class) bombarded Varna.

With Bulgaria not being an independent state and, formally, just a rebelling principality of the Ottoman Empire, nobody bothered with the declaration of war and Prince Ferdinand was taken completely by surprise.

A naval attack on the main port of the principality was a thing bad enough but, to make things more ominous, it was followed by a massive landing of the Russian troops. The 1st wave consisted of two army corps and was carried practically unopposed. The brave crews of the torpedo boats launched a suicidal attack with a predictable result: all of them had been sunk by the Russian destroyers.

To transport almost 50,000 troops with artillery, supplies and all other equipment, it was necessary to commandeer not just most of the available Russian merchant ships in Black Sea ports but also quite a few Ottoman ships and, with blessing of Emperor Charles II, a number of the French merchant ships in the port of Odessa. Upon unloading, they had been steaming back to load more troops and soon enough it was enough of them to occupy Burgos, the second biggest Bulgarian port.

With practically all mobilized Bulgarian forces being engaged against the Ottomans, Prince Ferdinand simply did not have enough immediately available troops to push the landed Russians into the sea or even contain them in the coastal area and it soon was found that the advance contingents of a much greater Russian force are already marching through the Rumanian territory with a full cooperation of Carol I Prince of Romania (second from the left, below). Most probably, Prince Carol expected, as a payment for his services. a piece of Bulgaria. Perhaps even Varna. Or Varna and Burgos, thus cutting Bulgaria from the sea. But perhaps he was ready to accept status quo with some monetary compensation. These details did not matter as long as he was acting against the Bulgarian interests.

Mobilization of the Bulgarian reserves had been called but it would take time and was not going to produce the numbers adequate for the task because it looked like the new Russian Emperor was fully intended to apply an overwhelming force to show who is the boss on the Balkans and ti minimize his own losses. And this could easily end very bad for Bulgaria. Besides, who said that the Powers involved will not decide to replace hm by some other German (or not German) prince?

There was seemingly still some time: the Russian troops had to march across Rumania and to be transported by the sea, not just appear on the Bulgarian border by a wave of a magic wand. And they’d have to cross the Danube. So all available contingents had been sent to the Danube and those on the front had been ordered to push more aggressively in a hope that the Ottomans will break before help arrives. But would they ‘break’ with an expected arrival of what started looking as at least 200 - 300,000 Russian troops and a complete naval dominance? With Emperor Nicholas being unexpectedly serious and, seemingly, acting in concert with France, Germany, Austria and Hungary, who can guarantee that Nicholas is not going to deploy a whole million?

The part regarding speed of the Russian arrival was quite valid and, while preparations for such an eventuality had started during the reign of AIII, there were no logistical miracles and moving hundreds thousand troops was a complicated process even without a full mobilization. However, preparation of an airfield in the Romanian Craiova was not such a big deal and a distance between Craiova and Sofia is only 184 km as crow (or “Ilya Muromets”) flies, which is just fine for a plane that can fly over 600km without a refueling. Of course, 800 kg of bombs carried by a single plane is not such a big deal but when day by day 30 planes are dropping over 20 tons of explosives on your capital, this becomes very unpleasant on more than one account and you may even began to consider an alternative course of actions.

On the Serbian-Montenegrin front situation was worse. Prince Peter of Serbia found his territory under attack from the north by a theoretically improbable combination of the Hungarian and Austrian forces with Belgrade being besieged and him not having troops to stop the enemies.

Hope for the uprisings in Hungary and Austria proved to be a wishful thinking and, even with the Ottomans in front of his armies retreating, these victories were of no use if his territory was invaded. The invading forces were, so far, rather limited because neither Austria nor Hungary had time for a full mobilization and Austria also had to maintain serious military presence on Italian border. However, the invaders’ numbers kept growing and while the Serbs were not lacking in bravery, they were short of the weapons and the regular troops.
Even the Montenegrin King Nicholas started losing his usual optimism.

The Netherlands. Perils of hunting.
As in a fairy tale, there was a prince. Not exactly Prince Charming but this is not important. The important thing was that this prince, Charles Wilhelm, was a son of Princess Louise of France, the only sister of Emperor of France Charles II Bernadotte, and William Prince of Orange. To add to the picture, he was married to the Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen, a nice of Kaiser Wilhelm II [5] and, of course, of the Alexandra Feodorovna, the Empress of Russia. In other words, the Prince was “everybody’s nephew”. He was wealthy, his wife was beautiful but the things were a little bit …er… complicated because of the “special relations” between the Prince and his father-in-law, Bernhard, heir to the reigning duke of Saxe-Meiningen.

Not that the wives objected but the husbands wanted, from time to time, to have some time away from a family life [6] and, as befitting the true macho men, they decided to go on a hunting trip to Africa. To be specific, to the Dutch Cape Colony. Of course, they were aware of the fighting that was going on to the north of the colony but what exactly did this had to do with them? They hired a yacht called “Panther”, big and presentable enough to fit their status, loaded rifles, ammunition, a lot of booze and other necessities, invited few mutual friends as a company, hoisted flag of the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen (as a heir to the reigning duke, Bernhard had a superior rank) and happily sailed to their destination.

By that time, the British government, being understandably pissed off with the flow of weaponry and volunteers to the Boer Republics, decided to restore the old practice of stopping and searching the neutral ships (with the Boers not having access to the coast, everything was carried by the third party ships by definition) going in a suspected direction. Taking into an account that unrestricted application of this practice may result in the unpleasant consequences like closing Suez canal to all British ships and/or banning the British merchant ships from the Black and Baltic Sea or even from the US ports, captain of the RN had been ordered to act judiciously. Which meant, don’t stop ships of the Great Powers and also Swedish, Danish and Dutch. Unless they behave suspiciously (whatever this may mean).

Protracted patrolling off the coast of Portuguese West Africa had been quite boring, especially taking into an account that a list of those whom you can’t stop was much longer than a list of those whom you can so it is not a big surprise that combination of a heat, crumpled accommodations, lousy food and prolonged seemingly pointless cruising in the open sea made the crew of a British light cruiser rather edgy. So when the a ship steaming under absolutely unknown flag had been spotted, the cruiser’s captain jumped to the opportunity to get at least some entertainment. The ship was ordered to stop and when the order was ignored a shot had been fired across its bow to make a point. The boarding crew had been sent to check the papers, cargo and whatever else including the personal possessions.

On the “Panther” its passengers also had been bored to death by a long trip and, the main available entertainment being drinking, it is not a big surprise that the whole noble company was more than a little bit tipsy and, being top aristocrats, got very irritated by the whole episode. Captain of the yacht was trying to calm down his passengers while trying to explain to the British officer with whom he is dealing but failed on both accounts. The British officer knew enough of the German to figure out that “englische Scheiße” [7] has an offensive meaning and took it personally. Pushing and shoving on both sides followed and while it was impossible to find out who fired the first shot, the result was there: Prince Charles Wilhelm was dead. Duke Bernhard sobered enough to restore his grasp of English and shout: “you just killed nephew of three emperors!” Commander of the boarding crew may not fully grasp the full extent of what just happened but he had enough of a common sense to leave yacht in a hurry and inform his commander about what just happened. In a meantime the radioman of “Panther” sent a message: “Prince Charles Wilhelm was shot by the British.” It was picked up by few ships sailing close enough and by radio stations in French and German South-West Africa.

The war with the Boers was damaging to the British popularity, an idea of stopping and searching the neutral ships definitely did not improve it but “the ‘Panther’ accident” just destroyed whatever was left of it. Stopping a ship in the neutral waters was an arrogance but stopping a ship under the royal standard and killing a member of a royal family who was closely connected to three imperial families was something defying a definition.

The continental press picked up the story and the drunken accident grew into a sinister plot (by you can guess whom) with a purpose to prevent a valiant Prince from going to fight on a side of the freedom-loving Boers. Portraits of the late prince and his widow had been selling as the hot cakes surpassing in popularity even the photos of the movie stars.

The late Prince became, posthumously, Prince Charming and his wife, Fedora, a popular tragic figure and even a subject of a poem “Fedora’s Grief” by a popular Russian poet Korney Chukovsky in which, in the best tradition of the Russian Decadence, the (unnamed) hero travels to Africa disregarding warnings of his wife and ends up being tortured and killed by the evil brigand Barmalei.[8]

But this was all just a noise. The serious part was that, no matter how you are trying to slice and dice it, the British warship did stop in the neutral waters a ship sailing under the royal standard, the boarding crew was warned about presence of the royalties on board but acted violently toward them and killed one of them. Even if the first shot had been fired by a late prince, he was obviously acting in the self-defense when being assaulted.

Apologies from the British government were rejected and the French, German and Dutch government demanded that the whole boarding team and the ship’s commander would be delivered to the Hague (him being Orange-Nassau) for the trial. As expected, this demand was declined and the British counter-offer to conduct investigation and trial in Britain was rejected.

Situation was not, yet, catastrophic but it was definitely beyond “serious”.

___________
[1] As you may notice, there is nothing about an alternative outcome in the case the doctor’s instructions are being followed. The doctors are too smart to be caught in a trap of taking responsibility.
[2] “You'll fall into the ditch,
You will drown in a swamp.
Don't go, wait,
Come back home!”
[3]
«Цесаревич Николай,
Если царствовать придется,
Никогда не забывай,
Что полиция дерется.»
“Tsesarevich Nicholas,
If you’ll have to reign
Never forget
That police is beating the people.”
[4] In OTL chief of staff; the army was commanded by Prince Constantine who ITTL is already a king and does not lead an army.
[5] Credit for this genealogy goes to @Valena.
[6] AFAIK, Duke Bernhard III of Saxe-Meiningen (in 1913 he was just heir to the Duchy) was not involved in anything of the kind. The whole schema inspired by OTL Prince George of Denmark and Greece and his uncle Valdemar of Denmark. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_George_of_Greece_and_Denmark#Marriage_and_family To make the long story short, they had special relations “forever” with a full knowledge of Valdemar’s wife. After George married, Valdemar’s wife explained situation to George’s wife who not just accepted it but became a lover of Valdemar (with George’s full approval and, seemingly in his presence) and then was engaged in a “passionate flirtation” with Valdemar’s son. “In neither case does it appear that George objected, or felt obliged to give the matter any attention” Valdemar’s wife was seemingly OK with all of the above. Then there was a “passionate flirtation” with Aristide Briand. So ITTL is relatively straightforward and simple comparing to the real life. Anyway, my apologies to the ghost of the late Duke Bernhard. 😂
[7] British s—t
[8] As with the hero’s bio, credit for the idea goes to @Valena. Quote in epigraph is, indeed, from “Fedora’s Grief” written by K.Chukovsky. It was a challenge to find in it a piece fitting the narrative because this is actually a children verse about a woman (Fedora) who did not wash her kitchenware and, as a result, all the household items fled from her and returned only after she promised to keep them clean. The quoted piece is a part of her plea to the fleeing things. A part about Barmalei is from his another poem for the children. Needless to say that at the time in question Chukovsky was not yet writing verses for the children: he was a literary critic, correspondent and translator. AFAIK, he had little or nothing to do with the Russian Decadance either. 😂

alexmilman · Jun 13, 2023

358. Wars without victories

“Damn it, I've never seen such an idiotic world war before!”
Gashek, ‘The good soldier Schweik’
“War is fought until victory, period."
Karl von Clausewitz
“I don't believe that Russia wants war. It wants the fruits of war."
Winston Churchill
“The countries, which the President liked had been fighting the just wars of a liberation, the countries which he disliked had been conducting wars unjust and aggressive”
A & B. Strugatsky, ‘The ugly swans.’
“At the end of the XIX century, two squadron battleships "Twelve Apostles" and "Three Saints" were laid down to restore the Black Sea Fleet in the Black Sea. British newspapers wrote hysterically: "Soon the Russian Navy will become stronger than British! For example, on the Black Sea, Russia has laid fifteen newest battleships named after the twelve apostles and three saints!"”
Old joke
“Submarine commander looks at the periscope: - So, we torpedo this ship. Radio operator, when she sends SOS, write down the coordinates. But that's the last time!”
“Navy axiom: if an object is moving - salute, if it doesn't move - paint it!”
“Navy gunnery exercise. The rangefinder operator: - 20 cables short! - Captain: - Slow forward! Advance by 20 cables! "

1913. Europe, Africa and perhaps some other places

A scandal over what was initially called “Panther Incident” but then, due to a Russian poem speedily translated by its author to French and German [1] and thus gaining an European popularity, more and more often being referenced as “Barmalei Affair” (name of the unfortunate commander of the British cruiser being changed in a poem from “Bromley” to “Barmalei”), kept escalating with the newspapers on both sides whipping population on both sides of the Channel into corresponding patriotic frenzies and depraving politicians of any space for maneuver. The underlying facts were blissfully ignored:

The British public was reading about the brave British sailors defending themselves (and, of course, a honor of the RN) against assault by the drunken Dutch imbecile and got enraged by the dastardly demands of the German, French and Dutch governments to deliver these good British boys for a mockery trial and execution.
On the continent the whole thing was presented as an intentional provocation staged by the British government with a purpose to insult Germany, France (and, of course, the Netherlands, if somebody cares) for their sympathy to the brave Boers. And, of course, the British arrogance on the sea can’t be tolerated. Both Wilhelm II and all Parisian ladies of a negotiable moral qualities had been in a complete agreement on this issue and wanted blood, which made less bellicose positions of Emperor Charles II and Queen Wilhelmina rather irrelevant.

With neither side being able to back off without losing face, the governments could only move forward. As an act of defiance, Bromley/Barmalei was promoted and the only answer to this new slap upon a collective continental face was a joined ultimatum from the three offended countries. It was, predictably, rejected and the war declared. Unofficially, it was known as Barmalei War.

At the moment the geopolitical situation looks rather straightforward and easy to grasp. There are few ongoing wars:

Turkish Italian War: Ottoman Empire is at war with Italy but does not really participate in it.
Balkan War:
- Ottoman Empire is also at war with the Balkan League (Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro) two members of which (Bulgaria and Serbia) are not the independent states but the Ottoman vassals and as such can be considered as just the rebels so the countries fighting with them are not actually at war, they are just helping the Ottoman Empire to settle its internal problems.
- Austria and Hungary are at war with Montenegro and are helping the Ottoman Empire against rebellious Serbia.
- Russia is at war with Greece and is helping the Ottoman Empire against rebellious Bulgaria.
- Rumania (Ottoman vassal) is helping Russia and the Ottoman Empire to defeat the rebellious Bulgaria.
- France is formally at war with Greece but they are not fighting each other.
Barmalei War: France, Germany and the Netherlands are at war with Britain. As a byproduct, they may try to help the Boers against Britain.
Boer War: Britain is at war with the Boer republics.

All these wars are going in parallel and, so far, pretty much independently of each other with the only two formal alliances being the Balkan League and Entente Cordiale (France, Germany, Netherlands - only in anti-British activities).

Not fighting:

Russia, Sweden and Denmark (the Baltic League) are formally neutral in the Barmalei War but they are friendly neutral toward Entente Cordiale.
Italy and Austria are not at war with each other but their relations are tense.

On the sidelines:

Government of Japan is contemplating an opportunity to grab something in China and around at either German or British expense but is waiting for a clearly defined loser.
What passes for the government of China may try to play a nationalistic card and attack the “foreign interests” on its territory being somewhat supported by the US government which keeps trying to push through a policy of the earlier buying out of the railroad concessions (held by other powers) by the Chinese government. Potentially, this may end up in a military action if the Chinese government or one of the powerful warlords manages to get enough weapons and money to assemble an army big enough. In case someone is extremely naive and has some illusions, the American companies are justifiably expecting to get better RR tariffs from the Chinese government than they are getting from the current concession holders.
In the US public sentiments are all over the place and ongoing mess in Mexico causes some worries because the revolutionaries tend to dislike “gringos”, even if they are actively buying weapons from them. In a meantime, the US are neutral and ready to sell all types of things to everybody who has money (or a reliable credit). Potentially, expanding of the American commercial interests into the British-controlled southern provinces of China looks as a reasonable application of the open doors policy. The Boers, being an underdog, have a general sympathy and that thing with killing a prince was really nasty.

Barmalei war.

As far as the Barmalei War was involved, it started at the most inconvenient moment for all its participants: none of them was ready and all of them had the ambitious plans for the next few years. A lot had already been said about Britain, Germany and France so how about the Netherlands?

Times when the Dutch were a major naval power had been long gone. By 1913 the Netherlands had:

Coastal defense battleships:
- Three commissioned in 1894-95
- Five commissioned in 1902-04 (each with 2 9.4” guns of main caliber)
- One commissioned in 1909 with 2 280 mm guns.

The protected cruisers:
- Sumatra - 1,693 tons; guns: 1 - 210mm, 1 - 150mm, 2 - 120mm; 2 torpedo tubes; 17 knots.
- K. W.Der Neth. - 4,530 tons; 1- 283mm, 1 - 209mm, 2 - 173mm, 4 - 75mm, 10 - 37mm; 2 torpedo tubes; 15.8 knots.
- Holland class (4 ships) - 3,900 - 4,033 tons; 2 - 150mm, 6 - 120mm, 4 - 76mm; 2 torpedo tubes; 20 knots.

8 destroyers
35 torpedo boats
6 submarines
35 Misc.: 3 armoured gunboats Brinio class (1912), 2 minelayers Hydra class (1911), gunboat Borneo (1892), 2 Nias (1897), 3 Koetei (1898), 8 Hydra (1873-76), 16 Wodan (1877-79).

With the exception of the coastal defense battleships, most of the Dutch fleet was deployed in Batavia.

It just happened that in 1912 the Royal Commission on the defence of the East Indies pushed through funds for an ambitious naval program which involved construction of 9 dreadnoughts. Discussions went on until consensus was achieved on a single design: 24,665 tonnes, 21 knots, eight 13.5 inches (356 mm), sixteen casemated 5.9 inches, and twelve 75 mm guns. The Dutch government itself proposed to even enlarge the chosen proposal. The tender had been won by the German shipyard Germaniawerft but the work did not start, yet.

The first action. When the war started, the main force of the RN was concentrated in the Northern Sea with the Mediterranean Squadron consisting only of 3 battlecruisers (Inflexible, Indomitable and Indefatigable) based on Malta and eight cruisers based on Gibraltar. The bulk of the French fleet was based in Toulon but there was a strong squadron in Tunis including two brand new battleships of the Courbet class (23,475 tons; 21 knot; 12 - 12”guns; belt armor 140-250mm), two semi-dreadnoughts, plus some cruisers and destroyers. The British battlecruisers had a speed advantage (25 - 26 knots) , 8 12” guns and a weaker armor of 100 - 150mm. Just for change, the French reacted faster and the British ships had been intercepted on their way to the Gibraltar. Thanks to the greater speed Indomitable and Inflexible managed to escape with the reasonably small damages but Indefatigable had been sunk. So was one of the French armored cruisers.

The French fleet did not have big ships capable of pursuing the British battlecruisers and its own cruisers were inferior in speed, armor and armament. OTOH, the battlecruisers had been clearly inferior to the modern battleships in the terms of vulnerability and seemingly had problems with precision of their fire.

Anyway, both sides considered this encounter a victory. The Brits because two out of three battlecruisers managed to escape from a grossly superior opponent and the French because they inflicted a much greater loss. For a while, the RN was out of the Mediterranean, Malta was isolated, the Italian government did not risk to join the Barmalei War and Greece was completely isolated so, geopolitically, this was definitely the French success.

The Balkan War.

Plan of Ferdinand of Bulgaria to force the Ottomans to surrender before bulk of the Russian troops will cross the Romanian border started looking as a wishful thinking. Offensive in Thrace kept going well but it started looking pointless and even insane with the homeland being under attack.

The 5th division of the Third Bulgarian army (17,000 infantry, 16 machine guns, 36 guns) was taken from the front and marched toward Burgas occupied by the Russians. This force was inadequate for dealing decisively with a landed force of approximately 15,000 supported by their own and naval artillery and its attacks failed. With more Russian troops landing and marching from Varna, the 5th division had to switch from an attack to defense. It fought bravely but in few days its remains hastily retreated from the city.

The piecemeal approach definitely did not work and Ferdinand grudgingly agreed to take from the front the rest of the 3rd Army and march it toward Burgas. This meant the 4th and 5th divisions (by the start of a war approximately 50,000 infantry with 40 machine guns and 140 guns), 8th cavalry regiment - 400, and army’s artillery - 42 guns. By that time, with the landed troops and those arriving from Varna, Russian force at Burgas amounted almost to 2 army corps units (minus garrison of Varna).

The Russian army corps usually consisted of 2 infantry (rifle) divisions or 4 rifle brigades with their own artillery, a mortar artillery division (12 guns), a demining battalion with an engineering equipment, a telegraph company (as part of a demining battalion) and an air detachment (3-6 aircraft). In wartime, the corps was given a Cossack regiment two hundred of which were at the disposal of infantry division commanders. In total, the fully mobilized corps had 32 infantry battalions, 6 hundred Cossacks, 96 76 mm field guns, 12 howitzers, 64 machine guns, 5 engineering companies, 3-6 aircraft, 13,500 horses and 48,700 personnel.

In other words, the Bulgarian action was too little too late to perform any miracle or even hold position: the Bulgarian 3rd Army, besides being exhausted by the earlier fighting and forced march, had been outnumbered and grossly outgunned. It started retreating toward Plovdiv, exposing left flank of the 2nd Army, which had to abandon siege of Edrine and start retreating from Thrace to avoid being cut off from home. The 1st Army did not have an option but to retreat from Macedonia.

For all practical purposes, Ferdinand’s design of a Great Bulgaria fell apart and, with the Russian army already crossing the Danube, the only reasonable option was to abandon the allies and sue for peace, which was what he did.

There was a brief confusion regarding whom he has to ask for an armistice: he started with the Russian commander, got an answer that Russia is not at war with the principality of Bulgaria and that he had to address the Ottoman government. This misunderstanding was easily cleared by the obvious reason of the Ottomans on one hand being in an extremely lousy situation and OTOH, out of a sense of self-preservation, did not want the Russian occupation of Bulgaria (of course, they are friends but a friendship has its limits and they may be tempted into some “creative” schema at the Ottoman expense). So, with the Russian mediation, the agreement was easily achieved with a return to antebellum status, which would not resolve any issues but probably was better than a continued war.

With Bulgaria out of war, the remaining League members did not have any chance for success. Greece immediately sued for peace with an expectation of getting away with just the reparations. Russia and France did not want to invade it because the results would not worth the trouble and the OE was not in a good shape to do anything on its own so King Constantine got an easy peace and Venizelos survived as his PM.

Serbia and Montenegro were in a worse position because both Austria and Hungary were looking for blood and behaved accordingly helped by the Albanian volunteers and the Ottoman troops. For Serbia the whole thing turned into an issue of a national survival with a big part of the population taking part in defense of their territory. The fighting continued through 1913 but eventually the Russian and French diplomatic efforts resulted in peace and everyone returned to the pre-war borders with a slight adjustment: Austria, which was “administering” Bosnia and Herzegovina since the 1880s, now changed de facto possession to de jure. [2]

Not that Nicholas was some kind of an unselfish pacifist. He did not want Russia bogging down in a prolonged military campaign (with a considerable losses and expenses) that would not benefit Russia more than a restored status quo. The important task of showing who is the real boss in the region was accomplished with the minimal losses, Russian army and navy successfully conducted a complicated join exercise, which could be useful in a future, there was a good reason for the promotions and awards, victorious and almost bloodless campaign was good for a morale at home and in the case of Serbia he acted as a defender of the Slavic brethren while at the same time helping Franz Joseph to get what he wanted. Survival of the reasonably strong Bulgaria and Serbia was going to keep the OE dependent upon the Russian friendship while them still being the Ottoman vassals would allow to preserve at least some semblance of order on the Balkans while avoiding a need to take sides in their inevitable territorial disputes. Besides, with an ongoing Barmalei war, it was to the Russian benefit to have hands as free as possible. Well, of course, France also benefitted from the settlement because there was no need to dedicate its naval forces to the Eastern Med.

Now, to completely resolve the Mediterranean issues and be able to concentrate on the big war, it was in the French interests to put an end to the whole Libyan charade with a minimal waste of the resources. It was quite clear that without a major third party involvement the OE can’t return it while it was equally clear that the Italians can’t get a clear cut victory. The initial Ottoman proposal about transfer territory to Italy (for a reasonable compensation) with preserving a formal Ottoman sovereignty over the vilayets (Egyptian style) had been revived and this time, after spending enormous money and effort, Italy agreed. Of course, in the practical terms OE gave close to nothing because the coastal area was lost, anyway, and the natives inland (the guys in white on the picture below) did not care too much, if at all, about their formal status as long as it did not involve a real submission to somebody (for the next few decades they successfully defied the Italian rule). The glorious peace was celebrated and Italian government finally had something to brag about.

In the Barmalei War Italy declared neutrality: it did not have money for a new military exercise and an alliance with any side had potential dangers.

In the OE the feelings were mixed and the Young Turks (CUP) had been blaming the government for incompetence but the movement split into a number of factions. Only the nationalist, pro-centralization and radical wing remained within CUP and when the Grand Vizier Mahmut Şevket Pasha was assassinated later in 1913 they took over establishing rule of Three Pashas which, with its nationalist program was just looking for trouble. But as of now, everybody was celebrating end of a war which ended up not too bad after all.

_________
[1] In OTL Chukovsky, AFAIK, was translating to Russian but perhaps he could do it other way as well, if properly stimulated.
[2] It seems that I omitted the Bosnia thingy and now it is a little bit too late to get back to “when and how”.

alexmilman · Jun 18, 2023

359. Mostly naval #1

“Captain of an ocean liner addresses the passengers: “There are two new, the good and the bad one. The good news is that we won eleven Oscars…””
“A captain notices a light in the distance, on a collision course with his ship. He turns on his signal lamp and sends, “Change your course, 10 degrees west.” The light signals back, “Change yours, 10 degrees east.” The captain gets a little annoyed. He signals, “I’m a US Navy captain. You must change your course, sir.” The light signals back, “I’m a Seaman First Class. You must change your course, sir.” Now the captain is mad. He signals, “I’m an aircraft carrier. I’m not changing my course.” The light signals back a final message: “I’m a lighthouse. Your call.””
“Why do they actually prefer non-swimmers in the Navy?… They defend their ship with a lot more enthusiasm.”
Unknown sources
“The coming of the wireless era will make war impossible because it will make war ridiculous.”
Guglielmo Marconi, 1912
“To protect Germany’s sea trade and colonies in the existing circumstances there is only one means - Germany must have a battle fleet so strong that even for the adversary with the greatest sea power a war against it would involve such dangers as to imperil his position in the world.”
Von Tirpitz
“The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility.”
John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher
“I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.”
H. G. Wells
“Even if a submarine should work by a miracle, it will never be used. No country in this world would ever use such a vicious and petty form of warfare!” Admiral William Henderson, Royal Navy, 1914

1913. “Barmalei War” starts.
While for all sides involved the “Barmalei War” [1] happened with a rather unfortunate timing for its participants (all of them had been planning to build more floating things within the next few years), this does not mean that at least three major players were fully unprepared in the terms of having at least some strategic plans.

Britain. In theory, Britain was in the most vulnerable position because of the obvious geographic reasons.
“The first and foremost reason why we should have a supreme Navy is our island home [and] our food supply. We require annually at least 33 million quarters of wheat … and we only grow seven quarters ourselves. Where would our country be in case of attack? We should be starving in three weeks, if the supply of food should not come in.” Samuel Roberts, British MP, 1909

However, the food was only a part of the equation. List of the British imports was quite long and the total cost of the imports was well outweighing one of the exports. Britain's export trade grew from £298 million in 1874 to £354 million in 1900. Imports grew more, however, from £668 million to £877 million over the same period.

This imbalance was partly offset by the income from British shipping, worth £76.3 million in 1900, and from financial and insurance services, while huge dividends from overseas investments kept Britain solvent. However, the average annual growth of exports dropped to 0.7% between 1890 and 1900 (compared with a rate of 4.4% in the decade before 1870). For a while, a high-quality coal was “king of the exports” but the numbers of oil-fired ships kept growing and less than 2% of Britain's coal was machine-cut at a time when its rivals were turning to mechanised methods of coal production.

On of the most critical import items was oil. Britain did not have oil of its own and had to rely upon the following options:

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in Southern Persia.
The US (Standard Oil)
Mexico

The Royal Dutch Shell obviously fall apart after declaration of a war: the Dutch were not going to allow enemy (Brits) access to the oil oilfield in Pangkalan Brandan, North Sumatra. Taking into an account that the British part of a company had been providing transportation while the Dutch were doing extration and refining, this created an obvious problem for both sides.

Of course, possession of 40 percent of the world’s merchant shipping tonnage was helpful in bringing the imports in but this also required security of the naval routes and this was going to create problems taking into an account how widely spread the supply sources were. So, “supply and demand” logic implied a need of having huge numbers of the cruisers, long-range destroyers and other vessels capable of protecting the convoys and hunting down the convoy raiders. OTOH, “imperial” logic implied a stress on the dreadnoughts as a tool capable of preventing the enemy’s attack on the British islands by either sinking the enemy’s fleet or by keeping it bottled in the ports. This logic was backed up by a consideration that, with a huge total tonnage of the British merchant fleet it would be rather difficult to sink a noticeable part of it. So the “imperial” (or “mahanian”) logic won the day and for the last few years the main effort of the British naval program was on building the big ships: dreadnoughts and line cruisers (presumably killers of the raiders). Of course, the big numbers of the smaller ships also had been built but it was an open question if they were up to the task to provide an adequate protection of the sea routes.

To perform its main task, an overwhelming majority of the RN had been stationed on the North Sea bases to address the main potential threat coming from Germany. Allocating a major force against the French on the Med was a pointless exercise until the German fleet is being dealt with.

The obvious problem in a conflict was that, with the Suez being closed, the British communication lines had been extremely stretched [2] and to a dangerous degree were passing close to the hostile coasts of the French, Dutch and German colonies in Africa.

British colonies.

Royal Indian Marine : 7 troopships, 2 survey ships, 3 riverboats.
Royal Australian Navy (RAN): battlecruiser HMAS Australia, the light cruisers Melbourne, Sydney, Encounter, small cruiser Pioneer, the destroyers Paramatta, Yarra, Wareggo, submarines AE1, AE2. Plus some old gunboats and torpedo boats.

In total before the war Britain had (in brackets - additional in construction)

Dreadnoughts - 22 (13)
Battlecruisers - 9 (1)
Pre-dreadnoughts - 40
Armored cruisers - 34
Protected cruisers - 52
Scout cruisers - 15
Light cruisers - 20
Destroyers - 221
Torpedo boats - 109
Submarines -73

France.

Most of the French fleet had been located on the Mediterranean with the Atlantic coast and the Channel being protected by the coastal defense ships (old ironclads and Jeune École’s leftovers) and extensive coastal fortifications which were in a construction for quite a few decades and looked quite formidable if one ignores peculiarities of the administrative organization and other issues. Well, anyway, the British attack to land on the French soil did not look realistic and the big guns of the coastal fortifications were a serious factor even if in each specific case it would be an issue to figure out which guns of which specific battery belong to the Navy and which to the Army.

So far, with the Tripolitanian business being resolved to the Italian satisfaction, with an active French help, the French dominance on the Med was a fact accompli and it was expected that both Italy and Austria are going to either remain friendly neutral or will join Entente Cordiale forgetting their old grudges: none of them was going to gain from choosing the British side or even from the British reappearance on the Med. Greece, after losing its only cruiser, ceased to be a factor and OE’s government of “Three Pashas” was seriously considering joining in a view of the British suspicious activities on Arabian Peninsula and sending troops from India to “protect” the oil fields in Persia.

Malta remained the only British foothold inside the Med and was completely isolated so, even with an effective blockade, its capitulation was a matter of a rather short time. With the efficient patrolling of the Alboran Sea and a strong squadron in Tunis, a potential British attempt to run the blockade would be securely intercepted.

With the Med being secured, France was going to make the British presence in Sudan quite uncomfortable by closing Suez and, together with the German squadron on Dahlak Archipelago, completely isolate Port Sudan and perhaps kick the Brits out of the Aden. With most of the available British troops in Africa being engaged against the Boers, situation in Sudan was quite precarious: Ali Dinar, the Sultan of Darfur, was Ottoman loyalist, Southern Sudan was a tribal mess and well-being (and loyalty) of the Northern Sudan was almost completely based upon the exports of cotton which, with both the Nile and the Red Sea being banned, was going to stop causing all types of the local problems.

Further to the East the French were planning to (at least) hold their positions to Indo-China and Southern China, which obviously required cooperation with the allies.

French Navy:

Dreadnoughts - 4 (8)
Semi-dreadnoughts - 6
Pre-dreadnoughts - 14
Coastal defense ships - 1
Armored cruisers - 19
Protected cruisers - 9
Destroyers - 81
Torpedo boats - 17
Small torpedo boats - 170
Submarines - 75

The Netherlands had been now facing a major problem of protecting their colonial empire after decades of neglecting their navy. Fortunately, the Cape Colony was well-developed and almost self sufficient except for the weapons production. It had few destroyers and gunboats of her own, which could come handy. But most of the naval forces had been concentrated in Batavia and they were inadequate in the case of a serious British attack. OTOH, its land force there, KoninklijkNederlands Indisch Leger (KNIL), was over 40,000 strong, well-experienced and most probably capable of repelling any attempt of a hostile landing.

Germany was in a tricky situation. Just as Britain, it strongly depended from the imports but, unlike Britain, majority of these imports could be received from the close neighbors either by land or by a reasonably secured Baltic Sea: the Baltic League explicitly banned all belligerent warships except for “those with ports on the Baltic Sea” and, to make this ban meaningful, Denmark and Sweden had been hastily upgrading fortifications on the Sounds, setting the minefields and moving their coastal defense ships closer to the sea’s entry. Russian Baltic Fleet in Kronstadt was put on a war footing and ongoing construction of the new ships was accelerated.
Kaiserliche Marine retained a possibility to move warships between the Baltic and Northern seas by the canal or by sailing along the Danish coast and then through the Sound but going westward, with a much greater British force placed in the bases of Northern Scotland and Scapa Flow was going to be very risky. However, there was a need to protect the German colonies on the Pacific - they had well-equipped communication posts and could provide a good operational base.

The same applied to the German East Africa colonies. The problem was in a composition of the German Navy.

Germany had [3]:

Dreadnoughts - 18 (9) (*15, 5)
Battlecruisers - 6 (3) (*4,3)
Pre-dreadnoughts - 30 (*22)
Coast defense ships - 8
Armored cruisers - 12 (*8)
Protected cruisers - 17
Light cruisers - 16
Destroyers - 90
Torpedo boats - 115 (approximate equivalent to the British destroyer)
Submarines - 51 (*31)

Kaiserliche Marine (KM) was seriously behind in the cruisers and this was making its effective operations on the ocean routes problematic. It also was seriously behind in the submarines but at that time on both sides their main practical usefulness was considered an ability to set few mines close to the enemy’s coast. Anyway, for anything than a high-risk major battle with the RN there was a need to get a sizable part of the KM out of the North Sea. But what would be its composition? The cruisers of all types were much less numerous than their British counterparts the RN will have an opportunity to strengthen its forces in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans at will while for Germany this would be problematic. The obvious decision was to relocate a very strong force capable of dealing with any realistic opponent, short of a really big detachment from Grand Fleet. To avoid this, KM was supposed to keep making the regular sorties without getting into serious engagements.

Even before the war officially started, almost half of the German cruisers of all types had been discretely moved into the bases in German colonies but almost immediately after declaration of war main force of KM’s dreadnoughts accompanied by few fast light cruisers sailed out of its base, presumably toward Scapa Flow.

The force was, predictably, spotted and the Grand Fleet hastily sailed from its bases to intercept it. But the battle did not happen: the German fleet simply turned back well before the main British force came anywhere close. The whole episode ended up with a long-range shootout between the British battlecruisers of Admiral Beatty and a rear squadron of the KM. When Beatty tried to pursue using battlecruisers’ higher speed, 12” shell wrecked the "Q" turret amidships on Beatty's flagship Lion and soon afterwards the battlecruiser Queen Mary was hit by a salvo which resulted in explosion of her both forward magazines and sunk with all but nine of her 1,275 man crew lost. Even for Beatty this was a sign that a further pursuit was not a good idea and the Germans continued their sail home unobstructed. As a “consolation prize” the Brits sunk a light cruiser. Besides accomplishing their main task, the Germans learned some valuable information:

Desk armor of the British battlecruisers was inadequate to protect from the plunging fire of 12” guns.
The 305 mm 45-caliber guns, standing on the Invincible, Indefatigable and Bellerophone types, had an elevation angle of up to 13.5°, which gave a range of only up to 18,850 yards. German 305 mm 50-caliber guns had an elevation angle of 13.5°, which gave them a range of 19,000 - 21,000 yards (17,400 - 19,200 m). British dreadnoughts: Agincourt - 305 mm, 45 calibers, 16°, 19,000 meters; Canada - 356mm, 20°, 24,060 yards (22,000 meters). German dreadnoughts: Nassau class - 280 mm, 45 calibers, 20°, 22,000 yards (20,100 meters).
The British 9 feet range finders were not very good for aiming at the distances over 10,000 meters.
The British shells (only very few of them managed to hit something) had been exploding immediately on impact, not causing a serious damage. OTOH, the German shell was exploding at 3 - 5 meters behind the shell.

Intermission: The results of the tests carried out before the First World War were presented in the "Memorandum to the Controller" of October 24, 1910. Regarding armor penetration, it was said that 12-inch armor-piercing shells that hit at an angle of more than 20 degrees are unlikely to be able to penetrate even 4-inch (102 mm) armor "KS" (with facial hardening), and when hitting the 6-inch (152 mm) armor "KS" at an angle of 30 degrees, they are likely to collapse. With regard to shells of other calibers, both adopted and developed, it was regretted that they had a similar design, ballistics and very likely to have similar shortcomings to a greater or lesser extent.

Admiral Beatty was not too good in maneuvering, keeping his ships in a proper battle order and assessment of the situation. He definitely had to be lauded in the German press for bravery in a hope that the Brits will keep him in his position or even promote.

However, all this entertainment was just a coverup for the main task: while the RN was distracted, two most modern German battlecruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau [4], accompanied by 8 B-97 class destroyers, made dash South and successfully passed the Channel. These ships had displacement of 32,600 tons, speed 31 knot, 9 × 28 cm/54.5 (11 inch) main caliber guns with a maximum range of 40,930 meters at elevation 40°, the belt armor of 13.8” and desk armor 2 - 4”. Each of them could quite successfully engage British battlecruiser or outrun it.

The destroyers were left to operate from the German West Africa and/or Cape Colony while the big ships sailed directly to the South Pacific.
__________
[1] “BW” for short. Also can be referenced as “The Great War” (“GW”), “War to end all wars” (“WEAW”) or “The Most Idiotic War” (“MIW”), depending upon who is referencing it in which context.
[2] Even in OTL “in the first years of its existence the canal was underutilized and plagued by a series of landslides that shut it down for most of 1915 and 1916, and then again in 1917 and 1920.”
[3] ITTL numbers are higher than OTL’s because Germany did not have to spend enormous resources and money on its army (and because the game has to be more equal not to be as boring as in OTL 😂). In (*) the real numbers.
[4] I’m pretending to be stupid and confusing two armored cruisers of WWI with two battlecruisers (sometimes defined as battleships) of WWII: we know what happened to those of OTL wwi so let’s make the underdog more than a little bit more equal. 😜

alexmilman · Jun 18, 2023

The problem is to find a way to prevent or limit the OTL American economic backup of the OTL’s Entente and, specifically, Britain: with the huge money (and employment) being involved, the American public opinion was inevitably shifting toward Entente and especially Britain.

Options:
1. Now, we can’t just use indiscriminate sinking OTL-style because this will not add popularity to alt-Entente and, anyway, sinking the needed tonnage would be probably impossible. Unless there are some additional factors. Which ones?
2. Getting rid of J.P. Morgan Jr. ? Probably is not a solution: with the huge money at stake the drive will still be there.
3. Perhaps more equal distribution of the American exports to Europe? Business is business and if both sides are buying, why not to sell? In OTL Morgan brokered a deal that positioned his company as the sole munitions and supplies purchaser during World War I for the British and French governments. What if he is doing the same for Britain on one side and France and Germany on the other? After all, with the alternative being present, if not he, somebody else would grab an opportunity for another side: 1% commission on billions of $$ is not a petty cash. Personally, I’d like him to do both sides, just for fun of it (and because so far I have no idea regarding the US financial sector of that time) but if this is too bizarre, I can make it one for each side.
4. Following Fisher’s statement about conducting a ruthless submarine campaign, perhaps we can shift the US public opinion but this works only in combination with the “material factors”.
5. Big Oil. Shell is kicked out by the Dutch so there is a niche for storage and distribution which can be filled by the US companies. Besides, the oil supplies are also needed by France and, to a lesser degree, Germany. Well, and probably by everybody else. Russia is a big player but can’t cover everything and is short on the tankers’ fleet. (in 1913 Russia was producing 7,035 mln. metric tons, US - 4,535, British India - 5,472 , Canada - 4,455, Argentina - 9,380)
6. Russian market. With German and French economies on a military footing, there are openings on the Russian market for “technological imports” not fully covered by a domestic production: cars, locomotives, ships (icebreakers, tankers, cargo ships, etc.) and aluminum (in OTL in 1914 Russia was consuming annually 1,280 tons while producing zero; ITTL production started and is not adequate) - some of the imports are transited to the Entente.

Some combination of the factors? Or something that I missed?

alexmilman · Jun 19, 2023

360. Mostly naval #2

“Army artillery school. - After being fired, the projectile flies above the ground along a curve called a trajectory.
- What if the shell flies over the sea?
- The affairs of the naval artillery are not our business.”
“Whoever commands the sea, commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”
Walter Raleigh
“Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.”
Winston Churchill
“Operations so far north required bases in Scotland, not England; anticipating this need, the navy five years earlier had begun to improve Rosyth, in the Firth of Forth, as the primary base for a North Sea campaign against Germany, with Scapa Flow, in the Orkneys, identified “as another potential main base.”37” “ Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

British pre-war plans. As in the earlier wars, the general British plan was to blockade its Continental enemies to prevent them from trading with the rest of the world. Under the circumstances (absence of the continental idiots ready to fight for the British interests) this was the only available strategy, anyway, even if the logic behind it had huge gaps. But the potential “issues” had been mostly ignored because very little could be done to deal with them. The task was narrowed down to an understandable and seemingly implementable idea of blockading opponents’ Atlantic ports and trans-Atlantic trade. The plan passed through the number of stages:

In 1908 Admiral Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, decided that the traditional close blockade was no longer viable because of the threat from torpedo armed ships and ordered that the blockade ships should withdraw 170 miles at night.
In 1911 Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, his successor, reinstated the plan for a close blockade. However, as well as being very risky, it required twice as many destroyers as the Royal Navy possessed, since one would be in port refuelling and one on the way to or from the port for each one on duty.
In mid-1912, the Admiralty considered replacing the close blockade with an observational one across the North Sea. This was rejected by the new First Sea Lord, Admiral Prince Louis Battenberg as ‘stupid’ because it was still vulnerable to German attack and needed too many ships.
At the start of war, in 1913, the distant blockade had been reintroduced. The Channel Fleet [1] would block access to the English Channel. A line of cruisers from the Shetlands to Norway would block German trans-Atlantic trade. They would be safe from the enemy because the Grand Fleet, the RN’s strongest force, including most of its dreadnoughts and battlecruisers, would frequently patrol the North Sea from its base at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys.

However, at the same time there were voices in favor of maintaining the close blockade by using the submarines. Admiral Sir John Jellicoe wrote that submarines ‘can undoubtedly carry out a blockade of the enemy’s coast in the old sense of the word.’ The most obvious problem with this idea as an absence of a number of the submarines needed for implementing this idea. The Naval Estimates had risen from £31.3 million in 1907-8 to £48.7 million in 1913-14 and to save money the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, even proposed to consider the planned dreadnoughts ‘not as capital ships, but as units of power which could, if desirable, be expressed in any other form.’

RN ships in the rest of the world were mostly old, with the exception of the battlecruiser HMAS Australia, the flagship of the Royal Australian Navy. Their wartime role would be to protect trade and hunt down the German cruisers that were stationed overseas.

Anyway, the distant blockade was introduced and it ruined German plans to whittle down the RN by attacks on British ships carrying out a close blockade. So far, neither Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the Secretary of State for the Imperial Navy Office, nor Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the commander of the High Seas Fleet had a clear solution of this dilemma and just limited activities of the High Sea Fleet to the regular sorties intended to keep the Grand Fleet off balance. On a positive side, a prompt move of a considerable force, including two new battlecruisers, to the “Eastern Theater” made the British naval forces on that theater inadequate for the assigned task.

However, on a grand strategy level the British plan suffered from some fundamental problems:

Britain would try use its effective monopolies in banking, communications and shipping to disrupt the global economy to paralyse Germany and France but this plan could not be carried out because of fears about the impact on Britain and neutral countries, especially the USA.
With the French effective control of the Mediterranean and, especially, the Suez Canal, the British ability to cut off all Entente’s sea trade while keeping bulk of the RN in the North Sea was rather questionable.
With the Entente being backed up by a big friendly-neutral continental block, cutting off “the world trade” was not realistic even if some specific strategically important items still could be problematic.

But, while in some areas the Entente managed to get ahead of Britain, in a very important one Britain was ahead of them. As soon as the war was declared, the British cable ship severed five German overseas underwater cables, which passed from Emden through the English Channel to Vigo, Tenerife, the Azores and the USA. This cut direct German communications to outside Europe, most significantly to the United States. The British could now intercept German coded signals to their embassies and eventually to decode them.

Africa. There was one more very serious issue, an ongoing war in the South Africa. Almost 100,000 British troops were engaged there and they needed a lot of supplies of all types to continue fighting or at least to remain a meaningful battle force. After declaration of a war, these troops had to deal not just with the Boers but also with the French, German and Dutch troops in the nearby colonies and those had at least a secure supply line through Mediterranean-Suez-Red Sea. The shortest British supply line was from India but it was vulnerable to the attacks of the German and French ships based in Djibouti and German East Africa.

With the British own colonies in the Eastern Africa being under attack from North-East and West, some of the troops already had to be moved from Transvaal to protect these territories or, at least, access to the sea. Reinforcements, as well as the supplies, could be brought from India but a potential Ottoman threat to the APOC’s oil fields in Southern Iran and recently purchased 50% shares of the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) operating in Iraq made Mesopotamia a high priority even if the OE was so far neutral.

The Indian Army had 150,000 trained men and the Indian Government offered the services of two cavalry and two infantry divisions for service overseas.

The first detachment of 9,000 under the command of Major General Arthur Aitken landed at Tanga, 80 kilometres (50 mi) from the border of British East Africa, a busy port and the ocean terminal of the important Usambara Railway, which ran from Tanga to Neu Moshi at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. Troops carrying convoy of 14 ships guarded by the British protected cruiser Fox appeared at the port but the German native troops, the Schutztruppe, and the citizens of Tanga were prepared for an attack. The German commander, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, rushed to Tanga. He reinforced the defences (initially only a single company of Askaris) with troops brought in by rail from Neu Moshi, eventually numbering about 1,000 in six companies. In a meantime, the Indian troops landed without an opposition and marched on the city where they met by the defenders.In the ensuing series of the skirmishes the Gurkhas of the Kashmiri Rifles and the 2nd Loyal North Lancashire Regiment managed to advance into the city but other units were not that lucky (some of them just fled). Then Lettow-Vorbeck (who was outnumbered 1:8) arrived with his troops, and enveloped the British flank and rear by launching bayonet attacks along the entire front. The whole British force fled in a complete disorder. Aitken ordered a general withdrawal. In their retreat and evacuation back to the transports that lasted well into the night, the British troops left behind nearly all their equipment. "Lettow-Vorbeck was able to re-arm three Askari companies with modern rifles, for which he now had 600,000 rounds of ammunition. He also had sixteen more machine guns, valuable field telephones" and enough clothing to last the Schutztruppe for a year.

A somewhat linked problem was the British position in Sudan, which now on a verge of the economic collapse and food crisis (with the stress on the cotton production, the Northern Sudan depended upon its sales and on the grain imports from Egypt).

Naval activities. With the big ships mostly being idle in their bases, the most intensive operations of the first stage of a war had been conducted by the minelayers, destroyers and submarines. The first casualty of these actions was the German minelayer (former steam ferry) Königin Luise

sunk by HMS scout cruiser Amphion,

which, in turn, had been sunk after hitting two mines laid by Königin Luise. Sibmarines, on both sides, had been initially used mostly as the minelayers but then there were attempts to use their torpedos as well. Needless to say that initially they were unsuccessful but the crews on both sides had been getting experience. With the merchant ships, for a while, both sides stuck to the international rules. A submarine would surface, raise a flag, order merchant ship to stop (if necessary, fire a warning shot), and send a boarding team to investigate the cargo. If it is legitimate (no weapons or war materials), let the ship to proceed. Otherwise, the crew has to be let on the boats (or into the sub?) and the ship is being sunk. In addition, the whole circus did not apply to the ships with the neutral flag clearly displayed on board, which often was “a false advertisement” (see cartoon below).

But, no matter how cumbersome, the submarine warfare started looking rather promising (and the subs were definitely cheaper to build than the dreadnoughts) so Britain, Germany and France almost immediately embarked upon the subs construction program not paying enough attention to the fact that this new “miracle weapon” is quite vulnerable to the destroyers and small cruisers.

The Pacific. The first task of Royal Australian Navy (RAN) was to seize or neutralise German territories in the Pacific stretching from the Caroline and Marshall Islands in the north, to New Britain and German New Guinea in the south. The British War Office considered it essential that Vice Admiral von Spee's East Asiatic Squadron of the Imperial German Navy should be denied the use of German facilities which represented a formidable network capable of providing intelligence, communication and logistic support to von Spee. Based in Tsingtao in China, the German squadron comprised the battlecruisers SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau and the light cruisers SMS Emden, SMS Nürnberg and SMS Leipzig.

Australia’s major effort was consequently directed at seizing German interests in New Guinea, and in particular New Britain which formed part of the German wireless network.To achieve this objective a volunteer force known as the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF) was hastily raised. It comprised eight companies of infantry, designated ‘A’ thru ‘H’, while 500 naval reservists and time-expired Royal Navy seamen drawn from Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia made up six companies of the Royal Australian Naval Reserve. To convey the expeditionary force to New Guinea the Peninsular and Oriental liner Berrima was chartered by the Commonwealth Government as a transport. In few days she was equipped to carry 1,500 troops and, accompanied by light cruiser Sidney, proceeded in company to Palm Island, situated to the north of Townsville. There Sydney handed over the escort responsibility for Berrima to the light cruiser HMAS Encounter and convoy had been joined by a supply ship Aorangi but the strict orders were received from Rear Admiral Sir George Patey in the

RAN flagship HMAS Australia (Indefatigable-class battlecruiser, 18,500 long tons, 25 knots, 8 12” guns, armor belt 4 - 6”) that the expedition was not to proceed north of Palm Island without a strong naval escort. Patey was involved in Australia’s first naval operation in company with HMAS Melbourne, HMS Psyche, HMS Philomel, and HMS Pyramus with a purpose to escort 1,400 Australian troops to occupy German Samoa. However, this expedition was intercepted by von Spee’s East Asiatic Squadron joined by the French armored cruiser Montcalm (9,177 tons, 21 knots, 2 7.6” guns, armor belt 3.1–5.9”) with the predictable results: it was too weak to fight and too slow to run. Only HMS Philomel managed to escape because nobody paid attention to this small ship. Capture of the German Samoa did not happen and, when the news of Patey’s defeat arrived, expedition to New Britain was hastily abandoned.

Strictly speaking, Germany still had a number of the fundamental problems on the Pacific:

Garrisons of the colonies were seriously understrength and it had to be figured out how to bring there at least 2,000 - 3,000 troops before Britain will send a new squadron to deal with von Spee.
Supplies.
Repairing facilities.

Solution of the last two problems was in the ability to use the regional resources of the allies (both France and the Netherlands had much bigger territories there with the well-established infrastructures) combined with the reliance upon the ports of friendly neutral states, those of the Swedish New Zealand and Russian Pacific. Situation with Japan was less clear: its government still was trying to figure out the most profitable position. As far as the supplies of the military materials were involved, French and Dutch colonies also were going to have the long-term problems. On a balance, Britain would have pretty much the same issues because neither Australia nor India had a big armaments or munition industry.

The neutrals. The “neutrals”, who so far had been pretty much enjoying the show, had been making all types of the “useful advices” on how to make the most effective usage out of the available hardware. However, the serious people saw a terrific business opportunity and tried to use it.

The problem of both belligerent sides was in a fact that they had been heavily dependent upon the imports both from their colonies and from the outside world. The war changed nomenclature of their production and, as a result, structure of their imports creating the obvious problems where to find what you need, how to pay for it and how to transport it. And this was where the things changed from “funny” to “interesting”. Perhaps even “very interesting”.

_________
[1] Few pre-dreadnought battleships and the constantly assigned and reassigned squadrons of 3-6 old cruisers each.

alexmilman · Jun 20, 2023

361. Naval, colonial, etc.

«В жёлтой жаркой Африке, в центральной её части
Как-то вдруг вне графика случилося несчастье.» [1]
V.Vysotsky, ‘What happened in Africa’
«В Сенегале, братцы, в Сенегале
Я такие видел чудеса!
…
Плеск волны, мерцание весла,
Крокодилы, пальмы, баобабы
И жена французского посла.» [2]
A.Gorodnitsky, ‘Wife of the French Ambassador’
“WAR FOR THE COLONY. Wait, filthy savages: you will soon become our happy loyal subjects.”
Karel Čapek
“It's good to have a colony, this is a place from which things are coming from.”
‘Adventures of Prince Florizel’
“The armies and navies of the world are kept up by three causes: cowardice, love of dominion and lust for blood.”
Bertrand Russell

1913-14.
Contrary to everybody’s expectations, the naval war was, so far, rather uneventful. Of course, there were losses on both sides including first in the history sinking of a submarine.

The light cruiser HMS Birmingham, patrolling the North Sea, observed through the mist a submarine stationary on the surface. The sounds of hammering coming from the submarine, which was U15, suggested that her crew were trying to repair an engine fault. Birmingham closed the range and opened fire. U15 moved forward slowly, but Birmingham rammed her and cut her in two. U15 sank with all hands.

On the other side of the equation, the submarines on both sides did not demonstrate an impressive performance: their torpedos were invariably missing the intended targets. Of course, if enough of the submarines would be shooting enough of the torpedoes long enough then sooner or later they would almost definitely hit something smaller than a shoreline but so far statistics simply was not there. There was also a non-zero chance that some ship sooner or later will occasionally hit one of few mines the submarines installed near the enemy’s coast. So an absence of the immediate successes could be written off as a learning curve.

What was somewhat surprising was almost zero level of using the naval aviation even if both sides had the hydroplane transporting ships. A number of these ships was in the single digits and so was a number of the planes each of these ships could carry but there were no efforts to increase these numbers even if these “transporters” were just modified merchant ships and each side had plenty of trained pilots (admittedly on the conventional planes) who were doing nothing: range of the land-based planes was not allowing any meaningful off coast operations.

With India now being the most convenient source of the troops for fighting in Africa and Asia, the British colonial authorities had been preparing the “Indian Expedition Force C” [1] for a repeated attempt to attack the German East Africa and IEF D (6th Poona Division) landed in the port Fao (Persian Gulf) being opposed by 350 Ottoman troops and 4 guns. The early success was guaranteed and less than two weeks later the British troops occupied city of Basra defended by 1,000 Ottoman troops. This put the British in a very strong position, ensuring that Basra and the oilfields would be protected from any future Ottoman advance. In the terms of securing the valuable oil source and, equally important, a refinery, the British actions definitely made a lot of sense.

OTOH, the British invasion forced the OE to abandon its neutrality, on which the Prime Minister, Sait Halim, insisted, and join Entente. The pro-war party led by Enver Pasha, the Ottoman Minister for War, Cemal Pasha, the Minister of Marine, and Talât Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, won. There was already a strong pro-German sentiment in the Ottoman Army, which was trained by the German officers and armed mostly with the German weapons and now Wilhelm II was quite excited and sent a specialist military team of 500 German officers and men.

The mobilization, as planned, would take at least 3 months. Until then the Brits were going to have almost a free hand being opposed only by the small Ottoman detachments and irregulars. In a reality, it was accomplished in 53 days and, due to the general enthusiasm, resulted in assembling much more people than the general staff was expecting with a resulting need to send the older ages back home. The main problems were communications, transportation and weapons. The OE had 55,383 km of the telegraph lines but practically no radio and very little in the terms of field telephones. There were 11,027 km of the railroads but only very few in the Mesopotamia.

Immediately after the declaration of war Germany sent a big number of the 77mm field guns and Maxim machine guns and promised to send the airplanes (with the pilots and technical crews): so far, the Ottoman Army had only few old German-made planes and very few trained pilots and technicians. Taking into an account that the army was predominantly using the German weapons, ammunition supply was not expected to be a major problem. However, shortage of the cars (the whole empire had less than 300 of them including those serving the diplomatic corps) could not be remedied easily.

OE’s entry into the war meant an immediate addition of the Ottoman fleet to the Entente’s Mediterranean force. The most valuable part of this addition was Yavuz Sultan Selim (Goeben).

The French blockade of Malta was going on and, with the French navy being strengthened by an addition of the 1st of the 4 newest dreadnoughts of Courbet class, it was pretty much unrealistic for the RN to break a blockade without significantly weakening its sacred cow, the Grand Fleet taking a nap in Scapa Flow. As a result, Malta’s capitulation was a matter of a reasonably short time without any serious effort or losses on the French side.

Italy, so far, was neutral but position of its government was slowly changing toward siding with the Entente. Experience of the previous wars demonstrated that alignment with Britain was useless: at best, it was providing a minimal help with the supplies and pretty much nothing on the diplomatic arena. OTOH, France helped to negotiate a “victorious” end of war with the Ottomans and was holding a key to the access to the Italian Eritrea and Somalia. So far, the Brits were not doing too well on the seas and in Africa and a number of their enemies kept growing. Openly getting on the British side would mean a war with France and, quite possible that Austria will use an opportunity to regain a part of the lost Italian territory by joining the Entente: after all, most of the French army was not engaged in a current war and Italy would have no chance to stand against the Franco-Austrian attack with no outside help whatsoever. OTOH, joining the Entente at the right moment may allow to get, for example, Kassala in Sudan which was occupied by Italy during the Mahdist War and which it had to occupy on the British demand. Or perhaps a piece of the British East Africa bordering Italian Somalia? Decision was not pressing but, so far, expressing the friendly feelings to France definitely made sense. OTOH, from the Entente perspective it was a big question if Italy as an ally is more useful than friendly neutral country, a status that would allow it to conduct a sea trade unmolested. In the cases of Austria and Hungary this was not even a question and soon enough quite a few ships with a home port in Budapest [4] could be seen on the high seas.

With this considerations in mind, the French high command decided that it is feasible to transfer a part of its cruisers and destroyers to the Djibouti to strengthen Entente’s control over the transportation routes from the British India to the colonies on Africa’s Eastern coast. This move was accompanied by transporting few regiments of the French army to French Somalia and, as a part of the allied effort, part of this naval group travelled further north to escort the chartered passenger and cargo ship carrying the German troops and military supplies to the German East Africa.

Before the British government got a reliable information regarding this operation, the British possession in the East Africa were in a very big trouble because the French troops had been advancing southwards and the German troops led by Lestow-Vorbeck, speedily promoted to a major-general, cut a vital railroad from Mombasa to Uganda.

(Thanks to @Kriss for the map below; the area on the South painted in the British color is actually the Boer states where the fighting is going on)

This meant that the British possessions in East Africa and Sudan had been cut from an outside world and must rely exclusively upon their own resources, unless the blockade is somehow broken from the outside because the colonies themselves hardly could not do this. To make things worse, the French colonial troops started pushing into the British territories from the French Central Africa and Congo. Adding to the picture, a growing dissatisfaction in the Sudan and the unhappiness of the natives of the East Africa pushed out of their land by the settlers from Britain and India and by railroad construction, situation in the region started looking “catastrophic but not serious”. “Catastrophic” by the reasons listed above and “not serious” because the French and Germans did not have enough troops to take advantage of the situation. 😉

In the South Africa the fighting kept going on but now the British colonies of the South started being threatened from the French Congo, French and German colonies of the South-West Africa and the Dutch Cape Colony. As in the north, the Entente’s forces in these colonies were not numerous enough to win a regular war against a big regular British force fighting the Boers but attacks on all sides were required constant redeployments of the British troops. Which, besides exhaustion of the troops, was accelerating “the horse crisis”: as was already mentioned, he horses of the British force had been dying in the big numbers and could not be easily replaced locally so the transportation difficulties had been steadily decreasing the British ability to move. With a growing shortage of the supplies and a need to address the threats from all sides, the British command in South Africa was forced to start switching to a defensive mode and even retreat with the immediate international gloating.

Of course, the German and French colonies in the South-Western Africa also had their own supply problems because naval communications along the Atlantic coast had been problematic for both sides and the land transportation from French Northern and Central Africa was rudimentary, at best. But on the Eastern coast the Entente, with its control of the Suez, was in a better position. Basically, the British situation was quite difficult because the enclaves on the Eastern coast were isolated from each other, the northern one was completely isolated and the southern was greatly dependent upon the supplies by the sea which could not be guaranteed. The British troops had to retreat from a part of the Boers’ territory, which was bad. What was worse, the first haunting photos of the scorched earth policy and concentration camps for the Boers became available to the international press.

If prior to this the British troops in the Boer states were mostly just a butt for the jokes, now s—t hit the fan not only in Europe but in the US as well. The opportunity for sensation was too good for W.R.Hearst to miss and his 28 newspapers went into a full-scale hysteria pretty much forcing the more “level-headed” publications to join at a risk of getting reputation of the heartless bastards.

Of course, Hearst was a king of the yellow press and regularly ridiculed for sensationalism and even inventing the “facts” but millions of people had been reading his newspapers and did not care too much about the “serious journalism”. The photos were there, and so were the reports from Transvaal. The presented facts (grossly dramatized - the public always loved drama) had been sickening and the articles were drawing certain parallels with the British behavior during the American War of Independence.

Of course, on his own, Hearst, regardless his own opinion of his importance, was a relatively small (even if very noisy) potato. However, many “serious people” saw the greater commercial opportunity in satisfying requests coming from both sides then just sticking to one side. Quite a few things could be said in favor of a neutral position in the terms of a great expansion of the American trade and manufacturing with a resulting greater employment, which was always a winning political card.

______________
[1] “In yellow, hot Africa, in its central part
Suddenly happened unscheduled disaster.”
[2] “In Senegal, brothers, in Senegal
I've seen such miracles!
….
Wave splash, oar flickering,
Crocodiles, palm trees, baobabs
And the wife of the French ambassador.”
[3] ITTL “A” is in South Africa (instead of Europe, and is significantly smaller than in OTL), “B” was defeated by Lettow-Vorbeck, “C” is going to do what “B” failed to do and “D” is going to Mesopotamia to “protect” APOC’s oil fields in Iran and in OE.
[4] The Swiss high seas merchant fleet has its home port in Basel.

alexmilman · Jun 23, 2023

362. Finances and other boring things

“Money makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around
Money makes the world go around
It makes the world go 'round.”
‘Cabaret’
“Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man's world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man's world.”
ABBA
«А деньги ваши будут наши — Это бизнес, господа!» [1]
Т.Shaov, ‘We will find our own way.’
«Умело и без опыта
Вытягивайте золото
Вытягивайте золото
Золото, золото.» [2]
Y. Kim
“What right to you have to expect a passionate love if you don’t have money?”
A.Ostrovsky, ‘The last sacrifice’
“- Capital, stretch your tentacles! - You don’t have tentacles? How did you became an actor?”
V.Mayakovsky, “The bath”

Before the war.
“Global finance in the first decade of the 20th century was based on the gold standard, a hybrid public-private system. It was public insofar as it underpinned the national currencies of sovereign countries—59 nations were part of the system —and set the boundaries within which private businesses, banks, and individuals could access trade, finance, and markets. Yet, the central banks whose coordination and mutual assistance kept the gold standard operational were nominally private entities. Moreover, in the decade before the war, the importance of large financial institutions (especially the large clearing banks of the City of London) grew as their gold reserves and lending behavior exercised a larger influence on global financial market conditions. The public and private elements of the system supported each other in stable times, but they could come into conflict in times of crisis. In the event of a crisis central banks would find themselves torn between two responsibilities. The first was to defend their currency’s parity with gold and thereby the entire edifice of the international gold standard. This required raising interest rates and keeping the total volume of money and credit under control, often with contractionary effects. The other responsibility was to act as a lender of last resort for their banking system by supplying emergency liquidity. This necessitated an expansion of credit and a lowering of interest rates.” [4]
So, basically, the states directly involved in fighting had to select from two courses, both of them bad:

Stick to the gold standard for easier borrowing and risking to collapse the economy due to the high interest rates.
Get off the standard expecting to fix the problem after war but risking collapse of the economy due to hyperinflation.

Britain.

Before the war London was a center of the global financial system The most prestigious institutions of the City of London were the five great merchant banks: Rothschilds, Barings, Morgans, Kleinworts, and Schröders. But the biggest entities were the joint-stock banks, institutions such as Westminster (£104m), Lloyds (£107m), and Midland (£109m) that had millions of depositors and connected long-term capital with short-term money markets. In 1912 the City of London financed over 60% of the world’s trade through its discount markets for bills of exchange. The two thirds of global maritime insurance contracts were handled in Britain. 70% of the global telegraph cable network was composed of lines operated by British companies; UK shipping companies carried 55% of the world’s seaborne trade (by comparison, American and French shipping constituted a quarter of the total); and Britain controlled about three quarters of the coking coal annually used by the world’s cargo vessels [4].

The system was well-connected a road but extremely self-centered: only one or two major banks had branches outside the UK.

France.

The financial system of Paris centered around the banques d’affaires: the Crédit Lyonnais (at £113m in 1913, the largest financial institution in the world), the Société Générale (£95m), and the Comptoir National d’Escompte de Paris (£75m), which competed with a set of older but smaller hautes banques focused on government finance and foreign investment in real assets around the world.

Unlike the Brits, French had been quite aggressive in “getting to the people” instead of waiting when the customers will come to them. Their banks had their representatives everywhere and Crédit Lyonnais was the only exception from a rule banning the foreign banks from opening their branches in the Russian Empire: generally, the foreign banks had to participate in a joined venture and the biggest commercial bank in Russia, Russo-Asiatic bank (capital 834.9 million rubles, control over 160 companies with a total capital of over 1 billion) was founded with a heavy participation of the French capital (the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, Crédit Lyonnais, the Comptoir national d'escompte de Paris, and Banque Hottinguer, Banque du Nord).

Germany.

In Berlin, Europe’s third financial center, the main actors were Deutsche Bank (£112m), Disconto Gesellschaft (£58m), and Dresdner Bank (£72m), which were heavily involved in trade finance and lending to industry, while sovereign lending was the prerogative of a small clique of private investment houses such as Mendelssohn & Co. and Bleichröder. On the whole, however, Germany had a much less concentrated financial system, and regional and local savings banks comprised the vast majority of finance capital in the Reich. A potential problem was the fact that Germany was, formally, a set of the states with their own governments and financial needs, which could easily result in a financial chaos.

The US.

In the United States, the financial system was, as in Germany, vast and regionalized. On Wall Street, the power of the major national banks, the Bankers Trust, the National City Bank (£57m), and the Guaranty Trust Co. of New York (£47m), was evident through their role in industrial financing, in which they directly competed with the preeminent investment banks, a group led by J.P. Morgan & Co., but which also included Kidder Peabody & Co., Lee Higginson & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Speyer & Co., and J. & W. Seligman & Co.

War financing.
Taxation was the most direct and traditional way to pay for increased expenditures on war. However, it was playing a reasonably modest role in this war. Taxes paid for at most a quarter of the actual expenses of fighting in Britain, in Germany they amounted to less than 10% and in France none of the ongoing costs of the war were paid out of taxes, which were already committed to covering ordinary peacetime budget outlays. However, the taxation remained important because it helped to control inflation and to uphold the creditworthiness of governments in the eyes of their creditors and potentially could provide a new stream of the revenew.

The war was predominantly financed by the loans and this process had two main aspects:

Type of a loan:
- short-term
- long-term
Source of a loan:
- domestic
- foreign

Short-term or “floating” debt was largely contracted with the central banks or with private banks, and represented a claim on the state by the financial sector.
Long-term debt could be issued to private banks, firms, and citizens.

War loans were large credits to the government to which private individuals and entities could subscribe by putting in their own money. In the hope that they would mobilize large sums of money from the public, governments publicized the war loans as patriotic contributions to the war effort. War loans were the most high-profile form of government borrowing, but they usually contributed to the war effort only temporarily and their issuance was often timed to coincide with successes or the anticipation of the victories, all to solicit maximum subscriptions from citizens. Long-term debt was more secure because, in theory, it could be (sooner or later and sometimes never) repaid after the war.
Short-term debt was easier to mobilize, but its liquidity also meant that its price was more volatile and that it would circulate as a means of payment; they also tended to result in credit expansion and inflation, both of which would eventually become sources of serious economic instability if, as was most often the case, they were not spent on constructive investments that increased production.

Foreign borrowing depended on a country’s position in the global economic hierarchy. Unlike the large volumes of international borrowing before the war—most of which was long-term capital invested in railways, canals, factories, and other real assets—external borrowing in wartime was almost always short-term and meant to cover ongoing expenditures.

Countries also could increase amount of money in circulation by using the central bank to buy government bonds from a national treasury or by altering gold reserves, reserve requirements, and note issuance (for example, temporarily forbidding conversion to gold), etc.

Each of the belligerent countries had the well-developed plans for “financial mobilization” created by the experienced professionals. The only tiny problem with all these plans was that all of them had been based upon a premise (coming from the competent military professionals) that the war is going to last just few months, at most a year. Which, after passage of the first moths of the sluggish activities on the sea and land, started looking as an excessively optimistic scenario on both sides.

France was planning to pay from its accumulated gold reserve, which at $840 million was the second biggest in Europe (after Russia). The Banque de France saw its gold as a “war chest” (trésor de guerre), and after 1911 prepared in the event of war to advance the government 2.9 billion francs in short-term credits in return for three-month treasury bills. It was expected that in the case of war some state intervention in the form of requisitioning, coercive labor practices such as corvée duty, consumption cuts, and various economic controls on prices, capital, and profits may be needed and social compact of the Union sacrée provided some democratic legitimation for such sacrifices. However, France had some serious problems. Already before the war its government debt constituted more than 70 percent of GDP, one of the highest debt burdens among all belligerents. It had introduced an income tax only couple months prior to the start of a war and much of French foreign wealth was long-term capital investment in Central and Eastern Europe that could not be liquidated quickly to raise money. As a result, during the war France borrowed 83.5 percent of its wartime expenditure through a wide variety of debt instruments: national defence bonds, treasury bills (bons du trésor), war loans for public subscription, and foreign borrowing. OTOH, it was lending money to the Ottomans being both debtor and creditor.

Britain entered the war intending to maintain a more normal civil society and economic freedom; this included relative freedom for business and no conscription unless necessary. The orthodox economic view was therefore that war was like any other expenditure—without the money to pay for it, it could not be done. Britain had traditionally funded its wars one third by tax increases and two thirds by borrowing. British war finance was brought onto a relatively more sustainable long-term footing early in the war. The UK benefited enormously from the pre-war reform of its fiscal system, which had introduced a permanent income tax and an efficient collection apparatus. This was partially because London expected that its public finances and stocks of private wealth would enable it to outlast France and Germany, and partially because its grand strategic posture depended less on offensive speed and more on the attrition. Which was, of course, a solid logic, providing the underlying facts had been assessed correctly. Which was the big “IF”.

Germany’s approach to war finance was defined by its political constraints. The German economy was fast-growing and wealthy, but the Reich lacked a federal fiscal structure capable of levying direct taxes to fund its war expenditures. Berlin remained dependent on the individual German states for most of its revenues other than customs duties and a one-off wealth tax passed in 1913. Since there was a hope for a short war, the Reich Treasury and the Reichsbank prioritized speed over sustainability in the mobilization of funds. The establishment of a localized system of regional loan banks (Darlehenskassen) overcame the fiscal weakness of the Reich by enabling enormous decentralized liquidity creation and monetizing of the government debt. These Darlehenskassen were local institutions created to surmount the liquidity shortage of the initial mobilization process. They were maintained taking in short-term deposits of between three and six months and making short-term loans. Unable to fund rising expenditures through long-term debt taken out by the imperial government, the governments of German states and communes borrowed heavily from the Darlehenskassen. If the war was going to last long enough, the whole German financial system potentially could be buried under a huge volume of the printed paper money.

Fighting a war.
Soon after the war started, French and German forms and businesses had been ejected from the London markets and the private and business assets had been confiscated through the special legislation prohibiting trading with the enemy. Of course, they reciprocated immediately. This was painful for both sides but probably somewhat more so for the Entente because British investments in Germany and France were rather modest.

OTOH the British expectation that the continental opponents are going to be strangled by loss of export earnings and shipping income caused by the naval blockade proved to a spectacular failure from the very beginning. The continental Europe remained neutral but it was friendly neutral to the Entente, which meant that Germany and France still had a big market for exporting their manufactured goods: with this being a predominantly naval war only a fraction of their economies had been channeled to the specifically military effort. And, to address this effort, they had a wide set of the sources both in Europe and in the Latin America: both Argentine and Brazil, while being neutral, had strong German communities and sentiments (and not reason to favor Britain) and it did not take them long to figure out the business opportunities. Chile was even worse: when Von Spee and his squadron entered Valparaiso harbour in Chile, they were welcomed as heroes by the German and pro-German population and afterwards the Chilean ports had been serving as the coaling and supply stations to the Entente ships.

The Baltic Sea immediately was out of reach: Denmark-Norway, Sweden and Russia were neutral but what was going to stop Germany from intercepting the British merchant ships? Formally, Britain still could trade with Russia via Arkhangelsk but the “business climate” was getting growingly hostile. As far as crediting financial operations was in involved, there was a single partially British bank in the Russian Empire, Russian-British Bank, and the shares in five Russian banks, which was peanuts comparing with a much larger representation of the French and German financial institutions. Besides, unlike the French and German banks which had been making loans to the Russian government and investments into the Russian industry, the British banks had been mostly involved onto the municipal loans and their footprint in the industry by 1913 was quite small: initially big share of the British capital in the Russian oil industry was greatly diminished due to the series of reforms establishing greater Russian control over the natural resources and the ways in which the joint companies were permitted to operate in the Russian Empire.

The Med and Suez were out of rich and communications with India and East Africa colonies became a risky enterprise due to a need to travel along the hostile coasts. After the French greatly increased the size of their cruiser squadron in the Indian Ocean, it became “high risk” and the longer route Atlantic - Pacific - Indian Ocean started looking as an attractive perspective. Of course, if one manages to avoid squadron of von Spee and the Dutch and French cruisers.

Few months after the war started Britain was quite surprised that over hundred of its merchant ships had been blocked in the Black Sea. Only to think about audacity of these Turks: how dare they to assume that the British invasion of their territory gives them a right to interfere with a free sailing through the Straits and even confiscate the British property? Well, what may one expect from the savages? The unlucky ships (those in the Ottoman Black Sea ports) had been immediately confiscated together with their cargo and the lucky ones got stuck in Odessa and other Russian ports. Their cargo was not confiscated and the crews had been allowed to go to the city as long as they behaved and as long as all dues are being paid properly. If they weren’t the ship and her cargo would be auctioned. If somebody was unhappy, they had been completely free to try breaking through the Straits. Of course, percentage wise, the lost shipping tonnage and cost of the merchandise were minuscule but one more supply line had been cut off.

So, who was strangling whom was an open question. Which made the British-US trade the most important one.

Importance of being neutral.

The US.
At least at the start situation was seemingly favoring Britain due to the position of Wilson Administration. Bank of England did everything in its power to preserve the sterling-dollar exchange rate—it would spend over $2 billion in reserves just to maintain parity and to keep being the major recipient of the American credits. Eventually, the United States lended $3.7 billion to Britain, $1.9 billion to France, and $1 billion to Germany. Of course, the implication was that most of these money are going to be spent on the purchases within the US. Weapons, oil, raw materials, food supplies, etc.

In the US influence enjoyed by the presidents of large financial institutions, holding companies, and industrial conglomerates was certainly enormous. In the early 1914, J.P. Morgan & Co. partner Henry Davison travelled to London to arrange a deal with the Bank of England that made his bank the official sponsor of all credits to the British government floated on American markets. J.P. Morgan & Co. underwrote $1.5 billion in war loans to London over the course of the war. As an investment bank, Morgan was not the largest American bank, but it was the most well-connected. Of course, it was detrimental for its public image (and connection) that it was implicated in arranging credit for London to help with the Boer War but business is business. To both improve the reputation and gain more money, Morgan also floated the French government loans in New York. The US government (aka, WW) initially barred him from doing that but then caved to a public pressure. This way, Morgan was safely covering all bases and he was not alone in doing so even if he was getting most of the not very complimentary PR. Which was plain unjust: he was serving the whole world for a modest 8.3% commission.

There was considerable tension between the Federal Reserve and the Wilson administration over how generous America should be with its money and credit. While the Fed Chairman was supporting a greater credit line, at least to Britain, Woodrow Wilson was keen to discipline what he saw as intra-European imperial recklessness by withholding money, thereby forcing the belligerents to seek a negotiated peace and reaffirming America’s commitment to neutrality and international peace; the self-righteous prick simply did not understood how good the war is going to be for business. He was even planning to order the Fed to instruct American banks and investors to halt foreign currency loans and purchases of foreign securities but, fortunately, was dissuaded. As a result, the US industries were booming, the employment was high and even the workers’ salaries kept growing, within the reasonable limits. Everybody was blessing the domestic peace and, of course, the war in Europe.
The Netherlands had been hit by combination of a need to get directly involved both in a land war in Africa (not that they were doing too much besides selling weapons to the Boers and supplying some volunteers), disruption of the traditional naval communications and a need to re-channel some of them (mostly those of Batavia) to the different route. OTOH, with substituting the British partner with a American, transportation of the Batavian oil kept going on with the minimal issues and even in the increased volume so in this area the things were not bad. In an almost complete absence of the sea-worthy navy in the metropolitan waters (except for few coast defense ships), the naval operations boiled down mostly to the mining approaches to the main ports. Of course, the fishing did suffer seriously and with the North Sea unsafe for civilian ships to sail on, food became scarce until its supply from the Central and Eastern Europe picked up.

Rest of the world.
As a result of the war the traditional transportation routes changed significantly and at least some of the neutral countries had been using situation to their advantage. The traditional trans-Atlantic routes ceased to be safe for the neutral and became plain dangerous to the combatants. Getting materials from the Indian Ocean in the usual way also became tricky because in both cases the merchant ships were goes through the zones infested by the British and Entente’s cruisers hunting each other but even more so the merchant ships and not always paying attention to the flag under which the ship was sailing as long as it was not their flag.

Russia. To at least some degree, the problem, for the Entente, had been resolved by sailing to the north to Vladivostok or to the Japanese Dailan and from there by the railroad to Vladivostok, then by TransSib all the way across Russia and further to Germany, Netherlands or France. The same was true for the transits going from the Western coast of the US across the Pacific. This route was safe but was creating its own problem: an additional stress on the railroad required increased number of the locomotives, train cars and extra maintenance.

Of course, friendship notwithstanding, Russia was going to benefit from being the major supplier of Germany and even France. Its own exports, both raw materials and manufactured goods, greatly increased in volume and they were accompanied by certain “quality” changes, especially at the German expense. For example, before the war wolfram ore mined in Russia was carried to Germany, processed there and the metal was returned to Russia; now, Germany was ready to share technology thus allowing Russia in a near future to have a complete cycle on its own territory. Or synthetic rubber: after Lebedev was able to switch from potato to oil as a source, Germany picked the principle and made production more efficient. But now, under a premise that shipping final product will save transportation volume and cost, the new technology had been disclosed to Russia allowing to expect a sharp domestic production increase in a near future, which would permit to send extra volume to Germany, etc. Growingly important for Germany was import of the aluminum the main producer of which were the US. This was just a transit trade: Russia had a minuscule domestic production of this metal and Germany was already experimenting with building the world’s first full metal aircraft based upon the aluminum alloy [5].

Of course, demand for the food, oil-based products, timber, steel, ores, alloys, cotton, etc. kept growing but besides money Russia was getting the high-quality stuff of which Germany was arguably the best producer: optics, radios, telephones, etc.

As a non-combatant, Russian Empire did not have serious problems with the big volume purchases in the US, especially taking into an account that a part of these purchases was had been done by cash, not credit. In a peacetime nomenclature of the Russian-American trade was rather limited and its volume quite small but now volume of the “Russian imports” increased dramatically with much more merchant ships sailing under its flag and a part of the volume being carried by the American and Japanese vessels.

Japan. A relative newcomer into the world trade, Japan, by the start of a war had been a net debtor with only small gold reserves but its net foreign asset position, boosted by a wartime export and shipping boom, started showing a growing surplus..

Sweden always was Germany’s main supplier of the iron and nickel and now volume of this supply kept growing. The well-developed financial center in Stockholm was on its way of becoming, together with Zurich, to became an attractive hub for the international transactions, providing that, with a little bit of luck, the war will go on long enough to result in financial exhaustion of the major countries.

Denmark. Denmark’s economy was heavily based upon imports of cheap animal feed and exports of animal products, mainly butter and bacon. With the imports still being easily available, and demand for its exports sharply growing (even with the strong competition of the Russian butter and meat), it was doing just fine selling to both sides and getting a lot of money (at a risk of ending up with the inflation) [6].

________
[1] “Your money will be ours - this is just business, gentlemen!”
[2] “With and without experience, keep obtaining gold, keep obtaining gold, gold, gold.”
[3] This, and other jewels of the financial wisdom are borrowed from the “War Finances” by Nicholas Mulder. As (hopefully) you understand, I did not have a clue on the subject. The main problem is to get from the OTL data to the TTL realities without excessively heavy involvement of the ASBs and “pianos in the bushes” (which is just another name of the same ASBs). 😉
[4] With the gradual switch to oil importance of this specific factor had been steadily decreasing but the process was long.
[5] Historic reference: In OTL Junkers J 1 was built in 1915, domestic production of nickel, wolfram, aluminum, etc. started (at least in the industrial volumes) only in the SU, mostly after WWII and the same goes for “borrowing” better German equipment for production of the synthetic rubber (after 1945 it was simply taken as a part of the reparations and copied). But most of the needed technologies had been around earlier. Well, with production of the synthetic rubber starting only in 1920s, the Germans definitely could not improve it in 1910s. 😉
[6] In OTL “the ensuing trade surplus resulted in a trebling of the money supply. As the monetary authorities failed to contain the inflationary effects of this development, value of the Danish currency slumped to about 60 percent of its pre-war value in 1920.”

alexmilman · Jun 25, 2023

363. Top priority

“We had been planning festivities first and then the arrests. Then we decided to combine them.”
G.Gorin, ‘That notorious Munchausen’
“When a king is said to have been kind, then his reign failed.”
Napoleon
“Always remember that the crowd applauding your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People love the show.”
Terry Pratchett
“Never show doubt, never lose your dignity beneath the crown, or it will not fit.”
Robert Greene
“Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.”
Ambrose Bierce

1914.
Military affairs.
The Barmalei War, and now incorporated into it the Boer War, had been sluggishly going on both on the sea and land. Armies and navies on both sides had been demonstrating, from time to time, cases of a modest tactical genius which so far did not produce anything of a serious strategic importance comparing to the ongoing world-wide battle for the credits and supplies.
In the Southern Africa situation was clearly deteriorating into a stalemate, in Mesopotamia the British (mostly Indian) troops kept advancing but the Ottomans already started moving their army into the region. Even a definite Entente’s success in cutting off the British Sudan and East Africa did not produce any immediate results because the Entente’s forces involved were not adequate for a major offensive and it would take time for the British administrations there to exhaust their local resources to a critical degree.
On the seas both sides kept the bulk of their navies in the bases and kept building the new ships and the raiding activities on the trade routes so far looked as an annoyance.

The RN was committed to building four huge brand new super-dreadnoughts, which would be fast (planned 25 knots but in a reality at most 24), burning oil (so far, APOC looked secure and there were those greedy Yanks as well) and had 8 enormous 15” guns. The only tiny, insignificant problem was that designers of an armor had been still living in a world of a close naval combat and, while providing ships with a thick belt protection completely ignored the plunging fire (the desk had armor 1-3”). Which was somewhat silly, taking into an account that the ship’s artillery was a long-range one (over 20,000 meters) and the enemy also had long range naval guns. Anyway, they were still in a process of being completed and when completed, it would be anybody’s guess when and if they are going to be deployed because so far neither side was willing to put its cherished and extremely expensive toys to a serious risk, which tells us that, no matter how stupid their other ideas could be, the people in charge of the naval operations in all warring countries hold a wise position that you are wasting …oops, spending, huge amounts of money not for them to be thrown away in some foolish encounter. Unless, of course, you can guarantee that your force is so much more powerful that it could destroy enemy while suffering just insignificant scratches.

The Germans finally figured out that the existing models of the submarines are not very good for the sea operations and started designing the improved versions but this, also, was not an overnight process. Neither was the German answer to the British super-dreadnoughts.

The French finally had their new dreadnoughts ready, which (at least in an absence of any serious challenge) guaranteed their control of the Med. As a demonstration of the activity, their big ships had been doing rotation in shelling Malta from a reasonably safe distance. Just for not letting the Brits to relax.

Non-military
In a somewhat flattering confusion, a popular perception in the US was Nicholas II being a puppeteer of the ongoing show.

Just as a shape of his beard in Pluck’s cartoon, this notion was detached from the reality even if, indeed, the RE, combined with two other members of the Baltic League, became the most important source of the supplies for Entente and as such an important competitor to the US, which probably explains the cartoon. The truth was that the combatants did not need any encouragement or manipulation, at least for now, and had been engaged in the rather clumsy attempts to cut each other’s throats completely on their own free will.

Probably Woodrow Wilson was much more into the puppeteering business: he had some rather peculiar ideas about creating a new world’s system while all the rest were, by various reasons, just interested in the war going on. Not that he was excessively successful, so far, but he kept trying by somewhat stretching the government’s constitutional functions.

Coronation [2]
Anyway, in the spring of 1914 the alleged puppeteer had to perform an extremely important task that had absolutely nothing to do with the war, he had to be crowned because so far he was an emperor only de facto. First of all, there were 12 moths of a mourning. Then, it was not a good idea to conduct ceremony during the winter or the early spring due to the weather. Then, there were religious events (Great Lent, Easter, Pentecost, etc.), which should not be combined with the secular ones so the first “free” day had to be picked up. Then, some time had to be spent upon the very complicated logistics of the coronation so the date of starting the three weeks long festivities was May 14. [1]

Preparations.

Preparations had been trusted to the Ministry of the Imperial Court. Its Minister, Baron Freedericksz, organized a Coronation Commission, of which he was a head. It included Administrator of the Imperial Cabinet,

Director of the Imperial Theaters Teliakovsky [3]! the head of the Moscow Palace Department and a number of less important personages. The Coronation Office was also created, consisting of 3 departments: administrative, economic and accounting.

The following entities were responsible for the preparatory activities:

His Imperial Majesty's Cabinet, which was engaged in the preparation of coronation regalia, objects, vestments;
Office of the Minister of the Imperial Court, which was in charge of the Bureau of Correspondents, compilation and publication of the "Coronation Collection", distribution of cash benefits;
An expedition of ceremonial cases, where ceremonials were compiled, the participation of foreign top officials was discussed, invitations to celebrations were distributed, as well as other economic issues were resolved;
Hofmarshal's office responsible for the accommodation and maintenance of guests, banquets;
Court stables office;
Moscow Palace Department, which was in control of the interior decoration of the premises and the supply of everything necessary;
Directorate of Imperial Theatres;
Court musical choir;
The Imperial Academy of Arts, which was engaged in the production of illustrations for the "Coronation Collection";
Special establishment for the arrangement of coronation folk spectacles and festivities;
Imperial Headquarters, in Charge of duty and meeting the highest persons;
Office of the palace commandant.

Current affairs were handled by:

His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery;
Office Of Empress Maria Feodorovna;
Office Of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.

According to the official report of the Coronation Commission, the total amount of coronation expenses of the Ministry of the Imperial Court amounted to 6,971,328 rubles and 24 kopecks.

By the April, Moscow was decorated with triumph arches, stands, pavilions and obelisks. Illumination of the Kremlin, made according to the drawings of artists N.N. Karazin, A.M. Prokofyev and A.N. Benoit consisted of five hundred thousand lights installed on the bell tower "Ivan the Great" and the tops of the Kremlin towers by sailors sent by the Maritime Ministry. A bureau was organized for correspondents, headed by the head of the office of the Minister of the Imperial Court, V.S. Krivenko. In total, one hundred and thirty-one representatives of Russian and foreign publications, fifty-seven artists and fifty-nine photographers took part in the coverage of the celebrations.

On February 6, the "Great State Seal" was solemnly moved from the State Vault to the Kemlin Armory, on April 4 - regalia from the Diamond Room of the Winter Palace, and on April 17, carriages intended for the coronation procession were delivered with an emergency train.
Ceremony
All persons participating in the ceremony of solemn entry of the imperial couple into Moscow on May 9 were invited to arrive in Moscow no later than May 5. In accordance with the ceremonial, the solemn entrance was made from Petrovsky Palace along the St. Petersburg Highway and further along Tverskaya-Yamskaya and Tverskaya streets.

Count K.I.Palen was vested with the rank of supreme marshal, the rank of supreme master of ceremonies was assigned to Prince A. V. Dolgorukov. The duties of the herald were performed by an official of the Senate, E. K Pribilsky (look at the beard on photo below; the guy was born for such a duty).

A coronation detachment was formed: 82 battalions, 36 squadrons, 9 hundred and 28 batteries - under the main command of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich, under which a special headquarters was formed. [4]

The Emperor and Empress arrived in Moscow on the birthday of Nicholas II - May 6. The solemn entry of the emperor into Moscow took place on May 9, the feast day of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. The emperor rode a white "English mare Norma... which was provided with silver horseshoes." In the Assumption, Arkhangelsk and Annunciation Cathedrals, the imperial couple venerated the most revered icons and relics.

Intermission: Coronation was a good excuse for finally pardoning Paul Alexandrovich who was expelled from Russia for inappropriate marriage made without permission of Alexander III. After death of his first (proper) wife, he began a relationship with Olga Valerianovna Karnovich, a married woman with three children and, after she divorced her husband, married her against the family opposition. He lived with her in Paris and by 1914 had three children with her. Situation was somewhat piquant because Paul’s daughter from the first marriage, Maria Pavlovna, also lived in Paris being married to the Duke Louis Bernadotte, the second son of the Emperor Charles II of France [5]. Paul Alexandrovich was pardoned, his title and privileges restored and he was made Commander of the Guards Corps. His wife and the children from that marriage became Princess and princes Paley. But Michael, whose unapproved marriage was too recent (1912) to be easily forgiven, still had to remain abroad.

On May 13, the coronation was announced to the public, the transfer of the imperial regalia from the Armory to the throne room of the Kremlin Palace [6] and the rehearsal of the solemn procession to the Assumption Cathedral, during which the emperor, the Empress and the Empress Dowager were replaced by camera pages. Tickets for the celebrations were issued with the signature of the palace commandant according to nominal lists. The published "List of the highest persons and persons who arrived in Moscow for the celebrations of the sacred coronation of their imperial majesty" occupies one hundred and eighteen pages.

On the morning of May 14, on the elevation between the Arkhangelsk and Annunciation Cathedrals, a court musical choir was located, which performed the anthem and "Fanfares" by P.I. Tchaikovsky from the music for Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet". The coronation day started with a lot of noice. At 7 a.m., several artillery guns installed near the Tainitskaya Tower of the Kremlin fired 21 volleys. After that, there was a long chime of bells in the city center. After such an "overture" came the time for the beginning of the main events of the holiday.

"
“... A platoon of brave-looking cavalerguards [7] came down from the porch, trumpets and timpani sounded. On the terraces of the palace there are a brilliant mass of courtiers, representatives of volosts, cities, zemstvos, nobility, merchants, professors of Moscow University, followed by chief prosecutors of the Senate, senators, state secretaries, ministers and members of the State Council. Finally, with the deafening enthusiastic cries of "hooray" of the hundred thousandth masses and the sounds of "God, keep the tsar", performed by the court orchestra, the Sovereign Emperor and the Empress are shown on the Red porch. They go to the cathedral under the golden canopy - the Sovereign is ahead, the Sovereign is behind. Suddenly in an instant everything subsides - music, bells, and shouts of the people - and in the midst of the reverent silence at the southern doors of the cathedral, Metropolitan Sergius of Moscow welcomes Their Majesty with speech. [8] Preceded by the three metropolitans, bishops and clergy, during the singing of the majestic psalm, their Majesties enter the cathedral, where about 10 o'clock the solemn rite of crowning and anointing on the tsardom begins, in which the Orthodox Church puts so much deep meaning, filled with such an important meaning.”
But the torture only started. This was followed by a formal but mandatory procedure. Metropolitan Palladius of St. Petersburg approached the sovereign and asked about his religion. In response, Nicholas II loudly said the Symbol of the Orthodox Faith. [9] After which more prayers followed. Then Metropolitan laid his crossed hands on the emperor’s head and proclaimed a prayer to God to "anoint the tsar with the oil of joy, put on him with force from above, ... gave his scepter of salvation in the right hand, put it on the throne of truth..." After that, the sovereign took the Great Imperial Crown lying on the special pillow and put it on his head and then took the Small Crown from another pillow and laid it on the head of the Empress.

After this NII kneeled and prayed after which he got up and everybody else kneeled and prayed. After all these ritual actions, the classical church service began - the Divine Liturgy. At the end of it, the Metropolitan celebrated the anointing of the king and queen. And then they came to communion [9] and it was finally over.
“We came back to our quarters at half past one. At 3 o'clock we went for the second time in the same procession to the Faceted Chamber to the meal. At 4 o'clock everything ended quite well; with a soul full of gratitude to God, I rested quite later. We had lunch at Mom's, who fortunately withstood all this long test perfectly. At 9 o'clock we went to the upper balcony, from where Alix lit the electric illumination on Ivan the Great and then the towers and walls of the Kremlin, as well as the opposite embankment and Zamoskvorechye, were consistently illuminated. Went to bed early.”

May 15-16 - greetings; illumination;
May 17 - congratulations; transfer of imperial regalia; solemn performance at the Bolshoi Theater;
May 18 - a national holiday; lunch for volost officers in the Petrovsky Palace; a ball with the French ambassador Count de Montebello;
May 19 - lunch for class representatives in the Alexander Hall of the Kremlin Palace;
May 20 - ball with the Moscow Governor-General;
May 21 - church parade (military parade during regimental holidays); lunch at the Austrian embassy; ball of the Moscow nobility;
May 22 - the emperor's trip with the empress to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra;
May 23 - visit to the Moscow City Duma, lunch with British Ambassador N. R. O'Conor, a big ball in the Alexander Hall of the Kremlin Palace;
May 24 - evening musical meeting with German Ambassador G. Breeder, Prince von Radolin;
May 25 - birthday of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna; lunch for ambassadors and envoys in the St. George Hall of the Kremlin Palace;
May 26 - parade of troops; lunch for representatives of Moscow government and class institutions in the Alexander Hall of the Kremlin Palace; departure from Moscow.

In case somebody got the wrong ideas, while the menus of the banquets looked as pieces of art, the contents was not too fancy: borsch, meat pie, cold fish, veal with the greens, fried chicken and game, cucumbers, sweet dish from raspberries, desert. And the other are on the same level. Judging by the contemporary memoirs, a middle class person could have, for an affordable price, a much fancier dinner in the famous Testov restaurant in Moscow.

_______________
[1] I just preserved the date. Probably in 1914 these holidays were on some dates different than in 1896 but I have no idea how the religious calendar was arranged.
[2] For those interested, under the link https://www.prlib.ru/item/421002 you can find a short authentic documentary (only few minutes, not three weeks 😉) of the OTL event - it is below text of the article.
[3] Previous director, Count Volkonsky, was very good but proved to be foolish enough not just to pick up an argument with Mathilda over the ballet costume for a “historic” ballet (she found one with the loops inconvenient for the dance) but went all the way to a certified insanity by fining her for disobedience: 1st, she was too rich to notice such a punishment and 2nd, she did not pay it, anyway, because decision was cancelled by the order from above and Volkonsky was reprimanded. After this he left his position. Presumably, this was to the better because Teliakovsky, regardless of being a cavalryman (he himself acknowledged that this initially was a handicap because the cavalrymen had …er.. “a reputation”) proved to be a very good administrator even if fully cleaning the well-entrenched swamp of the Imperial Theaters was beyond abilities of a mere mortal.
[4] In OTL - Vladimir Alexandrovich but by 1914 Paul was the only uncle left.
[5] In OTL in 1908 she married Prince Carl Wilhelm Ludwig Bernadotte, Duke of Södermanland, whom she divorced in 1914. ITTL, Bernadottes are ruling the different country and this will be a happier marriage by two reasons: 1st, she was bored in Sweden but this hardly could be the case in Paris, 2nd, without wwi (in its OTL form) there is no reason for her to become a nurse in a military hospital, etc. and generally to be underfoot. She was an interesting person but what I’m going to do with her? Well, perhaps some émancipe activities including personal friendship with Coco Chanel? 😜
[6] Including two historic thrones: Nicholas was sitting on the throne of Michael Romanov, founder of the dynasty, and Alexandra on the throne of Alexey I.
[7] Two tallest cavalerguards had been assigned to march directly in front of NII. Just OTL factoid: one on his left side is Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim.
[8] In which he, at some length, lectured Nicholas on a subject in which he is absolutely incompetent: duties of an emperor. All that drivel had to be listened attentively and without impolite interruptions like “proceed to the next item”, “can we have a break? I need to go to a restroom”, or “write it down, I’ll read it at the first opportunity”, etc.
[9] What if he, just for the fun of it, answered “I don’t recall” or “I’m a shamanist”?
[10] A clear indication that, whatever other problems he may had, he definitely had very good kidneys because this circus was already going on from 8AM till 1:30PM.

alexmilman · Jun 29, 2023

364. While the fools are fighting…

“The broken heart of "Madame Butterfly" caused an explosion of laughter in the Empire of the Rising Sun, because none of the kimono wearers was stupid enough to assume that she could stay with her "husband" until the death will part. Usually, the "marriage contract" was concluded with Japanese women for a period of one to three years depending upon how longer the ship would have to stay in the Japanese port. By the time such a contract expired, a new officer appeared, or if the previous "husband" was generous enough and his "wife" could save enough money, she returned back to her family.”
“Emperor Nicholas II has always been tormented by the same question: "What would his father do in his place?"
A.M.Romanov, ‘Memoirs of the Grand Duke A.M.Romanov’
“While the smart man is thinking, the fool is already doing.”
“While the fools are fighting the smart people are making money”
Proverbs

1914.
The US.

Formally, everything was just peachy. More or less. The world’s share of the US manufacturing amounted to 32% with annual steel production was 31,800,000 tons. In 1913, American exports amounted to 2.466 billion dollars, when imports amounted to $1.813 billion.

Then recession kicked in with the contractions of manufacturing and unemployment growth up to 11%. As a result, in 1914 export decreased almost by 100 millions and import increased by 81 million. Still, the GNP was approximately 38.6 billions, so this was serious but not critical. However, the U.S. had problems with the balance of payments and credit deficit. The main financial source of the American economy outside it was Great Britain and international transactions had been made in pounds, not dollars. The foreign (European) investments in the US amounted to $7.2 billion and American in foreign countries - $5 billion. The pure foreign debt was 3 billions or almost 7% of the GDP and, so far, “free market economy” did not allow concentrate the financial resources in the “strategic” sectors including the new areas, which had routinely suffering from the shortage of funds. For example, production of aviation industry amounted only to $2,000,000 and shipbuilding to $100,000. Only 35% of the metallurgy capacities had been engaged and while the agriculture was in a better position, it was dependent upon consumption in the cities which was going to be impacted by coming recession.
The European war came as a blessing. Production of the aviation industry increased, shipbuilding skyrocketed and so did the wheat export and the same goes for many other sectors. And, of course, the weapons producers and those financing them had been successfully lobbying for a considerable strengthening of the US army and navy to meet the potential challenges. There was an intensive discussion about creation of a government-sponsored military-financial corporation that is going to provide a financial backing of the strategically important sectors of economy and (artificially) maintain the course of the government-issued bonds.

And, with everybody looking for the credits, position of the world’s biggest creditor had been shifting from Britain to the other side of the Atlantic. Of course, there was an open question who and how is eventually going to pay the growing national debts but this was an issue of the future, just as the potential byproducts of the overextended credits to the economy and greatly expanded volume of money in circulation. Right now the things were good.
Politically, so far, the interventionist and noninterventionist lobbies had been balancing each other. The first group (representing you can guess whom) wanted bigger contracts to the military industry and the second wanted to profiteer on the broader imports and credits to the combatants.

With no big public sentiment for entering the war (and a general lack of understanding why it is being fought) and no clear winner, the US stuck to the neutrality and making money.

Japan.

So far, Japanese government had been torn between two desires:

To use situation for greatly increasing Japan’s footprint in China peacefully, to a great degree at the British expense.
To enter war on the British side and grab German Kiautschou and then the whole Chinese Shantung province.

The first course involved no risk. When the war started Britain, France and Germany stopped giving loans to what was passing for the Chinese government opening a big niche for Japan. As a result, Japan started establishing effective control over China's metallurgical industry, mining, and coal production founding hundreds industrial enterprises using cheap Chinese raw materials and labor.

However, the militarist party kept advocating a military action arguing that, with the German garrison in Kiautschou is small and isolated and the risk is minimal: Germany is far away and occupied fighting Britain and it is extremely unlikely that Russia was going to start a war on Germany’s behalf.

On the top of all of the above there were:

The US preaching the territorial integrity of China and open doors trade policy; none of which was pleasing Japan.
China appealing to everybody to support its sovereignty and seemingly eager to kick the Europeans out of their concessions.
Britain encouraging Japan to attack the German colony.
German and France encouraging Japan to attack the British positions in China.
Russian position which so far was rather difficult to figure out.

In 1914 Japanese Navy included:

2 dreadnoughts
1 battlecruiser
4 2nd class battlecruisers
10 pre-dreadnoughts
8 armored cruisers
15 protected cruisers
6 light cruisers
1 seaplane carrier
50 destroyers
12 submarines

Which means that it was stronger than what the French, Germans and Dutch or the Brits had in the region. However, the Russian Pacific fleet with its 4 dreadnoughts, 3 pre-dreadnoughts and other ships was a wild card which was definitely an important factor when one decides with whom to make friends against whom.

Russia.
Intermission. In OTL NII was seemingly almost physically afraid of his uncles Vladimir, Sergei and Alexei: they could almost always get what they wanted by shouting on him. To some degree this was also the case with Nicholas Nikolaevich. While AIII was maintaining order in the family by his intimidating personality, NII was trying to avoid the scandals by accommodating his uncles and they used this to their advantage. OTOH, with his own generation (Alexander Mikhailovich and Sergei Mikhailovich also were his “uncles” and AM was his brother in law and pretty much the only close friend) he felt himself much freer in his usual practice of promising things and then reneging on the promises. ITTL these uncles are already dead and he has more “education in governing” but this part of his personality is still there.
Seemingly, the things were going on well. Industry and trade were increasing, Russia was steadily getting rid of the foreign debts and, using the war as an excuse, mostly nationalized the oil industry. But the government had been plagued by the problems the biggest of which was the Emperor himself. His late father taught him a routine of the government but could not teach how to chose people or to get rid of his natural indecisiveness. As the ministers he inherited Witte (PM) and Stolypin (Interior) and, as minister of finances he had a reasonably competent Kokovtsev but the Army and the Foreign Affairs were as close to the disaster as it goes with the Navy being “problematic”.

The Navy.

The Minister of Navy, admiral Dikov, conducted a number of much needed organizational reforms and was quite popular in the navy but he had a big problem: he was expressing an open disdain to the State Duma and the Duma’s leadership was reciprocating in kind, which made obtaining the credits for naval buildup close to impossible and in 1912 he asked to be relieved from his duties and retired from the active service (but remained in the Council of State). His successor, vice-admiral Voevodsky (former Dikov’s deputy), also was at war with the Duma and had to go in 1913 to be replaced by admiral Grigorovich, who had reputation of a capable naval administrator and was able to get for the Navy the huge credits.
But the problems did not stop there. Chief of the General Naval Staff (GNS), vice-admiral Rozdestvensky, was, for all practical purposes, an idiot. To be fair, at least he was not an idiot with initiative but this was not a big consolation because he was not a stubborn idiot either and, while pretending to be a brave idiot, completely lacked a backbone in his communications both with the emperor and “the public”, which, for the time being, was keeping him in his position. Actually, he was not too bad for his specific position, which was strictly bureaucratic (functions of the GNS included: human resources, statistcs, regulations, training, etc.). It is just that he had to be kept out of any practical command and, with NII being rather unpredictable, this was hard to guarantee).

Intermission. OTL conversation between Rozdestvensky and Grand Duke A.M. in the presence of NII and Admiral-General in 1904: “Rozdnstvensky ... said that he was ready to immediately go to Port Arthur and meet the Japanese face to face. His almost Nelsonian speech sounded comical coming from a man who was entrusted with almost all power over our fleet. I reminded him that Russia has the right to expect anything more significant from its naval chiefs than readiness to go down.
"What can I do," he exclaimed: "Public opinion should be satisfied. I know that. I am fully aware that we do not have the slightest chance to win the fight against the Japanese.
- Why didn't you think about it before when you ridiculed Mikado sailors?
"I didn't ridicule," Rozhestvensky objected stubbornly: "I'm ready for the biggest sacrifice. This is the maximum that can be expected from a person.”
And this man with suicide psychology was going to command our fleet!”
The Army.
During the reign of AIII the Military Minister was general Vannvsky whom the emperor knew personally and valued for …er… not rocking the boat. He did not approve of the technical innovations but usually was caving to a pressure so the Russian army was not lagging behind armies of the other Great Powers. However, he was absolutely alien to the issues of a big scale military production, military usage of the railroads, etc. and while innovations in the “conventional” weapons were something he was grudgingly accepted, he completely rejected the brand new ideas like aviation (and the Grand Duke A.M. had to appeal directly to the emperor).

Artillery was in a good shape thanks to its inspector-general, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich who “practically created Russian rapid-fire artillery, laid the foundations of heavy mobile artillery, invariably demanded and personally checked with each officer an ability to conduct a fire from the closed positions and enforced supply of the necessary optical devices”.

Vannovsky retired and NII replaced him with general Rediger. He was one of the few ministers who managed to establish good business relations with the centrist and partly with the right-wing factions of the State Duma, which had a positive impact on the rapid and successful consideration and approval of the army bills submitted to the Duma. The reason for the dismissal was the emperor's dissatisfaction with one of Rediger's speeches in the State Duma, which caused a public outcry (in fact, the Minister of War recognized the fact of dissatisfaction of the current command staff, which immediately caused attacks by the right-wing press, which wrote about the minister's insult of the army).

General Rediger was replaced by general Sukhomlinov. He was a charmer. He also was a graduate of the General Staff Academy, a cavalryman, author of the books on tactics and (which should but did not ring an alarm bell) for a while served under general Dragomirov [1]. While it was already too late to abolish the “useless” innovations that were already adopted, he contributed by denying useful of the internal combustion engines. “War is a fistfight, today this fight will be with the use of an internal combustion engine, so we don't need them.” However, Under Sukhomlinov, reserve and fortress troops were disbanded, due to which field troops were strengthened (the number of army corps increased from 31 to 37) and he created military counter-intelligence.

His relations with State Duma were awful and he never visited it but he was good in getting what he wanted directly from NII and this was quite annoying to his colleagues ministers, especially to Kokovtsev. “I developed my point of view in the most detail to the Sovereign and presented a special statement in which I showed all the unnecessary money that the Minister of War demanded and without which our military training would not have suffered any damage. The amount of these extra loans turned out to be very significant - about 80 million rubles only for 1913. I also presented, as usual, another statement - on unspent loans of the old time - there were more than 180 million rubles.” Nicholas thanked him: “Let's hope that now it will go better and better, and if Sukhomlinov tells Me again that you're interrupting him off in loans, I'll just tell him that I don't want to listen to it anymore, and that it will now be his fault, not you.” ….and soon afterwards requested a new big sum of money on some new Sukhomlinov’s schema in violation of the legal procedures due to the alleged “emergency”. “The analysis of his requirements, which I hastily made, found out that out of 63 million rubles, at least 13 million have already been included in the estimates and cannot demand a secondary allocation - this general Sukhomlinov simply did not know - and ashamed by Kharitonov, naively remarked: "well, so they can be excluded." It turned out that out of the remaining 50 million, only about 20 require an immediate distribution, and more than 30 will be required in mid-1913 or even much later.” And this was just one episode. In general, with his very superficial military education NII simply was no grasping substance of the issue. Kokovtsev again:
“The Sovereign obviously sincerely thought that He supported the army, satisfying the demands of the Minister of War, and did not have the opportunity to delve into all their absurdity. .
When, a few days later, I visited Him with my next report, He completely sincerely and simply told me that after reading the Council's report, He finds that it is better to give money than to refuse it, although it is obvious that they will not be able to use these funds on time, but it is important that the army will know that it is being taken care of and prepared for war.
Again and again, I had to say in vain that the army needs not that according to the estimates of the Military Ministry there are allocated money, but that artillery has guns and shells and there is no shortage of rifles, machine guns and cartridges, and that it is necessary to give and execute the order properly, and not to remake drawings several times and not cancel them. I said all this time, clearly realizing that under such a manager as Sukhomlinov, the whole thing will remain in the same hopeless state and will go with the same turtle step, no matter how much you accumulate fuel material around us.”

Eventually, in 1914 he was accused of making the questionable contracts, mishandling supplies system and other misdeeds.

As a result, he was fired and replaced with general Polivanov who, as a deputy minister, worked with Rediger and then Sukhomlinov and had good relations both with the Council of Minister and with the right-wingers in the Duma. He focused on improving the supply of the army. Supporter of the involvement of the general public in military production. During Polivanov's administration, the acute crisis in supplying the army was generally overcome. The restructuring of the military industry, in which Polivanov played the main role, gave an increase in the production in 1915 (compared to 1914) of rifles by almost 2 times, machine guns - by 4 times, cartridges - by 70 percent, guns - by 2 times, shells - by more than 3 times. At the same time, Polivanov's active contacts with representatives of the large bourgeoisie and in the Duma circles, which reached self-promotion, gave rise to his distrust in the inner circle of Nicholas II. Close friendship with the chairman of the Central Military-Industrial Commission A. I. Guchkov also was “incriminating” but for the next few years he retained position.

He appointed general D.S.Shuvaev a Head of the Main Intendant Directorate of the Ministry of War. Being personally a very honest person Shuvaev accomplished impossible: eradicated corruption in the intendancy. During the reorganization of his directorate he paid a special to strengthening of the technical committee by introducing representatives of civil departments (ministries of finance, trade, industry, etc.), as well as professors of a number of institutes.

Foreign Affairs.
This area was bad. The Russian diplomats traditionally had been the great specialists in protocol, language of the diplomatic messages, etc. Some of them even had been good as the ambassadors. However, as soon as any of them was appointed Minister of the Foreign Affairs, some internal mechanism was clicking in and they either became afraid of their own shadows or started promoting some insane schemas. This phenomena was going back to at least the reign of AII and AIII became “his own Foreign Minister” with Girs serving just as an executor of his orders. Girs was followed by Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, followed by N.P.Shishkin, followed by M.N.Muraviev, followed by V.N.Lamsdorf, followed by A.P.Izvolsky who fell out of favor for conducting the secret negotiations without informing the fellow ministers (and, what’s more unfortunate, these negotiations being unsuccessful and leaked to the press). Now the Minister was S.D.Sazonov, Stolypin’s protege with a rather surprising reputation of being a liberal. Just as Izvolsky, had been suspected in the wrong (anti-Ottoman) sympathies on the Balkans but, unlike his predecessor, managed to keep his personal feelings under control.

The ongoing problem was a prevailing (with the exception of Izvolsky) Eurocentric experience of these ministers and a resulting absence of the first hand knowledge of the Far Eastern affairs. As a result, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich who, on the early stages of his naval career spent three years in Nagasaki, probably had a better knowledge of the subject that Russian Foreign Minister.

Intermission. In OTL the ship on which he was making circumnavigation was, as a part of the trip, stationed in Nagasaki for three years. This was usual practice which both sides seemingly enjoyed. Obviously, the young naval officers were looking for certain “accommodations” and the existing institute of the temporarily marriage served the purpose perfectly. The officers had been living in the nice clean houses with the small beautiful gardens and beautiful local girls trained to make their life comfortable. No stigma had been attached to this occupation and the girls had full respect of their neighbors and families. After visiting households of few of his fellow officers AM was easily persuaded to get follow the trend. Taking into an account his high status, he was presented with an assembly of 60 girls to chose from. According to his memoirs, they were indistinguishable: doll-like, delicate, beautiful and extremely elegant. With his preferred color being blue he picked one in a blue kimono and it worked just fine. The girl was highly resected in the village as a “wife” of a “very important samurai” and everybody involved had been happy. Later, he decided that it will be a good idea to learn Japanese and she acted as his tutor. Then the cable came from his cousin AIII with the instruction to pay an official visit to mikado. Master of the ceremonies at the Japanese court previously served in the same capacity in the German Imperial court and the whole thing was done with a due pomp: special train, 101 guns salute, escort of the mounted Guards, the whole enchilada. During a banquet he was sitting next to the Empress and decided to surprise her by talking without an interpreter. The Empress reacted strangely obviously trying to restrain herself but when he continued talking she brought in laughing and soon the whole table followed. Surprised, he asked if he did not learn Japanese well and got an answer that, on a contrary, he learned it too well and there was even a correct guess in which village exactly he was staying. It just happened that people of that village are talking on some specific dialect which the “true Japanese” find very funny [2]. PM Ito even promised to send girl in question an official gratitude for her pedagogical success.

Of course, there were specialists in the Foreign Ministry but they were hardly present at the high level decision making discussions and, them being in the subordinate positions, it was quite possible that they would be saying something their superiors would like to hear. Taking into an account the increasing importance of Japan and growing mess in China, this shortage of competence made it difficult to define and implement the right Russian policy on the Far East.

____________
[1] Remember, one who denied the magazine rifles, machine guns and other foolish things that may negatively impact the only important thing, the soldier’s spirit.
[2] My personal guess was that that “dialect” was full of the obscenities but unfortunately AM did not provide any details so the funny part remains a mystery.

alexmilman · Jun 30, 2023

365. The challenges

“It is not important how people are voting. What is important is who counts the votes.”
Stalin
[Duma] “More than nine tenths was opposition, and extremely nervously excited.”
“Only one of them [projects introduced by the government], on the allocation of 50 million rubles for the issuance of benefits to victims of crop failure, having passed all instances, became law. All the others remained under discussion.” [1]
L. Panteleev [2]
“For those in power, there is no sin greater than a faint-hearted evasion of responsibility.”
Stolypin

Russia 1914.
The first serious challenge of the reign came in February 1914 when Prime Minister Sergei Witte suddenly died; his quick death was attributed to meningitis or a brain tumor [3]. As his replacement NII chose I.L.Goremikin.

Goremikin was a distinguished figure with a long service in the Senate and widely appreciated adherence to the law. Generally, he was slightly on a liberal side in a traditional meaning of that term (mostly in the area of promoting zemstvos). There was one tiny problem. He was incapable of taking the independent decisions or even of insisting upon his own point of view when communicating with the emperor and held a seemingly reasonable if not necessarily practical view that sooner or later the foolish ideas would die out on their own because their stupidity will become obviois. In Russia circa 1914 this view was extremely naive and optimistic. Anyway, following these principles, as the PM he was inclined to do nothing unless directly ordered by Nicholas. And, taking into an account Nicholas’ own character, this combination could easily became dangerous. But, just because of this quality Nicholas liked him: advice to do nothing was highly appealing.

Another figure with a serious influence on Nicholas was a head of his personal security service, general Trepov [4]. Unlike Goremikin who was competent, quite intelligent but passive, Trepov was ignorant, stupid and extremely energetic. At a slightest problem (most of which were outside his competence) he was going into a full panic mode and coming to Nicholas directly with the projects of how to save him and his family. Needless to say that it would be rather optimistic to expect that these “salvation” projects would turn into a complete disaster if implemented but Nicholas kept paying attention and even “testing water” with his ministers.

His Foreign Minister, Izvolsky (still in position in the early 1914), was an additional “factor of confusion” with his never-ending hysteria about what the foreign country may think about Russia.

Kokovtsev and Stolypin, being in the subordinate positions vis-a-vis Kokovtsev and not closely acquitted with the Emperor, had been restricted in their actions.

In 1913 the term of the current Duma expired [5]. It was dissolved and, with the death of Alexander III and resulting period of mourning, etc., the new one (the 5th Duma) was not called until 1914. A resulting gap resulted in the wide-spread suspicions regarding attempt to cancel the Russian constitution and these suspicions had been playing into the hands of the Cadets (constitutional democrats) and their leftist allies who after fiasco of the 1st Duma had been successfully put into a far political cornerand kept there. Now, using a demagoguery and a weak government’s control over the election campaigns (Nicholas’ position was that it worked so far so what’s the big deal), the cadets were back into a majority and fully intended to make this permanent. Within the first couple days after the Duma was officially opened, the leadership of the majority got engaged in “taking power by storm”. In the address sent to the emperor in response to his opening speech it was declared that the present government must be fired due to a lack of “people’s trust” and replaced by a government answerable to the people’s representatives. State Council must be dissolved and a single-chamber system introduced. All private land ownership must be abolished, all types of “freedoms” introduced and zemstvo and urban institutions must be made completely independent from the government. Cherries on the top were universal suffrage and a broad amnesty of all political prisoners. The address was adopted in a truly democratic manner: the excited majority shouted down all opponents.

The Duma voted for a delegation to be send for delivering this address and, rather predictably, Goremikin informed Chairman of the Duma, Muromtsev, that audience is not going to be granted and the address must be delivered to the Chairmen of the Council of Ministers (Goremikin) who will present it to the Emperor.

Even more predictably, the Duma went amok and got eagerly engaged in unrestricted criticism of the government and writing countless projects of the laws, which, strictly speaking, wasn’t its function.

Kokovtsev:
“…The Duma became a real hotbed of open revolutionary propaganda day by day, to stop which the government had no legal ways, except for which begged itself from the very first minute.”
Taking into an account that the speeches made in Duma had been widely publicized, it was a small surprise that the cabinet was receiving reports from the provinces about the growing “revolutionary unrest”, which was made worse by the fact that nobody had an idea about government’s position in this situation. Nicholas, updated by Goremikin on a daily basis, was doing nothing and Goremikin, true to himself, was waiting for the Emperor’s orders.
The cabinet was uniform in its position that any concession was out of question and this applied both to the conservatives and to those ready to accommodate the new trends if they do not contradict to the laws (both Stolypin and Kokovtsev belonged to the second group). Confiscation of the land and replacement of the government responsible to a monarch with one responsible to the Duma were clear violation of these laws. Cabinet’s declaration emphasized two points: (a) adherence to the established order and protection of the private property and (b) willingness to accommodate wishes of the people’s representatives in the areas of improving the laws and their enforcement.
In his report to the Emperor Kokovtsev warned him that the ongoing commotion hurts Russian funds on the foreign stock exchanges to which NII answered that he does not like the idea of cabinet’s declaration and would rather send his own address directly to the Duma. To which Kokovtsev had to explain that this is not a legal procedure and that it may look as a direct conflict between the monarch and people representatives while he should be a supreme arbiter. Nicholas agreed but remarked “However, let's not run ahead, it happens that the most hopeless disease will pass by some miracle, although there are hardly miracles in such cases.”
Not surprisingly, the declaration which Goremikin read to the Duma did not produce and positive results. It started with V.D.Nabokov exclaiming: “The executive power must obey the legislative power!” and the anti-government speeches followed accompanied by the applauds. At the first break the cabinet members left the Duma members of which continued exercises in self-congratulatory rhetorics and then, accepted declaration with a demand of the government’s dismissal and “returned to the current business”.

“It was quite clear to everyone that any work of the government with the Duma was out of the question, and all judgments revolved only about the question of whether to prepare for the dissolution of the Duma now, or to show a certain restraint and see what turn the meetings of the Duma would take, and whether the adopted resolution would work to some extent as letting the steam out.”
Stolypin, who considered dissolution unavoidable, proposed to wait regardless the troubling news coming from the provinces.

In a meantime the Duma was bombarding the government with countless requests on various subjects and kept is discussing “the agrarian question”, abolishment of the death penalty, etc. Projects of the laws coming from the government had been ignored or, as an option, there were prolonged discussion to which Duma’s commission they had to be sent or if there is a need for a new commission. Occasionally, representatives of individual ministries appeared in the Duma - most often the Military to provide explanations for requests for alleged illegal actions, but in these relatively few cases the Duma turned to a real rally with the most obnoxious insults to government representatives and demands of them to be fired.

Finally, the Ministries of Finances and Interior filed a join request for authorization of an emergency credit for 50,000,000 to help population of the regions impacted by a bad harvest. There were fiery speeches in the Duma regarding this specific issues (with government being accused in all sins), which were blissfully disregarding the fact that the government’s proposal is already submitted and ignored. All representatives of the involved ministers sent to the Duma to ask for expedient processing had been getting the same answer: “it is in a process of development and the Duma knows the people’s needs better”. Finally, the Budget Commission let it know that it is ready to discuss the issue with the Ministry of Finances. Discussion was deviated into the numerous unrelated issues and finally it was declared that the government’s project is not adequately developed and as of now the discussion could be only about a partial authorization of the funds, something under 15,000,000. The rest will be authorized after the ministry produces the additional (unidentified) data and, instead of credit, the government was offered to find 15,000,000 in the “leftovers of the budget” [6]. In the general discussion in the Duma it was more of the same: “defenders of the people” had been busily denouncing the government while emphasizing impossibility to allocate 50 millions and requesting that the government must find them within already approved budget [7].
Goremikin, as usually, refused to do anything. “I understand absurdity of the Duma’s decision but refuse to do anything to change it and convinced that State Council also would not help as, not because we are wrong but because it would not want conflict with the Duma.” He ordered Kokovtsev just to allocate 15 millions and to remember that the legal rules are not applicable anymore. Dissolution was getting more and more inevitable, Nicholas was getting nervous but Goremikin was trying to calm him down assuring that nothing is going to happen.
In Stolypin’s opinion Nicholas was waiting for government taking a clear position regarding the dissolution but, with Goremikin at the helm, this was difficult to expect.

_________
[1] And even about this one he was lying.
[2] First, a member of “Land and Freedom” then member of Kadet party so lying is more or less expected. 😉
[3] In OTL this happened in 1915.
[4] In OTL died in 1906. ITTL this clown lives on a borrowed time.
[5] ITTL the 1st one had been called in 1887 and if we assume that the term was 6 years and that there were some irregularities, like dissolving the Duma before its term expired, then 1913 is a good as any other year.
[6] One of the proposed sources was defunding of the police.
[7] As I noticed above, L.Panteleev was lying.

alexmilman · Jul 1, 2023

366. Developing a backbone

«Друг, обманчивой надежде
Понапрасну ты не верь:
Горе мыкали мы прежде,
Горе мыкаем теперь.» [1]
Unknown author
“Opponents of statehood would like to choose the path of radicalism, the path of liberation from the historical past of Russia, liberation from cultural traditions. They need great upheavals, we need Great Russia!”
“It's a mistake, gentlemen... to approach each question, trying it on existing patterns - liberal, reactionary or conservative. Our opposition is used to touching each government bill with a special litmus test and then staring closely if it turned pink or blue. In vain. Government measures can only be state measures, and these measures, state measures, may be conservative, but can also be deeply liberal.”
“Power is a means of protecting life, tranquility and order, therefore, condemning arbitrariness and autocracy in every possible way, inaction cannot but be considered dangerous.”
P.Stolypin
“Stolypin, full of creative strength, was a brilliant man who strangled anarchy.”
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich
“Any cook can govern the state”
Lenin [2]
“He can’t decide if he is a fish or meat.”
Fieldmarshal Munnich about the Duke of Brunswick

… With all Duma-related circus going on, Nicholas still could not decide upon the course of actions: “I hear from different sources that things are not as bad as it may seem according to speeches in the Duma, and you only need to wait patiently and not be nervous, as the Duma will gradually get involved in the work and see for itself that the state machine is not as simple as it seems to it at first, but personally I think that there is a lot of a dilettantism in this thought … and, personally, I view things absolutely differently.”

In Stolypin’s opinion, two persons of Nicholas’ inner circle had been important: Minister of the Court baron [3] Frederiks and the Palace Commandant D.F.Trepov.

The first has no idea in state affairs, the Sovereign does not consult him about anything, but his personal nobility and devotion to the Sovereign is so beyond any doubt that the Sovereign involuntarily stops his attention on his words and the Empress trusts him as well [4].
Trepov’s position in the state affairs was absolutely unclear but Nicholas trusted him as a person responsible for his security so he could be either an useful ally or a dangerous opponent. And it looked like the second option was more probable because Trepov started talking about idea of a government responsible to the Duma. When he brought this idea to Kokovtsev, he was explained that the idea is problematic, taking into an a count the two-chambers system and Duma’s openly hostile Duma’s attitude toward the monarch’s power, and can result in a complete change of the whole system. Trepov did shut up but remained determined in his idea.

In a meantime the idea of a “responsible government” kept being brought up and Nicholas even got a proposal for such a government that was going to consist exclusively of the Cadet leadership of the Duma except for the ministers of the court, war and navy.

When Nicholas familiarized Kokovtsev with the document he got an explanation that implementation of this plan would mean that all executive power would go to that party and the emperor is going to be deprived of any influence on the state affairs. He would not even be able to fire these ministers because his power over the executive institutions would be gone. In other words, Russian Empire would be turned into something like the British monarchy or perhaps the change would be even deeper. Of course, this would also go against the existing laws and the power is going to be transferred to the people who did not possess any relevant experience.

Even worse, this group already made too many promises to its left wing allies and was too dependent upon their support to be able to accomplish even its own declared program and is going to be swept away by these left elements with unpredictable results [5].

In Kokovtsev’s opinion the only proper course of action would be to dissolute the Duma and change the election law that gave too much of a representation to the peasants and low-level zemstvo intelligencia. While doing this, why not reshuffle the existing government replacing the excessively conservative elements with those more acceptable by the public opinion and introduce more “law and order” in the provinces preventing forceful usurpation of power by the leftist elements. [6] Nicholas looked convinced (however, he asked Kokovtsev to keep conversation secret) but practically immediately after this conversation A.F.Trepov, brother of “the” Trepov, informed Kokovtsev that it was his brother who presented Nicholas with the list and that, knowing his brother’s energy, he is afraid that this insane project may get through. Being bound by the word not to disclose conversation with the Emperor Kokovtsev recommended to talk to Goremikin but Trepov replied that he just had such a conversation “But what do you want to do about him, he has one answer - it's all nonsense, and never the Sovereign will dare to take such a measure, and if he decides, nothing will come of it anyway.” He was not sure about Stolypin’s position and about his brother he said: “He either went crazy or just fell into the hands of people who lost all human meaning because to all my arguments he says one thing - "all is lost and it is necessary to save the Sovereign and the dynasty from the inevitable catastrophe, as if he himself is not pushing it directly into disaster"”.
Fortunately for the regime, Nicholas did reject the whole combination.
In the meetings of the Council of Ministers Stolypin was repeatedly stating that tactics of the Duma leadership is an open attempt of a power grab and a radical change of the structure of the RE. The main obstacle was Goremykin. Stolypin: “I have repeatedly told Goremykin literally the same thing as you say, but he has an original way of thinking; he just doesn't recognize any single government and says that the whole government is in one Tsar and that everything he orders is going to be implemented but while there is no clear order me have to wait and be tolerant.”
Finally, Stolypin decided to report to Nicholas that a further procrastination is impossible and, if Nicholas disagrees, to offer his resignation. In his opinion dissolution of the Duma was not going to cause any serious upheaval anywhere, an opinion strengthened by the reports from the Duma itself telling that the growing numbers of people start understanding what a dangerous game the people representatives are playing and that the consequences may be dangerous for them personally if the “awoken beast” will get out of control.

Outside the government an idea of Goremykin’s removal and forming a cabinet out of the people “from the system” but with more modern views also was getting a popularity. It even did penetrate the Imperial Yacht Club where it was actively supported by the Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich who openly blamed everything on Goremykin and his entourage.

Intermission. The St-Petersburg Imperial Yacht Club was opened in 1846. Members of the yacht club were Grand Dukes, courtiers, diplomats, high-ranking officials and guards officers. In a certain period of existence of the yacht club, there was a limit on the total number of its members - no more than 125. The yacht club overshadowed "all decisively clubs in Russia with its brilliance, splendor and influence." Members of the imperial family and representatives of the diplomatic corps were admitted to the yacht club without a ballot, but for the rest of the candidates there was the strictest filtration, never practiced in other clubs: one black ball destroyed five whites, and among the visitors to the yacht club there were members who always put black balls to everyone. In the club you could find out all the latest news court, service, public, political, and theatrical.
And this implied that Goremykin’s tenure as PM is going to end really soon. With this in mind Stolypin and Kokovtsev started the all-important discussions about who is going to be who in a new government. It was clear that, taking into an account the generally disturbing situation, Stolypin, as the Minister of Interior has to be a PM. But composition of the government was a different issue. Kokovtsev was going to stay in his present position but Stolypin’s ideas about potential inclusion of some “public figures” brought his objections. Quite reasonably, he argued that it would be rather difficult for him to deal with the people who have zero administrative experience: who know what types of the requests would they present to the Finance Ministry and if these requests are going to be realistic, to start with. So, before giving his own agreement, he wanted a clarity on that issue, a request which Stolypin found quite reasonable. As a side note, Stolypin did not inform Kokovtsev that he already had talks with Izvolsky, a big supporter of the idea of the “ministry of public trust”, and some representatives of the Cadet party [7].
Well, anyway, all attempts to invade into the government “public figures” failed because it is one thing to criticize government while being a member of irresponsible opposition and quite another to became a subject of others critics, not to mention a need of a heavy responsible work: “They need power for power and even more applause from like-minded people, and going with someone together for common work is a completely different matter.”

Finally, there was a cabinet meeting to which Goremykin and Stolypin came directly from the audience with the Emperor. Goremykin came first, looking extremely happy, and declared: “Ca y est! Congratulate me, gentlemen, with the greatest mercy that the Sovereign could have given me; I have been relieved of the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers and P. A. Stolypin, is appointed in this position, of course, retaining the post of Minister of Internal Affairs.”
To the questions regarding the Duma he answered that all details will be given by the new Chairman but that dissolution will happen two days later, the imperial rescript is signed and must be made public immediately but he is too tired to talk about anything and wants to go to bed but tomorrow will be happy to see them, if they still have some questions after conversation with Stolypin.

Stolypin returned later and told the whole story. Before audience he was met by quite excited baron Frederiks and listened to a whole stream of words from him, said incoherently, but reduced to the fact that the Sovereign decided to dissolve the Duma, that this decision could result in the most fatal consequences, to the collapse of the monarchy inclusive, that it should not be carried out, without trying all available means, etc. In his opinion, the Duma was in fight with the government but loyal to the Emperor and if he addresses the Duma personally and explains that he is not happy with the Duma’s attitude and asks them to change it or he will be forced to take measures allowed by the laws, then the Duma definitely will express its loyalty to the Sovereign and will get to a productive work.
Stolypin tried to convince him that this course is foolish but to no avail. Fortunately, the conversation was interrupted by invitation to the audience. Nicholas was absolutely calm and told the new PM that he is convinced that dissolution of the Duma can’t be postponed anymore. “Otherwise all of us and I, first of all, will be held responsible for our weakness and indecision. God knows what will happen if not to disband this hotbed of the calls for rebellion, disobedience to the authorities, bullying them and the undisguised desire to snatch power from the hands of the government that I appointed, and take it into their own hands and then immediately deprive Me of all power and turn into an obedient tool of their aspirations and at a slightest disagreement simply remove Me.” It looked like, at least temporarily, Nicholas developed a backbone.

Stick. Newly appointed PM assured Nicholas that all cabinet is in a full agreement on this issue and (conversation was on Friday, July 7) that the decision should be implemented on Sunday and unexpectedly, to avoid the complications. The rescript must be signed, delivered to the Minister of Justice, printed in the Senate’s typography, with the measures taken to prevent leaks of the information, and on Sunday the official government’s bulletin will be published, informing about the Duma’s dissolution together with the information regarding the new appointment. This leaflet must be placed throughout the city and one copy on the doors of the State Duma. The building itself (Tavria Palace) must be occupied by a strong reliable detachment and entry into it will be forbidden. Just in case, Stolypin will talk with the Military Minister about strengthening capital’s garrison by discretely moving into it few cavalry regiments of the Guards and by placing the military detachments into the important points of the city.

Carrot. However, Stolypin also requested to remove from the State Council few members openly hostile to the notion of the public representation to calm down the moderate elements of the opposition.

The whole “operation” did not cause any problems: most of the Duma members took train to Vyborg and tried to “open” Duma session there. However, this was just a pointless demonstration. The Duma was dissolved and the new energetic PM was in charge. The new Duma, according to the law, was planned to open on February 20 next year. In a meantime a new election law is going to be written.
____________
[1] Epigram based upon meaning of “Goremykin” = “sufferer”:
“Friend, deceptive hope
Don't believe in vain:
We been suffering before,
We are suffering now.”
[2] He did not mention the results. 😂
[3] Frederiks is being referenced both as “baron” and as “count”. He was a baron in Finland and count in Russia (Finland did not recognize his Russian title) and even in Russia both titles had been used. I’m preserving it the OTL way, especially in the quotes.
[4] And (who said that the Imperial Ballet is less important that other imperial institutions?) the Great Matilda found him invaluable for her performance: when one is doing fuetes (which, ideally, should be done without moving from the starting point) it is extremely important (as per Matilda) to have a point of which you can concentrate your eyes. Frederiks was always sitting on the same place in the first row and the scene lights were reflecting from the diamonds of his numerous awards thus providing a perfect “reference point”. Now, keeping in mind that at this time Matilda lived with two Grand Dukes and even had a son from one of them (nobody knew from which one and none of those involved seemingly cared), her performance was definitely the “imperial business”. So, whichever way you are looking at him, he was a very useful person to the imperial family.
[5] Pretty much as did happen in OTL after February Revolution.
[6] Unfortunately, Stolypin did not leave any memoirs but his speeches in the 2nd Duma contain statements to the same effect so most probably Kokovtsev was not the only one telling these things to Nicholas.
[7] This information came later from the Cadet leaders and, as such, is somewhat suspicious.

alexmilman · Jul 2, 2023

367. Everybody has fun

“We are having fun!”
‘Kindergarten cop’
“The Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity, they do not have national spirit… they are just a heap of loose sand.”
Sun Yat-sen
“Yuan Shikai thought that it was human nature to tremble before a flashing knife and to go crazy for yellow gold. Both of these weapons he used to rule the empire.”
Liang Qichao
“…must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.”
Woodrow Wilson
“Between France and England the best thing is English Channel.”
Douglas Jerrold
“English is just poorly pronounced French.”
Clemenceau
“We have no quarrel with the German nation,
One would not quarrel with a flock of sheep.
But, generation after generation,
They throw up leaders who disturb our sleep.”
Alan Herbert

China.

The political events in China were somewhat similar to those in Russia. President Yuan Shikai was obliged to conduct the elections to the National Assembly in February 1913 and they ended up with a victory of KMT – "Chinese Nationalist Party". Song Jiaoren, an appointee of the party leader Sun Yat-sen, proved to be a good organizer and KMT won 269 of 596 seats in the House of Representatives and 123 of 274 seats in the Senate. Song Jiaoren became a most probably candidate to the PM position and his proclaimed goal, unsurprisingly, was to limit the powers of the president’s position. Which, also unsurprisingly, was going contrary to the Yuan’s own ideas on this specific subject. It was, of course, a pure coincidence that Song had been shot by a lone gunman, which probably qualified as “self-inflicted wound”. A deadly one - some people simply don’t take a serious care of their own health. There was probably some kind of a minor epidemics as a result of which all people investigated either died or mysteriously disappeared (these viruses can be quite weird).
But learning on other’s experiences is not always working and after arriving in Peking, the elected Parliament attempted to gain control over Yuan, to develop a permanent constitution, and to hold a legitimate, open presidential election. These guys were also critical of Yuan’s handling of a national budget (he managed to authorize $100,000,000 “reconstruction loan” just before the Barmalei War started and before newly-elected Woodrow Wilson cancelled financial policy of his predecessor). To sum it up, the KMT was just looking for trouble and got it. Yuan successfully cracked on KMT y suppressing or bribing the parliamentarians and replacing pro-KMT governors with the loyal ones.

Sun Yat-sen behaved in his usual way: fled to Japan in August 1913, and from there called for a Second Revolution. Yuan Shikai also behaved in his usual way: used the army to dissolve the national and provincial assemblies and replace them with the newly formed "Council of State", with Duan Qirui, his trusted Beiyang lieutenant, as prime minister. Finally, Yuan had himself elected president to a five-year term, publicly labelled the KMT a seditious organization, ordered the KMT's dissolution, and evicted all its members from Parliament. The KMT's "Second Revolution" ended in failure as Yuan's troops achieved complete victory over revolutionary uprisings. In January 1914, China's Parliament was formally dissolved and Yuan got practically unlimited powers over China's military, finances, foreign policy, and the rights of China's citizens. Yuan justified these reforms by stating that representative democracy had been proven inefficient by political infighting. Probably not too smart move was to supply the provinces with the military governors, each with his own army but this worked for the time being.

Actually, with the “reconstruction loan” being provided not only by the neutral Russia and Japan but also by France, Britain and Germany, Yuan could expect that, no matter which side wins, loan from the losing one probably could be shrugged off and that the winner is going to be too busy with other issues to press the unpleasant parts of the loan conditions. Which, of course, still was leaving Russia and Japan and, while Russia already grabbed pretty much everything it wanted and was mostly interested in holding it, Japan’s appetite was seemingly on the initial stages of its development and the main hope was that the US with its current open doors policy may put enough pressure to keep Japanese demands within some reasonable limits. Anyway, as of now, China had certain degree of freedom of actions. “Within the reasonable limits”.

Barmalei War.

East Africa.

Going a little bit back in time for a broader picture.

Simultaneously with the British IEF “B”, which landed at Tonga with the intention to crush the German forces in the East Africa (see, earlier chapter), force “C” of approximately 4,000 mostly Indian troops landed in Mombasa as part of a two-pronged invasion of the German colony. This second prong would attack the German defences at Longido in the north around Kilimanjaro, then swing south and seize Neu Moshi, the western terminus of the Usambara or Northern Railroad. “The objective for the capture of Longido was to squeeze the German Schutztruppe in the upper end of a two-hundred-mile pincer."

As the plans go, this one was just as good as any other plan and, as with any other plan, but “no battle plan ever survives the first encounter with the enemy” [1]. Anyway, IMO, all these multi-prong plans require either (a) a complete idiot as an enemy, or (b) a “fail proof” huge advantage in strength or (c) a great skill of the leadership. The British commander, Major General Arthur Aitken, and his staff were not idiotic enough to have serious illusions regarding (a) or (c) but they sincerely expected to have (b). Well, they proved to be right on the (a) and (c) accounts and wrong on (b). Having it right on two out of three probably gives them reasonably high marks as the military planners [2]. Well, anyway, both him in charge of the Southern prong and Major Steward in the charge of the Northern one, regardless their planning abilities, definitely failed as the tacticians. The consolation prize for Major Stewart was that his superior lost a battle having 8:1 (or 10:1) numeric advantage while he achieved the same result with only 2:1 advantage.
To get to the point, the “C” force of 4,000 expected to met only 200 German troops but in a reality there were also 600 askaris and the colonial volunteers of 8th Schützenkompagnie [rifle company] of 86 young Germans on horseback. Totally, a whooping 886 opponents. A prudent commander would immediately order a retreat after getting news about this but Stewart, with more bravery than a common sense kept advancing loosing somewhere more than a half of his force in a process. Probably, these units also had been forming the prongs of their own or were implementing some other tricky maneuver. Anyway, “some 1,500 Punjabis of the British force came up the slope at night near Longido and, at daylight in the morning fog, were caught in the crossfire of a strong German defensive position. The large force of Indian infantry fought well when counterattacked, however, during the day the British attackers made no headway, but suffered substantial casualties.”
While they were fighting, a mounted patrol of the German 8th Rifle Company ambushed a British supply column; roughly 100 mules carrying water for the troops were stampeded away by the German horsemen. Some of the carriers in the column panicked and dropped their loads leaving food, ammunition and equipment behind. The British officers with their now widely scattered troops waited until darkness, determined their situation to be untenable, pulled out and down the mountain and marched back to British East Africa having accomplished nothing and losing over 300 vs. German 100. The German askari troops even had enough time to arrive by the train to the Battle of. Tanga.

Most of the “C” force managed to get to Mombasa and get the hell out of Africa before the French and German forces pretty much cut the colony out of the coast. The rest, remained inland but a double defeat by the much smaller forces cooled enthusiasm for war, especially among the British colonial volunteers most of whom had been Hindu colonists (there were more of them than the British settlers).

After securing the coast the Germans and French had been, for a while, just holding the perimeter waiting for the arrival of reinforcements and expecting the renewed British attempts to land in the area. On the far western end, Lake Tanganyika was dominated by the French and German small craft and even few airplanes had been present: the Germans had there 2 steamers, 1 ferry and some dhow boats, the French - 1 steamer, 1 armed boat, 1 armed barge and 4 planes against 2 British steamers, both of which had been eventually sunk.

Communication with Sudan was still possible from Uganda by the White Nile but this was not a big help in a long run because Sudan also was cut off the coast (and, anyway, both ends of the Red Sea were controlled by the Entente) and even put together these colonies/protectorates were not fully self-sufficient in the terms of maintaining colonial rule in a long run.

For the British government this situation posed a serious dilemma: just abandoning the region would be a major loss of the face and may have a serious negative domino effect upon other parts of the empire. OTOH, a successful relief effort would require a very serious naval redeployment involving assignment of at least 4 - 5 of the most modern battlecruisers or even the Queen Elizabeth battleships: no major relocation could pass unnoticed and the French had an advantage of a much shorter travel from the Med through Suez and the Red Sea and both German battle cruisers had been stationed in Batavia while the British squadron would have to sail all the way along the African coast. This was posing at least two problems:

Serious weakening of the Grand Fleet based in Scapa Flow may encourage the Germans to attack if not the base itself then at least the coastal cities.
The squadron will be looking for a trip 22 - 25,000 nautical miles. Taking into an account that a range of a Lion-class battlecruiser was approximately 5,600 nautical miles and of a battleship of Queen Elizabeth class 5,000, this meant numerous refuelings. Both new battlecruisers and new battleships had been using oil and Britain did not have the big oil supply bases down the Atlantic. The biggest one was on the Falklands, which was adding an extra hundreds miles to the route. As an alternative, the squadron could be followed by one or few tankers but this meant a much lower speed and a greater vulnerability along the route making protection of the tankers the main task of the squadron. The next problem was obvious: what’s the next? Even assuming that the squadron successfully accomplishes de blockade of the East Africa, how is it going to operate afterwards? Capacity of the tankers was not unlimited and the only available refinery was in Abadan on the Ottoman-Persian border. Which implied a need to sail even further, etc. And this also involved a need to have ammunition supplies and many other things, which could be hardly obtained even in India. Winston Churchill, the 1st Lord of the Admiralty, still was full of enthusiasm but the professionals were not too much so and so far the idea was not going anywhere drowning in the bottomless swamp of the planning and consultations. Running the supply convoys to South-Eastern Africa and across the Atlantic already was stretching resources of the cruisers and destroyers and adding to these convoys the tankers to provide an adequate oil storages on Madagascar or British Mozambique would stretch them even more, not to mentioning a need to create the necessary infrastructure.

South East Africa.

Operations there reached standstill. With the exception of few forts, the British troops evacuated territory to the South of Limpopo River due to the shortage of the supplies. On the opposite side the problem was pretty much the same: with the British dominance on the Atlantic the supplies had to come in what was a convoluted route for the Dutch: by land across France and then via the Med and Red Sea by the Indian Ocean using the route which was not completely safe from the British cruisers. As a result, both sides had been limiting themselves to the occasional cavalry raids.
The German incursions into Bechuanaland Protectorate were of no serious significance due to the small numbers involved, huge distances and generally pro-British King Khama III.

It was looking like that the conflict which triggered the whole war is dying out by the natural reasons and, if it was not a small part of a greater game, the sides directly involved, probably could come to a mutual agreement even if it was absolutely unclear what such an agreement could look like because giving the British immigrants the equal rights would quite soon remove the Boers from power by aa sheer force of the numbers. OTOH, due to a general absence of Boers’ interest to anything but farming and hunting, pretty much all technical activities were conducted by these British immigrants who, even during the war, had been running the railroads, mines, etc.

Mesopotamian theater.

The British troops (mostly IDF “D”) under command of general Townshend kept advancing pretty much into a vacuum with an ambitious plan to take Baghdad [3] while the Ottomans had been forming the army and moving it into the theater. Eventually, the forces met each other at Ctesiphon on the Western bank of the Tigris River in the barren Iraqi desert, about 380 miles (610 km) upstream from Basra, 40 miles (64 km) and 16 miles (26 km) south-east of Baghdad.

The Ottoman forces had formed a well-camouflaged and formidable line of trenches crossing the river. There were two lines of trenches; there was also a 20-foot-high (6.1 m) ancient wall 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the main line, used for observation by the Ottoman forces under command of Lieutenant General Nureddin. The Ottoman amy consisted of approximately 18,000 men and 52 guns.

The British force consisted of the 6th (Poona) Division, at a strength of around 11,000 men. Some British troops had been left behind to garrison the recently captured town and river junction of Kut. Townshend's plan of attack was to separate his force into four columns. Three infantry columns, designated columns A, B, and C, were scheduled for a frontal attack on different points of the Ottoman lines. The other column, referred to as the flying column, was made up of a mix of cavalry and infantry, and was supposed to swing around the left flank of the Ottoman lines. [4] The attack was to be supported by two river boats, a gunboat and HMS Firefly.

Nureddin had 55 days to prepare his defenses and did it well. Townshend ordered a night attack, which happened on schedule but due to poor ground conditions on the west bank the British ended up attacking the much stronger east bank positions. [5] The advance was supposed to be supported by river gunboats, however two things prevented the gun boats from becoming a factor in the battle: the Ottoman artillery fired on them and the Tigris was mined. What a barbaric and uncivilized thing to do!
Probably to confuse the enemy, Townshend named his columns not A, B, C from right to left or left to right but C, A, B from left to right. This was definitely a neat tactical trick that would put any civilized opponent into a confusion but the Ottomans were too uneducated to bite. Anyway, A and C did not even reach the trenches. B took the 1st line and advanced to the 2nd but was stopped by Ottoman division brought from reserve.

Townshend then ordered C-Column to fall back, and try and exploit the breakthrough. This movement was rather complicated and the task was made difficult by Ottoman forces firing into their flank. Meanwhile, the flying column bogged down in inconclusive fighting against Turkish and Arab Cavalry. Here again Nureddin committed his reserves, in this case the 51st Division, to great effect, halting Townshend's flanking attack.

The next day Townshend repeated attacks without success after which the Ottomans counter-attacked, also without success. On the third day both generals ordered a retreat due to the high losses but when Nureddin realized that the British were retreating, he turned his army around and sent it in pursuit of the British-Indian forces. The Brits lost 4,600 and claimed that the Ottomans lost between 6,200 and 9,500. Townshend decided a retreat back towards Kut was necessary to rebuild the strength of his army. It is not quite clear how exactly he was planning to achieve this while sitting in Kut but this became unimportant because Nureddin advanced and besieged Kut.

__________
[1] This quote sometimes attributed to C.Powell but Field Marshal Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke said it much earlier: “No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.”
[2] Definitely a higher mark than, say, general von Weyrother whose plan for Austerlitz battle was heavily relying upon (a) and (c). Or Varro, who at the Cannae relied exclusively on what he thought will be (b) (to think about it, perhaps Varro also was somewhat right regarding (a) and (c)? I got caught in my own logic). 😂
[3] Taking into an account that the primary goal was to protect Abadan refinery and that the British force was slightly more than a single division, wisdom of that strategy can be questioned unless it was heavily based upon (a)-factor (see above).
[4] “The 1st column is marching, the 2nd column is marching….” Weyrother would be proud.
[5] Doing a reconnaissance before preparing a plan would remove all fun from the following activities.
[6] The golden rule formulated by Suvorov is “never by shy about claiming the Turkish losses”.

alexmilman · Jul 3, 2023

boredviewer1234 said:
Maybe China might be at peace for 3 years, hopefully.

In OTL it was in peace, more or less, for few years but nothing good came out of it: it was going in a wrong direction strengthening the provincial warlords and not having any good way to deal with the growing Japanese economic and territorial aggressiveness: letting Japan to take the German colony only made things worse.

boredviewer1234 said:
The Ottomans are doing as well as they can against the British, though I do wonder when the war will end.

So far this is practically the OTL but ITTL OE is in a much better position because Mesopotamia is its only front and it can account upon the help from Germany and France and to buy needed stuff from Russia as well while Britain is much worse logistically (no Suez and problematic travel around Africa).

As for the end of fighting, there are (so far) 3 basic scenarios:

1. The peace comes with the exhaustion of both sides: as of now, both the US and RE are going to remain neutral; but this may change (especially if there are compelling arguments). OTOH, a peace conference looks as a nice idea, especially if accompanied by an agreement regarding control of the armaments, which all signatories will start ignoring as soon as the ink dries out. 😉

2. The Brits may do something stupid: in OTL they were confiscating cargo of the American ships going to Germany but paid for it and WW was pretending that this is OK. ITTL, this can be accompanied by some nasty accident producing a very bad PR and shift of the public opinion in the US. Then, there would be no need to go to war, just to cut the credits and shipments.

3. One side manages to loose really bad in a critically important area. I find this rather unlikely on the British side, short of a massive successful uprising in British India (probably with the ASBs landing near Delhi), and on the Entente side what could it be? Even a major defeat on the sea is not cutting their land-based supply lines and a complete annihilation of both French and German navies is also extremely unlikely. At least not with the OTL personages in charge on both sides.

Actually, this is a question to everybody: which scenario do you prefer?

alexmilman · Jul 4, 2023

368. Mesopotamia and other places

"Here is a dead land whence, if he die not, [the traveller] shall bring home nothing but a perpetual weariness in his bones."
Charles Doughty, ‘Travels in Arabia Deserta’
“Are we prepared to surrender control of the Persian Gulf and divide that of the Indian Ocean?”
Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, 1899
"The great Revolution of 1908 is the work of…Young Turks and in particular young officers. Most of them were in their 30s or even younger…They were the saviors of the fatherland."
Von der Holtz about the Revolution of 1908
"This article written by our Honorable Master should be repeatedly read by all soldiers from field marshal to lieutenant … it always should be read ... and should be taken as a guide in all our efforts and initiatives. … I assure you, Honorable Master … that we shall stick exactly to your advice and we shall regard it as our guide."
Major Ali Fuad, an answer to Von der Holtz

Historic background. In the late 18th Century and throughout the 19th, Britain's primary imperial concern was to protect her trade-routes to the East, especially to India. And so over 150 years she was led into a steady and, as she believed, defensive extension of imperial control from the Persian mainland to the Arabian shore of the Gulf and thence, by degrees, round the whole Arabian coast. The pattern of British activity in this region thus established in the closing years of the 18th Century. British control was maritime, not territorial - a girdle of sea power round the eastern extremities of the Arab world. Where territorial control of some kind was deemed essential, it was achieved by the traditional British method of indirect influence, rather than direct rule. This process was working in two directions: from the West by British government (attempts to establish the British preeminence on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea) and from the East (Persia and Arabian coast) by the government of British India. In both cases administration simply extended its system of protective overlordships from the native states of the sub-continent itself to the petty coastal rulers of Arabia and the Gulf. Apart from the maintenance 'of a territorial sphere ' of influence in southern Persia, nothing more was required so long as the defence of India and Britain's seaborne trade remained the centre of imperial policy. Arabia was, anyway, a notoriously hostile territory with zero material advantage inland. As long as the surrounding seas were free and other powers were kept at arm's length from India, the imperial duty was done. The only exception was around the port of Aden, a meager 75 square miles, did the British assume the responsibility of colonial rule in these Middle Eastern extensions of the Raj. Elsewhere, they took some 40 or 50 independent principalities into a variety of treaty relationships that made them what Lord Curzon called "loyal feudatories." Rulers of these principalities ceded to Britain a right of the foreign relations while retaining freedom of the internal actions and a right to fight with each other. Britain may or may not act as an arbiter in these quarrels. The end result was that the rival powers were formally barred from the Gulf, from Kuwait to Muscat, without Britain's being committed to any greater physical presence.
On the map below all that rainbow coloring along the Arabian coast are the British protectorates or dependencies except for Aden, which is dependency of … British India (Bombay Province).

Then the priorities shifted. On May 21, 1901 the Shah of Persia signed an agreement on the oil concession with the Englishman called William Knox D'Arcy. Seven years elapsed before D'Arcy got any returns, and his directors had actually sent a cable cancelling further exploration when the news arrived in London in 1908 of an oil strike at Masjid i-Suleiman in southern Persia. In the next year the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed with a capital of £2 millIon supplied by a group of British and Dutch financiers. D'Arcy was bought out and work began on the first Middle Eastern oil refinery at Abadan, in the Gulf.

At that time the Royal Navy was just completing its conversion from coal- to oil-fired ships and Winston Churchill at the Admiralty persuaded the government to safeguard the Navy's future by acquiring a majority holding in the new oil company. The discovery prompted other countries to seek oil concessions in the area; and in 1914 Anglo-Persian joined with Royal Dutch Shell and a German company to prospect for oil in northern Mesopotamia. At the same time, the British hurried to plug possible loopholes in their screen around the Gulf by signing yet another series of agreements with all the Arab states, from Bahrain and Kuwait to the Trucial Coast and Muscat, giving Britain the exclusive right to oil concessions in their territories. They were the first indication that Britain would soon switch her policy from maritime containment in the interests of India to territorial engagement for economic gain.
So the ongoing Mesopotamian campaign was an attempt to implement a great strategic goal of providing Britain (and especially the RN) with the reliable oil supply. Of course, to achieve this goal Britain had to maintain a permanent naval superiority in the region and to be successful on land. Neither was a trivial task.
1914.
Mesopotamia. To a great Ottoman’s disappointment mobilization of their army accomplished under the supervision of the War Minister (and wannabe dictator) Enver Pasha, was taking more time than expected and the troops were not armed as well as expected.

Part of the reason was in the fact that, by more than a little bit overestimating his own abilities and the Ottoman resources, Enver Pasha was initially not too eager to accept the German help and gave in only in a face of the early British successes in Mesopotamia. Cherry on a cake in this case was the call for Fieldmarshal Von der Goltz to be put in charge of the field army. Fieldmarshal was something of a “father figure” for the young Ottoman officers who passed through his military school and enormously popular among the Ottoman military. Which, understandably, was somewhat hurting Enver’s feelings and military ambitions. However, he had to submit to the pressure, especially because Wilhelm offered a package deal: Von der Holtz plus £5,000,000 in gold to equip the army, plus up to 18,000 German troops (if needed), German staff and artillery officers, a number of the flying units and a big amount of all types of military equipment. Of course, 18,000 Germans were not needed and what was called “Pasha 1 Expedition” included:

Infantry Battalion 701
Infantry support gun sections 701, 702, 703
Machine gun company 701
Asia Korps Cavalry squadron
Pioneer detachment 701
Pioneer company 205 (from the Hessian 11th Pioneer Battalion)
Flying detachment (Fliegerabteilung) 300 ("Pasha")
Mountain Signal detachment 27
Survey section 27
Medical section

Formally, Von der Holtz was already in charge by the time of a Battle of Ctesiphon (and, as a result, sometimes was given a credit for this battle even if he was not actually present) but he was still moving into the area with a bulk of the army so it was Nureddin who, with his troops, besieged Townshed and his troops in Kut.

The siege itself proved to be almost 4 months long affair during which the Brits made two failed attempts to relieve a garrison with a total loss of approximately 30,000 vs. 10,000 Ottoman losses. With Von der Holtz and his main force arrived the heavy Krupp artillery and the German airplanes and a serious bombardment of the city began. The besieged garrison was suffering from the shortage of the vital necessities: “we were smoking anything that would smoke, and green leaves (dried over a fire), tea leaves and sawdust mixed, ginger cut into small lumps.” Of course, following the law of the predictable consequences, smoking the tea leaves resulted in a shortage of tea and the besieged had to drink ginger crushed and steeped in boiling water. One can only imagine (personally, I can’t but perhaps some of you have a better developed imagination) what would happen when they run out of ginger but there was seemingly an ample supply of it. Anyway, the first things come first and Townshend was busy sending out a series of messages on the radio asking for a promotion from major-general to colonel-general on the account of his success advancing the Tigris.
On the 4th month the Indian troops had been forced to abandon the vegetarian diet of their religion and eat horse meat. Of course, it probably made sense in the terms of getting rid of the vegetarian competitors but, if they switched to a high protein diet, wouldn’t it make sense to start with their British commanders? Their meat was almost definitely softer. Well, anyway, with all other ideas failing, the British government sent to Istanbul the negotiators with an offer of £2 million for letting Townshend’s troops go with a promise they would not fight the Ottoman troops again. Enver Pasha at first pretended to negotiate in good faith, then publicized and rejected the offer as a final humiliation to the British.
When the all negotiation means had been exhausted Townshend surrendered. His soldiers “resembled animated skeletons hung about with filthy rags” but he was doing just fine.

Shortly before Townshend’s capitulation, Von der Holtz died (one may argue that the German depiction of his appearance on the Heaven does not closely fit any specific religious doctrine but after watching the last season of “Lucifer” I’m not going to start nitpicking; anyway, hookah [1] and Turkish coffee in a Paradise, while rather surprising, are not worse than the harps and chorus singing as far as having a good time goes).

After his death command passed to Halil Pasha (on the photo above sitting next to Townshend) who, used the situation to march on Basra, which was easily recaptured, and then to send expedition across the border to destroy refinery at Abadan or at least to do as much damage as possible. It was on the Persian territory but who cared if it was British.

Of course, it was almost impossible for a relatively small force to do a complete destruction of a big refinery in a short period of time but enough had been done to it and to a pipeline to put it out of a circulation for quite a while, especially taking into an account that equipment and the pipes had to be brought from Britain. However, the British “defensive belt” on the Arabian coast was not destroyed except for the very important port of Aden and, while the Ottoman recapture of Basra and a threat of invasion forced Emir of Kuwait to claim his loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, everybody knew quite well that it is going to last only until one more British expeditionary force arrives. Well, if it arrives, which at that point was a big “IF” because a loss of the tens thousands Indian troops in a less than a year seriously impacted the enthusiasm on subcontinent and the government in Delhi started getting worried if the obvious incompetence of the British commanders may generate some wrong ideas among the natives.

Atlantic Ocean - both sides
Now, even the Admiralty had to at least somewhat reconsider its strategy and send a strong squadron into the Indian Ocean regardless all related complications. After all, the Grand Fleet will remain a dominant force on the North Sea without some of its battlecruisers. However, taking into an account the involved logistics, a proper planning and assembling the necessary resources would take some time.

In a meantime, the British warships patrolling the Atlantic routes started getting engaged in a traditional British activity: stopping the neutral ships sailing to the Entente’s and sometimes even neutral ports and confiscating the goods which could be consider strategic. Not to have too much complaints from the US, the goods confiscated from the American ships had been paid for. Other nations were not that lucky and there were even few incidents with arrest of the neutral ships sailing to the neutral ports.

The Baltic League protested and had been ignored. As a result, all British ships stuck in the Baltic and Black Sea ports had been confiscated together with their cargo. British trade with the Baltic League was stopped until situation is resolved.

Well, of course, the other side were not the angels either and the few French and German light cruisers had been also operating on the sea routes not always fully following the international laws. Especially, when they had been lucky to catch a tanker going to Britain (how are you expected to confiscate its cargo?).

On the Western side of the Atlantic those involved in trade had not been amused: the goods could be paid for but a resulting breach of a contract was not a very good thing and neither was a growing cost of the insurance. With the resulting reorientation of the merchandise flow from the East to the West coast, the major Atlantic ports had been suffering because Britain alone could not replace the broader European market. And when the important people on the East coast are getting unhappy, POTUS, especially one from the East coast, must pay attention.

Woodrow Wilson, President of the US, and Nicholas II, the Emperor of Russia (also speaking for the Baltic League) started discussions (thanks to the modern technology, travel was not needed) regarding a satisfactory resolution of the Atlantic trade problem, of a broader issue of forcing the quarreling parties to start peace talks (under the Russian-American aegis, of course) and of an international conference that will put end to the crazy naval race by regulating it to everybody’s satisfaction. To a mutual pleasant surprise, both of them found [2] that they just love international peace conferences so this could be a beginning of a beautiful friendship which will shove the brave new peaceful world down everybody’s throat.

_________
[1] Personally, I do not support smoking but at least that hookah thing implies silence and relaxation, which can’t be said about a mass singing and playing the musical instruments by the (former) people most of whom never had any talent in any of these areas.
[2] To be precise, first the Russian Foreign Minister and American State Secretary found this and only then their masters found this as well but excitement on the top level is the only thing that matters so that we can skip the intermediaries including the telegraph operators, clerks, undersecretaries, etc. Even if each of them also had been pleasantly surprised. 😉

No GNW (or “Peter goes South”)

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