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“Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany was, during the starting affairs of the Alsatian crisis, taking a calming hunting trip on the state of Max Egon Furst zu Furstenberg in Donaueschingen in Baden-Wurttembirg. Although this meeting and trip in Southern Germany had been arranged and conducted even before the Alsatian crisis, Wilhelm’s lack of interest and his belligerence in favor of the German army left a very bad impression and only served to aid the French nationalistic organizations and pro-independence organizations conducting the rallies in Alsace-Lorraine. According to rumors, the empress, Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, had even ordered a train to take her husband so she could persuade him to return to Berlin to take in account the affairs of the Alsatian crisis. However Wilhelm II, ever the stubborn man, refused to go. Even his son, Crown Prince Wilhelm dropped hints that it would have been better to go back to Berlin, however the emperor of Germany continued to underestimate the issue at hand.
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany
According to historian Wolfgang Mommsen, Wilhelm II at the time had underestimated the political dimension of the growing political crisis in Alsace, and its international dimension during that point in time. The reports which were written by Statthalter (governor) of Alsace-Lorraine, Karl von Wedel reflected the reports of Director Mahl, who wrote down that nothing unlawful had been commited by the protestors, and Wilhelm II saw nothing to act upon. However Karl von Wedel reached Wilhelm II’s residence on January 3, 1915 and begged the Emperor to allow him to restore civilian rule in Alsace-Lorraine, and he described the heavy handed response of the military excessive, and unlawful. Wilhelm II ordered von Wedel to return back to Alsace-Lorraine and to play for time. Wilhelm II simply wanted to wait for the report from the military headquarters in Strasbourg first. When this became public news the next day, riots and protests in Alsace-Lorraine erupted into a whole new level, and many of the civilians began to utterly disregard the menacing troops that were present and continued to protest. The military, in particular the 99th and 87th divisions responded by opening fire at the protestors.
On January 10, the Prussian War Minister, Erich von Falkenhayn, the Chief of General Staff Karl von Bulow, and other high ranking generals arrived in Donaueschingen and six days of discussions began. The public already seething from the opening of fire from the german troops, became even angrier as it seemed that the Kaiser only wished to hear the viewpoint of the military.
Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg
Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg who had been passed over by the military for the discussions, also came to the area coming under heavy pressure from the Reichstag to take part in the discussions. The Alsatians still hoping for a relatively peaceful and correct decision from the government crossed their fingers, however the result was disillusionment from the Alsatian population. The Kaiser had approved of the behavior of the military officers, and saw no reason to believe that they had exceeded their authority, simply reprimanding them for not controlling their troops which had opened fire during the protests, and telling them not to do it again.
Nonetheless, military reinforcements from Baden and the Rhineland into Alsace-Lorraine dissipated the crowds, who were now fearful for their lives. On January 20, however, the crisis erupted again. A military exercise was held that day in Saverne. The scene was being watched by Karl Bank, a local Alsatian, and his ethnic French Alsatian wife, who burst into laughter when he saw the young finely dressed Forstner, who had started the crisis with his remarks, and some locals around the area joined in the laughing as well. As a result, Forstner lost control of his temper, and struck down Blank giving him severe head injuries and swiped his saber at Blank’s French wife, who was rendered unconscious for several days due to some amount of blood loss.
German troops patrolling Alsatian streets during the alsatian crisis.
Forstner was sentenced to 43 days of arrest by a military court on the first trial, however in the appellate trial, was only given a sentence of two weeks of house arrest. Although he had been accompanied by five soldiers who saw the event occur in front of their eyes, and Blank was unarmed, the judge, probably bribed by the Prussian military, interpreted his actions as self-defense, as Blank was guilty of laughing at the military, and by default insulting the crown. Forstner was thus only given house arrest for attacking Blank’s wife. Forstner received encouragement from many parts of the army, and even his colonel and lieutenant, as he had ‘defended’ the honor of the army with his acts of violence.
This only solidified the view within the Alsatian population that the German government was not working in favor of the populace, and began to devolve protests into outright riots. At first, police and military police dispersed the riots, and arrested hundreds of men, however small isolated cases of gunfire being released and killing rioters also became known. When this circulated into the people, many packed their bags, especially the ethnic French population, and started to pour into the French border, crossing the border and into France.
French Foreign Minister Gaston Doumergue
The French government soon smelt blood. French foreign minister, Gaston Doumergue demanded to the German ambassador Wilhelm von Schoen to give France an answer for the ongoing refugee crisis at the Franco-German border, and to confirm whether or not, the rumors of German troops opening fire at Alsatian and Lorrainer protestors was true. Von Schoen told Doumergue that the refugee crisis was a result of a few protests gone out of hand, and tactfully sidestepped the second question by stating that he had not been informed if the rumors were true or not. Premier Viviani of France expressed his concerns of the issue and warned the German ambassador that if the protests spilt over into French lands, then the consequences would be massive.
Meanwhile, the very same thing that Viviani warned Schoen of happened, when a particularly violent riot broke out in Strasbourg, this time the rioters openly demanded a return to French rule, or for independence. Either of the two was the only option left; the rioters said. This idea spooked the German empire, which despite having sizeable Danish and Polish minorities, didn’t have to deal with serious separatism before. Despite the pleas of Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to consider the options on a civilian platform, the German military overrode the civilian government, with tacit support from the Kaiser, and instead pushed 3 more divisions into Alsace Lorraine, and the Alsatians and Lorrainers knew exactly what the divisions were coming for, and this prompted a second mass refugee crisis into France, Luxembourg and Belgium, as well as Switzerland.
Rene Viviani, Prime Minister of France.
By this point, word had leaked to France and the rest of the world that German troops had indeed fired on Alsatians and Lorrainers, and French irredentism erupted again as thousands of Frenchmen came down onto Paris demanding the Vivian government to do something about the Alsatian Crisis. The French government, as it had for the past forty years, was eager to regain Alsace-Lorraine, especially as it seemed that the Alsatians and Lorrainers themselves wanted to become a part of France once again, however was unsure whether or not an aggressive policy could be used against the Germans.
On January 29th, they contacted the Russian government, led by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, who famously handed the French government a blank check so to speak, stating that Russia would defend her French ally with French interests being taken into account. Meanwhile as another wave of around 8,000 Alsatians and Lorrainers entered France the situation turned dire. Meanwhile news arrived to Berlin that Russia was going to stand with her ally and would remain a vigilant part of the Triple Entente. The German Foreign Minister, Gottlieb von Jagow, immediately departed for Vienna, to gauge the reaction of Germany’s Austrian and Italian allies, as the threat of war became real as Russia became involved.
Gottlieb von Jagow
Gottlieb von Jagow met with the Austrian Chief of Cabinet of the Austrian Foreign Ministry, Count Alexander von Hoyos, who assured the German foreign minister that Austria-Hungary would honor her alliance with the German Empire. Though as he said that, he advised caution on the growing crisis in Europe. The Italian legation also stated that they would honor the Triple Alliance. These assurances however only served to make Jagow confident, as he knew that Britain was only semi-formally allied with Paris and St. Petersburg.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov and British Foreign Minister met each other on February 3rd, in the North Sea aboard HMS Ajax and discussed the events in person. Grey confirmed that Britain would only seek to enter a possible war if Germany was ‘truly in the fault’ basically handing a vague answer that no one really knew how to interpret properly.
This however was interpreted in Germany as basically saying that Britain would not intervene, which only aided Germany’s growing boldness. Even the Reichstag which had been angry over the overt militarism the German military has displayed during the crisis, was becoming agitated by the feeling that the Russians and French were interfering in what was completely an internal German issue.
France itself was becoming more and more angry. The government led by Vivian was becoming more and more angered by the situation brewing in Alsace Lorraine, and was becoming agitated by the constant protests in Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille and Nantes to do something about the German attacks on what the French people deemed to be ‘French territory’ inhabited by ‘French peoples’. Joseph Noulens, the French Minister of Finance, also agitated for an ‘armed’ solution, as the economic capitulations that France owed to Germany as an aftermath of the 1871 War would finally be removed completely. Due to the 1871 War, France still owed Germany the economic status of ‘favored nation’ and tariffs were lowered for German goods, and French goods themselves were subjected to normal tariff rates. Getting rid of such an economic capitulation was an important object in the eyes of the French government.
Adolf Messimy, the French Minister of War, warned alongside Chief of General Staff Joseph Joffre, that war was becoming likelier by the moment, if the government did not seek a diplomatic arrangement with the Germans. However the topic at hand was Alsace-Lorraine, one of the very founding national mythos of the French Third Republc, if they negotiated the continued ‘murder’ of the Alsatians and Lorrainers, it was quite evident in the eyes of Vivian, that the next legislative election would be his to lose.
Finally on February 10th, 1915, after 6 weeks of crisis, the French government handed an ultimatum to the German government on the Alsatian issue demanding:
The Imperial German government shall undertake:
The suppression of any publication in Imperial Germany that directly affects the livelihood of the French population in Alsace-Lorraine such as hate articles.
To hold the young lieutenant and his encouragers accountable for the damage they have committed in Alsace-Lorraine
To eliminate without delay from public instruction, actions against the peoples of Alsace-Lorraine
To remove from military service all officers guilty of warlike actions against the peoples of Alsace-Lorraine
To accept collaboration of the French, Russian, Austrian, British, and Italian governments for the supervision of restoration of civil law and rule in Alsace-Lorraine
To take judicial proceedings against accessories to the actions of the Zabern Affair.
To the German government, this was an unacceptable affair, as it would mean the French would have the legal right to meddle in German affairs, no matter for how short of a time. The German government flatly refused the ultimatum which they called a ‘request’ publicly to avoid the notion of war. On February 12, Vivian and the ministry ordered a breaking of diplomatic ties between Berlin and Paris, and the French government ordered partial mobilization of its armed forces. The Germans catching wind of this, ordered partial mobilization as well. In response, the Russian government stood by its ally and declared partial mobilization as well. This in turn set the Austrians and Italians to mobilize their armies partially as well.
To the Russians, there were many who didn’t want war, however the prevailing idea among the government was that this crisis was being used by Germany to act aggressively and that Russia had backed down too many times in the past; the Bosnian Crisis for example, and backing down again would only cement Russian appeasement to German demands. Another thought that was prevailing was also the thought that Russian arms had been recovered sufficiently from the defeats of 1904-06.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov also believed that war was inevitable and refused to acknowledge that Germany did have a right to make countermeasures in the face of French irredentism. On the contrary, Sazonov aligned himself with irrendentism, hoping for the collapse the German and Austro-Hungarian empires. Sazonov’s blank check to France raised the stakes during the diplomatic maneuvering of the Alsatian crisis. The diplomatic situation was not aided by the fact that French President Raymond Poincare was just as belligerent as the Germans, and persuaded the French government to declare full war.
As another riot was violently suppressed on February 16, France finally declared war on Germany declaring “The Republic cannot in good faith continue to watch the discriminations that the people of Alsace-Lorraine, many of them ethnic French, committed by the German government.”
newspaper on the declaration of war.
The Germans retaliated with their own declaration of war. The Russian declaration of war delivered by Sazonov who had managed to stamp out war insecurities from Tsar Nicholas II and was delivered to Berlin as well. On the declaration of war from Russia, Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia and France on February 20, citing its alliance with Germany. On the 22nd of February, Italy honored its alliance and declared war on France and Russia as well.
The Great War had started.” Origins of the Great War. University of Oxford, 1998.
“Amidst the rising tensions of Europe the first general elections of home rule Ireland took place on January 25, 1915 till January 28, 1915. The elections was contested between the Irish Parliamentary Party, the Irish Unionist Party, The All-for-Ireland Party, the Sinn Fein party and the Liberal party. The Conservative party made a small comeback in the island by being named in the ballots, however it didn’t win a single seat in the Irish House of Commons. During the elections, the counties in Ulster which had voted against Home Rule were excluded from the elections.
The politics of Home Rule Ireland became involved in its classic taste. It was divided between three fields. The first was that of nationalist independence supporters. The second was that of moderates who wished for an Irish Dominion within the wider consensus of the British Empire. The third and final group was that of the Irish Unionists and the Irish Home Rulers who wanted to keep the Irish Home Rule Status Quo. Most famously, the Irish Unionist Party and the Irish Parliamentary Party allied with one another in a coalition alliance with one another displaying itself as a coalition that was for keeping the Home Rule Status Quo within Ireland.
John Redmond
Whilst William O’Brien and his party on the other hand, ran on a platform of staying within the United Kingdom under Home Rule Status, however with all of Ulster unified with Home Rule Ireland. O’Brien lost some votes when he espoused this agenda of his, stating that independence or dominion status for Ireland was out of the question in a conversation with Prime Minister Asquith. The conversation seemed to have been leaked to the public somehow. Arthur Griffith and Sinn Fein marched on a platform of something else entirely. They encouraged partial independence of Ireland, and focused on the Austro-Hungarian model, advocating for a Confederal British-Irish Kingdom instead, with the devolved powers of Austria-Hungary being applied in the case of Ireland and Britain as well. The Liberal Party which competed for seats remained ambiguous on its position regarding the future of Ireland, instead running on an economic platform. Under the Liberal Party, Ireland from the 1890s had experienced momentous economic growth with both Dublin and Belfast becoming major cities in the empire. The Liberal Party’s Irish Manifesto promised to all that the Liberal Party wished to spread this economic prosperity to other cities in Ireland as well and grow Ireland out of its agrarian stage and enter it fully into the industrialized economic world.
The results of the 1915 Irish General Elections were:-
Irish Parliamentary Party: 44.8% or 73 seats won
Irish Unionist Party: 24.2% or 40 seats won.
All For Ireland: 15% or 24 seats won
Sinn Fein: 5.7% or 9 seats won
Liberal Party: 5.3% or 8 seats won
Independent Nationalists: 3% or 4 seats won
Independents: 2% or 6 seats won
As the Irish Parliamentary Party won a plurality of seats in the Irish House of Commons, the party formed the devolved Irish government, alongside a coalition government with the Irish Unionist Party. In a By-Election in the Irish House of Commons, John Redmond was elected to become Ireland’s first Premier, and Redmond soon travelled to London where he became a member of cabinet as the Premier of Ireland, representing the Irish devolved government and its autonomy within the British Kingdom.” A History of Irish Politics: Can An Independent Ireland Survive? – Irish Nationalist League Pamphlet 2014.
“The European war that broke out mid February 1915 over the Alsace question spooked the Ottoman government. Even though fortifications in Rhodope was nearly completed and the Ottoman Military Reforms of 1910 and 11 were already completed in late 1914, the Ottoman government wanted absolutely no part in the growing war in the European continent. Nonetheless, it declared neutrality formally on February 25, 1915 and declared that no warship without the prior permission of the Ottoman government would be able to pass through the Bosporus Straits.
The new ottoman military reforms made the Ottomans keep a standing army of 500,000 men which could be expanded to 1.5 million during wartime. The 500,000 men were divided into 25 divisions of 20,000 men each. The force disposition of the new Ottoman Army at the start of the Great War was:-
Libya Region Command (20,000 men total)
9th Infantry Regiment
1st Brigade (Tripoli) (5000 men)
2nd Brigade (Benghazi) (5000 men)
3rd Brigade (Tobruk) (5000 men)
4th Brigade (Fezzan) (5000 men)
Eastern Anatolia and Caucasian Command (100,000 men)
1st Infantry Division
2nd Infantry Division
1st Mountaineer Division
3rd Infantry Division
4th Infantry Division
Western Anatolia Command (80,000 men)
5th Infantry Division
6th Infantry Division
7th Infantry Division
1st cavalry Division
Mesopotamia Region Command (40,000 troops total)
8th Infantry Division
2nd Cavalry Division
Syrian Region Command (60,000 troops total)
10th Infantry Division
3rd Cavalry Division
11th Infantry Division
Hejaz-Yemen Area Command (40,000 Troops)
2nd Mountaineer Division
1st Light Desert Infantry Division
Eastern Balkan Command (100,000 troops)
12th Infantry Division
3rd Mountaineer Division
4th Cavalry Division
13th Infantry Division
14th Infantry Division
Western Balkan Command (60,000 Troops)
15th Infantry Division
5th Cavalry Division
4th Mountaineer Division
As the Ottoman Empire did have a non-aggression pact with Britain, the Ottoman Minister of War, Mahmud Shevket Pasha ordered the 10th Infantry Division from the Syrian Region Command and the 2nd Cavalry Division from the Mesopotamia Region Command to enter the Eastern and Western Balkan Command Regions respectively to reinforce the Balkans up to 200,000 troops. These 200,000 troops were mixed in their quality. Some were very professional troops, most were mixed, whilst some were non-professional troops.
Ottoman Minister for War, Mahmud Shevket Pasha.
Meanwhile the Ottomans hurriedly looked at their supply situation for their military. The Ottoman army during the outbreak of the war used the following standard weapons for the army:-
Edged Weapons
Lance
Standard Sword
1911 Tripoli Standard Cavalry Sword (domestic)
Sidearms
Mauser C96 (license Production)
Luger P08
Browning FN M1903
Machine Guns
Hotschkiss Mk I
Vickers Medium Machine Gun
Rifles
Winchester M1907 (License Production)
Winchester M1910
Snider-Enfield Mk III
The Ottomans as a result had a basic supply of domestically produced (alongside licensed production) of edged weapons, sidearms and rifles. Whilst the Ottomans didn’t have a proper supply of machine guns other than foreign suppliers. As a result, the Ottoman government ordered the military industries of the empire to get into contact with French, Russia, German, Austrian or British machine gun producers and to procure a license production license for a machine gun and its ammunition. The Ottoman Air Force as of the starting of the great war numbered around 98 planes and the Ottomans had a domestic supply in its strong aviation industry. It also had around 40 armored cars, all of which were domestic made, so that wasn’t a problem either. Either way, the Ottomans getting ready for war, even though they didn’t want to be a part of it was a good thing, for even though they didn’t want to take part in the Great War, another war was about to erupt, a miniature war which would drag the Balkans into it.” The Balkan War: A War within a War. University of Angora, 2019.
***
Notes:
As you can see, the maneuvering of war ittl is very similar to that of otl: That is, war could have been easily avoided, but still happened due to ultranationalism, economic factors and the alliance web of Europe.
Now, a second war is also about to start in the balkans.....one which will directly affect the ottomans.
Also: Voting is still open in the turtledove polls! if you haven't voted, vote!
“When war was declared between Germany and France, and subsequently, Europe fell into war, France was on the backfoot. They had the need to garrison their border in the Alps with Italy and had to form a plan to invade Italian Eritrea and Italian Somalia, both of which seemed like a daunting proposal, considering there was a limit to how many troops France could commit to Djibouti. Nonetheless, the French were quite optimistic about the war, and many in the government, and the people cajoled each other stating that this was a war that at maximum, would be over by Christmas.
German Chief of Staff, Karl von Bulow
Karl von Bulow, the German Chief of Staff, was planning on pulling through with the old Schlieffen Plan. German strategy had given priority to offensive operations against France and had a defensive posture against Russia since 1891. Germany planning was determined by numerical inferiority, the speed of mobilization and the concentration and the effect of the vast increase of the power of modern weapons. Frontier attacks were expected to be brutal and very costly as well as protracted, with expected results to be limited, especially after France and Russia modernized their border fortifications on the frontiers of Germany. Karl von Bulow followed through with Alfred von Schlieffen’s plan of bypassing French defenses by conducting a maneuver through Namur and Antwerp in Belgium to threaten Paris itself from the north. Helmuth von Moltke took power in 1906 to become the Chief of General Staff and was less certain about the plan, and modified it to have more troops, increasing the number from 1.3 million to 1.7 million into the Westheer or the Western Army. Moltke instead wished to have the support of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the eastern front to make up for the disturbing lack of German troops on the eastern front itself.
However this plan meant that Belgium would need to be subdued, browbeaten into submission to Germany, either through diplomacy or force if needed. And Germany was willing to use force if needed. On February 19, the British government announced the mobilization of the Royal Navy after the first declaration of war was announced. Hostilities of small skirmishes broke out all over Alsace-Lorraine and the Polish border. On February 23, the German government sent an ultimatum to the Belgian government in Brussels, demanding passage through Belgian territory, as German troops crossed the frontier with Luxembourg to outflank French positions near Alsace-Lorraine.
Meanwhile in Belgium, the government since May 1914 under Chief of General Staff Antonin de Selliers de Moranville and King Albert I had been planning for a concentration of the army in the east on the german border, and met with railway officials in June to coordinate strategy. As the Alsatian Crisis spilled over into the rest of the Europe, Belgium declared armed neutrality and Albert I ordered the mobilization of troops on February 21. Belgian troops were to be amassed in central Belgium, in front of the national redoubt at Antwerp, ready to face any border, whilst the fortified position of liege, and the fortified position of Namur were left to secure the frontiers, a suicide mission in all regards.
Britain watched the developments worriedly and sent delegations to both Paris and Berlin on February 19, asking whether or not the French and German governments would respect Belgian neutrality. The French government assured the British that the French military would respect Belgium’s neutrality, however worryingly so, the Germans gave no answer.
When Germany issued the ultimatum on February 23, they gave until the end of February 24 to form a response for the Belgians. The Belgians were taken off guard by the ultimatum, whilst they had known it was a great probability, they weren’t actually sure that the Germans would do it, as violating neutrality in this day and age was quite unexpected and thought long past in European military politics and actions. On February 24, the Belgian government replied by rejecting the German ultimatum for passage and the Belgian government asked for support from the British government if Germany invaded. On February 25, German troops crossed the Belgian frontier and attacked the defenses at Liege.
In Britain itself, the Liberal Party, governing the government, and led by Prime Minister Asquith and its voters were anti-war, whilst the Tories remained pro-war. As Germany and France became the central players in the crisis, British leaders had an increasing commitment to the defense of France. First if Germany again conquered France, as had happened in 1870, it would become a major threat to British economic, political and cultural interests. Second and perhaps more importantly, partisanship was involved. The Liberal Party identified with internationalism and free trade, as opposed to warfare and jingoism. By contrast, the Conservative Party was defined as the party of Nationalism and Patriotism. Britons expected that the Tories would show the capacity of running in a war as such. Liberal voters initially wanted peace, and demanded as such, however found themselves outraged when Germany invaded Belgium and breached the Treaty of London of 1839, which was being derided by the German press as a worthless scrap of paper.
Liberal politician and future prime minister, David Lloyd George would tell reporters “Up until day before tomorrow, only a few members of the cabinet were in favor of intervention in the new war, however the violation of Belgian territory and sovereignty as well as neutrality has completely altered the situation.”
On the evening of February 25, the British government sent an ultimatum to Germany and demanded that the Germans withdraw from Belgium or face war. The ultimatum would expire the next day without the Germans replying to the ultimatum, and parliament voted in favor of declaring war on the Germans. On February 26, the British government finally formally declared war on the German Empire, though deliberation was being committed for a declaration of war against Italy and Austria-Hungary, as some wished to leverage Italy’s economic dependence on British imports to their advantage.
German troops entering Belgium
However soon enough, the declarations of war soon took place between Austria-Hungary and Italy with the United Kingdom as well, making war the only option left.” Great Britain in the Great War. University of Nantes, 1988.
“The first major action between France and Germany during the opening stages of the war was the Battle of Mulhouse/Mulhausen which took place in German Alsace from between February 28 to 9 March, 1915. It would culminate to become one of the dark forerunners of the upcoming battle of wits and blood during the Great War.
In Alsace, as war tensions ramped up during the Alsatian crisis, the deployment plan of the 7th Army was given to the command of General Josias von Heeringen, with the XIV, XV, XIV Reserve Corps alongside the 60th Landswehr Brigade forming the aegis of the German troops in Alsace. The 1st and 2nd Bavarian Brigades, alongside the 55th Landswehr Brigade, the 110th Landswehr Regiment, and a battery of heavy field howitzers were also added to the army under the provisional command of the XIV corps as mobilization continued. Meanwhile the French had mobilized the VII, VIII, XIII, XXI, XIV Corps and the 6th Cavalry Division to form the 1st Army or the Army of Alsace. The 14th, and 41st Divisions, alongside the 57th Reserve Division and the 8th Cavalry Division formed the southern flank of the 1st Army becoming a miniature army of its own.
General Dubail
A few border skirmishes took place between the German and French patrols as soon as war was declared. These skirmishes weren’t decisive, however they were enough to give Germany the information that the French had a chain of border frontier posts, supported by a larger position behind which was heavily fortified. The French stayed true to their idea of an offensive doctrine and advanced through German positions on the frontiers and advanced to the Schluct Pass, where the Germans were forced to blow up the tunnel to delay the French. Joffre received information from General August Dubail, the commander of the 1st Army about the holdup of French forces, and directed the VII Corps led by General Louis Bonneau with the 14th Division to advance on the flanks and rears to lessen the pressure on the central force of the 1st Army. The French were successful. The French advanced from Belfort all the way to Mulhouse and Colmar 35 kilometers to the north east and were only really hampered by the breakdown of supply service and delays in equipment supply. The local Alsatian population egged the French on, and aided the French in many ways that they could, feeding some of the troops, and giving the thirsty troops some water to drink when they wanted, and a few volunteer regiments signed up in the French army as well. The French were becoming more confident, as it was obvious whom the local population seemed to prefer.
a painting of the Battle of Mulhouse
The French seized the border town of Altkirch 15 kilometers south of Mulhouse with a small bayonet charge and forced the small German garrison there to retreat again. On March 4, Bonneau continued to advance and occupied Mulhouse, after a small engagement with the 58th Infantry Brigade of the Germans was forced to retreat. The 1st Army Commander, Dubail, preferred to dig in and wait for mobilization to finish but Joffre ordered the advance to continue. Dubail went against orders and instead dug the vast majority of his troops into defensive entrenchments and sent only a small portion of his force to continue the advance. On March 6th, the parts of the XIV and XV Corps of the German 7th Army arrived from Strasbourg and counter-attacked at Cernay. The Germans and their infantry emerged from the Hardt forest, and advanced into the east side of the city. Communications on both sides collapsed temporarily, and both sides of troops fought independently in isolated actions, with the Germans especially making costly frontal attacks. As night fell, the Germans continued to advance in the suburb of Rixheim, east of Mulhouse, and inexperienced German troops fired wildly on both sides, wasting huge amounts of ammunition and occasionally shooting each other as well.
Strategic map of the Battle of Mulhouse. Blue lines depict French movements and Grey lines depict German movements.
The Germans then tried to assault the main defensive line made by Dubail, however Dubail’s defensive line managed to stall the Germans enough for 57th Reserve Division to arrive and create a flanking action, defeating the Germans pushing them out of the Mulhouse area entirely being pushed out entirely. The battle of Mulhouse saw the loss of around 2500 French lives and around 3000 German lives, making it the first major battle of the war. The battle was extremely consequential as well, as it assured southern Alsace, and most of the Alsatian regions barring Strasbourg and its surroundings fell to French occupation for the duration of the war in its entirety.” The Battle for Alsace: 1915. Max Hastings, Penguin Publishing, 1992.
“Tensions among the Balkan states over their overlapping religious and ethnic claims in the Ottoman controlled Rumelia, Thrace and Maacedonia subsided after the intervention of the Great Powers in 1878 and 1881, which aimed to secure a more complete protection for the province’s Christian majority population as well as a way to maintain the status quo. By 1867, Montenegro and Serbia had gained their independence which was confirmed by the Treaty of Berlin 1878, and Romania had long been taken out of the Ottoman Sphere of Influence. For decades, the Balkan question remained calm and one of tepid calm, until the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which revived questions of viability of future Ottoman rule in the Balkans once again. Serbia’s aspirations to take over Bosnia and Herzegovina were thwarted by the Bosnian Crisis of 1908 which led to the Austrian annexation of the province in 1908 triggering a Europe wide diplomatic crisis that almost led to war. The Serbs wary of Austrian military might turned their attention of war to the south.
Prime Minister Stanojevic of Serbia
The Serbians and Bulgarians stood down for their belligerent stance when the Ottomans kicked the Italians out of Libya, reaffirming their ailing, but still worthwhile status as a great power within global geopolitics. However the interference of the British and German governments in favor of the Ottomans had given an impression that the British and Germans were the guarantors of Ottoman territorial sovereignty. With Europe descending into war, with the British and Germans directly involved in the Great War with one another, the diplomats in Belgrade, and Sofia started to believe that this was their most opportune time to take control of the territories that they regarded as rightfully theirs. Montenegro led by King Nicholas I was all for the idea, and even pledged the support of his country’s 25,000 troops immediately. Secret negotiations began to take place with the Greeks as well as Stanojevic, a Yugoslavic nationalist who was becoming increasingly pressured by the rest of his armed parliament to take action against the Ottoman government.
There was a flaw into the Greco-Serbian negotiations. The Serbians assumed that the Greeks would jump for a chance against the Ottomans without question, however were rudely beaten back diplomatically when the Greek diplomats pointed out that the Ottomans and their economic deal with Greece was greatly benefitting both countries involved. Whilst the Serbs and Bulgarians could take up the economic trade deficit to replace the Ottomans in the case of war, neither the Serbs or Bulgarians combined had enough economic clout as that of the Ottomans, and the Greek stock marketers were up in arms against any idea of a war against the Ottoman Empire, especially as some of the effects of the American Great Depression seeped into the Greek Kingdom. King George I of Greece, who was planning for his abdication as he grew older and older as days passed, also found himself frowning at the economic implications of the notion.
King George I of Greece
There was of course the idea of losing preferential trading status which would make Greece lose the savvy markets of Hejaz, the Levant and the Persian Gulf, and the heavy amount of imports and exports between Greece and the Ottoman Empire over the past few years had made economic dependence with each other more and more lucrative and made the idea of war all the more limiting in the eyes of many Greeks in the Kingdom of Greece. The second reason was also because of the burgeoning Ottoman democracy, which had led to a dampening of nationalistic feelings within the Ottoman Empire, and Ottoman Greeks. The election of a moderate Ottoman Greek to the Princedom of Samos, and the failure of Greek nationalistic parties to gain electoral threshold were testament to this fact. As long as the Ottomans remained democratic and respected the opinions of its minorities, especially the greeks, the Greek government doubted that the population would really be welcoming of Greek invasion, much less the non-Greek population of the areas that Greek nationalists aimed for. The third reason was the growing reforms of the Ottoman Army and Ottoman Navy which hadn’t gone noticed by the Greeks. Greek military attaches in Constantinople brought back news of massive reforms, and massive fortifications, and of course the 1911 Naval Plan had managed to bring the Ottomans back to a position of formidable naval power, which worried Greece, as they were predominantly a maritime trade power. As the Serbians and Bulgarians were unable to provide a proper replacement for the loss of Ottoman markets, as well as the fact that the Greek Navy would not be able to stop Ottoman reinforcements in the Balkans with the recent naval developments, Venizelos stalled the secret negotiations with Belgrade and Sofia.
Meanwhile, Ahmet Riza was wizening up to the threat being made to the Ottoman Empire as Ottoman Military Attaches reported suspicious movements of the Bulgarian and Serbian militaries. He had the Ottoman Intelligence work for breaking the telegraph codes and lines once again. Ottoman codebreakers managed to break the communication codes between Serbia and Greece just before Venizelos started to drag his feet over negotiations and the Ottomans quickly found out what was happening. The Ottomans ordered a secret partial mobilization of reserves in the Balkans whilst Ahmet Riza assigned a group of 12 diplomats to start secret negotiations with Athens to secure Greek neutrality in a future Balkan War, which Riza thought to be inevitable by that point.
On March 18, the Ottoman delegation arrived in Athens and began hushed negotiations with the Greeks. Venizelos of course wizened up to the fact that the Ottomans had probably found out that diplomatic intrigue had taken place between Athens and Belgrade, and was willing to hear the Ottomans out. The Ottomans directed by Riza offered the Greeks more economic access in the Ottoman Empire, and its approaches and links with the Asian economy. The Ottomans also more importantly offered border corrections with the Greco-Ottoman border, and offered the Greeks the Preveza Sanjak, all of the Northern Aegean Islands other than Lemnos and the areas ceded by Greece in 1897 back if the Greeks remained neutral in a near inevitable future war. This was of course a very convincing offer, as the Greeks would be able to enrich themselves more, and gain considerable land in the process. However Venizelos tried to push for more, and asked for the Tymfala Corridor, which the Ottomans wanted to keep as well, and Greek supervised plebiscites in Lemnos and Lesbos. The Ottomans accepted the first demand and agreed to give the Tymfala Corridor to the Greeks, however rejected any idea of giving Lemnos and Lesbos to Greece. Instead Riza compromised that the Greeks would be allowed to send Consuls to the islands and legations to check on the situation indefinitely and allow the Greek population of the island have their democratic rights within the empire affirmed. Venizelos also raised the idea of a naval treaty, and maintaining the current status quo of gross tons of the Royal Hellenic Navy and the Ottoman Imperial Navy, to which Riza hesitantly agreed.
The (Secret) Treaty of Athens was signed between the Ottomans and Greeks on March 29, 1915 and stipulated the following points:-
The Greek Government and Kingdom would receive lower tariffs than other countries within the Ottoman Empire (2% instead of 5%) and become a ‘favored economic nation’ of the empire.
The transfer of Preveza, Tymfala, the Northern Aegean Islands and the Areas ceded to the empire in 1897 to be ceded to Greece.
The muslim population of the areas above would be allowed full access back to the Ottoman Empire.
The Greeks and Ottomans to maintain their gross tons within their respective navies maintaining naval parity with one another.
The greek government to send 5 consuls and 5 legations to the Ottoman Aegean to affirm the democratic rights of the Ottoman Greek population of the islands.
The Greek government to remain neutral in any future conflict between the powers of the Ottoman Empire and the other local Balkan powers.
The border agreement with Greece after the Secret Treaty of Athens.
On March 31st the opposition parties within the Ottoman government tried to lambast the transfer of territories and denounce it, however the same time the Ottoman government received a declaration of war from Bulgaria and Serbia and Montenegro citing liberation of their ethnic peoples.” Diplomacy within the Balkan War. University of Odessa, 2019.
“When the Balkan War had been declared, the Russians were just as caught off guard as the Ottomans. The Russians were busy fighting a massive war against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and they certainly didn’t want to drag the Ottomans into that extensive list. They made diplomatic noises in favor of the Balkan Alliance, however only gave lip service to the support they would give to the governments in Belgrade and Sofia. The Russians preferred to keep their flanks secured.
The Ottomans when war broke out had around 350,000 men mobilized in the Balkans with some 400,000 en route to the Balkans from the Anatolian armies as the Ottoman mobilization continued in earnest and now expanded without the need to conduct it in secret. Ahmet Riza formed a national government, entering into a temporary coalition with every political party present in the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies and the Ottoman Senate and declared war time law.
The Ottoman flag used during the Balkan War. This flag depicts the Exalted Ottoman State during times of war.
The first engagement of the Balkan War took place in the strategic fortress town of Kardzhali. Shortly before the war, Bulgaria had deployed the 2nd Thracian Infantry Division reinforced with 3 artillery regiments to the area around Haskovo and had orders to protect the routes between Plovdiv and Stara Zagora. The Ottoman forces in Kardzhali were dangerously close to the Plovdiv-Harmanli railway line and the base of the Bulgarian Armies which were to advance in Eastern Thrace. The commander of the 2nd Army, Nikola Ivanov ordered the 2nd Army to advance towards the fortress city, the first city in a long range of fortifications across the Rhodope Mountains and to push the Ottomans to the south of the Arda River.
Meanwhile, the local commander of the area, Mehmed Yaver Pasha received orders from Mustafa Kemal, the commander of the Rhodope and Bulgarian Front, who had hastily come back into service splitting his honeymoon time in half, and was ordered to defend the first fortress city to allow reinforcements to arrive. Yaver Pasha had around 15,000 troops in the region, consisting largely of the 3rd Mountaineer Division. Meanwhile on the other hand, Ivanov had around 20,000 men consisting of the 2nd Thracian Division and the 40th Infantry Division converging on Kardzhali.
On April 2nd, 1915, the artillery regiments of the Bulgarians opened fire on the Ottoman fortifications which returned fire, beginning a massive cannonade between the two forces. Colonel Vasil Delov was ordered to take independent command of four columns and Delov took command as ordered. His four columns marched into the village of Kovancilar after defeating the small Ottoman garrison there, and started to heard for Kardzhali in a small flanking maneuver. Yaver Pasha hearing of this sent 3,000 troops under the command of Neshat Bey, the famous commander from the Italo-Ottoman War to counter attack against Delov and his troops and relieve the Ottoman flanks in the region.
After Neshat Bey drove the Bulgarians out of the villages surrounding Kardzhali, General Ivan Fichev, in total command of the Bulgarian Rhodope Front ordered General Ivanov to stop the advance of the 2nd Army against Kardzhali because the Bulgarians weren’t aware of the total Ottoman strength in the region. However, Ivanov did not withdraw his troops as ordered by the Bulgarian high command, and gave his officers autonomy and freedom of command and action. The detachment led by Delov counter attacked against Neshat Bey again and managed to retake some of the outlying villages. Neshat Bey managed to hold his ground and defend the flanks of the fortress however.
With that out of the way on April 4, Yaver Pasha received 1000 reinforcements and decided to take a risk and 10,000 Ottoman troops sallied out of the fortress lines and accompanied with artillery and cover fire, and attacked the Bulgarian positions. The Bulgarians were taken aback by the sudden attack, especially amidst torrential rain and the surprise factor, as well as the superior artillery that the Ottomans possessed with them pushed the Bulgarians out of Kardzhal for good.
a depiction of the Battle of Kardzhali
As the Ottomans won the first land engagement of the war, the Ottoman Black Sea Fleet also declared a blockade of the Tsardom of Bulgaria and the Ottoman Adriatic Fleet also declared a blockade of Montenegro, thus starting the war in absolute earnest.” The War in the Balkans: Ottoman Validation. Penguin Publishing, 2007.
“Austria-Hungary was the second fastest growing economy in the world when the Great War broke out. It was the largest conductor industrial manufactory of the world, and housed the important industrial estates of Bohemia, Galicia and Styria, which made up around a fifth of the total industrial capacity of mainland Europe, and was an industrial giant on its own two feet. Its economy was robust and both Karl von Sturgkh, the Minister-President of Cisleithania and Istvan Tisza, the Prime Minister of Hungary led powerful economic reforms basing their economic policies on the English School of Economics, creating a mix of a free trading and protectionist economy, one which worked well within the scenario of the Austro-Hungarian economy.
Hungarian Prime Minister Istvan Tisza
As such, when war broke out, it was obvious to many that Austria-Hungary was a partner that was only joining the war very very reluctantly. Franz Joseph I reportedly got upset that the Habsburg Monarchy was being dragged into a war which he called a solely Franco-German Affair, and the heir to the Habsburg throne, Franz Ferdinand had reportedly ranted and raved in anger in Vienna for three days straight when war was declared on Russia, stating that the war was lunacy of the highest kind. Karl von Sturgkh was willing to join the war however, as he feared that not honoring the Triple Alliance would see Austria-Hungary dangerously diplomatically isolated from the rest of the Great Powers, and that was something he could not abide by. He was also confident in the Austro-Hungarian Army as it only had to deal with a singular front with Russia, and could afford to send some token forces to the Franco-German front and the Alpine front with the Italians. The Austro-Hungarians deemed their most high participation in the western theatre to be in the Mediterranean where they would group with the Italian Navy and try to wrest control of the sea from the Royal Navy and the French Navy, as combined the two navies were up to the task.
Prime Minister Istvan Tisza on the other hand, was not sure about going to war at all and the Hungarian cabinet stalled the Austro-Hungarian government for a long time, trying to avert the Austro-Hungarian entry into the war. Tisza too was worried about being diplomatically isolated, however he was even more worried about adding more Slavic territories in the empire, which would destroy the equilibrium that had been formed in the empire as an aftermath of the 1908 Bosnian Annexation, and could spell its doom. Tisza was also worried that his opponents would use this war as a catalyst to expand suffrage into the Hungarian portion of the empire, like that of the Austrian half of the empire something which Tisza had fought against during his entire premiership. Third and finally he was worried about Romania. Romania, on paper was an Austrian ally, however in reality remained a foe of the Habsburg Monarchy, having its eyes covet Transylvania every time it could.
Austrian Chief of General Staff Viktor Dankl.
Finally after hushed negotiations and convincing apparatus’s he acquiesced to war, and the Austro-Hungarian government declared war soon after. Austria’s main participation was of course to lie against Russia. The German border with Russia was frightening lose, as von Bulow diverted troops to France to fight a ‘swift’ war over there. As such the main responsibility to fight against the Russians fell to Austrian Chief of General Staff Viktor Dankl. Dankl was more attuned to a defensive strategy, however the dangerously numerically inferior German border forced him to change strategy and he decided to go on a small offensive to deter the Russians from invading the German lands.
Dankl established his headquarters in Przemysl Fortress in Galicia, close to the front, and the armies under his command included von Bohm’s 1st Army, the I, V, and X Corps, 2 cavalry divisions, and an infantry brigade. North of his headquarters, there was the 4th Army commanded by Auffenberg with the II, VI, IX, XVII Corps commanding 9 infantry divisions, and 2 cavalry divisions. East of his position was the 3rd Army commanded by Brudermann, consisting of the III, XI, and XIV Corps consisting of 18 infantry divisions and 4 cavalry divisions. Von Falkenfeld also commanded an army group consisting of 2 infantry divisions and 1 cavalry division alongside the 3rd army to form its rear action. Kovess commanded the XII Corps on the eastern flank, to guard the Austrian supply lines in the region. Meanwhile the Russian Southwestern Front was under the command of the general Nikolai Iudovich Ivanov. Ivanonv’s forces consisted of Saltza’s 4th Army consisting of the Grenadier Corps, the XIV, XVI Corps of 6 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry divisions and an infantry and cavalry brigade each supplemented by an artillery brigade. To the east was Plehve’s 5th army consisting of the V, XVII, XIX, and XXV Corps consisting of 10 infantry divisions and 5 cavalry divisions. Further to the east laid Nikolai Ruzsky’s 3rd Army commanding the IX, X, XI, and XXI corps consisting of 12 infantry divisions and 4 cavalry divisions. On the Russian eastern flanks lay Aleksei Brusilov’s 8th Army consisting of the VII, VIII, XII, and XXIV Corps of 10 infantry and 5 cavalry divisions. The Russian’s battle plan, based on information provided by the infamous spy Alfred Redl assumed the Austro-Hungarian concentration of forces to be on the eastern side of the River San.
Going into the Battle of Krasnik, the Austro-Hungarian Army enjoyed tow distinct advantages over their Russian counterpart: numerical superiority and a batter strategic. The 1st Army enjoyed a numerical advantage of 10 and a half infantry and two cavalry divisions to Baron Salza’s 6 and a half infantry divisions and 3 cavalry divisions. Chief of Staff Dankl’s orders only expanded the K.u.K’s advantage as he ordered a concentration of forces further west than Ivanov and Russian Chief of Staff, General Alexeyev had expected, as they still followed through with Redl’s information, which by this point under Dankl was becoming obsolete.
On March 22, Alexeyev issued orders to the 4th and 5th Armies in an attempt to improve their positions in the crash course they were now headed towards aimed at a larger flanking pair of armies. While these orders probably saved the Russian 4th Army from a defeat from which it could never recover from, it failed to change the nearly pre-ordained outcome of the battle, as the Russians fell into the Habsburg trap.
a painting of the Battle of Krasnik.
On the 23rd of March, at around 9 am, the Austrian 1st army’s I Corps encountered the 4th Russian Army’s XIV Corps, near Zaklikow, while the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Cavalry division engaged the Russian 13th Cavalry division further to the west. The V corps of the Austrian 1st Army managed to reach the battlefield and was able enough to secure Polichna by the end of the day. By the end of the day, the Russian 4th Army’s XIV Corps was being driven back in disarray, exposing the entire western flank of the Russian Southwestern Front. On the 24th of March, the Russian 4th Army’s Grenadier Corps and XVI Corps continued their advance towards the south completely unaware of the danger enveloping them slowly and steadily as Ivanov’s order to hold their position was not relayed in time, while the Russian 5th Army turned on the Austro-Hungarian flanks to attack. The Russian corps encountered the Austrian V and X corps, fighting most of the day until late into the evening, by which point the Russians had to retreat from Krasnik. Salza withdrew his army to Lublin in the dead of night, abandoning the battle. The battle saw around 20,000 Austro-Hungarian casualties in the first great battle of the eastern front, whilst the Russians suffered twice and more casualties as they took 41,000 casualties during the battle. It would symbolize the Austro-Hungarian struggle for dominance in Poland and Galicia for the next few years to come.” The Habsburg Empire: Archduchy To Empire To Archduchy. Salzburg Press, 1999.
“Down in the south the Russians were taking a beating from the Austrians and Hungarians as the Habsburg Monarchy secured its border and was planning on diverting Russian attention to itself to protect its german ally. However at the same time, the Russians were advancing towards the Germans thinly defended border, or more importantly East Prussia. To this end, Schlieffen had predicted in 1897 that a mobile operation on interior lines using railways to mass forces against one Russian army and then destroying it before it could retreat would be a prudent idea. As a result every German general staff officer in East Prussia knew how to respond to a Russian invasion or offensive with this in mind.
The invasion was led by two Russian armies, the 1st Army consisting of 7 infantry divisions, 6 cavalry divisions and 500 guns under the command of general Paul von Rennenkampf, and the 2nd Army led by Alexander Samsonov consisting of 11 infantry divisions and 3 cavalry divisions aided by an overwhelming 750 guns. They would be confronted by the German 8th Army led by General Maximilian von Prittwitz, consisting of 14 infantry divisions and 1 cavalry divisions accompanied by 1000 guns.
Much to the surprise of the Germans, Austrians and even their allies in the west, France and Britain, Russia was able to mobilize into an invasion of East Prussia quite quickly. Any invasion of Prussia would be an important blow to the German morale, and if it fell, then it would be a blow from which the Germans would never recover from. Kaiser Wilhelm II famously stated before the invasion “I would be loath to hand over Konigsberg to the Russians than I would be to hand over Berlin to the French and English.”
East Prussia was the historical heart of the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire. It needed to be defended earnestly. The two Russian armies entered East Prussia on March 14th, 1915. The first battle to take place on the East Prussian front would be the Battle of Stalluponen. The Germans under the command of Hermann von Francois conducted a successful counterattack against four Russian infantry divisions from different infantry corps, which heavy outnumbered them but were separated from each other, creating a gap between the 27th and 40th Infantry Divisions which was exploited by von Francois to push the Russians back before retreating in good order. It was a minor German victory however did little to upset the Russian timetable, as the Russian armies converged and grouped up with one another.
Maximilian von Prittwitz
As it was becoming known that the Russians were going to invade East Prussia truly in earnest the Germans became hasty in their attempt to counter attack. General Maximilian von Prittwitz’s aerial reconnaissance had reported to him that there existed a gap between the converging Russian 1st and 2nd Armies and General von Francois’s scouts informed the German army that the 1st Army’s northern flank was exposed, making them ripe for counter attack. Prittwitz reluctantly agreed to attack, stating “I Corps made a soup for us, and we will now have to eat it up.”
On the 20th of March, the Battle of Gumbinnen began as the German 2nd Infantry division flanked the Russian 28th and 29th Infantry Divisions by advancing through the Zulllkinner forest. The Germans then engaged the Russians and the Germans inflicted heavy casualties, of around 50% on the Russian infantry regiments coming at them, capturing Mallwischken in the process. To the south, August von Mackensen and his XVII corps and Below’s I Reserve Corps were moving and not ready for combat. Hearing of the 2nd Division’s attack in the north however, Mackensen’s 35th and 26th Infantry divisions attacked Rennenkampf’s III Corps. However Below was not able to join in this attack on noon. The Russians in this area were well-reinforced by their upgraded logistical supply, and knew that an attack was extremely possible, so they had spent the time preparing for an assault by moving their heavy artillery in suitable positions. At first the Germans advanced deep in Russian lines, but it faltered immediately as the Russian heavy guns opened fire and the Russians were able to turn the German flanks and forced the enemy to retreat in disorder into the Insterburg-Angerburg lines, leaving 6,000 prisoners to the Russians. Meanwhile Below’s I Reserve Corps instead of attacking Goldap as ordered by Prittwitz, turned north to help Mackensen. His exposed flank was then attacked by the Russian 30th infantry division and was unable to aid Mackensen. The German 3rd Reserve Division commanded by Curt von Morgen arrived on the scene to form a rearguard to allow the rest of the Germans to retreat in good order.
Russian occupied East Prussia.
The Russian invasion of East Prussia however stalled when news of the defeat to the Austrians arrived north, and the transfer of units took place. Nonetheless, the Russians were now in command of around 15% to 20% of East Prussia, and they weren’t going anywhere.” Imperial Russia in the Great War, Osprey Publishing, 2019.
“Meanwhile during the Balkan Wars, two different battles were taking place. Mehmed Essat Pasha, a popular general who was a competent administrator and military governor, was given command of the Ottoman 3rd Army, consisting of the V, VI and VII Corps commanded by Said Pasha, Cavit Pasha and Fethi Pasha respectively. When war broke out, Mehmed Essat Pasha’s forces were the first in the region to mobilize in proper order, and as such they were the most battle ready as the Ottoman railway system worked overtime to bring resources and supplies to the army from Constantinople. Meanwhile the Royal Serbian Army plan was to destroy the Ottoman Army in a decisive battle before the Ottomans could complete the full mobilization of their reserves in the Balkans, and concentrate their forces. The Serbians assumed that the Ottoman forces would be deployed in a defensive manner in the valley of Vardar, on the strategically important plateau of Ovce Pole. The Serbian commander in chief, General Radomir Putnik made it his aim to double envelope the Ottoman Army by using the three armies under his command, the 1st Army led by Crown Prince Alexander, the 2nd Army led by Stepa Stepanovic, and the 3rd Army led by Bozidar Jankovic.
Mehmed Essat Pasha.
Even before war began on March 31st, skirmishes had broken out between the active personnel of Mehmed Essat Pasha’s forces near the border as the Toplica Group of the Serbian 3rd Army and Serbian Chetniks acting on their own attacked small ottoman forces near the region. The Ottomans believing the attacks to be the work of bandits before war broke out ironically arrested the chetniks using the police gendarmerie and and imprisoned them giving banditry charges to the confused Serbian Chetniks. However on the evening of March 31st, as war was declared, the Serbian 1st Army crossed the border, and on April 5th, reached the outskirts of Kumanovo.
At the other side, Mehmed Essat Pasha decided to take a risk and decided to settle for an offensive. He knew he was outnumbered, however wished to surprise the enemy and push them backwards in a decisive battle. On the evening of the 7th of April, the Ottoman 3rd Army, also known as the Vardar Army, gathered in the Valley of Pcinja River. Ottoman codebreakers and information intelligence had managed to gather and provide Mehmed Essad of the total disposition of Serbian forces, however the Serbians knew nothing of the Ottomans, and neither did they know that the Ottomans were going to give battle exactly one week later. Not expecting an attack, the Serbs did little to fortify their positions, which were topographically strong. Still, only two out of the five infantry divisions were deployed in the frontal positions, and the Danube I Division was deployed onto the left wing and flanks, whilst the cavalry division and the Morava Division I was deployed to the right wing and flanks. The left flank, Mehmed Essat Pasha concluded was particularly vulnerable, because of Srtevica, an important topographical position, was defended by militias instead of the actual Serbian army itself.
On the night of the 13th of April, 1915, the Ottomans began to form their positions in the dead of night, hiding their movements from the Serbs. The V corps under Said Pasha was ordered to fall onto the Serbian left flank and the VII Corps formed the center of the Ottoman line, whilst the VI Corps remained on the right flank as reserve.
The morning of the 14th of April was foggy, and reconnaissance could not be performed for fear of lack of coordination and visibility. On the Serbian left flank, observers noticed the troops of the Ottoman 17th Infantry Division moving, however mistook them for the Ottoman battering withdrawing from Stracin. Troops of the Danube Division I tried to capture this ‘battery’ but where surprised to find an entire division of troops and were mowed down in surprise, forcing the Serbians to retreat. Mehmed Essat then ordered the V Corps to fall on the Serbian left flank, this time coordinated with artillery support, and with 5 Ottoman bombers from the Monastir detachment. The combined arms approach broke the irregular militias who slinked off into the countryside withdrawing from the battle, forcing the Serbians to detach a division from their center to plug in the gap that had formed in the left flank of their forces.
Said Pasha soon found out that the 18th Serbian Infantry Regiment which was guarding a mountain pass on the left flank to be wavering and without waiting for orders, attacked at the pass utilizing his military autonomy to justify his actions later on, and managed to drive the Serbians out of the mountain pass in the region, utilizing his mountaineer regiments who were suited to fight in the terrain to push the Serbians out. However by this point the V corps was becoming dangerously low on ammunition as the combined arms approach, certainly a modern approach, was extremely taxing on the Ottoman logistics and supply system. It was at this moment, the VII Corps and the VI Corps started its attack on the Morava Division I in the Serbian center to distract the Serbians, whilst allowing the V Corps to resupply from small train carriages coming from Uksub. The Morava Division I was prepared for an Ottoman attack, and managed to defend its position after hearing of the fighting to the east. After initial Ottoman progress, the Serbians counterattacked and pushed them back to their original positions. After the Serbian counterattack the Serbs kept the Ottoman center checked by well organized artillery fire until the end of the day.
The Serbian rear echelon divisions, consisting of the Danube Division II, and Drina Division I in the center and Timok Division II on the right, and the army artillery were not informed about the combat operations taking place. They remained in the rear of the battle without participating at all. The Serbians as night fell deployed the Danube Division II and Drina Division I to the rapidly collapsing left flank as they prepared to fight another day.
The entire night was filled with artillery bombardments as both sides bombarded the other with shells trying to oust the other from their positions. The Ottomans held a distinct advantage in this regards, as the Ottoman airplanes told the Ottoman gunners exactly where to fire, and the Ottoman bombers let their bombs fall on Serbian positions. The Ottoman bombers did more than just senseless bombing however. They also bombed the roads being utilized by the Serbs to regroup and resupply and hampered the Serbian supply system again.
Serbian artillery during the battle.
Reinforced throughout the night with extra supplies, the Ottomans at 9:30 the next day on April 15th, counter attacked and the V Corps broke through the heavily battered Drina Division I and managed to outflank of the Danube Division II as a result. This attack was an astounding success and the Serbian left flank collapsed completely, and now the center of the Serbian forces led by Prince Alexander was exposed completely. The Serbian Center then formed rearguard lines and managed to retreat north to group up with the Serbian reservists in the north, fleeing the Battle of Kumanovo ending it in decisive Ottoman victory.
Ottoman troops during the Battle of Kumanovo
Mehmed Essat Pasha, who during this time had not earned the name of Pasha, was conferred the title for his victory and his modern application of combined arms attack and fast maneuvering attacks were noted by the Ottoman General Staff. The Battle of Kumanovo ending in decisive Ottoman victory and staved off a Serbian invasion of Vardar Macedonia and Kosovo for the time being, resulting in ~5,000 casualties on both sides of the battlefield. The only problem was that the Ottomans could afford such casualties, the Serbs…..could not.” Mehmed Essat Pasha: Lion of the Danube; A Biography, Vardar Publishing, 2016.
“Meanwhile however, whilst the Ottomans had secured great victories against both Bulgaria and Serbia, the Montenegrins decided to upend the Ottoman string of victories and defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Korita and the Battle of Tamare. An Ottoman army around 20,000 strong consisting of the 20th Infantry Division was led by Halepli Zeki Pasha and Zeki Pasha decided to go into a small probing action into Montenegrin territory on the 18th of April. He crossed the Cemi river with the rest of the 20,000 troops and entered Montenegrin territory near Korita, only to find himself facing the entire Montenegrin army of around 25,000 men led by King Nicholas I himself.
Surprised and disoriented to the extreme, King Nicholas I managed to regroup his army before Zeki Pasha could do the same and launched a pincer attack on the 20th Infantry Division and managed to force the Ottomans to retreat. However as the Ottomans retreated back to their side of the border, Nicholas I managed to send 4 regiments to flank the Ottoman positions, and made a portion of the Ottoman detachment encircled and without supply and communications. Zeki Pasha had no choice but to leave the 2,000 encircled troops to their fate as he retreated back into Ottoman territory. The 2,000 troops were either all killed, or captured and taken prisoner of war, thus ending the Battle of Korita in Ottoman defeat.
Nicholas I of Montenegro.
Nicholas I emboldened by this victory decided to invade Ottoman Albania and on the 23rd of April, left Montenegrin territory and invaded Ottoman Albania with 25,000 troops. At the border mountain pass of Tamare, the Ottoman 20th Infantry Division, or what was left of it anyway, decided to make a stand and defend its position. However Zeki Pasha had chosen this spot to stand against the enemy extremely badly. The mountain pass was detached from the outside world, and supply situation in a rural mountain area was basically non-existent. The Montenegrins decided to bypass the 20th Division and marched towards the southwest intending to capture Stare on the road to Koplik whilst the rest of the army decided to surround the 15,000 Ottoman troops in Tamare and decided to starve and fight their way in to get an Ottoman surrender there. A fierce melee consumed the mountain passes of tamare as the Ottomans and Montenegrins duked their strength against each other, however the tide of the Battle of Tamare had turned in favor of the Montenegrins and the mountain pass soon fell to the Montenegrins with only half of the troops managing to escape full encirclement and capture.
Nicholas I was now ready to make his move.” Nicholas I of Montenegro: A Biography, 2000
“The Ottoman Black Sea Fleet had decided to blockade Bulgaria on the declaration of war, and the four destroyers, 1 cruiser and 1 protected cruiser and 8 gunboats that the Black Sea fleet consisted formed the vanguard of this blockading force. The Bulgarian navy was really much of a threat, however a new plan brewing in Constantinople forced Mehmed Ciballi Bey, the Minister of the Navy to order Muhammad Pasha, an Arab-Greek fleet commander of the Black Sea Fleet to sally out of Sinop and deal a blow from which the Bulgarian navy could not recover from.
The Bulgarian ‘navy’ consisting of the Letyashi, Smeli, Strogi and Drazki which were all motor torpedo boats in reality. All other Bulgarian ships were all gunboats and present in Lake Burgas or in the Danube River, with the border in Romania. Led by the cruiser Hamidiye the Ottoman Black Sea fleet arrived at Cape Burgas, some 30 kilometers east of the port of Burgas itself which worried the Bulgarians, which sent the four torpedo boats to attack the Ottomans to deter them from entering Burgas water. Led by Captain Dimitar Dobrev, the Bulgarians first sent signals asking the Ottomans to withdraw, however since no answer came, the Bulgarians let loose torpedoes onto the Ottoman ships. Two Ottoman gunboats were struck by the torpedoes and one sank however the opening with the torpedo shot allowed the Hamidiye, which was hidden from sight from the Bulgarian due to morning mist on the 26th of April, to emerge from the fog and fire close range volleys at the Bulgarian torpedo boats. The Strogi was struck and it sank beneath the waves soon enough. Captain Dimitar Dobrev had thought that he was engaging only a few gunboats and two destroyers, however as the morning mist lifted, he found himself engaging a massive Ottoman naval force in comparison to his own. He decided to retreat and began to detach the naval forces from the battle, and began to retreat back to Burgas Harbor. However this was not to be. Ottoman gunboats had sallied forward during the earlier melee and now the Bulgarians would have to fight their way through with 3 torpedo boats. The Hamidiye and the three destroyers opened fire from behind and struck the boats a few time, and with the Ottoman torpedo boats assisting the attack against the Bulgarian ships, the ships soon capsized and sank beneath the waves, making around 90 sailors killed in combat, whilst around 27 sailors were picked up by the Ottomans and then taken as Prisoner of War.
Ottoman Cruiser Hamidiye before the battle.
The Battle of Cape Burgas in comparison to the great naval battles going on in the Great War, was a small affair, however it removed the Bulgarian Navy as a tangible threat (not that it was one, however the Ottomans needed to be absolutely sure). As the battle ended in the favor of the Ottomans, the Ottoman Ministry of War, began to look in favor of a marine landing in Burgas, some 40,000 strong from the Anatolian armies to outflank the Bulgarians and throw them out of the war as soon as humanely possible.” Ottoman Naval History in the 20th Century, Osprey Publishing, 2008.
“The Battle of Liege was the very first engagement in the German invasion of Belgium. The attack on the city took place on the 5th of March and lasted until the 16th. The fortresses surrounding the city were made in the 19th century and whilst the city had been kept supplied by the Belgians and upgraded every five years or so, the ring of 12 fortresses surrounding Liege were unprepared for the modern heavy howitzers that the Germans rained down upon on them. The fortresses and their defenses broke under immense german bombardment and forced the Belgians to withdraw to their second defensive line. At the same time, King Albert I of Belgium took personal command of the Belgian Army sending a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm II stating that ‘I hope our personal relationship is not destroyed by this war, however I must take the interests of my country at heart first and foremost.’
Albert I of Belgium
Kaiser Wilhelm II to this end forced the German government to stop the process of rescinding the German honors given to Albert I and the two would remain good friends even after the war. But for the moment, the two remained enemies. On the 12th of March, King Albert I sent Lieutenant General Leon de Witte of the Belgian 1st Army to delay the Germans near Diest. Albert I intended to use the time brought by the battle, whatever its result to evacuate the women and children of Brussels whilst simultaneously stripping the Belgian National Treasury and transporting it to Britain in case of the worst situation. Albert I sent Charles de Broqueville, the Prime Minister of Belgium to form the government in Nantes, forming a government in exile, recognizing the fact that Brussels couldn’t be defended for long.
At Diest, the De Witte managed to defend the Belgian positions near the river Gete and forced the Germans to stay on the other side of the bank for a whole day. During the night, Belgian codebreakers and decryptions managed to temporarily break into the German codes and found out that the Germans were going to head in force towards De Witte and his forces and cross the river using their numerical advantage against the Belgian forces. Acting on this information, the Belgian troops crossed the river at night and wreaked havoc on the German camp, taking them and their commander, General Georg von der Marwitz by complete surprise, forcing them to postpone the crossing of the river for another day. The Belgians then made a fortified position near Diest consisting of 30 heavy guns and bombarded the German positions until the German heavy guns arrived and managed to break the Belgian bombardment. Recognizing that he could not delay the Germans for long after this, De Witte ordered all of the bridges across the Gete river to be detonated and destroyed to cause the Germans more time to cross. Belgian engineers blew the bridge over and destroyed the 4 main bridges across the river and De Witte retreated back to Brussels with the remainder of his army informing Albert I of the situation. De Witte and Albert I had brought Brussels valuable time by allowing thousands of women and children to escape and the national treasury was already at sea en route to London. On March 25, 1915, the Germans occupied an abandoned Brussels, with the Belgian capital to become the first of many European capitals to be occupied during the Great War.
The belgians destroyed the bridges across the Gete
The Germans continued their advance into Belgian territory and the Germans decided to take care of the Belgian defensive parameter around Namur and break into French territory whilst a detachment was sent north to deal with the last Belgian fortress of Antwerp. The Belgian forces under King Albert I ordered the troops at Namur to defend the area as long as they could to buy the French and British more time to enter Belgium and entrench in their defensive positions whilst mobilization continued in Flanders to bolster the Belgian army. This was essentially a suicide mission however the Belgian commander Edouard Michel accepted the order and told his monarch that he could delay the germans for a maximum of two weeks with the amount of men and ammunition that he had. Albert I accepted the answer and told Michel to delay the Germans for two weeks at Namur. Marshal von Kluck who led the German army through Namur were stuck at the Siege of Namur for 11 days whilst the British Expeditionary Army led by Horace Smith Dorien entered Belgium to bolster the defenses of Belgium. The Germans broke through the Belgian defenses on April 2, and occupied Namur. Michel was killed during the chaos of the fall of Namur and King Albert I posthumously raised him to the title of Baron and made his family the Barony of Namur in his honor.
Excepting the Battle of Mulhouse, all of the German battles in the western front had been victories and the Germans advanced through Belgium at a frightening pace. However their first defeat was to come at the hand of General Smith-Dorien at the Battle of Charleroi. At the old battlefields of Waterloo which had been subsumed by the growing urban settlements of modern Belgium, the British were made to entrench by Smith-Dorien on April 1, 1915. On April 6, 1915, von Kluck and his armies assaulted the area which was defended by 76,000 British troops, around sixty percent of the entire BEF. The British held the line against the German 1st Army and inflicted a large amount of disproportionate casualties, showing that the British professional troops were still dangerous forces to be reckoned with, despite their small size. On April 9, von Kluck withdrew from the Battle of Charleroi recognizing that he could not defeat the British at their entrenched position, and instead focused further south at the British flanks at Joncret which was defended by the French Fifth Army and pushed the French away, placing the British position at risk, forcing the British to give up Charleroi.
General Horace Smith-Dorrien, leader of the BEF
With the upper French plains open for invasion, the allies needed the Belgians to hold out in Antwerp as best as they could. However the city of Antwerp and its national redoubt was penetrated by the Germans on April 7 and the outer ring of forts fell pretty quickly. On the 9th of April the inner citadel of forts fell and the Belgian army fell back to Ghent where Albert I and Smith-Dorien planned to defend Belgium once and for all.
From April 9 to 15, the Germans tried to capture Ghent, however the Belgians and British used the positions at the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal to defend themselves and the waterways were flooded by the Belgians to stop the Germans. The Germans unable to advance further into Belgian territory west of the canal, decided to entrench themselves by constructing defensive trenches for their own. The British and Belgians did the same. Thus began, the era of Trench warfare.” The Invasion and Rape of Belgium: Modern Atrocities. Bruges Publishing, 2001.
“When war had broken out between the British and the allies of Italy and Austria-Hungary, the Royal Navy and the French Navy had recognized that the Austrian and Italian navies combined were a very credible threat to the supremacy of the Entente at sea in the Mediterranean. The Entente could not rely on the Imperial Russian Black Sea Fleet as the Ottomans would not allow any warship to pass the straits without permission and the British knew that the Ottomans would demand something in return if they allowed passage. They were not willing to give up the Ottoman Capitulations to Britain and France.
British Med Fleet at Malta 1914
The Mediterranean Fleet based in Malta in 1915 when war broke out consisting of the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron (HMS Indomitable, HMS Inflexible, HMS Indefatigable), the 1st Cruiser Squadron (HMS Black Prince, HMS Duke of Edinburgh, HMS Warrior, HMS Chatham, HMS Dublin, HMS Gloucester, HMS Weymouth) and the 5th Destroyer Flotilla (HMS Solebay, HMS Cadiz, HMS Gabbard, HMS St. James, HMS St. Kitts, HMS Sluys).
Moreover, the British fleets at Alexandria and Gibraltar played host to 17 Cruisers (Astraea, Dido, Isis, Thetis, Venus, Vindictive, Diana, Naiad, Gladiator, Intrepid, Hermione, Furious, Barham, Pyramus, Pioneer, Pandora, Pegasus) and 16 destroyers (Wolverine, Scorpion, Scourge, Savage, Renard, Rattlesnake, Racoon, Pincher, Mosquito, Harpy, Grampus, Grasshopper, Foxhound, Bulldog, Beagle, Basilisk).
The major plan for the British and French was to secure the Straits of Sicily to allow passage of the convoys in the area, and to secure the route to Malta. Inflexible, and Indomitable led the Mediterranean Fleet out of Malta alongside the Black Prince, Warrior, Weymouth and Gloucester, and Solebay and Cadiz and Sluys to group up with the Isis, Thetis, Venus, Diana, Harpy, Grampus, Grasshopper and Basilisk which were coming from Gibraltar to open the sea lanes across the western Mediterranean. They were aided in this endeavor by the French Mediterranean fleet as 7 French cruisers and 10 destroyers joined up with this British detachment to secure the western seas.
An austrian dreadnought in the med.
The Italian navy was wracked with problems however. Around 60% of the coal used by the Italians came from Britain and the loss of British coal meant that the Italians could not sally out with their navy at will and the Italians could not replace their losses with Austrian and German coal completely and was forced to subsidize a third of their coal. Nonetheless, with 6 dreadnoughts, the Italian navy was still a powerful foe, and they Italians too had their eyes of the Straits of Sicily and the Italian Admiralty and the Austrian Admiralty began to eye up the Straits of Sicily to attack and blockade the Eastern Mediterranean against the Entente. The Austrians agreed to send one of their dreadnoughts whilst the Italians decided to send 2 dreadnoughts into the straits to attack and blockade the two halves of the Mediterranean sea. As the Italian and Austrian navies went out to attack the Royal Navy and French Navy, the cataclysmic Battle of the Straits of Sicily was about to begin.” Naval Operations in the Great War: Mediterranean Edition. Osprey Publishing, 2008.
“After the victory at Kardzhali, the Ottomans were confronted by the age old problem, of what it could do against Bulgaria now. Many advocated to stay on the defense and let the Bulgarians bleed themselves dry against the Ottoman defenses at the Rhodope Lines. The Ottomans were however becoming cautious of the surprising manner with which the forts in France and Belgium were collapsing against the German heavy guns and were not willing to let their forts to fall down as it was the last line of defense connecting Ottoman Thrace to Ottoman Macedonia.
Yaver Pasha on April 19th, was given the permission to seek an invasion of Bulgaria and initiated his plan by coordinated it with Bulgarian Front Commander Mustafa Kemal and Neshat Bey. Mustafa Kemal was busy in the upcoming landings in Burgas, and advised Yaver Pasha to invade Bulgaria in a series of small probes and to cut off the Plovdiv-Harmanli line near Haskovo to deny the Bulgarians a serious logistical advantage. Neshat Bey promised to launch the X Corps into Velingrad in the west to distract the Bulgarians making them unable to reinforce their positions in the east against the invasion planned by Yaver Pasha. For the Ottomans it was imperative to throw Bulgaria out of the war. The Bulgarians were the most militarized of their enemies, and their army was too close to Constantinople for comfort. The Ottoman Minister of War, Mahmud Shevket Pasha approved of the offensive named the Plovdiv Offensive and gave the Offensive jurisdiction over 50 warplanes, around 1/3 of the entire Ottoman Air Force at the time. Yaver Pasha gathered around 80,000 men consisting of 4 divisions (the 3rd Infantry Division, 2nd Mountaineer Division, 4th Cavalry Division, 7th Redif Division) and began to move inland into the Bulgarian frontier where they were confronted by the Bulgarian 3rd Army commanded by Deputy Commander Mihail Savov who had around 110,000 men under arms to fight against the Ottomans.
Meanwhile at the same time complementing the Plovdiv Offensive was an Ottoman probe into Lozengrad near Bulgarian Thrace commanded by Abdullah Pasha whose intention was draw as much Bulgarian troops as he could onto his 25,000 troops to divert the Bulgarian attentions. Neshat Bey conducted his own diversionary probe into Velingrad. Yaver Pasha and Savov clashed for the first time at the Battle of Beli Plast. It was here that Yaver Pasha decided to look into the newly formed aerial and ground combined tactics. He used Mehmed Essat Pasha’s artillery bombardment, aerial bombardment and simultaneous infantry assault tactic and attacked the Bulgarian positions in a massive blitz of combined arms warfare. The ottoman shell burst attacks and machine gun attacks on the Bulgarian positions began to seriously frighten Bulgarian troops and were beginning to fall back to their defensive positions near Haskovo.
Mihail Savov.
Savov was settling into defensive parameters around Haskovo and was resupplied by the Plovdiv-Haramanli railway which Yaver Pasha was directed to take action against. Yaver Pasha split his forces into two battle lines. The main center and right was composed of 50,000 troops whilst his left flank coming from the Trakietz lake would consisting of 30,000 men commanded by General Muftar Pasha. Yaver Pasha commanded the man detachment and came up from Teketo towards Konush on May 21st, 1915 and became involved with fighting with the Bulgarian advance guard positions at Voyvodovo. At Voyvodovo, the Bulgarians managed to delay the superior Ottoman army with a massive amount of casualties being split for the nearby redoubts as the Bulgarians in the area held the redoubt stubbornly. A flanking action by one of the mountaineer regiments towards the north near the Konushian marshes led to the collapse of the Voyvodovo Bulgarian defenses and the Bulgarian defenders retreated to Malevo in an orderly fashion without giving the Ottomans an opportunity to exploit a disorderly retreat. Yaver Pasha continued to march up north and encountered heavy resistance as Bulgarian reserves based at Malevo grouped with the Voyvodovo detachments and attacked the Ottoman columns near Northern Konush. The surprise attack by the Bulgarians led by General Mikhail Debrov managed to push the Ottomans back to Konush and the Bulgarians attacked with multiple coordinated assaults with artillery fire and mortar fire. The Ottomans had to fall back to Konush, however did so in an orderly fashion. The past half a decades military reforms within the army were showing as the veterans of multiple uprisings and the Italo-Ottoman War stayed impassive and fought against the well-trained by inexperienced Bulgarian troops. Yaver Pasha regrouped at Konush and communicated with the Adrianople Air Detachment and asked for aerial bombardment and support. The Ottoman aerial regiments responded with half an hour and bombarded the marshy wasteland in northern Konusha and forced the Bulgarians back. The Ottomans seized this opportunity and flooded across the Konusha marshes embankments forced Dobrev to retreat back to a pre-arranged retreating corner at Stamboliyski.
Meanwhile Muftar Pasha came up in a slow fashion, cautious as he was for a general, and reached Sirakovo whilst the Ottomans bombarded Konusha for the second time. Muftar Pasha then paused for a few minutes to regain order in his army and then moved north through the Trakietz marshlands and moved slowly, as he did not wish for his troops to die in the marshes instead of actually dying from fighting the enemy. He reached Vagalorovo and moved further north however were attacked by the right flank at Garvanovo by the Bulgarian troops placed there. Muftar Pasha was held up and decided to stay down and defend himself, believing that he had a numerical inferiority against the Bulgarians, which he did. His 30,000 troops were being beset with 36,000 troops.
Meanwhile Yaver Pasha attacked the frontal entrance to Haskovo and attacked Savov directly. Savov then commanded the regrouping Debrov in the east to strike at the Ottomans from their right flank and catch them by surprise. This was anticipated by Yaver Pasha who had sent scouts ahead to keep tabs on Debrov and his flanking force. The 1st Brigade of the 3rd Division began to give way against Debrov’s troops and created an illusion of retreating whilst two regiments stayed right where they were created gap in the ottoman lines which the Bulgarians filled in. The two regiments then surrounded the Bulgarians and encircled Debrov’s 18,000 troops around the area. Debrov and around 7,000 troops managed to fight there way out much to the fury and anger of Yaver Pasha, however the rest were either taken prisoner or killed in a furious melee of fighting. Savov attacked at this moment trying to break through the continuous bombardment of his position and was unsuccessful in his endeavor.
Red lines are Ottomans, Green lines are Bulgarians,
Muftar Pasha successfully pushed the Bulgarians at Garvanovo back and turned to Haskovo and came towards the western entrance to the city, capturing the railway lines leading up to the city and capturing the supplies in the train barges before attacking the western approaches to the city. Attacked and beset on two sides, Savov had no choice but to sound the retreat.
Yaver Pasha’s army had lost around 7800 men in this battle as casualties in heavy fighting around the city, and in comparison the Bulgarians lost around 5000 men killed and wounded whilst around 6000 men were captured by the Ottomans. The city of Haskovo was captured and the railway line which connected western Bulgaria to eastern Bulgaria was cut off. However this was not the worst news for Bulgaria this month. The month of May was not going to be kind to the Bulgarians.” Ottoman Military History in the 20th Century, University of Konstantiniyye, 2019.
“The Ottoman Dreadnought Yavuz Selim was transferred from the Aegean Fleet to the Black Sea Fleet alongside two destroyers and 1 cruiser. This was done in conjunction with the other ships of the Black Sea fleet as this miniature armada appeared on the horizon of Burgas City on the 24th of May, 1915. The Ottoman Dreadnought was a terrifying sight for many Bulgarians as they knew that the Ottomans wouldn’t bring it out against them without being up to something very dangerous. The ottoman dreadnought, protected cruisers, and destroyers opened fire at the Bulgarian coastal defenses in and around Burgas with some mild air support. At the same time, Ottoman troop transports from Constantinople and Zonguldak left harbor carrying a total of 60,000 troops consisting of the 11th Infantry Division, 5th infantry Division and 6th Infantry Division.
Yavuz Selim outside of Burgas Harbor in 1916;
The Bulgarian shore defenses did not manage to sink any ship, however managed to strike one cruiser and one destroyer enough to make them disengage from the bombardment and forcing them back to Constantinople for repairs. However the Ottomans continued to bombard Sarafovo and Kraymorie, intending to destroy the shore defenses and to soften up the resistance against any amphibious landing. The 5th Danubian Division which was stationed in Burgas was a reservist division and was caught off guard by the massive ottoman shore bombardment of the port and was unable to respond properly. The Bulgarian barracks near Atiya soon found themselves under heavy shore bombardment and many heavy artillery pieces of the Bulgarians were broken apart by the relentless shore bombardment. On the 26th of May after two days of massive bombardment left the Bulgarians unable to respond other than sending one more division, the 4th Sofia Infantry Division to the area in case of a ‘raid’.
The Ottoman 6th Division landed at Atiya with its forward regiments managing to defeat the disoriented small Bulgarian garrison in the area and managed to capture the barracks in the area. However the Bulgarians pulled in their last light artillery in the region and sent volleys of artillery fire at the area to force the Ottomans to stay in Atiya and did not break out of the small area. The Ottoman 11th Infantry Division landed at Kraymorie and found heavier resistance here. The Ottomans had to face the fresh 4th Sofia Infantry Division’s regiments in this area, and the Ottomans could only land due to the shore bombardment and assistance given to the Ottoman amphibious landings by the Ottoman aerial support which pushed the Bulgarians in Klaymorie back to Burgas citadel. At the same time the 6th infantry division landed in Sarafovo without much Bulgarian resistance in the area. The Bulgarian troops in the region decided to retreat back to Burgas city and barricaded themselves to fight against the Ottomans on more even terms, to consolidate the 40,000 troops they had in the region. The Ottomans soon pressed their way all the way to the Bulgarian defenses on the outskirts of the city as they crossed Lake Mandrensko and Lake Burgas as well as Izgrev in the north and Rudnik in the south. The Ottoman maritime navy began to supply the Ottoman troops in the ground with heavy artillery and the Ottoman Air Corps began to bombard the city with renewed ferocity. For five days the Ottomans bombarded the city with frightening assaults. Mustafa Kemal, who personally led the attack and the amphibious attack, made his base of operations at Atiya and commanded the assault attempts. On May 31st, the sixth assault attempt managed to break a hole through one of the defensive citadels, and the Ottoman troops poured in the city. The remaining Bulgarian troops decided to retreat from the city and retreated to Vratitsa, with some ~23,000 men. The Battle of Burgas was a very bloody affair. Around 8,000 Ottoman troops were either killed or permanently wounded in the amphibious attack and many were wounded for days. The Bulgarians lost some 10,000 men in the attack, with most of the casualties coming from the shore bombardment which had caught the Bulgarians off-guard. Around 5000 troops were captured by the Ottomans during the battle. Whilst Mustafa Kemal had won a great victory by securing an amphibious victory, the Ottoman troops were so tried by the end of the Battle of Burgas, that he sent a telegram back to the Ministry of War telling them that the troops were not ready to move for around two weeks.” The Battle for Bulgaria: 1915. Varna Publishing, 2012.
Ottoman troops at Burgas
“Romanian Prime Minister Ion Bratianu was the prime minister and head of government of the Romanian nation during the starting of the Great War and the Balkan War. In May 2nd, 1915, Ahmet Riza sent a delegation to Romania, seeking a military alliance with the Romanian nation aimed squarely against Bulgaria. Led by Aegeus Baros, an Ottoman Greek diplomat, the Ottoman delegation began to negotiate secret terms with the Romanians seeking to make Romania enter the Balkan war on their side.
Aegeus Baros pointed out to King Ferdinand I and Bratianu that the Romanians stood to win at every side during this era of great conflicts. He pointed out that a Central Power defeat would see Romania gain control of Transylvania, whilst an Entente defeat would see Romania assume power over Besserabia. However he pointed out that moving against the Central Powers or Entente were both very very dangerous proposals and could risk Romania falling under occupation itself and the nation being stripped of its independence and sovereignty. Russia and Austria-Hungary were military giants and could squat Romania like nothing should they wish to. Baros pointed at Bulgaria however. Bulgaria was already struggling against the Ottoman empire and its reformed armies and the Romanian claimed lands of South Dobrudja were ripe for the taking and in comparison to attacking either Austria-Hungary or Russia, it was a much more safer proposal as well. In order to sweeten the deal, Baros threw in the Ottoman exclave of Ada Kaleh and placed it on the table for Romania, which if the Romanians accepted, would extend Romanian domination of the eastern Danubian plain.
Romania needed more however, and asked for economic aid against Bulgaria and a favorable trade treaty. The former was accepted, however the latter was rejected by the government in Constantinople. Instead, the Ottomans focused on the growing resentment between Sofia and Bucharest to maneuver its diplomatic outreach to the Romanians, inducing them to fight on their side. Make no mistake, the Romanians had no lost love for the Ottomans, however the Ottomans were in no position to menace the Romanians in the future, however the Bulgarians were and the nearest immediate threat for Romanian territorial integrity, Bulgaria’s own interests in northern Dobrudja weren’t a well kept secret after all.
Ferdinand I of Romania.
With the added sweetener of Ada Kaleh and economic aid and subsidization, the Romanians accepted the offer. King Ferdinand I asked Baros to give Romania 1 month time to prepare after which at the end of June or in early July, the Romanians would enter the war on the side of the Ottomans. This was a massive diplomatic victory for the Ottomans, and tide of the Balkan War were starting to change, even though King Nicholas I of Montenegro continued to rampage in Albania and Kosovo with the Ottomans distracted with Bulgaria and Sofia.” The Romanian-Ottoman Alliance: How it Started and How it Endured. Bucharest Publishing, 1998.
So like my graduate finals are coming up in 2 months and i am already pretty far behind. Because of that i will be taking a 2 month hiatus from all of my TLs on this site. Don't worry though this TL is not going to be abandoned! Please just do have patience.
‘To the victors of this war, their way of life will be vindicated. To those who lose, only revolutions fill their future.” – Emperor Franz Joseph in 1915.
“The Russians began the month of June, 1915 with an attempt to reconquer the territories that Austria-Hungary had occupied in Russian Poland. After the Austrian victory at Krasnik, the Austrians had pulled into the area near Janow in Russian Poland, and were preparing for a further new attack into Russian territory. The Russian Chief of General Staff ordered General Alexei Evert, commanding the 4th Army (Grenadier Corps, XIV Corps, XVI Corps) and the 5th Army under Pavel Plehve (V Corps, XVII Corps, XIX Corps, XXV Corps) to push the Austrians back. Meanwhile Dankl on the Austrian side had embarked on a defensive strategy after this, recognizing the numerical inferiority his troops had overall against the Russians, and the fact that the Russian logistics were far better than what he had anticipated. He would draw attention to Austria through probes to relieve the German front, however he would not attack into Russian Poland with foolhardy maneuvers.
When news arrived to Dankl that the Russians were on the move, he ordered 4th Army commander Moritz von Auffenberg commanding the 4th Army (II Corps, VI, Corps, IX Corps, XVII Corps, VI Cavalry Corps), and the 3rd Army commander Rudolf Brudermann commanding the 3rd Army (XI Corps, XIV Corps, IV Cavalry Corps, 23rd Infantry Division, 41st Infantry Division) to defend the path towards Austrian Poland against the upcoming Russian onslaught.
The Austrians entrenched themselves by constructing redoubts and defenses all across the Janow area, as they gathered the Russian movement was largely aimed against them. The 3rd Army under Brudermann was arrayed across the eastern flank of Janow from Cegielnia and Zofianka all the way to Dzwola whilst the 4th Army under von Auffenberg was arrayed from Jonaki to Brzeiny in the west facing the northern direction as the Russians started to take up positions to fight as well. The Russians took their position at Branew and Pilatka a safe distance away from the Austrian positions allowing the Russians to regroup and deploy their formation in a proper line against the Austrian defenses. The Russians began to bombard the Austrian lines using their heavy artillery and began to probe into the Austrian defenses by attacking on June 4th, 1915. The Austrians did not retreat as their defenses aided them immensely in standing firm against the Russian bombardment. The Russians then, under the cover of artillery fire, sent forward a brigade of cavalry troops to shock the Austrian flanks and probe for weaknesses. Many Russian commanders, like their French counterparts were still stuck in the 19th century, not knowing that cavalry troops were impractical for large scale warfare in the 20th century and the cavalry sent by the Russians were mowed down by Austrian machine gun fire.
Nonetheless, the Russians were not deterred, and the Russian 4th Army began to march forward in order to meet the Austrians at Jonaki forcing Auffenberg to call for battle stations and to prepare his troops for an onslaught. The Russians attacked the Austrian trenches and the Austrian redoubts and destroyed the forward redoubts with the aid of their artillery and stormed the Austrian sectors. The Austrians pushed back and Auffenberg’s forces managed to push the Russians back for the time being. On the other side, Brudermann and his detachment was being attacked by the Russians as well, and with much more ferocity. The Russian heavy artillery was closer to this side of the battle, and the sheer scale of the bombardment forced Brudermann to abandoned the frontal trenches and redoubts and retreated back to the secondary defenses, which were closer to the Austrian gunnery positions which would allow the Austrians to bombard the Russians instead and force them back as well.
However Russian reinforcements arrived on the Russian right flank and they forced their way through the defenses that Auffenberg had made in a surprise attack during the midday and forced the Austrian left flank to fall apart in disarray forcing Auffenberg to call for a retreat back to Sandomierz on the Vistula River. With the left flank falling apart, Brudermann disengaged from the battle, not wanting to be encircled and retreated back to Bilgoraj where he could be reinforced. The Battle of Janow ended in Russian victory however the Austrians had managed to bloody the Russians enough that they could not liberate all of Austrian occupied Russian Poland and managed to hold on to a strong part of the area.
Field Marshal and Chief of General Staff Viktor Dankl used the loss as an excuse to launch a massive modernization campaign within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and called for infrastructural and economic development of the empire simultaneously whilst the war was going on. Since Austria only really had to fight on one front, the idea was pretty sound and Franz Joseph and Franz Ferdinand themselves were in favor of economic reforms during the war. Franz Ferdinand in particular was lambasting the fact that the Austrian defeat had come as a result of the inability of the Austrian economy to properly mobilize in time, despite the gains made by the army at the expense of Russia. Furthermore, Franz Ferdinand stymied a proposal from Rome, wherein the Italians were asking for Austrian troops to reinforce the Franco-Italian alps against the French. The Germans looked favorably to such a proposal, however the Austrians did not. And for good reason. The Austrians and the Italians all but hated each other, and both hated the infernal alliance the two states had with one another due to necessity and Franz Ferdinand argued that shifting the Austrian Alpine Divisions from South Tyrol to Piedmont would leave Austrian Tyrol defenseless and without any military staff which would be disastrous if Italy decided to invade and switch sides. With Italy’s diplomatic standing in the world during the time, that wasn’t out of the question either, as the Italian economy had relied on the French and British quite heavily.” The Eastern Front of the Great War.
***
“This Imperial Government that rules Nippon in the name of His Majesty, is now at war.” – Okuma Shigenobu
“The Japanese Empire as it was called back then, and to some extents, is still called till today, entered the Great war on the side of the Entente and honored its alliance with Great Britain and fought against the Germans and the presence of the German Navy in the Pacific. However early in 1915, the fact that Japan would actually enter the war was not actually clear and neither was it guaranteed. The Japanese Prime Minister, Okuma Shigenobu was not particularly enthusiastic about going to war with a General election right around the corner, and Shigenobu did not wish to alienate the peace faction in his party, the Doshikai, before the General Election, as the peace faction made a good plurality of the party members. As such, Shigenobu tried to stall the talks between London and Tokyo regarding a possible Japanese entry into the war whilst simultaneously preparing for war. Whilst he decidedly sent letters stating that Japan was not ready for war to Paris, Moscow and London, Japan was indeed preparing for war, as the Japanese industry was slowly prioritized and nationalized, and war materials were being given massive priority. The Imperial Japanese Navy was already starting to scour the outer reaches of the Japanese Seas, and was starting to slowly harass the German presence in East Asia.
Finally on the 8th of June, 1915, the Japanese General Elections took place. All 381 seats of the House of Representatives were up for contesting, with 191 required for a majority. Shigenobu and the Doshikai ran on a platform of centrism, promising to aid the Japanese economy even further, and called upon the electorate to vote for them in the elections. The oppositions was made up of mainly the Seiyukai and Kokuminto parties, both of whom had varying ideologies though both opposed the continued rule of the Doshikai party. Count Tako Takaaki represented the Doshikai in the House of Representatives and together, Takaaki and Shigenobu led the Doshikai to win the General Elections of 1915 as the Doshikai won around 36.8% of the total electorate, winning 153 seats in the House of Representatives. Shigenobu as such got a mandate from the Imperial House to form a minority government.
With the general elections over, and the peace faction mollified by the extensive preparations and general fact that the main war was extremely far away from Japan, Shigenobu actually started to work in favor of entering the war for Japan. For many in the war factions, this war was the golden opportunity to lower European presence in eastern Asia, and taking away the German presence in the region seemed like the first thing to do in the minds of many. Shigenobu on June 20th, declared a state of unrest between the Japanese Empire and the German Empire, and sent an ultimatum to Germany demanding that every German war vessel currently in East Asia to either be interned under Japanese supervision or to leave back to Europe under the surveillance of the Japanese government. This ultimatum was written and codified by Shigenobu with the express support of Emperor Taisho and the ultimatum was predictably rejected by the German government, as the pacific maritime raiding of the German Navy in the Pacific was hampering the British War effort by a good mile, and losing that would have been fatal to the German war effort as well. On June 25th, 1915 the Japanese Empire declared a state of war between the two states, and the German diplomatic team in Japan was escorted to China for safety.
However the Japanese entry into the war precipitated a crisis in China. Shigenobu after declaring war on Germany (and by default, Austria-Hungary and Italy) drafted an ultimatum again, this time not for the Central Powers, but this time for China. This ultimatum which was called the 5 Point Demands were ludicrous for China and consisted of the following demands:-
A Japanese occupation of the German ports and leases would be recognized by the Chinese government.
The Japanese South Manchurian Railway Zone would be extended for 99 years in lease, and expand Japan’s sphere of influence in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, to include settlement and extraterritorially, appointment of administrative officials to the government and priority for Japanese investments in those areas.
Give Japan control of the Hanyang, Daye, Pingxiang mining and metallurgical facilities.
China would not be allowed to give any further concession of coastal or inland possessions to any other great power.
China was to hire Japanese advisors who could effectively control China’s finance and police. Japan would then be empowered to build three major railways in southern china and gain effective control of Fujian.
Yuan Shikai who had previously been supportive of Japan and had allied with them against the KMT led by Sun-Yat Sen found himself in a difficult position that was being pushed by his erstwhile but not really Japanese allies. Shikai was caught in a dilemma and asked the 66 man cabinet that he had formed in August 1914 to reconvene and discuss on what he would have to do against the made demands. The cabinet, led by Yang Du stated in no clear terms that the demands, especially the last demand would not be agreed upon, and if Yuan Shikai agreed to the demands, then, Shikai would find himself without a cabinet. Even for an autocrat like Shikai, the idea of such a massive loss of face was one which he could not face, and he agreed that the ultimatum would be rejected, and sent a reply publically in front of the Chinese public stating that he would not accept the demands and that Japan would not be receiving anything it demanded. China’s population, which had been extremely anti-Japanese since 1894, rejoiced at the message and Yuan Shikai’s popularity in the country grew enormously.” The Japanese Empire: Rise and Fall of Nations.
***
‘The Mandate of Heaven has been restored! The Empire is back!’ – New York Times headline
“The popularity of Yuan Shikai after rejecting the demands from Japan subsequently gave him an impetus to further his own ambitions and reforms for the nation. Shikai was greatly impressed by the reforms of the Ottoman Empire’s government from 1911 to 1915 and sought to imitate that. Mirroring the Ottoman naval trading programs he passed several laws to incentivize the Chinese naval commerce sector, some with limited success, however overall this program, which he called the ‘Chinese Waterway and Dockyard Program’ () would be extremely successful, and his popularity continued to grow.
Yuan Shikai, Provisional President of China.
Hidden underneath this regalia of reform and popularity however ambition grew. Shikai had never hated the idea of the monarchy itself, however hadn’t liked the Manchu domination of China, and on multiple occasions he had joked with several politicians about restoring a constitutional empire under a new emperor. Many in China, except the KMT and Communists were amenable to the idea, as many found the unstable Republic to be fumbling and not ideal for the situation of China. On June 29th, 1915 when Yuan Shikai began making small quotes and favorable talk in favor of a monarchy, Cai E, a prominent KMT supporter from Yunnan spoke out against such views. However to the shock of many in the KMT, a small band of bandits and guerillas, armed with weapons, broke into his residence in Yunnan and killed the man, ending his complaints against Shikai. Shikai’s fumbling popularity had skyrocketed after his public display of rejecting the Japanese ultimatum.
The Chinese Legislation then began to assemble the northern Chinese warlords near the German leased territories, as Shikai began to act against Japanese interests. A race for Tsingtao was developing as the nation which occupied it, was bound to hold it in the eye of China. And the Chinese were eager to make a previous humiliation turned back. Around 62,000 soldiers of various warlords from Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Beijing and the Beiyang Army itself was mobilized and moved towards the border with Tsingtao. On the 5th of July, the Chinese armies began to bombard the German port without a declaration of war. Yuan Shikai did not make any diplomatic attacks on the Germans, however only stated that the expedition against Tsingtao was an expedition to ‘prevent’ Japanese hostility on the mainland and to stop Japanese expansion in the area. Bethmann Hollwegg, the Chancellor of Germany also didn’t want to increase the evergrowing number of German enemies, and with heavy unease from the Reichstagg also did not declare war on China. He declared a ‘conflict of interests’ and ‘State of semi-conflict’ with China, but a formal declaration of war not forthcoming. Despite this however, for all intents and purposes, China and Germany were now at war.
With this, the last linchpin of Shikai’s ambitions were on the move. On the 15th of July, the Legislative Yuan of China which had been dismissed in 1914 was re-assembled with appointments and by-elections (which were not accepted by the KMT but they could do little but wave their hands), and the Legislative Yuan voted in favor of a monarchical referendum throughout the country with two options of the monarch, the first being Puyi, the heir of the Qing Dynasty and Yuan Keding, Yuan Shikai’s son. Keding was a popular man on his own, and a supporter of democracy, and by default, constitutional monarchies, and was pretty popular throughout the country as a non-assuming man for a person who was from a prestigious family.
Yuan Keding, the Hongxian Emperor.
The ‘referendum’ only really took place within Beijing and the surrounding areas, however it showed that a majority were in favor of a monarchy under Yuan Keding. On July 28, 1915, the Empire of China was proclaimed by the Legislative Yuan, and Yuan Keding was declared as Hongxian Emperor of the Empire of China. More importantly, Yuan Shikai became Imperial Regent, holding power even greater than that of his own son, the new Emperor and by all extents, he held power over the newly appointed Prime Minister, Kang Youwei.
The Flag of the Empire of China
The nation still divided over the issue of restoration, found itself supporting it after the port of Tsingtao fell on July 31st, 1915, and this was used by the new imperial government to rally the population in the nationalistic fervor. To many this new Imperial government had reversed a humiliation of the last decade, and as such was proper in their view. It can thus be said, that this new Empire of China had survived its birth due to fickle nationalism.” The History of the Mandate of Heaven.
***
“When your enemy flees. Do something about it. An enemy who can retreat without qualms is an enemy who will win the war.” – Mehmed Essat Pasha.
“The victory of the Otttomans under Mehmet Essat Pasha in the Battle of Kumanovo forced the Serbians to retreat from their attacks into Ottoman territory, however the Serbs still had large tracts of the Ottoman balkans, especially in the north occupied, and whilst Mehmed Essat Pasha was ordered by the Central Army command to halt in order to receive reinforcements from the Yanya Corps, a group of two highly trained and well equipped reservist army based in and around Yanya, comprised by Greek Ottomans, which was being sent north to reinforce the area. There were in total 2 Yanya Corps, the 1st and 2nd Yanya Corps. The 1st Corps consisted of the 23rd Reserve Infantry Division, Yanya Reserve Infantry Division and the 19th Reserve Infantry Division. Mehmed Essat Pasha knew that allowing the serbs to regroup would be fatal to the Ottoman war strategy and as a result, only waited for the 1st Corps to arrive. Before the 2nd Corps could even arrive, Mehmed Essat Pasha and his Macedonian Army consisting of the V, VI, VII and I Yanya Corps moved out of Kumanovo and began to march north against the Serbian Army.
However the Serbians were preparing for a chase, and under the command of General Stepa Stepanovic, the Serbians had retreated to a pre-made defensive position near Kosovo, near the Kosovar capital of Pristina. There, the 1st Premier of Ottoman Albania was being held captive by the Serbian government. Hassan Prishtina had been in Pristina when the city fell and was unfortunate to become a high level profile Prisoner of War.
The Serbians had deployed their lines against the Ottomans near Pristina in three main areas. Namely the right flank near Magure was commanded by Prince Alexander and the 1st Army. The center based in and around of Lipljan was commanded by the 2nd Army directly under the command of General Stepa Stepanovic. The final and third flank, towards the left was based around Gracanica, and was commanded by General Bozidar Jankovic who commanded the 3rd Army of the Serbs. Mehmed Essat Pasha arrived in the region with his 125,000 men and set up camp near Uroshevac as the city was liberated from Serbian occupation without a fight as the small Serbian garrison there withdrew towards the north without trying to put up resistance, knowing it to be futile.
As the Battle of Pristina was about to start, the numbers and strength that both sides possessed needs to be assessed. Mehmed Essat Pasha had initially been ordered by General Mustafa Kemal Pasha to wait until the entirety of the Yanya Corps, both I and II could reinforce his army. However after receiving the I corps, Mehmed Essat had been on the move, only having 120,000 troops instead of the previously preferred 148,000. While the disparity of numbers between the Serbian Armies and the Ottoman Macedonian Army had lessened a great deal, the Serbians still had a small superiority in numbers, numbering some 132,000 to the 123,000 Ottoman troops present for battle. The serbs had with them, around 170 artillery pieces. In the area of artillery however, the Ottomans enjoyed a distinct advantage as they had over 240 artillery guns with them, most of the modern and ready to fire. On June 19th, the guns flared, being starting to bombard the Serbian lines and Serbian positions in and around Pristina. The Ottoman V Corps began to move against the Serbian flanks, and tried to attack the key Serbian outpost near Shtime, however Prince Alexander had deployed his IV Drina Division and the V Serbian Mountaineer Division onto the area. The Ottoman V Corps was beaten back with heavy casualties. Mehmed Essat Pasha and the VI, VII and I Yanya Corps managed to however heavily attack the forward defensive lines of the Serbians near Prelez Jerlive, and Gadime itself, and managed to fend off any and all Serbian relief efforts in the region. This made the situation in Shtime precarious for the Serbs, who could find themselves encircled if the Ottoman VI and V Corps swung to the west and attacked their positions whilst the Ottoman V Corps pinned them down in place, ripe for the taking.
Prince Alexander as such ordered a retreat from Shtime and had most of his forces coalesce in and around Magure, mainly in the forest of Blinaje to give battle to the Ottomans. However this was a foolhardy move from the young hotblooded prince. The Forests may have been good cover from the dominating Ottoman Air Force, and the numerically superior Ottoman Cavalry Corps and Divisions, the forests provided an ample amount of space for the Ottoman gunners to concentrate upon. This created a so called ‘kill-zone’. The Ottoman guns were moved towards Zborc on the outskirts of the forest, and they opened a thunderous amount of fire at the forest, destroying the Serbian lines as they tried to counter attack.
Meanwhile in the center, and the left, the Serbian Center and Left were holding on doggedly against the Ottoman onslaught. Despite aerial inferiority and artillery inferiority, the Serbians used the rough terrain in and around Lipljan and Gracanica. Both Stepanovic and Jankovic coordinated their defense with one another throughout the battles taking place. A particularly bloody Ottoman assault on the outskirts of Gilogoc, which is around half a mile south of Lipljan was forced back by the Serbs with sheer force of will as the Ottoman VI Corps was put into disarray trying to break the dogged Serbian lines.
However it was Prince Alexander’s undoing that forced the Serbian defeat in the Battle of Pristina. The Ottoman V Corps had managed to inflict so many losses on the 1st Army that Prince Alexander had to retreat the army back towards Medevac, which had more defensible terrain and defensive preparations favorable to the Serbians. It is unsure what happened during the retreat, as the whirlwind of chaos of the Ottoman bombing, ottoman artillery bombardment, Serbian counterattacks took their toll on the soldiers, however it seems that an Ottoman shell landed near Prince Alexander’s path and exploded. The Prince of Serbia was not killed, far from it, however the injuries sustained from the attack, forced Prince Alexander to be taken back to Serbia post haste for recovery. His position mid battle was taken over by General Milos Vasic. Vasic was an old guard general, generally against the military reforms and modernization of the Serbian Army, still stuck in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885 to truly recognize the Bulgarians as his allies.
The chaos of the chain of command being swapped over in the 1st Army amidst a great clash of chaos, made the army disorganized, and the V corps which had given chase, managed to break the Serbian lines as skirmishers entered the Serbian flanks and attacked near Mirene. The Serbian 1st Army had no real option other than to retreat. Vasic ordered a retreat back to Leskovac. This retreat however made Stepanovic’s and Jankovic’s flanks in turn become exposed. And Mehmed Essat Pasha was already beginning to take advantage of the fallen Serbian right flank and moved his divisions on the flanks and was starting to probe dangerously in the Serbian lines. The Serbs, knowing that the situation was not tenable for any longer, decided to conduct an orderly retreat back into Serbian territory.
The next day on June 20th, Pristina was liberated by Mehmed Essat Pasha, and Hassan Prishtina was rescued from his prison. The Ottomans had lost around ~9000 troops as casualties during this great clash, whilst the Serbians had lost around ~13,000. The war against Serbia was turning, just as the war against Montenegro was getting extremely sour.” The Battles of the Balkan War.
***
‘While the chaos after the Ottoman Revolution of 1908 may have alienated the Albanians, the Siege of Scutari would renew the Albanian Loyalty to the Ottoman State, if only to spite the Montenegrins who would occupy the dear Albanian city.’ – Hassan Prishtina.
“After the disastrous defeats that the Ottoman border armies next to Montenegro had been dealt with, the Montenegrin army under King Nicholas I began to bear down on the strategic fortress city of Scutari/Shkoder. The Montenegrins likened themselves to be the successor state of Zeta, a medieval south Slavic realm with Shkoder as their capital and intended to conquer the predominantly Albanian and Muslim city for themselves. Shkoder, despite its nationality being identified as either Albanian or Ottoman, was a ‘lost capital’ for many in Montenegrin Nationalistic Mythos, and it became a symbol of oppression for them.
General Hasan Riza Pasha
The commander of the Ottoman garrison of 8,000 in the city was Hasan Riza Pasha. A veteran of the Italo-Ottoman War, and a modern and able military commander, declared martial law in the city, as the Albanian Mayor gave him the legislative prerogative to do so after the news of the defeats in the north surfaced into the city. On June 17th, he declared that Montenegrins had been spotted in the north and the city would have to buckle up for a massive siege. Around 12,000 Albanian volunteers and militias volunteered for service to defend the city led by Turhan Pasha Permeti. Six days after the declaration, the Montenegrin troops began to file up against the city. At noon on June 22, 1915, Hasan Riza Pasha in his headquarters gathered the radio service of the city and his generals and commanders and told them this infamous speech: ‘The city will soon be surrounded, but this city will not fall into the hands of the Montenegrins. Shkoder is our fate and our grave, but it will not be our shame. As of today, begins an uphill battle, that none among us knows how long it will last.’
The siege started on 28 June 1915. The attack was originally carried out by the Montenegrin army under the command of Prince Danilo. However, his forces encountered stiff resistance.
The combined Turkish and Albanian defenders led by Hasan Riza Pasha and his lieutenant, Esad Pasha Toptani, resisted for seven weeks and managed to inflict a heavy toll on the besiegers.
On 30 July 1915, Riza Pasha was ambushed and killed by Osman Bali and Mehmet Kavaja, two Albanian servants of Esad Pasha, as he left Esad's house after dining with him. Riza Pasha wanted to keep up the defense of the besieged city but Esad Pasha wanted to continue his secret negotiations with Montenegro, which were done through the counsel of Russia in Scutari. Esad Pasha's plan was to hand over Scutari to the Serbs and Montenegrins as the price for their support in his attempt to proclaim himself King of Albania. On 2 August 1915, Esad Pasha made the official proposal to surrender the city to Montenegrin General Vukotic. On August 3 his proposal was accepted and he was allowed to leave the city with full military honors and with all of his troops and equipment, except heavy guns. He also received a sum of £10,000 sterling from the Montenegrin King.
the city being surrendered to King Nikola I of Montenegro.
This was a blunder of epic proportions for the Ottoman plans in the Balkans. The Ottoman government revoked the Pasha title of Esad Pasha, and named Riza Pasha an official martyr of the state. The Albanian militias which had defended the city continued to fight inside the city block for block before being thrown out by Montenegrin guns. They retreated under the command of Turhan Pasha Permeti and grouped with the II Yanya Corps in Kukes. With Scutari under Montenegrin control, the II Yanya Corps was forced to stay in Albania and fight against the Montenegrins.” King Nicholas I of Montenegro: A Biography.
***
[a] - Disclaimer - The wikibox is from wikipedia with no real change in it. - The Siege of Scutari is virtually the same ittl as otl, except its more ferocious and played violently than otl with Nikola I's rampage across Albania ittl. ***
“1,000 German troops are being interned in Spanish camps. This is a Crisis of the Highest Kind. We will be at war soon enough.” – King Alfonso XII of Spain
“During the Great War, the Germans were in control of Cameroon which was under the administration of German Camerun, which controlled the area as a colony. The German government at first was confident that the colonies would be quite overlooked by the British and French governments during the war, however this was not to be. On August 3, 1915, a small French colonial force of 2,000 men entered southern Cameroon from French Gabon under the command of Divisional General Joseph Gauderique Aymerich whilst a British force of 3,500 men from British Cameroon under the command of Lieutenant General Charles M. Dobell entered Western Cameroon from British Nigeria.
The commander of the German forces in German Cameroon at the time in southern Cameroon was Major General Carl Heinrich Zimmermann who held command over 3,000 Colonial troops in German Cameroon, southern division. He was under command from the Governor of German Cameroon, Karl Ebermaier to defeat the French incursion and bleed the French as dry as was possible in the region. However the Zimmermann reported back to the central colonial government stating that he did not have the needed amount of men to pursue such a course of action. He replied back to the government stating that the troops did not have ammunition for the needed tasks ahead of them. The central colonial government did not reply, as they deemed the British incursion to be off major importance. Zimmermann engaged the French near Ntem in what culminated in the Battle of Ntem. However the French troops knew of the German advance against their positions and managed to defend themselves and during a counter-attack routed the incoming German forces. General Aymerich managed to encircle the entirety of the German forces under command of General Zimmermann and was closing in for a kill, which if successful would make the entirety of southern German Cameroon in danger of a full-fledged French invasion. Zimmermann was sufficiently desperate enough for a miracle that he ordered his troops to hit the weakest part of the French encirclement near the southwest of the perimeter, and broke through the French lines. The German troops broke the encirclement and marched 30 miles southwest to get away from the French and regroup, as well as to fight a new day.
However during the flurry of the campaign and the battle, Zimmermann had forgotten one fact. His army was now on Spanish soil. The Spanish border in Spanish Equatorial Guinea was lightly secured, and the Spanish forces were only alerted to the fact when the citizens of Ebebyin complained back to a Spanish garrison in Maboe. The Spaniards sent a detachment of 200 soldiers under the command of Augustin Luque set out and found a German camp of 1,000 soldiers under the command of Zimmermann in northern Messo on August 17. The Spanish General told Zimmermann that the German troops were now on Spanish soil, and as per the Spanish declaration of neutrality in the conflict, the German troops would have to be interned in Spanish authority.
To Zimmermann this was unacceptable. His troops were the only thing stopping the French from invading all of southern Cameroon and acting in favor of the colony, Zimmermann agreed to retreat back to German territory however refused to be interned. Luque called back to the colonial government based out of Bata to ask for advice, however the Colonial government stressed that the Spanish government could not favor the Germans and break their own Spanish neutrality clause, and ordered Luque to take the Germans as interns. Luque was not a fool to assume that the Germans would come easily and ordered for 250 reinforcements which arrived on August 20, swelling his numbers to 450 men. On August 21, he ordered Zimmermann to be interned once again and this time, Zimmermann declined again. Luque forced the issue and a shot rang out. Someone among the two armies had fired a shot. After that a battle was inevitable.
The Spanish pushed the Germans to force their back against the Messo River near the border, and Luque had the entire German army encircled, and the Spanish interned the German army under Zimmermann by force.
The aftermath was far reaching. On August 22, the German government found out about the Messo Affair, and Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow was ordered to find the release of the troops. He spoke with Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato and demanded that the German troops along with the General be released. Dato replied by stating that doing as such would violate Spanish neutrality and was not possible. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollwegg had wanted to keep the issue under wraps and let the Spaniards have the small disposition writing Cameroon off in the war already however this was unacceptable for Kaiser Wilhelm II and the German Heer and Army.
Von Jagow was ordered to find a way to release the troops again and to no avail. The Allies on the other hand were pressuring Spain to keep the troops as well. The French government declared that the Spanish government would have to keep their word and keep the german troops in Equatorial Guinea as the troops posed a threat to French Gabon when free. The British also found that their invasion of Cameroon would be easier without the troops and pressured Spain to keep the troops interned. On August 28, a small group of German guerillas in southern Cameroon were caught by Spanish authorities to have crossed the border in an attempt to free the interned troops as well.
By this point Spanish neutrality was broken completely. Eduardo Dato reconvened the Spanish Cortes on August 30, and told the Cortes that the vaunted Spanish neutrality was over, and was breached by Germany too many times to count by that point (an exaggeration). The Cortes voted 228 to 180 to declare war on Germany on the charge of breaches of neutrality in Spanish Equatorial Guinea. On September 1, 1915 King Alfonso XII officially declared war on the German Empire and the 180,000 strong Spanish Army was mobilized for war.
A secret Allied commission in Spain consisting of Russian, British, Belgian and French diplomats in Madrid during that time also promised to the Spaniards that in return for Spanish aid in war, Spain would gain German Cameroon after the war, and the Spanish debts owed to Russia and Belgium were annulled and voided whilst the Spanish debts owed to France and the UK were reduced by a large amount, adding a sweetener for the Spanish government to act. The scope of the Great War had just increased.” Spain in the Great War.
Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato. (^)
***
“The Italians will conquer.” – Armando Diaz
“The Italian entry into the Great War had been of great concern for the entente and France as it exposed the French in their flanks. Thanks to the British economic dominance of Italian trade and economic power, the Italians had been unable to make a move in the French Alps as the Italian economy recovered from the entry into the war. As such the French and Italian Alps had seen little fighting other than a few skirmishes here and there. However on august 18, the Italians decided that their army was ready, and with Austro-Hungarian supplies and planes aiding them in their bases in Northern Italy, the Italian General Staff to go on the offensive in France.
Chief of General Staff Luigi Cadorna ordered the Italian 2nd Alpine Army to move against the French near the Ligurian Sea and take the valuable port city of Menton. The 1st Army was under the command of General Armando Diaz. Diaz was ordered to make a headlong assault into French positions and attack it until the French were worn out and retreated back to Nice, which was the French base of operations in the area.
Armando Diaz was of the opinion that such an offensive was foolish and a waste of blood in the army, however he was outranked by Luigi Cadorna who ordered the general to move and take the port at all costs. Diaz was not going to throw his men to the French however, and in secret began to create a whole new offensive plan to take the sought objective. The Italian army reforms after the Italo-Ottoman War had made some progress in the quality of the army and as such Diaz was properly in touch with the capability of the 130,000 men under his direct command.
On August 23, 1915, his troops started to move from Bevera and to take positions against the French border. They would be confronted by the French 17th Army under the command of Jean Cesar Graziani, ironically a Frenchman of Italian ethnic origins. His father was an immigrant to France from Italy before unification. Diaz enjoyed a numerical advantage over the French forces in the area, as the French numbered only 105,000 men in the area, however Diaz knew that his numerical advantage was not great and the French fortifications likely made his numerical advantage null by all rights.
On August 24, the Battle of Menton officially started becoming the 1st large scale battle in the Alpine Front of the Great War. The 5th Italian Alpine Corps moved against the French 3rd Alpine Corps who were stationed in the Alpine fortress of West Castellar on the Franco-Italian border. The Italians bombarded the outer reaches of the fortifications as the French Corps inflicted heavy losses on the uphill charge that the Italians led against the French forces. The French held the higher ground and used it to their utmost advantage.
From Torri, the 7th Italian Alpine Corps moved against the French 4th Alpine Corps based in west Castilon and was forced back as the French 4th Corps managed to defeat the Italian incursion near the Baisse de Faiche Fonda. However the Italian presence in the region continued to make French reinforcements from the north unlikely to the bulk of the French army based in the south facing the brunt of the Italian attack. The Italians maneuvered to the south, flanking the positions of the Fortress of St. Paul and the French garrison on the fort managed to fight a brave rearguard action as the French corps retreated to the second line of defense near Maglioc.
On August 27, the battle shifted towards Maglioc after the fort of St. Paul fell to the Italians as the Italians burst into the fort and took it by siege. The French defeated the Italians near Maglioc and halted any Italian reinforcement and attack during that time and managed to stall the Italian advance. However on August 28, Diaz managed to regroup the Italian 1st Alpine Army, and the Italian troops pierced the French defenses on that day near Maglioc, forcing the French to retreat back to Balmettes and La Vigne.
Diaz was unable to properly capitalize on this victory. The British Royal Air Corps based in Marseille had arrived to interfere in the battle alongside the French Air Corps and were starting to bomb the Italians as they were out on the open and the Italian general was forced to wait for Austro-Hungarian and Italian planes to arrive in the region on August 30. The Austro-Hungarian and Italian planes pushed the French and British out of the region temporarily allowing the Italian 1st Army to move against La Vigne, the biggest bump in the road towards Menton. Diaz attacked La Vigne in a probing attack during the night of August 30 however the French repelled the attack. This made Diaz wary of the cost of taking the fort and he decided to conduct a pincer movement to take out the fort.
The Italian corps were divided near De Fossan and de L’Ormea and attacked the French at La Vigne from 3 sides as the French were pinned down and unable to respond to the attack with proper fortitude. As the French were in danger of being encircled at La Vigne, the French commander, general Graziani ordered the French to retreat back to Nice, and abandon Menton. The French retreated and the Italians took La Vigne. On 1 September, the Italians occupied the port city of Menton after a short fight with the French Gendarmerie in the city.
The battle was an Italian victory however the effect it had on the French war effort was not the one that the Central Powers thought it would have. The Spanish entry into the war made the victory by all means null and void as the Spanish agreed to send 150,000 men to the Alpine front allowing the French maneuver with their manpower with better ease, and was able to reinforce their borders with relative ease, making the victory a bland and light one for the Italians. Nonetheless it was a victory and showed that the Italians were not joking about the war.” The Alpine Front; France, Spain and Italy locked in combat. University of Ajaccio, 2019.
***
“We do not trust the American economy. It has failed our investments for far too long. Sweden, Canada and the other dominions are suitable replacements.” – David Lloyd-George speaking to the Commons in 1915 on the outbreak of war.
Italian troops during the Battle of Menton (^^)
“The Great Depression of 1914 – 1916 was the second strongest depression in American history. The failure of the government’s commissions to regulate the economy meant that the recession led to the closure and suspensions of the thousands of throughout the country. Financial institutions failed for several reasons, including unregulated lending procedures, confidence in the Gold Standard, and consumer confidence in future economics, and agricultural defaults on outstanding loans. With these compounding issues, the banking system failed to hold up in the recession and was unable to meet the public’s demand for cash withdrawals. This decrease of money supply instead led to banks liquidating assets in the system to meet demands.
The outbreak of the Great War managed to heal the recession a bit as British and French companies began to buy war armament from America, however the failure of the American economic system meant that the governments of London and Paris were unwilling to invest too much into the American economy. As such the Swedish, Norwegian, Canadian, Australian and South African economies boomed during the Great War, receiving a slew of war orders from Britain and France which prompted a great growth of the armament industries in the aforementioned countries.
In terms of the fiscal policy, the US government under Woodrow Wilson failed to reach a proper consensus. In order to stimulate the economy Wilson began to expand federal spending, and set up governmental revitalization companies to provide emergency assistance to institutions on the verge of bankruptcy. This policy was an abysmal failure and aided the recession instead. This made the already low supply of money and cash in the market even lower and made the crisis deepen and unemployment rocketed in the United States. The Canadian government managed to give a loan of $50 million to the USA with British acceptance in June 1915, which alleviated some of the monetary concerns, however the recession continued. Wilson also advocated to keeping the wage rates high, as he believed that the high wage rates would maintain a steady level of purchasing power, and keep the economy turning and working. The high wage rates made employment during the recession all the more harder to come by and the high wage rates creating a wage crisis in the American economy as well.
All of these measures and effects made the recession all the more widespread throughout the United States of America and made the recession spread throughout the nation down to every family. The eviction of 120,000 people from their homes in 1915 is evident of the fact that the recession was reaching the common people and their day to day living.
Amidst this backdrop the 1915 American Gubernatorial Elections were taking place. As expected by many the recession managed to hit the Democrats by a massive amount and the Democrats lost Kentucky, Maryland to the Republicans whilst the Republicans held Massachusetts. Mississippi and Louisiana held onto the Democrats, however their elections were far from easy either.
In Kentucky there was growing dissent against the Democratic Governor Augustus Owsley Stanley. Stanley’s unclear fiscal position had made the recession worse in the state and around 200 big firms in Kentucky had been suspended or closed, increasing unemployment by a massive rate in the province. The republicans took advantage of this plight and the republican candidate Edwin P. Morrow campaigned in the state hitting the fiscal and economic policy of Stanley and showing himself as a new and better candidate for Kentucky. The election was extremely close. Despite the recession Kentucky had been a Democratic stronghold for many years now and as a result the Democrats campaigned heavily in the state. However in the end Edwin P. Morrow (Republican) won 219,991 votes or 49.06% of the total votes whilst Stanley (Democrat) won 219,520 of the votes or 48.96% of the total votes. The rest of the votes were scattered among the Progressive, Socialist and Prohibition candidates.
Similarly in Maryland, the race for the governorship was largely being competed between Emerson C. Harrington (Democrat and incumbent) and Ovington Weller (Republican). Weller managed to frame Harrington to the voters as the one responsible for the recession’s effects in Maryland, especially the closure of 3 big shipping companies in Baltimore. Harrington was partially responsible for the recession having been the Chief Controller of the Maryland Treasury, however the Harrington had been by all rights, been able to mitigate a lot of the effects of the recession in Maryland. His coherent balanced budgeting fiscal system had been able to keep a balanced budget in the state and the state was one of the least hit on the American eastern seaboard. However Harrington was the controller of the treasury and it wasn’t hard for many to frame the man as responsible for the recession in the state. A slip up from Harrington also made it clear that Harrington supported women’s suffrage which prompted the conservative half of the state to campaign directly in favor of Weller who remained ambiguous onto the issue. In the end, Weller (republican) won 119,317 or 49.16% of the vote whilst Harrington (Democrat) won 116,136 or 48.67% of the total vote, making Maryland turn Republican as well.
Whilst the Democrats retained Louisiana and Mississippi, the rising prominence of the Progressive Party and the Socialists raised heavy eyebrows in the country. In Louisiana, the main competitors of the gubernatorial election were Ruffin G. Pleasant (D) and John. M. Parker of the Progressive Party. Parker managed to campaign throughout the state and managed to win 47% of the total vote whilst Pleasant won 51% of the total vote in Louisiana. This was the best showing of a Progressive candidate for quite some time and it is sometimes said that this would the moment when the Progressive Party became permanent in US politics as a proper third party. In Mississippi the recession was quite more severe than Louisiana, and the main opponent to Democratic candidate Theodore G. Bilbo was J. T. Lester, the socialist candidate. Lester ran on a platform of racial equality and labor reform throughout the state and managed to garner quite a good amount of votes from the labor class of the state and the black population of the state. Bilbo won 67% of the total vote in the state, whilst Lester won 31% of the total vote in the elections, leading the way with the best gubernatorial show for the Socialists in a long time.
The 1915 Gubernatorial elections laid the foundations for the fall of the Democrats in 1916.” US Politics during the Great War. University of Chicago, 2011.
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“The Pincer is closing. If we can win the fight for Eastern Bulgaria then this war is ours to win.” – Mustafa Kemal Pasha.
“After being sufficiently reinforced and well supplied the Ottoman troops in Burgas were given orders to advance. Mustafa Kemal had been planning to end the war with Bulgaria in one full stroke with this upcoming Operation. Operation Tervel as it was named was an obvious insult against Bulgaria, naming an operation against Bulgaria after one of their more famous kings. Nonetheless, Operatio Tervel was not named one of Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s masterpieces for nothing. Within Burgas there were some 60,000 troops under the command of General Mustafa Fevzi Pasha and in Haskovo there was some 100,000 troops under the command of General Yaver Pasha. In between them stood two Bulgarian Armies, the 2nd and 3rd Armies under the command of General Mihail Savov and General Ivan Fischev amounting to 200,000 men to fight against the 180,000 troops that the Ottomans had gathered. The Ottomans began the operation on August 16, 1915 with a great barrage all across the Bulgarian front as artillery shells began to shell the enemy positions with deafening artillery fire as from Salonika and Constantinople, the Ottoman Air Corps started to bomb the Bulgarian positions as well. This was the signal to the Bulgarians that the expected great offensive was coming. The Ottomans bombarded the Bulgarian positions for the entire day and night from the 16th into the 17th not giving the Bulgarians any respite. A proper system of rotation initiated by Mahmud Shevket Pasha and Mustafa Kemal Pasha had allowed the artillery men to rotate their service amplifying the amount of shells they could fire at the Bulgarians. By the night, the Ottoman Artillery Corps were firing so fast the Ottoman Logistical Corps were complaining to the Ministry of War that they were firing too fast for the Corps to supply them with shells.
On the 17th of August the 11th Infantry Division left Burgas and clashed the Bulgarian 11th Danubian Division at Debelt at the Battle of Debelt and pushed the shell shocked and wary Bulgarians and managed to pursue them. Mustafa Fevzi Pasha knew that he could not dilly dally and fight with caution as doing as such with his inferior numbers would see his small army massacred by the Bulgarians. He needed to act fast and group up with Yaver Pasha’s army culling as many of the Bulgarian army as he could whilst he marched across the Bulgarian countryside.
Ottoman troops during the Battle of Debelt (^)
Whilst this was going on the Ottoman army from Haskovo left their positions from the city and began marching towards the Maritsa river near Simeongrad and came into contact with the enemy 2nd Army near Dimitrovgard. The original plan was for the Ottomans to take the city and then march across the Maritsa into Stara Zagora and take Simeongrad without having to make a river crossing into Simeongrad from the south. However Savov had stocked too many supplies and men into the city and Yaver Pasha was unable to crack the city. The city continued to hold out and on August 27, Yaver Pasha irritated by the resistance that the city was conducting against his army, inflicting heavy defeats, decided it was time to use the operational autonomy given to him by Mustafa Kemal Pasha. He ordered reinforcements from the 6th and 8th Salonika Reserve Divisions from Kardzhali and the two divisions were transferred north. The Ottoman Greek divisions were kept in place with siege artillery and one division was detached from the army of Yaver Pasha. The new force consisting of 50,000 men were ordered to keep up the siege in Dimitrovgrad whilst Yaver Pasha and his 80,000 men continued into Bulgarian Thrace.
Using the cover of night, Yaver Pasha force marched his army into Cherngorovo into Konstantinovo throughout the night and took the Bulgarians in Simeongrad by surprise and storm as the Ottoman troops stormed the city on the 28th taking the city’s defenders by surprise and the city fell to the Ottomans quickly.
From Dombay in Ottoman Thrace, the second linchpin in Operation Tervel began to move. Under the command of Djevat Pasha, the Ottoman Thracian Reservist Army (TRA) consisting of the 9th Mountaineer Division, 5th Reserve Infantry Division, 9th Reserve Cavalry Division and the 7th Reserve Infantry Division had been mobilized (80,000 men) and were now moving into Bulgarian Thrace to snuff out the Bulgarian eastern flank once and for all along with the armies of Mustafa Fevzi Pasha and Yaver Pasha.
Whilst the Bulgarians had mobilized a lot of troops, their population and industrial capability still paled in comparison to the Ottomans who were a great power in their own right. The Balkan plan had failed. The Ottoman reserves had been fully mobilized and equipped allowing the Ottomans to temporarily outnumber the Bulgarians all across the Thracian Front. Combined with the military and industrial reforms of the past half a decade, the Ottoman Army was now ready to show itself.
The TRA moved to the north across the Melnica road and encountered an army of 40,000 strength near the fields of Knyazhevo under the command of Ivan Fischev himself. This was the 7th Bulgarian Corps, and was the southern flank of the 3rd Bulgarian Army. The TRA had managed to take the Bulgarians by surprise and forced the 7th Bulgarian Corps out of Knyazhevo. The Bulgarians retreated north to the fortified city of Elhovo. The TRA continued to move north and surrounded the city of Elhovo taking up positions near Pchela, Izgrev and Topchia. A reservist force of 25,000 Bulgarians from northern thrace under the command of Georgi Todorov tried to relieve the besieged city on the 6th of September, however Ottoman aerial scouts had already informed Djevat Pasha of the Bulgarian movements, and the Ottomans managed to hold firm during the Battle of Pchela and made it impossible for Todorov to reinforce the besieged city as the Ottomans defended their siegelines.
Dejvat Pasha, the commander of the TRA (^)
On September 8, King Ferdinand ordered all of the Bulgarian troops south of Fakiya Line to retreat north in order to make their forces more compact and easier to account for as the Bulgarian situation worsened. This allowed Fevzi Pasha and his troops from Burgas, or more importantly from Debelt to move towards Golyamo. This virtually linked the Ottoman Burgas Expeditionary Army with the TRA and this was a huge boon for the Ottomans as the added siege equipment of the troops under Fevzi Pasha allowed Djevat Pasha to breach the fortifications of Elhovo which fell to the Ottomans on September 17, 1915. The TRA then turned its attention to Harmanli, the final goal in the 1st Layer of Operation Tervel. Yaver Pasha had been unable to move against Savov and towards Harmanli due to Savov defeating the Ottomans at the Battle of Svirkovo, forcing the Ottomans to stay grouped up in Simeongrad, at least in the case of Yaver Pasha.
The TRA managed to reach the outskirts of Harmanli which was being clenched by the Thracian Armies blockade of the city on September 26, and attacked the city. The city defended itself for a week before falling to the Ottoman onslaught on the 3rd of October. The 1st initiative of Operation Terveli had ended, and the Ottomans moved onto the second initiative. However before they could do this, revolution was brewing in Sofia, which would skid the Bulgarian front to a halt throughout the Balkan War. One Dimitar Blagoev had been very busy these past few months.” Operation Terveli: Kemal’s Masterstroke. Penguin Publishing 2009.
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“We will fight.” – King Ferdinand of Romania
“On September 1, the Romanians landed at Ada Kaleh and raised the Romanian flag besides the Ottoman flag at the main square. The Ottoman national anthem was played once more whilst the Romanians shouted ‘Long Live the Sultan!’ in Ada Kaleh one last time before the Ottoman flag was brought down and the Romanian national anthem was blared for everyone to hear. The Ottoman governor of Ada Kaleh gave the sovereignty of the island to the Romanians. Meanwhile Romanian warships were being concentrated at Corabia under the command of Admiral Eustatiu Sebastian. This group consisted of 3 monitors, 6 torpedo boats and two gunboats which attacked the 4 gunboats and 4 motorboats that the Bulgarian possessed in that region of the Danube. The Bulgarian navy was ill-quipped to fight off an actual naval attack the motorboats were defeated in quick order whilst the remaining 4 gunboats were actually scuttled by the Bulgarians. The Romanians landed the 5th Romanian Corps (30,000) at Nikopol under the command of General Ioan Culcer and was confronted by the 3rd Danubian Corps (21,000) of the Bulgarian Army led by General Nikola Zhekov. The battle was a lopsided one. Even without the naval and aerial support the Romanians had a clear equipment and numerical advantage against the Bulgarians. The Battle of Nikopol as a result ended in Romanian victory and the city of Nikopol and its outskirts were occupied by the Romanians on September 11.
The Romanians began to spread out, however as they did so, they began to encounter the so-called Redshirts. They too were becoming aware that something was not correct in Sofia. The Bulgarian Revolution was happening after all.” The Bulgarian Revolution: The Aborted Republic.
***
Romanian warships during the Battle of Nikopol (^)
“The Red-Shirts will be a terror for everyone. Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian and Ottoman alike.” – Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire
“The Communists were always a specter that haunted Europe and the civilized world ever since the theory of it was laid down in 1848 by Marx during the Springtime of Nations. For many years, leftists, socialists and communists always came to the forefront whenever a war was going on or an economic recession happened. However these effects were always happening under few and far between doctrines, perhaps with the sole exception of Russia as the idea of Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy took hold instead of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Dimitar Blagoev.
Whilst looking at a pre-Great War map of Europe, one may say that the more unstable countries of Europe, such as Russia, or Italy would have been the first nation to fall to communism, however the first nation that fell to communist ironically came to be in the Balkan nation of Bulgaria. Called the ‘Prussia of the Balkans’, Bulgaria was a highly militarized society. Militarization led to economic disparities and in this situation it is not a particular surprise that the leftists became a powerful underground force in Bulgaria. Many were not enamored with the idea of being conscripted against their wishes, and the economic disparity between investments in the military and civilian economy made many resent the militarization of the state. These socialists and communists rioted against the declaration of hostilities against the Ottoman Empire, deeming the war by all means imperialist and not in the interests of the normal Bulgarian worker. Led by Dimitar Blagoev, Vasil Kolarov and Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Communist Worker’s Party had denounced the war, and had boycotted the parliamentary vote in favor of hostilities.
At the beginning of the war however, the nationalistic fervor of the state made any attempt to move against the war in a more public manner a suicidal move for the communists and as such the Bulgarian communists stuck to writing pamphlets and articles against the war but mostly stayed out of the way for the Bulgarian government.
However soon the costs of war started to mount. The Ottomans fought back and the Bulgarian debt shot up from 0.2 Billion Francs to 1.7 billion Francs. The Bulgarian economy was increasingly becoming crippled as the public finances of the state collapsed, and the financial cost of the war slowly started to become too high. Agriculture, the leading sector of the Bulgarian economy was badly affected as farmers were conscripted into the army, contracting by 29%, with overall food consumption declining throughout the country on an average rate of 7%, and the number of horses, sheep, cattle and livestock declined throughout the country at an average rate of 34%. The Bulgarian industries were also affected. They were heavily dependent on foreign machinery and spare parts, and the declaration of war throughout the continent meant that neither Russia, France nor Britain, Bulgaria’s traditional suppliers had any surplus to give Bulgaria. External trade fell by 40% and imports going through the Ottoman empire fell by 23% souring to a deficit of 57 million Levs by August, 1915.
The current situation became unbearable for the Bulgarians. Worse, they were losing the war, despite King Ferdinand and Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov blustering their way through public meetings about winning the war. On June 28, 1915, the Bulgarian Communist Central Committee was formed as a coalition committee between all of the far left political parties of Bulgaria, with the sole aim of ending the war, and leading a communist revolution in Bulgaria under the command of Dimitar Blagoev who was named Premier of the Bulgarian People’s Congress.
After the Ottoman landings at Burgas, it was becoming increasingly clear that the war was going to end in only one manner, and the Central Committee voted on September 1, 1915 for a resolution saying that “an armed uprising now is inevitable, and the time for it is now ripe.” At the committee meeting, Blagoev discussed how the people of Bulgaria had waited long enough for an armed uprising against the autocratic Bulgarian monarchy and it was the time of the communists to take power. The Bulgarian Communists created a revolutionary military committee in Sofia, led by the Committee’s Legislative President, Vasil Kolarov. The committee included armed workers, soldiers and militias, and assured the support or neutrality of many of the capital’s garrison. The communist militias were rebranded and named Cherveni Rizi or simply the Redshirts.
On the morning of 5 September, a group of soldiers loyal to the monarchical regime marched into a communist newspaper holdout in Sfia and seized the printing equipment, destroying the newspaper stand. Shortly thereafter, in an attempt to shore up domestic complicity, King Ferdinand banned all leftist newspapers in the nation. In response at 9 a.m, the Redshirts Committee issued a statement denouncing the government’s action and at 10 am, the 1st Redshirt Militia regiment successfully retook the printing houses by force.
The capital city fell into chaos and disarray as Prime Minister Radoslavov responded at around 1 pm that afternoon by raising all of the city’s garrison. The city then fell into a series of sporadic clashes over control of bridges, and squares between the Bulgarian Army and the Redshirts. At approximately 3 pm the Redshirts seized all the major telegraph centers in Sofia, effectively controlling the communications of the city.
Redshirts storming the Royal Palace in Sofia.
The situation turned worse when three regiments of the Bulgarian army mutinied in favor of the Redshirts during the night and the next day these regiments began to use their heavy artillery to actually start bombarding governmental strongholds in the city. Ferdinand and Radoslavov were virtually helpless to try and offer any resistance. Railway stations had been controlled by the Redshirts and major bridges and communication centers had fallen to the Redshirts as well.
The Royal Family and the government was probably saved only by the personal magnetism of the Crown Prince, Prince Boris. Already a colonel in the Bulgarian army not through birth, but through sheer work and hard work, he rallied the remaining garrisons in the city and fought his way out with the government and the Royal Family out of Sofia and into Radomir.
As the government and the Royal family left Sofia, Dimitar Blagoev wrote a proclamation called ‘To Bulgaria!’ stating that the royal government had been overthrown by the Revolutionary Redshirt Committee. The proclamation was sent throughout Bulgaria through telegraph and throughout the nation, pro-Redshirt militias began to rise against the royalist government.
Blagoev was ecstatic, and he thought that the war was now going to end. One of the ruling parties in the Ottoman Empire was a Socialist party, they wouldn’t attack a fellow leftist nation, Blagoev had thought ideally. However as the People’s Democratic Republic of Bulgaria was proclaimed on September 16, 1915, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Romania were already scheming to end the first communist state in the world.” The Aborted Republic of 1915, University of Sofia.
***
“We will not fight for the Reds!” – Slogan of the 11th Danubian Division of the Bulgarian Army.
“The outbreak of the Bulgarian September Revolution ended the fighting all throughout the Bulgarian front. The Ottoman Armies halted as the Ottoman Airforce brought back news of insurrections throughout the country and the Ottoman Logistical Corps tapped into Bulgarian lines finding out what was going on. On September 20, the Ottoman cabinet and Chamber of Deputies reconvened to discuss what to do with Bulgaria. As the deputies cried their throats dry trying to find a compromising solution, another event was going on in Mt. Musala. There, King Ferdinand I abdicated the Bulgarian throne in shame, and Prince Boris ever the enigmatic fellow, took the throne as King of Bulgaria. From Mt. Musala he sent a telegram to Constantinople asking for an armistice, and asked for permission for the Bulgarian Government and Royal Family to take refuge in Ottoman Thrace.
King Boris III with one of his royalist generals.
Grand Vizier Ahmet Riza sprung to action, and accepted the offer. A royal telegram called out for all Bulgarians throughout the frontlines to drop their weapons, and join up with the Ottomans. Ahmet Riza’s actions gave the Ottomans a fait accompli. They now had to act against the Ottoman government. The Ottoman Socialists were of course hesitant to act against their fellow leftists in Sofia (though the Ottoman Socialists would never become so radical), and they started to hamstring the ability of the government to seek an intervention in Bulgaria.
However even they could not stop an intervention when on September 23, Blagoev’s new communist government declared the nationalization of all Bulgarian banks, expropriation of all bank accounts, and all foreign debts being repudiated. The Ottomans held considerable sway in the private bank accounts of Bulgaria, and this was unacceptable for the economic sector of the Ottoman Empire. On September 29, 1915, the Ottoman Empire declared peace with the Kingdom of Bulgaria and instead declared a state of hostilities with the People’s Democratic Republic of Bulgaria. The Romanians did the same the next day.
On September 30, King Boris III ordered all of the loyal divisions to side with the invading Ottoman and Romanian armies and formed the Royal Army of Bulgaria (RAB) from the remainder of the loyalist divisions and personally led the Bulgarian Loyalist Army (BLA) formed out of Bulgarian soldiers who were previous prisoners in Ottoman war camps. On October 4, Yaver Pasha arrived in Plovdiv with an army of 50,000 Ottomans and 20,000 Bulgarians and took the city which had suffered a pro-Redshirt coup a week earlier. The Redshirts had tried to barricade themselves and fight, however the haphazard defenses of the city was weak and the manpower shortage and anti-Communist defections meant that the city was extremely underdefended. The Royalists and the Ottomans took the city and occupied it the next day on the 5th.
At the same time, from the north, the Romanians were moving against the Reds. At the same time, Crown Prince Carol was leading an invasion of South Dobrudja, regardless of the fact that the Romanians were now allied with the Royalist government of Bulgaria. The Romanians under General Ioan Culcer began to move inland from Nikopol in a bid to put more and more pressure on the Bulgarian Reds, reaching Debovo on the 7th of October. There, they heard news of the fact that a massive Redshirt army under under the command of General Dragan Anev of 35,000 was assembling to meet the Romanian invasion force. Culcer moved southward towards Pleven and met Anev on the outskirts of the city of Pleven at what culminated in the Battle of Pleven from October 9 to 11. From his headquarters in Koilovtsi, the Romanians moved inland and attacked the Redshirt advanced guard positions in Varbitsa and took the stronghold by storm, using the Romanian artillery advantage and Ottoman allied aerial support to take the fortress. The Romanians then divided their forces into two groups. The left pocket moved against Bukovlak and the right pocket moved against Grivitsa, both of which controlled the passage and railways into Pleven, if captured, would cut Pleven out from the rest of the Bulgarian Republic.
Romanians during the Battle of Pleven.
The Romanian left pocket managed to fight and capture Bukovlak with great effect as the forest cover in the region allowed the Romanians to move undeterred and they were able to hide in plain sight. Culcer exploited the situation and surrounded the area from the north, northeast and northwest before creating an all-out assault that won through sheer weight of numbers and firepower. The right pocket was less-successful. They were able to pin the Bulgarian defenders in Grivitsa down, however they were unable to defeat and capture the position as the Bulgarian defense in the area was just too powerful to overcome. As such, Culcer took a risk and entered Pleven from the northwest without support from the right pocket and engaged the city’s defenders in brutal urban fighting. On October 11, the city’s garrison surrendered after finding their position untenable and the Romanians surrounded Grivitsa which prompted their surrender too.
While this was going on, Mustafa Kemal was being transferred in person to lead a contingent of 100,000 Ottomans and 40,000 Bulgarians into Sofia, taking direct command of Neshat Bey’s Macedonian Army. Simultaneously, the Bulgarian government in exile led by King Boris III had finally accepted a peace deal from the Ottoman Government. The Treaty of Gallipoli was signed between the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Most Sublime Ottoman Empire and Kingdom of Romania with the following articles:-
The Bulgarian government would renounce all claims to Ottoman Thrace and Macedonia and Northern Dobrudja in Romania.
The Bulgarian government would cede southern Dobrudja to the Kingdom of Romania.
The Bulgarian government would cede strategic frontier fortresses to the Ottoman Empire.
The Bulgarian government would pay 30 million pounds to the Ottoman government as reparations and 5 million pounds to Romania as reparations.
The capital of Sofia will be occupied until October 1, 1916.
The region of Rumelia in Bulgaria will be occupied by the Ottoman Empire until January 1, 1918, and all of its industrial output would be taken by the Ottomans as reparations as well.
The Ottoman and Romanian governments would pledge to restore King Boris III to the Bulgarian throne in legitimacy in Sofia against the communist republic.
Bulgaria would demilitarize the Rumelian region from 1918 to 1933.
The Bulgarian military would be limited to 100,000 men until 1935.
The Ottoman government to supervise and aid the Bulgarians to restructure their economy and recover from the war economically.
The signing of the Treaty of Gallipoli.
By all rights the Ottomans had been lenient in the treaty against the Bulgarians, however Ahmet Riza was also worrisome of the Bulgarian minorities within the Ottoman Empire in Macedonia and Thrace. He didn’t wish to ostracize them by completely dismantling the Bulgarian state, and despite their alliance, Ahmet Riza was not particularly trustful of the Romanians. He knew that every alliance was not worth the paper it was signed on, and he needed to keep Bulgaria at sufficient level of strength so that it could recover properly in the future to become an Anti-Romanian bulwark in the future for the Ottomans if needed. There was also the fact that Britain, France and Russia had during the negotiations subtly warned the Ottomans that they wouldn’t accept a totally dismantled Bulgaria at all, for it would shift the balance of power in the Balkans by a mile. The British had more than enough troops in Egypt, and the Russians had more than enough troops in the Caucasus to make this subtle threat a standing one. As such, the Ottoman government had sought a moderate treaty by all rights, and had successfully managed to pursue one.
On October 23, Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire signed the treaty ratifying it, and Boris III ratified the treaty as well from his base in Plovdiv. On October 24, Mustafa Kemal’s joint Ottoman-Bulgar army arrived on the outskirts of Sofia and asked the Ministry of War for permission to storm the city and end the war with Bulgaria and end the communists. That evening, Mahmud Shevket Pasha replied with an affirmative order. In a similar vein to the Paris Commune, the days of October 25 to November 1 would be remembered by Bulgarian communists as the ‘Bloody Week’.
On October 25, the Ottomans and Royalists began to shell the city’s outskirts and its fortifications and took several border forts dismantling the Redshirts whenever they could. The next day on the 26th, the Ottoman and Royalist troops began to enter the city in earnest. The commune system that had worked so well for the Bulgarian communists was now backfiring, as instead of a proper united defense each neighborhood in Sofia fought desperately for their survival only, and each was overcome in turn. On the morning of the 27th, Blagoev issued his first emergency decree, stating:-
……..To Arms! Sofia will be bristling with barricades, ramparts, and makeshift forts and will resist the imperialists and capitalists forever. The people of Sofia will do their duty whilst the Revolutionary Committee and the Redshirts shall do theirs!........
The next few days were brutal slogs. Mustafa Kemal and Mihail Savov, his Bulgarian father in law, and Royalist general, had to fight for every barricade, and fortress in the city and the siege of Sofia was by no means easy on the Ottomans and Royalists either. Finally on the 1st of November, the least ramparts and positions of the Communists were captured. The leading Troika of the Bulgarian Communists was captured in Sofia Hall and imprisoned and the war between Bulgaria, Romania and the Ottoman Empire ended in a brutal slog.
Ottoman Troops in Sofia.
On November 3, Boris III entered Sofia, and was restored as its rightful king. He ordered an amnesty for all of the communists barring the higher cadres and sought the reintegration of the communist armies into the Bulgarian paramilitaries (now that the military was reduced to 100,000 men). As per the terms of the Treaty of Gallipoli, the Ottomans took up occupation service in the areas designated to them, including Sofia, and the Romanians withdrew, annexing Southern Dobrudja as they did so. Dimitar Blagoev was summarily shot and executed, whilst his upper cohorts were to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
The end of the Balkan War in Bulgaria had far reaching consequences all throughout the war in Europe. The position of the Serbians and Montenegrins was now every ill-judged as the Ottomans had now freed nearly half a million troops for service on the Serbian and Montenegrin fronts and the war was shifting decisively in favor of the Ottomans. Meanwhile, the fall of an aborted communist republic would prove to be inspiring to many communists in Europe during the interwar era. But for now, the Bulgarians were out of the war, licking their wounds and set trying to recover. And the Serbians and Montenegrins were sending soft peace offers to the government in Constantinople as well, hoping for peace.” The Story of the Balkan War: Its Course and Consequences, Osprey Publishing, 1999.
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“Long Live the Reunion! Long Live Enosis!” – Cypriots in 1915.
“For Greece, the Balkan War and their neutrality in the conflict allowed a new way to be forged for the Greeks during this time of conflict in the Mediterranean. The Italians had since 1890 held covetous eyes towards the Ionian islands in their bid to control the entrance to the Adriatic Sea, and ever since the end of the Italo-Ottoman War, Italo-Greek relations had been shot to hell as the Italians rightfully guessed that the Greeks had aided the Ottomans during the war. Many in Italy’s revanchist parliament openly called for an invasion of Greece. Italy’s strong navy also meant that any attack on Greece could cripple the Greek nation in many ways, both economically and militarily.
For Greek Prime Minister, Venizelos, his position was strengthened by the fact that he retained strong relations with former Prime Minister Stephanos Dragoumis as well as many wealthy and prominent politicians throughout the country. However, King George I of Greece whilst pro-entente in his outlook did not wish to seek Greece dragged into a war, and wanted to keep Greece on track with its current economic boom, without endangering it with a war. Prime Minister Venizelos argued a lot with the King seeking royal mandate for a war against Italy, whilst getting concessions out of the Ottomans and British, however George I was not interested and remained in his neutrality mode. However on September 24, Crown Prince Constantine died of tuberculosis, which had been gripping him since early 1915. The old George I could not bear the pressure of having his eldest son being dead before him, and he was overcome with a stroke on the 26th. He was rushed to a hospital in Athens by the Royal commission of Greece, however the King of the Hellenes died on the way to the hospital. Whilst this was a national tragedy and the Greek nation went into mourning, this was an opportunity for Venizelos that he could exploit if he wanted.
King George II of Greece.
The young 25 year old King George II, who ascended to the Greek throne was very pro-western in his outlook and not at all political experienced like his late grandfather. King George II was soon persuaded by Venizelos to atleast look into the matter of intervention in the Great War, and open dialogue with the Entente.
On 19 September, 1915, Venizelos sounded out to the Entente by submitting a proposal of a joint Anglo-French Greek block against Italy and Austria-Hungary in the Adriatic. For many months now, the Entente and Central Power navies had been engaging each other in the Mediterranean in what seemed to be an evenly matched ordeal, and the British Admiralty quickly realized that having the Greek and Spanish navies join up with the Anglo-French navies would tip the favor in the Mediterranean in favor of the Entente. This signaled to the British and French that Venizelos was willing to abandon the territorial status quo in return for greek interests being safeguarded by the Entente.
For many months by this point, the British had been trying to negotiate an Anglo-Greek entente in the Adriatic by exchanging some land in return for leasing a Royal Navy base in the Greek Ionian islands for one or two decades. Venizelos had been resistant to the idea before the Great War, however with the war now raging all across Europe, the idea seemed a whole lot more enticing to the Greeks. On October 15, the British Ambassador to Greece, Sir Francis Elliot handed Prime Minister Venizelos the terms of British alliance with the Greeks. In it, the British offered, to transfer the administration of Ottoman Cyprus from Britain to Greece, on the condition that two Royal Navy bases in Cyprus were leased to Britain indefinitely and that the Greeks would negotiate the status of the Turkish Cypriots with the Ottoman government separately. In return the British government promised an interest free monetary starter of 6 million pounds to Greece, and would gain a naval access to the naval base at Corfu for a period of 10 years, which could be renegotiated for 25 years.
The offer was just too enticing for the Greeks. The idea of expanding even more, and gaining Cyprus, which was a major component of every Greek nationalist was more and more enticing for the Greeks. The Greek parliament reconvened on October 20, 1915 to discuss the offer. Venizelos argued throughout the parliamentary debate that the Italians had no real way to even attempt to harm Greece militarily as the war would be primarily naval, and that the Italians would have to invade the Ottomans to get to Greece. And seeing the fact that the Balkan War seemed near end, that possibility was not going to happen at all. He also used nationalistic fervor to denounce the anti-war faction, saying that if Greece did not get Cyprus, the blame would lie solely on the anti-war faction in the parliament.
Greek cypriots celebrating Enosis.
When the time to vote came, the Greek parliament voted 186 to 130 in favor of accepting the British offer and entering the war on the side of the Entente. However before they could do this, they needed to contact the Ottomans. Ahmet Riza was not at all pleased with the fact that the British were offering up Cyprus up to the Greeks. In the mind of many of the Ottoman diplomats, the Ottomans had conceded too much to the Greeks already. However already stuck in a war that he needed to end quickly, Riza knew that he didn’t have much choice in the matter. Nonetheless, Riza raised the issue of the Turkish Cypriots, who formed around a third of the entire Cypriot population and their safety. Venizelos proposed a population transfer, with the Turkish Cypriots being allowed free movement to the Ottoman Anatolian lands. Riza still did not like the offer being made to him by Athens and London, however when London added the sweetener of discounted trade deals between the British Empire and the Ottoman Empire, Riza acquiesced. This was met with outrage in the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies, Riza tiredly pointed out to the chamber that Cyprus was Ottoman in name only and that the British could transfer the island to Greek control anytime they wished, and getting something out of it, rather than nothing was the way to go. The Chamber reluctantly like their head of government agreed to the transfer, and on November 4, the island of Cyprus was ceded to Greek control. The next day on the 5th of November, the Kingdom of Greece declared war on the Kingdom of Italy on the grounds of interdicting maritime trade in the Mediterranean. The greeks had entered the fray in the Great War.” Venizelos – The Founder of Modern Greece? A Historical Survey. University of Knossos.
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“The Socialists of America will strive to live up to democratic institutions of this country and will seek to find a betterment through legal methods.” – Socialist Leader Victor Berger
“With the coming of the Depression of 1914 – 16, the second wing parties in the United States of America were strengthened immeasurably by the depression. Many people in America, especially evicted laborers and workers turned to the Socialist Party as a result, whilst many progressives turned to the Progressive Party as well. However the effects of the depression could not allow many to act properly either, despite the good showing of the Socialist party in 1915 gubernatorial elections. Eugene V. Debs, longtime Socialist leader of the American Socialist Party and a member of the far left faction of the party, found himself without a proper means of money resource, as the depression took its toll on the Debs family as well. Debs resigned from the leadership role in order to focus on the economical aspects of his party and turned to literary works and corporate work to gain money for his depression struck family.
Victor Berger.
Meanwhile, taking the position of Debs, Austrian-American Victor Berger became the leader of the Socialist Party after Debs resignation. A member of the centrist faction of the Socialist Party, he managed to reunite the bitterly divided socialist party over mutual hatred of the current ruling regime and the depression. Berger was a staunch centric socialist and was considered a progressive too as he began to slowly campaign in favor of desegregation in the socialist party to garner more votes in the Deep South’s black population who were allowed to vote. He argued that many black voters hadn’t voted to the socialists in the gubernatorial elections like that had been expected due to the party’s ambiguous stance regarding the segregation present in the country. The 1915 Socialist Convention was a heated affair with many in the party degrading the anti-segregation movement taking place in the party, however Berger’s own influence in the party ran extremely strong and during the convention he managed to barely pass a resolution which officially made the Socialist Party an anti-segregationist party. Many white socialists from the Deep South threatened to split the party afterwards, however Berger managed to negotiate with them allowing the regional socialist party subservient under the American Socialist Party to have their own laws regarding the issue, giving the regional parties significant autonomy, soothing both sides of the spectrum for the moment.
However in other progressive issues within the Socialist Party, he found overwhelming support for a pro-Women’s suffrage stance in the party and was able to enlist that too. The Socialists would soon become a massive headache for Wilson during the rest of his tenure as President as the party solidified under the capable hands of Berger.
Meanwhile Wilson’s government in a bid to distract everyone from the internal troubles of the government, began to meddle in the Banana Wars going on throughout Central America during this time. In February 1915, Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam took power as the President of Haiti. He began a ruthless repressive regime that culminated in the murder of 297 political prisoners in June 1915, including former Haitian president Zamor, who was being held captive. This infuriated the population and they rose up against Sam. Sam was supported by the American government due to Sam’s preferable stance towards the Haitian American Sugar Company. However Sam was deposed in October 11, by Rosalvo Bobo who was most definitely an anti-American Haitian politician. On October 15, Woodrow Wilson ordered 400 American Marines to occupy Port-au-Prince to safeguard American interests in the region as well as that of the Haitian American Sugar Company and tasked them with restoring President Sam who was being held prisoner in Haiti. However en route to Haiti the Americans found out that President Sam had died in prison and after Port-au-Prince had been occupied the Americans took Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave and installed him as the next President of Haiti whilst Bobo fled.
US troops in Haiti.
Bobo had survived the American invasion and had retreated inland with his supporters. This was start the War in Haiti, and would go on to become the major platform for the Republicans to win the 1916 American Elections.” The Political History of America in the Early 20th Century: a Time of Tumult. Penguin Publishing, 2017.
“The total defeat of Serbia has ensured that the House of Osman remains powerful on the peninsula.” – Franz Ferdinand
“After the defeat of Bulgaria, the flanks of the Serbian nation were dangerously exposed to an Ottoman attack that would end the war once and for all. The Serbian government under Prime Minister Stanojevic realized that their nation was in an unenviable position as the Bulgarians retreated past the border and made peace. The Serbian government began to use the Swiss as their intermediary and the Serbian minister to Switzerland met with the Ottoman Ambassador to Switzerland asking the Ottoman government for an armistice, now that victory was impossible.
It was clear to Peter I and Stanojevic that the nation was heading for national disaster as the armies of Mehmed Essat Pasha, swelling with the addition of reinforcements and reservists entered Serbian territory on the 3rd of November, 1915 with 150,000 men invading Serbia itself. That same day Serbian General Stepa Stepanovic told the Serbian Ministry of War that the Serbian armies at the front would be unable to hold Mehmed Essat Pasha for far too long, as his tactics of combined warfare was starting to take its toll on the Serbian armies. Things got worse for the Serbians as Mehmed Essat Pasha reached Predejane, only around 25 miles south of the bustling urban city of Leskovac. Stepanovic called out for a national defense of the nation, which was unlikely but not impossible. However neither Peter I nor Stanojevic had the stomach for an occupation of the country, especially by the Turks. As a result, on November 6, 1915, the Serbian government contacted the Montenegrin government under King Nikola I, and there, the two governments agreed to find a ‘peace with dignity’.
However such an idea was completely unfounded. Unlike the Bulgarians, with whom the Ottomans still had relative good relations despite the war’s bad blood, the Serbs and Ottomans had a long history of hatred for one another which made a complacent peace untenable and impossible. On November 7, Ahmet Riza got news from Switzerland that the Serbs and Montenegrins were hoping for peace, however Riza told the diplomats to stymie the armistice talks, long enough for Mehmet Essat Pasha to capture Leskovac.
Mehmet Essat Pasha made his main base against Leskovac on Graovo where the V Corps made their base. The IV Corps was deployed to Nakrivanj and the VI Corps was deployed to Ruplje forming the left and right flanks respectively. Meanwhile opposite to him General Stepa Stepanovich of the Serbians had deployed the Serbian I Corps at Grdelica to face the V Corps of the Ottomans whilst the Serbian II corps protected Trnjane against the Ottoman IV corps and the Serbian III Corps defended Velika against the Ottoman VI Corps. The Ottomans began the battle with a massive bombardment with the artillery corps and the air corps bombing the Serbian sector by a massive amount to soften their defense. The shock and awe strategy was followed by a massive Ottoman offensive all across the front. This strategy of shock was successful in throwing the serbs on the backfoot and Vucje, Tulovo and Middle Grdelica fell to the Ottoman assaults in good order.
Serbian troops fighting near Leskovac in the snow.
After that Stepanovic ordered all reserves from Leskovac to enter the battlefield in order to overwhelm the Ottomans in an attempt to gain numerical superiority however this bid failed as Mehmet Essat Pasha moved against this as well. Mehmet Essat Pasha managed to gain information from his troops that the II Yanya Corps was arriving from the south and Mehmet Essat Pasha ordered the II Yanya Corps to move towards the southwest and eventually to the northwest, in order to flank the position. As the Serbs and Ottomans continued to fight it out near Leskovac, the II Yanya Corps marched towards the frontier town of Medveda and attacked the defenses of Leskovac from the flanks, defeating the Serbian partisans in the area. This led to the fall off the western sector of Leskovac, and prompted a general panic amongst the populace aand the army defending the city. Mehmet Essat Pasha utilized this panic in full and ordered a new carronade from the artillery which bombarded the enemy positions and defeated the forward Serbian positions as well.
The next day on November 8, the Ottomans entered the city of Leskovac wary but victorious. The city’s populace was angered, and not at all cooperative, however Ahmet Riza and Mahmud Shevket Pasha made it clear that any breach of the Geneva Convention would mean instant death sentence to any general who got any ‘bright’ ideas.
This defeat made it sure to the Serbs and the Montenegrins that the Ottomans would not be seeking a lenient peace. Unlike the Serbs however, King Nikola I of Montenegro still held a powerful trump card up his sleeve. He had tied down nearly 100,000 troops with small army of around 30,000 men and was eager to exploit this to gain an even peace. A deputy of the Montenegrin government reached Constantinople on the 15th of November, and asked for peace, calling for a status quo ante bellum territorially and giving light reparations to the Ottoman government. To be clear, Ahmet Riza did not see the Montenegrins as a threat. They knew how to punch above their weight yes, however they could never stand on their own two feet against the Ottoman Empire. As a result, Ahmet Riza and the Cabinet was welcoming for peace with the Montenegrins. On November 22, the Treaty of Constantinople was signed in which the Montenegrins retreated back towards their border, and retained the territorial status quo whilst the Montenegrins agreed to pay 3 million pounds as reparations to the Ottoman empire, slightly above the total damage they had created throughout their occupied territories (The destruction created by the Montenegrin occupation in the Ottoman Empire amounted to some 2.85 million pounds).
At the same time, the Serbs had finally managed to negotiate an armistice as Serbian Foreign Minister Mihailo Gavrilovic and Ottoman Foreign Minister Curuksulu Mahmud Pasha signed the Armistice of Geneva which ended hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Serbia for the time being as the diplomats tried to find a proper peace treaty.
After two weeks of haggling and negotiations, the Treaty of Salonika (1915) ended the war between the Ottoman Empire and Kingdom of Serbia on December 12, 1915. The terms of the treaty were:-
The Serbian government would provide the Ottoman Empire 50 million pounds as war reparations.
The Serbian Military would be limited to 80,000 men for 25 years.
The Serbian Leskovac Province would be occupied by Ottoman troops until 1918.
The industrial production of Leskovac will be taken by the Ottomans as war reparations as well.
The Serbian government would try all war criminals who perpetrated crimes against the Ottoman Empire’s territories with Ottoman supervisors present.
The Ottomans to annex the Albanian majority border towns of the Vranje province.
The Serbian government to issue an apology to the Ottoman government.
All Serbian claims to Ottoman lands would be terminated by the Serbian government.
The current government of Serbia would resign and new elections would take place.
King Peter I of Serbia would abdicate his throne and due to the death of Prince Alexander of Serbia in hospitalization, Prince George would become King George I of the Serbian Kingdom.
The Serbian muslims would be granted total freedom of rights in Serbia, and the Ottoman government would have an advisory and supervisory role in the treatment of Muslims in Serbia.
The treaty was humiliating and made by the Ottoman diplomats to be as such. They hadn’t forgotten all the slights they had to put up from Serbia and as a result, the Ottomans were ruthless in their demands. Whenever the Serbian diplomats protested the Ottoman diplomats were not weary of showing the military situation bluntly to the Serbians. Meanwhile Russian Tsar Nicholas II meddled in the diplomatic process, and for once acted with caution. He knew that the scale of the Serbian defeat and knew that he could only save the Serbians from being reduced into a non-state. As such, the Russian Emperor began to revive talks with the Ottomans about an Ottoman-Russian Alliance that had been dropped in 1908 just long enough to gain some goodwill in Constantinople. He used this renewed and temporary influence to make sure that Serbia survived as a state, though very reduced.
The Balkan War was over.” A History of Ottoman Balkans: War, Deceit, Prosperity and Nationalism. University of Oxford, 1998.
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“We are citizens of the empire too!” – Ottoman Feminist slogan.
“The victory in the Balkan War was immediate in its effects. Throughout December, celebrations commenced throughout the empire, and its populace, as the population rejoiced that the war had been won. Ahmet Riza and his cabinet, called the Cabinet of the Wondermen became extremely popular universally and Ahmet Riza used this popularity to pass the Veterans Law in December 1915 which gave the veterans of the war who were retiring a permanent pension from the Ottoman state. The Ottoman economy was also backtracked as the wartime economy was slowly scrapped in favor of a peacetime economy as things settled down for the better in the Balkans.
However that is not to say that there weren’t problems afflicting the empire even after the end of the war. The Ottoman Women’s Suffrage Movement led by the troika of Halide Edib, Maria Leontias and Fatma Aliye were starting to get extremely more vocal in their support of universal women’s suffrage. Men in the Ottoman Empire had managed to gain universal suffrage in 1908 (though on paper it remained a conditional electoral vote), however in the empire, only women above the age of 30 were allowed the vote, something that Edib, Leontias and Aliye were all opposed to. The three had served in the Balkan War as women’s nurse and education volunteers and the three had become extremely popular with the veterans. The question of Universal Women’s Suffrage became the biggest political issue in peacetime Ottoman Empire after the Balkan War. Riza personally was disposed towards Universal Women’s Suffrage, however his party and many in the Ottoman Senate and the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies were opposed to the idea, on idealistic and religious grounds.
(1) - Hallide Edib, (2) - Maria Leontias
Two prominent early Ottoman Feminists
Maria Leontias, an Ottoman Greek, and the daughter of prominent educator Sopha Leontias was instrumental in increasing political pressure to the government. As an Ottoman Greek, she held natural sway in the parliament due to her minority status, and she held multiple rallies throughout the empire, especially in Greek majority areas in favor of Universal Women’s Suffrage. She was aided in this endeavor from Turkish Feminist Halide Edib and Turko-Arab feminist Fatma Aliye, who all campaigned within their ethnic boundaries of the empire in favor of Universal Women’s Suffrage as well.
To many in the Ottoman Parliament, the allowance of Women from ages 18 would be a fundamental change to the political body as the millions of new votes would change the basic fundamental power bases of every political party in the country. As a result, the politicians were afraid of such a radical change. On December 25, 1915 as the Christian populace of the empire settled down to celebrate Christmas, Ahmet Riza announced that the Parliament of the Ottoman Empire would be discussing conditional universal women’s suffrage in the empire, lowering suffrage requirements for women to the age of 18 if the women in question could meet monetary and electoral requirements such as wealth and education.
Amongst this growing feminist mood in the empire, the question of the Imperial Harem came into question as well. Almost every females in the empire, and indeed, many males as well, found the institution of the Harem to be horrendous, obsolete and in need of abolition. Sultan Mehmed V who had been grown and groomed in the Harem was not in favor of such a proposal, however knew that if he stated that aloud, he would be lynched in the streets and the popular image he had made for himself would die a very fast death.
On December 29, a meeting was conducted between the important members of the Imperial Dynasty, where they discussed the issue. Many among the Imperial Dynasty were opposed to abolishing the Harem, and Mehmed V reluctantly told the dynastic members that many changes needed to be made in the dynasty. After heated debates throughout the day between several dynastic members, it was the progressive faction led by Prince Abdulmejid [1] and Prince Osman Fuad who won the argument and the two managed to convince Mehmed V to talk against the Harem. On December 31, Mehmed V through radio announced to the empire and the world that after his death and the end of his reign, whenever it may be in the future, the institution of the Harem would be abolished forever. The Imperial Harem would be completely changed, as it would retreat from its usual interpretation to focus solely on education for women in the empire, by opening schools and colleges for women in the empire. [2]
This was a momentous day for the empire and the Women’s Movement in the Ottoman empire. As such every December 31, Women’s Day is celebrated in the Ottoman Empire till today as well.
governmental officials declaring the abolition of the Imperial Harem, which will take place after Mehmed V's death.
The official abolition of the Harem was supported by the Liberal Entente, Ottoman Democratic Party and the Ottoman Socialist Party within the political spectrum of the empire as the wartime coalition in the empire collapsed.” Women in the Modern Ottoman Empire: A History. Konya Publishing, 2019.
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“Dreadnought but the Seas.” – First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill.
“Ever since war had been declared the war in the seas had been an on and off affair within the Mediterranean Sea. The Italians and Austrians combined were trying to bait the Allied fleets whilst the allied fleets tried to force their enemies into open battle. Both tactics on both sides failed. However in early November, this situation changed as the Greeks entered the Great War amidst the backdrop of gaining Cyprus from the British government.
The naval situation was already untenable with the Spaniards in the war, however the situation turned for the worse as the Greeks entered the naval war. The Italian and Austrian admiralty therefore believed that they would need to defeat the allied fleets once and for all instead of in small hit and run tactics. Italian Vice-Admiral Augusto Aubry decided for a daring strategy, that of a battle in the open to destroy the Greek fleet. His counterpart, Anton Haus, the Commander of the Austro-Hungarian Fleet decided that was a horrible strategy, however Aubry convinced Haus that the Italians and the Austrians would disengage after the Greek fleet was destroyed, creating a tactical defeat but a strategic victory, something that would be extremely beneficial to the naval situation of the Central Powers. Haus was convinced after this, and the Austrian and Italian Navies met in the Adriatic on November 8, and started to move out against the allied warships.
On November 12, the Austrians and the Italians were informed by their intelligence that the Greek navy was loitering about near the Apulian Plateau in the Straits of Otranto patrolling the seas. The Greek contingent consisted of 1 Battleship, 3 cruisers and 8 destroyers, and was led by Admiral Pavlos Kountoriotis. Italian and Austrian information confirmed to them that the Spanish and joint Anglo-French navies weren’t far away near Alfeo Seamount, and as a result, the situation was most opportune. British Vice-Admiral Archibald Milne knew about the impending danger from his own information from the Admiralty and had already ordered the Anglo-Spanish-French fleet forward towards the Apulian Plateau however, unknown to the Austro-Italian fleets.
British ships during the Battle.
On November 14, the Austrians and Italians began to enter the Apulian Plateau intent on fighting. Admiral Haus’s Dreadnoughts, the Prince Eugen and Viribis Unitis lined up in the front with the Italian dreadnoughts Conte di Cavour and Leonardo Da Vinci lining up in the rear. In between there stood 19 Italian cruisers, 21 Italian destroyers, 7 Italian battleships, 10 Austrian cruisers, 16 Austrian Destroyers and 4 Austrian battleships, lining up to become a temporary naval behemoth as the 81 warships started to move against the completely outclassed and outnumbered Greek navy.
By around 14:00 of the 14th of November, Haus’s ships were proceeding southward at roughly the same latitude as Kountoriotis. Kountoriotis who was by now wary and knowing of the incoming danger was trying to outmaneuver his opponents, however the large number of enemy warships meant that they were capable of boxing his fleet in. However, the Spanish Navy consisting of 1 dreadnought, 4 Cruisers and 6 destroyers under the command of Admiral Antonio Gresilon allowed Kountoriotis to properly create a line so that he could retreat from the area in a proper line of command.
Haus at around 14:20 decided to send 2 cruisers and 5 destroyers ahead as a scouting group. As the scouting detachment turned north, the Austrian admiralty based out of Trieste and Zara informed Haus that they had received news and information that the Anglo-French navy under Milne was nearing his naval positions. As a result, Haus and Aubry ordered the warships to be divided into three columns. At around 15:00 the scouting detachment returned and joined the three columns just as Kountoriotis thankfully was able to attach the Greek navy into the Anglo-Spanish-French navies. Milne likewise ordered his ships to be divided into three columns as the ships started to turn to one another to stand and fight in the greatest naval battle of the Mediterranean throughout the Great War.
At around 16:30 the battle began in earnest as the Austrian Dreadnought Prince Eugen struck first and fired the first shell, which planted itself into a French destroyer. That was all that was needed for the battle to start in earnest. However whilst the Allied Navies now had a great numerical advantage of some 110 ships against 81 warships on the Austro-Italian side, the advantage of the strategic prerogative remained with Haus, and the wind blowing south during the evening gave the visibility advantage to the Austrians and the Italians. Haus used that to his utmost advantage. Using the cover of the scuds [3], the three columns of Austro-Italian warships detached from one another, in an attempt to create a wide trident formation.
Milne and his ships on the other hand were hampered by the low visibility created by the scuds and was completely caught by surprise when his third column was caught by the Italian line as the Leonardo Da Vinci and the Italian battleships laid down heavy fire at the surprised British lines of the Royal Navy. The sailors returned fire, however they were too late to save the Indefatigable which exploded in a maelstrom of fire and heat as the ship sank beneath the waves amidst a great carronade. The Greek Battleship Colchis managed to shield the other British warships allowing them to throw the Italian assault back though they remained battered.
This too was an Austro-Italian victory. Aubry and Haus now knew on which column the Greek navy was situated at, and the two columns started to veer to the Allied third column whilst the last Austrian column formed a defensive line to keep the other Allied ships at bay. Around 55 warships attacked the Allied third column again at around 17:45 and attacked that sector of the battlefield. This column was defending the allied navy was made up predominantly of British and Greek ships and the two sides fought one another with carronades continuously. Milne had believed that this attack was a diversion and was instead trying to probe into the defensive parameter made by the last Austrian column and was getting shelled in return by the two Austrian dreadnoughts.
This created a lopsided effect on both sides of the battle. The Austro-Italian assault on the Allied 3rd column succeeded and managed to sink 2 Greek cruisers, 3 Greek destroyers, 4 British cruisers, and 5 British destroyers in return for having 4 of their own cruisers and 5 of their own destroyers sunk. This created a gap in the allied third column that Haus exploited as the Austrian and Italian ships entered the gaps and started to fire at the startled enemies. As darkness fell however Milne counter-attacked. The Austrian and Italian naval flanks were dangerously overstretched and as such it became easy for Milne’s flagship, the Inflexible to create a breach in the Austrian third column as Prince Eugen was sunk by the British dreadnought. Haus and Aubry were informed of this breach and the fact that their entire line of retreat was now in danger of a pincer movement on part of Milne.
At 18:25, Haus ordered a strategic retreat. In his mind he had got what he had wanted. The threat of the Greek navy at the Straits of Otranto had been temporarily defeated and had been dealt a blow. The allied navies had been dealt a good blow as well, and the Austrians and Italians needed to preserve as much ships as they could as well. By 19:00 both navies had detached from one another ending the Battle of the Apulian Plateau in a tactical Allied Victory and Strategic Austro-Italian victory.
The battle immediately led to a sour taste in Greece, as the anti-war faction bristled at the strategic defeat of the navy. The Ministry of the Navy came under fire. Milne himself was replaced in the British Mediterranean Fleet by Somerset Gough-Calthorpe." The Naval War. Naval-Encyclopedia.com
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“The Winter Offensive will begin.” – Marshal Svetozar Borevic.
Chief of General Staff Viktor Dankl and Field Marshal Svetozar Borevic had been preparing for a grand offensive against Russia for a long time, however they did not get the mandate for it from the Ministry of War and the other members of the general staff for a long time due to ammunition problems, and the fact that the Hungarians were becoming wary of the war already.
Marshal Svetozar Borevic.
However the need for a grand offensive became clear as the Russians occupied Memel and were now in good position to take the city of Konigsberg, which if the Russians did, would be a blow the German Empire would never recover from. The morale blow would just be too high. As such German Chief of General Staff, General Bulow asked his Austro-Hungarian allies to divert Russian attention so that the Germans could recover and hold their ground against the diverted Russian troops.
Chief of General Staff Viktor Dankl agreed to the idea, and had his most capable subordinate Field Marshal Svetozar Borevic to plan a massive offensive which the two called the Winter Offensive. The goals of this offensive plan was simple. The 6th Army would strike at Lublin whilst the 4th Army would strike at Lutsk. This would make the Russians in between Lutsk and Lublin, as well the Russian troops in Poland, come into danger of encirclement, and force the Russians out. Then after that the 4th army from Lutsk and the 7th Army from Chernivtsi would strike out against Zhytomyr in Ukraine in a pincer movement, 200 kilometers west of Kiev, and through the attempt encircling nearly 600,000 Russian troops. Such a blow would be deadly to the Russian Empire, which seemed to be advancing into East Prussia.
Mounting pressure from Germany caused the Austrians to hurry their preparations. Dankl amassed the 4 armies consisting of 44 Infantry Divisions and 16 cavalry divisions up against the front, facing 40 Russian Infantry Divisions and 15 Russian cavalry divisions in near numerical parity. Deception efforts on the Austrian side were intended to conceal the point of attack. This included false radio reports and traffic, false orders being sent through messengers who were purposely left to be captured, and equipment displays including dummy artillery and dummy fortifications. Dankl and Borevic knew that they would not be getting a lot of reinforcements due to the Hungarian reluctance to supply them through the Carpathians, and as such moved his reserves up front to create more attacking power. They used the reserve to dig entrenchments along the frontline. These provided shelter for the troops and hindered Russian observations. The Austrians secretly sapped the trenches, and the Austrians prepared for a surprise assault.
The Winter Offensive started with the Battle of Lutsk on the 4th of December as the 4th Army under Borevic attacked the Russian 8th Army under the command of General Alexei Kaledin. Borevic began the battle with a massive artillery barrage against Kaledin’s Russian defenses lasting through the night and into the morning. The Austrian artillery broke gaps through the barbed wire trenches. This allowed the Austrian infantry to commence a surprise attack in the vicinity of the main metropolitan area of Lutsk itself. This complete surprise attack caused many of the Russians to be taken prisoner. Some entire units surrendered without resistance, and others fled in panic. A counter attack by Kaledin briefly secured the first and second line of the trenches, but overwhelming numbers of the Austrian infantry pressed the attack and took the third and fourth line of defenses. Within days, 80,000 Russian soldiers were lost in comparison to a simple 12,000 Austrian troops.
Russian troops during the Battle of Lutsk.
In a same manner, on December 8, the Austrian 6th Army under the command of General Rudolf Brudermann began to clash with the Russian 5th Army under the command of General Pavel Plehve, who controlled the passes into Lublin. In a similar manner to the south in Lutsk, Brudermann opened the battle with a massive artillery barrage and attacked the outskirts of Lublin, which were defended by the Russians fiercely. The line from Glusk all the way to Lupniak was fortified by the Russians ferociously as the Austrian cavalry rode forward and engaged the Russian Don Cossack Cavalry in what is deemed to be the last Great Cavalry Battle at the Battle of Dominow. The Austrian Hussars and the Russian Cossack Cavalry duked it out in Dominow to capture the territory which crossed the path into Konopnica which controlled a part of the fortifications against Lublin. The Austrians were able to make a flanking maneuver which pushed the Russians behind, and Brudermann began to use tactics that he had studied to pressure the Russians. Brudermann had studied the Ottoman Balkan War with careful eyes and had observed Mehmet Essat Pasha’s combined arms tactics and its effectiveness. A mixture of aerial bombing, cavalry probes, infantry assaults and artillery barrages broke the Russian defenses new Glusk and pushed them back into Wrotkow. The Russians began to attack Glusk again in a counter-offensive to take the area back, however the Croat regiments which defended the area, defended it fiercely and managed to stall any Russian counter-offensive. At the same time the Russian position became precipitous when Austrian grenadiers managed to capture Swidnik, putting the entire city of Lublin and its defenders under risk of or encirclement. On December 13, Plehve ordered a retreat to Leczna, ending the Battle of Lublin in favor of the Austrians as well.
the new Russian Prime minister, Sergey Muromstev.
The early success of the Winter Offensive made severe repercussions. These battles precipitated the fall of the Goremykin Government in Russia, and allowed the Progressive Bloc under Sergey Muromtsev to take power in Russia, despite the personal influence of the Tsar who did not wish to see Muromstev in power. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph legalized the creation of the Polish Legions and stated their explicit goal to see the creation of a free and independent Poland after the war, with a Habsburg monarch. The plan had worked. The pressure on the German front lightened, and the Germans soon started to recover territory in the occupied lands slowly one by one.” Precipice of an Empire: The Habsburg Empire during the Great War. Vienna Publishing, 2011.
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[1] – OTl Abdulmejid II
[2] – The Ottoman Harem provided educational opportunities for women otl, which led to many joining voluntarily. Essentially after the sexual portion of the harem is abolished, the harem ittl becomes a purely education board to support women’s education in the empire.
“On December 1, 1915, the Ottoman Electoral Commission informed the government that the next senatorial elections of the government, slated to take place every 3 years would took place on the 27th of January all the way to the 30th of January in 1916. As such the wartime coalition collapsed as the Balkan War ended, and the pre-war situation continued politically within the political spectrum of the empire. The senatorial elections this year would be extremely competitive as the issue of Women’s Franchise and Universal Women’s suffrage became a heated issue in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
The Committee of Union and Progress led by Ahmet Riza had managed to win the war, and the boost of the war prestige made the party’s position unassailable. Riza and the CUP campaigned during the elections in favor of conditional universal women’s suffrage which they deemed enough to be a middle ground. In contrast, the main opposition party, the Liberal Entente, led the way through the campaign in favor of unconditional universal suffrage which was supported by the Liberal Entente’s new leader, the 1st Premier of Albania, Hasan Prishtina. The Socialist Party under Huseyin Hilmi decided that they would be seeking the endorsements of the labour and trade unions in the country to gain their needed votes, and the Democratic Party under Ibrahim Temo sought their votes from their local strongholds scattered throughout the empire. It was the minor parties of the Social Democrats that managed to campaign a little better than before, as they managed to utilize the previous specter of war economy to gain more votes and credence to their social democratic views from the electoral populace of the country. The Armenekan Party under Portukalian experienced a downgrowth as ethnic nationalism and ethnic politics in the Ottoman empire started to disintegrate in favor of cross-ethnic political parties, which the CUP, Liberal Entente, Socialists and Democrats showed themselves as. The OPAD, a party espousing federal and confederal views, did not garner much support, as the recent spike of Ottoman Nationalism due to the war had made their federal views unpopular. Poale Zion similarly experienced a decline as the parties began to evolve into cross-religious parties as well, making the position of the party precarious.
At the end, the CUP won 33 seats, forming a large plurality with the Liberal Entente close behind with 25 seats. The Socialist Party won 14 seats whilst the Ottoman Democratic Party won 12 seats. The Social Democrats increased their seat coverage from 5 to 6, and the Armenekan Party lost seats to become reduced to 5 seats. The OPAD managed to scrape together 2 seats whilst Poale Zion barely managed to hang on with 1 seat in the Senate. The last seat of the Senate was taken up by an independent from the Senatorial Seat of Jerusalem. Huseyin Hilmi managed to retain his position in the Senate as the Speaker of the Senate, and promised more senatorial reforms regarding the position.” A Political History of the Ottoman Empire, Oxford Publishing, 2009.
“The Ottoman Empire having ended the Balkan War once again turned inwards towards economic development to make the economic standards of the nation better. The economic reforms of the past 4 years had shown their fruits to the Ottomans during the war with the Bulgarians, Serbians and Montenegrins and the Ottomans were eager to make sure that they could follow that up with ever changing and evergrowing economic success. The Ottomans were primarily an Islamic empire. The fact that they immediately turned to Hejaz, home of Mecca and Medina is therefore not at all surprising at times.
The economy of the Hejaz Vilayet was predominantly reliant on the annual Hajj and pilgrimage, as Muslims from throughout the world travelled to come to the holy cities of Medina and Mecca. The importance of the pilgrimage was such that entire residents of many outer villages outside of Mecca relied on the windfall from the pilgrimages for daily sustenance. May residents worked as guides for Pilgrims, camel-brokers, and built and provided pilgrim accommodations, sold or distributed Zamzam water [1]. Others worked in the maintenance of the Masjid Al-Haram and the Masjid al-Nabawi as sweepers, doorkeepers, servants, prayer leaders, preachers or candle cleaners. Of these occupations, the most numerous was that of the pilgrimage guides. These guides had the task of organizing the pilgrim’s accommodation, transportation, acting as a translator, and generally gudng the pilgrim through the rituals and prayers required. The opening of the Damascus-Hejaz Railway had however provided the peoples of Hejaz with new economic opportunities, and many became involved in the railway sector, and employment in this new burgeoning sector allowed the populace to diversify their economic base.
The pilgrims and caravans in Hejaz
The Ottoman government unveiled the Hejaz Economic Development and Reform Plan on February 9, 1916 under the direction of Finance Minister Avraam Benaroya who was eager to develop the Vilayet of Hejaz to bring it up to speed with the rest of the Ottoman Empire, as it was lagging behind slightly. The Development and Reform plan consisted of the following points:-
The government funded opening of 5 Date Mills.
The construction of a new railway line between Hejaz and Yemen increasing interconnectedness between the two Vilayets
The opening of 20 new higher education schools and 42 lower education schools.
The construction of new highways between Syria and Hejaz, as well as the cities and towns of Hejaz to made transportation services easier.
Creation of economic agricultural tax exemptions to increase incentive for agriculture in the Vilayet.
The development of Jazan as a new regional port within Hejaz to lift the load in Jeddah.
The scouring of the Vilayet to take place to find potential oil fields in the Vilayet.
Similarly the Ottoman government also increased the presence of the banking sector in Hejaz, most dominantly to increase the service sector and credit sector of the economy in Hejaz. The Ottomans also inadvertently or perhaps purposefully began to encourage the people to settle down and encouraged many throughout the Vilayet of Hejaz to give up their predominantly nomadic way of life. As a result, many cities and towns in Hejaz began to swell throughout the province. The Ottoman government, now officially a secular empire, was also not unwilling to reach out to the Jewish and Christian minorities of Hejaz (around 5% of the population) during this time, and restored much of their internal rights, and created a quota system allowing the minorities to enjoy a smooth economic and social life in Hejaz, with religious discrimination being criminalized by Ottoman law.
The Ottomans however had new problems to deal with in the north that they didn’t like at all. While anti-semitism in the Ottoman Empire was not high and relatively low, that didn’t mean that it didn’t exist. Several Christians and muslims in Palestine were known to assault the Jewish immigrants settling in their new homes. The Ottoman judicial system helped whenever it could, however, that didn’t mean they could take care off every offender, and some slipped through the net and continued to harass many Jews. In response a small Jewish militant organization known as the Hashomer was starting to gain prominence when on February 5, they raided the house of an anti-semite Assyrian in Jerusalem and killed the family. Hashomer had been established in 1907 by Alexander Zaid, a prominent Jewish settler in Ottoman Palestine. The Ottoman government reacted violently against the paramilitary organization.
The Flag of Hashomer.
Ottoman gendarmerie stormed the headquarters of Hashomer on February 17, 1916 and took the entire militia and paramilitary’s leadership under arrest. The members of the Hashomers knew that unauthorized paramilitaries were illegal within the Ottoman Empire, and that killing and murdering was also prosecutable under Ottoman law, however they had ignored that, and now were paying for it. The leadership was sentenced to life in prison. Most famously Sultan Mehmed V gave a speech in the Chamber of Deputies regarding the case.
“We are a multinational and multi-religious empire. As such despite our relative harmony with one another, fractions will always arise from time to time. However violence cannot be the answer. The Ottoman Government under the full provisions of the Constitutions will prosecute any murderer in the state, whether he or she be Christian, Muslim or Jew, whether he or she may be Turk, Arab, Jew, Armenian, Greek, Slavic or Albanian. This is a nation of equals. No single group is going to be favored over the other. Remember that, and this nation will flourish.” – Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Front for Jews or the OFJ was quick to support the Sultan, and condemned the Hashomer and the murders. Prominent Jewish politicians throughout the empire decried the Hashomer, with many calling out that a tit for tat strategy was not available and neither was it capable of being implemented and that it would jeopardize the future of the Jews within the Ottoman Empire. However something that made relations cool considerably was that the Ottoman Gendarmerie and Information sector had managed to find several links between the leaders of the Hashomer and the Zionist Congress. [2] As a result, the Ottoman government withdrew their funding of the Zionist Congress’s movement and settlement program in the Sinai Peninsula, and pointedly ignored the protests of the Zionist Congress, becoming increasingly irritated by the Zionist Congress’s continued meddling in Jewish affairs in the Ottoman Empire.
Ahmet Riza would sum up the issue bluntly when he told the Zionist ambassador ‘Your congress isn’t the representative of Ottoman Jews. The deputies and senators they elect to the Ottoman Parliament are their representatives. Not the Congress.’
This would be yet another precursor to the Sinai Crisis.” A History of Ottoman Arabia. Penguin Publishing, 1997.
***
“To Damage the English Fleet by offensive raids against the naval forces engaged in watching and blockading the German Blight, as well as by mine laying on the British coast and Submarine attack, whenever possible. After an equality of strength had been realized as a result of these operations, and all our forces had been made ready and concentrated, an attempt is to be made with our fleet to seek battle under circumstances unfavorable to the enemy.” – Admiral von Scheer
On January 7, the German Imperial Admiralty decided to halt their unrestricted submarine warfare throughout the Atlantic after complaints from neutral countries like the USA, Brazil and Argentina decried the loss of their ships. Reinhard Scheer, the German Fleet Commander believed that it would not be possible to continue attacking the enemy through the international accords of restricted submarine warfare and instead he set about deploying the submarine fleet against military vessels. It was hoped that following a successful German submarine attack, the fast British escorts such as destroyers and light cruisers would be tied down by anti-submarine operations. Then amidst this, the Germans would catch the British with their proverbial pants down. This decision was laid out after watching the (partially) successful Italo-Austrian victory at the Battle of the Apulin Plateau.
The Germans deployed 17 submarines into the North Sea on January 13, as a part of their plan. A fleet of Zeppelins were also deployed into the North Sea and Skagerrak for aerial reconnaissance and bombing runs. The Germans began to deploy the Zeppelins in the direction of the Norwegian Trough, distracting the Royal Navy allowing the German Navy to move north to attempt a raid at Sunderland. On January 18, the German warships left port, in order to conduct Reinhard’s daring scheme to strike out against the British Navy.
Unfortunately for the Germans, the British had obtained a German codebook from a scuttled German torpedo boat in Tanganyika, and were able to utilize the codebook to tap into German plans. The British Admiralty maintained the direction finding and interception of German naval signals, and on January 18, decrypted a German signal that provided ample evidence that the Germans were moving into the North Sea for a serious attack. After the debacle in the Mediterranean, Fleet Commander Jellicoe was unusually calm and cautious, intent on not making a second naval debacle possible.
Not knowing what the Germans were going after (Sunderland), Jellicoe and the Admiralty decided to head off any attempt by the Germans to enter the North Atlantic or Baltic through the Skagerrak by taking up positions right out of Norwegian waters, something that would irritate the Norwegian government a lot throughout the battle, as they feared it would breach their neutrality. As such Jellicoe led the sixteen dreadnought battleships of the 1st and 4th Battle Squadrons of the Grand Fleet and the 3 Battlecruisers of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron and headed eastward out of Scapa Flow on January 19, 1916. He was to meet Vice-Admiral Martyn Jerram coming from Cromarty. On January 21, the Admiralty reported to Jellicoe that the Germans had left the Heligoland blight just as Vice-Admiral Beatty’s 5th Battle Squadron of four battleships met and grouped up with Jellicoe.
As the British moved towards the east, being caught in the German diversion with the submarines and the Zeppelins, the Germans began to move towards the west. If they could catch Sunderland by surprise then there was a good chance that Reinhard and Hipper could catch the docked British fleets there completely open to attack without a proper means of defense. The 3rd British Battlecruiser Squadron consisting of the Galatea and Phaeton moved in the rear of the British Grand Fleet and came into contact with U-32 submarine. Before the submarine could properly attack the two battlecruisers, the submarine was subjected to a forced crashed dive by the tow battlecruisers, and retreated out of the line of attack. The British Admirals noted the presence of the submarines and were being caught into the German trap further and further.
Further north, U-76 was retreating from her zone of patrolling when the Duke of Edinburgh and Boudica, as well as eight battleships got within 350 yards of the submarine. The U-76 got ready to fire, however was forced to crash dive by an incoming destroyer. Its captain, Edgar von Spiegel reported back to the German Admiralty that there were 8 Royal Navy Battleships moving towards the southeast of the North Sea. The earlier submarine, the U-32 likewise reported the exact opposite. The courses predicted by the subs were incorrect. The British were instead focusing on a zigzag maneuver against the Germans in case of an attack. Meanwhile however, completely unknown to the British, the entire German High Seas Fleet had used the submarine and zeppelin ruse to pass through the Doggerbank area unnoticed. A British submarine patrolling in the area saw them, however was sunk by the Germans before it could report back to the Admiralty about the incoming danger.
It was the quiet nature of the ongoing battle that persuaded Jellicoe to double back on the 22nd, as his newfound cautiousness feared a surprise attack from the Germans. With information from the Admiralty becoming more and more unreliable, it was up to him and his staff to make a proper decision against the German naval threat.
The British warships doubled back and turned towards the north, and soon on January 28, Jellicoe saw the rear of the German fleets confirming his fear of a trick. He ordered the British fleets to converge before they attacked the German fleet. A battle was about to begin over Devil’s hole, a small trough in the North Sea 200 miles east of York. The Royal Navy had around 140 warships with them, with 28 battleships, 9 Battlecruisers, 8 armored cruisers, 22 light cruisers, 71 destroyers, 1 minelayer and 1 seaplane carrier. The Germans on the other hand had 16 Battleships, 5 Battlecruisers, 6 pre-dreadnoughts, 11 light cruisers and 61 torpedo boats.
Vice-Admirals Beatty and Evan-Thomas began to fire at the Germans with them targeting Hipper’s Battlecruisers. With several of his ships damaged, Hipper turned back towards Scheer to make their formation more compact, and dangerous. Jellicoe was however despite the early success in a precarious condition. He knew little of the location of the entire German fleet to judge how to deploy his battleships from their cruising formation into one single battle line. Early deployment could mean the loss of a decisive engagement and to deploy late would mean having the chance of destroying his entire fleet. As such Jellicoe decided to gamble, trying to go for the ‘right action at the right time’ move and held his battleships at standby intending to deploy them just as the time was right.
Action on the High Seas during the Battle of Devil's Hole.
Meanwhile as the fleets moved north with one another the British turned back, trying to stop any movement into the Shetland islands and Sunderland and attacked Hipper and Scheer with earnest as well. Vice-Admiral Hood attacked from the northeast and Beatty aided the attack. Nearby numerous British destroyers and cruisers aided the attack on the German warships. However the destroyers and cruisers were often crossing into each other’s courses barely avoiding collisions dampening their effect on the battlefield. The Battle went on and off on this state before the Defense sank at around 15:19, and this made Hipper unsuspectingly capable of sending his fleet into range of Hood’s Battlecruisers. Hipper’s aggressive ships moved into range and with the visibility aiding the British on this sector of the battlefield, the British, led by the HMS Indomitable hit the Germans quick and fast. The German ships were forced back by the sudden attack, with Seyditz and Derflinger sinking into Davy Jones’s Locker whilst the rest decided to return back with Scheer’s main division in the battle.
Jellicoe finally knew where the German fleet was by this point, and he deployed his lines into one massive pincer movement against the Germans with two main fleet lines coming up against the Germans from the north. By the evening, it was becoming clear to Fleet Admiral Reinhard Scheer that his position was becoming untenable as the British destroyer flotillas unleashed a massive torpedo attack at the German battlefleet in a violent and chaotic attack that was extremely successful. They managed to take out Rostock and Pommern creating a dent in the German battle formation. The Germans as such decided to retreat back into the German controlled area of the southeast North Sea and disengage from the battle entirely.
However the Battle of Devil’s Hole is not called one of the Royal Navy’s defining battles for nothing. The 5th Battle Squadron consisting of the Barham, Malaya, and Warspite had doubled back during the battle and were now coming north from the south, right at the German rear. The 5th Battle Squadron unleashed a powerful volley of fire and salvos into the German rear, taking the German fleet by surprise. What happened next was a desperate evening naval battle as the Royal Navy closed in and the Germans tried to let loose. By 8 pm that evening the battle was over as the bulk of the German navy managed to escape, but not without heavy casualties and losses during the battle.
(please forgive my rather amateur attempt to make a naval map).
The Germans had suffered 7,094 sailors dead, 774 wounded, and 281 captured as 2 Battlecruisers and 2 Pre-Dreadnought battleships were sunk. 3 Cruisers were sunk as well with 12 Torpedo-boats being sunk to the bottom as well. In contrast, the British had some 2,936 killed and 602 wounded in the battle, with 1 battlecruiser sunk, 1 battleship sunk, 4 light cruisers sunk and 4 destroyers sunk along with 1 armored cruiser sinking to the bottom during the battle.
The German intention to maim the British with a devastating raid had failed and the naval casualties was also high. The British had thankfully been able to stave off a new debacle and Jellicoe’s cautious approach to the battle had enabled to the win the battle. With the Battle of Devil’s Hole, the Royal Navy secured dominance over the North Sea for the rest of the Great War.” The Naval War. Navalencyclopedia.com.
***
“The 6th Army of Rudolf Brudermann would continue to show itself as exemplary throughout the Winter Offensive as Dankl ordered the 11th Army under the command of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand based out of Krakow to aid Brudermann and his forces. The end goal for the Austrians right now before the Winter Offensive’s first phase ended was to capture Warsaw, and evict the Russians from Russian Poland, perhaps causing a rout along the way. However standing between Warsaw and Lublin was the Russian 11th and 5th Armies under the command of General Sakharov and General Klembovsky, both of whom were far greater in strength and experience than General Plehve.
Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria. A man with no personality apparently but with great talent for military command.
During this time an argument erupted between the Austrian Cisleithanian and the Hungarian Transleithanian government within Austria-Hungary as the Hungarians began to waver in their material support of the war. The Austrians were enraged by this and demanded up front that the Hungarians do their part in the War. The Hungarians retorted that this war was one that they had not asked for. The Austrians simply retorted by asking why then had they agreed to declare war. The Hungarians were quiet on that issue. The Hungarians restored the supply lines to the north however this disruption disrupted the Austrian supply line. Brudermann was faced with a hard choice now, and knew that if the Russians found out about his supply situation and attacked his position would be untenable and would force him to abandon Lublin, reversing the Winter Offensive completely. Brudermann therefore, like his inspiration Mehmet Essat Pasha went on and took a risk. He completely ignored his supply situation and turned towards Warsaw with his 140,000 troops as Joseph Ferdinand converged on Lodz and attacked Lodz.
The 11th Army managed to hit the defenses around Lodz under the command of General Nikolai Ruzsky who commanded the 4th Russian Army. On 11 January, the III Corps of the Austrian 11th Army moved north and struck at the V Siberian corps of Ruzzsky and took the area near Wloclawek on the left bank of the Vistula River before the Russians could prepare any defensive position. Joseph Ferdinand’s left column then attacked the Russian Guard infantry and reached Breziny on the 13th of January and forced the Russian defenses to retreat behind Galkow Maly entirely. The Austrians under the command of the Archduke took the Russians by the storm in a sudden attack, and the Russians were forced to give ground to the encroaching Austrians. The Austrians then surrounded the heights near Lodz and took the outer ring of the city, forcing the bulk of the Russian Army to abandon the city. Inconclusive fighting continued until 19 January before the city fell into Austrian hands completely.
On January 27, the Austrians were arrayed from Sochaczew all the way to Siedice on the southern front of Warsaw with the 11th and 6th Army facing the Russians as the Russians under General Sakharov and Klmebovsky readied themselves to fight the Austrians once and for all in Congress Poland. The Austrians stormed the frontier defenses at Otwock, however the stubborn Russian defenses in the region took a lot of time to dislodge and added to the defensive mobility of the Russians as they became more and more compact and their defensive ring around the capital of Poland became more and more tight and more rigid as the Austrians continued to waste their time with attacking small frontier positions and forts in the regions.
The Austrians managed to take Piaseczno on the 31st of January before coming into full sight of a fortified city in front of them. The Austrians then laid siege to the capital of Poland. Russian reinforcements from the retreating 3rd Army in Poznan allowed Klembovsky and Sakharov to continue to successfully defend themselves. It wasn’t until March 14, when Dankl had supplied Brudermann and Joseph Ferdinand with enough artillery to reduce the city’s defenses that the city fell. The Austrians overran the southern defenses, and an improvised line of defense only managed to hold the Austrians off for a day allowing the Russians to destroy all of the supplies in Warsaw. The Russians then began to retreat wholesale from Warsaw after that. On March 18, the city of Warsaw fell completely to the Austrians, signaling the end of the first phase of the Winter Offensive, which had been a success.
However many were now underestimating the Russians. That would be fatal when the Germans and Austrians attacked in April during the Battle of Brest.” The Winter Offensive. Osprey Publishing, 1999.
***
Order of Battle:-
Anglo-French Order of Battle:-
BEF Commander: Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien
3rd British Army (General Sir Edmund Allenby)
II Corps
III Corps
V Corps
VII Corps
4th British Army (General Sir Henry Rawlinson)
VIII Corps
X Corps
XIII Corps
XIV Corps
5th British Army (General Hubert Gough)
XV Corps
Canadian Corps
ANZAC Corps
6th French Army (General Ferdinand Foch)
10th French Army (General Marie Emile Fayolle)
German Order of Battle
2nd Army – General Fritz von Below
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“The Battle of Lede was the result of a Russian plea to distract the Germans from taking part in the Austrian led Winter Offensive which was starting to become extremely successful. The French and British commanders during the past few months had been trying to think up a strategy to divert German attention from the east, and the Battle of Lede would become the brainchild of General Smith-Dorrien, who had till now proved himself to be an able commander.
The Battle of Lede would last 62 days from its start on January 21 and the battle truly began during the Battle of Melle. The attack was made by five divisions of the French 6th Army in the south and eleven British divisions of the 4th Army in the north. They were opposed by the German divisions of the 2nd Army under the command of Fritz von Below. The German defense south of the Albert-Wetteren road mostly collapsed, and the French managed to successfully clear out the defenses in that region of the battle. However in the north, the British were having more troubles, as the German defenses in the area were far greater and far more coordinated than in the south. On the south, the German defense was made incapable of making another proper defense, and a proper retreat began and in the south Kwatrecht was abandoned by the Germans completely to retreat to more defensible barriers. However in the north, the German Corps commanded by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria managed to inflict massive losses on the British defenders, with the British 4th Army taking unprecedented losses of 46,391 of which 16,375 were killed, whilst the French losses were merely a fifth of the total British losses in that sector.
After recuperating from the opening battle, the British knew that they would have to seek a proper means of breaking through Prince Rupprecht’s indomitable Bavarian Corps, who were blocking the British path to Aalst, the goal of the British troops. The British thus attacked at Melles once again this time led by the Mark I Tanks, which was a new British innovation in the field of warfare. The Tanks weren’t overly effective as hoped, however, they were able to reduce losses throughout the British front of the attack, and allowed the British to take the western sector of Melle successfully. This would be the first deployment of tanks in history. It would have a glorious future ahead of itself in the field of history.
However in the southern sector of Melle, the Australian Imperial Force was undergoing what is called ‘the worst 24 hours in Australian Military History’ as the 5th Australian Division attacked the German positions in southern Melles only to be butchered by the German defenses, with Australian losses amounting to 5,553 casualties whilst the Germans losses were extremely light within the range of the hundreds. On February 4, Prince Rupprecht managed to garner a two day truce with the British and French to collect the dead from No Man’s Land before the fighting began all across the front in Belgium once again.
The second phase of the Battle of Lede took place in the Battle of Opsmeer Woods. This was an operation conducted to secure the British right flank while the center advanced to control and capture the higher lying areas of Aalst and the High Woods. The British offensive had right now converted itself to evolve into capturing fortified villages, woods and other terrain that offered observation for artillery fire, jumping off points for more attacks, and other tactical advantages. The mostly costly fighting at Opsmeer woods eventually secured the British right flank and marked the debut of the South African 7th Infantry Brigade during the war which held the southern woods.
The Battle of Egern began in good weather and East Egern was captured on 27 February. Pauses were made due to rain and to allow time for a methodical bombardment, when it became clear that the German defense had recovered from earlier defeats. The British bombardment consisted of aerial bombardment and artillery bombardment combined with one another, as they conducted a massive carronade on the German positions. This made the German position unable of sitting down and forced von Below’s troops to retreat back towards Aalst where the British objective lay.
British tanks during the Battle of Lede.
On the 19th of March the British attacked the Aalst region against the german defenses with a combination of aerial, artillery and armored attack, and after 4 days of heavy slogging managed to defeat the German defenses in that area, forcing the Germans to abandon that front of their plan of attack, and forcing them to retreat back to their fortifications at Asbeeck to defend Brussels itself, as the British troops advanced 40 kilometers throughout the entire two months to liberate considerable territory with French and Belgian aid during the battle.
The British and French had succeeded in distracting the Germans and the Battle of Lede is often cited today as a reason why the Winter Offensive lost its steam after the fall of Warsaw.” The Battle of Lede: The Origins of the Tank. Osprey Publishing, 2006.
The frontlines after the Battle of Lede, Warsaw and Lodz in March, 1916.
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“On March 25, the British Admiralty and Ministry of War, in conjunction with the Spaniards and French authorized a landing force of 200,000 men (70,000 British, 40,000 French and 90,000 Spaniards) to land in Sardinia, just as Italy reinforced the island with 90,000 troops under the command of General Cadorna as General Diaz took care of the Alpine front in the north. First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill aimed to take Sardinia in what would be a hopping campaign to defeat Italy. Take Sardinia, and lay the foundation for a naval assault on Rome itself which would take the Italian Kingdom out of the war entirely. It wasn’t a bad idea. But the Battle of Sardinia would prove to be one of the most bloody affairs of the Great War.” The Battle of Sardinia – A Dagger Aimed at Italy. Osprey Publishing, 2009.
The allied fleet approaching Sardinia...........
***
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[1] – Water from the Zamzam well, the holiest well in Islamic religious consciousness.
Foreign Minister Curuksulu Mehmed Bey REJECTS Offers from London and Berlin
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Constantinople, April 3, 1916
In a sudden move, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published a public report stating that the governments of the German Empire under Chancellor Bethmann Hollwegg and the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Asquith have both offered an alliance with the Ottoman Empire on the conditions of monetary aid, military aid as well as total economic concessions regarding the Capitulations in the Ottoman Public Debt service.
The Foreign Minister, Curuksulu Mehmed Bey has called for a public conference in Topkapi Palace, where the government has reiterated its view that it shall remain neutral in the great war culminating throughout Europe.
“We have only just been able to come out of the war in the Balkans and we are in no state or condition to look for matters of war and conflict again, so soon after the great conflict with Bulgaria, Serbia and the Montenegrins. Our government and nation will remain neutral in the conflict encompassing the countries throughout Europe.” – Curuksulu Bey, the Foreign Minister has released this statement to confirm that the government will not be dragging the nation into a war again.
Curuksulu Mehmed Bey
Grand Vizier Ahmet Riza has similarly made a statement supporting his Foreign Minister, and has made his stance on neutrality become firmer than ever before.
The War in Europe
The War in Europe is spreading everywhere, that we cannot deny. The Spanish, French, Italians, British, Greeks, Austrians and Germans as well as the Belgians and Russians are fighting throughout the continent leading to hundreds of thousands perishing everyday. Our nation’s revitalized economy and military would be a boon for any side in the ongoing war. The Minister of War, Mahmud Shevket Pasha has called the steadiness of the military to seek a war with another great power into question.
“The current military innovation happening in Europe – for example just look at their new tanks, is something we cannot replicate at this time.” – Mahmud Shevket Pasha told the reporters of the Times of Osman yesterday.
The Specter of Nationalism and Humiliation
It cannot be denied however there are nationalists who would wish to take part in the war to get what many believe to be rightfully a part of the Exalted Ottoman State. The capitulations that led to the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina into the Empire of Austria-Hungary, recovering influence in the Caucasian mountains as well as bringing Egypt back into the fold are all dreams that many Ottoman nationalists are known to espouse. Such rewards could be possible if our nation entered the war, however with possibility of rewards, also comes the possibilities of failure.
Nonetheless, many nationalist deputies in the Chamber of Deputies have told the reporters of the state that they will be boycotting the vote that will reaffirm the neutrality of the nation.
Deputy from Adrianople, Enver Pasha has stated that he will not be accepting the government’s agenda regarding the ruling on neutrality and has stated that he will submitting his resignation from the CUP Party and will be forming a new nationalist party, called the Ottoman Nationalist Party (ONP) with other like minded members to form a league representing Ottoman revanchist movements. However for now, it seems this party will be going nowhere as no one in the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate has defected to this new party other than Enver Pasha himself. Still, the rise of nationalistic parties could be detrimental to the empire as of this moment. From The Women’s Movement in the Ottoman Empire, Salonika Press, 1997.
For all intents and purposes, the rise of women’s rights movements in the Ottoman Empire cannot be pinpointed to one event. The rise of consciousness in the Imperial Harem, as well as the general rise of education throughout the empire would mean that gradually the second standard living standards of Women in the empire became totally untenable and not at all capable of being retained throughout the empire. In the late 70s and early 80s, Women’s rights movements cropped up throughout the empire with the sole intention of aiding the movement for suffrage, rights and abolition of the harem. Of course, Sultan Abdul Hamid II was not at all interested in anything that seemed progressive and brutal suppression of these movements took place quieting the movements. It was during the Second Constitutional Era that the women’s movements began to rise up once again.
Fatma Aliye
The works of Hallide Edib, Fatma Aliye and Maria Leontias gained prominence during the Ottoman-Italian War, with their women’s movements and women’s organizations taking part in nursing and pharmaceutical works that could make the war effort better and more well organized. Throughout the periods and time between the Italo-Ottoman War and the Balkan War, however the dampening of nationalism throughout the empire and economic development throughout the empire meant that the government under Ali Kemal was more focused on developing the nation economically to bring it up to speed and to make the nation’s living standard’s even better. This inadvertently led to more and more women’s joining Edib and Leontias’s fronts for women swelling with women throughout the empire, as living standards increasing in the empire, and education swelling in the empire made women more conscious about their rights in the nation.
In 1913, Hallide Edib and Maria Leontias founded the Ottoman Women’s Association, an association that claimed to represent the interests of all women in the Ottoman Empire. Later that year they published the Women’s Manifesto, written in Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Albanian and Slavic which declared their intentions in the empire.
To Seek Equality between the status of the Woman and Man throughout the Ottoman Empire.
To create an environment in which equal economic opportunities can be handed over to both males and females in the empire.
To see to it that the education of women can take place in the empire in a smooth and proper manner that can ensure the future prosperity of women in the empire.
The promulgation of universal women’s suffrage in the empire.
The abolition of the Imperial Harem and rebranding the institution into a purely educational board.
The 5 point demands as they came to be known in the Ottoman Empire were demands for progressivism and representation of women in the empire. Throughout 1913 and until early 1915 the Women’s Associations started multiple marches throughout the Ottoman Empire in favor of women’s rights. The Constitution of 1908 gave freedom of protest and freedom of criticism to the masses, even women, and the Ottoman Riot Police was deployed only to stop violence during the marches, and otherwise the government allowed the women to conduct their marches, and only stopped them if the marches devolved into riots and shouting.
The outbreak of the Balkan War made the situation even more untenable for the anti-Women’s Rights in the Chamber of Deputies. The work of the Women’s Ottoman Militia against the Bulgarians and Serbians as well as Montenegrins behind enemy lines to strike out against the enemies supply lines, and the works of the women nurses throughout the war made the stature of women rise again and their voices and the political power that women wielded continued to grow throughout the Balkan War.
Former Grand Vizier Ali Kemal publically supported Women’s Universal Suffrage in the empire, and persuaded the Liberal Entente, now led by his Albanian protégé, Hasan Prishtina to adopt it as their main policy as well. The endorsements also came from the more progressive parts of the empire. Hristo Tatarchev, a regionalist and separatist politician in Ottoman Thrace, Sergey Komachev, as well as Mustafa Kemal Pasha made it clear that many in the empire were starting to come around and were supporting Women’s Rights in the Ottoman Empire.
However by April 1916, the situation was quickly turning into a stalemate. In the Deputies, the pro-Women’s Rights deputies, collectively called the Reformers and the anti-Women’s Rights Deputies collectively called the Stayers were locked in political stalemate over the issue. In the Senate the Reformers had a majority however in the Governor’s Mandate in the Ottoman government, there was an equal amount of reformers and stayers as well. The only provincial governor election that would be taking place in 1916 would be the Armenian Vilayet’s governorship election. As such the elections in the Armenian Vilayet promised to become extremely interesting as it would determine the political mandate in the Ottoman legislation for women’s rights in the empire.
The Armenian Vilayet’s governor was Sehzade Mehmed Ziyaeddin, the son of Sultan Mehmed V, and he was elected to the position by the Ottoman Senate in 1913 to offer a non-partisan governor during the first few years of the Armenian Vilayet. As such partisanship largely did not find a proper place in the small Vilayet. However by the time of the 1916 Governorship Election, partisanship in the Vilayet was divided between the Armenakan candidate Armen Garo, and the Armenian Revolutionary Foundation candidate Simon Zavarian. Garo ran on an economic platform more than anything else, as well as a socio-political one. Zavarian similarly ran through the elections on nationalistic lines, hoping to garner regionalist votes in the Vilayet. This however backfired on the man, as the Kurdish, Greek and Turkish minorities in the Vilayet instead opted to vote for Armen Garo’s moderate line instead of the ARF’s regionalist line, which was a thinly held separatist line for many. Zavarian managed to recover some votes when he focused his position on a confederal position rather than a nationalistic one.
The main contention however (un)surprisingly came in the form of Women’s Rights. Garo supported women’s franchise in the empire, and supported women’s rights, having links with some regional Armenian women’s associations in the empire as well. He was a major donor to the Women’s cause as well. Zavarian while sympathetic to the plight of the women ran on a platform of the status quo, as he stated that changing the political situation at the time with enfranchising the women could turn out to be dangerous.
The counting of the elections by the Ottoman Electoral Commission was fractious and was filled with jittered and panicked nerves as the commissioners continued to count the ballots and the votes. At the end of the election, it was decreed that Garo had won the governorship after the counting ended, having won 46.3% of the total votes, whilst Zavarian had come close, with 42.8% of the total votes in the elections. Garo was sworn in as the new Governor of the Armenian Vilayet.
This swung the mandate in the Governor’s Mandate in the Empire in favor of the Women’s issue in the empire and the women’s association gained momentum after this election. On May 12, the Minister of the Interior, Huseyin Hilmi (also leader of the Socialist Party) declared:-
……War by all classes of our countrymen has brought us nearer together, has opened men’s eyes, and removed misunderstandings on all sides. It has made it impossible I think that ever again at all in the lifetime of the present generation that there should be the revival of the old class feeling which was responsible for so much reactionary feelings, and among other things, for the exclusion for a period, of so many of our population from the class of electors. I think I need to say no more to justify this extension of the franchise to our dear members of Ottoman society – our women………
On May 19, The Representation of the Women Act passed in the Chamber of Deputies and was ratified by the Senate. The terms of the act were:-
All women in the empire were given universal right to vote after passing the age of 18 and registering in the Electoral commission.
Women above the age of 26 with proper education and monetary requirements would be able to stand in General Elections for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
Absolute Primogeniture to be adopted in the country’s succession and inheritance laws for business, economics, and familial wealth so that the eldest child regardless of sex would be able to inherit in their share of the ancestral right in the empire.
The act was a momentous change in Ottoman policy. Many had thought that a conditional women’s franchise would be given and would be implemented however the implementation of universal Women’s right in the empire fundamentally changed the situation of politics in the Ottoman Empire. It added around 3.4 million voters into the electoral commission and allowed women to stand in the elections. 8 women Deputies would be elected in 1918 as a result of this act giving them the right to do so.”
an English paper in Smyrna showed this poster after the act was passed.
From A History of Ottoman Arms and Weapons, Osprey Publishing, 2011
“The introduction of the Tank by the British government in the Battle of Lede fundamentally changed warfare forever, and every schoolboy interested in the military will be able to tell you what a Tank is. The Ottomans were early innovators in the idea of the Armored car and had used the Duvar Armored Car with great effectiveness throughout the Balkan War. The Ottomans were also eager to repeat that innovation by incorporating the Tank into Ottoman development plans in the military.
The Ottoman Ministry of War recognized the usefulness of the Tank almost immediately, as the tanks would be able to change warfare in the flat terrain of Ottoman Arabia forever, and the armored fighting role would also the Ottomans to have fortified maneuverability which would be extremely useful for the Ottomans if another war broke out in the mountainous Balkans.
On April 3, the Ottoman Minister of War, Mahmud Shevket Pasha ordered the Ottoman Engineering Corps to look into the tank and to ferment local development of the tank within the Ottoman Empire if possible. The first experiment used by the Ottoman engineers was the construction of a small landship with the aid of an American Killen-Strait tracked tractor. A wire cutting mechanism was successfully fitted, but the capability of the motor to cross wide trenches and holes was insufficient. A Duvar armored car was also fitted, however the project was abandoned after it was found that the project would not be able to fulfill all terrain requirements.
The Ottoman Engineer Corps also took part in development of the Caterpillar Continuous tracks as a means to an end to find a proper method to create a proper tank in the empire, and the Ottomans conducted an experiment near Baghdad near the flat terrain between the Euphrates called the Baghdad experiment. Ottoman Chief Engineer Heron Adamos (ethnic Greek) scrapped the earlier experiments and instead turned to caterpillar tracks in its full and in May 1916, managed to have a 75 horsepower wheel directed model and a 45 horsepower integral caterpillar baby engine, showing a proper maneuverability of the vehicle. The integral caterpillar was a success. On the 16th of June, new experiments followed, which were witnessed by Mahmud Shevket Pasha, Mehmed Essat Pasha, and Mustafa Kemal Pasha. The first complete chassis of the armor was demonstrated to the Ministry of War on 9th July, 1916, with the participation of Mehmed Essat Pasha during testing.
the prototype tank made by the ottomans.
The prototype would come into prototype testing production on the 18th of July, 1916.” TIMES OF CALIFORNIA
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Nationalists Win Filipino Elections. Demand more autonomy from the US government! Tensions rise in the region
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June 6, Manila
The elections for the members of the Philippine Assembly were held on June 6, 1916 under the conditions of the Philippine Organic Act of 1902 which prescribed for elections to take place every three years within Philippines, which became an American protectorate. The elections for the Philippine Assembly was largely contested only by the Nacionalista Party led by Sergio Osemna, a prominent Filipino Politician, and the Progresista Party. The Nacionalista Party, as its name means, is predominantly a Filipino Nationalist Party that supports Philippine independence from our nation. It is an increasingly populist and conservative party that stays on the right side of the political spectrum.
In an electoral landslide of epic proportions, the Nacionalista Party won around 75 seats in the Philippine assembly whilst the party’s opponents, the Progresista and Democrata Nacional won only 7 and 2 seats each. Around 6 independents managed to win seats in the assembly as well. Sergio Osmena, the Speaker of the Assembly and leader of the Nationalists has managed to hold onto his position, and has called for more autonomist powers to given by Washington. Osmena has called the continued American presence in the Philippines an infringement on Filipino sovereignty and has submitted a three point demand into the new Filipino Assembly asking for the repeal of the 1903 Sedition Law which imposed penalties on independence fighters of the Philippines, and has called for the repeal of the Flag Law which banned the display of the Filipino flag. Finally he has also called for the increase of the local governments, and has called for a new commission to be formed for the increase of Filipino autonomy.
Sergio Osmena
Our reporters from the government tell us that the points have passed in the new Filipino Assembly however President Wilson and the government have rejected this decision on part of the Filipino Assembly and has used their veto to overrule the legislation.
The failure of the American government to uplift the depression and recession in the Philippines, and even in the United States has radicalized the population. Many rumors have been made that the Moros are preparing for a new rebellion and the government is currently trying to hold matters on calm, though this reporter must admit that the situation is turning more and more untenable as time goes. Unrest is also spreading in the Confederation of the Lanao Sultanates, and many say that the Sultans are plotting to end the rightful American occupation of their lands, by proclaiming an independent elective monarchy of Muslim Filipinos in the south. The recent arrest of the Sultan of Baloi has only served to make matters worse in this case.
Only time will tell if the government will be able to meet this rising threat with the proper acumen that it deserves. From A History of American Political Parties and their Polities, New York Publishing, 1999.
“On June 2, 1916, the Republican Party held the Republican National Convention to seek their candidates for the 1916 US Presidential Election that was coming during November that year. At the starting of the convention, Supreme Court Justice, Charles Evan Hughes was widely seen as the favorite due to his ability to unite the party, though the nomination of Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge or General Leonard Wood also seemed possible and even likely to many in the party.
Many republicans sought to nominate a candidate that was acceptable to Theodore Roosevelt in hopes of avoiding a new third party run by the Progressive Republicans, though they were unwilling to nominate Roosevelt himself. The main candidates raised during the convention were:-
Associate Justice, Charles Evan Hughes of New York
Former Senator, Elihu Root of New York
Former Vice President, Charles Fairbanks of Indiana
Senator, Albert B. Cummins of Iowa
Former Representative, Theodore Burton of Ohio
Senator, Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin
T. Coleman du Pont of Delaware.
Senator, John Weeks of Massachusetts
Senator, Lawrence Sherman of Illinois
Governor, Martin Brumbaugh of Pennsylvania.
Former President Theodore Roosevelt was raised as a candidate however he withdrew from the balloting as he did not wish to run for the presidency over political and personal concerns in the 1916 elections. By the end of the national convention, it was voted and decided that Charles Evan Hughes would be the Republican candidate for the Presidency whereas Robert La Follette managed to gain the candidacy for the vice presidency from the political party.
At the same time, the Progressive National Convention was taking place simultaneously whilst this was going on in Chicago, Illinois. The progressives had before the 1915 Gubernatorial elections been focused on reunification with the Republican Party, however after the good showing of the party in the 1915 elections, the party decided to oppose reunification with the Republicans, like the Republicans themselves. Roosevelt refused to take part in the convention fearing that the Progressives would eat up Republican votes and allow the Democrats to win the election again. With Roosevelt refusing to be their candidate, the Progressive Party turned to other members of the party and cross party members such as Gifford Pinchot.
Among the candidates from the Progressives were:-
Former Congressman, Victor Murdock of Kansas
Governor, Hiram Johnson of California
Former Chief of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot.
Louisiana Congressman John M. Parker
Raymond Robins
Among these candidates, it was John M. Parker who had been most famous in the party after his near successful run in Louisiana last year that won the nomination for the presidency. Similarly, Gifford Pinchot became the vice president candidate from the Progressive Party.
John M. Parker, the Progressive Candidate
Similarly the Socialist elected their candidate too during the 1916 Socialist National Convention. The Socialists raised Arthur Le Seuer, former Mayor of Minot, North Dakota to become their presidential candidate whilst trade unionist James Maurer was elected through ballot voting to become their vice presidential candidate.
The Socialist party wouldn’t continue throughout the 1916 elections properly and their votes floundered, mainly due to the red scare after the Communist uprising in Bulgaria, however the Progressive Party managed to conduct itself in a most beneficial manner, allowing it to consolidate itself as the main third party in America after the 1916 US Elections, though it didn’t manage to win the presidency that year.” From A History of British Liberal Leaders (A Case Study into British Politics), Oxford Publishing, 2008. All rights reserved.
“Before the end of 1915, it became clear that the troops entrenched along the Western Front were engaged in a long term slogging march with the German Empire, as such british politicians began to search for a quicker way to victory. Prime Minister Asquith supported Churchill’s proposal that the navy and army invade Sardinia in a prelude to an Invasion of Rome itself, knocking Italy out of the war, and clearing the Mediterranean of total naval danger for the British convoys in the region.
However many in the British government were also opposed to the ongoing plan to land in Sardinia, and Admiral Fischer resigned on April 2, even ignoring Asquith’s order to return at once to his post. Fisher avowed that Churchill was impossible to work with and that he was against the planned Sardinian campaign. The ongoing Shell Crisis in the British Army also precipitated a political crisis of the highest kind within the government.
British munitions industries during the Munitions Crisis.
Shortage of ammunition had been a serious problem since the autumn of 1915 and the British Commander in Chief, General Smith-Dorrien had ben filing for more ammunition. Lord Northcliffe and many reporters blamed Lord Herbert Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War. On the basis of assurance from the Ministry of War, Asquith stated in a speech later that the army had sufficient ammunition in early January 1916. However the British failed to dislodge the Germans at the Battle of Outer Brussels, leading to a major fallback that almost jeopardized the Battle of Ledes and the Ledes campaign against the Germans. The Army complained back to the government blaming the lack of explosive shells. This time General Smith-Dorrien directly contacted Conservatives Bonar Law and Arthur Balfour complaining about the lack of proper shells to press British advantage in the war. By this point, the Conservatives and minor parties had all lost their confidence in Asquith as a proper wartime leader against the Germans and Austrians as well as Italians, just as the Sardinian Campaign was set to begin. In February, the death of Asquith’s eldest son, Raymond, killed fighting on the Western Front was also a staggering blow, and impaired Asquith’s personal effectiveness in fighting out the war.
He did not speak of his grief, but it made him dull and listless, and found it difficult to concentrate and failed to attend several meetings of the cabinet. The accumulated disappointments against Asquith continued to grow. The Times started to write articles that Asquith was disqualified on grounds of temperament and illegitimacy of his ways of governing the Isles during the conflict. Asquith attempted to reverse out of the political crisis’s however he was unable to and on April 9, submitted his resignation to King George V. He told the King that his resignation was the only solution to the growing embarrassment in the Liberal Party and to prevent bipartisanship during such a time of troubles.
After the fall of Asquith’s government, the Liberals largely came to the conclusion that a coalition government was required in Great Britain with the Conservatives. Bonar Law was amenable to a coalition on the grounds that a coalition had equal representation in the formed cabinet. A few liberals resigned in protest, however the absolute majority (92%) of the party stayed, and agreed to Bonar Law’s terms. Now came the job of finding a suitable successor within the Liberal Party, or perhaps an independent as Prime Minister. The prime candidates to become Prime Minister after Asquith were David-Lloyd George, the Minister of the Munitions, Reginald McKenna, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Herbert Samuel the Home Secretary, Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of War, and finally Bonar Law himself, the Leader of the Conservatives within Britain.
Prime Minister Reginald McKenna
Samuel and Kitchener dropped out of the nomination quick. Samuel was unsure of his own capability to be Prime minister and was more interested in keeping his role as Home Secretary whilst Lord Kitchener rejected the premiership on grounds that he needed to see the war through and that the Military could not run the state. Lloyd-George was deemed too liberal for many Conservatives and Bonar Law was not at all trusted by the Liberals. As such McKenna appeared as a centrist candidate for the premiership, which he accepted. He was asked by King George V to form a new government. McKenna formed a wartime coalition government in parliament with the Conservatives with confidence and supply given by the Irish Parliamentary Party as well as the Labour Party. The cabinet he formed consisted of:-
Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury: Reginald McKenna (Liberal)
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Andrew Bonar Law (Conservative)
Financial Secretaries to the Treasury: Sir Hardman Lever (Liberal) and Stanley Baldwin (Conservative)
Parliamentary Secretaries to the Treasury: Lord Edmund Talbot (Conservative), Neil Primrose (Liberal), Frederick Guest (Liberal) and Leslie Orme Wilson (Conservative).
Junior Lords of the Treasury: James Hope (Conservative), John Pratt (Liberal), James Parker (Labour), Josiah Jones (Liberal) and Sir John Gilmour (Conservative)
Lord Chancellor: The Lord Finray (Conservative).
Lord President of the Council: Arthur Balfour (Conservative)
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs: Sir Edward Grey (Liberal)
Secretary of State for the Colonies: The Marquess of Crewe (Liberal)
Secretary of State for Home Affairs: Herbert Samuel (Liberal)
Lord Privy Seal: Lord Curzon (Conservative)
Secretary of State for the Colonies: The Earl of Crawford (Liberal)
Secretary of State for War: Lord Kitchener (Independent)
Secretary of State for India: Austen Chamberlain (Conservative)
First Lord of the Admiralty: Winston Churchill (Liberal)
President of the Board of Agriculture and the Fisheries: George Roberts (Labour)
President of the Board of Education: Arthur Henderson (Labour)
President of the Local Government Board: Walter Long (Conservative)
Chief Secretary of Ireland: John Redmond (IPP)
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Thomas McKinnon Wood (Liberal)
Minister of the Munitions: David Lloyd-George (Liberal)
Paymaster General: Arthur Henderson (Labour)
Minister-Without Portfolio: The Marquess of Landsdowne (Conservative)
Postmaster General: Joseph Pease (Liberal)
Secretary for Scotland: Harold Tennant (Liberal)
President of the Board of Trade: Walter Runciman (Liberal)
First Commissioner of the Works: Lewis Harcourt
Attorney General: Sir F. E. Smith (Conservative)
McKenna’s first work as Prime Minister was impose a tariff of 33% on all luxury imports in order to fund the war effort. The McKenna duties were applied to cinematographic film, clocks and watches; motorcars and motorcycles as well as musical instruments. He also sought to stabilize the erratic British economy during the war, and started to stabilize the economy by increasing wartime taxation on goods such as coffee, and tobacco. He managed to lower the deficit in the budget from £0.9 billion to £0.65 billion in a few weeks however, he could not lower it any further. The unreliability of the American economy meant that he could not bring loans from America as he thought he could, and as such the new Prime Minister turned to the Dominions and neutrals such as Sweden, Portugal and the Ottoman Empire as well as Netherlands to fill the British army with weapons. In particular, the British government and McKenna’s investments allowed the Swedish and Ottoman economics to boom throughout the war as McKenna is estimated to have bought £90 million worth of goods from the Ottoman Empire throughout the Great War and £60 million worth of goods from the Kingdom of Sweden throughout the war. Around £180 million worth of goods were bought from the Dominions, creating a standing post-war debt of £330 Million, which while a large amount was quite small to what many had thought it would be. Many during Asquith’s government had calculated a debt of around 600 to 800 million and McKenna’s rational economic policies made sure that Britain could fight through the war properly.
McKenna also passed the Munitions Act of 1916 on April 24, exactly one week before the Sardinian Campaign began, ending the Shell crisis.” From The Italian Revolution of 1919: Its Origins by Luigi Umberto
“Ever since Spain had conspired to enter the war against the Central Powers, the Entente Powers had been designing a method to knock Italy out of the war. Ever since a Royal Navy commission in 1913, the Royal Navy and the French thought the best way to do that was to invade Sardinia as a hopping campaign until Rome itself, which would see Italy bail out of the war. The Spanish were willing to commit the bulk of the troops for the invasion, with Dato’s government raising the reservist system of Spain throughout the months in a most efficient manner.
It was decided that the flat fields of Arborea just south of Oristano in Sardinia would be the best landing ground for any invading force. The Order of Battle for the Allied troops during the landing consisted of:-
42nd East Lancashire Division (UK)
52nd Lowland Division (UK)
10th Irish Division (UK)
87th Division (France)
90th Division (France)
5th Infantry Division (Spain)
8th Infantry Division (Spain)
10th Infantry Division (Spain)
7th Mountaineer Division (Spain)
5th Guards Division (Spain)
The entire force of nearly ~210,000 men was commanded by General Aylmer Hunter-Weston and General Damaso Berenguer. On the flip side, the Italians were commanded by General Luigi Cadorna and their order of battle consisted of:-
50th Infantry Division
43rd Infantry Division
64th Infantry Division
7th Infantry Division
47th Infantry Division
26th Mountaineer Division
53rd Mountaineer Division
3rd Infantry Division
The allies had been concentrating their fleets in the Eastern Mediterranean and the combined amphibious capability of France, Britain and Spain were used to make sure that this massive operation was capable of taking place.
The allies planned to land and secure the northern shore of Arborea and capture the Italian forts and artillery batteries for a force that could advance through the Sardinian highlands through the summer and cut the island in half.
The 10th Irish Division was the first to land at Marcnedi and came under heavy fire from the Italian defenders. Cardona’s ‘impressive’ strategy was to simply hurl men at the invaders, and hope for the best and overwhelming the enemies with numbers and the home advantage. Similarly to the north, French and British marines landed at Torre Grande allowing the 87th Division and 42nd East Lancashire Divisions land and attack the nearby defenses of the Italians.
The Spanish Generals landing ashore in Sardinia.
The frontal attacks that Cadorna specialized in was suicidal when the Allies held naval superiority and the naval carronades and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAF)’s planes wreaked havoc on the Italian lines as they tried in futility to fulfill the orders given to them by their commander. In addition, Cadorna had poor relations with the other generals on his staff, and had sacked 217 generals, 255 colonels and 355 battalion commanders before the battle, making regimental and divisional coordination between the troops all the more harder. In addition, he was also detested by his troops for being too harsh, having ordered the summary execution of any officer whose units retreated during the battle. Around 750 commanders would be executed under his command during the entire Battle of Sardinia due to his incapability to defend Sardinia. There are also rumors that he revived the Roman practice of decimation – the killing of every tenth man in a military unit – for units which failed to perform in the battles, though this rumor is largely unfounded, thought it has some basis in truth as Cadorna was known to shoot retreating troops. His foolish leadership allowed the British, French and Spaniards to capture Oristano and Terraiba by the 9th of May before the allies began to move inland.”
“The Winter Offensive conducted mostly but Austria-Hungary and the German Empire, saw most of Poland fall under the occupation of the Central Powers. As such the Russians had lost a valuable territory to the central Powers, and frankly speaking, many of the generals and commanders of the Russians army were becoming more and more frantic as the offensive stared right back at them, promising defeat once more. Dankl and Borevic’s push into Russia has succeeded, however unknown to both the Russians and the Central Powers, the Winter Offensive had already stalled. The Austrians were unable to enter the interior of Ukrainian territory and as Russian supply lines became shorter due to the occupation, the Russian armies became better equipped and more capable of defeating the Central Powers in open battle.
Historian Roger Davis aptly summed up Russian war efforts in the Great War when he said “Exceptional troops, worthy weaponry, horrendous leadership.” Barring a few, much of the Russian commander class were old, decrepit and not really in sync with the modern methods of warfare. Many were quite stuck in the Franco-Prussian War and the 1878 Russo-Turkish War, and were not prepared for an industrial war of the scale that was currently going on. However the Winter Offensive provided the Russian War Ministry with the best excuse they could ever give the Russians to conduct a civilian purge of the generals and weeded out much of the older and obstinate generals of the military. This allowed new blood and younger generals to take their places. Old generals in step with modern warfare were kept in command as well.
On June 18, 1916, the Russian High Command now began to converge on three generals, Alexei Brusilov, Anton von Saltza, and Mikhail Diterikhs. The three generals coordinated with one another and deemed it necessary that Russians push the Austrians and Germans back so that the morale of the nation could recover and so that the Austrians and Germans would stay back and not continue on any new offensive. Anton von Saltza was given command of the entire Central Front, commanding the X, XI, XIII and XV corps, of around 170,000 troops against the army of General Edward von Bohm, who was approaching the Russian positions near Brest commanding a combined Austro-German Army of 140,000 men. The plan for the confrontation in Brest was simple, and its excellence was found in its simplicity. The idea was simple. Using the numerical superiority of the Russian troops, the Russians would defend Brest and slowly stretch their lines to cover more ground in the north and south, using the larger number of Russian troops to aid in this endeavor. Then, as the Austrian and German lines became more strung out, a pincer movement would take place on part of the Russian divisions that were stretched to the north and south all the way to Podlaska, pushing the Central Powers away from Belarossiya back into Poland.
Anton von Saltza
On August 3, Bohm’s Army reached the outskirts of Brest and the Battle of Brest began in earnest. Bohm’s Army consisted of the XII, III, VII and IV Corps of the Austro-Hungarian Army as well as the X and XI German Corps. This army attacked the defensive positions near Brest the next day on August 4 with the customary artillery barrage at their enemy’s positions. The Russians had had time to dig in and managed to stave off the worst effects of the barrage and responded against the Barrage with one of their own, which was far more effective as it was more properly coordinated and the Austrian and German troops wearing dull grey and black uniforms were kind of like light beacons in the field of green outside of the city, making accuracy and precision of the Russian artillery barrage even greater than their Austrian counterparts.
The Austrians captured the forward defensive positions near Kukuryki and Piszczac and managed to drive the Russians back to the main defensive layers at Terespol and Brest itself. However the string of fortress’s near Brest made any attempt on part of the German and Austrian armies to enter and attack Terespol to be a bloody and futile endeavor. As such Bohm changed his strategy and tried to outflank the Russian positions near Kolonia and Pratulin in the north and south respectively. This change of tactics was the one that the Russians had been betting that the Austrians and Germans would be committed to, and as such were ready for it. As the Austrians and Germans spread out to make sure that they could get proper flanking territories against the Russian defenders, the Russian Army stretched from the center starting to spread towards the north and south as well.
For around a week the Austrians, and Germans found themselves fighting over vast quantities of open land on the flanking sides of Brest, with sporadic fighting taking place all over the area near the key strategic strongholds of Pratulas and Koden. On the 11th of August, the Russian Commander, von Saltza decided to flip the tables on the Austrians and the Germans. Von Saltza was a Russian commander of Baltic German heritage and as such, during the starting phases of the war, his loyalty to the state had been questioned, despite the fact that his father had been a proud Russian commander during the Crimean War, and that he himself had fought with distinction in the Russian Conquest of Central Asia, the 1878 Russo-Turkish War, and the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. His excellence in battle had been noted, and he was not purged unlike some of his peers, nonetheless, the anger that had been building up inside von Saltza unleashed itself in the Battle of Brest as the Russian forces near Pratulin and Koden, instead of giving sporadic fighting, and then retreating, instead stood their ground and started to advance, much to the utter surprise of their Austrian and German enemies.
Like the olden days of the 19th century and 18th century, von Saltza personally rode out into the front, encouraging his troops to advance against the Germans and Austrians, instead of allowing lieutenant commanders to pass on the orders. The personal magnetism and the charisma of von Saltza raised the morale of the battle wary Russian troops and the Russians started to push. The stretched out German and Austrian lines started to fumble as the Russians won the dash for Pratulin and liberated the town from the German troops. The Russian troops of the XV corps near Koden managed to outflank the Austrian Hussars completely and managed to capture Piszczac as well making the Austrian and German situation in the battle all the more dangerous. Finally on August 12, Bohm ordered a retreat back into occupied Poland and was also ordered by Dankl to later form a defensive line so that a Russian invasion of Poland was impossible.
Russian troops during a Parade celebrating their victory in the Battle of Brest.
The Battle had been an astounding victory. For the loss of 28,000 Russian troops as casualties during the Battle, the Russians had inflicted 48,000 Austrian losses and 27,000 German losses, completely turning the previous momentum of the Winter Offensive away. The morale of the Russian Army which had been dropping with every defeat reared right back up, and the Russian reforms of von Saltza and Brusilov would prove to be extremely consequential over the next few years.” The Russian Empire: The Fumbling Giant, Jack Adamson, University of Oxford, 2012.
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“On August 17, the Emperor of the Austrians, King of the Bohemians, King of the Magyars, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary died due to his standing tuberculosis problems which had only be exacerbated by the war that his nation now found itself in. He was succeeded by Archduke Franz Ferdinand as Emperor Franz II of the Austrian Empire and as Francis II of Hungary.
Franz Ferdinand was a different man than his predecessor. He had not wished to enter the war and had even proclaimed in broad daylight in the Austrian House of Lords in 1915 ‘To Hell with Germany! We want Peace!’ during the Alsatian Crisis and was by the time of his ascension, no friend of the German Empire. Kaiser Wilhelm II despised the man after the proclamation that he had made, and the military and civilian government of Austria-Hungary was quite worried that their new Emperor would do something foolhardy that would make the empire’s entire position untenable during the war.
But Franz II was more cunning than what people gave him credit for during that time. In his eyes, the treatment of the Alsatians and Lorrainers, predominantly Germanic by the German empire had been horrendous and he had sympathized with their plight during the Alsatian Crisis. He was also wary of the oppression that the Francophone Alsatians and Lorrainers had to bear in Alsace-Lorraine, as he saw disturbing similarities between the old Habsburg oppression of the Ruthenians and Italians within the Austrian Empire, something that had nearly blown up in the face of the Empire during 1848, the Springtime of Nations. He had, since 1908 also been a supporter of peace between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire, and had been an advocate of a moderate policy regarding the points of contention between Austria-Hungary and Russia.
The fact that the combined Austro-German armies had been defeated at the Battle of Brest by the Russians after nearly a 7 month long grand offensive which had broken Russian control in Poland, and the fact that Russia was still rearing to go in the war with no end in sight, Franz II decided that he needed to take matters in his own hands.
Emperor Franz II of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
King Francis II of Hungary.
On September 11, he called his heir, Archduke Karl of Austria-Este, to his room in Schobrunn Palace, where he asked Karl about his foreign relatives. Archduke Karl confirmed that he had a brother in law in the Belgian Army fighting against the Germans in Wallonia, Flanders and Alsace. This was of course none other than Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma. Franz II ordered Karl to get into contact with Prince Sixtus and told him to tell Sixtus that he was to act as a secret beneficiary and intermediary between Vienna and Paris/London so that the Austrians could secretly enter peace talks. Franz II told Karl to do this in utmost security. Whilst the German military had not been stellar throughout the war, the German economic might could not be denied, and as such German officers and leaders were saturated in parts of Austro-Hungarian government, and leaking any information of the sort to the Germans could have disastrous consequences.
As such Franz II did not even include the Austro-Hungarian Civilian Government in this matter, and told Karl to get into contact with his brother-in-law quick to start negotiations as fast as possible. Karl would acquiesce. This would lead to the infamous Sixtus Affair, one which would see Austria-Hungary leave the war. This event is generally seen as the major linchpin which made German and Italian defeat in the Great War quite inevitable.” Emperor Franz II: The Peacemaker. Graz Publishing, 2009.
***
“The defeat of the Italians during the Battle of Oristano allowed the allies to enter Sardinia in earnest. Capturing the Port of Oristano, also allowed the allies to have a proper means of supply in the island. This gave the Allies an opportunity which they could exploit. The Italian Navy had been trying and failing for the past few days to try and relieve the Italian force in Sardinia, however had been routinely rebuffed by British, French, Greek and Spanish warships. Whilst the Italians had stockpiled a massive amount of ammunition and weapons in Sardinia to fight against the encroaching army, the ammunition and weapons could dry up anytime if the Allies worked well enough in Sardinia. Combined with Cadorna’s strategy of throwing men and material at the enemy, this was even more in favor of the allies.
General Aylmer Hunter-Weston.
The British decided to cover the northern half of the island under the command of General Aylmer Hunter-Weston, whilst the Spanish under General Damaso Berenguer decided to take care of the southern half of the island. The French divided their troops in half and followed both sides of the island forming the rearguard of the British and Spanish troops. This was mainly due to French manpower problems and the French High Command was eager to preserve men and manpower during the Sardinian Campaign.
On The 19th of August, the 10th Irish Division managed to take Ghilarza from the Italians securing a firm inland route into the heart of Sardinia, and managed to more importantly capture vast caches of Italian weapon being transported to Nuoro. Meanwhile the Lancashire’s were moving north as well and encountered an entrenched Italian Corps in Cuglieri and was unable to dislodge the Italians from that position. The Lancashires asked for reinforcements however Hunter-Weston did not have proper reserves to deploy to the front, and asked the French 87th Division to do the deed instead.
The French were at first unwilling, having known about their aforementioned manpower problem, however they acquiesced in the end and the French advanced towards Santu Lussurgiu instead flanking the Italian Mountaineers at Cuglieri completely and attacked the Italian left flanks from Scano di Montiferro, forcing the Italian Mountaineer Corps to move back towards Sindia. On September 2, the 10th Division entered Macomer as well, after a short firefight that took the city by the storm, and with aerial support from France and Britain. The main goal was now Sassari and Olbia, which if the two fell, then the northern half of the island would fall completely.
The French were willing to have a reserve division placed in Corsica, the 11th Marine Division launch a small amphibious assault from Bonifacio, Corsica to Olbia if the British and Spanish navies assisted the landing. The Royal Navy and the Spaniards agreed, and on September 19, Operation Garibaldi was given permission by the Allied Headquarters to be start. The 10th and 42nd Divisions of the British and the 87th French Division started to move northward in a wide pincer movement against Sassari from the south an managed to defeat the Italian garrisons near Alghero and Torralba with the aid of naval bombardment which softened the defenses of the area.
On October 3, the Franco-British forces converged on Sassari from Olmedo and Usini and managed to hold off an Italian attempt to sally out of the city and defeat the French and British in separate battles. On October 10, the Franco-British arrived at the doorstep of the city and laid siege of the city. The city of Sassari held out for a month and a half, with its defenders being completely isolated from the rest of the island and facing constant aerial and artillery bombardment. The Italians in the city showed exemplary bravery and managed to hold off 4 assaults into the city for 48 days until on November 27, the city, having lost all of its weapon supplies and food supplies as well as the general loss of proper water supply, surrendered to the allied forces to stave off the prospect of a famine.
Meanwhile on October 9, the city of Olbia had been actually abandoned by the Italians completely for fear of a massive naval bombardment that would render many of their men incapable of fighting the war, and in a rare moment of clarity and thought, Cadorna had ordered the abandonment of the city to preserve men. The 11th French Marine Division landed on the 17th of October in the city without much resistance at all. And with it, Northern Sardinia had fallen to the allies completely.
Meanwhile in the south Cadorna had retreated with the bulk of the Italian Army and had instead focused on making a defensive parameter outside of Cagliari. The intensive naval defenses of the city made any Allied naval bombardment of the city unlikely and the German anti-aircraft guns which had been installed before the war gave adequate defenses for any bombs falling from the sky as well.
The Spanish encountered this behemoth of a defense on October 21, when they first came across a real Italian defense at Villasor. The small village had been armed to the teeth, and the Italians fought ferociously defeating the Spanish in the battle, and forcing the Spanish to waste time trying to recuperate. The Spanish requests for the Allies to bombard the city were also rebuffed by the Navies of all countries involved, as the massive amount of naval defenses in and around Cagliari made that a suicidal move.
On November 3, after a week and two of trying and failing to properly dislodge the Italians from their forward defensive positions at Villasor and at Donori, the Spanish changed up their tactics. They started to feint attacks at other places, such as Ussana and Vallermosa to distract the Italians before doubling back with speed and capturing the surprised enemies. This was a strategy that the Spanish had used to defeat the guerillas of the Rif Colony and Spanish Morocco as well and in both cases, this strategy had worked like a gem. [1]
The Italian defenders at the Battle of Cagliari.
And it did not disappoint. On November, the Spanish feinted an attack on Piras, forcing some of the men in Villasor to be deployed towards Piras. The Spanish 18th Division thus found it easy to take the fortified village as the Italians were finding themselves dwindling quickly. At the same time, the Spanish 20th division feinted an attack at Dolianova, and the defenders at Donori fell back to defend that part of the defensive barrier, allowing the Spanish 20th Division which had doubled back to take the lighter defenses with comparative ease. This was also done with coordination with the high flying recon planes of the French and British which allowed the Spanish to track the Italian movements aptly. In this manner, the Spanish managed to reach the gates of Cagliari on December 7, 1916. Cadorna refused to surrender, however his generals and troops knew that the fight for Sardinia was lost. The General Staff of Cadorna led a small coup on December 9, that ousted Cadorna from power and one general Emanuel Romano took power, after which on December 10, he surrendered the city and the remaining 76,000 Italian troops to the Spanish and Allies.
Cadorna was taken as a high ranking prisoner of war, and the rest of the Italian PoWs were sent to Aquitaine and Ireland and Wales where they would be interned as Prisoners of War. Thus ended the Sardinian Campaign. The Roman Campaign was now in the works.” The Conquest of Sardinia. Osprey Publishing, 1991.
***
“The death of Fatima Al-Zamil, the Regent of Rashidi Arabia in early 1916 led to many consequences in the Rashidi state. The still young and inexperienced Emir/King, Saud bin Abd-Aziz refused to have a new regent take power in the country and instead he preempted the decision and declared himself of age, at the age of 17, and took power as the absolute monarch of the country.
Abd-Aziz had high hopes of glory and honor and fanaticism. In his opinion, the war with Germany made British Yemen, the British Gulf and British Oman all exposed to a massive attack. The Yemenis and the Omani Interior was rife with tribal conflicts which could be exploited in favor of Ha’il and be brought under the control of the Rashidi state. The Ottoman government disagreed, vehemently. Grand Vizier Ahmed Riza on July 1916 sent an envoy to Ha’il asking the young Emir to remain calm and not to do anything rash that would see the entire success of the Ottoman Middle Eastern Policy collapse on itself.
This angered Abd-Aziz who now sought to break the vassal and lord relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Rashidi Arabia. The young hotblooded Emir with dreams of grandeur was the worst person to have come to power in Ha’il as the old Nejd and Saudi loyalists started to plot in the background as relationships between Constantinople and Ha’il started to deteriorate by a massive mile.
The Ikhwan was the militant branch of the Emirate of Nejd, and led by Faisal al-Duwaish, and under him had gained an almost legendary like status among the interior Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula for their fighting prowess against their enemies. The War of Rashidi Unification had seen the Ikhwan defeated very rarely and after the war, Al-Duwaish disappeared. Everyone assumed that the man had simply died in the many battles of the war. However the man had survived and instead was hiding in plain sight, taking up a new name, and working as a tailor in the streets of Ha’il. The Illiteracy and the general lack of reading materials in the interior of Arabia made it hard for anyone to recognize the man even when the man had not disguised his face.
Faisal Al-Duwaish
On August 25, 1916 the Ikhwan Remnants decided to launch a pro-Saudi War, calling the few Saudi Princes in hiding to retake the crown of Nejd and restore the Nejd Emirate, as the Ottomans were busy in Europe, and the Rashidi State continued its instability, the perfect time to strike in the opinion of many of the Ikhwan remnants. Throughout the rest of August and in September, the Ikhwan started to spread all over Rashidi Arabia positioning themselves in key strategic places, only waiting for the signal. Al-Duwaish gave the signal on October 6, 1916 and a massive military coup was constructed against Abd-Aziz. Ha’il was captured by the Saudi Loyalists and the Ikhwan and major outposts of the Rashidi Military was captured by the Ikhwan as well. Abd-Aziz and the House of Rashid barely escaped being captured by the timely arrival of 50 Ottoman guard troops and 100 nomadic warriors who cut their way through the enemy troops to safety. The royal family decided to flee to the northern city of Sakaka.
Abd-Aziz was horrified at this new development and pleaded with the Ottoman government to intervene in favor of the Rashidi Kingdom. However Ahmed Riza, who knew well about Abd-Aziz’s double crossing behavior and his intention to break the vassalage between Ha’il and Constantinople refused to do so until Abd-Aziz took a new oath of allegiance to Sultan Mehmed V, reconfirming the fact that Abd-Aziz was a vassal and tributary to the Ottoman Sultan, as befitting the relation between an Emir and the Caliph of Islam himself.
Abd-Aziz refused to do so. He rightly believed that bowing down to Constantinople when loyalties were already so fractured would remove the last amount of credibility that he would have among the Rashidi Court. However this was also the last chance before any Ottoman reinforcements and aid could arrive. As he refused to renew his vow to Mehmed V, the Ottomans also declined to offer any sort of aid to the young Emir of Rashidi Arabia.
Instead, the Ikhwan continued to rampage all across Rashidi Arabia intent on restoring the Saudis to power in Riyadh and seeing to it that the Rashidis were removed as a proper threat to the power of Nejd forever. However throughout October and until the middle of November, the Ottoman 42nd Division in Najd and the Ottoman 37th Division in Medina was being prepared for an intervention in Rashidi Arabia despite the fact that Ahmed Riza had initially stopped any attempt to intervene in the country. The resurrection of the Saudis in Arabia was something that the Ottomans wanted to avoid at all costs and as such they wanted to kill two birds with one stone. Have the rowdy Emir of Rashidi Arabia die in the rebellion and defeat the Saudi Loyalists forever before a puppet from the Rashidi Dynasty could be chosen to rule in Rashidi Arabia on behalf of the Ottomans as a puppet ruler.
On November 17, Abd-Aziz was captured and executed by Al-Duwaish after the disastrous Battle of Asfan which saw the Rashidi Troops defeated by the Ikhwan. After confirmation of this defeat the two Ottoman divisions entered Rashidi territory to restore order, and fought their way through the Arabian Desert. The Ikhwan hadn’t been expecting Ottoman interference in their re-conquest and had been taken by surprise by the sudden action on part of the Ottoman troops. And the Ottomans also had 30 airplanes in the sky aiding the Ottomans to advance against the Ikhwan. The constant aerial bombing of the Ottoman Air Corps, and the general flat terrain meant that the Ikhwan was completely exposed to Ottoman airpower, and the 42nd and 37th Divisions crossed into Rashidi Territory with relative ease.
Ikhwan Troops during the Rebellion.
On December 23, the city of Ha’il was captured by the Ottomans and the Ikhwan’s leaders were executed by the Ottomans, not allowing them to retreat after this fight. Prince Abdullah bin Mut’ib who was a very pro-Ottoman Prince within the Rashidi Dynasty had been pro-chosen by Ahmed Riza to be the new Rashidi King and on December 26, he was sworn in as the 2nd King and Emir of Rashidi Arabia. In return for the Ottoman intervention, the Ottomans annexed several kilometers from Rashidi territory in the Najd area to gain a more defensible buffer between the Rashidi Border and the Najd Sanjak of the Ottoman Empire. King Abdullah I reconfirmed the vow of the Rashidi Kingdom to Mehmed V and the Ikhwan Rebellion petered out.” The Ikhwan Rebellion of 1916: History of Arabia. Cambridge University, 2017.
***
“The Ottomans ever since the 1911 Italo-Ottoman War had been trying to revive their own renowned maritime building and constructing capability. The Ottomans really only had the capability of constructing gunboats and torpedo boats and if necessary destroyers before 1911, and the last battleship that had been ordered by the Ottoman government to be built in indigenous companies was in 1890, when the infamous Abdul Kadir was ordered from Imperial Arsenal. However a lack of funds, and Abdul Hamid II’s rather disinterest in the Ottoman Navy scuttled the ship, literally, and the Ottoman capability of ships had degraded by a massive amount.
However in 1911, interest in building homegrown warships reignited after the victory in the Italo-Ottoman War, and under the command of Grand Vizier Ali Kemal, the Ottoman Empire’s maritime facilities underwent a rapid modernization program as well as renaissance. Imperial Arsenal, which had been degraded into becoming a civilian maritime constructor instead of its prestigious wartime constructor, was reinvigorated with extra funds from the state, and the Naval Academies began to stream out professional manpower. The purchase of ships from Britain and Germany as well as Austria-Hungary provided the Ottoman engineers with a basis of modern engineering knowledge and even before the sailors of the Ottoman Navy could acquaint themselves with the ships, the Ottoman Engineers had hijacked the ships finding and measuring every crook and cranny of the ships. By mid to late 1916, after five years of intensive naval research, as well as investment into Imperial Arsenal Dockyards/Slipways in Constantinople and Smyrna, the members of Imperial Arsenal replied back to the Ottoman government and the Ministry of the Navy that the Ottoman slipways were ready to build an indigenous battleship.
The Ottoman Ministry of War and the Navy were not exactly convinced by the statement as many slipways before had said the same only for their ships to be scrapped and sold for scrap metal later on throughout the modernization era, however the personal supervision of the Ministry of the Navy had been able to present a good view of the readiness of Imperial Arsenal to the government and the Minister of the Navy, Mehmed Ciballi Bey to approve the idea of building an indigenous warship.
The Ottoman naval engineers had since 1914, been dreaming about building a battlecruiser for the Ottoman Navy, something that the Ottomans distinctly lacked. As such Mehmed Ciballi Bey ordered the construction of 1 Suleiman Class Battlecruiser, as the name was given to the planned battlecruiser. Mehmed Ciballi Bey was going to play the waiting game with the one battlecruiser. If the battlecruiser construction was successful, then he could order more indigenous battleships, however the loss of one half built warship in indigenous slipways, if the investment failed, wouldn’t be too high of a loss either.
With 1.75 million pounds allocated to the Battlecruiser project Imperial Arsenal under Chief Engineer Abdullah Bey began the construction of the Battlecruiser.
The general characteristics of the planned Suleiman Class Battlecruiser were:-
Displacement: 19,180 long tons
Length: 780 ft 7 inch.
Beam: 80 ft.
Draught: 25 ft 10 inches
Installed Power: 86,000 shp and 16 small tube boilers.
Propulsion: 4 shafts; 4 geared steam turbines
Speed: 32 knots
Complement: 840 officers and men.
Armament: i. 2 twin 15 inch (381 mm) guns
ii. 6 triple 4 inch (102 mm) guns
iii. 2 single 3 inch (76 mm) guns
iv. 2 single 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes.
Armor: i. Belt: 3 Inches (76 mm)
ii. Decks: 3 inches (76 mm)
iii. Barbettes: 7 inches (178 mm)
iv. Gun Turrets: 9 inches (229 mm)
v. Conning Tower: 10 inches (254 mm)
vi. Torpedo Bulkheads: 1.5 inches (38 mm)
(AN: Based on OTL Courageous Class Battlecruisers).
The ship was meant to be an interesting addition to the Ottoman Navy by early 1921, with two new fire control directors being added into the warship, with each director being mounted in the conning towers. The Suleiman Battlecruiser Class would prove to be a success as the ship would be constructed by the end of 1920 and be commissioned into the Ottoman Navy in early 1921, however financial and budgetary constraints would only allow 1 sister ship to be built. Nonetheless, it was the starting of a new era, as the Ottomans had regained the ability to build indigenous battleships for the first time in three decades.” A History of the Ottoman Imperial Navy: From Humble Beginnings. University of Boston, 1988.
***
“To many in Moroland, the Lands of the Moros in Mindanao, the American negligence of the Island as the Great Depression of 1914 – 1916 continued to grow was mandate for independence from the United States of America. The Philippine Legislative Elections of 1916 earlier that year had failed to make sure that any progress could be made in higher Philippine autonomy as Washington vetoed virtually all autonomist plans. As such moderates in Mindanao was quickly turning into radicals, who changed their positions from autonomy to that of independence. And they found their leader in the form of Datu Piang. Datu Piang like his predecessors like Datu Ali were fervent anti-American and anti-Imperialism fighters, and sought to unite the Catholics, Hindus and Muslims of Mindanao in a grand struggle against American imperialism.
Datu Piang met with several members of the Sultans of the Confederation of Lanao and managed to garner their support for a massive Moro and Mindanese uprising against American rule in Mindanao. On August 19, the American government vetoed a new autonomist legislation that would see the powers of the Philippine assembly extended to include defense budget and local defense, and this provided the trigger that Datu Piang needed to start a general uprising all over Mindanao. His call for independence was accepted by the majority of the Mindanese population with open arms and the Sultans of the Lanao Confederation all declared loyalty to the uprising, something that surprised many in America, as Datu Piang was actually a Hindu, and the Sultans were of course Muslim. Catholics in Mindanao also answered the call and the uprising spread like wildfire all throughout Mindanao.
However the rebellion did not stop in Mindanao. Riots broke out in Cebu against the American military stationed there, and in Luzon, major figures like Emilio Aguinaldo called for immediate Philippine Independence. The Philippine Assembly met on August 27, to discuss the current situation developing and brewing in the Philippines and declared secession from the United States of America, and declared the Second Philippine Republic with Sergio Osmena as its President. Osmena quickly sent an offer to the Mindanao rebels under Datu Piang and offered to create a Protectorate of Mindanao under the authority and sovereignty of Philippines if the new war for independence was won wherein the entire country of Philippines would be a republic but the sovereign rights of the Mindanao Royal Families within their territories would be acknowledged and respected by Manilla.
Datu Piang.
Datu Piang accepted this offer, recognizing the strength of uniting and the popularity of the idea within his own rebel troops. Philippines was in an open state of rebellion against the United States of America. The Filipino-American War, and the bad relations post-war after that, the military occupation of the islands, and the weak, only in name autonomy given to the islands, and the American depression and the continued vetoes from Washington led up to this rebellion.
The Japanese Government during all of this under Shigenobu now saw a new opportunity that would allow Japan to extend its sphere of influence in the Eastern Pacific as China seemed to be rebounding and putting up a good fight against Japanese demands. Shigenobu on the 30th of August ordered the secret shipment of over 20,000 rifles and associated ammunition to Manila using civilian ships from the coastal cities in China, covering the tracks of the Japanese. The Filipinos took the aid generously. The Chinese, also supported the Filipino rebellion and sent various generals and warlords to the islands to serve as supervisors and advisers for the military operations that would be taking place.
Meanwhile the American Government passed the Emergency Philippine Act to declare a warzone next to the Philippine Archipelago and declared that any power caught aiding the rebels would be in war with the United States. A taskforce was being prepared in Hawaii and San Francisco to reclaim the islands. The Second Filipino-American War was now starting.” The Second Filipino-American War: The Failed Bid for Freedom. University of Cebu, 1978.
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“The US Presidential Election of 1916 was a fractious affair. The Democrats built their campaign around the fact Wilson had successfully placed the United States of America out of the war, saying that a Republican victory would mean a war with both Mexico, where Revolution was brewing, and with the Central Powers. Wilson’s position was however undermined by the fact that the Depression was still happening under his rule, though it now seemed to be entering its final stages.
Charles Evan Hughes advocated for greater mobilization and preparation for war. He proposed military expansion of the armed forces, and the ramping up of the naval preparedness of the navy as well. He attacked the rather lack of investment in the American Airforce as the Americans remained decisively behind in aerial technology compared to their European counterparts. Hughes’s Position was vindicated when the Philippine Rebellion and the 2nd Filipino-American War broke out in the Philippine Archipelago. The Military was caught off-guard and was fumbling much of the early response to the rebellion which made Hughes’s point even stronger in the eyes of the public. Hughes also attacked the economic policy of Wilson. He stated that Wilson had enacted labor laws, which saw limiting of the workday and raising the wages. Trying to be moderate he agreed that the idea was sound, however he attacked the fact that the reforms and the labor laws hadn’t been able to stop the depression at all. He instead stated that monetary policy, balanced budgeting and new foreign investment runs would be required for the depression to be fully staved off. For the many masses who found Wilson’s economic policy lacking, this idea was like the gospel for them.
John M. Parker on the other hand, was taking advantage of the fact that Democrats and Republicans were largely ignoring the Progressive Party to gain the third party votes. He crossed into the Rust Belt and advocated for monetary reform and mining reform and passing new health regulation for miners in the area. He also advocated an increase for educational funding and to expand the country’s civil protection service. He also advocated for the increase in oil and gas severance taxes to finance public education, which was supported by the miners of the north, who found the oil industry becoming too competitive for them to compete with, and the increased tax increase against the oil companies would allow them to gain breathing space again.
In the south he campaigned mostly focusing on progressive economic laws with the White populace, and focusing on combating the Ku Klux Klan with the Black populace. He promised to start legislations against the Ku Klux Klan and create better anti-discriminatory laws. This made him a target in the eyes of the Klan, and a few Klansmen tried to kill him during his campaign in Louisiana, but failed to do so, raising the profile of the man even further.
Finally the elections took place. Charles Evan Hughes came out on top, winning 270 electoral votes, carrying 19 states. Hughes won 7,633,750 votes as well, winning around 42.05% of the total votes. Wilson won 188 electoral votes carrying 16 states and getting 6,361,458 votes, or 35.05% of the total electorate. Most surprising of all, the Progressives under Parker managed to gain a respectable amount for a nascent third party in America, gaining 73 electoral votes and carrying 13 states. Parker managed to gain 3,816,875 votes, or 21.1% or a fifth of the total electorate, not a bad showing for a third party at all.
Wilson, during the weeks prior to the election, had worried that that he would lose the race to Hughes, and that he would remain a lame duck until March 1917. For Wilson this was problematic, as it would hinder the American response to the Philippine Rebellion and the final critical months of the Great Depression. Wilson thus decided that if Hughes were to win, he would immediately appoint Hughes as his Secretary of State. Then Wilson and Vice President Marshall would immediately resign, allowing Hughes to immediately ascend to the presidency, thereby allowing the nation to avoid a lengthy duck period. [2]
After the ballots were counted and were determined in favor of Hughes, Wilson offered the position of Secretary of State to Hughes, which he accepted reluctantly however. On December 10, the President and Vice President resigned, allowing Hughes to be inaugurated as the President of the United States.” A History of American Politics. University of Richmond, 2014.
***
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[1] – this is extremely true and true for otl as well.
[2] – this was his plan otl as well. But for preparation for WW1 rather than a depression like in ittl.
