While grim darkish, this has interesting potential...and just wait till word spreads to the Philippines.
PC: Spain 'wins' the Spanish-American war?
- Thread starter Rainbow Sparkle
- Start date
While grim darkish, this has interesting potential...and just wait till word spreads to the Philippines.
It will take substantial changes to turn the Spanish army into an effective force given the OTL record of surrendering/yielding key positions without resistance in Cuba*, not to mention frantically awaiting an adequate US army contingent to permit surrender with honor in the Philipines...
*When the Americans, questionably trained and organized, landed in Cuba it was at a site where the local Spanish garrison was in a position to rake the American landings at will...before it was suddenly withdrawn.
*When the Americans, questionably trained and organized, landed in Cuba it was at a site where the local Spanish garrison was in a position to rake the American landings at will...before it was suddenly withdrawn.
Well, if you're talking about a stronger country fighting a much weaker one, a total rout of the stronger one often times is totally unrealistic. E.G. "Spain loses Cuba, and keeps everything else after a series of US military disasters" is realistic, "Spain re-asserts control over Cuba, defends all other territories, re-annexes Florida" is not. And I see a lot of the latter type.
It's not my speciality, but having in account the state of the Spanish military, even in Cuba, it's quite possible they yielded those positions because they were unsupplied.
About a propaganda campaign... propaganda works very well to convince those who are close to you ideologically, and even to convince those in the middle of the fence and to weaken the resolve of those who sligly lean to the opposite side... but the independentists were ideologically opposite to the Spanish forces: on being told that, i think it's more likely they suspected it was either a fabrication or that it was actually the spanish army who did that.
BlondieBC
Banned
Germany is more likely. Richer country looking for colonies. And Germany with a nice prestige colony in the Pacific could have lots of interesting side effects.
I agree, Germany had been eyeing that part of the Pacific for a long time. They almost fought with Spain over it once and they arguably had even more desire to take control in that region at the time than did the Japanese.
Aside from the obvious prestige, they would see it as vital to gaurding their position in the Pacific and a link between new guinea and Tsingtao.
Sorry, not a native speaker, and sometimes i run off with strange sentencesI honestly didn't understand most of your post, jotabe1789. My bad.
I could do with rereading and correcting what i write...
What i meant to say is that propaganda against one side doesn't work well to weaken the resolve of the people in that one side. Propaganda from the Spaniards against the Americans who help the indepentists, right? Spaniards will vehemently believe it. People in between could give it a second thought. Some moderate independentists would feel their resolve weakening. But those who are ideologically convinced of the cause of the independentism will resort to denial and blame-shifting.
Hope i worded it better now
jotabe1789, no problem.
I just didn't see what propaganda had to do with the subject. The Spanish were all too aware of the irregulars, particularly in the Philipines, without the US trying to frighten them with tales of ruthless foes in every patch of jungle.
I just didn't see what propaganda had to do with the subject. The Spanish were all too aware of the irregulars, particularly in the Philipines, without the US trying to frighten them with tales of ruthless foes in every patch of jungle.
It is indeed. Haven't read all of it but from what I can remember the early parts at least seem pretty reasonable.
True, but such changes are with in the realm of possibility. Spain does not need to strategically defeat the U.S. forces. Rather, Spanish forces just need to beat them up. Then, the Spanish can immediatly offer to negotiate a peace settlement that gives the U.S. a face saving concession or two. Either of these two options could give the U.S. forces (hardly paragons of military lethality themselves) a bruising.
Option A- Right wingers in Spain, dreaming of the imperealist glory days, create a few elite expeditionary brigades of dedicated volunteers led by the best professional officers in Spanish service. Batalions in these brigdes have an elite with an elite Maxim gun units. Prior to the hostilties, the "fire brigades" are deployed to the colonies.
Option B- Spanish go Finnish style overseas and every male Spaniard or local with spanish sympathies is a member of an extremely well trained reserve unit. Even colonial police departments are de facto infantry companies or batalions. Thes reserve formations are supplemented by specialist companies (machine gun, engineering, artillery). and regular army brigades from Spain.
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Hoist40
Banned
It would also change how the US military and in particular the US Navy developed. The USN prior to WW2 was in large part based on rescuing the Philippines.
Tocomocho's timeline A Prussian on the Spanish throne has Spain and Germany win a war against the United States after the Germans attack and invade Venezuela. In the end, Spain manages to keep the Florida Keys and Germany takes Hawaii.
RamscoopRaider
Donor
No Spain could not
We've pretty well established that Spain could give the US a bloody nose in 1898 and kill lots of US troops if given proper preparation
Except that won't make the US give up after that, as far as the man on the street was concerned the Spanish launched an unprovoked attack and killed 256 US sailors for no reason, hell in 20 years the US went into WWI for less than that
No the US would not give up after a bad first year, not after that and with what looks like a damn good causus belli (personally I'm fairly convinced the Maine was an accident) it would try again, and if need be again after than
Spain might be able to stop the first rush but it cannot hold against a power with more population, a larger navy, vastly more industry and a larger economy until the US gets tired
We've pretty well established that Spain could give the US a bloody nose in 1898 and kill lots of US troops if given proper preparation
Except that won't make the US give up after that, as far as the man on the street was concerned the Spanish launched an unprovoked attack and killed 256 US sailors for no reason, hell in 20 years the US went into WWI for less than that
No the US would not give up after a bad first year, not after that and with what looks like a damn good causus belli (personally I'm fairly convinced the Maine was an accident) it would try again, and if need be again after than
Spain might be able to stop the first rush but it cannot hold against a power with more population, a larger navy, vastly more industry and a larger economy until the US gets tired
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This has a lot more intriguing butterflies than I'd have imagined, a German Phillipines, no Pearl Harbor/no carrier-focused U.S. Navy...
Possible POD's:
William Randolph Hearst or Joseph Pulitzer die almost immediately with the war's beginning and the media pressure for war drops precipitously since this is more about two U.S. newspaper chains' circulation wars than foreign policy, making it much easier for the reluctant McKinley to accept Spanish apologies/damages on the Maine and call back the troops.
An investigation commission on the U.S.S. Maine's demise is able to prove it's a smoldering coal bunker fire that exploded finally in the harbor rather than the claimed Spanish mine. The Discovery Channel did a convincing piece on that and coal bunker fire problems were increasingly common on long voyages, one of the big reasons for switching to oil for fuel not long after this. So the war doesn't start at all or is ended with the commission's report (unless it operates like modern commissions and reports so many years after the event it has no impact at all.)
Hurricane devastates the overloaded and very marginal ships pressed into service for transporting the American invasion force to Cuba, causing enough losses of men and equipment that they return to Tampa's logistical mess and in the ensuing months before enough ships, trained troops, equipment, etc. can be mustered, peace is negotiated. This would be a major amphibious invasion by any measure and the American Army was spectacularly ill-prepared for this, that they made it ashore and won is more unlikely outcome.
The Spanish did have Maxim machine guns, just not many of them, so several dozen more would have made a difference at any of the battles and may well have been on Cuba but dispersed to too many places. I think they might have had some modern Krupp artillery pieces too but that's as likely faulty memory on my part. Along with their regular Army there, there were roughly 2,000 in their Cuban Colonial Police force who after years of the guerrilla insurgency would be competent junglefighters themselves and could have been a battle-tipping surprise if used instead of kept to the insurgents and concentration camp duty.
Don't see how the naval outcomes change without relying on big storms far at sea to do the work (although that worked on Kublai Khan's Mongol invasion fleet headed to Japan and Phillip's Spanish Armada headed to England so it's not absurd.)
Spain agrees to give Germany some of the Pacific islands (Guam, Marshalls) for coaling stations/naval bases if it agrees to ally with it to face down American aggression, mostly to make a strong enough team to force immediate peace negotiations rather than a shooting war. It would certainly motivate McKinley that this saber-rattling was getting out of control and spiraling into a big war (like McKinley'd fought in in the American Civil War.) That would allow Spain to avoid the war, preserve it's fleet and most of it's colonies while building a stronger alliance with another major European power much like Franco and Hitler 38 years later.
Possible POD's:
William Randolph Hearst or Joseph Pulitzer die almost immediately with the war's beginning and the media pressure for war drops precipitously since this is more about two U.S. newspaper chains' circulation wars than foreign policy, making it much easier for the reluctant McKinley to accept Spanish apologies/damages on the Maine and call back the troops.
An investigation commission on the U.S.S. Maine's demise is able to prove it's a smoldering coal bunker fire that exploded finally in the harbor rather than the claimed Spanish mine. The Discovery Channel did a convincing piece on that and coal bunker fire problems were increasingly common on long voyages, one of the big reasons for switching to oil for fuel not long after this. So the war doesn't start at all or is ended with the commission's report (unless it operates like modern commissions and reports so many years after the event it has no impact at all.)
Hurricane devastates the overloaded and very marginal ships pressed into service for transporting the American invasion force to Cuba, causing enough losses of men and equipment that they return to Tampa's logistical mess and in the ensuing months before enough ships, trained troops, equipment, etc. can be mustered, peace is negotiated. This would be a major amphibious invasion by any measure and the American Army was spectacularly ill-prepared for this, that they made it ashore and won is more unlikely outcome.
The Spanish did have Maxim machine guns, just not many of them, so several dozen more would have made a difference at any of the battles and may well have been on Cuba but dispersed to too many places. I think they might have had some modern Krupp artillery pieces too but that's as likely faulty memory on my part. Along with their regular Army there, there were roughly 2,000 in their Cuban Colonial Police force who after years of the guerrilla insurgency would be competent junglefighters themselves and could have been a battle-tipping surprise if used instead of kept to the insurgents and concentration camp duty.
Don't see how the naval outcomes change without relying on big storms far at sea to do the work (although that worked on Kublai Khan's Mongol invasion fleet headed to Japan and Phillip's Spanish Armada headed to England so it's not absurd.)
Spain agrees to give Germany some of the Pacific islands (Guam, Marshalls) for coaling stations/naval bases if it agrees to ally with it to face down American aggression, mostly to make a strong enough team to force immediate peace negotiations rather than a shooting war. It would certainly motivate McKinley that this saber-rattling was getting out of control and spiraling into a big war (like McKinley'd fought in in the American Civil War.) That would allow Spain to avoid the war, preserve it's fleet and most of it's colonies while building a stronger alliance with another major European power much like Franco and Hitler 38 years later.