Oh, most certainly! As I said, spending the money and manpower to keep Danubia afloat is the best of bad options.
Place In the Sun: What If Italy Joined the Central Powers? (1.0)
- Thread starter Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth
- Start date
If given the choice, I’m fairly certain Bohemia would join Germany due to its strategic and economic interests. But it would simply be more easier as of the moment, to prop up the Hapsburgs. That and further infiltrate the Confederation through economic and military means. I won’t be surprised if the Confederation were to dissolve sometime in the future, a more significant portion of it would be more interested in a closer relationship with Germany.
It seems to me that Danubia actually has a stable core of Bohemia, Austria, and Croatia, with the others loosely attached. The Austrians dominate the nation in practice even if not officially, so they're quite obvious. The Bohemians would realize that their choices are a union with Germany, a union with Austria, or puppetization by Germany, so staying with Danubia gives them autonomy and influence over the Confederation as a whole. The Croats can either cleave to Austria or risk dealing with the Serbs alone; given recent history, the Serbs are clearly insane, so sticking with Danubia is valuable protection.
That core isn't a Great Power on its own, but it's a second-tier like Bulgaria (or Italy, though Italian weakness isn't evident ITTL) and a valuable ally to the German Empire. The Danubian collapse might be overblown.
That core isn't a Great Power on its own, but it's a second-tier like Bulgaria (or Italy, though Italian weakness isn't evident ITTL) and a valuable ally to the German Empire. The Danubian collapse might be overblown.
I could tick each and every sentence off in total agreement.
The rub to this one is Bosnia. Restive, Serb-backed Bosnia, which is none the less valuable for preventing a giant salient into Croatian territory.
A good point. I suppose they're fairly quiet- they like the idea of the new Constitution, and don't think the Serb rebels can really win. (Although I'm sure there'll be plenty of terrorism and such in the province)
You naive fool!
An update on Monday?
Not if five hours of homework have anything to say about it!
Sorry everyone; I know I did say. India will be along tomorrow, I promise.
Chapter 27: The Raj Assasinated
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Raj Assasinated
"Angrezi ghar jao!" (British Go Home)
- A very common bit of grafitti on Indian street corners in the months following the Great War; British troops were known to react viciously if they caught civilians in the act.
"Commander, tear this town down till you find the traitors, and bring me the murderers- I want them alive!"
-Governor Lloyd George in the wake of Bonar Law's murder. (1)
India had had a bitter experience in the Great War. Well over 150,000 Indians had donned khaki and fought for the British Empire (2). Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims had all fought side-by-side, distinguishing themselves repeatedly. Easily recognisable by their physical traits, Indian troops had gone to every theatre where British troops were stationed; they’d fought at the Marne and in the failed offensives of 1915, against the Ottoman Empire and in the German colonies, and many had died in the chaotic evacuation from the Continent in the summer of 1916. The war had given Indians experiences they had never imagined, and which some of their British overlords were uncomfortable with- such as a revived sense of Indian nationalism and the ability to organise into effective military units.
These men had a long trip home. Many of those who had gone to Mesopotamia were in prisoner-of-war camps when the fighting ended, while those in the former German colonies or England were surrounded by whites who received priority for demobilisation. This naturally caused plenty of bitterness, and there was an incident at a training camp outside Colchester in January 1917 when some Indian troops demanding to be sent home were fired upon by military police; four died. However, by the spring of 1917 most were en route for Bombay, the official demobilisation centre for Raj troops. Everyone was looking forward to getting back home and having things back the way they were before the war.
They should have been more careful what they wished for.
On the surface, the war hadn’t affected India much. Plenty of fit young men had never been called up, while the requisitions imposed on the economy weren’t much different from peacetime. As such, the men found their homeland barely touched by the war. There was no starvation in the cities like in Berlin or Petrograd, and the villages hadn’t, like Ypres, been reduced to rubble. Farmers still picked crops or cotton, Indians and whites still rubbed shoulders in the dense, impoverished cities, the food still set your tongue on fire, Hindus and Muslims still looked on one another with distrust, and the British still controlled everything.
Going from an atmosphere where they’d fought alongside their white counterparts and seen with their own two eyes that they were just as good as them, to one where their race labelled them as inferior, was a deeply embittering experience for these veterans. In fighting side-by-side with people of their ethnicity, these veterans had developed a sense of nationalism they’d lacked before the war, and many pondered just what to do. Something had to change, but what, and how?
Into this vacuum stepped Kaiser Wilhelm II. Ever one for adventurous schemes, he had promoted the cause of Indian independence during the Great War. With the war over, there was less justification for such adventures than before, but the Kaiser wasn’t about to let that stop him. During the war, he had supervised the establishment of a shadowy “Berlin Committee” to promote Indian independence, and he kept them active in the postwar world. Their main goal was to use German power to foster a repeat of the mutinies which had affected the Indian army in 1915. This would subsequently become a huge sticking point between London and Berlin, but for now the pro-independence activists would remain in drab offices, making contingency plans for the uprising they were sure would come one day. Unfortunately, while these men enjoyed the Kaiser’s personal backing, Germany wasn’t an absolute monarchy, while these men had no control over foreign policy. Cooler heads whose goal was to establish a working relationship with Great Britain staffed the Foreign Ministry. Attempting to detach the Crown Jewel of the Empire had been an acceptable wartime ploy, but if they tried it now, it would be a case for war- and would surely invite British meddling in Mittelafrika. Thus, German backing for Indian independence was reduced to occasional, meek gestures of verbal support. Other groups with similar goals existed in the United States, but the American authorities were watching them closely, and their ability to influence their home was minimal.
It would be up to the people of the subcontinent to evict the British from their homes.
Meanwhile, in London, Prime Minister Lloyd George was determined to get a handle on the colonies. He knew that they’d suffered during the war and wanted to head off further problems while raising morale. Of course, this was not from the goodness of his heart; rather, it was to forestall a potentially expensive colonial insurgency. Thus, he Minister for the Colonies Bonar Law on a tour of the British Empire. (3) He was to visit the great cities of the colonies and give a few patriotic speeches before meeting with the local administrators and find out what they needed. Law was enthusiastic, claiming that he needed a holiday, and set out in early February 1917. His first port of call was Gibraltar, then Cairo, then Nairobi in Kenya. Pictures have survived of him and the governor clutching rifles on a hunt. From there, he hopped on the HMS Queen Mary, specially chartered for the occasion, and went to Bombay on the 24th. His plan was to go from Bombay to Calcutta to Singapore- three cities in four days.
An oil painting of Bonar Law, Minister for the Colonies
Instead, he was killed in Bombay.
The assassination took place in a manner eerily similar to that of Franz Ferdinand; his car was passing down one of the main streets in a parade when it suffered mechanical trouble. While the driver fumbled with the engine, an Indian nationalist hurled a bomb out of nowhere. Law never saw the murderer, much less had time to react. A tremendous explosion hurled shards of metal every which way, cutting down dozens of innocent bystanders, and incinerating Law along with the governor-general of Bombay- a man unfortunate enough to be named Freeman Freeman-Thomas. within moments. Ironically, the driver survived because he was crouching on the opposite side of the car to the explosion; he escaped with ‘just’ a concussion and broken leg. Chaos ensued, with people- whites and Indians alike- screaming and running for their lives. No one knew if the terrorist was still alive, if he had a gun on him, or if more than one murderer was present. One of Law’s bodyguards, thinking that he’d seen the murderer, started blazing away with his rifle, but he’d guessed incorrectly and ended up killing two innocent people. A panicked civilian returned fire with a pistol he happened to own, adding to the chaos before police tackled him to the ground, beating him savagely. All told, twenty-two people died in the fracas, excluding Bonar Law and Governor Freeman-Thomas.
An image of the damage done by Bonar Law's assassination.
Following Law’s murder, the British placed Bombay under lockdown. Soldiers and police forced people into their homes while they carried a thorough investigation out. Indians were arrested and searched, with very little attention being paid to proper legal proceedings. Whites weren’t exempt from scrutiny, but the assumption was that no Englishman would have done such a thing and they recieved much less attention. The next few days saw the British incredibly on edge and not inclined to give their subjects any doubt; when one elderly merchant joked about the “explosive change” this would bring, a policeman who’d overheard had him arrested and questioned for two hours.
Law had been killed at ten AM Bombay time, which was four-thirty in the morning in London. When Prime Minister Lloyd George awoke at six, the first thing was a note on his desk telling him to call the deputy governor of Bombay immediately. Unfortunately for our purposes here, Law’s right hand-man and now successor was one Baron George Lloyd; despite this bizarre coincidence, he was an effective administrator. The morning’s events naturally left the new governor shaken; he had only survived because he was travelling in the car behind Law just in case something like this happened. He had just finished receiving stitches on his cheek when the phone rang; the conversation was thus rather painful physically as well as emotionally. Nonetheless, he conveyed everything he knew to the Prime Minister; some madman had killed Law and he would leave no stone unturned in finding out who. The PM nodded understandingly before telling Lloyd to carry on his present course. Privately, the new Governor-General was fuming. Security had been reasonably tight, but there had been nothing to indicate that Law was in any particular danger. As soon as his cheek felt a little better, Governor Lloyd rang up the man in charge of security and gave him a piece of his mind, calling him a bloody fool and several less printable things besides. Days of police activity turned up nothing.
Who could have done this, and why?
MI5 later ascertained that the murderer was a man named Pavel Adjee. He was an Army veteran who’d fought on the Western Front and experienced severe discrimination from white officers, being forced to perform degrading and dangerous tasks every day. On one occasion, a white officer had told him to go hungry and called him a racial slur after he’d explained that his faith forbade him from eating tinned beef, on another a different officer had turned a blind eye when some soldiers shoved him to the ground and claimed that he “didn’t look much browner now than before!” These inexcusable actions, combined with the sting of defeat, led Pavel to despise the British regime in India, and when he returned home in late December, he began planning to strike back somehow. Pavel wasn’t associated with any organised terrorist cell; he was very much a lone actor. He got his hands on some disused Mills grenades stolen from an Army warehouse and assembled two using skills he’d learned in the Army. After blowing Bonar Law sky-high, Pavel had fled in the chaos and, all too aware of what his fate would be if they caught him, used the second grenade to commit suicide. No one knew this though, and the British would spend years trying to find the killer. A racist image formed in many people’s minds, aided by newspaper cartoonists attempting to be witty, of Indians assembling bombs in the jungle with the help of wild animals, and sacrificing to their ‘gods’ for luck in killing white people. Naturally, the Indians turned this on its head, and the attempt to find the killer became a cultural phenomenon- except that instead of giving him a blindfold and a cigarette, they’d give him a firm handshake and a hot meal. When India eventually gained its independence, one group of militants dubbed themselves the “Lawbreakers”- an excellent double entendre if ever there was one.
The British were on edge throughout the spring of 1917. As if to vent their frustrations over having lost the Great War, they jumped at shadows all over the subcontinent and were unusually nasty towards their subjects. On the grounds that they were attempting to find the men who’d murdered Bonar Law, British police raided homes and businesses almost at will, and showed much less tolerance for complaint amongst their colonial subjects than before the war. Meanwhile, the Government’s attempts to balance the books led to an increase in taxes across India. One may speculate on whether the tax hike was privately influenced by Lloyd George’s desire to avenge the loss of his confidant. Salt, rice, and vegetables all had new levies imposed on them, which only made life harder for the people. They naturally responded with strikes and protests, but in a first-rate bit of cynicism, the colonial regime banned these gatherings on the grounds that another terrorist strike could occur. When the people rejected this and protested anyhow, they were met with bayonets and bludgeons. All of this made the Indians love British rule even more. Many of these people who had to put up with the increasingly hard-handed Raj government were Great War veterans who had fought for the Union Jack. They had no hatred for the British, but they had had more than enough of the status quo and now, for the first time ever, had the means to change it.
Something was going to give eventually, but no one knew what, or where…
* * *
Asaf Jah VII, the nizam whose assassination was the first blow in the First Hyderabadi Revolution
- Consider this quote a small tribute to David Prowse. RIP
- Expeditionary Forces A, B, and parts of C fought ITTL- that looks to be somewhere between 150,000 and 175,000 men.
- The fall of the Asquith government means that Law is kept on, as Lloyd George wants a steady hand at the rudder right now.
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Sorry this took so long- RL has been distracting lately and I don't frankly know much about India. I'll try and pick up the pace, though!
Did they misspell it as "People called Britons they go the house!" first?
"He is as clumsy as he is stupid".
-Every member of the German Foreign Office about Kaiser Wilhelm.
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Haha, most likely! Good old Google Translate...
Most definitely! Hermann Hoth no doubt rolled his eyes when he found out about this chapter's events...
I can understand Britain getting angry if Germany openly supports anti-British sentiment in India after the war, but during it? Germany owes them no apologies, and Britain has no right to talk. Or has everyone forgotten how the British tried to undermine the Ottoman Empire by provoking an Arab Revolt? I strongly doubt the Turks have, and given Germany's interests in Mesopotamia, they shouldn't have either.
Britain getting all hot and bothered about Germany's designs on India during the war are pretty much just a case of hypocrisy. Then again, it shouldn't come as surprising, considering this is Perfidious Albion we're talking about. It's only wrong if others do it. If they do it, then it's perfectly alright. Britannia rules the waves after all.
Britain getting all hot and bothered about Germany's designs on India during the war are pretty much just a case of hypocrisy. Then again, it shouldn't come as surprising, considering this is Perfidious Albion we're talking about. It's only wrong if others do it. If they do it, then it's perfectly alright. Britannia rules the waves after all.
Well things are heating up in the Subcontinent. Gandhi is probably not happy at all with this violence.
Well, what can he do? Preaching against the revolution is likely only to end with him branded as a British sympathizer, and possibly assassinated decades ahead of OTL.
I mean I’m not saying he can do anything about it just he’ll be unhappy with it. But he probably will end until assassinated IMO.
Why would he have to end up assassinated ITTL? He could, perhaps, I dunno, play a moderating influence in the fighting, and grow to be famous for, say, protecting civilians from the horrors of war or whatever.
That might earn him respect from both British and Indian leaders.
I do not think Gandhi will preach against the revolution per se, but he would want as little violence as possible in it.
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True, you do have a point. Irregardless, it’ll be interesting to see what Gandhi will do.
Raj: Everything's coming up "Independent India," and I don't know what to do!!!!
British populace: *panik*
Of this I agree, but at the same time I'm sure there will be some hardliners who will most definitely feel otherwise. I for one can't say how successful Ghandi would be about moderating such a revolution, or as to what the fate of India would be once it's all said and done.
British populace: *panik*
Of this I agree, but at the same time I'm sure there will be some hardliners who will most definitely feel otherwise. I for one can't say how successful Ghandi would be about moderating such a revolution, or as to what the fate of India would be once it's all said and done.