Pour le coeur

[Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy]

I know this can easily be butterflied away but can you make something out of it?

When Germany was awarded a concession to extend its railway line through Anatolia to Baghdad and acquired mineral rights to the land on both sides of the proposed route, heightened fear of German competition in Iraq and the Persian Gulf evoked strong protests from London. Soon afterward, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later the British Petroleum Company PLC) began production on the Iranian side of the gulf, and there were indications that oil might be found elsewhere in the area. In 1912 a group representing British, German, and Dutch interests formed the Turkish Petroleum Company, which, on the eve of the war, was given a concession to explore for oil in the vilayets of Mosul and Baghdad. A convention between Britain and the Ottoman Empire acknowledging British protection of Kuwait was concluded in 1913 but was never ratified. In view of these developments and because they feared that the Germans might persuade the Ottomans to undertake military action against them, the British had already made plans to send an expedition from India to protect their interests in the Persian Gulf before the Ottoman Empire entered the war in early November 1914.

 

[MrP]

I know this can easily be butterflied away but can you make something out of it?

I'll have to check my previous Ottoman bits. I have a feeling that the railway stuff went a bit differently, with the GWR (or another of the large British railway companies) taking a significant role in place of the Germans, which would have butterflied away much of the concern. I'll check.

 

[perfectgeneral]

Missing this already .

 

[MrP]

Missing this already .

Thankee! Will try to update soon. Need new keyboard first, though. Not typing an update with this on-screen doodah!

 

[perfectgeneral]

Thankee! Will try to update soon. Need new keyboard first, though. Not typing an update with this on-screen doodah!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Viewsonic-KU206-USB-Multimedia-SIlver-Black-Keyboard_W0QQitemZ290267457496QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item290267457496&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1300%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318
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[MrP]

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Picked up a new one yesterday. It's very snazzy, and even tells me the temperature.

 

[perfectgeneral]

Is it warm enough to type this weekend?

 

[MrP]

Is it warm enough to type this weekend?

I had a go at writing an update last night. But I got about a paragraph in, then realised it was crap. In short, I figure letting y'down by not posting is better than letting y'down by posting any old crap. I'll have another stab at it in a bit.

 

[perfectgeneral]

Turtledove nominee

You might have to get rolling now that you are up for a gong. Thande has nominated you (no pressure) in the WW1 category. I eagerly await resumption.

 

[MrP]

You might have to get rolling now that you are up for a gong. Thande has nominated you (no pressure) in the WW1 category. I eagerly await resumption.

Ooh, I missed that. Thankee, Thande! I shall do my best, but there'll be a hiatus of a few days. My friend Caroline arrives this evening, and is here until Friday, as she's applying for a Ph.D at Manchester. Then I'm driving her back to Bath, and heading myself to Port Talbot to celebrate my friend Kev's birthday . . . which is actually tomorrow, but clashes with Dad's birthday. Then on Saturday night I have to drive back because I'm reading at the 10.30 Mass on Sunday. It's going to be a full week! However, I shall take some time to make a few notes.

 

[MrP]

You might have to get rolling now that you are up for a gong. Thande has nominated you (no pressure) in the WW1 category. I eagerly await resumption.

Apologies for the months of waiting! Depression, yadayada, crazy people, blah-blah. I shall try to get back to things more regularly from now on. And finally Herr Thande's cameo!

Major Holtz entered the room, and was greeted effusively by a cheerful man in a voluminous white laboratory coat. “Come in, come in!” The moustachioed bespectacled figure waved Holtz to a chair covered in papers. “Oh, just put them on the floor. I shall be with you in a moment.” Doctor Tomas Andersen’s speech betrayed his Swedish birth. Despite this, he seemed as loyal in his support for Germany as any native. That and his skill had won him the position he now held. He added the contents of a smaller beaker to a larger one, and turned to Schmidt. “Major, my, ah, proposal, I am glad to see, has reached you. Now, the, ah, important thing is that we should, ah, um,” he waved his hand distractedly in the air, frowning, “yes! That we should begin at once the alterations necessary to the Frankfurt factory, so as to commence production of the new shells. I am confident that once we have refined the construction process there we should be able to do away with this costly system of employing gas canisters at the front!”

Holtz flinched, and cleared his throat painfully. The reason he was serving on this ignominious – in his opinion – mission away from the front was a result of the treacherous conditions at the front when using gas. In preparation for an assault, his men had laboured hard to bring up great containers, filled with toxic gas, with the hope of forcing the British from their trenches. A great bombardment by the artillery was to be augmented by such poison as would render the British trenches uninhabitable. Unhappily for Holtz, the wind turned, and he had narrowly avoided death, scantily protected as he was by his primitive gas mask. Nonetheless, he had been invalided out of the front line for a time, and only by constant expenditure of favours had he managed to acquire even this assignment.

“Doctor Andersen, if you can be certain of the efficacy of these shells, you will earn the thanks of every soldier who has had to drag these accursed cylinders to the front! I myself fear they are unhelpful against the enemy’s trenches, since the winds so often are against us. Nonetheless, they can deny the enemy the ability to move up reinforcements. If you should happen to-” Holtz broke off, seeing an almost mad gleam in Andersen’s eye. “Yes, Doctor?”

“I think you will be most interested in this other gas on which we have almost completed work. It is very noxious, and lingers for a long time. It would be perfect for this ‘area-denial’ role of which you speak. Shall I explain more?”

Chief among the problems facing all armies on the Western Front was the question of penetrating the enemy’s defences. A variety of novel methods was employed once more traditional ones proved unreliable. Very early in the war the French initiated the deployment of armoured units and poison gas warfare in the form of chlorine gas,* but was unable to support them sufficiently to achieve a breakthrough. However, when used in operations with limited objectives, these primitive and slow vehicles proved invaluable. With today’s technology, it should be apparent to every reader that…

* A claim made in the OTL version of Guderian’s work, too. It’s unclear whether he’s the victim of German Army/Nazi propaganda or is merely misinformed (see below), but modern historians agree that Germany first employed chlorine. This applies IOTL as well as ITTL. France did, however, have stocks of tear gas, which were deployed by rifle grenade before Germany first used chlorine gas shells and canisters. So it is possible confusion arose thence.

 

[Thande]

Hah, very good. Will PlC's reality-warping power now start focusing on me personally?

Refresh my memory, have the Germans already tried using simple gas projectors like OTL before resorting to shells?

 

[Zyzzyva]

Hah, very good. Will PlC's reality-warping power now start focusing on me personally?

"Why yes, German lab-mate of mine, Hermann Fischer was the greatest chemist in history."

...Er... nice to see this back, P.

 

[MrP]

Hah, very good. Will PlC's reality-warping power now start focusing on me personally?

Refresh my memory, have the Germans already tried using simple gas projectors like OTL before resorting to shells?

Soon you'll become a rabid atheist, yes. And worse - you'll enjoy Casino Royale.

They have, aye. I haven't read any German accounts of how godawful it was, but British accounts of using gas projectors describe it was one of the most awful jobs of the war. The British version weighed about 150 pounds, IIRC, and had to be manhandled up the trench system reasonably shortly before the attack, so one was at least risk of enemy fire exploding them in one's own trench before an assault. The chaps I've read of complaining about these things were veterans who were subsequently at various horrifying engagements such as Passchendaele, so I'm inclined to think it sucked similarly for Germans doing the same job.

"Why yes, German lab-mate of mine, Hermann Fischer was the greatest chemist in history."

...Er... nice to see this back, P.

Thankee, old boy!

 

[Thande]

"Why yes, German lab-mate of mine, Hermann Fischer was the greatest chemist in history."

...Er... nice to see this back, P.

Heh. Fischer was still around up until 1919 in OTL, so P could have Andersen idolise him as a mentor or something for irony "His molecular diagrams are just so sensible!"

Incidentally, just went to a memorial lecture for a lecturer of mine who sadly died a few years ago, and the bloke doing that claimed that the Platonic theory that all matter was made up of Platonic solids was, in some ways, borne out by Pauling's realisation that organic molecules are largely based on tetrahedral carbon, which was an interesting argument to make.

 

[Thande]

Soon you'll become a rabid atheist, yes. And worse - you'll enjoy Casino Royale.

Well, if anything would make you think there was no God, it would be the existence of that film

They have, aye. I haven't read any German accounts of how godawful it was, but British accounts of using gas projectors describe it was one of the most awful jobs of the war. The British version weighed about 150 pounds, IIRC, and had to be manhandled up the trench system reasonably shortly before the attack, so one was at least risk of enemy fire exploding them in one's own trench before an assault. The chaps I've read of complaining about these things were veterans who were subsequently at various horrifying engagements such as Passchendaele, so I'm inclined to think it sucked similarly for Germans doing the same job.

They also had a tendency to blow back on their own side if the wind changed.

 

[MrP]

They also had a tendency to blow back on their own side if the wind changed.

As happened to poor old Holtz here, aye. Very messy business, gas warfare.

Incidentally, I'd like to thank Guderian for inspiring me to get back into this - he is quite readable!

 

[Thande]

As happened to poor old Holtz here, aye. Very messy business, gas warfare.

Incidentally, I'd like to thank Guderian for inspiring me to get back into this - he is quite readable!

Hmm, much like Susano and the War of the Grand Alliance (not a Harry Potter knockoff ), I'm beginning to think you're the only person who knows what famous WW2 German generals were doing during WW1...

 

[MrP]

Hmm, much like Susano and the War of the Grand Alliance (not a Harry Potter knockoff ),

I want that Harry Potter knock-off now.

I'm beginning to think you're the only person who knows what famous WW2 German generals were doing during WW1...

I should kill off someone famous, really. But I haven't felt like it yet - Guderian and Rommel have rubbed me up the right way. Blasted rose-tinted glasses! I'm looking for an OTL dead German version of Adrian Carton de Wiart whom I can bring to the post-war era. As we know, brave doesn't cut it - only completely bloody bonkers will do.

 

[Hendryk]

Nice to see this going again. Of course, it also makes me feel guilty for still leaving my own TL in limbo...