REDUX: Place In The Sun: What If Italy Joined The Central Powers?

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1962strat

Given Falkenhayn's overall strategy, I don't think attacking the British makes much sense. He'll likely want to bait them into continuing the offensive and taking disproportionate casualties.

As for the French part of the front, he might advance if he sees an opening, but only if it he thinks he can manage without attriting himself too much and if it'll put him in a more advantageous position.

Expecting Germany to commit to a big offensive now would be against the principles on which Falkehnayn operates, given that his strategy was based on the understanding that Germany would not be able to defeat the Entente in a war of movements, and that they would need to destroy their armies before a big advance is possible. He'll gladly forgo territorial advances if it means continuing to chip away units of the enemy armies.
 

TRH

Gudestein said:
Im not pretending to be a specialist here, but as I understand it then defense in WW1 relied on counterattacks. If they don’t happen the front will break and that’s preferable to hitting the British and letting the French rest and recover.
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That may be true on a tactical level, but what about the operational picture? The British are still attacking the Germans at Ypres regardless. But if the French are unwilling to go on the offensive after this, you can commit more to pushing Haig back without fearing the French taking advantage of you weakening your grip on the lines opposite them. And then after the British are broken you can then bypass the French lines or outflank and encircle them, whatever makes sense. It's the choice between defeating the enemy in detail or fighting both of them at once, the way I see it.

1962strat said:
Given Falkenhayn's overall strategy, I don't think attacking the British makes much sense. He'll likely want to bait them into continuing the offensive and taking disproportionate casualties.
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Perhaps a heavy counterattack against them after they've halted their attack, then? You get the benefits of fighting defensively for as long as the enemy is willing to indulge you, and then try to exploit what for all you know is a temporary window of French passivity to gain some ground/bleed the British even further. It might not be what Falkenhayn normally does, but he envisioned a linear war where the enemy forces would react in lockstep to his moves until they no longer have the manpower to continue. This breakdown in command and control on the French side changes the game, so you don't need to continue playing by the old rules.
 

1962strat

TRH said:
Perhaps a heavy counterattack against them after they've halted their attack, then? You get the benefits of fighting defensively for as long as the enemy is willing to indulge you, and then try to exploit what for all you know is a temporary window of French passivity to gain some ground/bleed the British even further. It might not be what Falkenhayn normally does, but he envisioned a linear war where the enemy forces would react in lockstep to his moves until they no longer have the manpower to continue. This breakdown in command and control on the French side changes the game, so you don't need to continue playing by the old rules.
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The thing is, does Falkenhayn want to halt their attack? His whole thing seems to have been to bait them into attacking under unfavorable conditions, so I'm inclined to think he's fine with the British throwing as many men as they want, even if that results in marginal advances. Counterattacks are very costly casualty-wise, so I think he would try to avoid them.

As for the French, I think "breakdown in command" is a bit stretching it. There surely was a localized collapse, but the High Command is still functioning.
 

TRH

1962strat said:
The thing is, does Falkenhayn want to halt their attack? His whole thing seems to have been to bait them into attacking under unfavorable conditions, so I'm inclined to think he's fine with the British throwing as many men as they want, even if that results in marginal advances. Counterattacks are very costly casualty-wise, so I think he would try to avoid them.

As for the French, I think "breakdown in command" is a bit stretching it. There surely was a localized collapse, but the High Command is still functioning.
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The British won't keep attacking forever, though. And once they call it quits at Ypres, you no longer get the benefits of the tactical defensive anywhere since the French will also be trying to consolidate their position. But you still might be able to take advantage of the allies no longer coordinating their defense effectively. As for how deep the rot has gotten on the French side, I guess we'll have to see. I do think the main argument against Falkenhayn trying anything aggressive for now is simply that he can't be sure how poor French discipline has gotten and how extensive their problems are.

That said, he probably should be noticing around now that he's committed more than he needed to hold L'empire-aux-Bois and Nixeville. If nothing else, he likely can afford to send reinforcements to hold the line at Ypres.
 
AustrianFanboy

AustrianFanboy

Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth said:
And thus concludes Part III of the TL! The butterfly effect is now picking up steam, as despite the best efforts of Petain and others, the Mutinies are going to break the cohesion of the French Army, leaving it unable to perform when 1917 comes around- meanwhile, the Russians are finally going to get some attention, as more and more of their men opt to follow the French example and bow out of the war.

A spectre is haunting this TL: the spectre of revolution.
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Excellent update, Just...the brandeburgers are from WW2
 
prester.john208

prester.john208

TRH said:
The British won't keep attacking forever, though. And once they call it quits at Ypres, you no longer get the benefits of the tactical defensive anywhere since the French will also be trying to consolidate their position. But you still might be able to take advantage of the allies no longer coordinating their defense effectively. As for how deep the rot has gotten on the French side, I guess we'll have to see. I do think the main argument against Falkenhayn trying anything aggressive for now is simply that he can't be sure how poor French discipline has gotten and how extensive their problems are.

That said, he probably should be noticing around now that he's committed more than he needed to hold L'empire-aux-Bois and Nixeville. If nothing else, he likely can afford to send reinforcements to hold the line at Ypres.
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Why hold the line? German tactic was to trade territory for piles of enemy bodies. You don't want Haig to quit attacking.
 

Wedgekree

While they're in retreat near Ypres they have reasonable defensive terrain and the attack is petering out. Since Falkenheyn seems to have realized that the covenant of the counterattack is nearly as horrific as the French elan, there's no reason to heavily counterattack back. The German positions have some decent artillery, the British attack seems to have petered out, and the Belgians retook some minor villages. They have multiple defensive lines if need be they can fall bcak to and reinforcements are available.

They don't need to take hundreds of thousands of casualties to try and take back a few hundred meters or so. Let the British keep the blood soaked fields. They win if they can knock one side out of the war. They're not going to do that fighting along maybe 15-20 kilometers of frontage against equal numbers.
 
Part IV: The Spectre Of Revolution
  • Index

    • Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth

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  • Index
    • Chapter XXX- The First Mutiny
  • Index

    • Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth

    Chapter XXX​

    The First Mutiny​


    Mutiny did not have deep roots within the French Army. Unlike in Russia, when a lifetime of grievances led the Tsar's men to massacre their officers en masse and march on Petrograd, the poilus initially mutinied due to specific grievances which they trusted the government to address. The problem in August 1916 was not the war itself, certainly not the Capitalist, conservative Republican system of government- it was Joseph Joffre, Robert Nivelle, and all of the men eager to throw their lives away for nothing. Lucien Chanaris and the surrounded men at L'empire-aux-Bois had shown them the way: the Germans were the enemy, but they could also be reasonable, and however painful it was to turn one's back on la patrie, doing so at least guaranteed a safe exit from the war. Staying in the frontline trenches and waiting would only guarantee death in some pointless offensive to retake a town no one had ever heard of before the war.

    Joffre's efforts to suppress news of the Verdun Mutiny- banning reporters from his headquarters and censoring all mentions of the surrender in letters- had failed. The average civilian was horrified at the idea of one man, especially of low rank who'd only reached his position through luck, giving up such a crucial position, but Joffre was indifferent to their opinions. He may have hated Chanaris, but he'd read all of the dispatches from the siege and understood how bad conditions were. Joffre could thus understand what led Chanaris' men to throw down their guns and knew men in a similar situation would do likewise. Throughout the first two weeks of June 1916, he sent senior officers to the frontline to deliver a series of lectures on the importance of morale, discipline, and loyalty, as well as to shake hands and distribute small presents. This only increased suspicion among the hardened men that the top brass was planning something they would not like. When, after all, had they ever cared about the men who fought their war for them? Already, there were what the brass termed "incidents of indiscipline"- men throwing rocks or shoes at the senior officers, shouting "Give us leave! Give us food! Give us peace!", and one case where a colonel remarked that officers worked just as hard as the men at the front, only in a different way, to which a private pulled a dead rat from his dugout and shoved it under the colonel's nose, asking "and how many of these will you find in your office, sir?" Everyone expected their so-called leaders to send them over the top any day now, never to return.

    June 18th brought news of the Nivelle Offensive, and for one day, the officers were optimistic. Military newspapers raved about the "inevitable liberation" of Verdun and how Robert Nivelle was clearly a better commander than Falkenhayn. The next day brought more of the same, then the day after, and before long it was clear that something had gone wrong before the Meuse. No one in the frontline understood just what at first- everyone assumed it was nothing more than another failed offensive- but as the last days of June came and went, word came that a surrounded division had turned its guns on its officers after being ordered to fight to the death. Some said those men were now in German captivity, others that they were in the care of the Red Cross, but one way or another, they were out of the war. Then came the news so big, not even the papers could ignore it: almost ten divisions were refusing to fight.

    Of the twelve divisions sent to liberate Verdun in June, two had taken such heavy losses in only a few days so as to render them useless as fighting units: these were the ones leading the charge at L'empire-aux-Bois and had gone over to the Germans. On receiving news of their mutiny, Robert Nivelle had still refused to see reason and insisted on maintaining the offensive. He still dreamt of taking the heights behind L'empire-aux-Bois, but more important, to cancel the offensive now would send the men a message that if they wished to fight no more, they had only to massacre their officers. Legitimising mutiny was no way to fight a war- except, the men had a stronger memory than their commander. He had promised them that if the offensive did not show signs of success within two days, he would pull them back. After almost a week, Nivelle's main accomplishment had been to slaughter twenty thousand of his own men and drive twelve thousand more into enemy hands. No poilu was going to walk into the meat grinder under a man like that. Thus, when orders came down on June 24th that the offensive was to resume at dawn tomorrow, the men of Regiment d'infantrie 127, in the most literal sense of the phrase, shot the messenger. Their commander, a lieutenant-colonel, knew he could not calm them down and tried to sneak back to division headquarters, but was caught. After some debate, a "court-martial" led by a sergeant decided he was too dangerous to let live and he too was shot. All the regiment's other officers, minus a handful of lieutenants who had no more desire to fight than anyone else and so cooperated, were taken prisoner and thrown into a dugout under armed guard.

    The French Army Mutinies had well and truly begun.

    Word now spread up and down the line that a regiment refused to advance, reaching Nivelle's headquarters at around eleven AM. "Very well", he said. "If they are too cowardly to fight the Boches, perhaps we can interest them in fighting Frenchmen!" Orders went out to the Regiment d'infantrie 127's parent division to send its military police in backed by a second regiment of trusted troops. They were to arrest the entire regiment, free the officers, and identify the ringleaders. The MPs were ready within two hours and a regiment was selected to accompany them, but while the former was eager to prove themselves, the latter felt differently. All soldiers hated MPs, none more so than frontline troops, all of whom saw them as shirkers who had found a cushy job bullying the men who fought and died. The men of this second regiment knew that as soon as the mutiny was put down, they would be thrown back into the fire while the MPs went back of the line. They would do their jobs, but not with any joy, any desire to turn their guns on men who were every bit like them for the sake of men who lorded over them.

    It didn't take long for this assault to collapse. The men of Regiment d'infantrie 127 refused to hand their officers over, and when the MPs asked the ringleaders to identify themselves on a promise of clemency, every man stepped forward. Two and a half minutes in, an MP tried to arrest a second lieutenant but a bullet to the back stopped him. The culprit lowered his smoking rifle and told the other MPs to return to back of the line, to which the MP commander replied that if every man did not throw down his rifle and submit to arrest, the other regiment would fight them like enemy soldiers, and if they did not crush them, he would call in an artillery strike. The second lieutenant raised his hands and turned to the men sent to escort the MPs. "You are French like me, you know what will happen if we let these people have their way! Today it will be us, and tomorrow it will be you! Don't think these people won't betray you, or use you up- because I know if your roles were reversed, you'd say the same to me!" The men of the second regiment shook their heads and raised their rifles- the second lieutenant's heart thudded as he took his last breaths- and one of their number cried, "hands up, swine!" The second lieutenant raised his hands, eyes closed, then heard gunshots. He threw himself to the ground, and a moment later someone kicked his shoulder. "Get up you idiot", a soldier cried, throwing him his rifle, "we've got a battle to win here!"

    The men of the two regiments formed a circle around the military policemen. Hundreds of soldiers surrounded a few dozen men armed with pistols, many of whom had never fired a shot in anger. The MPs blazed back, toppling several soldiers, but it was hopeless and within minutes all lay dead. The junior officers of the second regiment then shook hands with the lieutenants of Regiment d'infantrie 127 who'd gone along with the mutiny and agreed to form a "collective leadership" until the authorities "recognised" them. No one wanted to rebel against France, aid the enemy, or go against their comrades, but all agreed that Nivelle was out of control. If they backed down and tried to negotiate, he would have them all killed. If they were lucky, he'd treat them like a punishment battalion and throw them where the fighting was hottest without a rifle or helmet; if not, he would have their own guns shell them from afar. They could only trust Army Group Centre commander Petain, or better yet, General Joffre, the highest soldier in all of France! They knew something of the war and of what the ordinary soldier needed, and they would make everything right. In the meantime, dusk was drawing near and they needed to rest for the night.

    Before going to sleep, the men did something which- however unfairly- marked them as an enemy in the eyes of the leadership. Before going to sleep, they sent a runner into No-Man's-Land to make contact with the Germans, who were still on high alert after the recent fighting and had assumed the second regiment was arriving to attack them. They mistook the messenger for a scout or raiding party and did their best to shoot him, but he raised a white flag and a German squad took him, blindfolded, back to their sap. There, he explained the day's events to an incredulous major, who sent him back to his own lines to ask permission to send a delegation. The "collective leadership" agreed, and just before midnight, two German captains did something which would have been suicidal twenty-four hours ago: they climbed out of their trenches and, in full view of the enemy, walked across No-Man's-Land. One of the men accompanying them later wrote to his brother that "it was like the surface of the moon, as though God had thrown rocks and fire and a hundred different curses on this poor stretch of field... I could not blame the French for turning their guns on their own officers, if those officers were foolish enough to see in this opportunity and joy instead of desolation."

    The two German captains met with half a dozen Frenchmen- three lieutenants, a sergeant, and two privates, chosen to represent the men of the two regiments. The French explained their situation once more and asked for a cease-fire: when dawn came, their own side would doubtless attack them with everything they had. They did not want to surrender as their comrades had at L'empire-aux-Bois, rather, they wanted "to live and let live", pointing to the pile of dead military policemen to prove how serious they were. The German captains had no authority to make a deal of any sort but agreed to pass this information up to the Major, and to his superiors back of the line. Before leaving, one man suggested taking all tricolour flags down and removing all patches: that way, none of his men would shoot the mutineers by accident. The Frenchmen later voted on this and agreed, sewing a regimental patch onto a bloody rag taken from a dead MP to make an improvised red flag.

    As June 24th turned into June 25th, no one was thinking of launching a revolution. Most of the men in Regiment d'infantrie 127 regretted shooting the messenger from Nivelle and their lieutenant-colonel, and feared that their captive officers might run off in the night. The men of the other regiment had no qualms about choosing not to massacre their fellow soldiers, but neither did they want to be part of something like this. Even the lowliest conscript understood that mutiny- especially when it involved the murder of superiors- was something for which the higher-ups would shoot them without question. Many deserted that night, slipping into the countryside or across to the Germans, while everyone else prepared for the inevitable fighting tomorrow. All of those who stayed hoped Joffre or Petain would understand, that Nivelle would receive due punishment for wasting their lives and sending the military police against them, even as they knew the rules entitled them to nothing better than a blindfold and a cigarette.

    Executing the ringleaders while giving clemency and understanding to the rest might have stopped the rot. As it was, the French High Command quickly lost control of the situation, and by the end of July, the knowledge that the war was lost, and the only way out was to turn on the officers, had infected nearly every man on the front lines. This was the beginning of the end, not just for France, but for the Entente.
     
  • Index

    • Windhover

    Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth said:
    On receiving news of their mutiny, Robert Nivelle had still refused to see reason and insisted on maintaining the offensive. He still dreamt of taking the heights behind L'empire-aux-Bois, but more important, to cancel the offensive now would send the men a message that if they wished to fight no more, they had only to massacre their officers.
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    If things reach this point then you likely have already lost because you have ended up in a lose-lose situation. You cannot in any way give the impression that shooting your own officers might lead to positive results if you want to be able to effectively fight against the enemy, but if you try to violently crack down on a mutiny of this scale then it is likely that the ones you send to do the clampdown will refuse to do so against their comrades. And since they have now refused to follow orders they will believe that their only option is to join the mutineers, leading to a cascade effect.
     

    historylearner

    Thutaaung1600 said:
    I hope France didn't go kaiserreich way of becoming communist because Germany will not let communist to take hold in his neighbor.
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    They might not have a choice. France is significantly stronger than Russia and if the entente can’t defeat the Soviet’s, I don’t think a Germany with severe war exhaustion can fight the French
     

    1962strat

    historylearner said:
    They might not have a choice. France is significantly stronger than Russia and if the entente can’t defeat the Soviet’s, I don’t think a Germany with severe war exhaustion can fight the French
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    While France is indeed stronger than Russia, that does not really mean much in this situation. France is also way easier to occupy and more reliant on outside resources than the Russians. In other words, it’s way easier to march to Paris and to remove a government than it is to weed the Bolsheviks out everywhere between St. Petersburg and Odesa.

    And on another note, I think France’s version of communism would have little to do with what we today relate with the Bolsheviks. Just like Russia had a tradition of authoritarianism that influenced the Soviets, France at this point had one of the strongest democratic traditions in the world, and that wouldn’t suddenly disappear cause they lost a war. IMO a French communist takeover would resemble the SPD takeover in Germany more than it would the October Revolution, if somewhat more radical.
     
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