In January 1916 John Irving was sworn in as President of the United States of America. Formed in 1866 with the Articles of Union between Canada and the UAS, it was one of the world’s foremost industrial powers. Irving had run on a strong progressive ticket, with his main policies being welfare reform, ‘trust busting’ and arms talks with the CSA. From the 1850s onwards, there had been a steady increase in expenditure between the North and South. His election by a razor’s edge in 1915 offered an end to what saw as the biggest potential war-starter on Earth. A week after his taking of the Presidential Oath, the New Albatross, the USA’s foremost political journal named him their ‘an of the Century’ and said that ‘President Irving could be the greatest thing to happen to this beleaguered continent since its colonisation some four hundred years ago.’ Such praise was not bestowed lightly, for in the months after his election he showed himself to be something of a perfect president. He passed bills to break apart the huge banking corporations which had taken over huge segments of the American economy, and he also introduced the Ten Hour Bill, which limited legal working hours to ten hours a day. On the 27th November, he signed a treaty with the CSA President Aldeville which opened up the possibility for future talks-there were even rumours of reunification.
Alas, it was not to happen. Irving was deeply unpopular in many parts of the country. He had won the Canadian States comfortably-he polled over 70% of votes cast in Quebec, due to his Catholic running mate James Albany. However, the border states of West Virginia and Tennessee were unconvinced by this northern radical; he received less than 20% of the vote in many Tennessee counties. The House of Representatives was deeply divided between the Progressives, those Congressmen who thoroughly supported the President, the Republicans, who were from the Canadian political pedigree of small but responsible government; and finally the ad hoc coalition of southern Congressmen, laissez-faire and chauvinists who formed an aggregate stolidly opposed to the President’s progressive agenda. This reflected a huge divide in the nation; the border southern states were fiercely opposed to the northern President, and some of the most radical party leaders even whispered of secession.
On the 19th May 1917 the President was visiting small-holding farmers in West Virginia when someone from the crowd who had gathered around his car fired three shots at him. The President fell and the assailant was captured immediately. Word was sent to Vice President Albany by telegram, and he was sworn in four hours later as President of the United States of America. Irving was dead.
The national outrage felt by the murder of the President was unprecedented, although the act of assassinating a president was novel in itself. The assassin, Telamon H. Jarvis was interrogated and at first confessed to being a member of an anarchist cell which called itself the Black Hand Gang. However, on further examination he turned out to be a member of an all-white drinking society, whose clubhouse was raided by Federal officers. Within it were found Confederate flags, and, most damming of all, telegrams sent from Confederate cities which contained passages which could be seen as seditious. President Albany, at the head of a divided nation, needed something to unify the Republic and pull it through its time of tragedy. He therefore expelled the Confederate Ambassador to the USA and withdrew the Union representitive in Atlanta.
What started as a diplomatic spat, however, escalated swiftly and President Albany found himself swamped by the people’s reaction to the severing of diplomatic relations with the CSA. Some called for war, whereas others called for the President to ‘restore amicable relations with our continental neighbours.’ The President, however, would hear nothing of either side. He drew up a list of demands and had them sent to President Aldeville via a French merchant marine vessel. The demands were: 1. The official disclosure of all CSA-supported and funded organisations operating within the USA. 2. The resignation of North Carolina Governor Patrick Keattes, due to his knowledge of the Black Hand Gang’s treasonous intentions. 3. The withdrawal of all CSA soldiers from an area of land 20 km from the border. 4. The opening of the Mississippi to Union warships. 5. That President Aldeville sign a treaty promising never to disrupt the status quo of the American continent.
Rather unsurprisingly, the demands were rejected utterly. President Albany read the Confederate reply to his demands to Congress. Chants of ‘War! War! War!’ came from the Republican and Progressive benches, yet Albany would not relent. He consulted his allies-he sent word to Berlin and Constantinople as to what to do. The Prime Minister of Great Britain offered to arbitrate the dispute, yet he was turned down by both parties. Finally, President Albany delivered his final ultimatum. Either the CSA demilitarise its border with the USA and the Mississippi River, or there would be war. When this was rejected on the 14th October 1917, Congress voted for war-65% in favour while 21% abstained. The Chiefs of Staff who had been playing war games for decades finally dusted off their maps and charts, and polished all their medals for the war to end all wars; this would decide once and for all who would dominate America.
But first, the diplomatic game had to wind down, yet once the declaration of war was served to President Aldeville there was little doubt how the die would be cast. Hours later, Mexico declared war on the USA and in response to this, Germany declared war on Mexico. France, Austria and Russia served a joint declaration of war against Germany, and the Ottoman Empire delivered the coup de Grace to the old diplomatic system by declaring war on the Triple Entente.
Late 1917 would see relatively little action-or at least compared to the following years. Union forces, numbering 5 million infantry and with thousands of pieces of artillery all ferried south by railway, swamped Confederate forces in Maryland. Baltimore fell by mid-November and Richmond was threatened by Christmas. The American front ground down for winter with Union forces well within the CSA’s borders. While this happened, Mexico began to mobilise for war. It was a slow process, given the distances involved, yet by early December Kansas and Texas were home to some 3 million soldiers waiting to make the Spring offensive. In the meantime they secured the Mississippi and its tributaries and conducted a few raids into American territory.
In Europe, the war planning of the Triple Entente, which had never been good by any stretch of the imagination, almost fell apart entirely. Mutual Russian and Austrian mistrust over the Balkans had meant that the French, who had wanted a more solidified joint command structure, was left with two bickering allies who had almost declared war on each other in 1919 rather than on Germany. The three countries’ war aims were wildly different in almost every conception. France’s birth-rate had fallen dramatically since the loss of its Empire, and Emperor Napoleon III had realised that France could not hope to win a war of attrition against Germany’s far larger, far younger population. France’s strategy was therefore to sit and wait. For decades, the French General Staff had been planning their defence of the Rhine against the Germans, and millions of Francs had been spent building bunkers, roads, coal depots and ammunition dumps all along the river. The French army, for the time being, at least, was going nowhere.
The Austrians, on the other hand, were not so fortunate as to have one of Europe’s largest rivers running along its border with Germany. The German Army crashed through Bohemia in November and was nearing the Danube by December. The Austrian Army, despite the substantial military reforms of the mid-19th century, had gentrified. Germany’s Officer Corps were the best trained in the world and the Imperial Artillery the most responsive, most accurate, most mobile in Europe. For two months, German war planners’ dreams came true as thousands of Junker horsemen poured across the Bohemian plateau, taking Prague and raiding through the countryside. Austrian collapse seemed imminent, and it was only a last-ditch defence on the borders of Austria itself which saved the Hapsburg monarchy.
Spring of 1918 saw the war begin in earnest. Except for Austria and Maryland, the war had barely started for most combatants. The Russian Army was still mobilising and the French were still sitting on the left bank of the Rhine. The Mexicans, meanwhile, were building up a head of steam in Colorado and Kansas, waiting to come crashing down upon the East like a furious locomotive. Russia and Austria had yet to get any momentum to their war effort-conscription was still haphazardly enforced, war time production was run on civilian lines and with little direct state involvement. Germany, however, had introduced conscription immediately, and drafted women and Scandinavian immigrants to run the war economy, which was run by national price and supply boards. In Spring 1918 the Austrians had 2 million men under arms, the Russian 4 million. The Germans, on the other hand, had 8 million and a further 7 million in reserve.
It was this enormous numerical superiority which let Germany, surrounded and seemingly choked, to break through. A co-ordinated assault comprised of German and Ottoman forces broke through the Austrian defences at Salzburg and Sarejevo. German forces advanced 100 km in two days, and by the end of March, Vienna was under siege. The Emperor fled the city with his court and set themselves up in Pressburg and then in Budapest. When it became apparent that the city was doomed, a Provisional Government was formed and the city surrendered in the name of Austria. The court in exile attempted to continue the war, yet the tensions of decades of forced cultural and political union were taking their toll. German forces were greeted as liberators in Pressburg and Ljubljana, and on the 25th June 1918 Emperor Franz Joseph abdicated, and released the news that the centuries old Hapsburg Empire was dead. He surrendered to the Germans before going into exile in Spain.
The collapse of the Austrian Empire freed up millions of men for the fight against Russia, which was making steady advances into Poland. Facing a three-pronged assault from East Prussia, South Poland and Moldavia, the Russian army was overwhelmed. From 1918-1919 there was a string of massive victories for German and Turkish armies. Poland was liberated by the end of 1918, and the 1919 offensive saw German forces enter Talinin. In May 1919 the Tsar entered into negotiations with the Germans for a conditional peace. The Germans demanded that Poland and the Baltic states be ceded to Germany to do as it willed with them. The Turks also demanded that the Black Sea be demilitarised and that the Crimean Peninsula be ceded to them. The Tsar refused the Turkish demands, although he secretly accepted the German ones. However, the Germans decided to prod the Tsar, and a joint offensive into the Ukraine in Summer 1919 saw Kiev fall. The Turkish fleet also landed detachments in the North Caucasus, and there were uprisings in Chechnya and Dagestan. His armies shattered, his generals distraught and his people starving, the Tsar capitulated. A new treaty saw drafted and the Tsar signed. The war in the east was over.
The Treaty of Helsinki saw much of the Russian Empire dismembered. Poland saw carved out from its holdings (but not from German holdings) and former Austrian possessions, and the new Grand Duchy of Livonia was created on the Baltic, with a cadet Hohenzollern family line seated in Riga. Ukraine was divided between the victorious allies; a German-backed Prince was installed in Kiev, yet there were significant concessions granted to the Muslim cossacks who were patronised by the Sultan. He also took the Crimea and Chechnya for himself.
In America, 1918 and 1919 saw a race between the USA and Mexico to see who could ravage the Southern States the quickest. General Ross of the US Army led an offensive through Tennessee and then into north Georgia, where the Confederates were weak. A simultaneous attack through Virginia and North Carolina saw Charlotte and Richmond capitulate, and Missouri also surrendered to Union shelling. Meanwhile, the Mexican juggernaut fell on the American flank. It cost many lives to cross the Mississippi, yet it was finally done and a bridgehead established in Arkansas. The Mexicans were, however, by and large kept on the left bank of the river, and Union gunboats kept it thus. President Albany was meanwhile engaged in secret negotiations with President Gardez of Mexico. Gardez saw that the Entente powers were losing the war and that he needed to get out of the bloody affair as soon as possible-there was already considerable unrest in the southern provinces, where most Mexican soldiers came from.
The President Aldeville surrendered Atlanta and the CSA on the 16th July 1919 and ordered all Confederate forces to stand down. A week later, Gardez and Albany signed a peace treaty which admitted no responsibility for the war and which promised ‘eternal friendship between the nations of the Americas.’ The treaty gave Albany the right to occupy the Southern States, except for Louisiana and Arkansas, which were annexed by Mexico as the spoils of war. The mood of jubilation as President Albany announced the final reunification of the ‘Ancestral colonies’ was unprecedented-he was re-elected in 1920 with nearly 80% of the popular vote (the occupied states did not vote until the 1928 election).
In Europe, late 1919 saw France make one final attempt to win the war. Her policy of defence had been shown to fail miserably, and so one finally effort was made to break the stalemate. Attempts to cross the Rhine were repeatedly defeated, and so the decision was made by Emperor Napoleon to violate the neutrality of British-protected Holland and to take Germany by surprise.
The invasion of Holland was itself a success-Amsterdam fell within weeks, and soon French forces were pouring into Germany. However, it spelled the end for France’s hopes of victory. The violation of Holland’s neutrality pulled Britain into the war, and not on France’s side. The Royal Navy blockaded French ports, and British Colonial forces made landings in Duvallierville (Congo) and Nuveau Montpellier (Harare). By the close of 1919 it was apparent that France couldn’t go on for much longer.
Spring 1920 saw France begin to starve. Paris was filled with beggars and war-wounded. Napoleon was spending more and more time away from the capital, leaving the business of state to the Senate, which began to turn against its Emperor. the knockout blow came in March 1920, when German Divisions marched through occupied Italy and captured Turin, threatening the cross the Alps. On the 4th April the Senate announced a State of Emergency, and deposed the Emperor. The Second Republic was born in a moment of national emergency, and for a week or so it looked likely that it would fall. The generals, however, chose to back the Senators, and Napoleon was left hung out to dry. He fled to Brazil and died there in 1934.
The Great War, as it came to be known, did not, therefore, end in some cataclysmic battle in which millions perished and in which imperial edifices were toppled, but rather in a rather lethargic coup which saw a corpulent Emperor replaced by a fragile Republic which opened negotiations with the victorious powers. Now that the fighting was finally over, it was time for the diplomats to step in.
When it came to Europe, there was only one man drawing the borders and writing the new constitutions, and that was German Chancellor Peter Hierring, who was given a free hand in Eastern Europe. Poland and Livonia were both bound to Germany in perpetuity by cadet branches of the Imperial family. Austria and Bohemia were annexed as was Istria. Austria’s Italian possessions were carved out into the Kingdom of Italy, and given to the King of Bavaria, who was married to the Kaiser’s niece. Hungary and Slavonia were both made into monarchies, with local aristocrats made kings yet with German subsidy and military backing. The Kaiser saw his borders not as the Rhine, the Alps and the Vistula, but rather the Mediterranean, the Carpathians and the Danube, and German military installations graced each of these frontiers.
It was Africa which caused the biggest headache for the diplomats, for France was stripped of all its colonies, yet the three victorious powers could not decide how to divide them. Finally, Germ any took the Congo Basin, the Ottomans received territory north of the Congo River and Britain took all territory south of the Basin. Germany therefore got rubber and vast deposits of copper and silver; the Turks got access to central African trade routes and Britain got thousands of miles of farmland, which was the driving force behind its African colonial policy.
Outside the peace talks, yet not unrelated to them, were a series of international events. The Ottoman Empire annexed Oman and the Gulf States, and proclaimed the unity of all Arabia. The Confederacy of Gran Colombia also collapsed due to the economic divide between the north and south; by 1920 all that was left of the grand South American project was Colombia and Venezuela, which remained bound together by a brutal dictator. Chile and Peru became homes of thriving democracies, whereas Paraguay and Ecuador became dens of corruption and vice. In India, as well, the Ayughib Empire, founded in the ashes of the Mughal Empire, fought a brutal war against the Maratha Confederacy, which eventually split the continent. The Maratha held the south and the western seaboard, whereas the Ayughib held the North, Bengal and Deccan. The Chinese also used this opportunity to annex several Himalayan kingdoms north of Burma, thus solidifying its hold over the most independent of its Asian vassals.