The Anglo-Saxon Social Model

[Rattigan]

Now for something completely different. I've previously said that pretty much every other country ITTL is meaningfully the same as IOTL but with a few exceptions. It should now be clear that one of these exceptions is the US...

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From left to right - Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, Eugene V. Debs, Eugene W. Chafin and Daniel De Leon

The United States presidential election of 1912 was held on Saturday 2 November 1912 and Saturday 16 November 1912. It was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election in the history of the United States and the 9th to have been held under the rules of the Second American Constitution. It was won by New York Governor and former-Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt defeated a field of seven other candidates, winning 41.8% of the vote in the first round and 54.8% in the run-off, thus foiling President William Jennings Bryan in his bid to become the first president to serve for more than two terms under the Second Constitution. In the House elections held at the same time, the Republicans picked up 91 seats to gain a majority of 31. Roosevelt’s running mates were California Governor Hiram Johnson (as Vice President) and Illinois Representative James Mann (as Speaker).

Backed by all notable factions of his party, Roosevelt, who had served as Vice President from 1901 to 1905 and as Governor of New York from 1908 to 1912, was adopted as the Republican candidate after two rounds of balloting at the Republican National Convention. Displeased with Bryan’s actions as president and the way that he had been sidelined since the Liberals had lost control of the Senate in 1910, Vice President Woodrow Wilson challenged Bryan at the 1912 Liberal National Convention. After Wilson’s conservative allies narrowly prevailed at the convention, Bryan rallied his supporters and launched a new party called the Greenback Party, with himself as the presidential candidate. Meanwhile, the Socialist Party and the Social Democratic Labor Party re-nominated their perennial standard-bearers, Eugene V. Debs and Daniel De Leon, respectively. The Prohibition Party nominated Arizona lawyer Eugene W. Chafin.

The election was a bitter and divisive one, mainly contested between the frontrunners of Roosevelt, Wilson and Bryan. Roosevelt’s platform called for an eight-hour workday, female emancipation and a stronger federal role in the economy. Wilson called for tariff reductions, cuts to social insurance programs and banking reform (although he did not call for a return to the gold standard, as he had done as recently as 1907). Bryan ran on a defence of his two terms as president and attempted to portray Wilson as corrupt and a betrayer of Liberal principles. Debs and De Leon claimed that the main three candidates were largely financed by trusts and corrupt business interests while Chafin and his running mates urged voters to help the Prohibitionists hold the balance of power in the new House.

The Republicans skillfully exploited the split between the Liberals and the Greenbacks, winning over former Bryan voters with their progressive policies and reassuring so-called ‘Bourbon’ Liberals through Roosevelt’s personal charm. His 41.8% in the first round was the highest by any first-round candidate since Abraham Lincoln in the 1884 election and he convincingly won the run-off against Wilson by convincing Greenback voters to come over to him. The Socialist result of 5.9% in the presidential election and nearly 50 seats in the house represents, to date, the electoral high point of their party.

The split in the Liberal Party is believed to have been a major factor in the Liberals’ losses in the election, which included not only losing the Presidency but also 167 seats in the House to all of the Republicans, Greenbacks, Socialists and Social Democratic Labor Party. But it is not clear exactly how big a cause this was. Some candidates stood calling for a reunification of the Liberals and the Greenbacks, others appear to have backed both Wilson and Bryan and some campaigned as so-called 'Liberal Greenbacks.' Few sources are able to agree on exact numbers, and even in the contemporary records held by the two parties, some House candidates were claimed for both sides. Furthermore, many analysts at the time believed that the popular mood had turned against Bryan, suggesting that a Republican win could have occurred in any event. By one estimate, there were 29 seats where Greenbacks and Liberals stood against one another. This is thought to have cost them at least 14 seats, 10 of them to the Republicans, so in theory a reunited Liberal Party would have been much closer to the Republicans in the House and might even have won the Presidency (Wilson’s and Bryan’s combined vote total in the first round was 50.6%). However, in reality the two factions were on poor terms and Bryan was hoping for cooperation between the Greenbacks and the Republicans in the House (and possibly even a cabinet position for himself).

 

[Rattigan]

The End of Splendid Isolation?: British Foreign Policy under Haldane

The Entente Cordiale - a cartoon depicting Marianne embracing Uncle Sam in return for $3,000,000 of direct investment

Since the beginning of the Edwardian era, Britain had mostly stayed aloof from alliances in the late 19th century, with an independence made possible by its island location, the presence of the Royal Navy, the country’s dominant position in finance and trade as well as its strong industrial base. Under the Liberal governments of Lord Hartington and Chamberlain, Britain’s economic position moved away from one of free trade (as had obtained under the Hanoverians since the end of the Napoleonic Wars) and towards one of tariffs and reliance on the Empire and certain protected markets such as Argentina. After losing power in 1874, William Gladstone had initiated his political return in 1876 by calling for a moralistic foreign policy, as opposed to the realism of the Conservatives. However, on his return to government in 1880, he found himself distracted by fiscal affairs and the question of Home Rule. As a result, his moralistic foreign policy was not taken up by successive Foreign Secretaries of both parties. Foreign policy was, by and large, not an issue that interested the vast majority of the public, with the exception of occasional flare-ups of public feeling over particular issues such as the Bulgarian War of Independence in the 1870s and the Congo Reform Association in 1904, or more consistently in campaigns to end the international slave trade.

Imperial affairs, as differentiated from foreign affairs, did have the capacity to capture the public imagination. However, the Congress of Berlin had largely neutered the prospect of conflict between European powers in Africa by delineating a process for African colonization and the Great Game in central Asia continued to be of interest to few people outside of India and Whitehall. Instead, what attracted the attention were developments in colonial and Dominion governments, with particular attention being paid to the prospects for emigration. Canadian and (later) Australian and New Zealand electoral results were regularly reported and discussed at length in the UK. The independent countries which most commonly figured in the British imagination were Argentina and the United States, both also distinguished by their position as popular sites for emigration.

As a result, British engagement with European politics was at a minimum. The country had renewed the Treaty of Windsor with Portugal in 1899 but had not taken action in response to the revolution there in 1910. Similarly, little action had been taken in response to German and Italian unification in the 1860s and 1870s or the fall of Napoleon III in 1871. The UK had acquiesced implicitly in Napoleon’s earlier intervention in Mexico which had restored the Mexican Empire and later stayed out of the Spanish Revolution (1868-74) until the attack on HMS Royal Alfred had initiated a short intervention which had ended with the annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines (1873-74). Cordial relations had been maintained with the Ottomans until the independence of Egypt promised a better safeguard of the route to India and relations with Russia improved following the annexation of Tibet. Kaiser Wilhelm’s telegram of support to the Kruger Boer government (1896) and the Fashoda Incident (1898) had briefly suggested the possibility of war with Germany or France, respectively, but relations were smoothed over in both cases.

However, following the election of 1904-05, the attitude of the British government changed as the alliance system in Europe moved the countries solidly into two mutually hostile camps. Germany had allowed their friendship treaty with Russia to lapse in 1890, which in turn pushed France and Russia into each other’s arms and encouraged Russian expansionary interest in the Balkans at the expense of the declining Ottoman Empire. In 1894, the two powers concluded a secret mutual defence treaty. This in turn pushed Austria-Hungary closer to Germany (the two powers had concluded a friendly treaty in 1882) and a more formal, but also secret, alliance was concluded in 1902. Thus, in 1905 there were four powerful countries in Europe which remained ‘unclaimed’ by either side: the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Spain and the UK. The Ottomans were caught between two opponents in the form of Austria-Hungary and Russia, both of whom were pursuing expansionary policies in the Balkans. Italy wished to join one of the alliances but its diplomatic aims of establishing African colonies (it would eventually do so in Libya in 1911) and being a major power in the Mediterranean was a source of concern for all the four powers. Spain was recovering from its civil war and revolution and its governments of all stripes were forced to adopt a delicate balancing act to avoid alienating anybody, which constrained its room for maneuver abroad.

The UK was in a similar position: unable to make a clear choice for each side. On the one hand, traditional concerns with maintaining the balance of power in Europe would indicate that an alliance should be concluded with France and Russia to keep down the rising power Germany. But on the other hand, France remained a traditional rival and there was a strong institutional dislike of any alliance with them (despite the Treaty of London in 1903, which had resolved a number of imperial border disputes). Germany, despite its own personal military and economic strength, was not well served for with allies and the majority of British analysts expected her to lose a protracted engagement with both France and Russia at the same time. Furthermore, the overriding British foreign policy concern of defending the empire was not exactly compatible with joining either alliance. The fact that the Anglo-Ottoman War in 1905 had been protested by both Russia and Germany (as well as, of course, the Ottomans), is a telling illustration of this point.

The Entente Cordiale of 1904 between France and the United States had been the pinnacle of the diplomatic maneuverings of President William McKinley and, although there were some doubts about the extent to which an American government headed by a President William Jennings Bryan (as occurred following the election of 1904) would actually honour the terms of the agreement, it caused considerable concern in London. It meant that not only was the United States to come to the aid of France if needed but also that France was opened up to an influx of American capital. The possibility of American expansion into Europe, either in the form of capital or military, was just as much of a concern to Britain as German expansion was (there had been a simmering geopolitical competition between the two Anglophone powers since the British intervention in the Spanish revolution). Finally, it left Germany in a vulnerable position against three great powers.

Richard Haldane, appointed Foreign Secretary by Chamberlain in 1905 and confirmed in this position by both Dilke and Lloyd George, was instinctively pro-German but understood that a full Anglo-German alliance would not be desirable. Despite its sympathies towards Berlin’s predicament facing the Triple Entente, the British government remained concerned about the build up of the German navy, even though Kaiser Wilhelm continued to insist that he did not want to expand his empire or challenge the Royal Navy. Furthermore, the beginning of the construction of the German financed Berlin-Baghdad Railway was a sign that there would now be close cooperation between the German and the Ottoman governments. The Liberal government thus agreed a strategy of neutrality which would enable Britain to deploy its diplomatic and military power as it saw fit in any given situation. By 1912, the simmering and undeclared naval arms race in which Britain and Germany had been participating (as had the United States up to 1905) had begun to take its toll on both countries’ finances. Furthermore, the German government was very aware of the weak position of its allies as against the Entente. The resulting Haldane-Jagow Agreement of 1912 meant that Germany accepted British naval superiority in exchange for British neutrality in a war in which Germany was not the aggressor, as well as formalizing the boundaries of the German colonies in Africa which abutted British ones. However, issues to do with the Ottoman Empire prevented Britain from formally joining the Triple Alliance and Britain kept its options open regarding future war in the Middle East.

The Agreement proved controversial in Britain, with there being hostility from both the press and the backbenches. Jackie Fisher – the architect of the Dreadnought programme – and Colonial Secretary Edward Grey resigned in protest, demanding a more assertive attitude towards the Germans. Further pressure was put on the government when the United States, France and Russia formally entered a mutual defence pact on 31 July 1912. A popular and much-reprinted cartoon appeared in the Daily Mail, depicting Britannia, Italia Turrita and Hispania scolding the ‘Triple Cowards’ in their governments. However, the government managed to ride out the turbulence, with Austen Chamberlain replacing Grey at the Colonial Office and Fisher resignation disappearing from public attention within a month or so.

With the end of the naval arms race, British naval policy once more shifted away from building ever bigger battleships and dreadnoughts and towards the refitting and updating of the current fleet. In particular, moves were made to change from coal to oil as the primary fuel. Work was also done to build on research undertaken on aeronautics following the recommendations of Plan 1914. The first seaplane tender ship had been created by the conversion of the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Hibernia in September 1911 and this was followed by the first successful take-off from a ship underway in May 1912. HMS Corageous became the first purpose-built seaplane carrier when it was launched in August 1913, equipped with Sopwith Pup airplanes (and was joined by her two sister ships, HMS Furious and HMS Glorious, by the end of 1913).

 

[Rattigan]

Another quick update on the European situation, this time looking at the Ottoman Empire after the Anglo-Ottoman War (1905). As you'll see, the majority of it is as IOTL (but is good background for people to have anyway) but with a few alterations in timing.

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The Overture: Ottoman Decline in the Balkans

Great Power Rivalry: a sulky Sultan Abdul Hamid II can only look on as his territory is claimed by the Romanovs and the Habsburgs

By the early 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was stuck in a state of both stasis and collapse. Following the Young Turk Revolution of 1906, its political system was seemingly stuck in an interminable opposition between the ideals of its leaders and the conservative inclinations of the Ottoman religious elite. This was further exacerbated by the internal contradictions within the Young Turks, who were divided between the economically laissez faire middle and upper class sections of their support and those from the working classes, who aspired to policies which might more easily be called socialist or socially democratic. A counter-coup by conservative military officers in 1907 had failed and resulted in the deposition of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and his replacement by Mehmed V as a symbolic figurehead with no power. But Young Turk power remained fragile and their potential reforms were piecemeal and often left unenforced by conservative local politicians.

During the reign of Abdul Hamid, the Ottoman Empire had lost the vast majority of its lands on the Mediterranean coast and west of Istanbul, with Greece (1832), Serbia (1867), Bulgaria and Montenegro (both 1878), Romania (1881) and Egypt (1905) all achieving some kind of de jure or de facto independence (additionally, the UK had declared a protectorate over Cyprus in 1878). These independent nations came about partly because of the rise of nationalism in the region, which Ottoman governance structures proved unable to cope with. But also because of the interests of the great powers in the region which encouraged them to either support or decline the break-up of the Ottomans. The Russian Empire had an historical interest in gaining access to the warm water ports in the Mediterranean, ideally through the annexation of Constantinople, and thus sponsored a pan-Slavic ideology to encourage uprisings of Eastern Orthodox Slavic communities. France too was concerned to expand its power in the Middle East, particularly in the Levant. Italy and Austria-Hungary both welcomed the decline of a rival power in the Adriatic but the Habsburgs were concerned that Russian activities in the Balkans were destabilizing their own restless Slavic populations in Bosnia and Vojvodina. Germany was attempting to prop up the Ottomans as a potential client state to help them gain access to the Indian Ocean via the Berlin-Baghdad Railway.

The British, for their part, had changed their longstanding support for the Ottomans after Cyprus had been de facto annexed and once it became clear that the Mohammed Ali Dynasty could, with some supervision, rule Egypt more securely than the Sultan. British policy thus changed from being one of attempting to prop up the Sublime Porte to one structured by greater ambivalence. Although they remained concerned about the prospects of the Berlin-Baghdad railway, more support was given to the Trucial States in the Persian Gulf to try and shore up British control there.

In September 1911, Italy commenced an invasion of Libya which began the Italo-Turkish War. Although the invasion was botched in many respects, the Italians nevertheless won the military confrontation and claimed the Ottoman regions of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, Fezzan and the Dodecanese Islands by the Treaty of Lausanne in October 1912. This peace was brought about because of a coup d’etat in Istanbul in July 1912, which brought the Ottomans to the negotiating table quickly. However, this display of rank military incompetence (by both sides but particularly the Ottomans) caused events to develop quickly in the Balkans.

With the initial encouragement of Russian agents, Bulgaria and Serbia concluded a series of secret agreements in March 1912. This was followed up by a treaty between the two nations and Greece in May of that year, a vital agreement as Greece was the only Balkan country with a navy powerful enough to prevent the Ottomans bringing in reinforcements through the Aegean. Montenegro signed agreements with the other three later that year, concluding the creation of the Balkan League. Although the League was loose and uncoordinated, Montenegro declared war on 8 October. Three days later, the Ottoman government was once more overthrown by the group known as the ‘Three Pashas’, who assumed command of the Ottoman government and resolved to fight. On 17 October, the rest of the Balkan League joined the war.

The combined armies of the Balkan states overcame the numerically inferior and strategically disadvantaged Ottoman armies and achieved rapid success. As a result of the war, the League captured and partitioned almost all remaining Ottoman European territories and created an independent Albanian state in December 1912. The defeat left the Ottoman Empire an almost entirely Islamic one, with Islam and calls to Arab and/or Turkish nationalism one of the main factors drawing the countries together. Bulgaria, for its part, was known to be dissatisfied with the division of the spoils in Macedonia but would find that its complaints would soon be overtaken by events.

 

[Rattigan]

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1913

Prince Wilhelm von Weid - the quiet cavalry officer who accidentally started a war

After the conclusion of the Balkan War by the Treaty of London in January 1913, many in Europe’s capitals saw the Balkans as a potential source of future conflict. There were many areas of concern, not least the possibility of the Balkan League fracturing, with Bulgaria known to be dissatisfied with their share of the spoils. Many feared that German attempts to divide Bulgaria from its Balkan allies (and thus also from Russia) would result in internecine warfare between them, with the potential for this to lead to a wider conflict. Alternatively, the possibility of the Balkan League using their success against the Ottomans as a springboard for the liberation of their Slavic cousins in Austrian Bosnia could not be discounted. Neither, of course, could the possibility of Ottoman revanchism, nor that the League would not simply renew an assault on them in the name of claiming the long-desired territories of Ionia, Thrace and Constantinople.

However, few at the time predicted that the ‘settlement’ of the London Treaty would break down so quickly, nor that the tinderbox for doing so would be a dynastic dispute over Albania. Carved out of Ottoman territory on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, Albania was a poor country and was expected to become a de facto protectorate of the League under a minor princeling whose identity was to be determined. However, the boundaries as set by the Treaty of London largely ignored the demographics on the ground and had created a nation where a largely pro-Ottoman and Muslim peasantry was exploited by their predominantly Christian landlords. The great powers took until the spring of 1913 to come up with the compromise nomination of Prince Wilhelm von Wied – a Prussian cavalry commander and nephew of the Queens of both Romania and the Netherlands – as their candidate. While he was acceptable to the Albanian provisional government, Wilhelm stunned his advisors when he turned down the offer of the throne on 7 March. Wilhelm, correctly as it turned out, predicted that the throne of Albania would not be worth the material it was made of.

Into this power vacuum, the former Ottoman officer Essad Toptani declared that he was now the Prince of Albania and assumed de jure control of the country’s government (which he had already de facto controlled for some months by this point). In this capacity he received the support of the Ottomans on 14 March. The reaction of the Balkan League was furious and they made renewed attempts to get Wilhelm to agree to take the throne (their earlier concerns about his possibly pro-German sensibilities discarded) and the Greek government began to arm separatists in North Epirus. Over the next fortnight, this lead to a generalized breakdown of law and order in the nascent principality with no clear resolution in sight: President Roosevelt’s suggestion that Albania be made an American protectorate was immediately vetoed by Germany.

On 6 April 1913, Ottoman forces invaded Albania in order to prop up Toptani. Although this was not, by any particular definition, an attack on any member of the Balkan League, the League nonetheless interpreted the move as a violation of the Treaty of London as well as a deliberate provocation towards Greek naval interests in the Aegean (given that the Ottomans moved most of their troops by sea). In secret, League officials sought and received a guarantee from the Russian government that the Russians would come to their aid in the event of any League nation being attacked by any of the Great Powers, which in turn lead to the combined governments of the League issuing an ultimatum to the Ottomans on 20 April, demanding that they immediately withdraw. When the Ottomans, predictably, refused to comply, the League commenced a full mobilization of their forces on 24 April, with Russia ordering a partial mobilization a day later.

Outraged by what they saw as an affront to their Ottoman allies, Germany and Austria mobilized their forces on 28 April, at the same time issuing a seven-day ultimatum to the League to withdraw their own ultimatum and cease mobilization. They argued that Albania was not a member of the League, that its only legitimate (or quasi-legitimate) government had invited intervention from the Ottoman forces, and that such intervention was only necessary because of destabilization by elements in Albania who were loyal to the League. All these arguments were technically correct on their own terms, although they did rather ignore the point that Albania had been declared a neutral territory in the Treaty of London and that, although Toptani’s invitation to the Ottomans gave the Ottomans a degree of legal cover for their intervention, this was flimsy at best. Having been violated first in spirit and then in letter by both sides, the Treaty of London was already a dead letter three months after its signing and the Balkans was now geopolitically lawless.

What happened next was the key point in the slide towards war and away from peace. With Germany now mobilized and the war in Albania now almost certain to spill out of that country’s borders, Russia ordered a full mobilization of its forces on 29 April. Over the previous week, the US ambassador to France, John M. Parker, had been running between his residence and the Elysee Palace attempting to control events as they developed. Eventually, on the night of 29 April, he was faced with the Russian mobilization and the question of whether France could rely on American backing in the event of the war which now seemed likely. Guessing (correctly, as it turned out) his president’s wishes, he confirmed that the American government would support their French and Russian allies. On 30 April France ordered a full mobilization and on the same day President Roosevelt announced a mobilization of the US Army and called up the National Guard.

Although they were intimately aware of the events unfolding in Europe, Britain had thusfar managed to stay out of the maneuverings. However, this was never going to be a practical long-term position and on 1 May the Belgian government sent secret messages to London asking for confirmation that the British would intervene to preserve Belgian neutrality in the event of Germany marching troops through its borders. After fierce debate in cabinet, Lloyd George and Haldane got the cabinet to agree that declaring war on Germany in order to protect Belgium would be worthless. It was a pretty clear abrogation of the UK’s obligations under the 1839 Treaty of London but the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary successfully made their case on the grounds of geopolitics. The decision was transmitted not only to the Belgian ambassador in London but also, separately, to the German one. The following day, Germany issued a formal request for Belgium to allow free passage of their forces, before beginning an invasion on 3 May. Contrary to most expectations, however, the Belgian government did not declare neutrality but instead attempted to repel the invasion. On 4 May, the French also invaded Belgium to attack the German army there, declaring war on the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans) at the same time. A few hours later, the United States and Russia did the same thing.

 

[Rattigan]

Will get back to the narrative in a bit but now for something completely different...

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President Lincoln delivers his address at his fourth inauguration in 1881

Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 – 15 April 1895) was an American statesman who served as the 16th and 19th President of the United States from 1861 to 1873 and from 1881 to 1889. Lincoln led the nation through the Civil War (1861-1869), its bloodiest war and its greatest constitutional and political crisis up to that point. In 1878, he came out of retirement when elected to the Senate as a Senator from Illinois and was chosen as leader of the Senate Republicans. He was the main draughtsman behind the second constitution of the United States and founded the Second American Republic in 1880 after approval in a national referendum. He was elected President of the United States once more later that year, a position he was reelected to in 1884 and which he held until his final retirement in 1889. He was the dominant figure in American politics during the Civil War and Reconstruction era (1861-1887) and his memory continues to influence American politics. In addition to his political achievements, Lincoln holds a number of presidential records, including the longest time in office of any American President (20 years) and the most presidential elections won (5 – 1860, 1864, 1868, 1880 and 1884).

Born in Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the western frontier in a poor family. Self-educated, he became a lawyer in Illinois. As a member of the Whigs, he served eight years in the state legislature and two in Congress before resuming his law practice. Angered by the success of Democrats in opening the western prairie lands to slavery and the violence of pro-slavery advocates, he reentered politics in 1854. He was a leader in building the new Republican Party from former Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats, becoming nationally renowned for his debates with senior Democrat Stephen A. Douglas in 1856 and 1858. This fame propelled him to the position of presidential candidate of the Republican Party for the election of 1860, which he won by sweeping the Northern states.

Southern pro-slavery elements took his win as proof that the North intended to outlaw slavery and began the process of seceding from the union and forming what became the Confederate States of America. The North, progressively radicalized by the ongoing debates about the future of slavery, would not tolerate secession and on 12 April 1861, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law and called up volunteers to suppress the rebellion. An executive action which provided for the phased abolition of slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation is regarded as the final straw which caused the Southern and Border states to secede and begin the Civil War.

Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, in particular the choice of generals. He made several major decisions on Union war strategy, including blockading Southern ports and the use of scorched earth tactics. As the war progressed, Lincoln initially attempted a conciliatory strategy in his 1864 reelection campaign but, as the fighting grew increasingly bloody, he pushed a more radical vision of reconstruction when he ran (and won) a then-unprecedented third term in 1868. As the war progressed, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution of 1865 permanently and immediately outlawed slavery and Lincoln encouraged the Union army to protect escaped slaves.

Following the final surrender of E. Porter Alexander in 1869, Lincoln pursued a radical vision of Reconstruction, permanently removing voting rights from senior officials in the CSA and promoting black politicians. These policies were pursued further through the use of an extensive military occupation of the South. However, frustrated by the return of heavy partisanship after 1870, he decided not to seek a fourth term and retired from the presidency in 1873, although he remained politically involved with the Illinois Republican party. He wrote a book about his presidency titled ‘War Memoirs.’ When the continuing terrorism of white supremacist groups threatened to rip apart the United States once more, Lincoln returned to the Senate. He founded the Second American Republic with a strong presidency and was elected to that role in 1880. He managed to keep the United States together while taking steps to clamp down on terrorist organisations such as the Klu Klux Klan, including the suspension of habeus corpus in the South.

In the context of Reconstruction, Lincoln pursued what he called “the politics of greatness,” asserting that America as a major power should not rely on other countries for its prosperity. To this end, he pursued a range of policies aimed at strengthening the federal government and modernizing the economy. In addition to erecting tariff barriers to protect American goods, he practiced a novel form of governance which came to be known as ‘indicative planning.’ This method of planning aimed to solve problems of oversupply and shortages by supplying various forms of state investment to reduce the incidence of market disequilibrium.

Although he was still personally popular by 1888, at the age of 79 he declined to seek another term and retired once again, this time for good. He died seven years later at his residence in Chicago, leaving a second set of memoirs unfinished. Many American political parties and figures since Lincoln’s time have claimed a ‘Lincolnian’ legacy: several streets and monuments in the United States were dedicated to his memory after his death. A controversial figure, Lincoln is praised for his success in the Civil War, his strong defence of individual liberty and the dignity of African Americans, and for creating the conditions for the economic growth of the 1890s. On the other hand, he is also criticized for his dictatorial rewriting of the American constitution, his suspension of habeus corpus and his support for scorched earth tactics during the Civil War. However, he has been consistently ranked by both scholars and the public as among the greatest American Presidents.

 

[Rattigan]

Deciding the Theatres: May - December 1913

Images from the fronts (l-r): Russian prisoners in Austrian custody after the Battle of Lemberg; retreating Bulgarian soldiers after the Battle of Adrianpole; one of the first contingents of American soldiers in France, autumn 1913; Ottoman soldiers retreating in winter 1913.

Amidst the confusion of the various mobilisations and invasions of the spring crisis, the fighting throughout the rest of 1913 was initially chaotic but, by Christmas, had settled into the patterns that it would for the rest of the conflict. These months also saw the development of four fronts which were, in many cases, fought between substantially different armies and which would define the rest of the war. The Western Front was fought primarily in Belgium and along the Franco-German border, where the min belligerents were the Belgian, German and French armies (with the American army not joining the fighting in substantial numbers until closer to the end of the year). The Eastern Front was fought over the enormous Northern European Plain largely between the Germans, Austrians and Russians. The Balkan Front saw combat between the Ottoman Empire, Austria, Germany and the Balkan League, largely in the three theatres of northern Serbia, Albania and Thrace. The Caucuses Front was fought between the Russians and the Ottomans, in eastern Anatolia and the Caucuses mountain range.

On the Western Front, the German army managed to bat back Belgian resistance without altering their invasion schedules and many assumed that Belgium would make common cause with their French neighbours, especially once the French army entered Belgian territory on 4 May. However, the Belgian public was outraged by this second encroachment on Belgian sovereignty which made it politically impossible for a formal alliance to be concluded. Instead, the Belgian King and commander in chief, Albert I, publically condemned the French invasion but at the same time ordered his troops to resist only the Germany army. He made an international appeal (mostly aimed at Britain) for intervention, pointedly referring to the “two invasions” of his country.

Nevertheless, the French were encouraged by the fact that they could march unopposed (albeit also unaided) through Belgium and their commander in chief, General Robert Nivelle, essayed an aggressive and destructive strategy based on vigrorous infantry assaults and enormous artillery barrages. This so-called ‘cult of the offensive’ managed to stall the German advance, especially at the Battle of Antwerp in July 1913. However, they failed to forge a decisive breakthrough and, given that members of the American Expeditionary Force would not be present in sufficient numbers until the end of the year, saw the French Army suffer enormous casualties (over 260,000 dead or wounded by the beginning of September).

Meanwhile, France’s Entente ally Russia was having more success on the Eastern Front. Germany had been surprised by the speed of the Russian mobilization in the spring and the Germany army in eastern Prussia and the Austrian army in Galicia was unprepared for the full Russian invasion that began in May 1913. General Aleksei Brusilov launched an aggressive attack into Prussia, rapidly advancing nearly 100 miles and crushing the German forces arrayed against it at the Battle of Allenstein. However, Brusilov’s successes in Prussia were undermined by the failure of the Russian Advance in Galicia, which was decisively defeated by General Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf at the Battle of Lemberg with the loss of 60,000 Russian POWs. Aware that he risked being cut off by a potential Austrian advance north from Galicia; Brusilov was forced to retire behind Russian borders in the winter of 1913, in conformance with a more general withdrawal.

One of the reasons why the Germany Army was not ready for an invasion in Prussia, aside from their arrogance about the speed with this Russia could mobilise, was the fact that the German Eighth Army, under the command of Paul von Hindenburg, had been deployed to Istanbul in February 1913 in order to meet any invasion by the Balkan League. A combined Bulgarian and Greek army under the command of the Bulgarian General Mihail Savov was met on 26 June 1913 outside Adrianople by the Eight Army with support from Ottoman units. The battle resulted in the complete destruction of the Balkan army and Savov’s suicide. The German army then punched into Thrace and followed up with victory at the Battle of Alexandroupolis, which virtually annihilated the Greco-Bulgarian army and kept them off-balance into the spring of 1914. This campaign brought much prestige to Hindenburg and his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff.

Despite the disasters in Thrace, the Balkan League otherwise saw a mixed year of fighting, as the Balkan army successfully completed the occupation of Albania by December and stalled an Austrian invasion of Serbia. The Serbian success in this theatre, against a much larger Austrian army, brought great prestige to its armed forces but is nowadays generally thought to have been the result of uninspired Austrian generalship, which failed to press home its advantage when it could have.

The predominance of the German army in Thrace can be explained by the poor conditions of Ottoman infrastructure in 1913 and the fact that the Russian army commenced an invasion of western Armenia in June, which left few Ottoman forces available to meet the invasion in the west. As it had in the Balkan War the previous year, the Ottoman army found itself beset with issues of supply, communication, morale and leadership. The Russians won notable victories at Karakose and Van, forcing Enver Pasha to not only take personal command of the theatre but also order a general retreat in December, under the cover of the harsh winter conditions.

After setbacks in a number of smaller engagements, the German defeat at the First Battle of Ghent in September saw their assault in Belgium stall for the final time (and, indeed, saw the first engagement of American troops in a European theatre). For the rest of the year, the German army tried a series flanking maneuvers to the north, none of which were successful, and which were countered by a botched French invasion of Alsace which came to an end with German victory at the Battle of Strasbourg. These attacks finished in October and November with a defensive line being stabilized from the English Channel at Zeebrugge to the River Scheldt, then down to Reims and finally in a line to Verdun and through the middle of Alsace-Lorraine to the Swiss border. With the AEF arriving in progressively larger numbers, the German army dug a series of fortifications and decided to try and hold what they could while seeking a breakthrough on other fronts next year.

 

[Rattigan]

Britannia Turns Her Back: The Imperial Conference of 1913

Delegates in debate at the Imperial Conference in London, June 1913

Throughout 1913, the topic of whether or not Britain would intervene in the European war, and on whose side, was one of intense debate. The Belgian government, in particular, made repeated statements requesting British intervention on their behalf. All three of the main parties were divided over the issue, not only over whether or not to remain neutral but also over what side the UK should be on in the event of it joining.

Naturally, their position as the governing party meant that the opinions within the Liberal party were the most important. Within the highest circles of the party, opinion was divided along both realpolitik and ideological lines and the circles of who was on which side for which reason did not overlap perfectly. From an ideological point of view, the plight of ‘plucky Belgium’ aroused considerable feeling within the party and the wider public. However, given the nature of the Belgian situation – with the country caught between two invasions from two conflicting powers – concern for the Belgian people and their government did not necessarily point uniformly towards one particular course of action. Over the course of 1913, arguments over ideology soon devolved to people taking whichever side fitted their pre-existing prejudices. As has since been revealed via the 30-year rule, debates in cabinet were very heated. Herbert Asquith was prominent in arguing for an intervention on the French side, arguing that Britain had a duty to stand by its treaty obligations to defend Belgian neutrality and that Germany, as the nation which had violated neutrality in the first place, was the obvious offender to be chastised. Asquith found himself opposed by Haldane, who was firmly of the view that Germany’s invasion had been a preemptive strike against the aggressive encirclement of France, Russia and the United States.

But it was on the brute question of realpolitik that calls for war against Germany really foundered. Was the prosperity of the Edwardian era really worth risking over an issue as comparatively trivial as the neutrality of Belgium? The question became more and more acute as the months wore on as it became unclear what a British intervention, on either side, would accomplish practically. Opinions ranged from war with France, to war with Germany and even some unconventional arguments that Britain should simply occupy Belgium and expel both invaders by force. Lord Loreburn, the Lord Chancellor, wrote in a private letter to Haldane that “it is quite impossible to reconcile intervention with the Liberal creed with which we professed, and on the force of which we received the support of the country.” In practical terms, supporters of continuing neutrality (of which Lloyd George was a proponent) found that they were able to keep out those in favour of supporting France, Russia and America through an alliance with the pro-Germans in the cabinet. Haldane, the unofficial leader of the pro-German tendency, understood that there was no appetite for direct war with France in an alliance with Germany (for a wide variety of reasons) and so quickly came round to instead forcefully arguing for continued neutrality. With this informal alliance of opinion, Lloyd George was able shelve discussion of the issue until the Imperial Conference, due to take place in June.

Labour and the Conservatives found themselves similarly divided. Many Conservatives made an argument for war on the grounds of patriotism and a certain notion of national greatness. However, such arguments were countered by the same question that had scuppered the Liberal interventionists (i.e. what is British intervention actually meant to accomplish?) and also the isolationist ‘Little Englander’ tendency in the party. For their part, Labour found itself split between its pacifist wing – which opposed all military actions – and its internationalist one – which felt that Britain had a duty to protect small countries like Belgium from aggression. In this context both the Labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald, and the Conservative leader, Walter Long, found that it was easiest to echo Lloyd George’s public commitment to allowing the question to be settled by consultation at the 1913 Imperial Conference.

The Imperial Conference was held in London between 23 June and 20 July 1913. Invitations were extended, as usual, to the heads of government and chief diplomats of each Dominion government but, given the importance of global security and military affairs, on this occasion invitations were also extended to representatives of the Indian government and members of the ICS. The Indian government was represented by Lord Reading (the Viceroy), Lord Ronaldshay (the Chairman of the Council of Ministers) and K.S. Ranjitsinhji (the chancellor the Chamber of Princes) and their staffs.

The attending politicians were given a presentation by General Herbert Kitchener, the Chairman of the ICS, on the progress of the war to date. Kitchener concluded that the way the war was developing indicated that it would not be a short war and instead a protracted conflict. Kitchener also expressed the view that fighting such a war would necessitate massive changes to the relationship between the imperial militaries and their governments. In particular, he raised the prospect that empire-wide conscription would be the only practical way in which the Empire’s militaries could cope with the human cost that had been so devastatingly revealed by the first few months of the war.

In the subsequent debate among politicians and officials, these predictions from Kitchener about the impact of the war on society, in particular conscription, seem to have proven decisive. On 7 July, the Conference issued a communique committing Britain and the Empire to a course of neutrality, also issuing a strongly-worded diplomatic warning to both France and Germany that Belgian independence must be maintained. In response, both countries issued amendments to their stated war aims (which had, in any event, both been produced after the outbreak of hostilities) confirming that they intended for Belgium to remain an independent nation after the conflict. Thus Belgium’s strange legal situation, whereby neither France nor Germany recognized the Belgian army as combatants but the Belgian government was actively ordering resistance to both of them, continued.

Disappointed at the end result of the conference, Asquith felt that he could no longer continue in the cabinet in good conscience. In his resignation speech of 23 July 1913, Asquith denounced the failure of the British government to take a moral lead and uphold its treaty obligations while also bitterly condemning Kitchener for his presentation to the Imperial Conference. In particular, he criticized Kitchener’s speculation about the necessary political reforms required in the event of British intervention, pointing out (correctly, technically speaking) that such decisions are the province of the elected government of the United Kingdom, India and the Dominions rather than of generals. The speech was hailed at the time by committed internationalists and made Asquith something of a cult figure but his isolation from the rest of his cabinet colleagues meant that he wasn’t able to trigger further resignations over the issue of war and he soon faded from public view.

By the winter of 1913, the first six months of intense fighting had left several countries facing worrying shortages of munitions and weapons, most notably France and Russia. In order to make up for the shortfall, they began placing large orders in neutral Britain and the Dominions for raw materials, rolling stock and military hardware. (Similar orders also began to be placed with Italian companies, initially for foodstuffs but later with emerging manufacturing companies such as Fiat.) With the UK and the Dominions now supplying both sides of the conflict, the Royal Navy began its so-called ‘neutrality patrols’ firstly in the English Channel and Mediterranean Sea but, from the middle of 1914, in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. These patrols made the Royal Navy the de facto protectors of all of global commercial shipping and effectively revived the convoy system of the Age of Steam.

 

[Rattigan]

The Iron Circle: 1914

Left to Right: American troops charge at the Battle of the Scheldt; German staff survey the field before the Battle of Kalisz; ships of the Hellenic Navy attempt to disengage at the Battle of Ithaca; Armenian irregulars on the Caucasus Front

Over the course of 1914, the Central Powers attempted to pursue a policy of containment on the Western Front while seeking breakthroughs aggressively on the Eastern and Balkan Fronts. This involved a progressive draw-down of forces where they were felt to be expendable, a point hammered home by the surrender of the west African colonies of Togoland and Kamerun without a shot being fired following the evacuation of most of the German military presence there.

Following their disappointing performance in 1913, the German military command on the Eastern Front was reorganized under Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and renamed Army Group Rupprecht. Rupprecht and von Hotzendorf unified their commands and prepared a concerted plan of action for the 1914 campaign. The offensive began with an Austrian invasion of Belorussia in February, throwing Russian forces back towards Minsk. German forces attacked in Poland, seeking to quickly avenge the losses of the previous year. Brusilov had been reassigned to command the armies in Belarussia and his replacement, Paul von Rennenkampf, was comprehensively outmaneuvered by Rupprecht. The Russian 1st and 2nd Armies were brought to battle outside Kalisz, where the 2nd Army was annihilated and the 1st managed to escape with only a severe mauling by some hithertofore-unsuspected good generalship from von Rennenkampf, who managed to withdraw the rest of his forces in good order. Nevertheless, the combined successes of the Central Powers in Poland and Belorussia had thrown the Russian army into a full retreat in July. The Russians’ severe deficiencies in technical equipment, especially in arms and ammunition, were cruelly exposed, as was the corruption and occasional incompetence. However, the Austro-German advance into the Baltic and towards Petrograd and Moscow would be halted by issues in the Balkans.

A winter offensive by the Austrians over the Carpathians had ground to a halt amidst large casualties and had been called off when they had to be redeployed to join in the campaigns on the Eastern Front. This left the Balkan League free to focus their forces on the German Eighth Army. What success the Central Powers had in this theatre was down to the success of the combined Austro-German fleet, consisting of the German battlecruiser SMS Gobden and light cruiser SMS Breslau and the Austrian Mediterranean fleet, under the overall commander of the German Admiral Wilhelm Souchon. At the Battle of Ithaca in August, Souchon skillfully isolated and destroyed the three cruisers of the Royal Hellenic Navy, making it easier to resupply Hindenburg’s army by sea. However, on land the war went well for the Balkan League, which was able to turn back the Germano-Ottoman assault on Salonica and received the surrender of the remaining Ottoman armies in Albania and Macedonia. Hindenburg was forced to march his army back across Thrace at full speed to face what was expected to be another Bulgarian attack on Adrianople, with serious concerns being raised in Berlin and Vienna that the Ottomans might be knocked out of the war by Christmas.

As bad as the Ottoman army had performed in the Balkans, it was performing worse in the Caucuses. With the Austro-German fleet tied up in the Aegean and the Ottoman fleet completely incapable of engaging the Russian Navy effectively, the Russians had free reign in the Black Sea to support their client Armenian forces in their campaigns. Enver Pasha’s attempted offensive in the spring was routed and Armenian insurgents managed to occupy a large region of western Anatolia and advance as far as Trabzon. The Pasha ordered a further retreat, effectively ceding large portions of eastern Asia Minor to the Armenians.

With things looking bleak, the Ottomans were saved by disunity in the Entente. Russia offered to deploy further armies to the Balkans to form the backbone of a push for Istanbul but this was rejected by the Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I, for whom the capture of the city had been a long-term strategic aim. In retaliation, the Russians withdrew all of their troops from the Balkans and the resulting confusion gave Hindenburg the time to redeploy his troops to Adrianople to prepare his defenses.

Seeking to further relieve the pressure on the Russians in Poland and Belorussia, the commander of the AEF, General Frederick Funston, saw a chance to win his soldiers some glory. On 10 October, Funston and Marshal Joseph Joffre, the Gerneralissimo of the French forces, agreed to combine French and American forces west of Ghent. Funston planned a joint advance along the river towards Antwerp, intending to create a breakthrough in the north which would enable the encirclement of German forces along the Scheldt and pave the way for an attack south towards Reims.

When the assault was launched on 19 October, attacks by the AEF made little progress along the Scheldt, taking small amounts of ground at great cost to both sides. German troops in improvised field defences repulsed American attacks for four weeks before Falkenhayn tried a limited counter-attack with the notional aim of capturing Ghent. The AEF had lost all of the (limited) ground they had gained by 17 November and, until 22 November, Falkenhayn launched a series of mass attacks at the German fortifications at Ghent, suffering huge losses to little effect, before ending the fighting. The AEF had failed to secure a breakthrough because of a mix of the inexperience of the AEF soldiers (although they had been manning the front lines in force since the beginning of the year, this was their first set piece battle) and the way that the battles of manoeuvre of 1913 had been replaced by attritional operations in which American generals (most of whom had gained their experience in fighting various Indian Wars) had little experience.

Despite the inconclusive outcome of the Battle of the Scheldt, it nevertheless became a big propaganda victory for the Roosevelt Administration domestically. Becoming the bloodiest battle in US military history (with the AEF suffering 50,000 killed and wounded), the AEF was portrayed as heroically attempting to liberate the Belgians and defending the city of Ghent against a numerically superior German army. The resulting publicity campaign stimulated the selling of war bonds and an enormous troop registration drive, as men from all across the United States rushed to sign up to take their place in defence of liberty in Europe. Leonard Wood, the Lieutenant-General responsible for the preparation of the successful fortification and defence of Ghent, found himself raised to the status of national hero.

 

[Rattigan]

So, having taken into account some comments about returning to a more UK-focused approach, I now present a (relatively) short update on... Belgian administrative reform!

But seriously, I'm going to try and do a single update covering the next two years of fighting (slight spoiler there, I guess) and follow that up with updates on (1) British political and economic developments since 1913, (2) an intellectual history of ITTL Labour Party since its founding and maybe (3) covering British diplomatic initiatives.

Again, all feedback welcome.

* * *
​

The Scramble for Belgium: The Menen Declaration of 1914

The new military governors of Belgium after 1914: (l to r) Joseph Joffre, Ferdinand Foch, Philippe Petain, Frederick Funston, John Pershing and Leonard Wood

A conference was called by the Entente powers in Menen in December 1914 to discuss the fate of Belgium. There, Frederick Funston and Joseph Joffre forcefully made the case that the passive resistance of the Belgian people had harmed the performance of the Franco-American forces in 1914 and that a more amenable government might be persuaded to commit troops to the fight. These arguments convinced the (mostly French) politicians present and they agreed to come up with a solution which solved these problems while not violating British demands to preserve Belgian independence.

The result was the Menen Declaration of 13 December 1914, which immediately placed all of Belgium under a joint Franco-American protectorate. Joffre was installed as Governor General and Funston as Deputy Governor General. The rest of the country that was under Entente control was divided into four districts each directly governed by a French or American general. The Belgian government was stripped of its competency in foreign and military affairs (in this capacity Felix Wielemans – the Chief of the Belgian staff who was known to have opposed the King’s position of neutrality – was appointed Minister for War) but allowed to retain its power over internal affairs.

This distinction was practically almost meaningless (although the Belgian government did institute out-of-work compensation in 1917) but it proved diplomatically useful. King Albert once more made an appeal to the UK to intervene at the latest slight on his country’s sovereignty but found himself rebuffed by Haldane, who asserted that the right to internal sovereignty had not been infringed. It was a remarkable display of unscrupulousness from Haldane and it reportedly earned him a direct ticking off from King Edward (who was otherwise in favour of the UK’s continuing neutrality). Albert, by now in despair and seeing his country fall into what he thought of as ruin, urged his fellow-countrymen to rise up against the invaders on Christmas Day 1914. When this announcement produced nothing (and, indeed, Belgian troops began to mobilise on Wielemans’ orders quite easily) he abdicated on 15 January 1915 and was replaced by his 13-year old son, Leopold III.

The Menen Declaration, and Britain’s inaction following it, was noticed by the Germans and on 1 January 1915 they declared their own protectorates, this time dividing Belgium into the Protectorate of Flanders and the Protectorate of Wallonia. In order to keep a semblance of a balance of power in the German Empire between Prussia and Bavaria, Crown Prince Wilhelm (the oldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II) was made Governor General of Flanders and Prince Leopold von Bayern (the younger brother of the Bavarian king Ludwig III) was made Governor General of Wallonia. The division was notionally made to accommodate the growing ethnic divisions between the two Belgian regions and was de jure under the authority of the ‘Provisional Government of Belgium’ run by the German Army under Falkenhayn,

 

[Rattigan]

Into the Abyss: 1915-16

Left to Right: The remains of Ghent in December 1916, Russian cavalry charging at the Battle of Grodno, the USS North Dakota sinking after being struck at the Battle of Corfu

1915 was an uneventful year on the Western Front, as both sides were wary that their ‘reforms’ of Belgian government might incite some popular unrest (a legitimate fear but one which did not eventuate) and chose not to pursue an aggressive strategy. Furthermore, German strategy now favoured adopting a holding pattern in the west while shoring up the Balkans and looking for a decisive breakthrough in the east. The French and the Americans, for their part, were only too happy to have this time to build up their defences even further. The greatest diplomatic success for the Central Powers came in April 1915, when Romania confirmed its continued neutrality. King Ferdinand I, who had succeeded to the Romanian throne in 1914, was known to be favourable to the interests of the Entente (eying territory to be carved out of Habsburg Transylvania) but was unwilling to commit his nation to war. This meant that the Central Powers did not have yet another enemy to fight as well as continuing to have access to Romania’s vast oil fields.

In the Balkans, the Ottomans attempted to counter-attack the Bulgarians in Thrace, with ambitious targets for a push on Sofia, but this ground to a halt in a gruesome and protracted stalemate. Similarly, on the Western Front the main combat was the Second Battle of the Scheldt, which proved to be strategically inconclusive but was notable for being the first use of poison gas (by the Germans) and the first major battle in which Belgian troops were deployed on both sides.

Attempting to take advantage of Ottoman weakness at sea, President Roosevelt agreed with Funston’s suggestion to launch a naval attack to help the beleaguered Hellenic fleet in the Aegean. In February 1915, a US fleet of 7 dreadnoughts, 11 pre-dreadnoughts and dozens of cruisers and destroyers sailed into the Mediterranean in an attempt to force engagement with the Austro-German fleet. Seeking to deny the Entente an opportunity to control the entrance to the Adriatic, Souchon put to sea and managed to pin the American fleet between his ships and Corfu on the evening of 18 March. In the subsequent engagement, American sailors had the sunset in their eyes and suffered under attack from the more experienced German gunners. On the following morning, Souchon withdrew into the Adriatic having sunk 3 American pre-dreadnoughts and a dreadnought. An attempt to force the Straits of Otranto the following day ended up with damage being inflicted on the USS Wyoming and USS South Carolina, which caused the American Admiral, William Slims, to call a general withdrawal to Marseille.

The main infantry fighting took place on the Eastern Front, where von Hotzendorf outlined plans for an ambitious encirclement of the remaining Russian forces in Poland, which had been stranded there over the winter of 1914-15 after the Central Powers’ successes in the 1914 campaigning season. Von Hotzendorf’s plans were ambitious but the Germans were happy for him to lead the assault. With the Austrian armies taking the lead, the Central Powers enjoyed great success in May and June, leading to an estimated loss of 30% of the Russian Army either as casualties or captured. This lead to a general retreat, which began in July and ended with von Hotzendorf capturing Minsk in September and Germany completing their occupation of the Baltic by Christmas. Despite operating under a combined command, the German armies under Prince Rupprecht played a junior role in the campaign, preferring to re-consolidate control over the German territories ravaged by the Russian invasion of 1913.

In March 1916, the Austrian army attempted to take advantage of the collapse of Russian power by seeking a decisive breakthrough in the Balkans. However, another attempt to capture Sofia was held up by the Bulgarians and soon became threatened by a pincer attack by Serbian and Montenegrin forces. That same month, the German army in Belgium launched an enormous attack on the American forces stationed around the (now) fortress of Ghent. The German high command was acutely conscious that Roosevelt faced a tricky re-election later in the year and wanted to break the Americans’ will to fight. Contrary to German projections, General Wood put up a stout defence of Ghent and managed to devastate the German attacking forces through the use of saturation artillery fire. In June, with the fighting still ongoing, Wood was asked by Joffre what his strategic plans were and Wood is famously alleged to have responded simply “they shall not pass.” The region around Ghent was turned into a massive killing ground in which 813,000 casualties were suffered on both sides, including 163,000 American dead.

But, nonetheless, Ghent held out and ‘The Defender of Ghent’ saw his popularity skyrocket even further. Leaked reports of his support for the GOP have since been held responsible for Roosevelt’s narrow reelection in November, although many historians have also pointed towards the continued splits between the Liberals and the Greenbacks dividing their vote and allegations of unpatriotic pacificism holding down the Socialist vote.

To take the pressure off the Americans at Ghent, the French agreed to mount an offensive in the summer. The target chosen was Alsace-Lorraine, long a territory of ideological importance for France and one which Entente intelligence suggested was less strongly defended due to the focus on Belgium. General Robert Nivelle outlined an ambitious plan to punch through the German line and cut into Germany territory proper, breaking the trench stalemate and re-starting a war of movement that, it was felt, the Entente was in a better position to win in the west. Nivelle’s plan had initial tactical success, capturing the majority of Alsace Lorraine from 1 to 4 August, but further attacks were repulsed. A large offensive on the Rhine was begun on 16 April but failed to force a strategically decisive breakthrough and was suspended permanently on 26 August. The failure of Nivelle’s grand strategy, along with the high number of French casualties (over 620,000 in total, including 145,000 dead), lead to his recall. A series of mutinies also broke out in the French army that effectively ended its ability to launch major operations for the rest of the year. However, minor operations to shore up control of Alsace-Lorraine and push the Germans against the Rhine continued into October.

The fighting was no less bloody on the Eastern Front, where the Russian army had finally got itself in a position to launch a counter-attack. Under General Brusilov, the Russians attacked in Belarussia, effectively reconquering all of the territory that had been lost to the Austrians in 1915, inflicting 1,300,000 casualties on the Central Powers. The sheer size of these losses meant that the Austrian army was effectively broken as an independent military force and would have to rely heavily on German support for the rest of the war. However, the Russian army also lost around 1,000,000 casualties of their own, raising serious doubts about its effectiveness in the near future.

 

[Rattigan]

The Sleeping Lion: Britain, 1913-1916

The World's Policeman - the Great War gave an opportunity for the Royal Navy to assert itself as the guardian of world trade through the convoy system

Since the declaration following the London Conference in the summer of 1913, domestic pressure on the UK to enter the war had all but disappeared as the fighting in Europe had devolved into a protracted stalemate. Britain, it was thought, could wait out the bloodbath and then pick up the pieces afterwards. Indeed, as the externalities of the war developed, neutrality looked like a more and more attractive and the years immediately after 1913 became a kind of mini-golden age for many people.

Few countries had been ready for an extended war in 1913 and had made little or no preparation such as stockpiling food, munitions or resources. Of the various combatant countries, the United States was probably the best prepared because of its vast natural resources but even America found itself taxed by the requirements of total war: a munitions shortfall in mid-1914 caused a major scandal and resulted in the resignations of the Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy. These shortfalls resulted in increased orders for military supplies, munitions and food being placed with, first British companies, and then industries around the Empire, stimulating an economic boom. Similarly, food shortages in France, Russia and Germany meant that enormous grain and meat shipments were soon being sent from around the Empire.

British and Imperial companies were made all the more attractive by the presence of the Royal Navy. Immediately after the London Conference of 1913, the Royal Navy began its so-called ‘neutrality convoys’ around the world, escorting merchant shipping so long as it flew the national flag of the UK, the Dominions, a British protectorate or any other part of the Empire. After a British-flagged vessel was damaged by fire from a German U-boat in December 1913, the British government sent an undertaking asserting that any future such action would be treated as a declaration of war in London. This not only ended the practical threat to British shipping but also ensured that the unrestricted submarine warfare – which so many had feared in 1913 – did not eventuate.

Soon enough, these convoys were no longer just escorting British shipping but had become vast fleets made up of merchant ships from a variety of countries (who paid for the privilege, of course). One famous convoy left Halifax in June 1914 containing ships flying the flags of each of Germany, France and the United States. By 1916, the British government had been able to finance a large increase in the naval budget paid for entirely by the governments and companies of other countries in fees. The Royal Navy became one of the most recognizable sights around the world and, while the rest of the world’s major powers fought themselves to a standstill, British diplomats and companies got to travel around the world presenting themselves as the pragmatic and peaceful representatives in troubled times.

As it had been for at least the past century, London remained the source of the greatest amount of public and private credit in the world and was the obvious option when the financial commitments of fighting the war placed unprecedented strain on the budgets of the combatant countries. In September 1914, French and American diplomats led a delegation from the two countries to London to secure huge loans from a syndicate of private British banks. The commission included the French Finance Minister, Alexandre Ribot, and the Treasury Secretary, George B. Cortelyou, as well as a number of private bankers (including J.P. Morgan Jr.). Lord Revelstoke had been designated as the United States’ sole purchasing agent in the UK in January 1914 and he took the lead in the negotiations (also reporting back to the Bank of England (of which he had been a board member since 1898) and the British government). On 18 September 1914, it was announced that the syndicate, lead by Rothschild & Sons and Revelstoke’s own bank Barings & Co., had reached a credit agreement with the American and French governments. The loan was for £110,000,000, at that time by far the largest single loan in financial history. However, any hope that this might signal the beginning of a new period of closer alignment between the UK and the Entente was dashed only ten days later, when a similar loan (of £25,000,000) was made by another syndicate of British banks (although there was some overlap – notably Rothschild) to the German government.

 

[Rattigan]

Playing the Orange Card: Conservative politics since 1905 and the election of 1916

Edward Carson - the architect of what became known as the 'Orange Strategy'

The selection of Walter Long as leader in an informal duumvirate with Michael Hicks-Beach (and, after Hicks-Beach retired in 1912, Hugh Cecil) following the disastrous losses of 1904-05 had set the Conservatives on the long road back to recovery. Although divisions that ran through the party over the tariff had not been healed – and, indeed, was a significant drag on their electoral campaign in 1910 – the long spell in opposition that was heralded by the disaster of 1905 gave the party the political space in which to find common ground and a new identity. The basis of this common ground was found in the form of Edward Carson, a prominent barrister from Dublin who had originally been a Liberal but had grown disenchanted by the passing of Home Rule and Chamberlain’s radicalism before eventually entering Parliament as a Conservative in 1895. He had served under Churchill as Solicitor General from 1898-1905 and had managed to keep himself largely untainted by debates over the tariff. Although Carson was, privately, in favour of the tariff, he was not willing to expend political capital on it: he had a far weightier matter on his mind and that matter was the status of Protestants in Ireland.

Since the combination of Home Rule and land reform, the traditional Protestant landowning ascendency which had dominated Ireland from a distance since the 1690s had had their powers rolled back considerably, although those who had been clever enough to adapt (as the Dukes of Devonshire had) had prospered. Nevertheless, most observers agreed that the pre-Home Rule fears of the effects of ‘Rome Rule’ had not eventuated. However, while this assessment had the virtue of truth behind it, it was not one that was shared by many Protestants in Ireland, not least the Anglican and Presbyterian communities in Ulster. While non-Catholics outside of Ulster tended to be in a small minority and either bourgeois or upper class, the Ulster support base was heavily working class. With Long being a committed defender of the interests of non-Catholics and Cecil being a staunch Anglican, the two found that they could find agreement on a need to protect Anglicans and Presbyterians against the threat of Catholicism and Nonconformity. Carson was a natural in this milieu, able to speak to both the membership of the Kildare Club in Dublin and the working class population of Belfast with equal ease.

As the war scare of 1913 passed and a general election in 1915 or 1916 hoved into view, a cabal of senior Conservatives met at the Carlton Club in October 1913 to sketch the outline of this new strategy. Although the meeting was not minuted and a full list of attendees will likely never be known, it is commonly agreed by historians that (along with Long, Cecil and Carson) James Craig, Lord Middleton, Lord Farnham and F.E. Smith were the key contributors to the planning. The aim was to create a message which could be presented to socially conservative groups who had previously voted Liberal, devising policy aims which were typically Conservative but at the same time allowed their voters' problems to be blamed on Catholics and Nonconformists while not explicitly appearing to say so. Inspired by comments made by former Prime Minister Lord Randolph Churchill about the possibility of civil disobedience in Ulster following the passage of Home Rule, the strategy came to be known informally as “playing the Orange card” or “the Orange strategy.”

When Lloyd George dissolved Parliament in April 1916 and called an election for May, the group was given the first chance to road-test their new strategy. The Liberals were caught on the back foot by the new Conservative approach, especially where it pertained to welfare reform. Previously, Conservative criticisms of the Liberal welfare state had been couched in terms of spending restraint but these had found only a limited purchase amongst the working and lower-middle class voters who primarily benefitted from them. Now, however, the Conservatives attacked the welfare system on the grounds of morality, criticizing the so-called “social mothers” who benefitted from government money despite being lazy and raising large families they couldn’t afford, a coded reference to the Catholic community.

The key controversy of the campaign came in April 1916, when the county council of Donegal (in the majority-Catholic (narrowly) County Donegal in Ulster) voted to not proceed with the compulsory purchase of some land belonging to local Protestants for the purpose of building a new Catholic Church. On the night of 24 April, a mob of Catholic locals marched through the town, forcibly removing a number of Protestants from their homes and smashing their businesses. This set off a series of counter-demonstrations by Protestants from around the county and province, which threatened to spark a wider unrest across the island until it was forcibly put down by the Royal Ulster Constabulary on 29 April.

On 30 April, Carson made a tub-thumping speech in Belfast where he condemned the Catholic rioters and pivoted the Conservative campaign to one which stressed “stability and good government.” Liberals accused Carson of pandering to Presbyterians and Anglicans with anti-Catholic prejudices, although he was careful to avoid saying anything too explicit and Carson himself always vehemently denied such accusations. Stunned by this tiptoeing into demagoguery and sectarianism, Liberals began to refer to the Conservative leadership as the ‘Hughligans,’ a play on the uncouth nature of the campaign and Hugh Cecil’s first name (an irony, to say the least, given the nature of some Liberal campaigns within living memory). In the end, the campaign was regarded as a qualified success, with the Conservatives gaining 26 seats, cutting the Liberal majority to 10. Although the party in fact lost some seats in England, it swept the 6 majority-Protestant counties of Ireland and saw gains in religiously divided cities such as Glasgow and Liverpool.

 

[Rattigan]

Keeping the Red Flag Flying: The Edwardian Labour Movement

Kier Hardie - a titanic, if unrepresentative, figure in early Labour history

While the controversy around the Conservative campaign took up a large amount of publicity at the time and attention from historians since then, it was perhaps the achievement of the Labour Party which was the most important development in the election of 1916. With the party more than doubling its parliamentary representation from 40 to 84 seats, it was firmly cemented as a major third force in British politics. Ramsay MacDonald, the party’s leader since 1911, had attracted some criticism from his own party for his firm stance that the UK should stay out of the war in 1913 but was seen to have been largely vindicated by events since then, further cementing his place as one of the leading intellectual figures of the Edwardian left.

Despite the organisation’s importance in subsequent political developments, the origins of Labour were oddly badly recorded and many of the facts remain in slight doubt. The origins seem to have begun with a series of meetings between trades union representatives and the leaders of the Liberals over the winter of 1885-86. In the midst of the Home Rule crisis roiling the country, it appears that some amongst the Liberal leadership thought that the trades unions could be persuaded to take a more explicit stance in favour of constitutional reform in return for closer involvement with the Liberals. However, agreement could not be reached and a special Trades Union Congress in February 1887 adopted a proposal to sponsor individual parliamentary candidates by way of paying for their campaigns. The subsequent ‘Liberal-Labour’ grouping returned 8 MPs in 1890 and 9 in 1895 but they all primarily caucused with the Liberals rather than being the voices of the trades unions.* Thus, in 1897, another Congress resolved to take things one step further by sponsoring their own candidates under their own banner. The so-called ‘Labour Representation Committee’ returned 2 MPs at the 1898 ‘Khaki Election’, a qualified success which persuaded other left wing organisations, notably the paternalistic Fabian Society and the utopian Social Democratic Federation, to agree to join the trades unions in 1899 to form the Labour Movement (although naming conventions mean that it is most often, then and now, called the Labour Party). The most notable absence from the Movement’s founding was the Marxist grouping called the Independent Labour Party, which attended the congress but left midway through.

When the election of 1904-05 came around, Labour was well prepared and made gains of 27 seats, taking particular advantage of the Conservative collapse in London and Dublin. Particularly notable new MPs included the prominent Fabians Sidney Webb, Graham Wallas, Edward Pease, Hubert Bland, Sydney Olivier and George Bernard Shaw, leading one wag in ‘Vanity Fair’ to describe Labour as “the parliamentary wing of the London School of Economics.” Although Keir Hardie, a committed and ideological socialist, was chosen as leader of the parliamentary party, he found the duties of leadership trying and himself further from the mainstream of his MPs. He quit the role in 1906 to concentrate on a variety of individual campaigns. Instead, the leadership devolved on to Arthur Henderson.

Henderson was a committed gradualist and trades unionist and Labour’s ideology concentrated on a unification of the two strands of thought. All the while, the Movement built up its organisation around the country. At the elections of 1910 and 1916, Labour successfully increased its grip on urban constituencies, particularly London, Cardiff and Dublin. Although a class analysis was inevitably an important vector of Labour’s critique of Edwardian society and lessening inequality a central focus of their policy proposals, class warfare, as such, never dominated Labour politics in the way that it did amongst European socialists or American progressives. Instead, the Labour leadership devoted most of its attention to the development of powerful state institutions, building on community groups, trades unions and what would nowadays be called civil society. With this emphasis on the evolution of the state, the early Labour Movement thus owed as much to a kind of Darwinism as it did to Marxism or more traditional socialism. While the specific politics were radical, the Movement also fitted closely into the Edwardian governing tradition, focusing on intellectual discussion and lawmaking and less on agitation.


* They are all listed in the Liberal column in previous updates covering these elections.

 

[Rattigan]

Perfidious Albion: British Foreign Policy, 1913-1916

The Robbers of the World - a German cartoon satirising British diplomatic policy

Although the UK had stayed out of the war, this did not mean that she was uninvolved in global affairs: far from it. In fact, Lloyd George early on regarded Britain as a potential mediator in the war and he and Haldane made repeated attempts to prod the German, French and American governments to enter discussions of peace terms, usually on the basis of status quo ante bellum. In January 1914, Edward Grey was persuaded to return to the frontbench as Under Secretary in the Foreign Office in order to balance out the pro-German sympathies of Haldane. Between them, Haldane and Grey spent almost all of 1914 and 1915 in Germany, France or the United States on various formal and informal diplomatic missions. These missions all failed basically for the reason that both Grey and Haldane were trusted by one side but not the other. Nevertheless, these diplomatic missions did serve a number of wider purposes, not least of which was to increase British international prestige in the face of the continued embarrassment about the diplomatic contortions over Belgian neutrality. Furthermore, the close personal relationship which formed between Grey and the US Secretary of State Edward M. House went some way to repairing Anglo-American relations, which had grown increasingly strained over Britain’s perceived failure to back Roosevelt over going to war in 1913.

At the same time, developments on the Caucuses Front were watched closely from London, with diplomats and generals alive to anything which could threaten the security of the passage to India through the Middle East. In 1914 and 1915, the various armies of the Dominions conducted full and amalgamated military training exercises. In 1915, the Indian Army was fully mobilized in response to the perceived threat of the Armenian Uprising to the neutrality of Persia. Although this move was perceived globally as a flex of the British imperial muscles, it in fact caused a minor scandal at home because the ‘threat’ to Persia was perceived in London as completely absurd and resulted, ultimately, in the recall of the Viceroy, Lord Reading.

In May 1916, a more overt issue regarding the route to India appeared in the form of an uprising in the Arabian Peninsula. Under the leadership of Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca, and the command of his son, Faisal, Arab guerillas captured Medina and Mecca in May, following up with the capture of Tabuk in June, bringing the whole of the Hejaz under their control. Although the uprising was portrayed as coming completely out of the blue (and, for the Ottoman authorities, it may have done), it was in fact the culmination of a series of carefully managed diplomatic negotiations. Since the Young Turk Revolution in 1906, the various governments in Istanbul had grown increasingly pro-Turkish in their attitudes. This had had a number of obvious effects in the Balkans and the Caucuses, including stimulating the Armenian Uprising and boosting the Balkan League’s claim to be the only guarantors of the safety of the Orthodox community. However, less remarked upon at the time was the effect in Arabia, where local rulers began to feel more alienated from the government in Istanbul. Of particular concern was the future of the Caliphate, which had been under the governance of the Ottomans since 1517 but, given their more pro-Turkish bent, many Arabs felt that the Caliphate was beginning to be a specifically Turkish vehicle rather than speaking to the entire Muslim community (as it was, in theory, supposed to).

In this context Lord Cromer, now aged 73 and in his 31st year of administering Egypt in one form or another, decided to embark on a little bit of freelance diplomacy. Starting in 1914, Cromer entered into secret correspondence with Hussein where he indicated that the UK would be willing to provide recognition of an Arab nation that included the Hejaz and other adjacent territories (excepting, of course, the British client kingdoms in the Persian Gulf) as well as approval for the proclamation of an Arab Caliphate of Islam. Although Cromer stopped short of promising military support for such a venture, on 31 March 1916, Emir Abdullah, Hussein’s son, chaired a meeting of Arab tribal leaders in which he proclaimed Hussein to be the King of the Arabs and the true Caliph of Islam.

As with Lord Reading’s mobilization a year earlier, the government in London was less than pleased by the actions of its men on the ground, not least of all because it threatened to break Britain’s neutrality policy. Cromer was recalled from Cairo to London (where he would die quietly the following year) and replaced by Sir Joshua Milne Cheetham. Sir Joshua was an old hand in the colonial civil service and managed the transition smoothly, ensuring that the secret communications, firstly, did not leak out to the wider public and, secondly, assured Hussein that the general tone of them at least had not changed. The British regarded the Hashemites (as Hussain’s family were called) as a better bet to control the route to India than the Ottomans and money was secretly funneled to support them, on the (tenuous) condition that it was not used outside Arabia.

The Ottomans certainly suspected that the British were behind this but were powerless to do anything without the say-so of their German allies, who refused to take steps which might lead to Britain joining the war in Europe.

 

[Rattigan]

The Suicide of Civilised Europe: January - October 1917

Left to Right: American troops retire from the front lines at the Third Battle of the Scheldt, Roger Casement at his trial

Since 1913, the course of the war had shifted back and forth, with seemingly-permanent stalemate on the Western Front, constant managed-Ottoman retreat in the Caucuses, vast changes in territory across eastern Europe and maneuvers in the Balkans which switched from desperate defences of Istanbul to cautious optimism. However, in 1917 the course of the war would switch decisively.

On the Eastern Front, the losses of the Brusilov Offensive had, as suspected, severely damaged the capacity of the Russian army to operate and caused catastrophic falls in morale in both the Russian army and the wider public. This combined with a continued series of crop failures and food shortages, along with the general incompetence of the Tsarist government, to create the conditions for the February Revolution, which overthrew the Tsarist regime and replaced it with a republican provisional government. Although the provisional government kept Russia in the war for the time being, there was now a significant anti-war position in Russian politics and the army itself was only kept in the field by the most tenuous of threads.

A more positive development for the Entente, however, would come only two months later. In April, the Irish émigré Sir Roger Casement was arrested in Paris by the nascent British intelligence services with the connivance of their French opposite numbers. Casement had originally worked for the Foreign Office in a number of capacities, acquiring an international reputation for his two reports into human rights abuses in the Belgian Congo (1905) and Peru (1911). He had retired from government service following the publication of his Peru report and had since drifted into Irish republican circles. Since the Home Rule crisis, the appeal of Irish republicanism had almost completely died away. What remained was a tiny and extremist minority, who were now devoted (however ineffectually) to the violent overthrow of the British state.

Between 1913 and 1917, Casement had travelled surreptitiously around Europe (on a Swiss passport he had received as a reward for his humanitarian work) attempting to drum up foreign support for an Irish uprising. Although most serious politicians regarded Casement as, by this stage, a dangerous fantasist and his schemes the surest way of ensuring that the UK entered the war on the opposing side, he did find ears in Berlin who were, at least, willing to hear him out. In April, he was returning to Ireland from Berlin through France, apparently with plans for guns to be supplied to republicans in County Cork, when he was picked up and taken back to London. In a highly-publicised treason trial in London, Casement’s actions generated a storm of anti-German sentiment, even though the German government forcefully rejected any of Casement’s claims about their support for an uprising in Easter 1918. Anti-Casement riots broke out in numerous cities, including Dublin, and his boyhood home in Sandycove was vandalized.

The patriotic (and/or jingoistic, according to taste) outburst caused by the Casement trial combined with two other important factors to make the march towards war increasingly irresistible. The first factor was the Hashemite defeat of their final two Arab enemies: the Al-Saud and Al-Rashid clans. This left the Hashemites in complete control of the Arabian Peninsula and meant that their eyes turned inexorably towards the Arab-populated lands in Syria, Mesopotamia and the Holy Land. As the Hashemites began to make direct strikes against Ottoman forces in Palestine and Syria, the British posture of neutrality became increasingly untenable and their double-dealing more and more outrageous, with British money and arms now clearly funding the Arab uprising and British ‘volunteers’ (most famously T.E. Lawrence) taking prominent roles in the campaign. When the British government demurred about giving more explicit support, the Hashemites began to make tentative approaches to the Entente about the possibility of a formal alliance over British heads, something London was desperate to prevent.

Finally, the old British concern with retaining the balance of power in Europe once more came to the fore. Over the course of 1914, the British intelligence services had successively cracked the codes of confidential French, American and German communications and the government became increasingly concerned about the tone of messages being sent between important American and French political and military figures. Recent communications spoke of the annexation of the west bank of the Rhine to France and the dismemberment of the rest of the Hohenzollern Empire into up to 30 micro-states. Also mentioned were plans for a French protectorate in Arabia and an American one in Palestine. Grey had long argued that the Entente was now more likely to win the war and that the best way to influence the subsequent peace settlement was to help them do it. In 1917, that argument began to find more ears.

These concerns enmeshed with each other and came to a head on the day of Casement’s execution in Pentonville Prison on 3 August 1917. The same day, Britain declared war on the Central Powers.

British arrival into the war came in the midst of the two biggest offensives of the year. On the Eastern Front, the Russian Minister of War Alexander Kerensky ordered another offensive in July but, rather than prove that Russia remained a reliable member of the Entente, the offensive collapsed after three weeks amidst widespread mutinies and 60,000 Russian casualties. On the Western Front, General Funston launched the Third Battle of the Scheldt on 31 July, over the heads of his political masters in Washington and against the reservations of his French allies. The offensive soon devolved into an horrific stalemate amidst dreadful weather which turned the battlefield into a quagmire. The battle eventually dragged on until November with the cost of 245,000 American casualties, 155,000 French and 270,000 German. Furious, Roosevelt removed Funston from his position in December and replaced him with Wood, who assumed overall command of the AEF.

Forces from around the Commonwealth had been en route to the UK for pre-arranged military maneuvers and were soon re-directed to the two fronts they would be fighting on: the Western Front and in Palestine. Herbert Kitchener, as head of the ICS, took overall command of the forces and Imperial troops and supplies were divided into two expeditionary forces: the Imperial Expeditionary Force (“IEF”) bound for France under the command of Field Marshal John Monash; and the Anglo-Egyptian Expeditionary Force (“EEF”) under the command of the Lightning General himself, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby. The first IEF troops arrived in France in September and the EEF was in place in Sinai by October.

 

[Rattigan]

The Lion Awoken: October - December 1917

Left to right: a stylised painting of Lenin proclaiming the first communist republic, Field Marshal Allenby entering Jerusalem, the SMS Von der Tann explodes under fire from HMS Invincible and HMS Australia

Despite the entry of the British into the war, by the autumn of 1917 things seemed to be getting worse for the Entente on the Eastern Front. After the Kerensky Offensive had petered out, a combined Central Powers offensive pushed back on all the Russian gains from 1916, this time with German forces taking the lead. By October, German forces were running rampant across the Baltic and Belarus and Austrian troops had occupied much of western and central Ukraine. A cabal of conservative Russian generals attempted a coup that went nowhere and, with their army now driven almost to the point of destruction and the home front in total chaos, the provisional government was overthrown in a coup by the Bolshevik Party on 25 October.

While the Bolsheviks had promised peace as part of their programme, they did not immediately sue for it, however, because news was filtering through of radical developments in the military situation in the west.

On 18 October, the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet put to sea in order to block any attempt by the German Kaiserliche Marine to enter the Atlantic. Owing to a mix of broken German codebooks and skillful use of the reconnaissance capabilities of the fleet’s four seaplane carriers, the Grand Fleet was able to ambush the scouting squadron deployed by Admiral Franz Hipper in advance of the main Kaiserliche Marine line, annihilating them in an action on the evening of 20 October. Admiral John Jellicoe was then able to form up his lines in advance of the German ships and on 21 October the two fleets – totaling 245 ships between them – commenced the largest battleship engagement in history. Jellicoe’s adroit maneuvering of his ships, combined with his subordinate David Beatty’s aggressive use of his battlecruisers and the general superior British preparation and gunnery, ensured that they had the best of the day: sinking 14 German ships (in addition to the 5 German ships lost the previous day) to their own losses of 11, with a total of nearly 10,000 deaths on both sides.

After sunset on the 21st, Hipper attempted to disengage and return to port but found that Jellicoe had cut off his retreat. On the following morning, Hipper attempted a breakout of the encirclement but the attempt failed with the loss of a further 6 Kaiserliche Marine ships. With his situation now hopeless, Hipper chose to ignore a cabled message from the Kaiser to attempt to fight his way out and instead surrendered his fleet aboard the Royal Navy’s flagship HMS Iron Duke on the evening of 22 October. Over the next three days, a rolling convoy of British, French, Russian and American ships escorted the entire captured Kaiserliche Marine of 68 ships (10 dreadnoughts, 3 pre-dreadnoughts, 4 cruisers and 51 torpedo boats) to Scapa Flow, where they and their sailors were interred. Updating the House of Commons on the war effort, the War Secretary Alfred Milner, described Jellicoe as “the man who had won the war in an afternoon.”

In the Middle East, Allenby marched the EEF into the Negev desert and captured Beersheba on 31 October. With Ottoman defences in the region weakened by the constant Hashemite attacks, the EEF broke the Ottoman lines at the Battle of Gaza on 8 November. Successfully implementing his lightning war strategy (even if the desert terrain meant that his armies were not as mechanized as he would have wished), Allenby captured around 50 miles of territory in a week. Jerusalem fell on 30 November after a fortnight-long siege and street battle. Meanwhile, Hashemite forces commenced raids on the Damascus Railway, opening up the route to the heart of Syria.

Having begun the year moderately confidently of at least forcing Russia out of the war, the Central Powers ended it in a position of almost complete disaster. With Britain having entered the war and annihilated the Kaiserliche Marine as a serious prospect in three days, both Germany and Austria faced the prospect of total blockade exacerbating already-serious food shortages. Meanwhile, the Ottoman position was now completely untenable, with their forces in a state of total collapse in both Anatolia and the Middle East. In November, Berlin recalled the Eighth Army from Istanbul. Although it was not explicitly said, the Ottomans were now left to their fate.

 

[Rattigan]

Breaking the Iron Circle: The Great War, 1918

Left to right: EEF cavalry maneuvering at the Battle of Megiddo; IEF infantry advancing with tanks at the Battle of Trier; American infantry celebrating the signing of the Armistice of Cochem in July

The destruction of the Kaiserliche Marine as a viable force had completely changed the calculus of the war, not just for the belligerents but also for neutral powers. Thus, when the Entente hosted a supreme war council in London in January 1918, they were joined not only by representatives of all the members of the Entente (including the Bolsheviks) but also, secretly, by representatives of the governments of Italy and Romania. Although both the British and the Russians were keen (albeit for different reasons) to prevent more countries joining in and having territorial claims in an eventual peace treaty, they did not manage to overrule their French and American allies, who wanted more countries on their side and were now actively seeking the dismemberment of the Habsburg and Hohenzollern Empires.

The Russian government was represented by Yakov Sverdlov and Leon Trotsky. Although none of the other Entente powers were comfortable with a Marxist government, they managed to swallow their objections in the circumstances, extending official recognition to Lenin’s new regime. They also agreed that the campaigning in 1918 would focus on the Western, Balkan and Middle Eastern Fronts, allowing the Bolsheviks to have a free reign to consolidate their regime in Russia. In return, Trotsky agreed to keep Russia (formally) in the war, although it was understood that for at least a year their presence would be to prevent the Germans from reassigning too many forces to the Western Front. Furthermore, the Russian representatives negotiated with the British government to keep the lines of credit open to them (albeit under significantly tighter restrictions than had been in place before) and provisionally agreed to continue to pay back loans taken out under the Tsar and the provisional government. Also agreed, but kept off the books, was that the British would receive the Tsar and his family as political refugees.

Although both Wood and Joffre wanted to incorporate the IEF into their own flagging forces, both Monash and Kitchener were opposed to this and received support from Lloyd George, who was adamant that the UK put distance between itself and the rest of the Entente. Instead, it was agreed that the IEF would take the lead role in a fresh offensive along the stretch of line between Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine. Under Monash’s command, the IEF successfully deployed their combined-arms ‘lightning war’ techniques in a crushing victory at the Battle of Reims (8-12 March). This was followed up by another victory at the Battle of Sedan (21-29 March), which broke the German lines and forced them to enter a full retreat back to their defensive positions within Germany itself.

That same month saw further success for the Entente, as Italy and Romania finally entered the war. Romanian forces invaded Transylvania on 7 March, catching the Austrians by surprise and being able to advance as far as Klausenburg before a credible defence could be mounted. The Austrian defenders lacked the numbers and morale to successfully repel an invasion of a region with a significant Romanian population. On 9 April, the Austrians suffered a tactical defeat at the Battle of Timisoara, which forced the Austrians to abandon plans for a counter-attack and from thereon in the front settled into a stalemate.

Under the overall command of Marshal Armando Diaz, the Italian army attacked a hastily-organised Austrian army at the Battle of the Isonzo, winning a victory and breaking into the Slovenian plateau on 15 April, opening up the path to then Vienna itself. Germany hastily attempted to come to the aid of their allies by reassigning Prince Rupprecht and his Bavarian 6th Army from the Eastern Front down to the Alps. However, they arrived too late to help as the Italians inflicted another defeat on the Austrians at the Battle of Ljubljana on 24 May - 4 June. Seeing the situation for what it was, Austrian Emperor Franz Ferdinand I sued for an armistice with the Entente and Rupprecht diverted his army to Munich. There, Rupprecht overthrew his pro-Hohenzollern father, Ludwig III, on 7 June and proclaimed himself King of Bavaria in his stead. Rupprecht then seceded Bavaria from the German Empire and signed the Armistice of Vittorio Veneto with the Italians, Austrians and Romanians on 12 June.

Although the rest of the Entente was furious about the Italian-arranged armistice it was presented as a fait accompli and, with the Austrian government rapidly withdrawing its troops from the Eastern and Balkan Fronts, there was little appetite to actively reject it. The absence of the Austrians in the Balkans meant that the League could organise a (primarily) Bulgarian push for Constantinople. With the German Eighth Army withdrawn, all that stood between the League and Istanbul was a demoralised and under-equipped Ottoman army. The assault began with an artillery barrage on 15 April, which had a devastating effect on Ottoman morale and lead to mass desertions.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the Hejazi army had advanced to the outskirts of Baghdad by January 1918. Faisal, the commander in chief of the Arab forces, successfully outmaneuvered the Ottoman defenders and expelled them in disarray on 11 March. In April, Allenby’s forces resumed the offensive in Palestine and inflicted another decisive defeat on the Ottomans at the Battle of Megiddo on 25 April. By now, the Ottoman lines in Palestine was riddled with holes, allowing the EEF’s mounted and mechanised forces to push through and destroy three Ottoman armies at Sharon, Nablus and the Jordan Valley over the course May. The EEF and Hejazi armies then began to race into Syria, trying to seize as much territory even as they knew that the Ottomans were in armistice negotiations with the Entente. EEF and Arab forces (commanded in Palestine by T.E. Lawrence) joined up and were able to enter Damascus unopposed on 1 June 1918. At the same time, Faisal’s forces advanced up the Tigris and captured most of another Ottoman army at the Battle of Sharqat on 23 June. Two days later, the Arab-EEF army captured Aleppo. The Three Pashas agreed to give up Istanbul without a fight in exchange for agreeing the Armistice of Constantinople on 30 June.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the IEF was advancing along the Mosel River, while French and American forces harried the German armies from the south and north, respectively. Falkenhayn had been removed from command in the winter of 1917 and command handed over to August von Mackensen, who attempted to organise a defence. However, the hastily-constructed ‘Mackensen Line’ was broken by the IEF at the Battle of Trier on 8 June. After this, German forces were in a state of absolute retreat and combat devolved into a series of fighting rearguard actions as the IEF cut towards the Rhine. The defeat at Trier convinced the German High Command that an armistice was the only option. Ludendorff, now in command of what was left of Germany’s reserve forces, informed the Kaiser that he could not guarantee that he could keep his armies in the field and recommended that Germany adopt a democratic constitution to better encourage a favourable peace from the Entente. When Wilhelm II demurred, he was removed in a coup on 3 July. In his place, his son was crowned Wilhelm III and the liberal Max von Baden was appointed Chancellor, with instructions to seek an armistice.

An armistice was hurriedly agreed upon in a British troop train outside Cochem, with negotiations lasting lasting from 8-11 July. It was signed at around 5:30 am and came into effect at midday. The terms of the armistice were an immediate end to all fighting, the surrender of German artillery and machine guns west of the Rhine and the evacuation of German troops from the Rhine Province and the Rhur region. Although peace had still to be negotiated, after 5 years the fighting had finally stopped.

 

[Rattigan]

So, a quick little update today giving approximate casualty figures (in each case rounded to the nearest 1,000) in the Great War.

I'll follow up hopefully later this week with a long update on the peace conference and resulting treaty. I'm afraid that that update will rather prove my lack of photoshop skills because I won't be giving a map or anything or the redrawn Europe. But I'll give details of what territories are moved around (and, if relevant, their OTL equivalents) so hopefully that'll work for everybody.

* * *
​

Entente
Arabia (1916-1918): 35,000 killed; 54,000 wounded; 89,000 total
Armenia (1913-1918): 60,000 killed; 98,000 wounded; 158,000 total
Belgium (1913-1918): 50,000 killed; 37,000 wounded; 87,000 total
British Empire (1917-1918): 215,000 killed; 229,000 wounded; 444,000 total
Bulgaria (1913-1918): 336,000 killed; 120,000 wounded; 456,000 total
French Empire (1913-1918): 1,700,000 killed; 5,000,000 wounded; 6,700,000 total
Greece (1913-1918): 33,000 killed; 26,000 wounded; 59,000 total
Italy (1918): 18,000 killed; 54,000 wounded; 72,000 total
Japan (1917-1918): 360 killed; 900 wounded; 1,260 total
Montenegro (1913-1918): 17,000 killed; 13,000 wounded; 30,000 total
Portugal (1917-1918): 7,000 killed; 14,000 wounded; 21,000 total
Romania (1918): 36,000 killed; 63,000 wounded; 99,000 total
Russia (1913-1918): 3,006,000 killed; 6,600,000 wounded; 9,600,000 total
Serbia (1913-1918): 563,000 killed; 166,000 wounded; 729,000 total
United States of America (1913-1918): 1,056,000 killed; 1,934,000 wounded; 2,990,000 total

Total for the Entente (1913-1918): 7,132,360 killed; 13,530,900 wounded; 20,663,260 total


Central Powers
Austria-Hungary (1913-1918): 1,937,000 killed; 4,750,000 wounded; 6,687,000 total
Belgium (1915-1918): 24,000 killed; 19,000 wounded; 43,000 total
Germany (1913-1918): 2,551,000 killed; 5,270,000 wounded; 7,821,000 total
Ottoman Empire (1913-1918): 965,000 killed; 955,000 wounded; 1,920,000 total

Total for the Central Powers (1913-1918): 5,477,000 killed; 10,994,000 wounded; 16,471,000 total

 

[Rattigan]

Also, because this is an Anglocentric TL, here's how the British Empire casualties break down:

United Kingdom: 142,000 killed; 150,000 wounded; 292,000 total
Australia: 24,000 killed; 26,000 wounded; 50,000 total
Canada: 22,000 killed; 23,000 wounded; 45,000 total
New Zealand: 7,000 killed; 8,000 wounded; 15,000 total
Newfoundland: 1,000 killed; 2,000 wounded; 3,000 total
South Africa: 2,000 killed; 2,000 wounded; 4,000 total
India: 16,000 killed; 17,000 wounded; 33,000 total
Other Colonies: 1,000 killed; 1,000 wounded; 2,000 total

Total: 215,000 killed; 229,000 wounded; 444,000 total

 

[Rattigan]

The Treaty to End all Wars: The Treaty of Paris, 1919

The Big Four: (left to right) images of the British, American, Russian and French delegations to the Paris Peace Conference.

Following the Armistice of Cochem, the various Entente leaders met in Paris in September 1918 to attempt to thrash out the future of the world. There was no pretence of negotiations with the Central Powers: none of Germany, Austria, Hungary or the Ottomans was even invited. Their job was to sort out their own internal politics and then come to sign the treaties when the time was right. This was useful as a way of demonstrating the totality of the Entente’s victory in its various theatres but caused the unintended problem of bringing the splits within the Entente to the fore. At the heart of this was the uncomfortable truth that the Entente was not an alliance of friendly nations but rather a confederation of countries who, for one reason or another, had considered it to be in their interests to go to war against Germany and her allies at some point between 1913 and 1918.

The conference started off on a bad footing when the American delegation raised an official complaint about the size of the British delegation. The British delegation certainly was large – approximately five times larger than the American one – because it incorporated representatives from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. But at the time it was not clear what this intervention was supposed to achieve, beyond allowing Roosevelt to remind everyone that he (and America) intended to be big players at the conference. It certainly did that but it also left a bad taste in the mouth, especially amongst the British.

The first order of business, and the least contentious, was the divvying up of the German Empire in Africa. France was awarded Togoland and the greater part of Kamerun (with a western strip being awarded to Britain). German East Africa was awarded to Britain and Ruanda-Urundi went to Belgium as a kind of roundabout apology for having been invaded and occupied for five years. German South West Africa was awarded to America, their second African colony after Liberia. Almost immediately, things got more contentious, initially over the future of German New Guinea and German Samoa. All of the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom wanted to have them as part of their plans to control the Pacific. Eventually, the United States was awarded German Samoa while Japan got all of the other islands north of the equator and Britain got the territories south of the equator.

Things then moved on to the issue of dismembering the three European empires. France’s aim here was straightforwardly one of revenge for the nearly 7,000,000 casualties killed and wounded they had suffered during the war (the equivalent of around 1 in 3 men in metropolitan France) and Georges Clemenceau, the French Premier, was eager to disestablish the German Empire and dismember the Rhineland into a series of French-dominated republics. The Bolsheviks clear aim was that the people of eastern and central Europe should be offered self-determination (unless they were within Russian territory, of course). Roosevelt too entertained wild plans for American protectorates in Europe. The British position was a more cynical one: desperate to keep Germany a viable counterweight against a vengeful France and a communist (and therefore unreliable) Russia.

In addition to the secession of Bavaria, Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine to France, who also received the Saar region as a 15-year protectorate. Additionally, northern Schleswig was transferred to Danish sovereignty and Moresnet to Belgian. Negotiations over the east were more complicated. Volunteer Polish legions had been raised during the war and fought on the side of the Entente, leading many to argue that the time had come to restore a Polish homeland. However, much of historical Poland was within Russia and it was clear that there was no question of Russia giving that up. Instead, they came up with a compromise. The German provinces of Posen, Silesia and West Prussia were combined with the Austrian provinces of Silesia and Galicia & Lodomeria and the Hungarian districts of Pressburg, Kaschau and Ruthenia to create the awkwardly named Polish-Slovakian Commonwealth.

The Habsburgs were to recognize Austria and Hungary as separate nations under the same monarch, something that Franz Ferdinand had done anyway via the Budapest Declaration of 16 July 1918. In addition to the territories already awarded to Poland, Austria lost South Tyrol and Trentino to Italy; Istria, Dalmatia and Bosnia to Serbia; and Bukovina to Romania. Hungary lost Transylvania south of the Mures river and east of the Somes to Romania; and Banat to Serbia.

In the Balkans, Northern Epirus was carved out of Albania and awarded to Greece while the rest was renamed Arbanon and gifted to Italy as a protectorate. It was a surprisingly dismissive end for the country that had, after all, caused the whole war. Greece was also rewarded with Smyrna and the surrounding territory; Bulgaria was awarded the European side of the Marmara region; and the Hejazi Kingdom was granted international recognition as the sovereign of the Arabian Peninsula and the former Ottoman territories in the Middle East south of Asia Minor; Armenia was also carved out of the Ottoman vilayets of Van, Erzurum, Mamuretulaziz, Bitlis, Dlyarbekir, Sivas and Trebizond. It was agreed that Kurdish representatives would have a referendum on their independence when agreement could be reached on their borders at a future date. Constantinople (as it was now officially called) was declared an independent international city.

It was over the question of reparations that the British found their delegation under the most pressure. Russia and France were keen to extract as much money in reparations as they could from the defeated powers, not just out of vengeance but also to allow them to pay back their substantial loans to the UK. The Americans, in a better financial position than their allies, sided more closely with the British, arguing that the Central Powers should pay some reparations but they should be kept to a minimum (perhaps only to cover the partial cost of the war). However, this emerging Anglo-American united front was shattered in January, when President Roosevelt fell ill from the Spanish influenza sweeping the world. Following Roosevelt’s death on 29 January, the conference was delayed for a month and, when it began again, new President Hiram Johnson had decided on a very different approach.

Johnson’s attitude was that the United States should not have gotten involved in the war in the first place and that, given that they had, his sole duty was to extract the maximum possible monetary payment from the Central Powers and then return home with as few international commitments as possible. Thus, South West Africa and Samoa were handed to Britain and he took a far more aggressive attitude towards Central Powers reparations. Over two months of hard negotiations, the eventual price of reparations was set at: £7,000,000,000 to be paid by Germany; £100,000,000 to be paid by each of Austria and Hungary and £40,000,000 to be paid by the Ottomans. These were enormous sums, especially considering that each of the four defeated combatants were already struggling under their own depleted treasuries and loans owed to foreign (primarily British) creditors in any event. John Maynard Keynes, a member of the British delegation, forcefully argued that these levels of reparations would be un-repayable and would only lead to resentment in those countries. Privately, many agreed but were not in a position to argue.

The final big outcome was the establishment of the League of Nations, based in Constantinople. The charter was drawn up by a predominantly-British commission headed by Jan Smuts, Arthur Balfour and Lord Bryce. Although initially conceived as the first step towards a unified global government, it soon became clear that Russia and France would not tolerate the presence of the Central Powers, at least initially. Eventually it was agreed that it would comprise a regular meeting forum for the various members of the Entente but even that wish came to an end in March 1919, when President Johnson made it clear that the United States had no intention of being involved. When its structures were agreed in May 1919, it was little more than a talking shop for members of the Entente. Nevertheless, it was the first worldwide intergovernmental organization with the principal mission of maintaining world peace through collective security, disarmament and arbitration, and many people were excited about its possibilities.

When the final Treaty of Paris was signed with the Central Powers on 10 April 1919, it was the culmination of a peace process of truly vast scope. But, at the same time, it was one where few could say they came out totally satisfied: Germany, Hungary and what was left of the Ottomans all nursed continued grievances over their territorial dismemberment; Austria looked nervously over its shoulder at an emboldened Serbia and communist Russia; Poland had no natural borders and faced, once more, being caught in between the vice of Germany and Russia; Russia felt angry at not having got its way; France still felt that its gains had not avenged the deaths of all of its citizens; Italy felt that the odd bits of territory they got was scant reward for 18,000 dead; the list went on and on. But it was, however, a peace, at least for now.