A new TL from my hand. Hope you all enjoy it and that I didn't over do it.
1915, was a year of stalemate or so it seemed, but as trench warfare continued, some people were attempting to find a way to score a decisive victory. One of them was admiral lord John “Jackie” Fisher who devised the “Baltic Project” as opposed to Winston Churchill’s Dardanelles plan which involved landing as close as possible to Constantinople and then capture the Ottoman capital to knock them out of the war. Lord Fisher was able to convince the admiralty to support his plan due to his status, experience, persuasive capabilities, enthusiasm and the opportunity to end the war; this plan was to land a massive force in Pomerania on the Baltic coast to march for Berlin and knock out Germany that way. The plan, however, did see some tweaking with three battlecruisers with a shallow draft being put on hold in favour of escort and scouting vessels like minesweepers and destroyers which were deemed more important by the Royal Navy’s leadership than battlecruisers. The plan required some preparation time and so was set to take place in late March/early April 1916 while the Dardanelles approach was shelved for the time being to Churchill’s dismay. In the meantime, the western front continued as a bloody massacre with Germany launching the Second Battle of Ypres.
Admiral John Fisher (1841-1917).
This battle was started to disrupt Franco-British planning, draw away attention from major offensives on the eastern front and test a new weapon: poison gas. On April 22nd 1915 they unleashed 168 tonnes of chlorine gas which crept across no man’s land – since it was heavier than air – and into British trenches. The green-yellow cloud caused the defenders to suffocate while those in the rear fled in panic, causing a six kilometre wide gap in enemy lines. The Germans, however, were unprepared for this level of success and didn’t have the reserves to exploit this temporary breakthrough. Another gas attack three days later caused a five kilometre Anglo-French withdrawal, but Canadian forces countered and the 16th Irish division withstood determined German offensives and so the German offensive petered out and a new bloody quagmire resulted. The western front further saw more air battles with the introduction of the Fokker monoplane which caused the “Fokker Scourge” as they were a terror for Entente pilots who rightly feared these new, fast planes. On the eastern front, Russia was faced with another defeat in the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes in February 1915 which Von Falkenhayn had hesitatingly approved since he believed the western front was more important. General Hindenburg’s Eighth and Tenth Armies faced the Russian Tenth and Twelfth Armies which they drove back 100 kilometres in a week. The worst loss was the 20th corps under general Bulgakov which was surrounded and destroyed by the German Tenth Army in the Augustow forest. The Russians retreated in chaos and many were made prisoner. In the end the Russian Twelfth Army counterattacked and checked Germany’s advance. Russia wasn’t knocked out of the war although Germany had succeeded in pushing Russian forces out of German territory. The Germans followed on their success with the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive in which they attempted to break the frontline. German and Austro-Hungarian troops attacked in May 1915 after an artillery bombardment which caught the Russians by surprise. They were driven back by the Central Powers and suffered heavy casualties while 750.000 more would be imprisoned by September. Przemysl was gratifyingly enough recaptured too in this offensive. The Russian stavka decided to reduce the salient and retreat to straighten out the frontline to not get surrounded and they succeeded in late 1915.
In the meantime, Italy had entered on the side of the Entente powers although that was not necessarily good. Their commander Luigi Cadorna had no combat experience, was incompetent and was disliked among his men. The Italian army also had little transport capabilities and aging weaponry. Their offensives toward the Isonzo river were meant to breakthrough into Slovenia to take Fiume and Trieste. Another unattainable objective was a breakthrough into the less mountainous Styria to capture Vienna, but their offensives were repulsed and incurred heavy losses which had a demoralizing effect, decreasing the Italian army’s effectiveness further. Further Italian efforts stranded with negligible gains if any and Austria-Hungary counterattacked which caused further defeats. Britain and France decided to conduct no offensives in the latter half 1915 in preparation for the Baltic Project of admiral Fisher to which the war economy was now geared. The steel, arms and shipping industries were now busy churning out destroyers, scouting vessels and minesweepers. The Russians were informed and told to hold out on the defensive and that they had a part in the Baltic Project too. They were requested to launch an offensive around the time of the landings in northern Germany to distract the Germans. In the meantime, the shelving of the Dardanelles plan made sure that Greek neutrality was maintained to the anger of the Serbs who had retreated with their army into Albania.
In the meantime, the Germans figured out something was up although they had failed to penetrate into the British admiralty and therefore didn’t know what it was. They did know that British naval shipyards were busy churning out minesweepers, destroyers and other escort/scout vessels. These ships all had shallow drafts and were needed for any kind of amphibious operation to escort the landing vessels and the question that remained was where they would land. They were not vessels that were needed for a clash between the all-big-gun battleships and a conclusion was soon drawn: there would be a landing somewhere. An obvious choice for an amphibious operation was Belgium in order to attack German lines from behind to outflank them and enforce a German withdrawal from the little kingdom. The other option was to land somewhere along the north sea coast of Germany and march for either Berlin or the Ruhr Area where most of Germany’s war industry was. The loss of these industries would choke Germany’s ability to wage war while the loss of Berlin would likely cause the political leadership to cave in. A last, but least likely option was a violation of Dutch neutrality to push into the Ruhr Area from there, but German admirals didn’t believe the Entente would violate the territory of a neutral. A large build-up of amphibious vessels was also detected on England’s east coast which confirmed suspicions sparked by the different direction of British naval construction.
1915 didn’t see any more attempts to achieve a final breakthrough and so the bloody stalemate on the western front continued. Italy made little headway and the eastern front saw little changes in the winter of 1915/’16. Both sides were preparing for the invasion which was soon to come. Britain was cranking out ships while meticulously planning for the invasion, setting objectives for the invading troops (such as establishing a secure perimeter) while drawing up a battle plan to counter its nemesis the Imperial German Navy. Germany, in the meantime, felt that a north German invasion was more likely and considered landings in Belgium a secondary option. Troops were pulled from the eastern front and were held in reserve to counter the landings. The Grand Fleet finally set sail on April 22nd 1916 which immediately put the High Seas Fleet on high alert. U-boats out in the North Sea sent word that the British were steaming for the Skagerrak, the water that separates Denmark from Sweden. The High Seas Fleet transited the Kiel Canal shortly hereafter and all of Germany’s mine laying vessels were deployed to the Baltic Sea and started to mine the entire western part as well as the Skagerrak extensively while U-boats prowled. Reportedly, admiral Scheer said that so many sea mines had been laid that one could walk from Denmark to Sweden.
The British Grand Fleet steaming toward the Baltic in 1916.
Admiral lord Fisher led the Grand Fleet himself and it was supposed to be the crown on his long career which had started in the age of wooden sail ships and ended in the age of battleships and the first submarines and aircraft carriers. Denmark caved to German demands quickly since they were a de facto satellite state of Germany anyway and so Danish intelligence was added to German knowledge. The first clashes took place just north of Copenhagen with German destroyers and light cruisers engaging the screen of British minesweepers. They fled the battle, leaving considerable amounts of sea mines still in place. The destroyer escorts of the minesweepers were too far away since they needed to protect the big battleships from German U-boat attacks which left the minesweepers dangerously exposed. The battle took place northeast of Copenhagen and was witnessed by Danish onlookers who saw gunfire in a short but intense battle. The scuffle was short and only a few minesweepers were damaged after exchanging a few shots and just one was lost, but their withdrawal due to lack of cover was the hole in Fisher’s plan. This would prove to be the largest naval battle in history between two battleship fleets. Admiral John Fisher pressed on and waved away the initial setback, but his overconfidence soon came to haunt him as he started losing ships to sea mines. HMS Conqueror hit two sea mines and was damaged so severely that she couldn’t continue and had to turn back while taking in water. Several other ships hit sea mines and were damaged or sunk such as battlecruiser HMS Invincible. The Invincible hit a German mine and the resulting explosion caused the ammunition chamber to explode, sinking the ship in a matter of minutes. Armoured cruiser HMS Duke of Edinburgh also sank although the cause was debated (it was suspected to be a mine, but survivor accounts state they saw two stripes under water which would indicate torpedoes) and her sibling HMS Warrior was also lost. Losses started to pile up although they weren’t yet crippling by any means as the Royal Navy had many more ships to fight with. The great battle erupted on the morning of April 24th when the High Seas Fleet met with the Royal Navy as they steamed due west, putting them in an advantageous position. The British fleet was to their east where the sun was rising, making their silhouettes perfectly visible on the horizon and targets for German gunners. The brand new battleship SMS Bayern opened fire with her 380 mm guns and HMS Queen Elizabeth was the first to return fire, starting the battle. The British order of battle was as follows: 27 dreadnoughts, 8 battlecruisers, 6 armoured cruisers, 24 light cruisers and 98 destroyers (including the losses due to mines so far). Germany fielded the following ships: 17 dreadnoughts, 10 pre-dreadnoughts, 5 battlecruisers, 11 light cruisers and 61 destroyers.
The German High Seas Fleet setting out to face its arch nemesis: the Royal Navy.
The Germans got off the first salvo and had an initial advantage as they scored a number of hits on British capital ships and caused damage. The larger British fleet returned fire and scored a few hits too although they had inflicted less damage than German fire which had been more accurate. A battle ensued and the Germans had a plan; they needed a good one since they knew they were still outnumbered in spite of British losses of capital vessels. The battle went on for an hour as both sides exchanged shells and did some serious damage. Cruiser Von der Tann received several hits by British 15 inch guns of battleship HMS Barham and sunk while Seydlitz experienced severe damage to her superstructure although her fighting capability was only slightly damaged. German battleship SMS Bayern engaged the older and less well armed and armoured HMS Colossus, pummelling her with her own 380 mm guns while Germany’s admirals introduced a new surprise: U-boats. They attacked the Grand Fleet from the east and one torpedo hit the rudder of HMS Colossus, preventing the ship from manoeuvring. She was critically damaged and had to be towed away since she could no longer travel on her own power. The British main force returned fire and sank German pre-dreadnought battleship SMS Braunschweig. With Seydlitz damaged, Von der Tann and Braunschweig sunk, and SMS Deutschland being hit hard to the point that it was crippled and had to leave for repairs, the Germans initiated the next part of their plan. They feigned a retreat and admiral Fisher ordered a pursuit, but what he didn’t know was that there was a minefield in between him and his German opponents and he steamed straight into it. Several ships hit mines and were either damaged or sunk while German U-boats added to the chaos. They unleashed as many torpedoes as possible in an attempt to drive the British further into the minefield while the German battle line shelled them. Chaos quickly ensued and losses now started to seriously mount for the Royal Navy.
Battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable sinking after German shells hit her ammunition storage, April 24th 1916.
In the meantime, the landing vessels were receiving fire from land-based German artillery although they did succeed in landing. The Germans counterattacked with over 150.000 men and pinned British landing forces down. At the same time, the Russians had launched their offensives into East Prussia. After making initial headway, their losses increased heavily. The Russians attacked with 500.000 men on April 23rd 1916, but the Germans defended fiercely and inflicted serious casualties. In the meantime, admiral Fisher had ended up in a bloodbath and reluctantly ordered a retreat since his plan had turned into a cataclysmic defeat. Minefields, torpedoes and shells had caused unseen losses for the Royal Navy which led to the operation being dubbed “Fisher’s Folly”. In total since the start of the operation eight battleships had been put out of commission due to critical damage while another six had been sunk, five battlecruisers had been sunk and a sixth was critically damaged, five armoured cruisers were sunk, twenty destroyers were sent to the bottom and twelve light cruisers were also sunk. This reduced the Grand Fleet’s combat ready force to 14 dreadnoughts, three battlecruisers, three armoured cruisers, 78 destroyers and 14 light cruisers. By contrast the German force still had 17 dreadnoughts, eight pre-dreadnoughts, four battlecruisers, nine light cruisers and 54 destroyers left that were still in operation. While the Royal Navy backed off, a corps sized force of some 60.000 men was still stuck on the coast of Pomerania and they surrendered on April 27th when it was clear no rescue would come.
The shockwaves of this defeat reverberated throughout the world since it radically changed the strategic situation. Britain was no longer the dominant force in the North Sea and now the High Seas Fleet would be able to roam free. King George V exclaimed “My God, lord Fisher, what have you done?” when he heard the news. Lord Fisher retired in disgrace while the news made headlines everywhere across the world, introducing the term “cluster fuck”. The Germans celebrated and Emperor Wilhelm II was overjoyed, but British morale received a serious blow and the peace faction, which had been silenced in 1914, rose again clamouring for peace. They blamed prime minister H.H. Asquith for the shattering defeat and called entering the war an enormous blunder. Asquith took the brunt of the political offensive while Fisher retired into isolation with his name now synonymous for “blundering incompetent moron”. He would die the following year of a heart attack although those few around him said it was the defeat in 1916 that had killed him. A vote of no confidence was issued in prime minister Asquith after this loss in which half of the Grand Fleet was resting on the ocean floor or in dry dock for the next few months.
Germany turned up the heat and launched an offensive in the north west of France on May 5th. With a massive but short artillery barrage and use of chlorine gas, Germany achieved surprise and succeeded in breaking through using over 200.000 men. They succeeded in capturing Amiens and Hasbrouck before they were stopped; these were two important transportation hubs for the entire western front and so logistics became much more complicated. In the meantime, the Russian offensive petered out with 50.000 casualties and another 100.000 as prisoner of war in German hands. More perished in the retreat as Germany pursued them, leading to heavy rearguard battles and chaos among the Russians. Moreover, the Germans had managed to convince Romania to join in for Bessarabia and so they had declared war on April 30th 1916. Asquith lost the vote of no confidence and the more peace minded David Lloyd George took over as the new prime minister. On May 10th 1916, the British requested an armistice and an “honourable peace” from the Germans through the Swiss embassy in London. French prime minister Aristide Briand was furious with the British; he knew France would have a hard time holding the Germans without the BEF since it would lose the Entente four entire field armies equal to several hundred thousand men on the western front. Tsar Nicholas II was similarly disappointed with the British peace request, but decided Russia would fight it alone; they had incurred heavy casualties so far and had lost many battles to the Germans which lowered morale although Russia’s fighting spirit wasn’t completely gone. The weakest Entente member, Italy, had incurred nothing but severe defeats and mounting death tolls for negligible gains.
David Lloyd George, the new prime minister for the Liberal Party and the only Welsh prime minister of Great Britain.
France, Russia and Italy decided to continue the war without Britain in hopes of enforcing a peace favourable to them while Britain started peace negotiations. Britain was now the black sheep among the Entente powers and relations cooled. Britain was now a neutral power, but the war continued.
The Folly of Admiral Fisher
Chapter I: The Baltic Project, 1915 – 1916.
1915, was a year of stalemate or so it seemed, but as trench warfare continued, some people were attempting to find a way to score a decisive victory. One of them was admiral lord John “Jackie” Fisher who devised the “Baltic Project” as opposed to Winston Churchill’s Dardanelles plan which involved landing as close as possible to Constantinople and then capture the Ottoman capital to knock them out of the war. Lord Fisher was able to convince the admiralty to support his plan due to his status, experience, persuasive capabilities, enthusiasm and the opportunity to end the war; this plan was to land a massive force in Pomerania on the Baltic coast to march for Berlin and knock out Germany that way. The plan, however, did see some tweaking with three battlecruisers with a shallow draft being put on hold in favour of escort and scouting vessels like minesweepers and destroyers which were deemed more important by the Royal Navy’s leadership than battlecruisers. The plan required some preparation time and so was set to take place in late March/early April 1916 while the Dardanelles approach was shelved for the time being to Churchill’s dismay. In the meantime, the western front continued as a bloody massacre with Germany launching the Second Battle of Ypres.
Admiral John Fisher (1841-1917).
This battle was started to disrupt Franco-British planning, draw away attention from major offensives on the eastern front and test a new weapon: poison gas. On April 22nd 1915 they unleashed 168 tonnes of chlorine gas which crept across no man’s land – since it was heavier than air – and into British trenches. The green-yellow cloud caused the defenders to suffocate while those in the rear fled in panic, causing a six kilometre wide gap in enemy lines. The Germans, however, were unprepared for this level of success and didn’t have the reserves to exploit this temporary breakthrough. Another gas attack three days later caused a five kilometre Anglo-French withdrawal, but Canadian forces countered and the 16th Irish division withstood determined German offensives and so the German offensive petered out and a new bloody quagmire resulted. The western front further saw more air battles with the introduction of the Fokker monoplane which caused the “Fokker Scourge” as they were a terror for Entente pilots who rightly feared these new, fast planes. On the eastern front, Russia was faced with another defeat in the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes in February 1915 which Von Falkenhayn had hesitatingly approved since he believed the western front was more important. General Hindenburg’s Eighth and Tenth Armies faced the Russian Tenth and Twelfth Armies which they drove back 100 kilometres in a week. The worst loss was the 20th corps under general Bulgakov which was surrounded and destroyed by the German Tenth Army in the Augustow forest. The Russians retreated in chaos and many were made prisoner. In the end the Russian Twelfth Army counterattacked and checked Germany’s advance. Russia wasn’t knocked out of the war although Germany had succeeded in pushing Russian forces out of German territory. The Germans followed on their success with the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive in which they attempted to break the frontline. German and Austro-Hungarian troops attacked in May 1915 after an artillery bombardment which caught the Russians by surprise. They were driven back by the Central Powers and suffered heavy casualties while 750.000 more would be imprisoned by September. Przemysl was gratifyingly enough recaptured too in this offensive. The Russian stavka decided to reduce the salient and retreat to straighten out the frontline to not get surrounded and they succeeded in late 1915.
In the meantime, Italy had entered on the side of the Entente powers although that was not necessarily good. Their commander Luigi Cadorna had no combat experience, was incompetent and was disliked among his men. The Italian army also had little transport capabilities and aging weaponry. Their offensives toward the Isonzo river were meant to breakthrough into Slovenia to take Fiume and Trieste. Another unattainable objective was a breakthrough into the less mountainous Styria to capture Vienna, but their offensives were repulsed and incurred heavy losses which had a demoralizing effect, decreasing the Italian army’s effectiveness further. Further Italian efforts stranded with negligible gains if any and Austria-Hungary counterattacked which caused further defeats. Britain and France decided to conduct no offensives in the latter half 1915 in preparation for the Baltic Project of admiral Fisher to which the war economy was now geared. The steel, arms and shipping industries were now busy churning out destroyers, scouting vessels and minesweepers. The Russians were informed and told to hold out on the defensive and that they had a part in the Baltic Project too. They were requested to launch an offensive around the time of the landings in northern Germany to distract the Germans. In the meantime, the shelving of the Dardanelles plan made sure that Greek neutrality was maintained to the anger of the Serbs who had retreated with their army into Albania.
In the meantime, the Germans figured out something was up although they had failed to penetrate into the British admiralty and therefore didn’t know what it was. They did know that British naval shipyards were busy churning out minesweepers, destroyers and other escort/scout vessels. These ships all had shallow drafts and were needed for any kind of amphibious operation to escort the landing vessels and the question that remained was where they would land. They were not vessels that were needed for a clash between the all-big-gun battleships and a conclusion was soon drawn: there would be a landing somewhere. An obvious choice for an amphibious operation was Belgium in order to attack German lines from behind to outflank them and enforce a German withdrawal from the little kingdom. The other option was to land somewhere along the north sea coast of Germany and march for either Berlin or the Ruhr Area where most of Germany’s war industry was. The loss of these industries would choke Germany’s ability to wage war while the loss of Berlin would likely cause the political leadership to cave in. A last, but least likely option was a violation of Dutch neutrality to push into the Ruhr Area from there, but German admirals didn’t believe the Entente would violate the territory of a neutral. A large build-up of amphibious vessels was also detected on England’s east coast which confirmed suspicions sparked by the different direction of British naval construction.
1915 didn’t see any more attempts to achieve a final breakthrough and so the bloody stalemate on the western front continued. Italy made little headway and the eastern front saw little changes in the winter of 1915/’16. Both sides were preparing for the invasion which was soon to come. Britain was cranking out ships while meticulously planning for the invasion, setting objectives for the invading troops (such as establishing a secure perimeter) while drawing up a battle plan to counter its nemesis the Imperial German Navy. Germany, in the meantime, felt that a north German invasion was more likely and considered landings in Belgium a secondary option. Troops were pulled from the eastern front and were held in reserve to counter the landings. The Grand Fleet finally set sail on April 22nd 1916 which immediately put the High Seas Fleet on high alert. U-boats out in the North Sea sent word that the British were steaming for the Skagerrak, the water that separates Denmark from Sweden. The High Seas Fleet transited the Kiel Canal shortly hereafter and all of Germany’s mine laying vessels were deployed to the Baltic Sea and started to mine the entire western part as well as the Skagerrak extensively while U-boats prowled. Reportedly, admiral Scheer said that so many sea mines had been laid that one could walk from Denmark to Sweden.
The British Grand Fleet steaming toward the Baltic in 1916.
Admiral lord Fisher led the Grand Fleet himself and it was supposed to be the crown on his long career which had started in the age of wooden sail ships and ended in the age of battleships and the first submarines and aircraft carriers. Denmark caved to German demands quickly since they were a de facto satellite state of Germany anyway and so Danish intelligence was added to German knowledge. The first clashes took place just north of Copenhagen with German destroyers and light cruisers engaging the screen of British minesweepers. They fled the battle, leaving considerable amounts of sea mines still in place. The destroyer escorts of the minesweepers were too far away since they needed to protect the big battleships from German U-boat attacks which left the minesweepers dangerously exposed. The battle took place northeast of Copenhagen and was witnessed by Danish onlookers who saw gunfire in a short but intense battle. The scuffle was short and only a few minesweepers were damaged after exchanging a few shots and just one was lost, but their withdrawal due to lack of cover was the hole in Fisher’s plan. This would prove to be the largest naval battle in history between two battleship fleets. Admiral John Fisher pressed on and waved away the initial setback, but his overconfidence soon came to haunt him as he started losing ships to sea mines. HMS Conqueror hit two sea mines and was damaged so severely that she couldn’t continue and had to turn back while taking in water. Several other ships hit sea mines and were damaged or sunk such as battlecruiser HMS Invincible. The Invincible hit a German mine and the resulting explosion caused the ammunition chamber to explode, sinking the ship in a matter of minutes. Armoured cruiser HMS Duke of Edinburgh also sank although the cause was debated (it was suspected to be a mine, but survivor accounts state they saw two stripes under water which would indicate torpedoes) and her sibling HMS Warrior was also lost. Losses started to pile up although they weren’t yet crippling by any means as the Royal Navy had many more ships to fight with. The great battle erupted on the morning of April 24th when the High Seas Fleet met with the Royal Navy as they steamed due west, putting them in an advantageous position. The British fleet was to their east where the sun was rising, making their silhouettes perfectly visible on the horizon and targets for German gunners. The brand new battleship SMS Bayern opened fire with her 380 mm guns and HMS Queen Elizabeth was the first to return fire, starting the battle. The British order of battle was as follows: 27 dreadnoughts, 8 battlecruisers, 6 armoured cruisers, 24 light cruisers and 98 destroyers (including the losses due to mines so far). Germany fielded the following ships: 17 dreadnoughts, 10 pre-dreadnoughts, 5 battlecruisers, 11 light cruisers and 61 destroyers.
The German High Seas Fleet setting out to face its arch nemesis: the Royal Navy.
The Germans got off the first salvo and had an initial advantage as they scored a number of hits on British capital ships and caused damage. The larger British fleet returned fire and scored a few hits too although they had inflicted less damage than German fire which had been more accurate. A battle ensued and the Germans had a plan; they needed a good one since they knew they were still outnumbered in spite of British losses of capital vessels. The battle went on for an hour as both sides exchanged shells and did some serious damage. Cruiser Von der Tann received several hits by British 15 inch guns of battleship HMS Barham and sunk while Seydlitz experienced severe damage to her superstructure although her fighting capability was only slightly damaged. German battleship SMS Bayern engaged the older and less well armed and armoured HMS Colossus, pummelling her with her own 380 mm guns while Germany’s admirals introduced a new surprise: U-boats. They attacked the Grand Fleet from the east and one torpedo hit the rudder of HMS Colossus, preventing the ship from manoeuvring. She was critically damaged and had to be towed away since she could no longer travel on her own power. The British main force returned fire and sank German pre-dreadnought battleship SMS Braunschweig. With Seydlitz damaged, Von der Tann and Braunschweig sunk, and SMS Deutschland being hit hard to the point that it was crippled and had to leave for repairs, the Germans initiated the next part of their plan. They feigned a retreat and admiral Fisher ordered a pursuit, but what he didn’t know was that there was a minefield in between him and his German opponents and he steamed straight into it. Several ships hit mines and were either damaged or sunk while German U-boats added to the chaos. They unleashed as many torpedoes as possible in an attempt to drive the British further into the minefield while the German battle line shelled them. Chaos quickly ensued and losses now started to seriously mount for the Royal Navy.
Battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable sinking after German shells hit her ammunition storage, April 24th 1916.
In the meantime, the landing vessels were receiving fire from land-based German artillery although they did succeed in landing. The Germans counterattacked with over 150.000 men and pinned British landing forces down. At the same time, the Russians had launched their offensives into East Prussia. After making initial headway, their losses increased heavily. The Russians attacked with 500.000 men on April 23rd 1916, but the Germans defended fiercely and inflicted serious casualties. In the meantime, admiral Fisher had ended up in a bloodbath and reluctantly ordered a retreat since his plan had turned into a cataclysmic defeat. Minefields, torpedoes and shells had caused unseen losses for the Royal Navy which led to the operation being dubbed “Fisher’s Folly”. In total since the start of the operation eight battleships had been put out of commission due to critical damage while another six had been sunk, five battlecruisers had been sunk and a sixth was critically damaged, five armoured cruisers were sunk, twenty destroyers were sent to the bottom and twelve light cruisers were also sunk. This reduced the Grand Fleet’s combat ready force to 14 dreadnoughts, three battlecruisers, three armoured cruisers, 78 destroyers and 14 light cruisers. By contrast the German force still had 17 dreadnoughts, eight pre-dreadnoughts, four battlecruisers, nine light cruisers and 54 destroyers left that were still in operation. While the Royal Navy backed off, a corps sized force of some 60.000 men was still stuck on the coast of Pomerania and they surrendered on April 27th when it was clear no rescue would come.
The shockwaves of this defeat reverberated throughout the world since it radically changed the strategic situation. Britain was no longer the dominant force in the North Sea and now the High Seas Fleet would be able to roam free. King George V exclaimed “My God, lord Fisher, what have you done?” when he heard the news. Lord Fisher retired in disgrace while the news made headlines everywhere across the world, introducing the term “cluster fuck”. The Germans celebrated and Emperor Wilhelm II was overjoyed, but British morale received a serious blow and the peace faction, which had been silenced in 1914, rose again clamouring for peace. They blamed prime minister H.H. Asquith for the shattering defeat and called entering the war an enormous blunder. Asquith took the brunt of the political offensive while Fisher retired into isolation with his name now synonymous for “blundering incompetent moron”. He would die the following year of a heart attack although those few around him said it was the defeat in 1916 that had killed him. A vote of no confidence was issued in prime minister Asquith after this loss in which half of the Grand Fleet was resting on the ocean floor or in dry dock for the next few months.
Germany turned up the heat and launched an offensive in the north west of France on May 5th. With a massive but short artillery barrage and use of chlorine gas, Germany achieved surprise and succeeded in breaking through using over 200.000 men. They succeeded in capturing Amiens and Hasbrouck before they were stopped; these were two important transportation hubs for the entire western front and so logistics became much more complicated. In the meantime, the Russian offensive petered out with 50.000 casualties and another 100.000 as prisoner of war in German hands. More perished in the retreat as Germany pursued them, leading to heavy rearguard battles and chaos among the Russians. Moreover, the Germans had managed to convince Romania to join in for Bessarabia and so they had declared war on April 30th 1916. Asquith lost the vote of no confidence and the more peace minded David Lloyd George took over as the new prime minister. On May 10th 1916, the British requested an armistice and an “honourable peace” from the Germans through the Swiss embassy in London. French prime minister Aristide Briand was furious with the British; he knew France would have a hard time holding the Germans without the BEF since it would lose the Entente four entire field armies equal to several hundred thousand men on the western front. Tsar Nicholas II was similarly disappointed with the British peace request, but decided Russia would fight it alone; they had incurred heavy casualties so far and had lost many battles to the Germans which lowered morale although Russia’s fighting spirit wasn’t completely gone. The weakest Entente member, Italy, had incurred nothing but severe defeats and mounting death tolls for negligible gains.
David Lloyd George, the new prime minister for the Liberal Party and the only Welsh prime minister of Great Britain.
France, Russia and Italy decided to continue the war without Britain in hopes of enforcing a peace favourable to them while Britain started peace negotiations. Britain was now the black sheep among the Entente powers and relations cooled. Britain was now a neutral power, but the war continued.
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France, Italy and Russia will go on.