The Futurist Manifesto: An Alternate Great War & Beyond

[Electric Monk]

The Futurist Manifesto begins in the waning years of the 19th century and quickly builds to a rather different Great War. In fact it's a Great War I don't believe anybody has done in alternate history, although I imagine I'm pushing the boundaries of plausibility just a touch here and there.

After that, well, the word "Futurist" is something to think about. I might throw in dieselpunk, for that matter. And zeppelins. Lots of zeppelins.

 

[Electric Monk]

Part I: Fifteen Minutes in Fashoda

"The day of small nations has passed away; the day of Empires has come."

—First Minister Joseph Chamberlain, a speech at Birmingham on 13 May 1904.


The Reference Volume of the Colonial Struggle For Africa.
© Thomas Faircloth, 1993.
Greyrock Press, Toronto.

The Fashoda Crisis

A brief Anglo-French engagement in 1898, leading to a increase of colonial rivalry between the powers and a worsening of relations. The potential of a British Cape-to-Cairo or a French Dakar-to-French Somaliland railroad rested, as lines on a map, in the town of Fashoda as both railroads would intersect near there. The French additionally had the issue of wanting Fashoda to build a major fort there and use gunboats on the Nile to potentially force the British out of Egypt.

Major Jean-Baptiste Marchand's Expedition reached Fashoda on 10 July 1898 after a fourteen month journey from Brazzaville in the French Congo. By the time of their reinforcement by Marquis Christian de Bonchamps's larger force[1] on 28 August 1898 the French controlled the area of Fashoda and had built a few light fortifications in case of an attack by the natives. A British gunboat flotilla under Sir Herbert Kitchener arrived on 18 September 1898 in the aftermath of their war to secure the Sudan. Unfortunately Marquis Christian de Bonchamps and Sir Herbert Kitchener got along poorly, with the final result being a confused fight between the two powers that resulted in the French forces withdrawing beyond the range of the British gunboats with Kitchener declining to pursue. Opinion remains divided on who opened fire first but both sides made provocative moves: the French by withdrawing to their fortifications, the British by clearly getting their gunboats ready for action.

The prospect of an European war was avoided by French foreign minister Théophile Delcassé but the final settlement of Fashoda to the British did much to influence French political and popular opinion against Great Britain. This brief conflict increased the Anglo-French pace of operations in Africa including the expansion of a number of ports into small naval bases and a number of additional rail lines extending into the interior. The Germans followed suit to some extent in German East Africa.


Colonial Claims, Africa 1898

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The Groundwork for Conflict: European Relations after the Congress of Berlin.
Jane Fairchild, Editor.
© We Publish Books! San Francisco, 1967.

France & the Ottoman Empire

Historically France had often supported the Ottoman Empire and with the loss of Fashoda this policy once again came to the forefront of French Middle Eastern policy. In particular the French set aside their own wishes for control of Egypt to promote the Ottoman Empire regaining full control of Egypt from the British. This was helped by the Ottomans being willing to hand over southern section of the Egyptian Sudan so that the French could build their Dakar-to-French Somaliland railroad in the event the British lost Egypt.

The increasing closeness of the Ottoman Empire and the French Third Republic prompted Germany to strengthen their relations with the Ottomans, partially by the completion of the Berlin-Baghdad railway in 1909. Although the Ottoman Empire had wished to keep the railway from British naval guns the Alexandretta to Aleppo coastal line[2] (albeit placed as far from the coast as possible) was chosen for financial and engineering reasons. One factor believed to be part of that choice was the French sale of a great deal of torpedo boats and other light naval craft to the Ottoman Empire as well as French financing of fortifications for the Ottomans as part of broader Franco-German funding for the Berlin-Baghdad railroad. Although the railroad had been Germany's project the French were able to involve themselves for both the oil fields in Mosul and as a geopolitical manoeuvre.

The Franco-Ottoman Cooperation Pact of 8 May 1906 was followed by the German-Ottoman Trade & Investment Alliance of 22 September 1907. In both cases the Ottoman Empire extended favourable trade status, oil field investment, and gained Franco-German support for military reforms and equipment. As part of both deals the Ottoman debt was also partially written down for oil concessions.

Both as an anti-British move and to gain somewhat secure sources of oil the French strongly backed the idea of a railroad to Baghdad and more importantly Basra (that link being completed in 1910 purely by French engineering and money) even if the Germans increased their standing with the Ottomans. The completed railroad allowed the Suez Canal to be bypassed to support German East Africa as well serving as a major threat to India and Persia. For once French and German aims coincided. The French had also considered the benefits of a Dakar-French Somaliland-ocean-Basra link on African investment and trade.

By 1911 the railroad was delivering oil straight to Germany, as well as to France from the key (and now heavily fortified) port of Alexandretta. The Ottoman Empire had greatly improved and expanded ties with both France and Germany, but British fears over the Berlin-Baghdad railway were exactly as the French had hoped. Anglo-Ottoman and Anglo-German relations had been substantively worsened.

[…]

The Egyptian Question

With the sale of Egypt's Suez Canal shares in 1875 and the Anglo-French victory in 1882 at the battle of Tel el-Kebir Egypt was quite throughly under the thumb of the British, much to French dissatisfaction as they had declined to join the British in occupying the county in 1882. The Fashoda Crisis, in addition to the railroad, was also to seize control of the Upper Nile and use French gunboats (or perhaps an impossible damming project) to drive the British out. The loss of Fashoda changed French opinion on the matter.

The French did still want a hand in Egypt and control of Fashoda. As such they entered into talks with the Ottoman Empire with the two powers agreeing that if the Ottomans (somehow) could re-establish de facto control of Egypt then the French would gain various trading concessions as well as full control of the southern Sudan for their Dakar-Somaliland railway.

The British had not quite politically been able to declare Egypt independent from the Ottoman Empire and therefore had laboured under a policy that paid lip service to the Ottoman Empire's de jure control of Egypt as well as seeking to put off the French. Given that the French also owned 56% of the Suez Canal, without any control of the area, British geopolitical problems were obvious.

By 1910 and the completion of the Basra link of the Berlin-Baghdad railway the question of Egypt was constantly in the forefront of British planning. With Persia threatened by the railway the requirements of the Middle East constantly rose. A fleet was needed to interdict Basra from supplying French, German, or Italian colonies without going through the Suez. Another fleet was needed at Malta to prevent a French landing in Egypt. Yet another fleet was needed at Alexandria to reinforce either of the other two fleets and to prevent Italian or German (through Austria-Hungary) forces from resupply in the case of a land invasion from the Ottoman Empire or Libya as well as to attempt the destruction of the railway in range of dreadnought guns. Army forces were needed in Persia as well as Egypt in increasing numbers.

Quite simply the British isolation had given them ever increasing problems in the Middle East. This would of course impact their choices as the war began.

[…]

The Anglo-German Alliance Negotiations[3]

The worsening Anglo-French relations after the Fashoda Crisis naturally brought the British to discussion of their European position. Splendid isolation had served well over the last several decades but the growing rigidity of the alliance system did seem to indicate the increasing possibility of war on the continent. The British government had been steady in isolation but increasingly they had been considering alliances in Europe to maintain the balance of power. France had seemed the better choice to contain Germany, but Fashoda and the French Navy's build-up of ships that seemed deliberately aimed at the United Kingdom's commerce did much to dissuade that notion.

If not France, then Germany? Joseph Chamberlain, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, was a strong proponent of an Anglo-German Alliance and, as Hermann von Eckardstein said, "unquestionably the most energetic and enterprising personality of the Salisbury ministry". Therefore on 29 March 1898 Chamberlain sat with the German Ambassador in London, Paul von Hatzfeldt, to discuss issues between Germany and France. Once the issues of the Jameson Raid and the Kruger telegram were dealt with quite easily, much to Von Hatzfeldt's surprise, Chamberlain moved to the issue of a defensive alliance between the two powers with particular regard of China.

Unfortunately for both men the German Reichstag was examining Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's First Navy Bill, which Hatzfeldt knew, and to pass the Navy Bill required the assumption that Great Britain was a key threat to Germany. Furthermore the German Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Bernhard von Bülow, did not believe that Great Britain would honour future alliance commitments due to public opinion and or Parliament itself. The German Reichstag of the time was much less powerful than the British Parliament and this naturally swayed Von Bülow's thinking.

Hatzfeldt, under instruction, simply strung along negotiations and on 25 April his asking for colonial concessions despite being unwilling to concede anything led to the ending of talks. First Minister & Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury was unsurprised but Chamberlain was quite disappointed. However the intervention of Germany over the issue of arms shipment from Portugal in the case of a Boer War led to the 30 August Anglo-German Convention, where the two powers would peacefully dismantle the Portuguese Empire between themselves if Portugul went bankrupt. This settlement would encourage Chamberlain to try again.

A visit to Great Britain by Kaiser Wilhelm II and Von Bülow after the settlement of the Samoa problem saw Chamberlain meet with both men as First Minister Salisbury's wife had recently died. Wilhelm II was supportive of Chamberlain's Anglo-American-German grand alliance idea but raised concerns about British commitment and their usefulness against France and Russia. Von Bülow echoed those concerns, but suggested that Chamberlain speak in support of such an alliance in public. However, despite Chamberlain's belief, Von Bülow would not do the same in the Reichstag.

Chamberlain's speech of 30 November 1899 which included "a new Triple Alliance between the Teutonic race and the two great trans-Atlantic branches of the Anglo-Saxon race which would become a potent influence on the future of the world." would be considered a mistake and coupled with Von Bülow's dismissal of Great Britain as a power in decline on 11 December 1899 in support of the Second Navy Bill would serve to end the chances for an alliance at the time. Nevertheless Von Hatzfeldt's assurance that Von Bülow only did what he had to do to in the Reichstag helped Chamberlain recover from his irritation and contemplate a third attempt.

First Minister Salisbury's withdrawal as Foreign Secretary in October of 1900 and Lord Lansdowne's ascension to that office gave Chamberlain an opening to gain control of British foreign affairs, or at least that which interested him. Eckardstein was promptly informed that the British would still like to join the Triple Alliance. Wilhelm II's visit to the ailing Queen Victoria improved his view of the British (albeit only briefly) and he was much in favour of the British alliance when informed of Chamberlain's proposal. Von Bülow continued to delay against the proposal and Chamberlain declined to negotiate with him. Lansdowne was instead presented with the proposal of a five-year defensive alliance but Lansdowne also delayed. This comedy of delay finally came to an end when Von Hatzfeldt took control of negotiations.

Unhappy with Lansdowne Von Hatzfeldt then demanded that the British enter the Triple Alliance as a full partner, committed to defending Austria-Hungary, which led to First Minister Salisbury rejecting the offer. Coupled with Chamberlain's remarks of 25 October 1901, that British conduct in the Second Boer War was far better than that of troops in the Franco-Prussian War which were correctly interpreted as a statement against the Boer supporting Germans, the alliance plans were off the table.

Although Chamberlain and French Ambassador Paul Cambon entered into talks over colonial differences Chamberlain was hoping that they would lead beyond that. If the German option was out, then a few years after Fashoda perhaps it was possible the French would be receptive. Despite Cambon agreeing with Chamberlain he could do nothing to alter the prevailing anti-British sentiment of much of the government, military and public of France and as such the cordial discussion between him and Chamberlain led nowhere.

With neither a French nor German alliance seeming possible Chamberlain decisively turned away from the idea of an Anglo-German Alliance in favour of a Bismarckian federal empire to challenge Germany and the United States of America on an equal footing. His tariff reform proposal[4] and his take-over of the Liberal Unionist Party to lead them into merger to form the Conservative Union Party in 1902 would mark the most major step away from Europe by Great Britain since First Minister Salisbury had entered office and stuck to the idea of splendid isolation (although Salisbury himself disagreed with that). By the time of Lord Salisbury's resignation the soon-to-be First Minister Chamberlain had his eyes across the world instead of Europe.

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German & French War Planning, 1898-1913. By Erich von Manstein.
Prussian War Academy Collection, Berlin. 1933.

In retrospect the plans adopted pre-war by Helmuth von Moltke and Joseph Gallieni, the respective Chiefs of the General Staff of Germany and France, are logical in many ways. With any problem in the field of war there are only a finite number of solutions, and only a few that have a reasonable chance for success. The German-French border was heavily fortified, Switzerland neatly blocked the left flank[5], and only the Low Countries left opportunity. On the German side was the Ruhr valley, and a chance for the French to break out into the broader Rhineland industrial area and cripple the German economy and contain German forces on the border. On the French side were their equally important industrial areas across northern France as well as Paris and the potential for an envelopment of the majority of the French Army.

Yet these plans were not ordained. As late as 1904 Count Alfred von Schlieffen (then Chief of the General Staff) envisioned a much weaker attack through Belgium and Luxembourg, leaving the Netherlands out entirely, with far greater forces in Alsace-Lorraine to stop the envisioned French attack and over a quarter of the German Army in the east against Russia. As late as 1911 the French were still planning a purely defensive stance. As we will see both Great Powers fluctuated plans in the years leading up war for a variety of reasons.

It is the French who originally came up with the Belgian thrust when French Minister of War, Charles Chanoine, asked his deputy, Jules Brunet, for a plan that unlike the recently adopted French Plan XIV accounted for reservists as well as the fastest possible way for the French Army to defeat the German Army. Jules Brunet produced Plan XIV-B, the eventual basis for Plan XVI, but with the turbulence of the French Third Republic (the Dreyfus Affair, well beyond the purview of this paper) both men were soon out of their job and Plan XIV-B was filed somewhere in French General Staff storage. Although Minister Chanoine left no papers it can be reasonably presumed that he was worried about France facing Germany alone, as this was only a few years after the Franco-Russian Dual Alliance was signed and the previous tentative Anglo-French steps towards alliance had been wiped out in fifteen minutes at Fashoda.

However Plan XIV would carry the French forward for the time being. It is possible that German intelligence obtained information about Plan XIV, and quite naturally Von Schlieffen would have had access to that information, as Plan XIV was centred around a French assault into Alsace-Lorraine. Plan XIV was flawed in a number of ways, although the lack of French reservists was the most glaring since the usefulness of railroads to transport both regular and reserve army forces was obvious at the time.

By 1905 the French General Staff had reconsidered their previous stance and introduced Plan XV which would hold as the official operations plan until 1911. It was based on a purely defensive position, and did account for reservists, in the expectation that the German Army would suffer heavy losses in their attack and would therefore leave the Russians a free hand in the east to bring Germany to the peace table. With the hindsight of history we know that it would likely not have worked, but it was a major improvement to Plan XIV. It was adopted shortly after the Russo-Japanese War and unlike German planning it considered the Japanese victory in that war a fluke.

Meanwhile Count Alfred von Schlieffen had been working on various plans, as we know when his personal papers were released to the German General Staff upon his death. By 1904 he had settled on a moderate right hook through Belgium and Luxembourg with much of the German Army in Alsace-Lorraine against the expected French attack (perhaps based on German intelligence about Plan XIV) and roughly a quarter of the Army in the east. However this radically changed by 1905 when he considered two additional plans: a much increased attack through Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of the Netherlands (the last to secure railroads for supply), with limited forces in Alsace-Lorraine and East Prussia; and a purely defensive position against France in order to muster more than half the German Army against the Russians. As it turns out he decided upon the French-first plan and only submitted that plan as the official German option. It was that 1905 version that his successor, Helmuth von Moltke, would work on.

It is reasonably clear that Von Schlieffen decided his 1904 plan would not take out the French from the war fast enough, which was also a reason he considered an eastern based plan, and so his final thought upon the subject as Chief of the General Staff was quite simply to surround the entire French Army from the right. If they stayed in place or attacked into Alsace-Lorraine (as he believed would be the case) they would be completely destroyed by the German right-wing. If the French choose to retreat then the vast French border fortifications would be German along with Belgium, Luxembourg, the southern Netherlands, and much of northern France with a territory near to or including Paris under German control. Either way the German Army would be free to shift a large portion of its strength eastward to fight the Russians.

However we now know from Von Schlieffen's personal papers that his estimates of required forces were deliberately set too high for the German Army to plausibly consider (and, in fact, too much for even additional Dutch railroads to keep in supply). Germany in the years leading up to the war had for various domestic reasons kept the size of the army and reservists quite lower then what was capable of being fielded—the French had roughly 25% more conscription, for the logical example—and part of the 1905 Von Schlieffen plan was to compel an increased German Army. As political civilian control of the military was much less in that timeframe one can easily see Von Schlieffen's work as quite literally compelling the German Empire upon the course he had designed for it. If that was the case than the German Empire eagerly accepted Von Schlieffen's work.

The 1905 Von Schlieffen Plan would remain official German policy, moderately altered by Von Moltke, right up to the eve of war when sudden changes were engaged upon it.

In 1911 when Joseph Gallieni accepted the position of Chief of the General Staff of France, he was appalled at the state of affairs. He began a purge of defensive minded French Generals and, in consultation with Ferdinand Foch, also set to work on a new offensive plan. Initial efforts were centred upon the old Alsace-Lorraine thrust but at some point Foch came across Jules Brunet's old Plan XIV-B and the French began to seriously consider it. As with Von Schlieffen's thoughts upon the matter Gallieni and Foch believed that the United Kingdom would not declare on the French over the violation of the 1839 Treaty of London regarding Belgian neutrality. Therefore Plan XVI was drawn up and refined from 1911 to the outbreak of war in 1913 and envisioned the vast bulk of the French regular Army striking through Belgium with light forces to be reinforced by reservists holding the German-French border.

Joseph Gallieni and Ferdinand Foch believed, probably correctly, that the only chance for French success in the west lay in a quick victory. Despite the politically motivated Franco-Russian Dual Alliance neither man thought (as private papers and various addendum to Plan XVI make clear) that the Russians would last very long in a war and as such the French must win an early victory. Occupying or destroying the German Rhineland industry was the only plausible way to achieve such a victory, and only by going through Belgium could such a thing occur.

By 1911 both the French and German plans were completely set. It only remained to one man, Helmuth von Moltke, to radically disturb the German plan.



A Map of Europe, 1898


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[1] The POD. The de Bonchamps Expedition is both larger and better supplied and successfully makes it to Fashoda. The Ethiopians, with the faster and more successful de Bonchamps, decide not to order a halt not least because custom duties on a Dakar-French Somaliland railway would be nice.

[2] IOTL they go through the Amanus mountain range with an 8 km tunnel. That expense and engineering work delayed it considerably. Without the tunnel and with even more money and engineering resources courtesy of the French the completion date is rather earlier.

[3] This is essentially OTL until the closing paragraphs and I deliberately kept the dates the same as OTL to make it easier for people to look up more information. Obviously future dates will be different, but this early in the timeline I've decided to get away with it .

[4] Chamberlain was strongly considered a potential Prime Minister. ITTL he decides to go for it as a isolationist to Europe Great Britain would need a far more integrated empire to compete.

[5] Naturally Von Manstein is regarding the front from the German perspective. From the French side it would of course be the right flank.

-----

My knowledge of World War I, British politics pre-war, and all kinds of other stuff is limited. So this is something of a learning experience for me and feel free to offer critiques and suggestions.

 

[wolf_brother]

Looks good so far, though I'm somewhat confused by the POD. If the French reached Fashoda first and were able to secure the area and build defensive works, why do the Brits get it?

 

[Electric Monk]

Looks good so far, though I'm somewhat confused by the POD. If the French reached Fashoda first and were able to secure the area and build defensive works, why do the Brits get it?

Marchand's Expedition OTL/TTL had 132 men. The ATL de Bonchamps Expedition is better supplied/larger than OTL but pretty much only to the point of successfully making it to Fashoda. Perhaps a couple hundred men (I can't find sourcing on the size of OTL's expedition).

Kitchener on the other hand has a bunch of gunboats and military veterans fresh from defeating the Mahdi and seizing the Sudan. Not to mention he can resupply via the Nile and the French cannot.

Finally, defensive works built to fight off potential native attacks are not up to fighting off British gunboats especially when the French wouldn't have anything better than rifles.

(Oh, and I added a French map of European colonial claims of Africa in 1898 to the post.)

 

[wolf_brother]

Marchand's Expedition OTL/TTL had 132 men. The ATL de Bonchamps Expedition is better supplied/larger than OTL but pretty much only to the point of successfully making it to Fashoda. Perhaps a couple hundred men (I can't find sourcing on the size of OTL's expedition).

Kitchener on the other hand has a bunch of gunboats and military veterans fresh from defeating the Mahdi and seizing the Sudan. Not to mention he can resupply via the Nile and the French cannot.

Finally, defensive works built to fight off potential native attacks are not up to fighting off British gunboats especially when the French wouldn't have anything better than rifles.

(Oh, and I added a French map of European colonial claims of Africa in 1898 to the post.)

I guess I'm still confused. Why do the French back down in the diplomatic crisis then ensues regarding Fashoda? i.e. if the French are doing better than IOTL why do we get the same result as IOTL?

 

[Electric Monk]

I guess I'm still confused. Why do the French back down in the diplomatic crisis then ensues regarding Fashoda? i.e. if the French are doing better than IOTL why do we get the same result as IOTL?

Potential for war is a much worse outcome for the French. Their Navy is tiny, their army can't reach anywhere the British would care about, and they'd quickly lose whatever colonies the British would care to take.

OTL outcome is a great one for the French. Even a short war would be terrible. More troops at Fashoda and a brief firefight (that they lose, or at least don't win) is way worse.

 

[Electric Monk]

Part II: A Place in the Sun

"In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession, in order that the sun's rays may fall fruitfully upon our activity and trade in foreign parts, that our industry and agriculture may develop within the state and our sailing sports upon the water, for our future lies upon the water."

—Kaiser Wilhelm II, a speech at Hamburg on 18 June 1901


Risks, Rewards, and Failures: Kaiser Wilhelm II. By Max Ebert.
© University of Munich: Historisches Seminar, 1972.

By the time of the infamous "place in the sun" speech by Kaiser Wilhelm II the German Empire was preeminent on the continent itself, but poor in colonies and naval power. Expanding a colonial empire was hard when most of it was taken, Germany had only a handful of colonies: Togo, Kamerun, German South-West Africa, and German East Africa; a few Pacific colonies. Of their colonies by far the most expensive and most invested in was East Africa. From naval bases in the Zanzibar archipelago to an excellent public school system, from a steadily expanding rail net to the shining city of Dar es Salaam, German East Africa was perhaps the best colony in all of Africa and certainly the one where natives were best treated.

Yet the British could seize it whenever they felt like it.

Such a state of affairs was intolerable to Wilhelm II. He had strongly supported Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's expansion of the navy as had his key ministers such as then-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Bernhard von Bülow but by 1901 and the possibility of an alliance with the United Kingdom the problem was clear. Should the German Empire work within a structure that acknowledged the British as master of the seas, or should they challenge the Royal Navy's century of dominance? Almost inevitably Wilhelm II and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz were set upon the second course.

The Naval Bills, five in total, were an explicit challenge to the United Kingdom. They laid out numbers of battleships, cost, type, and by the second Naval Bill even identified the Royal Navy as the main opponent of this expanding German Navy. The second Naval Bill also introduced Admiral Tirpitz's risk theory, that the German fleet would be large enough that confronting it would cripple the Royal Navy and leave them open to attack by other powers and therefore the British would seek not to engage Germany.

The Fashoda Crisis had also brought more attention to the security of the colonies. Following that the Zanzibar archipelago off the coast of German East Africa had been fortified with several small naval bases, repair facilities, and zeppelin docks built. It was designed to be able to raid the Indian Ocean and key Middle Eastern locations and attempt to keep supply lines from Basra open. The other African and Pacific colonies were understood to be indefensible but East Africa would have a chance. The German Army forces in East Africa were built up moderately and the flow of supplies and equipment was also increased.

The steadily expanding German Navy followed the French lead of deploying older ships overseas and by 1913 Dar es Salaam and the Zanzibar archipelago contained the most ships of any overseas area outside the British deployments. In particular a number of modern battlecruisers had been stationed at the expanding port as it was believed that they would be more useful there than in the North Sea. Furthermore, in an early and innovative use of aeropower, the Germans floated zeppelins from Berlin to Basra to Dar es Salaam to Trieste to Berlin again, demonstrating the usefulness of aeroships in Africa for supply.

Despite all of these plans and ideas, the lingering question of the Royal Navy hung heavy over all of Wilhelm II's grand schemes.


Königsberg Arriving in Dar es Salaam

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TRAVELS IN GERMAN EAST AFRICA
Byline: Jonathan Jenkinson
The Morning Post. London, Monday 27 August 1909.

It is reassuring to those of us who have long supported the grand project of civilising the native men and women of Africa to visit German East Africa. One alights from the steamer at the busy & lovely port of Dar es Salaam after making our way through the glowing green islands of Zanzibar, a Zeppelin glinting in the sun's rays as it descends behind us towards a field in the distance.

This is a new city, a bustling city, an African city infused with the best examples of Europeans. The docks are brand new, electrical cranes and rail lines making it a version in miniature of any modern European port. Hundreds of ships visit here in a year, making it the most trafficked harbour in all of East Africa, and when one talks to officials and natives they are inordinately proud of this as well as the increasing number of Zeppelin arrivals. In fact the first Zeppelin carrying tourists instead of crates passed through Dar es Salaam just a week before.

Saint Joseph's Metropolitan Cathedral is the finest this correspondent has seen on the African continent but unfortunately I was late for my train and had time to observe it only in passing. The locomotives and rails in German East Africa are of a high quality, and indeed my several hundred mile journey over the Usambara-Railway to Mount Kilimanjaro[1] was a wondrous trip, capped by that vast mountain's imposing bulk extending through the clouds. Perhaps the Germans would consider adding Mount Kilimanjaro to a Zeppelin sight-seeing tour.

[…]

Alas my time in German East Africa must be brief. I commend our follow Europeans on easily the finest colony in all of Africa outside South Africa and their fine work, unlike some nations, of educating and bringing natives to the civilised European way of mind.


Dar es Salaam


Interior of an Usambara-Railway Train

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The Reference Volume of the Colonial Struggle For Africa.
© Thomas Faircloth, 1986.
Greyrock Press, Toronto.

Tangier Crisis (First Moroccan Crisis)

A Franco-German dispute over the status of Morocco in 1905 prompted by French treaties with Spain and Italy that neither of those powers would get involved if the French established a protectorate there. German Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow decided that forcing the issue and bringing Franco-British rivalry back to the height of the Fashoda Crisis might bring the United Kingdom into a closer alignment with Germany after the failures of the alliance negotiations.

In one sense Von Bülow was successful in that the British declined to support the French position, however the British also declined to support the German position. As such French Foreign Minister, Théophile Delcassé, was successful in out maneuvering the Germans with the powers of Europe either not getting involved or backing the French (with the exception of German-supporting Austria-Hungary). Théophile Delcassé's successful conclusion on the crisis both increased the standing of himself as well as the anti-German faction in the French government. This directly led to increased tensions on the continent as well as the Agadir Crisis in 1910.

[…]

Agadir Crisis (Second Moroccan Crisis)

German Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow's second attempt to bring the United Kingdom towards a German position using Morocco. A rebellion in Morocco prompted French intervention with military troops and the Germans dispatched a small naval group of gunboats to the port of Agadir (leading to the term "gunboat diplomacy") in order to secure the port and force another Franco-German issue.

The British strongly disliked the possibility of the Germans having any port in the Mediterranean and as such reluctantly backed the French, forcing the Germans to the bargaining table. In return for the Germans accepting the French protectorate of Morocco the French handed over a section of French Equatorial Africa to be added to the German colony of Kamerun. Despite the Germans gaining access to the Congo River the deal was generally seen as good for the French.

The Royal Navy began a slow process of switching from coal to oil over the relative slowness of the speed of their battleships in reacting to the crisis while both the French and Germans increased their dispatch of light and older naval forces overseas. As with the previous Moroccan crisis the powers of Europe had found another incident to bring themselves closer to war.

[…]

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Choices & Consequences: European Powers Before the Great War. By Andrew Keohane, © 1959.
The Niche Printing Press, Sydney, Australia.
Republished by History Book Association 1984, with permission and all rights reserved.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands

[…] and the controversial debate over buying dreadnoughts to expand Dutch seapower had been decided against by 1908 in favour of a number of armoured cruisers and modern destroyers to be deployed to the East Indies. The withdrawal of much of the British Far Eastern Fleet as well as worries about Japan and France would make this naval expansion a priority.

Home defence would be moderately increased by an expansion of coastal fortifications, torpedo boats, and gunboats. 1911 saw the first delivery from French and British shipyards of large long-range armoured cruisers built with current technology from steam turbines to an 11" all big gun armament[2]. After trials they were dispatched to the Dutch East Indies and by 1913 there was a reasonably sized force of six cruisers and escorts stationed there.

On the other hand the Dutch Army remained a relatively small force and would not see major expansion. However a substantial amount of new equipment, particularly artillery, and a fairly through modernization in the first decade of the twentieth century did improve the capabilities of the army. Coupled with the construction of some forward forts to support the waterline defences the Netherlands could muster a small but high quality army in the case that they found themselves involved in a European war.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands had no desire to get involved in any war but with the rising Franco-German tensions and the disinclination of the United Kingdom to get entangled on the continent they had decided that it was best to be ready.

[…]

The Ottoman Empire

[…] had resigned themselves to the loss of Balkan territory, but that had only strengthened their opinions about the British and the Middle East. Franco-German money had helped a great deal both in military and infrastructure matters and in making the navy at least capable of mounting a vigorous defence of key ports such as Basra or Alexandretta with modern torpedo boats and coastal guns. Furthermore internal domestic and army reforms had made "the sick man of Europe" neither sick nor particularly focused on Europe, although no European power had taken much notice aside from the French.

By the start of war the Ottomans did not care about the situation in Europe and had instead devoted their diplomatic efforts towards whoever would fight the British. They were greatly disappointed in their efforts, but that allowed the Ottomans to engage in a number of training exercises and late delivery of a number of aeroplanes, artillery, and some prototype armoured cars from Renault that the French Army had declined to buy.

The creation of the Permanent Flying Column (with French military advisors no longer popular at home) saw it absorb the most modern Ottoman equipment and was stationed in Baghdad for potential Persian operations. This was arguably the world's first motorized combat force as a number of trucks and non-armoured cars had been obtained to increase the speed of the small force. Coupled with six aeroplanes and a few light truck-towed artillery pieces the Permanent Flying Column was, for its size, the most powerful force in the Middle East. Several trains were reserved for it as war enveloped the European continent.

|||||

The Groundwork for Conflict: European Relations after the Congress of Berlin.
Jane Fairchild, Editor.
© We Publish Books! San Francisco, 1967.

The Treaty of Berlin (1878) had given Austria-Hungary a number of special rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sanjak of Novi Pazar south of there. The Treaty of Berlin had also guaranteed that the Straits of Constantinople would be closed in wartime, locking the Russian Navy in the Black Sea. Finally the Sanjak of Novibazar prevented Serbia from land access with Macedonia, as otherwise those two states would likely join.

With a 1904 coup in Serbia that country soon wanted the Sanjak of Novibazar and perhaps Bosnia-Herzegovina as well. Austria-Hungary refused as a matter of course. Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Alois Aehrenthal met with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Alexander Izvolsky, and soon worked out a deal as the Russians otherwise would support Serbia and Balkan Slavs in general. In return for Austria-Hungary's support in opening the Straits of Constantinople the Russians would look the other way if Bosnia-Herzegovina was annexed. The issue of the Sanjak of Novibazar remained somewhat undetermined but both powers accepted in principle an Austro-Hungarian withdrawal from it.

By 1908 the matter was essentially settled. As a courtesy both Russia and Austria-Hungary informed Great Britain of the impeding annexation and of forthcoming Bulgarian independence. On 1 October 1908 the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, including Emperor Franz Joseph's announcement that he would give them an autonomous and constitutional regime. On 2 October Bulgaria announced their independence, to loud Ottoman protest. On 5 October Serbia mobilized their army, demanding at the least the Sanjak of Novibazar and at the most the complete reversal of the annexation.

Italy was expected to announce objections but the terms of mutual compensation under the Triple Alliance treaty were honoured with Italy receiving Trentino[3] in various bilateral talks with other European powers. This was promptly reversed, as the Austro-Hungarian government decided (after some infighting) that they in fact would not give up any territory regardless of the Triple Alliance.

Both France and Great Britain strongly protested the annexation and Bulgarian independence, with an interesting diplomatic exchange between France and Italy supporting Italian annexation of Trentino. Various bilateral discussions between governments (as a new Conference of Berlin could not be decided upon) legitimized the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Bulgarian independence. However the Straits of Constantinople remained closed in wartime. This agreement would last only a matter of days before Serbian insistence reopened the matter.

The Austro-Hungrarian threatened release of sensitive diplomatic documents slowed any Russian response. Instead they swung to support Great Britain and France (with the Italians joining late, after the Austro-Hungarian rejection of irredentist claims), and with four European powers backing Serbia the combination forced Austria-Hungary to hand over the Sanjak of Novibazar to Serbia as long as Serbia reduced the size and mobilized status of her army to that of spring 1908. This was agreed upon by all powers, although the Russian position towards Austria-Hungary rapidly deteriorated because of the Straits of Constantinople issue. Russian opinion was quite simply that of betrayal, especially since their entire objective in the matter was to reopen the Straits of Constantinople even in wartime.

Serbian control of the Sanjak of Novibazar was followed shortly by the unification of Serbia with Montenegro, forming Serbia-Montenegro and along with Albanian rebellion leading to the Balkan War in 1911.


A Map of Bosnia-Herzegovina & the Sanjak of Novibazar


A Humorous Poster of the Balkan Situation

[…]

The slow motion collapse of European relations arguably began the moment the Congress of Berlin ended without properly resolving the Balkans or Africa, let alone long-standing irredentist claims in Europe. However the decade leading up to the Great War saw various problems, incidents, and crisis occur. From Fashoda to Morocco (twice), to wars in the Balkans, to border incidents across Africa: all of Europe seemed determined to find some way to start a continental war.

Franco-German relations were probably the worst, for all that German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had once tried to get France to ally themselves with Germany (the apocryphal response: "Alsace-Lorraine. Alsace-Lorraine. Alsace-Lorraine.") but few relations were good outside that of allies or neutral nations. Italy was perhaps the most concentrated upon by Germany, France, and even the United Kingdom (the British requesting not alliance but that of neutrality) as every power could offer Italy something she wanted.

In fact the nations of Europe, even ones not expecting conflict such as the Netherlands or Belgium, were heavily arming themselves. The introduction of heavier artillery, widespread machine guns, early aeroplanes and increased zeppelin production, the dreadnought, and even experimental armoured cars all contributed to the tension as no one was sure yet whether the defence or offence held the advantage.

The alliance system was set and all sides knew that the commitments would almost certainly be answered. If France or Russia engaged Germany or Austria-Hungary then the other pair of powers would inevitably be dragged in. If the complex web of support and treaties and guarantees in the Balkans triggered then the whole of Europe would follow. If Germany struck first, if France did, if and if and if: however the war could have started, it could only end with the sound of guns across Europe.

By 1913 Europe was an armed camp, narrowly stumbling through potential powder kegs, and reluctant and eager for war in equal measures.

|||||

A History of Nippon & Korea.
© Sanjō Nobusuke & Confederated Publishing Corporation, Seoul: 1978.
Translation by Edward Spencer, 1980; United States of America Publication: Arbitrary House, 1980.
All Rights Reserved.

[…] the gradual take-over of Korea by Japan had been stalled by ongoing talks with the United Kingdom over the possibility of alliance. Key among the negotiations was British insistence on the independence of Korea, the Japanese counter-offered by demanding that the United Kingdom underwrite British bank loans so as to treat Japanese investment on a grade equivalent to that of modern European countries.

Ongoing British involvement with creating a constitutional framework for the empire also delayed negotiations several times. However Anglo-Japanese concern over the expansionist Russian Empire and British worries about the European situation and the need to keep much of the Royal Navy concentrated there resulted in a final treaty on 17 July 1903.

The steady flow of British money as a result (including treaty-guaranteed percentages to Korea) would help the Japanese greatly expand their industrial base and improve their military. The Korean investments, and the British position there, would lead to the absurd four-sided game of spies (Korean, Russian, Japanese, and British) there that modern popular culture to the contrary would result in consequences none of the parties involved would see coming (q.v.).

Emboldened by the security of the treaty as regards other European powers the run-up to the Russo-Japanese War began almost the day it was signed. In Europe the French were mildly frustrated by the treaty as they had developed ambitious plans to support the Russians and indeed had deployed a number of modern armoured cruisers to the ports of Haiphong, Saigon, and Cam Ranh Bay in French IndoChina in preparation for an invasion of Formosa. However the terms of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance prevented any French action in support of Russia as they did not want to go to war with the United Kingdom, which probably saved those cruisers from being summarily sunk by the Japanese Navy.

Perhaps the key provision going forward would concern the fate of Korea […]



|||||



[1] As a result of Fashoda the Anglo-French colonial rivalry has moderately increased the rate of infrastructure expansion in Africa. At least in East Africa the Germans have followed suit, hence the Mount Kilimanjaro link of the Usambara-Railway being open several years earlier.

[2] Like some earlier French armoured cruisers, to be covered in the next post, these are essentially small battlecruisers but only the Royal Navy and the German Navy use the term battlecruiser.

[3] With poor Anglo-French relations the Germans have a somewhat better view of Italy, as without British interference the Italians are rather more likely to enter the war as part of the Triple Alliance. However they are shackled to Austria-Hungary and are forced to follow along.

 

[imperialaquila]

Very interesting. The British will be in a very interesting position in a European general war. It depends on who violates Belgium first. They could conceivably stay neutral in a conflict, which would be interesting.

I look forward to seeing what sets off the European powder keg.

 

[Electric Monk]

The British will be in a very interesting position in a European general war. It depends on who violates Belgium first. They could conceivably stay neutral in a conflict, which would be interesting.

I look forward to seeing what sets off the European powder keg.

Man, I hate knowing the future outcome of events.

If you want some inside baseball the British position in the Great War was the second point I sketched out for TTL (after the idea of Futurism made me want to do something with early 20th century stuff) and it was the thing that actually got me writing this timeline. Even better Prime Minister Chamberlain was a late addition as I worked on British responses to Fashoda.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Why would AH give up Trentino??? That was anathema to the mindset of everyone at Hofburg!

 

[Electric Monk]

Why would AH give up Trentino??? That was anathema to the mindset of everyone at Hofburg!

Western Istria then? Dalmatian islands and a section of the mainland? I'm happy to change it.

Under the mutual compensation clauses of the Triple Alliance the Austro-Hungarians have to give the Italians something in return for annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina and ITTL the Germans are leaning on AH to fork over some irredentist claim.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Western Istria then? Dalmatian islands and a section of the mainland? I'm happy to change it.

Under the mutual compensation clauses of the Triple Alliance the Austro-Hungarians have to give the Italians something in return for annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina and ITTL the Germans are leaning on AH to fork over some irredentist claim.

Which they didn't honor OTL because they hated Italy and doing so would destabilize the Empire (for a variety of reasons). Even during the height of their dependency on Germany in WW1 AH NEVER parted with any territory despite intense political pressure to do so. There is no way that AH can for internal political reasons and nothing short of a lost war will make them.

 

[Electric Monk]

Which they didn't honor OTL because they hated Italy and doing so would destabilize the Empire (for a variety of reasons). Even during the height of their dependency on Germany in WW1 AH NEVER parted with any territory despite intense political pressure to do so. There is no way that AH can for internal political reasons and nothing short of a lost war will make them.

Heh. They'll have fun soon.

Alright, Italy is given Trentino, albeit briefly, but AH being obstinate over the issue results in no transfer of territory. (Post updated.)

 

[Hörnla]

Well, you wished for critique....here it is. ;-)

German East Africa was perhaps the best colony in all of Africa and certainly the one where natives were best treated.

Well, that is quite an optimistic look at Deutsch-Ostafrika. The history of this colony was anything but troublesome and the political correct are quite critical of some periods of it.

However, it wasn't the worst European colony when it came to the treatment of natives either. And as a German (resp. when it comes to the era, Austro-Hungarian) I can easily forgive you.

Italy was expected to announce objections but the terms of mutual compensation under the Triple Alliance treaty were honoured with Italy receiving Trentino[3] in various bilateral talks with other European powers. This was promptly reversed, as the Austro-Hungarian government decided (after some infighting) that they in fact would not give up any territory regardless of the Triple Alliance.

Now I think I remember that the Triple Alliance (which predates the POD) involved no such clause bringing Austria-Hungary even remotely close towards an obligation to give up Trentino or other territories. It would be a "conditio cum qua non" to Wien. Actually, they saw it the other way around: annexation of Bosnia would be a tiny compensation for the loss of Northern Italy in 1859/66!
Thus far I doubt that these Italian talks involved anyone but bat-like diplomats from outer space. I am glad you in the end decided to end them up with nothing.

That is not to say that one could regard a solution to the Austro-Italian differences as very positive. But you have to remember that Italian irredentism was not even satisfied with the borders it got in 1919. To 100% placate Italy, Austria-Hungary would have to give up large ethnic German regions and most parts of its coast including all major military and civil ports.

I also question your assessment of German views on Italy. Italian entry into WW1 didn't depend on Franco-English rapprochement but on Austria-Hungary bringing itself into the position of the aggressive party against Serbia. Sure, Germans and Austrians did a lot to depict the Italians as honorless. But pro-CP faction and said honor would have been strong enough to follow the treaty's obligations if these had been given.
However, the tensions between France and England would make Italy in a conflict rather less necessary, as Germany would feel confident to beat France on its own.

---

Congrats on the Flying Column. A brilliant idea and very promising.

---

let alone long-standing irredentist claims in Europe.

In the 1910s, these were irresolvable anyways, I mean, peacefully.

 

[Mac Gregor]

very interesting, keep it up

 

[imperialaquila]

I also very much like the Flying Column idea, that will give the British serious headaches should they try to invade the Middle East.

 

[Electric Monk]

Well, that is quite an optimistic look at Deutsch-Ostafrika. The history of this colony was anything but troublesome and the political correct are quite critical of some periods of it.

However, it wasn't the worst European colony when it came to the treatment of natives either. And as a German (resp. when it comes to the era, Austro-Hungarian) I can easily forgive you.

If I ever do actual dialogue and characters they can be trusted, but naturally the various books are biased in various ways. The Morning Post, in particular, was pro-colonialism and I think the views I have ascribed to a fictional writer fit with how the paper would have viewed things.

That said, for a colony, East Africa was pretty good compared to other European powers. It's probably a little bit better ITTL because of the extra money being dumped in it (and you better believe some of the German government are flipping out about the expense).

Now I think I remember that the Triple Alliance (which predates the POD) involved no such clause bringing Austria-Hungary even remotely close towards an obligation to give up Trentino or other territories. It would be a "conditio cum qua non" to Wien. Actually, they saw it the other way around: annexation of Bosnia would be a tiny compensation for the loss of Northern Italy in 1859/66!

As far as I recall there were mutual compensation clauses on Italian insistence, so that if AH gained Bosnia the Italians would get something in return. They demanded Trentino, the Germans in particular were fine with that and AH derailed the whole thing.

As wiking pointed out the Austro-Hungarians at that time would tell the Italians to go f**k themselves (which I overlooked) but the Germans are not terribly happy about it as they didn't see a problem handing Italians to Italy. They understand that South Tyrol or Trieste are absolutely impossible, but even their (not mentioned) alternatives such as parts of Dalmatia were rejected by AH.

That may or may not cause problems later.

That is not to say that one could regard a solution to the Austro-Italian differences as very positive. But you have to remember that Italian irredentism was not even satisfied with the borders it got in 1919. To 100% placate Italy, Austria-Hungary would have to give up large ethnic German regions and most parts of its coast including all major military and civil ports.

Agreed, the Italians were a little overboard. Austria-Hungary ITTL will not give up what the Italians want. However, depending on how things go, they may give up some of what the Italians want.

I also question your assessment of German views on Italy. Italian entry into WW1 didn't depend on Franco-English rapprochement but on Austria-Hungary bringing itself into the position of the aggressive party against Serbia.

That's what the Italians argued. But they were simply too vulnerable to British naval and economic power (and public opinion) for them to jump in without rather different circumstances. With the UK out of the way for the time being, things might change.

Sure, Germans and Austrians did a lot to depict the Italians as honorless. But pro-CP faction and said honor would have been strong enough to follow the treaty's obligations if these had been given.

However, the tensions between France and England would make Italy in a conflict rather less necessary, as Germany would feel confident to beat France on its own.

There was a much stronger possibility of them entering the war with the Triple Alliance if Russia or France attacked but I don't think it would still be certain. Doesn't matter for TTL, though.

As regards Italy, Germany is primarily thinking about the British in the Med. AH + Italy can put eight dreadnoughts in the field which would cause some major problems for the Channel Fleet or the French.

The next post covers the dreadnought race.

In the 1910s, these were irresolvable anyways, I mean, peacefully.

Well yeah. Again, biased authors.

very interesting, keep it up

Thank you.

I also very much like the Flying Column idea, that will give the British serious headaches should they try to invade the Middle East.

Congrats on the Flying Column. A brilliant idea and very promising.

Once the Ottomans started getting extra money from France and Germany (particularly military focused money) there were some neat ideas.

I kinda love the Ottoman's creating a pre-modern motorized force. I'm not sure the size, though. Battalion? It's got speed and a decent punch, but it's also something of a learning experience.

 

[Electric Monk]

Part III: HMS Dreadnought

"Those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world."
—Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812.


Dreadnought: The European Powers and the Coming of the Great War.[1]
© Robert Kinlock Massie III. New York City: Arbitrary Press, 1969.

The supremacy of the British Navy was stamped indelibly on the history of the nineteenth century during a single terrible afternoon in October 1805. Between noon and four-​thirty p.m. on October 21, in a light wind and rolling Atlantic swell off the coast of Spain, twenty-​seven line-​of-​battle sailing ships commanded by Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson annihilated a combined French and Spanish fleet of thirty-​three ships-​of-​the-​line under French Admiral Pierre Villeneuve. The battle took place in a small patch of ocean not more than two miles on each side, a few miles offshore between the port of Cadiz and the western end of the Strait of Gibraltar. The nearest map reference, a remote coastal bay, was to give the battle its name. The bay was called Trafalgar.

Nelson's victory that autumnal afternoon established a supremacy at sea which lasted a century and gave most of the world's great nations a period of relative calm known as the Pax Britannica. Both the naval supremacy and the peace endured while warships changed beyond recognition: wooden hulls were transformed to iron and steel; masts disappeared as sail gave way to steam; bottle- shaped, muzzle- loading guns were replaced by powerful, turret- mounted naval rifles of far greater range and accuracy. Something else remained constant as well: through all those years British seamen exuded a confidence higher than arrogance, an assurance that was bred and passed along by the seventeen thousand men who served at Trafalgar in Nelson's oak-hulled leviathans.

[…]

When the firing ceased about four-​thirty p.m., eighteen enemy ships had struck their colours and a nineteenth had burned to the waterline and then exploded. Villeneuve himself was a prisoner, and later a suicide.

Trafalgar did not defeat Napoleon; ten more years were to pass before the Battle of Waterloo. But Trafalgar removed Napoleon's threat to seize the English Channel. Never again during those ten years did France or any other nation challenge Great Britain's dominion of the seas. And so it remained for one hundred years.

|||||

The Groundwork for Conflict: European Relations after the Congress of Berlin.
Jane Fairchild, Editor.
© We Publish Books! San Francisco, 1967.

The Naval Race

In 1905 the Royal Navy was larger than the next two navies on the continent combined and better trained by a fair margin. In 1906 the Royal Navy had an advantage of exactly one ship: HMS Dreadnought. She was a ruthless and brilliant design: an all big gun armament as the Russo-Japanese War & Royal Navy trials had demonstrated the superiority of a single 12" hit versus multiple hits from lighter calibre guns and to avoid mistaking lighter guns splashes from the bigger ones; steam turbines increased the top speed from the 18 knots of triple expansion engines to 21 knots and in the process drastically reducing vibration allowing for more accurate targeting, and were less likely to break down; finally it had taken a mere eleven months to build her.

The speed of HMS Dreadnought's construction was a demonstration of the Royal Navy's preeminence in design and construction but as it turned out that would merely compel the other powers of Europe to follow suit. The French, Germans, and Italians all responded by shifting their construction plans and schedules in 1906-8 to adapt to the Dreadnought and the Austro-Hungarians and the Russians soon followed.

The dreadnoughts completely reset the board. The Germans suddenly had a chance to compete with the Royal Navy, and they proceeded to attempt so with great urgency. The French could come back from their haphazard battleship construction of the 1880s and 1890s to something that would at least offer some chance of success. The Italians could make another quiet bid for control of the Mediterranean and the Austro-Hungarians could plan to block them again.

Of course if the Royal Navy had not built the Dreadnought someone else would have as the American South Carolina was under construction (albeit without steam turbines) and the Japanese were working on all big gun ships as well. Furthermore the Italian naval architect Vittorio Cuniberti had developed every single one of these principles in 1903 and he had been remarkably close, the HMS Dreadnought would be 3 knots slower and 3000t heavier than his "ideal" battleship. Although the Italian Navy rejected his ideas at the time they would soon embrace both him and radical thought as regarded dreadnoughts.

The Dreadnought race was won by Great Britain, in the sense that they built the most. However compared to the British position in 1897 (before the Germans commenced expanding their navy) or even 1904 when the Royal Navy still had vastly more battleships then everybody else the dreadnoughts had wiped out much of their lead. They had managed to save money, by retiring older ships and the cost of British dreadnought was 25-30% cheaper than that of a German, but even so expenditures were rapidly increasing as more and more dreadnoughts and battlecruisers were required.

By 1913 the Royal Navy had an advantage of seven dreadnoughts over the German Navy (twenty-three to sixteen) and the French had but nine. By 1914 and the climatic naval battles of the war it was twenty-six to seventeen to eleven ∞. Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia[2] all had four of their own by either 1913 or 1914. This forced the Royal Navy to concentrate much of its fleet at home. The Royal Navy was only just able to match the next two largest powers in terms of dreadnoughts and this drastically narrowed their options on the eve of war.

The expansion of battlecruisers, that evolution of armoured cruisers, also continued apace. The Germans developed them to operate from Dar es Salaam to raid British bases and ships in the Indian Ocean as well as to better protect conveys going around the north of Great Britain to avoid French ships as the Royal Navy would not continence the militarization of the Channel itself. In the smaller powers the French relied on their large armoured cruisers and the Dutch bought and deployed half a dozen small battlecruisers to the East Indies. By 1914 the British had fourteen battlecruisers and the Germans had seven, with the French possessing eight large armoured cruisers. Four German battlecruisers had been moved to Dar es Salaam; of the British battlecruisers eight remained at home and six overseas; the French kept all their modern armoured cruisers ready for Atlantic operations from France itself or Dakar in western Africa.



∞ Fifteen of the British dreadnoughts had 13.5" guns (as did seven of the French) where the Germans had no 13.5" gunned ships and only ten of the German dreadnoughts had steam turbines. Therefore the pure numbers are slightly deceiving, but even so the Royal Navy's advantage was the slimmest since 1805.


A Postcard Photo of HMS Dreadnought


A Painting of HMS Dreadnought

|||||

The Ships of the Great War. Edited by John Samuel Clairbourne.
© 1949 Military History Press, New York, United States of America.

Appendix I: Dreadnought Classes 1906-1916 [4]

France

*Courbet class, 4 built 1906-1908 (last commissioned December 1908)
Displacement: 19,800t standard, 21,000t full load.
Length: 515 feet.
Speed: 21 knots. Coal fired steam turbines.
Armament: 6x2 12"/45 guns in a superimposed + wings layout, 12x1 5.5"/55 guns, 4x1 1.9"/47 guns.
Armour Scheme: Short range citadel + tapered, 9" main belt.


A Courbet Class ship

*Danton class, 5 built 1908-1913 (last commissioned April 1913)[4]
Displacement: 23,200t standard, 25,500 full load.
Length: 580 feet.
Speed: 22 knots. Oil fired steam turbines.
Armament: 4x3 13.5"/45 guns in a superimposed layout, 12x1 5.5"/55 guns, 4x1 1.9"/47 guns.
Armour Scheme: Extended range citadel + limited tapering[5], 12" main belt.

*Danton (II) class, 2 built 1911-1914 (last commissioned June 1914)[4]
Displacement: 24,700t standard, 26,300 full load.
Length: 587 feet.
Speed: 22 knots. Oil fired steam turbines.
Armament: 4x3 13.5"/45 guns in a superimposed layout, 12x1 5.5"/55 guns, 4x1 1.9"/47 guns.
Armour Scheme: Extended range citadel + very light armour elsewhere, 13" main belt.

[…]

Italy

Dante Alighieri class, 1 built 1907-1910 (commissioned October 1911)
Displacement: 19,500 standard, 21,600 full load.
Length: 551 feet.
Speed: 22 knots. Oil fired & mixed fired steam turbines.
Armament: 4x3 12"/45 guns in a centreline layout, 4x2 & 12x1 4.7"/50 guns, 13x1 3"/40 guns.
Armour Scheme: Short range citadel + tapered, 10" main belt.


A Photo of the Dante Alighieri

*Conte di Cavour class, 4 built 1909-1913 (last commissioned October 1913)
Displacement: 22,700t standard, 24,100 full load.
Length: 594 feet.
Speed: 25 knots. Oil fired steam turbines.
Armament: 3x3 13.5"/50 guns in a superimposed layout with all three turrets forward, 16x1 4.7"/50 guns, 16x1 3"/50 guns.
Armour Scheme: Extended range citadel + limited tapering, 11" main belt.


Appendix II: Battlecruisers

Great Britain

Invincible class, *5 built 1906-1910 (last commissioned August 1910)
Displacement: 17,530 standard, 20,750 full load.
Length: 567 feet.
Speed: 25 knots. Coal fired steam turbines, oil fired steam turbines for the last two Invincible ships.
Armament: 4x2 12"/45 guns in a centreline + wings layout, 16x1 4"/40 guns.
Armour Scheme: Short range citadel + tapered, 6" main belt, 7" main belt for the last two Invincible ships.


A Photo of HMS Invincible


Appendix III: Seaplane Tenders & Aeroplane Carriers

France

*La Gloire class, 1 built 1910-1913 (commissioned February 1913)
Displacement: 22,000t standard, 23,800 full load.
Length: 636 feet.
Speed: 25 knots. Oil fired steam turbines.
Armament: 12x1 4.7"/50 guns.
Aeroplanes: 24 (1913), 36 (1914) upon adoption of a permanent deck park.
Flight Deck: Armoured, closed hanger.


Appendix IV: Armoured Cruisers

France

Jeanne d'Arc class, *4 built 1898-1902 (last commissioned February 1902)
Displacement: 11,300t.
Length: 475 feet.
Speed: 22 knots. Steam engines.
Armament: 2x2 7.6" guns, 7x2 5.4" guns.

*Gueydon class, 6 built 1901-1904 (last commissioned July 1904)
Displacement: 13,500t.
Length: 492 feet.
Speed: 22 knots.Triple-expansion steam engines.
Armament: 3x2 7.6" guns, 8x2 6.5" guns.

*Suffren class, 8 built 1903-1908 (last commissioned October 1908)
Displacement: 16,100.
Length: 507 feet.
Speed: 25 knots. Coal fired steam turbines.
Armament: 5x2 9.2" guns, 10x2 6.5" guns.

[…]

Great Britain

Minotaur class, *4 built 1903-1908 (last commissioned February 1908)
Displacement: 14,600t.
Length: 519 feet.
Speed: 23 knots. Triple expansion steam engines.
Armament: 2x2 9.2" guns, 10x1 7.5" guns, 16x1 3" guns.


A Photo of HMS Minotaur

|||||

The Evolution of Aeroplane Carriers.
© 1976: Alain Tardieu & École Polytechnique.
Translation into English by Alain Tardieu (1976).
École Polytechnique Publishing: Palaiseau, Seine-et-Oise, France.

With the introduction of three-axis control for aeroplanes, thus vastly increasing their usability, the military powers of the world began to consider their potential first as scouts and then as armed craft. Furthermore the idea of the aeroplane carrier was gaining traction, the usefulness of spotting the movement of merchant ships and dreadnoughts clearly a good thing. However at the time the first aeroplane carrier was laid down no one had actually done such a thing, instead development was moving ahead on seaplane tenders.

French inventor, Clément Ader, proposed the idea to the French Minister of Marine, Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère, in 1909[6]. It is an odd turn of fate that the first aeroplane carrier would be the largest for a number of years. At the time there were many concerns about the required size of such a vessel to make it possible for successful landings and as such La Gloire, deliberately named after the revolutionary French ironclad, was built instead of a dreadnought to achieve the largest possible size at the time.

The successful launch (1910) and landing (1911) of an aeroplane on the American cruisers USS Birmingham and USS Pennsylvania, respectively, would serve as great relief for the French, as their tests had consisted of laying out a runway to the same size as the La Gloire on land and then requiring test pilots to take-off and land in as little space as possible on bad weather days.

The rather large gamble of a purpose built aeroplane carrier achieved an early and surprisingly long lasting French lead in carriers. Quite simply neither the Royal Navy nor the German Navy were willing, as the French had been, to dedicate the resources of what would have been a 22,000t dreadnought to the project.

The Royal Navy with the American success and the La Gloire under construction followed suit three different conversions (flush deck, twin island, single island) converted from a pair of cruisers and an ocean liner. Their first purpose built one would not launch until 1920, at roughly the same size as La Gloire.

[…]

The Dreadnought War. By Kenneth R. Clark. Oxford Publishing Press, Oxford. 1948.

An Overview of French Naval Design, 1902-1913

The Marine Nationale, the French Navy, La Royale. By the 1880s the French Navy had become the second finest in the world as it had been twice before. Napoleon III had rebuilt the Navy into a technically and conceptually innovative force from the steam powered battleship Le Napoléon in 1850 to the first blue water ironclad with La Gloire in 1853 to even the first mechanically powered submarine, Plongeur. As late as 1876 with the launch of the first steel-hulled battleship, the Redoutable, the French Navy was at the forefront of technology and design. Naturally the larger British Royal Navy, and more importantly their vast ship building capacity, was not something they could match and interesting French designs usually found themselves adopted in greater numbers in the service of the British.

In the 1880s right at the beginning of the sea change that would culminate in the HMS Dreadnought the French Navy, for logical and sound reasons, found themselves led astray down the conceptually innovate and deeply attractive Jeune École theory of thought. What did it matter if the Royal Navy had twice as many battleships if French torpedo boats and fast armoured cruisers could counter those numbers with a swarm of smaller ships? The rise of the torpedo boat destroyer, the pre-dreadnoughts and soon dreadnoughts, and the ineffectiveness of torpedo boats against an escorted battle line all served to end the workability of the Jeune École.

As talks began between the French and British governments as early as 1881 over the possibility of an alliance against Germany the French Navy was gradually dawning to that of an existential crisis: if the Royal Navy was on their side then what use was the French Navy? Coupled with the persistent instability of the Third Republic and bureaucratic over-management by 1898 the French Navy was only starting to formulate their new balanced fleet doctrine which essentially followed the British and German model fleets. To be sure the continuing interest in submarine design in particular was a remnant of the Jeune École but battleships seemed the way forward.

By 1898 the plan forward seemed set: the French Navy would continue to innovate where possible but in force structure it would resemble that of the Royal Navy or the navy the Germans seemed set to build where a balanced force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers dominated. However the suddenly increased Anglo-French tensions over Fashoda and further colonial action coupled with the Anglo-German talks of 1898-1901 made it clear that the monies available would not match those two powers.

Under Minister of the Marine Jean-Louis de Lanessan (also known as Jean-Marie de Lanessan, appointed 1898) and Vice Admiral Francois-Ernest Fournier the two men essentially in charge of the French Navy as it confronted its new challenges were more than up to the task. Their previous cruiser and battleship plan was now obsolete. It speaks well of both of them that they reacted strongly to the challenge and embraced the best elements of the Jeune École to move forward.

Battleships would be put aside for the time being as the Royal Navy could not be challenged, building only enough to properly challenge the Italians in a smaller conflict. Armoured cruisers would be lavished with innovation and resources to conduct a commerce war in the Atlantic and submarines would support that effort. Torpedo boats were to be evaluated again, and destroyers were to be considered for potential as torpedo equipped ships to give them a more effective role against capital ships. Furthermore naval bases in the colonies as well as construction facilities at home would be expanded and improved to better compete with the British lead in building ships.

Before Jean-Louis de Lanessan there had not had been a Minister of the Marine who had lasted longer than eighteen months in the role in a decade but Minister de Lanessan was a determined man who staved off what would almost assuredly been the disastrous reign of Charles Camille Pelletan in 1902[1] and then continued in his post until 1908 when Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère took over. Minister de Lanessan's long tenure also meant that for the first time the navy could drastically reform its bureaucracy to substantial effect.

It should be noted, especially given what seems the odd shift in naval design from armoured cruisers and submarines to dreadnoughts, that from the beginning battleships had been quite high in the agenda. It was circumstance and other priorities that had led to shifting battleships (and, more importantly, the yard space required to build them) into their second class role. The launch of the HMS Dreadnought in 1906 and rumours of it in 1905 made it clear that for the first time since ironclads were introduced every navy of the world was starting with a fresh slate.

[…]

Before the dreadnoughts however one should examine the modern armoured cruisers of the French Navy by 1913. The Gueydon class was an excellent ship for the time, but it is the Suffren class which demonstrated prescient ideas. In fact they are almost a 1903 preview of what the British would lay down with HMS Dreadnought and HMS Invincible. Steam turbines with a top speed of 25 knots and a single large 9.2" caliber of guns (as the French had learned of Royal Navy tests on the subject) made for superb armoured cruisers.

In retrospect it is slightly odd that the French didn't apply these lessons to larger ships but nearly a decade of de-emphasizing battleships makes it easier to understand their mistake. These "armoured cruisers" were essentially small battlecruisers although their size made it clear that they should not be included in the battle line unlike the battlecruisers of the British and German navies.

[…]

Along with armoured cruisers, submarine experimentation, and the increase in size of destroyers from roughly 450t to 800t (following a similar pattern to the Suffren's massive leap from the 13,500t of the Gueydon class to 16,100t) the French Navy also built four pre-dreadnoughts, that of the République class which which were so named in large part because Charles Camille Pelletan took what he could in revenge over not becoming Minister, as regarded his belief that the French Navy was deeply monarchist.

Importantly to the Dreadnought Race the République class had finished building and the Suffren class was finishing their construction[8] when the HMS Dreadnought appeared to change everything. In fact successors to both the République and Suffren classes were only months away from being laid down As it was yard space was free or still in the process of expanding and the French could respond to the new reality of the dreadnought.

Although the large torpedo-equipped destroyers and steadily improving submarines are interesting the former would not play a role until the Battle of Amsterdam in 1914 and the latter would not be relevant until 1915. Therefore we must move take another detour before the dreadnoughts, and turn out attention to an altogether different kind of ship. The aeroplane carrier.


The French had steadily worked on their aeroforce and indeed by 1913 would have the largest among all the powers. However it was the well-known inventor Clément Ader who spoke to the Minister of Marine de Lapeyrère in 1909 about the potential of aeroplanes being launched and landed upon a floating aerofield. As it happens Minister de Lapeyrère had been thinking about converting an existing ship to be a seaplane tender but the idea of a proper aeroplane carrier caught his attention. Although we can never know for certain the lingering influence of the Jeune École probably helped contribute to the decision to build such a large and experimental ship.

As it happened a Danton hull was about to be laid down and despite objections over the loss of a dreadnought the required size to safely launch and recover aeroplanes at sea justified the use of what would have been the fifth or sixth Danton. Her construction began at the end of 1909 and the ship was ready for operations by the time war broke out despite having fewer fully trained pilots (19) then aeroplanes it could carry (24).

La Gloire, named after the famous ironclad in the hopes that she too would be revolutionary, was a full sixty feet longer than the Danton class. She was also very fast, at 25 knots, as her role was envisioned both as a scout for the battle line and a scout for commerce raiding where the Suffren cruisers were also capable of 25 knots. At her launch in 1913 she carried 24 aeroplanes although that number would fluctuate up and down as different planes were carried and lessons were learned about positioning them on deck and from the roof of the hanger.

At the outbreak of war she was just about to dock at the naval base in Dakar, French West Africa […]

[…] it happened that the French naval yards had quite a lot of free space when the HMS Dreadnought was launched. Four dreadnoughts, the Courbet class, were promptly laid down. The following seven dreadnoughts, however, would be perhaps the finest ships afloat as war broke out.

The Courbet class was a direct reaction to the HMS Dreadnought and were quire similar. They had a displacement of 19,800t and a top speed of 20 knots, supplied by coal fired steam turbines. Six twin 12" gun turrets in a superimposed + wing layout provided the primary armament, a rejection of earlier hexagon design. Their stability as gun platforms over early German dreadnoughts should be noted, as it would take some time before the Germans adopted the steam turbine.

However the Danton class, and their similar Italian counterparts of the Conte di Cavour class[9], were much superior ships. Triple-turrets carrying 13.5" guns, superimposed layout of the turrets, an American inspired armour design optimized for longer range, and oil fired steam turbines to achieve a top speed of 22 knots (although the quantity of oil stockpiles required would lead to a number of internal arguments over the cost). At the beginning of the war they were probably the best dreadnoughts afloat.

It is interesting to note that the Italian and French naval captains and staff, when they met, made great fun of each other over the fundamentally similar nature of each other's dreadnoughts. The ongoing argument over the Conte di Cavour's speed versus the Danton's fourth turret is one of those impossible to settle counterfactual thoughts.

[…]

At the outbreak of war in 1913, then, the French had four standard 12" gun dreadnoughts, five excellent 13.5" gun dreadnoughts with two more of those almost completed, and four pre-dreadnoughts[10]. The world's first aeroplane carrier was also in their possession. They had eight large armoured cruisers and ten other modern ones, sixteen large torpedo destroyers (800t) and twelve smaller (450t) modern destroyers, and a steadily expanding submarine fleet of forty-five. It was the third largest navy in Europe which made for a very impressive force for a power that, a mere fifteen years earlier, had been building battleships almost one-at-a-time and a handful of cruisers.

Facing them, of course, was the entire might of the German High Seas Fleet and the Royal Navy….



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[1] Words are from OTL's Dreadnought. It's a source book for this timeline anyway, but that opening was too lovely to put under someone else's name or rewrite. *Robert Kinlock Massie III is rather similar to OTL, except that he turned his attention to the Great War earlier. If the book appears elsewhere in the timeline words will appear verbatim unless noted.

[2] The Russian dreadnoughts are finished earlier because the OTL financing and design problems are forced through faster due to Franco-Russian understanding that they would have to face the German Navy by themselves.

[3] Ships with an * in front of their name are ATL. Ships with an * in front of how many built have an alternate number of ships commissioned as compared to OTL. Note that if a class or a ship hasn't been built I might not mention it going forward: the HMS Neptune wasn't built along with a few smaller ships in favour of two more of the Invincible class; likewise the Germans sacrificed a dreadnought in favour of of an additional battlecruiser and several armoured cruisers.

[4] The French naval budget was essentially wasted IOTL for internal domestic reasons. In the ATL the 1898-1906 budget is spent on different things: the Gueydon & Suffren armoured cruisers, the expansion of naval bases in the colonies, and as financing to expand the size of the construction yards at home. From 1906 onwards the French both have more money and more/better construction capability (the last not fully online until 1908).

[5] In other words, a halfway step between the armour of the time and the American idea of all or nothing armour optimized for longer ranges. The navies of the time were building for shorter range and armoured to various extents the whole ship. The French and Italians are somewhat more radical ITTL in naval matters (the French for internal reasons relating to facing the Royal Navy, the Italians because they're worried about the larger French navy) and as such are doing things like experimenting with armour design.

[6] IOTL Clément Ader did in fact propose a large flat deck ship to launch aircraft off of in 1909. Minor butterflies have prevented an armoured cruiser being named Gloire in 1899 for quite honestly the coolness of the French going with the name for the first aeroplane carrier.

[7] IOTL Camille Pelletan threw the French naval plans out of whack for a few years just when they had stabilized for the first time in decades. They stabilize in a different direction then they would have IOTL without Fashoda, but stabilize they do.

[8] Building the Suffren class essentially occupies a fair amount of the OTL yard space that went to the Liberté class pre-dreadnoughts and as such four République class are built instead of two République and four Liberté. Camille Pelletan was the one to name the République (& Liberté) class IOTL and he manages to do so again ITTL because of how annoying he is.

[9] Think of OTLs HMS Nelson design for the Italian ships. They've sacrificed a turret in order to achieve a higher speed of 25 knots.

[10] The author is talking about the ships deployed in the Atlantic/English Channel and Mediterranean. The ATL Marine Nationale has scrapped older pre-dreadnoughts (keeping only the four République class) to free up manpower and resources, and sent older cruisers and destroyers to their expanding colonial naval bases.


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Sorry about all the footnotes but this one was long and the French Navy is vastly diverged from OTL. Next up is a tour of the major powers to bring them up to date before the war, and after that of course is the opening stages of the war. I'm sure I managed to screw something up since I'm certainly not a WWI naval expert, but c'est la vie.

 

[Hörnla]

As far as I recall there were mutual compensation clauses on Italian insistence, so that if AH gained Bosnia the Italians would get something in return.

The way I see it, AH gained BH in 1878 which predates the triple alliance. What happened in 1908 can be seen as reform confirming the way Austria-Hungary had been dealing with Bosnia for three decades. Of course, a bit silly of the Austrians to wake up sleeping dogs. But it was after all a Russian idea...

They demanded Trentino, the Germans in particular were fine with that[...] As wiking pointed out the Austro-Hungarians at that time would tell the Italians to go f**k themselves (which I overlooked) but the Germans are not terribly happy about it as they didn't see a problem handing Italians to Italy

Quoting Alfred Tetzlaff, 100% out of context "it is all possible because Germany is governed by Santa Claus nowadays, and an especially cunning one who gives away things which don't belong to him".
Ironically, the Germans were not so well known on insisting to repair the relations with France by negotiating the status of Elsaß-Lorraine.

They understand that South Tyrol or Trieste are absolutely impossible, but even their (not mentioned) alternatives such as parts of Dalmatia were rejected by AH.

Again assuming the AH point of view: when opening Pandora's box, it doesn't matter where you first attach the can-opener. In contrast to 1866 when Austria (in retrospect with little gain) gave Venetia away, the world has become to nationalistic to allow a multi-ethnic empire such as AH to give away a region to an irredentistic neighbour. What a signal to Serbia and Romania!

That's what the Italians argued. But they were simply too vulnerable to British naval and economic power (and public opinion) for them to jump in without rather different circumstances.

Often quoted. A Gallipoli in Ostia? I wonder how such an undertaking would have fared. But you are right Italy WAS concerned about the problem. But if the pro-CP faction would under different circumstances have commited to the alliance, the hopeful logic would have been: as soon as France is out, all other matters can easily be dealt with.

Well yeah. Again, biased authors.

I should clarify that I belong to the minority which sees WW1 as not 100% inevitable. But negotiating territory in Europe away seems totally out of character for all contemporary nations- unless the perspective of such a result is incredibly promising for both sides. Accepting the status quo is the only way to make it through until the continent matures...

But that is not where your TL is heading - I am quite sure of that.

 

[Electric Monk]

The way I see it, AH gained BH in 1878 which predates the triple alliance. Of course, a bit silly of the Austrians to wake up sleeping dogs. But it was after all a Russian idea...

Try telling the '78 de facto control part to the Italians, hence their problem with it. And the Russians bungled it badly, although not as terribly as they did OTL due to the kerfuffle over Trentino.

Ironically, the Germans were not so well known on insisting to repair the relations with France by negotiating the status of Elsaß-Lorraine.

Weird, isn't it? Of course if I'm the poor German diplomat herding Italians and Austrians together I'd probably be willing to toss bits and pieces of land overboard (just not German land, of course . As it happens, AH disagrees.

But negotiating territory in Europe away seems totally out of character for all contemporary nations- unless the perspective of such a result is incredibly promising for both sides.

It would have to very promising for both sides, wouldn't it? Trentino was only good for the Germans and Italians, and so AH flipped out (treaty or no treaty). Any kind of territory negotiations would have to be very important to, say, winning the war.