TL-191 GWI Anaconda Plan

[m0585]

As much as I love TL-191 (it got me into alternate history), some of the GWI U.S. military decisions that were made didn't make any sense. Some of these included the U.S. not allocating more troops/resources to take Winnipeg, not making better use of barrel technology, and wasting resources on attacking on the Roanoke Front.

One thing I also didn't get was why the U.S. didn't try for a revision of the Anaconda Plan. Granted the plan didn't work in that timeline's Civil War, but the U.S. would have a better chance of executing it after decades of military buildup. At the very least, it would have made sense to control the Mississippi River and potentially cut off the Confederate western states.

So would a revised version of the Anaconda Plan have worked for the U.S. in TL-191?

 

[Deleted member 96212]

some of the GWI U.S. military decisions that were made didn't make any sense. Some of these included the U.S. not allocating more troops/resources to take Winnipeg, not making better use of barrel technology, and wasting resources on attacking on the Roanoke Front.

In defense of this seemingly poor writing, I'll say that there are plenty of times in real history where military and political commanders have really screwed up big time. Just wanted to get that out of the way.

 

[m0585]

In defense of this seemingly poor writing, I'll say that there are plenty of times in real history where military and political commanders have really screwed up big time. Just wanted to get that out of the way.

Oh, most definitely. It just seemed like in TL-191, the U.S. military leadership ate paint chips during GWI.

 

[Tiro]

I've always assumed that the "Attack on All Fronts" strategy adopted by the North in 1914 was based on two things:

(1) A keen awareness that they have absolute Superiority in manpower & war material, especially over their North American opponents.

(2) The burning desire to prove themselves fuelled by two humiliating defeats at the hands of a weaker opponent, 43 years of revanchist militarism crying out for VENGEANCE and the lingering fear that this time WON'T be different (despite almost a half-century of build up).

So instead of having the cool-headed good sense to focus their initial assets against the weaker opponent - prioritising Canada is objectively the wiser option - US high command launches itself into an attack on all fronts that costs them their best chance to simplify a two-front war into a single, Southern Front (not least because the Confederate "Big Wheel" through the Mid-Atlantic states almost certainly sees the Canadian Fronts shorted of war materials & manpower to speed up reinforcements to the Chesapeake Front), allowing both the Confederate States AND Canada to survive the first year of the Great War.

This significantly complicates the United States' strategic situation and almost certainly means that it takes rather longer for the US to concentrate its assets than would otherwise be the case (there being demands from any number of theatres & side-theatres, each of which would have their advocates bringing influence to bear on their behalf, likely requiring that the Government expend political capital and the US Army spend at least some assets to quieten these demands).

 

[A Piece of History]

not making better use of barrel technology

It's important to remember that in the story, barrels are new technology and the General Staff couldn't think of any other way to use them than as infantry support, much like in OTL's Great War, where tanks were only experimental and while they did contribute significantly to the war, I can't think of any battles where tanks played a decisive role, outside of scaring the hell out of the Germans at Fleurs-Corucelette as they broke through their lines. (Correct me if I'm wrong).

I think it was a stroke of genius for Turtledove to have Custer, a man notorious for cavalry charges, to be the one to realize that the barrels could be better used as battering rams than as shields for the infantry.

 

[Tiro]

As for the Anaconda Plan, splitting the CSA in half and cutting it off from all outside help remains a valid strategic concept but one imagines that implementing it would be even harder in 1914 than in 1861 - for one thing the Confederate States of America controls Cuba and has an ally (or if you prefer a puppet regime) in control of Mexico, making it much harder for the US Navy to land troops on the Gulf Coast (freeing up Southern divisions for the Northern Front and denying the Yankees control over the mouth of the Mississippi); for another the Confederate States of America have had half a century to fortify the Mississippi Valley, making it an even harder nut to crack than it was in our time (presumably they would have constructed a defence in depth).

Further, while victory at Pearl Harbor mostly frees the United States from any serious threat to their Pacific Coast the Confederate Alliance with the British Empire - and the British alliance with Russia - means that the USA now has to split its resources between two fronts and a far greater number of theatres & side-theatres (it is also just possible that British depredations during the War of 1881 and their continuing presence in the Atlantic will force the United States to reserve at least a few divisions for seaside garrison duty in East Coast states, just to avoid arguments with Congressmen from more nervous communities that might complicate political processes within the House).

The fact that the Confederate States now has a Pacific port and two First-rate naval powers for allies also means the United States faces a slightly more difficult challenge in cutting off the South from outside assistance; while the Japanese are unlikely to send troops and the British have more than enough demands for their War Material, they will still be more inclined to commit some effort to breaking (or at least boring holes in) any blockade the US Navy can impose.

So ANACONDA remains a valid option, but one that requires alteration to accommodate the substantial changes in the Strategic situation between Winfield Scott & Theodore Roosevelt.

 

[RamscoopRaider]

Anaconda plan in 1914 is far more difficult to implement than in 1861. Naval Warfare has completely changed, the torpedo boat, submarine and naval mine can inflict unsustainable attrition on a force trying a close blockade of an enemy coast. Distant blockade without geographic choke points is unfeasible. Likewise with supplying lodgements in hostile territory purely by sea. Probably impossible with other naval powers to consider. A thrust down the Mississippi is probably workable though, decent enough amount of manuevering room, though may have to flank pretty darn wide

I've always assumed that the "Attack on All Fronts" strategy adopted by the North in 1914 was based on two things:

(1) A keen awareness that they have absolute Superiority in manpower & war material, especially over their North American opponents.

(2) The burning desire to prove themselves fuelled by two humiliating defeats at the hands of a weaker opponent, 43 years of revanchist militarism crying out for VENGEANCE and the lingering fear that this time WON'T be different (despite almost a half-century of build up).

So instead of having the cool-headed good sense to focus their initial assets against the weaker opponent - prioritising Canada is objectively the wiser option - US high command launches itself into an attack on all fronts that costs them their best chance to simplify a two-front war into a single, Southern Front (not least because the Confederate "Big Wheel" through the Mid-Atlantic states almost certainly sees the Canadian Fronts shorted of war materials & manpower to speed up reinforcements to the Chesapeake Front), allowing both the Confederate States AND Canada to survive the first year of the Great War.

This significantly complicates the United States' strategic situation and almost certainly means that it takes rather longer for the US to concentrate its assets than would otherwise be the case (there being demands from any number of theatres & side-theatres, each of which would have their advocates bringing influence to bear on their behalf, likely requiring that the Government expend political capital and the US Army spend at least some assets to quieten these demands).

I mostly agree with you, but I'd argue there are very good reasons not to focus an initial assault on Canada. Functionally to knock out Canada you have to take the Peninsula of Ontario and Quebec North of the St. Lawrence. The issue is that geography makes those areas easy to defend. The only approach to those areas that don't require a river crossing frontal assault against an entrenched enemy is going from the West via the north shore of Lake Superior, and the logistics there suck unless you have naval supremacy, and Naval Supremacy (as opposed to superiority) on the Great Lakes wins the war. I'd assume that plans to knock Canada out in Year One banked on a Naval landing, and Canadian mines and subs made that considered too risky. In general without a naval assault any plans to knock out Canada in one campaign are going to generate stupid high casualty lists, hence why it can be prudent to avoid that, don't want to burn through all your reserves to knock out the lesser opponent

 

[Tiro]

An excellent point RR - thank you very kindly for offering that further clarification to my thoughts on the matter!

A thrust down the Mississippi is probably workable though, decent enough amount of manuevering room, though may have to flank pretty darn wide

It's interesting that we don't really see very much of the "Trans-Missippi" theatre in the GREAT WAR sequence; given the importance of splitting the South to the Union war effort during the Civil War of Our Own timeline, one would have expected to see the Northern Army make far more effort to split Texas & the West from the rest of the Confederate States (especially given how much more populous & powerful the Texas of 1914 was than that of 1861*).


*A year ago I put together some estimates for the population of the South by state (in the form of Confederate census from 1865-1935), then used the numbers for 1911 to work out the pool of manpower from which the CSA might have drawn during the Great War (again broken down by state); my best guess was that Texas would provide the equivalent of FIFTY-SEVEN Divisions (assuming a Southern division = 16,000 officers & men), not counting "Confederate coloureds" and setting aside 5 Divisions to represent the state's contribution to contribution to the Regular Army.

 

[RamscoopRaider]

An excellent point RR - thank you very kindly for offering that further clarification to my thoughts on the matter!

It's interesting that we don't really see very much of the "Trans-Missippi" theatre in the GREAT WAR sequence; given the importance of splitting the South to the Union war effort during the Civil War of Our Own timeline, one would have expected to see the Northern Army make far more effort to split Texas & the West from the rest of the Confederate States (especially given how much more populous & powerful the Texas of 1914 was than that of 1861*).


*A year ago I put together some estimates for the population of the South by state (in the form of Confederate census from 1865-1935), then used the numbers for 1911 to work out the pool of manpower from which the CSA might have drawn during the Great War (again broken down by state); my best guess was that Texas would provide the equivalent of FIFTY-SEVEN Divisions (assuming a Southern division = 16,000 officers & men), not counting "Confederate coloureds" and setting aside 5 Divisions to represent the state's contribution to contribution to the Regular Army.

I just think that the West Bank of the Mississippi is the best place for the US to launch a major offensive, flat land that doesn't require crossing a river, good logistics, hurts CS transport net and potential to do take jumping off point for a war winning offensive. Only issue is it's only ~100 miles from the Ozarks to the river a single CS field army could block that and force an expensive frontal assault, but the CS doesn't have that many field armies to go around and strongly holding the border there might weaken Kentucky enough for a crossing of the Ohio without stupid huge casualties

Just a quick FYI it doesn't quite work out like that. A division may have 16,000 men, but that doesn't tell the whole story. That division would be in a Corps, in an Army, in an Army Group or Theater. At each level there are supporting troops that often aren't organized in divisions that have to be counted. As a result one usually deals with "Division Slices" when counting troops, number of troops in theater divided by number of divisions, and I would expect that such a WWI division slice to be in excess of 30,000 men. This just counts combat troops and those supporting them, doesn't count troops assigned to say training units, ordnance department, general staff etc.

 

[Faeelin]

Bear in mind that the core of the CSA in 1914 is different than 1861. How does the Anaconda plan get you control of Birmingham?

 

[Allochronian]

An excellent point RR - thank you very kindly for offering that further clarification to my thoughts on the matter!

It's interesting that we don't really see very much of the "Trans-Missippi" theatre in the GREAT WAR sequence; given the importance of splitting the South to the Union war effort during the Civil War of Our Own timeline, one would have expected to see the Northern Army make far more effort to split Texas & the West from the rest of the Confederate States (especially given how much more populous & powerful the Texas of 1914 was than that of 1861*).

I can see fans filling in that gap, regardless what consequences may arise that differ from Dr. Turtledove's original vision.

*A year ago I put together some estimates for the population of the South by state (in the form of Confederate census from 1865-1935), then used the numbers for 1911 to work out the pool of manpower from which the CSA might have drawn during the Great War (again broken down by state); my best guess was that Texas would provide the equivalent of FIFTY-SEVEN Divisions (assuming a Southern division = 16,000 officers & men), not counting "Confederate coloureds" and setting aside 5 Divisions to represent the state's contribution to contribution to the Regular Army.

I have not seen your post, but I recently made some research into the population of North American nations around the year 1910 and I compared them to each other.

Based on some real-life Census Data and tweaking the numbers to account for changes in population, here is what I was able to calculate:

U.S. Census, 1910
Total Population: 65,490,421
*I lowered the population of Maine because some of its northern part was taken by the British in 1882.
**Alaska and Hawaii are not included since it does not belong to the USA in TL-191.

C.S. Census, 1910
Total Population: 28,112,395
*In real-life, the population of Oklahoma was more than one-and-a-half million. I lowered it to 500,000 to account for a nearly pure Native American demographic.
** The populations of Cuba, Sonora, and Chihuahua (all are from Dr. Turtledove's Original Vision) are included in the total.
***In real-life, the population of African-Americans in the U.S. was 9,827,763. Most of that population would be located within the Confederacy and the total Confederate population eligible for military service would be more small (18,284,632 Whites within the CSA; an estimated half would be 9,142,316 men).

Mexico Census, 1910
Total Population: 14,489,279
*I removed Sonora and Chihuahua from the total.

Canada Census, 1911
Total: 7,431,643
* I included the Dominion of Newfoundland in the total.
**1910 Census, without Newfoundland, was 6,988,000

Haiti Census, 1909
Total: 2,029,700 (estimate)

Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)
1910 estimate: <800,000

Puerto Rico Census, 1910
Total: ~1,000,000

Central American Census, by nation, ca. 1910
Guatemala: <2 Million
El Salvador: ???
Honduras: 553,446
Nicaragua: >501,849
Costa Rica: ~300,000​

My sources are from the Demographics pages from each respective country on Wikipedia. The citations are an interesting read.​

 

[Tiro]

Just a quick FYI it doesn't quite work out like that. A division may have 16,000 men, but that doesn't tell the whole story. That division would be in a Corps, in an Army, in an Army Group or Theatre. At each level there are supporting troops that often aren't organised in divisions that have to be counted. As a result one usually deals with "Division Slices" when counting troops, number of troops in theatre divided by number of divisions, and I would expect that such a WWI division slice to be in excess of 30,000 men. This just counts combat troops and those supporting them, doesn't count troops assigned to say training units, ordnance department, general staff etc.

Please note that I was measuring commitments in divisions not because this accurately represents the structure of an army in the field, but because it made a useful shorthand for the level of manpower available in each state - if memory serves a Corps, an Army and an Army Group have no fixed number on the table of organisation but a division DOES* - and because my understanding was that it is the traditional unit of measurement for military histories of this era.


*Though the number of effectives actually serving with each division will of course vary from that figure according to the twists & turns of fortune.


It might actually be interesting to work out the Order of Battle for the Confederate Army during the Great War using your more rigorous method, but it would also be quite the Heroic Labour - given the sheer scale of the armies that fought the Great War (and my own somewhat modest grasp of statistics and the table of military organisation).

 

[Tiro]

I have not seen your post, but I recently made some research into the population of North American nations around the year 1910 and I compared them to each other.

While I have occasionally posted bits and pieces of my work on CS population numbers (mostly on FILLING THE GAPS), my complete numbers for the CS population between 1865 and 1935 have never been posted in full on Alternate History.com - mostly because there are quite a lot of them and statistics alone make dry reading, but also because I was never completely satisfied with my post-Great War population figures (mostly because I could never be quite certain how to factor in casualties from that conflict).

It might amuse you to know that I actually started the mini-project in question so that one could work out the proper apportionment for CS congressional delegations, but found myself being pulled farther and farther down the rabbit hole - statistics are an absolute nightmare to keep straight but can be bizarrely addictive!

*I lowered the population of Maine because some of its northern part was taken by the British in 1882.
**Alaska and Hawaii are not included since it does not belong to the USA in TL-191.

I was not only unable to work out how to properly allow for the diminution of Maine, but also completely forgot to subtract Hawaii & Alaska - so please do be aware that I'm a rank amateur when it comes to this statistics lark!

*In real-life, the population of Oklahoma was more than one-and-a-half million. I lowered it to 500,000 to account for a nearly pure Native American demographic.

Ditto! I actually came out with a figure of 322,370 (although I can't remember how one arrived at this figure - possibly by taking the population of the Indian Territory before the "Sooners" showed up as a basis).

***In real-life, the population of African-Americans in the U.S. was 9,827,763. Most of that population would be located within the Confederacy and the total Confederate population eligible for military service would be more small (18,284,632 Whites within the CSA; an estimated half would be 9,142,316 men).

Wikipedia, our friend and help in all researches, actually has a whole page on African American demographics by State; as you might imagine, I drew on this rather liberally when drawing up each Census of the Confederate States of America!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_African-American_population

^^ Please remember that I originally drew up this Census to help me work out the precise size of the delegation from each CS state to their House of Representatives and since the Confederate Constitution requires that each person of colour be counted as 3/5th of a person - please picture me spitting in distaste at this point - it was quite important to have a reasonable idea of what proportion of each states population would fall under this unpleasant little rule. ^^

My sources are from the Demographics pages from each respective country on Wikipedia. The citations are an interesting read.

I may have to go back and look at those citations, but I most definitely relied on Wikipedia almost exclusively when drawing up this Census - the only exception was in the case of Cuba, where I was lucky enough to stumble across a website with a somewhat more detailed breakdown of the Islands population.

http://www.populstat.info/Americas/cubac.htm

^^ You can find that website here - see what I mean about it being a godsend? ^^

I also remember fiddling a bit with the population numbers for Sonora & Chihuahua; being a natural born masochist, I just HAD to draw up every Confederate census between 1865 & 1935* so I estimated the population of Sonora & Chihuahua in 1885 by subtracting a percentage of the population roughly equal to its growth between 1895 & 1900 and used that as the "base figure" from which I might model population increase.

*With the logical exception of 1915, when the Confederate government would have been a TAD busy; the Sixth Confederate census would have to be held after the Great War (one assumed in 1919, in time for the tertiary Congressional elections in that year), quite might have been postponed until as late as 1925 if the Whigs really wanted to fudge things in their own favour.

I have not seen your post, but I recently made some research into the population of North American nations around the year 1910 and I compared them to each other.

My advice for modelling the population growth between 1910 & 1914 would be to take the population increase between 1910 & 1920 (the total number, not the percentage) divide that number by 10 and then multiply the resulting number by four; applying this to the (undivided) United States suggests a population of 97,745,712 in 1914.

For the record my method when working out the Confederate population increase was to take the pre-Civil War population figures and average out the percentage increase for each state between (say) 1870 & 1880, then apply that percentage to the population of that state; as you might imagine, this involved quite a bit of fiddling around and "best guess" work but it was still a reasonably pleasant diversion.

For the record, my own estimates for the Confederate population in 1914 indicate a total population of 32,119,222 - of which 22,075,942 White (or "White enough" allowing for Confederate attitudes to First Nations, Hispanic & creole populations) and 10,043,280 Black (or "Too Black" given that ugly, ugly 'mudsill' theory); I derived a rough estimate of military manpower from this population by estimating the percentage of the French population that was mobilised during WWI and applying that figure to the Confederate population (deducting Confederate coloureds from that number according to the percentage of the total CSA population they represented).

This left me with the figure of 6,240,702 White (or "White Enough") Confederates mobilised for the defence of the South (and I then proceeded to divide this number up by state, according to the percentage of the total population that state represented).

Did I mention that statistics can be quite, quite addictive? I really should have because you fellows really need to learn from my example & take warning!