WI: CP's Victory at Monte Grappa
- Thread starter Talus I of Dixie
- Start date
That would be for 1915 or 1916, right? By 1917, Most of Austria-Hungary’s army was in Italy, because Russia was in turmoil.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
Many of the POWs were suffering from conditions such as typhus & cholera when they returned OTL, and even worse - Bolshevism.
The Austrian army wasn't equipped for a desert campaign nor would they want to participate in one. The Ottomans aren't likely to be leading the world in oil while being cut off from world markets and having permanently lost control of the Arabian peninsula and Southern Iraq to the Entente. Austria would probably try to make a separate peace while they still had the chance.
Bombers couldn't do a thing to the Suez Canal in World War 1.
Well whithout Amiens the railroad network cannot support the bef north of the mouth of the somme, the British army thought that in order to leave in time not to be crushed they would have to leave behind 90% of there heavy equipment (artillery ect.) Which would at the very least precluded any offensive action until 1920, it would also mean the loss of the last place of Belgium left and be a huge blow to moral that the place so much propaganda had used in order to gustavie British losses in the war would gust be given up, plus the loss to the pa de cale coalfields would me the Paris factory's (still the largest and most numerous) would be closed do to a lack of coal.
So yes the loss of Amiens would be a huge blow if not a completely fatal one.
History Learner
Banned
Central Powers win the war, as the BEF is rendered incapable of supporting the French, and their lines are now disconnected anyway forcing the French Army to abandon most of Northern France. Without the coal of the bethune mines, French war production collapses by around 70% and thus we get a stalemate peace.
What you describe isn't quite a stalemate peace though. Were the bethune mines really that important? They were partially occupied by the Germans in 1914 already and the local infrastructure was under constant bombardment throughout the war. I know the area provided around 70% of the pre-war coal production of France, but I was under the impression, that its significance diminished during the war. Otherwise, can't Britain supply the French with coal? They had plenty.
marathag
Banned
Gotha Bombers were not so far different from what Mitchell used to attack Battleships
That was against a stationary ship not fighting back. The Suez Canal is downright impossible to destroy with the bombers available in 1918.
marathag
Banned
Not much AAA on WWI ships, and not a lot of room to maneuver, the Canal wasn't widened much till after WWII
At Maximum depth, narrow areas the channel was only 40 yards wide before that
I don’t think so. The Middle East was a tertiary theatre. If the Austro-Hungarians had troops to spare, they’d likely be sent to the Western Front.
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Where does that idea come from? Here's a picture of Austro-Hungarian troops in Jerusalem, thousands went there under German command to tdo precisely that - reinforce the Ottomans. Meanwhile the primary focus was elsewhere so it stayed at "thousands" and not "tens of thousands".
Unless A-H secures a separate peace - it's certainly possible as they're not part of the old Franco-German spat or British concerns about Belgium (officially) and German industrial might (inofficially), the Turkish front will be number 2 of the places where forces can be redirected to until victory or favorable negotiated peace settlement. Number 1 is the Western Front but there's only so many soldiers you can push into that small part of the world. Rail connection exists from Vienna all the way to Aleppo, logistics is a lot easier for them than for the British and French and unlike the Turks they can put up a fight thanks to having modern war materials.
The rail line has a break in Turkey but otherwise goes almost all the way to Gaza with a section under construction to connect to Egypt via the Sinai...Where does that idea come from? Here's a picture of Austro-Hungarian troops in Jerusalem, thousands went there under German command to tdo precisely that - reinforce the Ottomans. Meanwhile the primary focus was elsewhere so it stayed at "thousands" and not "tens of thousands".
Unless A-H secures a separate peace - it's certainly possible as they're not part of the old Franco-German spat or British concerns about Belgium (officially) and German industrial might (inofficially), the Turkish front will be number 2 of the places where forces can be redirected to until victory or favorable negotiated peace settlement. Number 1 is the Western Front but there's only so many soldiers you can push into that small part of the world. Rail connection exists from Vienna all the way to Aleppo, logistics is a lot easier for them than for the British and French and unlike the Turks they can put up a fight thanks to having modern war materials.
Jezreel Valley railway - Wikipedia
Seems like i was strictly looking at the Berlin-Baghdad railway, my mistake.The rail line has a break in Turkey but otherwise goes almost all the way to Gaza with a section under construction to connect to Egypt via the Sinai...
Jezreel Valley railway - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Instead Turkey could pull their own forces from European theaters.
XV Corps (Ottoman Empire) - Wikipedia
Romania - Turkey in the First World War
Before the World War broke out, Romania essentially consisted of three parts: Walachia, Moldavia and Dobruja. The first two regions had a more or less homogeneous population of Romanians, whereas Dobruja had an ethnically heterogeneous population with a significant amount of Muslims and a...
www.turkeyswar.com
Wouldn't shoring up of the Salonika front and demobilizing some of the army to get the economy more back on track be a better use for the Austrians? Or even helping the Germans in the west?