WI Prussians in the ACW

After the poor showing of the federal forces in 1961, president Lincoln signs a military cooperation treaty with Prussia. By the end of the year there are hundreds of Prussian Officers and NCOs organizing a multilevel trainning program for the Army, Dreyse licensed Needle Gun production in the US and english speaking german staff officers are posted as advisors with each US army division level command.
How long would it take for a prussian styled federal army to finish the civil war, and would the US and Germany form a long term special relationship?
 
Why?

In 1861, the Prussians were not thought of as all that much really. This being pre 1866. If the US is looking for the most prestigious and highly thought of 19th century foreign army for training purposes, they would go to the French.

Pretty ASB for the US to go asking for foreign help in the first place though, but by 1862 the Union army was pretty well trained anyway , i don't see much changing that way. The Dreyse was pretty handy though, maybe it shortens the war by a year or two, although all the butterlies from that will change things in Europe as well.

With the efficacy of the breechloader proved in combat, maybe the Austrians adopt the Sylvester Krnka needle gun design instead of keeping muzzleloaders, and win the Austro-Prussian war.

Could be the US and Prussia have a "special" relationship, but that pretty much throws out the entirety of 19th century US foreign policy, and it isn't really in character for them.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
After the poor showing of the federal forces in 1961, president Lincoln signs a military cooperation treaty with Prussia. By the end of the year there are hundreds of Prussian Officers and NCOs organizing a multilevel trainning program for the Army, Dreyse licensed Needle Gun production in the US and english speaking german staff officers are posted as advisors with each US army division level command.
How long would it take for a prussian styled federal army to finish the civil war, and would the US and Germany form a long term special relationship?

This is the unreformed Prussian Army - rightly considered one of the worst in Europe. Roon is just starting his reforms which massively increased Prussian strength (see Howard on their army reforms).

The M1841 Dreyse was a pretty bad weapon, and isn't even universal in Prussia. The bulk of thew Prussian infantry in 1861 carried the M1839/55 converted Minie Rifle which was actually exported heavily to the Union in 1861-2. The vastly improved (but still problematic) M1862 Dreyse doesn't exist yet.

How will others react to what is in effect a Prussian intervention? It's a great way to annoy vast swathes of Europe....
 
1961

It took until 1961 for Lincoln to realize that the war was not going well?:D

Maybe that was why he failed to do much about it... (being dead and all)

The prussian army was being reformed and modernized, but the prussians had an edge on staff officers quality by then, and good staff and planning work was what the US needed most. All the great 1866/1870 Prussian Generals were LT COL/COL/Generals by 1861, so the brains were there. They didn't get smart all of a sudden in 1865...
The needle gun was only bad compared to later weapons. Compared to muzle loaders it was better.
 
It took until 1961 for Lincoln to realize that the war was not going well?:D

You know, I'd love to see a timeline where the civil war actually drags on for over a century, along with Lincoln by some strange reason being blessed with perpetual middle aged-ness and winning presidential election after presidential election.

The timeline begins in 1961, with Lincoln entering his 26th term as President of the United States, having John F. Kennedy as Vice President. The efforts in the hundred years' war have been going poorly for the last eighteen years, and there are increasing fears that the Confederacy is on its way to develop nuclear weapons. Lincoln is of course more popular than ever, but members of his war cabinet, Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and Secretary of the Treasury James Roosevelt are conspiring to bring down their president and sure for peace before nuclear Holocaust. Meanwhile, over in Britain, Prime Minister Aneurin Bevan is getting increasingly uneasy about continuing the alliance with the United States, especially now that Napoleon VI has brokered an alliance with Emperor Otto I of Austria-Hungary.

Read it all in The Century of the Great Emancipator: Lincoln Lives Forever!
 

67th Tigers

Banned
Maybe that was why he failed to do much about it... (being dead and all)

The prussian army was being reformed and modernized, but the prussians had an edge on staff officers quality by then, and good staff and planning work was what the US needed most. All the great 1866/1870 Prussian Generals were LT COL/COL/Generals by 1861, so the brains were there. They didn't get smart all of a sudden in 1865...

Arguably there were no "great generals" but there was a workable staff system, which was only set up in 1858 and is just starting to have an impact.

The needle gun was only bad compared to later weapons. Compared to muzle loaders it was better.

Depends. It had less range and accuracy than the muzzle loading Minie rifles (especially the M1841). The breech did not seal properly, meaning hot gas would blast out and potentially blind the firer. The line infantry of the Prussian Army were forbidden from aiming for this very reason (only jaegars and NCOs were allowed to aim). This would also carry carbon into the locking mechanism, and after not many rounds the mechanism stopped working.

As for shooting, the round had very low velocity (ca. 850 fps on a well maintained Dreyse) and was very erratic. This can be shown by the very low standards required to get into the Jaegars and the Prussian official effective range (140m against a man).

The strength of the weapon was that it doubled the effective rate of fire from 2 aimed shots/min with the M1839/55 Prussian Minie to 4 unaimed shots/ min for the infantry. Prussian tactics involved getting close and then unleashing a barrage of unaimed fire from the hip to blast away the opposition (and in the Austrians they met a foe that it worked against, it would not be very ineffective against a British or American army).

Also, in terms of "getting lead in the air" it is inferior to the old smoothbores with buck and ball loads. These would easily get 8 projectiles per minute downrange vs the Dreyse's 4.
 
The Prussian Army of 1861 was not the one of 1870. If the Lincoln Administration did this from any European society it would be from the French Army whose influence was all over the Union army, from Baron Jomini's tactics to the uniforms, to adoption of Zouave tactics......
 
The Prussian Army of 1861 was not the one of 1870. If the Lincoln Administration did this from any European society it would be from the French Army whose influence was all over the Union army, from Baron Jomini's tactics to the uniforms, to adoption of Zouave tactics......

And pretty much up until the present day in many ways (Though admittedly that actually has more to do with WW1)
 
Prussian evolution

Arguably there were no "great generals" but there was a workable staff system, which was only set up in 1858 and is just starting to have an impact.

Helmuth Von Moltke was Chief of the General staff from 1857. If that's not a great General I don't know who is. (Maybe Lidell Hart was right and Scipio was the only great General...)
The effects of the Prussian General Staff 19th Century RMA were only felt in 1866, due to indiferent command options in the 1864 war, but all the pieces were there, and the machine could have been assembled by a selected group in a foreign country with the incentive of a major war demanding results.


Depends. It had less range and accuracy than the muzzle loading Minie rifles (especially the M1841). The breech did not seal properly, meaning hot gas would blast out and potentially blind the firer. The line infantry of the Prussian Army were forbidden from aiming for this very reason (only jaegars and NCOs were allowed to aim). This would also carry carbon into the locking mechanism, and after not many rounds the mechanism stopped working.

As for shooting, the round had very low velocity (ca. 850 fps on a well maintained Dreyse) and was very erratic. This can be shown by the very low standards required to get into the Jaegars and the Prussian official effective range (140m against a man).

The strength of the weapon was that it doubled the effective rate of fire from 2 aimed shots/min with the M1839/55 Prussian Minie to 4 unaimed shots/ min for the infantry. Prussian tactics involved getting close and then unleashing a barrage of unaimed fire from the hip to blast away the opposition (and in the Austrians they met a foe that it worked against, it would not be very ineffective against a British or American army).

Also, in terms of "getting lead in the air" it is inferior to the old smoothbores with buck and ball loads. These would easily get 8 projectiles per minute downrange vs the Dreyse's 4.

Try shooting on the move with a muzzle loader. Then do it with a breechloader. Muzzleloaders only work from stationary lines. breechloaders work anywere. A unit with the the needle gun can provide it's own supressive fire while advancing much better than a unit with Springfields, while being able to provide davastating short range defensive fire. The needle gun was designed for agressive manouver warfare, not skirmish tactics by expert riflemen. Call it a proto assault rifle...
 
French

The Prussian Army of 1861 was not the one of 1870. If the Lincoln Administration did this from any European society it would be from the French Army whose influence was all over the Union army, from Baron Jomini's tactics to the uniforms, to adoption of Zouave tactics......

And see what that led to...
The French Army of the 1860 was overinfluenced by it's colonial experience and lived in the shadow of it's own version of the lessons of the first Napoleon. It would soon have the best rifle in the world (The chassepot) but was the wrong model for the Union to copy.
So in 1861 the US choose to copy the colourfull past rather than the more efective grey future...
 

JoeMulk

Banned
You know, I'd love to see a timeline where the civil war actually drags on for over a century, along with Lincoln by some strange reason being blessed with perpetual middle aged-ness and winning presidential election after presidential election.

The timeline begins in 1961, with Lincoln entering his 26th term as President of the United States, having John F. Kennedy as Vice President. The efforts in the hundred years' war have been going poorly for the last eighteen years, and there are increasing fears that the Confederacy is on its way to develop nuclear weapons. Lincoln is of course more popular than ever, but members of his war cabinet, Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and Secretary of the Treasury James Roosevelt are conspiring to bring down their president and sure for peace before nuclear Holocaust. Meanwhile, over in Britain, Prime Minister Aneurin Bevan is getting increasingly uneasy about continuing the alliance with the United States, especially now that Napoleon VI has brokered an alliance with Emperor Otto I of Austria-Hungary.

Read it all in The Century of the Great Emancipator: Lincoln Lives Forever!

Things go badly when Lincoln mishandles the gulf of Mexico invasion and the CIA trained confederate blacks are either killed or sold back into slavery however he reedeems himself with his handling of the Kentucky missle crises by agreeing to remove the US missile sites from Key West and Baja California.
 
And see what that led to...
The French Army of the 1860 was overinfluenced by it's colonial experience and lived in the shadow of it's own version of the lessons of the first Napoleon. It would soon have the best rifle in the world (The chassepot) but was the wrong model for the Union to copy.
So in 1861 the US choose to copy the colourfull past rather than the more efective grey future...

Except the Confederacy also did the same thing. And as I remember that effective grey future lost both of its major modern wars, did it not?
 
Am I the only one seeing the totally batshit insane ASB level of incredulity this TL produces? Is there anyone else hearing the Confederate (and for that matter more than a few Unionists) screaming "The Hessians are coming!":eek: It boomeranged on the the British spectacularly in the ARW. As did just the THREAT of Charles I using Irish and French troops in the ECW. It represented 24kt propagandistic gold for Parliament. Don't expect the public to be sharp enough to distinguish the difference between "military advisors" and "armed troops".:eek:

"The damnyankees can't whip us without selling us down the river to furriners!"

That's exactly the claim to run through Southern written histories of the ACW ITTL, thereby severely beating down any hopes at eventual re-conciliation.:(
 
Top