TruthfulPanda
Gone Fishin'
Plus a President with a hate-boner for Willie and US Big Bussines that'd be fucked if the Entente lost ...Remember if took USW, massive German PR blunders and Zimmerman to get the US in, remove two and US stays out
Plus a President with a hate-boner for Willie and US Big Bussines that'd be fucked if the Entente lost ...Remember if took USW, massive German PR blunders and Zimmerman to get the US in, remove two and US stays out
I understand the logic behind this post, but why would Russia choose Britain rather than France and Germany, bearing in mind that back then Russia and Britain were main rivals in central Asia?
France and Russia began to approach each other after the Franco-Prussian War. In the case that Prussians were smarter and didn't annex A-L for some reason, why would France and Russia create an alliance in the first place?
Of course, there is a question how were Balkan problems solved and who controls what. What happened to Ottomans and Italy?
A partition of Turkey ...But the problem is that Germany and France have completely opposed interests regarding Ottoman Empire. Germany needs Iraqi oil controled by Ottomans back then.
This endangers British and French interests on Middle East and futher more in Far East. So, how would France and Germany solve this problem?
The second problem is that the Russians will not allow cash inflow to the Ottomans from selling oil and attachment to German technology, which jeopardizes Russian interests in the Caucasus.
Because the second Britain withdraws from the main zones of contestation to a degree acceptable to one of the powers within the Alliance it's going to immediately fall apart and everybody knows it. It has too much power divided between superpowers with differing interests to be passively stable, and can only be held together by mutual hostility to the continued British hegemony.
A partition of Turkey ...
1 - Russia gets Straits and Armenia
2 - let us not over estimate the importance of oil - this is 1914 ...
3 - France gets more or less - probably slightly - what it got in OTL 1918/20
4 - Germany gets something - Anatolia? Assyria?
This requires Germany to go against A-H, though - but then again, three of the five Great Powers acting in concert can be very persuasive.
Good idea!If Russia gains Straits and Armenia, Russia also renounces on Serbia and her claims.
OTL Britain did an unbelievable job of burning through almost its entire foreign reserves before the end of 1916. OTL Britain was also facing a wider fuel and shipping crisis, which required a greater proportion of goods to be sourced from North America, due to proximity. In this scenario, if Britain is cut off entirely from continental trade, the burden on British shipping would be brutal even without U-boats, thier french equivalents and bases relating thereto. It should be remembered Britain imported over half its calories.Britain has historically been almost unbelievably effective at shutting down hostile traffic in the English Channel. Enemy forces have managed to transit it exactly once since the Anglo-Dutch Wars (the WWII Channel Dash). Even with friendly French ports, that raises the question of how exactly significant German surface assets are going to get into them. U-Boats are the biggest threat, but to be really effective the WWI ones had to be used in the unrestricted fashion, which is going to bring in the U.S. eventually. At that point, France and Germany's chance of winning goes to flat zero.
The Royal Navy was not the problem - it was the OTL shortage of merchant shipping, which was relatively benign compared to this scenario.Oh Britain was highly dependant on its colonies for just about every resource in fighting for a war. But the incredible prowess of their navy would assure that they could get grain from India or beef from Argentina (not a colony but still) without much worry; especially if their entire war effort depended on it. So this worry of coastal ports at least in the short term is not much. Its in a generation that the worry will be there. But in 1922? No issue.
1 - No OTL war in 1914 probably means that Wilson does not get re-elected. He was very pro-Entente and anti-Central Powers.
Plus a President with a hate-boner for Willie and US Big Bussines that'd be fucked if the Entente lost ...
Indeed, two boxes of documents in the French military archives near Paris reveal that some French officials seriously toyed with the idea of attacking Britain through Ireland at a time when the British army was away in distant South Africa (incidentally, there are no documents about a German invasion in the German military archives in Freiburg im Breisgau). Between 1900 and 1904, several French intelligence agents were sent to Ireland to explore the possibility of a landing. Ireland was of course a historic ally of France. The agents sent back very precise reports to the Deuxième Bureau (military intelligence) in Paris about topography, quality of the roads, British coastal defences, strength and morale of British troops, estimations of strength and quality of various nationalist and unionist organisations and so on. The agents had reached the conclusion that the southern coast in County Cork would be the best place to land. They were in touch with Irish republicans who gave them a detailed invasion plan in September 1902.
Between 1900 and 1904 the French sent spies to Ireland to examine the possibility of a landing in Ireland in the event of a war between France and Britain:
While a landing in Ireland by the French and Germans probably wouldn't be possible and would be blockaded by the Royal Navy they would be able to get weapons and possibly advisors into Ireland to aid an Irish uprising.
OTL the weapons and supplies on the Aud failed to be delivered due to communication difficulties with the IRB and was captured, and as a result Eoin MacNeill ordered the rising to be called off causing it to be confined to Dublin with only around 1,000 of the expected 15,000 men taking part. A rising with outside supplies that wasn't countermanded would be a very different affair, especially if they were to focus on guerrilla tactics.They did in OTL, it was put down.
Would an World war 1 alliance between Germany and France against Britain have been possible?
It's actually really easy. The French were seeking such an alliance in the 1890s. We forget now but before about 1905 (and the first Morocco crisis) the disruptive power in Europe was not seen as being Germany or Russia or Austria-Hungary, but Britain, who was merrily waltzing across the globe bagging colonies and seeking to cut off the other powers at their knees whenever possible. Britain was very good and very lucky in OTL to out-maneuver the Germans in this sensitive period. I suspect that had Germany been the nimble diplomat, not the Brits, Britain would have faced an alliance of France, Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary come alt-WW1. (Russia was, for a long time, also seeking to forge an anti-British alliance with the Germans.)
The historical Easter Rising was on a tiny scale, involving around 1,000 people due to MacNeill's intervention. The full IVF had around twenty thousand men available.They did in OTL, it was put down.
How exactly were the British good and lucky during this period? Essentially Britain ended up getting dragged into a war against a traditional ally to defend the interests of Britain's two traditional rivals, effectively ending centuries of British global dominance and losing Britain its empire. What is your definition of stupid or unlucky? It was the Germans who dropped the Russians in the early 1890s. What makes you think the Germans ever preferred the company of Russians to the British? Let alone the French...
If Germany had been the nimble diplomat, you would have likely seen a Anglo-German alliance - or at the very least a solid understanding.
1. Russia would give it all for it.
2. Perhaps oil wasn't the key reason for the war, but it was already known that oil is going to be a strategic resource for the future. Didn't the Germans and Brits have oil cooperation before the war?
3. OK.
4. Instead of Lawrence of Arabia, history remembers Ludwig of Arabia who promised Arabs a united state?
If Russia gains Straits and Armenia, Russia also renounces on Serbia and her claims.
Why would Russia do so given their traditional role of protector of (orthodox) christian nations in Balkan?
Defend the English Channel from whom? The Germans certainly had no interest in such matters and the German mitteleuropa proponents remained wary of the need for British approval, including the role Belgium would play in the structure - even after Belgium was under German occupation.What, you mean the way the British cleverly hoodwinked the French into fighting and dying to defend the English Channel?
With Nicky in charge and conflicting Russian aspirations in the Balkans, scarcely a surprising outcome.And managed to manoeuvre the threatening Russian juggernaut into smashing itself against Germany?
The French navy had ceased to be a threat for over a century, the Germans were stared down in 1912 and whatever the Russians were building needed to be divided by three.Managed to decisively remove France, Germany AND Russia as naval competitors for the next 50 years? (Maybe more like 60 years - it took some time for the Soviet navy to grow larger than the British RN.)
Britain was the least broken of the European powers and on the winning side, so scarcely surprising - as far as investments go, Versailles would have represented pennies in the pound as a return.When you drill down into the treaty of Versailles, most every clause was tilted in the favour of British views and interests.
On paper, the British went to war to defend Belgium neutrality and secure the Channel coast. The need to do so arose from British (mis)calculations that the Franco-Russian alliance represented more of a threat than Germany i.e. the British foreign office was pursuing a policy of appeasement.I tell you, that doesn't look to me like Britain went in to WW1 to defend the interests of France and Russia.
Really? Would you like to provide a reference to support this fiction? Let me guess, perhaps the Kaiser wrote some bad things about the British in the margins while he was in a bad mood? Historically the closest the Germans ever got with Russia was a non-aggression pact, which is a long way from the conspiracy theory you are stitching together.And when you look at the very real strong anti-British sentiments across the continent and in the USA before WW1, the fact that governments in France and Russia DID in fact try to see if Germany might be open to an anti-British alliance and the German government at least tried to feel out the Russians about becoming allies again.
Nope, the most likely alternative was the status quo, also supported by Germany and A-H, which had resulted in over 40 years of European peace prior to the Balkan wars. What would any European power hope to gain by picking a fight with Britain? OTL the original intent of the German risk fleet was to force British friendship, not a diabolic plan of world conquest.Yes. It seems to me that the alternative to a war to contain Germany was a war to contain Britain.
As previously stated, the most recent opportunity for an understanding was when Wilhelm attended his Grandmother's funeral (1902?)and ditched his brash demeanor. He was under strict instructions by the Germany diplomats to rebuff any feelers from the British, not because of any Anglo-German enmity, but because the Germans calculated an understanding between Britain and Germany was inevitable and Germany should not sell itself short.So far as I know, there was no interest in Britain or Germany in such an alliance. I'd be interested to hear if there were any abortive attempts by either or both parties that I don't know about.