PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Holy shit, cold we actually get this? WWI with Britain as a Central Power would be absolutely bonkers.
The Widening Gyre: The Great War and the Remaking of Europe
- Thread starter Curby
- Start date
- Timeline Post-1900
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
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I think it would be extremely unlikely with this PoD. In this case, "Reapprochment" means something more like "tamping down of hostilities and tensions" than "entry into a defensive alliance with". In 1914, the most pro-German wing of elite British Opinion was in favor of neutrality rather than a complete realigning of British foreign policy.
WW1 with Britain as a Central Power isn't necessarily impossible with a PoD a decade or more further back. You'd need a stronger Russia, and you'd need to avoid the Anglo-Russian detente of 1907. The easiest way to get these is a Russian victory in the Russo-Japanese War, which is actually pretty plausible considering Russia's overwhelming superiority of firepower and numbers. It was something of a testament to the incompetence of the Russian Generals in the area that they lost that war in the first place. Another thing that could help here is an early Ottoman collapse with the Russians gaining control of the straits or something close to it, which was long a nightmare of the Brits.
To actually get Britain as a central power rather than a neutral, though, you also need a Germany that isn't going to pursue the militaristic brand of weltpolitik that they did IOTL, and which has a more competent and consistent foreign policy toward England. That's somewhat harder to achieve, I think, given the self-image of the German elite, the existence of Wilhelm II, and the way that the cartelization of the German political-economic system created pressures for expansionism within German politics. But it might be possible.
I imagine that, so long as Austria remains on the side of the Central Powers in such a war, it will be much shorter and significantly less bloody, probably lasting less than two years or so. The combination of industrial power, land power, and global naval reach of such an alliance would probably put a fright into America, potentially leading to a more russophilic American foreign policy (assuming something like a constitutional monarchy emerges in Russia following such a war).
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King Washington
Semi-Depressed Lurker
- Location
- Indiana
Hmm, are we in for a version of the Great War without British involvement, at least early on? The usual assumption with that sort of scenario is that the Central Powers win the war relatively swiftly, but that obviously isn't where this TL is going.
Well Britain originally entered WW1 OTL because A) they feared that a German victory would upset the balance of power in Europe (ironic when considered what happened post war) and B) defensive agreements with France and Belgium. I think those agreements are still active so Britain is probably still going to enter around the same time they did IOTL. Although given the fact that TTL's version of WW1 is longer and bloodier I'm guessing that the homefront's going to end way more radicalized compared to OTL.
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
- Pronouns
- He/They
Britain is still going to enter the war early on. The majority of elites perceived the security of the British Empire to be bound up with the Entente; it is very unlikely that any set of circumstances (barring the truly bizarre) would prevent them from entering the war very early on. It will just do so with a different government. IOTL the Liberals were barely able to hold things together. ITTL they won't because the radicals aren't going to be brought along and will refuse to endorse British entry into the war, splitting the Liberal Party and thus the current British Government.
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Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
- Location
- The Great State of Warshington
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I wonder if we will see British automakers like Austin emerging ITTL. It's entirely possible that the British section of the auto industry ends up permanently assigned to doing tanks and other weapons for the British Army.
This has an interesting knock-on effect on Japan of all countries: Nissan got its start assembling knock-down kits of the Austin Seven. Meaning that it's entirely possible that ITTL, Nissan doesn't exist, or doesn't make automobiles.
This has an interesting knock-on effect on Japan of all countries: Nissan got its start assembling knock-down kits of the Austin Seven. Meaning that it's entirely possible that ITTL, Nissan doesn't exist, or doesn't make automobiles.
Timeline of Events: 1914, April-June
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
- Pronouns
- He/They
Hey everyone! This will be the last "timeline of events" update before the actual beginning of the war. There will be two further updates before we get to the Great War: one on the July Crisis, and another on the internal dynamics in England and Germany, which are both going to be meaningfully different than IOTL. Then, I will probably have to take a short pause to do some reading in military history before writing about the war proper. Thank you once again to everyone who is taking the time to read and comment!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
April 1st: Harvard University conducts one of the first "scientific" opinion polls on American politics and the views of Americans on a variety of issues.
Regardless of your opinion of his character, how would you assess Bryan's performance as President so far?
Very Good: 33%
Good: 21%
Fair: 23%
Poor: 20%
Not sure: 3%
Regardless of Bryan's performance in office, how would you assess his (honesty)?
Very Honest: 71%
Somewhat Honest: 11%
Not Honest: 12%
Not sure: 7%
Regardless of Bryan's performance in office, how would you describe your personal sentiments about the man?
Very Favorable: 58%
Somewhat Favorable: 13%
Somewhat unfavorable: 12%
Very Unfavorable: 10%
Not Sure: 7%
In your view, which best describes the relationship of the [United Kingdom] to the United States?
A close ally: 6%
A friend: 18%
A competitor: 24%
A rival: 23%
An enemy: 4%
Not sure: 15%
In your view, which best describes the relationship of the [German Empire] to the United States?
A close ally: 1%
A friend: 6%
A competitor: 35%
A rival: 14%
An enemy: 5%
Not sure: 39%
In your view, which best describes the relationship of [France] to the United States?
A close ally: 3%
A friend: 15%
A competitor: 23%
A rival: 5%
An enemy: 2%
Not sure: 52%
If war were to break out in Europe between the United Kingdom and Germany, what do you think the United States should do?
Go to war against Germany: 3%
Help England in its war with Germany, but don't intervene directly: 17%
Help Germany in its war with England, but don't intervene diectly: 5%
Go to war against England: 1%
Stay out of the war, and try to help the Europeans make peace: 45%
Stay out of the war, and leave the Europeans to their fighting: 11%
Not sure: 18%
April 2nd: The capture of Torreon secures the hold of Pancho Villa's forces over North-Central Mexico.
April 4th: Serbian troops march toward Elbasan, a vital logistical hub for the Ottomans.
April 8th: The Tampico Affair. Mexican authorities arrest eight American sailors from the gunship Dolphin, currently docking in Tampico Harbor. The Mexican President Victoriano Huerta explains that they were mistaken for Constitutionalists, but the move causes outrage in the United States, further exacerbated by the refusal of the Mexican President to give a written apology or provide the departing soldiers with a 21-gun salute. Many expect a firm response from President Bryan, who despite his public neutrality on the issue is rumored to have sympathies for the rebels.
April 9th: Serbian troops reach the outskirts of Elbasan after skirmishes with Albanian partisans and retreating Ottoman soldiers.
April 10th: President Bryan committs a major gaffe when he praises the decision of 160,000 Illinois women to register for local township elections and vote for prohibitionist candidates. The "wets" are a vital part of the Democratic constituency in Northeastern states, and Bryan has thus far intentionally avoided speaking about his personal convictions on the matter for fear of splintering the Democratic base. He later clarifies that he was praising the "Civic activism" of the women and their decision to become "participants in the political process" rather than the particular candidates they voted for.
April 11th: In Michigan, the striking workers of the Western Federation of Miners win a series of concessions after the newly formed Department of Labor intervenes on their behalf.
April 12th: Serbian troops begin laying siege to Elbasan, forcing the Ottoman Empire to re-enter into negotiations with Bulgaria for their entry into the war. Bulgaria at first demands all of the lands ceded in the Second Balkan War be returned, hoping to use the desparate situation in Albania to their advantage.
April 14th: President Bryan begrudgingly agrees, after significant pressure from both Woodrow Wilson and his own political advisors, not to issue a public statement of support for William Sulzer's Anti-Tammany, prohibitionist American Party in New York. The same day, he signs off on a military response in Mexico, and backs a scheme to ship extensive amounts of artillery, small arms, and medical supplies to Pancho Villa's troops in the North.
April 16th: Edward Grey and Gottlieb von Jagow meet privately to discuss the Albanian affair. Jagow confides that he has no desire to see Europe "pulled into a war by the Turks", but explains that the Kaiser won't support any policy that could alienate the Ottomans. Grey is convinced that the Germans did not have foreknowledge of the Turkish coup, and proposes a six power conference to ice out the Ottomans and Serbs and impose a settlement. Both sides now need to convince their respective allies to participate in such a conference.
April 18th: Russia and Austria both insist on conditioning six power talks on the acceptance of their own proposals, irritating their allies. The Russians demand that any talks only occur if all sides agree on a return of the Control Comission to Albania and the recognition of at least some of the Greco-Serbian territorial gains. They agree to drop the first condition within a day when it is explained that the Germans would never agree to a conference with this condition.
Austria demand that all six powers agree that no Albanian territory be ceded to Serbia before such a conference begins, a condition which the Russians will not accept.
April 20th: The beginning of the second and bloodiest phase of the Colorado Coalfield Wars, a conflict that pits striking miners in Rockefeller-owned iron mines against private security forces.
April 21st: After reaching a deal with the Ottomans that would see them regain control of Ottoman lands west of Adrianople, Bulgaria declares war on Serbia, citing as their casus belli the "Illegal Serbian incursion onto sovereign Albanian territory and subsequent crimes against the Albanian people". The declaration throws a span in the works of the planned six power conference; hopes for a peaceful resolution to the crisis had begun to mount after Germany convinced Austria to agree to the talks without conditions.
April 22nd: A diplomatic incident occurs between Germany and Austria. The Germans, recalling the earlier Austrian attempt to have the Bulgarians mobilize, suspect that Austria has maneuvered without German consultation to secure Bulgarian entry into the war. The Austrians are outraged at this German accusation, not only because of its falsity, but also because they believe that as a great power, they have the right to conduct independent diplomacy. German and Austrian diplomats spend several hours yelling at one another, creating acrimony between the two governments.
German suspicions will only grow in the coming days as Austria, feeling that the war will now go decisively in the Bulgarians' favor, prevaricate further on the question of a six-power conference.
April 23rd: The Old Age and Unemployment relief act passes Congress by overwhelming margins as progressive Republicans vote with Democrats to forward the legislation.
John Rockefeller pointedly refuses Bryan's requests to mediate between the parties in the Coalfield War, prompting Bryan to denounce the "Aristocracy of Iron and Coal who believe themselves superior to the elected government of this republic".
April 24th: President Bryan addresses Congress, requesting an authorization for the use of military force against Mexico.
April 25th: Brazilian Military officer Candido Rondon dies near the end of the Rondon expedition in the Amazon. Theodore Roosevelt had initially planned to participate in the expedition but was convinced by Republican political operatives to stay in America to help the Republican Party organize opposition to the Bryan Presidency.
April 26th: As the Colorado miner's war worsens, Bryan calls off the planned invasion of Veracruz, instead redirecting the marine regiment toward Colorado. Bryan invokes the insurrection act of 1807 for the first time since 1894, and instructions are given for the 4th Marine Regiment to take an "impartial" attitude and disarm all the parties involved in the conflict.
April 27th: The Bulgarian offensive against Serbia encounters much greater resistance than anticipated. The Serbian military intelligence unit had successfully predicted the possibility of a Bulgarian intervention weeks ago, and defensive works, along with French machine guns, prove devastating to the Bulgarian offensive. Pirot, the main axis of the Bulgarian offensive, becomes a meatgrinder for both the Serbian and Bulgarian armies.
April 28th: The arrival of the 4th Marine Regiment forces both the miners and private security forces to disarm.
April 30th: President Bryan empowers the Department of Labor to "impose an agreement which ensures the miners do not feel the need to continue their strike". Labor secretary William Wilson, the secretary of Labor and a former labor organizer, will meet with the heads of several miner's unions to create a plan for ending the strike over the course of the next few months.
May 1st: With suspicions high of perfidious Austrian involvement in the Bulgarian declaration of war, the Bosnian Serbs Gavrilo Princip and Trifko Grabez receive training from the Serbian military for a planned assassination attempt on Franz Ferdinand.
May 3rd: The soldiers of the 4th Marine Regiment are slowly rotated out by a mixture of national guardsmen and regular military personnel. They are scheduled to begin their assault on Veracruz within two weeks.
May 4th: The Bulgarian Army breaks through around Zajecar, threatening the Serbian trenches in Pirot.
May 6th: Serbian reinforcements diverted from Albania manage to contain the breakthrough in Zajecar. Though the town falls, the Serbian position near Pirot is not unlodged.
May 9th: A small Bulgarian offensive in Macedonia, aiming to break the stasis further North, fails to gain ground. The mountainious terrain proves exceptionally difficult to assault. The Bulgarians request the presence of Ottoman troops on Bulgarian soil.
May 14th: Soldiers from Turkey slowly stream into Bulgaria. Effective coordination between the two armies is hampered by the lack of a shared language and lingering animosities from the First Balkan War. Nonetheless, the presence of Turkish troops will allow Bulgarian troops to be diverted from the south, enabling additional offensives in the north.
May 15th: In the Kremlin, the potential presence of Ottoman troops on Serbian soil is received with alarm. Faced with the changed balance of forces, the Russians agree to drop all of their conditions for a six power conference, though by this point, the Austrians are refusing to engage, believing that Serbia is going to finally be dealt a "decisive" blow. Germany soon begins to exert more pressure on Austria, but the acrimony from the previous weeks makes things slow-going.
May 17th: The Marine Regiment begins their assault on Veracruz. The delay in the operation has led to growing suspicions in the Mexican Government, and the area has been reinforced with additional Federal troops. Over 400 marines will lose their lives in the operation.
May 19th: Ethnic Greeks in Northern Epirus revolt and declare independence from Ottoman Albania, placing the Greek Government in an exceptionally difficult position. An armistice has already been signed with the Ottomans, and there is little belief in the Greek Government of the chance of a genuine victory when it would also likely involve conflict with Bulgaria.
May 20th: The Turkish Government condemn the Epirus Revolt and hint at the involvement of the Greek Government in it, but over the next few weeks, they will take no military action against the "autonomous government of Northern Epirus". Their hands are full with the Serbians, not to mention the increasingly restive Arabs.
May 23rd: A renewed Bulgarian offensive in the Zajecar area finally breaks through Serbian lines, forcing a westward evacuation from Pirot toward the key logistical hub of Nish.
May 24rd: Serbian forces finally take Elbasan. Despite the capture of the city, the balance of power in Albania has slowly swung away from the Serbs as the Ottomans improve their naval supply lines and begin establishing logistic routes over land through Bulgaria. The Serbians have also been forced to divert many troops stationed in Albania to make up losses on the Pirot-Zajecar front.
May 29th: The Old Age and Unemployment Relief Act comfortably passes the Senate. It will be signed into law later that day by President Bryan, creating a social security scheme similar to the German one.
June 1st: With the miner's war fresh in his memory, Bryan presses for a massive bill that will institute a national minimum wage, create new industrial regulations, limit the work-day to eight hours, empower the ability of the Department of Labor to arbitrate labor disputes, and give the department of justice new antitrust powers. He is forced to choose between these priorities;eventually, it is decided to introduce in concert separate bills: one for an eight hour work-day and national minimum wage, and another to give the department of labor more teeth to adjudicate labor disputes.
June 2nd: Gavrilo Princip and Trifko Grabez cross over the Drina River. Over the next few weeks, they will make preparations for their assassination attempt of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
June 4th: Flush with American arms, Pancho Villa's forces land a crushing blow to Huerta's Federal's Government at the battle of Zapatecas. The silver mining town has a crucial railroad junction that is required to advance on Mexico City from the north.
June 5th: Bulgarian forces overrun the towns of Knjazevac and Negotin. The Serbian Army in the North retreats toward Petrovac and Petrujevac, hoping to entrench and shorten their lines.
June 7th: Attempts to form a new miners union associated with the IWW in Montana largely peter out, as the Western Federation of Miners rapidly attracts more membership.
June 10th: Bulgarian attacks on Nish are rebuffed by dug-in Serbian troops. The town's position along two branches of the Morava river makes it difficult to encircle.
June 12th: The Austrians agree to engage the six-power conference after the German Foreign Minister von Jagow finally manages to convince the Austrian government that Germany will press hard for Austrian interests at the planned talks. They are scheduled to begin on June 24th.
June 15th: As Ottoman-Bulgarian forces stream up toward Petrovac, there are increasing reports of atrocities committed against Serbian villagers "in revenge for Albania". The Russian Government has to be talked down from a pre-emptive mobilization by the promise of a "just settlement" in the six-power talks.
June 16th: Secret Russian attempts begin to lure Romania into a declaration of war on Bulgaria. Russia intentionally avoids letting either Britain or France know of the attempts; Nicholas II, increasingly distrustful of the British, fears that they will shoot down any attempts to broaden the war.
June 18th: Romania responds with skepticism to the Russian entreaties. Though their army modernization project is nearly complete, American agricultural equipment will continue arriving for at least the next two years, and a declaration of war with Bulgaria would almost certainly end the American aid. There is also not much land in Bulgaria which Romania truly desires. Nonetheless, the Russians persist, skeptical of the ability of the six power conference to achieve any lasting peace in the region, and believing that a Romanian intervention would at least offer them a stronger hand in negotiations.
June 21st: Petrujevac, one of the largest cities in Serbia, falls to a joint Bulgarian-Ottoman offensive. Bulgarian forces reach the outskirts of Petrovac the same day. If the city falls, the gate-way to Belgrade will be opened. The arrival of Ottoman Forces has allowed the Bulgarian forces in the north to continue advancing without doing much to secure their Southern flank, which is manned by several Ottoman divisions.
June 24th: The six powers meet to settle the Albanian Crisis. Given the facts on the ground and the disputes between the great powers, it is agreed that an independent Serbia with its territorial integrity intact and Ottoman suzerainty over Albania are non-negotiable.
June 25th: Pancho Villa's forces march south toward Mexico City, taking the town of Leon. The position of President Victoriano Huerta is increasingly fragile as the armies of Obregon, Zapata, and Villa squeeze out the last remaining Federal strongholds.
June 28th: Two events occur which begin the July Crisis.
Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, are shot by Bosnian Serbs while inspecting a military exercise in Sarajevo. Though both survive, Sophie of Hohenberg is in critical condition for a little under a week, and will be wheel-chair bound for the rest of her life. The Archduke's injuries are more minor, and he will attend the emergency meeting in Vienna the next day. Given the current military clique in control of the Serbian government, few doubt their involvement.
In Romania, the American Ambassador discovers the Russian plot to draw Romania into the war. His conversation with a friend at a restaurant is overheard by a member of the British diplomatic staff, who cables the information to the British embassy. The British embassy in turn informs London of this. Shortly thereafter, the Romanian ambassador in Britain, Nicolae Misu, is called into the office of Edward Grey, who successfully browbeats him into admitting to the Russian plot. He insists that Romania did not have any intention of involving itself in the war.
For now, news of the affair is intentionally kept from the public by the increasingly divided Liberal Government, but there is a great deal of outrage with Russia in the Britain Foreign Ministry for maneuvering to widen the war during the course of the conference meant to settle it.
June 29th: Gavrilo Princip confesses during police investigation to being trained by both the Black Hand and Serbian military.
H.H. Asquith and William Jennings Bryan send cables to Franz Joseph expressing sympathy and prayers for Franz and Sophie.
At the emergency meeting of the Austrian government, it is (somewhat ironically) only the intervention of Franz Ferdinand, who pleads for caution, which manages to avoid an Austrian mobilization against Serbia.
June 30th: Austria withdraws from the six power conference. Russia does so later that day.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Timeline of Events: 1914, April-June
April 1st: Harvard University conducts one of the first "scientific" opinion polls on American politics and the views of Americans on a variety of issues.
Regardless of your opinion of his character, how would you assess Bryan's performance as President so far?
Very Good: 33%
Good: 21%
Fair: 23%
Poor: 20%
Not sure: 3%
Regardless of Bryan's performance in office, how would you assess his (honesty)?
Very Honest: 71%
Somewhat Honest: 11%
Not Honest: 12%
Not sure: 7%
Regardless of Bryan's performance in office, how would you describe your personal sentiments about the man?
Very Favorable: 58%
Somewhat Favorable: 13%
Somewhat unfavorable: 12%
Very Unfavorable: 10%
Not Sure: 7%
In your view, which best describes the relationship of the [United Kingdom] to the United States?
A close ally: 6%
A friend: 18%
A competitor: 24%
A rival: 23%
An enemy: 4%
Not sure: 15%
In your view, which best describes the relationship of the [German Empire] to the United States?
A close ally: 1%
A friend: 6%
A competitor: 35%
A rival: 14%
An enemy: 5%
Not sure: 39%
In your view, which best describes the relationship of [France] to the United States?
A close ally: 3%
A friend: 15%
A competitor: 23%
A rival: 5%
An enemy: 2%
Not sure: 52%
If war were to break out in Europe between the United Kingdom and Germany, what do you think the United States should do?
Go to war against Germany: 3%
Help England in its war with Germany, but don't intervene directly: 17%
Help Germany in its war with England, but don't intervene diectly: 5%
Go to war against England: 1%
Stay out of the war, and try to help the Europeans make peace: 45%
Stay out of the war, and leave the Europeans to their fighting: 11%
Not sure: 18%
April 2nd: The capture of Torreon secures the hold of Pancho Villa's forces over North-Central Mexico.
April 4th: Serbian troops march toward Elbasan, a vital logistical hub for the Ottomans.
April 8th: The Tampico Affair. Mexican authorities arrest eight American sailors from the gunship Dolphin, currently docking in Tampico Harbor. The Mexican President Victoriano Huerta explains that they were mistaken for Constitutionalists, but the move causes outrage in the United States, further exacerbated by the refusal of the Mexican President to give a written apology or provide the departing soldiers with a 21-gun salute. Many expect a firm response from President Bryan, who despite his public neutrality on the issue is rumored to have sympathies for the rebels.
April 9th: Serbian troops reach the outskirts of Elbasan after skirmishes with Albanian partisans and retreating Ottoman soldiers.
April 10th: President Bryan committs a major gaffe when he praises the decision of 160,000 Illinois women to register for local township elections and vote for prohibitionist candidates. The "wets" are a vital part of the Democratic constituency in Northeastern states, and Bryan has thus far intentionally avoided speaking about his personal convictions on the matter for fear of splintering the Democratic base. He later clarifies that he was praising the "Civic activism" of the women and their decision to become "participants in the political process" rather than the particular candidates they voted for.
April 11th: In Michigan, the striking workers of the Western Federation of Miners win a series of concessions after the newly formed Department of Labor intervenes on their behalf.
April 12th: Serbian troops begin laying siege to Elbasan, forcing the Ottoman Empire to re-enter into negotiations with Bulgaria for their entry into the war. Bulgaria at first demands all of the lands ceded in the Second Balkan War be returned, hoping to use the desparate situation in Albania to their advantage.
April 14th: President Bryan begrudgingly agrees, after significant pressure from both Woodrow Wilson and his own political advisors, not to issue a public statement of support for William Sulzer's Anti-Tammany, prohibitionist American Party in New York. The same day, he signs off on a military response in Mexico, and backs a scheme to ship extensive amounts of artillery, small arms, and medical supplies to Pancho Villa's troops in the North.
April 16th: Edward Grey and Gottlieb von Jagow meet privately to discuss the Albanian affair. Jagow confides that he has no desire to see Europe "pulled into a war by the Turks", but explains that the Kaiser won't support any policy that could alienate the Ottomans. Grey is convinced that the Germans did not have foreknowledge of the Turkish coup, and proposes a six power conference to ice out the Ottomans and Serbs and impose a settlement. Both sides now need to convince their respective allies to participate in such a conference.
April 18th: Russia and Austria both insist on conditioning six power talks on the acceptance of their own proposals, irritating their allies. The Russians demand that any talks only occur if all sides agree on a return of the Control Comission to Albania and the recognition of at least some of the Greco-Serbian territorial gains. They agree to drop the first condition within a day when it is explained that the Germans would never agree to a conference with this condition.
Austria demand that all six powers agree that no Albanian territory be ceded to Serbia before such a conference begins, a condition which the Russians will not accept.
April 20th: The beginning of the second and bloodiest phase of the Colorado Coalfield Wars, a conflict that pits striking miners in Rockefeller-owned iron mines against private security forces.
April 21st: After reaching a deal with the Ottomans that would see them regain control of Ottoman lands west of Adrianople, Bulgaria declares war on Serbia, citing as their casus belli the "Illegal Serbian incursion onto sovereign Albanian territory and subsequent crimes against the Albanian people". The declaration throws a span in the works of the planned six power conference; hopes for a peaceful resolution to the crisis had begun to mount after Germany convinced Austria to agree to the talks without conditions.
April 22nd: A diplomatic incident occurs between Germany and Austria. The Germans, recalling the earlier Austrian attempt to have the Bulgarians mobilize, suspect that Austria has maneuvered without German consultation to secure Bulgarian entry into the war. The Austrians are outraged at this German accusation, not only because of its falsity, but also because they believe that as a great power, they have the right to conduct independent diplomacy. German and Austrian diplomats spend several hours yelling at one another, creating acrimony between the two governments.
German suspicions will only grow in the coming days as Austria, feeling that the war will now go decisively in the Bulgarians' favor, prevaricate further on the question of a six-power conference.
April 23rd: The Old Age and Unemployment relief act passes Congress by overwhelming margins as progressive Republicans vote with Democrats to forward the legislation.
John Rockefeller pointedly refuses Bryan's requests to mediate between the parties in the Coalfield War, prompting Bryan to denounce the "Aristocracy of Iron and Coal who believe themselves superior to the elected government of this republic".
April 24th: President Bryan addresses Congress, requesting an authorization for the use of military force against Mexico.
April 25th: Brazilian Military officer Candido Rondon dies near the end of the Rondon expedition in the Amazon. Theodore Roosevelt had initially planned to participate in the expedition but was convinced by Republican political operatives to stay in America to help the Republican Party organize opposition to the Bryan Presidency.
April 26th: As the Colorado miner's war worsens, Bryan calls off the planned invasion of Veracruz, instead redirecting the marine regiment toward Colorado. Bryan invokes the insurrection act of 1807 for the first time since 1894, and instructions are given for the 4th Marine Regiment to take an "impartial" attitude and disarm all the parties involved in the conflict.
April 27th: The Bulgarian offensive against Serbia encounters much greater resistance than anticipated. The Serbian military intelligence unit had successfully predicted the possibility of a Bulgarian intervention weeks ago, and defensive works, along with French machine guns, prove devastating to the Bulgarian offensive. Pirot, the main axis of the Bulgarian offensive, becomes a meatgrinder for both the Serbian and Bulgarian armies.
April 28th: The arrival of the 4th Marine Regiment forces both the miners and private security forces to disarm.
April 30th: President Bryan empowers the Department of Labor to "impose an agreement which ensures the miners do not feel the need to continue their strike". Labor secretary William Wilson, the secretary of Labor and a former labor organizer, will meet with the heads of several miner's unions to create a plan for ending the strike over the course of the next few months.
May 1st: With suspicions high of perfidious Austrian involvement in the Bulgarian declaration of war, the Bosnian Serbs Gavrilo Princip and Trifko Grabez receive training from the Serbian military for a planned assassination attempt on Franz Ferdinand.
May 3rd: The soldiers of the 4th Marine Regiment are slowly rotated out by a mixture of national guardsmen and regular military personnel. They are scheduled to begin their assault on Veracruz within two weeks.
May 4th: The Bulgarian Army breaks through around Zajecar, threatening the Serbian trenches in Pirot.
May 6th: Serbian reinforcements diverted from Albania manage to contain the breakthrough in Zajecar. Though the town falls, the Serbian position near Pirot is not unlodged.
May 9th: A small Bulgarian offensive in Macedonia, aiming to break the stasis further North, fails to gain ground. The mountainious terrain proves exceptionally difficult to assault. The Bulgarians request the presence of Ottoman troops on Bulgarian soil.
May 14th: Soldiers from Turkey slowly stream into Bulgaria. Effective coordination between the two armies is hampered by the lack of a shared language and lingering animosities from the First Balkan War. Nonetheless, the presence of Turkish troops will allow Bulgarian troops to be diverted from the south, enabling additional offensives in the north.
May 15th: In the Kremlin, the potential presence of Ottoman troops on Serbian soil is received with alarm. Faced with the changed balance of forces, the Russians agree to drop all of their conditions for a six power conference, though by this point, the Austrians are refusing to engage, believing that Serbia is going to finally be dealt a "decisive" blow. Germany soon begins to exert more pressure on Austria, but the acrimony from the previous weeks makes things slow-going.
May 17th: The Marine Regiment begins their assault on Veracruz. The delay in the operation has led to growing suspicions in the Mexican Government, and the area has been reinforced with additional Federal troops. Over 400 marines will lose their lives in the operation.
May 19th: Ethnic Greeks in Northern Epirus revolt and declare independence from Ottoman Albania, placing the Greek Government in an exceptionally difficult position. An armistice has already been signed with the Ottomans, and there is little belief in the Greek Government of the chance of a genuine victory when it would also likely involve conflict with Bulgaria.
May 20th: The Turkish Government condemn the Epirus Revolt and hint at the involvement of the Greek Government in it, but over the next few weeks, they will take no military action against the "autonomous government of Northern Epirus". Their hands are full with the Serbians, not to mention the increasingly restive Arabs.
May 23rd: A renewed Bulgarian offensive in the Zajecar area finally breaks through Serbian lines, forcing a westward evacuation from Pirot toward the key logistical hub of Nish.
May 24rd: Serbian forces finally take Elbasan. Despite the capture of the city, the balance of power in Albania has slowly swung away from the Serbs as the Ottomans improve their naval supply lines and begin establishing logistic routes over land through Bulgaria. The Serbians have also been forced to divert many troops stationed in Albania to make up losses on the Pirot-Zajecar front.
May 29th: The Old Age and Unemployment Relief Act comfortably passes the Senate. It will be signed into law later that day by President Bryan, creating a social security scheme similar to the German one.
June 1st: With the miner's war fresh in his memory, Bryan presses for a massive bill that will institute a national minimum wage, create new industrial regulations, limit the work-day to eight hours, empower the ability of the Department of Labor to arbitrate labor disputes, and give the department of justice new antitrust powers. He is forced to choose between these priorities;eventually, it is decided to introduce in concert separate bills: one for an eight hour work-day and national minimum wage, and another to give the department of labor more teeth to adjudicate labor disputes.
June 2nd: Gavrilo Princip and Trifko Grabez cross over the Drina River. Over the next few weeks, they will make preparations for their assassination attempt of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
June 4th: Flush with American arms, Pancho Villa's forces land a crushing blow to Huerta's Federal's Government at the battle of Zapatecas. The silver mining town has a crucial railroad junction that is required to advance on Mexico City from the north.
June 5th: Bulgarian forces overrun the towns of Knjazevac and Negotin. The Serbian Army in the North retreats toward Petrovac and Petrujevac, hoping to entrench and shorten their lines.
June 7th: Attempts to form a new miners union associated with the IWW in Montana largely peter out, as the Western Federation of Miners rapidly attracts more membership.
June 10th: Bulgarian attacks on Nish are rebuffed by dug-in Serbian troops. The town's position along two branches of the Morava river makes it difficult to encircle.
June 12th: The Austrians agree to engage the six-power conference after the German Foreign Minister von Jagow finally manages to convince the Austrian government that Germany will press hard for Austrian interests at the planned talks. They are scheduled to begin on June 24th.
June 15th: As Ottoman-Bulgarian forces stream up toward Petrovac, there are increasing reports of atrocities committed against Serbian villagers "in revenge for Albania". The Russian Government has to be talked down from a pre-emptive mobilization by the promise of a "just settlement" in the six-power talks.
June 16th: Secret Russian attempts begin to lure Romania into a declaration of war on Bulgaria. Russia intentionally avoids letting either Britain or France know of the attempts; Nicholas II, increasingly distrustful of the British, fears that they will shoot down any attempts to broaden the war.
June 18th: Romania responds with skepticism to the Russian entreaties. Though their army modernization project is nearly complete, American agricultural equipment will continue arriving for at least the next two years, and a declaration of war with Bulgaria would almost certainly end the American aid. There is also not much land in Bulgaria which Romania truly desires. Nonetheless, the Russians persist, skeptical of the ability of the six power conference to achieve any lasting peace in the region, and believing that a Romanian intervention would at least offer them a stronger hand in negotiations.
June 21st: Petrujevac, one of the largest cities in Serbia, falls to a joint Bulgarian-Ottoman offensive. Bulgarian forces reach the outskirts of Petrovac the same day. If the city falls, the gate-way to Belgrade will be opened. The arrival of Ottoman Forces has allowed the Bulgarian forces in the north to continue advancing without doing much to secure their Southern flank, which is manned by several Ottoman divisions.
June 24th: The six powers meet to settle the Albanian Crisis. Given the facts on the ground and the disputes between the great powers, it is agreed that an independent Serbia with its territorial integrity intact and Ottoman suzerainty over Albania are non-negotiable.
June 25th: Pancho Villa's forces march south toward Mexico City, taking the town of Leon. The position of President Victoriano Huerta is increasingly fragile as the armies of Obregon, Zapata, and Villa squeeze out the last remaining Federal strongholds.
June 28th: Two events occur which begin the July Crisis.
Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, are shot by Bosnian Serbs while inspecting a military exercise in Sarajevo. Though both survive, Sophie of Hohenberg is in critical condition for a little under a week, and will be wheel-chair bound for the rest of her life. The Archduke's injuries are more minor, and he will attend the emergency meeting in Vienna the next day. Given the current military clique in control of the Serbian government, few doubt their involvement.
In Romania, the American Ambassador discovers the Russian plot to draw Romania into the war. His conversation with a friend at a restaurant is overheard by a member of the British diplomatic staff, who cables the information to the British embassy. The British embassy in turn informs London of this. Shortly thereafter, the Romanian ambassador in Britain, Nicolae Misu, is called into the office of Edward Grey, who successfully browbeats him into admitting to the Russian plot. He insists that Romania did not have any intention of involving itself in the war.
For now, news of the affair is intentionally kept from the public by the increasingly divided Liberal Government, but there is a great deal of outrage with Russia in the Britain Foreign Ministry for maneuvering to widen the war during the course of the conference meant to settle it.
June 29th: Gavrilo Princip confesses during police investigation to being trained by both the Black Hand and Serbian military.
H.H. Asquith and William Jennings Bryan send cables to Franz Joseph expressing sympathy and prayers for Franz and Sophie.
At the emergency meeting of the Austrian government, it is (somewhat ironically) only the intervention of Franz Ferdinand, who pleads for caution, which manages to avoid an Austrian mobilization against Serbia.
June 30th: Austria withdraws from the six power conference. Russia does so later that day.
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Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
- Location
- The Great State of Warshington
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wait, Franz Ferdinand survives. The casus belli is going to be different I guess, and one might assume, it might be the conflict in Northern Epirus, which makes sense as this region of Greece is best known as the home of Pyrrhus of Epirus.
Pyrrhus of Epirus is known for his quote, "One great victory like this and we are ruined". Thus giving his name to the concept of the Pyrrhic victory. I believe that this is meant to be a nod to the Ottomans or Bulgarians having a Pyrrhic victory.
Pyrrhus of Epirus is known for his quote, "One great victory like this and we are ruined". Thus giving his name to the concept of the Pyrrhic victory. I believe that this is meant to be a nod to the Ottomans or Bulgarians having a Pyrrhic victory.
- Location
- Not the asylum anymore
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Uh, is this supposed to be 1914?
Either way, this is a very interesting TL; I do hope to see more of it.
Franz Ferdinand surviving is an interesting departure from the usual WW1 alt history. Especially when you take into account his plan to federalize Austria Hungary. I kind of wonder if he becomes radicalized by the war and goes red while adapting his federalization to the new socialist government. The two had a tense relationship IOTL, I could see a longer, bloodier WW1 fully shattering that relationship.
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
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Yes, it is! Thank you very much for catching this. Not always the best with details!
Without giving too much away about the exact shape of the July Crisis, I'll say that post-war historians will largely treat the assassination attempt as simply one additional factor contributing to the out-break of the War rather than the "spark" which set it in motion.
Given everything that's already changed by 1914 ITTL, I actually felt somewhat odd having an assassination attempt at all; it's possible that with the increased military tension in the Balkans, there is no army exercise in Sarajevo, or that Ferdinand is convinced not to visit it in an open carriage, which was an exceptionally foolish thing to do. As it is, the major difference ITTL is that he goes with increased security and the assassins' training is a bit briefer because of the...rather awful situation Serbia currently finds itself in.
Even without an attempt on Ferdinand's life, my sense is that it would be very possible that Europe would still go to war over the Albanian crisis. The stiffening of Austria's position here just makes it more likely.
Ferdinand will indeed play an important role once he becomes Emperor, but perhaps even more important might be the downstream effects of never having Charles I take the throne, who is a significantly less reactionary figure.
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The guy being anti-Hungarian would no doubt not help matters with what is presumably going to be a radicalized population after 5 years of bloodshed. Not only that he was also very anti-democratic and was a catholic conservative despite his more liberal views regarding the empire's non-Hungarian ethnicities. Despite his initial cautious approach regarding Serbia I could see him embracing a sunk cost mindset once Franz takes the throne compared to Charles who tried to peace out of the whole mess. Not only that but Austria-Hungary economy was a mess during WW1. It had no provisions for a long war and had to rely on Germany for supplies which led to severe rationing in both food and fuel causing demonstrations and strikes.
To add further fuel to the fire there were increasing amounts of deserters as the war went who started to engage in banditry and later full on violence against the state in 1918. A WW1 that lasts for 5 years and leads to greater amounts of radicalization would not be an ideal scenario for a reactionary ruler who doesn't like the very important part of the empire. I mean think about it, how's Franz going to react to the empire's soldiers putting down their guns and engaging in something similar to the Christmas Truce. Something tells me that Franz might give something for the empire's ethnic groups to unite against.
Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
- Location
- The Great State of Warshington
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Speaking of Austria (and reactionaries), whatever happens to a certain Austrian corporal?
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
- Pronouns
- He/They
In early 1920, he is shot and wounded in the Battle of Munich. After barely making it out of the city, he attempts to gain entry into Switzerland as many other white emigres do, but is denied; the Swiss are only willing to take royals, the wealthy, or the otherwise distinguished. He successfully flees south into Austria, and, with a group of other freikorps veterans, manages to reach Trieste, where he is able to secure a ticket for an ocean liner to New York City. Denied entry into the United States, he eventually makes his way to the burgeoning German emigre community in Buenos Aires. After several failed attempts at art criticism, journalism, and political agitation, he takes a job as a clerk at a meat processing facility.
The Rise of the Red Mandarins (Spoilers Present)
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
- Pronouns
- He/They
Some spoilers ahead on Revolutionary Germany!
____
Excerpts from the article, The Rise of the Red Mandarins: The Survival and Transformation of the German Cultural Elite in Revolutionary Germany, Fritz K. Ringer
Published in The Journal of Historical Studies © 1961, Frankfurt, European Socialist Federation.
…One of the most frequently remarked upon features of the German revolution is that significant portions of the progressive bourgeoisie either chose to refrain from participation in the doomed Hindenburg-Ludendorff Government or even sided with the red forces, believing that the democratic reforms on offer would allow them to exert a moderating force in the new government. This included a minority of that class we know today as Mandarins, who were traditionally one of the most steadfast supporters of Imperial Germany, having traded off their Liberal hopes in the 19th century for a role as the traditional cultural stewards of the nation.
We may define this class more or less broadly: as consisting only of University professors and teachers at the prestigious gymnasiums, or also including those who taught in the more technically oriented oberrealschules and realgymnasiums. There were also portions of the educated professional bourgeoisie such as lawyers, doctors, and government bureaucrats who, though having different class interests from the Mandarins proper, tended to share an intellectual world and sensibility with the professors and gymnasium teachers, having attend institutions staffed by the Mandarin class and often being on intimate terms with some of its members. Here, we shall speak of the Mandarin mostly in the second sense, as including all of the educators who taught in realgymnasium, gymnasium, realschulen, and universities; when it is used in the more inclusive manner, I will indicate as such.
Prior to the Great War, the Mandarins were split into two wings. Firstly, there was the majority, reactionary wing of the Mandarins, who saw democracy, modernity, and the increasing participation of the laboring masses in political life as a threat to their role as cultural stewards of the nation. In fact, their attachment to existing social hierarchies in Germany predated the political ascent of the progressive masses, instead having taken form in the 1870s when the German industrial bourgeousie emerged as a significant social-political force. We may also call this grouping the "Orthodox" wing insofar as their commitment to crown, rank, and privilege was in large part the default opinion of the Mandarins, permeating the life of the class proper as well as the larger grouping of bureaucrats, doctors, lawyers, and engineers who were in frequent contact with it.
Secondly, there was a minority wing of Mandarins who we will call "accommodationists". The accommodationists believed in the inevitability of the political and economic processes which the Orthodox wing believed were reversible. Unlike the Orthodox wing, the mind-set of the accommodationists found more appeal among the outer layers of the class: lawyers and engineers in particular constituted a large part of the readership of accommodationist journals. Among University Professors, they found most support in the newer disciplines of sociology and economics, though there were more than a few neo-kantian philosophers who drifted into the camp following the Zabern Affair.
While not necessarily sanguine about the prospect of parliamentary democracy, interest group politics, labor unions, or social change, the accommodationists believed that reform was necessary to ensure the stability of the German state. They also believed that the Mandarins could retain their viability and privilege as a class precisely by serving as the technocratic experts and the educators of the experts who would guide such reform. Above all, perhaps, they were critical of the narrow-mindedness of the Orthodox wing, who they thought were so blinded by their own class prejudice that they were incapable of grasping the strategic folly of uncritical support for Kaiser and Junker.
The Great War radicalized the accommodationists, and had the effect of converting ever-increasing numbers of educated professionals to their ranks. Their increasing consciousness as a discrete class led to the crystallization of an ideology which legitimated their claims to national leadership. This ideology hinged on a capacious notion of "national interest", and offered arguments ranging from the sociological to metaphysical to demonstrate that the progressive intelligentsia was uniquely capable of ascertaining it. In the later years of the Great War, the increasingly furious broad-sides of the accommodationists against the Junkers, the military, and the industrial bourgeousie were undergirded by the belief that the class prejudices and factional, interest-group advocacy of the other groups in the German elite were capable of being ascended by a more purely "intellectual" leadership.
Despite only constituting a minority of Mandarins proper, many of the academic luminaries of pre-revolutionary Germany in fact belonged to the accommodationist wing: in their ranks is included Ersnt Troelscht, Lujo Bretano, Friedrich Meinecke, Max and Alfred Weber, Leopold Von Wiese, Adolf Harnack, Hans Delbruck, Ferdinand Tonnies, Ernst Cassirer, and G.A. Cohen, among others. The names of the Orthodox, by contrast, are less well-known, with their academic contributions viewed as comparatively minor in the present: Reinhold Seeberg, Gustav Roethe, Eduard Meyer, Georg Von Belo and Dietrich Schafer all were leading spokespeople for the Orthodox Mandarins. It is possible that the irrelevance into which their academic work has fallen is simply a demonstration of the dictum that winners tend to write history; it is also quite plausible that, on the whole, academics who were more creative and original in their work tended to be attracted to the accommodationists.
The emergence of the Progressive Social Union in 1919 and the subsequent repressions against it led to a process of radicalization that saw many of the accommodationists either begrudgingly endorse or refuse to condemn the revolutionary government of 1920. It is these accommodationists who would form the core of the Red Mandarins as they sought a modus vivendi with the government that would preserve at least some of their privileges in return for allegiance to the new government. Holding almost all of the cards, the initial government in fact showed a remarkable degree of grace and leniency toward the Mandarin class, though the drastic restructuring of the German University System pushed through under the Social-Revolutionary period from 1921-1926 had the effect of prompting some of the conservative accommodationists to join their brethren in Switzerland and America.
What remained were two new wings of Mandarins: the social-institutionalists and national-humanists. With the swift consolidation of the revolutionary state in Germany, each grouping found a way to square the old Mandarin ideology with the new revolutionary one. The social-institutionalists held that the new socialist state offered the best opportunity for a long-term "social peace" to be secured between the different classes. They also saw the extension of state bureaucracy under the socialist governments as an opportunity to realize their ambition of attaining the political power necessary to guide the nation's economic and social development. This tendency found its clearest ideological articulation in the work of Hungarian-German sociologist Karl Mannheim's 1928 "The Intellectual in the Era of Socialism", which argued that it was only socialist government which offered the intellectual "real rather than imaginary power - concrete rather than simply ideological power to employ thought to shape the world".
As a class, the social-institutionalists were composed overwhelmingly of economics and sociology professors, engineers, and some more conservative bureaucrats. Readership of social-instititutionalist journals was concentrated among teachers in the more technically-oriented oberrealschule's and Realgymnasiums, and fell off in the more traditionally humanistic institutions such as the University and Gymnasium. They voted as a bloc for the Progressive Social Union, though some would eventually come into the orbit of the more orthodox German Socialist Party. To those that had remained loyal to the regime, the steady curtailment of their social privileges were compensated sufficiently for by the increasing role of academics within the state planning apparatus. The massive expansion of the University system may have diluted the power of individual professors, but it led also to the promotion of many lecturers and vastly increased the overall reach of German academia.
The national-humanist wing of Mandarins represents a very different, and perhaps more traditional ideological current of Mandarin thought. Many of their members were professors and lawyers in the Orthodox wing who refused to leave Germany during the revolution, as well as academics whose thought was too eclectic to class them into either of the pre-revolutionary blocs. Additionally, most of the literary and academic luminaries who returned to Germany in the 1927-1930 period after fleeing the revolutionary violence of 1919 and 1920 gradually drifted into this group.
Overwhelmingly composed of humanists, literati, theologians, lawyers, and more conservative elements of the burgeoning department of culture, the national-humanists were committed to the classical notion of the "Kulturstaat", and believed that it could best be realized under a socialist government. They became early advocates for a non-producerist, non-bureacratic version of socialism whose primary aim was the "liberation of time for the joint task of individual cultivation and the re-creation of genuine people's communities". They were also some of the fiercest critics of the "alliance between the technical intelligentsia, moderate trade unions, and the old Prussian Cameralism". Their more progressive members endorsed and sought to expand the councillist elements of the Republic as a foil to the growth of state bureaucracy, though they remained critical of the cultural-revolutionary tendencies that often attended council democracy.
The initial loyalty of the national-humanists to the revolutionary government can be largely attributed to Germany's newfound European hegemony in the revolutionary period. The quick consolidation of Germany's revolutionary government and the chaos spreading across Europe ensured that the new Germany could often exert a decisive influence in continental affairs. The nationalist chauvinism of many of the humanists, their belief that Germany constitutes a uniquely cultured civilisation, suddenly found itself in a bizarre alliance with an anti-imperial government which had the achievement of grossdeutschland thrust upon it more by circumstance than will. Nonetheless, the territorial expansion of Germany on the continent and its importance in the international socialist movement found consonance with the traditional Mandarin desire to see Germany play a "leading role" in international affairs.
The most forthright representative of the national-humanists is Werner Sombart. In the Imperial Era, he was, like Tonnies and Weber, critical of the effect that late capitalism and "commercial civilization" had on traditional communities. He believed that the concentration of bureaucratic power in a central state and the depersonalization of social relations had a homogenizing effect on thought and culture. And he feared that societies dominated by the market were ones in which individuals would pursue wealth for its own sake, rather than to fulfill genuine human needs. Unlike Tonnies, Weber, and many accommodationists, he aligned himself with the trade unions long before the war, though was criticized by the left-wing of the Social Democrats for trying to tempt workers to bourgeois democracy.
In World War 1, he initially was far more supportive of the war effort than most accomodationists, writing of the patriotic duty of every German citizen to support Germany's "heroic civilization of culture" against "The commercial-bourgeois English civilization"". By the war's end, he had gone into something of an internal emigration, refusing to support either the new revolutionary order or the nationalist government of Ludendorff and Hindenburg. Then, in 1922-1925, he wrote a series of tracts which increasingly aligned his thought with the new revolutionary government. The most important of these "Culture and Socialism", argued that a "democratic government of German workers' and farmers', arising indigenously from local communities" was in fact the only antidote to the "creative destruction of contemporary capitalism, in that it provides the one opportunity to halt the ceaseless spread of market relations and thus restore man, rather than money, as the value of things". Although not a Marxist in any traditional sense, his skepticism of the bureacratic state and the spread of "technical rationality" led him to align himself with more revolutionary forces, and in "The End of Parliementary Government" he explicitly endorsed the movement to bolster the power of the worker's councils, with the proviso that they be expanded to include members of all classes.
The two wings of the Mandarins exercised little real influence on the German state in the 1920s, whatever their pretensions to speak on behalf of the national community. Even the social-institutionalists who were involved in the planning process tended to play a mostly consultative role. Overwhelmingly composed of individuals identified with the old order, they were viewed with suspicion by leaders of the new worker's government. Their importance as a subject of historical study is consequential chiefly because of the outsize influence they exerted on German intellectual life in the 1920s, which was still far from hegemonic. They also played a vital role in shaping the coming generation of academics and cultural elites: though the likes of Arendt and Schumpeter have left behind much of the elitism and national chauvinism of their Mandarin instructors, the recent debates between them nonetheless echo many of the divides between the national-humanists and social-institutionalists of the 20s...
____
Excerpts from the article, The Rise of the Red Mandarins: The Survival and Transformation of the German Cultural Elite in Revolutionary Germany, Fritz K. Ringer
Published in The Journal of Historical Studies © 1961, Frankfurt, European Socialist Federation.
…One of the most frequently remarked upon features of the German revolution is that significant portions of the progressive bourgeoisie either chose to refrain from participation in the doomed Hindenburg-Ludendorff Government or even sided with the red forces, believing that the democratic reforms on offer would allow them to exert a moderating force in the new government. This included a minority of that class we know today as Mandarins, who were traditionally one of the most steadfast supporters of Imperial Germany, having traded off their Liberal hopes in the 19th century for a role as the traditional cultural stewards of the nation.
We may define this class more or less broadly: as consisting only of University professors and teachers at the prestigious gymnasiums, or also including those who taught in the more technically oriented oberrealschules and realgymnasiums. There were also portions of the educated professional bourgeoisie such as lawyers, doctors, and government bureaucrats who, though having different class interests from the Mandarins proper, tended to share an intellectual world and sensibility with the professors and gymnasium teachers, having attend institutions staffed by the Mandarin class and often being on intimate terms with some of its members. Here, we shall speak of the Mandarin mostly in the second sense, as including all of the educators who taught in realgymnasium, gymnasium, realschulen, and universities; when it is used in the more inclusive manner, I will indicate as such.
Prior to the Great War, the Mandarins were split into two wings. Firstly, there was the majority, reactionary wing of the Mandarins, who saw democracy, modernity, and the increasing participation of the laboring masses in political life as a threat to their role as cultural stewards of the nation. In fact, their attachment to existing social hierarchies in Germany predated the political ascent of the progressive masses, instead having taken form in the 1870s when the German industrial bourgeousie emerged as a significant social-political force. We may also call this grouping the "Orthodox" wing insofar as their commitment to crown, rank, and privilege was in large part the default opinion of the Mandarins, permeating the life of the class proper as well as the larger grouping of bureaucrats, doctors, lawyers, and engineers who were in frequent contact with it.
Secondly, there was a minority wing of Mandarins who we will call "accommodationists". The accommodationists believed in the inevitability of the political and economic processes which the Orthodox wing believed were reversible. Unlike the Orthodox wing, the mind-set of the accommodationists found more appeal among the outer layers of the class: lawyers and engineers in particular constituted a large part of the readership of accommodationist journals. Among University Professors, they found most support in the newer disciplines of sociology and economics, though there were more than a few neo-kantian philosophers who drifted into the camp following the Zabern Affair.
While not necessarily sanguine about the prospect of parliamentary democracy, interest group politics, labor unions, or social change, the accommodationists believed that reform was necessary to ensure the stability of the German state. They also believed that the Mandarins could retain their viability and privilege as a class precisely by serving as the technocratic experts and the educators of the experts who would guide such reform. Above all, perhaps, they were critical of the narrow-mindedness of the Orthodox wing, who they thought were so blinded by their own class prejudice that they were incapable of grasping the strategic folly of uncritical support for Kaiser and Junker.
The Great War radicalized the accommodationists, and had the effect of converting ever-increasing numbers of educated professionals to their ranks. Their increasing consciousness as a discrete class led to the crystallization of an ideology which legitimated their claims to national leadership. This ideology hinged on a capacious notion of "national interest", and offered arguments ranging from the sociological to metaphysical to demonstrate that the progressive intelligentsia was uniquely capable of ascertaining it. In the later years of the Great War, the increasingly furious broad-sides of the accommodationists against the Junkers, the military, and the industrial bourgeousie were undergirded by the belief that the class prejudices and factional, interest-group advocacy of the other groups in the German elite were capable of being ascended by a more purely "intellectual" leadership.
Despite only constituting a minority of Mandarins proper, many of the academic luminaries of pre-revolutionary Germany in fact belonged to the accommodationist wing: in their ranks is included Ersnt Troelscht, Lujo Bretano, Friedrich Meinecke, Max and Alfred Weber, Leopold Von Wiese, Adolf Harnack, Hans Delbruck, Ferdinand Tonnies, Ernst Cassirer, and G.A. Cohen, among others. The names of the Orthodox, by contrast, are less well-known, with their academic contributions viewed as comparatively minor in the present: Reinhold Seeberg, Gustav Roethe, Eduard Meyer, Georg Von Belo and Dietrich Schafer all were leading spokespeople for the Orthodox Mandarins. It is possible that the irrelevance into which their academic work has fallen is simply a demonstration of the dictum that winners tend to write history; it is also quite plausible that, on the whole, academics who were more creative and original in their work tended to be attracted to the accommodationists.
The emergence of the Progressive Social Union in 1919 and the subsequent repressions against it led to a process of radicalization that saw many of the accommodationists either begrudgingly endorse or refuse to condemn the revolutionary government of 1920. It is these accommodationists who would form the core of the Red Mandarins as they sought a modus vivendi with the government that would preserve at least some of their privileges in return for allegiance to the new government. Holding almost all of the cards, the initial government in fact showed a remarkable degree of grace and leniency toward the Mandarin class, though the drastic restructuring of the German University System pushed through under the Social-Revolutionary period from 1921-1926 had the effect of prompting some of the conservative accommodationists to join their brethren in Switzerland and America.
What remained were two new wings of Mandarins: the social-institutionalists and national-humanists. With the swift consolidation of the revolutionary state in Germany, each grouping found a way to square the old Mandarin ideology with the new revolutionary one. The social-institutionalists held that the new socialist state offered the best opportunity for a long-term "social peace" to be secured between the different classes. They also saw the extension of state bureaucracy under the socialist governments as an opportunity to realize their ambition of attaining the political power necessary to guide the nation's economic and social development. This tendency found its clearest ideological articulation in the work of Hungarian-German sociologist Karl Mannheim's 1928 "The Intellectual in the Era of Socialism", which argued that it was only socialist government which offered the intellectual "real rather than imaginary power - concrete rather than simply ideological power to employ thought to shape the world".
As a class, the social-institutionalists were composed overwhelmingly of economics and sociology professors, engineers, and some more conservative bureaucrats. Readership of social-instititutionalist journals was concentrated among teachers in the more technically-oriented oberrealschule's and Realgymnasiums, and fell off in the more traditionally humanistic institutions such as the University and Gymnasium. They voted as a bloc for the Progressive Social Union, though some would eventually come into the orbit of the more orthodox German Socialist Party. To those that had remained loyal to the regime, the steady curtailment of their social privileges were compensated sufficiently for by the increasing role of academics within the state planning apparatus. The massive expansion of the University system may have diluted the power of individual professors, but it led also to the promotion of many lecturers and vastly increased the overall reach of German academia.
The national-humanist wing of Mandarins represents a very different, and perhaps more traditional ideological current of Mandarin thought. Many of their members were professors and lawyers in the Orthodox wing who refused to leave Germany during the revolution, as well as academics whose thought was too eclectic to class them into either of the pre-revolutionary blocs. Additionally, most of the literary and academic luminaries who returned to Germany in the 1927-1930 period after fleeing the revolutionary violence of 1919 and 1920 gradually drifted into this group.
Overwhelmingly composed of humanists, literati, theologians, lawyers, and more conservative elements of the burgeoning department of culture, the national-humanists were committed to the classical notion of the "Kulturstaat", and believed that it could best be realized under a socialist government. They became early advocates for a non-producerist, non-bureacratic version of socialism whose primary aim was the "liberation of time for the joint task of individual cultivation and the re-creation of genuine people's communities". They were also some of the fiercest critics of the "alliance between the technical intelligentsia, moderate trade unions, and the old Prussian Cameralism". Their more progressive members endorsed and sought to expand the councillist elements of the Republic as a foil to the growth of state bureaucracy, though they remained critical of the cultural-revolutionary tendencies that often attended council democracy.
The initial loyalty of the national-humanists to the revolutionary government can be largely attributed to Germany's newfound European hegemony in the revolutionary period. The quick consolidation of Germany's revolutionary government and the chaos spreading across Europe ensured that the new Germany could often exert a decisive influence in continental affairs. The nationalist chauvinism of many of the humanists, their belief that Germany constitutes a uniquely cultured civilisation, suddenly found itself in a bizarre alliance with an anti-imperial government which had the achievement of grossdeutschland thrust upon it more by circumstance than will. Nonetheless, the territorial expansion of Germany on the continent and its importance in the international socialist movement found consonance with the traditional Mandarin desire to see Germany play a "leading role" in international affairs.
The most forthright representative of the national-humanists is Werner Sombart. In the Imperial Era, he was, like Tonnies and Weber, critical of the effect that late capitalism and "commercial civilization" had on traditional communities. He believed that the concentration of bureaucratic power in a central state and the depersonalization of social relations had a homogenizing effect on thought and culture. And he feared that societies dominated by the market were ones in which individuals would pursue wealth for its own sake, rather than to fulfill genuine human needs. Unlike Tonnies, Weber, and many accommodationists, he aligned himself with the trade unions long before the war, though was criticized by the left-wing of the Social Democrats for trying to tempt workers to bourgeois democracy.
In World War 1, he initially was far more supportive of the war effort than most accomodationists, writing of the patriotic duty of every German citizen to support Germany's "heroic civilization of culture" against "The commercial-bourgeois English civilization"". By the war's end, he had gone into something of an internal emigration, refusing to support either the new revolutionary order or the nationalist government of Ludendorff and Hindenburg. Then, in 1922-1925, he wrote a series of tracts which increasingly aligned his thought with the new revolutionary government. The most important of these "Culture and Socialism", argued that a "democratic government of German workers' and farmers', arising indigenously from local communities" was in fact the only antidote to the "creative destruction of contemporary capitalism, in that it provides the one opportunity to halt the ceaseless spread of market relations and thus restore man, rather than money, as the value of things". Although not a Marxist in any traditional sense, his skepticism of the bureacratic state and the spread of "technical rationality" led him to align himself with more revolutionary forces, and in "The End of Parliementary Government" he explicitly endorsed the movement to bolster the power of the worker's councils, with the proviso that they be expanded to include members of all classes.
The two wings of the Mandarins exercised little real influence on the German state in the 1920s, whatever their pretensions to speak on behalf of the national community. Even the social-institutionalists who were involved in the planning process tended to play a mostly consultative role. Overwhelmingly composed of individuals identified with the old order, they were viewed with suspicion by leaders of the new worker's government. Their importance as a subject of historical study is consequential chiefly because of the outsize influence they exerted on German intellectual life in the 1920s, which was still far from hegemonic. They also played a vital role in shaping the coming generation of academics and cultural elites: though the likes of Arendt and Schumpeter have left behind much of the elitism and national chauvinism of their Mandarin instructors, the recent debates between them nonetheless echo many of the divides between the national-humanists and social-institutionalists of the 20s...
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- Location
- Not the asylum anymore
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Huh. So Red Germany is a "Greater" Germany? More than that, it's still a world power? How badly did the Entente get fucked up that they allowed that? And how badly did other revolutions get fucked up, if socialist Germany even broadly resembles Greater Germany?
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
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- Pronouns
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"Greater Germany" refers strictly in this context to the incorporation of Austria and parts of Slovenia as German states; Germany will not add lands in the East or West.
As for the Entente fucking up, well...they came pretty close to outright losing the war on a few occasions IOTL, and didn't figure out how to convert their overwhelming fiscal-industrial advantage over the Central Powers into a military one until late in the war. I feel as if that's incompetence enough, so I'm not going to try to make their leaders any more incompetent than those IOTL.
Instead, they're just going to be starting from a much worse place. ITTL, the war begins with Serbia nearly defeated, which is going to make matters much more difficult for the Russians in the East, and a more neutral America will not be as willing to finance the Entente's war effort, meaning that the munitions crisis of 16' will be a lot nastier and man-power issues from 17-19' significantly more serious. I don't want to say anything else for fear of spoiling too much about the revolutionary period (1919-1924).
Instead, they're just going to be starting from a much worse place. ITTL, the war begins with Serbia nearly defeated, which is going to make matters much more difficult for the Russians in the East, and a more neutral America will not be as willing to finance the Entente's war effort, meaning that the munitions crisis of 16' will be a lot nastier and man-power issues from 17-19' significantly more serious. I don't want to say anything else for fear of spoiling too much about the revolutionary period (1919-1924).
In the Early 1920s, Germany will occupy the peculiar position of being the most powerful nation in (Continental) Europe while having little capacity to project that power anywhere outside of the Mediterranean and North Sea. Whether that makes them a world or regional power is up to you to decide, and depends on how much you consider their significant influence in the international socialist movement to be a source of genuine state power.
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The July Crisis: Two Perspectives
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
- Pronouns
- He/They
Excerpts from the book, The End of the Belle Époque, Reginald Bassett
Published by Cambridge University Press © 1952, Cambridge, The United Kingdom
...The most striking fact about the diplomatic period preceding the July Crisis was the improvement of the position of the Central Powers within the Balkans. The Second Balkan War, if contained as a purely local affair, may have perhaps seen the balance of power preserved in the region, but the increasing Austrian alignment with Bulgaria and the subsequent arming of Greco-Serbian forces by the Entente had the effect of turning it into a proxy confict and hardening diplomatic allegiances that were not necessarily set in stone. Without the involvement of the great powers in the conflict, it is possible that Bulgarian hegemony in the Balkans would not have been perceived by Russia as a terminal threat to its interests in the region.
As it was, on the eve of the July Crisis the client states of the Central Powers held a swathe of territory running from the Black Sea to Durres. Bulgarian forces were approaching Belgrade, and Salonica was Bulgarian. In large part, the Austrian-Ottoman-Bulgarian axis in the Balkans had rendered moot any real concern about Entente "encirclement". This situation has led many historians to be skeptical that the war could have been caused principally by the Central Powers: the logic is that a winner would not feel the need to provoke a conflict. Unsurprisingly, the blame is often placed on larger-scale, "structural" factors, or on Russia or the ambivalence of the Russo-British alliance.
Yet it is now clear that the blame for the war lies principally with the German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, who conspired with the German military staff to throw Europe into war. On the 29th of June, Bethmann Hollweg instructed the diplomatic staff to restrain Austria from issuing an ultimatum to Serbia. This was not a pacific gesture, but an attempt to buy time as he consulted with military leaders to determine whether a European war would be in Germany's interest. The Austrians, who had diverted much of their soldiers to help collect the harvest, were not planning on issuing their ultimatum until at least the middle of July, as they were not prepared for war. Still, this seemed to be more of a purely precautionary measure: the internal correspondence of Austrian diplomats indicates that they intended to keep the ultimatum light and relatively easy for Serbia to accept. With Bulgarian forces soon to be laying siege to Belgrade, the more diplomatically-minded Hungarian Prime Minister Istvan Tisza convinced the rest of the ministerial council on July 2nd that there was no need to write an ultimatum that unduly provoked the Russians. The announcement later that week of Sophia of Hohenburg's recovery calmed tensions further.
At this point, if Austria had restrained its Bulgarian client, they may have avoided the bellicose Russian response that was to follow. With both the French and particularly the British aiming to restrain Russia, a deal may have been brokered that saw a territorially intact Serbia remain while ensuring de facto Bulgarian hegemony in the Balkans. This would have been yet another victory for the central powers. Nonetheless, though they had decided not to intervene in the conflict themselves for now, they did give the Bulgarians a "blank check" to proceed with the assault on Belgrade. In truth, this check came more from the Germans than the Austrians, who believed in the aftermath of the Romanian incident that the British may not intervene if the crisis caused a European war.
On July 7th, Russia mobiized against the Ottoman Empire and also put their military districts in Kazan and Turkestan on pre-mobilization footing. This was a gesture explicitly intended not to provoke the Central Powers, as the Russians still felt as if they did not have the support of the British for a general european war. The refusal to put the West Russian military districts in Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine on even a pre-mobilization, "preparatory to war" footing indicated this. The Germans understood this too: several military observers would report back on the 9th that they did not believe that the Russians aimed to start a general European war.
On July 10th, Bethmann Hollweg, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Falkenhayn met in Berlin. With the British government teetering on the brink and the Russians potentially isolated, Hollweg believed he was on the cusp of peacefully breaking the entente asunder. A confidential cable to the foreign ministry later that day announced the intention of using the crisis "…To isolate Russia from Britain as Bismarck played the South German states against the French, then to force on it the recognition of a new reality in the Balkans and West Asia". Falkenhayn, meanwhile, was pushing for an immediate mobilization against both Russia and France. This was in line with traditional German military thinking, which called for a quick mobilization against France to allow Germany to knock it out of a two front war before Russia could bring to bear its large army on East Prussia. But several junior officers in attendance who had been in contact with reconnaissance units in Russia explained that the partial mobilization in the Southern districts would have the effect of making an eventual Russian mobilization in the North more difficult.
This allowed Bethmann Hollweg to persuade the Kaiser to avoid an immediate, pre-emptive mobilization and gave him time for his "diplomatic" solution, which in fact amounted to an abandonment of his Ottoman allies. By pointedly refusing to back the Ottomans after the "Albanian Crisis", Bethmann Hollweg both curried favor with the British government and successfully convinced the Russians that a war against the Ottomans would not become a larger, European one. Hollweg hoped that a Russian declaration of war against the Ottomans and Bulgaria would prompt a more formal British withdrawal from the Entente, as traditional British fears of Russian control of the Straits of Dardanelles would once again take prominence in British foreign policy.
Crucially, Bethmann Hollweg did not consult with either the Austrians or Bulgarians before making this decision. While the Germans may have been willing to sacrifice the Turks for a long-term realignment of British loyalties, the Austrians perceived any incursion of the Russians into Anatolia as a potentially existential threat to their position in the Balkans. At this point, the Bulgarians felt similarly. Upon being notified of the German decision, the Austrians in effect threatened the Germans with a European War, stating that the refusal of Germany to back the Turks against the Russians would lead to a "much harsher" ultimatum to Serbia. Germany might be willing to sanction a localized Turko-Russian war, but it would not be able to stand back as the Russians invaded Galicia and Hungary.
On the 16th, Bethmann Hollweg, Wilhelm II, and Falkenhayn met again. This time, Wilhelm II upbraided Bethmann Hollweg for abandoning both the Ottomans and Austrians. Once again, Falkenhayn pressed for a mobilization, but Wilhelm II refused once more, believing that the Russians could be dissuaded from attacking Turkey with some firm diplomacy. Bethmann Hollweg was instructed to do whatever was necessary to re-assure the Austrians of the German commitment to their security.
Later that day, Bethmann Hollweg and Falkenhayn met privately. Both were concerned that despite his bellicose rhetoric, Wilhelm II would be unwilling to go to war if it turned out to be necessary. Though we do not have minutes of this private meeting, a note in Hollweg's journal states "Falkenhayn makes point that war, if necessary, would be best after France-Russia summit…ensures less coordination". The "France-Russia summit" was a visit of Poincare, the French President, and Viviani, the Prime Minister, to St. Petersburg from July 19-24. It was reasoned that a war against the Entente would go more smoothly if its leaders could not communicate as easily in its opening days.
On the 17th, the Germans put out another statement on the Ottoman-Russian crisis, this time intentionally adoping a stance of strategic ambiguity. At the same time, the Austrians were re-assured that the Germans would participate in any war that saw the Russians approach Istanbul. Reluctantly, the Austrians agreed to deliver the initial, ligher version of the ultimatum to Serbia. It called for the suppression of publications which incite hatred of Austria-Hungary, the dissolution of the Serbian nationalist organization "Narodna Odbrana", the elimination of anti-Austrian propaganda within school textbooks, the arrest of known collaborators with the assassins, and the cessation of arms traffic into Austria-Hungary.
On the 20th, Serbia issued a blanket refusal to abide by the terms of the ultimatum. There is no doubt that this refusal needlessly inflamed matters. The thinking in the Serbian government seemed to be that the only way to avoid being reduced to a Bulgarian rump state was Russian intervention in the Albanian Crisis. But even after being assured of French support, the Russians refused to provide Serbia with its full backing, insisting that they accept the ultimatum. In response, the Serbs committed an act of political suicide, refusing the ultimatum in the hope that an Austrian declaration of war would force the Russians' to intervene on their behalf against both Bulgaria and Austria.
The Serbian refusal to negotiate led to outrage within both Austria and Germany. Some have argued that this refusal is what led Bethmann Hollweg to conclude that war with Russia was inevitable, but the Falkenhayn-Hollweg meeting and the correspondence in its immediate wake indicates that war with Russia was being seriously contemplated before the Serbian refusal. Nonetheless, it certainly had the effect of hardening the German position. On the 22nd, the german foreign minister Gottlieb von Jagow visited Austria and telegrammed to Berlin that Austria would not be ready for war before the 28th, indicating that war planning was already well underway.
The British offered to mediate on the 22nd. This was an attempt to avert the fall of the Liberal government, which had grown divided about their commitment to Russia in a European War. For three days, the Germans responded receptively to these entreaties. Bethmann Hollweg wrote to Falkenhayn that "we must at least respond to the British requests - if and when matters do come to a head, it will be helpful not to be perceived too much as the strong-headed ones". A meeting of Von Below and Grey was set to take place on the 26th.
On the 23rd, Belgrade was surrounded, and the French offered "unconditional support" to Russia following the final day of diplomatic talks in St. Petersburg. This promise of support along with the impending fall of Belgrade jointly prompted the Russians to put the Kiev military district on pre-mobilization footing in an attempt to deter Austrian intervention in the coming invasion of Anatolia. Once again, German military spies correctly assessed that the pre-mobilization footing was not an offensive measure but an attempt at deterrence.
On the 25th, a German spy reported that the past couple days had seen increased rail-way activity throughout both the Polish and Vilno military districts. This prompted an emergency meeting the next day between Bethmann Hollweg, Falkenhayn, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Tirpitz, who were fortuitously all in the Berlin area. This time, Bethmann Hollweg and and Falkenhayn both pressed for an immediate general mobilization against Russia. What had changed? It has now been conclusively established that Russia was not mobilizing the Polish or Wilno military districts. The troop movements there were simply a matter of the complex Russian mobilization system, which required troops to be shuffled around many different districts. Several military officials had informed Falkenhayn of this before the meeting.
The best explanation for the much more bellicose stance of the German Government is that, firstly, the Austrian Army would finally be prepared for war in three days, and secondly, the coming fall of Belgrade would allow for an immediate Austrian mobilization in Galicia and even parts of East Prussia, allowing for more German troops to be dedicated to the assault on France. The fact that a vote of no confidence looked like it was about to occur in the British Parliament also helped matters. In short: the Russian troop activity in Polish was more a pretext for a war Germany had already been planning to launch than a genuine casus belli.
As Germany mobilized on the 26th, Russia felt prompted to do the same. On the 27th, believing that a European war was inevitable, they began the invasion of Ottoman Armenia. On the 28th, the British Government narrowly survived the vote of no confidence with a promise to avert war in Europe after securing the support of Labor representatives. It was widely understood to be one of the shortest mandates ever given to a British government by Parliament. The same day, Germany delivered an ultimatum to France which demanded France convince Russia to cease its mobilization against Germany or face a declaration of war. The following day, H.H. Asquith announced that the British Government would defend France in the event of a German attack, prompting another no-confidence vote to be scheduled on August 2nd. An unlikely coalition of conservatives and radicals looked poised to oust Asquith, with the radicals hoping to regain control over their own party and the conservatives looking to take the reins of government in coalition with some moderate liberals in a "government of national unity".
With the invasion of Armenia achieving several rapid successes, Russia began a general mobilization, prompting Austria-Hungary to do the same. On August 1st, the Great War began as Germany declared war on France after its refusal to submit to several ultimatums that would have meant the end of the Entente as an alliance. On the 1st, as his final act as Prime Minister H.H. Asquith declared war on Germany, infuriating many of the radicals in his coalition. He resigned the next day before the no-confidence vote. On the 2nd, Bonar Law was tasked with forming a new government; he quickly found willing partners among the more reasonable Liberals.
Excerpts from the book, The Great Deluge: Europe 1914-1924, Arthur Schlesinger Sr
Published by Harvard University Press © 1953, Boston, The United States
…The historical mythology which places sole guilt for the war on Germany typically proceeds through an examination of the diplomatic manuevering in the July Crisis. It should be insisted that such an analysis will never be sufficient to assign sole "guilt" to Germany for the war, since the war itself was the product of processes that stretched at least decades into the past, and which all of the European powers were willing participants in. Even so, an impartial and just adjudication of the actions of the principal actors in the July Crisis does not reveal any unambiguous verdict on the guilty and the innocent.
The blame for the war is traditionally laid on Bethmann Hollweg and Falkenhayn. As a military man, Falkenhayn was indeed accustomed to military solutions, though he did not have the power to act unilaterally. He required the consent of the Kaiser, and in crucial moments, the Kaiser showed himself to be unwilling to committ to a war unless both Bethmann Hollweg and Falkenhayn presented a unanimous front. For all his bluster, the Kaiser believed a European War to be a last resort, and he was more interested in using the threat of conflict to bolster Germany's position than he was in conflict itself.
This is true of Bethmann Hollweg as well. His fear, and the fear of Germany's entire military establishment, was that the Russian military expansion program would make the German-Austrian coalition unable to fight a two-front war within the next three years, and thus render the nation at a permanent strategic disadvantage. He may have been willing to accept such a scenario if there were assurances of Russia's pacific intentions, or if the Entente alliance itself had not grown significantly in the past three or four years. As it was, however, this was an unacceptable situation.
Nonetheless, at no point prior to the Russian troop movements in Poland on July 25th was Hollweg set upon war. The gamble he made was to isolate Russia in the crisis, not to use it to provoke a war between the great powers. The meeting on the 16th between Falkenhayn and Hollweg did not end in Hollweg promising support for Falkenhayn; much more plausible is the notion that it was simply meant to clear the air between the two men, who were at loggerheads in the previous meetings. The clearest record we do have of Hollweg's intentions is a private entry he wrote on the 12th, which reads "We may need to go to war with Russia…but only if Russia itself wants a war. The crisis will allow us to determine this".
In short, Hollweg aimed to use the crisis to both discern Russian intentions and attempt to foment splits within the Entente. War was a final and last resort if Russian intransigence indicated that they would remain a hostile power after their military expansion was completed. The Russian troop movements on the 25th were treated with quite genuine alarm in the emergency meeting of German military and civilian leaders; this would not be expected if it was viewed merely as a pretext for war. At most, the Germans can be accused of acting over-hastily in this situation by beginning a general mobilization before consulting with the Russians.
None of this is to claim that the fault for the war instead lies with the Russians or the French. The Russians were in a terribly uncomfortable position, on the verge of seeing their presence in the Balkans all but disappear. British waffling understandably led the French to a more uncompromising commitment to the Russians. German refusals to truly engage in British mediation were an indication of the paranoia of its leaders.
The point that must be driven home is that blame for the war cannot be laid at the feet of any of the European Powers alone, because doing so constitutes a failure to consider why the July Crisis was a historical possibility in the first place. Whoever can be proportioned the most blame during July 1914, the much weightier and more vital question still remains: why was European civilization so willing to engage in the suicidal violence of the next half-decade to settle questions of comparative influence in the Balkan backwoods?
Published by Cambridge University Press © 1952, Cambridge, The United Kingdom
...The most striking fact about the diplomatic period preceding the July Crisis was the improvement of the position of the Central Powers within the Balkans. The Second Balkan War, if contained as a purely local affair, may have perhaps seen the balance of power preserved in the region, but the increasing Austrian alignment with Bulgaria and the subsequent arming of Greco-Serbian forces by the Entente had the effect of turning it into a proxy confict and hardening diplomatic allegiances that were not necessarily set in stone. Without the involvement of the great powers in the conflict, it is possible that Bulgarian hegemony in the Balkans would not have been perceived by Russia as a terminal threat to its interests in the region.
As it was, on the eve of the July Crisis the client states of the Central Powers held a swathe of territory running from the Black Sea to Durres. Bulgarian forces were approaching Belgrade, and Salonica was Bulgarian. In large part, the Austrian-Ottoman-Bulgarian axis in the Balkans had rendered moot any real concern about Entente "encirclement". This situation has led many historians to be skeptical that the war could have been caused principally by the Central Powers: the logic is that a winner would not feel the need to provoke a conflict. Unsurprisingly, the blame is often placed on larger-scale, "structural" factors, or on Russia or the ambivalence of the Russo-British alliance.
Yet it is now clear that the blame for the war lies principally with the German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, who conspired with the German military staff to throw Europe into war. On the 29th of June, Bethmann Hollweg instructed the diplomatic staff to restrain Austria from issuing an ultimatum to Serbia. This was not a pacific gesture, but an attempt to buy time as he consulted with military leaders to determine whether a European war would be in Germany's interest. The Austrians, who had diverted much of their soldiers to help collect the harvest, were not planning on issuing their ultimatum until at least the middle of July, as they were not prepared for war. Still, this seemed to be more of a purely precautionary measure: the internal correspondence of Austrian diplomats indicates that they intended to keep the ultimatum light and relatively easy for Serbia to accept. With Bulgarian forces soon to be laying siege to Belgrade, the more diplomatically-minded Hungarian Prime Minister Istvan Tisza convinced the rest of the ministerial council on July 2nd that there was no need to write an ultimatum that unduly provoked the Russians. The announcement later that week of Sophia of Hohenburg's recovery calmed tensions further.
At this point, if Austria had restrained its Bulgarian client, they may have avoided the bellicose Russian response that was to follow. With both the French and particularly the British aiming to restrain Russia, a deal may have been brokered that saw a territorially intact Serbia remain while ensuring de facto Bulgarian hegemony in the Balkans. This would have been yet another victory for the central powers. Nonetheless, though they had decided not to intervene in the conflict themselves for now, they did give the Bulgarians a "blank check" to proceed with the assault on Belgrade. In truth, this check came more from the Germans than the Austrians, who believed in the aftermath of the Romanian incident that the British may not intervene if the crisis caused a European war.
On July 7th, Russia mobiized against the Ottoman Empire and also put their military districts in Kazan and Turkestan on pre-mobilization footing. This was a gesture explicitly intended not to provoke the Central Powers, as the Russians still felt as if they did not have the support of the British for a general european war. The refusal to put the West Russian military districts in Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine on even a pre-mobilization, "preparatory to war" footing indicated this. The Germans understood this too: several military observers would report back on the 9th that they did not believe that the Russians aimed to start a general European war.
On July 10th, Bethmann Hollweg, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Falkenhayn met in Berlin. With the British government teetering on the brink and the Russians potentially isolated, Hollweg believed he was on the cusp of peacefully breaking the entente asunder. A confidential cable to the foreign ministry later that day announced the intention of using the crisis "…To isolate Russia from Britain as Bismarck played the South German states against the French, then to force on it the recognition of a new reality in the Balkans and West Asia". Falkenhayn, meanwhile, was pushing for an immediate mobilization against both Russia and France. This was in line with traditional German military thinking, which called for a quick mobilization against France to allow Germany to knock it out of a two front war before Russia could bring to bear its large army on East Prussia. But several junior officers in attendance who had been in contact with reconnaissance units in Russia explained that the partial mobilization in the Southern districts would have the effect of making an eventual Russian mobilization in the North more difficult.
This allowed Bethmann Hollweg to persuade the Kaiser to avoid an immediate, pre-emptive mobilization and gave him time for his "diplomatic" solution, which in fact amounted to an abandonment of his Ottoman allies. By pointedly refusing to back the Ottomans after the "Albanian Crisis", Bethmann Hollweg both curried favor with the British government and successfully convinced the Russians that a war against the Ottomans would not become a larger, European one. Hollweg hoped that a Russian declaration of war against the Ottomans and Bulgaria would prompt a more formal British withdrawal from the Entente, as traditional British fears of Russian control of the Straits of Dardanelles would once again take prominence in British foreign policy.
Crucially, Bethmann Hollweg did not consult with either the Austrians or Bulgarians before making this decision. While the Germans may have been willing to sacrifice the Turks for a long-term realignment of British loyalties, the Austrians perceived any incursion of the Russians into Anatolia as a potentially existential threat to their position in the Balkans. At this point, the Bulgarians felt similarly. Upon being notified of the German decision, the Austrians in effect threatened the Germans with a European War, stating that the refusal of Germany to back the Turks against the Russians would lead to a "much harsher" ultimatum to Serbia. Germany might be willing to sanction a localized Turko-Russian war, but it would not be able to stand back as the Russians invaded Galicia and Hungary.
On the 16th, Bethmann Hollweg, Wilhelm II, and Falkenhayn met again. This time, Wilhelm II upbraided Bethmann Hollweg for abandoning both the Ottomans and Austrians. Once again, Falkenhayn pressed for a mobilization, but Wilhelm II refused once more, believing that the Russians could be dissuaded from attacking Turkey with some firm diplomacy. Bethmann Hollweg was instructed to do whatever was necessary to re-assure the Austrians of the German commitment to their security.
Later that day, Bethmann Hollweg and Falkenhayn met privately. Both were concerned that despite his bellicose rhetoric, Wilhelm II would be unwilling to go to war if it turned out to be necessary. Though we do not have minutes of this private meeting, a note in Hollweg's journal states "Falkenhayn makes point that war, if necessary, would be best after France-Russia summit…ensures less coordination". The "France-Russia summit" was a visit of Poincare, the French President, and Viviani, the Prime Minister, to St. Petersburg from July 19-24. It was reasoned that a war against the Entente would go more smoothly if its leaders could not communicate as easily in its opening days.
On the 17th, the Germans put out another statement on the Ottoman-Russian crisis, this time intentionally adoping a stance of strategic ambiguity. At the same time, the Austrians were re-assured that the Germans would participate in any war that saw the Russians approach Istanbul. Reluctantly, the Austrians agreed to deliver the initial, ligher version of the ultimatum to Serbia. It called for the suppression of publications which incite hatred of Austria-Hungary, the dissolution of the Serbian nationalist organization "Narodna Odbrana", the elimination of anti-Austrian propaganda within school textbooks, the arrest of known collaborators with the assassins, and the cessation of arms traffic into Austria-Hungary.
On the 20th, Serbia issued a blanket refusal to abide by the terms of the ultimatum. There is no doubt that this refusal needlessly inflamed matters. The thinking in the Serbian government seemed to be that the only way to avoid being reduced to a Bulgarian rump state was Russian intervention in the Albanian Crisis. But even after being assured of French support, the Russians refused to provide Serbia with its full backing, insisting that they accept the ultimatum. In response, the Serbs committed an act of political suicide, refusing the ultimatum in the hope that an Austrian declaration of war would force the Russians' to intervene on their behalf against both Bulgaria and Austria.
The Serbian refusal to negotiate led to outrage within both Austria and Germany. Some have argued that this refusal is what led Bethmann Hollweg to conclude that war with Russia was inevitable, but the Falkenhayn-Hollweg meeting and the correspondence in its immediate wake indicates that war with Russia was being seriously contemplated before the Serbian refusal. Nonetheless, it certainly had the effect of hardening the German position. On the 22nd, the german foreign minister Gottlieb von Jagow visited Austria and telegrammed to Berlin that Austria would not be ready for war before the 28th, indicating that war planning was already well underway.
The British offered to mediate on the 22nd. This was an attempt to avert the fall of the Liberal government, which had grown divided about their commitment to Russia in a European War. For three days, the Germans responded receptively to these entreaties. Bethmann Hollweg wrote to Falkenhayn that "we must at least respond to the British requests - if and when matters do come to a head, it will be helpful not to be perceived too much as the strong-headed ones". A meeting of Von Below and Grey was set to take place on the 26th.
On the 23rd, Belgrade was surrounded, and the French offered "unconditional support" to Russia following the final day of diplomatic talks in St. Petersburg. This promise of support along with the impending fall of Belgrade jointly prompted the Russians to put the Kiev military district on pre-mobilization footing in an attempt to deter Austrian intervention in the coming invasion of Anatolia. Once again, German military spies correctly assessed that the pre-mobilization footing was not an offensive measure but an attempt at deterrence.
On the 25th, a German spy reported that the past couple days had seen increased rail-way activity throughout both the Polish and Vilno military districts. This prompted an emergency meeting the next day between Bethmann Hollweg, Falkenhayn, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Tirpitz, who were fortuitously all in the Berlin area. This time, Bethmann Hollweg and and Falkenhayn both pressed for an immediate general mobilization against Russia. What had changed? It has now been conclusively established that Russia was not mobilizing the Polish or Wilno military districts. The troop movements there were simply a matter of the complex Russian mobilization system, which required troops to be shuffled around many different districts. Several military officials had informed Falkenhayn of this before the meeting.
The best explanation for the much more bellicose stance of the German Government is that, firstly, the Austrian Army would finally be prepared for war in three days, and secondly, the coming fall of Belgrade would allow for an immediate Austrian mobilization in Galicia and even parts of East Prussia, allowing for more German troops to be dedicated to the assault on France. The fact that a vote of no confidence looked like it was about to occur in the British Parliament also helped matters. In short: the Russian troop activity in Polish was more a pretext for a war Germany had already been planning to launch than a genuine casus belli.
As Germany mobilized on the 26th, Russia felt prompted to do the same. On the 27th, believing that a European war was inevitable, they began the invasion of Ottoman Armenia. On the 28th, the British Government narrowly survived the vote of no confidence with a promise to avert war in Europe after securing the support of Labor representatives. It was widely understood to be one of the shortest mandates ever given to a British government by Parliament. The same day, Germany delivered an ultimatum to France which demanded France convince Russia to cease its mobilization against Germany or face a declaration of war. The following day, H.H. Asquith announced that the British Government would defend France in the event of a German attack, prompting another no-confidence vote to be scheduled on August 2nd. An unlikely coalition of conservatives and radicals looked poised to oust Asquith, with the radicals hoping to regain control over their own party and the conservatives looking to take the reins of government in coalition with some moderate liberals in a "government of national unity".
With the invasion of Armenia achieving several rapid successes, Russia began a general mobilization, prompting Austria-Hungary to do the same. On August 1st, the Great War began as Germany declared war on France after its refusal to submit to several ultimatums that would have meant the end of the Entente as an alliance. On the 1st, as his final act as Prime Minister H.H. Asquith declared war on Germany, infuriating many of the radicals in his coalition. He resigned the next day before the no-confidence vote. On the 2nd, Bonar Law was tasked with forming a new government; he quickly found willing partners among the more reasonable Liberals.
Excerpts from the book, The Great Deluge: Europe 1914-1924, Arthur Schlesinger Sr
Published by Harvard University Press © 1953, Boston, The United States
…The historical mythology which places sole guilt for the war on Germany typically proceeds through an examination of the diplomatic manuevering in the July Crisis. It should be insisted that such an analysis will never be sufficient to assign sole "guilt" to Germany for the war, since the war itself was the product of processes that stretched at least decades into the past, and which all of the European powers were willing participants in. Even so, an impartial and just adjudication of the actions of the principal actors in the July Crisis does not reveal any unambiguous verdict on the guilty and the innocent.
The blame for the war is traditionally laid on Bethmann Hollweg and Falkenhayn. As a military man, Falkenhayn was indeed accustomed to military solutions, though he did not have the power to act unilaterally. He required the consent of the Kaiser, and in crucial moments, the Kaiser showed himself to be unwilling to committ to a war unless both Bethmann Hollweg and Falkenhayn presented a unanimous front. For all his bluster, the Kaiser believed a European War to be a last resort, and he was more interested in using the threat of conflict to bolster Germany's position than he was in conflict itself.
This is true of Bethmann Hollweg as well. His fear, and the fear of Germany's entire military establishment, was that the Russian military expansion program would make the German-Austrian coalition unable to fight a two-front war within the next three years, and thus render the nation at a permanent strategic disadvantage. He may have been willing to accept such a scenario if there were assurances of Russia's pacific intentions, or if the Entente alliance itself had not grown significantly in the past three or four years. As it was, however, this was an unacceptable situation.
Nonetheless, at no point prior to the Russian troop movements in Poland on July 25th was Hollweg set upon war. The gamble he made was to isolate Russia in the crisis, not to use it to provoke a war between the great powers. The meeting on the 16th between Falkenhayn and Hollweg did not end in Hollweg promising support for Falkenhayn; much more plausible is the notion that it was simply meant to clear the air between the two men, who were at loggerheads in the previous meetings. The clearest record we do have of Hollweg's intentions is a private entry he wrote on the 12th, which reads "We may need to go to war with Russia…but only if Russia itself wants a war. The crisis will allow us to determine this".
In short, Hollweg aimed to use the crisis to both discern Russian intentions and attempt to foment splits within the Entente. War was a final and last resort if Russian intransigence indicated that they would remain a hostile power after their military expansion was completed. The Russian troop movements on the 25th were treated with quite genuine alarm in the emergency meeting of German military and civilian leaders; this would not be expected if it was viewed merely as a pretext for war. At most, the Germans can be accused of acting over-hastily in this situation by beginning a general mobilization before consulting with the Russians.
None of this is to claim that the fault for the war instead lies with the Russians or the French. The Russians were in a terribly uncomfortable position, on the verge of seeing their presence in the Balkans all but disappear. British waffling understandably led the French to a more uncompromising commitment to the Russians. German refusals to truly engage in British mediation were an indication of the paranoia of its leaders.
The point that must be driven home is that blame for the war cannot be laid at the feet of any of the European Powers alone, because doing so constitutes a failure to consider why the July Crisis was a historical possibility in the first place. Whoever can be proportioned the most blame during July 1914, the much weightier and more vital question still remains: why was European civilization so willing to engage in the suicidal violence of the next half-decade to settle questions of comparative influence in the Balkan backwoods?
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Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
- Location
- The Great State of Warshington
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Pan-European Communist movement is going to be an interesting possibility. But also, the fact that we see "United Kingdom", which leads me to wonder what happened.
My best guess is that the UK has always been separate from the continental European system and trends. This has to do with its relative geographical isolation from continental Europe, being located on an island.
My best guess is that the UK has always been separate from the continental European system and trends. This has to do with its relative geographical isolation from continental Europe, being located on an island.
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
- Pronouns
- He/They
This is definitely a part of it.
Two other factors seem relevant as well. Firstly, the UK has one of the world's most well-established systems of parliamentary democracy, along with the Scandinavian and the Benelux countries. When such systems work effectively, they're capable of channeling dissent into channels that reinforce rather than enervate existing power structures. There's a reason that, IOTL, the UK was one of the European countries with the least influential fascist movements. This also tended to be true of those other regions mentioned, which experienced a significantly smaller surge of right-wing authoritarianism and left-wing radicalism than in most countries in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1920s and 1930s (though in plenty of Eastern European countries, substantial left-wing radicalism was more a ideological delusion of right-wing power elites than it was an actual reality).
The UK is also more affluent than other European states. There's a genuine case to be made that it possesses a real "labor aristocracy" by virtue of its empire, which allows it significantly more leeway in negotiating a peace between capital and labor. The Empire can also help it to weather the inevitable economic storm caused by the collapse of continental European states.
This isn't to deny that a revolution in England was possible sometime in the 20th century. I just think it was probably less likely than in other European nations.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly, I'd say it's also just more fun to watch Tory Island watch in horror as the whole of Europe goes Red. 
Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
- Location
- The Great State of Warshington
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I wonder if we will see a more left-wing Labour Party in England all the way to the end here.
In fact, I can see TTL's Labour Party pushing for closer ties to Red Europe. Weirdly similar to OTL.
In fact, I can see TTL's Labour Party pushing for closer ties to Red Europe. Weirdly similar to OTL.
fishsicles
ate a calculator to gain its power
- Location
- Alexander Horned Earth
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Minor gripe, but in British English, it'd be "cheque".
The Military History of the Great War, 1914-1915
Curby
recovering analytic philosopher, still sensitive
- Location
- Most Serene Republic of Unwashed Brooklyn
- Pronouns
- He/They
I feel like the time-line is moving a bit slower than I would like, so I'm going to change the way that I do updates for a bit. Instead of giving a granular blow-by-blow of events, I'll try to cover a certain aspect of the war over a set duration of time in a single post. So, the posts will look like this: "The Military History of the Great War, 1917", or "The British Home Front: 1916-1917". I'll be focused primarily on covering those areas where there are the largest divergences from OTL. I'm also going to dispense, for now, with the authorial device of in-universe texts. The way that the events of 1914-1919 are perceived by the various participants varies a great deal; for now, I want to avoid making readers feel as if they need to triangulate from whatever bias the text might have to get a true picture of events.
I'm also posting a short poll, just to get a sense of what kind of pacing people feel is best. The level of granularity I need to have is something I've struggled with somewhat, and any feedback would be appreciated. I'm also sorry it took so long for this update to come out; for anyone who also has Long Covid, I don't recommend getting re-infected!
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The Military History of the Great War, 1914-1915
The Western Front, 1914
Faced with an enemy which had an overwhelming advantage in raw materials, man-power, and naval might, the German general staff devised the "Schlieffen Plan", hoping to knock France out of the war in the first few months before pivoting to the East. The plan called for an invasion through neutral Belgium to bypass the heavy fortifications in Lorraine. It required the German Army's most well-equipped and thoroughly trained forces to be dedicated to the northern portion of the Western Front. Only a single field army was assigned to the east to hold Russia at bay in East Prussia. The plan informed much of the structure of German mobilization: a German general famously remarked that even if the German Army wished to divert additional armies to the East at the start of the war, it would have been logistically incapable of doing so.
The Schlieffen Plan was doomed to fail. It was a plan designed with 19th, rather than 20th century military technology in mind. It was also a plan which could only emerge from a military-political complex which believed deeply in its own strategic mythologies, in the notion of the decisive offensive which would shatter enemy lines with such force and vigor that the opposing army would be placed on the permanent defensive. Unfortunately, the failure of the Schlieffen Plan did not disabuse the German general staff of such notions.
In retrospect, it is a testament to the tactical brilliance of the German officer and extent of Franco-British incompetence that the offensive still saw German troops occupy many of the resource-rich regions in Northern France and come within 40 kilometers of Paris itself. In August, the German armies seized the Belgian fortress of Liege, occupied Rheims, and foiled the French offensive into Alsace-Lorraine. However, sabotage by Alsatian citizens and Franc-tireur activity made it difficult for the German Army to launch a counter-offensive in the region. On August 25th, Moltke refused the request of Prince Rupprecht to launch an offensive to the south in order to encircle French troops in Lorraine, instead committing additional reserves to the northern armies approaching the river Marne. Three days later, a request for a corps to reinforce the East was only begrudgingly supplied with a single division after it became clear that the Russian Army was still having trouble mobilizing sufficient forces for a sustained assault into East Prussia.
By September 5th, a sizable Franco-British force had emerged to oppose the armies at the Marne. With the front widening with every further advance, a gap had emerged between the German armies in the area between the towns of Chantilly and Meaux. In the "Battle of Oise", a British force attacked this region, slipping behind the German armies and threatening their rear. Moltke threw in his reserves for a counter-attack on the flanks of this advance. Although the counter-attack was inconclusive, it convinced the British commander in the region that they were at risk of encirclement, and the British troops promptly withdrew to their previous positions, giving the German armies time to re-establish communications and close any remaining gaps on the line. Nonetheless, the German Army as a whole was quickly losing its strategic initiative. Attacks on its flanks continued, and the Franco-British concentration of forces swelled further as troops were ferried in from Britain.
The German General staff was paralyzed by indecision. While Falkenhayn wished to mount a direct assault on Paris, Moltke believed that the flanks of the German Armies were not secure enough for such a move. The inadvertant operational pause which this dispute caused allowed the French Armies to the Northwest of the German position to muster their forces and attack just north of the river Oise. A simultaneous assault on Moltke's Southern flank by forces in Lorraine ensured that no reserves were sent to deal with the attack until the main axis of advance was determined.Tthough the attack out of Lorraine was halted at the expense of several German divisions, in the North several French armies broke through the German lines. This time, they did not retreat, and the General staff was forced to order a retreat of the armies to the south toward the river Aisne.
Moltke believed that the Schieffen plan had failed because it had not led to the destruction of the actual French Army. With it becoming clear that a "long war" was now inevitable, he decided on committing the remainder of the offensive power of the German Army to encircling the French Armies to his north. While the rest of the army retreated to the Aisne, he ordered the Third Field Army, thus far the least bruised in the fighting, to launch a counter-offensive around the town of Noyon, with the goal of pushing toward Amiens and creating a pocket of French troops stranded between the German position on the Aisne and the Somme river. It was hoped this would also render suspect the position of any French forces north of the Somme river, forcing a retreat from Belgium and Pas-de-Calais.
The counter-offensive began brilliantly. It started a phase of the war known as the "march to the north" as both armies increasingly shifted forces away from Lorraine and Paris. Moltke mused that "the war might still be won" after resigning himself to its loss only days ago. The French troops were caught off guard by the frontal german assault after several days of advancing largely without organized opposition. Within days, the German forces had captured Noyon, Mondidier, and Roye. The German forces dug-in on the Aisne River inflicted devastating causal-ties on several French counter-attacks from the south. Nonetheless, by the time the Third Army reached Amiens, it was exhausted. More than that, its flanks were exposed to French forces to both its north and south. In the days since the advance started, fresh BEF divisions were diverted to Amiens, and their heroic - and successful - defense of the city was a massive propaganda victory for the entente which helped smooth over tensions between the two nations.
The advance French forces cut off by the German thrust toward Amiens were nonetheless still quite vulnerable. But Moltke, now increasingly paranoid about the potential of encirclement, refused to immediately divert forces from Amiens for an offensive against them, and they largely managed to make their way north toward Passcendale, Ypres, and Givenchy. As a result, when an offensive from the 2nd army did begin to move north from Montdidier toward Albert and eventually Arras, these forces were able to engage in a fighting retreat that slowed down the German Armies and provided crucial time to organize a defense around Arras itself.
Arras was the point at which both armies lost their capacity to conduct offensive operations. Lead elements of the 2nd army had managed to occupy around a quarter of the town, but French reinforcements in the region had prevented them from advancing further. Flanking attacks to the town's north failed to make progress, and the rest of the town was turned into something of a bunker by French troops. Over the course of a week and a half in October, the French, British and German armies jointly suffered around 500,000 causalties in and around the historic city, with the Germans hoping to take the entirety of the town after flanking attacks to the town's north were defeated. The "Razing of Arras" saw much of the baroque town square destroyed by German artillery fire.
In the end, German forces were forced to withdraw from the ruins of Arras due to the pressure of flanking counter-offensives from the French and British. Despite this, the damage done to the French and British armies in the battle ensured that it would take at least a year before the Entente could launch a large offensive in France. By the end of 1914, the Central Powers occupied a line in Northern France running from along the river Aisne, and moving North toward Montdidier, Villiers, Albert, Vimy, Lens and Ypres.
The Eastern Front, 1914
Perhaps the most salient facts about the Eastern Front during the first month and a half of the war was its relative absence of real fighting. This was largely due to the "mobilization fiasco" in Russia. This fiasco was largely fore-seen by Russian generals, who warned that partially mobilizing some miitary districts but not others would likely result in confusion if a general mobilization of Western Military districts was ever called. The Tsar, who had initially hoped to confine the war to a Russian-Ottoman one, rebuffed the advice of his generals. Consequently, many weeks were spent with the Southern districts on a full mobilization footing while the Western ones were either partially or completely non-mobilized. When the call for general mobilization came out, trains intended to be used to transport troops to the West were already being employed to ferry soldiers and supplies to the South. The French plan for an early Russian invasion of East Prussia to divert German troops to the East failed spectacularly, and would have perhaps been fatal for the French war effort were it not for the equally spectacular failure of the Schlieffen plan.
In late September, around 500,000 Russian soldiers had finally coalesced to begin their invasion of East Prussia. The much smaller German force of 135,000 troops at first retreated after a Russian advance on Gumbinnen, but quickly redeployed to a more defensible position and halted the advance. After Ludendorff and Hindenburg arrived, they attempted to lure the Russian Army into several envelopments, but the commander of the 2nd Russian Army, General Samsanov, remained wary of advancing with his rather ill-equipped forces. Hindenburg and Ludendorff embarked on several counter-offensives, and they did manage to push the Russians out of most of East Prussia, but they were unable to inflict anything like a decisive defeat on the much larger and continuously swelling Russian Army, which by the end of 1914 numbered 800,000 to the Germans 150,000 troops. Hindenburg and Ludendorff's repeated requests in for additional troops to launch an offensive to push the remaining Russian forces out of Gumbinnen and other border towns in East Prussia were denied.
Developments further south were similarly ambiguous. While the fall of Belgrade was an unambiguous victory for the Central Powers, it was unclear who, if anyone, had won the Galician campaign. While the Russians had not managed to take Lviv, the infamously poorly planned counter-attacks of the Austrian General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf did succeed in decimating at least a third of the Austrian forces in the East. The Russians suffered similar losses, but had greater ease in replenishing them, as well as an army which wasn't riven by the same ethnic tensions as the Hapsburgs'.
The Western Front, 1915
At the beginning of 1915, the German general staff had a decision to make: to renew the offensive in the West, or strike East in the hope of inflicting a blow devastating enough to Russia to force them out of the war? Unsurprisingly, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who controlled the armies in the east, advocated for the transfer of at least six corps from the West for a massive offensive to drive the Russians out of East Prussia and then Congress Poland. Bethmann Hollweg supported the two commanders in this plan, but there were also important figures aligned with the clique around Falkenhayn who advocated for a decisive blow in the West, such as Tirpitz, who was invested in the strategy of commerce raiding with Britain, and eventually the Kaiser himself, who had been stung by British entry into the war.
In the end, Falkenhayn's clique won the struggle. The failure of the Russian armies to take Lviv and the fall of Belgrade conspired to weaken Bethmann Hollweg's warnings about the instability of Austria-Hungary. Ludendorff and Hindenburg's inability to drive the Russians completely out of the Reich's borders harmed their credibility. And the tantalizing closeness to victory in the West during the initial months of the War led many in the OHL to believe that one more offensive would break the back of the French Army and force Britain into a negotiated peace.
Thus in early April, the Germans began the First Battle of the Somme. Instead of directly assaulting Amiens, fourteen German divisions in the salient running from outside the city South to Montdidier attacked directly west after bombarding Allied troops with the first use of poisoned gas in the war. Once again, the offensive was initially spectacularly successful. Amiens was out-flanked, and then captured on April 11th. German armies rushed into the breakthrough, and France began scrambling to evacuate troops from north of Somme for a second defense of Paris. The penultimate target of the offensive was the town of Abbeville, just north of the Somme.
The battle of Abbeville, referred by the British simply as the "miracle of Abbeville", saw the German offensive halted by the extensive fortification network that had been built up around the city. The futile German assault in this area led to the exhaustion of the German divisions participating in the offensive. These divisions may have prevented the wild success of the coming British counter-offensive to the south if it had not lost around a third of its officers and artillery pieces. As it was, the British counter-offensive forced a general retreat of the German divisions in the area. After Amiens was recaptured, the French joined in the counter-offensive, and forced the demoralized German troops out of their initial positions in Montdidier and Albert, and back toward Noyon and Ham.
The offensive was a disaster. It was one of the first battles which had a higher proportion of German causalties than Entente ones. It also saw the German Army lose ground, and though the position it now held was somewhat more defensible, its defeat in the First Battle of the Somme nonetheless demonstrated that there would be no easy victory in the west. Perhaps most importantly, it led to a loss of face for Falkenhayn, which would have large consequences for later German strategy in the war. Though he was not demoted from his position at the head of the OHL, it was now Hindenburg and Ludendorff who had the ear of the Kaiser. Their "eastern strategy" would soon become unofficial German policy.
On the Western Front, the remainder of 1915 would see several failed Entente offensives in the north, around Ypres, and the south, near the Aisne. As German high command became convinced that the Entente was unable to break through the fortified German lines, more and more troops were committed to the east for a massive, Austro-German-Bulgarian offensive meant to knock the Russians out of the war. Reports received from both Britain and France about the massing of troops in Prussia and Galicia convinced them of the need to launch a more concerted and focused offensive early in 1916 to force Germany to bring forces back to the west.
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Quick note: I will cover the Eastern Front in 1915 in the next post!
I'm also posting a short poll, just to get a sense of what kind of pacing people feel is best. The level of granularity I need to have is something I've struggled with somewhat, and any feedback would be appreciated. I'm also sorry it took so long for this update to come out; for anyone who also has Long Covid, I don't recommend getting re-infected!
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Military History of the Great War, 1914-1915
The Western Front, 1914
Faced with an enemy which had an overwhelming advantage in raw materials, man-power, and naval might, the German general staff devised the "Schlieffen Plan", hoping to knock France out of the war in the first few months before pivoting to the East. The plan called for an invasion through neutral Belgium to bypass the heavy fortifications in Lorraine. It required the German Army's most well-equipped and thoroughly trained forces to be dedicated to the northern portion of the Western Front. Only a single field army was assigned to the east to hold Russia at bay in East Prussia. The plan informed much of the structure of German mobilization: a German general famously remarked that even if the German Army wished to divert additional armies to the East at the start of the war, it would have been logistically incapable of doing so.
The Schlieffen Plan was doomed to fail. It was a plan designed with 19th, rather than 20th century military technology in mind. It was also a plan which could only emerge from a military-political complex which believed deeply in its own strategic mythologies, in the notion of the decisive offensive which would shatter enemy lines with such force and vigor that the opposing army would be placed on the permanent defensive. Unfortunately, the failure of the Schlieffen Plan did not disabuse the German general staff of such notions.
In retrospect, it is a testament to the tactical brilliance of the German officer and extent of Franco-British incompetence that the offensive still saw German troops occupy many of the resource-rich regions in Northern France and come within 40 kilometers of Paris itself. In August, the German armies seized the Belgian fortress of Liege, occupied Rheims, and foiled the French offensive into Alsace-Lorraine. However, sabotage by Alsatian citizens and Franc-tireur activity made it difficult for the German Army to launch a counter-offensive in the region. On August 25th, Moltke refused the request of Prince Rupprecht to launch an offensive to the south in order to encircle French troops in Lorraine, instead committing additional reserves to the northern armies approaching the river Marne. Three days later, a request for a corps to reinforce the East was only begrudgingly supplied with a single division after it became clear that the Russian Army was still having trouble mobilizing sufficient forces for a sustained assault into East Prussia.
By September 5th, a sizable Franco-British force had emerged to oppose the armies at the Marne. With the front widening with every further advance, a gap had emerged between the German armies in the area between the towns of Chantilly and Meaux. In the "Battle of Oise", a British force attacked this region, slipping behind the German armies and threatening their rear. Moltke threw in his reserves for a counter-attack on the flanks of this advance. Although the counter-attack was inconclusive, it convinced the British commander in the region that they were at risk of encirclement, and the British troops promptly withdrew to their previous positions, giving the German armies time to re-establish communications and close any remaining gaps on the line. Nonetheless, the German Army as a whole was quickly losing its strategic initiative. Attacks on its flanks continued, and the Franco-British concentration of forces swelled further as troops were ferried in from Britain.
The German General staff was paralyzed by indecision. While Falkenhayn wished to mount a direct assault on Paris, Moltke believed that the flanks of the German Armies were not secure enough for such a move. The inadvertant operational pause which this dispute caused allowed the French Armies to the Northwest of the German position to muster their forces and attack just north of the river Oise. A simultaneous assault on Moltke's Southern flank by forces in Lorraine ensured that no reserves were sent to deal with the attack until the main axis of advance was determined.Tthough the attack out of Lorraine was halted at the expense of several German divisions, in the North several French armies broke through the German lines. This time, they did not retreat, and the General staff was forced to order a retreat of the armies to the south toward the river Aisne.
Moltke believed that the Schieffen plan had failed because it had not led to the destruction of the actual French Army. With it becoming clear that a "long war" was now inevitable, he decided on committing the remainder of the offensive power of the German Army to encircling the French Armies to his north. While the rest of the army retreated to the Aisne, he ordered the Third Field Army, thus far the least bruised in the fighting, to launch a counter-offensive around the town of Noyon, with the goal of pushing toward Amiens and creating a pocket of French troops stranded between the German position on the Aisne and the Somme river. It was hoped this would also render suspect the position of any French forces north of the Somme river, forcing a retreat from Belgium and Pas-de-Calais.
The counter-offensive began brilliantly. It started a phase of the war known as the "march to the north" as both armies increasingly shifted forces away from Lorraine and Paris. Moltke mused that "the war might still be won" after resigning himself to its loss only days ago. The French troops were caught off guard by the frontal german assault after several days of advancing largely without organized opposition. Within days, the German forces had captured Noyon, Mondidier, and Roye. The German forces dug-in on the Aisne River inflicted devastating causal-ties on several French counter-attacks from the south. Nonetheless, by the time the Third Army reached Amiens, it was exhausted. More than that, its flanks were exposed to French forces to both its north and south. In the days since the advance started, fresh BEF divisions were diverted to Amiens, and their heroic - and successful - defense of the city was a massive propaganda victory for the entente which helped smooth over tensions between the two nations.
The advance French forces cut off by the German thrust toward Amiens were nonetheless still quite vulnerable. But Moltke, now increasingly paranoid about the potential of encirclement, refused to immediately divert forces from Amiens for an offensive against them, and they largely managed to make their way north toward Passcendale, Ypres, and Givenchy. As a result, when an offensive from the 2nd army did begin to move north from Montdidier toward Albert and eventually Arras, these forces were able to engage in a fighting retreat that slowed down the German Armies and provided crucial time to organize a defense around Arras itself.
Arras was the point at which both armies lost their capacity to conduct offensive operations. Lead elements of the 2nd army had managed to occupy around a quarter of the town, but French reinforcements in the region had prevented them from advancing further. Flanking attacks to the town's north failed to make progress, and the rest of the town was turned into something of a bunker by French troops. Over the course of a week and a half in October, the French, British and German armies jointly suffered around 500,000 causalties in and around the historic city, with the Germans hoping to take the entirety of the town after flanking attacks to the town's north were defeated. The "Razing of Arras" saw much of the baroque town square destroyed by German artillery fire.
In the end, German forces were forced to withdraw from the ruins of Arras due to the pressure of flanking counter-offensives from the French and British. Despite this, the damage done to the French and British armies in the battle ensured that it would take at least a year before the Entente could launch a large offensive in France. By the end of 1914, the Central Powers occupied a line in Northern France running from along the river Aisne, and moving North toward Montdidier, Villiers, Albert, Vimy, Lens and Ypres.
The Eastern Front, 1914
Perhaps the most salient facts about the Eastern Front during the first month and a half of the war was its relative absence of real fighting. This was largely due to the "mobilization fiasco" in Russia. This fiasco was largely fore-seen by Russian generals, who warned that partially mobilizing some miitary districts but not others would likely result in confusion if a general mobilization of Western Military districts was ever called. The Tsar, who had initially hoped to confine the war to a Russian-Ottoman one, rebuffed the advice of his generals. Consequently, many weeks were spent with the Southern districts on a full mobilization footing while the Western ones were either partially or completely non-mobilized. When the call for general mobilization came out, trains intended to be used to transport troops to the West were already being employed to ferry soldiers and supplies to the South. The French plan for an early Russian invasion of East Prussia to divert German troops to the East failed spectacularly, and would have perhaps been fatal for the French war effort were it not for the equally spectacular failure of the Schlieffen plan.
In late September, around 500,000 Russian soldiers had finally coalesced to begin their invasion of East Prussia. The much smaller German force of 135,000 troops at first retreated after a Russian advance on Gumbinnen, but quickly redeployed to a more defensible position and halted the advance. After Ludendorff and Hindenburg arrived, they attempted to lure the Russian Army into several envelopments, but the commander of the 2nd Russian Army, General Samsanov, remained wary of advancing with his rather ill-equipped forces. Hindenburg and Ludendorff embarked on several counter-offensives, and they did manage to push the Russians out of most of East Prussia, but they were unable to inflict anything like a decisive defeat on the much larger and continuously swelling Russian Army, which by the end of 1914 numbered 800,000 to the Germans 150,000 troops. Hindenburg and Ludendorff's repeated requests in for additional troops to launch an offensive to push the remaining Russian forces out of Gumbinnen and other border towns in East Prussia were denied.
Developments further south were similarly ambiguous. While the fall of Belgrade was an unambiguous victory for the Central Powers, it was unclear who, if anyone, had won the Galician campaign. While the Russians had not managed to take Lviv, the infamously poorly planned counter-attacks of the Austrian General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf did succeed in decimating at least a third of the Austrian forces in the East. The Russians suffered similar losses, but had greater ease in replenishing them, as well as an army which wasn't riven by the same ethnic tensions as the Hapsburgs'.
The Western Front, 1915
At the beginning of 1915, the German general staff had a decision to make: to renew the offensive in the West, or strike East in the hope of inflicting a blow devastating enough to Russia to force them out of the war? Unsurprisingly, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who controlled the armies in the east, advocated for the transfer of at least six corps from the West for a massive offensive to drive the Russians out of East Prussia and then Congress Poland. Bethmann Hollweg supported the two commanders in this plan, but there were also important figures aligned with the clique around Falkenhayn who advocated for a decisive blow in the West, such as Tirpitz, who was invested in the strategy of commerce raiding with Britain, and eventually the Kaiser himself, who had been stung by British entry into the war.
In the end, Falkenhayn's clique won the struggle. The failure of the Russian armies to take Lviv and the fall of Belgrade conspired to weaken Bethmann Hollweg's warnings about the instability of Austria-Hungary. Ludendorff and Hindenburg's inability to drive the Russians completely out of the Reich's borders harmed their credibility. And the tantalizing closeness to victory in the West during the initial months of the War led many in the OHL to believe that one more offensive would break the back of the French Army and force Britain into a negotiated peace.
Thus in early April, the Germans began the First Battle of the Somme. Instead of directly assaulting Amiens, fourteen German divisions in the salient running from outside the city South to Montdidier attacked directly west after bombarding Allied troops with the first use of poisoned gas in the war. Once again, the offensive was initially spectacularly successful. Amiens was out-flanked, and then captured on April 11th. German armies rushed into the breakthrough, and France began scrambling to evacuate troops from north of Somme for a second defense of Paris. The penultimate target of the offensive was the town of Abbeville, just north of the Somme.
The battle of Abbeville, referred by the British simply as the "miracle of Abbeville", saw the German offensive halted by the extensive fortification network that had been built up around the city. The futile German assault in this area led to the exhaustion of the German divisions participating in the offensive. These divisions may have prevented the wild success of the coming British counter-offensive to the south if it had not lost around a third of its officers and artillery pieces. As it was, the British counter-offensive forced a general retreat of the German divisions in the area. After Amiens was recaptured, the French joined in the counter-offensive, and forced the demoralized German troops out of their initial positions in Montdidier and Albert, and back toward Noyon and Ham.
The offensive was a disaster. It was one of the first battles which had a higher proportion of German causalties than Entente ones. It also saw the German Army lose ground, and though the position it now held was somewhat more defensible, its defeat in the First Battle of the Somme nonetheless demonstrated that there would be no easy victory in the west. Perhaps most importantly, it led to a loss of face for Falkenhayn, which would have large consequences for later German strategy in the war. Though he was not demoted from his position at the head of the OHL, it was now Hindenburg and Ludendorff who had the ear of the Kaiser. Their "eastern strategy" would soon become unofficial German policy.
On the Western Front, the remainder of 1915 would see several failed Entente offensives in the north, around Ypres, and the south, near the Aisne. As German high command became convinced that the Entente was unable to break through the fortified German lines, more and more troops were committed to the east for a massive, Austro-German-Bulgarian offensive meant to knock the Russians out of the war. Reports received from both Britain and France about the massing of troops in Prussia and Galicia convinced them of the need to launch a more concerted and focused offensive early in 1916 to force Germany to bring forces back to the west.
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Quick note: I will cover the Eastern Front in 1915 in the next post!
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Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
- Location
- The Great State of Warshington
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It feels like ITTL the Western Front just peters out. This leads me to wonder how the Eastern Front is going to work. I'd assume that there is going to be no Battle of Cambrai to be the first battle to use tanks in.
Heck, I wonder if they will be called "tanks" here ITTL. Maybe they'll have a different name.
Heck, I wonder if they will be called "tanks" here ITTL. Maybe they'll have a different name.