IX) A World in Flames
(1913-1917)
War Clouds
The initial spark of the Polish-Lithuanian succession crisis of 1913, was the start of the Great War, but the fuel was added to the fire long before this one spark set off the world. By the turn of the century, the United Kingdom and Germany found themselves in a dangerous arms race. Germany wanted a fleet powerful enough to protect its African colonies and to blockade Britain itself. The Royal Navy’s mandate was to be powerful enough to fight two wars at once; i.e. able to handle both the German Empire and the United States. The British Admiralty believed the Americans would take advantage of a war with Germany to exact its own revenge upon the former mother country. After dragging America’s collective face through the mud during the Nineteenth Century, it was a wonder why the Americans would be so eager for vengeance.
The British and Germans were not the only ones to build up their fleets. When they started, the other World Powers took to building their own fleet. The Dutch Commonwealth was intent on maintaining its domination of world trade, and had the capital from the United Provinces and resources from the Empire of Brazil to keeps its navy ahead of the British. The French and Italians soon were locked in their own arms race, one that almost lead to war when Italy took Libya from the weakening Ottoman Empire. Since both were in opposing alliances, this could have lead to a general war.
The web off alliances between the Entente and Central Powers was also a leading factor to war. By 1910, Germany and the United Kingdom were viewed as leaders of their respective alliances, even though the British were not bound to aid the French or Swedes. Austro-Hungary and Italy would follow Germany, and both the Germans and Americans have pledged to aid each other if the other is attacked. As stated already, the Italian Federation’s expedition to Libya nearly sparked a war, but in 1903, a German cruiser squadron visited Morocco. According to the French, the Germans had intent on extending a protectorate over Morocco, which was nominally under Franco-Spanish (mostly Spanish) protection as of 1899. The fact that Spain did not sign on to the Entente until 1907, was the only reason war did not erupt in 1898, when Spain and the United States went to war.
In some cases, old fashion nationalism could have sparked off a war. If not for their alliance with Britain, the Confederacy would have come under the wrath of Americans who wanted to destroy them simply because twice in the previous century the southerners humiliated the United States. If not for protection, then the Confederates would have fallen under the sword of 7th Cavalry instead of non-compliant plains Indians. Some French had similar feelings towards Germany, wanting to avenge the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian war some decades before. Though France lost no land in that war, they lost much face.
One class that did not want war, despite revisionism of today, where the world’s industrialists. War would divide the world and cut off half their potential civilian customers. Though many American, British and German companies would follow their country, those who profited from it would prefer the open markets of peace. The VOC, company of the neutral Dutch, loathed a navy war for it would mean the construction of more warships, which carried little to no cargo, for defense of their own shipping. If they entered the war, then the VOC navy would be obliged to fight along side their own nationals. The Dutch governments stated before the war started that shipping flying the United Provinces, Brazilian or any other commonwealth flag would only be safe in Commonwealth territorial waters. International waters were to be entered at ones’ own risk.
Succession Crisis of 1913
The spark that ignited the world struck on February 11, 1913, when King Gunther II of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth died. As was the law of Poland-Lithuania for centuries, the parliament went about the process of electing a new king. Gunther II had requested that Frederick Georg Wilhelm, a distant cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II be named his successor. He was made a candidate, but the Poles and Lithuanians would decide for themselves who would sit upon their throne, which was far more constitutional than the one Germans were use to sitting upon. A second serious candidate, Erik Gustav, brother of the King of Sweden, was put forth to thwart German influence in the Commonwealth.
The German choice happened to be the cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II, while the Swede was the brother of King Charles XVII. With each election, the two choices were tied, and with no end in sight, the Kaiser decided to act. Since the previous king was a German, the German Empire felt it was entitled to have one of its own ruling over the nation to the east. Furthermore, Litho-Poland always offered the perfect buffer between the two Empires. The succession crisis caused much alarm across Europe, and France, Britain and Italy called up partial mobilizations of their military base. France in particular feared German ambitions, as it was humbled by Prussia fifty years prior.
Through the month of March, Parliament held vote after vote, each time deadlocking between the two candidates. Attempts to break the deadlock by introducing a third candidate failed, as one strong enough could not be found. One attempt to put a Bourbon, living in Quebec, upon the throne was met with laughter from the pro-German bloc of parliament. It was met with a famous and sarcastic quote “why not nominate a Bonaparte while you’re at it?”. However, outside force continued to pull at the blocs. Neither the Kaiser nor the King wished Poland-Lithuania to be pulled into the alliance of their rival.
To combat this, radicals in the Parliament move to have the Regal Election reformed to allow the people to decide who will be their king. The radicals could not gather strength for they were divided as well, with Socialists wanting to abolish the monarchy altogether. Further infighting brought parliamentary processes to a grinding halt. By the middle of May, the Kaiser had lost all patience. He decided that within a month, if the Polish-Lithuanian had not resolved the issue of the throne, then Germany would force the issue. On May 20, he ordered his General Staff to be ready for war against Sweden and France. Two days later, Charles Zimmerman sent a war warning telegram to the United States.
On May 22, 1913, a telegram arrived at the War Department in Philadelphia from the German Foreign Minister, Charles Zimmerman. The six page message stated that the German Empire was preparing to invaded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to resolve the succession crisis.. Germany outlined their plan in the telegram stating they would invade Poland-Lithuania and install Frederick on the throne. This would obviously mean war with Sweden, which was part of the Entente. Since the United States was Germany’s strongest ally, the Kaiser decided to warn Roosevelt so that the United States could be prepared in case general world war broke out. Because of this telegram, the U.S. Army quietly mobilized during the month of June and began to move up units to the front. When the alliances were activated, and Congress declared war on June 25, the Americans were in a position to move against their enemies before the British in Canada and the Confederates were fully mobilized. This telegram is often credited for allowing the United States to be the closest thing to a total victor in this otherwise status quo ante bellum war.
Invasion
On June 22, 300,000 German soldiers, divided into five corp, entered the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in force. For the first hour, they met no resistance, for the Poles had no idea they were being invaded. Only when reports of German regiments and divisions returned to central government, did the Poles and Lithuanians begin full scale mobilization. The Poland-Lithuanian National Assembly immediately convened and declared a state of emergency. At 14:04, the Swedish Assembly and King went one step further, and declared war upon Germany, which the Germans returned in kind.
Before the 23rd, France had declared war on Germany, Italy on France and Austro-Hungary on Sweden. Britain declared war, and the Confederates followed suit. As soon as this happened, the United States declared war on Britain, the Confederacy and Sweden, in that order. The three states returned the favor. Oddly enough, though on opposing sides, France and the United States did not declare war on each other. Given their long history together, both nations went out of the way to avoid fighting each other, with the United States not invading French Mexico, and France not attacking southern California, though both had the ability. Clashes on open seas between the two were inevitable, but aside from that, they remained co-belligerents and not official enemies.
On June 26th, the United States activated both of its war plans, invading the Confederacy and Canada. Armies crossed the Ohio (under the command of John Pershing), the Rappahanock (under the command of Clarence White Water) and the Columbia with initially minimal resistance. Alexandria, Virginia was entered and occupied before the day was out, as were key rail crossings of the Ohio River. With advance warning through Zimmerman, the Americans were already fully mobilized, while the Confederates were only partially so. Birmingham ordered an immediate call up of all of its soldiers.
France was in a similar state, as part of Alsace and Lorraine were conquered without a shot being fired. Several border fortresses were simply entered and taken by the Germans. Once the realization that a major war was on their hands, the French began to throw its forces into the gap between the United Provinces and Switzerland, trying to slow the German juggernaut. France would be on its own for three weeks, before the first regiments of what would be known as the British Expeditionary Force began to land in Calais. Spanish soldiers crossed the border to aid France in the Rivera against an Italian invasion. Spain was the last of the Entente to declare war, the republic taking a full week to deliberate and vote on a war that had little of their own national interest at stake.
Siege of Lodz
According to the initial planned invasion of Poland-Lithuania, the city of Lodz should have been overran within a week. This was not to be destined. Lodz and its defenders put up a stiff resistance, and continued to hold out as the front moved eastward. Lodz became an island in a rapidly advancing German tide during the summer of 1913. The fortresses surrounding the city held continued to repel German attacks, and some in the General Staff wanted to bypass the city and leave behind just enough soldiers to keep the defenders bottled up. The Kaiser would have none of it. He wanted no potential for attacks from the rear as the German Army slugged it out with Sweden over control of the Polish-Lithuanian throne. Even after Germany invaded Poland-Lithuania, the parliament remained undecided on whom should ascend the throne.
So instead of bypass the city, the Germans invested it. The eight month long siege of Lodz drew away critical resources from both fronts, East and West. The hundred thousand soldiers surrounding the city could have been used to complete Plan 6 or cut Poland-Lithuania off from the sea. The former would have gone a long ways to altering the outcome of the war, while the latter would do little. With Sweden as an ally, or at least claiming to protect the Commonwealth, the Poles had access to the sea via the vast Swedish Empire.
At the end of February of 1914, the city had already suffered millions of shells and tens of thousands of casualties. Tens of thousands more suffered through the siege as food supplies diminished. Dogs, cats, any birds and even the local zoo were slaughtered by the inhabitants who were desperate for food. The defenders of Lodz were lionized as heroes by the Entente, especially British, press. Attempts to aid the city were thwarted, and even the Red Cross was turned away by the German besiegers. Lodz would get relief after they capitulated. On February 27, able to suffer no longer, General Stefen Wolenski formerly surrendered the city. That should have been the end of the story.
The frustration of an eight month long siege, and the loss of a quick victory angered the German soldiery. What followed was not a civilized surrender, but rather a classical conquest. Discipline in the German Army broke down after the defenders laid down their arms, and the soldiery sacked the city. Officers struggled for four days to bring order to the mob. When order was restored, a portion of the city was burning and an estimated 22% of the surviving civilians were dead. In response to this atrocity, the German High Command executed over a thousand of its own soldiers, including the perceived ring leaders. Entente response was quick and to the point. The press declared this action the Lodz Massacre, and a prime example of how the barbarians were once again threatening civilization. The massacre even strained relations between Germany and the United States, its strongest ally. In response to the sacking of Lodz, the Polish-Lithuanian parliament broke its deadlock and unanimously elected the Swedish candidate, who was crowned Erik Gustav as King Christian I on April 29.
Opening Moves in the Pacific
The United States was at a disadvantage in the Pacific. The west coast was potentially cut off from the Pacific possessions of the Marianas and Wake by an Entente triangle of Seattle, Pearl Harbor, Port Sinoloa. In order to break this potential blockade of its western shores, the Navy Department moved forth its own part of War Plan Red; ejecting the British from the Hawaiian Kingdom. Hawaii entered the war on Britain’s side in July of 1913, using its small navy only in defense of its own shores and the British naval base on Oahu. The United States had no real interest in the rest of the Hawaiian Islands, and it was determined they would be ignored. However, the Pacific Fleet, as soon as supplied, set sail to eject the British from the strategic island of Oahu.
On August 3, 1913, the United States Pacific Fleet encountered a combined fleet of the Royal Navies of the United Kingdom and of Hawaii. Plans for the battle date back more than a decade. In the event of war, with the British to the north and west, and Confederates to the south, there was a good chance the United States could have its Pacific Coast blockaded. This would cut off America from its few colonies in the Pacific, but more importantly, to a large portion of its commerce. While offensives drive into Canada and the Confederacy, a third attack would head westward and drive the British off Oahu. With a base at Pearl Harbor, the British were in the perfect position to destroy American commerce.
At the command of the Pacific Fleet was forty year Naval veteran, Admiral Frederick Ruyter flying his flag from the USS California. Along with the California, seven more battleships; the Ohio, Iroquois, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Maryland, Idaho, and Kansas along with twelve cruisers and twenty destroyers, along with ten thousand Marines. Facing him with eight battleships and four battlecruisers, along with ten cruisers, sixteen destroyers and five Hawaiian destroyers was Sir Edmund Ralley.
The two fleets made their first pass at each other at 1003, a little more than two kilometers off the coast of Maui, between that islands and Hawaii. Gunnery during the first pass was poor, with less than ten percent of the shells finding their targets. This was still enough to damage the HMS Revenge, and sink two British destroyers, one American destroyer, and the USS Portland. Each American and British battleship suffered near misses, with straddling shots causing buckling in the hull. After the first pass, both fleets attempted to outmaneuver the other, coming at another pass at 1036. The USS Ohio lost its number two turret during the exchange, and two more American cruisers were knocked out of the battle. Not sunk, but damaged enough they were forced to drop out of the fight. On the British side, the Lionwas dead in the water and a cruiser listing severely. The cruiser capsized at 1044.
The third pass occurred at 1101, with more minor damage to big guns. Kansas was reduced to 2/3 speed as one of its boilers was flooded. The HMS Majesty lost power, and could no longer turn its turrets. The British battleship withdrew from the battle to rescue survivors from the first two passes. Even when ships were not giving broadsides, they were still exchanging fire. Before the fourth pass, the HMS Vendetta took four hits, one puncturing its forward hull and blowing off five meters of its bow.
The fourth pass, 1149 hours, was the climax of the battle, where Ruyter managed to “Cross the T”. In the exchange, British guns could fire only a few rounds, two of which breached the Ohio’s hull. In the British lines, three battleships were further damaged, and the HMS Warspite simply exploded as a three hundred millimeter round penetrated its magazine. Wounded, Ralley ordered the British fleet, badly damaged, to retreat to Pearl Harbor. He had no intent of staying there, for it would be a bottleneck for his own fleet when the Americans arrived.
Instead, he would evacuate British nationals from the island and retreat to Manilla to repair the fleet. Before he could make good his escape, Ruyter ordered destroyers to close in and launch torpedoes on the dreadnaughts. A squadron of American destroyers closed in on the retreating ships and unleashed their payloads. Four destroyers were damaged, with one crippled, but in exchange, the Majesty broke in half, and a cruiser joined her.
To cover his retreat, Ralley ordered a torpedo run by his own destroyers. Three British destroyers were lost, but in exchange, the Maryland lost its forward turret, and the main British Fleet was able to successfully withdrawal to Pearl Harbor. Ralley is often criticized for giving up the battle, but had he pressed the attack, he could very well have lost the Royal Navy’s entire Pacific fleet. That fleet was required to defend the Philippines, Australia and Malaysia, and attack the Americans in the Marianas along with German Marshals and Kaiserwilhemland, and have sufficient forces to defend British holdings in the Pacific against possible Dutch attacks.
By August 5, the British evacuated their nationals from Oahu, leaving behind a rearguard force of Royal Marines and ships too damaged to survive the voyage across the ocean, to aid the Hawaiians. During the months of August and September, the Americans conquered Oahu, sending the Hawaiian royal family fleeing to the island of Hawaii.
Back in North America, a force of twenty thousand soldiers moved from southern California into the Confederate State of Durango, across the Gulf of California. Port Sinoloa was first attacked by a cruiser squadron out of San Diego, leading the Confederate Pacific Fleet on a chase. While they were pursing the ships, which were reinforced by some of the fleet from Hawaii in September, the first of America’s naval invasions of the war took place. Some ten kilometers south of Port Sinoloa, the fifty thousand Americans hit the desert beach with minimal resistance. Real resistance did not take place until August 30, when Confederate garrisons and American invaders clashed just outside the city. In the course of the next three weeks, the Americans moved northward, fighting block-by-block to seize the city. Finally, on October 8, the Confederate commander at Port Sinoloa surrendered. The city was not the Confederate’s only outlet to the Pacific, but with it in American hands, it was not the Confederates who were blockaded.
The Great Lakes Campaign
Along side the reconquest of the Red River Valley, in later 1913, early 1914, the United States Navy on the Great Lakes did much to secure America’s northern border. Control of the Lakes would insure supply lines for both the Red River Valley and the York Peninsula. The British knew this as well, and decided to make the first move at the Battle of Mackinac.
Also called the Battle of Mackinac Strait or Battle of Fort Mackinac, this battle was the first British-Canadian counter-offensive following the declaration of War. Part of Britain’s own war plan against America called for it to drive American Naval forces from the Great Lakes. This called for bottling up much of the American Great Lakes’ Fleet on Lake Michigan while the British took control of the other four lakes. Not only would this allow the British, and the Canadians, uninterrupted supply lines for armies operating on American soil (none at the time), but it would also force the Americans to withdraw from the York Peninsula and cut off their iron mining regions in the west from the steel mills in the east.
Under the command of Vice Admiral Walter Cowan, a British fleet of two battleships (on BB and one BC), three cruisers, nine destroyers and ten smaller vessels, sailed ahead of a marine flotilla destined to occupy Mackinac Island. The British plan called for surprise, which was shattered on June 30, 1913, when the submarine Swordfish, commanded by Commander Edward Fitzgerald, spotted the British fleet and moved in to attack. A torpedo managed to hit the battlecruiser Leopard, but caused only slight damage, a rupture in the midship that was easily patched. In return, British destroyers hunted down the primitive submarine and sank it. At the time, Cowan was not aware if U.S. subs were equipped with the newly invented wireless transmitters. Though primitive, they were capable of transmitting a morse code pulse to warn that the British were coming.
On July 2, the British fleet entered Mackinac Strait and began to bombard the fortress upon Mackinac Island at 1133. A century ago, a British fleet made the same move and forced the fort to surrender before taking control of Lake Michigan during the Second Anglo-American War. Fifty years later, during the Third Anglo-American War, the British again attacked the fort, but this time took it by assault. Cowan planned to be the third to take the island in just over a century. Unbeknown to the British, Fitzgerald did get a signal back to Chicago, and the American fleet stationed their sortied.
The United States Navy split its forces on Lake Michigan into two columns. The western column, commanded by Rear Admiral Charles Vreeland, consisted of two battleships, two cruisers, four destroyers, seven frigates and torpedo boats. The eastern column, commanded by Commodore Robert Doyle, consisted of a lone battlecruiser, another lone cruiser, three destroyers along with a dozen torpedo boats. When the two columns converged on Mackinac Island, midday on July 3, Vreeland took overall command for what would turn out to be a short battle.
Given British superiority in overall firepower, Vreeland played his own gambit. He would send ahead the torpedo boats and smaller craft to launch their torpedoes at the British. He expected to loose many of the boats, after all, Destroyers were designed to destroy torpedo boats. However, he had hoped to open a breach in the British formation to exploit. At a distance of ten kilometers, the British guns began to open up on the Americans. At that distance, their aim was poor, and only a handful of near misses gave the Americans cause for alarm. The U.S.S. Columbia, a battlecruiser, did have a shell land close enough to cause minor damage to its hull.
In design, the British and Canadian Great Lakes Battleships were fifteen percent larger than their American counterparts, and sported 300mm guns, as opposed to the 203 and 253 mm used by American Great Lakes Battleships and -cruisers. Their armor was thicker as well. British cruisers had close to the same advantage against their American counterparts. American warships were lighter armed and armored, but also traveled faster than their enemies. American gunnery tended to be better on the Great Lakes, as was shown when shells from the Oregon made contact with a British destroyed that strayed too close, and tore it to pieces.
Before the opposing capital ships could get into more effective range, Cowan had to run the gauntlet of small torpedo boats. As was typical of a Royal Navy man, Cowan looked upon these lightly armed, glorified fishing boats with disdain. The idea that a boat could damage, much less sink, a Royal Navy battleship struck the Admiralty as absurd. This did not, however, prevent the Canadians from building their own torpedo boats to ply the Great Lakes. Cowan’s pride was about to receive a deep bruise when the American boats entered firing range. As was doctrine, the larger ships ignored the boats while the destroyers dealt with them. Two torpedo boats were destroyed before they could launch their torpedoes, but an addition thirteen breached British lines and launch two torpedoes each before retreating. Of these, and addition three boats were destroyed.
Many of the torpedoes missed, either be dodged, or simply sailing beneath the enemy bows. However, the bulk of the torpedoes were aimed at the largest ships; battleship Port Royal, battlecruiserLeopard and a cruiser steaming close to them. Seven torpedoes did hit, including one that took out the Leopard’s rudder. Two more torpedoes ruptured the battleship’s hull, reducing its speed by half. The cruiser received such a lashing, that it began to list. Before the day was out, it would be abandoned and capsized. With one capital ship mortally wounded and the other crippled, Cowan now had to face the Americans at a disadvantage. No British admiral had ever retreated from battle against the Americans on the Great Lakes, and Cowan did not wish to be the first.
When the American battleship and battlecruiser came into range, they quickly changed his mind. Shells from the Oregon and Susquehanna destroyed three destroyers and broke an addition cruiser in half. British shells caused their own damage, sinking an American destroyer and crippling two more, along with a cruiser Columbia even received hits, knocking out one of its two turrets. It was the fact that the Royal Marine transports would be within range of American guns within a day that caused Cowan to retreat. The transports were lightly armed, fast destroyers that would have stood little chance against the Americans. He would not condemn so many marines to their death just to save his own pride. At 1605, Cowan gave the order to withdraw. Not retreat, but to withdraw. He had every intend on returning as soon as his ships were repaired, and reinforced by ships from Lake Superior and Huron.
The Americans would not give Cowan, or any British admiral, a second change to seal Lake Michigan. Within a week, addition torpedo boats have arrived on seen, and damage to most of the ships was repaired. The Columbia did have to return to Chicago for repairs, but it would be replaced by ships arriving at Mackinac from Lake Superior. Addition soldiers were rushed to reinforce Fort Mackinac, and a small airstrip was built on the island. It could not project power against the Royal Navy, but would serve to base scouts. Addition guns were placed on the island in the following month, as were fortifications on either side of Mackinac Strait. Admiral Vreeland would not give the British a second chance to take Mackinac. As soon as he was reinforced, he took the fight to the British on Lake Huron.
Following their victory at Mackinac, the America Great Lakes Navy took up pursuit of their British counterparts once Mackinac Island was reinforced. By September of 1913, Vreeland set his fleet out, reinforced by two cruisers and the battleship Minnesota, across Lake Huron to hunt down what was left of Cowan’s fleet. Seaplanes launched from the northern shores of Michigan scoured the lake for the British fleet for a week before the first signs were detected. On September 7, Cowan’s fleet was spotted nearing Georgian Bay. Cowan had hoped to shelter in Owin Sound and repair the damage his ships sustained. At this point in the war, scouting planes were, if armed at all, very lightly armed. Bombers did not come into serious play for a couple more years. Had the Americans had these bombers, they might very well have sunk the British fleet from the air.
Instead, Vreeland ordered his fleet to sail across Lake Huron towards Georgian Bay. Cowan’s own scouts learned of the American’s approach. A squadron of five torpedo boats made runs on the Americans, missing the battleships at the cost of three of their own. One ship was eventually abandoned, but the fifth returned to Owin Sound with word of an American fleet approaching. The term fleet is used very loosely on the Great Lakes, for what Vreeland commanded would have been a glorified squadron on the high seas. Cowan had little choice but to put his whole fleet to sail, including the damagedLeopard. The British Admiral had no reinforcements aside from a few gunboats that nominally defend the naval base at Owin Sound. These followed Cowan towards their destined fate.
On September 15, 1913, just a few days over a hundred years since the Battle of Lake Erie, the American and British Great Lake Navies clashed some twenty kilometers of the northwest tip of the Bruce Peninsula. The battle was joined at 1103, when the Port Royal fired the first shots of the battle. British torpedo boats charged the Americans under the cover of the big guns. The shells fell short and wide, hitting a destroyer, ironically named the USS Oliver Perry. The destroyer was knocked out of action by hits from the British battlecruiser’s functioning turret, and began to list at 1108. The torpedo boats finished off the Perry and hit three more destroyers. The destroyer screen was tight enough that British boats could not penetrate to threaten the two American battleships and two battlecruisers.
By 1145, the playing was over and both formations began battling each other at ranges less than two kilometers. A British and American destroyer destroyed each other at under 300 m distance. Just before midday, Vreeland passed between Bruce Peninsula and the British Fleet, crossing Cowan’s ‘T’. All heavy caliber guns fired upon the lead ship, the battleship Port Royal. Of the shots fired, seven hit the battleship, including one just below the bridge’s superstructure. Cowan and his command staff were killed in the explosion. More hits punctured the aft and destroyed the rudder. The Port Royal began to turn to the port, no longer under human control. Seeing this, the following ships changed course, not realizing just what happened.
Both fleets lined up broadsides against each other. Several of the British shots hit their mark, damaging the Minnesota and killing its own captain. Over a hundred were killed when a boiler exploded onboard the Susquehanna. The damage to the Americans was painful, but not life threatening. Three destroyers were gutted during the exchange, with the loss of several hundred more sailors. The British losses were far worse. The earlier wounds on the Leopard were opened again by a torpedo run by one of the American destroyers lost. Explosions below the water line broke the back of the battlecruiser, which snapped in half at 1205. Only a handful of survivors, and none of them officers, were plucked from the lake. The out-of-control Port Royal was hit five more times, with two shots ripping open spontoons and causing the ship to enter a dangerous twenty degree list to its port. At 1211, the battleship capsized and went down. An addition royal cruiser and four destroyers were lost in the fight. By 1300, the Battle of Lake Huron ended with the bulk of British fleet on the lake effectively annihilated, and the remaining wounded ships limped away from battle. Two destroyers steamed towards Detroit in hopes of breaking through to Lake Erie, but the remainder of the ships headed towards Owin Sound.
The two destroyers were sunk by shore batteries attempting to cross over to Lake Erie, and the remaining ships were bottled up in Owin Sound. Vreeland sailed his own fleet within range of the Sound and began bombarding the naval base. Little damage was caused to the base, and none of the warships suffered any more serious damage, though a light cruiser was hit and ended up beaching itself. Vreeland sailed back towards Lake Michigan, victorious in clearing Lake Huron of British forces. Several American submarines set up a blockade of Owin Sound, and supply ships used the Huron side of the York Peninsula to resupply American forces in Canada. The Great Lakes were cut in half, and British and Canadian naval forces on Lake Superior remained isolated. American warships sortied into Lake Superior and hunted down the British cruiser and destroyers stationed upon it by the middle of 1914. Taking control of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario would not be as easy.
War in the Atlantic
After winning control over Lake Huron, and securing the northern flank of the York Peninsula, the Navy and War Departments shifted their attention towards the Atlantic. A key part of War Plan Gray was to liberate Cuba and restore its rightful Union government. This was partially a political goal, of restoring a state, and partially a military goal, to use Havana and Guantanamo as naval bases to succeed in blockading the Confederacy. The move against Cuba did not happen until the Great War was already several months old. On December 1, 1913, the United States Atlantic Fleet departed New Amsterdam in route to Cuba. The fleet was commanded by one Vice Admiral Hugo Osterhaus, veteran of the Spanish War, and now commander of six of the Atlantic Fleet’s ten battleships. Along with the Vermont, Nevada, New Amsterdam, Indiana, Nebraska and Wyoming sailed some eight additional cruisers and twelve destroyers. The fleet carrier with it some four thousand marines, not for retaking Cuba, but for clearing the Bahamas of British presence before the invasion force could leave port.
On December 7, the American fleet sailed into the islands from the northeast, attempting to lure the British and the Confederate fleets into decisive combat. The two Entente fleets combined outgunned the Americans, but Osterhaus was gambling on catching the Confederate fleet before the British were to link up with it. The Confederate Atlantic Fleet comprised of four battleships; South Carolina, Sonora, Mississippi, Congress, along with the battlecruiser Manassas, six cruisers and seven destroyers. Upon learning of the American departure from New Amsterdam, Confederate Rear Admiral Robert Lawrence Hunley Jr. departed Augusta with the entire fleet. Messages have been sent to Kingstown in Jamaica to British Vice Admiral Doveton Sturdee, who immediately put to sea with his two battleships, three battlecruisers, ten cruiser and thirteen destroyers. If he could link up with his Confederate ally, then the American fleet would be easily repelled, if not destroyed.
American cruisers steaming ahead of the main fleet, bombarded a British outpost at Hopetown. Ten minutes of bombardment destroyed much of the small outpost, and let the British know the Americans were here. By setting up for battle this far north in the Bahamas, Osterhaus knew that the Confederates would be the first to respond. However, Hunley was no fool, and would wait off the Floridian coast until the British steamed within range. To find the American fleet and coordinate a two prong attack, Confederate sea planes took to the air. These slow aircraft, with minimal range, spotted the Atlantic Fleet at 931, steaming off the eastern coast of Grand Bahama.
It was here that the actual battle was decided. The seaplanes had primitive radio transmitters on board, and transmitted coordinates back using Morris Code. The information was passed on to both Confederate and British. Unfortunately, the pilot and lookout who spotted the Americans were recent volunteers, and transmitted the distance in statute miles instead of the nautical miles the British used, and marked the American’s course off by fifteen degrees. Upon relieving this intelligence, Sturdee ordered his own fleet on a course that would intercept this faulty data, and leave the British well away from the actual battle. The Confederates coming in from the northwest, however, found the Americans at 1305.
Osterhaus ordered his own fleet into action, taking his line of battleships along side the Confederate line. Hunley, who expected the British to show up from the south at any moment, obliged, and traded the first broadside at 1323. This first exchange resulted in many misses, despite hard gunnery training. Two battleships, the Nevada and the Congress received damage from the exchange, but not enough to knock either from battle. For the next two hours, both fleets maneuvered, attempting to cross each other’s “T”, while exchanging pot shots at each other. A Confederate destroyer strayed too close to the American line of battle, and was reduced to a new corral reef in a matter of minutes.
At 1423, the fleets lined up and exchanged another broadside. The C.S.S. Sonora took severe damage, forcing it to fall back in the line. After more than an hour of combat, Hunley began to wonder if his allies had not abandoned him to a numerically superior American fleet. One-on-one, the Americans could carry the day against either the Confederate Atlantic Fleet or the British Carribean Squadrons. Combined, the Americans stood less-than-even odds. Hunley’s luck changed at 1440, when the Confederates managed to cross the “T” on the Americans, and bring their broadsides to bear on the American lead ship. The Nevada took fifteen hits from shells larger than 300 mm, and dozens of smaller hits. The American battleship was torn to pieces during the exchange, taking most of the Confederate’s broadside. At 1442, the captain of the Nevada, Charles O’Baley, ordered abandon ship. Three hundred sailors escaped the rapidly sinking Nevada, and the captain and command staff were not among them. The sinking of the battleship forced the Americans to break formation to avoid collision with either sinking ship or floundering crew.
After the humiliation of being crossed, Osterhaus made his own gambit, copying some of the moves that took place at Mackinac. He ordered eight of his ten remaining destroyers to make torpedo runs on the Confederate battleships. This was usually a job reserved for lighter torpedo boats, but the Americans lacked any that day. Instead, the destroyed dodged Confederate gun fire to close into range. The most celebrated destroyer of the day, the Tomahawk closed into firing range of the Confederate flagship, the South Carolina. At 1510, the Tomahawk released its torpedo salvo just as a 300mm shell slammed amidship, destroying the destroyer with all hands. Three of the torpedoes hit the South Carolina. One was a dud, but the other two hit amidship on the South Carolina, ripping into its hull and breaking its beam. The Confederate battleship was lifted clean of the water, the explosion breaking the ship in half. The aft half sunk in a matter of minutes, with the bow half remaining afloat long enough for fifteen sailors to escape. With its sacrifice, the Tomahawk decapitated the Confederate fleet, killing Hunley and all his staff. Two additional cruisers and the Manassas were damaged during the run, while the cruiser Atlanta was also sent to the bottom.
Now in chaos, the Confederates attempt to withdrawal and reform their lines. The Americans pressed on the attack, making another broadside exchange, causing addition damage to Confederate battleships, with the Sonora losing electrical power. One of the earlier damaged cruisers, the New Orleans capsizes due to damages. The Americans were not immune from damage, the USS Wyoming had its aft turrets knocked out and was reduced to half speed. At 1800, the Confederates began to retreat south, remaining ships rallying around the Mississippi, the least damaged battleships in their fleet. Osterhaus ordered a cruiser and two destroyers to remain behind to pick up survivors, from both sides, while the bulk of the Atlantic Fleet pursued the Confederates through the night.
The battle continued at 700 on the following day, when Osterhaus orders his fleet to split into two squadrons. The first squad will run up along side the Confederates, while the Vice Admiral will take his squad and cross the Confederate “T”. At 716, Osterhaus trapped the Confederates in his box, unleashing maximum firepower. The Congress began to list at twenty degrees and the Manassas capsized.Sonora simply exploded when rounds pierced its magazine. The explosion was powerful enough to severely damage a Confederate destroyer steaming too close. At 843, with three Confederate battleships sunk, Sturdee finally found the battle. The British were outnumbered and outgunned, but caught one of the American squadrons away from its fellows. The British pass resulted in minimum damaged to the HMS Lionheart, and one American cruiser sunk.
As the battered Confederate remains joined the fresh British forces, the British Vice Admiral ran up colors calling for a truce. Sturdee wished to fish survivors from the water, now very bloody and infested with sharks. Osterhaus agreed to a four hour cease fire, after which, he would continue his attack on the Confederates and the British. During this break, the Americans managed to get what fires that burned under control, and repaired one of the Wyoming’s damaged turrets. Sturdee assessed the damage to the Confederates, and determined that he could not hold the Bahamas without the loss of most of his own forces. Under such circumstances, he had orders from the Admiralty to yield the islands for the time being, until a naval force could be assembled to retake the Bahamas. At 1030, the British and remaining Confederate ships limped back to Kingstown, leaving Osterhaus victorious.
The following day, Osterhaus began his own attack on Nassau. One of his own cruisers were sunk and the New Amsterdam damaged by Nassau’s coastal defenses, including torpedo boats. Three thousand marines made it ashore on the island and continued to battle the few British defenders in Nassau until December 11, when the British surrendered the city and island. With Nassau secure, Osterhaus has cleared a path to Cuba and secured a base to raid the Confederate coast and tighten the blockade.
The United States Navy continued its operations, landing twenty thousand soldiers in southern Cuba on January 9, 1914. Guantanamo Bay was heavily defended by Confederate soldiers, and the city was not taken as easily as Port Sinoloa. It would require a further two months of conflict until ‘Gitmo’, as the United States Marines and Soldiers dubbed it, surrendered. Only the fact that the United States Navy, and others, controlled the waters around Cuba did the city surrender. Without naval control, they might very well of held out for months. The role of the Navy is obvious, but the role for “others” on the side of America as well as other nations is a more privatized part of warfare.
Privateering, a practice that has largely died out during the latter half of the 19th Century made a sudden revival with the outbreak of the Great War. The United States Congress issued more than seven hundred letters of marque during 1913, mostly against Confederate commerce, but a few wealthier ship owners were issued letters against Spanish, Swedish and even British shipping. The U.S. Congress did not issue any against France, since it had not declared war on the French Republic. The French, likewise, returned the favor. For Americans, a bond of some $100,000 dollars must be posted for the “good behavior” of the privateers, and to keep them from exceeding the bounds of their letters of marque. In 1913, there were no specialized privateering vessels in existence, and most would-be privateers took to modifying their own fishing boats, cargo tramps and even a few yachts. These ships worked well against Confederate commerce along the coast, and even raiding Canadian ships off the coast of Newfoundland. However, against British merchants they quickly lost effectiveness with the rapid implement of the convoy system. Any privateers that steamed within range of the Royal Navy escorts were simply destroyed.
Against the British, by 1914, the United States Navy took to Commerce Raiding. The difference between privateering and raiding is that in the former case, the goal is to capture the ship, and in the latter it is to simply sink it. Some American battlecruisers, and even the battleship Montana sailed lone missions, set on destroying Britain’s vital link to the rest of the world, especially its beef producing empire in Patagonia. Cruiser divisions of two to four cruisers also hunted primarily British shipping in the North Atlantic, Pacific and Far East. American submarines squadrons played a lesser role, however they operated further away, using German ports in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean as bases of operation.
The Confederate Congress issued its own letters of marque, some three hundred in 1913 alone. Confederate privateers focused almost solely on American shipping, with German merchants simply being out of range. Confederates operated along the Atlantic Seaboard, using Bermuda as a base, as well as up and down the Pacific, operating out of French Mexico. Confederate privateers took some fifty American ships in the first year of the war, compared to the Americans’ two hundred and five ships, and tens of millions of dollars worth of trade goods. For the most part, neither side netted much currency or specie from the raids, instead the privateers profited by selling captured goods and ships. When a privateer took a ship they believed better than theirs, they would modify it into another privateering vessel. The largest take by an American privateer was the C.S.S. Huxley, a Confederate Frigate. The most powerful privateer of the war was Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts; he used his family’s wealth and political clout to purchase an old destroyer recently decommissioned by the navy. The ship was obsolete in naval action, but served well for taking Confederate ships. The Luck of the Irish as the ship was called, even tangled with a Confederate light cruiser and destroyer, evading them through a series of maneuvers in the Florida Keys.
In Europe, privateering was banned by the 1856 Declaration of Paris because the difference between a pirate and a privateer was a little on the subtle side. Instead, the European participants took to simply destroying the other side’s commerce. The two biggest players in the game were Germany and Britain. The German High Seas Fleet did sent sorties of cruisers after commerce of Sweden and Britain in the North Sea and North Atlantic, with some using Boston as a base, but the biggest impact in commerce raiding was the U-Boat. These submarines operated either alone early in the war, but with the implementation of the convoy system, they began to sortie in squadron strength. The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet tended to interdict most commerce heading into Germany under belligerent flags, but this was not enough to blockade Germany. The Royal Navy also had to divide their forces to both sides of the Atlantic, and neutral powers still traded with Germany. Though Britain could stop many, it dared not provoke the VOC, which had its own convoy system. To combat U-Boats, the British introduced the Q-Ship. These were armed freighters that lay in wait, looking harmless, and waiting for U-boats to commence surface attacks before revealing the 200 mm guns hidden on the deck. The Germans countered this by attacking more and more beneath the waves.
The French raided and destroyed what they could, but they had too much of their resources devoted to the war on land. The Italian Federation dominated the Mediterranean, not only destroying Spanish, French, and latter Ottoman, shipping, but Italian Marines raided the Spanish coast. With its limited coast line, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had fewer opportunities to engage in economic warfare. The Austrian Antilles were lost to the British early in the war, taking away their base in the western Atlantic. Several private commerce raiders operated out of Austrian West Africa, and were little more than pirates plaguing all shipping in the Gulf of Guinea, including their allies. The Swedes had their own raiders, plaguing any German shipping in the Baltic Sea. Their raiders were far fewer, since the Swedish Navy devoted itself to battling the German Navy, and interrupting the resupply of German soldiers on the west coast of Sweden.
All powers in question took an active role in the so-called “Battle of the Atlantic”. The over all naval strategy of the Central Powers was to cut-off Britain from its empire and to link up in the North Atlantic. Millions of tonnes of British shipping were lost in the battle, along with hundreds of thousands of German, American along with French and Confederate shipping. Tens of thousands of merchant men died in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. Only on occasion would commerce raiders be bothered to pluck crews from the water. Privateers generally took the crews captive, delivering them to authorities in their home ports. Though the German and British raiders were ruthless, American and Confederate commerce raiders did take great pains to rescue their victims, and returned them to internment camps back home. These internees were traded between the United States and the Confederacy, one for one. Upon returning home, they often enlisted right into their navies for payback, either as sailors or as decoys or North America’s own version of the Q-ships.
Air War
The Great War was the first major war to see the use of air power. In 1913, this was hardly powerful. The United States, Britain, Germany and Italy used heavier-than-air machines to survey and scout over the network of trenches that began to appear in the fall of 1913 along narrow fronts. The use of aircraft as weapons was not until later. During 1913, the most that was exchanged between enemy scouts was the shots from pistols and carbines at distances to great to matter.
Starting that same year, when the aeroplane took a greater and greater role in the skies during the Great War, a sort of war profiteering rose outside of the City of Luxembourgh. The airstrip was totally make-shift, and at first was nothing more than a straight stretch of flat grass well outside of the city. The only remarkable features was a roadside pub some three hundred meters from the field. On November 12, Flight Lieutenant Samuel Winston, his observation plane shot up, made an emergency landing in the neutral Grand Duchy. Once on the ground, Winston hiked to the pub, ordered a pint of bitter and asked about local mechanics. Two days later, with his aeroplane repaired, Winston returned to the British Aerodrome on the French side of the border, telling his story.
Despite the fact that the United Provinces were neutral at the time, both British and German aircraft overflew the Grand Duchy of Luxembourgh. The French veered well clear of antagonizing the Dutch, but the British reckoned that if Germany was allowed to fly over, then so would they. At the time, and for many years after, Dutch law had clear definition of territory when it came to the sky, so legally speaking, there was no conflict. Provided that the war stayed outside of his Province, the Grand Duke would look the other way as two rival powers fought each other. During the course of 1913 and 1914, more damaged planes made landings at the airstrip.
By 1914, several more pubs have risen to service the influx of Entente and Central Power pilots making stops at Luxembourgh. Often after patrols, both German and British pilots would land at the airport at Luxembourg in search of unauthorized rest and relaxation. Discipline was tight around the combatant’s own aerodromes, and lacked in the way of entertainment. Beer was plentiful, but tightly rationed do to the war effort. Dutch breweries had no such limitations. Before the year was out, dozens of pubs, bars, casinos and even the odd brothel materialized around the airstrip. Workshops began to appear as well, as mechanics rushed outside of the city to work on the aircraft from both sides of the war. Even aviation fuel was sold.
At first, the Luxembourger officials turned a blind eye to the occasional landings, but as word about Luxembourg spread, the locals soon faced the prospect of both Germans and British ending up at the same pub. When the stories were told and the songs sang, the pilots would bid farewell, wishing the other luck in a may-the-better-man-win spirit. A few pilots would even seek out worthy opponents to challenge in the skies over the trenches. The city police force was tripled around the airfields, but to little avail. While in neutral territory, the two opposing forces had little interest in fighting, and more so in fraternizing. They traded stories about combats, about home life, and even the odd bottle of booze from each respective nation. British scotch was highly prized by the Germans. There was plenty of card playing to be had, and again the officials made absolute certain no cheats were permitted access to casinos. With a de facto truce in effect, the last thing anyone wanted was for bad blood to be spilt. Since these detours were without authorization, technically the pilots were absent without leave. Should their commanding officers ever learn of their stop over, and their fraternizing with the enemy, severe punishments would be met out. Never had any of the pilots been executed after being caught, for skilled pilots were very rare in the early days of flight. Instead, they were often transferred to alternate theaters of the war, one lacking a neutral power to cater to them.
Grinding into a Second Year
Though some predicted short wars, and a war that would end by the New Year, the Great War was far from over by late December. The Germans had ran smack into France’s Iron Drapes, coming to a halt and digging in as reinforcements were trained and rushed to the front. On the Eastern Front, Germans and Swedes were locked into more dynamic warfare as the more open spaces made trenches fewer and far between. Around key cities, such as Warsaw and Krakow, trenches were plentiful as both sides, with the Poles aiding the Swedes, fought ferociously for control.
Further south, the Swedes held the advantage over Austro-Hungary, in that this front was within Hungarian territory exclusively. Germany had to divert their own forces to prop up their southern ally. Italy also came to the aid of the Austrians, as well as held their own on the Western Front, though were still far from taking either Monaco or Nice. The Italian Navy did hold the advantage in the Mediterranean, but not to the point of keeping out the British. A naval battle between Italy and Spain resulted with a decisive Italian victory off the Catalonia Coast in November of 1913.
In North America, the Americans were totally on the offensive, with all their armies occupying enemy territory. The Red River Valley was in American hands, as was much of northern Maine and parts of the York Peninsula. Advances in the west have pushed further west and north from the Columbia River. In the south, American forces close in on the Rappahanock River as well as marched up the Tennessee River. The Confederates put all their resources into hold on, and the American blockade was just starting to take its toll when 1914 began.
At the start of 1914, the Central Powers’ star was apparently on the rise. With the exception of the ineptitude within the decrepit Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Central Powers had the bulk of their armed forces on the soil of their enemies. In Europe, German forces in the west were camped upon French territory. Much of Alsace-Lorraine was already under their thumb. The French, with the aid of the British Expeditionary Force, managed to establish themselves along the Iron Drapes, dug in and not about to allow the Germans to breakthrough. The Italians were also on French soil, though the front only extended, at most, nine kilometers inside France’s border.
The Eastern Front saw the Entente’s sole victory streak. Swedish forces moved across Poland-Lithuania and occupied parts of Austrian Galicia. Poland-Lithuania itself it divided between Swedish and German forces. After electing a Swede to its throne, Poland-Lithuania was fully in the fold of the Entente. The Kaiser’s primary goal of the war, to put an imperial relative upon the throne, was now out of reach. In a way, Germany has already lost the war, for they could no longer force the Polish parliament to elect the Kaiser’s cousin. However, this did not mean the Kaiser could not depose Christian I and replace him with a German.
The British and Canadians were holding the line against American aggression. By early 1914, despite poor weather, the Red River Valley was now fully under American control, as was northern Maine. The Americans made little gains on the York Peninsula, American advances outside of Iroquois stopped at Stoney Creek. Advances on the other side of the country have pushed slowly west and north of the Columbia River.
Gains against the Confederacy have been costly east of the Mississippi. In the far western deserts, the Confederates have been forced back, with a good portion of the Confederate State of Arizona in American hands, as well as parts of Durango. Landings on Cuba have yet to secure Guantanamo Bay, but the blockade of the Confederacy was in place and slowly taking its impact. With the lowest industrial output of the Entente, the Confederate war effort was most susceptible to blockades. However, this does not equate success on the battlefield, since the Confederates have held against the American tide on both the Ohio and Potomac Fronts.
Life in the Trenches
The euphoria and optimism of 1913, has been washed away by the winter rain and snow. The Great War differed from other wars in that, for the first time, the very landscape has been altered for hundreds of kilometers in length. A thin network of trenches, separated by a devastated no-man’s lands, served as the frontier between warring powers. Not all of the fronts had trenches. Along the Colorado Front, and in Poland-Lithuania, large areas made static warfare impossible. Any dug-in location could be bypassed. However, on narrow fronts, such as the Western or Potomac Fronts, a few defenders well dug in could hold of a much larger aggressor.
War, what was seen as a grand adventure by those too young to remember the last big war. The generation of the Franco-Prussian War were old, and those still serving were now Generals and Marshals. The United States Army had many of its higher ranking officers serving in the Spanish War, some fifteen years previous. That was paled in comparison, as the Spanish were easily pushed aside. Though with Spain in the Entente, no doubt they had their eyes on regaining territory lost to the Americans, and not just the Marianas in 1898. For the rest of the nations’ youth, war was something desirable.
The enthusiasm quickly drowned in the morass of mud collecting at the bottom of two meter deep trenches. The reality of war was, when not terrifying, very, very boring. Siting in the trenches for days and weeks on end, with the only sunlight hitting them when the sun was more or less overhead. Life inside the trenches was dark, dank and lice-infested. The parasites, that many combatants from middle class upbringing have never seen, plagued the soldiers more than enemy artillery. Soldiers rotated off the lines would undergo delousing, only to have the pests crawling all over them the moment they went back to the front.
In some areas, the frontline remained stagnant long enough for some comforts of home to make their way in. Soldiers in the trenches had little to do, and a bored soldier did command no good. Many were put to work inside the trenches, digging out bombardment shelters and underground barracks. Along with the barracks came other aspects of a normal army base, including mess halls and even recreation halls. Cards were the most popular way to pass the time. Few sections of the trenches even had motion picture projectors, though electricity was spotty.
At first, the dreaded call for “over the top” was just that, dreaded. But after months of sitting idle in the shells, taking cover only when the other side decided to lob rounds their way, even the most timid soldier was eager to charge. Anything was better than the endless monotony. Death was preferable over stale air, muddy beds and another round of beans from the mess. Even if they were not killed or mangled in the mad dash across no-man’s land, an order over-the-top could lead to the sought after breakthrough, and bring the soldiers one step closer to returning home.
The Western Front
Germany’s Plan 6 was slowed to a crawl, but not defeated. The largest obstacle in the path of France’s Northern Wing, was that of Verdun. The fortress of Verdun served as the northern most flank in a formidable obstacle along Germany and France’s common border. Construction on Verdun dated back into the 19th Century, following the disastrous defeat during the Franco-Prussian War, which ultimately lead to the founding of the German Empire. In 1891, the French government allocated the funding and resource to build a wall of fortresses from Verdun to Besancon, to prevent the German from ever penetrating deep into French territories again. In future wars, the French Army developed the strategy of trading land for time in Alsace and Lorraine, while the so-called iron drapes were being lowered into place over that window of invasion.
The Germans knew the fortifications were not solid, and developed several of their own plans on how to deal with it. Plan 6 would have the Imperial Armies move to flank both the northern most and southern most of the Iron Drapes, and then proceed to attack the line from east and west. Their original plans called for several weeks of fighting before France’s defenses were pummeled into submission. This failed to come to fruition in 1913, when the French Armies were in place at both northern and southern most extremities. This move by the French insured that the Great War would last for years instead of months. Initial advances by the Germans devolved into trench warfare throughout 1913, and by the start of 1914, the Germans were looking to break the deadlock.
By May 1, over two hundred thousand German soldiers were massed to the southeast of Verdun. German strategies have changed from pounding the line to conquering it one fortress at a time. An hour before sunrise on the 1st, tens of thousands of pieces of artillery on a stretch of the front more than twenty kilometers long, opened up on Verdun and the surrounding fortifications. Over the next seventy-two hours, more than a hundred thousand shells fell on the French lines. Some German officers were confident that nothing could survive. They were sadly disappointed when, on May 4, the German front along that same length of the trench swarmed out of safety and across no-man’s land. At 06:15, the French proved themselves very much alive and able to fight.
The initial swarm was turned back, and with the Germans on the run, the French went over the top in an attempt to overtake the Germans before they reached their own trenches. This back-and-forth charging, so common in the Great War, lasted for the better part of the day. By sunset, the Germans were firmly in the forward most trenches of the French, with twelve thousand of their own and eleven thousand French dead between the lines. The commander of the German Forces at Verdun, Crown Prince William, was quite pleased by the day’s actions. Following the actions of the 4th, and the disappointing survival of the French, a further two days of bombardment were ordered before the German continued the attack. These two days did little to damage the French positions and gave them more than enough time to bring up reinforcements.
The delay was so disastrous, that a further hundred thousand soldiers from both sides lay either dead or wounded between May 7 and May 13. Of his initial 200,000 soldiers, William had only 130,000 able to fight by the 14th. The French losses were even greater, with General Philippe Petain having only 103,000 soldiers able to fight. Of those, tens of thousands suffered from fatigue and shell-shock. Moral on the French side was eroding faster than the German’s. On the 14th, further shelling was launched at Verdun and surrounding French batteries. William made use of aircraft to drop bombs on French guns, and upon Verdun. On May 15, the Germans made their breakthrough.
At dawn, yet another offensive swarmed over the Trenches, much closer to the city than when they started. Several of the forts ringing Verdun were in ruins, one of which, Fort Douaumont, had its entire eastern face destroyed. German soldiers easily breached the fallen wall and captured the fort. Fort Vaux was taken by a similar storming, though at a much higher cost. Fort Souville fell the following day. Petain and his staff were in the process of planning counter-attacks when an aerial bomb found his headquarters. Petain was severely wounded and several key members of his staff were killed. This lone bomber did more to win Verdun than did all the German dead laying on the wounded lands east of the Maas.
Fort Belleville was stormed on May 16, thus breaching the final ring around Verdun. The French government, after hearing news of Petain’s wounding, ordered that the French Army move west of the Maas, else risk being cut off from retreat by the Germans advancing on Verdun from the northeast. William did hope to take the city and encircle the tens of thousands of French soldiers and either force a surrender or annihilate them. Many French soldiers were reluctant to retreat, but hearing news that the British Expeditionary Force was moving from the central sectors of the Western Front, mainly from further south along the Maas, and between it and the Moselle River. The movement of British forces from here weakened the line, but was deemed an acceptable risk considering the amount of reserves the Germans depleted in taking Verdun.
The first German units marched into Verdun, only an hour behind the retreating French, on May 17. To rob the Germans of any possibility of following up their victorious advance, the French destroyed the bridges linking Verdun to the lands west of the Maas. The Crown Prince ordered boats to be captured or brought up to the Maas, and planned to attempt the crossing on the 19th. However, orders from Berlin delayed this advance until May 20, then May 25, then the first week of June, and finally indefinitely. The German High Command sited the lack of reserves on the Western Front, as well as need for them in Poland-Lithuania as reasons for stopping the advance at Verdun. Though the advance came to a halt on May 17, the actual battle continued until the start of August, as French, British and even Spanish units attempted their own crossing of the Maas, with disastrous results. Upon taken their new forward positions, the German guns had the Maas targeted for such an eventuality. All large scale attempts to cross ended in blood baths, but smaller raids were successful
On June 16, the British attempted a crossing of the Maas thirty kilometers to the south. After establishing a beachhead, the Crown Prince moved his own forces into position against the beachhead. The battle for control of the Maas continued until June 29, when the British finally withdrew across the river. The Fall of Verdun did not end the war in favor of the Germans, but it did force the iron drapes a little more open, as well as force Entente forces on the east bank of the Maas, south of Verdun, to withdrawal to the south and east, further adding to German advances, to thirty-seven kilometers on some portions of the central sector. After a little more than three months of fighting, more than a hundred thousand lay dead and three hundred thousand more wounded. It was one of the most costly defeats for the French, and costly victories for the Germans.
Poland-Lithuania
The Eastern Front had far more open spaces, and allowed for cavalry to be put in use. In the Trenches of France, Kentucky and Virginia, Cavalry did not even exist. Those horse soldiers in these fronts fought dismounted, and in the trenches. More commonly, in the North American Theater, cavalry fought out west. France did make use of Cavalry in North Africa, in their failed invasion of Libya.
German and Swedish cavalry units fought in small unit skirmishes. Any attempt to bring cavalry to bear in force on the enemy only resulted in thousands of horses and men being chopped up by entrenched machine guns. Between the cities of Warsaw and Lodz, cavalry ranged far and wide. In an attempt to make better use of cavalry, the German army armored several automobiles, mounted them with machine guns, and used them as a vanguard. This prospect failed, as cars tended to bog down in the snow of the Polish winter and mud of the Polish spring.
In April of 1914, the German Empire began its disastrous attempt to invade Sweden Proper. Controlling the waters around Germany’s Danish states, the Imperial Army massed hundreds of thousands of soldiers around Kopenhagen. On April 13, an armada of transports crossed the straits, landing near Landskrona. On a seven kilometer long beach front, a hundred thousand German soldiers attempted to break out and capture the port of Helsingborg to the north, and race across southern Sweden towards the south.
The Swedish campaign was intended to knock Sweden out of the war. With most of their army in the lands that were once Russia, the German High Command believed that if they could get a hold on the northern shores of the Baltic Sea, they could race to Stockholm and force the Swedes out. As we all know, this was a spectacular failure. Sweden did not leave its coast undefended, especially on their side of the ‘Oresund’ (the Sound). German forces did not simply wade ashore in the cold water. Instead, they were greeted by only a few thousand, well dug in defenders and their machine guns.
The Swedish Campaign lasted for three months, with Germans unable to extend their front lines much further than day one. Additional Swedish forces moved into to bolster defenses. The German High Seas Fleet was of little use, for only a week after the landings occurred, their guns were soon turned back to sea. Even shelling fortifications with three hundred millimeter guns failed to destroy the Swedish defenders. Answering Sweden’s call for aid, the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet set out in the North Sea to engage the High Seas Fleet.
The two main bodies did not engage each other in 1914. Instead, a series of squadron-sized battles took place: Dogger Bank on April 29, and Dover Straight on May 17. The former was a German victories, with three British cruisers sunk, while the latter was a decisive British Victory, where the Home Fleet annihilated a German cruiser squadron. Both navies attempted to gain the advantage on the North Sea and force the other side to fight on their own terms. Arguably, the Home Fleet could have won, and won decisively if not for the fact that the Royal Navy had a fleet half the size of the Home Fleet guarding the Western Atlantic. The German-American alliance successfully divided the attentions of Britain’s admiralty. Attempts to recall ships from Canada would only endanger their main base at Halifax.
On July 17, the German Army began to evacuate its Landskrona pocket, conceding victory in the North to Sweden. The Swedes never made any attempt to invade northern Germany, mostly due to their lack of a large, blue water fleet. Sweden had a sizable naval force to defend the Baltic Sea, but even it was no match for the High Seas Fleet. The only reason Germany did not destroy the Swedish Navy is, because like Britain, the Germans were also divided between two foes on the seas.
Colonial Wars
The wars in the European colonies were more of an after though that anything else. Despite the attempts to block each of the warring nations’ ports, attempts to strip them of their colonies was not pursued as eagerly. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had lost the Austrian Antilles to the British by 1914, as well as parts of Austrian West Africa. As with their heartland, the Germans were forced to take up the slack in West Africa, which it too had lost land to the British. The Germans and British again clashed in the Coral Sea, with British designs on Kaiserwilhemland thwarted on February 9, 1914. Likewise, a German invasion of Australia was highly impracticable.
The Pacific islands holdings of the two, such as the Marshals and Samoa, were largely ignored. If not for the news reports coming in from around the world, an inhabitant of these islands would not even know a war consumed the Great Powers. The Polynesians living upon these islands were indifferent to the wars of the foreigners. Actions in North Africa were far from successful for any attacker. The French invasion of Italian Libya failed, and likewise did the Italian invasion of Egypt.
By far, the largest theater in the colonial war was that of South America. With the Germans in their River Platte Colony, and the British in their Patagonian Colony, the south of that continent faced extensive campaigning. The region was most vital for the British, for it was a pastoral region, with large ranches of both cattle and sheep. Much of the island nation’s meat came from Patagonia. Miniature trench warfare took place on the coasts of the colonies, while the interior was more open to cavalry, which existed in small numbers away from the major fronts. The Germans did not want the beef (for they received much of their own from the United States) as they simply wished to deny it to their enemies.
For the first year of the war, beef from British Patagonia continued to flow across the Atlantic to supply the British Expeditionary Force, as well as the British people. As part of their plan of action against the British, the Germans were intent to cut off this trade. For the most part, they succeeded along the South American coast. Operating out of their River Platte colony, the German navy had control of the coast line between Patagonia and southern Brazil. However, this was not to stop the British from simply sailing across the South Atlantic to southern Africa and sailing north from there. Many U-boats operated out of Germany West Africa, but they were far from controlling the coast. In order to bottle up Patagonia, the German Navy made a move for the Falkland Islands. These islands were situated far off the Patagonian coast, and controlling them would severe Britain’s supply line.
The attempt was made on August 4, 1914, more than a year after the war began. A German fleet of cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats encountered the local British squadron at 11:47, local time. What followed was an utter disaster for the Germans. In the space of seven minutes, the German South Atlantic Fleet lost four cruisers and three destroyers along with the senior staff, with an additional twelve ships damaged, effectively reducing their forces by more than half. The British suffered only one cruiser damaged and four dead, seventeen wounded. The British pursued the Germans, forcing three of the damaged German ships to surrender. A fourth was scuttled off the coast of Patagonia, with its crew taken prisoner. The Falklands engagement was a decisive British victory, and lead to Germany losing control of the South American coast. The surviving Germans ships would remained bottled up in the River Platte until 1916.
The Ohio Front
Under the overall command of General John Pershing, the American forces on the Ohio Front had crossed the Ohio River and advanced into Kentucky following the declaration of war. However, the Confederates quickly threw up defenses to slow the Americans and eventually stop them. Like in Alsace-Lorraine, Kentucky was a mess of trenches. The western parts of Virginia (west of the Appalachians) fell much quicker before the Confederates could stop the invasion. The Ohio Front was critical for the Confederate war efforts, for western Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee were the store houses for much of the country’s coal reserves. The Americans wanted it for the very same reason. Coal mines in Virginia were quickly turned over to private business by the United States government and put into use.
On a more personal note for the soldiers, Kentucky was also home to the finest whiskey the Confederates produced. The corn fields were put to the torch rather than be allowed to fall into American hands, but distilleries in Wheeling, Virginia and the world famous Daniel Boone Distillery in Owensboro were captured, with barrels of booze still in tact. It was a moral boost early in the war, but the soldiers had consumed the stockpile long before 1913 was out. When trench warfare took over from the general advance, morale crashed and the alcohol was needed now more than ever. With many coal fields (though far from all) in American hands, Pershing began to set his sites on overrunning Tennessee and entering Alabama to take Birmingham. The Confederate capital was built after the Civil War and was named in honor of the first Confederate President, David Birmingham. Taking the capital would be the easy part, reaching it would not.
One of the bloodiest battles of the Great War occurred in western Tennessee between July 3, to October 21, 1914, between the United States of the Confederate States. The origin of this campaign occurred the previous year, when war was declared, and the United States First Army crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. The drive through western Kentucky met with little resistance, for the Confederates were not fully mobilized by the time the U.S. declared war. The crossing of the Ohio was done completely by boat and barge, with the United States Navy’s brown water fleet holding off Confederate gunboats. Though not fully prepared for war, the Confederates managed to destroy ever bridge crossing the Ohio River. The 14th Division, 1st Army entered the city of Paducah without opposition only two days after the war started. By the time the 1st Army reached the Tennessee Border, they ran into Confederate fortifications. Attempts in September of 1913, to dig out the entrenched Confederate Army of the Ohio met with over ten thousand American soldiers dead. The 1st Army dug in a few kilometers south of the Kentucky-Tennessee border and waited.
For the “Big Push”, 1st Army commander, General John ‘Black Jack’ Pershing (called ‘Black Death’ by the Confederates) brought forth the 14th Infantry Division and 21st Cavalry Division (dismounted) to the front lines in Benton County to spearhead the assault. Commanding these divisions were Lt. Generals Newton Baker and Samuel Arnold respectively. Both generals served in the Spanish War, along with Pershing, during the invasion of Puerto Rico. Baker distinguished himself by winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, while Arnold was the heir to the Arnold Legacy, stretching back to Benedict Arnold of the Revolution and Second Anglo-American War. On the Confederate side, the Army of the Ohio in the vicinity of the Tennessee River had two divisions; the 31st South Carolina and 12thSonora, commanded by Major General James E. Sylvester III and Lt. General Robert Samson respectively.
On July 3, 1914, the United States army massed some forty thousand soldiers on a stretch of trenches five kilometers wide. In that same sector, the Confederates had only half. At 06:00 hours local time, over a thousand pieces of artillery, ranging from 75mm field guns to a 250 mm battery, opened up on this thin section of the front. For three days, several thousand tonnes of high explosive and shrapnel rained down on Confederate lines. General Pershing hoped the intense bombardment would rip the heart out of Confederate defenses. In his headquarters, kilometers behind the line, the Dutch War Correspondent, Hermann Overkirk wrote that soldiers believed the push would be as simply as walking across No-Man’s Land and jumping into the enemy trenches.
On July 6, at 08:00 the whistle was blown, and tens of thousands of American soldiers went over the top and charged into No-Man’s Land. Not only had the bombardment failed to destroyed the Confederate lines, it also failed to even break the barbed wire obstacles. When the offensive reached half-way to Confederate trenches, Confederate machine guns opened up on the advance. Thousands of American fell in that first advance. Some soldiers dug in, while others retreated. With a general retreat in order, the Confederates went over the top in hopes of running down the Americans before they re-entered their trenches. They failed, and fell by the thousands as well.
On July 7, a second bombardment, this one lasting from 21:00 to 06:30 on July 8. This time, Pershing held off the advance until after the Confederates poked their heads up. At 06:50, the bombardment started back up, catching many Confederates manning their machine guns. This second bombardment stopped after fifteen minutes, after which Americans went over the top again. This time, Americans entered the Confederate trenches, capturing the first two lines. An assault against a third line was broken, but the Americans held the second line. On July 9, the first reinforcements, the 103rdNevada National Guard Brigade, the first of several brigades that would be thrown into the grinder.
Two more advances, on July 15, and July 24, managed to push the front line southward by almost a total of one kilometer, at the cost of ten thousand American and seven thousand Confederate casualties. A third assault on August 4, was broken by Confederate artillery, which was followed by a Confederate attack that retook a section of the front, one hundred meters deep. The front remained static for most of the month of August while both sides brought up reinforcements and munitions. During this lull in the battle, both sides raided and counter-raided each other’s lines. Above them, American and Confederate aircraft dueled at altitude of hundreds of meters. On the Tennessee River itself, the brown water fleet pressed against Confederate defenses and gunboats.
On September 3, 1914, Pershing ordered a new weapon deployed. In the early morning hours, dozens of canisters of chlorine were opened above the trenches, the gas carried southward by a breeze. One hour after the gas attack, General Arnold’s 21st Cavalry (dismounted) lead an assault of fifty thousand men along a several kilometer wide stretch of the front line. A majority of the Confederate defenders were incapacitated or killed by the Chlorine, which allowed Arnold to break through the lines and push further south. His attack was not a route, however. The effects of the chemical weapons were not as wide-spread as originally planned. Confederate artillery slowed the advance, but not before it punched through to a depth of ten kilometers.
On September 8, more Chlorine was deployed, and this time the breakthrough reached as far as Camden, the county seat for Benton County. The advance was once again stopped, this time only one kilometer short of Camden. When the Americans attempted a third chemical attack on September 27, the Confederates have already deployed counter-measures. They wore crude gas masks, an idea borrowed from the Western Front in Europe, where Germany was also using chemical weapons. The Americans were so surprised by Confederate resistance, that the Confederate actually managed to push them back two kilometers.
The last big push of the battle occurred on October 12. Again chlorine was used, along with two days worth of bombardment. By this time, Pershing had seriously depleted his war stocks and knew he could make only one last push before the winter began to creep upon his army. On October 14, seventy thousand Americans went over the top, and, with the help of a rolling barrage from artillery, managed to sweep over the Confederate lines. On October 15, the 124th New Hampshire Brigade along with elements of the 14th Infantry Division, entered Camden. The bombardment of the city was so severe, that Confederate General Samson was wounded during the attack. He was unable to be evacuated from his position and fell into American hands that day. Attempts by medics to save him failed, and Samson died the following day.
The offensive did not stop until it was ten kilometers south of Camden. By October 19, the Americans were exhausted, and Pershing made the decision to halt the advance and dig in. On October 21, he called a halt to all offensive operations. He would spent the winter of 1914-15 replenishing both his army and its weaponry. The battle cost some one hundred thirty thousand American casualties (of which twenty percent died). A further seventy thousand Confederates were recorded as casualties during the Battle of the Tennessee River. As a result of the battle, the United States Army was firmly entrenched in western Tennessee and in control of the lower Tennessee River. The Confederates were never able to dislodge Pershing from his gains. Any dreams of taking the capital, much less cutting the Confederacy into two were dashed as a result.
Though neutral, the Dutch public was still interested in how the war progressed. Newspapers across the Provinces, and the whole of the Commonwealth related the exploits of armies, generals and even the common soldier. For the Dutch media, gaining access to the front was difficult. The French wanted no part of the idea, and there was little love-loss between Britain and the Netherlands. Even Germany was wary of reporters, fearing they were either spies or would accidently pass along valuable information to spies. The only nation that openly welcomed Dutch reporters was the United States.
In fact, the United States, after a century of humiliation, was more than eager to show the world its power. Reporters imbedded at the front, or near it, gave the war in North America excellent documentation, as was the case with Brazilian reporter Hermann Overkirk. Overkirk managed to get himself attached to the 1st Army along the Ohio Front, and to the offices of its commanding officer. His reports gave readers across the Commonwealth a detailed account of the horrors of modern warfare.
Throughout 1913, a static line developed within the Confederate State of Kentucky. It was not until 1914, at the Battle of the Tennessee River that the initial dead lock was broken. Over a year leading to the battle, Overkirk wrote and wired his stories of despair back home. One side would shell the other side all week, in vein hope of smashing a hole in the line. When the dust cleared, and the attackers ‘went over the top’, the defenders would crawl out of their well fortified subterranean homes, take up machine guns, and mow down the attackers. When the attackers retreated, the defenders attacked, only to get cut down by the attacker’s machine guns once they were safely back in their trenches. Tens of thousand of lives were thrown away in these futile charges, that seldom managed to take the first line of trenches. War had gone a long way since the days of Napoleon, and industrialization made man a far more efficient killing machine.
In 1915, before the Commonwealth was drug into the conflict, Overkirk wrote the most preposterous story to ever see publication. He stood within view of the front, invited by Pershing, who wanted the world to witness this great breakout. What he saw, nobody believed at first. He saw large, noisy, armored beasts crawling across no-man’s land. ‘Armored cavalry’ they were called. This was an allusion to the desire to open a gap in the lines for more traditional cavalry to route the enemy as they had in previous wars. Horses stood little chance against machine guns, as was most devastatingly learned by the Cossacks in the Eastern Theater. The Americans gained several kilometers of front before the Armored Cavalry all suffered mechanical breakdowns.
War and Technology
The United States unleashed the first chemical weapons of the war, but these were far from the last. Chlorine would turn out to be the more benign of weapons unleashed upon humanity. By the start of 1915, all the Great Powers were using the element. Instead of opening canisters and being at the mercy of the wind, shells full of chlorine were soon being fired back and forth. In the United Kingdom, British engineers developed a far more dangerous agent, called mustard gas. This did not even need to be inhaled; it could burn on contact with skin, rendering newly developed gas masks only marginally useful.
The British were also the first to deploy truly armored vehicles in combat. Armored cars were tried in 1913, but with little success. The British designed a land ironclad, a “tank” they called it for it looked much like a water tank. These mobile pill boxes bristled with guns and had a crew of twenty. They terrorized the first German infantry to ever encounter them, but not the artillerymen. Every gun in range quickly turned on these new weapons, and most were destroyed with relative ease. The same story would repeat itself on all fronts as all combatants developed their own tanks. Simply introducing a new weapons was of little use unless the tactical doctrine to use it had yet been invented.
Airplanes, which started as simple observation craft, quickly evolved during the Great War. To combat scouts, most opposing scouts were armed to shoot down their opponent. The Americans designed the first airborne gun platform, dubbed a pursuit plane since it was designed to pursue scouts. In response, scouts grew faster. A new type of plane arrived when the first scout dropped a grenade upon enemy trenches. The bomber quickly grew from a single-engine, single-seat aircraft to a multi-engine platform capable of dropping several bombs on enemy targets. By 1915, small fleets of these aircraft began to appear over the trenches. Like artillery, they did little against the ground-pounders, but they were used with some success in destroying targets behind enemy lines. Pursuit planes were soon adapted to shoot down bombers.
Submarines, which were simply ships at the start of the century, soon turned out to be the ideal commerce raiders. The first to use submarines in combat was the Confederacy. With many of their capital ships sunk or crippled, the Confederate States desperately needed a way to strike at American shipping, and even in breaking the blockade. The CSS Copperhead was the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, when it torpedoed the frigate USS Pallas some thirty kilometers east of Hilton Head Island. Germany took to the idea and began to use its own underseeboots to sink British shipping.
Even before the war, there was concern in the world navies on how to track such ships. In 1907, American President Theodore Roosevelt (who was re-elected in 1912 after a four year absence) ordered his Secretary of Navy to find a way to track submarines. The idea of sonar came about from learning how dolphins track their prey, but was not as easy as bouncing soundwaves off targets beneath the sea. Early sonar sets were bulky and unreliable. When tripped, the ship simply sent a scattershot of depth charges, set to the estimated depth, and hoped for a kill. Many submariners died horrible deaths, but far more escaped these early submarine destroyers.
The Potomac Front
While western Virginia was overran, northern Virginia came under American occupation. Lands north of the Rappahanock were almost completely in American hands by the start of 1915. This narrow stretch of land between the Potomac and Rappahanock cost most than a million casualties, including over three hundred thousand killed, to conquer. Confederate losses were absolutely smaller, but proportionally slightly higher. The Confederate tendency to charge machine gun positions in trenches longer than Americans would, is what lead to the higher percentage of losses. Southern culture did not permit a man to run from certain death as easily as Yankee society.
Many of the Confederate States’ more able officers died this way, because up to the rank of Colonel, Confederate officers believed in personally leading charges. They sought personal glory more than their northern cousins, and paid the ultimate price for this. As General White Water would later say “Glory in battle died when war was industrialized.” From the start of the Great War until well into 1915, the Potomac Front slowly crawled from Alexandria to the north bank of the Rappahanock River. Here it stalled in 1914, when an attempt to bridge the river by the VII Corps failed, with the loss of twelve thousand lives. In March of 1915, as part of the spring time offensive, the III Corps and XI Corps, under the command of General Clarence White Water, was tasked with bridging the river at Fredericksburg. White Water was born in the state of Iroquois and graduated from Fort Arnold in 1885. Like all Great War Generals, he participated in the Spanish War and fought on Puerto Rico.
Opposing White Water, was the Central Corps of the Army of Virginia, under the command of A.H. Stevenson III, the son of a wealth plantation owner and Senator from Georgia. On conclusion of the war, Stevenson was expected to take his father’s place in the Senate while A.H. II retired to running the family estate. At his command were some one hundred fifty thousand soldiers to oppose the Americans’ two hundred seven thousand.
At 0400, on March 21, 1915, White Water ordered a four hour bombardment of enemy installations and trenches on the south bank of the Rappahanock. Along with high explosives and chlorine, a new weapon, mustard gas, was used to soften up the Confederate defenses. The lingering affects of mustard gas caused minor blistering to the first wave of Americans, who crossed the river in hundreds of rafts, at 0815. The Confederates were far from obliterated, despite having some twenty thousand shells land on a length of the frontier no more than two kilometers in width.
After the end of the first day, and the loss of ten thousand American soldiers wounded and killed, White Water managed to secure a beachhead a kilometer east of Fredericksburg. Through the night of the 21st and all of the 22nd, Americans bombarded Confederate positions while engineers threw up several pontoon bridges. Barges delivered heavier equipment, such as the newly developed tank. American tanks were little more than giant rhomboids with tracks and cannon and machine guns pointing out of several openings. Seven of these tanks were delivered to White Water to use in breaching Confederate lines and pushing further in land.
On the 24th, the tanks lead the assault against Confederate trenches. The first line of trenches was overran with minimal difficulty; the Confederate soldiers panicked and flew at the sight of these land ironclads. Secondary and tertiary trenches were captured, at the loss of two tanks. Both broke down due to mechanical failure. One that failed was targeted and destroyed by Confederate batteries. The tanks proved effective weapons of terror, but the early models left a lot to be desired for combat. By March 29, the last tank broke down and was destroyed by Confederate barrages.
On April 1, the Stevenson attempted to organize a counteroffensive to “drive the Yankees back into the river”. The Confederate attack failed, and allowed the Americans to gain several hundred more meters of ground. White Water launched attacks on the city of Fredericksburg on April 2, April 3 and April 4. The first two assault were repulsed, with thousands of American casualties. The third attack breached the city’s defenses. From April 5 to April 8, street fighting claimed thousands of more lives on both sides. Artillery from American and Confederate batteries reduced much of the city to rubble in attempts to destroy their opponents. Civilian deaths in the Battle of Fredericksburg are inconclusive, but it is believed nearly 30% of the city’s remaining population perished.
General White Water called an end to the offensive on April 15, when severe rains hampered advancement. At the end of the nearly month long battle, the United States took the town of Fredericksburg and expanded the front in that area some five kilometers south of the Rappahanock River, securing the crossing and pushed Confederate guns far enough south to prevent them from destroying the pontoon bridges that connect the new front with the rest of American occupied territory. On the Confederate side, thirty thousand soldiers were killed, and twice as many more wounded. The Americans lost sixty thousand dead, most during the crossing and storming of Fredericksburg.
The biggest single tragedy of Fredericksburg was the American charge up Marye’s Ridge. An entire American brigade charged up that ridge, where Confederate trenches could rain down fire on them, and the rest of the battlefield. Out of three thousand American soldiers to charge on April 9, only three officers and seventeen enlisted men were able of walked off the killing fields under their own power. The Ridge was not taken that day, and required a second, division-sized charge the next day. One of the surviving officers, a Captain Dwight Eisenhower, was permanently scared by the lessons of his suicidal superiors. In later wars, Eisenhower would anguish over his own command decisions in later wars, knowing that his own planning would cost many young men their lives.
The Turkish Decision
On May 1, 1915, the Ottoman Empire entered the Great War. Unlike the other combatants, they did not take sides. Instead, they launched an attack against Austro-Hungary in the Balkans, and against Sweden in the Caucasus. The Turks were not interested in balances of power or global politics; they simply saw two bordering powers that have been weakened by nearly two years of war, and planned to grab as much of their land as possible. From the outset, the Turkish Decision was a poor one.
In May of 1915, the Turks crossed into Bosnia, and were easily repelled by local militia and Bosnian units of the Austrian Army. The Turks had planned on liberating their co-religionists from Habsburg oppression. As it turned out, the Bosniaks did not desire liberation from one empire into another. Along the Danube, Balkan nationals would end up fighting and dying for two ancient and despotic regimes that cared little about their own plight.
In response to their attack, the Austro-Hungarian Empire readily crossed the Danube and seized Belgrade. Less than a month into their war, the Turks were already humiliated as the garrison commander of Belgrade simply surrendered when his cavalry were cut to shreds by machine guns. Apparently the Ottomans had not been paying close attention to the Great War, as they employed pre-1913 tactics in 1915. The Turkish Army of 1915, was even less modern than the rest of the Great Powers in the year 1900. Turkey also had only limited industrialization, and still existed partially in the feudal state of the rest of Europe several centuries earlier.
The Turks fared far worse against Sweden. The Black Sea had once been an Ottoman Lake. This lake was easily entered by Swedish gunboats and torpedo boats. These torpedo boats ambushed the Ottoman Black Sea fleet outside of Sevastopol, sinking a full half of the vessels in the dawn twilight of May 5, 1915. The surviving vessels, outdated and damaged, limped back to the Anatolian coast of the Black Sea. Had the Swedes possessed a Black Sea fleet of their own, they could very well have landed their soldiers near Constantinople and ended Turkish involvement in the war before it really began.
Fighting in the Caucasus Mountains consumed a great deal of Sweden’s resources, which could have went to battling the Germans. Ottoman attempts to invade were turned back with minimal loss to Sweden. When Sweden went on the offensive, they quickly took losses, more from the locals than from the Ottoman Army. At the Battle of Grozny (May 20-July 5), the Swedish Army did more battle with Checnyan partisans than the Turks. The nationalities of the Caucasus saw the early Turkish losses as an opportunity to rise up against their own oppressors. Normally, the Swedes could have sat back and watched their enemy disintegrate. However, the possibility that this rebellion would spread into the Swedish Ukraine could not be ignore.
The Home Front
Civilians felt the impact of the Great War as it dragged on into its second year. Rationing was commonplace in all countries, including the United States. Americans accepted this intrusion into their lives by the state as a sacrifice of war. Rationing lessened as Confederate coal fields were put into American use. In many New England cities, homes were still heated by coal-fired stoves, as well as food cooked. Electricity was still a novelty, and would not even be commonplace nation-wide for more than a decade to come. Conversely, Confederate civilians had their own coal rations cut down to the point where large tracts of forest began to vanish in search of fuels for their own stoves. Of course, a Georgian winter was no where near as harsh as a Vermonter one.
In Europe, where rationing and government management of life was commonplace before the war, tightening of supplies was just part of life. Many countries would have “Meatless Mondays” (or whatever the non-Americans called their own days), but the British were forced to go without meat for two days out of the week. Bread was also rationed, as the British Expeditionary Force consumed a great deal of food. To compensate, park lands and former prized flower gardens were ploughed under and put to use cultivating turnips, potatoes and anything else British civilians could grow.
In North America, where the majority of the overall population still lived on farms, food shortages were rarer. In the United States, who had not even a single square meter of their own land occupied, rural Americans would not even know there was a war going on, if not for the shortage of decent quality tobacco. Luxuries were rationed even here, such as sugar, coffee and any foodstuff that had to be imported. Rationing was also less severe, Meatless Mondays aside, because American soldiers could partially live of the land in occupied territories.
Policies of occupation differed from front to front. General Pershing insisted his army pay fair market value for everything they seize from those under their occupation. White Water did not have this option, for much of the Virginian countryside was ploughed by artillery since 1913. On the York Peninsula, with its appalling cost in life, American units simply took what they wanted. The Columbia Front was unique, in that at the outset of the war, it was the only piece of territory planned to become American again (aside from the Red River Valley and northern Maine), thus it was the State Department’s policy that the civilians not be looted.
Conscription, low in 1913, started to take its toll on the civilians by 1915. Even Americans were subject to being drafted during war time. When the stream of volunteers began to dry up, nations began to conscript on masse. The British government immediately let every unmarried young man know they were up for the draft. The United States extended this too all men between 18 and 30, for fathers and childless men were all Americans equally. Germany and France practiced large scale peacetime conscription, so additional drafting did not have quite the same impact on their populations.
To take the places of many young and able-bodied men who were sent off to the front, women entered the workforce in the largest numbers ever. Munition and arms factories, many with assembly lines perfect for unskilled labor, brought in women workers by the millions. Only certain industries that require high strength, such as the steel industry, exempted women employees. The Confederacy had an addition labor pool in their underclass of black Confederates (which comprises around 30% of their total population) which lay largely untapped.
The situation in the Confederacy was so bad in 1915, that the Confederate Congress debated whether or not to allow their blacks to enlist in the Confederate Army. When they finally permitted it, albeit in segregated units, a surprisingly large number of blacks enlisted. They might be second-class citizens, but their nationalism was as strong as the whites, and fought just as hard. The American government attempted to exploit the discrimination of the south by offering amnesty to any black who surrendered to them. The ploy attracted a few deserters, but only a few. Despite the equality of the north, where skin color was treated largely with indifference (partly due to the small percentage of black Americans in comparison with the Confederacy), the black Confederates remained loyal to their own nation.
Unrestricted Naval Warfare
By the Spring of 1915, the naval powers of the world have declared unrestricted submarine warfare upon each other. Before, warships would have to warn their victims that they were going to be sunk. Afterwards, submarines could sink of sight. This caused a spike in destruction of combatants’ shipping and commerce. The Germans were first in declaring the waters around the British Isles as an unrestricted warzone. The Americans followed by declaring the same of their blockade of the Confederacy. The Swedes were next, doing so in the Baltic and North Seas.
The Mediterranean soon was declared an unrestricted zone by all belligerents. Unrestricted warfare was also extended to surface ships, where commerce raiders could sink ships on sight. The raiders above the waves were not as feared as those beneath. With an enemy cruiser, lookouts on a freighter could spot them before they entered gun range. Submarines were far harder to locate, for only their periscope was visible in the choppy waves. This represented a decentralization of war on the high seas. However, engagements between enemy fleets was still a possibility, as the British and Americans proved. Despite the amount of ship required to defend Britannia, the British still proved able to defend their own Commonwealth as well as shipping lanes.
What has become known as the Battle of the Grand Banks was little more than a skirmish between the Royal (British) Navy and United States Navy on April 8, 1915, off the coast of Newfoundland. The American plan was to cut off Halifax from its naval supply lines, and then have the army storm the city. At the time of the battle, the front lines were well outside of Nova Scotia, in New Brunswick. Halifax was the key to Britain’s entire war effort inside of Canada. Without a base in the western North Atlantic, Canada would surely fall. Leading up to the battle, and following it, the United States put political pressure on Quebec to either enter the war against the British, or at least to close the Saint Laurence to British traffic.
The big push by the Army towards Halifax commenced on March 23, and quickly bogged down as British and Canadian trenches were easily resupplied from British factories. Even German successes in the North Sea and raiding commerce had yet to sever the link between Britain and its colonies and dominions. The U.S. Atlantic Fleet sortied from Boston shortly after the offensive began, and circled to the east and north of Halifax. Under the command of one Admiral James McKinnon, the fleet was poised to interdict shipping and intercept the inevitable relief. However, McKinnon did not know that the Royal Navy was already patrolling off Newfoundland. On April 8, as a dense fog flowed over the North Atlantic, the British with five battleships and seven battlecruisers ambushed the American squadron of six battleships and six battlecruisers.
The battle was evenly matched, however the visibility was so poor that neither side could accurately sight the other. In this day long battle, not a single ship was sunk, and only a few suffered light damage. Compared to other naval battles of the Great War, the Grand Banks was relatively bloodless and a rather anti-climatic battle for dominion over North America. By nightfall, the American ships, spent on ammo and frustrated by visibility, withdrew towards the south and back to Boston to take on more ammunition and hopefully hunt down the British another day. Tactically speaking, the Battle of the Grand Banks was a draw. Strategically speaking, it was a British victory, for they kept the maritime highway open into Halifax and the rest of Canada, at least until Quebec finally entered the war some months later.
The Van Der Weld Incident
Unrestricted submarine warfare took a devastating toll on the merchant fleets of the world during 1915. The Staaten-Generals of all the Dutch states, along with the Commonwealth Assembly told Dutch companies and merchants that they would enter combatant’s territorial waters at their own risk. Once it was clear the Royal (Dutch) Navies would not protect any other nation’s trade, the fear of reprisal diminished and ships flying Commonwealth flags were fair game. All sides still avoided antagonizing the might Royal (Dutch and Brazilian) Navies in international waters– unless they had proof the ships were aiding their enemy, and could get away with it.
However, the Commonwealth made it perfectly clear that it would not tolerate attacks on its nationals while in Commonwealth or international waters. Within British, American or German water were one thing, but the Dutch considered international water vital to their trade and commerce. As many nations have learned throughout history, the quickest way to get the Dutch involved was to threaten their commercial empire. However, the Dutch Commonwealth claimed a territorial water limit of twenty kilometers, while most international treaties limited it to sixteen point one kilometers (ten miles). In this case, territorial claims often overlapped, such as with the United Provinces and Germany, Brazil and British Guyana, and so on.
It was also in these disputed zones, while the war was in its third year of stalemate, that one of the greatest controversies of the Twentieth Century occurred. In the waters between Germany and the United Provinces, at a point where coasts angled and the Dutch expanded their claims into German waters, did the Dutch finally get drawn into the conflict. The Kapenstaaten freighter Van Der Weld sailed, destined to Bremen, and behind it a submarine tracked. As soon as the Van Der Weld entered what the international community considered German waters, the submarine sped into an attack run.
From all account, the Van Der Weld was struck in the forward hold. Since the ship was carrying ammonium nitrate to sell to the Germans, the ships erupted into a monestrous fireball, killing all on board, and through pieces of the hull some twenty-five kilometers distance. The explosion was so powerful, that the HMS Grendal, a United Province destroyer not only spotted it, but felt the concussion. At once, the captain of the Grendal, Simon van der Hague, ordered his ship to pursue the submarine in Dutch waters. With primitive radio equipment, the Grendal sent word to near-by Dutch ships to coordinate in a sub round up.
In the afternoon of July 3, 1915, a squadron of two Dutch destroyers and three frigates, force the Swedish submarine Narwhal to beach itself on a German beach opposite the bay from the Province of Ommelanden. The Dutch captured the submarine and detained its crew. When word reached the Hague, the Staaten-General went into a frenzy, an emergency session of the Commonwealth Assembly was called, and Frederick III stormed the Swedish embassy demanding to speak with the ambassador. When the ambassador refused to see him, the King had the embassy closed, Swedish nationals expelled from the country, minus the ambassador, who would speak with the King.
The meeting lasted for a few minutes, for with each protest from the Swede, the King’s anger grew. When the ambassador finally acknowledged Swedish submarines operated in that area of German waters, Frederick rebutted by saying it was Dutch water, and by sinking a Boer freighter in Dutch waters, Sweden had doomed itself to a war it could not win. With those last words, the ambassador from Sweden was unceremoniously ejected from the United Provinces.
Since international affairs are decided by the Commonwealth as a whole, the Netherlander Staaten-General was understandably frustrated. The best it could do, was for the hereditary members of the Senaat to call up the militias of their respective Provinces. The VOC, was not tied to any state formalities, and its fleet was put on alert, though it took some time. It was not until all ships made port could they learn that the Dutch Commonwealth was now at war. Even during unrestricted attacks, the belligerents avoided attacking any ship that waved the orang-white-blue with big bold black VOC labeled across them. Only property of the VOC could wave that flag, and nobody could register under them. Even if they could, it was not likely that the VOC would give the ships back.
On July 17, 1915, as soon as he representatives could either be round up, or in the case of Brazil, sail in, the Commonwealth Assembly made the monumental decision. For once, there was little debate and no rivalries. What happened in the United Provinces could happen everywhere else if the Swedish menace was not confronted. In one of their few unanimous votes, the Commonwealth declared war upon Sweden.
The Commonwealth Goes to War
At the start of Dutch involvement in the Great War, the bulk of their army was not even in the United Provinces. Soldiers were scattered between Commonwealth states, such as Brazil and India, as well as the colonies, the oil rich Indies quickly reclaiming their spot as the most import of Dutch possessions. In order to bring a large enough army to bear in Europe, divisions of soldiers and volunteers would have to be shipped in from Brazil and the Boer Republics. Over the next year, more than a million men would volunteer for service, though many of the colonials would be used in garrison duty due to the government in the Hague not confident of their reliability.
The United Provinces made immediate use of their strategic locations, in opening their railroads to use by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of Germans previously held in reserve stormed into northern France, along with over a hundred thousand Netherlander soldiers. The Entente was forced to commit all their reserves, as well as pull units off the Western Front in order to plug this breach. British units rushed across the English Channel in order to bolster Calais, which the German Army reached within ten kilometers of it before stopping.
The British were also forced to recall some of their colonial units from less threatened colonies, or at least those not vital to Britain’s own empire, in order to reinforce the British Army in Britain itself. The threat of Germany or America invading the islands was laughable, but the threat of the Dutch making an attempt was taken very seriously by London. The Admiralty was force to abandon less vital seas, such as most of the Pacific, in order to strengthen Britannia’s defenses. With the High Seas Fleet and the Royal Dutch Navy joining forces, the idea of the Home Fleet being destroyed in a single, decisive battle was no longer hypothetical.
The Commonwealth’s naval forces took to dominating maritime choke points, easily blockading Sweden, as well as the French Atlantic Coast. Neither of those states had sufficient naval forces to easily break the blockade (though the French still had access through her southern coast, while British control of Gibraltar prevented a total blockade). The British resisted the blockade, and even attempted a blockade of its own against the United Provinces, whose confined coast line made it less difficult on paper than in fact.
Dutch victories on the ground were almost immediate. Following the declaration of war on Sweden, and the Entente’s declaration against the United Provinces and Brazil, the Dutch General Staff enacted War Plan Violet. Though the city was long since relinquished by the United Provinces, taking Mons was key to War Plan Violet. Along with a general advance into northern France, the Royal Navies would close off the English Channel to French traffic, and incidentally British traffic. In August of 1915, four Dutch divisions, the 1st Holland, the 5th Brabant, the 8th Liege and the 4th Brazilian Division, under the command of Field Marshall Albert van Meinrad, crossed the French frontier and encircled Mons. For three weeks, the Dutch Army laid siege to the city.
The Dutch crossed the border largely unopposed, along with German divisions that have been shifted with the United Provinces’ entry into the war. Germany was allowed limited movement through Dutch territory to attack France. In August of 1915, the bulk of France’s army was dug in along the German and Italian frontiers. Only old men and militia defended the border with the Dutch. These garrison units were swept aside by nearly one hundred thousand Netherlander and Brazilian soldiers. Resistance within the city was minimal. However, van Meinrad was a conservative and cautious general, deciding to reduce the city in hopes of forcing a surrender. He foresaw a bloodbath should Mons degenerate into a street-by-street brawl.
During the siege, the Dutch Army slowly crept into the suburbs. It was during these slow advances against militia that lead to the battle’s greatest tragedy. On August 19, the Grand Prince of Norway, heir to the throne, Captain Frederick Henry van Oranje, was shot by a partisan in the chest. The bullet lodged in his lung, and required extensive surgery to remove. For months afterwards, the Prince’s survival was in question. He never fully recovered from the wound, but managed to walk out of the hospital in the summer of 1916. In retaliation, the Prince’s company avenged their fallen leader by torching the entire neighborhood and summarily executing one hundred able bodied Frenchmen. The city itself surrendered on August 23, when it was apparent that no relief would come to the city. German flanking maneuvers through the United Provinces hit the British Expeditionary Force, forcing them to retreat or risk being cut off from the Channel, which in turn forced the French around Verdun to withdraw to new lines further west.
Across the Atlantic, the Royal Brazilian Navy was taking its toll on British supply lines. The Germans, confined to the River Platte following their disastrous attack on the Falklands, could never manage the same level of destruction as the Commonwealth. Even sailing across the South Atlantic did not offer the British security. Though Boer Republics, such as Kapenstaaten, lacked strong navies of their own, they did (along with Angola) offer bases from where the Royal Brazilian Navy could operate. Brazilian cruisers and battlecruisers operated as individuals during the destruction of British shipping. Even battleships participated. The KBS Recife alone sank some seventy thousand tonnes of shipping during 1916.
The British responded by strengthening their convoys, which were put into place to protect against U-boats. However, the destroyers escorts, which were apt at killing submarines, proved less than ideal to tackle battlecruisers. The Dutch did commit to large-scale attacks as well. On October 1, 1915, the Royal Brazilian Navy struck at the British squadron at the Falklands, destroying it in a two hour engagement. The British commander put up a valiant fight, but the small colonial force was simply outclassed. Curious enough, the Brazilians did not follow up with an invasion of the islands.
This stress in the South Atlantic soon forced the British to abandon the Indian Ocean as well, for what point was defending a distance ocean when their own homeland lacked sufficient food to fight its war. The French Navy, when not battling the Italians in the Mediterranean or escorting French shipping to Mexico, did attempt sorties against Java with their small fleet in Indochina. The naval engagements off Indonesian Coasts were slightly more successful than the British defense of the Falklands, only in that the French were not annihilated. The French were able to elude the Dutch among hundreds of smaller islands. After one attempt in force, the French commander simply decided to split his forces into individual ships and raid Dutch commerce with moderate success. The French even raided the coast of Hainan, with some success.
Overall, the British were losing ships faster than the Dutch, but there was one key exception. The KNS Half-Moon, fought its last battle on November 17, 1915. It was the single largest loss of life in the history of the Royal (Dutch) Navy before the advent of a integrated Commonwealth military command, including the death of Lieutenant Mandrick van Oranje, second-in-line for the Dutch Crown. Only three sailors survived the legendary duel between Half-Moon and the HMS (British) Resolution. During November of 1915, the British and Dutch navies had not commenced in a decisive battle. The British Admiralty wished to avoid such a battle, for the loss of the Home Fleet would spell a quick doom for the British Empire. Instead, the British reverted to a tactic of commerce raiding, attempting to hamper the United Provinces’ industrial capacity and economic health.
In October, the United Provinces lost some 43,000 tonnes of shipping to commerce raiders, far smaller than what her enemies were losing. This loss caused the Royal (Dutch) Navy to draw off some ships from blockade duties against Sweden and the French coast to patrol against British raiders. Even before the Dutch Navy began to send battleships and cruisers on patrols, the VOC took to convoying and escorting these convoys with company cruisers and destroyers. The United Provinces’ own commerce raiding managed to close the British Expeditionary Force from easy reply across the English Channel.
By the start of November, five Dutch battleships, six battlecruisers and twelve cruisers were patrolling the North and Norwegian Seas, hunting down the British raiders. On November 15, the KNSHalf-Moon learned that two Dutch freighters were sunk off the coast of Bergen. Captain Maurice Steinert gave the order to turn West by Northwest to intercept what he believed to be a lone British cruiser. Aircraft launched from Norway spotted two ships, instead of the one, and reported them as a cruiser and battlecruiser. Steinert continued the pursuit, believing his battleship could take both British ships, or at the very least, damage them to the point of them retreating.
The ships entered visual range early in the morning of November 17. It was only when spotters on board the Half-Moon had visual confirmation did Steinert learn he was facing a British battleship and heavy cruiser. After two days of pursuit, he could not easily abandon the chase. At 0912, the British spotted Half-Moon and turned to engage. The first shots were fired by the cruiser Excelsior at 0917. These shots fell short, causing only fountains of water to spray the Dutch battleship.
Over one hundred shots were traded in the first hour of the battle, with only near misses to show for the effort. At 1002, shots from the Half-Moon straddled the Excelsior, causing damage to its engines. With Excelsior slowing down, Steinert focused his ship’s guns on the Resolution. Shots between the two battleships scored hits on each other once they closed within ten kilometers of each other. Two shots ruptured the aft hull of Half-Moon and took out a smoke stack. One well placed shot from Half-Moon blew open Resolution’s forward turret. It was only dumb luck (or perhaps inefficiency of munition loaders) that prevented the forward quarter of the British battleship from vanishing in a large flash.
Excelsior attempted to cross the stern of the Half-Moon and bring all of its turrets to bear on the Dutch ship’s engines. One shot did hit Half-Moon in the stern, breaking open several square meters of hull well above the waterline, and knocking out one of the ships screws. The Dutch responded with both aft turrets, knocking out one of the Excelsior’s turrets, and ripping open the super structure. Fires raged on the cruiser as it was forced to withdraw from combat while it fought to prevent flames from breaching the magazine. Steinert could have turned to finish the cruiser, but decided to focus on the greater threat; a still living battleship.
At 1044, the two battleships closed within five kilometers of each other, and unleashed broadsides. The Half-Moon knocked out the second of Resolution’s forward turrets, causing fires to break out across the forward deck. With two turrets out of action, the British battleship was forced to withdraw from battle. However, it made one last pass at Half-Moon before steering westward. Again the Half-Moon punched holes into Resolution. However, the Resolution scored two direct hits on the Dutch battleship. The first hit knocked out two port-side spontoons. The second hit penetrated the aft magazine. Within a second of that hit, the Half-Moon erupted into a fireball, the after third disintegrating, and the rest of the ship ripped open. Debris flew more than three kilometers of the explosion, which was probably why there were any survivors at all. The shockwave of the explosion rocked Resolution and threatened to capsize the damaged battleship.
Half-Moon quickly sank under eighty meters of water, taking over twelve hundred sailors and officers to a watery grave. The Resolution made a quick pass across where the ship sank, and found three Dutch sailors floating in the water, all dazed. News that the Half-Moon sank hit the United Provinces like a dagger to the heart. Following the wounding of the Crown Prince of Norway at Mons, the death of his brother opened a potential succession crisis when King William VII dies. The loss of the battleship also forced the Dutch Navy to send patrols out in force; no longer would lone battleships patrol the North Sea. This, in turn, allowed the British to run the blockade of their forces on the continent with a little more regularity.
The British took one more hit in their war effort in 1916, when Quebec finally entered the war on the side of the Americans. This completely cut off the Canadian interior from shipping directly from the Atlantic. Now, if Ontario was to be resupplied, it would have to be via the Hudson Bay, and this could only happen when the bay was not frozen over. If the war drug into another winter, the High Command in London expected Canada would be lost.
The Last Push
Dutch entry in the war weakened the Entente and allowed the Central Powers one last push. By 1916, the United States had effectively reconquered all territories ever lost to the British, and had control over the Confederate States of Kentucky, Durango and Cuba, with Union governments already reinstated. A new front in France threatened to outflank previously held lines, and the Swedes were growing tired in Poland-Lithuania. The Dutch entry also did much to boost morale for the Central Powers, and crush it for the Entente.
Germany had already pushed the Western Front further west than it had been through the whole war, but the Entente were going to make one last push. On the morning of February 18, 1916, at 0230, hundreds of Confederate guns along the Potomac (or more accurately the Rappahanock) Front opened up upon American trenches. The first offensive of 1916 went to the Confederate States, and the government in Birmingham demanded that the Yankees be pushed back across the river that they crossed the previous year. At the command of the dwindling Army of Virginia, A.H. Stevenson III, discovered a relatively soft spot in the American lines at Chancellorsville, a town west from Fredericksburg. Chancellorsville fell to the Yankees the previous fall, and attempts to retake it before rain and snow made offensives impractical failed miserably.
During the winter of 1915-16, the Confederates stockpiles a majority of their industrial output of ammunition along the Potomac Front, in hopes of doing exactly as Birmingham commanded. With entry of the Dutch Commonwealth into the war against the Entente, it was only a matter of time before the Central Powers were victorious. Knowing they could no longer win outright, the Confederate government intended to hold as much land as possible.
After two days worth of bombardment, at 0800, on February 20, some eighty thousand Confederate soldiers went over the top and charged into the lines south of Chancellorsville. Unlike the early days of the war, the soldiers had no illusions that the Americans would have been wiped out in the bombardment. Sure enough, machine guns soon began to mow down advancing Confederates. However, unlike early attacks, the Confederates now had their own tanks. After pushing the Americans back several lines of trench-works, American tanks soon arrived on the battlefield to match Confederate Armor.
This early armored battle proved a disaster for both sides. With sufficient firepower and inability to maneuver, both sides effectively annihilated each other. The tanks accomplished their task, and punched a small whole in American lines, allowing Confederates to regain several hundred meters of front, at the cost of tens of men for each meter. The following day, the Confederates launched a second early morning assault, this time without tanks for support. The Americans were ready for it, and blunted the wave of Confederates against their new front-line trenches. Confederates managed a well organized retreat. The Americans attempted no counterattack.
On February 26, the Confederates commenced a second, day-long bombardment of American positions around and even in Chancellorsville. The city sat only two kilometers behind, and served as a supply depot for this section of the front. However, knowing the Confederates were on their last leg, General White Water ordered American forces to fall back north of Chancellorsville during the second bombardment. He would make the Confederates come to him, throwing themselves on a new network of trenches and fortifications constructed on the northern and eastern outskirts of the city.
Much to the Confederate soldiers’ surprise, on February 27, it appeared that the bombardment did in fact kill all the Yankees. Only a few Confederates were killed during the mad dash across no-man’s land, killed by mines and unexploded shells littering the field. The town itself was abandoned, its inhabitants refugees fleeing north to where the war was already a bad memory. White Water ordered the town to be zeroed in by American artillery during the second Confederate bombardment. As soon as Stevenson’s forces moved into the city, they were subjected to bombardment. Those Confederates the made it north of the city, ran into a wall of pill boxes and trenches, cutting them down in the hundreds. American aircraft joined in on the attack, strafing Confederate ranks advancing on the new front line.
The Battle of Chancellorsville ended on February 28, when Confederate soldiers retreated to lines south of the town. Chancellorsville was soon reduced to ruins as it remained no-man’s land for the duration of the war. Thus marked the final offensive of the Confederate Army along the Potomac Front. The Confederate Army was utterly spent, and from here on out could do little to prevent American advances, save to make them “take every mile only after its soaked in Yankee blood”, as one Captain George Patton would later say, though with slightly more color. The American Army was so tired after this battle, that it failed to follow up the attack, and knock Virginia out of the war.
Worse than the tactical defeat, Chancellerosville proved to be start of the Confederate downfall. General Stevenson’s apparent ineptitude served as a symbol, that the officer corp was comprised of nothing but the land-owning elite. This was far from true, for many middle ranking officers, such as the forementioned Patton, did work their way up in the world, first to get into the Confederate Military Academy, followed by earning their rank.
The merit of these Captains and Majors did nothing to ellivate the Confederate enlisted man’s anger. Many of the soldiers began to wonder just why they were fighting the North. After all, were Yankees not Americans– albeit misguided ones, too? With morale shattered from one too many blue-blooded planned attacks, sections of the Confederate Army in Virginia and Tennessee organized and went on what could only be called a strike. Soldiers refused to leave the trenches when ordered, nor would they go on patrol, nor risk their necks for the Southern Aristocracy. Hundreds of these soldiers ended up in court-marital, charged with mutiny. More than half were executed as a result.
Confederate soldiers would still fight for their States, but refused to do so for Birmingham. Soldiers from Texas, Kentucky and Sinoloa began to wonder why their own States did not make a separate peace with the Union. Kentucky was already lost, and gained nothing by having its people suffer from occupation. Discontent did not remain at enlisted levels for long. Within weeks, it spread to junior officers, who joined the strike.
Confederate censors must be commended for their job in covering up the mutinies. Had the United States known of them, then the Army might well have smashed into the lines. Roosevelt did learn of the mutinies, as did a number of officers in the General Staff. The division was not exploited. The end of the Confederate government was in sight. Roosevelt predicted that in a month, states would be secede from the Confederacy, an appropriate ending to a nation that formed by breaking away from another. Perhaps it was time to bring the wayward children home.
The government in Birmingham stared down the barrel of a total loss should the war drag on for another year. Confederate President Woodrow Wilson attempted to make contact with the Roosevelt Administration through the embassies of the one of the few neutral states; Chile. Chile had warm relations with both of the American nations, though were far warmer to Britain’s enemy than her ally. Wilson proposed a truce followed by a negotiated peace. Roosevelt was not about to make a separate peace, despite his failing health. He already surrendered any re-election bid in 1916.
Instead of making peace, Roosevelt would bide his remaining time on Earth. He wanted desperately to end the war while still President, to bask in glory one final time. If it was to be a final victory, than he was determined it shall be the bulliest victory of all time. His legacy would be to finally bring peace to the North American continent.
Peace Feelers
Paris was looking at a similar situation, though different problem. Their problem was not lack of resources or manpower, but lack of will. Where the Confederate soldier may fight for their home States even after the end had passed, the French were not likely to die for Paris. It was the French soldier who was breaking as victory looked further and further over the horizon. Despite the obvious, French Generals and Politicians labored under the delusion that patriotism alone would carry the day.
Attempts to bring the colossal struggle that consumed two continents to an end began as early as August of 1915. It was made by France through their Swiss Embassies. The negotiations were short and ended before they truly began. At that stage in the war, Germany demanded more from the French, in the form of their North African Protectorates and colonies, than they were willing to give. It would take another year, and more than two million more dead before war weariness hit Germany. The French were desperate for an end, and one more victory on the scale of Verdun in the fall of 1915 might have forced them to accept the loss of North Africa.
The Communist underground across Europe became active in the Spring of 1916, including elements within the French Army, largely among its non-commissioned officers. The Revolutionaries did have ties with those in the Balkans, however the French soldiery was more interested in ending the war than in great social and political reforms. The common soldier did begin to wonder why they were dying in droves and the arms manufacturers were untouched by the horrors of the trenches. Officers in the trenches dealt with the rumblings as best as they could, but the French High Command and Government dismissed such troubles, wanting to believe all soldiers would do their patriotic duty to France.
Balkan Revolution
The Great War pushed two ancient empires to their breaking points and beyond. It is highly unlikely that the Balkan Revolution would have been successful had the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empires not have already bled themselves white. This single event altered the face of Europe more drastically than any event in centuries. Out of the ashes of two ancient empires came the experiment in communism.
The causes of the Balkans Revolution are many, and stretch out decades before the last year of the Great War. Chief among them is the partition of the Balkan Peninsula between the Austrians and the Ottoman Turks. Nationalistic and Pan-Slavic sentiments alone would have inevitably lead to uprisings, as it had during the Nineteenth Century. During the same century, the doctrines of Marx and Engels reached across Europe. Marx always predicted that the socialist revolution would take place in the industrial west.
Though industrialization barely reached the Balkans at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, suppression of the workers was not the reason communism took hold. For three centuries, the bulk of the Orthodox Balkans were held under the thumb of Muslim Turks. Though some peoples, such as in Bosnia and Albania, eventually converted, the majority of the Balkan people were subject to the Jizya (religious tax for non-Muslims) and oppression that came about as result of the rise of nationalism during the 19th Century. In response to rebellions in Greece in 1848 and Serbia in 1878, entire towns and cities were depopulated, their inhabitants forcefully relocated, and in rare instances, enslaved. Along with slavery, forms of serfdom were still found in the Balkans up to the eve of the Balkan Revolution.
Reforms following the Napoleonic War sought to spread a uniformity across the Ottoman Empire. Before the reforms, the Orthodox and Catholic populations were governed by their own codes of law, using their own languages. The reforms sought to standardize laws across the Ottoman Empire, as well as imposing Turkish as the sole official language. In many cases, the Ottoman government tried to force assimilation.
North of the Danube, problems leading to the Balkan Revolution were opposite of the Turks. The Austro-Hungarians Empire lacked any cohesion, to the point that its army was comprised of ethnic units. Outside of Austria and Hungary, the majority of the Empire was impoverished, with taxes ruining the provinces. In both cases, the subject populace were treated as less than the ruling ethnicities. This inequality is also a leading contributor to the Balkan Revolution. Marxism’s supposed doctrine of equality and of a classless society appealed to the educated in the Balkans.
During the Great War, these subject populations found themselves fighting and dying for their rulers in Vienna and Constantinople. With the Ottoman entry, the war in the Balkans became a three-way struggle, with the Balkan peoples caught in the middle. The peasants under both Austrian and Turkish rule were conscripted and found themselves fighting over their own land for foreigners. The Austrians overran much of Serbia by the start of 1915. Belgrade was fought over in three separate battle between the Ottoman’s entry into the war and the Belgrade Uprising.
Like the French Revolution, the Balkan Revolution was formulated not by the masses of peasantry, but rather by the middle class and educated. In these circles, Marxism was all the rage, with talks of abolishing classes and privileges and turning their respective empires into socialist federations of equals. Some nationalist cells simply wished to break away from their long time overlords and not look back. In the underground movements that formed since the start of the 20th Century, the Marxist infiltrated all but a handful.
The founder of the Union of Balkan Socialists Republics is a Serb named Peter Karadordevic. Born in Belgrade on June 29, 1844, into a minor functionary family, Karadordevic had no want. In 1870, he spent several years in Paris, where he was introduced to the philosophies of Karl Marx. The idea of a classless society appealed to him. The middle class of the Balkans were enthralled by socialism, and they would eventually form the bureaucracy of the Balkan Unions.
Karadordevic served in the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War. After the defeat of France, he left the army and returned to his homeland to ferment revolutionary fever. He called for a Serbia ruled by Serbians. His participation in the 1895 Revolution saw his family’s estates seized by the Turks and himself exiled. He returned from exile in Vienna in 1903 under the alias of Mrkonjic, where he founded the Serbian People’s Party. From 1904 to 1916, the Party was outlawed by the Ottoman Empire, with suspected members facing imprisonment and even being sold into slavery.
With the Great War sending millions of young Europeans and Americans to an early death, the loosely confederated International Brotherhood of Workers began to take action. Their propaganda brought more members into their ranks, and angered the lower classes. The I.B.W. created a class division across Europe, strongest in the Balkans. The idea of wealthy industrialists and arms manufacturers pushed corrupt governments to wage war in order to increase the shareholder’s profits feed the conspiracy machine. The poor, certainly the non-German or non-Turkish poor began wondered why they were fighting.
For the Slavs of the Balkans, the question was why was brother fighting brother in the name of non-Slavic peoples. The image of the Red Revolution as a Pan-Slavic device would play into the future of the Union, and its demise, along with some of the great atrocities of the 20th Century. The first shots of this Slavic socialist revolution would take place in Belgrade, on the border between empires.
Belgrade Uprising
By February of 1916, both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire battled to the point of exhaustion. Since its fall in 1914, the Turks made no serious attempt to retake Belgrade. The city fell to an Austrian assault shortly after the Ottoman Empire declared war upon them. Its situation, on the Danube River, which in turn served as border between the two dilapidated empires made it contested in the centuries past. The land of the Serbs was long since divided between the two empires, and during the Great War, Serb fought Serb in the armies of opposing Empires.
With both Empires war weary, the leader of the Serbian People’s Party, Peter Karadordevic, sensed an opportunity to throw out the hated Austro-Hungarians and secure for the peace-loving peasants and workers of Serbia their freedom. Karadordevic and his fellow Serb Revolutionary, Dusan Simovic spent the last months of 1915, smuggling in arms and caching ammunition in the neighborhoods of Belgrade. They each headed a division of the Serbian Worker’s Liberation Army, with several thousands in each division.
On February 12, 1916, the first blow of the Balkan Revolution was thrown in Darcal neighborhood, when a cell lead by Gravilo Princip, launched a grenade attack on Austrian Field Marshall Oskar Potiorek, killing him and the other passengers of the staff car. Within an hour, a bombings killed patrolling Austrian soldiers, and destroyed their post office, killing the Post Master. Simovic lead an assault against the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army’s headquarters, capturing the building and massacring its occupants.
By February 15, Belgrade was under the control of S.W.L.A. and the victors began to dish out revolutionary justice. Any person in Belgrade suspected of collaborating with the Austrians was summarily executed. In some estimates, over 5,000 Serbs were victims of this justice in the few days Belgrade remained ‘free’. The revolutionary army quickly degraded into a mob, attacking any institution, business or even building that represented the old order of the Sultans or Habsburgs, including the Ottoman built University of Belgrade. The University was raised and captured professors were executed as collaborators and traitors.
Belgrade’s liberty was short lived. After hearing of the uprising and assassination of the Army’s Field Marshall, that the Austrian General Chief of Staff Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, released reserves from the Ottoman Front for immediate redeployment to Belgrade. By March 3, 50,000 Austrian soldiers, including many Croatian, Slovakian and Bosnian units, had the city encircled. After two days of siege, the Austrians stormed Belgrade.
Knowing immediately that holding off the attack was impossible, Karadordevic ordered the S.W.L.A. to scatter, and continue the struggle in the countryside. Of the estimated 13,000 revolutionaries, only 3,212 are known to have escaped. The two leaders of the uprising where among the escapees. Simovic escaped across the border in Sarejavo, and Karadordevic escaped across the front lines (some said smuggled in a coffin), down the Danube and into Sofia. It is from these two cities that revolutionary flames were fanned.
Fanning the Flames
The seeds of two more uprisings, more succesful uprisings, hatched on March 15, 1916. When Karadordevic and Simovic reached their respective destinations, they contacted cells of revolutionaries that were poised to act once Belgrade was free. Pieces were moved into place. By the time similar uprisings were in place across the Balkans, the Belgrade Uprising was thoroughly crushed. On March 13, Karadordevic contacted the Bulgarian People’s Army, ordering the uprising to take effect. Simultaneously, Simovic launched the uprising in Bosnia.
In the early hours of March 15, the Bulgarian People’s Army and Bosnia Liberation Front launched attacks against the garrisons of Sarejavo and Sofia. The Turkish garrison in Sofia was massacred after their surviving high ranking officer surrendered. During the uprising, Albanian units in the garrison switched sides, descending on their Ottoman overlords. The success of the Sofia Uprising sparked off rebellion across Bulgaria and Wallachia. In the streets of major towns, Ottoman governors and mayors were victims of Revolutionary justice.
By March 19, the lower Danube was completely under the control of the Revolution. The Bulgarian People’s Army and Wallachian Liberation Army decisively defeated an Ottoman army at Serevin, near the Serbian border. The Austro-Hungarian Army attempted to exploit this rebellion, which caused the uprising in Sarejavo to succeed. Serbians in Sarejavo linked with surviving units of the Serbian Worker’s Liberation Army, and spread the revolution into Zenica and Tuzla.
On March 21, 1916, in Sofia and Bucharest, Revolutionaries declared independence from the Ottoman Empire, establishing the Bulgarian and the Wallachian People’s Republics. On March 22, the Bosnians declared independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Bosnian Socialist Republic entered into an alliance with Wallachia and Bulgaria, and launched an invasion into Serbia. Both Austrian and Turkish armies inside Serbia were trapped by the invading Revolutionaries. Bulgarian units in the Ottoman Army rose up, killing their Turkish officers and captured much of the artillery.
Ante Trumbic, leader of the Croatian Socialist Army, captured Zagreb on March 28. He was a colonel in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and a secret member of the International Brotherhood of Workers. Once Bosnia declared its independence, Trumbic and his Croatian legion mutinied along the Balkan Front and marched on their homeland. Along with thousands of soldiers, a Croatian squadron flying Petrel D. IVs based in occupied Serbia joined Trumbic’ mutiny.
Greek Mutiny
While ethnic units were defecting and mutinying in piece meal, on April12, the entire Greek contingent in the Ottoman armed forces rose up against the Turk. Revolutionaries in Athens, Thessaloniki and even Constantinople drove the Turks out, forcing the Sultan across the Bosporus. Soon after, the Greeks declared independence with the Revolutionaries declaring a Hellenistic Socialist Republic. In the Ottoman Navy, Greek officers and sailors took control over several ship, including the Battleship Sultan Selim (which was renamed Leonidis).
Ottoman loyalist, under the command of Turkish Admiral Musha Seydi Ali intercepted the mutineers at their assembly point off the coast of Rhodes. Under the command of Pavlos Konstantinos, a high ranking member of the Greek Communist Party, two Revolutionary battleships, four cruisers and seven destroyers engaged a Loyalist force of nearly double the size. Key to winning the battle, Konstantinos credited the defection of several ships during the battle. The Crimean executive officer of the Turgut Reis seized control of the battlecruiser during the middle of the fight and turned its two hundred fifty millimeter guns on Seydi’s flagship, killing the admiral and effectively breaking the back of the Ottoman Navy. Since the ethnic content of the Ottoman Navy had a disproportionally high number of Greek and Crimean sailors, the surviving Turkish ships were held up in port while the Ottoman government commenced purging it of revolutionary elements.
Fragmentation
By May 1, 1916, the armies of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire were in an advanced state of decay. Forces were pulled away from the fronts to deal with ethnic uprisings and revolution. The state of Austria was in crisis by May 4, when a combined force of the Hungarian Revolutionary Army and the Croatian Socialist Army crossed the frontier into Austria Proper. Loyal Austrian soldiers were pulled from the front with the Ottomans (who had their own problems) and from the Swedish Front (who took advantage of the Revolution to push into Crimea and Moldova).
Two events prevented Vienna from falling to the Revolutionaries. One was the fact that discipline within the Hungarian and Croatian armies were poor, and the soldiers took to pillaging towns and seeking revenge for centuries of oppression. The second factor was that the Kaiser saw the writing on the wall and ordered units of the German Army to occupy German Austria along with Bohemia, to prevent the Revolution from spreading into Bavaria. At this point, the Germans had no intention on reconquering the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Instead they sought to contain the revolutionary plague well outside the Fatherland.
By July, the situation within the armies of both empires is utter chaos. No longer do the Turks or Austrians have an army. Austrian and Turkish units within their respective armies have abandoned the front lines and have retreated into their heartlands to defend their homes and families from the vengeance the repressed people tend to deliver. The newly formed Hungarian army, under the command of Revolutionary Zoltan Tildy, has even stepped beyond the Balkans and made incursions into Poland-Lithuania.
End of Empires
With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German Empire relocated its own soldiers from the Eastern Front (since Sweden was having its own problems with Revolutionary incursions into the Ukraine) to hold on to German Austria and Bohemia. The German Empire would annex both of these territories. The German Army would clash with Croatian forces under the command of Ivan Mestrovic. Mestrovic was born in Split in 1883. Through most of his early life, he dabbled in the arts, and even trying his hand at sculpting.
In 1905, his career was cut short when he found himself conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. Like many Croatians, he resented having to serves masters in Vienna, even if he would not have minded attending art academies there. It was while in the army that he met Ante Trumbic. It was from Trumbic that he became enthralled by socialism and the ideas of classless society, though he was never a member of the I.B.W. His Revolutionary zeal grew during the Great War, and more so when the Ottomans entered the war. He saw the injustice of his people dying for aristocratic elites and arms dealing capitalist in Vienna.
When the Revolution came, Mestrovic found himself thrust into a position of authority. It was not a position he wanted; after all, he only wished to be an artist. However, it was a position that he excelled. Mestrovic was not so much a tactician as a leader of men. He lead by example and his fellow Croatians would follow him into battle. He also had sense enough to listen to his inferiors in rank, especially since they knew more about tactics than he. One of his advisors had even attended the Military Academy in Vienna.
With charisma to lead and sense to listen, Mestrovic is known as one of the greatest Revolution. His victory over the German Army while at Graz. The Croatians took the city on July 17, after defeating a weak Austrian garrison. On July 30, the German Army sent a division against the Croatians defenses. The Croatians captured enough machine guns to turn back the German assault, forcing them into their own network of trenches. For the moment, it appeared a new front would form during the Great War.
Cease Fire
On August 2, 1916, German, Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth agreed to a cease fire in order to combat the Revolutionaries within their respective territories. The Austro-Hungarian Empire ceased to exist by August, and the Ottoman Empire received its final nail with the Janissary Massacre at Skopje on July 28. The last of the Janissaries in the Balkans were holed up in Macedonia, surrounded by Greek, Albanian and Serbian armies. Upon breaching the defenses of Skopje, all Turkish soldiers were killed by the Revolutionary Armies. No quarter was given, nor asked for, as the Janissaries fought to the last man. Those too wounded to fight were bayoneted where they fell.
When German annexations were recognized in the Treaty of Versailles, the Croatians withdrew from Austria and returned to their own frontiers. Croatia itself was starting to come apart with tensions between Serbs and Croats living within its borders. In Bosnia, fighting was already happening. Once the last of the Austrian holdouts surrendered, Serbs, Croats and Bosnians began fighting for control of the country.
While Balkans were fighting Balkans, the outside world looked towards the Balkans with a land-rush mentality. The threat of outside invasion did little to curb the violence. It was not until the Italian Federation invaded Slovenia, annexing the country in 1918, that made the Balkan nationalities to pause and take notice. At the start of 1919, the Balkan states knew that socialist states would have to work together, or they would be picked off one by one.
Armistices
The first of the armistices leading to the Peace Conference at Versailles came on August 2, 1916, when Sweden and Germany ceased hostile actions towards each other. In the wake of the sudden and violent collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, both combatants withdrew from Poland-Lithuania to wage war against Revolutionary elements that have crossed their borders. In the case of Germany, the German Army marched in German Austria, securing Vienna on August 12, as well as securing the Habsburgs. The Swedes were a more heterogenous state than Germany, and some concerns in Stockholm was that Revolutionary fervor might sweep up the Ukrainians, and other ethnic groups near the former Ottoman border. As per the cease fire, Germany began to immediately repatriate Polish-Lithuanian prisoners of war, and all parties involved began to trade prisoners. Partly to release resources from guarding them, and partly so these captives could be put to use fighting the Revolution.
Weeks later, on August 29, France and Germany signed an additional cease fire at Sedan. The same Revolutionary illness that plagued the Balkans began to infect the French Army. On August 20, units of the French Army west of Verdun refused to go over-the-top, and several officers were arrested by their own men. This mutiny began to spread, and the fact that Germany was already involved in German Austria kept them from exploiting this chaos and breaking through the Western Front. What was not known to the French government at the time, was that similar Red ideologies were beginning to ferment within the Imperial German Army. Had the French not mutinied, it is quite likely the Germans would have in the following months. Generals and Governments have a difficult time fighting wars when their soldiery is on strike. The cease fire between Germany and France called for the evacuation of British and Spanish soldiers from France within one week.
Italy, though not as susceptible to the Revolution as its neighbors, unilaterally withdrew from the war and back into its own borders. King Manuel recalled his soldiers into the urban areas of Italy, to break strikes that began shortly after the Balkan Revolution erupted. The King and his government believed, quite falsely it turned out, that these strikes were of Red sympathies. This was caused due to theteste di rosso, the redheads as they were called, named such due to either red scarves wrapped around their heads or of dying their hair red. Strikes in the steel industry were also seen as a general threat to national survival. Hundreds were killed when the army attempted to break the strike. However, with millions already dead in the Great War, the other nations did not seem to overly care about a few hundred extra.
With the war in Europe falling apart, the British looked to get out of the war entirely, and with its empire still intact. Though Europe remained a stalemate, North America was going badly. After Quebec entered the war on the side of America, supply links to Canada were forced to go through Hudson’s Bay. The Canadians were making the Americans pay for every kilometer of land they took, but the American advance continued relentlessly. On September 1, through the neutral embassies of the Swiss, the British sought terms with the Americans. Initial demands called for the cession of vast tracks of Canadian territory, which was rejected. Roosevelt did accept a cease fire, pending a peace conference between American and Britain.
By September 5, the United States and Confederate States were the only combatants left in the war, and the Confederates were already teetering on destruction. Roosevelt dreamt of a restored Union, and a crumbling Confederacy was going to play into his hands. Without the industrial base of Britain or France, the Confederate States found themselves at a disadvantage when the war began. As it came to an end, Confederate supplies evaporated. Their largest source of income still came from cotton exports, exports that dried up due to American blockades, and ended by the Dutch Commonwealth’s entry into the war.
The first meeting between American governments was not between Philadelphia and Birmingham, but rather Philadelphia and Richmond. With so much of its state torn up by war, the governor of Virginia took the extraordany step of entering into separate negotiations with a foreign government, in clear violation of the Confederate States Constitution. Virginia was not the last state to seek terms. Kentucky’s government-in-exile found itself declared illegitimate by its own constitutients. Kentuckians elected a new government, which immediately sought terms of surrender from General Pershing.
Arizona and Tennessee were next to follow. Birmingham declared martial law and attempted to send soldiers to hold down States it declared rebellious. Units from Tennessee mutinied when they were ordered to storm their own capital. The Confederate States were on the verge of civil war while facing their greatest defeat. So disastrous was the month of August, that Secretary of War Phillip James Moisure committed suicide, and the Confederate Secretary of State simply vanished. With the situation on the home front worsening by the day, the Confederate people began to protest. Protests that quickly evolved into riots.
Charolette and Jackson were simply shut down by city-wide strikes and rioting. Wilson was now facing a possible coup by his own Army. With both heavy heart and desperation, Wilson sued for terms. American and Confederate delegates met on September 11, at Memphis. Though the Confederate States would not formally end until Versailles, Wilson’s signing the terms of surrender was the last act of any Confederate President.
Treaty of Versailles
In October 1916, after various separate cease fires and armistices, the surviving belligerents of the Great War met in the Palace of Versailles to draw up a peace treaty to end the war. For most of the combatants, years of war followed by recent revolutions upon their borders has weakened resolve for decisive victory. Instead, the combatants in Europe would settle upon a largely maintenance of the balance of power. For Germany, Sweden, Italy, the Dutch Commonwealth, Britain and Poland-Lithuania, the war would end in a status quo ante bellum. Poland-Lithuania would abolish its monarchy as a result of the war, becoming the Republic of Poland-Lithuania.
Nothing gained, nothing lost, and nothing achieved after four years of conflict and millions dead and maimed. France would lose Alsace-Lorraine to the German Empire for a period of twenty years. After which, a plebiscite would be held in the provinces for the locals to determine their own fate. Despite the status quo, Sweden agreed to pay the worth of the van der Weld to its owner, and the King of Sweden formally apologized for the sinking of the ship.
In related terms, all parties agreed upon a new maritime boundaries at fifteen kilometers from the shores of the country in question. In cases were territorial waters overlap, all parties involved would have joint sovereignty over the waters. It was hoped that this would prevent a replay of the events that brought the Dutch into the war. This, of course, turned out to be a pipe dream. Further in European affairs, Germany was permitted to annex German Austria from the ruins of the Habsburg Empire. The fate of the Balkans was not resolved at the peace conference, but no World Power desired to be drawn into the civil war that raged across former international boundaries.
Though the Great War was often seen as a pointless exercise in nationalism in Europe, the only true winner to come out of the war was the United States. At Versailles, international recognition for the Anglo-American Permanent Peace Treaty, which was still in the works at the time, was achieved. In the previous month, delegates from Birmingham met in Philadelphia to discuss the Confederate terms of peace. The terms were simply; the Confederate States national government would disband and the former States would submit to military occupation and governing until such time as they were suited to rejoin the Union.
The biggest accomplishment to come out of Versailles was the establishment of the League of Nations. This was the dream of former Confederate President Woodrow Wilson. The League would be a place were nations could meet to resolve their differences before an arbitration of global community. It was hoped that a repeat of the succession crisis in Poland-Lithuania that sparked the war could never happen again. The idea was met with acclaim and included within the treaty. The Treaty of Versailles was signed October 18, 1916, formally ending the Great War. Within six months, all combatants would ratify the treaty. However, in the case of the League of Nations, the Dutch Commonwealth opted out of it. Wilson would not live to see his dream come to fruition; he was found dead on May 21, 1917, at his home in Tennessee. Death by poison, whether it was suicide or murder has never been determined.
Following the Balkan Revolution and end of the Great War, what would become of the Austro-Hungarian Navy was a serious question. By annexing German Austria and later Bohemia, the German Empire claimed a great deal of the Austrian ships. However, several warships were seized during the Revolution by Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. When the Italian Federation annexed Slovenia, they captured only a few of the ships. The rest were scuttled in the Adriatic Sea. The ships under the control of Croatia and Bosnia were handed over to the Union of Balkan Socialist Republics. Only one battleship and three cruisers ever ended up in the hands of the Kaiser. Those Austro-Hungarian ships not captured by mutinies remained in the hands of loyalists, and too were scuttled in the northern Adriatic rather than be surrendered to the Balkan Union, or to Austria’s German cousins. Today, many reefs have developed among the wreckage scattered in an arc stretching hundreds of kilometers south of Venice.
Enemies no More
There were some lessons learned from the Great War. The most oblivious lesson was the follow of two nations being enemies without end. It took the Great War to make the United States and United Kingdom to put aside their differences and put behind them nearly a century-and-a-half of hostilities. To achieve this, the two nations made a separate agreement along with the general peace of Versailles.
The peace treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States ended an on-again, off-again state of warfare between the two nations since the days of the Revolution. Following the cease fires that swept across the world in 1916 following the Balkans Revolution, the United States and Britain attended the peace conference at Versailles, as well as a separately in Halifax to work out a separate, lasting peace. The British recognized that the United States was the dominate power in North America and they would have to do business with them. The Americans, with honor satisfied in their victories during the Great War, also sought to end the belligerence within the Anglo-sphere. Both sides recognized that peace would benefit all. Several disputes between the English-speaking powers were resolved with Permanent Peace Treaty. The points of the treaty are as follow:
1) The northern border of the United States would have both northern Maine and the Red River Valley restored to the Union. The border would follow the 49th parallel to the Continental Divide, where it would then extend north to include all of the previous Oregon Country territory.
2) The Great Lakes would be demilitarized.
3) Canada would be guaranteed right of passage through Québécois controlled waters.
4) The Grand Banks fishery would be neutralized, allowing fishing vessels from signatory nations free access.
5) Cession of the Bahamas to the United States in exchange for twenty-five million dollars.
6) Free Movement of nationals across the U.S., Canadian and Québécois borders, including
extradition.
7) Rights of citizens in ceded territories would not be abridged.
8) Open (but not free) trade between the United States and British Empire.
9) A pact of non-aggression between signatory nations.
The United States Senate ratified the bill on February 28, 1917, and President Theodore Roosevelt signed the bill the next day, one of the last bills he signed into law.
War Clouds
The initial spark of the Polish-Lithuanian succession crisis of 1913, was the start of the Great War, but the fuel was added to the fire long before this one spark set off the world. By the turn of the century, the United Kingdom and Germany found themselves in a dangerous arms race. Germany wanted a fleet powerful enough to protect its African colonies and to blockade Britain itself. The Royal Navy’s mandate was to be powerful enough to fight two wars at once; i.e. able to handle both the German Empire and the United States. The British Admiralty believed the Americans would take advantage of a war with Germany to exact its own revenge upon the former mother country. After dragging America’s collective face through the mud during the Nineteenth Century, it was a wonder why the Americans would be so eager for vengeance.
The British and Germans were not the only ones to build up their fleets. When they started, the other World Powers took to building their own fleet. The Dutch Commonwealth was intent on maintaining its domination of world trade, and had the capital from the United Provinces and resources from the Empire of Brazil to keeps its navy ahead of the British. The French and Italians soon were locked in their own arms race, one that almost lead to war when Italy took Libya from the weakening Ottoman Empire. Since both were in opposing alliances, this could have lead to a general war.
The web off alliances between the Entente and Central Powers was also a leading factor to war. By 1910, Germany and the United Kingdom were viewed as leaders of their respective alliances, even though the British were not bound to aid the French or Swedes. Austro-Hungary and Italy would follow Germany, and both the Germans and Americans have pledged to aid each other if the other is attacked. As stated already, the Italian Federation’s expedition to Libya nearly sparked a war, but in 1903, a German cruiser squadron visited Morocco. According to the French, the Germans had intent on extending a protectorate over Morocco, which was nominally under Franco-Spanish (mostly Spanish) protection as of 1899. The fact that Spain did not sign on to the Entente until 1907, was the only reason war did not erupt in 1898, when Spain and the United States went to war.
In some cases, old fashion nationalism could have sparked off a war. If not for their alliance with Britain, the Confederacy would have come under the wrath of Americans who wanted to destroy them simply because twice in the previous century the southerners humiliated the United States. If not for protection, then the Confederates would have fallen under the sword of 7th Cavalry instead of non-compliant plains Indians. Some French had similar feelings towards Germany, wanting to avenge the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian war some decades before. Though France lost no land in that war, they lost much face.
One class that did not want war, despite revisionism of today, where the world’s industrialists. War would divide the world and cut off half their potential civilian customers. Though many American, British and German companies would follow their country, those who profited from it would prefer the open markets of peace. The VOC, company of the neutral Dutch, loathed a navy war for it would mean the construction of more warships, which carried little to no cargo, for defense of their own shipping. If they entered the war, then the VOC navy would be obliged to fight along side their own nationals. The Dutch governments stated before the war started that shipping flying the United Provinces, Brazilian or any other commonwealth flag would only be safe in Commonwealth territorial waters. International waters were to be entered at ones’ own risk.
Succession Crisis of 1913
The spark that ignited the world struck on February 11, 1913, when King Gunther II of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth died. As was the law of Poland-Lithuania for centuries, the parliament went about the process of electing a new king. Gunther II had requested that Frederick Georg Wilhelm, a distant cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II be named his successor. He was made a candidate, but the Poles and Lithuanians would decide for themselves who would sit upon their throne, which was far more constitutional than the one Germans were use to sitting upon. A second serious candidate, Erik Gustav, brother of the King of Sweden, was put forth to thwart German influence in the Commonwealth.
The German choice happened to be the cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II, while the Swede was the brother of King Charles XVII. With each election, the two choices were tied, and with no end in sight, the Kaiser decided to act. Since the previous king was a German, the German Empire felt it was entitled to have one of its own ruling over the nation to the east. Furthermore, Litho-Poland always offered the perfect buffer between the two Empires. The succession crisis caused much alarm across Europe, and France, Britain and Italy called up partial mobilizations of their military base. France in particular feared German ambitions, as it was humbled by Prussia fifty years prior.
Through the month of March, Parliament held vote after vote, each time deadlocking between the two candidates. Attempts to break the deadlock by introducing a third candidate failed, as one strong enough could not be found. One attempt to put a Bourbon, living in Quebec, upon the throne was met with laughter from the pro-German bloc of parliament. It was met with a famous and sarcastic quote “why not nominate a Bonaparte while you’re at it?”. However, outside force continued to pull at the blocs. Neither the Kaiser nor the King wished Poland-Lithuania to be pulled into the alliance of their rival.
To combat this, radicals in the Parliament move to have the Regal Election reformed to allow the people to decide who will be their king. The radicals could not gather strength for they were divided as well, with Socialists wanting to abolish the monarchy altogether. Further infighting brought parliamentary processes to a grinding halt. By the middle of May, the Kaiser had lost all patience. He decided that within a month, if the Polish-Lithuanian had not resolved the issue of the throne, then Germany would force the issue. On May 20, he ordered his General Staff to be ready for war against Sweden and France. Two days later, Charles Zimmerman sent a war warning telegram to the United States.
On May 22, 1913, a telegram arrived at the War Department in Philadelphia from the German Foreign Minister, Charles Zimmerman. The six page message stated that the German Empire was preparing to invaded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to resolve the succession crisis.. Germany outlined their plan in the telegram stating they would invade Poland-Lithuania and install Frederick on the throne. This would obviously mean war with Sweden, which was part of the Entente. Since the United States was Germany’s strongest ally, the Kaiser decided to warn Roosevelt so that the United States could be prepared in case general world war broke out. Because of this telegram, the U.S. Army quietly mobilized during the month of June and began to move up units to the front. When the alliances were activated, and Congress declared war on June 25, the Americans were in a position to move against their enemies before the British in Canada and the Confederates were fully mobilized. This telegram is often credited for allowing the United States to be the closest thing to a total victor in this otherwise status quo ante bellum war.
Invasion
On June 22, 300,000 German soldiers, divided into five corp, entered the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in force. For the first hour, they met no resistance, for the Poles had no idea they were being invaded. Only when reports of German regiments and divisions returned to central government, did the Poles and Lithuanians begin full scale mobilization. The Poland-Lithuanian National Assembly immediately convened and declared a state of emergency. At 14:04, the Swedish Assembly and King went one step further, and declared war upon Germany, which the Germans returned in kind.
Before the 23rd, France had declared war on Germany, Italy on France and Austro-Hungary on Sweden. Britain declared war, and the Confederates followed suit. As soon as this happened, the United States declared war on Britain, the Confederacy and Sweden, in that order. The three states returned the favor. Oddly enough, though on opposing sides, France and the United States did not declare war on each other. Given their long history together, both nations went out of the way to avoid fighting each other, with the United States not invading French Mexico, and France not attacking southern California, though both had the ability. Clashes on open seas between the two were inevitable, but aside from that, they remained co-belligerents and not official enemies.
On June 26th, the United States activated both of its war plans, invading the Confederacy and Canada. Armies crossed the Ohio (under the command of John Pershing), the Rappahanock (under the command of Clarence White Water) and the Columbia with initially minimal resistance. Alexandria, Virginia was entered and occupied before the day was out, as were key rail crossings of the Ohio River. With advance warning through Zimmerman, the Americans were already fully mobilized, while the Confederates were only partially so. Birmingham ordered an immediate call up of all of its soldiers.
France was in a similar state, as part of Alsace and Lorraine were conquered without a shot being fired. Several border fortresses were simply entered and taken by the Germans. Once the realization that a major war was on their hands, the French began to throw its forces into the gap between the United Provinces and Switzerland, trying to slow the German juggernaut. France would be on its own for three weeks, before the first regiments of what would be known as the British Expeditionary Force began to land in Calais. Spanish soldiers crossed the border to aid France in the Rivera against an Italian invasion. Spain was the last of the Entente to declare war, the republic taking a full week to deliberate and vote on a war that had little of their own national interest at stake.
Siege of Lodz
According to the initial planned invasion of Poland-Lithuania, the city of Lodz should have been overran within a week. This was not to be destined. Lodz and its defenders put up a stiff resistance, and continued to hold out as the front moved eastward. Lodz became an island in a rapidly advancing German tide during the summer of 1913. The fortresses surrounding the city held continued to repel German attacks, and some in the General Staff wanted to bypass the city and leave behind just enough soldiers to keep the defenders bottled up. The Kaiser would have none of it. He wanted no potential for attacks from the rear as the German Army slugged it out with Sweden over control of the Polish-Lithuanian throne. Even after Germany invaded Poland-Lithuania, the parliament remained undecided on whom should ascend the throne.
So instead of bypass the city, the Germans invested it. The eight month long siege of Lodz drew away critical resources from both fronts, East and West. The hundred thousand soldiers surrounding the city could have been used to complete Plan 6 or cut Poland-Lithuania off from the sea. The former would have gone a long ways to altering the outcome of the war, while the latter would do little. With Sweden as an ally, or at least claiming to protect the Commonwealth, the Poles had access to the sea via the vast Swedish Empire.
At the end of February of 1914, the city had already suffered millions of shells and tens of thousands of casualties. Tens of thousands more suffered through the siege as food supplies diminished. Dogs, cats, any birds and even the local zoo were slaughtered by the inhabitants who were desperate for food. The defenders of Lodz were lionized as heroes by the Entente, especially British, press. Attempts to aid the city were thwarted, and even the Red Cross was turned away by the German besiegers. Lodz would get relief after they capitulated. On February 27, able to suffer no longer, General Stefen Wolenski formerly surrendered the city. That should have been the end of the story.
The frustration of an eight month long siege, and the loss of a quick victory angered the German soldiery. What followed was not a civilized surrender, but rather a classical conquest. Discipline in the German Army broke down after the defenders laid down their arms, and the soldiery sacked the city. Officers struggled for four days to bring order to the mob. When order was restored, a portion of the city was burning and an estimated 22% of the surviving civilians were dead. In response to this atrocity, the German High Command executed over a thousand of its own soldiers, including the perceived ring leaders. Entente response was quick and to the point. The press declared this action the Lodz Massacre, and a prime example of how the barbarians were once again threatening civilization. The massacre even strained relations between Germany and the United States, its strongest ally. In response to the sacking of Lodz, the Polish-Lithuanian parliament broke its deadlock and unanimously elected the Swedish candidate, who was crowned Erik Gustav as King Christian I on April 29.
Opening Moves in the Pacific
The United States was at a disadvantage in the Pacific. The west coast was potentially cut off from the Pacific possessions of the Marianas and Wake by an Entente triangle of Seattle, Pearl Harbor, Port Sinoloa. In order to break this potential blockade of its western shores, the Navy Department moved forth its own part of War Plan Red; ejecting the British from the Hawaiian Kingdom. Hawaii entered the war on Britain’s side in July of 1913, using its small navy only in defense of its own shores and the British naval base on Oahu. The United States had no real interest in the rest of the Hawaiian Islands, and it was determined they would be ignored. However, the Pacific Fleet, as soon as supplied, set sail to eject the British from the strategic island of Oahu.
On August 3, 1913, the United States Pacific Fleet encountered a combined fleet of the Royal Navies of the United Kingdom and of Hawaii. Plans for the battle date back more than a decade. In the event of war, with the British to the north and west, and Confederates to the south, there was a good chance the United States could have its Pacific Coast blockaded. This would cut off America from its few colonies in the Pacific, but more importantly, to a large portion of its commerce. While offensives drive into Canada and the Confederacy, a third attack would head westward and drive the British off Oahu. With a base at Pearl Harbor, the British were in the perfect position to destroy American commerce.
At the command of the Pacific Fleet was forty year Naval veteran, Admiral Frederick Ruyter flying his flag from the USS California. Along with the California, seven more battleships; the Ohio, Iroquois, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Maryland, Idaho, and Kansas along with twelve cruisers and twenty destroyers, along with ten thousand Marines. Facing him with eight battleships and four battlecruisers, along with ten cruisers, sixteen destroyers and five Hawaiian destroyers was Sir Edmund Ralley.
The two fleets made their first pass at each other at 1003, a little more than two kilometers off the coast of Maui, between that islands and Hawaii. Gunnery during the first pass was poor, with less than ten percent of the shells finding their targets. This was still enough to damage the HMS Revenge, and sink two British destroyers, one American destroyer, and the USS Portland. Each American and British battleship suffered near misses, with straddling shots causing buckling in the hull. After the first pass, both fleets attempted to outmaneuver the other, coming at another pass at 1036. The USS Ohio lost its number two turret during the exchange, and two more American cruisers were knocked out of the battle. Not sunk, but damaged enough they were forced to drop out of the fight. On the British side, the Lionwas dead in the water and a cruiser listing severely. The cruiser capsized at 1044.
The third pass occurred at 1101, with more minor damage to big guns. Kansas was reduced to 2/3 speed as one of its boilers was flooded. The HMS Majesty lost power, and could no longer turn its turrets. The British battleship withdrew from the battle to rescue survivors from the first two passes. Even when ships were not giving broadsides, they were still exchanging fire. Before the fourth pass, the HMS Vendetta took four hits, one puncturing its forward hull and blowing off five meters of its bow.
The fourth pass, 1149 hours, was the climax of the battle, where Ruyter managed to “Cross the T”. In the exchange, British guns could fire only a few rounds, two of which breached the Ohio’s hull. In the British lines, three battleships were further damaged, and the HMS Warspite simply exploded as a three hundred millimeter round penetrated its magazine. Wounded, Ralley ordered the British fleet, badly damaged, to retreat to Pearl Harbor. He had no intent of staying there, for it would be a bottleneck for his own fleet when the Americans arrived.
Instead, he would evacuate British nationals from the island and retreat to Manilla to repair the fleet. Before he could make good his escape, Ruyter ordered destroyers to close in and launch torpedoes on the dreadnaughts. A squadron of American destroyers closed in on the retreating ships and unleashed their payloads. Four destroyers were damaged, with one crippled, but in exchange, the Majesty broke in half, and a cruiser joined her.
To cover his retreat, Ralley ordered a torpedo run by his own destroyers. Three British destroyers were lost, but in exchange, the Maryland lost its forward turret, and the main British Fleet was able to successfully withdrawal to Pearl Harbor. Ralley is often criticized for giving up the battle, but had he pressed the attack, he could very well have lost the Royal Navy’s entire Pacific fleet. That fleet was required to defend the Philippines, Australia and Malaysia, and attack the Americans in the Marianas along with German Marshals and Kaiserwilhemland, and have sufficient forces to defend British holdings in the Pacific against possible Dutch attacks.
By August 5, the British evacuated their nationals from Oahu, leaving behind a rearguard force of Royal Marines and ships too damaged to survive the voyage across the ocean, to aid the Hawaiians. During the months of August and September, the Americans conquered Oahu, sending the Hawaiian royal family fleeing to the island of Hawaii.
Back in North America, a force of twenty thousand soldiers moved from southern California into the Confederate State of Durango, across the Gulf of California. Port Sinoloa was first attacked by a cruiser squadron out of San Diego, leading the Confederate Pacific Fleet on a chase. While they were pursing the ships, which were reinforced by some of the fleet from Hawaii in September, the first of America’s naval invasions of the war took place. Some ten kilometers south of Port Sinoloa, the fifty thousand Americans hit the desert beach with minimal resistance. Real resistance did not take place until August 30, when Confederate garrisons and American invaders clashed just outside the city. In the course of the next three weeks, the Americans moved northward, fighting block-by-block to seize the city. Finally, on October 8, the Confederate commander at Port Sinoloa surrendered. The city was not the Confederate’s only outlet to the Pacific, but with it in American hands, it was not the Confederates who were blockaded.
The Great Lakes Campaign
Along side the reconquest of the Red River Valley, in later 1913, early 1914, the United States Navy on the Great Lakes did much to secure America’s northern border. Control of the Lakes would insure supply lines for both the Red River Valley and the York Peninsula. The British knew this as well, and decided to make the first move at the Battle of Mackinac.
Also called the Battle of Mackinac Strait or Battle of Fort Mackinac, this battle was the first British-Canadian counter-offensive following the declaration of War. Part of Britain’s own war plan against America called for it to drive American Naval forces from the Great Lakes. This called for bottling up much of the American Great Lakes’ Fleet on Lake Michigan while the British took control of the other four lakes. Not only would this allow the British, and the Canadians, uninterrupted supply lines for armies operating on American soil (none at the time), but it would also force the Americans to withdraw from the York Peninsula and cut off their iron mining regions in the west from the steel mills in the east.
Under the command of Vice Admiral Walter Cowan, a British fleet of two battleships (on BB and one BC), three cruisers, nine destroyers and ten smaller vessels, sailed ahead of a marine flotilla destined to occupy Mackinac Island. The British plan called for surprise, which was shattered on June 30, 1913, when the submarine Swordfish, commanded by Commander Edward Fitzgerald, spotted the British fleet and moved in to attack. A torpedo managed to hit the battlecruiser Leopard, but caused only slight damage, a rupture in the midship that was easily patched. In return, British destroyers hunted down the primitive submarine and sank it. At the time, Cowan was not aware if U.S. subs were equipped with the newly invented wireless transmitters. Though primitive, they were capable of transmitting a morse code pulse to warn that the British were coming.
On July 2, the British fleet entered Mackinac Strait and began to bombard the fortress upon Mackinac Island at 1133. A century ago, a British fleet made the same move and forced the fort to surrender before taking control of Lake Michigan during the Second Anglo-American War. Fifty years later, during the Third Anglo-American War, the British again attacked the fort, but this time took it by assault. Cowan planned to be the third to take the island in just over a century. Unbeknown to the British, Fitzgerald did get a signal back to Chicago, and the American fleet stationed their sortied.
The United States Navy split its forces on Lake Michigan into two columns. The western column, commanded by Rear Admiral Charles Vreeland, consisted of two battleships, two cruisers, four destroyers, seven frigates and torpedo boats. The eastern column, commanded by Commodore Robert Doyle, consisted of a lone battlecruiser, another lone cruiser, three destroyers along with a dozen torpedo boats. When the two columns converged on Mackinac Island, midday on July 3, Vreeland took overall command for what would turn out to be a short battle.
Given British superiority in overall firepower, Vreeland played his own gambit. He would send ahead the torpedo boats and smaller craft to launch their torpedoes at the British. He expected to loose many of the boats, after all, Destroyers were designed to destroy torpedo boats. However, he had hoped to open a breach in the British formation to exploit. At a distance of ten kilometers, the British guns began to open up on the Americans. At that distance, their aim was poor, and only a handful of near misses gave the Americans cause for alarm. The U.S.S. Columbia, a battlecruiser, did have a shell land close enough to cause minor damage to its hull.
In design, the British and Canadian Great Lakes Battleships were fifteen percent larger than their American counterparts, and sported 300mm guns, as opposed to the 203 and 253 mm used by American Great Lakes Battleships and -cruisers. Their armor was thicker as well. British cruisers had close to the same advantage against their American counterparts. American warships were lighter armed and armored, but also traveled faster than their enemies. American gunnery tended to be better on the Great Lakes, as was shown when shells from the Oregon made contact with a British destroyed that strayed too close, and tore it to pieces.
Before the opposing capital ships could get into more effective range, Cowan had to run the gauntlet of small torpedo boats. As was typical of a Royal Navy man, Cowan looked upon these lightly armed, glorified fishing boats with disdain. The idea that a boat could damage, much less sink, a Royal Navy battleship struck the Admiralty as absurd. This did not, however, prevent the Canadians from building their own torpedo boats to ply the Great Lakes. Cowan’s pride was about to receive a deep bruise when the American boats entered firing range. As was doctrine, the larger ships ignored the boats while the destroyers dealt with them. Two torpedo boats were destroyed before they could launch their torpedoes, but an addition thirteen breached British lines and launch two torpedoes each before retreating. Of these, and addition three boats were destroyed.
Many of the torpedoes missed, either be dodged, or simply sailing beneath the enemy bows. However, the bulk of the torpedoes were aimed at the largest ships; battleship Port Royal, battlecruiserLeopard and a cruiser steaming close to them. Seven torpedoes did hit, including one that took out the Leopard’s rudder. Two more torpedoes ruptured the battleship’s hull, reducing its speed by half. The cruiser received such a lashing, that it began to list. Before the day was out, it would be abandoned and capsized. With one capital ship mortally wounded and the other crippled, Cowan now had to face the Americans at a disadvantage. No British admiral had ever retreated from battle against the Americans on the Great Lakes, and Cowan did not wish to be the first.
When the American battleship and battlecruiser came into range, they quickly changed his mind. Shells from the Oregon and Susquehanna destroyed three destroyers and broke an addition cruiser in half. British shells caused their own damage, sinking an American destroyer and crippling two more, along with a cruiser Columbia even received hits, knocking out one of its two turrets. It was the fact that the Royal Marine transports would be within range of American guns within a day that caused Cowan to retreat. The transports were lightly armed, fast destroyers that would have stood little chance against the Americans. He would not condemn so many marines to their death just to save his own pride. At 1605, Cowan gave the order to withdraw. Not retreat, but to withdraw. He had every intend on returning as soon as his ships were repaired, and reinforced by ships from Lake Superior and Huron.
The Americans would not give Cowan, or any British admiral, a second change to seal Lake Michigan. Within a week, addition torpedo boats have arrived on seen, and damage to most of the ships was repaired. The Columbia did have to return to Chicago for repairs, but it would be replaced by ships arriving at Mackinac from Lake Superior. Addition soldiers were rushed to reinforce Fort Mackinac, and a small airstrip was built on the island. It could not project power against the Royal Navy, but would serve to base scouts. Addition guns were placed on the island in the following month, as were fortifications on either side of Mackinac Strait. Admiral Vreeland would not give the British a second chance to take Mackinac. As soon as he was reinforced, he took the fight to the British on Lake Huron.
Following their victory at Mackinac, the America Great Lakes Navy took up pursuit of their British counterparts once Mackinac Island was reinforced. By September of 1913, Vreeland set his fleet out, reinforced by two cruisers and the battleship Minnesota, across Lake Huron to hunt down what was left of Cowan’s fleet. Seaplanes launched from the northern shores of Michigan scoured the lake for the British fleet for a week before the first signs were detected. On September 7, Cowan’s fleet was spotted nearing Georgian Bay. Cowan had hoped to shelter in Owin Sound and repair the damage his ships sustained. At this point in the war, scouting planes were, if armed at all, very lightly armed. Bombers did not come into serious play for a couple more years. Had the Americans had these bombers, they might very well have sunk the British fleet from the air.
Instead, Vreeland ordered his fleet to sail across Lake Huron towards Georgian Bay. Cowan’s own scouts learned of the American’s approach. A squadron of five torpedo boats made runs on the Americans, missing the battleships at the cost of three of their own. One ship was eventually abandoned, but the fifth returned to Owin Sound with word of an American fleet approaching. The term fleet is used very loosely on the Great Lakes, for what Vreeland commanded would have been a glorified squadron on the high seas. Cowan had little choice but to put his whole fleet to sail, including the damagedLeopard. The British Admiral had no reinforcements aside from a few gunboats that nominally defend the naval base at Owin Sound. These followed Cowan towards their destined fate.
On September 15, 1913, just a few days over a hundred years since the Battle of Lake Erie, the American and British Great Lake Navies clashed some twenty kilometers of the northwest tip of the Bruce Peninsula. The battle was joined at 1103, when the Port Royal fired the first shots of the battle. British torpedo boats charged the Americans under the cover of the big guns. The shells fell short and wide, hitting a destroyer, ironically named the USS Oliver Perry. The destroyer was knocked out of action by hits from the British battlecruiser’s functioning turret, and began to list at 1108. The torpedo boats finished off the Perry and hit three more destroyers. The destroyer screen was tight enough that British boats could not penetrate to threaten the two American battleships and two battlecruisers.
By 1145, the playing was over and both formations began battling each other at ranges less than two kilometers. A British and American destroyer destroyed each other at under 300 m distance. Just before midday, Vreeland passed between Bruce Peninsula and the British Fleet, crossing Cowan’s ‘T’. All heavy caliber guns fired upon the lead ship, the battleship Port Royal. Of the shots fired, seven hit the battleship, including one just below the bridge’s superstructure. Cowan and his command staff were killed in the explosion. More hits punctured the aft and destroyed the rudder. The Port Royal began to turn to the port, no longer under human control. Seeing this, the following ships changed course, not realizing just what happened.
Both fleets lined up broadsides against each other. Several of the British shots hit their mark, damaging the Minnesota and killing its own captain. Over a hundred were killed when a boiler exploded onboard the Susquehanna. The damage to the Americans was painful, but not life threatening. Three destroyers were gutted during the exchange, with the loss of several hundred more sailors. The British losses were far worse. The earlier wounds on the Leopard were opened again by a torpedo run by one of the American destroyers lost. Explosions below the water line broke the back of the battlecruiser, which snapped in half at 1205. Only a handful of survivors, and none of them officers, were plucked from the lake. The out-of-control Port Royal was hit five more times, with two shots ripping open spontoons and causing the ship to enter a dangerous twenty degree list to its port. At 1211, the battleship capsized and went down. An addition royal cruiser and four destroyers were lost in the fight. By 1300, the Battle of Lake Huron ended with the bulk of British fleet on the lake effectively annihilated, and the remaining wounded ships limped away from battle. Two destroyers steamed towards Detroit in hopes of breaking through to Lake Erie, but the remainder of the ships headed towards Owin Sound.
The two destroyers were sunk by shore batteries attempting to cross over to Lake Erie, and the remaining ships were bottled up in Owin Sound. Vreeland sailed his own fleet within range of the Sound and began bombarding the naval base. Little damage was caused to the base, and none of the warships suffered any more serious damage, though a light cruiser was hit and ended up beaching itself. Vreeland sailed back towards Lake Michigan, victorious in clearing Lake Huron of British forces. Several American submarines set up a blockade of Owin Sound, and supply ships used the Huron side of the York Peninsula to resupply American forces in Canada. The Great Lakes were cut in half, and British and Canadian naval forces on Lake Superior remained isolated. American warships sortied into Lake Superior and hunted down the British cruiser and destroyers stationed upon it by the middle of 1914. Taking control of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario would not be as easy.
War in the Atlantic
After winning control over Lake Huron, and securing the northern flank of the York Peninsula, the Navy and War Departments shifted their attention towards the Atlantic. A key part of War Plan Gray was to liberate Cuba and restore its rightful Union government. This was partially a political goal, of restoring a state, and partially a military goal, to use Havana and Guantanamo as naval bases to succeed in blockading the Confederacy. The move against Cuba did not happen until the Great War was already several months old. On December 1, 1913, the United States Atlantic Fleet departed New Amsterdam in route to Cuba. The fleet was commanded by one Vice Admiral Hugo Osterhaus, veteran of the Spanish War, and now commander of six of the Atlantic Fleet’s ten battleships. Along with the Vermont, Nevada, New Amsterdam, Indiana, Nebraska and Wyoming sailed some eight additional cruisers and twelve destroyers. The fleet carrier with it some four thousand marines, not for retaking Cuba, but for clearing the Bahamas of British presence before the invasion force could leave port.
On December 7, the American fleet sailed into the islands from the northeast, attempting to lure the British and the Confederate fleets into decisive combat. The two Entente fleets combined outgunned the Americans, but Osterhaus was gambling on catching the Confederate fleet before the British were to link up with it. The Confederate Atlantic Fleet comprised of four battleships; South Carolina, Sonora, Mississippi, Congress, along with the battlecruiser Manassas, six cruisers and seven destroyers. Upon learning of the American departure from New Amsterdam, Confederate Rear Admiral Robert Lawrence Hunley Jr. departed Augusta with the entire fleet. Messages have been sent to Kingstown in Jamaica to British Vice Admiral Doveton Sturdee, who immediately put to sea with his two battleships, three battlecruisers, ten cruiser and thirteen destroyers. If he could link up with his Confederate ally, then the American fleet would be easily repelled, if not destroyed.
American cruisers steaming ahead of the main fleet, bombarded a British outpost at Hopetown. Ten minutes of bombardment destroyed much of the small outpost, and let the British know the Americans were here. By setting up for battle this far north in the Bahamas, Osterhaus knew that the Confederates would be the first to respond. However, Hunley was no fool, and would wait off the Floridian coast until the British steamed within range. To find the American fleet and coordinate a two prong attack, Confederate sea planes took to the air. These slow aircraft, with minimal range, spotted the Atlantic Fleet at 931, steaming off the eastern coast of Grand Bahama.
It was here that the actual battle was decided. The seaplanes had primitive radio transmitters on board, and transmitted coordinates back using Morris Code. The information was passed on to both Confederate and British. Unfortunately, the pilot and lookout who spotted the Americans were recent volunteers, and transmitted the distance in statute miles instead of the nautical miles the British used, and marked the American’s course off by fifteen degrees. Upon relieving this intelligence, Sturdee ordered his own fleet on a course that would intercept this faulty data, and leave the British well away from the actual battle. The Confederates coming in from the northwest, however, found the Americans at 1305.
Osterhaus ordered his own fleet into action, taking his line of battleships along side the Confederate line. Hunley, who expected the British to show up from the south at any moment, obliged, and traded the first broadside at 1323. This first exchange resulted in many misses, despite hard gunnery training. Two battleships, the Nevada and the Congress received damage from the exchange, but not enough to knock either from battle. For the next two hours, both fleets maneuvered, attempting to cross each other’s “T”, while exchanging pot shots at each other. A Confederate destroyer strayed too close to the American line of battle, and was reduced to a new corral reef in a matter of minutes.
At 1423, the fleets lined up and exchanged another broadside. The C.S.S. Sonora took severe damage, forcing it to fall back in the line. After more than an hour of combat, Hunley began to wonder if his allies had not abandoned him to a numerically superior American fleet. One-on-one, the Americans could carry the day against either the Confederate Atlantic Fleet or the British Carribean Squadrons. Combined, the Americans stood less-than-even odds. Hunley’s luck changed at 1440, when the Confederates managed to cross the “T” on the Americans, and bring their broadsides to bear on the American lead ship. The Nevada took fifteen hits from shells larger than 300 mm, and dozens of smaller hits. The American battleship was torn to pieces during the exchange, taking most of the Confederate’s broadside. At 1442, the captain of the Nevada, Charles O’Baley, ordered abandon ship. Three hundred sailors escaped the rapidly sinking Nevada, and the captain and command staff were not among them. The sinking of the battleship forced the Americans to break formation to avoid collision with either sinking ship or floundering crew.
After the humiliation of being crossed, Osterhaus made his own gambit, copying some of the moves that took place at Mackinac. He ordered eight of his ten remaining destroyers to make torpedo runs on the Confederate battleships. This was usually a job reserved for lighter torpedo boats, but the Americans lacked any that day. Instead, the destroyed dodged Confederate gun fire to close into range. The most celebrated destroyer of the day, the Tomahawk closed into firing range of the Confederate flagship, the South Carolina. At 1510, the Tomahawk released its torpedo salvo just as a 300mm shell slammed amidship, destroying the destroyer with all hands. Three of the torpedoes hit the South Carolina. One was a dud, but the other two hit amidship on the South Carolina, ripping into its hull and breaking its beam. The Confederate battleship was lifted clean of the water, the explosion breaking the ship in half. The aft half sunk in a matter of minutes, with the bow half remaining afloat long enough for fifteen sailors to escape. With its sacrifice, the Tomahawk decapitated the Confederate fleet, killing Hunley and all his staff. Two additional cruisers and the Manassas were damaged during the run, while the cruiser Atlanta was also sent to the bottom.
Now in chaos, the Confederates attempt to withdrawal and reform their lines. The Americans pressed on the attack, making another broadside exchange, causing addition damage to Confederate battleships, with the Sonora losing electrical power. One of the earlier damaged cruisers, the New Orleans capsizes due to damages. The Americans were not immune from damage, the USS Wyoming had its aft turrets knocked out and was reduced to half speed. At 1800, the Confederates began to retreat south, remaining ships rallying around the Mississippi, the least damaged battleships in their fleet. Osterhaus ordered a cruiser and two destroyers to remain behind to pick up survivors, from both sides, while the bulk of the Atlantic Fleet pursued the Confederates through the night.
The battle continued at 700 on the following day, when Osterhaus orders his fleet to split into two squadrons. The first squad will run up along side the Confederates, while the Vice Admiral will take his squad and cross the Confederate “T”. At 716, Osterhaus trapped the Confederates in his box, unleashing maximum firepower. The Congress began to list at twenty degrees and the Manassas capsized.Sonora simply exploded when rounds pierced its magazine. The explosion was powerful enough to severely damage a Confederate destroyer steaming too close. At 843, with three Confederate battleships sunk, Sturdee finally found the battle. The British were outnumbered and outgunned, but caught one of the American squadrons away from its fellows. The British pass resulted in minimum damaged to the HMS Lionheart, and one American cruiser sunk.
As the battered Confederate remains joined the fresh British forces, the British Vice Admiral ran up colors calling for a truce. Sturdee wished to fish survivors from the water, now very bloody and infested with sharks. Osterhaus agreed to a four hour cease fire, after which, he would continue his attack on the Confederates and the British. During this break, the Americans managed to get what fires that burned under control, and repaired one of the Wyoming’s damaged turrets. Sturdee assessed the damage to the Confederates, and determined that he could not hold the Bahamas without the loss of most of his own forces. Under such circumstances, he had orders from the Admiralty to yield the islands for the time being, until a naval force could be assembled to retake the Bahamas. At 1030, the British and remaining Confederate ships limped back to Kingstown, leaving Osterhaus victorious.
The following day, Osterhaus began his own attack on Nassau. One of his own cruisers were sunk and the New Amsterdam damaged by Nassau’s coastal defenses, including torpedo boats. Three thousand marines made it ashore on the island and continued to battle the few British defenders in Nassau until December 11, when the British surrendered the city and island. With Nassau secure, Osterhaus has cleared a path to Cuba and secured a base to raid the Confederate coast and tighten the blockade.
The United States Navy continued its operations, landing twenty thousand soldiers in southern Cuba on January 9, 1914. Guantanamo Bay was heavily defended by Confederate soldiers, and the city was not taken as easily as Port Sinoloa. It would require a further two months of conflict until ‘Gitmo’, as the United States Marines and Soldiers dubbed it, surrendered. Only the fact that the United States Navy, and others, controlled the waters around Cuba did the city surrender. Without naval control, they might very well of held out for months. The role of the Navy is obvious, but the role for “others” on the side of America as well as other nations is a more privatized part of warfare.
Privateering, a practice that has largely died out during the latter half of the 19th Century made a sudden revival with the outbreak of the Great War. The United States Congress issued more than seven hundred letters of marque during 1913, mostly against Confederate commerce, but a few wealthier ship owners were issued letters against Spanish, Swedish and even British shipping. The U.S. Congress did not issue any against France, since it had not declared war on the French Republic. The French, likewise, returned the favor. For Americans, a bond of some $100,000 dollars must be posted for the “good behavior” of the privateers, and to keep them from exceeding the bounds of their letters of marque. In 1913, there were no specialized privateering vessels in existence, and most would-be privateers took to modifying their own fishing boats, cargo tramps and even a few yachts. These ships worked well against Confederate commerce along the coast, and even raiding Canadian ships off the coast of Newfoundland. However, against British merchants they quickly lost effectiveness with the rapid implement of the convoy system. Any privateers that steamed within range of the Royal Navy escorts were simply destroyed.
Against the British, by 1914, the United States Navy took to Commerce Raiding. The difference between privateering and raiding is that in the former case, the goal is to capture the ship, and in the latter it is to simply sink it. Some American battlecruisers, and even the battleship Montana sailed lone missions, set on destroying Britain’s vital link to the rest of the world, especially its beef producing empire in Patagonia. Cruiser divisions of two to four cruisers also hunted primarily British shipping in the North Atlantic, Pacific and Far East. American submarines squadrons played a lesser role, however they operated further away, using German ports in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean as bases of operation.
The Confederate Congress issued its own letters of marque, some three hundred in 1913 alone. Confederate privateers focused almost solely on American shipping, with German merchants simply being out of range. Confederates operated along the Atlantic Seaboard, using Bermuda as a base, as well as up and down the Pacific, operating out of French Mexico. Confederate privateers took some fifty American ships in the first year of the war, compared to the Americans’ two hundred and five ships, and tens of millions of dollars worth of trade goods. For the most part, neither side netted much currency or specie from the raids, instead the privateers profited by selling captured goods and ships. When a privateer took a ship they believed better than theirs, they would modify it into another privateering vessel. The largest take by an American privateer was the C.S.S. Huxley, a Confederate Frigate. The most powerful privateer of the war was Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts; he used his family’s wealth and political clout to purchase an old destroyer recently decommissioned by the navy. The ship was obsolete in naval action, but served well for taking Confederate ships. The Luck of the Irish as the ship was called, even tangled with a Confederate light cruiser and destroyer, evading them through a series of maneuvers in the Florida Keys.
In Europe, privateering was banned by the 1856 Declaration of Paris because the difference between a pirate and a privateer was a little on the subtle side. Instead, the European participants took to simply destroying the other side’s commerce. The two biggest players in the game were Germany and Britain. The German High Seas Fleet did sent sorties of cruisers after commerce of Sweden and Britain in the North Sea and North Atlantic, with some using Boston as a base, but the biggest impact in commerce raiding was the U-Boat. These submarines operated either alone early in the war, but with the implementation of the convoy system, they began to sortie in squadron strength. The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet tended to interdict most commerce heading into Germany under belligerent flags, but this was not enough to blockade Germany. The Royal Navy also had to divide their forces to both sides of the Atlantic, and neutral powers still traded with Germany. Though Britain could stop many, it dared not provoke the VOC, which had its own convoy system. To combat U-Boats, the British introduced the Q-Ship. These were armed freighters that lay in wait, looking harmless, and waiting for U-boats to commence surface attacks before revealing the 200 mm guns hidden on the deck. The Germans countered this by attacking more and more beneath the waves.
The French raided and destroyed what they could, but they had too much of their resources devoted to the war on land. The Italian Federation dominated the Mediterranean, not only destroying Spanish, French, and latter Ottoman, shipping, but Italian Marines raided the Spanish coast. With its limited coast line, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had fewer opportunities to engage in economic warfare. The Austrian Antilles were lost to the British early in the war, taking away their base in the western Atlantic. Several private commerce raiders operated out of Austrian West Africa, and were little more than pirates plaguing all shipping in the Gulf of Guinea, including their allies. The Swedes had their own raiders, plaguing any German shipping in the Baltic Sea. Their raiders were far fewer, since the Swedish Navy devoted itself to battling the German Navy, and interrupting the resupply of German soldiers on the west coast of Sweden.
All powers in question took an active role in the so-called “Battle of the Atlantic”. The over all naval strategy of the Central Powers was to cut-off Britain from its empire and to link up in the North Atlantic. Millions of tonnes of British shipping were lost in the battle, along with hundreds of thousands of German, American along with French and Confederate shipping. Tens of thousands of merchant men died in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. Only on occasion would commerce raiders be bothered to pluck crews from the water. Privateers generally took the crews captive, delivering them to authorities in their home ports. Though the German and British raiders were ruthless, American and Confederate commerce raiders did take great pains to rescue their victims, and returned them to internment camps back home. These internees were traded between the United States and the Confederacy, one for one. Upon returning home, they often enlisted right into their navies for payback, either as sailors or as decoys or North America’s own version of the Q-ships.
Air War
The Great War was the first major war to see the use of air power. In 1913, this was hardly powerful. The United States, Britain, Germany and Italy used heavier-than-air machines to survey and scout over the network of trenches that began to appear in the fall of 1913 along narrow fronts. The use of aircraft as weapons was not until later. During 1913, the most that was exchanged between enemy scouts was the shots from pistols and carbines at distances to great to matter.
Starting that same year, when the aeroplane took a greater and greater role in the skies during the Great War, a sort of war profiteering rose outside of the City of Luxembourgh. The airstrip was totally make-shift, and at first was nothing more than a straight stretch of flat grass well outside of the city. The only remarkable features was a roadside pub some three hundred meters from the field. On November 12, Flight Lieutenant Samuel Winston, his observation plane shot up, made an emergency landing in the neutral Grand Duchy. Once on the ground, Winston hiked to the pub, ordered a pint of bitter and asked about local mechanics. Two days later, with his aeroplane repaired, Winston returned to the British Aerodrome on the French side of the border, telling his story.
Despite the fact that the United Provinces were neutral at the time, both British and German aircraft overflew the Grand Duchy of Luxembourgh. The French veered well clear of antagonizing the Dutch, but the British reckoned that if Germany was allowed to fly over, then so would they. At the time, and for many years after, Dutch law had clear definition of territory when it came to the sky, so legally speaking, there was no conflict. Provided that the war stayed outside of his Province, the Grand Duke would look the other way as two rival powers fought each other. During the course of 1913 and 1914, more damaged planes made landings at the airstrip.
By 1914, several more pubs have risen to service the influx of Entente and Central Power pilots making stops at Luxembourgh. Often after patrols, both German and British pilots would land at the airport at Luxembourg in search of unauthorized rest and relaxation. Discipline was tight around the combatant’s own aerodromes, and lacked in the way of entertainment. Beer was plentiful, but tightly rationed do to the war effort. Dutch breweries had no such limitations. Before the year was out, dozens of pubs, bars, casinos and even the odd brothel materialized around the airstrip. Workshops began to appear as well, as mechanics rushed outside of the city to work on the aircraft from both sides of the war. Even aviation fuel was sold.
At first, the Luxembourger officials turned a blind eye to the occasional landings, but as word about Luxembourg spread, the locals soon faced the prospect of both Germans and British ending up at the same pub. When the stories were told and the songs sang, the pilots would bid farewell, wishing the other luck in a may-the-better-man-win spirit. A few pilots would even seek out worthy opponents to challenge in the skies over the trenches. The city police force was tripled around the airfields, but to little avail. While in neutral territory, the two opposing forces had little interest in fighting, and more so in fraternizing. They traded stories about combats, about home life, and even the odd bottle of booze from each respective nation. British scotch was highly prized by the Germans. There was plenty of card playing to be had, and again the officials made absolute certain no cheats were permitted access to casinos. With a de facto truce in effect, the last thing anyone wanted was for bad blood to be spilt. Since these detours were without authorization, technically the pilots were absent without leave. Should their commanding officers ever learn of their stop over, and their fraternizing with the enemy, severe punishments would be met out. Never had any of the pilots been executed after being caught, for skilled pilots were very rare in the early days of flight. Instead, they were often transferred to alternate theaters of the war, one lacking a neutral power to cater to them.
Grinding into a Second Year
Though some predicted short wars, and a war that would end by the New Year, the Great War was far from over by late December. The Germans had ran smack into France’s Iron Drapes, coming to a halt and digging in as reinforcements were trained and rushed to the front. On the Eastern Front, Germans and Swedes were locked into more dynamic warfare as the more open spaces made trenches fewer and far between. Around key cities, such as Warsaw and Krakow, trenches were plentiful as both sides, with the Poles aiding the Swedes, fought ferociously for control.
Further south, the Swedes held the advantage over Austro-Hungary, in that this front was within Hungarian territory exclusively. Germany had to divert their own forces to prop up their southern ally. Italy also came to the aid of the Austrians, as well as held their own on the Western Front, though were still far from taking either Monaco or Nice. The Italian Navy did hold the advantage in the Mediterranean, but not to the point of keeping out the British. A naval battle between Italy and Spain resulted with a decisive Italian victory off the Catalonia Coast in November of 1913.
In North America, the Americans were totally on the offensive, with all their armies occupying enemy territory. The Red River Valley was in American hands, as was much of northern Maine and parts of the York Peninsula. Advances in the west have pushed further west and north from the Columbia River. In the south, American forces close in on the Rappahanock River as well as marched up the Tennessee River. The Confederates put all their resources into hold on, and the American blockade was just starting to take its toll when 1914 began.
At the start of 1914, the Central Powers’ star was apparently on the rise. With the exception of the ineptitude within the decrepit Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Central Powers had the bulk of their armed forces on the soil of their enemies. In Europe, German forces in the west were camped upon French territory. Much of Alsace-Lorraine was already under their thumb. The French, with the aid of the British Expeditionary Force, managed to establish themselves along the Iron Drapes, dug in and not about to allow the Germans to breakthrough. The Italians were also on French soil, though the front only extended, at most, nine kilometers inside France’s border.
The Eastern Front saw the Entente’s sole victory streak. Swedish forces moved across Poland-Lithuania and occupied parts of Austrian Galicia. Poland-Lithuania itself it divided between Swedish and German forces. After electing a Swede to its throne, Poland-Lithuania was fully in the fold of the Entente. The Kaiser’s primary goal of the war, to put an imperial relative upon the throne, was now out of reach. In a way, Germany has already lost the war, for they could no longer force the Polish parliament to elect the Kaiser’s cousin. However, this did not mean the Kaiser could not depose Christian I and replace him with a German.
The British and Canadians were holding the line against American aggression. By early 1914, despite poor weather, the Red River Valley was now fully under American control, as was northern Maine. The Americans made little gains on the York Peninsula, American advances outside of Iroquois stopped at Stoney Creek. Advances on the other side of the country have pushed slowly west and north of the Columbia River.
Gains against the Confederacy have been costly east of the Mississippi. In the far western deserts, the Confederates have been forced back, with a good portion of the Confederate State of Arizona in American hands, as well as parts of Durango. Landings on Cuba have yet to secure Guantanamo Bay, but the blockade of the Confederacy was in place and slowly taking its impact. With the lowest industrial output of the Entente, the Confederate war effort was most susceptible to blockades. However, this does not equate success on the battlefield, since the Confederates have held against the American tide on both the Ohio and Potomac Fronts.
Life in the Trenches
The euphoria and optimism of 1913, has been washed away by the winter rain and snow. The Great War differed from other wars in that, for the first time, the very landscape has been altered for hundreds of kilometers in length. A thin network of trenches, separated by a devastated no-man’s lands, served as the frontier between warring powers. Not all of the fronts had trenches. Along the Colorado Front, and in Poland-Lithuania, large areas made static warfare impossible. Any dug-in location could be bypassed. However, on narrow fronts, such as the Western or Potomac Fronts, a few defenders well dug in could hold of a much larger aggressor.
War, what was seen as a grand adventure by those too young to remember the last big war. The generation of the Franco-Prussian War were old, and those still serving were now Generals and Marshals. The United States Army had many of its higher ranking officers serving in the Spanish War, some fifteen years previous. That was paled in comparison, as the Spanish were easily pushed aside. Though with Spain in the Entente, no doubt they had their eyes on regaining territory lost to the Americans, and not just the Marianas in 1898. For the rest of the nations’ youth, war was something desirable.
The enthusiasm quickly drowned in the morass of mud collecting at the bottom of two meter deep trenches. The reality of war was, when not terrifying, very, very boring. Siting in the trenches for days and weeks on end, with the only sunlight hitting them when the sun was more or less overhead. Life inside the trenches was dark, dank and lice-infested. The parasites, that many combatants from middle class upbringing have never seen, plagued the soldiers more than enemy artillery. Soldiers rotated off the lines would undergo delousing, only to have the pests crawling all over them the moment they went back to the front.
In some areas, the frontline remained stagnant long enough for some comforts of home to make their way in. Soldiers in the trenches had little to do, and a bored soldier did command no good. Many were put to work inside the trenches, digging out bombardment shelters and underground barracks. Along with the barracks came other aspects of a normal army base, including mess halls and even recreation halls. Cards were the most popular way to pass the time. Few sections of the trenches even had motion picture projectors, though electricity was spotty.
At first, the dreaded call for “over the top” was just that, dreaded. But after months of sitting idle in the shells, taking cover only when the other side decided to lob rounds their way, even the most timid soldier was eager to charge. Anything was better than the endless monotony. Death was preferable over stale air, muddy beds and another round of beans from the mess. Even if they were not killed or mangled in the mad dash across no-man’s land, an order over-the-top could lead to the sought after breakthrough, and bring the soldiers one step closer to returning home.
The Western Front
Germany’s Plan 6 was slowed to a crawl, but not defeated. The largest obstacle in the path of France’s Northern Wing, was that of Verdun. The fortress of Verdun served as the northern most flank in a formidable obstacle along Germany and France’s common border. Construction on Verdun dated back into the 19th Century, following the disastrous defeat during the Franco-Prussian War, which ultimately lead to the founding of the German Empire. In 1891, the French government allocated the funding and resource to build a wall of fortresses from Verdun to Besancon, to prevent the German from ever penetrating deep into French territories again. In future wars, the French Army developed the strategy of trading land for time in Alsace and Lorraine, while the so-called iron drapes were being lowered into place over that window of invasion.
The Germans knew the fortifications were not solid, and developed several of their own plans on how to deal with it. Plan 6 would have the Imperial Armies move to flank both the northern most and southern most of the Iron Drapes, and then proceed to attack the line from east and west. Their original plans called for several weeks of fighting before France’s defenses were pummeled into submission. This failed to come to fruition in 1913, when the French Armies were in place at both northern and southern most extremities. This move by the French insured that the Great War would last for years instead of months. Initial advances by the Germans devolved into trench warfare throughout 1913, and by the start of 1914, the Germans were looking to break the deadlock.
By May 1, over two hundred thousand German soldiers were massed to the southeast of Verdun. German strategies have changed from pounding the line to conquering it one fortress at a time. An hour before sunrise on the 1st, tens of thousands of pieces of artillery on a stretch of the front more than twenty kilometers long, opened up on Verdun and the surrounding fortifications. Over the next seventy-two hours, more than a hundred thousand shells fell on the French lines. Some German officers were confident that nothing could survive. They were sadly disappointed when, on May 4, the German front along that same length of the trench swarmed out of safety and across no-man’s land. At 06:15, the French proved themselves very much alive and able to fight.
The initial swarm was turned back, and with the Germans on the run, the French went over the top in an attempt to overtake the Germans before they reached their own trenches. This back-and-forth charging, so common in the Great War, lasted for the better part of the day. By sunset, the Germans were firmly in the forward most trenches of the French, with twelve thousand of their own and eleven thousand French dead between the lines. The commander of the German Forces at Verdun, Crown Prince William, was quite pleased by the day’s actions. Following the actions of the 4th, and the disappointing survival of the French, a further two days of bombardment were ordered before the German continued the attack. These two days did little to damage the French positions and gave them more than enough time to bring up reinforcements.
The delay was so disastrous, that a further hundred thousand soldiers from both sides lay either dead or wounded between May 7 and May 13. Of his initial 200,000 soldiers, William had only 130,000 able to fight by the 14th. The French losses were even greater, with General Philippe Petain having only 103,000 soldiers able to fight. Of those, tens of thousands suffered from fatigue and shell-shock. Moral on the French side was eroding faster than the German’s. On the 14th, further shelling was launched at Verdun and surrounding French batteries. William made use of aircraft to drop bombs on French guns, and upon Verdun. On May 15, the Germans made their breakthrough.
At dawn, yet another offensive swarmed over the Trenches, much closer to the city than when they started. Several of the forts ringing Verdun were in ruins, one of which, Fort Douaumont, had its entire eastern face destroyed. German soldiers easily breached the fallen wall and captured the fort. Fort Vaux was taken by a similar storming, though at a much higher cost. Fort Souville fell the following day. Petain and his staff were in the process of planning counter-attacks when an aerial bomb found his headquarters. Petain was severely wounded and several key members of his staff were killed. This lone bomber did more to win Verdun than did all the German dead laying on the wounded lands east of the Maas.
Fort Belleville was stormed on May 16, thus breaching the final ring around Verdun. The French government, after hearing news of Petain’s wounding, ordered that the French Army move west of the Maas, else risk being cut off from retreat by the Germans advancing on Verdun from the northeast. William did hope to take the city and encircle the tens of thousands of French soldiers and either force a surrender or annihilate them. Many French soldiers were reluctant to retreat, but hearing news that the British Expeditionary Force was moving from the central sectors of the Western Front, mainly from further south along the Maas, and between it and the Moselle River. The movement of British forces from here weakened the line, but was deemed an acceptable risk considering the amount of reserves the Germans depleted in taking Verdun.
The first German units marched into Verdun, only an hour behind the retreating French, on May 17. To rob the Germans of any possibility of following up their victorious advance, the French destroyed the bridges linking Verdun to the lands west of the Maas. The Crown Prince ordered boats to be captured or brought up to the Maas, and planned to attempt the crossing on the 19th. However, orders from Berlin delayed this advance until May 20, then May 25, then the first week of June, and finally indefinitely. The German High Command sited the lack of reserves on the Western Front, as well as need for them in Poland-Lithuania as reasons for stopping the advance at Verdun. Though the advance came to a halt on May 17, the actual battle continued until the start of August, as French, British and even Spanish units attempted their own crossing of the Maas, with disastrous results. Upon taken their new forward positions, the German guns had the Maas targeted for such an eventuality. All large scale attempts to cross ended in blood baths, but smaller raids were successful
On June 16, the British attempted a crossing of the Maas thirty kilometers to the south. After establishing a beachhead, the Crown Prince moved his own forces into position against the beachhead. The battle for control of the Maas continued until June 29, when the British finally withdrew across the river. The Fall of Verdun did not end the war in favor of the Germans, but it did force the iron drapes a little more open, as well as force Entente forces on the east bank of the Maas, south of Verdun, to withdrawal to the south and east, further adding to German advances, to thirty-seven kilometers on some portions of the central sector. After a little more than three months of fighting, more than a hundred thousand lay dead and three hundred thousand more wounded. It was one of the most costly defeats for the French, and costly victories for the Germans.
Poland-Lithuania
The Eastern Front had far more open spaces, and allowed for cavalry to be put in use. In the Trenches of France, Kentucky and Virginia, Cavalry did not even exist. Those horse soldiers in these fronts fought dismounted, and in the trenches. More commonly, in the North American Theater, cavalry fought out west. France did make use of Cavalry in North Africa, in their failed invasion of Libya.
German and Swedish cavalry units fought in small unit skirmishes. Any attempt to bring cavalry to bear in force on the enemy only resulted in thousands of horses and men being chopped up by entrenched machine guns. Between the cities of Warsaw and Lodz, cavalry ranged far and wide. In an attempt to make better use of cavalry, the German army armored several automobiles, mounted them with machine guns, and used them as a vanguard. This prospect failed, as cars tended to bog down in the snow of the Polish winter and mud of the Polish spring.
In April of 1914, the German Empire began its disastrous attempt to invade Sweden Proper. Controlling the waters around Germany’s Danish states, the Imperial Army massed hundreds of thousands of soldiers around Kopenhagen. On April 13, an armada of transports crossed the straits, landing near Landskrona. On a seven kilometer long beach front, a hundred thousand German soldiers attempted to break out and capture the port of Helsingborg to the north, and race across southern Sweden towards the south.
The Swedish campaign was intended to knock Sweden out of the war. With most of their army in the lands that were once Russia, the German High Command believed that if they could get a hold on the northern shores of the Baltic Sea, they could race to Stockholm and force the Swedes out. As we all know, this was a spectacular failure. Sweden did not leave its coast undefended, especially on their side of the ‘Oresund’ (the Sound). German forces did not simply wade ashore in the cold water. Instead, they were greeted by only a few thousand, well dug in defenders and their machine guns.
The Swedish Campaign lasted for three months, with Germans unable to extend their front lines much further than day one. Additional Swedish forces moved into to bolster defenses. The German High Seas Fleet was of little use, for only a week after the landings occurred, their guns were soon turned back to sea. Even shelling fortifications with three hundred millimeter guns failed to destroy the Swedish defenders. Answering Sweden’s call for aid, the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet set out in the North Sea to engage the High Seas Fleet.
The two main bodies did not engage each other in 1914. Instead, a series of squadron-sized battles took place: Dogger Bank on April 29, and Dover Straight on May 17. The former was a German victories, with three British cruisers sunk, while the latter was a decisive British Victory, where the Home Fleet annihilated a German cruiser squadron. Both navies attempted to gain the advantage on the North Sea and force the other side to fight on their own terms. Arguably, the Home Fleet could have won, and won decisively if not for the fact that the Royal Navy had a fleet half the size of the Home Fleet guarding the Western Atlantic. The German-American alliance successfully divided the attentions of Britain’s admiralty. Attempts to recall ships from Canada would only endanger their main base at Halifax.
On July 17, the German Army began to evacuate its Landskrona pocket, conceding victory in the North to Sweden. The Swedes never made any attempt to invade northern Germany, mostly due to their lack of a large, blue water fleet. Sweden had a sizable naval force to defend the Baltic Sea, but even it was no match for the High Seas Fleet. The only reason Germany did not destroy the Swedish Navy is, because like Britain, the Germans were also divided between two foes on the seas.
Colonial Wars
The wars in the European colonies were more of an after though that anything else. Despite the attempts to block each of the warring nations’ ports, attempts to strip them of their colonies was not pursued as eagerly. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had lost the Austrian Antilles to the British by 1914, as well as parts of Austrian West Africa. As with their heartland, the Germans were forced to take up the slack in West Africa, which it too had lost land to the British. The Germans and British again clashed in the Coral Sea, with British designs on Kaiserwilhemland thwarted on February 9, 1914. Likewise, a German invasion of Australia was highly impracticable.
The Pacific islands holdings of the two, such as the Marshals and Samoa, were largely ignored. If not for the news reports coming in from around the world, an inhabitant of these islands would not even know a war consumed the Great Powers. The Polynesians living upon these islands were indifferent to the wars of the foreigners. Actions in North Africa were far from successful for any attacker. The French invasion of Italian Libya failed, and likewise did the Italian invasion of Egypt.
By far, the largest theater in the colonial war was that of South America. With the Germans in their River Platte Colony, and the British in their Patagonian Colony, the south of that continent faced extensive campaigning. The region was most vital for the British, for it was a pastoral region, with large ranches of both cattle and sheep. Much of the island nation’s meat came from Patagonia. Miniature trench warfare took place on the coasts of the colonies, while the interior was more open to cavalry, which existed in small numbers away from the major fronts. The Germans did not want the beef (for they received much of their own from the United States) as they simply wished to deny it to their enemies.
For the first year of the war, beef from British Patagonia continued to flow across the Atlantic to supply the British Expeditionary Force, as well as the British people. As part of their plan of action against the British, the Germans were intent to cut off this trade. For the most part, they succeeded along the South American coast. Operating out of their River Platte colony, the German navy had control of the coast line between Patagonia and southern Brazil. However, this was not to stop the British from simply sailing across the South Atlantic to southern Africa and sailing north from there. Many U-boats operated out of Germany West Africa, but they were far from controlling the coast. In order to bottle up Patagonia, the German Navy made a move for the Falkland Islands. These islands were situated far off the Patagonian coast, and controlling them would severe Britain’s supply line.
The attempt was made on August 4, 1914, more than a year after the war began. A German fleet of cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats encountered the local British squadron at 11:47, local time. What followed was an utter disaster for the Germans. In the space of seven minutes, the German South Atlantic Fleet lost four cruisers and three destroyers along with the senior staff, with an additional twelve ships damaged, effectively reducing their forces by more than half. The British suffered only one cruiser damaged and four dead, seventeen wounded. The British pursued the Germans, forcing three of the damaged German ships to surrender. A fourth was scuttled off the coast of Patagonia, with its crew taken prisoner. The Falklands engagement was a decisive British victory, and lead to Germany losing control of the South American coast. The surviving Germans ships would remained bottled up in the River Platte until 1916.
The Ohio Front
Under the overall command of General John Pershing, the American forces on the Ohio Front had crossed the Ohio River and advanced into Kentucky following the declaration of war. However, the Confederates quickly threw up defenses to slow the Americans and eventually stop them. Like in Alsace-Lorraine, Kentucky was a mess of trenches. The western parts of Virginia (west of the Appalachians) fell much quicker before the Confederates could stop the invasion. The Ohio Front was critical for the Confederate war efforts, for western Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee were the store houses for much of the country’s coal reserves. The Americans wanted it for the very same reason. Coal mines in Virginia were quickly turned over to private business by the United States government and put into use.
On a more personal note for the soldiers, Kentucky was also home to the finest whiskey the Confederates produced. The corn fields were put to the torch rather than be allowed to fall into American hands, but distilleries in Wheeling, Virginia and the world famous Daniel Boone Distillery in Owensboro were captured, with barrels of booze still in tact. It was a moral boost early in the war, but the soldiers had consumed the stockpile long before 1913 was out. When trench warfare took over from the general advance, morale crashed and the alcohol was needed now more than ever. With many coal fields (though far from all) in American hands, Pershing began to set his sites on overrunning Tennessee and entering Alabama to take Birmingham. The Confederate capital was built after the Civil War and was named in honor of the first Confederate President, David Birmingham. Taking the capital would be the easy part, reaching it would not.
One of the bloodiest battles of the Great War occurred in western Tennessee between July 3, to October 21, 1914, between the United States of the Confederate States. The origin of this campaign occurred the previous year, when war was declared, and the United States First Army crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. The drive through western Kentucky met with little resistance, for the Confederates were not fully mobilized by the time the U.S. declared war. The crossing of the Ohio was done completely by boat and barge, with the United States Navy’s brown water fleet holding off Confederate gunboats. Though not fully prepared for war, the Confederates managed to destroy ever bridge crossing the Ohio River. The 14th Division, 1st Army entered the city of Paducah without opposition only two days after the war started. By the time the 1st Army reached the Tennessee Border, they ran into Confederate fortifications. Attempts in September of 1913, to dig out the entrenched Confederate Army of the Ohio met with over ten thousand American soldiers dead. The 1st Army dug in a few kilometers south of the Kentucky-Tennessee border and waited.
For the “Big Push”, 1st Army commander, General John ‘Black Jack’ Pershing (called ‘Black Death’ by the Confederates) brought forth the 14th Infantry Division and 21st Cavalry Division (dismounted) to the front lines in Benton County to spearhead the assault. Commanding these divisions were Lt. Generals Newton Baker and Samuel Arnold respectively. Both generals served in the Spanish War, along with Pershing, during the invasion of Puerto Rico. Baker distinguished himself by winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, while Arnold was the heir to the Arnold Legacy, stretching back to Benedict Arnold of the Revolution and Second Anglo-American War. On the Confederate side, the Army of the Ohio in the vicinity of the Tennessee River had two divisions; the 31st South Carolina and 12thSonora, commanded by Major General James E. Sylvester III and Lt. General Robert Samson respectively.
On July 3, 1914, the United States army massed some forty thousand soldiers on a stretch of trenches five kilometers wide. In that same sector, the Confederates had only half. At 06:00 hours local time, over a thousand pieces of artillery, ranging from 75mm field guns to a 250 mm battery, opened up on this thin section of the front. For three days, several thousand tonnes of high explosive and shrapnel rained down on Confederate lines. General Pershing hoped the intense bombardment would rip the heart out of Confederate defenses. In his headquarters, kilometers behind the line, the Dutch War Correspondent, Hermann Overkirk wrote that soldiers believed the push would be as simply as walking across No-Man’s Land and jumping into the enemy trenches.
On July 6, at 08:00 the whistle was blown, and tens of thousands of American soldiers went over the top and charged into No-Man’s Land. Not only had the bombardment failed to destroyed the Confederate lines, it also failed to even break the barbed wire obstacles. When the offensive reached half-way to Confederate trenches, Confederate machine guns opened up on the advance. Thousands of American fell in that first advance. Some soldiers dug in, while others retreated. With a general retreat in order, the Confederates went over the top in hopes of running down the Americans before they re-entered their trenches. They failed, and fell by the thousands as well.
On July 7, a second bombardment, this one lasting from 21:00 to 06:30 on July 8. This time, Pershing held off the advance until after the Confederates poked their heads up. At 06:50, the bombardment started back up, catching many Confederates manning their machine guns. This second bombardment stopped after fifteen minutes, after which Americans went over the top again. This time, Americans entered the Confederate trenches, capturing the first two lines. An assault against a third line was broken, but the Americans held the second line. On July 9, the first reinforcements, the 103rdNevada National Guard Brigade, the first of several brigades that would be thrown into the grinder.
Two more advances, on July 15, and July 24, managed to push the front line southward by almost a total of one kilometer, at the cost of ten thousand American and seven thousand Confederate casualties. A third assault on August 4, was broken by Confederate artillery, which was followed by a Confederate attack that retook a section of the front, one hundred meters deep. The front remained static for most of the month of August while both sides brought up reinforcements and munitions. During this lull in the battle, both sides raided and counter-raided each other’s lines. Above them, American and Confederate aircraft dueled at altitude of hundreds of meters. On the Tennessee River itself, the brown water fleet pressed against Confederate defenses and gunboats.
On September 3, 1914, Pershing ordered a new weapon deployed. In the early morning hours, dozens of canisters of chlorine were opened above the trenches, the gas carried southward by a breeze. One hour after the gas attack, General Arnold’s 21st Cavalry (dismounted) lead an assault of fifty thousand men along a several kilometer wide stretch of the front line. A majority of the Confederate defenders were incapacitated or killed by the Chlorine, which allowed Arnold to break through the lines and push further south. His attack was not a route, however. The effects of the chemical weapons were not as wide-spread as originally planned. Confederate artillery slowed the advance, but not before it punched through to a depth of ten kilometers.
On September 8, more Chlorine was deployed, and this time the breakthrough reached as far as Camden, the county seat for Benton County. The advance was once again stopped, this time only one kilometer short of Camden. When the Americans attempted a third chemical attack on September 27, the Confederates have already deployed counter-measures. They wore crude gas masks, an idea borrowed from the Western Front in Europe, where Germany was also using chemical weapons. The Americans were so surprised by Confederate resistance, that the Confederate actually managed to push them back two kilometers.
The last big push of the battle occurred on October 12. Again chlorine was used, along with two days worth of bombardment. By this time, Pershing had seriously depleted his war stocks and knew he could make only one last push before the winter began to creep upon his army. On October 14, seventy thousand Americans went over the top, and, with the help of a rolling barrage from artillery, managed to sweep over the Confederate lines. On October 15, the 124th New Hampshire Brigade along with elements of the 14th Infantry Division, entered Camden. The bombardment of the city was so severe, that Confederate General Samson was wounded during the attack. He was unable to be evacuated from his position and fell into American hands that day. Attempts by medics to save him failed, and Samson died the following day.
The offensive did not stop until it was ten kilometers south of Camden. By October 19, the Americans were exhausted, and Pershing made the decision to halt the advance and dig in. On October 21, he called a halt to all offensive operations. He would spent the winter of 1914-15 replenishing both his army and its weaponry. The battle cost some one hundred thirty thousand American casualties (of which twenty percent died). A further seventy thousand Confederates were recorded as casualties during the Battle of the Tennessee River. As a result of the battle, the United States Army was firmly entrenched in western Tennessee and in control of the lower Tennessee River. The Confederates were never able to dislodge Pershing from his gains. Any dreams of taking the capital, much less cutting the Confederacy into two were dashed as a result.
Though neutral, the Dutch public was still interested in how the war progressed. Newspapers across the Provinces, and the whole of the Commonwealth related the exploits of armies, generals and even the common soldier. For the Dutch media, gaining access to the front was difficult. The French wanted no part of the idea, and there was little love-loss between Britain and the Netherlands. Even Germany was wary of reporters, fearing they were either spies or would accidently pass along valuable information to spies. The only nation that openly welcomed Dutch reporters was the United States.
In fact, the United States, after a century of humiliation, was more than eager to show the world its power. Reporters imbedded at the front, or near it, gave the war in North America excellent documentation, as was the case with Brazilian reporter Hermann Overkirk. Overkirk managed to get himself attached to the 1st Army along the Ohio Front, and to the offices of its commanding officer. His reports gave readers across the Commonwealth a detailed account of the horrors of modern warfare.
Throughout 1913, a static line developed within the Confederate State of Kentucky. It was not until 1914, at the Battle of the Tennessee River that the initial dead lock was broken. Over a year leading to the battle, Overkirk wrote and wired his stories of despair back home. One side would shell the other side all week, in vein hope of smashing a hole in the line. When the dust cleared, and the attackers ‘went over the top’, the defenders would crawl out of their well fortified subterranean homes, take up machine guns, and mow down the attackers. When the attackers retreated, the defenders attacked, only to get cut down by the attacker’s machine guns once they were safely back in their trenches. Tens of thousand of lives were thrown away in these futile charges, that seldom managed to take the first line of trenches. War had gone a long way since the days of Napoleon, and industrialization made man a far more efficient killing machine.
In 1915, before the Commonwealth was drug into the conflict, Overkirk wrote the most preposterous story to ever see publication. He stood within view of the front, invited by Pershing, who wanted the world to witness this great breakout. What he saw, nobody believed at first. He saw large, noisy, armored beasts crawling across no-man’s land. ‘Armored cavalry’ they were called. This was an allusion to the desire to open a gap in the lines for more traditional cavalry to route the enemy as they had in previous wars. Horses stood little chance against machine guns, as was most devastatingly learned by the Cossacks in the Eastern Theater. The Americans gained several kilometers of front before the Armored Cavalry all suffered mechanical breakdowns.
War and Technology
The United States unleashed the first chemical weapons of the war, but these were far from the last. Chlorine would turn out to be the more benign of weapons unleashed upon humanity. By the start of 1915, all the Great Powers were using the element. Instead of opening canisters and being at the mercy of the wind, shells full of chlorine were soon being fired back and forth. In the United Kingdom, British engineers developed a far more dangerous agent, called mustard gas. This did not even need to be inhaled; it could burn on contact with skin, rendering newly developed gas masks only marginally useful.
The British were also the first to deploy truly armored vehicles in combat. Armored cars were tried in 1913, but with little success. The British designed a land ironclad, a “tank” they called it for it looked much like a water tank. These mobile pill boxes bristled with guns and had a crew of twenty. They terrorized the first German infantry to ever encounter them, but not the artillerymen. Every gun in range quickly turned on these new weapons, and most were destroyed with relative ease. The same story would repeat itself on all fronts as all combatants developed their own tanks. Simply introducing a new weapons was of little use unless the tactical doctrine to use it had yet been invented.
Airplanes, which started as simple observation craft, quickly evolved during the Great War. To combat scouts, most opposing scouts were armed to shoot down their opponent. The Americans designed the first airborne gun platform, dubbed a pursuit plane since it was designed to pursue scouts. In response, scouts grew faster. A new type of plane arrived when the first scout dropped a grenade upon enemy trenches. The bomber quickly grew from a single-engine, single-seat aircraft to a multi-engine platform capable of dropping several bombs on enemy targets. By 1915, small fleets of these aircraft began to appear over the trenches. Like artillery, they did little against the ground-pounders, but they were used with some success in destroying targets behind enemy lines. Pursuit planes were soon adapted to shoot down bombers.
Submarines, which were simply ships at the start of the century, soon turned out to be the ideal commerce raiders. The first to use submarines in combat was the Confederacy. With many of their capital ships sunk or crippled, the Confederate States desperately needed a way to strike at American shipping, and even in breaking the blockade. The CSS Copperhead was the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, when it torpedoed the frigate USS Pallas some thirty kilometers east of Hilton Head Island. Germany took to the idea and began to use its own underseeboots to sink British shipping.
Even before the war, there was concern in the world navies on how to track such ships. In 1907, American President Theodore Roosevelt (who was re-elected in 1912 after a four year absence) ordered his Secretary of Navy to find a way to track submarines. The idea of sonar came about from learning how dolphins track their prey, but was not as easy as bouncing soundwaves off targets beneath the sea. Early sonar sets were bulky and unreliable. When tripped, the ship simply sent a scattershot of depth charges, set to the estimated depth, and hoped for a kill. Many submariners died horrible deaths, but far more escaped these early submarine destroyers.
The Potomac Front
While western Virginia was overran, northern Virginia came under American occupation. Lands north of the Rappahanock were almost completely in American hands by the start of 1915. This narrow stretch of land between the Potomac and Rappahanock cost most than a million casualties, including over three hundred thousand killed, to conquer. Confederate losses were absolutely smaller, but proportionally slightly higher. The Confederate tendency to charge machine gun positions in trenches longer than Americans would, is what lead to the higher percentage of losses. Southern culture did not permit a man to run from certain death as easily as Yankee society.
Many of the Confederate States’ more able officers died this way, because up to the rank of Colonel, Confederate officers believed in personally leading charges. They sought personal glory more than their northern cousins, and paid the ultimate price for this. As General White Water would later say “Glory in battle died when war was industrialized.” From the start of the Great War until well into 1915, the Potomac Front slowly crawled from Alexandria to the north bank of the Rappahanock River. Here it stalled in 1914, when an attempt to bridge the river by the VII Corps failed, with the loss of twelve thousand lives. In March of 1915, as part of the spring time offensive, the III Corps and XI Corps, under the command of General Clarence White Water, was tasked with bridging the river at Fredericksburg. White Water was born in the state of Iroquois and graduated from Fort Arnold in 1885. Like all Great War Generals, he participated in the Spanish War and fought on Puerto Rico.
Opposing White Water, was the Central Corps of the Army of Virginia, under the command of A.H. Stevenson III, the son of a wealth plantation owner and Senator from Georgia. On conclusion of the war, Stevenson was expected to take his father’s place in the Senate while A.H. II retired to running the family estate. At his command were some one hundred fifty thousand soldiers to oppose the Americans’ two hundred seven thousand.
At 0400, on March 21, 1915, White Water ordered a four hour bombardment of enemy installations and trenches on the south bank of the Rappahanock. Along with high explosives and chlorine, a new weapon, mustard gas, was used to soften up the Confederate defenses. The lingering affects of mustard gas caused minor blistering to the first wave of Americans, who crossed the river in hundreds of rafts, at 0815. The Confederates were far from obliterated, despite having some twenty thousand shells land on a length of the frontier no more than two kilometers in width.
After the end of the first day, and the loss of ten thousand American soldiers wounded and killed, White Water managed to secure a beachhead a kilometer east of Fredericksburg. Through the night of the 21st and all of the 22nd, Americans bombarded Confederate positions while engineers threw up several pontoon bridges. Barges delivered heavier equipment, such as the newly developed tank. American tanks were little more than giant rhomboids with tracks and cannon and machine guns pointing out of several openings. Seven of these tanks were delivered to White Water to use in breaching Confederate lines and pushing further in land.
On the 24th, the tanks lead the assault against Confederate trenches. The first line of trenches was overran with minimal difficulty; the Confederate soldiers panicked and flew at the sight of these land ironclads. Secondary and tertiary trenches were captured, at the loss of two tanks. Both broke down due to mechanical failure. One that failed was targeted and destroyed by Confederate batteries. The tanks proved effective weapons of terror, but the early models left a lot to be desired for combat. By March 29, the last tank broke down and was destroyed by Confederate barrages.
On April 1, the Stevenson attempted to organize a counteroffensive to “drive the Yankees back into the river”. The Confederate attack failed, and allowed the Americans to gain several hundred more meters of ground. White Water launched attacks on the city of Fredericksburg on April 2, April 3 and April 4. The first two assault were repulsed, with thousands of American casualties. The third attack breached the city’s defenses. From April 5 to April 8, street fighting claimed thousands of more lives on both sides. Artillery from American and Confederate batteries reduced much of the city to rubble in attempts to destroy their opponents. Civilian deaths in the Battle of Fredericksburg are inconclusive, but it is believed nearly 30% of the city’s remaining population perished.
General White Water called an end to the offensive on April 15, when severe rains hampered advancement. At the end of the nearly month long battle, the United States took the town of Fredericksburg and expanded the front in that area some five kilometers south of the Rappahanock River, securing the crossing and pushed Confederate guns far enough south to prevent them from destroying the pontoon bridges that connect the new front with the rest of American occupied territory. On the Confederate side, thirty thousand soldiers were killed, and twice as many more wounded. The Americans lost sixty thousand dead, most during the crossing and storming of Fredericksburg.
The biggest single tragedy of Fredericksburg was the American charge up Marye’s Ridge. An entire American brigade charged up that ridge, where Confederate trenches could rain down fire on them, and the rest of the battlefield. Out of three thousand American soldiers to charge on April 9, only three officers and seventeen enlisted men were able of walked off the killing fields under their own power. The Ridge was not taken that day, and required a second, division-sized charge the next day. One of the surviving officers, a Captain Dwight Eisenhower, was permanently scared by the lessons of his suicidal superiors. In later wars, Eisenhower would anguish over his own command decisions in later wars, knowing that his own planning would cost many young men their lives.
The Turkish Decision
On May 1, 1915, the Ottoman Empire entered the Great War. Unlike the other combatants, they did not take sides. Instead, they launched an attack against Austro-Hungary in the Balkans, and against Sweden in the Caucasus. The Turks were not interested in balances of power or global politics; they simply saw two bordering powers that have been weakened by nearly two years of war, and planned to grab as much of their land as possible. From the outset, the Turkish Decision was a poor one.
In May of 1915, the Turks crossed into Bosnia, and were easily repelled by local militia and Bosnian units of the Austrian Army. The Turks had planned on liberating their co-religionists from Habsburg oppression. As it turned out, the Bosniaks did not desire liberation from one empire into another. Along the Danube, Balkan nationals would end up fighting and dying for two ancient and despotic regimes that cared little about their own plight.
In response to their attack, the Austro-Hungarian Empire readily crossed the Danube and seized Belgrade. Less than a month into their war, the Turks were already humiliated as the garrison commander of Belgrade simply surrendered when his cavalry were cut to shreds by machine guns. Apparently the Ottomans had not been paying close attention to the Great War, as they employed pre-1913 tactics in 1915. The Turkish Army of 1915, was even less modern than the rest of the Great Powers in the year 1900. Turkey also had only limited industrialization, and still existed partially in the feudal state of the rest of Europe several centuries earlier.
The Turks fared far worse against Sweden. The Black Sea had once been an Ottoman Lake. This lake was easily entered by Swedish gunboats and torpedo boats. These torpedo boats ambushed the Ottoman Black Sea fleet outside of Sevastopol, sinking a full half of the vessels in the dawn twilight of May 5, 1915. The surviving vessels, outdated and damaged, limped back to the Anatolian coast of the Black Sea. Had the Swedes possessed a Black Sea fleet of their own, they could very well have landed their soldiers near Constantinople and ended Turkish involvement in the war before it really began.
Fighting in the Caucasus Mountains consumed a great deal of Sweden’s resources, which could have went to battling the Germans. Ottoman attempts to invade were turned back with minimal loss to Sweden. When Sweden went on the offensive, they quickly took losses, more from the locals than from the Ottoman Army. At the Battle of Grozny (May 20-July 5), the Swedish Army did more battle with Checnyan partisans than the Turks. The nationalities of the Caucasus saw the early Turkish losses as an opportunity to rise up against their own oppressors. Normally, the Swedes could have sat back and watched their enemy disintegrate. However, the possibility that this rebellion would spread into the Swedish Ukraine could not be ignore.
The Home Front
Civilians felt the impact of the Great War as it dragged on into its second year. Rationing was commonplace in all countries, including the United States. Americans accepted this intrusion into their lives by the state as a sacrifice of war. Rationing lessened as Confederate coal fields were put into American use. In many New England cities, homes were still heated by coal-fired stoves, as well as food cooked. Electricity was still a novelty, and would not even be commonplace nation-wide for more than a decade to come. Conversely, Confederate civilians had their own coal rations cut down to the point where large tracts of forest began to vanish in search of fuels for their own stoves. Of course, a Georgian winter was no where near as harsh as a Vermonter one.
In Europe, where rationing and government management of life was commonplace before the war, tightening of supplies was just part of life. Many countries would have “Meatless Mondays” (or whatever the non-Americans called their own days), but the British were forced to go without meat for two days out of the week. Bread was also rationed, as the British Expeditionary Force consumed a great deal of food. To compensate, park lands and former prized flower gardens were ploughed under and put to use cultivating turnips, potatoes and anything else British civilians could grow.
In North America, where the majority of the overall population still lived on farms, food shortages were rarer. In the United States, who had not even a single square meter of their own land occupied, rural Americans would not even know there was a war going on, if not for the shortage of decent quality tobacco. Luxuries were rationed even here, such as sugar, coffee and any foodstuff that had to be imported. Rationing was also less severe, Meatless Mondays aside, because American soldiers could partially live of the land in occupied territories.
Policies of occupation differed from front to front. General Pershing insisted his army pay fair market value for everything they seize from those under their occupation. White Water did not have this option, for much of the Virginian countryside was ploughed by artillery since 1913. On the York Peninsula, with its appalling cost in life, American units simply took what they wanted. The Columbia Front was unique, in that at the outset of the war, it was the only piece of territory planned to become American again (aside from the Red River Valley and northern Maine), thus it was the State Department’s policy that the civilians not be looted.
Conscription, low in 1913, started to take its toll on the civilians by 1915. Even Americans were subject to being drafted during war time. When the stream of volunteers began to dry up, nations began to conscript on masse. The British government immediately let every unmarried young man know they were up for the draft. The United States extended this too all men between 18 and 30, for fathers and childless men were all Americans equally. Germany and France practiced large scale peacetime conscription, so additional drafting did not have quite the same impact on their populations.
To take the places of many young and able-bodied men who were sent off to the front, women entered the workforce in the largest numbers ever. Munition and arms factories, many with assembly lines perfect for unskilled labor, brought in women workers by the millions. Only certain industries that require high strength, such as the steel industry, exempted women employees. The Confederacy had an addition labor pool in their underclass of black Confederates (which comprises around 30% of their total population) which lay largely untapped.
The situation in the Confederacy was so bad in 1915, that the Confederate Congress debated whether or not to allow their blacks to enlist in the Confederate Army. When they finally permitted it, albeit in segregated units, a surprisingly large number of blacks enlisted. They might be second-class citizens, but their nationalism was as strong as the whites, and fought just as hard. The American government attempted to exploit the discrimination of the south by offering amnesty to any black who surrendered to them. The ploy attracted a few deserters, but only a few. Despite the equality of the north, where skin color was treated largely with indifference (partly due to the small percentage of black Americans in comparison with the Confederacy), the black Confederates remained loyal to their own nation.
Unrestricted Naval Warfare
By the Spring of 1915, the naval powers of the world have declared unrestricted submarine warfare upon each other. Before, warships would have to warn their victims that they were going to be sunk. Afterwards, submarines could sink of sight. This caused a spike in destruction of combatants’ shipping and commerce. The Germans were first in declaring the waters around the British Isles as an unrestricted warzone. The Americans followed by declaring the same of their blockade of the Confederacy. The Swedes were next, doing so in the Baltic and North Seas.
The Mediterranean soon was declared an unrestricted zone by all belligerents. Unrestricted warfare was also extended to surface ships, where commerce raiders could sink ships on sight. The raiders above the waves were not as feared as those beneath. With an enemy cruiser, lookouts on a freighter could spot them before they entered gun range. Submarines were far harder to locate, for only their periscope was visible in the choppy waves. This represented a decentralization of war on the high seas. However, engagements between enemy fleets was still a possibility, as the British and Americans proved. Despite the amount of ship required to defend Britannia, the British still proved able to defend their own Commonwealth as well as shipping lanes.
What has become known as the Battle of the Grand Banks was little more than a skirmish between the Royal (British) Navy and United States Navy on April 8, 1915, off the coast of Newfoundland. The American plan was to cut off Halifax from its naval supply lines, and then have the army storm the city. At the time of the battle, the front lines were well outside of Nova Scotia, in New Brunswick. Halifax was the key to Britain’s entire war effort inside of Canada. Without a base in the western North Atlantic, Canada would surely fall. Leading up to the battle, and following it, the United States put political pressure on Quebec to either enter the war against the British, or at least to close the Saint Laurence to British traffic.
The big push by the Army towards Halifax commenced on March 23, and quickly bogged down as British and Canadian trenches were easily resupplied from British factories. Even German successes in the North Sea and raiding commerce had yet to sever the link between Britain and its colonies and dominions. The U.S. Atlantic Fleet sortied from Boston shortly after the offensive began, and circled to the east and north of Halifax. Under the command of one Admiral James McKinnon, the fleet was poised to interdict shipping and intercept the inevitable relief. However, McKinnon did not know that the Royal Navy was already patrolling off Newfoundland. On April 8, as a dense fog flowed over the North Atlantic, the British with five battleships and seven battlecruisers ambushed the American squadron of six battleships and six battlecruisers.
The battle was evenly matched, however the visibility was so poor that neither side could accurately sight the other. In this day long battle, not a single ship was sunk, and only a few suffered light damage. Compared to other naval battles of the Great War, the Grand Banks was relatively bloodless and a rather anti-climatic battle for dominion over North America. By nightfall, the American ships, spent on ammo and frustrated by visibility, withdrew towards the south and back to Boston to take on more ammunition and hopefully hunt down the British another day. Tactically speaking, the Battle of the Grand Banks was a draw. Strategically speaking, it was a British victory, for they kept the maritime highway open into Halifax and the rest of Canada, at least until Quebec finally entered the war some months later.
The Van Der Weld Incident
Unrestricted submarine warfare took a devastating toll on the merchant fleets of the world during 1915. The Staaten-Generals of all the Dutch states, along with the Commonwealth Assembly told Dutch companies and merchants that they would enter combatant’s territorial waters at their own risk. Once it was clear the Royal (Dutch) Navies would not protect any other nation’s trade, the fear of reprisal diminished and ships flying Commonwealth flags were fair game. All sides still avoided antagonizing the might Royal (Dutch and Brazilian) Navies in international waters– unless they had proof the ships were aiding their enemy, and could get away with it.
However, the Commonwealth made it perfectly clear that it would not tolerate attacks on its nationals while in Commonwealth or international waters. Within British, American or German water were one thing, but the Dutch considered international water vital to their trade and commerce. As many nations have learned throughout history, the quickest way to get the Dutch involved was to threaten their commercial empire. However, the Dutch Commonwealth claimed a territorial water limit of twenty kilometers, while most international treaties limited it to sixteen point one kilometers (ten miles). In this case, territorial claims often overlapped, such as with the United Provinces and Germany, Brazil and British Guyana, and so on.
It was also in these disputed zones, while the war was in its third year of stalemate, that one of the greatest controversies of the Twentieth Century occurred. In the waters between Germany and the United Provinces, at a point where coasts angled and the Dutch expanded their claims into German waters, did the Dutch finally get drawn into the conflict. The Kapenstaaten freighter Van Der Weld sailed, destined to Bremen, and behind it a submarine tracked. As soon as the Van Der Weld entered what the international community considered German waters, the submarine sped into an attack run.
From all account, the Van Der Weld was struck in the forward hold. Since the ship was carrying ammonium nitrate to sell to the Germans, the ships erupted into a monestrous fireball, killing all on board, and through pieces of the hull some twenty-five kilometers distance. The explosion was so powerful, that the HMS Grendal, a United Province destroyer not only spotted it, but felt the concussion. At once, the captain of the Grendal, Simon van der Hague, ordered his ship to pursue the submarine in Dutch waters. With primitive radio equipment, the Grendal sent word to near-by Dutch ships to coordinate in a sub round up.
In the afternoon of July 3, 1915, a squadron of two Dutch destroyers and three frigates, force the Swedish submarine Narwhal to beach itself on a German beach opposite the bay from the Province of Ommelanden. The Dutch captured the submarine and detained its crew. When word reached the Hague, the Staaten-General went into a frenzy, an emergency session of the Commonwealth Assembly was called, and Frederick III stormed the Swedish embassy demanding to speak with the ambassador. When the ambassador refused to see him, the King had the embassy closed, Swedish nationals expelled from the country, minus the ambassador, who would speak with the King.
The meeting lasted for a few minutes, for with each protest from the Swede, the King’s anger grew. When the ambassador finally acknowledged Swedish submarines operated in that area of German waters, Frederick rebutted by saying it was Dutch water, and by sinking a Boer freighter in Dutch waters, Sweden had doomed itself to a war it could not win. With those last words, the ambassador from Sweden was unceremoniously ejected from the United Provinces.
Since international affairs are decided by the Commonwealth as a whole, the Netherlander Staaten-General was understandably frustrated. The best it could do, was for the hereditary members of the Senaat to call up the militias of their respective Provinces. The VOC, was not tied to any state formalities, and its fleet was put on alert, though it took some time. It was not until all ships made port could they learn that the Dutch Commonwealth was now at war. Even during unrestricted attacks, the belligerents avoided attacking any ship that waved the orang-white-blue with big bold black VOC labeled across them. Only property of the VOC could wave that flag, and nobody could register under them. Even if they could, it was not likely that the VOC would give the ships back.
On July 17, 1915, as soon as he representatives could either be round up, or in the case of Brazil, sail in, the Commonwealth Assembly made the monumental decision. For once, there was little debate and no rivalries. What happened in the United Provinces could happen everywhere else if the Swedish menace was not confronted. In one of their few unanimous votes, the Commonwealth declared war upon Sweden.
The Commonwealth Goes to War
At the start of Dutch involvement in the Great War, the bulk of their army was not even in the United Provinces. Soldiers were scattered between Commonwealth states, such as Brazil and India, as well as the colonies, the oil rich Indies quickly reclaiming their spot as the most import of Dutch possessions. In order to bring a large enough army to bear in Europe, divisions of soldiers and volunteers would have to be shipped in from Brazil and the Boer Republics. Over the next year, more than a million men would volunteer for service, though many of the colonials would be used in garrison duty due to the government in the Hague not confident of their reliability.
The United Provinces made immediate use of their strategic locations, in opening their railroads to use by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of Germans previously held in reserve stormed into northern France, along with over a hundred thousand Netherlander soldiers. The Entente was forced to commit all their reserves, as well as pull units off the Western Front in order to plug this breach. British units rushed across the English Channel in order to bolster Calais, which the German Army reached within ten kilometers of it before stopping.
The British were also forced to recall some of their colonial units from less threatened colonies, or at least those not vital to Britain’s own empire, in order to reinforce the British Army in Britain itself. The threat of Germany or America invading the islands was laughable, but the threat of the Dutch making an attempt was taken very seriously by London. The Admiralty was force to abandon less vital seas, such as most of the Pacific, in order to strengthen Britannia’s defenses. With the High Seas Fleet and the Royal Dutch Navy joining forces, the idea of the Home Fleet being destroyed in a single, decisive battle was no longer hypothetical.
The Commonwealth’s naval forces took to dominating maritime choke points, easily blockading Sweden, as well as the French Atlantic Coast. Neither of those states had sufficient naval forces to easily break the blockade (though the French still had access through her southern coast, while British control of Gibraltar prevented a total blockade). The British resisted the blockade, and even attempted a blockade of its own against the United Provinces, whose confined coast line made it less difficult on paper than in fact.
Dutch victories on the ground were almost immediate. Following the declaration of war on Sweden, and the Entente’s declaration against the United Provinces and Brazil, the Dutch General Staff enacted War Plan Violet. Though the city was long since relinquished by the United Provinces, taking Mons was key to War Plan Violet. Along with a general advance into northern France, the Royal Navies would close off the English Channel to French traffic, and incidentally British traffic. In August of 1915, four Dutch divisions, the 1st Holland, the 5th Brabant, the 8th Liege and the 4th Brazilian Division, under the command of Field Marshall Albert van Meinrad, crossed the French frontier and encircled Mons. For three weeks, the Dutch Army laid siege to the city.
The Dutch crossed the border largely unopposed, along with German divisions that have been shifted with the United Provinces’ entry into the war. Germany was allowed limited movement through Dutch territory to attack France. In August of 1915, the bulk of France’s army was dug in along the German and Italian frontiers. Only old men and militia defended the border with the Dutch. These garrison units were swept aside by nearly one hundred thousand Netherlander and Brazilian soldiers. Resistance within the city was minimal. However, van Meinrad was a conservative and cautious general, deciding to reduce the city in hopes of forcing a surrender. He foresaw a bloodbath should Mons degenerate into a street-by-street brawl.
During the siege, the Dutch Army slowly crept into the suburbs. It was during these slow advances against militia that lead to the battle’s greatest tragedy. On August 19, the Grand Prince of Norway, heir to the throne, Captain Frederick Henry van Oranje, was shot by a partisan in the chest. The bullet lodged in his lung, and required extensive surgery to remove. For months afterwards, the Prince’s survival was in question. He never fully recovered from the wound, but managed to walk out of the hospital in the summer of 1916. In retaliation, the Prince’s company avenged their fallen leader by torching the entire neighborhood and summarily executing one hundred able bodied Frenchmen. The city itself surrendered on August 23, when it was apparent that no relief would come to the city. German flanking maneuvers through the United Provinces hit the British Expeditionary Force, forcing them to retreat or risk being cut off from the Channel, which in turn forced the French around Verdun to withdraw to new lines further west.
Across the Atlantic, the Royal Brazilian Navy was taking its toll on British supply lines. The Germans, confined to the River Platte following their disastrous attack on the Falklands, could never manage the same level of destruction as the Commonwealth. Even sailing across the South Atlantic did not offer the British security. Though Boer Republics, such as Kapenstaaten, lacked strong navies of their own, they did (along with Angola) offer bases from where the Royal Brazilian Navy could operate. Brazilian cruisers and battlecruisers operated as individuals during the destruction of British shipping. Even battleships participated. The KBS Recife alone sank some seventy thousand tonnes of shipping during 1916.
The British responded by strengthening their convoys, which were put into place to protect against U-boats. However, the destroyers escorts, which were apt at killing submarines, proved less than ideal to tackle battlecruisers. The Dutch did commit to large-scale attacks as well. On October 1, 1915, the Royal Brazilian Navy struck at the British squadron at the Falklands, destroying it in a two hour engagement. The British commander put up a valiant fight, but the small colonial force was simply outclassed. Curious enough, the Brazilians did not follow up with an invasion of the islands.
This stress in the South Atlantic soon forced the British to abandon the Indian Ocean as well, for what point was defending a distance ocean when their own homeland lacked sufficient food to fight its war. The French Navy, when not battling the Italians in the Mediterranean or escorting French shipping to Mexico, did attempt sorties against Java with their small fleet in Indochina. The naval engagements off Indonesian Coasts were slightly more successful than the British defense of the Falklands, only in that the French were not annihilated. The French were able to elude the Dutch among hundreds of smaller islands. After one attempt in force, the French commander simply decided to split his forces into individual ships and raid Dutch commerce with moderate success. The French even raided the coast of Hainan, with some success.
Overall, the British were losing ships faster than the Dutch, but there was one key exception. The KNS Half-Moon, fought its last battle on November 17, 1915. It was the single largest loss of life in the history of the Royal (Dutch) Navy before the advent of a integrated Commonwealth military command, including the death of Lieutenant Mandrick van Oranje, second-in-line for the Dutch Crown. Only three sailors survived the legendary duel between Half-Moon and the HMS (British) Resolution. During November of 1915, the British and Dutch navies had not commenced in a decisive battle. The British Admiralty wished to avoid such a battle, for the loss of the Home Fleet would spell a quick doom for the British Empire. Instead, the British reverted to a tactic of commerce raiding, attempting to hamper the United Provinces’ industrial capacity and economic health.
In October, the United Provinces lost some 43,000 tonnes of shipping to commerce raiders, far smaller than what her enemies were losing. This loss caused the Royal (Dutch) Navy to draw off some ships from blockade duties against Sweden and the French coast to patrol against British raiders. Even before the Dutch Navy began to send battleships and cruisers on patrols, the VOC took to convoying and escorting these convoys with company cruisers and destroyers. The United Provinces’ own commerce raiding managed to close the British Expeditionary Force from easy reply across the English Channel.
By the start of November, five Dutch battleships, six battlecruisers and twelve cruisers were patrolling the North and Norwegian Seas, hunting down the British raiders. On November 15, the KNSHalf-Moon learned that two Dutch freighters were sunk off the coast of Bergen. Captain Maurice Steinert gave the order to turn West by Northwest to intercept what he believed to be a lone British cruiser. Aircraft launched from Norway spotted two ships, instead of the one, and reported them as a cruiser and battlecruiser. Steinert continued the pursuit, believing his battleship could take both British ships, or at the very least, damage them to the point of them retreating.
The ships entered visual range early in the morning of November 17. It was only when spotters on board the Half-Moon had visual confirmation did Steinert learn he was facing a British battleship and heavy cruiser. After two days of pursuit, he could not easily abandon the chase. At 0912, the British spotted Half-Moon and turned to engage. The first shots were fired by the cruiser Excelsior at 0917. These shots fell short, causing only fountains of water to spray the Dutch battleship.
Over one hundred shots were traded in the first hour of the battle, with only near misses to show for the effort. At 1002, shots from the Half-Moon straddled the Excelsior, causing damage to its engines. With Excelsior slowing down, Steinert focused his ship’s guns on the Resolution. Shots between the two battleships scored hits on each other once they closed within ten kilometers of each other. Two shots ruptured the aft hull of Half-Moon and took out a smoke stack. One well placed shot from Half-Moon blew open Resolution’s forward turret. It was only dumb luck (or perhaps inefficiency of munition loaders) that prevented the forward quarter of the British battleship from vanishing in a large flash.
Excelsior attempted to cross the stern of the Half-Moon and bring all of its turrets to bear on the Dutch ship’s engines. One shot did hit Half-Moon in the stern, breaking open several square meters of hull well above the waterline, and knocking out one of the ships screws. The Dutch responded with both aft turrets, knocking out one of the Excelsior’s turrets, and ripping open the super structure. Fires raged on the cruiser as it was forced to withdraw from combat while it fought to prevent flames from breaching the magazine. Steinert could have turned to finish the cruiser, but decided to focus on the greater threat; a still living battleship.
At 1044, the two battleships closed within five kilometers of each other, and unleashed broadsides. The Half-Moon knocked out the second of Resolution’s forward turrets, causing fires to break out across the forward deck. With two turrets out of action, the British battleship was forced to withdraw from battle. However, it made one last pass at Half-Moon before steering westward. Again the Half-Moon punched holes into Resolution. However, the Resolution scored two direct hits on the Dutch battleship. The first hit knocked out two port-side spontoons. The second hit penetrated the aft magazine. Within a second of that hit, the Half-Moon erupted into a fireball, the after third disintegrating, and the rest of the ship ripped open. Debris flew more than three kilometers of the explosion, which was probably why there were any survivors at all. The shockwave of the explosion rocked Resolution and threatened to capsize the damaged battleship.
Half-Moon quickly sank under eighty meters of water, taking over twelve hundred sailors and officers to a watery grave. The Resolution made a quick pass across where the ship sank, and found three Dutch sailors floating in the water, all dazed. News that the Half-Moon sank hit the United Provinces like a dagger to the heart. Following the wounding of the Crown Prince of Norway at Mons, the death of his brother opened a potential succession crisis when King William VII dies. The loss of the battleship also forced the Dutch Navy to send patrols out in force; no longer would lone battleships patrol the North Sea. This, in turn, allowed the British to run the blockade of their forces on the continent with a little more regularity.
The British took one more hit in their war effort in 1916, when Quebec finally entered the war on the side of the Americans. This completely cut off the Canadian interior from shipping directly from the Atlantic. Now, if Ontario was to be resupplied, it would have to be via the Hudson Bay, and this could only happen when the bay was not frozen over. If the war drug into another winter, the High Command in London expected Canada would be lost.
The Last Push
Dutch entry in the war weakened the Entente and allowed the Central Powers one last push. By 1916, the United States had effectively reconquered all territories ever lost to the British, and had control over the Confederate States of Kentucky, Durango and Cuba, with Union governments already reinstated. A new front in France threatened to outflank previously held lines, and the Swedes were growing tired in Poland-Lithuania. The Dutch entry also did much to boost morale for the Central Powers, and crush it for the Entente.
Germany had already pushed the Western Front further west than it had been through the whole war, but the Entente were going to make one last push. On the morning of February 18, 1916, at 0230, hundreds of Confederate guns along the Potomac (or more accurately the Rappahanock) Front opened up upon American trenches. The first offensive of 1916 went to the Confederate States, and the government in Birmingham demanded that the Yankees be pushed back across the river that they crossed the previous year. At the command of the dwindling Army of Virginia, A.H. Stevenson III, discovered a relatively soft spot in the American lines at Chancellorsville, a town west from Fredericksburg. Chancellorsville fell to the Yankees the previous fall, and attempts to retake it before rain and snow made offensives impractical failed miserably.
During the winter of 1915-16, the Confederates stockpiles a majority of their industrial output of ammunition along the Potomac Front, in hopes of doing exactly as Birmingham commanded. With entry of the Dutch Commonwealth into the war against the Entente, it was only a matter of time before the Central Powers were victorious. Knowing they could no longer win outright, the Confederate government intended to hold as much land as possible.
After two days worth of bombardment, at 0800, on February 20, some eighty thousand Confederate soldiers went over the top and charged into the lines south of Chancellorsville. Unlike the early days of the war, the soldiers had no illusions that the Americans would have been wiped out in the bombardment. Sure enough, machine guns soon began to mow down advancing Confederates. However, unlike early attacks, the Confederates now had their own tanks. After pushing the Americans back several lines of trench-works, American tanks soon arrived on the battlefield to match Confederate Armor.
This early armored battle proved a disaster for both sides. With sufficient firepower and inability to maneuver, both sides effectively annihilated each other. The tanks accomplished their task, and punched a small whole in American lines, allowing Confederates to regain several hundred meters of front, at the cost of tens of men for each meter. The following day, the Confederates launched a second early morning assault, this time without tanks for support. The Americans were ready for it, and blunted the wave of Confederates against their new front-line trenches. Confederates managed a well organized retreat. The Americans attempted no counterattack.
On February 26, the Confederates commenced a second, day-long bombardment of American positions around and even in Chancellorsville. The city sat only two kilometers behind, and served as a supply depot for this section of the front. However, knowing the Confederates were on their last leg, General White Water ordered American forces to fall back north of Chancellorsville during the second bombardment. He would make the Confederates come to him, throwing themselves on a new network of trenches and fortifications constructed on the northern and eastern outskirts of the city.
Much to the Confederate soldiers’ surprise, on February 27, it appeared that the bombardment did in fact kill all the Yankees. Only a few Confederates were killed during the mad dash across no-man’s land, killed by mines and unexploded shells littering the field. The town itself was abandoned, its inhabitants refugees fleeing north to where the war was already a bad memory. White Water ordered the town to be zeroed in by American artillery during the second Confederate bombardment. As soon as Stevenson’s forces moved into the city, they were subjected to bombardment. Those Confederates the made it north of the city, ran into a wall of pill boxes and trenches, cutting them down in the hundreds. American aircraft joined in on the attack, strafing Confederate ranks advancing on the new front line.
The Battle of Chancellorsville ended on February 28, when Confederate soldiers retreated to lines south of the town. Chancellorsville was soon reduced to ruins as it remained no-man’s land for the duration of the war. Thus marked the final offensive of the Confederate Army along the Potomac Front. The Confederate Army was utterly spent, and from here on out could do little to prevent American advances, save to make them “take every mile only after its soaked in Yankee blood”, as one Captain George Patton would later say, though with slightly more color. The American Army was so tired after this battle, that it failed to follow up the attack, and knock Virginia out of the war.
Worse than the tactical defeat, Chancellerosville proved to be start of the Confederate downfall. General Stevenson’s apparent ineptitude served as a symbol, that the officer corp was comprised of nothing but the land-owning elite. This was far from true, for many middle ranking officers, such as the forementioned Patton, did work their way up in the world, first to get into the Confederate Military Academy, followed by earning their rank.
The merit of these Captains and Majors did nothing to ellivate the Confederate enlisted man’s anger. Many of the soldiers began to wonder just why they were fighting the North. After all, were Yankees not Americans– albeit misguided ones, too? With morale shattered from one too many blue-blooded planned attacks, sections of the Confederate Army in Virginia and Tennessee organized and went on what could only be called a strike. Soldiers refused to leave the trenches when ordered, nor would they go on patrol, nor risk their necks for the Southern Aristocracy. Hundreds of these soldiers ended up in court-marital, charged with mutiny. More than half were executed as a result.
Confederate soldiers would still fight for their States, but refused to do so for Birmingham. Soldiers from Texas, Kentucky and Sinoloa began to wonder why their own States did not make a separate peace with the Union. Kentucky was already lost, and gained nothing by having its people suffer from occupation. Discontent did not remain at enlisted levels for long. Within weeks, it spread to junior officers, who joined the strike.
Confederate censors must be commended for their job in covering up the mutinies. Had the United States known of them, then the Army might well have smashed into the lines. Roosevelt did learn of the mutinies, as did a number of officers in the General Staff. The division was not exploited. The end of the Confederate government was in sight. Roosevelt predicted that in a month, states would be secede from the Confederacy, an appropriate ending to a nation that formed by breaking away from another. Perhaps it was time to bring the wayward children home.
The government in Birmingham stared down the barrel of a total loss should the war drag on for another year. Confederate President Woodrow Wilson attempted to make contact with the Roosevelt Administration through the embassies of the one of the few neutral states; Chile. Chile had warm relations with both of the American nations, though were far warmer to Britain’s enemy than her ally. Wilson proposed a truce followed by a negotiated peace. Roosevelt was not about to make a separate peace, despite his failing health. He already surrendered any re-election bid in 1916.
Instead of making peace, Roosevelt would bide his remaining time on Earth. He wanted desperately to end the war while still President, to bask in glory one final time. If it was to be a final victory, than he was determined it shall be the bulliest victory of all time. His legacy would be to finally bring peace to the North American continent.
Peace Feelers
Paris was looking at a similar situation, though different problem. Their problem was not lack of resources or manpower, but lack of will. Where the Confederate soldier may fight for their home States even after the end had passed, the French were not likely to die for Paris. It was the French soldier who was breaking as victory looked further and further over the horizon. Despite the obvious, French Generals and Politicians labored under the delusion that patriotism alone would carry the day.
Attempts to bring the colossal struggle that consumed two continents to an end began as early as August of 1915. It was made by France through their Swiss Embassies. The negotiations were short and ended before they truly began. At that stage in the war, Germany demanded more from the French, in the form of their North African Protectorates and colonies, than they were willing to give. It would take another year, and more than two million more dead before war weariness hit Germany. The French were desperate for an end, and one more victory on the scale of Verdun in the fall of 1915 might have forced them to accept the loss of North Africa.
The Communist underground across Europe became active in the Spring of 1916, including elements within the French Army, largely among its non-commissioned officers. The Revolutionaries did have ties with those in the Balkans, however the French soldiery was more interested in ending the war than in great social and political reforms. The common soldier did begin to wonder why they were dying in droves and the arms manufacturers were untouched by the horrors of the trenches. Officers in the trenches dealt with the rumblings as best as they could, but the French High Command and Government dismissed such troubles, wanting to believe all soldiers would do their patriotic duty to France.
Balkan Revolution
The Great War pushed two ancient empires to their breaking points and beyond. It is highly unlikely that the Balkan Revolution would have been successful had the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empires not have already bled themselves white. This single event altered the face of Europe more drastically than any event in centuries. Out of the ashes of two ancient empires came the experiment in communism.
The causes of the Balkans Revolution are many, and stretch out decades before the last year of the Great War. Chief among them is the partition of the Balkan Peninsula between the Austrians and the Ottoman Turks. Nationalistic and Pan-Slavic sentiments alone would have inevitably lead to uprisings, as it had during the Nineteenth Century. During the same century, the doctrines of Marx and Engels reached across Europe. Marx always predicted that the socialist revolution would take place in the industrial west.
Though industrialization barely reached the Balkans at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, suppression of the workers was not the reason communism took hold. For three centuries, the bulk of the Orthodox Balkans were held under the thumb of Muslim Turks. Though some peoples, such as in Bosnia and Albania, eventually converted, the majority of the Balkan people were subject to the Jizya (religious tax for non-Muslims) and oppression that came about as result of the rise of nationalism during the 19th Century. In response to rebellions in Greece in 1848 and Serbia in 1878, entire towns and cities were depopulated, their inhabitants forcefully relocated, and in rare instances, enslaved. Along with slavery, forms of serfdom were still found in the Balkans up to the eve of the Balkan Revolution.
Reforms following the Napoleonic War sought to spread a uniformity across the Ottoman Empire. Before the reforms, the Orthodox and Catholic populations were governed by their own codes of law, using their own languages. The reforms sought to standardize laws across the Ottoman Empire, as well as imposing Turkish as the sole official language. In many cases, the Ottoman government tried to force assimilation.
North of the Danube, problems leading to the Balkan Revolution were opposite of the Turks. The Austro-Hungarians Empire lacked any cohesion, to the point that its army was comprised of ethnic units. Outside of Austria and Hungary, the majority of the Empire was impoverished, with taxes ruining the provinces. In both cases, the subject populace were treated as less than the ruling ethnicities. This inequality is also a leading contributor to the Balkan Revolution. Marxism’s supposed doctrine of equality and of a classless society appealed to the educated in the Balkans.
During the Great War, these subject populations found themselves fighting and dying for their rulers in Vienna and Constantinople. With the Ottoman entry, the war in the Balkans became a three-way struggle, with the Balkan peoples caught in the middle. The peasants under both Austrian and Turkish rule were conscripted and found themselves fighting over their own land for foreigners. The Austrians overran much of Serbia by the start of 1915. Belgrade was fought over in three separate battle between the Ottoman’s entry into the war and the Belgrade Uprising.
Like the French Revolution, the Balkan Revolution was formulated not by the masses of peasantry, but rather by the middle class and educated. In these circles, Marxism was all the rage, with talks of abolishing classes and privileges and turning their respective empires into socialist federations of equals. Some nationalist cells simply wished to break away from their long time overlords and not look back. In the underground movements that formed since the start of the 20th Century, the Marxist infiltrated all but a handful.
The founder of the Union of Balkan Socialists Republics is a Serb named Peter Karadordevic. Born in Belgrade on June 29, 1844, into a minor functionary family, Karadordevic had no want. In 1870, he spent several years in Paris, where he was introduced to the philosophies of Karl Marx. The idea of a classless society appealed to him. The middle class of the Balkans were enthralled by socialism, and they would eventually form the bureaucracy of the Balkan Unions.
Karadordevic served in the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War. After the defeat of France, he left the army and returned to his homeland to ferment revolutionary fever. He called for a Serbia ruled by Serbians. His participation in the 1895 Revolution saw his family’s estates seized by the Turks and himself exiled. He returned from exile in Vienna in 1903 under the alias of Mrkonjic, where he founded the Serbian People’s Party. From 1904 to 1916, the Party was outlawed by the Ottoman Empire, with suspected members facing imprisonment and even being sold into slavery.
With the Great War sending millions of young Europeans and Americans to an early death, the loosely confederated International Brotherhood of Workers began to take action. Their propaganda brought more members into their ranks, and angered the lower classes. The I.B.W. created a class division across Europe, strongest in the Balkans. The idea of wealthy industrialists and arms manufacturers pushed corrupt governments to wage war in order to increase the shareholder’s profits feed the conspiracy machine. The poor, certainly the non-German or non-Turkish poor began wondered why they were fighting.
For the Slavs of the Balkans, the question was why was brother fighting brother in the name of non-Slavic peoples. The image of the Red Revolution as a Pan-Slavic device would play into the future of the Union, and its demise, along with some of the great atrocities of the 20th Century. The first shots of this Slavic socialist revolution would take place in Belgrade, on the border between empires.
Belgrade Uprising
By February of 1916, both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire battled to the point of exhaustion. Since its fall in 1914, the Turks made no serious attempt to retake Belgrade. The city fell to an Austrian assault shortly after the Ottoman Empire declared war upon them. Its situation, on the Danube River, which in turn served as border between the two dilapidated empires made it contested in the centuries past. The land of the Serbs was long since divided between the two empires, and during the Great War, Serb fought Serb in the armies of opposing Empires.
With both Empires war weary, the leader of the Serbian People’s Party, Peter Karadordevic, sensed an opportunity to throw out the hated Austro-Hungarians and secure for the peace-loving peasants and workers of Serbia their freedom. Karadordevic and his fellow Serb Revolutionary, Dusan Simovic spent the last months of 1915, smuggling in arms and caching ammunition in the neighborhoods of Belgrade. They each headed a division of the Serbian Worker’s Liberation Army, with several thousands in each division.
On February 12, 1916, the first blow of the Balkan Revolution was thrown in Darcal neighborhood, when a cell lead by Gravilo Princip, launched a grenade attack on Austrian Field Marshall Oskar Potiorek, killing him and the other passengers of the staff car. Within an hour, a bombings killed patrolling Austrian soldiers, and destroyed their post office, killing the Post Master. Simovic lead an assault against the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army’s headquarters, capturing the building and massacring its occupants.
By February 15, Belgrade was under the control of S.W.L.A. and the victors began to dish out revolutionary justice. Any person in Belgrade suspected of collaborating with the Austrians was summarily executed. In some estimates, over 5,000 Serbs were victims of this justice in the few days Belgrade remained ‘free’. The revolutionary army quickly degraded into a mob, attacking any institution, business or even building that represented the old order of the Sultans or Habsburgs, including the Ottoman built University of Belgrade. The University was raised and captured professors were executed as collaborators and traitors.
Belgrade’s liberty was short lived. After hearing of the uprising and assassination of the Army’s Field Marshall, that the Austrian General Chief of Staff Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, released reserves from the Ottoman Front for immediate redeployment to Belgrade. By March 3, 50,000 Austrian soldiers, including many Croatian, Slovakian and Bosnian units, had the city encircled. After two days of siege, the Austrians stormed Belgrade.
Knowing immediately that holding off the attack was impossible, Karadordevic ordered the S.W.L.A. to scatter, and continue the struggle in the countryside. Of the estimated 13,000 revolutionaries, only 3,212 are known to have escaped. The two leaders of the uprising where among the escapees. Simovic escaped across the border in Sarejavo, and Karadordevic escaped across the front lines (some said smuggled in a coffin), down the Danube and into Sofia. It is from these two cities that revolutionary flames were fanned.
Fanning the Flames
The seeds of two more uprisings, more succesful uprisings, hatched on March 15, 1916. When Karadordevic and Simovic reached their respective destinations, they contacted cells of revolutionaries that were poised to act once Belgrade was free. Pieces were moved into place. By the time similar uprisings were in place across the Balkans, the Belgrade Uprising was thoroughly crushed. On March 13, Karadordevic contacted the Bulgarian People’s Army, ordering the uprising to take effect. Simultaneously, Simovic launched the uprising in Bosnia.
In the early hours of March 15, the Bulgarian People’s Army and Bosnia Liberation Front launched attacks against the garrisons of Sarejavo and Sofia. The Turkish garrison in Sofia was massacred after their surviving high ranking officer surrendered. During the uprising, Albanian units in the garrison switched sides, descending on their Ottoman overlords. The success of the Sofia Uprising sparked off rebellion across Bulgaria and Wallachia. In the streets of major towns, Ottoman governors and mayors were victims of Revolutionary justice.
By March 19, the lower Danube was completely under the control of the Revolution. The Bulgarian People’s Army and Wallachian Liberation Army decisively defeated an Ottoman army at Serevin, near the Serbian border. The Austro-Hungarian Army attempted to exploit this rebellion, which caused the uprising in Sarejavo to succeed. Serbians in Sarejavo linked with surviving units of the Serbian Worker’s Liberation Army, and spread the revolution into Zenica and Tuzla.
On March 21, 1916, in Sofia and Bucharest, Revolutionaries declared independence from the Ottoman Empire, establishing the Bulgarian and the Wallachian People’s Republics. On March 22, the Bosnians declared independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Bosnian Socialist Republic entered into an alliance with Wallachia and Bulgaria, and launched an invasion into Serbia. Both Austrian and Turkish armies inside Serbia were trapped by the invading Revolutionaries. Bulgarian units in the Ottoman Army rose up, killing their Turkish officers and captured much of the artillery.
Ante Trumbic, leader of the Croatian Socialist Army, captured Zagreb on March 28. He was a colonel in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and a secret member of the International Brotherhood of Workers. Once Bosnia declared its independence, Trumbic and his Croatian legion mutinied along the Balkan Front and marched on their homeland. Along with thousands of soldiers, a Croatian squadron flying Petrel D. IVs based in occupied Serbia joined Trumbic’ mutiny.
Greek Mutiny
While ethnic units were defecting and mutinying in piece meal, on April12, the entire Greek contingent in the Ottoman armed forces rose up against the Turk. Revolutionaries in Athens, Thessaloniki and even Constantinople drove the Turks out, forcing the Sultan across the Bosporus. Soon after, the Greeks declared independence with the Revolutionaries declaring a Hellenistic Socialist Republic. In the Ottoman Navy, Greek officers and sailors took control over several ship, including the Battleship Sultan Selim (which was renamed Leonidis).
Ottoman loyalist, under the command of Turkish Admiral Musha Seydi Ali intercepted the mutineers at their assembly point off the coast of Rhodes. Under the command of Pavlos Konstantinos, a high ranking member of the Greek Communist Party, two Revolutionary battleships, four cruisers and seven destroyers engaged a Loyalist force of nearly double the size. Key to winning the battle, Konstantinos credited the defection of several ships during the battle. The Crimean executive officer of the Turgut Reis seized control of the battlecruiser during the middle of the fight and turned its two hundred fifty millimeter guns on Seydi’s flagship, killing the admiral and effectively breaking the back of the Ottoman Navy. Since the ethnic content of the Ottoman Navy had a disproportionally high number of Greek and Crimean sailors, the surviving Turkish ships were held up in port while the Ottoman government commenced purging it of revolutionary elements.
Fragmentation
By May 1, 1916, the armies of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire were in an advanced state of decay. Forces were pulled away from the fronts to deal with ethnic uprisings and revolution. The state of Austria was in crisis by May 4, when a combined force of the Hungarian Revolutionary Army and the Croatian Socialist Army crossed the frontier into Austria Proper. Loyal Austrian soldiers were pulled from the front with the Ottomans (who had their own problems) and from the Swedish Front (who took advantage of the Revolution to push into Crimea and Moldova).
Two events prevented Vienna from falling to the Revolutionaries. One was the fact that discipline within the Hungarian and Croatian armies were poor, and the soldiers took to pillaging towns and seeking revenge for centuries of oppression. The second factor was that the Kaiser saw the writing on the wall and ordered units of the German Army to occupy German Austria along with Bohemia, to prevent the Revolution from spreading into Bavaria. At this point, the Germans had no intention on reconquering the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Instead they sought to contain the revolutionary plague well outside the Fatherland.
By July, the situation within the armies of both empires is utter chaos. No longer do the Turks or Austrians have an army. Austrian and Turkish units within their respective armies have abandoned the front lines and have retreated into their heartlands to defend their homes and families from the vengeance the repressed people tend to deliver. The newly formed Hungarian army, under the command of Revolutionary Zoltan Tildy, has even stepped beyond the Balkans and made incursions into Poland-Lithuania.
End of Empires
With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German Empire relocated its own soldiers from the Eastern Front (since Sweden was having its own problems with Revolutionary incursions into the Ukraine) to hold on to German Austria and Bohemia. The German Empire would annex both of these territories. The German Army would clash with Croatian forces under the command of Ivan Mestrovic. Mestrovic was born in Split in 1883. Through most of his early life, he dabbled in the arts, and even trying his hand at sculpting.
In 1905, his career was cut short when he found himself conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. Like many Croatians, he resented having to serves masters in Vienna, even if he would not have minded attending art academies there. It was while in the army that he met Ante Trumbic. It was from Trumbic that he became enthralled by socialism and the ideas of classless society, though he was never a member of the I.B.W. His Revolutionary zeal grew during the Great War, and more so when the Ottomans entered the war. He saw the injustice of his people dying for aristocratic elites and arms dealing capitalist in Vienna.
When the Revolution came, Mestrovic found himself thrust into a position of authority. It was not a position he wanted; after all, he only wished to be an artist. However, it was a position that he excelled. Mestrovic was not so much a tactician as a leader of men. He lead by example and his fellow Croatians would follow him into battle. He also had sense enough to listen to his inferiors in rank, especially since they knew more about tactics than he. One of his advisors had even attended the Military Academy in Vienna.
With charisma to lead and sense to listen, Mestrovic is known as one of the greatest Revolution. His victory over the German Army while at Graz. The Croatians took the city on July 17, after defeating a weak Austrian garrison. On July 30, the German Army sent a division against the Croatians defenses. The Croatians captured enough machine guns to turn back the German assault, forcing them into their own network of trenches. For the moment, it appeared a new front would form during the Great War.
Cease Fire
On August 2, 1916, German, Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth agreed to a cease fire in order to combat the Revolutionaries within their respective territories. The Austro-Hungarian Empire ceased to exist by August, and the Ottoman Empire received its final nail with the Janissary Massacre at Skopje on July 28. The last of the Janissaries in the Balkans were holed up in Macedonia, surrounded by Greek, Albanian and Serbian armies. Upon breaching the defenses of Skopje, all Turkish soldiers were killed by the Revolutionary Armies. No quarter was given, nor asked for, as the Janissaries fought to the last man. Those too wounded to fight were bayoneted where they fell.
When German annexations were recognized in the Treaty of Versailles, the Croatians withdrew from Austria and returned to their own frontiers. Croatia itself was starting to come apart with tensions between Serbs and Croats living within its borders. In Bosnia, fighting was already happening. Once the last of the Austrian holdouts surrendered, Serbs, Croats and Bosnians began fighting for control of the country.
While Balkans were fighting Balkans, the outside world looked towards the Balkans with a land-rush mentality. The threat of outside invasion did little to curb the violence. It was not until the Italian Federation invaded Slovenia, annexing the country in 1918, that made the Balkan nationalities to pause and take notice. At the start of 1919, the Balkan states knew that socialist states would have to work together, or they would be picked off one by one.
Armistices
The first of the armistices leading to the Peace Conference at Versailles came on August 2, 1916, when Sweden and Germany ceased hostile actions towards each other. In the wake of the sudden and violent collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, both combatants withdrew from Poland-Lithuania to wage war against Revolutionary elements that have crossed their borders. In the case of Germany, the German Army marched in German Austria, securing Vienna on August 12, as well as securing the Habsburgs. The Swedes were a more heterogenous state than Germany, and some concerns in Stockholm was that Revolutionary fervor might sweep up the Ukrainians, and other ethnic groups near the former Ottoman border. As per the cease fire, Germany began to immediately repatriate Polish-Lithuanian prisoners of war, and all parties involved began to trade prisoners. Partly to release resources from guarding them, and partly so these captives could be put to use fighting the Revolution.
Weeks later, on August 29, France and Germany signed an additional cease fire at Sedan. The same Revolutionary illness that plagued the Balkans began to infect the French Army. On August 20, units of the French Army west of Verdun refused to go over-the-top, and several officers were arrested by their own men. This mutiny began to spread, and the fact that Germany was already involved in German Austria kept them from exploiting this chaos and breaking through the Western Front. What was not known to the French government at the time, was that similar Red ideologies were beginning to ferment within the Imperial German Army. Had the French not mutinied, it is quite likely the Germans would have in the following months. Generals and Governments have a difficult time fighting wars when their soldiery is on strike. The cease fire between Germany and France called for the evacuation of British and Spanish soldiers from France within one week.
Italy, though not as susceptible to the Revolution as its neighbors, unilaterally withdrew from the war and back into its own borders. King Manuel recalled his soldiers into the urban areas of Italy, to break strikes that began shortly after the Balkan Revolution erupted. The King and his government believed, quite falsely it turned out, that these strikes were of Red sympathies. This was caused due to theteste di rosso, the redheads as they were called, named such due to either red scarves wrapped around their heads or of dying their hair red. Strikes in the steel industry were also seen as a general threat to national survival. Hundreds were killed when the army attempted to break the strike. However, with millions already dead in the Great War, the other nations did not seem to overly care about a few hundred extra.
With the war in Europe falling apart, the British looked to get out of the war entirely, and with its empire still intact. Though Europe remained a stalemate, North America was going badly. After Quebec entered the war on the side of America, supply links to Canada were forced to go through Hudson’s Bay. The Canadians were making the Americans pay for every kilometer of land they took, but the American advance continued relentlessly. On September 1, through the neutral embassies of the Swiss, the British sought terms with the Americans. Initial demands called for the cession of vast tracks of Canadian territory, which was rejected. Roosevelt did accept a cease fire, pending a peace conference between American and Britain.
By September 5, the United States and Confederate States were the only combatants left in the war, and the Confederates were already teetering on destruction. Roosevelt dreamt of a restored Union, and a crumbling Confederacy was going to play into his hands. Without the industrial base of Britain or France, the Confederate States found themselves at a disadvantage when the war began. As it came to an end, Confederate supplies evaporated. Their largest source of income still came from cotton exports, exports that dried up due to American blockades, and ended by the Dutch Commonwealth’s entry into the war.
The first meeting between American governments was not between Philadelphia and Birmingham, but rather Philadelphia and Richmond. With so much of its state torn up by war, the governor of Virginia took the extraordany step of entering into separate negotiations with a foreign government, in clear violation of the Confederate States Constitution. Virginia was not the last state to seek terms. Kentucky’s government-in-exile found itself declared illegitimate by its own constitutients. Kentuckians elected a new government, which immediately sought terms of surrender from General Pershing.
Arizona and Tennessee were next to follow. Birmingham declared martial law and attempted to send soldiers to hold down States it declared rebellious. Units from Tennessee mutinied when they were ordered to storm their own capital. The Confederate States were on the verge of civil war while facing their greatest defeat. So disastrous was the month of August, that Secretary of War Phillip James Moisure committed suicide, and the Confederate Secretary of State simply vanished. With the situation on the home front worsening by the day, the Confederate people began to protest. Protests that quickly evolved into riots.
Charolette and Jackson were simply shut down by city-wide strikes and rioting. Wilson was now facing a possible coup by his own Army. With both heavy heart and desperation, Wilson sued for terms. American and Confederate delegates met on September 11, at Memphis. Though the Confederate States would not formally end until Versailles, Wilson’s signing the terms of surrender was the last act of any Confederate President.
Treaty of Versailles
In October 1916, after various separate cease fires and armistices, the surviving belligerents of the Great War met in the Palace of Versailles to draw up a peace treaty to end the war. For most of the combatants, years of war followed by recent revolutions upon their borders has weakened resolve for decisive victory. Instead, the combatants in Europe would settle upon a largely maintenance of the balance of power. For Germany, Sweden, Italy, the Dutch Commonwealth, Britain and Poland-Lithuania, the war would end in a status quo ante bellum. Poland-Lithuania would abolish its monarchy as a result of the war, becoming the Republic of Poland-Lithuania.
Nothing gained, nothing lost, and nothing achieved after four years of conflict and millions dead and maimed. France would lose Alsace-Lorraine to the German Empire for a period of twenty years. After which, a plebiscite would be held in the provinces for the locals to determine their own fate. Despite the status quo, Sweden agreed to pay the worth of the van der Weld to its owner, and the King of Sweden formally apologized for the sinking of the ship.
In related terms, all parties agreed upon a new maritime boundaries at fifteen kilometers from the shores of the country in question. In cases were territorial waters overlap, all parties involved would have joint sovereignty over the waters. It was hoped that this would prevent a replay of the events that brought the Dutch into the war. This, of course, turned out to be a pipe dream. Further in European affairs, Germany was permitted to annex German Austria from the ruins of the Habsburg Empire. The fate of the Balkans was not resolved at the peace conference, but no World Power desired to be drawn into the civil war that raged across former international boundaries.
Though the Great War was often seen as a pointless exercise in nationalism in Europe, the only true winner to come out of the war was the United States. At Versailles, international recognition for the Anglo-American Permanent Peace Treaty, which was still in the works at the time, was achieved. In the previous month, delegates from Birmingham met in Philadelphia to discuss the Confederate terms of peace. The terms were simply; the Confederate States national government would disband and the former States would submit to military occupation and governing until such time as they were suited to rejoin the Union.
The biggest accomplishment to come out of Versailles was the establishment of the League of Nations. This was the dream of former Confederate President Woodrow Wilson. The League would be a place were nations could meet to resolve their differences before an arbitration of global community. It was hoped that a repeat of the succession crisis in Poland-Lithuania that sparked the war could never happen again. The idea was met with acclaim and included within the treaty. The Treaty of Versailles was signed October 18, 1916, formally ending the Great War. Within six months, all combatants would ratify the treaty. However, in the case of the League of Nations, the Dutch Commonwealth opted out of it. Wilson would not live to see his dream come to fruition; he was found dead on May 21, 1917, at his home in Tennessee. Death by poison, whether it was suicide or murder has never been determined.
Following the Balkan Revolution and end of the Great War, what would become of the Austro-Hungarian Navy was a serious question. By annexing German Austria and later Bohemia, the German Empire claimed a great deal of the Austrian ships. However, several warships were seized during the Revolution by Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. When the Italian Federation annexed Slovenia, they captured only a few of the ships. The rest were scuttled in the Adriatic Sea. The ships under the control of Croatia and Bosnia were handed over to the Union of Balkan Socialist Republics. Only one battleship and three cruisers ever ended up in the hands of the Kaiser. Those Austro-Hungarian ships not captured by mutinies remained in the hands of loyalists, and too were scuttled in the northern Adriatic rather than be surrendered to the Balkan Union, or to Austria’s German cousins. Today, many reefs have developed among the wreckage scattered in an arc stretching hundreds of kilometers south of Venice.
Enemies no More
There were some lessons learned from the Great War. The most oblivious lesson was the follow of two nations being enemies without end. It took the Great War to make the United States and United Kingdom to put aside their differences and put behind them nearly a century-and-a-half of hostilities. To achieve this, the two nations made a separate agreement along with the general peace of Versailles.
The peace treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States ended an on-again, off-again state of warfare between the two nations since the days of the Revolution. Following the cease fires that swept across the world in 1916 following the Balkans Revolution, the United States and Britain attended the peace conference at Versailles, as well as a separately in Halifax to work out a separate, lasting peace. The British recognized that the United States was the dominate power in North America and they would have to do business with them. The Americans, with honor satisfied in their victories during the Great War, also sought to end the belligerence within the Anglo-sphere. Both sides recognized that peace would benefit all. Several disputes between the English-speaking powers were resolved with Permanent Peace Treaty. The points of the treaty are as follow:
1) The northern border of the United States would have both northern Maine and the Red River Valley restored to the Union. The border would follow the 49th parallel to the Continental Divide, where it would then extend north to include all of the previous Oregon Country territory.
2) The Great Lakes would be demilitarized.
3) Canada would be guaranteed right of passage through Québécois controlled waters.
4) The Grand Banks fishery would be neutralized, allowing fishing vessels from signatory nations free access.
5) Cession of the Bahamas to the United States in exchange for twenty-five million dollars.
6) Free Movement of nationals across the U.S., Canadian and Québécois borders, including
extradition.
7) Rights of citizens in ceded territories would not be abridged.
8) Open (but not free) trade between the United States and British Empire.
9) A pact of non-aggression between signatory nations.
The United States Senate ratified the bill on February 28, 1917, and President Theodore Roosevelt signed the bill the next day, one of the last bills he signed into law.