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The Italian Generals should be bottom of that list. The Russian Generals didn't actually do that badly. Remember Brusilov masterminded the greatest Allied victory of the whole war and pioneered the stormtrooper tactics which would be so successful in breaking the stalemate in the West. On top of this thing only started to really collapse for Russia when the home front went down the pan - considering the quality of their army compared to the Germans after 1914 this is no mean feat.

The list does make a lot more sense as a list of armies.
 
The list does make a lot more sense as a list of armies.

If it was a list of armies then Germany should be top ... by a really, really long way ....
 
Chapter twenty-seven: Persian Oil, British interest, Allied obligations


As if to put more pressure upon general Smith Dorrien, a German diplomat attempted to bring Persia into the war on the German side. Wilhelm Wasserm, who was called later on "the Lawrence of Persia", recognized the opportunity to foment a revolt in the Middle East. He met with his superiors in Constantinople and proposed to organize the Persians in a guerilla war against Britain. The plan was approved and the German Foreign Office as Wilhelm II was enthusiastic about the plan. Although Wassmuss had absolutely no training in espionage, he became one of the world’s first covert action operatives.

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In the first days of February 1915 Wassmuss and a few followers sailed down the Tigris River and from there Wassmuss' party moved eastward into Iran where he began work on a grandiose mission, aimed at ending of Anglo-Russian domination in the Middle East. Based in Bushehr, Wassmuss organised the Tangsir and Qashghâi tribes to revolt against the British in the south of the country. Wassmuss was very successful in Iran, but tribal support for him began to fade when it became obvious to the tribal leaders that Germany was not defeating England. Meanwhile, Fritz Klein, a former military attaché in Teheran, was attempting to gather some land forces to seize the oil refinery at Abadan an to raise into revolt the Shi'it tribes. Klein found himself without the troops needed for the enterprise.

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This failed activities were enough to make the British jump into action. They decided o give the Turks and the German enought troubles elsewhere to make them forget Persia or being unable to divert efforts that would be needed now in other fronts. In any case, as Wassmuss assembled four hundred tribesmen outside of the port of Bushire, the British reacted by sending a battalion of Indian troops to the port on 13th July 1915 to secure it against capture, while more troops were sent to Ahwaz. Meanwhile, General Smith Dorrien, and his counterpart in Egypt, General Sir Beauchamp Duff, prepared their forces to the new onslaught, confident that the drain of resources caused by the Italian landing would made up for the lack of quality of some of their forces.

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However, before any preparation could be carried out, the war changed upside down, as Bulgaria entered the war on 7th September 1915 on the side of the Central Powers. They had offered them the of Serbian Macedonia, yet it was the strength of the Turkish position which convinced Sofia that the time for entering the conflict was ripe. The failed Gallipoli campaign had reinforced this assumption. The lethargic attitude of Greece only served to strengthen Bulgaria’s hand. The Austro-Hungarians, still unable to capture Belgrade, were more than happy to sanction the renouncement of Macedonia to the Bulgarians in return for their cooperation in the dismantling of Serbia. This prompted Britain and France into direct action and began to press Greece to allow the landing of a combined force of 60,000 men in Salonika, from where it would march to reinforce the Serbian army. However, in Greece the political consensus collapsed as the frontline moved closer to Greece. Chancellor Venizelos resigned in March after his proposal to join the Allies had been vetoed by king Constantine, who subsequently opened treaty negotiations with Berlin. Venizelos' landslide victory in the June elections undermined the King's position, and the Greece stumbled into chaos. Finally, the royal non-cooperation would forced Venizelos to resign again in early October 1915. For a while, Greece seemed on the verge of entering into a civil war, as Venizelos created an alternative government in Crete in September, establishing a Commitee of National Defence at Salonika in October, while beginning to recruit an Army of National Defense to fight with the Allies.

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Meanwhile, the Allies hesitated too, as the French Prime Minister, Briand, objected any kind of Allied interference in Greek affairs. Thuis doomed Serbia to be destroyed. Attacked from North and East, the Serbian army had to retreat into Kosovo, and from there into the Albanian mountains on late December 1915.

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@quaazi: At this pace, I'll have to pray for my enemies not being defeated too early!

@Enewald: And the Germans are too far away from Helsinki, too...

@Tommy4ever: Near, near...

@FlyingDutchie: As sir Humphrey Appebly would say: "yes, it's very interesting" :D

@Dr. Gonzo: That's explain the bad smell in Flanders. Those pesky Germans...

@Nathan Madien: They are given a free hand... they will hang themselves, in due time.... :D
 
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Ahh Wassmuss, a man who's actions would set the finest traditions of the German intelligence agencies to come; Incompetence, failure and ultimately doing more harm to his own side than to the enemy. If only his secretary had been working for the other side he would have had the complete set of mistakes, still you can't have everything can you?
 
Serbia? Can you hear me Serbia? Serbia!

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
 
Speaking of blundering German intelligence operatives, hows Von Papen doing in the States?

Well, you'll need that Middle-Eastern victory fast, both to keep the pressure of Russia and to balance the Central troops not needed anymore in the Balkans.
 
This is simply golden. Indians on their way to Baghdad. I think I might have to kiss you, Kurt :D
And Greece... At that rate they can just as well wave goodbye to the Megali Idea already.
 
Chapter twenty-eight: Clash in the Channel


By late August 1915 the 1st Canadian Corps, under Lt. Gen. Sir Edwin Alderson, KCB, was ready to be sent to the front line after being deployed from the other side of the Channel. The election of Alderson, in part, due to his experience in South Africa commanding Canadian troops during the Second Boer War but also for his problems with Sir Sam Hughes, Canadian Minister of Militia. Alderson and Hughes came soon to grips as the former complained about the poor quality of the politically appointed officers, the low degree of training and the total ineffectiveness of the Ross rifle, a weapon personally approved by Hughes.

Thus, Alderson was sent to England to keep him away from Hughes and to command the first corps of Canadian troops, that, by that stage of the war, they were training in Salisbury Plain. Alderson began at once to toughen his troops encamped in the wet, autumn weather and to dismiss the officers appointed by Hughes who had proved ineffectual. By late summer, the Canadian Corps was dispatched to France and attached to the British 2nd Army.

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It was then when the Hochseeflotte went for another foray into the Channel, trying to catch the vulnerable transport ships without protection and, as it had happened in the first weeks of th war, the German commander was sorely dissapointed when he found a bigger and thougher enemy.

The younger brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Grossadmiral Prinz Heinrich von Preussen, led some of the most modern ships of the German navy in that attack, when he found his path blocked by the Channel Fleet, under Admiral The Hon Sir Hedworth Meux, GCB, KCVO. Meux, a friend of George V, had been, for a time, candidate to become the new First Sea Lord, but the "Fisherites" had blocked this move and Meux had ended defending cross-Channel communications, including transport for the British expeditionary force crossing to France. In March 1915 he became Admiral of the Fleet and now he was facing the German onslaught.

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Meux, in a pre-war picture, when he was a Vice-Admiral.​

Fortunately for the British, Commodore Roger Keyes was leading another submarine patrol into the Heligoland Bight, much in the same fashion as he had done since the outbreak of war, when the German ship sailed. His flotilla was a mixture of D-class and E-class submarines, based at Harwich, and tasked with undertaking offensive action in German waters. Keyes was a destroyer captain, not a submariner, but he was the ideal man for the job. Two of his submarines, E-9 and E-10 surfaced and one of them, the E-9, commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Max Horton, fired two torpedoes against the flagship of Prinz Heinrich, the new German dreadnought Kronprinz: at 25,390 tonnes, capable of twenty-three knots and armed with ten 305 mm guns, she was one of the finest ship in the German Navy. At this moment she was also one of the luckies, as the two torpedos missed her. However, Horton was able to alert his commanders abour the German sortie and soon the Channel Fleet, which was escorting the Allied convoys to France, was informed. The Home Fleet also left Scapa Flow, but it was to arrive too late for the battle.

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The SMS Kronprinz prior to the battle.

As the convoys returned to the southern coast of England, the Channel Fleet turned round and began to head back into the mouth of the Channel. Meux kept his fleet together by travelling at teen knots, with all his dreadnoughts in the van. Observing radio silence, the movements of his fleet remained unknown by the Germans.

The first sighting of the enemy fleet as it travelled through the Channel by a neutral merchant vessel near the island of Wight. This was not the only sighting, for another merchant vessel saw Prinz Heinrich’s fleet and reported in more detail. Prinz Henrich's fleet was lead by two pre-dreadnoughts, Hessen and Braunschweig, followed by the four Wittelsbach Class Battleships - Wittelsbach, Mecklenburg, Wettin and Schwaben -, the SMS Prinzregent Luitpold - a Kaiser class battleship -, the Braunschweig class battleship SMS Hessen, four cruisers (the CA SMS Siegfried, as well as Thetis, Undine and Arkona, three light cruisers). The German ships sailed in line astern when the British fleet appeared in the horizon with the sight of distant gun flashes being followed up by columns of water rising not too far from his ships. Meux had caught sight of him first.

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Meux left behind the much slower pre-dreadnoughts, which were struggling to make sixteen knots. The guns of his dreadnoughts more than made up for the absence of these last three ships, and soon an explosion engulfed the Sigfried: a direct hit on her magazine caused a ball of flame to rip through the ship, instantly sending her to the bottom of the sea without a single survivor. The German response was largely ineffectual, with gunfire often failing to hit Meux’s dreadnoughts, and not causing much damage when it did. The two combatants exchanged blows across the grey stretch of water, with the numerical superiority of the British beginning to manifest. Then another heavy shell from a British dreadnought – this time the Dreadnought itself – plunged into the Hessen.

Her captain was killed instantly when the shell struck the bridge, and the ship continued much like a headless chicken, going out from the German battle line as teh crew fought to repair the damage caused. Gunfire from British cruisers made matters worse, and another salvo from Dreadnought finished the hapless Hessen, breaking the ship in two. In reaction, Prinz Heinrich turned to starboard to head south-east in hope of avoiding Meux’s fire and to break the contact. As the German fleet turned, the British fire concentrated on the two German ships in the van – Wettin and Mecklenburg, and had all the guns of his dreadnoughts firing on these two vessels. Nearly thirty 305-mm (the good old twelve-inch) guns were now aimed at the leading German pre-dreadnoughts, who did their best to return the enemy fire. Eventually, Wettin exploded in a wall of flame while the remains of the ship floundered, which was now rapidly sinking. The damage inflicted on Mecklenburg was appalling, and with four dreadnoughts now concentrating their fire on her, she soon became a floating carcass of twisted metal.

Soon Prinzregent Luitpold was heavily damaged. The British dreadnoughts continued to pound Prinzregent Luitpold for another fifteen minutes, whilst British and German cruisers duelled some way back. Finally, the German battleship began to falter, then list and finally sink.

By then the rest of the German squadron had managed to break the contact and speeded back to its base in Helgoland. In exchange for a hevily damaged light cruiser, the Diamond, which was sunk when she was being towed to Plymouth, and a few destroyers, the Royal Navy had crushed again the Germany fiend.

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@Enewald: Not really. The Serbian army got surrounded and wiped, but, for historical accuracy, I'll try to do something about that later on.

@quaazi: Yes to both comments. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

@El Pip :rofl:

@Nathan Madien: You're not the only one who thinks that...

@Tommy4ever: Nobody at home, I'd say.

@FlyingDutchie: Last time he was searching for an elusive double agent called Ronald MacDonald.

@Milites: Apparently, the Indian army is bound to be successful. Perhaps they will reach Constatinople. Who knows?
 
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Nice to see Horton and Keyes having a good war, two excellent commanders there. Interesting the Royal Navy has the 305mm gun while the Kronprinz has 12" guns, I'm struggling to wonder who which side would be more surprised at using the wrong units, though I suspect it would be the British who rightly viewed metric is the tool of the enemy (after all it is French and it is surely only a matter of time till they show their true colours....)
 
though I suspect it would be the British who rightly viewed metric is the tool of the enemy (after all it is French and it is surely only a matter of time till they show their true colours....)
It is the French against whom the British nuclear program is aimed against, after all. Well, them and the frickin' Chinese. :p
 
There goes the last of the Kriegsmarines pride down the drain, or channel in this case. Britain is save, but Jerry is still dangerously close to Paris...
 
I must confess that Enewald and El Pip are giving me a good laugh and good headaches at the same time, as I cannot not decide, for the life of me, to whom of them bestow the Petinguished Order of the Sacred Holypizza (POSH). :D