The Great War (mod 1914)

[Kurt_Steiner]

I have to update this AAR soon before it ends moved to the History section...

[Tommy4ever]

I have to update this AAR soon before it ends moved to the History section...

If you don't we will stone you.

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter thirteen: The Old Sick Man of Europe

The Ottoman Empire controlled a great swathe of the Middle East. It was ruled by the Sultan, who in his capacity as Khalif was the theoric overlord of the orthodox (Sunnite and Shi'ite) Muslim world. Until the Young Turk revolution (July 3, 1908) the Sultan had reigned as an autocract, bolstered by a strictly orthodox religious hierarchy. Then the revolution forced him to accept a constitution and an elected representantive assembly. He was deposted the next year after a failed countercoup and was replaced by the kindly but elderly Mohammed V.

A series of military defeats in the 19th century had compelled the grant of reparations and zones of influence to European Powers. By 1914 Great Britain was in effective control of Egypt (technically an Ottoman province) and economically dominated the Persian Gulf. The recent territorial losses of Bosnia-Herzegovina to Austria (1908), of Lybia to Italy in the war of 1911-12, and of Macedonia to independent regional powers in the First Balkan War (1912) had practically eliminated Ottoman influence from Europe and North Africa.

The surviving Empire contained an estimated 25 million people in 1914, including a large Arab, Kurdish, Slavish, Armenian, Circassian and Greek minorities, all of whom spoke different languages and worshipped differing religions, ranging from Sunni and Shi’ite Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Nestorism, Maronism and Judaism.

İsmail Enver Efendi (1881-1922), known to Europeans
during his political and military career as Enver Pasha

Led by Enver, Talaaat and Djemal, in alliance with a cabal of senior bureaucrats, Turkey embarked on a policy of rapid industrialization, military reorganization and cultural "Turcification" under the guise of constitutional government. Its restrictive attitude towards minorities, though, exacerbated tensions already fuelled by supply shortages and bureaucratic breakdowns.

By 1914 the Anglo-French influence in Turkey was still strong, but the German activity was growing fast in banking, development, trade and military affairs. Germany was building the Berlin-Baghdad railway link and sent a military mission under Liman von Sanders reached Constantinople in December 1913, which soon had a growing influence on the Turkish Army, controlled by Enver as a war minister. Enver and the ruling cabinet inner circle constituted a war party in Turkey, while the rest of the government were committed to neutrality and were undecided on the direction of the Turkish foreign policy. Unknown to most of the cabinet, Enver and Talaat signed a defensive alliance with Germany in July 1914, which remained secret, enabling genuine negotiations with Allied diplomats to continue while Enver worked to join the Central Powers.

Allied clumsiness helped. The Turks, without adequate shipbuilding or docking facilities, had contracted in Britain the construction of a superdreadnought named Reshadieh. Additionally, the Turks also purchased the Rio de Janeiro, which had been ordered by Brazil, now bankrupted, and had it renamed Sultan Osman I. By July 1914, the Reshadieh was complete, and the Ottoman government was keen to bring her home to display to the nation, but, as the July Crisis intensified, Churchill, upon hearing that the Sultan Osman I was near completion, and suspecting that the newly arrived Turkish sailors would board the ship and raise their flag, gave the order to seize the ships on 4th August, two days before the battle of the Waddenzee. Soldiers from the British Army guarded the docks and boarded the vessels and guarding the docks. Churchill attempted to appease Turkish by offering to hand them back after the war and by paying them for every day that they remained neutral. Enver did not accept that -he had already suspected that the British would do that- so he had signed the secret agreement with Germany.

Thus the importance of the German Mittlermeerdivision came to the fore and the nominal purchase of its two modern warships by the turkish navy was another propaganda defeat for the allies and gave Germany enourmous influence of Turkish policy, not least because its guns covered the capital. However, Turkey was increasingly reluctant to go to war. Allied voices kept pressuring Constatinople, despite Turkey's clossure of the Dardannelles. Finally, it was Admiral Souchon, with the contrivance of Enver, that put war beyond doubt on October 29th, 1914, when he launched a preemptive attack on Russian naval bases on the Black Sea. In less than a few months, the British had overturned the policy it had adhered to for more than a century – from protecting the Ottoman Empire, she was now tasked with destroying it.

Meanwhile, Serbia was facing a desperate situation...

After resisting the successive Austro-Hungarian offensives, by September 1914 the Serbian army had virtually exhausted the Army's manpower resources, so that men in their fifties were already being called up and many men in their seventies emulating King Peter by joining the fight. However, the losses of heavy equipment were harder to replace, as Serbia depended on imports to cover those losses and the army had lost all its heavy artillery and was desperately short of ammunition.

An update with a lot of comments, methinks... let's answer some...

@Enewald: I can tell you something: Those GermanRussians are mad!

@Karaiskandar: Someone who see the bright side of life, indeed!

@Nathan Madien: I would like to have more, as casualties are huge even without battles.

@El Pip: It caused two things. The first one a "D'oh"-ish () feeling among the Britons and then the firm belief in commiting the full strenght of the Empire to repair that awfull wrongdoing from the evil Hun. About doing anything, well, you might end with the German army in controll of all the coastline from Brest to Holland, so...

@c0d5579: I have plans for K o K and, bearing in mind that he fought in the Boer war, the old saying that it's wise to "keep De Wet from defeat" (awful pun, I know) might work this time. About the First Earl of Milford Haven... well... honours always came late, you know...

@El Pip: I hope so, but the German submarines are being quite elusive -darn they- and I fear that I'm going to have quite a bit of troubles with the UC Boats in the future...

About Beatty going to the Mediterranean. Let me put it this way. After seeing the French and the Italian navies looking for the Goeben in Gibraltar, damn me for a fool if I trust them to finish the German Mitlermeerdivision and the Austrian navy! The Dardenelles Campaign... I've been told that Churchill was seeing looking at a map of the Turkish Empire and being adviced by an strange fellow named Baldrick about the best suitable landing area. Apparently, they were not looking to the Bosphorus area.

@Tommy4ever: If you forget about the frontile by the Seine, yes, it's quite historically accurate. I'm proud of it, even if I had to work quite hard to lure the German AI to attack me.

@FlyingDutchie: Ian Hamilton, too kind to be a field commander. Someone else would have kicked Hunter-Weston's balls in the landings on the first day or would have explained Stopford in unmisteakable ways what do do in Suvla, but, you know... I have plans for him, too.

@Nathan Madien. Right now USA is having the times of their lifes making money and seeing the Preparadness Movement going to grips with groups like the American Union Against Militarism, the Women's Peace Party, the American Fellowship of Reconciliation and the more radical People's Council of America for Peace and Democracy (no kidding, those were real organization). Thank God for Teddy Roosevelt and General Wood

@soulking: I'm afraid it will have to wait a bit, sorry...

@El Pip: Well, it's the French Army, after all. They play with a huge advantage in that field Only the Italian Army can defeat them in that (oh, irony, the Italian army defeating someone at least!!!!)

About the inept, arrogant and useless British generals... well, I'll make an example of one of them and a massacre with the rest...

@Porkman: Perhaps, in due time, if I have the chance, I'll cover the making of a British officer...

About the example of previous wars... They don't bother to keep their own Boer war in mind, so...

[Sir Humphrey]

So the war spreads across the world. I was hoping the Ottomans might stay out. I hope that the campaign does not have the lows it did for the Brits OTL.

[Karaiskandar]

Poor Serbia...

[Enewald]

I thought the Ottoes had already by 1913 lost their Slavic minorities...

Evil Churchill. The nastiest imperialist of 20th century.

[Tommy4ever]

I thought the Ottoes had already by 1913 lost their Slavic minorities...

Evil Churchill. The nastiest imperialist of 20th century.

There will still be some Slavs in Thrace.

Nice to see the Turk has entered the war. You need only threaten Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire shall come tumbling down. The plan is fool proof!

[Patukov]

There will still be some Slavs in Thrace.

Nice to see the Turk has entered the war. You need only threaten Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire shall come tumbling down. The plan is fool proof!

Wasn´t Galipoli a disaster?In OTL,of course

[Tommy4ever]

Wasn´t Galipoli a disaster?

[El Pip]

Nice to see the Turk has entered the war. You need only threaten Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire shall come tumbling down. The plan is fool proof!

Indeed, keep the army well clear, despatch a commander with a bit of vigour job done. Whatever you do though, don't involve the Army, colonials or the French in the scheme, that would be a sure fire route to disaster.

[Van5]

but the Anzacs....

[trekaddict]

Is that an Austro-Hungarian Airship Squadron?

[quaazi]

Don't be afraid to land at Gallipoli, just make sure Stopford has nothing to do with it.

[TheRealKestrel]

Conduct a campaign in Gallipoli if you must, but remember, it's a sideshow. A victory against the Turks cannot outweigh a reverse against the Germans in France or in the North Sea.

[soulking]

I believe that the Ottoman entrance into the war delayed the end of WWI by maybe a couple months. Also, the Austro-Hungarian airship made my day

[Nathan Madien]

Nice to see the Turk has entered the war. You need only threaten Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire shall come tumbling down. The plan is fool proof!

I see just one catch with your "fool-proof" plan: Nationalist Arabs.

[c0d5579]

I have three points to make here...

1. To those who say leave the Army out, how exactly do you threaten a city with a solid land-side food and fuel supply strictly using the fleet?

2. If you do land troops, for God's sake issue the poor Newfoundlanders an extra pair of socks. I mean, really, people from Newfoundland suffering five times as many cold injuries as combat injuries, in the Mediterranean?

3. Nationalist Arabs are a perfect foil to the plan to threaten Constantinople and cause the Sultan to tremble - they aren't conducive to the peace settlement after, but they're great for bothering the Turks.

[Nathan Madien]

3. Nationalist Arabs are a perfect foil to the plan to threaten Constantinople and cause the Sultan to tremble - they aren't conducive to the peace settlement after, but they're great for bothering the Turks.

...And bothering whomever comes up with lousy border drawings.

[FlyingDutchie]

Didn't nobody tell Churchill stealing other peoples stuff isn't nice? At least Allenby and TE Lawrence will have a nice new corner of the world to have fun in.

BTW, I'm pretty sure the Sultan was only Caliph of the Sunni muslims. Shi'a muslims believe only direct decendents of Mohammed can be Caliph. Since there aren't any left, their can beno Caliph. Its one of the major differences between both religions.

[StephenT]

To those who say leave the Army out, how exactly do you threaten a city with a solid land-side food and fuel supply strictly using the fleet?

Actually, I believe most of Constantinople's fuel supply came by sea, in coastal freighters moving along the southern shore of the Black Sea.

And you threaten a city like that by saying you'll shell it to burning rubble unless it surrenders. Churchill's concept of the Gallipolli campaign was basically "Send a gunboat!" writ large.