The Great War (mod 1914)

From August 1919 and June 1920 a series of treaties (Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Trianon and Sèvres) attempted to create a new order in Europe and Middle East but only succeeded in being the source of new troubles and deep hatred.


The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, signed on 10 September 1919 by the Allies and by the new Republic of Austria, declared that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was to be dissolved, thus confirming a fact which, by then, was almost seven months old. The new Republic of Austria, consisting of most of the German-speaking parts of the former Austrian Empire, but neither the Sudetenland nor South Tyrol, recognized the independence of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Slovenia and Croatia. The treaty included 'war reparations' to pay for the costs of the war (1).


Austria, in addition to the loss of crownlands incorporated into the newly created states of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Slovenia, had to cede the Trentino and the South Tyrol, Trieste, Istria and several Dalmatian islands to Italy. Furthermore, the little Republic was forbidden from entering into political or economic union with Germany without the agreement of the League of Nations. This, along with the economic weakness caused by the loss of lands, was to cause great resentment in Austria in the future, which was somehow lessened by the cancellation of the war reparations in 1922 and the US and British help for the wrecked economy of the old nation.

The Treaty of Trianon, signed in 1920 by the Allies and Hungary (as a successor state to Austria-Hungary), redefined and reduced Hungary's borders. From its borders before World War I, it lost most of its territory and of its total population, with many ethnic Hungarians being forced to live outside the new borders of Hungary. Hungary was deprived of direct access to the sea and of some of its most valuable natural resources. The principal beneficiaries of territorial adjustment were Czechoslovakia, Serbia and Croatia. In addition, Hungary had to pay war reparations to its neighbours.

Hungary, which was still recovering from the short wars with Czechoslovakia and Romania, was to cause the rise of a revisionist feeling aimed to recover the ethnically Hungarian majority territories, or, if possible the full pre-Trianon area. In addition to this, it also contributed to further inestability of the country, plagued by intense and sometimes violent conflict between left and right from 1920 onwards. (2) Romania, in her turn, had failed to recover Transylvania and felt betrayed by the Allies, who turned their backs at Bucharest when Romania came to grips with Hungary without waiting to the peace negotiations.

The Treaty of Neuilly, dealing with Bulgaria for its role as one of the Central Powers in World War I, was signed on 27 November 1919 and determined the fate of the Balkans by further exacerbating the national rivalries of the countries of that region. The treaty required Bulgaria to cede Western Thrace to Greece, thereby cutting off its direct outlet to the Aegean Sea, and to return Southern Dobruja, which had been captured during the war, to Romania, thus restoring the border set by the Treaty of Bucharest (1913). In Bulgaria, the results of the treaty are popularly known as the Second National Catastrophe and gave rise to deep resentment and inner inestability in Bulgaria.

The Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920,was the peace treaty between the Ottoman Empire and Allies. Also, France, Great Britain and Italy signed a secret "Tripartite Agreement" at the same date, confirming Britain's oil and commercial concessions and turning the former German enterprises in the Ottoman Empire over to a Tripartite corporation. The treaty confirmed the abolition of the Ottoman Empire and its partitioning between France, Italy, and Great Britain, who had began as early as 1915, but, due to the anger which it caused in Turkey, it was annulled in the course of the Turkish War of Independence and the parties signed and ratified the superseding Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
In Asia, Turkey renounced sovereignty over Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine (including Transjordan), which became British mandates; Syria (including Lebanon), which became a French mandate; and the kingdom of Hejaz, which became an independent kingdom under British influence and granted international recognition. Turkey retained Anatolia but was to grant autonomy to Kurdistan. Smyrna and its environs were placed under Greek administration pending a plebiscite. In Europe, Turkey ceded parts of Thrace and certain Aegean islands to Greece, and the Dodecanese and Rhodes to Italy, retaining only Constantinople and its environs, including the Zone of the Straits, which was neutralized and internationalized. The treaty was accepted by the government of Sultan Muhammad VI at Constantinople but was rejected by the rival nationalist government of Kemal Atatürk at Ankara. Ataturk's separate treaty with the USSR and his subsequent victories against the Greeks forced the Allies to negotiate a new treaty in 1923.


From all the treaties, this was the most damaging for the peace of the Balkans. Greece did not accept the borders as drawn, which was to cause the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), fought along with the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923), which led to the creation of the Republic of Turkey.

Finally, the Treaty of Versailles, ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. After five long months of negotiations, it was a succession of failures and misunderstanding, for which it was called the "unhappy compromise". It began by Clemenceau's insistence that Germany had to be forced to accept responsibility for causing the war (along with Austria and Hungary). Lloyd George rightly feared that his could only end in creating a revanchist spirit in Germany and refused to oblige. Finally it was Roosevelt support to the British Premier that settled the issue, creating the first breach between Paris and London. Nevertheless, Germany had still to reduce his army to 500,000 men with neither air force nor tanks nor submarines, its fleet reduced to a tonnage of 500,000 tons, to make territorial concessions (mainly to yield control of its colonies to the Allies, to return Alsace-Lorraine to France, the area of Eupen-Malmedy to Belgium, the provinces of Posen and of West Prussia would be ceded to the restored Poland, thereby granting it access to the Baltic Sea via the "Polish Corridor") and to pay war reparations. This point caused the second dispute between Lloyd George and Clemenceau, as the French Premier wanted to punish Germany heavily while Lloyd George deemed the french demands to be excessive and counterproductive and as a restored Germany would be an important trading partner of Britain, the British Primer Minister was worried about the effect of reparations on the British economy. Germany will eventually agreed to pay reparations of 55 Billion Gold Reichmarks to the Allied powers, most of it in the form of rebuilding Belgium and Luxembourg and raw materials. France had originally demanded 150 Billion Gold Reichmarks for itself, but after more warnings from Washington and London this amount was reduced to 25 Billion.


In the end, the war reparations established left no one happy: France considered them too light and Germany too unfair. In fact, the German economy was so weak that only a small percentage of reparations was paid in hard currency and, in fact, in 1923 Britain and the United States had to make some heavy loans to help Germany to make those payments and led to the implementation of the the Dawes Plan.


Another problem caused by the treaty was that the negotiations were mainly carried by United Kingdom, France and the United States. This caused Italy and Japan to feel slighted and —for most of the remaining conference—their foreign ministers left the main meetings (only to return to sign in June), and the final conditions were determined by Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Roosevelt. Perhaps the most controversial issue of the treaty was the occupation of the Rhineland. As a guarantee of compliance by Germany, the Treaty provided that the Rhineland would be occupied by Allied troops for a period of 15 years, which was later reduced to five. The Territory of the Saar Basin was to be under the control of the League of Nations for 15 years, after which it would be returned to Germany (to Clemeanceau's great changring). Also, Germany was forced to provide France, Belgium, and Italy with millions of tons of coal for 10 years.

Finally, another consequence of the Paris Peace Conference was the creation of the League of Nations, already mentioned. It sprung from the desire of the Allied heads of state to create an international organization that would control conflict and promote peace between states. On 28 June 1919, 45 states signed the Covenant of the League, including 31 states which had taken part in the war on the side of the Entente or joined it during the conflict. That the United States ratified the Covenant was a close thing. Roosevelt embarked on a cross-country speaking tour in an attempt to rally the nation to his support, but many opposed to this, particularly Republican politicians Henry Cabot Lodge and William E. Borah. In the end, the President managed to win the necessary support in the Senate for it to ratify the Covenant and the Treaty of Versailles, but the effort further damaged his rapidly declining health and Theodore Roosevelt died in his sleep at Oyster Bay of a coronary thrombosis on August 6, 1919. As Warren G. Harding had died in early February from a bout of influenza, it was Vice-President Leonard Wood who was sworn President of the United States on September 7th, 1919.

Thus Peace began.


(1) These reparations payments were cancelled in 1922.
(2) Béla Kun never attempted to establish the Hungarian Soviet Republic, so the leftist and the rightist parties and their paramilitary forces are free to solve their differences by fire.
(3) Why the borders are represented in the style of Hoi2 1936? Because I'm awfully lazy, that's why.




@TheExecuter: I am afraid I wasn't too interested in getting involved in a foreign war...

@trekaddict: In due time.

That's the idea, that¡s the idea...

@TemplarComander: And to risk winning the war? Without the Red Threat the world would be too boring and there would be no 1936-edition.

@talt: You got it. A reason to fight over in World War II. Japan isn't enough, methinks.

@Nathan Madien: The more you mention it, the more I want to have a Red Revolution in the States... Just imagine... the British Empire having to rescue the former rebel colonies from themselves... :laugh:

Isn't it lovely, Pippy?

Were not for my love and hate towards FDR...

@El Pip: I feared to buttefly Russia in any way or I could get the wrong people doing the wrong thing in the wrong country...

In short: that's what I have in store for Russia: I'm going to let them to enjoy for a few years the wonders and delights of Communism and then... To try to help to save Kerenski's would have been as hopeless as to try to save Mussolini's arse from being deposed by the Great Council; if I had helped the Whites to win I would have put Britain in the funny situation of figthing alongside of those who supported a regime quite similar to the one she had just fought for four long years...

And I needed a good evil enemy for the Second Part of this AAR.

@Nathan Madien -2- Absolutely

Viden: Mmmh Garner...

@StephenT: Better late than never :laugh:

@Milites: No, not even a half century of Red paradise, if it depends on me

So this AAR comes to its end (me, finishing an AAR and in a quite proper and decent way!). I would like to thank you all for the loyal and patient support that this AAR has received through his long year of existence, through the mud and No Man's Land.

It was a story that I wanted to tell. It has not turned out exactly as I planned originally (too much history book) but I'm quite happy about it. And Peti is also happy, too :laugh:

Thank you all, chaps!

PS: Why the heck do I feel I'm forgetting something?

@MastahCheef117: Thank you!

@Agent Larkin: Otherwise there'll be no Second Part...

@trekaddict: The Versailles army is 200,000 men weaker than the 1914 pre-war army. I was against making it 100,000, so I choose the middle path. Of course, the tanks and air force restriction won't last too much.

About the tonnage question: Had I not decimated the Hochseeflotte the way I did, by 1918 the German navy would have around ships worth 800-900,000 tons (or so so). Reducing it to 500,000 tons will be well below 50% the tonnage of the Grand Fleet, and so not anger the English. Once restrictions are lifted, Germany will have a quite decent fleet -with f*****g battleships worth than name!!!"- and perhaps some seaplane Carriers (in this TTL Germany hadn't had the chance to develop them during the war) that might open the way for a trully German air carrier. Or perhaps Germany will go all the way down with subs, as usual

True, there will be inflation, a bit of political instability but nothing that goes out of control.

@Agent Larkin -2-: The Balkans are going to be quite useful for my dark purposes... If I only knew what to do with the Polish hellish corridor...

@trekaddict -2-: With the Kaiser still around, the army and some democracy I hope that Germany will behave awfully well. What I wonder is how France is going to swallow this alternative Versailles.

@Agent Larkin -3- Don't worry, Larkin. In due time Europe will be pacified. :laugh:

@TemplarComander: I like it too. Dunno why, but I love to divide Yugoslavija. No fragging idea why, really.

About the Schlewing-Holstein... it has been a mistake I have just corrected. I was too obssesed to find a way to keep the Polish Corridor and I slipped. fIn due time you'll see Panthers, Tigers, Leopards and all the usual suspects of the armoured German

About the Polish-Soviet War... Well... it will be quite interesting...
Reclaiming West Prussia... Suggestions are welcomed, really, 'cause I'm struggling right now to find an acceptable excuse.

@El Pip: Blame the Welsh Wizzard for that... Well, if we forgett that the death toll has been a bit lower and that Churchill could smoke a cigar on the banks fof the Rhine, well, it has been quite similar to OTL. If the Western Front hadn't gone nuts when and how it did, I would have loved to fufill by Plan 1918 with a gorgeous landing in Germany, but, you see, due to some mistake with the German AI, by the time that the German reinforcements did arrive to the Western Front I was in Liège.

The idea si to carry on, in a new and exciting way, to avoid doing something that has already been done. That's the dilemma: what the frag to do now?

@trekaddict --3: No, Trekkie: I just love to punish the Serbs for the sheer beauty of it and to spoil a bit the Croatians. It's like kicking France: an habit of mine, dunno why. That and going after Uncle Joe's head.

Marginalizing France? No need. They will do it all by themselves Just imagine:

Guderian: Vait. Are you telling me zat zis is a panzer?
Alanbrooke: Er... yes?
Guderian: You're kidding! That's a verdamnte teapot!
Alanbrooke: No, not really. Actually it's our best and most modern design...
Guderian: Oh f**k... vell, let me tell you somezing about the panzers...
Rommel: It could be vorse...
Guderian: Really?
Rommel: You haven't seen ze Italians tanks... or the Japanese ones...
Guderian: The horror... the horror...

The Schlewig-Holstein mistake has been corrected

@Agent Larkin: Glad to know.

@Nathan Madien: I knew I was forgetting something...

The League of Nations was created in the Paris Peace Conference. I'm going to add it BTW, I've taken care of Harding, as I promised you

@talt: True, but then it would make a bit hard to restore a parlamentarian monarchy when half of its supporters have been fighthing in the wrong side...

@Pip: Methinks I've found a way to make the Liberal Party to survive and even do something worthy