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Wow. Just wow. I knew that Germany had her enemies in Europe, but to see ALL the other great powers line up against her? Methinks this Entente has a bit of jealousy to the German empires success over these past couple decades. In fact, i'm sad to see that we have no allies other than the nations in our SoI. Considering Zentrum's foreign policy objective of a Balkan crusade was never fulfilled and the DKRP moderated out their influence in foreign policy, maybe we can get the Sick man of Europe on our side?
I hope that our military has kept up over the years, lest we be wiped away by the sea of Entente bodies. I think the VSVR got into epic struggles for survival like this though, so i'm very confident in Tommy's ability to turn this into a black day for the Entente Cordiale :)
Gott mit uns!
edit: are those rebelling provinces I see in Bohemia and Osterreich? D:
 
I reasoned thusly; Nationalism and Freedom is something fascists always preach. But, maybe a DKRP break up or maybe even the DZP break up may give birth to a fascist party.

I can see the DKRP breaking up behind the idea that some elements probably pro-Kaiser/Pro-Prussia still exist dating back to the KP's earlier days, especially now that we have a Kaiser that wants to challenge the Reichstag and wants to be more hands on but that will depend on what happens next...but the break up giving birth to the fascist party I am not so certain on that. Possible but it would be a long transformation. If it turns out that we are voting for 6-7 parties in the next couple elections the coalitions will be certainly interesting.
 
I can see the DKRP breaking up behind the idea that some elements probably pro-Kaiser/Pro-Prussia still exist dating back to the KP's earlier days, especially now that we have a Kaiser that wants to challenge the Reichstag and wants to be more hands on but that will depend on what happens next...but the break up giving birth to the fascist party I am not so certain on that. Possible but it would be a long transformation. If it turns out that we are voting for 6-7 parties in the next couple elections the coalitions will be certainly interesting.

Well I'd foresee it occurring via a Nationalist or Reactionary breakaway party first. I honestly cannot see any party going from its existing ideology to fascist in only one jump.
 
Well I'd foresee it occurring via a Nationalist or Reactionary breakaway party first. I honestly cannot see any party going from its existing ideology to fascist in only one jump.

Yeah like I said it would be a long process, for any party really. No way would it be in one jump. Even if we lose this war badly, the seeds could be planted but we wouldn't see the so called fruition for decades to come.
 
Yeah like I said it would be a long process, for any party really. No way would it be in one jump. Even if we lose this war badly, the seeds could be planted but we wouldn't see the so called fruition for decades to come.

Don't Fascists start popping up in Vicky at around 1905 or so? That's only like what, half a decade away?
 
Don't Fascists start popping up in Vicky at around 1905 or so? That's only like what, half a decade away?

I do not remember. I was going on that it historically appeared around the time of WW1, however, since its a more extreme form of national syndicalism then yeah I could see it coming on around 1905, yeah.
 
I've still not been able to play through to war (just too large a world load at the moment I'm afraid) so we'll have to wait a bit yet to see if I somehow manage to pull off a victory or if Germany is cast into the traumatic abyss of defeat.

I still have that ticket to America, does anybody want to get off this sinking ship of state?

Good luck avoiding the Royal Navy ;).

How are strong are Germany's allies?

Despite non of them being Great Powers Germany is aligned with some of the strongest secondary powers around. The Dutch and Swedes both have relatively strong (but archaic fleets), combined the Belgians, Dutch, Danes and Swedes are stronger than a lesser Great Power like Italy or Spain but weaker than a major like France or Russia in terms of their land armies, our allies to the East (Hungary and Serbia) can out fight Russia's allies in Eastern Europe and probably hold their own against Russia (I'm certainly relying on them to do so!). So the situation isn't quite as bad diplomatically as it seems - but still pretty terrible.

What saddens me most is that this government has apparently achieved none of the goals of the Zentrum..
I fail to see the crucial flaw in Zentrum policy that could have caused this alienation, it seems to me to be the result of a variety of policies from a variety of parties, developing over the years.

The war is not what a good Christian would have wanted..

Na this is the fault of all the administrations of recent memory, this sort of thing does not happen overnight. Zentrum hasn't won THAT many elections. Oh well, we ride to war but do we ride to victory? DB, it is time the FoE veterans lend Germany its strength! :cool:

Indeed, its very hard to blame this situation on the most recent administration alone. All German policy since 1861 can be considered a failure at this point as it all stacked up towards this final conclusion. The initial project of unification, the acquiring of a colonial empire, the unification with Austria, the expansion of our sphere into Central Europe (Hungary!) and a simple failure to sweet talk the likes of Spain, Britain and Russia all added up towards this conclusion. Liberal, Conservative and Centrist governments were all involved in these myriad failings.

I reasoned thusly; Nationalism and Freedom is something fascists always preach. But, maybe a DKRP break up or maybe even the DZP break up may give birth to a fascist party.

Don't Fascists start popping up in Vicky at around 1905 or so? That's only like what, half a decade away?

Fascism is a possibility in the future, but it is only likely to emerge under certain circumstances - that said, if the time is right in the AAR I'm willing to change to date for the emergence of fascism to reflect the situation.

Wow. Just wow. I knew that Germany had her enemies in Europe, but to see ALL the other great powers line up against her? Methinks this Entente has a bit of jealousy to the German empires success over these past couple decades. In fact, i'm sad to see that we have no allies other than the nations in our SoI. Considering Zentrum's foreign policy objective of a Balkan crusade was never fulfilled and the DKRP moderated out their influence in foreign policy, maybe we can get the Sick man of Europe on our side?
I hope that our military has kept up over the years, lest we be wiped away by the sea of Entente bodies. I think the VSVR got into epic struggles for survival like this though, so i'm very confident in Tommy's ability to turn this into a black day for the Entente Cordiale :)
Gott mit uns!
edit: are those rebelling provinces I see in Bohemia and Osterreich? D:

You certainly have confidence in my game play abilities. I remember that AAR had some tough situations - I'm not sure if any were quite so bad as this though!

Don't worry, those are just the provinces of Austria that are yet to become cores :p.

The next update might be up tomorrow if I'm not too busy reading the biography of Pierre Mendes France, if not it might be another few days I'm afraid.
 
The next update might be up tomorrow if I'm not too busy reading the biography of Pierre Mendes France, if not it might be another few days I'm afraid.

An ominous portent?
 
1896-1898
The End of the Beginning, Part One​


From the outset of the Great War in February 1896 Germany appeared to be faced with an unwinnable conflict. Surrounded, horrendously outnumbered and facing the reality of a Royal Navy imposed blockade the Empire was faced with a threat on an incredible scale. Yet, in the first dizzying months of the War, Germany appeared to strike out and make victory appear a genuine possibility. Firstly the so called ‘Burgfrieden’ was established in which all political parties and trade unions agreed to support the government unconditionally and allow the Kaiser to temporarily take power from the civilian government of Chancellor Hertling and grant it to an extraordinary military government. Diplomatically the Germans pulled off an astonishing coup within the first weeks of war as the United States of America, one of the world’s greatest economic powers and the hegemon of the Western Hemisphere, signed a military alliance and entered the war on Germany’s side. With America troops pouring into Canada and assaulting Spanish, French and British colonies in the Caribbean the hopes of the German Empire grew considerably.


On the field of battle too there were reasons for optimism. In the opening moves of the war the Germans, supported by substantial Dutch, Belgian and Danish forces launched an invasion of Northern France through Belgium with the aim of striking towards Paris and closing the Western Front early in the war. Although the French army was impressively broken within weeks the arrival of around 150,000 British soldiers checked the German led advance around the Channel Ports – holding it up just long enough to allow for a mixture of conscripted troops and soldiers brought over from Algeria to begin a counteroffensive. For the rest of the year Anglo-French troops would be engaged in a bloody struggle of trench warfare across Northern France, Belgium and Alsace. To the South the Italians made quick progress in the Tyrol and Istria before a mixture of German and Hungarian troops began to reverse their advance with the Italians reaching as far as Zagreb and Salzburg at the height of their penetration. In the East two Russian armies were utterly destroyed in Poland and East Prussia as Warsaw fell under German occupation by the end of March. Meanwhile in Transylvania badly outnumbered Serbian and Hungarian forces prepared for a defensive battle against Romanian, Ruthenian and Russian troops. Finally, British troops were deployed to Norway in an attempt to foster a rebellion in the Swedish ruled country and prevent Sweden from committing its not insignificant army to the continental fronts.

It was at this early stage of the war that Germany managed to make victory appear to be a tangible possibility. The Italians had been checked and were in retreat, the Anglo-French were barely holding the line, the Russians had been routed and in North America the British had been utterly defeated in Canada. Although overseas German troops in West, Equatorial and East Africa all faced overwhelming odds even there Allied advances were hardly significant. It would be in the next phase of the conflict that the hubris of German high command led to a series of fatal errors. Simply put a, in light of the overwhelming numerical superiority of their enemies in terms of manpower, a single major strategic error would likely mean defeat – through the summer of 1896 the Germans were to make several.


In the South the Germans and their allies were in high spirits as the Italians were pushed across the Alps and into the Veneto – indeed Udine, Treviso and Verona were all captured during April and May. But these victories were not to last. They had cost significant energy and manpower to achieve and were largely indefensible. As early as April the first Hungarian troops on the Southern Front were being withdrawn to protect the Hungarian homeland on the Carpathian Front, at the same time the successes on this front led to German high command directed reinforcements elsewhere rather than plug the gaps left by the Hungarians. These laxities were to allow for a total reversal of the situation in the South over the summer as Spanish, French and most importantly large number of Italian conscript troops routed the Germans and forced them into headlong retreat over the Alps – inflicted massive and irreplaceable casualties.

In the East the successive failures of Russian armies to offer any meaningful resistance to German advance led German generals into an assumption that a quick victory might be won in the most unlikely of locations – the Russian Empire. Through the summer of 1896 German troops advanced as far East as Kiev and Minsk, only in September were their advances finally halted as tirades of Russian troops – losing 3 sometimes 4 or even more men for every German killed – did not only send the Germans into retreat but destroyed large sections of the Eastern Army.


Although the other fronts saw horrendous casualties the Western Front was to be the most brutal, most modern and most mechanical of all the theatres of the Great War. Here Germany became embroiled in a battle she could never win faced with her commitments to other theatres – a war of attrition. From March through to October the Battle of Tournai (in reality a series of long Anglo-French offensives for control of the city) alone cost the lives of 700,000 men on both sides, the slight majority being Anglo-French. Likewise at Metz to the South 300,000 were killed on both sides. Although the Germans might have been able to sustain these losses provided a regular supply of reinforcements the defeats in the South and East meant that any new troops were directed to those theatres in order to plug the gaps, allowing the Anglo-French to slowly build up an overwhelming numerical superiority even as their losses were consistently higher than those of Germany and her allies.


Germany’s military situation grew critical over the autumn, by mid-November significant German lands were under occupation in the West, East and South and everywhere the army was being stretched to breaking point. Despite the fine performance of the Americans on their own continent the strength of the British, French, Spanish and Italian fleets meant any hopes of American assistance in Europe were simply not within the realms of possibility. Within Germany itself the frank absurdity of German losses (well over a million in less than a year!) had seen bubblings of discontent begin to emerge. In January 1897, with enemy armies bearing down on Munich, Vienna, Cologne, Breslau and Danzig, the SPD and FVP (Free People’s Party) expelled members who were calling for an immediate peace treaty – in the ensuing months most of these expelled members would coalesce in the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), a party declared illegal as it openly demanded peace, bread, democracy and working class power.


As February saw the French pour into Southern Germany and cross the Rhine into both Westphalia and Holland, as the Italians captured Munich, and two weeks later Vienna, in March and the Russians advanced towards Stettin the war was essentially over by the dawn of April 1897. Germany had been beaten. The Chief of the General Staff, and effective leader of German government, Alfred von Schlieffen petitioned the Kaiser to accept the inevitable and capitulate to Allied demands of unconditional surrender. Wilhelm II refused and instead called for the regrouping of the German army (still around 400,000 battle ready men) to the Brandenburg region in preparation for a defence of Berlin from Russia attack that might convince the Allies to accept a negotiated truce rather than outright surrender.

The madness of the last weeks and months of the Kaiser’s rule had begun. In these final months the German army actually performed relatively well – the Russians were definitively beaten back through April and May whilst a British attempt to attack the capital via a landing in Mecklenburg and Pomerania was also repulsed. However, as famine began to become a genuine issue and the destructive rampaging advances of the Allies armies proceeded across the German Empire demands for an end to the war became deafening.


The events that were to become the German Revolution began on June 28th 1897 in Dresden. As Russian troops advanced into Bohemia Czech nationalists had risen up and overthrown the German government in Prague and welcomed the entrance of Russian troops into the city – their actions were aped by nationalist groups throughout the area still under German control. When command order troops based in Dresden to march South against these nationalist groups the troops refused their orders and instead began to march Northward to Berlin with two simple demands – immediate peace and the abdication of the Kaiser. On June 29th, under extreme pressure from his government Wilhelm II abdicated the throne becoming the third and last German Emperor. The military government – which now pursued the legitimacy of being nominally civilian by reappointed pre-war Chancellor Hertling – offered unconditional surrender. This was in turn accepted and on July 4th 1897 the Great War came to an end.

Stormtroops_Advancing_Under_Gas.jpg

In not much more than a year an incredible 5.5 million people had lost their lives – perhaps as many as 2,000,000 of them German (although many claimed the figure was far higher). German civilisation had collapsed – her economy was in ruins (by the end of the year industrial production stood at barely 1/3 of its pre-war high), between 3 and 4 million were left unemployed whilst food shortages gripped the entire country. The political establishment had been totally discredited with the old elite now an object of hatred for the general population, the Kaiser having to use disguises in his flight to the safety of the Swiss border. The German Empire was no more, what would replace it was still a very open question. Within a week of the surrender two Republic had been proclaimed in Berlin – one by a united front of the SPD and FVP with the tacit support of Liberal elements and the other by ultra-leftist revolutionaries even more radical than the USPD, at the same time the Prussia military – attempting to align itself to Southern conservatives in the Centre Party – presented itself as a third alternative with the promise of order and a strong hand against revolution being a tantalising offer to many. Even as the foreign armies withdrew to the fringes of the Empire where they continued to occupy large parts of metropolitan Germany the fighting was far from over.
 
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Now would be an appropriate time for Sasson or Wilfred Owen.
 
There was a moment early in this war where I thought I might just sweep to victory. I probably should have played things a lot safer and might have at the very least lasted much longer (at the end of the day I'm not sure a complete victory for ever possible).

The destruction caused by this war was quite incredible. My industrial score was still over 1500 on January 1st 1897, one year later it was almost 500 - the vast majority of that decline taking place between February and July and most of it not being possible to remedy through merely reopening factories. I think the coming period is going to be by far the most interesting point in the AAR to date!

The next election takes us through around a year and a half of revolutionary turmoil as the various factions vying for power compete amongst one another. Will something akin to the Imperial system survive, will socialism come to Germany or will it be a democratic Republic and if so of what nature? The next update will see many of these questions become clearer, but as ever it will ultimately come down to the voters in the next election which path Germany move towards.
 
((UGH, so ... much ... potential ... ICING. Die Vereinigten Deutschen Katholischen Organisation must live!))

The arrogance of the Northern DZP in ripping Germany from its Catholic roots and forcing into a life of pride has brought down the greatest of giants, the German Empire. Now the time to rebuild from the wreckage is at hand.
 
Only one thing to do now...

99 puts on his Fascist hat.
 
And so over 30 years of hubris has finally caught up to the German Empire...So much potential is coming. So much....UGH! Potential. Damn fine work. Looking forward to the rest. As one part of the journey ends, another begins: But which path will we take?
 
I don't think this will go well for Germany...
 
Befehlsverweigerung!

I did not vote for this madness!

No proper German soldier marches against the commands!

How did you really mess up so badly? Well, whatever happens, keep the sozkommies out!
 
All I know is that this is all somehow Zentrum's fault. It appears, strangely, that the old warnings of "vote Zentrum today and get a socialist revolution tomorrow" have proven to have been prophetic. My condolences on the death of your party, Herr Khalep.