Originally posted by Faeelin
Actually, I think a central power Italy is a war-winner. Consider:
1) Austria, the Ottomans, and Italy have parity with the French and British naval fleets. OTL the Central fleet were bottled up in the adriatic and bosphorus. The Mare Nostrum comes alive with torpedoes and dreadnoughts, which hurts France, because it slows the deployment of reinforcements.
I have to say I don't buy this.
The Ottoman Navy was, shall we say, obslete in WW1. The German ships they got were the only ones anywhere near modern.
Very much ditto the Austrian navy. In fact both were also rather small, the nations being land orientated.
These are lifted from Janes Fighting Ships from the end of 1914 (there may be mistakes since I am going through the book manually)
The numders are Italy / Austria / Ottoman Empire
The first number is completed, the second numer is building.
Dreadnought 3+3 2 1(ex-German BC)
Pre-dreadnought 11 14 3
Armoured Cruisers 5 0 0
Heavy Cruisers 4 2 1(ex-German)
Light Cruisers 10 8 0
Destroyers 33 15 6
Compare these with just the French Fleet
Dreadnought 4+3
Pre-dreadnought 22
Armoured Cruisers 22
Heavy Cruisers
Light Cruisers
Destroyers 81+3
NB: France was not developing cruisers along semi-modern definitions pre-1914, hence I have left these slots blank. In any event there is a rough parity here. With even a small addition from the Royal Navy that parity becomes superiority. Although all 4 nations could not compare in terms of doctrine to Germany, the UK, or the US, the Austrians and Turks were particularly bad. The French and Italians it is hard to judge, since Italy was an unknown at this stage for Naval warfare. I have also not mentioned a small but significant Russian Black Sea Fleet that was roughly equal to the Ottoman Fleet (pre-German additions).
Torpedo boats were now also less of the threat than they had been in 1904 say, because of the development of the Torpredo Boat Destroyer (later just known as destroyers). By 1914 many torpedo boats were older vessels as nations concentrated on the newer destroyers.
Like Burris I think the Alps proved fairly defensible. A possible better situation in the East indeed - but Austrian troops were not that good, for the most part. Think how difficult they found dealing with Serbia, even before Italy entered the war.
As for an assault against southern Italy - I think there is some evidence that what stalled Gallipoli was lack of initiative in the first few days of the landing. Not saying the same could not have been repeated but just pointing out that just because Gallipoli failed does not mean any amphibious operation in WW1 had to fail (since it was the only big one we'll never know of course). That said Italy proved highly defensible in WW2 and I imagine the same would have been true in ww1.
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