„The great seminal catastrophe of the 20th century“
- A 1914 Germany AAR-
- A 1914 Germany AAR-
We write the year 1914.
Europe is the Center of the World, divided between five Grand Powers that has been in a critical balance for over 40 years, since the German Empire was established.
This balance of power granted an era of peace and stablilty for Europe.
Military Alliances and Pacts were the peace-keeping methods of the second half of the 19th century.
Diplomatic men of genius, like Bismarck, had kept the world as what it was.
Yet this era went by in the last decade of the last century.
Now, in the 20th century, the age of Imperialism has reached its cenit.
Tensions between the grand powers are rising, Germanys Monarch, Wilhelm the Second, wants "a place under the sun" for the german people.
Militarism and arms race have turned Germanys Army and Navy into a huge machinery - and it doesn´t seem as Wilhelm would hesitate to use them.
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First of all, I want to allude that I don´t play the Original Version of 1914, but a Version that was modified by me.
The most important changes are:
rebalanced unit stats for longer Combat, Army as well as navy.
Ground Defense of 95% for all Countries exept of Germany, which has 100% (as the German Military was the best of it´s time)
New Unit Icons for Naval Units (I don´t like the paradox´ ones)
If anybody is interested, I could release the wanted packs. (Be careful, it´s only for Doomsday-Version!!) Just ask me.
Anyway, I hope you´ll like it.
Have fun!
Strategy and Planning
By January 1914, the German Army includes 116 Divisions,
the majority is Infantry, furthermore 9 Divisions there are cavalry-Divs and around 20 Reserve-Divisions.
The German Navy contains 34 Battleships and around 50 other ships. The Naval arms race of the last years have made us the second-biggest Sea-Power after Great Britain.
However, the coming war is not to be won with ships.
Germany is encircled by Russia and France.
Faced by this two-frontline-war, the German General-Staff worked out a plan to cope with this situation:
The invasion of france should be managed through Belgium:
To sustain the German technological superiority, our research-department was ordered to fulfill the following projects:
Nevertheless, the troops that were committed to the western front in January didn´t seem enough to bring a decisive victory against France until Russia began to steamroll our eastern border.
More Divisions were sent to our border with Belgium, in May 1914 we had around 70 Divisions at the western front,
57 of them only at the border with Belgium and Luxemburg.
Our Eastern Border garrision was relatively weak, only 37 Divisions were sent to defend Eastern Prussia.
Russia was not supposed to mobilize it´s massive army very fast, so we should have enough time to defeat france first.
The Lamps go out
At the 27th of June 1914 the Austrian Crown-Prince Franz Ferdinand was murdered by a Serbian Nationalist while being at a visit in Sarajevo.
The situation was not yet taken very serious, yet this changed quite fast, as the Austrian Emperor seeked revenge and used the new chance to annex Serbia and make Austria-Hungary stronger.
We supported this attempt and an Ultimatum was sent to Serbia.
However, the Serbians rejected the Ultimatium and asked Russia for help...
Motivated by the idea of panslavism, the Tzar declared war against Austria.
France, as part of the Entente and Russian Ally, was now at war with us.
Time for our plans to step in.
On the first of August the German Empire declared war upon Luxemburg and Belgium.
The Armies began to move and the huge war-machinery started doing their job.
The first World War had begun