I wonder what the ideology of Action Francaise is in this ATL - are they still monarchists, or do they accept the rule of House Bonaparte at this point, and are they still anti-assembly? I suspect that provincial decentralism is still an aspect of their message, since the Bonaparts seem pretty centralist by this point.
Cinco de Mayo
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I wonder what the ideology of Action Francaise is in this ATL - are they still monarchists, or do they accept the rule of House Bonaparte at this point, and are they still anti-assembly? I suspect that provincial decentralism is still an aspect of their message, since the Bonaparts seem pretty centralist by this point.
Yes, yes and yes.
There’s an aspect of decentralism already inherent to the French assembly of course, since the lower house is elected indirectly by province under the Constitution of 1878. So AF can’t really push for that since it’s already built into the system (a system they sorta oppose of course) but then the French government itself is very centralized around the Emperor’s Cabinet
Seeking Swaraj: The Struggle for Indian Independence
"...Lord Hardinge, to his credit, was a genuine Indophile even before his appointment and arrival as Viceroy and made real and tangible efforts to ingratiate himself to the local populace and try to rebuild relations between London and the Raj after the brief but disastrous Lansdowne years. Hundreds of new Indian civil servants were hired in tandem with reforms to the examination process to identify candidates, hundreds of new schools were budgeted to be opened (particularly in Punjab, the most restive of provinces) and Hardinge even went so far as to move into the Red Fort as his Viceregal residence.
Of course, even the indigenous advisers he kept as a close circle, often being Oxford-educated and living detached from the emerging literate middle class they were ostensibly drawn from, couldn't entirely steer him in a direction that totally mended fences, but nonetheless Hardinge's brief turn as Viceroy of India saw not so much a retreat of swadeshi impulses so much as a quieting of them after the heated events of 1907-10..."
- Seeking Swaraj: The Struggle for Indian Independence
Of course, even the indigenous advisers he kept as a close circle, often being Oxford-educated and living detached from the emerging literate middle class they were ostensibly drawn from, couldn't entirely steer him in a direction that totally mended fences, but nonetheless Hardinge's brief turn as Viceroy of India saw not so much a retreat of swadeshi impulses so much as a quieting of them after the heated events of 1907-10..."
- Seeking Swaraj: The Struggle for Indian Independence
Interesting Times: A History of the Chinese Revolution
"...the President's bid to nationalize the Republic's railroads was possibly the greatest political disaster of the young nation. The Railway Protection Movement to prevent the nationalization and sale of every province's railways to foreign concessions to help finance the war seemed to form and consolidate overnight, and in Sichuan the movement spread from merely being an explosive protest over the railroad to a full general strike in Chengdu. The uprising in the peripheral but key agricultural province that was on the perimeter of Qing Shaanxi could not have come at a worse time, as Li's forces had nearly reached Jinan again in bloody offensives all spring and he thus had to divert recruits and reinforcements to Sichaun to put down the strike at Sheng's behest and ward off Qing auxiliaries who stole through the mountains from Xi'an, led by the notorious Ma brothers. The slowdown gave Duan, Feng and Chang an opportunity to regroup and stiffly ward off Li's push back into the north and the 1911 Spring Offensive ground to a halt, angering the Republican commander enormously as yet again he had been denied a chance to drive the Qing past the Huang He and perhaps even beyond the Great Wall into Manchuria where they belonged. [1]
The Chengdu General Strike inspired sympathy strikes across the Republic; the rail system in most of southern China stopped for several days, dockworkers refused to work in Canton, Foochow and Shanghai, and protest marches consumed the outmanned police in many cities. The Guomindang enjoyed one of its greatest recruiting drives in its Guangdong heartland and as it had started arming some of its supporters seemed potentially capable of soon threatening the government with force and armed revolution, at least in Canton..."
- Interesting Times: A History of the Chinese Revolution
[1] Suffice to say that if Li can't even seize Jinan such a victory is quite a ways away
The Chengdu General Strike inspired sympathy strikes across the Republic; the rail system in most of southern China stopped for several days, dockworkers refused to work in Canton, Foochow and Shanghai, and protest marches consumed the outmanned police in many cities. The Guomindang enjoyed one of its greatest recruiting drives in its Guangdong heartland and as it had started arming some of its supporters seemed potentially capable of soon threatening the government with force and armed revolution, at least in Canton..."
- Interesting Times: A History of the Chinese Revolution
[1] Suffice to say that if Li can't even seize Jinan such a victory is quite a ways away
Ah, China, just as messes up as I remember. Truly, the war will not end until everyone loses.
The Central European War
"...Joffre made his mark almost immediately upon his appointment as Chief of Staff in the spring of 1911. The staff-level war games of that year were hailed internally as a tremendous success making use of his predecessor's revision of mobilization plans and corps-level reorganization; they incorporated "escalating scenarios" in which France went to war exclusively against individual states all the way up to a general war including every state in Europe including the British Empire. The focii of the games, however, were on the longstanding assumptions in Paris about what "the next war" - one can interpret how one likes the self-fulfilling prophecy of treating such a conflict as an inevitability - would look like, and this was as a limited conflict between France and Austria on one side and Germany and Italy on the other. That these alliance systems that had informally stood in place since the early 1870s were, ironically, at a nadir in 1911 was besides the point; French military leaders from Joffre on down presumed that unless France was fighting a limited conflict that these "natural alliances" would be triggered.
The games helped the French General Staff developed what became known as War Plan III, or the Joffre Plan, and here Joffre's impact on the actual conflict when it did "inevitably" break out are plain. It is remarkable, with hindsight, how much the contours of the Joffre Plan resemble what actually occurred when the Central European War in fact did occur less than a decade after its design. Variant III-B and all others presumed a French transit of Belgium as one of its three offensive prongs into western Germany; Variant III-D presumed Denmark honoring its treaty commitments to the "Iron Triangle" (a name long since disused, but whose basic alignment remained) and being overrun in four days, but tying down enough German divisions to allow the French offensives to work. The plan called for the total mobilization of France's entire 110 divisions at once - the largest land army in Europe and probably the world - and to launch three offensives into Germany and one into Italy's Piedmont. The biggest offensive was to be through Belgium, which France's assumption in III-B and III-D treated as a neutral and in III-C as a co-combatant, with a full fifty divisions marching through the "Limburg salient" south of Maastricht to strike at Aachen and then breakthrough into the Rhineland; fifteen divisions apiece were to launch an attack against the Trier Triangle (but primarily Saarbrucken, regarded as the weak link and to draw German forces south from the "Northern Gibraltar" of Luxemburg) and from Alsace toward Karlsruhe and the Upper Rhine Valley, thus seizing the initiative on both sides of the Vosges. The remaining thirty divisions of French forces would attack from bases in Grenoble through the high pass of Valloire into Italy. Germany and Italy would be unable to maintain full strength on both of these fronts thanks to the Austrian threat, with Joffre presuming at least sixty German divisions forced to deploy to the Inn River and two dozen more sent to Silesia and the Bohemian mountain passes, the majority of the Italian Army dispatched to the Gorizia Hills and Trentino, and both enemies struggling to fight a two-front war against two advanced opponents.
Aachen was the key to the Joffre Plan, though. The Ardennes made for a difficult territory to attack across but was certainly easier than the neighboring Eifel Plateau, and thrusting through the lowlands that opened up to the Rhine-Ruhr and the North German Plain was key. It was here that a number of officers expressed skepticism at some of Joffre's estimates, particularly those regarding an Alpine offensive to seize the Piedmont; a number of them, once Joffre was more ensconced in his position, were infamously dismissed for "defeatism." The Hindenburg Line that defended the Luxemburg-Saarbrucken salient to Joffre may as well not have existed, nor the smaller but still formidable border fortifications near Alsace; the logistics of Alpine warfare and breaking through such difficult terrain was a matter merely for elan to solve. Joffre's most optimistic Variant III-C, in which the Belgian Army struck into Aachen and northern Luxemburg from their bases in Liege and the critical crossroads of Bastogne, suggested French armies would occupy most of the Piedmont, including Turin, within 28 days and that Cologne would fall with French armies "on the Rhine" within 35. These estimates were, to say the least, wildly optimistic, even with more modest assumptions about Austria's "defensive front" in the east, and also assumed that once French armies had taken Cologne and thus threatened the Ruhr and Germany's ability to resupply Luxemburg, Berlin would sue for peace.
The Joffre Plan became the backbone of French war planning for the remainder of the 1910s, then, with new variants, mobilization tables and equipment provisions designed entirely to satisfy it. Joffre's penchant for sacking or reassigning officers who told him what he did not want to hear became more infamous, and after the war, when the failure of the Joffre Plan became more clear, only added to his ignonimy..."
- The Central European War
The games helped the French General Staff developed what became known as War Plan III, or the Joffre Plan, and here Joffre's impact on the actual conflict when it did "inevitably" break out are plain. It is remarkable, with hindsight, how much the contours of the Joffre Plan resemble what actually occurred when the Central European War in fact did occur less than a decade after its design. Variant III-B and all others presumed a French transit of Belgium as one of its three offensive prongs into western Germany; Variant III-D presumed Denmark honoring its treaty commitments to the "Iron Triangle" (a name long since disused, but whose basic alignment remained) and being overrun in four days, but tying down enough German divisions to allow the French offensives to work. The plan called for the total mobilization of France's entire 110 divisions at once - the largest land army in Europe and probably the world - and to launch three offensives into Germany and one into Italy's Piedmont. The biggest offensive was to be through Belgium, which France's assumption in III-B and III-D treated as a neutral and in III-C as a co-combatant, with a full fifty divisions marching through the "Limburg salient" south of Maastricht to strike at Aachen and then breakthrough into the Rhineland; fifteen divisions apiece were to launch an attack against the Trier Triangle (but primarily Saarbrucken, regarded as the weak link and to draw German forces south from the "Northern Gibraltar" of Luxemburg) and from Alsace toward Karlsruhe and the Upper Rhine Valley, thus seizing the initiative on both sides of the Vosges. The remaining thirty divisions of French forces would attack from bases in Grenoble through the high pass of Valloire into Italy. Germany and Italy would be unable to maintain full strength on both of these fronts thanks to the Austrian threat, with Joffre presuming at least sixty German divisions forced to deploy to the Inn River and two dozen more sent to Silesia and the Bohemian mountain passes, the majority of the Italian Army dispatched to the Gorizia Hills and Trentino, and both enemies struggling to fight a two-front war against two advanced opponents.
Aachen was the key to the Joffre Plan, though. The Ardennes made for a difficult territory to attack across but was certainly easier than the neighboring Eifel Plateau, and thrusting through the lowlands that opened up to the Rhine-Ruhr and the North German Plain was key. It was here that a number of officers expressed skepticism at some of Joffre's estimates, particularly those regarding an Alpine offensive to seize the Piedmont; a number of them, once Joffre was more ensconced in his position, were infamously dismissed for "defeatism." The Hindenburg Line that defended the Luxemburg-Saarbrucken salient to Joffre may as well not have existed, nor the smaller but still formidable border fortifications near Alsace; the logistics of Alpine warfare and breaking through such difficult terrain was a matter merely for elan to solve. Joffre's most optimistic Variant III-C, in which the Belgian Army struck into Aachen and northern Luxemburg from their bases in Liege and the critical crossroads of Bastogne, suggested French armies would occupy most of the Piedmont, including Turin, within 28 days and that Cologne would fall with French armies "on the Rhine" within 35. These estimates were, to say the least, wildly optimistic, even with more modest assumptions about Austria's "defensive front" in the east, and also assumed that once French armies had taken Cologne and thus threatened the Ruhr and Germany's ability to resupply Luxemburg, Berlin would sue for peace.
The Joffre Plan became the backbone of French war planning for the remainder of the 1910s, then, with new variants, mobilization tables and equipment provisions designed entirely to satisfy it. Joffre's penchant for sacking or reassigning officers who told him what he did not want to hear became more infamous, and after the war, when the failure of the Joffre Plan became more clear, only added to his ignonimy..."
- The Central European War
Ah yes overly optimistic European war planning.
I remember people talking about these in another TL thread and how impossible they were
I remember people talking about these in another TL thread and how impossible they were
“These” being European war plans? Indeed. Small fronts, lots of men, industrial technology… bad recipe
Oh, come now - what's the WORST that can happen? Its not like a group of nations would suddenly just decide to sacrifice an entire generation of young men to a romantic, yet utterly futile, cause brought upon by aged generals who couldn't adapt to modern forms of warfare!? Pshaw! Go away sir, I'll have none of your lies today!!!!
Though, honestly, considering that the Great American War will happen a few years prior - I wonder what lessons the general staffs of Europe will take away from the fighting being done there. The fronts are going to be more open in the US, but there's certainly still some fronts where I could see trench warfare being used - and the Europeans can't be so blind as to think "Huh, I can't imagine WE would devolve into that form of fighting - our superior European martial spirit and elan would never allow such a thing!"
...
Oh god, that's what happens, isn't it?
It's pretty much what they thought in OTL after the example of the Russia-Japanese war.
The "Fronts" on land in the GAW are likely to be as follows.
1) Mason-Dixon. The OP has said that Baltimore falls, I believe and my guess is that takes everything south of there including DC. Note the Delmarva is likely to be considered a sub-front, the C&D Canal, which uses the extreme north end of the Chesapeake Bay should be pretty easy to defend. I'm not sure this is as suitable for Trench Warfare as the Franco/German border, *especially* when the Confederacy will jump forward quite a bit in the beginning of the war away from pre-war fortifications, but it is by far the closest. (and will have *far* more naval involvement than the Franco-German border.
2) Appalachian. I'm not quite sure *what* the equilvalent area to fight to this in Europe is, the Carpathians?
3) Ohio River + small part of Mississippi down to the bottom of the boot heel. Unlikely to have trench warfare, fighting will be on one side of the river or the other, the question of where to send boats for moving large troops to the other side will be key. (which will require wiping out the gunboats of the other side.)
4) Ozarks (see Appalachians, but with somewhat less supplies)
5) West. Perhaps some distinction between the US fights against the Natives in OTL Oklahoma and farther west, but probably not
6) Far West. the US Border with Mexico. Like the Mason-Dixon front, significant involvement of the Navy.
1) Mason-Dixon. The OP has said that Baltimore falls, I believe and my guess is that takes everything south of there including DC. Note the Delmarva is likely to be considered a sub-front, the C&D Canal, which uses the extreme north end of the Chesapeake Bay should be pretty easy to defend. I'm not sure this is as suitable for Trench Warfare as the Franco/German border, *especially* when the Confederacy will jump forward quite a bit in the beginning of the war away from pre-war fortifications, but it is by far the closest. (and will have *far* more naval involvement than the Franco-German border.
2) Appalachian. I'm not quite sure *what* the equilvalent area to fight to this in Europe is, the Carpathians?
3) Ohio River + small part of Mississippi down to the bottom of the boot heel. Unlikely to have trench warfare, fighting will be on one side of the river or the other, the question of where to send boats for moving large troops to the other side will be key. (which will require wiping out the gunboats of the other side.)
4) Ozarks (see Appalachians, but with somewhat less supplies)
5) West. Perhaps some distinction between the US fights against the Natives in OTL Oklahoma and farther west, but probably not
6) Far West. the US Border with Mexico. Like the Mason-Dixon front, significant involvement of the Navy.
I think it might be legitimately difficult for GAW lessons to be applied to the CEW. (They should be applied anyway, mind, but I think we all know that's not what's going to happen.)
1) The vibe I've been getting is that both the US and the CS will be doing their best to emulate bumbling fools. European officers will likely discount any lessons to be learned due to this.
2) Distances are barely comparable. Straight-line distance between Nice and Groningen (aka a first-order approximation of the maximum extent of a France-vs-Germany-plus-Italy front) is 658 miles. On the other hand, Philadelphia to Evansville, Indiana is 680 miles, and Philadelphia to San Diego is ~2370 miles. Note these are great-circle distances, not the distance the actual front would follow. Should still give a sense of scale. I suspect that European war planners will know this also, and assume that they will be able to do better due to reduced logistics strain.
1) The vibe I've been getting is that both the US and the CS will be doing their best to emulate bumbling fools. European officers will likely discount any lessons to be learned due to this.
2) Distances are barely comparable. Straight-line distance between Nice and Groningen (aka a first-order approximation of the maximum extent of a France-vs-Germany-plus-Italy front) is 658 miles. On the other hand, Philadelphia to Evansville, Indiana is 680 miles, and Philadelphia to San Diego is ~2370 miles. Note these are great-circle distances, not the distance the actual front would follow. Should still give a sense of scale. I suspect that European war planners will know this also, and assume that they will be able to do better due to reduced logistics strain.
Not to play my own hand away here, but in OTL Beseler did have his own ideas, and as a military engineer he understood fortifications.
Yes, but *some* fronts will be comparable. As long as the Swiss aren't in it, you have a *tiny* Italian front and a larger German front which will be comparable to the US/CS front *east of the appalachians*. There were reasons that OTL civil war didn't have significant conflict in West Virginia (not counting the Eastern Two counties which were stapled on later) and those apply here in the GAW. The US and Confederacy can't really outflank the Mason Dixon Front by going through Central West Virginia any more than the French or Germans could outflank each other by going through most of Switzerland (even if they didn't care about Swiss Neutrality)
I agree the "Western Front" (Tulsa - Phoenix) is not likely to have lessons the Europeans can use, but the fighting in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania definitely.
Needles to say; given the degree to which French war plans involve invading Belgium; I'm pretty sure that gives the British even less incentive to intervene. They have no real quarrel with the Germans and they do fear the French. Plus; given that French and German military power will cancel each other out in Belgium; it actually helps to ensure that neither side can control the Low Countries and thus directly threaten the UK.
For these reasons, yes, European generals will be skeptical of precisely the lessons that can be learned. Now, that being said, recall that in 1900-01 the Nine-Nation Alliance had a hell of a time with a China that was able to punch back and the Filipinos, with a major assist from the Japanese, also in 1903-04 drove a relatively modern Spanish Army out of the Orient (the Spanish, while one of the lesser European powers, are nowhere near the rake-stepping punchline of OTL even after losing the Philippines). So there are fairly recent examples of warfare they can incorporate. However...Oh, come now - what's the WORST that can happen? Its not like a group of nations would suddenly just decide to sacrifice an entire generation of young men to a romantic, yet utterly futile, cause brought upon by aged generals who couldn't adapt to modern forms of warfare!? Pshaw! Go away sir, I'll have none of your lies today!!!!
Though, honestly, considering that the Great American War will happen a few years prior - I wonder what lessons the general staffs of Europe will take away from the fighting being done there. The fronts are going to be more open in the US, but there's certainly still some fronts where I could see trench warfare being used - and the Europeans can't be so blind as to think "Huh, I can't imagine WE would devolve into that form of fighting - our superior European martial spirit and elan would never allow such a thing!"
...
Oh god, that's what happens, isn't it?
Also, this.
More or less, yes. With varying degrees of success for the US depending on the front. The CS doesn't have much in the way of defenses out West, but also, that's a lot of desert to march across
I haven't boned up too much on the West Virginian history in the Civil War but, no, for the reasons you describe I hadn't really thought there'd be much fighting there other than scattered paramilitary activity.
Different war, same idiots
TBF I hadn't looked in to him very much. Of course, that's an easy retcon - with that background, Beseler sounds like he'd have been perfect for a German General Staff that is much more aware that the West will be fought defensively, have prepared for such a scenario for going on two decades, and are instead doing a Aufmarsch Ost into the Danube Basin as their offensive initiative. (Of course, the terrain favors the defender in Austria, too, and not just along the Inn but the Bohemian/Sudetes Mountains, too).
Precisely. Of course, as Chris Clark spells out so plainly in the Sleepwalkers, British entry into the Entente was as much a "keep your friends close and enemies closer" approach to realpolitik with France and Russia as it was about "containing Germany," with the latter designed as post-facto justification. France is a bit too much of a threat here to ever see any kind of Entente Cordiale and without the Franco-Russian Alliance there's no fucking way London gets in bed with St. Petersburg but the British won't exactly leap to supporting Germany, either, with its growing sophisticated economy
In OTL von Beseler had served in the Oberquartiermeister III, deputy chief of the Großer Generalstab, head of the Engineer and Pioneer Corps, Inspector-General of Fortresses and instructor at the Kriegsakademie.
He was recommended as the successor of Schlieffen by Graf von Hülsen-Haeseler, Chief of the Military Cabinet. Naturally Wilhem II chose otherwise.
Von Beseler made some interesting prewar operational studies: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-century-history.272417/page-33#post-20743374
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