Kaisereich Part 0: the Great Weltkrieg

This is just some context about the alternate WWI itself. It summarises the key events


The Alternate World War 1

At the start of the war, Germany didn’t declare war on Belgium. However The Eastern Front however would remain relatively the same as in our timeline during the early part of the War. Meanwhile on the Western Front, the French spent a million casualties with the Germans receiving 900,000 casualties during plan XVII, or the French offensives to take Alsace Lorraine. They only advanced about 40 kilometers to take the town of Dabo by October 1914, however the French were unable to take the key points of Mulhouse or Strasbourg, because the natural terrain of the Vosges slowed down the advance considerably for the French. Also, The Germans innovated by digging trenches, which proved highly effective in combating the initial French advantage of men and artillery as well as their denser deployment of troops in that area. It also mowed down the French with machine guns and this lost the will for Joseph Joffre the commander-in-chief of French forces, to continue Plan XVII by November. By November 1914 the Western Front had mostly stabilized, with the German reinforcements matching the numbers of French troops equally. Finally, the Ottoman empire joined the war at the same time as in our timeline.

During 1915, the British would lean further to deciding to join the war. They were sympathetic to the Entente and despite not being at war with Germany, it was sending several hundred thousand tons of much needed supplies to the French per month. Also, there was a British interest in receiving spoils from the ‘sick man of Europe’ or the Ottoman Empire, since that country had oil reserves in its territories in the middle East. Several German u boats were sited in British sea zones during March 1915 which inflamed tensions greatly between Britain and Germany, however the Germans apologized for the uboats ‘mistakeably in British waters’ and the crisis was lifted. Then the Germans sunk a British Cargo vessel delivering artillery shells to France with 150 British sailors drowning on April the 6th 1915, this inflamed public opinion immensely, and caused Herbert Asquith the British Prime Minister, to embargo Germany to stop it receiving a large portion of British Goods. On the Eastern Front, the Galicia-Tarnow offensive started in March 1915, which is 2 months before the start date of the offensive during our timeline. This is because Germany had much more men to throw at the Russians since the Western front was much smaller to control. In this timeline the offensive would go rather like our timeline, with the Russian army losing hundreds of thousands of men and would be decimated and expelled from Poland, Lithuania, and parts of Belarus and Ukraine by August 1915. Also, in this timeline the Germans could seize the town of Riga as well by 1915. The ottoman’s offensive in Armenia would go as well for the Ottomans as in our timeline, with an entire army decimated in the Battle of Sarikamesh. Meanwhile in the Western Front the French would launch repeated major offensive to push for Mulhouse and Strasburg in April through to September 1915, however would gain 1 million more casualties and only advance 2.5 miles before being pushed back to their original positions by a German counter-offensive. By May 1915 Italy would join the Entente like in our timeline, and that front would remain relatively like our timeline. By October 1915 the Bulgarians would have joined the Central powers and Serbia was finally occupied like in our timeline. Meanwhile the massive offensives by the French with disastrous losses for them would already cause mutiny in the Army. Various incidents with German u boats sinking British ships delivering supplies to France causes the British to declare ‘armed neutrality’ which means that Britain mobilizes its army and conducts further economic embargoes on the Germans as well as sinking any u boats in British waters. Meanwhile the German colonies of Cameroon and Togo are seized by France. The Germans prepare the ‘Falkenhayn line’ which is a large and ‘indestructible’ trench defensive system that is built on the other side the Rhine river from Alsace Lorraine, it was built from Strasburg to the Belgium border. The Germans also completely dominate the air war with the Focker’s winning complete aerial superiority against the French.

1916 sees a grand French offensive in February in the 2nd battle of Mulhouse. With new tactical innovations such as copying German aircraft designs and employing tanks from the British, the French hope to break the German lines. A gigantic artillery bombardment of 1 million shells leads to some small successes, but after 7 months the French only advance 2.8 miles with 1.5 million casualties and the Germans 1 million. Meanwhile the Russians manage to take the city of Erzurum and pushed through much of Turkish controlled Caucasus towards Trabzon and Bitlis during that year, breaking the Ottoman Army. France and Russia discuss secret plans for the partition of the Ottoman empire with Britain invited. The ‘oriental congress’ allows for Britain to seize much of Iraq and Palestine if they decided to join the war, as well as Russia receiving Constantinople and France and Italy partitioning Asia minor. Herbert Asquith and his liberal government are however not desiring to entangle themselves in ‘a European imperialist war’. The British parliament was still bitterly divided on the issue to join the war and Herbert Asquith was replaced with Bonar Law who was the leader of the Conservative party during an election in May 1916. He and his pro-war faction with members like Winston Churchill declared that Germany ‘must be stopped or else shall completely dominate Europe.’ However, he was unable to currently make the Parliament agree for Britain to join the war. On the Eastern Front the Brusilov offensive doesn’t especially create big results since the German’s blunt the offensive earlier then in our timeline in June 1916 and Russia gains 1 million casualties with half a million dead, and with even less gains then in our timeline. Romania would not even be enticed to join the war because of the offensive’s lack of success. France agrees to try and open the Black sea to give the Russians ammunitions and supplies for helping with their offensive by launching their own Gallipoli Campaign to destroy Turkish fortifications in Istanbul and make them peace out of the war. However, the campaign was a total failure and only lasted a few months before the French had to pull out from the short 3 month campaign from August-November 1916 with 130,000 casualties including tens of thousands of men sunk during the evacuation of Gallipoli by Turkish mines and artillery. After the terrible loses during the war, France would experience riots during August 1916 from 50,000 factory workers across France and some soldiers demanding an end to the war and better pay for those workers. The government cracked down on the protests hard and imprisoned the leaders with 5,000 workers imprisoned and 500 being shot. At this point French Prime Minister Raymond Poincare was replaced with George Clemenceau because of the current massive losses the French army experienced, and the blame was put on him. Meanwhile in September 1916 the British detained an American cargo ship trading with Germany. The British believed that it was a German ship posing as an American one, however they were wrong and instead it instigated a severing of relations between them and the Americans. Finally, in October 1916 the Japanese decided to declare war on Germany and quickly seized the German Pacific islands as well as the German port of Tsingtao. Also, China joined the war in November 1916 for the allies and would provide laborers to the French and Russians. Indeed, there was constant unrest for France as there was constantly mutinies in the army and navy, as well as a planned coup against the government by the French communist party and their militia in November which was conducted by Jean Jaures, [who was not assassinated like in our timeline] with his communist league. The coup failed and Jean was sent into prison, with his communist party forcibly disbanded and outlawed.

In 1917, the Tsar was ousted from power and a Russian republic was proclaimed in February, however instead of Alexander Kerensky taking control of the government, Julius Martov, the leader of the Mensheviks, took control. He was a pacifist and would seek immediate peace negotiations with the central powers, with an armistice declared on March the 18th. Meanwhile the Germans retreated their troops across the Rhine river to the heavily fortified Falkenhayn line. This allowed for the French to finally retake Alsace Lorraine from the Germans, however it was completely impossible for any further advances to be made to pass through the heavily fortified and complex trench networks on the Falkenhayn line despite several attempts to break it during the ‘Rhine offensives’ conducted by the French in April to August 1917. This was the most horrendous campaign for the French, with 2.2 million casualties caused to the French whilst the Germans only received 1.25 million. On March 1917 there was an incident with a German u-67 and a British cruise ship RMS Aquitania, as it was seen in French waters, the German u-boat sunk the liner with 1,500 people drowning mostly British, but also various other nationalities. This enraged the British government and finally the Parliament agreed to declare war on Germany on March the 25th by only 15 votes. This meant detaining many American ships which were importing military goods to Germany. In May 1917, the British launched an offensive into Palestine without officially declaring war on the Ottomans, there was immediate success ensuring against the Ottomans with the British seizing Jerusalem by early July and another offensive from May 1917 in Mesopotamia began. Also the South Africans seized German South-West Africa and Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and German Samoa respectively. Meanwhile in June the 15th the treaty of Grodno was signed, which was an armistice between Russia and the Central Powers. The effects of the treaty were quite like the effects of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Germans were now planning to transfer 4.5 million men including 2 million men from their army in the East to the Belgium border to begin the final ‘Kaiser offensive’ to strike through Belgium and push towards Paris in September. This was when the Austrians and Germans succeeded in their offensive against the Italians in the battle of Vittorio Veneto in early July in which the Italians retreated for over 75 miles. Meanwhile the British were arriving in force on the Western front, such that by July, the British had over 1.5 million troops stationed there. The British also managed to push towards Baghdad by July the 15th and destroy several Turkish counter offensives. Meanwhile during August, France experienced over 75,000 factory workers as well as women, retired soldiers, and members of the socialist party going on strike demanding an end to the war in which this time 10,000 were imprisoned and a few shot. This was at the same time in which the British manage to win their greatest battle in Palestine with 100,000 prisoners taken during the battle of Megiddo in August the 10th, effectively allowing them to advance towards Damascus. Finally, on September the 1st, the preparations for the Kaiser Offensive were complete, and Germany declared war on Belgium with 4.5 million troops advancing towards Paris. The invasion of Belgium lasted for 8 days in which time the Belgians tried to halt the Germans as much as possible by destroying railway tracks. The British and French were surprised with this attack and had to suddenly relocate millions of troops. It was slow progress because of their reliance of transporting by rail, and this allowed for the Germans to gain great initial success when they advanced as far as Cambrai in France within 10 days of the offensive before progress began to halt in the battle for Cambrai in which the Germans only pushed through after several days of intense fighting . The Germans then decided to attack towards the ports of Calais and Dunkirk in which British troops were arriving from. On the 10th they broke through at Amiens after fierce fighting with British and Canadian as well as French unit. Amiens was a strategic town since it provided railway access to Calais and as such the British units were trapped in France. At this point however the German supply lines were also outstretched so they were forced to stop their offensive from the 13th to the 15th of September to repair broken railway tracks and receive artillery shells and ammo which was beginning to run out. This allowed the French valuable time to build a cohesive line and dig some simple trench fortifications. However, the French army was breaking down and was exhausted after the massive losses over the past years and then the German’s surprise attack. The Germans then continued their offensive to Paris, on the 16th in Reims, 5 divisions simply surrendered to the Germans, and on the 20th at Compiegne, a whole army group simply surrendered. This caused major distrust with the British towards the French and prepared to leave France. This allowed for secret German-British negotiations in which their army could leave Britain with ‘a peace with honor’. The French were in constant retreat and with hundreds of thousands of troops surrendering and with massive riots across France violently opposed to conscription. The Germans managed to be only 50 miles from Paris by the 25th of September and reach the Marne river. At the same day Britain officially negotiated peace with Germany. Despite the terrible morale of the French army some loyal forces fought back the Germans in fierce fighting but by the 27th were broken and forced into Paris. Germany then offered peace for the French with the offer of not occupying Paris, George Clemenceau declined the offer, and in response a coup was organized by various government officials in Clemenceau’s own party culminating with Clemenceau being forced to resign from office and Poincare being reinstated as President. By the 29th of September he immediately negotiated for peace with Germany for an armistice that would come on the 30th. This armistice is seen by many historians as the official end to the Weltkrieg but the war was not actually concluded because Italy didn’t officially surrender until several weeks after the Armistice, and Japan would only surrender in the new year.