1918: Know When to Fold 'Em, Know When to Walk Away
Oct 17, 2023 2:08:55 GMT
stevep and Max Sinister like this
Post by raharris1973 on Oct 17, 2023 2:08:55 GMT
December 1917 - Preliminary armistice of Brest-Litovsk, between Bolshevik Russia and Central Powers, pending a peace treaty [OTL event]
January 1918 - Taking a winter tour, shuttling between troop training camps, observing troop conditions, tactical practice, tank maneuvers, etc., Britain's Prime Minister, David Lloyd George is accidentally, and tragically, killed in a motor vehicle collision accident. [first PoD] A mourning nation picks its next PM to lead the government.
February 1918 - At one of the fronts or a demonstration at the rear, Enver Pasha, leading figure of the ruling CUP triumvirate in the Ottoman Empire is killed by shrapnel and explosive force from an artillery piece exploding from misfiring instead of shooting properly. Djemal and Talaat Pasha, the other triumvarate members, inherit the reins of power.
Feb 1918 - Angry at Bolshevik footdragging on peace terms, German led Central Powers forces launch Operation Faustschlag against a faded and depleted Russian Army. German forces make rapid territorial conquests in the Baltics and Ukraine and Crimea, easily sweeping a melting Russian Army out of the way. Resistance also crumbles away in the Caucasus in front of the Ottoman Army [OTL]
March 1918 - Reeling from Central Powers military pressure, and with no credible force to stop German occupation of Petrograd or Moscow, Lenin convinces Bolsheviks to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, yielding away all of Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Ukraine, Crimea, and the Caucasus to the Central Powers or independence/'independence' without Bolshevik interference. [OTL]
March 1918 -
On the western front, Ludendorff and Hindenburg and Max Hoffmann, and the German civilian leadership, having worked on new Storm Troop tactics and begun transferring troops west from Russia, eagerly, and somewhat nervously await the start of their spring offensive, the Kaiserschlacht [OTL]
The western powers, exhausted from their offensive efforts in 1917, which for most of the year fell on British Empire forces exclusively, are also nervously awaiting the German spring offensive, knowing they must absorb it and are in no position to take the initiative in the spring, with the French unrecovered from years of brutal attrition and mutinies, and the Americans not in the line in sufficient numbers with sufficient blooded experience. [OTL]
The war is in the balance, at a tipping point, that people on both sides feel can go either way, even though leaders are promising their own armies and peoples victory.
ATL narrative - CUP Cabinet headquarters victory feast in celebration of victory over Russia:
Djemal and Talaat congratulate their intimates and leading commanders in their presence on a difficult job well done, the humbling, and utter defeat, of the eternal Russian enemy. Their intimates and staff praise them back. Cheers are raised for the recovery of Kars and Ardahan and the driving back of Russian and Armenian forces. Other cheers are raised to promised victories tomorrow, to recover the situation in the south, recover the unfortunately recently lost Jerusalem (Nov-Dec 1917), Palestine, and the connections to Hijaz and Mecca, and lost Baghdad (March 1917) and Iraq. Cheers are raised for the Central Powers allies. To Germany, Austria, with a bit less enthusiasm - Bulgaria.
In a quiet moment of the festivities, Djemal and Talaat speak one-on-one, and Djemal says, "So. the Bear is dead. It is good for us that the main beast that wanted to devour us is laid flat, like a rug, for now and some time. But tomorrow we think of what comes next. While never so hungry for us as the bear in the mountains and woods above us, the British lion bites at us below through the desert and bleeds us. We need to get the lion off of us and we need to stop bleeding."
Talaat replies, "Yes we must get the British off of us, the German Eagle will now turn west to unleash hell on the British Army, that should help us. With Russia out, Germany will hit hard and make Britain pay, Britain will have to hold its ground, and hold France up, and America is a new untested factor. But I fear German efforts and strength may not save us in the end, or save us in time. Even if thrown into the sea, the British island is protected by a wall of sea. They and their American allies have more money than the almighty, and that alone would not pull their army from Palestine or Iraq."
Djemal in turn replies, "Well what would you have us do? We sink or swim with the Germans and Austrians. We must pray for, and support, their victory in Belgium and France to hurt Britain, then call on their reinforced support, for our neighborhood.
Talaat responds, "That is one way out and forward, and it may turn out to be the only way. But you know the British have been sending us missives occasionally in the last year, even in the last 12 weeks, about a side deal. So far, their offers are unsatisfactory on their face, offering our Sultan 'suzerainty' once more over Palestine while they retain de facto economic and military control, in return for us making peace, abandoning the CP, expelling the Germans, and returning the Allies their prisoners."
Djemal snorts, "Such double-dealing perfidy is so typically British, coming mere weeks after Balfour's love letter to the Jews offering them a special palace in Al-Quds! And after over a year of subborning buggery with that treasonous Bedouin Hashemite Hussein! So what of it, Minister, you see, opportunity?"
Talaat: "There very well may be. But a very first step must be the recall of all of our soldiers and draftable students from the other CP nations to serve on our fronts, instead of anywhere else. Our policy must protect us first, last, and always. We still have need to shore up our fronts against renewed pressure from the British in Syria and Iraq no later than late this summer, possibly earlier. There is ample precedent, the Germans have been thinning out their officer and technician cadre for their own spring offensive this year."
Djemal: "Of course, this would be entirely unobjectionable, Empire first!"
Talaat: "The pain and pressure Britain is about to feel, and likely feel the brunt of, thanks to our German allies, may provide them an opportunity to reason, and our requirements, more clearly. Their armies will soon be at risk of being thrown into the sea in northern France. They can have their prisoners back when we have our occupied lands back. Those British certainly have other places to use soldiers and battlefronts to support. They have last year, lost their one ally, Russia, that most insisted we be on the carving block. Their other main ally, France, the Gallic rooster, is tired, exhausted, and doing its best not to get cooked, and to get relief from the fire of war. Italy? Those gluttons would surely want to steal more from us, but the Austrians gave them quite a beating, their priority is to first recover, and then steal from Austria. Only then to go stealing more from us than they stole in 1912. The Americans, rich and powerful, thankfully have not decided to declare war on us. Our requirements are simple, and go in line with what their American President talks about, respect our sovereignty, leave our land in peace, leave us to determine our own destiny, and we can have peace, and commerce. We can not only reach out when the time is right with our offer to the British, but discuss with the Americans, and let the French and Italians know, so Britain knows its Allies will see if it values beating Germany with certainty more than it desires looting Al-Quds, Beirut, the straits, and the oil of Mosul and Kirkuk."
.....after multiple weeks of criss-crossing bilateral talks between the Ottomans and British another parties, while the Michael Offensive blows a nasty hole in British lines in Flanders:
On 3 April, 1918, an astonished world wakes to find the Ottoman Empire has given Central Powers personnel 48 hours to evacuate the country (primarily to Bulgaria) without their weapons (save sidearms, hand-carried); the Ottoman Empire also declares a cease-fire, and the Entente Powers declare that they will reciprocate the cease-fire
4 April: A first shipment of British PoWs including Gen Townshend, captured in Kut, is sent on a Red Cross ship from the Turkish Aegean coast to Athens harbor. When news is radio'ed around the world, British commanders in Palestine and Iraq begin a pullback of their forces by fifty miles, which yields Jerusalem. lightly armed Ottoman troops advance as the British pull back.
4 April: Armenian 'trail of tears' begins. Survivors of Armenian genocide in deserts and towns and camps throughout Ottoman Empire are sent marching to and across the border to the Armenian Republic on former Russian territory. This includes those living in Kars & Ardahan districts.
In April and May- Alternating linked repatriations of Entente PoWs, and Entente force withdrawals from Ottoman territory continue, while German offensives in the west rage on. Both sides keep to agreed deadlines, give or take fumbles of 6-12 hours on occasion. Turks keep to their commitment to keep heavy artillery and aircraft out of Entente evacuated areas. Turks begin to receive back some of their PoWs. While maintaining defensive watchfulness, with pullback and buffer space, Britain redeploys British and ANZAC troops with remaining service commitments, or their replacements, to the Western Front
By mid-May, final, publicly agreed, stop lines are reached. In Iraq, the new line of contact between Ottoman and British forces is the border of the Baghdad and Basra vilayet. Britain retains occupation over the latter. In the Levant, the new line of contact is along the Palestine-Sinai border, with the Ottomans reoccupying the former, However, the Ottoman garrisons are evacuated from the Hijaz province, which is left as an independent Emirate, whose northern border is set to include Aqaba port, to both cut off the Ottoman Empire with direct contact from the Red Sea, and provide a tiny land border with British-occupied Egypt.
As a consequence of the separate peace agreement, Ottoman Turkey avoids further invasion of the straits and its Thracian and Anatolian heartland and Syria-Lebanon. It also recovers the vast majority of Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq/Mesopotamia, but loses direct outlets to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. The British bolster their imperial protection the Anglo-Persian Oil Company refineries at Abadan in southwest Persia and Gulf protectorates, and their Red Sea interests. They get PoWs back, and the ability to focus more on the western front sooner. The Ottomans stage the release of the healthiest PoWs first while working to improve conditions, to reduce odds of shocking pictorial evidence causing a reneging on any British ends of the bargain. Horrific stories get out immediately, but basically the Ottoman try to encourage weight gain to minimize bad pictures.
The Ottomans also use the separate peace and Allied preoccupation with the western front to quash or expel what they consider subversive elements.
This will include expulsions of European heritage Jews from Palestine to Egypt. Assyrians from Kurdistan and Iraq to the border with the Basra vilayet, some Greeks, and of course, Armenians.
As a result of these atrocities, the postwar Ottoman Empire will be severely criticized and in many ways treated as an international pariah, with its international representatives, where they have them, often subject to harassment or assassination. But no power is sufficiently motivated to start a war with the Ottomans, either during or after WWI.
In the meantime, what is the effect of this Ottoman disengagement from the CP's war effort over April-May 1918, with the peace treaty arrived at in mid-May, following the cease-fire in early April?
How is the course of the German spring and summer offensives effected, and the timing and pace of the Allied counteroffensives of 1918? How is the timing and pace of the Allied Salonika and Bulgaria campaign of 1918, and og Bulgaria's capitulation, affected.
As a result of the ceasefire, the straits are reopened to Allied shipping, once the work of de-mining is done...although the significance is much less now than it would have been earlier in the war, because Russia has peace'd out. Still, how is Allied or Turkish intervention in the Russian Civil War affected?
January 1918 - Taking a winter tour, shuttling between troop training camps, observing troop conditions, tactical practice, tank maneuvers, etc., Britain's Prime Minister, David Lloyd George is accidentally, and tragically, killed in a motor vehicle collision accident. [first PoD] A mourning nation picks its next PM to lead the government.
February 1918 - At one of the fronts or a demonstration at the rear, Enver Pasha, leading figure of the ruling CUP triumvirate in the Ottoman Empire is killed by shrapnel and explosive force from an artillery piece exploding from misfiring instead of shooting properly. Djemal and Talaat Pasha, the other triumvarate members, inherit the reins of power.
Feb 1918 - Angry at Bolshevik footdragging on peace terms, German led Central Powers forces launch Operation Faustschlag against a faded and depleted Russian Army. German forces make rapid territorial conquests in the Baltics and Ukraine and Crimea, easily sweeping a melting Russian Army out of the way. Resistance also crumbles away in the Caucasus in front of the Ottoman Army [OTL]
March 1918 - Reeling from Central Powers military pressure, and with no credible force to stop German occupation of Petrograd or Moscow, Lenin convinces Bolsheviks to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, yielding away all of Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Ukraine, Crimea, and the Caucasus to the Central Powers or independence/'independence' without Bolshevik interference. [OTL]
March 1918 -
On the western front, Ludendorff and Hindenburg and Max Hoffmann, and the German civilian leadership, having worked on new Storm Troop tactics and begun transferring troops west from Russia, eagerly, and somewhat nervously await the start of their spring offensive, the Kaiserschlacht [OTL]
The western powers, exhausted from their offensive efforts in 1917, which for most of the year fell on British Empire forces exclusively, are also nervously awaiting the German spring offensive, knowing they must absorb it and are in no position to take the initiative in the spring, with the French unrecovered from years of brutal attrition and mutinies, and the Americans not in the line in sufficient numbers with sufficient blooded experience. [OTL]
The war is in the balance, at a tipping point, that people on both sides feel can go either way, even though leaders are promising their own armies and peoples victory.
ATL narrative - CUP Cabinet headquarters victory feast in celebration of victory over Russia:
Djemal and Talaat congratulate their intimates and leading commanders in their presence on a difficult job well done, the humbling, and utter defeat, of the eternal Russian enemy. Their intimates and staff praise them back. Cheers are raised for the recovery of Kars and Ardahan and the driving back of Russian and Armenian forces. Other cheers are raised to promised victories tomorrow, to recover the situation in the south, recover the unfortunately recently lost Jerusalem (Nov-Dec 1917), Palestine, and the connections to Hijaz and Mecca, and lost Baghdad (March 1917) and Iraq. Cheers are raised for the Central Powers allies. To Germany, Austria, with a bit less enthusiasm - Bulgaria.
In a quiet moment of the festivities, Djemal and Talaat speak one-on-one, and Djemal says, "So. the Bear is dead. It is good for us that the main beast that wanted to devour us is laid flat, like a rug, for now and some time. But tomorrow we think of what comes next. While never so hungry for us as the bear in the mountains and woods above us, the British lion bites at us below through the desert and bleeds us. We need to get the lion off of us and we need to stop bleeding."
Talaat replies, "Yes we must get the British off of us, the German Eagle will now turn west to unleash hell on the British Army, that should help us. With Russia out, Germany will hit hard and make Britain pay, Britain will have to hold its ground, and hold France up, and America is a new untested factor. But I fear German efforts and strength may not save us in the end, or save us in time. Even if thrown into the sea, the British island is protected by a wall of sea. They and their American allies have more money than the almighty, and that alone would not pull their army from Palestine or Iraq."
Djemal in turn replies, "Well what would you have us do? We sink or swim with the Germans and Austrians. We must pray for, and support, their victory in Belgium and France to hurt Britain, then call on their reinforced support, for our neighborhood.
Talaat responds, "That is one way out and forward, and it may turn out to be the only way. But you know the British have been sending us missives occasionally in the last year, even in the last 12 weeks, about a side deal. So far, their offers are unsatisfactory on their face, offering our Sultan 'suzerainty' once more over Palestine while they retain de facto economic and military control, in return for us making peace, abandoning the CP, expelling the Germans, and returning the Allies their prisoners."
Djemal snorts, "Such double-dealing perfidy is so typically British, coming mere weeks after Balfour's love letter to the Jews offering them a special palace in Al-Quds! And after over a year of subborning buggery with that treasonous Bedouin Hashemite Hussein! So what of it, Minister, you see, opportunity?"
Talaat: "There very well may be. But a very first step must be the recall of all of our soldiers and draftable students from the other CP nations to serve on our fronts, instead of anywhere else. Our policy must protect us first, last, and always. We still have need to shore up our fronts against renewed pressure from the British in Syria and Iraq no later than late this summer, possibly earlier. There is ample precedent, the Germans have been thinning out their officer and technician cadre for their own spring offensive this year."
Djemal: "Of course, this would be entirely unobjectionable, Empire first!"
Talaat: "The pain and pressure Britain is about to feel, and likely feel the brunt of, thanks to our German allies, may provide them an opportunity to reason, and our requirements, more clearly. Their armies will soon be at risk of being thrown into the sea in northern France. They can have their prisoners back when we have our occupied lands back. Those British certainly have other places to use soldiers and battlefronts to support. They have last year, lost their one ally, Russia, that most insisted we be on the carving block. Their other main ally, France, the Gallic rooster, is tired, exhausted, and doing its best not to get cooked, and to get relief from the fire of war. Italy? Those gluttons would surely want to steal more from us, but the Austrians gave them quite a beating, their priority is to first recover, and then steal from Austria. Only then to go stealing more from us than they stole in 1912. The Americans, rich and powerful, thankfully have not decided to declare war on us. Our requirements are simple, and go in line with what their American President talks about, respect our sovereignty, leave our land in peace, leave us to determine our own destiny, and we can have peace, and commerce. We can not only reach out when the time is right with our offer to the British, but discuss with the Americans, and let the French and Italians know, so Britain knows its Allies will see if it values beating Germany with certainty more than it desires looting Al-Quds, Beirut, the straits, and the oil of Mosul and Kirkuk."
.....after multiple weeks of criss-crossing bilateral talks between the Ottomans and British another parties, while the Michael Offensive blows a nasty hole in British lines in Flanders:
On 3 April, 1918, an astonished world wakes to find the Ottoman Empire has given Central Powers personnel 48 hours to evacuate the country (primarily to Bulgaria) without their weapons (save sidearms, hand-carried); the Ottoman Empire also declares a cease-fire, and the Entente Powers declare that they will reciprocate the cease-fire
4 April: A first shipment of British PoWs including Gen Townshend, captured in Kut, is sent on a Red Cross ship from the Turkish Aegean coast to Athens harbor. When news is radio'ed around the world, British commanders in Palestine and Iraq begin a pullback of their forces by fifty miles, which yields Jerusalem. lightly armed Ottoman troops advance as the British pull back.
4 April: Armenian 'trail of tears' begins. Survivors of Armenian genocide in deserts and towns and camps throughout Ottoman Empire are sent marching to and across the border to the Armenian Republic on former Russian territory. This includes those living in Kars & Ardahan districts.
In April and May- Alternating linked repatriations of Entente PoWs, and Entente force withdrawals from Ottoman territory continue, while German offensives in the west rage on. Both sides keep to agreed deadlines, give or take fumbles of 6-12 hours on occasion. Turks keep to their commitment to keep heavy artillery and aircraft out of Entente evacuated areas. Turks begin to receive back some of their PoWs. While maintaining defensive watchfulness, with pullback and buffer space, Britain redeploys British and ANZAC troops with remaining service commitments, or their replacements, to the Western Front
By mid-May, final, publicly agreed, stop lines are reached. In Iraq, the new line of contact between Ottoman and British forces is the border of the Baghdad and Basra vilayet. Britain retains occupation over the latter. In the Levant, the new line of contact is along the Palestine-Sinai border, with the Ottomans reoccupying the former, However, the Ottoman garrisons are evacuated from the Hijaz province, which is left as an independent Emirate, whose northern border is set to include Aqaba port, to both cut off the Ottoman Empire with direct contact from the Red Sea, and provide a tiny land border with British-occupied Egypt.
As a consequence of the separate peace agreement, Ottoman Turkey avoids further invasion of the straits and its Thracian and Anatolian heartland and Syria-Lebanon. It also recovers the vast majority of Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq/Mesopotamia, but loses direct outlets to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. The British bolster their imperial protection the Anglo-Persian Oil Company refineries at Abadan in southwest Persia and Gulf protectorates, and their Red Sea interests. They get PoWs back, and the ability to focus more on the western front sooner. The Ottomans stage the release of the healthiest PoWs first while working to improve conditions, to reduce odds of shocking pictorial evidence causing a reneging on any British ends of the bargain. Horrific stories get out immediately, but basically the Ottoman try to encourage weight gain to minimize bad pictures.
The Ottomans also use the separate peace and Allied preoccupation with the western front to quash or expel what they consider subversive elements.
This will include expulsions of European heritage Jews from Palestine to Egypt. Assyrians from Kurdistan and Iraq to the border with the Basra vilayet, some Greeks, and of course, Armenians.
As a result of these atrocities, the postwar Ottoman Empire will be severely criticized and in many ways treated as an international pariah, with its international representatives, where they have them, often subject to harassment or assassination. But no power is sufficiently motivated to start a war with the Ottomans, either during or after WWI.
In the meantime, what is the effect of this Ottoman disengagement from the CP's war effort over April-May 1918, with the peace treaty arrived at in mid-May, following the cease-fire in early April?
How is the course of the German spring and summer offensives effected, and the timing and pace of the Allied counteroffensives of 1918? How is the timing and pace of the Allied Salonika and Bulgaria campaign of 1918, and og Bulgaria's capitulation, affected.
As a result of the ceasefire, the straits are reopened to Allied shipping, once the work of de-mining is done...although the significance is much less now than it would have been earlier in the war, because Russia has peace'd out. Still, how is Allied or Turkish intervention in the Russian Civil War affected?
