Note: This will be either a two part or three part update mainly because the Great World War would be a bit bloodier and a bit longer. Also, this timeline has now covered all the continents since one of the updates here will cover Brazil.
The beginning of the 20th century in Europe became increasingly turbulent as labor unions across Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia began to rise from obscurity, inspired by the Trudoviki regime in Russia and its stance on revolutionary socialism that will not involve sending innocent civilians into their deaths for no apparent reason at all. In 1913, Chancellor Mikoyan formally stepped down from his post as Chancellor of the Russian Federated States as Pyotr Stolypin became his successor. Under Chancellor Stolypin’s first acts in office, the title for Russia’s official name was changed to the Union of Sovereign States to make it easier for any nation outside the former Tsarist Empire to join. However, Stolypin’s biggest dilemma was this: which continent will the Trudoviki movement have the most potential to succeed? They can only succeed in Africa if Egypt had a Trudoviki regime, which may be unlikely. The American continents would be earmarked for the leadership of the United States of America (although Mexico may soon overtake the USA in terms of economic growth by the 1930s), so it was either Europe or Asia. Even there, they also provided considerable risks to launching the Trudoviki revolution on those two continents. For instance, the Muravievist monarchies in Europe are hostile to the Pestelist regime in Russia while in Asia the forces of reaction can lit the fuse for a potential political quagmire there.
Brazil – Superpower in the Making but Hardly Aggressive:
Brazil was slated to become one of the dominant superpowers of the 19th to 20th century with a surprisingly diverse ethnic groups living within its borders. Pedro I of Brazil became its country’s first ruler after he defeated his father King Joao VI in Brazil’s War of Independence. It was worth noting that Brazil’s path to independence had occurred three years before Pavel Pestel and Nikita Muraviev launched the Decembrist Revolution. The Cisplatine War that Brazil lost eventually had a positive effect on them, as they were able to avoid becoming entangled in a separatist problem. It was not until Pedro II’s reign in 1851 when he successfully stabilized the country’s institutions.
Slavery was a thorny issue in Brazil, because it signed a treaty with Great Britain on the ban on importing slaves. However, the ban became weak when the Confederate States of America gained its independence and the right to own slaves. Although Pedro II’s government continued to import slaves into the country, it was not until 1888 when the Brazilian Republic was established and slavery was finally outlawed. Despite its extreme distance from Pestelist Russia, Pedro II’s Brazilian Empire adopted some of Pestelism’s phases, from consolidation of power through a military dictatorship to a revolution similar to the one in Russia which brought the Trudoviki regime into power.
The Brazilian economy stabilized and grew during the ten year stable period in which a booming construction industry sprang up. The Paraguayan War was a costly affair on a similar scale to the French intervention in Mexico, although this time there was no European monarch that would intervene in Brazilian internal affairs. However, as Pedro II no longer showed interest in maintaining the stability of the Brazilian monarchy, Brazil itself would later fall under the Pestelist influence, though it would develop a Brazilian variant of the Trudoviki ideology. However, a republican dictatorship was more appropriate for the Brazilian state since they had no experience in the republican movement. Because Brazil was deemed too far for the Pestelist experiment to take hold, they turned instead to the British Empire for support. In 1888, Deodoro de Fonseca deposed Pedro II and proclaimed the First Brazilian Republic. However, the fragile state of the First Brazilian Republic caused by the domination of the oligarchs. It was because of its decline that Brazil would descend into chaos in 1898.
Rodrigues Alves was credited with the founding of the Brazilian National Revival movement, although his foundation of the movement was questionable. Nevertheless, Brazil’s turmoil only intensified when rival military leaders carved out territories within Brazil to be ruled as their personal fiefdoms. For a while, the warlords who dominated the Brazilian countryside did little to stem the tide of violence, so the Brazilian National Revival was founded. Pilnio Salgado became the successor to Alves’s movement as he quickly reformed the group into a pseudo-Trudoviki movement.
In the midst of the chaos which unfolded in Brazil, Delfim Moreira responded by suppressing the BNR through the arrests of several key trade union leaders, of which Pilnio Salgado was one of them. Martial law was declared by 1912, with the entire country at a grinding halt as all forms of life were suspended. The economy soon tanked after martial law was declared, prompting yet another wave of protests to happen on the streets of the Brazilian capital, Brasilia and Rio de Janiero. Salgado would be sprung out of prison by armed militants sympathetic to his movement as the Braziliero Trabalhistanos (the splinter group of the Brazilian National Revival movement) would emerge as the most dangerous militant pro-Trudoviki movement in all of Latin America.
Origins of the Great World War – Continued:
In addition to the Anglo-Russian rivalry which threatened the fragile state of the world, there were several imperial ambitions among other nations that will inevitably collide with each other. Nations within both the Biscay and Hanseatic Pacts increased the expenditure on their military budget, as well as expansion of territories in Africa. In particular, the German colonial empire continued its progressive growth, largely thanks to the influx of African workers who longed to escape from their homelands under the control of any Biscay Pact member state. Trudoviki Russia’s only African ally in the restored Egyptian Sultan Abbas II had toyed with the idea of continuing the reforms undertaken by the previous regime. However, it was not going to look up to the Meiji model, but rather on the long neglected model of Siam’s King Chulalungkorn.
In Asia, the Japanese expansion into the Central Pacific had triggered a hostile response from the Netherlands, in which their East Indies colony was now a vulnerable target now that the Dutch had joined the Hanseatic Pact. Although the British Empire can still maintain its security in its Malayan colony, Australia remained a wild card until Edmund Barton decided to seek an agreement with Great Britain on expanding its autonomous status first. Barton hoped to provide an example of how a Dominion could eventually move into a fully fledged republican state to another potential ally, the Union of South Africa. It was also in Asia where Trudoviki Russia had other potential allies in spreading the Trudoviki movement: Mongolia under Bogd Khan and Korea under Empress Myeongseong.
Japan and Korea – Mending the Broken Fences:
On October 26th, 1909, former Chancellor Mikoyan called for a general meeting between the Russian, Korean and Japanese delegates for an important issue with regards to loosening trade barriers between such nations. Because Japan and Korea never had good relations with each other since the Imjin War, the Japanese delegates were instructed by Emperor Meiji to mind their manners and not to offend their Korean guests. Ito Hirobumi led the Japanese delegates into the port of Busan, where they encountered a mixture of curious and protesting Koreans. Accompanying statesman Ito into the capital of Gyeongseong was one of Korea’s finest cavalry regiments, the Knyaz Wladyslaw’s Korean Husaria Regiment with Lieutenant Ahn Jung Geun as the leader of the honor guard assigned to protect Ito. There were no incidents on the journey from Busan to Gyeongseong, allowing the Japanese delegation to enter the site of the meeting, Seokjojeon. Mikhail Tereshchenko, who would later become the successor to Chancellor Stolypin as the head of the Trudoviki regime, started the meeting by discussing Russia and Korea’s need to establish relations with Japan. Ito explained to the Russian and Korean delegates that because Japan will focus on developing its far flung Pacific colonies and its main colony of Chishima, they would be too busy to expand into the mainland. Prince Sunjong however, remained suspicious of Ito’s motives due to the lingering hatred between Korea and Japan. Kokovtsov responded by suggesting that the Korean and Japanese merchant firms be allowed to compete on Russian soil, and in return, the Russian and Korean merchant firms be allowed to establish itself on Chishiman territory. Ito agreed to the proposals as a way for the Japanese zaibatsu to dislodge the traditionally entrenched hacienda landowners and oligarchs like the Cojuangcos.
Chishima – Signs of Ethnic Tensions:
The early years of Japanese rule in Chishima was marked by hostile relations between the Chinese diaspora and the newly emerging Japanese diaspora. Riots and vandalism of property occurred on both sides, forcing the Japanese authorities to respond to a harsh crackdown on the extreme elements. To enhance security, Emperor Meiji and Yamagata Aritomo authorized the formation of the Kempeitai, or the Japanese security service in order to deter possible dissent, both on Japanese Home Islands and in the colonies. The Aglipayan community volunteered for an auxiliary role within the Kempeitai, and in some cases, they also formed the nucleus of the Nippon-Chishima no Rikugun (or Chishima-gun) officer corps. Some Aglipayans had some reservations on pledging their loyalty to Japan until an anti-Aglipayan pogrom launched by Roman Catholics prodded them to retaliate by torching Catholic churches in the Ilocos region. The religious tensions would be tackled by an increased presence of Kempeitai agents within all religious institutions.
The Great World War Breaks Out:
Tensions were already high between Britain and Russia by the time the war broke out. A British warship named HMS Excalibur (one of the Dreadnought-class warships) mysteriously exploded while it was anchored on the port of Riga on June 22nd, 1914. At that time, King George V was aboard the warship, dining with the Royal Navy’s top class officers when the explosion had killed them. For decades, no one knew the cause of the mysterious explosion occurred on the Excalibur but the British naturally suspected radical elements of the Trudoviki movement in the Baltic States, aided by Russia, was behind the terrorist attack. As a result, Edward, the Prince of Wales, assumed the throne at a mere age of 20 and began to direct the war effort. Some say that his inexperience as a king would play into the Trudoviki regime’s hands. Within days, young King Edward VIII issued an ultimatum to Chancellor Stolypin’s government: hand over the Baltic Trudoviki terrorists behind the murder or go to war. Officially, Stolypin denied involvement but threatened to declare war if the British would continue their outrageous behavior. Faced with the desire to avenge his father’s death, Edward VIII boldly declared war on Russia, or as it styled itself now, the Union of Sovereign States.
{Nations that were now a part of the Biscay Pact as of 1914 were: Great Britain, France, Belgium, United Baltic Duchy, Lithuania, Ukraine, Ottoman Turkey, Croatia, Albania, Bulgaria, Japan and the Confederate States of America.}
{Nations that were now a part of the Hanseatic Pact as of 1914 were: Germany, Poland, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Serbia, Greece, China and Wallachia.}
{Nations that founded a third party, namely the Bering Strait Pact were: Russia, United States, Korea, Mexico, Persia, Afghanistan and Egypt}
All across the world, there were pre-conflict festivals that were dominated by an aggressive recruiting drive for enlistment as young men from the ages of 18 until 35 were called up for service. In the British Empire, the number of enlisted recruits reached 500,000, three fifths of which were from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, while France’s army increased the number of its trained men to 700,000 troops. In Russia/Union of Sovereign States, its military maintained its combat readiness in the event of war as the number of regular soldiers was already at well over 5,000,000. Another advantage they possessed was the additional manpower coming from the Jewish Sakhalin Autonomous Territories and Chancellor Stolypin could count on recruiting the Hazaras living in Russian Hazarajat.
1914 – Opening Stage:
In the opening months of the war, Europe was preparing for what was to become the bloodiest conflict ever fought. Even Spain and Portugal were not immune to the war fever that gripped the entire continent, as they mobilized most of their forces in an anticipation of a conflict with the French and the British. Italy too, mobilized its forces, although they possessed only a hundred thousand soldiers who had actual combat experience, from their expeditions against Arab militias operating in North Africa. Everyone expected the war to end before Christmas, and if it went a bit longer, by Easter of next year. Of course, no one can predict correctly on when the war would actually conclude as military technology evolved by this time, making a short war dangerously long.
Western Front 1914 – From Fluid to Static Warfare:
France opened up the conflict in the Western Front by an attack on its lost territories in the Marseilles region, which was currently under Italian occupation. Unlike the earlier wars in which the French Army wore bright colors, the war close to the Italian border featured French soldiers wearing horizon blue uniforms. Even with the improvement of the uniforms worn by French soldiers, they still were easy targets for Italian sharpshooters. As for the Italians themselves, they too maintained their combat readiness like the Russians on their borders with the pro-British Eastern European states. It appeared that the French could have their territory back and even possibly push into the Italian peninsula within a year and a half, a realistic estimated guess, depending on the geography involved. However, what the Italians lacked in combat experience, they made up for it in having Spain as an ally, which could pin the French down in the Pyrenees, allowing the Italians to pursue a bigger campaign against the British.
Italy’s war aim in the Great World War was not just the retention of southeastern France, but expansion into the Balkans, particularly in Croatia and Bosnia where new potential markets were to be exploited and the old dream of Mare Nostrum was to be achieved with the eventual expulsion of the British from Croatia and the eventual expulsion of the Scottish House of Seaforth-MacKenzie that is currently ruling Croatia. Current Croatian King Tomislav III Seaforth called up the Croatian Army to resist the Italians if they were to invade Dalmatia, although the small Croatian Navy can easily harass the larger Italian Navy simply by using small gunboats to damage the bigger warships.
On September 6th, 1914, Joseph Joffre led the French 8th Army into battle and launched the siege of Marseilles. The Italian defenders were caught by surprise but managed to put up a fierce resistance. Three days later, the British Expeditionary Force arrived in the Normandy beaches from the British Isles, the Baltic States and Bulgaria to aid the French in stopping a German invasion. British General Douglas Haig then led the BEF 9th Army into an offensive against the German forces under the command of Erich Ludendorff, and managed to capture the tiny principality of Luxembourg. The occupation of Luxembourg would have allowed both Britain and France to launch new offensives into German territory and to give the Belgians a breathing space. Though the German garrison in Luxembourg was slowly being annihilated, their stout defense allowed Ludendorff enough time to muster enough reinforcements to retake Luxembourg from the British.
By October of 1914, Spain’s army was not yet capable of launching attacks on French territory but a Spanish Volunteer Regiment was deployed in fighting alongside the Italians in the Italo-Croat border. The Spanish volunteers who fought with the Italian Army provided enough experience and training to share it with the rest of the Spanish Army recruits, which were still undergoing intensive training along with Portugal. The Spanish Navy however, needed more time to rebuild because of its wretched condition in the aftermath of its loss of the Philippine Autonomous Territories to Japan. In the Mediterranean Sea, the Italian Regina Marina laid a naval bombardment on the port of Dubrovnik, which was being heavily guarded by the Royal Navy. Even though the British Royal Navy still possessed superior advantages to its rivals, its main weakness was in how the warships were built. Luckily for the British admirals, the Italians were still inexperienced in dealing with larger fleets due to their relatively late start.
Unfortunately, the Anglo-French coalition forces were forced back from Luxembourg by a German offensive, launched by Helmut von Moltke the Elder on October 31st, in what was to become known as the Moltke Offensive. German troops under Moltke’s command advanced into Luxembourg and retook it within weeks of fighting inside the city. By November 8th, the French siege of Marseilles concluded with the French Navy’s bombardment of Italian bases in the area, allowing Joffre to enter the city as a conquering hero. The Italian forces under Marshal Luigi Cadorna retreated from Marseilles, across the Alps, and into northern Italy as they garrisoned inside the city of Torino. Cadorna’s unpopularity among his men would be exploited to France’s advantage as captured Italian POWs were interrogated by their French captors on the nature of Italian officers. Armando Diaz was forced to take command of the Italian garrison in Torino after Cadorna was relieved of duty and discharged from the military. For most of the war, Joffre’s French forces went through the Alps while avoiding Swiss border patrol troops and reached within sight of Italian territory. Torino came under siege by December of 1914 with French artillery firing an artillery barrage. Another French Army attacked the city of Aosta with the intention to cut off the Italians from their German ally.
The Rhineland was a land known for its pristine landscapes and beautiful rural towns, as people there were hospitable. By the time the war reached the Rhineland, it was now dominated by trenches and machine gun nests. It certainly helped the Germans a lot that the Rhine River was an impenetrable barrier which could certainly be turned into a moat if all the bridges are blown up. Thus a German sapper regiment successfully accomplished the top priority mission of destroying the remainder bridges by December 9th. For now, the Germans were safe from the Anglo-French offensive through the Rhine River. However, there were still other targets that the Anglo-French coalition could choose; especially in Belgium where another Anglo-French force commanded by Alfred Cavendish was poised to invade the Netherlands. To forestall the possible invasion of the Netherlands, German General Paul von Hindenburg and Dutch General Izaak H. Rejinders collaborated on a secret defensive strategy to lure a larger enemy army into a deadly trap somewhere within the Dutch countryside. For the last weeks of 1914 and into the first few weeks of 1915, both sides used the Rhine River as a demarcation of their trench networks, but this time there was no room for a No Man’s Land. The bulk of the conflict will be fought in the Eastern Front.
Eastern Front 1914-1915 – The Real Carnage:
Five days after Joffre’s attack on Italian occupied Marseilles, the Russians spent no time beefing up the defenses of St. Petersburg, in particular to the enhanced security of the Kronstandt naval base, just outside the former Petrine capital. Aleksey Brusilov was placed in charge of the European Russia Military district (core of the old Muscovite state and the Caucasus) while Viktorin Molchanov was assigned as commander of the Siberia-Central Asia military district and Vladislav Vinogradov took up the post as commander of the Far Eastern military district. The three commanders in charge of those military districts crafted some well laid plans for the defense of their districts from any enemy invasion, whether it was British or Japanese invaders. To the USS leadership, the British would be looking to pin most of their armies down on one of the fronts available: Eastern European, Far Eastern and Central Asian. Therefore, each commander of the assigned military district invited its close allies in an attempt to draw up defense plans. In the case of the Central Asian and European Russian fronts, Brusilov and Molchanov made contact with Persian and Afghan military leaders and most of the Russian forces there were moved to the border with those countries.
Russian Invasion of Ukraine:
Under Brusilov’s overall command of the European Russian Theater of the war, the independent Ukrainian state was an obvious target for Russia’s overall strategy. The Ukraine would have offered the Union of Sovereign States a greater chance of retaking most of its lost territories and to menace the hostile pro-Muravievist Polish and Hungarian governments. So it was under the Russian 2nd Army led by Brigadier General Dmitry Karbyshev that the USS launched an attack into the Ukrainian capital, Kiev on September 16th. He anticipated a fierce resistance in what was then the most prized capital in all of ancient Rus’s history, with the Ukrainians fighting desperately to repel the Russians back into the Dnieper. To his surprise, the moment his army entered Ukrainian territory that a civil war was being fought between Petliura’s faction and that of Yehven Petrushevych. Immediately, Petliura sought to enlist the aid of Karbyshev’s Russian 2nd Army to topple Petrushevych’s regime. Under Chancellor Stolypin’s wishes, Karbyshev was to defeat any remaining Ukrainian force who continued to resist the Russian advance.
Like in Belarus, the Ukrainians also had a pro-Pestelist faction within the Uniate half of the country. Vsevolod Holubovych founded the Ukrainian branch of the Trudoviki Party back in 1907 and was earmarked as a potential governor of a pro-Trudoviki Ukrainian regime if the Russians successfully held on most of Ukraine. Most of Ukrainian territory was swiftly taken by Karbyshev’s forces by October 30th, 1914 as Brusilov made plans to eject the British from the Baltic States and to stir up trouble there, just to distract the BEF from having to redeploy in Western Europe. In Moscow, Stolypin’s jubilation at the liberation of Ukraine resulted in Karbyshev’s promotion to Lieutenant General and his reassignment to the Caucasian Front. He was soon replaced as commander of the Russian 2nd Army by Theodore Chernozubov, who would distinguish himself as an expert on military intelligence and his role in the attempted Ottoman invasion of Armenia.
Baltic Incursion:
By the time the 89th anniversary of the Decembrist Revolution arrived in Russia, Stolypin thought about resigning due to old age. Although he was at his fifties, the stress of managing the country at war with Great Britain had taken a toll on his health as he often got sick with the common cold. He was persuaded by his peers to continue with his post until the war would end. It was a good thing Stolypin opted to remain in his post, because his leadership was needed for the defense of St. Petersburg.
A British Baltic fleet commanded by Sir David Beatty bombarded the Kronstandt naval base in St. Petersburg as the Russian Baltic fleet commanded by Admiral Aleksander Kolchak attacked Beatty’s fleet. In what was to become the naval Battle of the Baltic Sea, the British and Russian fleets clashed fiercely. Three Russian light cruisers were sunk within hours, followed by two British destroyers that went down under the Baltic. Desperate to turn the tide of the battle against the Royal Navy, Kolchak ordered the deployment of six Russian Pochtovy-class submarines to sink the bulk of the Royal Navy’s dreadnought ships. The slugfest in the Baltic Sea went on for days, until Beatty received a report from Sir John Jellicoe that a German fleet was heading towards the British Isles.
Buoyed by the initial debut of the Pochtovy-class submarines, Kolchak wrote a report to Chancellor Stolypin, making recommendations that the Pochtovy-class submarines should be mass produced to counter the powerful Royal Navy’s best warships. Although the naval Battle of the Baltic Sea had no clear result, it allowed Sir Ian Hamilton’s BEF 13th Army to land in Vyborg and occupied it. By January of 1915, Hamilton’s forces laid siege to St. Petersburg as the citizens inside began to join the civil defense groups set up by the Russian military. Overall, St. Petersburg would be synonymous with carnage and suffering, as around 300,000 civilians were killed during the siege. Brusilov himself directed the defense of St. Petersburg while Karbyshev was on his way into Tsaritsyn to take command of the Russian 17th Army stationed in the Caucasus Mountains.
Baltic auxiliaries also took part in the siege of St. Petersburg and indeed, they also became the first troops to advance into Russian territory, followed by three BEF divisions that followed suit. The first documented atrocity of the war was recorded by a young soldier named Rodion Malinovsky, who witnessed the executions of thirty Russian civilians by the BEF for the death of three British soldiers. Malinovsky’s atrocity report was sent to Moscow where Stolypin and his administration would capitalize on British actions in Russian territory, but Stolypin decided to keep the report a secret until when Britain would be weakened by a prolonged attrition. Incensed by the ‘Pskov Massacre’ that Malinovsky had witnessed, several regiments within the Russian 5th Army commanded by Aleksander Samoilov attacked a Latvian auxiliary detachment just outside the Belorussian-Latvian border and initiated a massacre, later dubbed as the Daugavpils Massacre.
Unlike the Russian National War of Liberation when Britain managed to occupy Karelia, they actually failed to advance into Karelia due to the British High Command’s top priority of capturing Moscow and toppling the Trudoviki regime. The Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t take any chances with a potential British occupation of Russian territory and secretly organized resistance groups, consisting of army recruits that failed to pass the notoriously harsh fitness tests, young teenage boys who were not yet old enough to join the military, veterans of the National War of Liberation and men who are too old to join. These ‘partisans’ were lightly armed and lacked supplies, prompting General Brusilov to teach the ‘partisans’ how to live off the country, from hunting for reindeer to fishing for trout in the Don, Dnieper and Neva Rivers. Such harsh training was later extended to any Russian soldier who was chosen for his unusually great stamina and remarkable military service, as well as proficiency in arms and survival. These chosen soldiers would later become the core of a Russian ‘special forces’ that will officially be founded in 1938.
Caucasian Front – Russo-Persian Solidarity and the Armenian Tragedy:
By February 9th of 1915, the Ottoman forces led by Enver Pasha, invaded the Union of Sovereign States through their border with Russian Armenia. The Russian garrison in the Caucasus was ill prepared for the Turkish onslaught as Artashat was besieged by Enver’s forces within four days after they entered Armenian territory. What happened inside Armenia would later be known to the entire world as a great tragedy that has befallen upon the Armenian people. Thousands of Armenian civilians were rounded up by the Ottoman Army when they occupied areas where there was an Armenian majority and herded them into open ditches. Agonizing cries of pain and anguish ran through the Near East as Ottoman machine guns blazed into the terrified civilians who had no idea that they were going to die. More Armenians living in what was former Ottoman northeastern Anatolia were deported into Armenia proper as 32% of the exiles died from starvation and physical abuse.
The massacres continued on throughout 1915 while Karbyshev was recalled to the European Russian district and Chernozubov was assigned to take command of the Transcaucasia garrison in an attempt to eject the Turks out of Armenia. From the east, Kuchik Khan’s Persian force launched the invasion of southeastern Anatolia in order to force the Ottomans into a two front war, while another Persian Army led by Rais Ali Delvari attacked Ottoman Mesopotamia in order to capture the Shia Muslim territories there. A British garrison in Bulgaria was soon deployed into northern Anatolia in order to back up the Ottoman forces in fighting the Russians and the Persians, but when they arrive at the Armenian border, the massacre continued in large scale. Incensed by what they saw, King Edward VIII threatened to sever ties with Mehmed V unless he reins in the Young Turk factions that were doing most of the killing. However, Mehmed V himself wrote a letter of rebuke to his British counterpart, stating that the British Empire has committed atrocities in the past. Edward VIII replied back in another letter that British atrocities did not involve shooting unarmed civilians and forcibly starving them.
Things went downhill for the Turks when Delvari’s forces besieged Baghdad on March 9th, 1915. Unlike the times when Ottoman-Persian conflicts involved Turkish forces prevailing over their Persian foes, this around the Persians were being backed by the Russian military and Armenian volunteers, who joined up the newly formed Armenian Volunteer Legion in response to the Armenian Massacre taking pace. Andranik Ozanian was appointed the commander in chief of the AVL and took part in the Caucasian campaigns alongside Chernozubov’s forces. Enver Pasha on the other hand, was shocked to find that his Persian opponents were not only competent, but their soldiers were keenly motivated by a chance to beat their Ottoman rivals and possibly take most of the Shia dominated territories of the Ottoman Empire.
In what was considered a very risky move, Chernozubov ordered the Russian garrison in the Caucasus Mountains to retreat into the Kuban Host and to take the civilians along with them. Most of the Armenians who lived in Russian Armenia gladly evacuated from their homeland, aware of the fate that has befallen their countrymen under Turkish occupation. The Armenians who chose to stay were either AVL soldiers or guerrilla fighters who could harass the Ottoman occupational forces. Why it was such a risky move was because if the plan had gone horribly wrong, the Ottomans could not only take advantage of the Russian mistake, but they can also be in a position to stir up the Muslim Caucasian peoples to rise up against their Russian overlords. If done correctly, the Russians could devastate the Turks while they would advance deeper into Russian territory.
Armenian guerrilla fighters wasted no time in burning down their own homes and killed most of their livestock to deny their use to the occupiers. Indeed, they knew that they were going to turn their own homeland into a desolate wasteland, but it was a necessary sacrifice they needed to make in order to bring down the might of the Ottoman Empire to a crashing halt. Needless to say, it certainly made the Ottoman soldiers uncomfortable whenever they were on reconnaissance, not knowing when they might die the next minute. It was up to Chernozubov to wait for the Ottomans to make a careless mistake so they could pounce on their weakness and utterly devastate them in one, giant swoop. At the same time, the Ottoman garrison in Baghdad held out against the Persian forces while Mosul was surrounded by Kuchik Khan’s forces and was besieged. His plan worked; the Ottoman 8th Army led by Halil Kut was bogged down at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains and was delayed by an avalanche that blocked the mountain pass. It was there that Chernozubov’s forces sprung their trap upon the Ottoman forces in the city of Tbilisi, starting the Battle of Tbilisi.
Russian and Ottoman forces clashed in the Georgian capital, amidst the Armenian resistance attacks on Ottoman garrison troops in occupied Armenia. Mehmed V’s government was increasingly isolated by its own allies in the wake of the Armenian Massacre as he sought to preserve his own throne against the increasing influence of the Young Turk nationalists within the Ottoman Army. The tensions between the mainly secularist Young Turk faction and Ottoman royalists had spilled into the streets of Istanbul as Mehmed V struggled to maintain law and order within the Ottoman capital. Young Turk officers like Mustafa Kemal had at one point supported Mehmed V, but the Armenian Massacre and its after effects on Ottoman relations with its allies had a profound effect on the future leader. While General Halil Kut’s troops were being devastated by Russian counterattacks in Tbilisi, Mustafa Kemal, Husein Rauf and Bekir Sami started to plot for a possible coup d’etat against the sultan. They realized that in order to salvage what was left of the Ottoman Empire’s honor; they must create a new government that will restrain the excessive frenzy that the Young Turks unleashed on the Armenians.
Mehmet V also faced criticism from within his own administration at the increasing decline of living standards among the Turkish population across the empire. Jews living in the Levant started to form their own self-defense groups in anticipation of a planned attack on Jewish communities and Kurdish separatists were conniving with the Persians to drive out the Turks from Mosul. Finally, when news of the Ottoman defeats in Tbilisi and Baghdad by the Russian and Persian Armies reached Istanbul on July 18th, 1915, public opinion began to turn against the sultan as Kuchik Khan’s forces made their way southwards into the city of Najaf, the holiest place in all of Shia Islam, while the Russians and their Armenian Volunteer Legion began to retake Russian Armenia from the depleted Ottoman Turkish forces.
Egypt – The Dawn of the Arab World:
While the Ottoman Empire was bogged down in their conflict against Russia and Persia, the Sultanate/Khedive of Egypt under Abbas II had an advantage over their Ottoman rivals: their military was improved on the Prussian model thanks to his policies of sending talented Egyptian officers into German and Russian military schools to complete their education there. The outbreak of the war forced these officers to return into their homelands to begin assembling the new Egyptian Army. Curiously enough, it was a foreigner who would become Egypt’s first commander in chief, named Aslan Pasha Nasution (1), of mixed Indonesian and Turkish descent. General Nasution led the Egyptian Army against his old Ottoman comrades in the Battle of the Sinai, in which he made a reputation as a skilled commander who used the mountainous terrain to harass the Ottoman troops attempting to capture the Sinai. By far his biggest achievement though, was his role in destroying the dreaded Wahhabi-Saud alliance and the rise of Hashemite Arabia.
Abdullah Hasimi (OTL Abdullah I of Jordan) organized a Hashemite militia with the help of General Aslan Pasha Nasution and organized raids on Ottoman bases in the Hejaz. At the same time, the Saud forces had also launched attacks on the Ottoman forces within the Arabian Peninsula, but at the same time they faced competition from both the Hashemites and Arab Shia Muslims who preferred to set up their own state under Persian control. From May of 1915 onwards, the Egyptian forces invaded the Hejaz and attempted to bring them under Egyptian control, in which they would later turn it over to the Hashemites should they eject the Turks. Because Mecca and Medina was considered the holy cities in all of Islam, whether Sunni, Shia or Sufi, the Egyptian forces had to attack the Turks outside the holy cities. Hashemite guerrillas proved to be effective in fighting the Ottomans on harsh, desert conditions as they often attacked railway stations. With the fall of Baghdad to the Persians, the Turks were hard pressed on all fronts.
The Egyptian 9th Army attacked Jerusalem on June 7th, 1915 in an attempt to cut off the Ottomans from their forward base in the Red Sea and in the Levant. Rumors of a planned coup d’etat circulated around the Egyptian Army, and Nasution confirmed their curiosity: the Ottoman Empire might face the coup d’etat everyone had anticipated, mainly because of their disastrous defeats in the Caucasus and in Mesopotamia. The tragedy of the Armenian Massacre had also made a dreadful mark on humanity’s history as the worst mass murder of the 20th century, but certainly not the last one. Thanks to intelligence reports obtained through the Jewish self-defense groups operating within the Levant, Nasution’s armies were able to seize not only Jerusalem, but the Golan Heights and even Lebanon itself by September of 1915. However, the real catalyst for an Ottoman collapse was the Russian conquest of Trebizond in the same month as Lebanon’s conquest: September 21st, 1915.
North American Front 1914-1915 – Welcome to the New World:
On October 10th, 1914, the United States and the Confederate States went to war with each other for the second or third time. Mexico intervened on the US side as they used their warships to occupy Puerto Rico from the British while they were bogged down in Western Europe. By December of 1914, US border defenses were constantly upgraded to the point where the entire United States was a gigantic fortress, bristled with guns to repel the Confederates and the British from their territory. It was in the North American continent where the British would use up most of their resources fighting the US Army, besides the European theater when they were fighting the Russian military.
Confederate general Kendall Jackson, the descendant of Stonewall Jackson, was given the command of the CS forces deployed close to the US-CS Demilitarized zone while Nathan Bedford Forrest II was appointed the commander of the Confederate forces defending their southern border against the Mexican forces of Porfirio Diaz. The Mexican Armed Forces have also improved over time, but it was mainly thanks to German military assistance that allowed the Mexican Army to launch a successful invasion of Confederate Texas, which took the Confederate 19th Army by surprise. Buoyed by the Mexican success, US General John Pershing launched a similar attempt against the Confederate forces in the Roanoke Valley, one of the bloodiest fronts in the North American theater.
Unlike the previous wars between the United States and Great Britain where both sides were strong enough to pound each other into dust, the 1914 conflict between the two Anglophone countries was entirely different because of Britain’s involvement in Europe. The Canadian Expeditionary Force was deployed in Western Europe to help the British and the French repel the German forces in the Rhine Valley, but news of George Custer’s invasion of Nova Scotia forced the British High Command to recall the entire CEF to defend their country against the US Army. As small and lightly trained as they were, the Canadian Expeditionary Force surprisingly managed to stall the larger, well equipped US forces in the Battle of Montreal. Custer’s invasion of Quebec in December of 1914 provided the CEF enough missions for them to improve their fighting quality, but it also provided the US Army some ample targets to strangle the British Empire where they are vulnerable the most.
Halifax soon became the most important target by the US forces as Pershing was given responsibility to capture the port city, in conjunction with Admiral George Dewey’s US Atlantic Fleet based in New York City. Thus Dewey’s naval bombardment of Halifax occurred on January 8th, 1915, while Custer’s forces were still bogged down in Montreal and General Arthur MacArthur’s US 21st Army (also known as the “Black Jack Division”) was poised to besiege Vancouver, British Columbia. By the time the CEF had defeated Custer’s invasion force in Montreal, they had to split their forces when MacArthur crossed the border and captured Forts Langley and Yale. Control of the Fraser River was necessary in MacArthur’s view because it guarded the important port of Vancouver. Prince Rupert was another vital port that was connected through the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and another potential target to be captured. Thus a third attack on Canada was launched from Alaska, made by Brigadier General Charles Turchin, was carried out by January 31st.
In the southern front, the Confederate Army was forced to fight on two fronts with limited quantities of ammunition, due to the Whig Party’s reluctance on industrialization that would have wiped out the slave class and therefore the issue of slavery would have become redundant. Because the German colonial empire purchased most of the African slaves between 1888 and 1914, the African population in the American continent gradually dwindled to the point where Confederate President Woodrow Wilson banned the sale of slaves to hostile foreign powers. Confederate women were persuaded to give up their traditional lifestyle of housewives and belles in favor of working in factories while Confederate men were being drafted into the CS Army. The same was applied to US women working in their factories while Union men joined the US Army.
Victoriano Huerta led another Mexican Army in the Great Southern Expedition, in which they successfully seized the nations of Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize, El Salvador and Panama. The Great Southern Expedition of 1915 had made Mexico even stronger, although pacification efforts would nullify its benefits, as guerrillas often made the occupying Mexican forces’ lives miserable. South America didn’t escape the war unscathed as the Guyanas were on the front lines of Britain and France’s conflict against the Second Mexican Empire. However, Brazil used this opportunity to strengthen itself while avoiding entanglement in the battlefields.
At the same time, Mexico’s Emperor Agustin de Iturbide-Hapsburg faced a rise of republican sentiment, inspired by the labor movements in the United States. Fearful of the American Socialist revolution spreading into Latin America, Emperor Agustin ordered the Mexican Royal Guard to suppress the rioters, but only made it worse when the Yucatan Riot of 1915 resulted in bloodshed. Like his Ottoman counterpart Mehmed V, Emperor Agustin would face a potential coup from a group of pro-socialist Mexican revolutionaries, led by Plutarco Elias Calles. Coincidentally, Calles and Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal would play vital roles in the extreme secularization of their countries to the point where Mexico and Turkey would become close allies in their conflict against clerical fascism. The Christeros being Calles's secularist government's enemy and Islamic fundamentalists in Kemal's secularist Turkish state.
Balkan Front 1914-1915 – Baptism of Fire:
Nothing was worth mentioning than the Great War in the Balkans, which brought Serbia and Greece much closer than ever before. Fourteen years ago, Prince Feliks Yusupov and Princess Milanka Karadjordjevic were married in St. Sava’s Church in Belgrade, with King Djordje as the main witness in the wedding. In 1905, Milanka gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Milos Felixovich Yusupov, who would eventually marry Greece’s Princess Katherine, daughter of Constantine I of Greece, cementing the union between Serbia and Greece. There was not much conflicts fought between the two countries and they shared a common heritage, dating from the days of the Byzantine Empire. Still, the Great War provided the Serbian and Greek armies opportunities to become closer to each other.
Nikola Pasic commanded the Serbian garrison guarding the three important rivers which protected the country from outsiders: the Drina, the Sava and the Danube. Pasic knew that an invasion from across the Drina was the Achilles’ heel of the Serbian state, with possible devastating consequences. Therefore, he received authorization from King Djordje on deploying Serbian irregular soldiers to guard the three rivers and to harass the invaders long enough for the bulk of the Serbian Army to drive them out. Pasic and General Radomir Putnik also shared their defense strategies with Greek General Panagiotis Danglis, allowing the Greek forces to establish a defensive line later named the Danglis Line, a chain of fortifications that strung out the Vardar Macedonian region.
British forces in the Balkans by now were seriously overstretched by July of 1915 as commitments to the Eastern, Western and North American Fronts took a strain on British logistics. A British attempt to invade Russian Turkestan had to be cancelled because more British troops were needed to reinforce the Ottoman Turks in the Middle East and against the US Army in Canada. Even so, the Balkan Front was mainly fought between the pro-British nations of Croatia and Bulgaria against the anti-British nations of Serbia and Greece. Both sides also agreed to respect Bosnian territorial integrity and to use its position as a buffer zone, although the Serbian irregular forces (later named the Chetniks) were persuaded to remain at their posts.
It was in the Balkan Front that several leaders in the inter-war years would emerge as junior officers of the war. The British created the Croatian Expeditionary Force in 1913 to help train the Croatian forces for a possible war with Serbia and Hungary. Indeed, Stjepan Sakotic was made the commander of the Croatian army and under his command; two promising officers who were a part of the 81st Seaforth Highlanders of Croatia emerged as key leaders: Josip Broz and Ante Pavelic(2). These men would play a vital role in the next phase of Croatia’s turbulent history.
Anglo-Croatian forces also had to respect Bosnia’s territorial integrity, but that didn’t stop them from launching an invasion of Hungary in August 21st of 1915. Although Hungary and Poland had severed ties with Russia, they were not so eager to jump into bed with the British, as they clearly sided with Germany when Britain declared war on the Kaiserreich.
Pancevo/Pancsova was attacked by George Milne’s Anglo-Croatian 7th Division by August 25th as the Hungarian Army led by Lajos Csatay was forced out of Pancsova by September 8th. With parts of Vojvodina occupied by the Anglo-Croat forces, Belgrade was open to the siege. By September 28th, Milne’s British artillery corps pounded the Serb capital, even going as far as to bombard enemy civilian homes just to force the Serbian Army defenders out of the homes and into the killing zone. Unexpectedly, Belgrade held out for a bit longer as more Serbian soldiers arrived in Belgrade by October 12th to reinforce the capital’s defenses. Although Belgrade would never fall under Anglo-Croat control, it also raised Bosnia’s combat alertness as the miniscule Bosnian Army commanded by Mehmet Sokolovic struggled to create a combat worthy fighting force. Even so, the Bosnians were prepared to resist any invader who would occupy their lands. However, within Bosnia’s territory there were a large amount of Christian population, with 51% of them of Serb origin and only 31% of Croat origin. Such percentage would inevitably drag the Bosnian state into the conflict. So it was during this time that the Anglo-Croat forces did the unthinkable and invaded Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Bosnian Quagmire:
The invasion of Bosnia-Herzegovina by October 26th, 1915 proved to be one of the worst times to attack a heavily mountainous region, due to its subzero climate. Bosnian soldiers knew the foothills like it was second nature to them, meaning that they can create ambushes for any incoming invader. However, the Herzegovinian region that was populated by the Croat majority welcomed the Anglo-Croat invaders as liberators. Not to be outdone, General Putnik’s Serb forces launched a counterattack against Milne’s position in Pancsova to distract the Anglo-Croat troops from their siege of Belgrade. However, another Anglo-Croat army under Sakotic’s command would strike into Mostar and Sarajevo by December of 1915. It was also at the Bosnian Theater where the seeds of the Irish revolution was planted, as several Irish regiments fought alongside the Anglo-Croat forces in the highlands of Herzegovina.
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(1) Aslan Pasha Nasution is closely related to Indonesia's Abdul Haris Nasution ITTL. He is of mixed Turkish and Indonesian heritage and symbolizes the close relations between Turkey and Indonesia in the upcoming interwar years as these two states would help each other realize their Pan-Turkic and Pan-Malay dreams.
(2) IOTL, Josip Broz and Ante Pavelic were hostile enemies during WWII, with the former as the leader of the Partisans and the first president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the latter as the Poglavnik of the wartime Independent State of Croatia, which had a notorious reputation for atrocities that shocked even the Gestapo. ITTL, Broz and Pavelic would be in the same regiment, but enemies later on.
