Asian Front 1915-1917 – The First Pacific War:
Unlike the Biscay Pact which commenced conflict in Europe, the Asian theater didn’t witness any battles for the remainder of 1914. That was about to change when the Netherlands declared war on Great Britain and France over an accidental fire into Dutch territory, which killed ten villagers just outside the Belgian-Dutch border. As such, the British Royal Navy mobilized in the naval base of Singapore and launched their seaborne invasion of Sumatra. The new Royal Dutch East Indies garrison commander Alfred Aaldenberg commanded a sizeable amount of Dutch and Indonesian troops, numbering around 150,000. His naval counterpart, Admiral Kobus Raske, had 5 Java-class cruisers, 9 Wolf-class destroyers and 3 Zeeland-class battleships under his command but was still weak against the British Asia Pacific fleet and the Japanese Navy based in Chishima. Unfortunately, the Dutch East Indies have no credible ally in which he can rely on against the might of the Anglo-Japanese naval fleets. To distract one of the major powers in the Pacific, Admiral Raske sent a delegate to Beijing to negotiate China’s entry into the war on the Dutch-German side. Emperor Pu Yi had a good reason to join the war; China was itching to test its newly developed strength against the British and the Japanese, for whom it viewed as hostile enemies. Pu Yi approached the Grand Council for approval on China’s entry into the war but his enthusiasm fell apart.
The British hoped to take advantage of the increasingly divided society in Qing China, with the rebels opting to stay neutral while the Great Powers bloodied themselves in the Indonesian jungles, pouncing on any opportunity when they’re weak enough. The Tongmenghui would launch their revolution only when China becomes too divided. However, Pu Yi had successfully managed to co-opt the intelligentsia within the Tongmenghui to support his war aims: the restoration of China as a Great Power, the conquest of Indochina and re-subjugating its former vassals of Korea and Japan. The prospects of China’s potential rise as a superpower had its risks however, as it would be surrounded by other hostile rivals. Even so, most of the Chinese public was itching to avenge its humiliations suffered at the hands of the British and the French. Preparations were made in terms of army deployments. Brigadier General Jiang Jieshi was appointed as the commander of the 8th Chinese Army, poised to invade Indochina while Zhang Zuelin was tasked with the invasion of Mongolia, Korea and the Japanese Empire.
Before China could get its act together, Japan struck first. Admiral Togo Heihachiro’s Southern Fleet stationed in the Chishiman naval base of Subic Bay, sailed into the British port of Hong Kong for a goodwill visit while another Japanese fleet, this time sailing from the Home Islands, would arrive on the Chinese city of Tsingtao, which would be led by Yonai Mitsumasa. The Wakamiya-class seaplane carriers were currently being built in the port of Kobe when Admiral Togo’s fleet launched a surprise attack on the Chinese port of Xiamen. The defending ships of the Imperial Chinese Navy were sunk within two hours as the sailors there had not yet gotten used to their roles on the operation of the German-built Nanjing-class cruisers. With Japan’s surprise attack on Xiamen, China had no choice but to declare war on Japan, and did so on February 8th, 1915.
Gunagzhou province was invaded on February 9th, 1915 by the 12th Japanese Army led by Mitsuomi Kamio as they crossed the border into China proper. Another Japanese force launched an amphibious attack on the island of Hainan and the island fell within five days. Mitsuomi’s advance into Guangzhou was hampered by the untimely ambush of Jiang’s forces which would surprisingly fight the Japanese forces on equal terms, a rude awakening to the Japanese High Command in Tokyo. Emperor Yoshihito explicitly ordered his military officers to improve the training of the new recruits with veterans of every battle as their instructors. Auxiliary troops fighting for the Japanese proved themselves to be exceptional fighters, with the Chishiman soldiers the bravest. Indeed, General Makario Sakay rose in ranks to become one of Chishima’s finest generals. He participated in the Japanese conquest of Guangxi province, which would not fall until September of 1915.
The Chinese forces would eventually push back the Japanese invaders for a while, with Jiang’s forces credited for their victories over Mitsuomi’s forces in the Siege of Guangzhou and the Battle of Nanning on March 9th to 30th of 1915. While the Chinese soldier was just as well trained as its Japanese counterpart, the fact that they can be deployed in greater numbers would prove to be a major thorn in Japan’s presence. Mitsuomi on the other hand, realized that while China’s vast quantities of manpower were unlimited, they could easily turn it into their weakness simply by exhausting those reserves. So in an effort to exhaust those reserves, Mitsuomi was ordered by Emperor Yoshihito to withdraw from their occupied Chinese territories for the safe haven of Indochina. As Yamagata Aritomo would later write in his diary, the 12th Japanese Army in Indochina will serve as a juicy lure for Jiang’s army, and at the same time the Indochinese garrison troops would resume guerrilla warfare against the Chinese, with Japanese and Chishiman soldiers joining in the fight as well. Plans for possible guerrilla warfare were drawn up in the event of a Chinese invasion of Chishima, with Sakay’s Chishiman troops acting as guerrillas.
North Asian Theater:
It was in this theater that Japan would face its Russian rival in equal terms, just as they faced its Chinese rival in equal terms. Yevgeni Alekseyev was the head of the Russian Pacific Fleet, but his eventual replacement would come up with the countermeasure against the Japanese Navy. Ivan Kozhanov soon replaced Alekseyev who later died in March 22nd, 1915 due to old age and drew up a plan to lure the Japanese Navy into the port of Vladivostok. Unlike the Russian Pacific Fleet, Mitsumasa Yonai’s fleet didn’t include submarines but would later deploy the Wakamiya-class seaplane carriers. In Vladivostok, the Russian war effort was shifted to the construction of twelve Kasatka-class submarines, ten Pochtovy-class submarines, several more Pavel Pestel-class dreadnoughts and they were also ordered to damage and captured any unknown carrier that the Japanese would possess. Vladivostok would witness a huge naval buildup for the remainder of the war, while the Primorsky Krai and the Yakutian province of the Russian Empire would be the center of its military industry.
Because of Russia’s huge buildup in Vladivostok and as Japanese military intelligence later found out that another shipyard was constructed on the Kamchatka Peninsula, they opted to attack the Russian Empire through Korea and Manchuria. What the Japanese didn’t realize was that the invasion of Korea would require a massive redeployment of Japanese divisions from Indochina and Chishima towards the Home Islands for the Korean expedition. It was on August 20th, 1915 that General Mitsue Yue’s 200,000 Japanese soldiers landed on the Korean port of Pusan, accompanied by Admiral Mitsumasa’s fleet which sailed from Tsingtao (the invasion of Tsingtao was cancelled in favor of incursion into Korea). To make Japanese involvement in Korea extremely costly, Kozhanov sent three Smolensk-class battle cruisers into Pusan to aid the miniscule Korean Navy. He knew that the naval theater of the Korean expedition would not become a repeat of the Imjin War’s total thrashing of Japan’s navy. 20th Century Korea has no Yi Soon Shin to counter the modernized Japanese Navy, but the Koreans would have Russian naval assistance in making the landings difficult. Once Japanese troops headed inland, Korean and Russian garrison forces began to lure the Japanese deeper into Korean territory as irregular units sprang up to harass Japanese positions in their occupied portion of Korea. However, the Japanese were not in the mood to treat the Koreans under their rule as merciful as they did with the Chishimans, as the Japanese High Command viewed Korea as another potential territory they would annex.
The heroic defense of Seoul was the battle in which Ito Hirobumi’s former bodyguard Ahn Jung Geun played a role in stopping the Japanese advance, as well as Marshal Josef Pilsudski the Younger, who distinguished himself as a capable commander responsible for inflicting huge casualties on advancing Japanese soldiers. Despite their small numbers, the resistance put up by the Korean and Russian armies in delaying the Japanese forces from reaching the Yalu were fierce in nature. In particular, the Chinese garrison in Manchuria learned of the Japanese incursions by August 30th, and were able to muster up an army of 150,000 soldiers and several hundred artillery pieces. By the time the Japanese forces had besieged Kaesong, the Russian army commanded by Nikolai Ruzsky in Korea had set up defenses in nearby Pyongyang. Kim Hyong Jik was among the Korean soldiers who participated in the Japanese Siege of Pyongyang, which occurred from September 1st, 1915 and would not fall until later on in 1918, a fact that would later be repeated to a mythical level by his son, Kim Il Sung, who would later become the founder of the Korean Worker’s Party, a pro-Trudoviki leftist party whose goal was to bring in a pro-Russian Korean government.
The delays in the conquest of Korea left the Japanese High Command frustrated with the fact that they’re being bled dry on the North Asian Front while their comrades in the Southeast Asia Front were slowly losing ground to Chinese troops in their Indochina Campaign, launched from September 5th, 1915 onwards. They immediately turned to their British ally for aid, but the British forces were busy fighting the Dutch in the island of Sulawesi. Desperate measures were taken by the occupying Japanese to clear their territory of any defensive positions, mainly by burning down farms which kept the Korean population in the countryside fed. The burning of farms in the Korean countryside only resulted in a huge decline of living standards and calorie intake among Korean civilians, even though the Japanese Army leaders participating in the Korean peninsula had no regards for their enemies. Pyongyang and Kaesong remained unconquered throughout the summer and autumn of 1915, while a British fleet was sent to Manila to reinforce the Japanese naval presence against a possible Chinese or Dutch incursion.
Western Front 1916-1918 – Twists and Turns:
The Western Front saw little action for the first six months of 1915. Indeed, the introduction of poison gas on the trenches of the Rhine Valley resulted in increasing amount of casualties. The only difference now was that the Netherlands had joined the war on Germany’s side. Dutch artillery bombarded Anglo-French position in the Belgian region of Flanders as the Flemish population was ready to stage a revolt against Belgian rule. Dutch sappers began to dig their own trenches just outside the Dutch-German border, as their trenches connected with the rest of the Rhine Valley trenches. Even so, there was no breakthrough on the part of either side for the remainder of 1915, although the introduction of the airplane and a strange looking vehicle with a turret on the top. There were many guesses as to what the name of the turret vehicle should be. The names like ‘tank’, ‘barrel’ and ‘turrets’ were among the most commonly proposed names.
On December 12th, 1915, the British forces unleashed their first strange machines against the German trenches in what became known as the Battle of Karlsruhe. German artillery guns bombarded the British offensive, although the Rhine River crossing proved to be a huge disaster for the British army, as the width of the Rhine allowed German machine gunners to mow down any crossing infantry. One bridge was captured by three British divisions while two Canadian divisions crossed the bridge on the Rhine. The capture of the Karlsruhe Bridge resulted in a tactical German defeat, as Hindenburg’s forces were forced to retreat deeper into German territory. Aachen became under siege by December 27th as a British force under General Byng bombarded the city with heavy artillery. A French force under Robert Nivelle joined Byng’s army by January 2nd, bringing in an additional 80,000 French troops to bolster Byng’s 189,000 British and Commonwealth force outside Aachen. The main objective of the Anglo-French force was to capture Aachen and Karlsruhe. Control of those two cities would enable them to continue their offensive into Germany, with a British, Canadian and New Zealander force under the command of Canadian General Arthur Currie targeting Hamburg and another British, Canadian and South African force under Marshal Haig heading towards Heidelberg and the Swiss Alps to lay an ambush on the Italian forces locked in combat with George Milne’s Anglo-Croatian forces.
70,000 Dutch troops under the command of Lieutenant General Max Aakster launched a surprise attack on an exhausted British army in the Battle of Hasselt. The surprise attack had a minimal effect on the British position in Belgium, although those troops caught in the attack were requested as reinforcements in the planned breakthrough against the German defenders in Aachen. On the other hand, a large amount of Commonwealth troops captured by the Dutch outside Hasselt were of South African Boer origin, and Aakster launched a PR campaign to recruit these Boer POWs for a future Boer guerrilla army that would launch a revolt against British rule in South Africa. As a result, the British began to suspect the loyalty of their South African troops, many of whom were Boers forcibly conscripted to fight on a foreign battlefield.
The early months of 1916 saw great breakthroughs in the Western Front, but it was mainly done by Commonwealth troops. Canadian Expeditionary Force soldiers under Currie’s command led the assault on the German forces in what became known as the Battle of the Lahn River, named after the Lahn River located along the Rhine tributary. On January 10th, 1916, Currie’s forces began their bombardment against German defenses on the river while four Australian divisions advanced in the nearby Neckar River against three German divisions defending this river, led by then Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Keitel. After Canadian and Australian artillery bombardment had reduced the German defenses, the infantry advanced along with the unnamed turret car, which made its first debut in breaking through the stalemate on the Rhine Valley. However, German counter battery fire reduced the advancing Australian forces to a miniscule amount of soldiers remained alive as the British still used the old bayonet charge against their enemies that had now possessed machine guns. German troops now began to launch a counterattack against the demoralized Australian troops now retreating from the Neckar River and into their trenches as Commonwealth machine gunners took the turn of mowing down German soldiers who also used bayonet charges.
When Erich von Ludendorff took charge of the Western Theater while Paul von Hindenburg was reassigned to the Balkan Front to bolster their Italian ally’s chances against the British in Croatia, he immediately ordered the construction of fortifications and other kinds of defensive structures whenever they capture an inch of foreign land. Before the Germans could start constructing those defenses, the British were distracted by a breakthrough in the Balkans on their enemies’ part, as it will be discussed later on. Right now, the British logistical support had reached their limit as reinforcements were being targeted by the Dutch Army, which had correctly predicted the collapse of the British supply lines but failed to capitalize on such an opportunity due to a lack of manpower on their part. On the other hand, the German Kriegsmarine had began to use their U-Boats to target British shipping in the Atlantic while in the Pacific the Russian Pochtovy-class submarines would target British and Japanese shipping.
Aakster’s growing Dutch forces soon joined the Germans in the Siege of Ypres on March 18th, 1916 in an attempt to bring all of Belgium under a joint Dutch-German occupation. Dutch cavalry provided escorts to German artillery pieces while Dutch infantry advanced deeper into Ypres. It was at Ypres that the Anglo-French use of mustard gas had a devastating effect on the Dutch-German forces to the extent that German machine gunners were tasked with destroying enemy squads that carried poison gas into the battlefield. At the same time, the air battles that raged over the skies of Belgium became the most dominant feature of the Western Front in terms of its decisiveness. Anglo-French fighter biplanes were responsible for strafing at German artillery guns while other pilots would drop bombs and grenades on top of enemy infantry troops’ heads. The Germans also had an air arm as well, and they used it well.
Multiple breakthroughs on part of Britain’s enemies resulted in the first signs of the strains of its logistical problems only persisted when three British freight ships were sunk over the North Atlantic in the neutral nation of Iceland. German U-Boats also targeted troop transports carrying British and Canadian troops into the battlefields of North America, providing an additional relief to the US forces that were hard pressed on the Roanoke Front. Most importantly, British commanders had doubts on their ability to prosecute the Eastern Front against the Russians while they began to gain an upper hand against them in Ukraine. So Marshal Haig decided to order the British Army to build its own fortifications along the Meuse River, later named the Haig Line. The main purpose of the Haig Line is for Britain to switch to a defensive warfare while other British forces would attack in the Balkans and in Russia.
British static warfare along the Haig River produced the exact results their commanders expected: German casualties would pile up while British casualties remained at a minimum. Although the British and French forces would remain hard-pressed against the German Army in northern France, they were not quite secure along the Pyrenees. In April 9th, 1916, the Spanish Army finally completed its training of 200,000 green recruits, bolstered by the fighting experience of the Spanish Volunteer Regiment soldiers. A young officer under the command of Marshal Sanjurjo named Francisco Franco was given the command of the 16th Spanish army, tasked with distracting the French in the Pyrenees long enough for the Italians to regain Marseilles. The ferocity of the Spanish troops overwhelmed the exhausted French forces defending the crucial Pyrenees as it later fell to Spanish occupation by October of 1916. The surprising long amount of time it took for Spanish troops to capture the mountain pass was attributed to a heavy French resistance which resulted in 24% of Spanish troops that died on the major assault. At the same time, Vittorio Ambrosio took charge of the Italian Army that slowed down the French advance deeper into Italian territory. Aosta and Torino were retaken by Ambrosio’s forces after a brief period of French occupation as the replenished Italian Army steadily drove the French out of Italy by December of 1916, with heavy casualties taken by both sides. Italian troops also managed to link up with the German Army in the French town of Arbois by Christmas Eve, while General Ambrosio and German General Ludendorff decided to create a joint Italo-German Joint Command that would make plans for an eventual offensive into Paris. They also agreed that France would have to be knocked out of the war before Britain can be forced to sue for peace, a very difficult task to accomplish, especially Britain’s war against Russia. The Italian High Command also agreed to let the British tire themselves out in the Balkans and in Russia, so they can have an easier time collaborating with Serbian and Greek forces fighting the British forces in Croatia and Bosnia.
General Sanjurjo’s forces descended upon the sleepy town of Vichy by January of 1917, as he took advantage of a much weakened French position from sustaining huge casualties from its setbacks against the Italians and the Germans. He hoped to capture the town of Vichy and its surrounding territories in order to deal the French another blow, resulting in their possible defeat. By now, desertions wracked through the French Army as morale decreased among its soldiers. British morale on the rank and file remained high, though it was not the case in the Balkans where British morale took a hit when they encountered stiff Bosnian resistance. In the French home front, civilians launched strikes against the government for their decline in living standards and a lack of foodstuffs, which were redistributed to French soldiers. However, the French troops themselves also suffered from lack of foodstuffs due to Italian or German capture of French supplies, contributing to an increasing social instability. Desertions were rather high and news of revolutionary fervor began to reach the French government. Nothing was more dangerous than a planned coup d’etat while the country was at war. Britain on the other hand, has a problem of its own. Far from ever dealing a huge humiliating defeat upon Russia, they are the ones who were humiliated over and over again by their Union American rivals. It was now or never; the French Republic must have one small victory to restore their citizens’ confidence in their government and Joffre would aim at a very special target: Arbois, where he hoped to kill two birds with one stone and inflict a surprising defeat upon the Italian and German Armies. All he needed was enough troops to accomplish this increasingly suicidal task.
Joffre’s plan was launched on February 7th, 1917 when 50,000 French troops launched a pre-emptive strike on the Italian garrison in Arbois during dawn, inflicting around 3,760 casualties on the Italian forces in the area. Next, another 30,000 French troops ambushed the German garrison in nearby Besancon but the attack had failed due to constant German alertness in the city. Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Jodl led the German counterattack in Besancon, inflicting around 2,970 casualties on the French forces, who were forced to retreat. Although Joffre managed to salvage a victory over the Italians and the brief liberation of Arbois from the Italian occupation forces, the German advance into Arbois had dampened their spirits to the point where mutinies were commonplace and French soldiers fled into the mountains to avoid being used as cannon fodder once again. The Action Francaise clamored for revolution as the autocratic regime of the House of Bonaparte has lost its magic. Philippe Petain was chosen to lead the coup, in which he launched it on the same day their Ottoman counterparts did: February 14, 1917.
Eastern Front 1916-1918: Baltic Adventures and Ottoman Downfall:
Britain’s battles against Russia remained as vicious as ever. However, the main bulk of the battles involving Russia were against Ottoman Turkey, which was also on the verge of collapse as riots plagued every Turkish city, from Istanbul to a backwater town named Ankara. Like France, the Ottoman Empire would also suffer from low morale among its soldiers and other subject peoples like the Jews, Kurds and Arabs were rising up against the increasingly incompetent rule of Mehmed V. The revelation of the Armenian Massacre had forever stained the honor of the Ottoman Empire to the point where Mehmed V had seriously considered executing the Young Turks for bringing in such a shameful episode. However, the Russo-Armenian combined forces had managed to eject the last Ottoman soldier out of what has now become an expanded Armenian nation and into Anatolia itself. The Persians on the other hand, continued their advances southwards under Kuchik Khan’s command as they began to capture key territories in the Persian Gulf (or Arabian Gulf as the Arab Sheikdoms called the body of water shared by the Arabian Peninsula and Persia).
The Young Turks also suffered a split within its own ranks as Mustafa Kemal and Enver Pasha began to disagree with each other on policies of the Young Turks and questioned whether it was necessary or not to launch a heinous atrocity against their Armenian subjects. Gripped by the influence of Pan-Turanism, Enver Pasha advocated the implementation of similar measures against other Christian minorities within the Ottoman Empire, but trouble also lay ahead for two opposing members of the Young Turks. In a secret meeting on October of 1915, Bekir Sami told Mustafa Kemal that the ideal year to start a coup would be in 1917, when the situation for their empire would have gone beyond hope. In other words, only the forcible removal of the Sultan can result in the radical change the Kemalist faction needed to implement. Husein Rauf had also gotten into contact with Philippe Petain and a similar group of French officers who became disenchanted by the way the war was turning and agreed that they would launch the coup at the same time, and formally withdraw from the war. Should another war break out, France and Ottoman Turkey (or a republican regime in Turkey) will become firm allies.
As for the Baltic Front, the British forces under Ian Hamilton managed to inflict a huge defeat on Brusilov’s forces in the October 1915 Siege of Daugavpils as the Russian atrocities against Latvian civilians were revealed to the entire world as Russia’s crime. Anxious to get back at the British in the propaganda war, Stolypin published the official story of British atrocities in the Pskov Massacre, even as Edward VIII vehemently denied. In the Baltic Home Front, pro-Trudoviki Balts launched a revolt against their puppet leaders in December 7th, 1915, the 90th anniversary of the Decembrist Revolution. Although the uprising was suppressed by pro-British Baltic troops, it only radicalized the anti-British factions to the point where Lithuania overthrew its British king and Prime Minister Aleksandras Stulginskis asked Chancellor Stolypin to send in Russian soldiers to restore order in Vilnius. His pleas for Russian intervention in Lithuania provoked outrage among several Lithuanians who were victims of Russian oppression but in nearby Latvia and Estonia, the Estonian Prime Minister Konstantin Paats actually ordered most of the Estonian Army to stop obeying British orders when news of British logistical liabilities were reported to him from his Lithuanian counterpart. It was now or never, the Estonian opposition leader Jaan Anvelt said to Paats. Either the British must be kicked out of Estonia or they will have to ask Russia to do it for them. Unlike Lithuania or Latvia for that matter, Estonians had no ill will towards Russia and during Pestel’s regime he encouraged the Baltic peoples to develop their own cultural identity but at the same time he expected them to remain loyal to the Russian Empire. So on January 7th, 1916, the Estonians launched a revolt against their British puppet masters. Stolypin took the advantage of Estonia’s revolt to order Admiral Kolchak’s fleet to engage the Royal Navy using the Pochtovy-class submarines as the new main arm of the Russian Baltic Fleet, with five Russian Borodino-class cruisers (the Smolensk-class’s sister ship) and eight Polotsk-class destroyers escorting the submarines. The British by now were demoralized by the sudden destruction of their navy, although Edward VIII’s rants about how the British Empire will finish off the Muscovite menace had kept what’s left of their morale from plummeting.
Chancellor Stolypin appointed an officer who would make his reputation known to the world as a brilliant, albeit ruthless leader in keeping together the Baltic revolutionaries from tearing each other apart. For it was Lieutenant General Mikhail Tukhachevsky who led 80,000 Russian and other USS soldiers across the border into Estonia, capturing Narva within January 19th, 1916. Estonian troops gave helpful Intel to Tukhachevsky’s army on British Army deployments, allowing the Russians to stop them from re-deploying their soldiers elsewhere, which could have hurt Russia’s allies in the long run. By April of 1916, all of Estonia and half of Latvia were in revolt. As Prime Minister Paats told his people in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, while the Russians may have been a brutal ruler, the so-called Pestelist Enlightenment was an opportunity for the Russian people to make amends for their past deeds against their minorities, albeit not against Greek Catholic minorities as it was mentioned earlier. Estonian Trudoviki revolutionaries then crossed over into Latvia to link up with Jukums Vacietis as the appointed leader of the Latvian Trudoviki Party and commander of the Latvian National Army. Daugavpils was retaken by Vacietis’s forces with Russian and Estonian aid on June 26th, 1916 after its siege began back in May 8th. Riga’s capture took a bit longer, as the Royal Navy’s presence made it difficult for Tukhachevsky’s forces to besiege it. Tukhachevsky’s rise to prominence was in the Siege of Daugavpils when he took command of the Russian Army that launched an artillery barrage into the city, with British forces under Hamilton’s command defending the city. Furious at the lack of progress in the city, he opted to send in the Russian partisans that accompanied him for the trip to sabotage British military installments in Daugavpils’s outskirts. Next, he ordered 3,000 Russian infantry troops to surge into the city’s gates to distract the British machine gunners so the Russian artillery can move closer and reduce the city to rubble. Such a very risky tactic had resulted in 39,500 Russian soldiers killed in action.
Lithuania was the last Baltic nation to fall, and it was in reality a civil war, with pro-British Lithuanians fighting against pro-Russian Lithuanian Trudoviki revolutionaries and also against independence minded fighters who didn’t want to set up an independent Lithuanian state dominated by either Britain or Russia. Maksimas Katche took over as commander of the Lithuanian Reformed Military in July 8th, 1916 after news of Riga’s capture reached Vilnius, with Russian, USS, and Trudoviki revolutionaries from Estonia and Latvia crossing over into Lithuania five days later. It was also worth noting that the liberation of Lithuania would also be one of bittersweet memory as the Polish Army fighting the British to liberate Lithuania consisted of 83,000 soldiers under General Lucjan Zeligowski’s command, all of which were green (i.e.: newly trained) recruits. On July 15th, Zelikowski’s troops entered Lithuania in the midst of a major battle between Katche’s forces and British soldiers in the city of Kaunas, as the Lithuanian defenders struggled to keep the British from conquering the city. Polish ambush against another British Army under the command of a young officer named Winston Churchill succeeded in drawing out the British from Kaunas and into Zelikowski’s advancing infantry. However, the pro-British Lithuanian Civil Defense Force led by Jonas Variakojis had managed to foil Tukhachevsky’s plan to simultaneously attack Kaunas, Raseinai and Alytus by sabotaging Russian military bases behind enemy lines. When Katche’s LRM engaged Variakojis’s LCDF just outside Rasenai by July 19th, most of the Lithuanian countryside had been devastated by the war to the extent that Russian and British authorities had to call for a ceasefire in order to allow International Red Cross aid to the displaced Lithuanian civilians. Only after the Lithuanian displaced persons agreed to head towards the refugee camps in the Latvian city of Liepaja did hostilities resumed.
By October of 1916, only the Samogitia region remained under Variakojis’s command while the rest of Lithuania fell under Katche’s command. However, with the Royal Navy’s sudden redeployment into North America to participate in the much awaited Fourth Anglo-American conflict in the North Atlantic, British naval presence in the Baltic declined drastically to the extent that only three British destroyers remained afloat on the Baltic, though King Edward VIII responded by removing the British crews from those destroyers and turning it over to Variakojis’s command. The Russian Baltic Fleet though, would capture the British destroyers and turn it over to the newly formed Lithuanian Navy, based in the new Lithuanian port of Palanga, as Klaipeda was currently under German control. Further pacification campaigns were launched by Katche’s forces as Variakojis and 37 of his men were captured after a skirmish outside Palanga on November 17th, 1916. Most of the LCDF’s leadership were summarily executed by Katche’s soldiers, as well as members of the Lithuanian Trudoviki Party. The Baltic States were finally regained by Russia, though the war against the Ottoman Empire might start to wind down.
Two Nations’ Mutinies:
1916 was not a good year for both France and the Ottoman Empire, in terms of social stability in the face of decreasing morale among its soldiers. As it was discussed earlier, the drop of morale among the Ottoman Army was caused by Mehmet V’s increasingly inability to cope with riots that plagued not only Istanbul, but Ankara, Izmir and Gaziantep had been hit by riots and sectarian violence between Sunni Muslim Turks on one side, and Armenians, Jews, Kurds and Alawite Shia Muslims on the other. Survivors of the Armenian Massacre formed partisan units to help rescue their suffering comrades and journeyed across the Anatolian Plateau into the Russian border. These core members of the Armenian partisans would go on to form the Armenian Revolutionary Federation or the Dashnaktsutyun in Armenian. Simon Zavarian became the leader of the ARF, and his first mission was to escort 6,000 survivors into the Armenian capital of Yerevan. Such mission had its risks, as Ottoman soldiers were told to be on the lookout for stragglers. To make his mission easier, Zavarian obtained help from Kuchik Khan and the Shah of Persia in aiding the Armenian exodus, as well as Kurdish separatists. Tragically, only 4,000 survivors made it to the Armenian border as 2,000 Armenians perished from lack of medical care due to low supply of medicine.
Mustafa Kemal became the de facto leader of the splinter group within the Young Turks as he and many other moderates began to make contingency plans on dealing with Ottoman loyalists, their former Young Turk comrades and minorities who formed militias to protect their communities. When news of the French disaster at Arbois reached the Kemalist faction, Mustafa Kemal also received news that Philippe Petain and many other junior officers were planning a coup. Thus he agreed that February 14, 1917 will be the start of their coup.
On that particular Valentine’s Day, Napoleon IV and Mehmet V were rudely awoken by armed officers and their soldiers with their weapons pointed at them. They were quickly taken into custody for their inability to prosecute the war properly and were placed under house arrest. A power vacuum erupted in Paris and Istanbul as the Action Francaise galvanized for support from demoralized deserters while the mainstream Young Turks asked for support from Ottoman royalists, some of whom were quick to distance themselves from such radicals. Petain sent one of his subordinates, a skilled officer named Charles de Gaulle to negotiate for a possible truce and a fully fledged alliance with the Action Francaise. Charles Maurras accepted the offer and placed some of its militants under de Gaulle’s command, who in turn subordinated himself to Petain’s command. On the other hand, Enver Pasha had decided to take action against his former comrade Mustafa Kemal for trying to sabotage the Young Turk Revolution, resulting in the fragmentation of the Anatolian heartland of Ottoman Turkey as various Ottoman generals suddenly transformed themselves into little warlords ruling over their own beyliks. Mustafa Kemal also played the game of warlord and carved out for himself and his followers the territory in which the city of Ankara was located. He didn’t have time to regroup his forces as Anatolia descended into anarchy. Arab separatists entered Egypt to obtain help, while the Jewish community began to leave in thousands in fear of pogroms.
Charles Maurras had been aware of the weakness which plagued the French Army and consulted with Petain and de Gaulle on whether or not they should surrender to the Italians and the Germans in order to put their house back in order. Petain too, had been forced to come to the conclusion that they may be forced to surrender. By February 28th, representatives of the French and Ottoman emergency committees arrived in Munich to discuss the terms of surrender to German, Italian, Russian and Persian delegates. On part of the Ottoman Empire, the Russian delegate Nikolai Bukharin presented the harsh terms of the so-called Treaty of Munich, giving details as to what kinds of losses would the Ottomans expect:
- The Ottoman Empire is to cede northeastern Anatolia to the Union of Sovereign States, to be attached to the Armenian Sovereign State.
- Mehmet V is to abdicate from the throne and the Islamic title of Caliph is to be ceded to the Khedive of Egypt.
- Ottoman Turkey is not required to pay reparations in cash, but they are required to help evacuate the Armenian population from Ottoman concentration camps and into the new territories.
- The Ottoman Army is to be slashed into only 100,000 men, and its navy is only allowed eight warships. They are forbidden from manufacturing heavy weapons for the army, navy and air force. The Ottoman air service is also forbidden from building airplanes.
- In the event that a new Turkish government is formed, they are to recognize the independence of Assyria, the Arab lands, Kurdistan and Cyprus.
Similar demands were placed by German delegate Gustav Bauer on the French side:
- France is to cede its southeastern lands around Marseilles to the Kingdom of Italy, and they are forbidden from reclaiming lost colonies they have lost up to 1914.
- Napoleon IV is to abdicate from the throne and the House of Bonaparte is banned from political affairs. Either a republic or a monarchy under the House of Orleans can be established with German and Italian supervision.
- France must pay 25 million pound sterling to the combined powers of Germany and Italy. The French government is not required to pay reparations to Russia, but its allies might be.
- The French Army is to be slashed to 100,000 men as well, and its navy is only allowed eight warships. Like their Turkish counterparts, they are forbidden from manufacturing heavy weapons for their army, navy and air force including airplanes.
British reaction to the French and Turkish surrender was one of outrage. In London, protesters burned French and Turkish flags in anger as Edward VIII perceived their surrender as dishonorable and placed the blame squarely on the Action Francaise (France) and the Young Turks for taking matters into their own hands. Luckily, the British can still count on its empire to tip the scales in its favor but only Japan remained a committed ally. However, public anger began to turn against the war in London when news of Russia’s re-conquest of the Baltic reached the British public. Edward VIII hoped to win a major engagement in the North American theater so he can salvage what is left of British prestige.
North American Theater 1917-1918 – We Have Avenged Ourselves:
Emperor Agustin had been at the receiving end of a rude awakening when Mexican soldiers loyal to the so-called Mexican Republican Army under Elias Calles’s command. Unlike the French and Ottoman coup where Napoleon IV and Mehmet V were placed under house arrest, Calles’s forces had actually arrested Agustin and his family in February 1917, and had them summarily executed three days later. Despite Mexico’s successful campaigns against the Confederate States and the British Empire, its staggering costs in human lives proved to be too much for the Mexican government to bear and thought about arranging an armistice instead of surrendering. Their hopes faded when the United States launched the so-called MacArthur Offensive, in which Arthur MacArthur positioned his armies to simultaneously strike at three different targets in the Confederacy: Texas, Virginia and Louisiana.
In the North American theater, the tank had made its debut as a deadly mobile cavalry, capable of crossing no-man’s land without suffering any damage at all. It was widely believed that MacArthur recommended to US President Theodore Roosevelt (at that time) that the tank should be used other than infantry support. Though Roosevelt disapproved of MacArthur’s proposal, the US general countermanded Philadelphia’s orders and used them anyways, much to his surprise when the tanks had not only routed the Confederate Army from the Roanoke trenches, but had also played a vital part in the Second Battle of Chattanooga.
Unlike the American Civil War where the Confederates had succeeded in holding the Cracker Line against Union soldiers, it was entirely different this time around, as Union tanks in large numbers forced the lightly armed Confederate cavalry squadrons to retreat from the Cracker Line. Perryville was besieged with heavy artillery as Confederate civilians suffered from a decline in living standards due to the shortage in basic supplies. When the US Army entered a slave plantation, the proceeded to burn it to the ground and the slaves who still worked there were rounded up and escorted into the German Embassy in Philadelphia, where the German ambassador worked around the clock to have all the freed slaves processed for immigration into German Central Africa. Roosevelt also wrote a letter to Kaiser Frederick Wilhelm V on the possibility of US involvement in a possible German conquest of French West Africa in order to enlarge its African territories there and to resettle the freed slaves.
Kendall Jackson was credited with the heroic Confederate defense of Wauhatchie on March 9th, 1917 when his forces were sent to reinforce Wauhatchie against General Pershing’s 89,000 US troops besieging the city. Meanwhile, British reinforcements from Europe arrived on Canada’s eastern shores in time for the Anglo-Canadian defenders to repulse the US offensive into Halifax, and preventing the US Navy from getting closer into the harbor. Defense of Canada was now seen as the main priority over British plans to open up the Central Asian Theater against Russia. It was there that MacArthur would be recalled into the Cascadian Front to bring British Columbia under US control, which he will on June 13th, 1917. Vancouver was under siege since 1914, and British manpower stretched to the limit as the British Expeditionary Force was deployed in the Western, Eastern and Balkan Fronts. After facing a severe food shortage and increasing casualties, Canadian General James Elmsley was forced to surrender to MacArthur’s forces in Vancouver City Hall on June 19th. Even as Elmsley parlayed with the US forces in the Fraser Valley region, other US forces surged throughout the Yukon and northern BC in order to cut the British off from the Pacific. However, it would be at British Columbia and the Yukon where US pacification efforts would drain their manpower to the extent where future US presidents would prioritize on families having more than four children to generate enough men (later on, women) for the US military.
Three major battles which involve British and US forces in combat would be won by the British: the battles of New York, Boston and Hartford. Distracted by the surge of US presence in the West Coast, Canadian General Arthur Currie learned that the tri-state area was lightly defended due to US assumption that they can handle lightly armed Canadian soldiers, a mistake the US Army will pay for dearly when Currie received an additional 50,000 British and Commonwealth forces from Europe to shore up their defenses along the DMZ. Canadian troops specializing in sabotage began to plant explosives on US defensive positions in the Quebec-Maine border. The explosives were detonated successfully, allowing 80,000 Anglo-Canadian coalition troops to enter the tri-state area. The surprise attack was devastating to the point where Royal Navy warships stationed in Halifax steamed into New York and Boston and bombarded those cities from the Atlantic. 31,000 US soldiers and civilians perished within two weeks of the attack, starting from March 9th, 1917 until March 23rd, although the siege would last until 1918. US guerrillas operated behind enemy lines, sabotaging any infrastructure that the British might use to fuel their drive towards the Atlantic, forcing the BEF to requisition supplies from US civilians.
President Roosevelt responded by increasing his support for the US guerrillas in order to make British invasion of the tri-state area extremely costly, thereby using regular US soldiers for further campaigns against the Confederacy. His strategy worked only because Britain still had to maintain a large army in France against the Italians and the Germans, though the BEF in Europe too, began to arrive on Canadian soil to help retake British Columbia from MacArthur’s forces. German submarines helped the US war effort by sinking British troop ships and machine gunning its passengers who tried to escape, even though this was considered a war crime back then. Worse news for Edward VIII had arrived, starting in July of 1917 when the Confederate States fell under a military junta with Nathan Bedford Forrest III leading the coup, and the Dutch succeeding in annihilating the British invasion force in Sumatra, Java and Borneo. Now it was only the North American and the Balkan Fronts that would be decided in an all out campaign.
African Theater:
Not much was said about the European powers in Africa since it was mostly quiet until 1916 when Germany and Ethiopia began to build up their armies to expel the British and the French from the Horn of Africa. A minor campaign launched by Gustav Zimmer against the French in West Africa had succeeded in routing the French Army from there, already plagued by their government’s surrender and exit from the war. British troops in Africa were pulled out and redeployed in North American and in the Balkans in the face of Russian and German power. Frederick Wilhelm was generous enough to cede portions of the French colonial empire in Africa to the Netherlands, who expanded most of their territory at the expense of both the French and the British while German West Africa was incorporated into German Mittleafrika. By the end of the war, Germany would have succeeded in driving out the British and the French from Africa while sharing what’s left of their territories (except of course, South Africa) to the Dutch, the Italians and even the Union Americans, who would have a piece of African territory assigned as a mandate.
