So my question is not "what's the earliest time a world wide war could break out". Rather it's about when a conflict of the same nature as WW1 could start, that is, a conflict with the same style of deadlocked, extreme casualties fighting. From which date onward would a European conflict result in trench warfare and the sort of stalemate we saw on the Western Front?
Earliest possible "World War I"
- Thread starter Gryffinson
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Basically after the invention of barbed wire, machine guns, heavy artillery, and the means to supply an army in the field all year round. Looking at some of the sieges in the ACW and the Russo Japanese war I would say probably by the 1880s if not a bit earlier.
In 1898 a Polish banker Jan Bloch published a treatise know in English as IS WAR POSSIBLE where he outlined that the invention of smokeless powder magazine rifles, machine guns and rapid fire artillery would render war of maneuver impossible That a man in a trench was worth 4 in the open Warfare would then bog down
Jan Gotlib Bloch - Wikipedia
I'd think you'd need a few more years extra to get modern machine guns and the next generation of breech loading artillery. That suggests you'd be 1890 or very late 1880s to start getting maxims into service - and the Franco Prussian war wasn't dominated by defensive fire in 1870, so that's too early, while Russo-Japanese war and some of the Spanish American wars started to look like modern warfare.
So my pick would be mid 1890s or very early 1900s, but you'd have to ramp up European tensions a bit somehow to get a wider conflict - maybe drag in the Ottomans as well.
Yeah i think one of the Balkan wars or the italo-ottoman war could have kicked off a wider war had the other European powers not put in serious diplomatic effort to stop them from snowballing
The Russo-Japanese War escalating is one possibility as, while the Anglo-Japanese alliance was a mainly defensive one, the Dogger Bank Incident, precipitated by the Russian naval auxiliary Kamchatka*, very nearly brought the British Empire into the conflict. The subsequent actions of the Kamchatka only aggravated matters. Tensions remained high when the 1st Moroccan Crisis kicked off. With only a few small changes, such as Royal Navy vessels opening fire on the Russians and/or some diplomatic slips during negotians, both post Dogger Bank, during the Russo-Japanese peace talks and the Algeciras Conference of 1906, convened to settle the Crisis, these could easily result in an earlier WW1.
Alternatively, the 2nd Moroccan Crisis, aka the Agadir Crisis, very nearly started a war between the Anglo-French Entente and Germany in 1911. A third option would be the 1st & 2nd Balkan Wars, themselves triggered by the Italo-Turkish War, but those would only advance WW1 by a couple of years.
* Seriously, if you haven't heard of this ship before, or the actual voyage of the Russian Baltic Fleet to its ultimate fate, its one hell of story.
Alternatively, the 2nd Moroccan Crisis, aka the Agadir Crisis, very nearly started a war between the Anglo-French Entente and Germany in 1911. A third option would be the 1st & 2nd Balkan Wars, themselves triggered by the Italo-Turkish War, but those would only advance WW1 by a couple of years.
* Seriously, if you haven't heard of this ship before, or the actual voyage of the Russian Baltic Fleet to its ultimate fate, its one hell of story.
I don't see Dogger Bank Incident beginning World War very plausible at least not without some earlier POD, probably early 1890's at least if not even earlier. This would possibility cause Anglo-Russian War but it would be still far from world war level conflict. France is not going to participate and it sees this being problem of Russia. Their treaty was targetted against German expansionist, not defending Russian stupidity. And France wanted closer relationships with Britain.
Germany has not intrest to enter to this war.
And other great powers couldn't be intrested any lesser.
You're assuming that the sides are the same as IOTL WW1. If the Russo-Japanese War expanded due to Dogger Bank AND the 1st Moroccan Crisis, A 1st World War could begin.