the ottomans will not enter the war on their own violition, which means an outside attack is likely
indeed.
Osman Reborn; The Survival of Ottoman Democracy [An Ottoman TL set in the 1900s]
- Thread starter Sarthak
- Start date
Vranje.
The Montenegrin military situation was much better than the serbs which is why a territorial status quo was ceded.
those are all parts of modern day kosovo, which is a part of the ottoman balkans. how are the ottomans going to get what they already have?
Well @Gokbay, I suppose you were right.
Anyway so was I with the fact of a great offensive against Russia was going to happen.
Anyway so was I with the fact of a great offensive against Russia was going to happen.
Battle of Tannenberg equivalent?
Here the plans to take the Montenegrin coast were dropped.
The Balkan states never managed to gain the prestige of beating a great power even when they banded together and everyone knows that their independence is owed to Austria-Hungary and Russia alone.
A war enquiry commission should be set up to look into failures and possible improvements in the war.
Eastern Rumelia should be made a zone of influence and permanently occupied to eliminate the threat to the Thrace-Macedonia corridor.
If Montenegro was eliminated then there were chances that after joining the Entente, they could remain Bosnia but now it's unlikely but if it is done Montenegro would be surrounded and Serbia would face the Empire from two sides.
Ottoman Empire should stay clear of the British attempts to woo them as it was the British who extorted away Thessaly, seperated Crete and sold away Cyprus and response should be made to their offers if at the very least some concessions are secured regarding the administration of Egypt or some major concessions in the Gulf.
Every time Greece expands the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire get hope of getting into the Greek state. Even if Crete or Cyprus were seperate kingdoms under the Greek crown it could have been accepted. Something even if covertly needs to be done to weaken Greece untill the Greeks in the Empire start looking towards Constantinople more than Athens.
If the British ego is too much they can sit and trade with everyone and selling what they can for payment that is to be made by cancelling OPDA debt. And make unreasonable demands like asking for Kars or Batumi or both to allow for the passage of the Russian Black Sea Fleet through the Straits.
The Spanish officers were well trained but their NCOs who are the backbone of any army and the ordinary soldiers were poorly trained and I am doubtful of their capabilities in combatting the Italians. The Success of Armando Diaz means that he can replace Cadorna faster and that can change a lot.
The Austro-Hungarians seem to be fighting a aimlessly and with war weariness already setting in Hungary it is a matter of time before it spreads to Austria. The victories are only keeping them in the fight. The Austro-Hungarian offensives into Russia must be focused on taking Congress Poland, which is the only reasonable goal they have.
The German High Seas Fleet should have sortied along with the Italians and the Austro-Hungarians to increase the pressure on the British Admiralty.
The fragile Spanish Dreadnoughts would probably have been blown out of the water by the last generation of Pre-Dreadnoughts, so it isn't worth risking them in the line. The victory would probably keep the Austro-Hungarian Dreadnought building on priority. For smaller sorties the Italian fleet alone is enough and it is the fastest fleet in the world and even has slight speed advantage over everyone.
The seems that the war will go on for years and in the end the Entente will have the upper hand but would be too war weary to inflict the final blow.
If Austro-Hungarians win more in Russia then Romania might jump in to seize Bessarabia.
The Balkan states never managed to gain the prestige of beating a great power even when they banded together and everyone knows that their independence is owed to Austria-Hungary and Russia alone.
A war enquiry commission should be set up to look into failures and possible improvements in the war.
Eastern Rumelia should be made a zone of influence and permanently occupied to eliminate the threat to the Thrace-Macedonia corridor.
If Montenegro was eliminated then there were chances that after joining the Entente, they could remain Bosnia but now it's unlikely but if it is done Montenegro would be surrounded and Serbia would face the Empire from two sides.
Ottoman Empire should stay clear of the British attempts to woo them as it was the British who extorted away Thessaly, seperated Crete and sold away Cyprus and response should be made to their offers if at the very least some concessions are secured regarding the administration of Egypt or some major concessions in the Gulf.
Every time Greece expands the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire get hope of getting into the Greek state. Even if Crete or Cyprus were seperate kingdoms under the Greek crown it could have been accepted. Something even if covertly needs to be done to weaken Greece untill the Greeks in the Empire start looking towards Constantinople more than Athens.
If the British ego is too much they can sit and trade with everyone and selling what they can for payment that is to be made by cancelling OPDA debt. And make unreasonable demands like asking for Kars or Batumi or both to allow for the passage of the Russian Black Sea Fleet through the Straits.
The Spanish officers were well trained but their NCOs who are the backbone of any army and the ordinary soldiers were poorly trained and I am doubtful of their capabilities in combatting the Italians. The Success of Armando Diaz means that he can replace Cadorna faster and that can change a lot.
The Austro-Hungarians seem to be fighting a aimlessly and with war weariness already setting in Hungary it is a matter of time before it spreads to Austria. The victories are only keeping them in the fight. The Austro-Hungarian offensives into Russia must be focused on taking Congress Poland, which is the only reasonable goal they have.
The German High Seas Fleet should have sortied along with the Italians and the Austro-Hungarians to increase the pressure on the British Admiralty.
The fragile Spanish Dreadnoughts would probably have been blown out of the water by the last generation of Pre-Dreadnoughts, so it isn't worth risking them in the line. The victory would probably keep the Austro-Hungarian Dreadnought building on priority. For smaller sorties the Italian fleet alone is enough and it is the fastest fleet in the world and even has slight speed advantage over everyone.
The seems that the war will go on for years and in the end the Entente will have the upper hand but would be too war weary to inflict the final blow.
If Austro-Hungarians win more in Russia then Romania might jump in to seize Bessarabia.
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Otranto seems contrived, And does not conform to the strategy either of Kunduriotis in the 1st Balkan war or of the British during the Great War. Both did a distant blockade with aggressive forward patrolling by strong scout forces while keeping their battlelines concentrated to act in one piece, Kunduriotis went as far as flat out refusing Venizelos to break up his battleship force when Hamidieh escaped the blockade in the 1st Balkan war. Why exactly they are running around willy nilly here in penny packets in contrast to their own strategy and tactics? The relative example here is Jutland with the whole Grand Fleet showing up and the Germans surviving by chance.
The Entente would be having a combined battleship squadron operating either out of Argostoli or out of Malta with scout forces and aircraft (the Brits pioneered shipborne aircraft and the Greeks the first in the world to use them in naval action in 1912) keeping an eye on Central powers forces closer to the Italian coast. The very reason the British initiated the Anglo-Greek Entente back in 1912 was applying such a strategy against the Italians and Austrians.
For some technicalities, the Greeks are bringing around the only 14in gun ships around (btw Colchis? no way Salamis and Themistocles sounds about right). If the battle extends to the night as well the British and Greeks were trained for night action and use the same tactics (the Greeks are trained by the British after all) Not certain about the Austrians level of training in night fighting, overall they were very good, or the Spanish for that matter. The Italians were severely deficient in night training though all the way to WW2, Matapan was not just a matter of radar. British battlecruisers have well known issues with protection... so do the Austrians when it comes to torpedo defences as evidenced in the sinking of Szent Istvan, not a good thing with squadrons of very aggressive RN and Greek destroyers running around.
Basically no ship of the era has "good" torpedo defence.
As for Szent Istvan afaik that was more of a shoddy construction by a Hungarian (so, Croat) shipyard which had no business building a dreadnought rather than an issue with Austrian warships overall. Szent Istvan had issues which her Austrian built sisters did not have.
(As for British Battlecruisers, true for the I-classes (Invincible, Indefatigable etc) but the Cats actually had decent protection (less than Battleships of course, but that is what makes a Battlecruiser a Battlecruiser) their performance in Jutland mostly due to poor ammo handling (thanks Beatty). With the Indefatigables it was the case of them being old. They are built for the pure mission of the BC which is hunting Armoured Cruisers and it lacks the thought for "the fast section of the battle-line" idea. Kind of like Blucher. They definitely can't be used in the battle-line.)
yup, mainly due to pragmaticism
yeah, well more russia than A-H
pretty obvious this one
it won't be permanently occupied. Not feasible
indeed
Well, the Ottomans do want to keep british on side. They are the turks largest economic partner after all
that depends. Like the time between 1908 - 1911, democratically itself the greek nationalist parties are not doing so good due to proper development.
The Russians will not be getting access to the med unless they make concessions
The soldiers were pretty good actually. The Rif war showed a lot of operational manuverability from the Spaniards. They had improved a lot from 1898.
well not aimlessly. The Hungarians just dont want to stay in the war.
oh they will be doing as such,......
the Spanish dreadnoughts were actually pretty good. On par with Italy at least.
we'll see
they just might
Apulia actually
They're actually on way to group up with the British and French navies, a temporary risky time that the CP took advantage off completely.
Yes, one of the major butterflies ittl. Greece never tries it out, mainly because they haven't been in a proper conflict, and Britain's airplanes are being diverted all the ways with the new front in the Alps, and Eastern Central Africa.
No ships during this time had proper defenses against torpedos.
So when someone can do this and get from Piraeus to Malta in 595 nautical miles without exposing his fleet at any point to defeat in detail
Instead is going to do this inviting defeat in detail at a distance of 532 nautical miles.
Colour me unconvinced... besides the suspected narrative purpose
of the Ottomans saving the day.
Without the war the Greeks have not used their naval air service in action but this does not mean they do not have one. The navy was very enthusiastic about aircraft in the first place. And of course had a VERY enthusiastic supporter in Venizelos who back in 1911 was probably the first head of government in the world to fly an aircraft...
Timelines are narratives- they need to build toward climaxes or they're just dull collections of textbook extracts.
That means that sometimes an author needs to place their thumb on the scales, and that's fine- Spanish entry into the war, for example.
But respectfully, this last one was a bit clumsy.
That means that sometimes an author needs to place their thumb on the scales, and that's fine- Spanish entry into the war, for example.
But respectfully, this last one was a bit clumsy.
Was Spain not close to France in 1914 though, at least more than the Italians? Granted I know their not exactly with the British given their attempts at wooing the US and aggressiveness in expansion in Africa.
Chapter 26: New Year – New Plans
Chapter 26: New Year – New Plans
***
“On December 1, 1915, the Ottoman Electoral Commission informed the government that the next senatorial elections of the government, slated to take place every 3 years would took place on the 27th of January all the way to the 30th of January in 1916. As such the wartime coalition collapsed as the Balkan War ended, and the pre-war situation continued politically within the political spectrum of the empire. The senatorial elections this year would be extremely competitive as the issue of Women’s Franchise and Universal Women’s suffrage became a heated issue in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
The Committee of Union and Progress led by Ahmet Riza had managed to win the war, and the boost of the war prestige made the party’s position unassailable. Riza and the CUP campaigned during the elections in favor of conditional universal women’s suffrage which they deemed enough to be a middle ground. In contrast, the main opposition party, the Liberal Entente, led the way through the campaign in favor of unconditional universal suffrage which was supported by the Liberal Entente’s new leader, the 1st Premier of Albania, Hasan Prishtina. The Socialist Party under Huseyin Hilmi decided that they would be seeking the endorsements of the labour and trade unions in the country to gain their needed votes, and the Democratic Party under Ibrahim Temo sought their votes from their local strongholds scattered throughout the empire. It was the minor parties of the Social Democrats that managed to campaign a little better than before, as they managed to utilize the previous specter of war economy to gain more votes and credence to their social democratic views from the electoral populace of the country. The Armenekan Party under Portukalian experienced a downgrowth as ethnic nationalism and ethnic politics in the Ottoman empire started to disintegrate in favor of cross-ethnic political parties, which the CUP, Liberal Entente, Socialists and Democrats showed themselves as. The OPAD, a party espousing federal and confederal views, did not garner much support, as the recent spike of Ottoman Nationalism due to the war had made their federal views unpopular. Poale Zion similarly experienced a decline as the parties began to evolve into cross-religious parties as well, making the position of the party precarious.
At the end, the CUP won 33 seats, forming a large plurality with the Liberal Entente close behind with 25 seats. The Socialist Party won 14 seats whilst the Ottoman Democratic Party won 12 seats. The Social Democrats increased their seat coverage from 5 to 6, and the Armenekan Party lost seats to become reduced to 5 seats. The OPAD managed to scrape together 2 seats whilst Poale Zion barely managed to hang on with 1 seat in the Senate. The last seat of the Senate was taken up by an independent from the Senatorial Seat of Jerusalem. Huseyin Hilmi managed to retain his position in the Senate as the Speaker of the Senate, and promised more senatorial reforms regarding the position.” A Political History of the Ottoman Empire, Oxford Publishing, 2009.
“The Ottoman Empire having ended the Balkan War once again turned inwards towards economic development to make the economic standards of the nation better. The economic reforms of the past 4 years had shown their fruits to the Ottomans during the war with the Bulgarians, Serbians and Montenegrins and the Ottomans were eager to make sure that they could follow that up with ever changing and evergrowing economic success. The Ottomans were primarily an Islamic empire. The fact that they immediately turned to Hejaz, home of Mecca and Medina is therefore not at all surprising at times.
The economy of the Hejaz Vilayet was predominantly reliant on the annual Hajj and pilgrimage, as Muslims from throughout the world travelled to come to the holy cities of Medina and Mecca. The importance of the pilgrimage was such that entire residents of many outer villages outside of Mecca relied on the windfall from the pilgrimages for daily sustenance. May residents worked as guides for Pilgrims, camel-brokers, and built and provided pilgrim accommodations, sold or distributed Zamzam water [1]. Others worked in the maintenance of the Masjid Al-Haram and the Masjid al-Nabawi as sweepers, doorkeepers, servants, prayer leaders, preachers or candle cleaners. Of these occupations, the most numerous was that of the pilgrimage guides. These guides had the task of organizing the pilgrim’s accommodation, transportation, acting as a translator, and generally gudng the pilgrim through the rituals and prayers required. The opening of the Damascus-Hejaz Railway had however provided the peoples of Hejaz with new economic opportunities, and many became involved in the railway sector, and employment in this new burgeoning sector allowed the populace to diversify their economic base.
The pilgrims and caravans in Hejaz
The Ottoman government unveiled the Hejaz Economic Development and Reform Plan on February 9, 1916 under the direction of Finance Minister Avraam Benaroya who was eager to develop the Vilayet of Hejaz to bring it up to speed with the rest of the Ottoman Empire, as it was lagging behind slightly. The Development and Reform plan consisted of the following points:-
The Ottomans however had new problems to deal with in the north that they didn’t like at all. While anti-semitism in the Ottoman Empire was not high and relatively low, that didn’t mean that it didn’t exist. Several Christians and muslims in Palestine were known to assault the Jewish immigrants settling in their new homes. The Ottoman judicial system helped whenever it could, however, that didn’t mean they could take care off every offender, and some slipped through the net and continued to harass many Jews. In response a small Jewish militant organization known as the Hashomer was starting to gain prominence when on February 5, they raided the house of an anti-semite Assyrian in Jerusalem and killed the family. Hashomer had been established in 1907 by Alexander Zaid, a prominent Jewish settler in Ottoman Palestine. The Ottoman government reacted violently against the paramilitary organization.
The Flag of Hashomer.
Ottoman gendarmerie stormed the headquarters of Hashomer on February 17, 1916 and took the entire militia and paramilitary’s leadership under arrest. The members of the Hashomers knew that unauthorized paramilitaries were illegal within the Ottoman Empire, and that killing and murdering was also prosecutable under Ottoman law, however they had ignored that, and now were paying for it. The leadership was sentenced to life in prison. Most famously Sultan Mehmed V gave a speech in the Chamber of Deputies regarding the case.
“We are a multinational and multi-religious empire. As such despite our relative harmony with one another, fractions will always arise from time to time. However violence cannot be the answer. The Ottoman Government under the full provisions of the Constitutions will prosecute any murderer in the state, whether he or she be Christian, Muslim or Jew, whether he or she may be Turk, Arab, Jew, Armenian, Greek, Slavic or Albanian. This is a nation of equals. No single group is going to be favored over the other. Remember that, and this nation will flourish.” – Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Front for Jews or the OFJ was quick to support the Sultan, and condemned the Hashomer and the murders. Prominent Jewish politicians throughout the empire decried the Hashomer, with many calling out that a tit for tat strategy was not available and neither was it capable of being implemented and that it would jeopardize the future of the Jews within the Ottoman Empire. However something that made relations cool considerably was that the Ottoman Gendarmerie and Information sector had managed to find several links between the leaders of the Hashomer and the Zionist Congress. [2] As a result, the Ottoman government withdrew their funding of the Zionist Congress’s movement and settlement program in the Sinai Peninsula, and pointedly ignored the protests of the Zionist Congress, becoming increasingly irritated by the Zionist Congress’s continued meddling in Jewish affairs in the Ottoman Empire.
Ahmet Riza would sum up the issue bluntly when he told the Zionist ambassador ‘Your congress isn’t the representative of Ottoman Jews. The deputies and senators they elect to the Ottoman Parliament are their representatives. Not the Congress.’
This would be yet another precursor to the Sinai Crisis.” A History of Ottoman Arabia. Penguin Publishing, 1997.
***
“To Damage the English Fleet by offensive raids against the naval forces engaged in watching and blockading the German Blight, as well as by mine laying on the British coast and Submarine attack, whenever possible. After an equality of strength had been realized as a result of these operations, and all our forces had been made ready and concentrated, an attempt is to be made with our fleet to seek battle under circumstances unfavorable to the enemy.” – Admiral von Scheer
On January 7, the German Imperial Admiralty decided to halt their unrestricted submarine warfare throughout the Atlantic after complaints from neutral countries like the USA, Brazil and Argentina decried the loss of their ships. Reinhard Scheer, the German Fleet Commander believed that it would not be possible to continue attacking the enemy through the international accords of restricted submarine warfare and instead he set about deploying the submarine fleet against military vessels. It was hoped that following a successful German submarine attack, the fast British escorts such as destroyers and light cruisers would be tied down by anti-submarine operations. Then amidst this, the Germans would catch the British with their proverbial pants down. This decision was laid out after watching the (partially) successful Italo-Austrian victory at the Battle of the Apulin Plateau.
The Germans deployed 17 submarines into the North Sea on January 13, as a part of their plan. A fleet of Zeppelins were also deployed into the North Sea and Skagerrak for aerial reconnaissance and bombing runs. The Germans began to deploy the Zeppelins in the direction of the Norwegian Trough, distracting the Royal Navy allowing the German Navy to move north to attempt a raid at Sunderland. On January 18, the German warships left port, in order to conduct Reinhard’s daring scheme to strike out against the British Navy.
Unfortunately for the Germans, the British had obtained a German codebook from a scuttled German torpedo boat in Tanganyika, and were able to utilize the codebook to tap into German plans. The British Admiralty maintained the direction finding and interception of German naval signals, and on January 18, decrypted a German signal that provided ample evidence that the Germans were moving into the North Sea for a serious attack. After the debacle in the Mediterranean, Fleet Commander Jellicoe was unusually calm and cautious, intent on not making a second naval debacle possible.
Not knowing what the Germans were going after (Sunderland), Jellicoe and the Admiralty decided to head off any attempt by the Germans to enter the North Atlantic or Baltic through the Skagerrak by taking up positions right out of Norwegian waters, something that would irritate the Norwegian government a lot throughout the battle, as they feared it would breach their neutrality. As such Jellicoe led the sixteen dreadnought battleships of the 1st and 4th Battle Squadrons of the Grand Fleet and the 3 Battlecruisers of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron and headed eastward out of Scapa Flow on January 19, 1916. He was to meet Vice-Admiral Martyn Jerram coming from Cromarty. On January 21, the Admiralty reported to Jellicoe that the Germans had left the Heligoland blight just as Vice-Admiral Beatty’s 5th Battle Squadron of four battleships met and grouped up with Jellicoe.
As the British moved towards the east, being caught in the German diversion with the submarines and the Zeppelins, the Germans began to move towards the west. If they could catch Sunderland by surprise then there was a good chance that Reinhard and Hipper could catch the docked British fleets there completely open to attack without a proper means of defense. The 3rd British Battlecruiser Squadron consisting of the Galatea and Phaeton moved in the rear of the British Grand Fleet and came into contact with U-32 submarine. Before the submarine could properly attack the two battlecruisers, the submarine was subjected to a forced crashed dive by the tow battlecruisers, and retreated out of the line of attack. The British Admirals noted the presence of the submarines and were being caught into the German trap further and further.
Further north, U-76 was retreating from her zone of patrolling when the Duke of Edinburgh and Boudica, as well as eight battleships got within 350 yards of the submarine. The U-76 got ready to fire, however was forced to crash dive by an incoming destroyer. Its captain, Edgar von Spiegel reported back to the German Admiralty that there were 8 Royal Navy Battleships moving towards the southeast of the North Sea. The earlier submarine, the U-32 likewise reported the exact opposite. The courses predicted by the subs were incorrect. The British were instead focusing on a zigzag maneuver against the Germans in case of an attack. Meanwhile however, completely unknown to the British, the entire German High Seas Fleet had used the submarine and zeppelin ruse to pass through the Doggerbank area unnoticed. A British submarine patrolling in the area saw them, however was sunk by the Germans before it could report back to the Admiralty about the incoming danger.
It was the quiet nature of the ongoing battle that persuaded Jellicoe to double back on the 22nd, as his newfound cautiousness feared a surprise attack from the Germans. With information from the Admiralty becoming more and more unreliable, it was up to him and his staff to make a proper decision against the German naval threat.
The British warships doubled back and turned towards the north, and soon on January 28, Jellicoe saw the rear of the German fleets confirming his fear of a trick. He ordered the British fleets to converge before they attacked the German fleet. A battle was about to begin over Devil’s hole, a small trough in the North Sea 200 miles east of York. The Royal Navy had around 140 warships with them, with 28 battleships, 9 Battlecruisers, 8 armored cruisers, 22 light cruisers, 71 destroyers, 1 minelayer and 1 seaplane carrier. The Germans on the other hand had 16 Battleships, 5 Battlecruisers, 6 pre-dreadnoughts, 11 light cruisers and 61 torpedo boats.
Vice-Admirals Beatty and Evan-Thomas began to fire at the Germans with them targeting Hipper’s Battlecruisers. With several of his ships damaged, Hipper turned back towards Scheer to make their formation more compact, and dangerous. Jellicoe was however despite the early success in a precarious condition. He knew little of the location of the entire German fleet to judge how to deploy his battleships from their cruising formation into one single battle line. Early deployment could mean the loss of a decisive engagement and to deploy late would mean having the chance of destroying his entire fleet. As such Jellicoe decided to gamble, trying to go for the ‘right action at the right time’ move and held his battleships at standby intending to deploy them just as the time was right.
Action on the High Seas during the Battle of Devil's Hole.
Meanwhile as the fleets moved north with one another the British turned back, trying to stop any movement into the Shetland islands and Sunderland and attacked Hipper and Scheer with earnest as well. Vice-Admiral Hood attacked from the northeast and Beatty aided the attack. Nearby numerous British destroyers and cruisers aided the attack on the German warships. However the destroyers and cruisers were often crossing into each other’s courses barely avoiding collisions dampening their effect on the battlefield. The Battle went on and off on this state before the Defense sank at around 15:19, and this made Hipper unsuspectingly capable of sending his fleet into range of Hood’s Battlecruisers. Hipper’s aggressive ships moved into range and with the visibility aiding the British on this sector of the battlefield, the British, led by the HMS Indomitable hit the Germans quick and fast. The German ships were forced back by the sudden attack, with Seyditz and Derflinger sinking into Davy Jones’s Locker whilst the rest decided to return back with Scheer’s main division in the battle.
Jellicoe finally knew where the German fleet was by this point, and he deployed his lines into one massive pincer movement against the Germans with two main fleet lines coming up against the Germans from the north. By the evening, it was becoming clear to Fleet Admiral Reinhard Scheer that his position was becoming untenable as the British destroyer flotillas unleashed a massive torpedo attack at the German battlefleet in a violent and chaotic attack that was extremely successful. They managed to take out Rostock and Pommern creating a dent in the German battle formation. The Germans as such decided to retreat back into the German controlled area of the southeast North Sea and disengage from the battle entirely.
However the Battle of Devil’s Hole is not called one of the Royal Navy’s defining battles for nothing. The 5th Battle Squadron consisting of the Barham, Malaya, and Warspite had doubled back during the battle and were now coming north from the south, right at the German rear. The 5th Battle Squadron unleashed a powerful volley of fire and salvos into the German rear, taking the German fleet by surprise. What happened next was a desperate evening naval battle as the Royal Navy closed in and the Germans tried to let loose. By 8 pm that evening the battle was over as the bulk of the German navy managed to escape, but not without heavy casualties and losses during the battle.
(please forgive my rather amateur attempt to make a naval map).
The Germans had suffered 7,094 sailors dead, 774 wounded, and 281 captured as 2 Battlecruisers and 2 Pre-Dreadnought battleships were sunk. 3 Cruisers were sunk as well with 12 Torpedo-boats being sunk to the bottom as well. In contrast, the British had some 2,936 killed and 602 wounded in the battle, with 1 battlecruiser sunk, 1 battleship sunk, 4 light cruisers sunk and 4 destroyers sunk along with 1 armored cruiser sinking to the bottom during the battle.
The German intention to maim the British with a devastating raid had failed and the naval casualties was also high. The British had thankfully been able to stave off a new debacle and Jellicoe’s cautious approach to the battle had enabled to the win the battle. With the Battle of Devil’s Hole, the Royal Navy secured dominance over the North Sea for the rest of the Great War.” The Naval War. Navalencyclopedia.com.
***
“The 6th Army of Rudolf Brudermann would continue to show itself as exemplary throughout the Winter Offensive as Dankl ordered the 11th Army under the command of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand based out of Krakow to aid Brudermann and his forces. The end goal for the Austrians right now before the Winter Offensive’s first phase ended was to capture Warsaw, and evict the Russians from Russian Poland, perhaps causing a rout along the way. However standing between Warsaw and Lublin was the Russian 11th and 5th Armies under the command of General Sakharov and General Klembovsky, both of whom were far greater in strength and experience than General Plehve.
Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria. A man with no personality apparently but with great talent for military command.
During this time an argument erupted between the Austrian Cisleithanian and the Hungarian Transleithanian government within Austria-Hungary as the Hungarians began to waver in their material support of the war. The Austrians were enraged by this and demanded up front that the Hungarians do their part in the War. The Hungarians retorted that this war was one that they had not asked for. The Austrians simply retorted by asking why then had they agreed to declare war. The Hungarians were quiet on that issue. The Hungarians restored the supply lines to the north however this disruption disrupted the Austrian supply line. Brudermann was faced with a hard choice now, and knew that if the Russians found out about his supply situation and attacked his position would be untenable and would force him to abandon Lublin, reversing the Winter Offensive completely. Brudermann therefore, like his inspiration Mehmet Essat Pasha went on and took a risk. He completely ignored his supply situation and turned towards Warsaw with his 140,000 troops as Joseph Ferdinand converged on Lodz and attacked Lodz.
The 11th Army managed to hit the defenses around Lodz under the command of General Nikolai Ruzsky who commanded the 4th Russian Army. On 11 January, the III Corps of the Austrian 11th Army moved north and struck at the V Siberian corps of Ruzzsky and took the area near Wloclawek on the left bank of the Vistula River before the Russians could prepare any defensive position. Joseph Ferdinand’s left column then attacked the Russian Guard infantry and reached Breziny on the 13th of January and forced the Russian defenses to retreat behind Galkow Maly entirely. The Austrians under the command of the Archduke took the Russians by the storm in a sudden attack, and the Russians were forced to give ground to the encroaching Austrians. The Austrians then surrounded the heights near Lodz and took the outer ring of the city, forcing the bulk of the Russian Army to abandon the city. Inconclusive fighting continued until 19 January before the city fell into Austrian hands completely.
On January 27, the Austrians were arrayed from Sochaczew all the way to Siedice on the southern front of Warsaw with the 11th and 6th Army facing the Russians as the Russians under General Sakharov and Klmebovsky readied themselves to fight the Austrians once and for all in Congress Poland. The Austrians stormed the frontier defenses at Otwock, however the stubborn Russian defenses in the region took a lot of time to dislodge and added to the defensive mobility of the Russians as they became more and more compact and their defensive ring around the capital of Poland became more and more tight and more rigid as the Austrians continued to waste their time with attacking small frontier positions and forts in the regions.
The Austrians managed to take Piaseczno on the 31st of January before coming into full sight of a fortified city in front of them. The Austrians then laid siege to the capital of Poland. Russian reinforcements from the retreating 3rd Army in Poznan allowed Klembovsky and Sakharov to continue to successfully defend themselves. It wasn’t until March 14, when Dankl had supplied Brudermann and Joseph Ferdinand with enough artillery to reduce the city’s defenses that the city fell. The Austrians overran the southern defenses, and an improvised line of defense only managed to hold the Austrians off for a day allowing the Russians to destroy all of the supplies in Warsaw. The Russians then began to retreat wholesale from Warsaw after that. On March 18, the city of Warsaw fell completely to the Austrians, signaling the end of the first phase of the Winter Offensive, which had been a success.
However many were now underestimating the Russians. That would be fatal when the Germans and Austrians attacked in April during the Battle of Brest.” The Winter Offensive. Osprey Publishing, 1999.
***
Order of Battle:-
Anglo-French Order of Battle:-
BEF Commander: Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien
2nd Army – General Fritz von Below
-
“The Battle of Lede was the result of a Russian plea to distract the Germans from taking part in the Austrian led Winter Offensive which was starting to become extremely successful. The French and British commanders during the past few months had been trying to think up a strategy to divert German attention from the east, and the Battle of Lede would become the brainchild of General Smith-Dorrien, who had till now proved himself to be an able commander.
The Battle of Lede would last 62 days from its start on January 21 and the battle truly began during the Battle of Melle. The attack was made by five divisions of the French 6th Army in the south and eleven British divisions of the 4th Army in the north. They were opposed by the German divisions of the 2nd Army under the command of Fritz von Below. The German defense south of the Albert-Wetteren road mostly collapsed, and the French managed to successfully clear out the defenses in that region of the battle. However in the north, the British were having more troubles, as the German defenses in the area were far greater and far more coordinated than in the south. On the south, the German defense was made incapable of making another proper defense, and a proper retreat began and in the south Kwatrecht was abandoned by the Germans completely to retreat to more defensible barriers. However in the north, the German Corps commanded by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria managed to inflict massive losses on the British defenders, with the British 4th Army taking unprecedented losses of 46,391 of which 16,375 were killed, whilst the French losses were merely a fifth of the total British losses in that sector.
After recuperating from the opening battle, the British knew that they would have to seek a proper means of breaking through Prince Rupprecht’s indomitable Bavarian Corps, who were blocking the British path to Aalst, the goal of the British troops. The British thus attacked at Melles once again this time led by the Mark I Tanks, which was a new British innovation in the field of warfare. The Tanks weren’t overly effective as hoped, however, they were able to reduce losses throughout the British front of the attack, and allowed the British to take the western sector of Melle successfully. This would be the first deployment of tanks in history. It would have a glorious future ahead of itself in the field of history.
However in the southern sector of Melle, the Australian Imperial Force was undergoing what is called ‘the worst 24 hours in Australian Military History’ as the 5th Australian Division attacked the German positions in southern Melles only to be butchered by the German defenses, with Australian losses amounting to 5,553 casualties whilst the Germans losses were extremely light within the range of the hundreds. On February 4, Prince Rupprecht managed to garner a two day truce with the British and French to collect the dead from No Man’s Land before the fighting began all across the front in Belgium once again.
The second phase of the Battle of Lede took place in the Battle of Opsmeer Woods. This was an operation conducted to secure the British right flank while the center advanced to control and capture the higher lying areas of Aalst and the High Woods. The British offensive had right now converted itself to evolve into capturing fortified villages, woods and other terrain that offered observation for artillery fire, jumping off points for more attacks, and other tactical advantages. The mostly costly fighting at Opsmeer woods eventually secured the British right flank and marked the debut of the South African 7th Infantry Brigade during the war which held the southern woods.
The Battle of Egern began in good weather and East Egern was captured on 27 February. Pauses were made due to rain and to allow time for a methodical bombardment, when it became clear that the German defense had recovered from earlier defeats. The British bombardment consisted of aerial bombardment and artillery bombardment combined with one another, as they conducted a massive carronade on the German positions. This made the German position unable of sitting down and forced von Below’s troops to retreat back towards Aalst where the British objective lay.
British tanks during the Battle of Lede.
On the 19th of March the British attacked the Aalst region against the german defenses with a combination of aerial, artillery and armored attack, and after 4 days of heavy slogging managed to defeat the German defenses in that area, forcing the Germans to abandon that front of their plan of attack, and forcing them to retreat back to their fortifications at Asbeeck to defend Brussels itself, as the British troops advanced 40 kilometers throughout the entire two months to liberate considerable territory with French and Belgian aid during the battle.
The British and French had succeeded in distracting the Germans and the Battle of Lede is often cited today as a reason why the Winter Offensive lost its steam after the fall of Warsaw.” The Battle of Lede: The Origins of the Tank. Osprey Publishing, 2006.
The frontlines after the Battle of Lede, Warsaw and Lodz in March, 1916.
***
“On March 25, the British Admiralty and Ministry of War, in conjunction with the Spaniards and French authorized a landing force of 200,000 men (70,000 British, 40,000 French and 90,000 Spaniards) to land in Sardinia, just as Italy reinforced the island with 90,000 troops under the command of General Cadorna as General Diaz took care of the Alpine front in the north. First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill aimed to take Sardinia in what would be a hopping campaign to defeat Italy. Take Sardinia, and lay the foundation for a naval assault on Rome itself which would take the Italian Kingdom out of the war entirely. It wasn’t a bad idea. But the Battle of Sardinia would prove to be one of the most bloody affairs of the Great War.” The Battle of Sardinia – A Dagger Aimed at Italy. Osprey Publishing, 2009.
The allied fleet approaching Sardinia...........
***
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[1] – Water from the Zamzam well, the holiest well in Islamic religious consciousness.
[2] – This is true for otl as well as ittl.
***
“On December 1, 1915, the Ottoman Electoral Commission informed the government that the next senatorial elections of the government, slated to take place every 3 years would took place on the 27th of January all the way to the 30th of January in 1916. As such the wartime coalition collapsed as the Balkan War ended, and the pre-war situation continued politically within the political spectrum of the empire. The senatorial elections this year would be extremely competitive as the issue of Women’s Franchise and Universal Women’s suffrage became a heated issue in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
The Committee of Union and Progress led by Ahmet Riza had managed to win the war, and the boost of the war prestige made the party’s position unassailable. Riza and the CUP campaigned during the elections in favor of conditional universal women’s suffrage which they deemed enough to be a middle ground. In contrast, the main opposition party, the Liberal Entente, led the way through the campaign in favor of unconditional universal suffrage which was supported by the Liberal Entente’s new leader, the 1st Premier of Albania, Hasan Prishtina. The Socialist Party under Huseyin Hilmi decided that they would be seeking the endorsements of the labour and trade unions in the country to gain their needed votes, and the Democratic Party under Ibrahim Temo sought their votes from their local strongholds scattered throughout the empire. It was the minor parties of the Social Democrats that managed to campaign a little better than before, as they managed to utilize the previous specter of war economy to gain more votes and credence to their social democratic views from the electoral populace of the country. The Armenekan Party under Portukalian experienced a downgrowth as ethnic nationalism and ethnic politics in the Ottoman empire started to disintegrate in favor of cross-ethnic political parties, which the CUP, Liberal Entente, Socialists and Democrats showed themselves as. The OPAD, a party espousing federal and confederal views, did not garner much support, as the recent spike of Ottoman Nationalism due to the war had made their federal views unpopular. Poale Zion similarly experienced a decline as the parties began to evolve into cross-religious parties as well, making the position of the party precarious.
At the end, the CUP won 33 seats, forming a large plurality with the Liberal Entente close behind with 25 seats. The Socialist Party won 14 seats whilst the Ottoman Democratic Party won 12 seats. The Social Democrats increased their seat coverage from 5 to 6, and the Armenekan Party lost seats to become reduced to 5 seats. The OPAD managed to scrape together 2 seats whilst Poale Zion barely managed to hang on with 1 seat in the Senate. The last seat of the Senate was taken up by an independent from the Senatorial Seat of Jerusalem. Huseyin Hilmi managed to retain his position in the Senate as the Speaker of the Senate, and promised more senatorial reforms regarding the position.” A Political History of the Ottoman Empire, Oxford Publishing, 2009.
“The Ottoman Empire having ended the Balkan War once again turned inwards towards economic development to make the economic standards of the nation better. The economic reforms of the past 4 years had shown their fruits to the Ottomans during the war with the Bulgarians, Serbians and Montenegrins and the Ottomans were eager to make sure that they could follow that up with ever changing and evergrowing economic success. The Ottomans were primarily an Islamic empire. The fact that they immediately turned to Hejaz, home of Mecca and Medina is therefore not at all surprising at times.
The economy of the Hejaz Vilayet was predominantly reliant on the annual Hajj and pilgrimage, as Muslims from throughout the world travelled to come to the holy cities of Medina and Mecca. The importance of the pilgrimage was such that entire residents of many outer villages outside of Mecca relied on the windfall from the pilgrimages for daily sustenance. May residents worked as guides for Pilgrims, camel-brokers, and built and provided pilgrim accommodations, sold or distributed Zamzam water [1]. Others worked in the maintenance of the Masjid Al-Haram and the Masjid al-Nabawi as sweepers, doorkeepers, servants, prayer leaders, preachers or candle cleaners. Of these occupations, the most numerous was that of the pilgrimage guides. These guides had the task of organizing the pilgrim’s accommodation, transportation, acting as a translator, and generally gudng the pilgrim through the rituals and prayers required. The opening of the Damascus-Hejaz Railway had however provided the peoples of Hejaz with new economic opportunities, and many became involved in the railway sector, and employment in this new burgeoning sector allowed the populace to diversify their economic base.
The pilgrims and caravans in Hejaz
The Ottoman government unveiled the Hejaz Economic Development and Reform Plan on February 9, 1916 under the direction of Finance Minister Avraam Benaroya who was eager to develop the Vilayet of Hejaz to bring it up to speed with the rest of the Ottoman Empire, as it was lagging behind slightly. The Development and Reform plan consisted of the following points:-
- The government funded opening of 5 Date Mills.
- The construction of a new railway line between Hejaz and Yemen increasing interconnectedness between the two Vilayets
- The opening of 20 new higher education schools and 42 lower education schools.
- The construction of new highways between Syria and Hejaz, as well as the cities and towns of Hejaz to made transportation services easier.
- Creation of economic agricultural tax exemptions to increase incentive for agriculture in the Vilayet.
- The development of Jazan as a new regional port within Hejaz to lift the load in Jeddah.
- The scouring of the Vilayet to take place to find potential oil fields in the Vilayet.
The Ottomans however had new problems to deal with in the north that they didn’t like at all. While anti-semitism in the Ottoman Empire was not high and relatively low, that didn’t mean that it didn’t exist. Several Christians and muslims in Palestine were known to assault the Jewish immigrants settling in their new homes. The Ottoman judicial system helped whenever it could, however, that didn’t mean they could take care off every offender, and some slipped through the net and continued to harass many Jews. In response a small Jewish militant organization known as the Hashomer was starting to gain prominence when on February 5, they raided the house of an anti-semite Assyrian in Jerusalem and killed the family. Hashomer had been established in 1907 by Alexander Zaid, a prominent Jewish settler in Ottoman Palestine. The Ottoman government reacted violently against the paramilitary organization.
The Flag of Hashomer.
Ottoman gendarmerie stormed the headquarters of Hashomer on February 17, 1916 and took the entire militia and paramilitary’s leadership under arrest. The members of the Hashomers knew that unauthorized paramilitaries were illegal within the Ottoman Empire, and that killing and murdering was also prosecutable under Ottoman law, however they had ignored that, and now were paying for it. The leadership was sentenced to life in prison. Most famously Sultan Mehmed V gave a speech in the Chamber of Deputies regarding the case.
“We are a multinational and multi-religious empire. As such despite our relative harmony with one another, fractions will always arise from time to time. However violence cannot be the answer. The Ottoman Government under the full provisions of the Constitutions will prosecute any murderer in the state, whether he or she be Christian, Muslim or Jew, whether he or she may be Turk, Arab, Jew, Armenian, Greek, Slavic or Albanian. This is a nation of equals. No single group is going to be favored over the other. Remember that, and this nation will flourish.” – Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Front for Jews or the OFJ was quick to support the Sultan, and condemned the Hashomer and the murders. Prominent Jewish politicians throughout the empire decried the Hashomer, with many calling out that a tit for tat strategy was not available and neither was it capable of being implemented and that it would jeopardize the future of the Jews within the Ottoman Empire. However something that made relations cool considerably was that the Ottoman Gendarmerie and Information sector had managed to find several links between the leaders of the Hashomer and the Zionist Congress. [2] As a result, the Ottoman government withdrew their funding of the Zionist Congress’s movement and settlement program in the Sinai Peninsula, and pointedly ignored the protests of the Zionist Congress, becoming increasingly irritated by the Zionist Congress’s continued meddling in Jewish affairs in the Ottoman Empire.
Ahmet Riza would sum up the issue bluntly when he told the Zionist ambassador ‘Your congress isn’t the representative of Ottoman Jews. The deputies and senators they elect to the Ottoman Parliament are their representatives. Not the Congress.’
This would be yet another precursor to the Sinai Crisis.” A History of Ottoman Arabia. Penguin Publishing, 1997.
***
“To Damage the English Fleet by offensive raids against the naval forces engaged in watching and blockading the German Blight, as well as by mine laying on the British coast and Submarine attack, whenever possible. After an equality of strength had been realized as a result of these operations, and all our forces had been made ready and concentrated, an attempt is to be made with our fleet to seek battle under circumstances unfavorable to the enemy.” – Admiral von Scheer
On January 7, the German Imperial Admiralty decided to halt their unrestricted submarine warfare throughout the Atlantic after complaints from neutral countries like the USA, Brazil and Argentina decried the loss of their ships. Reinhard Scheer, the German Fleet Commander believed that it would not be possible to continue attacking the enemy through the international accords of restricted submarine warfare and instead he set about deploying the submarine fleet against military vessels. It was hoped that following a successful German submarine attack, the fast British escorts such as destroyers and light cruisers would be tied down by anti-submarine operations. Then amidst this, the Germans would catch the British with their proverbial pants down. This decision was laid out after watching the (partially) successful Italo-Austrian victory at the Battle of the Apulin Plateau.
The Germans deployed 17 submarines into the North Sea on January 13, as a part of their plan. A fleet of Zeppelins were also deployed into the North Sea and Skagerrak for aerial reconnaissance and bombing runs. The Germans began to deploy the Zeppelins in the direction of the Norwegian Trough, distracting the Royal Navy allowing the German Navy to move north to attempt a raid at Sunderland. On January 18, the German warships left port, in order to conduct Reinhard’s daring scheme to strike out against the British Navy.
Unfortunately for the Germans, the British had obtained a German codebook from a scuttled German torpedo boat in Tanganyika, and were able to utilize the codebook to tap into German plans. The British Admiralty maintained the direction finding and interception of German naval signals, and on January 18, decrypted a German signal that provided ample evidence that the Germans were moving into the North Sea for a serious attack. After the debacle in the Mediterranean, Fleet Commander Jellicoe was unusually calm and cautious, intent on not making a second naval debacle possible.
Not knowing what the Germans were going after (Sunderland), Jellicoe and the Admiralty decided to head off any attempt by the Germans to enter the North Atlantic or Baltic through the Skagerrak by taking up positions right out of Norwegian waters, something that would irritate the Norwegian government a lot throughout the battle, as they feared it would breach their neutrality. As such Jellicoe led the sixteen dreadnought battleships of the 1st and 4th Battle Squadrons of the Grand Fleet and the 3 Battlecruisers of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron and headed eastward out of Scapa Flow on January 19, 1916. He was to meet Vice-Admiral Martyn Jerram coming from Cromarty. On January 21, the Admiralty reported to Jellicoe that the Germans had left the Heligoland blight just as Vice-Admiral Beatty’s 5th Battle Squadron of four battleships met and grouped up with Jellicoe.
As the British moved towards the east, being caught in the German diversion with the submarines and the Zeppelins, the Germans began to move towards the west. If they could catch Sunderland by surprise then there was a good chance that Reinhard and Hipper could catch the docked British fleets there completely open to attack without a proper means of defense. The 3rd British Battlecruiser Squadron consisting of the Galatea and Phaeton moved in the rear of the British Grand Fleet and came into contact with U-32 submarine. Before the submarine could properly attack the two battlecruisers, the submarine was subjected to a forced crashed dive by the tow battlecruisers, and retreated out of the line of attack. The British Admirals noted the presence of the submarines and were being caught into the German trap further and further.
Further north, U-76 was retreating from her zone of patrolling when the Duke of Edinburgh and Boudica, as well as eight battleships got within 350 yards of the submarine. The U-76 got ready to fire, however was forced to crash dive by an incoming destroyer. Its captain, Edgar von Spiegel reported back to the German Admiralty that there were 8 Royal Navy Battleships moving towards the southeast of the North Sea. The earlier submarine, the U-32 likewise reported the exact opposite. The courses predicted by the subs were incorrect. The British were instead focusing on a zigzag maneuver against the Germans in case of an attack. Meanwhile however, completely unknown to the British, the entire German High Seas Fleet had used the submarine and zeppelin ruse to pass through the Doggerbank area unnoticed. A British submarine patrolling in the area saw them, however was sunk by the Germans before it could report back to the Admiralty about the incoming danger.
It was the quiet nature of the ongoing battle that persuaded Jellicoe to double back on the 22nd, as his newfound cautiousness feared a surprise attack from the Germans. With information from the Admiralty becoming more and more unreliable, it was up to him and his staff to make a proper decision against the German naval threat.
The British warships doubled back and turned towards the north, and soon on January 28, Jellicoe saw the rear of the German fleets confirming his fear of a trick. He ordered the British fleets to converge before they attacked the German fleet. A battle was about to begin over Devil’s hole, a small trough in the North Sea 200 miles east of York. The Royal Navy had around 140 warships with them, with 28 battleships, 9 Battlecruisers, 8 armored cruisers, 22 light cruisers, 71 destroyers, 1 minelayer and 1 seaplane carrier. The Germans on the other hand had 16 Battleships, 5 Battlecruisers, 6 pre-dreadnoughts, 11 light cruisers and 61 torpedo boats.
Vice-Admirals Beatty and Evan-Thomas began to fire at the Germans with them targeting Hipper’s Battlecruisers. With several of his ships damaged, Hipper turned back towards Scheer to make their formation more compact, and dangerous. Jellicoe was however despite the early success in a precarious condition. He knew little of the location of the entire German fleet to judge how to deploy his battleships from their cruising formation into one single battle line. Early deployment could mean the loss of a decisive engagement and to deploy late would mean having the chance of destroying his entire fleet. As such Jellicoe decided to gamble, trying to go for the ‘right action at the right time’ move and held his battleships at standby intending to deploy them just as the time was right.
Action on the High Seas during the Battle of Devil's Hole.
Meanwhile as the fleets moved north with one another the British turned back, trying to stop any movement into the Shetland islands and Sunderland and attacked Hipper and Scheer with earnest as well. Vice-Admiral Hood attacked from the northeast and Beatty aided the attack. Nearby numerous British destroyers and cruisers aided the attack on the German warships. However the destroyers and cruisers were often crossing into each other’s courses barely avoiding collisions dampening their effect on the battlefield. The Battle went on and off on this state before the Defense sank at around 15:19, and this made Hipper unsuspectingly capable of sending his fleet into range of Hood’s Battlecruisers. Hipper’s aggressive ships moved into range and with the visibility aiding the British on this sector of the battlefield, the British, led by the HMS Indomitable hit the Germans quick and fast. The German ships were forced back by the sudden attack, with Seyditz and Derflinger sinking into Davy Jones’s Locker whilst the rest decided to return back with Scheer’s main division in the battle.
Jellicoe finally knew where the German fleet was by this point, and he deployed his lines into one massive pincer movement against the Germans with two main fleet lines coming up against the Germans from the north. By the evening, it was becoming clear to Fleet Admiral Reinhard Scheer that his position was becoming untenable as the British destroyer flotillas unleashed a massive torpedo attack at the German battlefleet in a violent and chaotic attack that was extremely successful. They managed to take out Rostock and Pommern creating a dent in the German battle formation. The Germans as such decided to retreat back into the German controlled area of the southeast North Sea and disengage from the battle entirely.
However the Battle of Devil’s Hole is not called one of the Royal Navy’s defining battles for nothing. The 5th Battle Squadron consisting of the Barham, Malaya, and Warspite had doubled back during the battle and were now coming north from the south, right at the German rear. The 5th Battle Squadron unleashed a powerful volley of fire and salvos into the German rear, taking the German fleet by surprise. What happened next was a desperate evening naval battle as the Royal Navy closed in and the Germans tried to let loose. By 8 pm that evening the battle was over as the bulk of the German navy managed to escape, but not without heavy casualties and losses during the battle.
(please forgive my rather amateur attempt to make a naval map).
The Germans had suffered 7,094 sailors dead, 774 wounded, and 281 captured as 2 Battlecruisers and 2 Pre-Dreadnought battleships were sunk. 3 Cruisers were sunk as well with 12 Torpedo-boats being sunk to the bottom as well. In contrast, the British had some 2,936 killed and 602 wounded in the battle, with 1 battlecruiser sunk, 1 battleship sunk, 4 light cruisers sunk and 4 destroyers sunk along with 1 armored cruiser sinking to the bottom during the battle.
The German intention to maim the British with a devastating raid had failed and the naval casualties was also high. The British had thankfully been able to stave off a new debacle and Jellicoe’s cautious approach to the battle had enabled to the win the battle. With the Battle of Devil’s Hole, the Royal Navy secured dominance over the North Sea for the rest of the Great War.” The Naval War. Navalencyclopedia.com.
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“The 6th Army of Rudolf Brudermann would continue to show itself as exemplary throughout the Winter Offensive as Dankl ordered the 11th Army under the command of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand based out of Krakow to aid Brudermann and his forces. The end goal for the Austrians right now before the Winter Offensive’s first phase ended was to capture Warsaw, and evict the Russians from Russian Poland, perhaps causing a rout along the way. However standing between Warsaw and Lublin was the Russian 11th and 5th Armies under the command of General Sakharov and General Klembovsky, both of whom were far greater in strength and experience than General Plehve.
Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria. A man with no personality apparently but with great talent for military command.
During this time an argument erupted between the Austrian Cisleithanian and the Hungarian Transleithanian government within Austria-Hungary as the Hungarians began to waver in their material support of the war. The Austrians were enraged by this and demanded up front that the Hungarians do their part in the War. The Hungarians retorted that this war was one that they had not asked for. The Austrians simply retorted by asking why then had they agreed to declare war. The Hungarians were quiet on that issue. The Hungarians restored the supply lines to the north however this disruption disrupted the Austrian supply line. Brudermann was faced with a hard choice now, and knew that if the Russians found out about his supply situation and attacked his position would be untenable and would force him to abandon Lublin, reversing the Winter Offensive completely. Brudermann therefore, like his inspiration Mehmet Essat Pasha went on and took a risk. He completely ignored his supply situation and turned towards Warsaw with his 140,000 troops as Joseph Ferdinand converged on Lodz and attacked Lodz.
The 11th Army managed to hit the defenses around Lodz under the command of General Nikolai Ruzsky who commanded the 4th Russian Army. On 11 January, the III Corps of the Austrian 11th Army moved north and struck at the V Siberian corps of Ruzzsky and took the area near Wloclawek on the left bank of the Vistula River before the Russians could prepare any defensive position. Joseph Ferdinand’s left column then attacked the Russian Guard infantry and reached Breziny on the 13th of January and forced the Russian defenses to retreat behind Galkow Maly entirely. The Austrians under the command of the Archduke took the Russians by the storm in a sudden attack, and the Russians were forced to give ground to the encroaching Austrians. The Austrians then surrounded the heights near Lodz and took the outer ring of the city, forcing the bulk of the Russian Army to abandon the city. Inconclusive fighting continued until 19 January before the city fell into Austrian hands completely.
On January 27, the Austrians were arrayed from Sochaczew all the way to Siedice on the southern front of Warsaw with the 11th and 6th Army facing the Russians as the Russians under General Sakharov and Klmebovsky readied themselves to fight the Austrians once and for all in Congress Poland. The Austrians stormed the frontier defenses at Otwock, however the stubborn Russian defenses in the region took a lot of time to dislodge and added to the defensive mobility of the Russians as they became more and more compact and their defensive ring around the capital of Poland became more and more tight and more rigid as the Austrians continued to waste their time with attacking small frontier positions and forts in the regions.
The Austrians managed to take Piaseczno on the 31st of January before coming into full sight of a fortified city in front of them. The Austrians then laid siege to the capital of Poland. Russian reinforcements from the retreating 3rd Army in Poznan allowed Klembovsky and Sakharov to continue to successfully defend themselves. It wasn’t until March 14, when Dankl had supplied Brudermann and Joseph Ferdinand with enough artillery to reduce the city’s defenses that the city fell. The Austrians overran the southern defenses, and an improvised line of defense only managed to hold the Austrians off for a day allowing the Russians to destroy all of the supplies in Warsaw. The Russians then began to retreat wholesale from Warsaw after that. On March 18, the city of Warsaw fell completely to the Austrians, signaling the end of the first phase of the Winter Offensive, which had been a success.
However many were now underestimating the Russians. That would be fatal when the Germans and Austrians attacked in April during the Battle of Brest.” The Winter Offensive. Osprey Publishing, 1999.
***
Order of Battle:-
Anglo-French Order of Battle:-
BEF Commander: Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien
- 3rd British Army (General Sir Edmund Allenby)
- II Corps
- III Corps
- V Corps
- VII Corps
- 4th British Army (General Sir Henry Rawlinson)
- VIII Corps
- X Corps
- XIII Corps
- XIV Corps
- 5th British Army (General Hubert Gough)
- XV Corps
- Canadian Corps
- ANZAC Corps
- 6th French Army (General Ferdinand Foch)
- 10th French Army (General Marie Emile Fayolle)
2nd Army – General Fritz von Below
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“The Battle of Lede was the result of a Russian plea to distract the Germans from taking part in the Austrian led Winter Offensive which was starting to become extremely successful. The French and British commanders during the past few months had been trying to think up a strategy to divert German attention from the east, and the Battle of Lede would become the brainchild of General Smith-Dorrien, who had till now proved himself to be an able commander.
The Battle of Lede would last 62 days from its start on January 21 and the battle truly began during the Battle of Melle. The attack was made by five divisions of the French 6th Army in the south and eleven British divisions of the 4th Army in the north. They were opposed by the German divisions of the 2nd Army under the command of Fritz von Below. The German defense south of the Albert-Wetteren road mostly collapsed, and the French managed to successfully clear out the defenses in that region of the battle. However in the north, the British were having more troubles, as the German defenses in the area were far greater and far more coordinated than in the south. On the south, the German defense was made incapable of making another proper defense, and a proper retreat began and in the south Kwatrecht was abandoned by the Germans completely to retreat to more defensible barriers. However in the north, the German Corps commanded by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria managed to inflict massive losses on the British defenders, with the British 4th Army taking unprecedented losses of 46,391 of which 16,375 were killed, whilst the French losses were merely a fifth of the total British losses in that sector.
After recuperating from the opening battle, the British knew that they would have to seek a proper means of breaking through Prince Rupprecht’s indomitable Bavarian Corps, who were blocking the British path to Aalst, the goal of the British troops. The British thus attacked at Melles once again this time led by the Mark I Tanks, which was a new British innovation in the field of warfare. The Tanks weren’t overly effective as hoped, however, they were able to reduce losses throughout the British front of the attack, and allowed the British to take the western sector of Melle successfully. This would be the first deployment of tanks in history. It would have a glorious future ahead of itself in the field of history.
However in the southern sector of Melle, the Australian Imperial Force was undergoing what is called ‘the worst 24 hours in Australian Military History’ as the 5th Australian Division attacked the German positions in southern Melles only to be butchered by the German defenses, with Australian losses amounting to 5,553 casualties whilst the Germans losses were extremely light within the range of the hundreds. On February 4, Prince Rupprecht managed to garner a two day truce with the British and French to collect the dead from No Man’s Land before the fighting began all across the front in Belgium once again.
The second phase of the Battle of Lede took place in the Battle of Opsmeer Woods. This was an operation conducted to secure the British right flank while the center advanced to control and capture the higher lying areas of Aalst and the High Woods. The British offensive had right now converted itself to evolve into capturing fortified villages, woods and other terrain that offered observation for artillery fire, jumping off points for more attacks, and other tactical advantages. The mostly costly fighting at Opsmeer woods eventually secured the British right flank and marked the debut of the South African 7th Infantry Brigade during the war which held the southern woods.
The Battle of Egern began in good weather and East Egern was captured on 27 February. Pauses were made due to rain and to allow time for a methodical bombardment, when it became clear that the German defense had recovered from earlier defeats. The British bombardment consisted of aerial bombardment and artillery bombardment combined with one another, as they conducted a massive carronade on the German positions. This made the German position unable of sitting down and forced von Below’s troops to retreat back towards Aalst where the British objective lay.
British tanks during the Battle of Lede.
On the 19th of March the British attacked the Aalst region against the german defenses with a combination of aerial, artillery and armored attack, and after 4 days of heavy slogging managed to defeat the German defenses in that area, forcing the Germans to abandon that front of their plan of attack, and forcing them to retreat back to their fortifications at Asbeeck to defend Brussels itself, as the British troops advanced 40 kilometers throughout the entire two months to liberate considerable territory with French and Belgian aid during the battle.
The British and French had succeeded in distracting the Germans and the Battle of Lede is often cited today as a reason why the Winter Offensive lost its steam after the fall of Warsaw.” The Battle of Lede: The Origins of the Tank. Osprey Publishing, 2006.
The frontlines after the Battle of Lede, Warsaw and Lodz in March, 1916.
***
“On March 25, the British Admiralty and Ministry of War, in conjunction with the Spaniards and French authorized a landing force of 200,000 men (70,000 British, 40,000 French and 90,000 Spaniards) to land in Sardinia, just as Italy reinforced the island with 90,000 troops under the command of General Cadorna as General Diaz took care of the Alpine front in the north. First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill aimed to take Sardinia in what would be a hopping campaign to defeat Italy. Take Sardinia, and lay the foundation for a naval assault on Rome itself which would take the Italian Kingdom out of the war entirely. It wasn’t a bad idea. But the Battle of Sardinia would prove to be one of the most bloody affairs of the Great War.” The Battle of Sardinia – A Dagger Aimed at Italy. Osprey Publishing, 2009.
The allied fleet approaching Sardinia...........
***
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[1] – Water from the Zamzam well, the holiest well in Islamic religious consciousness.
[2] – This is true for otl as well as ittl.
I may have been unclear- I was comparing the Spanish entry to the war (original in its execution, plausibly written) to the strange incompetence of the Greek and British navies in the last update.