WELTREICH: Part 3 — Victoria III AAR (1920–1925)

Weltkrieg — Campaign AAR, Part 3

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The concluding chapter to the little narration I gave to my Victoria 3 game as Greater Germany. This one isn’t fully finished but as I am unlikely to have time to finish it, I may as well publish as-is.

Some chapters will be obviously barebones with my sketeched notes on what I had planned to write about. But I got carried away.

CONTENTS

• Weltkrieg (1920–25)

Links to Part 1 and 2 of this series:

1: https://medium.com/@edisonzhou2007/weltreich-a-victoria-iii-germany-campaign-aar-7fcbd2b0d80f

2: https://medium.com/@edisonzhou2007/weltreich-part-2-victoria-iii-aar-1870-1920-3e38d1c25869

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Weltkrieg, 1920–25

The ‘Reforms of 1920’, credit to the architect Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn, filled OHL (Oberste Heeresleitung) with much confidence.

Flamethrowers were dispersed to all units with a new unit composition having been formulated: the concept of ‘stormtroopers’, Stoßtruppen, who could break enemy trench lines through infiltration and assault to return warfare to the state of manoeuvre rather than static stalemate. Aerial reconnaissance was factored in as the ideal method of artillery observation. The ‘creeping barrage’ was theorised, through which infantry could advance out of their positions while covered by an artillery cannonade that preceded them by not many metres. Other methods of breakthrough were being researched. In 1916, large funding had been given to exploration of chemical warfare, which remained in its infancy four years later.

They did not think that themechanisation of warfare was necessary or possible. They would rather the army was ready with its present technology when the war commenced in, predictably, a few months.

The OHL shot itself in the foot when in March of 1920 (seeing one of the members of their Entente, France, in dire straits) the Russians reached out through secret channels looking to enter some defensive/non-aggression pact with Germany and a reinstated trade agreement. Because Ludendorff wanted war to break the encirclement, he ironically rebuffed their olive leaf. The same month, Germany formed an alliance with Spain.

Then Berlin went so far as to expel all Russian, British, and American diplomats from the country. These were not sane actions. These were paranoid actions. It was Germany, fearing humiliation from international encirclement, trying to pre-empt them, and in that very process creating its enemies.

The Bourbon emperor took hold of his country by August of 1920. Now, fascist against fascist. The French Empire’s mandate was essentially ‘cut Germany down to size’. Failing that, he had no other raison d’etre.

August Crisis, 1920

The real flashpoint was in the Balkans — remember Bismarck’s own portent:

“If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.”

In August, a Bulgarian, Albanian, and Bosnian uprising threatened to rip off the European third of the Ottoman Empire, something that soon expanded in a Balkan War that involved Serbia, Greece, Romania, and Montenegro.

Figure 18.0, Springtime of the Balkans.

The default German disposition was to support its ally. The problem was that the other powers had precisely the opposite idea. Russia as ‘Protector of the Slavs’ had special interest in Serbia and Bulgaria, aside from its existing alliance with Romania. German-friendly states like Croatia and Hungary possessed ill relations with Bosnia and Serbia respectively. Romanian irredentists sought control of Transylvania, which was for the most part ethnically Romanian. All the new states were anti-Ottoman. In a stroke, the Sultan had lost about 33% of its territory and 20% of its population.

The Balkan War had an inflammatory effect on existing national juxtapositions. Romania launched an invasion of the Duchy of Transylvania, while Greece was warring against the Tsardom of Bulgaria for Thrace. Both Germany and Russia had alliances with these nations.

The German military may have planned for an eventual war, but as it happened they were caught off-guard. Russia was making its play. It was willing to back Romania for the last piece of Bessarabia. It also wanted to annex Galicia. Tsar Pavel Romanov and Kaiser Friedrich IV exchanged telegrams. They talked about peace.
But at the same time 26 September saw general mobilisation in the UK ordered. Great Britain then immediately embargoed the German Empire. The famous ‘Railroad Thesis’ of historian AJP Taylor argues that strict mobilisation schedules were what made the countdown to war inevitable. By that logic, the point of no return for the August Crisis was when the British began to mobilise and call up reserves.

One of Germany’s most valuable allies, Italy, declared for the time being its neutrality in the crisis. This was due to the Reich’s refusal to cede Istria to Italy, a perpetual sore point in their relationship. Refusing to do so would have forfeited many millions of men and an ally on the French and Balkan fronts.

Britain declared support for Russia on 17 October. America showed its stance by embargoing Germany not long after.

The supreme opportunist, France’s Emperor Ferdinand-Philippe sent out an ultimatum to Berlin for the return of Lorraine and Franche-Comte. Germany, of course, refused.

Bassermann won a diplomatic victory out of his trip to Madrid, when King Alfonso and his military advisors agreed to join a war against France in return for British Gibraltar, Oran, and French Tunisia.

He also procured the allegiance of Scandinavia in return for Russian Finland; their control of Iceland and Greenland would be valuable in the naval positioning war. Japan declared its hostility to Russia.

On 19 October, he delivered a speech that spoke in internationalist and dramatic terms:

“We must form the axis that shall resist the machinations of the…Old World … from Berlin to Baghdad will be aligned the new axis around which the world shall revolve.”

The OHL immediately had to increase taxation rates and levied consumption taxes on all manner of expensive goods.

It was when the United States of America stepped in in November of 1920 that Germany realised just how dire its situation was. Mexico and the Federation of the Americas (Peru-Bolivia) naturally joined them. The Ottomans had been convinced by that month (promises of Caucasus and Balkans territories), but now Germany deployed its sweet talk on Italy. Dealing behind Spain’s back, they were promised Tunisia, to go along with huge territorial annexations up to the Rhone River and Corsica from France, Cyprus from Britain, Istria from Germany, and were promised to face no opposition if they one day invaded Greece, Croatia, or Crete. So Italy entered the fold.

There had never been such a war so global — such was the power of the all-devouring, ephemeral alliance. It cannot be said that Germany intended for a war of this scale. In December, Emperor Antoine Bernadotte in Stockholm was successfully persuaded by British envoys to abandon the German side. He made no noise about it then, but when war began he did not join either side.

Croatia’s King, sensing foul play with the Italian switch, also broke off ties with Germany.

An international embargo probably tanked the German GDP by about 30 million pounds in the first few months of the crisis. It soon recovered in nominal figures; however, this was more due to the ballooning of the war industry and forced employment in either the army or factories.

The Great War Begins, January 1921

On the 7th of January 1921, the Ottoman navy ineffectually bombed Russian ships in the Crimea. They were the first to go to war. Serbia and Romania sent a joint declaration of war to Hungary on the 9th, several hours after they had begun moving in troops. Germany responded later that day. Russia declared war on Germany on the 10th.

France and Germany went to war a month later.

The American powers joined a couple months afterwards.

In all nations involved, citizens poured their hearts out with nationalistic fervour. In Russia, there was the first pro-Tsarist sentiment in decades. In Britain, people were invigorated in the notion that they were the generation to oversee Britain’s “finest hour”, the one war that would see Britannia preserved or broken. American isolationism had also been replaced by President Wilson’s internationalist doctrines.

The list of involved nations as of the war’s start:

Axis Powers:

• German Reich
• Kingdom of Hungary
• Duchy of Transylvania
• Duchy of Galicia-Lodomeria
• Empire of Italy
• Ottoman Empire
• Kingdom of Spain
• Empire of Japan
• Khedivate of Egypt

Entente Powers:

• United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
• French Empire
• Russian Empire
• Kingdom of Greece
• Tsardom of Bulgaria
• Principality of Serbia
• Grand Duchy of Finland
• Kingdom of Romania
• United States of America
• Empire of Brazil
• Federation of the Americas
• United Mexican States
• Commonwealth of Australia
• Dominion of Canada

With their recent experiences of warfare and a long period of anticipation (thus preparation), the armies that lurched into war were gargantuan:

Figure 19.0, military sizes of the Great War

German Opening Strategy: Drang Nach Osten

Caught in a two-front war, the OHL faced a conundrum. War planning had focused on Russia, because the German high command had underestimated the fire of the revanchist spirit in France. Despite deep exhaustion, the French people, 43 million of them, were bitter about the incompetence of the Communards in leading the last war, and sought the chance to prove themselves. Failing that, France would lose its position as a Great Power. Anecdotal evidence shows that the French soldiers were considered the most dedicated of any nationality in the war — unfailing morale up to the very end.

Based on existing plans, they would make a two-pincer attack out of Lwow and East Prussia; the two army groups would converge on Brest — a grand manoeuvre to encircle the entire front. Firstly, the idea was grandiose and impractical, as about three million men had been been sucked away to the Westfront. The strategic idea of knocking Russia out of the war was not a bad one. It is debatable, but it had many merits.

For one, there was the nationalities factor. Germany seriously lacked grain, so of course they had interest in gaining wheat exports out of Ukraine, but they did genuinely proclaim in 1921 that Ukraine and the Belorussians would be granted independence. In the Baku, there was oil, which the Axis powers desperately needed given the suffocating international embargo. Even if the fleet could defend most convoys, the pool of nations to trade with was small.

Russia under its premiers Witte and Stolypin had seen limited economic reform, but other than that it was an archaic monstrosity that had no place in the 20th century. Only the Orthodox Church and military propped up the Tsar at that point. The military had hardly reformed and had been embarrassed in the Persian War against the English. Despite good progress in the Great Game, they had seen no new expansion abroad for decades; quite the contrary: influence in China and Japan was lost to Germany, Afghanistan and Persia to Britain. The Russian Empire possessed a decrepit military whose enormous strength existed only on paper and an abysmal railway system.

There were disadvantages, on balance: the large size of russia posed logistical challenges as well as the manpower needed for occupation.

At the same time, it would be more difficult to defend against Russia. The broad front meant there would always be avenues to be attacked from, and the curvature from East Prussia to Galicia favoured offence, not defence. Trenches were also being established on the French side, even before war was declared. Assuming Germany successfully broke through, British and American troops could absorb the impact. And France had much less resource value to the long war. There was also the risk of naval invasion from Britain once it could be occupied.

Thus was the decision made on the eve of Germany’s commencement of war to focus east. Hindenburg was placed in overall command of the Westfront, and he fell back many miles to a concave, more defensible front known as the Hindenburg Line.

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On 13 January, the Battle for Galicia began. The Imperial Russian Army was being dictated by objectives from Moscow, which were to crush Hungary and help its Slavic allies. The Hungarians performed exceedingly well during the Great War. In an attempt to emulate the power of Austria-Hungary, it maintained a large army, large enough to be suboptimal by drafting young teenagers. Still, against Russia’s web of allies and the ‘Bear’ itself, it held its own. Hungary’s General Schweidel triumphed in the Battle of Galicia, as well as three other simultaneous engagements: in Moldavia, Banat, and Delvidek

They joined the Germans in an upwards thrust into Poland. By the coming of February, Russian casualties were already 390,000 in number.

The speed and scale of German victories in the East gave the lie to Allied doubts about the effectiveness of the archaic Prussian military tradition.

Figure 19.1, Frontline in May 1921.

A new directive began the drive to Kherson and the Crimea.

Western Front, 1921

Spain had borne the brunt of the main Entente effort. Rather than an easy conquest of Gibraltar, British naval landings across Andalusia had swept aside Spanish resistance and were well into Valencia before long. Spain underperformed most. The Pyrenees were not defended in depth, and the British Expeditionary Force to France was able to take part of the mountain lines in the first month of 1921.

The long-awaited French offensive, structured around their Plan XVII, began on 4 February, which made the Germans fear that the 2.5 million or so defenders stationed there would be wholly inadequate. In the Battle of the Meuse, the combined attacking force of French, Brits, Americans, and Mexicans outnumbered German defenders 570,000 to 200,000, but still lost far more men because they were just waking up to the realities of full-scale trench warfare. In an impressively tenacious defence, the main spear of the Allied offensive was munted with an astounding 330,000 casualties, a third of that dead, in comparison to 120,000 German losses. Manpower advantage had made the Allied Powers over-confident in a heady opening attack. The Americans were the least experienced. They fell back from the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of Besancon, noses bloodied. The evidence shows this disparity was primarily technological, for against Spain, in spite of the Pyrenees, they were overrunning the enemy. France took away the wrong lessons from this failure. For one, the feedback loop of continuous development of frontline strategy and its bolstering through technological and production adjustments at home was vastly inefficient because the French Empire’s bureaucracy and administration had been swapped out and built in under five years, even if the Americans sent over workers to aid in the factories. The dialogue between civilian and military, which was necessary for coordination, was not kept open, nor was it ever truly open. The reconstituted Grande Armee interpreted their ‘February Shame’ as a signal to focus themselves purely on the defence. The generals in Paris determined that from now on Allied strategy should revolve around vanquishing Germany’s allies and isolating them geographically — as opposed to cracking the tough nut. France’s doctrine shifted to a search for victory through attrition rather than operational ground — “bleed the Boches white”.

This may as well have sounded out the death knell for the Russians, who were desperate for an Allied effort in the west that could save the west, something which never came.

Generalfeldmarschall Neuerburg was put in charge of 400,000 men and tasked with saving Spain. He focused on the south first.

This theatre went back and forth for the first two years of the war but in no way could be called a stalemate; rather, it was a mobile war where both sides had large amounts of offensive force, not much time to build trenches, and where caught by enemy offensive often just after they had launched their own in a distant but adjacent sector.

The Western Front was largely not at risk for 1921. The Italians lost Savoy and fell back to the Alps. Technology and tactics were a force multiplier against France that allowed Germany to have a safe margin to defend.

Fall of Russia, 1921

With one knockout punch after the other, the Russians had been cut off from the Balkans by July. The fact that their incompetent Tsar had decided to take supreme command of the army had not helped. Moltke Jr led the brilliant campaign to subjugate Romania in a war of manoeuvre against the stranded Russian troops. Romania was dismantled into a separate Wallachia and Moldavia. Pre-war Kriegsspiel wargames had covered this very subject: the goal of which was to swiftly secure Romania’s Ploiesti oil reserves.

The Ottomans had faced nill resistance in the Caucasus and so had been able to march up to the Volga, and were assisted by German artillery and Ukrainian partisans in seizing the Crimea. Russia had destroyed the oil-extracting infrastructure of Baku and Ottoman Turkey was not technologically proficient in making do.

Ludendorff continued to command an offensive towards Moscow. One German private wrote:

“We are advancing miles by the score every day. Everywhere we go, the Russian retreats. My commandant said this reminded him of Napoleon in 1812. But I told him, ‘But we are not in Winter’.”

Subsidiary forces were redeployed to Spain and against Serbia. The ‘Serbian Strategic Offensive’ began 7 September and ended with an armistice, some weeks after Belgrade fell, where Serbia agreed to not challenge Hungarian or German control over the Balkans.

The sudden collapse of the Serbian and Romanian fronts convinced Greece, which if it was to receive aid would have to get it through the contested Mediterranean waters, to bow out, which the Ottomans were most happy to accept.

Winter frost descended over Russia in early December, chilling the unprepared German forces to their bones. In that Winter, it is estimated that 210,000 German men died of attrition, be it from the cold or from starvation. After a spirited battle before the River Moskva, in which a concentrated artillery bombardment over a narrow strip in the Russian trenchline created a gap through which infantry could penetrate, the Germans prevailed despite the cold. Moltke, suffering at that time from a fatal pneumonia, was given the honour of leading the procession into Moscow and receiving the surrender of the garrison. A pocket of 400,000 Russians around Kursk was also liquidated over that Winter.

Figure 19.2, Battle of Moscow

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Hundreds of thousands of German men could now be shifted from east to west.

The November Offensive in the Champagne sector had made use of the disorganisation of Allied forces after their failed assault to capture so much ground that the Axis was brought within 80 miles of Paris. Winter saved France as it may not have saved Russia, and by the coming of March the Germans were disappointed to find an elaborate trench system set up with reserves posted to allow defence in depth. The perimeter of Paris had been converted into a fortline.

The northern sector of the line was covered by Brazilian troops. The Germans were able to coordinate with Italy in a series of attacks in eastern Burgundy to recapture Savoy. This was part of a wider operational shift to break into France, but the lines of defence were too developed on the main front, so they considered the other avenues — Spain (but that was insecure with Catalonia still under French occupation), Italy (hence the movement of more than a million men to brute-force the Savoy Alps), or Belgium (armed neutrality and supported by the Netherlands). The Battle for Grenoble (December-January 1921–22) had seen 330,000 Axis and 180,000 Allied men clash for the course of the Italian front.

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Extensive submarine and cruiser raiding of American convoys carrying troops across the Atlantic, the ruination of their capital ships at the Battle of the Azores, and the annihilation of their Pacific Fleet which caused the subsequent surrender of 300,000 Americans in Japan, had turned the brief tide of pro-Wilsonianism in the US into a desire to isolate the New World from European barbarism. When the desire to seek a profitable peace was expressed, the Zimmerman Mission was begun to seek out terms of a white peace with the USA. President Wilson’s morale had been shattered by protests at home, which caused a crisis of faith with his belief in the benevolence of his people. American defeatism can only be explained by the understanding that they viewed the war in economic terms. They had seen the German juggernaut as a military force unchallenged, and considered it only beatable by a blockade and resource starvation.

The fact that Germany secured itself the European ‘breadbasket’, Ukraine, as long with the oil of Wallachia, and for the most part maintained a naval link with its colonies, foretold the total failure of this strategy or its assumptions. And while the Reichsmark held stable, and GDP too, the United Kingdom had seen a catastrophic fall in domestic productivity from 485M pounds pre-war down to 304M as of the beginning of 1922. To characterise Germany as a land power was to project anachronistically the Prussian archetype of the past onto its present reality.

In the end, America began to withdraw its troops from France with Germany respecting the condition that no attacks be launched in a period of one and a half months. Although Ludendorff in Berlin almost continued the war for the sole reason that America refused to un-embargo Germany, Zimmerman disabused him of his idiocies: America’s retreat from the war was a blow to the Allies as severe as had been the fall of Russia, even if it would keep up the economic aid — as part of their Treaty of Amsterdam (signed 2 February 1922), it had to be agreed that Germany would abandon unrestricted submarine warfare so as to never damage American shipping.

(Side note: the American landing in Japan triggered the Kantaro Restoration, by which the Japanese Emperor was restored to absolute power, Japan focused once more on modernising, and the German protectorate was thrown off.)

The Treaty of Warsaw (10 February 1922) also capped off the German feat of arms on the Ostfront. Revolution in Saint Petersburg had forced the Tsar to abdicate. The new Provisional Government had called for peace, but when shocked by the breadth of German demands, was shocked further more by the continued advance of their troops, until they were forced to the table to sign. Suffering an amazing seven million casualties (many in prisoners), the ‘bear’ had been tamed.

Treaty of Warsaw, 1922

The terms of the ‘German peace’ in Eastern Europe were draconian. Much historiography has been devoted to the question of whether Germany entered the war with such annexationist aims. The probable answer is that it exposed certain ambitions that the Kaiser aspired to: the incorporation of parts of Lithuania and the ‘Polish Frontier’.

In the event, these claims were extended much further by Bassermann’s aspirations to creating a European customs union — Mitteleuropa — and the inclination of the OHL to support him. The German aims in this treaty were primarily economic, not ‘Pan-German’.

The treaty saw several drastic border shifts:

• Germany annexed Polish lands in the north and south, up to Krakow, and Byelorussian areas such as Bialystok, along with a southern portion of Lithuania.
• New states were created: the Kingdom of Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine, which were to varying degrees (Poland the most) either full vassals or loose satellites of Germany.
• Galicia-Lodomeria, which had been prospering since its creation, was strong-armed by Germany into entering a unitary state under Poland. Likewise was Transylvania no longer considered useful as a counterweight to Russian Romania, so Hungary was ‘rewarded’ by being allowed to annex it
• The United Baltic Duchy, which was to include most of Lithuania, was created and authority handed over to Baltic Germans.
• The Ottomans de facto ended their involvement in the war, annexing minor territories but majorly the Crimea, and establishing clients in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
• The vast territories in Amur lost in the Sino-Russian War were returned to the Qing.
• Mitteleuropa was established, spanning Hungary, Wallachia, Moldavia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, and Poland, now all under the tight economic control of Berlin.

The Russian Empire had been permanently broken. What little there was of its plummeted GDP had been halved again to Ukraine and Poland.

Because the uncompromising duumvirate of Ludendorff and Hindenburg ran the country, Germany was likely to impose similarly extreme terms on the West. In choosing to secure the oil of Romania and grain of Ukraine, the two had torpedoed any hopes, however slim, of a negotiated peace in the West. In this light, the firebrand British Prime Minister Spencer Kennard (a trade unionist who had only been elected through the bizarre circumstances on the Home Isles — the cherished Windsor monarchy was under threat of abolition), had a stroke of genius when sending out ambassadors to Spain, Scandinavia, and Italy.

In Trondheim, the Scandinavians expressed their concerns that Germany would rope them into the customs union, a reasonable fear given German attempts to make them declare an embargo on both Russia and the UK. Britain was happy to promise them Schleswig-Holstein in its entirety.

Italian and Spanish delegates meanwhile met secretly with French and British ones in Portugal. Spain, which had suffered a thrashing from both fronts since the beginning of the war, nonetheless played its cards well — it would abandon Germany if it could be promised the lucrative German Niger colony and Morocco postwar, and Gibraltar now. Kennard rejected categorically the Niger stipulation but otherwise generously approved. Italy’s principal clash was with France. The Emperor Giuseppe would settle on no less than Tunisia and Alpine France, to complete its ‘natural borders’; the French relented on a British proposed compromise, ie yes to the Alps, no to Tunisia, but instead they could claim Libya.

The primary enabling factor of this trifold defection was the terrible experience of coalition warfare among the Axis Powers. Germany, and for this the blame goes squarely on the shoulders of the shoulders of the supreme warlords, viewed its allies as instruments of its own war effort, and so generally failed to convince them that they were genuine in their promises of post-war status, and oftimes brushed aside any concerns that they had; their strategic needs were considered below even secondary and thus ignored. In contrast, the program of the Allies was essentially to restore a multipolar system to Europe, as opposed to Germany’s goal to make it unipolar and hegemonic, which would have put Italy and Spain equally under its bidding. Spain and Italy had entered the war opportunistically and were no true friends of Germany. Indeed, they were natural allies to the Entente: France’s ruling dynasty, the Bourbons, were kin to King Alfonso de Borbon of Spain, and, if one remembers that the Two Sicilies unified Italy, the Emperor of Italy was a Bourbon too.

Any who are tempted to call this an act of betrayal hardly needs to delve deep to find German crimes and infamy. Spain had a particular grievance with Ludendorff when he took control of the Battle of Bayonne, during which he deployed, establishing thereafter a precedent in the war, chemical weapons in the form of mustard gas, to devastating effect. But he had also done so in populated Spanish areas and committed an indirect massacre of civilians.

For the time being, Spain hedged its bets, while Scandinavia mobilised and Italy started demanding South Tyrol and Istria. The Germans reacted with bluster but none could deny they had been caught unawares.

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Spring Offensive, March 1922

Ludendorff, in his headquarters at Nancy, had been planning an advance to Paris as soon as March came. General Bibra launched a determined attack against numerically superior forces in the Battle of Meaux, and he performed admirably against the British and Canadians opposite him.

But events soon washed that whole plan of importance.

The Entente had known about its diplomatic coup quite some time before it became known publicly at the moment when German troops had been forced to leave Italy and Spain respectively. They had awaited the coming of March eagerly to begin their Spring Offensive, whose aim was to drive the Germans out of Champagne, thereby taking the fight off the danger zone before Paris. This time their aims were in line with the need to project confidence diplomatically.

The Allied forces began six major battles: Lons-le-Saunier, Besancon, Chaumont, Epernay, and Reims. The Germans were caught completely off balance as their opponents deployed poison gas and, for the first time in large scale, tanks at Reims.

At its furthest extent, the Spring Offensive breached the Aisne and Marne by the end of month, but the Entente finally sacrificed all momentum in a Hail Mary attempt to reach the Meuse, which Hindenburg and VI. Armee withstood. All across the front, the exhausted French and British forces were defied by the adamantine bedrock of February 1921, Germany’s premier trenchline. Ammunition had mostly been expended.

Like a hammer to the anvil, 17 March witnessed Ludendorff’s VIII. Armee come bearing down in an outflanking counteroffensive from the north against demoralised British divisions, a turning movement in positional battle. A further 20 German divisions, composed of fresh and capable men, from the Eastern Front had arrived, and now they made short work of the enemy. Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander, was sending telegrams to London and Paris as the situation developed: “I am attacking. Situation excellent. My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat. Men on the run.” — what followed was nothing short of a total rout.

A well-armed, well-led, and well-rested host of German troops was now reversing these precious Allied gains.

Their militaries were wholly unable to contain the situation. Allied communication was still conducted by horse messenger; it had taken a precious day for word of the situation to reach Paris — another to send the reply and new orders, by which time they were outdated.

Even when some fighting forces were more capable than others, there was the friction between their varying armies, which followed their own maxims by their own means. Supreme, coordinating planners had little knowledge of how the soldier from each nation could reliably perform, for offensive (and defensive) capabilities were rather disparate; Britain’s army functioned the best, and Brazil’s the worst.

Battle of the Channel, April 1922

All in all, the Spring Offensive, over by mid-April 1922, cost the Allies some 800,000 casualties.

But that was far from its most devastating outcome.

The primary consequences were diplomatic.

Great Britain had been suffering a general strike of some 800,000 workers and women that debilitated industry, and, what was worse in the eyes of Buckingham, these radicals were calling for the permanent deposition of the British monarch. Ireland was in a state of revolt and anarchy. In Wales and Scotland, nationalists contemplated separation from England. It was unfathomable, but only goes to show the depths that the economic freefall had plunged its people into. The Winter of 1921 had seen starvation — not mainly because of poor crops — because of mismanagement of harvests and the fact that much food was shipped over wastefully to Russia through Murmansk, only to rot as ships tried to wade through Arctic ice.

The Great War was the first time Britain tried to exert itself as a territorial and Continental power; they were firmly disenchanted by the failure of the Spring Offensive and their extreme casualties. Mass army mutinies (upwards of 30% of manpower!) caused the collapse of the British Expeditionary Force, whose positions were taken up by the French, considerably stretching them.

German raiding of British-American trade was putting the British Isles in danger. The Grand Fleet, stationed at Scapa Flow, had so far shirked battle in a policy of ‘prepared and armed deterrence’ — the ‘Fleet in Being’ doctrine. It was clearly failing, as the outspoken Winston Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty) insisted, and in the interests of encouraging Spain and re-affirming domestic faith in the Royal Navy it sailed out for the North Sea at the end of March.

The vanguard first lured out the Hochsee Flotte, and at 1700 hours (5 PM) on 5 April the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet, engaged, leaving Admiral Graff bruised, but both Admirals Jellicoe and Beatty were crestfallen to have not dealt a larger victory.

An opportunity presented itself, inexplicably, at dawn the next day when Graff and his flagship, the super dreadnought Bayern, were sighted heading — not home to port — but west, towards the English Channel. So they pursued.

However, the admirals had not been informed by the codebreakers at base that Germany’s greater fleet, the Große Armada, was situated in the Bay of Biscay and due north-east.

On the 10th, Graff suddenly banked north away from the tip of Nom, while from the west the ‘Great Armada’ of Maximilian von Spee (Grand Admiral) and Maximilian Hugel was making its way east, on a collision course with the Grand Fleet. The Battle of the Channel began that day: between 1830 hours, when the sun was lowering, back-lighting the German forces, and nightfall at 20:30, the two fleets — totalling 374 ships — directly engaged twice. Fourteen British and eleven German ships sank, with a total of 9,823 casualties. After sunset Spee manoeuvred to cut the British off from French ports and Graff did the same for the British coast, hoping to continue the battle the next morning.

In the early hours of the next day, all ships sprinted west, the Grand Fleet trying to make it to the open sea in anticipation of reinforcements from the French or from their fellow Atlantic Fleet (formerly the Channel Fleet).

Slower ships being picked off relentlessly, Jellicoe made the call to turn around and fight a delaying battle. What ensued was a naval massacre — his fleet was cumbersome in turning about-face, and by operating as two separate forces one German fleet was able to take the brunt head-on while the other crossed the ‘T’. Evening of the 11th: Most of the Grand Fleet had been smashed into the ocean by the time the Atlantic Fleet under Charles Madden arrived, whose arrival was “more of a funeral procession than a saving grace”, in the words of Spee — an ignominious day, a black day, in British history this became. The two fleets, which together were superior, were beaten separately in immediate succession in what produced a hard-fought, vicious, decisive victory for the German navy and broke the illusion of British naval invincibility. Their flagship, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, was sunk.

Figure 19.3, Battle of the Channel

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This was the last straw for the British Empire. Ludendorff had broken the back of the BEF. The navy was now defanged. Defeatism became the spirit of the day, despite flailing attempts of the press to whitewash the defeat for Britons.

That Germany possessed a blue water navy capable of cutting Britain off from its colonial empire, as Spain and France had never done, promised to multiply the existing quandary of German cruiser and submarine convoy raiding. The best way to conceptualise the strategic reality is to make an analogy to land warfare and the principle of interior lines: Germany, operating from the ‘centre’ of the world (note its monopoly over the Suez Canal), had more concentrated fleet task forces that could break Allied naval lines wherever pressure was applied; the Allies, if they were to preserve their span over the globe and their sea lanes from Africa to Europe, Americas to Europe, and Asia to Europe had to distribute their naval power to cover a greater area of projection. Diffused and not condensed, the German East Asia Fleet beat America in the Gulf of Tonkin, and on 8 December 1921 Hugel’s Neue Armada defeated the French Admiral Pautrat in the Bay of Biscay.

Britain and Germany had preserved an informal stalemate on the Indian front (Britain could source far greater resources from the ‘Crown in the Jewel’ but Germany too needed their Punjab — they were thusly equally loss-averse), and Africa was the site of something that was popularly known as the ‘Phoney War’. Only Egypt carried the war in Africa, and the only major shift was the successful occupation of German South Africa by the end of 1921. The colonies, however, were the target of the peace terms presented.

Treaty of Berlin, May 1922

Below is detailed the general stipulations of the peace treaty that was agreed between Germany and Great Britain:

• Germany relinquished influence over Zambia and Algeria
• Angola to be annexed by the German Mittelafrika (more below)
• Tanganikya, Kenya, and most of Guinea-Senegal transferred from Africa.
• Polynesian islands, Tahiti, transferred, German dominance over Malaysia to be recognised
• But most crucially of all: India — Germany staked out the richest portions for itself: Bengal, Madras, Bombay, and Kashmir. This was the single most galling term of the treaty.

Without naval access to Europe, Brazil unilaterally declared peace and exited the war. 550,000 Brazilians had perished meaninglessly.

The Mittelafrikaprojekt:

The concept of Mittelafrika appeared at the beginning of German Weltpolitik in the 1890s, when German imperialists wanted to expand their territory and to link the colonies already owned by Germany by annexing the region between them. Thus, the geostrategic concept of Mittelafrika proposed a German domination over Central and Eastern Africa, stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and ensuring German economic self-sufficiency through the exploitation of natural resources, which were already abundant in the Belgian Congo alone. The plan, which had not actually received much attention in the war, was suddenly materialised by the insistence of Secretary of the German Colonial Office Wilhelm Solf when etching out a way to carve out British colonial possessions after their capitulation.

The idea of a contiguous entity that could stretch from the Gambia (river) to the Horn of Africa was an impressionistic one, but it had its appeal in the direction of attaining Autarky. The full realisation of Mittelafrika depended on a German victory in the European theatre, where Britain would be forced to negotiate and cede control over colonies when faced with a German-dominated Europe across the English Channel. In the course of the actual war, German aspirations in Mittelafrika were never matched by events in the African theatre. The German colonies were at very different levels of defence and troop strength when the war began in Europe, and were not in a position to fight a war due to a lack of material. Out of all the German colonies, only General von Lettow-Vorbeck’s troops in Eastern Africa resisted intrusions. That the colonial administrations in Lagos and Libreville held on any semblance of power was because the Allies did not deem the war in Africa of consequence.

Expansion of the World War

Germany reneged on its promises to Italy after the British exit completely shifted the balance of power. Italy arguably should not have expected to receive Istria given its pivot to neutrality, but the brusque German communique (as opposed to what could have been more of a leading, suggestive one) made certain that Italy was to be Germany’s enemy.

In Stockholm, the Emperor Antoine Bernadotte was completely swayed by the ‘War Party’, which saw German demands that Scandinavia cease trade with Russia, France, and Britain, on threat of “further drastic action”, tantamount to an attack on its sovereignty. There would likely never be a chance to act again.

Hence, on 13 March 1922, the two powers issued a joint declaration of war. Italy with over four million men on the Tyrolean front was facing about three million Germans. The decorated General der Infanterie Friedrich Grebe was tasked with the invasion of Italy up to the Po Valley and River. He had the veterans of the Ostfront, good men with winter stock, and, overflowing with imperious arrogance and unnecessary hubris, took to persuading Ludendorff that he needed to go through Switzerland to complete that task. As if German ignominy could not be exacerbated any more, OHL gave its approval; there is evidence by this point that he was engaging in Napoleonic fantasies and had lost his grip on the tenets of grand strategy. He spoke sternly to the Kaiser when he voiced his objections.

The metropolitan areas of Switzerland were overrun, but, predictably, this improvised invasion fared poorly in some of Europe’s most adverse terrain — the Swiss Alps. Switzerland called up about 600,000 men and some women in defence. This only opened up a very well defendable front that France sent men to, forcing a greater than proportional withdrawal of manpower from the French front. The chief irony is that, Italy’s defences proving brittle, Germany was already fighting for Rome by October of 1922 and Switzerland’s mountains were still yet to be secured.

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France Resurgent: Battle of the Frontiers, October 1922

Morale was so poor among the French army that the chief, Philippe Petain (who had replaced Foch and Joffre), was convinced that only some form of victory before Winter could carry them into the next year. The esprit de corps may have left much to be desired, but Joffre and Petain had overseen a major restructuring over the French army. The lessons of 1921 and the first half of 1922 had been taken into account. We quote historian William Philpott for his overview:

“The age-old contest between firepower and shock action on the battlefield would recur, with firepower temporarily proving decisive. All armies had developed tactical systems which tried to integrate artillery fire with infantry action. What became evident from the encounter battles along the frontiers of France in August 1914 was that the German tactical system, which used concentrated artillery fire to silence the enemy’s guns to enable the infantry to proceed, was superior to the French doctrine which advocated suppressing the enemy’s infantry with field-artillery fire to facilitate a decisive infantry attack. The heavy casualties on both sides, however, indicated that artillery and rifle fire would control the battle space, obliging infantrymen to take to trenches for self-protection. The machine gun was relatively scarce at this time, although the German practice of concentrating their fire rather than dispersing their guns added to their ability to control the killing zone between the armies known as ‘no man’s land.’”

Already the French had displayed their innovation and capacity for adaptation to the tenets of ‘modern’ European warfare.

“The French learned quickly: ‘I attack with the greatest prudence, lots of artillery, and as little infantry as possible,’ divisional commander Marie-Émile Fayolle (1852–1928) noted in his diary at the end of August 1921. This meant that the French were able to meet the German Army on more equal terms during the Battle of Paris in November [1921] which became a gruelling back-and-forth slog as German forces tried to break the French centre.”

Defence, as both armies learnt, was the comparatively easy affair. The Battle of Chaumont (March 1922) was the first properly attritional engagement as Allied reserves were thrown into the fight, with German reserves fed in piecemeal to block this attempt to break through to Alsace-Lorraine.

Foch himself had predicted:

“The armies have outgrown the brains of the people who direct them. I do not believe that there is any man living big enough to control these millions. They will stumble about, and then sit down helplessly in front of each other thinking only of their means of communication to supply these vast hordes who must eat.”

It was not until the end of 1922 that armies finally relearnt the power of strategic manoeuvre matched concomitantly on the operational level, relying on the independent initiative of smaller units — regiments and battalions — to field the operational flexibility needed to advance at any pace faster than walking. Railways and attempts at motorisation were implemented in limited form.

In the face of stalemate almost universally (save for Russia), rather than shattering the enemy’s defences, the elimination of his reserves became the Clausewitzian ‘centre of gravity’ of military operations. Petain stated, “The artillery conquers, the infantry occupies.”

In a bid, then, to liberate Paris, they agreed upon a Paris Offensive to attack the German salient and reclaim their beloved capital. It posed a good opportunity for encirclement if the two sides could be cut off. In the Battle of Fontainebleau, the French did indeed make significant gains on the southern flank but stalled on the northern pincer. Joffre was made General of the southern flank where armies were concentrated to menace the Germans on their exposed front.

Figure 19.4, Paris Offensive, October-November 1922.

But in fact, they succeeded far more than ever thought possible — beyond the wildest of imaginations. Unlike the localised offensives which were of comparatively pecuniary gain, now the whole front was on the move.

Just a month before there had begun a widespread Ukrainian and Polish revolt, which forced the redeployment of some two million men and ensured that there would still be a lack of food for Germans the coming Winter. The Russians successfully reclaimed the Kuban and Rostov in that time. The ageing Hindenburg’s failure to react in time to the Paris Offensive did mean, in fact, that the entirety of the VI. Armee was trapped and a gaping hole left in the lines. Joffre, taking up the mantle of the new ‘Napoleon’, seized the opportunity: every reserve France had was put into penetrating the German line, and this phantasmagoria of news — soldiers were hearing about the entrapment of hundreds of thousands of their men, with millions others leaving the front — spiralled into a widespread front collapse. Germany was, for the first time in this war, on the run.

It is crucial not to understate how inconceivably disastrous this was. The French were in Alsace-Lorraine, where the wait for liberation had lasted decades, not just the span of the war! Its population was still 45% French and 33% Alemannic. Switzerland was liberated in a span of weeks. Grebe, who had only just taken Rome, was now being forced to flee all the war back to the pre-war positions before France could invade Bavaria proper. Hindenburg saw himself at the decisive moment of what could be a turning point in the war: could he hold Saarbrucken with 150,000 men against 340,000 Frenchmen under General Hercule Kellerman?

The German army in general had been overrun and ignored as pockets of resistance by the French, who were truly demonstrating their brilliance in manoeuvre warfare with the novel concept of ‘deep battle’. As Hindenburg fought his stand, some French units were already overtaking his position, reaching Heidelburg eastwards and the Rhineland north.

But despite being reduced to about 4.7 million effectives compared to 6.7 million Frenchmen and another 2 million of other countries, Germany eventually stemmed the tide. They had lost the Battle for Lombardy and Tyrol entirely, as well as every territory more obviously ‘French’, but won the Battle of the Frontiers. Hindenburg, for all his responsibility in this catastrophe, became immortalised as the ‘Hero of Saarbrucken’: in a 42 day-long battle, he inflicted 96,600 deaths, 179,000 wounds, and captured 74,000 French soldiers, for 40,000 casualties of his own. His counterpart, Krohn, triumphed in a similarly decisive Battle in Baden.

Spain’s populace had been much inspired by the wave of French success, and before long the state declared war on Germany, although its mobilisation was not properly complete until October of 1923 — a leisurely pace that would cost its allies.

The German defeat, however much France exalted the ‘Grande Armee resurgent’, was a product of their own complacency. They were hit hard, all of a sudden, which hurt all the more because they had become accustomed to gloating and hubris. Leaden logistical strains ended the offensive. Vienna fell on 10 December of 1922, and was liberated in February of 1923.

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War of Attrition, 1923

By early 1923, the front had stabilised. In headquarters (Frankfurt and Munich), the ‘Conceptual Revolution’ overthrew the orthodoxy of military strategy and instead resolved that Germany, rather than seeking to win by position or manoeuvre, should focus on attritional warfare. This manifested itself in small but vicious German counter attacks that destroyed small pockets of Allied men — defeat in detail. The fluidity and increase in rates of attack led to higher casualties on both sides; 1923 broke records that themselves had been unimaginable once set, in terms of deaths.

The three month-long and decisive Battle of Kaiserslautern began in July 1923. The German directive echoed, eerily, the motto of the French: “Bleed France white”. At any one moment there were one million men engaged, with about 500,000 being maintained on both sides by an exhaustive cycle in-and-out rotation. The battle ended by September with, compared to initial forces, a near total rate of casualties: 500,000 dead, wounded, or captured on the French side, and 300,000 of the same for the Germans. The idea of a decisive battle on French ground was ironic because pre-war planning of OHL had indeed focused on annihilating Russia while falling back into positions to conduct a ‘Wacht am Rhein’ on the Western Front. But the lessons of trench warfare in the First and Second German-Communard Wars made France ‘turtle shell’. The aspirations of the previous year had been deflated by November in 1923, when Germany launched Operation Michael on 1 November, punching its way into Alsace-Lorraine. The short-lived ecstasy of its French inhabitants turned to dread and loathing. Many took up weapons to become partisans; many more fled as refugees to the bleakened west.

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In comparison, the Northern Front against Scandinavia seemed quiet. With only the grunt of resources being provided by OHL, the ‘Nord Armee’ was outnumbered, and what it did have were conscripts more than soldiers. Their opposition was not to be underestimated: a small but well-drilled force of Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians. Their commander, the Generalfeldmarschall Hugo Neuerburg, took to the task with vigour despite it all. In the Battle of Odense (10–13 July 1923), he prevailed, forcing his way across the Danish Straits in July 1923. That was the beginning of the difficulties for his men. Odense marked the beginning of a prolonged, difficult campaign, which had to spar with the acclimatised Scandinavians and grapple with blizzards and snow and ice to make any ground at all. Without much logistical support either, Neuerburg’s men scoured the land, zig-zagging across Sweden to secure roads and depositing men at junctions — “We bleed men like the sky bleeds snow” is how one corporal put it. A famous painting depicts Neuerburg with a snow-frosted beard overlooking Jonkoping as it was razed. The conditions were so challenging that he became detested by his men. The Field Marshal took that with pride — he imagined himself as a Hyperborean Alexander the Great.
On 1 September of 1924, Danish collaborationists were given control of a puppet Kingdom of Denmark.

On the Southern Front, Italy had its gains reversed too. The Italian front was mainly covered by their nationals. German commanders identified it as a weak spot and drove their way back into Venice.

— — [here’s where the full sentences tend to stop. I also pulled some resources from Kaiserreich]

The policy of limited European war

Total war. Thinking in terms of a ‘Second Punic War’

Finally issued a list of war aims.

• eg Mediterranean hegemony

The Mitteleuropa plan was to achieve an economic and cultural hegemony over Central Europe by the German Empire and subsequent economic and financial exploitation of this region combined with direct annexations and the creation of puppet states in the east as a buffer between Germany and Russia. An important advocate of the concept was the liberal politician Friedrich Naumann of the NLP, who dedicated the concept its own book in his 1915 work “Mitteleuropa”. According to Naumann, this part of Europe was to become a politically and economically integrated block subjected to German rule. Naumann also supported programs of Germanization and Hungarization and the creation of German dependencies in Crimea and the Baltics.

The concept of Mitteleuropa met the approval of the ruling political and economic elite; War plans in the east were drawn out quickly, it was spoken of a “new German order in Europe”. Eastern Europe was planned to serve as an economic backyard of Germany, whose exploitation would enable the German sphere of influence to better compete against strategic rivals like Britain or the United States of America. Political, military and economic organization was to be based on German domination, with commercial treaties imposed on countries like Poland and Ukraine. It was believed that the German working class would be appeased by the economic benefits of territorial annexations, a new economic sphere of influence, and exploitation of conquered countries for the material benefit of Germany. The Mitteleuropa plan was heavily opposed and viewed as a threat by the British, who feared it would destroy British continental trade, and, as a consequence, the source of its global dominance — something that indeed happened after the conclusion of the war and would indirectly cause the British Revolution and the collapse of the British Empire in 1924/25.

The Mitteleuropa concept worked out by Reichskanzler von Bethmann-Hollweg in the early stages of the war additionally planned an inclusion of parts of Western Europe in the economic union, most prominently Belgium and, in case of a total victory, France. The German occupation of Belgium was the first phase in this process; Plans to create a “Duchy of Flanders” and a “Grand Duchy of Lorraine” were discussed as political units of future “localized” administration. German left-wing parties heavily opposed said plans, calling it “romantic nonsense” and a “dynastic joke” to reestablish the old medieval fiefdoms and titles. Eventually these plans were dropped and Germany instead opted for an altered approach: Turning Belgium into a puppet state (possibly split between the Dutch and French population) and forcing France to make strategic territorial concessions, most importantly the Longwy-Briey basin, one of Europe’s richest mining areas directly located at the Franco-German border.

The most important economist behind the Mitteleuropa plans was without a doubt Walther Rathenau, a German-Jewish industrialist and CEO of AEG, one of the world’s leading electrical equipment producers. He rejected the more radical visions of the right-leaning political establishment (like complete German economic domination of the planet) and strived for the creation of a customs union of equals consistent with a history of the Zollverein and German Confederation of the 19th century. There were many concerns that this would make Germany too inward-looking, but Rathenau’s more liberal Mitteleuropa concept gained the support of Georg von Hertling, Minister-President of Bavaria and, since 1917, German Reichskanzler, and eventually even the German Foreign Office.

1914 cartoon

Schlieffen-Moltke Plan, 1924

A peasant-worker Soviet Union had been established in Russia, ‘revolutionary nationalism’, it was immediately invading Belarus and Ukraine and the Baltics.

Debate over Maastricht railway.

Extremely ambitious time planned gamble. Operation Gotterdammerung

Monarchy had been abolished in the UK. Became a federal republic.

British economy had apparently bounced back quite quickly 374M.

German invasion of Belgium, attempt at ‘outflanking’, in a bid to win the war in 1924. German economy was taking losses. Kaiser was becoming very unpopular, Communists growing. German first use of a full tank corps.

Resistance surprisingly heavy.

German fury = Rape of Beligum.

The invasion of Belgium and Netherlands (14 April ’24) sparked such outrage that it awoke the feeling of deep humiliation to have lost so many colonies to Germany. Referendum: pro-war. Britain declared war and annulled the treaty, declaring it was illegitimate because it was signed by the king.

In June, Britain invaded Punjab.

Ludendorff’s offensive halted in a great Battle for Champagne, the BEF. France had been injected with a new lease on life: money.

German war exhaustion at home. War had led to crippling unemployment, already they had been forced to undertake the ‘Release Policy’, where troops were released from service to work at home: promise of universal suffrage elections after the war.

Sweeping reforms:

• Compulsory and free primary education
• Expanded platform for workers’ healthcare: public health insurance, positive rights
• Proper worker protections
• Veterans’ pensions
• Full freedom of speech

Over-ambitious, but it worked: bought some reprieve.

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Second Battle of Paris, November 1924

Germany had (find someone’s name) shipped Lavr Kornilov over to Russia to lead the Whites, saving grace: Russian Civil War. Those who had cheered the rise of the Soviets were butchered in the Moscow Massacre of August 1925 for daring to protest against martial law.

Concept of ‘Endsieg’

With the tanks caught up he tried again and prevailed this time in October.

Allies did what they could: counterattack on southern front into West Austria.

But Germany was making stunning gains. Combined arms… at the precipice of Paris in the Winter…

The vaunted Panzer Korps, utilising _ x tank, and _ y tank (lighter and more mobile). Outclassed competing designs: only British could rival, but they lacked numbers in production.

Figure 19.5, Second Battle of Paris

The dual battle of Paris: happening to north and south of the city.

One of the great civilian tragedies, the deployment of gas near the historic city. It had to be evacuated.

Followed by a Race to the Coast. German pincer move from Paris salient and Belgium to cut off Allied armies in northwest France. Allies ‘smashed into the sea’ in the colossal Battle of Dunkirk: 560,000 Germans (overall command General Peter Hartz) vs 600,000 Allies (20% Belgian, 30% British, 50% French).

And Lille, Saint-Quentin, Bruges… All German victories.

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Armistice Day, 26 February 1925

French Emperor forced to abdicate on 10 Feb. On the 12th, the French appealed for an armistice. Parliamentary Republic: Just Farconnet, first Chancellor.

Germany demanded unconditional surrender.

They prevaricated, looking for favourable terms.

Germany responded with Operation Faustschlag, First Punch: the 11 Days Offensive, which pushed further into France.

On 26st, France accepted.

Followed eventually, the last of which came a year later, by official peace with UK, Scandinavia, the American countries…

Spain, Italy not out yet though.

• Moluccas Islands, French Solomons,
• Gotland
• The Danish Island
• new state: Burgundy
• Force Britain to recognise German puppet states: Burgundy, Holland, Denmark, Baltics, Poland… Britain gets Dutch Guiana.
• Eastern Switzerland to Germany
• Western Switzerland to Burgundy
• Treaty port in Dunkirk.
• Britain hands over Malta
• British islands off Yemen
• French Abyssinia
• All of French Senegal, except Timbuktu to Britain
• British to leave Oran.
• Bergen, Godhavn (Greenland), and Isafjordur (Iceland) treaty ports

New borders:

• Germany hands over areas of Lorraine to a new Burgundy
• Netherlands/Flanders up to the Meuse River annexed
• Germany takes small pieces of Wallonia
• Border with France known as the ‘Nazi Line’

note cost of war. French population at 32 million, compared to 40 million pre-war.

These changes were finalised in a treaty concluded after the war in August 1926, the Treaty of Versailles (signed in the Palace of Versailles).

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Casualties notes: [these were taken from game and to be accurate have to be multiplied by a factor of at least 5x]

• UK 500,000 dead as of 1921.
• 150k for Ottomans.
• As of 1922 for Spain: 160k dead, 240k wounded,
• 200k for Federation of Americas.
• Italy by 1922: 150,000
• Egypt 40k dead, 40k wounded.
• 100k dead, 124k wounded Mexico

3.3 M france, half-half by end of 1922/

https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Killed-wounded-and-missing

Coup de Grace, 1925

Germany began to demobilise most of its army. Its navy gave up the convoy war and focused on preparing an amphibious invasion of Spain: many battles, reduced to 206 ships, below half the pre-war strength. It was to be the coup de grace alongside the difficult push through France past the Pyrenees.

The Kaiserreich’s greatest enemies had been vanquished. But the war against Italy and Spain, and war in other parts of the world, continued to ravage millions.

South Slavic nationalism, or Yugoslavism, was realised in a violent Second Balkan War in which Bulgaria, undergoing a civil war, had part of itself united with Serbia, which then (along with Greece but no in allied fashion) embarked upon a rampage across the Balkans to conquer Bosnia and Albania and much else. Greece’s expansionist ‘Megali Idea’ was realised in war against the flagging Ottoman Empire, which saw an ‘Arab Spring’ that created Iraq and Syria as autonomous states in a loosely bound Ottoman Confederation. Greece took its chance to seize the remaining Aegean islands, southern Thrace, and part of the Turkish mainland. Germany occupied Dalmatia.

Wallachia and Moldavia united into Romania once more in October 1925.

On 10 April OHL exerted its last major influence on foreign affairs: submitting the war aims against Italy, which included the annexation of Venice and Lombardy up to the Po River. Italians resisted ferociously. Policymakers in Berlin had to be conscious of the fragility of Italy and its nationalism. Its population, like France’s, had seriously dipped, from _ to _, and simultaneous de-mobilisation probably protracted the war in the south.

Quite tellingly, Germany flatly refused the reasonable request of the Whites in Russia for military advisors. Germany was already saddled with 150M in debt and was in a mindset of pure damage control.

Impressively-executed operation in Galicia (Spain), carried out in June of 1925. Esaias von Jons and the vaunted Sturm Armee (consisted of the Panzer Korps). The success in attaining a beachhead triggered a wide panic in Spain, which culminated on 1 September in the Spanish Revolution, a mass army mutiny led by vanguardist communists.

Spain had de facto ceased to be a combatant, and German demands were to the point.

• Germany takes Gibraltar and Melilla.
• Canary Islands
• Dahomey, Togo, and Ghana.

Marshal of Italy and war hero Armando Diaz delivered the surrender of his embattled Third Army before Naples could be razed by war. Much of the Italian countryside and marshland had already been laid waste to.

Much to the Chief of Staff, Luigi Cardorna’s chagrin.

The Italian surrender was officially signed by the Emperor Giuseppe and came into effect 1st Jan of the new year, and with it Switzerland had no recourse. It simply ceased to exist.

In later months Germany tried to be charitable. Italy was handed French territories up to the Rhone River and Corsica, along with Tunisia. but they had no quarrel with the French. The new governors of formerly French lands took them up apologetically.

But with most Italians it rankled: poisoned well.

Officially renamed: Greater German Reich.

battle for the soul of Germany in the election of… fascists vs democrats…

Dangerous, unstable, lawless: Freikorps. Paramilitary groups asserted their local authority.

A German Peace: Treaty of Versailles, 1925

On Sedan Day, one of the most important German national holidays commemorating the German victory over the French in the 1870 Battle of Sedan, the Versailles Peace Conference begins, with the main negotiations being held at the iconic Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Negotiations would go on for months, in parts at smaller “sub-conferences”, especially in regard to the Balkans, Caucasus and Middle East, for example in Constantinople and Jerusalem.

German hegemony over Europe surpassed that of Napoleon’s. The sun had set on the british empire. Russia and France were knocked out of the ranks of the Great Powers.

The price of peace: casualties…

Many questioned what really the war was about.

Ataturk and Arab Revolt in Ottoman Empire brought it to an end a couple years after its costly win.

The war had been fought over the Balkans, where nobody achieved their aims.

Each one of the colonies would see various anti-colonial uprisings over the next couple years, and many more insurgencies that lasted decades.

Germany was pretty much bankrupt. Navy no longer funded, only took half a decade before it had fallen well behind British and American navies respectively.

If germany had now a place in the sun, there were left there to roast under the scorching heat. No legitimacy but an infamy-ridden pariah state, not ‘broke the encirclement’, but cemented it.

116M population. Not more nationally unified but far less… diluted.

Religious conflict, 57.7M catholics vs 33.5M protestants, a reversal of the pre-war Protestant majority.

saddled in

With the war officially over, the Reichstag demands democratic elections, parliamentary reforms, demobilisation, and a full return to civilian rule. Especially Erich Ludendorff, however, is not willing to allow political liberalisation yet, justifying the continuation of emergency powers for “national security” reasons rooted in the highly unstable European political order at the time, especially in Russia and France. Not long after, nation-wide peace demonstrations break out, and the Reichstag decides to take matters into its own hands, citing the ongoing demands for change in the streets to prevent a revolution such as the one in France or another insurrection attempt like in 1918. The Reichstag’s agenda is backed by the chancellor, the Emperor, and secretly even Hindenburg, who pledges to accept democratic reform as long as military authority is not curtailed.

Ludendorff, unaware of his own isolation, tries to convince the Kaiser to step in and end the reform debates in the parliament if necessary via force, e.g. by dismissing Reichskanzler Brockdorff, justifying it with the need for Germany to maintain the current authoritarian system for a few more months to weather the coming struggle. After he threatens to resign in an effort to pressure Wihelm into submission, the Kaiser calls his bluff, unspectacularly dismissing Germany’s once widely feared “Dictator” with one simple decree — which paves the path for proper parliamentary reform not long after.

-> KNOWN AS THE MARCH REFORMS

The March Constitution (German: Märzverfassung), also commonly known as March Reforms (German: Märzreformen), is the name given to a series of amendments to the Constitution of the German Empire which were written in early 1920 following the dismissal of First-Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff. The amendments provided for several constitutional, political, and legislative changes which transformed the German Empire into a parliamentary monarchy following the end of the Weltkrieg.

The introduction of the March Reforms is undoubtedly among the most controversial political decisions in modern German history. Although they were seen as a major step forward by the war-weary, reform-minded population when they were introduced in 1920, they are more than controversial after a decade and a half of practice. Right-wing parties claim that parliamentarism — the harmonisation with Western European systems of government- has been responsible for Germany’s slow stagnation and international encirclement by hostile powers. Irrespective of this, the many legal grey areas of the reforms are also viewed critically by many, especially the high degree of autonomy still granted to the military, a consequence of the clandestine Brockdorff-Hindenburg Pact of February 1920.

The German Empire is the leader of Mitteleuropa, more formally known as the Central European Customs Union, an economic bloc formed during the early 1920s to cement German economic hegemony across the European continent. Not only Germany’s direct Eastern European satellite states (Oststaaten) are part of this cooperation initiative, but also its former Central Power allies as well as strategic trading partners such as most of Scandinavia, Ireland, the Netherlands, or Spain. For tariff-related reasons, both Germany’s own colonial possessions as well as the Dutch East Indies are not part of the union.

The Reichspakt (“Imperial Pact”) is an informal name for the vast and complex network of military alliances maintained between Germany and its Eastern clients, i.e. Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, White Ruthenia, the United Baltic Duchy, and Finland — all of which play a crucial role in bolstering Germany’s formidable “Ostwall” defensive network against potential Russian aggression — as well as Flanders-Wallonia to the West.

Germany maintains cordial relations and close economic ties with its former Central Powers allies of Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria, who have not expressed an active interest in joining the Reichspakt. They also treat Bulgaria as a bastion of security in the southern Balkan Peninsula.

Germany also has dynastic ties with some of its allies. The King of Flanders-Wallonia and the King of Poland are both sons of the Kaiser, with members of three other German dynasties reigning in Lithuania, Finland, and the United Baltic Duchy: the House of Württemberg, the House of Hesse, and the House of Mecklenburg, respectively.

And anticipators who adhere to the Great Man theory look to the Kaiser’s son, who is a pacifist as a child and may alter Europe sensationally once he sits the throne.

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Thank you if you somehow managed to read this.

Even if not, I needed to get this off my chest and out of the archives ;)