Grey Tide In The East

by Andrew J. Heller

  It follows that if Great Britain does not enter the war, the Royal Navy has no occasion to impose on Germany the blockade that eventually proved to be so ruinous to her economy. By the same token, Germany has no reason to employ unrestricted submarine warfare against Britain or anyone else. Under these circumstances, it is nearly certain that the United States does not enter the war. (Woodrow Wilson won re-election in 1916 running on the slogan, “He kept us out of war.” This was after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 by U-20, which had resulted in the drowning of nearly 1200 people, including 128 Americans, in addition to many other sinkings of American vessels. Americans did not want any part of this war.)

  What is left is the Triple Alliance consisting Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy (see note) against the Dual Entente of Russia and France.

  Note: Italy declined to enter the war in 1914 alongside its partners in the Triple Alliance, claiming that their treaty obligations were strictly “defensive”, that Austria’s dealings with Serbia were “offensive”, and that Italy was therefore excused from its treaty commitment. However, Italy’s reluctance was more likely caused by Great Britain’s entry into the war. Here is another consequence of the German invasion of Belgium. For relevant diplomatic correspondence on this topic, see: http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/italianneutrality.htm

  My basic thesis is that the French–Russian coalition without the aid of the British Empire would have been defeated by the Triple Alliance. This hypothesis is given quantitative support by Paul Kennedy in Chapter 5 of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York, 1987). Of special note is table 22 on p.258 where Kennedy calculates the total “industrial potential” of Germany and Austria-Hungary at 178.4 compared with that of the Franco-Russian combination at only 133.9. This calculation does not even take into account the addition of Italy, which I believe would have joined the other members of the Triple Alliance if Great Britain had stayed out of the war. Nor does it include the damage to the economy of France caused by the German blockade.

  By contrast, a table on page 271 of Rise and Fall shows the overwhelming industrial might of the combination that actually won the war. The total industrial potential of the U.S.-British-French alliance that eventually prevailed in 1918 was 472.6, compared to the German-Austrian total of only 178.4. These numbers bear out Kennedy’s thesis that over the course of a long war, the nation or coalition with the greatest industrial resources will prevail, all other things being roughly equal (this caveat leaves room for exceptions like the Vietnam War and the American Revolution).

  An almost equally important question is whether it was even possible for the Germans to have turned the entire weight of their attack to the East at the last minute without causing the chaos that Moltke feared. The answer to this depends on how much credence one puts in the post-war claims of General Herman von Staab, the Director of the Division of Military Railways. It should be remembered the efficiency of the German Railway Division of the General Staff rose to the level of legend after the role it played in organising the German railroads in victorious wars against Denmark, Austria and France in the half-century preceding World War One. I rely for the outcome set forth in this story on the book by Staab after the war. His book was written to refute Moltke’s post-war claim that the transfer of the 750,000 men of the right wing from the Western Front to the East would have been impossible. In Aufmarsch nach zwei Fronten: auf Grund der Operationspläne von 1870-1914 (March on Two Fronts: on the Basis of the Operational Plans of 1870-1914) General von Staab definitively states that German deployment could have been changed from West to East even as late as the first week of August 1914.

  A comparatively minor but interesting issue is whether the Chief of the General Staff would have backed down under these circumstances, or instead would have presented the Kaiser with his resignation. When considering this question, it is worth noting that Moltke was uncomfortable with the vast responsibilities that his position entailed. At a critical moment during the Battle of the Marne, with the outcome of the war possibly riding in the balance, he delegated a critical decision to a subordinate, a lowly Colonel (Col. Hentch in Chapter 1) (The Guns of August, p. 431). Given that he had doubts about the wisdom of the Schlieffen Plan in the first place, it is not so difficult to believe that Moltke would have been secretly grateful to be relieved of the burden by orders from above.

  The rationale for the outcome of the Battles of East Prussia herein is not very difficult to understand. What the outnumbered German 8th Army did at the Battle of Tannenburg and the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes could have been done in spades with the addition of 750,000 men transferred from the Western Front.

  The main source for my description of the rout of the XV Corps in Chapter 4 is a paper written at the Levenworth General Staff School in 1933 by Major Edgemont F. Koenig, entitled “A Critical Analysis of the Battle of Morhange-Sarreborg,” which can be found at the Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library at: http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/ collection/ p4013coll14/id/995/rec/1.

  In the Great War, it took the French High Command more than a year to adjust to the gigantic siege operation that was the Western Front. General Joseph Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief, persisted in employing the same near-suicidal tactics on the Western front in 1915 that had already failed so spectacularly in 1914, launching offensives in Champagne and Artois that resulted in enormous French losses without gaining a single positive result. Indeed, Joffre never absorbed the lessons taught by the early battles of the war. He was promoted to Field Marshal in 1916 and kicked upstairs to remove his dead weight.

  Thus in the story, the French continue to apply their offensive a’ outrance tactics in their spring offensive in the mountains, with the same grisly results as before. An excellent source for the development of French tactics before the war as discussed in Chapters 4 and 15 is “No Other Law: The French Army and the Doctrine of Offensive” by Charles W. Saunders, Jr., the Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA. 1987 at: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P7331.pdf.

  The Japanese takeover of Indochina in Chapter 13 is based on what happened to the German Pacific colonies in the Great War, combined with what happened to Indochina in the Second World War. In 1914, Japan took advantage of Germany’s difficulties to snap up several German colonies in the Pacific, including the Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands and the Marianas Islands, as well as the German leasehold in China at Kiautschou, while the Germans were busy elsewhere and their fleet was blockaded by the Royal Navy. In World War II the Japanese invaded and seized Indochina in September 1940, after the French were defeated by Hitler, and the weak Vichy government was helpless to do anything to stop them. Given that historical record, it is not difficult to imagine Japan taking advantage of French difficulties, as portrayed here.

  In this alternative, Germany carves a huge new empire out of what had been Russia. This actually happened in 1918; however, Germany was forced to disgorge all of this real estate at the Versailles Peace Conference after being defeated in the West. In 1918, the occupying Germans organised the three Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into a short-lived puppet state known as the Baltic State Duchy, with Kaiser Wilhelm II as the first Duke. (See Thomas, N. and Bujeiro, R. The German Army in World War I, 1917-1918, Vol. 3, Oxford (U.K.), 2004.) Further evidence of German intentions in Eastern Europe after the defeat of Russia is the Ober Ost, political units in Western Russia created in 1919, with an eye towards settling German soldiers there after the war, along with the more immediate goal of shipping all the food surplus of the region to Germany to support the war effort. (See Gettman, E. The Baltic Region During World War One, 2002 http://depts.washington.edu/baltic/papers/worldwar1.htm.)

  The domination of the Mediterranean by the Triple Alliance described in the story logically follows from Great Britain’s neutrality. The entire French Navy was only marginally superior to either the Italian or Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1914. The two combined, along with
the much more powerful German High Seas Fleet, could easily control the Mediterranean.

  The account of the Galician offensive in Chapter 17 is based in part on the successful German-Austrian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive of May 1915, but with more men and a much larger artillery preparation. Although the Russians were routed, they eventually recovered, re-established a defensive line and continued to fight for two more years. In the story, the force of the blow is even more devastating, and the Russian lines have been thinned by the removal of units which had been sent North in attempt to stem the grey tide along the Baltic.

  Lieutenant Colonel Max Hoffman (1869-1927) began the war as the deputy chief of staff of the Eighth Army. He devised the plan that resulted in the destruction of the Russian Second Army at the Battle of Tannenburg for which Hindenburg and Ludendorff received most of the credit, and which launched the latter two men to the heights of fame. By the end of the war, Hoffman, by then a general, was in effective command of all the German and Austrian armies on the Eastern Front. His offensive in 1917 proved to be the final Russian defeat of the war, causing the overthrow of the Provisional Government, knocking Russia out of the war and forcing the Bolshevik Government to sign the humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

  Stephen King-Hall’s (later, Commander King-Hall) (1893-1966) account of his wartime experiences on the light cruiser H.M.S Southampton, entitled North Sea Diary 1914-1918, is available in excepted form at WWI Resource Centre (http://www.vlib.us/wwi/resources/northseadiary.html)

  Raymond Gram Swing (1887-1968) was a journalist and head of the Chicago Daily News Berlin bureau in 1914. He was a war correspondent who covered the 1915 Gallipoli campaign from the Turkish side and many other war stories. He later became a pioneer in radio journalism. His coverage of the 1932 presidential election brought him an offer from CBS to set up a radio news network in Europe. He turned down this offer, and the position was given to Edward R. Murrow. He instead signed in 1936 with the Mutual Radio Network, covering Europe, and went on to a long and distinguished career in broadcasting with ABC, BBC and the Voice of America. (Biographical material from Wikipedia and the New York Times obituary December 24, 1968.)

  On one minor matter, I must confess to cheating a bit. Joseph Stilwell (1883-1946), who appears several times in the story as the military attaché to the Embassy in Berlin, never served in Germany. (He did serve as a military attaché in China in 1935-37, however.) He was a brilliant combat soldier, who eventually rose to the rank of General as the commanding officer of the China-India-Burma Theatre in World War 2. My excuse for putting him where he certainly never was is that I find him to be a compelling historical figure, and my favourite American soldier. I do not believe that his presence in Berlin in 1914 would have had any significant effect on the major historical events as set forth in this book. For a portrait of this American original combined with a lucid account of the failure of America’s China policy, I heartily recommend Barbara Tuchman’s Stilwell and the American Experience in China (New York, 1970).

  The remarkable story of Albert Dawson (1885-1967), the long forgotten pioneer documentary filmmaker is told by Ron van Doppern in “Shooting the Great War: Albert Dawson and the American Correspondent Film Company, 1914-1918,” Film History , vol. 4, No. 2, University of Indiana Press, 1990. (For those curious as to the fate of Dawson’s film, but not curious enough to track down the van Doppern article, I will summarise here. Dawson’s production company, the American Correspondent Film Company, had been kept afloat by German government money. Before the film could be distributed to theatres in America, Berlin pulled the plug on the ACFC and the company promptly folded. Sadly, the film was never shown in this country, and Dawson’s career in filmmaking ended in 1918. He died in 1965 in obscurity, his film lost in the mists of time.)

  Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was a war hero, winning the Iron Cross First and Second Class on the Western Front. He was wounded twice and gassed in 1918. He became prominent in German politics in the 1920s and 30s as the leader of the National Socialist Workers Party.

  The description of the Berlin Guildhall Rathskeller in Chapter 10, including the translation of the poem inscribed on the central column, comes from Berlin Under the New Empire, Volume 2, by Henry Vizetelly (London, 1879).

  Below are some of the Internet resources without which this book would not have been possible:

  For naval matters especially for facts about the French Navy, Navypedia: (http://www.navypedia.org/ships/france.htm); for facts and figures on warships of all the participants, the Dreadnought Project, a website devoted to all things dreadnought (http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org) and WWI, the War At Sea (http://www.gwpda.org/naval/n0000000.htm), an incredible source for naval information on all the major powers, with the names, classes, and details of individual ships, including HMS Southampton.

  For general background on the origins of the war, I am indebted to Laurence Lafore’s excellent The Long Fuse (Philadelphia and New York, 1965).

  Much more about the Lohner B.VI and other aircraft of the Austro-Hungarian Royal and Imperial Aviation Corps can be found at Military Factory (http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/ww1-austria-hungary-military-aircraft.asp)

  For all kinds of background material and leads to other sources, The First World War.com (http://www.firstworldwar.com) was invaluable.

  Afterword II:

  THE WAR THAT WAS AND THE WAR THAT WAS NOT

  World War One and the Great European War: A Comparison

  Grey Tide in the East is a thought experiment in counter-factual history. Where in the preceding essay I described the details of the experiment, I will now discuss some of the consequences of World War One (WWI) of history versus those of the Great European War (GEW) of this book.

  To begin, after the GEW, there would have almost certainly been no Nazi Party to take power in Germany, thus Adolf Hitler would not have become the dictator who would bring about the Second World War almost single-handedly.

  In August 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm enjoyed the overwhelming popularity and support of the citizens of the Empire. The Kaiser’s power in the state was unchallenged. It was almost unthinkable that he would be forced to abdicate the throne just four years later, after defeat on the battlefield, famine at home and revolution on the streets. It was this defeat after four terrible years of war, combined with the effects of the Depression that created the conditions that brought the National Socialist Party to power in 1932. One of Hitler’s most effective appeals to voters was the promise that he would avenge the humiliating defeat of 1918. Obviously, if there had been no defeat in 1918, this would not have been a very effective campaign pledge.

  In any case, it is almost impossible to imagine a radical Right political party like the Nazis being successful in a German Empire basking in a glorious victory of a war led by the popular Hohenzollern Dynasty. Even if something like the Nazi Party did form in post-war Germany (which would be very unlikely), the Kaiser’s government would not have tolerated their violent ideas or their street-fighter tactics, and would have very quickly suppressed the movement and jailed its leaders.

  For Great Britain, the result of the GEW as depicted in this book would have been in many ways much better than that of WWI. The negative is foreshadowed in Chapters 2, 7 and 18. In the GEW, Germany comes to dominate the Continent militarily and economically. She poses a potential challenge to the British Empire after the war with the expansion of her own Imperial holdings and the newly enhanced status of the High Seas Fleet, after a victorious campaign in which she wins every sea battle and imposes a blockade on France, in true Royal Navy style.

  On the other side of the coin… in WWI, the British Empire ended up on the winning side, but lost over one million men killed and more than 2 million wounded. Great Britain alone suffered 886,000 dead (over 2% of the population) and 1.6 million wounded. An entire generation of men would have otherwise become the leaders of the Empire in the decades after the war was sacrificed in the mud of northern France.

  WWI
had a drastic effect on Great Britain as the world’s banker and the City of London as its financial centre, roles she had filled for a hundred years. In August 1914 the Bank of England announced that it was suspending gold payments against pounds sterling, in other words, abandoning the gold standard. The result was that the centre of international finance shifted to Wall Street in the United States, never to return. As WWI dragged on and the combatant countries needed to borrow more money, the United States, not Great Britain, became the recipient of this immense (and immensely profitable) business. (See John Brooks’ excellent study of Wall Street in the 1920s and ‘30s, Once in Golconda, New York, 1969, p. 3-5.)

  Although Great Britain’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) increased slightly during the war, this was achieved in part by expending 15% of the nation’s pre-war wealth by massive borrowing and by production of huge quantities of munitions, whose value after the war was negligible. Moreover, the increase did little for British consumers, since by 1917 the government was absorbing 40% of the GDP compared with only 8% in 1913. Finally, the post WWI British economy was further crippled by the indirect costs of the war such as pensions to widows and soldiers crippled in the war, the loss of skilled labour, and so on. (War expenditure figures here and below are from Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p. 274 and “Societies at War: Britain and France 1914-1918,” by Dr. Paul Mulvey, London, 2011, http://www.academia.edu/1093598/Societies_at_ War_Britain_and_France_on_the_Home_ Front_1914-18_lecture_, and The Economics of World War One: a Comparative Quantitative Analysis by Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison, University of Warwick, 2005.)