All over by Christmas

Could British intervention in 1914 saved the Entente?

The British decision to abandon Belgium, while much criticised at the time in the sensationalist press, was swiftly vindicated by the rapid defeat of the French army. The rapid advance of the German forces towards Paris continued unabated by French efforts at counter-attack. Despite the fall of much of East Prussia to the Russian army, and the siege of Konigsberg, German forces continued to pour into France. The final effort at saving Paris, a counter-offensive along the Marne, was a miserable failure, with the hastily assembled French forces collapsing in front of the professional German advance. By the end of September much of Paris was in German hands, and the French government was on the brink of collapse. The final nail in the coffin was the belated Italian declaration of war in favour of Germany, and the Italian invasion of Southern France. France then accepted a British offer of mediation, and surrendered to Germany. France’s surrender meant that a massive number of German troops were free for the Eastern Front, ultimately resulting in the Russian loss of Poland, the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the regency of Grand Duke Michael for the new Tsar Alexei. The war of 1914 ended on Christmas Day, giving the war its name of ‘the Christmas War’.  

The Peace of Edinburgh would see the Central Powers make substantial gains. In the East Russia lost Poland was forced to accept Austrian primacy in the western Balkans. France’s losses were much greater. German annexed more of Lorraine, with great fortresses such as Verdun falling under German rule. Large amounts of France’s colonial empire were transferred to Germany. Indochina, French Equatorial Africa, the French Congo, Madagascar and Morocco became German. In addition the Belgian Congo would later be partitioned between Britain and Germany, allowing Germany to create its ‘Mittelafrika’ at last. Italy gained Tunisia and parts of metropolitan France from France.  

The other two great wars of the 20^th century were the South American and Pacific wars. The former was a conflict over the Gran Chaco region between Bolivia and Paraguay. The Increasingly tense Anglo-German economic competition over South America resulted in this escalating to a wider continental war between Chile and Argentina, which ended in the victory of British-backed Chile. The Pacific War was longer, and far more destructive. The collapse of China in the 1920s resulted in small scale Japanese intervention, but in the 1930s Japan came under the control of a military clique that, dissatisfied with the Anglo-Japanese alliance, sought to conquer China and create a united East-Asian Empire under Japanese control. The invasion of China in 1935 would attract international opprobrium, particularly as Japanese combat operations stymied other powers trade. America and Germany implemented sanctions, and the British cancelled their alliance with Tokyo. Germany began smuggling arms to China from their colonies in Indochina, Kaiser Wilhelm II demanding that Japan be ‘put in their place’.

The militarists reaction was a surprise attack against German colonies in East Asia. German Quingdao and Indochina fell extremely rapidly, and soon Japanese cruisers were harassing city in Germany’s Dutch ally’s colony of the East Indies. German efforts at fighting Japan were ineffectual. Many of Germany’s heavier surface warships were designed with operations around the European coasts in mind, and had a much shorter ranger than their Japanese equivalents. In addition Japan had a small number of aircraft carriers, while Germany had none. German battleships were sunk by Japanese naval aircraft, humiliating the Kaiserliche Marine. However Japanese aggression had attracted British and American attention. War with these two powers quickly followed as they halted imports of vital resources to Japan. While the United States, with its small military, failed to prevent the capture of the Philippines, Britain successfully defended Singapore with its own carrier force, and began raids against Japanese assets in the South China Sea. The Pacific War very nearly became a true world war, with the near entry of France and Italy into the war on Japan’s side. Both countries had come under the control of militaristic, expansionist governments. In France the Action Francais government sought to avenge France’s defeat in the Christmas War, while in Italy Benito Mussolini’s government claimed that Italy had been cheated of her rightful territories in Austria in that war, and desired revenge. Austria was in turmoil, following the reforms of the Emperor Charles, and was in need of a large German garrison simply to keep itself together. The two Latin powers approached Russia, hoping for a restored Entente to destroy Germany. Russia had modernised since the Christmas War, becoming an industrial titan and consumer economy. Land reforms had considerably lessened revolutionary activity, and Russia was now both stable and extremely powerful.

German went to massive lengths to prevent a Russian attack. It was agreed that German and Austrian forces would vacate Serbia and Romania, and allow those countries in the Russian sphere of influence. Tsar Alexei then declared war on Japan, aiming to avenge the defeat of his father 40 years before, and Russian troops poured into Manchuria and Korea. Following this massive defeat, the Japanese Empire fell apart. A coup by moderate navy officers ousted the militarists, and the Japanese sued for peace. Japan lost all of its colonies apart from Formosa, and ultimately came under the control of the Japanese Socialist Party.

The Pacific War divided the world into three great power blocs, which dominate the world to the present. Britain and America came closer together as a result of the Pacific War, forming an informal Anglo-American Agreement. The British Empire has since been reformed into an Imperial Federation, a federation of federations. Provinces, such as British Columbia, form part of the four dominions, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Oceania, which all form part of the Imperial Federation, with its capital in the shared ‘Imperial City’ of London. India is not part of this system, although the two countries still share a monarch, since the massive Indian population would quickly come to dominate the Federation if allowed to be part of its democratic process. Germany has created several formal organisations around itself, the European Union and the Welt-System. The EU is an economic union of European states directed from Berlin, while the Welt-System is an international alliance that embraces the EU states, Germany’s former colonies, and other German allies such as Argentina. Russia has few allies, instead preferring to focus on its immediate strategic concerns in Persia and the Balkans. Its most prominent international allies are Brazil and French Algeria. The latter is the remnant of the French militarist regime that, after its failure to convince Russia to join in the Pacific War, was overthrown by an extremist socialist movement called the People’s Army. While both Algeria, which restored the Bourbon Monarchy in the 1970s in defiance of the French People’s Republic, and France itself have democratised, the two countries remain rivals in the Western Mediterranean.

This trench of Human development, away from the binary balance of power of Germany-Austria/ Russia-France, was only possible because of Britain not intervening in 1914. The destruction of the Entente system was the fault of the British, and could have been avoided if they had joined in.

What did we say about answering the question on the paper, and not the question we want Tim? This was supposed to be a short discussion of the military situation in 1914, and whether the arrival of the British Expeditionary Force in Belgium could have halted the advance of the German Army. It was not meant to be a summary of the past century, with a short paragraph crudely linking this ramble back to the original question at the end. See me after class, and consider dropping one of your other subjects, I think the time pressures are effecting the quality of your work.