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Post by fredsanford on Oct 20, 2013 16:42:42 GMT -6
Aww, c'mon. It was a dangerous and tricky manuever. That F-4 could've leaked hydraulic fluid all over his canopy.
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Post by fredsanford on Oct 20, 2013 9:43:07 GMT -6
Sorry to not respond for a few days... Reading your last post, I don't think we're that far apart. I agree that an offensive drive into France in the southern Alps is really a non-starter. Greece, like you say, isn't going anywhere and once the decay and fall of Italy's erstwhile allies AH & OE come to fruition, the Balkans and eastern Med will be ripe for future exploitation. If the early part of the war in the Med is focused on naval activity, it will help assuage the Italian people's aversion to casualties. Once naval superiority is established, Italy can focus it's limited resources on attainable, low cost objectives.
Next question: Assuming Italian intervention on the side of the central powers takes place, and the straits of Otranto aren't the choke point they became historically, what does AH do with its fleet? I don't think either one of us believe a high level of operational cooperation would take place between AH and Italy, more like co-belligerents with their own independent strategic objectives. If you were CinC of the AH navy, what kind of campaign would you wage?
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Post by fredsanford on Oct 17, 2013 6:36:45 GMT -6
I guess I'm coming at the issue of Italy's stance from the POV of someone trying to convince Mussolini (using him as a stand-in for all triple alliance intervention skeptics) that declaring war on the Entente had a potential payoff for Italy. From that POV, what good does simply closing the eastern Med do? Garner AH's "appreciation"? I don't see that as a very convincing argument. In fact, if I were Mussolini I'd say "why don't we just stay out of it?", since I'd see the cost and risk of war with the Entente, but no upside.
So I think it's a case of "go big or go (stay) home". I would say to Mussolini, "Look, intervening on the side of our alliance partners will give us the closest thing to a favorable balance of naval power that we're going to see in the foreseeable future. If the French reinforce metropolitan France with the colonial army, we can subsequently attack and sieze their undefended colonies and Corsica. If they don't move the colonial army, we can take Nice and Savoy and hold the southern alpine passes in our undisputed control. Heck, if we get lucky and intercept the troop convoys and destroy them at sea, we may be able to do both. So far as the British go, they have only 3 BC's and a few cruisers in the Mediterranean, and with the situation in the North Sea, reinforcing them would be problematical for them. So we may have the opportunity to sieze Malta, blockade Suez and assist AH and Turkey in subduing the Balkans. And by "assist", I mean beat them both to Greece and the rest of the Aegean islands. An offensive strategy would also have the virtue of accomplishing all of the support goals of the defensive strategy by default, since a successful offensive strategy would mean gaining naval supremacy in the Med. Furthermore, as a price for participation, Italy should require the industrial assistance of our alliance partners, specifically in the form of coal, steel, and armaments to allow us to undertake such a bold and important mission on behalf of all alliance partners."
So basically, I'd appeal to his lust for territorial gain. Also, remember the saying "possession is 9/10ths of the law". A defensive strategy doesn't give Italy possession of anything when peace negotiations come around. Does Italy really want to count on the generosity of AH and Germany for some crumbs that fall from their table? Italy must create its own "facts on the ground", to borrow a phrase from another place and time. Early, forceful, and successful operations would also have the benefit of rallying the people to our Great and Noble Cause.
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Post by fredsanford on Oct 16, 2013 3:03:58 GMT -6
The Nationalists wanted to "redeem" Dalmatia, certainly. However, they also held irredentist claims on France (I neglected to mention Savoy and Nice above). This would force a choice over which claims/colonial territory would take priority, and which set of claims would require patience. A defensive posture would have still been an act of war (or otherwise be meaningless posturing), but IMO would be a futile attempt to split the difference and have no possibility of accomplishing either goal. It thus becomes a prerequisite of this alternative that the Dalmatian territorial ambitions be put on hold, until Italy could fulfill it's goals against the French (and Malta wrt the British). The Nationalists would have to understand that liberation of Dalmatia would have to wait until the next war.
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Post by fredsanford on Oct 15, 2013 17:38:01 GMT -6
I'm not saying Germany and AH are interested in North Africa. Italy was interested in North Africa however, along with the Balkans as mentioned. They also had irredentist claims on Corsica. If Italy was going to add to its nascent empire, they'd have to take an active role against the French, as well as being a truly useful alliance partner. I'm not sure I understand how a silent partner/defensive stance for Italy would get them anywhere- in that case they might as well have stayed on the course they ended up taking. In order to give Italy a reason to vary from that historical course, there would have to be a potential upside for them. The hypothetical inducement would be Germany and AH saying to Italy, "make common cause with us against the French and British. When we are victorious, you will be rewarded with as much of French North Africa as you can take, along with Corsica, Malta, and Egypt if you can get it." This would help Germany in Northern Europe by diverting French and English strength away from the German main effort. Having both the Italian and AH fleets loose in the Med would also hinder Entente efforts to supply Russia, even if Turkey remains neutral. I just don't see Turkey joining the same alliance as Italy given that they had just fought a war against each other 2 years prior, and Turkey's losses to Italy were still fresh. Perhaps if AH, Italy, and Turkey made an arrangement to partition Greece...maybe then.
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Post by fredsanford on Oct 15, 2013 11:08:35 GMT -6
I'm thinking that Italy would abrogate any secret arrangement with France under this alternative. The inducement Germany and AH would use to garner active Italian participation is the promise of French North Africa. Italy was historically unhappy that the French beat them into Tunisia, so this is the presumed motivation for active Italian involvement. This would make the naval war more active, as the Italian fleet would be available to support the Goeben in attempting to interdict French troop convoys, or perhaps even undertake offensive operations aimed at French North Africa.
Meanwhile, the AH fleet would attempt, independently, to interfere with British support to Serbia and Greece via the Salonika front. Since the Goeben & Breslau don't need to flee Italian waters in this alternative, their subsequent transfer to the Ottoman navy and operations against the Russians doesn't take place, so the Ottomans remain neutral- so no Middle Eastern Theater or Gallipoli. However, the stopper is off the Adriatic bottle and the AH fleet has more freedom of movement to interfere with Britain in the eastern Med.
On land in the east, the net result is that AH can concentrate on Serbia and the Eastern front, but Russia doesn't have the Caucasus front to worry about, either. So that's more or less a wash. In the west, the French may want to bring the colonial army over to the mainland for helping out on the Western front or for a drive into northern Italy. However, that may leave French North Africa vulnerable, and getting those troop convoys across is by no means assured. What to do, what to do?
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Post by fredsanford on Oct 15, 2013 1:22:24 GMT -6
I deleted my old version of SAI and the Campaign expansion to do the update, and don't have my registration codes anymore.
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Post by fredsanford on Oct 14, 2013 17:26:33 GMT -6
You may be onto something with that last sentence. According to Wikipedia, he was turned down by the Portuguese twice, and the Castilians once, because they thought he was underestimating the distance.
At any rate, if Columbus didn't make the voyage, somebody would have sooner or later.
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Post by fredsanford on Oct 14, 2013 15:07:45 GMT -6
Would the marginal cost of the additional trip length really have been a deal-breaker? Assuming that the expedition would have obtained supplies for the return trip in "Asia", and say a 100 mile/day average rate of advance, would another 25 days worth of supplies been that hard to swallow? I'm sure some ghosts of native Americans would hope so, but I'm not sure.
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Post by fredsanford on Oct 14, 2013 14:50:53 GMT -6
Doing a little Wikipedia-level research, a couple of issues worth considering: Italy apparently took pains to try and reassure Britain that the Triple Alliance, in their mind, wasn't directed against Britain. Later, they also sought to reassure France in a similar manner, though I'm not sure they really meant that. Which to me, begs the question, "So who was this alliance meant to protect against?"
Also, there was little love lost between the Austrians and the Italians, as evidenced by the actual turn of events as well as recent contemporary history. So even if Italy did side with the Austrians, as a practical matter, what would that mean operationally? i.e., how well would they play together? Would you see combined fleets with units of both countries? I'm a bit skeptical. In fact, I'm not sure Italy would be keen on the Austrian army crossing northern Italy to strike at the French, unless the French were themselves advancing into Italy. They would most likely be "co-belligerents", more than formal allies in any operational sense, IMO.
Final thought of this post: Would the Ottomans end up a belligerent in this alternate 'reality'? Would the Goeben have been homeless? Presumably not, and so it's voyage to Turkey wouldn't have happened. Absent this gift to the O.E., would they have joined the war? Given that the Ottomans and Italy just concluded a war against each other, my gut feeling is that Italy and the Ottomans would be incompatible as allies.
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Post by fredsanford on Oct 14, 2013 11:05:55 GMT -6
Here's one with a SAI tie-in: What if Italy had decided to honor its treaty commitments (at least from the POV of the Germans & Austro-Hungarians) and entered the war in August 1914 on the side of the Central Powers?
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