In August, the Sultan, angered by the loss of his empire attempted to re-assert his authority over the government. The CUP, dissatisfied with the constant interference by the Sultan deposed him, declaring the Republic of Turkey. In Elections held in November, Enver Pasha became Turkeys first President. The deposed Sultan Mehmed VI accepted exile in Malta, then moved to the Italian Riviera.
Chapter 36
November 1920
The Presidential Election in the United States began a contentious political year. The early Republican front-runner Robert LaFollette angered the party leadership with his continued swing to the extreme Progressive wing of the party. Looking for a middle of the road candidate, the Republicans nominated the Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge. For Vice President, they nominated Herbert Hoover who led the American Relief Association to Europe immediately following The Great War.
The Democrats nominated James Cox the Governor of Ohio, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt from New York. The campaign became a referendum on the Taft Presidency.
The Irish Democrats deserted their party, as Taft kept the United States out of the war. Great Britain decisively defeated the Irish Rebellions in 1916 and 19. About one-half of Irish Democrats voted Republican; the others refused to vote and stayed home. In Irish eyes, staying out of the war forced Great Britain to the bargaining table.
The mid-west German-Americans felt the same way. They overwhelmingly voted Republican.
The League of Nations, formed in Europe with headquarters in Geneva, also became an issue. Article 10 which committed signatory nations to wage any war declared by the League was a non-starter. The Republican Party rejected the League. America First was the dominant theme throughout the country. Coolidge’s affirmation of the Taft Doctrine – Peace Through Strength – resonated throughout the electorate.
The Democrats, while not supporting the League, rejected America First. They argued that theTaft Doctrine would force an international arms race. That arms race would destabilize the world, and bankrupt the nation.
On November 2, The Coolidge – Hoover ticket won with 61 percent of the popular vote, The Electoral College voted for Coolidge - Hoover by 454 to 127. The 1920 election became a benchmark, as with the ratification of the Nineteenth amendment women were allowed to vote. Their participation doubled the electorate and changed the electorate’s face. Politicians now needed to pay attention to issues of primary interest to women.
Chapter 37
January 1921
Following over six years of almost constant warfare, the map of Europe and the middle east radically changed.
As a result of the Nordic Union, Sweden and Norway merged for the second time into a dual kingdom with duel capital cities of Stockholm and Oslo. Following the example of Austria-Hungary, each nation would have a Prime Minister and the Parliament would meet in each capital in alternate years. Both nations had equal membership in Parliament. Both royal families would share the crown. The current Swedish King Gustav V named the former King of Norway Haakon VII as his heir.
The German Empire expanded east into the former Russian provinces of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. Germany became the dominant power in Europe. German appointed princelings ruled in semi-autonomous principalities of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. Each principality elected their Diets, which elected representatives to serve in the Reichstag in Berlin.
Greece became dominant in the Aegean area, conquering Thrace and northeastern Anatolia. The Greeks moved their capital from Athens to Constantinople. The Greek Navy dominated the Aegean Sea, with the islands, including Crete incorporated into Greece.
The Russian Empire became the Russian Federation. The Russian government also moved the capital from Petrograd to Moscow. The former Russian provinces of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan became independent nations.
Finland and Moldova became independent states. Finland established its capital city at Helsinki and allied with the Nordic Union.
The Ottoman Empire ceased to exist. The provinces of Mesopotamia, The Hejaz, and Syria became independent kingdoms. The Kurds calved out a nation called Kurdistan, with its capital of Mosul. Anatolia became the heartland of the new Republic of Turkey.
A new Caliph, Hussein bin Ali replaced the Sultan as the religious leader of Islam. Two of his sons ruled in Mesopotamia and Syria. The only threat to his authority came from the Saud Kingdom in central Arabia. He was confident that if the Saudi’s proved troublesome, the armies of Hejaz, Syria, and Mesopotamia, equipped with modern weapons would defeat them.
A new decade dawned from the ruins of war. Millions of civilians faced starvation and disease. The Bird Flu which swept the world from 1918 to 1920 took the lives of fifty to one-hundred million civilians. That was estimated to be three times the amount of total deaths attributed to the war. Death totals in areas untouched by the war comprised up to six percent of the population. Many of the infections came from soldiers returning home from the war or moving to other countries. In the United States, almost one million persons died.
By 1921, the pandemic abated. Unscarred by war, the United States emerged as the most powerful nation in the world. She dominated all of North America, and with the Panama Canal and the naval base in Chimbote Bay, Peru influenced South American national priorities. Looking around the world for potential adversaries, the Naval war College focused on the Empire of Japan; which expanded its influence by appropriating the previous German colonies in China, The Marshall and Caroline Islands. The expanding military bases in those islands became a potential threat to United States possessions in the Philippines, Guam, Wake, and Hawaii.
Secretly, the Naval War College war-gamed various scenarios of a war with the Empire of Japan. The results were mixed. Japan’s smaller fleet consolidated itself near the home islands. The positioning of the Pacific Fleet included task forces in Bremerton, Washington, Mare Island and Long Beach California, Chimbote Bay and Pearl Harbor. That dispersal’s design was to project power in multiple locations, with minimal threat to the fleet. With a threat of war, the fleet could consolidate.
The Panama Canal allowed for easy reinforcements to either the Atlantic or Pacific fleets. Groups influenced by the doctrines of Alfred Thayer Mahan advocated for newer and larger battleships to project seapower. Others advocated for more aircraft carriers to serve as seaborne airports to obtain intelligence from remote areas, and to project air power into a war. Billy Mitchel's aviators previously convincingly proved that air power could sink a pre-Dreadnought target battleship with bombs.
The Naval War College postulated a middle road. A written report to the Department of the Navy proposed a new class of fast battleships capable of speeds more than thirty knots, which would allow the battleships to keep up with and protect a fleet of fast aircraft carriers.
The War College recommendations influenced the Department of the Navy to request the set-aside funds to convert the two other Lexington Class battlecruiser hulls to be the prototypes of the new generation of Missouri Class fast battleships. The first two carried the names USS Missouri and the USS New Jersey. The new class would incorporate the advances of the South Dakota Class into a longer hull with larger electric turbine engines. The estimated hull speed of the Missouri Class fast battleships was 33 knots. A standard design would economize costs, and allow for modifications as technology improved.
Epilogue
Book one in the series imagines how the history of the United States of America might change if Abraham Lincoln survived the assassination. It also postulates a war between the United States and Great Britain.
The second book in this series postulated a growing super-power in the Western Hemisphere, which drastically changed United States history. The annexation of Canada allowed for the admission of additional states. The domination of the Caribbean provided for mass emigration of southern blacks to Cuba, Puerto Rico and Dominica. This emigration also eliminated the scourge of southern white discrimination against the southern black populati
on. The policies of Jim Crow and Separate but Equal do not happen in my timeline.
Book three postulates how the strength of the United States Navy enabled it to establish a naval base at Chimbote Bay in Peru. The defeat of Chile at Chimbote Bay established United States hegemony in South America.
In actual history, Peru offered to lease Chimbote Bay to the United States. Chile prevented as she possessed a modern navy with ironclad battleships, constructed in Great Britain. The United States Post-Civil War navy was allowed to decline to steam powered wood frigates and sloops. These warships would not have survived a battle with the Chilian Navy.
The next big change in history came with the delayed assassination of President McKinley. The timing allowed for Teddy Roosevelt to serve two full terms. Instead of the historical feud between Roosevelt and Taft in the Republican Party in 1912, Roosevelt provided enthusiastic cooperation. Woodrow Wilson did not become President, as he battled with a united Republican Party.
I also changed the scenario of the beginning of The Great War. The assassination attempt on Arch Duke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo failed. The Arch Duke was a reformer, and much out of favor with the Emperor Franz Joseph, who rejoiced after the actual assassination.
I also flipped the Battle of Dogger Bank, with a change in command of the German Navy. An aggressive Admiral Scheer replaced the timid Admiral Ingenohl. Actual history records that Admiral Ingenohl missed a golden opportunity for victory by retreating in the face of inferior Royal Navy forces.
An analogy is the replacement of Admiral Bull Halsey with Admiral Fletcher just before the Battle of Midway. Admiral Yamamoto predicated his strategy on the presumption that Bull Halsey would charge directly into a superior battleship fleet. Instead, Admiral Fletcher contented himself with the destruction of four Japanese fleet carriers.
In my version, the Royal Navy’s defeat at Dogger Bank, and the formation of the Nordic Union motivated the Royal Navy’s occupation of Narvik, Norway. Paranoia resulted from the loss of so many Dreadnoughts in one battle. The occupation soured American public opinion, particularly the Irish against Great Britain.
I also postulated a Taft Doctrine of Peace Through Strength, which kept the United States out of the war. He actively built up the United States Navy to defend the 3,000 miles width of the Atlantic Ocean. The policy was not isolationism, as the United States State Department actively pursued peace initiatives.
Without the United States entry, the Triple Entente could not defeat the Central Powers. The French Army was in mutiny with thousands deserting daily. The German Armies exhausted themselves. Compounding the issues, the economies of all the warring nations faced catastrophe.
King Albert of Belgium proposed a policy of no winners – no losers in the war. He was ignored by the British and French. After the defeat of the Russians, The Kaiser offered a similar solution as King Albert’s on the Western Front. Had the United States stayed out of the war, a ceasefire and subsequent treaties similar to what I postulated at Breton Woods might have happened?
I followed the Russian Revolution from the beginning. I twisted it with the capture and execution of Stalin and Trotsky during the Petrograd uprising in July 1917. Lenin’s defeat, capture, and exchange for the Royal Family in 1918 is a sound theory. If Germany did not suffer defeat in the Great War, an intervention to prevent a Bolshevik victory is a distinct possibility. In real time, the belated intervention by Western Powers in Russia, and by Japan in the Far East failed to prevent the Bolshevik victory.
The deaths of the exiled Tsar and Tsarevich from the Bird Flu could have happened. An estimated fifty to one-hundred million died in this worldwide pandemic.
The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was inevitable. In real time, the British occupation of Mesopotamia and the Hejaz, and French occupation of Syria and Lebanon resulted in the Sykes-Picot agreement which created the modern middle east. In my timeline, organic revolutions precipitated the fall of the Ottomans. In my timeline, the future of the middle-east is open for change.
In real time, the Greeks conquered eastern Anatolia until 1922. A united Nationalist Turkey, led by Kemal Ataturk drove them out, reclaimed Constantinople, and renamed it Istanbul. The Turks slaughtered tens of thousands of Greek and Armenian minority populations.
Manifest Destiny: HEGEMONY Page 17