January 2, 1914 On the Western Front, French troops make small gains amid heavy rain and mud. In Armenia, Enver Pasha abandons his troops, having led them to what would become the worst Ottoman defeat in the Great War, and scoots back to Constantinople. Digging up a well-used scapegoat, Enver Pasha blames treason by Armenian troops and villagers for the defeat....even though an Armenian named Hovannes helped Enver escape the Russians by carrying him on his back South Africa introduces conscription, the first part of the British Empire to do so. Prime Minister/General Botha argues that the conscription is necessary based on the potential for further German-backed uprisings or invasions from German colonies in Africa. The Ottoman government passes legislation allowing Zionist groups of European Jews to acquire up to 1/3 of the land in modern Israel and the Palestinian territories, but which at the time was just part of the Ottoman province of Syria. The term Zionist did not in 1914 carry the same controversial connotations that it does today. HMS Fox and HMS Goliath shell Dar Es Salaam in East Africa. The British high command debates alternatives for striking against Germany and her allies somewhere outside the deadlocked Western Front. There are two main proposals. First Sea Lord Jacky Fisher argues for a strike by the Royal Navy into the Baltic Sea, to link up with a Russian army and punch into Germanys northern coastal provinces, and goes so far as to order the construction of numbers of warships and troop transports just for this one Baltic Project. The main drawback to this idea is the need to destroy or otherwise neutralize the German High Seas Fleet in the North Sea before entering the Baltic, since the German fleet can easily pass back and forth from the North Sea and the Baltic via the Kiel Canal across the base of the Danish peninsula. The fleet commanders of the Royal Navy positively paled at the prospect of the losses they would suffer from mines and torpedoes while forcing the Skaggerak and Kattgat straits between Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Churchill, on the other hand, favors an attack on the Dardanelles. Significantly, Kitchener has major reservations about both proposals, and flatly tells Churchill that no troops could be spared for the Dardanelles, while simultaneously promising Russia that something will be done to rattle the Ottomans. A third proposal, which would have co-opted or outright ignored Danish neutrality and simply landed British or Russian troops in Denmark to invade Germany from the north, is left aside.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 23:43:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015