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Austria-Hungary and the European War - A Hearts of Iron IV AAR

Austria-Hungary today is one of the principal powers of Europe, a highly-industrialized, prosperous and modern country. The krone is considered a major reserve currency, the University of Vienna is held in similar esteem to Cambridge or Harvard, and the Two Crowns are as recognizable as the Union Jack or the 51-starred American flag. Tourists regularly flock to Venice, political summits are regularly held at Budapest, and Austro-Hungarian goods are sold across the world. Yet the meteoric rise of Austria-Hungary was mired in controversy particularly for its role in the Balkan Crisis and the short-lived Hungarian-Yugoslavian war of aggression, and it was only the struggle against the Axis powers that united the western and eastern halves of Europe into a single whole.

Refoundation

The Kingdom of Hungary was in a precarious position in 1936. Dismembered by the Treaty of Trianon after the Great War, Hungary had seen a succession of ministers promising to restore the prestige of the diminished state from the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic to the ardently pro-Nazi Gyula Gömbös. With the failures of both the fascist and communist movements on full display, the Regent Admiral Miklos Horthy elected to work with the monarchist parties, approving their motion for stricter budgetary controls and supporting their call for a restoration of the Hungarian monarchy, giving a famous speech on 8 October 1936 that “a regent is a steward, not a king.” The debate raged as to who would be invited to wear the crown of Saint Stephen, with Frederich Franz of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Carl Wilhelm of Sondermanland both suggested as candidates. The former with the nationalist Unity Party and encouraged by pro-German elements along with Adolf Hitler, the latter was championed by the liberal parties in the hopes that he would introduce a monarchy modeled upon the Swedish constitutional system. However, the monarchist voices were the most powerful, and they selected as their candidate Otto von Habsburg, to restore the previous prestige that the country enjoyed under Habsburg leadership. At his coronation ceremony on 16 December, 1936, Otto von Habsburg swore to restore the kingdom to prominence, and return the provinces lost in the war. This caused an uproar within the European diplomatic community, with President Edvard Benes of Czechoslovakia and Prime Minister Leon Blum of France providing the strongest voice against the move. When pressed to reaffirm France’s eastern commitments established in the wake of the Great War, Blum was noncommittal, domestic commitments and the weakness of his Popular Front government in the wake of rising violence between the French Communist Party and the nationalist Leagues.

Yet despite the rhetoric, King Otto I took an unexpected policy direction. His first cabinet was dominated by industrial policy, looking to revitalize a decaying industrial structure by importing ideas from the more industrialized nations, particularly the United States, who benefitted from a large trade deal for U.S. Steel. Keenly aware of the limited natural resources, King Otto commissioned an institute to innovate synthetic materials, primarily Buna rubber and oil from coal liquefaction plants, bringing in ideas developed in Germany and the United Kingdom. Even more surprising, Otto convened the Danubian Railroad Summit, inviting Austria and Czechoslovakia to unite their railroad networks, which had suffered since the break-up of the old Austro-Hungarian empire. This move particularly impressed the Austrian people, which sparked pro-Hungarian demonstrations which sometimes descended into violence with pro-German groups who wanted to unite Austria with Germany into one Germanic nation. The pro-Hungarian movement owed much of its support to Otto von Habsburg himself, who had spent much of his time in exile writing on Austrian affairs and made a name for himself as a fierce critic of nationalist policies. While monarchist and Catholic voices were among the most loyal of his supporters, he also enjoyed the support of Austria’s Jewish population, largely concentrated within Vienna, as they had hoped that a government led by Otto could stand up to the Third Reich and a large majority of the middle classes who wanted similar industrial policies to help revitalize Austria’s economy. Even stranger, his fierce opposition to Nazi Germany earned him the support of anti-monarchist groups, most notable among them being the social democrats.

Upon learning of the pro-Hungarian demonstrations, Otto suggested to Kurt Schuschnigg to hold a referendum on reunification with Hungary and the restoration of the Dual Monarchy. With the threat of forcible German annexation on the horizon, Austria agreed to hold the referendum provided that Austria would be seen as an equal, and not merely a junior partner. The date of the vote was scheduled for 15 July 1937, a hot summer day. The referendum was fiercely protested by local communist groups, who boycotted the election and accused the Austrian government of manipulation by foreign powers. Otto encouraged participation by funding street parties for pro-Hungarian political groups, and the results were even better than Otto could have predicted: a landslide victory for unification. The Austrian government announced the results on 16 July, and formed itself into a provincial government under the overlordship of the Hungarian monarchy. Otto assumed the title of Emperor of Austria on 22 September, and proclaimed that the Austria-Hungary of old was reborn, and that he would not rest until all of the former Habsburg territories were brought under one banner.

The Balkans Aflame

Almost immediately, this brought a crisis to the Balkan region, with both Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia expressing concern about Austro-Hungarian ambitions in Eastern Europe, as both provinces were formed in the collapse of the previous Empire and King Otto’s rhetoric on reclaiming lost territory meant he might be thinking of annexing their territories. Indeed, King Otto embarked on lengthy negotiations with Edvard Benes, discussing the return of Czechoslovakia into the Austria-Hungary as the province of Bohemia. The young democracy had a long struggle with balancing the monarchist and republican voices within the country and the fear of Germany demanding the Sudetenland in its goal to establish a pan-German state. Surprisingly, Otto von Habsburg offered a surprising amount of compromise, promising to respect the Czech parliament as well as the language privileges enjoyed by the region during the time of the previous Austro-Hungarian Empire. Noting the political tension between Czechs and Slovaks, Otto offered to continue Benes’s plan of shared industrial growth in order to relax ethnic tensions, a prime example of Otto’s vision of an Austria-Hungary that was a cosmopolitan, poly-ethnic nation. On 1 December 1937, Benes accepted the offered terms of Austro-Hungarian overlordship, and Otto was acclaimed as King of Bohemia. His speech following his accession was careful, stating his respect for “the young parliament and its enthusaiastic supporters,” as an olive branch to the liberal, anti-monarchist factions who opposed the move. Yugoslavia lodged diplomatic protests, stating that the control of the Czechoslovakian army violated the 35,000 man limit on the Hungarian army as stipulated in the Treaty of Trianon. Otto disagreed, noting that the army was trained in Czechoslovakia before its annexation into Austria-Hungary. Benito Mussolini agreed with Hungary’s claims, and French and British did not comment directly, stating that their primary goal has always been the preservation of peace in the region.

With Bohemia within its borders, Austria-Hungary set its sights on the territories awarded to Romania in the aftermath of the Great War. Transylvania, or Siebenbürgen as the Hungarians named it had a large segment of ethnic Hungarians. Romania, ruled by King Carol II under royal dictatorship, refused the gesture out of hand; Hungarian aggression had caused the Great War and the territory was lawfully transferred to Romania as part of war reparations. Upon hearing his refusal, King Otto retaliated by stating that the treaty went against its stated objective of national self-determination and that the Romanians had violated the treaty due to its land confiscation and anti-Semitic policies. Both Otto and Carol moved their armies to the border, neither wishing to back down in a crisis. The news media of the day was alight with articles fearing another Great War that could start at any time, the Balkans lit aflame yet again.

Wishing to avoid a war, Otto suggested impartial mediation through diplomatic back-channels. With Germany hostile, and France already invested in the conflict with its post-war foreign policy guarantees but unwilling to enforce them, the United Kingdom and Italy were named as possible mediators. This move has been considered a foreign policy masterstroke by Austria-Hungary. By being the one to suggest mediation, it engendered goodwill toward France, Italy, and Great Britain. Neville Chamberlain, the United Kingdom Prime Minister, debated a compromise by returning North Transylvania to Hungary within his own Tory cabinet. Italy however, preferred a strong Hungary ever since coming to diplomatic blows with Germany regarding Austria, and recommended that the territory be ceded to Austria-Hungary. The Italian offer reached the Romanian government first, and believing that they would be facing the Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies combined, ceded the territories without a fight. Chamberlain, upon learning of the compromise, believed it to be a Romanian capitulation, and never sent his proposal.

Otto turned his attention to Yugoslavia, which had been struggling with rising separatist movements among the Croats, Macedonians, and Slovenes. Yugoslavia had vociferously protested Austro-Hungarian actions in the region, but found limited support from France and Britain, particularly after Yugoslavia announced claims on Bulgarian lands in the interests of establishing a “South Slav Union” and started quietly sacking officers who opposed German interest in the Balkans. Having already been disillusioned by the failure of the British and French to prevent the re-militarization of the Rhineland, Prince Paul believed that only alignment with Germany would save Yugoslavia from being annexed by Austria-Hungary. The Jewish populations in Macedonia, Thrace, and Dobrudja were particularly anxious about the direction that Yugoslavia was taking. Citing the need to protect Bulgarian lands from Yugoslavian aggression and the need to return the favor for their assistance in the Great War, Otto declared war on Yugoslavia. Thanks in large part to the highly modernized forces produced by the Czechs and the Skoda Works, the Austro-Hungarians were quickly able to penetrate the Yugoslavian defensive perimeter on their shared border. Austrian forces swept into Slovenia, encircling and destroying isolated units. Belgrade fell in less than thirty days, and the Yugoslavian government was forced to evacuate to Skopje. Even a last minute, desperate defense in the southern theater did little to stop the advancing Austro-Hungarian troops. In less than four months, the Yugoslavian government capitulated completely.

While there were several high-profile diplomatic protests from the League of Nations, most media at the time reported great relief that the conflict was a small, contained struggle that did not erupt into a global war. Sanctions were imposed on Austria-Hungary, but these were of limited effect, as the war had ended before major actions could be agreed upon. The United States, citing the Neutrality Act, traded with neither Austria-Hungary nor Yugoslavia, France had withdrawn its guarantee of independence, and Germany declined to help Yugoslavia, unwilling to help a Slavic power. On 24 February, 1939, King Otto, having secured the territory he had lost, proclaimed the restoration and reintegration of the Dual Monarchy, and the rebirth of Austria-Hungary.

The Sudeten Crisis

Elsewhere in Europe, the great powers were slowly aligning against one another. In 1936, an attempted coup by the Spanish Army had failed and had erupted into a massive civil war. Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler quickly sent support to the armies of Nationalist Spain, providing weapons, fuel, and volunteers to assist. Republican Spain had a much harder time finding international support, with only the Soviet Union sending material shipments, while French Prime Minister Leon Blum chaired a Non-Intervention Committee with the United Kingdom, the formation of which led to renewing the Great War-era alliance between the two countries. King Otto joined the Non-Intervention Committee, considering the Spanish Civil War to be a domestic Spanish matter and that the Habsburgs had not been in Spain for over two centuries. During the Civil War, an anarchist rift formed in the Republican faction, with the Regional Defense Council of Aragon refusing to obey Manuel Azaña and starting their own rebellion. The Nationalists, however, were unable to take advantage of this, as they suffered their own coalition fracture between Emilio Mola of the Spanish Directory and Manuel Fel Conde of the Carlist faction. The two factions were driven by irreconcilable divisions over the direction of post-war Spain. In desperation as 1938 began, Azaña accepted Stalin’s offer of expanded Soviet aid. Otto’s refusal to intervene caused a diplomatic rift between Austria-Hungary and Italy, who had expected support in exchange for mediating the Transylvania conflict in Otto’s favor. The Republicans eventually won the civil war on 12 November 1938, and Stalin installed Gabriel Acuna, a retired military officer and ardent Stalinist, as President of Spain, who immediately suspended elections and fired all non-Communist ministers, and instituted emergency laws to allow him to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies in favor of regional Soviets and establish a one-party state. Manuel Azaña, despondent over the death of Spanish democracy, never recovered, and died of illness shortly after the war’s conclusion in exile in France.

The loss of such a state to communism caused Germany and Italy to mend their diplomatic fences. In a famous speech, Mussolini declared: “France, Britain, and Austria-Hungary are unwilling to face the Bolshevik menace.” and signed the Pact of Steel, a treaty of cooperation with the German Reich. Shortly thereafter, the two announced a military alliance. Italy began to court Bulgaria as another possible member of this “Berlin-Rome axis,” Afterward, Italy demanded that Albania’s King Zog cede the country to be ruled in a personal union under Victor Emmanuel III, and Greece received a similar demand from Hitler in June 1939. King Zog of Albania submitted to Italian demands, stating that Albania did not have the manpower to resist Italian invasion and that he would not murder his citizens for pride. Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas defied the demands, and Germany declared war on 15 June 1939. The invasion of Greece was quickly condemned by United Kingdom Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who issued an ultimatum: leave Greece immediately or face war. When Hitler refused, the United Kingdom declared war, joined by France and the various Dominions. This was too late for Greece, which could not receive reinforcements and was forced to capitulate. The failure of the Allies to protect Greece led to a vote of no confidence in Neville Chamberlain, who was replaced by his deputy, Winston Churchill. At Stuttgart, Hitler made a grand show of turning over control of Greece to his alliance partner Mussolini. Diplomatic historians have theorized that this overture was directed at governments which were not part of the Allies, in the hopes of causing them to join the Axis powers and becoming a part of the new European order to receive similar boons of territory.

This development caused a crisis within the Austro-Hungarian cabinet. With Greece and Albania administered through Italian puppet governments, the south flank of the nation was exposed, and if Bulgaria joined the Axis powers, they would be almost completely surrounded. Austria-Hungary’s relationship with the United Kingdom had been frosty ever since the war in Yugoslavia. Several councilors suggested rapprochement with the Axis powers, or attempting to split Mussolini and Hitler to break up the Axis and align with Italy against Germany. The left suggested approaching Stalin for a defensive pact. In a defiant response to the Greek and Albanian submission, Austria-Hungary declared that the countries of eastern Europe were free and independent powers, offering independence guarantees to Romania and Poland to protect them from Axis expansionism, much to the surprise of King Carol II. Hitler began to fund pro-fascist political groups and parties within Austria-Hungary, using nationalist sentiment against the poly-ethnic nation and promoting rhetoric that Otto’s policies were causing ruination of the region, that he must be deposed and Admiral Horthy must be returned to shepherd the government, in the hopes that the 1940 elections would cause domestic unrest and Austro-Hungary distracted by concerns at home. Wehrmacht officers suggested that Hitler thought little of the Austro-Hungarian military, confident that it was full of “weak and backwards races that would crumble against German armor,” and that he wanted to maintain focus on his war with France and the United Kingdom. German groups in Austria were their prime target, but Hitler also targeted Slovaks in eastern Bohemia in an attempt to stir up the divisions that had been present in Czechoslovakia. This effort caused a rise in nativist parties in the north and south of Austria-Hungary. King Otto retaliated with a large-scale crackdown on fascist groups, typically under a flimsy excuse of violating public safety laws, but fascist sentiment grew.

Almost a year after the February Proclamation, Germany, citing the principle of ethnic self-determination and a German state for the German people, demanded that the Sudetenland be ceded to Germany. Konrad Heinlein, leader of the Sudeten German Party and a Great War combat veteran, campaigned publicly for the cession of the territory. King Otto proclaimed Konrad a traitor to the Empire, to which Heinlein responded “You lived in comfort for your nation, I lived in a prison. Which of us has given more?” Street violence followed between the Legitimist monarchist party and the Sudeten German Party, and the First Royal Army Group was positioned along the border from Tyrol to the eastern Sudeten, the Second on the border near South Tyrol, and the Third sent to Macedonia on the border with the Albania and Greece. As the deadline for the German ultimatum drew near, King Otto remained defiant, proclaiming to the emergency session of the joint National Assembly “The Germans may have their war if they dare..The Czech people gave me their trust, and I give it to every man on the border down to the lowliest private. I nor any of the citizens of this reborn nation shall sacrifice this great enterprise.” When the deadline expired, Germany issued a formal declaration of war with Italy following less than four hours later. Austria-Hungary was now at war.

Opening Gambit - The Invasion at Zara, The Greek Campaign, and a War on Two Fronts

While the Wehrmacht had hoped to push into Austria-Hungary from the north, early attempts were repulsed by the extensive fortification network in the Sudetenland and the Austrian mountains. The heavy fortifications and powerful Austro-Hungarian artillery left the theater in a precarious stalemate, neither side able to break through enemy fixed positions. The initial moves from Austria-Hungary had better luck, with the Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army pushing south, deep into enemy territory in Italian-occupied Greece. Initial records from the battle had cited the brilliance of the commander, General Lajos Verees, but later analysis of the war had shown a lack of coordination between Hitler and Mussolini on the war plans for Austria-Hungary. Mussolini’s army had been organizing the annexation and administration of the new Greek holdings, the sudden increase in territory had forced Mussolini to assign many of his forces in that region to garrisons and coordination with the new puppet government while the majority of his trained forces were stationed on the French-Italian border. Several divisions had not even shown up, delayed in transit as Mussolini had to organize an Albanian and Greek regional government. The Italians that had been mobilized had made a valiant showing, but ultimately were forced to cede territory as garrison forces were scrambled at fallback positions and artillery was airlifted to provide firepower for the reeling army.

Hitler had originally intended to reinforce Italian holdings in Greece, but Admiral Karl Donitz suggested a bolder push, to reinforce Italian holdings at Zara and push into Austro-Hungarian territory, hoping to spark a panic. The Austro-Hungarian navy was barely functional, as the shipyards on the Dalmatian coast had only recently been acquired, and intelligence suggested that the Austro-Hungarian only had a few destroyers and submarines staffed with barely trained naval forces. Hitler gave his approval, and the Kriegsmarine launched Operation Blue Serpent. The results were astounding, the combined Italian and German naval force was able to overwhelm the patchwork Austro-Hungarian Navy and force a landing at Zara. From there, Axis forces overran Split and Rijeka in Dalmatia before a relief force under Austro-Hungarian general Fritz Lipfert was able to form a battle line in Bosnia. The loss of vital industrial facilities severely hampered Austro-Hungarian war production. President Franklin Roosevelt’s proposal to extend the Lend-Lease Act to Austria-Hungary met with resistance even from his own party, but an impassioned speech by Harry Hopkins was able to secure the passage of the bill, and Austria-Hungary was able to manage the supply shortfall. In public recognition of the material support, King Otto commissioned a statue of an American factory worker entitled: “The Hands of Freedom.”

In a surprising and stunning move, Romania elected to send volunteer detachments in support of Austria-Hungary, which constituted themselves under Lipfert’s command as the Foreign Corps. This was done at the behest of the new king Michael. Carol II, who had long irritated his government with his wild, hedonistic lifestyle, had been deposed in a bloodless coup by his son, and declaring the need to stand against Axis oppression, sent volunteer forces to fight with the Austro-Hungarians. The Foreign Corps and the Austro-Hungarian Sixth Army set up their headquarters in Ljubjlana. Michael I also offered to mediate dialogue between Otto von Habsburg and Winston Churchill. The Copenhagen Conference was productive, with Austria-Hungary and Romania both welcomed into the Allies.

Hitler was reportedly furious. Coordination between the Austro-Hungarians and the British meant that he was facing a war on two fronts. Historians speculate on Hitler’s expectations, whether he had anticipated a greater result from Konrad Heinlein, that Otto von Habsburg would cede the Sudetenland rather than risk being encircled by the Axis, that previous bad blood between Austria-Hungary and the United Kingdom regarding Yugoslavia, or that Austria-Hungary would sue for peace following the successful landings at Zara. There are no surviving written records of the strategic objectives, but military historians consider this to have been one of the greatest strategic mistakes of the 20th century.

The Push Through Italy

With Greece re-captured and under Austro-Hungarian control, the Allied War Council met in London to discuss war strategy. Of the two Axis Powers, Germany possessed the more accomplished and capable army. France wanted to push into Italy, removing the weaker power before bringing all forces to bear on Germany. Austria-Hungary, by contrast, wanted reinforcements in Eastern Europe, to liberate Dalmatia before striking at Germany to the north. Italy, Marshall Luza, leader of the Austro-Hungarian Second Army Group, believed that the Italians were contained, argued: “If we should break the German back, Mussolini will surrender and the war will be over before autumn.” The United Kingdom agreed with France, stating that if Northern Italy were cleared, France could reinforce the battle lines in Dalmatia, while the Royal Navy could keep the Adriatic clear and prevent any reinforcements to the Axis lines. With any luck, once the Axis expedition was cut off from supply shipments from the mainland, they would surrender en masse before starvation began to bite. As an acknowledgement that Austria-Hungary had some of its territory occupied, Great Britain and France agreed to detach several divisions to help hold the battle lines in Austria-Hungary, setting up an expeditionary corps headquartered in Banja Luka.

In March 1940, the Italian campaign was kicked off in earnest. Austria Hungary ordered a push from the Second Army Group toward Venice, while France ordered a major assault toward Genoa and Milan, while sending a destroyer group to secure the Corsica-Sardinia strait and support an amphibious assault on the small Italian island. The United Kingdom prepared a naval invasion from Egypt, hoping to strike Sicily once Mussolini had sent his forces northward. By April, French forces had taken Milan, but Genoa had been reinforced by a large number of infantry and armor divisions, Mussolini’s elite. Genoa was taken, but it was hard fought. Austria-Hungary had better luck, pushing through Venice and beginning the push along the Adriatic Coast. The Second Army Group experiencing a stunning breakthrough, with Italian forces falling back to Florence and establishing a fighting position in the hilly terrain outside the city. Austro-Hungarian and French troops, along with detached British divisions, met at Bologna, and theater commanders agreed to exploit the Austro-Hungarian breakthrough, bypassing the fortified Italian fighting positions in Florence. May saw further Italian retreats as the Allied forces pushed into Ancona and the successful launch of the British invasion of Sicily and the fall of Palermo, which became the main naval staging yard for further Mediterranean operations. The Royal Navy successfully contested the Mediterranean, and by the end of May Italian ships found it incredibly difficult to leave port either in the west or the east.

Operations continued into June, although hot weather slowed the tempo. Dogged resistance in the hills of Florence had failed to dislodge the Italian positions, and Allied war planners feared a stalemate that would permit the German army to redouble production efforts, push south from Germany, and possibly threaten the war effort. British efforts to push from Sicily to the Italian mainland had similarly stalled. Bohemian Marshal Luza of the Second Army Group, always an aggressive commander, suggested pushing toward Rome instead, charging Richard Tesařík with the task. Tesařík’s idea was called Operation Saber, better known as the Corneo Needle, where an infantry force would push southeast from Ancona while the spearhead of light tanks and motorized infantry would push through the center of the Italian peninsula. The Italian field officer took the bait, dispatching a relief force from Anzio to support the defense of the east. Followed closely by French infantry, Tesařík’s forces began shelling Rome to the surprise of the Italian defenders. On 28 June, 1940, Rome fell to the advancing Allies. Disheartened, the Italians pulled further south, but the isolated Florentine hill forces were unable to regroup, digging in. The dogged Italian defenders fought for two months, during which the famous war memoir “Colline Rossa” was written. As the Italian Army began to crumble, King Victor Emmanuel seized control of the Italian Parliament, arrested Mussolini, and sought an armistice. On 27 August 1940, Italy surrendered to a joint Allied delegation. Hardline Fascist holdouts persisted, moving their provisional government to Crete, but the British Navy bottled them on their island, and they played no part in the remainder of the war.

Hitler’s Gamble, the German Lemon Squeeze, and the Postwar Order

With Italy lost, Hitler faced a losing war. Strategists within the Nazi council debated, with many suggesting making a peace overture, but Hitler refused to consider it. Instead, he embarked upon a daring gamble, a westward push through the Low Countries, bypassing the Maginot Line and threatening Paris. The prevailing theory among military historians is that Hitler hoped a display of strength would force a general ceasefire before the Allied armies could march north from Italy to threaten Germany. A few days before the Italian Army surrendered, Hitler attacked Belgium and the Netherlands. However, British cryptologists at GCHQ led by Alan Turing had uncovered the plans. Belgian and Dutch defenders had fortified their positions, reinforced by the British Army, and had been able to repulse Hitler’s plan. Disgusted by the German actions, the United Mexican States, under President Lázaro Cárdenas, joined the Allies, and sent a small expeditionary force to supplement the Low Countries defense.

The Austro-Hungarian army, having secured Italy, began the slow march north to the central European mountains, spilling over the Austrian border and pushing slowly toward Munich. British and Dutch forces advanced from Frisia while French forces began to emerge from their Maginot defenses and attacked southwestern Germany. Hitler’s force, spread out, were significantly outnumbered, and began to take heavy losses.

The Allies developed their plan as a broad pincer movement, for an aggressive attack moving both north and east, not stopping until they had received an unconditional surrender. General Bernard Montgomery had caused a slight diplomatic row when he wagered with Austro-Hungarian general Géza Lakatos that the British could take Berlin before the Austro-Hungarian even got there, to which he was privately censured by Churchill for antagonizing his coalition partner.

As September came, Austria-Hungary took Munich, where the First and Second Army Groups split, with the First marching north while the Second marched west to press German divisions stationed between the French and Austro-Hungarian lines together. It was here that the combined Allied offensive received the nickname “Lemon Squeeze.” In discussion with French reporters, an unknown sergeant said “Of course we’re going until we see the French on the other side! When you squeeze a lemon, you do not stop until there is nothing left but the rind!” By November 30, the Austro-Hungarian army proved the unknown sergeant correct, as they had closed the fronts save for a holdout force of 20 German divisions near the Swiss border. At a joint session of air command, British bombers volunteered to begin all-out strategic bombing including hard-to-fly night bombing raids, where the smaller Austro-Hungarian bombers would cover tactical bombing and free up the larger British planes for more important missions.

The Belgian-British-Dutch-French breakout in the west accomplished the most success in the German theater, sweeping through northern Germany, while the Austro-Hungarian northward attack had only reached Leipzig. General Lakatos, angered that Montgomery might win his bet, ordered a redoubled effort, and detached line troops to march across the Belgian front to Magedburg, and then to march east to attack Berlin. Three days after Christmas, Austro-Hungarian forces radioed to the joint Allied command outside Berlin that they were joining the assault, much to Montgomery’s chagrin. With 43 divisions outside the gates and Hitler out of communication, the fall of the German Reich came swiftly. On the fourth of January, 1941, Hitler’s body was found within his improvised command bunker, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and the German Reich formally surrendered.

While the war was devastating, the casualty count was much smaller than the Great War, with slightly over 3 million military casualties total, although this was only an 11-month conflict. At the Peace of Konigsberg, the Allied Powers set out their aims for post-war Europe. Greece was liberated and founded as the Hellenic Republic of Greece. Occupied Lithuiana was similarly reorganized, with Memel being returned. Austria-Hungary wanted to reinstate Victor Emmanuel as King of Italy and the territorial concessions of Venice, Istra, and South Tyrol, while the United Kingdom favored Ferrucio Parri and re-established borders. A compromise was hastily made, permitting the territorial concessions, but establishing Italy as a constitutional monarchy, with Victor Emmanuel having little political power. Germany was reorganized as a republic, with Konrad Adenaur becoming the first Chancellor of a newly democratic Germany. Austria-Hungary returned Albania to King Zog with much fanfare, a victory procession into his country. In less than a year, the threat of fascism was lifted from Europe, though tensions still ran high. Joseph Stalin eyed Polish territories and Bessarabia with hungry eyes, and the United Kingdom has taken a firm stand against the brutal oppression happening in Spain. Japan continues to threaten China in the Pacific, and both the United States and the United Mexican States worry about Venezuelan aggression in South America. War may come again, and the world may not be so lucky next time.

The Dual Monarchy Today in 1941

The Austro-Hungarian military is a modern and sophisticated fighting force. While not as large as the French or Red Army, the Habsburg army is a well-funded and well-equipped force with modern infantry, artillery, and armor divisions. Austro-Hungarian warfare is dominated by firepower theory, stressing a mobile defense, artillery barrages called in by forward observation units from advanced firebases, and an integrated support structure. This last notion is particularly important, as Austria-Hungary is famous for its support corps, among the most highly trained individuals in the military profession today. Austria-Hungary developed an extensive military engineering corps capable of breaching obstacles and building field fortifications to both protect its own and bypass the defenses of the enemy. The Royal Patrol School develops skilled reconnaissance squads, with its infamous “High and Low” course on mountain and forest recon being internationally notorious for its difficulty. An early adopter of military radio, the Royal Signal Corps helped to pioneer backpack-sized signals equipment and field telephones. Armor corps have dedicated maintenance divisions to keep tanks in repair, as early conflicts with Yugoslavia were littered with broken-down tanks causing delays in military timetables. Most highly prized, however, are the logistics and hospital corps, when one British general said: “If I get hurt, please let me be picked up by the Habsburgs!” These two were of special interest to King Otto, and he invested a great deal of capital into developing field surgery equipment and a highly educated logistics staff, recalling the grueling conditions suffered by Austro-Hungarian troops during the Great War. Austro-Hungarian military thinkers have emphasized the need for dedicated supply in both men and materiel, with logistics study mandatory in all officer academies. These developments came as a result of an extensive motorization program, with Otto von Habsburg famously declaring: “A modern war is a truck war,” and permitting the motorized and mechanized infantry divisions to name themselves the Hussar Corps, distinct from the Royal Hussars, a primarily ceremonial unit present at most Austro-Hungarian state functions.

Austria-Hungary also fields a small special forces program. Of particular note are the Royal Mountain Corps, based off the Alpini program in Italy. The Corps, often nicknamed the Skyscrapers or the Hold-Your-Breath Squad, often provide training and consultation to other nations on developing and maintaining a trained mountain warfare program, and inter-Allied drills on mountain warfare are often conducted in Austro-Hungarian territory. The Danubian Marine Corps primarily trains in river and marsh warfare, specializing in high-speed bridging operations.

On the sea, the Austro-Hungarian navy is not a true blue water navy. As much of the earlier Austro-Hungarian navy was disbanded, Austria-Hungary had little in the way of development with its navy, and naval warfare was often seen as a distant third priority compared to land and air warfare, much to Austro-Hungarian chagrin when the Axis were able to land forces in Zara. His Majesty’s Navy primarily acts as a coastal and Mediterranean force, primarily destroyers and cruisers and a small but well-established submarine force. King Otto, however, is looking to modernize the navy with a focus on aircraft carriers with destroyers acting as escort and heavy cruisers providing firepower from naval guns.

In the air, Austria-Hungary boasts a well-trained and well-equipped air force. The Austro-Hungarian Air Force’s most famous planes are its RMI-8 X/V and it’s RMI-16. The former is a heavy fighter, primarily an air superiority and bomber escort, a large, twin-engine heavy fighter, while the latter is a streamlined medium bomber. The Austro-Hungarian Air Force is a relatively small service, with an operational doctrine toward flexibility. Bomber pilots are expected to be able to perform at both strategic bombing and close air support missions. Drop-out rates for its Bomb School are high due to the intense demands of the course, but the pilots who successfully complete them are among the most decorated and talented members of the Austro-Hungarian armed forces.

Imgur Links for Full-Size, images are in the same order that they are in the AAR

Austria Hungary country map

Otto Assumes the Hungarian Crown

Austria Agrees to Unite with Hungary

Restoration of Austria-Hungary

Before the War Begins

The Italian Push

The German Lemon Squeeze

The Battle of Berlin

War Score and Participation

-SLAL

#hearts of iron 4 #hearts of iron iv #creative

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cincinnatusvirtue · 4 years ago

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The First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842): Britain’s Great Game ends up meeting a dead end...

The region of Afghanistan has a long and varied history, one that is rugged like its topography of many mountain ranges, valleys and deserts. Its mix of barren wastes, snowy caps and forested patches of oasis. Its history has placed it at the crossroads of the geopolitical focus over the centuries. The focus of empires and of trade, often trying to assert its own path in history but so often a focal point of foreign ambition. As always to appreciate the modern we need to go back to earlier times.

Early History:

-Afghanistan is a patchwork of peoples, a testament to its status as a crossroads of empires over the ages. Primarily it sits in the eastern end of the ethnolinguistic region of Iranian peoples, a mix of ethno linguistically related but diverse groups of peoples from Persians (Farsi), Kurds, Ossetians, Baloch to Pashtun and Tajik among others. The latter two being the primary groups found in Afghanistan today, along with smaller Iranian groups like the Hazara & Baloch. Others include the Turkic Uzbek and Turkmens and a small number of Arabs.

-In ancient times Afghanistan was home to Iranian groups known as Bactrians & Sogdians who inhabited portions of the country. These peoples were incorporated into their fellow Iranians sphere of influence, the first Persian or Achaemenid Empire. This empire stretched from the Indus Valley in the East (modern Pakistan/India) to Greece and the Balkans in the West. Members of these groups served in the Persian Empire’s army but maintained their own traditions too. It is widely believed that the religion of the Persian Empire and of most Iranians in this time was Zoroastrianism, founded by Zoroaster in the region of Balkh in North Central Afghanistan. This religion would serve in some ways as an influence on the monotheistic Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity & Islam later on history.

-During Alexander the Great’s march to conquer the Persian Empire, having defeated the Persians in three major battles and taken the western half of their empire, he sought to conquer the eastern half too which took him into the modern region of Afghanistan. The Macedonian armies under Alexander founded new cities here and brought forth Greek culture which began to merge with the local religion and culture. This Hellenistic culture spread as far as India as with Greek paganism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism all mixing in the same cities as times. In the wake of Alexander’s death, his empire which essentially replaced the Persian Empire had no set structure of succession and quickly dissolved into portions going to his various generals. The largest expanse of which was the Seleucid Empire which spanned the whole of the Iranian plateau to India and to the Levant, this included Afghanistan. The region underwent many changes with portions being given to the Indian superpower of the day, the Mauryan Empire and later a successful uprising against the Seleucids, forming the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom which found itself at war with the Parthian Empire, a resurgent Iranian Empire which swept away the remnants of Seleucid Greek rule. These wars left Afghanistan open to nomadic invasions, namely from the nomadic branch of Iranians from the Eurasian steppe, coming in different waves. The Yuezhi and Scythians, the Scythians would later establish a kingdom that controlled portions of the region, the Indo-Scythian Kingdom as did the Yuezhi which became the Kushan Empire. Eventually this gave way to the second Persian Empire or Sassanid Empire which took over the region.

-All the while this region sat along the Silk Road spanning from the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire in the West to the Han Chinese in the East. Goods and peoples of different backgrounds travelled through the region, most just passing through but they all shared their influence, establishing Afghanistan as an important crossroads of commerce and not just conquest. Additionally, ancient sources attest to portions of Afghanistan, namely the region around the city of Herat being a major source of grain due to fertile farmlands in Central Asia as well as supplying vineyards of grapes for winemaking in the Persian world.

-In terms of religion, Afghanistan reflected the many changes of its many ruling peoples religions remaining a hub of Buddhism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism along with lingering elements of Greek culture. This would change with the eventual downfall of the Sassanids in the 7th Century AD to the Islamic Caliphates and their gradual expansion over the Iranian plateau. Overtime Islam began to gradually take hold as the religion over the area but it was still set side by side with numerous other faiths and lived in relative tolerance to the other faiths. Eventually the Ghaznavid and Ghurid & Khwarazmian dynasties ruled over the area, a mix of Iranian and Turkic peoples who gradually made Islam the unifying religion of the region by the Middle Ages.

-The Mongols would invade and devastate the region in the 13th century. The devastation was so complete that the many settled cities were ruined, forcing the peoples of Afghanistan back into rural agrarian societies, something which has not been fully removed from the majority of Afghan society today. Overtime the peoples of Afghanistan, a region long noted for its literary, especially Islamic poetic contributions and had been a hotbed crossroads of cultural interfacing, was now reverted to an mostly tribal agrarian society once more. With some centers of learning gone forever Its peoples divided along ethnolinguistic grounds and into clans from there.

-There was somewhat a renaissance in the ages with the Turco-Mongol ruler, Timur and his empire ruled with new additions to architecture and culture contributed to the region but this was short lived. Meanwhile, a descendant of Timur named Babur would base himself in Afghanistan before launching an invasion of India and upon overtaking the Sultanate of Delhi, became the founder and ruler of the new Mughal Empire, the Islamic superpower that was to overrun much of India and dominate the subcontinent and beyond in the coming two centuries.

-Meanwhile, Afghanistan once more found itself on the fringe of an Iranian power, half the country at max was under the control of the Safavid Empire, a Kurdish dynasty that took power in Persia and expanded to reclaim historical “Persian” lands. Indeed the Persian (Farsi) language was regarded as the lingua franca of the region for centuries and was the language of the learned and most educated in the Islamic world as a whole, whereas Arabic was for mostly religious celebration. Persian was the language of government and the arts.

-Safavid rule was tenuous at best and their primary focus was facing the Turkish Ottomans to the west, leaving much of Afghanistan to de-facto local rule. Here the tribal societies that have dominated Afghanistan to the modern era, in part a result of the resumption of rural life after the Mongol destruction of the major cities held sway, with tribal leaders functioning as more or less warlords among the Pashtun and Tajik peoples and their various clans among others ruled over certain sections of the country. Only Islam united them in their differences. Much time was spent raiding and fighting each other, along with the few travelers who ventured into this increasingly isolated and remote portion of the world.

-The Hotak dynasty of Pashtuns had a hand in the downfall of the Safavids which was increasingly corrupted and weakened by intrigue at the royal court. In the wake of this, a Turco-Persianate ruler named Nader Shah took the reins in Persia and put down the Hotaks before setting up his own short lived Persian Empire, known as the Afsharid dynasty which pillaged the Mughals in India and defeated the Ottomans several times before Nader Shah was killed and his successors failed to maintain control. In Afghanistan, another Pashtun dynasty, the Durrani took power in the middle 18th century.

-The Durrani would for the first time in the modern age have a local Afghan power base that expanded beyond the borders of Afghanistan with any longer lasting impact. These mostly Pashtun peoples supported by some Persians invaded and controlled portions of India, defeating the Hindu superpower, the Maratha Empire at the peak of their powers at the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761. However the Durrani dynasty and its Emirate of Afghanistan, was weakened through ongoing external and internal pressures, military defeats from the Qajar dynasty in Persia and the new Sikh Empire in the Indian Punjab put closed in their borders. Eventually, internal conflict led to the fall of the Durrani dynasty with one its Emirs (leader), Shuja Shah going into exile in India hoping to return to rule. By 1823 the country had fractured into many smaller entities with civil war taking place until by 1837 Dost Mohammed Khan, founder of the Barakzai dynasty took power as Emir and reunited the country...

The Great Game:

-The exile of Shuja Shah and rise of the Barakzai dynasty in Afghanistan after much civil war by the end of the 1830′s was the state into which Afghanistan again entered wider geopolitics. Namely amidst the geopolitical struggle between the British and Russian Empires. Called the Great Game by the British as Tournament of Shadows by the Russians, this rivalry for geopolitical and economic influence was a likened to a game of chess whereby each power vied for influence, mostly through proxies, a precursor to the Cold War of the 20th Century between the US and USSR. Afghanistan it was hoped by both Empires would be one of those proxies.

-The British since the 16th and 17th centuries had pushed to become a naval power as well and felt that international commerce was the way to expand their economic and political power. Along with the Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch they all took an interest in naval power and setting up colonies in other parts of the world. In Asia, the Indian subcontinent became their primary focus. It was rich in resources such as tradable goods like cotton, silks, spices, jewels, salt, opium, various minerals and other commodities. It was also a vital link in the idea of a global empire in protecting commerce links on the way to Indonesia and China. Denying their main rival, France, influence in India was of high importance and by the mid 18th century, they became the unrivalled European power defeating the French at the Battle of Plassey during the Seven Years War. India was not united in any meaningful fashion at the time locally with various empires, kingdoms and principalities fighting locally over this vast area. They were divided by various ethnicities, religions and the usual drives of personal power and wealth. Due to this division, the Europeans who first established small trading factories gradually could expand their power to the interior of India and through mutual alliances of convenience between them and their local Indian trading partners they could compete with other Europeans. For some Indians, the European powers were initially more to their benefit, their presence was small but their weapons and military advantages were far superior giving them a strategic advantage over their opponents. In time, this power dynamic changed as the Indians had to continually grant the Europeans more power, namely the British who routinely defeated the Indians and began ceding more territory to them. Also the British’s vast wealth could now employ Indians against other Indian powers. Especially after France’s defeat at Plassey, no other Europeans seriously threatened the British interests. Britain’s East India Company, a joint-stock venture given great autonomy in the name of the British Crown had its own military, its own military officers school and total monopolies over half the world’s trade at one point.

-The British East India Company’ army had British officers, mostly Indian rank and file soldiers called sepoys and occasional regular British army regiments to complement it in its venture to conquer the whole of India by any means necessary. The East India Company also known as the Company had since the 17th century established a number of trading posts, most importantly Calcutta which was the capital of Bengal in the eastern portion of the country. This was decisively established after defeating the French and remnants of the crumbling Mughal Empire which they supported and which had declined since the 18th century due to the rising power of the Maratha Empire, India’s last great Hindu superpower before the British era.

-Britain focused their efforts of conquest on south India, first defeating after much initial difficulty the Kingdom of Mysore, run by Tipu Sultan. Later, battling the Maratha Empire which had piqued by the mid 18th century. Following their defeat by the Afghan Durrani Empire at the Third Battle of Panipat, the Maratha started a gradual decentralization that led to civil war, the Company got involved trying to place their preferred candidates in power in the Maratha hierarchy. The first war saw a British defeat but by the early 19th century, the British with Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, fought a second war, defeating the Marathas at Assaye from which they gained territory. They finished off the Marathas in 1818 and had by then essentially absorbed the whole of India with exception of the Punjab where the Sikh Empire had arisen under Maharaja Ranjit Singh at the end of the 18th century and grew in power in the first decades of the 19th century. The Sikhs had thrown off the last remnants of the Mughals in their realm and then pushed out the Afghans on their borders too.

-The Sikh Empire like many Indian powers used foreign mercenaries and officers from Europe & America to join their ranks, supply them with European and American style military training doctrine and supply them with the latest in military technology which far surpassed anything made in India at the time. The Sikh army was quite strong and had French officers providing most of the training, the Company’s default position was to make an alliance with them. The Sikh’s had troubles with Afghanistan, namely over the city of Peshawar and the Khyber Pass.

-The Russians for their part had expanded from Russia over the whole of Siberia towards the Pacific, this process had begun in the late 1500’s and was completed by the end of the 17th century. Leading to Russian exploration and colonization in Alaska and elsewhere in the Pacific during the 18th century.

-Russian expansion into Central Asia was in part a result of their off and on conflicts with the Ottomans and Persians in the past. By the second decade of the 19th century with the threat of Napoleonic France gone, their attention turned to maintaining a balance of power in Europe and a free rein in Central Asia. The threat to their influence as they saw it was Britain, which Russian tsars, namely Nicholas I, viewed with suspicion as far too “liberal” for their belief in absolute monarchy and conservative values. The British in turn were suspicious of Russian threats to their geopolitical spheres, namely gaining too much power at the expense of the Ottoman Empire or more directly to British India which was after the American Revolution to become the crown jewel in their global empire.

-The Russians gradually defeated the various Islamic emirates in Central Asia, taking over modern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The process was drawn out over several decades but through military conquest by the late 19th century would be achieved. It was as this Russian encroachment neared Afghanistan, that alarm amongst the British in India began to be raised…

The British Misinterpret Everything:

-Britain’s government and the East India Company misinterpreted the Russian view of events. It is true Russia sought to expand its influence but the British interpreted the expansion into Central Asia as meaning only one thing, eventual invasion and conquest of British India. Only Tsar Paul I in 1800 seriously pressed for an invasion of British India but he was assassinated and the plans for invasion never thought of as a practical reality by most in Russia’s military were cancelled. The Russians did want increased political influence in the area but even the most conservative of Russian tsars always believed a reproach with Britain could be obtained.

-The British also saw civil war in Afghanistan as well as the strength of the Sikh Empire as threats to their border and greater sphere of influence in India. The conflict between the Sikhs and Afghans meant they had to choose sides, they couldn’t be an alliance with both. Precisely, because of this conflict and the greater specter of Russian influence did Britain find itself on a course for war.

-In Afghanistan, the British and Russians had spies and intelligence agents acting as emissaries. The British had Scotsman Alexander Burnes, who joined the British East India Company. Burnes was stationed in Kabul and in turn his presence spurred the Russians to counter with their own envoy, the Polish-Lithuanian born Jan Prosper Witkiewicz. Both British and Russian envoys hoped to make an alliance with Afghanistan’s emir, Dost Mohammad Khan against the other. The emir for his part sought to regain Peshawar, recently lost to the Sikhs. This, however put the British in an awkward position, Company controlled India bordered the Sikh Empire and both sides had a mutual if tense respect for one another. The Sikh Empire was the last major independent kingdom of India outside of British rule and while Britain sought to eventually neutralize it, now was not the time. Furthermore, the Sikhs had a large standing army, with European doctrine, modern weapons and European officers who could pose a threat to British India, a threat they saw as greater than Afghanistan. Afghanistan had no formal army, only tribal men with tribal loyalties but nominally served their overlord the emir in times of national defense.

-Dost Mohammed Khan wasn’t enthused about the Russians to begin with but he believed the entertaining of an alliance might force the British to offer their alliance. Instead, given the British calculations of realizing they couldn’t support the Afghans over the more powerful Sikhs but also couldn’t abide the possibility of s Russian allied Afghanistan, moved closer to a casus belli for war.

-Burnes was apparently distraught at the arrival of the Russian envoy in 1836-1837, he wrote panicked reports. The Russians in turn reported on British maneuvers in Kabul. The British governor-general of India, Lord Auckland sent what amounted to a cease and desist letter to Dost Mohammed Khan. The letter was very demanding of Khan, ordering him to not negotiate with the Russians or even receive them as envoys. Khan was angered by this but wanted to avoid war. He had his own advisor, an American named Josiah Harlan talk to Burnes. Burnes argued he could only report on matters not make policy directly himself, Harlan saw this as merely stalling on his part and on his advice Khan expelled the British mission.

-Lord Auckland was now determined to force Afghanistan to submit to British demands. Furthemore, Russia and Afghanistan couldn’t come to a deal and their mission too broke down. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s major western city, Herat was besieged by Qajar Persia with Russian material support. Fearful the Russians might use this as a pretext to invade Afghanistan proper, Auckland would in turn use it as a pretext to restore “order” in Afghanistan.

-Auckland reached a reproach with Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Maharaja. His goal was to fend off the Persians and their Russian support. He would also depose Dost Mohammed Khan as emir, seeing him as too unfriendly to British interests by his earlier negotiations with the Russians, as well his conflict with the Sikhs, who the British treated as a nominal ally at the time. His plan included placing the former Durrani emir, Shuja Shah on the throne once more. Shah had lived in exile in British india since 1818 and had been deposed in 1809. In the three decades since he last reigned, he was hardly remembered by anyone, aside from those who remembered his cruelty that had led to his deposition in the first place. Shah had been given a Company pension and comfortable living in exile, considered a useful pawn in British geopolitics, he in turn was willing to ally with anyone who would support his restoration to the throne. Auckland was led to believe that Shah was actually popular and that the instability in Afghanistan meant Khan was unpopular himself, the inverse turned out to be the case...

The First-Anglo-Afghan War:

-By October 1838, Auckland sent the so called Simla Declaration which resolved the British and the Sikhs to march in Afghanistan and restore Shuja Shah to the throne on the grounds that Dost Mohammed Khan was unpopular, had lead to instability within the country, was a threat to the Sikhs and British by extension and given rise to the prospect of foreign (Russian) interference.

-In Punjab, Lord Auckland and Ranjit Singh held a grand parade of the so-called Grand Army of the Indus which would march in Afghanistan jointly to bring “order”. Two things happened in the interim. The Persian siege of Herat was called off and the Russian tsar had recalled his envoy altogether. The British pretexts for war ended before war began. Auckland and others heading the Company’s policy in India however were deadset to commit to a military operation, believing Afghanistan essentially needed to be put in its place, meaning it needed a British backed ruler who would amount to a puppet and could put British interests in the region first.

-December 1838 saw the British East India Company’s 21,000 strong army set out for Afghanistan. Composed of British and Indian troops (mostly rank and file Indians and British officers) along with nearly 40,000 Indian camp followers, Indian servants, families and even prostitutes following too. Ranjit Singh in the end backed out of the plan, not sending any troops to aid in Afghanistan.

-The British trek took months to cross the snowy Hindu Kush mountains. Finally they reached the area near Kandahar in April 1839. From there they waited two months until better conditions in the summer to march to Kabul. The British found themselves having to besiege the fortress-city of Ghazni in July. Eventually upon destroying a weakened gate, they breached the city and after much fighting captured the city.

-Khan upon hearing of Ghazni’s fall, offered a surrender to the British, he was replied with removal of his position on the throne to a life of exile in India, this was unacceptable, so the march to Kabul continued, though Ghazni remained occupied.

-A battle took place outside of Kabul which forced Dost Mohammed Khan to flee the city, the British entered and Shuja Shah was placed on the throne. The war was seemingly at end, the main objective achieved, Khan’s removal and Shah placed on the throne. Most of the British Indian force returned to India, leaving some 8,000 to occupy Afghanistan in various places from Kandahar to Kabul.

-The initial invasion was successful but the occupation and continued support of Shuja Shah was costly in terms of public relations for the British. Shah resumed his cruelty, he punished and executed those who he considered traitors from decades before. By his own admission, his people were dogs in need of “obedience” and corrective punishment. He raised taxes which hurt the already impoverished economy. This hurt his limited popularity along with his essentially martial rule, upheld by the British. Now, a guerilla war phase was being instituted by various Afghan groups, some loyal to Khan and some just offended by the presence of foreign invaders.

-The British for their part did not help matters. Many officers imported their families from India into Kabul, where they took residence in a cooler mountain valley climate, they created gardens and set up English country gentrified life in the Afghan capital. Some English customs weren’t especially troublesome to the Afghans, tea drinking socials, cricket and polo, even ice skating on frozen ponds in the winter which actually amazed the Afghans having never before seen such a thing.

-However, the more the British lingered, the sense they'd never leave crept in, their presence in the daily markets brought raised prices which coupled with higher taxes meant they were linked with such economic hardship. The British also drank alcohol and had wine cellars fully stocked, in a devout Muslim country this was offensive given Islamic prohibitions on alcohol. However, most trying for the Afghan populace was the sexual relations between the occupiers and Afghan women. British men soon found themselves acquiring the services of willing Afghan women for prostitution. Afghanistan was quite poor to begin with and coupled with hardships brought on by the invasion a number of Afghan women, married or unmarried found themselves becoming prostitutes to the British. Afghan women realized even the lowest paid British soldier was more wealthy than Afghan men, so their turns to prostitution were not unsurprising. Others willingly entered into romantic relationships with the British and indeed some British officers did marry Afghan women, including daughters of tribal leaders. This development offended the Afghan men, particularly the Pashtun who had a sense of society that revolved around honor to manhood, any slight real or imagined could be responded to with justified violence in their code of honor. The Pashtun men could enact honor killings on women who fraternized with the British, on the grounds that these women brought shame to the men in their family for engaging in immoral behavior and for sleeping with infidel Christians.

-The guerilla war that developed in reaction to the British also spurred their sense of prolonging their stay. Shuja Shah knew more British was the only way to ensure his continued reign. Isolated British outposts or patrols could be attacked in ambush due to fighters whose entire fighting style relied less on technical skill or discipline beyond waging ambushes and raids. Most Afghan warriors would have been armed with little more than an old matchlock musket or possibly a dagger or sword.

-The British nevertheless were negotiating with Shuja Shah to develop a standing army and do away with the tribal levy system. He argued there was not enough infrastructure or more succinctly, funding to maintain a standing army. So the British occupation dragged on.

-Dost Mohammed Khan was eventually taken prisoner and exiled to India. However, his sons continued to wage the war on their dynasty’s behalf.

- By 1841, George Elphinstone was in charge of the British forces in Kabul, most of his time was spent bed ridden with gout and other ailments.

-Early November, saw in motion a planned uprising. For months through Shuja, tribal chieftains had their loyalty earned by bribes of money. The British used this as a way to pacify the resistance with some success but it was a tenuous development. The spark for the uprising in Kabul came from British agent, Alexander Burnes. Burnes had been particularly well known for his sexual relations and womanizing of Afghan women and was viewed as largely a focal point of the resentment Afghans had towards the British. The final straw came when a slave girl from Kashmir who belonged to a Pashtun chieftain escaped to Burnes home. At first the chieftain sent retainers to retrieve the girl, only to find Burnes in the act of sleeping with her himself, Burnes own guards then beat the retainers and sent them on their way. The chieftain, having his code of honor offended along with other chieftains, proclaimed jihad. The next morning a large riot broke out at Burnes residence in Old Kabul, away from the British camp which had moved to the outside of town. Burnes, his brother and others were hacked to death by the angry mob, their beheaded skulls placed on pikes for display. Shuja Shah sent a single British regiment to put down the events, it suffered casualties and was forced to return. Shuja realized the people were rebelling against him and the British and he was effectively overthrown.

-Elphinstone was gripped with indecision on how to deal with the matter, he wrote to the Company Civil Administrator, William Macnaughten. Macnaughten tried to negotiate with Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mohammed, with an eye towards making him vizier, in exchange for extending the British stay. Macnaughten also negotiated with other tribal leaders to assassinate Akbar Khan. The news of these two faced dealings led to Macnaughten being captured and killed by Khan’s men, his body dragged through the streets of Kabul.

-Elphinstone realized it was time to withdraw, the British presence no longer tenable. The Afghans had not attacked the encampment directly due to the concentrated British strength but these appeared to be only a matter of time. He made the decision to withdraw the garrison, 4,500 strong with 12,000 camp followers including family and mostly Indian servants and some Afghan women who preferred life with their British lovers as opposed to facing the wrath of their angered families who would kill them for shaming them.

-January 1842 saw Elphinstone’s withdrawal in a massive column through snowy passes. The retreat dragged out for weeks with little food, bad weather and repeated attacks from Pashtun guerillas who attacked and killed as many as they could. Repeatedly, Elphinstone met with Akbar Khan to call off the attacks, Khan allowed the English women and children to return to Kabul to be ransomed later, but the Indian camp followers were not spared, they were forced to freeze to death in the snowy passes. Meanwhile as Elphinstone and the army marched on, the attacks continued with Khan playing Elphinstone for a fool. Eventually, he treated Elphinstone to a good meal before taking him prisoner, Elphinstone would die as a hostage some months later. The 44th Foot, the only all British regiment made a famous last stand fending off many Afghan charges before being overrun. The British column was mostly starved, frozen or hacked to death in the passes, most of the victims being Indian sepoys or their families and camp followers (servants) of the British officers. Some British women and children remained in Afghan captivity for a time, with some being ransomed and released, most being well treated. Some women were forced to marry their captors and others as children were adopted into Afghan families, some living into the early 20th century in Afghanistan. Only one British doctor and some scattered sepoys survived the ordeal at all. Much of this episode was detailed by Lady Florentia Sale in a diary, later published to great acclaim. She would spend nine months in captivity before her and her daughter were rescued by the British.

-The Afghans stormed the other British garrisons but all these attacks were repelled, in turn British reinforcements were arriving from India. These reinforcements subsequently beat Akbar Khan in a pitched battle. Plans were underway for a retaking of Kabul with a new larger force but Lord Auckland suffered a stroke and was replaced by Lord Ellenborough as Governor-General of India. Plus, elections in Britain’s parliament brought a new government with orders to change policy, withdraw from Afghanistan, which found itself in a military stalemate. A last battle took place in which Akbar Khan who was routinely defeated in pitched battles was beaten again with huge casualties at Kabul. However, the measure was merely punitive for the deaths of Elphinstone’s column. The Company at government orders withdrew all British troops from Afghanistan, having inflicted numerous deaths on the Afghan side and destroyed more forts of theirs but politically been unable to change the situation.

-Dost Mohammaed Khan was allowed to return where he co-ruled with his son Akbar who eventually died in 1845, possibly poisoned on orders from his father, who is rumored to have misgivings about his ambition. Dost Mohhamed Khan’s primary goal was to restore Peshawar from the Sikhs all along, during the Anglo-Sikh Wars that followed in the decade ((1845-1846 & 1848-1849), he was nominally neutral albeit he somewhat supported his old rivals the Sikhs with an Afghan mercenary force, still hoping to negotiate Peshawar. These wars resulted in British victory over the Sikhs, the last of Indian independent kingdoms fell and India was more or less completely in Company hands, the Afghan border nor directly bordered British India in the Punjab. The British never returned Peshawar despite their own promises to do so, but Dost having faced his own temporary overthrow and captivity realized, the British were far too powerful to resist in the long run and so he maintained quiet on his part, staying neutral during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, ruling until his death in 1863.

-The British for their part were defeated in the first Anglo-Afghan War, though their military generally held the upper hand in pitched battles and their initial invasion for all its hubris and motivations was successful. It was the occupation that proved too much of an expense than originally endeavored. British arrogance and ignorance of local custom also worsened reception of their plans. In the end, it was British paranoia, belief in imperial prestige and jingoism that had led to a war that while a limited military success was a political failure, having achieved none of their goals, which seemed to shift as the situation shifted. It was a confused war, brought on by people on all sides misreading the events surrounding them and made worse by their stubborn commitment to short-sighted policy goals and ego. Britain would avoid venturing into Afghanistan for nearly forty years when similar disputes over diplomacy led to a second war...

#19th century #military history #afghanistan #the great game #british imperialism #british east india company #india #islam #pashtun #tajik #persian #russian empire #guerilla warfare #kabul

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wahbegan · 4 years ago

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The hoplite phalanx was weakest when facing an enemy fielding lighter and more flexible troops without its own such supporting troops. An example of this would be the Battle of Lechaeum, where an Athenian contingent led by Iphicrates routed an entire Spartan mora (a unit of anywhere from 500 to 900 hoplites). The Athenian force had a considerable proportion of light missile troops armed with javelins and bows that wore down the Spartans with repeated attacks, causing disarray in the Spartan ranks and an eventual rout when they spotted Athenian heavy infantry reinforcements trying to flank them by boat.

The Macedonian phalanx had weaknesses similar to its hoplitic predecessor. Theoretically indestructible from the front, its flanks and rear were very vulnerable, and once engaged it may not easily disengage or redeploy to face a threat from those directions. Thus, a phalanx facing non-phalangite formations required some sort of protection on its flanks—lighter or at least more mobile infantry, cavalry, etc. This was shown at the Battle of Magnesia, where, once the Seleucid supporting cavalry elements were driven off, the phalanx was static and unable to go on the offensive against its Roman opponents (although they continued to resist stoutly and attempted a fighting withdrawal under a hail of Roman missiles, until the elephants posted on their flanks panicked and disrupted their formation).

The Macedonian phalanx could also lose its cohesion without proper coordination or while moving through broken terrain; doing so could create gaps between individual blocks/syntagmata, or could prevent a solid front within those sub-units as well, causing other sections of the line to bunch up.[22] In this event, as in the battles of Cynoscephalae and Pydna, the phalanx became vulnerable to attacks by more flexible units—such as Roman legionary centuries, which were able to avoid the sarissae and engage in hand-to-hand combat with the phalangites.

Another important area that must be considered concerns the psychological tendencies of the hoplites. Because the strength of a phalanx depended on the ability of the hoplites to maintain their frontline, it was crucial that a phalanx be able to quickly and efficiently replace fallen soldiers in the front ranks. If a phalanx failed to do this in a structured manner, the opposing phalanx would have an opportunity to breach the line which, many times, would lead to a quick defeat. This then implies that the hoplites ranks closer to the front must be mentally prepared to replace their fallen comrade and adapt to his new position without disrupting the structure of the frontline.[10]

Finally, most of the phalanx-centric armies tended to lack supporting echelons behind the main line of battle. This meant that breaking through the line of battle or compromising one of its flanks often ensured victory.

Thought i’d post this section of wikipedia about the strategic weaknesses of military shield and phalanx formations for just, y’know, no real reason. Flanking, lighter, faster troops, projectile weapons, and breaks in the terrain all seem valuable. Once the front line is broken they’re essentially totally vulnerable.

Again, completely unrelated to any current events, nifty historical tidbit, bit of military strategy for all you enthusiasts out there

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peashooter85 · 6 years ago

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The Evolution of the Roman Army Part II --- The Manipular Legion (Middle to Late Republic, 4TH Century BC - 107 BC)

In case you missed: Part I

The phalanx system which the Romans had adopted from the Greeks and Etruscans had served the Roman Army well from the 6th century BC up to the 4th century BC, allowing the city state to defend itself against numerous hostiles and even expand their small realm. However as mentioned in the previous post the phalanx had several weaknesses, most glaring in that the formation lacked mobility, was easy to outmaneuver, and was helpless when outflanked. The phalanx first showed its weakness in 390 BC when a large army of Celts lead by the tribal king Brennus invaded central Italy. The lighter and faster Celtic army was easily able to maneuver around, surround, massacre the Roman phalanxes. The Celts sacked Rome, destroying much of the city and making off with 1,000 lbs of gold. Throughout Roman history until 410 AD, the first sack of Rome was a large scar on the collective psyche of the Roman people. As the 4th century BC progressed, a new people descended from the hills of Campania in Southern Italy looking to expand their territory. Coming into contact with Rome, the Samnites were able to take advantage of the weaknesses of the Roman phalanx, dealing several terrible defeats in battle. Unlike the territory around Rome, Campania has very hilly and rough terrain which often hindered a phalanxes’ maneuverability. One of the most embarrassing defeats was the Battle of the Caudine Forks in 321 BC when the Samnite Army was able to ambush and surround an entire Roman Army. Rather than engage the Romans, the Samnites merely laid siege to their position, starving out the Romans and forcing them to surrender. The Samnites spared the Romans, who marched back home with their heads held low in shame. For a Roman of the early republic, death was preferable to defeat.

Around 315 BC the Romans ditched the phalanx and began copying the tactics of their Samnite enemies. The result was the manipular system, which would be used from the remainder of the Samnite Wars, through the Macedonian invasion, and finally allowing Rome to conquer it's mortal enemy, Carthage. The new tactical system was based on a new formation called the "maniple" which basically translates as "a handful". Each maniple had either 60 or 120 men, and a collection of maniples numbering 5,000 men was called a legion. This was the first time in history that the term “legion” was used. Like the older Roman Army, the new system was a citizen militia based on class in which soldiers had to have a certain amount of wealth to qualify for military service. The Roman state for once began to take responsibility for the arming of its military, providing each soldier with a free sword. However, all other arms, armor, clothing, food, and other supplies were the financial responsibility of the individual soldier. The structure of the manipular legion itself was based more on experience than social class however.

The manipular legion consisted of three lines, with the maniples arrayed in a “checkerboard pattern” so that each line could retreat behind the other (see chart above). The first line were the "hastati", named after the hasta, a type of spear. Despite being named after a spear, hastati were armed with a sword, two or three javelins (which they would throw at the enemy before engaging in close quarter combat), a large oval or rectangular shield, a helmet, and either a small bronze plate that covered the chest or a chainmail shirt if the soldier could afford one. Most importantly the hastati were composed of raw recruits with little to no battle experience. The second line consisted of the "principes", who were armed and armored identically to the hastati, however were composed of experienced veterans. Unlike the earlier phalanx, the hastati and principes had a much looser formation. Shields weren't locked together in tight formation, rather soldiers were more spaced out giving each infantryman more freedom of movement and more room to use his sword. Usually after a few minutes of fighting the hastati and principes would switch position, the hastati retreating to the second line, and principes advancing to the front, or vice versa. This gave the soldiers a break from combat, and ensured that the army would not be quickly fatigued.

The final line consisted of heavy infantry called the "triarii", which was a throw back to the old phalanx. Like earlier hoplites, they were armed with a long spear, as well as a sword, shield, helmet, and chainmail cuirass. The triarii were not only the most heavily armed infantrymen of the maniple, but also consisted of the most battle hardened, combat grizzled veterans. The idea was that if the enemy broke through the hastati and principes, the triarii would be the last line of defense, forming a shield wall with with spears arrayed in a phalanx like formation. Things were going badly if the triarii were pressed in combat, and if the triarii failed, the battle was lost.

Like the slingers of the Roman phalanx, the new maniple system had a forth line of light infantry who were placed at the front of the legion at the beginning of a battle. Armed with javelins, "velites" served as skirmishing troops. When attacking the velites would cover the enemy advance by throwing volleys of javelins at the enemy. When the legion was under attack the velites would slow the enemy advance by throwing volleys of javelins. Once close combat began, the velites would retreat to safe ground and continue to harass the enemy if possible. Velites were typically recruited from the poorest Roman citizens who qualified for military service, and thus could afford less in terms of arms and equipment.

Finally, there was the cavalry, which was the most prestigious position within the Roman Army, and were typically drawn from the equites, a very wealthy and powerful social class second only to senators and other politicians. Typically the cavalry were used to guard the flanks of the army, attack the flanks of the enemy, and chased down retreating enemy soldiers.

With its looser formation the manipular legion was better able to react to enemy movements and attacks, where as the tight formation of the phalanx was fairly immobile, and couldn't react if the enemy happened to attack from some direction other than straight ahead. Since the maniple was a smaller unit than the phalanx, it was much easier for armies to coordinate complex movements on the battlefield. With lighter infantry the maniple was also able cover terrain that the previous phalanx couldn't, and with the legion arrayed in a checkerboard pattern, could move around obstacles without breaking formation. The maniple proved to be superior to the phalanx when in the 2nd century BC, shortly after the Punic Wars, Rome would begin conquering Greek kingdoms and states, easily annihilating Greek or Macedonian phalanxes who resisted the onslaught. The maniple system would continue to be used until the Marian reforms of 107 BC. By the end of the Punic Wars, the Roman Army had grown from a small citizen militia of 6,000 men, to a massive army of 23 legions, or 116,000 infantry and 13,000 cavalry. The Roman Republic, a de facto empire and soon to be "Empire" found that it's old system of citizen soldiers recruited by class and wealth could not provide enough manpower for Rome's military needs, especially when some barbarians across the border deal some of Rome's worst defeats since the days of Hannibal. In addition, while the maniple allowed for greater flexibility, the units themselves were too small, especially now that Rome would face massive, well organized armies. A general named Marius would step forward with a brilliant solution.

To be Continued...

#history #ancient history #ancient rome #roman army #military history #roman republic

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dwellordream · 2 years ago

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“Pinning down rules of thumbs on how many officers an army needs (again, including both NCOs and commissioned officers), by contrast, is relevant but deceptive. Students (and occasionally scholars) can easily enough notice that the ratio of officers to soldiers (‘rankers’ we might say) has gone up steadily overtime since the early modern period, at the same time that armies to became capable of progressively more complex operations. The inference is easy to draw: a higher ratio of officers (that is, more officers) corresponds to a greater capability to execute complex plans.

And in the very broad strokes this seems to be true. The Spartans, our sources note (Thuc. 5.68; Xen. Lac. 11.4-5) had more organizational divisions commanded by more officers than other contemporary hoplite formations and seem also to have been able to maneuver a bit better than other hoplite formations, albeit still nowhere near what would be possible for later Roman or Macedonian armies.

It’s difficult to precisely parse out the organization (in part because Thucydides and Xenophon differ in some details), but Xenophon gives the mora as the large scale unit (estimated around 576 men; six of which made up the army), each of which had 29 officers (see chart below), so one officer for each 19 or so regular Spartiates.

As Xenophon notes, this greater degree of organization with many smaller units nested in larger units enabled the Spartans to perform maneuvers thought by the Greeks to be quite difficult to do. This is succeeding over a very low bar, since a hoplite phalanx was one of those formations which struggled to do much more than march forward in a line, but it still speaks to the importance of officers.

Fast Forward to the organization of the Macedonian army under Philip II and Alexander and by all indications the system has become more sophisticated, with an even greater number of officers. We don’t have a description of the detailed structure of Alexander’s army, but what we do have is a later description by a philosopher, Asclepiodotus, of an ‘ideal’ sarisa-phalanx for the later Hellenistic period. The basic unit, the syntagma, consisting of 256 men as he describes it has eighty various officers (many of which we would classify as NCOs, but again we’re not making those distinctions here). That’s now one officer for every 2.2 regular soldiers.

Those syntagma were then grouped into larger formations; under Alexander these were the taxeis, of which there were six. In later Hellenistic armies, particular parts of the phalanx are specified by their shields or commanders, but we often have limited visibility into the subdivisions of the phalanx. Again, it is worth warning that we cannot be sure the degree to which Asclepiodotus may have embellished this system, but it does seem to be accurate in the broad outlines at least.

And we know from Alexander’s campaigns and the subsequent wars of his successors that this was a much more flexible, reactive formation than any hoplite phalanx. Alexander is able to do things like refuse his left flank (to give himself more time to win on the right) and later Hellenistic phalanxes are able to do things like form square under combat conditions (App. Syr. 35), while often operating with attached light infantry and cavalry support. This was a clockwork mechanism substantially more complicated than anything the poleis of Greece had put together on land and it demanded a lot more officer accordingly.

So it seems like we have a pretty clear pattern from most hoplites to Spartiates to Macedonians that ‘more officer’ means ‘more reactive and flexible formation.’ And indeed, some scholars have noted such. And then we get to the Romans.

There is little question that the Roman legion of the Middle Republic was a more flexible, reactive adaptable fighting formation than the Hellenistic phalanxes it faced. Our sources tell us as much (Plb. 18.31-32; Liv. 44.41.6) and that same conclusion emerges pretty clearly in both the battle narratives we have in our understanding of how the legion was expected to function in battle (discussed last time).

Even the basic mechanics of the legion’s fighting method – the three ranks engaging in sequence, forming and closing gaps as they do – appears well beyond the capabilities of the Hellenistic phalanx (and indeed this leads the latter to struggle and eventually fail to cope with the former). And while as a rule the Hellenistic phalanx maneuvers by taxeis, in the legion notionally the maniples could be independent maneuvering units as the fight shifted from hastati to principes to triarii; a much smaller unit of maneuver.

So we ought, by the theory, to have yet more officers still, right? And yet we don’t! The legion (or 4,200 or so excluding cavalry) is divided into thirty maniples, each split into two centuries. Each century was commanded by a centurion so that gives us sixty centurions; centurions were organized in seniority order, so they are not all peers but organized in a hierarchy.

Above this was the commander himself (holding imperium; a consul, praetor, proconsul or propraetor) along with a number of military tribunes (frequently junior aristocrats, typically six per legion these fellows could be delegated to command a legion in battle), the praefecti sociorum, Romans put in command of the allied units and the assigned quaestor who handled pay and finance but might also be asked to command in a pinch.

Below the centurions, we have attested in the imperial period the decani, each of whom commanded a contubernium or ‘tent group’ of six men. The contubernium but not the decanus is attested for the period of the Republic, but I tend to think that there must have been decani in the Republic too; as the commanders of six men they’d probably double as file-leaders since the standard Roman file was of six.

The legionary cavalry (just 300 per legion; the Romans liked to rely more on allied cavalry) were divided into ten turmae (of 30) each commanded by three decuriones (so that’s 30 decuriones total). That means for a standard double-legionary army (9,000 Romans, we’ll put the socii and their praefecti to the side) had 1 commander, 1 quaestor, 12 military tribunes, 60 decuriones, 120 centurions and perhaps 1,200 decani; 1,394 officers for 7,606 regular soldiers, a ratio of around 1 officer to every five and a half soldiers.

That is decidedly less than the Hellenistic phalanx and yet the Roman legion is, as noted, more flexible and response than the Hellenistic phalanx. There must be some key element we are missing here. And indeed, there is.”

- Bret Devereaux, “Commanding Pre-Modern Armies, Part IIIb: Officers.”

#warfare #military #ancient #roman #greek #bret devereaux

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brookstonalmanac · 3 years ago

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Events 8.3

AD 8 – Roman Empire general Tiberius defeats the Dalmatae on the river Bosna. AD 70 – Fires resulting from the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem are extinguished. 435 – Deposed Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius, considered the originator of Nestorianism, is exiled by Roman Emperor Theodosius II to a monastery in Egypt. 881 – Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu: Louis III of France defeats the Vikings, an event celebrated in the poem Ludwigslied. 908 – Battle of Eisenach: An invading Hungarian force defeats an East Frankish army under Duke Burchard of Thuringia. 1031 – Olaf II of Norway is canonized as Saint Olaf by Grimketel, the English Bishop of Selsey. 1057 – Frederik van Lotharingen elected as first Belgian Pope Stephen IX. 1342 – The Siege of Algeciras commences during the Spanish Reconquista. 1492 – Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain. 1527 – The first known letter from North America is sent by John Rut while at St. John's, Newfoundland. 1601 – Long War: Austria captures Transylvania in the Battle of Goroszló. 1645 – Thirty Years' War: The Second Battle of Nördlingen sees French forces defeating those of the Holy Roman Empire. 1678 – Robert LaSalle builds the Le Griffon, the first known ship built on the Great Lakes. 1778 – The theatre La Scala in Milan is inaugurated with the première of Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta. 1795 – Treaty of Greenville is signed, ending the Northwest Indian War in the Ohio Country. 1811 – First ascent of Jungfrau, third highest summit in the Bernese Alps by brothers Johann Rudolf and Hieronymus Meyer. 1829 – The Treaty of Lewistown is signed by the Shawnee and Seneca peoples, exchanging land in Ohio for land west of the Mississippi River. 1852 – Harvard University wins the first Boat Race between Yale University and Harvard. The race is also known as the first ever American intercollegiate athletic event. 1859 – The American Dental Association is founded in Niagara Falls, New York. 1900 – The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company is founded. 1901-present 1903 – Macedonian rebels in Kruševo proclaim the Kruševo Republic, which exists for only ten days before Ottoman Turks lay waste to the town. 1907 – Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis fines Standard Oil of Indiana a record $29.4 million for illegal rebating to freight carriers; the conviction and fine are later reversed on appeal. 1914 – World War I: Germany declares war against France, while Romania declares its neutrality. 1921 – Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis confirms the ban of the eight Chicago Black Sox, the day after they were acquitted by a Chicago court. 1936 – Jesse Owens wins the 100 metre dash, defeating Ralph Metcalfe, at the Berlin Olympics. 1936 – A fire wipes out Kursha-2 in the Meshchera Lowlands, Ryazan Oblast, Russia, killing 1,200 and leaving only 20 survivors. 1940 – World War II: Italian forces begin the invasion of British Somaliland. 1946 – Santa Claus Land, the world's first themed amusement park, opens in Santa Claus, Indiana, United States. 1948 – Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union. 1949 – The Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League finalize the merger that would create the National Basketball Association. 1958 – The world's first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, becomes the first vessel to complete a submerged transit of the geographical North Pole. 1959 – Portugal's state police force PIDE fires upon striking workers in Bissau, Portuguese Guinea, killing over 50 people. 1960 – Niger gains independence from France. 1972 – The United States Senate ratifies the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 1975 – A privately chartered Boeing 707 strikes a mountain peak and crashes near Agadir, Morocco, killing 188. 1977 – Tandy Corporation announces the TRS-80, one of the world's first mass-produced personal computers. 1981 – Senegalese opposition parties, under the leadership of Mamadou Dia, launch the Antiimperialist Action Front – Suxxali Reew Mi. 1997 – Oued El-Had and Mezouara massacre in Algeria: A total of 116 villagers killed, 40 in Oued El-Had and 76 in Mezouara. 1997 – The tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opens after two-and-a-half years of construction. 2004 – The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty reopens after being closed since the September 11 attacks. 2005 – President of Mauritania Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya is overthrown in a military coup while attending the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia. 2007 – Former Deputy Director of the Chilean secret police Raúl Iturriaga is captured after having been on the run following a conviction for kidnapping. 2010 – Widespread rioting erupts in Karachi, Pakistan, after the assassination of a local politician, leaving at least 85 dead and at least 17 billion Pakistani rupees (US$200 million) in damage. 2014 – A 6.1 magnitude earthquake kills at least 617 people and injures more than 2,400 in Yunnan, China. 2014 – The genocide of Yazidis by ISIL begins. 2018 – Two burka-clad men kill 29 people and injure more than 80 in a suicide attack on a Shia mosque in eastern Afghanistan. 2019 – Six hundred protesters, including opposition leader Lyubov Sobol, are arrested in an election protest in Moscow, Russia. 2019 – Twenty-three people are killed and 23 injured in a shooting in El Paso, Texas.

#Events

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blueiscoool · 3 years ago

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Hundreds of Rock-Cut Roman-Era Tombs Discovered in Turkey

Some 1,800 years ago, residents of Blaundos buried their dead in highly decorated graves cut into the sides of a surrounding canyon.

Excavations at Blaundos in Uşak, Turkey, have revealed 400 rock-cut tombs dated to 1,800 years ago, when the ancient city was under Roman control. Many of the tombs are decorated with images of vine branches, bunches of grapes, flowers, animals and mythological figures, the state-run Anadolu Agency (AA) reports.

Blaundos was located atop a hill and surrounded by a canyon that offered protection from attackers. The tombs were carved into the steep sides of the canyon.

“There are arched sarcophagi carved into the bedrock in front of the walls of each room,” expedition leader Birol Can, an archaeologist at Uşak University, tells AA. “Apart from these, places that are thought to be used for funeral ceremonies were also found inside the rock tombs. The main door of the tombs was closed with a marble door and reopened during burial or ceremony times in the past.”

Some of the tombs have only one chamber, while others are “complex structures formed by arranging rooms one after the other,” Can says to Live Science‘s Laura Geggel.

“These rooms were not created in one go,” he adds. “It is understood from the traces on the walls that these tombs were originally designed as a single room. However, in time, when there was no place for burial in this single room, the room was expanded inwards and the second, third and then the fourth rooms were added.”

Archaeologists have been aware of the rock-cut necropolis—one of the largest burial sites of its kind in the world—for more than 150 years. But researchers only began systematically excavating Blaundos in 2018. Aside from the tombs, writes Argun Konuk for Daily Sabah, the team has identified temples, a theater, a public bath, aqueducts, a state building, a stadium and more.“

Apart from these, we know that there are many religious, public and civil structures still under the ground,” Can tells Live Science.

Over the centuries, grave robbers partially destroyed some of the tombs while removing jewelry and other precious items. But many objects remain. They include pottery fragments and coins dated to the second through fourth centuries C.E., as well as grave goods like mirrors, rings, cups and oil lamps presumably intended for use in the afterlife.

Murals decorating 24 of the chambers remain visible but are in poor shape.

“Some of these tombs were used as animal shelters by shepherds a long time ago,” Can tells Live Science. “The frescoes were covered with a dense and black soot layer due to the fires that were set in those times.”

A conservation team has cleaned some of the paintings, which include motifs of vines, flowers, wreaths and geometric patterns, as well as mythological figures like Hermes, Eros and Medusa and animals including birds and dogs.

Blaundos was founded by a commander of the same name who served under Alexander the Great after his army swept into Asia Minor in the fourth century B.C.E. Originally inhabited by Macedonians, it later became an important Roman city, notes Peta Stamper for “History Hit.” In the later Roman and Byzantine eras, Blaundos was a seat for bishops leading Christian communities in the surrounding area.

The tombs uncovered so far are just a part of the necropolis. Hundreds of other graves have yet to be excavated. The team also plans to conduct DNA and chemical analyses aimed at determining the ancestry, age, sex and diet of those buried in the ancient city.

By Livia Gershon.

#Hundreds of Rock-Cut Roman-Era Tombs Discovered in Turkey #archeology #history #history news #ancient civilizations #Roman Empire

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jeannereames · 2 years ago

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What do you think were some of ATG’s biggest/best innovations in warfare? Additionally (and this is kind of a thought more than a question) I thought it was incredibly fascinating how quickly he took to naval warfare despite most Macedonian military expertise being land-based (although I might be wrong)

It took him a while to catch on to naval power, actually—perhaps not surprisingly as Macedon was never that sea focused. Some recent archaeology suggests Pydna was a Macedonian port from way back, and certainly Archelaos moved the capital from Aegae to Pella in order to get a protected port on the Thermaikos Gulf. Later, Kassandros would combine several old settlements NE of Pella into Thessaloniki. Yet the goal of all these seems to have been trade more than military, albeit by Kassandros’ time, he was thinking military too, and certainly the Antigonids did.

Philip rather famously had to retreat his own “navy” (essentially a bunch of pirate-type pentakonters) when only about 20-30 Athenian triremes showed up during one of his campaigns in the north. He would manage to seize over 200 triremes when they were beached but couldn’t take them on the water. The non-Athenian boats he freed, but the Athenians ones? Did he use them himself? Nope, he broke them down for siege engine timber. As we’ll see, siege engineering is where he threw money.

He did realize he needed a better navy before going up against Persia, but his solution was to use Athens’, not build his own—despite owning acres upon acres upon acres of perfect ship timber. It still takes money to build those ships, even if not paying for the timber, and ol’ Phil just didn’t have it then. Plus, navies have to be maintained (ships deteriorate), and I’m not sure Philip cared enough to make that sort of long-term commitment. Alexander is the first Macedonian king (that we know of) to invest significantly in building warships, not just borrowing other people’s, and that wasn’t until late in his career, India forward.

Why the change? I’m about 90% convinced his real next target (before his death) wasn’t Arabia, but Carthage. So obviously, he needed a huge navy, and Persia’s navy (which he was now responsible for) had been famous. Yet he was also building boats for trade linking India back to Asia, specifically Babylon, which is why he made the whole Gedrosia trek in the first place. Baloney on him trying to outdo Cyrus and Semiramis. That’s largely imposition by later authors. He was looking for trade routes.

I do find it curious that the nation who supplied Athens with such copious amounts of ship timber that it became the 3rd front in the Peloponnesian War was not, herself, a naval power.

In terms of military innovation, Philip did more with basic equipment. He created the sarissa, devised the hammer and anvil tactic, and employed combined arms in a masterful way. He’s also the one who invested in artillery. That’s where his extra money went, instead of into ships. Alexander largely refined technology.

Alexander’s military innovations were more in the realm of ideas. Philip had made a few moves towards advancement on ability (not birth). Alexander pushed that forward post-Gaugamela. If he couldn’t touch the highest positions (and may not have wanted to right then), he did introduce advancement on bravery and ability with the lower-level offices among both infantry and cavalry. Especially with cavalry, this would have been tough to force through, as cavalry was traditionally for the elite (who could afford horses). Naturally, they expected to advance based on family connections. Also, following the downfall of Philotas, the cavalry was divided up into increasingly independent units. It started with the division between Hephaistion and Kleitos, but after Kleitos’s death, Alexander broke down the Companions into six hipparchies…not unlike the way the infantry taxeis were each under the command of a single general, who then answered to the man in charge of that wing of the army (Parmenion or Alexander, or later, Krateros or Alexander). This both allowed the army to operate more efficiently, but also prevented too much power concentrated in the hands of any one person. AND it rewarded ability, which tied the receiver to the king, breaking down mini-family dynasties within the army. (Such as Parmenion’s.) Philip had tried this a bit with the Pezhetairoi (later called Hypaspists), who were selected for size and courage. Alexander really expanded it, and renovated how the army command structure worked.

Likewise, Alexander had a rare ability to come up with, on the spot, new ways to use old toys. So, for instance, he put siege engines on boats to attack Tyre. In Thrace, earlier, he used a turtle (and gravity) to break apart carts rolled down on troops from above. He also used sarissai to “mow” down a big wheat field to attack the enemy from an unexpected direction. He built ginormous ramps all around Gaza to bring his machines up to the level of the walls. In India, he used “junk” from the countryside to fill in “impossible” ditches and construct a causeway to attack a mountain fort. Etc. Basically if somebody told him, “You can’t do that,” he figured out a way to do it anyway.

Militarily, he was the ultimate problem-solver, and he was brilliant at military organization. But Philip was more the innovator when it came to the tools of war, from weapons and armor to artillery, even if his son would then use that artillery in ways he hadn’t thought of.

#Alexander the Great #Philip of Macedon #Philip II #Philip II of Macedon #Macedonian military #Macedonian artillery #military history #ancient Macedon #ancient military history #ancient combined armies #Macedonian military innovations #Macedonian army structure #Classics #ancient history #tagamemnon #asks

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cincycinner · 7 years ago

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The Colorful Microbe

When determining the identification of an isolated bacteria often times the macroscopic coloring of the colonization can lend valuable insights into what the microbe may be. Simply put, bacteria are capable of producing a variety of colors for the human eye to enjoy.

Bacteria produce pigments for a variety of reasons that include energy production, UV protection, defense mechanisms, against potentially fatal threats, and energy storage.

Pigments are mostly synthesized in the cell walls or periplasmic spaces of bacteria. Only aerobic and facultatively aerobic bacteria have been shown to naturally produce pigment because molecular oxygen is an essential component of pigmentation.

Enterobacter species and non-fermentative Gram-Negative rods such as Chryseobacterium, Agrobacterium, and Sphingomonas species can be identified by their yellow pigmentation.

Burkholderia species can be identified by their yellow-brown pigmentation.

Chromobacterium violaceum produce violet pigmentation via violacein

Roseomonas, Methylobacterium, and some Serratia species can be identified by their pink to red pigmentations.

Pseudomonoas group can be distinguished by their fluorscent pigment pyoverdin but are capable of producing a variety of pigments.

Micrococcus isolates can have a range of pigmentations from M. luteus’ yellow to the pink of M. roseus and red of M. agilis.

Water Soluble vs. Water Insoluble

Water Insoluble pigments are those that give color to only the bacterial colonies themselves and include:

Carotenoids (Yellow-Orange): Carotenoids play a key role in protecting cells against photo-oxidative damage. Carotenoids have been shown to play a role in light harvesting for bacterial photosynthesis. The potential for microbial biotechnological production of carotenoids is of growing importance.

Violacein (Violet or Purple): Indole derivative produced mostly by Chromobacterium that has shown antimicrobial properties. May be useful in treatment of cancers and leukemias due to its cyto-toxic properties.

Phenazines (Yellow, Maroon, or Red): Phenazines have many roles including serving as electron shuttles to alternate terminal acceptors, modifying cellular redox states, acting as cell signals that regulate patterns of gene expression, contributing to bio-film formation and architecture, and enhancing bacterial survival. Phenazine producers make up a plethora of species including Nocardia, Sorangium, Brevibacterium, Burkholderia, Erwinia, Pantoea agglomerans, Vibrio, and Pelagiobacter. (That’s a mouth full)

Water Soluble pigments are those that are diffusible and give color to the enrichment agar surrounding the pigment producing bacterial colony and include:

Pyocyanin: Produced by Pseudomonas species, pyocyanin has shown to have antimicrobial properties

Pyoverdin: Fluorescent pigment produced by Pseudomonas species. Complex siderophores that bind metal ions.

“More than 750 structurally different yellow, orange, and red colored molecules are found in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes with an estimated market of $919 million by 2015”

HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS:

In 332 B.C. during the siege of Tyre by Alexander the Great and his army of Macedonian, the soldiery became greatly concerned by the appearance of blood-like droplets on bread as it was broken. So great was the alarm that soldiers and king alike were about to give up the siege since they considered this phenomena as a portent of their destruction. Upon having this brought to his attention, Aristander, one of the king’s most skillful soothsayers, interpreted it to mean that since the droplets of blood were on the inside of the loaf, it indicated destruction for those within the walls. If the blood had been on the outside of the loaf, it would have portended evil to the army on the outside of the walls. Taking courage from these interpretations, the Macedonians continued their siege and the city of Tyre fell.

To the modern scientist and bacteriologist, this “miracle” can have but one clear and logical explanation. The growth of what is now known as Serratia marcescens, the red pigmented bacterium which grows profusely on bread and even today causes what is commonly called “bloody bread”.

Sources:

Practical Handbook of Microbiology, Second Edition

Emanuel Goldman, Lorrence H. Green

“Colorful World of Microbes: Carotenoids and Their Applications” Kushwaha Kirti, Saini Amita, Saraswat Priti, Agarwal Mukesh Kumar, and Saxena Jyoti. Advances in Biology Volume 2014

“Sequence analysis and functional characterization of Violacein biosynthetic pathway from Chromobacterium violaceum.” August, P.R, et al. J. Mol. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 2000

“Metabolism and function of Phenazines in bacteria: impacts on the behavior of bacteria in the environment and biotechnological processes.” Pierson. Appl. Microbiol Biotecnol. May 2010.

#microbiology #bacteria news -- sciencedaily #science #color #cincinnati

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afishtrap · 7 years ago

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This article analyzes the techniques by which the kings of the early Sasanian dynasty engaged the past and shaped the experience of future generations. I concentrate on the innovations and legacy of the first two kings of kings of the dynasty, Ardashir I (r. 224–239/40 C.E.) and his son Shapur I (239/40–270/2 C.E.). These sovereigns fashioned a new and politically useful vision of the past to establish their dynasty's primacy in Persia and the wider Iranian world, eclipsing their Seleucid, Fratarakid, and Arsacid predecessors. I identify and examine the artistic, architectural, and ritual means by which the early Sasanians conformed the built and natural environment of their homeland to their grand new vision of the past. I argue that the Achaemenid patrimony of the province of Pars played an important role in these efforts, serving as inspirations and anchors for the Sasanians' new creations.

Matthew P. Canepa. "Technologies of Memory in Early Sasanian Iran: Achaemenid Sites and Sasanian Identity." American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 114, No. 4 (October 2010), pp. 563-596.

The Sasanian dynasty had its roots in the province of Pars in southwestern Iran, the homeland of the Achaemenid empire (fig. I).10 Although their empire had been defunct for centuries, the ruined palaces, sacred sites, and tombs of the Achaemenid kings of kings still loomed large on the physical and ideological horizons of Pars long after their fall. The vestiges of this great, yet half-understood, Persian heritage confronted all who held power in the province and eventually stimulated the Sasanians' own memorial and monumental practices. The most impressive concentration of visible Achaemenid remains in Pars lay at the western end of the Marv Dasht plain. Here, the plain meets the mountains, and the Polvar River divides the mountains into two spurs, the Hosayn Kuh to the north and the Kuh-e Rahmat to the south. Persepolis' massive platform rose below Kuh-e Rahmat, while, about 6.25 km to the north, the Achaemenids' royal necropolis, called today by its New Persian nickname of Naqsh-Rostam, marked the final spur of the Hosayn Kuh. Be tween these two ancient sites grew Staxr, post-Achae menid Pars' principle city and religious center.11 From at least the early Sasanian period, the inhabitants Pars conceived of Staxr, Persepolis, and Naqsh-e Ros tam as a whole.12 With their colossal architecture and fine relief sculpture, Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rostam emerged as objects of special pride and fascination for the post-Achaemenid rulers of Pars and, eventually, became the raw material out of which the Sasanians crafted their early expressions.13

While they presented themselves as the true stewards of the ancient Persian sites, the Sasanians' memo rial activities owed a great deal to their more proximate predecessors in the region. Indeed, the Sasanians initially drew from, and reacted to, the accumulated Hellenistic, Arsacid, and local post-Achaemenid Persian reinterpretations of the sites. After entering Parsa in 331 B.C.E., Alexander held victory games and banquet at Persepolis, a celebration that culminated in the destruction of the palace.14 While, in this instance, Persepolis served as a monument to Hellenic vengeance, other Achaemenid structures retained their original significance. Alexander made a show of caring for the Tomb of Cyrus to associate himself with the founder of the Achaemenid dynasty.15 Persepolis' significance as an aggressive, Macedonian victory monument did not endure long after Alexander's death. Despite its damaged state, the multivalent symbolic potential of the site attracted Alexander's successors quickly thereafter for different goals (see table 2). In 316, Peukestas, Alexander's companion whom he had appointed governor of Parsa, staged an elaborate banquet for his army at Persepolis before the showdown between Eumenes and Antigonos Monophthalmos, where he conducted lavish sacrifices to Alexander and Philip.16 The banquet hosted both Macedonian and Iranian contingents, and its seating arrangements and sacrifices evoke Persian protocol.17 This suggests that Peukestas, popular and trusted among the Persian nobility, intended to capitalize on Persepolis as an open-ended symbol that could speak to the event's different constituencies.18

[...]

In addition to their regalia, the Fratarakids incorpo rated into their coins aspects of the most prominent features of Achaemenid royal architecture and architectural ornament that still existed around them.28 Most of the Fratarakid coins depict a winged disk with a male bust emerging from it, recognizable on every Achaemenid royal tomb, many prominent reliefs at Persepolis, and many seals (fig. 2).29 On most issues, this divine figure hovers over a stepped rectangular structure with coffering or coffered doors that recalls Achaemenid architectural forms and post-Achae menid crenellations at Persepolis. Speculations on the identity of the structure on the reverses of the coins have proliferated; however, the most cogent interpretation of the iconography, not to mention the only one grounded in primary source material (i.e., archaeological evidence), argues that it was inspired by Achaemenid architecture, possibly the Achaemenid towers such as were built at Naqsh-e Rostam and Pasar gadae.30 Although we will likely never know the exact function or identity of the structure, on most issues, a male figure stands next to it in a posture directly in spired by the composition and posture of the Achaemenid kings of kings on their tombs: the figures face right, raising their right hand to the winged figure above. The figures hold their bow with the bowstring facing away from the object of veneration. This is the same posture of respect shown by the Achaemenid sovereigns on the tomb reliefs. The bow, however, is of a contemporary, recurve style, rather than a direct copy of those on the Achaemenid reliefs.31

A discrete break with early Fratarakid coin types occurs only after Pars submitted to the Arsacids.32 The coinage of Wadfradad II, the first ruler of Pars thought to acknowledge Arsacid suzerainty, marks a transition, and after Darew II, the obverse portraits clearly follow Arsacid royal iconography.33 The reverse types change as well but do not follow Arsacid models. Achaemenid iconography appears also to have inspired these new types. The reverses of most of these portray a male figure in profile, facing a fire altar broadly similar to the fire altars on all Achaemenid tombs and many of the seals.34

The Fratarakids built both on and near the plat form of Persepolis. A group of structures located 300 m north of the platform show characteristics of a palace and a shrine where the inhabitants honored the gods with a statue, a fire, or some combination thereof.35 These post-Achaemenid mudbrick structures employed some carefully chosen and reworked Achaemenid stone architectural members, such as a doorjamb and lintel, all taken from material at Perse polis.36 The Fratarakids removed a doorway from the tacara (private palace) of Darius I. With its depictions of beardless eunuch servants in profile wearing Persian robes and carrying personal articles of the king (as in other relief sculpture there), incorporated into its new context, it is possible the Fratarakids gave these figures a new interpretation or identity. A windowjamb associated archaeologically with the sacred area of the complex carries the simple, low-relief images of two figures in profile. They hold ritual paraphernalia in their hands in a contemporary Middle Iranian gesture of reverence.37 The window that the jamb decorated communicated with the antechamber to the inner sacred area, linking their actions to the sacred area inside.38 Although they were Fratarakid creations, the iconography on these reliefs responds to and reinterprets aspects of the Achaemenid reliefs, adapting their striding profile and outstretched, raised arms to contemporary post-Achaemenid, Persian visual culture. If Islamic accounts can be believed, the Temple of Anahid in Staxr, of which the Sasanians took over the hereditary priesthood, similarly integrated elements of Achaemenid architecture such as bull capitals and reliefs.39

More remarkable for their absence, the Arsacids apparently never sponsored any activity in the Achaemenid ruins of the province, nor did they carve a rock relief in Pars near the Achaemenid tombs. Arsacid kings appeared in monuments in other provinces in their empire, such as the rock relief of Mithridates I at Khong-e Nowruzi, deep in Elymais.40 One can conjecture that this dearth of Arsacid evidence in Pars is the result of the Sasanians' particularly thorough job of obliterating their monuments, as occurred at Bisotun, or simply because by this time, Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rostam no longer held any special significance beyond the province. Bisotun, the site of Darius I's monumental rock relief and inscription, preserves limited evidence of Arsacid engagement with the Achaemenid site. Al though they do not match the scale or intricacy of the Sasanian material in Pars, Mithridates II, Gotarzes II, and a king named Vologases carved reliefs several meters distant, on Bisotun's lower rock face or in the field to the north, though, given their orientation, these were intended to engage with Bisotun's walled sanctuary below rather than with Darius I's relief.41

[...]

The founder of the Sasanian empire, Ardashir I, led his family's rise from obscure, local garrison commanders to provincial kings by systematically assassinating neighboring chieftains and annexing their domains.42 The family overthrew the king of Pars in 212 C.E., setting up an eventual conflict with the Arsacid king of kings, Ardawan IV. During the Sasanians' bloody two-decade rise from local dynasts to kings of kings, Pars' monumental patrimony again played an important role as raw material for expressing a vision of Iranian kingship for a new regime. Once in power, the Sasanians took possession of Staxr and its surrounding symbolic landscape, being driven to match and supercede their predecessors' engagement with the Achaemenid structures.

#archaeology #iran #research #middle east #pre-history #jstor

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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Tensions Rising in Balkans as Hopes for EU Future Fade

By Walter Mayr and Jan Puhl, Der Spiegel, June 27, 2017

Fourteen years after being told they had a future in the European Union, countries in the Western Balkans are losing hope. Meanwhile, Turkish and Russian influence in the region is on the rise. So too is the nationalist rhetoric of old.

The man who hopes to become the prime minister of Kosovo has a past, documented under case file IT-04-84 at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Forty-eight-year-old Ramush Haradinaj, aka Smajl, was accused of crimes against humanity in 37 cases, including murder and torture.

The allegations are from the 1990s, when he was a field commander for the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK) in the war against the Serbs. The court ultimately found Haradinaj not guilty, a product of witnesses declining to testify at the last moment or, in some cases, dying suddenly. The United Nations police force in Kosovo has accused the UÇK veteran of dealing cocaine, while Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, described him in a 2005 analysis as being the head of a group involved in “the entire spectrum of criminal activities.”

Despite his past, though, Haradinaj’s alliance of former fighters managed to emerge victorious in Kosovo parliamentary elections earlier this month. With 34 percent of the voters supporting his alliance, it is now up to him to form a governing coalition.

The news from Kosovo, the mini-republic located northeast of Albania, is consistent with the atmosphere in the Western Balkans these days. Kosovo, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, all part of former Yugoslavia, have spent years waiting to become members of the European Union, but it seems in the early summer of 2017 as though they have almost been forgotten. And people there are beginning to lose their patience. The result: increasing numbers of people leaving the region, accelerated Islamization and rising nationalism. Violent protests recently in the Macedonian capital of Skopje along with ranting about a Greater Albania in both Tirana and Pristina, the capitals of Albania and Kosovo respectively, have served to demonstrate just how tense the situation has become.

Located at the historical intersection between the Orient and the Occident, the Western Balkans are something of a geopolitical no-man’s-land. Between the territories of EU member states Croatia and Greece, there are six countries in the region whose chances of joining the European bloc any time soon are extremely limited.

Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania: All were promised a future in the European Union at the Thessaloniki Summit in 2003, a time when optimism was widespread in the Balkans. But their hopes have been dashed: Not long after that summit, the EU switched from expansion to naval gazing, its energies being rerouted to the euro crisis and the dangers presented by populism and, more recently, Brexit.

Way back in 2010, then-Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg blasted the lack of attention paid to the Western Balkans, saying the region threatened to become “nitroglycerine under our behinds.” And now, it has become increasingly apparent that others are taking advantage of the West’s lack of action, including autocratically governed countries with historic ties to the Balkans like Russia and Turkey, in addition to new sponsors and mentors from the Persian Gulf.

The Balkans, a region that has produced numerous crises in Europe, is once again threatening to become a security risk. The attraction of the EU is fading and the nationalist rhetoric of the past is returning. If the EU had a joint foreign and defense policy, this would be its test case: the sustainable pacification of the Balkans.

1. Kosovo: The Threatening Scenario of Greater Albania. As a commander during the war, Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi’s codename was Gjarpri, Albanian for “snake,” because he hardly left any tracks. But for years now, criminal prosecutors have been on his tail.

In the 1990s, Thaçi was one of the founders of the paramilitary liberation army UÇK and has been president of Kosovo since 2016. And now, just as he has been handed the privilege of granting his old comrade Haradinaj the task of forming a government, he faces potential prosecution for war crimes by a special tribunal in The Hague.

Seemingly by chance, books about streetfighters-turned-politicians, such as Joschka Fischer and Gerry Adams, lie strewn about on Thaçi’s desk in the capital of Pristina. The president of Kosovo is intent on demonstrating that the Thaçi of today no longer has anything in common with the man who, as a German intelligence report once claimed, controlled “a criminal network active in all of Kosovo.”

Sitting amid the gold-gilded, Rococo chairs and crystal chandeliers in his office, the head of state makes it clear that he is interested in talking about Kosovo’s future, and not about his own past. “The main threat,” he says, “is that the EU will come too late to this region, thus leaving space for others, including radical Islamists.” He says he is also concerned about “rising nationalism in the region and the increase of Russian influence wherever Serbs live.” In April, Thaçi even threatened the unification of all Albanians in the Balkans in a joint state if the EU was to close its doors. Now, though, he says his comments were misunderstood.

Ten years after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, the country--the majority of whose population is comprised of ethnic Albanians--still finds itself among Europe’s step-children. Five EU member states and 75 additional UN countries have declined to recognize Kosovo as an independent nation--and it is the only European country west of Belarus whose residents require a visa to travel into the EU. Its isolation, combined with an official unemployment rate of almost 30 percent, has accelerated the exodus of mostly young Kosovars.

Increasing Islamism: “Every year, the German Embassy alone receives 55,000 visa applications,” says political scientist Naim Rashiti, “but it takes up to half a year to process them. By contrast, citizens of Kosovo can travel to Turkey without a visa. The EU still represents the promise of a better future, but in some parts of society, this certainty is eroding through Turkey’s growing influence in addition to increasing Islamism.”

Per capita, more fighters from Kosovo have joined Islamist militias in the Middle East than from any other country in Europe. One-sixth of the jihadists from Kosovo have fallen in battle, but many of them have since returned home. The government in Pristina does what it can to combat radical imams, but in a recent statement, the German government noted: “Saudi Arabian missionary organizations are also active in Kosovo, spreading the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam by sending preachers.”

For half a millennium, Kosovo was under Ottoman rule and now Turkish economic and cultural influence is again on the rise. Turkish investors have pumped a billion euros into sectors such as transportation and energy, but money has also been made available for private schools, student dormitories and grants for Koran students to study in Turkey.

The West, meanwhile, doesn’t quite know what to do about Kosovo. In 1999, NATO launched air strikes to end Serbian autocrat Slobodan Milosevic’s violent control over the Albanian-majority region and the international community pumped 33 billion euros into Kosovo in the period prior to 2008 alone. Indeed, the extent of that involvement might explain why Washington, Berlin and other Western capitals are unwilling to see Kosovo’s Feb. 17, 2008, declaration of independence for what it is: a violation of international law. Russian President Vladimir Putin is fond of pointing to Kosovo when justifying his own country’s annexation of the Crimea or de facto annexation of Abkhazia.

The U.S. was instrumental in paving the way for Kosovo’s independence and saw Hasim Thaçi as the young republic’s hope for the future--despite Thaçi’s instrumental leadership role in the UÇK, a group the U.S. State Department had listed as a terrorist organization as recently as 1998. In return, the U.S. was able to establish a heavily guarded military base in Kosovo--and 18 years after NATO intervention, the former rebel leaders of the UÇK still control political and economic life in the country.

Around 5 percent of the Kosovo population is still made up of Serbs. About an hour’s drive north of the capital, one arrives at a structure of steel and concrete stretching across the Ibar River. Rebuilt with the help of more than a million euros from the EU, the bridge connects the Albanian southern part of the city of Mitrovica with the largely Serbian northern part. New wooden benches have been installed on the riverbanks to facilitate encounters between the two ethnicities, but only pedestrians are allowed to cross the bridge.

Initially, the span was intended as a symbol of rapprochement, but it has instead become emblematic of a lasting conflict. Fully 90 percent of the Kosovar Serbs still say that don’t want to live in a state with Albanians North of the river, Serbian flags still fly in the divided city.

Thus far, a resurgence of violence between Serbs and Albanians has been prevented primarily due to funding and pressure from the EU. That money is distributed on both sides of the river and houses and streets are being fixed up across the entire city. Brussels has also pressured Serbia into no longer providing Serbian residents of Kosovo with passports, with which they could enter the EU without a visa.

And in Belgrade, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has left no doubt that he is willing to sacrifice the Kosovo Serbs on the altar of an EU future.

2. Macedonia: Ethnic Tensions and European Hopes. The further south you drive from Pristina toward the border with Macedonia, the less ubiquitous becomes the blue flag of Kosovo--and the more prevalent the double-headed eagle flag of neighboring Albania. It is the symbol of that which binds across all borders.

In Macedonia, formerly the southernmost republic of Yugoslavia, Albanians represent 25 percent of the population. They tend to be concentrated near Macedonia’s western border and traditionally feel closer to their fellow Albanians in Kosovo, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro than to their Slavic countrymen.

On April 27, Talat Xhaferi became president of Macedonian parliament, the first time ever that an ethnic Albanian had been chosen for that position. A mini-flag with the double-headed Albanian eagle can be found on his desk as well. After he was elected, violence broke out, with followers of long-time nationalist-conservative ex-Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski storming the parliament and assaulting their political adversaries. In the eyes of Slavic-Macedonian ultra-nationalists, Xhaferi’s election represents the first step toward the country’s partition, and they are concerned that a “binational” arrangement could ultimately lead to the establishment of Greater Albania.

Macedonia, population 2 million, has had an Association Agreement with the EU for 16 years, has been an accession candidate for 11 years and, fully nine years ago, was at the cusp of becoming a member of NATO. Yet neither membership in EU nor NATO has come to fruition, and Macedonia’s southern neighbor Greece is primarily to blame. Athens has consistently exercised its veto right, complaining that the name Macedonia is historically the provenance of ethnic Greeks. Greece wants Macedonia to change its name.

Prime Minister Gruevski, who stepped down in 2016, was initially considered to be pro-European, only changing course once he realized that the EU and NATO couldn’t even solve the name conflict with Greece. He developed into an autocrat and he now stands accused of electoral fraud, corruption and large-scale surveillance of civilians. He also transformed the center of Skopje into a nationalist-Macedonian Disneyland--with gigantic, totalitarian-esque bronze statues recalling a glorious past.

Currently, there is no obvious way out of the dead-end into which Macedonia has maneuvered itself. “The EU is slowly losing its regulative power here and support for united Europe is falling,” a Western political consultant in Skopje warns.

3. Bosnia and Herzegovina: Faces of Ethnic Partition. Vernes Voloder lived not even 500 meters from the Stari Most, the famous Old Bridge of Mostar, in the Muslim eastern side of the city when the 1991 war began. He survived the siege by Orthodox Serbs and the following skirmishes between the Catholic Croatians and the Muslim Bosniaks, who had initially been allies. But by the time the Croatians blew up the famous Stari Most spanning the turquoise Neretva River in 1993, Voloder had already left his hometown. “This bridge, which connected the Muslim quarter with the Croatian quarter was a fact of life for us,” he says. Mostar, one of the largest multi-ethnic cities of Yugoslavia prior to the outbreak of war, had lost its symbol. Today, a quarter-century later, the bridge is back, its reconstruction financed with millions of euros from the EU.

A slender 40-year-old in jeans and a hipster T-shirt, Voloder has since returned to Mostar and walks almost every day from the Muslim eastern part of the city to the Croatian sector in the west. He works for a non-profit institute as an “ethno-therapist,” seeking to get Croats and Bosniaks talking to one another again.

Even 25 years after the war broke out, Serbs, Croatians and Bosniaks are still feuding with each other within the confines of the Bosnia and Herzegovina federation. The Serbian half of the republic is threatening to secede and to remove all reference to the genocidal slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica from their school books.

In 1995, after U.S. air strikes put an end to the Serbian massacre of Muslims, Washington leaned on the three warring parties to sign a peace deal in Dayton. It is still in force today. The problem, however, is that the peace agreement solidified ethnic segregation. Bosnia and Herzegovina is made up of a Serbian entity--the Republika Srpska--and a federation of Croatian and Bosniak entities. Political offices are dispersed using a complicated formula aimed at parity and several institutions exist in triplicate, such as electricity suppliers, pension funds, water supply facilities and district councils.

In the street where Voloder works, there is a public transportation training facility where young Bosnians take classes until 12:30 p.m., followed by Croatians in the afternoon. There are two school directors and two different teams of teachers. It took Voloder months to get the teachers to sit down at a table together and talk about teaching Croats and Bosniaks together for at least a couple hours a week. He was successful until the moment when a television broadcaster showed up and interviewed a Croatian student who said he couldn’t stand Muslims. That brought a premature end to the dream of joint schooling.

Billions in development aid from the EU has likewise been unable to change the fact that Bosnia-Herzegovina remains a poorly functioning entity. Its residents have shown little interest in stepping across the ethnic divide for the good of the commonwealth.

To obscure the lack of progress, Bosnia’s politicians continue to resort to the same nationalist language common in the 1990s. Milorad Dodik, president of the Republika Srpska, for example, has been demanding for years that the Serbian portion of the country secede, which would be a violation of the Dayton Accords. In the Croatian cantons, meanwhile, Dragan Covi is promoting the establishment of an exclusively Croatian region, with the ultimate goal of becoming part of EU-member Croatia. The EU, protector and sponsor of the cold peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has remained silent on the issue.

Cutting off funding to the country is not an option, says an EU representative in Bosnia who would like to remain anonymous. That would be “welcome to the rabble rousers on all sides,” he says. “We would produce martyrs.”

In the early summer of 2017, there is no war in the Western Balkans, nor are there pockets of civil conflict. There is, however, a growing repudiation of the European project across the entire region. While it may be understandable that the EU is losing its attraction and influence as a symbol of security and prosperity, it is also dangerous. Peace in the Western Balkans is being threatened by the barely concealed Albanian ambition for a common state beyond existing borders just as it is by the megalomania of Serb nationalists.

What is currently taking place in the Balkans, says the EU representative in Mostar, is a total masquerade. Nobody in the EU believes, he says, “that Bosnia will become a member in the foreseeable future.” As such, the country is making little effort to conform to European standards. “The attraction of the European Union has faded. We are no longer a role model.”

#Balkans #Kosovo #Macedonia #Bosnia and Herzegovina

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