Isolationism and neutrality
Been reading too much Tuchman I guess... going through The Proud Tower (Europe before the War 1890-1914) and August 1914. Really interesting reads for this period. Anyways it does give a picture of the conditions which we are trying to recreate here. The story of the whole Anarchist movement is particularly interesting and the way it moves, along with ideas like Marxism and Socialism toward the political assasinations which culminate with the dead Archduke and Archdutchess in Sarajevo and ultimately with the USSR in 1917, not to mention the allied and White Russian attempts to destroy the Communist USSR in a subplot to WW1 (this is, I'm assuming, part of the mod, given that it goes on till the mid '20s?) While I'm as much for recreating on HoI scale the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele I'm as interested in recreating not only the battles but the feel, the atmosphere of the period and part of this is embodied in the optimism of 1914, the 'Now God be Thanked' attitude, that pendulum that swung between the almost orgasmic need for the release of a 'European war' (the last one was, for Britain, fought in the Crimea in the 1850s! - Mme Tuchman's comment in 'The Proud Tower' on the British in the Boer war is amusing: "It showed that the British (of 1899) were quite prepared to fight the Crimean war.") and the belief that economic forces would prevent it from being a long war. The capitalists believed that financial interdependence and international big business would not permit a war to intrude on its moneymaking for so long (while making allowance for fortunes to be made by war-profiteering) while the socialists believed that worldwide brotherhood among the workers would ultimately prevent the war from affecting them. It's like a man contemplating an affair and going through with a single infidelity without considering all the consequences. It's like "Fatal Attraction" if you will.
However to say that the war will not happen between 1914 and 1920 is most likely a vain hope. Some 'damn fool thing in the Balkans' or elsewhere was ready to spark it like dry tinder. Since the 1840s, anarchists like Prince Kropotkin were prophesying a great war that would pave the way for socialist take over, a worldwide revolution (the kind that would almost happen post-WW2 with China and the whole 'domino theory') that eventually happened in a big 'small way' in Russia 1917. So I'm not saying that there should be no war. But there should be the viable alternatives. Now I'm also not saying that we need to even consider these alternatives now. Right now I'd be happy just being able to play a strictly historical mod, heck even without any deviations and choices other than where to attack or move my divisions, without the computer crashing on me. But as the mod expands I would like to see things like these. If it were even possible to do, with events, I was thinking (if it doesn't violate copyright or whatever), we could, like in Solzynitzen's novel, 1914 (about the Tannenburg campaign) or John Masters' World War 1 trillogy, have 'news clippings' about the price of soap (remember SMS Emden's Soap advertisement?) or contemporary poetry (I think that's part of the appeal of WW1 is that it is perceived as perhaps the last war of poet warriors and so many great western literary figures fought in it, from those who died like Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenburg, Alan Seeger, Joyce Kilmer, John McCrae, to those who lived like JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, TS Eliot, Siegfried Sassoon, even old Kipling whose son died at Loos while serving with the Irish Guards) and song.
So neutrality and isolationism should, eventually, be possible paths for anyone to take, particularly the great powers with a lot of clout. Reading the Willy-Nicky letters where both look to the other to help 'stop the madness' though perhaps neither in their heart really want to, as it is a chance for military glory, the historic splendid isolation of Great Britain, and Germany, despite the British guarantee of Belgian neutrality, was realistically counting on British neutrality and isolationism, expecting little more than an international 'slap on the wrist' and little more from the Belgians than 'mild protests' and Woodrow Wilson's historic stance of isolationism (because if there's no motivation to stay neutral in this war, I for one will join the Allies in 1914 as America! - it's interesting to think of what a Teddy Roosevelt would have done in 1914 or 1915 post Lusitania - or what a Jennings-Bryant would have done in 1917!). These realities should be present and in place as part of the historic situation because when they are violated - when the 'world socialist brotherhood' or 'international independence of capitalists' does not make the war end 'by Christmas', when neither Willy nor Nicky prevent the war from spreading, when Belgium actually does fight and Britain honours the 'scrap of paper' the fact that they had the choice to stay out or lie back and did it will be more frustrating, more irritating and ultimately more realistic I think than with 'historic predestination'. Similarly a Kaiser Wilhelm II refusing to let the war spread and acting as the 'peacemaker' of the 1914's would be definitely surprising and might well lead to German predominance, certainly it would counteract the 'hun' propaganda and imagery. Imagine what it would look like if France took the offensive in 1914 and marched through Belgium? We could potentially see another battle of Waterloo with British and German troops facing the red trousers with King Albert requiting himself more honorably than the Prince of Orange a ninety-nine years previous. Indeed this idea, of an Anglo-German alliance was more real (though to us nowadays it seems almost unimaginable - as the current NATO Franco-German alliance would have seemed to the statesmen of World War 1!) to the people of the time than the Anglo-Franco-Russian setup. England and Germany were and are historic allies - indeed the English language is a derivate of the Germanic languages and the English royal houses were closely linked to the German principalities by blood. Despite the propaganda of the 'barbaric huns' thanks mainly to the blundering of German statesmen post-Bismarck and Willy's diplomatic 'exercises in perpetual motion' England and Germany should have been closer than they actually were. This is the reason why Bethmann-Hollwegg was so agonized in those early August days that led him to complain that England was abandoning her traditional ally, her cousin, Germany, for the sake of a 'scrap of paper.'
France and Russia on the other hand were very real historic foes, France being England's ancient enemy from the days of William the Conqueror to the Fashoda incident. Russia was the old enemy of the Crimea and a very present and real threat was the Russian bear hovering over Afghanistan and India - the Great Game as popularized by Kipling and other Imperial writers was fought against the hypothetical Russian threat to the English Crown in India.
Once more, I would like to re-emphasize that I would much more like to see the historic game come through than any of these hypotheticals. But eventually the trick to making this mod shine would be to make the only certainty in TGW the thought that nothing is certain. If there's a way, perhaps at the start of the game, to ask the player if he would like to play a strictly historical game in that the diplomacy is pretty much set and unchanging, or would like a more free-wheeling diplomatic challenge where Wilhelm II can potentially be the peacemaker and George V the aggressor then perhaps that could be one way of solving this debate without sacrificing historicity to hypothesis.
Hope no one takes this the wrong way, I'm just as eager to see this become the best mod for HoI that it can possibly be.
Best regards and happy New Year,
Richmond
