The Winter of Discontent

I met them at close at day
coming with withdrawn faces
from counter or desk among staid
eighteenth century houses
I passed with a nod of the head
or polite meaningless words
or have lingered awhile and said
polite meaningless words,
and thought before I had done
Of some mocking tale or gibe
to please a companion
around the fire at the club,
being certain that they and I
Had but to sigh and to mourn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

-Yeats, May 1917

Excerpt of the chapter “Winter of Discontent” from The Great Deluge: Europe 1914-1924 , by Arthur Schlesinger ​

…It is hard to see the winter of 1917 as anything but a caesura in the history of the Great War. Events, heretofore proceeding at a steady pace, suddenly seemed to rush forward with unprecedented quickness; with each week, the war widened and grew more radical. By the time the long winter of 1917 had finally given way to spring, it was clear the world had utterly changed.

In the popular imagination, it was the failed attempts to broker peace negotiations in December 1916 which loosed the coming orgy of violence on the world. In truth, none of the powers were willing to make peace, but all of them wished to appar credible brokers of peace amongst their populations. In this, they succeeded, at least temporarily. A peace note to the British with small but unacceptable annexations was forwarded by the Reich chancellery on December 3rd; shortly thereafter, the Reich announced that they also endorsed William Jennings Bryan’s mediation attempts. The British responded to the note by informing the Germans that annexations of French territory were unacceptable, but it was willing to accept a status quo peace in the west, so long as the Germans would accept a similar peace in the east. The Germans demanded security guarantees in the east which included the creation of an independent Poland under German suzerainty (perhaps a contradiction in terms, but one included in the note nonetheless), and thereafter, things were at an impasse.1​

None amongst the great powers expected a peace in late 1916, and none planned for it. The Verdun offensive was meant to bleed the French army until a front-wide offensive would become possible, and the Central Powers had ideas for new offensives in the east that would occur during coming peace negotiations to reduce Russia’s position. But it was the British whose plans would come to fruition.

The winter of 1916-1917 was one of the coldest on record.2​ By the end of December, fighting between German and French troops around Verdun had largely ceased as soldiers hunkered down in the trenches. Few expected an Entente counter-offensive in the Central Powers military staff, and even fewer did on the ground. But the failure of German troops to fully secure the west bank of the Meuse had created a vulnerability on their flanks.3​ The British offensive achieved strategic surprise. The first three lines of German offenses were overrun almost immediately. Within a week, the German forces around Verdun were in full retreat. The French troops in the area, though exhausted, pressed the attack.

Falkenhayn, long forced to share much of his power in the OHL with the Hindenburg-Ludendorff duo, was finally ousted formally from his position.4​ Hindenburg ordered troops diverted from the east, but then the next blow fell: On January 2nd, the British mediterranean fleet entered the Dardanelle Straits. The young Winston Churchill had finally received approval for his plan. Soldiers from Australia, New Zealand, and Scotland stormed the beaches of Gallipoli. Several British admirals were relieved of their commissions after they refused to move their warships closer to the heavy guns on the beaches; nevertheless, their warnings were prescient, as the British ended up losing over six cruisers to the guns5​. But the cooperation of the warships proved crucial for the British and Commonwealth marines, and in any event, the Ottoman forces in the area had been stripped to deal with British forces at Aleppo and Russians ones in Erzerum. The British landing forces met their operational deadlines, and a breakout toward Constantinople was threatened within days of the initial landing.

Then the next hammer fell. The Entente had long tried to persuade Romania and Greece to enter the war.6​ Thus far, the disastrous performance of the Russians in the east had dissuaded them. But now they had seen several defeats inflicted in quick succession on the Central Powers. Moreover, Bulgaria had, over the last two years, slowly drawn down the size of its exhausted army, worn out by a half-decade of fighting. A quick Romanian assault over the Danube would be difficult for Bulgaria to resist, especially since many of their best troops were now in western Russia. Most crucially, unlike the British, neither Greece nor Romania knew of the secret peace talks currently being conducted between Germany and Russia.

On January 9th, a day after the British broke out from the Gallipoli peninsula, Romania and Greece declared war on Bulgaria. At British instruction, neither side declared war on Germany or Austria-Hungary. This was meant to sow maximum confusion among the Central Powers and delay the movement of reserves toward Bulgaria. Romania immediately invaded Bulgarian Southern Dobrudja. The purchase of American tractors with low-interest loans had enabled Romania to embark on an ambitious army expansion program. Although it technically broke a non-aggression deal with Bulgaria brokered by its transatlantic sponsors, this was to be but one of many indignities inflicted on President Bryan in the coming months. The well-equipped Romanian Army quickly broke the tenuous Bulgarian lines in the region and proceeded toward the city of Silistra. On the 10th, Romanian forces crossed the Danube in several places, prompting Bulgaria to call up its demobilized divisions.

On the same day, in concert with two British divisions freshly landed in Athens, Greek troops loyal to Prime Minister Venizelos arrived in Athens to secure the city and place the German King under house arrest. In the first, they were successful, though the German King narrowly escaped and managed to flee across the Adriatic to Durres, from which he made his way to exile in Vienna.7​ With the capital safe for the pro-British government, the Greek Army began an offensive toward Salonica against numerically inferior Bulgarian forces. The plan was to seize the city and then head due north, toward the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, where they would link up with Romanian troops.

Faced with the prospect of losing two of Germany’s eastern allies, Hindenburg ordered the movements of troops toward the west to halt.8​ The weary soldiers at Verdun were ordered to retreat to the defensive lines they occupied at the onset of Falkenhayn’s Verdun offensive, while reserves were redirected to Bulgaria.

Despite the success of the recent Entente offensives, civilian officials in the Russian government still wanted out of the war: the British were increasingly skittish about offering additional financial support and the Russian Army had yet to achieve a real, lasting success in the field. However, the government recognized that the successes of the Entente gave them a stronger negotiating position (somewhat ironically, this was viewed at the time as an additional reason to make peace). In negotiations, Germany’s “security programme” of eastern puppet states was slowly whittled away until all that remained were the Baltics, Poland, and some areas of Ukraine west of Kiev.

As the two powers seemed to be nearing agreement on a peace deal, the news of the original, expansive plan of German annexations and puppet states was leaked to the public. This plan included White Ruthenia, the entirety of Ukraine, and Finland. It is still uncertain who the culprit was, though the consensus is now that it was likely a Russian general with knowledge of the diplomatic proceedings. Regardless, it quickly sent shockwaves through Europe. In Russia, it electrified nationalist sentiment and provided crucial support for the war. In Germany, it strengthened the left flank of the Social Democrats, who now had definitive proof of the “imperialist war aims” of Bethmann Hollweg. Efforts by both the German and Russian governments to insist that a much more modest peace was now being considered received little currency.9​

On January 21st, the peace talks were indefinitely tabled after Russia started taking a harder line. It was not enough to save the government, which was now discredited both among pro-war and anti-war voices alike. Within a week, the Tsar had abdicated, and a new provisional republican government announced that it would continue the war effort.10​

This blow was an especially bitter one for Germany, but there were more to come. By early February, British troops were approaching Istanful and Romania was preparing to lay siege to Sofia. Salonica and Aleppo had both fallen. In America, the British Prime Minister Bonar Law met with President William Jennings Bryan to negotiate an “early renewal” of the Alexandria Accords. In truth, the intention of the British was now to press the Americans to drop the accords entirely and allow for a complete blockade of Germany. The British felt that they were finally in a position to play hardball: the Internal Revenue Act of 1916 had improved the position of the pound and reduced (though not eliminated) dependence on American loans; most importantly, a month ago, prominent American financiers gave private assurances that a failure of the next round of Alexandria talks would not imperil the flow of loans.

President Bryan threatened on several occasions to reduce the export of American grain, foodstuffs, and weapons to Britain. After this information was leaked to several sympathetic journalists, American stock markets plummeted by 7% in a day, threatening to reverse the progress made in the recovery from the recession of 1913-1914. The American economy had grown too dependent on British import orders for Bryan to use a partial embargo of American goods as leverage. But he would not acquiesce quietly to a complete blockade, which he saw as an affront to the laws of commerce. After publicly denouncing the British refusal to bargain for a renewal of the Alexandria Accords, the talks simply failed.

This had both immediate and longer-lasting repercussions in Germany. A return to the unrestricted submarine warfare of 1915 had long been advocated by Tirpitz and the nationalist agitators of the Pan-German League. But in more sober circles, they were sidelined after Bryan had made clear that a return to the practice would lead to the immediate cessation of American food and grain exports.11​ Now, with these exports likely to be cut off in the near-future, there was much less reason to play to America’s sensibilities. A growing chorus of voices in the government and among the nationalist press endorsed a submarine campaign, especially after the impact of the tightening blockade started to make itself felt. Bethmann Hollweg, long its most staunch opponent, felt himself under increasing pressure to grant his assent, especially since few believed that an America governed by Bryan would intervene in the war.12​

In early March, the events of the winter of discontent began to reach some kind of resolution. Istanbul, and with it the Dardanelle Straits, fell to British troops, but the Turkish government fled to Ankara and then vowed to fight on after yet another leak revealed the full extent of Entente plans in the Middle East. The Christmas counteroffensive was finally halted north of Verdun before it could reach the vital iron mines of Longwy. A german counterattack broke the siege of Sofia, though much of eastern Bulgaria was occupied; meanwhile, British soldiers in Thrace advanced north toward Burgas to link up with the Romanian Army.

The winter of 1917 sent political shockwaves through multiple countries. In February, Hindenburg and Ludendorff used their new position to consolidate their hold on the deputy district commanders and with it, a key element of the repressive apparatus of the state. In March, they began to force their labor mobilization bill through the Reichstag, which now included a series of restrictions on trade union activity and new provisions allowing for the draft to include single women if the government felt it to be necessary for the war effort.13​ In conjunction with the leak of German war plans in the east, this spelled the end of Ebert and Scheidemann’s leadership of the social democrats. The question was now not if, but when they would be removed from the party executive.

In Britain, the decision to withdraw from the Alexandria Accords was met with apprehension among coalition liberals. Edward Grey, who had felt it to be a grave mistake, threatened to resign on several occasions. Lloyd George, already fearing that his wing of the party was bleeding support to the radicals, knew that he could not appear to be in favor of a break with America. After discord within several cabinet meetings threatened the orderly business of government, elections began to be mooted, though both the coalition liberals and conservatives wanted to first take measures to ensure that the “radicals” would not end up picking up seats.

In America, Bryan grew increasingly frustrated as Wall Street money flowed to Britain in violation of his instructions to slow down war financing to Britain. Ironically, a federal reserve system - something which Bryan vetoed in 1913 - would have likely given an American president the control over the financial system necessary to punish other nations without the complicity of private financiers. It also would have made the stock market much more resistant to temporary scares, since a federal reserve could act as a backstop in liquidity crises. In March, Bryan attempted to usher a bill through congress which would give the executive branch greater powers to regulate loans to warring powers, but a coalition of pro-british southern democrats and republicans acted to stymie it. It was shortly after this bill failed to pass Congress that the rumors emerged of a “Great Conspiracy” orchestrated by (some combination of) Jews, Freemasons, financiers, and industrialists to force America into the war and impose “atheism” upon the nation.

In Russia, the opening of the Dardanelle Straits provided a crucial prop for the new government of liberals, moderate narodniks, and social democrats, allowing them to import grain more easily during the winter. But Russia’s refusal to join the offensives of 1917 quickly deepened rifts in the Entente and threatened Russia’s ability to actually purchase grain, which was dependent on British loans. Of all the great powers, Russia had the most difficulty in financing the war, and Russia seemed to be stuck between the three unpalatable choices of launching an offensive it did not believe itself prepared for, entering an inflationary fiscal crisis, or starving the workers producing the weapons needed to win the war.

The more minor powers were also shaken by the events. In Turkey, the fall of Aleppo and Istanbul brought the nation to the negotiating table, but when the full extent of Entente war goals became clear, they resolved to fight on in the heartlands of Turkish Anatolia. The events nonetheless prompted a major shakeup in Turkey’s government. In Greece, despite the quick deposition of the pro-german monarch, anti-war sentiment remained high in the country. The greek war effort was hampered by the resistance of the peasantry, which at first involved traditional measures like hoarding grain and underreporting crop yields, but eventually expanded to a guerilla campaign egged on by the government-in-exile of Constantine I. Exhausted by a half-decade of fighting and demoralized by the sudden loss of their war-time conquests, many in the Bulgarian army and citizenry radicalized, flocking to to the narrow socialists of Dimitar Blagoev, while others called for the permanent dismemberment of Romania in revenge for the “betrayal” of the 1912 agreements.14​

Footnotes ​

1​IOTL, there were similar attempts at peace made at the end of 1916, arguably somewhat more earnest. In this case, however, the Entente offers somewhat more reasonable terms than the Germans, who have a stronger hand than IOTL.
2​As IOTL. Nothing that’s happened so far would change global climate patterns, at least to my knowledge!
3​IOTL, during the Verdun offensive (which took place around 8 months earlier with a markedly different correlation of forces), the Germans also had more trouble advancing on the west bank of the Meuse; a similar dynamic exists here, but there is also much less of an active effort to seize the area by the Germans, who are mainly focused on capturing Fort Souville and don’t believe an Entente attack over the Meuse is possible.
4​Falkenhayn was formally relieved of power earlier IOTL. Here, he manages to hold on for longer after success at the Battle of Lille.
5​The failure of the Gallipoli offensive IOTL was due in large part to the hesitance of British warships, which feared that getting too close to the big coastal guns would lead to disaster. Here…it does, but the support provided by the ships and a much more robust, well-equipped, and well-trained British-Commonwealth landing force allows for a breakout to occur.
6​IOTL, Romania joined the war in August 1916, and Greece later next year. Here, the British manage to coordinate having the two join together, which is seen as necessary to quickly knock Bulgaria out of the war. Romania takes significantly longer to persuade ITTL because the performance of the Russians in the east is much worse.
7​The Greek King is ousted much more quickly here due to the surprise landing of British divisions in Athens.
8​In 1916 IOTL, Hindenburg also prioritized dealing with Romania in the east over shoring up the ongoing Verdun offensive. The decision here is a bit more drastic, however, as the British Christmas Offensive is threatening German lines moe than Somme or or french counterattacks at Verdun ever did.
9​IOTL, German war goals in the east were similar to those presented here, though there were not serious negotiations to end the war in 1916-1917.
10​More information on the details of these developments will be presented in future updates. The revolution happens around a month and a half earlier than IOTL, and is instigated by different actors.
11​IOTL, the position of the proponents of unrestricted submarine warfare was much stronger throughout 1915-1916, with Falkenhayn, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and many other prominent members of the naval staff pushing for a renewal of the practice, and Bethmann Hollweg alone holding back the tide with the silent consent of the Kaiser. Here, only the fringe of the German nationalists advocates for submarine warfare, with most seeing no reason to disturb the flow of American goods.
12​IOTL, one of the largest cards Bethmann Hollweg could play against the advocates of unrestricted submarine warfare was that it might bring America into the war; here, this argument is much weaker because few seriously entertain the notion that Bryan would join the entente.
13​IOTL, a version of this bill successfully passed the Reichstag in late 1916, but the Social Democratic Party successfully managed to water down some of its more repressive provisions and amend the language to ensure that unions would have some say over the organization of labor. ITTL, the bill is significantly broader and more authoritarian in its outlook, largely because 1) Hindenburg and Ludendorff have secured a much greater degree of power, 2) the Social Democrats still struggle to shape Reichstag policy, as they are locked in an internal power struggle, 3) Hindenburg-Ludendorff have successfully used their control over wartime censorship to cow a number of politicians, particularly in the Catholic Centre Party, into supporting the bill. The final bill passes with the unanimous consent of the National Liberals and Conservatives, half of Catholic Centre Party delegates, and roughly twenty percent of delegates from the right wing of the Progressive Liberals and Social Democrats.
14​The events in this section will be covered in greater depth in a future update.