Of lost monkeys and broken vehicles

[Lascaris]

Athens, January 1934

Nikos Zachariadis had been de facto leading the Greek communist party since late 1931 when Comintern had installed him in leadership of the party in hopes of ending the factional strife of the previous years. Now the 6th party congress officially made him general secretary of the party. So far the party had had a difficult 15 years since its creation in November 1919. It had kept hovering between legality and illegality while it struggled with itself, Zachariadis was the tenth general secretary, of the previous 9 only one Andronikos Haitas was still a party member, the other 8 had all been expelled from it, one of them for embezzling the funds provided by Comintern for the party. The party position following the Comintern line in favour of autonomy of Macedonia and Thrace, calling the Asia Minor war a "Greek imperialist venture" and supporting Soviet participation in the League of Nations presence in Constantinople, hardly helped party prospects either. Still under Zachariadis the party had managed to secure an all time high of 4.97% of the vote in the recent 1932 elections, increasing its senators to 3 from a single one in 1928 and managing for the first time to elect 1 member in the parliament as well. It remained to be seen whether Zachariadis would manage to much improve things.

Sofia, February 1934

Mustafa Kemal had been last time to Sofia, as Ottoman military attaché. Now he was here as the first Turkish prime minister, the position of grand vizier had been abolished to be replaced with that of prime minister back in December, making the first official visit by a Turkish head of government to Bulgaria since the country had been liberated from the Ottoman yoke. His goal was simple. Since the end of the war Greece, Yugoslavia and Romania had remained allied, formalizing their alliance by treaty in July 1922. Neither Turkey, nor Bulgaria or Hungary could deal with the alliance of all three countries on its own, even Italy would have second thoughts particularly given French support for the Balkan Entente. Following delivery of Fatih last year he had been tempted to consider a war with Greece, only to decide that the risk was too high as long as thanks to their allies the Greeks would be able to concentrate nearly their whole army in Anatolia, if his navy failed to defeat the Greeks which given the size of their navy was hardly a given even with Fatih. But if the Greeks, Yugoslavs and Romanians work in concert so could their enemies. Which had brought him here to meet king Boris and prime minister Nikola Mushanov... as well as Hungarian prime minister Gyula Gömbös and even king Zog of Albania. It should not be difficult to convince them to create a pact of their own. And let Mussolini think it was his idea and he would be able to manipulate the pact as he saw fit...

Dublin, March 1934

The Irish constitutional act removing the oath of allegiance to the British monarch and making official Ireland's Gaelic name of Eire passed the parliament voted by both Collins Sinn Fein and De Valera's Fiana Fail. It was just the latest in the intricate balancing act Collins had had to play in the past dozen years. Sinn Fein had won the the 1927 elections with 44.1% of the vote to 29.8% of Fianna Fail. The 1932 election thanks to world economic crisis had proven a more closer affair, but Collins had openly supported abolishing the Oath of allegiance and reducing the powers of the Governor-General and the Senate making them effectively non issues in the campaign, coming ahead with 40.6% and 68 seats to 39.1% and 61 seats. Collins had stayed in power in an uneasy coalition with various independents and the Labour and farmers parties but with no absolute majority new elections had been held in 1933. These, thanks to Collins managing to secure Frank MacDermot's support had returned Sinn Fein with 47.9% and 82 seats to 41.5% and 54 seats. Now as tensions in Europe were starting to rise again it was up to him to deal with Britain over the treaty ports and North Ireland.

Vienna, July 1934

The Nazi coup against the Austrian government had proven at least premature as it had been crushed by Austrian security forces and Italy had threatens military intervention if Germany moved into Austria. Hitler had backed down before his fellow dictator, after he had been arguing for the past dozen years for an alliance with Italy. In Rome Mussolini had reason to be satisfied from his Austrian success. For the immediate future his northern front was secure, allowing him to act elsewhere, while with his improved anti-German credentials he could likely get concessions from the French and British elsewhere. Then... then Italy could also play the Germans against the French when the time came as he had tried back in 1932 when he had come close to starting a war against France and her allies in the Balkans only to be dissuaded by information the French secret services had uncovered the plan. No matter how strong France and Britain looked they were decaying powers unlike Italy...

Constantinople, August 1934

Soldiers from the French, British, Italian and Greek units in the queen of Cities presented arms to the outgoing Allied high commissioner for the last time as Aristeides Stergiadis boarded the ship that would take him to Piraeous. Stergiadis had remained the uncrowned king of Constantinople for the last dozen years. In these he had managed to maintain order, improve city infrastructure, advance health and education, the Patriarchic University of Constantinople established from the Megali tou Genous Scholi back in 1930 in the face of Italian and Turkish attempts to sabotage it had been undeniable proof to this end. But it had been a thankless job. The Turks hated him for being Greek and advancing the Greek effort to unite Constantinople with Greece, which he was of course doing. The Greeks and Armenians hated him for strictly enforcing the rights of the Turkish population, the average nationalist could not get through his skull that anything different undermined the Greek cause. And the large foreign community in the city, reinforced by tens of thousands of White Russian refugees, hated him on general principle for enforcing law and order for everyone and not allowing them to do as they pleased with the support of their consuls. But now Italian pressure, taking advantage from European tensions, had finally persuaded the British and French to agree to his replacement. A setback for Greek diplomacy, at least Venizelos had adamantly refused calls in parliament that Greece should move into Constantinople. The time for that had not come yet...

Britain, September 1934

The British army confirmed the adoption of the Vickers-Pedersen semi-automatic rifle and the Czech ZBG-33 light machine gun both in the new American 7x51 calibre for its own use. Adoption of the new calibre by the Americans two years earlier had certainly been a strong factor in British acceptance of the same as it was likely to bring considerable advantages if it ever came to a new war. Still it had been a close affair, as there had been strong pressure to use the money either for the construction of additional cruisers or of a second aircraft carrier similar to the one approved for the navy, only prime minister's Ramsay MacDonald's reluctance to further fuel the naval race that appeared to be brewing worldwide had stopped this from happening. [1]

Spain, October 1934

Seven years of war in the Rif and over 20,000 deaths had taken their toll on Spanish politics. The monarchy had been abolished in 1931. The next year an abortive coup in support of the monarchy had led to the execution of general Sanjuro and the imprisonment of several officers that had supported him leading to even higher tensions. When elections had come in November 1933 despite a victory of a coalition of the right wing parties, it had taken nearly a year for 3 right ministers to be now accepted into a coalition government as the left refused to give up power. Even that was not taken well. A general strike was proclaimed and Asturias and Catalonia outright revolted in October 5th. The new defence minister Diego Hidalgo would turn to generals Francisco Franco and Manuel Goded Llopis to suppress the revolt, only to receive a demand for the release and reinstatement of the officers held in prison since Sanjuro's coup as the cost of the army's support. As people in Madrid bickered the rebels in Asturias and Catalonia had time to organize themselves, mobilizing over 30,000 men in Asturias alone by October 15th...

Piraeus, October 14th 1934

The Balkan Entente conference, had been decided back in September following events in the Balkans and elsewhere. The meeting in Sofia between Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary and Albania back in February had been impossible to go unnoticed, despite claims that its aims were purely defensive. Then a coup had taken place in May in Bulgaria and for a time the Yugoslavs had hopped that the new government under Kimon Georgiev might take a friendlier line towards Yugoslavia there was even talk of a visit by king Alexander to Sofia. But king Boris had then removed Georgiev from power for his own reasons and the Bulgarian government had resumed its anti-Entente stance, the four power pact had been signed with the blessings of Italy back in September. Worse, given an increasingly assertive Germany France was starting to make concessions to Italy, hardly an acceptable situation from the Balkan capitals viewpoint as they feared the concessions would be coming at their own expense. Which was bringing to Piraeus king Alexander of Yugoslavia, prime minister Gheorghe Tatarescu of Romania and even the French foreign minister Louis Barthou, maintaining the Little and Balkan Ententes was central to French foreign policy after all and Paris wanted to keep its minor allies re-assured.

The foreign dignitaries were welcomed by an enthusiastic crown, as an open car motorcade moved to King George avenue to take them to Athens when the shots started ringing. Venizelos, not for the first time target to assassination attempts, jumped down immediately bringing down Alexander who stood by him along as his own Cretan bodyguards and policemen returned fire, killing the assassin instantly. King Alexander would survive the assassination attempt with a shoulder would, from being tripped by Venizelos it would be said later, perhaps with a dose of exaggeration. Venizelos and Tatarescu would come out unscathed. Barthou would not be so lucky dying during the firefight. The assassin would prove to be a Vlado Chernozemski a Bulgarian IMRO member working together with the Croatian Ustase. Italian involvement at the assassination attempt would not be officially confirmed by either the Greeks or Yugoslavs, after behind the scenes pressure by France and Britain not to do so...

Sivas, November 1934

Earlier in the year Mustafa Kemal had avoided the temptation to start a war with Greece. Now he signed the agreement for Turkey to buy two submarines that Portugal had ordered in Italy but had failed to pay. Back in September Turkey had also quietly bought submarine E1 built by the Germans in Spain, despite the trouble currently underway in Spain the boat was already on its way to Turkey. For the first time Turkey was in direct open breach of the treaty of Chantilly...

[1] Back in 1924 Lloyd George remaining in power had not reduced navy appropriations from 10 to 7 cruisers TTL. So with the RN having the same numbers with OTL there are about 4-5 million poinds in the budget to finance a rifle along with the new LMG now that the Americans have also chosen the new calibre.

 

[Lascaris]

Spain, November 1934

Spanish troops under general Francisco Franco, brought down the last rebels in Asturias putting a formal end to the Spanish Left's uprising. Franco had taken a gamble in demanding , the release of officers imprisoned after the 1932 coup to support the government but it had played out when the government had backed down. Then the government had taken his advice and battle hardened units of the Spanish Army of Africa had been brought in the mainland placed under his command and unleashed upon the Asturias rebels, forces under general Lopez Ochoa were already in action against the Catalonia. A mix of military action and negotiation by Ochoa would bring down the rather unorganized Catalonian revolt with relatively moderate casualties. Asturias treated by Franco and his Regulares no different than the Rif, would prove much bloodier with over 3,000 dead including several summary executions on both sides, gaining Franco the nickname of "butcher of Asturias" and the enmity of the Left.

Athens, December 1934

Five years ago Andreas Zaimis had been a convenient compromise solution to elect in the largely ceremonial position of president of the republic. It was a position that fitted Zaimis, a mediocre politician with the great advantage on not arousing passions for or against him during his long career quite well and neither side could secure the two thirds majority in the joint senate and parliament to elect a candidate of their own. After the 1932 election this was hardly the case as the Liberals with 203 MPs and 63 senators comfortably exceeded the 247 votes needed to elect a president. And thus 74 year old Themistoklis Sofoulis became the third president of the republic. With most looking at the presidential election the new budget for 1935 tripling projected arms and fortifications expenditure from about 330 million drachmas in 1934 to nearly a billion went mostly unnoticed. But Venizelos had quickly noticed the implications of Hitler's rise to power two years ago and intended for Greece to be ready for the new international environment.

Ethiopia, December 1934

How the border incident between Ethiopian troops and the Italian colonial army had been triggered could not been proven. What was certain was that very conveniently Italy used it to make economic and territorial demands against the Ethiopians. Ethiopia would appeal on the League of Nations but the Italians didn't seem to be impressed. For the British and French governments it was one more inconvenience in their hopes of securing Italian support against Germany.

Rome, January 1935

The French foreign minister Pierre Laval signed off part of French Somaliland and Chad to Italy while giving it a blank cheque in Ethiopia. Mussolini was quick to take advantage of it, starting to ship troops to Italian Somaliland by the end of the month. Further Ethiopian protestations to the League of Nations would follow but despite general sympathy for Ethiopia would amount to little.

Piraeus, March 25th 1935

Venizelos had not been particularly happy with Stratos decision to build a battleship back in 1931. But the way things were going the past couple of years Stratos decision could well prove to be the right one for all the wrong reasons he mused as Salamis, completed the previous month, joined the rest of the fleet for the independence day celebrations. First came Ares, back in 1921 there had been some idiots who had proposed scuttling the ship on cost grounds as if there had been many ships dating to the revolution still afloat. Next was Averof, always taking precedence to every other ship of the fleet. Then Salamis. Then the two light cruisers, Koundouriotis and Katsonis. Then the half dozen destroyers built in Greece in the last decade, Hydra, Spetsai, Psara, Kimon, Formion and Nearchos. More were needed. Earlier in the month Germany had openly introduced conscription and announced it would stop abiding by the arms limitations of the treaty of Versailles. It was only a matter of time for Turkey and Bulgaria to follow suit.

Arsenal de Brest, France, April 22nd, 1935

Battleship Richelieu, was laid down. Early in January France had renounced the quantitative limitations on her navy from the treaty of Washington, though she continued to abide by the rest of the treaty. Thus Richelieu would not exceed 35,000t standard displacement at least officially. Like the battleships building in Italy since April 1934 she would carry 16 inch guns, 9 of them in three triple turrets grouped forward.

Turkey, May 1935

After three years of preparation new penal and civil codes modelled upon European models were officially introduced. As part of the civil code everyone was required to take surnames. Things were less positive in the economic front where Turkey was under severe strain in her foreign balance of payments, for every practical purpose the country was in default as she was under ever increasing difficulty to secure foreign currency particularly British pounds and US dollars, following the strong protectionist laws enacted all around the world. The new clearing agreements signed with Germany were promising to be very helpful, establishing in effect a barter system were Turkish goods like chrome and tobacco would be sold to Germany and Germany would export a similar amount of goods to Turkey. Germany was not signing clearing agreements just with Turkey. Similar agreements were being signed with most European countries. But some were more susceptible to German economic influence than others. The German share of Turkish foreign trade start rising exponentially with Italy a distant second.

Topola, Serbia, May 7th, 1935

The body of king Alexander of Yugoslavia was interred in Saint George's church in Oplenac. The king had survived his assassination attempt in Greece but terminal cancer [1] had proven a more intractable opponent than any assassin. Nearly half a million people and several foreign heads of state had gathered for the funeral. Inevitably discussions for the ongoing crisis in Abyssinia, where Mussolini seemed set on war had taken place. But both France and Britain were still loath to take action against Italy.

London, June 1935

Much to the French shock Britain signed a treaty with Germany limiting the German surface navy to 35% of the Royal Navy and allowing it equality in the number of submarines. Within days of the treaty Germany would lay a pair of battleships ostensibly of of 26,000t each, actual displacement would be in excess of 32,000t. Each if the two ships, to be named Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would be armed with 6 380mm guns in three twin turrets. Proposals by the navy to instead arm the ships with the readily available 283mm would be met by Hitler's intransigence who insisted upon matching the new French ships. It wasn't the only British concession to the fascist powers that month. In the end of the month Britain proclaimed an arms embargo against the participants of the Abyssinian crisis. Given how Italy was a fully developed industrial nation and Ethiopia had no industry at all it was obvious who benefited and who didn't from the embargo.

Adrianople, July 1935

A dozen PZL P.24s in the blue and white roundels of the Hellenic Air Force landed in the airstrip. Another two dozen where on order while a licence production agreement had been signed to produce the aircraft in the KEA factory in Phaleron, PZL's chief designer Zygmunt Pulawski, was currently visiting Athens to oversee ironing out the last details for local production to begin. Poland had been probably an unexpected choice for the Greeks who were traditionally buying British and French designs. But Greek rearmament had run into unexpected difficulties in the previous few months. On one hand Britain had declined to guarantee loans that would be used for arms. On the other much to the Greeks shock even though they could pay, the ability of French and to a lesser degree British industry to deliver, while they were themselves busy rearming had proven questionable. To further exacerbate things, with free convertibility between currencies a thing of the past after 1932, the large scale Greek exports of Greek tobacco to Germany, comparable only to these to the US, were useless for importing goods from anywhere but Germany. Thus the Greeks had turned for artillery to Czechoslovakia, the Stratos government had already bought vz30 howitzers from Skoda in 1931 after all and to Poland for aircraft, as the Poles were accepting Greek tobacco for payment. The situation was relatively better for the navy as orders had been placed in Britain for two more Sunfish class submarines. Even there the Greek attempt to also order from Britain the two heavy cruisers the navy desired since the 1920s had fallen flat though as it conflicted with British desires to reduce all future cruisers to 8,000t and 6in guns. Venizelos, not particularly happy with the British refusal of a loan, nor particularly impressed by their recent actions towards Germany and Italy had just turned to the US ordering the ships from there.

Constantinople, August 1935

Chrysanthus, the exiled metropolitan of Trebizont became the new patriarch of Constantinople as Chrysanthus II following the death of Meletius IV earlier in July. With the importance of the Greek patriarch enhanced after the removal of Stergiadis is was a selection that passed multiple messages. On one hand the new patriarch unlike his predecessor was not a Venizelist. On the other he had been sentenced to death by the Turkish nationalists back during the war...

Ethiopia, September 7th 1935

Three days earlier a special session of the League of Nations had exonerated both sides of the border incident last December. Since December Italy had refused all attempts at mediation or arbitration, both through the League or by France and Britain, or even French and British proposals for large Ethiopian territorial concessions. The only "compromise" Mussolini had offered was demanding a quarter million square kilometres of Ethiopian territory east of Adis Adeba which the Ethiopians readily refused. And thus 685,000 Italian troops marched into Ethiopia without a declaration of war to bring to it European civilization as Italian propaganda claimed. Or at least its products like tanks, bombers and mustard gas...

[1] Source is his son's prince Tomislav's memoirs according to which at the time of his death doctors were giving Alexander about 6 months of life...

 

[Lascaris]

Geneva, September 11, 1935

Italian troops under general De Bono had been advancing into Ethiopia for the past four days with very little resistance as the Ethiopians had decided to trade space for time before the League of Nations could come to session declaring Italy the aggressor. Imposing sanctions would take quite a bit longer and prove of dubious effect but for a few weeks it looked as if even war between Italy and the western powers was not out of the question. Greece would stand by the League but the level of unpreparedness shown by Britain and France was a shock to say the least. Britain had asked the Greeks for a an army corps of 50,000 men with 2 infantry divisions and 2 cavalry brigades to deploy to Egypt [1] while France had cited inability to handle urgent orders of artillery and aircraft the Greeks had tried to place when the crisis begun.

Sivas, October 10, 1935

If Italy had expected Turkey to meekly follow the Italian line in the invasion of Ethiopia it had been in for a shock. The Turkish public had not taken well to the invasion, considerable numbers of Turkish officers had even volunteered to go join the Ethiopian army. Kemal rather more pragmatically had seen the whole crisis as an opportunity. Within a week of the crisis Kemal had announced that Turkey would not abide any more by the military terms of the treaty of Fontainebleau, with Paris and London preoccupied the only reaction was verbal protestations from Greece that had no effect. Then he had signalled to Italy that Turkish support had a price, namely the return of Italy's Anatolian mandate to Turkey and for good measure had ordered 80,000 troops on the border of the mandate. The Italians had found themselves into something of a bind. From the very start back in 1922 Italy had been somewhat ambivalent about her newly minted colony in Anatolia as it could not quite make up its mind whether it preferred a Turkey firmly in the Italian sphere of influence or outright control of as much of Anatolia as possible. As long as Turkey remained relatively weak the Italians had tried having both, retaining the mandate and supporting the Turkish government in Sivas. But as Kemal was quick to realise this was not possible to continue doing any more. Italy had already committed 17 infantry divisions and a large number of aircraft in Ethiopia. Yet more divisions were in Libya and even more would be needed in the Italian mainland. Defending Caria would be problematic with Italy's other commitments. It was time for Italy to decide if it really wanted a friendly Turkey or not. Kemal had personally flown to Rome to negotiate with Mussolini in the start of October, taking advantage of the admiration of the Italian dictator for him and now was back in triumph as he announced Italy had agreed for the referendum on the future of Caria included in the provisions of the treaty of Fontainebleau to take place within a year. There was little doubt on what would be the result of the referendum. The other terms of the agreement need not bother the public...

Britain, November 1935

Back in June, Baldwin had taken the place of MacDonald as prime minister. Now the new election had returned another victory for the national government who elected 354 MPs, 341 of them Conservative for 190 Labour and 60 Liberal MPs. More and more the National government was nothing but the Conservatives, in the election out of the 49.6% of the popular vote for the national government nearly 48% had come from the Conservatives.

Ethiopia, December 1935

The Italian advance into Ethiopia had slowed into a crawl as De Bono wanted to rebuild his supply lines. Mussolini had promoted him to marshal then replaced him with marshal Badoglio, who had been ordered to expedite the conquest. France and Britain had actually made an attempt to end the war by offering Italy a large chunk Ethiopia with the rest becoming dependent on Italy. But the proposal when leaked to the press had created such an uproar in the French and British public to render it moot. On Christmas eve the Ethiopian army actually counterattacked hoping to surprise the Italians. In six weeks of fighting the Ethiopians would actually have some successes but superior Italian firepower, reinforcements from Italy and liberal use of phosgene and mustard gas would allow Badoglio to defeat the counterattack.

Athens, January 1936

Ελληνική Εταιρεία Οχημάτων, the Hellenic Vehicle Company or ELEO in short was created in cooperation between the Prodromos Athanasiadis Bodosakis and the Isigonis company in Smyrna, after Bodosakis bought out the Ford company's factory in Athens which had been faltering in the aftermath of the world economic crisis and Greece leaving the gold standard back in 1932. But Bodosakis could see that with the Greek economy turning upwards again, strong protectionist rules in place and the Greek army trying to rearm at an increasing pace and in need of thousands if not tens of thousands of cars the factory had every prospect of becoming a gold mine. Working with the Isigonis also made sense for its own reasons. Even though the Isigonis corporation could hardly match Bodosakis own commercial interests it was the largest industrial company in Asiatic Greece, producing machinery and engines and had start producing trucks initially for the army since the 1920s. The Isigonis also had a unique advantage as a member of the family Alexandros Isigonis had turned out to be a very talented car designer working in Britain who had just secured the cooperation with Morris Motors for his family's company.

Yugoslavia, December 1935

Milan Stojadinovic was installed as the new prime minister of Yugoslavia by the regency under prince Paul. Stojadinovic a noted economist who had stabilized the dinar back in the 1920s was very much needed at the moment given the trouble the Yugoslav economy was facing which was only made worse by the internal divisions of the country and the disaffection caused by king Alexander's royal dictatorship. But the new prime minister also had his own distinct policies, admiring Mussolini, seeking Yugoslav rapprochement with Germany, Italy and Bulgaria and a distancing from the French alliance system. Stojadinovic, even though he did not leave the Balkan Entente right away, was open to the idea of dividing up Greek Macedonia with Bulgaria as a means of solving Yugoslav-Bulgarian relations and gaining the port of Thessaloniki. Ominously the first international act of the new government would be a clearing agreement establishing trade with Germany.

Spain, February 1936

The Spanish government after struggling for two years had finally collapsed in December and new elections had been called. The new elections had been mainly contested between the National Block of right and the Popular Front of the left under conditions of massive polarization and accusations of electoral irregularities. The Popular Front had come slightly ahead with about 0.5% of the block thus gaining 285 seats in the Cortes to 131 seats of the National Block. A new Popular Front government would be formed and by April Manuel Azana would become president of the republic.

Belgrade, February 1936

King Boris III of Bulgaria made an official visit in Belgrade. While nothing tangible came out of the visit, it was certainly noted by the Greek foreign ministry and both Greek intelligence and diplomatic services were already getting troubling reports about the new prime minister. Since the previous year Greece had quietly begun fortifying her border with Bulgaria and improving fortifications in Asiatic Greece in anticipation of a two front war with Turkey and Bulgaria. The Greek army's engineering corps was secretly ordered to prepare fortification plans for the Greek-Yugoslav border as well. But the fortification of the Bulgarian border was already anticipated to cost at least 1.36 billion drachmas, nearly 4.8 million British pounds. Also fortifying the Yugoslav border could easily raise costs to nearly 2 billion...

Appendix: Treaty of Rome between Italy and Turkey

1. A referendum to take place in the Italian mandate of Anatolia over its future within 12 months of the treaty or 6 months of the end of the war in Ethiopia whatever is earliest.
2. Italian companies to retain their economic interests in the mandate territory.
3. Turkey to sign a new clearing agreement with Italy regulating trade between them. Turkish exports to Italy to be paid in lire, not freely convertible to gold or other currencies.
4. Italian nationals in Caria to remain.
5. Italy to retain the naval base of Marmaris and adjacent air bases. Turkey receives the right of using the Italian naval facilities in Marmaris.
6. Italy to diplomatically support Turkish efforts to recover Turkish populated areas in Syria and Iraq.
7. Turkey to sign a mutual defence treaty with Italy.


[1] Same as OTL.

 

[Lascaris]

Sevastopol, January 1936

After nearly two decades out of service battleship Frunze, the former Poltava joined the Soviet Black Sea fleet. By now the ship had been converted with Italian help to a fast battleship with 9 320mm guns, converted from her old 12in guns and a top speed of 27 knots. When Parizhskaya Kommuna the former Sevastopol completed her modernization to the same design, the fleet should be able to maintain superiority the British Greek puppets. It was only the start, much more ambitious plans for the construction of up to twenty new battleships had been proposed and it had been written in Pravda that the Soviet Union would soon become again one of the world's great naval powers.

Athens, March 22nd 1936

The Greek supreme war council came to session presided by prime minister Venizelos. It's first order of business was replacing the chiefs of the army and the navy general staffs Alexandros Mazarakis-Ainian and Alexandros Hatzikyriakos who had reached mandatory retirement age. In their place Theodore Pangalos, the former chief of staff of the Army of Asia Minor during the Greek-Turkish war and Ioannis Demestichas would replace them. The next order of business was the recent failure of France and Britain to deliver urgently needed equipment in a timely fashion during the Abyssinian crisis even with Greece willing to pay in gold or dollars. This had been a shock particularly from Venizelos who had expected and declared as much in parliament that if a new crisis had come he would be able to anticipate it and import any missing material in a timely fashion. He had proven right over anticipating the crisis. What he had failed to anticipate was France being unable to deliver.

The only viable solution was on one hand diversifying arms sources and on the other relying on domestic production. Greece's Hephaestus works were already producing locally light arms and munitions while Greece also had some limited domestic production of steel, thus in theory could expand to producing artillery and mortars domestically, after all if Romania and Yugoslavia could do as much there was no reason Greece shouldn't emulate them. Everything that could be built domestically should be built locally and existing production capabilities expanded. Greece at the moment had a large unused surplus in her balance of payments with Germany which was starting to become a problem. It could not be used to buy arms, Germany was not willing to export weapons after all, but it could be used for buying machine tools and industrial equipment of which Germany had a great excess and none in Berlin had put export restrictions so far, although this was likely only a matter of time to happen. At the same time training would need to be much expanded as well. From the coming school year both the number of technicians trained in the Sivitanideios technical school and the number of engineering students entering the National Technical University of Athens and the Technical school in the Ionian University in Smyrna would need to be much increased while scholarships would be provided to train a number of engineers and technicians outside Greece if arrangements could be made. The military purchasing commissions in Europe were ordered to seek licences for any arms they could buy in addition to the arms themselves.

London, March 25th 1936

A final naval arms limitation treaty came to being this time signed solely by Britain, France and the United States as neither Japan nor Italy were willing to sign although both countries diplomats tried to make excuses and delay things overall. Under the new treaty all numeric limitations to ships built were removed. Battleship size would be retained at 35,000t and 16in guns, with both Italy and France building already such ships and Japan expected to follow the United States outright refused the reductions proposed by Britain, actually an escalator clause allowing expanding tonnage to 45,000t if Japan and Italy did not sign the treaty was added. Britain at least managed to secure limiting aircraft carriers to 23,000t, cruisers to 8,000t and 6.1in guns and submarines to 2,000t and 5.1in guns. Whether the limitations made any sense given the growing tension in international relations was a different matter.

France, March 1936

The prototype of the Loire-Nieuport 161 fighter flew for the first time. It would soon be put into full testing. After all the Armee de'l Air was in urgent need for a modern fighter and the recent crash of the competing Morane Saulnier MS-405 prototype which had first flown the previous August, ahead of the Loire-Nieuport aircraft which had been lacking an engine didn't help things.

France, April-May 1936

The French Popular Front, easily won French elections securing 57% of the vote in the aftermath of the German army reoccupying the Rhineland the previous March. Socialist Leon Blum would form the new government. The new government would have its work cut out for it. Within days a general strike had been called by the labour unions against the new government, that they were supposed to be supporting. Reforms were much needed. The German threat was increasing by the day. Reform was needed in the empire. And the senate was not controlled by the front...

Ethiopia, May 1936

Addis Ababa fell to the advancing Italian army. Emperor Haile Selassie was able to flee to Djibuti ahead of the Italians, from there he would flee to Europe appearing before the general assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva and setting up a court in exile in Britain. Back in Ethiopia resistance continued under the leadership of the emperor's cousin Imre Haile Selassie but with the emperor gone and the capital fallen the Italians could declare victory, even though nearly half the country was still free and it would take several more years to "pacify" it. For Mussolini it was a great victory bringing his popularity within Italy at its peak but had come at a steep cost. Itallian casualties were nearly 66,000 men while war costs had reached a staggering 33.5 million, by comparison the two Littorio class battleships under construction, the costliest ever built in Italy, were not going to exceed 800 million lire each.

Berlin, June 5th, 1936

General Walther Wever personally presented the Bomber A RLM requirement for a modern heavy border to German industry. Testing for the two candidates of the earlier "Ural bomber" was meanwhile continuing although the prototypes of both contesting designs were still several months of their first flights.

Madrid, June 26th, 1936

Spain had been in increasing turmoil since the victory of the Popular Front earlier in the year with both the Let and the Right pressing for any advantage they could get and often clashing in the streets and members of the PSOE openly calling for Spain becoming socialist and allying with the Soviet Union. Now the assassination by Falangists of an Assault Guard officer would trigger yet further escalation. Since the new government had gained power general Francisco Franco had been ordered to remain in his house in Madrid in anticipation of trial for his actions in the Asturias revolt two years earlier. Now a group of socialist aligned policemen, invaded the house carried him away and killed him. The "butcher of Asturias" was no more. Τhe reaction of the army to the assassination of one of their own remained to be seen...

 

[Lascaris]

Spain, July 5th, 1936

The Spanish army went to action. Following the assassination of Franco nine days earlier and persistent rumours that a coup was brewing well before that, someone might have expected the government to be waiting for one. If it was, it had clearly failed to take the necessary action to prevent it. The coup plotters on their part had waited till Sunday in hopes of maximizing surprise but were less than completely successful either. The rebels quickly seized control of Spanish Morocco, the Balearic islands and the Canary islands where general Ochoa had been exiled in all but name after the Popular Front had come to power. In the Spanish mainland though results had been decidedly mixed for both sides. In Madrid the coup was suppressed with supporters of the coup forced in the Montana barracks, which would be stormed the next day and survivors executed. Old Castille, Leon and Navarre quickly sided with the rebels. On the reverse Valencia and Catalonia, stayed loyal to the republic, although Catalonia with the socialists and communists still weak from the 1934 rebellion had fallen under control of the anarchists. Further west the rebels had managed to secure Cadiz and Seville but their hold to them was rather precarious. Spain had been effectively split in half. So had the army and police forces in the mainland. The Army of Africa had passed under complete rebel control, on the reverse the majority of the navy had remained under control of the government. The advantage from controlling the navy though would be mostly negated when both Italy and Germany intervened on the side of the rebels allowing the rebels to move troops from Africa to the mainland reinforcing their hold on the south-west.
The coup had just given place to full scale civil war.

Constantinople, July 13th, 1936

A Comintern international conference in the city decided on supporting the Spanish government, with money and volunteers. The free city offered many unique opportunities in supporting the efforts to reinforce the republic. With British, French and Italian troops and civil servants already in the city, not to mention Greeks and Turks and large foreign communities, including tens of thousands of former While Russians, it was inevitable that the Queen of Cities was also home to spies and smugglers of all kinds.

Paris, August 1936

Under intense British pressure France proclaimed non intervention in the Spanish civil war. It would be soon followed by over two doze nations, ironically enough including Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. Germany and Italy were already in blatant breach of non-intervention not just providing arms to the Nationalist side but also sending "volunteers" by the thousands to reinforce them. The Soviet Union would soon follow their example. France itself would continue shipping aircraft to the Republicans till the end of the year despite in theory leading the non intervention movement.

Spain, September 1936

With all out war underway, Largo Caballero became the Republic's prime minister a clear sign of the increasing control of the government by the Left. On the Nationalist side things remained less clear cut. During August general Ochoa's southern army had captured Estremadura linking with the northern army of general Mola and putting the entirety of the Portuguese border under Nationalist control, a useful advantage given Portuguese support for the nationalists. Following that Ochoa had advanced against Madrid, ignoring the Loyalist siege of Alcazar in Toledo, correctly expecting the besiegers would pull back to defend Madrid anyway. But noone was in overall control of the rebellion till finally, in September 27th general Miguel Cabanellas had been proclaimed generalissimo with Mola and Ochoa under him.

Drama, Macedonia, September 1936

The first load of Virginia tobacco was put in the oven for curing. The Greek tobacco industry had been facing a serious problem over the past few years as the British tobacco industry had switched over to Virginia and Burley tobacco and would not buy Oriental tobacco. Worse yet from the Greek point of view there appeared to be a gradual switch away from oriental tobacco in continental Europe as well. And far worse from a strategic point of view Germany was among the United States one of the two main importers of Greek tobacco leaving Greece potentially economically dependent on Germany. Given the international situation this was not something acceptable to the Greek government. The Agricultural university of Athens had been given as a priority task the introduction of American tobacco varieties to Greece back in 1933 and following the first successful experiments in the 1935 planting season, the Agricultural Bank of Greece had start subsidising the switch to Virginia and Burley tobacco, in place of the lower quality varieties of Oriental tobacco. A wholesale switch to the American varieties was neither expected nor desirable, Greek varieties like Agrinion, Smyrna or Basma were excellent in their own way after all but it was hoped that over the next 5 years around a third of the Greek tobacco production would switch to American varieties. These in turn were exportable to Britain...

Madrid, October 1st 1936

20,000 Nationalist troops supported by Italian and German tanks and aircraft assaulted the city. On the Loyalist side the defenders were numerically superior with 42,000 men but were severely lacking in arms and ammunition compared to their opponents. For two weeks Nationalist troops slowly ground their way through taking and inflicting very heavy casualties. It looked as if Madrid was about to fall... then the first 50 T-26 tanks shipped from the Soviet Union entered the battle counterattacking against the exhausted Nationalists and pushing them back. The Nationalists would still keep a toehold at the city at a cost of nearly 10,000 casualties but Madrid held. But the Loyalist victory, at 20,000 casualties had been anything but cheap...

Mugla, Turkey, October 12th 1936

Mussolini had held to his part of the deal with Kemal and a referendum on the future of Caria, had taken place in September 1936. The result had not been much in doubt, Turkey would had won a fair referendum and Kemal had not had any intention of taking chances. A Turkish infantry division had then replaced the Italian garrison and Kemal was here to declare victory, at the first territory in Anatolia to be returned to Turkish control. And to take the opportunity to announce the new law introducing surnames for everyone, he would graciously accept the spontaneous public calls, organized of course ahead of time, to take up Ataturk as a surname himself.

Vyronas, Smyrna, October 1936

The old neighbourhood of Daragatsi [1] had taken the opportunity to rename itself after Lord Byron back in 1924 at the centennial of his death, after all the previous name after a tree used for hangings was somewhat problematic. Now it was becoming home to thousands of new residents as most of the Greek population of Caria had voted with their feet after the referendum, leaving the territory ahead of the Turkish army.

Valencia, Spain, October 1936

Greece had been quick to follow the British and French lead over not intervening in the Spanish civil war and the government had scrupulously followed the agreements. Entirely coincidentally the Greek army had provided a large amount of old munitions to the Hephaestus works, to recycle their materials in exchange of an equal amount of new munitions, of course there was nothing odd in newly build artillery shells and bullets costing as much as the recycled materials they were made of. As there was nothing odd in Hephaestus also buying old torpedoes, 65mm mountain guns, Chauchat LMGs and 8mm Mannlicher rifles that had been captured from the Bulgarians back in 1913 again for disposal, actually at prices higher than newly built weapons. The first ships carrying Greek surplus munitions and arms to the Loyalists start unloading their cargo, the payment, in gold had already been disposed to Greek accounts in Paris. Greek re-armament, needed financing and the British were still refusing to provide loans for military sales after all...

[1] Modern day Umurbey

 

[Lascaris]

I can see a few issues with turkish chrome. Firstly, a fair deal of the already explored deposits lie in the former Italian Caria. I think that at least half of the OTL production is now controlled by an italian company, even though the province has returned to Turkey. Would Benny allow the only italian-controlled source of chrome to export to Germant instead of feeding the italian industry? I guess some of the production can end up in Germany but the majority would be exported to Italy. I doubt Kemal would break with Italy over such an issue. After all, Italy is a much more important ally against Greece compared to Germany (at least until the Fall of France).

At the same time, in OTL Germany imported 11,500 and 14,00 tons of chrome ore from Greece in 1937 and 1938 respectively, I doubt that greek chrome exports will be that big in TTL. Turkey would be hard pressed to export as much as in OTL, nevermind covering the OTL greek ore. So, the importance of Yugoslavia as a chrome exporter (albeit smaller than Turkey) is enhanced in TTL. It is worth mentioning that the OTL increase of the yugoslav chrome ore production was due to german investments. Moreover, Yugoslavia was a main exporter of manganese, copper and bauxite, resources equally significant for the german war industry.

Overall, I think Yugoslavia is at least as important as Turkey when it comes to strategic ores. Then there are other interests at play in Yugoslavia, such as the interests of the viennese banks in the economy of the former AH part of the country. Overall, the Germans would have to export either machinery or weapons to Yugoslavia.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41485411?seq=1

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6207&context=etd

https://d-nb.info/994443129/34

I'm not entirely certain. Germany's chrome consumption in 1938 from the third link was 190,000t a year in 1938, French 40,000t and Soviet 220,000t. Now per Mitchell (European Historical Statistics 1750-1993) German steel production in 1938 was 22,656,000t, French 6,137,000t and Soviet 18,057,000t. Italian steel production was 2,323,000t. The analogy is probably not entirely accurate but this should put Italian chrome requirements between 15,000t and 28,000t per year, call it ~20,000t if you use German consumption as a benchmark. Turkey in 1938 produced 213,630t of chrome. If half of that is produced in the Mugla area mines it is roughly 4 to 7 times more than Italy can consume. Something in the order of 79-92,000t of chrome would need to be exported elsewhere and the most likely candidates here are the United States which needed something in the order of 750,000t a year when all of the Americas produced barely a fraction nearly all of it in Cuba (again from Mitchell) and Germany... I note that in OTL the Germans imported 66,000t of chrome from Turkey in 1936, the peak year before 1939 when they imported 96,000t up to the start of the war. The other big source of German chromium was ironically enough none other than the British empire, South Africa to be exact. A good situation certainly for the Italian shareholders of the Mugla mines but not one where Germany will not be getting its chromium... although TTL this means Mussolini is also politically benefiting from this if Germany gets a significant fraction of her chrome through Italian interests in Turkey.

Which brings us also to German imports of chromium from Greece and Yugoslavia. In 1938 Greece produced 52,620t of which 14,000t went to Germany and Yugoslavia 59,932t of which 12,700t went to Germany. TTL both would be even more concerned over economic dependency to Germany when in the reverse unlike OTL Turkey would be rather less concerned. If both the Greek and Yugoslav exports go to the US, it creates a deficit of about 27,000t to the Germans, who would need to import about 80,000t from Turkey. If Turkish exports had not been reduced in January-August 1938 to about half the rate of the rest of the year they'd have reached 75,000t in 1938.

The tables below are from THE SINEWS OF WAR: TURKEY, CHROMITE, AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Aaron Ranck, Bilkent university, they provide an interesting picture both for world chrome production and for the Greek and Turkish role in US chromite imports which is usually overlooked before... tobacco.

I know it is a rhetorical question, but I will answer regardless: Greece. If we add the OTL 12 105mm guns that ended up in Turkey, there can be 82 guns in total. Nothing to sneeze at.

No comment on actual numbers...

France and Britain can cause harm to the turkish economy and trade. To quote from "The ill-made alliance":


The French can mess up the german-turkish trade if the debt payment is frozen. The Allies can also ruin the exchange rate of the lira, making turkish trade problematic with anyone other than Germany. And Germany cannot simply absorb all the turkish trade.

The quotation on the French clearing doesn't look entirely promising. The French ended being paid up with German coal as the writer correctly says effectively subsidizing German imports from Turkey. The real question here is... in half the Turkish foreign trade in OTL depended on Germany how much of it depends on Germany TTL? Between a smaller Turkish economy, the prime Turkish exports to Germany being largely unchanged and the lost Turkish exports like Smyrna tobacco going mostly elsewhere the TTL figure could well be upwards of 70%.

 

[Lascaris]

Greece, November 15th 1936

Venizelos had made certain to complete the full four years of his term, before new elections would be held, it was actually becoming something of a standard practice by now, the last snap election had been back in March 1915. Compared to the 1932 elections the Liberals had suffered heavily losing bore than 10 percentage points. But this meant they'd still had managed to secure 48.18% of the vote and 145 seats in parliament. The United opposition, by now consisting of Nikolaos Stratos Conservative Reform party and Dragoumis National Radical party, which had absorbed the remnants of the Populists had secured 43.24% of the vote and 104 seats with Dragoumis radicals notably edging for the first time slightly ahead of Stratos Conservatives with 21.89% and 54 seats to 21.45% and 50 seats. Just as notably the Greek communist party had grown to 5.76% of the vote securing a single seat in parliament along with 3 more seats in the senate increasing its total number of senators to 6.

Deutsche Werke, Kiel, Germany, November 28th 1936

Flugzeugträger A, was laid down in the slip that had been freed earlier in the month by the launching of battlecruiser Gneisenau. Just as the ship was being laid down other workers kept working on Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser building since summer. Both the British and the French admiralties kept careful note of the increasing pace of German construction, two more battleships had been laid down back in April and July. Britain was waiting for the new year to immediately lay down the first pair of her own battleships, a variety of materials was already on order. France was relatively better off. The Dunkerque was expecting to enter service in May, Strasbourg had been launched in December 1935 and should be in service by early 1938, while a second Richelieu class ship had been laid down in September in the new Caquot dock in St Nazaire.

Paris, December 9th 1936

The Franco-Syrian treaty of independence was finally signed after nearly 9 months of negotiations that had nearly collapsed several times after the refusal of the Frence side to accept the incorporation into Syria of Lebanon, the Kurdish, Alawite and Druze states and the sanjak of Alexandretta as the Syrians were demanding. Finally the Syrians had to accept a separate Lebanon, while a compromise would be reached for the remaining areas with each state having a referendum on its future within three months of the signing of the treaty. The Druze would be the only ones to vote to join the new Syria. The Kurds understandably preferred their own state which they saw as the first seed to eventually create an independence Kurdistan, while the Alawis in the aftermath of the 1925 revolt feared that incorporation into Syria would also mean the return of the Sunni landowners that had left during the revolt. in Alexandretta the result against Syria had been ironically enough decided by the Turkish population voting along with the majority of Christians against incorporation into Syria if for diametrically opposite reasons, as the Christians wanted to remain in the French sphere of influence while the Turks were following Kemal's instructions, who wanted to keep Alexandretta out of Syria in order to join with Turkey later.

Yarrow yards, Glasgow, February 1937

The light cruisers Themistoklis and Miaoulis, were laid down for the Hellenic Navy. At 3,205t calling them light cruisers was probably a misnomer, the ships were for every practical purpose large destroyers capable of making 40 knots when completed and armed with American made 5in guns as Britain was not in position to provide either the 5.25in guns the ships had originally been designed or 4,7in guns. This was also becoming a problem for destroyers being built in Greece as well since their guns were being imported from Britain. Already delivery of the destroyers Sfendoni and Niki, originally intended as close copies of the British H class and due for delivery in 1936 was running late as the ships had to be altered at the last moment to take US 5in guns and Dutch Hazemayer directors instead while Britain had also claimed inability to deliver two more submarines, these had been laid in Greece instead, using the pair of additional slips recently built at Skaramanga. Of course this mean the slips could not be used for destroyers but one could not have everything...

Guadalajara, Spain, March 1st 1937

The failed offensive in October against Madrid, had been followed by a second assault in November, beaten back after heavy street fighting and three offensives attempting to cut off and encircle Madrid. By the end of the last one in early February the Nationalists had gained some ground along the Jarama river but had failed to have any decisive results. The arrival of the Italian expeditionary force which had scored a quick victory at Malaga, had renewed Nationalist hopes for victory in the Madrid front though. A joint offensive was planned with the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie with 35,000 men and 140 tanks under general Roatta attacking against Guadalajara and the Nationalists renewing their offensive against Jarama. The Nationalist part of the plan would nearly fail to materialize due to rivalries between Spanish officers and the recently arrived Italians but in the end general Ochoa could not bring him to break his promise to renew the attack on the Jarama and some 34,000 Nationalist troops moved to the attack within hours of the Italians launching their own assault. This put the Republicans in significant trouble. With 20,000 men and 30 tanks tied down facing Ochoa only 10,000 men supported by 40 tanks were left to take on the Italians. Twelve days of heavy fighting followed with the Republicans contesting every single step of ground they had to give, till Ochoa having lost a quarter of his forces till the start of February had to call of his offensive on the Jarama and the Republicans managed to shift some badly needed reinforcements against the Italians. By now it was too late to stop the Italians but not too late to inflict yet more casualties on them, before Roatta had to stop his own offensive in March 20th. Guadalajara had fallen with the Italians advancing over 60km in 20 days. But their advance had cost the Italians 8,000 men and half their tanks, with Ochoa losing another 4,000 men. Republican casualties had been comparable with 13,000 men and 38 tanks lost. The position of Madrid start becoming precarious...

Alexandretta, French mandate of Syria, March 15th 1937

The tensions already evidenced in the recent plebiscite to join Syria erupted into full scale clashes between the Turkish population, not openly agitating for union with Turkey and the Arab population, which under the direction of Zaki Al Arsuzi had also taken to the streets to contest the decision not to join Syria. The big loser of the clashes would actually turn out to be the local Armenians and other Christians as they were targetted by both sides. Christians start slipping away to nearby Lebanon despite French efforts to contain the clashes. Turkish diplomats in the League of Nations would hardly fail to take advantage of the opportunity demanding the return of Alexandretta, Northern Syria and Mosul to Turkey and asking for plebiscites in all three even though the only area they were likely to win a fair plebiscite was Alexandretta...

Turkey, April 1937

A language commission was established, to organize the replacement if the Arabic script in which Turkish was written with a Latin derived alphabet. The commission would return with recommendations for switching the alphabet over a period of five years. Kemal would instead take rather more drastic measures introducing the new alphabet by law in July and making switch to it compulsory by the end of the year. After all time was essential given developments around the world and social reforms in Turkey were already running late compared to what they would had been if he had not been forced to rescind power in the aftermath of defeat back in 1922. That failure had cost him and kept costing him in other ways, recently between approving construction for a new railroad to Diyarbakir and ordering a new light cruiser from Italy and 4 submarines from Germany he had to chose the naval orders to keep the support of Rauf Orbay's faction. Admittedly the navy would be of use when war with Greece came, thus he had not much begrudged the orders or securing ahead of Brazil 3 Adua class submarines that the Italians had laid down for their own navy but made available for sale. But when all was said and done Kemal was still an army man and had spent a decade of fighting without the Turkish navy having much of an impact and having to rely to Rauf's or Karabekir's support even to a limited extend instead of being in complete control of the country was galling at a personal level.

Brunette, Spain, May 6th 1937

63,000 Republican troops supported by 130 tanks and 140 aircraft sprung to the attack in hopes of turning back the increasingly dire military situation of the republic. The siege of Madrid was becoming more desperate by the date following the defeats in Guadalajara and Jarama. In the north of Spain the Nationalists had gone to the offensive in early April advancing into the Basque country and with a massed bombing of Guernica, apparently chosen more for her cultural significance to the Basques than for military reasons, by German and Italian aircraft with over a thousand civilians killed. Behind Spanish lines trouble was increasingly growing between the republican government and the anarchist groups that controlled Catalonia. The offensive, it was hoped, would both relieve Nationalist pressure on Madrid and divert them from their offensive in the north or for that matter from taking advantage of the Republicans internal problems in Catalonia. At least in diverting Nationalist efforts it was successful as the Nationalists reinforced Brunette with two infantry divisions while the Republican government and the communists managed to smash the Anarchists and their Trotskyist supporters at a cost of nearly 6,000 killed and wounded on the Anarchist side. On the international front the bombing of the German panzerschiff Admiral Scheer by Republican aircraft had brought German retaliation and had given Germany and Italy an excuse to leave the international non-intervention committee. That Scheer itself had been bombarding Republicans fleeing Malaga a couple months earlier was of course irrelevant as was the presence of German and Italian troops on the Nationalist side...

Madrid, June 5th 1937

The Republican offensive in Brunette had turned into a bloody failure with the Republicans suffering nearly 18,000 casualties at the cost of just a third as many Nationalists. Now it was the turn of the Nationalists as 55,000 troops under general Varela launched a second assault on the 45,000 men left defending Madrid. If Varela hoped for an easy victory in the aftermath of his victory in Brunette he was in for a disappointment as every street taken had to be paid in blood...

 

[Lascaris]

Lubyanka prison, Moscow, June 3rd, 1937

Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, was shot to the back of the head and his body thrown to an unmarked grave. The previous day he had been condemned by the Soviet supreme court, for supposed treason, Trotskyism and collusion with foreign secret agents, accusations to which he had supposedly confessed, the oddity when dealing with NKVD torturers interrogators would had been not confessing to anything they might have wanted. It was just the beginning of the purges launched by Stalin to secure his absolute control of the Soviet Union against any challenge fictional or real. By the end of 1938 nearly 700,000 people would be executed. Yet more would be imprisoned, with many of them dying there, Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam would become the best remember victims of the gulags but the death toll within the prison system would reach close to 200,000.

Swan Hunter shipyards, July 1937

HMS Anson the first battleship of its class was laid down. Back in January Britain had laid their first two battleships of the King George V class to be armed with 9 15in guns each. Then with international tensions keeping to increase a supplementary budget to lay down three more battleships in 1937 had been approved. That had put the admiralty into something of a conundrum as Italy, France and the United States had all laid down ships armed with 16in guns and so was also expected of Japan although preciously little detail was coming out of it. An evolution of the King George V with 9 16in guns had been actually designed and by happy coincidence a suitable gun and mount was also available thanks to the pair of mounts built for the Greek battleship Salamis a couple of years earlier. Thus while the first of the additional ships would be built as a King George V increasing the total number of ships to three, the last two battleships laid in 1937 would be instead the 16in evolutionary design. Thought was already being given into the ships of the 1938 program...

China, July 1937

On and off skirmishing between China and Japan was ongoing since the Japanese had conquered Manchuria in the fall of 1931. But Manchuria was apparently not enough for Japan as it now launched a new invasion of China. But this time the Chinese fought back. What begun as one more land grab on the Japanese part soon escalated into all out invasion of China...

Brunete, August 17th, 1937

80,000 Republican troops supported by 100 tanks and 200 aircraft attacked in hoped of relieving Madrid only to be beaten back by the Nationalists after two weeks of fighting. But Madrid still fought on.

France, August 1937

An order for 80 more Loire-Nieuport LN-161 fightesr was placed increasing total orders to 130. But while LN-161 appeared to be very promising, even more so its LN-165 evolution which was competing with Dewoitine's D.520 for France's follow up fighter French aircraft industry was still lagging behind. LN-161 was not yet into series production, while the German Bf-109B and the Soviet I-16 were already in action in Spain and the British Hawker Hurricane expected to enter service by the enf of the year. And if anything the French bomber situation was even worse...

Madrid, September 10th, 1937

Madrid fell, as the last of the 45,000 Republican soldiers defending it were forced to surrender. They had held for more than three months, far more than anyone had expected when the Nationalists had launched their second assault on the city in the aftermath of the Republican defeat in Brunete. But with the relief attempt at the second battle of Brunete failing any last hope of saving the capital had gone. The defenders had still fought on for ten more days before finally the their last remnants finally gave up. Madrid had proved a meat-grinder costing the Nationalists 44,000 casualties. It would take several months for the Nationalists to be able to resume the offensive. But Madrid was now in their hands.

Asturias, October 7th, 1937

The war in the north of Spain came to an end in full Nationalist victory. Bilbao had already fallen from June but the Republicans had still managed to hold on for four more months before the final Nationalist offensive in August had managed to finish them off.

Yugoslavia, October, 1937

Since his accession to power in December 1935 Milan Stojadinovic had followed a set of policies decidedly alarming to Yugoslavia's allies. In December 1936 he had refused the proposals initiated by France to extend the little Entente, with Romania and Czechoslovakia to foreign power instead of solely Hungary openly telling French envoys that Yugoslavia was too dependent on German trade to contemplate conflict with Germany, while at the same time continuing to increase his country's economic dependence upon Germany. Then in January he had signed a treaty of friendship with Bulgaria, threatening Greece and Romania that his country would outright leave the Balkan Entente if they failed to agree to the treaty. And while the treaty itself might sound innocuous, information had soon reached the Greek army's 2nd Bureau from contacts within the Yugoslav army that Stojadinovic had actually offered the Bulgarians splitting Greek Macedonia between the two countries, with Thessaloniki going to Yugoslavia. Then in April 1937 Stokadinovic had received count Ciano in Belgrade and signed a treaty of friendship with Italy weakening Yugoslavia's ties with her existing allies further yet. Then pursuant to the new treaty with Italy he had begun pursuing a concordat with the Vatican. But when that had been brought before parliament it had nearly caused an outright revolt among its Serb members and the Serb Orthodox church. Stojadinovic had then withdrawn it in hopes of not losing his popularity in Serbia only to lose support in both Serbia and Croatia as a result.

By now prince Paul was starting to fear about his own position in the country both from Stojadinovic himself who was giving clear signs of hoping to emulate Mussolini and from the most radical of his opponents as there had been movements within the Serb dominated army for a coup during the concordat crisis, while the tilt of Yugoslav policy towards the axis was also highly questionable to the regent who was generally pro British and pro Greek. Yet Paul was not a decisive man personally. Pressured both from within the country and from Venizelos and the British and French governments outside he avoided a direct confrontation with his prime minister. But now on his advice Aca Stanojevic brought the entirety of the Serb Radical party in the anti-government coalition being formed by the new leader of the Croatian peasant part Vladko Macek. Stojadinovic undeterred start preparing an official visit to Rome for December. After all the next election was not due till December 1939.

Agioi Saranda, Greece, November 13th, 1937

The first train of the Epirote line of the Hellenic State railways reached the little port city. Starting from Athens the train, carrying prime minister Eleutherios Venizelos for the inauguration of the line had taken nearly a day going from Athens to Larisa from there to Kalambaka, throught the Metsovon pass to Ioannina and from there the Agioi Saranda without even counting the necessary stops for speeches in Metsovo and Ioannina. For a 73 year old like Venizelos is was certainly an exhaustive ordeal but the prime minister appeared to be in good spirits throughout it.

Poland, November 1937

The prototype PZL P.53 took to the air for the first time powered by a 860hp Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 engine. An inline engined variant of the P.50 fighter of Zygmunt Pulawski that had first flown back in August, the aircraft was the result of Pulawski's insistence on using inline engines despite the air force's preference for radials. Even though P.53 would reach 537 km/h to P.50s 500 km/h the P.50 had already been selected for production with an order for 300 aircraft, but Pulawski had enough pull to be allowed to continue developing P.53 in parallel, after all both the Greeks who were producing the earlier P.24 under licence and the Yugoslavs who were discussing the purchase of 20 PZL.37 bombers and a licence for more had already shown interest. At least P.50 had come at an opportunate moment. Unlike Dabrowski's PZL.37 which had first flown in January 1936 and had done very well, the two engined PZL.38 fighter that was originally expected to replace older fighters had been a near complete failure so far.

Teruel, December 1st, 1937

The Republican army took to the offensive in hopes of reducing the Teruel pocket and regaining the initiative in the war. There had been strong pressure within the Republican government to instead launch the attack against Madrid but in the end military necessities had prevailed as reduction of the Teruel pocket would remove the threat of cutting the remaining territory in two and significantly shorten the front. Given that by now the Nationalist side held by now numerical superiority with 553,000 men facing 395,000 this was no small consideration for the Republican side.

Soviet Union, December 11th, 1937

The Greek operation of the NKVD was set in motion. Within days over 10,000 Greeks would be arrested and either sent to the gulags or outright executed over their supposed contacts with Greek intelligence and nationalist agitators. The arrests included general Vladimir Triandafillov, who would be imprisoned but survive and Konstantin Chelpan the designer of T-34s engine who would not. The former general secretary of the Greek communist party Andronikos Haitas who had escaped to the Soviet Union to avoid charges of sedition by the Stratos government in 1931 would also disappear along several other members of the party in the Soviet Union his fate never to be determined again...

Romania December 20th, 1937

Romanian electoral politics since the end of the Great war had been at the very least convoluted and made all the worst by royal interference in them and scandals within the royal family. After the May 1920 elections fresh elections had followed in March 1922 won by Ion Bratianu's National Liberal party. The 1926 elections had been won by Alexandru Averescu's People's party only for fresh elections to follow in June 1927 won again by Bratianu only for fresh elections to follow in December 1928 won this time by Iuliu Maniu of the National Peasants party who for a change managed to form a stable government for the next four years to no small extend due to the new king Nicolae I being rather more pliable than king Ferdinard who had died back in 1927. Nicolae, normally second in the line of succession had come to the throne only due to his brother Carol having a scandal too many when in 1925 he had been forced to resign his position after he had left his wife princess Helena of Greece, the sister of the late king Alexander for his mistress Elena Lupescu. With their single daughter, born in 1921, excluded from the succession per the Romanian constitution the throne had thus passed to Nicolae who was conveniently more interested in racing cars and the navy in which he served before being forced on the throne, than intervening in politics. Nicolae had caused a scandal of his own when he had married a commoner Ioana Dumitrescu in 1931 but this had ended increasing his popularity with the common Romanian securing his position on the throne despite machinations by his brother to depose him. Maniu had won the new elections in July 1932 but his second government what survived only to December 1933 before the ongoing economic crisis had forced him to fresh elections in December 1933 which had been won by the 69 year old Bratianu.

Now the ninth election since 1918 made things if anything worse. The National Liberals had avoided electoral disaster by an extremely thin margin winning 40.4% of the vote, Romanian electoral law gave half the seats to any party winning over 40% of the vote with proportional representation used for the rest thus giving the NLP 278 seats, when at 40% they would had won 155. Maniu had won 43 seats. But the third party in the chamber had been the fascist Iron Guard of Corneliu Codreanu with 33 seats and fourth the equally fascist National Christian Party with 19 seats. If the rise of the fascists to a quarter of the overall vote was not enough, powerful forces within the NLP, most notably Bratianu's own son Gheorghe were also supportive of an alliance with Germany...

 

[Lascaris]

Belgrade December 24th, 1937

Milan Stojadinovic had been on official visit to Rome. Then at the invitation of Mussolini and Ciano he had stayed as their guest for the Christmas eve, his position in Yugoslavia secure. It would prove a wrong assumption as he learned that he had offered his resignation from the position of prime minister to prince Paul and the regent had accepted it and replaced him with Aca Stanojevic the head of the Serb Radical party over the radio. Yugoslav army units loyal to Paul under the command of the head of the general staff Dusan Simovic were already on the move in Belgrade and elsewhere in Serbia rounding up both Greenshirts, the fascist paramilitary organization Stojadinovic had created and members of the miniscule United Militant Labour Organization of Dimitrije Ljotic an openly fascist organization in the German payroll. Neither Italy nor Germany could do much directly in response but neither Mussolini nor Hitler were going to forget the slight soon. Stojadinovic would remain in exile in Rome...

Teruel, February 7th, 1938

Nationalist forces entered the town in triumph. The Republican offensive had been initially successful only for Nationalist reinforcements to turn the battle into a 10 week battle of attrition that had cost the Nationalists 57,000 casualties and the Republicans 78,000. Two weeks later 125,000 Nationalist troops would invade Aragon. Within 5 weeks both Aragon and the 75,000 Republican troops defending it would be lost.

Thessaloniki, February-March 1938

Thessaloniki was finally getting her own university, the fourth Greek one after these of Athens, Smyrna and Constantinople. The official inauguration and the first classes were to begin in September, with schools of philosophy, law, theology, medicine and physics/mathematics. A seat of Hebrew studies would be included under the school of philosophy with the seat offered to the arch-rabbi of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki Zvi Koretz. Not all was sunny though. The establishment of the university had again brought forth the problem of the Beth Ahaim cemetery. First established in the 15th century the Jewish cemetery with, between 350,000 and half a million graves over an area of 357,796 square meters in 1930 was the largest Jewish necropolis in Europe, the next largest, that of Warsaw held about 150,000. But its position originally outside the eastern walls of the medieval city put it effectively in the very centre of the city as it expanded eastwards. Part of the cemetery had been appropriated by the Ottoman governor back in the 1890s while the Hebrard urban plan created after the 1917 fire, was calling for removing all the cemeteries from the area, by 1930 all with the exception of Beth Ahaim and the much smaller Greek Orthodox one of Euangelistria were gone. But Judaism does not allow graves to be disinterred or moved, very much unlike Greek Orthodox practice. Thus the fate of the cemetery had become a matter of political contention within the city in the years after 1918 with the difference in practices causing a distinct lack of understanding on the part of the Greek Orthodox majority and the Jewish senators and members of parliament often having to defend it and political clashes over its fate also extending within the Jewish community. That the cemetery at night, often became home to vagrants, couples, prostitutes and drug trafficing [1] despite the efforts of the guards paid by the community and a small police detachment did not much help things as it was cause of embarrassment. Neither did the precedent of Smyrna's Bahri Baba cemetery whose removal had start under the Ottomans in 1914 and ended under Greek administration in June 1921 when the Smyrna rabbinate had had to transfer the last graves to the new cemetery of the city, nowadays parts of the Ionian university stood upon the old burial grounds. Finally an area of 12,400 square meter in the west of the cemetery was donated to the university and the community was given by the municipality land for a new cemetery in Stavroupoli. The rest of the cemetery would be cleaned up, have trees planted and turned into a park as Hebrard's plan called but with the graves left undisturbed. The Thessaloniki rabbinate would oversee the removal and reburial of 562 tombs over February and March proclaiming the day of the removal one of general mourning as their Smyrniot counterparts had done back in 1921. It could be called a compromise of shorts, though a deeply unpopular one for all involved.


Austria, March 12th, 1938

Back in 1919 Austria had asked on its own to unite with Germany, the allied powers had refused to allow it. As late as 1932 support for union with Germany, then still under the Weimar republic, was estimated to run at about 80%. The rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, an attempted coup by their Austrian branch in 1934, that had cost to life of then prime minister Engelbert Dollfuss, himself a fascist ironically enough, and a continued campaign of assassination that had claimed some 800 lives since then had soured though quite a few Austrians to the idea. How many? Kurt Schuschnigg, Dollfuss successor who was against absorption to Hitler's Germany, calling Austria "the superior German state" apparently thought enough to win a plebiscite which he had called for March the 13th. Hitler had not cared about taking chances. On the 11th Schuschnigg had been threatened with invasion unless he gave up power. The next day the German army had marched into Austria to an enthusiastic welcome that had surprised even the Germans and Austria ceased to exist and was subsumed into Germany as were her armed forces.

Segre river, Spain, April 4th, 1938

Nationalist artillery start thundering all along the front from the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean as 335,000 Nationalist troops advanced against the Eastern Army group of the Peoples Republican army, formed after the Nationalist advance in Aragon had cut Republican territory in two. Loyalist troops under general Saravia did not number more than 153,000 men. But at least the French government had finally opened the border in the aftermath of the anschluss. Nearly twenty thousand tons of arms had gone over the border and the Rebublicans were conscripting everyone between 16 and 60, even Nationalist prisoners of war.

Valencia, April 30, 1938

Republican prime minister Juan Negrin, issued his "13 points" as the proposed basis for a peace settlement between the Valencia government and the Nationalists. The reaction on the Nationalist side was decidedly mixed any short of compromise between the two sides. The Carlists and Falangists, whose importance was increasing thanks to Italian and German support would accept only an unconditional surrender on the Republican part. Miguel Cabanellas the head of the nationalist junta and himself a member of the Radical Republican party was far more sympathetic as was Eduardo Ochoa, the nationalists chief general, who might well have ended on the Loyalist side if not for the attacks against him due to the suppression of the Catalonia revolt back in 1934. The one thing all Nationalist factions agreed were that they would not negotiate as long as the Spanish communist party remained part of the Republican government. The situation on the Nationalist side would grow even more complicated as Cabanellas would die in mid-May throwing open the question of his succession. In the meantime the fighting for Catalonia went on...


[1] From chapter 5 of Jewish Salonica by Devin Naar from which most of the background of this part stems from.

 

[Lascaris]

Madrid, May 1938

Rather inconveniently for the Nationalist cause Miguel Cabanellas, so far the head of the Nationalist junta had died in mid May, opening the question of his succession and wit it control of the disparate coalition making up the Nationalists at the very time they appeared to be winning their war. under the Nationalist banner one could find Falangists under Manuel Hedilla, Carlists under Manuel Fal Conde, Alfonsists and conservative republicans. The army itself had its own factions, coalescing around Ochoa and Mola, although Juan Yague and Jose Varela were growing in importance as the war progressed thanks to their victories but also their close ties with the Falangists and the Carlists respectively. In the end it would be Ochoa that would come on top given his seniority, a rather more impressive war record over Mola and just perhaps a few unproven British nudges in his favour behind the scenes. There was a certain irony in someone that had become Nationalist nearly by accident ending up at their head...

London, May 1938

Britain began negotiations with Greece and Yugoslavia for the provision of credits for the purchase of military equipment and additional credits to facilitate the import of British industrial goods by both countries and the sale of Greek and Yugoslav products to Britain. in total it was proposed to provide 6-8 million pounds for the military credits end up to 10 million for the trade credits. But despite support from the British foreign office and strong pressure from Venizelos who had visited London in person to facilitate the negotiations and throw behind them his considerable skill and influence, negotiations only proceeded at a glacial pace as the British treasury was most reluctant to commit itself to what was loans for political reasons that it feared would be never be repaid...

Catalonia, June 26th 1938

Barcelona had already fallen back in June 12th. Now as the last remnants of the Republican Eastern region army group and nearly half a million civilian refugees crossed over into France the battle of Catalonia could be considered finished. It had been an unmitigated military disaster for the Republican side which had lost nearly 200,000 men in three months of fighting. The political and strategic repercussions were if anything worse. The Nationalists by now outnumbered the Republicans by two to one, while president Miguel Azana had resigned in the aftermath of the disaster and both France and Britain had recognized Ochoa's government. Negrin would be forced to offer peace again, this time with ensuring the protection of the lives of republicans and a referendum on Spain's future form of government only to be told that the Nationalists were not negotiating with communists. Behind the scenes Ochoa's message was similar but with a significant difference. He would not offer Negrin's government terms as long as the communists were part of it. But if the communists were gone...

Hephaistos Works, Eleusis, July 1938

The first locally made Mle 1936 gun left the assembly line. Schneider between orders from the French army and an order for 180 guns for the Romanian army had been unable to offer deliveries before the second half on 1940, but had agreed to provide a licence for the constuction of the gun in Greece instead. This was proving considerably more difficult than originally hoped for, as the Greeks were just now building up their own manufacturing capacity and the French design was rather more complicated compared to the Skoda vz30 howitzers that the factory had start turning out earlier in the year after a license had been bought back in 1936 but building even limited number of guns was certainly prefferable to no guns at all. Getting suitable licenses was something of an issue itself. Recently France had turned down Greek requests both for the export and for a licence of their 47mm APX anti-tank gun. An offer had been made to sell instead the Schneider 47mm anti-tank gun, a rival design that had been turned down by the French army and ordered by Romania, but the Greeks had declined both it and an offer by Bofors to sell a licence for their own 37mm AT, on top of the licences for 75mm and 40mm anti-aircraft guns already bought by Greece. A licence for the older M1931 gun had been bought from Belgium instead.

Valencia, July 19th 1938

The front-lines had remained relatively quiet after the fall of Catalonia. The Nationalists needed to reorganise, their victory had not come cheap, as they had suffered about 53,000 casualties, while the Republicans were hardly in any position to challenge their opponents, by now they were fielding about a quarter million troops when the Nationalists could muster nearly 550,000 men. Within the Republican side only the Communists were still willing to fight on. But if the war was lost and the only thing from bringing its end was the communists, then something had to be done about it. Army units under colonel Segismundo Casado moved. Whether Negrin had been complicit in the coup from the start or was forced to co-opt it after the fact would remain an open question but it wouldn't matter much. Within a week the Spanish communist party was out of the government despite troops loyal to it fighting back against the coup. Within two weeks negotiations for a surrender were underway with Ochoa's government despite objections within his own side. By the end of August the war was over with die hard Republicans quietly slipping away to France and Negrin and Casado securing an amnesty for the rest. Significantly the amnesty left open a loophole for not politically related actions...

Alexandretta, Syria, September 2nd 1938

Since Syria's independence, the sanjak had been the focus of rival Turkish and Syrian claims over it, with the French government pressed by both sides. Normally someone would had expected France to side with Damascus given the trouble caused during the Great Syrian revolts in the 1920s and additional Turkish claims on the Kurdish statelet of the mandate. But a lot of bad blood also existed with the Syrian nationalists that controlled the newly established Damascus government and Kemal had a reputation of being both reliable and reasonable. If a compromise could reduce tensions with Turkey removing the possibility of its siding with Germany it was a worthwhile goal one encouraged By Britain as well. Of all the possible concessions to Turkey a compromise over Alexandretta was the one least damaging to British and French interests, unlike Turkish claims on Mosul, Syrian Kurdistan, Constantinople or Greece. Thus France had proposed a plebiscite on the future of the sanjak and promised to respect the result. Both Sivas and Damascus had reluctantly agreed, neither was certain on the result of a fair plebiscite. When it actually came it was won by the Turkish side by 53% to 47% as the Alawis that formed 28% of the population had been split between the two sides. The process of returning Alexandretta to Turksh control begun. Whether it would be enough to appease Turkey, was a question for another day...

Cologne, September 30th 1938

The previous weeks had brought Europe to the brink of general war, given German territorial demands against Czechoslovakia. The British government had instead tried to negotiate, dragging the French along with it an will both Western powers pressing the Czech government to compromise instead with the Germans. A parody of negotiations had then followed with the Germans being offered more an more concessions and every time making additional demands on top of their previous ones. Germany was set to start an invasion by October 1st and Czechoslovakia had mobilized her own army on the 23rd, a German ultimatum to surrender Sudetenland or face war had been issued the next day. Finally with Mussolini offering to mediate and a last minute conference between Britain, France, Germany and Italy organized in Cologne, the western powers had backed down to the German demands. Then Czech president Benes under British and French pressure had decided to back down without a fight instead of defending his own country [1]. Czechoslovakia would cede Sudetenland to Germany immediately, within the next couple of months it would be forced to cede additional territory to both Hungary and Poland. War had for the time being avoided an both the British and French prime ministers would receive enthusiastic welcomes in their countries on their return from Cologne. Both while claiming peace had been saved would further intensify re-armament efforts. in the meantime Germany had managed to remove an army of 40 divisions from the allied side without firing a shot and most of said army's material would find its way intact in her hands. Churchill would sum it best. "England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame, and will get war."

London, November 1938

The credits agreements being negotiated for the past six months were finally signed, despite the obstacles put along the way by the British treasury. Greece would receive 5 million pounds for war credits as well as 5 million in credits to facilitate trade with Britain. Yugoslavia would receive 3 million in war credits and an additional 5 million credit to support trade. it was something of a reassurance in the aftermath of Cologne and Alexandretta and particularly for Yugoslavia a much needed aid to break its dependence of German imports since the depression. Yugoslav orders for over 100 Hurricanes and as many Blenheim bombers would quickly follow along with licences to build both aircraft locally. The Greeks would increase their own orders for Spitfires from 24 to 60 aircraft, with the first expected to be delivered in September 1939.

Sivas, November 1938

Mustafa Kemal died from cirrhosis, even to the end he had refused to reduce his heavy drinking and smoking despite the advice of his doctors. In his time he had shaped Turkey both for good and bad. But now the inevitable question was who would take his place...

[1] Benes famously or infamously took pride post war at how Prague had been spared wartime destruction "and it was all his doing"

 

[Lascaris]

Sivas, December 1938

The funeral of Mustafa Kemal had been treated no different than that of a sultan. Truth to tell it had been probably treated more lavishly than that of any sultan since the previous century, with Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union in particular making sure their foreign ministers were present for the funeral. Kemal might had been defeated in 1921 but had managed to preserve Turkey as a fully independent state despite the territorial losses. Then following his return to power he had managed to roll back at least in part the territorial losses of the early 1920s besides pushing even harder for domestic reforms within Turkey. Of course that had come at a cost both during the war and after it. Technically Turkey had retained a parliamentary system. In practice it had been dominated by the Halk partisi through the 1920 and had been turned practically into a single party state since 1932. But it was easy to overlook this at the moment. After all Kemal was hardly the sole man to dispense with democracy in the name of revitalizing his country. Italy and Germany were no different after all nor the sole examples around the world in the past two decades.

Succession had proven a more complicated question. Within the Grand National Assembly the Liberal party, under Fethi Okyar since the death of Bekir Sami in 1933 had been almost completely marginalized with only a handful of representatives managing to be elected in the 1936 elections, with the state apparatus from the army to the gendarmerie and civil service making certain only the "right" candidates had found their way into the assembly. Ismail Canbulat's Renewal party had done relatively better, even two decades after the Mudros armistice the CUP still could count upon people sympathetic to it within the army and gendarmerie after all or for that matter within the ruling Halk partisi. Within the party as long as Kemal was alive no clear successor had shown himself. Ismet Ismirli pasha had been Kemal's trusted lieutenant since the world war and had been made his foreign minister after his return to power. Ismet had been also a protege of marshal Fevzi Cakmak the chief of staff of the army for the past two decades, not an insignificant consideration given the role the army held in Turkish politics. But Ismet had also been also under a cloud due to his defeats by the Greek army in the critical battles of Afyon-Kutahya-Eski Sehir that had effectively decided the war in spring 1921. Blaming Ismet for losing the war might not had been fair. But it was something his rivals could easily do and make themselves believable.

Kazim Karabekir was under no such cloud. He had comprehensively defeated the Armenians in 1920 and his six divisions in Eastern Anatolia had been the core from which the Nationalist army had been born. It was true that the Soviet invasion in late 1921 had driven his army back to the 1878 Russo-Turkish border. But since his army had been stripped from the majority of his forces to feed the fight in the west against the Greeks not much blame could or did accrue to him. Then he had led the Kemalists in close cooperation with Rauf Orbay, serving as minister of war for a decade till Kemal's return to power. He was a natural candidate for a successor with strong influence in the army. This was also perhaps his main disadvantage. Despite personal friendship to Kemal, Kemal had seen him as a potential rival to his own power thus made certain to marginalize him wherever possible after 1932. And Karabekir was also not dependent on Cakmak for influence in the army, something definitely noted by the field marshal.

The last contender for power Recep Peker had been the general secretary of the Halk partisi since 1928. From his position he had been the chief ideologist of the party, introducing and teaching himself "history of the revolution" and what he called "revolution lessons" both in the school curriculum and the Anadolu university of Sivas and had been Kemal's hatchetman since his return to Turkey ensuring his control of the party and through it the state apparatus. In his politics he was a strong advocate of a single party authoritarian state in close relation to Italy and Germany and statism in the economy. In 1935 he had infamously stated in public "liberalism is treasonous" while the next year after visiting Italy had proposed establishing a "fascist council" above the Grand National Assembly. Kemal had not followed through with the proposal but had not taken any measures against Peker either.

Ismet had been quickly marginalized in the days after Kemal's death leaving Peker and Karabekir as the two main contenders for power. Of the two Peker could count to the support of the party apparatus and would prove more adept at outmanoeuvring his opponent, securing the support of Cambulat and neutralizing Rauf Orbay, Karabekirs ally, offering him concessions for the navy, that a 150 million marks loan, 40% of it for military equipment had been secured from Germany on preferential terms back in August, had eased things and the German and Italian embassies had not been shy in making promises in support of Peker. When Cakmak had thrown his lot with Peker, assuming he would be more dependent on him for the army's support than Peker the matter had been settled. On December 10th, 1938 Peker became the 2nd prime minister of the kingdom of Turkey. A week later he would be proclaimed "Millî Şef" literally the national chief....

 

[Lascaris]

London, March 31st 1939

Two weeks before Germany had occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia despite express promises the previous year it would not do so. Britain and France had in return given Poland a guarantee of its independence should it be threatened by Germany. How much direct military help Poland could get by the treaty was questionable. But indirectly Germany would likely think twice about threatening Poland if it also meant wr with the western powers or so it was hoped at least. Negotiations for military coordination and a loan to Poland begun almost immediately but would go glacially slowly much to the Polish frustration. In the meantime Poland did what it could to prepare on its own. The first P.50 fighters were already in service, it was expected that at least 50 would be available by the end of the summer, with production peaking up pace afterwards, as would about 120 PZL.37 bombers. Both aircraft had also generated considerable international interest. Yugoslavia had already taken delivery of 20 PZL.27 and was preparing to build it locally. Greece after initially ordering the French LeO.45 only for the order to be cancelled due to constant delays in its development had just placed an order for two dozen with another 25 to be built locally while it had also bought a licence for the P.53 variant of P.50 to replace P.24 in KEA production lines. Turkish and Bulgarian bids for both aircraft had been politely refused with a bit of French prompting behind the scenes. But Poland had also gotten a perhaps surprising order from Spain where Ochoa after the nationalist victory in the civil war seemed to be quietly trying to reduce German and Italian influence within his country.

Kleisura pass, Greek-Albanian border, April 7th 1939

The second lieutenant in command of the border post looked incredulously at the small motorcade that had reached his post. At dawn the whole VIII Infantry division in Epirus had been put on high alert at the news of Italian naval landings in Durrazo and Valona and the order to call up reservists throughout Epirus had quickly followed. But he hadn;t expected within hours of the invasion to have to deal with king Zog of Albania showing up at his post, with his family, some retainers and apparently as much of the gold of the central bank of Albania as he could carry away. After all countries didn't fall in a single day did they? The Ethiopians had fought on for months and no news of Italians near the border had reached him. The lieutenant, a reservist that had just taken his degree from the Panteion university of political sciences, before being called up to do his term, had been taught that Zog had been the Italians creature. But then what he was doing here escaping his own masters, what were the Italians doing invading their own satellite in the first place? He did the right thing, called his battalion for instructions. About two hours later king Zog and his entourage were allowed into Greece. After a few days in Athens the former king would pack up and leave for Paris where he settled. Albania itself was proclaimed a protectorate of Italy. It hadn't been a particularly auspicious affair. The Albanian army even when it tried to resist had been sabotaged by its Italian trainers while the population had been at best indifferent to the Italians. With the Italians publicly backing the Albanian national aspirations against Greece and Yugoslavia, on April 12th the Albanian parliament had deposed Zog and proclaimed Victor Emanuelle III as the new king of Albania. And yet the handful of mostly gendarmerie units that had fought back against the 22,000 Italian invaders had given the Italians significant trouble. As an Italian commentator none too diplomatically put it "if only the Albanians had possessed a well-armed fire-brigade, they could have driven us into the Adriatic". But they did not...

Paris, April 28th 1939

France and Britain had reacted to the Italian takeover of Albania by extending their guarantees to Greece and Romania on April 13th but not to Yugoslavia, although in its case its alliance treaty with France still stood. Britain so far, despite relatively close ties with Greece had kept her at arms length refusing the Greek request for an outright alliance out of fear of alienating Italy and for the same reason had dissuaded France from offering an official alliance to the Balkan Entente in early 1937. Anthony Eden had resigned for the British cabinet over continued appeasement of Italy, Churchill and Lloyd George, the latter probably influenced by Venizelos, had repeatedly attacked the policy but it was only recently that Britain had taken any tangible steps in support of her friends. The occupation of Albania would prove the last straw for the western powers and Venizelos had taken advantage of it rushing to London and then Paris as soon as it looked the Italians were not going to invade Greece after occupying Albania. Two weeks of intense negotiations had secured 150 million francs in French war credits, an agreement for Greece to locally produce the Merlin III, under licence, for 50,000 pounds and an obligation to deliver part of the production to British forces in the Near East and most important of all a joint treaty of guarantee between the three countries should war break out in the Mediterranean. Greece had effectively entered a defensive alliance with France and Britain. It was a great diplomatic success for Venizelos. But it had taken its toll on him. The treaty was signed in April 26th. On April 28th the overworked Venizelos had a stroke as he was preparing for the return journey to Greece. He died the same night despite the best efforts of the French and Greek doctors that rushed to his help...

Chania, Crete, May 9th 1939

The 3rd republic had treated "monsieur Venizelos" with honours more akin to one of its own than a foreign dignitary. The French presidential guard had escorted his body as it was brought to the Greek Orthodox cathedral of St Stephen in Paris where it had been kept for a day, with thousands of people paying their respects and French veterans of the Macedonian front had volunteered themselves as pall bearers. From Gare de Lyon train station the body had been brought to Marseilles where it had been received by Averof to be brought first to Athens and finally to his native Chania, as Venizelos had wanted to be interred at Akrotiri from where he had led the 1896 Cretan revolt against the Ottomans. There things had almost gone out of control, in addition to thousands of officials, diplomats and common people from the rest of Greece and Constantinople that had found a ship to Chania over 100,000 Cretans, nearly a quarter of the whole population of the island, had gathered to mourn their "chief" with his fellow revolutionary veterans literally grabbing the body from the hands of the Averof sailors and the presidential guard euzones to carry it. And thus the era of Venizelos came to its end...

* * *​

"We must all understand well that Eleutherios Venizelos has died and that we have all died with him. Venizelists, Antivenizelists, past, factions, dangers, sufferings and titles of each of us, all suffered a stroke and, if they have not all died, they are dying. Both the one Greece that weeps for her man and the other one that does not curse her persecutor out of propriety, as much as the one lays flowers and the other thorns, before his body, as much as they besiege his dead and as much as they present themselves as refusing to detach from his coffin, deep down they ask for nothing better than to return from the cemetery, to open the windows of their house, and to stand there, free, carefree to breathe. Because Eleftherios Venizelos, no matter how he was characterized by enemies and friends, had always been a heavy handed leader for his own, a terrible danger for others. A man who, from the day he appeared until the day he disappeared, created on his own the history in which all other Greeks, either as opponents or as his fellow soldiers we were called to live in..."

George Vlachos, Kathimerini newspaper (OTL 22/3/1926, ATL 2/5/1939, translation mine)

* * *​

"Greeks were being born and dying Venizelist or anti-Venizelist. They had stopped thinking politically. His followers believed his words as a creed. His opponents, just because they had found themselves in the anti-Venizelist camp felt obliged to oppose every action of Venizelos. Thus the Greek political problem had been solved. Eleutherios Venizelos was thinking on behalf of all Greeks. After his death Greeks had to start thinking politically. Make decisions, study issues, find solutions to the problems..."

George Dafnis, "Hellas between two wars" (OTL 1955, translation mine)

 

[Lascaris]

Senate chamber, Athens, May 12th 1939

The chamber was packed with over 200 people as every member of parliament and senator of the Liberal party had come into session to elect the new head of the party. Someone might had expected this would had been a simple matter. Themistoklis Sofoulis was 79 and president of the republic, thus not a candidate. Alexandros Papanastasiou had died back in 1936, Andreas Michalakopoulos two months before Venizelos after a lengthy illness. Thus George Kafandaris, for decades the closest lieutenant of Venizelos should had been the obvious choice. He was, but this had not stopped Sofoklis Venizelos, George Papandreou, Ioannis Sofianopoulos, Alexandros Mylonas and Konstantinos Zavitsanos. Someone could understand Papandreou and the younger Venizelos, both were growing in influence within the party, Venizelos no doubt helped by his name in addition to his undoubted qualities. Sofianopoulos, Mylonas and Zavitsanos were rather less excusable and were eliminated in the first ballot. In the second ballot Zavitsanos backed Kafandaris and Sofianopoulos and Mylonas backed Papandreou. It would take a third ballot and Venizelos throwing his lot with Kafandaris, for him to be elected to the leadership of the Liberal party and confirmed as prime minister.

Italy, June 1939

Four Soldati class destroyers and as many Adua class submarines were laid down for the Turkish navy. Back in Turkey there was some grumbling in the army over the money being spent in the navy, the new orders were expected to cost over 2.3 million pounds, money that the army, starved for modern equipment could had certainly used. But Peker had several reasons to want to reinforce the navy, his position and keeping the support of Rauf Orbay not least among them.

Athens, June 1939

"Son of minister of education member of Trotskyist organization!" proclaimed the newspaper's headlines. And not just any newspaper but Athinaika Nea, the evening paper of the Lambrakis group and the Liberals first paper in circulation. Being a Trotskyist as Andreas Papandreou was, was not illegal but certainly was rather highly frowned upon. Being a Trorskyist while your father has been for the past several years the minister of education as George Papandreou was? This was even more frowned and also rather embarrassing for the elder Papandreou that he had found himself under mounting attacks that claimed anything from him being incompetent, a minister of education that could not educate even his own son, accusing him as a traitor who wanted to undermine the education of Greek children. Kafandaris had supported his minister if in the end he had been forced to switch Papandreou to a different ministry, but it had been anything but difficult for Papandreou to see what had happened as a direct assault against him from within his own party when the initial articles attacking him had come from the party's largest newspaper...

New York, July 1939

Young Andreas Papandreou, looked at the Big Apple opening in front of him with just a bit of a sense of wonder. Nothing in his native Athens or for that matter Smyrna and Constantinople truly compared, even if Athens did have its own appeal and probably noone could ever visit Constantinople without somehow being mesmerized by the Queen of Cities. Following the mess of the past two months, his father had been strongly advised that Andreas should be off the limelight for a while and a scholarship for the United States had been quietly arranged. But one could be philosophical about it. With law school off the way, normally Andreas would have had to spend two years on the army and while between his education and his father's connections a slot in one of the reserve officer schools was certain, exchanging the life of a student with life in uniform was not the most enticing of prospects, even if one forgot such minor issues like the political situation of Europe. Harvard was bound to be most interesting for a bright intellectually curious young man...

Moscow, August 15th, 1939

Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko had been rounded up on the same day the previous year, in all probability they had been denounced by the same person and held together in Butyrka prison for the past 17 months. Now they were both sentenced to 8 years in prison each for supposedly sabotaging Soviet aeronautical developments. But at least the sharatska they were moved to serve their terms was more interesting and had better living conditions than Butyrka. The two men had discussed a lot of plans and ideas while together in prison, after all they didn't have anyone else to talk to, who could had understood them. But would any of their dreams ever come true? It seemed doubtful...

Moscow, August 26th, 1939

British and French staff talks with the Soviet Union went on and on but despite initial Soviet hopes seemed to be going nowhere. British ad French negotiators did not appear very enthusiastic in the first place and the adamant Soviet demand that the Soviet Union should be given a seat in the League of Nations administration of Constantinople only made things worse as the British appeared to be equally adamant to refuse any concession to the Russian bear related to Constantinople. If the British and French would not budge they were not the only game in town...

Berlin, August 26th, 1939

The German army was all set to cross the Polish border, despite the failure to negotiate any agreement with the Soviets so far, the Soviet insistence on concessions over Constantinople had proven a big stumbling block. But the official British accession to the Franco-Polish alliance the previous day had given Hitler second thoughts and the invasion had been temporarily delayed. Mostly at least, some special forces teams had already gone to action before the order to hold off the invasion had gone out. The ongoing secret negotiations with the Soviets had just gotten even greater imperative.

Warsaw, August 29th, 1939

Poland was already taking mobilization measures since the crisis with Germany begun but had avoided a general mobilization order so far, if nothing else the cost would had been hard to bear. But time for half measures was probably over, Polish signals intercepts had located what appeared to be at least 60 divisions arrayed against Poland after all. What the Polish government had not counted upon was Britain and France immediately putting pressure upon it to rescind the general mobilization order lest it provoke the Germans and thus remove the last hopes for a peaceful settlement. The Poles almost budged. Then news from Moscow reached Warsaw. The Soviet Union and Germany had just announced to the world their non-aggression treaty. The mobilization went on...

Selected terms of secret addendum to German-Soviet non-aggression treaty

1. Partition of Poland into German and Soviet spheres of influence
2. Assignment of Finland, the Baltic states and Bessarabia to Soviet sphere of influence.
3. Return of Vilnius to Lithuania
4. Return of Constantinople to Turkey subject to special provisions on the straits
5. Free use of the straits by Soviet navy and merchant shipping in times of peace and war
6. Closing of straits to all warships in excess of 10,000t displacement not belonging to a Black Sea power. Non Black Sea power warships allowed into Black Sea never to exceed 30,000t displacement.

 

[Lascaris]

Polish-German border, September 1st, 1939

With tacit Soviet cooperation secured, Germany had not wasted more than three days and hadn't even bothered with a proper declaration of war before throwing close to 2 million men in 66 infantry divisions against Poland On the Polish side, army mobilization was still underway. 27 infantry divisions and 11 cavalry brigades had already been called up ahead of the general mobilization order in August 29 and a total of 352 infantry battalions out of a projected 455 had managed to mobilize by September 1st. Mobilization would continue during the fighting with the Poles managing to mobilize about 1,072,000 men by September 14th [1]. The invaders material superiority is even more overwhelming with 2,750 German tanks facing 228 Polish ones while in the air 669 Polish aircraft have to take on over 2,300 Luftwaffe planes which are also technologically superior, the only truly modern aircraft on the Polish side are 50 PZL P.50 fighters and 123 PZL.37 bombers. [2]. But the odds didn't matter. Poland was going to fight. To the last man and the last bullet if need be but would not surrender.

London and Paris, September 3rd, 1939

Britain and France had failed to immediately declare war when Germany had invaded Poland. Instead they had issued an ultimatum demanding a stop to the invasion. With it expiring without answer it was time for the guns as both countries declared war against Germany. Neither country was particularly enthusiastic about going to war, but both where determined and confident. Germany had been defeated in 1918. Now the British and French empires were even stronger relative to it than 20 years earlier. It might not be a fast war but sooner rather than later the allies should have crushing material superiority over Germany and end its threat for good this time.

South Africa September 5th, 1939

Somewhat to the British shock the South African government, of JBM Hertzog had tried to declare her neutrality in the war despite being obliged to follow London's lead normally. But Hertzog's own government had deserted him. By September 4th after furious parliamentary debate Hertzog had been forced to resign and Jan Smuts had formed a new government. Smut's had not lost time to declare war on Germany. But South Africa's internal troubles would just start as member if the strongly pro-German Ossewabrandwag group would refuse to serve, attack servicemen in uniform and even sabotage infrastructure.

Athens, September 9th, 1939

The Greek supreme war council was, again, in full session. The Greek government was understandably anything but happy with the start of the war in Europe. Greece had proclaimed her neutrality but the Greek merchant marine had come under German attack already from the first day of the war, German submarines and surface raiders were treating Greek ships no different than British ones, while not everything was good with the western allies, the Greek government had already been given notice that delivery of the Spitfire and Blenheim bombers it had on order had to be frozen indefinitely, understandable but highly problematic, little news were coming from the French offensive begun two days ago in the Saar, while the Germans seemed to be advancing even faster than expected in Poland, Pangalos had already summoned colonel Konstantinos Davakis, the army's foremost expert in armoured warfare to the council. At least Italy had not joined the war. Yet at least...

Dublin, September 10th, 1939

Back in April 1938 Michael Collins, had secured an agreement with Britain to return the Irish treaty ports to Ireland on the unofficial understanding that should the need arise facilities in Ireland would be made available to British forces, after all Ireland was part of the Commonwealth. Then he had called a snap election as soon as he was back from London, easily securing over half the popular vote and 77 out of 138 seats in the Dail. But now war had come and what Ireland should do. Deciding whether Ireland would follow the rest of the Commonwealth to war was an easy decision, this was not Ireland's war, over the centuries too many Irishmen had died in Britain's imperial wars for Collins taste, both for and against it, thus when the vote had come in front of the Dail it had been overwhelmingly in favour of declaring neutrality. But even if it was not written in the treaty of the previous year, Collins had given his word that should the need arise some support would be given Britain and Collins had always been a man of his word. Ireland might be neutral. But her neutrality would be heavily tilting towards the allies...

Saar, September 18th, 1939

The French offensive drew to a halt. In twelve days the French army had advanced 8km in the face of resistance that could be best described as anemic...

Soviet-Polish border, September 20th, 1939

800,000 Soviet troops backed by 4,700 tanks and 3,300 aircraft attacked over the border, while the Soviet Union announced to the world that it considered Poland to had ceased to exist. Polish border troops fought back as best as they could against the new enemy but the Polish army was already crumbling under the German attack. Now facing also the Soviets any hopes of prolonged resistance in the so called "Romanian bridgehead" the Poles had planned for before the war were gone. The only question now was how many Polish soldiers would manage to escape Poland to fight another day...

Warsaw, September 25th, 1939

Sixty Dornier Do-19s led an attack of 1,090 aircraft against the Polish capital, the Germans used everything down to Ju-52 transport planes indiscriminately dropping nearly 900 tons of bombs and inflicting thousands of civilian casualties. The huge four engined bombers had been kept out of combat so far but by now the Polish air force was mostly gone and Warsaw's air defences severely understrength from weeks of fighting leaving the Germans to bomb the city almost at will. Still the actual military results were questionable. Propaganda results were anything but questionable though, as the western press would write that Polish casualties from the bombing run in the tens of thousands. But Warsaw would not surrender for 6 more days.

Trieste, September 28th, 1939

Vittorio Veneto, was delivered to the Regia Marina. Some final fitting out before joining the fleet was still required but the Italians were in a hurry. Italy so far had kept neutral in the new war. But this could change at any moment, the duce was most interested it seeing the unfortunate state of affairs that was peace change sooner rather than later after all. At slightly over 44,000t normal displacement and armed with 9 16in guns the new ship was easily the most powerful battleship in the world, only her sister Littorio, itself also fitting out was a match to it. The French counterpart to the Italian ships, Richelieu would need till the end of the year to complete anf her sister Jean Bart was due to complete in February 1941. Of course by the end of 1940 one could also expect the two German battleships of the Bismarck class and at least the first of the three King George V class battleships to enter service. But Italian propagandists could conveniently claim that both the British and the German ships had "merely" 15in guns, the two Ansons building for the Royal Navy were still away out and no-one knew what was going to happen to the new battleships the Germans had ordered just before the way. As no-one knew what was going on in Japan and the Soviet Union. The Japanese were building... something. And the Soviets simply refused to give any information publicly...

Poland, October 9th, 1939

The last units of operations groups Polesie, were forced to surrender to the Germans, Warsaw had already fallen from October 1st the same day the invading German and Soviet armies had met each other. Poland had fought for over 5 weeks before being destroyed. But her destruction had not come entirely cheaply to the Wehrmacht. Over 51,000 men had been lost along with 385 aircraft and 312 tanks. [3] Hundreds more aircraft and tanks had been heavily damaged and many would likely never be returned to service. From the Polish armed forces some 40,000 had been interned in Hungary and another 72,000 in Romania. [4] Hungary, traditionally friendly to Poland, was already letting the interned Poles quietly slip into Yugoslavia from were they could either take trains through Italy to France or move down to Piraeus and take from there a ship to Marseilles. In Romania the elected government under Ion Bratianu, while proclaiming its neutrality had been rather more openly supportive of its Polish allies, German pressure had been met by polite reassurances that "Romanian oil exports to Germany would continue normally" while the Polish gold had left Constanta for Constantinople under the discreet escort of Greek destroyers, Britain and France wanted to avoid using their own warships in the Black Sea lest they further alienate the Soviets and increasing numbers of Poles found their own way in the mostly Greek passenger ships of the Constantinople-Constanta route...


[1] In OTL it was 316 battalions by September 1st and ~1 million men. So the additional day mobilizing gains Poland about 70,000 men.
[2] That's 50 P.50s and 31 PZL.37s in addition to OTL, which means the Poles have TTL a modern fighter if in rather limited numbers. Wever's boys are in for a few surprises...
[3] In comparison to 285 and 236 in OTL
[4] Roughly 42,000 Poles more have escaped TTL into Romania.

 

[Lascaris]

Athens, October 5th, 1939

If it was the wrong time for politicking with a war ongoing, the Greeks hadn't really noticed. Since June Georgios Papandreou had come under mass attack over the participation of his son in a Trotskyite organization and it was clear to him that come from supporters of Sofoklis Venizelos, the son of Eleutherios and his rival within the Liberal party. It was true that Kafandaris who had actually succeeded the late Venizelos had backed him but had still forced Papandreou to leave the ministry of education for a different ministry, a slight that Papandreou had been forced to accept at the time but had done so with ill grace. Worse yet he had to see his son leave for the United States as a result for the scandal. Papandreou's reaction had taken nearly 3 months to emerge but now it showed with the creation of the Democratic and Agrarian party. Twenty more Liberal MPs including Ioannis Sofianopoulos and nine senators had followed Papandreou into the new party and while the Democratic MPs had continued offering their support to the government, now Kafandaris, directly controlling only 124 MPs directly depended upon Papandreou who was already asking for his return to the ministry of education. But Kafandaris was not a man to take well to this kind of pressure. If Papandreou was not willing to back him, he'd enter talks with Stratos. And if Stratos would not see reason which he did not, despite Zavitsanos best efforts to arrange a coalition then the matter would be taken to the ballots, after all he felt a new mandate was needed, the voters had elected Venizelos not himself. A snap election was called for November 12th.

Pera Palace hotel, Constantinople, October 12th, 1939

Zygmunt Pulawski, shook hands with the two Greeks opposite him at the table. Pulawski had just got a chance to not just continue working on aircraft but to continue working on aircraft of his own design. And the Greek KEA aircraft factory had just gotten a new technical director and chief designer it sorely lacked. Under instructions by Prodromos Bodosakis, informally assigned by Kafandaris to coordinate the Greek war industries, Greek recruiting agents were fast at work among the Polish civilian refugees offering jobs to any engineers that had managed to escape to Constantinople. Anyone who agreed would find first a room in Bodosakis own Pera palace and then a ticket to a secure job in Athens. For many it was proving more enticing than the uncertain possibility of maybe securing work in some French factory if they managed to reach France. The Polish government in exile, still in shock from the defeat, wasn't minding... much. After all this way some independent design capability might find its way back to Poland after liberation. Besides the Greeks while neutral were proving quietly helpful so far...

Psamatheia/Samatya, Constantinople, October 15th, 1939

"Join the fight for freedom! Volunteer today for the Armee d' Orient!" the poster proclaimed in French... and also Greek, Armenian, Russian and Turkish. In the opinion of the sergeant who was keeping with his squad a wary eye over the volunteer recruiting center at the Surp Kevork church the poster was just wasting printing ink with some of the languages. Armenians were volunteering in reasonable numbers, they were traditionally pro-French and there were over 220,000 of them in Constantinople, which was why the recruiting centre was in one of their churches. Russians so far were mostly indifferent, why a White Russian emigre would join the fight for Poland? Greeks... if Greeks wanted to volunteer there was always the Greek army, they didn't even need to take the ride to Catalca, they could do right here in the city. As for the Turks, the only interest shown was by the people who he was certain were keeping an eye at who was volunteering, Turkish sympathies in this was were for understandable reasons rather specific which was one of the reasons his squad was here. That the situation in the queen of cities was... delicate was rather an understandment. Back in August after the German-Soviet pact France had decided to give a message of firmness and had sent admiral Georges Durand-Viel, the former head of the French navy, as French High Commissioner to Constantinople. But the move had not been accompanied by any notable reinforcement of the allied military presence. Allied forces still consisted of the 6e Regiment Etranger d'infanterie and the British 85th infantry brigade. The Italians were at the other side of the straits at Uskudar their "Corpo truppe di Constantinopoli" must have at least 5,000 men itself. The Turks or for that matter the Greeks? The correct answer was who really knew? But the police was mostly Greeks and Turks and both countries had a tradition of militarized police forces. And you couldn't discount anyone from boy scouts to sports clubs in this damn place. Back in the spring by some unfortunate coincidence ASP, the Pera Sports Club had won for the first time the Greek football championship at the very time Galatasaray had won her first Turkish football championship. Fans of both teams had come out to celebrate. Then promptly clashed with each other, with fists quickly giving place to rocks and crowbars and these promptly escalating to knives, petrol bombs and firearms. It had been by pure luck and prompt intervention by both sides, who did not care for unplanned troubles, that deaths had been avoided. But tension was still very much in the air in the friendly game arranged between ASP and Galatasaray a couple weeks later supposedly to mend fences, that some idiot Greek journalist in Apogevmatini had nicknamed it the "Constantinople champion game" and his counterparts in Tanin had taken up the idea had hardly helped reducing tensions...

Athens, October 19th, 1939

Back in September 10th Euripides Bakirtzis had been sent by Pangalos to meet with Maxime Weygand in Constantinople to discuss military cooperation between France and the Balkan nations. Bakirtzis in his report back to Pangalos in September 15th had not been entirely impressed by Weygand's plans and proposals. Now Weygand was in Athens and Pangalos, very much agreed with his subordinate and protege. In Weygand's opinion it would be impossible for the Germans to breach French defenses in the west, but also equally impossible for the allied armies to breach German defences while Italy would join the war on the German side. The solution? A second front in the Balkans against the Germans that would decide the war very much like the defeat of the central powers in 1918 had begun in the Macedonian front. Pangalos might have been sympathetic but was not blind. Weygand promised that France would provide 4-5 divisions initially to the new Balkan front. Was that in addition to French forces in Syria? No it included them. What would happen if Turkey and Bulgaria chose to fight the Balkan entente then? Surely they would not? Alexandretta had already been given to Turkey and the Balkan Entente nations could negotiate with Bulgaria and Turkey their current differences to secure their neutrality and even inclusion to the Balkan Entente? It was pure chance that Pangalos had not thrown Weygand off his office then and there causing a diplomatic incident. What about specifics on air cover? Some would be surely provided. In the end the only concrete thing that had come out of the meeting was Weygand committing to support Greek requests for arms deliveries from France in anticipation of future cooperation...

Greece, November 12th, 1939

Election time. And the first election since the death of Venizelos. Despite friction between them the Liberals and the new Democratic party had formed a "National Coalition" to enter the election against the "United Opposition" of Stratos and Dragoumis. The National Coalition had come close to winning with 44.42% of the vote. But the United Opposition had won 47.33% and 137 seats in parliament to 113 of the National Coalition. At the party level the National Radical party had won 27.44% and 79 seats, the Conservative Reform party 19,89% and 58 seats, the Liberals 38,03% and 97 seats and the Democratic Agrarian party 6.39% and 16 seats. The Greek Communist party with 5.43%, slightly diminished from 1936, had failed to elect anyone in parliament although it had secured three senators. But who should form the new government? Not Stratos whose party had actually lost votes from the previous election. Not the National Coalition, which fell 13 seats short of a majority. Stratos backing a Dragoumis cabinet would had been logical but Stratos had not forgotten the fall of his own government and his replacement by Dragoumis back in July 1932 and as a former Liberal had contacts also in the Venizelist camp. His 58 MPs made him kingmaker. If the Conservative Reform party backed the Liberals there would be a Liberal government. If it backed the National Radicals, Dragoumis would become prime minister. The role was convenient and he start negotiating with both.

Ansaldo, Genoa, November 15th, 1939

Battleship Impero was launched. Along with her sister Roma they had been laid the previous year, part of the 1938 program much to the consternation of the Italian finance ministry that was facing significant problems paying for all three services on top of the massive costs being incurred due to the Spanish civil war. Fortunately for the ministry the end of the war in summer of 1938 had freed up funding and the navy had finally managed to lay down the three heavy cruisers that since 1935 were supposed to counter the pair of cruisers the Greeks had building in the United States. But now war was closing much earlier than anticipated and both the new battleships and the new cruisers were not going to be ready before 1942 at the earliest. All was a matter of choices of course. Impero and Roma cost about 1.6 billion lire and the three cruisers, Luigi Rizzo, Venezia and Constanzo Ciano another 900 million for a total of 2.5 billion lire. The support to the Spanish nationalists had cost Italy 13.4 billion lire [1] . The Ethiopian war another 33 billion lire...

Greece November 25th, 1939

On the first session of parliament in November 19th Stratos had backed the conservative Liberal Konstantinos Zavitsanos as president of the chamber. But negotiations for a government had kept dragging on, as Stratos kept negotiating with both sides trying to maximize the price of his support and an increasingly frustrated Kafandaris, remained at the head of a caretaker government. What Stratos failed to account for was that he was overplaying his hand and that in person while respected he was hardly popular among his fellow politicians. Or for that matter that Dragoumis while technically in the right was widely respected as an intellectual all across the political spectrum even among communists. Or that passionately anti-Venizelist, Dragoumis family had its own connections to the highest levels of the Venizelist camp, after all the Benakis family were close confidantes of Venizelos and even if someone forgot his own love affair with Penelope Delta nearly a generation ago she and his sister Natalia Mela remained close friends. And thus when the coalition government between the National Radicals and the Liberals would be announced in November 25th the only one surprised was Stratos. Ion Dragoumis would become prime minister for a second time with Kafandaris his deputy. The three war ministries would go to Liberals, War to Kafandaris in person, air to Alexandros Zannas, Penelope's son in law and the Hellenic Air Force's spiritual father and Navy to Alexandros Hatzikyriakos. Both Theodore Pangalos and Ioannis Demestichas would retain command of the army and navy respectively, after all this was not the time to start shifting around the high command. It was about time. Five days later the Soviets invaded Finland...

[1] Or in other words the early end to the Spanish civil war reduced Italian costs by about 900 million enough to allow Italy to begin construction of the Ciano class cruisers a year ahead of OTL (and actually lay them down instead of the war intervening). Then on top of that the Italians will be reacting to Greek naval construction TTL which turns the ships from large light cruisers to heavy cruisers instead. And accidentally also forces the French's hands with their Saint Louis class but that's a story for later...

 

[Lascaris]

Finland, November 30th, 1939

Twenty-one Soviet divisions, totalling roughly 450,000 men crossed the Finish border after negotiations with the Finish government had failed. The Soviets had produced a puppet government under Otto Kuusinen, claiming it was the legitimate government supported by the people of Finland but not many in Finland or the world were particularly impressed. Despite being heavily outnumbered and even more heavily outgunned, Finland had 32 tanks and 114 to take on 2,500 tanks and nearly 3,900 aircraft on the Soviet side, the Finnish army fought back. Worst yet for the Soviets, whose own army had been gutted by the purges, they fought back successfully despite being heavily outnumbered and massively outgunned.

Constantinople, December 14th, 1939

It had taken the League of Nations 15 days to expel the Soviet Union from its members in reaction to the invasion of Finland, not the swiftest reaction even at this late time when its non reaction to German, Italian and Japanese reaction had reduced the League to complete irrelevance. But Britain and France had actually received the news of the war in Finland, with resolution, one might even say enthusiasm that seemed at the moment to be completely lacking from their war against Germany, where much to the Polish dismay hardly a shot was being fired at the moment. Planning for sending an expeditionary force to Finland through Sweden and Norway had begun and the plans to bomb the Soviet oilfields in Baku had gained renewed momentum as it was hoped that bombing Baku would cripple the Soviet economy leading possibly even to a collapse of the regime and through crippling the Soviet economy also heavily affect the Germans. The Soviet invasion had also brought drastic reinforcement of the allied position here in Constantinople as well. A French squadron consisting of the battleship Lorraine, 3 heavy cruisers, a light cruiser and 3 destroyers had sailed to Constantinople, under admiral Castex whom Darlan wanted away from France proper, the French army was forming a new division, the 193e Division d'Infanterie, adding the 24e Régiment Mixte Colonial from Syria and the newly formed 2e Regiment Infanterie Armenienne to the 6e REI already present in Constantinople, while agreement had been reached with the Polish government in exile to form up one two new divisions directly in Constantinople in addition to the ones forming in France. After all Poles leaving internment in Romania had to pass through the City...

Near the Azores, December 21st, 1939

The German navy had begun the war with two out of its three panzerschiffe already in the Atlantic to attack allied shipping. Of the two the Admiral Graf Spee assigned to the North Atlantic, had to be return to Germany in mid November after managing to sink or capture three ships. Deutschland assigned to the South Atlantic has had a far more profitable voyage, reaching all the way to the Indian ocean before increasing wear and tear make her captain turn north and head for Germany. On the 18th she sinks a Greek freighter, her eight ship but not before its captain can radio a distress signal, drawing allied hunting groups after her. It is Force Y consisting of the French battleship Dunkerque and HMS Neptune that gets lucky as floatplanes flying off the French ship detect the German raider. Deutschland's captain tries to evade, hoping that the allies will lose him under dark, but the two allied ships have the speed advantage and close the distance before he an do so. Finally Deutschland having no other option turns to give battle, after all she has a reasonable chance of beating off a pair of allied cruisers. Dunkerque specifically designed to take down the panzershiffe is different beast altogether though. Her armour proves invulnerable to the German ship's 283mm guns,just as designed. Deutschland's armour on the other hand is not completely invulnerable even against the Neptune's 6in guns, far less Dunkerque. Two hours later Deutschland is no more. And allied propaganda can pun that Germany has been sunk...

Stockholm, January 10th, 1940

The Soviet Union officially was rejecting any negotiations with the Finnish government, after all it was not recognising it in the first place. Unofficially Alexandra Kollontai the Soviet ambassador in Finland begun negotiating with Finish representatives. After six weeks of fighting the Soviet war was becoming an embarrassment, with the Soviet army taking tens of thousands of casualties so far for no tangible gain on the ground. And the Soviet establishment was getting gravely concerned over the possibility of Western intervention in the war. The large scale reinforcement of allied forces in Constantinople had not been missed, while NKVD agents in Constantinople were also reporting increasing numbers of volunteers from the large White Russian community of the city to the French army following the start of the Finnish war. Soviet paranoia in general and Stalin's in particular could run amok on much flimsier evidence than French battleships anchored on the Golden Horn...

Belgium, January 17th, 1940

The day passed quietly. There had been some concern a few days before when movements by the 6th German army had been detected near the border but nothing had come out of them. Belgium remained mobilized since September but remained so far neutral. Even though the Belgian high command was understandably more weary of the Germans than the Western allies, technically it remained strictly neutral towards both, the Belgian border crossing to France were closed with roadblocks on them for the unlikely event the French marched in uninvited. It would be only after the war that it would be learned that the Germans had intended to invade the west on January 17th and the invasion had been postponed between bad weather and no-one in the German high command being particularly happy with their current operations plan...

Rome, January 21st, 1940

The outbreak of the war in Europe had put Italy in the somewhat odd position of being the only power beyond the United States capable of exporting arms, thus gaining much needed foreign exchange, but at the very time that it was also preparing itself for war. A careful balance needed to be struck. A balance was stuck. Whether it was a careful one was a different question. Back in December Italy had informed both Sweden and Turkey that it was willing to offer for sale warships already in service with the Italian navy and military commissions from both countries had quickly reached Italy. Sweden felt understandably extremely vulnerable beween the general European war and the Soviet war with Finland. On December 30 the Swedes had reported back home that the Italians were willing to sell the Barbiano class cruisers for 45 million krone, the Dardo class destroyers for 15 million, Sella class destroyers for 8.1 million and Spica class torpedo boats for 7.6 million. [1] The Swedes had concluded a deal to buy 216 aircraft, two Sella and two Spica class ships. Things were more complicated with Turkey. The Turks had already a light cruiser, 4 destroyers and as many submarines under construction in Italian yards. The cruiser laid down back in April 1937 would be complete by April. The submarines laid down back in June, had already been launched and should be ready by the summer, Italian yards averaged about a year to complete a submarine. The destroyers thought would not be ready before the summer of 1941 and Turkey felt that this might be too late, at a moment that her own navy was in need of immediate reinforcement and felt itself threatened in the aftermath of the German-Soviet pact and the massive reinforcement of the allied presence in Constantinople, but her budget was already very strained. But the Italians would not mind to see the Soldati class destroyers currently under construction in their own service. Thus grounds for a deal could be found. The destroyers currently under construction would be taken over by the Regia Marina. In their place the light cruiser Alberto da Giussano and the 4 Dardo class destroyers would be immediately delivered to he Turkish navy.

Piraeus, February 1st, 1940

Fifty Vickers Mark VI tanks start unloading in the docks. Both these and the French R-35 tanks of which the Greeks had received 50 in January and were expecting another 50 in April were a far cry from the Somua S-35 tanks the Greeks had tried and failed to buy or for that matter from the privately designed Vickers heavy cruiser of which Greece, its own arms industry still closely tied to British company, had been the first customer with a hundred machines and a production licence ordered early the previous year ahead of the British war office which had accepted the design only in April. At 25 tons, with 70mm frontal armour and a 400hp diesel engine, sir John Carden's latest design had been everything the Greeks might had desired aside from not existing as deliveries had been delayed indefinitely by the start of the war and so far the difficulties over ELEO setting up production locally were proving much greater than originally expected. Just to add to the irony the new tank had even retained its Greek mythological name, "Centaur", when accepted into British service. [2] At least the allies by now were somewhat less sparing with other material, 60 4.5in and 155mm howitzers, a dozen 105mm guns and about two hundred 25mm anti-tank guns were being delivered. And if domestic industry could not, yet, produce tanks it could at least cover other needs. The first locally made T-40 rifles had already been delivered to units of the 1st Mountain Infantry brigade as were the first locally designed automatic carbines...

TOMTAS aircraft factory, Kayseri, February 10th, 1941

Four more Bf-109E fighters delivered in crates through Italy were brought into flying condition. The Turkish air force was most satisfied with the aircraft, the initial order for 60 had been followed by a second order for 40 more aircraft. The Turks would had liked to build the aircraft locally but there had been surprising or given the essentially feudal nature of the German administration perhaps not so surprising difficulties to get the Germans to agree to allow licence production, which was why TOMTAS was preparing to locally build the Reggiane Re.2000. This still put TOMTAS ahead of the Bulgarian DAR, the Bulgarian attempt to locally manufacture the Avia B.135 had been actively sabotaged by the Germans, if not the Greeks and the Yugoslavs, reports from Athens had the first locally built Merlin powered P.53s in service thanks to the efforts of Pulawski. But one could be philosophical about it, the Germans were still making deliveries on schedule while the Greeks and the Yugoslavs had to contend with the Hurricanes delivered to Yugoslavia and French promises for LN-161s. It was no accident that the Greeks had turned to the US ordering Martin 167s recently...

[1] Source here from page 24 on.

[2] Centaur is of course the Lost Monkeys version of the Valiant tank in the excellent Sir John Carden lives TL. Sir John's survival is incidental here, with a point of divergence in late 1920 Carden finding his way into the same aircraft crash 16 years later or said crash happening in the first place would be highly problematic. @allanpcameron is of course treating his subject in far greater detail and far better than I have any hope doing here. I'll only say in my defence that my initial Centaur was to be "21t, with 70mm frontal armor and a 340hp Liberty engine" so relatively close. Shorta kinda so.

 

[Lascaris]

I think by the end of 1940 (I assume fully worked up?) and her two sisters shortly after.

Probably a table is in order... if for no other reason for me not to forget things.

Everything with a ? ahead of it is tentative as it may well be affected one way or another by future events.

Ship	Laid Down	Launched	Completed
Littorio	28/3/1934​	22/1/1937​	6/12/1939​
Vittorio Veneto	28/3/1934​	23/12/1936​	15/12/1939​
Roma	18/5/1938​	9/2/1940​	? 14/2/1942
Impero	14/5/1938​	15/11/1940​	?
King George V	1/1/1937​	21/2/1939​	? 1/10/1940
Prince of Wales	1/1/1937​	3/5/1939​	? 19/1/1941
Duke of York	5/5/1937​	28/2/1940​	? 19/8/1941
Anson	20/7/1937​	24/2/1940​	? 14/2/1942
Howe	1/6/1937​	9/4/1940​	? 17/6/1942
Lion	28/2/1939​	22/11/1943​	? 11/11/1944
Temeraine	1/7/1939​	?	?
Dunkerque	24/12/1932​	2/4/1935​	31/12/1936​
Strasbourg	24/11/1933​	12/12/1935​	15/9/1937​
Richelieu	22/4/1935​	17/7/1938​	15/3/1940​
Jean Bart	12/9/1936​	6/12/1939​	? 86% 6/1940
Clemenceau	17/7/1938​	? 20% 5/1940	?
Joffre	26/11/1937​	1/8/1939​	? 66.4% 6/1940
Sharnhorst	15/5/1935​	3/9/1936​	7/12/1938​
Gneisenau	6/4/1935​	8/11/1938​	21/4/1939​
Bismarck	1/4/1936​	14/11/1938​	? 24/5/1940
Tirpitz	2/7/1936​	1/12/1938​	? 25/10/1940
Graf Zeppelin	28/11/1936​	8/11/1938​	? 87.7% 9/1939

 

[Lascaris]

Karelian Isthmus, February 18th, 1940

The Mannerheim line had been leaking like a sieve for the past several days. Disaster at Summa had been barely avoided by a timely counterattack on the 11th only for new breakthroughs to be made by the Soviets. Finally Mannerheim had been forced to order a retreat to the "Intermediate line". Even that would not be enough as the Finns were forced to retreat o the so called "rear line" before Viipuri. Fighting went on as did negotiations but Finland was getting into increasingly dire straits as Sweden refused to directly intervene beyond her provision of arms and volunteers and Finland was reluctant to accept Western military aid. This of course had not stopped Entente preparations to move an 135,000 men expeditionary force in support of Finland, that not accidentally should also cut off Swedish iron ore shipments to Germany. If everything went according to plan the force should deploy to Scandinavia by March 20.

Athens, February 20th, 1940

Ioannis Voulpiotis was not a happy man. Closely connected to German financial interests representing Siemens in Greece and even more closely connected to the Greek political system, he professed himself a Venizelist and his family was part of the Greek political elite all the way back to the revolution, Voulpiotis back a few years ago had managed his biggest deal, getting to supply and organize Greek state radio. According to the deal his local subsidiary of Siemens was to provide and locally produce and repair radio and electronic equipment for radio stations in Athens, Smyrna, Thessaloniki and Corfu and had even gotten the rights for future introduction of television into Greece. On the financial part Voulpiotis could not really complain the Greek state had stuck to the deal, facilitating importation into Greece of machinery and equipment through the Greek-German clearing and placing large orders with him after all the Greek army and air force had their ever increasing needs of radio equipment. But Voulpiotis original deal also gave him the management of Greek state radio. Unexpected delays to this actually happening had kept cropping up while Venizelos was alive and Voulpiotis did not dare confront Venizelos over them, or perhaps had been himself under the spell of the great Cretans charisma. He was certainly much less impressed by his successors though so he pressed, to get the management through means direct and indirect, only to end up finally confronting Ion Dragoumis. Dragoumis was an intellectual, a writer and had been a career diplomat. But anyone who made the mistake that he could be pushed around forgot that Dragoumis had also been the man who had coordinated the Greek side of the struggle for Macedonia as cosul of Thessaloniki, running a very effective campaign of guerrilla bands, spies and propaganda. Dragoumis had made ot amply clear he would not under any circumstances leave Greek propaganda in the hands of someone compromised by German interests. Then had gone a step further creating Ethniko Idryma Radiofonias, the National Radio Foundation to run the Athens and Smyrna stations as well as the older Tsiggiridis station in Thessaloniki. Stratis Myrivilis would serve as program director of EIR with Tsiggiridis as technical director. Voulpiotis... Voulpiotis was lucky to be left with his company in one piece...

Central Atlantic, February 24, 1940

One more ship went down to a German submarine. But the owner one Aristotle Onassis, had made sure that the ship was actually insured for more than its actual commercial worth. The young Smyrniot, a graduate of the Evangelical School of Smyrna and its commercial academy, had taken over his father's successful tobacco business and grown from strength to strength in the past 15 years first exporting tobacco to Argentina and the United States and then using his very substantial profits to enter shipping. There were around Greeks much richer than Onassis at the moment. But increasingly thet were starting to take notice of the new financial power growing out of Smyrna. In Smyrna itself Onassis was all the more influential between his family connections and his support and participation in Panionios... [1]

Moscow, March 13th, 1940

The Soviets had attacked the Finnish "Rear line" on March 5th. The attack had made progress but Finnish progress still held, while in Moscow a Finnish delegation was attempting to hammer an acceptable peace treaty with the Soviet Union. The main point of contention was the city of Viipuri, the fourth largest in Finland which the Soviets were demanding even though it was still being held by the Finnish army. The Finns were understandably most reluctant to give it up particularly since their army was still, if just barely, holding onto it. Finally Stalin's paranoia would work for once to the Finnish favour. Soviet intelligence was well aware of the preparations of the allied expeditionary force to deploy to Scandinavia. In Constantinople allied forces had grown to 2 Polish and 1 French divisions as well as a British brigade threatening the Crimea. It was better to end the war in Finland on slightly worse terms that invite war with Britain and France. After all it was hardly out of the question that in such a case the fascists would forget their war with the western powers and turn on the Soviets. After all if the war was being taken seriously there would be some actual fighting since September on the French-German border. The Soviet Union accepted peace along the line currently held by the Finnish army spanning from Viipuri through Kuparsaari along the northern shore of Vuoksi River to Taipale on the western shore of Lake Ladoga. After 15 weeks Finland had been defeated. But it had not come cheap to the Soviets who had suffered about 319,000 combat casualties in addition to another 62,000 sick or frostbitten in exchange for 70,000 Finnish casualties...

Germany, April 3rd, 1940

The first German ships start quietly leaving German ports heading north...

Selected terms of the Moscow peace treaty, March 12th, 1940

1. Finnish Karelia west of lake Ladoga south of the Viipuri-Kuparsaari-Vuoksi-Taipale line ceded to Soviet Union
2. Ladoga Karelia east of Sortavala ceded to Soviet Union
3. Salla-Kuusamo area ceded to Soviet Union
4. Finnish parts of Rybachi peninsula ceded to Soviet Union
5. Islands of Suursaari, Tytärsaari, Lavansaari, Peninsaari and Seiskari in Gulf of Finland ceded to Soviet Union
6. Hanko peninsula leased to Soviet Union for 30 years.

The VKT line courtesy of Wikepedia

Ladoga Karelia

Gray Map of Republic of Karelia

www.maphill.com

[1] And yes Onassis TTL is rising from a much bigger financial basis compared to OTL...

 

[Lascaris]

Off Trondheim, 08:00 April 8th, 1940

"No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy". The captain of HMS Ardent when forced to action against the Admiral Graf Spee proves true to Nelson's words when he rams his ship on the German pocket battleship. Graf Spee suffered extensive damage, but Ardent was sunk by German fire without managing to report its engagement to the admiralty.

Off Lillesand, 10:00 April 8th 1940

The German troopship, MS Rio De Janeiro, was supposed to support German landing on Bergen. Instead it had met HMS Tarpon. The British boat would sink it with a pair of torpedoes. No report of the sinking would reach the admiralty till the next day as Tarpon was under strict orders to maintain radio silence.

Norwegian Sea, 14:00 April 8th 1940

The British Home fleet turned Northwest following reports of sighting a group of German ships, it was assumed the German goal was to slip the blockading forces and break into the Atlantic. Meanwhile plans for the landing of troops to Norway continued, the Scots Guards and supporting units had already been loaded on 4 Royal Navy cruisers which should be sailing out within the next day.

Oslo, 04:00 April 9th 1940

The Norwegian cabinet was in session for the past several hours after news had reached it of the navy engaging German ships outside Oslo. Finally the decision to order a partial mobilization was issued. Colonel Rasmus Hatledal the chief of the general staff had instead asked for a general mobilisation but to no avail, could only say that he'd order the army to start mailing call-up notes to reservists right away only to be met by shock. The army could conduct the ordered mobilization only by mail? It was Hatledal's turn to be shocked, hadn't the ministers just order a secret partial mobilization? It took defence minister Birger Ljungberg to explain the vagaries of the mobilization system, and that partial mobilization was allowed only by secret call-up. One more hour would be lost before the cabinet issued the order for a general mobilization. Elsewhere in Norway fighting was already underway.

Narvik, 06:00 April 9th 1940

An hour ago 10 German destroyers had sunk the two Norwegian coastal defence ships protecting the city and landed 2,000 Gebirgsjäger. The Norwegian commander, a colonel Sudlo, had surrendered Narvik shortly afterwards. He would be put on trial on charges of high treason for his action. The German ships start immediately refuelling from the couple of German tankers that had put into the port before the invasion under the guise of merchant ships, while the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau provided distant cover to the force. It was estimated that it would take 18 to 20 hours to refuel all ten ships. The battleship Renown backed by 5 destroyers turned toward Narvik, while the 2nd destroyer flotilla with 5 more destroyers was ordered into Narvik. Renown's sister Repulse, escorted by 4 more destroyers and the light cruiser Penelope turned north to join Renown but she was still much further out.

Trondheim, Morning April 9th 1940

With coastal defences smashed by Admiral Graf Spee's heavy guns, the city was forced to surrender...

Bergen, Morning April 9th 1940

Coastal defences would manage to severely damage the light cruiser Karlsruhe and moderately damage a transport before massed Luftwaffe bombardment forced their surrender. Karlsruhe would be sunk by Fleet Air Arm bombers the next day.

Copenhagen, 08:30 April 9th 1940

The Danish government surrendered, 6 hours after the country had been invaded by the Germans. Had not Zanzibar surrendered to Britain in 38 minutes back in 1896 it might had been the shortest war in history...

Kristiansand, 14:00 April 9th 1940

The light cruiser Köln had run aground under Norwegian fire but the town had nevertheless fallen to the Germans. Köln would be unstuck and ordered back to Germany for repairs only to be sunk by the Polish submarine Orzel that had managed to position itself outside Kristiansand by then.

Drøbak Sound, April 9th 1940

The German invasion force led by heavy cruisers Admiral Hipper and Blücher was forced back after Norwegian coastal defences sunk Hipper and severely damaged Blücher. Oslo would be captured later in the day by German paratroopers but not before, the Norwegian cabinet, royal family and gold reserves could be evacuated.

Narvik, 03:00 April 10th 1940

German destroyers start leaving port for the return voyage to Germany...

 

[Lascaris]

Vestfjord, 04:00, April 10th, 1940

The 2nd destroyer flotilla was on its way to attack Narvik when it encountered the German destroyer force leaving Narvik for Germany. Neither side really expected an encounter at this point and the Royal Navy force with 5 destroyers was outnumbered two to one but this did not stop the British commander captain Warburton-Lee from attacking. Three German and two British destroyers would be sunk in the short action before the remaining German ships would manage to run away at 05:10 with the British ships in pursuit.

Lofoten 11:00, April 10th, 1940

The seven surviving German destroyers escaping Vestfjord had managed to join up with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau but the short encounter had given Renown and Repulse enough time to meet as well and the Germans had failed to shake off Warburton-Lee's surviving destroyers allowing the British to intercept the Germans. With a single light cruiser and a dozen destroyers, including 3 Tribal class ships the British clearly out-weight the 7 surviving German destroyers even though the German ships are individually much larger, while at least on paper Renown and Repulse are comparable to their German counterparts. Both battlecruisers have been modernized in the 1920s and again in the early 1930s, the start of the war has cancelled a planned thorough reconstruction of Renown, carry the same main armament and have comparable speed. It's true the German ships belt is much thicker but horizontal protection is supposed to be comparable. In reality for all their modernizations the British ships design predates Jutland and the German ships being of much newer construction hold a speed advantage besides being better protected.

The battle does not start badly for the British. Scharnhorst receives several hits from Renown, first having her rear turret knocked out, then her radar, then a 15in shell punches through her armour and causes severe engine damage dropping her speed to 20 knots. Renown in turn has received two hits, that have not much affected her ability to fight, while the fight between Gneisenau and Repulse remains so far inconclusive. And then Repulse is hit by a 15n shell from Gneisenau, explodes and sinks with nearly all hands, the admiralty board of inquiry will determine afterwards that Gneisenau's hit led to an explosion of Repulse aft magazine. Then Gneisenau joins Scharnhorst against Renown which receives several hits and starts listing. With Renown in danger of being lost as well the British destroyers launch a torpedo attack against the German ships, managing to push through the destroyer screen. Scharnhorst her speed already reduced receives multiple torpedo hits, capsizes and sinks with Gneisenau and the three surviving German destroyers escaping south towards Trondheim.

Churchill will write afterwards that the Royal Navy at Lofoten stayed true to its finest traditions which is certainly true, with the British destroyers managing to snatch victory from German hands, Wamburton-Lee will be awarded posthumously the war's fist Victoria cross for the sinking of the Scharnhorst. But it has been a pyrrhic victory. The Germans have lost Scharnhorst and four destroyers, The British have lost Repulse, Penelope, the destroyers Hardy and Acasta and will not manage to save Renown which is torpedoed and sunk by submarine U-64 on her way to Scapa Flow on April 12th. U-64 herself is sunk with all hands by Renown's escorts.

Oslo, April 11th, 1940

After some temporary repairs the heavy cruiser Blücher had been ordered back to Germany, for some reason without a destroyer escort. It had been a rather bad idea as Blücher was sunk by HMS Spearfish shortly after midnight.

Narvik, April 11th, 1940

The cruisers Devonshire, York, Berwick and Glasgow start landing 3,000 men to the north of Narvik. The German forces in the town, some 2,000 men were already under considerable pressure fighting against the Norwegian 6th division...