Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/December 2015/Op-ed


 * By TomStar81



By December 1915 the Allied and Central forces at war in Europe had watched their advances grind to a halt after repeated attempts to outmaneuver and overpower each other had failed. At sea, the loss of RMS Lusitania had permanently altered international perceptions of the German Empire's U-Boat campaign. In the aftermath of the backlash from this attack Germany had bowed to international pressure and aborted its U-Boat campaign, leaving the Atlantic Ocean open to the British Empire and other Allied forces to ship war goods through with minimal opposition. On land, the failure of the Allies to overcome Imperial Ottoman resistance resulted in the recall of a British Army commander, while Germany's attempts to secure its Eastern Front against Imperial Russia would see the Imperial Russian Army repeatedly withdraw until it was able to stabilize its lines. Irate with the lack of progress being made on the front, Emperor Nicholas II relieved Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia from command of the Imperial Russian Army, inadvertently tying his fate to the fate of Russia's progress in the west in face of an already unpopular war.

While the Imperial European Powers were fighting and plotting against each other in Europe, their forces had been recalled and largely redeployed in and around Europe to assist parent nations in their attempts to win. This had the inadvertent effect of leaving far flung regions of various Imperial European powers understaffed, and the absence of armed forces in these regions did not go unnoticed by interested parties. By 1915 the Empire of Japan had begun to capitalize on the absence of European powers by moving against China, edging out European government and business interests and moving to subjugate the nation by giving the Chinese a list of 21 demands. In the face of criticism and international condemnation, the Japanese toned down the listed demands, at which point the Chinese reluctantly signed the treaty. China, at the time a Republic, was already dealing with a cold war at home between warlords, communist-sympathizing forces, and the government proper.

In addition, the arrival of western nations had resulted in a preponderance in both nations on their preferred course of action to deal with the incoming European and U.S. forces: The Japanese for their part were quick to adopt to the western ideals, under the Meji restoration the Empire of Japan had become a massive industrial power between the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the outbreak of the war in Europe. No where was this felt more than in 1905, when the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire had come to blows in the Asia Pacific region. In the Battle of Tsushima, the Imperial Japanese Navy had defied all odds and decisively defeated the Imperial Russian Navy – and in so doing stunned the world's foremost western powers. In the process, the Empire of Japan came to be regarded as a global power, although the prevailing racial and ethnic ideologues at the time left the Japanese at the far end of the established global powers that were dominated by white men. Seeking to move against additional European strongholds in the Asia-Pacific region while their parent European nations were occupied with the bleeding at home, the Empire of Japan began colluding with the Imperial Russian Government to act against German interests in the region, and would gradually begin to edge the Russian Empire out of the area as well, a process that would last into 1916. Ultimately, the Empire of Japan's aggressive expansion would not be fully checked, contained, or overturned until 1945, when the Empire of Japan would unconditionally surrender to Allied forces to end World War II.

China, by contrast, had been forcibly opened by the British Empire, however the Chinese were slow to take to the idea of modernization. In the early days of the European intervention the Chinese went to great lengths to escape European interference – undermining European business interests, buying up and destroying railroad lines, and clinging to dress codes, customs, weaponry, and other arguably outdated customs and traditions at the time of the arrival of the Europeans. Ultimately, China would became a stage whereby the irresistible force and the immovable object would come to blows over the nation's future in the form a long running series of civil wars between communists, nationalists, and warlords, as well as wars against the invading British and Japanese Imperial forces. When the dust finally settled in China in 1949–50, the mainland would be claimed by communists while Formosa would be claimed by nationalists, resulting in the formation of two separate Chinese nations: the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China.

In the United States, the American public still remembered the loss of the Lusitania at the hands of the Imperial German Government. While still nominally neutral, the United States began to show signs of sympathy for the Allied nations. Fortuitously for the German Empire, 1916 was an election year for the United States, and war was not a popular position for the American public, granting a reprieve of sorts to the Kaiser. All the same, the possibility of a United States intervention in the war as an Allied Power could no longer be overlooked, a fact which would in time lead the German Empire to seek allies across the sea in an effort to prevent the US from intervening.

Most notably for all parties involved in combat in December of 1915 was the absence of a truce for Christmas. In 1914, the Christmas truce saw elements of the Allied and Central forces lay down their arms for a day, drawing the ire of several governments whose troops had elected to adhere to a truce as opposed to retaining a war footing over the holidays. Consequently, there was no Christmas Truce in 1915, which perhaps reflected the growing military mindset and drive to win from governments whose men were fighting abroad.