Introduction

The Great War was just that – great beyond all experience. It remained the Great War until madness a generation later forced it to become merely a numbered war. Nevertheless, one must go back 2,400 years to find another such inter-civilisational war that was so devastating to the spirit of the age – to the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). As the flower of Athens died in the quarries of Syracuse or with throats cut on Goat Creek, so did the shining youth of Europe die in the mud of the Somme, the charnel house of Verdun, and across the vast distances of the Eastern Front.

Four great empires were destroyed by the war: the Austro-Hungarian, the German, the Ottoman, and the Russian empires all fell during or shortly after the conflict. The war culled the European peoples of some of their best and brightest. The survivors sought meaning in the conflict and christened it the ‘war to end all wars’, hoping that the sheer cost would dissuade nations from future struggles. But the Great War did not end war; in fact it only seeded monstrous tyrannies in Germany and Russia and laid the foundations for a vaster, even more destructive war between 1939 and 1945. Its name even changed, from the Great War to merely the First World War, the precursor to the Second World War, and so slipped from historical prominence.

Yet history did indeed pivot upon the Great War, setting the stage for all that followed in the twentieth century. Where a spirit of optimism prevailed before the war, the aftermath was a pall of dispiriting, moralesapping despair at the enormous waste. The colonial subjects of even the victors lost much of the awe with which they had beheld their rulers. If not more important, the centre of gravity of Western civilisation had shifted to the United States, along with much of Europe’s wealth, the treasure of empire spent on war. Thus, whilst America enjoyed the ‘Roaring 1920s’, the devastated economies of Europe were wracked by shortages and strikes. At the same time, the war sowed, like dragon’s teeth, the predatory tyrannies of communism, national socialism, and Japanese imperialism that would convulse the rest of the century.

All this need not have happened in just the way it did. Nothing was preordained or inevitable. Europe was not subject to some god curse pronounced from the Oracle of Delphi. History does not roll down some prearranged grove. It rolls all over the place. It is contingency writ large, subject to vast and ever-shifting influences. It most resembles a kaleidoscope in which every turn of the tube presents a new picture, with no two ever alike.

In the years after the First World War there was a degree of public interest in ‘counterfactual’ history that explored the alternative possibilities of war.¹ For example, Winston Churchill’s influential history of the conflict, The World Crisis, offered the reader a tantalising series of potential turning points. With verve so typical of the author, The World Crisis outlined several key moments when greater vision or determination might have swung the war to Britain’s advantage, including a successful Gallipoli operation, a decisive Battle of Jutland or greater ambition in the use of tanks. The idea was carried further in Bernard Newman’s popular novel The Cavalry Went Through, in which a dynamic young British officer rises to command the army on the Western Front and achieves a dramatic breakthrough by employing innovative operational methods.

However, the outbreak of the Second World War abruptly ended interest in First World War alternative history. For a variety of reasons, not least commercial considerations, modern authors have been reluctant to explore the decisions of 1914–18. This is unfortunate, because the history of the Great War especially begs the question: What if? The student of the war cannot help but plead as the drama unfolds, ‘Save yourselves, you fools!’ More importantly, the reader cannot help but notice all the decision nodes where the resolution to take a particular course of action balanced on a knife’s edge and could as easily have gone one way or another. Follow those plausible roads not taken, and history changes exponentially. Suddenly, the war is racing off in different and unexpected directions.

To describe these new directions, the arts of the historian and storyteller must be given full play. Writing alternate history (more accurately ‘alternative history’) must follow rigorous rules to create plausible scenarios. Author, historian, strategist and soldier Ralph Peters has described the ‘Five Pillars of alternative history’, in Frontline’s recent Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History. They are worth summarising here for there is no more perceptive analysis in the requirements of writing for this new genre.² Good alternate history must have:

A compelling, convincing vision. ‘If the alternative-history does not grip us with logic – the recognition that this could have happened – the entire structure falls flat … We have to be captured by the recognition that, yes, but for a few matters of happenstance, the author’s vision might have come to pass, changing history.’

Historical and technical knowledge. The writer must know ‘what has happened down to the “sub-atomic” details’. He must also grasp ‘why things happened and how slight alterations in events or personal relations might have led to very different outcomes’. He must also ‘know what soldiers can do and won’t do’ and also know ‘not only what political leaders are supposed to do, but what they actually end up doing’.

Grasp of character. ‘Alternative history doesn’t work if the author doesn’t understand the actual personalities of the figures he enlivens on the page – or human complexity in general … [T]he actions men make and the actions they take must be grounded in their actual psychology and mundane circumstances.’ Characters must ‘make credible decisions based on the different developments confronting them’.

Writing ability. ‘In alternative history, the focus should be on events and characters presented in transparent prose that never calls attention to itself. The writing should be so clean and clear that it disappears, leaving only the author’s vision … Even when’ addressing ‘infernally complex situations or arcane technical details, the writing is a spotless window that lures the reader to look deeper inside’.

Storytelling ability. ‘Writing ability and storytelling are often confused with one another, but while related involve separate talents and skill-sets … The novelist/storyteller … is a literary Dr. Frankenstein, struggling bravely to create not only a living being, but an entire living world …’, choosing ‘from an infinite number of possibilities, the unique combination of body parts that will spring to life for the reader. The non-fiction writer declares, “It’s a fact.” The novelist cries, “It’s alive!”’

The reader will have to judge whether the contributors to Over the Top have successfully crafted these five pillars to support their stories.

The Great War has always been dominated by images of the Western Front in the popular imagination of the British, French, Germans, and Americans. Yet, numbers of men even greater than those fighting in France and Belgium were fighting in other theatres where the opportunities were more fluid – the Eastern Front, the Balkan Front, and the Arabian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Half of our stories address these theatres and the obscured, yet vital, contributions of the Russians, Austrians, Greeks, Turks, and Arabs. How would the war have changed had the Germans not attacked France but turned their main thrust against Russia; had the Russians thoroughly defeated the Austro-Hungarians; had the Greeks joined the Allies at Gallipoli; or had the British severed the communications of the Ottoman Empire at Alexandretta?

The war in the west is not neglected. The BEF was especially vulnerable at Ypres in 1914; Jutland begged for a more decisive outcome; technological solutions to the stalemate in the trenches were plausible earlier than they were actually realised; and there were alternative plans in place for the Battle of the Somme in 1916 that could have changed the nature and perhaps outcome of the fighting. The possibility of earlier American intervention in the war – entering in 1915 rather than 1917 – is also explored.

Although separated from the modern reader by a full century, the First World War continues to generate controversy and interest as the great event upon which modern history pivoted. It is hoped that the ten scenarios presented in this volume focus the reader upon the immensity of that event and the roads not taken that could have led to a far different world.