April 20th, 1915

- Prime Minister Asquith gives a speech today to armaments workers in Newcastle, attempting to calm public and press concerns over a shortage of artillery shells by suggesting that the supply of munitions is adequate in present circumstances.  Asquith bases his speech on advice from Lord Kitchener, who has assured the Prime Minister that worries over a 'shells crisis' are vastly overblown.  The reality being otherwise, Asquith will come to regret his comments.

- Preceded by heavy artillery bombardments, the Germans have launched repeated attacks against the British position on Hill 60 for three days.  After bitter fighting the Germans have reestablished themselves on the slopes of the hill, with the British defenders left clinging to the large craters the detonation of their mines on the 17th created.

- From the outbreak of the war, when it declined to side with Austria-Hungary and Germany in fulfillment of its obligations under the Triple Alliance, Italy has remained on the sidelines.  This neutrality, however, has never meant indifference; indeed, the Italian government has keenly followed the fortunes of both sides, for it has always intended to leverage its neutrality to secure territorial concessions.  There is a powerful sentiment among many of the ruling class that Italian unification is not yet complete, as long as Italians live outside of Italy.  This has inevitably drawn attention to Austria-Hungary; not only to secure the city of Trieste and the region of Trentino, but also to achieve a dominant position in the Adriatic and influence in the Balkans.  Italy has already taken advantage of the war to occupy the Albanian port of Valona, and negotiations have been ongoing with Austria-Hungary over territorial concessions.  However, even despite the intransigence of Conrad, Franz Joseph, and others in the Austro-Hungarian government, it was always improbable that Austria-Hungary would ever willing cede all the territory desired by the Italian government.

This has inevitably drawn the Italian government towards the Entente, as the British and French are more than happy to promise whatever Italy desires to secure its entry into the war on their side.  Since March 3rd, secret negotiations have been underway to find the size of the bribe necessary for Italy to join the Entente.  The only significant stumbling block has been Russia - whereas Britain and France have no problem handing over whatever portion of the Balkans Italy desires, Russia has been more reticent, as it desires both to maintain its own influence in the Balkans and secure territorial acquisitions for its Serbian ally.  The lands desired by both Serbia and Italy are not mutually compatible, and much of the focus of the negotiations has been on the fate of the Dalmatian coast and the islands just offshore.  Generally, it has been the Russians who have compromised, for they have been promised post-war control over Constantinople and the Dardanelles by the British and French, and are not willing to endanger that pledge for the sake of their Serbian ally.  The last stumbling block has been the date on which Italy will actually enter the war.  The Italian government, on the advice of the army, has requested a delay until mid-May; the Russians, meanwhile, want Italian intervention as quickly as possible, in order to force Austria-Hungary to divert forces from the Carpathians.  After personal messages from President Poincaré and King George V, this evening the tsar agrees to the delay, clearing the path for a final agreement.

- When the Ottoman Empire entered the war in November 1914, its Young Turk leadership had sought to utilize the conflict to achieve their ambition of transforming the state into a revitalized pan-Turkic empire, seizing lands in central Asia from Russia inhabited by Turkic peoples.  The crushing defeat at Sarikamish in January 1915 had destroyed these hopes, and in the aftermath the Young Turks had sought to assign blame to minorities within the Ottoman Empire, seeing non-Turkic peoples as inherently disloyal.  The focus for such accusations had rapidly become the Armenian people, whose Christian religion had also told against them.  Armenians had long been a scapegoat in Ottoman history, with widespread ethnic massacres occurring in the two decades prior to 1914.  Further, though 2 million Armenians lived on the Ottoman side of the frontier in the Caucasus, another 1.5 million lived on the Russian side, which made it easy for the Ottoman government to portray the Armenians as sympathetic to the enemy.

Over the past several months, increasingly harsh measures have been taken against Armenians.  Those who served in the Ottoman army had been removed from combat formations and reassigned to labour battalions, preemptively disarming them lest they cause any trouble.  In the countryside of the western Caucasus, and in particular the region around Lake Van, Ottoman police and soldiers have taken ever-harsher measures against the Armenian population, and by April massacres of civilians are increasingly commonplace.  These atrocities have occurred with the knowledge and complicity of governor Cevdet Bey, brother-in-law to Enver Pasha - indeed, Cevdet's appointment to Van in February aimed to ensure that anti-Armenian measures adopted by the national leadership would be enthusiastically enforced at the local level.

Yesterday Cevdet yesterday had ordered Ottoman police and army detachments into the Armenian-dominated city of Van.  After several attacks on Armenian civilians, the Armenian population rises in rebellion today, and this uprising will provide the Young Turk leadership with the excuse to implement the policy they desired to implement anyway: genocide.

The Ottoman Empire, showing the location of the city of Van in the Caucasus.

April 18th, 1915

- After the loss of Hill 60 yesterday evening, the Germans have moved up 19th Saxon Regiment, and at 630 launch a desperate counterattack.  Under heavy fire, and despite taking heavy casualties, the Germans are able to reach the British line, and hand-to-hand fighting ensued.  By nightfall, however, a British bayonet charge has cleared their trenches of Germans, and, however narrowly, they remain in command of the hill.

- Over the Western Front, French pilot Roland Garros, in his specially-modified Morane-Saulnier aircraft, shoots down his third German aircraft this month, demonstrating the effectiveness of being able to fire forward through the propeller.  Shortly afterwards, however, Garros' aircraft is damaged by German anti-aircraft fire, and he is forced to crash-land behind German lines.  Garros is made prisoner, and of greater importance his Morane-Saulnier aircraft is captured by the Germans.  It will quickly be sent back to Berlin for study, and in particular will draw the attention of aircraft designer Anthony Fokker.

- For several months the leadership of the Italian navy has been developing plans in the event of war breaking out with Austria-Hungary, and today they are officially approved by the Italian government and transmitted to Duke Abruzzi, commander-in-chief of the Italian Navy.  At the outbreak of hostilities, the Italian navy is to be based in the southern or central Adriatic, most likely at Taranto where they can be most easily reinforced by the British and French navies.  If the Austro-Hungarian fleet comes south from its main naval base at Pola, the Italians will give battle.  If the enemy remains at Pola, the Italian navy would remain in the south until called north to support the advance of the Italian army towards Trieste.  It was at this point that the Italians most expected a major naval battle to occur, and the plan emphasizes the importance of maintaining the strength of the Italian navy until this point.  This means that major warships of the Italian navy are not to be risked in minor operations; plans, for example, to seize islands on the Dalmatian coast have been abandoned.  While sensible, the plan assumes that at some point, the main battle fleet of the Austro-Hungarian navy will put to sea and seek battle.  The question, of course, is what if they do not?

April 17th, 1915

- In March Sir John French had refused Joffre's request for the British Expeditionary Force to take over the defence of the Ypres salient, citing a lack of manpower.  By the beginning of April, two new divisions have arrived in France, including 1st Canadian Division, and the BEF commander has decided that he now has the strength to extend the British line northwards.  For the past two weeks, the three divisions of the British V Corps have replaced three French divisions, a process that ends today when 1st Canadian Division comes into the line.  The Ypres salient is now held, north to south, by the French 47th Colonial Division (from the Ypres Canal to east of Langamarck), 1st Canadian Division (from east of Langmarck to north of Broodseinde) 28th British Division (from north of Broodseinde to Polygon Wood) and 27th British Division (from POlygon Wood to south of Zillebeke).

- As the British finish taking over much of the Ypres Salient, they also launched an attack just to the south, from a section of the line the BEF has held since the fall.  In the flat terrain of Flanders, any rise in the land, however slight, becomes of great importance, given whoever holds in the ability to observe into and behind enemy lines and direct artillery fire accordingly.  Thus it is with the optimistically-named Hill 60, which in reality is nothing more than a pile of earth taken from cuttings during the construction of the Ypres-Lille railway in the previous century.  The Germans have held the 'hill' since the end of the 1st Battle of Ypres, and today, in an effort to dislodge them, the British explode seven mines under the hill this evening.  Large craters are formed as a section of the German trench line is destroyed, and an immediate attack by 1st Battalion, Royal West Kent and 2nd Battalion, King's Own Scottish Borderers regiments manages to seize the hill and the craters from the stunned German defenders.

The Ypres Salient after the British take over most of the line, April 1915.  Hill 60 is visible at the bottom of the map.

- The first units of the German 11th Army begin their redeployment by rail to the Eastern Front in preparation for the Gorlice-Tarnow offensive.

- With yesterday's rejection of Italy's demands, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minster glumly informs Conrad today that negotiations will be continued only in the hope of delaying an Italian declaration of war as long as possible.