Guest Post: 28 December, 1913 - Brazilian Dreadnoughts sold to the Ottoman Navy

 This article first appeared on Today in Alternate History.

"It is no longer possible to force the Dardanelles, and nobody would expose a modern fleet to such peril" ~ OTL First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill in 1911; however, he would change his mind three years later.

On this fateful day in alternate history, President Hermes da Fonseca of Brazil negotiated the sale of two under-construction dreadnoughts to the Ottoman Navy. Because the shipbuilding was in a third country, the agents of the two parties had wisely taken the precaution of obtaining secret guarantees from the British government.

It was a prudent choice given the global uncertainty. Circumstances had radically altered in the two years since the order for the Sultan Osman-I Evvel and the Resadiye had been placed, and the Brazilian Republic could no longer afford, and actually did not need, them. This was because the rubber boom had collapsed due to the loss of monopoly to British plantations in the Far East. Also, as a nation she was far more secure having experienced warming in relations with her chief rival, the neighboring country of Argentina. Other financial priorities would prevail.

Following successful sea trials, the Ottoman crew duly arrived to collect the Sultan Osman-I Evvel and the Resadiye from the shipbuilding yard in Newcastle. The newly-constructed Ottoman battleships arrived in the Black Sea on the eve of the July Crisis. Evidence of the British government's secret guarantees were revealed by Sultan Mehmed VI unexpectedly declaring neutrality following the outbreak of war. In hindsight, this would prove to be a serious strategic error because the Entente Powers were prevented from re-supplying the Russians via the Black Sea. The Tsar, who wanted Istanbul for the Russians, fell from power long before the Central Powers were defeated.

Meanwhile, the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had bitterly opposed this ruthless political horse-trading, wanting to abrogate the agreement and seize the vessels for use by the Royal Navy. Disgusted by the sickening cynicism of Westminster, he was drawn to the Royal Flying Corps' motto "Through Adversity to the Stars." Not yet forty, he decided to resign from the government and apply for a war-time commission in an aeroplane squadron.

It was during his wartime service that Churchill came to meet Oswald Mosley, a kindred spirit who had transferred from a British cavalry unit. Both men shared a common reputation for being brave and somewhat reckless, and their relationship continued strongly after the war. Due to his injuries experienced from a crash, Churchill became somewhat of a reclusive figure at Blenheim Palace, continuing to paint and write fiction and occasional journalism. With a great deal of time on his hand he also served as a mentor to the younger Mosley who entered the House of Commons in the general election of 1918. It was Churchill that discouraged Moseley from falling out with the Conservatives over the operations of the Black and Tans in Ireland against civilians.

Meanwhile, the tottering Ottoman Empire was experiencing a remarkable recovery following the discovery of vast oil reserves in the Middle East. The disgruntled heads of the former Royal Families of Austria, Germany, and Russia could only wonder how this weaker empire had survived their own fall from power. Like the blue-blooded Churchill, they would be mere spectators in the unfolding world crisis.

Rising to Party Leader, Mosley would eventually become Prime Minister in 1931 after the collapse of the second Labour government. As the Head of a Government of National Unity, he was largely free from the vagaries of the electoral cycle. A dominant figure, he would use his authority to form an unsavory relationship with the German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. In this policy he was strongly supported by other members of the British Ruling Class who had lost many sons during the Great War, and preferred a working relationship that would avoid a repetition of that conflict.

Hitler would laud him as a world statesman for his diplomatic role in the peaceful resolution of the Sudeten Crisis. With the Czechs abandoned to their fate, it soon became apparent that Mosley's Britain would not stand in the way of a grand settlement of other territories disputed since the Treaty of Versailles. An even more embittered Churchill would slowly come to realize his error, in his biopic "The World Crisis" he would quote the figurative expression of Robert Southey who wrote, "Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost."

With the French Third Republic weakened by political crisis, the German Reich restored her 1914 border with the exception of Alsace-Lorraine and her African possessions.

While many actually believed in Mosley's false promise of "peace in our time," a phrase already familiar to the British public by its longstanding appearance in the Book of Common Prayer, the Soviet Union prepared for a final showdown with the capitalist powers. Stalin feared that he would have no Allies in this future conflict and was forced to fight his instincts to purge the Red Army. By the early 1940s, he was ready to invade Western Europe.

With the former victor powers disengaged from this existential struggle, the alignment of Ottoman Turkey would become a decisive factor in whether Hitler or Stalin would have access to the fuel necessary to power their mobile forces and navies. Writing in the Sunday Times, Churchill predicted that the future of Christendom lay at the whim of a Muslim, Sultan Abdulmejid II.

Author's Note:

In reality, sea trials were ongoing at the outbreak of war and the British government seized both dreadnoughts for use by the Royal Navy. This act caused resentment in the Ottoman Empire, as the payments for both ships were complete, and contributed to the decision of the Ottoman government to join the Central Powers. The seizure, and the gift of the German battlecruiser Goeben to the Ottomans, influenced public opinion in the empire to turn away from Britain, and they entered the war on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire against the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia on 29 October, after Goeben had attacked Russian facilities in the Black Sea.