Re: Blood and Iron

Apis' death had only further emboldened the Black Hand to gain their vengeance against the Habsburgs, as well as steeled their resolve toward their ultimate goal of independence and unification of the Balkans under a single banner.

Either way, it was entirely possible that Heidi's actions had hastened the start of the upcoming Great War. Or it would have been, if not for the fact that less than half a year after the grisly death of Apis aboard a ship headed for South America, war broke out in the Balkans.

But that was a story for another time. In fact, as 1911 began drifting into its final few months, an interesting conflict broke out that would help contribute to this madness. Italy, having been given a sense of security by joining the Allied Powers, had decided now was the time to press some of its former claims.

For complex diplomatic reasons, mostly tied to the Great Powers all desiring the same pieces of the pie during the scramble for Africa, which occurred a century prior, Italy had a claim on Libya. And currently, the Ottoman Empire was the ruler of the region.

Content originally comes from novel~fire~net

However, because of the many, shall we say, chaotic undertakings within the Ottoman Empire —which one might call the natural course for all multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi- religious societies-the Ottoman Empire was in a state of collapse, more or less.

The Young Turk Revolution had forestalled the inevitable by a few years, but the problems that were bound to occur eventually were just beginning to manifest themselves. The Balkans, ever a location rife with tension, was like a powder keg that had been lit with a slow fuse, and that slow fuse, after years of burning, was just about to go off.

Over the course of the last few years, ethnic and religious tensions had been rising within the region between the native European populations and the Turkish occupiers. And these scuffles, as we might call them, were only growing in intensity as the years passed.

It didn't help that Serbia was stoking the flames by providing Catholics within Ottoman- occupied Balkan regions with arms and munitions to continue the fight. This, along with Italy's joining of the Allied Powers, had compelled them to declare war on the Ottoman Empire and stage an amphibious landing of some 20,000 men on the coast of Libya.

Currently, Bruno was within the headquarters of the Central Division of the German Army's High Command, listening to reports of what was happening in Libya. He, of course, knew what would happen. Italy, using modern technology such as early armored cars and aircraft, would overwhelm the Ottomans and win the war within a year.

This, in turn, would embolden the resistance groups in the Balkans, as well as the nations supporting them, into starting the First Balkan War. After disputes between the nations comprising the so-called Balkan League, this would lead to the Second Balkan War.