Greece, November 15th 1936
Venizelos had made certain to complete the full four years of his term, before new elections would be held, it was actually becoming something of a standard practice by now, the last snap election had been back in March 1915. Compared to the 1932 elections the Liberals had suffered heavily losing bore than 10 percentage points. But this meant they'd still had managed to secure 48.18% of the vote and 145 seats in parliament. The United opposition, by now consisting of Nikolaos Stratos Conservative Reform party and Dragoumis National Radical party, which had absorbed the remnants of the Populists had secured 43.24% of the vote and 104 seats with Dragoumis radicals notably edging for the first time slightly ahead of Stratos Conservatives with 21.89% and 54 seats to 21.45% and 50 seats. Just as notably the Greek communist party had grown to 5.76% of the vote securing a single seat in parliament along with 3 more seats in the senate increasing its total number of senators to 6.
Deutsche Werke, Kiel, Germany, November 28th 1936
Flugzeugträger A, was laid down in the slip that had been freed earlier in the month by the launching of battlecruiser Gneisenau. Just as the ship was being laid down other workers kept working on Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser building since summer. Both the British and the French admiralties kept careful note of the increasing pace of German construction, two more battleships had been laid down back in April and July. Britain was waiting for the new year to immediately lay down the first pair of her own battleships, a variety of materials was already on order. France was relatively better off. The Dunkerque was expecting to enter service in May, Strasbourg had been launched in December 1935 and should be in service by early 1938, while a second Richelieu class ship had been laid down in September in the new Caquot dock in St Nazaire.
Paris, December 9th 1936
The Franco-Syrian treaty of independence was finally signed after nearly 9 months of negotiations that had nearly collapsed several times after the refusal of the Frence side to accept the incorporation into Syria of Lebanon, the Kurdish, Alawite and Druze states and the sanjak of Alexandretta as the Syrians were demanding. Finally the Syrians had to accept a separate Lebanon, while a compromise would be reached for the remaining areas with each state having a referendum on its future within three months of the signing of the treaty. The Druze would be the only ones to vote to join the new Syria. The Kurds understandably preferred their own state which they saw as the first seed to eventually create an independence Kurdistan, while the Alawis in the aftermath of the 1925 revolt feared that incorporation into Syria would also mean the return of the Sunni landowners that had left during the revolt. in Alexandretta the result against Syria had been ironically enough decided by the Turkish population voting along with the majority of Christians against incorporation into Syria if for diametrically opposite reasons, as the Christians wanted to remain in the French sphere of influence while the Turks were following Kemal's instructions, who wanted to keep Alexandretta out of Syria in order to join with Turkey later.
Yarrow yards, Glasgow, February 1937
The light cruisers Themistoklis and Miaoulis, were laid down for the Hellenic Navy. At 3,205t calling them light cruisers was probably a misnomer, the ships were for every practical purpose large destroyers capable of making 40 knots when completed and armed with American made 5in guns as Britain was not in position to provide either the 5.25in guns the ships had originally been designed or 4,7in guns. This was also becoming a problem for destroyers being built in Greece as well since their guns were being imported from Britain. Already delivery of the destroyers Sfendoni and Niki, originally intended as close copies of the British H class and due for delivery in 1936 was running late as the ships had to be altered at the last moment to take US 5in guns and Dutch Hazemayer directors instead while Britain had also claimed inability to deliver two more submarines, these had been laid in Greece instead, using the pair of additional slips recently built at Skaramanga. Of course this mean the slips could not be used for destroyers but one could not have everything...
Guadalajara, Spain, March 1st 1937
The failed offensive in October against Madrid, had been followed by a second assault in November, beaten back after heavy street fighting and three offensives attempting to cut off and encircle Madrid. By the end of the last one in early February the Nationalists had gained some ground along the Jarama river but had failed to have any decisive results. The arrival of the Italian expeditionary force which had scored a quick victory at Malaga, had renewed Nationalist hopes for victory in the Madrid front though. A joint offensive was planned with the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie with 35,000 men and 140 tanks under general Roatta attacking against Guadalajara and the Nationalists renewing their offensive against Jarama. The Nationalist part of the plan would nearly fail to materialize due to rivalries between Spanish officers and the recently arrived Italians but in the end general Ochoa could not bring him to break his promise to renew the attack on the Jarama and some 34,000 Nationalist troops moved to the attack within hours of the Italians launching their own assault. This put the Republicans in significant trouble. With 20,000 men and 30 tanks tied down facing Ochoa only 10,000 men supported by 40 tanks were left to take on the Italians. Twelve days of heavy fighting followed with the Republicans contesting every single step of ground they had to give, till Ochoa having lost a quarter of his forces till the start of February had to call of his offensive on the Jarama and the Republicans managed to shift some badly needed reinforcements against the Italians. By now it was too late to stop the Italians but not too late to inflict yet more casualties on them, before Roatta had to stop his own offensive in March 20th. Guadalajara had fallen with the Italians advancing over 60km in 20 days. But their advance had cost the Italians 8,000 men and half their tanks, with Ochoa losing another 4,000 men. Republican casualties had been comparable with 13,000 men and 38 tanks lost. The position of Madrid start becoming precarious...
Alexandretta, French mandate of Syria, March 15th 1937
The tensions already evidenced in the recent plebiscite to join Syria erupted into full scale clashes between the Turkish population, not openly agitating for union with Turkey and the Arab population, which under the direction of
Zaki Al Arsuzi had also taken to the streets to contest the decision not to join Syria. The big loser of the clashes would actually turn out to be the local Armenians and other Christians as they were targetted by both sides. Christians start slipping away to nearby Lebanon despite French efforts to contain the clashes. Turkish diplomats in the League of Nations would hardly fail to take advantage of the opportunity demanding the return of Alexandretta, Northern Syria and Mosul to Turkey and asking for plebiscites in all three even though the only area they were likely to win a fair plebiscite was Alexandretta...
Turkey, April 1937
A language commission was established, to organize the replacement if the Arabic script in which Turkish was written with a Latin derived alphabet. The commission would return with recommendations for switching the alphabet over a period of five years. Kemal would instead take rather more drastic measures introducing the new alphabet by law in July and making switch to it compulsory by the end of the year. After all time was essential given developments around the world and social reforms in Turkey were already running late compared to what they would had been if he had not been forced to rescind power in the aftermath of defeat back in 1922. That failure had cost him and kept costing him in other ways, recently between approving construction for a new railroad to Diyarbakir and ordering a new light cruiser from Italy and 4 submarines from Germany he had to chose the naval orders to keep the support of Rauf Orbay's faction. Admittedly the navy would be of use when war with Greece came, thus he had not much begrudged the orders or securing ahead of Brazil 3 Adua class submarines that the Italians had laid down for their own navy but made available for sale. But when all was said and done Kemal was still an army man and had spent a decade of fighting without the Turkish navy having much of an impact and having to rely to Rauf's or Karabekir's support even to a limited extend instead of being in complete control of the country was galling at a personal level.
Brunette, Spain, May 6th 1937
63,000 Republican troops supported by 130 tanks and 140 aircraft sprung to the attack in hopes of turning back the increasingly dire military situation of the republic. The siege of Madrid was becoming more desperate by the date following the defeats in Guadalajara and Jarama. In the north of Spain the Nationalists had gone to the offensive in early April advancing into the Basque country and with a massed bombing of Guernica, apparently chosen more for her cultural significance to the Basques than for military reasons, by German and Italian aircraft with over a thousand civilians killed. Behind Spanish lines trouble was increasingly growing between the republican government and the anarchist groups that controlled Catalonia. The offensive, it was hoped, would both relieve Nationalist pressure on Madrid and divert them from their offensive in the north or for that matter from taking advantage of the Republicans internal problems in Catalonia. At least in diverting Nationalist efforts it was successful as the Nationalists reinforced Brunette with two infantry divisions while the Republican government and the communists managed to smash the Anarchists and their Trotskyist supporters at a cost of nearly 6,000 killed and wounded on the Anarchist side. On the international front the bombing of the German panzerschiff Admiral Scheer by Republican aircraft had brought German retaliation and had given Germany and Italy an excuse to leave the international non-intervention committee. That Scheer itself had been bombarding Republicans fleeing Malaga a couple months earlier was of course irrelevant as was the presence of German and Italian troops on the Nationalist side...
Madrid, June 5th 1937
The Republican offensive in Brunette had turned into a bloody failure with the Republicans suffering nearly 18,000 casualties at the cost of just a third as many Nationalists. Now it was the turn of the Nationalists as 55,000 troops under general
Varela launched a second assault on the 45,000 men left defending Madrid. If Varela hoped for an easy victory in the aftermath of his victory in Brunette he was in for a disappointment as every street taken had to be paid in blood...
