"Save Russia, give us three months of respite, otherwise the entire Eastern Front will collapse!" The Russian ambassador to France spoke almost in a pleading tone when he met with French President Armand. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Just three weeks after the start of the war, the Bavarian and Bohemian Legions fought the famous border battles against the Russian Fifth and Sixth Armies on the German-Russian border. The entire battle lasted 18 days, and Russia successively invested a total of 22 infantry divisions and 6 cavalry divisions in two army groups, with a total strength of nearly 500,000 at its peak. The Bavarian and Bohemian armies concentrated a total of 21 divisions with a total of 450,000 front-line troops, as well as 3 aviation regiments, a huge battle group of 600 aircraft.

In this earliest and largest ground coordinated battle in history, under the command of Prince Ruprecht, the two German and Austrian armies annihilated a total of 15 infantry divisions and 4 cavalry divisions on the Russian side! Kill a total of 350,000 enemies! Among them, as many as 90,000 people were captured! According to the description of the official German newspapers, the captured officers filled the area of five football fields, and the captured soldiers were no longer worried about the lack of labor in the newly occupied land of Germany, although it was an exaggeration, but the losses were undoubted.

Along with the loss of these forces, the loss of equipment of the two armies and the defending units made the Russians feel even more painful, and the two armies were fully equipped with 1,300 artillery pieces of various types before the war, and in the middle, after the addition of other units, the number of artillery pieces increased by 300. However, after the end of the war, all artillery was only 400 guns, which means that after the end of World War I, the Russians lost 1,200 guns, which is the equipment of more than 200 artillery batteries, and excluding the destroyed, the Russians estimate that the Bavarian Army captured at least 500 guns of various kinds.

In addition to troops and equipment, the Russians also lost more than 20 large warehouses that had been arranged on the border and in shallow depths, including hundreds of thousands of tons of grain and various military supplies. and about tens of thousands of livestock. After the battle, the Russians estimated that these supplies alone would be enough to support the consumption of Ruprecht's troops for more than half a year, or that it would not be a problem to expand the army by another 200,000.

By the end of the campaign, the Russians had lost nearly 30,000 square kilometers of territory, and the Bavarian and Bohemian legions were deeply wedged into Russian Poland. The entire eastern front battlefield was cut into two sections, and the northern front was a confrontation between the two Russian armies and Mackensen, and the Russian army on the northern front was ready to be reckless, but now they were under the opponent's pincer offensive, and they had no courage to continue the attack. If the Bavarian Legion chooses to go north after resting, the Russians' best bet is probably to flash immediately.

On the southern front were four other Russian armies, which were fighting Austria-Hungary. They were in a better position than their brothers on the northern front, where the Bavarian corps was far away, and if nothing else, the southern front should be decided before the opponent completed its preparations. However, even if the Russians defeated the Austro-Hungarian fleet, they would still have to face Ruprecht's forces. What if 2 armies can be drawn? It's just the result of repeating the border battle again.

"Even in the best-case scenario, after the end of the campaign, if the Bavarian Army does not take any action on the Eastern Front for three months, it will be possible for us to recover the previous losses. And to do a good job in dealing with the campaign, we are not losing in strategy, nor in quantity. Our tactical system is far behind our opponents. Equipment, coordination, quality and more! After they attacked, the best thing we could do was to retreat, and it would be very difficult for us to throw away a few troops. "Looking at the shocking losses," Kuropatkin wrote in a letter to the Russian emperor.

"If the Bavarian corps continues to attack, then in order to reduce losses, the North-Western Front will have to retreat, give up some territory, and then draw the front. The troops began to dig trenches on the spot to build fortifications to defend against the enemy's attack, and if necessary, even halted the offensive on the southern front and transferred troops to make up for the lack of troops on the northern front. "Ivanov had even prepared for the worst, completely abandoning the strategic offensive and moving to the strategic defense, which seemed to Nicholas II to be almost unacceptable!

In other words, no matter how hard you fight, you can't win. Unless there is a brief period of time for Russia to readjust, which includes building up air and armored forces, strengthening artillery, and concentrating forces. With a huge military advantage and new equipment, you can compete with your opponents.

So now the question arises. Does Ruprecht give the other person a breather? According to Russian estimates, the maximum losses of the Bavarian and Bohemian corps did not exceed 80,000 casualties, most of them wounded, and the replenishment would have been very fast in terms of personnel and equipment alone. That is, if there were no external forces, theoretically the Russians would not have been able to drag on for that long.

Of course, the actual situation will not go directly to the level of saving Russia, as the Russian ambassador said. After all, Russia still has a vast depth, after all, it has a population of hundreds of millions, after all, it is also a great power, as long as it is internally stable, it will not collapse. As a diplomat, learning to act on the spot, especially crying poor, is almost a compulsory course! Therefore, when the Russian ambassador met with the French president, he strongly urged the French army to launch an offensive in the border area, so that the Bavarian Army could be partially transferred westward to relieve the pressure on Russia.

"We will consider your request well, but we are also under great pressure, and they have concentrated seven of the nine army groups for the Western Front, where the soldiers on both sides are almost next to each other. We have already blocked the enemy's attack on the border, and we will soon launch a counterattack that will drive the Germans out of French territory, and even directly take Belgium is possible. Your country just needs to hold on, the war will end soon, believe me. French President Armand said.

"Then I await the news of the victory of your country and the British Empire on the Western Front." The Russian ambassador complimented.

Just as the history of the Eastern Front had undergone major changes, so had some changes on the Western Front, and the Germans' raids on this plane had some trouble in the border areas, which the Germans did not expect. The border battle that Ruprecht expected was not only not repelled by Germany, but instead fought half a catty, and some of the fronts shrank back a little, which made the hearts of all the German high-level leaders, including the prince, tighten! it! That's not right!

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