The Emperor's offensive finally proceeded according to the original plan - Leo, who was awakened by Ludendorff's phone call, said that he smelled victory and that if he attacked, he would win!

At 3:20, according to the predetermined plan, 4,000 artillery pieces on the 40-kilometer defensive line of the Crown Prince Army Group on the front line of Persanne, more than half of which were heavy or super-heavy artillery, began to open heavy fire on the French troops on the opposite side of the line. High-explosive bombs and poison gas bombs carried poisonous smoke and immediately covered the entire French defense line. Since the German gunners fired according to the map, their fire caused terrible damage. The machine-gun post exploded into the sky along with the human limbs, and the angry soldiers coughed and vomited, and they couldn't see anything clearly; And compared to the deafening German artillery fire, when the French 2,000 guns returned fire, the sound was weak and inaudible.

After two hours of heavy shelling, at 5:20 in the morning, more than 2,000 mortars launched a barrage of fire on the French front line, and nearly 100 experimental A7V combat vehicles rushed through their own trenches At the same time, 18 elite infantry divisions carrying artillery began to attack with the close cooperation of the other 24 infantry divisions, dressed in steel armor and body armor and wearing poison gas masks.

Although the German attack was detected by the Allies, such a fierce and swift attack was unpredictable. The length of the defensive line that needed to be heavily defended on the entire Western Front was close to two hundred kilometers, and no one was sure that the Germans would choose which section of the line as a breakthrough; Moreover, this time the German offensive artillery preparation was very short, when the Allied front-line officers in the artillery were still elegantly drinking coffee and eating breakfast, the German elite assault infantry touched the minefields and barbed wire at the front of the French defense line, and rushed into the first trench defense belt of the defense line. These German soldiers, dressed in steel armor and wearing masks, appeared in the smoke as if they had come out of hell and quickly broke through the first defensive belt. Hit the second defensive belt two kilometers away.

The appearance of German tanks and the rapid and sharp attack of their elite infantry made the British and French army headquarters immediately determine the German army's operational intentions - the Germans wanted to occupy important places on both sides of the Oise River and cut off the connection between the British and French armies. Once they had achieved this goal, the British expeditionary force on the western flank was in danger of being completely driven out to sea; At the same time, losing the protection of the British expeditionary forces on the western side, the western side of Paris would be detoured by the German Army. Even if they could not capture Paris, as long as the German artillery could reach the banks of the Seine, they would be able to interrupt the navigation of the Seine and inflict unimaginable damage on the French army.

In the face of the German sea of attacks, Britain and France mobilized their reserves and more artillery to reinforce in the direction of Persanne, and just when the attention of the French army was completely focused on Persan on the west side, Leo finally ended his sleep that had been repeatedly interrupted. Energetic, I washed my face with hot water and started shaving.

The chief of staff, Major General Hoffmann, introduced the situation on the side of the Crown Prince Army and said: "The breakthrough went very smoothly, the French and the British were in a mess, and they had nothing to do with our offensive. In just one hour from the start of the attack, they had advanced three kilometers, a distance that had been difficult to advance even in a month. Now it's only the damn swamp that stops them, because because of their presence, it's hard to transport artillery, ammunition, and supplies in the rear. But the eighty-odd tanks that accompanied the attack could make some difference......"

The beard was neatly shaved and freshened up again. Leo had just begun to enjoy a delicious breakfast, and the supplies in the rear were indeed extremely poor, with only two eggs on his plate and half-canned American beef seized from the French, which had been re-fried by the chef, but even so, the canned food was very strong. Finish breakfast in silence. After a gentlemanly and slow cup of black tea, Leo took off his napple and said to Hoffman, "Are the soldiers ready?" ”

"Yes, General!" Hoffman replied. "But the High Command forbade you to personally command this campaign, and they wanted me to stop you with the other officers!"

"Would you do that?" Leo came out of the restaurant. As he walked to the headquarters next door, his eyes swept over Major General Hoffman and the other officers who had been waiting here for a long time, and he was answered by silence.

After looking at the table for the first time, Leo said aloud to the officers, "Gentlemen, the attack will begin in an hour and forty minutes. Before that, I will only tell you: this may be a war of competition between the German road and the Jewish-Anglo-Saxon road, but in my opinion, it is a war of life and death for the German nation.

The war lasted four years, and countless excellent soldiers died on the battlefield, they had completed their mission of defending the German nation, and now all the Germans, alive and dead, are watching us, waiting for the final outcome of the battle. For we will decide the fate of the whole nation, and they want us to penetrate the French lines, cross the Seine, detour back to the south of the city of Paris, encircle and annihilate the main force of the French army, and finally end the war.

Truly, it was a sacred mission that only great commanders like Hannibal, Yang or Alexander the Great could accomplish - to open a ten-kilometer gap in the enemy's heavily defended line, and then plunge a bayonet into the enemy's heart, leaving them in fear, confusion, and fear - and today, it is up to us, ordinary but God-chosen men, to finish him. I don't know what you think, how excited and uneasy you will be, but for me, it's better to die than to win! ”

At the end of the plain, short, unfettered, agitative speech, all the officers stood on the spot, and only when Leo ordered them to disband, did they leave the headquarters with a solemn salute. Back in their respective units, all of Leo's words just now were ignored by these people, and they only relayed one sentence to their subordinates, that is: Victory or death!

At 7:50 a.m., all the airfields covered with camouflage cloth in the direction of Leach were removed from camouflage, and one after another planes were lifted into the air, and instead of reinforcing Persan on the western flank, they aimed at all the French positions in the way of the armored troops, and all available effective ground attack methods were used.

At Leach's position, more than 400 steel chariots had been activated, and Leo, who had decided 'Victory or Death,' sat in one of the command vehicles - even with rudimentary radios, he was not trying to direct the battle. He just wanted all the soldiers involved in the attack to know that he was with them. At eight o'clock, the wreckers at the front shook a few times, and then drove over their trenches into the morning mist, and began to lead the attack on the survival of Germany.

A German correspondent with the army described it this way: "...... The fog rose straight into the sky like a stage curtain, suddenly opening the thick curtain between our eyes and what we had been longing for for four years. On the opposite side of the line of defense, a miracle has occurred. This miracle is rapidly developing. Under the cover of dark clouds, countless chariots, cannons, trucks, carriages, and cavalry were crossing the plain of Masiyi, and the sun covered them with a layer of brilliance through the fog, and they were steadily advancing southward. There was only sporadic enemy shelling along the way, and the land under their feet was a place that the French had occupied only at dawn, and everything they had dreamed of seemed to have become a reality in an instant. ”

During the operation to cross the entire French line, it was not the enemy's stubborn resistance that caused the Germans the greatest trouble, but the swampy area between the no-man's land of the two armies' lines, through which tracked armor, cavalry, and infantry could calmly pass. But the trucks, wagons, and artillery wagons were often stuck in the mud and could not move, but the High Command had recruited tens of thousands of sappers before the attack, and they were to pave several passable roads with countless logs for the follow-up troops to advance.

The French high command was apparently overwhelmed by the cluster of German crown princes in the direction of Persanne, and by the time all reserves were moving to the west, the German armored forces, which had advanced to Charny and approached Claisui, were only thirty-six kilometers from Paris. When the news was confirmed again and again, everyone from Petain to Foch and finally to President Poincaré and Prime Minister Clemenceau, everyone was stunned. Four years earlier, the Germans had been on the outskirts of Paris. and had already invaded the city of Paris sporadically, and everyone was ready to abandon Paris. However, the French army was finally victorious in the battle of the meat grinder, and with the entry of the United States and China, victory was not far away from France, and at this time they abandoned Paris. That would destroy the will of the entire French army to resist.

Since you must not give up, you should stick to it. It's just that none of the French units had experience in anti-tank warfare, they didn't have anti-tank rifles, they didn't have anti-tank guns, they didn't have anti-tank mines, and they didn't even know how wide the anti-tank trenches should be dug because no one had ever fought with German tanks. In a hurry. French soldiers armed with explosives and numerous Miss 75 guns were ordered to defend the perimeter of Paris; In Paris, the citizens of Paris, who had enjoyed years of peace on the weekend, were in an unspeakable panic over the emergency retreat of the army and government agencies.

The government did not want the approaching German forces to cause confusion among the citizens, who were becoming more and more panicked because they did not know what was really going on at the front. The clash ensued when the police tried to stop some citizens who were trying to leave. More and more taxis and horse-drawn carriages blocked all roads out of the city, and countless citizens crowded the streets. In the government's propaganda, the Germans have long been turned into extremely cruel, ** women, and child-killing demons, thinking that they are about to fall into the hands of those demons, and the citizens are desperate to escape from this doomed city. The front line was at this point, and when the officers received an urgent report from the city and looked back at the city, everything was out of control.

The chaos in the city and even in the suburbs of Paris affected the movement of the French reserves, and the reserves that had been drawn from the east to the west were ordered to be transferred back to the east side, because of the traffic jam in the city, the reserves were exhausted, and when they wanted to bypass the city center from the southern suburbs of the city, the armored forces led by Leo did not attack Paris as the French high command imagined, but bypassed Paris, from its deserted eastern suburbs, the 12th arrondissement, to the Seine, although the French defenders began to blow up all the passable bridges on the Seine in the eastern suburbs, However, the unexpected speed of the German armored forces and the poor quality of the French military products during the war still allowed the armored forces to grasp the most solid one.

When it became known that the German chariots had appeared on the south bank of the Seine, all organized resistance in Paris immediately collapsed. The officers and soldiers did not want to be surrounded by the Germans, so they abandoned the steel positions in the north that had been cemented with millions of sacrifices three years earlier, threw away all heavy weapons, and blended into the retreating crowd of the city, hoping to escape from Paris before the Germans closed up. It's just that the congestion of the city traffic is completely incomparable to the speed of the German armor and cavalry units galloping through the deserted suburbs. Admiral William did not wait for the follow-up troops, but forced his men to make a detour to the south at maximum speed, and waited for an opportunity to pursue the French in a southwesterly direction.

At the forefront were less than a battalion of A7V tanks and an incomplete cavalry brigade. and the infantry who learned from the Baath Army and mounted on the chariot, whose largest caliber gun was the 57mm Nordenfeld rapid-fire gun on the chariot. If there had been a regular French division in front, and if the commander had courageously ordered the artillery to concentrate on the front of the line and fire directly at the enemy's approaching chariots, this small detachment would have been blocked, if not destroyed, outside the southern suburbs of Paris, and the solidification of a blocking position would inevitably lead to the establishment of more blocking positions. At this time, the Germans, who did not have enough troops to throw a left hook, were likely to watch the French in the encirclement slip away, and Paris would be an empty city even if it was occupied.

And then the assumption is always just a hypothesis, that the panicked crowd in Paris deprived all the troops of the will to fight, and on the contrary, the German soldiers, stimulated by the unimaginable brilliant victory, did not hesitate to lose their casualties to the south, and they were not afraid of the French soldiers who were still holding rifles and occupying the road, and the beautiful French came out of the mouths of the German officers, who shouted: "Soldiers, the war is over!" The war is over! I command you to get out of the way and lay down your arms. Waiting to take over! Soldiers, the war is over! The war is over! I order you to get out of the way, lay down your arms, and wait for ...... to take over."

Surrender was a disgrace to the soldiers, but the slogan 'The war is over' struck the hearts of the French soldiers who had been tormented for four years, and the French, who knew that they had been surrounded, laid down their arms in order to end the war, but when the German armored force in front of them was gone, they did not see the Germans again, and only the inertia of 'end the war' kept them disciplined. Wait for the takeover until dark.

The consequences of the German invasion of the Entente were terrible, and the instant chaos in Paris was only one of them. More seriously, the French General Headquarters was delusional in its attempt to recover its disadvantage in order to hold Paris. It's just that the more this kind of thinking goes, the more serious the harm it brings. While the French troops on the west flank were resisting the rapid attack of the German army of the Crown Prince Wilhelm, they found that the troops in the rear were constantly being withdrawn and left, and everyone was puzzled in the morning, and in the afternoon, the news of the occupation of Paris by the Germans swept through the French army like a strong wind. The officer's binoculars were no longer staring at the front line, but at Paris with countless black smoke rising from the rear.

Everyone knew that the capital Paris had been occupied by the Germans, and just as the troops were about to collapse under the powerful German offensive in front of them, the commander-in-chief, Péttenli, gave the order to retreat against the consensus, and the Persan line was placed under the full command of his loyal subordinate, Lieutenant General Ashberry. In order to buy time for the French army to retreat safely. When the French army retreated on a large scale, it was learned that the friendly forces occupied Paris and the Prince Wilhelm urgently ordered his troops to pursue the French army, and then the resistance of Lieutenant General Ashberet and the difficult terrain of the Oise valley saved these French troops, and most of the French troops on the west side retreated unharmed, except for 50,000 men who were wiped out and 90,000 surrendered.

At noon on the same day, Ludendorff, who had received the news of the siege of Paris, immediately reported the news of the siege of Paris to Hindenburg and the Kaiser, who had been waiting for the results of the battle, hit the ground with his cane like a seizure, and after being excited, he proudly declared: "If the British delegation comes to sue for peace, he must kneel according to German rules, because it is a victory of the monarchy over democracy." ”

The Kaiser's excitement did not fall in the eyes of Ludendorff, he only cared about the next step of the whole offensive, after leaving the German Empress, facing the same excited Hindenburg, Ludendorff cautiously asked: "Marshal, are we going to attack quickly?" ”

"Yes, that's what we have to do." Hindenburg replied. "No matter how difficult it may be, the French are in a worse situation than we are, and only a desperate pursuit can inflict greater losses on the French."

"Yes, many tanks of the armored assault forces have broken down, and maybe by night they will only have more than a hundred tanks left." Ludendorff knew exactly what victory came from, so he now cherished every chariot very much.

"No, even if there are only ten tanks left, we have to attack without stopping." Hindenburg was clearly not Hitler, and he knew what the consequences would be for the French to be relieved, "it is necessary to pursue them at all costs, to create enough confusion and fear in the French." Although we will not be able to destroy them, a sufficiently chaotic army will wear down the French will to fight to the greatest extent. ”

"Yes, Marshal. I understand! "Now that the marshal had made his decision, Ludendorff, a genius staff officer, had a planned goal - that is, to destroy the French will to fight to the greatest extent possible.

The battles that took place in the suburbs of Paris were transmitted to the rear by wire and radio telegraphy from the morning, and the Germans broke through the French front trenches, assaulted the eastern suburbs of Paris, crossed the Seine, and detoured into the city of Paris. The world is in the spotlight. The Germans actually captured heavily defended Paris, which was an April Fool's joke. As a result, except for the panicked politicians of the Entente countries, the stock markets in London, New York, Shanghai, and Tokyo fell sharply as long as they were open. Victory in the war is in sight, and the stock market is certainly bullish. But now that the war was facing defeat and the Allies could not be reparated, stocks, including the military-industrial stocks, immediately plummeted, and even the intervention of the government and big business could not help.

The stock market crash was not the worst, the most worrying thing on the side of the Entente was whether the French would be able to withstand the blow and whether they would make peace with the Germans. King George V of the United Kingdom and his cabinet, as well as President Wilson of the United States, were most concerned about where the French president and prime minister were at this time. When they learned that neither the French president nor the prime minister were in Paris, everyone breathed a sigh of relief at the same time. It is well known that both the French president and the chancellor were notoriously hardliners against Germany, as long as they were not captured by the Germans. The war can still be fought, and it must be fought.

Britain did not want Germany to dominate Europe and threaten its maritime hegemony, so it turned its back on its own principle of neutrality and joined the European war, at this time Russia has been completely weakened, if France also bows to Germany, then the integration of the whole of Europe Germany will be a nightmare for Britain.

And for the United States, at the beginning of the war, she was passively involved in the war in Europe under the demagogy of bankers. Once the Entente is defeated, billions of dollars in borrowing and tens of billions of dollars in military spending will be wasted. Military spending is still spent on the country. But the loan to Britain, France, and Russia would be lost; The most serious thing is that the American people, who bought the Anglo-French war bonds at high interest rates, will occupy Wall Street in anger, and all the bankers, including Morgan, will either be sent to court or take revenge alone, and the entire ruling apparatus of the United States will be ineffective and chaotic, which is a fact that the Anglo-Saxons, who indirectly control the ultimate power of the country through finance, cannot accept.

Neither Britain nor the United States could accept defeat, the other two major powers of the Entente. China and Japan could not withstand such a blow either. Although both countries made temporary windfall profits on shipping and military supplies, these profits were reflected in paper money rather than gold - when China proposed that the precondition for joining the Entente was to exchange the currencies of Britain, France, and the United States for a part of the gold as the price of participating in the war, the Americans ignored this; The British, under the pretext that ocean shipping could not guarantee the safety of gold, said that they had insufficient gold reserves and could provide a loan of 100 million pounds if needed; Only France, which is eager to ask for help and has more than 1,400 tons in the central bank, is willing to exchange 500 million francs of gold. He also asked the Chinese side to pick up and transport it on its own. 500 million francs was only 150 tons of gold, and in the end it was only when it came to exchanging 200 tons of gold that the two sides could reach an agreement.

Two hundred tons of gold is simply not enough, but the reality is that the total amount of gold in the world, including private hands, is only more than 15,700 tons[Note 107], and the amount of money issued, because Britain controls global trade and manages the world financial system through the Bank of England, has a huge surplus and financial hegemony, they do not care about gold reserves, and the sterling banknotes that can be converted into gold are less than 4% of their issuance, and the proportion of dollars that can be converted into gold is 15%, The ratio of convertible gold francs is 25 percent[note 108], and in this case, once the Allies lose the war and France and other countries pay reparations to Germany, then China's currency will immediately depreciate by half, and the remaining half will depend on how the United States and Germany negotiate.

In addition, China has the banknotes of Britain, France, and the United States, and it is even more tragic for Japan, which is not prepared for wartime trade and has to rely on foreign loans to stimulate trade. This is also a helpless move that cannot compete with Chinese goods, and the billions of yen of unsecured loans lent will be lost to the Japanese once Britain and France repay their debts.

Unable to accept the defeat of the Allies, the four major belligerents were unable to accept the defeat of the Allies, and a bizarre situation arose: the leaders of the four countries all promised the others that they would hold out until the final victory in the war. With such a desire, the previous entanglements and contradictions between countries suddenly became unimportant, and in the intimate atmosphere, the opportunity to ask for prices and fish in troubled waters has come (to be continued......

PS: Note 107 (footnote number on the word document, this is footnote 107th in this book): Taken from The Economist, February 15, 1930, with figures from the Federal Reserve Bank Gazette and other sources.

Note 108: From the British Pound to the US Dollar: A Study of the Transfer of International Monetary Hegemony, p55