Have a seat. ”

With the empress's gentle and rigid command, all the military generals and ministers sat down in unison, and only Liu Bailiang, the chief of the general staff in the new marshal's dress, did not move.

"The military situation is urgent, and it is necessary to make a decision immediately, and gossip can be avoided, and now on behalf of the General Staff of the Imperial Armed Forces, I will report to His Majesty and all your ministers on the situation of the war against Russia."

Qian Hua took off the snow-white ceremonial gloves of the generals, wiped the blue ground gilt notebook in front of him with her fingers, and nodded at Liu Bailiang: "It's hard work for Elder Liu." ”

"Yes, before reporting on the situation with our army, it is necessary to inform the latest gathered allied intelligence."

After speaking, Liu Bailiangping picked up a brown leather folder with red edges on a black ground and read it unhurriedly.

It may be more meaningful to remove the embellishments in the speech and add the narrative of relevant details than Marshal Liu's simple recitation......

In February 1915, the French launched a long-prepared spring offensive against the Germans, with the 4th Regiment, the strongest of which was the first to attack the Shambany area, supported by a lured assault by the 3rd Group.

On the entire Western Front, the basic forces of both sides were deployed in Flanders, on the Belgian-French border, and in the areas of the Salient of Champagne, Argonne and Saint-Miel in France. In the Flemish region in the northern sector of the front, the twenty-six and a half divisions of the German 4th and 6th armies confronted the thirty-eight to forty divisions of the Entente. In the area of Shambany, Argonne, and Saint-Miel in the middle of the front, the thirty-four and a half divisions of the German 3rd and 5th armies, plus the thirty-two divisions of the 34th Army, faced each other. The southern section of the front was undulating and unfavorable for combat, and neither side deployed heavy troops.

At the right time, the German High Command determined the general strategy of first uniting Central Austria and Turkey to defeat Russia, and its operational plan on the Western Front was to firmly hold the occupied territories of France and Belgium.

Judging from the recent talks between Su Sanling, chief of the operations division of our General Staff, and Fa Kinghan, chief of staff of the German army. The German side had the following basic understandings: First, the Entente on the Western Front could not have increased its forces sharply enough in 1915 to launch a decisive and major offensive. Second, Russia must be defeated before a large-scale landing of American troops in Europe.

For this reason, Falkingham specifically mentioned that he had ordered the German armies in the west to consolidate their positional defenses and to draw troops to form reserves, striving to draw 12 divisions from the existing 94 and a half divisions as reserves at the beginning of the 2nd century. In order to mobilize reserves and combat materiel more flexibly and flexibly, it was stipulated that there should be a duty train in the rear of each army group on standby at all times. Falkingham believed that this would be sufficient to resist a large-scale offensive by the Entente** with its existing forces in any area of the Western Front. Germany could continue to move its new forces to fight the Russians on the Eastern Front – a guarantee that was tentatively demonstrated in the limited Spring Offensive of the Entente.

On 16 February, the German 3rd Regiment in the Shambany area was suddenly subjected to overwhelming artillery bombardment and a dense infantry charge from the mountains and tsunami, and it was later ascertained that the French army had mobilized four corps of the 4th Regiment and three corps of the reserve, with a total of 163,000 troops, 900 light artillery pieces and 110 heavy artillery pieces, while the German troops in front of them had only 85,000 troops, less than 400 light guns and 76 heavy guns, while the French had an advantage of more than three to one in the main breakthrough section, and the density of artillery pieces in the front of the breakthrough reached 60 to 70 guns per kilometer. Dozens of "St. Chamont" assault combat vehicles were also put into service.

Probably due to the lack of ammunition, the French ground artillery preparations were unable to break through the barbed wire obstacles everywhere. Most of the German machine guns and artillery were not suppressed. The defective design of the "St. Chamont" assault tank broke down frequently when passing through the dense crater area, the artillery mounted in front of the hull was inconvenient to fire, and the weak boiler steel armor could not withstand the concentrated fire of the K-type armor-piercing bullets issued by the Germans to every machine gun and even each rifleman on the front line, in addition, the originally small tank unit was divided equally among the 5 divisions on the seven-kilometer main attack area in groups of 6 to 9 units, and the assault effect was even more limited, with the result that all 40 tanks were lost on the first day. Only 1 led the infantry to break through the first line of German bunkers. After that, the French army only used dense waves of skirmish lines to repeatedly attack the German fortified bunker line, and suffered heavy casualties.

The battle lasted until 19 February. In total, the French advanced only 300 to 500 meters, captured the second bunker line and began to fight for the third. On the same day, three German reserve divisions rushed to Shambany and quickly filled the front. The counterattack against the French offensive became more and more violent, making it difficult for the French army to move an inch. By the end of February, the Germans had put in several reserve divisions one after another. The forces of the two sides were leveled out, and the organized large-scale attack of the French army turned into a small-scale scattered attack, and the bunkers occupied during the day were recaptured by the German counterattack at night, and the battle completely evolved into an evenly matched attrition.

The French also threw the last two corps of the reserve into the attack at the beginning of the 3rd, hoping to turn the situation around, but to no avail, and by 315, the troops generally lost the will to fight, and the offensive was suspended. The French army paid the price of more than 90,000 casualties and missing personnel, and only occupied a small section of a narrow and barren "death zone" six kilometers wide and 3,400 meters deep, and the German army suffered more than 60,000 casualties.

On the other hand, the Battle of Artois, which was supposed to be launched at the same time as the Battle of Shambani, was aborted by the British and French in the northern part of the battle line due to the uncooperative attitude of the British, and it is believed that the British insisted on mobilizing forces to launch a strategic operation in the Dardanelles.

Approximately as compensation, the British carried out a local offensive campaign in the area of Neve-Chapelle in the central part of the Flemish territory and south of Lille, in the area of Neve-Chappel, in the middle of the Flemish territory, south of Lille, and the two armies attacked the 7th Army of the German 6th Army, with the British 2nd Regiment and the Belgian Army Group carrying out a lure feint.

On the 37th, after a short thirty-five minutes of artillery preparation, more than 48 British vehicles were guided. Concentrating on a narrow frontage of three kilometers, the German 7th Army camp was pounced, and in just two or three hours it easily captured the village of Nev-Chapel and Germany

Imperial Position. The British stayed in front of the second position for five hours to prepare, but in such a short time, the Germans quickly brought in reserves using the field railroad that ran through the entire defensive area, and repelled the subsequent British attacks with strong firepower and a strong counterattack of the reserves, and the British stopped the attack after losing 13,000 men and all the tanks. The Germans suffered more than 8,000 casualties.

On the 45th, the French 1st Army launched a local attack on the Val de Welf in the area of Saint-Miel southeast of Shambani, in an attempt to destroy the German Saint-Miel Bulge on the right flank of its Verdun salient. It was later ascertained that the French army had mobilized about 15 divisions, 500 artillery pieces, and 50 tanks in the direction of the important assault. As in the Battle of Shambani, all forces swooped down in dense battle formations on the two main attack sections of five kilometres each, with an average of one and a half divisions and about 50 artillery pieces per kilometre of frontal penetration.

However, as early as mid-3, the German high command learned that the French armies and artillery had begun to be transferred from Shambany to Saint-Michael, and at the end of 3, the French 1st Army was actively building offensive bases: a new direction for the French assault, and immediately ordered the Stralanz cluster to prepare for battle.

The Strenz cluster defending the area of Saint-Miel had eleven and a half divisions, but by the beginning of the campaign two reserve divisions had been added, and the regiments on the front line had already entered combat readiness, and the French offensive did not form a numerical advantage at the beginning.

A few days before the battle. The French assault troops, supported by newly equipped British-made multi-turret "battle vehicles", for a time seized the first positions on the two main attack areas in the north and south. By the 17th, the French army stopped its offensive and attempted to dig tunnels to blast the German fortifications, and on the 25th, the Stralanz cluster launched a counterattack with the support of its own newly made tanks, and the positions occupied by the French troops also penetrated the original defensive line of the 1st Army in many sections.

During the 12-day battle, it was estimated that the French suffered 60,000 to 70,000 casualties and the Germans suffered more than 40,000 casualties.

The German High Command confirmed from the failed spring offensive of the Entente** that Britain and France had neither the ability nor the will to launch a large-scale offensive capable of achieving major campaign results in the near future. The High Command no longer worried about the stability of its Western Front and began to boldly transfer more troops to the Russian front. From January to May of this year, a total of 90 infantry regiments and 54~~ times have been transferred to the Eastern Front, giving them a superiority in troops. That is, with 110 German-Austrian divisions against less than 90 Russian divisions.

At the end of the 4th, in order to improve the situation of its own positions in the northern part of the Flemish territory, the German 4th Regiment launched an offensive in the area of Ypre between the 5th British Army and the 20th French Army. and for the first time in the European theater – or for the first time in the world – the large-scale public use of chemical weapons.

The Germans tried various gas bombs on a small scale as early as the beginning of the war, but the effect was limited and did not attract the attention of the other side.

This time, the Germans chose the Ipre area, where the terrain was flat and the wind was suitable, and used the night to place 6,000 cylinders filled with compressed gas on the six-kilometer-wide frontage.

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On the afternoon of 422, the Germans took advantage of the tailwind to release 180,000 kilograms to the 5th position of the British army, forming a one-man-high yellow-green smoke belt, and the German 26th Army ground assault troops followed with face bandages, and occupied the first-line bunkers and artillery positions abandoned by the British without firing a single shot, and the section ten kilometers wide and seven kilometers deep behind it was almost undefended. Fifteen thousand British troops were poisoned, five thousand of them died, and a three-and-a-half-kilometer gap appeared between the British and French armies.

However, the Germans had no reserves, and after occupying a small section of the salient several kilometers deep, they could not continue to develop victory, and the gap was soon blocked by infantry units brought in by British and French cavalry and automobiles, and the Germans tried to attack again with poison gas, but they could not achieve the original effect, and the British and French soldiers had the simplest protective equipment and were told how to use it in battle.

Although the Chinese army has also used a large number of functions (tear gas, sneezing, vomiting) and asphyxiating poison gas in many important battles, it has strictly limited the scope of use to attack islands or besiege fortresses, and try to ensure that relevant information is not leaked, but after the Battle of Ypre, the Entente, which was shocked by the powerful lethality of poison gas, is bound to make every effort to develop more and more effective anti-poison equipment, and then will also develop its own chemical weapons. The chemical weapons superiority that the Chinese military has unilaterally possessed since entering the war will no longer exist.

In response to the German campaign of Ypre, at the beginning of the 5th, the recoordinated Anglo-French forces launched the Battle of Artois on an unprecedented scale, mobilizing at least thirty divisions in the southern part of the Fred area, attacking simultaneously from a wide frontage of twenty kilometers and another ten kilometers, and the German 6th Army facing General Ruprecht had only thirteen divisions, two of which were also used as reserves directly under the high command.

On the 10-kilometer-wide section of the first main attack, the 10th French Army had less than four German divisions in twelve pairs.

The French 10th Army carried out six days of artillery preparation before the general attack, and on the day of the general attack on the 59th, it carried out another four and a half hours of suppressive artillery bombardment, which almost completely flattened the bunkers of the first German position on the entire breakthrough section, most of the machine guns were destroyed, the shelter fortifications were destroyed, and the defenders were killed and wounded.

Before sunset on the 59th, the 10th Army was in the German army