Taking the sword back from the guard who kept the weapon and fastening it at her waist, the girl saluted and turned heroically and walked out of the army general staff, and in front of her and behind her were all non-commissioned officers and guards standing and saluting, and their hot eyes followed her vigorous steps.

Except for a very few unfriendly glances, the vast majority of eyes were full of heat—not the heat of the opposite sex, but the awe and worship of the hero, and the dedication to charge into battle even for that back and serve as a cover for the retreating palace army. The most important thing is that no one forced them to do so, and the soldiers at the lowest level of these armies were completely spontaneous.

If their superiors give them orders to sacrifice their lives for the motherland, these loyal and brave soldiers will go to the soup without complaint. But the Holy Maiden is different. The miracle saint maiden, the hero of the salvation of the country, like most of the soldiers, came from among the civilians. Compared with the generals and marshals of most noble backgrounds, this girl from Orleans made the soldiers from the rural and urban lower classes feel more close, and it was easier for them to revere the living legend in front of them.

Through the fiery sight crossing, the blonde girl quickly stepped onto a modest carriage, the coachman had been sitting in the driver's seat, holding the reins and whip, and as soon as the doors were closed, the carriage slowly drove down the street.

Roland, who had returned to his original appearance in the carriage, let out a long breath that in terms of efficiency and speed, riding a unicorn out of the house was much faster than a carriage. But after a few traffic jams, Roland gave up on this mode of travel altogether. The smooth carriage successfully kept the enthusiastic citizens out of the carriage and provided a space for intimate conversation and reflection.

After quickly sorting out his emotions, Roland put on a calm smile.

"It worked. ”

"Thank you. ”

A short debriefing, a brief thanks. For the couple Roland and Minerva, this was enough. On the one hand, I don't want to spoil the other person's mood with those bad things in the General Staff, and on the other hand, I don't want to force my partner to say anything more when he is obviously not in a good mood.

If they were an ordinary couple, changing the topic at this time might quickly reverse the solemn atmosphere, but they were destined to have nothing to do with the ordinary, and the weight of thousands of lives and even the whole world weighed them down so much that they were almost out of breath, and a moment of warm existence seemed luxurious at this time. After a moment of silence, Minerva cautiously led the conversation.

"World Wars...... I still don't think it's realistic. ”

In fact, strictly speaking, Charlemagne, who is fighting almost all countries on his own, is already fighting a world war. It's a world war, at least from a legal point of view. It's just that due to a series of surprise attacks and diplomatic means, it has now become a wonderful state in which Charlemagne and Alfheim are fighting hotly, and other countries are watching from the sidelines. Critics in Albion have bitterly called it a "strange war."

Roland's "world war" does not refer to the present war, but in a more strict sense, the present war is part of the future world war, a prelude, an opening ceremony.

"Alfheim's ultimate goal is to completely dominate the whole world. Until this is fully achieved, they will not stop, maybe there will be an intermission, or even a truce of twenty or thirty years. But until the winner is decided, it will never stop. ”

Bury the girl's thoughtfulness deep in his heart, and the young man who has entered the state tells the veins that he has been sorting out for many days.

In order to clarify the current situation and grasp the future development context, we must first sort out the root cause of the problem - after the "Balfour Massacre", Roland, who deeply tasted the sense of frustration and defeat, began to re-examine Alfheim's strategy, trying to figure out Li Lin's strategy and weaknesses, and formulate his own new strategy from it.

What is Alfheim fighting for?

When the average person hears this question, he immediately answers "fight for independence." Regardless of nationality, this simple and intuitive answer is the most intuitive and standard answer for all those who have witnessed this war. In fact, this answer is quite correct at this stage. In the context of the awakening of nationalism, the revival of the country, and the national mission, this answer with a strong romantic overtone is easily accepted. But the underlying reason is not so simple.

The formation of an individual's personality, thinking mode, and formal norms is deeply affected by the environment in which he grew up, and many times the seemingly unreasonable behaviors or behaviors of some people can be traced back to their childhood. The lack of father's love and mother's love (William's second mother, in order to treat her son's disability, not only asked the doctor to cut off the tendons in William's neck, but also tied her son to an electric chair every day for electric shock therapy, and forced her left-handed disabled son to ride a horse, even if her son cried bitterly. After the treatment was hopeless, he completely broke off the mother's love of his son, and even hated his son with his husband, and planned to abolish this prince's son many times...... It's no wonder that in the end, a second emperor who vowed to fight Britain was created). The behavior of the state and the nation also bears a deep historical imprint.

Because they have been slaughtered and encircled many times in history, and have been on the verge of extinction several times, the elves are extremely insecure. After the emergence of Yalfheim as a state, their sense of insecurity has intensified rather than subsided, due to their geopolitical position in the land of war surrounded by many unfriendly countries. The powerful West and East have trapped Alfheim in the heart of the continent and is an eternal nightmare for the elves. How to avoid a two-front war, and how to solve it in the unfortunate event of a two-front war, has become their eternal problem.

At the military level, the Yalfheim Defense Force has developed a series of strategic and tactical guiding ideologies, such as the concept of overall warfare, interior line strategy, mobile operations, and strategic air attack, and has developed a series of advanced technologies and equipment for use on this basis. At a deeper level of national strategy, the elves basically follow the principle of "occupying the moral high ground when war breaks out, and co-opting countries that may intervene in the conflict to form some form of alliance with them or at least to promote their neutrality, and only engage one opponent at a time" - such a set of methods that suit their own conditions and objective circumstances. So far, it has been proven to work.

However, this multi-faceted approach has gradually revealed its flaws, and although the countries cannot intervene in the war for various reasons, they have gradually revealed their suspicion and anxiety about Alfheim.

At the heart of the question is not how much they will gain from the war, but whether the nations will allow a hegemonic state to emerge in the heart of the continent, a power that is deeply insecure and expands to ensure its own security.

"To defend Alfheim, to occupy Charlemagne, to defend Charlemagne, to bring Castile and Lapland under control, and to defend Castile and Lapland, to eliminate the United Duchy of Albion and Rus—this is the essence of the elves' 'problem of living space'. Perhaps their intention was simply to fill the psychological ailment of insecurity. But such a slow line of aggression and expansion will eventually push all countries into the corner of a showdown. ”

Just like Charlemagne is now. The only difference is that Alfheim's method is more subtle, the process is more slow, and the purpose and essence are the same.

It is impossible for Albion to sit idly by and watch a superpower appear on the continent, and it is also impossible for the United Principality of Rus to accept the appearance of a monster that can crush it in all directions. There is no room for compromise on this issue, which is a matter of national survival and survival. In the end, you can only follow the trajectory of collision until the bloody wind and rain sweep the whole world.

In order to win the final war, Alfheim developed general warfare and tried to find and correct shortcomings that had not been exposed before. Judging by the results so far, it should be said that they have done a very successful job.

It can be said to be regret, or it can be said to be cruel. Modern warfare in the industrial era is based on corpses, exposing the gap between the advanced and the backward. The piles of Charlemagne's corpses stacked high in front of the Siegfried Line now fully demonstrate the all-round gap between the two warring parties, Charlemagne and Alfheim, in terms of operational thinking, weaponry, and war potential. Clear-headed people have long been able to see that this is a war that cannot be won by Charlemagne's country alone, and only the war gamblers in the General Staff Building and the aristocratic salon still firmly believe in the gambler's logic that as long as they keep betting, they will eventually turn over.

"The kind of victory that the main war faction hopes for is unlikely to be achieved in any way, but Charlemagne is not without a chance, or a victory by other definitions – the achievement of national defense objectives without total defeat – still has a good chance. For this reason, we must intervene in the battle in the direction of the Siegfried Line as soon as possible and plan to preserve our combat strength as soon as possible. ”

The only way to overwhelm the overall war is the general war.

The only way to outdo each other's steel is to rely on human resources and expect foreign involvement, which are interrelated.

No one is going to bet on a horse race with no hope of winning, and in order for a country that is not yet able to intervene to make up his mind to come back, Charlemagne must first show his worth – enough to contain Alfheim, keep it bleeding, and crush its ability and determination to continue fighting. And then with the aid of the countries - the overwhelming superiority of resources to offset the advanced advantage of Alfheim.

In other words, it is to drag the war into the last thing Yalfheim wants to see, such as protracted warfare, trench warfare, and law and order warfare, so that this sophisticated war machine will lose power little by little in the bloody quagmire, and finally force it to stop. Then, as the Chief of the Army General Staff said just now, after understanding that the war cannot be won, return to the negotiating table.

- I really don't want to be a nasty adult.

With bitter feelings in his chest, Roland subconsciously looked out of the car window, and the crowd of people strolling on the street swept out of the car window, using them as the bottom panel, and a melancholy teenager looked back at him in the reflective window glass.

He knew that his decision meant the consumption of a lot of human life. That's right, it's consumption. In the general theory of warfare in which all national forces are mobilized into war, human life is a consumable item like weapons and spare parts, and is destined to be consumed in large quantities. In this crazy battlefield, there is not even a so-called sacrifice, but simply the "consumption" of everything as a number. The two sides continue to compete frantically until one of them can no longer afford to make peace or completely collapse.

- Treat living people with joys, sorrows, and personal wills not as human beings, but as a crazy world of numbers.

The moment he decided to adopt this strategy, he was on the same line as Li Lin, and he was no longer in a position to criticize Li Lin's approach, because he had done the same thing—something he had tried so hard to oppose.

But even so.

Even if he fell to the bottom of hell and was broken thousands of times by the souls of countless dead souls who died because of him, Roland did not want to see a world where even resistance and resentment were quantified and manipulated.

"Now that we have a reason to intervene in the battlefield and logistics system, we must grasp as soon as possible the situation of the entire front, the deployment of troops, the location of military stations and railway stations, the terrain of the battlefield, the intensity of air strikes, the distribution of the railway network, the number of trains, the performance and condition of locomotives, and so on. Once all the data was obtained, two schedules and transportation plans were drawn up. ”

"Two copies?"

"One is a transport plan for how to use the railway network to retreat the main forces to the rear as soon as possible in an emergency. We need to fully investigate the situation on site to avoid further congestion and minimize losses during transportation. ”

Scratching his cheeks, the boy continued slightly apologetically:

"The other is the transportation plan and logistics support plan for the movement of the 901st Anti-Tank Hunter Battalion to the front line. ”