Sometimes human greed is the greatest enemy, it can make people lose their judgment of the situation, and unconsciously go crazy and perish. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

"I have only one request, that is, to ensure the fruits of victory on the Eastern Front, and everything else can be restored to the situation before the start of the war, whether it is to maintain the national border or the colonies on the Western Front, these can be discussed or abandoned!" The prince said.

"Then we didn't fight for nothing on the Western Front?" Little Moltke stood up and said excitedly. "Is our millions of troops on the Western Front, with hundreds of thousands of casualties, and tens of thousands of tons of material consumption just in exchange for a pre-war start? So what is the purpose of our war? ”

"What else do you want? Negotiation is not about doing what you want, and what if Britain and France don't agree? Bringing back the troops of the Eastern Front will solve the problem of Britain and France? What if it can't be solved? After paying a huge price, and then everyone sits down at the negotiating table to sign a treaty that should have been signed 1 year ago? The prince smiled bitterly, and his worries finally came.

"If we have to talk about the value of the Western Front, then there is only one, and that is to buy time for our victory over Russia! It is impossible to crush the opponent by military means alone! Really, absolutely impossible, even if you can come up with firepower that is unimaginable now, you still can't do it! The prince said categorically.

Prince Ruprecht, who was a traverser, was also in trouble, because he did not know how to explain to the future chief of the German General Staff what the historical Battle of Verdun was like to the ground, if there was only one of the most tragic battles of the 1st World War! That was the Battle of Verdun, which was unprecedented in terms of the scale, level and duration of artillery! The two belligerents of Germany and France seem to see this battle as the embodiment of the national strength and national glory of both sides! They put their forces and resources into it at all costs, and then watched them disappear in bursts of flashes and explosions! This is perhaps the largest war ever seen that has trampled on human life!

This battle planned by the then chief of the German General Staff Falkenhayn was so cold-blooded and cruel, in the original plan, Verdun was just a magnet to attract continuous reinforcements from the French army, the German army attacked Verdun, and then attracted a steady stream of reinforcements from the French, and then the Germans used superior large-caliber artillery to eliminate it, when the situation on both sides developed to a certain extent, the German army and the French army were engaged in a decisive battle to decide the victory!

And in order for this plan to be carried out smoothly, the entire German army concentrated a powerful artillery assault force that was unique on the Western Front, and even during the entire war! This force is so powerful, purely from the point of view of projection, such a lineup is terrifying even if it is put into 2 battles!

On the frontage of the position, which is less than 13 kilometers, Falkenhayn concentrated 1220 various large-caliber guns, including 542 heavy guns, 306 howitzers, 152 heavy mine launchers! (This kind of thing can actually be seen as a kind of mortar.) And this is only frontal artillery, there is the presence of other artillery on both wings!

Don't think that these howitzers are 105mm or even 75mm gadgets, these so-called 306 howitzers are all German 210mm heavy howitzers! These guns were originally assigned to units of the army level! Those divisional cannons can only sing the protagonist at all! These more than 300 210mm heavy guns were deployed to the front, and 150 meters apart, there was a 210mm heavy howitzer artillery battery! So many heavy guns fired at close range is probably unprecedented, right?

The Germans and the Austro-Crarian watchman artillery also took part in this feast of blood and steel! These heavy guns included 13 420mm bellha guns! This heavy artillery, which destroyed the Belgian fortress of Liège with only 3 guns, was the most powerful artillery in the German Army! The total combat weight is 42.6 tons. It can shoot 810kg heavy shells 9 kilometers away, when it first appeared with only 3 guns to smash the fortress of Liege, and this time, a full 13 guns were deployed to the front line!

In addition, two 380mm heavy guns were transferred from naval batteries and 17 305mm heavy howitzers from Austria-Hungary as long-range support guns. (It should be noted that information on how many guns were used varies, but a Russian publication mentions that a total of 38 380mm and 420mm guns were used in the campaign.) ）

In order to provide these artillery with sufficient ammunition, the German army engineering department paid a huge price, and 26 military engineering companies and 20 railway corps with a total of about 20,000 road construction troops were committed, and they built railways for each division, and there were also a large number of narrow-gauge railways to assist transportation.

Before the start of the war, 213 trains full of ammunition sent a large amount of supplies, according to the specifications of 3,000 shells per field cannon company, 2,100 shells per field howitzer company, and 1,200 shells per heavy howitzer company, enough shells for 6 days, and after the war, according to the plan, 34 trains of ammunition per day were delivered for consumption!

And the French did an equally good job of transporting ammunition! It can even make the German counterparts embarrassed, although the French are beginning to be defenseless, and there is no special railway to transport ammunition, but the performance of the people on the road is simply crushing the Germans! By the end of February, the French had organized a huge transport unit of 300 officers and 8,500 soldiers, who formed 1,075 transport companies, drove 3,900 vehicles, and delivered ammunition to the front line at a rate of 4 vehicles per minute, 6,000 cars day and night, and in the period from February 27 to March 6, the French delivered 23,000 tons of ammunition, 2,500 tons of other supplies and 190,000 reinforcements to the front! This is equivalent to the shipment of 15 pairs of railway trains per day and night.

And what was the outcome of this campaign? In the battle, which lasted nearly 10 months, the Germans had fired 22 million shells, and the French were not to be outdone, and by June 15, the French had also fired 15 million shells, of which 2 million were heavy! In the end, nearly a million soldiers were buried here, and the losses of the French were about 542,000 or more, while the losses of the Germans were about 433,000! Hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies were reduced to ashes, neither side achieved their goal, and the result of the war only led to the change of hands of several square kilometers of positions. What's the point of such a fight?

This drastic attrition was undoubtedly a disaster for Germany, but even after the Battle of Verdun, the Germans did not think about how to end the war with dignity, but continued to increase their weight like gamblers! And in the end, Germany exhausted the last shred of war potential, and ran out of oil!

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