Königsberg Railway Station.

"Little Sasha, you have to take care of your brother while I'm away, okay?" Chen Tian picked up his little princess and kissed him hard.

"Stabbing, don't!" Three-year-old Sasha turned her head away from Chentian's beard.

Lisa stood silently, tears already welling up in her eyes.

"Return triumphantly soon!"

"Hmmm! Waiting for me to come back! Chen Tian held the little princess in one hand and Lisa in his arms with the other, while little Andres slept soundly in the nurse's arms.

On the platform, there was a sad scene of parting, and countless German soldiers with spears on their backs were saying goodbye to their relatives or lovers.

From here, the Panzer Corps and the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Infantry Corps of the East Prussian Regiment were about to leave for the Russian-German border, and they were to cross the border into Russian territory to fight.

Two days ago, Tatsuten put Ollie and his staff on the train here. Since Turkey was about to enter the war, Kemal asked that Oli be sent there as the commander of the German-Turkish forces, so as soon as the counterattack on the Eastern Front ended, Oli hurriedly set off with a group of staff officers.

At the same time, Lenin and his companions boarded a train to Turkey, from where they would enter Russia. Once the Russian army was completely defeated, Lenin led his Bolsheviks to start the Russian Revolution.

At this time, the 4 armies of the Russian army and the 3 armies of the Austro-Hungarian army were fighting fiercely in the Polish region, and in view of the fact that the East Prussian Corps did not suffer any losses in the previous East Prussian counterattack, Chentian decided to quickly send troops to stab the Russian army in the back.

For this plan, neither the emperor nor Moltke Jr. was very much in favor, once there was an accident in the East Prussian army, they would not be able to transfer troops from the Western Front to support, and they both expressed trust in the combat effectiveness of the Austro-Hungarian army, and more importantly, the victory in East Prussia made everyone think that the Russian army was not vulnerable at all, so they thought that the Austro-Hungarian army was enough to deal with the Russians.

Chen Tian himself knew very well that if he hadn't taken advantage of the right time, place and people, and a large number of machine guns played a huge role in the defensive battle, he would not have eliminated the two Russian armies so easily. If he does not intervene in the Russo-Austrian war, it is not surprising that the Austro-Hungarian army will be defeated in the near future, and the situation on the Eastern Front will be very unfavorable to the Central Powers at that time, and perhaps the time will really have to divide troops from the Western Front to support the Eastern Front. Therefore, Chen Tian repeatedly insisted on this troop operation, and argued with Moltke Jr. on the phone for two days, and Moltke Jr. reluctantly agreed to the East Prussian Army to enter the Russian border to fight.

Most of the tanks and planes did not accompany the East Prussian Corps due to the deep fighting on the Russian border, which would strengthen the defenses of the East Prussian region.

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Western Front, Belgium.

On 8 August, the 1st Army on the right flank of the German army captured the Belgian capital Brussels, and the Belgian king and army retreated to Antwerp.

A detachment of German lancers armed with flagpole spears appeared on the streets of Brussels, they were only the advance party to show the might of the German army, and the contingent that followed was almost unbelievable in strength and prestige.

The main force of the German army began to pass through Brussels at 1 o'clock, and the first to appear were groups of infantry in earth-gray uniforms, neatly groomed, with shaved beards, polished shoes, and bayonets glistening in the sun; Then the cavalry came, the same earthy gray uniforms, black and white pennants floating on the flagpoles, and the dense hooves of horses making a crisp sound on the gravel road; The wheels of the heavy artillery of the artillery team rolled forward like thunder; The drummers rumbled to the snare drums, and the soldiers opened their hoarse voices and sang in unison the triumphant song "May You Always Wear the Corolla of Victory".

The soldiers marched forward, and the ranks were endless. The crowd watching the march was silent, and they couldn't help but be amazed by such a mighty army. The Belgians were certainly in awe of the strength of the German army, but the convoy of trucks with a shoe factory and the four-horse cooking convoy were even more astonishing. In the shoe repair workshop car, the shoemakers stand at the workbench and slap their hands, the shoe repairing soldiers stand on the pedals and wait, and the cooking car is a blazing fire and smoke curling.

The German troops walked along the side of the avenue, and the staff officers' cars and the communicators' bicycles shuttled through the middle of the road. Some of the cavalry officers held cigarettes and looked at everything proudly, some wore monocles, and some held English whips, all of which were in different shapes, but they all looked like noble knights.

The marching procession went hour after hour, all afternoon, all night, all night, until the next day. In this way, the 320,000 troops of Kluk's 1st Army marched into Brussels for three days and nights. **************

Western Front, France.

General Xia Fei, the commander-in-chief of the French army who is nearly 60 years old, has a burly figure, a big belly, a plump face embellished with a thick beard and two thick eyebrows, a white complexion, blue and serene eyes, and a sincere and quiet gaze, looking like a Santa Claus, so he is called "Xia Fei's father". His strategy for the French army was to abandon the fortifications on the right flank and concentrate on the German center and left flank, and he and all the French hoped to retake the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which had been lost in 1870.

On August 4, Paris, the French army marched. French soldiers, dressed in dark blue shirts with red trousers and wide hems, marched through the streets in a neat stride, singing loudly. General Bo, who had lost an arm, wore the blue and black ribbon of an 1870 battlefield veteran and rode at the head of the procession. The soldiers of the cavalry regiment marched with vigour, dressed in dazzling iron chest armor and long black ponytails hanging from their helmets. They were followed by large wooden crates and flatbed trailers with aircraft mounted on slender 75 mm field guns, the pride of France. Horses and horses flow throughout the day, passing through the arched gates of the North and East stations.

On 10 August, 80,000 British troops, armed with 30,000 horses, 315 field guns and 125 machine guns, assembled at Southampton and Portsmouth, crossed the Channel to fight with the French. The officers' command knives were freshly sharpened and shiny, and they were ordered to be sent to the repair shop for polishing on the third day before mobilization, but they were of no other use than to pay tribute during the review. The British, however, described the force as "the best trained, organized, and equipped of any British army that has ever set out on the march." ”

***************

Western Front, Franco-German border.

The strength of the five French armies was similar to that of the 70 divisions deployed by Germany on the Western Front, with the French 1st Army on the right, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th armies on the left, and two large armies grouped together on the boundary from Verdun to the Tühr Line, which were similar in numbers to the two German armies on the line from Metz to Theonville. At Asalos and Lorraine, the French 1st and 2nd armies faced the German 7th and 6th armies and formed the French right flank, with the task of launching a powerful offensive to drive the confronting German forces back to the Rhine line.

On 15 August, the French army began an offensive on the left flank of the German army on the Western Front, with General Bo's headquarters launching an offensive on Alsace, and General Dibay's 1st Army and De Castelno's 2nd Army also crossing two natural passes in the Lorraine area to attack the natural fortress of Molangge.

The defenders of the German positions in Lorraine were the 6th Army of the Bavarian **** Ruprecht, and the 7th Army of General Herringen, which was under his command. Their task was to pin down as many French troops as possible on his front so that it could not reach the main French positions facing the German right flank. According to Schlieffen's plan, in order to accomplish this task, he had to retreat first, lead the French army into his pocket, stretch the French line of communication, and then bite it, and then the decisive battle was fought elsewhere. The essence of this plan is to give the enemy a tactical victory in the region and a strategic defeat for it. In the first days of the French offensive, the Germans slowly retreated as planned. The blue-clad and red-trousers French troops marched from the wide, straight road between the sycamore roads into the land that once belonged to them.

However, from the day of the French attack, Moltke Jr.'s determination to carry out Schlieffen's plan to rely solely on the right flank began to waver. He and his staff were counting on the French army to mobilize the main forces of their left flank to meet the threat of the German right flank. But the French have not moved. The French army was gathering its main forces for a major offensive through the Lorraine area between Metz and the Vosges mountains, prompting the German high command to consider the need to reorient the entire strategic deployment. From then on, the German high command was tempted to see that the left flank had an opportunity. Moltke Jr. was no longer ideologically opposed to changing his battle plan in accordance with the enemy's movements. In this way, Schlieffen's plan to pour all his strength with one wing, without asking how the enemy moves, must be strictly executed. Plans, which seemed so seamless on paper, are now shattered in war, under the pressure of vagaries and especially emotional impulses.

Seeing the other troops marching forward with their heads held high while he himself retreated, Ruppresette felt very uncomfortable, and he strongly demanded a counter-offensive, believing that the best way to contain as many French troops as possible on his front was to attack. He had heated discussions on the telephone with the German high command for three days, and he said that his troops were too impatient to wait for orders to attack, that it was difficult to control them, and that it was shameful to force the troops who were eager to advance to retreat.

The German high command was both fascinated and terrified. Moltke the Younger reminded Rupresette of the dangers of a counter-offensive, the chief of which was that it would be a frontal attack, given the rolling hills and the French forts, which made it impossible to outflank them.

Rupbresit retorted that the danger of attacking was not great, but that the danger was to continue to retreat. He will take the enemy by surprise and knock the enemy into a daze.

"Either let me attack," he finally shouted hoarsely, "or give me an order that explicitly prohibits attack!" ”

Rupresit couldn't hold back, and demanded that Moltke give a straightforward answer to whether he could or could not.

"Oh! No, I will not bind your hands and feet to prevent you from attacking, but you must take responsibility and make your decisions in good conscience! Moltke relented.

On 18 August, the French commander-in-chief, Chauffel, issued an order instructing General Luff's 3rd Army and General Decari's 4th Army to prepare for an attack on the Ardennes, and the 5th Army to attack north of the Sambre River.

At Lorraine, on the morning of 20 August, the French 1st and 2nd Armies were overwhelmed by an attack on the German lines at Salbul and Morangers. For machine-gun positions equipped with heavy artillery, barbed wire, and concealed bunkers, the shortcomings of a massive charge were immediately exposed. The French assault tactics were based on the estimation that the emigrated infantry units would sprint forward for 20 seconds and advance 50 meters without the opponent having time to take their guns, aim and shoot. But the subjects that were painstakingly practiced during the exercise proved to be an unattainable stupidity on the battlefield. The German machine gun took only 8 seconds to fire. Despite the setback, the two French generals ordered their troops to move forward. The German counteroffensive began, and the French army was shattered by heavy artillery fire. The French 2nd Army was forced to retreat, leaving the right flank of the 1st Army without cover. Xia Fei had no choice but to order the 1st Army to retreat with him.

The next day, Rupresit's heavy artillery roared like a galloping horse, day and night. The French army retreated to the mouth of the Sharme Gorge between the French Turkish and Erbinar defense areas.

On the 23rd, the German 6th and 7th armies launched a magnificent attack on the Sharme Pass, and in the following days they were locked in a fierce battle with the French 1st and 2nd armies.

The defeat of Lorraine's offensive did not discourage Xia Fei, on the contrary, he saw that the fierce counteroffensive of Rupresit had plunged the German left flank into a fierce battle, and it was a good time for him to attack the German center, so he gave the order to attack in the Ardennes mountains. While the French 3rd and 4th armies entered the mountains, the French 5th Army crossed the Sambre River to attack the enemy's right flank.

The Ardennes terrain was not suitable for attack, with its dense woods and streams, but it was chosen as the breakthrough point by the French, who considered it to be the weakest German army.

The German forces guarding the area were the 5th Army led by Crown Prince Prince and the 4th Army led by the Duke of Württemberg. According to the plan, the German 4th Army was to attack Nafsciato, through the northern Ardennes, the 5th Army was to attack Verton, as well as the two French fortresses of Longvie and Montmedy, through the southern part of the mountains, and the headquarters of Prince was located in Tionville.

Confronting Prince was the French 3rd Army under the command of Luff. Lüf's task was to drive the Germans back to the area from Metz to Theonville and encircle them, while recovering the Brière area as they advanced. While he was encircling the right flank of the German center, the friendly 4th Army was to encircle the German army on the left flank of the center. The two French armies were to fight their way out of the middle and cut off the arm of the German right flank from the shoulder.

On August 22, large-scale battles began. In Verton and Tantini, in Rossinhoor and Naftosia, on various battlefields, artillery roared.

Before the attack, the French soldiers had bayonets on their guns, and countless flags fluttered in the wind. The drum and bugle orchestra played the "Marseillaise" passionately. The officers wearing white gloves, 20 steps before the band, stepped on the syllables of the trumpet, and marched neatly and quickly, with a huge and spectacular sound, like a military parade at the National Day ceremony. When the French infantry advanced, their advance guard marched in a neat manner, in a neat formation, and even when they fell under the sound of gunfire, they were very neat. One by one, they were like rabbits, and when they fell, they could not get back up, but they were brave and did not fear it. The officers of the avant-garde strutted in front of the ranks, and the avant-garde fell one by one, and followed one by one, and kept falling and advancing, and the position where the follow-up troops fell never exceeded 50 meters in front of the first fall.

At Rossinhol, the French 3rd Colonial Division was surrounded by the 6th Army of the German 5th Army and fought for 6 hours, with little left of the division and the division commander killed.

In Verton, the battlefield after the fierce battle was an unbelievable sight, with thousands of dead still standing, leaning against a 60-degree slope made of piles of corpses.

On August 23, the situation of the French army's missed shots and broken arrows was already clear, the French army did not "split the German army in half", the French army mustered the courage of pride, brandished sabers, shouted "forward", and launched one attack after another against the German troops who held the trenches and used machine guns and artillery, but the opponent's terrifying firepower overcame their courage, and the French army began to fully retreat from the Ardennes, the 3rd Army retreated to Verdun, and the 4th Army withdrew to Stenay and Sedan.

At this time, the French 5th Army, which was on the banks of the Sambre River, was ordered to cross the river to attack, and this was the first operation with the participation of the British. The vanguard of the German Bülow Army arrived at the Sambre River on 21 August and forced its way between Namur and Charleroi, where the 10th Army of the French 5th Army, stationed in this area, dug neither trenches nor barbed wire or other fortifications on the south bank, but waited to charge the enemy with flesh, since the French military vocabulary did not contain the word defensive preparation. The French rushed forward in this way, but the German machine guns were extremely powerful. On 23 August, the French army began to retreat.

Far to the left, the British and Kluke's troops had been fighting for the 18-metre-wide Mons Canal since early in the morning. This was the first time that British soldiers fought with the European enemy since the Crimean War, and it was also the first battle on the European continent since Waterloo, the battle was fought for a total of 9 hours from the beginning to the retreat, and the British army engaged in the battle counted 35,000 people in 2 divisions, with a total of nearly 2,000 casualties, but they delayed the advance of the German Army Group Kluk for 1 day.

The battle of the German-French border ended, and the French suffered more than 140,000 casualties in these four days, while the German casualties were negligible. The German-French border was littered with broken walls, and the streets and alleys smelled of blood, medicine, horse manure and corpses. Among the corpses, scattered with the words "The French army should take the offensive as the only law in the future, and only the offensive can produce positive results".

The border had been breached, the gates of France were opened, and the French army units retreated. On 24 August, the whole battle situation was clear, and the Germans began to advance in a long drive.

When he got the news, Chen Tian and the main force of his East Prussian Army were assembling on the German-Russian border. Hearing that the German army had successfully invaded France, the soldiers were jubilant, but Chen Tian was worried.

"The dream of 'Schlieffen' was shattered in this way, the main force of the French army was not wiped out on the border and in the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, their living forces were preserved almost intact, little Moltke, there will be a time when you will regret it in the future!" Chen Tian looked up to the sky and sighed, sooner or later the Western Front will be in a stalemate again, he must solve the Russian situation on the Eastern Front as soon as possible to free up his hands to join the battle on the Western Front, and also hope that the emperor can send his elite armored troops to the front line as soon as possible, the tractor factory has been fully engaged in manufacturing armored vehicles, and 2 new armored armies are also being formed, but it is still unknown whether they can rely on these weapons to defeat all the French and British armies.

"Lenin, don't disappoint me!"