Before leaving for the Eastern Front, Hindenburg and Ludendorff did not know each other, or even met, and when they arrived on the Eastern Front, the situation there was still deteriorating. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoWith the arrival of the Russian 2nd Army, the German army's inferiority in strength became more and more obvious. The 8th Army built trenches and tried to stop the Russian attack, but the Russians were not as bad as they had been rumored, and the Russo-Japanese War a decade ago had taught them a lot of lessons, making them much more clever in tactics than the French. In order to break through the German field positions, the Russian soldiers lay in ambush on the positions all night, and before dawn they crawled forward another hundred yards. After the signal was given, they took the last six hundred yards with three charges. The German machine guns fired, and they fell to the ground, and then swarmed again. That's how they go up and down again and again. When the Russian infantrymen in white shirts, brandishing bright bayonets, rushed in waves, the Germans crawled out of the trenches, dropped their machine guns and fled.

Over the next two days, the momentum of the Russian offensive slowed down due to logistical supply problems, and thanks to the efforts of the commanders of the corps instead of the new corps commanders and chiefs of staff, the German forces on the Eastern Front stabilized their positions, and the two corps drawn by Moltke Jr. from the Western Front were also on the road, and the situation finally improved. At this time, the Germans accidentally intercepted the telegram of the Russian army about the position and operational deployment of the troops, and found that the two Russian army groups were disconnected from each other and ignored each other. As a result, Ludendorff quickly issued an offensive order, determined to seize this golden opportunity to turn the tide on the Eastern Front in one fell swoop.

In the last days of August, a fierce battle broke out between the German and Russian armies in the fertile lands of East Prussia. On a front more than 70 kilometers wide, the two sides invested hundreds of thousands of soldiers and thousands of artillery pieces. At the beginning of the battle, both sides tried to break the opponent with an attack, and although there were still some problems with the deployment, movement and liaison of the German army, the Russians had even worse problems in this regard, and the Germans were afraid that they would have the upper hand with the support of heavy artillery, and their cavalry, infantry, and horse-drawn heavy field artillery artillery artillery passed through villages and forests, across lakes and fields, and advanced, and kept advancing.

The German offensive quickly paid off. At first the 6th Corps, then the 13th, 23rd and 1st Corps, one after another the main corps of the Russian army was routed, the soldiers retreated in a hurry, the rumors were loud, more and more people surrendered to the Germans, and the captives who were driven to the rear even blocked the path of the German advancing ranks. The entire front of the Russian army was in disarray, the field commanders did not know where their subordinates were, the staff officers' vehicles were speeding everywhere, and the orders of the command were either not received at the front or it was too late. In this way, the Russian 2nd Army was defeated by the German 8th Army, which was not superior in numbers, with more than 120,000 killed, captured and missing, more than 400 Russian artillery pieces and thousands of horses.

Although the German army won the Battle of East Prussia, the situation on the Eastern Front was still very unfavorable for the Allies, and the German victory could not compensate for the heavy losses of the allies - at the same time as the Battle of East Prussia was going on, Austria-Hungary attacked Russian Poland with two army groups, and was defeated by the Russians. By September 1, the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army had collapsed, the 1st and 4th armies were cut off, and the situation was precarious.

So, Wilhelm II was already thinking about providing strong military aid, including chariot units, to his unrivalled allies to help them withstand the Russian army's attack? Natsuki pondered in his heart.

Seeing that Natsuki did not respond for a long time, Wilhelm II had no choice but to come up with his own thoughts: "The combat quality of the naval tank unit is impeccable, in order to facilitate command and scheduling, the army hopes to establish its own tank unit as soon as possible, and the plan is to form 20 tank squadrons first." ”

Modeled after the German tank forces during World War II, Natsuki organized the Navy's tank test brigade into four tank squadrons, and the full squadron should be equipped with 22 combat vehicles. Based on this calculation, it will take 440 combat vehicles to form 20 squadrons, and it will take nearly two years to supply all of them to the army at a rate of 20 units per month.

Without waiting for Natsuki to speak, Crown Prince William said: "With these 20 tank squadrons, we can easily sweep any European country, and no one will dare to make false accusations against Germany at that time." ”

If the German army had 440 tanks at the outbreak of war, even if all of them were lightweight "Hubert 13", the commemoration of the day would have been held entirely in Paris. With Germany's industrial prowess, it was entirely feasible to mass-produce light tracked combat vehicles before 1914, and the reason why Natsuki did not let this happen was that the technical secrecy was the first consideration.

The gap in overall national strength is there, and if there is an arms race, the Allies will definitely not be able to defeat the Entente.

To this end, under the guise of a tractor factory, Natsuki is engaged in the project of developing and producing tracked combat vehicles. With the backing of Daimler's engines and the armored weapons of the Friedrich shipyard, it is not difficult to expand the scale of production, and the long-term testing, training, and drills of the Naval Combat Vehicle Test Brigade have also laid a practical foundation for the mass formation of combat vehicle units. If a surprise production was carried out at any cost, 440 tanks could be built in five months at most, plus two or three months of training, and by the autumn of 1915, the German steel flood would be truly unstoppable.

But if that were the case, Germany's aircraft production would inevitably suffer greatly.

Because of the initiative, Natsuki said unhurriedly: "As Your Majesty wishes, we will try our best to expand the scale of production of combat vehicles, and give relative priority to the supply of army units." If each squadron is equipped with 10 tanks as the backbone, then 10 squadrons can be formed in the first three months, and the other 10 squadrons will only take two months, and then gradually fill the gap in each squadron. ”

"So, it will take us half a year to assemble the first batch of tank troops at the earliest?"

Although Wilhelm II did not reveal his expectations in words, his expression told Natsuki that such a result did not make him very satisfied.

Natsuki was a little surprised, it is said that the current situation on the Western Front is that the German army has the upper hand, as long as France is successfully killed, there is no suspense in turning around and defeating Russia, why is the German emperor in a hurry to form a powerful steel division?

Wilhelm II was reluctant to say more, and Natsuki naturally didn't want to ask in person. When the Emperor walked away, he inquired about the situation with Crown Prince Wilhelm, and learned that Louvain's fire had pushed Germany into the opposite of secular morality.

Louvain is a city in central Belgium, less than 30 kilometers from the capital Brussels. The city has a history of more than 1,000 years, flourished in the 13th century with the woolen trade, and in 1425 established the first university in Belgium, where the library houses 230,000 volumes, including 750 medieval manuscripts and more than 1,000 antiqual books, making it one of the world's rare collections.

When Luvangang's German army was occupied, everything was calm. Shops were still open, and German soldiers were paying for their groceries in a regular manner, even waiting in line with regular customers at barbershops. However, only one day later, a German soldier was shot in the thigh by a hidden gunman, and the situation in the city suddenly became tense, several Belgian officials were taken hostage, and the German army was on heightened alert. Another day later, the German troops on the front line were routed by a surprise attack by the Belgian army, and the defeated troops withdrew to Louvain, and there was a serious shooting in the city that night - the Germans claimed that Belgian civilians were firing at them, and that civilians were shooting on the rooftops to signal the Belgian troops, but the Belgians claimed that the Germans were beating themselves in the dark. In the aftermath of the events that shocked the world, the Special Court conducted a long-term investigation into the causes of the incident, and Germany's complaint was refuted by a Belgian counter-claim. The question of who exactly hit whom has never been decided. This had nothing to do with later events, for the Germans burned Louvain, not as punishment for the alleged misdeeds of the Belgians, but as a deterrent and warning to all their enemies - a gesture of German might before the whole world.

The news of Luvan's burning had long since spread, and the frightened and weeping refugees who had been driven out told people about the atrocities of arson and brutal looting, arresting and killing by the German army, street by street. On August 27, Richard Harding-Davis, an American journalist who was in Belgium at the time, arrived in Rouvain by military train. The Germans locked him in the carriage when the fire had reached the street opposite the station, so he could see rows of houses burning.

On 28 August, Hugh Gibson, First Secretary of the United States Legation, accompanied by his colleagues from Sweden and Mexico, went to Louvain to inspect the situation for himself. The blackened and charred houses are still burning, the roads are hot, and the ashes are everywhere; Dead horses and dead people are lying everywhere. Many of the bodies were swollen and apparently dead for days. All sorts of ruined things, as well as furniture, bottles, and torn clothes, were thrown in the ashes everywhere. Some of the soldiers of the German Ninth Reserve Regiment were drunk, some were nervous, sad, and bloodshot. They ran from house to house, broke down doors, grabbed valuables, stuffed their pockets with cigar cigarettes, and brandished torches.

The fire in Louvain became the subject of public protest by the Belgian government, and the U.S. Legation made an official report, and while the fire was still raging, it caused the whole world to cry out. Foreign newspapers and magazines devoted a great deal of space to the facts witnessed by the refugees and the reports made by journalists. The New York Tribune ran a bold headline above Davis's report: "The Germans sacked Louvain; Women and clergymen were shot", under the subheading "Berlin confirms the terrorist act in Luvan", published a Berlin radio statement circulated by the German Embassy in the United States, saying that it was because of the attack of Belgian civilians in disregard of faith that Luvain was punished for the destruction of the whole city - the Germans wanted to intimidate the world and induce their opponents to submit, only to convince many people that they had an enemy with whom they could not reconcile and compromise.

Belgium almost aroused the whole world against Germany.

"We have no choice but to win the final victory in order to be respected by the whole world." Crown Prince Wilhelm imitated the Kaiser's tone, "The war will not end until the neutrality of Germany's neighboring countries is abolished, the intolerable hegemony of Great Britain in world affairs is ended, and Russia is dismembered." Even after the war is over, we must remain vigilant against the European nations uniting against Germany, as they did against Napoleon. ”

(End of chapter)