Because of the intricacies of alliances, entente relations, and long-standing ethnic tensions, the imminent war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia touched the nerves of the major European powers. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoOn July 15, the British Navy entered a state of readiness in accordance with the mobilization plan and held a trial mobilization. Although British law did not require reservists to report for duty in such circumstances, as many as 20,000 reservists came to the naval station. For the first time in the history of the British Navy, a general mobilization was tested and thoroughly inspected, and the Admiralty sent officers to observe the mobilization process in every seaport in order to report and correct every deficiency in the mobilization system. Winston Churchill, Lord of the Admiralty, and Prince Louis, First Sea Lord, personally inspected Chatham and watched as all the reservists carried their personal paraphernalia onto the designated warship.

On July 18, in the waters off Cape Spit, south of Portsmouth, the British Navy held a ship parade on an unprecedented scale. It was an unparalleled gathering of ships ever seen in the world, with a large fleet of 55 battleships and four battlecruisers as the main force, and the ranks of warships were more than 30 nautical miles long, almost filling the Solent Strait between Cape Spit and the Isle of Wight. King George V on board the royal yacht Alexandra for a review. Every warship of the entire fleet flew a full flag. The deck was lined with sailors and marines in full costume, military music and gun salutes, and it took more than six hours for these ships to sail in front of the "Alexandra" one by one. A total of 17 naval seaplanes and land planes are constantly circling over the strait. The purpose of this large-scale parade, known as the mobilization review, was to check the mobilization system of the reserve ships and to show that the Third Fleet, as a reserve, was able to join the Grand Fleet and the Straits Advance in the midst of the imminent war.

……

On the evening of July 26, the German royal yacht "Hohenzollern" sailed from the North Sea into Wilhelmshaven. On the heavily guarded docks of this military port, the most important members of the royal family bid farewell to each other and then went their separate ways. Wilhelm II took the Empress to the Potsdam Palace, and Crown Prince Wilhelm returned to the headquarters of the 5th Army Corps, where he had been appointed commander of the more than 200,000 troops, and the other princes who held military positions returned to their respective ranks.

As for Natsuki, the trip had already lived up to his expectations to persuade the Kaiser to change his mind. If Britain entered the war, the High Seas Fleet would be allowed to strike and break the fate with an all-out battle. Therefore, he will return to the fleet headquarters to work with von Ingnoll and his staff officers to improve the combat plan and carry out all the preparatory work as soon as possible, without delay.

When the Kaiser arrived in Potsdam on a special train, the situation in Europe was moving towards what Natsuki described as the "worst-case scenario". Consciously or unintentionally connived at Germany, the Austro-Hungarian government issued a harsh ultimatum to Serbia, demanding a reply from the Serbian government within 48 hours.

After receiving the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum, Serbia immediately appealed to Tsarist Russia for help. As French President Poincaré, who was on a quick visit to Russia, took a tough lead and promised France to support Russia as much as it could, Russia decided to provide resolute support to Serbia, including a commitment to use force if necessary. With the support of Russia and France, Serbia rejected the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to allow Austro-Crèque officials to enter Serbia to participate in the investigation of the assassinations and to allow Austria-Hungary to send agents to assist in the suppression of actions against Austria-Hungary in Serbia. In the eyes of posterity, this was a harsh condition unacceptable to any independent country, but in this era, the situation is different. In the early years of an attempt to assassinate Prince Mikhel of Serbia, Austria-Hungary fully cooperated and allowed Serbia officials to send officials to the empire to investigate.

Before submitting a reply to Austria-Hungary, Serbia ordered a partial mobilization, sending 15 divisions to the Austro-Serbian border. Upon learning of the situation, Austria-Hungary mobilized 20 divisions late that night to prepare for the war against Serbia, and Russia began various military preparations at dawn the next day, and the war mobilization was actually launched.

On the same day that Serbia delivered its ultimatum to Austria-Hungary, the British fleet, assembled for the review of King George V, held a large-scale combat exercise in the English Channel. In view of the drastic deterioration of the situation in the Balkans, all the ships participating in the exercise were fully manned according to the wartime quota, and the detachments and squadrons were originally scheduled to be disbanded after the exercise, and some of them were to go to the high seas for various training projects, some of them were to return to the port bases, some of them were sent back to the training school, and some of them were to be docked for repairs. However, news from Vienna led the British Admiralty Churchill to make an important decision, and after urgent consultations with the First Sea Lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg, he ordered the fleet not to be disbanded. Then, with the consent of Foreign Secretary Gray, Churchill issued an Admiralty order to the press, hoping that the news would "keep a clear head" in Berlin and Vienna.

On 27 July, von Ingnoll signed an order for a special exercise in the name of the commander-in-chief of the German High Seas Fleet, requiring all detachments and detachments to summon all active personnel in place and to recruit cadets from naval academies and flight schools to supplement the fleet. On the same day, the 1st Marine Brigade of the German Navy, stationed in the barracks in Wilhelmshaven and the surrounding barracks, also sent a large number of naval infantry under the pretext of the exercise to carry out a carpet sweep and a tight garrison on the coast of Wilhelmshaven and the nearby islands.

In the early morning of July 28, Wilhelm II saw the contents of Serbia's reply to the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum sent by Austria-Hungary in the Potsdam Palace, and learned from the Austro-Hungarian diplomats who had come to meet him that Emperor Franz-Joseph was ready to sign the declaration of war against Serbia!

Despite the war clouds on the Austro-Serbian border, after reading the original Serbian reply, Wilhelm II immediately advised Austria-Hungary to cancel the war plan. Since Serbia had shown its submission in its reply, the reason for waging war had disappeared, and a forced declaration of war at this time would put Austria-Hungary at a public and moral disadvantage.

Despite this clear opinion, Wilhelm II replied in the affirmative when asked by Austro-Hungarian diplomats whether Germany would faithfully honour its earlier commitment to give full support to Austria-Hungary once Austria was launched.

Later that day, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on the grounds that it did not accept the ultimatum.

Knowing that Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia, Churchill ordered the British Home Fleet to sail to the Scapavolo base far north. The Grand Fleet sailed out of Portland Harbor overnight, and nearly 100 ships lined up in an 18-mile column and headed north through the Strait of Dover.

After the fleet was deployed, Churchill wrote in his diary: "In any case, a sudden torpedo attack has become yesterday's nightmare, and it is gone forever." ”

At the time of writing, Churchill may still have a hint of apprehension in his mind, but coincidentally, another "Admiralty-Chancellor", von Tirpitz, State Secretary of the German Navy, wrote in his diary: "When the reality of Britain's entry into the war shatters the wishful thinking of those men, they will surely be extremely upset at the opportunity we have just lost—three German submarines could have attacked the British fleet unsuspected, and conservatively estimated that at least four or five British capital ships could have been severely damaged." thereby significantly neutralizing the superiority of the British home fleet over us...... The shame of undeclared war? Today, one will only recognize the rise of Japan, and who else accuses it of despicable acts of undeclared war in the Qing-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars? ”

On 29 July, Austro-Hungarian troops crossed the Austro-Serbian border and shelled the Serbian capital, Belgrade. Although many people still wanted to keep the war within the scope of local wars, the criss-crossing alliances and ententes had made it impossible for the major European powers to stay out of the situation. On July 30, both Austria and Russia issued general mobilization orders; On 31 July, Germany issued an ultimatum to Russia, giving it 12 hours to withdraw its mobilization and to "declare to us clearly that it has been done", which Russia ignored.

At the same time as the ultimatum was delivered to Russia, Germany also sent an ultimatum to France, demanding that France reply within 18 hours whether it would remain neutral in the Russo-German war, and that if France remained neutral, Germany "demanded that the forts of Turkey and Verdun be occupied by the Germans as a guarantee of neutrality and be returned after the war."

In other words, France was asked to hand over the keys to the door.

Baron Schönn, the German ambassador to Paris, found it difficult to submit this "outrageous" request, and in his view, it would be of great benefit to Germany for France to remain neutral at this moment, and his own government could have paid the price for it without punitive measures. Eventually, he submitted to the French government a request for a declaration of neutrality, without making any German threats against the two fortifications, but the French had intercepted and deciphered the instructions given to him by Berlin, and the facts were still clear.

To the German ultimatum, France replied that it "will act in its own interests."

Once the fuse of war has been lit, everything has become irretrievable. Panicked governments on the border are struggling to avoid war, but all in vain. The intelligence officers along the border reported every cavalry patrol squad as being deployed ahead of the mobilization order, and the general staffs of the countries, driven by their ruthless schedules, slapped the table and demanded that the order to dispatch troops be issued as soon as possible, for fear that the adversary would take advantage of the action of an hour earlier. The heads of state were terrified, after all, they were asked to take responsibility for the fate of the country, and they wanted to back down and avoid it, but the timetable of military action still pushed them forward......

……

In the early morning of 1 August, fog filled the Helgoland Bay. As Chief of Operations Staff of the German High Seas Fleet, Natsuki boarded the large torpedo boat K29 and set off from Wilhelmshaven with the minelaying fleet, and arrived at Helgoland, known as the "Gibraltar of the North", after more than two hours at sea.

The name Helgolan means "sacred place", and in Norse mythology, it is the abode of Fristi, the god of justice, peace and truth. In 1721, a sudden storm cut off the natural passage between Helgoland and its beaches, and the island consisted of two parts: the main island with 61 meters of reddish-brown cliffs and the outlying islands jutting out into the sea with white beaches. The waters around the island are known as "Helgoland Bay" or "Deutsches Bay".

Because of its unique geographical location, Helgoland has an important strategic position that is not commensurate with its positive face. Historically, it has played many roles as a sea fortress for the countries bordering the North Sea, a lair for pirates in the North Sea, and a foothold for trek sailors. In the early 18th century, it was even the largest freight transit station in Europe. In 1714 it came under Danish control, and in 1807 it passed into British hands until 1890. On 1 July 1890, Britain signed the Treaty of Colony and Helgoland with Germany, transferring Helgoland to Germany. The British Prime Minister at the time, despite the opposition of Queen Victoria and the islanders of Helgoland, ceded the important island to Germany in exchange for a former German colony in East Africa and a commitment from Germany to continue to expand its colonial power in East Africa.

After acquiring Helgoland, the Germans quickly built the island into a military base against the British, where berths could be used for light cruisers, coastal defense fortresses were built on the main and outlying islands, equipped with long-range, large-caliber shore guns, barracks, radio stations, seaplane hangars and other facilities, and the aborigines were all sent to the German mainland.

Landing on the main island of Helgoland, Natsuki looks out from above. Ahead is the rough North Sea hinterland, and behind is the estuary of the Weser and Elbe rivers, where Germany's largest seaport cities of Bremen and Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven, the largest naval base on the North Sea coast, are located. Figuratively and strategically, Helgoland at this time was like a sentinel, alone but heroically guarding one of Germany's most important stretches of coastline. However, because the geographical outline of Helgoland Bay is an open harbor, and Helgoland Island is more than 50 nautical miles away from the coast in the east and south directions, the British fleet can still bypass Helgoland Island and march if it wants to forcibly attack the ports of William, Bremen, and Hamburg. Therefore, the German Navy's defensive strategy in the Gulf of Helgoland was to use Helgoland Island as a tactical fulcrum, with light cruisers, large torpedo boats, and minelayers to implement a warning blockade of the open sea.

In the First World War in history, the first official confrontation between the British and German navies took place in the Helgoland Bay. The British Navy used submarines as bait to ambush the German patrol fleet with light cruisers and destroyers, and then burst into the Helgoland Bay to engage in a fierce battle with the German light cruisers, which were reinforced by the British battlecruisers, and in the final stage of the battle, the supporting British battlecruisers joined the battle group, and finally won a complete victory over the German Navy. In this service, the German Navy lost three cruisers and one large torpedo boat, and many ships were wounded, with more than 1,000 casualties and prisoners, while the British Navy suffered heavy damage on only four ships with less than 100 casualties.

Under Natsuki's watchful eye, the mine-laying ships that accompanied them laid mines in the predetermined sea area. Historically, the weapons that sank and damaged warships the most in the First World War were neither naval guns nor torpedoes, but these seemingly dull mines. In the past four years, thousands of mines have been laid in the warring waters, the British Navy's new dreadnought "Daring" was sunk by mines laid by the German Navy shortly after the start of the war, and the German Navy lost the armored cruiser "Frederick-Carr" because of Russian mines, and the British and French fleets joined forces to attack the Dardanelles, and the mines laid by the Turkish Navy sank three French battleships one after another, thus playing a huge role in reversing the strategic situation. The battleship "Bavaria" was damaged by mines, and several light ships were damaged by mines.

From light ships of several hundred tons to super dreadnoughts of tens of thousands of tons, the slightest carelessness can lead to the death of an inconspicuous mine.

With Kaiser Wilhelm II's consent, Tirpitz signed a vigilance readiness order on 30 July, which led to additional patrols in the fleets and naval bases, and mine-laying began that night. In just a few hours, German warships have laid six minefields in the Helgoland Bay, and in accordance with the scheduled operational deployment, they will also lay more than 4,000 mines of various kinds in this important sea area in the next week, thus forming a relatively complete warning and defense system.

A planned large number of mines can be prevented from the opponent's surprise attack to the greatest extent, and Natsuki's intention is obviously not to retreat, he has already set aside a passage in the tight mine array for large ships to quickly enter and exit, and has reached an agreement with Rear Admiral Maas, who is in charge of the maritime vigilance and defense of the Helgoland Bay -- in order to prevent British submarines from tracking and reconnoitring, the German ships patrol only through the preset patrol channel on weekdays, and deliberately put on a posture of constantly planting mines, so that the other side can misjudge the true intentions of the German navy.

(End of chapter)