At the end of September, the first summit meeting of the Central Powers was held in Vienna, and military deployment in accordance with political needs was the main topic of the summit. And political needs can be interpreted as the distribution of interests, and political needs can be interpreted as the distribution of interests, and Wilhelm II urgently needs to resolve the interest disputes within the allies in order to obtain oil resources more quickly, and then launch a larger-scale war of conquest.

The quarrel lasted for three days, and in the end Germany and Austria-Hungary became the winners, and Bulgaria also got a good share of the pie, only the Ottoman Turks were not satisfied, but the results gave them no confidence to refute.

According to the secret agreement established at the Congress of Vienna, the Allies were to first target southern Europe, and the Germans would send the forces of two army groups, in conjunction with Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, to completely defeat Serbia and send troops to Romania. After the capture of Romania, the Allies and the Ottoman Turks would flank Greece, thus threatening British shipping in the Mediterranean and the lifeline of the Suez Canal.

After winning the Balkan War, Germany would receive the entire oil share of Romania and Crete in Greece, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria would divide the territory of Romania equally, and Austria-Hungary would receive three-quarters of Serbia and part of northern Greece. Bulgaria received part of Serbia's southeastern border and Greek territory east of Thessaloniki. Ottoman Turkey, on the other hand, received only a part of the territory of central Greece, and Greece, which retained part of its territory, would form a new government with the support of the Central Powers and become a member of the Central Powers.

The battle after the spoils sharing agreement was drawn up was very smooth, and the Allies had no trouble other than cooperation between the allies, logistical inconveniences, and confusion in the chain of command. However, those problems were enough for the Allies to have a headache, but fortunately, the Serbian army and the Romanian army were also in trouble.

The course of the battle was lackluster, with elite German soldiers advancing rapidly in front and Austro-Hungarian troops following behind to clean up the battlefield, collect prisoners of war, and take over towns. The Germans occupied enemy positions that the Austro-Hungarian army had not been able to break through for several months, and the disparity in combat effectiveness made the Austro-Hungarian generals ashamed.

Romania, Greece and other countries immediately appealed to the Entente for help, and Britain also knew that now was not the time to be afraid, so it immediately dispatched a large amount of supplies to Serbia and Greece, and mobilized 15 divisions of colonial troops from the African and Asian colonies to the Balkans to support.

It turned out that the powder keg of the Balkans was nothing more than a shoddy fight between local peoples and states, and as soon as the elite German army arrived, the low level of parity immediately became one-sided. Romania was first conquered by 200,000 German soldiers, 150,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers, and 50,000 Bulgarian soldiers.

The resistance of Greece and Serbia did not last long either, and at the end of 1910, the Austro-Hungarian crown declared Serbia its domain, and in early 1911, Greece announced its surrender. The British deployed 21 divisions of colonial troops, suffered more than 90,000 casualties, and 50,000 became prisoners of the Allies, but they still could not stop the fall of Greece.

The Allied devouring of the European continent panicked the Allies, and Italy on the Apennine Peninsula was about to turn into spaghetti, trembling in front of the German army. Spain and Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula did not show signs of leaning towards the Allies, but the British did not take it lightly, and the security of the Strait of Gibraltar was at stake. In fact, there were already people in Spain who showed a pro-German attitude, and this neutral country made a lot of war money, but the improvement of the economic situation did not bring about an improvement in the lives of the common people, and the internal contradictions became more and more prominent.

In this situation, with Barcelona as the center, an organization called the Officers' Honda, the Officers' Group, the Officers' Union, emerged and gradually became a decisive force. They are dissatisfied with the existing system of the army, with the state of flattery, lax discipline, and theft of state property in the army, with the incompetence of the generals, and even more indignant at the luxurious life of the upper echelons of the army and the poverty of the middle and lower rank officers. And the officer Hongda, who was composed of infantry officers below the rank of colonel, showed a clear favor for Germany, which the British obviously did not want to see.

Therefore, there was only one Tsarist Russia left on the European continent as a resisting ally, which was the lifeline for the Entente and the last hope for the Entente. Once Tsarist Russia surrendered, the Entente would no longer have the possibility of defeating the Central Powers, and the best possible future would be the confrontation between the two powers, which was also beyond the bottom line of Britain.

Nicholas II immediately felt Alexander, equally very proud, seeing that no, the hope of Europe is in the hands of me, Nicholas II the Great, and the great Russia will become the savior of Europe, and without me, Europe will again enter the Dark Ages.

At the same time, Nicholas II did not forget to ask Britain and the United States for benefits, it is difficult to block the German attack with Russian strength alone, and the previous battles have proved this, he does not want to exchange space for victory as in the Napoleonic period, Napoleon's defeat in Moscow does not mean that Wilhelm II will also lose. He was planning to defeat the Germans in the border areas, so more gray cattle were drafted and mobilized, and in the border areas, Russia had gathered more than three million troops, three-quarters of whom were newly recruited soldiers, without decent training and without decent weapons.

"We need weapons, we need ammunition, we need uniforms, we need steel helmets, we need tanks, planes, artillery, everything, without these, we don't expect Russia to stand up to the Allies on its own!" Russian diplomats are tough in London and Washington, and now Britain and the United States have a demand for Russia, and they must come up with real money!

Britain and the United States were able to come up with a lot of things, and all kinds of supplies needed by Russia were piled up in ports around the world, but the question was how to transport them. Regardless of the Atlantic route, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea were run by the Germans like iron barrels, and the Arctic Ocean route used Norwegian ports, which were also blocked by German submarines and warships.

That is, only the Pacific Route and the Trans-Siberian Railway are left to be used, which are inefficient, but still a good way. Although China and Russia have frequent economic and trade exchanges, and a large number of materials and arms have been transported to the hinterland of Russia, this requires Russia to pay a lot of wealth, and many military materials such as tanks and planes cannot be imported from China. Moreover, there has been a military standoff between the two countries, with more than three million armies facing each other across the long border between the two countries in the Far East, Mongolia and Central Asia. The construction of fortifications, the hoarding of supplies and the movement of troops have not stopped, and the inevitable result of the geopolitical environment here is that even if the relationship between the two countries is good, it is impossible to abandon the defense of the border area.

So when Nicholas II's envoy arrived in Wuhan and met secretly with President Lu Liang, he couldn't believe the answer. China went so far as to agree to open up the North Pacific passage and allow American and British merchant ships and transport ships to dock in Vladivostok! This is no different from stabbing Germany in the back.

It is no secret that Germany and China are eye-to-eye, and those four super battleships, the countless supplies, and the German-style weapons and equipment with obvious Chinese blood all prove this. The two countries went to war against the Entente and Japan and the United States respectively, and they were all waiting for the day when the two countries announced their alliance, and in the end they were waiting for such a news, how can it not be surprising!

The surprise was followed by a secret joy, and the contradiction between China and Germany was the greatest good news for the Entente and the United States. The even better news is that China and Russia have reached a non-aggression pact, and according to the requirements of this agreement, the two countries will have fewer troops stationed in the border areas. The total strength of the Northeast Army, the Mongolian Army, and the Northwest Army was reduced from 1.4 million to 650,000, and most of them were transferred to the south. Nicholas II was more active, the more than 1.5 million garrisons in the Asian direction were reduced to 800,000, and the remaining more than 700,000 elite soldiers were transferred to the Eastern Front, becoming the most powerful supplement to the Eastern Front.

Aid departed from the coast of the United States and arrived in Vladivostok via the Pacific route, and within a few days countless supplies were piled up on the port. The Trans-Siberian Railway has limited capacity, and Russia's backward rail transportation system and incompetent bureaucracy make it difficult to meet the needs of the European front line like a drizzle of supplies destined for Europe. The generals at the front were in a hurry to see the tank artillery piled up in Vladivostok, but received a few insignificant bullets, or the soldiers ate canned food made in the United States, but did not get the weapons and ammunition they needed most. This railway, which spans a third of the distance of the world, cannot meet the needs of millions of Russian troops.

The Germans, who almost vomited blood because of the betrayal of China, began to speed up the pace of war preparations, and while the Russian Far Eastern soldiers were still grinding on the distant road, Vladivostok supplies and trains transporting soldiers grabbed the carriages, the German General Staff decided to launch an active attack on Russia.

By the time the offensive began, the General Staff had prepared more than 2.1 million troops for the Eastern Front, including the two most elite Panzer Corps, three newly formed Panzer Corps and two mechanized infantry corps. 2,500 aircraft and 11,000 artillery pieces became the biggest reliance on the army's offensive, and the German army at this time was stronger than the German Wehrmacht at the peak of World War II. At the technical level they were not even weaker than in that period, and most importantly, they did not have a single Führer who pointed fingers, but instead the emperor and the chief of the General Staff, who cooperated tacitly. (To be continued.) )