Facts have proved that in the face of European powers, Russia relies on a vast territory and poor transportation conditions, perhaps with the addition of simple and simple soldiers, but these cannot stop the fiasco of the Russian army, and the entire system of the army lags greatly behind the German army, which is the main reason for the fiasco of the Russian army.

The German Army Group North used the newly formed Third Panzer Army to break through the Russian defense line in three days, and the more than 500,000 Russian troops piled up on the front line were crushed. The fierce confrontation and tug-of-war imagined by Nicholas II did not appear, and on the first day, more than 200 planes that the Russians had painstakingly accumulated were slaughtered by the Luftwaffe, and the difference in the performance of the two planes was not very large, but the generational difference in the quality of the pilots could not be erased. German pilots have endured a lot of trials in Western Europe, whether it is single aircraft or formation combat is superior, and the Luftwaffe occupies an overwhelming numerical advantage, Fokker II fighters continue to go to the front, the latest Fokker III fighter more than 200.

The upper echelons of the Russian army are full of corrupt and incompetent generals, most of whom have experienced actual combat and witnessed new forms of warfare in the Far East, and most of the rest of the generals adhere to infantry-based tactics, and even use a large number of cavalry to launch counterattacks against German armored forces. Hundreds of tanks were placed at various defensive nodes as fixed fire points, and after the infantry line was broken by the Germans, the rear troops were unprepared for the hoarding of troops, coupled with the confusion of the command system caused by the aerial bombardment and the German offensive too fast, it was not surprising that the Russian army failed. Some units even received orders to counterattack, and on the way to the front line, they were crushed by the sudden appearance of German troops, who were extremely unaccustomed to the German offensive methods.

After several lines of defense were lost one after another, the Russian generals received orders from St. Petersburg, and by this time the situation had seriously deteriorated, and Nicholas II still considered his troops to be large enough to drive the Germans out of the border area. The front-line generals, who were ordered to hold out and counterattack, did not dare to disobey the emperor's orders, and as a result, more troops were sent into the German offensive line, which became the record of the German army, and the soldiers became prisoners of war of the German army.

The hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war became a major obstacle to the German advance, and they had to detach large numbers of troops to guard and escort the prisoners. It is worth recalling that there were a lot of troops in the Polish army group of the Russian army who voluntarily surrendered, they were troops composed of local soldiers and generals, because of the harsh national policy of Tsarist Russia, the local Poles were extremely disgusted with Russian rule, but showed a good impression of the invader Germany. Schlieffen was keenly aware of this and ordered the Poles and captured Polish soldiers to be treated well, an order that made the German advance faster and caused tens of thousands of Polish soldiers to become German servants.

On the seventh day of the offensive, Army Group North surrounded more than 400,000 Russian troops east of Warsaw, and the Germans were delighted with the huge results, knowing that the new tactics led by armored forces, that is, what Moltke the Younger called a blitzkrieg, were powerful, but the results of the blitzkrieg were beyond their imagination.

You must know that most of the more than 400,000 Russian troops in the encirclement are standing forces, that is, the so-called elite of the Russian army, which is the main component of Russia's mobilized forces before the war. Losing more than 400,000 elites, the Russian army will be greatly damaged, and Russia will be doomed to lose control of this part of the elite. On the sixth day after the start of the siege, the Russian generals led the Polish Army Group to surrender to the German generals, and the losses of tens of thousands of people every day exhausted the Russian generals, and the hopeless battles and the harsh threats of Nicholas II made the Russian generals not want to continue to resist.

Five days later, the German Army Group North easily occupied the city of Warsaw and gradually took control of all of Russian Poland. In other directions, the Germans were advancing just as smoothly, even surpassing the pace of progress in the north. Army Group South invaded the territory of Ukraine, Moltke Jr.'s First Army acted as the vanguard, and the most elite First Panzer Army advanced hundreds of kilometers a day, destroying all Russian fortifications along the way, and its offensive process was almost a copy of Army Group North.

The granary of Ukraine is under great threat, and this can be said to be the core territory that Russia cannot lose, and if it is lost, all of Russia will starve. The commander of the Ukrainian army group of the Russian army was a little smarter, he did not pile all his troops on the first line of defense, because he did not expect the German offensive to be so fast. He still had enough time to lay out the defenses before the Germans arrived in Kyiv. There is a vast strategic depth in front of Kiev, and although it is a plain area, there is no developed railway and road transportation system here, and it is impossible for the Germans to come too quickly. Therefore, he shrank his forces within more than 200 kilometers around Kiev, trying to block the German attack with dense defenses and waiting for an opportunity to counterattack.

The huge territory of Eastern Europe was indeed too vast for the German army, and the armored forces advanced more than 500 kilometers, defeated more than 100,000 Russian troops, and collected tens of thousands of prisoners of war. But there's still no end in sight, knowing that it's almost the entire distance across Germany! By the time they arrived in front of the Kyiv line, Army Group South was exhausted, the tanks of the armored forces needed to be repaired, and they had too many tanks abandoned on hundreds of kilometers of roads, waiting for sappers to repair and replace parts. In addition, they needed fuel, ammunition and food, and there were signs of disconnection from the grenadiers and infantry clusters in the rear. The logistics units have been put to great test, they are accustomed to transporting supplies under a well-developed system of rail and road transportation, and once they enter the relatively backward regions of Eastern Europe, they have to leave the lovely railways and trains, and use pack horses and manpower to transport countless fuel and ammunition, which is several orders less efficient than before.

Therefore, it was very crucial to attack and occupy the various stations along the railway, and this was exactly what the German offensive line was. When the Battle of Kyiv was launched by the German Army Group South and the Russian Ukrainian Army, it was already the twentieth day after the start of the offensive. In the north at this time, the German Army Group Center was already preparing to launch the Minsk Campaign, while Army Group North was advancing to the northwestern coast of Russia, trying to capture Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, directly threatening the security of St. Petersburg.

On October 20, 1910, the Battle of Kiev ended, and the attempt of the Russian Ukrainian Army Group to resist the German army with the core of Kiev failed. The Russian defense line was shattered by German armored forces, and the Russian army had to suffer the bitter consequences of defeat before the aid piled up in Vladivostok arrived.

In the absence of weapons and ammunition, the gray cattle used inferior weapons to show the admirable combat effectiveness of the German soldiers, they often suffered huge casualties, but did not take a step back, and these Russian soldiers learned from the war so quickly that it became difficult to deal with in a few days. It is a pity that their generals did not give the soldiers more time to study, and on the eleventh day after the start of the Battle of Kiev, the commander of the Ukrainian Army Group ordered the surrender to the Germans, and 350,000 soldiers in the encirclement centered on Kiev became prisoners of war of the German army.

Over the next two months, Minsk was conquered, and Vilnius and Riga in the north became occupied by the Germans. Frightened, Nicholas II moved his command center out of St. Petersburg and Moscow to avoid the sharp blades of the German Army Group North.

The problem was that the Germans, who had achieved great success, could no longer afford to continue the offensive, and Schlieffen ordered all troops to stop advancing and build fortifications along the existing occupied areas. Because they spanned thousands of kilometers and were far from the German mainland, the logistical supply lines were frighteningly fragile, and there were hundreds of thousands of stragglers outside the railway lines and major cities, who organized with the assistance of the locals to attack the logistics convoys, so that the Germans had to devote a lot of energy to deal with these elusive partisans.

And the soldiers on the front line have also reached the top of exhaustion, Rommel did not go so far when France was destroyed, his tanks urgently need to be repaired and replaced with parts, half of the twenty-one tanks in his tank company are waiting for sappers to repair on the road, and the remaining half lost four during the attack on Kyiv, and another five have mechanical problems, so the entire tank company has only three tanks that can fight, and it can be said that it has completely lost its combat capability.

The state of more than two million German soldiers on the front line is about the same, compared with the pitiful ammunition and fuel, the German army can also get a lot of food replenishment from the local area, this line is a famous granary in Europe, and it is the main area of Russian grain exports to Europe, before Stalin scourged here, the granary lived up to its name.

The main problem was the winter coats, and when the German offensive was launched, it was already the end of September, and most of the German military leaders, including the chief of the General Staff Schlieffen and Kaiser Wilhelm II, believed that Russia would sue for peace with Germany because of the crushing defeat in the border areas, and Germany would use this to acquire large swathes of Eastern European territory, completely suppress Russia near cold Moscow, and force Russia to submit to the obscenity of the German Empire.

Things did not go according to the German script at all, the Russians did not surrender as neatly as the French, and even Nicholas II did not send a peace envoy to Berlin, even though St. Petersburg was directly threatened by the German army, Nicholas II did not give in. He was stubborn and stubborn, like the British, which gave Schlieffen and Wilhelm II a headache.

It seems that there is no for the fighting nations to lose Eastern Europe, and the loss of a broken arm and a leg is nothing to them, and Nicholas II was surprised to find that the loss of Minsk, Kiev and other places has increased the efficiency of logistics and transportation. After the German offensive stopped, the Russians finally had time to catch their breath, and forces from the European and Far East regions of Russia gathered on the front, and in just one month the Russian army again gathered more than two million troops. (To be continued.) )