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Since the German lightning invasion of Luxembourg and Belgium, the first thing Song Xiaofei wakes up every morning is to read the battle reports sent back by hundreds of military observers sent by China to the European theater. At that time, it was an international practice for neutral countries in war to send military observers to the front line. Historically, the highest-ranking military strategist in the history of the U.S. military, John Brown. Joseph. Pershing, a special general of the United States of America, was a military attache in Japan and a military observer of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.

The war reports of the European war are usually collected and sorted out by the intelligence team led by Song Xiaofei's wife Rong Rong, after all, she has been the editor-in-chief of the newspaper for many years, so she is very good at doing this. In addition, Rong Rong traveled in Europe in her early years, was proficient in the languages of these countries, and was familiar with their history, so Song Xiaofei was often with her during this time. Rong Rong was also very happy. It's a great blessing to be able to spend time with the people you like.

The reason why Song Xiaofei is so concerned about the war in Europe is that in addition to the fact that Chinese companies want to make war money, but also because he expected that the outcome of the war would probably be different from the first war in history, because Archduke Ferdinand did not die, and the Austro-Hungarian army may not return with a crushing defeat in Serbia, the German Chief of General Staff Schlieffen should have retired, but Kaiser Wilhelm II recalled him in order to start a war in 1908, and he would definitely not deviate from the "Schlieffen Plan" like Moltke Jr. in history. It would certainly concentrate superior forces to fight a war on the right flank, and Germany would not necessarily be defeated in World War I. The Russian Empire had collapsed, Ukraine and Poland had become Germany's sphere of influence, and the divided Russia was weakened in 1908, and with the support of France and Great Britain, it was an egg to fight Germany. So. History has changed, and if Germany wins in Europe, Italy may fall to the Allies. If Germany once dominates Europe, will it really be as Wilhelm II thought at the end of the 19th century? It is also unknown that the German army was sent to attack the port cities of New York and Boston in the United States, and to support Mexico in attacking the United States. Therefore, the "butterfly effect" in history is already too great, and Song Xiaofei has to rely on collecting a large amount of intelligence every day to judge the future development trend of the world and see when the time is ripe for China to enter the war.

At the beginning of the war, the war between Germany and France on the Western Front was the main line. And according to the estimates of the German Chief of Staff Schlieffen. The fighting on the Western Front will be over in about 39 days. He told Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary that in 39 days, the Germans would go to the Eastern Front to support the Austro-Hungarian army.

At the beginning, the situation on the battlefield was still favorable to the Germans. More than 1,200,000 German ** teams launched a blitzkrieg, sweeping Luxembourg and Billy. But the invasion of Belgium could not have been successful without conquering the fortress of Liège, and on the side of this strongly-fortified entrance, across the vast plain of Flanders and France. If the Germans conquer Liège. It will be flat, while France is basically without danger.

On the morning of August 4, the Meuse River was covered with a thin veil of mist. In a cool breeze, about 30,000 German vanguard troops, the "Meuse Corps", approached Visse on the Meuse. The commander of this legion was Otto. Feng. General Emich, commanding two cavalry regiments and six infantry brigades, was a battle-hardened lieutenant general.

Note that there is a "von" in his name, which was the status of the Prussian Junker aristocracy in Germany at that time. For example, the full name of Schlieffen, the chief of the German General Staff, is Alfred. Feng. Schlieffen, who also came from a Junker family. Bismarck, the iron-blooded prime minister, also had a "von" in his name, Otto. Feng. Bismarck. After the unification of Germany by Prussia in 1871. The German Conservatives in the Reichstag and the Peasant League outside the Reichstag represented Juncker interests, and most of the officers in the army were Junkers. Thus the entire German Empire was branded with the Junkers.

General Emich of Germany, riding on a tall horse, discovers that the bridge at Visse has been blown up by the Belgians. Belgian soldiers gathered on the west bank, watching the Germans on the other side with alarm. He quickly sent two cavalry regiments to gallop three miles south and wade across the river. Fearing that they would be besieged, the Belgian defenders of Visse quickly retreated south towards Liège. In the evening, the German infantry crossed the Meuse at Visse and advanced towards the fortress of Liège.

In the face of the neat German army, the Belgian soldiers were a lot shorter, after all, not every soldier was willing to be cannon fodder. But the senile commander of Liège, General Lehmann, did not retreat. Liège was built on a high slope across the Meuse River, with an unobstructed view of all the passages. Twelve powerful forts—six on each side of the river—enclosed an area about ten miles in diameter. Their mutual support system was limited by a three-mile gap between the batteries, but mobile troops were sent in when needed and were considered an effective substitute. The fortresses of Liège, large and small, were reinforced with cement to withstand direct attacks from heavy artillery. He commanded 8,000 soldiers to resist the Germans in the fortress, plus a motorized infantry division consisting of 24,000 infantry, 500 cavalry, and 72 field guns.

After inspecting the terrain, General Emich of Germany immediately ordered his troops to cross the river by boat and launch a general attack on Liege from the east, south, and north at the same time.

The fortification of Liège was carried out by a brilliant military engineer, Henri Liege. Designed by General Briarmont, it consisted of reinforced concrete with an armoured turret shaped like a flat triangular hill, and at each corner of the triangle was a turret with a smaller-caliber rapid-fire gun, one of which contained 400 weapons, ranging from machine guns to eight-inch cannons. General Lehmann then ordered the Belgian defenders in the fort to fire first, using artillery and machine guns to storm the Germans. The Germans fell into the water, suffering numerous casualties, and blood stained the clear waters of the Meuse River.

While ordering the Germans to continue to force their way across the river, Emich brought in 200 heavy artillery pieces to bombard the fortress of Liège. Suddenly, the cannon on both sides of the Meuse River roared, and the smoke of gunpowder filled the air. However, the fortified batteries of Liege only shook off some concrete, and the Germans suffered heavy casualties.

In this world, courage can never defeat artillery fire. But courage can bring dignity to the weak in front of the strong! The battle continued into the evening, and the Germans underestimated the determination of the Belgians to defend their homeland and resist to the end.

The Germans launched another assault, but the twelve batteries in Liège were surrounded by dry deep ditches thirty feet deep; Searchlights with strong light are added to prevent surprise attacks at night. These lights are along with heavy artillery. It can be lowered below the surface, where underground tunnels connect the entire system to each other. All the cannons looked down on the four railways coming from Germany. General Lyman left 25,000 troops in the fortress to hold out. The German assault was ineffective, so they had to consider peaceful persuasion.

The next day. General Emmich of Germany sent an emissary, in the name of a truce. Go and persuade the commander of Liège, General Leman, to surrender. General Lehmann read the letter of surrender, which stated that either surrender or the city of Liège would be attacked by German air raids, and the lives of the local residents would be in danger.

Germany had one of the largest aviation units in the world at that time. However, the focus of the German Aerospace Forces was not on airplanes, but on zeppelins. At that time, the performance of the aircraft was still fragile, and there were almost no aircraft capable of fighting at night. Year 1900. Count Zeebling of Germany built the first rigid airship with a thick skin. This kind of airship uses a complete structure of keel to maintain the shape of the airbag, and uses a piston engine as power, so it has good flight performance, large loading capacity, can carry hundreds of kilograms of explosives at a time, and by the summer of 1908, the German army had about 100 military airships.

Sending airships to bomb this kind of behavior is, strictly speaking, illegal. Because in the Hague Declaration of 1899, it was expressly forbidden to drop bombs of any kind from aircraft. General Lehmann had also heard of the power of the German Zeppelin, but he had already received a request from the king to fight to the death. Although he was old, he had a lot of backbone, and he tore up the letter of surrender with a cold face, saying: "I am ashamed of you Germans for blatantly violating international law!" We, the Belgian army, will fight to the end for the monarch and the people and defend every inch of Belgian land! ”

On the evening of 5 August, General Emich of Germany was furious when he received a reply that Belgium would not surrender. The Z-6 Zipblinger was immediately dispatched to bomb the Belgian city of Liège. At the same time, German cavalry rushed from Wiese in the south to encircle Liège.

Zeppelin. That night, like a huge black ghost, flew over the city of Liège and dropped a dozen bombs. Nine citizens were killed, and some others were injured. However, the Germans did not expect that the airship bombing not only did not deter the Belgians, but was also strongly criticized by international public opinion, which strengthened the Belgians' determination to defend the country.

Lieutenant General Emich led the German army to storm the fortress of Liège and attacked frantically day and night. Wave after wave of German troops entered the battle at all costs, rushing into the gaps between the forts where the trenches had not yet been completed. In some locations, the Germans broke through the Belgian positions and forced their way up the slopes where the Belgian artillery could not shoot. But they were swept down by the machine-gun fire of the fortress, and the corpses piled up. At the fortress of Barchon, the Belgians saw that the German front was beginning to waver, so they took the opportunity to attack and repelled the enemy with bayonets. But the Germans repeatedly attacked and did not hesitate to suffer casualties. Thousands of German soldiers fell in a single day. The Germans did not try to spread out the formation, but rushed in rows and almost shoulder to shoulder until they were shot and fell to the ground. The fallen casualties were stacked into a terrible barricade that covered the guns of the Belgian troops. The Belgians also suffered casualties, but they were insignificant compared to the large number of casualties inflicted by the Germans. The Germans stormed the fortress of Liège for three days and three nights, but made no progress.

The Germans repeatedly charged in waves, especially at the Fleiron and Evne batteries to the east, but were repulsed by the combined fire of artillery and machine guns, and the corpses in front of the batteries piled up to waist-high. All the bridges over the Meuse to the south and north of Liege had been destroyed, and the troops attempting to cross the Meuse by pontoon bridges were subjected to artillery fire, and the Germans suffered heavy casualties and bloodshed, but were repeatedly defeated in front of the fortress of Liège.

Moltke Jr., a war maniac and deputy chief of the General Staff of the German army, was shocked when he received the report of the defeat of the German army, but he did not expect that the Belgians would work so hard for neutrality. If they continue like this, the entire layout of the Western Front in Germany will collapse. So little Moltke made a quick decision and sent a German ** officer Erich. Feng. Ludendorff went to the aid of Lieutenant General Emich and transported the giant siege artillery from the General Staff to Liège.

Ludendorff was forty-three years old in 1908, from a humble family of declining landowners in Germany, quick-witted, resourceful, and rich in military theory, but he was only an inconspicuous major general at the time, and had just been promoted to coordinate the Second Army and the siege army of Liège. He is a burly man whose biggest feature is his double chin.

The reason why Moltke Jr. sent Ludendorff to support the attack on Liège was because Ludendorff was Moltke Jr.'s staff back then. A plan was drawn up to destroy the fortress of Liège. In order to formulate this plan, Ludendorff also went to Belgium on vacation that year, secretly surveying the terrain of the fortress of Liège. This time he was sent to storm the fortress of Liège. He has since stepped onto the world stage!

After a detailed analysis of the situation in Liège, Ludendorff ordered two cavalry regiments to gallop three miles north. Forcibly cross the Meuse River in shallow waters. The German cavalry went to the north of Liège and used a suspicious tactic, and the Belgian general Lehmann felt that his mobile army was about to be surrounded by the Germans, so he mistakenly withdrew the mobile army from the city of Liège to join the main Belgian army, but also to preserve its strength. In this way, General Lehmann did not have enough military strength to block the German ** team within a certain distance, and the German giant artillery could play a role.

On the morning of August 7. Ludendorff took the opportunity to occupy Liège. On the second day after the occupation of Liège, Ludendorff reported the situation of the battle to his superiors and asked the General Staff to immediately transfer the siege artillery, since not a single fortress on the outskirts of the city had been captured at that time. Moreover, after the death of General Vusso, Ludendorff also took over the command of the German 14th Infantry Brigade. He led his troops at night through the gaps in Fleiron and Evne and quietly entered the vicinity of the fortress fortress of Liège. Ludendorff ordered the Germans to move the howitzer forward. The trajectory of the howitzer is curved, the firing range is long, the projectile angle is large, and the fragments are scattered evenly, which is mostly used for suppressive shooting. Moving forward, the howitzer could directly bombard the Belgian defenses.

After an afternoon of fierce fighting, Ludendorff led the Germans to take a commanding height in the fortress of Liège. From this vantage point, the Germans could see the city of Liège and the various fortresses, and could set up artillery to bombard the various fortresses. Especially the fortress, the stronghold of the Belgian army, where shells rained down.

General Lehmann and the Belgian officers were inside the fortress of the base camp of Liège, and the earth was shaken. The general's aide-de-camp, Bluzair, advised him to leave and go to the city of Liège. General Lyman shook his head and said firmly: "I swear to live and die with the fortress!" "Bruzaire had no choice but to take General Lyman to a remote fortress with his men.

After General Lehmann left the base camp, Ludendorff found that the Belgian base camp had not moved much, so he quickly led a group of German troops to rush over and surround the base camp of Liège. He slammed the gates of the fortress with the round end of the hilt of his command knife in succession. Like the shouting inside: "Surrender or kill!" ”

There were quite a few Belgian troops inside, but because General Lehmann had left. I couldn't figure out the condition of the other fortresses, after a barrage of German artillery. The defenders inside the base camp surrendered, and the Germans took control of the Liege base camp fortress! After the loss of the base camp, the other fortresses of the Liège fortress group were intact, but the communication and support between the fortresses were cut off.

In order to achieve a quick victory, Ludendorff once again sent people to persuade General Lyman to surrender under the pretext of stopping the dispute. To his surprise, General Lyman's answer was still: I'd rather die than surrender!

Ludendorff was very angry, but the return of the men who had gone to the fortress of Liège brought new information to Ludendorff, and the returning messenger said that General Lehmann had the strongest will to resist and the highest prestige in the Belgian army.

Ludendorff had a plan, he decided to send a team of officers and soldiers, pretending to be the British expeditionary force rushing to the aid of the Belgian army in Liège, and when the time came, he deceived General Lehmann's fortress and forcibly kidnapped General Lehmann, so that the Belgian army would be leaderless, and maybe those strong fortresses would be breached!

So, at dawn, a group of 200 German officers and soldiers, dressed in the uniforms of the British Expeditionary Force, disguised as British troops supporting Belgium, ran to General Lehmann's fortress. They were all handpicked by Ludendorff and spoke English so well that they knocked on the door of the fortress!

Two hundred German officers and soldiers, dressed in the uniforms of the British Expeditionary Force, opened the gate of a fortress in Liège, and they entered the fortress, but the gate was immediately closed, and they were greeted by Belgian machine gunners. General Lehmann had already seen through Ludendorff's tricks, and he had predicted that the British Expeditionary Force would not come so quickly.

In the end, 200 German officers and soldiers were all killed, Ludendorff was grief-stricken, and ordered a fierce bombardment of the fortress of Liège with field artillery, but it still had no effect, the conventional cannon was like an itch for the reinforced concrete underground fortifications of Liège, but because the cannon was too close to the fortress, the huge recoil and fragments accidentally injured many German troops.

Ludendorff then applied to the German Army General Staff for a special giant siege howitzer, nicknamed "Big Berta".

When the Germans formed an alliance with China to carve up Russia, they began to develop the "Cannon King", and the task was given to Alfred. Krupp's son Filitz. Krupp. In 1908, Filitz organized a group of experienced designers and engineers to tackle key problems, and in 1908 he secretly developed a giant mortar, which was named after Filitz's mother, and called it the "Big Berta" gun. This gun has a length of 7 meters and a muzzle diameter of 420 mm, and before that, among the known various cannons, the largest of the 343-mm naval guns of British caliber and the 279-mm stationary howitzers of the coastal artillery.

The barrel of the "Big Belta" gun, together with the gun truck, weighs 120 tons and can fire nearly 1 ton of shells to targets at a distance of 14.5 kilometers. Each shell used up nearly 400 catties of propellant, which required more than 200 gunners to operate. However, it was so bulky that it had to be disassembled and railed when it was carried in order to transport it to the gun mount. At the same time, due to the huge recoil it produces when fired, it is necessary to pour a concrete base several meters deep, and it takes six hours to place the gun emplacement. By the time the war broke out in 1908, Krupp had produced 5 420 mm railway cannons and 2 road cannons.

On 9 August, while the siege artillery was still on the way, the German government made a last diplomatic effort to persuade the Belgians to make way for the Germans to cross the border. This diplomatic memorandum, transmitted by the neutral Ambassador of the Netherlands, was sent to the King of Belgium on 12 August, and was written with the utmost humility: Since the Belgian army had preserved the honor of the Belgian soldier by valiantly resisting the superior German forces in spite of the disparity in strength, the German Government pleaded with His Majesty the King of Belgium and his Government not to allow the valiant Belgian soldiers to continue to endure the horrors of war, and Germany solemnly undertook that it would never intend to invade Belgian territory. But the Belgian king still did not believe in the sincerity of the Germans, and he did not know that the Germans had built the "Big Berta" cannon. Without these guns, the German fortress of Liège could hold for at least a month, so that British and French reinforcements would arrive, so the Belgian king still refused the German "plea".

Eventually, five "Grand Berta" cannons arrived at the fortress of Liège and took two days to install them. On August 13, the earth-shattering, weeping ghosts and gods began to bombard, a ton of shells continued to fall from the sky, the dust, debris, and gunpowder smoke stirred up when the shells landed and exploded formed a huge cone, rising to a height of 300 meters, the ground shook the mountains, the fortress of Liège seemed to have an earthquake, and the Belgian troops inside suffered heavy casualties. For example, at the fortress of Saudefontein in the southeast corner of Liège, only 76 of the 408 defenders came out alive and surrendered. On August 15, the shell of the Loncin fortress was damaged by a shell, and the ammunition depot in it was ignited.

By 16 August, eleven of the twelve fortresses of Liège had succumbed after a series of heavy bombardments. That night, the fortress of Ronsen, where General Lehmann's headquarters was located, was destroyed by a direct hit, and he himself was stunned.

After General Lyman was rescued, Ludendorff asked Officer German to take him away. General Lyman took his command knife and handed it to Ludendorff, "Please be sure to explain in the battle report that I was captured in a coma. ”

Ludendorff did not accept his command knife, saying: "Your command knife does not tarnish the honor of the soldiers. You keep it. ”

On the day of the capture of the fortress of Liège, Ludendorff was awarded the Meritorious Cross by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the highest military industrial medal of the German army.

In the first major battle of World War I, the German army won the final victory at the cost of more than 10,000 casualties. On August 20, the victorious German army marched into Brussels, the capital of Belgium! (To be continued)