The status of the country is fought by the army, but it is also necessary to find a suitable opponent, and the face of the US military after World War II is full of blood, the emperor Song Biao is still unwilling to do it, after understanding the combat level of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he decided to use the Austro-Hungarian Empire as the benchmark of the Chinese Army.

In any case, Austria-Hungary is also one of the world's army powers, and its prestige and status are much better than its own army.

According to Song Biao's plan, even until the end of World War I, he will not go to the German army to challenge, unless the United States does not send troops, for the final victory must do so, if the United States sends troops, after the defeat of Austria-Hungary, even if the Chinese Empire has completed its own task, it will be used when fighting Soviet Russia.

Austria-Hungary is really not weak, both the navy and the army are very strong, otherwise Germany would not dare to challenge Britain, France and Russia just because it has an Austro-Hungarian ally.

Before reaching an agreement with Britain and France, the Central Military Department of the Reich established the Middle East Staff Bureau in advance to oversee the operational preparations, and transported two engineer regiments to Iran to engage in infrastructure construction, and then from November 1916, the reorganized Middle East Expeditionary Force with a total of 22 infantry divisions, 2 cavalry divisions, 5 artillery divisions, 3 baggage brigades and 75 new regiments was officially transferred to Iran.

The transportation of military horses was too difficult, and it was also difficult to cross the mainland, so in the end, it was changed to directly purchase new horses in Iran and other places, but this meant that the cavalry division had at least three months of adjustment and training for war horses.

In order to minimize the transport of horses across the sea, all artillery was temporarily repurposed to be vehicular towed, and the only two baggage brigades with experimental surnames adapted to use wagons were redeployed.

The empire was very creative in changing the four-wheeled agricultural tractor into a means of transportation, mainly importing gasoline engines from the United States in the early days, and later copying them themselves, although the speed of this tractor was inferior to the cars used by France in the war, but it was more efficient and able to adapt to a variety of road conditions.

For this reason, the empire changed some of the 75mm, 88mm, and 105mm guns to four-wheeled vehicles, which required a lot of gasoline, but in terms of the overall tonnage, it was more economical to transport than feeding horses, and had better speed and a completely non-stop marching speed.

Due to the difficult development of the domestic automobile industry, the Far East Automobile Corporation could only pin its hopes on trucks and military vehicles from the beginning of its birth, and until 1914, more than 90% of the contracts of the Far Eastern Automobile Corporation were still from the Central Military Department.

In terms of technology, China's automobile industry is also roughly copied from the United States and Germany and France, the main models are basically directly copied from General Motors and Ford Motor Company, and even the production management is copied from the Ford system, there is no obvious gap in production technology, at this time the gasoline engine, diesel engine are very bulky, very clumsy, the technical content is not high, at least far less than the steam turbine and the barrel of the manufacture and processing of so high-precision.

In order to meet the military needs, these trucks and trucks produced by the Far Eastern Automobile Corporation are more compact and bulky than the prototypes of General Motors and other companies, and the horsepower is also larger.

Due to the production capacity of the past two years mainly to ensure the needs of Britain, France and the Entente, coupled with the fact that there are still many deficiencies in military vehicles at this stage, as well as the sufficient number of domestic military horses and the low level of domestic oil production, the Central Military Department of the Empire has not been fully equipped, and this time in order to ensure the operational needs in the Middle East, almost all the military vehicles of the Imperial Ministry have been transported to Iran.

In early February 1917, the Imperial Middle East Expeditionary Force and Headquarters were officially established in Ahvaz City, Iran, and Song Biao also used Song Ye's pronoun during the same period to arrive at the Middle East Military Headquarters with Duan Qirui and others as a first-class staff officer.

After arriving in Ahvaz City, Song Biao rarely went out in a secret and low-key manner, and spent most of his time in the staff headquarters dispatching various armies, because of his presence, the overall command and dispatch of the Middle East Expeditionary Force were very smooth.

Of the 11 elite divisions of the empire, except for the 3rd and 10th Infantry Divisions in Serbia and the 5th, 6th, and 20th Infantry Divisions that continue to stay in the country, the remaining five have all arrived in Iran, and the most elite 1st, 2nd, and 4th Infantry Divisions arrived in early January.

The Fifth Imperial Cavalry Division and the newly formed Sixth Cavalry Division arrived in late January, and it was difficult for the two cavalry divisions to quickly engage in combat due to the heavy use of local Iranian military horses.

The 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Brigades of the Reich will also arrive before late March after they are expanded into divisional combat units, and the 10th, 11th, and 12th Artillery Regiments will arrive one step earlier than these three divisions, and the 33rd to 60th Regiments, which are earlier in the new formation, have already arrived with the main force, and the more than 40 new regiments will gradually arrive before October 1917.

According to the plan made by Song Biao and the Central Military Department, the Imperial Army will eventually devote 1.3 million troops to the Middle East and Balkan theaters, and in addition to the more than 200,000 troops in Serbia, the remaining 1 million troops will arrive before October 1917.

In addition, after negotiating with Iran, the empire will recruit 200,000 militiamen locally at a suitable salary to be responsible for logistics and transportation, as well as other miscellaneous affairs, and after defeating the Ottoman Empire, the empire is expected to continue to recruit 300,000 militias in the Middle East.

Since it has been decided to go to war in an all-out way, we must not be stingy with military spending, and everything should be aimed at the pursuit of victory.

In the general impression, almost all countries believe that Austria-Hungary is definitely not weak, even if it is not strong enough, for example, Italy has never fought Austria-Hungary, but in the reports of Chen Qicai and Martos and others, the evaluation of Austria-Hungary is still very low.

At this time, Austria-Hungary was still able to maintain an army strength of two million, especially the artillery unit of nearly 90 regiments, the size was so amazing that Song Biao had to bring the five most elite artillery brigades of the Central Military Department over.

In the first half of 1916, the artillery brigades of the empire had completed the expansion to the division level, and at this time there were five artillery divisions transferred to Iran, but it was only equivalent to 20 artillery regiments, so the new artillery regiments also had to be transferred to the battlefield about 20, which almost all the new artillery regiments in the country were transferred.

A great feature of the Reich Central Defense Force, completely different from the classical military establishment in Europe, is that it is flexible, a division in a state of war is usually close to 30,000 people, and the artillery division can be equipped with up to more than 400 artillery pieces according to different situations.

Therefore, before October 1917, Song Biao was sure to expand the artillery strength of the Middle East Expeditionary Force to a degree of 1.5 times that of Austria-Hungary, and to continue to maintain three times the artillery pressure of the opponent in mobile combat.

The reason why Song Biao had to make such a plan was precisely because the combat effectiveness of the Austro-Hungarian Army was not as superb as imagined, because there were more than 20 nationalities within the empire, and none of them occupied an absolute advantage, so that the language of the officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers within the army was different, and the nationalities were also different, and it was extremely difficult in management and coordination, and nationalist sentiment also made the soldiers of many units collapse in a battle.

In particular, the situation of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Wehrmacht was terrible, only the Italian army could compare with them, but the place that was more powerful than the Italian army was the Austro-Kharid local defense army, which was almost composed of troops of a single nation and region, but they had a high combat power, and at the most outrageous time, four regiments resisted the attack of the Italian army's 150 infantry regiments in the mountainous area.

However, whether it was Austria-Hungary or the Kingdom of Italy, the confusion of the army establishment and the poor centripetal force of the country were a major cause of low combat effectiveness.

If he did not want to be consumed with Austria-Hungary for a long time, Song Biao realized that the CSKA must give full play to the operational characteristics of rapid mobility, bold attacks, rapid interspersed and rapid mobilization of elites to continuously encircle and annihilate the opponent.

Of course, before that, he had to deal with the Ottoman Empire.

This is not a much feared opponent, the Ottoman Empire at this time is basically not much better than the previous Qing Dynasty, as long as the Imperial Center Army really exerts its strength, the Ottoman Army will not be able to stop it at all.

As the Imperial Expeditionary Force expanded its presence in Iran, the Ottoman Empire, aware of the threat of an enemy on its back, withdrew its large forces from the border areas between the two countries and stationed heavy troops in the Amara and Basra regions.

Such a military deployment was obviously wrong and grossly wrong, although it was a decision made by the German advisers on behalf of the Ottoman Empire.

If it was Song Biao, he would rather shrink the main force to two points that could take care of each other, rather than deploy large-scale defense along the line, because the combat strength of the Ottoman Army was at a low level, and the longer the deployment of such a distance, the worse the actual defense effect.

German advisers helped the Ottomans design a well-developed modern defensive trench, and from January to March 1917, multiple lines of defense were placed along the border between Iran and Iraq, protecting the 140-kilometer border.

March in Iran is so dry that the rainy season seems to be far away, and the dust and sand are always swept up with the strong wind, sweeping across the Gobi-like land.

Song Biao has been commanding troops in Iran in his new capacity during this time, and even Britain and France don't know that he is actually in Iran, this is the advantage of being a constitutional monarchy, even if you disappear from the empire, as long as the cabinet continues to function, no one will feel any discomfort, and abnormal signs.

After carefully weighing the battle situation, Song Biao decided to boldly use the main force to directly bypass the border defense line designed by the German [***] advisers, and use a large-scale detour to penetrate Amara directly, crush the Ottoman garrison in Amara City, flank the defense line in both directions, and finally attack Basra, which the German [***] advisers thought the Chinese expeditionary force should attack first.

On March 22, 1917, the 1st Infantry Division and the 4th Infantry Division, with the cooperation of a truck baggage brigade and six new regiments, directly bypassed the defensive line and marched 130 kilometers in two days around the clock to directly attack the rear of Amamarah.

After only two hours of fighting, nearly 100,000 defenders collapsed, after which six new regiments remained to garrison, two elite main divisions went directly south, and the second and seventh main divisions surrounded and annihilated the area where the defense line was interrupted, and finally went south to attack Basra, and quickly attacked Kuwait, ensuring the penetration of the port, so that the fleet of the imperial expeditionary force could carry out large-scale supply shipments in Kuwait.

From March 22, 1917 to April 7, 1917, the Chinese Expeditionary Force attacked all the way to Mosul, occupied almost the entire Iraqi area, and formed a situation with the Russian army in Armenia and Azerbaijan to flank the Ottoman Empire.

Just as Song Biao arrived in Mosul as the de facto commander-in-chief, preparing to further lead the army to defeat the entire Ottoman Empire, he received the latest news that the United States had officially declared war on Germany on April 6, citing Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare and the Strange Murman telegram.

Song Biao was a little surprised by such news, he originally thought that after China entered the war, the United States might not consider taking the initiative to participate in the war, after all, it was of little significance, but with China and the United States joining the war one after another, the war obviously lost its last suspense.

It was also true that shortly after the United States declared its entry into the war, the Ottoman Empire, having lost 600,000 troops on the Southern Front, gave up resistance and agreed to accept armistice negotiations, even if the terms of the armistice were extremely harsh.

Song Biao immediately adjusted the original strategy, led the main force to move to the port of Beirut, and prepared to take a boat from here to Greece and Albania directly, using this as a springboard to attack the Balkans and directly attack the Ottoman army, while most of the troops spanned the entire Ottoman Empire, confiscated a large number of Ottoman weapons and equipment, confiscated all war materials, and made final preparations for a large-scale counteroffensive against Germany and Austria.

In fact, the real stimulus to the United States to declare entry into the war was the outbreak of the February Revolution in Russia, at this time no one knew whether the New Deal Axe after the abdication of the Russian tsar would continue to maintain the Entente Treaty, and if Russia did not continue to attack Germany, Britain and France alone, plus China might not be able to end the war.

In particular, after China adopted a military strategy of launching an attack from the Middle East for its own interests, Germany may have defeated the Anglo-French forces in advance before China could attack Germany, and it is precisely for this reason that the United States decided to go to war.

At present, except for Britain and France, which are the most anxious, China, the United States and Italy are actually waiting to see the situation in Russia, and the United States, even after landing in Europe, has been waiting for the situation in Russia to become clearer, and then decided to attack Germany with all its might.

Due to the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the Russian army did not take advantage of the victory to advance to the Ottoman Empire on a large scale, allowing China to monopolize the entire territory of the Ottoman Empire, which was completely beyond the original assumption of Britain, France and Russia.

At this time, the German-Austrian navy was basically divided into two parts, one in the Black Sea and one in the Adriatic Sea, but here it was basically wiped out by the French and Italian navies, which was very important good news for the large-scale landing of the empire in Greece and Albania.

In July 1917, the main forces of the Imperial Army converged in Albania and attacked Austria-Hungary together with the French and Italian forces there, and quickly advanced towards Serbia.

At this time, the German Army was concentrating most of its main forces on the Western Front, trying to force Russia to withdraw from the war before the United States moved troops into the war on a large scale, and the insufficient forces to assist Austria-Hungary on the Southern Front led to the successive annihilation of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Wehrmacht by the Imperial Expeditionary Force in the mountains of southern Serbia.

Most of the new formations of the Imperial Expeditionary Force were still in the Ottomans, with only 720,000 troops, but they were all elite troops, while the Austro-Hungarian Empire's various ethnic forces and the Imperial Wehrmacht, plus the four divisions of the Bulgarian Army, totaled nearly 1.3 million men.

Even so, the Imperial Expeditionary Force relied on more elite combat strength and bold interspersed tactics to quickly win a complete victory, continuously annihilating more than 400,000 Austro-Hungarian Army.

Unlike Britain, France, Germany and Austria, the Imperial Expeditionary Force mainly focused on mobile warfare, did not emphasize the contention for position, and constantly adopted a large-scale detour attack with detours, cutting directly into the rear of the enemy army, and often used strong attacks to cut off the enemy's positions, turning from offensive to defensive, and quickly depleting the enemy army with defensive warfare and machine gun arrays after cutting off the enemy army.

Through this constant switch of offensive and defensive tactics, as well as a great detour of outflanking tactics, the Austro-Hungarian army was constantly surrounded and annihilated by the imperial expeditionary force, and more than 300,000 troops were encircled at the Desun River defense line, cutting off all supplies.

However, in addition to the enemy, the most feared of the war were the allies, and while the Imperial Expeditionary Force attacked Austria-Hungary all the way, the Italo-French army was routed by the Bulgarian army in the Vranje area and was forced to retreat, resulting in the Imperial Expeditionary Force being cut off by the Bulgarian army.

In September 1917, the Imperial Expeditionary Force retreating to the Vranje region routed the Bulgarian army and attacked Sofia, and on December 4, it captured Sofia and forced Bulgaria to withdraw from the war.

In March 1918, the Imperial Expeditionary Force, with the cooperation of the Serbian Army and the Italian Army, recaptured Belgrade, restored the Kingdom of Serbia, and made the final preparations for a full-scale attack on Austria-Hungary.

It's just that under such a good situation, Song Biao quietly returned to China by boat and appointed Duan Qirui as the commander of the Imperial Expeditionary Force, and the actual command was in charge of the Expeditionary Force Staff led by General Martos and Chen Qicai and others.

Obviously, for China, the victory in Europe was not a victory in the true sense of the word, and the Imperial Expeditionary Force had no real goal other than the occupation of Iraq, but only to fulfill the Entente responsibilities and protect the fruits of the victory.

From 1918, the war, which really belonged to the Imperial Army, had just begun.

Song Biao returned home to reorganize a new large-scale war, this time pointing the finger at Soviet Russia, and the 1st and 4th Infantry Divisions, the main forces of the Imperial Expeditionary Force, were also drawn back from the Ottoman Empire.

(To be continued)