The German General Staff and the Austro-Hungarian General Staff divided the scope of operations, and the German army was responsible for the long front from Belarus to Ukraine and Soviet Russia, while also dealing with a possible attack by the French. The Austro-Hungarian side was responsible for operations along the line from the Donets region to the Caucasus, while fighting the British in North Africa for control of the Suez Canal Zone.

The Italians were still waiting, but Mussolini had no intention of leaning towards the Allies, but was just looking for a suitable time to enter the war.

After the war, France built a strong Maginot Line consisting of a 50-kilometer-deep reinforced concrete fortress group along the Franco-German border along the Maas River, while Germany also built a 20-kilometer-deep "Hindenburg" defense line on the Alsace-Lorraine border. Therefore, no one on either side of the French and German fronts dared to launch an attack lightly, and 700,000 German troops and 1 million French troops stayed in the trenches with each other, forming a situation of "sit-down warfare".

Germany had long had an excellent reserve system, with every adult citizen over the age of 18 receiving military training, and after the first mobilization order, the German army quickly expanded to 3.5 million men. The Austro-Hungarian mobilization system was also the same as that of Germany, and the goal of the first phase of mobilization was to expand the size of the army to 2.2 million within two months.

Before the war, the German-Austrian General Staff believed that the total strength of the Soviet army was about 180 divisions and about 2.7 million men, but in fact the total strength of the Soviet army was as high as 4.5 million, which greatly exceeded the initial projections.

Within 20 days of the outbreak of the war, the Ukrainian capital Kyiv had fallen, with the Republic of Ukraine's 650,000 army troops losing nearly half, and the Don Cossack Army also losing its troops, relying only on the cities on the coast of the Sea of Azov and the Kuban region to resist steadily. The Caucasus Federation also lost more than half of its territory in twenty days. Relying on several ports on the Black Sea coast of Sochi, Sukhumi and Batumi, they barely resisted with the support of Austria-Hungary.

At the Hofburg Palace, the Austrian Emperor Lee Haydn was furious, and before the war he had warned the garrison in Sinai several times to pay attention to strengthening the control of the Suez Canal, but due to the hesitation of the Austro-Hungarian defenders, the British still sank the canal with dozens of merchant ships before declaring war. Blocked the channel of the Suez Canal.

The Austro-Hungarian Navy was stuck in the Mediterranean Sea and could not access the Indian Ocean for at least three months.

The governor of Sinai, Admiral Flopp, was relieved of his duties, and the Emperor ordered the Seventh Army, the First Marine Corps, the North African Corps in Libya, and the newly formed Ninth Army to attack Egypt with all their might, along with the German 12th Army, and demanded that the British forces in Egypt must be eliminated within thirty days.

Crown Prince Karl was appointed commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian army on the Eastern Front, responsible for operations along the Don River and the Caucasus.

Admiral Wang Chongwen rushed to Qingdao on the third day after the British declared war, and his Navy's First Fleet was currently in Qingdao, where two Chinese battleships, the "Zhenhai" and "Pinghai," had been repaired, and dozens of warships of the German Far East Fleet, including five "Bavaria"-class battleships, were still moored in the harbor.

The train entered Qingdao Railway Station at 7:30 a.m. Rear Admiral Shen Honglie, captain of the "Zhenhai," made a special trip to the railway station to meet him. The group got into two cars and prepared to go to the port after breakfast. They had just entered a hotel when they heard a burst of artillery in the sky above the port.

"Maybe it's an emergency air defense exercise." Shen Honglie told him, "In recent months, the Germans have organized several such live-fire exercises to test and improve the air defense capability of the port. ”

"Gentlemen, please go upstairs to the private room!" The hotel is large in size, with six floors and mainly guest rooms on top. But the restaurants on the first and second floors also sell breakfast. The lobby manager, a young man in a suit, saw them come in. He offered to greet them and invited them upstairs for dinner.

At this time, the sound of anti-aircraft guns became more and more violent and loud, and the sound of the motors of the aircraft roared in the sky.

"No, it's not like a drill." Wang Chongwen said, he walked quickly to the window and leaned out of the window. Looking up at the sky at the harbor, clouds of black smoke were exploding. "Go to the top of the building and get the binoculars in the car!" He turned back to the adjutant behind him.

The group ran to the top of the building, where they could see the sky at the harbor in the distance, and they could see clouds of black smoke blooming under the blue sky. More than a dozen planes with small black dots were flying over the harbor and heading into the city.

"What's going on?" The faces of the spectators were full of doubts, and many of them ran to the harbor and looked up at the sky curiously from time to time. The planes began to turn around and swoop down towards the harbor, and with a violent explosion, puffs of smoke rose over the harbor.

"It should be the Japanese, broken, our warship!" Wang Chongwen shouted and began to run towards the staircase. The whole Qingdao was in chaos, thick black smoke rose from the anchorage where the warships were stationed, and throughout the port, anti-aircraft guns fired black anti-aircraft shells that burst into flames in the blue sky.

Wang Chongwen's car was blocked on the road to the port, and the Chinese admiral simply abandoned the car and ran in the direction of the port in the face of bombs dropped by Japanese planes. By the time he arrived at the naval base in Qingdao Port, the bombing had already ended, and the fighters taking off from Weifang, Jiaozhou, Pingdu, and Gaomi airfields had already begun an air battle with the Japanese planes over the port, chasing and driving the Japanese bombers.

The harbor was in shambles, the battleship "Poramenia" had capsized, and the rest and the decks of the battleships were on fire. The pier was also blown up, the faces and hands of the burned sailors were blistered by the fire, their skin became charred, and many of the wounded were lifted out of their lifeboats. The air was filled with the heavy smell of gunpowder, mixed with the stench of black fuel oil that burned from the water around Ford Island.

Commander of the German Far East Fleet, Hugo. Admiral Dormanik stood in the bombed-out dock with his face blushing, his waist crossed, looking up at the sky, and scolding the Japanese for their shameless sneak attack.

The Japanese had attacked the port of Qingdao before declaring war on Germany and Austria, and by the time the Japanese ambassador to Berlin handed over the declaration of war to Germany to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Japanese naval attack had already begun. The German Far East Fleet was largely paralyzed, two battleships were sunk, two others were also heavily damaged, and only the "Baden" was almost intact. The Germans also lost one cruiser and three destroyers, and two supply ships and two merchant ships were also sunk in the raid.

This attack also made many people suddenly understand that it has now become a world of aircraft, and that seemingly inconspicuous planes are enough to destroy a huge fleet.

The Kaiser delivered a national address in which he denounced the "despicable" sneak attacks of the Japanese, and the German Kaiser vowed to repay the "blood debt" committed against the Germans today by tenfold or hundredfold from the Japanese. But at present, the Germans had no way to take Japan, and because the British were stuck in the sea lane, the German fleet was beyond the reach of the whip, and there was no way to send reinforcements to the Far East. (To be continued......)