After the Battle of Paris, the Entente [***] shattered the German army's plan for a quick victory and recovered Paris, thus creating a stalemate on the Western Front in World War I. The strategic outcome of the battle was enormous, as the Germans lost their only chance to defeat France first and then turn against Russia.

In this battle, the two warring sides successively invested 1.5 million troops, and the number of casualties was nearly 700,000. Among them, the French army lost 350,000 people, the British army lost 33,000 people, and the German army lost 320,000 people.

For more than three months after the outbreak of the war, the German army followed the basic policy set by Schlieffen and quickly advanced through Belgian territory to the French mainland. At that time, all of Germany, and indeed almost the whole world, was convinced that the German army would soon be victorious and that Paris was about to be occupied. However, when the victory of the Germans seemed to be within reach and the disaster of the French was imminent, the Entente[***] turned defeat into victory on the Marne, between Paris and Rouen, and was thus called the "miracle of the Marne-sur-Marne".

Middleton, a French expert on war history, later discussed who contributed the most to the Battle of the Marne among the Allied generals: "History shows that there is no shortage of people who claim the title of 'Victor of the Battle of the Marne', and Gallerieni is more justified than most people, but Major General Ma Jin, the commander of the Imperial Chinese Observation Group in the Entente, was the one who contributed the most, because he persuaded the Chinese Imperial Political Axe to export 100 advanced Jian-1 fighters to the French Air Force, thus changing the direction of the battle." In addition, the requisitioning of the car rental company of the Chinese Imperial merchants in Rouen to transport troops for the French army was also indispensable. ”

The Chinese Empire first supported the German white phosphorus bombs, which significantly increased the attack power of the German Army, and the French army was looking for teeth all over the place, and lost the capital Paris, which made the whole world think that France could not withstand it for a while. At this time, the Chinese Empire struck again and provided the French Air Force with J-1 fighters, so that the German Air Force suffered heavy losses and the Army offensive was stopped.

Germany's pigeon fighter production line was not in sufficient capacity, and in a short period of time it could not compete with the French Air Force's more than 100 Newport fighters. And the German Zeppelin could not pose a threat to the French army without enough fighter escorts.

The German offensive on the Marne front was thwarted, and Paris was lost after only a week of occupation, much to the annoyance of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was on the verge of removing Moltke from his post.

Moltke promised the Kaiser that he would turn the tide of the war in a short time. To this end, Moltke negotiated with Xu Jingcheng, the Chinese Imperial ambassador to Germany, hoping to obtain the fighters of the Chinese Empire as soon as possible to stop the French Air Force from slaughtering the German army.

This was exactly what the Chinese Empire was looking forward to. However, due to political considerations, the Chinese Empire continued to reject it, but did not oppose non-governmental trade.

As a result, Moltke Jr. immediately contacted the major arms giants in the Chinese Empire, and soon obtained the export project of the Jian-5 fighter from the Chengdu Airlines of the Chinese Empire, while the Chinese Empire Congress did not allow the aircraft to carry weapons for export, and only allowed civilian use.

This decision was made to balance the political pressure on the part of the Entente, but it was only a pretext. Chengdu Airlines dismantled the J-5's machine gun and exported it to Ford Air in Germany as a civilian aircraft. As soon as the plane arrived in Germany, it could be immediately fitted with a machine gun and turned from a new fighter into a fighter, which was very easy for the German workers.

In May, Germany obtained 500 Jian-5 fighters from the Chinese Empire, and the German side renamed them the Ford 3 fighter, openly saying that this is a three-wing fighter that Germany has developed for a long time. At the same time, Germany also began to increase the production line of pigeon fighters and mass production of pigeon fighters.

At the same time, France tasted the sweetness of aircraft combat in the Battle of the Marne, and in addition to the large-scale domestic production of Newport fighters, it was very satisfied with the Jian-1 fighters of the Chinese Empire, and ordered 500 again.

Beginning in June, Germany and France launched a large-scale air battle on the battlefield of the Marne, with more than 1,000 warplanes engaged in the battle, opening the prelude to a large-scale air war in human history.

Since the Fokker (Jian-5) fighter surpassed the Jian-1 fighter by a lot in terms of combat ability, after the large-scale air battle began, the French Air Force was no match for the German Fokker fighter, and every large-scale air battle was a large loss for France.

Britain and France had already seen the great power and role of the fighters, and were eager to replenish the losses. However, the domestic fighters of Britain and France were inferior to those of the Chinese Empire, and after a period of unsuccessful attempts to make up for quality with quantity, they had to import Jian-1 fighters from the Chinese Empire on a large scale. Although the J-1 is inferior to the J-5 fighter in terms of combat, the J-1 is much stronger than the Newport, so Britain and France have no choice but to buy J-1 aircraft on a large scale to make up for it in quantity.

During this period, Britain and France hoped to obtain more advanced fighters from the Chinese Empire, but the Chinese Empire still had more than 8,000 Jian-1 fighters in stock, and if more advanced fighters were sold to Britain and France, then these stocks could not be sold.

Fortunately, the Chinese Empire only has more than 2,000 Jian-5 fighters in stock, and the number of Jian-5 fighters supplied to Germany is not much, so Britain and France can still withstand Germany's Fokker (Jian-5) fighters by relying on a large number of Newport (Jian-1) fighters, temporarily maintaining the balance of air power.

At the same time, the Entente side also needed more J-1 fighters on the Serbian and African sides. Because the Chinese Empire exported a limited number of Jian-5 fighters to Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Turkish Empire, and Bulgaria received a small number, and the Allies still had a numerical advantage in other battlefields.

After the Battle of the Marne, the two sides entered positional warfare on the Oise to the Swiss border, forming an exposed flank in the northwest. The Chief of the General Staff of the French Army, J-J-C. Chauffeur, attempted to make a detour to the German right flank in order to threaten its railway supply lines, force the Germans to withdraw from the areas of the Aisne, Oise, Somme and Esco, and at the same time rescue Antwerp, which was defended by the Belgian army. The Chief of the German General Staff, E. von Falkenhayn, decided to reinforce the right flank of the 6th Army from the Lorraine area, in an attempt to thwart the coalition plan and detour to the left flank of the coalition army.

On May 16 and 21, the French 6th and 2nd armies launched attacks on the German 1st Army between the Oise and Somme rivers, and the German 6th Army was reinforced in time, and the French army was repulsed. On the 24th ~ 25th, the two sides fought fiercely in the upper reaches of the Somme, and each other won and lost.

On the 25th, the French army formed the 10th Army, which spread along the line of Arras, Lens and Lille, and carried out a surprise attack on Cambrai and Valenciennes, threatening the German supply lines. On May 30 ~ June 7, the two sides fought fiercely on both sides of the Scarp River, and the battle line gradually moved north.

The Germans occupied Douai and Lens, and repeatedly fought Arras with the French. On June 8, the Germans began shelling Lille and attacking the west bank of the Leth River.

On the 9th, the French army established Army Group North (under the jurisdiction of the 10th, 2nd, and 6th armies and the British Expeditionary Force), under the unified command of F. Foch, deputy commander-in-chief of the French army. On the 10th ~ 15th, the British Expeditionary Force launched a surprise attack on the Germans along both sides of the Leith River, with little progress, and finally the two sides turned to the defensive. While fighting the Anglo-French forces, the Germans sent heavy forces to surround Antwerp, capturing the city on June 20. Belgian troops and British reinforcements withdrew to Ostend.

In the month-long "Race to the Sea" operation, the Germans suffered 130,000 casualties and the Entente [***] lost about 100,000. Due to the equal strength of the forces and the lack of resoluteness in the action, the attempts of both sides to detour the other flank did not materialize.

In this battle, France gave full play to the tactics of the automobile transport army, so that the German army was always half a beat behind the French in mobility and reinforcements, so that although Germany occupied a large part of the French territory, it was never able to cut off the supply lines of France and Britain, so that the strategic plan to quickly destroy France went bankrupt.

After this battle, the German General Staff quickly summed up the experience, and there was also no railway support, why the French reinforcements could always be one step ahead of the German army. After the investigation by the agents, the Germans realized that France had tasted the sweetness of the tactics of requisitioning automobile companies to transport troops in the Battle of the Marne, so they requisitioned cars in France on a large scale. However, the rental company's car capacity was too small, and the Chinese Empire hurriedly seized the opportunity to sell military trucks, military jeeps and other advanced means of transportation to Britain and France.

The Anglo-French command agreed to mass-purchase military vehicles from the Chinese Empire. For this reason, the first batch of 1,000 military vehicles of the Chinese Empire was urgently loaded in Cyprus and transported to France, just in time for the battle to the seaside, and the Anglo-French allied forces quickly entered the battlefield in the military vehicles provided by the Chinese Empire, effectively stopping the German offensive.

After the battle, the Anglo-French command was very satisfied with the military vehicles of the Chinese Empire, so it placed an additional order for 10,000 military vehicles.

After Germany obtained this information, Moltke Jr. immediately negotiated with the Chinese Empire, and also imported 20,000 military vehicles from the major automobile companies of the Chinese Empire in a civilian way to equip the German army on the Western Front.

For this reason, the Chinese Empire produced military vehicles on a large scale, in order to flood the European military automobile market as soon as possible and prevent European countries from producing military vehicles on their own, because there was no threat of war in the Chinese Empire, the military painted 100,000 military vehicles in active service one after another and sold them to various belligerents in Europe. At the same time, the newly produced military vehicles in China were in service with the Chinese Emperor [***] team.

In this way, the Chinese Empire sold second-hand military vehicles to European countries at the price of new cars, that is, it helped the imperial side to upgrade military vehicles and equipment for free, and earned a lot of gold from European countries.

In June, Bulgaria sent 300,000 troops, under the cover of Jian-1 fighters, and cooperated with the German-Austrian forces to attack Serbia, as a result, the Allies soon occupied all Serbia, and the Serbian political axe and army were forced to retreat to the Greek island of Corfu.

The European war was extremely disadvantageous to the Entente, but in this case, the Entente did a great thing, and that was to persuade Italy to join the Entente.

In June 1913, the Anglo-French forces on the Western Front fought hard against the Germans, but still lost large swaths of territory. At the same time, on the Eastern Front, Russia's 2 million troops were pinned down by 2.4 million troops of Turkey, Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary and Germany, unable to attack East Prussia.

The situation was not optimistic, and the Entente was facing a serious threat, so winning Italy into the war became the first priority of British and French politicians.

The tireless efforts of Britain and France, as well as the rejection of Italy by Austria-Hungary and the Turkish Empire, eventually led Italy to join the Entente.

Italy had promised to divide Fum and Dalmatia after the war, so Italy sided with the Allies and declared war on the Central Powers. Although the Italian army was weak, after declaring war on Austria-Hungary on June 5, it lost nearly 300,000 men in the early stages of the battle, but it successfully held back the strength of 40 Austro-Hungarian divisions and relieved the pressure on Russia and France.

In this way, Italy succeeded in containing the main force of Austria-Hungary, which greatly reduced the pressure on Russia and France, and the European war entered a stalemate.

Aside from the European war, the African battlefield and the Asian theater are also in a stalemate. A fierce battle broke out between the British and French 400,000 troops and the German 300,000 troops along the Suez Canal, with both sides holding fortress fortifications and secretly supporting the Chinese Emperor. Under the control of the Chinese Empire, the two sides were evenly matched, so the fight was stalemate.

And the African colonial wars were also going on. The German colonies did not have many troops, and the British had the advantage. However, because of the tight French front, Britain had to suspend the war with Germany in the colonies and transfer a large number of colonial troops back to Europe to support the French war. As a result, the German colonial army was given a respite and was evenly matched with the British army, which also led to a stalemate between the two sides in the colonial war.

On the Asian front, a large-scale war broke out between the Turkish Empire and Russia on the Black Sea coast and in Russian Persia as part of the Twelfth Russo-Turkish War between the two countries and as part of the Asian theater of World War I.

Russia and Turkey fought for hundreds of years, almost every twenty years, and the two sides won and lost each other. Prior to this war, Turkey had been defeated in the 11th Russo-Turkish War, and Russia had been severely weakened in the two Sino-Russian wars, so neither side had a large advantage in victory, and the battle was fought more than a dozen times, with each other winning and losing, and soon also fell into a stalemate.

The whole of Europe, Africa, and West Asia was in a state of stalemate, which was the outcome that the Chinese Empire was most happy to see.

Under the guise of the International Red Cross Society and the International Commission on Human Rights, the Chinese Empire built a powerful sea, air and land transport fleets with the vast industrial capacity of the empire, and exported materials to various belligerents on a large scale and made a lot of war profits.

For the Entente side, they could get direct supplies from the Chinese Empire by air and sea, and for the Central Powers, they could get direct supplies by land, rail, and air, and the two sides were basically unaffected by the external relations, and through the Chinese Empire they could maintain material supplies.

However, both the Entente and the Central Powers were obsessed with each other's supply routes and vowed to be the first to defeat them.

In June 1913, the Entente carried out a landing operation on the Balkan Peninsula with the intention of cutting off the Baghdad railway and preventing the Chinese Empire from supplying land supplies to the Central Powers, but because Serbia was besieged by 900,000 troops from Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Turkish Empire and Bulgaria, it was defeated after less than a month, resulting in the Entente being forced to abandon before completing the landing.

Similarly, Germany launched the Battle to the Sea to cut off British supplies to France by sea, but it was also declared a failure.

However, the German Navy followed the example of the Imperial Chinese Navy and began to carry out submarine warfare against the British.

When the war broke out in Europe in January, the German Admiralty planned to prepare for a decisive naval battle with the British Navy in order to break the British naval blockade of Germany. However, because the German Navy did not have the experience of a large-scale decisive naval battle, it was afraid that the German Navy would be exhausted in one battle and fall into a passive situation, and the army achieved brilliant results, which led the German General Staff to suspend the plan for a decisive naval battle.

However, the German navy planned to follow suit in view of the fact that the Chinese Empire had defeated Britain in an even war. However, German surface ships could not leave the North Sea, so they had to send submarines to engage in submarine warfare.

On 1 March, the German submarines, which had been underestimated by the British, finally showed their formidable prowess when a torpedo fired by the German Navy submarine U-35, which was patrolling the waters off the Forth Bay, struck the British Royal Navy light cruiser Explorer, which sank within minutes and caused huge losses of life.

The U-35 submarine is an export version of the Seawolf 4 submarine of the Royal Chinese Navy's submarine fleet, and its combat power and surname are far more advanced than the submarines built in Germany. Captain Otto Hersing was one of the first students to graduate from the Royal Chinese Naval Submarine Academy, and after systematic study, he already had a deep understanding of the operational and tactical objectives of submarines.

Soon after, the first record of German submarines in World War I was set on April 12. In order to prevent the British [***] ships entering and leaving the Thames and the English Channel, the Germans set up submarine positions between the Belgian Ostein and the British Margaard. On the morning of 12 July, the U-17 submarine spotted three cruisers of the British Royal Navy approaching in a horizontal formation in the waters near the Dutch Gulf. At 7:20 a.m., the U-17 submarine fired torpedoes to sink the cruiser "Hugh" first, and then fired two more torpedoes to sink the "Abojir." At about 8 o'clock, the U-17 fired three more torpedoes at a distance of 1,000 meters from the cruiser "Claycy", and within 15 minutes the ship sank, killing a total of 1,460 British sailors in this terrible attack. The U-17 submarine thus set a precedent in the history of naval warfare for sinking three cruisers in 75 minutes. In Germany, the people were so encouraged by the successful attack that the Kaiser awarded the entire crew of the U-17 the Iron Cross.

June was another dark month for the Entente Navy. On June 11, the German Navy submarine U-26 sank the Russian cruiser "Parada" with a displacement of 7,900 tons in the waters of the Gulf of Finland. Soon after, the U-17 submarine sank the 7,000-ton British Royal Navy light cruiser HMS Hawke in the waters off Aberdeen. On June 20, a very important event occurred in history, when the German Navy submarine U-18 sank the 8,660-ton British freighter "Gritla" in the waters south of Norway.

The German submarine carefully identified the freighter before sinking it, and after ordering all the crew to leave the ship and board the lifeboat, it fired a torpedo to sink it. This was the first time that a German submarine sank a merchant ship during the war, and since then, merchant ships have also become the primary target of submarine attacks.

Six days later, the German Navy submarine U-24 surfaced in the Strait of Dover, and immediately after confirming that it was not a merchant ship of the Chinese Empire, it immediately ordered an attack.

"Launch!"

Two minutes later, U-24 torpedoed and sank an American merchant ship on its way back to port without warning.

The American political axe soon lodged a solemn protest, and Germany, under pressure, had to order the submarine fleet to stop attacking American merchant ships. However, unlike the merchant ships of the Chinese Empire, Germany demanded that the United States not export military supplies to the Entente countries, otherwise they would be sunk if they were discovered.

At this time, the focus of the United States was on preparing for war against the Chinese Empire, because the United States felt the smell of gunpowder, so the American side also agreed to Germany's request and allowed German submarines to inspect American merchant ships.

The same are merchant ships, and the merchant ships of the Chinese Empire are not allowed to be inspected by the ships of any country's navy, and the political axes of various countries have also acquiesced to this. Even the spies clearly told the political axes of various countries that the xxx ships were loaded with arms and materials sent to the hostile countries, but all [***] parties also directly allowed them to go on the grounds of insufficient evidence. On several occasions, some stunned officers had to board the ship for inspection, but they were quickly expelled by the ships of the Chinese Emperor [***], and there was even a confrontation between the two sides, but in the end it was the Chinese Empire that won.

Both warring countries did not want to offend the Chinese Empire, and they also needed military supplies from the Chinese Empire, so three months after the start of the war, the navies of all countries were "exempted" from inspection for the merchant ships of the Chinese Empire.

In a memorandum submitted to German Chancellor Theopold von Bessmann-Helwig, Chief of Staff of the German Navy's Far Sea Fleet, Hugo von Bohr suggested that the German Navy adopt [***] tactics against Britain, i.e., the massive use of submarines imported from China and its own production of submarines, thereby increasing the likelihood of winning the war.

Although the Chinese Empire remained neutral in the European War, arms exports to Germany were not banned. The submarine deal, in particular, has been going on for several years. Every year, Germany imports a batch of submarines from the Chinese Empire and takes them back to China for research.

However, the German Admiralty was dragged down by the large construction costs of surface ships, which made the development of submarines very slow. Moreover, Germany has never wanted to expose the submarine forces of the German Navy, so it has always been a low-key development.

With the brilliant achievements of the German submarine force in the Atlantic, although it lost a lot of submarines, Germany made more money than the British sunken warships and merchant ships.

This kind of submarine warfare, with low investment, short production cycle and quick results, was highly valued by the German Admiralty. To this end, the German Admiralty approved the large-scale construction of submarines in order to break through the blockade of the British troops.

However, due to the tensions of the war, the construction of super battleships and battle cruisers in the German navy, as well as other warships, consumed a huge amount of steel, so Germany was careful to allocate the use of steel. At the same time, the docks were full of modules for the construction of surface ships, and the few submarine construction docks in Germany could not provide submarines for the Navy on a large scale.

Therefore, the German Navy immediately sent representatives to secretly negotiate with the Chinese Navy to negotiate the matter of ordering submarines in bulk.

(To be continued)