Chrétien tightened his collar and stomped his foot hard, the last shift before dawn was not a good thing, it was the coldest time of the day, especially at the end of October, when the temperature in Poland had plummeted, and their poor big-headed soldiers could only wear thin autumn clothes. Speaking from the heart, it's really cold!

Chrétien sighed two more times into his hands, but it was of no use to his hands, which were numb from the cold. At this moment, it would be nice to have a fire to keep warm!

But the idea was tantamount to death, and the day before, a few soldiers who could not stand the cold had secretly made a fire to keep warm, but before they could warm their hands, the enemy shells fell, and in a few seconds the poor worms were blown to pieces.

Chrétien didn't want to die at all, he had survived the long world war, and there were warm and lovely girls waiting for him in Porto, and he had to give birth to a lot of children, but he couldn't give up his life in damn Poland.

But when it comes to this damn war, Chrétien's stomach is full of anger, the battle is too aggrieved, the back road is cut off before Warsaw can be taken, and then the army's attempt to reopen the line of communication is thwarted, and all the Americans are involved. So much so that now they are besieged in the suburbs on the edge of the city of Warsaw, and they can only suffer like this day by day!

Since two days ago, the food for the troops has been limited to 500 grams of black bread and a little cane sugar per person every day. This is not enough for an adult, even a child. What's even more terrifying is that Chrétien listened to the brothers in the logistics department say: "Be content, this quota alone will not support a few days, and there will be nothing in a few days!" ”

Anyway, Chrétien and her comrades are trying to get food everywhere. Whether it is to steal it from the warehouse of the logistics department or to rob it from the homes of ordinary people in Poland. Do whatever it takes. Especially after the weather gets colder day by day. In addition to stealing food, they also looted cotton clothes, blankets, woolen socks and coal for the winter. All in all, the troops are trying to get supplies, because according to Commander-in-Chief Foch, they must hold on for at least ten days, and no friendly army will be able to save them within ten days!

In fact, ten days is already a very optimistic estimate, according to the estimates of the Entente. It took at least half a month for reinforcements from France to Poland to reach Warsaw. And this is the most optimistic estimate, if it does not rain or snow, if the sappers can clear the mines on the lines of communication more quickly, if the German traffic is restored, if the workers in France stop their strikes, if all the above conditions can be achieved, then the reinforcements will arrive in Warsaw within half a month.

Obviously, if not all of this, it is not easy to achieve half of them at the same time. So it will be impossible for Foch to be rescued within half a month. Even the Entente itself is thinking about whether it is necessary to continue this war!

Why would they hesitate? There are two kinds of reasons: subjective and objective.

Subjectively, Foch's troops proved that the Bolshevik Red Army was not so easy to deal with. The Red Army, albeit limited in combat effectiveness. However, this disadvantage was able to be leveled out by reasonable tactics, and the Bolsheviks were able to mobilize much more than the Entente had anticipated. Based on information provided by spies embedded in Russia. The Russians are engaged in a massive mobilization for war, and in a short time they will once again arm an army of a million!

In other words, even if Foch can eliminate part of the Red Army in Warsaw, it will not be of decisive significance, and soon the new Red Army will appear in front of the old man, and he will use waves of crowd tactics to annihilate the old man!

What's more, what actually manifested on the battlefield was that Foch's troops did not have any advantage and were instead surrounded by the Red Army. This fully shows that if these Red Army troops are to be eliminated, the Entente must invest more troops and materials. And these are undoubtedly quite difficult for them, who have just experienced a world war.

Since 1918, whether in England, France, or the United States, the workers' movement has been constantly erupting, and the feelings of the proletariat have become more and more unstable and difficult to satisfy, and if they are left alone, the final result will probably be quite pessimistic.

The extermination of these insurrectionary workers required a great deal of repression, which was contrary to the continued interference in the Russian revolution. Moreover, in order to settle down the workers, it is not enough to rely on force and pressure alone, but also to rely on the necessary policy of softness. And if you want to Huairou, you need money and materials, which is naturally contrary to continuing a large-scale intervention war.

The more objective reason is the damn weather, with the arrival of November, cold air will sweep across Europe, and the closer you get to Russia, the cooler the temperature will be, such an extreme environment is very uncomfortable for the Allied soldiers who have been fighting in France.

Moreover, in such extreme weather conditions, Russia's poor infrastructure construction will also greatly weaken the logistics support capabilities of the coalition forces, and Napoleon's experience is in sight, and continuing to interfere in Russia seems to be in danger of repeating the mistakes of the past?

After intense analysis and discussion, the wise men of the Entente agreed that continuing to intervene in Russia by armed force was the last policy and the most stupid choice, and that the Bolsheviks could not be solved by force in view of the objective conditions of each country and the overall situation of the world. The government should devise a more long-term plan, locking Russia by means of blockade, sanctions, and isolation, and then slowly overthrowing the Bolshevik regime by means of incitement, instigation, and fostering opposition.

The think-tanks agreed that the blockade and peaceful evolution of the Bolsheviks were more feasible and that it would take an astonishing amount of time and money, but it was the only feasible option at the moment.

So is the opinion of these think tanks justified? Objectively speaking, it is very true, in real history, Western countries have done this, 70 years later, the communist leader who once swept the world collapsed under their various means, and then it took 20 years to recover without being able to recover, and in the longer term. Twenty more years of recuperation for the Russians is not enough!

Case. Have the opinions of the think-tanks been shared?

No!

Why not? There are both subjective and objective reasons for that. Let's start with the subjective reasons. That is, the big bosses of the Entente bloc are unwilling to accept the result that they have absolutely no way to take the crude Russians, and they still think that they are capable of striking Russia hard with force and draining the blood of polar bears.

The top brass of the Entente bloc was more inclined to believe that the present bad situation was more due to the carelessness of the officers themselves, and that the army that had just defeated the Central Powers had taken the Russians too lightly as to allow them to succeed in a sneak attack. If our army could have been more cautious and single-minded, then defeating and eliminating the Red Bandits would not be a big problem.

The solution given by the Entente was to change the commander, and Foch, who had just won the world war, was abandoned and removed from the post of commander-in-chief of the coalition forces. In his place was British Field Marshal Hegel, who had previously served as commander of the British Expeditionary Force.

I have to say that this is really a stupid move, although Foch's appearance is really not good, and it is indeed careless to lose Jingzhou, but is it really appropriate to change the commander at this time?

You must know that Foch already has a full understanding of the combat effectiveness and tactics of the Red Army, even if he can't find a way to immediately change the passivity of the coalition forces, but he can still maintain the current situation.

Hegel, on the other hand, had not fought against the Red Army, and he needed to get to know and become acquainted with this strange opponent anew, which took time and cost an additional price. The tragic situation of the coalition forces in the encirclement. Can you afford this extra effort?

And, the funniest thing is. Hegel wasn't in Warsaw, he was in Berlin when he accepted the appointment, which means he couldn't command the troops directly, isn't that funny?

Of course, there is no way for the Entente to be so funny to others, anyway, they subjectively want to continue to fight, and they want to gamble. Objectively, the Red Army had no intention of stopping, and even if the Entente took the initiative to throw an olive branch and say that the Bolsheviks would not believe it if they said that they would settle disputes by means of negotiation. On the contrary, Lenin and Trotsky could only think that this was a delaying tactic by the Entente.

The situation on the battlefield finally changed, and the Red Army finally regained the initiative again, and it seemed that it had the ability to annihilate the enemy's main forces in one fell swoop. For Trotsky, the annihilation of Foch's troops meant that his line of the world revolution could once again work, even if only for the sake of his political future.

As a result, the war can only continue, and small soldiers like Chrétien can only continue to struggle on the line of death. To be honest, the most innocent and tragic in this war are these most ordinary soldiers.

If they win the war, apart from the dispensable so-called honor, most of the benefits generated by this war have nothing to do with them; And if they lose, they may be injured and maimed or lose their lives outright. Anyway, getting and paying are completely disproportionate, which is probably the sadness of the so-called prosperity of the people's suffering, death, and people's suffering.

To get back to the point, when both the Entente and the Bolsheviks had made the decision to continue fighting, a final decisive battle was inevitable. On the one hand, the Entente ordered the troops in the encirclement to hold out to the end, and on the other hand, they also actively mobilized their troops, tilting the troops and resources that could be mobilized towards Poland in all directions.

However, the actual effect of this is really difficult to say, and the "ifs" mentioned before are big problems, so this kind of mobilization behavior is actually very inefficient. In fact, the only thing the Allies were able to move quickly was the small number of troops that had been stationed in Berlin before.

As the nominal commander-in-chief of the Allied Army, Hegel drove out of Berlin with three divisions of the Anglo-French-American army and five divisions of the servant army contributed by the German government, all the way east.

To tell the truth, the old man was very bad at that time, because his army had eight divisions in name, but in fact it was really reliable, and only the three divisions of the British, French and American coalition forces really worked. At best, the other five German divisions could only wave their flags and shout. Because the Germans had exposed their true colors in the battle in Szczecin, these damn Hans would never be of the same mind as the Entente, and they would cause trouble for the Entente as long as they had the opportunity and ability!

For Hegel, it was a fantasy to use three divisions to rescue Foch's headquarters in the encirclement. It could even be said that it did. It is equivalent to sending sheep into the mouth of the tiger. It is estimated that the Russians will be very happy to eat these three divisions in one bite. After all, they had already shown their ability to fight a war of annihilation, and Gaspar and Seibert had already proven it for the Russians.

According to Helge's own opinion, Foch's men had better break out of the siege on their own, and his men could only come forward to answer it at best, and even this action had to be done with extreme care, because the unreliable Germans could sell them at any time, as they did in Szczecin.

And once the last remaining reliable forces of the Allies in Germany and Poland were wiped out, the chain reaction would be no less than that of a volcanic eruption. So Hegel was more inclined to be conservative. He preferred to build a solid defensive position on the Poznan line first, first based on the defense, and then steadily deal with the Russians after the main force of the French drove over arrived.

Unfortunately, Hegel's opinion was directly rejected, for the simple reason that the Entente could not accept the price of Foch's total annihilation, and the strength of nearly twenty divisions was squandered, and a field marshal who had just defeated Germany, Nima, had to be put in. If this happens, the proper cabinet must resign and apologize!

For the political officials of the Entente. This is a price that can never be afforded, and even the previous fiasco is already unbearable. When Gaspar's troops were surrounded and annihilated, the Entente had this to say: "Major General Gaspar led a small number of troops to repel the enemy's attacks again and again in extremely unfavorable conditions, and stubbornly held every inch of the position, until they ran out of ammunition and food, and had to lay down their weapons in order to save more lives...... Their actions are good enough to be a model for soldiers! ”

Look at it, even idiots like Gaspar have become models and models in their mouths. As for Seibert, the Americans' praise of the general was even more shameless and disgusting, and they not only repeated the words of the French touting Gaspar, but also came up with an even more bloody solution to the crisis.

The U.S. Department of the Army single-handedly concocted such a play, they announced that Seibert led the troops to a heroic breakthrough at the last moment, highlighting the encirclement of the red bandits in one fell swoop, the only pity is that this division seat was relatively unlucky, was wounded by enemy shells, and was forced to surrender after being seriously wounded. In the words of the Americans, Seibert's troops were not annihilated, they heroically broke through, and now this heroic unit is resting in Poznan and will soon return to the battlefield.

So what about the real situation? The truth is that Seibert's forces were wiped out except for a few lucky lucky ones who escaped from the encirclement in the last moments. The U.S. War Department gathered up these poor people who had escaped, and then pieced together some of the U.S. logistics units that had remained in Poznan before, and restored the numbers of the U.S. troops participating in the war on paper.

To tell the truth, Hegel was confused by the genius of the Americans, because according to the US War Department, Poznan still has four divisions of the American army, which means that in the eyes of the outside world, Hegel has 12 divisions of heavy troops, so many troops can't save Foch in the encirclement?

In any case, the public opinion circles were quite dissatisfied with Hegel's later slow action, and in their opinion the English field marshal was too conservative, too timid, and too incompetent, and repeatedly sat back and watched Foch get trapped, only knowing how to stand still, which was simply a waste!

At that time, Hegel was so depressed! Is it to tell the truth to the outside world and debunk the tricks of the Americans? This will definitely not work, if he does this, then the position of commander-in-chief of the coalition forces under his ass will probably change immediately. It will even lead to a series of international disputes, which will not even affect him for the rest of his life.

However, in his diary, Hegel scolded the Americans and directly greeted the eight generations of ancestors of the relevant personnel of the US War Department and all the female relatives in the family. And for the rest of the old man's life, as long as he saw Americans, he blew his beard and glared, and even publicly said more than once that Americans were garbage! One can imagine how angry the old man was at that time.

However, in the midst of the scolding, Hegel actually held back, no matter what the outside world said, he just didn't see it, and rubbed a little bit towards Warsaw with the speed of an old ox pulling a slow car, and stopped and watched at the slightest disturbance.

This continued until early November. When the weather was getting colder, when the troops in the encirclement had been hungry for days, and when their ammunition was about to run out, all sorts of telegrams for help poured into Hegel like snowflakes of telegrams from scolding mothers.

Under the internal and external pressure, the old-fashioned Hegel could not continue to grind foreign workers, he could only reluctantly speed up, but in addition to speeding up, the old man also warned his subordinates more than once: "We must not rush forward, our aim is to fight steadily and steadily, as long as we encounter any risks, we must stop and observe, and we must maintain close contact between the troops......

Even, the old man privately warned the only reliable three division commanders under his command: "The Germans are unreliable, you must keep an eye on them at all times, and you must not let them out of your sight!" ”

Of course, the old man's caution was not completely meaningless, because on his march, there was always a pair of eyes watching his movements, always looking for fighters, and as soon as the old man showed any flaws, he would bite him hard...... (To be continued......)

PS: Bow and thank you to Comrade hzwangdd and Comrade Juventus!