July 31, 1914. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and a few days later, the European powers were involved in the war one after another, and the two German ships stranded in the waters of the Ottoman Empire became a big problem, and Britain and Russia successively sent notes to the Ottoman government, asking it to disarm the two German ships in accordance with the principle of neutrality.

The Ottoman Empire, which already possessed two new super-dreadnoughts, was not without the strength to disarm the Goburn and Breslau, but Rear Admiral Sorochin's intransigence was a problem for the cabinet ministers: the two warships were anchored near the imperial capital, and if the other side made up their minds to fight to the death, the thousand-year-old city would be reduced to rubble by a huge artillery bombardment, along with the lavish Sultan's palace. At the same time, the Germans also threw bait: Germany promised to pay the Ottoman Empire 80 million marks (4 million pounds, or 4.4 million Turkish lira) worth of gold coins, which would be handed over as soon as it entered the war, and also supported the Ottoman Empire in recovering the Caucasus territories that had been ceded to Russia for a century, as well as parts of the Balkan territories ceded to Greece and Serbia.

Germany's conditions, which pleased War Chancellor Enver, the head of the Big Three, were opposed by most of the cabinet ministers, not so much because they hated the Allies or were closer to the Allies, but more because they "saw no hope of victory."

After a heated debate, the parties reached a compromise that covered their ears and stole the bell: Germany announced the sale of the "Goeben" and "Breslau" to the Ottoman Empire. Named "for sale", it was actually a gift, and the two ships hung up the star and moon flags of the Ottoman Empire, and the German officers and sailors on the ships changed into Ottoman Empire ** uniforms. Wearing a Turkish flat cap with a national character, the "Goeben" was renamed "Yavos. Sultan Selim I", the "Breslau" was renamed the "Midili", and Rear Admiral Sorochin was appointed Chief of Staff of the Ottoman Navy, commander of the Black Sea Fleet and captain of the "Sultan Selim I" – in fact, he was not under the jurisdiction of any Ottoman officials.

At the end of October, the impatient Germans made a two-pronged move: on the one hand, without waiting for the Ottoman government to officially answer whether they would enter the war or not, the first shipment of gold arrived in Constantinople via the "Eastern Railway"; On the other hand, Sorochin, who had already been promoted to the rank of Admiral of the Ottoman Empire, left the Bosphorus and sailed into the Black Sea without even saying hello to Admiral Jemal, who took the liberty of leading the battlecruiser "Sultan Selim I" equipped with 10 280-mm guns, the new light cruiser "Midili", the old protective cruiser "Hamidiya", and a destroyer detachment, a total of four destroyers. Over the next few days, the fast fleet shelled the Sevastopol military port and fortresses, the commercial ports of Odessa and Novorossiysk, sinking more than a dozen large and small ships and damaging many warships.

In response to this series of undeclared attacks, Russia immediately recalled its ambassador to Constantinople, and Britain issued a final ultimatum to the Ottoman government: to immediately expel all German advisers on its territory, including the German naval officers and men of the "Sultan Selim I" and "Midili", within 12 hours.

Under the strong impetus of the pro-German nationalist leader Enver, the Ottoman government rejected the British demands, and in early November, Russia and Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire. On 12 November, Sultan Mohammed V declared war on the Entente and declared it a "holy war" in the name of the Caliph, the supreme religious leader of Islam, calling on all Muslims to join him in the war – but the course of the war proved that the impact of this "holy war" proclamation went far beyond the 19 million subjects of the Ottoman Empire.

At the beginning of the war, the mobilized Ottoman Army was organized into 40 operational infantry divisions, 57 reserve divisions, 40 regular cavalry regiments, and 24 irregular cavalry regiments, with a total strength of 1.3 million troops, of which 750,000 could be immediately dispatched to the front. Although the number of troops was quite large, the armament was very different from that of the European powers: an infantry division had only sixteen artillery pieces and twelve machine guns. An army with three infantry divisions had only 60 to 72 artillery pieces and 42 machine guns. The main armament of the field artillery was 75-mm Krupp field guns and mountain guns, as well as 36 105-mm Škoda howitzers and 60 120-mm Krupp howitzers, in addition to 150 fortress artillery batteries with fortress cannons, howitzers and mortars of various calibers.

The Ottoman Army had not yet recovered after the Italo-Turkish War and the Balkan War, and could even be called on the verge of collapse, and the army was seriously short of weapons, ammunition, and even clothing and boots, and was dependent on German assistance in all aspects.

Shortly after the end of the First Balkan War, on 30 June 1913, Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed the former Commander-in-Chief of the Cavalry, Liman. Feng. Lieutenant General Sanders was appointed head of the 40-member military advisory group in Ottoman, and he received 1 million marks in cash from the Deutsche Oriental Bank every year as "communication expenses".

On the eve of the Ottoman Empire's entry into the war, Blonzart. Feng. Colonel Schelendov was appointed Chief of Staff of the Ottoman Army by Sultan Mehmed V, while Lieutenant General Sanders was appointed Commander of the Fifth Army, responsible for guarding the Dardanelles. War Minister Enver personally commanded the 190,000 elite troops of the Second and Third Armies to attack the Russian Caucasus, but was severely attacked by the Russian army in a blizzard, and the Third Army was almost completely annihilated, losing more than 90,000 people by the end of January 1915. It was not until September of that year, after the Chinese army had inflicted heavy losses on the most elite mobile corps of the Russian army under the command of Brusilov, the Trans-Baikal Front, in the "Battle of the River", that the Second and Third Armies, which had strengthened part of the forces of the First Army in Constantinople, gradually resumed the offensive. By the end of the year, he finally recovered his declining momentum, not only recovering all the lost territory, but also attacking Russian territory again.

During the same period, the Fourth Army deployed in Syria and Palestine had seven divisions and more than 100,000 troops, and due to the limited capacity of the Hejaz narrow-gauge railway and the resistance of the local population, the Fourth Army could only dispatch 20,000 troops to attack the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt at first.

In the Mesopotamia (Iraq) region, only 15,000 troops of the Ottoman 12th Army were deployed, and the Ottoman authorities confiscated the Anglo-Polish books long before the declaration of war. All the assets of the oil companies in Iraq, the British side immediately increased the troops in the adjacent Abadan oil field area, and landed three brigades on the Faw Peninsula at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, and by the end of November they had occupied the river port of Basra, which was 130 kilometers away from the mouth of the river, and in mid-December, the British army occupied the city of Kulna at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and it was not until after China entered the war that the British army suspended its advance to Baghdad, and the two sides turned into a standoff on the Kulna line that lasted for more than a year.

The backbone of the Ottoman Navy consisted of two super-dreadnought battleships less than one year old, one two-year-old battle cruiser, two early pre-dreadnought battleships over 20 years old (i.e., two Brandenburg-class ships transferred by Germany in 1910), one shore-defence ironclad built in 1872, one two-year-old light cruiser (Midili), two old protective cruisers built in 1901 and 1902, and 12 small destroyers.

Compared to the Army, the situation in the Navy looks good: two new Chinese-built super-dreadnoughts plus the battlecruiser "Sultan Selim I" are enough to suppress both the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the Greek fleet in the Aegean Sea, but as the war progresses. There was constant friction between the Chinese advisers who came with the "Resadih" and "Sultan Osman I" and the German advisers who tried to occupy absolute dominance, and the navy was divided into pro-Chinese and pro-German factions, and the discord and strife between the two sides continued until the end of the following year.

The factional struggle was accompanied by repeated disadvantageous battles in the navy: first, in the second month after entering the war, the shore defense ironclad ship "Masudiye" with a standard displacement of 9,120 tons was sunk by a British submarine in the Dardanelles; In February of the following year, the battle cruiser "Sultan Selim I" was damaged by a mine at the entrance to the Dardanelles, because there was no suitable dock repair, and the gap could only be temporarily plugged with wooden wedges, from which the Ottoman Navy ceased its activities in the direction of the Aegean Sea; In April 1915, the protective cruiser "Madjidiye", purchased from the United States, ran aground during the shelling of Odessa and was captured by the Russian army; In August, with a displacement of more than 10,000 tons, "Haireddin. The former battleship Barbarossa was sunk by a British submarine in the Sea of Marmara, killing 250 people.

The most decisive battle took place on August 17, when Admiral Sorochin, in command of the battle cruiser "Sultan Selim I", led the battleships "Resadih" and "Sultan Osman I", the light cruiser "Midili" and four destroyers, again to carry out artillery bombardment on Sevastopol, and suddenly encountered a Russian detachment consisting of five dreadnought battleships, two protective cruisers and eight destroyers at Cape Saleh at the southern tip of the Crimean peninsula.

The Ottoman fleet, which had absolute superiority, immediately attacked, destroying the 12,840-ton "Yestafi" in less than a quarter of an hour, severely damaging two other former dreadnoughts, and the Russians pulled up the smoke screen and retreated, covering with a lightning strike from the destroyer. Sorochin still led his troops in hot pursuit, rushed into the thick smoke several times, and sank 2 Russian destroyers that stood in the way, and unknowingly collided with the guns of 3 Russian cutting-edge dreadnoughts in a scattered column formation. Under the intensive bombardment of 36 powerful Russian-made 52 times diameter 305 mm guns, the three Ottoman capital ships, which could only return fire at the front main guns (4 or 6 50x diameter 280 mm guns and 8 45x diameter 350 mm guns), immediately fell into an unfavorable situation: the superstructure of the "Sultan Selim I" caught fire in several places, a 305 mm armor-piercing shell penetrated the horizontal armor plate of the amidships and fell near the auxiliary gun ammunition depot, and the fire caused by the explosion forced the captain to order the secondary gun ammunition depot to be filled with water, The force of the near-miss explosion also broke through the wooden wedges that had blocked the holes in the waterline, causing a large amount of water to enter again, and the speed of the ship dropped to less than 22 knots; The bridge of the "Resadikh" was shot, and all the bridge personnel, including the head of the Chinese Ottoman Naval Advisory Group, were killed. Due to the interruption of communications, the reserve command post was unable to function in a timely manner, and the situation was very critical.

The "Sultan Osman I", which had been delayed from its position, was not seriously hit at first, but was able to calmly turn to evade, and returned fire with a powerful 350-mm main gun, hitting the enemy flagship "Empress Maria" with several shells.

Taking advantage of the transfer of firepower from the Russian ships, Sorochin led the "Sultan Selim I" and "Resadih" to stagger away under the cover of the destroyer's lightning strike, and the Russian side only sank one Ottoman destroyer because the maximum speed of the "Empress Maria" class was only 21 knots.

After this battle, the German advisers took the opportunity to take advantage of the opportunity to force all the Chinese advisers to withdraw from the Ottoman navy on the grounds that the "Sultan Osman I" carrying the Chinese advisers had escaped without authorization - although there was no conclusive evidence that the withdrawal order was related to the Chinese advisers, and appointed Sorochin as the commander-in-chief of the Ottoman Navy in the name of Sultan Mehmed V, thus taking full control of the Ottoman army and navy.

The Chinese Empire protested and completely halted the construction of a large 35,000-ton dry dock that had begun in February 1914 – a work that had been in a semi-halted state since the Ottoman Empire entered the war, but which was eventually downplayed by all sides after the signing of a memorandum between Berlin and Beijing on the demarcation of the scope of the post-war situation.

Without a suitable dry dock, it is impossible to repair the damaged capital ships, and the damaged waterline parts of the "Sultan Selim I" and "Ressadih" can still only be blocked with wooden shovels; due to the withdrawal of the Chinese affairs advisers, the combat effectiveness of the "Ressadih" and "Sultan Osman I," which were already undertrained, has also been affected, and the German affairs advisers sent to the two ships were once resisted by the pro-China officers and men, and the ensuing "lack of obedience spirit" The large-scale replacement of officers and men further weakened the combat effectiveness of the entire Ottoman Navy......

“…… Looks like you're in an unpopular place. ”

Sighing weakly, Lieutenant Colonel Zhou Shuren put the documents in his hand on the coffee table, got up and stretched his waist, took a deep breath of air filled with a faint salty smell of seawater, and looked up into the distance, the Sultan's palace Domabahce Palace, which was also located on the shore of the Bosphorus and cost 35 tons of gold to build, was like an overly fancy and ugly multi-layered cream cake. The Sultan Osman I was quietly moored in a single column in the narrow strait, which was only 708 meters at its narrowest point, and in terms of visual appearance, each giant ship seemed to be no less in size than the 285 rooms, 46 halls, 8 hammam and St. Petersburg-style complex of 285 rooms, 46 halls, 8 hammam and 68 toilets.

"That's fine. It's like a vacation...... But how should this report be written, I have a headache ......"

While talking to himself, Zhou Shuren unconsciously touched the "History of Chinese Novels" on the recliner, and was about to escape from reality irresponsibly when a Turkish servant of the embassy suddenly appeared next to him.

"Is it Mr. Zhou? A German guest would like to meet you. ”

Zhou Shuren blinked suspiciously: "German guest? I've just arrived, how could it be...... Is it really such a coincidence? By the way, did he give his name? ”

Without thinking, the shrewd young servant replied, "He said that he was Lieutenant Lieutenant Karl Murphy of the cruiser Midili. Feng. Dönitz, I have a relationship with you, sir. ”

Zhou Shuren narrowed his eyes and tried to recall: "Dönitz...... Dönitz ...... Cal? It's him? Okay, ask him to wait in the living room, and I'll come down. ”

At the same time as he suddenly commanded, he took out his wallet, took out a banknote and handed it to the other party: "I'm tired of preparing some tea and snacks, thank you—what's your name?" ”

……

On the third floor of the Chengxian Hall of the Xinhua Palace in Beijing, in the office of the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Yang Zhengjin, Prime Minister of the Cabinet and Acting Chief of the General Staff, behind the desk, was alternately flipping through a thick old book with yellowed pages with Marshal Hook, the white-polished cover, and a line of hollow characters appeared on the white-polished cover: "History of the First World War in the World", and a line of small characters was attached to the upper right of the big characters: [Edited by Surostunov. In the upper right corner of the cover are two lines of numbers, "1914" and "1918", with a short slash in the middle. A blurry picture is printed in the upper right corner of the cover: a soldier in an English steel helmet with a bayonet rifle in one hand rising to look at something under a gloomy sky, and below him two other soldiers lying on the wall of a trench operating a machine gun, surrounded by looming wooden poles, presumably used to build barbed wire.

“…… What do you think is the key? ”

Yang Zhengjin asked coldly, pressing the spread page tightly with his right hand, and under his little thumb were exactly a few lines of lead words: "Admiral Fisher, Chief of Staff of the Navy, seems to be correct in opposing Churchill's attempt to fight the Dardanelles." Before the Gallipoli landing, the coalition wrote to Churchill: 'Damn the Dardanelles! There will be our grave. What a grave this is! During the entire First World War, Britain had never suffered such great losses in any battle, and had nothing to gain. ”

Hooke, who had a flat face with a Chinese character face, let out a sigh of expression, reached out and tapped on another book on the table: "The key is not to make mistakes, I don't mean low-level mistakes like going to the wrong beachhead - in fact, there are conclusions in this book." ”

"If the Allies had taken a decisive lead and had engaged all the forces they had mobilized in mid-August in February 1915, they would have captured Constantinople and opened the Black Sea passage for the Russians. The reason for the failure of the entire campaign was the result of ineffective command, hesitation, and delay, which was to let incompetent minesweepers clear mines, and to let incompetent warships suppress coastal artillery and strike at coastal guard units, and failed to seize the opportunity to put in reserve at the right time. In addition, they underestimated the tactics and bravery of the Turkish army, and at the same time, it was the result of bad luck......"