A few hours later, the results of the offensive and defensive maneuvers in neighbouring East Prussia were heard throughout the General Staff. To the disbelief of many senior Junker officers, the crown prince, who had fought Tirpitz for many years like his emperor's father, had led his troops to fend off an attacking army with six times the strength and artillery superiority, which had an almost subversive impact on their values. As the entire battle was recreated in detail on the giant sand table, the staff generals were amazed by the unique fortifications of the defenders, and they also began to think and analyze them in detail.

Completely different from the garrison system they were familiar with before, almost all the fortifications built by Qing Ying were below the horizon, and the underground artillery bunkers that were often more than 5 meters deep greatly ensured the survivability of the garrison officers and soldiers under enemy artillery fire. Half-concealed machine gun bunkers and camouflaged concrete forts are also highly immune to conventional direct fire, which is not only well protected by reinforcement, but more importantly, it has a fairly small shell area, with only one scalp exposed, making it extremely difficult to aim direct artillery. This, combined with rolling barbed wire, criss-crossed trenches, fast-firing infantry artillery, and a large number of machine guns in concentrated use, all contributed to the unprecedented tragedy of the attackers in this exercise.

Out of the exploration of the unknown and the responsibility of the uniform, the entire German General Staff, including Schlieffen himself, spent months thinking about how to break through this novel line of defense, but never came up with a good strategy. Although the tunnel blasting was able to avoid the barbed wire and a large number of machine guns that would have to be confronted by a frontal attack, the project was laborious and laborious to perform. And the defenders only need to dig a trench and dig a deep trench to keep the underground demolition troops out. Even if the blasting is successful. Since the trench is not a line of defense. Rather, it has a network of elastic surfaces with a wide depth and depth, and the collapse of a small section of it cannot make any difference to the situation. As for the crowd tactics, don't even think about it, the number of bullets and shells will always be 2 to 3 orders of magnitude more than the number of people, and the 50,000 corpses that the Japanese army fell under the Russian fortress city to implement the meat bullet tactics are the most direct result of the competition between flesh and bullets; After entering the era of hot weapons, the act of piling up victories regardless of casualties is gone!

After putting forward countless ideas that failed, the German staff had to return to the most primitive path, which was to completely drown the opponent with thunderous and tsunami artillery fire. However, all of the core fortifications of this trench defense system were buried deep in the ground or only a small part of the ground was exposed, and the rapid-fire guns widely respected by the army today were extremely limited in their damage. The Teutonic people, who are extremely sensitive to military warfare. Soon a strategy was found in the Russo-Japanese War, which was still going on, and that was to equip a large number of short-barreled heavy howitzers.

Half a year ago, the Japanese captured the Dalian fortress that ambushed 70,000 people, and as the biggest weapon hero of this battle, the 280-mm howitzer naturally entered the eyes of German observers and the German General Staff. After Schlieffen's defeat in the offensive and defensive exercises, the General Staff suddenly realized that it was a good idea to break through this defense with howitzers. Compared to long-barreled cannons with straight ballistics, howitzers have a higher trajectory and are more curved, which means that they can hit low, half-buried fire points more easily than flat-firing cannons, and thus kill them. Due to the high-throw nature of the shells, the area where they will eventually hit will almost always be an undefended dome. This lethal effect is obviously much more effective than using rapid-fire guns to bombard reinforced frontal defenses (I don't understand myself, refer to Yamaguchi Ding Zhongfuku's own uncle, who was forced to be empowered by the bombing). At the last juncture of the year-long battle of Dalian, the shells fired by the Japanese 280-mm howitzer successfully pierced the dome of several Russian fortresses that had slaughtered the lives of countless Japanese officers and soldiers. It greatly cleared the way for the follow-up siege troops. If the Japanese had continued to fire with ordinary artillery fire, the final price they would have paid would have been even greater than the staggering casualties.

In addition, the howitzer has another advantage over the cannon, that is, its muzzle velocity is relatively lower than that of the cannon, and it can be equipped with thicker caliber tubes on the same gun carriage, and the caliber is power and justice. Therefore, in dealing with all kinds of low fortifications in trench warfare, howitzers have both the advantage of hitting and the advantage of single firepower, and the results that can be achieved will be twice as effective as that of cannons.

Knowing the reaction of the General Staff, Qingying, who started the attack, was surprised, and then a sense of joy and admiration followed. Although the Germans were known for their rigidity and rigidity, and they were always known as engineers who followed the rules, they were extremely deceitful in military affairs, and had an unusual sense of smell for war and weapons. On the eve of World War I, only Germany realized that machine guns would bring great changes to the war, so the army was heavily equipped with an improved version of the Maxim; During World War II, the Germans broke free from the dogmatism of tanks supporting infantry, organically combined and concentrated the use of tanks and combat aircraft with internal combustion engines as the core, and stabbed the Gallic rooster, known as the world's first army, in only 6 weeks. This time, they were able to realize that the power of howitzers in the defensive battle against the trenches was also an excellent performance that Qingying expected.

Under the impetus of Qing Ying, the German Army began to increase the order of howitzers, and the artillery academies also expanded the scale of enrollment to send high-quality professionals to this army that is the best in Europe. However, to Qingying's sweat, the expansion of the German artillery unit was not blocked by the parliament, but was met with internal opposition from the top of the army. Their reason turned out to be that artillery was the core of the army, and its unbridled expansion would inevitably cause a large number of democrats to mix into the officer corps, thus greatly undermining the "purity" of the army. At its worst, the result was inevitably that the royal characteristics of the army, which the army was proud of, would inevitably become "nationalized" or even "democratized", and the absolute ruling majesty of the Hohenzollern royal family in it would be completely lost. Qing Ying can only express her helplessness about this phenomenon, because Schlieffen's strategy of paramilitary training of army reservists has already been opposed by the Junkers, and these things have to be taken slowly.

In fact, the blood of the German army was no longer pure, and the navy created by Tirpitz was almost entirely controlled by officers of ordinary civilian background, and only 5% of Junkers above the rank of colonel were in charge. A large number of elements who did not belong to vested interests were obviously less loyal to the Kaiser and Hohenzollern than the Prussian officer corps, which had been passed down for centuries, and the Kiel sailors' uprising, the trigger for the collapse of the Second German Reich, was directly triggered in the navy. From Qingying's point of view, as the heir to Hohenzollern, he should have tried to maintain the status quo of the Junker aristocracy controlling the army, but he knew history well that a massive expansion of the German army was inevitable under outside pressure. As long as it practiced an efficient and stable enlightened autocracy, and was able to maintain victory on the battlefield, Germany would not have been in the same extreme situation as it was in history, with its extremely developed productive forces and extensive social security!

The large addition of howitzers could only initially solve the problem of the lack of striking capabilities against trenches, and Schlieffen's General Staff did not stop further improvements; They flipped through the reports sent back by the military observers from the Japanese and Russian armies, and finally found a way out of the Russo-Japanese War.

A year ago, the battle for the Dalian fortress was in full swing, and in order to shorten the charging distance, the Japanese dug trenches only a few dozen meters away from the Russian positions, and it was difficult for the ordinary firepower of the Russian army to kill these Japanese troops lurking in the trenches and having the "advantage" of height. In order to solve this situation, a Mao artillery captain modified the old 47-mm mortar guns on the navy battleship with an attitude of giving it a try, and fired long-tail shells at a large angle, which actually dealt a heavy blow to the Japanese troops in the trenches. The rigorous German military observers did not miss a single detail of the battlefield, and Schlieffen, who had experienced the pain of the trenches, also noticed this new strange weapon. It has a trajectory higher than that of a howitzer, and it can be fatal to the damage of people in the trenches!

When the corners of Schlieffen's mouth rose and he showed Qingying his latest achievements in a smug tone, Qingying's admiration for these Junker officers was difficult to express in words. This weapon is precisely the mortar that has been passed down for a century in the army equipment of later generations! Originally, he was going to find an opportunity to sell this classic century-old weapon to the army, but now it seems that it is completely unnecessary. Although the mortar that Schlieffen showed Qingying was still in a relatively primitive state, with a large and inappropriate gun carriage, no tail fins, and no optical sight, the modification of this weapon was as simple as a sack for him, a traverser. Importantly, since this weapon was operated by a single soldier, it did not need to be expanded to "tarnish the purity of the officer corps"; The low cost of construction allowed it to be mass-produced, which greatly increased the firepower of the German infantry. Qing Ying could clearly feel that the national glory of this empire had really been changed by him! (To be continued......)