The changes in this world are a little incomprehensible, and the entry of Italy and the Ottoman Empire into the war did make everyone nervous at first, thinking that the Entente was afraid that it was going to be finished. But the development of things is so strange, the allies who have been joined by these two countries do not seem to be like tigers, and there are still no breakthroughs on the eastern and western fronts.

On the contrary, it was the miraculous expression of the Italian army that once again shattered the world's glasses and refreshed the lower limit of the combat effectiveness of the great powers.

Seeing the French being beaten violently by Erdezi, the Italians felt that their opportunity had come, and they wanted to take advantage of the fact that the French were beaten dizzy. According to the Italian government's idea, now the Gallic chickens have been smoked into plague chickens, and now they can't take care of the Italian-French border at all.

So, on the very day of the declaration of war, eight Italian divisions happily crossed the border. In their own words, it was a pleasant march of arms.

This was true at the outset, when the French forces were very strained, and the line from Caen-Orleans to Auxerre-Besonsant was already very tight, and it was true that they could not spare much force to deal with the Italian invasion. The same is true of the British, whose forces on the Western Front are almost entirely on guard against Germany, and do not dare to relax at all. I don't know if they have any other ideas, but they just can't spare the manpower to go to the Alps to deal with the Italians.

However, the Entente did not have only the armies of Britain and France on the Western Front. Not counting the colonial armies, there is also the country of Japan.

The first Japanese to send to Europe had five divisions, which increased to six in 1915. Of course, the establishment of these six divisions has not changed, and the officers and soldiers at the grassroots level are constantly being consumed in the flesh and blood mills of the Western Front, and by now, the number of people has changed several times. By the end of October 1916, according to Japan's own figures, more than 170,000 had died in the European war, and more than 80,000 had been seriously wounded or disabled. At this time, the establishment of the Japanese army was about 2 divisions. 20,000 people, 260,000 casualties, almost enough to replace these six divisions twice.

According to the arrangement of the Entente, the disabled Japanese army and the colonial armies of India and Annam were all resting on the Mediterranean coast, because it was close to the port, which was convenient for them to replenish and rotate personnel. Before Italy and the Ottomans joined the Central Powers, the Mediterranean Sea was still firmly in the hands of the Entente, and in the face of the powerful British and French navies, the Austro-Hungarian navy did not dare to go to sea at all, so they could only stay in their own home port as a storage fleet, and the merchant ships of the Entente countries sailed swaggering in the Mediterranean.

While Italy was invading France, the Japanese 2nd, 8th, and 13th Divisions were resting in the Marseille area. They had been crippled in the battle with Germany in front of them, and had retreated to replenish their personnel, equipment, and recuperate, and the Italians had just replenished their personnel and equipment when the Italians came over.

When the Allied command found that it was impossible to draw troops from the front line against Germany, it immediately thought of this group of Japanese troops and immediately ordered them to meet the Italian army. After the three Japanese divisions were mobilized, an Annam division, which was also resting near Toulon, was also transferred to let them fight in tandem with the Japanese army.

The French side sent a group of officers to form the Southern Alpine Cluster Command, using the idle Admiral Xia Fei as the commander-in-chief, and the former chief of the French Army Operations Department, Major General Gammerin, as the chief of staff. Three Japanese divisions, one Annam division, and other scattered forces in the Alpine region were assigned to this "Southern Alpine Cluster" to fight against Italy.

Because of the small number of troops in hand, this cluster command actually only played the role of a coordinating organization, and could not directly command the three Japanese divisions, and the actual operations were still commanded by the Japanese themselves.

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The Italians attacked smoothly at first, easily capturing Donde and Menton on the first day, Monaco on the second day, and Nice on the third. Aside from a brief fight with a squad of police in Nice, there was little resistance along the way.

When the Italian army regained Monaco (Monaco's ownership is also one of the major conflicts between Italy and France), and after a "bitter battle", the news of the capture of the French city of Nice reached home, the Italians were very happy, and celebrations were held everywhere.

General Petro Badogrio, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Italian Army and commander of the First Army that attacked France, immediately became a star, and was praised by the Italian media as "a rare famous general", "contemporary Scipio" and other honorary titles.

When the news came from the front on 21 October that the Italian army had encircled Cannes and was about to conquer it in the near future, the Italians fell into a complete frenzy. Cannes is less than 100 kilometers from the Italian-French border, as for why it took the Italian army six days to get here. Not surprisingly, Italians have always been like this.

They had not been happy for a few days, but on October 24, they received a thunderbolt from the blue: the Italian First Army had been attacked by the Japanese dwarfs in Cannes, and more than half of its troops had been lost, and it was now withdrawing to the Franco-Italian border......

The Italians, who were celebrating their victory, were stunned by the terrible bad news, as if they had been slapped in the face and broken with a basin of ice water. How could it be? How could our invincible army of Great Italy be so defeated?

But whether they want to believe it or not, even if it is true, the Italian First Army was besieging Cannes when it was stabbed in the back by the French Southern Alps. The three Japanese divisions, which were the main forces, were even more eye-catching, and under the command of Lieutenant General Yoshiko Akiyama, they quietly approached the Italian encirclement on the night of the 23rd, and launched a night attack in the early morning after the troops were in place.

The Japanese 13th Division rushed in from the junction of the two Italian divisions, and the other two divisions also attacked from the flanks, and the Italians, who were caught off guard, were immediately stunned. The Japanese attacked the Italian positions in a frenzied attack, and the Italians were beaten to the point that the wolves fled, and by daybreak the Italian army had collapsed.

Italy's First Army, consisting of eight divisions with a total strength of more than 160,000 men, was defeated by the Japanese, who were less than half their strength.

The "modern-day Scipio" was even more remarkable, for though his advance was incredibly slow, he was swift as the wind when he retreated. It took six days to get there, and less than three hours to get back.

As the actual commander of this battle, Akiyama Yoshiko triumphantly sent a telegram to Xiafei, who was waiting for news at the Toulon headquarters, after the victory of the battle, claiming: "The Italian army is losing and retreating at an astonishing speed, and our army cannot catch up with ......" At the same time, he also said that a large number of Italian troops had been captured, and he asked the headquarters to send someone to receive them as soon as possible, and they would continue to pursue.

After receiving the news of the victory at the front, Xia Fei was overjoyed and immediately sent Major General Gan Malin to the front line to understand the specific situation.

On the morning of the 24th, Gan Molin arrived in Cannes on a Y-1 plane, and as soon as he got off the plane, he asked Akiyama Yoshiko: "How many Italians have been captured this time?"

Akiyama replied proudly, "I'm counting, but I haven't counted it yet." Anyway, the soldiers stood about twenty hectares, and the officers looked like about two hectares......"

Akiyama Yoshiko had studied at the Saint-Cyr Military Academy in France before, and his French level was okay, so there was no need for a translator between them. According to Japanese rules, Gan Molin would still call him "senior".

A careful count shows that the Italian army lost more than 23,000 casualties and more than 48,000 were captured. That is, the Italian First Army was crippled. The Japanese army only lost more than 1,000 people in this battle, and 3,000 were wounded, which can be described as a great victory.

Next, Akiyama Yoshiko continued the pursuit, recovering Nice that night, Monaco on the 25th, and defeating the defending Italian First Army at the Maddalena Pass on the Italian-French border on the 27th, and counterattacking into Italian territory. The Japanese advanced in great force, routed several defending Italian troops, and captured Turin on 30 October.

At this moment, the whole world was stunned, and what shocked people was not how high the combat effectiveness of the Japanese was, but the incompetence of the Italians had exceeded the cognitive level of the broad masses. This Nima is also called the Great Powers?

It was precisely because the Japanese army performed well in the battle against Italy that Britain and France were willing to spend 300 million pounds on them.

The experience of the Japanese commander Yoshiko Akiyama is also quite legendary, and in the Sino-Japanese War in 1913, he led the 13th Division to garrison Taiwan. During China's liberation of Taiwan, his 13th Division was devastated by China, and he himself was once thought to have died in battle, and even the Japanese military headquarters prepared a tablet for him at the Yasukuni Shrine.

But in fact he did not die, his luck does not know how to describe, when the artillery fire of the People's Liberation Army blew up a building, and this building happened to be the temporary headquarters that Akiyama had just designated, and he happened to be in it at the time, so he was buried by this collapsed house. He was buried for five days before being dug up by PLA sappers who were cleaning up the battlefield.

He was also a fortune teller, and when the building collapsed, the broken beams and floor slabs just formed an oblique space, which just covered him, so he was not stoned to death in the first place. And there were exactly a few boxes of dry food and sake in this space, and it was these things that he relied on to support him for the few days he was buried alive.

Later, after the People's Liberation Army confirmed his identity, it also added his name to the list of prisoners. At that time, everyone in Japan thought that he had hung up, and his family even built his mourning hall.

After the Sino-Japanese contract was signed, he was immediately redeemed by the Japanese government as a high-ranking general. After recuperating at home for a while, he continued to serve as the commander of the newly formed 13th Division. After the outbreak of World War I, he and the 13th Division were sent to Europe as the first Japanese troops to participate in the war.

The Japanese army did not take advantage of the Germans in the previous battle, but suffered heavy losses. This time, however, he regained his self-confidence in the Italians, and Akiyama Yoshiko, who was the de facto commander of the front, became famous.