As the clock ticked into the end of 1911, people around the world were relieved to finally get through a year of crisis and conflict.

What happened throughout 1911 was not good news for all Europeans.

The second Moroccan crisis brought into effect the confrontation between the two major European military blocs, and the contradictions between Britain and Germany deepened, further contributing to a more aggressive naval arms race.

And more importantly, this naval arms race is in which all the European powers are fully involved, which also means that these great powers have a clear understanding that war is not far off, and they are preparing for it.

In addition, the major European powers are also stepping up the expansion of their armies. From the 300,000 expansion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Italy to the 500,000 expansion of the troops of France, Russia and Germany, all prove that the current situation facing Europe is very serious, and war seems to be imminent.

The frenzied expansion of the army and navy of these great powers also led to an explosion of growth in their military enterprises.

One of the most obvious examples is the Krupp factory, a famous German military enterprise, which had only 9,000 employees in 1873 and grew to 43,000 in 1902. By the end of 1911, the number of employees at the Krupp plant had reached 70,000.

Britain's military industry is also very large, with more than 100,000 people engaged in the military industry.

Britain's military industry has two major characteristics: First, it gives priority to the development of warships and merchant ships, which is also in line with the characteristics of the British navy.

The second is that private arms factories occupy an important position, which is not the same as the royal military factories in Australasia.

Among the Australasian military factories, the royal family's royal military factory accounts for 87 percent of all the Australasian military factory market, and only a small share of weapons that some military factories are unwilling to produce will be produced by some private military workshops.

In addition, France, Russia and Austria-Hungary also had a very large arms industry, and the armaments and soldiers of these great powers also benefited from a very large military industry.

This can also be seen in Australasia. There are currently 15,000 people working in the military industry in Australasia.

If you include the aviation research laboratories and agricultural machinery factories hidden in the shadows, the number of employees in the military industry has exceeded 20,000.

The number of reserves brought by the major European powers was even more exaggerated than the number of standing armies expanded.

In addition to the British Empire, the focus of the expansion of the European powers was actually the land forces.

This has led to the fact that up to now, the armaments and soldiers of the major European powers have been very exaggerated.

At present, among all the great powers in Europe, Russia has the largest number of soldiers, with a regular army of 1.1 million and a reserve of 5.65 million.

The second largest is France, with a standing force of 710,000 and a reserve force of 5 million.

It was followed by Germany, with a standing force of 700,000 and a reserve force of 4.9 million.

Austria-Hungary had 400,000 standing troops and 3 million reserves, Italy had 380,000 standing troops and 1.8 million reserves, and the British Empire had 250,000 standing troops and 1.2 million reserves.

Although major European countries have already announced military expansion, the pace of military expansion is also different.

At present, Germany and France should be the most successful in expanding their troops. Germany and France have so far summoned more than 200,000 reservists to join the standing forces and have been engaged in continuous training.

The relatively slow pace of military expansion should be the Tsarist Empire, which has the largest number of reserves.

I have to admit that the decay of this country is shocking. Even though the expansion has been announced for several months, only tens of thousands of troops have been conscripted so far, and even these tens of thousands have not yet arrived at the scheduled training sites and are still being transported on the road.

If the expansion of the armies of these great powers is completed, then in the future war, Europe may usher in a great war with tens of millions of soldiers, and the losses caused to the major European countries are also immeasurable.

In addition to the confrontation between the two major military blocs in Europe, the shadow of the Balkans has also been very dense.

The Balkan states are either preparing for war or preparing for war.

In order to prepare for future wars, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Mendigorogro and other Balkan alliance countries have announced military expansion, Bulgaria and Serbia have exceeded 300,000 and 200,000 respectively, even the smallest Mendiguero, the number of troops has exceeded 35,000.

The Balkan Alliance was backed by the support of the Tsarist Empire, and the weapons and equipment they needed to expand their armies were naturally purchased from the Tsarist Empire.

To this end, the Tsarist Empire eliminated some of the weapons that were currently being equipped, selling them to the Balkan countries at a slightly lower price than the market price.

The Russian Empire, on the basis of the previous order of 50,000 rifles, ordered 150,000 rifles and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition from Australasia to prepare for the expansion of the domestic army.

This also made Arthur feel the windfall profits from the sale of arms. Even if the war has not yet begun, the European countries are only preparing for war, and only Russia has ordered weapons from Australasia, which has made hundreds of thousands of Australian dollars from the arms factories.

If war really starts and all European countries are short of weapons, the profits from the arms trade will expand to tens or even hundreds of millions of Australian dollars.

To this end, Arthur also generously gave tens of millions of Australian dollars to the Royal Arsenal, so that the arsenal can concentrate on production, and reserve at least one million rifles and hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition for future wars, as well as tens of thousands of artillery pieces and millions of shells.

Anyway, Australasia has both British-made and German-made weapons in the country, and also has Australasia's own weapons and equipment developed and produced.

Within the scope of Europe, the more popular weapons are British and German-made weapons, and there is basically no difficulty in exporting weapons.

Arthur even wondered if the first two generations of aircraft could be built in large quantities and sold in large quantities if military aircraft had been used in World War I and had shown importance for aircraft.

Anyway, Australasian military aircraft have already been studied to the third generation, and research on the fourth generation is already underway.

As long as the fourth-generation military aircraft is successfully developed in the future, then the sale of the first two generations of military aircraft to the major European powers will not affect the aircraft research of Australasia, anyway, due to the impact of the war, it is impossible for them to catch up with Australasia in a short time.

And the cost of these aircraft is tens of thousands or even tens of thousands of Australian dollars, and the profits brought to European countries by large-scale sales are no less than those of arms exports.

5,000 words today to take a day off, happy May Day!

(End of chapter)