Chapter 414 The Great Encirclement Plan

Ministers Daze and Gray quickly reached a verbal agreement, and the British Empire exchanged the areas of Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait for the Mesopotamia plain occupied by Australasia.

Moreover, the two foreign ministers also happily reached an agreement to visit each other's countries in the near future so that they can reach a further step in the Anglo-Australian Agreement, which is what Minister Gray believes will firmly bind Australasia. On the chariot of the British Empire.

In fact, there is no harm to Australasia in supporting the British Empire in terms of profit distribution after the war, and it can even gain a lot of benefits.

Among the three major allies of the Entente, Australasia had the best relations with Britain and Russia. Naturally, Arthur could not risk offending Britain by supporting France's expansion on the European continent.

Anyway, France and Australasia are thousands of miles apart, and it is impossible for the French to have any influence on Australasia.

The domestic situation in Russia is not very clear. Not to mention its massive external expansion, it is good to be able to stabilize the domestic situation with war reparations, and it is not expected to provide much help to Australasia.

This also means that the only country that can help Australasia after the war is the British Empire.

At present, the British Empire's consumption in the war is not large, and it is not a problem for the British Empire to maintain its number one position in the world after the war.

Having a good relationship with the British Empire will also allow Australasia to gain more in the distribution of interests after the war. Although it will offend France, who will care?

France, which had suffered a lot of consumption after the war, urgently needed to replenish its blood through its colonies, rather than start a conflict with Britain and Australasia, which had not consumed much.

After France regains stability, Australasia's strength no longer needs to fear France, not to mention the support of Britain.

After Britain and Australasia were unified, the peace talks in Constantinople became very smooth.

On August 12, the Allies and the Ottoman Empire reached an agreement on the issue of land cession.

The Ottoman Empire ceded tens of thousands of square kilometers of land in the Caucasus to Russia, ceded the coast of the Rashid Emirate to Australasia, ceded the Mesopotamian plains, and the Yemen region to the British Empire, and ceded all European areas to The Balkan countries only retained land within ten kilometers of Constantinople.

Yes, Constantinople eventually returned to the hands of the Ottoman Empire, at the cost of losing a large amount of territory.

Although it seems that the Ottoman Empire also included Turkey, Syria, Israel and other regions in later generations, this area surrounded by Britain, Russia and Australasia, coupled with the indigenous forces in the Arab region, was not as peaceful as imagined.

Moreover, the Allies delivered Constantinople after the war, which also meant that Constantinople was still jointly managed by the Allies before Germany and Austria-Hungary surrendered.

Compared with the large amount of land ceded, the reparations demanded by the Allies from the Ottoman Empire were pitifully small.

According to the final agreement reached between the Allied Powers and the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Empire was required to pay a total of 150 million pounds in compensation to the Allied Powers within 15 years, and an additional 3 million pounds per year overdue.

As the main contributor to the war against the Ottomans, Australasia can receive a quarter of the 150 million pounds in compensation, which is 37.5 million pounds.

The reason why the Ottoman Empire's compensation is not high is because most of the Ottoman Empire has been divided up, and the remaining land is also coveted by the great powers.

Relying only on areas such as Turkey and Syria, the Ottoman Empire can compensate 150 million pounds in 15 years, which is already very good. After all, the size of the country can only allow the Ottoman Empire to compensate so much.

However, all the major powers have achieved considerable expansion in their land, and they do not care about the compensation, which is a drop in the bucket for the war.

The same goes for Arthur. The land acquired by Australasia already connects Qatar to Kuwait.

A large area of ​​land is rich in oil and natural gas. Their value is many times the compensation received by Australasia. Who cares about the small compensation?

In addition to land cession and war reparations, the Ottoman government also signed various treaties that were humiliating and humiliating, such as recognizing the occupation of Ottoman lands by the British Empire and Italy before the war, including Cyprus and Zozekanisos. .

At the same time, the Allied armies had the right to move freely within the Ottoman Empire. Before the end of the war, the Allied armies could freely enter and exit Ottoman territory, and the Ottoman government was not allowed to make any obstruction or intervention.

In areas such as Syria and Israel, the Allies have a large number of privileges. Although these lands were not ceded, the Ottoman Empire had lost actual jurisdiction and these areas were more like semi-colonies.

In addition, a large number of mineral rights in the Ottoman Empire, and even railway toll rights and jurisdiction, were sold and leased to the Allies.

With the signing of the Peace Treaty of Constantinople, it became inevitable that the Ottoman Empire would become an ordinary country. Its land area and population were not enough to support it from becoming a regional power.

As for the Allied Powers, the signing of the Peace Treaty of Constantinople greatly boosted the morale of the Allied Powers, and media from various countries rushed to report on it.

After the surrender of the Ottoman Empire, only Germany and Austria-Hungary were left to resist. The people of the Entente seemed to have seen victory coming.

It is worth mentioning that due to the accession of Australasia, the demand for imported resources from the Allied countries is not that high.

The island countries and the United States have never been able to find a good opportunity to join the Allied Powers. The United States has repeatedly promoted military equipment to the Allied Powers, but was rejected by the Allied Powers on the grounds that they did not lack supplies.

This resulted in the United States not doing much trade with Europe during the war, except for some supplies that were also scarce in Australasia.

Of course, as the war has developed so far, Britain, France, and Russia have borrowed heavily from the United States. This is also the only thing the United States has participated in the European war.

After the Peace Treaty of Constantinople was reached, the Allied powers once again turned their attention to the battlefield on the Eastern Front.

At present, the German army on the Western Front has entered a state of holding on, and there is no good way to quickly defeat Germany.

The hopes of the Allied Powers were all concentrated on the Eastern Front. If the Eastern Front could defeat the Germans again, Germany, which was severely weakened, would no longer be an opponent of the Allied Powers, and there would be hope for a quick settlement of the war.

In fact, it is not only the Allied Powers that are paying attention to the Eastern Front battlefield, the Allies are even more concerned about the Eastern Front battlefield.

As early as after the defeat of Bulgaria, Germany understood that it was time to make a desperate move. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire was actually inevitable. When the Ottoman Empire was facing siege, Germany also launched an offensive on the Eastern Front.

According to the plan, the German army and the Austro-Hungarian army carried out a strategic encirclement of the Russian army on the eastern front.

The plan for a general siege could be divided into two parts, with German forces in East Prussia advancing eastward and then southward around Poland.

The German-Austrian forces bypassed the southern Carpathian Mountains, joined the German army in East Prussia, and cut off the retreat of the Russian army in Poland and Galicia.

If this large-scale encirclement plan can be implemented smoothly, at least millions of Russian troops will be in an encirclement circle, surrounded by the combined forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

As long as most of the millions of Russian troops can be eliminated, Germany and Austria-Hungary will have an overwhelming advantage on the Eastern Front.

It is even possible to use Russia's heavy losses to strike hard at Russia and force Russia to withdraw from this war.

As long as the Russians withdraw from this war and the pressure on the Eastern Front is relieved, the German and Austrian troops can move south and force the Balkans to fall to the Allies.

With the German-Austrian Allied Forces and the Balkans fighting against Britain, France, Italy and Australia, the war was definitely still possible.

Even if the Ottoman Empire can be persuaded to join the war again, Germany will be able to obtain material support from the United States from the Persian Gulf, and the resource crisis will be solved.

Without the restraint of the Russian army on the Eastern Front, the British, French, Australian and German-Austrian forces on the Western Front were only evenly matched.

In a one-line war, if a transportation line with the United States could be opened, Germany would not be afraid of the Allies at all.

Adhering to the belief of fighting hard, at the end of July 1915, the German army launched a full-line offensive against the Russian army.

It was summer in the northern hemisphere, which was also a good opportunity to attack Russia. If we wait until the ice and snow in winter, no matter how powerful the army is, it is very likely that it will collapse in Russia.

Napoleon was such an example more than 100 years ago, which also made the German army very urgent.

If this battle cannot be ended before winter comes, the Eastern Front battlefield will be difficult to survive by then.

The German and Austrian armies launched a fierce attack on the Carpathian Mountains. The left wing of the Russian Eighth Army was stationed here. Under the strong pressure of the German and Austrian allied forces, it had to slowly retreat to the rear.

However, the Russians responded very quickly. The commander of the Southwest Front temporarily transferred right-wing troops to form the newly formed Ninth Army and accelerated reinforcements to the Eighth Army.

But at this time, Germany and Austria-Hungary were fighting hard. Coupled with the superiority in the number of soldiers, the Russian Eighth and Ninth Armies were still unable to stop the German-Austrian offensive and could only slowly retreat towards the rear.

The Russians had no choice but to mobilize the 11th Army in the central region, which barely blocked the Russian-Austrian coalition's charge from the Carpathian Mountains.

However, the combat effectiveness of the Russian army was vastly different from that of the German-Austrian coalition. The casualties of the three Russian armies soared, and even at the peak, the casualties in one day were as high as more than 30,000.

Although the Russian army successfully prevented the German-Austrian Allied Forces from encircling the Russian army in Galicia, it also suffered staggering casualties.

According to rough statistics from the Russian front, the Eighth, Ninth and Eleventh Group armies suffered a total of more than 300,000 casualties, and the death toll was at least more than 100,000.

This also means that the casualties of the three armies with a combined total of less than one million people have been nearly half, which can be said to be heavy losses.

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