Chapter 454 The Austro-Hungarian Empire surrendered and launched a full-scale counterattack
In the peace treaty between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Allied Powers, the Austro-Hungarian Empire repeatedly mentioned a clause that no country in the Allied Powers could support Hungarian independence forces.
The Hungarian independence forces include not only the Independence Party, which is already very famous in Hungary, but also the capitalists and landlords who are trying to promote Hungary's independence.
If you have a map, you can clearly find that most of the terrain of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is surrounded by mountains, and only the Hungarian region is one of the few plains in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
This has also led to the fact that most of Hungary has a small-scale peasant economy, which of course also contains a considerable number of farmers and small capitalists.
The completely different economic models of Hungary and Austria are doomed to conflict between Hungary and Austria.
But for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the empire could not lose such an important granary as Hungary.
After full consideration by the Austro-Hungarian government, it was finally decided that even if some more territory was lost, Hungary's right to rule could not be lost.
Of course, there is good news for Karl I. His throne as emperor is temporarily saved.
In order for the Austro-Hungarian Empire to better rule Hungary, the monarchy of Karl I cannot be lost for the time being.
After all, in addition to the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Karl I also held the titles of King of Bohemia and King of Hungary.
It was the combination of the three titles of Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia and King of Hungary that formed the dual country of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Once the monarchy was overthrown, countries that were united because they were Habsburg territories lost their reason to unite with each other.
I have to admit that as the greatest royal family in Europe, Habsburg's family fortune is still very rich.
Even at the beginning of the 20th century, the Habsburgs still held the titles of the Austrian Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary and the Kingdom of Bohemia. They were one of the most splendid and now most glorious families in the European royal family.
This contract is about to be concluded, and it should be King Karl I and the government of the Kingdom of Hungary who will relax.
Karl I was able to keep his throne, and the Hungarian government was able to handle its own crisis. It was a win-win situation.
As for the losses of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they could only be borne by the imperial government. But for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ending the war as early as possible may be the best choice. At least it can avoid further consumption of its war potential, and it can also avoid the human and property losses caused by the war to the Royal Hungarian government.
When they heard that the Russian government was re-sending troops to join the war, officials of all sizes in the Royal Hungarian government were basically frightened.
If this contract can be completely confirmed, it will at least give the Royal Hungarian government a period of development opportunity to deal with domestic minority issues. new
1. Because the progress of the peace talks was very smooth, the armistice was finally announced in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it was decided to mobilize most of the troops to the German border in an effort to fight Germany to the death in a short time.
The news of the surrender of the Austro-Hungarian Empire shocked the European people, and it also meant that Germany's defeat was already a matter of time.
Many European newspapers are even clamoring. They even believe that the Allied forces can end the war before Christmas this year, so that all European people will once again have a peaceful Christmas.
On July 24, more than 100,000 Australasian troops returned to the Western Front battlefield on transport ships. This also meant that the Australasian troops would once again face the German army.
Also removed were more than 500,000 troops from the Balkan coalition. Coupled with the coordinated operations of 500,000 Italian troops, the total number of Allied troops on the European Western Front has approached 10 million.
This is almost all the Allied Powers' current trump card. Within one and a half years, the Allied Powers, especially Britain and France, suffered more than 4 million casualties, and the death toll was close to 2 million. It can be said to be a truly heavy loss.
The Germans are not having it easy either. The total number of casualties in the past year and a half has been as high as 3.5 million, and the death toll has been close to 1.6 million.
The three local wars, the Battle of Verdun, the Battle of the Somme and the Spring Offensive, caused a total casualty figure of more than 8 million, and a total death toll of more than 3.5 million. It was also the most tragic period of the war since the outbreak.
During the entire war, the total number of soldiers from European countries involved in the war exceeded 20 million, the total number of casualties exceeded 15 million, and the death toll was as high as 6 million.
Even the death toll is comparable to some small and medium-sized countries in Europe. The cumulative number of casualties is close to the population size of Australasia, which is enough to show the cruelty of this war.
In addition to the consumption of manpower, the consumption of funds and materials in European countries has not decreased at all.
In the year before the war broke out, military expenditures in 1 were generally only about 100 million pounds, and some countries did not even exceed 100 million pounds.
But now, even Italy and Australasia, which have the lowest military expenditures, hover around 100 million pounds.
Countries such as Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, which are the most depleted, have annual war expenditures reaching tens of billions of pounds. It can be said that they are frantically squeezing the country's potential and damaging the country's economic development.
It is no exaggeration to say that an early end to the war has become the expectation of all countries.
But the problem is that Germany is currently not qualified to end the war early unless it ends the war with the attitude of a loser.
You must know that the current German government is under the rule of a military government, and it is absolutely impossible for those soldiers and Junker nobles to accept defeat. new
The Germans' delusional approach of ending the war with a staged victory was simply not acceptable to the Allies. This also meant that the Allies had to decide the outcome with Germany until either side had no room to fight back.
One American division was transported to the Western Front, which also allowed the Allied troops on the Western Front to officially exceed 10 million.
In August, under an order from the General Headquarters, tens of millions of Allied troops were scattered on the front lines of Belgium and France, launching a full-scale attack on the German defense lines.
The Allied Counterattack was earth-shattering, which also caused the artillery fire on the border to never stop. The shock of the explosion of artillery shells was like an earthquake. It also caused the entire border to be shrouded in a layer of white mist, making it impossible to see the enemy's troop deployment from above. .
With the Verdun area as the boundary, the Belgian area north of Verdun is the northern theater, the Verdun area is the central theater, and the south of Verdun is the southern theater.
The northern theater has 1.5 million British Expeditionary Forces and 500,000 Australasian Expeditionary Forces as the main force.
The central theater has 500,000 British Expeditionary Forces, 2.5 million French main troops and 100,000 US troops.
The southern theater has 500,000 Italian troops, 800,000 French troops and 550,000 Balkan troops.
In addition, Britain and France each have more than 1 million colonial troops deployed at the rear of these frontline armies, responsible for transporting supplies and serving as reserve troops.
Although the total size of the army seems daunting, in fact the real elite troops are less than 3 million, and most of the others are colonial armies and armies with low combat effectiveness.
new igh.πππ
The number of German troops was only half that of the Allied Powers, with less than 5 million troops at full strength.
More importantly, a considerable number of these 5 million people are new recruits, and their actual combat effectiveness is also questionable.
Moreover, Germany has at least one million troops at the mercy of Russia. Since the Austro-Hungarian Empire was suddenly attacked by Russia, it has strengthened its defenses on the Russian border to prevent Russia from repeating its old tricks and catching itself by surprise.
At this time, both sides are holding on to the idea of ββvictory, because once this decisive battle fails, it is really not far from failure, and it is even very likely that the enemy will directly invade the capital.
Although the Allies did not have such concerns, major European media had already blown the truth. Many British and French media had sworn to the people that they would fight so that the people could have a peaceful Christmas.
The people don't care whether the war on the front line will be complicated and changeable. If unfavorable news comes from the front line at this time, no one can bear the anger of the people.
You know, in order to promote this decisive battle, the British changed their conscription system from the previous recruitment system to a conscription system, and quickly raised more than 2 million combat troops.
Although there are less than 1 million troops composed of real British people, the conscription system does allow the British to have more troops.
If any unfavorable news comes from the front line at this time, I am afraid that the people will immediately resist the recently revised conscription system, which will even affect the British soldier supply.
Under such pressure, Allied politicians ignored the actual situation on the front lines. They have only one purpose, and that is to comply with the will of the people and completely end the war this year.
Although more casualties will be paid for this, some casualties are completely acceptable compared to a comprehensive victory.
In particular, Britain and France both had a large number of colonial armies, and these colonial armies were used as cannon fodder.
The Allied General Headquarters adopted a completely opposite strategy from the previous counterattack, choosing a concentrated and oppressive charge instead of the previous roundabout outflanking.
In fact, itβs normal to think about it. On the borders of Belgium, France and Germany, there are more than 14 million troops from the Allied Powers.
Although these troops are distributed in all directions, they basically occupy the front line. There are very few places where they can break through, and they are extremely easy to be discovered by the enemy's troops in other directions.
Instead of doing this, it is better to take advantage of the absolute advantage of numbers, charge directly in front of the enemy in a cluster, focus on attacking a certain point of the enemy, and then swarm up to destroy the enemy's defensive front.
Although doing so will result in more casualties, what the Allied forces currently lack most is numbers, and what they can least afford is time.
In the span of August, the single-day casualties of the Allied Powers were as high as 78,000, 44,000, 31,000, 51,000, and 37,000, and the single-day death tolls were as high as 22,000, 13,000, and 90,000 respectively.
A total of 221,000 casualties were caused in five days. On average, more than 13,000 people died and 31,000 were injured every day. Such casualty figures far exceeded previous wars and exceeded the casualties during most of last year's two major battles. .
Of course, under the premise of huge casualties, the results achieved by the Allied Powers were also very gratifying.
The first is the casualties caused to Germany. Although the German casualties were far behind this number, the total casualties in five days were as high as nearly 100,000, and the deaths were nearly 30,000.
Although it seems that the battle damage ratio between the two sides is close to 2:1, you must know that most of the Allied Powers used colonial troops. This kind of battle damage ratio actually favors the Allied Powers.
The reason why the Allies were able to use indigenous troops to inflict such casualties was because the three fronts had accumulated a large number of artillery, and the total number of artillery even exceeded 10,000.
Millions of artillery shells were consumed every day on the entire Western Front battlefield, far exceeding the combined artillery shell production of Britain, France, Australia, Italy and the United States.
Fortunately, with the United States as a big supplier, there was no shortage of artillery shells and ammunition on the Western Front battlefield in a short period of time.
After all, the American army's mobilization progress has been very slow. The current total size of the army is just over 200,000 people, and the truly combat-effective army is even less than 100,000 people.
Under such a premise, the Americans definitely want to increase their contribution to the war in other ways, so as not to spend a lot of money and manpower in vain. If it plays a small role in the war, it will not be able to distribute any important benefits after the war.
As time entered mid-August, the contract between Austria-Hungary and the Allies was officially signed. This also means that the country that first provoked World War I finally chose to end with surrender and leave the war after more than two years of torture.
According to incomplete statistics from the Austro-Hungarian government, the war caused more than 3 million casualties to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with more than 800,000 deaths, causing economic losses of more than 20 billion pounds, and directly brought this huge empire to its end. .
Although the contract was signed, the subsequent compensation of up to 15 billion pounds also caused a headache for the entire imperial government.
Until this reparation was repealed or completely repaid, Austria-Hungary could not hold its head high in the eyes of other nations.
15 billion pounds is enough to support Britain's one-year war, or Australasia's one-hundred-year war.
Coupled with the ceded land, various unequal terms, and major factories that are about to be demolished, etc., whether the Austro-Hungarian Empire can maintain its status as a great power after the war is a question.
At least the island countries that were not affected by the war were very covetous of the status of the great powers. There are also traditional countries in Europe such as Spain, Serbia, which ate a lot of meat during this war, and so on.
Especially Serbia, which had a bad relationship with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, also annexed Bosnia, which the Austro-Hungarian Empire had previously occupied.
You know, the Sarajevo incident happened in Bosnia and directly led to the outbreak of World War I.
Now that this land has returned to Serbian rule, I believe that the Austro-Hungarian Empire will not be willing to do so, and I also believe that Serbia, which has a larger land, will not be willing to be just a regional power.
Hungary's demand for independence, the trauma of the civil war, high reparations, and the covetousness of neighboring countries (Italy, Russia, Serbia) were the first things that the Austro-Hungarian Empire had to solve after the war.
In addition, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which abandoned the Germans to seek peace alone, was bound to be abandoned by the Germans. This was a big diplomatic challenge for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had long insisted on its alliance with Germany.
For the postwar Austro-Hungarian Empire, whether to remain a neutral country or to find reliable allies again is also a question worth thinking about.
Todayβs update is about 4,200 words. Iβll take a break and have two more updates tomorrow.
Please vote for me and support me!
