Since the Battle of Limburg, the Austro-Hungarian army has entered a rest period as a whole. It only sent the 2nd Army to harass the Russian flanks at the critical moment when the Germans launched the Battle of Rhodes. Li Haydn made it clear that before the Germans concentrated enough troops on the Eastern Front, the Austro-Hungarian side would never take large military actions alone.

Lee Hayden didn't understand why the Germans launched the Battle of Ypres, which was almost useless to the entire Western front. The result of the attack on Ypres, which was strongly defended by the British, was to fill in the four newly formed German troops and then get nothing.

If these 250,000 people were used on the Eastern Front, Li Haidn felt that it was possible to even drive the Russian army out of Poland, so that the entire Eastern Front would occupy an absolutely favorable position.

Condra came to Li Haidon and reported to him that Falkenhein assured him that he would draw 5 to 6 troops to the Eastern Front within two weeks. "Can we transfer the main force to the scheduled starting point of the battle now?" asked the Chief of Staff.

"Impossible. When there is no definite news that the Germans have concentrated more than four armies in East Prussia and Silesia, all our main army will stay on the second line and continue to rest, and only a few mobile forces will be retained at the forefront." Li Haydn clearly rejected the Chief of Staff's suggestion. The problem with Kant's position is that he trusted the promises of the Germans too much, and easily allowed the Austro-Hungarian army to rush to the front and fight the Russians to the death.

He suffered a great loss during the first phase of the battle because he was too convinced that the Germans would restrain part of the Russian army's forces when formulating the battle plan, but he did not.

This consumed the limited military strength of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in vain.

The problem is that he never thought that the Austro-Hungarian Empire could not defeat Russia independently with its own strength, but was just engaged in a futile war of attrition. According to Li Haydn's estimate, even if Germany and Austria join forces, they will need at least 3 million troops to truly defeat the Russians.

What's the use of Falkenhein actually transferred 6 military regions to the eastern front?

In 1914, it was about to spend the endless dispute between Germany and Austria, and Leheiden had no intention of taking action against Serbia and Greece. Even if he occupied it, it would be nothing more than a futile trapping hundreds of thousands of troops in the Balkans, which would weaken the overall mobility.

Russia is the biggest concern on land.

During the short period of calm winter, the Port of Bola, one of the main military ports of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was even more busy, with ships constantly entering and leaving the waterway. However, compared with the battleships stationed in the anchorage with a drainage of more than 20,000 tons, these ships seemed to be considered "little things".

These ships were the 2nd Destroyer Detachment of the Imperial Navy commanded by Rear Admiral Pachner. After the British and French fleets blocked the Otranto Strait. This small fleet of 8 destroyers, 3 mine-branches and 12 torpedo boats was particularly active. With the high speed of new destroyers of up to 30 knots, they continued to enter and exit the Mediterranean waters, carry out mine-branching, attacking ports and attacking merchant ships.

However, since the war began, the Austro-Hungarian Navy has achieved the record of sinking and injuring more than a dozen British and French ships in the Mediterranean through the mine-branching tactics, but it has suffered no losses.

In addition to the submarine force, the performance of this light fleet is also enough to attract enough attention.

Li Haidn did not have a deep understanding of destroyers. He only knew that in the future, destroyers had become the main force of the navies of various countries. However, because of anti-ship missiles, naval guns had almost become decorations, and now they are still the era of giant ships and cannons.

However, since it was built as a companion ship of the main battleship, the destroyers of the Austro-Hungarian Navy were generally built with a relatively large displacement of about 1,200 tons and a range of 2,500 nautical miles to 3,000 nautical miles. Such a range is enough for it to run back and forth in the Mediterranean.

Due to funding restrictions, the number of destroyers built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy was not large. From 1906 to 1914, a total of 31 were built, which means that each main ship could have about 3 destroyers to escort it. Because the Otranto Strait was blocked, large warships of the Imperial Navy could not enter and exit freely, and the destroyer fleet became the main force of the Imperial Navy's maritime routes harassed Britain and France.

The best record of the Destroyer fleet was the sinking of an old-fashioned former dreadnought in France in a nighttime torpedo attack in Cape Matapan, Greece.

This record made the Imperial Navy realize that this light ship with a displacement of only more than 1,000 tons is enough to pose a fatal threat to large warships. Of course, it refers to the situation of torpedo raids. Due to the development of torpedo technology, the range of torpedoes has reached more than 3,000 yards, which can play a certain threat role even in combat.

The development of naval technology weapons naturally has its own rules and cannot be changed by one person. The role played by Lee Haydn is actually just to make the Imperial Navy do better in some aspects.

No one could make a weapon beyond the times, so he now had to endure the torture of his highly anticipated tank at speeds below 20 kilometers per hour and replacing certain parts every seventy kilometers. A little better are cars, but almost all car tires are still using solid tires. Although pneumatic tires were invented as early as 1905, they were immature. Before the radial tires were invented, their wear speed was enough to make people mad.

Li Haidn didn't know what radial tires were. He only knew how many layers of canvas were inside. The specific problems could only be solved by the engineers themselves.

The source of rubber in the Allies was interrupted. Although there were still some reserves, it could not last long.

Fortunately, the Germans invented the method of synthesizing rubber from coal tar, so that Lee Hayden would not have to worry about his transportation convoy returning to the old era of using steel wires.

War always promotes the rapid development of science and technology. Almost every time humans experience war, they will always be accompanied by a leap of science and technology.

Is the progress of civilization always inseparable from war?

The Turks officially joined the Allies on October 31, 1914. The British detained two battleships purchased by the Turks who saved money and slashed out £4 million, including the famous "one-week turret battleship" "Ajinkut", and were not prepared to refund the shipbuilding costs, which angered the Turks.

Although Turkey's participation in the war expanded the scope of the war zone, it almost did not play any role. The British occupied the lower reaches of the Basra and Euphrates with just one Indian division. In the Caucasus, the mediocre and incompetent Ottoman Army Secretary Enverpasha personally led the 3rd Army of about 150,000 people and began to attack the Russian army.

There were only about 100,000 Russian troops against it, but the result of the battle was that the Russian army won a great victory. Most of the Turkish 3rd Army was wiped out, with more than 90,000 casualties.

Even if the Turks were restrained, they could not do it. The only benefit of their participation in the war was that the Russians were cut off through the Black Sea maritime transportation channel. However, in the early days of the war, the 350,000 troops lost in Galicia had a huge impact on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Until now, Li Haidn has not been able to completely make up for this loss.

However, the Russians were replenishing very quickly. They seemed to have endless manpower. By the end of December 1914, they had already made up for the huge losses they suffered. The total strength of the Southwest Front Army reached 1.47 million, and Grand Duke Nicholas seemed to be unable to hold back.
Chapter completed!