Luxembourg is an undefended country, it is too small, and no goddess has been born for many years.**
The mission of the vanguard cavalry regiment sent by the Germans was to occupy the center of Luxembourg's railway system and control the dozen or so locomotives and hundreds of wagons parked at the station. As a result, the commander of the cavalry regiment found that he could occupy the entire Luxembourg.
Since there was no goddess, the Luxembourgers readily surrendered.
While the cavalry regiment was crossing the border, the German government sent an ultimatum to Belgium, asking King Albert of Belgium to allow the German army to pass through his territory. But the Germans obviously did not intend to wait for a reply from the Belgians. The ultimatum had just been issued, and people gathered in
The German troops at the border had already entered Belgium.
Albert asked the British protectorate on the other side of the strait through a transoceanic telegram. The British said that if you still want to retain the throne after the war, you must resist the German invasion. So Albert ordered his army to enter a state of war.
, they began to blow up bridges everywhere, implemented a scorched earth policy, and retreated towards seaport cities where they could receive British naval support.
But there was one place where the British asked Albert not to give up no matter what.
That is the fierce fortress guarding a narrow passage on the Meuse River.
Liege was originally just one of the many fortress cities in Europe, but now it suddenly became the most important of all these fortress cities. As long as Lieutenant Fortress is still in the hands of the Belgians, the right uppercut of the German army will be squeezed in.
It cannot be deployed on the starting position, so if the German army wants to quickly defeat France, it must quickly conquer the Liege Fortress.
But Lieri Fortress is not a target that will be easily captured. The Belgians used the original Lieri town as the core of the fortress and built twelve extremely strong modern fortresses around it, each of which was reinforced with cement.
And an armored turret was built, which contained nine heavy guns.
The Lieutenant Defense Force commanded by General Gerard Raman has 32,000 people, of which 8,000 are hidden in 12 forts, and the other 24,000 are deployed as mobile troops in the town of Lieutenant.
The Belgians firmly believed that even the powerful German army could not easily cross this fortress - Belgium's original intention of building this fortress was to block the Germans until reinforcements from the British protectorate arrived across the sea.
The young King Albert was very confident in the Fortress of Lieri. He had inspected the defense of the fortress many times. He was very satisfied with General Laman's work. Both he and General Laman believed that Lieutenant could hold on for at least a month.
But in this world, unexpected things abound. This time Albert and his subjects encountered them.
On the morning of September 21st, when the Belgians woke up, the German flying battleships had already appeared over the Fortress of Lieri. The Germans dispatched 12 flying battleships, accompanied by more than 200 escorts. This made the year
General Laman, who was already at a high level, was very puzzled. In the mind of this old general, the battle still followed the same rules as in the past: when the strength of the two sides was equal, both sides would try their best to avoid putting the goddess into battle.
, but to use conventional troops to gain an advantage as much as possible, forcing the opponent to first invest Shenji troops to support the conventional troops in combat.
In his opinion, Belgium itself is not very powerful, and it does not have the financial capacity or industrial capacity to replace the new type of armor on a large scale. So on the evening of the 20th, King Albert of Belgium ordered the Royal Belgian Shenki Group to go to the UK for training.
And replace them with new armor. However, it is impossible for the Germans not to worry about the British behind Belgium. It is even more impossible for the French, who are currently at war with Germany, to invest their own Shenji before they invest in Shenji.
The old general didn't know that the introduction of new armor has changed the form of Shenji battles. Spiritual power is no longer the first issue to consider. Commanders on both sides can use the power of Shenji more freely.
In addition, the Germans did not actually intend to put Shenji into ground combat. These girls only provided escort for the air battleship fleet to guard against surprise attacks from the British Shenji.
The main attack on the fortress was launched by flying battleships.
On the morning of September 21st, the first super-heavy bomb slid out of the ammunition rack on the side of the flying battleship.
In the last time and space, regardless of World War I or World War II, the horizontal bombing accuracy of large bombers was embarrassing. This was mainly because the bomb-dropping body itself was moving, and the ammunition was dropped too fast, and there was no possibility of "test drop" and correction.
xing, we can only use carpet bombing with a large fleet of aircraft to make up for the poor hit rate.
However, ground bombing attacks by airborne battleships do not have these problems, especially when the enemy has no air defense capabilities at all.
The 12 German sky battleships hovered upwind of the 12 forts respectively. After dropping a bomb, they fine-tuned their positions according to the impact point. After the third round of bomb drops, a heavy bomb hit the single fortress of Shaodefang in the southeast corner.
, the bomb directly penetrated the armored turret of the fortress and the thick concrete under the turret, plunged into the ammunition magazine, and was then detonated by a delayed fuse.
The Belgians on the ground felt that the entire earth was shaking. The Belgian soldiers closest to the Shao De Fang single fortress could even clearly see the astonishing scene of the huge cannon installed in the fortress being lifted into the air.
Only 7 of the 408 soldiers in the fortress escaped.
Afterwards, the German army conducted several rounds of bomb drops, and the twelve modern fortresses that the Lieni Fortress was proud of were completely reduced to burning ruins.
After the Germans poured the remaining bombs into the fierce town, they retreated and disappeared into the smoke-filled sky.
On September 22, a group of German cavalry appeared southeast of Lieri Fortress.
After the Belgian cavalry repelled the Germans, General Laman ordered all the remaining troops to move closer to the main Belgian force, while he locked himself in the headquarters in the town of Lieri and committed suicide by swallowing a gun.
It was said that the modern fortress could withstand the German offensive for at least a month, but it fell under the attack of new weapons in just two days.
Just when the German advance troops launched their long-prepared right hook, Moltke and his staff were gathering troops on the western border of Germany. Moltke numbered his army group from right wing to left wing and arranged them neatly in Germany.
The German side of the French border.
On the far right wing of the German army was the First Army led by General Alexander von Kluck. This old general was the father of the goddess Alexandra von Kluck.
Old Kluck is 64 years old. He has never worked in the General Staff Headquarters for so many years in the army. He was originally just a child of a civilian family in East Prussia that was not even a Junker noble. However, because he gave birth to a daughter with the blood of a high-ranking goddess,
As an East Prussian, he eventually received the honorific title "Von", which represents the nobility. Then he started as an infantryman in the army and was promoted through meritorious service, without even going to a military academy.
Because of this, he always quarreled with his daughter who graduated from the Berlin Military Academy. Their understanding of infantry tactics was completely different, and their strategic thinking was even more different. Although old Kluck was old, he had no dogma.
I really appreciate the theory of active defense put forward by the Chinese, but I also prefer to choose a war of annihilation with large interspersed encirclements when attacking.
Perhaps because of this, Xiao Maoqi placed Kluck's 300,000-strong army group on the far right. This huge army will gather and send troops westward along the road opened by the advance troops.
, passed through the territory of Belgium and outflanked the French army's flank.
Among all the seven German armies, Kluck's troops have to advance the furthest distance, which means that he must drive his troops to continuously advance, advance, and advance. Even if they encounter the enemy, do not be reluctant to fight. After defeating or driving them away, they will continue.
go ahead.
Old Kluck's left wing was the Second Army led by General Carl von Bülow, while his right wing had nothing, almost an "empty door" to tempt people to take risks - he was the far right end of the entire German front.
But the German General Staff was not worried about this at all. Because when Kluck was attacking, there could not be any French or British troops on his right wing, and when he passed through Belgium, he began to turn south and prepare to outflank Paris.
When the time came, his right wing turned into the sea again.
Karl von Bülow's Second Army needed to advance much closer than Kluck. Their mission was to push towards Paris from the front, and then form an encirclement situation with Kluck's outflanking troops.
The Third Army on Bülow's left was regarded by Moltke as the general reserve for the entire right-wing assault force, ready to enter the battlefield wherever needed.
The Sixth and Seventh Armies on the German left wing were only prepared to launch limited diversionary attacks to prevent the French from reinforcing their left wing, or from abandoning their positions behind the national border and attacking the French Army, which had a better fortress as a defensive support point.
The second line of defense retreated. Of course, the Sixth and Seventh Army also had the task of preventing the French from retaking Alsace and Lorraine when the French army counterattacked.
The tasks of the Fifth and Fourth Army arranged in the middle are basically the same. The commander of the Fifth Army is the Prince of Prussia and the German Crown Prince Wilhelm, and the Fourth Army is commanded by the Crown Prince Marx of the Principality of Bagria.
On the day war was declared, all German troops were unprepared except for the German standing forces concentrated outside the borders of Belgium and Luxembourg.
The commanders of the seven group bureaus only have a core of troops composed of officers, and the soldiers are still on the train or have not even been recruited yet - even for an industrial giant like Germany, it is difficult to assemble and arm a million-strong army.
Very easy thing.
But Moltke felt that he couldn't afford to wait. He believed that the more time the French army was given to prepare, the greater the possibility of Schlieffen's plan failing, so the French must be defeated instantly.
Now that Fortress Fierce has been taken, once Kluck and Billot's troops are assembled, no one can stop them from inserting themselves into Paris, the lifeblood of the French. (To be continued...)