Rise of Australia

Chapter 414 The Great Siege Plan

Minister Daze and Minister Gray quickly reached a verbal agreement, and the British Empire exchanged Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait for the Mesopotamian plains occupied by Australasia.

Moreover, the two foreign ministers also happily reached an agreement that they will 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, and Australasia will be firmly tied to the chariot of the British Empire.

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

Among the three major allies of the Allied Powers, Australasia had the best relationship with Britain and Russia. Naturally, it was impossible for Arthur to support France's expansion on the European continent at the risk of offending Britain.

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

And the domestic situation in Russia is not very clear, not to mention a large amount of external expansion, it is already good to be able to stabilize the domestic situation with war reparations, and the help to Australasia is not specified too much.

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

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

A good relationship with the British Empire will also allow Australasia to gain more in the distribution of benefits after the war. Although it will offend France, who cares?
After the war, France, which has been consumed a lot after the war, urgently needs to recover blood through colonies, instead of conflicting with Britain and Australasia, which have not consumed much.

After France regained its stability, the strength of Australasia no longer had to fear France, not to mention the support of the United Kingdom.

After the unification of Britain and Australasia was achieved, the peace talks in Constantinople became very smooth.

On August 8, the Allies and the Ottoman Empire reached an agreement on land cession.

The Ottoman Empire ceded tens of thousands of square kilometers of land in the Caucasus to Russia, the coast of the Rashid Emir to Australasia, the Mesopotamia Plain, the Yemen area to the British Empire, and all European regions to the Balkan countries, only retaining the land within ten kilometers of Constantinople.

Yes, Constantinople eventually returned to the Ottoman Empire, at the cost of losing a lot of land.

Although it seems that the Ottoman Empire still has Turkey, Syria, Israel and other regions in later generations, this region is surrounded by Britain, Russia and Australasia, plus the indigenous forces in the Arab region, it is not as peaceful as imagined.

Moreover, the time when the Allied Powers handed over Constantinople was after the war, which also means that before the surrender of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Constantinople was still jointly managed by the Allied Powers.

Compared with the large amount of land ceded, the Ottoman Empire's reparation demanded by the Allied Powers is pitifully small.

According to the final agreement between the Allied Powers and the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Empire had to pay a total of 15 million pounds in compensation to the Allied Powers within 1.5 years, and an additional 300 million pounds a year overdue.

As the main contributor to the war against the Ottomans, Australasia can get a quarter of the 1.5 million pounds in reparations, which is 3750 million pounds.

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

Only relying on regions such as Turkey and Syria, the Ottoman Empire can pay 15 million pounds in compensation within 1.5 years. After all, the size of the country can only allow the Ottoman Empire to pay so much.

However, the major powers have achieved considerable expansion on the land, so they don't care about the indemnity that is a drop in the bucket for the war.

So did Arthur.The land acquired by Australasia has been able to connect from Qatar to Kuwait.

A large piece of land is rich in oil and natural gas, and their value is many times that of 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 humiliating treaties, such as recognizing the occupation of the Ottoman Empire by the British Empire and Italy before the war, including areas such as Cyprus and Zoseka Nissos.

At the same time, the troops of the Allied Powers had the right to move freely within the Ottoman Empire. Before the end of the war, the troops of the Allied Powers could freely enter and exit the Ottoman territory, and the Ottoman government was not allowed to obstruct or interfere in any way.

In areas such as Syria and Israel, the Entente has 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 mining 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 was inevitable for the Ottoman Empire to become an ordinary country. Its land area and population size were not enough to support it to become a regional power.

In terms of the Allied Powers, the signing of the Constantinople Peace Treaty boosted the morale of the Allied Powers, and the media from all over the world rushed to report on it.

After the surrender of the Ottoman Empire, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire remained rich and stubborn in the Allied Powers. People in the Allied Powers seemed to have seen the coming of victory.

It is worth mentioning that because of the accession of Australasia, the demand for imported resources from the Allies is not so high.

The island countries and the United States have never been able to find a good opportunity to join the Allies.The United States has repeatedly sold military equipment to the Allies, but the Allies refused on the grounds that there is no shortage of supplies.

This resulted in little American trade with Europe during the war, except for some supplies that were also scarce in Australasia.

Of course, the war has developed to the present, Britain, France and Russia have borrowed a lot from the United States, and this is the only thing that the United States has participated in the European war.

After the peace treaty of Constantinople was reached, the Allied Powers turned their eyes back to the battlefield on the Eastern Front.

At present, the German army on the western front has entered a state of persistence, and there is no good way to quickly defeat Germany.

All the hopes of the Allied Powers were also concentrated on the Eastern Front. If the Eastern Front could defeat the Germans again, the decimated Germany would no longer be the opponent of the Allied Powers, and there would be hope for a quick resolution to the war.

In fact, it is not just the Allied Powers who are paying attention to the Eastern Front, but the Allies are paying more attention to the Eastern Front.

As early as after the defeat of Bulgaria, Germany knew that it had reached the time of all-or-nothing.The defeat of the Ottoman Empire was actually inevitable. When the Ottoman Empire was facing a siege, Germany also launched an offensive on the Eastern Front.

According to the plan, the German army and the Austro-Hungarian army implemented a strategic encirclement of the Russian Eastern Front Army.

The plan for the encirclement can be broken down into two parts, with German forces in East Prussia moving east and then south around Poland.

The German and Austrian allied 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 encirclement plan can be implemented smoothly, at least millions of Russian troops will be surrounded by the joint forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

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

It is even completely possible to rely on Russia's heavy losses to strike Russia hard and force Russia to withdraw from this war.

As long as the Russians withdrew from the war and the pressure on the Eastern Front was relieved, the German and Austrian troops would be able to move south and force the Balkans to fall to the Allies.

The German-Austrian Allied Forces plus the Balkans fought against Britain, France, Italy and Australia, and the war was still fought.

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 easily resolved.

Without the containment of the Russian army on the eastern front, the Anglo-French-Australian and German-Austrian forces on the western front were only evenly matched.

Under the single-front war, if the transportation route with the United States can be opened, Germany will not be afraid of the Allied Powers at all.

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

It is summer in the northern hemisphere at this time, and this is also a good opportunity to attack Russia.If you wait until the ice and snow in winter, no matter how powerful the army is, it is very likely that it will fall into the sand in Russia.

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

If the battle cannot be ended before winter, the Eastern Front will be difficult.

The German-Austrian army 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 retreat slowly to the rear.

However, the Russians responded very quickly. The commander of the Southwest Front temporarily mobilized the right-wing troops to form a new Ninth Army and expedited reinforcements to the Eighth Army.

But at this time, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were fighting hard. Coupled with the superiority in the number of soldiers, the Russian Eighth and Ninth Army still could not stop the offensive of the German-Austrian Allied Forces and could only slowly retreat towards the rear.

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

However, the combat effectiveness of the Russian army is very different from that of the German and Austrian allied forces. The casualties of the three Russian armies soared, and even at the peak, the casualties in one day were as high as more than 3.

Although the Russian army successfully prevented the strategy of the German and Austrian coalition forces to encircle the Russian army in Galicia, the Russian army also paid staggering casualties for this.

According to rough statistics from the Russian front, the combined casualties of the Eighth, Ninth and No.11 armies exceeded 30, and the death toll exceeded at least 10.

This also means that the three group armies with a total number of less than 100 million people have suffered nearly half of the casualties at this time, which can be described as heavy losses.

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(End of this chapter)