African Entrepreneurship Records 2

Chapter 1322 New Meat Grinder - Southern Front Battlefield

The Allies used both carrots and sticks to force Romania to submit. This naturally went against Ferdinand I's wish to remain "neutral" in the end, so it is understandable that Ferdinand I was dissatisfied.

Of course, Ferdinand I had many little thoughts. The reason why he agreed to join the Allies was certainly not just because of the threat from the Allies. In essence, it also showed that he was still optimistic about the future of the Allied camp.

Although the entry of the United States has now made the Allies more powerful, the Central Powers currently have the upper hand in Europe militarily, not to mention that there is still a German country in East Africa overseas that has yet to be resolved.

Crown Prince Rudolf did not care about Ferdinand I's little tricks. He just wanted Romania to obey the arrangements of the Allies, or Germany and Austria.

Crown Prince Rudolf said: "You don't have to worry too much. We don't need Romania to join the Western Front. Your main task is to assist my country, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire in attacking Greece, Albania and other countries in the Balkan Peninsula."

"At the same time, we will organize an expeditionary force of at least 200,000 people to enter the Ottoman Empire to assist our country and the Ottoman Empire in regaining the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea coast and opening up trade routes between the alliance and East Africa."

"The Allied forces in these two directions are not very strong. If we can defeat the Allied forces in these two directions, our chances of winning will be greater."

Although the Allies gained a large amount of Russian territory, it would take time to reorganize local industrial and agricultural production to benefit the Allies, and these new territories could not provide the Allies with strategic materials such as cotton, rubber, and sugar.

Therefore, the Allies knew clearly that only by breaking the Allied naval blockade could the Allies be invincible.

The easiest thing to achieve was to retake the Ottoman Empire's land along the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, so Crown Prince Rudolf, after discussing with Germany's Wilhelm II, decided that the Austro-Hungarian Empire should lead the new war on the Eastern Front.

Lead the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria and Romania to clear the Allied forces on the Balkan Peninsula and the Middle East.

……

Romania's participation in the war and joining the Central Powers was very bad news for the Allies. In addition to adding nearly 600,000 elite troops to the Central Powers, Romania also solved the Central Powers' oil shortage.

Because of the investment of East African countries and other countries in Romania's oil fields, its oil production has exceeded the historical level for the same period. Therefore, relying on Romania's current oil production, there is no problem in ensuring the operation of the Allies' cars and machines. What's more, Russia's Baku oil fields will also be able to supplement the Allies in the future.

Moreover, from trade between East Africa and the Allies before 1918, the Allies themselves had large reserves of gasoline and diesel.

This means that for a long time, the Allies do not need to feel nervous about energy issues. Currently, the energy sources needed by the Allies are nothing more than coal and oil. The Allies have never lacked coal, and several member states of the Allies are coal-producing countries.

In addition to ensuring industrial production and military needs, the most important energy for the Allies is to ensure people's livelihood, especially heating for cities in winter, especially for Germany, which is the main force of the Allies.

Germany is the only high-latitude country among the Allied Powers, and is also the most industrially developed and most populous country. Therefore, Germany's demand for energy far exceeds that of its allies such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

After solving the energy problem, Germany's biggest problem is the food problem. After all, human survival is inseparable from the words "food and clothing", so energy and food are the most basic issues. However, the food problem is also being alleviated after the occupation of the grain-producing areas in Eastern Europe.

In addition to obtaining new channels for obtaining food, trade with East Africa was also an important reason for the normal maintenance of German society. From 1914 to 1918, East Africa exported a large number of agricultural products to the Allies, especially important agricultural products such as wheat, meat, and sugar. This not only maintained the basic livelihood needs of the Allies, but also allowed the Allies to import tropical fruits and vegetables, meat, eggs, milk, desserts and other non-essential materials from East Africa.

A very typical data can illustrate the importance of East African export trade to the Allies. In the past, the Germans estimated that at least 1918 Germans died of hunger or hunger-related diseases in World War I. However, due to the existence of East Africa, before , Germany's basic living supplies could barely be maintained.

Not to mention that the Allies still had the capacity to import non-survival essentials from East Africa. In the past, Germany's food shortage problem was so serious that it threatened the survival of the nobility.

For example, Blücher, a British woman who married a Prussian nobleman in her previous life, wrote in her diary in January 1917: "We are getting thinner every day. The plump figure of the German people has become a legend of the past. We are now skinny and have dark circles around our eyes. Our main thought is about what the next meal will be."

Assuming there had been no trade between East Africa and the Allies, the Allies would have found it difficult to continue to exist as early as early 1917. After all, even the nobles were troubled by food shortages, so one can imagine the living conditions of the common people.

Therefore, reopening trade with East Africa was very important to the Allies, which was also the main reason why Germany supported its allies such as Austria-Hungary to seize the Persian Gulf and Red Sea coast.

To this end, the Allies would rather give up part of their troops supporting the Western Front and first wipe out the Allied forces in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire in order to realize the strategy of reopening trade with East Africa.

This strategy basically relied on the army as the main force. Although the navies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire still had strength, they could not shake the British and French navies that had absolute superiority in the Mediterranean.

If the navy was not weak, the Allies' target would probably not be the Balkans and the Middle East, but the Suez Canal controlled by Britain.

1918 October.

With the Austro-Hungarian Empire as the main force and Bulgaria and Romania as the auxiliary, the Allies assembled nearly 1.2 million troops and officially went to the Balkan Peninsula and the Ottoman Empire to fight.

Read more latest popular novels at 6.9*shuba!

Among them, there were 700,000 troops from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 300,000 from Bulgaria, 200,000 from Romania, plus the Allied troops that had originally fought on the Greek and Albanian fronts, and the Ottoman Empire troops.

From the Balkan Peninsula to the Middle East battlefield, the size of the Allied forces exceeded five million, among which the Ottoman Empire had the largest number of troops, reaching more than two million, followed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire with nearly two million. Bulgaria had about 700,000 troops in the Balkan Peninsula, and finally Romania, which had just joined. Although the number of Romanian troops participating in the war was only 200,000, Romania would gradually increase its troops in the future.

As for the Allied Powers, mainly Britain, France and Greece, the number of troops, together with those recruited from their respective colonies, was about four million.

However, the military composition of the Allied Powers was worrying. Britain had the largest number of troops, with an astonishing number of more than two million in the Middle East. However, nearly 90% of the British troops were Indians, and the French army was mostly composed of blacks and North African whites. This meant that although the British and French armies were large in number, their actual combat effectiveness might not be as reliable as that of Greece, which had less than 700,000 troops.

The increase in troops by the Central Powers and the Entente in the Balkans and the Middle East completely upgraded the so-called "new" Eastern Front to a Southern Front that was no less fierce than the Western and Eastern Fronts in World War I.

The two sides had nearly 10 million troops fighting on a long front from the Balkans to the Middle East. As time went on, Britain and France would certainly continue to recruit troops from colonies such as India, Southeast Asia, North Africa, and West Africa to support the southern battlefield.

It is only a matter of time before the number of troops on both sides on the southern battlefield exceeds 10 million, which will quickly turn the entire southern battlefield into a new meat grinder.

(End of this chapter)