Expedition to Europe

When Qin Zhiyuan led the Foreign Legion to dig trenches in the Supp River, the leaders of the Allied Powers were meeting non-stop in Paris.

The first meeting lasted four days, and the focus of the conflict was on the front that Britain and France needed to be responsible for. Pétain asked the British not to concentrate their troops in Flanders, which is now a swamp, and the Germans could not launch an attack from Flanders. Pétain believed that the British army should extend southward, at least to Noyonva, so that the French army could have 10 more divisions of reserve troops.

The British were dissatisfied with Pétain's proposal. They opposed arranging the Foreign Legion led by Qin Zhiyuan in Reims, because it had now become a sad place for the Germans, and the Germans were unlikely to launch an attack in Reims.

The British believed that the French should place the Foreign Legion at the junction of the British and French positions.

What the British and French said made sense, but they both stood on their own perspectives and had no overall view.

Foch tried to mediate, but it had no effect, because Foch had no jurisdiction over the British army.

The progress of the meeting was spent in quarrels every day. Not only did no resolution come out in four days, but it also triggered more problems.

The trouble came from the Americans.

During this meeting, US President Wilson proposed the "Fourteen Points of Basic Principles" for international relations.

In some articles, Wilson called for the restoration of Belgium's independence, the return of Alsace and Lorraine occupied by the Germans to France, and the return of the territories occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Italy.

These articles sounded good, at least Belgium, France, and Italy all agreed.

But at the same time, Wilson's "Fourteen Points of Basic Principles" also included opinions on national autonomy.

Wilson proposed: all national self-determination, open covenants, and open signing.

As we all know, before the World War, almost all alliances and agreements in the world were born in secret. Except for the parties involved, no one knew whether two countries had signed secret agreements and what the specific articles were.

This would cause misjudgments in some countries to a certain extent. For example, if Italy knew the relationship between the British and Belgium, and also knew the relationship between France and Belgium, Italy would not necessarily choose Germany at the beginning of the war.

In that case, the Germans, who felt alone, would not necessarily start a world war. Perhaps the start of the world war would be greatly delayed.

"Open covenant, open signing" was also recognized by many countries, and only some countries made some bland comments, such as Japan.

The Japanese had reasons to oppose it. During the world war, Japan had seized as many benefits from China as possible through a series of secret agreements, taking advantage of the fact that European powers were busy with the world war and had no time to look east. If these secret agreements were made public, whether the interests of the Japanese could be guaranteed would be a question mark.

After all, compared with the whole world, the 400 million people of the Republic of China were too many, and no one wanted to be squeezed out of the Republic of China market.

Finally, there was "national self-determination", which aroused strong opposition from almost all countries in the world.

The so-called "national self-determination" was an amplified version of the "open door policy" advocated by Americans.

The situation in the United States was similar to that of the Germans. They were obsessed with developing the economy and improving productivity, but when the products produced were enough for their own consumption and they needed to find external markets, they found that the whole world had been divided up and their products had no market.

You know, at this time, the colonial system of the whole world was determined by Britain and France. In order to better control the colonies, Britain and France implemented a single colonial economy. Then all the materials needed by the colonies needed to be allocated by the mother country, which gave the mother country the opportunity to dump its own industrial products.

Wilson's proposal of national self-determination was equivalent to letting the colonial people decide their own destiny, which was absolutely unacceptable to the British and French. They even publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the United States because the US army had arrived in Paris, but had not participated in the war so far, and the Americans did not have enough say.

At least, the United States did not have as much say as Wilson thought.

As a member of the vested interest group, Qin Zhiyuan also expressed a clear opposition to "national self-determination".

The Chinese immigration layout has not yet been completed, and Qin Zhiyuan does not want to support "national self-determination" now.

Moreover, from the French standpoint, Qin Zhiyuan should also be consistent with the French government.

More importantly, Qin Zhiyuan should not let the French be wary of Corsica because of Wilson's boldness.

Wilson was indeed very bold. Before he published the "Fourteen Points", he had hardly communicated with anyone, not even Raymond Poongarais and Lloyd George. This behavior was no different from what Karl I did last year when he left William II aside and negotiated peace with France alone.

Well, these two people are really stupid.

While Paris was arguing, Berlin was also arguing.

The negotiations between the Germans and the Russians had reached the implementation stage. Russia's withdrawal from the world war was irreversible. The only thing to bargain about was the conditions under which the Germans would allow Russia to withdraw from the war.

In mid-February, Ludendorff proposed at the second meeting of the German Imperial Council that not only Estonia, Finland, and Ukraine should be separated from Russia, but Germany should also continue to move eastward and directly overthrow the Bolshevik regime.

William II was even more radical. He proposed that the territory originally belonging to the Romanov dynasty should be divided into four parts: the Russian mainland with some territories cut off, Ukraine, Siberia, and the Southeast Federation.

Perhaps William II wanted to divide Russia so that Russia would not look so big.

But William II probably did not realize that even if Russia was divided into four parts, each part of Russia would still look much larger than Germany.

For the whims of William II and Ludendorff, the newly promoted major general who attended the meeting, perhaps the smartest general in Germany, Max Hoffmann, Foreign Minister Kuhlmann, and Prime Minister Hertling, were not only unable to fight back, but even unable to complain.

In March, the "Brest-Litovsk Peace Agreement" was signed. Trotsky, then the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, did not attend the signing ceremony because this so-called "Peace Agreement" was a humiliation to Russia and would not achieve peace at all.

The agreement stipulated that Russia would give up Courland, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Livonia, Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus.

These places were not ceded directly to Germany, but were ruled by puppet regimes supported by Germany.

According to the provisions of the agreement, Russia lost 55 million people, which is equivalent to one-third of the population of the original Russian Empire, hundreds of thousands of square miles of land, one-third of the railways and farmland, and half of the industry.

At the same time, Russia also agreed to disband the remaining soldiers immediately.

The original text is in the six # 9 @book/bar!

The Russian delegation rejected the agreement. Even if they did not sign, the agreement would be implemented. They refused to sign and did not even look at the text of the contract.

They knew very well that once they signed this agreement, it would mean something to them. There is no need to talk about their political future. If they dared to sign, they would probably face trial after returning.

William II and Ludendorff were indeed too much. They abandoned the excellent traditions handed down from the Bismarck era. If the Russians knew that the Germans were so greedy now, they would fight to the end.

Bismarck once defeated the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 19th century, but Bismarck did not plunder any territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in order not to make the already humiliated Austro-Hungarian Empire more resentful.

At present, it is hard to say who is more beneficial to this contract.

Russia did lose a large area of ​​land, but at the same time, Russia was finally freed from the world war, and they could focus all their energy on eliminating domestic opposition parties and developing their own strength.

For the Germans, those seemingly vast territories could not generate any benefits. Instead, they occupied Germany's already tight funds and manpower because they had to maintain the regime.

For example, in Ukraine, there are 400,000 German soldiers and 250,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers stationed here. They do nothing, but consume 30 trains of supplies every day.

And all the regions together involve a total of 1.5 million German troops.

The Germans finally got the coveted colonies, but they are no longer of any use, because Germany can no longer produce any materials domestically, and they can't even guarantee their own needs, let alone dumping them in the colonies.

A fact that cannot be ignored is that through this war, the above-mentioned regions were finally separated from Russia. It seems that Ukraine and other countries should thank the Germans because it was Germany that forced Russia to give up its direct rule over them.

Because of the losses in the battle last year, the Germans had some difficulties in deploying their forces. Ludendorff originally planned to launch an offensive in mid-March, but it was not until the end of March that the troops were fully deployed.

At the beginning of March, Ludendorff's headquarters was still in Belgium. In mid-March, Ludendorff's headquarters had moved forward to France. At the same time, on March 20, with the deployment of artillery units, the German army changed the telegraph code.

It seems that the Germans have prepared for war, but in fact, the infantry units have not yet moved in place, and Ludendorff has to wait.

On March 25, Haig's intelligence department provided him with the latest intelligence. In this report, the intelligence department wrote: There are many obvious signs that the enemy will attack the front lines of the Third Army and the Fifth Army, with the goal of cutting the Cambrai salient and attracting all our reserve troops.

This intelligence was correct, but because Lloyd George had just replaced Haig's head of intelligence, Haig was unwilling to believe it.

So Haig sent out a reconnaissance plane and concluded that the Germans had no signs of gathering troops in Cambrai and Bapaume.

From the sky, it was indeed impossible to see the Germans moving, because the Germans chose to march at night in order to expose their combat targets.

Just when Haig came to the conclusion, 47 German divisions were gathering in the direction of Cambrai, and it would only take a few days for them to move in place.

Specifically in Reims, there was no sign of large-scale mobilization of the Germans opposite Qin Zhiyuan, which may indicate that Reims was not the direction of the German attack, but no one could be sure.

After all, there were nearly 400,000 Germans opposite Qin Zhiyuan.