Chapter 1,334 The Russians at a Loss What to Do 1
Chapter 1334 The helpless Russians 1
Just as the German Empire's eastern sea, land and air forces were sharpening their knives, preparing to kill the Russian legions in the entire Russian Poland area with one final blow, and perhaps directly take out the Russian Air Force and the Russian Mediterranean Fleet, the Russians were also considering this year How to fight the war.
A bunch of Russian army bosses gathered in St. Petersburg, and then stared at the gloomy and bleak battle situation. Just last year, the Russian army experienced a disastrous defeat that had never been seen in history. It lost nearly 3 million Russian troops. The first The mobilized legion can almost be described as a completely different one. (Note that losses and those killed and captured in battle are not the same concept, and those who have been injured repeatedly can also count their losses twice.) As for equipment, it completely wiped out the wealth that the Russians had saved for more than ten years! Not to mention those expensive artillery and aircraft, there are even serious shortages of three-inch rapid-fire cannons, rifles, and machine guns (Historically, the Russians did not have enough rifles in World War I.)
Compared with the military defeats and losses, the economic blow to Russia after the war broke out was even more fatal! This kind of blow may not be as cruel and bloody as on the battlefield, but it is like the so-called internal force that hurts people. Although it does not look serious on the surface, the internal damage is fatal enough!
Let’s not talk about anything else, let’s just talk about the railway transport capacity in Russia. Judging from the current situation, the overall level of Russian railway transport capacity is less than 80% of the pre-war level. It doesn’t seem to have dropped much, right? Do you think it would be smoother if everyone carried less stuff? Is it really? Obviously nonsense!
Judging from the proportion, it is indeed not much, but don't forget that this is a war period, and a large part of the transportation capacity originally used to maintain the livelihood of the people has been used for military transportation. This is not a slight increase! Just think about how millions of troops, equipment, personnel and supplies are continuously transported from Ukraine, Moscow and St. Petersburg to the front line thousands of miles away, and you can imagine how difficult transportation is!
According to the Russians' own statistics, if military transportation is excluded, Russia's current capacity for civilian transportation is only half of what it was before the war started! what does that mean? To give a vivid example, in winter, St. Petersburg needs to burn coal. If the coal transportation volume from Donetsk to St. Petersburg is reduced by half, it means that at least 80% of households will survive a severe winter due to lack of coal. What? Do you think this ratio is wrong?
You don’t understand this again, don’t forget that private transportation not only meets people’s living needs, but also meets production needs! And production needs are rigid needs! It is absolutely not allowed to be reduced, so the real unlucky people can only be the common people, so the final result is that the living standards of the Russian people are now extremely low, and although domestic production can continue, it has reached the edge of danger. This kind of The decline in production is irreversible, because under such circumstances, it is impossible for the Russian government to allocate enough funds to repair infrastructure, and the so-called expansion of production capacity is obtained by squeezing other non-war fields, and in the end there is a The limit, the limit has been reached, and it is also the moment when the Russians die!
Don’t think that you can only destroy a country’s army;
Or occupying the capital of a country can destroy a country. Long-term consumption is also very fatal for those "puffy" countries with weak national power! The fact that Russia was exhausted in the first battle illustrates this problem, and the fact that the Soviet Union was not exhausted in the second battle also illustrates this problem!
The Russians are not stupid. In fact, they are already aware of this problem. This was mentioned in Kuropatkin's submission to Russian Emperor Nicholas II. "If the war does not take a significant turn this year, we will be unable to stop the Allies' advance on the Eastern Front. They will crush our defenses like a steamroller and then advance deep into Russia. Although Russia is big, it can There is not much room for concession! Not because there is St. Petersburg behind us, but because all our manpower has been exhausted by the war. No matter how fertile the black soil in Ukraine is, it cannot grow food on its own, let alone directly into the bowls of the soldiers. . However, the increase in military production capacity is limited, and the enemy destroys it faster than we can produce it. Even if we are still far away from our core area, we will still fail."
In fact, what Nicholas II didn't know was that Kuropatkin even proposed the idea of peace talks with Germany in the previous draft, but in the end he did not dare to write it out in the official text. However, as a front-line general, He knew that if the Russian Army supported it, it might be possible to survive this year, but it would never survive next year!
Therefore, the current thinking of the Russian military is very clear, that is, first of all, hold the current front, the entire army will enter a defensive state, and no longer attack in the direction of Poland. On the one hand, offensive wars will consume a lot of money, and on the other hand, they will not be able to defeat... ..... Secondly, the goal of launching an offensive in the direction of Romania is not to help Romania recover, but to coordinate the British and French actions in the Dardanelles Strait! They have regarded this battle launched by Britain and France as a life-saving straw! This is also the so-called turning point mentioned by Kuropatkin in his submission!
It can even be said that. The Russians have been waiting all winter to prepare for a big wave in Romania in the spring. However, the sad thing is that by the time the Russians are ready to use their ultimate move, the Germans are already preparing to play a bigger wave! What's even more tragic is that the British and French coalition forces that were originally preparing for spring operations were forced to delay their plans due to the unexpected loss of the Japanese fleet... Therefore, the Russians are very embarrassed right now!
It is not that the Russians have never thought about abandoning Poland, and then leveling the front and conducting better defense in pits. However, this plan was considered a failure after several deductions. The reasons can be attributed to the following points. First, in the Polish area There are 5 Russian armies. How can these 5 armies be evacuated? Don't tell me to just get on the train and leave. Even without the Germans intervening, it would take at least 2 months to remove these troops and equipment from the front line! Well, if the Germans find out in advance and choose to launch a forceful assault, the Russians' retreat may turn into a rout... This is a typical example of how you lose half as long as you take action!
The second problem is that if the defense line is leveled, it will be equivalent to giving up the entire Balkans, not to mention Serbia's life and death. Up to now, the Russians don't care at all. The biggest impact of this on the entire war situation is that Russia cannot cope with Britain and France at all. In the operation in the Dardanelles Strait, after all, you still have a bridgehead going south and can launch a diversionary attack. But if you withdraw, the bridgehead will be gone, so how can you attack?
Here comes the second update~~~! Please subscribe and reward~~~!