1890 King of Southeast Asia

"Italians can do anything. The only car companies that can compete with us without using tariffs are Italian companies."

"Italians do well in medicine, textiles, or art."

"Although the demand for weapons in peacetime is not great, Italy's military technology is also good."

"From rifles to battleship main guns, Italian products are not inferior to their peers, and even lead their peers in some weapons."

"Like the 40-caliber 381mm main gun equipped by the Italians, although the barrel is shorter than the British products of the same generation, the power is not weak."

"The armor-piercing shells used by the Italians weigh 889 kilograms, while the British armor-piercing shells are only 800 kilograms. The weight of the ammunition makes up for the barrel. Shortness weakens the armor-piercing ability. "

"And the Italians like to use powder cannons, that is, to increase the energy of the propellant and increase the chamber pressure to make the artillery have better performance. "

"The advantage is that the Italians have obtained a faster initial velocity, a longer range, and a stronger destructive power than the British artillery of the same caliber with a shorter barrel. "

"Because of the use of powder cannons, the life of Italian artillery is almost half that of British products, but the barrel is shorter, the difficulty of processing drops sharply, and the cost is much lower. "

"But don't think that the Italians are good at everything, but they are not good at launching wars abroad. "

Liu Yiming and Xu Hui drank tea leisurely. Since the war began, they haven't been so idle for a long time.

In the past, if they had free time, they would definitely receive applications from the Allies or the Allies, hoping to meet and talk about the survival of the Chinese Empire.

It just so happens that these are all formal diplomatic envoys. As long as they don't tear their faces apart, they must go through the motions.

"I read Jiang Wang's assessment of Italy's military strength. The Italian Royal Army has expanded to 1.7 million people, and there is a trend of further expansion."

"In addition, Italy's joining the Allies means that the Mediterranean is completely controlled by the Allies. Now the only channel for the Allies to join the coalition forces is the Ottoman Empire."

"We have to be on guard!"

Xu Hui is not so optimistic.

Even if Italy went to war with the Ottoman Turks, if the Chinese had not intervened, Italy might have been defeated. Xu Hui did not think that Italy's participation in the war would have no impact.

Italy is to the west of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the two sides are separated by the Alps. However, the Alps are not high, and the mountainous areas in the northwest of Italy are also bordering the southwest of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is not all high mountains.

One million and seven hundred thousand people, even if they are all the combat effectiveness of the old Ottoman Turkish army, will also play an important role in the direction of the war.

Xu Hui felt that in order to stop so many people on the long border, the Austro-Hungarian Empire would probably not be able to do without 400,000 or 500,000 troops, right?

One third is already very little. After all, it is not a simple positional war. The Austro-Hungarian Empire has a long border line to defend.

As for the attack? Offense is indeed the best means of defense. If the Austro-Hungarian Empire can organize an attack, enter the Italian territory, and then build fortifications, it will control the initiative of the war.

But! The Russian Empire is launching an autumn offensive, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire are exhausted and have no extra troops to fight back.

This is exactly what Xu Hui is worried about. The Austro-Hungarian Empire is now attacked from all sides, and the main force must be the army of the Russian Empire. Can it hold on?

Will the Ottoman Empire take the initiative to launch an attack in the Arab direction? In order to seize the strategic initiative.

Now the Ottomans have deployed two army groups on the southern front. Even if the northern front is fighting fiercely and farmers are recruited to join the army, they have not used the two army groups on the southern front.

Does this mean that the Ottoman Empire has regarded the Huaxia Empire as an enemy and is on guard? Is it even ready for war?

After all, the Huaxia Empire was indeed ready to join the Allied Powers, and the conditions had been negotiated. They just wanted to delay and consume Britain and France.

Anyway, Italy's "sudden" entry into the war caught many countries off guard, and Huaxia was just one of them.

"Don't worry, it's not us who should be worried, it's Britain and France." Liu Yiming looked like he was waiting to see the show.

"By the way, the high-profile war preparations have all stopped, but privately we are still preparing according to the original plan."

"In contact with Britain and France, release the hesitation. If the British ask, just say that we may not be needed in this war. They probably won't ask."

Liu Yiming suddenly wanted to praise Italy. If King Emmanuel III of Italy was here, Liu Yiming might give him a big hug.

This is a good opportunity to raise the price!

The Americans joined the war without getting any preferential conditions, not because they love peace, but because they threatened the Allies with a bad performance, and the monopoly capital of the United States was afraid that their loans would go down the drain.

But China is different. If Britain and France lose the war, the currency cannot be exchanged? The loan cannot be paid back?

It doesn't matter, we can take it ourselves.

Persia, India, East India, French Indochina, Australia, are all excellent high-quality assets.

However, Liu Yiming does not think there is such an opportunity. They are all high-quality assets. With these assets, it will be difficult for Britain and France to lose the war.

The British can also drag the Germans to death by selling assets, just like what Britain did in World War II.

The victory of World War II is not directly related to the Americans.

…………

Austria-Hungary did not expect Italy to join the war, and in fact, most countries in the world did not expect it.

Because Italy has been wavering for too long since the war began.

The Italians negotiated with the Allies and Austria-Hungary, while telling the Germans that they had no intention of joining the war.

And repeatedly emphasized that the Three Emperors' Alliance was a defensive treaty and had no effect in this war initiated by Austria-Hungary, and it was just for Italy not to participate in the war.

Because of the various confusing behaviors of the Italians and the crazy attack of the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire gradually withdrew its main military forces here.

On the third day of the declaration of war, a battalion of one thousand people from one army of the Italian advance force crossed the Alps and launched an attack on the Tyrol state of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The dispatch of an army in three days indirectly proved that the Italians were well prepared.

The organization of the Italians in World War I was very peculiar. The army group was composed of armies of varying numbers. One army was composed of two infantry divisions, one division had two brigades, and one brigade had two regiments.

Everything is normal here. A division with two brigades and four regiments was also a common organization in Europe before the war.

But below the regiment, there are three battalions under one regiment,

a platoon has 50 people, a company has 250 people, a battalion has 1,000 people, a regiment has 3,000 people, a brigade has 6,000 people, a division has 12,000 people, and an army has 24,000 people.

Doesn't it feel wrong? It is obviously a large-scale grassroots organization, but when it comes to a division, there are only 12,000 people, which is much less than other countries.

Why?

Because Italy was not prepared, or was not prepared for the world war.

Except for the strange regiment organization of Britain, other countries are almost the same as Italy, with a full strength of about 3,000 people.

But the grassroots infantry organization of other countries is much smaller. Apart from other things, the standard infantry organization at this time has only 201 people in a company.

(As the war changed, the number of troops at the beginning of the war was 265, which was more than the Italians.)

The extra people were generally technical soldiers. The Italians just made up the number of people, but there was a severe shortage of artillery, engineers, machine gunners, mortar gunners, etc.

Correspondingly, Italy lacked sufficient artillery, especially assault artillery that could cause damage to bunkers and trenches.

In addition, there was a lack of machine guns and engineering facilities. Before the war, only four Italian divisions were equipped with machine guns. These machine guns were imported from the South China Empire when Italy and the Ottoman Empire went to war.

The engineering facilities were even more outrageous. The Italians did not pay much attention to engineers, so that after more than a year of World War I, the Italian engineers were not equipped with engineer pliers and had to use gardening shears to make up the numbers temporarily - this was used to cut through barbed wire.

Not only that, the Italians also lacked experienced non-commissioned officers and officers, so they had to increase the grassroots organization to reduce the consumption of non-commissioned officers and officers.

But the Italians did not realize this. They made a simple comparison:

The Austro-Hungarian Tyrol, which borders Italy, has only four local second-line regiments because its garrison was withdrawn, with a total of less than 10,000 people and no artillery.

The Tyrol only has local troops. These local garrisons are not equipped with artillery for historical reasons, but they have machine guns.

The first and second armies of Italy, which were dispatched in the first batch, totaled more than 300,000 people and thousands of artillery pieces (the number of new artillery pieces was insufficient, and most of them were old ones.).

Even if the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a geographical advantage in the Tyrol direction, the Italians did not think they would lose. After all, this was a 1:30 military advantage and a 0:1000 artillery advantage. Rommel would not have thought he could win.

In the direction of the Isonzo River front, the Italians also had an absolute military advantage. More than 200,000 Italians and more heavy artillery faced 25,000 Austro-Hungarians, with a total of 49 artillery pieces.

This includes the number of 37mm anti-tank guns.

Most of these 25,000 Austro-Hungarian defenders were defeated on the Eastern Front, unable to receive adequate reinforcements, and were sent to the Western Front to slowly rest.

It can be said that Italy had the best timing and the advantage was mine.

However, since Italy had no experience in large-scale troop transport, even transportation through its own domestic railway lines was chaotic.

In addition, Italy was not fully prepared for the war and did not have sufficient ammunition. Many times, the army was unable to launch an attack and could only watch time pass.

In the direction of Tyrol, the commanders of the two army groups came together and squeezed for a long time before squeezing out enough supplies to support an army, and then quickly sent an army to attack.