Iron Cross Fire

On April 29, the allied forces in the Caucasus launched a tentative attack on the Central Asian steppes of Russia.

They soon discovered that there were not many Russians, and there was almost no defense on the long front, which made the armored forces move unhindered.

After Kuster learned about it, his confidence was unstoppable.

He accelerated the deployment, but lacked sufficient preparation. Some troops were asked to attack enemy cities without even having time to reorganize after getting off the car.

If there were no enemy troops stationed in these cities, perhaps they would not be so simple to swagger in.

On the same day, about 12 divisions received orders to attack.

With so many people, it should not be difficult to occupy a large area.

But reality is always the opposite of ideal. As of the next day, the Caucasus did not form a complete encirclement of the remaining Russian troops, and the few hectares of land occupied were still too little for Russia's vast territory.

Moreover, they did not have enough troops. Back then, San Dezi had invested millions of people but could not fill the entire front line. It was really wishful thinking for Kuster's 400,000 people to do such a big job.

The strategy of a quick blitzkrieg against Russia was simply not feasible. The spring mud had just passed, and there were still ruins left on the Russian land that no one cared about. The really poor infrastructure made it difficult to move.

These major economic problems helped Russia a lot during the war, greatly slowing down the advance of the Allied forces, which was more useful than its Russian soldiers.

It seemed that there was still hope for everything in the war.

Unfortunately, the crisis of domestic affairs is often the most urgent, and it comes much faster than those external pressures.

The current situation in Russia is no longer as simple as it was yesterday. The scale of the rebellion has expanded rapidly. Except for Siberia, which is uninhabited, people in almost all regions have risen up to resist the cruel tyranny of the Tsarist autocracy.

Interestingly, the people who led these were relatively scattered, but they soon gradually unified and were uniformly controlled by the bourgeoisie.

But they did not do anything too impulsive, just asking the Tsar to stop conscription and allow them to take over the enterprises supported by the original government.

The Tsar did not want to suffer such a big loss, so he naturally would not agree, but even the royalists persuaded the Tsar to delegate some power to prevent a bigger crisis.

Brusilov, the commander-in-chief of the Western Front, stopped the attack just to force the Tsarist government.

The Tsar was deserted by his friends and relatives, and had to negotiate with the bourgeoisie and signed the agreement in person.

Experts estimate that the Tsar's losses this time should be huge, and the Romanov dynasty will basically not be able to recover after the war, but it is still unknown whether it can survive the war.

Fortunately, after the signing of the agreement, the capitalists quickly stopped, and the remaining rebellions were basically launched by the hungry people, and it would not take long to quell.

But this almost made Russia lose its combat capability, the Tsar's dictatorship was shattered, Russia's centralized autocracy no longer existed, and power was delegated to the bourgeoisie. The entire Russian politics quickly dispersed, and it was completely impossible to quickly solve the problem, let alone mobilize troops in a unified manner.

King George V of England trembled all over and could not speak for a long time after learning about it.

French President Poincaré also looked haggard and could not believe the newspaper in his hand.

In their view, although the era of the evil Tsar executing people at will has ended, the price is the loss of an extremely precious ally.

It is too late to know that Germany did not really launch an attack. Everyone in the British and French political circles must regret and feel deeply regretful for their actions.

In order to make up for this loss, the Allies had to find an ally again.

And this ally is undoubtedly Italy, which betrayed the Allies not long ago and it is almost impossible to have any communication with them.

Although it is not good to find a fence-sitter, the Allies are in trouble at this time, so they can pull in as many people as possible.

It is easy to extend an olive branch, but the problem is how they can pull Italy in.

As a fence-sitter, Italy only does things that harm others and benefit itself. Although its own strength is hard to describe, its ambition is not small.

They claim to be the "true successors of Rome" and believe that they should own the territory of the Roman Empire at its peak.

In addition, the Allies swept the world with the victory of Eastern Europe, and most European countries were deeply affected by it. Bulgaria even participated in the war directly.

Such a bad war situation made everyone worry about the strength of the Allies. Almost no one would side with them. On the contrary, the United States was very happy to sell arms.

However, Italy itself was also threatened by the Allies. The German emperor kept clamoring to take revenge on the fence-sitters, especially after the continuous victories on the Eastern Front, and his imagination became more and more bold, and the output to Zaun in Italy continued to increase.

Thinking of the pressure brought to them by the Germans not long ago, Britain and France trembled, and Italy dared not say a word.

So Britain and France jointly declared that the remaining forces in Europe should unite to resist the dictatorship of the German emperor and break their ambition to conquer Europe.

But in fact, few people agreed. The Scandinavian countries sent a few ambassadors to get familiar with them, but Switzerland ignored it.

Only Italy affirmed this, but because it was afraid of completely angering Germany, it did not express its intentions openly.

Britain and France said that as long as Italy joined the war, they would do their best to support Italy's "Roman Dream".

The British Prime Minister made it clear that after the war, part of its colonies would be allocated to Italy, but he did not specify which part.

The French also said that they would give their North African colonies to Italy after the war, and if Turkey collapsed after the war, they would help Italy conquer the Middle East.

The French government even said that if Italy joined the war, they would directly return Corsica to Italy.

These conditions were obviously attractive to Italy. Even though some people thought it was a blank check, the Italian government secretly agreed and said it would wait for an opportunity to join the war.

Seeing Italy's good attitude, Britain and France, which had suffered from the war, finally showed a glimmer of life.

However, considering that Italy could not even beat an ancient African country, France secretly sent troops to the Alps to support the local Italians.

The Italian government acquiesced to France's actions and soon gave the Allies military passage rights, which was almost the same as directly joining the Allies.

So on May 2, Italy went to war without declaration.

Hundreds of thousands of Italian mountain troops joined the French to attack Tyrol in Austria-Hungary, catching the Allies off guard.

But those Tyroleans have been climbing and rolling in the Alps and are familiar with the mountains. How can they be easy to deal with?

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