Chapter 146: The Initiative Changes Hands

On July 7, Feng Chengqian was summoned back to Berlin to attend a high-level military conference personally convened by the German Emperor.

During this conference, Feng Chengqian unreservedly supported Ludendorff's proposed operational plan. The plan involved launching two successive large-scale offensives on the Western Front: first striking the demoralized British Expeditionary Force in the Flanders region of Belgium, and then concentrating all available forces along the entire front from Verdun to the Somme to attack the French army, with the goal of breaching the strategic defense lines of the French before the end of the year.

However, Feng Chengqian also raised three crucial points.

First, the British Expeditionary Force was not easy to defeat; on the contrary, it was a formidable adversary, especially the troops from the dominions, who would undoubtedly cause considerable trouble for the German army. Therefore, the overall objectives of the campaign should not be set too high. Instead, they should be based on realistic conditions, primarily focusing on inflicting casualties on the enemy's living forces and shattering their morale.

Second, France was not yet at the end of its rope. Even if the strategic defense lines of the French army were breached, it should not be taken for granted that Paris could be captured. Indeed, even if Paris fell, France might not necessarily surrender; thus, vigilance must not be relaxed prematurely.

Finally, and most critically, the inclination of the United States was becoming increasingly evident.

According to Feng Chengqian's analysis, Britain and France would certainly seize this final opportunity in the coming months to vigorously court the United States. The simplest and most effective method for them to achieve this was to make the United States the largest buyer of this war, ensuring that the US could not bear the consequences of a British and French defeat. To put it bluntly, Britain and France would desperately secure loans from the United States, and American interest groups would unreservedly support the Allies because only the massive wartime demands of Britain and France could provide a sufficiently large market for the rapid expansion of American enterprises while allowing American banks to reap enormous profits. Conversely, the wartime demands of the German Empire offered few benefits to the United States. This would lead to a very direct consequence: once Britain and France became the largest debtor nations to the United States, Washington would under no circumstances allow them to lose the war.

The issues raised by Feng Chengqian became the primary topics of discussion during this military conference.

Specifically: Would the United States enter the war, and if so, when?

On this matter, no one was certain.

Let alone the Emperor, Tirpitz, Falkenhayn, and Ludendorff, even Feng Chengqian could not predict which direction the United States would take, nor could he guarantee that America would remain neutral until the end of the conflict.

Consequently, everyone was forced to prepare for the worst-case scenario.

If the United States were to enter the war on the side of the Entente, how should the Empire wage this conflict, and by what means could ultimate victory still be secured?

The discussion ultimately led to only one conclusion: defeat France as quickly as possible and bring the war in continental Europe to a close.

Put plainly, if France had not been defeated by the time the United States entered the war, the internal security of the Empire could no longer be guaranteed. To mention nothing else, the national strength and manpower of the United States surpassed the combined totals of Britain and France; once millions of American soldiers arrived, the Empire would face an infinitely more arduous struggle.

The dilemma, however, was that the more precarious France's situation became, the more resolute the United States would be in its march toward intervention.

In other words, the more fiercely the German army attacked, the more likely the United States was to enter the war.

Without a doubt, this was a massive gamble.

If the German army could defeat France before the United States intervened—or even after American entry, provided Washington's forces had not yet exerted their full potential—then the German Empire could at least ensure it would not become the ultimate loser. If France was not defeated before that critical juncture, the Empire would very likely face total defeat.

One might say this was the greatest gamble the Empire had undertaken since its founding.

More importantly, the Empire had no way to extricate itself and virtually no room left for choice.

If the war were dragged out, the United States would still enter the conflict when necessary. Furthermore, as Britain and France recovered their vitality under American support, even if the US stayed out, the Empire's chances of winning were slim.

The Empire had only one path left to walk: to defeat France as swiftly as possible.

In fact, this was the primary reason why Ludendorff's proposal won the support of the majority, as everyone knew that only by defeating France could ultimate victory be attained.

Yet, relying solely on military means was clearly insufficient to achieve the objective.

While the military conference was underway, the Empire also launched active diplomatic initiatives, and the only nation worth the effort of courting was Italy.

However, this time the Empire adopted a combination of carrot and stick.

While wooing Italy, the Imperial special envoy made it unmistakably clear that if Italy still refused to clarify its stance on entering the war, the Empire would be forced to stabilize the Southern European front first. At the very least, it would dispatch an army corps of over half a million men to the Austro-Hungarian Empire to assist in controlling the Balkan Peninsula and eliminating potential threats. To state it more bluntly, the Empire would be compelled to deploy heavy forces facing the direction of Italy. Of course, this was also a subtle warning to Italy that if it were not an ally, it might very well become an enemy.

For Italy, this was hardly good news.

Although the Great War had been raging for nearly two years and Italy had moderately expanded its military forces, the German army had already been tempered by the most rigorous fires of battle, and its combat effectiveness was plain for all to see. Both Italian military officers and politicians were well aware that Italy was by no means a match for the German Empire.

Furthermore, Russia had already been defeated, and France's days were numbered.

Although the Imperial envoy had explicitly stated that as long as Italy maintained strict neutrality, its security would be guaranteed, Italy could forget about reaping any benefits. For instance, disputed territories with France would certainly not be awarded to Italy after the war simply because it stayed neutral.

In other words, if Italy wanted to gain any spoils, it had to board this last train.

On July 10, the Italian authorities sent a diplomatic note to the Empire, making major concessions regarding its entry into the war: it would no longer demand that Austria-Hungary cede its interests in the Balkan Peninsula, asking only to share control of regions such as Croatia with Austria-Hungary and to have southern French territories assigned to Italy after the war.

Two days later, the Empire gave a far more positive reply.

Having obtained the consent of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Empire largely accepted the conditions set forth by Italy, promising that after the war Italy would govern the entire Mediterranean—excluding the waters east of Crete in the Adriatic Sea—and that all British and French colonies in North Africa, except for the Suez Canal, would be transferred to Italy.

On July 15, Italy formally concluded a treaty of alliance with the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Romania, and Bulgaria. The following day, Italy officially declared war on France and Britain as a member of the Axis powers and initiated a general mobilization for war.

At this time, the Empire's military conference had not yet concluded.

Italy's entry into the war as an Axis power was undoubtedly a major boon. Although it soon became evident through the cruel crucible of war that the Italian army was little more than a rabble, completely out of the same league as the major belligerents, Italy was nonetheless a nation with tens of millions of people and millions of troops, ranking among the notable powers of the European continent. Its contribution would certainly be no less than that of Romania or Bulgaria.

More importantly, Italy's participation directly tied down nearly a million French troops.

Now, it was France, not the German Empire, that faced a war on two fronts.

For a tottering France, Italy's entry into the war was tantamount to the final straw crushing the camel's back.

However, over the ensuing half-year, the significance of Italy's participation manifested primarily in the political sphere, making very few substantive contributions on the battlefield.

During the first two months, France still held Italy in high regard. To cope with the threat, the French army even transferred a roughly fifty-kilometer stretch of the front line to the British Expeditionary Force, withdrawing a million troops to reinforce its southern defense line. Yet by mid-September, after engaging the Italian forces in battle just once, France's respect for them plummeted. By the end of 1916, the number of French troops deployed in the southern region had been reduced to half a million.

Of course, Italy's military contribution could not be entirely denied.

For instance, precisely because the French army shortened its front line and increased the burden on the British Expeditionary Force, the German army was able to severely maul the BEF during the "Flanders Campaign" launched in August, wiping out over 600,000 British soldiers in a single stroke and scoring the greatest victory against the BEF since the outbreak of the war. Had France not reinforced the southern front, it would not have shortened its lines, the burden on the British would not have increased, and the British army would not have suffered such a catastrophic defeat.

The problem, however, was that Italy's importance clearly paled in comparison to that of the United States.

In early August, Ludendorff launched the "Flanders Campaign," throwing in 180 divisions in a single breath and unleashing a full-scale offensive against the British Expeditionary Force along a 140-kilometer front.

Ten days later, in mid-August, the British Expeditionary Force had already lost three lines of defense, and four armies had been annihilated.

Although the German army also paid a heavy price, with nearly forty divisions battered to exhaustion, the strategic situation became vastly more favorable to Germany, and the British Expeditionary Force was on the verge of being driven out of Belgium.

Strategically speaking, if Britain and France lost Belgium, France would be left with zero hope.

It must be understood that it was the British Expeditionary Force holding the Flanders region that prevented the German army from spreading out laterally, thereby shielding the flank of the French army from direct threat. Although Ludendorff had already captured the Verdun region and posed a threat to Paris, the French army was still able to concentrate its forces for battle. For the German army, the key to swiftly defeating France did not lie in winning the primary battlefield alone, but in achieving a grand envelopment of France. Consequently, the battles in the Flanders region proved critically decisive, as only by capturing Flanders could this objective be achieved.

Following the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force, the strategic landscape was cast in stone.

At this juncture, for the United States to continue maintaining its silence was evidently an impossibility.

According to documents disclosed after the war, by the end of August, American war loans extended to Britain and France were already three times those granted to the Axis powers. More importantly, the wartime demands of Britain and France sustained 60 percent of America's heavy industrial production capacity; without arms orders from Britain and France, half of all American enterprises would face bankruptcy. To make matters worse, the blockade maintained by the British Royal Navy over the previous two months had severely curtailed the economic ties between the Empire and the United States.

At this stage, American entry into the war had become inevitable.