Iron Cross Fire

On January 7, the Austrian army captured Galich, and the door to Russia was opened; every gunshot on the Polish land was ringing the bell for Russia's death.

The Russian army was also surrounded at this moment, and their support would not arrive until half a month later. If the German-Austrian coalition took the opportunity to attack quickly, they would be unable to resist.

But at least, they still had some troops to threaten the Austrian army.

Just like the Russian Fourth Army, although they were surrounded, they still had the ability to attack.

But the Austrians on the opposite side would not give it such an opportunity.

The Austrian army quickly devoured the Russian Third Army not far from it, and then turned its spearhead, cutting off supplies while constantly cutting off the connection between the Russian army.

Soon, the Russian Fourth Army had only 70,000 people left, and its organization was severely damaged; while the Austrian army still had more than 200,000 people, just like nothing happened.

These surrounded Russian troops basically lost their threat, and Kuster also stopped the encirclement and suppression of them, and began to concentrate troops to prepare to overwhelm Russia.

On January 8, after learning of Kuster's victory, Emperor Wilhelm II immediately asked his ministers to prepare an Iron Cross medal for Kuster, and then he held the battle report alone, slapping the table and laughing like a lunatic.

Marshal Hindenburg suggested that he concentrate his troops on the Eastern Front and cooperate with the Allies to drive Russia out of the war; even Germany's current Chief of Staff Falkenhayn believed that attacking Russia would bring greater benefits.

So the Germans quietly transferred part of the Western Front troops to the Eastern Front, preparing to give Russia a fatal blow.

They originally planned to deploy in East Prussia so that they could directly attack the Russian capital of St. Petersburg.

But at Kuster's strong request, they finally chose to occupy the Polish region first.

They joined forces with the Austrian army and drove the Russians away without any effort.

As of January 10, the whole of Poland was controlled by the Allies, which was extremely unfavorable to the Allies-Russia was facing the possibility of withdrawing from the war.

Seeing that Russia was beaten like this, Romania secretly concentrated its troops on the edge of Ukraine.

Italy also began to lean towards Germany, hoping to join the Allies to gain greater benefits.

Bulgaria even declared war on Serbia directly and opened up the Serbia-Bulgaria front.

God seemed to favor the Allies, making them invincible everywhere. But this was not what Britain, France and other countries wanted to see.

Britain began to increase its troops on the Balkan front to allow Serbia to hold out longer.

But this was to no avail. With its superior force, Bulgaria quickly broke through the defense line and captured Zajecar and Nis.

In order to relieve the pressure on Russia, the French army took the initiative to attack, but was quickly repelled by Germany's solid defense line.

Seeing that the support on land could not effectively help Russia, Britain and France became increasingly nervous about the war situation.

At this time, British Admiralty Minister Churchill (later British Prime Minister) made a suggestion: open up the Black Sea waterway to provide continuous blood transfusion for Russia.

This is not an easy task. Although the Allies firmly control the sea power of the war, it is difficult to sink all the Turkish fleets and control the Turkish Straits.

But there is no way on land at this moment, and the British high-level officials have to agree to this bold plan.

On January 11, three days before Kuster returned to Vienna, a fleet gradually formed in the Mediterranean. The crews on it came from all over the world and spoke different languages.

The Allies made rapid progress in Russia and soon pushed the front line to the Latvian-Western Ukraine area.

Petersburg is within reach, and the Germans only need to advance a few more steps to completely destroy Russia's glory.

But there were differences within the Allies:

Germany wanted to attack Russia non-stop. But the Austro-Hungarian high-level officials only wanted to control Western Ukraine. They stopped Kuster's movement and began to move part of their troops to the Balkan front.

When Kaiser Wilhelm learned about this, he cursed and felt sorry for Kuster, a very capable general.

Now Kuster has only 400,000 troops, and it is difficult to make any big moves. If they wanted to attack Russia, they could only rely on Germany itself.

But Russia's reinforcements had already arrived. They had about 900,000 people, plus the original Russian army, a total of 1.8 million people.

The German-Austrian coalition forces added up to only 1.2 million people, and it was impossible to launch an attack.

Germany tried to occupy Estonia, and without being counterattacked by the Russian army, it built a defense line there to resist the attack.

The offense and defense have been exchanged, and the initiative has been handed over; next, it depends on how the Russian army fights.

Without the tense confrontation on the Eastern Front, the Allies fought smoothly in the Balkans.

Serbia was hit from behind and wanted to return to help in time, but most of its troops were tied up by Austria-Hungary and could not move at all.

Bulgaria also took the opportunity to speed up the attack and soon occupied all of Serbia's eastern regions.

It is not Serbia's fault for the formation of such a situation. After all, who would have thought that Russia would be defeated so badly, let alone that Bulgaria would join the war so quickly.

Faced with such a severe situation, the Serbian high-level ordered to retreat to Belgrade in an attempt to make a final resistance.

On January 13, Kuster officially resigned as the commander-in-chief of the Eastern Front, but still retained the command of the 19th Army.

As compensation, the Austro-Hungarian high-level allowed him to enter the Imperial Privy Council, and the emperor personally awarded him the first-class Iron Crown Medal.

At the same time, the Imperial Parliament appointed him as the "Imperial Minister of Armaments", enjoying the highest right to armament research and development and production, as well as certain logistical advice.

Although he got a bigger position and reputation, Kuster was still unhappy. He still stared at the military map in his hand and carefully observed the situation.

On the Eastern Front, there was no large-scale fighting.

On the one hand, the German-Austrian coalition was building a defense line; while the Russian army was short of food and clothing.

On the other hand, Germany and Austria were busy restoring the fault in the military alliance; Russia was eager to reorganize its troops.

Both sides were busy with their own affairs and had no energy to launch an offensive.

But the longer the time dragged on, the more advantageous it was for the German-Austrian coalition: because they could dig deeper trenches and build more fortifications.

The rare peace on the Eastern Front, but the Balkans were bustling.

The carefully built defense line of Serbia was destroyed in just four days when it was attacked from both sides.

What was more fatal was that Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria were connected on land, which meant that they had been penetrated.

More Serbian troops were divided and surrounded, and the main force was lost. There was no need to fight this battle. But because of the strong opposition from Britain and France, they still tried to hold on.

Serbia gave up Belgrade and tried to survive in the south.

But the support from the Allies was delayed, which made the Serbian army more desperate.

In the end, Serbia established a government in exile and fled abroad, leaving only the army to fight guerrilla warfare in the mountains.

The Balkan front gained a brief period of peace. In return, it brought infinite glory to the Allies and the darkest moment of the Allies.

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