"His Excellency Petliula, if it weren't for your repeated requests from you and your government, we didn't even have to defend that trench position, and we just put the enemy in, and then we encircled and annihilated the other side. It was you who clamored to defend Ukraine's capital and defend Kharkov, and we helped you repair trench defenses on the border north of Kharkov. If your national army does not want to defend, then the door hole will be opened and abandoned. Anyway, it is not Germany's manpower and material resources!"

A German general who was sitting in the conference room who had not spoken could not help but speak. Simon Petrella turned red when she heard this, and turned around and blushed and shouted, "General von Francois, where did you go in the battle of Tannenburg? At that time, the 450,000 troops of the Tsarist Russian army could not let your first army blink.

Although you are leading troops composed of reserve divisions such as the 29th Army, your combat effectiveness will never be worse than those of the former Soviet Red Army and the White Guards of the Volga Federation! As the commander of the 29th Army, why don’t you dare to lead your troops to the front line to fight, but instead hide on the second line defense south of Kharkov to see us suffer?”

The Prime Minister of the Ukrainian ruling cabinet was obviously even more angry with François's performance. As far as he knew, the plan to push the main force of the Ukrainian national army to the front line to defend the trench positions was the plan formulated by this Von François.

The commander of the 29th Army of the German 10th Army in Ukraine, the infantry general Hermann Carl Bruno von François, was born in 1856. He is 11 years older than his new boss, William Grener. At this moment, except for his mighty bearded man, still dark and shiny, his forehead was already covered with gray hair, but his eyes were bright and bright.

Francois's fame battle was in the Tannenburg War on the Eastern Front that began the European War. That battle established the status of the main generals of Germany in the entire European War. A German Eighth Army fought against two Russian armies and wiped out the Russian Second Army within half a month. It was also the most well-trained main army in the entire Tsarist Russian troops.

In the Battle of Tannenburg, in addition to becoming famous in Hindenburg, who served as the commander of the German Eighth Army, Rudendolf, the chief of staff of the Eighth Army, also jumped into the dragon gate. But speaking of the greatest contribution in the entire battle, it should be the First Army commanded by General Von François. This guy commanded the First Army to capture 90,000 Russian troops and eliminated another 70,000, completely erasing the Russian Second Army from its organization.

As Hindenburg was promoted to Berlin as Chief of Staff, and Rudendolf was also promoted to the First Military Chief (Deputy Chief of Staff). Von François served as commander of the Eighth Army for a period of time, but this guy's rebelliousness and arrogance made the relationship between him and Rudendolf very stiff.

François's behavior of disobeying orders in the Battle of Tannenburg but achieving great results was not officially handled, but it caused suspicion between him and Rudendolf. After Hindenburg and Rudendolf were promoted to the position of the Supreme Command of Germany, Rudendolf, especially as the First Military Chief, was responsible for the main practical work.

Since Rudendolf explicitly regarded François as a dangerous person to some extent, François was never granted the highest command of the army level. These obstacles to his career can be seen through a comparison.

General August von Mackenson was similar to François, and in the Battle of Tannenburg, he was of the same level as François, commanding the 17th Reserve Army to fight side by side. However, compared to François's stalemate at the military level, Mackenson was very active in the subsequent wars, becoming the supreme commander of a war zone and promoted to the Field Marshal.

Later, in the Second Battle of Lake Massuri, François won only a dismal victory, and sometimes even was considered a failure. After that, François handed over the proxy command of the Eighth Army and returned to the army-level command of the army.

François received the famous Blue Max Order on 14 May 1915. In this note of honor, he emphasized his outstanding leadership and outstanding military plans, as well as his successful command of the 41st Preparatory Division in the breakthrough of the Battle of Cholistanov in Galicia and his defeat of the Russian army on 2 May 1915, François received a handwritten letter from Emperor William II, congratulating him on his award.

After Germany and Austria signed the Brest Treaty with the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union actually acquiesced to the predecessors of Belarus and Ukraine, von Francois, an outstanding general of the German Army, was still the commander of the 29th Army of the 10th Army of the Occupation Army stationed in Ukraine. The 29th Army was under the jurisdiction of the three reserve corpses. In the sequence of the 10th Army, the equipment and training level were not as good as the 27th Army stationed in Kiev.

Due to von François's personality, his relationship with the former Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn, the highest commander of the German Occupy Force in Ukraine, was also very stalemate. Fortunately, Chief of Staff William Grener was a chief of staff who was good at using talent. After taking over Eichhorn's position, William Grener, the new boss, had a very harmonious relationship with subordinates who were nearly a round older than him.

If François's original intention was to recommend that his commander give up defending Kharkov for the Ukrainians, and let Simon Petliula, who was in front of him, move the capital back to Kiev with his Ukrainian government, so that Kharkov would be nothing more than a border city and could remove this burden at any time.

At that time, a reserve regiment of Francois's 29th Army could drive the 5th Soviet Ukrainian Army from Kharkov. According to von Francois's judgment, the three German-armed divisions of the Ukrainian National Army could withstand at least five infantry divisions of the Soviet Red Army. The 47th Reserved Infantry Division, which was stationed in the southern suburbs of Kharkov, could deal with at least three Soviet infantry divisions. If it were just like this, based on von Francois' temper, he would really be able to take the initiative to cross-border attack and assemble the Volga Federal Army in Belgorod.

However, based on the intelligence collected by reconnaissance and collection, the main force of the more than 40,000 Allied coalition forces gathered in Belgorod was the yellow-skinned Japanese monkey soldiers. Because before the beginning of the European war, military exchanges between Germany and Japan were relatively frequent, and in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese monkey soldiers defeated the arrogant Tsarist Russian Russians, so Von Francois really dared not underestimate the Japanese army in the coalition.
Chapter completed!