The Russo-Japanese War temporarily frustrated the expansion ambitions of the Russian Tsar in the Far East, and turned his attention to the West. The situation in the entire Balkan Peninsula suddenly became tense again. The Grand Duke Ferdinand, who had already taken power in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, took advantage of the chaos in the Balkan Peninsula and the internal chaos in the Ottoman Empire to make an astonishing move - annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina in one fell swoop. Although this place has been under its rule since 1878, it is still nominally the two provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

At the same time, the Grand Duke of Bulgaria Ferdinand announced his separation from the rule of the Ottoman Empire and established himself as the Bulgarian Tsar.

As the Ottoman Empire gradually declined, more and more countries developed ambitions and began to seize the legacy left by the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans - Thrace, Macedonia and Albania, as well as islands on the Aegean Sea.

The French took advantage of the weakest time of the Ottomans' annexation of Tunisia and Morocco, which triggered a political crisis and almost broke out. German Emperor William II claimed that the Second Empire had huge interests in Morocco and wanted to send fleets to Morocco to expel the French.

Finally, under the mediation of the British, the matter was peacefully resolved and the Germans received some compensation in Central Africa.

The jealous Italians could not sit still and sent troops to Cyrenega. Their fleet landed in Tripoli and Tobrook and seized the last piece of Ottoman territory in North Africa. The Turks had no choice but to organize some guerrillas to resist the Italian occupation.

In 1911, civil unrest occurred in Turkey again. The Third Army controlled by the "Turkish Al-Shabaab" left the Balkans and returned to the capital, quelling the coup in the capital. The Ottoman Empire was in the hands of the three Turkish Al-Shabaab giants. In the end, they signed various treaties with the Italians and agreed to ced the Cyrenega, Ionian Islands and Rhodes to Italy, but the Ottoman Empire retained the nominal "socile sovereignty".

The Bulgarians who had just left the Turkish rule could not sit still. Seeing the decline of this former sect leader, Tsar Ferdinand, who also wanted to grab meat, declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Bulgaria, with a population of only 4 million, stabbed the "sick man from Europe" with 60 million people.

Do you feel a little familiar after watching this scene? This kind of thing just happened once in the Far East.

Seeing the Bulgarians take action, the small countries on the Balkans that had just left the Turks also wanted to share the bowl of broth. Immediately, Serbia, Romania and Greece declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Under the attack of the Balkan coalition, the Turkish army, which had the upper hand, retreated one after another, and Macedonia, Albania and Thrace were successively occupied by the Balkan coalition. The Turks had to seek peace, but the Bulgarian Tsar refused to give in and claimed to regain Constantinople, the former direct territory of the Orthodox Patriarch, and its status in the minds of Orthodox people was just like the Vatican where the Catholic Pope was located.

In the end, the Turks barely resisted the attack of the Balkan coalition with their strong defense line, and the two sides finally spoke. The Ottomans barely saved the last bit of European territory, and the First Balkan War ended. The Bulgarians took the most advantage because they took action first and took the most advantage. The entire Thrace and half of Macedonia were included in it.

Serbians and Greeks looked at each other and said, "Brother, I have taken so much, can I share some of it?"

But the Bulgarians never let go and were willing to spit out the flesh in their mouths.

As a result, the Balkan brothers who were fighting together a year ago started another internal strife. Greece, Serbia and Romania joined forces to beat up the Bulgarians who took advantage of the situation, and scolded them while beating: I told you to eat, I will not be able to kill you!

In 1913, the Second Balkan War broke out.

As a result, the Bulgarians could only cry and beg for mercy. Not only did they vomit all the territory they had just seized from the Ottomans, but they also cut another piece of meat from their bodies.

The Bulgarians were so angry that they vomited blood. They licked the wound and looked at the evil neighbors around them with a wolf-like gaze. Now the grudges are getting bigger.

Is the Balkan war related to the European war?

There was nothing to do with it, it was just that the British were making excuses for the outbreak of the war.

In 1911, the British started construction of ten main battleships in one go, and were already preparing for the war. However, the Germans were unaware of it and were still slowly building new main battleships at the speed of four ships a year. In the strategy of Tirpitz and Emperor William, they did not want to fight a war with the British, but they did not know that the British had already sharpened their knives.

The comparison between the main naval battleships of Britain and Germany opened up the gap.

If William II and Tirpitz were able to realize this, it would be impossible to lose to the British in the battleship construction competition with the Second German Empire twice the industrial output and three times the steel output of the British.

Unfortunately, they didn't notice it.

Lee Haydn looked at all this pessimistically. The British had decided to launch a "preventive war" to kill the German nation before it completely rose and then dismember it. The Treaty of Versailles was a plan that had been formulated before the war began, dismembering the Second Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and completely stifling the German hope for the rise of the Germans. All mining and oil-producing areas were stripped from the German land, so the German countries lacking resources could only become a second-rate country on a continent, equivalent to France, and restraining each other, but there was no hope to challenge the British Empire.

In fact, there is no winner in this war. The real winner is the American country that shouts "glorious isolation" all day long, but is eyeing the entire Europe and the world.

"Who can know the final result..." The coffee on the table was cold. Lee Haydn leaned his back on the soft high-back chair and stretched his waist. He had done everything he could, but it had nothing to do with the overall situation. He couldn't help but feel an inexplicable loneliness, "Maybe this is the tragic fate that the Germans are bound to be unavoidable..."

His eyes were turned out to the window, and the large Istria shipyard in the bay at the foot of the mountain was fully visible. There were now 10 surface ships of all sizes and construction, and 5 submarines were being built or outfitted in the closed workshop. Further away, in the anchorage of the military port, some battleship masts could be vaguely seen. These made him regain his confidence, drank the cold coffee on the table, and his eyes turned to the half-written reply on the table.

“About the establishment of the Dalmatia garrison division…”

A week ago, his adjutant, Colonel Miller, was promoted to the command of the Dalmatia garrison division. Lee Haydn took the command of the division into his own hands in the name of the coastal garrison mission. Brigadier General Miller was preparing to add this strata into a full-packed infantry division. Lee Haydn was preparing to write him a long letter, carefully describing the equipment required by the standard 33 infantry division in later generations.

Lee Haydn is preparing to equip each infantry squad with a light machine gun, and each infantry company will add a fire support platoon equipped with three 60mm mortars and three heavy machine guns.

He did not believe that a army with few people, but armed to the teeth, and a well-trained army would lose to those Russian peasants who were not even equipped with rifles.

This is a war in the industrial age, and it is no longer an era when cavalry and spearmen cut off each other in the Middle Ages. The gap in equipment cannot be made up by the advantage of numbers.
Chapter completed!