Re: Blood and Iron

The French Republic did not take the news of their last major ally withdrawing from the war very well… The British Empire, had agreed to enter the war on the side of the French as a show of strength and solidarity against an increasingly powerful German Reich.

This was the result of past enemies and formal alliances being built by the Germans with powerful states. As well as the Germans securing military agreements and trade with the Empire of Japan at the exclusion of the British Empire.

After a series of disastrous pushes against the front lines of Belgium, and Elsass-Lothringen, as a well as the Battle of Ypres which had resulted in the deaths of a million men in total, by the time disease and rot sank deep into the flesh, the death toll which the British and French had suffered was far greater than in Bruno's past life.

And this was just on the Western Front. With the Empire of Japan being wielded against British and French colonies in the Pacific opening a far larger Pacific theater in this war, and German domination of the seas allowing for routine shipments of weapons and munitions to their colonial possessions.

One might say that the Allied Powers had suffered monumental casualties that were perhaps 2-3x their scale in the previous war. Meanwhile, the Central Powers had suffered a fraction of their overall casualties, especially when you considered they came from the three nations with the highest rates during the previous timeline.

It was a once sided affair as any war of such scale could possibly be. The majority of the world's nations were at war with one another, and one side was clearly winning in dominant fashion.

The Ottoman Empire was dismantled, the Kingdom of Serbia was absorbed, however temporarily, into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria capitulated in a matter of days, and Italy surrendered at the first sign of German aggression.

The British Empire had dissolved its parliament and begun the process of total surrender. All that remained was France… And their army was already destitute, weary and broken. Their will to fight no longer existed, and even the threats of the officers in command had little effect on the soldiers of the French Army.

Many of which chose to get drunk while in the trenches rather than maintain watch over their position. At any point, if Germany really wanted to they could break through critical areas of the front lines with only the slightest resistance, and yet nobody within the French chain of command, save for perhaps De Gaulle, realized how bad the situation they were in.

The leadership of the French Army, and the Republic as a whole had been driven beyond the point of insanity with their incessant need to avenge past losses, and current defeats. The sunk cost fallacy gripped their minds and hearts like a cage of thorns. The slightest deviation from it would puncture them, and no doubt end with a miserable end. Discover more content at My Virtual Library Empire

An apt analogy when one considered the moment the French Army surrender the Republic was doomed to the same fate as its predecessors. The people would riot, and revolt. Such sentiment was barely being curtailed with the French Government's massive attempts to sway the masses via propaganda and false hope.

Every newspaper had become a mouthpiece of the state, who printed some variation of the same headline every day.

"Victory is certain!"

"Germany can only hold on for so long!"

"Ypres was not of strategic importance!"

"Wilhelm won't be in power for long!"

"We are winning!"

While Bruno was laughing with a cup of coffee in his hands while peacefully enjoying his leave in Berlin, along with the rest of the German soldiers who had fought in the Balkans, Caucasus, and Italy. The top French officials were in a heated discussion about how they planned to proceed as a result of the British Empire declaring a state of Armistice with the Central Powers.

One French minister was particularly furious as he violently threw an object from his desk at a wall, while curing the reports in his hands.

"We've been stabbed in the back by our allies! Twice! First, those damned Italian pigs waved the white flag at the first given opportunity and surrendered to the Germans without giving us the slightest warning!

How many of our men died in the Alps to protect their territory, and yet the moment they faltered, they simply laid down their arms and submitted to the enemy! Cowards! All of them!

And the damned British are no better! I should have known they would give up the moment the war became too much for them to handle! It would not be the first time they did such a thing to their allies!"

The other ministers had varied expressions on their faces, some were as enraged as the man currently shouting, while others were pale, as if they felt sick to their stomach while thinking about what was about to happen to all of them. Guillotines would likely make a comeback after the disaster they had led France into.

But these men, with some semblance of common sense, were the minority, as the majority of France's leadership was among the irate, and their solution to their current crisis? Double, triple, and quadruple down!

As a result, it was not long before someone shared that exact sentiment!

"We cannot allow them to get away with this! Blood must be paid for with blood! We will fight until the very end! No matter what! We will not admit defeat even if they march through the streets of Paris itself, and storm Versailles as they did in '71! France will never be defeated a second time!"

Nearly the entire crowd shouted their support, causing those minorities of politicians with dissenting views to silently converse with themselves in the back about their plans to escape the chaos that was to come.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to take my family to our summer estate in Algeria for a much needed, and extended vacation… I hear it has remained relatively unscathed from all of this nonsense, and I do not want my head to roll like the rest of these fools!"

Thus, France had made its bed, and intended to lay in it… What few French politicians, generals, admirals, and ministers that had any semblance of common sense decided to also visit the colonies for an undetermined amount of time.

As for the rest of the nation? They would only submit after they had been thoroughly crushed by the German Army, which was already preparing for its final offensive, one that was designed to end the war once and for all…