Chapter 352: Unwavering Spirit of Resistance
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.