Chapter 369: The Autumn Offensive Begins Part III
From the northernmost tip where Belgium and France met, to the most southern end where France aligned with German, a singular push began from all ends. In what could easily be considered the largest military offensive in human history, millions of Germans, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian troops rushed over the wire and to the positions here France had tried their best to invade their enemies’ lands from over the course of the last two years.
This overwhelming volume of infantry larger equipped with Federov Avtomat battle rifles, and mg-34 general purpose machine guns were supported by large-scale artillery operations conducted by 75mm, 105mm, 152mm, 172mm, and 211mm variants which proceeded their attacks.
At critical areas, these infantry charges were shielded by thousands of armored cars, halftracks, and light tanks. With the two combined armed armies pushing though from Luxembourg and Ypres,
The hopes were that these armies would simultaneously strike at Paris from the north and the east and combine together to form a perimeter where they would maintain a siege over the French capital until further reinforcements arrived to seize it, and in doing so hopefully end the war immediately.
Typically, throughout history, a war ended when a belligerent nation’s capital was seized by its enemy. And the reason for this was self-explanatory. If one’s political center was captured and their leaders with it, it was very easy to force them to surrender.
Exceptions to this general rule of thumb in the history of warfare were rare but generally pertained to incidents where a nation’s governing body escaped the capture of its capital in a sufficient enough capacity to command forces while in exile.
Perhaps in anticipation of such an event, Bruno had used his influence to task the combined naval might of the Central Powers and the nations within it to impose a blockade over all ports of the French mainland the moment the armistice with Great Britain had been declared.
Months had passed, strangling the trade between France and the rest of the world, as its only neighbors being Spain and Italy were either under direct treaty not to provide aid to France, or were heavily pressured by the nations of the Central Powers to do so.
This, of course, crippled France in many ways as the months passed in anticipation of this offensive. The lack of raw materials necessary for producing weapons, munitions, and just about everything that was critical to the war effort became apparent quite quickly.
As did fuel shortages for maintaining France’s energy grid, following this were the fields of medicine and agriculture. To put it simply, by the beginning of the Autumn Offensive of 1916, France’s economy had been strangled into submission, despite the government’s refusal to surrender.