Germany does not seek survival

A young and gentle maid,

Light as a dancing butterfly.

Her eyes sparkled like wine,

We called her Madeline.

We miss her day and night,

She is the love of our hearts..."

The female singer's voice was indeed as sweet as a lark. Most of the noble sons sitting on the sofa in a circle below the stage fell silent after hearing the voice, but there were still a few who were still holding the waitresses in their arms, playing with them and shouting. Some of them were so drunk that they threw their wine glasses directly onto the stage.

On the second-floor viewing platform of the Bat Dance Nightclub, a young officer with the rank of major poured a whole bottle of champagne on the low-cut dress of the blonde waitress. He was drunk and, while teasing, picked up a whiskey glass and smashed it against the stage. The glass fell at Galadilla's feet, leaving a thin scratch on her snow-white ankle.

There was a burst of uneven laughter in the nightclub. Someone whistled sharply, holding an unextinguished cigar between his fingers. The singer's eyelashes trembled, but she remained unmoved and continued to sing:

“…Madeline, Madeline, my love, wait till I come home;

Madeline, Madeline, your love calls you home quickly..."

Another captain staggered to his feet, his medals jingling on his chest. "Sing another song! Sing 'The Eagle of Vienna' for me! Another song! Do you hear me?"

The officer walked towards the stage, reeking of alcohol. He pushed away the waiter who tried to stop him, kicked away the broken pieces of wine glass on the ground, and grabbed the singer's wrist in a very rude manner. This man must have come from a very good family. Not only did the noble officers below not stop him, but they all doubled down on the booing.

The female singer Galadilla still had an indifferent expression. It seemed that a female singer like her who was very famous in the upper class and so young and beautiful must have dealt with such situations many times.

Galadilla simply lowered the microphone slightly and looked around, perhaps to see if anyone would come to help. Unfortunately, the result disappointed her. So many noble officers were either drunk or infatuated with the waitresses, and the rest were all making a fuss.

Faust's face twitched: "You parasites..."

Faust walked up to the captain, grabbed his hand, and pushed him away. "You parasitic bastard! How can you be worthy of a military uniform? Austria has fallen to this point with people like you. Enough of this. It's been too long!"

The sons of powerful people in the box stood up cursing, and an officer pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Faust while shouting curses.

Without saying a word, Faust picked up the silver candlestick on the table and smashed it at the first officer who pulled out a pistol. With a bang, with Faust's strength, he smashed the noble officer's head and made him faint on the spot, bleeding all over.

The female singer was a little surprised. She lowered her voice and said, "Sir, don't do this. It will definitely not be good for you if the conflict escalates. The people here are either rich or noble..."

Faust snorted coldly. He took out a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to the female singer: "Miss, cover the wound."

After saying that, Faust turned around, picked up two more wine glasses, and threw them left and right. With two loud bangs, he knocked down two more noble officers.

Vasily, standing in the audience, was horrified. He quickly pulled out his pistol and shouted at the noble officers, "This is Colonel Faust from the Training Directorate! Do not act rashly! This is Colonel Faust!"

But Faust and Vasily were not wearing military ranks or medals today, and those noble sons were all drunk, so no one would listen to Vasily's warning.

In a short while, more than a dozen people rushed towards Faust in anger. Faust was not polite to them. He took a boxing stance, jumped up in small steps, and punched anyone he met, hitting them in the face one by one.

In less than a minute, more than a dozen people had already laid down in front of Miss Galadilla's stage.

Miss Galadilla was stunned. She looked at Faust's fist, which was already covered in blood. She didn't know whether it was the blood from Faust's injury or the blood from punching others.

Miss Galadilla stood there in a daze, her eyes flickering and trembling, a trace of unspoken doubt in her eyes. Perhaps because the scene was too shocking, a whole row of officers, some fainting, some wailing, had piled up in front of Faust. She was still trying to figure out which was real and which was a dream...

Galadilla shook her head slightly. After a few minutes, she finally understood what was happening. Suddenly, she covered her mouth with her hand.

"Who...are you?"

Half of the remaining noble officers sobered up. They looked at Faust while cursing his catchphrases. Faust took a small step forward, which scared them all. They quickly retreated several meters until they reached the wall of the nightclub.

Several people bumped into each other and were in a mess. Faust continued to move forward in silence. He walked towards an officer who was still shouting and cursed, ripped off the man's epaulettes without any hesitation, and punched him.

During this time, someone with a pistol wanted to go around Faust from behind and shoot. Faust seemed to have eyes on his back. He grabbed the bottle and threw it out, knocking the guns out of the hands of these people.

The remaining officers' previous fierce expressions turned into extremely aggrieved panic, but they held on with their last breath and still tried to attack Faust, but naturally they were beaten even more badly.

"Are you parasites?"

Faust said this in a faint voice, then paused and repeated: "Tell me, are you parasites?"

Faust grabbed an officer who was trying to escape, pulled him back, threw him on the table like garbage, and punched him in the face again and again.

"Tell me, are you a parasite?"

Under Faust's questioning, the officer, whose face was bruised and swollen, finally stammered out the correct answer: "Yes... yes... please... please stop hitting me... I am, I am... I am a parasite, isn't that enough..."

Faust was satisfied and let the man go. His eyes continued to sweep over the remaining officers. Those officers had already been written badly. Faust asked the question again to whoever he saw, and whoever nodded hurriedly, saying yes repeatedly like pounding garlic.

Faust sneered twice, crossed his arms, and ordered Vasily, "Go inform Marshal Conrad, inform the headquarters of the 11th Army, and tell Marshal Conrad everything that happened in the nightclub tonight."

Vasily was stunned: "God... Colonel, what on earth do you want to do?"

Chapter 129 Operation Barbarossa

Vasily was shocked, and Marshal Conrad was even more shocked.

By the time Marshal Conrad and a group of Austrian troops arrived at the Bat Dance Nightclub, the scene had already been cleaned up by the nightclub staff.

The officers who had been beaten by Faust all lay on the sofa. The remaining dozens of officers did not dare to move. They all put their hands on their heads and, as Faust requested, lined up and squatted on the ground obediently.

Conrad was shocked and angry when he saw this scene: "Colonel Faust! What are you doing? These people are all officers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including majors and lieutenant colonels. Their ranks are not as high as yours, and you have no right to treat Austrian officers like this! Among them are counts and even princes' sons!"

Faust clapped his hands and said, "Old Marshal, I won't say much. Is this the way Austrian officers behave? At this critical moment of the war, they are still living a life of debauchery. I am teaching them a lesson on behalf of Vienna, and also on your behalf, old Marshal."

Faust chuckled and said, "Otherwise, let someone like him fight with you. I don't think it's necessary to fight the river crossing battle that the old marshal has high hopes for. Can an officer like him fight? He can't fight."

Marshal Conrad had a gloomy face. He didn't know how to end this matter after Faust had caused such a thing.

After a long time, Marshal Conrad finally thought about settling the matter peacefully. His most important thing now was to stabilize the rear and win the battle to turn his career around.

Conrad advised Faust, saying, "Colonel Faust...let me handle these matters. Don't make a big deal out of this, okay? If it gets out, it will have a very negative impact on the diplomatic relations between Germany and Austria."

Faust stared at the ceiling. "What shall we do then? Even if I don't tell anyone about this, old Marshal, they will go to Vienna and complain."

Conrad gritted his teeth and sighed, "I will definitely take these officers to the front and won't let them run back to Vienna. Don't worry, at least during the river crossing battle, I promise not to let them cause trouble."

Faust laughed and said, "If they don't make trouble, I will. What if they retaliate against me?"

Marshal Conrad almost cursed out loud: How could these people have the courage to take revenge on you, Faust!

But Faust's words do make sense on the surface.

Marshal Conrad now wants to suppress this matter as quickly as possible. He can suppress it on the Austrian side by himself, but on the German side, it depends on Faust himself.

Otherwise, Conrad would not be able to stop Faust from going to Berlin to complain.

The old marshal had no choice but to ask, "Colonel, what do you think? What should we do to make you feel that we can solve the problem?"

Faust propped his chin on his hand, pretending to think. "Well, let me think about it, old Marshal. Would it be okay to transfer all my troops back to Innsbruck? That would prevent friction between the German and Austrian armies. As long as the headquarters appoints me to be responsible for order in Innsbruck, I don't have to worry about retaliation."

This request was just a piece of cake for Marshal Conrad. The old marshal nodded immediately. He didn't want the German army to take away the credit for his turnaround, so he agreed immediately:

"Good! I will immediately draft an order to transfer the three German chasseur regiments from Venice back to Tyrol, and appoint Colonel Faust as the commander of the Innsbruck garrison."

Faust asked Vasily to take him to a nightclub, and specifically instructed him to find a place where the children of the Austrian military elite gathered, so that he could cause a big scene.

Faust knew Conrad's mentality very well. The old marshal did not want to cause any more trouble. After the friction between Germany and Austria, he must have wanted to settle the matter peacefully. As long as he was right when causing trouble, he could be relentless and control Conrad.

After Faust received the official commission as commander of the Innsbruck garrison, he had more power to place personnel and control key positions in Tyrol.

So when Faust returned to his mountain villa, the National Socialists were all celebrating. The time was almost here, and all the conditions for the National Socialist armed uprising were gradually maturing.

Rommel and Paulus also reported the latest news on the Western Front to Faust at this time.

"Red Baron Richthofen died in battle."

"It's not surprising. If you walk by the river often, you will get your feet wet. If an Air Force war hero doesn't serve as an instructor in the rear and insists on fighting on the front lines, he will die one day."

The death of the Red Baron, another of Germany's most famous war heroes besides Faust, cast a shadow on Operation Michael, which Ludendorff had high hopes for, and made ordinary German soldiers begin to feel a strong sense of foreboding.

Since March, the German army on the Western Front has launched a fierce offensive for nearly two months. One and a half million German soldiers are like a continuous tide, hitting the Allied defense line.

The British and French forces were defeated one after another. The first to be attacked by the Germans was the British defense line. In an instant, on the first day of Operation Michael, 20,000 British soldiers were killed and 40,000 were injured. The German storm troopers were pervasive and infiltrated everywhere. The Somme River positions that the British had defended with hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in one day.

The British commander could only watch in despair as the German army rushed to the other side of the Somme River on a pontoon bridge like a tide. If it were not for the French army's desperate rescue, coupled with the 100,000-strong American Expeditionary Force arriving on the French battlefield at that moment, the British army might have been overwhelmed by the German army in an instant.

The people of Paris were already frightened. The German Big Bertha artillery had an extremely long range and could directly bombard Paris, causing great panic among the French.

The British and French forces suffered heavy losses, but the number of American soldiers increased and they gradually became the main force on the Western Front.

This new force had never experienced the torture of four years of trench warfare, so their morale was generally high. Americans had a naiveté about war that only existed in the early stages of a war, so they dared to charge and fight, and were very brave. They often died in large numbers at the hands of the German army before they had time to understand the cruelty of war.

However, due to the Americans' reckless human wave charge, Ludendorff's Operation Michael was temporarily hindered and the offensive was forced to stop.

Faust was very clear: "Operation Michael is the German army's last ditch effort. Once the offensive stops and this breath of hope is lost, Germany will be finished."

The US 1st Division successfully launched a counterattack, capturing Picardy northeast of Paris, and subsequently repelled German counterattacks several times. Although the casualties were very heavy and the recapture of Picardy had no strategic significance, it was of historical significance.

This was the first time that the US military launched an offensive in France and won. The Yankee soldiers were unstoppable. Once millions of US troops were deployed to the battlefield, there was no doubt that Germany would have no chance of winning.

So the German army had no choice but to continue the offensive. In May, the German army marched southwards towards the Marne River again. The situation was very similar to that summer of 1914. There were cheers of victory from all directions, prisoners of war and spoils passed by, and the bright May sun also showed a smile of success, as if the summer of 1914 had really returned.

But the French were just as tenacious as they had been in 1914. Every French unit that still had the strength to fight was urgently transferred to the Marne River to form a line of defense, which reminded people of the taxi fleet that was desperately rushing to get to their destination in 1914.

This time, with the addition of a large number of American troops with high morale, the German army seems unstoppable, but in fact the situation is far from the same as in 1914.

Paulus had a battle line map that he had obtained from the 11th Army Headquarters. The situation marked on this battle line map was not the latest situation on the battle line, but it was enough to explain many problems.

"Operation Michael opened a gap at the junction of the British and French lines, but Ludendorff didn't throw all his forces into it. He launched another offensive in Flanders, which also opened a gap for the Germans. This allowed a large number of German reserves to be deployed to the Flanders battlefield."

Rommel analyzed, "General Ludendorff's judgment cannot be said to be wrong, because the breach opened by Operation Michael was on the Somme River. We all fought on the Somme River. That battlefield... after millions of shells bombarding it, it was riddled with potholes and had long since become as rugged and difficult to navigate as hell. There was no way a German army of 1.5 million could squeeze through such a rugged and narrow breach."

If you really want to squeeze in, you might be able to, but the logistics will definitely not be able to keep up.

Anyone with a discerning eye could see that although the German army had made some progress, it had failed to occupy any strategically important positions. In Operation Michael, apart from occupying some wasteland that had long been bombed into the surface of the moon at the cost of huge casualties, the German army had gained nothing.

To be frank, the German army's gain was that it inflicted heavy casualties on the British and French forces. The German army lost 300,000 people, while the British and French forces lost 350,000 people. In terms of exchange ratio, the German army also achieved an advantageous exchange ratio in the offensive war.

However, the 300,000 elite troops lost by the German army will be difficult to replenish in the future, while the 350,000 lost by the Allies can be easily replenished from the millions of American troops.

In such a war, Germany has no chance of winning.

"Germany has already lost the war."

Faust made a somewhat cruel judgment: "Next, it depends on who can clean up the mess in Germany. We, the National Socialist Party, must shoulder this historical responsibility."

The heavyweights of the National Socialist Party gathered in this mountain villa. They sat in a circle around Faust's desk. In addition to Hitler, Rommel, Tito, and Paulus, there were also three regimental commanders: Kesselring, Scherner, and von Thoma, as well as Guderian, who had recently joined the National Socialist Party.

Because this meeting was of great significance, in addition to the senior cadres of the National Socialist Party, many core middle-level officials were also summoned.

These middle-level core members reported to Faust one by one:

"Erich Wedel! A Stettin native, Captain, and current head of the Cheka's First Action Battalion!"

"Ernst Schmidt! A Hanoverian Jew, a captain, and currently the deputy director of the military administration in Kufstein, Austria-Hungary!"

"Karl Ptacek! Bohemian, major, current political commissar of the 10th Battalion of the 3rd Regiment!"

……

Sorge did not attend this meeting because he had been ordered to go to Vienna to set up the Stasi's Vienna agency. The other intelligence personnel under his command were also appointed. Lieutenant Friedrich Weissen was responsible for setting up the Berlin Stasi, Lieutenant Jean Pilar was responsible for setting up the Munich Stasi, and Lieutenant Lucas Schmidt was responsible for setting up the Königsberg Stasi.

The National Socialist Party is trying to establish a preliminary foreign intelligence network within the core territory of Central Europe of the Allies.

Internally, Hitler controlled the Cheka, which was the National Socialist Party's internal security force. Currently, two action battalions have been formed under the name of the Cheka. Through the previous purge of the Austrian Eleventh Army, the Cheka also planted a large number of National Socialist Party members within the Austrian army, and they were all in key positions.

Then there is the local administration of Tyrol, which is mainly under the responsibility of Tito, an Austro-Hungarian citizen. His main task is to arrange personnel in advance and control important industrial and mining enterprises and transportation routes in Tyrol.

In addition, personnel must be deployed in several military fortresses that control strategic points in Tyrol.

The National Socialist Party has begun to control every aspect of Tyrol. There are many people with high names and positions. By the time Conrad led the main force of the Austrian army to run into a wall, Faust was already confident of capturing the city of Innsbruck.

"Now, on behalf of the Central Revolutionary Committee of the National Socialist Party, I make the following arrangements!"

"The Grossdeutschland Regiment will be stationed in Innsbruck to prepare for the main armed uprising. The 5th and 6th Battalions will be stationed in Kufstein to control the railway from Innsbruck to Munich. The remainder of the 2nd Regiment, plus the 10th Battalion, will attack Trento and cut off the Austrian army's retreat to Tyrol. The remainder of the 3rd Regiment will serve as a general reserve to monitor the line between Bozen and Lienz."

"I, Witt Faust, will be the commander-in-chief of the Innsbruck uprising. Kesselring will be the commander-in-chief of Kufstein, Tito will be the commander-in-chief of Trento, and Rommel will still be in charge of the general reserve."

Division of labor completed.

Faust was still a little nervous and excited. He had been waiting for this day for a very long time. The National Socialist Party started from scratch and finally built up its current foundation. It could be said that it had some strength. But if compared with the millions of German troops, the power of the National Socialist Party was like an ant trying to shake a tree. It was overestimating its own capabilities.

"We have been advocating revolution for two years now, accumulating experience and lessons, all in order to save Germany from the decadent and degenerate feudal aristocracy and its bourgeois lackeys. With the exception of the National Socialists, who understand and possess this understanding, all other political factions and social groups in Germany are dreamers and fools, still asleep and unable to count on anything. All revolutions can only be driven forward by the National Socialists!"

"Our code name for the operation is Barbarossa!"

"Operation Barbarossa!"

Chapter 130 The End of the Beginning

At the end of June 1918, the Po River in Italy, a broad river still flowing in the middle of summer, was turbulent and the water level was much higher than in previous years. The river flowed from the location of the city of Taglio sul Po into the Adriatic Sea.

The soil brought by the river was continuously deposited at the estuary for hundreds of years, and finally formed a new mudflat. After the unification of Italy, the new country sorted out this mudflat, connecting it with Venice, and continued to extend it, so that the population of Taglio sul Po continued to grow.