Part 17: World War II, Chapter Two: The Western Counterattack
The march towards Budapest... Was not going well. Chinese forces had become bogged down on well-designed Austrian border defenses, and even once the Chinese finally broke through they were harassed incessantly by Austro-Hungarian forces seeking to cut their supply lines, forcing them to turn around and crush the Hapsburg armies.
But the Austro-Hungarian forces paid dearly for attempts, quickly finding themselves surrounded and wiped out.
And the Venetian rebels, meanwhile, mounted a last, desperate stand against the Austro-Hungarian army. They pleaded for Chinese help in their battle, but none came - the Italians had requested the Chinese not provide any assistance to the Venetians, as again the Italian government did not see them as allies, since they wanted independence from both the Hapsburgs and Italy. And so, they fell to the better armed Hapbsurg forces. The last hope for an independent Venice, it seemed, died with them.
In a tragedy, the Burmese capital of Ava had fallen to the British. The barbarians engaged in an orgy of looting and destruction, sacking the city and slaughtering thousands of citizens - but the heroic Ever Victorious Army soon put an end to their devastation, saving the Burmese people from the foreign devils! The Qing promised the Burmese monarch that they would liberate all of Burma of British rule, once and for all, and avenge the deaths of her citizens.
And in Africa, at long last the French army was finally wiped out under pressure from a joint Zambezia-Qing offensive.
The war only continued to spread. The Russians launched an offensive to retake Tomsk, and aided by countless Russian loyalists, were able to capture the city briefly. However, the Chinese counteroffensive shattered the Russian forces, driving them back into the depths of Siberia.
A coterminous Russian offensive into Manchuria was also shattered, though this time with heavier Chinese casualties. Some Chinese generals called for an immediate full-scale counterattack against the Russian Far Eastern Army, but there were few valuable targets in Siberia and China was already managing multiple offensives around the globe; the plans were deferred, with Chinese forces along the border ordered to retain a defensive strategy.
Meanwhile, the British Canadian army finally came out of hiding and launched a serious counteroffensive, laying siege to Chinese-occupied Montreal. The Chinese forces quickly abandoned their advance and rushed to defend the recently captured city.
French and British Guyana were also the site of a serious conflict. The Chinese had successfully made a beachhead in British Guyana with logistical support from Venezuela and naval forces in Suez, but now the French had intervened. Chinese and French forces chased each other through the whole of French and British Guyana in a game of cat and mouse, both sides as of yet too cautious to engage the other in battle.
Meanwhile, Chinese and Germans were engaged in furious high-level talks about Germany's failure to issue a mass mobilization order. The Germans were still hesitant to do so, even with French forces spilling over their borders; the Chinese were beginning to suspect the Germans were expecting China to win the war single-handedly. Germany's ruling socialists protested that its economy and people were war-weary, and another mass mobilization would be asking too much from the German people. Finally, a deal was struck - Germany would issue a mass conscription drive in return for sizable Chinese war subsidies.
But this perhaps came too late. With the Italian rebels broken, the Austrians went on the offensive. The Chinese had rushed an army of reinforcements to Rome to stem any Hapsburg advance on the Italian capital, while meanwhile the Hapsburgs counterattacked the Chinese advance in force.
Alas, the month of October was a catastrophic wakeup call for the Chinese high command.
Chinese forces, their supply lines stretched thin by their advance, suffered a shattering defeat in the battle of Posojna. The Chinese fell back in disarray to the Ottoman Empire, any hope of an easy victory lost.
The defeat of their allies left the remaining Chinese forces in a shockingly dangerous position, forcing them to withdraw rapidly as well as overwhelming numbers of Hapsburg forces convened on their position. It was a catastrophe the likes of which China had not seen in decades.
But the news only got worse. The Qing force sent to relieve the siege of Montreal... Was gone. Surrounded by the Brits, they were annihilated until the few survivors surrendered. Nearby general Guan Kang'an did not lift a finger to support them. (i.e. I wasn't paying attention to the battle until it was too late) When confronted on the matter, he insisted he had received orders from above not to engage, and thus had had no choice but to follow them - investigations confirmed this assertion, his superiors having believed the battle of Montreal would be an easy victory and not even having entertained contingency plans.
The catastrophes turned into a scandal that rocked the highest reaches of the Chinese military high command. Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Guangxu both angrily confronted the generals, chewing them out for their catastrophic overconfidence. Just months before they had been insisting this would be another easy war, with Budapest bound to fall in a matter of weeks and Vienna soon after - now it was quite clear that assessment had been overly optimistic, at best. A bold-faced lie, in Cixi's loudly declared opinion.
Almost half the Chinese high command was forced to resign in the scandal, and the Empress Dowager announced a serious reorganization of the military command into a new General Staff structure with hopes that this would never happen again.
The new General Staff members predicted that winning the war would take years. It was becoming quite clear to all in China that this would be a long, bloody struggle.
As Germany began issuing conscription notices, Eastern forces desperately struggled to stem the Western offensives in Canada, Italy, Germany, and Poland; Western-aligned Africa and Asia fell rapidly to Eastern advances; and neither side was interested in negotiating with both now convinced they could win. Many were becoming increasingly resigned to the fact that this war would be the bloodiest in all of history. Centuries of Western hegemony would not, it seemed, die without a brutal fight.
