Starting with the smashing of Dunkirk

Chapter 151 Odessa is nothing, we'll fight our way to the Dnieper River in one go!

Lelouch managed to get Admiral Eberhard to talk in just half the night.

This not only completely broke down his psychological defenses, but also made him willing to cooperate obediently.

Eberhardt even fantasized that after the collapse of Lusa and the killing of the Tsar, he might be able to take up some position in the "Volgademonia".

Yes, of course, the future "Volgademian" people will certainly not still live in the area from the lower Volga River to the Caspian Sea coast. That place is the heartland of Russa's rear.

If the two nations and peoples were to fight each other to the point of deep hatred, the Volga Demanians would certainly need to migrate to a land further west or south, and find a place in the relatively sparsely populated southwestern border region of the Russa people after the war to establish a country, relying on the traditional Demanian sphere of influence for self-protection.

However, these are all too far off-topic.

Regardless, the fact that Admiral Eberhardt is even fantasizing about things so far in the future shows just how completely he submits to Lelouch's plan.

At this point, Lelouch would be willing to betray any of Lusa's military interests if asked to do so.

……

At dawn the following day, Admiral Spee had just woken up in the captain's cabin of the USS Goben.

Then Lelouch came in with several documents and handed one of them to Spee.

"This is a rough description of the minefield defenses around Nikolayev Port. By following these coordinates, we can navigate a safe passage for the fleet to enter and exit Nikolayev Port safely—this is what Eberhard just confessed last night."

Spee didn't know what interrogation methods Lelouch had used, but he was quite satisfied with the results.

If a rough map of naval mine deployment is real, then there's no need to slowly clear the mines; instead, they can approach the depths of the port undetected.

Although the Empire has mastered heavy-duty mine-clearing chains, the element of surprise in these two methods is still vastly different.

"Congratulations on succeeding in just half a night," General Spee exclaimed sincerely.

Lelouch: "This is nothing. That old man only remembers the safe navigation routes outside Nikolayev Port. I was hoping he would produce safe navigation routes for Sevastopol and Yevpatoria as well."

But isn't that too complicated? He can't remember that much. We'll have to wait until our forces reach Odessa or Nikolayev before we can seize it from the safe in their naval flotilla command headquarters.

Admiral Spee: "So what do you need the Navy to do with these blueprints now? Or are you just letting me handle them as I see fit?"

Lelouch considered his words carefully, then pulled up two more documents: "Here's a list and a few letters."

The list included Admiral Eberhardt's trusted confidants whom he believed could be persuaded to surrender, other relatively reliable Volga-Manian officers in the Black Sea Fleet, and some of his close associates at the Nikolayev and Odessa shipyards.

These letters were secret letters he personally wrote urging surrender, and they even used his personal seal. They analyzed the inevitable downfall of the Tsar and how, if the Russo were to collapse and become a nation-state rather than an aristocratic state, Volgamanian officials would certainly not have a good future.

In short, we can take advantage of the current situation—the collapse of the Black Sea Fleet, the widespread panic among enemy forces along the Black Sea coast, and the peak of mutual distrust between the army and navy—to further intensify our provocations. We should strive to make more enemy navies feel they are about to be purged, and make more enemy army units feel the navy is about to stab them in the back, thus deterring them from fighting to the death and forcing them to flee…

Admiral Spee couldn't bear to listen any longer and quickly interrupted, "Just tell me exactly what you want our navy to do. Also, have you received authorization from Field Marshal Rupprecht?"

Lelouch: "Of course, everything I did was reported to the Marshal in advance. However, there are some adjustments to the details, and some additional resources need to be coordinated, but I will get it sorted out quickly."

Admiral Spee understood immediately and brought over another large torpedo boat to send Lelouch ashore so he could coordinate resources with various parties and plot something.

After landing, Lelouch quickly met with Duke Rupprecht at the forward command post in Ovidiopoli. Combining his latest success in persuading Eberhard to surrender, he devised a plan to sow discord between the Lusa people's army and navy, maximizing mutual distrust.

Of course, this plan to sow discord won't directly cause the enemy to collapse, but it will definitely damage their morale to the greatest extent and temporarily create chaos within their ranks. The final task of attacking the city and annihilating the enemy will still rely on the allies fighting a hard-fought battle on the front lines; that's beyond Lelouch's capabilities.

There is a sequence to learning, and each profession has its own expertise. In this Black Sea battle, Lelouch's greatest contribution was winning hearts and minds.

It's fortunate that the enemy they're facing now is a centrifugal giant like Lusa. If Lelouch were to deal with a united and religious nation twenty years from now, such underhanded tactics wouldn't work.

……

Two days later, the fierce siege of Odessa was still ongoing.

Every day, both sides suffered at least four figures in casualties, and even more injuries and illnesses.

A new plan to flank and harass from behind has been freshly developed.

Lelouch hastily recruited some Volgard Mania soldiers who had just been brainwashed from the sailor prisoners of war he had rescued after sinking Lusa's Black Sea Fleet, and persuaded them to abandon their evil ways and join the light.

Under Lelouch's propaganda offensive, these people realized that the Tsar was doomed and that the Volgamanians would not fare well if they continued to be loyal to Rusa. Therefore, they were genuinely willing to fight for their people and no longer bound by the old-fashioned feudal loyalty to the Tsar.

After Lelouch brainwashed these soldiers, he found several recently captured Rusa supply ships, still flying the Rusa flag, carrying a group of loyal soldiers who could speak Rusa, mixed with these newly converted "converts," and prepared to launch a landing raid on the port area and shipyard area of ​​Nikolayev.

Lelouch did not intend to rely solely on force in this surprise attack. He also had several copies of Admiral Eberhard's letter of persuasion to surrender made, intending to use them to create chaos and force some of the port guards and shipyard workers in Nikolayev to surrender.

Considering the difficulty of delivering paper letters and the need to protect Admiral Eberhard as a pawn, Lelouch decided against using leaflets to persuade Eberhard to surrender. Therefore, he opted to send a short-range naval coded telegram directly from within 50 kilometers of the port, using the Black Sea Fleet codebook provided by Admiral Eberhard. The telegram would also include some inside information about Admiral Eberhard and his subordinates to enhance credibility.

With this multi-pronged approach, taking advantage of the chaos to seize the port of Nikolayev and the shipyard should not be too difficult.

Taking over the port was not Lelouch's ultimate goal. His main objective was to create the stereotype that "everyone in the Black Sea Fleet who has landed is capable of rebellion," thereby discriminating against and distrusting the remaining Black Sea Fleet sailors who had not yet rebelled, and further reinforcing Lelouch's propaganda efforts in a self-reinforcing cycle.

This is also the most common phenomenon before the collapse of any feudal dynasty. Perhaps not many people in the Western world at the time had studied these issues, but in the Eastern world, which had experienced dozens of dynastic changes, any scholar who studied history could understand the reasoning behind it.

Therefore, Lelouch, with his Eastern soul well-versed in the Twenty-Four Histories, had a significant advantage when managing these matters.

How many ancient dynasties truly fought to the death until the very last moment before collapsing? It was only those few that faced invasions from foreign tribes that resisted more resolutely, which is what Gu Yanwu meant by dynastic changes: "Some dynasties perish, some dynasties perish."

If it were merely a matter of "changing the surname and the title," as long as more than half of the empire was lost, the former emperor would begin to doubt the loyalty of his subordinates, and the subordinates would begin to feel insecure. The second half of the dynasty would then be over very quickly.

However, there were very few unified dynastic changes in the ancient Western world. The vast majority of ancient Western countries were destroyed by other countries, rather than by their own people.

This has led to a lack of experience among Western historians and political practitioners in this area, who are not quite sure how to demolish a feudal empire on the verge of a change of dynasty and hasten its demise.

However, after learning from the lessons of World War I, scholars in history and later, thinking they had understood, went to the other extreme by overcorrecting.

It must be said that in this respect, Western scholars who study historical lessons are far inferior to their Eastern counterparts.

They don't even know the basic truth that "every dynasty, in its efforts to avoid the same way as the previous one, goes to the other extreme and ultimately self-destructs"—a truth that even middle school students in the East know.

Even middle school students in the East know that the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period ended because "whoever had the strongest army and the most powerful horses ruled," so the Song Dynasty perished because it overcorrected and crippled its own military.

In the West, researchers, having learned from the lessons of "overestimating Russa's cohesion during World War I" and "if only we hadn't followed Schlieffen's stupid plan and had instead returned to Moltke's strategy of attacking in the east and defending in the west," rashly concluded that "the USSR is just a dilapidated building that will collapse if you kick the door."

During World War I, the cohesion of a feudal empire was overestimated, while during World War II, the cohesion of a new form of organization was underestimated.

World War I collapsed because of its overly thorough mobilization and Rodendorff's excessive "total war" mobilization. World War II was much more cautious, fearing that even a slight increase in the burden on the people would lead to its collapse, and it was not until 1944 that it fully transitioned to a wartime economy.

If they could experience the "change of dynasty" of a dozen or so unified dynasties like the East, and broaden their horizons, they would know that "learning from the lessons of the previous dynasty cannot be too harsh; one cannot directly switch from flooring the accelerator to flooring the brake, and one cannot directly switch from full left to full right."

……

With the added benefit of Lelouch's experience in "how to accelerate the internal collapse of a feudal empire," which far surpasses that of Western historians and political practitioners.

His plan quickly progressed to near perfection.

On the evening of August 10, Rommel, along with his advance landing force, Russian-speaking soldiers, and newly recruited Dmanian sailors from the Black Sea Fleet, quietly sailed several supply ships flying the Russian flag along a safe route he had scouted beforehand and docked at the port of Nikolayev.

Before taking action, Admiral Spee had his men clear the mines to confirm the situation, and they found no mines in the channel, indicating that the safe channel information provided by Eberhart was correct.

After docking, the first group of soldiers to go ashore were still wearing their own Lusa people's clothes. The message they sent before entering the port was that "a transport fleet was intercepted by the Demanian Navy in the open sea and had to flee back to their own minefield and requested temporary shelter."

In short, various groups took advantage of the panic and chaos among the sailors of Lusha to go ashore.

Don't blame Lusa Navy for being lax in its management; the main reason is that the main warships of the Black Sea Fleet have been destroyed, and the remaining sailors and ground crew have all been temporarily reassigned.

With a large number of personnel being diverted to assist the army, Nikolayev couldn't even adequately staff the port authority. Under such circumstances, chaotic management was to be expected.

Ultimately, Rommel successfully landed the ship by surprise, and at the same time, he had the radio stations on nearby ships send naval coded telegrams to the shore, hoping that Nikolayev's small group of former subordinates of Admiral Eberhard would recognize the situation.

Of course, the city of Nikolayev was not only home to sailors who had switched careers, but also to army personnel.

The Romanian Front has also deployed a corps of troops in the defense zone around Nikolaev.

Lelouch showed no mercy to that part of the army, and directly used the three pre-dreadnoughts to unleash their full firepower with their 240mm main guns and 150mm secondary guns.

With the Black Sea Fleet failing to stop Rommel from landing, the naval veterans in a state of panic, and the army being caught off guard by a bombardment, the situation in Nikolayev quickly descended into chaos.

This city was still considered to be in the rear, 100 kilometers away from the Odessa front, and it had already penetrated deep into a bay. The local garrison really did not expect to be attacked.

Rommel took control of the port and shipyard in just one night, and then began a fierce battle with the enemy in the city.

Throughout the process, thousands of former Black Sea Fleet sailors, along with the officers in charge, seemed to realize that the Tsar's fate was sealed and, persuaded by the old commander's coded telegram, were willing to defect and surrender.

The workers at the shipyard and docks had no loyalty to the Tsar and readily surrendered.

The flames of war quickly spread across the western coastline of the Kievan Rus' Plain. The Rus' people were completely stunned and realized that as long as they were near the ports along the Black Sea coast, the enemy could come up from any point, and they simply couldn't defend against it.

Although they had encountered their first amphibious landing on July 28th, when they were landed at the mouth of the Dniester River, it is only August 10th now. Given the self-adaptation and evolution speed of the Roussillon military machine during World War I, it is quite normal that they could not come up with a countermeasure for the amphibious landing within two weeks and could not make targeted deployments.

It's not uncommon to suffer the same loss twice.

……

The following day, at the Romanian Front Command headquarters in Odessa.

When General Evert, the commander of the front, heard that Nikolayev had been ambushed, he was instantly furious.

"How is that possible? How could the enemy have so silently crossed at least 60 nautical miles of minefields and landed directly in the port of Nikolayev? And they even had ships flying our flag, the first soldiers to land, and a large number of people speaking Rusa?"

General Evert, who had never experienced special operations, could not even imagine it.

The enemy's fancy moves were so numerous and frequent that his brain couldn't keep up.

After his mind was in turmoil for several hours, he finally managed to come to a conclusion: there were a lot of traitors in the navy! They would stop at nothing to kill the Tsar, and they didn't even care about betraying their country!
The more Admiral Evert thought about it, the more frightened he became. He couldn't help but do what Lelouch expected him to do: immediately disarm all the former sailors and naval ground crew who had just been conscripted into the city's defense force in Odessa and revert them to logistics personnel to prevent them from defecting in the face of battle!

Because a large number of their former comrades, the original sailors of the Black Sea Fleet stationed in Nikolayev, had already defected to the enemy!
With Nikolaev's former naval personnel setting an example, the former naval officers in Odessa, Yevpatoria, and Sevastopol were obviously not trustworthy. In such chaotic times, caution was always the best policy.

Admiral Evert's move has further escalated the land-sea conflict around the Black Sea.

General Evert originally intended to quietly disarm a single unit, but due to the urgency of the situation, he did not intend to expand the scope of the attack.

But Lelouch was on the other side, watching their every move.

With a propaganda genius like Lelouch nitpicking like a magnifying glass, any extreme action by Admiral Evert would be seized upon and magnified by Lelouch immediately.

……

Just hours after Evert's disastrous move, at the forward command post of the German 6th Army in Ovidiopoli.

Upon receiving the news, Lelouch immediately approached the Duke to promote his next move:
“Great, we can move on to the next step of our plan. Now that Evert has disarmed the first unit he considers unreliable, composed of former naval personnel, we’re going to spread the word that Evert doesn’t trust any naval personnel.”

They could even spread rumors that the Tsar no longer trusted any Black Sea Fleet personnel; they could go even further and say that the charlatan Rasbukin, who served the Tsar, had just performed an astrological reading for him, predicting that as long as the traitors in the Black Sea Fleet were wiped out, the empire would be saved!

It doesn't matter how absurd the content of the rumor is, since spreading rumors costs almost nothing.

The Duke had grown accustomed to Lelouch's thought process over the past few days and had gained a good understanding of his overall plan, so he wasn't surprised again. He simply nodded silently, letting Lelouch proceed.

"As usual, you don't need to worry about things on the front lines. Just focus your energy on spreading rumors."

Lelouch, reassured, continued to operate according to his own plan.

On August 12, some terrible rumors began to circulate among the Lusa garrison in Odessa and Nikolayev through every possible channel.

The specific ways in which the message was spread included shouts from Demacian soldiers on the battlefield, infiltration and dissemination by people disguised as Lusa soldiers and civilians, and even radio coded surrender attempts by the former Lusa Black Sea Fleet.

The content is also clearly divided. For example, some rumors involving too many twists and turns are not suitable for ordinary soldiers to shout in front of the battle.

However, the Demanian Empire already had its own intelligence and propaganda networks, so Lelouch didn't need to worry about these details.

Demania also has many spies in Lusa. Although they are usually inefficient, when it matters, as long as Lelouch prepares the propaganda materials, these people can always find a way to spread them for him.

Lelouch only needs to use his authority as the deputy director of the propaganda bureau of the Imperial War Department (in charge of external propaganda) to issue orders, without needing to care about how the people below implement them. For Lelouch, those things are just a black box resource that can only be accessed as a whole.

In short, within just two days, rumors began to circulate among the officers and soldiers of Lusa: "Who exactly betrayed the Tsar and started this wave of naval defections?"

All of this pointed to Rear Admiral Lukin, the commander of the Odessa fleet who had already died in battle, and a small group of people around him. Of course, the Lusa army did not know that Rear Admiral Lukin had died in battle; they thought that Rear Admiral Lukin had been rescued and captured by the Demacians.

Just like Admiral Eberhardt, the commander-in-chief of the Black Sea Fleet, who was clearly rescued by the Demacians, but is now believed by most people to have died in battle.

With Admiral Spee of the German fleet doing a good job of keeping secrets and not allowing prisoners to come ashore, the Russo people could not possibly know who was still alive and who was dead.

As tensions between the army and navy around the Black Sea intensified, General Evert, commander of the Romanian Front, dared not remain silent. Moreover, the army's operational situation was becoming increasingly critical, and General Evert needed someone to take the blame for him.

Thus, Evert reported this rumor directly to St. Petersburg and then to the Tsar without conducting a thorough investigation.

Nicholas II was furious upon seeing this. The situation in the Black Sea theater had deteriorated so rapidly in the past week or two because Major General Lukin was a traitor, colluding with anti-Tsarist forces!
The Tsar was finally enraged and ordered that Major General Lukin's family be severely punished.

Although Lusa did not have a punishment like "exterminating three generations of one's family," it could still exile all of Lukin's family members to Siberia and then execute a few of the more serious cases.

This was also necessary during the war to appease the troops and prevent the Romanian Front from losing heart.

All of this finally came to a conclusion on August 15th.

But then, Lelouch's even more vicious follow-up moves came one after another.

He began a large-scale campaign to persuade other wavering officers in the Black Sea Fleet, especially Admiral Eberhardt's close associates, to surrender. Because of Lukin's death, the remaining Black Sea Fleet troops stationed in various rear areas who had not yet defected became unstable, and everyone began to feel insecure.

More and more Black Sea Fleet minefield maps were handed over to the Demacian army by those who defected from the Dark side. Admiral Spee began to divide his forces to carry out more harassment, intercept more Black Sea transport fleets, and even launch more small-scale landings with the help of other enemy sailors who were willing to surrender.

On the south bank of the Dnieper River estuary, in the Crimean Isthmus, and even in some small ports on the Crimean Peninsula, the "rebel army" of Lusa sailors, responding to Demania, sprang up everywhere.

With the battle at this point, the ground defenses of the Luza Romanian Front had completely collapsed.

At this point, it was impossible to distinguish where the enemy was, where our own people were, and where it was still safe. It seemed that wherever there was a coastline, there was a possibility that our own people might suddenly rise up in rebellion in support of the enemy.

Finally, on August 16, the Romanian Front abandoned Odessa, and General Evert led the remnants of one corps in a northward retreat towards Kiev.

On August 20, the remnants of the two divisions guarding Nikolayev also fled east and north, retreating to the east bank of the Dnieper River, preparing to reorganize their defenses along the Dnieper River and join forces with the local second-line troops.

It wasn't that the Demacian army was really that good at sieges, but rather that the morale of the Lusa army was already extremely low, and they didn't want to fight anymore.

Originally, the generals at all levels were afraid that a retreat without a reason would bring them severe military punishment and execution. But now that they had an excuse, they could say that "the navy betrayed us and stabbed us in the back, which is why we couldn't hold out," so of course they wanted to take the opportunity to escape.

This can be seen as Lelouch offering a way out to the demoralized Lusa Army.

Taking advantage of the situation, the Demanian army advanced rapidly. Duke Rupprecht connected the previously occupied territories through multiple infiltrations and landings into one contiguous area. He not only captured the entire coastal area from Odessa to the mouth of the Dnieper River, but also crossed the Dnieper River from the mouth to control the entire Krem Isthmus.

They cut off the land route connecting the Russian army on the Crimean Peninsula with the Kievan Rus' plain, and finally advanced all the way to Yevpatoria Port on the Crimean Peninsula.

On the Crimean Peninsula, only the strategically vital city of Sevastopol remains unconquered by the Lusha army.

Although the Demanian air raids destroyed the heavy coastal fortifications here, Sevastopol was, after all, a fortress that the Russa people had managed for over 50 years. Back in the 1854 war, the Buffalo coalition besieged the city for almost a year before finally capturing it.

So even if external aid is cut off, and even if some local naval personnel waver and defect to the enemy, Sevastopol, plus the Kerch Peninsula, still has half an army group, a total of 4 armies and 20 men, which can continue to hold out.

But after Duke Rupprecht arrived here, he wasn't in a hurry to quickly capture the fortress. The Russa no longer had the Black Sea Fleet; what use was a mere old port of the Black Sea Fleet? It was nothing more than a withered vine and dead fruit.

If the Lusa people want to hold out for reinforcements, then let them hold out.

Their land routes connecting them to the Kievan Rus' plains have been cut off. The Demanian army only needs to hold the line from Yevpatoria to the Crimean Isthmus, then rely on the strategic terrain to confront the Rus' army with high walls and deep trenches, waiting for the Rus' to try to break out or transport supplies, and finally die in waves on the defensive line, continuously bleeding the Rus' to death.

Alternatively, the Lusa people might have taken a chance and tried to sneak across the Kerch Strait by civilian boat under cover of darkness to send reinforcements and supplies to the Kerch Peninsula.

However, the Demacian navy has already gained absolute control of the Black Sea. Even though the Kerch Strait is only 10 nautical miles wide, the Demacians can find ways to intercept the enemy's supplies at sea. Perhaps this route can also be used to bleed the enemy who are taking chances.

By this stage of the Black Sea campaign, the established strategic objectives had been largely achieved.

If a subsequent offensive is to be launched deep into the Kievan Rus's black soil plains, it will be necessary to allow the troops to rest and reorganize, transfer supplies to the front lines for stockpiling, and even wait for new weapons such as armored vehicles and tanks to be gradually deployed to the troops.

This will require at least another month of preparation time.

Despite the seemingly prosperous and thriving situation of the Demanian army in the Kievan Rus' theater, we must not be fooled by the current victories.

But all of this is based on absolute control of the Black Sea, and the resulting "logistics will not be a problem as long as the fighting is carried out in the western coastal areas of the Black Sea".

However, once they leave the coastline and venture inland, their logistical supply system will collapse. A reckless and continuous offensive will only lead to rapid exhaustion; conserving strength and regrouping are essential.

At the same time, the enemy will not stand idly by and watch the Demacian army achieve great success on the southern front.

Since the start of the Black Sea campaign, the Britannians in the southern Mediterranean theater have been extremely anxious, fearing that if the Lussa's control of the Black Sea were to completely collapse, the sea routes to support Lussa would be completely cut off.

Therefore, as early as when Lelouch was helping Rupprecht invade Nikolaev, the landing operation in the Dardanelles Strait to the south had already officially begun.

Bretonnia's First Lord of the Navy, Walton Spencer, originally wanted to make further preparations, feeling that the official landing around the end of August would be more appropriate.

However, after being alarmed by the rapid advance of the Dmanians in Kievan Rus', Walton rushed to launch the Gallipoli landing operation on August 15th – roughly the same day that Odessa fell on the Black Sea side.

Fortunately, the Ottoman army stationed in the Dardanelles Strait and Gallipoli Peninsula region was quite effective.

In addition, General Zanders, the chief of staff that Demania sent to the Ottomans, was also a very capable commander.

Therefore, the Ottoman army is currently able to hold off the Britannian and Italian landing forces for a while on its own.

(Note: The image below shows the latest changes in the Line of Actual Control after the Black Sea Campaign.)
(End of this chapter)