Starting with the smashing of Dunkirk

Chapter 94 Kitchener's Resignation

While Lelouch was returning home in triumph, things were far from peaceful across the Strait of Hormuz in Britannia.

海军累计被击沉了1艘战列舰、15艘前无畏舰、3艘战巡，总共19艘大型军舰永久性损失，海军士兵战死溺毙被俘总计1万7千多人。

With such a devastating loss, how can anyone be held accountable?
The army fared even worse; the expeditionary force was completely annihilated, and Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal John French surrendered directly to the enemy. The months-long Battle of Ypres-Dunkirk ultimately ended with the loss of over 21 army soldiers.

The navy's enormous sacrifices to save the army ultimately served only as a fig leaf.

Before the encirclement of Dunkirk was completed, the Burkina Faso army withdrew its heavily damaged 3rd Corps back to the country for rest and reorganization. At that time, a considerable number of soldiers in the 3rd Corps were wounded, which barely preserved the only corps-level unit in the army.

The only units that were successfully rescued as complete units were the 29th Division of the 4th Army and the 1st Cavalry Division of the Cavalry Corps. When they withdrew, they brought with them approximately 2 other friendly troops and wounded soldiers.

Of the veterans in the entire Burkina Faso army, only four division-level units remained; the rest were scattered and disorganized soldiers.

In the end, a total of 45,000 veterans, including the wounded, who had fought in the bloody battles on the European continent returned.

The total number of army veterans plummeted from 260,000 before the war to 45,000. This loss was not just a matter of more than 210,000 people; it would also greatly hinder the speed of army training and expansion.

With 80% of the veterans killed, wounded, or captured, relying on the remaining 20% ​​to train new recruits would slow down the training cycle by at least one full cycle—because the old model of expanding the army by having veterans train new recruits was basically expanding at a rate of three to five times per cycle. And each cycle of training and combat integration took at least six months.

In other words, to form a new regiment with four battalions, at least one battalion of veteran soldiers and three battalions of new recruits are required. Otherwise, if the proportion of veteran soldiers is too low, training efficiency and combat effectiveness cannot be guaranteed.

The total number of veteran soldiers that the country could mobilize (including colonial troops) plummeted from 260,000 to 45,000, which was almost equivalent to losing an entire expansion cycle.

It will take at least six months, until August of this year, for Bretonnia's army to recover to a fighting force of over 200,000. In fact, at that point in Earth's history, Bretonnia's available army could theoretically have approached one million (in reality, it did not, because a large number of them were lost in the Battle of the Dardanelles).

Another six months later, they will be able to launch the Battle of the Somme.

Now that this pace has been abruptly interrupted, the construction cycle of the Burkina Faso army has been delayed by half a year.

The loss of 20 army veterans might not seem like much to their ally, the Frankish Kingdom, as the Franks had lost many 20 men since the start of the war.

But that's because Frankish was a major land power, and before the war, it maintained a million veterans. It trained and expanded its army while fighting, so it could still hold on even if it lost a few more 20.

For a small country like Britannia with a limited land base, 20 troops would severely damage its foundation.

The Dardanelles campaign, which was originally scheduled to begin in the first half of this year, is now unlikely to be launched and will at least be delayed until the second half of the year. Moreover, even if it were to take place, the size and combat strength of the troops would not be comparable to those in the original historical events.

On the Eastern Front, without the presence of the Burgh army to contain the Ottoman army, the pressure on the Russa people will be even greater, and a series of chain reactions may occur.

In response to such heavy losses, starting on February 23, the very day the Demandians across the border were publicizing in the newspapers the news of "capturing and forcing French to land alive," a significant personnel upheaval occurred in the British cabinet in London.

A heated argument ensued, with conservatives launching a fierce attack on the ruling liberals, pressuring Prime Minister Asquith to hold several ministers accountable and remove them to appease public anger. If they weren't removed, then Prime Minister Asquith himself was out of a job!
Before the matter could be resolved, in early March, a series of new bad news came in: a small number of captured Burkina Faso soldiers had defected to the enemy and expressed their willingness to fight for the Demanians! A considerable number of Indian prisoners of war had also switched sides, which was an utter disgrace!
Conservatives then launched a fiercer attack and questioning of Prime Minister Asquith's liberal cabinet!
This criticism reached its climax during the Senate session on March 2.

……

March 2, morning, London, House of Lords chamber.

As soon as the meeting began, Andrew Bonner Law, the leader of the conservatives, launched a fierce attack on the Prime Minister: "Prime Minister Asquith! History has proven that your lax approach is completely unsuitable for leading the Great Britannian Empire in the harsh environment of wartime!"

Subsequently, Max Aitken, a conservative congressman and newspaper tycoon and media mogul, who was a close confidant of Bernard Law, immediately followed up with a full-scale attack:

"Not only are you incompetent on the battlefield, but the people you employ are also devoid of willpower, honor, and loyalty; they are nothing but opportunists! The generals you send out will only grovel and surrender willingly!"

The soldiers under your command actually resented the enemy because "the soldiers' pay is not as high as the wages of the workers in the rear," and even defected to the enemy!
Your finance and economic management departments have completely failed to regulate the chaotic labor market in the rear, allowing bankers and military payroll companies to arbitrarily raise workers' wages, resulting in some key technical workers earning more than ten times the wages of soldiers! This has caused resentment among the soldiers!

After Aitken and the others finished speaking, Bonner Law gave a stern final summary:

"Your Excellency Prime Minister! Aren't you encouraging people to do everything they can to evade military service? From London to Manchester, from Coventry to Glasgow, there are now large numbers of citizens who are forging medical records and disability certificates to avoid military service!"
Everyone knows that working in a factory in the rear earns many times more than risking one's life for the country on the front lines! Isn't your economic management model encouraging people to abandon any sense of honor and only pursue profit? Someone must be held accountable for this! Someone must also be held responsible for the series of defeats we've suffered so far!

Inside the Senate, a torrent of angry demands and accusations quickly brought Prime Minister Asquith to the brink of collapse.

Asquith clenched his teeth, his vision blurred, and he nearly collapsed several times.

He knew that after holding on for more than a week, he could no longer hold on.

We must sacrifice at least one pawn each in the military and the economic sector today, otherwise we absolutely cannot get through this.

He couldn't defend himself, but in his heart he cursed countless times those mysterious and vicious Demanians on the other side.

What kind of heartless scoundrel could come up with such a vicious plan, using the Burkina Faso army as bait on the battlefield, not only annihilating the army but also severely damaging the lured navy?

Who on earth is this heartless bastard who's started a propaganda war? They're taking advantage of the country's absolutely free market economy, targeting its weaknesses, stirring up resentment among soldiers that workers in the rear are earning more than those who are working hard at the front, and causing a massive wave of defections.

I've never heard of those honest, straightforward people in Demacia resorting to underhanded tactics and propaganda wars! Has some guy in Demacia lost his intelligence and emotional intelligence?!

Ultimately, after several hours of struggling to hold on, Prime Minister Asquith was forced to make three decisions:
First, they had to relinquish the vested interests that the liberals had enjoyed at the beginning of the war, and were forced to promise to form a coalition government, bringing in some conservatives to serve as cabinet ministers.

The liberals were elected in 1908 and rightfully took power. In 1911, Asquith pushed forward some reforms and was re-elected to form a new government, successfully winning a second term.

All things considered, if a world war had not broken out, given Bretonnia's absolutely permissive economic policies and its expansionist policies at the time, the liberals could have maintained their power for a long time.

But now, their laissez-faire economic policies have backfired. Those policies only benefited big capitalists, but were detrimental to centralized power and overall planning, leading to a disastrous situation on the front lines.

They can only relinquish a portion of their power.

On that day, after a heated discussion, the opposition conservative heavyweight Bonner Law was finally recruited by Prime Minister Asquith and became the de facto "Deputy Prime Minister," able to intervene in many decisions.

This is the biggest loss for the Asquith cabinet.

Further down the list, Prime Minister Asquith lost two important cabinet ministers today.

Either the Army Ministry or the Navy Ministry must be lost.

Before today, Asquith was still weighing whether to abandon Navy Secretary Walton or Army Secretary Kitchener.

Walton's problem is that he has already led the Navy to two consecutive defeats.

In the Battle of Ostend last November, that madman Hipper destroyed four pre-dreadnoughts and a bunch of auxiliary ships of the Royal Navy without losing a single warship, resulting in a total of 8,000 casualties and drownings among the naval personnel.

This time it was even more outrageous, with more than a dozen large warships sinking and more than 17,000 people killed, drowned, or captured.

After these two defeats, the opposition's calls for Minister Wharton to be removed from office are growing louder and louder.

The only excusable aspect of Walton's situation is that he was implicated by the army in this major defeat. Had the army not been incompetent and surrounded, forcing the navy to go to the rescue, the navy wouldn't have inadvertently fallen into the trap.

As for the final blow from Hipper, the Bretonnia leadership still considers it an accident.

It's just that Hipper was too audacious; he acted completely irrationally, his behavior defied logic, and he was a madman who defied orders and went his own way.

Therefore, the additional losses caused by this point cannot be blamed on Wharton. The opposing conservatives did not intend to nitpick over this detail, but only focused on the previous points, attacking the major issues while ignoring the minor ones.

On the other hand, regarding the Minister of War, the problem with Count Kitchener was that he had lost one less major defeat than the navy, losing only one battle in total. However, the scale of his defeat was much larger than that of the navy. He failed to defend the railway line at first, and later failed to defend Dunkirk.

Moreover, the army's incompetence, the enemy's capture of the coastal fortifications, and the subsequent turning of the guns against the navy caused enormous additional losses to the navy. Even if you are bad at fighting, if you see that the coastal fortifications are about to be captured by the enemy, can't you find a way to destroy them yourself? All these culpabilityes are ultimately about equal in terms of the problems of Kitchener and Walton, perhaps with Kitchener being slightly more serious.

After all, Walton got into trouble while trying to rescue Kitchener.

But today's new developments have completely tipped the scales.

Because of the Demanians' propaganda war against prisoners of war, a large number of army soldiers defected, openly declaring their willingness to fight for the enemy and no longer fight for "a capitalist country where workers in the rear are paid far more than soldiers' pay."

This was not a simple surrender or capture; it was a large-scale, proactive, and genuine act of defection to the enemy. The nature of this was far more egregious.

With this incident, Prime Minister Asquith has no chance of protecting Count Kitchener.

Ultimately, before the end of the day's meeting, he reached a compromise with the opposition: removing Count Kitchener from his post as Minister of War and allowing him to return to the Middle East to continue serving as Governor-General of Egypt and Sudan, responsible for containing the Ottomans on the southern front of the eastern front.

Before the outbreak of the World War, Count Kitchener was already doing this kind of thing. He rose to power by bloodily massacring the rebellion of Sultan Mahdi and using the lives of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese people to achieve his military career.

So Kitchener was more familiar with the business of returning to Egypt and fighting the Ottomans in the Middle East, so let him go back.

He has already proven incapable of coordinating the overall operations of the army.

Seeing that the Prime Minister had finally vacated the position of Minister of War, the opposition did not pursue the matter further. They also believed that Kitchener was at least capable of serving as Governor-General of Egypt, so it was a good use of his talents.

After Kitchener's dismal departure, Prime Minister Asquith privately instructed him: "Go to Egypt for a few months, and I'll find a way to get you back. After all, you have a high reputation in the army. This time, you should cooperate well with Lussa on the Eastern Front and help Lussa tie down a portion of the Ottoman army."

In the future, I will put you in full charge of the army's external liaison duties. Whenever the Imperial Army needs to cooperate with friendly forces, or even carve up the Middle East, you can contribute. If you do a good job, you won't have to worry about not being able to return."

Count Kitchener had no choice but to swallow his anger, and he had a general understanding of his new career path: for now, he was only in charge of the management of colonies such as Egypt and Sudan, but if he performed well, he could also participate in leading the plan to cooperate with Lusa and even the Franks to divide up the entire Middle East.

In this way, if he wins this world war and dismembers the Ottoman Empire, his governorship will not only include Egypt and Sudan, but also other new colonies in the Middle East that the empire will conquer in the future! He will become the governor of the entire Burkina Faso Middle East!

The Prime Minister has painted such a grand picture; now it remains to be seen whether he can live up to it. After all, those lands are still in enemy hands; the Ottomans must be defeated first before he can become the Governor-General of the Middle East.

The Prime Minister also privately promised him that as long as he performed well, the 45,000 army veterans who had fled back, as well as the 200,000 new recruits who were undergoing intensive training, would be reassigned to him, and he would be given priority in supplementing the Middle East theater of operations in the future.

As for Britannia itself, as long as the new recruits hold it, the Royal Navy will prevent the enemy from landing on its territory. The Britannian army on the Frankish front has been completely wiped out, and Bilikin has been entirely occupied by the enemy. Britannia has no intention of returning to the western land front in the short term, so they'll send their army to the southeastern front.

With Kitchener stepping down as Secretary of the Army, Navy Secretary Walton was essentially spared.

The opposition did not press the matter further, allowing Walton to continue and observe further.

After securing his position, Walton was desperately trying to turn the tide. Historically, he was already organizing the Dardanelles landings at this time, also known as the Gallipoli Campaign.

But with the army suffering so many losses, this campaign clearly cannot be launched.

However, his old partner, Count Kitchener, was demoted back to Egypt as governor, and the empire's future focus was on fighting the enemy in the Middle East.

After much deliberation, Walton decided that a landing operation against the Ottomans was still necessary, but it had to be postponed until at least the second half of this year.

After the position of Secretary of War became vacant, and following some maneuvering, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George was temporarily appointed as Secretary of War. A suitable replacement will be found later. Temporarily appointing someone who previously managed finances to oversee the Army is also considered because the Army currently has no combat missions, only reconstruction tasks; having someone in charge of money and resources is sufficient. Once the Army needs to fight again in a few months, a person with military expertise can be selected to take over.

(Note: Historically, Kitchener was not dismissed because he did not suffer such a crushing defeat; he was ultimately killed in battle. After his death, the Asquith cabinet temporarily appointed Lloyd George as Secretary of War before replacing him with a professional.)

Parliament also passed a resolution to establish a new "Ministry of Munitions" during Lloyd George's tenure as Secretary of War, also headed by Lloyd George. This ministry would be specifically responsible for coordinating wartime economic and military production, in order to avoid the previous problems of overlapping management and conflicting policies among the Treasury, War Ministry, and Imperial Trade Commission.

The reason why there were such morale-damaging incidents as “unscrupulous capitalists madly increasing workers’ wages, resulting in workers’ wages being far higher than those of soldiers on the front lines” was because there was no dedicated department that could make the decisions on this matter.

In this unprecedented situation, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of War, and the Trade Commission passed the buck to each other. Unscrupulous capitalists then bribed the heads of these three departments with large sums of money, telling them not to concern themselves with raising wages for workers in military factories, resulting in nothing being accomplished in the end.

If any more cases of unscrupulous capitalists arbitrarily increasing workers' wages occur, Lloyd George will be held specifically responsible; if he fails to handle the situation, he will be considered negligent.

As for the position of Finance Minister vacated after Lloyd George became Secretary of War and Secretary of Munitions, it was given to opposition leader Andrew Bonner Law—in the political tradition of Britannia, the "Finance Minister" is basically equivalent to the "Deputy Prime Minister," and is the highest-ranking official besides the Prime Minister.

If Prime Minister Asquith wants to compromise with the opposition and form a coalition government, he will naturally have to vacate the lucrative position of Chancellor of the Exchequer and give it to someone from the opposition.

Finally, the Asquith cabinet not only needs to dismiss an army minister, but also needs to remove another person as a scapegoat in the aforementioned area of ​​economic management.

The result of the investigation was the dismissal of Walter Lankerman, the chief of the Imperial Trade Committee.

Walter Lankerman was ultimately held responsible for the previous incident of "disorderly wage increases in the rear leading to discontent among frontline soldiers who defected to the enemy," and was directly dismissed from his post and reduced to civilian status.

Later, it was discovered that this person had accepted many bribes from military capitalists and their bankers, and he was immediately imprisoned.

Walter Lankman is not entirely wronged, because he was an extreme supporter of free trade and a free market economy, and opposed to all economic regulation and macroeconomic control.

Now that the war has escalated to this point, he's still advocating for pure free trade and rejecting economic regulation. If he doesn't die, who will?

After Walter Lankerman was dismissed, he was succeeded as the chief of the Imperial Trade Commission by Austin Chamberlain, the former Comptroller of the Treasury under Lloyd George.

(Note: The Austin Chamberlain of today is not the same person as the Chamberlain who said "I brought peace to an era" decades later. He was the older brother of the later Chamberlain.)
……

Two days later, in Vienna, the capital of the Oreo Empire.

Having finally arrived in Vienna by train, Lelouch stretched and relaxed as he got off the train and waited for his attendants to help him with his luggage.

While stretching, he spotted a newsstand on the platform, strolled over, and bought a newspaper.

I just glanced at it and saw a big news story.

Burundi Cabinet Earthquake:
Due to previous defeats and the large number of prisoners of war from the Burma and Indian armies who defected to the enemy.

The Minister of the Army of Burkina Faso and the Chief of the Imperial Trade Council, two ministerial-level officials, were dismissed.

The former Finance Minister was transferred to the position of Army Minister and concurrently Minister of Munitions.

The former Finance Minister was transferred to the position of Chief Executive of the Trade Commission.

Opposition candidate Andrew Bonner Law was brought into the cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position second only to Prime Minister Asquith.

After reading the news, Lelouch couldn't help but smile.

This can be considered as him using a little trick to get rid of two ministers from Burkina Faso.

This is the consequence of being Lelouch's enemy, and it's only the beginning.

Later, he will drag out all those hypocrites in the court of Bu Guo one by one and rub them in the mud.

Let those utterly immoral troublemakers create chaos around the world!
In high spirits, Lelouch decided to have a good drink when he got home today to celebrate this double happy occasion.

"Sir, the luggage has been unloaded. Where do we go now?" The voice of Captain Crozier, the guard company commander, pulled Lelouch back from his smug daydreams.

Lelouch thought for a moment: "Let's go to the Vienna tax office. My brother-in-law works there. Let's persuade him to switch jobs with my sister first."

(End of this chapter)