The Rise of Australasia

On February 21, 1917, the Balkan Front Alliance Army took the lead in launching an attack on the southern border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The 150,000-strong Australiasco Expeditionary Force led a combined force of 200,000 Romanian troops, 250,000 Serbian troops, 150,000 Greek troops, and 50,000 Montenegrin troops, totaling 800,000 troops in two separate lines, launching attacks on the Croatian region and the Transylvania region.

Among them, the Western Front had a total of 450,000 personnel, consisting of 150,000 Australasian troops, 250,000 Serbian troops, and 50,000 Montenegrin troops.

The Eastern Front had a total of 350,000 personnel, consisting of 200,000 Romanian troops and 150,000 Greek troops.

The purpose of the Eastern Front was to hold down a portion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's troops while threatening the Kingdom of Hungary area.

The main task of the Western Front was to push northwest directly, occupying Croatia and the Dalmatian region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and then to join forces with the Italian Army at Klagenfurt.

As long as the areas of Slovenia, Istria, Croatia, and Dalmatia are completely occupied, the Austro-Hungarian Empire will become a completely landlocked country, and its collapse will not be far off.

In order to ensure the success of the offensive, Australasia has specially transferred hundreds of bombers domestically. Additionally, a large number of airships are transporting supplies and reconnaissance in the skies.

To counteract the formidable firepower of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Australasia has amassed nearly 2,000 firearms this time, with the intention to cause heavy damage to the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire.

With the formal launch of the campaign, hundreds of thousands of Balkan Front troops launched fierce attacks on the Austro-Hungarian Empire's front line.

Although the Austro-Hungarian Empire put up a desperate resistance, the front lines continued to advance smoothly, with both the Eastern and Western Fronts achieving good results.

The Eastern Front has approached the key city of Sibiu in Transylvania. If Sibiu can be captured, the flat Hungarian Plain will be like fish on a chopping board, waiting to be slaughtered by the Balkan Front Alliance Army.

The Western Front advanced along the coast of Dalmatia, preparing to move north to encircle the Croatian stronghold of Zagreb.

Along the way, they faced some resistance from the Austro-Hungarian Empire forces, but these troops had little room to resist in front of the well-supplied Australasian Army troops.

After experiencing two rounds of bombing, these Austro-Hungarian forces became submissive. Some forces, whose morale was already unstable due to the war, surrendered after experiencing the bombardment reminiscent of heavenly wrath.

On March 1, the rapidly advancing Australasian forces arrived at the River Sava. To the north lay Zagreb, the stronghold of Croatia.

Upon reaching this point, the troops finally felt a different intensity of resistance compared to before. Moreover, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had constructed dense defense lines in this area, apparently intending to block the Australasian forces here.

General Thomas, who had already fully engaged with the Austro-Hungarian forces, was well aware of the true fighting power of the Austro-Hungarian army.

As such, General Thomas did not regard the defense lines established by the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a threat and continued employing massive bombing combined with concentrated breakthrough tactics.

But soon, General Thomas discovered that something was amiss. The Austro-Hungarian forces in front of them clearly possessed formidable fighting strength.

Based on the enemy's response and resistance, it was either elite troops of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the German Army Group stationed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Regardless, the opposing force was a powerful elite force with powerful firepower and combat capabilities.

Although the initial probing attack failed, General Thomas did not become disheartened but rather looked forward to the challenge.

In theory, once the elite troops of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in front of them were taken down, the Empire would have few cards left to play.

What General Thomas did not yet know was that this was not an Austro-Hungarian force but a German force, consisting of 15 German divisions and one German Army Group that had rotated in and out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Originally, the German Army Group had lost about two army's worth of troops due to two battles, but the supplemental 15 German divisions restored the group to full strength.

Both Germans and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were confident that this fully replenished, even slightly overpowered, army group could easily block the Australasian soldiers outside of their defensive lines.

After understanding the combat power of the elite forces in front of him, General Thomas did not take it lightly and changed the original attack plan to a large-scale bombing raid, while sending a contingent to outflank and cut off the enemy's supply lines to the defensive positions.

At this point, the more than two million shells prepared by Australasia in advance became useful. Under the continuous bombardment of over 2,000 guns, these shell reserves supported the bombing campaign for more than ten days.

In addition to the aerial bombardment from airships and bombers, nearly three million shells were consumed by the Australasian forces on these defensive lines.

It was clear that such large-scale bombardment had achieved certain results. Even the powerful Germans would fear the damage caused by such a massive barrage of shells.

The Germans are human too, and it is normal for them to have fears. After all, they had previously subjected other countries to extensive bombardments and suppression by firepower, and this was the first time they had experienced the power of such bombardments.

Such a large number of shells were hitting a relatively small area of the defensive position, not only shaving off several meters from the top of the mountain where the position was located, but also causing a large number of casualties among the German military on the position.

By March 14th, about ten days later, the once lush green hill was left with only scorched black land, as well as red streams mixed with blood and various fragments.

Under the cover of tractors modified into the first generation of tanks, the Balkan Allied Forces launched a large-scale offensive.

These tanks were not like those of the British, and because their main body was a tractor, their performance was somewhat guaranteed.

Although their speed was not fast, the probability of them breaking down was much lower than that of the British tanks.

Australasia deployed nearly 200 tanks, with fewer than 20 breaking down, accounting for less than one-tenth of the total.

After experiencing more than ten days of bombardment, the Germans already had a shaky mentality.

Now confronted with a big machine that could withstand bullet sweeps, their mentality suddenly collapsed.

Apart from the Australasia Army's attempt to attack on the first day, these Germans hadn't seen much of the Australasia Army's troops.

Yet the enemy's shells caused considerable casualties to their troops, and some German soldiers didn't know how to counter-attack in a situation where they couldn't see the enemy but were being chased by them.

Now that the enemy was finally planning to attack, they were confronted with a large number of steel-covered machines.

These large steel-made machines offered good resistance to bullets, and the probability of shells accurately hitting them was also very low, which left the German military without any good options for the time being.

As the enemy's army approached, the German commander had no choice but to issue the order to retreat.

On March 17, 1917, the Western Front Army officially besieged Zagreb, which also meant that the offensive of the Balkan Front Army had achieved more than half of its progress.

Perhaps because the Australasia Army was about to defeat the Austro-Hungarian Empire on its own, Italy could not sit idle and immediately launched its own campaign.

The Italians planned to deploy at least 500,000 combat troops, first attacking the Trento and Innsbruck regions from the north, then turning east to attack Riast in Istria, and finally meeting with the Australasia Army in Klagenfurt.

Italian forces even harbored other ambitions; if possible, they wanted to occupy the entire Slovenian region, controlling their border line south of Zagreb, and even occupy the entire Dalmatian region.

If these strategic objectives were achieved, the Adriatic Sea would become an Italian inland sea, greatly expanding Italy's interests in the Balkan Peninsula.

On March 19, Italy urgently launched its campaign and quickly surrounded the Trento region.

There were only two divisions of Austro-Hungarian Empire garrisons in this area, and they were ultimately defeated and retreated after a full-scale attack by the Italians.

Rome's newspapers even regarded this campaign as the clarion call for Italy's rise, and the retreat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's garrison was seen as a defeat of the Allied nations.

Many Italian media outlets heavily praised their government and military, as if Italy had already won and occupied a lot of land.

After the Balkan Allied Forces and Italy launched their offensives consecutively, Neville decided to look for an opportunity to launch a spring offensive to defeat the entire Allied Group.

On March 25th, the spring offensive was launched, and the European continent once again entered the tide of war.

As soon as the spring offensive was launched, it immediately replaced the Balkan and Italian fronts as the line with the most casualties among soldiers every day.

This was also quite normal, as the British and French, and the Germans in the spring offensive had deployed more than 3 million troops, far more than the total number of soldiers deployed in the Balkan and Italian fronts combined.

As time entered April, Zagreb could not withstand the attack of Australasia after holding out for more than ten days.

This also meant that almost the entire Croatian region had fallen into the hands of Australasia, with the Hungarian Plain in imminent danger and the coastal regions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire equally at risk.

On one hand, there was the frantic offensive on the Balkan Front, and on the other hand, the frenzied depletion of Italian troops. Even with the support of the Germans, the Austro-Hungarian Empire seemed unable to hold on for a while.

On April 7, 1917, the Italian Army officially besieged Innsbruck, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire's plan to secure a chance for peace through a beautiful defensive battle became a wishful thinking.

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