Chapter 746 Morale is available
Fetter River Line.
As the longest and strongest defense line in East Africa, it has withstood more than a dozen Boer and British attacks since the war began.
In fact, the Fet River Defense Line in East Africa was used to deal with the Boers, and it felt like "killing a chicken with a bull's-eye", just like the Macedonian Defense Line was not used to resist Germany, but Belgium.
Merk has begun to personally command the Battle of Fetter River, preparing to end the passive defense that lasted for three months.
"Twelve o'clock tonight is the time for us to cross the river. We must eliminate the Transvaal people on the other side of the river in a short time. Our army is preparing to attack from three directions to completely eliminate the Boer Republic, the nail in our land. "Merck said in the military headquarters.
Herzendorf asked: "General Merk, why are you launching a night battle? You are completely superior in strength and firepower. There is no need to launch a counterattack at night. This may instead make your operations worse due to the interference of the night. It’s prone to mistakes.”
"It is true that night is not a good time to fight, especially when the enemy is well prepared on the other side of the river. You have to deal with various problems, including a lack of understanding of the terrain and the enemy's defensive offensive." Plittwitz also emphasized on the side .
Merk explained: "Don't worry about this. We have already figured out the enemy's defense deployment, and although the Boers have built fortifications on the other side of the river, their projects are completely incomparable to ours, regardless of our expense. The Te River defense line is impregnable and was built with a lot of manpower, and this kind of manpower was unavailable to the Boers on the opposite side."
The biggest shortcoming of the Boers is their sparse population. Historically, there should have been more than 400,000 Boers at this time in history. However, after the hardships of East Africa and themselves, the national population is probably close to the level of 400,000.
Of course, a large number of "black slaves" were used to build the Feite River defense line in East Africa. There was no need to elaborate on this with the military advisers of Germany and Austria.
Merk continued: "The Boers have continued to attack our army for the past three months, but according to the recent Boer offensives, they have probably reached their limit. So I judge that the situation between the enemy and us has long ago changed, and now The morale of the Boers has probably hit rock bottom, and their morale has also been exhausted by our careless passive defense mode.”
The current situation of the Boers is indeed very bad as Merk said. One is that they have been unable to break through the Fetter River defense line in East Africa for a long time, and the other is that the bottom soldiers are disgusted with war.
A country the size of the Boer Republic now maintains nearly 50,000 troops, which means one out of six Boers is serving as a soldier. Children and the elderly can also be seen everywhere in the Boer army.
If it were not for the material support of the British, the Boer army would have collapsed long ago. Even so, the Boers' mental state is now very bad.
"In the Far Eastern Empire more than two thousand years ago, there was an ancient war called the Battle of the Changshao. A man named Cao GUI said that he would go all out in one go, then weaken again, and finally win by destroying the enemy's morale. "
"We in East Africa actually adopted this method, which depleted the enemy's morale and failed to achieve results after three months of offensive. The recent Boer attacks have appeared weak," Merk explained.
Currently, East Africa, as a country of immigrants, is not bad in all aspects, but it only takes time to cultivate the sense of belonging among its citizens.
The South African War is an opportunity that the East African government sees. Currently, all fronts in East Africa are in the defensive stage. This state of being passively beaten and unable to fight back is definitely very unpleasant for East African soldiers.
Except for the high-ranking officers, everyone in the troops below was holding back their anger, that is, to take back the beatings they had received in vain in the past few months.
Under this circumstance, the sense of belonging of East African army soldiers is actually increasing rapidly. No matter where everyone is from before, they now have a common external enemy.
After three months of training, the East African army has unprecedented unity, and this is also the result that the East African government wants to see. Now it is just about winning the war to build national pride and honor.
This is also the helplessness of immigrant countries. Of course, it is the helplessness of East Africa to be precise. The United States probably does not have this problem.
As a country of immigrants, the United States has various means to deceive the people at the bottom into nowhere, but East Africa does not have such conditions, because under the world situation in the 19th century, the United States' ideology was the most "advanced".
As an autocratic monarchy, East Africa lacks such effective means and does not have a complete aristocratic system like Europe.
The European aristocracy system can be said to be a powerful force in maintaining European monarchy and political stability. Especially in local areas, the aristocracy has great prestige among the people.
Of course, East Africa also has a corresponding political model, but it mainly praises the "Hesingen Royal Family", which is very similar to North Korea in its previous life.
But this situation certainly cannot be maintained for a long time, especially after the demise of the first generation of "grateful" immigrants in East Africa. Currently, East African governments are mainly developing towards the German political model.
Germany has a nationalist banner to use, but East African nationalism is not very reliable. If you want to change this situation, you need to cultivate a sense of identity among East African citizens.
One of the ways to gain a sense of identity is through war. As long as East Africa wins the South African War, East Africa will be able to accelerate national integration in a short period of time.
The United States has a history of hundreds of years and has gone through a long period of development. This is what East Africa lacks. There is no more effective means than war for East Africa to make up for this. Therefore, in Ernst’s mind, the South African War was the real founding battle of East Africa. .
As for the previous East-Portugal War, although it had a similar effect, the shock that Portugal brought to the hearts of the East African people as a sunset was far less effective than defeating Britain, the world's most powerful country.
Herzendorf and Plittwitz naturally did not understand East Africa's pursuit of this ideological aspect, because the two countries did not have such a dilemma.
Of course, there must be an Austro-Hungarian Empire, but the situation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire is very different from that in East Africa. This is the difference between the thinking patterns of Europeans and those of the Far East.
No matter how independent Hungary is, it still supports the Habsburg family. At the same time, although the relationship with Austria is a little worse, everyone is used to it.
And Ernst certainly did not want East Africa to follow the old path of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This political model proved to be ineffective in the world war.
Merk: "As for the war, this time the war will be fought in three general directions at the same time. It doesn't matter if things don't go well here. In the Wenburg area in the east, we are directly bordering the Boer Republic on land, and there is also Oran in the west. With the support of the troops controlling the river, as long as we gain an advantage in one direction, we can inflict a huge blow to the Boers."
"At the same time, I think the Boers will not feel comfortable launching a counterattack at night. After all, this counterattack is the first active attack in East Africa. It is difficult for them to predict this situation. Coupled with the backward intelligence system of the Boers, maybe we They can only react when the troops arrive in Bloemfontein."