Joseon Needs a Coup - Chapter 405



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#Part 2 Episode 15. The protagonist of an unwanted play (4)

“Director, what should we do now? I predicted that Russia would demand war, but I never dreamed that it would come out like this. My goodness, they are trying to sell Kwantung Province to Japan without even having official contact. I guess I’ll have to live long to see this.”

“This would be the same for Gyeongungung Palace and Gyeongbokgung Palace.”

I looked around at everyone and said, most of them looking like they wanted me to do something. The Marshal, who usually showed sharp insight and was rational and calm, seemed even more so today, as he was filled with uncontrollable excitement and anger, and seemed almost at a standstill.

But there was only one thing I could say here.

“… We can’t just sit back and let this happen, so we have to find a way to break it now. The situation has already happened, and there’s no way we can reverse the decision made by the Tsar of Russia, who could be called the main power of the Savior.”

“But this is a tyranny of the North!”

“So, are you saying that we should declare war on them and join the Allies? If we do that, the British fleet in Hong Kong and the Japanese fleet in Sasebo will immediately storm Chemulpo. If that happens, the events of 1898 will come back to haunt us even more. I understand that you are angry, but let’s all calm down and find a way.”

Some of the Operations staff members were furious, but I motioned for them to calm down. Army Minister Min Yeong-hwan and Chief of the Marshal’s Office Lee Gyu-tae seemed to shudder for a moment, remembering that in 1898 the Anglo-Japanese Fleet had planned a military demonstration near Jemulpo to challenge the honeymoon relationship with Russia.

“Although it is something that no one could have foreseen, let’s find a way to resell our value in a way that is most helpful to us, perhaps at the highest possible price.”

If there is one thing that is fortunate, it is that rather than fighting and shifting blame as is usually the case, they are trying to find a way to resolve the situation. I cleared my throat, feeling a great deal of comfort in the fact that the organization of the Red Army has matured quite a bit.

I put my hand on the pack of cigarettes in front of me and threw the most important question to everyone. It may seem like a simple choice, but it is ultimately the starting point for all the problems we face now, and it is also a question that will determine our future fate.

“Ultimately, isn’t the question which side we take right now?”

“Yes. Of course, in the cabinet meeting, we did end up temporarily agreeing that we should support the negotiating countries that France and Russia belong to, as a matter of duty… But to be honest, I can’t say for sure who will win now.”

I remembered what I said at a cabinet meeting the other day. In response to Foreign Minister Lee Beom-jin’s question about whether it would be possible to send troops to all of Europe in the event of an emergency, I answered this question with no reservations and with reality.

‘The reality is that our military is currently in the process of implementing a plan to create 10 divisions, and we cannot do anything with the 200,000 troops we have now. Even if we were to draft and dispatch troops, it would only amount to one corps at most.’

He said that pouring all our forces into a battlefield where if one operation goes wrong, thousands, no, tens of thousands of people could die in a single day would be tantamount to suicide. It was probably less than a week after the end of the First Battle of Ypres, which could have ended the race to the sea.

At that time, I presented the figures of casualties for just 35 days to the cabinet members, and they were all silent about the apocalyptic results of the battle. Allied casualties 120,000, German casualties 130,000. The average daily death or injury figure of 7,100 was reported by Army Minister Min Yeong-hwan. Even if we were to draft a corps-level force of about 100,000 men, the hell of this world, which would end in just two weeks, had arrived in the savior.

‘In fact, from now on, there will be many battlefields that are even worse than this.’

In addition, he pointed out the practical problem of how the supply needs would be met if the army was mobilized and sent to Europe, which is thousands of kilometers away on the other side of the globe, and how the issue of defending South Manchuria would be resolved.

Above all, there was a real problem. Everyone was trying to ignore it through their brilliant growth and control of South Manchuria, but it had only been ten years since the end of the Far East War. Having overcome the ravages of war and barely managed to make a living, they were in a situation where they did not know what disaster would strike if they got involved in the large-scale war taking place in Europe.

Frankly speaking, I had no diplomatic experience on the scale of intervening in a war with a foreign country, especially one on the level of a European power, and I simply could not make the decision to carelessly get involved in a war where there was no guarantee who would win.

‘Did I tell Lieutenant Colonel Burchani too much then?’

In fact, it seemed like a shame that the Habsburgs were given a glimpse of a future war at that time. Many people may have made fun of the Austro-Hungarian army, calling it a great laughingstock that even a second-rate empire, Serbia, could not defeat, but that was only on the surface.

Even without my help, they would have been able to force the Russians into a coma in Galicia, inflicting hundreds of thousands of casualties on them, but Lieutenant Colonel Burchani, a fairly capable man and a respected figure among the younger factions within the Habsburg officer corps, was there, learning tactics and methods of reorganization to suit their own style, and he was flying high.

In the end, a few words of advice and a few days of observation were the ‘consideration’ that had a butterfly effect that greatly distorted the Eastern Front, and was strangling us. They had won too much of the stakes that Russia had set for themselves, and even I, a man of the future, had turned the front line in a way that was difficult to predict.

“My beak is the nemesis, the nemesis… … .”

“yes?”

“No, continue.”

I muttered to myself and waved my hand to those who were giving me strange looks. In any case, because of this, even I now couldn’t confidently tell the outside world that the negotiating nation would win, just like in the original history. Unless the United States was guaranteed to participate in the negotiating nation as in the original history, the current situation would not get better, but rather worse.

Moreover, the information pouring in from all sides and the cross-checked battle reports made it difficult for the cabinet to sense which side would win. Information was more dangerous when it was overflowing than when it was lacking.

This was because the leadership was unable to determine what was more important and what could be the decisive factor. Therefore, it was possible to refine the information and make a quality judgment based on which information was selected, but unfortunately, this was not the situation at the time.

This also applies to the current cabinet and the Marshal’s Office, which are struggling over who will win the issue of sending troops. In the end, they decided to support the negotiating powers, but to consider the timing of declaring war and sending troops when the fog of war has clearly cleared.

Also, since the production of mortars and heavy artillery, which were essential for the formation of the expeditionary force, was currently being carried out at a low rate, time was also needed. You might point out that this is too cautious, but if you look at the ‘Shell Crisis’ that Britain experienced in 1915, you would think differently. The aftermath of this was so severe that the British wartime cabinet was overturned, and we cannot apply such a problem to us.

Like this, I sat on a chair, stretched out my legs, and tried to roll my head, but it was completely out of the question.

“In the end, you and the cabinet… I think 1916 will be the starting point, yes.”

“Yes, Army Minister. Both sides have clear limits, but I cannot guarantee how long that will last.”

I continued speaking, recalling the stories I had told at the time.

“The present great war is different from previous wars in that it is not about producing new materials and troops, but rather about balancing a scale with a limited number of weights.”

“Yes, we talked about that. Ultimately, the current war in the savior is about balancing the two sides within the stakes, and the one who loses the stakes will lose.”

“And the main office also talked about that. The stakes themselves are much higher for the negotiating country.”

“I also added this story. There is a possibility that the Allies will overturn the front with the money they have, rather than the time the Negotiating Powers have to collect the stakes.”

Min Yeong-hwan hit the nail on the head. Of course, it was the same in real history, but even now, the total amount of materials and goods that could be mobilized immediately was overwhelmingly greater for the allies than for the allies. That is why I specifically mentioned 1916, and that was related to this. If we start to enter around 1916, we will start to see signs of domestic depletion among the allies.

However, we could not immediately bet everything we had on the Allied Powers, as they would win. Naturally, the Russian army’s mobilization force, which had to hold onto the Eastern Front, including Galicia, was greatly depleted.

“But the Russian defeat was so great that I wonder if that is why they are asking us for direct combat troops.”

“Do you know how much they have lost by now?”

“It is estimated that there are at least 800,000, and up to a million. This is the estimate from the start of the war in August 1914 to the present in May 1915.”

As early as 1915, among the materials sent to the German command, there was one piece of incredible information mixed in. It was about a group of Russian soldiers who had been captured armed only with wooden clubs. As of January 1915, the Russian army had secured a total of 6.25 million men, but more than a third of them had not even been given clubs.

And most of the troops who were armed and knew how to fight properly were erased from the books. It was a situation where it could be said that almost all of the Russian army’s standing forces that could be mobilized immediately before the outbreak of war were gone.

“A million?”

“It’s literally true. It’s estimated that they lost up to a million, but the problem is that even in St. Petersburg, they don’t really understand the damage they’ve done. It’s not for nothing that they abandoned Galicia and started to adjust their defensive line, which is called the ‘Great Retreat’. The losses in combat troops are too great.”

Everyone was disgusted by the words of Shin Pal-gyun, who was serving as the 2nd Chief of the Operations Department of the Marshal’s Office. The Russian military’s attrition, which exceeded expectations, was making everyone nervous. Starting with the loss of 300,000 troops in Galicia alone in 1914, the loss of nearly 900,000 troops during the East Prussian Front and the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive combined.

“Besides, we have used up too much equipment in the process. According to the commander of the Guards Cavalry Regiment, a certain Mannerheim, he said that they would soon be fighting with clubs. And even his superior, Corps Commander Bezobrazzov, agreed with him.”

And this figure would have been nearly twice the actual damage suffered on the Eastern Front. Major General Golovin, the quartermaster general of the Russian 8th Army, left the following telegram about this miserable situation:

‘It is difficult to describe in words the situation of our Russian soldiers at the front at the present time, under the attack of the Teutons. Only a very small number of the soldiers deployed at the front are armed, and the rest are waiting for the death of their comrades, in order to take up the rifle when the one carrying it dies… … .’

The situation was so bad that such explicit information had leaked out to us.

“On the other hand, the Allied forces’ losses are only half that of the Russian army. In fact, Russia’s war-fighting capacity is starting to hit rock bottom, while the Allied forces’ losses are lower, so they can fight longer… … .”

In the process, the Allies, quite surprisingly, suffered only about half the casualties of the Russians. The Austro-Hungarian army, which lost about 400,000 men in Galicia, was able to withdraw from Przemysl intact, thereby virtually eliminating the losses of the original historical Przemysl-Carpathian campaign.

The Carpathian Campaign, particularly in the harsh winter of 1914, was virtually lost, allowing the Allied armies to reduce their losses in materiel and men, while the Russians were left struggling with serious losses.

[Author’s Note]

In real history, the battle between Austria-Hungary and Russia in Galicia was a bloody battle. In the story, the Austrian-Hungarian army lost about 900,000 men in Galicia, Przemyśl, and the Carpathians, and the Russian army suffered a huge blow, suffering about 600,000 casualties in Galicia and East Prussia.

The Battle of Przemysl can be seen as one of the reasons why the Austro-Hungarian army lost momentum on the front. The Carpathian Offensive itself was a forced offensive attempt to relieve Przemysl, and since it was mainly carried out in winter, there were also enormous non-combat losses in the harsh cold, so the Allied forces suffered significant losses.

In the end, after the fall of Przemysl, in April 1915, the Austro-Hungarian army had a combat strength of 892,693, less than 900,000 men, which was less than half of the number it had when the war broke out in August 1914. In the end, in order to hold the front and launch the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, which could be called a counteroffensive in Galicia, the Habsburgs had no choice but to take the desperate measure of increasing the military service age from 42 to 50, which accelerated the material and human losses they would suffer from 1916 onwards.

Perhaps, here, the Austro-Hungarian army was able to retreat from Przemysl relatively unscathed and maintain a standing army of 120,000 men, and thus, with the Carpathian Offensive, which had been carried out recklessly, being cancelled out, it is possible to assume that the actual army was at least 300,000 and at most 500,000 more.