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


    The 150,000-strong Australiasco Expeditionary Force led abined 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,unching 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 Austrsian 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, upying Croatia and the Dalmatian region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and then to join forces with the Italian Army at genfurt.


    As long as the areas of Slovenia, Istria, Croatia, and Dalmatia arepletely upied, the Austro-Hungarian Empire will be apletelyndlocked country, and its copse will not be far off.


    In order to ensure the sess of the offensive, Austrsia has specially transferred hundreds of bombers domestically. Additionally, arge number of airships are transporting supplies and reconnaissance in the skies.


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


    With the formalunch of the campaign, hundreds of thousands of Balkan Front troopsunched 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 t Hungarian in will be like fish on a chopping board, waiting to be ughtered 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 Austrsian 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 Austrsian forces arrived at the River Sava. To the northy Zagreb, the stronghold of Croatia.


    Upon reaching this point, the troops finally felt a different intensity of resistancepared to before. Moreover, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had constructed dense defense lines in this area, apparently intending to block the Austrsian 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 bombingbined 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 andbat capabilities.


    Although the initial probing attack failed, General Thomas did not be 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 y.


    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 Austrsian soldiers outside of their defensive lines.


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


    At this point, the more than two million shells prepared by Austrsia 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 Austrsian forces on these defensive lines.


    It was clear that suchrge-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 arge number of shells were hitting a rtively 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 arge number of casualties among the German military on the position.


    By March 14th, about ten dayster, the once lush green hill was left with only scorched cknd, 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 Forcesunched arge-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.


    Austrsia deployed nearly 200 tanks, with fewer than 20 breaking down, ounting for less than one-tenth of the total.n/?/vel/b//in dot c//om


    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 copsed.


    Apart from the Austrsia Army''s attempt to attack on the first day, these Germans hadn''t seen much of the Austrsia 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 nning to attack, they were confronted with arge number of steel-covered machines.


    Theserge steel-made machines offered good resistance to bullets, and the probability of shells urately 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 Germanmander 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 Austrsia Army was about to defeat the Austro-Hungarian Empire on its own, Italy could not sit idle and immediatelyunched its own campaign.


    The Italians nned to deploy at least 500,000bat troops, first attacking the Trento and Innsbruck regions from the north, then turning east to attack Riast in Istria, and finally meeting with the Austrsia Army in genfurt.


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


    If these strategic objectives were achieved, the Adriatic Sea would be an Italian ind sea, greatly expanding Italy''s interests in the Balkan Penins.


    On March 19, Italy urgentlyunched 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 rion 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 upied a lot ofnd.


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


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


    As soon as the spring offensive wasunched, it immediately reced 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 frontsbined.


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


    This also meant that almost the entire Croatian region had fallen into the hands of Austrsia, with the Hungarian in 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 n to secure a chance for peace through a beautiful defensive battle became a wishful thinking.