Beiyang Dream

Chapter 18 Germans, you'd better start thinking about how to fight World War I!

September 8, 1889, 9:00 AM, Berlin.

Chang Desheng jumped down from the old horse-drawn carriage of the embassy and stepped onto the stone pavement in front of the War Academy. He first looked up at the four-story gray stone building. The weather was fine, the autumn air was crisp, and the sunlight shone on the walls, making it a little hard to open one's eyes.

Major Goltz was already waiting at the door. He was dressed in a crisp Prussian major's uniform, and his expression was even more stern than when he delivered the notice last night.

"Mr. Chang, please come with me."

Chang Desheng followed him inside. His leather shoes clicked and clacked on the marble floor. As they passed through the long corridor lined with portraits, his eyes swept over the figures on the walls: Frederick the Great, Scharnhorst, Moltke the Elder...

His old Tianjin-style shrewdness resurfaced.

"I took the exam here last time, and I was even thinking that once I made a name for myself, I might be able to get my degree listed here too," he muttered to himself. "Now it seems like I'm one step closer to that day."

Golds stopped in front of a heavy oak door and then pushed it open.

"Please come in."

Chang Desheng stepped inside.

......

The classroom wasn't large, but it was bright and airy. One entire south-facing wall was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, letting in a flood of sunlight that illuminated the entire room. A long table sat in the middle of the classroom, behind which three people sat.

The man in the very center, with graying hair, a thin face, and three general's stars on his epaulets, had small eyes, but when he looked over, his gaze was sharp and piercing—it must be Waldersee. The future Commander-in-Chief of the Eight-Nation Alliance, he was currently the Prussian Army Chief of Staff. The ultimate client, the second most important figure in Germany.

Chang Desheng's mental ledger automatically turned a page.

"If history doesn't turn out any worse for me," he thought, "you'll be leading your troops into Beijing in twenty years. But for now... let's talk about trench warfare."

To Waldersee’s right sat Brauchitsch, the dean of the War College, whose brows were habitually furrowed. A stack of documents lay open in front of him, and Chang Desheng recognized the top sheet from afar—the jagged trench lines and dense engineering markings were his tactical planning answer sheet.

The one on the right...

Chang Desheng glanced over and was immediately startled.

Good heavens, this guy sits there like a mountain. Broad shoulders, thick back, neck as thick as a tree stump, and his hands, when laid out on the table, are so big they could cover half a map. Square face, thick eyebrows, and a neatly trimmed beard. His eyes are fierce, like he's about to bite.

The nameplate in front of him read: Paul von Hindenburg. This was the future imposing president of the Weimar Republic!

"I have to make that." Chang Desheng added another entry to his mental "Presidential Ledger." "For no other reason than that copy of 'True Essays on Mao Zedong,' I can make this friend. Besides, we're all going to be presidents someday, so making a friend will make things easier in diplomacy, won't it?"

He walked to the center of the classroom, stood at attention, raised his hand, and gave Waldersee and Brauchitsch a standard Prussian military salute. The movements were clean and precise; he had learned them from Reiner in recent days.

"Chang Desheng, a Qing Dynasty student studying abroad, was ordered to come and defend his thesis."

He spoke German with a Hanoverian accent, and his pronunciation was impeccable.

Waldersee nodded without saying a word. Brauchitsch waved his hand, gesturing for him to stand at the podium.

Chang Desheng turned around and walked to the small blackboard. The blackboard was clean, and a few pieces of white chalk lay in the chalk box.

He turned around and faced the two generals.

At this moment, Waldersee and Brauchitsch were also sizing him up.

This young man was handsome, with a high nose and deep-set eyes, looking quite spirited, much better than the Chinese in the embassy. He was also tall, probably around 1.8 meters, much taller than the four Japanese candidates. It was just that the braid at the back of his head looked awkward, and his indigo-blue Huai Army uniform—the material was mediocre, and the cut was outdated, incomparable to Prussian military uniforms.

"But he's smart," Brauchit thought to himself. "Perfect scores in math and physics, only three points deducted from English... those grades would be top-tier even at the University of Berlin. Could there really be someone like that in Qing Dynasty China?"

Waldersee tapped his fingers lightly on the table and spoke:

"Chang Xuesheng, Dean Brauchitsch and I have both reviewed your tactical planning questionnaire."

He paused, his gaze piercing Chang Desheng's face like a needle:

"It's interesting, but it also has a lot of problems."

Questions? Go ahead and ask. Chang Desheng thought to himself: If I ask all these questions and end up wiping out World War I, I don't care. This "historical responsibility" is all yours!

Brauchitsch picked up the conversation. He picked up the answer sheet on the table, turned to the last page, and pointed to the dense annotations on it:

"Chang Xueyuan, you devoted a lot of space in your answer sheet to calculating how long the barbed wire was, how deep the trenches were, how wide the communication trenches were, what the probability of the shells hitting the target was... you even calculated how long it would take for a soldier to dig a 100-meter trench."

He looked up and questioned:

"But war is not civil engineering. War is an art—it is mobility, courage, decisiveness, and the art of seizing fleeting opportunities on the battlefield to deliver a devastating blow to the enemy. Your plan is entirely about how to evade, how to stall, and how to buy time with minimal cost."

He leaned forward slightly:

"This forces me to ask—did you design a defensive plan for a French division chief of staff, or was it the instinctive 'national condition analysis' that a Qing Dynasty officer, facing superior Western firepower, would come up with?"

The subtext of this statement is: You're not trying to help France; you're just using your Qing Dynasty's outdated mindset of "more people, less fear of death, and using human lives as bait" in the guise of a European battlefield.

After listening, Chang Desheng did not rush to refute.

"Your Excellency the Dean has a keen eye," he said. "This answer sheet is indeed from the perspective of a 'weak' person."

He paused for a moment, picked up the chalk, and wrote two large characters on the blackboard:

Weaklings!

"On the battlefield, strength and weakness are relative." Chang Desheng turned to look at Waldersee. "France was inferior to the German Empire in terms of population, industrial potential, and even the organization and training level of the army rebuilt after its defeat in 1870. This is a fact that must be recognized."

"When the weak face the strong, the primary goal is not 'to defeat,' but 'to survive.'" He then wrote two more words:

live!

"Survive, wear down your opponent, drag the battle into a rhythm that your opponent is not good at, and turn the exchange ratio to your advantage—that is the only chance of victory for the weak. It has nothing to do with courage; it's arithmetic."

Brauchitsch frowned. He understood what Chang Desheng meant—this kid was quite the smooth talker. He had subtly changed the comparison of strength between "France and Germany" to the universal problem of "any weaker party against a stronger party."

Before he could even open his mouth, Chang Desheng had already switched into his eloquent "expert mode" as a contractor.

"Since we're going to settle accounts, let's do it one by one." Chang Desheng tapped the blackboard. "The core of my defense plan is to figure out a few things."

He drew a simple coordinate system on the blackboard, and then drew an ellipse.

"Suppose that one of your 75mm artillery batteries, with six guns, is firing suppressive fire at a distance of 2,500 meters at a length of 500 meters of my forward trench."

He wrote down some figures: "According to your country's actual artillery measurements, at this distance, the circular error probability is about forty meters. This means that half of the shells will land within forty meters of the aiming point."

"A standard vertical firing trench, one meter wide at the opening and one meter and one inch deep. The effective kill radius of a 75mm grenade inside the trench would definitely not exceed ten meters, probably only..."

He began to write out formulas, calculating the probability of a single shell hitting the "trench and the ten-meter kill zone on both sides." The chalk scratched across the blackboard, and the formulas were concise and easy to read.

"The calculation shows that the single-shot hit probability is about 3.9 percent." Chang Desheng put down the chalk. "That means that to ensure 90% coverage, this artillery company would have to fire at least fifteen salvos, which is ninety shells. And this is only 'suppression,' not 'destruction.'"

Brauchitsch stared at the number, his brow furrowed. Waldersee also narrowed his eyes, lost in thought.

"But that's the ideal situation," Chang Desheng said, changing the subject. "The premise is that my soldiers stupidly stay in the trenches and get bombed."

He drew two more lines on the blackboard to represent "forward trenches" and "reserve positions," connecting them with a zigzag line to form "communication trenches."

"In my defense system, there are three communication trenches, each more than 1.8 meters deep, connecting the forward trenches to the reserve positions 800 meters behind. My observation posts will report when your army fires its first shell."

"Before the formal artillery bombardment began, all infantry on my forward positions, except for a few observation posts, withdrew to reserve positions via communication trenches. Your army's bombardment, which lasted two hours and consumed hundreds of tons of ammunition, actually targeted an empty trench."

He looked at Waldersee: "Your Excellency, is it worth it to use your expensive shells to blast through the dirt?"

"My principle for using firepower is: fire when the enemy is most vulnerable and most crowded—that is, when they break through the barbed wire, step into the minefield, and stop to get over the obstacle..."

He drew a shadow over the obstacle zone: "At this point, the kill benefit of a single artillery shell or a volley of machine gun fire is several times that of the enemy charging in open ground. This is the most cost-effective 'ammunition exchange ratio'."

"Furthermore, as long as my engineers and reserves can build and construct reserve positions faster than you can attack the current positions, this war of attrition can last for seventy-two hours, or even longer," Chang Desheng said. "This is not a test of courage, but of organizational and logistical arithmetic."

He paused, his gaze sweeping over the three generals before finally settling on Waldersee's face.

"This is the last and most crucial account." Chang Desheng's voice was calm, but his words were somewhat frightening. "France has a population of around 40 million, while Germany has 50 to 60 million. According to the traditional, annihilation-oriented fighting style, even if the exchange ratio were one to one, France would have to bleed dry first."

"The goal of my tactics is to break this ratio."

他用粉笔，在「1:1」上打了个叉，在旁边写下「3:1」、「5:1」。

"By optimizing fortifications and firepower, and achieving a casualty exchange ratio of three to one or even five to one in certain areas, it is possible to reverse the overall exchange ratio. Only then can the weaker side offset the numerical and qualitative advantages of the stronger side, dragging the war into a stalemate. In this way, it will be easier to find a political solution."

The classroom was deathly silent.

At this moment, Chang Desheng delivered the final blow.

"Your Excellency the Dean just mentioned 'the art of war,'" he said, looking at Brauchitsch. "But let me be frank, how a war is fought has always been determined by technology."

"In 1870, advancements in breech-loading firearms rendered the 'art' of line infantry tactics obsolete. Now, technology is revolutionizing again." He looked at Waldersee. "I notice the question allows for the use of Gatling guns… I dare say this is the beginning of yet another technological advancement, the beginning of a technological advancement that favors defense!"

"One machine gun can be equivalent to the firepower of a whole company of rifles when defending. Once this kind of rapid-fire weapon becomes widespread, any charge that relies on dense formations, 'courage,' and 'assault' will become suicide."

He put down the chalk, dusted off his hands, and said:

"By then, the 'art' of war will have to shift from rapid maneuver and offensive-style decisive battles to a competition of engineering calculations, firepower systems, and logistics."

"Each generation of equipment brings a new set of tactics. To refuse to acknowledge technological revolutions and cling to the 'art' of the old era is the greatest betrayal of a soldier's duty."

Then came a long silence.

Brauchitsch opened his mouth. He wanted to argue, to say that "war always depends on courage and decisiveness," but those words seemed utterly unconvincing in the face of the rigorous arithmetic on the blackboard, based on mathematics and national power. In the end, he just sighed and leaned back in his chair.

Waldersee moved.

He sat up straight, his gaze shifting from the numbers on the blackboard to Chang Desheng's face.

"Dean Brauchitsch is right. At first glance, this looks like a 'special interpretation of national conditions'," Waldersee said slowly. "A country with a large but poorly trained army uses manpower and dirt to compensate for the gap in firepower and training—it's clever and rational."

Chang Desheng thought to himself: Is this old man going to designate me as a "master of defense with Chinese characteristics"?

Waldersee then changed the subject:

"But the biggest inspiration I got from your analysis is that in the future, on the European battlefield, one of our adversaries—such as France or Russia—when faced with an unfavorable balance of power, will also learn from this approach and build a deep, flexible, and trap-filled defensive system..."

He paused, then asked, word by word:

"What will the German army do then? How many shells will we need to prepare to breach such a defensive line?"

This is not a question for Chang Desheng. It is a question for ourselves, for Brauchitsch, for Hindenburg, and for the future German army.

However, Chang Desheng knew very well that Waldersee could not get the answer from the future German army... at least the German army in 1914 had no ideas.

Perhaps the German Navy can answer this question!

"Therefore, the value of this answer sheet far exceeds that of an entrance exam," Waldersee concluded. Looking at Brauchitsch, he said, "Dean, I believe that from the perspective of 'solving a given tactical scenario' alone, it deserves an extremely high score. And considering the reflections it raises about the entirely new challenges the Imperial Army may face in the future…"

He paused, then his voice was resolute:

"I give it full marks!"

Brauchitsch paused for a few seconds, then slowly nodded: "I agree with Your Excellency the Chief of the General Staff's assessment; this is more than just a tactical report. Chang Desheng, on behalf of the Prussian War Academy, I welcome you!"

Chang Desheng felt a huge weight lift from his heart. He didn't show it on his face, but simply stood at attention again: "Thank you, Chief of Staff and Dean."

Waldersee wasn't finished. He turned to Hindenburg: "You've written it all down?"

Hindenburg closed his notebook and stood up: "Yes, Your Excellency Chief of Staff. Very detailed."

"Form an informal evaluation team in the name of the General Staff Research Bureau," Waldersee ordered. "Use the 'Special Defense Scenario and Countermeasures Proposed by the Eastern Students' as the topic, and conduct a war game exercise. You will lead it and report directly to me."

"Yes!" Hindenburg replied in a deep voice.

Waldersee gave Chang Desheng one last look: "Cadet Chang, I will arrange for you to be sent to the General Staff Headquarters Map Room for your internship. I hope you will gain more...inspiration there."

"I will definitely work hard," Chang Desheng said respectfully.

Major Goldz was about to step forward to signal the end of the defense when Chang Desheng suddenly spoke again.

"Your Excellency, I have another matter to discuss."

Waldersee looked up at him.

Chang Desheng took out a kraft paper envelope from his pocket, held it with both hands, and placed it on the table. The envelope was neatly written in German, sealed with wax, and stamped with the official seal of the Beiyang Minister.

"This is a letter that Lord Yinchang entrusted me to bring to Berlin before my departure, to be presented to His Majesty the German Emperor. It is a letter congratulating His Majesty on his ascension to the throne, and it is also stamped with the official seal of Minister Li of Beiyang..."

He didn't continue, but simply pushed the letter forward a little.