Chapter 151: What's Odessa? We're Pushing Straight to the Dnieper River!

Lelouch needed only half the night to pry open Admiral Eberhardt's mouth, completely shattering his psychological defenses and making him perfectly willing to cooperate.

Eberhardt even began to fantasize that after Lusha collapsed and the Tsar was killed, he might secure a post in the Volga Demanian nation.

Of course, the future Volga Demanians certainly wouldn't remain in the region stretching from the lower Volga River to the shores of the Caspian Sea. That was Lusha's deep rear.

If a deep, blood-soaked hatred took root between the two nations and peoples, the Volga Demanians would undoubtedly need to migrate further west or south. They would have to carve out a new nation somewhere along Lusha's southwestern border—an area left desolate and sparsely populated by the war—and rely on Demania's traditional sphere of influence for protection.

But that was looking too far ahead.

Regardless, the fact that Admiral Eberhardt was already fantasizing about such distant futures proved just how thoroughly he had submitted to Lelouch's plans.

At this point, if Lelouch told him to sell out any of Lusha's military interests, he would likely do it.

...

At dawn the next day, Admiral Spee had just woken up in the captain's quarters aboard the Goeben when Lelouch walked in. Lelouch produced several documents and handed one to him.

Spee didn't know what interrogation methods Lelouch had used, but he was highly satisfied with the results.

A rough sketch of the minefields—if accurate—meant they wouldn't have to slowly sweep for mines. They could silently press deep into the harbor.

Although the Empire already possessed the heavy, bottom-scraping Minesweeping Chain, the element of surprise between the two methods was vastly different.

"Congratulations. You succeeded in just half a night," Admiral Spee said sincerely.

"This is nothing," Lelouch replied. "That old relic only remembered the safe channel outside Nikolaev. I was hoping he could produce the safe navigation charts for Sevastopol and Yevpatoria as well. But it was too complicated, and he couldn't remember that much. We'll have to wait until our forces break into Odessa or Nikolaev to seize them from the safes in their naval squadron headquarters."

"So what do you need the navy to do with this chart now?" Admiral Spee asked. "Or should I handle it slowly as I see fit?"

Lelouch weighed his words for a moment before producing two more documents. "I also have a list here, along with several letters.

"The list contains the trusted subordinates Admiral Eberhardt believes can be persuaded to surrender, as well as other relatively reliable Volga Demanian officers in the Black Sea Fleet. It also includes some close associates he frequently interacted with at the Nikolaev Shipyard and the Odessa shipyard.

"As for the letters, they are secret messages of persuasion written in his own hand and stamped with his personal seal. They analyze the Tsar's inevitable downfall and point out that if Lusha collapses and becomes a nation-state rather than an aristocratic one, Volga Demanian officials will undoubtedly have no future.

"In short, with the Black Sea Fleet destroyed, the enemy forces along the coast in a state of panic, and the mutual suspicion between their army and navy at an all-time high, we can exploit this opportunity to sow even more discord. We need to make as many enemy naval personnel as possible feel like they're about to be purged, and make as many army personnel as possible believe the navy is going to stab them in the back, ensuring they lose the will to fight to the death and only want to run..."

Admiral Spee couldn't bear to listen to it all and quickly interrupted. "Just tell me exactly what you need the navy to do. Also, do you have Field Marshal Rupprecht's authorization?"

"Of course," Lelouch said. "Everything I do has been requested and reported to the Field Marshal in advance. However, some details have been adjusted, requiring the coordination of some additional resources. I'll get it sorted out soon."

Admiral Spee understood implicitly. He immediately arranged for a large torpedo boat to ferry Lelouch to shore, allowing him to coordinate resources with various parties and finalize his schemes.

...

After coming ashore, Lelouch quickly requested an audience with Duke Rupprecht at the forward command post in Ovidiopol. Utilizing his latest gains from persuading Eberhardt to surrender, he presented a plan to maximize the mutual suspicion between Lusha's army and navy.

Naturally, this divisive plan wouldn't collapse the enemy forces overnight, but it would absolutely deal a massive blow to their morale and temporarily manufacture internal chaos. The final tasks of sieging cities and annihilating the enemy still relied on their frontline forces fighting hard battles; that wasn't something Lelouch could handle himself.

Everyone had their own expertise. In this Black Sea campaign, Lelouch's greatest contribution was psychological warfare.

Fortunately, the enemy they currently faced was a giant with feet of clay, a nation completely fractured in loyalty like Lusha. If it were twenty years later and Lelouch had to deal with a unified, ideologically driven nation, such underhanded tactics wouldn't work at all.

...

Two days later, the fierce siege on the main front of Odessa continued.

Both armies suffered at least four-digit fatalities every day, not to mention a far greater number of wounded and sick.

Meanwhile, a fresh plan for a flanking amphibious harassment operation had just been rolled out.

From the naval POWs fished out of the sea after the sinking of Lusha's Black Sea Fleet, Lelouch urgently enlisted a number of recently brainwashed Volga Demanian sailors, convincing them to forsake the darkness for the light.

Under the propaganda barrage orchestrated by Lelouch, these men realized the Tsar was doomed, and that remaining loyal to Lusha would only end in disaster for the Volga Demanians. Thus, they were genuinely willing to fight for their own people, shedding their old-fashioned feudal loyalty to the Tsar.

Once he had urgently indoctrinated these men, Lelouch procured several recently captured Lushan supply ships. Still flying Lushan flags, these vessels carried a contingent of his core troops who spoke the Lushan language, mixed with these newly converted defectors, to launch a surprise amphibious assault on Nikolaev's port and shipyard.

Lelouch didn't intend to rely purely on brute force for this raid. He also had Admiral Eberhardt's surrender letters reproduced, intending to use them to create chaos and force the surrender of a portion of Nikolaev's port defenders and shipyard workers.

Since physical letters were difficult to deliver, and out of a need to protect his pawn, Admiral Eberhardt, it wasn't currently viable to scatter them as leaflets. Therefore, Lelouch decided they would transmit short-range naval coded telegrams once they were within fifty kilometers of the port, using the Black Sea Fleet codebook Eberhardt had surrendered. They could even pepper the messages with inside secrets between Admiral Eberhardt and his subordinates to boost their credibility.

With such a multi-pronged approach, seizing the port of Nikolaev and its shipyard during the chaos wouldn't be too difficult.

But taking the port wasn't Lelouch's ultimate goal. His main objective was to forge the stereotype that "any Black Sea Fleet sailor who comes ashore might mutiny." This would cause the remaining loyal sailors of the Black Sea Fleet to face discrimination and suspicion, lose the trust of Lusha's high command, and create a self-reinforcing loop that amplified Lelouch's propaganda work.

This was the most common phenomenon before the collapse of any feudal dynasty. At the time, perhaps few in the Western world had studied such matters, but in the Eastern world, which had seen dozens of dynastic changes, any educated person who studied history understood this principle.

Therefore, an Eastern soul like Lelouch, intimately familiar with the Twenty-Four Histories, held a massive advantage when orchestrating these schemes.

How many ancient dynasties had truly fought to the bitter end before collapsing? They only resisted resolutely when facing foreign invasions—what Gu Yanwu referred to when distinguishing between "the fall of a state" and "the fall of the world."

If it was merely a "change of surname and title," once more than half the realm was lost, the former emperor would begin to doubt the loyalty of his subordinates across the board. In turn, his subordinates would fear for their own lives, and the latter half of the dynasty's fall would conclude very quickly.

However, the ancient Western world rarely saw sweeping dynastic overhauls of a unified empire. The vast majority of ancient Western nations were destroyed by foreign countries, not overthrown by their own people.

This resulted in Western historians and political practitioners lacking experience in this area. They didn't quite understand how to deal the final blows to a decaying feudal empire on the verge of dynastic change and accelerate its demise.

Historically, when later scholars drew lessons from the First World War and thought they understood, they would overcorrect and veer to the opposite extreme.

It had to be said that in this regard, those Western scholars studying historical lessons fell far short of their Eastern counterparts.

They didn't even know the principle—one that even an Eastern middle schooler understood—that "every dynasty, in its desperate attempt to avoid the fate of its predecessor, will overcorrect to the opposite extreme and ultimately destroy itself."

Even an Eastern middle schooler knew that because the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms perished under the logic of "he who has the strongest army and sturdiest horses shall be the Son of Heaven," the subsequent Song Dynasty crippled its own military out of overcorrection, leading to its demise.

In the West, after researchers absorbed the lesson that "they overestimated Lusha's cohesion during World War I, and should have ignored that idiot Schlieffen's plan in favor of the Elder Moltke's strategy of attacking the east and defending the west," they rashly assumed that "the USSR is just a dilapidated building; all you have to do is kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."

In World War I, they grossly overestimated the cohesion of a feudal empire, only to vastly underestimate the cohesion of a newly born organizational form during WWII.

During World War I, they mobilized so thoroughly under Ludendorff's absolute "Total War" that they essentially imploded. Then in WWII, they grew so paranoid, fearing the slightest burden on their populace would cause a similar collapse, that they tiptoed around until 1944 before finally fully transitioning to a wartime economy.

If only they had experienced a dozen dynastic overhauls of unified empires like the East had, and seen more of the world, they would know that "when absorbing the lessons of the previous dynasty, you cannot overcompensate. You cannot slam on the brakes right after flooring the accelerator, nor can you violently yank the rudder from hard port straight to hard starboard."

...

Backed by Lelouch's experience in "how to accelerate the internal collapse of a feudal empire"—which vastly outstripped that of Western historians and politicians—his plans swiftly made near-perfect progress.

On the evening of August 10th, Rommel led the vanguard landing force—comprised of Demanian soldiers fluent in the Lushan language and the recently turned Volga Demanian sailors from the Black Sea Fleet. Quietly slipping through the pre-scouted safe channel, they steered their Lushan-flagged supply ships right up to the docks of Nikolaev.

In truth, prior to the operation, Admiral Spee had ordered a brief sweep to confirm the route. The sweep revealed no mines, proving the safe channel intel provided by Eberhardt was completely accurate.

After docking, the first wave of soldiers to disembark were even dressed in Lushan uniforms. The message they transmitted before entering the port was, "A transport fleet was intercepted by the Demanian Navy in the open sea and forced to flee back to the friendly minefield. Requesting temporary shelter."

In short, they fully exploited the panic and administrative chaos of the Lushan sailors to land amid the confusion.

One couldn't fault the Lushan Navy for lax management; the primary issue was that the main capital ships of the Black Sea Fleet had been destroyed, forcing the surviving sailors and ground crews to hastily transition to other duties.

With massive numbers of personnel drafted to assist the army, Nikolaev couldn't even fully staff its port authority. Under such conditions, chaotic management was entirely normal.

Ultimately, Rommel successfully executed the surprise landing. Simultaneously, he had the Radio Sets on the nearby ships transmit encrypted naval telegrams to the shore, hoping that the small faction of Admiral Eberhardt's former subordinates in Nikolaev would recognize the reality of their situation.

Naturally, the city of Nikolaev housed more than just reassigned Lushan sailors; it also held army contingents.

The Romanian Front had deployed an entire army corps cumulatively across the defensive sectors surrounding Nikolaev.

Lelouch showed no mercy to those army units. He simply used the three Pre-dreadnoughts to blast the hell out of them, unleashing the full fury of their 240mm main batteries and 150mm secondary batteries.

With the Black Sea Fleet failing to stop Rommel's landing, the former naval personnel plunging into panic, and the army caught entirely off guard by the bombardment, the situation inside Nikolaev rapidly descended into chaos.

This city was still considered the rear, situated a hundred kilometers from the Odessa frontline, and nestled deep within a bay. The local garrison never imagined they would be subjected to a sneak attack.

Rommel took only a single night to seize control of the port and the shipyard, after which he engaged in fierce urban warfare with the enemy in the city.

Throughout the process, several thousand former Black Sea Fleet sailors and their commanding officers—seemingly realizing the Tsar's cause was lost and persuaded by their old commander's coded telegrams—chose to defect and surrender on the battlefield.

The workers at the shipyards and docks harbored no loyalty to the Tsar whatsoever and promptly surrendered as well.

The flames of war instantly engulfed the entire western coastline of the Great Plain of Kievan Rus. The Lushans were beaten into a stupor, finally realizing that the enemy could strike from any port along the Black Sea coast, and they simply couldn't defend against all of them.

While it was true they had encountered their first amphibious assault on July 28th at the mouth of the Dniester River, it was still only August 10th. Given the pace at which the Lushan military machine adapted and evolved during the era of the First World War, it was perfectly normal that they hadn't formulated countermeasures or made targeted deployments for amphibious warfare within a mere two weeks.

Falling for the same trick twice was hardly a rare occurrence.

...

The next day, inside the Romanian Front headquarters in Odessa.

Upon hearing that Nikolaev had been ambushed, the Front commander, General Evert, exploded in a fit of absolute rage.

"How is this possible? The enemy managed to silently traverse at least sixty nautical miles of minefields and land directly in the port of Nikolaev? And they used ships flying our flag, with a first wave of soldiers heavily comprised of Lushan speakers?"

Having never experienced special operations before, General Evert was completely incapable of comprehending it.

The enemy employed far too many flashy, unconventional tactics at such a rapid pace that his brain simply couldn't process them in time.

After his mind spun in chaos for several hours, he finally pieced together a single conclusion: the navy was riddled with traitors! They were stopping at nothing to destroy the Tsar, perfectly willing to commit treason to see it done!

The more he thought about it, the more terrified General Evert became. He involuntarily made the exact move Lelouch was hoping for: he immediately ordered the disarmament of the several thousand former sailors and naval ground crews recently conscripted to defend Odessa, reverting them to logistics personnel to prevent them from defecting mid-battle!

After all, large numbers of their former comrades—the former Black Sea Fleet sailors garrisoned in Nikolaev—had already defected to the enemy!

With the former naval personnel in Nikolaev setting such a precedent, the old naval units in Odessa, Yevpatoria, and Sevastopol were obviously untrustworthy. In such chaotic, war-torn times, one could never be too careful.

Yet this move by General Evert only further exacerbated the conflict between the Lushan army and navy around the Black Sea.

Originally, General Evert only wanted to quietly disarm a single unit due to the urgency of the situation; he hadn't intended to widen the scope of his crackdown.

But Lelouch was sitting right across the lines, watching their every move.

With a propaganda genius like Lelouch using a magnifying glass to find flaws, any extreme action taken by General Evert would be instantly seized upon and magnified.

...

Mere hours after Evert made his foolish move, back at the forward command post of the German 6th Army in Ovidiopol.

Upon receiving the news, Lelouch immediately sought out the Duke to pitch his next countermeasure:

"Excellent. We can execute the next phase of our plan. Now that Evert has disarmed the first unit of former naval personnel he deemed unreliable, we need to broadcast that he mistrusts the entire navy.

"We can even claim that the Tsar no longer trusts anyone in the Black Sea Fleet. We can take it a step further and spread the rumor that Rasputin—the mystic by the Tsar's side—just cast an astrological reading, declaring that the Empire will only weather this crisis if all the traitors in the Black Sea Fleet are slaughtered!"

It didn't matter how absurd the rumors were. Fabricating lies cost them absolutely nothing.

Over the past few days, the Duke had grown accustomed to Lelouch's rhythm of thought and understood much of the groundwork for his overarching plans. He wasn't surprised this time, simply nodding to give Lelouch free rein:

"The usual rules apply. Don't worry about the frontline battles. Focus all your energy on spreading these rumors."

Reassured, Lelouch boldly continued to orchestrate things according to his vision.

On August 12th, terrifying rumors began circulating through every possible channel among the Lushan garrisons in Odessa and Nikolaev.

These avenues included Demanian soldiers shouting from the front lines, infiltrators disguised as Lushan soldiers and civilians spreading whispers, and even encrypted radio broadcasts from the former Lushan Black Sea Fleet urging surrender.

The distribution of these rumors was clearly divided; convoluted narratives, for example, were ill-suited for ordinary soldiers shouting across the battlefield.

However, the Demania Empire already possessed a certain level of intelligence and propaganda infrastructure, so Lelouch didn't need to micromanage these details personally.

Demania had numerous spies planted in Lusha. Although their usual efficiency was rather low, at critical moments, all Lelouch had to do was prepare the propaganda scripts, and these agents would always find a way to disseminate them.

Lelouch simply needed to issue orders using his authority as the Deputy Director of the War Office Propaganda Bureau (in charge of external propaganda). He didn't have to concern himself with how his subordinates practically executed them; to him, it was merely a black-box resource to be mobilized as a whole.

In short, within just two days, a rumor started sweeping through the Lushan ranks: "Just who betrayed the Tsar and sparked this massive wave of naval defections?"

All fingers pointed to the already deceased commander of the Odessa squadron, Major General Lukin, and a small cadre of his associates. Of course, the Lushan army didn't know that Major General Lukin had died in battle; they assumed he had been plucked from the sea and captured by the Demanians.

This was just like how Admiral Eberhardt, the commander-in-chief of the Black Sea Fleet who had been fished out by the Demanians, was widely believed to have died a martyr for his country.

With Admiral Spee maintaining strict secrecy within the German fleet and keeping the POWs off the shore, it was impossible for the Lushans to know who was truly alive and who was dead.

As the animosity between the army and navy around the Black Sea escalated, General Evert, commander of the Romanian Front, could no longer feign ignorance. Furthermore, with the army's combat situation growing increasingly critical, Evert needed a scapegoat.

Consequently, Evert directly relayed these rumors to Petersburg—right to the Tsar himself—without conducting any thorough investigation.

Nicholas II flew into a towering rage upon reading the report. So the reason the Black Sea theater had deteriorated so rapidly over the past week or two was because that bastard Lukin was a traitor colluding with anti-Tsarist factions!

Humiliated and infuriated, the Tsar issued a decree to severely punish Major General Lukin's entire clan.

Though Lusha didn't have a punishment like "exterminating the three clans," exiling all of Lukin's family to Siberia and executing a few of the more problematic members was certainly achievable.

This was also deemed a necessary wartime measure to placate the troops and prevent the Romanian Front from feeling disheartened.

All of this was finalized on August 15th.

But soon after, Lelouch's even more vicious follow-up moves arrived in quick succession.

He initiated a massive campaign to coax surrender from other wavering Black Sea Fleet officers, particularly Admiral Eberhardt's loyalists. Driven by the news of Lukin's fate, the remaining rear-echelon naval garrisons that hadn't yet defected began to destabilize, every man fearing for his own life.

More and more Black Sea Fleet minefield charts were handed over to the Demanian Army by defectors. Admiral Spee began splitting his forces to launch more harassment operations, intercept more Black Sea transport fleets, and even mount numerous small-scale amphibious landings, coordinated with enemy sailors eager to surrender.

Along the southern bank of the Dnieper River estuary, the Crimean Isthmus, and even various small ports on the Crimean Peninsula, Lushan naval Rebel Forces sprang up everywhere in response to Demania's call.

With the war reaching this point, the ground defenses of the Lushan Romanian Front completely collapsed.

It was no longer possible to tell where the enemy was, who was friendly, or what areas were safe. It seemed that in any coastal region, their own men might suddenly rise in rebellion and answer the enemy's call.

Finally, on August 16th, the Romanian Front abandoned Odessa. General Evert led the remnants of one army corps fleeing north toward Kyiv.

On August 20th, the battered remnants of the two divisions defending Nikolaev also fled east and north, retreating to the eastern bank of the Dnieper River. They planned to rely on the river to reorganize their defenses and merge with the local second-line units.

It wasn't that the Demanian forces were truly so devastating in their siege capabilities; rather, the Lushan army's morale had plummeted to rock bottom. They simply didn't want to fight anymore.

Previously, officers at all levels had feared that retreating without cause would invite harsh military punishment, up to the firing squad. But now they had an excuse. They could claim, "We couldn't hold the line because the navy betrayed us and stabbed the army in the back." Naturally, they took the opportunity to flee.

In a way, Lelouch had handed the demoralized Lushan army a convenient ladder to climb down.

The Demanian Army seized the momentum to advance triumphantly. In a single stroke, Duke Rupprecht connected the various bridgeheads established through their scattered landings. He not only captured the entire coastal strip from Odessa to the mouth of the Dnieper River, but pushed across the river to take control of the entire Crimean Isthmus.

He severed the land connection between the Lushan forces on the Crimean Peninsula and the Great Plain of Kievan Rus, fighting all the way down to the port of Yevpatoria on the peninsula itself.

On the Crimean Peninsula, the Lushan military was left with only their final, chokepoint fortress city of Sevastopol still standing.

Even though the earlier Demanian airstrikes had destroyed the heavy coastal defense guns here, Sevastopol was a fortress the Lushans had been developing for over fifty years. Back during the war in 1854, the Britannian-French Allied Forces had to besiege this very city for nearly a year before capturing it.

Therefore, even cut off from external aid, and even with a portion of the local navy wavering and defecting, the forces inside Sevastopol—combined with those on the Kerch Peninsula—still amounted to half an army group. With a total of four corps comprising 200,000 men, they could continue to mount a desperate defense.

However, after pushing this far, Duke Rupprecht was in no rush to quickly seize the fortress. Since Lusha no longer had a Black Sea Fleet, what use was an empty home port? It was nothing more than a dead fruit hanging from a withered vine.

If the Lushans wanted to fiercely defend it and wait for reinforcements, let them.

Their land corridor to the Great Plain of Kievan Rus was already severed. The Demanian Army only needed to hold the line from Yevpatoria to the Crimean Isthmus, relying on the natural chokepoints, high ramparts, and deep trenches to face off against the Lushan forces. They could just wait for the Lushans to try breaking out or running supplies, bleeding them dry as wave after wave threw themselves to their deaths against the defensive line.

Alternatively, the Lushans might harbor delusions of slipping civilian ships across the Kerch Strait under the cover of night, ferrying reinforcements and supplies to the Kerch Peninsula by sea.

But the Demanian Navy held absolute naval supremacy over the Black Sea. Even if the Kerch Strait was only ten nautical miles wide, the Demanians would find a way to intercept and slaughter the enemy's supply runs at sea. This route, too, could serve to bleed the hopeful enemy dry.

With the Black Sea campaign reaching this stage, their primary strategic objectives were essentially achieved.

Launching a subsequent fierce assault into the deep heart of the black-soil Great Plain of Kievan Rus would require the troops to rest and regroup. They needed to transfer and stockpile supplies at the front line, and even wait for new weapons like armored cars and Tanks to be gradually issued to the units.

That would require at least a month of preparation.

The Demanian Army's current string of victories in the Kievan Rus theater seemed as unstoppable as a blazing fire.

Yet all of it was built upon their absolute naval supremacy over the Black Sea, and the resulting reality that "as long as we fight along the western coast of the Black Sea, our logistics and supplies won't fail."

Once they left the coastline and pushed deep inland, their logistical supply system would still collapse. Rashly continuing the offensive would only lead to swift exhaustion; gathering their strength and preparing anew was mandatory.

Meanwhile, the enemy wasn't going to sit idly by and watch the Demanian Army carve out glorious victories on the southern stretch of the Eastern Front.

Ever since the Black Sea campaign began, the Britannians down in the Mediterranean Theater had been frantic, terrified that after Lusha's naval supremacy in the Black Sea utterly collapsed, the maritime supply route supporting Lusha would be completely choked off.

Therefore, right around the time Lelouch was helping Rupprecht capture Nikolaev, the amphibious landing campaign down south at the Dardanelles had already officially commenced.

Originally, the Britannian Admiralty Minister, Wharton Spencer, had wanted more time to prepare, feeling that late August would be a more suitable time to officially launch the landing.

But spooked by the breakneck pace of the Demanians in Kievan Rus, Warton scrambled and forced his troops to launch the Gallipoli Peninsula landing operation on August 15th—which, doing the math, was roughly the same day Odessa fell on the Black Sea front.

Fortunately, the Ottoman Empire army garrisoning the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Peninsula proved fairly competent.

This was coupled with the formidable command abilities of General Sanders, the Chief of General Staff dispatched by Demania to the Ottomans.

Thus, the Ottoman forces were currently able to rely on their own strength to hold off the landing forces of Britannia and Italy for the time being.

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