Chapter 237: If I Can't Scheme You to Death, I'll Take George V's Surname

Lelouch had profound reasons for temporarily sparing the Volga River–Caspian Sea lifeline. He wanted to dangle a final sliver of hope before Lusha and Britannia, baiting them into continuously doubling down on their bets. Ultimately, he aimed to bleed the britannian dogs as dry as possible while they tried to supply Lusha.

Even now, however, he wasn't entirely certain his plan would succeed.

Many of the details were still just hazy concepts; he had to take it one step at a time. He needed to see if the right conditions materialized and whether the enemy took the bait before he could figure out how to counter their next move.

War was full of variables; no one could plan everything perfectly in advance.

That was why he hadn't revealed his full plan to anyone, not even Field Marshal Rupprecht. The time simply wasn't right. Many of his predictions relied on his foresight as a transmigrator, and he had no way to explain where he was getting his intelligence.

But now, with the window of opportunity rapidly approaching, the situation was clearing up. Many of the details Lelouch had tracked using his transmigrator's foresight were gradually being verified.

Lelouch felt it was finally time to reveal a little bit to Lieutenant General List, an absolute confidant, so the man could help him set the trap.

After all, Lieutenant General Dellmensingen still resented him and might stir up trouble. Lelouch was freshly promoted and lacked a deep foundation of support. Having an ironclad co-conspirator who would never leak his secrets would make executing his orders much easier.

With that in mind, he gradually sorted out what he needed to tell List right now and what he should save for later.

"As long as our army refrains from cutting off the Volga River and the Caspian Sea, and instead strikes deep to conquer the Caucasus first, the Britannians will be forced to adapt once critical nodes like the Baku Oil Field fall. If they still want to use the Caspian Sea route to supply Lusha, they'll have no choice but to throw everything into the Iraqi and Persian theaters. They'll scramble to secure key nodes like Baghdad, Mosul, and Tabriz, all while trying to maintain a firm grip on Tehran.

"So far in this war, the Empire and Britannia have mostly been in a tug-of-war between Baghdad and Basra in the Middle East theater. The Empire dispatched Marshal Goltz to hold down Baghdad, coordinate the Osman forces defending the Iraqi heartland, and attempt a counteroffensive into the vast swaths of Persia that Britannia and Lusha carved up. Britannia, meanwhile, has leveraged its naval dominance to maintain control over the port of Basra at the mouth of the twin rivers in the Persian Gulf.

"If we secure the Caucasus region, our 6th Army can split off a detachment to march south, supporting Baghdad through Tabriz, and pushing back against Basra and Tehran. When that happens, the Britannians will be forced to fight to the death to hold Basra and Tehran—and I have a plan that will bring complete ruin to the Britannian army and navy when they try to reinforce the Middle East!"

Lieutenant General Eugen List had been listening intently. When Lelouch paused, he felt a flutter of apprehension and carefully asked, "Am I allowed to hear the details of this scheme? If the fight reaches the Middle East, how exactly do you plan to wipe out the Britannians there, Chief of Staff?"

Lelouch gave him an encouraging smile and replied with a guiding question, "Don't just listen; use your own head. Do you know the current situation in the Middle East? Can you see the advantages and disadvantages between us and the enemy right now?"

Lieutenant General List pondered this seriously. "I know a little about the current situation in the Middle East. I know the fighting wasn't going very smoothly before, locked in a war of attrition. However, Marshal Goltz returned to the Baghdad frontlines despite his illness this month, so things should be taking a turn for the better. As for how much better, I can't say.

"As far as I know, the frontline combat strength of the Britannians and Lushans in the Middle East is vastly inferior to the Empire's elites. The problem is that the Empire deployed far too few elite troops to the region. Nominally, there's a single corps, but in reality, it's completely understrength—they can't even scrape together two full divisions. They're primarily relying on those 200,000 Osman troops to do the fighting.

"Britannia's main advantage is that they've been using the Persian Qajar royal family as a puppet for years prior to the war. Consequently, they've levied a considerable number of local Persian puppet troops, forming the 'South Persia Rifles' and 'Dunsterforce.' They also have an endless stream of colonial troops pulled in from India, and they can continuously supply them locally via maritime routes across the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.

"On the other hand, supplying the Empire and Osman armies near Baghdad is a nightmare. They have enough food, but getting anything else to the front lines is incredibly difficult because Osman's domestic infrastructure is abysmal.

"For years before the war broke out, the Empire pitched the 'Baghdad Railway Plan' to the Osmans, attempting to build a line connecting Berlin to Istanbul, and on to Baghdad and Basra. But Britannia believed this would severely threaten their hegemony in the Indian Ocean, so they constantly threatened and obstructed the project.

"I remember that before the war, they only managed to finish the sections from Istanbul to Ankara and Konya. As for the railway stretching further east from Konya, crossing the Eastern Taurus Mountains to Mosul, the Empire secured the rights for it as early as 1903. However, due to continuous Britannian obstruction, it was never built before the war started, and there certainly haven't been any resources to build it since.

"Now, to transport weapons, ammunition, and other non-food supplies to the front lines, the Osmans rely entirely on trains to reach Konya. From there, they use human and animal labor to haul everything over the Eastern Taurus Mountains into the northwestern Iraqi region, before transferring it back to road or rail transport.

"That route is far too difficult to traverse, which is why they can only sustain a small army at the front, and even they are short on artillery and shells. If their supplies were just a bit more abundant and could support a larger force, the combat strength of the Britannians and their colonial servant troops in the Middle East wouldn't even be worth mentioning!

"However, it seems there's been a new shift in the situation recently. I've heard that over the past two months, many of the Arabs under Osman rule in the Middle East have been rising up in response to Britannian instigation. There's apparently some guy named Lawrence—I don't know if he's a diplomat or a saboteur—who has been madly promising them benefits and inciting local rebellions.

"The Najd and Hejaz regions are already in chaos, as is the southern Levant. The Iraqi region is faring a bit better for now.

"If we can't wipe this guy out, the war in the Middle East could take a sharp turn for the worse."

Lieutenant General List was quite professional and regularly kept up with the movements of friendly forces, allowing him to rattle off these details with familiar ease.

This was all public information; anyone who wanted to know could find out. It simply came down to whether a general was willing to study it.

Thus, he hit the nail on the head, pointing out the core issues of the future Middle Eastern battlefield:

In terms of raw combat power, the enemy wasn't worth noting, but they could heavily incite the locals to fight. They had roused many native Arab tribes, and they had an endless influx of Indian reinforcements.

The Empire's elites were absolutely formidable in battle, but their lack of supplies meant they couldn't sustain large-scale deployments.

Two critical issues needed solving: resolving the Empire's logistics, or stamping out the local rebellion Lawrence had just ignited.

If they could completely cure even one of these issues—and combine that with the future collapse of the Lushans in the Caucasus theater, allowing the Demanian forces in the Caucasus to dispatch a small detachment south to support the Middle East—the situation there could see a decisive reversal.

If both issues were resolved, it went without saying that the Britannian forces in the region would be instantly obliterated. They would be met with yet another catastrophic annihilation.

Having organized his thoughts, Lieutenant General List finally turned to Lelouch for guidance. "Therefore, the key to victory or defeat in the Middle East comes down to two points: 'our army's logistics' and 'pacifying the local rebellion stirred up by the enemy.'

"Do you have a way to resolve these two points, Chief of Staff? Are the solutions connected to the strategy we're adopting for the Caucasus campaign today?"

Seeing that Lieutenant General List was already thinking deeply, Lelouch nodded in approval. "Good question, and an incredibly crucial summary! Since you've already seen this far, I can answer you directly:

"I have plans to resolve both of these points.

"And the strategies I will use are intricately linked to the Caucasus strategy we're implementing in the coming days."

Lieutenant General List's spirits lifted. He held his breath, paying rapt attention as he waited for the Chief of Staff's ensuing instructions.

Holding up two fingers, Lelouch spoke with assurance. "To solve the logistics issue, I actually have a plan. In the future, we might consider using a much more practical railway line to transport supplies for our vast army, bypassing the current Istanbul–Ankara–Konya line.

"The route from Konya to Mosul, northwest of Baghdad, requires crossing the treacherous Eastern Taurus Mountains. It's far too difficult to traverse. The sheer ruggedness of the Eastern Taurus Mountains is second only to the Greater Caucasus in the Middle East, meaning the transport capacity is abysmally low.

"We can completely replace the current 'railway–mountain trek–railway' model with a 'railway–sea route–railway' combination. For example, we could ship goods from Istanbul, or a port on the southern coast of Asia Minor, across the sea to the easternmost coast of the Levant in the Eastern Mediterranean (modern-day Syria/Lebanon). From there, we could use the Alexandretta–Mosul–Baghdad railway, or the Beirut–Mosul–Baghdad railway, to complete the final leg of supply transport to the front lines.

"The Eastern Taurus Mountains are impossible to bypass on land. They stretch all the way from Armenia in the Greater Caucasus region down to the eastern Mediterranean coast, severing the transit routes between Asia Minor and the Middle Eastern heartland. This mountain range is precisely what caused so many obstacles when they tried to build the Berlin–Baghdad railway; it's the biggest bottleneck of the entire project.

"But if we take a short detour by sea along the southern coast of Asia Minor, passing near Cyprus and landing at Alexandretta or Beirut, we bypass the Eastern Taurus Mountains entirely. The transport capacity of a maritime route is immense. With proper preparation, shipping tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo in a single go wouldn't be a problem. If we can run this route successfully even just once or twice, the Britannian and Lushan forces in the Middle East will absolutely face utter annihilation!

"By then, once we finish the Caucasus campaign and send a few corps south to Baghdad by land, those troops will have ample provisions to completely flatten the enemies in the Middle East!"

Lieutenant General List was dumbfounded upon hearing Lelouch's plan. He immediately recognized a massive problem. "Th—this is far too audacious, isn't it?! Sure, everyone knows you can bypass the Eastern Taurus Mountains by sea, but for all these years, no one has even dared to entertain the thought! Britannia holds absolute naval supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean! Their Mediterranean Fleet would tear our supply convoys to shreds!"

Lelouch only laughed. "If even you think that way, it means my future scheme has a solid chance. We could absolutely slip a small-scale supply run past them in secret. Smuggling it through is possible—at least for the very first time, the chances are high. Even if it fails, we only lose some supplies. The casualty rate wouldn't be too high.

"Furthermore, we can use fast destroyers to transport the goods; we don't have to rely on sluggish steamboats. Finally, we could even consider deploying the Black Sea Fleet to escort the supply ships. The Empire now has total command over the Black Sea. The Lushans' Black Sea Fleet has been completely wiped out, and every port city along the coast except Sochi is under our control.

"Meanwhile, the Britannians have historically kept the bulk of their naval forces closer to home. Their Mediterranean Fleet consists mostly of pre-dreadnoughts, relying on quantity for an advantage. If the Empire's battlecruisers, the Moltke and the Goeben, take advantage of the enemy's complacency and launch a covert sortie, bringing only other high-speed auxiliary vessels to punch through the Strait of Istanbul, carve through the Aegean Sea, and enter the waters near Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean to provide an escort once or twice, it's entirely possible to catch the enemy's Mediterranean Fleet completely off guard!

"Especially since the enemy's Mediterranean Fleet was heavily crippled and weakened during the Gallipoli campaign last year, losing numerous pre-dreadnoughts! Even with a numerical advantage several times over, their remaining pre-dreadnoughts might not be able to pose a threat to the Moltke and the Goeben. Though the enemy has dispatched a handful of dreadnoughts to the Mediterranean, it's not enough. Our goal is precisely to force the enemy to divert more warships from their home base in the North Sea down to the Mediterranean!

"By doing so, we might even indirectly create an opportunity for the Empire's High Seas Fleet in the North Sea. His Majesty the Emperor has actually been repeatedly urging Admiral Tirpitz and Admiral Hipper since last year, hoping the navy would adopt a more aggressive stance. He wants them to seize any opportunities where the enemy fleet is dispersed or at a localized numerical disadvantage, forcing a decisive fleet battle to concentrate our superior forces and weaken a portion of the enemy fleet.

"At the time, Admiral Tirpitz and Admiral Hipper repeatedly urged His Majesty to remain calm. Ultimately, they concluded that the second quarter of this year would be the golden window when the gap in naval strength between us and the enemy would be at its narrowest. By the second quarter, our newly commissioned battleships, the Bavaria and the SMS Baden, will be combat-ready, granting the Empire two super battleships armed with 380mm main guns. Simultaneously, the other capital ships damaged last year will all be fully repaired.

"Meanwhile, the enemy's HMS Queen Elizabeth won't be fully repaired by then, and the HMS Warspite sank last year. While the third, fourth, and fifth ships of the Queen Elizabeth-class—the Barham, the Valiant, and the Malaya—have already been completed, matching our two 15-inch gun battleships against their three still gives the Empire a fighting chance.

"If it drags on any longer into the third quarter, the HMS Queen Elizabeth will be repaired, and two of their newest Renown-class battlecruisers will enter service. The subsequent ships of the Empire's Bayern-class, however, will take even longer to commission. At that point, the situation will become highly disadvantageous for us.

"The Renown-class high-speed battlecruisers are a particular threat; they will provide the enemy with battlecruisers armed with 15-inch guns, meaning our vanguard battlecruiser fleet would be utterly crushed. If the Empire seeks a decisive naval battle, it must happen before the enemy's Renown-class ships enter service. Otherwise, we'll simply have to wait until our own Mackensen-class ships are commissioned to counter their Renown-class.

"Therefore, if we can carve out a slight advantage in the Eastern Mediterranean theater in the second quarter of this year, we can use the Moltke and the Goeben to force the enemy to pull a significant number of dreadnoughts from their Home Fleet to hunt down our Black Sea Fleet. If that happens, Admiral Hipper's odds of finding a favorable battle window in the North Sea will increase dramatically."

There was one final detail Lelouch didn't mention to Lieutenant General List: he had already hashed this out with Admiral Hipper and Gustav Krupp a long time ago.

When the timing was right, they could falsify the sea trial records for the SMS Baden, announcing that "the technical design for the new 380mm main guns was overly aggressive, and the new barrel steel's resistance to chamber pressure was severely overestimated, leading the new supercharge propellant bags to cause a barrel explosion."

Then, they could send the SMS Baden back for "drydock repairs," while declaring that the Bavaria also needed to be "overhauled for major barrel reinforcements." They would tow them to the shipyards in East Prossen, or even near Riga, to undergo repairs in absolute secrecy, ensuring Britannian spies couldn't sniff out a thing.

Only then would it be possible to lull the Britannian navy into underestimating them. By the time Lelouch engineered a crisis that forced the Britannian navy to sally forth, confident that their Home Fleet could clinch the win, this timeline's Battle of Jutland would be handled far more smoothly.

Of course, by then it certainly wouldn't be called the Battle of Jutland anymore, as the engagement location was bound to change.

Based on Lelouch's estimations, this timeline's grand naval clash in the North Sea would likely unfold over the Norwegian Sea issue and the Arctic route.

Between April and May, the Lushans would fully complete the Murmansk–Saint Petersburg railway—a project built on the bodies of millions—along with the port of Murmansk itself. By then, having been starved for more than half a year, Lusha would be ravenous and desperately reliant on the Murmansk Route for incoming supplies.

As long as the Demanian Navy found an opportunity to intercept the Murmansk Route, Britannia's Royal Navy would have no choice but to answer the challenge.

This would be far more effective than Vice Admiral Scheer's flashy, convoluted baiting tactics in the Earth timeline. Lelouch had no interest in playing around with unpredictable gimmicks. If he was going to fight, he would strike where the enemy had no choice but to defend!

What's more, long before winter hit last year, Lelouch had already planted a few hidden assets in the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea.

At the time, right after the Baltic Sea campaign had concluded and the shores of the Gulf of Riga were completely occupied by the Demanian Army, Mackensen's Northern Army Group had secured a massive victory. During that period, Lelouch had seized evidence of "pro-Britannian Norwegians sabotaging their neutrality by colluding with certain anti-royal, pro-Britannian factions within Sweden to secretly ship weapons to Lusha."

Later, as winter set in and the Gulf of Bothnia froze over, there was temporarily nothing more to unearth from that route.

It was nearly April now. The Gulf of Bothnia, with its extremely low salinity and a freezing point close to fresh water, would soon thaw out and be suitable for shipping once again. When that happened, those Norwegian thieves, along with the rogue Swedish ministers secretly sabotaging their nation's neutrality behind the King's back, would surface once more.

Lelouch had already had the Grand Duke of Baden inform his brother-in-law, Gustav V, to quietly investigate the matter. They had already cast a wide net across Sweden.

When the Demanian side deemed the time ripe for a naval clash, Gustav would slam the "Norway violates Swedish neutrality" card onto the table. Launching a massive land and sea offensive in Norway, if they still couldn't rip an arm and a leg off the Royal Navy, Lelouch would swallow the ultimate humiliation and take George V's surname!

Of course, all of this was still just a hazy prototype of a strategy. For many of the ensuing details, he would have to cross that bridge when he came to it.

For example, what if the Britannians pulled the Francian navy into the Mediterranean, or dragged the Italian fleet into the Eastern Mediterranean for a joint operation against the two Moltke-class ships? How would he handle that?

Lelouch actually had backup plans in mind for these potential variables, but things simply hadn't gotten that complicated yet. There was no need to lay out all of his strategic deductions.

Regardless, baiting the Britannians into madly pouring their resources into the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean was an opening move that absolutely wouldn't go to waste.

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