Chapter 746 Morale Available

Fetter River Line.

As the longest and most solid line of defense in East Africa, it has withstood more than a dozen attacks by the Boers and British since the war began.

In fact, the Fette River Line in East Africa was a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut when used to deal with the Boers, just as the Macedonian Line of Defense was not used to resist Germany but Belgium.

Merkle had begun personally commanding the Battle of the Fetter River, preparing to end the three-month-long passive defense.

"Tonight at twelve o'clock is the time for us to cross the river. We must eliminate the Transvaal people on the other side of the river in a short period of time. Our army is ready to attack from three directions and completely eliminate the Boer Republic, which is a thorn in our land." Merk said in the military headquarters.

Hetzendorf asked: "General Merk, why do you want to launch a night battle? You are completely superior in manpower and firepower. There is no need to launch a counterattack at night. On the contrary, it may cause interference from the night, making your operations more prone to errors."

"Night is indeed not a good time to fight, especially when the enemy is well prepared on the other side of the river. You have to deal with various problems, including your lack of understanding of the terrain and the enemy's defensive offensive." Prittwitz also emphasized.

Merk explained: "Don't worry about this. We have already figured out the enemy's defense deployment. Although the Boers have built fortifications on the other side of the river, their engineering is completely incomparable to ours. Don't look at our Fetter River defense line as indestructible. It took a lot of manpower to build it, and this kind of human resources is not available to the Boers on the opposite side."

The biggest shortcoming of the Boers is their sparse population. Historically, there should have been more than 400,000 Boers at this time period, but after East Africa and their own turmoil, the national population is probably only close to 400,000.

Of course, a large number of "black slaves" were mobilized to build the Fette River Defense Line in East Africa, and there was naturally no need to explain this in detail to the military advisers of Germany and Austria.

Merk went on to say, "The Boers have been attacking our army for the past three months, but judging by their recent offensives, they have probably reached their limit. So I think the situation has changed a long time ago. The Boers' morale has probably hit rock bottom, and their morale has been exhausted by our careless passive defense mode."

The current situation of the Boers is indeed very bad as Merk said. One reason is that they have been unable to break through the Fette River defense line in East Africa for a long time, and the other is that the lower-level soldiers are disgusted with war.

A country of the size of the Boer Republic now maintains a military force of nearly 50,000, which means that one out of every six Boers is a soldier, and children and the elderly can be seen everywhere in the Boer army.

If it were not for the material support from the British, the Boer army would have collapsed long ago. Even so, the Boers' mental state is very bad now.

"More than 2,000 years ago in the Far Eastern Empire, there was an ancient war called the Battle of Changshao. A man named Cao Gui once said that the first attack is the best, the second is weaker, and the third is exhausted. In the end, victory is achieved by destroying the enemy's morale."

"We actually adopted this method in East Africa, which depleted the enemy's morale. After three months of attack, we were unable to achieve any results. The Boers' recent attacks have seemed weak," Merk explained.

Currently, East Africa, as an immigration country, is not bad in all aspects, except for the national sense of belonging, which requires time to cultivate.

The South African War was an opportunity that the East African government had set its sights on. Currently, all fronts in East Africa are in a defensive stage. This state of being able to passively take a beating and unable to fight back is definitely very unpleasant for East African soldiers.

Except for the high-ranking officers, everyone in the troops below was holding back a grudge, and that was to retaliate severely for the beatings they had suffered in vain in the past few months.

Under such circumstances, the sense of belonging among the soldiers of the East African army is actually increasing rapidly. No matter where they came from before, they now have a common external enemy.

After three months of running-in, the East African army has become more united than ever before, which is also the result that the East African government wants to see. Now all that is left is to win the war and establish national pride and honor.

This is also the helplessness of immigrant countries. Of course, to be more precise, it is the helplessness of East Africa. A country like the United States probably won't have this problem.

As an immigrant country, the United States has various means to deceive the lower-class people and make them lose their way. However, East Africa does not have such conditions because in the world situation in the 19th century, the American ideology was the most "advanced".

As an absolute monarchy, East Africa lacks such effective means and does not have a complete aristocratic system like that of Europe.

The European aristocratic system can be said to be a powerful force maintaining European royal power and political stability, especially in local areas, where the aristocracy enjoys great prestige among the people.

Of course, East Africa also has a corresponding political model, but it mainly praises the "Black Heunggen Royal Family", which is very similar to North Korea in the past.

However, this situation cannot be maintained for a long time, especially after the demise of the first generation of "grateful" immigrants in East Africa. The current East African government is still mainly developing towards the German political model.

Germany has the banner of nationalism to use, but East African nationalism is not very reliable. If we want to change this situation, we need to cultivate the sense of identity of East African citizens.

One of the ways to gain a sense of identity is war. As long as East Africa wins the South African War, it can accelerate national integration in a short period of time.

The United States has a history of a hundred years and has gone through a long period of running-in, which is what East Africa lacks. There is no more effective means than war for East Africa to make up for this, so in Ernst's mind, the South African War is the real founding war of East Africa.

As for the previous East-Portuguese War, although it had similar effects, the shock that Portugal, as a declining power, brought to the hearts of East Africans was far less effective than defeating Britain, the world's number one power.

Herzendorf and Prittwitz naturally did not understand East Africa's pursuit of this ideology because the two countries did not have such a dilemma.

Of course, the Austro-Hungarian Empire definitely existed, but the situation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was very different from that in East Africa. This is the difference between the thinking patterns of Europeans and those of Far Easterners.

No matter how independent Hungary is, it still supports the Habsburg family. Although the relationship with Austria is a little bad, everyone is used to it.

Ernst certainly did not want East Africa to follow the old path of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a political model that was proven to be ineffective during the world war.

Merk: "As for the war, this time it will be fought in three major directions at the same time. It doesn't matter even if things don't go well for us. In the Winburg area in the east, we are directly adjacent to the Boer Republic on land, and there are troops from the Orange River in the west to support us. As long as we gain an advantage in one direction, we can deal a huge blow to the Boers."

"At the same time, I think the Boers will not feel comfortable launching a counterattack at night. After all, this counterattack is the first proactive attack in East Africa. It is difficult for them to predict this situation. In addition, the Boers' backward intelligence system may not react until we reach Bloemfontein."

(End of this chapter)