✠ Gott schütze die Königin ✠
My time in this forsaken land has left many scars. Physical and mental scars. Many of my comrades have died in ways that is difficult for me to put into words. It is a relief that the commander ordered us to return to Germany for rest and relaxation. It will be the first in months to feel good once again.
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News of recent events from Paris seem a welcome sign of the end of this nightmare. The French have capitulated and are finally seeking an armistice. The British refused to surrender and will continue to fight on that I know of. I hope that starvation will not be their reason to finally lay down their arms and put an end to this atrocious.
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My wounds had been much worse than I had realized. I had been admitted into the Hospital in Berlin for recovery. The doctors said I had shrapnel that if not caught sooner would have rotten away my legs. I'm quite thankful for that. Now that there is time to write in this notebook, I feel oddly waiting for the worse to happen. Time in Russia has affected me more than I realize. When this war is over, I will quit the army and begin a new life here in Germany.
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It is 1921. It has been seven long years, but now I can finally write that the Great War has now come to an end. Erich von Ludendorf's proposal for "Peace with Hounor" was accepted by the British Prime Minister yesterday evening. Father invited the leaders of the Entente to sign the armistice which they plan to agree later this week. I thought this terror would never end, now we can hopefully repair the damages and look towards a better future.
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My wounds have made a complete recovery. I was also admitted to leave the Hospital which is a great now that I can finally leave. It is sad leaving my injured friends in that building but they need there well deserved rest and time to heal.
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The Weltkrieg at first on both sides was hoped to be a quick war with rapid mobilization and grand strategies to swiftly eliminate the enemy. However, the reality was far from it. From 1914 to 1917 the war became a constant battle of attrition for both sides. Trenches were constructed from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. In these trenches were heavily armed soldiers with machine guns, heavy artillery, mines, and other deadly devices. Both sides kept ramming each other in the vain hope of breaking the enemy trenches for a decisive victory but this was not possible and would continue until 1917. Several million men died along the western front alone, many horrific battles were waged sending almost a generation of men to their deaths.
A turning point in the war came in 1917, the German and Austrian Armies in Russia finally achieved a strategic victory against Russia. The victory did not come from German and Austrian military operations but rather with the dissent from within Russia itself. The country's performance in the war was very poor, much of the army had weapons in its arsenal from the previous century and many men were not equipped or trained the warfare of the day. Constant military defeat, social unrest from the Russian people, and the Tsar's disastrous attempts to maintain stability caused his downfall of the monarchy and the end of Tsarist Russia in 1917. A provisional government was created under socialists, democrats, and former supporters of the monarchy under Alexander Kerensky. Alexander Kerensky believed that Russia could still fight in the war against Germany, which caused massive dissent in Russia. In October in 1917, a man named V.I. Lenin attempted a Bolshevik Revolution which created the massive and destructive Russian Civil War. For a time, the Russian armed forces were unable to hold the Bolsheviks and began to retreat from the Russian heartland. Germany fearful of a powerful Communist state in its back door began the intervention in the Russian Civil War. German support for Russia reversed the fortune for the White forces against the Reds. The Reds under the brilliant commander of Leon Trotsky held his last stronghold in Tsaritsyn which became a burial ground for hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who fought for the city. Tsaritsyn was captured by the White forces and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia had failed.
Meanwhile during the Russian Civil War, the Germans redeployed the bulk of their armies from Russia to France in the hope of breaking the deadlock of the trenches. Planning for Germany’s Great Spring Offensive had being going on for over a year. New equipment, tactics and logistics had been developed, many of which were tested during the invasion of Greece. After the fall of Greece a second offensive had also been planned, known as Operation Radowitz, which called for an envelopment of the Italian army at the Piave by an attack from Trento. Germany sent four elite alpine divisions to spearhead the attack.
The Spring Offensive was launched on the 2nd March. The German 1st and 8th Armies attacked the French lines at St. Mihel to the south of Verdun. The storm trooper tactics worked once more, albeit not as stunningly as at Riga in 1917 or in Greece the year before. After 5 days of heavy fighting the Germans broke out of the St. Mihel salient. German planners had been careful this time to have ready a large and mobile reserve which now penetrated through the gap. German forces quickly pushed west and south. Verdun itself became surrounded on the 14th and the siege began a day later while Nancy fell on the 16th. Allied divisions rushed to the front managed to slow the German advance as it approached the Marne and soon another stalemate seemed likely. However on the 26th March another German attack was launched on French positions near Rheims. While the attack had been hastily organised it succeeded partly because the allies were too overstretched and so couldn't defend the line properly. With the capture of Rheims the new allied lines near the Marne were outflanked. At this point the German 6th Army showed great skill. In three days they pushed through all opposition to capture Chateau-Thierry. This blocked the path of retreat from the Marne back to Paris and so split the French forces. While a large portion retreated southward the rest fell back on Paris. The only remaining entrenched zones were now the British lines to the North.
Meanwhile the Germans struck north and south and began to encircle Paris. The attack in Trento, begun on the 11th March, was also proving a success. Helping this was the denuding of that front by the allies in order to get reinforcements north into France. A lightning advance by the Central Powers saw them reach Verona and Vicenza on the 24th. The Italians hurriedly began to pull back from the Piave line but far too late for many. Despite strong opposition from an Australian division that held the road to Padua for three days single-handedly the Central Powers were able to push forward and reached the Adriatic coast south of Venice on the 10th April, trapping over 60% of the Italian army in doing so.
Italian morale plummeted quickly, just as it had done at Caporetto. Nevertheless it was only on the 8th June that the last Italian resistance in the pocket outside Venice surrendered. Meanwhile Venice itself came under fierce siege. The arrival of much of the Italian army in the city made defence easier but supply a lot harder. Luckily the Austrian navy was in no state to blockade Venice and so sea-supply routes were soon set up. While all this was occurring other Austrian forces were pushing southwards, aiming at seizing Rome before the end of the year. In France Paris was surrounded by the beginning of May and victorious German forces halted to regroup and plan the next offensive. This proved to be a mistake, for it gave time for much of the British army to pull back and retreat slowly towards the Channel Ports. Thus, when the Germans began a new drive for the coast around Dieppe in June the British managed to get most of their army out of the trap by an extended naval evacuation. A few Belgian units were also evacuated, but returned home soon after with the surrender of their country.
In both France and Italy the Entente was in full retreat. Paris and Venice were both under siege while German, Austrian and Bulgarian armies raced southwards down the country at a speed which seemed incredible next to the trench warfare pace that had dominated the war for four years. In the end Rome fell on the 1st August. Five days later Italy unconditionally surrendered to the Germans (in the hopes of avoiding Austria’s harsh terms), its remaining armies pinned in Venice, its capital and industrial heartland gone. The fall of Italy also allowed a southern invasion of France. Marseilles fell in late September but by then it was clear that France too was doomed. Thus on the 4th October, with Paris only weeks away from surrender, the French government likewise chose to surrender to the Germans, their decision no doubt hastened by the rising radicalism amongst the working class soldiery. This left Britain as the only remaining major Entente power left in the war.
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I'll let the title give some hint of what's going to be taking place. Let us begin 
