"General Kuropatkin, it turned out just as you predicted."
As Nikolai muttered, Kuropatkin wiped his sweat from his brow several times in nervousness. Kuropatkin, who remained on the Western Front until the end, had warned early on about the threat of the German army's new doctrine of infiltration tactics and had concluded that it would be difficult to maintain the defensive line.
"Your Majesty, what our army needs is not land, but time. The transfer of troops from the Western Front has temporarily increased the strength of the German military, but the country is lacking in resources, has suffered heavy casualties, and its economy is exhausted. In order for our country to win, we must fight a protracted war and buy time until the United States, which is rumored to be intervening soon, declares war on Germany."
Kuropatkin's logical explanation was convincing to Nikolai.
(This is a logical inference based on facts. During the Great Patriotic War, the weak France surrendered so easily that they had to fight the well-prepared Nazis, but this time, England and France held out and Germany was completely wounded, so it might be better.)
Once this was decided, Nicholas immediately changed his strategy from coastal defense to inland endurance. Fighting on the vast Russian soil always comes with the problem of supplies, and the German army's increased numbers would put a heavy strain on logistics, so he would want to avoid a protracted war.
"So, General Kuropatkin, how should we conduct a protracted war?"
"We will thoroughly weaken the enemy's ability to continue a long-term battle. Then, we will force them to compete on the same level as us."
Kuropatkin was a cautious general, the type who produced modest but steady results.
In his intention to wage a protracted war, he emphasized the importance of eliminating the enemy's advantages, specifically "firepower" and "training," and believed that if he could reduce those advantages and turn it into a pure war of attrition, he would have a chance of winning.
(However, doing so would cause even more casualties... Although it is a necessary sacrifice to win the war, I cannot help but feel sorry for the soldiers.)
Be ruthless, Kuropatkin forced himself to do. The Russo-Japanese War and World War I had taught him that ruthlessness was the key to victory.
The Japanese army's assault on Hill 203, disregarding the losses, and the German army's blitzkrieg against the Verdun fortress...In the end, I was too optimistic and overestimated the power of the Japanese attack and my own losses, which led to my defeat, and it is likely that the French army's weak will also paved the way for their surrender.
On the other hand, Nicholas II... Stalin was originally a ruthless man and did not have the conflicts that Kuropatkin had. He never showed much love for his wife or son, and did not grieve the sacrifice of so many Soviet soldiers. He did not feel pity for the innocent people who were starved to death or executed during the Great Purge or the Holomoor.
What Stalin learned from the Russian Civil War and World War II was that in the end, nothing matters unless you win, and victory ultimately comes down to military might.
(Our country has infinite human resources... Now that I think about it, I have thought about the maximum number of troops we can deploy at one time, but I have never thought about losses. Even if we lose 10,000 soldiers, we can just mobilize 10,000 more from the reserves. And if we lose those 10,000, we can just conscript another 10,000.)
For Stalin, soldiers were nothing more than expendable goods that could be harvested from the fields. Wasting human resources, even if they were expendable, was against Soviet rationalism, but he also had no intention of making the foolish mistake of being stingy with necessary expenditures.
(Above all, the German army, an industrial country, has overwhelmingly more firepower... We can only learn from the human wave tactics used by Mao in the Korean War.)
Unlike the Soviet Union, which achieved rapid industrialization through a planned economy, the Russian Empire remained an agricultural nation until the end. It could not afford the luxury of lining up a large number of artillery pieces to cripple the enemy's mobility, or deploying countless tanks in succession to march nonstop, as the Soviet Red Army did.
--Above all, Stalin realized that total war was a race against time.
In other words, it was a battle to buy time by using land and space until the Russian army, which had been widely scattered due to strategic mistakes, could be gathered together. The battle against time was also a battle against the speed of supplies and replenishment. In other words, it was a battle to see whether the German army could take Petrograd first, or whether the Russian army could gather enough troops to fortify the capital first.
(The reason the Soviets were able to win the Great Patriotic War was not because they had more material superiority, but because they were better able to transition to a long-term war than the Germans...)
Through the two world wars, Stalin came to understand that modern warfare is total warfare. It is not a short-term war in which peace is reached when the capital is taken, but a long-term war in which industrial and manpower are literally mobilized until one side is reduced to ashes.
--No matter how many soldiers you kill, you can recruit them.
--No matter how many tanks and bombers you destroy, new weapons can be made in factories.
The same was true for both the Soviet Union and Germany. In fact, since the German army controlled the industrial and densely populated areas of Western Russia, in reality, there was not much difference in the resources of the two countries, whether in terms of manpower or industrial power, until the Soviet Union completely recaptured the country.
However, Germany, which was oriented towards short-term wars, was not fully prepared for total war, and its military doctrine was not suited to long-term wars. Even the all-time popular "blitzkrieg" strategy relied on excellent non-commissioned officers, skilled engineers, and skilled pilots who could adapt to changing circumstances, and these veterans were destined to be lost as the war dragged on.
In contrast, for better or worse, the Soviet Union had lost many of its talented veterans in a series of misfortunes, including the Russian Civil War, the Great Purge, and the Winter War, and from the beginning of the war they were working at a rapid pace to create a system that would allow amateurs to fight without relying on veterans...
"Anyway, we must thoroughly weaken the German army's ability to continue fighting! We don't care how many casualties we inflict on soldiers and weapons, but we must make sure to conserve the veteran noble officers and other veterans."
This order was carried out immediately without any significant opposition. Almost all of the officers were aristocrats, so there was no way anyone would object.
Even conservative military officers such as Kuropatkin and Brusilov actively supported Nikolai's orders, as they understood the difficulties of training veterans in the poor conditions of the Russian army.
On the other hand, in contrast to preserving their own veterans, German veterans and non-commissioned officers were prioritized for elimination. They were so thorough that they offered a bounty to any soldier who killed a non-commissioned officer or above. The same was true for pilots and mechanics, whose military branches took a long time to train, and the policy shifted to one of reducing the enemy's fighting power, even if it meant taking land.
(I really don't like it, but Germany has more industrial power... If we were to compete over weapons, our country would be at a disadvantage. But our veterans and engineers can't make them in factories.)
It would take at least ten years to train these troops, but they could be lost in an instant. Maintenance shops and officers' quarters were given priority in the area of artillery, bombing, and sniping.
On the other hand, there was a possibility that the Germans would take similar countermeasures, so there was also the question of how to conserve their own veterans.
One simple thing that worked for the Soviet Army was to make the uniforms of officers and soldiers the same, which was particularly effective in urban warfare, where snipers play a much bigger role than in level ground warfare, and officers were given priority in training to be snipers.
However, in the "Fatherland of Workers," the Soviet Union, soldiers and officers wore uniforms that were standardized under the principle of "equality," and unnecessary things like decorations and salutes that indicated rank were eliminated, so the damage was somewhat smaller than in the German army. As a side effect, the standardization of uniforms also reduced the burden on factories, so it really killed two birds with one stone.
However, this was the Russian Empire, where aristocratic society flourished, and it was unreasonable for the aristocrats, who made up the majority of officers and commissioned officers, to wear the same clothes and behave in the same way as commoners.
"So how many times do I have to tell the military nobles to stop wearing flashy clothes?"
"We have conveyed this message many times, but there has been strong resistance from the field..."
"Resistance on the ground?! We should crush them! Anyone who disobeys orders will be shot! Execute them!"
"...Wouldn't it be counterproductive to execute a veteran officer?"
"So what should we do?!"
Even for an emperor with immense power, there are things that do not go his way.
However, perhaps fortunately, the brave German officers were more willing to go to the front lines than the timid Russian officers, so casualties slowly accumulated.