In January 1914, the port of Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

Suddenly, cold air mass attacked Eastern Europe and the Near East, and the temperature had dropped to freezing point. Ice accumulated on the crystal windowsill of the magnificent Domabachche Palace, and the ice layer overlapped on the narrow north coast of the Bosphorus. Even the common olive trees along the Mediterranean coast were frightened by the severe winter.

The cold wind raged over the Marmara Sea. The sea was like an ancient evil beast that woke up, carrying amazing power and hustling waves of more than ten meters, enough to tear a hundred tons of boats into pieces in an instant.

Given the harsh sea conditions, the Turkish Strait has long been closed, and ships of all sizes have entered the port to shelter the wind. In the Golden Bay [1] where the Crescent Banner Navy is located, the waves can calm down a little because of the protection of terrain and breakwater. Even so, the old and strong Barbarossa-class coastal defense ships, the 9,700-ton Mesudier-class battleships, the Hamidier-class cruiser, which has just returned from the UK, and the American-made Mechtier Cruiser, still only has the ability to bump up and down in front of nature. As for the four 300-ton legal destroyers and four 600-ton German-built S-165-class lightning strike ships, they are still not allowed to go to the table and simply disappear in the wind and waves of several feet high.

The Marmara Sea is terrifying, and the luxurious and declining Istanbul is not much better. The wind and snow are gloomy over the Port City, and they directly flood the Ottoman Navy Command's unique Italian-style buildings. The German Advisory Group's headquarters' building was quiet, and the violent wind almost blew upside down on the two German Empire tricolor flags and Ottoman Crescent Flags in front of the building.

The small apartment is very quiet, with only the rustling sound of writing in front of the desk. The fire in the fireplace flickers and darkens, and occasionally the pine branches and charcoal bursts, making a crisp crackling sound, and then it ripples in this quiet little room.

"The Greece-Turkish War in 1898, the Italian-Turkish War in 1911, and the two Balkan Wars from 1912 to 1913, the Ottoman Empire lost its glory in most of Europe's territory and ancestors. The behemoth that once spans three continents and regards the Mediterranean as an inner lake finally could not stand it, and fell down under the devastating offensive of the poor Italy and the Balkan alliance. In the two Balkan wars, the Sudanese people were not powerless to fight back: the Turks did not

They retreated step by step, but the Turkish army trained by the Imperial Army performed remarkable in combat; although the Crescent Banner Navy was vulnerable, there was still Hussein Rauf Orbai, an outstanding warbreaking expert. Just one Hamideye could turn the Mediterranean upside down. But even so, the country had rotted from its roots, and no matter how many ships and cannons were powerful, it was not enough to save this dying dynasty, just like the Qing Dynasty in the Far East."

"Compared with the end of the Ottoman Empire, the performance of the Balkan Alliance Navy was eye-catching. The Bulgarians had only six torpedo boats before the war, but they still severely damaged the Armored Cruiser of Hamideye. The Greek Navy blocked the exit of the Dardanelles and carried out the battle to seize the islands of the Aegean Sea. They sank the 4,800-ton old ironclad ship Ashalitvfik[2], the 2,700-ton cruiser Fatehiblund, and injured the former dreadnought of Barbarossa-Haireding. As a potential Allied force of the British, the Greek Navy showed aggressive aggressiveness in this war, and its rising naval strength deserves our vigilance."

The desk was filled with Greek, local newspapers from Turkey, intelligence sent by German naval officers in Turkey, and investigation reports of the German Mediterranean squadron sent by Denitz, a special trip to the German Mediterranean squadron. In the Balkan War in 1912, the Turks were defeated, and the polar bears' "PanSlavism" expanded greatly in the Balkan Peninsula, which aroused fear and dissatisfaction between Germany and Austria. Germany decided to take intervention actions: the Mediterranean squadron composed of the famous battle cruiser Goben and the Braures cruiser rushed into the Adriatic Sea, blocked Montenegro Port and sent Marines to stop the Serbs from obtaining the estuary, and Karl-Donitz was on the Braures cruiser at the time.

The coffee on the dining table was already cold, the rye bread dipped in butter was hard like a stone, and the bacon and sausage were even hung with ice. The bitter north wind roared in through the gaps between the doors and windows, and took away the last trace of heat in the room with determination.

The otaku casually put on a washed white German naval old clothes, a Turkish naval standard felt hat on his head, his eyebrows were furrowed and he bit his pen and thought about the evaluation report on the Greece-Turkish naval military preparation competition.

In 1912, the exhausted Turks signed an armistice agreement with Bulgaria and Serbia. The defeat exposed the weakness of the Ottoman Empire. When the Sultans woke up in the morning, they would be surprised to find that the situation faced by Constantinople was so bad: the northwest were the fierce Magyars; the north were Romanians and Tatars; the west were Slavs and Greeks, Slavic Muslims, Albanians and Macedonians; the east were Armenians and Kurds; the southeast and south were hundreds of Arab tribes. The domestic situation was difficult to deal with, and the unclean Romans and Gauls, the old enemy Russia, who were eyeing the north, the British who were coveting the Middle East, and the poverty that could not be shaken off after the opening of sea routes between the East and the West.

After the defeat, the Turks were helpless and eager to rebuild their navy, especially in the context of the Greeks' continuous ships and artillery increase and British naval consultants' evaluation of "Turkey has no navy". So they helped the Turks rebuild their navy and took the opportunity to expand Germany's influence in the Turkish Navy as a political task before the Imperial Navy. At that time, the smoke of gunpowder in the Balkans had not yet dissipated, and the war could break out again at any time. The Turkish liberal cabinet, which had just come to power, was shaky and lost control of the army. Constantinople's war was in chaos, revengeism, defeatism and all kinds of absurd rumors spread everywhere. Everyone from the German Navy regarded Turkey's journey as dangerous. Only the otakus Heidi, who was desperate, and the young Gunther Lütjens, who was a young man, stood up.

1913 was the year of the Balkans. In the Second Balkan War, the great powers continued to quarrel and intimidate the Balkans. On January 23, 1913, the coup in Istanbul, the dazzling light of a small piece of projectile land in the Near East was enough to make later Afghan Iraq sad. The bells of the New Year in 1914 sounded, and the gunshots stopped and the smoke disappeared. The eyes of the whole world still failed to shift back from the Balkans. The two opponents who had just fought with real guns and live ammunitions, found a new game field - the Navy.

The German-English naval arms race has been in full swing for more than ten years. Europas who have seen the world have long been accustomed to this. The decade-long grudges and entanglement between Fisher and Tirpitz, a pair of old enemies, have "humiliated" Yima even became a topic of talk for Europeans after dinner. The jealous naval competitions of several countries in South America were really lively and noisy for a while, and finally, under the impact of the economic crisis, the very bloody eunuch. Just when people sighed that the arms race was not affordable to poor countries, in the poor, backward and turbulent place of the Balkans, Greece and Ottoman Turkey actually caught up with the trend, and began a vigorous arms race regardless of the fact that their respective domestic economic difficulties.

In 1914, the situation in Europe became increasingly tense, and the war was lingering over the Europa continent. The great powers were entangled in the Balkans. Ethnic conflicts, religious conflicts, cultural differences, border disputes, political differences and other difficult issues were affected by each other, and they were in a mixed manner, which affected the whole body. Emperor William, who had always been ambitious about Turkey, naturally paid attention to this point, so he instructed the German advisory group to Turkey to submit an evaluation report on the Greek and Turkish naval competition.

The Turkish Army is the private land of the Germans, and on the contrary, the Turkish Navy is the back garden of the British. Under the hegemony of the Royal Navy of the British Empire, the only non-British naval consultants of the Turkish Navy were almost breathless by the arrogant John Bull, while Captain Heidi Sileme and Lieutenant Gunther Lütjens were the only remaining nail households in the Turkish Navy of the German Advisory Group, and the assessment report could only be handed over to these two people.

"The two Balkan wars put Greece and Turkey on the road of arms race. The second Balkan War exposed the essence of the so-called Balkan alliance. Before the London Treaty was in its ink, the Turkish government sent troops to recover Edirne, which made the Greeks even more frightened. In order to prevent possible revenge and maintain naval superiority, the Greeks were waving money to buy warships all over the world despite financial difficulties."

Just as the otaku was writing hard, the dilapidated door of the apartment was pushed open, and Lütjens, wrapped in a military coat, slipped in with an empty cup.

Gunther Lütjens is the only and only partner of the otaku in this barren land of Turkey. He was born in the small German town of Wiesbaden. He joined the navy in 1907 and served on two small auxiliary warships, Freya and Issa. In 1912, the Admiralty issued a convening order. The teenager ignorant Lütjens was in a state of a German version of the intellectual youth going up the mountain, packed his bags and headed straight for the Golden Horn Bay in Istanbul, and excitedly came to the old bay ship of Barbarossa Reading as a gun and torpedo instructor.

"The winter in Turkey is really cold..." Lütjens took off his thick cotton gloves and rubbed his hands, which were frozen purple, and leaned over and rummaged through the cabinets in the otakus' room as if no one was around.

Half a spoonful of brown sugar and half a spoonful of coffee beans, Lütjens made a cup of coffee for himself with a smile, and casually brought a chair and sat down leaning against the otaku. He smiled and said, "I know you have a lot of local goods hidden here, so I borrow some coffee brown sugar and hot water..."

"I'm really tired of your opening remarks. You're not the British across the strait. The opening remarks of greetings are always complaining about the hazy weather..." The otaku dropped the pen in his hand, rubbed his swollen eyes and yawned, and said angrily: "If you want to take whatever you want, move it yourself, there is no need to say 'borrow' this humiliating word that you repeatedly humiliated."

"Don't talk about this, don't talk about this..." Lütjens's old face turned red and he wisely changed the subject. He sat on a shaking chair with few arms and legs, crossed his legs leisurely, and picked up an evaluation report that had just begun. He looked through it and complained: "Do you think it's strange? The Admiralty deceived us to this ghost place in Turkey for many years, and suddenly he could urge us to complete a Raussian evaluation report. Haven't we sold a Salamis to the Greeks? The Turkish-Greece arms race may not be without our contributions. The Admiralty should know the whole story of the Greece better than us..."

"Who knows..." Wang Heidi tightened her coat tightly, stretched her waist and leaned on the chair. Looking back on the bumpy and loneliness of the years, the otaku laughed at the mirror embedded in the wardrobe and said, "Maybe the Admiralty wants to use the waste!"

The topic was too heavy. Lütjens shook his head and pretended to be nothing, and changed the topic: "How did the Tyne farce solve it?"

"The Turks won the first prize." The otaku pointed to the newspaper spread out on the table and said coldly: "But the Greeks also received the consolation prize. The American cowboys were preparing to sell two battleships to the Greeks at a price of 10 million US dollars."

The Greek government was undoubtedly at a disadvantage in this massive naval race. Just as the Athenians were panicked and lonely, the shrewd Americans jumped out and said that they could sell two active battleships - Idaho and Mississippi.

"Why don't the Americans go and grab money..." Lütjens spat, knowing that you can buy two latest dreadnoughts for ten million US dollars, or you can buy a stack of old-fashioned former dreadnoughts that are about to be retired.

"Silem, the British almost completely control the Crescent Banner Navy. We non-British naval advisers can only struggle to support the edge. If we add those two British battleships, I am afraid we will be squeezed out of the Turkish navy by the British." News about the Greece-Turkish naval competition in the newspaper was overwhelming. On the headlines of the front page of the Constantinople newspaper, the huge black and white photo of the Turkish national hero Hussein Rauff Orbai, standing on the main deck of the Hamidyah, looked so dazzling. Lütjens subconsciously frowned and said slightly unhappy: "It's already troublesome to have an English cruiser (i.e., Hamidyah) and a British man named Gambol [6]..."

"In the two Balkan wars, the Turks suffered heavy damage and the diplomatic environment was extremely harsh. If the Ottoman Empire wanted to exist as a sovereign state, the Turks would have to reorganize a powerful army. The German army was enough to ensure our existence in Turkey, and the navy was just a supplement to this influence." Wang Heidi turned his head and looked out the window, and said confidently: "The Greeks may not be the biggest loser in this arms race, and the Turks may not be the biggest winner. The real winner can only be the Germans!"

Following the half-open blinds, downstairs of a four-story gray building opposite, a British Empire's rice flag was rumbling in the snow and snow in Istanbul.

【Note】

1. The former naval harbor of the Ottoman Empire, a blessed land for the Turks.

2. Another theory is that the Ashalitvfik was severely damaged.

3. In 1913, Greece ordered a battlecruiser Salamis equipped with a 14-inch main gun from Germany, and the expected launch date was 1915.

4. Douglas Gamble, British Rear Admiral, Turkish Navy Advisor. It was Gamble's lobbying that led to the Turkish government's determination to purchase two dreadnoughts.

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Chapter completed!