"Your Excellency Grand Duke, Your Excellency, this is a tremendous opportunity! If we seize it and launch an attack on Russia, then even by conservative estimates, we could gain over a million square kilometers of territory! Western Ukraine and southwestern Belarus would both fall into our hands. This would play an enormous role in strengthening the Austro-Hungarian Empire!" Crown Prince Karl said to Archduke Friedrich and Baron Marshal von Heitzenforf, his face glowing with excitement.
In order to persuade Franz Joseph I to approve their plan, Crown Prince Karl had already secured the support of many senior government officials and military commanders. Yet Archduke Friedrich and Baron Marshal von Heitzenforf, the two titans of the military, had never stated their positions, which made Crown Prince Karl extremely anxious. He could not wait to win their support.
"Your Excellency Grand Duke, Your Excellency, this is a once-in-a-thousand-years opportunity! If we miss it, we will regret it beyond all remedy," Crown Prince Karl said.
"Crown Prince, although we won the previous battle on the Eastern Front and eliminated more than a million Russian troops, do not forget that we have not beaten the Russian military flat. They still have several million troops," Archduke Friedrich said.
"Those Russians are nothing but newly formed recruits. How much combat strength can they possibly have? Even if they dare to come, we can still defeat them!" Crown Prince Karl said spiritedly. It was as though, after winning this battle, the German military had already become a defeated foe beneath the Austrian military's feet. He seemed to have completely forgotten that at the beginning of the war, they had been pressed down and beaten by the Russians all along. Had Germany not intervened in time, perhaps even the Carpathian Mountains would already have fallen to the Russian