The Third Reich in Desperation

During Marshall's career as an instructor, it was not a simple plot transition, but a great foreshadowing for the future. .During this period, Marshall established a cadet file and recorded the names of young officers he thought were talented.

Later, after Marshall became the chief of staff of the army, this file became an important trump card, allowing him to often select excellent commanders based on it.

But it may be that the novelist who portrayed Marshall kept Marshall at this level after he was promoted to lieutenant colonel for the sake of the water plot.This plot lasted for 15 years!

It may be that there are too many plots in the water, or it may be that it is too unfair to Marshall. When Marshall was 55 years old, he was finally promoted by God from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general. It was the first time in his life that he was promoted rapidly. addiction.

In contrast, during the period of Marshall's ascension, a German sergeant named Reinhardt had been promoted from non-commissioned officer to general.

By the time Marshall was finally promoted once, Reinhardt had already transformed from an admiral to a head of state.

This is really comparing people to people, which makes people mad.

Just now, after President Roosevelt appointed Marshall as Army Chief of Staff, he was officially awarded the rank of major general.

As for his current rank of general, he is still temporarily held.

However, the bumpy promotion process and mismatched talents and talents did not obscure Marshall's brilliance.To some extent, his life experience is richer and more meaningful than that of Reinhardt, the German head of state.

Even as the protagonist prototype of a novel, Marshall's life experience is more suitable to be written into a book.

A late bloomer, Marshall finally had enough plans to show himself after the start of World War II.

As Roosevelt's chief of staff of the Army, he very wisely first proposed that "whether the United States is willing or not, the United States will inevitably be involved in the war. Therefore, the United States must actively prepare for war before it encounters war."

And he was also one of the few sensible people who strongly supported Roosevelt's strategy of aiding Britain in the United States during the period when isolationism was prevalent.

Marshall argued from the beginning that the British were fighting to buy the United States time to prepare.

And now, even though the fighting in Britain was over, Marshall still used Randolph as the spokesperson to follow the big trend of British governments emerging one after another, and created a fourth British government.

Text 705 The two-front battle is over, and the Atlantic barrier is formed

The end of the Battle of the Isle of Man meant that the military bloc of the Allied Powers led by Germany no longer had any hostile forces left in Western Europe.

The leader of the last opposition forces on the Western Front, the French re-offender Charles de Gaulle, was escorted back to China by Wey Gang himself.The British war criminal Churchill was also sent to Berlin for trial by the German army.

It is no exaggeration to say that the two-front warfare of the Third Reich has since come to an end.Next, Germany can devote all its energies to the Eastern Front, and end up with the last neighbor threat—the Soviet Union.

Of course, the German army did not have any remaining troops on the Western Front.However, counting the expeditionary forces of Vichy France and Norway in the UK, as well as the defense forces of the soon-to-be-formed Mosley puppet British government, the garrison of Germany's allies in the British Isles has already steadily surpassed that of the British Isles. 20 people.

In addition, the German High Command will send a detachment of the SS British Volunteer Army to the British Isles to recruit foreign troops who are willing to join the SS.This SS British detachment is initially expected to be expanded to the size of a reinforced division in the end.

Of course, the German Wehrmacht will also leave two newly formed infantry divisions to be responsible for jointly defending the safety of the "Atlantic Wall" of the British Isles.

The two new infantry divisions of the Wehrmacht actually left behind the two infantry divisions with the heaviest casualties from the original troops that attacked the UK. In the command framework of these two divisions, a large number of new recruits with no combat experience were added. , mixed with veterans to form two full-staffed infantry divisions.

Naturally, such an infantry division's combat effectiveness will not be too high at the beginning.However, since the United States, which has not prepared super-capacity in advance, is unlikely to cross the Atlantic to attack Europe and land on Germany's "Atlantic Barrier" in the short term, the newly formed infantry division recruits have enough time to carry out Military training, run-in with veterans, and strengthen the combat effectiveness of troops.

In addition, the rest of the German troops participating in the British campaign, except Student's three paratrooper divisions, were transferred to the Eastern Front after quickly replenishing high-quality troops. Then stationed in the mainland of France, and built the "Atlantic Wall" with the Allied forces on the British mainland.

In the same way, these troops also have enough time to train new recruits and restore their combat effectiveness.

In this way, counting the garrison troops left by Vichy France, the Allied forces on the Western Front have already reached a scale of close to 80. With the addition of the natural dangers of the Atlantic Ocean, this coalition force is used to defend the "Atlantic Barrier". It's more than enough.

And if you count the Spanish troops left by the Spanish ruler Franco in the mainland, the total troops deployed by the Allies on the Western Front even exceeded 150 million.

Such a powerful coastal defense force may not be able to break through even if the U.S. military has prepared enough sea transport fleets and escort fleets.

In addition, Dönitz's submarine force in the German Navy has been quite familiar with the combat environment in the Atlantic Ocean after intercepting the training of the US aid fleet. resistance.

The Imperial High Seas Fleet under Raeder's command has greatly increased its tactical strength due to aircraft carriers. After obtaining a large number of military ports, docks, and the remaining warships of the British home fleet after the surrender of the United Kingdom, its strength has also risen to a higher level.

However, due to the defeat of Britain, the Norwegian navy lost its power to threaten the homeland and existed in the inland sea of ​​the Allied powers.As a result, Norwegian Prime Minister Quisling simply signed an agreement with Germany to transfer all the Norwegian navy away from the home port and park in the port handed over by the United Kingdom, and continue to be dispatched by Raeder's United Naval Command.

The Italian Navy, controlled by the new Italian Prime Minister Rossi, itself has a large number of battleships. After acquiring the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal, its power should not be underestimated.

Although they are not directly under the command of Raeder's Joint Naval Command, as a member of the German Gestapo in Rossina, it is not difficult for Reinhardt to cooperate with the Italian Navy in the future.

The navy of Vichy France on the western front is also very strong. As long as the benefits are enough, Petain has no reason to refuse joint operations.Furthermore, today's Vichy France has been completely tied to the big ship of the Allies. If Petain is unwilling to sink the ship with Germany, then he must go to the dark side with Reinhardt.

As for Franco's Spanish fleet, although it is not easy to control, Reinhardt does not need to control them anymore.The Spanish navy has been lonely for a long time, and after a civil war, its strength has been greatly reduced again.Today's Spanish navy is enough to be there as a decoration, and the already impregnable "Atlantic Barrier" really doesn't need them.

After the Atlantic Wall, which was a hundred times more reliable than the so-called "unbreakable" Maginot Line of the year, settled down, the remaining problem was to share the spoils.

In the Battle of Britain, among Germany's many allies, the biggest contributors were France and Italy.

Fortunately, the Italian side said that Prime Minister Rossi, who is fully in power in Italy, is one of his own, and Reinhardt very cleverly followed the original agreement with Mussolini.As long as the African campaign is over, Italy will return all the colonies jointly recovered by the coalition forces to Italy, except for Libya, which the German army helped them defeat, and part of the area that will be handed over to Germany.

As for the colonies that are about to be taken from the British, the Suez Canal is under the control of Germany, and the German troops under Rommel's command took over the super large overseas military base established by the British in the canal area.Other former British spheres of influence, including Cairo, were taken as Italian trophies.

Germany has long coveted the Suez Canal and has always wanted to control it.And handing over control to allies, especially Italian allies, is naturally no more reassuring than the German army's own control.

As early as World War I, Germany was unable to reach here, so it had to instruct the Turkish allies in World War I to send troops to attack Egypt and seize the Suez Canal.However, that also fails.

But this time, when the troops of the Third Reich came to Africa, they did not take advantage of this canal, which was objective in value and capable of creating huge wealth.

With the control of this canal, even after the war, Germany can obtain a steady stream of economic benefits from here.

Moreover, this canal also has important strategic value for the military bloc of the Allies.To be the head of the Allies, Germany must control the Suez Canal itself.

Then there is the division of warships after the surrender of the British Mediterranean Fleet. There is no doubt about this, and the selfish Reinhardt asked Rossi very "politely".

In short, Italy is very talkative, and has reached a win-win carve-up agreement with Germany very happily.

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In addition to Italy, Reinhardt also left a lot of spoils to France.

Pétain's French State and Reinhardt's Third Reich have long set the tone for cooperation.Although Vichy France was established as a vassal regime based on the defeat of the French Third Republic and the victory of the German Third Reich, it is still a country with a sound system in essence.

Exchanges between countries still have their own set of procedures.For example, although Germany asked Vichy France what to do, Vichy France did not dare to talk back.However, in order to win over Vichy France's powerful and relatively independent navy and instigate Pétain to do his best for the cause of the Allies, Reinhardt still offered a lot of benefits to Vichy France.

After all, by agreeing to give France some benefits from the beginning, it can better mobilize its enthusiasm to capture Britain.For Germany, solving the UK is tantamount to solving the risk of fighting on two fronts. From this point of view alone, it is not an exaggeration to offer any benefits.

Therefore, when Reinhardt had just established the French state in Petain, he asked Ribbentrop to draft an agreement with the French, unanimously acknowledging that the rapid defeat of Britain was in the common interests of France and Germany.

Later, Reinhardt proposed to Petain that if France participated in the war against Britain, it could maintain overseas troops in North Africa that exceeded the armistice agreement, ensuring that France had the same colonies as it had at the beginning of the war.

In particular, Reinhardt also expressed his forgiveness for Pétain's small gesture of sending away Berente and the three local divisions.

However, after the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was smart enough to launch Operation Ballista, after the incident of "losing the aircraft carrier and breaking the army", the French government has become a personal person, and the degree of hatred of Britain has skyrocketed, and public opinion overwhelmingly supports cooperation with Germany.

In this way, one side was pushed by hatred, and the other side was driven by interests. Only then did the famous French general Weygand lead the elite French army and the Allied forces to attack the British mainland together.

In the last battle in Western Europe, after the Battle of Britain, the French not only retained the important oil fields in Algeria, but also got the Isle of Man, one of the British Isles.

Of course, France is also very willing to accept the incidental responsibility of sending a force from the Allies to serve as the Isle of Man garrison.In fact, the German army, who was busy on the Soviet-German battlefield on the eastern front, is now too lazy to send troops to garrison everywhere.