< World War II - The Waves of Steel (3) >
July 1, 1940
Central Italy, the Italian capital - Ro Italy had fully expected Germany to launch an offensive and had prepared for it in its own way.
They diligently reinforced their defense lines and accelerated the production of new fighter aircraft, doing their best by Italian standards to prepare their defenses.
The problem, however, was the miserable reality that doing one's best does not always yield the best results.
“What are you going to do now?”
Mussolini, who had grown timid and quiet after a series of military failures and Himmler's grand failure, finally raised his deep baritone voice to interrogate Chief of the General Staff Badoglio.
For Chief of the General Staff Badoglio, it was a dumbfounding situation, but he had nothing to say.
“Why are you silent, Chief of the General Staff? You were the one who said that putting all our efforts into a defensive war was the best choice for Italy, and you were the one who said we couldn't spare the Air Force for an attack on British strongpoints in the diterranean because there were signs of a German invasion.”
In truth, Mussolini, who loved offensives and gambles, had wanted to actively participate in La Rocque's plan.
To La Rocque's proposal to strike Alexandria and Malta by air and sea, he had acclaid it as 'an operation shining with fascist genius' and had shouted, "All in!"
The problem was that the head of the Air Force, Marshal Italo Balbo, accepted the persuasion of Army Chief of the General Staff Badoglio and refused, stating that the Air Force would focus on defending the holand as a German offensive was imminent.
It wasn't common sense to wage another gamble with the fate of the nation when the ho country was on the verge of being overrun. From the perspective of the Italian Army and Air Force, it was a perfectly rational and strategic choice.
The problem was that the Italian Navy, led by Admiral Campioni, took this decision very badly.
Unlike in the original history where Italy entered the war only during the invasion of France, the Italy that had intervened during the German Civil War was hit with an embargo earlier than in the original history as a price for it.
After La Rocque's governnt ca to power, they were able to procure fuel through France for a short while, but even that was soon cut off due to the intervention of Arica and Britain, aided by the Abwehr's great performance.
The shortage of resources like fuel, which had plagued Italy in the original history, was tornting Italy even sooner, and the Italian Navy, the group that had stockpiled the most oil 'by a slim margin' in Italy, had to dole out the oil they had sparingly saved and stockpiled to the Army and Air Force, and even to the factories.
But when the Army and Air Force, who had co begging for oil from the Italian Navy, ended up betraying the Navy, the furious Admiral Campioni also dug in his heels at the port, declaring that the Navy would not move without the Air Force.
It could have been dismissed as unavoidable up to that point, but then France hit the jackpot in Britain.
They had succeeded in landing on the British Isles, sothing no one had ever imagined, and as things turned out, Mussolini was frad as the 'man of foresight' who had actively agreed with La Rocque's proposal, while the military leadership was frad as the 'incompetent military' that failed to recognize his insight.
“Speak, Chief of the General Staff! The Navy couldn't move because of your unilateral action, and France refused to dispatch its army! So what is the state of the defense line you poured so much effort into?”
Neither Army Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Badoglio, nor Air Force Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Balbo, had anything to say, though they had mouths.
It wasn't that they had done anything terribly wrong.
Despite the limited resources available and the imnse damage suffered from Mussolini's rash offensives, they had, in any case, perford the outstanding feat of blocking Germany's offensive once with France.
Even after France withdrew, they did their utmost to strengthen their defense lines and air force by scraping together what few resources they had.
But the offensive ticulously prepared by the Fourth German Reich, the 24 hours of violence inflicted by a mad air force of 5,000 planes and overwhelming artillery, mockingly destroyed all their efforts.
“The Air Force is annihilated, and we can’t even get a proper damage assessnt from the front lines. Does that make any sense? What did the defensive strategy you all valued so much leave us with! Because of you, the British diterranean Fleet remains intact, and France has refused to help!”
Unfortunately, looking only at the results, it seed as if Mussolini had been right, and the Duce, who had been lying low, was now full of vigor, cornering the two n.
Of course, it was rely looking at the result in hindsight, and just as a broken clock is right twice a day, it might have been a fluke.
In the end, Chief of the General Staff Badoglio closed his eyes tightly before opening his mouth with a sigh.
“My apologies, Duce. My capabilities were insufficient to fulfill my duties.
I, in my foolishness, will resign.”
Watching Badoglio, Marshal Italo Balbo also let out a sigh and added.
“…I will resign as well.”
It was an unprecedented incident for the Army and Air Force Chiefs of the General Staff to resign simultaneously during a war, but Duce Mussolini was pleased with the resignation of the two chiefs who had been so full of themselves and had ignored his orders.
“You have worked hard. Rest well.
From now on, this Duce will overco Italy's crisis!”
Mussolini's confidence was not entirely without basis. The Italian Air Force had been annihilated at the start of the battle, and the defense line was taking a one-sided beating, but on the surface, the front line itself had not been pushed back.
If Mussolini had seen with his own eyes the state of the front, where they were being battered for the third day, with communication lines and the very terrain torn apart, unable to even report the current situation to their superiors, he would never have had such confidence. However, the situation where the front line was being maintained, even without an assessnt of the damage, was instead stimulating his wishful thinking.
An offensive that pours ammunition and bombs until the enemy is nearly annihilated is hard to imagine by 'common sense', and looking at the map of the front, it appeared chaotic, but the line itself seed to be holding.
It was a bravado he could not have had if he knew that the front line was being maintained only because the German Army had not yet ordered its ground forces to charge, and that his troops were in a situation where they could not retreat even if they wanted to, because of the waves of steel covering the sky and the endless rain of steel pouring down.
“The Air Force, which only ate up the budget and was of little help, is already near annihilation. Give all their oil to the Navy.
Go and appease Admiral Campioni and tell him to strike the British diterranean Fleet!”
After all, they were the sa German army that they had blocked once with France. It was Mussolini's judgnt that they could hold out if only the French Army ca.
“Foreign Minister, go to France and tell them! The great Italian Navy will secure our sea (Mare Nostrum - the Italian term for the diterranean Sea), so send reinforcents to stop those German invaders!”
Unlike Mussolini, who was highly excited and showing his dignity as the Duce for the first ti in a while, the face of his son-in-law and Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, did not look so good.
“My apologies, Duce, but France has already resolutely refused to dispatch their army to us.
Even if we go now…”
“Nonsense! Isn't that what a Foreign Minister is for, to make it happen! They will think differently once they see our navy's great performance in the diterranean! Surely, our navy is not inferior to the French Navy!”
The British diterranean Fleet had the aircraft carrier Glorious, and the battleships Barham, Warspite, and Malaya, but the Italian Navy had a whopping six battleships, including the recently commissioned new battleships Littorio and Vittorio Veneto.
The three Queen Elizabeth-class battleships of the diterranean Fleet were quite old, and Britain was in no position to support the diterranean Fleet from its ho country at the mont, so Mussolini was confident of victory.
Count Ciano did not want to face the French Pri Minister La Rocque, who had not even hidden his anger, but in the end, he had no choice but to let out a sigh and say he understood.
-
July 2, 1940
Southern British Isles, Portsmouth – French Army Headquarters The French landing force, led by Charles de Gaulle, had to pay a considerable price in sacrifices to break through the British coastal defense line while landing on the beach east of the Portsmouth naval port.
However, thanks to the British being ill-prepared in the aftermath of the surprise attack, they sohow broke through and succeeded in capturing Portsmouth Harbor.
After landing, instead of rashly launching an offensive towards London, de Gaulle adopted a strategy of securely capturing Southern England to secure troop transport and supply lines.
This was partly due to the difficulty in unloading heavy equipnt like tanks as the bridgehead was not yet properly established, and also because he was wary of facing the strongest resistance before recovering from the casualties of the landing operation.
Indeed, the commander of the Southern Command in Britain, General Alan Brooke, who was short on troops, was implenting a strategy of concentrating his forces near London to establish a defense line, proving de Gaulle's judgnt to be correct.
Thanks to de Gaulle's judgnt, the French Army succeeded in occupying the southern British Isles without major casualties, and by securing the naval and air bases in southern Britain, the French forces gained a stable strongpoint for the fight for air and sea superiority for the capture of Britain.
The problem ca next.
“Was the landing of the million-man army promised by the Pri Minister impossible from the start?”
De Gaulle pressed his glabella with a tired look, and his close friend, Alphonse Juin, who was also considered a master commander in the French Army, replied.
“Yes, Charles.
We lost many transport ships during the landing operation, but it was an unreasonable operation from the beginning.”
The plan to land a million-man army and force Britain, which was weak on land, to surrender at once seed plausible at first glance, but France's poor supply capability was not sufficient to support a million-man expedition across the sea, sothing that was not easy even on land.
Thanks to de Gaulle securing not only Portsmouth but also Plymouth and Portland, they were sohow managing, but France, having lost a large number of transport ships, was struggling to supply just 500,000 troops.
La Rocque still wanted to land another 500,000, but de Gaulle refused, telling him to prepare for the war with Germany instead.
“The Navy was hit by H Force again yesterday.”
The report from his subordinate, Philippe de Hauteclocque, known as Leclerc in the original history, made de Gaulle's already troubled brow furrow even more.
The French Navy had desperately dispatched submarine fleets to lay mines and carry out all sorts of sabotage to tie down the fleet at Scapa Flow even after the surprise attack, but their opponents were Winston Churchill and the Royal Navy.
They used the brutish thod of breaking through by having transport ships simply collide with the mines, and in the end, they succeeded in getting their relatively intact fleet to escape from Scapa Flow.
Once out of the narrow harbor, the Royal Navy's destroyer fleet hunted down and drove off the French Navy's submarines, which were busy laying mines, like they were chasing rats, and in the end, the sea belonged to the Royal Navy once more.
For now, the Royal Navy's fleet was small and the French Navy was intact, so there was no problem maintaining sea superiority in the narrow English Channel for the ti being.
However, Britain was using H Force, led by Admiral Jas Sorville, to continuously inflict damage on the French Navy guarding the English Channel with hit-and-run tactics.
H Force, consisting of the aircraft carriers Ark Royal and Illustrious, and the battlecruisers Hood, Repulse, and Renown, endlessly carried out operations where they would inflict damage with their characteristic mobility and then flee, grating on the French Navy's nerves, but there was no suitable counterasure.
The only aircraft carrier France had, the Béarn, was as slow as a rchant ship, so it was a non-starter, and while the Dunkerque-class and Richelieu-class battleships were 30-knot fast battleships and could respond, the Royal Navy knew this and desperately avoided those three ships, harassing only the others.
It was obvious that if they dragged on ti, the Royal Navy would finish repairing its other damaged capital ships from the surprise attack and commit them.
anwhile, the news that Germany had begun an all-out offensive on Italy and that the Luftwaffe was blanketing the sky and striking Italy added fuel to France's impatience.
“The Pri Minister seems to have no idea what the situation is here.”
Occupying Southern England, which was almost unprepared due to the surprise attack, was not very difficult in itself.
But de Gaulle and the French Army had to shudder at the truly terrifying animosity of the British people, and they had to make every effort to maintain a gentlemanly attitude and thoroughly manage public security to sohow lessen the animosity of the locals.
They had just managed to quell the simring resistance in the southern region and were just catching their breath, but it had only been a week. The fact that it was a little quieter now could not possibly an that the region had been stabilized.
However, La Rocque was pushing de Gaulle, saying he had to capture London as soon as possible, and from de Gaulle's perspective, just sitting tight in the southern region of England would only make the situation worse.
“Now it's unavoidable.
We must launch an offensive.”
It was a bad situation in many ways, but in the end, he had no choice but to launch an offensive.
De Gaulle opened his mouth, examining the map with a prudent face, and the other generals looked down at it with tense faces.
“The Pri Minister's request is London, but if we crash into that defense line, we'll be chased back to France imdiately.”
Unlike in the original history when they had to worry about the Nazi's Operation Sea Lion after abandoning all their equipnt at Dunkirk, the British Army's equipnt was now equal to or better than the French Army's.
Thanks to Halifax, who had disbanded all the mobilized troops after the Munich Agreent, the British Army's troop numbers were still low but would gradually increase.
And de Gaulle's French Army, while said to be 500,000 strong, couldn't utilize all of them in an offensive due to rear area security and supply issues.
La Rocque was pushing to capture London, but de Gaulle was an individual with enough arrogance to trust his own judgnt and resolutely refuse a politician's unrealistic demands.
De Gaulle's finger pointed to Gloucestershire, to the left of London.
“They are prepared for a decisive battle to defend London, so we will bypass them, break through, and isolate London from the rest of Britain.”
“Certainly, that seems to have a higher possibility of success.”
“The enemy commander is said to be a man nad Bernard Law Montgory.
Have you heard of him?”
Everyone shook their heads, and de Gaulle nodded.
“Good, then it is decided.”
De Gaulle's first opponent was decided to be Montgory.
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