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Chapter 3: Sisterhood and Infatuation [Act 3] Intricacies (10)

Hitler's turn of defeat into victory turned his anger into joy, and he was even more excited by the tactics of the French Army and Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces on the Western Front, General Gammerin, and the Anglo-French dispute: since the outbreak of the war, the general, who graduated from the Saint-Cyr Military Academy and the General Staff College and served in the General Staff during World War I, has been carefully advancing his troops in battalion units. It was not until the afternoon of the 12th that an invasion of about eight kilometers of German territory was carried out on the twenty-four-kilometer-wide front line in the Saarland region. Without waiting for the German troops to meet the attack, Gammelin openly claimed that the French were on the Western Front, and succeeded in forcing the Germans to quickly transfer six divisions from Poland. This pompous and ridiculous information naturally aroused the suspicion of British observers, who severely rebuked France for fabricating facts and doing nothing.

As a result, after Goebbels and the Wehrmacht High Command disclosed the situation of the war in Poland, the absurd acts of Gammerin and the French government immediately became a joke in the major media in Britain and Germany. Hitler, seeing that Britain and France were too busy to take care of themselves and that they had always been ambiguous in dealing with the invasion of Poland, proposed to Goering and other Nazi dignitaries to take the opportunity to launch an offensive on the Western Front and remove these two eye-catching nails in one fell swoop. After repeated deliberations by Keitel, Yodel and other high-level military officials, the Supreme High Command finally communicated him.

However, when it reached the German temporary headquarters in Posen, it was severely opposed by many officers. Stauffenberg, who had just returned from the position, was silent for a moment, and slammed the table, which shook the magnifying glass, ink, and pens on the table: "It's ridiculous! At present, the siege of Warsaw has not yet been completely formed, but a new war is to be launched in a hurry on the Western Front, is OKW so eager to fight on two fronts and sign another "Treaty of Versailles"!? ”

"Calm down, Klaus." Eric leisurely played with the IMCO lighter in his hand, his face was calm and unwavering, as if he had already expected this qiē, "The key to OKW's decision is the perfunctory behavior of Chamberlain and Petain [93]. These cunning politicians feared that they would fall into war, weaken their national power, and take advantage of the opportunity for other countries to become bigger, so they could never really go to war for the sake of a weaker country that had been repeatedly invaded[94]. Otherwise, how could they have missed the opportunity of the Poznan army's counteroffensive and let you and me gossip here now? ”

Stauffenberg bowed his head and agreed with this analysis. But he was still angry, approached Eric and Wilkes, and poured out the dissatisfaction in his heart: "Ricky, if it weren't for that old fool interfering in OKW, according to your previous thinking, how could you let those ignorant Polish cavalry have a chance to counterattack?" It's a pity that it's too late to make up for it now! Hmph, what else does he know except for noisy all day long and graffiti a few bad works of uneven color? I don't want to think about how many outstanding talents in the army have been buried and purged for no reason since the establishment of OKW [95] in July 1935? It would be a shame for the empire to let a stupid donkey command a pack of valiant lions! ”

Exegesis:

[93] Arthur Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940. Condemned for the policy of appeasement of Hitler's Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II. He had a nickname before the outbreak of the war: "I love Mr. Berlin", and the declaration of war was called the "Telephone War" because it was held out until Hitler attacked the Netherlands that Britain actually entered the war. However, during this period, he ordered the acceleration of the British rearmament program, improved the radar defense system, and updated the air force, which played a key role in the later defense of Britain.

Henri Philippe Petain, Marshal of France, Head of State and Chancellor of the Vichy government. He served as commander-in-chief of the French army during World War I, led France against Germany, and was considered a national hero. When he was prime minister of France in 1940, he was sentenced to death in a post-war trial in 1945 for surrendering to Germany, which was later commuted to life imprisonment.

[94] Poland was partitioned three times in history: in May 1772, Tsarist Russia, Prussia, and Austria met in Petersburg and signed the first treaty of partition of Poland on August 5. As a result, Poland lost about 35% of its territory and 33% of its population, and Poland became a protectorate of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. On January 23, 1793, Russia and Prussia signed the second partition of Poland in Petersburg, after the second partition, Poland became a small country with only 200,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 4 million, and became a puppet state of Tsarist Russia. On January 3, 1795, Russia and Austria signed an agreement for the third partition of Poland, and on October 24, Prussia also signed an agreement. According to the agreement, the entire territory of Poland was divided.

[95] In traditional Germany, the General Staff existed largely as the "Army General Staff", and after Hitler took full power, the position of the General Staff was also challenged by the Air Force under the command of Goering, the second man in the Third Reich. But with the ouster of Hitler by Hitler as Blenburg (Minister of Defence from 1933 to 1938) and Army Commander-in-Chief Fritsch the General Staff, which was dominated by the traditional Juncker officer corps, began to lose ground across the board. On March 16, 1935, the Wehrmacht (Wehrmacht) was formally established, and the various branches of the armed forces were organized into the General Headquarters of the Wehrmacht Army (OKH, German Oberkommandodesheeres), the General Command of the Wehrmacht Navy (OKM, German Oberkommandodermarine) and the General Command of the Wehrmacht Air Force (OKL, German Oberkommandoderluftwaffe). Each branch of the armed forces has its own general staff. On July 1, 1935, the former Army Directorate was officially renamed the "Army General Staff" (German Generalstabdesheeres), which was subordinate to OKH. Hitler, on the other hand, established the Wehrmacht Supreme Command (OKW, German oberkommandoderwehrmacht), which really played a decision-making role in the war, abolished the former War Ministry (the former Ministry of Defense), and set up a supreme command with a director (Keitel), replacing the former chief of the General Staff. As a result of Hitlerton's comprehensive takeover of the command of the army, the opposition between the OKW and the traditional German officer corps represented by the Army General Staff became increasingly acute (the former and new forces such as the Air Force wanted to strengthen the position of the Navy and Air Force, while the latter represented the conservative view of Prussia's "Army Determinism", and most importantly, the command of the traditional General Staff since Moltke no longer existed.

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