In the naval headquarters building in Berlin, Field Marshal Raeder, who was in luxurious uniform and dignified, was carefully reviewing the report on the condition of the Tirpitz jointly sent back by Mashal and Topp. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 info Raeder's eyes were as concise as substance, lest he miss some of them. As a veteran sailor who followed Hipper to fight the Battle of Jutland, Raeder has always had an inseparable deep affection for the great ships and giant guns that have created countless brilliant victories, and the battleship Tirpitz that returned to the base this time is the most cherished divine sword in his heart besides the Bismarck!

"The Tirpitz is running in well, and it seems that Machar can't wait to lead the fleet to attack." A smile appeared on the corner of Raeder's mouth, and he whispered. Since the triumphant return of the main force of the fleet led by Berme in mid-October, the morale of the German Navy has risen to an unprecedented high: everyone from the fleet commander to the shore-based operatives was ecstatic at the historic victory that had inflicted a heavy blow on the British Home Fleet, and was eager for their own fleet to continue its efforts and completely plunge the once proud Royal Navy into the eighteenth layer of hell.

Now, nearly two months after the fleet's return, the vast majority of officers and men believe that the surface fleet should strike again and nail the last screw in the coffin of Anglo-Saxon sea power.

Judging from the current maritime situation, Raeder also believes that it is indeed the time for his navy to launch a new ****-scale operation. By this time, the Bismarck had been repaired and the Tirpitz had its initial combat capability, and the two new heavy battleships were like two dragons of the deep sea, enough to come and go freely in front of the remaining British home fleet. And the British Navy's fast capital ships are only left with Hood and Prestige 2 battle cruisers, and it is almost impossible for them to stop the German sister ships with 18 450mm guns with 14 381mm cannons!

As for the fact that the British still had 6 slow-moving capital ships to rely on, such as Rodney, Queen Elizabeth, and Malaya, and the overall firepower was still twice that of the German battleships, Raeder didn't care about it at all. The Bismarck-class has a speed of up to 30 knots, just to seize the initiative in a rapidly changing naval battle, who would be brainless enough to fight head-on with the battle line formed by 8 British capital ships? As long as the lookout post found that the situation was not right, the wind would be tight, and the British battleships with an overall speed of 7~10 knots slower would not be able to stay with the Germans at all.

At this time, Raeder did not know that the British Queen Elizabeth was undergoing a large-scale refit in the dockyard and would not be able to go to sea for the next 1 year. If it weren't for the fact that this information was covered by the British Navy, the current German pocket battle patrol would have been even more unscrupulous.

On aircraft carriers, the superiority of the German Navy was even greater. Although the Blucher was still being repaired at the Soviet Union's northern military port of Murmansk, the British Navy sank the Fury in late September. Even if Britain removes the Glory from the Mediterranean, there will only be two fast aircraft carriers that can really be driven, the Glory and the Ark Royal. The German Navy still maintains a lineup of 4 aircraft carriers, and they can go to the battlefield again after two months of overhaul and maintenance. As for the gap between the two sides in terms of the performance of aircraft carriers and the quantity and quality of carrier-based aircraft, it is needless to mention. Raeder only hoped that the British aircraft carriers would actively participate in the war, so that his carrier-based aircraft would have a chance to destroy the enemy in one fell swoop.

The only advantage of the British Navy was the number of their auxiliary ships. However, since Britain had to take care of the defense of North Atlantic shipping, the actual maneuver of these ships that could be used against the German fleet was obviously greatly reduced. In addition, the British had to keep fleets in the Far East and the Mediterranean, which further dispersed their auxiliary warships, which had already suffered heavy setbacks at the Battle of Scapa Bay. At present, the British Navy has 26 first-line cruisers and about 100 destroyers of various types, and in Raeder's estimation, the British can concentrate up to 50% of them on their own soil.

However, the number of light warships of the German Navy that could go to the ocean has increased significantly compared with the beginning of the war. With the completion of the laying of the minefield in the southern part of the North Sea, the three K-class heavy cruisers and eight Z-type superpilots who were responsible for watching the field near the minefield have been liberated from the shallow sea area, and the ships that are being repaired and maintained are still in the process of being repaired and maintained, and it is still no problem to gather 20 junior brothers for the capital ships. The escort of these light warships made it exponentially more difficult for the British Navy to sink the main German warships. In addition to the theoretical chance of a submarine crashing into a big deal, this well-balanced and young ocean-going fleet is no longer something that the current British Navy can stop!

However, Raeder was not a pure soldier. After more than 10 years at the highest level of the German authorities, he has developed a strategic vision to coordinate the overall situation. At this point, there is a more important target for the navy to deal with: Norway, a narrow and slender coastal country in western northern Europe.

The German Navy's coveting of the small Nordic country of Norway is no longer a day or two. As early as the last World War, Germany was deeply troubled by the naval blockade established by the British: the British Grand Fleet was like a watchdog, staring at the 450-kilometer-wide North Sea estuary from Scotland to the west coast of Norway, and almost all German warships and merchant ships were trapped in the North Sea, and only submarines could sneak out.

Since France was a hard bone that could not be gnawed, Germany's hope of breaking through the naval blockade could only fall on Norway in the north. The country has 2,000 kilometres of coastline, and the UK can't do it all, no matter how powerful it is. If Germany can occupy Norway and use her port as a forward base, then the British Navy can only hope to block German ships in the Faroe Waterway and the Danish Strait, and this will be at least 3~4 times more difficult than blockading the North Sea!

With the defeat of World War I, the German Navy's ambitions for Norway had to be completely buried, but this situation lasted only 20 years. On March 14, 1939, Hitler annexed the remaining Czechoslovakia, and Anglo-German relations suddenly became tense; With Britain officially listed as an imaginary enemy of Germany, Raeder turned over the idea of attacking Norway from his dusty memory. In the event of a war between Britain and Germany, Germany needed to occupy Norway first, so as to regain some of Germany's inherent geographical disadvantage and take a more active stance to engage the British navy.

Although at the beginning of this war, the German navy achieved a brilliant victory that it did not even expect through a surprise attack on Scapa Bay, kicking seven or eight bars away from the prison door that locked it; However, Germany's own geographical disadvantages remained, and Norwegian ports were still of considerable importance to the German navy. Among other things, the departure from the port of Trondheim in south-central Norway alone is nearly 1,300 kilometers longer than the fleet setting sail from the German mainland into the Atlantic. This shortcut, Raeder is clearly not going to turn a blind eye. Soon after the surprise attack on Scarpa Bay, Raeder began to seriously consider the feasibility of taking Norway through a cross-sea expedition.

For these reasons, Raeder was not determined to invade Norway's neutrality and open a new front in the north, but with the Soviet attack on Finland, everything changed completely.

The outbreak of the Soviet-Finnish War brought Northern Europe, which had been indisputable since the beginning of the 19th century, to the forefront of today's turbulent world. Almost the entire Western world has turned its sympathetic gaze to Finland, which would rather die in the struggle, and has also paid attention to the two countries to the west, Norway and Sweden. Because, if the West were to bail out Finland, the two Nordic countries would be unavoidable: large quantities of goods would have to be transported by sea to Norway for unloading, and then through Sweden to Finland. However, on this seemingly inconsequential aid path, there lurks a vital lifeblood hub for Germany.

On 28 June 1919, France regained sovereignty over the Alsace-Lorraine provinces through the Treaty of Versailles. Germany lost not only 8,280 square kilometers of territory, but also a huge amount of iron ore from this land. Since then, Germany has to rely on a large number of imports of raw materials for steel smelting every year, especially the largest number of iron ore imports to Sweden. At present, Germany imports more than 11 million tonnes of iron ore to Sweden every year, almost 75% of the total annual imports of 15 million tonnes. The amount of crude steel produced from these Swedish ores accounts for more than 40% of Germany's total annual steel production. It can be said that without the iron ore mines of Sweden, there would be no pomp and circumstance of the German military industry today.

During the normal warm season, these minerals are transported without any problems. They were loaded from northern Sweden and then shipped across the Baltic sea to Germany via the Gulf of Bothnia. Since the entire Baltic Sea had been effectively blocked, British submarines and ships could not enter, ensuring peace of mind on the transport routes. However, winter was approaching and the Gulf of Bothnia in the north had already formed a thick layer of ice, which meant that Swedish iron ore had to be transported by rail to the nearby Norwegian port of Narvik, and then by ship along the Norwegian coast to Germany. This has become a potential lifeline for Germany at the moment.

If Britain and France had sent troops to land in northern Norway under the banner of "resisting the Soviet Union and aiding Finland and defending freedom", Germany's winter iron ore supply would have been cut off immediately. And if Britain and France go further and march their troops into Swedish territory, then the entire northern Swedish mining area will be under British and French control, and Germany will not even have a source of iron ore in the warm season. Although Raeder hadn't seen the thirty-six schemes, this kind of trick of false tricks could still be clearly felt. Whether from the perspective of Germany's overall strategy or the operational needs of the naval fleet, Raeder could never accept the presence of British and French troops on Norwegian soil. (To be continued.) )