On July 16, 1916, the Allies launched landing operations at the ports of Civitavecchia, Lido Diostia and Latina at the same time, opening the prelude to the campaign on the Apennine Peninsula.

On July 25, in the Allied Allied Coalition Headquarters, Lieutenant General Valikot was holding a military meeting. Although the landing operation had begun, the fighting on the front line was somewhat unexpected, and the Italians were much more prepared than they expected.

It's normal to think about it, after all, it involves the security of the capital, and you can't pay too much attention to it! In addition, the geographical location of the Italians determined that after losing sea supremacy, their coasts would no longer be safe.

The armies of the Entente that participated in this campaign included:

Bulgaria: 5 infantry divisions (each infantry division has about 17,000 people), 2 heavy artillery brigades (each heavy artillery brigade has about 3,800 people, with 108 artillery pieces of various types), 5 bombing groups (each group has 36 bombers) and 6 fighter groups (each fighter group has 48 aircraft), with a total strength of about 100,000 troops;

British: 2 Canadian divisions (about 15,000 men each), 2 Australian divisions (about 14,700 men each), 1 New Zealand division (about 13,600 men), 10 Indian divisions (about 15,300 men each), 4 heavy artillery regiments, a total strength of about 230,000 men;

French: 5 African divisions (about 14,000 men each), 1 heavy artillery regiment, with a total strength of about 72,000 men.

On the surface, the Entente had 25 infantry divisions with a total of 400,000 troops, and it seemed that it was really possible to divide Italy in two, and they could choose the landing site at will!

But in fact, only the five main divisions of Bulgaria really had combat effectiveness, and the other British and French colonial troops were far from each other in terms of weapons and equipment and will to fight!

In the opinion of Lieutenant General Valikot, it is not an exaggeration to say that these five main Bulgarian divisions can sweep these twenty colonial divisions!

Many of these soldiers have just joined the army, and they have only been sent to the battlefield after a few months of short-term training!

It is estimated that less than one-fifth of those who are really willing to work for Britain and France are even less! Most of the people were forced to join the army for their livelihood, or they were directly forcibly conscripted into the army by the colonial government, so what kind of morale did it come from?

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After the landing operation began, Lieutenant General Walikot was naturally reluctant to let the main force go to the mines, and there was no doubt that the Indian divisions of the British and the African divisions of the French were all in the front, and even the five white divisions of the British Dominion were waiting behind, which was considered the preferential treatment of the whites.

Originally, according to the original plan of the Entente, the landing in Italy was a feint, and the main strategic purpose was to force the Italians to withdraw troops from the front line to help Rome and create combat opportunities for the Anglo-French forces on the Western Front.

After all, the Italians were able to become one of the great powers, and they also relied on their own strength, and Britain and France never thought that they could defeat the Italians by relying on this partial division alone.

This is too unrealistic, and if the colonial troops are replaced by their main forces, there may still be a slight possibility of realization.

If it is only to achieve this strategic goal, it is really not too difficult, and now the Italians are actually about to hold on, and if they continue to fight, they will have to consider drawing troops from the front.

The Entente lost cannon fodder troops, and neither the British nor the French cared about their lives or deaths, they were not worth much anyway.

But the Italians can't do it, it's their own people who die. What's more critical is that the current battle loss ratio is still a special pit of 2.2:1, and it takes an average of 2.2 Italian soldiers to lose casualties in exchange for a cannon fodder, which is a very cost-effective business for the Allies.

No way, who told the Italians to now lose air supremacy and sea supremacy at the same time? There are planes bombing in the sky and warships bombing on the sea, so it's no wonder that their casualties are not large!

But now it is different, Ferdinand ordered Lieutenant General Valikot to complete the landing operation as soon as possible, and the troops came to Rome or even occupied Rome, forcing the Italians to withdraw from this war, and this difficulty coefficient increased exponentially!

Lieutenant General Valikot said cautiously: "Generals, we have called you here today because with the change of the form on the battlefield, we have to change the battle plan we have formulated before.

You can see, these are the information we have recently gathered, the Italians are mobilizing the whole country, and according to their population base, it is tentatively estimated that the Italians can mobilize more than 2.2 million troops.

And the Germans have recently supplied the Italians with a batch of weapons and equipment, which will reach the Italians next month, and then at least hundreds of thousands more Italians will be armed, and our mission will fail!

Not only could the Italians be unable to force them to withdraw from the Western Front, but they also had the ability to continue to increase their troops on the Western Front, and I don't think anyone wanted to see that happen."

Everyone carefully read the information, and there was no doubt that this information was true, but some irrelevant content was deleted, such as: the Italians have no longer been able to keep up with the consumption, and the Italian people have begun to resist joining the army, etc.

Therefore, the more people look at it, the more ugly it becomes, especially the French! The combat effectiveness of the Italian army is not very good, but no matter how wasteful, a sudden increase in the number of Italian troops by a million can still change the tide of the war!

Major General James was the first to ask: "Your Excellency Commander is right, the enemy's strength is increasing, we must revise the battle plan, and we can't let the Italians complete military mobilization!"

But what do we do now? With the forces we have now, it is almost impossible to defeat the Italians? ”

The world war had just broken out, and everyone thought that it was just an ordinary war, which could be ended in a year and a half at most, and the preparations were not very adequate.

The only countries that completed industrial mobilization at the beginning of the war were Germany and Bulgaria.

When the war entered 1916, the French also began to mobilize industrially, then Austria-Hungary, the British Empire, and finally the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy.

As for the other participating countries, industry can be ignored, and naturally there is no talk of industrial mobilization. Of course, Belgium was an exception, the war was over at the beginning of the war, and there was no opportunity for industrial mobilization.

Before the outbreak of the war, no one thought that after industrial mobilization, the war would continue, because the manpower and material resources that both sides could devote to the war had greatly increased, and the time required to distinguish the winner had become even longer!

Soldiers were needed to fight wars, soldiers needed weapons and food, and workers and peasants were drafted into the army to fight wars.

While an unprecedented amount of human resources was being poured directly into the battlefield, in the rear, the manpower needed for war production was also increased to an unprecedented extent.

Gone are the days when the war required only the active participation of soldiers and some craftsmen, and the majority of the people were mere spectators, and the majority of the people served the war directly or indirectly.

Now the industrial mobilization of the Italians has not yet been completed, their comprehensive national strength has not yet had time to fully burst out, and once they have completed the mobilization, the disaster of the French will be!

As a French major general, James naturally wants to avoid all this from happening, as long as he can achieve this goal, even if this coalition army is wiped out now, he doesn't care!

Well, Valikot knew that the reason he was looking for was not sufficient, and if he calmed down and thought about it, he would find that it was almost impossible for the Italians to complete a full mobilization.

The granaries of the Italians were in the south and Sicily, now that Sicily had fallen, the south was not less patronized by the navies of the Entente.

At least now a large part of the food supply of the Entente landing force is selflessly contributed by the Italians!

In order to alleviate the food crisis, Italy has begun a large-scale land reclamation campaign, and the corners of the land that were previously unattractive are now being developed.

Against this background, how is it possible to continue mobilizing? Now the Allies can't afford to come up with so much food to support them!

The authorities are obsessed with bystanders, and for Major General James, he is no longer able to calm down and analyze, even if there is only a glimmer of possibility, he can't take risks!

After all, no one can guarantee that the Italians will not come to break the cauldron once, and they are desperate to gamble, as long as they break through the French defense, their food problem will be solved!

Since the French were so cooperative, Lieutenant General Valikot naturally would not make any extraneous complications. I saw that he said confidently: "It's very simple, continue to feint on the other two roads, gather troops to storm Civitavecchia!"

Now the Italians have five divisions in the port of Civitavecchia, with a total strength of less than 70,000 men, and as long as we attack with all our might, they will not be able to stop it at all!

And Lido-Diostia, because it was closest to Rome, now the Italians deployed ten divisions there, with a total strength of about 130,000 men,

Latina is about the same as Civitavecchia, and the Italians have five divisions deployed, and if we land from here, it will not be conducive to our subsequent operations.

The Italians still had fifteen divisions of troops in Rome, and although most of them were rabble, we were still not sure of defeating them before Italian reinforcements arrived.

Therefore, in addition to attacking Rome, we have another option - to cut off the northern and southern arteries of the Italians!

After we take Civitavecchia, we can choose to attack Rome in the south, or we can choose to attack in the northeast to pick up the railway, and we can blow up at least a hundred kilometers of the railway before the main Italian army arrives!

As a result, in the coming months, the Italians would have to rely on horses to transport the north and the south, and their troops on the western front would be starving if they did not retreat! ”

Valikot still didn't say that this time he wanted to kill the Italians directly, which was related to the battle for the right to speak.

Britain and France can not fight for the dominance of attacking Italy, but they will definitely jump out to fight for the dominance of forcing the Italians to surrender, after all, this is related to the distribution of interests after the war, and it is also related to the issue of dominance in the Mediterranean Sea in the future.

As soon as the Italians were defeated on Bulgaria's initiative, then in the future the Entente would have an advantage in the distribution of interests in the Kingdom of Italy.

This is definitely not what Britain and France want, maybe France is now for the sake of domestic security, and it is not able to draw a large number of troops from the country, so it can choose not to fight, but John Bull will definitely jump out.

After all, the British have not yet broken out with full force, and they still have spare strength, and it is not a problem to mobilize another two or three hundred thousand troops from the country!

Since everyone is eyeing the Kingdom of Italy, it is only natural that Lieutenant General Valikot chose to conceal his purpose.

Anyway, no one thinks that a mere 100,000 Bulgarian troops and 300,000 colonial troops can make the Italians surrender, and as long as Valikot has created the established facts, it is impossible for Britain and France not to admit it.

Although I don't know what medicine is sold in the Walikot gourd, Major General Winston, with the intuition of a soldier, feels that something is wrong, when did the Bulgarians become so selfless?

Major General Winston questioned, "Your Excellency, I'm afraid our forces are a little insufficient, right?" Once the Italians react, we may not be able to withstand their counterattack? ”

Walikot smiled and said, "General Winston, you're too worried! Don't forget that our mission is only to contain the Italians and force them to send troops from the front to help us back home!

Anyway, as long as the landing is successful, everyone's first task is to sabotage, and this is not our homeland, so what is there to worry about?

I am convinced that it is far easier to destroy than to build, and in just a few days we can inflict a serious blow on the Italians!

Unless we are lucky enough to conquer Rome, I don't think there is a need to hold on, and the Italians want to regain lost territory, so let it be better for them!

It's a big deal to catch them in the coastal cities and continue to attack, which can also achieve our strategic goals! ”

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With great effort, Valikot managed to convince everyone to agree to his plan. As long as the first step is successful, the rest will be easy!

Valikot believes that as long as they see the hope of conquering Rome, even if it is for their own interests, they will cooperate with them later!

Monopolizing the credit for defeating the Italians, I believe that few people can resist the temptation, which is enough for everyone to be promoted collectively, even if there are a few exceptions, it can't change the overall situation!

The British and French officers assigned to the colonial troops did not mix well at home, and now they have the opportunity to make a great comeback, and whoever dares to sabotage is against them!

After all, a lot of things can't be put on the table, these are unspoken rules! Even most of the middle and lower-level officers and soldiers didn't know that there was such a thing!

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