At seven o'clock in the morning of the 21st, the German vanguard reached Rovereto, an important transport junction in the southern Alps, from where it turned eastward and could cross the foothills of the Pasubio Mountains by intermountain road and enter the eastern plain of the Po River from the Torrebelvich Pass to the east. It is one of the most prosperous regions in Italy, with ancient cities such as Padua, Vicenza, Traveso and Venice.

From Rovereto, on the other hand, along the Adige River and the railway line, one can break through the southern pass of the Alcarol Mountains into the Po River Plain, which is less than twenty kilometers away from Verona, the target of the 9th Panzer Division.

The 9th Panzer Division was on the southern route as planned, and the biggest obstacle at the moment was the Caeano Gorge on the way, where the road was narrow, the road was close to the cliff, and on the other side was the rushing Adige River, which was a good place to set up an ambush, but as soon as this bottleneck was passed, the road began to open up suddenly.

At the same time, Assault Group F would come out of the Eastern Front with a corps battle group, which was tasked with cutting off the road from Vicenza to the Bay of Venice, and together with the assault group troops from Austria and Yugoslavia and breaking into the Italian border from the northeast, they would divide and encircle the heavy Italian groups stationed in Friuli and Veneto and annihilate them in this plain.

Intelligence shows that Italy has three standard infantry divisions stationed in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region alone, and a number of air forces of unknown numbers have been deployed.

By eight o'clock in the morning, the heavy search platoon of the 9th Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion had already rushed through the Caeano gorge, and it turned out that the Italians had not set up an ambush here at all, and judging by the confessions of some of the Italian road policemen captured on the way, they did not even know that the Germans had broken through the border defenses.

At this time, the military and political authorities of the Veneto region had not yet reached work time, and the staff on duty at night was wondering about the sudden loss of communications in a succession of northern cities. The Italians could not have imagined that in this short period of eight hours, the German army had marched 200 kilometers and occupied more than 30 Italian villages and towns along the way, and the vanguard had already rushed out of the Alps and was rapidly approaching the important town of Verona.

Von of the 9th Panzer Division. Lieutenant General Hubiki, knowing that as soon as the troops entered the prosperous plains, the concealment of military operations would no longer exist, so he ordered the radio to be activated silently, and reported the current progress of the armored division to the headquarters of Assault Group F, which was still in Innsbruck.

The mountainous terrain interferes with radio signals so much that they have to be relayed through radio relay stations set up in Bolzano and the Brenna Pass. Although the division headquarters is equipped with a half-track long-range communication vehicle equipped with a 10-meter whip antenna, because the battlefield is too large, it is inevitable that there will be some delays in the transmission of information with the headquarters, and if you want to improve this situation, you can only move the headquarters and the command center forward, as close to the front line as possible, but this will cause some security problems.

By the time the Innsbruck Command had sent the order to reply to the Ninth Panzer Division, two lightly armed companies of the 1st Battalion of the 33rd Panzer Regiment and an infantry regiment of the 9th Guards Infantry Brigade were already outside Verona.

The Germans had broken through the Alps and landed on the ancient city of Verona, and the news spread through the entire Kingdom of Italy within an hour of radio waves.

At this time, most Italians were still sitting on their balconies enjoying breakfast in the warm sun, and most of them thought it was a radio announcer who had suddenly gone insane. Everybody knows what the Alps are all about, and it takes at least a day to drive through the mountains in a car, and how could the Germans have broken through this moat in just one night, and so many cities and villages along the way are inhabited by dead people.

On the contrary, some clever people guessed the truth, the Germans must have transported the assault troops by rail, why no one was prepared for this, and the officials in charge of the matter should be dragged out and shot immediately.

But there was no point in putting these afterthoughts now, and it was only in this morning that the Italians really felt the pressure of the war on them. Italians had seen wars in Europe in newspapers and newsfilms, some cities near the north-west border had even been bombed by the French, and the fall of Sardinia had only been a little over a month, but these things were still too far away in the eyes of ordinary Italians. Although more and more friends around them are conscripted into the army, life is not the same as it is, Mussolini and fascism, the key depends on who can fill their bellies.

But this time is different, anyone who can read a map and has studied history knows where Verona is, and even the illiterate who have not read a book should always know Venice and Milan. The Germans had already stormed the Po Plain, and cities like Milan and Venice were destined to fall soon, a vast plain with no natural hazards at all.

At this moment, even the capital Rome no longer feels safe, the Germans can break through even the dangerous Alps, and the Apennines, with their roads in all directions, are more like a sieve and cannot be an obstacle for them.

When the Italians found out that war had really befallen them, the panic was immediately accompanied by all kinds of rumors, which spread lightning through the streets.

"These old guys are crazy, it's literally sending us to death." Lieutenant General Bernardino received the telegram from his subordinates, and when he read the first few lines, he could not help but exclaim loudly.

The 19th Venetian Infantry Division of the Italian Army, which he commanded, was stationed in a small town called Vestino, preparing to move towards Vicenza after lunch.

The Romans had given him the order to board the prepared army in Vicenza, then go to Bolzano, and then rely on that city to build a defensive line on a nearby mountain pass. And in order to strengthen the lieutenant general's determination to resist, the Romans assured him that they had mobilized the 28th Aosta Infantry Division to reinforce it, and it was expected to reach Bolzano in three days.

In addition, the 12th Sassari Infantry Division and the 133rd Lidorio Panzer Division, which were facing off against the French on the western front, would also be transferred to the northern line, and the Roman high command believed that with such a large force, even the powerful Wehrmacht would not be able to easily break through the Alps.

Yesterday's telegram was still in his briefcase, and today he was told that the Germans had already killed the Venetian division, and that there could be more outrageous things to be found.

The Roman command may not have known the current state of the Venetian division, but as division commander, Lieutenant General Bernardino certainly knew the strength of his subordinates. The Venetian division is almost a waste division, this group of guys as a coastal garrison unit, stationed in the barracks on the outskirts of Venice, is full of bustling markets, officers and men have long developed the habit of laziness, and the infantry unit has not received combat training for a long time.

Hearing that they were going to fight the Germans in the cold mountains, the morale of the troops plummeted in an instant, and the officers were finally vaccinated in advance and strictly guarded the below, otherwise there would have been a large number of deserters last night. Don't think that these guys don't have this kind of guts, if they make an opening, believe it or not, they can run away with a company commander in one night.

Now Rome wants to let such a force go to Verona to reinforce the defenders there and resist the German attack, and the opponent is still the German Ninth Panzer Division, which has long been known for murder, which is equivalent to sending these small 6,000 men to the execution ground. Yes, you read that right, this infantry division is currently seriously lacking, and all of them add up to only five thousand six hundred people.

PS: Sorry, the update is a little late, please understand.

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