For Churchill personally, it was not a question of war or non-war, but the question of how to continue fighting. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

His life was lived to continue the war, and he himself was a stubborn man who made people laugh and cry.

Roosevelt once said of Churchill, describing him as "a stubborn donkey." This stubborn donkey has been stubborn all his life and has been "fighting" for Britain all his life.

Now, the biggest problem facing this stubborn old man is that the Mediterranean route is now almost completely blocked, and it could have been possible to transport a batch of materials through the Mediterranean Sea regardless of the loss, and in a few days it may not be able to transport a ton.

The Axis maritime power in the Mediterranean is not strong, and the core is the fleet of the Italian Navy, but what this naval fleet has been doing is to contain the British Mediterranean Fleet.

To put it bluntly, everything this Italian fleet did was to attract the attention of the British Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet, trying not to let the British Mediterranean Fleet go to trouble the Axis Mediterranean routes.

In fact, even the task of containing the British Mediterranean Fleet was barely accomplished by the Italian naval fleet.

In true history, Cunningham led the LinkedIn Navy's Mediterranean Fleet to attack Taranto, causing heavy damage to the Italian naval fleet.

After the Battle of Taranto and the end of World War II, the Italian Navy was no longer able to pose a real threat to the British Mediterranean Fleet.

If it weren't for the help of Li Le, who crossed over, the Italian Navy avoided the loss of the Battle of Taranto and killed the British battleship Resolve by the way, and it was still unclear who would win or lose in the Mediterranean.

Because of the accident of the traveler Li Le, Britain lost the vital Malta in a daze, and triggered a series of changes in North Africa, which made the Axis powers really make waves in the Mediterranean.

However, even if the Axis coalition forces achieved a series of victories in North Africa and the Mediterranean, and avoided a series of defeats and losses, the original fish belly was still a fish belly and could not become a hard support.

The Italian fleet was now barely able to compete with the British Mediterranean Fleet, and it would be whimsical to get them to take the initiative and block the British Mediterranean routes.

The onerous task of blocking British shipping routes in the Mediterranean, in September 1940, was still completely on the shoulders of the Luftwaffe on the island of Malta.

80 ME-109E fighters of the Luftwaffe were stationed here, as well as 60 Stuka bombers.

Looking at this air force arrangement, you can understand that the ability of the Luftwaffe deployed here to intercept sea targets is really very limited.

Stuka bombers and ME-109E fighters, with poor ranges, deployed on the island of Malta, could only watch the British transports fly away at night, and after taking off during the day, it was also a little powerless to intercept the British ships that were about to sail out of their combat radius.

There were also some problems with the type of aircraft, most of which were ME-109E fighters for air combat, and only a small number of Stuka were used as weapons for sea attack.

Most of the pilots on these Stuka were also air force pilots who had come from bombing ground targets, and they were asked to attack sea targets, but the actual results were not very good.

One of the most lethal problems was with ammunition, and the Maltese islands had just been occupied by the Germans, and there was little time to replenish the ammunition reserves on them.

The air force lacks aerial torpedoes to attack sea targets, because the delivery of supplies to the islands is really small, which makes people laugh and cry.

The typical tragedy of letting the horses run and not letting the horses graze - the recent transport forces of Germany and Italy are really a little overwhelmed by Malta.

Maybe many people will think, isn't it just to transport some gasoline and torpedoes to an island, what's so difficult? A few ships drove by, and the supplies arrived, didn't they? What's more, the transport route to Malta is completely within the combat radius of the Air Force's protection, isn't it easy?

In terms of the difficulty of supply, there is no difficulty in transporting supplies to the Maltese islands, and it can even be said to be a very simple process.

But the problem lies in the transport links: Italy and France, which no longer have the strength in the Mediterranean, are engaged in supplementary transport to the island of Malta.

In addition to maintaining the daily wear and tear of the island's soldiers and air force aircraft, Germany could no longer afford to strengthen the island of Malta with extra ships.

Ships leased from France, ships recruited from Italy, everything was in the service of building the Libyan oil fields.

It was for this reason that the Axis powers did not have the strength to take advantage of the island, despite being the first to storm and take the island......

The gap in transportation capacity, or the ability to use the sea, is very different from the land powerhouse Germany and the Mediterranean fish belly Italy, and in any case with the Sanyo perverted United States and the maritime hegemon England.

At a time when Germany, Italy, and even France were struggling to raise a Mediterranean shipping route, they had worked so hard to raise that they did not have even half of the capacity on the route from Britain to the United States.

In order to make Rommel invincible on the African battlefield, and to make the construction of the Libyan oil fields work a thousand miles - Malta...... Let's just sit idle.

This is the position of Malta at the top of the German hierarchy, that is, this island is in our hands, and it is enough!

As for using this island to block the British Mediterranean shipping route - sorry, we weren't ready! You have to ask when you will be ready, after October 41, don't ask me why, it's just so willful and don't explain.

It is necessary to wait for Libya to start cutting construction investment, until Libya's oil output is large enough to feed the island of Malta, and until the British Navy's Mediterranean Fleet loses its advantage......

Every time they heard these preconditions or demands, Li Le and the top brass of the Air Force deeply felt that it was more "reliable" to rely on Rommel's Afrika Korps to cut off the Mediterranean route.

After all, by this time, Rommel's Afrika Korps had already captured Alexandria and Cairo, and the Suez Canal was only a few days away.

If the British retreated and abandoned the defense, then this attack time could be reduced to one day! Yes, it's just how short. Without the interference of the British defenders, the Germans rushed to the Suez Canal, one day would have been enough!

Rather than wait for the Malta interception operation to start working, it is better to wait for Rommel to stop the Suez Canal directly before then.

In terms of effectiveness, it was Rommel who won the Suez Canal once and for all - after all, no matter how high Malta's interception efficiency is, it can't be 100% intercepted, right? Interception in the Suez Canal, that's a real 100% interception efficiency!

So, from Lile to Goering, from Brauchitsch to Kesselring, from Mussolini to Garibaldi...... Everyone has selectively forgotten about Malta and the strategic point that had added so many blockages to the Axis powers.

Sometimes things are so strange, Malta, which was in British hands, ended up being a poison to defeat Rommel, and the same island was in the hands of the Axis powers, but it was just a not very good escort carrier......

Because of Malta's lack of succession, British transport ships often choose to force their way through the Maltese blockade, and the probability of success is very large, even to the extent that the British top management is very happy.

As a result, the British top brass also selectively forgot about Malta and this important strategic stronghold.

However, in October 1940, when Rommel's armored forces entered Cairo, this selective past was finally reluctantly reminded again.

Churchill knew that he could no longer use the Mediterranean route, which would be closed forever if he did not defeat Rommel, near the Suez Canal.

Detouring the Cape of Good Hope, the huge consumption is not mentioned for the time being, and the delay in supplies brought by traveling across the ocean is enough for the British mainland to drink a pot.

The big navy is not something that everyone can afford to play, Britain maintains a navy size of more than a dozen battleships, and the heavy fuel consumed by each sortie is an astronomical amount.

The loss of the Mediterranean route indirectly made it difficult for Britain to replenish oil. And this was the beginning of the Navy's loss of the material base for the active attack, a beginning that the British Navy was unwilling to face.

"The pressure on the Greek side to ask for more aid has risen to a critical point with Rommel entering Cairo." The British Foreign Secretary looked at Churchill and spoke in a decadent manner about the problems of Balkan diplomacy.

He was now powerless to deal with the situation in the Mediterranean as a whole, and the collapse of the strategic environment and the defeat of military operations had allowed British influence in the Balkan countries to continue to decline.

At this time, Greece opened its bloody mouth, and extortion began to "ask for sky-high prices", but the British side was increasingly unable to provide the assistance requested by Greece because of the unfavorable war situation.

The British troops in the Balkans were not strengthened at this time, on the contrary, in order to support the Suez Canal, an infantry division was transferred to the Egyptian theater of operations, which was already on the verge of collapse.

Instead, Britain dropped a large number of small arms to Greece and supported Greece by arming 10 infantry divisions in the hope that these infantry divisions would hold the Balkans.

Of course, with dozens of Italian and German divisions encircled, Greece was an almost impossible task to win this defensive battle – and historically the Balkans have not been able to do so.

The guerrillas in the Balkans proved to be much more effective than their government forces, and of course, it is not known how the guerrillas performed in this life.