As soon as the German fleet entered the Mediterranean, a big news came out, and the ferocity of the Germanic barbarians once again opened the eyes of the Italians.

The military value of this island, which is only fifty kilometers long, should be seen in the slightest hint of strategic foresight, stuck in the main shipping route connecting Italy to its African colonies.

Italian people of insight also dreamed of seizing this island and completely removing this stumbling block that the British had placed at the door of Italy. Interestingly, this matter was only the intention of the civilian people from beginning to end, and the Italian military did not even make a plan.

The reason for this may seem absurd to say that the Italian Navy does not have its own marines and aviation, and neither the Italian army nor the air force is willing to fight for the good of the navy.

The contradictions between the Italian army, navy, and air force have been going on for a long time, and the reason for this lies with Mussolini.

He was a great fan of the navy, and the big guns satisfied his penchant for showing off, and he believed that only a strong navy could help him in his grand ambition of turning the Mediterranean into an inland lake of Italy.

After he came to power, the entire government's military spending was tilted towards the navy, and the navy became Mussolini's personal darling, and its comfortable working conditions and sufficient logistical supplies made Italian young people who wanted to join the army more flocking, and a large number of school-age young people rushed to sign up for the navy, which undoubtedly caused dissatisfaction among the other two branches of the military, especially the Italian army, which saw the navy with a look of envy, jealousy and hatred.

While the sailors lay comfortably on the deck of the battleship, nibbling on lobsters and oysters with a glass of chilled wine, and sunbathing in the warm Mediterranean sun after lunch, the hard-working Italian soldiers were left to carry a tattered rifle. Wrapped in a thin military coat and nibbling on half-baked potatoes, he shivered in an Alpine outpost, or marched on the barren Gobi in North Africa in the heat of 50 degrees Celsius, under the scorching sun, and carrying dozens of kilograms of equipment on his back. Why is this? The Italian Army is also the armed forces of the kingdom, and it is not raised by the stepmother.

As time passed, Mussolini's tendencies intensified, and the contradictions between the Italian army and navy deepened, although not to the point of incompatibility, but not to the point of incompatibility, but not to the point of being close to the Japanese. Speaking of which, Japanese people have always had a good impression of Italy, perhaps because the two are so similar in many places.

In order to build Italy's huge fleet, the Italian navy took up a lot of military spending and resources that would otherwise belong to the army. This led to a great reduction in the combat effectiveness of the Italian Army, not that the Italians would not fight. The problem is to fight World War II with World War I-level equipment, which is indeed difficult for some strong people. The Italian leader has a good appetite, but lacks a good set of teeth.

It's not that Italy is incapable of advanced army equipment, and the Italians are actually as capable of breaking through the sky as the Germans when their brains are open. In fact, the military technology of the Kingdom of Italy was once at the forefront of the world, because the Apennines have always had a tradition of folk scientific research since ancient times, and Italian military inventors have made many strange but interesting inventions, many of which can be regarded as genius innovations even in modern times.

But in the end it all came to naught with Mussolini's rise to power, and Italian fascism imprisoned the mind. All creation had to be done according to the instructions of the leader, and only what Mussolini was interested in could be financed and procured by the government. Italians are loose by nature. Some inventors are even more free in their bones, and many people are dissatisfied with Mussolini's policies, they have no ability to resist, so they can only choose to flee Italy, and a large number of technical talents are lost, and a large number of countries on the other side of the ocean are cheaper.

At the time of the war, the Italian Army boasted a million troops. The big mouth even boasted that the total number of Italian armed forces could exceed 10 million after the general mobilization of the country. But in fact, at the beginning of the war, the total strength of the Italian army was only 450,000 men, and these people were organized into 74 infantry divisions of the 22 system, which was a small number compared with other powers, and the two infantry regiments plus an artillery regiment were only 12,000 men.

Even in these seventy-four infantry divisions. There are only 19 of them that are really fully equipped with weapons, and most of the others are just hanging the sign of an infantry division, and there is a serious shortage of both weapons and soldiers. It is strange that Mussolini has always used the army as the main foreign attack force, but did not give them the funds and armament they deserve.

Italy has a long-range artillery with good performance, but due to insufficient military spending and production capacity problems, the total number has never exceeded the triple-digit mark. Most of the Italian soldiers were armed with World War I 1891 rifles, and most of the main artillery in the infantry divisions came from Austria-Hungary and was the spoils of war at the end of World War I.

Similarly, the Italians had good submachine guns and semi-automatic rifles, but the problem was still limited production, and as a result, they could only arm some blackshirts and elite companies, not to mention the distribution of ordinary big-headed soldiers, and many soldiers did not know that the army was equipped with these weapons until the defeat of Italy.

For the most part, Italian soldiers were fighting a group of enemies armed to the teeth on a pile of antiques, and they were fighting in a war that was completely different from the weight class.

Mussolini's character led to his eventual defeat, and countless Italians lost their lives for his personal ambitions. Mussolini had a profound reflection after his arrest, arguing that his failure was due to an overestimation of the national character of the Italians. They are not descendants of the ancient Romans, according to Mussolini, who today are a mixture of foreign slaves, immigrants and Gothic barbarians.

The great leader angrily accused the Italians of being incompetent cowards and lacking something hard in their souls, as Mussolini once said after his defeat in the Alps, if he gave Michelangelo a piece of marble, he could carve a statue of David and give him a lump of clay. He can only make a pitcher.

Mussolini's words were indeed excessive, the Italians did not lack courage, they only lacked the motivation to ignite courage, and once they found a reason to fight, these guys went crazy and even scared themselves.

Due to the contradictions between the armed forces, all branches of the armed forces have been strictly guarded. Guarding your own territory, I will not interfere with you, and you will not want to set foot in my realm. The Italian Navy was forbidden to form a marine unit, and at the same time it was forbidden to have its own air force.

All those who can fly belong to the Italian Air Force, and in this respect the Italian Air Force is very Goering Fat Man. As a fashionable new branch of the military, the romantic and adventurous air force was the first target for the Italian elite to join the army. Because the pilots are all officers, and they don't have to come from professional military schools, this is just right for the appetite of the children of the aristocracy, because these gentlemen don't want to waste time in military schools. I also want to be an officer as soon as I enlist in the army. Moreover, the training of the Air Force is also very different from that of the Army, and those air ladies do not have to carry a 35-kilogram backpack to march in the sun at all, they can drink cold drinks under the parasol, lazily and lazily spend the whole day, as long as they sit on the plane as a crew member and go around the sky a few times a week, if they have an adventurous spirit, they can also fly their own fighter jets to play stunts and other tricks, military discipline and the like are for those civilians. No one in the Italian army dared to trouble a single nobleman.

The Air Force has become the best place to mix qualifications, and often a son of a nobleman enlists in the army for three or four months. Immediately he was honorably discharged with a medal on his chest and the rank of lieutenant in the Air Force. Military experience and rank are the background that the Italian aristocracy must have, and with these backgrounds can enter the political arena with confidence, this is a process that the new blood of the power class must go through before coming to power.

The Italian Air Force plays out the same plot every year, and it is really an iron-clad battalion. It has always been strange to outsiders that the Italian Air Force does not seem to receive any special treatment as a gold-plated tool, except for a few fighter groups that have been specially trained by the elite to get some of the latest toys. The rest of the companies were stuffed with the rags of all eras of Italy.

Before the start of the war, the Italian government claimed that it had built up the best flying force in Europe, and the powerful Italian air force had more than 2,300 aircraft of various advanced aircraft, which could easily turn Italy's enemies into fans. In fact, Mussolini himself did not know how much water was in this propaganda, and what role the Italian Air Force top brass played in it. There are also different opinions in hindsight, and it is difficult to come to a clear conclusion.

Scandals such as the embezzlement of military funds by the Italian Air Force have never been stopped, because there are a large number of powerful people behind the back and even take action in person, so only the big things are small, and the small things and witnesses are not at all.

At the time of the war, Italy's air force was actually half as strong as it had been advertised, with at least 1,300 or more aircraft on paper, which in reality had long since been dismantled because they were old and waiting to be dismantled, or because they were no longer fit to fly, they had to be locked in hangars waiting to be scrapped.

There are only about 1,000 aircraft that can really be used, of which more than eighty percent are old models of various thirties, the remaining ten percent are improved versions of the above-mentioned models, and only one percent are advanced models that can barely meet the standards of the times.

Although Italy claims to be a European power, it cannot change its essence as a resource-poor industrial country. Most of the raw materials for production that Italy urgently needs must be imported from abroad, and this problem seriously restricts Italy's military production and the upgrading of equipment.

Italy has a good industrial system, but it is stuck in the insurmountable barrier of resources. It's not that Italy doesn't want to give the army newer guns and weapons, the problem is that its steel production is only more than two million tons per year, most of which will be used to build the navy in addition to civilian use.

Now turning back to the Maltese strategy, there were indeed some officers in the Italian Navy who considered the need to occupy Malta immediately in the event of a war to reduce the threat of the British Royal Navy to the Italian Navy.

But in the end, it turned out that this was only a matter of their own thinking, the Italian Army was resolutely opposed to fighting for the benefit of the Navy, Malta was of no use to the Italian Army at all, and after defeating it, it would only cheapen the Navy and Air Force. Of course, the army will not openly express its opposition to it in person, and they use the most customary methods, procrastination, which must be investigated, verified, studied, discussed, calculated, deduced, and so on...... So you just have to wait and wait.

As mentioned earlier, the Italian Navy had no marines, and their warships could not go ashore, relying on the sailors to fight the British Army, and the Italian Navy had no confidence in this.

Also on this issue, the Italian Air Force is also very ambiguous, and they are not interested in fighting the British for the sake of the Navy, so like the Army, the Air Force replied that the Navy must study and study this issue and plan carefully, and the British are very difficult to provoke. Unlike the Italian Army, which has a tendon, they are still playing the small abacus of picking peaches afterwards.

In the end, the Navy gave up on the plan to seize Malta, and there was a high head in the event of an accident, as long as I didn't say I hadn't warned me about it before.

So, after a series of tri-armed games in Italy, this pearl of the Mediterranean finally fell into the hands of the Germans.

When the German Mediterranean task force with three British-made battleships as the core appeared on the surface of the island of Malta, the heart of the British commander stationed on the island was broken. You must know that at this time, the British army, navy and air force stationed on the island of Malta combined were full, and there was only one battalion of men.

A German fighter group that took off from Tunisia was the last weight that overwhelmed the defenders' psychological scales, and the ferocious Messeschmitt fighter slaughtered in five minutes the six Hurricanes that had been trembling around the German fleet, which was all the strength of the British Royal Air Force on the island.

While the German Army soldiers were climbing the net ropes and starting to transfer to the landing craft, a white flag was rising on the flagpole on the roof of the British headquarters in Valletta Harbour.

Continue to ask for a monthly pass.,The monthly pass ranking of this book has dropped.,I ask for your support again.,I'm keeping a continuous update of one chapter a day.,I just ask you to vote for a monthly pass to this book.,Thank you for your support.。 (To be continued......)