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After a pause, Kesselring continued: "In a sense, the Italians are actually waiting...... Therefore, we should defend in Italy, and the Italians will not dare to act rashly when they see that we are inseparable from the Allies. Of course, we can't put the handle of the sword in the hands of the enemy, which is one of the reasons why I asked for more troops, who are responsible for holding on to the important cities along the way, and if the Italians choose to surrender, then we can control them with the army! ”

"I have to warn you, General!" Hitler said, "That's an army of millions, how many troops do you need to control so many troops?" ”

"Don't worry about that, honorable Führer!" Kesselring replied: "Although the Italian army is very large, they are a rabble, and we only need a small number of troops to contain them!" I think General Rommel would agree with this as well! ”

Hitler set his eyes on Rommel, who nodded.

Although he was still not in favor of defending Italy, he had to agree on this point.

"How much?" Hitler asked Kesselring: "How many more troops do you need?" ”

Kesselring thought for a moment and replied, "Five divisions!" ”

"No, I can only give you two divisions!" Hitler said.

Kesselring was a little helpless: "Okay, just two divisions, but I hope these two divisions are airborne divisions, because they can be on standby at the airport, and if necessary, they can be airborne to any city in Italy within an hour, only in this way it is possible to control so many cities and so many Italian troops!" ”

Hitler stared at Kesselring's eyes for a moment, then took Kesselring's hand and said, "As you wish, General, I am persuaded by you!" ”

So two airborne divisions were sent to the airfield near Rome, and the reason why Rome was chosen was because Rome was the capital of Italy, and of course it was the political, military and economic center of Italy, as long as it controlled Rome, it would almost control half of Italy.

On the other hand, because Rome was located in the middle of Italy, no matter which city was reinforced, it would not be too far away.

The controversy between Rommel and Kesselring undoubtedly ended in a victory for Kesselring......

In a way, Kesselring was right, because he has historically succeeded in achieving the desired strategic objectives...... In fact, it was completely beyond expectations, because when everyone thought that Kesselring and his Army Group A were going to be finished, Kesselring miraculously used his meagre army to control Italy while blocking the attack of hundreds of thousands of Allied troops, and in the end it took the Allies eight months to reach Rome, and another eight months to liberate most of Italy and reach the Alps.

In other words, there was no such thing as an avalanche of victories that Alexander and Montgomery believed to be, and if it existed, it would have been a year and four months.

This is not only a strategic mistake, but also a tactical mistake.

Strategically, the Allies should not have put their troops into a country as mountainous and river-rich as Italy...... Strategically, however, the British were victorious, as they wanted to delay time and avoid a premature collision with the main German forces.

Tactically ...... If Zhang Chi had been left to fight in this battle, Zhang Chi would not have landed from Salerno at all, and landing from here would have made the British army almost have to fight from the south to the north throughout Italy if they wanted to liberate Italy.

But Montgomery, a commander who was called a "genius of war" by the British, would only fight with this one-by-one push.

As Kesselring said of the Allied command: "The plan of the coalition forces thoroughly demonstrated that the basic idea of its high command was to follow the rules, and the result was that I was able to accurately predict the next strategic and tactical actions of the other side with little effort...... Therefore, I was able to find appropriate countermeasures within the limits of all my resources! ”

If you always know what your opponent's next move will be, you can do your best to the best of your ability, even if you have limited resources...... This is the reason for Kesselring's success in Italy.

But at the same time, Kesselring also failed, because with the great success of Kesselring's defense, Hitler completely abandoned the idea of withdrawing from Italy, and then put more and more troops into Italy into Kesselring's hands, and when the Allies landed from Normandy, the German army collapsed due to insufficient troops.

In this respect, Rommel's view was more far-sighted, but unfortunately Hitler made the wrong choice.

Because of Hitler's support, Kesselring's Army Group A behaved differently on the southern front...... Before, because I was in a hurry to evacuate, I just blew up bridges and broke roads along the way, and I didn't even do much of this work because of the hasty withdrawal.

But now the purpose of the German army is to defend in Italy, or it can be said to use the terrain of Italy to exchange space for time, so the German army began to garrison along the way to block the American army.

This was the third day of the U.S. advance, and because of the speed of the advance in the first two days, there was a kind of thinking of underestimating the enemy in the U.S. army, and even some officers thought that they should speed up again, so that they could catch up with the fleeing enemy and give them a good look.

The U.S. military had reason to think of underestimating the enemy, because they had marched all the way in the Battle of Sicily.

But Zhang Chi reminded Patton: "General, you should remind your troops to slow down, the Germans will not let you chase like this!" ”

"That's right, Major General!" Barton replied, "I'll warn these disobedient fellows again!" ”

Barton used "again" and "disobedient" in his words, so Zhang Chi knew what was going on...... As a veteran of the battlefield, Patton certainly knew that this was dangerous, but the tradition of the American military was that there were many soldiers with personality and many officers with personality, and these personalities were manifested in the fact that they often disobeyed orders and did things on their own.

These officers and soldiers quickly paid the price for their rashness:

An ambush set up by the Germans near a road bridge, an ingenious ambush.

The reason why it is ingenious is that the Germans still blew up the road bridge as usual...... If you don't blow it up, a fool knows that there is a fraud in it.

So the U.S. military was not suspicious at all, and they built bridges and roads as usual.

The Germans lay in ambush on the high ground on both sides of the road bridge, aiming their guns at the sappers who were building the road, but did not shoot, and let the American military bridge erection equipment lay the road bridge.