The new book is on the list, everyone can help vote for recommendations!! Thank you very much!!

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Winters in England are much colder than in the Apennines.

When the sun shines on the earth, the once glorious city is displayed in front of the world with broken eaves and broken walls. On that sleepless night that has just passed, the London sky was red with fire, and the River Thames turned black overnight.

"Fourteen, Fifteen......"

In the ruins of Buckingham Palace, a soldier in a muddy uniform with a military uniform observes the river not far away with a telescope, silently muttering a series of numbers. The Germans erected dozens of pontoon bridges over London's Mother River, over which tanks rumbled across, and countless soldiers wearing M15 and M16 helmets trotted all the way to this side of the river.

Blue-gray planes whizzed past the river from time to time, and when a biplane flew by, the British scout had to cling to the clammy mud.

A burst of machine guns rang out not far away, and the scout looked up with difficulty, seeing the German plane swaying from side to side to avoid ground fire, but it did not seem to intend to leave immediately, but circled in mid-air over and over again.

Just a few minutes later, the sound of war drums sounded across the river, followed by the shrill shrill shrunk of objects across the air at high speed, and the Scout had to bow his head again and take in the shaking of the earth.

After a burst of head-and-face shelling, the city was completely calm.

When the Scout looked up again, he was covered in rubble and dust, and his chest was still aching.

After hovering at low altitude for a while, the German plane left satisfied.

The rumbling of metal came from far and near, and a dull and even somewhat ugly guy swaggered from Westminster Abbey onto the street in front of Buckingham Palace.

This was followed by the second and third......

Suddenly, a yellow figure appeared in the sight of the British scout, who jumped up from the side of the road, and then staggered towards the approaching German tank, seemingly holding a zha medicine bag in his hand.

A rush of machine guns rang out, and the relentless bullets completely crushed the heroic and feeble resistance of the British soldiers. Faced with the mighty German legions, the moribund defenders of London despaired.

Perhaps from the moment the main forces of the Navy were routed by the German fleet, the British were already in despair.

Before the German tanks could get closer, the scout quietly left, and when he looked back again, the German infantry also appeared on the street.

Further north of the city, the remnants of the London garrison were ramping up to build the last barricades of the ruins.

At the entrance of an air-raid shelter, the disheveled General Gary was smoking a cigarette bitterly, the British general who had just been promoted from brigadier general to major general was only 38 years old this year, and he was a rare young general in the British Army, but Gary did not have the slightest pride and pride in his heart. General Hamilton and his Home Defense Command had retreated before the Germans could encircle London, and all the mess had fallen to poor Gary, who had only been an infantry division commander in the London Theater of Operations.

The British soldiers in Gary's sight were equally listless, and those who survived the heavy German shelling and air raids had already experienced great mental and physical devastation, and there was hardly a single soldier or officer in full uniform, and some were even dressed like beggars. Gary's division had long since been dispersed, and now there were only nearly a thousand soldiers from various units gathered in this dilapidated defensive line, which was the last defense force of London.

In a trance, Gary vaguely saw the glorious London, with its neat streets, tall buildings, the turquoise Thames River, the traffic and pedestrians on the bridges, the occasional ships passing under the bridges, and the flag of St. George of the British Empire flying high above the city. Then, Gary seemed to see his adjutant and staff officers, the rows of soldiers, the neat and mighty military appearances, and the confident faces.

News of the armistice in Italy soon spread around the world, and subsequently to England, and Gary also learned of it from the last telegram from the Defense Command. Gary was envious of this, at least on the warm peninsula of the Mediterranean, where the fierce and savage beasts of war had finally stopped.

However, when will the peace that belongs to Britain come?

As the rumbling approached, Gary straightened his dusty hat, and it was time for him and his soldiers to be loyal to the Empire.

On January 12, 1915, London was declared lost.

The muddy roads, heavy pace, and the physical and mental scars of two weeks of fierce fighting with the Germans on Southampton's roads to the north of England have left hundreds of thousands of British troops, British Colonial Corps, and Commonwealth soldiers demoralized. One by one, they marched silently with their brains down, and there was not much sadness in the hearts of those who had lost their comrades, and people were more concerned about their fate.

The pale-faced general rode slowly beside the team, like ordinary soldiers, he was covered with the smell of sweat, his hair was messy, and his military uniform was also covered with mud.

When there was an annoying and frightening hum in the sky, the general's movements suddenly became agile, and he rolled over and dismounted, and plunged into the ditch or grass beside the road. The soldiers, on the other hand, did not need to be called by the officers, and they all instinctively left the road and quickly dispersed into the surrounding fields.

Judging by this scene, they can be called responsive and well-trained.

In fact, they were just two German reconnaissance planes, and after a few weeks of circling, they left without looking back.

When the German planes were completely gone, the British soldiers regrouped under the shouts of the officers, but their movements were as slow as old men. The more dirty general Muna straightened his collar, and then stood on the side of the road waiting for his lieutenant to retrieve the frightened warhorse.

This was a group of British troops evacuated from the Southampton line in Dorchester, and in the fighting since December 27, 1914, about 1.4 million British troops were sent to that front and launched an attack on the German 8th Army, which had already landed, but with the landing of the Hindenburg Army at Dover, the situation in England changed dramatically. Hindenburg's army was attacking London and advancing into the interior of England, so it was entirely possible that they would be able to cut off the southwest of England from the rest of the world, and advance into Birmingham, the temporary capital of England. Based on these considerations, General Hamilton, the new commander of the British Army's Home Defence, decisively issued orders to all the front-line units, and all forces began to shrink into the north of England and Scotland, in an attempt to build a new line of defense there.

The British army and its retinue troops who left the Southampton line in Dorchester alive were less than a million, hundreds of thousands of people had lost their lives in repeated and fruitless attacks, and everything on the German line was better than the sickle of death. Even after the end of the war, many retired British soldiers still reminisced about those painful scenes when they heard the sound of a machine-gun.

In the eyes of the German General Staff, if the retreat of the main force of the British army could be cut off with a knife, the British war would soon be over, and once the British retreated their troops to the Scottish Highlands, which were not conducive to the operation of armored forces, it would take more time to completely defeat the British, but no matter how strong the Hindenburg Army was, it was less than 300,000 people, and in the face of a British army with more than one million people, it was too risky to carry out a truncated blockade in London-Gloucester, which stretched for nearly 200 kilometers. One careless mistake may collapse on all fronts and be forced to retreat to Dover, and the entire British war situation may even be reversed.

Therefore, the Kaiser, the General Staff of the German Army, and Hindenburg all chose a more appropriate approach: first to gain a foothold, then to attack.

Thus, in the week or so after the New Year, the Germans who landed from Dover did not advance quickly to Birmingham or Gloucester (which was the west coast of England closest to Dover), as the British feared, but steadily expanded the landing ground to receive follow-up troops and equipment, and at the same time surrounded the whole of London with eight divisions of about 100,000 men, and launched an attack on the Thames line of the London defenders on 10 January 1915. One armored division and three infantry divisions attacking inland advanced about 100 kilometres upstream along the Thames before coming to a halt to build fortifications and temporary airfields along the river.

It was not until reinforced by Army Group Helingen that the Germans advanced further into the interior of England and cut off the northern and southern parts of England in mid-January, before a large number of British troops were able to bypass the German lines and retreat to the north of England, trapped only by a few rearguard units and local defenders in the south and southwest.

By the end of the Battle of London, Kluk's 1st Army and its equipment had landed at Bonemouth, and Herringen's 7th Army had begun to disembark at Dover, and after all these forces had landed, the convoy would be divided into two similar parts, one for the logistical supply of Army Group West (7th and 8th Armies) and the rest for Army Group East (1st and 5th Army).

After ascending the throne, Chentian was still nominally the commander of the 8th Army, but the actual command had been handed over to the deputy commander, General François, and Hoffmann's army group staff. With the retreat of the main British army to the north, the 8th Army was divided into three routes, one under the command of General François to attack Southampton in the east, one under the leadership of Guderian to follow the retreating British army north, and the other under the joint command of Colonel Fleming of the 2nd Panzer Division and Colonel Maras of the 2nd Mechanic Division, their target was many ports and cities in the southwest of England, including Plymouth, although the main British army had left, there were still a considerable number of defenders in those places, The harbor of Plymouth is home to the last large warships of the British Navy.

After most of the landings had been completed, General Cluke led his main force into the sweep of southwest England.

By the time Hindenburg's headquarters captured London, Plymouth had been surrounded by 1 Panzer Division and 7 Infantry Divisions of Army Group West, under the command of General Gono of the 1st Army, and when the siege artillery and ammunition were ready, they would attack with the Scheer fleet outside Plymouth Harbour to occupy LinkedIn's last large military port and submarine base in southern England.

In fact, at this time, there were only two badly damaged armored battleships, two cruisers, and about 20 light ships left in the harbor of Plymouth, and not even one of the only three submarines was able to sail normally.

In the early hours of 11 January, the British defenders of Plymouth welcomed their first German "guests" – 12 Seahawk II attack aircraft, which were the first time German military aircraft had visited the port due to Plymouth's distance from the French coast, and only a few Naval zeppelins had visited the port before.

As one of the most important naval bases in Britain, the air defense of Plymouth Harbor was greatly strengthened after the Pascalflo air raid, and when the main force of the British and French fleets was stationed here, more than 40 anti-aircraft guns of more than 40 mm caliber and hundreds of modified anti-aircraft machine guns and machine guns were deployed in the whole port, and many anti-aircraft weapons were also equipped on the large and small ships in the port. However, with the absence of the main fleet, the anti-aircraft weapons here were successively transferred to the beach defense lines and key cities, and as a result, there were now only 11 small-caliber anti-aircraft guns and less than 30 anti-aircraft machines left in the huge port.

The German Navy carrier-based aircraft that came to Plymouth in the sunshine took off from the "Super Duck Mother", which was also the only aircraft carrier traveling with the Scheer fleet this time, and the "Lisa" was transferred to the Heydrich fleet to carry out escort and attack missions, and the "Prince", a newly commissioned aircraft carrier, had some technical problems during the Bonemouth landing campaign, and returned to Wilhelmshaven for repairs and improvements as soon as the landing campaign was over.

Plymouth Harbor, which had been silent for a long time, finally became noisy again with the arrival of the German aircraft group, although there was no hope of victory, the soldiers of the British garrison and the sailors of the fleet were still very active in the battle, the slightly thin anti-aircraft guns roared desperately, the anti-aircraft machine guns seemed to tilt bullets into the air regardless of ammunition, those two-winged German fighters could only try their best to dodge, the effect of the first wave of bomb attacks was also affected, and in the end the British only lost an oil depot and a small patrol boat, Their anti-aircraft fire also shot down a Sea Hawk II, and subsequently captured a German pilot who had parachuted out.

From noon on 11 January, the minesweepers and destroyers of the Scheer fleet began to clear nearly 2,000 mines off Plymouth Harbour, about one-third of which had been laid by the German Navy to prevent the British fleet from leaving the port before the landing campaign, and the rest had been deployed by the British to prevent a surprise attack by German warships and submarines.

On the afternoon of the 11th and the morning of the 12th, the British twice sent destroyers to try to interfere with the German mine-sweeping operations, and there was a skirmish of artillery outside Plymouth Harbour between the two sides, in which a German destroyer and a large minesweeper were damaged, and the British also had a destroyer hit a fire, and both naval battles ended with the appearance of the German heavy cruiser "Blucher", and the British hastily withdrew into the protective circle of the harbor fortress as soon as they saw the tall mast of the "Blucher", and before the mines were cleared, The Scheer fleet had no intention of engaging the British fortifications, and in fact the safest way was to have the powerful army take care of the two forts and the dozen or so artillery batteries.

For the next few days, as long as the weather permitted, Scheer's carrier-based aircraft flew into the harbor every day to conduct reconnaissance and bombing. Due to the limited ammunition in stock and the encirclement of the German army, the resistance of the British gradually weakened, although some aircraft and pilots were lost, but the results of the German aviation were also increasing, the British armored battleship "Vic" was completely incapacitated after eating 2 bombs, and the other damaged armored battleship "Coral" simply sat on the shallow bottom and used as a battery.

As of 14 January, the Scheer fleet's mine-clearing operations were continuing, and about 25 per cent of the mines had been cleared. At 12 noon on the same day, the German Army units surrounding Plymouth shelled the outskirts of the port city for the first time. Then, for the first time, attack planes and bombers from the newly built Bonemouth field airfield flew into the harbor for an air strike, and Plymouth was like a small ship in the middle of the storm, as if it was in danger of being overturned at any moment.

The next day, the siege force finally arrived outside Plymouth, with 6 280 mm heavy howitzers, 21 150 mm heavy howitzers, more than 400 105 mm howitzers and 76.2 mm cannons and sufficient ammunition, plus 35 tanks, 140 armored vehicles and 110,000 soldiers, General Gono had reason to completely smash the British line of 8,000 soldiers, more than 220 cannons and 110 machine guns. Once this line of defense was lost, the British ships anchored in the harbor would become the best targets for the German army's heavy artillery, and the British would have no choice but to surrender.

On January 16, the vanguard of Army Group East reached Gloucester, and the first stage of the "Imperial Eagle" plan was successfully completed, and the German soldiers of the 4 armies successfully broke through the English Channel and landed in Britain and gained a foothold. In the second phase of the Battle of England, the Reich army, which was good at land warfare, faced the British army, which was inferior in numbers, equipment, morale, experience, and naval and air forces, which would be the best time for the German army generals to show their strength, and the Reich Air Force, especially the Airborne Forces, would also add a splendid and wonderful stroke to the end of the war.