The successive victories of the Soviet Red Army on the Eastern Front put unprecedented pressure on the Anglo-American alliance. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

In the impression of the British, the Soviet Union was nothing more than a backward developing country, where the people lived in poverty, the industrial development was backward, the government was brutal and unkind, and the leadership style was dictatorial.

These impressions, to some extent, are not wrong, because the Soviet Union did have problems of one kind or another, but this does not mean that they do not have strong military strength and the ability to defeat a strong enemy.

The Russian Empire, which had been shattered by the Second German Reich, had long since ceased to exist and was replaced by a red proletarian regime.

This new country, after the development of the New Economic Plan and the Three Five-Year Plans, has become the most powerful force in Eastern Europe, and has developed from a weak and backward country to a new great power.

However, these achievements were not known to outsiders because of the Soviet Union's closed policy, and foreigners did not know the real situation in the Soviet Union, and the Soviets did not know the situation in foreign countries, so that foreign governments often made wrong judgments on diplomatic issues involving the Soviet Union, and the Soviet people often failed to see their own problems clearly and overestimated their own strength.

Just before the war, Britain, which had always been hostile to the Soviet Union and communist forces, deployed a strategy called "leading the water to the east", hoping to use diplomatic means to eliminate the Soviet Union as a communist country with the help of Nazi Germany. Britain and France watched the Soviet-German dispute, and waited for Nazi Germany to destroy the Soviet Union, and then came to pick peaches.

However, Britain's wishful thinking was still shattered, and Nazi Germany actually signed the "Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact" with the Soviet Union, and then partitioned Poland together.

Later, Germany launched an attack on Britain and France, occupied the French mainland, and bombed the British mainland, causing a large number of British military and civilian casualties.

By 1941, Germany had finally attacked the Soviet Union and had amassed more than three million troops! As a result, these more than 3 million German troops were actually killed by the Soviet Union.

This is the Nazi German army that defeated Britain and France back then, how could it be killed by the "hillbilly" of the Soviet Union? And they were able to encircle and annihilate 800,000 German troops in the Lviv-Sandomierz offensive, and then the entire Northern Ukrainian Army Group was gone.

What about the UK? He was first beaten by the Germans on the French battlefield, and later on the North African battlefield by Rommel, who was inferior in strength and equipment.

Although the British eventually won the Battle of El Alamein, this victory did not bring them much gain, but allowed the dozens of Soviet-assisted T-34 tanks to show their might on the battlefield, and the Afrika Korps No. 3 and No. 4 tanks were no match for Soviet tanks at all.

When the Soviets approached Central Europe, the British were still enduring the German bombardment across the Channel. The empire, which was once the world's first, was not willing to show weakness in front of the Soviets and Germans, so they began to prepare a battle plan to land in Italy, open up the European theater, and take more resources and land from the Axis powers before the Soviets.

Manturov had already anticipated this, after the defeat of the German army on the Eastern Front, its military strength and comprehensive national strength had already suffered a considerable blow, and if the Anglo-American coalition launched an attack on Italy or even Germany itself at this time, Germany might not be able to cope with it.

At this time, the Soviet Union had already proved with their war records that they had the strength to resist and even destroy Nazi Germany, and they did not need or want military help from Britain and the United States, let alone open up the European theater and grab Nazi Germany's territory with themselves.

However, the British were not stupid, and the Yankees were not stupid, and when they saw the defeat of the Germans on the Eastern Front and the defeat of Rommel at El Alamein, they had already found the moment to prepare an attack on the Italian island of Sicily.

Sure enough, in May 1943, two months after the end of Operation Bagration and the Lviv-Sandomierz offensive, the Anglo-American forces gathered 160,000 men, 600 tanks, and 1,800 artillery pieces and landed in Sicily, Italy, to launch an attack on the Axis forces there.

Because the Axis powers had received the information in advance (Manturov had Yakov leak it out), the Axis forces that received the information were prepared in advance, deploying more than 350,000 troops in Sicily, building fortifications in advance, and arranging artillery and machine guns along the coastline where they could land.

In addition, the Italian Navy also dispatched a fleet of ships, including the battleship Vittorio Veneto, to be in the vicinity of Sicily in the event of an attack by the Anglo-American forces.

By May 1943, the Anglo-American forces had launched a major attack on Sicily, initially gathering 160,000 troops to land, but failing to repel the 350,000-strong Axis army.

After the Anglo-American coalition increased its strength, sending 500,000 men in one go, the Axis forces were finally defeated by the Anglo-American forces with inferior forces, equipment, and air supremacy, and Sicily was occupied by the Allies in July.

At the same time, the Soviets were constantly attacking the Axis powers, and the armies were advancing on the battlefields of Central and Southeastern Europe.

By August 1943, the Soviet army had advanced under the Hungarian capital Budapest, encircling the Hungarian Axis forces in Budapest, while the communist forces in Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Greece also liberated the whole country with the help of the Soviet army, and the Yugoslav partisans also liberated half of the country's territory.

The Soviet Red Army was unstoppable, but when it came to Budapest, it was met with a difficult opponent.

Originally, Hungary was planning to withdraw from the war, but Hitler learned the lessons of Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia, fearing that Hungary would turn against himself like the former Axis powers, and that it would lose its oil fields near Lake Balaton.

As a result, Hitler mobilized hundreds of thousands of German Wehrmacht troops into Hungary to overthrow the surrender-prone government of the Kingdom of Hungary and bring the pro-German fascist government to power.

The new Hungarian government was loyal to the Germans, and they had no intention of surrendering in the face of the Soviet Red Army, which was superior in strength and equipment. Together with the German troops in Hungary, they stubbornly organized resistance, and in the face of heavy encirclement and lack of logistical supplies, they actually insisted on holding on.

As a result, the Soviet army spent a lot of energy and paid more than 100,000 casualties to take down the Hungarian capital Budapest and liberate the entire territory of Hungary, but after fierce fighting, Budapest has been bombed beyond recognition, leaving the Soviet army with nothing more than a dead city, an empty city.