Throughout human history, turmoil often means the arrival of opportunities and the birth of heroes.

Hearing of the post-war turmoil in Italy, some people in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Soviet Russia, the United States, France, and even distant Japan smelled the opportunity, but some people were just ready to act, and some immediately took action.

By the time the Italian **** Umberto's urgently requisitioned paratrooper assault force arrived at the Rome airport, the situation in the capital had developed to an even worse situation than the worst expected. The reason for this was that the French suddenly intervened and changed the course of the situation in the whole of Italy.

In fact, if the Italian paratroopers had arrived more than a dozen hours earlier and took control of the Roman airfield, there would have been nothing to do with the French.

In this race against time, the first to "cross the line" is a Frenchman named Romain Machach. This gentleman is 54 years old, has served in the French Army for 37 years, was promoted to colonel 9 years ago, and is stuck in place due to the lack of convincing enough military contributions, according to the French Army regulations, he should be transferred to the reserve in a few months, then he will basically have no chance with the general star in this life.

Colonel Macchach came to Italy at this crucial juncture, not just to take a risk to gain military success before retiring from service. He personally experienced the First World War, as a scout, he single-handedly captured the German communications corps, as a demoman, destroyed a German tank in the Vichy defensive battle, and was one of the few heroes in the French ** team in that war. Between the two world wars, he entered the military academy three times for further study, step by step from a low-level non-commissioned officer to the rank of a colonel, and became a well-known tactical expert in the army. After the end of World War II, Macach began to study international politics and national strategy, and his articles published in military journals attracted the attention of the upper class, and then he was given the opportunity to go to the United States for military exchanges, so he came into contact with a large number of materials about the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, and the Pacific War between the United States and Japan, and gained an in-depth study and understanding of the military expansion and war adventures of the United States in modern times. After returning to China, Marcach wrote and published the book "France Will Rise Again", which caused a strong reaction in military and political circles, and he became acquainted with many high-ranking military and political figures, laying the groundwork for his future single-handedly flight to Italy.

When it comes to Franco-Italian relations, we have to say that the two countries have risen and fallen in completely different ways since World War I. It has been more than 30 years since France became a defeated country in World War I. In addition to not falling apart, it has experienced almost the worst situation imaginable, with the loss of sovereignty, bullying, political chaos, economic decay, inflation, people's livelihood, social unrest, revolution, gunsmoke and war...... By the mid-30s, when French politics had re-stabilized, economic and social indicators had fallen to the levels of around 1900, which meant that for two decades, the French had not progressed, but rather regressed.

During World War II, France, which was weakened by its national strength, became the advance pedal of the Western Allied camp to attack Britain, and the ports, airports and railway systems in northern France were forcibly requisitioned by the German ** team, and many important ports in western France were still controlled by Germany, and were therefore attacked by American and British warplanes. Even though all the French had no intention of getting involved in the war, France was inevitably raved by the flames of war, and hundreds of innocent civilians fell victim to it.

The two world wars completely changed the world pattern, and the emerging Germany finally replaced the old empires such as Britain, the United States, France and Russia to become a new generation of "empires on which the sun never sets". Having cleared the way to global domination, the German rulers turned their strategic attention to the more distant Americas and Asia, freeing the inactive French from the awkward situation of surviving in the cracks, and their country entered a period of stable recovery that lasted more than a decade. By 1948, France's economy and industry had finally surpassed its peak of 1913, and the total population had reversed from the U-shaped bottom upwards to 1910 levels.

When the domestic situation was improving, the French political circles learned from the painful experience and came up with the strategic development orientation of actively integrating into the camp of Western allies and striving to return to the ranks of great powers. Under this positioning, they not only "do not blame the past" for their former enemies, but also play the role of small followers in various international affairs, actively contributing to the efforts of others, and thus gaining the opportunity to rebuild the military industry and rearmament. On the other hand, the French vigorously competed for international trade markets in the fields of agriculture and animal husbandry, light industry, and metallurgy, and for this reason regarded the Triple Economic Alliance concluded between Ireland, Spain, and Austria-Hungary as their number one competitor, and actively enlisted neighboring countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Italy to form a group of cooperation.

After more than 30 years of political and economic changes, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, a few small European countries that have flourished in history, have been deeply embedded in the German local economic circle, basically lost the independence in the field of industrial economy and trade, and the only one that really has the conditions to cooperate with the French and play the "1+1>2" effect is only Italy. However, the Italians have always been immersed in the dream of "hegemony in the Mediterranean", and feel that the countries bordering the Mediterranean are either weak or enemies - weak and underdeveloped countries such as Greece, Turkey, Syria, and Saudi Arabia are worthy of their cooperation, while Austria-Hungary, France, and Spain, these old powers, are all direct competitors that need to be suppressed and excluded.

Taking advantage of the two world wars, Italy plundered many African colonies and several Mediterranean islands from France, so it had both a psychological advantage and an emotional wariness of France, and always felt that the French were interested in retaking these overseas territories. In the face of the olive branch thrown by the French, the Italian top brass behaved very cautiously, and the more enthusiastic the attitude of the French, the more strange the Italian politicians felt. In recent years, although the economic and trade relations between the two countries have improved and some cooperation has been carried out, there has been a lack of substantive results. After the Italians ran into a wall, the French tried to cooperate with Soviet Russia and the United States, but they never achieved the desired results due to the lack of complementarity in technology and resources.

In desperation, the French top brass turned their attention back to the Italians, but after several temptations, they finally realized that the current Italian government was in its bones unwilling to cooperate with France, so they asserted that "unless there is an Italian government close to France, there will be no quasi-strategic cooperation between France and Italy." ”

At a time when the French were at a loss, Italy was attacked by the new United Kingdom and Austria-Hungary, and the Germans were ostensibly neutral, but behind the scenes, they were putting the Italians to death, and Japan, Italy's secret ally, was too far away to quench its thirst and could not help at all. Seeing the Italian army beaten to death by the Allied forces, the Italian top brass was like ants on a hot pot, and the French top brass was very happy, and they expected that the Italians would put away their arrogance after the war and carry out all-round cooperation with France in a down-to-earth manner, so they refused the lure of New Ireland and Austria-Hungary to maintain a goodwill neutrality towards Italy during the war.

As the war deepened, the Italians unsurprisingly lost to their opponents and signed a humiliating armistice, just when the French took the initiative to open their minds to this loser, unrest broke out in Italy, first people everywhere held protest marches, and there were signs of large-scale ** action, and then the army mutinied, the royal family and the head of government fled Rome in a hurry, and then the ** who claimed to be an Italian republican seized the palace and announced the establishment of a provisional government by telegram......

While the governments of most of the great powers stood idly by, the French saw this as a great opportunity to change their strategic position. After learning that the Italians had occupied the palace, Colonel Macach paid a non-stop call on the French prime minister and the minister of defense, and after receiving their support, he took an adjutant, a translator, and a volunteer pilot to "shun" a German-made He-151 long-range reconnaissance plane loaded with fuel from the French Air Force, and set off from the airport outside Paris and flew directly to Rome, the capital of Italy.

As far as the situation was concerned, the voyage of less than 1,200 kilometers was fraught with uncertainties. Not to mention the adverse weather conditions that may be encountered when flying over the Alps, and the possibility of a miscarriage without radio guidance, after entering Italian airspace, they are likely to be intercepted by the Italian Air Force, and in the case of poor communication, they will be expelled from the airspace at least and shot down outright. In the end, even if the plane arrived in Rome unhindered, it would probably face the dilemma of being unusable at the airport, and the fuel for the plane would not be able to support their flight back to France from Italy anyway......

Even so, the adventurer Mahach set out on the journey without hesitation. For most of the nearly three-hour flight, he sat in the co-pilot's seat, holding a 15-year-old aerial atlas to guide the pilots to Rome, Italy's capital, in an unknown condition. To make it easier to get their bearings, after crossing the Alps, they flew to the seashore and then south along the coastline. During the flight, the radar wave detectors on board almost non-stop, which meant that they were constantly under the monitoring of the Italian ground radar station, and the Italians could send fighters to intercept them at any time, and on the sea below the plane, Italian warships appeared several times. Fortunately, the He-151 was not attacked by the Italians in any way, and even more fortunately, when they flew over Rome, the runway of the Roman airport was empty, and several air defense positions around the airport were not in any way.

Colonel Macach made a move and ordered the pilot to land directly. After landing, they found that the Rome airport was uncontrolled and undefended. In order to get in touch with the ** activists who occupied the palace, Macach and his lieutenants took a truck from the warehouse and rushed to the palace according to the tourist map of Rome......

(End of chapter)

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