France, suburb of Vichy.

When he came here again, Chen Tian suddenly felt like a world away.

In November 1914, he visited here as a German negotiator and witnessed the signing of the Franco-German Armistice Treaty.

In April 1916, Chen Tian came here again, his identity has become the emperor of the German Empire and the supreme commander of the armed forces, only Hindenburg and Hausen participated in the negotiations among the entourage, the names of the Duke of Falkenhein and Württemberg have been gone, and Ruprecht is king in London, all of which makes Chen Tian feel a lot of emotion.

Today is April 16th, more than two weeks after the first German invasion of France, Vichy immediately south of the armistice line has long become the rear of the German army, Guderian and Fleming's armored forces have now reached the Garonne River in southwestern France and Nice in northwestern France, respectively, the next two assault arrows will strike in the center, if nothing else, the battle will soon be over.

Compared with the hard battle in 1914, the German army fought this battle crisply and neatly, and even foreign media called it a blitzkrieg without suspense and amazing!

Blitzkrieg?

Hordes of Stuka flying in the sky, a large number of Panthers, Tigers, and DV and DDD tanks are rampant on the ground, and there are countless infantry wearing M42 steel helmets, holding M4s, Iron Fists, MG42s, and long-handled grenades on their belts, this is the real blitzkrieg in people's minds.

Although in 1916 the technology was not enough for Chentian's army to engage in the kind of high-speed, large-depth blitzkrieg, in Austria-Hungary and France, they had already shown the world a very different mode of land warfare than before.

To be precise, Chen Tian hopes that this invasion of southern France can be used as a rehearsal for real blitzkrieg warfare in the future, and to train a large number of high- and middle-level officers and low-level non-commissioned officers who are familiar with this kind of air-ground coordination and use armored units as arrows to quickly intersperse operations, and by the way, provide a basis for the logistics department's reference.

In Austria-Hungary, the German Army's replenishment was somewhat slow, and the vanguard armoured assault units still had to stop from time to time to wait for fuel, ammunition, and infantry support. This time in France, the situation has improved considerably.

It was the day after Chentian and his party arrived in Vichy. From the front, news came that Fleming's Panzer Army had captured Nice and routed the French Right Wing Army, and after this battle, the French government in the south had lost an arm, and it was only a matter of time before it was completely routed by the Germans.

In this situation, the French quickly expressed their desire for peace through the neutral country of Switzerland. But in the face of such a great opportunity, how could the German rulers give up so easily?

At this time, Chen Tian set his eyes on his right flank, that is, the wing where Gudri installed the armor army. What kind of surprise will this blitzkrieg hero of World War II in another world give people in this world?

After finally crossing the Garonne, Major General Guderian and his other armored forces rushed all the way to the port of Bayaugo in the southwest corner of France, because he had been delayed for 24 hours at the Garonne River, and now he had to regain time on the way.

To the dismay of the young marshal, the reason why his troops were delayed for a day on the north bank of the Garonne was not because of the French resistance, but because after his troops arrived on the banks of the Garonne, they could only wait for the arrival of the engineering bridge building troops in the face of the flooding of the river after the rain, but those sappers and their cars actually encountered an unprecedented traffic jam!

On the more than 100-kilometer road from Ruelle to Liebcona, more than 200 tanks and armored vehicles, more than 900 trucks, more than 73,000 soldiers and nearly 400 artillery pieces have turned the already small French asphalt road into an ultra-slow lane, and the long convoy and the flow of people can only move at a speed of less than 2 kilometers per hour! Even worse is after the heavy rains. Except for this asphalt road. The dirt roads and fields in the countryside had become muddy "car ponds", so the engineering troops and their ground equipment made great efforts to get to the Garonne, and then they were scolded by the hot-tempered General Guderian!

This is already the case in France, where transportation is well developed. Guderian was even more afraid to imagine what it would be like to enter Russia. In his opinion, this is the main reason why His Majesty the Kaiser is reluctant to invade Russia.

While stopping for a roadside meal at noon, Guderian received from his adjutant an up-to-date French infantry manual and a picked up leaflet. In order to better study foreign sources, Guderian was fluent in English and French, so he casually looked through these two things. The 1915 edition of the French Army's infantry manual finally abandoned the spirit of looking forward to attacking as life, but unfortunately fell into another misunderstanding: "The first choice of a strong enemy on the opposite side should be to build a strong defensive line...... The trenches should be maintained at a depth of at least 2 meters to avoid heavy losses in the event of heavy artillery bombardment by the enemy, and wide anti-tank trenches should be constructed in front of the defensive line, and attention should be paid to the rational allocation of anti-tank weapons......"

Guderian disdainfully threw the infantry manual aside, along the way. The German army is all open the way with a large number of airships, attack planes and bombers, their horizontal bombing and low-altitude strafing to the soldiers in the trenches are incomparable to heavy artillery, and psychologically it is a huge deterrent to ordinary French soldiers, as for the trenches, they are just children's props in front of the German armored forces, because they can bypass the trench area or open the way with heavy bombs in a very short time, once a group of tanks appear on the French position, only light weapons, anti-tank guns, The French with anti-tank grenades and Molotov cocktails could not stop the breakthrough even at great cost.

The French leaflet read, "The Germans tore up the armistice, and France will never throw itself at the treacherous!" "Fight to the last man." Let the Germans shed their blood", to which Guderian just laughed.

For Guderian, the invasion of Austria-Hungary and the invasion of France gave him a lot of inspiration and inspiration, and whether time permitted or not, he decided to compile his experience and understanding into a book as soon as possible, so as to pass on these advanced ideas to every German person.

Within half an hour, Guderian and his command had run out of canned food, butter, bread, and hot coffee, when supply trucks carrying oil tanks arrived, and 10 minutes later, all tanks and armored vehicles refueled and continued to move rapidly towards their goal.

Perhaps by a historical coincidence, the 60-year-old Lieutenant General Henri Philippe Aume Bey, who had a relationship with Guderian at the Battle of the Boer River in 1914, when Petain led his troops to surrender to Guderian. Unexpectedly, one and a half years later, the two met again on the battlefield.

Commander of the left flank group. It sounds like Petain has a lot of authority, but considering that Petain was only a commander of the French Army three weeks ago, and this army only had one infantry division and one artillery regiment, it is not difficult to understand the situation of General Petain at this time. After losing the two lines of defense in succession at Guerland and Luelle, Pétain simply abandoned the Garonne and Mont-de-Marsan and retreated to Dax, only 60 kilometers from Bayogon, and asked his remaining 70,000 soldiers to build fortifications on the hill in the gap between the German arrivals, which was already at the foot of the Pyrenees.

Although he still had 70,000 soldiers in his hands, General Pétain was still very embarrassed, because at least two-thirds of them were temporarily incorporated into the army's reserves. Many of them, though they had fought in the 1914 war, were still very new to their commanders and companions, and were very short of equipment and ammunition, and the only consolation was that there was little shadow of defeat in the last war in these soldiers, and under the propaganda of the government, everyone actively prepared for war and swore to fight to the death to the death.

As for the geographical location of this last line of defense, Petain felt that it would be much safer to rely on the Pyrenees than on the sea, because after the German invasion began, four battleships of the German North Sea Fleet and the Atlantic Fleet and the aircraft carrier "Prince" invaded the Bay of Biscay with a group of light ships. and heavy shelling and bombardment of fortified French ports along the coast. Although the French navy had laid a large number of mines outside the port of Bayogo and blocked the harbor channel with sunken ships, this was not enough to make the coastline a safe belly.

Meanwhile. The mighty German Mediterranean Fleet was shelling the ports of Marseille and Toulon, and in view of the current dire situation, the main members of the French government had retreated to Mias, which was located in the mountains, and after the right flank cluster was surrounded by the Germans, Petain had become the last hope of France.

When he received letters of encouragement from French President Poenga, Prime Minister Clemenceau and the War Office's order for promotion, General Petain was not even the slightest bit happy, because the German armored forces appeared in his sight, which was a day sooner than he expected. It is a pity that Petain underestimated the speed of the Germans, especially the speed of the German armoured troops marching in this large plain area on the south bank of the Garonne River.

This is already the case. Petain had no choice but to face the German offensive that was about to begin.

On the first day, the Germans still sent only planes and airships to bomb and strafe, and this air attack had already taken a toll on the speed and enthusiasm of the French soldiers in building a defensive line in the previous days, and even more irritating when the opposing soldiers pressed the border. The French air defenses were still able to shoot down two or three German planes a day, but the German clusters that were only increasing every day made people feel more and more hopeless, and whenever a German plane was shot down, the cheers of the soldiers could still be heard on the French positions, but this cheering was weakening every day.

The next day, after three sorties of aircraft were dispatched for air strikes. Guderian divided his armored forces into three teams, the first line in front of the formation, composed of 160 DDD tanks and 60 stone DDB tanks, after the battle began, they lined up in 6 assault columns to advance to the French positions, the first 20 shells were loaded with armor-piercing shells, and they focused on the anti-tank gun fortresses and machine gun fortresses on the French positions; The second platoon consisted of 86 DDD tanks and 63 armored combat vehicles equipped with 120 mm mortars, which slowly advanced and suppressed French fire after the battle began, and the first 20 shells were loaded with ordinary grenades and fired at the French trenches; After the 3rd formation, it consisted of Stone DDC, Stone DDD tanks, and armored personnel carriers, waiting for the order to attack. In addition, after the armored forces, 120 artillery pieces provided long-range fire support.

Faced with this strange formation, Petain pondered for a few minutes, and his eyes showed a kind of helplessness of defeat.