The attack on the Allied "Royal Glory" convoy was the last fleet-level attack by the U.S. and British navies in the Atlantic in 1933. Due to the poor supply lines at sea and the frequent enemy air raids, the situation of the American and British troops defending the four islands of Texel, Pico, São Jorge, and Faial in the central part of the Azores was deteriorating day by day, and the officers and men were miserable, and by early October, the Allied troops were basically ready for a cross-island attack.www.biquge.info The military bases in the British Malay Peninsula and the East Indies not only inflicted heavy losses on the US and British military forces in Southeast Asia, but also disrupted the strategic deployment of the US and British camps in the Eastern Hemisphere and directly threatened the rear routes of hundreds of thousands of US and British troops in West Asia.

As in history, Japan, which rose rapidly after the Meiji Restoration, had great expansionist ambitions, first invading northeastern China and then gradually expanding the scale of its aggression, but the war progressed far less smoothly than expected, and as more and more human, material, and financial resources were consumed on the Chinese battlefield, the domestic economy became more and more strained. At the same time as a major war broke out between the Allies and the United States and the British camp, and in the face of the olive branches thrown by the belligerents, the Japanese government was on the right and left, demanding preferential economic and trade policies from the Western powers on the one hand, and patiently waiting for the best opportunity to enter the war on the other hand. When the US-British coalition forces had absolute superiority in the Azores battlefield, the Japanese military top brass overwhelmingly supported joining the US-British camp, and the military attache in the United States even proposed to the high-ranking US generals a list of supplies before Japan's entry into the war, privately saying that as long as the United States promised to provide these materials and put them into practice, the Japanese army would go south to the Indian Ocean to cooperate with the US and British troops to wage war against the Allied forces entrenched in the Middle East, but because the amount of materials requested by Japan was too large, Washington hesitated. It didn't take long for the situation in the Azores to take a turn for the worse, and when the prospects for the Atlantic theater became more and more pessimistic, the U.S. government was willing to accept Japan's previous demands for reinforcements, but the Japanese, seeing the wind and rudder, decided to wait and see for a while, and secretly negotiated with the leading brother of the Allied camp through diplomatic channels, and received assurances from those in power in Germany on key issues such as the division of the territory of influence and the provision of economic assistance -- compared to the materials promised by the United States, The occupation of Southeast Asia, which was rich in natural resources, was the condition for the Japanese military and political leaders to enter the war.

Due to the signing of the Four-Power Treaty with Japan and the Soviet Union in the early years, the military focus of the US and British camps was placed in the east and west, that is, the Azorean strategy in the east and the Great Persian strategy in the west. In order to ensure this important resource producing area, the United States and Britain blindly made concessions to the Japanese Government in the political, economic, and trade fields, believing that this would win over Japan and at least stabilize it from making trouble during the war. By 1933, the overall size of the Japanese navy ranked third in the world, second only to Germany and the United States, and its naval aviation was in the forefront of the world in both quantity and quality.

On October 19, the U.S. and British fleets returning from the Indian Ocean to the Malay Peninsula encountered the main force of the Japanese Southern Fleet in the Strait of Malacca, and the course and result of the battle were quite similar to the Russo-Japanese Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the U.S. and British fleets, which were demoralized and lacked air cover, were completely destroyed by the opponent, 9 of the 22 combat ships were sunk and 5 were captured, and more than 3,200 people were killed, missing, and captured, while none of the Japanese ships were lost, and the casualties were less than 200 officers and men.

The Ottoman Empire officially declared its entry into the war on October 22, and on the day of the declaration of war, the German and Italian armies launched a fierce offensive against the "Greater Persia" forces supported by the United States and Britain.

With the entry of Ottoman Turkey into the war, the confrontation between the two camps in the Middle East finally changed from a proxy war to a direct war, which was originally an opportunity that the United States and Britain had been looking forward to, but Japan made a sideways attack on Southeast Asia, if the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula and even Australia fell into the hands of the Japanese army, the American and British troops deployed in British India would be reduced to a lone army, although the war may still take a turn, the front-line troops were already panicked, and MacArthur, the commander of the US-British coalition forces in West Asia, had to give up the plan to take the initiative to attack the Persian region, Commanded all units to strengthen defenses, relied on border defenses to resist the Allied forces, and accepted the armed personnel of the "Great Persian State" to withdraw into India for regrouping and standby.

On October 26, the Azores Islands, which is regarded as the "final field" of the war, sounded the whistle for the second half of the final, and the Allied forces launched the Second Battle of Texel with three German Marine Divisions as the spearhead, and when the heroic marines braved the enemy's bullets to open up a solid landing ground, more than 60,000 Allied infantry quickly landed under the cover of more than 2,000 combat vehicles. It dealt a heavy blow to the will of the enemy's officers and men to fight. By dusk on 29 October, more than three-quarters of the island of Texel was back in the hands of Allied forces, and the remnants of the coalition forces retreated to the mountains and a few ports to continue their stubborn resistance. At the initiative of the Allies, the two sides ceased fighting for 12 hours on the 3rd, and after face-to-face negotiations, the commanders of the American and British forces agreed to disarm.

As soon as the communiqué came out, the world was shocked. Although the U.S. and British troops quickly seized the island of Texel, and the Allied troops were killed and captured, a considerable number of officers and soldiers successfully evacuated by sea with the efforts of their own navy, and most of these people participated in the battle to defend Pico Island or São Jorge Island, and then retreated to São Miguel Island or Santa Maria Island, and finally ushered in a victorious counteroffensive, and now the 120,000 U.S. and British troops stationed in Texel, only a few thousand of them moved to the remaining three islands occupied by the U.S. and British troops before the end of the battle, and the inaction of the U.S. and British fleets was not incompetent. Rather, they took the opportunity to achieve a successful strategic retreat - nearly 100 ships, including all the capital ships, from the hopeless Azorean front to North America, and more than 20,000 soldiers from Pico, São Jorge, and Faial.

Although the American and British troops left behind on these three islands numbered 40,000, they had lost the fighting spirit to fight the enemy, and the next task for the Allied forces was to persuade them to surrender and take over. By 3 November, with the surrender of the defenders of Pico, the Battle of the Azores, which lasted five months and 11 days, finally came to an end. This protracted and fierce three-dimensional battle of land, sea and air devoured the lives of more than 300,000 soldiers on both sides of the war, more than 19,000 combat planes were deployed to this archipelago with a land area of less than 25 of Ireland, more than 12,000 were shot down, destroyed or scrapped due to injuries, and the total number of combat ships engaged in this battle by both sides reached 1,359, of which 416 were sunk, and the total tonnage lost was nearly 1.6 million tons. This is equivalent to three-quarters of the total number of military ships built in the world in the whole of 1932; The two sides lost 825 non-combat vessels, with a total tonnage of nearly 3 million tons, and it took half a year for the shipyards of the participating countries to operate at full capacity to build these large and medium-sized ships suitable for ocean-going voyages.

With the fall of Britain proper, the complete defeat of the Azores, and the all-out attack of the Southeast Asian colonies by Japan, the war situation in the American and British camps was already extremely bad within half a year of the outbreak of the war. Britain was undoubtedly the biggest loser in the war, and although King George V in exile in Canada had the support and allegiance of the Commonwealth countries, the glory of the empire had dimmed, and the centripetal force of these Commonwealth states would only weaken and fall apart as time went by. However, the U.S. government and the British government-in-exile did not take the initiative to sue for peace as expected, and were able to extricate themselves from the quagmire of the Azores campaign, and they quickly adjusted their original strategic deployments, and proved their strong demeanor with the withdrawal of Southeast Asia and the attack on Argentina, two big moves that surprised the world, boosted the low morale and morale of the people, and warned their opponents that although the U.S. and British navies were damaged in the Azores, they had not yet fallen to the point of being bullied by others, as long as they were used properly. They are still a force to be feared.

Before being attacked by the US and British navies, Argentina, which had already joined the camp of the Allies, was preparing to declare war on the United States and Britain, and the German General Staff also began to formulate an operational plan to attack the United States and Canada with the Azores and Argentina as the pedals. Some in the hierarchy began to question whether Argentina's participation in the war with the Allies was really as beneficial as expected, but the shelled ports were still smoking, the destroyed warships ran aground on the shore, and everything was irretrievably irretrievable. On November 17, Argentina declared war on the United States and Britain, becoming another participating country after Japan and the Ottoman Empire, and now the participating countries spread across all continents, covering nearly 70 percent of the world's land area and 50 percent of the world's ocean area.

Among the great powers, only Soviet Russia was not directly involved in the war at this time.

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Thank you for your long-term support, and in the new year, I wish you all good health and all your wishes come true!

In addition, "Long Live Joachim" is nearing completion, and the new work is being prepared, so stay tuned.

(End of chapter)