"A line of defense?" Adolph. Hitler was a little confused, "I remember that in this war there was not a single line of defense that was held, and even a fortress like Gibraltar was about to be captured by us soon." Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ”

The battle against the fortress of Gibraltar began in June and has been going on for almost two months. However, the fighting in Gibraltar was not fierce, it was a heavy artillery siege. Marshal Kesselring mobilized 800mm "Gustav" and "Dora" train guns, 600mm "Karl" mortars, 420mm "Big Bertha" howitzers and 280mm K8 train guns, as well as many other large-caliber heavy guns, and carried out a continuous bombardment of the fortress of Gibraltar. By 10 July, all British artillery positions at the western foot of the Wind Mill Plateau had been completely destroyed. Subsequently, a German infantry division launched an offensive and captured the rocky heights at the northern end of the Wind Mill Plateau. Immediately afterwards, six "Karl" mortars were transported to the foot of the wind mill platform, and under the cover of the platform, heavy concrete armor-piercing shells weighing 2.17 tons were fired nearby.

Because of the extremely high angle of fire of the "Karl" mortars, they can be deployed at the foot of the wind mill platform and can hit every corner of the Gibraltar peninsula. The 2.17-ton heavy concrete armor-piercing shells were almost indestructible, so the British batteries scattered throughout the peninsula were quickly destroyed one by one. By 7 August, the entire Windmill Plateau and the port area of the Gibraltar Fortress had been occupied by the Germans, and the British had retreated to the Europa Plateau, the southernmost tip of the peninsula.

And the British fleet, which had done nothing but transport and support their ground forces to seize the Canary Islands and lay mines near the Strait of Gibraltar, was clearly powerless to rescue the Gibraltar Peninsula.

In addition, the British troops in the fortress of Tubruk, which had been besieged for several months, surrendered to the German-Italian forces on August 2, and the North African operation was completely ended. And on the island of Crete, due to the surrender of the Kingdom of Greece, German and Italian troops also successfully landed in July, and it took less than 7 days to completely crush the British resistance and occupy the entire island.

Now, as long as Gibraltar is finally taken, the entire Mediterranean Sea will be completely turned into an inland lake of Germany and Italy.

After the Mediterranean was completely settled, Germany should settle the British mainland in a step-by-step manner. And as long as Britain is taken, Germany will be undefeated in this war. Because without Britain as a springboard, it would be impossible for the United States to land in Europe or engage in any strategic bombing. All of Europe, with the exception of the territory of the Soviet Union, was completely controlled by Germany. Moreover, Germany also receives oil and non-ferrous metals from the Middle East and Africa, so that it can ensure that its war machine is full of power.

It is difficult to say whether the Soviet Union can be destroyed by using the manpower and industrial resources of most of Europe to deal with it, but no matter how bad it is, it will not be defeated by the Soviet Union, at most it will be a stalemate on the Eastern Front, as was the case in World War I. But now Germany still has a super trump card in its hands - the atomic bomb! As long as Germany can be the first in the world to build an atomic bomb, then the Soviet Union will only be defeated no matter how hard it fights.

However, the Soviet Union will most likely not watch Germany successfully take Britain itself, and Stalin will most likely start a war against Germany when Germany lands on British soil. This would have left Germany with the dilemma of fighting on two fronts before defeating Britain. Therefore, the General Staff led by Hersmann planned to establish a defensive line on the Eastern Front to ensure that Germany held the Eastern Front before taking LinkedIn proper.

"Leader, there is no defensible line of defense since the beginning of the war, and that is because the attacking side is the most elite German soldiers." "If we were to defend, there would be no line of defense that we couldn't hold," Hersman said. ”

"There's no line of defense that you can't hold?" Hitler frowned, "We have to defend from the Baltic Sea all the way to the Black Sea, even if you don't consider the Soviet-Finnish border, this line of defense will be 2,000 kilometers long, right?" ”

"Yes," said Hersman, nodding, "now the General Staff is planning to build a line code-named 'Barbarossa' in the eastern part of the border with the Soviet Union. The total length of the defensive line will be more than 2,000 kilometers, but we will not be heavily deployed along the entire line, but will adopt a combination of focused defense, in-depth defense and mobile defense. ”

It is impossible and impossible to maintain a tight defense of the entire front on a long front of 2,000 kilometers, and it cannot be defended. If a division is deployed according to the standard of 10 kilometers of defense, at least 200 divisions must be invested in the 2000-kilometer defense line, and mobile troops must be prepared to counterattack and gamble on loopholes, and no 300-350 divisions will be insufficient in any case. However, the total strength of the Wehrmacht Army is not so large, so it can only adopt the method of combining key defense, in-depth defense, and mobile defense.

"What is Focused Defense?" Hitler asked. "What is defense in depth and mobile defense?"

Hersmann stood up, nodded at Hitler and Schleicher, and walked to the map desk in the conference room. Hitler, Schleicher, and other high-ranking figures who attended the meeting also followed him to the edge of the map table.

On the table was a map of the situation in Europe, with the German-ruled areas blue, the Soviet Union red, and the British bleak gray.

Hirschman picked up a baton, first pointed to the Baltic Sea coast on the map, and said, "The Baltic states need to be defended. The Courland Peninsula, the Gulf of Riga, and the forested Estonia all have relatively easy terrain to defend. And we have been operating there for many years, and we already have very well-developed defenses in the border areas. ”

Although Soviet-German relations have been relatively good for the past two decades, the Baltic republics and the current Baltic states have always been wary of the Soviet Union. Of course, it will not destroy the "ecological environment" of the Soviet-German border area, so now the Soviet-German border line in the Baltic region is still covered with large forests, which is more beneficial to the defending side. The railways and highways that entered the territory of the Soviet Union through the forest were guarded by fortifications.

Moreover, Germany has built a large number of military airfields along the coast of Baltic, where it can deploy medium- and long-range bombers to threaten Leningrad, and even send planes from there to bomb the Soviet capital, Moscow.

In addition, as long as Germany held the Baltics, the Soviet Red Army had to heavily defend Belarus and Leningrad in case the Germans launched a major counteroffensive from the Baltics.

"In addition to the Baltic states, Western Ukraine and the Carpathian Mountains also need to be defended. This includes part of the Grand Duchy of Galicia-Western Ukraine, the territory of the Kingdom of Romania, part of the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia and the Carpathian and Lesser Polish voivodeships. Similar to the situation in the Baltic state, the terrain of the Western Ukraine-Carpathian region is equally conducive to defense. Moreover, it is also an important gathering place for coal, iron ore, oil and non-ferrous metals in our country, which must be defended at all costs. ”

Having said this, Hersmann then pointed the baton to central and northern Poland and southern Lithuania.

"While we are focusing on Baltic on the northern front and Western Ukraine-Carpathians on the southern front, we are defending in great depth and mobility on a line of about 700 kilometers in the middle of the flat Barbarossa line," he said...... That is, the Polish and Lithuanian defense forces were deployed only on the front line, relying on the fortifications left over from the original Pilsudski Line, and at the same time the Vilnius, Warsaw, Bialystok, Lublin and Warsaw were fortified and the elite German Wehrmacht was deployed. And in the rear of the first line of defense and in Vilnius, Warsaw, Bialystok, Lublin and Warsaw, powerful armored clusters were deployed for counterattacks. ”

"A big U-shaped encirclement?" Hitler stared at the map, listened carefully to Hersmann's plans and plans, and finally raised his head and asked, "Marshal, are you going to put Stalin's millions of Red Army troops in a super U-shaped encirclement?" ”

Hersman nodded and replied with a smile: "If Stalin really sent his millions of Red Army troops against us, then they would definitely be wiped out by us." ”

"And then go to attack the Soviet Union?" Hitler immediately asked.

Hersmann knew that Hitler was an immortal guy with a "heart to the dead Soviet Union"! But now I can only follow his meaning.

He nodded and said, "Yes, we will wipe out the best part of the Soviet Red Army in Poland, and then counterattack!" I reckon that Stalin would either not attack or would have wanted to quickly cross the Polish plain and storm Berlin. We fought them in a decisive battle on Polish soil, which was more certain than if we had broken into the territory of the Soviet Union and fought a decisive battle with the Red Army in the depths of the Soviet Union. ”

Hitler suddenly hesitated again, "But...... Stalin had 20,000-25,000 tanks, could we defeat so many Soviet tanks on the Great Polish Plain? ”

The current Soviet Union has the largest armored forces and air force in the world, and the number of tanks exceeded 20,000 in 1940. If the Soviet-German war had broken out in 1942, Stalin would have had more than 25,000 tanks at that time, and there would have been a huge improvement in quality, with advanced T-34 tanks, KV-1 tanks and KV-2 tanks all massively equipping troops. In addition, the Soviet Union had the possibility of receiving a large number of truck and aircraft engines with US assistance, which greatly increased the mechanized combat capability of the Soviet Red Army by several notches.

Hersmann nodded and replied in the affirmative: "Leader, we will defeat the Russians, no matter how many tanks they have, they will be reduced to steel wreckage in front of the powerful German armored forces and the Luftwaffe." Because there are already several very effective anti-tank killer features! (To be continued.) )