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By this time, all hopes were pinned on a small single-engine Fiessler "stork" reconnaissance plane hovering over the hotel. The plane was specially sent by General Student to observe the rescue operation, and its pilot was Captain Grach, a German ace pilot, who was also Student's adjutant and personal pilot. When Student learned over the radio that Otto had succeeded, he was a little skeptical, but he ordered Grach to find a way to help the commandos. Having received the order, Grach began to lower the flight altitude, hovering over the hill, preparing to land.

Otto commanded the commandos and the Italian soldiers, who had already surrendered, to push aside the glider behind the hotel and roughly trim the ground in preparation for the landing of the reconnaissance plane. At this point, a German war correspondent who had been parachuted in was allowed to use their camera and camcorder to record the events that followed, including footage of Captain Grach carefully landing the plane on the makeshift runway. After the plane landed, everyone stepped forward and pushed the light plane, which could only carry two people, to the predetermined take-off position.

When it was learned that Otto was going to leave on this plane with Mussolini, Grach very firmly refused. Because the aircraft was designed to carry two people, it was doubtful that the plane would be able to take off if it carried a 90-kilogram Mussolini and a commando captain who also weighed 90 kilograms. But after Otto insisted that he personally escort Mussolini to safety, and hinted that it was Limer's instructions, Grach relented.

The 12 commandos stood at the tail of the plane and dragged it tightly until Grach raised his arm to signal that the engine was in the ideal position for takeoff. The plane slid rapidly through the makeshift clearing, nearly hitting a large rock, but under the manoeuvring of the experienced Grach, the plane staggered into the sky, circled around the hotel, and flew straight to Platika Airport outside Rome. After landing safely, Otto escorted Mussolini on a He-111 plane to Vienna, and Operation Oak was completed.

The whole rescue operation went very smoothly, and the funniest of them was the Italian colonel commander who guarded Mussolini, and when Otto surrounded the hotel, he shouted:

"We don't need to shed any more blood, you are already surrounded, surrender immediately! Give you a minute to think about it."

A bald, bearded Italian colonel heard the shout, cringed for a moment, then walked out and came over with red wine glasses in both hands to sign his surrender.

When Otto was inexplicably surprised to accept the red wine glass handed by the Italian colonel, the Italian colonel then said something that made the whole world feel loved:

"Cheers to the winner"

Otto was petrified in an instant, this ...... This...... Is it a cocktail party? Otto raised his glass with a smile and the two of them drank the red wine from the glass. Outside, Italian soldiers shook up their white underpants from themselves as a sign of surrender. (Okay!) Cute Italian officers and soldiers, go play football and pick up girls! ）

After arriving in Vienna, Mussolini flew to Munich on the 13th, where he met his wife and two children, who had fled Italy, and on September 17 he reappeared in Salou, northern Italy, and established the "Italian Social Republic", a puppet regime entirely controlled by the Germans.

Otto received heroic receptions in Vienna and Berlin, and he became an overnight success. Radio stations across Europe were broadcasting news about the rescue, his name appeared in the newspapers in the largest bold font, and even Churchill mentioned Otto's name in his address to the House of Commons, saying that "it was a sign of valor and bravery...... This undoubtedly shows that in modern warfare there are many such opportunities to show the bravery of people. ”

Although the rescue of Mussolini itself was not of great strategic significance to Germany, the German propaganda department was well aware of the huge propaganda effect of the operation, and under their vigorous exaggeration, Otto became a well-known German combat hero, Goebbels was also ready to send a film crew to the Great Sasso Mountain to reshoot the rescue process, and Otto himself was promoted to major and awarded the Knight's Cross.

Operation Oak, the most daring rescue operation in the history of the German army, has been called "the devil's masterpiece"

Li Mo did not want to control Mussolini, but needed Mussolini and his followers to temporarily block the pro-British and American Italian troops, temporarily stabilize the situation in Italy, and prevent the coup d'état from containing the formation of the 23 German divisions deployed by Germany in northern Italy, because these 23 elite divisions will form a huge encirclement with the Maginot Line and the Ardennes Forest in the future.

Of course, these twenty-three divisions alone were not enough, the German units withdrawn from the southern coast of France, their foothold and replenishment point was these) mountainous areas of northern Italy. This is an area that is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and the Germans have looted a lot of weapons and ammunition from Italy, so those German troops who have retreated from the coastal defense line can rest and replenish their weapons and ammunition here.

As for the soldiers, don't worry, the Italian SS is not something that the pro-British and American governments can control. The number of Italian SS soldiers who remained in Italy proper, excluding the Italian SS soldiers who Vincent brought to fight in the Soviet Union, was not less than 200,000, was not enough for the German army to replenish the personnel lost in Normandy? It should be enough.

……

As early as May 1941, Britain and the United States began to carry out strategic bombing, because Limer had deployed more than 4,000 planes on the German mainland, and the Allied forces did not achieve any success in the air attack plan to attack the German mainland, but lost a lot of aircraft.

However, there was no way for France's air supremacy, and Li Mo did not want to fight with the Allies before the decisive battle, since the Allies wanted to bomb France, he let him bomb it, which undoubtedly made the Allied bombing of France extremely smooth.

In order to ensure air supremacy in the landing area, the Allies launched a fierce assault on 40 major German airfields within a radius of 200 kilometers from the landing site three weeks before landing, dispatching a total of 3,915 bomber sorties and dropping 6,700 tons of bombs, basically suppressing the Luftwaffe in the theater. With the Allies in complete air supremacy, on the surface, the Luftwaffe lost the ability to organize an effective counterattack and could only carry out some small-scale harassment.

In order to prevent the German reinforcements to Normandy, the Allies implemented an air blockade codenamed "transport operation", which was divided into two phases: the first stage was from early May to mid-May, the bombing of the French railway junction to completely block the communication lines in this area, the Allies flew 20,000 sorties in half a month, dropping 76,000 tons of bombs, of which more than 71,000 tons were used to attack the railway hub and 4,400 tons to attack the bridge.

…… R1152