Berlin, Chancellery of the Third Reich. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Hitler was in a bad mood, and after the French robbery, Italy launched a war on two different fronts, but apparently the fighting power of the Italians was very much in line with the concept of "papier-mâché": both sides suffered heavy losses, and the attacking side turned out to be a disgraced loser.

At the end of October last year, Mussolini suddenly telegraphed Hitler: "Your Excellency, we have begun to march" and informed Hitler that the Italian troops deployed in Albania had begun to attack Greece. The next day, Hitler met with Mussolini at the Brenner Pass, and although Hitler was very annoyed by Italy's rash behavior, he offered to support Mussolini's army, but Mussolini unexpectedly politely declined, because Mussolini saw the Balkans as his sphere of influence.

"Mussolini, fat man! Rejected my friendly suggestion, and now looks like a leper dog who has lost a battle! Facing Goebbels in front of him, Hitler did not hide his contempt for the Italians at all.

Last year, the six divisions of the 11th and 9th armies under the command of General Visconti Plaska of Italy advanced aggressively into the Greek mountains in four routes.

Now Mussolini is sending troops from Italy mainland to support the Albanian front line, trying to save the disadvantage, but Hitler is not optimistic about the Italians, and it is estimated that he will not wait long to come to him for help.

"My Führer, the Italian army has spotted the presence of planes of the British Air Force in Greece." Heinrich Himmler fanned the flames against an annoyed Hitler on the side.

"The British want to maintain their influence in the Balkans and open up a second battlefield, and I will not allow that to happen. I'm going to send our mountain troops to Greece and it is necessary to keep the Romanian oil fields safe! ”

Hitler was still very strategic, and once the RAF recovered from its massive bombing of the British mainland and entered Greece in a big way, the threat to Germany's oil supply was fatal.

In the Balkans, the Italians were miserable, and in Africa they were defeated: Beginning last September, in order to seize the British and French colonies in Africa, Italy marched on two routes, one from Libya along the Mediterranean coast to Egypt, and the other from Eritrea and Ethiopia in early July, attacking Sudan in the west and Kenya in the south. By mid-September, Italian forces had occupied parts of Kenya and all of British Somalia in East Africa, and had reached the Sudanese border in the west.

In North Africa, the Italian army attempted to occupy Alexandria and the Suez Canal, an important military port in Egypt, and crossed the Libyan-Egyptian border on September 13 to occupy Sallum, Egypt. On the 16th, Sidi Barani was occupied. But soon, this ally became weak again, and Marshal Rudolph Grazia's troops were driven back to Libya by the Commonwealth forces under the command of Interim General Archibald Wavell.

Hitler already sensed an even greater crisis, and if the British were allowed to chase after the Italians in North Africa, the Axis could lose all of North Africa, which would be disastrous for the overall strategy of the Third Reich. Hitler once again realized that he had to step in to help Italy, an unreliable ally, out of the predicament - each time he provoked the dispute first, and each time he lost the battle, the Italians were simply a living advertisement for the "spirit of defeat and defeat"!

Thinking of that ridiculous ally, Hitler was angry: the fourth, this is already the fourth!

Which four? For the first time in Spain, the "elite" Italian intervention forces had the international columns howling and were chased by the defeated French in France, and now it was the turn of the same scene in North Africa and Greece.

"Mussolini, when are you going to get smarter!" The arrogant, self-aware rulers of Italy were on the verge of driving Hitler mad - and the presence of such a ridiculous and arrogant ally was a blessing or a tragedy for the Third Reich.

At this critical juncture, Mussolini once again demonstrated his "full value as an ally" in order to regain the face he had lost in France, and the result was a possible upheaval in the Balkans, despite the fact that neighboring Hungary and Romania had joined the Berlin-Rome axis and Bulgaria had agreed to the presence of German troops of the Italian army was defeated one after another at the hands of the Greeks.

Hitler's original idea was to cease fire between Greece and Italy, but the British had already appeared in Greece, and it was estimated that in the near future, British troops might be stationed in the Balkans on a large scale as Greek allies, which would pose a serious threat to Germany's flanks -- Mussolini was forcing Hitler to send troops to the Balkans at the threshold of preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union.

If it weren't for the overall situation, Hitler would have had the idea of killing Mussolini!

Unlike the fat man who spent his days dreaming of rebuilding the Roman Empire, Hitler was able to prepare for a rainy day, although his calculations were always distracted by the reckless actions of his allies. In Hitler's mind, a plan had been devised for how to solve the Greek problem -- the Germans needed to send troops from Bulgaria, not from Italian-controlled Albania, not to fight hard with the main forces of the Greek army, which was fighting fiercely with the Italians, but to break through the Metaxas line between Greece and Bulgaria with the help of its own highly combative mountain troops.

The Metaxas Line, a fortified line named after Greek Prime Minister Giannis Metaxas, has been called "one of the most majestic fortifications in the world" and sits high in the mountains of Macedonia. It connected many rugged peaks and passes, and was a formidable barrier for Greece south of the border with its old rival, Bulgaria.

For the Bulgarians, it was no less difficult to get through that strong line of defense than it was to get a camel through the eye of a needle. But the mountain infantry of the Germans were not Bulgarians, they were capable of this. But why didn't Hitler plan to let troops go out of Albania? It would require a distant strategic move, with troops crossing half of Europe from Italy to Albania, and several new mountain divisions he had formed to prepare for an attack on the Soviet Union were already being trained, for the Eastern Front, which could be used to solve the Greek problem first.

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January 4, 1941, Kremlin.

After the joint meeting concluded its agenda in the morning, the central authorities decided to continue to speed up the overall state of the national economy into a wartime state, and the commanders of the mechanized corps should do a good job in training their troops after returning to their respective units, but they would not enter the three-level combat readiness state for the time being.

Lin Jun thinks that the time has not yet come, and there is at least three months to prepare. At a meeting of the ****** Standing Committee in the afternoon, Lin Jun expounded on the necessity of a tentative offensive and a large-scale bombardment of Romania's oil fields in the south, proposed by Fikochinov.

"With credible information, the German mountain troops had entered Bulgarian territory, and of course they had been invited to Bulgaria as guests. We all already know that to the south, Hungary and Romania have joined the Berlin-Rome axis and signed the International Pact of Industry, and Bulgaria has become a de facto ally with Germany. Now Germany's strategic center of gravity is beginning to shift to the east, and although their cover is good, it has not escaped the eyes of our intelligence services. ”

A line was drawn along the western border on the map: "From the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, the enemies of communism are already on the other side of the border, and when spring comes, Germany and its allies may attack at any time." ”

"Comrade Andrei, as far as I know, our aviation forces are ready to gather enough forces at any time to carry out several devastating strategic bombings of Romanian oil fields. I agree with you on this. ”

It was Vrosinov who spoke, and Comrade Marshal was looking forward to a war with Germany and the sweep away of the reactionary forces in Europe.

"Yes, Comrade Vorosinov. So I propose to bomb the Romanian oil fields around April this year, and the border guards will need to create some friction in advance. ”

Alexander nodded on the other side, signaling that the border guards were fine, and that there was some friction and some reason (the Soviet border guards were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. ）。

"It was already clear from the two-day meeting that it would take at least nearly half a year for the Red Army to prepare for a systematic offensive and jam the German oil supply, and the sooner Romanian oil production facilities were destroyed, the better." Vorosinov again expressed his opinion - he could not wait four months.

"Comrade Vorosinov, the current situation in the Balkans is very delicate, it is possible that the Germans will attack Greece in a few months, and the situation in Yugoslavia is not as stable as it seems. I estimate that in a few months the Germans will invade the Balkans in a big way and address the threat from their flanks. If the German offensive had been bombed at the right time after the German offensive had begun, it would have completely disrupted the German army's disposition and caused it to be difficult to take care of both sides, which would have been more effective and more effective than launching a bombing now. ”

"Comrade Andrei, your plan threatens to force Germany to attack us in advance, and our preparation time will be shortened." Kalinin, who rarely spoke, was a little worried.

This will Vorosinov once again stand on Lin Jun's side: "Comrade Kalinin, Germany has only a few months of oil reserves, we are not well prepared, they are even less prepared, and they have to face the containment from the Balkans, it is worth our try." ”

The problem of oil exports is very easy to solve, and Molotov only needs to send an official note to Germany: the trade should be fair, and there is no reason to owe it!

Wait until Germany accelerates the transportation of those machinery and equipment owed to the Soviet Union, and then waits for the Soviet Union to "restart" the crude oil export process, which will not be able to be taken in half a year!

This is the transaction between countries and countries, not as neat as individuals going to the vegetable market to buy vegetables, and a small action can drag on for a year and a half - a trick is ruthless enough! (To be continued, if you want to know what will happen next, please log in to the www.qidian.com, more chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!) (To be continued.) )