On the morning of May 3, 1942, the British, who had just been defeated on the Celtic Sea, reaped the fruits of victory at Dundalk, near Northern Ireland in the Irish Free State. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

This was the first defeat suffered by Germany's Nazi Superman in a land battle in this war! It was also the first victory of the British army in World War II.

Amid the rumbling of British artillery, Montgomery, who had just been promoted to commander of the army group, left his former enemy headquarters in Newry-Morn, Northern Ireland, in an AEC armored command vehicle and headed for Dundalk, a city in northeastern Ireland.

Despite the support of a dozen German 38t tanks and hundreds of heavily armed German troops, Dundalk's Irish line did not hold out until dawn and was crumbled by the British 11th Panzer Division and the 3rd Infantry Division. The Irish and their German friends, together after dawn, left the city of Dundalk and a large quantity of weapons and ammunition, and retreated in panic along the Dundalk-Dublin road.

The road south from Newry-Mohn was now full of tanks, armoured vehicles, trucks with cannons towing and full of soldiers, and many soldiers and horse-drawn artillery on foot - the British Army, which was fully motorized at the beginning of the World War, acquired a large number of American trucks and armored vehicles after the war began, and produced many of them themselves. There would have been enough vehicles to allow Montgomery's troops to move in.

But now there is a shortage of fuel, and most of the infantry has changed from motorized to mule and horse...... In fact, there were not even enough mules and horses, and most of the infantry marched on foot, while their baggage was mainly transported by rail, as if they had returned to the First World War overnight.

However, this did not affect the high morale of the officers and soldiers, and although the prospects for the war were very bleak, most of the British soldiers were quite optimistic.

Sitting inside an AEC armored command vehicle with an ugly shape that looks a bit like a coffin, Montgomery can feel this atmosphere of blind optimism, and it is understandable. Soldiers who have undergone two or three years of rigorous training, but have not really experienced the baptism of war, feel that they are powerful. And they had just won their first battle, and now they were on Irish soil. As long as they can continue to win small victories one after another, their morale and experience will continue to accumulate, and the combat effectiveness of the troops will become stronger and stronger -- after all, the officers and men of the 12th Group are no worse than the Germans in terms of training and weapons, and they should not have lost the battle.

At this time, a group of dejected Irish prisoners of war were escorted along the road, and passed by the British infantry who were walking south, and the British soldiers immediately cursed.

"Irish pigs!"

"Inferior Irishman!"

"Well deserved!"

"Die!"

Hearing these words, Montgomery couldn't help but frown, he was also half Irish!

But he did not blame his unruly soldiers, for it was the Irish who did the wrong. They resigned themselves to depravity, abandoning their pride as subjects of the British Empire and bowing to the lowly and brutal German Nazis. This is unforgivable, and they will have to pay the price.

And this price is that the entire island of Ireland is reduced to ruins in the war! It would become the scene of bloody battles between German and British armies, just as northern France and Belgium did in World War I. If the British could fight the Nazi army in Ireland, no, as long as the British army could fight a brutal and long war of attrition with the Germans in Ireland and keep the Germans in a quagmire, Britain would win!

Because there is a huge worry behind Germany - the Soviet Union!

Now the gcist tsar must be looking at the Irish battlefield with his neck out, right?

……

Montgomery thought of Stalin, the great man of GCISM, standing with a carved pipe in his hand, a huge map of the Irish military that hung on one wall of his office in the Kremlin.

On the map, Dublin and Cork Bay are prominently marked with swastikas, while Belfast in Northern Ireland is affixed with a small rice flag next to it. A large blue arrow stretches from Belfast to Dundalk in the Irish Free State.

At the same time, there is a long black arrow in the sea south of the island of Ireland, which stretches from Brest in northeastern France to Cork Bay in Ireland. It was a lifeline for the Germans to send supplies and troops to the island of Ireland, and if it was cut off by the British Royal Navy, then Germany would lose the battle for Ireland.

Unfortunately, the Home Fleet of the British Royal Navy was again defeated in the Battle of the Celtic Sea in the early hours of May 3. According to the reports of internationalist fighters who broke into the Royal Navy, the British were defeated by a German secret weapon, losing 1 battleship and 3 heavy cruisers, and now even the anchorage of the home fleet has moved more than 100 kilometers north.

It seems that now the British could not count on their navy and could only rely on their land forces to resist the German invasion.

"Comrade Pavlov, Comrade Zhukov, what do you think of the Irish campaign? Who will win? How long will it take? ”

Stalin whispered questions to Pavlov, commander of the Western Military District of the Red Army, who was standing behind him, dressed in a straight military uniform and with the rank of general, and Zhukov, who had just returned to Moscow from the Far East as chief of the General Staff of the Red Army.

The commander of the Western Military District, General Pavlov, first answered the question, he had been promoted to the commander of the Western Military District since the Polish Campaign, and was in command of the most powerful military district of the Soviet Red Army (the front army in wartime) and Germany.

Pavlov said: "Comrade General Secretary, I think that the Irish battlefield will turn into a huge meat grinder!" After all, Ireland is an island that is not connected to the European continent, very close to the British island, but relatively far from the European continent. The British could quickly transport troops to the island of Ireland, while the Germans would have had much more difficulty transporting reinforcements and logistical supplies. ”

He paused and said in a very positive tone: "Therefore I don't think they will throw in the towel on the island of Ireland until the British Army has exhausted most of its strength, because that would mean the end of the history of the British Empire!" ”

"Comrade Pavlov, do you mean that the Germans will pay a heavy price on the island of Ireland, but in the end they will still win?"

"Yes." Pavlov nodded affirmatively and said, "If we don't go to war with Germany, the Germans will emerge victorious." Hundreds of thousands of Germans may die in battle, but in the end they will win. ”

"Why?" Stalin asked.

"Because the reactionary ruling class in Britain has no determination to shed its last drop of blood in defense of the Fatherland!"

Pavlov frowned and said: "In fact, some of the British ruling class and the German ruling class are not mortal enemies, but relatives!" They all belonged to the decaying and declining circle of European aristocracy, and now they were only fighting for dominance, not a life-and-death struggle for one class to overthrow another.

According to the information we have, the ruling class at the highest levels of Britain is already preparing for flight and compromise. Princess Elizabeth, the heir to the British throne, would become the leader of the compromise faction, marrying her cousin, who was also the son of Kaiser Wilhelm III, thus bringing the Hohenzollern dynasty to the British Isles. And her sister Princess Margaret has now arrived in Canada, and will become the monarch of Canada in the future, and become the leader of the runaway faction...... Therefore, among the current top ruling class in Britain, there are only those who flee and surrender, and there are no people who really want to resist to the end. This situation determined that Britain would eventually lose the decisive battle in Ireland unless the Soviet Red Army entered the war in time. ”

Stalin nodded, he thought that Pavlov had a good analysis, and then he half-turned to look at Zhukov. The same generals who were very favored by Stalin, Zhukov and Pavlov had completely different characteristics, General Pavlov was more like a strategist, able to look at military issues from a considerable height, which Stalin admired very much, and it was easy to communicate with Pavlov.

Zhukov, on the other hand, is a relatively pure military man, and he will not stand on a very high strategic height and start from political issues to study military affairs. For Zhukov, military is military, and it is enough to analyze it in terms of the number of troops, training, morale, logistics, weapons and equipment, and so on.

"Comrade General Secretary, the situation now is such that the Germans have successfully landed on the island of Ireland." "Then they just need to move troops, supplies and equipment to the island of Ireland, build air and naval bases, deploy enough aircraft to threaten Lorne Bay, Clyde Bay and Liverpool Harbor, and then advance steadily and win without too many casualties," Zhukov said.

However, it still takes a lot of time, and delaying tactics to delay change is the only thing the British can do. ”

"So do you think the British can drag a change?" Stalin took a puff on his cigarette and looked at his two favorite generals.

This question is not easy to answer, Zhukov frowned, as if he was struggling to think about it. Pavlov, although he was far away in the Western Military District, was very aware of Stalin's thoughts, and he immediately replied: "The key to whether or not lies in the British themselves, if they are brave enough to resist resolutely on the island of Ireland and attract enough German troops from the European continent to Ireland, then the change may be very great." ”

Stalin nodded, and then looked at Zhukov, who was speechless. Zhukov frowned and said: "Comrade General Secretary, we must find ways to know the most accurate situation on the battlefield in Ireland, otherwise we will not be able to figure out exactly how many troops the Germans have committed in Ireland. So I wanted to be able to lead a high-profile military delegation to England and see for myself what was going on in Ireland. ”

Stalin shook his head and said: "No, it's not appropriate for you to go, you are the chief of the General Staff and need to be responsible for the overall situation, let's let the head of the intelligence department, Comrade Golikov, go." (To be continued.) )