Chapter 525: Iron-Blooded Germany (21)

The German resistance did not end with the mass occupation of the homeland. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. biquge。 infoTheir prime minister went to London with his government to form a government in exile and became a brother and sister to the Russian tsar.

The main reason why London was chosen over the French city was that almost everyone was not optimistic that the French would survive the ensuing war.

At this time, the Allies were left with only mainland France and the Low Countries and a small part of Germany on the west bank of the Rhine.

The south of France had now been beaten into a pot by the Ming troops who had been killed from the Iberian Peninsula and the Apennine Peninsula. The French army and the American expeditionary force resisted hard, but they continued to lose their positions. The constant loss of coastal cities also brought a great crisis to the French navy, which was stranded in the Mediterranean.

By mid-August, the port of Marseille, the last naval base of the powerful French Mediterranean Fleet before the war, was surrounded by Ming troops. Nearly 200,000 Franco-American troops were surrounded in Marseille and the surrounding area. But that's not the most important thing.

The most important thing is that when the Ming army began a large-scale counteroffensive last year, the French fleet, which did not choose to retreat from the Mediterranean Sea with the main forces of the Allied navies, is now left with only the port of Marseille, the last naval base in the Mediterranean. If it is lost, the French Navy's elite fleet will lose its last supply points and bases.

In the vast Mediterranean, there were no more ports belonging to the Allies for the French fleet to dock at this time. All the seaports on the Mediterranean coast had already fallen into the hands of the Ming army.

Although the Mediterranean Sea is huge, its unique geography has created a strange topography. The only way to get in and out of this vast Mediterranean Sea is through the Suez Canal in the east or the Strait of Gibraltar in the west.

Needless to say, the Suez Canal will not be able to sail through the current French fleet, and whether it will be able to force its way through a segmented canal with locks. Even if they made a strange passage through the canal into the Red Sea, it would have taken tens of thousands of nautical miles to reach the nearest allied port. The ships of the French Navy simply can't do it.

Needless to say about the narrow city of Gibraltar. The channel is now covered with numerous minefields, along with shore artillery on both sides and numerous air forces. The French fleet had no chance of escaping at all.

There is no way out for a navy that has lost its bases. There are only two options in front of the French Navy's Mediterranean Fleet, either to give up resistance and surrender after the fall of the port of Marseille, or to directly choose to sink the ship and never let the fleet fall into the hands of the Ming army.

And the final choice of the French Navy was to sink itself. They rejected orders from Paris for them to force their way through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic Ocean to the west coast. Because the French navy knew very well in its heart that it would be impossible for him to successfully break through the defenses set up by the Ming army in the Strait of Gibraltar.

Instead of going for a desperate, senseless suicide attack, the whole army was finally annihilated in the Strait of Gibraltar. It's better to have a booming and tragic self-sinking after running out of shells. And the French Mediterranean Fleet did just that.

When the Ming army launched the siege of Marseille, the French Army and the American Expeditionary Force, which had lost all morale, were almost immediately defeated, and they lost large swaths of their outlying positions. However, the French Mediterranean fleet in the port of Marseille blocked the Ming army's offensive with extremely ferocious artillery fire.

Of the fourteen battleships of the French Navy, all but the Cascoyne and the Clemenceau remained on the west coast, and the other twelve were all here. The 340, 380, 406 mm guns they were equipped with did not care about the loss of barrels and launched a fierce artillery attack on the Ming army's attack area. Even because of the excessive density of the shelling, many defenders were killed and wounded.

In addition to the battleships, the French Navy also had seven heavy cruisers, more than a dozen light cruisers, and dozens of destroyers in the port of Marseille at the same time, using their guns, which were absolutely heavy artillery in the army, to launch heavy artillery bombardments against the Ming army.

The number of main guns and secondary guns of various calibers on French warships was as high as 1,000. Under so many intensive artillery strikes, the ground forces of the Ming army, which had a small attack area, suddenly suffered a major blow. According to statistics, the French Navy's heavy cruiser Marseille alone fired 982 rounds of 203 mm shells in one day.

Under such intense attacks, the Ming army was forced to halt their attacks and seek support. Although the Ming army besieging the port of Marseille had a large number of artillery, it was impossible for them to fight the naval fleet under any circumstances. It's like the infantry can't fight the armored forces with anti-tank guns.

Although the heavy shore defense artillery in the strong fortifications was the nemesis of the fleet, the field artillery of the Ming army, which lacked protection and lethality, certainly could not do it.

The Ming attack on Marseille was suspended for two days. In the past two days, the main force of the Daming Army Aviation Mediterranean Fleet and the naval aviation unit have also been quickly put in place.

The Mediterranean Fleet of the Ming Navy had no intention of using surface ships to rush into the port of Marseille to bombard the French fleet and shore artillery. That approach is also unlikely to be approved by the Navy Command and Zhang Cheng. Their method of operation is simple, that is, the massive use of aviation units.

On August 16, the weather was clear and cloudless.

In the sea off the port of Marseille, six Ming aircraft carriers, which were surrounded and protected by numerous warships, began to accelerate against the wind and release their own carrier-based aircraft units. These fighters, flown by elite naval aviation, consisted mainly of dive bombers and torpedo attack aircraft. As for the protection of air defense, it is the responsibility of the Army Jet Fighter Wing, which takes off from land.

The first attack wave consisted of 24 fighters, 196 dive bombers and 112 torpedo aircraft. They circled mightily in the sky, forming a huge flying phalanx, and soon flew towards the port of Marseille area to the east.

The Ming Dynasty had already equipped all its air forces with advanced short-wave communication radios long before the war, which enabled the Ming army to form a super-large aviation formation. Compared to Japan's air power, which used gestures and clipboards to communicate, it was completely ahead of its time.

It took nearly an hour for the vast air power to be grouped alone, and that's not counting the time it took them to take off. Fortunately, it is not so far from the port of Marseille, and it didn't take long for these warplanes to fly over the port of Marseille.

Although the waters in the port of Marseille are not small, the size of the French Navy's Mediterranean Fleet is very large, so the port is very densely populated with warships. Although the anti-aircraft fire on the ground and on the warships was in full swing, it could not prevent the Ming naval aviation units from attacking these warships with almost no maneuverability to speak of.

In the whole day, Daming Hainan Airlines launched three waves of attacks in a row from morning to night. Together with the shore-based forces of naval aviation and part of the forces of the army aviation, the French Navy's Mediterranean Fleet was successfully annihilated in the port of Marseille.

After dark, the port of Marseille is filled with burning warships and wrecks with their hulls or masts exposed. On the night of the same day, the commander of the French Mediterranean Fleet gave the order to sink all the warships that could still fight.

With the exception of submarines, all the French naval warships in the port of Marseille opened their own sea valves, sinking them into the sea, which had cost countless wealth and resources, representing the French ambition for the sea.

With the sinking of the French Navy's Mediterranean Fleet, the French desire for the sea was completely extinguished.

More than a dozen French submarines received orders to break out on their own. After sneaking out of the harbor, some of them headed for the Strait of Gibraltar, and some headed in the direction of the Ming Navy's Mediterranean Fleet.

Eventually, all of these submarines were sunk during the journey or during combat.

After the navy sank, the defenders of the port of Marseille, who had long lost the desire to resist, soon announced their surrender. At this point, the entire Mediterranean coast fell into the hands of the Ming Dynasty.

From the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the coast of the Netherlands, the Ming offensive was overwhelming.

On the northern landmass, the last of the Germans' forces were largely concentrated on the west bank of the Rhine and in the Low Countries. The Ming army opposite them was rapidly adjusting its forces and preparing to launch an attack on the Rhine defense line. The German Chancellor, who was far away in London, instructed his army to hold on to the Rhine and fight to the last soldier.

In order to fill as many gaps in the army as possible, the Germans carried out a large-scale conscription campaign on German soil on the west bank of the Rhine. This is no longer a conscription, but a direct pull of strong ding.

Men in Germany, especially those fit for military service, have entered almost all factories and armies everywhere. Most of the men who remain here now are old people and children, and some people who don't need to serve with their connections and connections.

By this time, however, Germany had completely lost most of its territory, there was no longer a need for so many workers in the factories, and the wealthy families and connections everywhere had lost their former rights and protections. Groups of German troops went around to various cities and villages, and whenever they saw a man, they pulled them away.

Cities such as Aachen, Kaiserslautern, and Saarbrücken were almost all left with women after the confiscation. If it weren't for the fact that countries around the world have been deeply influenced by the Ming Dynasty for many years, and have always insisted on implementing the law that women do not go to the battlefield, the Germans, who were already anxious, might have pulled out a legion composed of women. (To be continued.) )