Imperial Firmament

The clouds covered the sky like a heavy curtain, the wind swept the waves, the torrential rain poured down, the boats tied to the pier in the port of Tromsø were swaying helplessly, and there were few pedestrians in the city, as if all activity had stopped because of bad weather, and only the quaint buildings and gravel roads were silently bearing the rain. At this time, in the factory area northeast of the port of Tromsø, thick chimneys are still spraying gray and black sè smoke outward, and the rumbling roar of machinery and the monotonous sound of metal stamping echo in the mountains......

At the largest foundry in Tromsø, the most middle-aged workers are skillfully manipulating the production line. The plant, which is nominally owned by the Swiss company Pifil in cooperation with several independent investors, is mainly engaged in metal recycling, smelting and casting.

When it comes to Piffil, people's first reaction is that the market performance of the well-known military industrial enterprise in Europe and the United States in the field of machine guns is like the unrivaled advantage of Sweden's Forbo in the anti-aircraft gun industry. Forbos's orders in the second quarter of 1946 exceeded the scale of the whole of 1945, and the funded Erlikon Phil not only planned to expand the scale of its business, but also won the opportunity with the integrated radar and cannon device. 20-mm quadruple self-propelled air defense with a small-sized fire control radar,

As soon as the ship-based anti-aircraft weapon was introduced, the French Army received orders from the French Army, and Britain and the United States were not far behind, and in order to prevent the Soviets from obtaining this extremely powerful short-range anti-aircraft weapon through other means, the U.S. Navy bought out its production technology and production line at a high price. This means that after the first 20 sets of orders for the French Army, the Swiss companies have to transfer the production license to the US Navy along with the production line, and the American companies will complete the 30 sets of orders for the French Army.

Based on the partnership between the Pifir Group and the Erlikon company, the Vestel foundry and the famous Swiss arms company are only distant relatives of the famous Swiss arms company, and the project of Erlikon to buy the wreck of the "Tirpitz" is extraordinary, and not only the Norwegian government has sent permanent monitors, but even the inspectors of the American and British military regularly visit to inspect it. According to the agreement signed between the Swiss company and the Norwegian government, the generator sets on the Tirpitz will be used to set up a power plant in Tromsø, and the metal materials used to dismantle and return to the furnace will be made into commemorative coins and ship models, respectively, and the smelting and casting work will naturally be handed over to the nearby West. In April 1946, the first commemorative coins were sent to Oslo for public distribution, and the model ships made from scrap steel were first supplied to the official collections of the Norwegian government and the American and British governments, and then began to receive external orders. Overall, the Tirpitz's fame made the deal quite popular, with Britain, France, Switzerland, the United States, Argentina, Chile ordering in bulk, and even Allied Germany having many people trying to get a commemorative coin or a few ship models. However, the outbreak of war between the Eastern and Western camps greatly affected the shipping in northwestern Norway, the import of high-quality coal was sharply reduced, and many orders were forced to be delayed due to the lack of energy in the factories.

The raindrops of beans crackled on the windows of the tall factory, and in the hot workshop stood a group of figures that were rarely seen on weekdays, one by one with straight waists and slight upward movements, although they did not wear military uniforms, but their serious and rigid expressions, resolute and tenacious eyes, and arrogant and arrogant momentum were simply the hallmarks of German soldiers. They looked patiently and expectantly at the finished assembly line, which had previously been output through the conveyor belt of round commemorative coins or sets of ship models, but this time they were things that looked like keys, which were dim in the light at first, and suddenly shimmered in gold after the final polishing process, in the shape of an eagle with its wings outstretched to the left and standing on a swastika logo surrounded by ringed oak leaves. …,

This is precisely the national emblem of the Third Reich, the Nazi Eagle.

Picking up an eagle emblem about one finger long and three fingers wide from the flannel tray, Lynn looked at it for a moment, it was exquisitely made, and the back was engraved with the words "One nation, one country, one head of state". Although they do not have the texture and value of gold or silver, they are of extraordinary significance, and the Empire's intelligence liaison officers will use them to "awaken" the "sleepers" who are hiding around the world

They were Third Reich soldiers, politicians, and people with close ties to the regime who had fled before the end of the war to avoid being captured by the Allies, but some had been in hiding with the help of official forces through actions similar to the Aryan Ark Project, some had left Germany and Europe with the tacit consent of those in power, and some had been purely personal in search of survival. The name "Awakening" is actually a "reminder" to make it clear to these people that the German Empire is not dead, and that the real ruler of this nation and state is not a German puppet government established with the support of the Allies, but a group of dark spirits who have gathered an indomitable spirit and a will to fight.

Perhaps in the eyes of outsiders, they are all devils, devils from hell.

On the hotter European continent, a new round of military build-up has been launched as the war continues. Aside from the American GIs, who were crossing the sea at a rate of 300,000 to 400,000 a month, Britain, France, and Bōlan, who were in the camp of the Western Allies, used reserves or recruited new soldiers to make up for losses and expand their ranks. France, which received large sums of money and material aid from the United States, was the most active, and they formed the 3rd Army with their native army and part of the colonial army, and formed the 1st French Expeditionary Force with the North African colonial forces and entered West Asia to prepare to attack Azerbaijan, a Soviet republic, together with the British army. Also relying on assistance from the United States, the British formed the 5th Army Corps, which was lost due to their combat operations on the Southern Front. More than 10,000 people, and by the time this army arrived on the European continent, the British army's contribution to the land battlefield was only roughly the same as before the Southern Front. Bōlan, intent on returning to the ranks of the great powers of Europe, remained firmly in the Western Allied camp, announcing the formation of the Bōlan Army 7th and 8th

Army, these were certainly not antique units on horseback and spear-wielded, they were heavily armed with German-made weapons, from infantry weapons, which were assigned to Bōlan as war reparations. Howitzers, fortress guns, and heavy tanks, these units were not wearing German steel helmets and German uniforms, and at first glance they looked like a patchwork German corps, but because many units of the Bōlan Army were equipped with American-made weapons during the same period, plus Bōlan's own guns and artillery, the Bōlan Army in 1946 became the most sophisticated government armed force.

In terms of population and resources, the five Western countries together still had an advantage over the Soviet Union, but after the nightmarish war on the southern front, the situation of the Western allies on the battlefield was very bad. A military coup d'état finally took place in Romania, which had occupied most of the country by Soviet troops, and the Soviet power that was established was completely embraced by the Soviet Union, which also united the Soviet Union with Yugoslavia, which was also in the socialist camp. Despite the differences in governing policies and ideologies, the two sides have remained consistent in their overall stance of regarding the Western camp as their greatest enemy. On September and Sunday, Yugoslavia declared war on the Western powers, directly threatening Hungary, Austria, and Italy on the Allied flanks, and forming an arc of suppression of the Allied forces together with the Soviet troops occupying Romania, Ukraine, and Belarus. In the face of unprecedented threats, the Allies had to send additional combat troops to Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, and Italy, which had joined the Allied camp at the end of World War II, also declared its entry into the war due to political pressure, and the two Italian armies were formed at an astonishing speed. On paper, the European Allies gained more than 1.2 million fresh troops in just one month in September, but the French and Bōlan armies needed time to train, and although the 400,000 Italian soldiers were veterans of World War II, they were extremely short of equipment, as large as aircraft, tanks, guns, bayonets, and the existing equipment could only equip half of the troops, which also meant that at least before more than 100,000 tons of American military aid arrived in Italy, it would be good for the two Italian armies to hold the border between Italy and Yugoslavia. Don't expect them to be able to relieve the pressure on the Allies on the frontal battlefield.

The war situation was not optimistic, and the news that the Soviet Union had formed a combat unit with German prisoners of war was also stabbed, and the Allied top brass finally opened their "Pandora's box" and selected the more than one million German military personnel held in prisoner of war camps in Britain, France, and Germany to form the German Wehrmacht and Austrian Wehrmacht with the right mind, body, and quality. Although these three criteria were aimed at selecting relatively reliable Wehrmacht personnel, it was difficult to define the "mind" in practice, and the physical and mental health of Wehrmacht personnel became the main condition for the selection of Allied officers. Because after the end of World War II, most of the weapons and equipment handed over by Germany to the United States and Britain were destroyed and dismantled, except for a small part that was kept for testing and temporarily included in the use of its own army, the old Mauser rifles were used for heating in the cold winter of 1945, machine guns, cannons and tank parts were returned to the furnace for smelting, the inventory in the warehouse was only enough to equip 50,000 people, and many arsenal machinery and equipment were transported back to China by the Soviets in a complete set, but the Allied generals selected 100,000 former German personnel in one go, and as many as 300,000 people were included in the standby list. Added up to enough to form an army group. Tens of thousands of Springfield rifles, Maxim water-cooled heavy machine guns, old mortars, and howitzers made the German and Austrian infantry in the Allied sequence a spectacle that happened to be reversed from the Bōlan army...... (To be continued...)