The autumn of 1940 was the most difficult period for the British, as the Germans began a continuous bombing of the British, and at sea, the German fleet was based in Norway and occasionally sprawled into the North Atlantic to attack British convoys. ↗ As the top fiction goes, this has caused Britain's supply to be intermittent and often to a standstill.

Thanks to the support of the United States, and with the aid of thousands of American-made fighter jets, the British withstood the massive German bombing of the British mainland and won the Battle of Britain. Under the threat of British aircraft, the activities of the German fleet off the coast of Britain also converged considerably.

The British Empire, which was strategically on the defensive, was no longer able to take care of its colonies around the world, and the German-Austrian forces seized the opportunity to occupy all of South Africa and began to march to the coast of West Africa.

History saw a huge fork in history here, when Britain handed over the colonies of British Malaya to the United States in the form of "Lend-Lease" in exchange for a large amount of military material aid in the United States, including the provision of 20,000 combat aircraft, and the heavy project of American shipyards to build four heavy aircraft carriers and twelve escort aircraft carriers for the United Kingdom.

This forced Austria-Hungary to change its plan to start attacking the Malay Peninsula in the autumn and winter to open up ties with China. Unwilling to prematurely break out into war with the United States, Henkel ordered Yankel to command an expeditionary fleet to revert to the Atlantic, sweeping British naval bases all the way and returning to the Atlantic ports based in French ports.

Lechelton turned his attention to Gibraltar, and if the Austro-Hungarian navy could still have the upper hand against the Japanese navy alone, but if the United States was added, even if he completely ignored Europe and threw all his naval forces into the Pacific theater, he would not be able to defeat the United States. This requires the support of the German Navy, now. The occupation of Gibraltar and the opening of sea lanes between the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean became a priority.

Located in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula, Madrid is surrounded by beautiful mountains.

Spanish Prime Minister Franco was summoned by King Maximilian to the Oriental Palace to meet the King.

Because of the civil war. The Habsburgs were restored in Spain, and Maximilian I, the eldest son of Emperor Friedrich, became the new king of Spain. However, the Habsburg princes did not have much real power, and the power of the entire kingdom was actually in the hands of Prime Minister Franco.

After the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty, Germany and Austria began to woo Spain to join the Axis group, but Franco's attitude has been wavering. After years of civil war, the Spanish people withered and could no longer sustain a large-scale war.

"Prime Minister, this is a secret report from Vienna. Germany and Austria were ready to move on Gibraltar. "No sooner had he entered the King's study than King Maximilian brought Franco bad news.

"But Your Majesty, they didn't get our consent!" Franco almost jumped.

"Do they need our consent?" Maximilian sighed, he inherited a declining empire, Spain has long since lost the glory of the maritime empire it once was, "The French only held out for a month, how long can we hold out if we stop them?" The Germans today are much stronger than the French in Napoleon's time! ”

"陛xià. With the current situation, we are certainly powerless against them! "After calming down a bit. Franco seems to have thought of a new countermeasure, "Germany and Austria have not asked us to cooperate with their actions, we can still protest." Then withdraw the troops from the south and leave them to do whatever they want in Gibraltar. But this is also the best time for us to take back Gibraltar, and it would be a shame to give up. ”

"Prime Minister. I don't think it is appropriate for the kingdom to get involved in this war, and now that there is a lack of food in the country, what to fight, and besides, it puts us at the forefront of the war against the British. We could resolve the question of Gibraltar diplomatically after the war. Maximilian said he needed to think about Spain's future.

"Okay. The British had built a strong fort and fortifications in Gibraltar, and they had more than 10,000 men to guard it, and they had a fleet of two battleships stationed in the harbor. Franco reluctantly said, "We can make Malaga to the south of Cadiz a zone of war, and we need to stand on a neutral position and make the necessary protests." ”

This was done by the Chinese during the Russo-Japanese War, but neutrality also requires national power as a guarantee, like Norway, which will still be occupied by Germany. If the Germans don't do it, the British and the French will do it. Now Spain has been reduced to the point where it is at the mercy of those powerful countries.

As the war progressed, the German and Austrian war planes began to operate in full force, and all the iron and steel plants, shipyards, aircraft factories, tank factories, gun factories, machine factories, automobile factories and other enterprises connected with the military industry began to operate in full force and continued to expand their scale. War is also the best catalyst for science and technology and industry, during the war, with a large amount of capital investment, scientists concentrated manpower and material resources, regardless of the cost into the research and development of new products, many new scientific and technological products were invented, driving the development of the entire industry technology.

It's ridiculous that the purpose of human technological progress is to solve the problem of how to kill more of its kind.

The advantage of being able to foresee the future was that Austria-Hungary was more focused on this area, such as alloy technology, turbine engines, rocket technology, transistor technology, guidance technology for torpedoes and rockets, especially in the field of atomic energy, where the Royal Vienna Academy of Sciences and the Royal Academy of Engineering were one step ahead.

Of course, due to the limitations of the overall scientific and technological level, these research projects are still only in the practical stage and have not yet been put into practical use.

The Americans were rearmament, their army had expanded to more than 700,000 men, the navy had built twelve super-battleships of two classes, and in 1940 the construction of ten aircraft carriers had begun at the same time. Of course, they are not ready, and the military industry and technology of the United States have always lagged behind Europe due to insufficient investment. Lehydon needed to occupy a relatively favorable strategic position before the Americans completed their armaments and entered the war.

In fact, in the early days of the war, the United States lagged behind the European powers in terms of the performance of major weapons such as aircraft, warships, tanks, and artillery. After getting the radar technology of the British, the radar technology of the United States caught up with the European countries. In the field of aircraft manufacturing, the performance of American-made aircraft lagged behind that of Europe, and it was only after obtaining the technology of the British Spitfire in the later period that they fully copied the P-51 fighter that they boasted of being "invincible in the world".

Of course, in the field of large aircraft construction, they are basically at the forefront of the world due to the developed air transport in the United States.

In terms of army weapons, the United States is lackluster, and the tanks they are equipped with are just "scum", not only lagging behind Germany and Austria, but even behind Britain and Soviet Russia. The Americans have just been crushing their opponents with their huge numerical superiority.

But in this world, Germany is much stronger than Hitler's empire, and there is also an Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is not weaker than Germany, and even after the Americans enter the war, it is impossible to change the final outcome of the war.

Moreover, Roosevelt was now forced to be a spectator, although he was anxious. (To be continued......)

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