For a fort that had been painstakingly operated by the United Kingdom for more than 200 years at its peak, even after a terrible air raid, the British army still had many fortifications to rely on inside the fortification.

Every tunnel and every pillbox had to be fought through bloody battles on both sides.

At the end of another day, the attacking troops of the Spanish Defense Force and the Chinese Expeditionary Force each suffered heavy casualties, but they gained very little.

The Allies were still unable to flank the intact fortifications. The distance of a few hundred meters is like a bloody line of life and death, which makes both sides pay thousands of lives, but it is still insurmountable.

When the night came again, Sun Liren had to give the order to suspend the attack again.

Faced with the dilemma that there were only a dozen people left in some companies of the two infantry divisions that launched the attack, the two generals were speechless for a long time.

It is hard to imagine what it would have been like if it had not been for the fact that Operation "Surgical" had paralyzed most of the British defensive positions and the Allies had launched a direct assault on the fortifications.

"Sun, are you going to give up?" The Spanish commander hesitated, but the interpreter spoke the somewhat impolite question fluently.

"Nope! Of course not! We are soldiers, how can we retreat because the enemy is strong. ”

Sun Liren was a little amused, and a little angry—after all these years, the Chinese are still a weak and bully image in the eyes of these Europeans.

"Tomorrow ......" Sun Liren wanted to say: Tomorrow our Chinese Expeditionary Force will be the main attack. But the adjutant's "report" at the door interrupted his somewhat impulsive righteousness.

"Commander, Commander-in-Chief Jiang Yunzhi of the Cairo General Headquarters is calling!"

Sun Liren took it and looked at it carefully, his brows that had been frowning suddenly stretched, and a smile appeared on his face that had been gloomy for many days.

While handing the telegram in his hand to the translator, he patted the shoulder of the commander of the Spanish Blue Legion: "General Gutierrez, you can go to your Führer with your head held high!" ”

……

The ground attack on the fortress of Gibraltar was unfavorable, and although neither Sun Linor Gutierrez complained to the general command for distress and help, why didn't Jiang Yunzhi pay attention to the progress of the war?

The huge casualties of the Chinese Expeditionary Force and the Spanish Army surprised the black-faced marshal, who had always been known for his iron blood. "Why is the British army, having lost its commander, still so tenacious? Isn't that the character of the British? ”

Lin Jie, commander of the Royal Navy's submarine squadron active in the Atlantic, has sent back a telegram: The combined British and American fleets have broken through the layers of sea wolf packs, bypassed Cape Sagres in Portugal, and are about to reach the Strait of Gibraltar.

Stopping this support force and taking Gibraltar was the most important task for the Allied Mediterranean theater.

But after talking to His Majesty on the phone, Jiang Yunzhi's tone changed, and the core content of the battle became: to destroy the last naval mobile force of the Entente in Europe and advance into the Atlantic.

Guan Canghai commanded the Allied Combined Fleet, which was formed by the main forces of the Northern Fleet and the Italian Navy, and quickly moved towards the Strait of Gibraltar.

and was the first to be shelled by a fleet of battleships for the bombardment of two Spanish enclaves in North Africa, Ceuta and Melilla. These two ports, originally part of Morocco, were occupied by Spain during the Great Colonial Period. But after Eisenhower's Allied landing in North Africa for Operation Torch, the multinational force took over the ports on security grounds.

Compared with Gibraltar, which the British have been running for a long time, the two small ports on the southern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar have relatively few military installations, except for the group of bunkers on Cape Heracles, which is known in Greek mythology, whether it is the port of Ceuta or Melilla, it is difficult to call it a fortress.

Perhaps the Entente did not think at all that the Allies would attack here. After Montgomery's Eighth Army defeated the German-Italian Afrika Korps at the Battle of Benghazi, the Entente generally believed that the African campaign would soon be over.

Although the port of Ceuta built some fortifications around Cape Hercules after the Multinational Force suffered a blow in the Mediterranean region as the war progressed, it was quickly dissipated by the 380-mm and 410-mm guns of the Northern Fleet battlefleet.

The Italian St. Mark's Division and the Turkish 1st Marine Division, supported by naval gunfire, were able to crush the discouraged Commonwealth defenders in just two days and occupy two key sites on the southern shore of the Channel.

As a result, the Allies won another landing fulcrum in Morocco after landing in Tunisia.

This time, not only the British were in a hurry, but even the new president of the United States, Truman, could not sit still. Once the Allies landed in Morocco in large numbers, Eisenhower's multinational force, the Afrika Korps, would be completely surrounded. The vast majority of them are U.S. troops, and they are the most elite units of the U.S. Army.

If these forces are lost, I am afraid that the Atlantic will not be able to guarantee the security of the United States homeland...... Although the West Coast has been bombed, it has lost these elite army ...... Truman seems to have seen the boundless Allied forces begin to land in North America.

"We don't have to pay attention to the end of the British, but our American warriors must be rescued."

The White House has just been hit by a fire, and the president's office is being renovated. Truman had to choose another small building as a temporary office space.

After Roosevelt's death, Admiral Marshall also seemed to be much older. The successive defeats of the multinational forces in the war made the chief of the US Army General Staff anxious.

The president's words made him even more worried: If Britain is abandoned like this, will the United States be left alone? The Pacific Ocean can't stop the Han navy, can the Atlantic can? Or is it ...... Marshall thought of another possibility, and although it would be his greatest shame as a soldier, he also had to admit that it was the best way to avoid dragging America into an even greater abyss.

"President, are we going to ...... Negotiations with allies? ”

"George, it's not that I'm hiding it from you! This is the result of our sleepless discussions last night, and we haven't had time to tell you yet. Yes, we are going to start negotiations, but not with the entire steel alliance, but with the Han state alone. The latest news brought to us by our intelligence agencies is that the Han Emperor has begun to be dissatisfied with the Germans, and we hope to use this to divide the relationship between the two fascist powers, Han and Germany, and buy time for us America. ”

……

One has to admire the foresight of the White House think tank and the investment of the Americans in intelligence. In real history, Americans can analyze the anxiety in the heart of the mustache who likes to fly at night, and then judge that the German army will give priority to counterattacking on the Western Front based on the fact that due to the advance of the American army, the security range controlled by the German army is getting smaller and smaller, and the distance of the German Führer's road is getting shorter and shorter. The strategic defeat of the German army in the Ardennes battle was closely related to the US military's detailed analysis of Adolf's mentality.

In this life, the CIA shifted the focus of its analysis to Emperor Zhongyi of the Han Dynasty. Through some clues, he submitted an intelligence analysis to the president, elaborating in detail the dissatisfaction of the Han Emperor and the German Führer on some private occasions and even in public, and analyzing the personalities of the two people, and summed up one sentence: One mountain cannot tolerate two tigers!

Yes, the CIA used Chinese characters to express this sentence, and of course, in order for the president to understand it, they also added an English note to the end.

This intelligence analysis became an important basis for the White House think tank's proposal to engage Han separately in order to make the United States conditionally withdraw from the war.

And it was stated that this was the only way to avoid a large-scale war on the American homeland. Otherwise, once Britain was defeated and the Entente lost its fulcrum in Europe, the next move of the Han army would definitely be to land in North America. As for the German army, the United States can actually ignore it. Even if the Germans were able to defeat the Red Soviet Union, they would no longer be able to wage a transatlantic war against the United States. What's more, the navy of the Germans, apart from U submarines, what else can they take?

"Rescuing hundreds of thousands of elite US Army troops in Africa is not only so that we can be more proactive in negotiations, but also to accumulate strength for a future counteroffensive in Europe!"

Seeing the unwillingness in the eyes of the chief of the General Staff, Truman hurriedly added.

At least for the time being, Marshall's attitude still has considerable influence on the US military circles, and most of the main commanders of the US military in Africa are also promoted by this veteran. The president also had to be suspicious of his ideas.

But Marshall did not think about this, and before the United States entered the war, he had already applied to Roosevelt for retirement, giving up his position to a more energetic general.

It was Roosevelt's efforts to retain and trust Marshall to regain his fighting spirit. Now that the war is unfavorable and old friends have died, the only belief in Marshall's continued fight is to win the war.

But President Truman had already decided to make peace with Han, although he still insisted that it was only to buy time - the Manhattan Project had always been the direct responsibility of Marshall, so no one knew better than the old general the enormous power of that thing.

But can you defeat the fascists with that thing? The strength of the Han army was obvious to all, and Marshall sometimes thought that even if Germany had not contained the Soviet Union, the Han could still defeat the Entente. Could such a powerful country not study such a powerful weapon?

"Counterattack on Europe?" Marshall shrugged his shoulders at President Truman's words, even if the Manhattan Project could succeed, I am afraid that it would only be a deterrent or simultaneous destruction by both sides!

"Nuclear war?" These three words suddenly flashed in Marshall's brain! "Oh, God! That would destroy the entire planet, and humanity would destroy itself! ”

It must be admitted that Marshall in real history was also a great man. He insisted on attacking Nazi Germany first and then Japan, making an indelible contribution to the victory of the United States in World War II. After the war, he came up with a "European Recovery Plan" (that is, the Marshall Plan), which also created a Cold War pattern of confrontation between the "Warsaw Pact" and "NATO" after World War II.

The imperial capital of Chang'an, Weiyang Palace, Weiqing Pavilion.

Wu Jiayi, who has recently transformed into a curious baby, is lying on His Majesty's bookcase in a seductive posture, listening to Zhong Yi talk about the horror of "nuclear war". When he heard that a nuclear explosion with a yield of 5 billion tons could completely destroy the living conditions of mankind on the earth and cause a "nuclear winter", a pair of big eyes behind the gold-rimmed glasses of Wuhan University reporter flashed a few times, and he couldn't help but hold Zhong Yizheng's big hand: "Your Majesty, you must prevent a nuclear war!" ”