The German offensive can only be described in four words - devastating. On the morning of March 10, Guderian's armored forces occupied Boulogne and then Calais. On the afternoon of the 11th, the 19th Panzer Corps had reached Graflin, 10 miles behind Dunkirk, while Reinhardt's 41st Panzer Corps, on its right flank, had also reached the line of the Eyre-St. Omer-Graflin Canal.

The two armoured armoured armoured forces only needed to make a direct effort to take Dunkirk, and dozens of infantry divisions were constantly following suit. Guderian and others were full of ambition and determined to lead their armored forces to fight another encirclement and annihilation battle, completely annihilating hundreds of thousands of British and French troops in the coastal area.

However, at the same time, the 19th Panzer Corps and the 41st Panzer Corps received an order from Kleist, the commander of the Panzer Corps, to halt their advance, and said that "the enemy of Dunkirk will be left to Marshal Goering's air force to settle down." When Guderian received the order, he immediately questioned and protested to Kleist, but the most rebellious reply he received was: "This is an order given by the Führer himself, and it must be carried out." ”

Hitler's order puzzled the generals of the German tank forces, and Guderian sighed even more. Dunkirk is at your fingertips, but you are ordered to stop advancing! And the German Air Force was on the offensive. The controversy that arose later with this order was considered by many military historians to be a stupid order for Hitler to arbitrarily interfere with military command.

In fact, Hitler's order was based on his considerations, and it could not be reduced solely to his own responsibility. The first was that after the war in northern France became clear, the Germans needed to preserve their armoured forces for the next combat operation. Plus Goering assured Hitler that the Air Force could wipe out the coalition forces in Dunkirk. Dunkirk is full of swamps and low-lying areas. Unfavorable for the advance of the armored forces, there is no need to inflict losses on the armored forces.

Hitler's stupid order gave an opportunity to the Anglo-French forces, which were fighting for survival and strengthened the defensive positions close to Dunkirk. Taking advantage of this fleeting respite, the coalition forces were able to carry out a "generator plan" to retreat from the sea.

On the evening of March 14, 1940, thanks to the efforts of the Navy, the first batch of 1,312 people successfully left Dunkirk and returned to England. As soon as the retreat began, there could be no more secrecy, and with the urgency of the situation, the British Admiralty began to requisition ships along the coast and along the Thames. There was even an appeal on the radio to all those who owned ships to go to Dunkirk. The owners understood very well what it meant for Britain to withdraw from the expeditionary force, so they responded to the Admiralty's call by sending barges, tugboats, cargo ships, passenger ferries, fishing boats, motorboats and even private yachts to sea. Sail to Dunkirk.

This is an eccentric "armada": there are brightly colored French fishing boats. There are tourist boats that carry passengers. There are also maintenance vessels, tugs, small escort boats, minesweepers, trawlers, destroyers, British air rescue vessels, radar sentry boats...... Someone joked: "Everything that can float in England goes to Dunkirk"

This extremely bizarre and indescribable fleet was piloted by all sorts of British and French. Among them were bankers, dentists, taxi drivers, speedboat drivers, dock workers, teenagers, engineers, fishermen, and civilian officials...... Among them were the delicate-skinned Sea Scouts and the bronzed-skinned old man with pale hair. Many of them are clearly poor. They had no coats, they wore shabby sweaters and sanitary shirts, they wore cracked galoshes, they were drenched in the sea and rain, and they were hungry in the bone-chilling wind......

This strange flotilla was bombarded by artillery fire, unarmed and unescorted, but the brave people faced the rain of bullets and gunpowder smoke, and moved forward nimbly on the surface of the sunken ship, knowing that hell lay ahead, and they were not afraid. A total of 693 British ships and 168 French, Dutch and Belgian ships, a total of 861 ships of various kinds, joined the rescue process, which mainly departed from six ports in the south of England and picked up British and French officers and soldiers at Dunkirk before returning to England.

After eight days of rushing transportation, 324,000 people were withdrawn from Dunkirk, including 85,000 French troops, which became the main force of the future counterattack on the European continent.

Chen Feng was extremely happy when he learned that the German army was advancing all the way and was now about to sweep through the whole of Western Europe. Especially when he heard that more than 300,000 British and French troops had successfully withdrawn from Dunkirk to the British mainland, Chen Feng was even more excited. Chen Feng didn't really care about how the German army was progressing, and how many British and French troops were killed or wounded, anyway, the life and death of these people had nothing to do with him.

However, Chen Feng knew that although Britain's large-scale retreat successfully saved a large amount of manpower, all the heavy equipment of the British expeditionary force stationed in France was abandoned on the European continent, causing serious problems in Britain's ground defense, which means that from now on Britain and France will lack a large number of weapons and equipment, and the plan that he Chen has arranged for more than a year can finally be implemented.

Sure enough, soon the British ambassador to the United States went to the White House to meet President Roosevelt, asked to buy enough weapons and equipment from the United States, and put forward many preferential conditions.

To tell the truth, Roosevelt really wanted to do this business, but Roosevelt was surprised to find that although there are now more than 120 large and small arms companies in the United States, there are less than seven arms companies that can provide weapons and equipment for a country on a large scale, and there is only one arms company that can meet Britain's short-term requirement of equipping 500,000 people, that is, the Huaxia Arms Company, and even DuPont, the largest military giant in the United States, does not have this ability.

Although there are quite a few arms companies in the United States, their main service targets are not the US government or the US military, but private individuals. Due to the prevailing isolationism in the United States and the impact of the economic crisis, the US Army has only 100,000 troops, and apart from the weapons and equipment produced by the US Government itself, there are not many weapons and equipment that can really be handed over to those arms companies for production.

As a result, this has led to a phenomenon in which the number of US arms companies is huge, the number of gun patents applied for every year is also as high as a cow, and the invention of new weapons and equipment is also numerous, but almost all US arms companies have a common problem, that is, the company is small in scale and has limited production capacity. Some small arms companies even only produce pistols, not rifles and machine guns, and some companies produce no more than 500 guns a year, focusing only on performance and quality, regardless of cost, so that only the Huaxia Company can meet the requirements of the British.

Roosevelt was happy to broker the deal, fearing the U.S. government as a visionary statesman by Germany's strong rise and frenzied attitude, coupled with the German-Japanese alliance and the Japanese military in the Pacific.

The British must be supported, not to mention that the two countries are of the same race, even for the sake of the Americans' own interests. But Roosevelt knew better that it was not easy to persuade the Chinese to sell their weapons and equipment to the British, because the weapons and equipment of the Huaxia Arms Company were prepared for themselves.

It is no wonder that the US Government has such an idea: in the past two years, the arms trade in the world has not been very smooth, the market is not large, and many US arms companies have found it difficult to continue and have declared bankruptcy one after another. Even those that barely went bankrupt have reduced production capacity and laid off employees.

But instead of reducing production capacity, Huaxia continued to merge with small arms companies, and then spent a lot of money to renovate production lines and increase production capacity. While other companies are laying off their staff, Huaxia Arms is recruiting skilled gunsmiths and engineers on a large scale.

However, to everyone's surprise, although the Huaxia Arms Company produces a large number of weapons and equipment every day, its varieties include pistols, rifles, machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles, anti-aircraft machine guns, small-caliber mortars, heavy mortars, field heavy artillery, mines, grenades, and other weapons and equipment, but it has not seen any of the Huaxia Arms Company sell any of them, and there is not a single firearms marketing point opened by the Huaxia Military Industry Company in the entire United States. Therefore, almost all people who know about the Huaxia Arms Company believe that the weapons and equipment produced by the Huaxia Arms Company are all produced and sold by themselves, after all, there are hundreds of thousands of troops under Chen Feng's command, and the daily consumption is quite a lot.

Soon after, representatives of the United States Government met with Long Jian, deputy general manager of the Huaxia Group and general manager of the arms company, in Los Angeles and made a request to them to purchase arms.

Two days ago, Long Jian was instructed by Chen Feng, and he very happily rejected the request of the US Government, and formally stated to the US Government that the weapons and equipment of the Huaxia Arms Company were all produced and sold by itself, and would not be sold under normal circumstances.

On March 25, the U.S. consul in China and the British consul in China urgently went to Chongqing, and then asked Lao Chiang for help, hoping that Lao Chiang could come forward to persuade Chen Feng to sell a batch of weapons and equipment to Yingfa as soon as possible.

If it were other officers, Lao Jiang would definitely call the shots directly, but he didn't dare to make decisions about Chen Feng's affairs at will, so he sent a telegram to Chen Feng and asked him what he thought.

Now that Lao Jiang has come forward, Chen Feng will no longer twist and pinch, he said a little that he is very embarrassed, then agreed to the request of the United States and Britain, and at the same time he also put forward two requirements, the first request is to not offend the Germans, all the links in this transaction are brought forward by the United States and Britain, and the arms are also sold by the Americans to the British, and it has nothing to do with the Huaxia Company and him Chen.

The second condition is that the US government must be exempted from the taxes generated in the transaction between the two sides, after all, the sale of Huaxia Company is not willing, and it is entirely for the sake of the face of the Chinese and American governments. Risking offending the Germans to "help" the British, the U.S. government could not collect taxes with itself.

These two conditions were not harsh, the United States and Britain immediately agreed, and then the British government paid for it, and quickly placed an order for weapons for 25 infantry divisions to Huaxia Company. ”。 (To be continued......)