The fact that the Soviet Union had made peace talks with Japan shattered the glasses of many countries that were waiting for the Soviet Union and Japan to collide to the death, including Germany and China.

At this time, the air war of Great Britain was at its most intense, and although Germany devoted all its air power to the bombing of the British Isles, the British resistance continued, which greatly annoyed Hitler and at the same time was helpless. Therefore, Hitler believed that there was little hope of forcing Britain to submit by force, and that it was unlikely that troops would be sent from Europe to attack Britain itself, and that the German Navy was no match for the British Navy in the first place, so Hitler believed that the German offensive against Western Europe should come to an end, and it was time to reconsider the relationship between Germany and the Soviet Union.

In fact, before attacking Britain, Hitler's confidence was still very strong. The main reason is that the overall strength of the Luftwaffe far exceeds that of the British Air Force, first of all, in terms of the number of fighters, Germany has a clear advantage. At this time, Germany had more than 850 fighters alone, and a total of 850 fighters of 656 Bf109E and 168 Bf110 were staring at the other side of the strait. In addition to these fighters, there are more than 1,200 bombers.

Second, Germany had occupied most of Western Europe by this time, and it could launch air strikes against the British mainland from anywhere across the English Channel, France, Portugal, Belgium, or Luxembourg, which the Germans did. At the end of March 1940, the German army began pre-war preparations, and the aviation units were transferred from the mainland to France, the Netherlands, Belgium and other countries, and at the same time a large number of engineers and young and strong laborers were concentrated. The airfields at the front line were greatly expanded, and a steady stream of materials from the German mainland was brought to the front.

Although the mobilization of troops and the replenishment of personnel and materials will take time. However, the Luftwaffe did not want to wait and began a tentative attack with a small number of troops while preparing for the war. At the beginning of April, the Germans launched an attack on ships sailing in the southern ports of Britain and the English Channel, and the Germans had two operational purposes: first, to understand the British air defense capability and find out the deployment of the British Air Force; The second is to lure British planes into battle and consume the strength of the British army in air combat.

By mid-April. The Luftwaffe was essentially ready for war. And a massive air raid was launched on the British. However, the effect was extremely dissatisfying to Hitler, and the German army suffered heavy losses in the first battle. On the first day of the war, the Germans flew 1,485 sorties, attacking seven airfields in southern Britain during the day and attacking British aircraft factories at night. The British army flew 727 sorties to meet the battle. Fierce battles with the Luftwaffe in the Portland and Southampton areas. In this battle, 47 German planes were shot down. More than 80 were damaged, the British lost only 12 "Hurricanes" and 1 "Spitfire", and the damage to the airfield was insignificant.

But in the ensuing offensive, the Luftwaffe behaved very well. In view of the resistance of the British Air Force, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Air Force, Goering, decided to carry out a massive air raid on the main bases of the British army in the south and the aircraft factories in the south of England, and for the next two weeks, the German army flew more than 1,000 sorties a day to carry out devastating bombing of these important targets!

Bombing wave after wave, air battle after air battle, and at this decisive stage, the British pilots were very tired from being in a state of high tension for more than a month, sometimes having to make several sorties a day. Since the beginning of the air battle, 103 British pilots have been killed and 128 seriously wounded, accounting for a quarter of all pilots! The British Air Force began to suffer from a shortage of personnel, especially the experienced pilots, who suffered a large number of casualties, and even some young people who were only about 20 years old were already considered veterans.

At the same time, 295 British planes were shot down and 171 were seriously damaged, while the total number of new aircraft produced by the British plus repaired aircraft at the same time was only 269, and the British Air Force was already seriously damaged! To make matters worse, the five most important airfields in southern Britain were severely damaged, and the underground fan command center, the most important command center of the British Air Force, was also severely damaged by the Luftwaffe.

The command center conducted a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the enemy situation according to the reports sent back by the radar station, the ground air defense observation post and the pilots of the air operation, and then used the radio to direct the fighters in the air to fight, and the Germans intercepted the communication between the command center and the pilots through radio listening, and realized the importance of these command centers, so they attacked this kind of command center with all their might, and 6 of the 7 command centers in the southern region and near London were destroyed!

The command and communications system of the British Air Force is on the verge of collapse, and if it continues like this, the British Air Force will soon lose the strength to resist! The Germans began to show their numerical superiority, and in the course of two weeks, the Germans lost 214 fighters and 138 bombers, but they still had enough strength to continue the offensive.

In order to change this passive situation, the British had to make tactical adjustments, and a fortuitous event gave the British a very good chance. On April 24, 1940, 12 lost German bombers flew over London and dropped bombs in the city center.

On April 25, on the instructions of Prime Minister Churchill, the British Air Force sent 81 bombers to attack Berlin in retaliation. Despite the fact that the material damage caused by the air raids was minimal, it greatly shook Germany psychologically!

On the night of April 28 and August 31, the British attacked Berlin twice, and the citizens of Berlin experienced the war firsthand. Enraged, Hitler clamoured for the complete destruction of London!

On 3 May 1940, Goering convened a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff and decided to shift the focus of the attack to London from 7 September 1940. On May 4, Hitler claimed in his speech that he would return the night attack with a night attack, the British dropped a thousand kilograms of bombs, and the Luftwaffe would return with ten, hundred, or even a thousand times more bombs!

Then, the large-scale German air raid on London finally began, and Goering and Kesselring stood on the hill off the coast of Calais and watched as 625 bombers and 648 fighters of the 2nd Air Force flew over the Channel and flew towards London. The British did not expect the German air attack on London, and the fighter planes that took off to intercept it pounced, and the German planes dropped 300 tons of bombs and incendiary bombs on London. After nightfall, another 250 German planes attacked, London did not have night fighters, night air defense could only rely on anti-aircraft guns and searchlights, air raids lasted from 8 p.m. to early morning, more than 1,300 places in London were on fire, many neighborhoods became a sea of fire, and even Buckingham Palace, where the British king lived, was bombed. In the horrific air raids that night, more than 300 Londoners were killed and more than 1,500 wounded.

The following week, the Germans carried out a massive air raid on London day and night, inflicting huge losses in life and property, in an attempt to bring the British to their knees with brutal bombardments that destroyed the city. However, the British people, under such heavy losses, did not give in, on the contrary, they aroused hatred for the Nazi tyranny and their determination to fight!

Of course, this huge loss was not in vain! Britain succeeded in diverting Germany's attention and giving the Air Force a valuable respite to quickly regain its combat effectiveness.

After the plan to force Britain to surrender failed, the most important thing the Germans wanted to do was to attack their eastern neighbor, the Soviet Union, and Hitler hoped that while the German army was attacking, the Japanese could launch an offensive from northeast China to the Soviet Far East and Siberia, and the two countries would completely destroy the Soviet Union from the east and west.

However, at this time the news of the signing of a neutrality pact between the Soviet Union and Japan came to Hitler's great annoyance. The German Foreign Office immediately telegraphed the Japanese government, hoping that Japan would terminate the neutrality treaty.

However, the Japanese government's focus is now on Southeast Asia, or Japan has now developed a faint fear of the Soviet Red Army in the Far East, and the Battle of Nomenkan and the Zhang Gufeng incident have shown that the Japanese Army is no match for the Soviet Red Army at all, and there is no comparison between soldiers armed with the spirit of bushido and soldiers armed with steel.

Moreover, the Soviet Union now has more than 300,000 troops stationed in the Far East, plus the defense forces of its client state Mongolia, the total strength has reached 450,000, and the most important thing is that the Red Army in the Far East has far more heavy firepower than Japan, and even the Red Army in the Far East has formed armored corps and artillery clusters, which Japan does not have.

More importantly, Japan had already learned from the Soviet representatives that they had reached a tacit strategic understanding with China's Chen Feng, and that if Japan made the slightest move, the Soviet Union would use weaponry and oil as bargaining chips to implore Chen Feng's troops to send troops to northeast China.

Compared with the Soviets, the Japanese are more inclined to seize Southeast Asia, especially the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina, which can now be basically regarded as ownerless, anyway, the Netherlands and France have been destroyed by the Germans, and it would be a fool not to take advantage of them.

More importantly, the Japanese were extremely dissatisfied with the Western powers, and it could even be said that they had a deep grudge, mainly because the Western countries had hurt the Japanese too much during World War I. During the First World War, out of the friendship of the Japanese and British alliances and the consideration of its own interests, Japan fought against Germany on the side of the Entente, and at the same time sent troops to seize the Jiaodong Peninsula.

Unfortunately, however, the reward that Japan received from Europe and the United States after the war was a series of policies that oppressed Japan. In particular, the United States, which had maintained an unusual friendly relationship with Japan and had not hesitated to provide support since the founding of Japan, was suddenly uncharacteristically uncharacteristically acting as the vanguard of a policy of oppression against Japan. (To be continued......)