Chapter Ninety-Four: The True Meaning of War Is to Hurt Each Other

The nuclear bombing of London on the morning of 13 October was, strictly speaking, only part of the Red Camp's strategic bombardment of the British mainland. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

-- This majestic and large-scale "100-hour bombing" can be said to have set a new record in the history of human warfare!

On this day, bomber groups that took off from various air bases along the coasts of France, Holland, and Belgium carried out an unprecedented and frenzied bombing of cities and towns throughout Britain in units of 100 planes. From Portsmouth and Coventry to Glasgow, Scotland, countless bombs have been hit. The farthest bomber group even attacked Northern Ireland, and the total number of bombers and escort fighters put in front and rear reached a frenzied 60,000 sorties!

In order to complete the crew of such a large fleet, the Soviet Red Army itself was so overwhelmed that it had to mobilize a large number of French, Dutch, Belgian, Hungarian, and even German and Italian pilots through the Comintern to "volunteer" to participate in the war in order to show the unity of "Red Europe".

In this way, in the midst of this "100-hour bombardment", tons of mass killing weapons were brutally thrown on the heads of the British who were caught off guard.

All of a sudden, the bombing secrets of "Red Europe" flew over the towns and countryside of Britain like a swarm of locusts, which really obscured the sky and the sun, and frightened the citizens into fleeing in all directions. The whole of Britain was filled with dazzling explosions and fire, and billowing smoke was overwhelming, as if the end had come.

Prior to this, Britain and the Soviet Union had fought on the continent, but each had rarely attacked each other's home towns. The British Royal Air Force is beyond the reach of the British Royal Air Force -- organizing a bomber group to take off from the island of Great Britain and cross the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to St. Petersburg, a distance that is too limited and too far away, and it needs to pass through so many countries along the way that it will be intercepted layer by layer, and every sortie may have to be prepared to never return. The Soviets, on the other hand, were deliberately restrained, and even if they occasionally sent planes into the skies over Britain, they were mainly scattered leaflets. Even if bombs were to be dropped, they would be limited to British air bases, ground-based radar stations, and some areas where the military-industrial complex was concentrated, such as Lower London and the Thames River.

So, as time went on, British civilians who had been on the lookout for battle, dug bomb shelters in their backyards to hide food, and were ready to make cameo appearances as marmots to avoid the bombing, gradually slackened. In particular, the towns in the north of England had not been bombed during the air war against the German Nazis in Britain, and naturally did not have much experience in counter-air raids now - as we all know, Nazi Germany's military aircraft were generally known for their "short legs", and the range of attack was difficult to reach even in the north of England, let alone Scotland and Northern Ireland.

As a result, by now, they have to pay the price of blood and lives for these untimely laxity and laziness.

-- In order to defeat the British Empire as quickly as possible, the Soviet Union and its allies had no mercy in dropping the most powerful bombs on all the British towns on the target list: against the industrial towns and port terminals, mainly by throwing conventional blasting grenades and incendiary bombs; In the country towns where there is no industrial equipment to destroy, the biggest goal is to kill and injure, and the more inhumane sarin ♂ and Tabang ♂ gas bombs are thrown!

As a result, there are many "ghost towns" and "ghost villages" that seem to be intact buildings all over the United Kingdom, but people and animals are all killed on the ground - because they have not suffered from foreign invasion for a long time, and there are not many earthquakes and natural disasters, British villages and towns generally have a long history, a building can often be traced back to hundreds of years of history, and the central areas of many villages and towns still maintain the pattern of centuries ago, with narrow streets, compact layouts, and almost no gaps between houses. Cover the town in minutes!

As a result, in the face of these latest types of nervous poison gas deliveries that far surpassed the mustard gas of the First World War era, many ancient British villages and towns fell into ruin, and many villagers and townspeople died directly at their own dining tables and beds without even having a chance to react.

Of course, brave British pirates...... Ah, no, it's the English gentlemen who don't just get beaten and don't fight back. Instead, the civil defense artillery in every town operated all the anti-aircraft guns they could muster at hand, and frantically sprayed bullets into the sky. Red and blue tracer bullets flew all over the sky, indescribably gorgeous, but the range of most anti-aircraft guns was generally too close to threaten the strategic bomber group at an altitude of 10,000 meters. Rao was that they had red the barrels, and they could only watch as huge bombs fell from the sky. As for the heavy anti-aircraft guns that can hit an altitude of more than 10,000 meters, there are only about 200 of them in the whole of Britain, and they can only focus on protecting some big cities, and don't dream of less important rural places.

At the same time, the boys of the British Royal Air Force also flew their steel warhawks, soaring above the blue sky of their homeland, bravely facing foreign enemy planes attacking from all directions, and indeed achieved certain results. However, due to the mushroom cloud of the nuclear explosion in London, which greatly interfered with the command and communication system of the British Royal Air Force, the various air bases had to fight in silos, with no instructions and no up-to-date intelligence, and the radio was full of false rumors. As a result, British fighters often could not find the enemy after taking to the sky, wasting their troops, and what was even more tragic was that when they ran out of fuel and returned home, they often found that the runway had been bombed into potholes, and they could only find a piece of grass to make a forced landing.

All in all, at the beginning of World War III, the Soviet troops stationed in Europe mobilized the forces of the entire "red Europe" to launch the "100-hour bombardment" on the British mainland, which can be called an unprecedented record-setting air raid in the history of human warfare. In these four days and four hours, the entire European socialist camp dispatched more than 62,000 sorties of various types to carry out strategic bombing of more than 1,000 cities, villages, towns, military bases, and ports throughout Britain.

-- The last backbone of the British Empire, and the last pride in the hearts of the Anglo-Saxons, is about to be knocked out!

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It is conceivable that in this mourning field all over the country, the heaviest losses are naturally London, the capital of the country, which has eaten an atomic bomb.

In fact, compared to the tragic situation in Madrid after the nuclear bombing, the situation in London after the first nuclear bomb is relatively good. Because of the fierce resistance of the Royal Air Force and the dense smoke released by the ground air defense forces, which caused serious interference to the Soviet strategic bomber group, the nuclear bomb fell slightly off, and did not hit the core points of Westminster or the City of London, but fell in the Wembley area northwest of London...... Therefore, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Hyde Park, and other landmarks of London are still largely intact for the time being after London was hit by the first Soviet nuclear bomb - except for being covered with a layer of radioactive dust......

But even so, the world-famous capital of the world, the heart and glory of the British Empire, was actually hit by the barbaric and brutal Bolshevik atomic bomb of Soviet Russia, and a large area of the city was reduced to a radioactive wasteland, which still dealt a devastating blow to the confidence and morale of the citizens of the British Empire.

If we add to this the losses of men in Gibraltar and Scapa Bay, as well as the tragic casualties caused by the strategic bombing of other British cities by the Soviet Air Force, the death toll of Great Britain in the first week of World War III has surpassed the million mark in one fell swoop.

Clearly, this is a heart-wrenching number. After all, in terms of population, Britain was not only not comparable to the giants of the United States and the Soviet Union, but was also far from "small" Japan, with a population of only 46 million before the war. And at this moment, the number of legal citizens in the entire United Kingdom is probably about to fall below the 40 million mark! And the gender ratio of men and women is even more imbalanced.

If it had been in the early stages of the war, it would have only aroused the hatred of the British against the enemy, boosted their morale for the common enemy, and became a blood debt that they had on the enemy's account, and inspired them to take revenge. But at this time, the feelings in the hearts of ordinary people in Britain are more numbness and despair.

-- It is undeniable that the citizens of the British Empire in this era were very proud, and in their memories, the unprecedented sun never sets on the empire to dominate the world, after the industrial revolution, it led the world trend of science and technology for several decades, the Royal Navy swept across the seven seas, and the army also successively beat France, Russia, and Germany on the head. Cambridge and Oxford's two famous universities are like clouds of professors and scholars, and the literature and art of the Victorian era are dazzling...... Any attempt to smash the British Empire's golden signboard will be met with a counter-attack at all costs. Therefore, in the early days of World War II, the British Empire was united as one, people of insight shouted patriotic slogans, and loyal and brave people from all walks of life enthusiastically signed up to join the army......

However, there is a maximum threshold for human society to endure injury and death, and now Britain has been bleeding in the war for six whole years. While national pride and patriotism persist in the chest, frustration, numbness and despair are also growing.

As a result, after receiving a few nuclear bombs, the spirit of many British people completely collapsed. Although the propaganda wing of Churchill's wartime cabinet was still trying to advocate sacrifice and incite revenge, everyone was forced to let out a final roar when the British Empire was at its most critical...... Unfortunately, the result was that there were very few responders, and everyone's hearts were like a tree, because now anyone with a discerning eye could see that the British Empire was already in a dying struggle at this point in the war. The glorious Royal Navy of the British Empire has been completely destroyed, the even more glorious Royal Air Force is also half-disabled, and the British Army has died a whole generation of British boys, and now they have to rely on blacks and Arab pagans to defend their homeland, and see that the British Empire is coming to an end!

Since the general trend of the collapse of the empire is irreversible and cannot be reversed by courage and perseverance, even the most patriotic British citizens can only take care of their own own self first - the empire is finished! But can I let my son and husband come home first?

Decadent ideas such as these are rapidly rising among the British people, and they are becoming more and more difficult to suppress...... Looking at the subtle eyes around him, Prime Minister Churchill knew very well that if he could not do something to boost morale as soon as possible, he might not even have a chance to step down with dignity, but might be like Mussolini in Italy who was suddenly dismissed from office and placed under house arrest by the king, and then thrown on the trial seat and hanged as a war criminal......

However, after losing the main force of the Royal Navy, he could not do anything while trapped on the island of Great Britain.

Therefore, Prime Minister Churchill, who was in a desperate situation, had to pin his last hope on the US allies......

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Italian peninsula, port of Naples

While the island of Great Britain was spasmodic in mushroom clouds and poisonous gas, the American and British allies entrenched in southern Italy were also trembling in the face of the ironclad torrent of the Soviet Red Army - from the day of the outbreak of World War III, the Allied-controlled southern Italy had erupted in a staggering wave of refugees!

At this moment, if you stand on the towering Mount Vesuvius and look down, you will see that every road, dirt road and mountain road is full of crowds of refugees! Under the years of unremitting demonization and education by the capitalist government, and out of fear of the Bolsheviks, all the Italians who had a little more surplus were packing up their finesse, dragging their children and daughters, and hurrying out of their cities and heading south to every port where ships could be found, on all the means of transport they could find, and with all the belongings they could take with them.

On the roads south of Rome, the capital city of the military dividing line between the north and the south, the convoys of fleeing people rushed south, crowding all the roads. Horse-drawn carts, cars, rickshaws, donkey carts, ox carts, and cattle were all crammed into the same road. And the poorer the Italian refugees, the more reluctant they were to give up any property, from pots and pans to furniture and electrical appliances, boxes, baggage, clothes and food, they were all taken with them, and mountains were piled up on their cars, which not only slowed down the speed, but also seriously blocked the view of the vehicles behind, thus causing many traffic accidents.

For the fighting U.S. military, this untimely influx of refugees is a real nightmare. Millions of refugees not only paralyzed the road network throughout southern Italy, blocked most of the high-grade roads, blocked the reinforcements that were being transferred to the Roman front, but also broke down the fortifications and roadblocks that the American army had set up on the roads, and even stepped on the minefields laid by the American army...... It really made the U.S. military feel like crying without tears.

At the same time, the city of the port of Naples was in chaos, and the streets were full of citizens with luggage on their heads, rushing to the pier with earth-shattering shouts and cries. Men, women, young and old, shouted and kicked at each other without any courtesy, scrambling to board any ship that could go to sea. Even a small dhow can squeeze twenty or thirty people. Many small fishing boats overloaded and sank on the side of the pier, and the refugees who fell into the water were dragged to the bottom by heavy packages and coats that soaked up seawater before they had time to struggle in the water. There were now dozens of dead bodies of poor people who had drowned before, but no one on the shore would glance at them, and all of them were thinking of using all means to escape. There are also quite a few Spanish-speaking front-line troops -- because the war against Japan has not been going well and the troops have been consumed enormously, the Pentagon has no choice but to tear down the east wall and make up for the west wall, and the elite units of the European and American armies stationed in Europe have been transferred to the Pacific theater one after another to fight fires.

Dressed in American-aided uniforms and holding American-style weapons, these South American troops seemed to be quite decent at first glance, but after the real fight began, they were quickly revealed, and the United States and the Soviet Union had just declared war on each other, and the two armies had only begun to exchange fire in the city of Rome for less than 24 hours, and many South American troops who had lost their armor and were embarrassed poured into Naples in jeeps and trucks. As time went on, more and more troops fled into Naples, and the port area was filled with South American soldiers with terrified and terrified faces. And they are never afraid to shoot at anyone who dares to stop them, and the small number of loyal American military police can no longer restrain these damn fellows, and can only watch the port become a mess.

-- Standing on the marble balcony of an Italian hilltop villa temporarily requisitioned as a headquarters, overlooking the chaos in and around Naples with a high-powered telescope, Admiral Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander-in-chief of the European and American forces, was in a very heavy mood.

Compared with the half-heartedness of the Red Camp in besieging Switzerland before -- the Soviet side did not know whether it had the intention of replacing training with war, or whether it had the intention of consuming miscellaneous cards, and on the Swiss battlefield, the volunteers of various newly socialist countries in Europe basically served as the main force, and the proportion of genuine Soviet troops invested was very small, so the progress was relatively slow -- on the Italian battlefield of confronting the European troops stationed in Europe, the Soviets could be said to have gone out with all their strength.

Before the attack began, Marshal Konev's Northern Italian Front had a full 850,000 troops and about 7,000 tanks. To the south of the military demarcation line, Admiral Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander-in-chief of the European forces stationed in Europe, had only 300,000 Allied troops and less than 1,000 tanks at his disposal. Therefore, when the war officially broke out, Marshal Konev naturally drove straight into the country and devastated. Eisenhower could only rely on the only superior Mediterranean fleet, holding a number of coastal strongholds, struggling to survive the onslaught of the Soviet Red Army, hoping to hold out until the tide turned.

However, in this hard-fought battle, Eisenhower's hand was simply too bad. Not only is the force at a disadvantage, but the quality is far inferior to that of the opponent, and even air supremacy cannot be guaranteed...... Such a headwind battle that was restrained everywhere made Eisenhower unspeakably uncomfortable.

At this time, on the map of operations in South Italy unfolded in front of Eisenhower, the red arrows representing the Soviet Red Army had cut the blue box representing the Allied defense zone of the United States and Britain to pieces--due to the collapse of the troops of various South American countries without a fight, the eastern defense line on the Adriatic side was basically completely disintegrated and ceased to exist, and the armored units of the Red Army actually rushed all the way to the port of Brindisi, which was holding the exit of the Adriatic Sea!

On the western defense line, which is garrisoned by 100,000 genuine US troops, because the Soviet side seems to be concerned about the extremely valuable ancient buildings in Rome and is unwilling to invest heavy firepower in indiscriminate bombardment, the two sides are still fighting endless low-intensity street battles in the city of Rome. With the U.S. forces occupying several ports near Rome, the battle could still be fought even if it was cut off from land communications from the south and relied on supplies by sea.

At the same time, however, 150,000 Soviet Red Army troops simply bypassed the city of Rome and penetrated all the way to the Allied rear hinterland, dividing the American troops into several port strongholds that could not be matched with each other, and could only rely on the sea route to maintain logistics and supplies, barely contending with the invincible Soviet army on land.

Eisenhower, who originally relied on the United States and Britain to jointly control the sea, still had the confidence to continue to hold out on to the Italian peninsula for one to two months. But the problem was that as a result of the nuclear explosion at Scarpa Bay, the British mainland, which had lost the protection of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, was almost completely exposed to the Soviet Red Navy. Having lost both sea and air supremacy, the Soviets' ironclad torrent seemed ready to cross the Channel and land on the southern beachhead of the island of Great Britain at any time. Churchill's wartime cabinet was horrified by this, and naturally sent the Mediterranean Fleet back to the mainland.

Thus, on the verge of losing the last bit of superiority, Admiral Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was about to lose his last advantage, had in fact decided to preserve his vital forces, gradually abandon the Italian battlefield, withdraw his troops and supplies to North Africa, and resume the confrontation with the Soviets across the Mediterranean.

However, before he can withdraw from Italy, according to the instructions of the White House and the Pentagon, he still has some things to do - "...... Send another telegram to the front asking if the Pope has safely withdrawn from Rome? Tell the front-line commander that this is the highest priority! ”

The reason for this arrangement is that the current Catholic Emperor Pius XII is a pro-American and British activist, who has been indifferent to the Nazi and fascist regimes as early as World War II, and at the same time secretly informs the Allies. After the complete collapse of the fascist regime in Italy, and the American and Soviet armies divided half of Italy with Rome as the boundary, Pius XII jumped up and down, trying his best to incite the Catholics to confront the Bolsheviks.

Obviously, this caused a lot of trouble for the establishment of the socialist regime in Italy and the strategic planning of the Soviet Red Army, and also put Pope Pius XII on the Kremlin's blacklist: one can imagine how the Pope would be treated in the hands of the Soviet atheists and Orthodox Christians when the Vatican was taken by the Red Army - although the Americans were mostly Protestants, the whole of Latin America to the south was Catholic territory. If the Pope, such an influential figure, was sent to the judgment seat or even the gallows by the Soviets, it would have a very bad effect

Therefore, long before the outbreak of World War III, the Allies had been persuading Pius XII to withdraw from Rome, preferably to relocate the entire Holy See to the safety of the Americas, believing that the Catholics in South America would be happy to donate money to build a new Papal Palace. But Pius XII refused to agree, because the Holy See, like the government, could not give up its base at will. Once the Vatican, a "country within a city" embedded in the city of Rome, is abandoned, how many people in the world are willing to recognize his status as a "pope in exile"? If Stalin, after conquering Rome, installed a new pope and a new papacy, wouldn't there be a second schism in the Catholic world?

However, in any case, all this was expected to be in the future, and the shells of the Soviet Red Army were close at hand. In the end, after the outbreak of World War III and the city of Rome became a battlefield, Pius XII could not be arrogant after all, and could only agree to the retreat proposal of the American side half-pushed and half-on-the-spot.

Thus, Admiral Eisenhower did not have to wait long to receive good news from the Roman front - Pope Pius XII and the cardinals had withdrawn from the Vatican, carrying a large number of relics and texts, and had been transferred to Sardinia on six landing ships.

The problem was that Pius XII, although he reluctantly agreed to withdraw from Rome, which was directly under fire from the Red Army, said that he was not willing to leave Europe again. Not to mention going to the Americas, even North Africa is reluctant to go, insisting on staying on the map of Europe until the last moment.

“…… In that case, let the Holy See stay in Sardinia for a while! Anyway, the Soviets didn't have a fleet in the Mediterranean, so they shouldn't be able to attack the island for the time being—is this pope really a European rather than dead? ”

Eisenhower said this disappreciatively, as if to forget the precedent of the capture of Crete by the Nazi German airborne forces," ...... Then, according to the latest directives of the Pentagon, the B-29 'Super Flying Fortress' on Sardinia that is responsible for the nuclear bombing of France should have also departed...... Well, in order to prevent retaliation from the Soviets, withdraw the headquarters to the warship later! There is no safe city in Europe! ”