Chapter 119: Is This a Nuclear Winter? (Above)

April 15, 1947, Washington, D.C., United States

In the Oval Office of the White House, President Truman happily reviewed the documents and hummed a few ditties from time to time -- even though a month and a half had passed since the "Scarlet ♂ Valentine" war on the Soviet Union. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info but the good mood it brought to him is still not consumed.

- What better way to punch an enemy in the face than to break his head and bleed, and then immediately walk thousands of miles away, shrink out of the opponent's reach, and watch the other person jump in anger in the distance, but there is nothing to do about himself...... And what makes people feel happy and have clear thoughts?

Although the cost of organizing this nuclear expedition by the US Strategic Air Force is really high, the cost of each new type of B-29 "Super Flying Fortress" strategic bomber alone is as high as $700,000, and if we include the losses from various accidents during the transition from the mainland to Iceland, as well as the previous reconnaissance operations and small-scale harassing bombing against the Nordic countries, the US military has lost more than 2,000 B-29 bombers for this operation alone, that is, it has burned $1.4 billion in one go. Add to this the loss of escort fighters, the cost of eighteen atomic bombs, and the training of more than 20,000 crew members...... All together, the total cost is more than four billion dollars, and when converted into gold, it can pile up as high as a mountain.

But this is nothing compared to the losses of the Soviets - the battleship Sovet, the flagship of the Soviet Red Navy, which was sunk in Stockholm by a nuclear bomb, cost about $100 million to build. The destruction of the five Baltic port cities of Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, Vyborg and Leningrad and a large number of merchant fleets caused economic losses of no less than $400 billion!

(During World War II, the dollar was much more valuable than it is today, when the purchasing power of a dollar was about forty to fifty dollars today.) ）

Of course, immediately after the explosion of the atomic bomb in Leningrad, Stalin took a frenzied revenge, but the staff officers of the Pentagon are not fools, and where do they not know how the other side will react after stabbing a polar bear in the stomach?

In fact, as early as when the plan for the bombing of the Soviet Union was formulated, the US military expected that the Soviets would retaliate with nuclear bombs against the Icelandic base afterwards. Moreover, considering that after this all-out attack, the nuclear arsenal in the hands of the US military will be exhausted again, and the B-29 "Super Flying Fortress" bombers that will attack God knows how many will come back, no matter how you look at it, it will not be able to launch the next wave of attacks from Iceland.

Therefore, on 14 February, before the B-29 "Super Flying Fortress" bomber group that had been making a long-distance attack on Leningrad had yet to reach its destination, the US troops stationed at the Icelandic base began to start an intensive retreat -- as a result, five days later, when the hastily assembled Soviet strategic bomber group set out from Murmansk and carried atomic bombs to the US military base in Iceland for a long distance, they found that Iceland's great retreat was nearing its end, and the dozen or so military airfields in Iceland were already empty. The military port and the barracks where hundreds of thousands of troops were once stationed were also empty, leaving only a handful of miscellaneous troops from the South American allies, as well as some third-rate black and Asian American troops, who were left to suffer nuclear bombings and top cylinders.

Even so, Iceland, which should be erased from the map, still has to be blown up - whether it is the steel uncle Stalin, or the seriously wounded ship's mother, Ms. Sophie, or Wang Qiu and others who almost failed the mission, they are now all angry and ruined, and they must bomb Iceland to the point where they are not suitable for human life in any case, at least they must not let the US military use the airport here again to launch the next nuclear strike on the Soviet mainland.

As a result, wave after wave of Soviet strategic bombers came one after another, dropping more than 30 atomic bombs on Iceland, and planting mushroom clouds everywhere on this eight-lifetime moldy island...... Although the more than a dozen airfields, military ports, docks, freight stores, radar stations, and weather stations built by the US military in Iceland over several years were bombed to ashes, Iceland's original hundreds of thousands of Viking natives were almost wiped out, and in the end, there were only a few thousand dead remnants of particularly tenacious vitality left on the whole island, still dying in the radiation wasteland of this alpine region.

Next, what made President Truman laugh even more was that it seemed that because the Soviets had angered God by throwing nuclear bombs, Iceland brazenly used large-scale geophysical weapons in retaliation -- perhaps because of the Soviets' repeated nuclear explosions, Iceland's Eyjafara volcano suddenly hiccuped at noon on March 10, spewing out a large amount of smoke and volcanic ash, shooting down forty percent of the last long-range bomber formation sent by the Soviet Union to Iceland for strategic nuclear strikes. The dense volcanic ash in the air can also cause aircraft engines to malfunction.

To make matters worse, a week later, right next door to Eyjafrah, Iceland's larger Katla volcano erupted violently, reaching Scotland, Ireland and northern Norway thousands of kilometres away...... The magma from the eruptions of the two volcanoes, covering 800 square kilometres of land, and the ensuing heat melted the unstable ice cap and caused major floods across Iceland – it doesn't matter, there are not many people left alive in Iceland after so many nuclear bombs. At the same time, millions of tons of ash particles, dust and soot from the two volcanoes rose into the atmosphere under the influence of heat, and then drifted in all directions under the impetus of the wind, forming a huge cloud of dust covering the whole of Iceland in diameter, and still drifting south, dwarfing the mushroom cloud of any atomic bomb.

Until now, the eruptions of these two volcanoes in Iceland have not ended, and the air routes in the North Atlantic have been completely cut off. If it had been before the fall of Britain, this might have had a negative impact on the logistics of the U.S. military. However, at a time when the US military has withdrawn from Europe and is facing off with the red camp across the Atlantic, it is tantamount to an additional natural barrier, blocking the offensive route of Soviet bombers from the Arctic Ocean to penetrate and invade North America.

However, although Stalin had no way to deal with the US troops who had already withdrawn from Iceland ahead of schedule, it did not affect him from throwing the flame of revenge on the US troops in the Middle East led by Eisenhower -- Jerusalem, where Eisenhower set up his headquarters, is a common holy place of the three major religions of mankind, and its religious, cultural, and historical value is so high that even Stalin, the iron uncle, would not dare to destroy it easily. Therefore, the Soviets turned to bomb Basra in Iraq, the port that undertook the main logistical tasks of the US military in the Middle East, in an attempt to cut off the supply of the 300,000 American and British allied troops trapped in Jerusalem and cause chaos without a fight.

As a result, Admiral Eisenhower, like the Allies who had escaped from North Africa through the Sahara Desert, embarked on a difficult journey south across the desert - fortunately, the width of the Arabian Desert was much narrower than that of the Sahara Desert, and the Red Sea could be used as a convenient supply route. In this way, 300,000 American and British Allied troops abandoned their heavy equipment, traveled from Jerusalem to the shores of the Red Sea, and then marched south along the eastern shore of the Red Sea.

The journey of the 300,000 Allied troops south from Palestine along the eastern shore of the Red Sea was much more comfortable than those hapless colleagues in North Africa who were forced to risk their lives to cross the Sahara Desert and survived an average of one out of three. The Allied East Africa Command managed to organize six hundred transport planes, giving them airdrops of food and medicine. In addition, two 30,000-ton oil tankers were urgently renovated to load fresh water from Eritrea and Yemen to the eastern shore of the Red Sea, and a series of water replenishment stations were set up for the southbound troops...... Thus, at a modest cost of more than 1,000 men, Eisenhower finally arrived at the port of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia in early April, with the last remaining Allied force, and once again gained a foothold at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

At this point, across the vast desert, the two camps of the United States and the Soviet Union once again turned into a confrontation, and the military operations that took place on the old continent at the beginning of World War III came to an end for the time being. Although the white camp led by the United States was beaten to the ground at this stage, it was crushed and embarrassed, and millions of living forces were annihilated, but it was finally through a big retreat, in exchange for space and time, and stabilized the entire front from collapsing.

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While the fronts of the Old Continent were stabilizing, the situation in the rear of the Americas was also developing in favor of the United States.

First of all, after three months of chaotic fighting, killing dozens of cities with rivers of blood, and killing more than 100,000 people, the situation in Canada has finally calmed down. According to the mediation of the United States Government, the British government-in-exile was forced to release the detained Canadian parliamentarians, and to negotiate a settlement with the local authorities in Canada, and finally reached the following peace plan - the Canadian federation separated from the British Empire and no longer owed allegiance to the Windsor royal family, and the British royal family and Churchill's government-in-exile were declared "persona non grata" by the Canadian government and were given a deadline of one month to leave the country.

-- Seeing that the guerrillas were surging all over Canada and had turned into a quagmire and black hole devouring troops and supplies, and even that the war had spread across the national border and burned the flames of war into the United States, President Truman naturally did not want to lose money any longer, and only wanted to settle the situation as soon as possible.

On the other hand, Churchill must have been extremely dissatisfied with such a humiliating mediation result, and even made a big fallacy, declaring that he would rely on the military strength of the British government-in-exile and the support of the hardcore Canadian royalists to fight the "counterinsurgency war in the Canadian colonies" to the end. However, the White House and the Pentagon no longer had the heart to continue playing with him, and they were still more unwilling to be dragged by him and set himself on fire, so they directly issued an ultimatum to this blind fat man -- when the United States openly threatened to deny the legitimacy of Churchill's government-in-exile, confiscate all its overseas assets without compensation, and even send the US Army to disarm the British troops in exile en masse, this fat man finally shamefully coerced and gave up Canada in a gloomy manner.

Canada can't afford to stay, but Churchill's government-in-exile has to have a place to stay. According to President Truman's plan, it was originally intended to kick them to Cape Town, South Africa, to organize a "British African Empire" to continue the fight against the Soviet Bolsheviks across the Sahara Desert. Unexpectedly, the group of anti-backbone boys who had no loyalty and shame in their hearts, seeing that the British Empire was already such a fluffy phoenix was not as good as a chicken, actually closed the door to Churchill's government-in-exile, and then announced that after a "referendum (white people only)" resolution, following the precedent of Canada, completely separated from the territory of the British Empire, and at the same time declared the British royal family members and Churchill's government-in-exile "persona non grata" and were not allowed to enter South Africa.

The remaining colonies of British Africa are also following the ass of the South African authorities, and although they do not have enough confidence and capital to directly declare independence for the time being, they have also issued public telegrams one after another, refusing to move the British government-in-exile to their own territory -- their territory is generally too dilapidated and poor to support such a large government-in-exile! It only takes ten days and half a month to eat them!

Obviously, since President Truman was unwilling to suppress the Canadian rebellion on behalf of Churchill, he would not have the heart to carry forward the spirit of Lei Feng at the critical juncture of World War III, send troops across the Atlantic Labor Expedition, and recover the African colonies for this fat man who died -- Churchill was not his father! Instead, Churchill's government-in-exile must be restrained from sending troops to South Africa, in order to prevent this gang of rubbish from dismantling the African front of the white camp from behind.

Facing the muzzle of the back of the head of his American cousin, Churchill, who has become a slave of the country, really doesn't want to coax anymore at this time, and can only continue to coax. But if you are cowardly, you still have to find a place to stay. You can't really rent a house in New York as a public apartment like those exiled politicians in small European countries! This is too much of the British Empire's coercion, isn't it? And it can't accommodate the tens of thousands of loyal servants and righteous men who escaped the Atlantic with Churchill!

Fortunately, the British Empire in its heyday was really a big business, although it is now too bad, but there are still a few fragments of territory in Latin America, the largest of which is British Guiana, whose name means "land of water" in the Indian language, is located on the southern shore of the Caribbean Sea, north of Brazil, in terms of land area, 215,000 square kilometers, but not much smaller than the British mainland of the British Island.

So Churchill and Queen Margaret moved to Georgetown, the capital of British Guiana, with more than 60,000 native soldiers and civilians evacuated from the island of Great Britain, as well as more than 100,000 hardcore royalist civilians from Canada and South Africa, to settle down temporarily.

However, although the territory of British Guiana is a bit cold and desolate, Churchill and Queen Margaret will never feel too lonely in Guyana, because in the next door in Dutch Guiana (Suriname), Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and her Dutch government-in-exile have been moving over for a long time. Next door, in French Guiana, there was Monsieur de Gaulle, who moved in at about the same time, and the French government-in-exile he led...... These three families used to live together in Europe, and now they are still living together in South America, which can really be said to be a long time of evil......

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All in all, in President Truman's view, since the successful nuclear bombing of the Soviet Union, everything has been developing in a good direction: the frontal battlefield against the Soviet Union has finally stabilized, and the armies of both sides have been separated by the sea and the desert, temporarily disengaged, and the American army, which had been beaten out of breath, has also given the American army, which had been beaten out of breath, the leisure to adjust and replenish. Despite the unrest among the allies, they also rallied more faithfully around the United States. Public opinion in the country has also picked up a bit, and at least the number of anti-war demonstrations has decreased considerably – more likely, of course, to martial law......

Of course, public opinion or something is simply scum for the interest groups in power...... As long as there is no split within the interest group.

In recent times, the thing that has caused President Truman the most trouble is actually the cold weather of the spring, which is too cold.

-- In the spring of 1947, the weather in the northeastern part of the United States was so unpredictable that it was difficult to describe it. In January, the weather was unusually cold, with five meters of snow in Boston, burying two floors, freezing the New York Strait and Washington's Potomac River as an ice rink. Finally waited until the ice and snow melted, the spring flowers bloomed, and at the end of last month, the temperature suddenly plummeted again, and there was a freezing rain without warning, which was really a drop of water that fell to the ground to become ice, a spring rain passed, and the camellia rhododendron in the garden looked like a fiery red, but as long as you take a closer look, you will find that each flower is frozen in the whole ice mound, and the death is a thousand charming, lifelike, knocking down is a work of art.

Even though the calendar turned to April, the weather in Washington showed no signs of getting warmer, but it snowed twice in a row, and looking out the window at the snow-capped lawns and shrubs, frozen fountains, this scene of snow covered in silver made President Truman suddenly feel as if he was still celebrating Christmas...... But in fact, at this time, almost four months have passed since last Christmas......

It's been a cold spring! Could it really be some kind of devil's curse? It was so cold that President Truman sneezed, then pouted, reached out and turned the heating up a little higher, and immersed himself in the work of reviewing the documents again.

Unbeknownst to him, the annoying spring chill in Washington was only the beginning of the global climate anomalies that followed two years.

-- In the future, this earth will usher in two eerie "summerless years" in a row in addition to the flames of war...... (To be continued.) )