Nine Hundred and Sixty Eight Local Tyrants

Germany's massive offensive has been prepared for more than two months, which also means that the Americans spend more time and thought on the Suez Canal defense line. After the defeat of the American and British troops from the defense of Alexandria, they were desperately preparing for this line of defense. At that time, Germany had not yet occupied the Nile River Basin.

Therefore, even if Rommel carefully prepared this surprise attack, it is simply a whimsical thing to say that the entire Suez Canal defense line was torn apart within two hours. When the Marshal of the Third Reich was eager to break through the Suez Canal defense line, the US and British coalition forces were also trying to prepare a very huge surprise for Rommel.

"Ignite the oil in storage and use a special line of defense to stop the Germans from advancing!" While retreating, the US battlefield commander issued an order to start a planned response to the prepared measures.

In fact, speaking of this special method, the troops of the United States and Britain in the Middle East are also very helpless. The loss of Egypt, which has a good infrastructure and some light industries, is a fatal blow to the entire Anglo-American Middle East strategy. The local production of many weapons and ammunition has become very difficult, and most of the materials have to be shipped from far behind India.

From the start of the war to the present, Britain has lost Tobruk itself, the US-British coalition forces have lost Alexandria and Egypt, and most of the construction in the Middle East has been lost to the German-Italian coalition forces, which has shortened the logistics lines of the German-Italian African Army by more than half—— Because obviously Alexandria is much stronger than distant places such as Tunis and Tobruk.

Most of the weapons of the United States rely on transportation from the distant continental United States. These weapons bypass the Atlantic Ocean, enter the Indian Ocean from the Cape of Good Hope, and finally reach the Middle East. This route is so long that the U.S. Army rarely gets supplies in time.

In addition, there is a certain gap between the combat effectiveness of the US and British coalition forces and the German North African Army, so the US and British commanders really cannot find the possibility that they can defend the Suez Canal. When the power balance between the two sides was not so obvious before, Alexandria was occupied by Germany. Now the power gap between the two sides is even greater. How can the small Suez Canal be defended?

Driven by this idea, the British and American coalition forces began to constantly think about where their advantages lie. Because the ammunition can only be processed by small factories in India, it is completely inferior to the German-Italian African Army in terms of quantity: because the ammunition shipped from Italy can directly arrive in Alexandria, the distance between the two sides is similar, but India and Italy are completely absent in terms of industrial level. up a notch.

Although the number of troops has been supplemented, a balance of power has been barely maintained, but there is a big gap between the personnel of the two sides in terms of equipment, morale and fighting will. Most of the British soldiers are now on the same level as the Italians. Compared with the Germans, the American army can only be described as hehe.

In terms of armored strength, Patton was fought by German paratroopers in a blocking battle at Damanhur, leaving half of his tanks in Egypt. Supplements in the United States simply cannot supply American soldiers in the Middle East to reorganize a strong armored force.

In the end, the Americans relied on their huge production capacity to barely make the number of American tanks in the Middle East reach two-thirds of the German army.

As for the Air Force...after numerous supplements, the Americans are still unable to gain air supremacy in North Africa-this is a polite official statement, but to put it bluntly, the U.S. Air Force was beaten to nothing in front of the superior German Air Force.

On the Pacific battlefield, the American soldiers who overwhelmed the Japanese army by relying on their firepower superiority and production capacity, and played a good record, faced the German army with stronger firepower and more convenient supplies, as if they had encountered a natural enemy. What is the difference between a group of recruits going to the veterans of the African Legion and seeking death?

After much deliberation, the senior officials of the British and American coalition forces did not come up with any good solution. In the end, General Mountbatten, who was far away in India, proposed a plan: use oil! This barren desert in the Middle East requires poor infrastructure and few natural barriers, but it has only one advantage, that is, there is an outrageous amount of oil.

Since the British Navy lost its dominance in the Mediterranean Sea, the oil in the Middle East can no longer feed back the British mainland. With the end of the British Homeland War, the transportation of oil from the Mediterranean has become a joke. The oil shares of the United States and Britain in the Middle East have simply lost their effect, and the development and investment in the Middle East for more than ten years has become a burden.

Fortunately, the United Kingdom has continuously shipped oil from the Middle East to India, hoping that the oil hoarded there can be used as a resource for future restoration of the country. But the United States is pitiful. It is cheaper to transport the oil back to the country than to mine it locally in the Gulf of Mexico. After all, the cost of going around the whole of Africa is too scary.

As a result, the Middle East has become an oil hoarding warehouse. The Americans have hundreds of thousands of tons of oil sitting idle, and the British have a lot of production that cannot be shipped out. Withholding the German share and the Italian share, as well as the oil share after the French surrender, such a huge oil production capacity is cheaper for the locals.

Since there is so much oil, and most of the oil is useless, then Mountbatten suggested that we burn the oil directly to prevent the Germans from attacking, isn't it all right? So the British and American allied forces opened up in Maosai, and began to build an "oil line of defense" that used oil to prevent the advance of the German army.

The oil was neatly stacked in the trenches, and the criss-cross trenches were covered with only a layer of floating soil. These terrible incendiary bombs were built like fishing nets about 20 kilometers behind the first position of the United States. It is intended to use such a sea of ​​fire line of defense to stop the advance of the German army after the first line of defense is breached.

American soldiers began to retreat along the predetermined road, and hundreds of thousands of German troops began to cross the Suez Canal. All the scripts seemed to be developing according to Rommel's design. He watched his troops board the embankment on the opposite bank, and he watched his engineers build the pontoon bridge across the center of the canal.

As long as he is given half an hour, his Leopard tank can drive through the Suez Canal, and this line of defense that has blocked him for several months will be left behind by him. The troops of the Third Reich will occupy this land, and those Yankees and Britons will eventually be defeated by themselves.

While Rommel was thinking about his future, an old Stuka bomber in the sky was looking for its target. The pilots on the Stuka finally found a trench full of American troops on the ground. So he began to dive down to lower his altitude.

This trench is one of the retreat routes reserved by the U.S. military. No one expected that the German attack would be so fierce that the U.S. military’s retreat would be chaotic. The originally planned retreat in batches became crowded. Pushing and shoving in the tunnel, the originally inconspicuous trenches have now become the main target of the Stuka bombers.

The battlefield is changing rapidly, and any planned procedures may change during the execution process. Although the U.S. Army imagined the offensive means of the powerful German army as much as possible, it still did not expect that the German army could establish a bridgehead on the opposite bank within an hour. .

The Stuka plane rushed towards its target with a roaring sound. It got as close to the ground as possible, and then dropped the terrible aerial bomb under the fuselage into the trench. With the tremor of the fuselage, the pilot knew His bomb had already disengaged from the fuselage, so he began to pull the joystick to let his plane pull up quickly.

But at this moment, a bullet flew from nowhere and shattered his cabin glass. The bullet hit his throat, and the blood immediately splashed on the splicing glass of the Stuka aircraft like a burst water pipe. The pilot pulled the joystick twice with the remaining consciousness, and then drooped his head, Not breathing.

So the Stuka fell to the ground, and then with unburned aviation fuel, a huge explosion occurred the moment it hit the ground. Immediately next to the exploding plane, on a node where dozens of barrels of oil had been buried, there was a bang and a loud explosion, setting off black smoke that covered the sky and flames several meters high.

The American soldiers next to the position were completely dumbfounded. Although they buried the oil, they didn't know that these terrible things would be so terrible when they exploded. You must know that their position is not far from these terrible burial sites. Everyone thought that the burning of oil would turn into a wall of flames, but no one knew that this thing would burn as high as a few floors.

The other oil-filled places connected here also began to explode and burn. The whole position was filled with thick smoke and it was impossible to see anything clearly. Many American soldiers who had not retreated were forced to retreat by the flames, and some of the people who managed to escape were also covered in disgrace. dirt.

Rommel and Garibaldi witnessed this amazing scene with their own eyes. At the beginning, the Marshal of the Third Reich thought that the bomber unit he was chasing had hit the enemy's ammunition depot, but the explosion that followed He was dumbfounded.

I have seen extravagant ones, but I have never seen such extravagant ones! The German armored forces were constantly troubled by their own fuel supply. Burning gasoline for heating was expressly prohibited on the Eastern Front, not to mention burning a wall of fire with oil to stop the enemy from advancing?

Immediately, Rommel had such a question in his mind: With so much fuel, wouldn't it be good to use armored troops and infantry to fortify the line of defense? At this moment, he suddenly discovered that he didn't understand the world of local tyrants at all. The United States, with its wealth and wealth, could really be regarded as a strong enemy of the Third Reich.