Chapter 194 Cheating

Hitler was certainly not crazy.

There are several reasons why he chose to attack the Soviet Union at this time.

The first is Hitler's misjudgment of the Soviet Union.

This is mainly based on the fact that the Soviet Union invaded Finland two years ago but only won a miserable victory. Therefore, Hitler believed that although the Soviet Union had a large military force, it was extremely corrupt internally and the commanders were generally inexperienced... 75% of its officers were officers with no command experience who had served for less than a year. Many officers were simply unable to do their jobs well. The reason they could become officers was only because of their firm political stance.

So Hitler judged that if he assembled a large number of troops and suddenly launched an attack, he could defeat the Soviet Union and end the war within a few months.

The second is the need for resources.

This aspect is ultimately due to the German army's "fighting to support war" combat method... A large number of German laborers carried guns to the front line, which made the war machine seriously lack of labor, so it was necessary to occupy other countries and obtain a large number of laborers by enslaving the people of other countries.

But invading other countries would be met with strong resistance from other countries, so the scale of the war became larger and larger, and the expansion of the scale required more materials, and more materials required more labor, which in turn required launching new wars to meet the labor demand...

At this time, Germany was caught in such a vicious cycle: because of the lack of labor in the war, the war had to be expanded for the sake of labor.

At this time, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union would have at least the following benefits: Ukraine could provide a large amount of cheap food. Occupying the Soviet Union would allow a large amount of slave labor. Defeating the Soviet Union would further isolate the British Empire. Germany's war machine was in great need of more oil, and this goal could only be achieved after capturing the Baku oil-producing area of ​​the Soviet Union.

More importantly, according to Hitler's plan, the German army would be able to defeat the Soviet Union in a few months, and then the German army would no longer need to maintain three million troops, and most of them would be retired, and the German industry would be able to immediately supplement the labor shortage.

Finally, it was Hitler's arrogance.

Before this, many German generals had warned Hitler to deal with Britain first and then attack the Soviet Union. Fighting on two fronts was not a good thing for Germany anyway.

But Hitler simply didn't listen to these suggestions... The series of victories he had achieved before made Hitler think that he was a political and military genius, and the reason why a genius can be called a genius is that he can stick to his correct path despite opposition.

The impact of this on the North African battlefield was to further withdraw the air force from North Africa... The German air force in the North African direction originally had two air wings, one was the 24th Air Wing in Sicily, Italy, and the other was the 27th Air Wing in Tobruk.

The former was mainly responsible for bombing Malta and protecting the sea routes from Italy to Africa, and the latter was mainly responsible for providing necessary air support to the African Corps.

However, in order to gather enough forces in the Soviet direction, Hitler transferred the 24th Wing stationed in Sicily to the Eastern Front... This almost completely exposed the supply line of the African Corps to the attack of the British Navy and Air Force.

Rommel strongly opposed this, because at this time the African Corps' war in North Africa had entered the final critical stage. It can be said that the situation was very good, especially after the capture of Alexandria, it only needed to make another effort to drive the British into the sea...

At this time, the most important thing was air power, because the strategic significance of Alexandria was that it could bomb and block Port Said and the Suez Canal, thereby cutting off the British supply line.

But without the advantage of air power, there would be no way to talk about it. Even the German army did not dare to deploy fighters and bombers in Alexandria... Port Said was too close to Alexandria, with a straight-line distance of less than 300 kilometers. The British Air Force only needed half an hour to reach the airport and carry out indiscriminate bombing.

In this way, the German army's capture of Alexandria did not have much strategic significance.

But Hitler certainly would not weaken the offensive power against the Soviet Union because of Africa, which was considered a secondary battlefield, so Rommel's opposition was completely set aside.

And the British on the other side were not having a good time either.

The difficulty mainly lies in the air force. The British originally had more than 500 fighter planes in North Africa, but more than 100 were lost in the battle, leaving only more than 360.

It was indeed a good thing for the British after the 24th Wing of the German Air Force turned to the Soviet Union, but the British Air Force was in a dilemma... whether to redeploy the air force on the island of Malta.

From a strategic perspective, the answer is yes. Deploying fighter planes on the island of Malta can effectively attack the German supply lines and even reverse the situation.

But...

The quality of the fighter planes and pilots of the British Air Force is generally not as good as that of the Germans. They need to use the advantage of numbers to maintain their air supremacy over North Africa.

If a part of the fighter planes, even a small part, is allocated to the island of Malta, the German Air Force may have the air supremacy over North Africa and then use Alexandria as an air base to block the Suez Canal and Port Said... This is also fatal to the British army.

However, if the fighter planes are not deployed on the island of Malta, the German army's sufficient supplies will also be fatal to the British army.

So Churchill asked the United States for help again.

At this time, Britain and the United States used a cheating method.

At this time, the United States had not yet joined the war. Although the United States signed the Lend-Lease Act with Britain, the Soviet Union and other countries, this act even stipulated that American merchant ships should not be used for transportation... Because if American merchant ships were used for transportation, Germany would have the right to destroy American merchant ships, so the United States would inevitably be dragged into the war.

In other words, the United States used American merchant ships to help Britain transport supplies in the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal, which actually violated the contract and could not be said to be a neutral country.

But this is only the second...

In order to quickly deploy fighters on the Malta Island, Churchill actually borrowed aircraft carriers from the United States, and the United States actually agreed.

You must know that the United States is a neutral country that has not participated in the war. The German army cannot attack American warships, and of course American warships cannot have any military actions against the German army.

However, American warships are helping Britain transport fighters and passing through the narrow Strait of Gibraltar as a neutral country... If it is in a state of war, aircraft carriers will never be able to enter the narrow strait, which is almost a dead end.

As a result, 126 British aircraft were transported safely to Malta by the USS Wasp and USS Eagle.

The supply line of the Afrika Korps over Malta was cut off almost overnight.