Chapter 595 The Red Tsar Stretches His Neck

On the morning of May 3, 1942, the British, who had just suffered a defeat in the Celtic Sea, reaped the fruits of victory in Dundalk, near Northern Ireland in the Irish Free State.

This was the first defeat suffered by the German Nazi Superman in a land battle in this war! It was also the first victory of the famous British general Montgomery in World War II.

Amid the rumbling of British artillery, Montgomery, who had just been promoted to the commander of the army group, left his front-line command post in Newry-Mourne, Northern Ireland, in an AEC armored command vehicle and drove to Dundalk, a city in northeastern Ireland.

Although supported by more than a dozen German 38t tanks and hundreds of fully armed German troops, the Irish Army's defense line in Dundalk still failed to hold out until dawn and collapsed under the attack of the British 11th Armored Division and the 3rd Infantry Division. The Irish and their German friends abandoned the city of Dundalk and a large amount of weapons and ammunition after dawn and retreated hastily along the Dundalk-Dublin highway.

Now the road from Newry-Mourne to the south is full of tanks, armored vehicles, trucks towing cannons and full of soldiers, as well as many soldiers on foot and horse-drawn cannons - the British Army was fully motorized at the beginning of the World War, and after the war began, it obtained a large number of American trucks and armored vehicles, and also produced many of its own. Originally, there were enough vehicles for Montgomery's troops to move in.

But now fuel is in short supply, and most infantry have changed from motorized to mule-horse-driven... In fact, there are not enough mules and horses. Most of the infantry are on foot, and their baggage is mainly transported by rail, as if they have returned to the First World War overnight.

However, this does not affect the high morale of the officers and soldiers. Although the prospects of the war are very bleak, most British soldiers are still quite optimistic.

Montgomery, sitting in the ugly AEC armored command vehicle that looks a bit like a coffin, can feel this blindly optimistic atmosphere and understand it. Soldiers who have received two or three years of rigorous training but have not really experienced the baptism of war will think they are very powerful. Moreover, they have just won the first battle and now set foot on the land of Ireland. As long as they can continue to win small victories, morale and experience will continue to accumulate, and the combat effectiveness of the troops will become stronger and stronger - after all, the training and weapons of the officers and soldiers of the 12th Army are no worse than those of the Germans, and they should not lose the battle.

At this time, a group of dejected Irish prisoners of war were escorted along the road and passed by the British infantry walking south. Suddenly, some British soldiers started to curse.

"Irish pigs!"

"Inferior Irish!"

"You deserve it!"

"Go to hell!"

Hearing these words, Montgomery couldn't help but frowned. He was also half Irish!

However, he did not blame his soldiers for speaking rudely, because it was indeed the Irish who made the mistake. They degenerate, give up the pride of being a subject of the British Empire, and kowtow to the mean and brutal German Nazis. This is unforgivable, and they will definitely pay the price.

And this price is that the entire island of Ireland will be reduced to ruins in the war! This will become a battlefield for bloody battles between the German and British armies, just like northern France and Belgium in World War I. If the British army can hit the Nazi army hard in Ireland, no, as long as the British army can fight a cruel and long war of attrition with the German army in Ireland and make the Germans fall into the quagmire, Britain will win!

Because Germany still has a huge worry behind it - the Soviet Union!

Now the GCist Tsar must be craning his neck to look at the Irish battlefield, right?

…

When Montgomery thought of Stalin, the GCist great man was holding a carved pipe in his hand and standing on a huge Irish military map hanging on a wall of his office in the Kremlin.

On the map, Dublin and Cork Bay are both posted with eye-catching Nazi swastikas, and a small Union Jack is posted next to Belfast in Northern Ireland. A huge blue arrow extends from Belfast to Dundalk in the Irish Free State.

At the same time, there is a long black arrow on the sea south of the island of Ireland, which extends from Brest in northeastern France to Cork Bay in Ireland. This is the lifeline for the Germans to transport supplies and troops to the island of Ireland. If it is cut off by the British Royal Navy, Germany will lose the battle of Ireland.

Unfortunately, the Home Fleet of the British Royal Navy was defeated again in the Battle of the Celtic Sea in the early morning of May 3. According to the report of the internationalist fighters who infiltrated the Royal Navy, the British were defeated by a secret weapon of Germany, and lost 1 battleship and 3 heavy cruisers. Now even the berth of the Home Fleet has moved more than 100 kilometers to the north.

It seems that the British can no longer count on their navy, but can only rely on their army to resist the German invasion.

"Comrade Pavlov, Comrade Zhukov, what do you think of the Irish battle? Who will win? How long will it take?"

Stalin whispered to Pavlov, the commander of the Western Military District of the Red Army, who was standing behind him, wearing a neat military uniform and holding the rank of general, and Zhukov, who had just returned to Moscow from the Far East to serve as the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army.

General Pavlov, the commander of the Western Military District, answered the question first. He was promoted to the commander of the Western Military District after the Battle of Poland. He commanded the most powerful military district of the Soviet Red Army (the front during the war) and the confrontation with Germany. Naturally, he spent a lot of energy on research. The German army is the easiest to say about the situation of the German army's combat effectiveness.

Pavlov said: "Comrade General Secretary, I think the Irish battlefield will turn into a huge meat grinder! Because after all, Ireland is an island that is not connected to the European continent. It is very close to the British Isles, but relatively far from the European continent. Far away. The British can transport troops to the island of Ireland quickly, but it will be much more difficult for German reinforcements and logistics."

He paused and said in a very positive tone: "So I think that the British Army will not admit defeat on the island of Ireland until they have exhausted most of their strength, because that means the end of the history of the British Empire!"

"Comrade Pavlov, do you mean that the Germans will pay a heavy price on the island of Ireland, but in the end they will win?"

"Yes." Pavlov nodded firmly and said, "If we don't go to war with Germany, the Germans will win. Maybe hundreds of thousands of Germans will die, but in the end they will win."

"Why?" Stalin asked.

"Because the British reactionary ruling class has no determination to shed the last drop of blood to defend the motherland!"

Pavlov frowned and said: "In fact, some members of the British ruling class are not mortal enemies of the German ruling class, but relatives! They all belong to the decadent and declining European aristocratic circle, and now they are just competing for dominance. , rather than a life-and-death struggle in which one class overthrows another.

According to the intelligence we have, the highest levels of the British ruling class are already preparing for escape and compromise. Princess Elizabeth, the heir to the British throne, will become the leader of the compromise faction and marry her cousin, the son of Kaiser Wilhelm III, thus allowing the Hohenzollern dynasty to take over the British island. And her sister, Princess Margaret, has now arrived in Canada and will become the monarch of Canada in the future and the leader of the escape faction... So among the current British top ruling class, only the escape faction and the capitulation faction really want to resist to the end. There are no people. This situation determined that Britain would eventually lose the decisive battle in Ireland unless the Soviet Red Army entered the war in time. "

Stalin nodded. He thought Pavlov's analysis was very reasonable. Then he half turned around and looked at Zhukov. Both Zhukov and Pavlov were generals who were highly regarded by Stalin, but they had completely different qualities. General Pavlov was more like a strategist and could view military issues from a considerable height, which Stalin admired very much. , and it is also easy to communicate with Pavlov.

Zhukov is a relatively pure soldier. He does not study military affairs from a high strategic level and starts with political issues. For Zhukov, military is military, and it can be analyzed in terms of the number of troops, training, morale, logistics, weapons and equipment, etc.

"Comrade General Secretary, the current situation is that the Germans' landing on the island of Ireland has been successful." Zhukov said, "Then they only need to transport troops, supplies and equipment to the island of Ireland step by step, establish air force and naval bases, and deploy sufficient threats Aircraft from the Firth of Lorne, the Firth of Clyde and the Port of Liverpool, and then a steady advance could win without too many casualties.

However, it still takes a lot of time. Delay tactics and waiting for changes are the only things the British can do. "

"So do you think the British can bring about a change?" Stalin took a puff of cigarette and looked at his two favorite generals.

This question is not easy to answer. Zhukov frowned nervously and seemed to be thinking hard. Although Pavlov was leading troops in the Western Military District, he was very clear about Stalin's thoughts. He immediately replied: "The key to whether they can succeed or not lies in the British themselves. If they are brave enough and resist resolutely on the island of Ireland, they will be strong enough." If more German troops are attracted to Ireland from the European continent, the possibility of changes will be great."

Stalin nodded and looked at Zhukov who said nothing. Zhukov frowned and said: "Comrade General Secretary, we must find ways to understand the most accurate situation on the Irish battlefield, otherwise we will not be able to figure out how many troops the Germans have invested in Ireland. Therefore, I hope to lead a high-level military representative The regiment went to England and went to the Irish battlefield to see the situation there firsthand.”

Stalin shook his head and said: "No, it is not appropriate for you to go. You are the chief of the general staff and need to be responsible for the overall situation. It is better to let Comrade Golikov, the intelligence chief, go."