"La France Continue" (LFC) a different destiny for France. (France continues to fight in 1940 by Emi

[simon darkshade]

This is drifting a bit into specific commentary on another timeline/universe rather than comparative observations related to FFO scenarios, but here goes:

A city the size of Paris would take weeks to capture if defended to the end, but at a massive cost to civilian casualties and historical monuments etc. All would be for no real strategic gain and potentially cause some issues for French POWs. Open city was the right choice for DE and in general for WW2 France in 1940.

[lordroel]

Oct 16, 2022 11:16:50 GMT simon darkshade said:

This is drifting a bit into specific commentary on another timeline/universe rather than comparative observations related to FFO scenarios, but here goes:

A city the size of Paris would take weeks to capture if defended to the end, but at a massive cost to civilian casualties and historical monuments etc. All would be for no real strategic gain and potentially cause some issues for French POWs. Open city was the right choice for DE and in general for WW2 France in 1940.

Thanks for the answer simon.

[ukron]

Oct 15, 2022 17:00:58 GMT simon darkshade said:

Oct 15, 2022 16:23:20 GMT ukron said:

simon darkshade , Personally I had a hard time with the Surcouf in the Pacific (either in this story or in theoriginal LFC), I have a hard time imagining this ship as anything other than the symbol of the failure of the pre-war "Marine Nationale".

Ukron, in my own WW2 writings and work, which involve France fighting from North Africa, cruiser submarines like Surcouf (albeit with different names) do play a role in the form of commando raid transport and causing trouble for the enemy through nocturnal surface bombardment, as well as other more mundane missions, such as getting high priority cargo through to besieged island bases. They don't play a role in major battles, let alone get the speed and good fortune to take a (successful or unsuccessful) shot at enemy carriers. Through sheer dumb luck, the cruiser submarine gets a partway reasonable reputation in WW2, albeit not in its original role.

Thank you for your answer, Simon.

To tell the truth, I have a hard time seeing the interest that the Surcouf could have had for commando infiltration missions, from what I have read, it was a real disaster of logistics and command with a noisy ship, too complex and where the use of its unique (and obsolete) seaplane took at least one hour (in perfect conditions), Therefore, comparing with the (sometimes unsuccessful) infiltration attempts of commandos by submarines carried out by the American and British forces, I find it very doubtful that the Surcouf could not have been capable of this kind of mission (without counting the risk of allied fire).

[ukron]

Thanks for the book recommendation, lordroel.

Interesting observation, Simon. It is obvious that Paris should be declared an open city, especially after the fate that Warsaw and Rotterdam suffered, it is very unlikely that the city could not sustain a siege, especially with disparate, under-equipped and demoralized troops in the middle of civilians trying to flee.

Unless one imagines (which a French comic strip did, surprisingly, a few years ago) that the French and British general staff decided to transform Paris into a weakly defended city in order to lure the German armies into a trap before counter-attacking on the flanks (obviously, the comic strip took other historical liberties such as the death of Hitler after the Polish campaign). But I think that if I continue Simon will resent me for not respecting the historical coherence and logistics (and that's fine).

[lordroel]

Oct 16, 2022 16:23:07 GMT ukron said:

Oct 15, 2022 17:00:58 GMT simon darkshade said:

Ukron, in my own WW2 writings and work, which involve France fighting from North Africa, cruiser submarines like Surcouf (albeit with different names) do play a role in the form of commando raid transport and causing trouble for the enemy through nocturnal surface bombardment, as well as other more mundane missions, such as getting high priority cargo through to besieged island bases. They don't play a role in major battles, let alone get the speed and good fortune to take a (successful or unsuccessful) shot at enemy carriers. Through sheer dumb luck, the cruiser submarine gets a partway reasonable reputation in WW2, albeit not in its original role.

Thank you for your answer, Simon.

To tell the truth, I have a hard time seeing the interest that the Surcouf could have had for commando infiltration missions, from what I have read, it was a real disaster of logistics and command with a noisy ship, too complex and where the use of its unique (and obsolete) seaplane took at least one hour (in perfect conditions), Therefore, comparing with the (sometimes unsuccessful) infiltration attempts of commandos by submarines carried out by the American and British forces, I find it very doubtful that the Surcouf could not have been capable of this kind of mission (without counting the risk of allied fire).

For some reason i have a soft spot for Surcouf, that and I-400.

[lordroel]

Oct 16, 2022 16:40:36 GMT lordroel said:

Oct 16, 2022 16:23:07 GMT ukron said:

Thank you for your answer, Simon.

To tell the truth, I have a hard time seeing the interest that the Surcouf could have had for commando infiltration missions, from what I have read, it was a real disaster of logistics and command with a noisy ship, too complex and where the use of its unique (and obsolete) seaplane took at least one hour (in perfect conditions), Therefore, comparing with the (sometimes unsuccessful) infiltration attempts of commandos by submarines carried out by the American and British forces, I find it very doubtful that the Surcouf could not have been capable of this kind of mission (without counting the risk of allied fire).

For some reason i have a soft spot for Surcouf, that and I-400.

Still stand with the statement.

[ukron]

Chapter 9: Preparing for the Future : The Origins of Gaullism

"Only a strong France, with a marked supreme authority, will be able to accompany this movement by demonstrating both compassion and honor, but also the necessary authority.
Charles de Gaulle to Georges Mandel on the subject of decolonization

De Gaulle despised parliamentarians and the party system they embodied. This regime could have led France into the abyss had it not been for the strength of will of Georges Mandel and the disappearance, which he considered miraculous, of Marshal Pétain. And yet, it was necessary to bow to those who, according to him, would have handed France over to Philippe Pétain and consequently to Germany and Italy, in other circumstances. A sign for the General that the bankruptcy of the regime of the Third Republic was both collective and general, the "flanking" deputies spotted during the last debates in Metropolitan France, and those who immediately followed the resumption of the parliamentary session in Algeria, were represented from the SFIO to the Republican Federation. The distinction was rather geographical, the deputies from the devastated regions of the north being clearly more inclined to defeatism than those from the relatively unscathed regions of the south of the country. This meant one thing: if the combative deputies from the south had been elected in the north, they too would have supported an armistice...

Worse, some deputies whose baseness was not the inherent weakness of the Regime but rather felony, had tried to escape the departure for Africa aboard the Massilia, the most infamous of them and one of the few who managed to do so being of course the now deceased Pierre Laval. There was also Louis Deschizeaux, now high up in the hierarchy of the felonious national state, who had tried to disarm the soldiers defending his city of Châteauroux against the Nazi invasion...

As for the heroic deputies, who volunteered and sometimes died for France, such as Léo Lagrange, or who, having been taken prisoner and sent by force to the Congress of Versailles, had opposed Pierre Laval, following the example of Jean Bouhey, if the General admired them, it was as individuals. Indeed, they represented the patriotic exception in the face of majority weakness...

But de Gaulle was no longer worried about the immediate future. Mandel "held the helm" with a practice of power close to a "Roman-style dictatorship", bypassing possible parliamentary blockages by the use of the famous decree-laws. Better still, the effective resistance of "Fortress Africa" coupled with the now effective American intervention had now closed the parliamentary ranks behind the cause of final victory. What worried de Gaulle was the more distant future, the medium-term fate of France.

De Gaulle foresaw a potential weakness of power in the event of a return to a strictly parliamentary regime, marked in particular by a weak executive. "A nation without a leader. A nation without a state", thought the General... All this at a time when Stalin would probably have advanced his pawns in Eastern Europe and when it would be necessary to manage the "friendly influence" of the United States on the rest of the continent, which de Gaulle, unlike many of his colleagues, considered to be a burden. Worse, some of the ministers in Mandel's cabinet, such as Darlan, his counterpart in the navy, were already almost wishing it away...

And France was probably not going to face a major crisis only in Europe. The General foresaw that she would also face serious difficulties in her colonial domain. The speech of enthronement of Moncef Bey on June 20, 1942 did nothing to reassure this supporter of the imperial grandeur of France. Indeed, the new bey of Tunis in his inaugural speech, if he praised freedom and called on Tunisians to fight for it alongside the French Republic, it was also a plea for the eventual independence of his country, via a parallel with the Syrian-Lebanese situation. Moreover, the new bey quickly approached the independence activists of the Neo-Destour. Nevertheless, Mandel, a former minister of the colonies, and therefore fully aware of the imperial stakes, responded to de Gaulle's objections by explaining that he wanted to accompany the independence movements, as France had done in the Levant with success, rather than fight against the aspirations for freedom of the peoples of the Empire and lose their friendship forever, as the President of the Council explained to him during one of their many informal exchanges.

De Gaulle, a past master of politics, retorted "that only a strong France, with a marked supreme authority, will be able to accompany this movement by showing compassion, honor, but also the necessary authority. In short, a real call for a Fourth Republic, which he already desired and which he would publicly call for in the following years.

The future will show that this very "Gaullian" sentence is a good summary of the French decolonization policy. Indeed, after the Japanese capitulation, it was the government of authority, led by the General himself, that granted independence to Indochina while integrating into the Republic as overseas departments the now former colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Reunion, the French Establishments in India, New Caledonia, the French Establishments in Oceania, and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. This same government will transform the territories of the AOF and the AEF into autonomous states within the French Union (provoking the jubilation of the populations) as well as Morocco and Tunisia (where independence riots will take place)...

But this is another story.
For the moment, de Gaulle did his utmost to obtain the election of a "constituent" at the Liberation, but Mandel was reluctant. He sensed the General's desire to set up a regime with a strong executive, on a permanent basis, whereas his practice of strong power was only a temporary expedient, the time it took to win the war... Secretly, de Gaulle used his personal networks of influence to bring together current or "potential" politicians from all sides around his project for a Fourth Republic and the election of a constituent. Thus, de Gaulle approached the anti-Munich leftist Pierre Brossolette, who had remained in Metropolitan France during the invasion, but was now involved in the Resistance and had since become a delegate from Algiers to the CNRI. Brossolette shared the General's ideas concerning the desire to reform the Republican regime by strengthening its executive.

De Gaulle, on the other hand, did not negotiate with any of the parliamentarians already in place. He was aware of their fierce opposition to the project, and, as had already been agreed, general elections would be held at the Liberation, as had been promised by the Mandel government. It is therefore more than likely that new men (but also women) will emerge from the ballot boxes, from the ranks of the internal resistance. It is therefore them who must be convinced. If the single cry of the parliamentarians from the ranks of the army of shadows is for constitutional reform, then Mandel will give in...

[ukron]

Chapter 10: Landings

"I have nothing but contempt for the Italians. Only the Germans are entitled to my eternal hatred!"

Rene Massigli, who led the team of French diplomats negotiating the Italian withdrawal from the conflict.


In Europe, Operation Torch/Torch, the landing in Sicily, was taking shape. In parallel to the preparations for the latter, a violent bombing campaign was carried out on Italian industries. Miraculously, the great Italian monuments were not hit.

At least not yet...

The Italian population rumbles, it even begins to show more and more openly its rejection of Fascism. In the big cities, it was becoming more and more difficult to erase the graffiti insulting Mussolini and his clique. Better still, a general strike broke out in Milan, with the workers of the Fiat factories demanding a pay rise. The Duce's wavering power did not dare to break the strike violently and began negotiations with the strikers' representatives! The latter, made apathetic for months by the turn of events, seems to have lost the hand...

These events seem to bring closer the hour of the liberation of the first metropolitan department from the enemy occupation. Corsica. This forthcoming return of French forces to this department with its particularly active resistance will be the first exercise in re-establishing the republican administration in formerly occupied France.

And consequently the first effective implementation of the measures decided for liberated France!

Nobody in Algiers is worried about the future ordeal. The Republic is legitimate, legal and ready. The Corsican civil service will be a mixture of members of the Corsican internal resistance and civil servants withdrawn in Africa and trained for their next mission. To re-establish the authority of the State in the soon to be liberated territories.

It was rather the harshness of the future fighting in the Italian boot, which made the French and, beyond, the Allies fear a bloodbath, that gave Georges Mandel cold sweats. Anticipating this, his government secretly negotiated with... representatives of the King of Italy, who had decided (at last) to dismiss Mussolini and leave the war.

The French, strangely moderate on most points, are intractable on one subject however... Victor-Emmanuel III, the monarch who brought Mussolini to power in 1922, must abdicate in favor of his son, Prince Humbert, much less compromised than him with Fascism. For the rest, René Massigli, head of the French delegation, announced that the French government would even be in favor of maintaining the Italian monarchy in the long term, "a source of stability for the country" and, even, of maintaining the territorial integrity of the country after the Allied victory, with the exception of its colonies, which were destined to be ceded to the Allies.

In his reports to Mandel, the French diplomat mentioned a well-known fact. The Italians were not afraid of the Germans, no, they were terrorized by their cruel allies! This was the last thing that drove the country's monarchist leaders to remain in Berlin's orbit.

"When Torch is launched, they will have no choice though." Writes Massigli.

From reading these reports, the idea began to emerge that once the Axis had been chased out of Sicily, the announcement of the Italian surrender and the landing on the Italian mainland would have to be made at the same time, a landing that would have to take place as far north as possible. Why not in Ostia?...

In the Pacific, another landing was effectively launched. The one on Guadalcanal.

It was Operation Watchtower (not translated into French, as France did not take part in the operation), launched on August 7th 1942.

In addition to Guadalcanal, the US Marines also attacked the neighboring island of Tulagi. If the first one was relatively quickly secured (for the moment...), the second one was taken at the cost of terrible losses, considering the modest size of the island... As soon as Guadalcanal was secured, the Americans started to complete the construction of the airfield started by the Japanese and renamed it "Henderson Field", after an airman who fell at Midway.

While on the Japanese side, the battle was in full swing and a force of cruisers, commanded by Vice-Admiral Mikawa, rushed towards the Allied fleet, Vice-Admiral Fletcher made more than a mistake, he made a mistake...

Worried about his aircraft carriers, which he judged to be exposed to an inevitable Japanese retaliation, he abandoned nothing less than the Marine landing fleet and the sector, scalded as he was by the disaster of the Coral Sea! The aircraft carriers withdrew to Noumea, leaving the US Marines alone to face the Japanese...

The day after the landing, on the night of 8 to 9 August 1942, the imperial squadron crushed the remaining American and Australian ships, but miraculously spared the transport ships, which Mikawa deemed unworthy of being fought...

The American soldiers, numbering 10,000, were nevertheless isolated for several weeks.
In Tokyo, there was astonishment. The Americans were not considered capable of attacking before 1943, especially with the heavy losses inflicted on them by Yamamoto's navy.

The US force landed on the island was underestimated and only 5,000 soldiers were landed in the following days. They suffered heavy losses during their counter-attack on Henderson and the survivors dug in to the north of the island to await reinforcements. The Americans, also entrenched, cut off from their supply lines, were also waiting for reinforcements.

Each side saw in the confrontation that had just begun the opportunity to strike a decisive blow against its enemy.

This was the beginning of what would later be called "The Apocalypse in the Solomons".



Landing of the US Marines at Guadalcanal (August 7, 1942) (Source: Wikipedia)

[ukron]

Chapter 11: The Hour of Destiny

"It was in these streets that the fate of the war was decided. The outcome of this battle would define the post-war map of the world, determine the greatness of Stalin or the frightening power of Adolf Hitler (...) The single word of Stalingrad had made the Kremlin and Berchtesgaden live, breathe and dream. It was Stalingrad that was to determine the philosophies of history, the social systems of the future."
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate


Frightened by the announcement of the American landing at Guadalcanal and Tulagi and, above all, by the failure of their counter-attack on the US Marines' positions, the Imperial General Staff set up the KA operation to reconquer the 2 islands. Having noted the departure of the HMS Illustrious for Europe, the Shokaku left Singapore and joined the survivors of Midway, the Zuikaku and the Hiryu for the assault. Opposite, the Americans had an equivalent number of aircraft carriers to oppose them. Indeed, the USS Enterprise and the USS Hornet were joined by the USS Wasp, which had been operating in the Atlantic against the U-Boats, with a certain success, which the Allied strategists did not hesitate to note in their notebooks... If in terms of aircraft carriers, the battle seemed balanced, Nimitz's men had an additional asset up their sleeve.

Henderson Field is now operational! A real "uncollapsible" aircraft carrier, squadrons of fighters and naval bombers have been installed there for several days. They have already started to attack the Japanese squadrons harassing the airfield and the US Marine positions defending the island, as well as the Japanese cruisers pounding the airfield from the sea.

Vice-Admiral Fletcher, who had been seriously criticized by Admiral Nimitz, was now determined, as the good American he had always been, to give up nothing to his Japanese adversary. Yamamoto and Nagumo are in the same state of mind, the survival of the Empire seems to be already at stake. All hell can break loose...

While the 3 heavy carriers of the Kido Butai attacked the American fleet, a powerful convoy, heavily escorted, including by the light carrier Ryujo (the heavy losses suffered at Midway having made the use of light carriers much more necessary) and carrying 10,000 men of reinforcements for Guadalcanal, soldiers commanded by General Kawaguchi Kiyotake, to reinforce the last forces of Colonel Ichiki Kiyono, entrenched north of Guadalcanal.

Nimitz, who guessed that the game was going to be close, entrusted the aircraft based at Henderson Field with the task of causing maximum damage to the Japanese convoy, while the heavy fleet fought the Kido Butai.

But this division of tasks, quite logical, did not prevent the battle from starting with a disaster on the American side... Hunted by the formidable Japanese submersibles, more capable of confronting the heavy units than of harassing the supply lines, in accordance with their engagement doctrine, and their armament (let us quote the famous "long-lance torpedo", the Type 93), by the way... Because of one of them, the I-19, the US heavy fleet started the battle very badly. Indeed, the submersible avenged the Soryu, and sank in a single salvo not only the USS Wasp but also the US Navy battleship USS North Carolina! This was to be the record for tonnage sunk in a single salvo by a submersible in the entire conflict.

Nimitz, in agreement with Fletcher, eager to redeem himself from his unexpected retreat at Watchtower, decided to modify his plans to continue the battle because any retreat would mean the massacre of the Marines stationed at Guadalcanal! Perhaps even a Japanese surge across the Pacific! As a band-aid, the aircraft of the Cactus Air Force (nickname of the American air force based in Guadalcanal) were diverted from their mission of tracking the convoy, to launch them, alongside the embarked air force, in the tracking of the main Japanese fleet.

Once the tactical balance was restored, everything was ready for the slaughter.

Both sides were determined. The American air force succeeded in sinking the Shokaku, while the Japanese pilots succeeded in sinking the USS Enterprise after a series of furious assaults. In the South Pacific, the Americans only had the USS Hornet as an aircraft carrier! The enemy kept the Zuikaku and the Hiryu (in addition to the light Ryujo...). Fortunately, the American industry, infinitely superior to its Japanese counterpart, provided new units to the US Navy in the Pacific by the end of the year, while the Japanese projects did not come to fruition until... 1944!

While aircraft carriers were killing each other, the convoy was able to reach Guadalcanal and drop off the 10,000 men of General Kawaguchi. And one can say that the Japanese were in a hurry. Disregarding the idea of reconnaissance of the terrain, disregarding the idea of simple rest, the Japanese commanders as soon as they landed launched their "final offensive" on Henderson.

The defenders of the airfield, on the other hand, showed a cold determination. They too had received reinforcements and supplies before the battle. Inspired by France, a cry arose from the US ranks:


"They shall not pass!"

"They shall not pass!". As in Verdun in 1916...

The battle was particularly barbaric. The American machine guns mowed down the Japanese en masse, who charged with bayonets, screaming so much that they ended up reaching the US lines and attacking the Marines not only with their bayonets but also with knives and bare hands... It was, at first, only to the intervention of tanks, which crushed the Nipponese without mercy, that the Americans owed their survival... The last Nipponese rush before dawn seemed to offer victory to Tojo's men when, suddenly, an infernal roar came from the sky. It was the aircraft from Henderson Field that were finally able to take off, due to the appearance of the saving sun! The intervention of the aircraft from the air base, completes the Japanese defeat in the battle of Bloody Ridge, the last line of defense between Henderson and the Japanese rush.

But the battle of Guadalcanal was not over... Faced with American air superiority in the region, the Japanese opted to transport supplies and reinforcements by destroyers from Rabaul to the disputed island at night. Thus began the famous "Tokyo Express", which caused several "old-fashioned" gun battles... For their part, the Americans, at least when the Japanese aircraft carriers were not patrolling the area, were able to pour in their logistics during the day as well and by more "conventional" means. And, indeed, when 2 convoys crossed each other, furious naval engagements were engaged.

The US Marines, who used the war cry of the French of Verdun, did not expect the French, at least their surface fleet, to be so close to them! Indeed, the battleship Richelieu, completed by the Americans in the New York shipyards, is in Noumea! Equipped with the latest radar, she is about to fight alongside her new sister ship, the battleship US Washington!

Moreover, the ship's commander, Captain Marzin, upon learning that the American Marines had shouted at the top of their lungs the warrior maxim of the late Pétain's men, had this to say: "From now on, it is no longer a question of preventing them from passing. Now it's about pushing them back and crushing them!"

Everything is said...

Algiers, September 4, 1942: On this anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic in 1870, the nationalist deputy, Pierre Taittinger, was about to speak once again from the perch of the Palais Carnot, which had housed the Chamber since the 1940 exile. His words are as sharp as steel, it must be said that he has to pay the "price of blood". His son, Michel, died on June 15, 1940 defending the village of Saint-Parres-aux-Tertres... De Gaulle, secretly, although his government was regularly attacked by the extreme but patriotic right-wing tribune, was satisfied with his diatribes, which advocated a clear reinforcement of the executive at the expense of the legislative. In short, for an overhaul of the mode of government of France, in the sense of the wishes of the General.

"I admire the way the President of the Council conducted the war. Firm, strong, directive. This practice of power will lead us to the forthcoming victory over the hated enemy. Victory, which I know you, my esteemed colleagues, desire to be definitive.

Nevertheless, dear colleagues, in order not to lose our victory, as was the case in 1918, we must give ourselves the means of our ambitions.

Of course, I am not talking about going easy on the Germanic beast. Not having crushed it after victory is indeed the main source of our present misfortunes. No, I am talking about exercising power in such a way as to enforce the just retaliatory measures that the defeated Germany will have to suffer.

If President Poincaré, the architect of our victory, had had real authority, an authority other than moral, we could have, by perpetuating the occupation of the Rhineland, prevented the rearmament of Germany, prevented German cannons from threatening Strasbourg again... ". (This pique towards the words pronounced in 1936 by Albert Sarrault, causes a real outcry on the left and among the Radicals. Worse, the radical pillar of the Republican left, Georges Clemenceau, was "forgotten" by Taittinger. It is true, in defense of the right-wing man, that Poincaré's political impotence was more flagrant than that of the "Tiger").

Taittinger goes on to list his wishes for a victorious France. Namely:

- A strong executive, of the Bonapartist type.

- To refocus France around Christian values.

- Taittinger wishes to make France the herald of the anti-communist struggle. He regularly denounced the ambiguous attitude of the Communists before June 1941 (French Communists whom he qualified as "Soviet patriots"!). Moreover, when he speaks, the Communist deputies and ministers systematically leave the room...

Paul-Boncour, seated to the left of de Gaulle whispered to him "It's simply the national state, minus the anti-Semitism and submission to the enemy!"

De Gaulle nods but approves Taittinger in his heart, at least in the main, even if the ideals Gaullian are not so much to the right as those of the MP ... However, the General will reveal his ambition for France only when the French tanks roll again on the Champs-Élysées... Moreover, concerning the virulent anti-communism of the nationalist deputy, de Gaulle cannot join him on this point because, we know it, the General intends to rely on the USSR in the future.

But let's go now to the battle of Stalingrad, object of all the attentions, where the fate of the World will be played. There, the German VIth Army is stuck in the ruins, blocked by the heroic and desperate resistance of the defenders. If the Soviet historiography made of it a fight of the last chance, however, the Soviet defenders were not so abandoned as that... Already, the Soviet aviation challenges the domination of the sky of the Nazi Luftwaffe. In the Russian ranks, there were members of the Normandy squadron, the French heroes that de Gaulle had managed to get his government to send to fight alongside the Soviets.

Jean Accart, one of them, will have his words: "It was a Dantesque spectacle. A vision of apocalypse. The smoke from the burning city gave us the impression of flying over Hell itself. To think that there was still life down there seemed inconceivable to us... And yet, it was to help our Soviet brothers in arms that we were fighting Adolf Hitler's death air force up there. So far away, and yet so close to the infantrymen we were trying to support".

Indeed, on the ground, the "blitzkrieg" turned into a terrible urban war. The Djerzinski, Barricades, Red October and Lazur factories, located to the north of the city, formed powerful fortified points on which the defenders relied, even though they continued to function as factories! Further south, the Mamaïev hill, a former Tatar necropolis, 102 meters high, is the key to the control of the city, and the object of fights "worthy of Verdun" as "La France combattante" will quickly point out. Leaning against the Volga River to the east, it is from this direction that the defenders receive their supplies.

Paulus, the commander of the VIth Army, which attacked the city, launched the advanced elements of the 295th Infantry Division, whose main troops fought further north, against the heights of the Mamaïev hill, to offer an excellent view of the Volga to the artillerymen of the IIIrd Reich, but he did not want to send them any further, aware that he lacked manpower in this sector. However, following their victorious campaign in the steppe, the Germans thought on the first day, September 14, that the city would fall quickly and advanced without caution, suffering losses against the isolated and late Soviet. In the south, the Germans seized several working-class neighborhoods in the western suburbs, a strategic bridge over the Tsaritsa River, Komosommol Park, and approached the train station and administrative districts in the south of the city. However, they were quickly blocked by the fierce resistance of the Russians as they approached the fortresses of the Stalinist administration buildings, a new situation that forced them to adapt. Initially, the Germans entrench themselves to not only methodically conquer the city of Stalin, but also to simply "clean" the conquered areas, to avoid the presence of Soviets on their backs! Then, by themselves, the German troops reorganize Sturmtruppen, assault sections issued in the spirit of the eponymous units of the previous conflict.


Nevertheless, it appears that despite the tactics of "urban guerrilla" employed by the Soviets, and against which the Germans manage to adapt in large part, the fall of the city seems certain before the winter, especially since despite a resistance as heroic as that provided in the city center, the south of Stalingrad fell to the Germans.

However, Stalin, who refused any idea of withdrawal, was not at all inactive. The Vojd began to mass a powerful strike force on the disproportionately large flanks of the Axis, which were defended not by Heer soldiers, but by soldiers from the ranks of the nations that had been satelliteized by the Reich (Hungary, Romania, Italy). What was the objective? To surround and isolate the VIth Army in the smoking ruins of its eponymous city!

This was the "Uranus" operation.

Anxious to put a definitive end to all German threats against the Soviet capital, Stalin prepared in parallel the operation "Jupiter", which he entrusted to General Zhukov. His goal? Nothing less than the annihilation of the German Army Group Center!



Stalingrad in ruins

[ukron]

Chapter 12: Counterstrike!

"Hope had changed sides, the battle changed souls.
Victor Hugo, Les Châtiments, XIII - Atonement

In October 1942, the Western Allies were actively preparing to open a second front against the Axis forces. Their designated target was Sicily, the southern tip of Italy, the "soft underbelly" of the Nazi empire, which offered a logical route to Rome, unlike Greece and Sardinia, which were much further away, especially the latter.

Nevertheless, the French leaders wanted an operation to liberate Corsica, and as quickly as possible. The General in particular would like it to be carried out by French troops only, but the other members of the government, even those who were not necessarily "American-born" as Darlan could be, did not see any stain on the honor of France if Ajaccio and Bastia were liberated by GIs... The real problem was that the island was swarming not only with Italian soldiers, but also with German troops, who were mercilessly repressing the Corsican Resistance. To attack now was to risk being thrown back into the sea, while perhaps compromising "Torch/Torche", to attack too late was to risk a bloodbath in Corsica.

"It is necessary that these cursed Italians put down the weapons as soon as possible! General Henri Giraud will say on this subject, during a staff conference.

Now, crushing the Germans in Sicily could finally be the electroshock that would definitively decide these all too pusillanimous monarchist leaders to dismiss Mussolini and to leave the war. Given René Massigli's reports, this is probably what will happen. Besides, the Italian army being massively engaged in Russia, the sudden erasure of the ARMIR from the Nazi battlefield will perhaps even provoke a total debacle on the German side! This is at least what the most optimistic allied leaders dream of...

Indeed, it was second-hand Italian units that defended the island... The real problem was the German troops of General Rommel's Heeresgruppen Mittelmeer (Mediterranean Army Group), commanded at a second level on the island by Albert Kesselring, an air force general and a formidable Nazi... Nearly 100,000 well-motivated and well-equipped Germans made up for the probable failure of the conscripts, who were not very motivated on their side, of the Royal Army. Thus, it was necessary to strike hard during "Torch/Torch" to quickly drive out the Germans before they could receive reinforcements, especially from Greece, because Rommel understood immediately that the Mediterranean landing of the Westerners would not take place in this country.

To delay the arrival of the no less formidable units stationed in Greece, the Allies counted on local resistance, from conservatives (Cheeniks (Monarchists) in Yugoslavia, EDES (Venezuelan Republicans) in Greece) to communists (KKE in Greece, Tito's Partisans in Yugoslavia) to launch major sabotage actions on the Axis lines of communication at the hour H.

The Axis kept more and more troops in Greece as it was the victim of an intoxication by the Allied secret services, the operation Mincemeat (minced meat in French). In order to make it look like a landing in Greece, the Allies deliberately abandoned the body of an anonymous man who had died of pneumonia but who was supposedly a British intelligence officer, Major Martin, on the Spanish coast. The corpse of the major would be carrying the plans of... Battleaxe! At the same time, false troop movements in Libya were to make people believe that the movement towards Athens was genuine. The Francoists hastened to transmit the information to their German friends who fell into the trap, in particular because the colonel of the Abwehr, Alexis von Roenne, a Christian with a secret aversion to the Nazis, attested to the authenticity of the documents, which removed Hitler's doubts! Hitler even opposed Mussolini, who was strategically astute enough for once, and for whom Sicily was the next logical objective of the Westerners... Thus, Hitler diverted air and land forces that were vital to the effective defense of the large island...

Anxious for military synergy, the Westerners sent senior officers of the first rank, members of SHAEF, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, to the Soviet Union. The American General Walter B. Smith, Eisenhower's second in command, British General Harold Alexander and French General Georges Catroux. The objective was to coordinate the actions of the various members of the great Alliance in order to multiply the impact of combined operations and accelerate the future defeat of the Axis. Thus, "Torch/Torch" was launched on the same day as "Uranus" (the assault aimed at encircling the Germans in Stalingrad) and "Jupiter" (the assault on the German army group in the Center).

Hitler will not know which way to turn!

Moreover, this would strengthen the ties between East and West, as Stalin could no longer accuse the West of delaying the opening of the second front that he so much wanted... It was this concern that led the Americans to accept, at the Algiers conference in July, the principle of an assault on Sicily. In fact, the Americans originally wanted to bet everything on a landing in France in 1943, which the other two Western powers, especially the British, still considered premature (despite the obvious desire of the French to liberate their homeland as quickly as possible)... For them, it was necessary to weaken the German forces in Western Europe first, by fixing a maximum in the south, in Italy. Especially since this "kick in the butt" would also push the Italian leaders to overthrow Mussolini, as reports from spies and even diplomats negotiating with envoys from Rome attest. Secretly, Churchill also wanted to use this maneuver to push the future "demarcation line" between Western influence and the "Soviet empire" as far east as possible... If these last two arguments also weighed on the French, they also wanted to put an end to the air raids on Algiers by driving the Axis out of Sicily, which had already cost the lives of nearly 2,000 people! For it was mainly from there that the Junkers and other Dorniers took off, sowing death on the provisional capital of the Republic.

The "general" counter-offensive was scheduled for November 8.

On D-Day, the cannon thundered from the steppe to the Mediterranean, while in Yugoslavia and Greece, the works of art vital to the German army were reduced to dust. The telephone rang continuously in the Wolf's Lair, the Führer's headquarters in East Prussia. The counter-offensive of the enemies of the Reich is general! In Sicily, after the Allies had gained a foothold on the island, the German air force launched a desperate counter-attack on the Allied fleet, managing to sink the British battleship HMS Barham as well as several transports, while the Italian fleet only launched two cruisers (! ) on the invasion fleet, cruisers that retreated when a fleet of torpedo boats arrived to intercept them... It should be noted that thanks to the work of Polish mathematicians Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski, who had taken refuge in Algeria since June 1940 and who had broken Enigma, the Nazi encryption machine, the Western Allies were able to know to a large extent the German-Italian plans for the defence of the island. For their part, the Allied assault force was formed as follows: In the east, General O'Connor's British VIIIth Army was to land in the south-east of Sicily, around Cape Passero and the Gulf of Noto (while paratroopers were to seize the venerable Siracusa). In the center, around Gela, was General Giraud's First French Army. Finally, on the western flank of the Allied forces, in the Licata area, was General Patton's American Seventh Army.

After the "evaporation" of the Italian defenders of the coastal pillboxes, who fled as soon as the Allied fleet appeared, and the installation of the bridgehead that followed, the real battle began. The Germans launched a powerful counter-attack against the Gela sector where the French had landed, and in particular their valuable 1st (commanded by General Jean Touzet du Vigier) and 2nd (commanded by Philippe de Hauteclocque) armoured divisions. The spearhead of the Axis counter-offensive was the Hermann Goering division and its fearsome Tiger tanks, supported by Italian units of varying degrees of motivation. However, the French fought like lions while Eisenhower made the Tiger tank battalions the priority target of the Allied air force and navy. In the end, this heroic resistance stopped the advance of these mechanical monstrosities and solidified the bridgehead. On the other hand, the German counter-offensive had to undergo a violent attack by Patton's armoured vehicles on its western flank, which allowed, in addition to the heroic resistance of Giraud's soldiers, to crush the German forces. On the evening of the battle, the famous handshake between the American general and Colonel de Hauteclocque of the 2nd armored division took place, immortalized by Robert Capa. Giraud, jealous, will do everything to be photographed next to Eisenhower.





Too late, the legend of the brave Picard was on the march...

Having realized that it was impossible to drive the Allies back into the sea, the Germans entrenched themselves in the northeast triangle of the island, relying in particular on the city of Catania and Mount Etna, in order to prevent the British from going back to Messina, which would block all communication routes and possibly retreat. For in Italy, events were moving quickly. On the night of November 23-24, Mussolini was (finally) deposed by King Victor Emmanuel III following a vote of no confidence by the Fascist Grand Council, before being arrested and replaced by Marshal Badoglio. However, the Germans were not fooled by his declarations that the "war was going on" and they prepared their response...

In Russia, at the same time as Torch/Torch, the Soviets attacked the army groups of the Center and the South. Not far from Stalingrad, it is the Romanian army which suffers the shock, and which, in spite of a stubborn resistance, overtaken on all levels, finally collapses... The 2 pliers then rush towards Kalatch, on the Don, in order to close the pocket and to isolate the VIth army in the smoking ruins of Stalingrad, where it had however reached in several places, the Volga. Kalach was finally reached on November 11. The men of von Paulus are isolated...

In the center, it is another matter. The defenses, held by soldiers of the Wehrmacht, are much stronger than around Stalingrad, the front being almost fixed since the fall of the salient of Rjev, early in the year. But the gigantic means employed by the Soviets made the edifice bend, without breaking. The army group of the Center succeeded in its retreat and was not destroyed, as originally planned by "Jupiter". Nevertheless, the Soviets can be proud of having driven the "Fascists" out of Smolensk.
Regarding "Jupiter" again, the German General Staff draws the following conclusion. The defenses of the sector, almost worthy of the previous conflict, have almost held their role. Certainly, the front has retreated, but it has not collapsed, while the Germans sometimes fought at 1 against 10 in some points! This pushed Hitler to transpose the idea of the "Atlantic Wall" to the East.

This was the genesis of the Panther-Wotan Line.

On the southern front, Hitler faced a desperate situation. Certainly, he could assemble an ad hoc Kampfgruppe under the direction of von Manstein to break the fatal embrace suffered by the men of von Paulus, but for the operation to succeed, the Don front had to hold. However, it was largely held by the ARMIR, while Italy was preparing to withdraw from the conflict in all likelihood! Hitler then took an extraordinary decision, when one knows his character.

He ordered the VIth to attempt a sortie and the Caucasus Army Group to make a general retreat along the Rostov-Kursk line in a repeat of the Russian retreat.

130 years later...

At the same time, Manstein's Kampfgruppe will hold back a little from the positions held by the Italians and the Hungarians on the Don in order to compensate for the certain failure of the first, and probable of the second, to allow to leave open the way of salvation for the conquerors of the Caucasus, from now on defeated. For his Ostwall project, the Eastern Wall, Hitler mobilized nearly a hundred thousand Soviet forced laborers, and this in the middle of winter, because the work was immediately set in motion by order of the Führer, despite the extreme weather conditions!

Hope had changed sides, the battle changed souls, as Victor Hugo might have said...

[lordroel]

Oct 20, 2022 15:10:45 GMT ukron said:

Chapter 12: Counterstrike!

"Hope had changed sides, the battle changed souls.
Victor Hugo, Les Châtiments, XIII - Atonement

In October 1942, the Western Allies were actively preparing to open a second front against the Axis forces. Their designated target was Sicily, the southern tip of Italy, the "soft underbelly" of the Nazi empire, which offered a logical route to Rome, unlike Greece and Sardinia, which were much further away, especially the latter.

Nevertheless, the French leaders wanted an operation to liberate Corsica, and as quickly as possible. The General in particular would like it to be carried out by French troops only, but the other members of the government, even those who were not necessarily "American-born" as Darlan could be, did not see any stain on the honor of France if Ajaccio and Bastia were liberated by GIs... The real problem was that the island was swarming not only with Italian soldiers, but also with German troops, who were mercilessly repressing the Corsican Resistance. To attack now was to risk being thrown back into the sea, while perhaps compromising "Torch/Torche", to attack too late was to risk a bloodbath in Corsica.

"It is necessary that these cursed Italians put down the weapons as soon as possible! General Henri Giraud will say on this subject, during a staff conference.

Now, crushing the Germans in Sicily could finally be the electroshock that would definitively decide these all too pusillanimous monarchist leaders to dismiss Mussolini and to leave the war. Given René Massigli's reports, this is probably what will happen. Besides, the Italian army being massively engaged in Russia, the sudden erasure of the ARMIR from the Nazi battlefield will perhaps even provoke a total debacle on the German side! This is at least what the most optimistic allied leaders dream of...

Indeed, it was second-hand Italian units that defended the island... The real problem was the German troops of General Rommel's Heeresgruppen Mittelmeer (Mediterranean Army Group), commanded at a second level on the island by Albert Kesselring, an air force general and a formidable Nazi... Nearly 100,000 well-motivated and well-equipped Germans made up for the probable failure of the conscripts, who were not very motivated on their side, of the Royal Army. Thus, it was necessary to strike hard during "Torch/Torch" to quickly drive out the Germans before they could receive reinforcements, especially from Greece, because Rommel understood immediately that the Mediterranean landing of the Westerners would not take place in this country.

To delay the arrival of the no less formidable units stationed in Greece, the Allies counted on local resistance, from conservatives (Cheeniks (Monarchists) in Yugoslavia, EDES (Venezuelan Republicans) in Greece) to communists (KKE in Greece, Tito's Partisans in Yugoslavia) to launch major sabotage actions on the Axis lines of communication at the hour H.

The Axis kept more and more troops in Greece as it was the victim of an intoxication by the Allied secret services, the operation Mincemeat (minced meat in French). In order to make it look like a landing in Greece, the Allies deliberately abandoned the body of an anonymous man who had died of pneumonia but who was supposedly a British intelligence officer, Major Martin, on the Spanish coast. The corpse of the major would be carrying the plans of... Battleaxe! At the same time, false troop movements in Libya were to make people believe that the movement towards Athens was genuine. The Francoists hastened to transmit the information to their German friends who fell into the trap, in particular because the colonel of the Abwehr, Alexis von Roenne, a Christian with a secret aversion to the Nazis, attested to the authenticity of the documents, which removed Hitler's doubts! Hitler even opposed Mussolini, who was strategically astute enough for once, and for whom Sicily was the next logical objective of the Westerners... Thus, Hitler diverted air and land forces that were vital to the effective defense of the large island...

Anxious for military synergy, the Westerners sent senior officers of the first rank, members of SHAEF, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, to the Soviet Union. The American General Walter B. Smith, Eisenhower's second in command, British General Harold Alexander and French General Georges Catroux. The objective was to coordinate the actions of the various members of the great Alliance in order to multiply the impact of combined operations and accelerate the future defeat of the Axis. Thus, "Torch/Torch" was launched on the same day as "Uranus" (the assault aimed at encircling the Germans in Stalingrad) and "Jupiter" (the assault on the German army group in the Center).

Hitler will not know which way to turn!

Moreover, this would strengthen the ties between East and West, as Stalin could no longer accuse the West of delaying the opening of the second front that he so much wanted... It was this concern that led the Americans to accept, at the Algiers conference in July, the principle of an assault on Sicily. In fact, the Americans originally wanted to bet everything on a landing in France in 1943, which the other two Western powers, especially the British, still considered premature (despite the obvious desire of the French to liberate their homeland as quickly as possible)... For them, it was necessary to weaken the German forces in Western Europe first, by fixing a maximum in the south, in Italy. Especially since this "kick in the butt" would also push the Italian leaders to overthrow Mussolini, as reports from spies and even diplomats negotiating with envoys from Rome attest. Secretly, Churchill also wanted to use this maneuver to push the future "demarcation line" between Western influence and the "Soviet empire" as far east as possible... If these last two arguments also weighed on the French, they also wanted to put an end to the air raids on Algiers by driving the Axis out of Sicily, which had already cost the lives of nearly 2,000 people! For it was mainly from there that the Junkers and other Dorniers took off, sowing death on the provisional capital of the Republic.

The "general" counter-offensive was scheduled for November 8.

On D-Day, the cannon thundered from the steppe to the Mediterranean, while in Yugoslavia and Greece, the works of art vital to the German army were reduced to dust. The telephone rang continuously in the Wolf's Lair, the Führer's headquarters in East Prussia. The counter-offensive of the enemies of the Reich is general! In Sicily, after the Allies had gained a foothold on the island, the German air force launched a desperate counter-attack on the Allied fleet, managing to sink the British battleship HMS Barham as well as several transports, while the Italian fleet only launched two cruisers (! ) on the invasion fleet, cruisers that retreated when a fleet of torpedo boats arrived to intercept them... It should be noted that thanks to the work of Polish mathematicians Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski, who had taken refuge in Algeria since June 1940 and who had broken Enigma, the Nazi encryption machine, the Western Allies were able to know to a large extent the German-Italian plans for the defence of the island. For their part, the Allied assault force was formed as follows: In the east, General O'Connor's British VIIIth Army was to land in the south-east of Sicily, around Cape Passero and the Gulf of Noto (while paratroopers were to seize the venerable Siracusa). In the center, around Gela, was General Giraud's First French Army. Finally, on the western flank of the Allied forces, in the Licata area, was General Patton's American Seventh Army.

After the "evaporation" of the Italian defenders of the coastal pillboxes, who fled as soon as the Allied fleet appeared, and the installation of the bridgehead that followed, the real battle began. The Germans launched a powerful counter-attack against the Gela sector where the French had landed, and in particular their valuable 1st (commanded by General Jean Touzet du Vigier) and 2nd (commanded by Philippe de Hauteclocque) armoured divisions. The spearhead of the Axis counter-offensive was the Hermann Goering division and its fearsome Tiger tanks, supported by Italian units of varying degrees of motivation. However, the French fought like lions while Eisenhower made the Tiger tank battalions the priority target of the Allied air force and navy. In the end, this heroic resistance stopped the advance of these mechanical monstrosities and solidified the bridgehead. On the other hand, the German counter-offensive had to undergo a violent attack by Patton's armoured vehicles on its western flank, which allowed, in addition to the heroic resistance of Giraud's soldiers, to crush the German forces. On the evening of the battle, the famous handshake between the American general and Colonel de Hauteclocque of the 2nd armored division took place, immortalized by Robert Capa. Giraud, jealous, will do everything to be photographed next to Eisenhower.





Too late, the legend of the brave Picard was on the march...

Having realized that it was impossible to drive the Allies back into the sea, the Germans entrenched themselves in the northeast triangle of the island, relying in particular on the city of Catania and Mount Etna, in order to prevent the British from going back to Messina, which would block all communication routes and possibly retreat. For in Italy, events were moving quickly. On the night of November 23-24, Mussolini was (finally) deposed by King Victor Emmanuel III following a vote of no confidence by the Fascist Grand Council, before being arrested and replaced by Marshal Badoglio. However, the Germans were not fooled by his declarations that the "war was going on" and they prepared their response...

In Russia, at the same time as Torch/Torch, the Soviets attacked the army groups of the Center and the South. Not far from Stalingrad, it is the Romanian army which suffers the shock, and which, in spite of a stubborn resistance, overtaken on all levels, finally collapses... The 2 pliers then rush towards Kalatch, on the Don, in order to close the pocket and to isolate the VIth army in the smoking ruins of Stalingrad, where it had however reached in several places, the Volga. Kalach was finally reached on November 11. The men of von Paulus are isolated...

In the center, it is another matter. The defenses, held by soldiers of the Wehrmacht, are much stronger than around Stalingrad, the front being almost fixed since the fall of the salient of Rjev, early in the year. But the gigantic means employed by the Soviets made the edifice bend, without breaking. The army group of the Center succeeded in its retreat and was not destroyed, as originally planned by "Jupiter". Nevertheless, the Soviets can be proud of having driven the "Fascists" out of Smolensk.
Regarding "Jupiter" again, the German General Staff draws the following conclusion. The defenses of the sector, almost worthy of the previous conflict, have almost held their role. Certainly, the front has retreated, but it has not collapsed, while the Germans sometimes fought at 1 against 10 in some points! This pushed Hitler to transpose the idea of the "Atlantic Wall" to the East.

This was the genesis of the Panther-Wotan Line.

On the southern front, Hitler faced a desperate situation. Certainly, he could assemble an ad hoc Kampfgruppe under the direction of von Manstein to break the fatal embrace suffered by the men of von Paulus, but for the operation to succeed, the Don front had to hold. However, it was largely held by the ARMIR, while Italy was preparing to withdraw from the conflict in all likelihood! Hitler then took an extraordinary decision, when one knows his character.

He ordered the VIth to attempt a sortie and the Caucasus Army Group to make a general retreat along the Rostov-Kursk line in a repeat of the Russian retreat.

130 years later...

At the same time, Manstein's Kampfgruppe will hold back a little from the positions held by the Italians and the Hungarians on the Don in order to compensate for the certain failure of the first, and probable of the second, to allow to leave open the way of salvation for the conquerors of the Caucasus, from now on defeated. For his Ostwall project, the Eastern Wall, Hitler mobilized nearly a hundred thousand Soviet forced laborers, and this in the middle of winter, because the work was immediately set in motion by order of the Führer, despite the extreme weather conditions!

Hope had changed sides, the battle changed souls, as Victor Hugo might have said...

Call me stupid but who is the American 4 star general sitting across i assume is a French general.

[simon darkshade]

Eisenhower

[lordroel]

Oct 21, 2022 10:26:18 GMT simon darkshade said:

Eisenhower

Stupid me.

Thanks.

[ukron]

Chapter 13: Crisis


Do you want total war?"
Excerpt from Goebbels' speech at the Berlin Sportpalast, February 18, 1943

Catastrophic news from the Eastern Front reached the Wolfsschanze, Adolf Hitler's personal headquarters in East Prussia, every day. The VIth Army was virtually annihilated in its attempt to break through to the west. Thus, only a few scattered groups of isolated men managed to reach the German "lines". These "groups" correspond to less than 10 % of the forces present in Stalingrad before the release of Uranus! At the same time, the units retreating from the Caucasus lead a difficult and inglorious retreat, harassed as they are by the Soviet troops. Worse, the way to salvation depends only on the Italian troops positioned on the Don River, and from December 8 onwards, they are confronted with the Soviet forces who want to seize Rostov, within the framework of the Saturn operation. However, Italy was about to lay down its arms...


Fortunately for Germany, the new Italian government was in little hurry to sign the terms of its surrender with the Allies, rightly fearing the appalling response from Berlin. This saved the Caucasus Army Group, which could largely withdraw to a Kharkov-Rostov line, but also gave the German generals and the Führer time to fine-tune Operation Alaric (Unternehmen Alarich), the disarmament of the Italian army and the takeover of the peninsula. Moreover, since Italy was still officially a member of the Axis, the Germans were able to settle in the northern half of the peninsula without the slightest opposition, officially to oppose the Western invasion.

Most regrettably, the Allies were far too cautious (despite the inevitable conclusion of an agreement with the Badoglio government). Thus, the Anglo-Americans landed south of Rome, first in Regio di Calabria on January 6, where they did not encounter any opposition, and then in the region of Salerno on January 12, where, conversely, the Anglo-Saxons faced stubborn resistance from the German divisions (and where they had to repel the enraged counter-attacks of a panzer division) but also... from Italy! The armistice concluded after the assault on Calabria was not yet officially announced!

However, the Italians were very badly organized. Indeed, in order to keep their intentions secret, they did not give any instructions to their forces on the measures to be taken following the announcement of the capitulation. However, eager to force Badoglio and Victor-Emmanuel III to order the Italian soldiers to stop fighting their troops, the Western leaders had the content of the secret agreement concluded between them and the Italians announced by Radio-Alger. The Italians, ashamed, had to announce the armistice to their fellow citizens.

However, as German and Italian units were often close to each other, what had to happen happened after the armistice was announced.

Badoglio, shortly after confirming the armistice on the Roman radio, left the capital in the company of the king and their families, giving only sketchy defense instructions to the garrison defending the Eternal City. This joyful troop fled to Brindisi, in Puglia, leaving their unfortunate country at the mercy of the Germans' retaliation and the Fascists' revenge... Immediately after hearing the announcement of the armistice, the Germans launched Alaric.

If, on paper, the operation will unfortunately be an almost total success for Hitler, in several points, the Italian army and, beyond, the people of the boot, will lead a desperate resistance to Alaric. Let us note the sacrifice of the garrison of the island of Cephalonia, which, once defeated for lack of ammunition, will be massacred by the Germans! If Rome fell relatively easily, many Italian civilians and soldiers tried to oppose the coup de force of their former allies. Better still, Italy was covered with numerous "maquis" who harassed the invaders as well as their fascist affiliates. For in fact, everywhere in Italy groups of maquisards, socialists, communists, monarchists, conservatives and liberals were formed to fight against the Nazi invaders

La guerra è finita,inizia la guerra civile! The war is over, the civil war begins.

For in fact, at the same time, Mussolini, after having experienced his "great wanderings" through Italy, was finally released from his place of captivity, located in the Gran Sasso massif, in Abruzzo, by a Nazi Kommando, commanded by Otto Skorzeny, within the framework of the Eiche operation. Immediately transported to the Führer, he was immediately "parachuted" by the latter at the head of the Fascist puppet state that would replace the authority of the Kingdom of Italy, which the Nazis intended to establish in the north of the peninsula.

The Italian Social Republic, soon nicknamed the "Republic of Salo", after the small town on the shores of Lake Garda, where most of the republican ministries would be based.

The fight between "republicans" and "anti-fascists" will be merciless... It will wound Italy in its flesh while giving it back its soul...

One even sees in Yugoslavia certain Italian soldiers rallying the Partisans of Tito! A less important fraction rallied on its side the Cheeniks forces. Moreover, the certainty of an Italian defection at first, and then its realization, forced the Germans to cancel the offensive they had planned to launch against Tito, who taunted them from his "capital", Bihac, geographically located in Bosnia (but politically in Ustasha Croatia). Better still, the Yugoslav Partisans seized the majority of the weapons abandoned by the routed Italian soldiers!

For Mihailovic, this was a serious failure. The leader of the Cheeniks was outmaneuvered by the Communist Partisans not only in terms of taking their weapons from the Italians, but also in the territorial field, as the Partisans had taken a much larger share of the Yugoslav territories occupied by the Italian army than the Cheeniks. However, the monarchist soldier retained the unwavering support of the authorities in Algiers, while in London, murmurs began to be heard... Finally, the Italian fleet, or rather what was left of it, joined the Allies. At the same time, in Albania, the Germans also reacted quickly by occupying the country's cities. Anxious to attract the goodwill of nationalist groups, they proclaimed the independence of the country, which retained the region of Kosovo. However, it should be noted that Albania was the only country occupied by Nazi Germany to see its Jewish population increase during the conflict!

However, overall, the Italian army was disarmed without having had time to organize any resistance. Nevertheless, only a few tens of thousands of soldiers, mostly fascists, agreed, at first, to continue the war on the side of the Nazis. The rest were locked up in prison camps and harshly treated. Better still, in Corsica, the Italian army began to restore its reputation. Let's see how.

Indeed, the French troops did not participate in Operation Husky (the Salerno landing). In fact, they were kept in reserve by Eisenhower in order to reconstitute themselves for future operations in continental Italy.


However, while the Wehrmacht had already abandoned Sardinia, due to the massive bombardments of the Allied air force, Corsica, which was blockaded by the Allied fleets, trapping the German garrison, saw the local resistance, one of the most active in mainland France, trigger a general uprising against the occupier on January 13, 1943, an uprising which was joined by... the Italian garrison! The Italian general Messe, after a short hesitation, and seeing the brutal takeover of Italy by the Germans, decided to rally the king's government and help the Corsican maquisards to liberate their island. The Germans therefore fought against their former allies and the Corsican resistance fighters. They did so with obstinacy.


The French officers were incensed. Indeed, the commander-in-chief of the Allied forces, the American General Eisenhower, refused to support the resistance fighters, considering their uprising "premature". His refusal even provoked a feeling of revolt in the heart of a French general, who was not very inclined to disobey his superiors, but who could not bear the idea of standing by while Corsica died. Henri Giraud, commander of the First French Army, turned to Georges Mandel, himself shocked, who, through the intermediary of Paul Reynaud, French ambassador to Washington, obtained Roosevelt's agreement to order Eisenhower to detach part of the First French Army to support the revolt.


Eisenhower gave in to his president and agreed to launch operation Vesuvius.


The German resistance in Corsica quickly collapsed following the intervention of Giraud's troops, in which the colonel of the 2nd armoured division, Philippe De Hautecloque, once again distinguished himself.

Corsica is a symbol, it is the first metropolitan territory liberated, partly by the internal resistance, partly by the army of Algiers. It was also a laboratory for the organization of the return of the Republican administration to French territory. A most successful experience with the return of the authority of the republican state in Corsica through the reinstatement of the... Commissioner of the Republic, the former prefect of Corsica, Jules Henri Anastase Petitjean. Indeed, one of the secret decisions taken by the "Preparatory Commission for the great political and social reforms for liberated France" was the replacement of the term "Prefect", coming from the Napoleonic Empire, by that of "Commissioner of the Republic", coming from the Second Republic. Beyond the "announcement effect", the holders of the newly created function will be less powerful than their predecessors. It is indeed planned in the long term to give the executive powers of the departments to the president of the general councils, elected by indirect universal suffrage. Once the war was over, the commissioner would only exercise a posteriori control over decisions taken by the general councils. De Gaulle sulked, but he continued to weave his networks to obtain a Fourth Republic...

In the Aegean Sea, Churchill decided to support the Italian garrison of the Dodecanese Islands (an Italian colony that included the island of Rhodes), which was threatened by a German retaliation. The operation was a success, with most of the Italian garrison rallying to the Allies. Only the Blackshirts remained loyal to Mussolini and his social republic and were therefore interned. Churchill would like to go further and organize a landing on the Greek mainland (and he knew that he would easily obtain the agreement of the French), but the harshness of the fighting in Italy and the resources it required, as well as the presence of large German forces in Greece, finally dissuaded him.

Salazar, the Portuguese dictator, understood that the tide had definitely turned in favor of the Allies and decided to get closer to them. The first gesture of this policy was the recall of his ambassador to Paris. Instead, it was Algiers and the French Republic that Lisbon recognized as the representative of the French people. However, Mandel rejected the various names of ambassador proposed by Salazar and asked that Lisbon send him a man he considered a hero...

Aristides de Sousa Mendes.

Consul of Portugal in Bordeaux in June 1940, he had, as we have already seen, issued thousands of visas to personalities wishing to flee invaded France to reach either America or North Africa via Portugal. De Sousa Mendes also saved thousands of Jews from Hitler's clutches. Mandel, who wished to reward this hero and send a strong signal, expressly asked Salazar to represent Portugal in Algiers. Mendes, who had been in disgrace since June 1940, regained his status. Better still, the following March, Portugal ceded an air base in the Azores to the Allies. From then on, the central Atlantic was covered by the Allied air force. The arrival of a large number of escort aircraft carriers allowed the Allies to launch their counter-attack against the "wolf packs" that were still wreaking havoc in the North Atlantic.

Franco's Spain also began to distance itself from the Axis powers. Thus, the Caudillo asked for the recall of the Spanish Azul Division fighting on the Eastern Front. Only volunteers remained, now fighting as the Legion Azul.

On January 30, the British, who were definitely not lacking in "humor", celebrated in their own way the anniversary of the Nazi takeover by launching a raid on Berlin. The raid took place at the same time that Goebbels and Goering were giving a speech on the occasion of the anniversary. It should be noted that Hitler himself did not make a speech on this occasion, the first sign of the dictator's withdrawal from public life as military setbacks began to multiply. Moreover, the Reich suffered a serious setback in the race for nuclear power when the Norwegian resistance destroyed the heavy water plant in Telemark.

Faced with this situation, the Führer summoned the Bulgarian sovereign, Tsar Boris III, to the Berghof (where Mussolini was, having been freed by German commandos). The German dictator asked him (or rather ordered him) to go to war against the USSR and to send an expeditionary force to the east. The monarch replied that this was impossible, mainly because of the Russophilia of his people. Hitler then entered into a black anger and criticized the Bulgarian sovereign so strongly that he fell ill. He died a few days later in Sofia. Despite the fact that some historians today consider Hitler innocent of the death of Boris III, the deceased czar would not be the first victim of a crisis of hysteria of the Führer ... In March 1939, the president of Czechoslovakia mutilated, Emil Hacha, was indeed a victim of a stroke following direct threats from Hitler ...

His young son, Simeon II, succeeded him on the throne. Nevertheless, if the three regents (Prince Cyril of Bulgaria, brother of the deceased Tsar and uncle of Simeon II, the previous Bulgarian president of the council, Bogdad Filov, and General Nikola Mihov) continued the Bulgarian support to Germany, they did not send troops to the Eastern Front...

Goebbels, in a great speech held on February 18, 1943 at the Berlin Sports Palace in front of the highest dignitaries of the Third Reich proclaimed "total war" to his fanatical audience. Anxious to reach a maximum audience, his diatribe was also broadcast on the radio. Moreover, the few Germans actively opposing Nazism suffered a sad setback with the dismantling of the anti-Nazi resistance network "The White Rose". The members of this network were beheaded after an iniquitous trial...

Georges Mandel, who was aware of the existence of an anti-Nazi resistance in Germany itself, but who also had objectives that were far less moral than taking into account the existence of Germans who were not subservient to Hitler, namely to dress up in a nice role, while the objective of everyone in Algiers was the destruction of Germany, stated, in a declaration countersigned by the members of his government, that the enemy of the French Republic was not the German people, but "its cruel leaders", and called on it to rise up against them.


The President of the French Council would have liked to address the Congress (which includes the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate and the Council of the Empire) to respond to the Nazi, but he was secretly on his way to Quebec where a conference was to be held during which the Big Three (the United States, Great Britain and France) would decide on the strategy to be pursued in Europe and the Pacific as well as on the fate of defeated Italy.

Among the decisions made in Quebec City were:

- The priority given to an assault on France for 1944 over a Balkan strategy. Concerning Yugoslavia and Greece, one will be satisfied with supporting the local guerrillas. This decision was taken to the great despair of Churchill. But the British Prime Minister has not said his last word...

- The intensification of the air campaign against the Reich in order to prepare the ground for the planned assault on France.

- As far as Italy was concerned, it was granted a cobelligerent status, but was not considered a full ally. Moreover, all of its colonies were withdrawn after the war.

- In the Pacific, an assault will be launched during the following summer against the island of Bougainville, three new American aircraft carriers (the USS Essex, the USS Yorktown second of the name and the USS Bunker Hill) having left the shipyards in all likelihood at that time, the air cover necessary for the operation will be provided. It was also decided to further increase aid to China (which had dazzled the Allies with its fierce resistance during Operation Ichi-Go) and to strengthen the submarine weapon in order to weaken Japan by cutting it off even more than it already was from the resources it had seized in 1942.

The Quadrant conference report is an opportunity for us to review the situation on the Pacific front of the war.

From late September to early October 1942, the Japanese "Tokyo Express" was in full swing, constantly bringing more Japanese troops to Cactus, the island of Guadalcanal. A horrible war of position, leading to a terrible attrition among the 2 camps, took place along the Matanikau river, which obliged each belligerent to constantly reinforce its manpower to be able to maintain its positions...

Thus, during the night of 13 to 14 October 1942, the situation on the island made two powerful naval squadrons, each escorting a reinforcement convoy for their camp. The Japanese, well aware of the decisive nature of the battle, had their convoy escorted by two battleships, the Kirishama and the Hiei, accompanied by a fleet of cruisers and torpedo boats. Moreover, the presence of these powerful ships provided artillery support for the Empire's "final offensive" on Henderson.

However, the Allied fleet was ahead of its opponent, albeit by a small margin. This allowed the Allies to get into position and to watch for the approach of the Japanese with their state-of-the-art radars while taking advantage of the cover of night. France could be proud, because the battleship Richelieu was there! Equipped with state-of-the-art radar, as we have seen, it was ready to pour death into the Japanese ranks, who did not expect any resistance, thinking that the "Americans" were absent, or at worst far away. At the most opportune moment, when the Allies were about to be seen by the Nipponese, but were still invisible to them, so at the moment when they were relatively close, Admiral Norman Scott ordered to unleash a hellfire. Totally caught off guard, the Japanese commander, Admiral Goto Aritomo, even believes he is being attacked by his own fleet!

His last words to his men were "You bastard idiots"...

The Japanese tried to fight back as best they could, but due to the presence of the Washington and the Richelieu, they were also inferior in terms of firepower. Their battleships were sent to the bottom of the sea, as well as the cruiser Aoba, while the rest of their fleet withdrew to Rabaul. Victorious, the Allied ships were able to provide significant fire support which, combined with the absence of substantial reinforcements, allowed the Marines to push the Japanese infantrymen well beyond the Matanikau River, thus expanding the defensive perimeter of Henderson Field.
Yamamoto, aware of the failure of the strategy to recapture Guadalcanal at all costs, convinced the Imperial General Staff to launch an evacuation operation from Cactus. This was done at the beginning of January, when destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy evacuated the last Japanese soldiers present on the island.

But this evacuation did not mean the end of the Solomon campaign. Yamamoto, on whom the "sailors" were aligned, agreed with the army to establish a common strategy. Abandoning the Central Solomon Islands, Japanese defense in the region will focus on Bougainville, the large island located at the northernmost point of the Solomon Islands. Thus, soldiers evacuated from Guadalcanal will reinforce the garrison, which has orders to fight to the death.

In the meantime, although the land battle took a break, the fighting did not stop in the sky. Japanese heroes emerge such as Sakai Saburō, Ōta Toshio and Nishizawa Hiroyoshi, who shoot down dozens of Allied aircraft between them. At sea, Japan also defended itself rather well. A Japanese submarine sank the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Camberra while several other units were either sunk or damaged.

Faced with the Homeric resistance of the "rising sun" pilots, as in the Greek stories of antiquity, only one hero can stop another. But one or more heroes emerge in the Allied camp. Boyington's bastards of Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, a veteran of the Flying Tigers, which fights for years so the imperialism of Hiro-Hito's Japan, soon inflict serious setbacks to the Japanese pilots. Ōta himself is killed in action, leaving Sakai and Nishizawa "orphans".Worse, Japan can only make up for its losses with pilots who are too poorly trained where the Allies at least take the time to properly train their new recruits.

But Yamamoto, who was preparing a tour of the troops stationed in the Japanese bases in the South Pacific (Rabaul, Port-Moresby, Lae...) in order to raise their seriously shaken morale, a tour that would prove to be a huge propaganda success, had, despite this "success" and the fact that the war seemed to be more of a stalemate than anything else, clearly understood that Tojo's war was a folly. Indeed, he knew it from the beginning... The Japanese admiral knew all the better the industrial power of his American enemies, having lived in their country between the two wars, and knew it to be clearly superior to that of Japan. He was also able to feel the position of the Americans in the face of a conflict and was perfectly aware that the latter also knew no other war than the one aiming at the total rout of the opponent.

And after such a heavy blow as the one Japan dealt to the all-powerful America at Pearl Harbor, the admiral knows that the Yankees will not stop fighting until they have knocked down Japan... Yamamoto Isoroku prays in his heart that the gods will have mercy on Japan and that they will give him the opportunity to end this conflict in a way that is honorable for the Empire of the Rising Sun...




Aristide de Sousa Mendes

[ukron]

Chapter 14: "Terrorist Attacks"

"It is pure madness! Not only are we demonstrating our inability to protect our French allies, but we are also alienating a significant part of them by placing this former Bolshevik at the head of the government! The brutality he is already showing will invariably throw the last hesitant French into the arms of the Resistance! France, already full of resistance fighters, will soon see their maquis become sources of more active resistance, following the example of Yugoslavia."
Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of the western front. March 29, 1943.




The military catastrophe in the East pushes Hitler's military opponents to relaunch their project to assassinate Adolf Hitler, in order to overthrow the Nazi regime. The main conspirators, sincere, were joined by new recruits, for whom necessity was the law...

The Führer, worried about the extent of the counter-offensive of the "Reds", which saw them take over Kharkov, Rostov and Kursk in a few days and penetrate again into eastern Ukraine, goes to the headquarters of the army group of the south in Dnipropetrovsk, both in a propaganda perspective but also try to remedy the military disaster ...

However, the anti-Nazi plotters put explosives in bottles of Cointreau offered to the Führer. Once Hitler was sent to hell in anticipation, a military uprising would have taken place under the direction of General Olbricht. Unfortunately, Hitler escaped his punishment. The detonator was frozen by the Russian cold and the bombs did not explode. The plotters rush the bottles back to Berlin before the planned attack is discovered...

A few days later, Adolf Hitler, back in Berlin, visited an exhibition of materials taken from Germany's defeated enemies, in the company of the cream of the regime. Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff, a German anti-Nazi officer, accompanied the Führer. However, he was carrying an explosive belt. Indeed, he is ready to die to kill Hitler in a suicide bombing! Unfortunately, fate once again favored the monster of Braunau am Inn who, in a bad mood, cut short the visit and withdrew before von Gersdorff's belt exploded. The brave soldier only has time to stop the timer on his explosives before everything explodes for nothing.

If Hitler was not to die in March 1943, the path of history will at least have allowed the plotters to remain undiscovered and to consider new attempts.

However, another leader will not escape his "directed" fate...

Following the surrender of the kingdom of Italy, the French national state immediately proclaimed the "return" of Savoy and Nice to "France". Anxious for its glory, the caciques of the decline, and in the first place, de Brinon, decided to celebrate this "return" with great pomp and circumstance by a great military parade of elements of the national guard before de Brinon made a speech in front of a crowd of pundits of the Regime and hand-picked citizens of Nice.

Unfortunately... While the grandiloquent speech of the first French journalist to interview Hitler, and now his puppet, had been going on for about 5 minutes, de Brinon's head exploded from a rifle bullet fired by a "Franc-tireur". In spite of the searches launched by the Germans, real guardians of the maintenance of order during the parade, the assassin managed to escape. After the war, following a search of the secret Nazi archives and various interrogations, it turned out that the author of the shot was a man in black, an SS man, acting on direct orders from Himmler! This German culpability, and of the SS in particular, was nevertheless considered in the days that followed, because, in the following hours, Jacques Doriot, launched his henchmen to storm the ministries of the national state, officially to "protect" them, all without, this time, the Germans lifting a finger to stop him... Then he proclaimed himself "Head of the French Nation" and placed his followers at the head of the various ministries before physically liquidating, in the weeks that followed, Déat's most prominent supporters who remained in France. Marcel Déat himself, having lost the protection of a fallen Mussolini, quickly disappeared from circulation. At the same time, Algiers had not given any order for the execution of the traitor, while no resistance movement, or French "lone wolf", like Bonnier de la Chapelle, acting on his own initiative, revealed itself as the author of the attack.

But why did Himmler have de Brinon executed? Although de Brinon was a strong supporter of active collaboration with the Reich and of a fraternal Europe under the rule of Berlin, he was nevertheless judged by the SS leader to be "too soft" and not effective enough in his fight against the resistance. Better still, by killing de Brinon, Himmler gained points in the eternal struggle to know who would be the second in command of the Nazi Reich, behind the indestructible, indisputable (and indefatigable as we have seen) Führer. Secretly, Himmler was also advancing his pawns in his immoral project of constituting an SS state in Burgundy... Indeed, having a blank check from Doriot for this project, only the local Resistance now had the will to fight against the SS project, where de Brinon and the "reactionary" tendency of the collaboration might have had some scruples... Finally, having him assassinated during a public ceremony, made the thesis of an assassination by the French Resistance plausible. This one was thus defensible by the propaganda...

Moreover, the week after the former communist took power, the National Guard participated massively, and even with scandalous enthusiasm, in the destruction of the Vieux-Port district of Marseille, a den of resistance fighters and a refuge for Nazi outcasts, alongside the Wehrmacht. Thousands of people, including several hundred Jews, were arrested, deported, or even shot on the spot...

The arrival of Doriot in power did not make many happy in the old Prussian institution that was the German army. Thus, Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of the western front, had his own words to say in private about the murder of de Brinon.

"This is pure madness! Not only are we demonstrating our inability to protect our French allies, but we are also alienating a significant part of them by placing this former Bolshevik at the head of the government! The brutality he is already showing will invariably throw the last hesitant French into the arms of the Resistance! France, already full of draft dodgers, will soon see their maquis become sources of more active resistance, following the example of Yugoslavia."

In Verona, in northern Italy, now occupied by Germany, the founding congress of the Republican Fascist Party was held. The purpose of this meeting was to define the government program of the Italian Social Republic. The "debates" took place under the leadership of Alessandro Pavolini, a fanatical Fascist, while Mussolini was absent...

The participants of the Verona congress wanted to return to the revolutionary and anti-capitalist roots of Fascism and defined a program in this sense. The decisions of the Verona congress also went in the direction of strengthening state anti-Semitism in Italy.

"In constitutional and domestic policy matters



1. A Constituent Assembly will be convened, which will abolish the monarchy and give substance to the Italian Social Republic.

2. The Constituent Assembly will be composed of members of the Fascist unions and of representatives of all the constituencies, including the occupied provinces, through delegations of evacuees and refugees.

3. The Constituent Assembly will have to guarantee the citizen the right to control and criticize the public administration and the appointment of the head of the Republic. No citizen may be arrested or detained for more than one week without the authorization of the judicial authority. The judiciary will be independent.

4. The composition of the chamber of Fasci and corporations will be subject to popular election, while the appointment of ministers will be the prerogative of the Duce; within the Republican Fascist Party, it is advocated, by analogy, that the Fasci be elected, while the national directorate will be appointed by the Duce.

5. The Party should be pure, the guardian of the "fascist revolution" begun on October 28, 1922. Holding a PFR card will not be required to hold any job or office.

6. The official religion will be Catholic; however, other religions will be tolerated as long as they do not contravene the law.

7. Those belonging to the "Jewish race" (razza ebraica) will be considered foreigners and, for the duration of the present war, as belonging to the enemy nationality.

In matters of foreign policy



8. The borders of the Italian Social Republic are the Alpine and maritime limits, limits marked by nature, blood and history, but also threatened by the governments that have taken refuge in London. It will be necessary to make Europe recognize that Italy needs its own living space. Furthermore, it will be necessary to found a European Community that accepts as principles the elimination of British influence in the European states, the abolition of the capitalist system, the fight against the plutocracies, and the valorization, for the benefit of both Europeans and natives, of the natural resources of Africa, while respecting the indigenous peoples, especially Muslims, who, as in Egypt, already constitute organized societies.

In social matters


9. The basis and primary object of the IHR is work in all its manifestations.

10. Private property is guaranteed by the state, but must not be used as a means of exploiting labor.

11. Everything in the national economy that is the interest of the individual becomes the interest of the community and, as such, of the state. Public services and war industries must be managed by the IHR.

12. In each enterprise, technicians and workers must collaborate to obtain an equitable distribution of profits and an equitable determination of wages, in particular by means of profit-sharing, including by the workers (the fascist principle of the socialization of industry).

13. In agriculture, private initiative ran up against its own limits precisely where it was lacking. The uncultivated or badly managed lands will be able, after expropriation, to be ceded to the agricultural workers so that they become direct farmers, or to parastatal or parastatal farms, according to the necessities of agriculture.

14. It must be the right of the workers to carry out their own productive activities at home (in the form of family businesses, except for bringing to the national reserve the quantity of products provided for by law and subjecting their own tariffs to control).

15. Since housing is a right, a National Office for the Housing of the People will be created, with the objective of providing each worker with a home, either by building new ones or by purchasing homes, which will then be rented to the workers and, once paid for, will become the property of the worker.

16. The worker will be automatically enrolled in the fascist union, but will be able to change it if he meets the conditions for doing so. All the unions will be part of the General Confederation of Labor, Technology and Arts; former owners may also be part of it, provided they are not managers or technicians. The Labor Charter is the fundamental contract binding workers, managers and the State.

17. A minimum wage will be guaranteed to workers. Recalcitrant employers will be forced, if necessary, to pay the wage in kind at the official price, in order to stabilize prices and the currency and to clean up the market. Black market speculators will be sentenced to death along with traitors and defeatists.

18. The Party intends, with this preamble to the Constituent Assembly, to demonstrate not only that it is going towards the people, but also that it stands by the people. The Italian people, if they want to preserve their gains, must defend themselves against the occupation carried out by the Anglo-American plutocracy, which obviously wants to make the life of Italians even more narrow and miserable. The watchword, therefore, is threefold: fight, work, win.

The Verona program is a perfect example that words often have nothing to do with actions. Appreciable on paper (except for the anti-Semitic vomit), the program was never implemented. Worse, those who conceived it naturally behaved like ruthless brutes towards their fellow citizens, becoming moreover the agents of German (and therefore foreign) imperialism in the boot and of its policy of systematic destruction of the Jews of Europe. From now on, the Italian Fascists will participate in the tracking down of Italian Jews and anti-fascist maquisards, as mere pawns of the Germans. The ridiculous does not kill, unlike German bullets, while the program speaks of the natural and historical borders of Italy, threatened by foreign powers enemy of the IHR, it is indeed the Germans who have annexed the South Tyrol and detached Istria from the collaborator republican state to make it a military governorate, while expelling from Trieste the fascist governor, guilty of having declared Trieste to be an Italian city!

Claiming to be the heirs of the Caesars, they only deceived...

Let's talk about other systemic liars... the leaders of the Stalinist regime. The latter, following a declaration of the Sikorski government on the restoration of the Polish state to its pre-war borders, accuse the Polish government of refusing to recognize the historical rights of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples to be united in their national state. Polish policy was condemned as "imperialist and as having been profascist before the war. Certainly, in the midst of this vile slop, a truth is revealed. Poland was close to Hitler's Germany until the capture of Prague in 1939. Worse, the Poles invaded several small disputed Czechoslovak territories, including the border town of Cieszyn/Český Těšín, following the Munich Agreement. But can one compare the entry of the Polish soldiers, who were moderate occupiers, with the signing of a non-aggression pact with Hitler, followed by the brutal invasion of the eastern part of that same Poland now on the ground, an invasion accompanied by massacres and deportations?

The Polish government in exile in Algiers retorted that the Polish declarations were only intended to show the indisputable rights of the Poles on these territories in which the Polish nation wanted to continue to live in harmony with the Ukrainians and the Belorussians. The Polish government categorically rejected the Soviet insinuations of imperialist claims in the east, and expressed their constant readiness for a cordial understanding with the Soviet government.

Stalin was content with a relatively terse declaration of friendship as a response. In any case, he wanted to keep Eastern Poland, which he had annexed with the consent of the Nazis three and a half years earlier, and then to subjugate the rest, once Hitler had been crushed... Ah, if only he had had a pretext to break with the Poland of Algiers...

Concerning the fighting, the other Italy, the anti-fascist one, was heroic. Naples rose up against the Nazi occupiers, routed them and was able to triumphantly welcome the Allies, who were slowly moving northwards towards Rome. The Germans had to establish their defense line further north. Alas, they would build it up brilliantly. This was the genesis of the Gustav Line.

At sea, the Nazi U-Boats were at their peak. Wolf packs, the Wolfpacks, attacked in force and inflicted heavy losses on convoys of up to a hundred ships! But the peak always precedes the fall... The allied backlash was particularly violent and effective. Installing their ASM fighter aircraft in the Azores, and having their gigantic convoys escorted by escort aircraft carriers, the submarines of the Third Reich went from being hunters to being prey as early as the following May...

This did not bode well for Nazi Germany, but its agents were still extremely effective. Von Manstein, having received reinforcements, finally succeeded in stopping the Soviet rush. The work on the Panther-Wotan Line could miraculously continue. Moreover, in the midst of the Slavic slave laborers, there were now... Italian workers! The unfortunate soldiers of the ARMIR, after having fought desperately against the Soviet mass on the Don, then having made a chaotic retreat in the middle of the white hell, were immediately interned by their former comrades upon their arrival, at least for the "lucky" ones, and then sent to participate in the costly work in human lives of the Nazi defense line.



Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff