Chapter two hundred and fourteen Mussolini's beautiful blue
Seeing the jealousy of the leader, his good son-in-law Ciano quickly changed the subject and said: "I would say that the Germans can achieve such great success today completely without the help of our Kingdom of Italy."
After hearing this, Mussolini felt a little better and his face became better: "Well, my dear Ciano, please tell me in detail how much help we have helped the Germans.
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"Yes! Great leader." With a flattering smile, Ciano gave an example: "First of all, we have been continuously transporting agricultural workers and industrial workers to Germany for several years, even during the war in Poland.
There has been no interruption. On this point, I think Deputy Prime Minister Rossi, who is the specific loser, has done a good job."
Not knowing that Rossi, whom he had safely appointed as Italy's number two, had long been bribed by the Germans, Ciano thought that Rossi was relying on his long-term vision to maintain cooperation with Germany under tremendous pressure.
That's why he has the kind of praise he has now, like an afterthought.
Mussolini also felt justified: "Rossi has done a good job in this matter. He has been working hard to maintain the friendship between Italy and Germany over the past few years. I will reward him well later."
Seeing that the leader was in a much better mood, Ciano decided to strike while the iron was hot and continue to use his skills as a flatterer: "Then the leader's decision to send troops to the Alps was a timely help! This move scared the French to the ground and pissed them off.
The troops that attacked Germany were evacuated back home, which relieved the Germans from the major crisis of losing the Saarland."
Although Mussolini's original intention was to deploy troops secretly and wait for an opportunity to attack France. However, due to the ineffective execution of orders by his subordinates, the deployment situation was leaked, and almost all of Europe knew the movements of the Italian army.
This was originally an embarrassing joke, but Ciano actually brazenly called this mistake intentional, which was the strongest support for the German army.
As expected, Italy's power was frightening. Mussolini was quite satisfied with taking the unrelated credit for the French army's voluntary withdrawal: "That's right, that's right! This guy Reinhardt,
In the end, it was all thanks to my help that we achieved what we have today.”
Seeing that Ciano was almost turning black into white, the other two types of people in the conference room finally couldn't sit still.
If there are war-avoiding factions like Ciano and others, there will naturally be war-fighting factions. If the theory of the war-avoiding faction finally makes sense, how can the war-avoiding faction still exist?
Coincidentally, the representative of the war-avoidance faction is the Governor of Libya, while the representative of the war-fighting faction is the Governor of Somalia.
General Rodolfo Graziani, a frontier official boasted by Italians as the "Italian version of Guderian", can be said to be the general who best understands the role of armored forces in Italy.
He once led the Italian Army in Somalia during Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. He relied on highly mobile troops to fight and achieved amazing results with a small number of troops.
As one of the few generals in Italy who knew armor, Graziani held a high position in Mussolini's heart. A few days ago, he thought he was capable of boldly speaking out about war before the war, but he had just been replaced by Mussolini.
Nigeria appoints Italian Army Chief of Staff.
In order to show the necessity of his main battle theory, Graziani also boasted unreasonably: "Dear Leader! Our Italian Army has 152 divisions, some of which are armored divisions equipped with the latest weapons. In addition, we
We also have a huge reserve force of 12 million as backup. We have such a force but we are too timid to participate in the war. If word spread, it is an insult to the whole of Italy and to you, the leader."
In fact, there are only 15 divisions in Italy that can be put into battle at any time, and most of them do not meet the quota of troops. The equipment is old and in short supply, and no division can be called a true "armored division".
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But Mussolini liked to hear such words of good news and not bad news. Now that Graziani, Italy's "armor master", had spoken, he could naturally think with peace of mind that Italy did have as powerful a force as the Germans.
of armored forces.
"It's nothing that the Germans can defeat Poland. As long as our Italian army is willing, we can even defeat Britain and France at the same time!" Since both the peace faction and the war faction believe that Italy is strong enough, as they do,
Mussolini's confidence was even stronger.
As long as you are happy, this is the common thought of all Italian senior leaders. As long as the leader doesn't cause any problems, it doesn't matter to anyone how he dreams.
"Under my leadership, the Kingdom of Italy will be invincible." Now that he had started, Mussolini had to be intoxicated for a while: "If I left the Alps westward, my main force would be on the northern front to guard against Germany.
The French army will definitely be caught off guard by the surprise attack of the Italian army. At that time, I will send another hundred divisions. The Germans only need to follow our pace and bring out the troops in the Siegfried Line to match us.
, France should be destroyed!"
Seemingly unfinished, Mussolini went on to fantasize: "As for those self-righteous British people, if we hadn't restrained ourselves, Africa would have been our world long ago!"
Can't Britain beat Italy? In fact, this statement also has its origin.
As the third faction within the Kingdom of Italy, a group of Italian generals in Africa, led by Badoglio, the commander-in-chief of the Italian army that invaded Ethiopia, all believed that Italy should not participate in the war until Germany, Britain and France were both injured before sending troops.
Collect the fisherman's profits.
Who is Badoglio? He is an experienced field marshal in Italy!
In the last world war, the 2nd Corps led by Badoglio humiliated the Italian army and suffered a textbook failure. As many as 265,000 soldiers were captured by the Germans at one time.
After becoming a soldier, Badoglio not only received no punishment but was promoted to Army Lieutenant General in the same year. Finally, he also served as the representative of the Italian side in the armistice negotiations and signed a treaty symbolizing Italy's status as the victor in World War I.
protocol.
Just as the SS generals learned from the shamelessness of the German head of state, the Italian field marshal also learned from the Italian Prime Minister's nonsense. He also planned a blueprint for Africa's future to Mussolini: "With Italy's nearly 500,000 garrison troops,
With the African army as the backbone, and an additional army of 2 million black soldiers recruited, we can completely defeat the tens of thousands of British troops left in Africa, and then achieve control of Africa!"
