When evening came, Hersman and Adolf. Hitler climbed the walls of Saladinburg, which was majestic and quaint, and who had seen many ups and downs for hundreds of years. A Roman eagle flag hangs from the spire of the Muhammad Ali Mosque in the citadel www.biquge.info and is silent in the dim sun.

"In 621 AD, the Sassanid Empire of Persia defeated the Eastern Roman Empire and took full control of Egypt." Hitler seemed to be a little emotional, looked at the eagle flag and said to Hersmann, "After 1320, you have brought the Roman eagle back to Cairo." ”

"Leader, this is the eagle flag of Italy, not the eagle of Rome." Hersmann laughed mockingly, "The Italians are not worthy of the name of the Roman Empire, they will never be Rome." In today's Europe, the only one who can become Rome is our German Empire! ”

Rome had a special significance for Europe, as it symbolized an era of glory and unity. In the days when the Germans led Europe, they called their empire Holy Rome. When the Emperor Napoleon swept across the continent, the French emperor took the name of Rome away from the Germans and made his son Napoleon II King of Rome - there was no Roman kingdom at that time, and the name of the Roman king clearly implied the birth of Rome of the French.

And now, Mussolini has made Italy raise the Roman eagle flag again!

The transformation of the Kingdom of Italy into the Roman Empire was not as simple as changing its name, because the European Community could accommodate Italy, but it could never accommodate Rome.

"Reich Marshal, our friend Mussolini didn't think so." "His Roman Empire," said Hitler, pacing slowly on the ancient city walls with his hands behind his back, "His Roman Empire has a vast territory of 7.5 million square kilometers, which is even larger than Rome at its peak in history." ”

Mussolini did establish a great Rome, and his empire included roughly Italy proper, Albania, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Abenesia, and Somalia (including Italian, French, and British Somalia), almost 7.5 million square kilometers!

According to the cheeky Italian leader, the Roman Empire is now the second largest power in Europe by territorial area, after the Soviet Union and larger than both the German Empire and the French Republic.

"Big and useless," Hirschman smiled, "except for Egypt and Italy proper, the rest of the land is barren and of little value." Now the Italians are only blinded by an illusory power and have some delusions. ”

In fact, Mussolini's 7.5 million square kilometers still have a lot of valuable territory, such as oil-rich Libya and South Sudan. But oil in Libya and Sudan has not yet been discovered, and even if oil is extracted there in the future, that oil revenue will certainly not be able to cover the cost of developing and managing more than 7 million square kilometers of African land.

In the future, Italy will either turn its African dependencies into mere resource collectors and leave them undeveloped, or it will be burdened with a heavy burden, which will be very heavy considering that Italy's industry is not developed at present.

France, which swallowed Algeria and French Morocco, faces the same problem, with nearly 3 million square kilometers of land on a map that looks very gratifying. But it was very troublesome to develop and build, to assimilate the people there, to make it a real part of France.

Moreover, Algeria and French Morocco, like the Italian African territories, were not places where industry could be cultivated. Except for the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, the rest of the world is sparsely populated, inaccessible, barren, and has few low-cost industrial resources other than oil and gas. Even the advantages of oil and gas resources are not comparable to those in the Middle East, which is controlled by Germany.

In contrast, Germany is ready to take territory as its own territory, such as Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, part or all of Belarus, and Ukraine, although small in size, but it is the essence of the real thing.

As long as it is done well, although the future German Empire will have an area of less than 2 million square kilometers, its economic and industrial strength will far exceed that of France and Italy.

However, the comparison of the 750-square-kilometer "Greater Rome" with the less than 2 million square kilometers of "Little Germany" still gives Italians like Mussolini an illusory sense of power.

And this illusory sense of power is now one of the biggest obstacles to Italy's integration into the European Community. At this afternoon's meeting, Mussolini rejected the proposal to allow the Roman Empire to join the European Community, and also made a request to merge Bosnia (the Yugoslav part) and Montenegro (Montenegro) into Italy's Greater Albania - Italy's compensation for giving up Greece.

"Imperial Marshal, I know Mussolini is a little hot-headed." Hitler pointed to his head and smiled bitterly, "But after all, he is our friend, so we can't order 100 divisions to march on the city of Rome...... Although that would have made us masters of Italy in 3 months. ”

"Leader, you overestimate the Italians," Hersman shook his head with a smile, "it doesn't take 100 divisions, and it doesn't take 3 months...... With 10 divisions and 2 weeks we could occupy the whole of Italy. ”

"Really?" Hitler looked back at Hersmann, saw the seriousness of the Reich marshal's face, and knew that he was not joking, but he shook his head anyway. "No, the Italians are a Latin race, unlike us Aryans, these people are too cunning. It took the Holy Roman Empire hundreds of years to turn them into Germans, and I don't want the Third Reich to waste any more energy on the Italians. Germany...... Can only expand to the east! ”

"Yes," Hersman nodded, "I don't think it's possible for us to assimilate the Italians either...... In fact, we Germans are more similar to the peoples of Eastern Europe who were not ruled by the Mongols for a long time. For example, Poles, Lithuanians, Belarusians and Right-Bank Ukrainians, they are more similar to us and are closer in blood. ”

This is the Prussian Junker national view represented by Hersmann, which is different from that of Nazis from South Germany such as Hitler.

Because many of the Prussian and East Prussian knightly families were ancestors of transnational aristocracy, branching out in Poland, Lithuania and Western Ukraine, as well as the Baltic coast, and inevitably having West Slavic or East Slavic (East Slavic under Lithuanian rule) in their blood, these Slavs were not regarded as outsiders. But at the same time, they see the Russians as half barbaric Tatars, and do not consider them authentic Europeans.

"But how shall we heal the illusory powerful feelings of the Italians?" Hitler looked at the Roman eagle flag flying high and was a little embarrassed.

Feeling too good is a disease that must be cured!

"Leader, there is still a small country in the Balkans today that is not very obedient." Hersmann said slowly, "It must also be healed, it is better to let Mussolini heal, and by the way, to heal the Italian leader himself." ”

"Serbia?" Hitler frowned, "But the Hungarians do not want to see Italy expand in the Balkans......"

"Actually, we don't want to see the Italians expand their power in the Balkans!" Hersmann shrugged, "Let's pit the Hungarians, Serbs, and Italians against each other...... We just need to control the scale. ”

"Scale?"

"The Hungarians, the Croats can't go head-to-head with the Italians." Hersman said.

What he meant was that the Italians could go to war with the Serbs, and that the Croatian-Hungarian kingdom could provide some aid to the Serbian resistance. But the war between Italy and Croatia-Hungary must be banned. That is, Yugoslavia could exist as an "ulcer face" to educate Italians......

"There will be a lot of refugees," Hitler shook his head, "Mussolini was a discontented fellow, and he would invade Serbia as soon as he took advantage of Bosnia." When the time comes, many people will flee to the lands of the Croats and Hungarians, and we cannot afford to ignore them. ”

Now many Ukrainians, Belarusians and Poles have fled to Western and Central Europe as refugees. Because they will all become German in the future, they will have to be taken care of no matter how much headache they have. But the Serbs did not have this treatment, and no one prepared German passports for them.

"Send it to the Middle East," Hersman thought for a moment, "and send it to Lebanon and Syria, I think Syria is a good place to house European refugees." ”

……

While Hersmann and Hitler were discussing how to cure Mussolini's illusory sense of power, the greatest Roman since Justini the Great was at Cairo's Caesar Airport to greet Hideki Tojo and Isoroku Yamamoto from Japan, who had come all the way from Japan -- Mussolini had welcomed the visitors because the Cairo Conference was hosted by Italy, and the German side had only sent Foreign Minister Ribbentrop to accompany them.

Without seeing Hitler and Hersmann, Hideki Tojo and Isoroku Yamamoto were inevitably a little disappointed.

However, Mussolini was also one of the Axis triumvirate (the other two being Hitler and Tojo himself), and the United European Fleet also had a stake in Italy. In terms of aviation technology, the Italians, who are now also third in the world after Germany and the United States (a vaunted ranking on the part of the Axis powers), also seem to have some help to Japan.

Therefore, Hideki Tojo and Isoroku Yamamoto simply raised the issue of "sneak attack on Panama" and aviation technical assistance to Mussolini at a dinner party held for them by the Italians that day. (To be continued.) )