"Why hasn't Calais's troops arrived yet?" Lao Xi asked for the third time.

The Germans also pinned their hopes on the heavy troops stationed near Calais.

Because when the French surrendered, they announced to the world that Paris would not be defended, so even if the German army entered Paris, in order to take care of the face of the French, they never deployed a large army near Paris. Therefore, it is very slim to expect a large army to be sent from Paris in close proximity.

Fearing that the Allied forces would be airborne and pose a direct threat to Paris, the troops stationed in Paris did not dare to dispatch easily.

The German headquarters did not count on these Parisian troops either, and the 32nd Panzer Division, which patrolled the area from Paris to the seafront, was already the main force in the vicinity, but it was also useless in the face of a strong Allied offensive.

As the war began, the Germans also received some news of Allied movements.

Although the specific strength of the troops is unknown, judging and deducing, the surrounding garrison troops are not at all useful.

Most of the troops in other parts of France were second-rate troops, and it was okay to suppress those French resistance groups, but it could only delay for a while longer against the Allied forces that were attacking.

The garrison in the nearby Cherbourg area has some strength, but its strength is also limited, and in the face of such a large-scale offensive, I am afraid that it will not be able to help Normandy much, and it is easy to lose Cherbourg.

As a matter of fact, with the beginning of the landing, the Cherbourg area also became the target of the right-flank offensive of the landing operation.

In the end, the Germans had to count on the heavy troops of Calais, the closest to Normandy.

Say it is recent, mainly the most recent reliable reinforcements. In fact, the distance from Calais to Normandy is more than 300 kilometers.

Although the road and rail network in France is well established, the more than 300 kilometers are not too far. But the German army in Calais had to cross not just more than 300 kilometers of roads, but more than 300 kilometers of the line of death.

From the very beginning, Allied bombers bombed Calais to the ground.

Calais has always strengthened air defense. But this time, the Allies sent too many bombers. Although it will not cause much damage. However, for a while, it was difficult to gather support forces completely. When the army was mobilized to support, the Allies used bombers to block all the roads from Calais to Normandy with bombs.

Every step forward requires a corpse to pave the way.

The nearby Luftwaffe was already entangled with Allied fighters. Even if the German self-propelled anti-aircraft guns followed the queue, they still could not stop the overwhelming and continuous bombardment of the Allies.

This time the Allied bombing formation lost more than 100 planes, but the interception strategy of German reinforcements in Calais was successful.

By the time the German vanguard in Calais finally moved to Normandy in the early morning of the fourth day after the D day. The Allies had landed more than 100,000 troops in Normandy and quickly built up defensive positions to block the Calais reinforcements.

The Germans still underestimated the Allied landing capabilities.

Ships from across the Atlantic sailed into the English Channel without even stopping at the British mainland, and a large number of Allied transport planes flew directly from Scotland and Ireland to Normandy.

While the smoke of Northern Ireland was still in the air, the British had reached an agreement with the Irish to return Northern Ireland to Ireland in exchange for the Irish government to lean into the Allies.

Once again, the Germans were one move behind in the petition. At the beginning of the Normandy landings, they were still sending weapons to Northern Ireland. In an attempt to hold the Irish behind the English, even many members of the Northern Ireland Organization fell under the guns of the British in those days, and in the blink of an eye the whole of Ireland was on the side of the Commonwealth.

Such a cramped place in the southwest corner of England. It is simply impossible to accommodate the army. Moreover, there were still parts of the area that fell into the hands of the Germans. This is nowhere near as convenient as the historical conditions supported by the whole of mainland Britain.

In order to organize this huge landing battle, even the northern part of Scotland was used. Needless to say, Ireland is much closer.

The Americans came forward to draw Ireland, and with the strong power of the Allies around it, Ireland had no choice. The British, though reluctant to abandon Northern Ireland, eventually made the trade-off, using the Commonwealth as a guise to maintain nominal rule.

This allowed the landed million Allied forces to have more airfields and hiding places.

And now all together, the Allied forces far exceeded the German estimates.

According to the situation on the Cornish Peninsula, the Germans estimated at the beginning that the total strength of the Allied landing was about 300,000-600,000, but they did not expect that the Allied troops would have more than 1.3 million troops here, and the army alone had more than 700,000.

After receiving the news of the Allied landing in Normandy, Lao Xi even ordered 80,000 German troops in the southwest to launch an attack on the Allied forces gathered on the Cornish Peninsula in an attempt to contain them in the rear. But there were already 150,000 Allied troops behind the line to stand in their way.

Although the island closest to the landing fleet was still half controlled by the Germans under the previous Allied counteroffensive, even if these forces caused a lot of casualties to the Allied forces, they were not enough to stop the landing ships carrying the departure ships in Southampton and other surrounding areas.

German reinforcements from all over France continued to pour in, but as the Allied prefabricated artificial port in Normandy was built, more Allied troops landed.

By the end of May, 600,000 Allied troops had been sent across the English Channel, along with 120,000 vehicles and 400,000 tons of supplies.

By the beginning of June, the Allies had repelled three large-scale German counterattacks, completely established themselves on French soil, and began to expand outward.

On the 1st, the US 1st Army, which had stormed Cherbourg for more than half a month, finally completely regained the place.

On the 3rd, the Allies finally broke through the Oden River after repeated battles with the Germans.

On the 8th, the Allies captured Saint-Lo, an important transportation hub in the Normandy region.

On the 11th, the Allies recaptured Caen.

By mid-June, the first half of the Normandy landings had come to an end.

Although the two sides did not invest as many troops as in the original history, the fighting was extremely fierce.

The Allied casualties reached 150,000, more than 3,500 aircraft of various types, and more than 1,200 large and small ships, including 1 battleship, 2 aircraft carriers and 5 cruisers.

The Germans also suffered more than 120,000 casualties, many of which were lost on the way.

Fighters from all over the country, even from the German mainland, suffered heavy losses, more than 3,000 aircraft. 135 battleships sank in the intercept. Among them were 2 battleships and 3 cruisers that arrived to support from the Bay of Biscay and Calais.

Overall, the Germans lost less than the Allies, but from a strategic point of view, the Germans had already lost a move.

The Allies, who had opened up a second battlefield, gained a foothold in the Normandy area and advanced gradually, even directly threatening Paris.

If the reconquest of Paris and the agitation of more French to join the ranks of the Allies would undoubtedly be a catastrophe for Germany.

The Germans have been constantly deploying troops to block the advance of the Allies these days, but they have always had little effect.

Somewhat similar to the Japanese, the Germans, who had swallowed large areas of occupied territory, also had some indigestion. Most of their main forces have spread out, and the Eastern Front has taken up the majority of their forces.

The ammunition and suppression troops that remained in Europe were always less elite, resulting in a relative emptiness of strength in these places.

Far from quenching their thirst, even though the Germans had the most powerful army in the world, they would not have enough time for them to hold back the deadly advance of the Allies in their soft underbelly.

The refueling tactics of the German reinforcements that poured in from all over the country were quickly drowned out by the growing number of Allied troops.

The gap in Normandy was opened, and the Allies saw hope, and more troops were deployed in the United States.

Although the Normandy landings came to an end, landings elsewhere continued, and the United States alone deployed another 300,000 troops just before August. Together with the armies of other countries, the Allied army numbered more than one million by the beginning of August.

In early August, 700,000 Allied troops pressed to the vicinity of Paris.

There, the gathered 400,000 German troops, led by Field Marshal Rundstedt, will usher in a decisive battle.

In this decisive battle, Meng Xiang is still not optimistic.

In the air, the Allies had the upper hand.

The main force of the Germans' armored forces was not here, and it was obvious that the gap was too great to rely on the reserves and the newly built armored divisions of less than 3,000 tanks of all kinds to meet the Allied forces with more than 11,000 tanks. Moreover, the 400,000 patchwork German troops obviously did not reflect the sharpness of the German tank.

What's more important is that the home ground is French, not German's.

If there are no accidents, the German army, which is inferior in all respects, is likely to cede Paris, as it did in the original history, and then lose the strategic initiative in more areas.

But the world is always full of many accidents, and a small thing can change the trend of history, and it directly affects China.