Chapter 33: Scuffle

After the German army on the Western Front suddenly launched an attack into Belgium and Luxembourg, the 50,000 Polish integrated divisions under the banner of the German Polish Army entered France with great momentum, and the troops in the east of France were extremely empty, and they captured all the French villages and towns near the Alps like a bamboo, and then showed that they wanted to capture Saarburg and approach Nancy. The French are crazy, they don't know how these 50,000 Polish troops crossed the Alps with equipment in winter, they only know that now 50,000 guys under the banner of the Polish Legion are making trouble in eastern France, and a large number of French refugees are moving to the relative safety of the French coastal cities.

After hastily mobilizing several French regular troops to fight the battle, the French authorities also drew another group of troops from the coastal defense forces to form a second line of defense, in a vain attempt to push back the menacing Polish legions. The French mobilized a large number of troops to stand up to the second line of defense on the line of Reims and Besançon, hoping that a tight line would hold back the advance of the Polish corps to the west or south.

The French were anxious, their elite French troops had been assembled in Belgium and Luxembourg, and were entangled with the German army that had broken through the Western Front, and now if they were to forcibly withdraw troops from there, the Western Front would collapse immediately, and the British would not let them do so. Langman's French were not calm, and immediately sent people to ask for help from the British, hoping to get the support of the British, but they were also allies.

In the face of the menacing Germany, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed an order to send troops to France without thinking about it, and mobilized half of the fighters to fly to France to help in the war. At the beginning of the war with Germany, the former empire of the sun never set had withdrawn a large number of troops from the colonial countries, and now it happened to be sent to France to help in the war. Under the direction of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, a large number of British and French ships sailed through the English Channel, sending a steady stream of British troops from the British Isles to France, unaware that the German tentacles had penetrated deep into their country's homeland.

Italy declared its entry into the war, and was still on the side of Germany, and a large number of Italian troops that had already been assembled crossed the Italian-French border into French territory, firmly entangled the British troops who came to support France. On the 12th, after the German army suddenly attacked on the Western Front, the Polish Legion invaded eastern France, and Italy, which had been watching from the sidelines, suddenly declared war on France, and more than 300,000 Italian troops crossed the border into France, and the Polish Legion that suddenly appeared in the Alps was faintly connected, stirring up eastern France into a pot of porridge.

It is appropriate to describe the current mess in eastern France, where a large number of French refugees with their families began to migrate along the highway to the cities on the northwest coast of France, and the refugees who fled would often block the entire road, blocking the Anglo-French troops who had come to fight on the road. This is another new tactic formulated by Zhao Zhi for the German Army's ** Department -- the sheep herding tactic. Rather than gathering the French in the occupied zone and guarding them with a large number of second-line troops, it is better to drive them directly to other areas that are not yet at war, which naturally has the advantage of being advantageous to the Polish Legion and the Italian Army, which are not superior in numbers, not only to block the roads and delay the Anglo-French army, but also to create panic among the French people, weaken their desire for battle, and create opportunities for the offensive of the Polish Legion and the Italian army.

It has to be said that Zhao Zhi's new tactics have been enhanced, and it took 6 days from the British armored units that landed in the French coastal cities until Christmas Eve, and they did not reach their intended defense line. The lack of familiarity with the terrain was one thing, but the main reason was that the large number of French refugees blocked the roads, and the overwhelming number of French refugees made it difficult for their armored troops to march. Without the support of armored forces, the Polish regiments active in the eastern part of France continued to attack the French troops like ghosts, and on the day of the 22nd alone, more than 20,000 French were routed, and a large number of weapons and equipment were captured by the Polish regiments.

Unlike the rest of the German troops, the Polish regiments had a variety of tactics, they were not heavily armed, and at best they carried some mortars and heavy machine guns. The 50,000 Polish troops were divided into 10 units with 5,000 men, and they sometimes fought separately and alone, sometimes gathered together to attack the main French force with firepower, but they left with one blow, regardless of victory or defeat, if the French army dared to follow the pursuit, what awaited them would be more ambushes from the Polish army. The Polish legion that entered France was like a pack of wolves in Wuthering Mountains, and in just a few days, it successively blitzed a number of French garrisons, which terrified the opposing French army.

Light and fast movement was the advantage of the Polish Legion, and before the British and French armored forces arrived, the French troops in the eastern region were beaten by the Polish Legion, and they had no power to parry. Once these German armoured units entered eastern France, all the war-torn eastern France would fall into German hands, and the Anglo-French forces would be entangled in the eastern part by the Italian army and the Polish legions. If they dared to retreat, a great rout awaited them, a consequence which they could not bear, and the only way was to continue to increase their forces to the east of France until they had squeezed the Italian army and the Polish corps out of France with a large superior force.

Britain, which was good at provoking, sent diplomatic teams to the United States and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the war, with only one purpose, hoping to gain the sympathy of other countries in the world, in a vain attempt to use diplomatic mediation to stop Germany's frenzied expansion. It is a pity that the results disappointed them, the Americans were making a lot of war money, and they simply ignored the olive branch extended by the British, and after Germany ordered a large number of products from the big American enterprises with a large amount of dollars, the Americans, who had been condemning Germany internationally, changed the direction of the wind, in their view, the war was only a matter between Germany and Britain and France, and had nothing to do with their United States of America, and Congress could not afford to send its own boys to help the sinister and cunning British to go to war.

As for the Soviets in the Far East, who were still busy entangled with the endless Polish resistance, the Soviets, who occupied a third of the Polish territory, also wondered how the tactical level of the Polish resistance had improved so much in three months, and the same number of Soviet troops could no longer defeat the same number of resistances. There are also those Japanese Kwantung Army entrenched in Manchuria, China, will take advantage of the cold winter to launch a surprise attack on the Soviet defenders, the whole process of Germany's blitzkrieg on Poland is still fresh in the memory of the Soviet Union, the number of troops sent is less than half of the Soviet Union, but the territory occupied is twice that of the Soviet Union, and the Soviets, who are busy fighting at both ends, will not say that they will help Britain and France, after all, they still have a private alliance agreement with Germany.

After a busy circle, Britain and France finally returned in vain, and the two countries, which had already embarked on the wear of war, had no choice but to contact small countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg to confront Germany, hoping to stop the expansion of the fierce beast of Germany. After careful planning, the scheming Britain decided to put the main battlefield of the battle against the German army in France, so as to avoid the flames of war burning to the British mainland, and also to rely on the French seaports to continuously send follow-up troops into France, using the depth of France to drag the German army to death in the quagmire of war, just as they had done in World War I.

In the eyes of the British, it was extremely unrealistic for the Germans to send troops across the French border to occupy French territory while waging war with Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on the Western Front. The Germans were indeed strong, but they were not strong enough to avoid war at the same time, especially when the small Eastern European countries that had just been occupied by Germany had not yet fully submitted to Germany. As long as the Anglo-French forces could withstand the German advance, and under the instigation of the intelligence officers they sent, the countries that had just been occupied by Germany would once again revolt against the Germans.

The German army, which was gaining momentum, did not know the plans of the British, they just pressed forward step by step according to the orders of the high command, and a large number of young people in Germany were recruited into the army, and after the German elite went into battle, they would become the backbone of the defense of the German homeland. In Zhao Zhi's plan for Hitler, Germany needed at least nearly 2 million main battle troops and 1 million second-line guards to capture Britain and France.

Advancing forward, the Germans did not stop because they were stubbornly resisted by the Allied forces, and they changed their mode of fighting against the Allied forces for every inch of territory to divide and outflank. Often, after the German armoured forces broke through the Allied positions, they squeezed to the flanks to force the Allied soldiers to flee, and then a large number of motorized infantry equipped with trucks and motorcycles followed the scattered Allied forces until they were completely routed. A large number of weapons and equipment captured from the coalition forces were also gathered together, waiting for the follow-up engineers and mechanics to arrive and use the factories in the occupied areas to repair and refit on the spot.

The seemingly impregnable Allied defensive line was in fact already riddled with holes, and a large number of scattered Allied troops were chased by German soldiers and fled to the next line of defense, while they gained temporary safety, they also made a mess of their rear lines, creating the conditions for the next wave of German attacks. The Anglo-French command now plays the role of a tailor, using the little force in hand to fill in the gaps, and some troops often receive several orders in a day, and each time the orders are different, so that they do not know whether they should assemble or defend in place.