Chapter 66:
Chapter 66
Rommel was in a rather difficult situation as he tried to capture Liverpool.
The British army planned to resist desperately in urban warfare, and the civilians also began to arm themselves.
The only force he could deploy in Liverpool was barely 100,000 men.
It was far from enough to occupy a city that was prepared for a desperate defense.
But Rommel was calm.
To everyone else, time seemed to be against Germany, but he acted and thought as if the goddess of victory would soon raise his hand.
“What is General Rommel thinking?”
The others were puzzled.
The expeditionary force had succeeded in surrounding Liverpool and cutting off the supplies from the land.
But Liverpool was one of the largest ports in Britain.
Supplies could be endlessly delivered from the sea, and if the American reinforcements arrived, the weak siege could be broken at any time.
Nevertheless, Rommel was calm.
He only ordered his troops to build fortifications that could surround Liverpool.
As sturdy and solid as possible.
He emphasized the importance of building strong fortifications.
Some doubted.
“Does he trust the navy, the Kriegsmarine?”
They could engage in a naval battle and block the American transport fleet, or the U-boat fleet that had been strangling Britain’s neck could sink the fleet again and eventually starve Liverpool to death.
This explanation was quite plausible.
Except that the US Atlantic Fleet was not an easy opponent for the Kriegsmarine.
Germany had succeeded in dispersing and defeating Britain’s power.
But could they protect the transport fleet in the English Channel with limited power, rescue Turkey who desperately requested support, and face the US Atlantic Fleet reinforced by three battleships at the same time?
The US Atlantic Fleet was already close.
The British in Liverpool were already cheering.
***
“The Americans are coming! The Americans are coming!”
“Woooooo!!”
The German planes that roamed the sky like crows looking for corpses no longer looked like ominous signs of death.
The anti-aircraft gunners who fired a barrage of shells at the crows that lowered their altitude for reconnaissance talked about the upcoming counterattack.
A vanguard of 20,000 men, and another 200,000 men in a few days.
Even if the German army had 200,000 men, they were exhausted and injured from the battle, while the newly deployed troops were fresh and had the advantage of home ground.
There was no way they would lose.
Germany was stupid enough to wage war with all three countries: Britain, America, and Russia.
And as they did in the last war, they would be pressured from both sides and forced to surrender. Many people thought so.
“Phew, by the way, when will they arrive?”
“I don’t know? I heard a rumor that it would be tomorrow…”
The middle-aged Home Guards who had experienced the last war waited for the American support without blinking.
In the last war, America joined the war after the Lusitania was sunk and Germany sent a telegram to Mexico urging them to join the war.
But this time, Jerry bastards really messed with America.
How dare they touch Panama!
Of course, they tried to avoid it, but Britain did fight a war of attrition.
Our great British Empire has become so dependent on other countries… The Royal Navy suffered defeat after defeat, and the army that was defeated in France disappeared from criticism.
In the last war, they somehow managed to set foot on the continental territory of France, but this time they were completely pushed back and invaded their homeland.
He suddenly remembered those days like a nightmare of Gallipoli.
“Surely… we won’t have to land in France?”
“Kak! Don’t say such bad things.”
Churchill, who became prime minister at that time, forced 500,000 troops to land on Gallipoli Peninsula to subdue the Ottoman Empire and free Dardanelles Strait from blockade to support Russia.
But the Ottoman Empire fortified the coastline with German support, and countless young men from Britain and Commonwealth who stormed there according to orders were literally crushed.
He shuddered at the thought of that landing operation where half of 500,000 men died or became disabled and returned.
“Germany also landed so easily, why can’t we?”
“That’s because Churchill is an idiot. Right?”
“Hey, don’t bring up that dead guy!”
Even then Churchill insisted on landing and came back with a terrible defeat.
In this war too Churchill fell for Germany’s deception tactics and did some stupid things with Home Guards and gave up their heavenly defense line which is sea so easily.
Home Guards hated Churchill. It was true that his end was pitiful… But isn’t it pitiful to come to this foreign land at this age and shoot at nothing?
When Churchill’s story came up, some conservatives who sympathized with him gave a glance at soldiers who cursed him but most of laborers’ soldiers said very harsh words that they could never say in front of their children.
“That bastard, his father died of syphilis. Maybe since he was born…”
“Oh my… then his mother too…?”
“Hey, let’s be moderate!”
The colorful predictions about the parents’ sex life and the medical reasoning that Churchill had syphilis in his brain and did such crazy things were rampant.
Churchill had some insight to sense Germany’s expansionism and advocate a hard-line policy, but after a few big mistakes, all those evaluations were gone.
What if he knew?
He knew and still got kicked, so he’s more stupid.
Most British people thought so.
A considerable number even said that it would have been better to ally with Germany and divide France and its colonies.
A Home Guard who had respected Churchill could not stand the soldiers who were about to cross the line with their obscene jokes and shouted at them.
A soldier who looked at him with a what-are-you-saying expression said to him, the youngest recruit in the squad.
“Uh…? Aren’t those Germans?”
High up in the sky, far away, German planes began to appear. How many are coming? The soldiers were scared.
The rumors of London burning and Churchill Prime Minister being roasted were hushed by the military authorities, but they were reproduced and spread like a plague behind them.
The Germans bombed Soytan and went to check Churchill’s body at 10 Downing Street, which melted down, and saw him stuck like a roast beef that was overcooked in the oven, they said.
Although they could not confirm it together, very stimulating rumors were passed from mouth to mouth.
“Anti-aircraft guns! Anti-aircraft guns! All personnel to battle positions!”
The soldiers who were joking around saw the German planes and ran to their battle positions with the angry shout of the senior sergeant.
The soldiers who grabbed the trigger of the anti-aircraft machine gun aimed at the sky with trembling hands waited for the order.
“Fuck, fuck… Huh… God…”
When faced with such a situation, the soldiers would usually say one or more of these three things: fuck, God, and mother.
The younger soldiers, who were still very much children, often called for their mothers.
Those who were old enough to have lost their mothers to God mostly sought God.
And the veteran soldiers, who were too embarrassed to keep calling for their mothers or God, just swore.
“Shoot them when they get within range. Don’t waste ammo until then!”
“Yes, sir!”
The higher-ups, who thought the US army would arrive soon, did not impose much restriction on the use of ammunition.
They were also too afraid of the Luftwaffe to do so.
They only fired bullets as a farewell gesture at the tails of the fighter jets that flew around in the sky and then swiftly flew away.
They did not really limit the shooting unless it was like wasting ammunition on purpose. But now, right before the battle, they had to limit it because they might run out of it in the next moment.
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“What’s that?”
And then, disappointingly, the German air force that flew in a large formation did not even come near the center of the city.
Was it because of the anti-aircraft guns? But it did not even seem like they were passing by the city.
They were heading towards the harbor…
They were flying so high that they could not identify the models accurately, but they looked a bit chubby and seemed like bombers.
Could they hit anything properly from this altitude?
They flew towards the harbor and dropped something there, but it did not look like aerial bombs.
There were parachutes attached to them… They wouldn’t drop paratroopers here…
“What is that?”
Something dark and vague started to fall with small parachutes attached.
The objects, which seemed to number in the thousands, mostly landed in the direction of the harbor, not the city.
The anti-aircraft gunners breathed a sigh of relief.
“What are they doing, those bastards?”
“Who knows?”
The Luftwaffe formations had attacked several times, and the anti-aircraft guns had spat fire. But the falling objects did not hit the city, and the anti-aircraft guns did not inflict much damage.
The Germans, who threw away their money-made things into the sea, might have some ulterior motive, but they were doomed now.
The British gritted their teeth.
***
“The operation was successful, mein Führer!”
“Is that so?”
In the dimly lit office, the lieutenant who reported to the Führer, who was deeply buried in his cushy chair, had a stiff expression.
Operation Hunger had been carried out successfully, and it was as good as cutting off another strand of hope for Britain.
The Americans would not be able to enter Liverpool now.
Hundreds of Luftwaffe bombers had carried dozens of mines each instead of aerial bombs and scattered them all over the sea in front of Britain’s major ports that they had not yet occupied.
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and its surroundings, Newcastle upon Tyne and even the ports that the occupying forces had ‘not yet’ taken over were now blocked by hundreds of mines dropped from aircraft, and there was no power to clear them, at least in front of Liverpool.
Mines were the best way to prevent a fleet from using a port.
A single mine could blow up a warship or a transport ship, so they could not enter the area until they cleared it thoroughly and confirmed its safety.
The fleet could only wait and wait while sticking to the port.
And the American fleet that had not even entered the port yet would have to wander around looking for a place to land.
They must have left assuming that they would use the huge city port of Liverpool, so they were not prepared to land on a sandy beach at all.
They had to find a port somewhere, but the major ports were all blocked.
Well, Glasgow or Edinburgh, where the British government had fled, might be cleared soon, but Liverpool, where the British forces had concentrated, had to starve to death without moving.
That’s how the operation name ‘Hunger’ came out.
They resisted fiercely in the city?
Then starve them to death!
The German veterans, who had been trained through battles and battles, were not very afraid of the 20,000 US troops made up of recruits.
Even if they landed in Newcastle or Edinburgh right now, they had to march hundreds of kilometers down.
They had to charge into the German defenses with their tired and exhausted bodies.
In fact, they didn’t even know if they could land.
By blocking the ports with mines, Rommel had changed the situation from having to push his troops into a heavily fortified city to having the enemies charge in front of his machine guns.
It must have been a fatal blow to them, who relied on their numerical advantage and the defender’s advantage.
The Führer listened to the report in his chair, half-drowsy.
He frowned slightly as if he remembered something unpleasant, but he grinned as if he was in a good mood when he reached the part where Rommel assured his victory.
Soon, he burst into a mad scream.
“Good, good. Starve them all… Starve them to death!”
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