Chapter 127 Chapter 21 Victory on the Western Front (5)

Neither Hitler nor Mussolini knew that Britain was seriously considering whether to declare war on the Soviet Union over the invasion of Poland.The reason why the British government is like this is the result of pressure from sectarians and the "Clifton Group".Because they believe that the real enemy is Red Russia, not Germany.After all, Hitler's demands on Poland were reasonable, but in an abominable way.Meanwhile, the siege of Hitler was in name only.During a train journey to the French border, the crew told William Shirer that not a single shot had been fired on the border since the war began.He saw firsthand that both sides appeared to be adhering to the unofficial ceasefire. "Just one '75 from France and our trains would be over. The Germans were pulling cannon and supplies along the railroad lines, and the French weren't bothering them. It was a weird war." In fact, it was so weird to such an extent that when the Secretary of the Admiralty suggested that the RAF should bomb timber mills in southwestern Germany, Sir Kingsley Wood, the Air Secretary, replied: "Oh, you can't do that, it's private property. Next time you will let I'm going to fry the Ruhr."

Hitler's main offensive weapon in these turbulent days was Goebbels - the outbreak of war brought him back into favor.The main target of his propaganda was against France, with the aim of driving a wedge between it and England.Goebbels braved the rain and snow to visit the "two walls" to obtain first-hand information on what the French soldiers in the Maginot Line a few hundred yards away were doing.He concluded that the common French soldier, depressed, sullen, and generally war-weary, was a perfect victim of his own concerns and prejudices. “Goebbels knew,” recalled his secretary Werner Naumann, “that the average French soldier needed a bed, a woman, a warm house, a garden of his own, and comfort.” He was concerned about the Jews , the British, and above all, this ridiculous war.Propaganda Minister Goebbels therefore instructed the Germans to greet the Army on the other side of the vacuum with a loud and friendly greeting and to talk to the French soldiers like brothers.Propaganda teams used loudspeakers to broadcast news and news to prove that Germany and France were not enemies.At night, the Germans broadcast lingering French songs to the French troops in the Maginot Line.By the end of the show, the broadcaster would say something like, "Good night, dear enemy, we don't like this war as much as you do. Who's to blame? Not you, not us. So, why are we shooting each other ?Another day is over, and we all get another good night's sleep." A recorded lullaby was broadcast at the end.During the day, leaflets were flying over the heads of the French soldiers—a picture-in-picture of a French soldier trembling at the front while his wife shared a bed with a British soldier.

Propaganda to ordinary French people was different.The Germans used many secret radio stations to broadcast to them how their government was corrupt, how the Jews made money, how Hitler's army and air force were frighteningly powerful, and so on.One flyer worked particularly well.It was the German version of "The Prophecies of Nostradamus"-it predicted that France would be conquered by the Third Reich. At home, Goebbels had the Germans grit their teeth for the coming battle.Their lives were in jeopardy because the enemy was "determined to annihilate Germany once and for all". In mid-December, he ordered that all newspapers be banned from publishing peaceful speeches. "According to this directive, the newspapers and the radio stations are to refrain from emotional tones when it comes to Christmas." There is only one day, December 24, to celebrate.To unite the front and the rear, the theme of the 1939 Christmas broadcasts was: "Soldier's Christmas - People's Christmas".

British troops in France were indifferent to Goebbels' propaganda.In fact, the war has turned into a bad joke contest.The British people are as war-weary as the British army, calling the war a "false war".More and more MPs dozed off as Chamberlain read the weekly paper. Hitler was waiting for five days of fine weather - turning a joke into a horrific war.His air force commander is also in a dilemma.Göring had to give the impression of being impatient with the wait, but secretly hoped that the bad weather would continue, fearing that the Air Force was not yet ready for combat.He personally attended the daily weather meeting, and pestered Di Xin, the director of the meteorological station, to ask him to provide more information.Hitler also coerced Di Xin to make longer forecasts.He firmly refused. "My Führer," he replied, "I will be bold enough to forecast the weather for three days, but not recklessly—not five days!"

Goering was desperate.With a huge sum of 100,000 marks, he hired a rainmaker, Mr. Schwiefler.Whether Field Marshal Goering wanted five consecutive days of good weather or continued bad weather was not clear to anyone.But it really didn't make much difference, since Schwiefler's only tool was a silent radio.Marshal Milch, on the other hand, was hoping for better days, because he agreed with the Fuehrer that time was on the enemy's side.Despite its shortcomings, the Air Force has air superiority.However, this advantage gradually diminished due to the continuous flow of American aircraft to Britain and France.

On January 10, 1940, Hitler, who was impatient to wait, set a time for the invasion again: a week later, 15 minutes before sunrise.The day was not over, and fate intervened again.A light aircraft of the Air Force lost its way across the border and crashed while landing in Belgium.Of all the planes that took off that day, this one was the most important: an unauthorized passenger, Major Helmut Rheinberg, was on board.The major had a briefcase full of plans for the air raid on Belgium.Rheinberg was captured by the Belgian army while burning the documents.But he reported to Air Force Command through the German embassy in Brussels that he had burned the plan to "insignificant fragments, at most no bigger than a palm." as a test.The results of the experiment were not yet convincing to him.So his wife advised him to use "clairvoyance"--not an unusual suggestion for someone who had used a "rainmaker."A group of "clairvoyance" hired said in unison that there was not a single piece of paper left in the file.

Their reports might have reassured Goering—not Hitler.Guessing that the battle plan had been leaked to the enemy, he ordered the cancellation of the invasion plan.It was him who was correct, not the group of "clairvoyance".The scraps of paper that remained were enough to inform the Belgians of the invasion.The information was sent to London, where it was taken with a grain of salt. Halifax, for example, told the cabinet, "I very much doubt that this document is genuine." The General Staff agreed that the document was clearly prearranged.They reveled in their offensive: an expeditionary force landed in Norway.The idea of ​​this one-shot success interested the new Lord of the Admiralty very much.Even though he had had a similarly painful experience in the previous war, when he followed suit until the cabinet was won over and vetoed the move.

Hitler was also preparing to take Norway.He had never considered such a move before—after all, the Nordics, as in 1914, would have remained neutral—until Stalin, his ally, invaded Finland and upset his calculations.Hitler feared that this might give the Allies an excuse to drive into Norway and encircle Germany from the north.He approved a study into the possibility of an invasion of Norway, but with extremely low urgency.Then, at the end of February, startling reports came: the imminence of British landings in Scandinavia made Hitler an ardent advocate of an invasion of Norway—where, he feared, if Britain found a foothold, At that point, the Baltic Sea would be sealed off, and all his submarines would be trapped.Equally dire is the economic threat.More than half the iron ore used by Germany came from Norway and Sweden; the supply of iron ore ended, and his war economy ended.Therefore, Hitler ordered the simultaneous occupation of Denmark and Norway on March 1, 1940.This would have to be "a peaceful occupation with the aim of protecting the neutrality of the Nordic countries by force", but any resistance "would be crushed by all possible means".

The time factor was of particular concern to Hitler.Two days later, he decided—"the boldest and most important decision in the history of warfare"—to attack before invading the West.The offensive will begin on March 15. At the same time, he has also managed to shore up deteriorating relations with his two allies, especially with Russia, as it has entered a troubling phase. Shortly after the conquest of Poland, the two countries began negotiating a trade agreement.Germany sent a 37-member economic delegation to visit Moscow; the Soviet Union sent a larger delegation to return to Berlin—the Soviet delegation brought a purchase order for machinery and military supplies, worth 1.5 billion marks.The Germans were dumbfounded, because most of the machinery and armaments needed by the Soviets were necessary for their war production.The result was a ferocious and prolonged rivalry, culminated by Stalin himself.He declared grumblingly that unless the Germans backed down, "the treaty will not be signed."

This, Hitler cannot allow. In early February, he instructed Ribbentrop to write to Stalin asking him to review his position on Germany.Apparently Stalin (whose obstinate negotiations had yielded some concessions from the Germans) had woken up to the fact that he had cornered his allies (two months earlier his old enemy Trotsky had said: "Many, many people in Europe were wiped out before Hitler's defeat sounded. Stalin didn't want to be in it, so he was very wary of leaving Hitler too early.") Change tactics and ask for the quarrel to stop.He agreed to deliver the goods to Germany within two years and three months, and promised to hand over the raw materials to Germany within one and a half years.After all obstacles were cleared, the treaty was signed three days later.The German delegation was in high spirits. "This agreement," the colonel reported, "means that the door to the East is open for us."

Hitler was both happy and relieved.He was more engrossed than his colleagues in the Kremlin.Stalin was the only world leader he wanted to know deeply.He questioned the emissaries back from Moscow exhaustively, asking the smallest details about his allies.According to Krista Schroeder's recollection, he interrupted each other from time to time and shouted enthusiastically, "Stalin is a cruel guy, but you have to admit that he is an extraordinary person." was talking about himself. Solving this Russian problem also solved another: In March of that year, the Finns were forced to accept the Soviet Union's harsh peace terms, ending their short, bloody war.Hitler, relieved to have been embarrassed to support such an unpopular cause, turned his attention to more fertile arenas.One of them is Italy.Not long ago he had taken a step forward in this regard by answering Mussolini's unpopular proposal.He justified his actions at length, raved about Italy, and used as many italics as a schoolgirl writing to her latest crush. Naturally, the letter was so long delayed that it must have been delivered by a person of eminence.So, on the next day, March 9, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop left Berlin with a large entourage.Among them were counselors, secretaries, hairdressers, doctors, gymnastics instructors and masseuses.At the first meeting, Mussolini gave a cautious answer to Ribbentrop's question "Is Italy in the war?"He said he intended "to intervene in the conflict, to fight a war parallel to Germany's." But the day was his choice.Ribbentrop tried unsuccessfully to bring him into submission, agreeing only to meet Hitler. On Monday, March 18, the two dictators met at the Brenner Pass in a storm. The meeting was warm and sincere, and Hitler became the master of the meeting.He spoke calmly, with a pretentious gesture.He said the purpose of his trip was to "explain the situation" so that the Italian prime minister could make his own decisions. What surprised Schmidt was that Mussolini used the few minutes he had to speak to focus on clarifying his intention to enter the war.It was simply a matter of picking the best time, he said.The two parted in an atmosphere of eternal trust and eternal friendship.But Hitler instructed Schmidt not to give copies of the minutes of the talks to the Italians. "Who on the Italian side will see this document and which allied diplomat will tell it, no one knows." Mussolini seemed to feel that his recent pledge to join the war was wrong.On the way back to Rome, he pointed to the heavy snow falling outside the window and said that only by letting the snow fall all the way to Etna in the south can the Italian nation be transformed into a nation of warriors.He was annoyed that Hitler was dominating the talks, but he knew for sure that his allies would not launch an offensive on land.