The Rise Of Australasia-Chapter 1312 - 955 Italian Armys Clever Trick_2

Chapter 1312: Chapter 955: Italian Army’s Clever Trick_2

Chapter 1312 -955: Italian Army’s Clever Trick_2

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Facing the dishonest Spain and Italy, the British-French-Australian forces were not to be trifled with.

On January 1, 1938, on the first day of the new year, they attacked several coastal cities in Italy.

Naturally, the capital city of Rome was a primary target of the attack.

As the largest city in Italy, Rome played an absolutely crucial role from beginning to end.

As mentioned before, the unification of Italy had been too recent, and the development gap between northern and southern Italy was too wide, creating a sense of division within the country.

Using Rome as the dividing line, northern Italy above Rome could be considered an industrial region, with a higher population and more economic and industrial development.

In contrast, southern Italy below Rome, despite also having a significant population, was far behind in terms of industrial and economic growth.

Although southern Italy provided the nation with a very important food production, some people from northern Italy looked down on their southern compatriots, considering them mere country bumpkins.

Without the link of the Rome region, it would’ve been virtually impossible for northern and southern Italy to blend together.

From this perspective, the impact of bombing Rome on Italy can be seen.

The Italians were finally coming to terms with a sense of powerlessness as if being violated by a strongman.

If it were the enemy’s air force bombing Rome, Italy could have fully deployed its own air force in defense, and could have even relied on various anti-aircraft guns and weapons within the city of Rome to tip the balance of aerial victory in their favor.

Regrettably, it was the Royal Navy of the British that bombarded Rome. Although Italian airplanes could also be used against the Royal Fleet, the problem was that the enemy also had airplanes, and their scale was not at all inferior to that of Italy.

This chapter is updated by freēwēbnovel.com.

If Italy dispatched planes to attack those Royal Navy warships bombarding Rome, it would face the double firepower coverage of enemy warships and airplanes, putting the Italian Air Force on the defensive.

This was an unavoidable situation because, fundamentally, the Italian navy was far behind the scale of the British Royal Navy.

Although what was in the Mediterranean was only a part of the British fleet, it was mixed with fleets from France and Australasia, and the overall scale was still immensely powerful.

With a comparable scale of air force that could be utilized, Italy’s weak and pitiful navy was in a somewhat embarrassing position.

Using the navy wouldn’t be enough to defeat the opposition, but not using it at all would also place an extremely awkward status on the Italian navy.

This also led to the German and Italian forces in the North Africa region causing significant chaos, but their reserves of weapons and ammunition were diminishing daily.

If it weren’t for the occasional air-drop supplies from the Italian Air Force, and the ability to plunder the indigenous people for enough grain, the German and Italian forces in North Africa would have long run out of provisions.

The North African Army finally received supplies, but the British-French-Australian alliance was not at all flustered at the time.

On January 2, 1938, the Anglo-French coalition bombed the Tunisia region, focusing on places where the German and Italian garrisons might be stationed.

It wasn’t just the navy involved in the bombing; a large number of Air Force bombers joined in as well.

This was undoubtedly another blow for the German and Italian garrisons in Tunisia. Although they had just received support in the form of supplies, enduring daily intensive bombings was a double torment on the body and mind for an average soldier.

Even if taking shelter could ensure one’s safety, a variety of worries would still sweep in. Under such psychological pressure, it’s clear that a normal person couldn’t hold out for long.

If it was a matter of protecting their homeland and country, perhaps they could hold out a bit longer. But as an invader on foreign soil, facing such bombings would also amplify the psychological strain.

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The German Army might have been okay, but as for those Italian forces, their combat will was not as strong as one might imagine.

While the Italian Army’s weapons and equipment could be rated first-class among the Powers, the quality of individual soldiers certainly wasn’t the worst either.

However, the problem with the Italian Army was their lack of steadfast combat will, with many soldiers even resistant to such a war.

There are anecdotes in history, such as when the Italian forces in North Africa saw the British Military, they immediately surrendered to them.

While surrendering, Italian soldiers were cursing and complaining that the logistics teams didn’t provide a crowbar with the ammunition boxes, making it hard for them to open the boxes and access the ammunition supplies.

But when British soldiers took over the surrendered Italian materials, they discovered that each ammunition box was indeed equipped with a crowbar, and the Italian Army’s ammunition supply was even more lavish than theirs.

Another anecdote tells that after surrendering, the Italian Army, unsatisfied with the enemy’s treatment of prisoners, particularly the food they were being served at each meal, launched a rebellion. After defeating their captors, they successfully forced a change in their treatment as prisoners.

No doubt, such anecdotes unequivocally satirize the combat attitude of the Italian soldiers during World War II. Regardless of how combat-effective Italian soldiers were, as long as they lacked combat will, the overall combat effectiveness of the Italian Army was the weakest amongst the Powers.

Germany couldn’t expect Italy to turn the tide in the war, just as Mussolini couldn’t count on Italian soldiers not to surrender when faced with an enemy’s offensive.

Clearly, this was the situation that the Anglo-French army faced on the battlefield in Tunisia.

On January 3, after launching the second raid on a military fortress in the southern region of Bizerte, the British-French-Australian forces witnessed a truly shocking scene: hundreds of Italian soldiers slowly walking towards them, holding white flags aloft.

Bear in mind, they had only bombed the military fortress from the air, and it was not even time for the ground assault yet.

Even the French soldiers thought it was a German ploy. They suspected the Germans instructed the Italian soldiers to feign surrender to catch the British-French-Australian forces off guard, and then ambush them in secrecy.

But once the dispatched colonial forces confirmed that the fortress was uninhabited, the British-French-Australian forces finally believed the reality before their eyes: the Italian forces had indeed surrendered.

It’s worth mentioning that the white flags held by the Italians during their surrender seemed to vary in size, but they appeared to be made of the same material.

The British-French-Australian forces were curious as to where Italy got so many white flags for surrendering, and upon asking, they found out that all of them had been cut from the Kingdom of Italy’s National Flag.

At this moment, the astounded Frenchmen were unaware that, without Australasia, France would probably have been the country able to swiftly convert their National Flag into a flag of surrender.

It’s worth noting that the design of Italy’s National Flag originated from the era of Napoleon. During the time Napoleon Bonaparte was leading the Italian legions, he established the green, white, and red tricolor flag for the legion.

Over a long period of development, the tricolor evolved into the flag of the Italian federal states and eventually became the National Flag of the Kingdom of Italy.

Of course, the Kingdom’s National Flag also had the addition of the Savoy dynasty’s emblem in the center of the white stripe, which explained why the size of the white flags held by the Italian soldiers varied.

The surrender of the Italian Army was significant. It wasn’t about the act of surrender itself, but the fact that the surrender immediately turned Tunisia and Bizerte into a salient in the Tunisian region, fully encircled by the military of the Britain-France-Australia Three Nations.

Though Bizerte in the north still had some gaps, if the British-French-Australian forces could close this gap in time, the hundreds of thousands of German and Italian soldiers still in Tunisia and Bizerte would be trapped in a small salient by the British-French-Australian forces.

This would be a true encirclement, leaving the German and Italian forces no way to escape besides a frontal breakout.

Aside from the southern land, the salient was surrounded by the vast Mediterranean Sea on almost all sides.

The Mediterranean was filled with numerous British and French fleets. Italy, with its inferior naval strength, obviously had no way to rescue these troops by sea.

This was no British-led Dunkirk evacuation. The weakness of Italy’s naval strength had already doomed these troops; if they became trapped, the only way to flee would be to find a means by land.