Chapter 58:


    Chapter 58


    Churchill was never a good prime minister.


    He was stubborn and upromising.


    His temperament made him many political enemies, and even more personal ones.


    His obstinacy led him to many failures – especially in Gallipoli and France – and Britain had to suffer defeat because of him.


    But he refused to ept a cowardly peace and insisted on fighting to the end, and he carried out his conviction.


    “I will never run away! If I die, the Nazis will have to drag my corpse from the office chair at 10 Downing Street! The only future for Britain is victory, victory at any cost, victory no matter how long and hard the road. Victory alone. I am willing to give up my life for that victory, like the sons of the great British Empire who went before me!”


    The cab decided to evacuate to sgow to stop the advancing German army, which was approaching London. But Churchill insisted on defending London to thest.


    “Without you, Prime Minister, our cab cannot survive!”


    Churchill looked at his ministers with his characteristic bulging eyes and chuckled.


    The old lion refused to bow down even though he had lost his teeth.


    “There is no need to say such ttering words to me, an old stubborn man. It is because of my stubbornness that this historic city is on the verge of falling, and the people are divided. It is all my fault. My fault.”


    No one could argue with his resolute attitude.


    “And a loser like me can only sink with his defeat. If I cowardly run away from here and try to cling to the pitiful title of prime minister, who will recognize us? Even the people will abandon us.”


    “Prime Minister!”


    “The captain goes down with the ship! I’m sorry, Attlee, Eden. I’m passing on too heavy a burden to you. Don’t resent me, I have no shame.”


    Damn it! If you know that, please evacuate.


    Attlee wanted to shout that, but the old man’s stubbornness had be something that could never be broken.


    Or maybe he should hand over the temporary prime minister position to Eden of the Conservative Party…


    ‘Why me? Why!’


    Churchill, who signed the order to destroy the factories and shipyards that were the basis of the industry in order not to hand over Britain’s industrial base to the Nazis,ughed hoarsely.


    “Well, I’ll sign the hardest orderst. Now, hurry, hurry up. They say those bastards are using big bombs?”


    London was now being bombed.


    The Nazis seemed to covet Britain’s industrial base.


    The shipyards where battleships and aircraft carriers were still being built, factories that produced nes and various military supplies.


    He had to destroy all of this.


    He knew that after losing this, there was no longer a future as the world’s greatest naval power for the British Empire, but he couldn’t just hand them over to the Nazis.


    Many civilians were evacuating. Northward, northward.


    The German army hadnded on the southern coast and was advancing along the shortest route to London, while troops defending London were moving south from the north, and civilians were heading in the opposite direction.


    “It will take at least a week for the US troops tond in Britain to support us. Prime Minister, can you defend London until then?”


    “As long as I have to defend it. I’ll defend it somehow.”


    The US had officially deployed troops after dering war on Germany.


    Although the ground forces had not been fully mobilized yet, two divisions that were immediately mobilized had reached full strength, and 20 more divisions were being formed.


    Most of the US Army forces were on the western and southern Mexican borders, and there were only regiment-sized homnd defense forces or Marine Corps forces stationed on the east coast, so they needed time.


    But Churchill believed in America’s immense potential.


    And he believed in the Soviet Union.


    Even though they were allies who spied on each other despite being allies, they had inflicted more than a million casualties on Germany so far.


    France, which boasted itself as Europe’s strongestnd power, couldn’tst more than six weeks even with Britain’s full support, but the Soviet Union fought evenly with Germany for almost six months, sometimes with an advantage.


    Now that the Americans are here, we can win! Defend London!


    “Waaaaah! Long live the British Empire! Defend our homnd!”


    The mobilized troops consisted mostly of Home Guards made up of middle-aged men who hadst touched a gun in the previous war, except for some elite regiments or local police.


    There was no armored force to counteract the four full-strength armored divisions thatnded and pushed in by Germany.


    They had to hastily finish and bring out Valentine tanks that were being made in factories.


    The two battalion-sized armored unitsposed of Valentine and Matilda tanks weremanded by the most experienced general among those who remained – those who had not been captured in Dunkirk and Africa – Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the Free France in exile.


    “Men! Will you bring dishonor to France in front of the British!”


    “No!”


    “We have nowhere else to run! Our homnd has been trampled under the boots of Nazi Germany, and the glory of great France has been thrown into the gutter. The country under the Vichy regime is not France! It is not France if it is not great!”


    Free France had fought alongside Britain, but they had suffered defeat after defeat from Germany.


    France’s ‘great army’ surrendered to Germany in just six weeks, and a puppet government led by Marshal Petain was established in Vichy.


    At the port of Mers-el-Kebir, Germany seeded in taking most of the French fleet, and former Minister Georges Mandel, who had tried to escape and establish an exile government in Africa, was dragged away to a concentration camp somewhere in Germany by the traitorous French governor of Moro.


    The main force of the army was all under the control of Vichy France, and only a few joined the Free French government led by de Gaulle in Britain or Africa.


    They started without a single tank or artillery, and joined the British army in endless battles, but lost most of them, and even lost their colonies to Vichy France.


    The only colony that supported Free France, Chad governor Felix Eboue, was assassinated by Vichy supporters, and the Equatorial African colonies he had tried to persuade, such as Congo and Cameroon, all swore absolute loyalty to Vichy France.


    There was no longer a single colony that supported Free France.


    The anti-French dissidents in the colonies who had tried to negotiate alsopletely ignored Free France as if they had no power, and some even sold Free French spies to the Nazis and Vichy.


    All that remained were his subordinates who had followed him into exile from his old days as an armored divisionmander.


    There was nowhere else to retreat or fall.


    “By the cross of Lorraine! We will return to Paris! Come back alive, you have too much to do here to die. Long live France! Long live! Long live!”


    “Long live! Long live Free France!”


    The sound of tank engines became a roar and the French shouted long live.


    The British who were with them seemed to not understand what they were saying, but they followed suit.


    Long live France! Long live Free France!


    Drive out the Nazis!


    The Nazi army had advanced to the outskirts of London with fanatical loyalty-armed boy soldiers.


    Their entire force was concentrated on London, and if London could hold their offensive for a few days, America could send reinforcements.


    The German army did not attack the major ports such as Cardiff, Bristol, or Liverpool in Wales or the west coast due to their limited manpower and supply capacity, and only focused on London.


    Even though London was being bombed into ruins, as long as they had a port where the Americans coulde…!


    ***


    “Are you ready?”


    “Yes, sir. All squadrons are ready for bombing.”


    When did they make so many bombers? Rommel was surprised by the unexpected forces.


    Marshal Goering said he had turned most of his forces to the west because he could not throw his precious nes into the snowstorm in Soviet Russia after the air raid on the eastern front.


    But this scale?


    He must have taken a lot of money from the army and invested it in the navy and air force.


    He thought so.


    But what does it matter? It’s just a show. When will I ever get such a lot of support?


    A huge fireworks show was about to begin.


    The air force reconnaissance squadron offered special seats to the seniormand of the army if they wanted to see it from above, but Rommel politely declined for fear of a possible counterattack by the British air force.


    “We will show you how one of the oldest cities in the world turns into ashes and burns! Hahahahaha!! It may have taken thousands of years to build it, but it only takes tens of hours to tear it down.”


    ‘The butcher of the sky’ Richthofen appeared on the western front this time andmanded the bombing of London. Dozens of Groser Yung bombs and thousands of incendiary bombs. He seemed to enjoy this huge firework too much.


    Although he couldn’t carry out indiscriminate bombing against civilians as he liked because most of them had evacuated, he seemed to be satisfied with destroying this historic city.


    Most of the British air force was not defending London but protecting civilian evacuation columns from German ground attacks.


    Richthofen sent Stukas from time to time to bomb civilian evacuation columns.


    “Shooting at civilians? Are you sane?”


    “They were surely soldiers disguised as civilians!”


    He insisted stubbornly and was endorsed by the Führer himself.


    ‘Respect the judgment of the air forcemander’. But Rommel could not respect Richthofen’s judgment.


    London tried to defend the city from the bombing by gathering as many anti-aircraft guns as possible and setting up a dense barrage, but there was a clear limit to the anti-aircraft guns alone.


    Richthofen imed that if he formed a dense formation and bombed at an altitude of 2,000 meters, which was a blind spot between the machine guns and therge-caliber anti-aircraft guns, he could achieve both maximum st and uracy.


    And his strategy had indeed shown considerable results on the eastern front.


    “And this time, we have developed a new way of bombing. The conventional high-explosive bombing had a limit in inflicting damage on the city, while the incendiary bombing showed tremendous lethality even in the city. Also, like this…”


    The bombing n he showed was truly outrageous.


    It was an operation that poured, literally poured, incendiary bombs that could be used for months in just three days over London.


    They delivered incendiary bombs over London as if they were delivering them, came back, reloaded, flew again, and poured them again… They came and went, pouring tens of thousands of tons of incendiary bombs a day.


    Arge part of the limited supply line was filled with incendiary bombs for this.


    It was a simple but cruel method.


    When an Italian general asked if there was no problem with coteral damage to civilians, Richthofenughed like a madman.


    “Oh, General. My kind and gentle General. Did you ask about civilians? Civilians?”


    “Th… that’s right…”


    “There are no innocent civilians in this war! Our kind General. Those British citizens are criminals who support the warmonger Churchill and put him in the prime minister’s seat, and they are the ones who wage war with the British government.


    They produce weapons that kill our German and Italian sons and shoot at us with guns. We are not only fighting against armed enemies, but also against their productivity!”


    The generals closed their mouths.


    War against productivity.


    It was an expression that contained some insight. But they could not ept the ‘insight’ that this lunatic suggested.


    Rommel himself thought so.


    What was the Führer thinking? Didn’t he want to upy and control Britain?


    How could we rule Britain if we destroyed it so brutally? Would the puppet government we set up in Britain support us?


    Wouldn’t they be dragged down by angry mobs in an instant…


    Of course, he knew that killing civilians was not good for public opinion, so until recently, the German army had sprayed leaflets that tolerated the evacuation of the British.


    Nevertheless, there were still those who remained: local defense forces called ‘Home Guards’ and their families, and stubborn natives who refused to leave London.


    Churchill also refused to leave London and dered to fight to the death.


    Some sighed at his words.


    We may be able to upy Britain… but can we rule it?