"La France Continue" (LFC) a different destiny for France. (France continues to fight in 1940 by Emi

Thanks for the answer simon.

Thanks for the book recommendation, lordroel.

Interesting observation, Simon. It is obvious that Paris should be declared an open city, especially after the fate that Warsaw and Rotterdam suffered, it is very unlikely that the city could not sustain a siege, especially with disparate, under-equipped and demoralized troops in the middle of civilians trying to flee.

Unless one imagines (which a French comic strip did, surprisingly, a few years ago) that the French and British general staff decided to transform Paris into a weakly defended city in order to lure the German armies into a trap before counter-attacking on the flanks (obviously, the comic strip took other historical liberties such as the death of Hitler after the Polish campaign). But I think that if I continue Simon will resent me for not respecting the historical coherence and logistics (and that's fine).

Still stand with the statement.

Chapter 10: Landings

"I have nothing but contempt for the Italians. Only the Germans are entitled to my eternal hatred!"

Rene Massigli, who led the team of French diplomats negotiating the Italian withdrawal from the conflict.


In Europe, Operation Torch/Torch, the landing in Sicily, was taking shape. In parallel to the preparations for the latter, a violent bombing campaign was carried out on Italian industries. Miraculously, the great Italian monuments were not hit.

At least not yet...

The Italian population rumbles, it even begins to show more and more openly its rejection of Fascism. In the big cities, it was becoming more and more difficult to erase the graffiti insulting Mussolini and his clique. Better still, a general strike broke out in Milan, with the workers of the Fiat factories demanding a pay rise. The Duce's wavering power did not dare to break the strike violently and began negotiations with the strikers' representatives! The latter, made apathetic for months by the turn of events, seems to have lost the hand...

These events seem to bring closer the hour of the liberation of the first metropolitan department from the enemy occupation. Corsica. This forthcoming return of French forces to this department with its particularly active resistance will be the first exercise in re-establishing the republican administration in formerly occupied France.

And consequently the first effective implementation of the measures decided for liberated France!

Nobody in Algiers is worried about the future ordeal. The Republic is legitimate, legal and ready. The Corsican civil service will be a mixture of members of the Corsican internal resistance and civil servants withdrawn in Africa and trained for their next mission. To re-establish the authority of the State in the soon to be liberated territories.

It was rather the harshness of the future fighting in the Italian boot, which made the French and, beyond, the Allies fear a bloodbath, that gave Georges Mandel cold sweats. Anticipating this, his government secretly negotiated with... representatives of the King of Italy, who had decided (at last) to dismiss Mussolini and leave the war.

The French, strangely moderate on most points, are intractable on one subject however... Victor-Emmanuel III, the monarch who brought Mussolini to power in 1922, must abdicate in favor of his son, Prince Humbert, much less compromised than him with Fascism. For the rest, René Massigli, head of the French delegation, announced that the French government would even be in favor of maintaining the Italian monarchy in the long term, "a source of stability for the country" and, even, of maintaining the territorial integrity of the country after the Allied victory, with the exception of its colonies, which were destined to be ceded to the Allies.

In his reports to Mandel, the French diplomat mentioned a well-known fact. The Italians were not afraid of the Germans, no, they were terrorized by their cruel allies! This was the last thing that drove the country's monarchist leaders to remain in Berlin's orbit.

"When Torch is launched, they will have no choice though." Writes Massigli.

From reading these reports, the idea began to emerge that once the Axis had been chased out of Sicily, the announcement of the Italian surrender and the landing on the Italian mainland would have to be made at the same time, a landing that would have to take place as far north as possible. Why not in Ostia?...

In the Pacific, another landing was effectively launched. The one on Guadalcanal.

It was Operation Watchtower (not translated into French, as France did not take part in the operation), launched on August 7th 1942.

In addition to Guadalcanal, the US Marines also attacked the neighboring island of Tulagi. If the first one was relatively quickly secured (for the moment...), the second one was taken at the cost of terrible losses, considering the modest size of the island... As soon as Guadalcanal was secured, the Americans started to complete the construction of the airfield started by the Japanese and renamed it "Henderson Field", after an airman who fell at Midway.

While on the Japanese side, the battle was in full swing and a force of cruisers, commanded by Vice-Admiral Mikawa, rushed towards the Allied fleet, Vice-Admiral Fletcher made more than a mistake, he made a mistake...

Worried about his aircraft carriers, which he judged to be exposed to an inevitable Japanese retaliation, he abandoned nothing less than the Marine landing fleet and the sector, scalded as he was by the disaster of the Coral Sea! The aircraft carriers withdrew to Noumea, leaving the US Marines alone to face the Japanese...

The day after the landing, on the night of 8 to 9 August 1942, the imperial squadron crushed the remaining American and Australian ships, but miraculously spared the transport ships, which Mikawa deemed unworthy of being fought...

The American soldiers, numbering 10,000, were nevertheless isolated for several weeks.
In Tokyo, there was astonishment. The Americans were not considered capable of attacking before 1943, especially with the heavy losses inflicted on them by Yamamoto's navy.

The US force landed on the island was underestimated and only 5,000 soldiers were landed in the following days. They suffered heavy losses during their counter-attack on Henderson and the survivors dug in to the north of the island to await reinforcements. The Americans, also entrenched, cut off from their supply lines, were also waiting for reinforcements.

Each side saw in the confrontation that had just begun the opportunity to strike a decisive blow against its enemy.

This was the beginning of what would later be called "The Apocalypse in the Solomons".



Landing of the US Marines at Guadalcanal (August 7, 1942) (Source: Wikipedia)

Chapter 12: Counterstrike!

"Hope had changed sides, the battle changed souls.
Victor Hugo, Les Châtiments, XIII - Atonement

In October 1942, the Western Allies were actively preparing to open a second front against the Axis forces. Their designated target was Sicily, the southern tip of Italy, the "soft underbelly" of the Nazi empire, which offered a logical route to Rome, unlike Greece and Sardinia, which were much further away, especially the latter.

Nevertheless, the French leaders wanted an operation to liberate Corsica, and as quickly as possible. The General in particular would like it to be carried out by French troops only, but the other members of the government, even those who were not necessarily "American-born" as Darlan could be, did not see any stain on the honor of France if Ajaccio and Bastia were liberated by GIs... The real problem was that the island was swarming not only with Italian soldiers, but also with German troops, who were mercilessly repressing the Corsican Resistance. To attack now was to risk being thrown back into the sea, while perhaps compromising "Torch/Torche", to attack too late was to risk a bloodbath in Corsica.

"It is necessary that these cursed Italians put down the weapons as soon as possible! General Henri Giraud will say on this subject, during a staff conference.

Now, crushing the Germans in Sicily could finally be the electroshock that would definitively decide these all too pusillanimous monarchist leaders to dismiss Mussolini and to leave the war. Given René Massigli's reports, this is probably what will happen. Besides, the Italian army being massively engaged in Russia, the sudden erasure of the ARMIR from the Nazi battlefield will perhaps even provoke a total debacle on the German side! This is at least what the most optimistic allied leaders dream of...

Indeed, it was second-hand Italian units that defended the island... The real problem was the German troops of General Rommel's Heeresgruppen Mittelmeer (Mediterranean Army Group), commanded at a second level on the island by Albert Kesselring, an air force general and a formidable Nazi... Nearly 100,000 well-motivated and well-equipped Germans made up for the probable failure of the conscripts, who were not very motivated on their side, of the Royal Army. Thus, it was necessary to strike hard during "Torch/Torch" to quickly drive out the Germans before they could receive reinforcements, especially from Greece, because Rommel understood immediately that the Mediterranean landing of the Westerners would not take place in this country.

To delay the arrival of the no less formidable units stationed in Greece, the Allies counted on local resistance, from conservatives (Cheeniks (Monarchists) in Yugoslavia, EDES (Venezuelan Republicans) in Greece) to communists (KKE in Greece, Tito's Partisans in Yugoslavia) to launch major sabotage actions on the Axis lines of communication at the hour H.

The Axis kept more and more troops in Greece as it was the victim of an intoxication by the Allied secret services, the operation Mincemeat (minced meat in French). In order to make it look like a landing in Greece, the Allies deliberately abandoned the body of an anonymous man who had died of pneumonia but who was supposedly a British intelligence officer, Major Martin, on the Spanish coast. The corpse of the major would be carrying the plans of... Battleaxe! At the same time, false troop movements in Libya were to make people believe that the movement towards Athens was genuine. The Francoists hastened to transmit the information to their German friends who fell into the trap, in particular because the colonel of the Abwehr, Alexis von Roenne, a Christian with a secret aversion to the Nazis, attested to the authenticity of the documents, which removed Hitler's doubts! Hitler even opposed Mussolini, who was strategically astute enough for once, and for whom Sicily was the next logical objective of the Westerners... Thus, Hitler diverted air and land forces that were vital to the effective defense of the large island...

Anxious for military synergy, the Westerners sent senior officers of the first rank, members of SHAEF, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, to the Soviet Union. The American General Walter B. Smith, Eisenhower's second in command, British General Harold Alexander and French General Georges Catroux. The objective was to coordinate the actions of the various members of the great Alliance in order to multiply the impact of combined operations and accelerate the future defeat of the Axis. Thus, "Torch/Torch" was launched on the same day as "Uranus" (the assault aimed at encircling the Germans in Stalingrad) and "Jupiter" (the assault on the German army group in the Center).

Hitler will not know which way to turn!

Moreover, this would strengthen the ties between East and West, as Stalin could no longer accuse the West of delaying the opening of the second front that he so much wanted... It was this concern that led the Americans to accept, at the Algiers conference in July, the principle of an assault on Sicily. In fact, the Americans originally wanted to bet everything on a landing in France in 1943, which the other two Western powers, especially the British, still considered premature (despite the obvious desire of the French to liberate their homeland as quickly as possible)... For them, it was necessary to weaken the German forces in Western Europe first, by fixing a maximum in the south, in Italy. Especially since this "kick in the butt" would also push the Italian leaders to overthrow Mussolini, as reports from spies and even diplomats negotiating with envoys from Rome attest. Secretly, Churchill also wanted to use this maneuver to push the future "demarcation line" between Western influence and the "Soviet empire" as far east as possible... If these last two arguments also weighed on the French, they also wanted to put an end to the air raids on Algiers by driving the Axis out of Sicily, which had already cost the lives of nearly 2,000 people! For it was mainly from there that the Junkers and other Dorniers took off, sowing death on the provisional capital of the Republic.

The "general" counter-offensive was scheduled for November 8.

On D-Day, the cannon thundered from the steppe to the Mediterranean, while in Yugoslavia and Greece, the works of art vital to the German army were reduced to dust. The telephone rang continuously in the Wolf's Lair, the Führer's headquarters in East Prussia. The counter-offensive of the enemies of the Reich is general! In Sicily, after the Allies had gained a foothold on the island, the German air force launched a desperate counter-attack on the Allied fleet, managing to sink the British battleship HMS Barham as well as several transports, while the Italian fleet only launched two cruisers (! ) on the invasion fleet, cruisers that retreated when a fleet of torpedo boats arrived to intercept them... It should be noted that thanks to the work of Polish mathematicians Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski, who had taken refuge in Algeria since June 1940 and who had broken Enigma, the Nazi encryption machine, the Western Allies were able to know to a large extent the German-Italian plans for the defence of the island. For their part, the Allied assault force was formed as follows: In the east, General O'Connor's British VIIIth Army was to land in the south-east of Sicily, around Cape Passero and the Gulf of Noto (while paratroopers were to seize the venerable Siracusa). In the center, around Gela, was General Giraud's First French Army. Finally, on the western flank of the Allied forces, in the Licata area, was General Patton's American Seventh Army.

After the "evaporation" of the Italian defenders of the coastal pillboxes, who fled as soon as the Allied fleet appeared, and the installation of the bridgehead that followed, the real battle began. The Germans launched a powerful counter-attack against the Gela sector where the French had landed, and in particular their valuable 1st (commanded by General Jean Touzet du Vigier) and 2nd (commanded by Philippe de Hauteclocque) armoured divisions. The spearhead of the Axis counter-offensive was the Hermann Goering division and its fearsome Tiger tanks, supported by Italian units of varying degrees of motivation. However, the French fought like lions while Eisenhower made the Tiger tank battalions the priority target of the Allied air force and navy. In the end, this heroic resistance stopped the advance of these mechanical monstrosities and solidified the bridgehead. On the other hand, the German counter-offensive had to undergo a violent attack by Patton's armoured vehicles on its western flank, which allowed, in addition to the heroic resistance of Giraud's soldiers, to crush the German forces. On the evening of the battle, the famous handshake between the American general and Colonel de Hauteclocque of the 2nd armored division took place, immortalized by Robert Capa. Giraud, jealous, will do everything to be photographed next to Eisenhower.





Too late, the legend of the brave Picard was on the march...

Having realized that it was impossible to drive the Allies back into the sea, the Germans entrenched themselves in the northeast triangle of the island, relying in particular on the city of Catania and Mount Etna, in order to prevent the British from going back to Messina, which would block all communication routes and possibly retreat. For in Italy, events were moving quickly. On the night of November 23-24, Mussolini was (finally) deposed by King Victor Emmanuel III following a vote of no confidence by the Fascist Grand Council, before being arrested and replaced by Marshal Badoglio. However, the Germans were not fooled by his declarations that the "war was going on" and they prepared their response...

In Russia, at the same time as Torch/Torch, the Soviets attacked the army groups of the Center and the South. Not far from Stalingrad, it is the Romanian army which suffers the shock, and which, in spite of a stubborn resistance, overtaken on all levels, finally collapses... The 2 pliers then rush towards Kalatch, on the Don, in order to close the pocket and to isolate the VIth army in the smoking ruins of Stalingrad, where it had however reached in several places, the Volga. Kalach was finally reached on November 11. The men of von Paulus are isolated...

In the center, it is another matter. The defenses, held by soldiers of the Wehrmacht, are much stronger than around Stalingrad, the front being almost fixed since the fall of the salient of Rjev, early in the year. But the gigantic means employed by the Soviets made the edifice bend, without breaking. The army group of the Center succeeded in its retreat and was not destroyed, as originally planned by "Jupiter". Nevertheless, the Soviets can be proud of having driven the "Fascists" out of Smolensk.
Regarding "Jupiter" again, the German General Staff draws the following conclusion. The defenses of the sector, almost worthy of the previous conflict, have almost held their role. Certainly, the front has retreated, but it has not collapsed, while the Germans sometimes fought at 1 against 10 in some points! This pushed Hitler to transpose the idea of the "Atlantic Wall" to the East.

This was the genesis of the Panther-Wotan Line.

On the southern front, Hitler faced a desperate situation. Certainly, he could assemble an ad hoc Kampfgruppe under the direction of von Manstein to break the fatal embrace suffered by the men of von Paulus, but for the operation to succeed, the Don front had to hold. However, it was largely held by the ARMIR, while Italy was preparing to withdraw from the conflict in all likelihood! Hitler then took an extraordinary decision, when one knows his character.

He ordered the VIth to attempt a sortie and the Caucasus Army Group to make a general retreat along the Rostov-Kursk line in a repeat of the Russian retreat.

130 years later...

At the same time, Manstein's Kampfgruppe will hold back a little from the positions held by the Italians and the Hungarians on the Don in order to compensate for the certain failure of the first, and probable of the second, to allow to leave open the way of salvation for the conquerors of the Caucasus, from now on defeated. For his Ostwall project, the Eastern Wall, Hitler mobilized nearly a hundred thousand Soviet forced laborers, and this in the middle of winter, because the work was immediately set in motion by order of the Führer, despite the extreme weather conditions!

Hope had changed sides, the battle changed souls, as Victor Hugo might have said...

Eisenhower

Chapter 13: Crisis


Do you want total war?"
Excerpt from Goebbels' speech at the Berlin Sportpalast, February 18, 1943

Catastrophic news from the Eastern Front reached the Wolfsschanze, Adolf Hitler's personal headquarters in East Prussia, every day. The VIth Army was virtually annihilated in its attempt to break through to the west. Thus, only a few scattered groups of isolated men managed to reach the German "lines". These "groups" correspond to less than 10 % of the forces present in Stalingrad before the release of Uranus! At the same time, the units retreating from the Caucasus lead a difficult and inglorious retreat, harassed as they are by the Soviet troops. Worse, the way to salvation depends only on the Italian troops positioned on the Don River, and from December 8 onwards, they are confronted with the Soviet forces who want to seize Rostov, within the framework of the Saturn operation. However, Italy was about to lay down its arms...


Fortunately for Germany, the new Italian government was in little hurry to sign the terms of its surrender with the Allies, rightly fearing the appalling response from Berlin. This saved the Caucasus Army Group, which could largely withdraw to a Kharkov-Rostov line, but also gave the German generals and the Führer time to fine-tune Operation Alaric (Unternehmen Alarich), the disarmament of the Italian army and the takeover of the peninsula. Moreover, since Italy was still officially a member of the Axis, the Germans were able to settle in the northern half of the peninsula without the slightest opposition, officially to oppose the Western invasion.

Most regrettably, the Allies were far too cautious (despite the inevitable conclusion of an agreement with the Badoglio government). Thus, the Anglo-Americans landed south of Rome, first in Regio di Calabria on January 6, where they did not encounter any opposition, and then in the region of Salerno on January 12, where, conversely, the Anglo-Saxons faced stubborn resistance from the German divisions (and where they had to repel the enraged counter-attacks of a panzer division) but also... from Italy! The armistice concluded after the assault on Calabria was not yet officially announced!

However, the Italians were very badly organized. Indeed, in order to keep their intentions secret, they did not give any instructions to their forces on the measures to be taken following the announcement of the capitulation. However, eager to force Badoglio and Victor-Emmanuel III to order the Italian soldiers to stop fighting their troops, the Western leaders had the content of the secret agreement concluded between them and the Italians announced by Radio-Alger. The Italians, ashamed, had to announce the armistice to their fellow citizens.

However, as German and Italian units were often close to each other, what had to happen happened after the armistice was announced.

Badoglio, shortly after confirming the armistice on the Roman radio, left the capital in the company of the king and their families, giving only sketchy defense instructions to the garrison defending the Eternal City. This joyful troop fled to Brindisi, in Puglia, leaving their unfortunate country at the mercy of the Germans' retaliation and the Fascists' revenge... Immediately after hearing the announcement of the armistice, the Germans launched Alaric.

If, on paper, the operation will unfortunately be an almost total success for Hitler, in several points, the Italian army and, beyond, the people of the boot, will lead a desperate resistance to Alaric. Let us note the sacrifice of the garrison of the island of Cephalonia, which, once defeated for lack of ammunition, will be massacred by the Germans! If Rome fell relatively easily, many Italian civilians and soldiers tried to oppose the coup de force of their former allies. Better still, Italy was covered with numerous "maquis" who harassed the invaders as well as their fascist affiliates. For in fact, everywhere in Italy groups of maquisards, socialists, communists, monarchists, conservatives and liberals were formed to fight against the Nazi invaders

La guerra è finita,inizia la guerra civile! The war is over, the civil war begins.

For in fact, at the same time, Mussolini, after having experienced his "great wanderings" through Italy, was finally released from his place of captivity, located in the Gran Sasso massif, in Abruzzo, by a Nazi Kommando, commanded by Otto Skorzeny, within the framework of the Eiche operation. Immediately transported to the Führer, he was immediately "parachuted" by the latter at the head of the Fascist puppet state that would replace the authority of the Kingdom of Italy, which the Nazis intended to establish in the north of the peninsula.

The Italian Social Republic, soon nicknamed the "Republic of Salo", after the small town on the shores of Lake Garda, where most of the republican ministries would be based.

The fight between "republicans" and "anti-fascists" will be merciless... It will wound Italy in its flesh while giving it back its soul...

One even sees in Yugoslavia certain Italian soldiers rallying the Partisans of Tito! A less important fraction rallied on its side the Cheeniks forces. Moreover, the certainty of an Italian defection at first, and then its realization, forced the Germans to cancel the offensive they had planned to launch against Tito, who taunted them from his "capital", Bihac, geographically located in Bosnia (but politically in Ustasha Croatia). Better still, the Yugoslav Partisans seized the majority of the weapons abandoned by the routed Italian soldiers!

For Mihailovic, this was a serious failure. The leader of the Cheeniks was outmaneuvered by the Communist Partisans not only in terms of taking their weapons from the Italians, but also in the territorial field, as the Partisans had taken a much larger share of the Yugoslav territories occupied by the Italian army than the Cheeniks. However, the monarchist soldier retained the unwavering support of the authorities in Algiers, while in London, murmurs began to be heard... Finally, the Italian fleet, or rather what was left of it, joined the Allies. At the same time, in Albania, the Germans also reacted quickly by occupying the country's cities. Anxious to attract the goodwill of nationalist groups, they proclaimed the independence of the country, which retained the region of Kosovo. However, it should be noted that Albania was the only country occupied by Nazi Germany to see its Jewish population increase during the conflict!

However, overall, the Italian army was disarmed without having had time to organize any resistance. Nevertheless, only a few tens of thousands of soldiers, mostly fascists, agreed, at first, to continue the war on the side of the Nazis. The rest were locked up in prison camps and harshly treated. Better still, in Corsica, the Italian army began to restore its reputation. Let's see how.

Indeed, the French troops did not participate in Operation Husky (the Salerno landing). In fact, they were kept in reserve by Eisenhower in order to reconstitute themselves for future operations in continental Italy.


However, while the Wehrmacht had already abandoned Sardinia, due to the massive bombardments of the Allied air force, Corsica, which was blockaded by the Allied fleets, trapping the German garrison, saw the local resistance, one of the most active in mainland France, trigger a general uprising against the occupier on January 13, 1943, an uprising which was joined by... the Italian garrison! The Italian general Messe, after a short hesitation, and seeing the brutal takeover of Italy by the Germans, decided to rally the king's government and help the Corsican maquisards to liberate their island. The Germans therefore fought against their former allies and the Corsican resistance fighters. They did so with obstinacy.


The French officers were incensed. Indeed, the commander-in-chief of the Allied forces, the American General Eisenhower, refused to support the resistance fighters, considering their uprising "premature". His refusal even provoked a feeling of revolt in the heart of a French general, who was not very inclined to disobey his superiors, but who could not bear the idea of standing by while Corsica died. Henri Giraud, commander of the First French Army, turned to Georges Mandel, himself shocked, who, through the intermediary of Paul Reynaud, French ambassador to Washington, obtained Roosevelt's agreement to order Eisenhower to detach part of the First French Army to support the revolt.


Eisenhower gave in to his president and agreed to launch operation Vesuvius.


The German resistance in Corsica quickly collapsed following the intervention of Giraud's troops, in which the colonel of the 2nd armoured division, Philippe De Hautecloque, once again distinguished himself.

Corsica is a symbol, it is the first metropolitan territory liberated, partly by the internal resistance, partly by the army of Algiers. It was also a laboratory for the organization of the return of the Republican administration to French territory. A most successful experience with the return of the authority of the republican state in Corsica through the reinstatement of the... Commissioner of the Republic, the former prefect of Corsica, Jules Henri Anastase Petitjean. Indeed, one of the secret decisions taken by the "Preparatory Commission for the great political and social reforms for liberated France" was the replacement of the term "Prefect", coming from the Napoleonic Empire, by that of "Commissioner of the Republic", coming from the Second Republic. Beyond the "announcement effect", the holders of the newly created function will be less powerful than their predecessors. It is indeed planned in the long term to give the executive powers of the departments to the president of the general councils, elected by indirect universal suffrage. Once the war was over, the commissioner would only exercise a posteriori control over decisions taken by the general councils. De Gaulle sulked, but he continued to weave his networks to obtain a Fourth Republic...

In the Aegean Sea, Churchill decided to support the Italian garrison of the Dodecanese Islands (an Italian colony that included the island of Rhodes), which was threatened by a German retaliation. The operation was a success, with most of the Italian garrison rallying to the Allies. Only the Blackshirts remained loyal to Mussolini and his social republic and were therefore interned. Churchill would like to go further and organize a landing on the Greek mainland (and he knew that he would easily obtain the agreement of the French), but the harshness of the fighting in Italy and the resources it required, as well as the presence of large German forces in Greece, finally dissuaded him.

Salazar, the Portuguese dictator, understood that the tide had definitely turned in favor of the Allies and decided to get closer to them. The first gesture of this policy was the recall of his ambassador to Paris. Instead, it was Algiers and the French Republic that Lisbon recognized as the representative of the French people. However, Mandel rejected the various names of ambassador proposed by Salazar and asked that Lisbon send him a man he considered a hero...

Aristides de Sousa Mendes.

Consul of Portugal in Bordeaux in June 1940, he had, as we have already seen, issued thousands of visas to personalities wishing to flee invaded France to reach either America or North Africa via Portugal. De Sousa Mendes also saved thousands of Jews from Hitler's clutches. Mandel, who wished to reward this hero and send a strong signal, expressly asked Salazar to represent Portugal in Algiers. Mendes, who had been in disgrace since June 1940, regained his status. Better still, the following March, Portugal ceded an air base in the Azores to the Allies. From then on, the central Atlantic was covered by the Allied air force. The arrival of a large number of escort aircraft carriers allowed the Allies to launch their counter-attack against the "wolf packs" that were still wreaking havoc in the North Atlantic.

Franco's Spain also began to distance itself from the Axis powers. Thus, the Caudillo asked for the recall of the Spanish Azul Division fighting on the Eastern Front. Only volunteers remained, now fighting as the Legion Azul.

On January 30, the British, who were definitely not lacking in "humor", celebrated in their own way the anniversary of the Nazi takeover by launching a raid on Berlin. The raid took place at the same time that Goebbels and Goering were giving a speech on the occasion of the anniversary. It should be noted that Hitler himself did not make a speech on this occasion, the first sign of the dictator's withdrawal from public life as military setbacks began to multiply. Moreover, the Reich suffered a serious setback in the race for nuclear power when the Norwegian resistance destroyed the heavy water plant in Telemark.

Faced with this situation, the Führer summoned the Bulgarian sovereign, Tsar Boris III, to the Berghof (where Mussolini was, having been freed by German commandos). The German dictator asked him (or rather ordered him) to go to war against the USSR and to send an expeditionary force to the east. The monarch replied that this was impossible, mainly because of the Russophilia of his people. Hitler then entered into a black anger and criticized the Bulgarian sovereign so strongly that he fell ill. He died a few days later in Sofia. Despite the fact that some historians today consider Hitler innocent of the death of Boris III, the deceased czar would not be the first victim of a crisis of hysteria of the Führer ... In March 1939, the president of Czechoslovakia mutilated, Emil Hacha, was indeed a victim of a stroke following direct threats from Hitler ...

His young son, Simeon II, succeeded him on the throne. Nevertheless, if the three regents (Prince Cyril of Bulgaria, brother of the deceased Tsar and uncle of Simeon II, the previous Bulgarian president of the council, Bogdad Filov, and General Nikola Mihov) continued the Bulgarian support to Germany, they did not send troops to the Eastern Front...

Goebbels, in a great speech held on February 18, 1943 at the Berlin Sports Palace in front of the highest dignitaries of the Third Reich proclaimed "total war" to his fanatical audience. Anxious to reach a maximum audience, his diatribe was also broadcast on the radio. Moreover, the few Germans actively opposing Nazism suffered a sad setback with the dismantling of the anti-Nazi resistance network "The White Rose". The members of this network were beheaded after an iniquitous trial...

Georges Mandel, who was aware of the existence of an anti-Nazi resistance in Germany itself, but who also had objectives that were far less moral than taking into account the existence of Germans who were not subservient to Hitler, namely to dress up in a nice role, while the objective of everyone in Algiers was the destruction of Germany, stated, in a declaration countersigned by the members of his government, that the enemy of the French Republic was not the German people, but "its cruel leaders", and called on it to rise up against them.


The President of the French Council would have liked to address the Congress (which includes the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate and the Council of the Empire) to respond to the Nazi, but he was secretly on his way to Quebec where a conference was to be held during which the Big Three (the United States, Great Britain and France) would decide on the strategy to be pursued in Europe and the Pacific as well as on the fate of defeated Italy.

Among the decisions made in Quebec City were:

- The priority given to an assault on France for 1944 over a Balkan strategy. Concerning Yugoslavia and Greece, one will be satisfied with supporting the local guerrillas. This decision was taken to the great despair of Churchill. But the British Prime Minister has not said his last word...

- The intensification of the air campaign against the Reich in order to prepare the ground for the planned assault on France.

- As far as Italy was concerned, it was granted a cobelligerent status, but was not considered a full ally. Moreover, all of its colonies were withdrawn after the war.

- In the Pacific, an assault will be launched during the following summer against the island of Bougainville, three new American aircraft carriers (the USS Essex, the USS Yorktown second of the name and the USS Bunker Hill) having left the shipyards in all likelihood at that time, the air cover necessary for the operation will be provided. It was also decided to further increase aid to China (which had dazzled the Allies with its fierce resistance during Operation Ichi-Go) and to strengthen the submarine weapon in order to weaken Japan by cutting it off even more than it already was from the resources it had seized in 1942.

The Quadrant conference report is an opportunity for us to review the situation on the Pacific front of the war.

From late September to early October 1942, the Japanese "Tokyo Express" was in full swing, constantly bringing more Japanese troops to Cactus, the island of Guadalcanal. A horrible war of position, leading to a terrible attrition among the 2 camps, took place along the Matanikau river, which obliged each belligerent to constantly reinforce its manpower to be able to maintain its positions...

Thus, during the night of 13 to 14 October 1942, the situation on the island made two powerful naval squadrons, each escorting a reinforcement convoy for their camp. The Japanese, well aware of the decisive nature of the battle, had their convoy escorted by two battleships, the Kirishama and the Hiei, accompanied by a fleet of cruisers and torpedo boats. Moreover, the presence of these powerful ships provided artillery support for the Empire's "final offensive" on Henderson.

However, the Allied fleet was ahead of its opponent, albeit by a small margin. This allowed the Allies to get into position and to watch for the approach of the Japanese with their state-of-the-art radars while taking advantage of the cover of night. France could be proud, because the battleship Richelieu was there! Equipped with state-of-the-art radar, as we have seen, it was ready to pour death into the Japanese ranks, who did not expect any resistance, thinking that the "Americans" were absent, or at worst far away. At the most opportune moment, when the Allies were about to be seen by the Nipponese, but were still invisible to them, so at the moment when they were relatively close, Admiral Norman Scott ordered to unleash a hellfire. Totally caught off guard, the Japanese commander, Admiral Goto Aritomo, even believes he is being attacked by his own fleet!

His last words to his men were "You bastard idiots"...

The Japanese tried to fight back as best they could, but due to the presence of the Washington and the Richelieu, they were also inferior in terms of firepower. Their battleships were sent to the bottom of the sea, as well as the cruiser Aoba, while the rest of their fleet withdrew to Rabaul. Victorious, the Allied ships were able to provide significant fire support which, combined with the absence of substantial reinforcements, allowed the Marines to push the Japanese infantrymen well beyond the Matanikau River, thus expanding the defensive perimeter of Henderson Field.
Yamamoto, aware of the failure of the strategy to recapture Guadalcanal at all costs, convinced the Imperial General Staff to launch an evacuation operation from Cactus. This was done at the beginning of January, when destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy evacuated the last Japanese soldiers present on the island.

But this evacuation did not mean the end of the Solomon campaign. Yamamoto, on whom the "sailors" were aligned, agreed with the army to establish a common strategy. Abandoning the Central Solomon Islands, Japanese defense in the region will focus on Bougainville, the large island located at the northernmost point of the Solomon Islands. Thus, soldiers evacuated from Guadalcanal will reinforce the garrison, which has orders to fight to the death.

In the meantime, although the land battle took a break, the fighting did not stop in the sky. Japanese heroes emerge such as Sakai Saburō, Ōta Toshio and Nishizawa Hiroyoshi, who shoot down dozens of Allied aircraft between them. At sea, Japan also defended itself rather well. A Japanese submarine sank the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Camberra while several other units were either sunk or damaged.

Faced with the Homeric resistance of the "rising sun" pilots, as in the Greek stories of antiquity, only one hero can stop another. But one or more heroes emerge in the Allied camp. Boyington's bastards of Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, a veteran of the Flying Tigers, which fights for years so the imperialism of Hiro-Hito's Japan, soon inflict serious setbacks to the Japanese pilots. Ōta himself is killed in action, leaving Sakai and Nishizawa "orphans".Worse, Japan can only make up for its losses with pilots who are too poorly trained where the Allies at least take the time to properly train their new recruits.

But Yamamoto, who was preparing a tour of the troops stationed in the Japanese bases in the South Pacific (Rabaul, Port-Moresby, Lae...) in order to raise their seriously shaken morale, a tour that would prove to be a huge propaganda success, had, despite this "success" and the fact that the war seemed to be more of a stalemate than anything else, clearly understood that Tojo's war was a folly. Indeed, he knew it from the beginning... The Japanese admiral knew all the better the industrial power of his American enemies, having lived in their country between the two wars, and knew it to be clearly superior to that of Japan. He was also able to feel the position of the Americans in the face of a conflict and was perfectly aware that the latter also knew no other war than the one aiming at the total rout of the opponent.

And after such a heavy blow as the one Japan dealt to the all-powerful America at Pearl Harbor, the admiral knows that the Yankees will not stop fighting until they have knocked down Japan... Yamamoto Isoroku prays in his heart that the gods will have mercy on Japan and that they will give him the opportunity to end this conflict in a way that is honorable for the Empire of the Rising Sun...




Aristide de Sousa Mendes