stonecrandall Chapter 499
Chapter 499
“”Hurry, hurry, and hurry up!”
The German army launched a fierce attack on Dunkirk, and the coalition forces were also rushing towards Dunkirk!
They knew very well that if the German army occupied this place, they would lose the last hope of retreat, and they would have to fall into the huge encirclement of the German army and fight a desperate battle with the German army!
Although the coalition forces had never enjoyed such a large encirclement, Mainz’s hand was very large. At this time, the entire Belgium and part of Gaul became the encirclement of the German army. The coalition forces were surrounded in a huge area with a total area of nearly 60,000 square kilometers and a battlefield width of nearly 600 kilometers!
If it was in World War I, in this situation, if someone told the coalition forces that they had been surrounded, the coalition forces would never believe it!
Just the slow offensive rhythm of both sides in World War I, and the snail-like advancement… If they can only advance five kilometers a day, it would be considered very good if they can slow down the advance speed and attack freely!
However, in World War II, it was completely different!
Hans’s armored forces are rapidly expanding the width and breadth of the battlefield at an unprecedented speed!
Perhaps, when the war just broke out, people in Gaul thought that the war was far away from them, especially those places far away from the border areas, such as Eiffel Tower City and Dunkirk, which were the rear areas in World War I!
If someone told them that the German army would suddenly come here in a few days and asked them to escape quickly, they would not believe it nine out of ten times.
Because the experience of World War I told them that it was almost impossible to push the front line here in just a few days!
In World War I, Germany The army tried their best and spent several months launching the offensive, but they still couldn’t break through to such a deep inland area. So the Gauls in these areas were obviously unprepared for the war!
However, Hans’s armored forces turned out, and the experience they accumulated in World War I immediately turned into poison that killed them!
When the coalition forces were still following the routine, digging trenches, building bunkers, and constructing solid defense lines in the border areas of the two countries, and then deploying a large number of troops waiting for the enemy to attack.
The German army was not fooled at all. The German army did not have a fixed position at all, and would not try to dig trenches on the battlefield, lay out barbed wire, and fight a stupid battle with the coalition forces in the way of World War I!
They didn’t do this at all. They suddenly rushed out from the gap in the coalition defense line and immediately brought the flames of war to the back of the coalition forces. After that, the defense line that the coalition forces had carefully prepared on the front line instantly lost its function.
Moreover, the German army’s advancement speed was extremely fast, and it could advance more than 300 kilometers in one day. At this speed, the garrisons in various places that were not prepared were caught off guard and had no ability to resist the German attack!
Therefore, wherever the First Army went, the coalition forces almost collapsed at the touch of a button, and were quickly wiped out by them!
The German armored forces were not only fast, but also very powerful in offensive capabilities. They showed extremely powerful assault capabilities in the battle to attack Dunkirk.
The coalition forces on the defense line lacked the means to effectively deal with German tanks, and their hastily constructed defense lines were not strong enough. In addition, they were bombarded by Stuka bombers before the war, and completely lost the ability to fight against the German Gaunt torrent.
So they could only watch the German tanks rush from their front to their positions, and then use 75mm tank guns and machine guns on the tanks to shoot at them hiding in the trenches!
This kind of battle directly stunned the coalition forces. When have they ever experienced such a battle!
In the past, they only had to stay in the trenches, avoid the enemy’s artillery fire, and then when the enemy launched a charge, they would desperately harvest the enemy’s lives with heavy machine guns. As long as the heavy machine guns kept firing, the enemy would not be able to capture their positions.
When has there ever been a situation where the enemy rushed to the position with a charge and then had to engage in hand-to-hand combat?
No, they didn’t even have a chance to engage in hand-to-hand combat, because the German tanks were always in the front, so that their attacks could only hit the tanks. Ordinary attacks could not hurt the tanks. The tactics of using explosive packs to try to destroy the tanks were also resolved by the assault rifles and submachine guns in the hands of the infantry behind the tanks!
As a result, the coalition forces retreated step by step, and soon lost all their positions, and completely retreated into the city, fighting a desperate battle!
Almost no one knew how to limit and how to deal with the attack of the German tank forces.
In this case, it was impossible to defend Dunkirk!
On November 13, 1927, the last coalition force still resisting in Dunkirk surrendered to the German army. The defensive battle of Dunkirk lasted less than two days and ended!
Although the battle did not last long, the brutality of this battle was extremely high!
According to statistics from the German army after the war, more than half of the 150,000 coalition forces defending Dunkirk were killed or wounded, with corpses everywhere in the city and a scorched earth outside the city.
Most of them died in the fierce bombing of the German army, and some lost their lives in the fierce attack of the armored forces!
In the battle to attack Dunkirk, the performance of the German Air Force was remarkable. If Goering had not desperately put a large number of bombers here to help them bomb the enemy, the main force of the coalition forces coming down from the north might have been in place long ago, and Guderian might not be able to bite off this hard bone so smoothly!
In this battle, the best performance was the 100 B-29s equipped by the German army. After the war started, they took advantage of their long range and long air time. They did not bomb the frontline positions, but handed this task to the Stuka dive bombers. Then they divided themselves into two parts. One part went to Dunkirk and carried out carpet bombing here!
Mainly destroying the ports and docks in Dunkirk, preventing the reinforcements from the other side of the strait from rushing to help, and creating trouble for the attack of the First Army!
The other part went north and bombed the Allied forces going south to Dunkirk along the way!
The coalition forces had never suffered such a fierce air raid. Because they were worried about the safety of Dunkirk, the order issued by the coalition command was a death order, requiring all troops to rush to Dunkirk as soon as possible at all costs to help the defenders.
Therefore, a large number of troops could only travel south to support at night without any cover.
The air supremacy in Benelux and other places was completely in the hands of the German army. Whether it was day or night, as long as these troops appeared on the road, they could not avoid the eyes and ears of the German army. The
German B-29 bombers were specifically watching them, keeping more than 30 in the air at any time. Once they found that the coalition troops were heading south, they would immediately rush up and bomb them!
This method of marching in open areas gave the German Air Force the opportunity to cause huge casualties.
The coalition soldiers had no way to dodge in the open areas, and Benelux and other places were all plains. They had no other way to protect themselves except lying on the spot!
The German bombing was carried out according to the carpet-style intensive bombing tactics of one bomb every 50 meters, which meant that in the areas covered by bombs, except for a very few lucky ones, other soldiers who were taken care of would almost never be spared and would definitely be killed or injured!
This is indeed the case!
In just three days, the Allied forces suffered more than 100,000 casualties under the German bombing. Most of them were killed on the way to Dunkirk before they even reached it!
Such heavy casualties and extremely tragic deaths caused the Allied soldiers to collapse. After they were surrounded, their morale had already fallen to the bottom. At this time, they were subjected to such fierce bombing by the enemy. The morale of the soldiers collapsed completely, and the whole army was filled with despair!