The Rise Of Australasia

Chapter 1331: 964 Chapter: Chapter 1331: 964 Chapter: Time quickly advanced to the end of 1938.

For the hastily ending 1938, the only theme was the continuous failures of the Allies.

Italy and Spain had their capitals overrun in the middle of the year, eventually leading them to choose unconditional surrender with helpless resignation.

But this wasn’t the only bad news.

Since the British-French-Australian forces had decided to attack Northern Europe, the Germans were forced to divide their troops, sending them to the European battlefield in order to protect the Nordic Trio.

After the capitulation of Spain and Italy, the importance of Norway surged even more.

Norway could not only provide Germany with extremely important mineral resources, but it also made the number of Germany’s apparent allies seem less embarrassing.

More importantly, if the Northern European region were lost, Germany’s theoretical only access to the sea would also be cut off.

A Germany confined to Central Europe could not possibly outlast Britain and France, which possessed colonies.

Indeed, the Germans were unable to allocate a sufficiently strong military force to support Norway while fighting on two fronts.

The British-French-Australian forces needed only two and a half months to conquer most of Norway and successfully reclaimed major Norwegian cities such as Bergen, Stavanger, Kristiansand, and Oslo.

If reclaiming most of Norway wasn’t enough to seriously weaken Germany, the subsequent actions of the British-French-Australian forces would be enough to cause the Germans a major headache.

Clearly, Norway was not the sole objective of Britain-France-Australia, nor even a significant part of their overall plan.

After recapturing the capital city Oslo, the British-French-Australian forces relentlessly continued their eastward expansion because to the east of Norway lies Sweden, the most important country in Northern Europe.

The importance of Sweden lies entirely in its extremely rich iron mining resources. Sweden had become a very important iron supplier for Germany. Iron ore from Sweden was shipped continuously through the Baltic Sea to German harbors and then transferred to core industrial areas like the Ruhr District, where it was smelted into steel and manufactured into a variety of weapons and other military goods.

It is no exaggeration to say that at least one-quarter of Germany’s iron ore resources currently comes from Sweden, a figure that continued to rise alongside the bombing of Germany’s mainland by British-French forces.

The relentless bombing campaign by the British-French-Australian forces effectively damaged Germany’s exploitation of its own resources. However, for a country like Sweden, which is far away and where damage is not as great as it would be on Germany’s mainland, Allied bombing was minimal.

But clearly, after the onset of the Northern European offensive, it wouldn’t be so easy for the Germans to smoothly obtain iron ore from Sweden.

While Germany managed to prevent the British and French fleets from entering the Baltic Sea through extensive mining, those mines posed no threat to the air force.

After Britain-France-Australia achieved air superiority in Western and Central Europe, the situation for the German air force was far from wonderful.

Of course, a considerable part of the credit must be given to the effort of the Italians.

As is commonly known, apart from the inadequacy of the Italian army, their navy and air force combat capabilities are worthy of praise.

Italy’s naval design level still ranks among the top in Europe, and its air force design is also first-class.

Over the course of the long war, the Italians built tens of thousands of airplanes, with more than 7,000 of them being shot down.

After the fall of the Italian capital, Rome, the British-French-Australian forces astonishingly discovered that Italian armories and airfields still held over 1,000 newly built planes and more than 2,000 damaged ones.

Although over half of those 2,000 damaged planes were beyond repair, by dismantling them for parts, it was still possible to salvage at least 500 planes.

This meant that the Italian government directly provided the Britain-France-Australia alliance with over 1,500 planes.

With these 1,500 Italian planes, the air superiority achieved by Britain-France-Australia over Central Western Europe became even more significant.

And there was more to come. Italy had surrendered unconditionally, and almost all of its military enterprises were taken over by Britain-France-Australia and continued to produce the weapons and equipment needed by them.

This meant that the military enterprises painstakingly established by the Italian government were effectively making a dowry for Britain-France-Australia. The current productive capacity of the Italian government is still quite reliable, and although some military factories were destroyed by Britain-France-Australia, the lowest output could provide at least 3,500 airplanes and 1,000 tanks for Britain-France-Australia each year.

If one were to follow the actions of the German Chancellor and Mussolini and constantly squeeze the productive capacity of the Italian military enterprises, the output of planes and tanks could at least double, surpassing the current capacity of France.

But France can hardly be blamed, after all. Its most prime regions in Northern France were occupied by Germany for several years, and its North African colonies were recklessly destroyed by German and Italian forces, naturally having a great impact on industry.

Compared to Italy, Spain did not have such strong military production capabilities. Most of the weapons and equipment seized in Spain were rifles and machine guns; Spanish military enterprises had difficulty producing advanced airplanes and tanks, even with blueprints from Germany and Italy, they could only produce a three-digit number of planes and tanks each year.

What can three-digit numbers of planes and tanks achieve? On the vast European battlefield, that number wouldn’t even suffice for one day’s campaign consumption.