Скачать или смотреть FALL ROT: FRANCE SURRENDERS (FINNTROLL 1984'S WAR TALES #20 WW II CODWWII)

finntroll 1984 FALL ROT: FRANCE SURRENDERS (FINN'S WAR TALES #20 WW II CODWWII)
After having captured the Benelux region and the English Channel during Fall Gelb, Fall Rot began on June 5 of 1941. Field Marshal Rommel completed an expansion to West Normandy and Cherbourg on June 18 after a heavy Luftwaffe bombardment. Rommel had bluffed about the intel in order to receive air support, and that would come back to haunt him later. French General Charles De Gaulle saw no other option but to flee and went into Algerian exile in North Africa. Because Paris was helpless and Marshal Philippe Pétain wanted to avoid mass executions, the capital had been declared an Open City on June 10. Pétain was no stranger to the Germans, seeing that he had been the commander of the French Army during the Battle of Verdun in WW I. Paris fell to the Germans on June 14 without force, as stated in the Geneva Convention. However, the rules had been ignored on May 27 when 97 captured British soldiers were executed by an SS-division in Pas-de-Calais under the command of Fritz Knöchlein. 99 soldiers were shot down, 97 of them died. After the war, Knöchlein would be trialed and executed in 1949 for this 'Le Paradis Massacre', thanks to the only 2 survivors. Also Italian PM Benito Mussolini had declared war on France on June 10, out of free will and desire to gain African colonies to build a new Roman Empire. He sent troops to the eastern coastline of France with Albanians in the frontline. Albania had already been annexed by Italy after a battle between April 7-12, 1939, after which all natural resources were exploited by Italian companies. A total of 32 Italian divisions managed to make a small advance but the troops at the Côte d'Azur were halted by a French Non-Commisioned Officer and 7 men. On June 21, France signed an armistice with Hitler personally in a little train wagon in Compiègne, 80 kilometers north of Paris, and France also signed an armistice with Italy on June 25. In some French cities however, the resistance would stay active until July 10. Stuck between Spain, Occupied France and the Alps, there was no escape for the citizens of the brand new Vichy-France anyway. Also, many French citizens had been imprisoned in Occupied France to be used as both leverage and slave workers. Vichy became the de facto capital and the new border between Nazi Germany and Free France, 220 miles south of Paris. With France on its knees, Churchill had no option but to give the inhumain order to destroy the French battleships docked in Mers-el-Kébir in Algeria during Operation Catapult on July 3, to avoid a German naval attack WITH these French ships. 1,297 French marines died in the British RAF attack, that gave Churchill bad publicity. The British PM also denied an immediate 'peace offering' from Hitler, made on July 4 against the German public opinion. Churchill launched a commercial film on how to use Hitler's manuscript as toilet paper, pulling an angry 'Corporal Hitler' into a German air attack on Great Britain. Churchill was confident to demonstrate the superiority of the RAF and the Royal Navy. Luftwaffe Commander Hermann Göring put together a strategy called 'die Luftschlacht um England' to destroy Great Britain from the air in only 4 days. Although the Luftwaffe only existed officially since March 1935, it was the best trained airforce in the world by Summer 1940. If Göring's plan would have been a success, Hitler could have considered Operation Seelöwe: the invasion of England! A plan that sounded too good to be true, and it would prove to be just that! finntroll 1984:    / @finntroll1984cod