The Rise of the Third Reich

"Shell attack! Hurry and take cover..."

With a cry, Major General George Patton was suddenly thrown into the snow in England. His big nose hit the cold snow, and then he heard a loud "rumbling" sound, and then There were a few more sporadic roars.

This is a "Deutschland" class armored ship anchored at the mouth of the Tiz River, firing with a 283mm main gun. It is not bombarding Patton, but bombarding the British troops who are digging trenches 2,000 meters ahead.

The British and American forces have successively arrived at the German bridgeheads on the British Isles-Middlesbrough and Hartlepool. Both port cities have been completely occupied by the German army. Now the Germans have deployed defensive positions outside the city, and several large ships have sailed into the Tiz River to act as floating forts.

Montgomery, who was cautious in employing troops, did not dare to launch an attack immediately. Instead, he chose to dig trenches and set up encirclements outside the two cities, preparing for a positional war. It also requested the mobilization of 305mm train guns to the Middlesbrough-Hartlepool front line.

General Patton's 2nd Armored Division also had no use for it. It seemed that there was no chance of a field contest with the German tank corps. Montgomery wanted to use the tank group to attack the outskirts of Middlesbrough but Montgomery disagreed.

So I could only go to the front line near Middlesbrough to smell the smoke, but unfortunately I was always knocked down by a timid big guard.

The somewhat annoyed general pushed away the guard who was pressing him, and got up yelling: "Asshole! Coward! What are you afraid of German artillery shells? We have traveled thousands of miles here just to lie down." Are you hiding from Nazi shells in the snow? You coward should go back to the United States and hide under your mother's bed..."

While he was cursing, an American Jeep sped nearby, and a three-star Lieutenant General who looked a bit old-fashioned and slow got out of it, it was Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell.

"George, you are swearing randomly again. This is not good!" Stilwell was a little angry. "If war reporters expose your behavior, you will never be able to command the Second Armored Division again!"

Patton's bad temper was well known in the American Expeditionary Force. He not only cursed people, but also hit people when he really lost his temper. On several occasions, he was discovered by reporters accompanying the army and reported on it, causing a lot of trouble.

"To hell with those damn war reporters!" Patton shouted, "I don't believe that the German generals on the other side who always win the war are all good-tempered. We are generals, not chaplains. , How can we do this if we don’t know how to curse? We have to make the soldiers below fear us more than the enemy’s bullets... These are all taught in the military academy, Joseph, have you forgotten them?”

Stilwell shook his head repeatedly. Although he had objections to Patton's fiery style, he had to admit that the 2nd Armored Division led by Patton was definitely a good force - it is true that a general cannot be too nice.

Stilwell waved his hand: "Okay, okay, just say a few words. If you have the energy, save it for beating the Germans!"

"What? Are you going to fight the Germans?" Patton immediately stopped losing his temper and asked with a smile, "Has Montgomery finally figured it out?"

"It's not that General Montgomery has figured it out, but the pressure from London is coming!" Stilwell lowered his voice, "The Germans issued a "Cairo Declaration" and set out some quite deceptive conditions..."

"I know, the British will surrender soon. So what should we do? Should we make peace with the Germans and then go to the Pacific to concentrate on fighting the Japanese?" Big Mouth suddenly started shouting loudly.

"George!" Stilwell shouted, then looked around and breathed a sigh of relief when he found no British friend.

In fact, all the generals and colonels in the American Expeditionary Force knew that the British mainland could not be defended. If you can't tell, wasn't your stay at West Point all those years in vain? Now the British mainland is no longer a springboard for the United States to counterattack Europe, but a bargaining chip for negotiations between the United States and Germany. If the Germans had not agreed to betray Japan, Roosevelt would have ordered the withdrawal of troops and returned home.

It's just that everyone knew in their hearts, but they were holding back and didn't say anything. Only Barton's big mouth that he couldn't control was spreading poison everywhere.

"We must fight an exciting victory now!" Stilwell quickly changed the topic to the issue of war, "George, do you have any ideas?"

"We must attack immediately!" Patton said, "Immediately, immediately, and preferably start artillery preparations in five minutes. Don't worry about the German battleships on the Titz River, and don't wait for those 12-inch train guns who don't know when they will arrive."

"But the losses in such a war will be huge." Stilwell shook his head.

"Hey, what time is it now? Why do you still care about losses?"

Barton looked at Stilwell with some annoyance. He knew that this guy was very stubborn. Although he asked for his opinion, he would not actually listen.

But Big Mouth still said to Stilwell: "The Germans also have transport fleets, and their power in Hartlepool and Middlesbrough is increasing every day! And time is on their side, as long as it is delayed until after the vernal equinox, the weather will Once the situation improves, it will be difficult for us to escape. So it is better to fight early than to fight late. If I were to direct the attack, the attack would have started long ago...Joseph, we must not consider losses or wins."

"You don't care about winning or losing?" Stilwell, who had been a department chair at West Point Military Academy, was stunned when he heard this. How can you fight without caring about winning or losing?

"That's right," Patton nodded, "the sooner we lose the battle, the sooner we escape...if we drag it out here for another two months, then it won't be a matter of losing the battle."

If we drag it out for another two months, the spring equinox will almost arrive, the polar night will turn into polar day, and there will be more good weather in the North Atlantic, North Sea, and Norwegian Sea. By then, the German fleet and aircraft will reoccupy the ocean and sky, and the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers trapped in England will have nowhere to escape.

So no matter whether we win or lose the battle, we have to get a result as soon as possible!

Patton's words are all hard truths, and Stilwell can understand them as long as he uses his brain to think about them, but he dare not say such politically incorrect words to Montgomery.

"So...if we start the attack right away," Stilwell asked, "how should we fight?"

Patton raised his hand and pointed directly in front of him, saying: "About 5 kilometers ahead is the most important railway/road bridge on the Tees River, which is also the traffic bottleneck between Hartlepool and Middlesbrough. A few days ago, the German Tiger tanks moved south from there to threaten the rear of the Middlesbrough defenders and forced them to retreat.

If we want to launch a counterattack, we should first recapture the bridge and cut off the road traffic between Hartlepool and Middlesbrough. Then we will drag the 5.5-inch guns up the embankment of the Tees River along the road (the road leading to the bridge), and then along the embankment If we advance a few kilometers downstream, we can bombard the German battleships at the mouth of the Tees River... I have consulted the officers of the British coastal defense artillery. Now it is not a German battleship anchored at the mouth of the Tees River, but a 10,000-ton pocket battleship. The deck armor is relatively thin, and there is a certain probability that it can be damaged by a 5.5-inch cannon. As long as the German pocket battleships leave, we have the opportunity to counterattack with overwhelming troops and firepower.

Of course, if the Germans transfer their Hindenburg-class battleships to the mouth of the Tees River. Then, hehe..."

Although General Patton can't speak, he still has some rules for fighting, so the plan he proposed was quickly adopted by Admiral Montgomery.

On the afternoon of January 9, in the midst of a snowstorm, two British infantry brigades (actually one regiment) and one armored brigade, as well as one American tank regiment, began to advance from both sides of the Tees River toward the bridge.

...

On the north bank of the Tees River, the small town called Stodunk just blocked the main road leading to the Tees River Bridge from the northwest. When the Germans occupied the bridge on January 3, they also took the town and used it as a forward stronghold.

When the British and American forces began their attack on January 9, a reinforced company-level group commanded by Captain Otto Skorzeny (a paratrooper company reinforced with a self-propelled anti-tank gun platoon, a recoilless gun platoon and a combat engineer platoon) was stationed here.

They drove over from Hartlepool on January 4 and spent several days deploying defenses. Many of the sturdy buildings in the town were transformed into defensive strongholds, and mines were laid outside the town and anti-tank traps were dug.

"Tank! Captain, that's the British Churchill tank... No, why doesn't it have a turret?"

"It should be a Churchill tank destroyer! The British also learned from us and turned the Churchill tank into a tank destroyer. Our Tiger tank has met its match."

After the British and American coalition's artillery preparations were completed, Otto Skorzeny and Lieutenant Heinrich Eyler, the platoon leader of the self-propelled anti-tank artillery platoon, climbed up to the second floor of a church that had just been bombarded by artillery, raised their telescopes and began to observe the situation on the front line.

On the snowy ground about four or five kilometers away from the town, dozens of tanks were forming a team, and hundreds of infantry were forming a team behind the wide tank body.

The tanks that appeared in the eyepieces of the two people's telescopes looked quite large, not much smaller than the German Tiger. At a glance, Lieutenant Eyler found two models, one of which seemed to be an M4 medium tank, but the gun barrel was much longer, which should be a special anti-tank model. The other type of tank surprised Eller a little. The body of this tank looked like a Churchill tank, but it had no turret. Instead, a 75mm first-class cannon was directly installed on the body. Moreover, the barrel of this cannon was very long, and it was obviously a model specially designed to deal with tanks.