The decisive battle against the Third Reich - Chapter 921

c918 lie

The U.S. bombing did not happen, although the 1st Infantry Regiment did not arrive at the second line of defense until two hours after dawn.

On the one hand, the reason is that the US military has little interest in infantry, even infantry transported in cars.

In fact, it cannot be said that they are not interested, but that bombing is very cost-effective for infantry… The infantry will see the bombers flying towards them from a long distance, and then get off the car and disperse to find a place to hide.

Therefore, against such a target, a large amount of ammunition is often consumed with almost no results, except for a few worthless cars.

The armored forces are another story. The bulky tanks and armored vehicles will be like targets waving to the pilots in the sky.

On the other hand, there was something wrong within the Allies.

The advance of the U.S. military on the battlefield made the British army very unhappy. To be precise, it made De Gaulle feel threatened… because the U.S. military was about to pick up the fruits of victory and march into Paris, and whoever liberated Paris first was almost a likeness to the French troops. Zheng, a symbol of winning dominion.

Therefore, de Gaulle made some tricks in this regard, or it can be said to be a strategy.

First, he had Leclerc’s fighting French 2nd Armored Division move to a position ten kilometers south of Crecy.

The 2nd Armored Division went here not to wipe out the remaining German troops, nor to fight against the German troops… The German troops’ retreat was planned, so they retreated completely.

After the fighting French 2nd Armored Division arrived here, it spread out in all directions, and then pretended that the tank had malfunctioned or fell into a crater and blocked the road to cause a traffic jam.

This section of the road is the only way for the U.S. 3rd Army led by Patton to transport supplies. This has basically brought the logistics transportation of the 3rd Army to a standstill.

This made Patton furious. He made a phone call to Eisenhower and cursed angrily: “Ike, I know they did it on purpose. It must be intentional! Do you know what they are doing? They let it go for their own benefit. The entire 3rd Army is in danger. We are about to kick the enemy in the butt. They defeated one of our regiments last night, and now we have to stop because we have no fuel and ammunition. It is ridiculous. We have not been defeated by the enemy! In the hands of their own people, these ridiculous British and French people, what’s even more ironic is that they are driving American tanks… American tanks, they used American tanks to block the way of the American army!”

This is true. Because of the poor performance of British tanks, the French 2nd Armored Division was mostly equipped with tanks reinforced by the United States.

Although Eisenhower knew that this was probably intentional by the British or French as Patton said, of course he, as the commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces, could not answer that.

“No, Joe!” Eisenhower said. “You know, the roads are always in bad condition. It’s just a coincidence that the French armored divisions were there. You shouldn’t think that. I’ll make them change that!”

But in fact it was difficult for Eisenhower to change this situation, because the French had a good excuse.

“General!” Leclerc said: “We can’t drive the tanks to the side of the road and let the cars pass first. There is a constant stream of cars, so we will never be able to drive to the front line to fight the enemy. We have tanks and armored vehicles, General, and There are well-trained and extremely brave warriors, we should make use of them and put them into battle with the enemy as soon as possible!”

So Eisenhower could only acquiesce, and the transport team could only advance hard behind the French armored division or through the cracks, so that Patton simply did not have the ability to pursue the 1st Infantry Regiment and the 275th Infantry Division.

In fact, this is lucky. If the German army knew this and organized a few armored forces to counterattack Patton’s 3rd Army at this moment, then Patton would probably capsize here.

But that alone is not enough.

Because it is still possible for the US military to point directly at Paris and occupy Paris… The German troops have withdrawn from Paris in batches, and there are only a few security forces and engineers left to do some finishing work.

Hitler’s orders were to set all of Paris on fire, and if he couldn’t have Paris, no one could.

However, the German officers who later performed this mission disobeyed this order and did not order the bombing or setting fire to it.

Of course, this is something.

The British had this information, and they knew very well that if the US military attacked Paris, even if supplies were limited, they would be able to occupy Paris without any effort and become the greatest liberator of France.

In fact, General Patton planned exactly this.

He even teased Eisenhower on the phone: “Should we do what the Germans did before… drive the hateful British and French to the seaside?”

General Patton was referring to the British-French Dunkirk evacuation. After the U.S. military occupied Paris, it turned back and could indeed drive the British and French forces to Dunkirk again just like the German army had done before.

“And this time!” Patton said with a smile: “I won’t make that mistake like the Germans!”

Patton was always outspoken, and his jokes were also very inappropriate.

This made Eisenhower frown.

“Watch your words, Joe!” Eisenhower reminded: “If word gets out, you will be on the front page of the newspaper again because of this sentence!”

“Oh, then let them do it!” Barton replied nonchalantly.

In fact, Patton still cared about it, because he was a warlike person. He liked to stay on the battlefield and command troops to charge into battle.

So, even if he knew that Bradley had plagiarized his offensive plan, he didn’t care. He just wanted to fight.

But just as Patton was commanding his troops to advance towards Paris, the British Intelligence Agency sent General Bradley a piece of intelligence: “We got intelligence from the guerrillas that the Germans had at least two armored divisions in Paris!”

General Bradley believed it without a doubt.

He always believed in the “stop when in doubt” combat style, and immediately contacted Patton.

“We should stop advancing!” Bradley ordered as the commander of the army group: “We got intelligence that there are at least two armored divisions in Paris, and we are short of fuel and artillery shells. We should make more adequate preparations and wait for the French 2nd Armored Division to catch up before launching an attack on Paris!”

“No, General!” Patton protested: “This is a lie, my intuition tells me that the enemy will not be stationed in Paris!”

“Your intuition?” General Bradley said: “Do you think I will believe in intuition or intelligence? I will not put our troops in danger because of your intuition! I order you to stop advancing!”

Patton was so angry that he slammed the phone on the phone stand, but he could do nothing.