Chapter 7. Waiting the baiting - part 3
1940 begins with frequent meetings between il Duce and the military chiefs. It is decided that Italy will enter the war in June to help Hitler. Il Duce secretly travels to Berlin and offers a puzzled Hitler his cooperation in return of a nulla osta for Italy in the Balkans.
Redeploying of Italian forces begins in February. The 5 units composing the old Corpo di Spedizione Albanese are ordered to be redeployed to Ethiopia. The first Italian garrison unit replace them in Tirana. These 5 units are equipped with Artillery and Armored cars, greatly reinforcing Ethiopian theater firepower.
The rest of the Army will be split between France border and Northern Africa. With Badoglio having discovered history faculty library, a new idea comes out between Italian leaders.. Why not apply the same tactics the Russian used with Napoleon to the Brits in Lybia? After all we got a lot of sand to give up… we could let them advance and then suddenly unload our Amphibious troops and a few mobile units and cut their supply lines, finishing them off. Eager to apply this tactic, the Italian forces deployed in Northern Africa are minimal, just to make it look like there’ll be some fight, at least.
On the Ethiopian front the units will fight a classic WWI style trench warfare, with some air cover to spoil any moving allied troop. Large part of the successful conquest campaign are replaced with WWI veterans more used to fight in trenches. (Old guard leaders are useful sometimes)
Albania is left out of any plan at the moment, beside Tirana airport expansion.
Italian research speeds up. New mountain equipment is researched as well as the first testing of assembly lines. Balbo keeps improving our fighters behavior.
The Winter War ends. Stalin got some useless land close to Finland border.. who cares? Our trades with Finland are safe anyway.
Italian shipyards keep working at full speed.. in the first few months of the year CLs, CAs and CVLs are pumped out. Also, the first unit of Progetto Drago is ready! Our leaders begin to write plans to employ them in battle.. will they be used in Africa as planned in the beginning or in France?
More artillery improvements.
Italian scientists make an important discovery.. in the background you can see Italian troops fine tuning their defensive line.
At the beginning of May the first Italian MOT infantry unit is ready. It is assigned to the French front, ready to be used to quickly encircle French troops. However the situation of the front is still uncertain, with the Germans able to close their first pocket in… Friedrichschafen!
In mid-May Germany is finally able to overrun Ghent. The war isn’t going well anyway, with France advancing on the Sigfried line.. maybe those few troops used to keep the Belgian at bay in Ghent can now give some momentum to German offensive? With less than a month to the Italian war declaration, the plans on the French border could be seriously spoiled.