Chapter 216: Ultimatum
Germany's central square near Wilhelmstrasse.
The traffic light at the intersection had turned green, yet not a single car moved forward.
As if by silent agreement, drivers, pedestrians, clerks, workers, soldiers on leave, and women holding shopping baskets all turned their heads toward the shop windows.
Inside those windows, television screens flickered with gray-white images.
Before a pair of crossed military flags, Jörg von Roman stood in uniform. His mouth opened and closed with each word, and his powerful voice rolled across Berlin through loudspeakers and radios.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am Jörg von Roman, President of Germany and Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht."
His voice was calm at first.
"For the past year, I had hoped, and Germany had hoped, that the Olympic Games would bring Europe peace. We hoped that treaties would keep us away from the ravages of war."
"But regretfully, as the Polish Army crossed our border, and as the flames of Italian war swept through the Balkans, I must inform you of a painful reality."
His gaze sharpened.
"Peace is no more."
Jörg's calm tone gradually gained force.
"Now, the French wish to open a breach from the Balkans. They wish to blast ancient Athens open with tank cannons, to sing the Marseillaise while charging toward Germany, toward Berlin."
"They wish to trample the honor we have regained. They wish to make us vulnerable again and force us to swallow another humiliating treaty, just as they did after the Great War."
His voice paused slightly.
Across Berlin, countless listeners felt blood rush to their heads.
It was as if their veins had grown mouths of their own, forcing them to open their lips and release a silent roar.
Then Jörg's speech continued.
"I will not agree."
His voice struck like iron.
"Germany will not agree."
"What do they want this time? Reparations? Land? Submission?"
"I will tell them what they will receive."
His expression was cold.
"Corpses. Bullets. And the wrath Germany has accumulated for more than a decade."
"This wrath will become tanks. It will become shells. It will become countless gun barrels."
"And it will burn France into scorched earth."
Those who had struggled through the currency crisis, those who had once been ridiculed because Germany had become Europe's egg-laying hen, those who had watched the statue of the King smashed and dragged down, all of them understood what this war meant.
This was not simply a new war.
It was the delayed continuation of a humiliation more than a decade old.
They were not soldiers. They could not calm the fire in their chests with rifles in hand. They could not reclaim what they had lost through orderly marching steps.
They could only vent the sharp pain of old wounds torn open once more with their voices.
"March on France!"
"Revenge!"
"Forward, Germany!"
Jörg's voice was drowned beneath the roaring crowd.
After a brief silence, that same voice, tempting every German to give everything for the nation, for honor, and for Germany, rang out once again.
"We will not allow Greece to be invaded."
"The French say they are Lancelot among the Knights of the Round Table, carrying divine power, and that they will sweep through Prussia as swiftly as they did in Napoleon's time."
"Then let Germany be the evil dragon."
His voice became low and dangerous.
"Now, the evil dragon spreads its wings."
"It is our turn to ask."
"France, are you ready?"
The speech ended.
Yet Finch's mind was still filled with that passionate declaration. Jörg's voice echoed again and again inside his head.
Under the influence of alcohol, he even vaguely wanted to throw everything aside, pick up a rifle, put on a steel helmet, and rush to the battlefield to witness and embrace everything described in that speech.
Meanwhile, on the Hungarian border.
Bock, who had received the order, was checking his stopwatch as though waiting for a precise moment.
Soon, hurried footsteps outside the barracks interrupted his countdown.
"General Bock! The Air Force in Vienna has completed refueling. All Army units have entered full combat readiness."
Bock nodded.
"His Excellency the Commander in Chief said the Balkans are Germany's garden, and we are the gardeners."
His voice was firm.
"There is only one mission. Drive the pests and invaders out of the Balkans."
He placed the stopwatch on the table.
"Order the Air Force to clear all obstacles for the Eleventh Panzer Division and the Fourteenth Panzer Division. Advance toward Budapest."
A faint smile appeared on his face.
"I cannot wait to engage the French."
Austria-Hungary border.
Caravaggio.
As the foremost garrison city, it had been heavily reinforced by Hungary and Italy.
At that moment, in the logistics kitchen, an Italian soldier was completely unaware that death was already lingering above his head.
He was earnestly explaining to a Hungarian soldier why spaghetti should never be broken before cooking. From time to time, he turned to whisper complaints to another Italian soldier nearby.
"I should have paid more money to that idiot responsible for recruitment. This godforsaken place is dangerous and cold. I heard from a veteran who survived the Spanish battlefield..."
He lowered his voice.
"Germany's aircraft are far ahead of ours. They practically dominated our Air Force."
Before he could finish speaking, a piercing air raid siren howled through the camp.
Woo!
The entire camp instantly descended into chaos.
The countless drills they had practiced for such a situation seemed to be selectively forgotten the moment real war arrived. It took a full ten minutes before the troops were finally organized.
By the time the anti-aircraft gunners adjusted their sights, four He 111 medium bombers had already appeared above the small town.
"Fire! Fire!"
Anti-aircraft guns hidden in the forest burst to life. Black flowers of smoke bloomed one after another in the sky.
After seeing a large gap torn into a friendly aircraft nearby by anti-aircraft fire, Hunter cursed angrily.
"These Italian bastards! After a few years, they are no longer the idiots from the Spanish battlefield. They actually learned to hide anti-aircraft guns in the woods."
The pilot pulled the bomber higher, disappearing into the clouds, then replied, "Then we take them out, Hunter. Just like in Salamanca."
His voice was steady.
"It is a good chance to let them taste our new bombs."
Whoosh!
As the propellers cut through the clouds, the pilot suddenly realized that two Italian Fiat CR.32 Arrow fighters were heading straight toward them.
"Pull up, damn it!"
The enemy had spotted them first.
Machine gun bullets streaked past the wings. Several stray rounds pierced the outer metal skin, exposing the dark framework beneath.
Debris struck the fuselage, producing a harsh clattering sound.
"You do not need to tell me, Hunter! Marco, Oca, watch both sides! Machine gunner, shoot them down, damn it!"
Tat tat tat!
The machine gunner curled in the bomber's belly rotated his gun, pouring out a continuous rain of bullets.
The opposing pilot's skill was excellent.
With a shift to the left, he narrowly avoided the bullets. Like a piranha in a river, he fixed his eyes on the colossal bomber, determined to tear it apart and swallow it.
The Italian fighter climbed, attempting to seize the bomber's rear.
But at that moment, a reassuring voice sounded through the headset.
"098, I am on your left. Pull down toward three o'clock and lure him over."
The engine let out a hoarse roar.
Feeling the machine gun fire coming from behind, the pilot's palms were drenched with sweat. But his mouth never stopped cursing.
"Where the hell have you been?"
Naturally, the other pilot would not tell him that the first wave of fighters had already fought a brilliant interception battle over Budapest, completing their mission with only one loss and eleven enemy aircraft shot down.
This Italian fighter was the last one that had slipped through the net.
The Bf 109 pilot accelerated and pulled the aircraft upward, silently counting down.
"Three."
"Two."
The fighter shot into the clouds.
Hunter saw the Bf 109 almost rushing toward them head-on and was about to shout for the pilot to pull up.
The next instant, he felt the bomber rise sharply.
Looking back, the Italian fighter that had been following them was shredded by bullets. A pilot's parachute soon opened in the sky.
Lowering altitude, the machine gunner gave the German fighter pilot a thumbs-up.
Then the bomber disappeared into the clouds once more, unleashing hellfire upon the anti-aircraft zone below.
Several incendiary bombs exploded in the forest. The spreading sea of fire ignited the dry wood, and the gunners, like startled sparrows, abandoned their anti-aircraft guns and scrambled toward the camp.
And just as Hunter completed his first mission, two Stuka bombers headed toward the crowd.
With no anti-aircraft defenses left to restrain them, they could now drop their bombs freely upon the fragile forces on the ground.
.....
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