Chapter 263: Chapter 156: [Italy... Surrendered! They’ve Surrendered!!!] (6k Two-in-One)
This scene.
Blue Star netizens were all stunned watching it.
They surrendered without even putting up a fight?
And it was a secret surrender too. This is going to kill the Empire without any remorse.
The key problem is this kind of intelligence, even though Blue Star players know it, they can’t inform the Supreme Leader of the Imperial Camp.
They can only watch helplessly as the Kingdom of Italy engages in secret negotiations with the Allies.
Some Blue Star players reviewed the operations of the Kingdom of Italy. When the Empire was sweeping across Europe, the Kingdom of Italy only sent out troops to assist.
Seeing the Empire unifying Europe, Italy realized how strong the Empire was and wanted a piece of the pie.
However, the European pie was already gone, so Italy set its sights on Africa.
They fought in Africa for a while, but couldn’t defeat the British Commonwealth and started calling for reinforcements, which attracted the ’Desert Fox’, with the Imperial and Italian troops on board.
They fought in North Africa for more than two years.
Then Rommel returned due to illness, and the Italian troops were driven out of North Africa in just over a month.
Then came the Allied landing on Sicily.
Without even attacking Italian territory, their regime collapsed and was overthrown, and then they sent people to negotiate secretly and surrender.
This series of moves made Blue Star netizens’ heads spin.
It’s like they can’t even eat the food while it’s hot, and then they backstab immediately.
The quick surrender of the Kingdom of Italy left all Blue Star players baffled. Couldn’t they at least pretend to resist a bit?
Never heard of anyone saying a harsh word only to have the opponent immediately drop to their knees in surrender.
Can you be this cowardly?!
But the Kingdom of Italy did just that... the Allies just reached their doorstep, and Italy backstabbed their ally and surrendered outright.
And that’s not all.
Some players even started as officials on the Allied side.
Joining in the secret talks.
Live streaming the whole process, watching the smiles on the faces of the Italian Kingdom officials as they continuously berated the Empire.
You have to give it to them.
If they had any shame, they couldn’t have possibly berated the Empire so fawningly.
Meanwhile, the Empire.
Still unaware that Italy had already engaged in secret negotiations with the Allies and surrendered.
They were still stubbornly fighting the Soviet Union at [Kursk].
Even though the initial offensive was fierce, weaknesses were exposed in just over half a month.
Insufficient supply!
That’s right, it’s still insufficient supply!
This is already an unsolvable problem.
From Moscow’s winter, Stalingrad’s winter, to the Tunisian campaign in the North African Battlefield, and now the Battle of Kursk.
All are plagued by one serious issue: insufficient supply.
In the North African Battlefield, due to insufficient supply, Rommel couldn’t expand his success and had to switch to defensive.
On the European Battlefield, during the Battle of Kursk, initially, the Empire broke through the Soviet defenses but consumed large amounts of ammunition and fuel.
Even though Manstein is the top general of the Empire, he couldn’t solve the fuel issue.
The Tiger Tank itself, as a new type of tank, already had a high failure rate. Now, with no way to supplement fuel, after half a month of fighting, the initial offensive momentum has turned into strategic defense.
Even due to fuel shortages, armored tanks couldn’t maneuver quickly.
To the point where tank soldiers had to jump out and engage in hand-to-hand combat with Soviet soldiers.
What’s worse is.
Because the Allies’ successful landing on Sicily, the Supreme Leader of the Empire, after much deliberation, finally ordered the redeployment of some armored forces from Kursk to support the Kingdom of Italy!
Directly weakening the strength of Manstein’s army group, forcing them into passive defense.
But on the Italian side, they had already started secret negotiations and were surrendering.
The Empire was completely unaware.
They sent this important armored force from the [Kursk battlefield] to an ally that had already secretly surrendered... even from a third-person perspective, Blue Star netizens couldn’t turn a blind eye.
This is simply terrible.
It’s a trap dragging the Empire down to its doom.
However.
Blue Star netizens still didn’t know, this was just the beginning.... the Kingdom of Italy would be an even bigger trap in the future.
The Sicily landing indirectly affected the outcome of the Battle of Kursk, resulting in the Empire’s forces, after August, switching from attack to defense, unable to resist the massive Soviet army.
In just a month and a half.
At Kursk, both sides lost nearly 1.4 million soldiers.
On average, over 20,000 soldiers were lost daily, with a fatality rate of only about 30%, but even so, both sides had nearly 10,000 men dying each day.
The collapse at Kursk made the Empire’s defense line unable to hold.
This was immediately followed by an offensive towards the Lower Dnieper River, a massive army pressing forward, capturing the Lower Dnieper River, Kyiv, and other places.
This also completely shattered the Empire’s ’Eastern Bulwark’ defense line.
The rapid change in the game’s situation caught Blue Star players by surprise, as they could skip plots in the game, meaning a real day could skip five or six days in the game.
This led to Blue Star players seeing the end of the Battle of Kursk in the streamer’s plot.
The next day, they had pushed to the Lower Dnieper River.
And by the time they got off work to watch again at night, Italy had surrendered!!!
That’s right.
This time it was a real surrender.
And it was an official announcement, leaving Blue Star players in shock, "Do you really dare to announce it?"
At this point, the immersive plot mode, the fastest, had already reached September.
The streamer from the Imperial Camp, Cheng Yu, in the live stream, stood there dumbfounded as he listened to the broadcast: