Chapter 119: Is this considered nuclear winter? (Part 1)
April 15, 1947, Washington, District of Columbia, capital of the United States
In the Oval Office of the White House, President Truman happily reviewed documents and hummed a few tunes from time to time - even though a month and a half had passed since the "Bloody Valentine's Day" nuclear explosion in the Soviet Union. But the good mood it brought him was still not exhausted.
——What could be better than punching the enemy hard in the face, causing his head to bleed, and then immediately retreating thousands of miles away, shrinking out of the opponent's reach, and watching the opponent become angry in the distance? Jumping, but there is nothing you can do about it...but what makes people feel more happy and clear-minded?
Although the cost of organizing this nuclear explosion expedition by the US Strategic Air Force is indeed high, the cost of each new B-29 "Super Flying Fortress" strategic bomber alone is as high as 700,000 US dollars. Due to various accidental losses during the transfer to Iceland, as well as several previous reconnaissance operations and small-scale harassment bombings targeting Nordic countries, the US military lost more than 2,000 B-29 bombers just for this operation. , that is, US$1.4 billion was burned in one go. In addition to the loss of escort fighter jets, the cost of eighteen atomic bombs, and the training costs of more than 20,000 crew members...added together, the total cost is more than four billion US dollars at least, which can be converted into gold to pile up as much as a mountain. Same height.
However, compared to the losses of the Soviets, this price is nothing - the Soviet Red Navy flagship battleship Soviet, which was sunk by a nuclear bomb in Stockholm, cost about 100 million US dollars to build. . The destruction of the five Baltic port cities of Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, Vyborg and Leningrad and a large number of merchant fleets caused economic losses of no less than 400 billion US dollars!
(The value of the U.S. dollar during World War II was much higher than it is now. The purchasing power of one U.S. dollar at that time was approximately equivalent to forty to fifty U.S. dollars today.)
Of course, after Stalin exploded the atomic bomb in Leningrad, he immediately went into a rage and carried out crazy revenge, but the staff of the U.S. Pentagon were not fools. How could they not know that after stabbing the polar bear in the belly, the other party would What was the reaction?
In fact, as early as when formulating the operational plan for nuclear explosions on the Soviet Union, the US military had anticipated that the Soviets would retaliate with nuclear bombs against the Icelandic base afterwards. Moreover, considering that after this full-scale attack, the nuclear arsenal in the hands of the US military will be exhausted again, and God knows how many B-29 "Super Fortress" bombers will come back. If there is a wave of attacks, it is better to accept it as soon as possible.
Therefore, on February 14th, before the long-distance attack on Leningrad by the B-29 "Super Fortress" bombers reached their destination, the US military stationed at the Icelandic base began an intensive retreat - and as a result, Five days later, when a hastily assembled Soviet strategic bomber group set off from Murmansk and carried atomic bombs for a long-distance attack, When they arrived at the US military base in Iceland, they discovered that the Icelandic retreat was coming to an end. More than a dozen military airports in Iceland had long been deserted. The military ports and barracks where hundreds of thousands of troops had been stationed were also empty, with only a few remaining. A few miscellaneous troops from the South American allies, as well as some third-rate American black troops and Asian troops, were left to suffer nuclear explosions and top tanks.
Even so, Iceland, which should be wiped off the map, still needs to be blown up - whether it is Stalin, the steel man, or the seriously injured shipgirl Ms. Sophie, or Wang Qiu and others who almost failed the mission. , now they are both furious and frustrated. No matter what, they have to bomb Iceland to make it unsuitable for human survival, at least not to allow the US military to use the airport here again to launch the next nuclear strike on the Soviet Union.
As a result, waves of Soviet strategic bombers came one after another, dropping more than thirty atomic bombs on Iceland. This island, which had been in bad luck for eight lifetimes, was filled with mushroom clouds that bloomed everywhere... The U.S. military in Iceland It took several years to build more than a dozen airports, as well as military ports and terminals. Not to mention that the headquarters, warehouses, radar stations and weather stations were blown to ashes, the hundreds of thousands of original Vikings in Iceland were also almost wiped out. In the end, only a few thousand special people with vitality were left on the island. The tenacious dead species are still struggling in the radioactive wasteland of this alpine zone.
Next, what made President Truman even more dumbfounded was that it seemed that because the Soviets' random nuclear bombs offended God, Iceland brazenly used large-scale geophysical weapons in retaliation - perhaps because of the stimulation of the Soviets' repeated nuclear explosions. , Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano on March 10 Suddenly he burped at noon, and a large amount of smoke and volcanic ash spewed out, shooting down 40% of the last long-range bomber formation dispatched by the Soviet Union for strategic nuclear strikes on Iceland on the spot: In addition to the sound waves of the volcanic eruption, the air was filled with The dense volcanic ash can easily cause aircraft engine failure.
What's even more terrible is that a week later, just next door to Eyjafjallajökull, another larger Katla volcano in Iceland also erupted violently. The loud noise of its eruption even reached thousands of kilometers away in Scotland, Two volcanoes erupt in Ireland and northern Norway The magma covered 800 square kilometers of land, and the high temperature that followed melted the everlasting solid ice caps, causing major floods across Iceland. This didn't matter, after all, after suffering so many nuclear bombs, There are not many people left alive in Iceland. At the same time, the two volcanoes erupted millions of tons of volcanic ash particles, dust and soot, which rose into the atmosphere under the influence of heat, and then floated in all directions driven by the wind, forming a volcano with a diameter covering the entire Iceland. The giant dust cloud is still drifting southward, dwarfing the mushroom cloud of any atomic bomb.
Until now, the eruptions of these two volcanoes in Iceland have not ended, and air routes in the North Atlantic have been completely cut off. If it was before the fall of Britain, this might have a negative impact on the logistics transportation of the US military. But now that the U.S. military has withdrawn from Europe and is confronting the Red camp across the Atlantic Ocean, it is like adding a natural barrier, blocking the attack route of Soviet bombers from the Arctic Ocean to invade North America.
However, although Stalin had nothing to do with the U.S. troops that had withdrawn from Iceland early, it did not prevent him from throwing the flames of revenge on the U.S. troops in the Middle East led by Eisenhower. Jerusalem, where Eisenhower set up his headquarters, is one of the three major religions of mankind. The common holy place of China has such high religious, cultural and historical value that even Stalin, the steely uncle, would not dare to destroy it easily. Therefore, the Soviets turned to nuking Basra in Iraq, a port that assumed the main logistics tasks of the US military in the Middle East, in an attempt to deprive the 300,000 US and British Allied troops trapped in Jerusalem of supplies and cause chaos without fighting.
Therefore, the helpless General Eisenhower had no choice but to embark on the difficult journey south across the desert like the Allied troops who escaped from North Africa through the Sahara Desert - fortunately, the width of the Arabian Desert is much narrower than the Sahara Desert, and There is also the Red Sea that can serve as a convenient supply channel. Three hundred thousand American and British Allied troops abandoned their heavy equipment, arrived at the Red Sea from Jerusalem, and then headed south along the east coast of the Red Sea.
Compared with those unlucky colleagues in North Africa who were forced to risk their lives crossing the Sahara Desert, with an average of three people surviving, the journey of the 300,000 Allied troops heading south from Palestine along the east coast of the Red Sea was much more comfortable. The Allied East Africa Command managed to organize 600 transport planes to airdrop food and medicine to them. In addition, two 30,000-ton oil tankers were urgently modified to transport fresh water from Eritrea and Yemen to the east coast of the Red Sea, and a series of water replenishment stations were set up for the troops heading south... Therefore, at the slight cost of losing more than a thousand people, After that, Eisenhower finally took this remaining backbone of the Allied Forces to the Port of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia in early April, once again establishing a firm foothold at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
At this point, across the vast desert, the two camps of the United States and the Soviet Union once again entered into confrontation. The military operations that took place on the Old Continent in the early days of World War III came to an end here. Although the white camp headed by the United States was defeated at this stage, defeated thousands of miles away, and was in dire straits, with millions of active forces wiped out, at any rate, through a large-scale retreat, they exchanged space for time. , which stabilized the entire front from collapse.
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While the various front lines on the battlefields of the Old World were becoming stable, the situation in the American rear was also developing in a direction favorable to the United States.
First of all, after three months of chaotic fighting that turned dozens of cities into rivers of blood and killed hundreds of thousands of people, the situation in Canada finally calmed down. According to the mediation of the U.S. government, the British government-in-exile was forced to release the detained Canadian parliamentarians, cease fighting and negotiate a settlement with local Canadian authorities, and finally reached the following peace plan—the Canadian Federation separated from the British Empire and ceased allegiance to the Royal Family of Windsor. , members of the British royal family and Churchill's government-in-exile were declared "undesirable persons" by the Canadian government and were given one month to leave the country.
——Seeing the guerrillas all over Canada, which have turned into a quagmire and black hole that swallows up troops and supplies, and the war is even spreading across the border and burning the flames of war into the United States, President Truman is naturally unwilling to lose money anymore. Go down, all I want to do is put an end to the problem as soon as possible.
On the other hand, Churchill must have been extremely dissatisfied with such a mediation result that was humiliating and humiliating the country. He even made fallacies and declared that he would rely on the military power of the British government-in-exile and the support of Canada’s die-hard royalists to achieve “Canadian colonial peace”. Fight the "rebellion war" to the end. Unfortunately, the White House and the Pentagon no longer wanted to keep playing with him, and they were not willing to be dragged into trouble by him. They directly issued an ultimatum to this fat man who was messing around. The United States publicly threatened to deny the legitimacy of Churchill's government-in-exile, free of charge. Confiscating all his overseas assets, and even sending the US Army to collectively disarm the exiled British troops, the fat man finally gave up shamefully, resigned in despair and gave up on Canada.
It seems that Canada has no choice but to stay, but Churchill's government-in-exile must have a place to stay. According to President Truman's plan, he originally planned to kick them to Cape Town, South Africa, to organize a "British African Empire" and continue to fight against the Soviet Bolsheviks across the Sahara Desert. Unexpectedly, those rebels in the Union of South Africa, who had no sense of loyalty and integrity in their hearts, saw that the British Empire was no better than a phoenix, so they turned a blind eye to Churchill's government-in-exile, and then announced that they had passed a "referendum (whites only)". )" resolution, following the precedent of Canada, completely separated from the territory of the British Empire, and at the same time declared members of the British royal family and Churchill's government-in-exile as "undesirable persons" and were not allowed to enter South Africa.
The remaining colonies in British Africa are also following the South African authorities in making noises. Although they do not have enough confidence and capital to directly declare independence and founding a country for the time being, they have successively sent out public messages to reject this move that invites disaster. The British government-in-exile moved to its own territory—their territories were generally too dilapidated and poor to support such a large government-in-exile! It only takes ten days and a half to defeat them!
Obviously, since President Truman was unwilling to suppress the Canadian rebellion for Churchill, he would not have the intention to carry forward the spirit of Lei Feng at the critical moment of World War III and send troops across the Atlantic to recover the African colonies for this fat man seeking death-Churchill was not His dad! Instead, they must restrain Churchill's government-in-exile and not allow them to send troops to South Africa to prevent this gang of losers from disintegrating the white camp's African front from behind.
Facing his American cousin's gun on the back of his head, Churchill, who had become a slave to his country, really no longer wanted to be cowardly, so he could only continue to be cowardly. But even if you are timid, you still have to find a place to stay. You can't really rent a house in New York as an apartment like those exiled politicians from small European countries! This is too out of character for the British Empire, isn’t it? And there was no room for the tens of thousands of loyal ministers and martyrs who followed Churchill across the Atlantic Ocean!
Fortunately, the British Empire in its heyday was really a big business. Although it is now in dire straits, there are still a few scattered territories in Latin America. The largest of them is British Guiana, whose name means " The "Land of Many Waters" is located on the southern coast of the Caribbean Sea, north of Brazil. In terms of land area, it covers 215,000 square kilometers, which is not much smaller than the British mainland on the island of Great Britain.
As a result, Churchill and Queen Margaret moved to Georgetown, the capital of British Guiana, with more than 60,000 local soldiers and civilians who had evacuated from the island of Great Britain, as well as more than 100,000 hardcore royalist civilians from Canada and South Africa. ——It is also the only decent city in the area, where we can temporarily settle down.
However, although British Guiana is a bit shabby and desolate, Churchill and Queen Margaret will never feel too lonely in Guyana, because in Dutch Guiana (Suriname) next door, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and Her Dutch government-in-exile has been here for a long time. Next door to French Guiana, there is also Mr. de Gaulle, who moved here at about the same time, and the French government-in-exile led by him... These three families used to live together in Europe, and now they still live together in South America. It can be said that they have an eternal fate. ……
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All in all, in President Truman's view, since the successful nuclear explosion of the Soviet Union, everything has been moving in a good direction: the frontal battlefield against the Soviet Union has finally stabilized, and the armies of both sides have been separated by oceans and deserts, temporarily separated from each other. The lack of contact also gave the US military, which had been beaten out of breath, some time to adjust and supplement. Although there were riots among the allies, they also united more faithfully around the United States. Domestic public opinion has also cheered up slightly, at least the number of various anti-war demonstrations has been reduced a lot - of course, this is more likely to be the result of martial law...
Of course, public opinion and so on are nothing but scum to the interest groups in power... as long as there are no divisions within the interest groups.
The thing that has caused President Truman the most trouble these days is actually the excessively cold late-spring weather.
——In the spring of 1947, the weather in the northeastern United States was truly unpredictable and difficult to describe. In January of the year, the weather was unusually cold. The snow in Boston was five meters thick, burying two floors. The straits in New York actually froze, and the Potomac River in Washington also became frozen. Ice rink. After finally waiting for the ice and snow to melt and spring flowers to bloom, the temperature suddenly dropped again at the end of last month, and freezing rain fell without warning. It was really like water falling to the ground and turning into ice. After the spring rain, the camellia and azalea in the garden It looks like a fiery red flower, but if you take a closer look, you will find that each flower is frozen in a whole block of ice. It is so charming and lifelike that when you knock it off, it becomes a work of art.
Even though the calendar turned to April, the weather in Washington showed no sign of getting warmer. Instead, it snowed twice in a row. Looking out the window at the snowy lawns and shrubs, and the frozen fountain, this snow-covered scene made me laugh. President Truman suddenly felt as if he was still celebrating Christmas... But in fact, at this time, nearly four months have passed since last year's Christmas...
It’s so cold this spring! Shouldn't it be taken seriously as a curse from the devil? Feeling a little cold, President Truman sneezed suddenly, curled his lips, reached out to turn the heating up, and then immersed himself in the work of reviewing documents again.
What he didn't know was that this annoying late spring cold in Washington was just the beginning of global climate anomalies in the following two years. —— Next, this earth will usher in two eerie "years without summer" in a row as the war rages on...