Chapter 130, Shocking Changes in South America (Part 2)
United States, Washington, White House, Oval Office
The Oval Office filled with people was filled with smoke. Since the two major bad news of South Africa's betrayal of the alliance and the incident in South America broke out one after another, various emergency meetings have been held from the Pentagon to the White House and then to Capitol Hill, but still nothing can be done. An effective countermeasure is to get together and smoke cigarettes.
President Truman held a cigar in his hand, blowing smoke rings from his mouth, his eyes were bloodshot, and his mind was full of worries.
The current war situation is really too bad for the United States! It has to be described as a nightmare or purgatory!
Last week, the "Southern African Community" led by the Union of South Africa as its core was officially established, and issued an ultimatum to Eisenhower, who was trapped in the port of Mombasa in East Africa, ordering him to leave the Indian Ocean coast - this was an agreement between South Africa and the Soviet Union. An important prerequisite for peace treaty.
In view of the fact that the logistics supply lines and material storage points of the 300,000 US and British Allied troops are all under the control of the South African authorities, and since a few months ago, the South African side has consciously limited the amount of materials delivered to Eisenhower, leaving Mombasa The Allies were unable to accumulate much supplies.
As a result, when the Pentagon generals tried to ask Eisenhower whether he was sure to return to South Africa and use force to force the South African authorities to "get back on the right track," Eisenhower smiled bitterly and sent a telegram to reply: First, he has no supplies at hand. Three hundred thousand The army turned around from Mombasa to the transport ship heading to South Africa. If it took the land route, the straight-line distance would be as long as two thousand kilometers. In the wild and backward African continent, his army would definitely collapse halfway; secondly, East Africa Allied artillery, tanks and other heavy equipment , has long been lost in defeats one after another, and has not been replenished since. Its current firepower level is similar to that of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army during the Long March era. In a head-on battle, it is no match for any modern army; third, The existing ammunition is only enough After a forced battle, he would only have enough food to last for a month, and only enough gasoline to run at full capacity for two weeks. Trucks, mules and horses were all in short supply. Moreover, once South Africa defected, his troops would be cut off from their supply lines, and even if they wanted to, their supply lines would be cut off. There is no place for robbery in Africa.
What's even more terrible is that even within the 300,000 East African Allied troops under Eisenhower, there are many different voices. Many British troops were demoralized by successive defeats and no longer wanted to fight for the Queen and Churchill. Instead, they accepted the olive branch offered by the South African authorities and planned to rely on the special relationship between the Anglo-Saxon nations to transform themselves. Become a South African citizen and bid farewell to the suffering of war and escape. In order to suppress the large and disobedient black South Africans, the South African authorities are extremely eager for white immigrants from all over the world and are willing to provide extremely high treatment. In order to gain leverage over the United States, the Soviet Union generously promised to completely open up immigration channels for white Europeans to South Africa after the armistice and peace talks...
Now, more than 80,000 British troops have openly refused to obey General Eisenhower's orders. They have even robbed arsenals, collected ammunition, and built fortifications in camps to confront the U.S. military. If the situation continues to develop, even General Eisenhower has no idea what will happen next. In other words, if the Pentagon insists on using force to solve the South African chaos, it cannot send big votes to Eisenhower who is trapped in the port of Mombasa. words of reinforcements , then the 300,000 American and British Allied troops stationed in the Port of Mombasa would have to break out into an internal strife first... No matter for Eisenhower, who was running out of ammunition and food and was alone behind enemy lines, or for the Pentagon, which was extremely short of veteran warriors. , these are the unbearable weight of life.
Therefore, in previous meetings, the White House and the Pentagon have reached a preliminary consensus on abandoning Africa after repeated weighings. When the U.S. military was forced to withdraw from East Africa and Southern Africa turned hostile, Eisenhower would certainly not be able to stand in West Africa. Foot: The Soviets are still sending strategic long-range bombers from their North African bases across the Sahara Desert, methodically destroying ports and cities in West Africa with an average nuclear explosion rate of two to three atomic bombs per week. After several months of this, the port cities built in the colonial era have been almost destroyed. The remaining white immigrants from various countries were forced to move into the forest, take off their pants and hunt with the black people like savages carrying spears! After Eisenhower's American troops withdraw from East Africa, where should they be stationed? You can't just stay in the ruins of a nuclear explosion and wait to get radiation sickness!
Moreover, with the successive defections of South Africa and South America, the control of the Atlantic Ocean is about to completely change hands. If you want to maintain a maritime supply line from the United States to the West African ports, it will become difficult under the joint stranglehold of the Soviet and Japanese navies. Extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive.
More importantly, what would be the use of even maintaining such an army in West Africa? Judging from the current situation, the Soviet Red Army has no plans to march south across the Sahara Desert. It is obvious that it intends to use indiscriminate bombing of atomic bombs to solve the problem. Eisenhower could only suffer a nuclear explosion if he stayed there. Instead of doing this, it is better to temporarily withdraw our fists and retain this time-tested strategic mobile corps for other uses.
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However, the United States of America can hold its nose and make substantial concessions in Africa, but it can no longer retreat in South America!
——Since the changes in South America broke out, the Pentagon has been gathering troops like crazy, preparing to go south to suppress them and use force to overthrow these thorns.
It's a pity that one step is too slow and one step is too slow. While the United States of America is hurriedly deploying troops and generals everywhere, Peru, Chile, and Argentina have quietly cleaned up the pro-American forces in the country and stabilized their respective regimes - because They advocate that everyone tightens their belts and sells their kidneys to aid the United States, and conscripts millions of soldiers to be used as cannon fodder for nuclear bombs overseas. Today's pro-American forces are extremely unpopular among South American people, and they are almost as good as everyone shouting to fight. Even the military is generally hostile to the pro-American warring regime: rather than burying their bones overseas and serving the Americans without honor, they are more willing to open up territory for the motherland. In the past, it was all based on its strong support from the ruling position. Now, once it is knocked out of the world, it can hardly find supporters in the country and can only choose to cease all activities.
Half a month after the incident broke out, not only the changes in Peru, Chile, and Argentina were irreversible, but even the two small countries of Paraguay and Uruguay to the north of Argentina were drawn in, driven by anti-war and anti-American sentiments. ——In order to expel the United States’ penetration into South America and establish Argentina’s dominance in South America, the famous Argentine Rose, Evita Peron, President's wife, worked everywhere, formed cliques, appealed to the people of various countries, and achieved great success in public opinion. In the end, with Argentina's President Peron as the leader, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, The five countries of Paraguay and Peru formally formed an alliance and announced the establishment of an "Armed Neutrality Alliance", openly raising the banner of anti-Americanism.
The Bolivian authorities, which firmly adhere to a pro-American stance, are experiencing various civil unrests while experiencing simultaneous siege by the armies of Peru, Paraguay and Chile and bombings by the air forces of the three countries plus the Japanese naval aviation. The capital Sucre is in flames, and the entire The country is on the verge of collapse.
As for Brazil, the United States' current hardcore brother and top thug in South America, it also has its own troubles now - revolution, no matter what color it is, is usually contagious. As the saying goes, "a single spark, It can start a prairie fire." This has been true from the Great Revolution of 1848 in Europe, to the drastic changes in Eastern Europe in the 20th century, and to the Arab Spring in the 21st century. The same is true of the current changes in South America.
As the most active ally among South American countries in following the United States in participating in the war, Brazil was also the country in South America that sacrificed the most in the world war. Especially in the early stage of the great defeat during the outbreak of World War III, the Pentagon simply used the Brazilian army as a scapegoat, and was left in desperate situations every time to take charge of the rearguard action. As a result, about three million Brazilian troops were wiped out in battlefields in Japan, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia. For Brazil, which currently has only 45 million people in the country, including a large number of Indians and black people, this is It is already close to France's casualty ratio in World War I. Even this is not fighting at home and defending the country, but going overseas to serve as cannon fodder for others!
The consequences of this are naturally boiling public dissatisfaction and rising revolutionary atmosphere. When Argentina, Chile and Peru withdrew from the war one after another, anti-war movements broke out in various major cities in Brazil, and various politicians soon joined in, making the movement more and more powerful. When the Brazilian government ordered the dispatch of military police to suppress the movement, a mutiny broke out even within the army. If the US military hadn't come to the rescue, I'm afraid everything would have been doomed.
Even so, in order to suppress the chaos in Brazil, the US military on the front line fought very bloody and hard: in Rio de Janeiro, the US dispatched two battleships to bombard the port, destroying the rebellious Brazilian navy and the coastal defense forts occupied by the rebels; in Sao Paulo, The US military and government forces dispatched aircraft to bomb the " In the neighborhoods controlled by "thugs", tanks and heavy artillery were also used to destroy the barricades... After half a month of continuous killings, which turned the two major cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo into rivers of blood, this battle almost overturned Brazil. The government riot was finally quelled as quickly as possible.
But even at this point, the chaos in Brazil is not over yet - since the outbreak of the Pacific War, more than 400,000 Japanese immigrants in Brazil have been considered unsettling factors and have been imprisoned in concentration camps one after another. Next, more German immigrants, Russian immigrants, anti-war elements, Nazi supporters, Bolshevik sympathizers, fallen politicians and their families... were also arrested one after another, and the final total number of people imprisoned It actually reached a huge amount of 1.5 million! Most of these concentration camps are located in southern Brazil, near the border between Argentina and Uruguay.
As a result, during the period of chaos, the rebellious Brazilian army released all the hapless people in the concentration camp in order to win over supporters. Immediately afterwards, the Argentine army that invaded across the border armed them and became the leading party and vanguard army in the invasion of Brazil...
At present, the coalition forces of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay have invaded hundreds of kilometers of the southeastern border of Brazil and captured the important towns of Rio Grande and Porto Alegre. The political situation in Brazil is still in chaos. The small number of government troops that are still under control are only enough to control the capital and a few major cities. The border defense relies entirely on a small number of US troops to support it, or to put on a show. Moreover, militias and regular troops from various parts of Brazil are still there. There are constant rebellions, and even the troops that have not yet raised the flag of rebellion are generally inclined to separate themselves to protect themselves, unwilling to obey the dispatch of the central government, and have no intention of resisting the coalition forces with the same hatred of the enemy.
To make matters worse, according to the latest intelligence, the Soviet long-range strategic bomber force is rapidly moving towards Argentina and Chile through the two springboards of South Africa and the Polynesian Islands. The Soviet Red Army and the Japanese Army also seemed to intend to land in South America on a large scale. Although the long distance spanning half the world made it impossible for them to invest too much power in South America, with the public opinion in South American countries generally anti-American, It is probably very difficult for the US military to conduct long-term operations here, and there is no home field advantage. More importantly, once they were allowed to gain a foothold in South America, the value of the Hawaiian Islands as an outpost was lost! The enemy can launch from its base in South America and drop atomic bombs on the United States! ! !
Therefore, after repeatedly weighing the pros and cons, President Truman finally came to the conclusion: We must use all our troops to go south to Latin America at all costs, clean up our own backyard, and drive out the evil hands of the red camp from the New World! Otherwise, the United States will not only lose its future, but also its present!
"...As a last resort, we can temporarily give up Africa, but we must never give up South America no matter what - if we lose Africa, we will only lose the future, if we lose South America, then we will also lose the present... The American continent is our absolute defense circle!”
President Truman declared so categorically, and then turned to Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Ernest King, "...let the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii withdraw! They are needed more in the South American battlefield! It is worth taking some risks for this. Compared with Hawaii Islands, losing South America is even more dangerous for us! No matter what sacrifices and costs we pay, we must expel the evil Bolsheviks from the New World!”
"...Understood, I will have the main force of the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii come back from Pearl Harbor as soon as possible, but this will take some time to prepare."
Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Ernest Jin lowered his head and pondered for a moment, seeming to be silently calculating the gains and losses. Finally, he nodded gently, "...before that, I plan to collect ships from various ports on the east coast and west coast. Urgently organize an expeditionary fleet to go to Peru to confront the Japanese fleet. Regarding the commander of this fleet... I suggest giving General William Halsey another chance."
Sure enough, when he heard the name, Truman frowned, "...let this Typhoon God of War go to sea again"
"...Mr. Chief of the Navy, it's hurricane season in the Caribbean today." Secretary of State Hull also echoed the casual ridicule.
"...but William Jr. is currently the general in the country who is most familiar with the Japanese Navy and has the most experience in combat, Mr. President, Your Excellency the Secretary of State."
Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Ernest King replied in a neither humble nor condescending manner, "...and, according to the meteorological department's observations, the Caribbean Sea is very calm today." Seeing Admiral King's insistence, others seemed to have no intention of objecting. , President Truman hesitated for a moment, but finally clicked. Head said, "...Well, now is indeed the time to hire people! We need to be eclectic and not too taboo. I agree with Halsey! I hope he can sweep through Peru and Chile like a real typhoon. The coastline brings us a clean South America..."