The decisive battle against the Third Reich

When Qinchuan and Colonel Slaine rushed to Rommel's headquarters, Rommel was discussing something with Major General Strike and others. What surprised Qinchuan was that Rommel did not have victory on his face as he should have. Not happy, but sad.

"General!" Qin Chuan and Colonel Slain walked up to Rommel and stood up to salute.

Rommel looked up and saw the two of them, his face quickly filled with a smile and said: "Look, our heroes are here, welcome!"

The officers in the headquarters applauded spontaneously, and several officers, including Rommel, enthusiastically stepped forward to shake hands with Qinchuan and Colonel Slain.

"Lieutenant, you did a great job!" Rommel said: "I'm not just talking about your performance on the battlefield, but also your suggestions and plans, which allowed us to once again defeat the powerful Allies. More importantly Or...if the British don't find a better way, we can always use the mountains and tunnels to stalemate them in Tunisia. In other words, we finally found a foothold. "

"But General!" Colonel Slaine said, "You seem... to be dissatisfied!"

Colonel Slain saw it too.

"Yes!" Rommel nodded and sighed: "You know? We could have fought back!"

"What?"

"I mean, we can attack Tripoli!" Rommel said: "And then attack Benghazi, Tobruk, Matruh as before... and even drive the British into the sea!"

"But..." Colonel Slain looked at Qin Chuan. He thought this was very difficult.

Qinchuan knew what Rommel was thinking. At this time, Tripoli was a logistics supply port for the British army. If two German armored divisions launched a surprise attack there... it would indeed be possible to recapture Tripoli and obtain a large amount of supplies, and at the same time cause the Allied forces to retreat. Just like we did with Tobruk and Alexandria.

Attack is also Rommel's military style.

Sure enough, Rommel said: "As long as we take Tripoli and attack all the way along the Corniche and occupy the coastal ports, do you know what will happen? The British armored forces will have to stay here forever!"

This is indeed possible. Although the British army has air superiority, the German army has the 27th Air Wing and the quality of its pilots is generally better than that of British and American pilots. Especially compared with American pilots who do not have much combat experience. Therefore, the German army may have local air superiority, such as covering the attack of German armored forces in the air over Tripoli.

"The reason we didn't do this was because we were low on fuel, right?" Qin Chuan asked.

Rommel nodded and replied: "This is also the reason why we failed to surround the British 15th Armored Division and the 7th Armored Division in Gafsa. It is also the reason why our fighter planes are rarely dispatched."

Qin Chuan couldn't help but be startled when he heard this. He knew that the African Legion was short of fuel, but he didn't expect it to be so short.

This is somewhat beyond Qin Chuan's imagination, because the transportation line from Algiers to the French port of Toulon has been opened and is very safe, so there should not be such a shortage of oil.

Rommel seemed to have seen through Qinchuan's thoughts, and explained: "Warships, fighter planes, tanks, cars, etc., everything needs fuel, and Berlin also needs to supply fuel to the Eastern Front, so..."

Qin Chuan understood this when he heard this.

The fuel shortage of the Afrika Korps may also be related to itself. The Afrika Korps in history should not have so many tanks surviving. Now the three armored divisions already have 300 tanks. Although they are not full, they only have a few tanks compared to the history. Ten tanks is much better.

In particular, Qinchuan also captured an entire Toulon fleet... These warships are big oil burners.

Therefore, although relatively safe transportation channels have been established and fuel is continuously transported, it is still unable to make ends meet.

At the same time, this is also related to time. Historically, when the Afrika Korps withdrew to Tunisia, it was when the Eastern Front was completely defeated and Hitler shifted his focus to North Africa. But now... The Eastern Front is in full swing, and Hitler's supply transportation to North Africa is of course Not much.

"Do you know how dangerous we are in this battle?" General Strike said: "Our fuel has reached the danger line. If the British know this and launch another attack from the sea... we will not even be able to fight!"

The reason was of course that there was not enough fuel. Later Qin Chuan learned that the two German armored divisions pretended to be worried about being bombed by the British and moved slowly. In fact, they were short of fuel.

"We can't let anyone know this!" Rommel said seriously: "Otherwise, the consequences will be disastrous!"

Qin Chuan and Colonel Slain responded unanimously: "Yes, General!"

"I'm afraid this situation will not change for a long time in the future!" Rommel said with some worry: "The fuel allocated to us by Berlin every month is only enough for us to barely fight a battle! In other words, If the British launch two large-scale attacks within a month...then we can only sit and wait!"

After thinking about it, Qin Chuan asked: "General, didn't we transfer a geological exploration team from Berlin?"

"You mean to look for oil in Algeria?" Rommel couldn't help laughing: "Please, Lieutenant, this is a desert, there are only sand and corpses, there will be no oil!"

"Oh, yes!" Qin Chuan replied: "I was just asking!"

As mentioned before, the technology of this era has entered into a misunderstanding about the formation of oil. They believe that oil is formed from the mud on the seabed seeping into the ground for a long time, so they take it for granted that oil should be on the seaside.

This may be the reason why several large oil fields discovered happen to be close to the sea... For example, European oil is mainly concentrated in the coastal country of Romania, which is also a major oil importer for Germany and Italy. Another example is the Soviet oil base, the Caucasus Oil Field, which is located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.

So geologists are always looking for oil on the seashore. This is the main reason why oil fields in Africa, a country with rich oil resources, were not discovered and developed until after 1950. They generally believed that there would be no oil fields in arid and barren land like Africa. There is oil.

After much thought, Qinchuan believed that Tunisia could be defended by using tunnel defenses, and even if the oil fields were exploited, they would not fall into the hands of the Allies.

On the other hand, he believes that Germany will do its best to keep this secret for its own benefit... After all, this is related to the fate of Germany, so of course they will be more cautious.

But how to tell them that there is oil inland? Not only is there oil, but it is rich in reserves and of good quality. Not only is the quality good, but most of them are spouting wells that are easy to exploit...

Qinchuan, who has extensive research on North Africa, even knows several large oil fields, such as Tunisia's Borma Oil Field and Algeria's Hasi Mesaoud Oil Field.