Transmigrated as the Crown Prince

Chapter 436 North African Campaign (4)

Of the 50,000 Vichy French soldiers transferred to North Africa, only 20,000 participated in the attack on Egypt. The other 30,000 began to wander around their own colonies to scare those who were previously ready to move and were a little restless.

The first stop is Tunisia, which is adjacent to Libya.

Tunisia was originally the territory of the Phoenicians, followed by the Romans, then ruled by the Hafsid dynasty, and was occupied by the Ottoman Turks in 1574 AD.

As early as 1830 AD, France swallowed up Algeria for some unreasonable reasons, and then set its sights on Tunisia. The Ottoman Empire was already half alive at this time. Hearing that France wanted to invade Tunisia, it sent warships to Tunisian waters to demonstrate to France.

France was furious and sent warships to Tunisia to warn the Ottoman Empire to leave as soon as possible to avoid being unable to step down. The Ottoman Empire's national power was in serious decline and it did not have the strength to confront France. Faced with France's warning, the Ottoman Empire very wisely withdrew from the competition.

Tunisia is an economically backward region. Coupled with successive years of drought, the people have no food to eat and people are panicked. Seeing that Tunisia was so hungry, France suddenly launched a "goodwill" initiative. In 1869 AD, it established a so-called Finance Committee to help Tunisia solve its fiscal deficit and foreign debt. Can a wolf be kind to a sheep? France colluded with Britain and Italy, who had ulterior motives, to "check the pulse" of Tunisia's economy.

All sheep who believe in the kindness of wolves will not end well. Tunisia really thought France was here to help, but it didn't take long to discover that French thieves were present in every economic field in Tunisia, and the banking sector was completely controlled by France. By the time Tunisia woke up from its sweet dream, it was too late.

France needs a "reasonable" excuse to swallow up Tunisia. "Coincidentally", in early 1881, a boy in Tunisia fell in love with a girl from French Algeria, and was killed by the girl's family. The boy's village attacks the girl's village. France smelled something fishy and accused Tunisia of attacking French Algeria. Tunisia wanted to explain, but France did not listen at all. In April 1881, it dispatched more than 30,000 troops to attack Tunisia.

Tunisia's swords, guns, swords, halberds, axes, hooks and forks were no match for France's modern weapons. They were quickly defeated and had to sign the "Bardo Treaty" with France. The treaty was simple. France had the right to station troops and administer administration in Tunisia.

Everything fell into place and France took full control of Tunisia. It was not until 1956 that Tunisia was freed from the clutches of France.

Yannick and Pétain discussed that all French colonies would still be nominally owned by Vichy France, and Germany would be responsible for exploiting the resources in the colonies, with a 64% share.

After all, as long as Germany is willing, what if it directly seizes these colonies? Now that there is still 40% of the profit to be obtained, Petain naturally has nothing to say. What made him a little curious was how the Germans found these resources and found them accurately. Take France as an example. From the founding of the country to the present, the French themselves did not discover that there was a lead mine near Cober. As a result, when the Germans arrived, they immediately started mining.

Yannick smiled slightly and said, "It's God's guidance." This made Petain doubtful as to whether it was true or not.

Compared with other major oil-producing countries in Africa, Tunisia's oil and natural gas resources are very limited, with small reserves (70 million tons of oil and 61.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas); there are also 2 billion tons of phosphates and 25 million tons of iron ore.

In addition, Tunisia is the world's largest olive oil exporter and the world's tenth largest tomato producer; it is quite worthy of German investment.

Naturally, a small country like Tunisia did not dare to have any other ideas; the French expressed their satisfaction and went to their second colony, Elgeria.

Like Tunisia, Algeria originally belonged to the Ottoman Empire. As a result, France entered Algeria in the early 19th century and gradually annexed the entire Algeria.

During World War II in the original time and space, in order to fight the Axis Powers, France promised Algeria that it would be allowed to become independent as long as it helped France win the war. After the end of World War II, France became the victor as it wished, but de Gaulle, who was eager to repair the wounds of the war, not only failed to fulfill his promise, but intensified his efforts to squeeze Algeria. The Algerian people fought hard for eight years before they were able to gain independence.

Algeria is rich in natural resources. Oil reserves are about 1.7 billion tons, accounting for 1% of the world's total reserves, ranking 15th in the world, mainly Saharan light oil, with higher oil quality; proven recoverable reserves of natural gas are 58 trillion cubic meters, accounting for 37% of the world's total reserves. %, ranking 10th in the world.

Other mineral deposits mainly include iron, lead, zinc, uranium, copper, gold, phosphate, etc. Among them, iron ore reserves are 3 to 5 billion tons, mainly distributed in the Uangza Mine and Buhadra Mine in the east. The reserves of lead and zinc ore are estimated at 500 million tons, 50,000 tons of uranium ore, 2 billion tons of phosphate, and 73 tons of gold. Afghanistan is rich in water conservancy resources, with about 17.2 billion cubic meters of developable water resources, 64 dams, and a water storage capacity of 71 billion cubic meters.

Then Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Niger...

When the French drove more powerful Jackal tanks and BF109s than before, how could these colonies have any dissatisfaction? They simply threw away all the tempting promises of De Gaulle and knelt down in the maintenance of peace again. At the feet of France.

The German, Italian, and French forces that attacked Egypt advanced all the way to a place less than 200 kilometers away from Romania. At the speed of the German attack, it would take less than two days to reach Cairo. In order to ensure this long supply line, Germany, Italy and France assembled 3,000 trucks to deliver supplies to the front line day and night.

General Wavell on the British side could only keep forcing his troops to retreat. His blind retreat aroused Churchill's dissatisfaction.

Originally, there was a serious disagreement between Churchill and Wavell in terms of personality, which led to Churchill's great dissatisfaction with Wavell. For example, Churchill's character was eloquent, but Wavell's character was taciturn, so it was always particularly difficult for the two of them to communicate on some matters. In particular, General Wavell was very dissatisfied with the government's arbitrary interference in military matters. He never thought that Churchill, who had a very short service experience, would have much actual military talent.

Churchill hoped to win a beautiful victory in North Africa to boost morale; but Wavell thought this request was simply a fantasy.

Churchill in the original time and space appointed General Auchinleck to succeed General Wavell and became the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in Africa; however, by this time Auchinleck had already died, and even the British mainland was in danger, so how could he care about it? Far North Africa.

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