In the blink of an eye, time had reached May 1937.
By then, the clouds of war had already shrouded the entire Eurasian continent. In Europe, the smoke of the Spanish Civil War still lingered.
Germany's war preparations were progressing faster than in Ernst's previous life. Even Ernst did not know when Adolf would choose to strike, or which country he would target.
Even if Germany had suddenly launched a war at that moment, Ernst would not have found it strange.
However, there was one thing Ernst knew very well: Germany's chosen ally—Italy—was absolutely unprepared for war.
For that reason, Italy might not have wanted war to suddenly erupt. Instead, it had become an important political force promoting Europe's temporary peace.
The reason was simple. Italy, which had not completed its military reorganization and war preparations, feared that Germany's advance after the outbreak of war would be too rapid, leaving it unable to realize its ambition of dominating the Mediterranean Sea.
This had been evident in Ernst's previous life. Just days before Germany's invasion of Poland, Benito had still proposed at the last moment convening an international conference to resolve the Danzig Corridor crisis, attempting to avert war.
Of course, this was not because Benito "loved peace." Rather, if an utterly unprepared Italy performed poorly in the war, there was a high chance that the postwar "fruit" he envisioned would slip from his grasp.
After all, as the saying went, "What you cannot win on the battlefield, do not dream of gaining at the negotiating table."
In this timeline, the Italian government was even less certain of the Italian military's capabilities.
Because Italian unification had been delayed, Italy's war preparations were also progressing far more slowly than in Ernst's previous life.
At the other end of the continent, a new