Chapter 923: Smolensk
As the war progressed, the Spaniards finally could not hold back any longer.
In May 1937, after Germany had conquered vast swaths of Russian territory, more than 300,000 Spanish troops finally gathered in Tetouan in a grand show of force, with their sights set directly on the French colonies in Northwest Africa.
To draw the French people's attention, Germany and Italy also decided to launch a new offensive in North Africa, reopening the North African battlefield.
Italy mobilized nearly 300,000 troops from the Two Sicilies. Together with a German reserve army, nearly 500,000 troops landed in Tunis and advanced steadily westward.
The Spanish and German-Italian lines of attack corresponded with each other. If they won in North Africa, they would have a chance to swiftly occupy France's colonies there and, relying on Algiers and Tunis, delay the Anglo-French Army's offensive.
Among France's colonies, the number of French troops stationed there was not large. Even counting every last soldier, there were only around 300,000.
The main reason was that during the earlier Libyan War, France had withdrawn more than 500,000 troops from its North African Colony to fight the Italian Army. Those soldiers had yet to be replaced.
To make their landing plan safer, the Germans continued using the same approach they had employed against Russia: sending in a huge number of aircraft to clear the way, prioritizing the destruction of French ground defenses and positions.
To protect the mainland, France had not deployed many aircraft in its Northwest African Colony. Its only large military base lay in the mountains south of Tunis. A fighter squadron and a small bomber squadron were stationed there, with nearly seventy aircraft in total.
Clearly, those seventy-plus aircraft were utterly helpless when faced with attacks from the Italian and German Air Force.