I Will Stage A Coup D’état - Chapter 156



Only Noblemtl

EP.156 The Italian War (2)

With the nuclear tests in the Adriatic Sea and the provocations of the Northern Italian People’s Republic, war in Italy is virtually imminent.

To deal with this situation, the great powers were moving busier than ever.

Experts flew countless times between London and Washington, Pyongyang and Moscow.

There were times when up to five hundred telegrams would arrive in a single day.

We yawned leisurely as we read the text.

I thought I could prevent a nuclear war, but I was willing to risk one or two explosions.

Of course, after getting hit with a few nukes, they’ll learn not to use nukes.

To begin with, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union possessed a large number of nuclear weapons.

If you keep using it, you might not know, but if you stop it at the right time, you can stop the nuclear escalator.

By the way, if McCarthy runs wild a little more, it seems like America’s brains could become a little more childish. Why don’t you light a fire?

It seemed like it would be a great help to the Empire’s scientific power to round up Tier 1 scientists like Wernher von Braun and kick them out of the United States.

Of course, white scientists would not readily come to a yellow country, but if we appealed to the advantage of having a German immigrant community, it was not impossible.

‘Ah, I should get rid of guys like Chen Xuesen right now.’

Yuan Yichen Xuesen was one of China’s greatest geniuses, involved in China’s nuclear development and leading its space development.

Rather than seeing such a dangerous person cross over to China and enhance the scientific power of the Republic of China, it seemed better to just get rid of him.

Although the Republic of China and South Korea nominally formed an anti-communist alliance, we were fundamentally enemies.

However, they only briefly joined hands to fight against their common enemy, the Chinese Communist Party.

I never forgot that fact for even a second.

Since they’re going to do it openly, it would be better to do it after their position is destroyed by McCarthy.

Oh, it would have been nice to get McCarthy to do it first.

Let’s send a complaint to McCarthy.

He’s the kind of guy who won’t even verify it anyway.

“Central Court.”

I just conveyed the ideas I had organized to Lee Kyung-ho.

When others were trembling in fear of nuclear war, it was an opportunity.

When everyone was looking away, it was standard to stab them like this.

Is the slander behind the scenes a big deal?

‘I got one done.’

In exchange for this, good scientists will suffer, but it couldn’t be helped.

If South Korea wanted to continue to compete with the superpower the United States, it needed to engage in this kind of invisible sabotage.

Cowardly?

But in the international community, it is the one who is at fault for this kind of manipulation.

We should never have shown any weakness to rip you off in the first place.

At a point when someone like McCarthy was installed, America was left speechless even when stabbed.

“Your Majesty, I have a message from Bonn. I would like to know whether Adenauer can open a channel of dialogue with the Soviet Union.”

Germany?

Indeed, the friends who were most surprised by the Italian War were Germany.

If by any chance this war were to escalate, the first region to be devastated would be Germany.

First, it was necessary to find out what Adenauer specifically wanted.

I sent a telegram to Adenauer.

“Your Excellency, German Chancellor. I fully understand your concerns about this war. We will do our best to help you in any way we can.”

Adenauer’s report arrived in less than 30 minutes.

Did these guys translate it and send it to the specialist?

The German specialist was extremely desperate.

“First, please open a channel with Moscow. Only when we understand Secretary Stalin’s intentions will we be able to feel at ease.”

Well, I can help you with that much.

We didn’t want Germany to become a battlefield either.

If the war gets too big, I won’t be able to handle it.

I sent a telegram to Stalin.

“Dear Secretary Stalin, Your Excellency, I would like to arrange a meeting to mediate any conflicts that may arise between Bonn and Moscow in connection with this war crisis. What do you think, Your Excellency?”

Stalin accepted my offer.

In the first place, Stalin was not the type to want World War III.

I have designated Southwest Berlin, where we still have administrative power, as the negotiating seat.

Even as the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Germany met in occupied Korea, the threat of war continued to grow.

Soon a major cause for war was created in northern Italy.

“The conservative reactionaries in the southern half are planning a surprise attack on our military! This is proof that they want war!”

Northern Italy waved as evidence an operational plan from the southern kingdom.

After looking into the situation in Jungjeong, it turned out that the document was real.

Of course, I could bet five cents that this wasn’t a formal operational plan prepared by the Southern Kingdom.

Clearly, it was a forged document created by bribing several people from the Southern Kingdom.

However, it is also true that the North’s actions gained strength once evidence that the South was preparing a preemptive strike was made public.

“If this trend continues, there is a high possibility that war will break out around late June.”

Surely not that day.

I had the military run a war game about the Italian war.

The results of the war game were shocking.

“4 weeks?”

France was a laughing stock after falling apart in 6 weeks, but Southern Italy fell apart in 4 weeks?

It was a somewhat absurd result, so I called Kim Seong-ju and asked him why.

“But even though the Southern Kingdom had a geographic advantage and considerable military power, why is there such a difference?”

“The Southern Kingdom is basically a country unprepared for war. It has a decent military on the outside, but its military organization has not improved at all since World War II. The Italian soldiers rely solely on anti-communist ideology as their reason for fighting.”

That was a bit risky.

If communism and anti-communism are on equal footing, anti-communist ideology might work.

But now in Italy the power was not in the south, but in the north.

The North was far superior in both industrial power and population.

Even in post-war recovery, indicators in the North were much better.

This was thanks to the support of the Comintern, which suffered some bleeding.

On the other hand, the South had not yet completed post-war recovery.

“The gap in equipment has also widened. The North already has over 2,000 tanks. The South now has 800 tanks. The gap in aircraft is three times.”

The gap in military power has also widened further than before.

Then it wouldn’t have been strange if it ended in four weeks.

Well, the US won’t let Southern Italy do this for four weeks.

As the leader of the free world, there was no way he could give up if he wanted to maintain his prestige.

In any case, it seemed that the 6.25 War would start off quite unfavorably for the West.

Of course, we could just pop some popcorn as long as World War III didn’t break out.

‘That’s not our fight.’

To begin with, we weren’t really part of the free world.

*

Ivanoe Bonomi, Prime Minister of the Southern Kingdom, was born in 1873 in Mantua, northern Italy, to a bourgeois family.

Bonomi was initially a socialist with an interest in socialism, but changed his position over time.

As a revisionist, he believed that an alliance was possible between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and he aimed for modern bourgeois democracy.

Bonomi was willing to join hands with liberal reformers to reform Italy’s politics, and so he was seen as a possible compromise for the establishment.

Unlike the socialists, Bonomi did not show a negative attitude toward imperialist expansion.

“Italians also have the right to their own territory.”

Bonomi continued to be used heavily in the bourgeois regime and grew into a prominent politician.

Meanwhile, the fascists took over Italy.

Bonomi withdrew from politics at this time, but continued to carry out covert anti-fascist activities behind the scenes.

When the fascist regime finally collapsed and a provisional government led by Graziani was established, Bonomi returned to the kingdom’s politics.

Bonomi defended the monarchy, which had lost much of its popularity due to its political instability, and softened his proposal to depose the king.

“If Italians are to be united, the monarchy must survive.”

Bonomi played a significant role in the survival of the monarchy in southern Italy.

King Emmanuel III and Crown Prince Umberto II were also aware of Bonomi’s achievements.

In 1944, when the interim prime minister, Graziani, resigned, Bonomi became prime minister with the support of the government, government, military, and royal family.

The military, which was dominated by fascists, supported Bonomi because he was a man who was kind to them.

Bonomi also lived up to those expectations.

Bonomi protected a significant number of fascists in the face of Allied requests to extradite war criminals.

In return for this protection, the fascists actively supported Bonomi.

As a result, Bonomi was able to continue as Prime Minister even after the war.

If it had been a far-right war, Bonomi would have been forced out of power by his opponents who were critical of the fascists, but with Northern Italy in a state of decline, there was no one who could go against the mainstream fascists and touch Bonomi.

Bonomi set the direction of the regime he created as follows:

“The Kingdom of Italy must make anti-communism its highest value.”

It was not something a Prime Minister who had once been a socialist should have said, but given Bonomi’s disposition, it was not entirely unusual.

From the beginning, Bonomi was a person close to social democracy.

Bonomi pushed anti-communism as the national policy and ran the Kingdom of Southern Italy as a thoroughgoing war state.

Given the overwhelming weight and threat from the North, it was an inevitable choice.

As the country’s operations leaned toward the military, the military’s voice naturally grew.

Then, this claim also arose within the Southern Kingdom.

“If it is a country led by the military anyway, isn’t practicing Korean-style democracy the answer?”

Bonomi was appalled by these claims, but he was unable to completely defeat the fascists’ covert push for Korean-style democratic reforms.

Over the course of about five years, the southern kingdom evolved from a constitutional monarchy into a quasi-dictatorship mixed with Korean-style democracy.

Certainly, in terms of preparing for war, Korean-style democracy was effective.

The Bonomi regime, with Western support, prepared faithfully for war.

Internally, there is an analysis that suggests that we may have a go at the northern communists.

“Breakfast in Florence, lunch in Bologna, dinner in Venice.”

Graziani, a powerful figure on the silver screen during the Bonomi regime, openly talked about this story.

Bonomi himself also thought that since the military was showing this much confidence, they could fight well against the North.

“Don’t be pushed around by the northern warlords!”

Although there were nearly 100 local skirmishes between May and June, Bonomi had no intention of refraining from clashes.

Showing weakness here would only make the communists stronger.

On June 24, 1950, after a repeated war of attrition, the North’s provocations suddenly ceased.

And that night, a soldier who had deserted from the North brought word that the North would invade the next day.

The Royal Italian Army command dismissed this information as common rumour.

“What kind of courage do they have?”

The Italians believed that the North did not have the courage to start a war that could trigger a world war.

Common sense tells you that it was right.

But this war was not one the North had prepared for.

The mastermind behind the Italian War was Stalin.

At dawn on June 25, 1950, under cover of darkness, a large artillery force of the Northern Italian Army was deployed forward.

At 3 a.m., the barrage that would shatter the peace of the European continent began.

The Italian forward positions were swept by artillery fire, accompanied by the thunderous roar of gunfire.

“The commies are attacking!”

The Italian army belatedly realized that this attack was no ordinary local war.

“Issue the forward units! Maintain a defensive posture immediately and prepare for a counterattack!”

But when the royal army command came to their senses, a chaotic scene unfolded where they could not even issue orders to their subordinate units.

The shells that poured down without distinction between the front and rear contained a huge number of chemical bombs.

The Italian army was forced to fight in a semi-paralyzed state due to this chemical attack.

As the scheduled preparatory bombardment ended, the Italian People’s Army tanks started up.

Hundreds of tanks rumbled with loud engine noise.

“Comrades, the war for unification to liberate the southern hemisphere has finally begun! Let us sweep away the anachronistic fascists and imperialists through this war and build a socialist fatherland on this land. Long live the unification of the fatherland!”

“Long live the reunification of our country!”

The kingdom’s weaklings will be easily crushed before this mighty army.

The tank crews were confident that they would achieve victory in a short period of time.

That’s how the invasion began.