Chapter 328 Balkan Situation (2)

As early as the end of March 1939, Mussolini issued an ultimatum to Albania, ordering the Albanian Zogu government to respond to the following demands before 12:00 on April 6: Allow Italian troops to land at major ports in Albania; allow these troops to control strategic roads, airports and strategic border points; establish an Italian "immigrant zone" in Albania, and these immigrants enjoy the rights of Albanian citizens; establish a customs union; Italian citizens living in Albania have the right to hold the most important public offices; the secretaries-general of government departments should be Italians; the Italian ambassador in Tirana and the Albanian ambassador in Rome should both be members of the cabinet of the sending country.

Although the Zogu government kept Mussolini's ultimatum a secret, the people soon grasped the truth. From April 3 to 6, 1939, large-scale mass demonstrations broke out in Albania every day, and Zogu abandoned his country and fled. On April 7, 1939, about 40,000 Italian troops, under the command of the supreme commander General Guchuni, arrived at the four main ports of Albania - Durres, Vlora, Saranda and Shenjin. Albania's resistance was quickly broken, and on April 10, almost the entire country was occupied by the Italian army.

In fact, Yannick did not want to provoke the Balkan "powder keg". Even if the British deployed bombers in Greece in the future to bomb the Ploiesti oil field in Romania, the German air defense forces deployed on the oil field could deal with it well.

What really made him determined to get involved was the resources stored in Albania.

As we all know, Germany has been lacking nickel and chromium ores in World War II, which even seriously affected the production capacity and quality of weapons and equipment, such as jet engines that can only work for 50 hours and 88 guns whose production capacity has never been improved.

However, ironically, these two minerals are not lacking in Europe, and their origin has always been under the control of the German-Italian Axis, and this place is Albania.

Albania has the largest reserves of chromium ore in Europe and rare high-grade nickel ore resources in Europe; for chromium ore, there are 6.1 million tons of chromium ore with a content of more than 42%, 2 million tons of chromium ore with a content of 38%-42%, and 29.2 million tons of chromium ore with a content of 18%-38%; nickel ore is also very rich, with a total of 59.3 million tons of nickel iron ore with a nickel content of 03%-25%, and 49.4 million tons of nickel silicate ore with a content of 21%-32%.

For these resources, Yannick also "had to" step into the Balkan Peninsula. However, he did not want to waste too much energy in this "European powder keg" and summoned the Greek ambassador to Berlin.

"Greetings to you, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince." Marcus, the Greek ambassador who came to the palace, was a little uneasy.

Since Italy occupied Albania, it has been eyeing Greece. A few days ago, Germany also sent troops into Albania. Marcus was very worried whether this summons was a war notice.

"Ambassador Marcus, is His Majesty George II in good health?"

The original Greek Prime Minister was Ioannis Metaxas. As soon as he took office, he dissolved the parliament, arrested workers' leaders, declared strikes illegal, and suppressed freedom of speech; left-wing politicians were either exiled or imprisoned; a strict censorship system was established, and even the works of Plato, Thucydides and Xenophon were listed as banned books. Greece, which had only been restored to a constitutional monarchy for only 8 months, became a dictatorship.

Yannick didn't like this guy, because he was the one who later led Greece to join the Western Alliance, so he used a trick early on to drive him out of Greek politics, and finally killed him. The current Greek Prime Minister is an ordinary person with no courage.

Ambassador Marcus asked cautiously. "Thank you for your concern, Your Majesty, His Majesty George II is doing well. I wonder why His Royal Highness the Crown Prince asked me to come?"

Yannick smiled a little bit with an ambiguous meaning. "Nothing, I heard recently that your country is flirting with Britain?"

"Absolutely not!" Ambassador Marcus denied hastily. Sweat was oozing from his forehead. He really even suspected that Germany would use this as an excuse to attack Greece. Sweat was pouring down his face. "You know that we Greeks strictly adhere to neutrality."

"Oh? Did I hear it wrong?" Yannick smiled slightly. "Ambassador Marcus, don't be so nervous. I also believe in your country's neutrality policy, and I hope that your country will always adhere to it. Don't listen to the British's sweet words and be used as a gun.

Don't worry, I support you to remain neutral, but if your country breaks its promise, then I won't have to be polite at that time. If your country wants to join us, you are welcome at any time. We can also help you get back what you lost." According to the Treaty of Lausanne, Greece lost Smyrna, Northern Epirus, Eastern Thrace and other territories obtained during the reign of Alexander I.

Of course, the last sentence is just a polite remark. You should know that Greece, as the most backward country among the 15 old EU countries, enjoys hundreds of millions of euros in subsidies from the EU every year. The entire country's finances are insufficient to cover expenses, leading to government bankruptcy.

And this bankruptcy is not accidental. Greece has gone bankrupt several times in history.

Contemporary Greece was founded on November 30, 1823, and on that day, Greece borrowed a huge sum of money from Western countries. On that day, major British banks lent 800,000 pounds to the leaders of the Greek independence revolution to finance their war against the Ottoman Empire. The money was mainly used to purchase military equipment, and the rest was used to maintain daily expenses in the rebel-occupied areas. Just four years after this loan, Greece declared its first bankruptcy due to its inability to repay the interest.

66 years later, in 1893, then Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis announced Greece's second bankruptcy and said a famous saying that echoed in the long river of history: "I'm sorry, we're bankrupt."

In 1932, Greece declared bankruptcy for the third time. The then Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos misjudged the situation: after the Great Depression in 1929, he should have realized the serious consequences of this crisis; instead, he still pegged the Greek exchange rate at the time to gold and the pound, leading to the final bankruptcy.

After the end of World War II, Greece's economic situation still did not improve and it always hovered on the brink of bankruptcy. British Prime Minister Churchill gave up first, leaving the United States alone to fight and launch the famous "Marshall Plan" to assist Europe in post-war reconstruction and revitalization. The US government watched and spent the government budget on the construction of high-level social facilities, which led to the continuous growth of the communist camp and eventually forced the United States to establish a highly controlled administrative system.

Throughout the 1950s, the upper class in Athens was squandering Greece's international financial reserves, and even took the gasoline that should have been used for agricultural machinery for their own luxury cars. According to Joseph Harrison, an American journalist stationed in Athens at the time, the rich Greeks at that time "cried for their motherland all day long, but disdained to pay taxes, and transferred most of their property to the United States, Switzerland and Egypt."

This was still the case throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

Yannick didn't want to take such a disappointing younger brother.

But this younger brother is not useless, it still has some resources. Bauxite (reserves of about 1 billion tons), lignite (reserves of 5.6 billion tons), oil (reserves of about 500 million barrels), natural gas, nickel, chromium, magnesium, asbestos, uranium, marble, etc.

In the 1960s, uranium mines were discovered in the Paranasti region and other places in northern Greece, with reserves of up to millions of tons. 1 million tons of uranium mines are equivalent to 5,000 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium. Or it is equivalent to 150,000 kilograms of uranium for low-enriched uranium for nuclear power plants. It is equivalent to 405,000,000 tons (40.5 million tons) of standard coal, which is similar to the total output of a large coal mine in nearly 20 years.

So if Greece "shamelessly" wants to join, Yannick still reluctantly agrees; of course, the price they pay cannot be reduced at all.

Ambassador Marcus was stunned when he heard Yannick's words. "Thank you, Your Highness, I will go back and report to His Majesty."

Yannick warned again. "But if I find out that you go back on your word and secretly collude with the enemies of the empire, you can blame me for being rude."