Transmigrated as the Crown Prince

"A butterfly in the Amazon rainforest in South America, flapping its wings occasionally, can cause a tornado in Texas two weeks later."

This is the famous theory proposed by American meteorologist Edward Lorenz, the "Butterfly Effect". The reason is that the movement of the butterfly's wings causes changes in the air system around it and generates weak airflow. The generation of weak airflow will cause corresponding changes in the surrounding air or other systems, thus causing a chain reaction. Ultimately leading to drastic changes in other systems.

In human history, the butterfly effect is even more common. A series of seemingly insignificant events are closely linked, but they can often influence the course of history.

For example, the Balkans during World War II.

Since the Turks crossed the Dardanelles Strait and invaded southeastern Europe in 1352, for five centuries, various ethnic groups in the Balkan Peninsula have been oppressed under the iron heel of the foreigners. In 1821, the Greek people raised the flag of righteousness for the first time and resisted the Turks. After nine years of hard work, Greece finally gained independence in 1830, opening a gap in Turkey's rule in the Balkans. Greece's independence played a very good role in inspiring and demonstrating. By the 1870s, the national liberation movement was surging throughout the Balkans and received strong support from external forces. The rule of the Ottoman Empire collapsed in an instant, and Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania Countries such as Turkey gained independence one after another. Except for retaining Istanbul and its surrounding areas, Turkey lost all its territory on the European continent. With the collapse of Turkey's rule in the Balkans, the forces of major European countries have moved into this region, and those newly independent countries have also purposefully chosen a certain major country as their backer.

After the two Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913, on the eve of the outbreak of World War I, the Balkan countries went through a series of differentiation and combinations, and were divided into two camps like the European powers at that time: Serbia and Greece fell to the side of the Allies. , while Bulgaria leaned towards the Central Powers. The intervention of the great powers in the Balkan Peninsula has made the situation in this region complicated. Any seemingly careless incident will trigger a major crisis. The Balkan Peninsula has become the Achilles' heel of European geopolitics at this time. Some far-sighted politicians Having keenly observed this point, German Prime Minister Bismarck pointed it out pointedly. "One day, the stupid things happening in the Balkans will drag all of Europe into a big war."

Sure enough, on June 28, 1914, Archduke Ferdinand, the crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. The assassins were several Serbian radicals. This made the already tense Austro-Serbian relations To make matters worse, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia and bombarded Belgrade, the Serbian capital, on July 28, provoking a war. Serbia was supported by Russia, while Germany endorsed the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Subsequently, Britain and France The country was also involved, and what happened next is known to everyone. Just as Bismarck predicted during his lifetime, "a stupid thing caused a war." The First World War, which was called "the war to end all wars" at the time, broke out. , almost the entire European continent was dragged into a four-year fierce war.

Twenty years later, when Germany raided Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and World War II broke out, Italy wisely declared neutrality and wanted to sit back and watch the success or failure.

In June 1940, Germany's blitzkrieg into Western Europe was a great success. The German army defeated France, the European military power, in just six weeks. It also forced the Netherlands and Belgium to surrender, and drove nearly 300,000 British Expeditionary Forces back to the British Isles. At this juncture, Italy finally joined the war. Mussolini was jealous of the great success of the German army in Western Europe. He was determined to restore the glory of ancient Rome and turn the entire Mediterranean region into an Italian lake. Therefore, he The Italian General Staff was ordered to formulate a plan to invade Greece.

On October 28, 1940, nearly 160,000 Italian troops crossed the border between Albania and Greece (Italy had annexed Albania as early as 1939) and invaded Greece. At the beginning of the war, people generally believed that Greece, a small country with a population of only 7 million, was no match for Italy with a population of 45 million. However, what was surprising was that the Greek army commanded by General Papagos fought extremely bravely, just like their two thousand Like their Spartan ancestors who fought against the Persian invasion many years ago, they reenacted the glory of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. By the end of November, the Italian army was not only driven out of Greece, but was even in danger of losing Albania, just because of the winter With the advent of Japan, the temperature plummeted to minus 20 degrees. The Greek army was forced to stop the offensive due to lack of supplies, and the Italian army was saved from collapse.

Italy's disastrous defeat in Greece made Mustache very angry. This was not because he sympathized with Italy's situation or understood Italy's territorial ambitions, but because Mussolini's reckless invasion of Greece broke the Balkans. The original complicated diplomatic balance in the region was like opening a Pandora's box, triggering a series of butterfly effects: Due to the invasion of the Italian army, Greece was forced to seek help from its traditional ally, the United Kingdom. The Royal Air Force first sent several Fighter and bomber squadrons were stationed in Greece to cheer them up. Although the number was small, this move aroused alarm in Germany, because Germany does not produce oil locally. Its most important overseas oil source is the Ploiesti oil field in Romania. The oil field is exactly within the combat radius of British Air Force bombers stationed in Greece, which makes Germany very worried about the safety of the oil field.

Since the dispatch of the air force, the British Near East Army stationed in North Africa has also been continuously moving from Egypt to Greece. This has made the Germans realize that the "nasty ghost" Greece must be dealt with as soon as possible, otherwise there will be endless troubles, which will affect the Axis powers in the future. Security of the Southeast European flank.

On April 6, 1941, Germany, Italy, and Hungary invaded Yugoslavia via separate routes. By April 17, all of Yugoslavia had fallen, and its territory was occupied by the four countries. Germany easily surrendered Yugoslavia in just 11 days, and the price paid was only 558 casualties and missing people. This battle fully demonstrated the power of the German blitzkrieg. power.

After defeating Yugoslavia, the German army continued to move south under the command of Marshal List. The German armed forces were far more powerful than Italy. The British and Greek coalition forces were no match for the well-trained German army. On April 24, the German army Capture Athens. By the beginning of May, the Axis forces occupied the Greek mainland, and the remaining British troops were forced to withdraw to Egypt via the Mediterranean. This was the third time in just one year that the British troops were driven out of the European continent. The first two were respectively In Norway and France, this was a fatal blow to the British, enough to humiliate them, but it was nothing compared to the two disastrous defeats the British army suffered a year later at Tobruk and Singapore. .

Throughout World War II, the British Army's performance was lackluster compared to the Royal Navy and Air Force, and it rarely achieved outstanding results whether it was fighting the Germans or the Japanese. Shortly after occupying mainland Greece, elite German paratroopers carried out the largest and most famous airborne operation on Crete during World War II. Just like the German airborne occupation of the Eben Emaar Fortress in Belgium a year ago, the heroic German paratroopers The British troops stationed on the island were defeated in a panic, and finally occupied Crete, the largest island in Greece, on May 25. At this point, the Axis Power Group completely controlled the entire Balkan Peninsula.

The German army's victory in the Balkans was jaw-dropping. It was a classic and brilliant blitzkrieg. The efficiency of the German war machine was fully revealed. However, the price the Germans paid for this was that "Operation Barbarossa" was forced to be postponed from its original schedule in May. The 15th was postponed to June 2. Judging from the future historical development process, this delay of more than one month will be fatal.