American Strategic Deception Bureau

　Ferry stretched himself and nonchalantly began to tell insulting jokes about France. "It's well known that no one can capture Paris before France surrenders. Because the French can only win under the leadership of dwarfs, foreigners, and women; otherwise, they will most likely kneel down faster than anyone else."

　Charles de Gaulle, the last great man of France, is dead. France is now ruled by neither a dwarf, nor a woman, nor a foreigner. Faced with U.S. nuclear blackmail, what other choice does the Gallic rooster have other than to submit like Vichy France did to the Nazis?

　Author's words: PS: Tik Tok is about to be closed, and a large number of American netizens have flocked to Xiaohongshu as a substitute. Cultural exchanges between China and the United States are booming. Chinese people ask Americans to do English papers, and Americans ask Chinese people to do math papers. Some people even saw US soldiers stationed in South Korea on Xiaohongshu.

　Many Chinese netizens only just learned that there's a "cat tax" custom on European and American internet sites. New users joining a forum or chat group are required to post a photo of their own cat or someone else's cat to show friendliness. This is called the "cat tax."

　But Xiaohongshu's operators are not happy at all. Faced with overwhelming traffic, they are not planning to launch a translation function to promote Sino-US communication. Instead, they are working overtime to implement a blocking function, attempting to prevent domestic and overseas IP addresses from seeing each other's posts.

　Hey, why do people all want to close the country to the outside world?

　Chapter 568, Nuclear Era: Continue to drop nuclear bombs on each other as a gesture of friendship!

　On the night of February 13, 1971, the day before Valentine's Day, a mushroom cloud rose over Paris, the French capital.

　Compared to gloomy London and even colder New York, the weather in Paris is much warmer, and it is rare for heavy snow to lock people in their homes.

　So, a few minutes before the mushroom cloud rose, the streets of Paris were still bustling at night.

　As the night wore on, revelers wandered the streets and alleys, seeking entertainment. The fashionable shops of the Champs-Élysées were still bustling with people. The Moulin Rouge, the Opera, and various cabarets were packed. Glittering neon lights, elegant cafes, elegantly dressed ladies, and rebellious rock singers all combined to create a captivating wonderland brimming with fashion.

　Indeed, while almost the entire Western free world is currently struggling with the misery of economic depression and financial crisis, the French Fifth Republic, thanks to its own eccentricity, has temporarily maintained its prosperity and wealth.

　As mushroom clouds rose successively in the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan, international hot money from all over the world flocked to France in search of a safe haven, greatly pushing up the purchasing power and exchange rate of the franc, allowing France, the old "usurious imperialism", to once again usher in a financial heyday!

　France's relatively independent industrial system from the United States and Britain, which is still relatively complete, and its African resource-producing areas, which are apparently independent but still firmly controlled by France through soft means, also provide sufficient guarantees for the effective absorption and digestion of these funds.

　This ensured that the international capital that had been pouring into France for the past few years would have more places to invest, instead of being forced to rush into the real estate and stock markets. Besides driving up housing prices and stock prices, creating a massive bubble, it left no real benefit.

　On the contrary, relying on massive capital and abundant reserves of technical talent, the French economy has ushered in steady and significant development during this period.

　Therefore, in recent years, the French Fifth Republic, after getting rid of the consumption of colonial wars and establishing a stable order, and relying on the collapse of the United States and Britain to make the franc more valuable than the pound and the dollar, Paris ushered in the most prosperous golden age since World War II.

　According to the ever-arrogant Gallic rooster, although France is the most insignificant of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, after enduring the nightmare of World War II, the painful setbacks of the Vietnam War and the Algerian War, and the buoyancy of de Gaulleism, France now possesses nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, domestically produced jet fighters, its own West African "tributary circle (franc zone)", and its own Triomphant-class ballistic missile nuclear submarine is about to be launched. With such hard power, it can certainly speak out and make money at the same time, right?

　However, it must be said that the French's thinking is too rigid. They never thought that there is a possibility of version iteration in this world.

　What they didn't take into account was that ever since someone first opened the seal on the indiscriminate nuclear bombardment of non-nuclear countries, which then prompted other countries to follow suit and set off a nuclear proliferation frenzy that swept the world, the entire world has long since become "not afraid of nuclear bombs, not afraid of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council"!

　——New York in the United States was hit by a nuclear bomb, and London in the United Kingdom across the strait was also bombed. Why can't you grow mushrooms in Paris, France?

　Therefore, shortly after President Nixon’s visit with “goodwill” left, France experienced a brief golden age in the early 1970s.

　The moon, like a beautiful but fragile soap bubble, suddenly disappeared on the eve of Valentine's Day.

　——Accompanied by an unprecedented "brilliant radiation", a bright flash brighter than the sun instantly illuminated the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées, turning night into day.

　The brilliant light of gold, crimson, purple, gray, and blue blended together, illuminating the sky above Paris with a magnificence that is almost indescribable in words, and decorating all the scenery with a dazzling and dreamy hue...

　It was as gorgeous as the aurora, yet as cruel as hell. It was like God's apocalyptic miracle of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah.

　Then, a deafening roar like thunder swept across. It was as if ten thousand heavy bombs exploded at the same time, making the ground of Paris tremble with terror. The ears of countless unfortunate people were buzzing, and they jumped up.

　Even though the explosion was just a miniature atomic bomb with a TNT equivalent of over a thousand tons, the devastating sound was still terrifying.

　Countless citizens who were awakened by the explosion and flash stuck their heads out of the bedroom windows, looked at the spectacle in the distance, and were so surprised that they couldn't say a word - of course, these were people who were far away from the epicenter. Within a few hundred meters of the epicenter, what they saw was the light of death!

　In this white light that illuminated the world, everything near the epicenter—trees, vehicles, people, and animals—reached unimaginable temperatures in the intense glare, rapidly carbonizing and burning. Living beings were reduced to charcoal before they could even react, steel melted like candles, and trees were reduced to a sea of ​​fire. Even the sturdiest concrete buildings were burned beyond recognition.

　People who were nearby were burned to death by the flash, and people who were a little further away were blinded as if they had been hit by a flash bomb, and they covered their eyes in pain.

　After the eye-catching "bright radiation" that cut through the night sky without warning, the devastating catastrophe brought by the nuclear explosion descended upon the bustling streets of Paris. The terrifying radiation wave knocked down the ancient houses left over from the French Revolution, swept wildly along the streets, and blew the Parisians who had been blinded by the flash to the ground, some even turning them into rolling gourds all over the street.

　The Champs-Élysées looked like it had been hit by a typhoon, and every glass window of the Louvre was shattered by the air waves.

　The wood and other combustible materials ignited by the nuclear explosion were swept into the air waves, spreading everywhere and turning into a terrible firestorm!

　As the lights on the ground in Paris went out one after another and leaping flames rose up in patches, a huge fireball slowly rose at the end of the horizon and gradually rushed into the sky... Under the horrified gaze of the Parisian citizens, it emitted a dazzling light, and its color was constantly changing, from dark purple to orange, constantly spreading outward, and becoming larger and larger, illuminating the surrounding sky as bright as day.

　Finally, when the mushroom cloud gradually took shape, all Parisians were stunned by the sight before them.

　— Under the illumination of a mushroom cloud as bright as a super torch, raging fires burned between the streets on both sides of the Seine. Then, just like the time of the Hiroshima nuclear explosion, Paris began to drizzle with black rain mixed with radioactive dust.

　Unfortunately, the rain was too light, just a drizzle, and it stopped after a few minutes, far from enough to extinguish the flames. The power supply to more than 80% of Paris's neighborhoods was cut off immediately after the nuclear explosion, and many parts of the city's tap water pipes also had problems.

　Even if the Paris firefighters were able to brave the lethal doses of radiation and the intense heat of the explosion and continue to charge into the fire, what would they do if there was no water in the fire hydrants? Would they pump water from the Seine?

　Fortunately, unlike the United States, where there are flammable wooden houses made of plywood everywhere, and the old Japanese Empire, where there are even more flammable cardboard houses, the houses in Paris have all experienced the test of the Great Revolution, the Franco-Prussian War, World War II, and countless demonstrations and Molotov cocktail fights. They are made of either bricks or cement, which are relatively less flammable - most of the old houses that burn quickly had burned down long before this!

　But despite this, Notre Dame de Paris, the most famous old house in Paris, was unfortunately ignited and burned in the scorching hot winds brought by the nuclear explosion, causing Catholics to wail in grief: although the outer walls are made of stone, the supporting structure of Notre Dame de Paris is still made of wood!

　In addition, facing the rain of fire falling from the sky, the whole of Paris was a scorching inferno, and people were burning everywhere.

　From coffee shops to opera houses, from slum apartments to garden mansions, all are struggling towards their end in the flames of the Vulcan.

　Even if the equivalent of a miniature nuclear bomb is not enough to evaporate the water of the Seine, watching the charred corpses floating across the river in the light of the fire is enough to make people shudder.

　Faced with this apocalyptic scene, some felt as if they were transported to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, hearing God say, "Let there be light!" And there was light. Others felt disillusioned with the idea of ​​a peaceful world, as if they were witnessing the advent of another world war.

　Young people immediately rushed to attics or cellars, pried open dusty "doomsday survival kits," took out the iodine tablets, and swallowed them. Then, those who had dug shelters at home hid in them, those who didn't, dug into cellars, and those who didn't even have cellars took refuge in bathtubs or closets.

　The old man recalled with a sigh

　The meat grinders of Verdun and the Somme, and the humiliation of being swept through by the Nazi German army in 45 days during World War II...

　Many journalists and ordinary photography enthusiasts in Paris could not help but take out their cameras and camcorders to try to record this impressive scene, but they did not know that the pervasive radiation had already exposed the film in most people's cameras in advance.

　Then, a reporter with sharp eyes screamed like a groundhog: The tower is falling!

　——Most of the Eiffel Tower has disappeared, leaving only the twisted and broken base, which continues to crumble and collapse in the flames.

　There is no way, because the epicenter of the Paris nuclear explosion was right next to the Eiffel Tower.

　In short, the collapse of the Eiffel Tower shattered the Parisians' dream of peace.

　Paris has not been without war in its history. On the contrary, from the French Revolution to the Paris Commune, revolutions, uprisings, and street battles have made Paris one of the most frequently war-torn capitals in Europe, with only Rome being able to compare.

　(Rome has fought more battles due to its long history. However, the frequency of street fighting in modern times is still not as high as that in Paris.)

　But the shock caused by the volley gun fire and Napoleonic cannon bombardments in the past is completely different from the shock caused by today's nuclear bomb explosions.

　The international community was also stunned by this, as people were shocked to discover that the so-called "no punishment for the five permanent members" may have become a thing of the past.

　And a "cruel nuclear era" in which countries around the world drop nuclear bombs on each other as a gesture of "friendship" is about to begin...

　-

　When Paris was hit by a nuclear bomb, French President Pompidou was not at the Elysee Palace but was visiting India.

　When he received the bad news and rushed back from South Asia, the situation in Paris had almost calmed down.

　Although the Eiffel Tower collapsed, Notre Dame Cathedral burned down, the Invalides and the Louvre caught fire, and even the Arc de Triomphe was blackened.

　More than 20,000 people died instantly in the nuclear explosion, and another 100,000 people were exposed to radioactive contamination, with their risk of developing leukemia and cancer increasing dramatically.

　Not to mention the riots and large-scale zero-dollar shopping that broke out throughout Paris after the nuclear explosion, as well as the bloody clashes when suppressing the bandits.

　However, no matter what, the explosion of a miniature atomic bomb with a TNT equivalent of 1000 tons cannot destroy a large city like Paris with a population of one million. With a power less than 10% of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, it can directly destroy the Eiffel Tower, which is already the greatest damage.

　Regardless of how the news media commented on the tragedy that occurred on Valentine's Day Eve, and how the French people mourned the fall of the Eiffel Tower, the next question President Pompidou had to face was: Who did it?

　As a result, before the French government officially expressed its position on this issue, US President Nixon held a press conference on the South Lawn of the White House, announcing that the US CIA and Army Intelligence Agency had successfully seized a piece of conclusive intelligence that the culprit of the "nuclear explosion of the Eiffel Tower tragedy" in Paris, France was the "Desert Dawn Front", a Tuareg nomadic terrorist organization in the Sahara Desert of West Africa (fictional in this book).

　Since their establishment in the 1960s, they have been engaged in guerrilla warfare against French colonial rule in the grasslands and oases on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Recently, they obtained miniature nuclear bombs assisted by the Soviet Union from Libya, and successfully used the African immigrant groups in Paris, France as a cover to transport a miniature Soviet nuclear bomb to Paris, France, in an attempt to make a name for themselves by destroying the Eiffel Tower, a landmark building in Paris.

　In response to this, the attitude of all NATO member states is: "Don't believe it! Don't insult our intelligence!!"

　Not to mention the Africans who eat sand every day in the Sahara Desert, how could they be so capable? Besides you inherently evil Americans, who else would dare to brazenly bomb the city of Paris? Even the German Nazis and the Soviet Union wouldn't do such a thing, okay? KUMA!!!

　Subsequently, both the Soviet Union, Libya, and the Tuagher Desert Dawn Front firmly denied the US accusations.

　But President Pompidou, the victim, hesitated for a few days before accepting the US statement and admitting that it was done by Africans.

　——Faced with Uncle Sam pretending to brandish the nuclear stick, the timid Gallic chickens once again backed down!

　The embassy was in such a hurry that they could probably even set up the guillotine and the burning pyre:

　After all, Paris is the place where the world's first proletarian red regime was born and it is an old revolutionary base in Europe with a long tradition of rebellion!

　Well, the French police watched the whole thing and basically pretended not to see it.

　After all, many families of Paris police officers had just been killed by nuclear bombs, and many colleagues had contracted radiation sickness and were waiting to die in hospital beds!

　They did not join the mob and killed the American ambassador to vent their anger. This is already very well-behaved!

　Hey, you Americans have gone too far. The war between the two countries hasn't even started yet, but you have already blown up the Eiffel Tower, burned down Notre Dame Cathedral, and killed tens of thousands of people in Paris in one breath. Even Hitler of Nazi Germany didn't do as exaggerated as you in Paris, okay?

　So, since you Americans can do such a thing, you must be prepared to face retaliation.

　We old Parisians of the Plain White Banner could even send the king to the guillotine, so what’s the big deal about hanging an ambassador of yours?

　Of course, the United States also knew that it was in the wrong, so it only made a few symbolic protests about the embassy tragedy and then nothing else happened.

　Anyway, the current ambassador to France was appointed by President Johnson and should have been withdrawn by the new president long ago. It was only because of a series of turmoil and chaos and coincidences that he was somehow kept in office until now - so this guy has no relationship with the current President Nixon.

　In President Nixon's view, this guy's death was just a "necessary sacrifice."

　It’s all for the greater good!

　However, despite the outrage in Paris, the burning of the American flag across France, and the international community expressing "deep sympathy" for the tragedy in Paris, the French government seemed to be suffering from collective hysteria, pretending not to see the elephant in the room.

　As soon as President Pompidou returned to France, he ordered the French intelligence agencies to stop investigating the Paris nuclear explosion, suppressed and destroyed the evidence that had been obtained about the CIA's involvement in the Paris nuclear explosion, and secretly executed some witnesses and informants.

　Then, he issued a statement that he himself did not believe, and completely adopted the previous statement of the White House, that on the eve of Valentine's Day, it was the anti-French "terrorist organization" of the Tuagher people in the Sahara Desert of West Africa, the "Desert Dawn Front", that smuggled miniature nuclear bombs into France and exploded Paris.

　——This matter cannot be investigated. If something is really found out, how will the Elysee Palace end?

　Finally, even after condemning the Tuaghers' "atrocities of using nuclear bombs against France," President Pompidou solemnly prepared to dispatch the French Foreign Legion to cooperate with the newly independent pro-French (puppet) governments of West African countries in a retaliatory strike against the Desert Dawn Front...

　It's like Europe in the 21st century facing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion. Not only did they not dare to say a word to the US, but they also pretended that it was Russia's fault and planned to form a joint Baltic fleet to prevent the Russian fleet and "Chinese disguised attack ships" from destroying submarine cables.

　It can be seen that the European politicians at that time were completely living in the information cocoon of their own making, and they fooled themselves.

　In short, when President Pompidou made these remarks, the whole of France booed him, and newspapers in the Soviet and Eastern European blocs across the Iron Curtain were even more mocking:

　The French surrendered faster this time than in World War II!

　But the insects in the political arena of the French Fifth Republic really have no choice: life is not only about poetry and distant places, but also about the immediate reality!

　At the moment, although the United States bombed Paris with nuclear bombs, it at least knew to cover it up, pushed out a target to block the bullets, and pretended that it was not done by them.

　So, if the French government doesn't want to risk its life, then even if Washington nuclear-arms them, it can only back down and pretend the US never did anything like this. It's like: I know you don't want me to know about this, so you'd better not let me know. If I do, then we can no longer pretend we don't know.

　What? The Americans are so crude at covering up this?! Oh well, there's nothing we can do. We in France can only work harder and voluntarily lower our intelligence and lose our memory!

　In other words, no matter how noisy the outside world is, the French government must pretend that it is stupid and knows nothing.

　As the old saying goes - "You can't wake up a man who pretends to be asleep."

　This feeling is certainly humiliating and sad, but it is also the choice that the French gentlemen have to make in order to maximize their own interests.

　It's just like the reason why these gentlemen quickly knelt down, surrendered to the Nazis during World War II, and then suppressed the French Communist Party.

　Otherwise, if this window paper is really torn apart, what will be the next step? Will we really fight a desperate nuclear war with the United States?

　This is definitely not possible - even if they win, the French territory will be stained red by the revolutionaries!

　So you must never work too hard. How can you enjoy life if you work too hard?

　However, no matter how the French high-ranking officials tried to deceive themselves, they could neither suppress the public anger on the verge of exploding nor deceive the sensitive international financial markets. In the eyes of the Jewish financial community, the vicious Americans had already issued a terrifying warning to the international financial world with the mushroom clouds rising everywhere: "There is no safe place in this world. No matter where your funds go, they cannot escape the pursuit of nuclear bombs!"

　Of course, the Soviet Union and China have not yet been hit by nuclear bombs. But you, a financial capitalist, dare to invest your money in

　Going across the Iron Curtain?

　Don't you dare? That's right, just pay tribute to your American masters!

　Therefore, as the old capitalist countries outside the United States, such as Britain, France, Japan and Germany, were successively devastated by nuclear bombs, international funds began to flow back to the United States in large quantities. The Dow Jones Index, which had just reopened, soared 11.8% in one day, a huge increase.

　It is foreseeable that the U.S. economy will rebound and usher in a period of prosperity and trance-like "roaring years".

　However, before the US economy truly began to recover, precious metal prices had already skyrocketed, with gold reaching $4778 an ounce within a few days. Even at this price, demand remained high—after all, New York police and agents, who had recently been sweeping through slums, breaking into homes and rummaging through cabinets, searching for "Federal Reserve gold losses," were incredibly enthusiastic.

　Meanwhile, the French economy suffered a triple whammy: stocks, currencies, and bonds. The franc plummeted 10% in one day and another 8% the next. International hot money fled France in a hurry, fearing its value would evaporate. Parisian real estate prices plummeted after the nuclear explosion.

　In short, when the United States was entering a period of prosperity, France was facing its own misery.

　And even more tragic things are yet to come - in order to implement strategic contraction while opening up new sources of funds for domestic capital groups, the United States decided to abandon distant Southeast Asia and the Middle East, while moving towards neighboring Africa and attacking France's reserved territories in Africa.

　In short, it is to send various NGOs and CIA black gloves to infiltrate those former French colonies in Africa that have just gained independence in name, instigate coups and uprisings, and use assassinations and bribery to replace the pro-French comprador governments in these places with pro-American governments.

　Then squeeze out France's colonial sphere of influence in West Africa, turn Africa's franc zone into a dollar zone, and allow greenbacks to circulate on both sides of the Atlantic!

　The reason why President Nixon bombed Paris was not only to hit the franc exchange rate, but also to destroy France's prestige and show the world France's weakness and cowardice - to let Africans know that the Gallic chickens are dead bones in the grave, and the American bald eagle is the destiny of the Western Hemisphere!

　So you don't have to be afraid at all. The French are all cowards. They didn't even dare to say a word when Paris was bombed. How can they dare to fight for Africa?

　By then, as long as the American flag is hoisted on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, these black African uncles will surely turn against their enemies and surrender, in order to seek the title of nobility!