Chapter 121:
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Chapter 121
The death of Budenny did not have the effect that Germany had hoped for.
On the contrary, it only backfired.
On the central front, the Italian and French troops that filled the gap left by the 4th Army, which had been transferred to the north, did not know who Budenny was.
They only knew him as ‘the mustached man who looked like a Mongolian on the leaflets that the Soviet army dropped’. That was their perception of him.
Even after hearing the news that the Soviet army commander had been assassinated, they were only scared of the Soviet army that filled the vast plains of Eastern Europe.
Their poor supply, mediocre weapons, and dog-like food conditions contributed to their fear.
On the other hand, the Soviet army, from generals to soldiers, was united by revenge and anger, and wanted to punish the filthy fascists.
“Ura, ura, ura-aaaaa!!”
“Aaaahhh!!”
A Soviet soldier with bloodshot eyes stabbed his sword into the chest of an Italian soldier who was trembling in the trench.
The scream of the Italian soldier was drowned out by the blood that gushed out of his mouth.
The Molniya, or ‘Fire Bear’ planes, tore through the blue sky and raided the ground. A 500kg bomb hit the Tachanka and caused a huge explosion.
The Soviet soldiers, who had been unable to advance because of the Tachanka, resumed their attack like a swarm of bees as the obstacle was removed.
“Charge, charge! Smash the fascists!”
The soldiers each wore a black armband.
The chief of staff ordered that the entire army should wear the black armband to mourn for 49 days.
And this order was very well followed.
From low-ranking soldiers to officers, they had grown up listening to the stories of Budenny and his legendary cavalry army since they were young and until they joined the army.
The stories of how the red army’s cavalrymen destroyed the evil landlords and absolutist monarchs and gave the land to the peasants and the factories to the workers.
And after joining the army, they learned anew that the man who was their ‘commander’ had been so generous and fought with the soldiers.
The fascists had killed Budenny with their wicked schemes and tricks.
The chief of staff declared revenge, and the revenge for the filthy fascist army that trampled on their motherland burned in the hearts of many soldiers.
***
The Italian soldiers, who had been dragged from their hometowns to faraway places, had very low morale.
Some of them even surrendered as soon as they saw the Soviet army.
“Surrender! Surrender!”
The Soviet soldiers learned Italian in an instant. Even if it was only one word, ‘I surrender!’ (Mi arrendo!).
The fighters often dropped leaflets.
They usually condemned the atrocities of the vicious fascist regime and urged them to surrender to the Soviet Union and liberate their homeland in the German, French, and Spanish camps.
They dropped leaflets for the Italians on how to say the word ‘surrender’ in Russian.
The Italian officers seriously wondered whether they should crack down on the Russian knowledge that was circulating within the army.
Of course, it was not a matter of cracking down on Russian.
Also, the leftists from various countries who belonged to the Communist Party or the Socialist Party and who had been conscripted into the army and dragged to the eastern front surrendered as soon as they met the Soviet army.
It was difficult for them to express their ideological position or to say ‘I want to join and support the great struggle of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War!’ in Russian, but they had a very simple way.
“Compagni avanti il gran partito Noi siamo dei lavorator. Rosso un fiore in petto c’e fiorito~”
“Huh? That…”
As the Soviet soldiers stopped shooting and stared, the Italian soldier nodded his head and started singing louder.
Even the most ignorant ones knew their own national anthem.
When they heard the <Internationale>, the Soviet soldiers looked at each other and lowered their guns, and approached the Italian soldier who came out with his hands up.
These things happened frequently. Mussolini and Petain had forcibly enlisted the young people who had been branded as leftist troublemakers in the country.
They thought it was better to cause trouble in the faraway eastern front than in the country.
Whether they surrendered to the Soviet army or did something else, that was Germany’s concern, not ours.
They probably thought that way.
Anyway, these people had ‘subversive activities’ stamped on their records and could not rise to important positions.
They were just cannon fodder on the front line.
The only ones who were frustrated were the German army, who faced the risk of being surrounded and annihilated as they suffered losses bit by bit and their defense area collapsed.
***
“The defense lines of the French 3rd Army and the Italian 7th Army have been broken through! Retreat…”
“Stupid bastards! Worse than dogs! Are they soldiers?”
The front line of the Central Army Group was defended by the German 9th Army.
The Soviet army wanted to recapture Smolensk by any means and eliminate the bridgehead for the German army to advance to Moscow.
On the other hand, the German army had to defend Smolensk by any means to go to Moscow after clearing Leningrad.
Smolensk was the center of the supply network and the forward base that pressured the Soviet western front army, and it was a place that could not be given up.
But the French 3rd Army on the left wing and the Italian 7th Army on the right wing were not doing their part at all.
The gap left by the 4th Army, which had been transferred to the Northern Army Group, was too big.
Adolf Strauss, the commander of the German 9th Army, slammed his desk and vented his anger.
“Did you report to the Army Group to order a retreat? We can’t just be surrounded here!”
“Sir… the Army Group said that retreat is impossible…”
Strauss grabbed his stiff neck. Damn it.
The Italian and French troops of mixed origin were slowly giving up their defense areas and moving back, leaving him alone in the enemy line to die.
A great general like Guderian must have known what the situation was.
If the 9th Army evaporated and the two foreign corps collapsed, a huge hole would open in the central front.
It was impossible to stop it with the two ‘armored armies’ that Guderian liked so much.
He was probably looking at the higher-ups. And the higher-up of the Army Group commander was obvious.
The one whose name was too hard to even mention. ‘Him’.
Strauss glanced at the SS officers and spoke to his staff.
“If there is no retreat, what are we going to do? Are we supposed to break the two offensives on both wings by ourselves?”
“…”
The Luftwaffe, which had once dominated the sky of the eastern front, was now struggling with the Soviet air force that had returned with upgrades.
The gap was gradually narrowing in the Central Army Group, where the elite squadrons of the air force had been taken away one by one to the Atlantic and the north.
The German reconnaissance planes could no longer fly in the Soviet sky. The intelligence agency had not yet figured out the scale of the Soviet offensive.
The 1st Guards Cavalry Army had retreated after Budenny’s death, but the offensive did not stop at all.
It seemed to be the size of several field armies, but the 9th Army headquarters was all frustrated.
“Can we break one of them, north or south, by deploying our reserves? Huh… What about the 2nd and 3rd Armored Armies?”
Strauss knew it as he said it.
The 1st Panzer Group had lost most of its heavy equipment and fallen into obscurity in the face of the Soviet offensive last winter. But it had been revived by being redeployed and prioritized for supply for the northern offensive.
Of course, that meant that the other panzer groups received less support.
The 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups in the center had each given up a corps for the 4th and 1st Panzer Groups in the north.
They were also pushed back in support and reorganization, and they had to give up tank units to the SS or scheisse… whatever they were, who whined for them.
The panzer power of the Central Army Group was pitiful compared to the heyday of the Barbarossa operation.
But if things went on like this, the 9th Army would be surrounded. I’ll try to contact them. Strauss buried himself in his chair, kicking out his staff.
***
“Sir, at this rate…”
The young staff trailed off. At this rate? The offensive had already failed.
Everyone in the Northern Army Group knew that they had failed to break through the thick layers of the Soviet defense line.
They just couldn’t say it.
“How is the equipment status of the 1st and 4th Panzer Groups?”
The commander of the Northern Army Group, General Manstein, wanted to deny that fact. The staff’s faces were not good.
General Manstein had acted too politically after being implicated in the suspicion of being involved in the assassination plot against the Führer last year.
He took the initiative in driving out the anti-Nazi figures in the Defense Army, and he also showed the most active loyalty to the Führer.
And now… he was running after the Führer’s order, ‘Capture Leningrad’.
“The overall operational rate is below 50%, sir. Any more offensive operations…”
“Prepare for another offensive. The Soviet army has suffered more than we have, and Leningrad is right in front of us!”
With several brilliant tactical maneuvers and delicate artillery operations, the Soviet army had suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties.
It was a feat that would have already won them the victory in any other battlefield, considering that they had only suffered that much damage while breaking through such a solid defense line.
But the Soviet army was different. Germany also suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, and as if that was enough, they built another defense line whenever the defense line was broken.
Now it was only 50km to Leningrad.
They were almost there.
The Führer looked at the map and wanted them to advance quickly and capture Leningrad and change the name of the city to ‘Adolfburg’.
“Yes, sir!”
“Good. We have to coordinate the offensive schedule with the Finnish army, so report as soon as the draft of the plan is ready.”
It was a hopeful news. As if to boost the morale of the depressed staff, General Manstein told them a few secret matters that had come down.
“The 20th Army in the north will move south. With the Finnish army! It’s not us who will tear down that damn city, but Kriegsmarine’s battleships. What are you afraid of?”
“No, sir!”
The damn city. The soldiers of the Northern Army Group called Leningrad that.
Anyone would think that way if they had to cross dozens of layers of trenches to capture that one city.
Anyway, the staff’s faces brightened up when they heard the encouraging news that Finland would start moving south. The Soviet Union had given up the severed northern Lend-Lease route thanks to Kriegsmarine’s activities.
They gave up Murmansk and East Karelia and retreated to build a defense line.
The Finnish army refused to crash into that defense line.
And they set up a camp and only defended about a few tens of kilometers away from Leningrad.
They thought they had recovered all the land they had lost, and they refused to cut off Leningrad’s lifeline from the north.
But now that the German army was bringing as many as seven field armies, they seemed to be greedy for the spoils.
“We can win if we push a little more!”
Under the pressure of the commander, the German army began a heavy march. In fact, the front-line soldiers also began to feel something like hope.
On the distant horizon, they saw a gray city instead of an endless plain.
The Soviet defense lines they encountered were increasingly makeshift and less solid, and they ran away without hesitation if they felt like they were going to be surrounded.
The intelligence agency had now determined that the Soviet strategic reserves had begun to run out.
The Soviet army had also suffered tremendous damage despite the German attack.
They no longer had any troops left to deploy to defend Leningrad!
They might try to resist by placing a large number of troops in the complex city, but the Luftwaffe’s bombers were preparing for another air raid.
They would turn the city into a ruin.
He felt sorry for destroying that beautiful city, but Manstein decided not to dwell on that emotion.
He also felt sorry for the Soviet soldiers who would be left in the city and fight and die until they were captured and died, but he decided to forget that emotion too.
His son was still missing, and he was ready to do anything to get him back.
Even if he had to kill millions of Soviet soldiers.
He was willing to stain his hands with blood.
Manstein clenched his teeth.
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