Chapter 122:
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Chapter 122
“Our glorious army has conquered Leningrad! Long live the German nation!!!”
That was how Goebbels shouted over the radio.
Between the ruined buildings of the city, soldiers marched and the Nazi swastika flew over the Hermitage Museum, once the palace of the tsars.
All these scenes were filmed and sent to Berlin. Countless newspapers reported as if the Soviet Union would surrender by tomorrow.
[The Red Dragon of the Apocalypse with a Torn Heart]
One newspaper used this headline and drew a caricature of a dragon with Stalin’s head, bleeding and dying from a wound in its chest.
The popular caricature soon appeared in the Nazi party’s journals and Goebbels’ speeches, and posters with it were plastered all over the place.
In the university district, at the crossroads, there were placards cheering for the imminent conquest of the Soviet Union.
Now that Leningrad, once the heart of the revolution, was torn apart, no matter how giant the beast was, it would eventually fall and die.
That was what the newspapers made people think.
The broadcast, the press, and all the media repeated only dreamlike stories about the great victory of the German nation and the world domination.
Of course, reality was a bit more cruel.
***
“Damn it, why do they keep popping out from there?”
“Your Excellency, this place is not safe either. We have to retreat immediately…”
Bang, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. The 116th Division, which had advanced its headquarters, was engaged in an unexpected urban warfare with the Soviet troops that kept pouring out from somewhere.
Leningrad was a huge city.
It was much bigger than Pskov or Smolensk, which the air force could turn into ashes.
Not only the main city of Leningrad, but also the several satellite cities connected to it were twenty or thirty times larger and the buildings were much denser.
The Soviet troops hid in the communal apartments on the outskirts of the city and as soon as the shelling stopped, they quickly hid back into the city.
And they adapted much better to the complex terrain than the Germans who were not familiar with it.
“Is artillery support impossible?”
The division commander had to blame himself for his foolishness as soon as he said it.
The enemy was tangled up messily and all kinds of debris from the buildings blocked the movement of the heavy equipment.
After a storm of fire and gunpowder swept over, only the ruins of the broken city remained. But those ruins became a huge maze for the soldiers.
A labyrinth full of deadly enemies everywhere.
“How the hell are we supposed to fight here? What the hell!”
The staff officers had no idea, but the division commander exploded with anger.
Artillery or air support was realistically impossible.
Only an endless maze-like battlefield where people and people clashed.
As soon as they entered the city, the Germans followed the Führer’s order and held a grand ceremony instead of suppressing the ‘remnants’.
While the Germans hurriedly occupied the major landmarks such as the Hermitage for the event, the Soviet troops quickly infiltrated into every corner.
Bang! This gunshot was too close.
The temporary tent set up in the field did not provide any protection against firearms.
The sound of the machine guns firing like raindrops was heard, but it did not reassure him.
“Your Excellency, the sniper is causing a lot of casualties among the officers. We have to retreat right now.”
“Yes. They have a much more suitable armament system for urban warfare.”
Tanks were not needed in urban warfare.
It was lucky if they did not explode from the Molotov cocktails thrown by the enemy hiding in the buildings.
Weapons such as artillery or aircraft were also much less useful than in the field.
It was much harder to catch the enemy hiding in the buildings using the verticality than the trench warfare where they dug and hid on the flat ground.
The Soviet infantry also had a lot of weapons that were useful in urban warfare.
“Our soldiers need more grenade launchers. Rocket launchers to destroy the machine gun nests and…”
“Also, there are additional requests for weapons such as mortars and grenades.”
“Those damn rocket launchers, rocket launchers!”
The division commander snapped.
The Soviet troops hiding in the ruins of the buildings fired a rocket launcher and ran away, causing a lot of damage to the Germans.
Even if they tried to shoot them, the rocket launchers had a much longer range.
Machine guns might not be able to touch the precious heavy equipment, but rocket launchers were specialized in dealing with them.
In addition, the Soviet troops used a lot more and better weapons such as grenade launchers and grenades that added a lot of shrapnel, and mortars, which were the only curved weapons that could be used in urban warfare.
Also, there was one decisive difference.
“Those bastards, they abandoned this place, what were they thinking…?”
It seemed that tens of thousands of civilians who used to live in Leningrad had already disappeared before the bombing began.
There was nothing of value left in this city.
Factory equipment, artworks from the Hermitage Museum, nothing.
The soldiers tried to ‘confiscate’ the valuables and the artworks from the relics to send them to their homeland, but they did not get any income.
Rather, they were counterattacked by the Soviet troops hiding and ran away in surprise.
They were like rats… They had nothing to lose.
Now that I think about it, they were not trying to protect Leningrad, but the people, the factories, and the artworks inside it.
They were buying time to take them away.
On the other hand, the situation was different for the Germans.
The Führer ordered them to occupy Leningrad to break the Soviet’s industrial capacity, and to lower their morale and raise the morale of the allies. Because of the Führer’s order, and because of the propaganda for the whole nation, the Germans had to take over this city no matter what.
‘It’s meaningless.’
He gritted his teeth.
This place, which they came to at the cost of hundreds of thousands of soldiers’ blood, was nothing but ruins.
The Soviet troops tricked the Germans into thinking that this place was of great value by putting up a desperate -or so it seemed- defense.
In this tin can, the precious sons of Greater Germany were dying.
***
“That, that *-sized building can’t even be pushed over and they’re doing this…”
Bang!
The head of the German lieutenant who was making a fuss at the soldiers splattered with blood.
The Soviet troops occupying the building were sniping.
Horribly, there seemed to be a skilled sniper hiding, and every time a gunshot rang, one person fell for sure.
Company commander, platoon leader, military officer and medic, and even the staff officer who came to deliver the order.
The soldiers’ morale hit rock bottom as they watched the officers die one by one.
It was only a four-story brick apartment, but it did not collapse even after the shelling and bombing, and only half of it was crumbled.
Through the gaps that were created here and there, the Soviet troops sprayed all kinds of weapons at the Germans.
Where the soldiers were crowded together, mortar fire flew.
Machine guns poured at the approaching soldiers.
The bewildered soldiers just took cover and killed time, firing a rifle once or twice.
The biggest problem was the four-story building that blocked the way to the northwest of Leningrad, across the Neva River.
It was a key stronghold that held off at least a battalion-sized assault from the unknown Soviet troops.
“Damn it, why don’t we just push them with our tanks?”
An officer suggested and led a charge with his armored vehicles and tanks towards the building. But the Soviets inside had rocket launchers, and as soon as the three tanks and one armored car got close, they fired them without hesitation.
Machine gun bullets rained down on the soldiers who tried to rescue them.
The veterans who had experienced several counterattacks managed to retreat to the trenches with minimal casualties.
But the fate of the tanks was more miserable.
“Aaargh!”
A tank soldier who escaped from the tank that was blown up by a rocket launcher uttered a final word and screamed.
A dark hole was pierced in the back of his head, which fell forward with the building behind him.
A sniper who could shoot very well, whoever he was, killed the fleeing tank soldiers one by one.
A new captain who had just taken office and did not know how the building was defended was enraged by this sight and ordered an assault.
“Charge! Charge! We just need to get inside the building!”
“…Waaaaah!!! Hail the Führer! Hail the victory!”
It was almost a suicide order, but the soldiers obeyed anyway. They had to charge across a flat land of nearly 400 meters, while being showered by machine gun fire from the stacked building.
They would have disobeyed if they were ordered to do so.
But the order to get inside the building somehow sounded more convincing. For the German nation, for the Führer!
They shouted and charged.
The adjacent company also issued a charge order, seeing their assault.
The soldiers who carried the heavy flamethrowers, which had been used to clear several buildings, followed them safely from behind.
In fact, it did not take long to realize what this was between an honorable death and a dog’s death.
“Mother…”
A soldier who was torn apart by a machine gun fell to the ground, looking at the sky and searching for his mother.
He did not think of the glory of the German nation and the grace of the great Führer that he had been shouting until a moment ago.
He only thought of his mother and father who would be waiting for him at home.
Fortunately, the assault route was a well-paved flat land.
That meant that at least the infantry’s most feared mines were not buried.
But the unfortunate thing was that the assault route was a well-paved flat land.
It was a tragedy for the soldiers who had to charge towards the building where several machine guns were waiting, which was the second most feared thing by the infantry.
Hundreds of corpses were added to the road leading to the building during the assault.
Fresh blood was sprinkled on the rotting corpses of the soldiers who had died attacking the building for several days, and new corpses piled up.
Passing by the German tanks that were left next to the building with their turrets blown off, dozens of soldiers tried to enter the apartment door.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, and from inside, the sound of firing that had made the Germans learn a lesson for the past few days welcomed them.
It was a grenade launcher!
A quick-witted soldier shouted that, but his reaction was not as quick as his wit.
A shower of shrapnel passed by and the soldiers near the entrance fell.
There were few survivors, and even fewer who had the will to fight.
A few brave ones tried to throw grenades into the windows on the upper floor.
“Ah, fuck…”
But when a grenade bounced off the window sill and came out, the soldier who threw it cursed. It was the last word he could say in this world.
In an instant, the personnel of the two companies were reduced by more than half.
And half of them again were bloodied and unconscious or unable to walk a single step forward.
The remaining hundred or so who could still run stepped on their comrades’ corpses, splashed in the puddles of blood, and bravely rushed into the building.
“Up the stairs! Quickly!”
There was no one on the first floor as expected.
The bullets always came from the second floor or above, so they must be there.
The soldiers thought so and followed the order of the sergeant who had survived so far, and ran quickly to the stairs leading to the second floor.
“What… what is that?”
A sharp-eyed soldier pointed to a square barrel that was quietly placed in the corner with his hand.
It was a khaki color that looked like a Soviet uniform, and it was in a dark corner that no one noticed, but there were similar barrels placed in various corners.
And there were wires attached to each barrel, connected to the upper floor.
The soldiers felt a chill and hesitated for a moment.
“Do svidaniya, gryaznyye fashisty.”(Goodbye, you dirty fascists)
They heard a voice from the Soviet soldier on the upper floor.
Until the bomb exploded, the Germans had to wonder what that meant. It didn’t matter much, though.
Boom! Boom!
The bombs exploded in various corners, and a storm of shrapnel flew towards the Germans. Six bombs, called <Claymore> by the Soviets, exploded in various corners and sent 4,200 steel bearings and iron balls to the Germans.
In just a few minutes, between the explosions and the gunshots, two companies disappeared and the German soldiers were terrified.
They thought that everything would be over once they occupied Leningrad.
The city was in flames, and they had already marched and sent photos for the homeland… But Leningrad was not Germany’s.
The Soviets waited for them with their bloody mouths wide open, and the city named after the monster of the Jews-Bolsheviks, Lenin, gladly drank the blood of the Germans.
This place must be hell.
A soldier muttered.
He recalled a phrase from a literary work he had read once.
‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’
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