Chapter 124:
Chapter 124
The Northern Army Group was too hasty to enter Leningrad.
They used four battleships that could hardly leave the Atlantic for the city assault, and Germany started a siege without completely encircling Leningrad.
Leningrad was still connected to the rest of the Soviet territory by rail.
And thousands, tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers were reinforced to Leningrad every day by rail.
“Damn it, how many soldiers have died trying to capture that one building?”
“…The soldiers say more than those who died taking Paris.”
Ha, that’s ridiculous. Of course, the German army had to fight a fierce siege for Paris. But was it as desperate as when the corpses piled up like a mountain, making it impossible for the infantry to even approach?
Now the German army began to call the building that was once four stories and now three and a half stories ‘the house of lamentation’.
Despite all the attacks, the building stood firmly.
the top floor of the half-collapsed building, the Soviet red flag fluttered.
Sometimes when the gunfire and shelling stopped, they stretched out a white cloth and wrote German poorly on it. Don’t fall for the wicked propaganda of the Jewish-Bolsheviks, the officers disciplined the soldiers like that, but what could they do about what they saw?
“Your Führer has one ball… what?”
“Yes, they even made a song out of it and sing it.”
The Soviet army had brought speakers for propaganda, and they started playing a bizarre song.
A fearless Soviet soldier climbed up to the building and pulled down his pants, shaking his butt at the German army. He spoke German with a heavy Russian accent.
“Hitler has only got one ball~”
“Can’t we shoot that damn commie bastard?”
The Soviet soldier didn’t even know that the German army was mocking him, and he sang along with the lyrics of the speaker while dancing happily with his butt.
<Hitler has only got one ball
G?ring has two but very small
Himmler has something sim’lar
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all~>
The song had a strange charm and addictiveness, and there were quite a few German soldiers who sang along.
Of course, the officers who were loyal to the Führer did not end with just discipline when they saw that.
Nevertheless, by now there were no soldiers in the Northern Army Group who did not know the <Ball Song>.
“How much force was deployed in Leningrad?”
“Yes, our army deployed about 450,000 troops from four field armies. We are adding one division each day to compensate for the daily losses. The German army is estimated to have deployed about 300,000 to 400,000 troops from the 20th and 4th armies and other units.”
Leningrad was the second city of the Soviet Union at this point. It had six times more population and twice as much area as Stalingrad, including the nearby urban area.
About three times the size of Seoul in terms of area?
The German army stepped in, thinking it was easy to take over a huge metropolis with 3 million people, by the standards of this era.
In the actual history of the Battle of Stalingrad, the German army had to pour in more than 500,000 troops. How much would they have to pour into Leningrad, which was several times larger than that? The Northern Front, which had a level of 1 million troops, would have to pour in so much that it would be almost gone.
“There must be holes all over the front, right?”
“Yes, that’s right. There is a noticeable shortage of reserves in both the center and the north. It seems that they can no longer withstand our offensive!”
That’s understandable.
They barely held on with the half-destroyed army last winter, bringing in reinforcements from France, Spain, and Italy. But an army that was once shattered could not be easily rebuilt.
This was not just a matter of manpower. The German army was 4 million, but that was the number of combat and non-combat troops combined.
The proportion of combat troops with high skills would be about half? And of those combat troops, roughly a quarter had already evaporated. And another quarter of the remaining troops were thrown into Leningrad as stakes.
Germany was fundamentally inferior to the Soviet Union, which could still conscript and deploy millions more to the battlefield. In terms of population and industrial production.
That’s why the Soviet Union pushed the Germans back from side to side in the late war, when they had run out of stakes. Germany was doomed to fail after gambling on the Moscow Offensive, Stalingrad, and Kursk.
Now it was time to bring that doom a little closer.
“Good. The end of the fascist bastards was near! But proceed with the additional conscription as planned. Overwhelming manpower and support are the way to guarantee the least damage.”
“Yes! Comrade Secretary!”
A massive conscription of 3 million. It was a violence of scale and something that only the Soviet Union could do.
The balance of the battlefield was already tilted towards the Soviet side. Adding a huge force of 3 million to that would completely overturn the scale.
“With the great power of our people! We will punish the fascists who trampled on our motherland with their boots!”
“Long live Comrade Secretary! Long live the Soviet Union!”
The generals of the Stavka jumped up and shouted hooray in front of me, who was shouting for a retaliation war.
Ura! Ura! Ura! Victory is coming!
It may not be as close as they hope, but.
And to bring the victory closer, we pulled out one more card that we had prepared for Germany.
“Now we march to the capital! Long live the liberation of Yugoslavia!”
“Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”
The Yugoslav partisans were about to advance to Belgrade, the capital of the Yugoslav Kingdom.
The partisans, who had gained a huge force with the help of the Soviet Union and the Allies, were no longer at a level that could be called partisans.
What kind of partisans had a group army-sized army of 500,000, operating tanks and fighters? Of course, they would soon break away from the name ‘partisan’.
“After liberating Belgrade, we will officially declare the People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. We must win this offensive and capture Belgrade.”
Tito declared solemnly in front of his comrades. After the invasion of the Axis powers, the partisans resisted by carrying out guerrilla activities mainly in the mountainous areas, and by creating liberated zones by uprising in the cities.
But now they had built a powerful army.
At least Tito himself thought so.
Nazi Germany and other Axis powers were gradually sinking in the fight against the Soviet Red Army.
‘Now is the best time…!’
Until now, they had only received support from the Soviet Union and asked for something. But now it was time to give back what they had asked for.
There had to be something to give and take in order to establish a normal relationship between countries.
If they only received support, they would just become another colony.
“If we capture Belgrade, we can enter the plains where the major cities of Hungary are located. We can either make Hungary break away from the Axis, or advance with the Soviet army to liberate Croatia and Hungary…”
Or we can become the sword that strikes at the heart of Germany. With this alone, Yugoslavia can make a great propaganda after the war.
It was the Soviet Union that brought down Germany, but it was the Yugoslavs who set foot on German soil first.
They were the army of the Yugoslav people!
The army stationed in Belgrade was composed of SS divisions and Ustasha ‘volunteers’ from the Croatian state, who were recruited from the collaborators of the Balkan Peninsula.
As the Yugoslav partisans stirred up trouble, Nazi Germany stationed these armies in Belgrade, mainly composed of local collaborators, to prepare for any possible unrest. But it didn’t take long to realize that it was a bad decision.
The Balkan Peninsula, especially Yugoslavia, was divided into many different ethnic groups.
They had different ethnic and religious identities.
For example, Slovenia and Croatia were Catholic, Serbia and Montenegro were Orthodox, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo were Muslim.
And like any other believers, they hated the followers of other religions as if they wanted to kill them.
“Prepare for the sake of the homeland!”
“Long live Croatia!”
The Ustasha militia soldiers marched proudly through the streets of Belgrade, despite the glares of the Serbs.
The atrocities they committed against the Orthodox Serbs, as Catholic faithfuls, provoked the Serbs’ anger towards Croatia.
Of course, a stronger emotion than anger was fear. Human butchers, even the relatively sane German soldiers called the Ustasha militia butchers.
“What are you looking at? You bitch!”
“Please, save me!”
One of the Ustasha militia grabbed the hair of a woman who was murmuring at them and threw her to the ground.
The woman screamed as she was dragged out. But the Ustasha seemed to enjoy her scream and kicked her belly hard.
“Serbian pig bitch, how dare you make a sound?”
The soldiers who tore off the Orthodox cross around her neck trampled on the woman repeatedly.
Thud, thud, the hard military boots crushed her face and red blood splattered on the floor.
The people who saw the scene did not dare to resist.
They did not hesitate.
Those who resisted were brutally killed.
did not dare to resist because of the learned fear.
Yet there were always those who tried to make a sound. And the Ustasha acted more cruelly to set an example.
The citizens did not know yet, but it was widely known among the Ustasha that the partisan bastards were marching.
They must not cause any riots when they come.
Crush the sprouts of rebellion in advance. Ante Paveli?, the leader of the Ustasha, personally ordered.
“Die! Die!”
The woman who was covered in wounds stopped twitching. Her face was distorted beyond recognition and her arm was twisted in a grotesque direction.
“Ha, is she dead? Good timing. Stefan!”
“Yes? Yes!”
The one who seemed to be the captain of the soldiers shook off the blood and flesh from his military boots. Something that looked like it came from a person scattered.
The young soldier, Stefan, who wore a large uniform that did not fit his body, answered the captain with a pale face.
The captain handed him the gun he was holding. There was a large sword attached to the old rifle. Something blood-red was stuck to it. Stefan turned even paler.
“It’s a ritual. Since she can’t resist, cut open her belly!”
“…”
He accepted the rifle, but the young soldier clenched his teeth and trembled.
The Ustasha killed the Serbs or Jews by cutting their bellies open as a ‘ritual’.
This ritual was similar.
People screamed.
The fat lady at the stall cried and hid.
The Ustasha militia soldiers who surrounded the woman who was dead or alive and the soldier who held the rifle and sword sang cheerfully.
<Home, freedom, faith, we treat the wounded like this
Ah, thousands are dancing in our homeland Croatia
The brave Ustasha army fights for the homeland!>
“Die, you fascist bastards!”
Tatatatang, some of the Ustasha soldiers fell, spitting blood.
A few young men ran out of the alley and fired at the Ustasha militia.
The atmosphere changed in an instant. The Ustasha militia counterattacked, but they had little actual combat experience compared to their cruelty, and they were quickly subdued.
Soon they all fell to the ground, bleeding.
Except for the young soldier, Stefan, who was hesitating whether to stab or not.
“Hooray! Hooray!”
“Everyone! We came too late. We’re sorry! We’re sorry!”
A group of young men armed with Soviet-made guns ran out of the alleys and dragged away the bodies of the Ustasha militia.
Most of the pedestrians and stall owners who were of Serbian descent helped them.
When the gendarmes of the Serbian military administration set up by Nazi Germany blew the horn somewhere, the young men quickly disappeared.
“Please, save me! Save me!”
The young Ustasha soldier, Stefan, who survived alone, was dragged into the alley by these young men.
He threw the gun on the ground and begged.
He cried.
He was scared.
They were the partisans he had only heard of.
They would retaliate, just like the Ustasha did.
The partisans had already executed the fascists who betrayed the Nazis cruelly.
“Lift your head, young friend.”
“Yes! Yes!”
The one who seemed to be the leader of the young men spoke solemnly. He did not seem to be burning with vengeance. Rather, he looked gentle.
“What are you thinking?”
“…I thought this shouldn’t be done…”
“Yes. And you didn’t stab her in the end.”
That was true. Stefan had never killed anyone before. He had just joined the militia because his father, a fanatic Ustasha supporter, told him to.
The captain wanted to make him do the ritual. But now he was dead and couldn’t do anything.
“This shouldn’t be done. That’s right. You’re right. Why do we have to kill and be killed because of different nationalities, different religions?”
“Right! Right!”
The other young men agreed. Stefan was just amazed.
Many people incited hatred for other nationalities. For the land of our nation, for the ‘glory’ of our nation!
His father participated in killing the Serbian neighbor he used to get along with.
Stefan remembered the wooden doll that the old man had carved for him when he was young.
They were so friendly then, how did it come to this? And the young men were talking about something else.
“Nationality is nothing but nonsense that they made up to rule over us. So that we would fight each other and not fight the real enemy!”
“Who is that enemy? Huh!”
“Hahahaha, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
He patted Stefan’s back with a sad smile. Actually, he did not hate this young Ustasha kid. He just felt sorry and pitiful.
Many people compromised when they were coerced, and gradually justified and internalized their madness.
The things they started with ‘because it’s an order’ became natural at some point.
And believing that it was the right thing to do, people killed, looted, and destroyed others without hesitation.
But this boy hesitated until the end, despite the order. He still had a good heart, the young man believed.
“Our enemy is the capitalist class that incites and creates war and destruction! When we, the proletarians who have nothing, point guns at each other and kill each other, the filthy capitalists who make and sell guns fill their bellies!”
“…!”
“Freedom is coming to Belgrade soon! The dirty fascists are just making their last struggle. We will bury them behind history!”
Will you join us? We won’t force you to kill anyone. The young man said, holding out his hand.
Stefan grabbed his hand.
Tight.
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