Chapter 126:
Chapter 126
Houser’s 1st Armored Corps barely made it in time. They had traveled hundreds of kilometers by train and were immediately deployed to the battlefield as soon as they arrived.
The reinforcements succeeded in repelling the Soviet army just before the 9th Army was trapped in their encirclement.
The 9th Army soldiers welcomed the reinforcements.
But the situation did not fundamentally change.
The Führer ordered the 9th Army to defend Smolensk at all costs.
“Not a single step back!”
After clearing Leningrad, or rather ‘Adolfusburg’, the next target was Moscow.
The Central Army Group could not retreat a single step to advance to Moscow.
Especially if they thought of their comrades who had died while attacking Smolensk.
“Have you forgotten how much blood we shed to take that city? What will happen if we give it up now? We don’t need cowards in this army!”
By then, the one who was scared was Manstein, the commander of the Northern Army Group.
There were at least tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers holding out in Leningrad.
It would take several times more troops to sweep them out of the ruined city.
Nevertheless, he and his officers lied to the Führer, afraid of his rage.
[Leningrad will soon fall into our hands! Please wait a little longer!]
The Führer, who was mad with fury, might kill them too, so they dared to lie. But now, the consequences of their lies came back to haunt them like a snowball.
At least Houser cooperated to hide Manstein’s lies.
Despite being from the Armed SS, which did not get along with the Defense Army, he knew how important a competent senior commander was.
He was originally from the Defense Army, and he did not hate the army of the Prussian Junkers as much as the other SS members.
It would not be good if the Führer’s anger exploded again and blew away Manstein as well.
The government had already completely taken over the military in the last purge of the Defense Army.
And the result was the current disaster.
The incompetent flatterers who rose to power by the Führer’s side would only mess up the army. Houser at least recognized that.
“We’ll try to stop them somehow with our 1st Armored Corps.”
“Can you do that?”
Guderian, the commander of the Central Army Group, grasped Houser’s hand tightly. As if it was a lifeline.
Guderian was undoubtedly one of the best generals in Germany. He led Germany to victory in the war by applying a Copernican idea of how to use armored units.
But he could not handle the problems that led the German army to the abyss of destruction.
The lack of supplies, the poor road conditions, and the Soviet army’s formidable industrial capacity!
The 2nd and 3rd Armored Corps became weaker and weaker as the losses accumulated.
“Half of the vehicles are out of action!”
Guderian cried out. He had inflicted several times more tactical losses on the Soviet army, but they recovered quickly.
The Central Army Group had only received 220 new armored vehicles last month. But the Soviet army had received five times more reinforcements.
The interrogation of the captured Soviet officer panicked the Central Army Group headquarters.
“There are four armored and mechanized corps and four cavalry corps under the Western Front. The composition of each corps is…”
The interrogating officer initially thought that the Soviet bastard was lying to scare the German army.
But the cross-checking results showed that most of his words were true.
The Soviet army that the Central Army Group faced was the Western Front and the Bryansk Front. Each front had more than 2,000 tanks.
‘How many do we produce in a month…?’
Guderian gave up comparing with his fingers.
“Isn’t their new Budyonny heavy tank more than our Panzer IV?”
“Hahaha…”
But he could not despair. Despair only awaited more despair.
The German offensive began against the 5th Guards Tank Army, which had broken through the French army’s defense in the north of Smolensk.
Except for the 3rd Armored Corps, which was sent to block the sporadic attacks across the Dnieper River, the 1st and 2nd Armored Corps were deployed.
The 5th Guards Tank Army might be the strongest armored unit in the Soviet Union. But the German army facing them was not a scarecrow.
“T-34s, six o’clock! Fire from the ready tanks!”
The surviving German soldiers were strong. The quality of their weapons was not much better than the Soviet army, but their numbers were much smaller.
They survived and became aces in that situation. When they were mounted on powerful heavy tanks, they roamed the battlefield like their own home and smashed the Soviet tanks.
The Soviet heavy tanks were also powerful, but the super aces achieved an overwhelming exchange rate.
“Uhahahaha, Budyonny dies twice?”
For example, Kurt Knispel, the tank commander of the 503rd Battalion, who destroyed eight Budyonny tanks with only two Panthers. He posed for the photographers. He laughed and joked, brushing his tangled hair.
There were a dozen or so aces in each heavy tank battalion of the German army.
“The best weapons suit the best drivers! Give the best treatment to the great aces of Germany!”
The Führer’s order was stern.
The 5th Guards Tank Army, which had been advancing fiercely, hesitated in front of the German onslaught. They had lost at least 200 tanks in a few days.
Maybe a similar number of tanks were out of order? The German staff thought so.
But the Soviet army on the front line was still terribly numerous and morale was high.
They became a monstrous army as they equipped themselves with equipment.
The enemy commander was famous for being a madman who drove a tank and fired a gun on the front line.
“Charge! Chaaaarge!”
“Uraaaa!”
So, the Soviet army that the 1st and 2nd Armored Corps faced was consistent with the numbers.
The 5th Guards Tank Army, commanded by the ‘madman’, had a terrible fighting spirit.
They were all crazy like their commander, and even if they spewed black smoke from the engine room, they charged, saying that if they were going to die anyway, they would take one more skull of the Fascists.
“Long live the Soviet Union! Long live the revolution! Revenge for Budyonny!”
“Aaaah! That crazy bastard!”
Well, maybe it was less mentally taxing for the German army to see their tanks explode than to see their men turn into rags by the machine guns.
[The enemy’s offensive is slowly stopping! If you need more reinforcements in other directions, please send them there!]
“Good job, well done!”
Guderian and Houser listened to the communication from the front-line division commander and sighed with relief as they looked at each other.
The German army had restored the railway line to the 9th Army and regained their breath through a counterattack.
The ignorant soldiers cheered.
“The firefighters are here! The armored corps is here!”
The firefighters who restored the collapsing front line and rescued their allies. The soldiers praised the role of the armored corps like that.
But unlike the soldiers’ opinions, the staff officers, especially the staff who had a high understanding of armored warfare, sighed deeply.
“Armored troops are essentially a means of offense. The fact that they have fallen into a means of blocking the collapsing front line…”
We’re screwed. Someone with a rough mouth muttered quietly. But everyone heard it.
We’re screwed.
That was a summary of the situation of the German army.
At this time last year, the armored units were the spearhead of the offense, breaking through the Soviet formations and contributing to the early victory.
But now they had fallen into firefighters who were pushed in to restore the broken front line.
In just one year! In just one year, the roles of offense and defense had reversed.
The Soviet army began to use the armored units more skillfully and sophisticatedly.
The Soviet army that used to not even know how to use their weapons and got smashed was gone.
The officers knew. If the Soviet army grew at this rate… next year, or the year after?
The Führer promised a ‘super weapon’ that would turn the front line upside down. But before that, wouldn’t Berlin fall, some joked bitterly.
There were still 400km left to Moscow. 400km filled with the Soviet army and their tanks.
The firefighters were not enough to put out the fire. If they were told to go ahead and beat the enemy… would it be possible?
The generals shook their heads.
***
“The allied offensive has been repulsed?”
“Yes, yes, Comrade Secretary. But this is temporary…”
It was somewhat expected.
Rokossovsky, who was called from the front line, would have sat in a wheelchair if it were normal, but he couldn’t in this situation. Literally, he clenched his teeth and trembled.
Was the gulag so scary? Well, it wasn’t that the offensive had completely failed, but that it was blocked.
“What do you think is the cause of the defeat?”
“The enemy’s armored units appeared in large numbers and counterattacked. Our army was not in the end point of the offensive, so we reorganized and fought back, but we failed to complete the encirclement of the Fascist 9th Army.”
“General Rokossovsky is right, Comrade Secretary. Paul Houser’s 1st SS Armored Corps moved south from the Northern Army Group area to the Central Army Group area. Perhaps the huge enemy armored unit that General Rokossovsky faced was them.”
Surprisingly, Beria said something helpful. After entering Leningrad, tanks were not very necessary for urban warfare. So he probably sent a rescue team for the Central, where a field army was surrounded.
“They use the armored units as firefighters on the battlefield. As long as they have a powerful reserve that can be quickly deployed, equivalent to one field army…”
A complete encirclement would be difficult. Rokossovsky would have wanted to say that. He was just afraid of the gulag.
Hmm, since it came to this…
“You guys, what do you think is the biggest weakness of the armored units?”
“Excuse me?”
The generals were puzzled when he suddenly asked a question.
The weakness of the tanks? Well, there were many, but no one knew what answer the Secretary wanted. Especially when Rokossovsky asked in this blocked situation, what kind of amazing answer would they have to give?
“…Maybe it’s the terrain? They can’t operate tanks in the Rasputitsa or the Pripyat marshes.”
Hoo, a similar answer to what I thought came out first. Tolbukhin raised his hand quickly, not fitting his size. He probably had experienced the southern front operation last year.
“That’s right. It’s not the answer I had in mind, but it’s a very helpful answer for Captain Rokossovsky.”
Rokossovsky winked at Tolbukhin with gratitude. The generals looked like they were thinking of another answer.
“Supply can also be a weakness.”
“They are powerful against ground forces, but powerless against air forces, aren’t they?”
Various things that could be weaknesses of tanks came out. There was still no correct answer, but… it would be a useful answer.
“That’s right. You’re all right. Now, to sum up…”
To prevent the enemy from using tanks, they drag them into rough terrain where tanks are difficult to maneuver.
They harass their supply and use air forces to consume their tanks.
This is the standard in the operational scale.
“Let’s apply it to the situation of the Central Army Group. We can use a mobile unit to disrupt the enemy’s rear along the Pripyat marshes. Just like our old enemy did.”
The atmosphere became solemn. As a cavalry commander, he instinctively understood the mobile warfare very well.
He stabbed the place where the enemy’s main force was missing. He ran away to a place where it was hard to chase when the enemy came. Was it a way he learned during the civil war?
“And we can use the partisans. If their supply demand is high, why don’t we destroy the railway that supplies them with air raids?”
“As expected, Comrade Secretary is like a god of war!”
“It’s like an ancient hero has come back to life!”
All kinds of flattery poured out.
Oh, how embarrassing. Why are you so hungry for praise? I’ll have to remember the ones who made the hot remarks.
The flatterers blushed when they met my eyes. They must have thought I liked it.
“But the really important point is this. The armored units have low mobility.”
“???”
The Soviet soldiers would shout yes even if the Secretary said he made soy sauce with beans, so they couldn’t directly argue, but the generals’ expressions changed strangely.
Especially the two who flattered me. They wondered if they should praise or criticize this.
It would be funny if the one who said that the armored units were a good reserve that could be quickly deployed to the battlefield said this…
“What you think of as mobility is tactical mobility. Strategically, it’s far behind, isn’t it? How are you going to move those heavy and bulky tanks around this vast land?”
Rokossovsky, who understood the words right away, slapped his knee. Yeah, that’s why he’s a great general. The clueless Borosilov and the flatterers seemed to not understand yet, so I decided to explain.
“The Fascist army is short of railway transport capacity for supply, how are they going to move those many tanks from north to central, south? Isn’t it simple?”
“Ah!”
“Hmm, if those Fascist bastards block our offensive in the center, we just have to stab somewhere else. Make them run around with heavy armored units. Then… one place will be broken through, won’t it?”
Hahaha, a refreshing laugh burst out. What are you going to do if you block here?
The German army was pulling out the lower stone and breaking the upper stone to stop the Soviet offensive. They could block it locally by using the armored units. But the other places would be wide open.
“Now, where should we take the next offensive? Leningrad? Dnieper River? Ukraine? Or the Balkans?”
Of course, I had the answer. If it was hard to cut off the army in the center, then why not cut it off in Leningrad?
This content is taken from fr(e)ewebn(o)vel.𝓬𝓸𝓶