Chapter 132:
Chapter 132
The Northern Group Army, which boasted a million-strong force, fled in a few months as a pathetic remnant.
The territories they had captured were taken back by the Soviet Army, and their defensive line was pushed back to Pskov, where they had set foot last year.
The Soviet Army was stronger than ever, but the German Army was far from its heyday.
Faced with a situation that seemed to collapse in an instant, the German officers stopped thinking.
“You stupid bastards! How dare you deceive me? Are they also traitors, spies?”
“Please calm down, my Führer…”
Bang! The Führer threw whatever he could get his hands on.
The attendees said nothing and trembled, waiting for the Führer’s rage to subside.
The Northern Group Army was virtually gone. It was common sense in modern military science that a unit was considered annihilated if it lost 30% of its combat capability. But the Northern Group Army had 70% of its troops killed or captured, and the remaining 30% were mostly wounded.
It was literally evaporated, once the most powerful unit of Germany.
“Are we completely driven out of the North Russian region now? By your incompetent command? Well, Field Marshal Manstein, say something if you have anything to say. Do you have anything to say to the hundreds of thousands of sons of Greater Germany who died or were captured?”
“…I have nothing to say. My Führer.”
Manstein clenched his teeth.
‘My Führer, one of those ‘sons of Greater Germany’ is my son.’
His son, Gero von Manstein, had gone to the battlefield and his fate was unknown. What had happened to the prisoners, especially the son of the enemy commander who had trampled Leningrad? Manstein did not want to imagine it at all.
Of course, the Führer did not seem to care about that.
“You useless eaters! What are you going to do now? Damn it, damn it!”
The Führer was literally glowing. He was not foaming at the mouth, but he screamed at them with his eyes bloodshot and his neck veins bulging.
But screaming did not produce any solutions.
“…”
All the generals were silent. From G?ring, who was angry that the Führer had forced air supply and lost dozens of pilots in Finland, to the lower-ranking generals who did not know what to say in this situation.
After launching a preemptive attack on the Soviet Union, the result of a year and a half of fighting was that the Soviet Union had grown to an unbearable size.
Germany was running out of manpower and had to send even the skilled workers from the factories to the battlefield, while the Soviet Union conscripted more and more soldiers endlessly.
“My Führer… The Imperial Security Headquarters has obtained the Soviet Army’s additional conscription plan for next year.”
“…”
“They plan to conscript at least another two million more…”
The intelligence officer said nervously. Sighs erupted everywhere.
Everyone was desperate.
The Soviet Army was now not much inferior to the German Army in quality.
Their officer corps and soldier training level, which were initially pathetic, had improved gradually through the battles across the front line.
But the elite officer corps and the soldiers trained by harsh training, who were the pride of the German Army, were mostly buried in the vast plains of Eastern Europe or became prisoners of the Soviet Army.
Now the soldiers who were sent to the battlefield were hastily trained ones who lacked combat capability.
The healthy ones were the first to be dragged and killed, and the ones who were additionally conscripted were the ones who would not have been able to go near the army in normal situations.
“They came to the army?”
The army instructors were appalled day by day.
They dragged these losers to the proud German Army?
In fact, even the instructors who had to spit out those words were assigned to the unit called ‘Correction Division’ and sent to the front.
Now the ones who were engaged in education work in the rear of the German Army were the ones who were returned to the reserve for various reasons, but even they thought the level of the recruits was miserable.
“It’s like an idiot teaching an idiot!”
The German Army training unit made such a joke that was not a joke.
Those who had lost fingers or ankles, or one eye, were mostly assigned to the rear training unit.
They could no longer rest comfortably at home with that degree of injury.
And they consoled themselves by training those who were lacking or had serious problems.
Nevertheless, the manpower was insufficient. If the Soviet Army conscripted two million, the German Army had to conscript one million more, but there was no way to do that.
“My Führer, please entrust me with the front line.”
“!!!”
“…Field Marshal Model?”
Model, who had been sitting quietly in the corner of the conference room, seemed to have made a decision.
People looked up at him with hopeful eyes.
The lion of defense! The firefighter of the southern front! Many people called Model that. He had succeeded in rescuing the Southern Group Army, which was in a desperate crisis, and retreating safely. He began to gain fame as a master of defense.
Although he had retreated, he had crushed the Soviet Army literally with a 10 to 1 exchange rate.
Everyone praised the Führer’s grace for appointing him as the group army commander.
He stepped forward to take charge of the eastern front. The Führer stopped glowing and breathed heavily, looking calmly at Model, who was staring at him. Model raised his voice calmly.
“My Führer, our army is in the worst situation right now.”
Gasp. Some were startled and gasped. Since the ‘National Defense Army Rebellion Incident’, no one had dared to speak frankly about the situation of the battlefield in extreme distress in front of the Führer. But Model, who trusted the Führer’s affection for himself, confronted him head-on with the facts that no one had ever said.
“You may not be able to achieve everything you want, my Führer. But if we defend the territories we have secured in this situation and inflict heavy damage on them… we may ask for reinforcements.”
“…”
No one dared to open their mouth. Model was the first person to say that there might be a conclusion other than victory in this war.
At least in front of the Führer.
Hitler bit his lip and stared at Model’s face. Model did not waver a bit. He declared that he would stop the overwhelming Soviet Army with his battered army, and the Führer had no choice but to rely on him.
He slumped into his chair and asked, touching his forehead. With a voice that seemed to age 10 years in an instant.
“How much more manpower do you need? Field Marshal Model, or rather, Commander-in-Chief?”
“…I think we need at least half a million, or more.”
***
A while later, Goebbels gave a radio speech in his characteristic metallic voice.
[The heroic resistance of the 4th Army and the Holrit Detachment was eventually overwhelmed by the Soviet supplies. We declare three days of mourning to commemorate them.]
There was no explanation of what had happened and how. What had become of Leningrad, which was supposed to be renamed Adolfburg and become the pride of the German nation? What was the situation on the eastern front?
The broadcast did not try to explain what the people were curious about.
Only what they wanted to say came out. Goebbels’ voice was more abrasive than ever, provoking the people.
[German people, do you want a total war? Do you want a total war to crush those vile Jewish-Bolshevik beasts? Do you want a more radical total war than any war before?]
Tens of thousands of Nazi party members were mobilized to encourage participation in the war with a march of slogans. They carried placards saying <Long live the total war> or <Let’s annihilate the Jewish-Bolshevik reds> and shouted slogans like <Long live the Führer> and <Long live the victory>.
“Long live the Führer! Long live the victory! The German people need your dedication for the victory. Join the army!”
The young Eugenics members distributed posters they had made themselves on the streets. Their seniors, who had been their role models, had already been deployed to the Armed Guard’s Eugenics Division by region.
There were no young people on the streets of Germany, mostly middle-aged and older, but that was not important to the fanatics.
“More manpower! A bigger army! The German people need an army!”
During the day, the Eugenics boys roamed the streets, and at night, the secret police looked for people to drag to the army.
<People’s Assault Force>.
This was the name of the unit that the newly conscripted people would join.
***
[Good. Our intelligence agency also reported that the bombing would have a significant effect.]
“Thank you! That’s very good news.”
The season of mud had arrived on the eastern front. The front line was temporarily in a lull. Of course, this was only for the ground forces tied to the land. The sky was still hot with the heat of the battlefield.
The US military mobilized hundreds of bombers to bomb the factories in Schweinfurt and the power production dams in the Ruhr Valley.
A small city was turned into a sea of fire, and the dam collapsed, flooding thousands of households, but the US did not care.
The bloody war in the Atlantic had ignited the Americans’ thirst for revenge.
The beaches of the Azores were already soaked with the blood of American soldiers.
Through intelligence, the US military learned that Germany was in a panic over the surprise bombing and asked for more bombing targets.
They also said they would bomb Japan in a similar way and stepped up the development of large heavy bombers.
“Our Soviet Army plans to launch an offensive in the east during the winter and drive the German Army out of Soviet territory. We will join the war against Japan as soon as possible after we finish off Germany.”
[This time I have to thank you.]
On the Pacific front, it seemed that they were able to maintain the connection with Australia thanks to the defeat of the Japanese at Guadalcanal. But they had not yet commissioned the ships to replace the sunken battleships and aircraft carriers, so they could not launch an offensive.
[Next year, we will also commission new battleships. Our full-scale counterattack will start then.]
Fifteen Iowa-class battleships, including the newly commissioned battleship Iowa, were under construction.
There was nothing to say about the US Navy’s idea of building dozens of sturdy and powerful battleships to counter the Yamato of the Japanese Navy.
They needed a huge ship to compete with the Yamato, which had a displacement of over 70,000 tons, so they built the Iowa-class, which had a displacement of 50,000 tons, one after another.
The US industrial production capacity, which could build such ships while blocking the eastern front, was truly enviable.
‘I wish we could build that many fleets too…’
With the Soviet’s poor shipbuilding technology and steel production capacity, they could not build such ships while holding the eastern front.
And knowing that carriers were much more efficient through the knowledge of the future, they could not afford to pour billions of rubles into battleships.
Despite the fact that battleships were men’s romance.
A Soviet Soyuz-class battleship fleet that would sail proudly in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific! He imagined that his thing, which would not stand up anymore, would spring up at the thought of that, but that was not possible.
Battleships or that.
As a second best option, they were training for carrier construction and naval aviation establishment after the war, but they were not satisfied.
“Ah, and there is a very good way for the US to pressure Japan.”
[Yes? What is that?]
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