Chapter 136:
Chapter 136
“What… what is this…”
“Ha…”
The German bureaucracy was still as precise and efficient as ever, and the train heading to the eastern front was packed with troops conscripted by that bureaucracy.
The staff had done a remarkable job of drafting a million people’s assault force in just three weeks, but the result was hardly satisfactory.
What was the point of sending a million ragtag soldiers who had not even received proper military training to face the Soviet army armed with tanks, artillery, and aircraft?
The frontline personnel and supply officers only sighed deeply and rubbed their foreheads.
[Didn’t you send all the training units in the rear to the frontline combat units? How do you expect me to train a million soldiers with no instructors?]
“…”
The rear command only gave them a snappy answer. The frontline commanders had nothing to say and just sighed heavily.
They were not wrong.
The instructors who had the most knowledge of weapons and equipment were assigned to elite units to plug the holes in the frontline when the situation worsened.
Units like the Armored Training Division were examples of that.
But they were consumed the fastest in the most intense battles.
And the German army faced the Soviet army without the veterans who could train the next generation.
There was also a problem with the quality of the troops.
“Uncle~ I need to pee…”
“Oh, Hans. Over there, over there.”
“…?”
The army captain who was sent to command the people’s assault force platoon was bewildered. First of all, the young man who was conscripted into the army was not in the army, but in the people’s assault force.
And he looked strange somehow.
A middle-aged man who seemed to know him from the same neighborhood was fussing over him.
The other assault force members also glanced at them as if there was something wrong.
“Hey! What are you guys doing!”
“Hehe, hello.”
“Ah… well… this guy is a bit slow…”
The middle-aged assault force member turned around with the young man who had a naive expression. The captain was speechless.
“What do you mean, you brought that kind of guy to the army?”
“Did I bring him? The country brought him.”
Ha… The captain sighed deeply.
The Nazis had tried to kill and eliminate all the disabled people who ‘tainted the pure blood of the Aryans’ as inferior beings after they seized power.
But it was not possible to cut them off with a knife and say, you are normal, you are disabled! So not everyone died.
Most of the people who were a bit slow but could manage to live in society survived.
Of course, there were tests to distinguish them, and normally they were ordered to do rear labor instead of military service. But he could see that too.
“How the world works…”
The elderly over the normal conscription age, the young wounded who could fight, the physically weak, the mildly mentally impaired.
The Führer had swept them all into the people’s assault force. Of course, that was a nice way of putting it, and the rough soldiers usually used different words to describe them.
‘Oldies, morons, blockheads.’
They were supposed to command them and mix in a few senior sergeants, but that didn’t solve anything.
Which commander would willingly give up the sergeants who were scarce in the defense force units? So most of the people who wore the squad leader badges were veterans of the last war.
The old men who were digging the ground complained that they remembered the old days.
The captain had a headache looking at the young man who was laughing silly without grasping the situation.
They were crazy, crazy. Did they think of throwing them as machine gun fodder?
***
“So, aside from these soldiers, please send us some supplies!”
[How can we do that when we don’t have any? We are doing our best to encourage production in the supply factories, so you should also do your best on the frontline. Beep- beep-]
“No, damn it… dog…”
The German bureaucracy, which was so competent that it made him sick, had succeeded in squeezing out the hidden troops in the people and sending them to the frontline.
As a result, they were doing basic military training at the wrong time. But even those competent bureaucrats could not create something out of nothing.
“Didn’t they give us enough last year, and now they say they don’t have enough winter clothes?”
“…Yes.”
The supply officers were in a panic. More than a million soldiers had arrived at the frontline by train.
This was almost enough to take up the entire transport capacity of the scarce trains.
Food and water to sustain a million soldiers. Equipment and ammunition to supply them, and to feed and keep alive the soldiers who were already stationed there, they needed thousands of trains and tens of thousands of trucks.
“Three transport trucks were attacked and destroyed by partisans. Three of them exploded completely…”
“Soviet attack planes bombed the railway and destroyed the train cars and the tracks also need repairs. If we don’t reduce the food distribution, the division’s reserve food will be reduced to two weeks’ worth.”
The logic was simple. There was a priority for supplies.
Things that you die without and things that you don’t die without.
The supply officers classified the supplies into these two categories.
And unfortunately for many German soldiers, winter clothes belonged to the latter.
So the soldiers would rather wait for the Soviet attack.
“Come here, you bastards! Give me your clothes!!!”
“Charge! Charge forward!!”
When the battle with the Soviet army ended, the first thing that happened was that the friendly casualties occurred.
As a result, the denominator became smaller and the distribution situation per person improved a little.
And the Soviet army had very valuable things on this battlefield.
Thick coats and gloves, sturdy boots, excellent weapons.
They were like legendary monsters that spit out all kinds of treasures if you just catch them.
The problem was that the Soviet army was like a legendary monster to the people’s assault force.
“Don’t come here… please…”
The people’s assault force squad that found and attacked the Soviet reconnaissance squad was completely defeated and ran away.
The fallen soldier was scared and rolled around in the field, forgetting the momentum he had when he ran towards them earlier.
Even though they were ambushed, the Soviet army counterattacked calmly.
They quickly took cover and fired their machine guns, making the people’s assault force soldiers panic.
The Soviet soldiers, who were momentarily undecided whether to retreat or engage, chose to attack despite being outnumbered.
The result was a defeat for the German army, which had several times more troops.
The people’s assault force soldiers, who lacked proper support weapons, shooting experience, and combat experience, could never win against the Soviet army that was trained in battle.
***
“This is a direct order from the Führer! Your Excellency, the Imperial Leader. I have the command authority over all the soldiers on the eastern front.”
“…I understand.”
Model grabbed his head. Just like the situation his homeland Germany was in, Model also had to fight on two fronts.
‘The incompetent allies inside and the competent enemies outside.’
The Imperial Leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, was ambitious.
He was not as much as his rival, the Air Force Imperial Marshal G?ring, but Himmler also wanted to have more soldiers and more units in his hands.
So Himmler started to throw a tantrum.
“The people’s assault force is not the defense force, so I should have the command authority over them!”
Even though they had no difference in function, the SS maintained their own command system, ranting about the Prussian Junkers of the defense force and the army of the German nation.
They subtly defied the orders of Model, the single commander of the eastern front.
They also snatched away their share of the supplies that were scarce for everyone, and sneakily increased their authority while passing the tasks to the defense force.
The SS did such despicable things calmly.
Model appealed directly to the Führer and obtained the command authority over them, but Himmler resisted until the end. He backed off when he heard the Führer’s order, but he still licked his lips.
***
Apart from the incompetent allies, the Soviet army was extremely competent.
“Position 3314, position 3314, respond!”
The German 64th Division’s defense line was bombarded with artillery fire. The barrage that poured over the anti-tank positions removed the barrier that could stop the Soviet tanks.
[More than 10 tanks are coming! We need anti-tank guns… Zzzt…]
Once they identified the anti-tank positions through aerial reconnaissance, the coordinates were accurately hit by the bomber’s bombs or the artillery’s shells.
Even if they tried to counterattack, the Soviet army always kept some reserve forces and counterattacked the counterattack.
The Soviet army’s medium tanks broke through the weakened defense line.
The medium tanks with strong armor did not hesitate to break through the defense line and wreak havoc in the rear, and after they penetrated, the armored units or mechanized infantry followed.
“Where the hell is our air force…”
Kreeeeek Bang! Something exploded nearby and the field command tent shook. Of course, the German army was already somewhat used to it.
But that didn’t mean they could endure it.
All the people in the command post hid under the desk to avoid the air raid, and only crawled out of the desk when they heard the engine sound of the friendly fighters.
“Damn bears! Damn shock bombs!”
Someone cursed.
The bear fighters carried 500kg aerial bombs and dropped them indiscriminately when they went on ground attacks.
The bombs had horns attached to them, similar to the Stuka, which made the Germans suffer from neurosis.
Did the Soviet army feel this way when they were hit by the Stuka? The German army could now understand the Soviet army’s feelings.
“The Soviet army must have reached this area. We have to retreat too!”
“No, we can’t do that.”
The division commander firmly rejected the retreat proposal. Where would they go if they retreated?
If they ran to the rear, the friendly anti-aircraft guns would also have to retreat. Then our fighters would have to fight the Soviet fighters without anti-aircraft gun support, and they would not be able to cover the retreat.
If they lost the air superiority, they would be exposed to the Soviet fighters who would relentlessly destroy the roads and railways. Or they would be attacked by the enemy tank units that chased after the rear of the allies who abandoned the defense line and ran away.
Either way, they would be surrounded. It was better to fight to support the precious fighters on the ground.
“Let’s fight! Let’s fight and die! Reinforcements will come! Trust Model commander!”
“Long live victory! Long live the Führer!”
The division commander poured out an optimistic plan without a solution to the radio.
The Soviet army was too powerful. Accurate shelling, effective close support, bold tank tactics and the overwhelming quantity that followed them.
But almost all the German soldiers believed in the commander. Model marshal, who had won the victory in the southern battlefield, would eventually repel the vicious Soviet army.
“Long live the Führer! Long live Model marshal! Long live! Long liveee!!!”
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