Chapter 144:
Chapter 144
Smolensk, a city that had been trampled by foreign invaders many times.
The Red Army liberated Smolensk, which had been burned twice by Napoleon’s Grand Army during the Patriotic War and by the Nazi German Army during the Great Patriotic War.
The citizens who had survived by hiding in the ruins of war and the people who had fled gathered again in Smolensk. To rebuild the ruins.
“Long live the Red Army! Long live the liberators!”
“Ura! Ura! Ura!”
The Second Belorussian Front, led by Major General Yeryomenko, who had liberated Smolensk after a desperate battle, entered the city and held a parade.
The citizens cheered at the sight of the proud Red Army, but the commander was not happy at all.
The city was literally a pile of rubble with people crawling in it.
The German 9th Army had abandoned Smolensk and retreated while the Northern Group was collapsing.
In the process, they did not forget to destroy the city’s important facilities so that the Soviet Army could not use them even if they recaptured the city.
“Damn bastards.”
Of course, the shells fired by the Soviet Army must have done their share as well. And there must have been damage from when Smolensk was occupied in ’41.
But the soldiers who saw the ancient city of Kiev Rus, which had no stone left on the stone, could not think of such things. The soldiers clenched their teeth and shed tears, vowing revenge on the fascists.
“Comrade Commander! Comrade Commander! We found him!”
“Alright. Let me see.”
The center of the city was especially cruelly destroyed. The city hall, which had been bombed heavily, was left as a pile of rubble, a symbol of the German’s power.
Along with the Soviet corpses underneath. At least hundreds of Soviet casualties had been buried under the building for over a year, and the soldiers of the Second Belorussian Front were excavating the corpses while restoring the city for military use.
They dug up the rotten corpses that they could not touch among the collapsed concrete and bricks, and recovered the dog tags and service numbers. It was hard and disgusting work, but the soldiers worked silently.
The brave seniors who had died heroically to buy some time for themselves and the entire Soviet people.
The soldiers started their work to help them rest as soon as possible.
“Salute to Comrade Commander!”
When Yeryomenko arrived at the site where they were digging, it was already after the mobilized heavy equipment and tens of thousands of manpower had cleared some of the rubble.
“Did you find him? Damn…”
“Yes, here…”
The ashes were carefully placed in a coffin made of good quality wood. The officer in charge was documenting the names and ranks of each one based on the dog tags brought by the soldiers.
When the commander approached, he saluted and led Yeryomenko to a corner.
“Sigh…”
The coffin was covered with a red Soviet flag and left alone.
Reading the name of the coffin owner, Yeryomenko sighed deeply.
“Yakov Iosifovich Zhugashvili…”
“The identity is confirmed. We have cross-verified with the dog tags and personal belongings.”
“Good job.”
The eldest son of the Secretary General had died in ’41 trying to defend Smolensk.
It was only now that they had succeeded in recovering his body.
What would the Secretary General, who had given up two of his three sons to the battlefield, feel?
What would he think when he saw the corpse of his son, who had decayed beyond recognition? Yeryomenko shivered his shoulders.
The Second Belorussian Front had captured Smolensk, but the damage was not small.
If the Secretary General were to issue an unreasonable advance order, they might suffer more damage.
“Let’s report to the Politburo for now. Let’s see what happens.”
“Yes! Yes, sir!”
***
As soon as they reported that they had found the remains of Yakov Zhugashvili, the Kremlin issued an order.
[Bury him in the nearby cemetery of the fallen heroes.]
The tens of thousands of heroes who had died in Smolensk were buried one by one on a nearby hill. A cemetery to honor the fallen heroes was quickly built on the Balutino Hill, located east of Smolensk.
The Secretary General announced that he would visit the ‘liberated Smolensk’ as soon as possible.
The Second Belorussian Front prepared to show the best possible image to the powerful man, as any army would.
The recovered remains were quickly buried in the cemetery according to their units.
“Is he here?”
The soldiers lined up on the runway that was barely completed just before the Secretary General’s arrival.
The Secretary General, who flew in on a private transport plane, had a stone-like face and said nothing as he followed Major General Yeryomenko’s guidance and walked around the cemetery of the fallen heroes. He finally reached his son’s grave.
The people were startled by the one word he uttered after saying nothing. But the Secretary General did not seem to want an answer, as he walked lonely to the small tombstone in front of him.
“Yakov I. Zhugashvili, artillery lieutenant. 1907-1941.”
“…”
“Where did you find him?”
“Yes! Yes! Under the ruins of the city hall…”
The officer in charge of the work was startled and answered, then trailed off. Who would be happy to hear that their son had been buried under the rubble for over a year?
Especially if it was the iron dictator Stalin. But the Secretary General just stared blankly at the small tombstone.
There were endless rows of identical tombstones in the cemetery of the fallen heroes. Of course, there were not many of them that had the year of birth and death engraved on them, as there was not enough time.
“Did you take a picture…?”
“No, no, Comrade Secretary General! We didn’t have time to take a picture…”
“Good.”
The Secretary General nodded his head without saying anything else and waved his hand to the people.
The dozens of people who had accompanied him sensed the Secretary General’s discomfort and quickly retreated to ten meters away.
Major Yeryomenko was cursing the stupid excavation officer who didn’t bother to leave any evidence photos, but he couldn’t say anything.
Anyway, the Secretary General was absorbed in his deep feelings, stroking his son’s tombstone.
“Come on! There’s a lot to do!”
“Yes?”
“How long are you going to stay here? We have to go back to Moscow.”
The Secretary General tried to smile and talk, but no one could miss the redness in his eyes. But no one dared to say anything about it.
Whether he really thought no one knew, the Secretary General tried to make a joke with a cheerful tone.
“Have you seen that movie? <Saving Private Lef>… The Spetsnaz were shooting really well there… Well, what about you? How was it?”
“That, that’s right. Long live the great Red Army!”
“Hahahaha, very good. Ura! Ura!”
<Saving Private Lef> was about the Spetsnaz jumping into the battlefield to save the last remaining son of seven brothers, six of whom had died on the front lines.
The soldiers knew why he thought of that movie, so they were very careful not to offend the Secretary General’s sore spot.
***
“It’s not just my son who died. It’s very unfair for him to get special treatment.”
“Comrade Secretary General…”
As he spoke on the plane back to Moscow, Zhukov looked at me with pity. He had four daughters, so he didn’t have to send his children to the battlefield. He couldn’t even begin to understand how I felt.
Of course, Stalin’s two sons were hardly children to me. Stalin himself was not very close to his children, and frankly, how could I call them my children when they were older and bigger than me?
The Stalin inside me was raging with anger and madness, but I didn’t want to reveal my feelings to the people.
“But it’s not too much to ask for a statue to commemorate the fierce battle of Smolensk and to honor the fallen. Don’t you think?”
“That’s a fair point.”
“What about the name of the statue… ‘The Motherland Calls’?”
Zhukov nodded silently.
The Motherland called the Soviet sons for her own revenge.
The blood of the enemy and the ally flowed like a river in the dry ditch, and the sons of the Motherland fought and died heroically.
“When Yevgeny and Galina grow up enough, they will know what their father died for when they go there. Let’s make a cemetery for the heroes. So that our descendants can remember the fierce Great Patriotic War in the distant future…”
“I understand, Comrade Secretary General.”
I was thinking of the <Motherland Statue> on the Mamayev Hill in Stalingrad. The original name of the statue was ‘The Motherland Calls’ (Rodina-mat’ zovyot!).
“Let’s make it bigger than the Statue of Liberty in New York. Let the whole world know what bloodshed the Soviet Union went through and won this war.”
As Zhukov nodded heavily, the secretary brought another pile of reports.
“The Minsk offensive?”
“Ah! Yes, that’s right, Comrade Secretary General.”
The Soviet Army was now pushing the German Army back from the front line without rushing.
Model retreated to a position where the supply line could be stabilized, forcing the Soviet to consume.
It was 1,400km from Smolensk to Berlin. It was 200km farther than the distance from the northern part of France, Normandy, to Berlin.
But the Minsk offensive had a symbolic meaning.
‘The tide of the battlefield has already turned!’
The German Army captured Minsk in two weeks after the start of the war and stormed in. They were stopped and repelled by the iron wall of the Soviet Army, and eventually defeated in Leningrad.
What would the Germans think when the Soviet Army appeared in front of their homeland after recapturing Minsk?
“I see. Who will be in charge of the Minsk battle?”
“Yes, Marshal Rokossovsky will lead the First, Second, and Third Belorussian Fronts. He will crush the fascists’ army with 1.6 million troops!”
The number of units was staggering. The German Army had recorded over 2 million total losses and was scraping and dragging its manpower resources.
But what about the Soviet? The snowball had rolled so much that they could deploy 1.6 million troops in Belarus, which was about the size of the Korean Peninsula.
The basic strategy of Model, which was brought by the intelligence department, was ‘accumulation of losses’.
In defensive battles, the defender is much more advantageous tactically, so if they do not suffer a strategic defeat and continue to inflict damage on the Soviet Army, they will not be able to cope and will negotiate for peace.
He seemed to think so.
“Let’s show him that he’s wrong. General Zhukov. Do you understand?”
“Yes! Comrade Secretary General!”
Of course, it doesn’t matter if Model blocks it.
Just drop a nuclear bomb on Berlin. Rather, it might be more of a problem if he blocks it too well.
Not only Berlin, but other cities will also be stained with the fire of the nuclear bomb.
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