Chapter 145:
Chapter 145
“Quick! Get rid of them!”
“Here! This way!”
In Minsk, the capital of the Belarusian SSR, a massive preparation for a defensive battle was underway.
Smolensk had fallen, and the Red Army was reclaiming the Belarusian territory one by one across the Dnieper River.
Now the German army was ‘introducing’ the city for the last time before handing it over to the Soviet army.
The SS soldiers in charge of security transported the Jews who had been isolated in the Minsk ghetto to eastern Poland.
Like frightened sheep, the Jews who had been imprisoned in the concentration camp were dragged out by the German army’s cruel hands and loaded onto the train like luggage.
“Wh-where are we going…”
“Shut up!”
Thud! The old Jewish grandmother who was walking with trembling legs holding her young granddaughter’s hand collapsed from the German army’s kick.
The granddaughter cried holding her grandmother who could not get up from the ground, but the SS showed no mercy to them.
“If you can’t walk, just drag them over there! You can’t even work, I can tell.”
“Yes!”
In 1941, the German army invaded and occupied the entire territory of Belarus with Operation Barbarossa.
Many Belarusian residents who were fed up with the harsh Stalinist rule welcomed the German army as liberators. Until they were massacred.
The Germans did not want the Slavs to live in the ‘Lebensraum’. From the Vistula River to the Ural Mountains!
The vast territory of Eastern Europe should be ruled only by the most superior Aryans!
One million Jews living in Belarus were hunted down and brought to the concentration camp. In the Maly Trostenets extermination camp near the capital Minsk, they were literally slaughtered.
There was no exception for the partisans who picked up guns after seeing their families, relatives, and neighbors being massacred.
[There is no space for inferior races in the Lebensraum]
The German army shouted slogans and burned villages, killing people.
They drove tens of thousands of people naked to clear mines, and burned them alive while they were still alive.
But now they no longer had time to devote themselves to ‘cleaning’ leisurely.
The Red Army was advancing like a tidal wave, filling the horizon.
The Wehrmacht and the SS, who had disposed of the Jews, Slavs, and Untermenschen so that they could not cause ‘damage from the rear’ during the battle, were now preparing for the battle.
The commander of the Minsk defense, SS Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, shouted with a torn voice.
“If we lose here, our wives and sisters will be raped by the devilish Soviet army, and our parents will be dragged to the barren plains of Siberia and freeze to death! Fight for the Fatherland! Young men of Germany!”
In fact, it would have been more convincing to say, ‘You will get back what you did to the Soviets’.
But quite a few German soldiers did not acknowledge the Soviet ‘people’.
They thought they were something inferior, even though they had human forms.
Of course, that contempt could not last long.
“Damn it! The dickheads are coming!”
Screech! The devil from hell screamed and the Soviet army’s missiles and rocket launchers began to fall.
The German army ran in panic to their battle positions. Behind the iron and concrete barriers, they grabbed machine guns and rifles.
Hoping that the Soviet army’s blind bullets and shells would not find them, the soldiers said a short prayer.
***
The commander-in-chief, Model, clenched his forehead when he heard the report of the start of the battle.
“Can that idiot really…”
As the commander-in-chief, he could exercise military authority over all units on the Eastern Front. But he could only determine the direction of the gun barrel with his military authority, not control the soldiers, especially the SS generals.
The Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler insisted that the SS, the ‘party and Führer’s guard’, should not lose the opportunity to establish a front line, even if the defense army general, that is, Model, gave orders.
If only he could get rid of the stupid and incompetent ones with his personnel authority. Anyway, the defense of Minsk, the most important stronghold in Belarus, was eventually entrusted to the SS.
“Von dem Bach, does he know how important Minsk is? What do you think?”
“Hmm… He probably knows that it’s more important than his own head for the sake of the country, but I don’t know if he can distinguish between offense and defense.”
“Ha, ha, ha…”
They could not help but laugh at the idiot who volunteered to crawl into the place where the most fierce battle would take place, flattering his superiors.
If Minsk was broken through, then…
“Vilnius won’t be able to stop the Soviet army. The friendly forces in Riga will have to retreat so they don’t get trapped in Courland. And then there’s K?nigsberg and Warsaw…”
If they were pushed back there, the war would be as good as lost. Even now, the Allied forces were bringing in American bombers and pounding the German mainland. They would turn Berlin, which was right in front of them, into ruins.
The problem was there.
“They have to deploy those damn rabble in this important place!”
“…”
What could the idiot who only knew how to lead the SS’s massacre squad, specialized in killing unarmed civilians, and flatter his superiors do?
Could they stop the mighty Red Army’s elite armored forces? Have they ever seen a Soviet tank?
All they had as reserves were a few infantry divisions that they barely scraped together. The Führer ordered emergency production and deployed a few ‘medium tank battalions’, but Model did not trust them, let alone rely on them.
“Phew… Hans, call me when I need to make a decision.”
“Yes! Your Excellency!”
The commander was not only responsible for this front.
The Baltic Front, which was retaking Pskov from the north and pushing down. The Ukrainian Front, which was pressing Hungary from the north with an offensive in the direction of Lwow. The Balkan Front, which was aiming for the ‘soft underbelly’ of the Axis with the Yugoslav Partisans.
He had to lead the war against millions of Soviet troops, while also being wary of the American bombings from behind.
He nodded at his old friend, whose dark circles under his eyes had reached his chin after days of working overtime and staying up all night. His friend was Hans Valentin-Hube, his chief of staff.
***
“Load armor-piercing shells! Three T-34s at one o’clock!”
“Aim at 800 meters, fire!”
Bang! The muzzle flashed. One of the Soviet armored reconnaissance team’s T-34 tanks was hit by the shell and started to spew black smoke.
“They’re coming this way!”
“It’s okay, reload!”
The 1st SS Panzer Division had retreated hundreds of kilometers from Smolensk to Minsk, where four new heavy tank battalions were formed.
The newly formed heavy tank battalions, numbered 601 to 604, were deployed on the flanks of the 6th SS Division, which was defending Minsk. The main force of the 1st SS Panzer Division was the strategic reserve of General Model, and stayed in the rear, but the most valuable force, the heavy tank battalions, were placed as the jokers on the front line.
The heavy tank battalions, made up of only the best tank soldiers who had achieved the most outstanding feats among the defense forces and the armed guards, and equipped with the best and latest tanks, were worth a hundred each.
“Hahaha! This thing is awesome!”
Clang! A dull metallic sound rang out as the Soviet shell bounced off the armor.
The tank commander, Lieutenant Michael Wittmann, laughed and turned his gun towards the Soviet tank that dared to fire at them.
“Take this! Hahaha!”
The roar of the 8.8 cm 71 caliber cannon made another Soviet tank explode. The latest German heavy tank, the ‘Tiger 6’, used its overwhelming weight and firepower to hunt down the Soviet tanks that approached for a tank battle.
The 70-ton steel beast kept firing shells without stopping. As long as the T-34’s 100 mm anti-tank gun did not hit the Tiger tank directly at close range, it could withstand any attack.
[The enemy is retreating! There may be more ambushes and counterattacks, so do not pursue.]
“Hmm, too bad…”
The tank soldiers of the heavy tank battalion chuckled and licked their lips.
Unless they were extremely unlucky, a frontal confrontation with the Soviet tanks was nothing but a way to increase their kill count and medals.
Most of the soldiers who had come through the bloody battles laughed and said that this was nothing.
Far away, in the sky of Minsk, fighter planes flew, and the thunderous roar of the artillery shook the earth.
Of course, whether there was a bloody battle in the city or not, the tank was not a weapon for urban warfare.
It was for running across the vast plains of Eastern Europe, breaking through the enemy lines, and smashing the enemy tanks.
The aces, who had started to enjoy the thrill of combat rather than fighting for their homeland, looked at the battlefield with little emotion.
“Huh, what will happen if they break through there?”
“Well, then more of those red bastards’ tanks will come!”
Saying that and smiling, Lieutenant Wittmann started to sing a song to encourage his soldiers, accompanied by a humming.
“Even if the storm blows, or the blizzard sweeps!”
“Even if the sun smiles at us, or in the burning noon, or in the freezing night!”
Even with the whistling sound of the Katyusha rockets coming from afar, the tank soldiers sang along with it as a background.
“We are happy with our dusty faces. Yes, we are happy! Our tanks march in the storm!
Even if the cold wind brought by the Red Army blew past them with a whoosh, the tank soldiers laughed.
It was quite brutal to sing with the Soviet tanks burning and spewing black smoke in the background, but the tank soldiers happily sang the Panzerlied.
Without knowing what was coming next.
***
“Fuck… fuck! Hey, more ammo…”
“Aaaah!”
Compared to the heavy tank battalions that had ‘easily’ repelled the Soviet troops with their overwhelming weight and armor, the defenders of Minsk were having a much harder fight.
The Soviet troops understood the German defensive tactics very well.
They knew that the machine-gun-centered defensive positions would lose their firepower if the machine-gunners were suppressed or eliminated, so they poured automatic fire over the heads of the machine-gunners.
The soldiers, who could not wear armor and deflect bullets, hid behind the walls of concrete and steel.
And then, the Soviet grenades flew and tore the German defensive positions to shreds.
“They’ve come up to the bottom!”
“Blow it up!”
They were not without tricks learned from the Soviets. ‘Directional mines’, mines that spewed fragments and explosions in a certain direction when detonated, were not difficult to develop, so they were quickly deployed to the front-line units.
A Soviet squad that was climbing the stairs to clear out the Germans hiding in the brick building was wiped out in an instant.
Of course, directional mines could not wipe out all the Soviet troops surrounding the building. The 6th SS Division soldiers, who were eager but lacked combat experience, wasted their ammo in a hurry and either retreated or were killed.
“Ah, fuck… this, ugh…”
One of the machine-gunners, who had burned his hand trying to change the barrel of the overheated machine gun that had caused a cook-off, flinched and clenched his right hand.
They were mostly on the side of pouring fire unilaterally.
The powerless civilians, when threatened with guns, either trembled in fear or cursed in their own language, but still went into the town hall or the public warehouse.
It was easy to lock the doors of those wooden buildings and burn them while pouring machine-gun fire. Even if the cartridge case got stuck, or if they had to change the barrel, there was no pressure.
But this was qualitatively different from the slaughter they had done so far.
The Soviet veteran shooters answered with accurate shots whenever the Germans exposed their bodies outside the cover.
The overheated barrel ruined the precious machine gun, and if the fire stopped for a moment, the Soviet troops approached with a swarm.
“Aaaah!”
The Red Army killed another invader who had set foot on their motherland.
“Drive out the fascist invaders! Ura! Ura!”
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