< World War II - Liberation (Wyzwolenie) (5) >
May 4, 1941
Eastern Front, Bialystok – Occupied territory of the Soviet Army Group North
Eight days since the start of Operation Liberation. As the Mobile Army Group made a direct breakthrough toward Pinsk, where Zhukov was, the Soviet forces deployed on each front were attempting a desperate retreat.
In the urban center of Bialystok, which Ivan Konev's Army Group North used as a core strongpoint, the sound of artillery could be easily heard.
The only way for such a large military force of army-group size to retreat quickly was by railroad, and with the main heavy equipnt units, including Ivan Konev, having already withdrawn, only so infantry units remained in Bialystok.
The train station was crowded with Soviet infantry units struggling to escape this hellish battlefield even a mont sooner.
However, that struggle brought about another disaster.
"E-Enemy aircraft!"
"Air raid, air raid!"
"Take cover!"
It was less a warning and more of a scream.
No matter how much they shouted, there was no way for the tightly packed Soviet troops to evacuate from the air raid in an orderly fashion.
The crowded Soviet soldiers were riddled by strafing fire, and the more unlucky ones were struck by the flas of incendiary bombs exploding overhead.
"Uwaaack, aack, uwaaaaaaah!"
"It's hot! Help eeeeee!"
The scene of n flailing as they burned alive blew away any shred of reason from those who witnessed it.
A burning victim, writhing in agony, reached out for help to a nearby comrade, only to spread the flas to him as well.
"Aaaack! You bastard, get away from !"
What had been a comrade just a mont ago was now reduced to a walking disaster rushing to set them on fire.
"G-Get out of my way! I'm going to live! I will live!"
"D-Don't push, ack! Uwaaack! It hurts, don't step on ! Aaaack!"
As they pushed and shoved to avoid being burned, the unlucky ones were pushed down and fell, and a succession of them were crushed and trampled to death under dozens of others.
The battalion commander of those unfortunate soldiers, a Soviet officer, watched the scene, dumbfounded.
"T-This, this isn't war."
They had no ans of resistance.
They had no will to fight.
This situation, being slaughtered while waiting for the train, their last hope, just to survive, was no longer a war but a one-sided massacre.
But the Luftwaffe did not stop the bombing.
Whether they had the capacity to resist or not, they were regular army soldiers, and they had not yet surrendered.
Therefore, they were targets that could be destroyed.
Unable to discern the detailed circumstances of the Soviet troops on the ground, that was the only fact that mattered to the Luftwaffe.
Their battalion commander glanced at the political officer next to him.
The political officer said nothing, his eyes narrowed as he kept a close watch on him.
It wasn't that the Soviet soldiers had so great will to fight that made them desperately try to retreat instead of surrendering.
If they surrendered here, their families would all be killed.
Thus, the fact that they could not surrender, even if it ant death, was not a consideration for the Allied Forces.
Even as the battalion commander and the political officer watched the pandemonium outside from the relative safety of a building, the Soviet troops continued to et disaster.
"Those devilish German bastards!"
"Fuck, why the hell am I here!"
"I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die!"
Just as the Soviet troops fell into great confusion, their only hope, a train, was finally seen approaching on the railroad in the distance.
"T-The train is coming!"
"We're saved now!"
But it didn't take long for their hope to vanish like a mirage.
Because the German strategic bomber, the HeB 177, nicknad the 'Arsonist' by the Soviet troops, was flying toward the tracks.
"Ah, ahh…!"
The train slamd on its brakes upon seeing the approaching bomber, but there was no way to stop the bombs, which the bomber poured out like a carpet, from shattering the train.
Seeing the driving force that had made them grit their teeth and endure all sorts of senseless deaths from the bombing go up in flas before their eyes, the Soviet soldiers' eyes beca bloodshot.
"What do we do now, Comrade Battalion Commander?"
"This is a senseless death!"
The Soviet battalion commander ca out of the building and blankly looked around.
The Poles who had been watching their miserable state from the windows imdiately slamd them shut and hid.
If they had guns, it wouldn't have just ended with them watching.
"At this rate, shouldn't we at least surrender?"
The battalion commander turned his anxious eyes to the political officer, who drew his pistol.
As everyone froze, instead of aiming it, the political officer brought it to his own temple.
"C-Comrade!"
"Those who wish to surrender, do so. I cannot bear to see my family executed."
A gunshot rang out.
Watching the political officer fall, spewing blood, the battalion commander's face beca grim as he drew his pistol and likewise aid it at his temple.
His subordinates were too flustered to stop him, but no gunshot was heard.
The battalion commander aid with a trembling hand for a long ti, but in the end, he couldn't fire it and shed tears.
"I'm sorry, Yenina, sob.
Sob…"
Even knowing their families would be executed, not everyone had the resolute will to die.
As the battalion commander sank weakly to his knees and dropped his pistol, the Soviet soldiers, without any prompting, all pulled out faded, whitish cloths and began to wave them frantically.
Even then, a few unlucky ones were hit by the bombing, which only stopped when most of the personnel were waving the faded, white-ish cloths.
-
May 5, 1941
Eastern Poland, Pinsk – Headquarters of the Soviet Union's Polish Front Army
Nine days since the start of Operation Liberation.
General Georgy Zhukov had ordered a retreat for all forces at the front as quickly as possible, but with the German armored units' breakthrough following all kinds of bombing and shelling, the current status of the units in great confusion could not be confird at all.
Of the Army Groups North, Center, and South, those who managed to retreat to the rear in ti via railroad were lucky.
The German Army deliberately bombed the railroads and trains crowded with retreating Soviet troops, and there were more who failed to get away than those who succeeded.
In the end, by the ti not even half of the military force had reached the rear, the devastating conclusion was reached that there were no more trains left to support the front army's retreat.
At least, due to their operational range, the enemy fighter aircraft had not yet reached Pinsk, and the few surviving Soviet fighter pilots were defending Pinsk's railroad with their lives.
However, this too would not last long.
The German Army was advancing with engineers specifically for constructing airstrips, and it was obvious that given a little ti, they would set up a temporary airbase from which fighters could take off to bomb the Pinsk railroad.
The enemy's armored units would reach Pinsk even faster than that.
Georgy Zhukov faced Vasily Chuikov and Enrique Líster, their faces grim.
"Comrade Chuikov, Comrade Líster. Please buy us even a little ti for the main force's retreat."
The units of both Chuikov and Líster had already struck the flank of the Panzer Group, only to be hit by a counterattack and retreat after taking damage.
The units of the two n, who had once majestically led thousands of T-34s, were now shabby and battered, but there were no other units that even maintained a proper chain of command.
Enrique Líster remained silent before opening his mouth.
"Is that a aningful sacrifice, Comrade?"
Zhukov, who was about to hurl profanities at such a ridiculous question in this urgent situation, shut his mouth after seeing the look in Líster's eyes.
"What is this war for, Comrade? For what reason did the Union reject the Allied Powers' peace agreent and join hands with that Fascist empire, driving millions of our people to their deaths?"
While Vasily Chuikov, prompted by Zhukov's look, cleared his throat and turned away, Zhukov glanced at the door.
Líster's voice was thoroughly restrained. The political officer outside couldn't have heard.
The gazes of Zhukov and Líster t.
Neither of them exchanged a single word.
A mont later, Líster saluted.
"For the people."
Zhukov returned the salute.
"For the motherland."
As Chuikov and Líster left the room, Georgy Zhukov felt a deep fatigue and picked up the telephone.
Zhukov had always been an imposing man, arrogant and full of pride, but now even the weight of the telephone in his hand felt heavy.
The short ti it took to connect to STAVKA felt excruciatingly long.
-STAVKA, Chief of the Army General Staff Vasilevsky speaking.
"Comrade Chief of the General Staff.
Is the General Secretary… is the permission to retreat, not yet granted?"
To Zhukov's desperate question, Vasilevsky's reply from Moscow was somber.
-The General Secretary has not left his official residence for days, Comrade General.
Georgy Zhukov gritted his teeth so hard they audibly ground together.
It must have been clearly audible to Vasilevsky on the other end of the line.
Thanks to the General Secretary's order forbidding retreat under any circumstances, the Soviet Army, in a panic, was facing a truly catastrophic situation.
When Georgy Zhukov reported that although precise casualties could not be confird, at least two million losses were expected, Stalin's reaction had flustered Zhukov.
Stalin had denied reality, saying it couldn't be true, and ordered him to re-verify the situation on the front.
If Zhukov had obeyed the General Secretary's order to hold their current positions and tried to confirm the damage, the Soviet Army would have surely been annihilated.
Zhukov had ignored the General Secretary's directive and ordered all frontline army groups to fall back east and reorganize their defense lines.
Then, after a little ti had passed, when he reported without re-verification that the losses hadn't changed, Stalin had acted as if his soul had left him and promptly vacated his post.
The military force the Soviet Union had lost so far amounted to seven million. This was not a simple matter of numbers.
The Soviet Regular Army, which had been gradually recovering from the aftereffects of the Great Purge while fighting Poland and was just barely spreading its wings, had been annihilated whole.
Mobilizing more troops would be possible.
But they were not already prepared military resources.
To fill the shattered front lines, they would be pushed to the front without proper training or equipnt.
The root cause that allowed the German Army of the original history to win with an overwhelming casualty ratio every ti it clashed with the Soviet Union before the Battle of Stalingrad—the situation where the Soviet regular army evaporated in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa—was recreated exactly.
And the incident Zhukov faced was so urgent that even that didn't matter.
The armored units led by Guderian and Roml were charging forward, crushing all resistance in their path, and had now reached the vicinity of Pinsk.
Orders were given for the troops who had barely survived at the front and retreated to the rear not to congregate in one place as much as possible, but over a million soldiers still remained in Pinsk alone.
It would take ti for them to get out by railroad, yet they were trapped because of the General Secretary who had ordered them to hold their positions and then disappeared!
Giving up the front line, which had already beco a deathtrap, was one thing, but an order to abandon the entire territory of Poland and retreat to the ho country carried a different weight.
If they retreated, abandoning everything gained after shedding the blood of millions, soone would surely have to pay the price.
And that soone would be the one who gave the order to retreat.
"Comrade Chief of the General Staff, if we don't retreat right now, we will all die!"
-We are well aware of that, Comrade.
I've asked Comrades Molotov and Khrushchev to see the General Secretary, so if you could just wait a little longer…
"The enemy is right before Pinsk! Do you believe the railroad can move all our troops at once!"
Zhukov roared, his blood boiling, and a deathly silence flowed from the other side.
Zhukov also knew that this situation was not Vasilevsky's fault.
He also knew that this wouldn't bring about any solution.
But the man, who had never doubted he was the Soviet Union's greatest general, could not suppress the rage welling up from this absurd situation and his own powerlessness.
The outco of the battlefield, which he had thought would be the decisive point, had been determined from the very beginning.
Only after clashing directly with them as they fought with all their might did Zhukov realize that for the Soviet Union to win against them, it would have to wring out every last drop of the motherland's national power.
The price for underestimating them, just because he had more troops and had used their careless mistakes to achieve a few small victories, was too devastating.
After a long silence, Vasilevsky's voice was heard.
-You should retreat, Comrade General.
At the completely unexpected words, Zhukov was even more flustered.
"C-Can I do that? But the General Secretary—"
Zhukov thought of his military senior, Rokossovsky, who he had sent ahead near the train station due to his mobility issues.
The General Secretary had more than enough justification to oust him and Rokossovsky.
Although the General Secretary's order to hold their positions had exacerbated the casualties in this battle, Zhukov would have been defeated even without it.
And even if it was entirely the General Secretary's fault and not Zhukov's, that ruthless man was soone who wouldn't have a shred of hesitation in shifting the bla.
-If we wait for the General Secretary's answer, even the surviving army will be annihilated, Comrade General.
"…"
-If the General Secretary holds you accountable, I will say it was my unilateral decision.
I will also say the responsibility for this defeat is mine, for failing to assist you as the Chief of the General Staff. Comrade General, please retreat.
"…How can I fight without you, Comrade Chief of the General Staff."
Whenever the arrogant and hot-tempered Zhukov clashed with the General Secretary, whenever the General Secretary tried to interfere with his operations, it was Vasilevsky who stopped and diated.
It was also he who had supported Zhukov's plans, maintaining millions of troops with the Soviet Army's abysmally poor supply and communication systems, so they could fight as planned.
As Zhukov hesitated, a sigh ca from the other end of the line.
-Even without , Comrade Antonov will help you, Comrade General.
The Chief of the General Staff, who in the original history had been a steadfast supporter in Zhukov's victory against Hitler, spoke softly but resolutely from across the line.
-I will trust you, Comrade General. Even without , the Union of People must survive, must it not?
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