Chapter 9:

Chapter 9:

Chapter 9

“Don’t you think so too?”

“How dare... How could we possibly know the intentions of Comrade Secretary General? We just follow his orders.”

His voice was completely hoarse.

He was still shaking his hand with missing fingers, a sign of the torture he had endured.

He squinted one eye as if in pain and bowed to me in a servile manner.

Rokossovsky, one of the best generals of the Soviet army and a man of misfortune who was abandoned by both his homeland of birth and his homeland of faith.

He was born in Poland and devoted his loyalty to Russia and the Soviet regime.

But the Soviet Union threw him into a prison camp and forced him to confess to an unproven conspiracy.

Eventually, he was released and reinstated after the country faced a crisis, but then he was sent to Poland as a military governor, because he was of Polish descent, and made him hated by the Polish people.

He never considered himself Polish, but everyone thought he was.

Even the Poles who hated Rokossovsky.

There was nothing he could do about what he had done.

The only thing left was to get him out of the prison camp as soon as possible.

Rokossovsky was at least a field army commander.

Considering his experience in the Civil War or the Soviet-Polish War, he could have replaced the weak Soviet military leadership as a front army commander or even a chief of staff, but...

To be honest, I doubted his loyalty. Could someone who had been tortured until a few days ago have no hatred or resentment for the regime?

Stalin seemed to be clicking his tongue all the time.

He said he would get a good slap on the back of his head someday.

Anyway, Stavka agreed to bring him back to the military.

In actual history, he was a corps commander, and in the defense of Moscow, he was a field army commander, but for now, I decided to postpone his command position.

I gave Rokossovsky an unofficial rank of deputy chief of staff and assigned him the role of coordinating two front armies in the northern front: Konev’s Northern (=Leningrad) Front Army and Bagramyan’s Northwestern Front Army.

That’s why Rokossovsky came to my office and summarized the reports from the two front armies, received my instructions, and drew up a blueprint for the future.

“You can sit down and report from now on. If you need it, I’ll make you a special chair.”

“Thank you, Comrade Secretary General!”

‘Special chair’ sounded like a torture device somehow... But I meant a wheelchair. If his toes were so mangled that he had to wear specially made boots, a wheelchair might be more comfortable.

In actual history, after this point, several more front armies were added to the Soviet army.

In the northern front, there were the Karelian Front Army that was responsible for the Finnish direction, and the Volkhov Front Army that had the mission of liberating the Leningrad siege ring, in addition to the Leningrad/Northwestern Front Army.

In the central and southern fronts, there were front armies that changed their names constantly, such as Kalinin Front Army, Crimean Front Army, etc.

To exploit the rivalry between Zhukov and Konev and make them compete with each other, I had to raise them to similar ranks, so I planned to give Konev the command of the northern front, and promote some more people to fill in the front army commanders as they increased.

One of them was obviously Rokossovsky.

I had to make him familiar with the situation in the northern front as soon as possible.

These administrative reports were terribly boring compared to some battle reports that I had marked.

The Soviet generals that I knew of, especially those who rose to the highest ranks such as Soviet Marshals or equivalent later on, were assigned to command combat units from division commanders to field army commanders depending on their careers in places where fierce battles would take place.

Rokossovsky was still recovering from his aftereffects -and I didn’t trust him completely yet- so I called him to my staff office for now...

Malinovsky and Tolbukhin, who would play an active role in Stalingrad in 1942 -here it might be more likely Kiev battle since the southern front didn’t seem to be pushed back so much- were given hints under Zhukov’s command to play pivotal roles in counterattack operations.

They would be the commanders of new shock armies.

Ivan Bagramyan, Vasily Chuikov, Ivan Chernyakhovsky and others who were not high enough in rank yet were given corps or division commands and entrusted with leading the vanguard of the battlefields to build up their merits and opportunities for promotion.

And I read their reports carefully, so the commanders of all ranks would take good care of them.

The operation itself was simple.

He divided his tank unit into two parts and ambushed them on both sides of the exit of the corridor between the swamp and hills, waiting for them to pass through the corridor.

When the German army’s armored units were caught in the crossfire from both sides, he mobilized his division’s artillery regiment and a third tank unit to strike at their rear!

Germany had a ridiculously low tank production rate.

Nazi Germany started the war too early after an adventurous diplomatic operation and could not provide enough equipment to each division.

Especially for their tribute army, the Northern Group Army.

The 56th Panzer Corps had four divisions, but only one of them was an armored division.

Even in an armored division, most of them were Panzer II or III tanks, and there were only a few dozen Panzer IV tanks that could be called real main battle tanks.

“Damn it!”

Clang! A Panzer IV tank’s shell bounced off the armor of a KV tank.

There were sparks and flashes, but Rotmistrov cursed and then burst into laughter.

“You dirty fascist bastards! *Pierce them through! Fire!”

“Yes! Fire!”

The Panzer IV crew that hit the KV tank and rejoiced did not escape.

The 76.2mm tank gun penetrated the Panzer IV tank.

The ammunition exploded or something, and with a heavy bang, the turret flew off. Destroyed!

They could not stop them with the German army’s ‘gentle door knockers’, the PaK 36s.

Only the 15cm heavy guns that belonged to the divisional or corps artillery, or the famous 8.8cm anti-aircraft guns, could halt the mad bears that were the Soviet tanks.

But the German howitzers had no time to aim at the Soviet tanks.

The Soviet artillerymen relentlessly targeted the German medium howitzers with direct fire, and the German howitzers had to respond to them.

Artillery was the god of the battlefield, but as the old joke went, the gods were too busy with their own affairs to meddle in trivial matters.

The German soldiers had a chance to experience the Soviet weapon development firsthand.

And it was not a pleasant experience at all.

The 56th Motorized Division was like a flock of sheep attacked by three angry bears, panicking and being hunted one by one.

The Germans, who thought they could pass through easily, encountered an unexpected ambush from the Soviets and were hit hard.

“Hey, hey!”

“Hahaha! Eat this, you *s!”

The division commander bit off the pin of a grenade with his teeth, as if they were made of steel.

He had a strong arm, and his grenade flew towards the enemy infantry who were approaching.

A few of them fell to the ground.

Out of his four divisions, one was an armored division and the rest were infantry divisions.

They were motorized, but they were essentially infantry.

The infantrymen hid behind the shadows of destroyed tanks and fired their guns, not knowing what to do.

They prioritized people like Rotmistrov, who exposed his body outside.

Whether he received some divine protection, or rather the protection of the secretary-general since socialism did not acknowledge God, the bullets did not hit him.

He did not care even when his glasses broke and blood dripped from his cheek that was scratched by a fragment.

“Soviet Ura! Ura! Blow up their heads, you *s!”

“Uraaaa!!”

The Soviet tankers shouted ecstatically.

The Germans had never faced proper resistance until then, but they had to struggle against the Soviets who came close with their superior equipment as if they were possessed.