Chapter 12: (July 21, 1941)
Chapter 12 (July 21, 1941)
How did the Nazis win?
That was what I was most curious about.
How did they do it?
Did the British all take some drugs?
Or did Germany do something better?
In Operation Barbarossa, I didn’t feel that the German army’s actions had changed much.
They were just as recorded in history...
Suddenly, something came to my mind.
“Ah, why can’t I find it when I look for it? The Fasho army... organization...”
I hurriedly started to rummage through the pile of documents to find the papers.
Damn, why are there so many?
This era was so backward that there were no computers or phones, let alone electronic documents.
I had to make such a fuss to find something that I could have found with Ctrl+F... I felt ashamed.
The pile of documents that filled the desk collapsed and the office became a mess, but that was not important right now.
“Walter... Walter Model... M...”
There it was.
His name.
The Lion of Defense, the Firefighter of the Führer, the Apprentice of the Magician, the Greatest Commander of the Eastern Front. L1tLagoon witnessed the first publication of this chapter on Ñøv€l--B1n.
He had many nicknames that suited him.
Zhukov, Konev, Rokossovsky and other Soviet generals had all lost to him at least once and added another letter to his many nicknames.
He had defended the salient in front of Moscow for a year and literally ground up 2.3 million Soviet troops like a meat grinder.
He had also inflicted the biggest defeat of his life on Zhukov, the rising star general.
He fought well until he retreated with Operation Winter Storm and mocked the Soviet army until the end.
That was truly worthy of the name ‘Apprentice of the Magician’.
After Germany’s downfall began, he took command of the Central Army Group and defended against the Soviet offensive that started with Operation Bagration, delaying Germany’s collapse by several months.
After he became the commander-in-chief of the Western Front, he also gave a big fuck-you to the Allied forces who launched Operation Market Garden.
He was not well known in Korea, but Walter Model was truly the best defensive commander in Germany. Hitler’s ‘best field enemy’.
But at this point, he should have been the commander of the 3rd Panzer Division, but he was the commander of the 24th Panzer Corps.
His rank was also one rank higher than at this point in history.
Something had changed.
I decided to look up other German generals as well.
Rommel... Rommel was already leading the Afrika Korps and commanding all over North Africa.
What?
They already gave him a field marshal’s baton?
What happened in Africa?
Manstein was still commanding the 56th Panzer Corps as in real history, but his rank was also one rank higher like Model’s.
Ferdinand Schörner, Lothar Rendulic, Paul Hausser and other famous German commanders were mostly in key frontline corps positions, one rank higher than usual.
It was not a big departure from Operation Barbarossa in real history.
The old veterans like Rundstedt or Bock were still commanding army groups and the most important positions like panzer group commanders were unchanged from history.
That’s why I didn’t notice...
But since they had achieved great feats from early on and rose quickly in rank – like I did with Soviet generals – they would soon be promoted to top commanders!
The German elite officer corps who had been recognized for their abilities since World War I and stayed in the 100,000-strong Weimar Republic army and continued to rise afterwards, and the Soviet generals who started as soldiers or junior officers at the end of World War I and rose rapidly to their current positions through purges... Their abilities were bound to be different.
They had spread their wings now... And we were just chicks who had just hatched from our eggs.
“Uh... This is bad...”
It might not be so.
The ‘snowball’ was already rolling.
Hitler himself had enough understanding of total war to order targeting Ukraine and Caucasus, where Soviet industrial capacity and oil were concentrated, in 1942... But he could not overcome his own limits.
And history had already changed a little bit. But it was not like the world had turned upside down.
Even if Hitler ordered a total war posture and turned Germany into a killing machine that ran through the fire of war... The German people would not follow him obediently.
Would they obey the German government that suddenly ordered three shifts?
Or would they resent the regime?
Would they want to be consumed in a futile war when only news of terrible defeats came from the Eastern Front?
Of course not.
In real history, as Germany’s downfall approached, Germans began to rebel one by one against the iron fist rule.
The White Rose group, Claus von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt on Hitler, Confessing Church and Catholic resistance groups... Those who followed Hitler saw millions die, become disabled or never return and turned away from him.
The German regime had to crush them one by one, and revealed their own defeat by resisting.
The Soviet Union just had to fight and win. We won even in real history’s horror.
If Hitler was more sane than I thought and suggested negotiations, that wouldn’t be bad either.
The beauty of war is only in a quick end.
Nothing could be better than less bloodshed.
“Comrade Secretary-General? Comrade Beria, the head of the NKVD, wants to see you.”
“Ah, let him in.”
Beria bowed deeply to me with a disgusting smile.
Ugh, I hated Beria, maybe because of prejudice.
He was rumored to be a pedophile and a sadist, and that he raped his wife and married her.
The rape thing was officially refuted, but... I don’t know about the rest. Even without that, he was clearly cruel as he led the purges.
And there was something else that was important.
In the power struggle after Stalin’s death, Beria became a powerful figure as the head of the intelligence agency, and formed a troika with Malenkov and Khrushchev.
In this collective leadership, Beria advocated a conciliatory policy with the West and a thawing stance internally.
He ordered to suppress spies and liberals from the West, but when power came to his eyes, he changed his position?
He was driven by power and could do anything for power.
That attitude contributed to my alertness. Stalin seemed to trust him quite a bit, but...
“Comrade Secretary-General, I came to report that the facility you ordered has started construction.”
Beria, who didn’t know what I was thinking, talked to me with a fawning smile.
Anyway, Beria was competent.
Certainly more than Himmler, his counterpart.
He was responsible for the Soviet intelligence network and extracted useful information, contributing to the victory of the war.
And now... He had done what I ordered in no time.
“Good. You must strictly supervise the technicians and the prisoner laborers. We can’t let anyone know that we are building this facility.”
“Yes! I will do my best.”
“‘Copper’ is almost confirmed to be obtained by Molotov from the United States... So we need to produce and refine ‘silver’ as soon as possible.”
“I will also devote my body and soul to prepare for that!”
It’s not your body, but the prisoner laborers’ bodies.
Where are you selling drugs?
Anyway, I didn’t expect it to be ready so soon.
The work of moving factories to the Ural Mountains must have been a great history... But could they do it with just people and equipment?
Because there was no initial defeat, the Soviet Union did not have to send everything they had to the front line as they did in real history.
They had some room for other things.
Most of that room was invested in improving and increasing weapons.
The upgrade of T-34, the early introduction of IS heavy tanks, the development of decent fighters/attackers, etc.
The People’s Commissariat of Defense was in charge of those areas.
But if you wanted to keep it secret, the counterintelligence agency was always the best.
They should not know about ‘silver’.
