Chapter 33:

Chapter 33:

Chapter 33

“What? Is that true?”

“Yes, Comrade Secretary. We suspect that there was a personnel change within the German army.”

“Get out! All of you, get out! Damn it...”N0v3lRealm was the platform where this chapter was initially revealed on N0v3l.B1n.

While I was receiving the regular report, I had to hear a shocking news.

What do you mean, Manstein, Guderian, and Model have already become army group commanders?

How is that possible?

The conference attendees were startled by my scream-like cry and ran out of the meeting room.

They must have been afraid of facing my anger.

Actually, I was angry. Not at our generals, but... at this old body of mine.

Stalin’s body was old and worn out, as if it had witnessed the years he had lived, and he was suffering from various medical problems.

What do you mean?

I just peed a little. Shit. How embarrassing...

“Ahem... Let me hear your plans.”

About 30 minutes later, the Secretary who seemed to have calmed down after his outburst asked, and the important figures of Stavka had to rack their brains.

Even though it was a clear advantage that these unverified people had become commanders, the Secretary reacted as if a great disaster had struck.

The generals, including Zhukov, who had never seriously thought about it, were speechless.

“Comrade Secretary, we will crush them with our overwhelming forces. And also some diplomatic work...”

“Yes. Since you mentioned it, let me report that the young king of Romania has agreed to cooperate with us.”

“Is that true?”

Zhukov was so flustered that he passed the baton to Molotov.

Molotov quickly told me a good news that would improve my mood.

Ah, this is better.

“We informed them that we would relocate the Ukrainian population in the area to Ukraine and guarantee Odessa to the Soviet Union on the premise that they would give up Bessarabia and Bukovina.

Upon this, King Michael I of Romania pledged to cooperate fully with us. It also helped that we promised to repatriate all the Romanian prisoners we had captured. The negotiation terms are as follows...”

“Good, good. You did very well! Giving up those small pieces of land won’t cause any problems for the Soviet state.”

Of course, it was Stalin’s order that we kept nagging the neighboring countries to give us those small pieces of land...

Anyway, this move would dramatically reverse the situation on the southern front.

Among Germany’s allies, Romania had provided the most troops in terms of numbers.

If we only look at combat power, Finland might be considered the strongest with its winter war experience and burning fighting spirit, but numbers were not easy to ignore.

What if about a third of Germany’s southern army group betrayed and turned their guns?

Even though they had poor combat skills, what if more than 400,000 troops left the allied camp and joined the Soviet side?

It would be a nightmare for the Germans.

Molotov roughly guessed what I was thinking and explained the situation.

“The young king of Romania, Michael I, who just turned twenty, was tired of being a puppet of General Ion Antonescu, who seized power through a coup.

He had been through several times of being treated like a puppet before he even turned twenty. He was ready to do anything to get rid of Antonescu, a fascist dictator and Germany’s lackey.”

“Even if it means joining hands with us? Hahaha!”

In actual history, Michael secretly negotiated with the Soviet Union when the Soviet army pushed the German army to the border.

He drove out the military dictators and brilliantly stabbed them in the back, but he ended up being stabbed in the back himself.

The Romanian socialist forces controlled by the Soviet Union did not intend to leave the king alone anyway.

He had to step down from the throne again and go into exile.

The boy king could not return to his homeland until he was in his sixties.

“Haha, Comrade Secretary is right. The military factions who were dissatisfied with Antonescu, especially the anti-Hungarian-Romanian nationalist faction also agreed to ally with our supported socialists and royalists for ‘the greater good’.”

“Hmm, very good.”

Manstein and Model were like chess pieces on a board.

They were not simple pawns, but powerful pieces that could change the game, but they were still on the board anyway.

And the players of this board were me and Hitler.

No matter how much a piece ran wild, it could not escape from the board. But the players could play various tricks outside the board.

For generals who could not intervene in diplomacy and politics... The situation must be very distant now.

The reinforcements they thought were allies suddenly turned against them for political reasons.

And even if they tried to encourage their soldiers to fight, they faced a shortage of oil.

Similarly, our generals who could not intervene in politics looked at me with admiration.

They must have thought it was magic to see the tanks I pulled out, the additional troops I brought from somewhere, and the supplies I kept enough.

“We have the factors to succeed in this winter operation... General Zhukov, use them well. You can inflict a fatal blow on the German bastards.”

“Yes! Thank you, Comrade Secretary!”

As this hopeful conversation went on, I noticed something.

The air force commander Novikov kept looking at me nervously.

“General Novikov, what are you hiding!”

I had to put my hand on my chest to hide my pounding heart.

Among those who recovered quickly from the shock, my crony and acquaintance of my sons, Zhdanov raised his hand slightly.

“Speak up, Zhdanov.”

“Yes, Comrade General Secretary. That... For the sake of military discipline, but such a harsh punishment is...”

I slammed the table and everyone flinched.

Harsh punishment? Harsh?

For someone who drank and molested his comrades and shot at them during wartime?

“Shut up Zhdanov! He deserves death right away for such a harsh punishment? According to military law, he should be executed but considering it’s wartime I changed his punishment so that he could kill at least one more enemy for the sake of the Soviet Union!

There is no need for his punishment to change during wartime just because he is my son. Novikov, 30 years it is. 30 years. Don’t reduce his sentence by even one year and give him 30 years of punishment. And make sure he is sent to the front line.”

Novikov nodded quickly without answering.

Everyone was trembling under my pressure and fear.

Especially Zhdanov who had vomited at my words clenched his teeth and shivered.

Hey, there’s no need for you to tremble?

Punishment should be fair.

“Is there anyone here who has a child on the front line? Raise your hand.”

Quite a few raised their hands.

I pointed out one by one those who didn’t raise their hands and asked them why.

They all had different reasons.

Some were like Zhukov who had only four daughters.

Some had no children at all and didn’t raise their hands.

Or some were not of conscription age.

One of them said that his only son had died on the front line and there was no one in his family who was in the war.

I walked over to him and hugged him tightly.

“Here are the most exemplary communists. We have dedicated our lives to building this great country! My life and my children too! Even if Vasily Dzhugashvili dies fighting the fascists, it’s nothing but a necessary sacrifice. Just like the sacrifices of other people.

No, rather beneficial. It’s better for him to die and inspire the people’s resolve than to live and cause trouble. He’s better off dead. Do you understand, Novikov?”

As I spoke, an irrational urge to cancel it surged inside me, but I suppressed it hard.

Novikov swallowed his saliva and answered that he understood.

I looked around and everyone seemed flustered.

Yes, you are human too and you love your children, so you would try to keep them from going to the front line.

But are only the children of the powerful human, and those who have to die on the front line, the children of the workers, are they not human?

Is it okay to do such things in the Soviet Union, the country of the proletariat?

“As I have already said, all communists must fight ahead of non-communists and retreat later than non-communists. There is no mercy for cowards and defeatists!”

Everyone rose from their seats with a vigorous yes answer.

As I walked out of the meeting room, everyone applauded me.

How many of them would follow my instructions?

I should ask Beria.

Come to think of it, Beria had a son too, how old was he...?

Beria soon came to my office with a pile of documents.

As I went through the documents that recorded in detail the personal information and whereabouts of the children of senior officials and generals, I realized that there was nothing about Beria himself.

“How old is your son?”

It was the first time I saw confusion on his face and I couldn’t help but laugh.

This man also cherished his son.

“Yes, he is seventeen years old. He is not old enough to go to war yet and he is receiving officer training at a military academy.”

Oh he’s still young... Well that’s fine.

We don’t have a shortage of human resources yet and we don’t need to scrape and deploy promising talents who attend military academies.

Only in extreme situations like the Siege of Leningrad.

Anyway, Beria’s expression was not very good.

He must have thought I was a person who would send all the children to war and let them die.

Hey, am I you?

“Hmm... They’re all fine.”

There was less nepotism among the Soviet elites than I thought.

Was it because not much time had passed since the revolution?

Or because I set an example.

As time went on, bureaucrats became corrupt communist nobles who regarded the state as their own property under the name of Nomenklatura.

I had to nip that possibility in the bud as soon as possible.

To prevent the emergence of Chinese princelings.

The best thing might be to kill them all in war.

To kill them and eradicate their roots.