PS: 2-in-1 6,000-word chapter.

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"Misfortune and blessing are relied upon, and blessing and misfortune are lurking."

These two sentences are the remarks of an old grandfather who was called "Lao Tzu" by later generations.

More than 2,000 years later, from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Second World War, these two famous sayings were confirmed in a small country called Hungary in Eastern Europe.

Hungary formed the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Austria in 1867 and maintained this state form until World War I.

After the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed.

In March 1919, Hungary was transformed into a Hungarian Soviet Republic, which was overthrown by an army led by Admiral Horthy in August of the same year, and the Kingdom of Hungary was restored as a constitutional monarchy.

In 1920, after dealing with the defeated Germany with the Treaty of Versailles, the Entente group, as the victor of the First World War, did not forget Hungary in Eastern Europe.

On June 4, at the Grand Trianon Palace in Versailles, France, the Entente signed the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary.

As a result of the treaty, Hungary lost 72 percent of its territory and 64 percent of its population.

In this devastating blow, Hungary lost its only seaport, the port of Rijeka.

Since then, the Kingdom of Hungary has lost its coastline and has become a purely landlocked country.

Admiral Horthy also lost his fleet and became an admiral without a navy.

For Hungary, the catastrophe of losing territory hides a little blessing.

After the cession of large swaths of the northern and northeastern territories of the Kingdom of Hungary to Czechoslovakia, ground communication between Hungary's northeastern border and the Soviet Union was cut off by Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union was no longer threatened by the ferocious polar bear.

Eighteen years have passed, and under the command of a man with a "mustache", the former defeated country Germany has re-emerged, and the situation on the European continent has changed dramatically.

Under the crisscrossing of the "mustache" man, and under the appeasement policy of Britain and France, Germany recovered the lost Rhineland without firing a single shot. Annexation of Austria, annexation of the Sudetenland.

The German expansion in central Europe aroused great concern in Hungary, and with the success of German expansion after success, the Kingdom of Hungary witnessed the weakness and impotence of Britain and France. In the end, he couldn't resist the impulse in his heart and began to move closer to Germany.

Follow the Germans, have meat to eat, and have good luck.

In November 1938, under joint pressure from Germany and Italy. Czechoslovakia ceded the southern part of Slovakia and Transcarpathian Lucinia to Hungary.

This land accounted for a quarter of Slovakia's land, and Admiral Horti was surprised to lose his way without contributing anything to Germany, and immediately decided to speed up his move towards Germany.

In February 1939, the Kingdom of Hungary signed the International Agreement on Industry, and two months later withdrew from the League of Nations, moving closer to Germany.

One detail that Admiral Horthy did not pay attention to when he was fully approaching Germany was after getting the land sent by Slovakia. The Kingdom of Hungary regained its status as a border with the Soviet Union.

By June 1940, the situation on the European continent had undergone earth-shattering changes.

Under the attack of Germany, in just 50 days, France, which once claimed to have the "first army in the world", fell to its knees, lost a large area of territory, including the capital Paris, and only retained about half of France in the south, and lost the right to speak on the European continent.

After the great victory in the French campaign, Germany decided to give a "red envelope" to the "little brother".

On August 30 of the same year, Germany entered into a second arbitration in Vienna to force Romania to cede Northern Transylvania to Hungary.

North Transylvania has 43,000 square kilometers of land. More than 2.5 million people.

After receiving this super gift package, Admiral Horti was so happy that he almost fainted.

In the French campaign, Hungary did not send a single soldier, a tank, or an airplane, but it was able to receive such a super gift.

This great gift from the sky proves once again. Follow the Germans and have great luck.

However, Admiral Horty did not notice the scourge hidden in good luck.

The arrival of North Transylvania not only brought Hungary a 43,000 square kilometer of land, but also an extended border with the Soviet Union.

A year later. Hungary once again felt the benefits of following the Germans.

At the end of 1941, after the well-known "Your Excellency Brother-in-law" assumed the post of Governor-General of Poland, he invited the Hungarian military leaders headed by Admiral Horthy to visit Poland.

After visiting the SS-controlled tank factory in Warsaw, Poland, the Hungarian military, interested in the square, masculine tank four, offered to buy the Type Four G tank.

Your Excellency brother-in-law waved his hand boldly, and it was just one word, sell.

Not only did he sell the No. 4 tank, but the brother-in-law also packaged and sold the production license and production line of the No. 4 tank to Hungary, and after the Hungarian secret service secretly inquired about it, the price was very conscientious.

After selling the production line and production license, His Excellency the brother-in-law also sent engineers to Hungary to assist Hungary in laying the production line of the No. 4 tank as soon as possible, and to assist in the training of various skilled workers.

The German teaching unit followed closely behind, helping the Hungarian Army to train tankmen.

Thanks to the initiative of His Excellency the brother-in-law, Germany and Hungary have established a comrade-in-law and brotherly friendship.

As a senior junior brother of Germany, as a common border with Germany and the Soviet Union, Admiral Horthy had long been aware of the clouds of war between Germany and the Soviet Union, and actively sought to join Germany's war against the Soviet Union.

However, as the war approached, there were many discordant voices among the top echelons of the Hungarian political and military circles.

Members of the political circles, led by Prime Minister Bardosi, refused to participate in the war against the Soviet Union, and Bardoch refused to declare war on the Soviet Union, no matter how much the Chief of the General Staff of the Hungarian Army, General Wirther, persuaded.

On the evening of May 19, the Royal Palace of Buda in the south of Budapest.

Admiral Horty strode into the palace, undisguised from the anger on his face.

Germany's war against the Soviet Union was about to break out, and Baldoch's weak guy still insisted on opposing the declaration of war on the Soviet Union.

He even called on cabinet members to vote against it.

Admiral Horthy and the Chief of the General Staff, Admiral Wirther, joined forces to persuade him to no avail, so he had to return to his residence in a huff.

Today is the 19th, and the war is less than a week away, and we cannot drag on like this any longer, and we must solve this problem as soon as possible.

Following Germany in fighting against the Soviet Union, victory will inevitably be rewarded handsomely. Baldohi's soft bastard must not be allowed to stir up the situation again.

Tomorrow, wait until tomorrow, Baldohi must be kicked out of the prime minister's position and replaced by his old friend Kaloi. The time to prepare for the war was very tight, and there was no time to argue with Baldohi again.

Admiral Horthy made up his mind, ate a hearty supper, and then collapsed on the bed.

After watching "Napoleon's Biography" for half an hour, Admiral Horthy felt the weight of his eyelids growing heavier.

Slip the book under your pillow. Admiral Horty fell asleep.

At three o'clock in the morning on 20 May, Admiral Horti was dreaming of expanding his territory in the East, on the northeastern border of Hungary.

In the hazy night, there was a faint buzzing sound in the east, like a swarm of flies flapping their wings.

The buzzing sound is like a megaphone, amplifying the noise infinitely.

The deafening noise rushed out of Soviet airspace, crossed the Soviet-Hungarian border, crossed the Carpathian Mountains, and descended over the city of Mukachevo, a transport hub in northeastern Hungary.

Follow the guidance of mysterious radio waves from the western town of Mukachevo, Chop. A fleet of sixty-five LI-2 transport aircraft and TB-3 bombers successfully arrived at the airdrop site.

In the misty light, the group looked like a flock of black crows.

The ill-intentioned crow flock swerved east over Choop, and by the time they turned away, the gloomy sky was already densely populated with umbrella flowers.

Umbrella flowers fluttered in the wind and swayed down to the fields and fields east of Capp Town.

Except for a few unlucky people who hung on trees or happened to fall into the ditch and were slightly injured, the third battalion and reconnaissance company of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Airborne Army of the USSR, more than 600 people, successfully parachuted into Hungary.

There was no resistance, and a company of Soviet paratroopers rushed into the town of Choop, led by the Hungarian Bolshevik Party underground. Occupy the town government building.

They also led Soviet paratroopers to the east of the town and violently smashed open the door of Mayor Najib's house.

The Soviet officer at the head was a typical violent element, kicking the neck of the black-backed wolfdog barking in the yard and killing the mayor's only resistant. The group then stormed the house and arrested Mayor Najib, who was still wearing pajamas.

The main force of the three battalions and two paratrooper companies outside the town set up improvised fortifications near the airborne site.

The scouts of the reconnaissance company turned on the radio and informed the rear about the successful airborne military situation.

After receiving a telegram, the main force of the 1st Parachute Brigade, which was waiting for battle, immediately boarded and took off at the military airfield on the southern outskirts of the western Ukrainian town of Buchachi. Pounce on Chop Town.

About fifty kilometers west of Buchachi, in an inconspicuous Orthodox church east of Ivano, Colonel-General Kirponos, commander of the Southwestern Front of the Soviet Red Army, stood at the map table, his broad lips twitching a few times.

Hearing the news that the advance team had successfully landed in the air, this general with a square face, a knife-like nose, and a rock-like ** look on his face, the expression on his face was still extremely stiff.

With the pencil in his hand constantly tapping on the map, Admiral Kirponos said to the chief of staff and staff officers around him: "Neither the success of the advance team nor the success of the 1st Parachute Army is a real success. The Twelfth Army was able to break through the Carpathian Pass and enter the Great Hungarian Plain to be a real success. ”

Admiral Kirponos's mood at this time, like his expression, was passionless.

In order to start a war on the Western Front, the General Staff of the Soviet Red Army reorganized the Soviet Red Army in Ukraine, forming a total of three front armies.

From north to south are:

The Central Front confronted the German forces south of the German Polish Governorate, which consisted of the Fifth, Sixth, and Twenty-sixth Armies.

The Southwestern Front, commanded by Kirponos, commanded by the Twelfth, Twenty-first and Thirty-seventh Armies, was tasked with attacking Hungary.

The Southern Front was reorganized from the Odessa Special Military District and was tasked with attacking Romania with the ninth, eighteenth and forty-fourth armies.

From the first day he received the task of attacking Hungary, Admiral Kirponov hated the mission, believing that the plan had been drawn up by a group of amateur military strategists who did not understand military affairs and could only shout the slogan "spirit overrides everything."

In the northeastern part of Hungary's border with the Soviet Union is the majestic North Carpathian Mountains.

The highest point of the mountain range is nearly 2,500 meters, across the Soviet-Hungarian border. The mountains are steep and wooded. It is impossible to get around, only mountain troops can pass.

Armored units and ordinary infantry units could only pass through the Carpathians through twelve mountain passes to the north.

However, those mountain roads can be held by only a few troops, in general. The terrain here is not suitable for the use of tank units.

Colonel-General Kirponov glanced at Vashukin, the political commissar of the front army beside him, who was constantly looking at his watch.

It was this short-tempered and brainless guy who followed the people of the General Staff and shouted, "A stubborn will can overcome all difficulties."

Hopefully, the tenacious will will help our tank troops to get through those mountain roads, especially the big guys of the KV1 and KV2.

Fast forward to 10 o'clock, and Admiral Kirponos received another good news. The main force of the 1st Parachute Brigade has successfully parachuted in, and has now joined up with the advance team, and is expanding the area of the parachute site.

Admiral Kirponos nodded coldly, endured the disgust in his heart, and walked over to Vashukin to watch him.

When the hands of the two watches pointed to 4:15 at the same time, an electric switch was opened on the Soviet-Hungarian border, and the electric light reflected the Soviet-Hungarian border.

More than 1,600 artillery pieces were fired, 152 mm howitzers, 122 mm howitzers, and 120 mm heavy mortars, raining shells on Hungarian soil.

Countless shells swirled and flew through the sky. With a hail of winds, all the positions, fortifications, and outposts identified by the scouts were covered, even the minefields hidden underground.

In the shocking shelling, the orderly wooden stakes fell to the ground in all directions, or were uprooted by the shock wave and thrown into the sky, and the barbed wire pulled on them was broken, twisted, and turned into a twisted ball.

The ground in the minefield turned to the surface of the moon in an instant, and fountains of freshly sprouted grass and dirt rose into the air like a fountain of deadly shrapnel.

The 20-minute shelling scene was spectacular. Hit on the head by tons of steel, most of the Hungarian border guard soldiers were sent to hell while still asleep.

The shelling had not stopped, and on the Soviet-Hungarian border of more than 200 kilometers, the 12th and 37th armies sent 12 infantry divisions at once. Each infantry division was supported by a separate tank battalion.

The 97th and 99th Infantry Divisions, each of which were responsible for the main attack, rushed to Hungary under the guidance of a KV1 tank battalion.

On the front of the two main attack divisions, sixty KV-1s creaked and rushed to the front.

Thousands of Red Army soldiers followed behind with stabbed Mosin Nagant rifles and **sand submachine guns, shouting and rushing at the enemy.

The loud sound of "Ula" instantly overpowered the sound of gunfire, and the group of tanks painted in grass green was painted. The soldiers in grass-green uniforms turned into a green whirlwind, strangulating everything they encountered along the way to pieces.

The remnants of the barbed wire were mercilessly broken by the KV-1 tank tracks, and the crumbling stakes on both sides were also dragged down.

The KV-1 brazenly withstood the machine-gun bullets of the Hungarian army, and used 76.2 mm guns to blow up the remaining pillboxes and firing points.

The tide of infantry followed and rushed to the enemy's trenches, ** sand submachine gun bullets beat the recalcitrant enemy into a sieve, and some Hungarian border guards even howled and were impaled by the spiked guns.

The Soviet Red Army's overwhelming offensive broke the unsuspecting enemy lines and easily won the first victory of the war.

The reaction of Admiral Kirponos to the news of victory from the front was in stark contrast to that of Vashukin, the commissar next to him.

He said coldly: "Let the 44th, 58th and 60th mountain divisions keep up with them, and once the forward troops advance to the mountain pass, it will be up to them to perform." ”

Pointing to his watch, Vashukin said: "It took less than an hour for us to break through the border with the Hungarians on all fronts. The Hungarians were unsuspected, and we would surely be able to rush through the mountains in one fell swoop, all the way to Debrecen and then into Romania, where we would join the Southern Front. ”

Kirponos didn't want to talk to Vashukindo, but chimed in: "Victory is definitely ours." ”

While Admiral Kirponos was worried about the impending outbreak of mountain warfare, the fighting in southern Ukraine and on the Soviet-Romanian border was also going unusually well.

Unlike the treacherous Carpathians, the commander of the Southern Front, Tyulenev, faced only one Prut River.

Different terrain determines different playing styles.

At 4:15, accompanied by a piercing and strange whistling, on the position of the Ninth Army of the Southern Front, the captain of the NKVD (NKVD) troops of the USSR, Villean. Schunezel (played by book friend MACSAD-Internet Police). Be the first to jump out of a pile of bushes on the east bank of the Prut River.

"Follow me." Schunezel shouted and rushed to the railway bridge opposite, and behind him, more than fifty figures leaped out of the grass and followed him towards the railway bridge.

Above their heads, two thousand Katyusha rockets dragged a dazzling tail flame across the border. Captain Schunezel's gaze swept over, and the other side of the Prut River instantly turned into a sea of fire.

Ignoring the rocket show, Schunezel stepped onto the railroad and sprinted across the bridge.

More than fifty fighters lined up in two rows, making the same movements.

The railway bridge is almost three hundred meters long. Rushing through it is Romania.

Thirteen kilometres further along the tracks will take you to Iasi, an important town in northeastern Romania.

The ancient city of Iasi has always been the cultural and artistic center of Romania and even Eastern Europe, and its long cultural tradition has earned it the reputation of "the cradle of Romanian culture".

However, the Soviet General Staff valued Iasi's value as a railway junction more.

In order to seize this railway bridge of inestimable value and the ancient city of Iasi, with the approval of Stalin, the General Staff of the Red Army deliberately sent more sophisticated NKVD units to carry out this difficult task.

As Captain Schunezel charged, he kept an eye on the movement on the other side of the bridge.

Rushing to the third of the bridge, he saw a flash of fire on the left side of the opposite bridgehead, a screeching sound of metal crashing on the guardrail on the left-hand side, and a faint flash of fire.

Captain Schunezel slumped on the bridge deck, holding his SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle. Through the gaps in the guardrails of the bridges, fire was fired at enemy fire points on the opposite bank.

The commandos behind him also set up light machine guns and fired at the opposite bank.

Half a magazine of five bullets was fired in a row, and only when he saw a fireball burst from the fire point on the opposite bank, Schunezel stopped firing and turned his head to glance at the riverbank behind him.

They're coming, and they're doing it fast.

Seeing more than a dozen BT-7 tanks appearing at the bridgehead of the riverbank, Schunezel exclaimed.

After bursting the fire on the opposite bank, the BT-7 tank then turned around and drove onto the bridge, driving past Schunezel with a whirlwind, rushing to the other end of the bridge.

One, two, three

Seeing the convoy of tanks passing by, Schunezel was in high spirits. Jumped up and followed the tank brigade to launch another sprint, rushing across the bridge in one go.

Passing a collapsed Romanian outpost, Schunezel took refuge to the left of the bridge, behind a sandbag bunker for the Romanian army. Pull out the flare gun on your waist.

Immediately, two white flares flew into the air.

Half an hour later, Schunezel saw countless T-34 tanks carrying infantry across the bridge, followed by KV-2 tanks with boxy heads.

My mission was successfully completed, and now I will watch the performance of these comrades of the Ninth Mechanized Army.

Downstream of the railway bridge, about five kilometers away.

Fighters of the 159 Infantry Division of the XII Army. Paddled rubber boats and assault boats, rowing towards the opposite shore with their heads held high.

They did not need to worry about bullets from the opposite bank, the Romanians who had just appeared on the other side had been torn to pieces by the heavy machine guns and mortars behind them, and those who survived did not know where to flee.

Rushing across the riverbank, the assault battalion quickly dug trenches, built positions, and prepared to defend against the counteroffensive of the Romanian army.

Behind them, on the other side of the river, sappers were busy building pontoon bridges.

The battles at the railway bridge and pontoon bridge near Iasi are only a microcosm of the early morning battle.

After more than an hour of fighting, the battle for the bridge on the Prut River ended almost entirely in the victory of the Soviet army, not only the road and railway bridges, but the Soviet Red Army also built seven pontoon bridges on the river.

Countless tanks of the KV, T, and BT series flocked to Romania with infantry.

Far away in Moscow, receiving good news from the headquarters of the South-Western Front and the Southern Front, Stalin silently took out his pipe and issued a war speech to the members of the General Staff.

"The war has begun, and I am not ashamed of it, even if I have not submitted a war document. It is better for us to go to war without declaring it than to let the enemy storm our land, kill our people, rape our women, and rob our rich land. As long as we can win this war, no one will blame us, because the victor is not to blame. ”

When Stalin delivered his war speech, the Southwestern Front was fighting his real enemy, the Carpathians.

The Southern Front also encountered their real enemy, the Romanian field troops, and the Eleventh Army of the German Army, a powerful ally standing behind the Romanian army.

On May 20, 1942, the Balkan powder keg was detonated again. (To be continued.) )