In the silence of the Kremlin, Stalin was holding a pipe and listening to Beria's report on the recent special investigation with a blank face. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

There was an invisible fear under Beria's calm voice, because he himself couldn't help but start to be scared in the face of the truth, and he knew that these truths did not represent the whole story, and the reported data should have been shrunk layer by layer - for example, the data on the land lost in the Spring Awakening and the Battle of the Castle was no longer counted. But no matter how much it shrinks, it can't resist the terrible numbers.

"The grassroots party organizations in various places show that since May, more than 1 million people have died unnaturally due to hunger, malnutrition or eating non-food, mainly the elderly, infants and young children, and the infirm, and the existing grassroots food stocks are about 7-10 days, and the army's food stocks are about 25-30 days, and there are still about 3 months before the harvest season, maybe, maybe, probably ......," he said tremblingly, "There are nearly 8 million to 10 million unnatural deaths." ”

"Is food from the Far East, China and India counted? Is the U.S. aid food included? ”

"The US aid grain has been counted, and the rest is the core war preparation materials personally controlled by Comrade Voroshilov, which has not been counted, but the total amount is not much, a total of less than 800,000 tons." Beria wiped his cold sweat, "This is all the army's emergency combat food, and we dare not touch this food without your instructions." ”

"Release half out." Stalin said with a blank face, "I will talk to Comrade Voroshilov, and in addition let Comrade Budyonny go to Mongolia, he bragged with me last time, but he did not complete all the tasks." ”

Beria knew what it meant to go to Mongolia - to carry out another complete sack of the Mongolian steppes that had already been looted once, and as for whether the more than 1 million people in Mongolia could survive, it was no longer in Stalin's consideration, and he nodded subconsciously.

"The Ministry of the Interior has also conducted a survey of the social and political climate, and since May, there has been a considerable increase in the number of treason and defectors, and despite the strict control and ideological education carried out by the grassroots organizations, many wavering elements have been found ......

"It's not the faith that shakes, it's their stomachs that shake......" Stalin stopped Beria's explanations and notes, "just tell me the numbers." ”

In fact, it is also very difficult for the Ministry of Internal Affairs to obtain these figures, and the grassroots are not stupid, and the number of people who suddenly come to investigate the traitorous defection to the enemy is obviously ill-motivated, and it may be necessary to arrest the leaders of the grassroots who are not well controlled. But Beria was not a dry eater, and he quickly came up with a trick to deal with it, so that the organizational system would carry out a major change of the secretaries of the grassroots party organizations, and the new officials would be responsible for supervising the statistics. And clearly tell them that if he doesn't tell the truth and doesn't find out the problem, then if there is a problem found in the future spot check, the original person in charge is not responsible, and the person who needs to be supervised is fully responsible; Conversely, if there is a problem in the inspection, the inspector is not responsible.

Theoretically speaking, the Ministry of the Interior has no right to interfere in the personnel transfer and organizational operation of grass-roots party organizations, but the Ministry of the Interior is too loud to come and the aftermath of the purge is still there. As soon as this method came out, the people below were crazy-no one wanted to give the other people a black cauldron, and besides, there were still problems in their own jurisdiction.

The figures reported further are relatively much more reliable, and of course it may be inevitable that the collective series of frauds will be carried out, but this is a minority after all, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs has not found it until now. It's not that he really can't find out, but Beria doesn't let the mess come from below, and he vaguely feels that Comrade Stalin's thinking and practices are changing, and now it's better to be stable and not to make trouble.

"Since May, more than 400,000 people have fled to enemy-occupied areas, and another 200,000 to 300,000 people have been intercepted by grassroots organizations......," Beria glanced at Stalin secretly, "Most of the fugitive population is not in good composition, and their behavior in the local area has always been very average, with middle-aged women fleeing with infants and young children the most, followed by men in their 60s, and the number of people fleeing directly from the army is not large." ”

Stalin nodded, and his intuition told him that this figure was more credible, that the food supply of the troops was much better than that of the civilian population, and that the control was much stronger, and that if a deserter was found, he would be shot.

"What if I send them another 2 million?"

"This ......" Beria was stunned, he did not understand what Stalin was thinking.

"There are a lot of people in the rear who have lost their labor, and at the same time we don't have enough food to feed them, and from humanitarian reasons and in order to reduce our burden, push them over to the side of the enemy, what do you think Vlasov thinks?" Without waiting for Beria to answer, Stalin said again, as if to himself, "Didn't he flaunt that he wanted to save the Russian people from the dire situation?" Let him raise these 2 million people for us. ”

As he spoke, his tone became stern: "If the enemy refuses to raise him, their rumors will be destroyed, and the people will recognize him for what he really is; If the enemy really accepts these 2 million people, it will inevitably greatly increase their economic, financial, and food burdens, and can also contain the necessary troops and time for social settlement. It would have been better if the SS had sent them to concentration camps - this would only have inspired the people to fight the fascists to the end. ”

Beria lowered his head and whispered: "Will this damage the image of the party?" And will it have an impact on the minds of the people? ”

"The impact is inevitable and controllable, can it affect the image more than a film of starving people?" Stalin made up his mind that "the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the grass-roots party organizations will make arrangements according to the population at their disposal, temporarily controlling the proportion at 5 percent, and it must be guaranteed that the population is completely incapacitated for work or suffering from various injuries and diseases." ”

Beria quickly agreed.

Finally, there was a secret investigation into the peace talks, mainly against high-ranking generals and important officials, and was conducted entirely by the Ministry of the Interior itself. Before the report, Beria was not sure of Stalin's intentions and wrote three reports in one go: the first was approved by the majority; the second is that the majority is against; The third is the conclusion and analysis of his investigation. He originally wanted to find out Stalin's tone from the previous two investigative reports, so that he could submit the corresponding reports in a targeted manner and make the leader's words look convincing, but at present, he still has no idea what Stalin's cards are.

After hesitating for a long time, he finally took out the third report from his briefcase.

"More than 75 percent of the members of the Politburo agree with your decision, and think that it is better to make contact with the enemy and talk about the conditions, even if it can actually delay time and survive this winter; The rest of the comrades thought that it was possible to follow the example of Comrade Lenin and make peace with the Germans quickly, or even to temporarily cede the enemy-occupied areas to the Germans, and as to whether they would occupy or support the puppet regime, we would not interfere, but we would never take the initiative to recognize the puppet regime; Among the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party who are not members of the Politburo, most of them believe that the current sacrifice is too great, but they can still grit their teeth and persevere. ”

Stalin nodded, this situation was in line with his understanding, the news of the two peace between Bulgaria and Germany was passed at the Politburo meeting, and the level of the Central Committee was unknown, so they would feel at a loss.

"It is noteworthy that on more than one occasion we have heard Comrade Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev talk about peace talks, in which he advocated the complete relocation of the Party, the state and the army to the east of the Ural Mountains and the conclusion of an armistice agreement with the enemy without war and peace, and ...... Beria paused, "and heard him peddling this statement to several other members of the Politburo and commanders of the Front...... For now......"

Beria stopped suddenly.

"Why don't you say it?"

"The following circumstances are the result of speculation by the comrades of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and there is no direct evidence." Beria whispered that he had to be careful about how big or small it was to directly monitor a Politburo member without authorization.

"It's okay, go on."

"It seems that not many other Politburo comrades agree with this point of view, and the commanders of several fronts in the Stalingrad direction are more disgusted by it,...... It seems that Comrade Zhukov, Comrade Vasilevsky and Comrade Kuznetsov once discussed this line of thought when they talked about the situation. ”

"What do they say?" Stalin felt his breathing a little short: the main event came.

In the Napoleonic era, it was enough to lure the enemy to the front line of Moscow, but because of the progress of the times and technological forces, the mobility of the army has increased, and now we need to lure the enemy more and more, and retreating to the Ural Mountains is a good strategy.

At the same time, it can also be seen from the practice of Chinese warfare that since the Japanese army invaded Manchuria, China's political center gradually shifted inland, retreating from Nanjing to Chongqing, 1,500 kilometers away, and finally under a long period of resistance, forcing the enemy to continue to stretch the battle line, so that it could not be maintained and forced to shrink.

If the German army were to advance and approach the Urals, it would mean that their supply lines would reach the Azores in the west, South Africa in the south, Norway in the north, and the Ural Mountains in the east, nearly 5,000 kilometers in either direction (more than 10,000 kilometers to the south).

In addition, Germany's enemies were not only us, but also Britain and the United States. In particular, the United States, although it has been fighting a lot of trouble in recent times, its population and industrial strength determine that there is no problem in arming more than 10 million troops, and under the current situation that Germany is unable to threaten the US mainland, the United States will not easily make peace with Germany, and its potential and strength have not yet been fully developed, and once Britain and the United States regain their superiority at sea, Germany will fall into a bitter ......" (to be continued. )