Also with East Prussia as the starting point, it was also at the same time that three armies under Army Group North launched an attack at the same time.

The Eighteenth Army was on the left flank, the Sixteenth Army was on the right flank, and the Fourth Panzer Army acted as the sharp knife to open the way in the middle.

At 3:15 p.m., more than 560 howitzers, rocket artillery, and even railway artillery opened fire on the front of the 41st Armored Corps under the Fourth Armored Army, opening the prelude to the war.

Heavy shelling continued until four o'clock sharp.

After the sky cleared, a layer of mist hung over the border line, and with the thunderous shelling as the background music, the tanks of the 1st Armored Division under the 41st Panzer Army drove out of the hidden pine forest, ghostly through the white mist, and rushed to the border line.

The steel body of Tank No. 4 smashed through barbed wire, knocked down boundary monuments engraved with the letters CCCP (Soviet abbreviation), and poured into Soviet-occupied Lithuania.

Two Soviet border guard posts had long since been destroyed in previous artillery preparations, leaving only ruins and mutilated corpses.

The surviving Soviet border guards hurriedly fled into the forest on the side of the road, or fled further into the rear.

In a word, the units of the 1st Panzer Division did not receive any decent resistance and easily stormed into the territory of Lithuania.

The topography of the Baltic States is similar to that of East Prussia, with flat terrain and occasional highlands, some areas covered with dense forests, sand dunes, numerous lakes, swamps. Only the coastal areas are fertile pastures.

The further you go northeast, the more desolate it becomes, and the denser the forest becomes. There are few decent roads, and most of them are narrow. And there are few repairs.

The border road is flanked by large expanses of farmland. The fighting will of the local Soviet border guards was also inferior to that of the Western Front. The troops of the 1st Panzer Division drove straight into the heart of Lithuania without hindrance.

A little more than two hours later, southwest of the Lithuanian border city of Taulagai, the 1st Panzer Division met real resistance.

It was an important stronghold of the Soviet border guards, and the Yura River crossed the city from south to north and the road from west to east, forming a cross shape.

By the time the 1st Panzer Regiment of the 1st Panzer Division arrived, the entire city had become a fortress with trenches and anti-tank gun positions outside the city. Almost every house in the city became a point of fire.

With the assistance of powerful artillery fire and Stuka dive bombers, the Krugel battle group of the 1st Panzer Division easily broke through the Soviet defenses on the outskirts of the city.

Leaving behind the crater-strewn positions and the corpses of their comrades, the Soviets fled into the city in a panic, intending to engage the Germans in a street fight.

However, contrary to the expectations of the Soviet troops in the city, the commander of the battle group, Colonel Krugel, did not let the tank regiment rush straight into the city, but withdrew from the battlefield, and instead of the tank troops entering the city, it was an infantry regiment reinforced by the 269th Infantry Division to the battle group.

Every street, every house, soldiers on both sides fought over and over again.

Just when the infantry on both sides was in full swing in the city of Tauragai. Colonel Krugel personally led a tank battalion and an infantry battalion, led by a guide, to the south of the city.

Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia between May and August 1940. Successively succumbed to the strong pressure of the Soviet Union, it was forced to join the Soviet Union, becoming the 14th, 15th and 16th union republics of the Soviet Union, adding 174,000 square kilometers of land and 5.86 million people to the Soviet Union.

Unwilling to submit to the tyranny of the Soviet Union, groups aspiring to national and national independence in the three Baltic countries fled one after another, and Germany, which had long been eyeing the Soviet Union, laughed at these groups hostile to the Soviet Union.

After various trainings, these groups were upgraded to armed groups, and they joined the Germans into the war and returned to their homeland.

Colonel Krugel was led by members of the Lithuanian Restoration Organization, who were natives of the area and knew the distribution of the roads in their homeland inside out.

Led by these guides, Colonel Krugel led his troops from the path south of the city to the Yura River, wading across the river and then detouring back to the east of Tauragai, before launching an assault on the city.

After more than three hours of fighting, the 1st Panzer Division took the first Lithuanian city liberated by the division and the first Lithuanian city liberated by Army Group North.

On the right flank of the 4th Panzer Army, on the front of the 30th Infantry Division of the 10th Army of the 16th Army, the battle also went extremely smoothly.

The 30th Infantry Division, as a unit of His Excellency the Polish Governor General who suffered in the Polish Campaign, and is also one of the subordinate units of the Polish Governor's Office, received special care from the Polish Governor Rosen, and the whole division not only gave priority to the latest Type 42 three brothers in light weapons, but also the first battalion of the division's artillery regiment was equipped with Wild Bee 150mm self-propelled howitzers.

And the most luxurious equipment of the division is the two special units assigned to the division.

The first unit was a company from the Blackwater Special Reconnaissance Group, and the other was an integrated divisional assault artillery battalion.

Before the outbreak of the war, the reconnaissance company led by Captain Hastings had already figured out the pattern of the activities of the Soviet troops on the opposite side.

The patrols of the Soviet border guards were not continuous twenty-four hours a day, but in between the patrols of the Soviet troops, and the first line of defense of the Soviet troops was behind the farther borders.

Without artillery preparations, the division's assault artillery battalion drove directly to the border line, smashed through the barbed wire fence that was in the way, and rushed into Lithuanian territory.

Rushing straight to the Soviet line, two high grounds, Captain Hastings and his men moved carefully.

The road passes between two heights, numbered 67 and 71, on which the Soviets have built fortified positions and watchtowers.

Soviet machine-gun bullets quickly flew from the high ground and clanged at the No. 3 assault gun.

Mortar shells also streaked across the sky and landed on the road one after another.

There was no need to command, and the two No. 3 assault howitzers ignored the interception of the Soviet army's bullets and bullets, and fired one after another, and the 105-mm high-explosive shells accurately smashed onto the watchtower on the high ground.

The three watchtowers burst into flames, and the observation room and the observation posts inside were shattered, and the splinters of wood and the flesh and blood of the Soviet soldiers fell like a meteor shower, smashing on the heads of the Soviet soldiers in the fortifications below.

Seeing the watchtower flattened, Captain Hastings turned his gaze to the two FI-282 helicopters cruising in the air.

Due to the lack of production, this luxurious equipment can only be seen in armored divisions and motorized infantry divisions.

Thanks to the patronage of His Excellency Governor Rosen, the 30 Infantry Division would have such an on-call air "watchtower".

A helicopter represents an artillery battalion, and the observation posts on the helicopter are condescending, and the distribution of Soviet fortifications on the high ground is clearly visible, and several radio waves fly out, and the whistling of artillery shells can be heard in the sky.

An artillery battalion took care of a high ground, and the flames and gray-white smoke of the shell explosion instantly flooded the Soviet positions.

Taking advantage of the fact that the Soviet positions were suppressed by artillery fire, the infantry of the 30 Infantry Division rushed to the heights, and the artillery fire did not stop until the soldiers at the front rushed to a distance of about a hundred meters from the heights.

The heavy artillery fire was replaced by mortars and assault gun No. 3, and any Soviet machine-gun position that dared to show its head would be met with accurate fire from German artillery.

Sappers cut the barbed wire, and the infantry rushed through the gaps and rushed up to the heights, driving the defenders of the heights into cornfields and bushes behind the heights.

Two highlands were taken, and the gates to the Lithuanian hinterland were opened.

The 30th Infantry Division's long marching procession and supply convoys marched along the road between the heights and marched northeastward.

Almost at the same time, on the left flank of the Fourth Panzer Army, in the theater of operations of the Eighteenth Army, the divisions under the Eighteenth Army also took advantage of the surprise attack and made a breakthrough on the entire front.

That night, in the operational command room of the Wolf's Lair, Hitler, Brauchitsch and others stood around the map table, looking at the telegrams from the front one after another.

Hitler pointed to the theater of Army Group North and said: "Today's battle is going quite smoothly, and the fastest armored division has penetrated more than 60 kilometers into the territory of the Soviet Union, faster than I imagined. Was it the Soviets who were too weak to fight back under our onslaught, or was there some conspiracy? ”

Marshal Keitel triumphantly said: "Judging by the performance of the Russians in Hungary and Romania, the gradual defeat is what they should be." ”

Hitler nodded with satisfaction, convinced by Marshal Keitel's words.

"Today is only the first day of the war, and in a few days, when Stalin finds out what we are in, he will definitely pee his pants, and I think it will be a joyous scene." (To be continued......)