July 16, 1938, Germany, suburb of Stuttgart.

Although it is summer, Germany has a temperate maritime climate.

Hans sat in the "Wolf" infantry fighting vehicle with his G41 semi-automatic rifle in his arms, wondering if he would be welcomed by the populace when he entered Stuttgart.

It had been 10 months since Hans returned to Germany from Spain, and after the terrible Battle of Barcelona, his infantry division was transferred back to the rear of the battle line for repairs due to excessive attrition, and after a period of repair, the entire division was withdrawn to Germany.

His 11th SS Infantry Division suffered the heaviest casualties of any German unit that fought in the Battle of Barcelona. The 11th Infantry Division of the German SS was originally a second-line unit, not fully staffed, they had a total of 8,310 men before they left for Spain, and after a series of battles, they still had 8,039 officers and soldiers before the outbreak of the Barcelona offensive and defensive battle, but after this battle they were left with less than 5,000 men, a reduction of more than 37%.

Such heavy casualties were not due to the weak combat effectiveness of the 11th SS Infantry Division, on the contrary, because the 11th Infantry Division fought extremely tenaciously and fought to the death.

During the battle of Barcelona, Hans's division was responsible for assisting two infantry divisions of the Spanish National Army in attacking the eastern and western parts of Barcelona.

At the very beginning of the battle, they were met with stubborn resistance from the Spanish Republican Army, which used a small number of tanks and artillery to place one firepower after another in the ruined city of Barcelona, and the coalition soldiers who lacked heavy firepower had to use their lives to pull out these firepower points one by one.

But that's not the worst of it.

Just when the allied soldiers had finally cleared the enemy after a bloody battle, the Republican Army invested three divisions of nearly 40,000 men to launch a counter-assault on the occupied eastern and western cities, in a vain attempt to reopen the road from Barcelona to Fort Nuuk, so as to save the 150,000 Republican soldiers of Army Group East and Army Group Ebro in the large area from Barcelona to Bars, and withdraw to the cities of Taraza and Sabadell to re-establish the defensive line.

If the IRA succeeds in achieving their objectives, the 150,000 IRA will significantly strengthen the Berga-Girona line, and the situation in the entire Catalan campaign will be again uncertain.

The Allied command reacted immediately to this situation, mobilizing two Italian expeditionary divisions and two divisions of the Nationalist Army to rush to Barcelona to support, while allowing the exhausted SS and the two dilapidated Nationalists to retreat, in case the position could not be held and the outer divisions were completely annihilated.

But where did the proud SS choose to retreat? They immediately united with the National People's Army and a small number of armored troops who had rushed to support them on the ground, and built a solid defensive line from the ruins.

The Republican Army, which has been on the defensive, has finally seen the defensive ability of the SS, and the firepower advantage brought by one MG34 per squad is huge, and the 7.92mm bullets flying everywhere and the 75mm shells fired from time to time have taught the Republican Army how to behave.

However, the MG34 with a high rate of fire gave the Germans a huge firepower advantage, but also brought a huge amount of ammunition consumption. The Germans, who had just finished a battle and had not had time to replenish their ammunition, soon fell into a dilemma of having no guns and no bullets.

The firepower balance on the battlefield gradually tilted to the side of the Republican Army as more and more MG34s were dumb fire.

In order to save precious ammunition, the coalition forces had to choose to get closer to the IRA before firing, trying to get every bullet into the enemy's body, and the disadvantages of this approach were obvious - when you were closer to the enemy, the enemy was also closer to you.

The Republican Army, which was still pressed by the powerful firepower of the coalition forces like a negative little lady one second, regained the feeling of a man in the next second, and they raised their heads from behind the ruins, holding the "Spanish Mauser" in their hands, and rushed towards the coalition forces under the cover of their own machine-gun fire.

The coalition forces used G41 semi-automatic rifles and M1916 bolt-action rifles to shoot accurate and lethal bullets at the "valian" Republican Army.

Although the rate of fire of the G41 was quite high, as a semi-automatic rifle, it was not as good as the machine gun, and soon, the Republican soldiers rushed into the coalition positions and fought hand-to-hand with the coalition soldiers, which made the small number of No. 3 and No. 4 tanks on the side dare not open fire at will.

After three days and two nights of fierce fighting, on the evening of the third day, Allied reinforcements finally reached the outskirts of Barcelona, while the SS Panzers, who were responsible for attacking the other side of the city, also eliminated the remnants of the city and supported the SS-Nationalist forces from the rear.

The IRA has been slow to deal with the stubborn SS-Nationalist coalition, let alone rebuild its positions to withstand a new offensive.

Therefore, the equally exhausted Republican counter-assault force, seeing that the general situation was gone, had to hold its tail and retreat to the Berga-Girona line in disgrace.

At this point, the offensive and defensive battle of Barcelona finally came to an end, and the 150,000 Republican troops besieged on the line from Barcelona to Bars surrendered a day after the battle of Barcelona after the failure of the breakout.

The first thing the Allied forces, which had experienced high-intensity operations, did in the rear of the withdrawal line was to fall asleep, and after some time of repair, they were withdrawn to Germany.

In order to commend them for their spirit of fighting to the death, Leon specially went to the station of the 11th Infantry Division to comfort them, and upgraded the 11th SS Infantry Division to a standard Panzergrenadier Division, and the three original infantry regiments were all equipped with "wolf" infantry fighting vehicles and became mechanized infantry regiments, and an armored regiment containing two Tank Battalion No. 4 and one Tank Battalion No. 3 and an anti-aircraft battalion equipped with 20 quadruple 20mm self-propelled anti-aircraft guns.

And what excited the soldiers the most was not that they had become Panzergrenadier Divisions, but that the Führer gave them a special designation - the 11th Panzergrenadier Division of the German SS "Nordic Nordic", SS number SS11.

This title means that they have since become a "word division", the elite of the elite of the German SS.

The company commander's voice came over the on-board radio, pulling Hans back from his memories: "Hey, guys! We're about to enter Stuttgart, are we ready for the cheers of the crowd? ”

"Yes, company commander, I think we're ready." The squad leader smiled into the radio and said, "Not only are we ready to cheer on the people of Stuttgart, but we are also ready to go to Strasbourg and kick the French in the ass!" ”

"Haha!" The company commander laughed, "Yes, our return to the Rhine DMZ this time is not like last time, this time we hope that the French will be bolder, so that we can have a reason to teach this group of Gallic chickens a lesson!" ”