"Your Excellency, this is the latest order from the Senate. www.biquge.info"A soldier walked up to Admiral Moder and handed over a telegram.

Moder took the telegram, only to see a short sentence written on it - "The whole army is not allowed to retreat, do your best to organize a counteroffensive!" ”

This was the content of Hitler's order to Army Group North Ukraine, which expressed the Führer's dissatisfaction with the current situation and the incomparable anger in his heart in just one sentence.

He pinned all his hopes on Moder, and only the Northern Ukrainian Army Group under his command was temporarily not routed by the Soviets. More than a million soldiers under his command still stuck to the long-built defensive line, using dense firepower to block the repeated attacks of the Soviet army.

Modell was a well-known defensive master in the German military circles, and was still able to hold most of the defense line when the enemy had the advantage of troops, firepower, and equipment, and dealt a lot of damage to the attacking Soviet army.

He was confronted by the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Soviet Red Army, commanded by General Mikhail Potapov. This commander, personally promoted by General Manturov, was also a well-known defense master in the Soviet military circles, and his attainments in defensive tactics were no less than Moder's.

But Potapov's task this time is not to defend, but to attack. Even though he had more than a million troops at his disposal and had the advantage in troops and equipment, he still failed to achieve the expected results.

The Germans resisted more stubbornly than expected, and they amassed more forces in Western Ukraine than expected. If this fight continues, I am afraid that hundreds of thousands of lives will have to be filled in to break through Moder's defense line and recover the western Ukrainian region from the front.

Fortunately, Potapov's First Ukrainian Front was not the main attacking force, and their repeated attacks were only to attract Moder's forces and induce Moder to fill the main forces in Western Ukraine.

In this way, the forces in the rear of Moder will be empty, and the southern defense line will become weak, but in order to block the offensive of the 1st Ukrainian Front, he will have to do this.

"Your Excellency, General!" A communications soldier walked in angrily, "A large number of Russian and Romanian troops have appeared in the area from Chernovsky to Khmelnitsky!" ”

As a result, Moder's worst fears finally came to pass - the Second Ukrainian Front under the command of Marinovsky launched an offensive against the German southern Ukrainian line in southern Ukraine and northern Romania.

Before Moder could react, one urgent telegram after another arrived on his desk, followed by one more lost telegram.

Eventually, the Ukrainian 2nd Front under the command of Malinovsky broke through Moder's defenses, and the Hungarian 1st Army and the reconstituted 1st Tank Group, which was responsible for defending that section, were routed by the Soviets.

The Soviet-Russian forces, which broke through the defensive line, under the command of General Malinovsky, led by tank and motorized units, advanced at the fastest speed towards Lviv, the capital of western Ukraine.

When Marinovsky's troops advanced to the Koroja area, Moder learned of an even worse situation - the 1st Belorussian Front under Rokossovsky's command concentrated three army groups with a total of 360,000 troops moving south from the Brest area.

"It's over!" He took out a red pencil and drew the route of the march of Malinovsky and Rokossovsky on the operational map, and it was only then that he saw an important fact - the real main force of the Soviet army against himself was Rokossovsky and Marinovsky's troops, not his million-strong army commanded by Potapov.

The troops of Marinowski and Rokossovsky, like two sharp knives, plunged deep into Moder's rear. From the north and southeast, the two forces outflanked the main forces of Moder's Army Group in Northern Ukraine, and if they joined forces around Lviv, the entire German army group of more than a million people would be completely surrounded in the area of Western Ukraine.

"Send a message to Berlin! The Russians have broken through the defense line around Chernivtsi and are advancing towards Lviv together with the First Belorussian Front. After Morder finished speaking, the whole person was like a deflated balloon, spread out on the chair of the command without any expression.

At this moment, what he wanted to hear most was not the good news of the success of the front-line defense, but the order of the Supreme Command to allow a retreat.

However, the reality was cruel, and Hitler, having received Moder's telegram, did not hesitate to refuse the request to retreat, he ordered Moder to defend with all his might, awarded him the rank of marshal, and hoped that he would fight to the end or commit suicide (no marshal in German history became a prisoner of war).

At the same time, Hitler also issued an order to Army Group Center to launch an offensive against Rokossovsky's First Belorussian Front, to prevent his troops from moving south, and to delay or even prevent him from encircling the German forces in western Ukraine.

However, Army Group Center at that time had already been routed by the Soviets in Operation Bagration, and 2 armies were encircled and annihilated, losing hundreds of thousands of troops. And the Soviet army they faced, although they also suffered greater losses, still had much more troops left than the German army, and even if the three army groups were withdrawn, they still had an advantage in strength.

Even so, Army Group Center effectively complied with the Führer's orders and launched an attack on the 1st Belorussian Front. But the offensive did not stop Rokossovsky's southward advance, but instead cost the Germans more casualties.

By the time Marinovsky and Rokossovsky met in Lviv, Moder's four armies (the 17th Army, the 1st Tank Group, the 6th Army, and the 1st Hungarian Army) with a total of 800,000 troops were all besieged in Western Ukraine.

At this moment, Moder no longer had any choice. It's not that he didn't think about breaking through, in fact, he was already thinking about retreating to the west as early as the time of Rokossovsky's operation.

But in this way, if he moves his troops to the west to deal with Rokossovsky and Marinovsky, the entire eastern defense line will be more than a small number of troops, and then Potapov's Ukrainian First Front will easily break through the weak defense, leaving Moder in danger of being flanked from all sides, and he will lose no matter how he fights.

Just as he was about to gather his forces and burn them with the Soviets, bad news suddenly came: "Generals, Paulus (commander of the 6th Army), Stupnag (commander of the 17th Army, member of anti-Nazi groups) and Nadé (commander of the Hungarian First Army) have all led their troops to surrender to the Soviets!" ”

Moder smiled bitterly, pulled out his pistol, and committed suicide on the spot in the command headquarters!