Chapter 230: Return to Moscow
Andrei is now the head of the theater of operations, he has tried his best to improve the treatment of prisoners, but now the mortality rate of prisoners is still terrible, more and more German prisoners have closed their eyes forever due to the bad environment, Andrei has improved the housing of the prisoner of war camp, no longer 30 people live in one room, and ensure that food is distributed every day, and at the same time, the sick, especially infectious diseases, are isolated from others, but the overall bad situation and the physical constitution of the prisoners are not good, and people continue to die, Looking at a series of death reports, now Andrei feels numb, in fact, Andrei is already more humane than the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in history, after all, Andrei has been trying to find a way, but the reality is like this, Andrei does not have three heads and six arms, let alone conjure up materials out of thin air, with the advent of spring, some of the captives will stay as labor for the reconstruction of the city, and the rest should go to labor camps in Siberia and the Far East, no wonder mercy is expensive, only the rations, clothes, and Drugs are a big expense, not only a matter of money, but also a shortage of materials and the trouble of transportation capacity. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 In contrast, ruthlessness and cruelty cost no money (or less money), which is one of the main reasons why there is more cruelty and less mercy in the history of warfare.
Remembering what happened to Soviet prisoners of war at the hands of the Germans, Andrei also comforted himself that he was already a good man, and that it was time to arrange the transportation, which was no less bloody: "Some women stood on both sides of the road, according to the ancient custom, stuffing blankets, coarse salt, black bread and pickled fish into the prisoners of war on the road, while some children and men threw stones at the team and cursed loudly. "For the prisoners of war, the duration of this death journey varies, and the luckiest ones simply stay in the Dubovka prisoner of war camp north of Stalingrad; Many more will have to trek for months to reach their destinations in Siberia and the Caucasus, as well as Central Asia. During the long march, the gunfire of the guards could be heard constantly, announcing that yet another overwhelmed and overly weakened companion had fallen. During the night, the prisoners of war had to huddle together in the size of 10 to 20 to share a military blanket, and the outermost members had to be vigilant to ensure that the sleepers in the inner circle rotated with them after two or three hours, otherwise the still cold weather in early spring would turn the short slumber of the unclothed into death. "Every morning, everyone wakes up to the rough urging of the guards and lines up in time. The logic of the Russians is very simple, those who can stand up will be sent on the road, and those who cannot stand up will be rewarded with a bullet. In a prisoner-of-war transfer in March, 1,200 of the 1,800 prisoners of war were killed. In addition to this, a large number of diseases are circulating among them, including typhus, jaundice, diphtheria, scurvy, edema, and tuberculosis. With the onset of spring, another disease - malaria - began to ravage among the prisoners of war.
The number of transferred soldiers and young officers was quite staggering: 20,000 were sent to Bekabad in eastern Tashkent, 2,500 to Volysk, northeast of Saratov, 5,000 along the Volga to Astrakhan, 2,000 to Usman, north of Voronezh, and the rest to Basyanovsky, north of Sverdlovsk, and to Olanch and Karaganda, near Gorky.
Before they set out, the captives were registered, and many wrote "agricultural labourers" in the column of their desired occupation, hoping that they would be sent to the farm. The numb smokers collect their camel manure early and dry it as tobacco leaves for the road
. After experiencing the horrors of Bektovika, believing that their bad luck was coming to an end, they were relocated to another place as a symbol of rebirth. But it wasn't long before they realized that their idea was completely wrong. Each train car for transporting prisoners had to be stuffed with 100 people, and the only hole in the whole carriage was in the middle of the carriage, which had the dual function of breathing and excreting for the prisoners of war. For the POWs, the cold was still a threat, but now an even greater threat came from thirst, because the Russians gave them dry bread and salted fish to eat, but little water to drink. In such a desperate situation, the POWs had to live by licking the ice that had congealed on the iron sheets of the carriages. Therefore, every time they stop to let the wind out, many people can't stand their thirst, grab the dirty snow on the ground and send it to their mouths. Many died quietly, long dead by the time they were found by their companions. The bodies were piled up at the door of the carriage, waiting for the porters to come and pull them away. “Skolkokaputt?” - "How many died?" "Whenever they stopped to let the wind out, the Soviet fighters would shout in stiff German.
Some migration processes can even take up to 25 days. The worst of all was the migration through Saratov, then through Uzbekistan and finally to Bektovika. Of the 100 people in one carriage, only 8 survived.
In order to prevent a possible insurrection, the prisoner of war camp administrators divided the prisoners of war into a variety of ranks according to their nationality and "political component": Romanians, Italians were treated significantly better than the Germans, their rations and clothing were more abundant, and they could work in the kitchens, and the Italian Eighth Army Lieutenant Carlo, who was captured in the Don River area? In his memoir "The Return of Siberia", Silva describes that they could even perform opera in the camp and receive bread, sugar, fresh vegetables and meat for Christmas. On the German POW side, at least 50 to 100 people died a day from infectious diseases or overwork, and even a pound of margarine stolen from the kitchen could cause an overstarved POW to die of indigestion.
So much so that in the future, the Italians and Hungarians still remembered Andrei's preferential treatment at that time, at least after seeing the fate of the Germans, they knew that they were still prisoners of war, and the Germans directly tasted the fate of retribution.
For all this, of course, Andrei knows but what can he do, do you have to say anything to repay grievances with virtue, so that in the future, Andrei became a nightmare for the Germans, especially when Andrei followed the troops to Germany to kill their land and their blood practice, the red butcher, the horror Andre, this one by one nickname is so that Andrei does not have to promote himself, of course, the high mortality rate of prisoners of war during this period of time did not affect Andrei's career at all, in the blink of an eye, in April of 43, Andrei received an order from Moscow, not from Beria but from the General Staff, and Andrei was also strange, he had been doing his old job in the internal affairs army for this period, how could the General Staff suddenly find himself!
And what Andrei didn't know was mainly because of the failure of the Kharkov counterattack, and history, Manstein can be said to have exerted his talents, he lured the enemy deep and kept the Soviet army away from the rear airfield and supply base, and the Soviet army regained lost ground all the way, but did not expect the disaster to come!
On February 19, 43, the German "Tiger" heavy tank began to turn its heavy armored turret, and its fast-moving tracks left deep traces on the snow-covered ground, and it would be a fierce battle where the powerful 88-mm tank gun was pointed. On this day, the "German" Panzer Infantry Division and the "Skull" Panzer Infantry Division of the SS Panzer Corps of the German Army launched a surprise and fierce blow to the weak flank of the Sixth Army of the Soviet Southwestern Front. The dive bombers of the Luftwaffe's Fourth Air Force bombarded Soviet positions that lacked air support, while German panzer clusters launched ferocious assaults under the guidance of Tiger tanks.
In the tank battle between the two sides, the T-34 tank, which had once dominated the Soviet-German battlefield, suffered heavy losses. The 76-mm tank guns of this Soviet tank were simply unable to penetrate the 102-mm frontal armor of the Tiger tank, and even the frontal armor of the German tank IV, which was used for enhanced protection, was almost helpless at a distance of 400 meters. However, the 88-mm tank gun of the German "Tiger" tank and the long-bodied 75-mm gun of the No. IV tank could easily destroy the T-34 at a distance of 1,000 and 500 meters. As for the standard 45-mm anti-tank guns of the Soviet army, there is no way to take the German tanks.
The absolute superiority of the tanks and the excellent use of tactics allowed the Germans to achieve a one-sided victory, and their powerful armored forces soon opened a gap of more than 30 kilometers in the positions of the Soviet Sixth Army, along which the German SS "German" division routed the Soviet Fourth Guards Army and advanced more than 100 kilometers south at high speed. On 22 February, the 48th and 57th Panzer Corps, two other armies belonging to the German Fourth Panzer Army, also launched an attack. Soon they and the SS Panzer Corps were at Pavlograd and cut off the lines of communication of the Soviet Sixth Army. Immediately afterwards, the German 40th Panzer Army delivered another fatal blow to the Popov cluster of the Red Army, which had run out of fuel.
On March 12, SS units stormed Kharkov and engaged in fierce street fighting with Soviet troops. Two days later, the Soviet tank Third Army was surrounded, and the Soviet high command could only order the Second Air Army to use night aircraft to resupply the army.
At this point, it was a foregone conclusion that Germany would take Kharkov. On 15 March, the 17th and 19th Infantry Brigades and the 179th Tank Brigade of the Soviet Army, defending the city, gave up useless resistance and broke through to the east. On 16 March, the SS Panzer Corps re-entered Kharkov.
After the fall of Kharkov, the Red Army's Third Army broke through in the early hours of March 17. After losing a large number of troops and discarding a lot of equipment, this exhausted Soviet unit was finally scattered to the left bank of the Severodonets River and was incorporated into the Southwestern Front on the spot. The next day, the German motorized rifle division "Veliky German" captured Belgorod. For Manstein, the biggest goal at present is to take advantage of the retreat of the Soviet army, while the thaw and the season has not yet begun, to seize as much territory as possible from the Soviet army. From then until March 22, the Soviet Voronezh Front was pursued by the Germans and retreated.
However, on 23 March, due to the lack of German troops and the beginning of the melting of ice and snow, the roads were ***** and the three new Soviet armies (the 1st Tank Army, the 21st and 64th Armies) had arrived. The Germans had to stop the pursuit. And the Soviet Voronezh Front, which retreated across the Severodonets River, established positions along the banks of the river in the Oboyan area south of Kursk.
This battle made Moscow's originally hot head sober up instantly, and because of the appearance of the Tiger tank, Stalin asked Ustinov to get new tanks out as soon as possible to equip the troops, as well as anti-tank guns and rocket launchers to equip the troops as soon as possible.
And the Soviet General Staff also had to adjust its thinking, Deputy Chief of Staff Antonov remembered Andrei, he felt that Andrei was a rare talent, and the original analysis of the war situation was also very correct, so he decided to let Andrei also come to Moscow, and Stalin and Zhukov also gladly accepted this suggestion, so the General Staff issued an order, but Beria is very annoyed now, but who let everything serve the war now, and the internal affairs troops must change the vest of the Red Army on the battlefield, Now the internal affairs army also has to obey the command, but Beria feels that digging the foot of the wall is unbearable, and only the internal affairs department has always dug people, but now the internal affairs department bleeds itself, he is not so stupid, you must know that the internal affairs army is one of the foundations of his power, he relies on Stalin's trust the most, but he also needs the strength of the internal affairs army, otherwise his power will be insecure!
Soon, Andrei took Yushchenko and his special guard company back to Moscow by plane, and then immediately drove to the General Staff, but as soon as they arrived at the door, Andrei and his party were stopped, and the soldiers on duty asked them to take out their documents and say the task of this, and at the same time to verify, but Andrei still obediently complied, after all, this is the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the General Staff of the Red Army is arrogant, and I have to restrain myself in this place, otherwise there will be no good fruit to eat!
After registering the information, the soldier on duty said to Andrei: "Comrade General, please wait a moment, we need to check with the officer on duty." "Okay." Andrei nodded and continued to stand outside the cordon.