Comrade waiter brought dinner to Lin Jun, and together with the four staff officers, he ate casually in his office. Before he could finish his www.biquge.info, the phone rang, and Gusev picked it up.

"Marshal, the call from the Sevastopol airport, the contingent sent by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Balkans is ready."

Lin Jun took the phone: "I am Plunyakov, please tell the comrades of the task force that the current situation in Yugoslavia is very complicated, and I remind you once again that you are only going to Yugoslavia as a liaison observer to cooperate with the work of the leading organs of the Yugoslav Communist Party." Comrades who go to Montenegro must do a good job in ideological guidance, but they must not cause irreconcilable contradictions and conflicts with the comrades in Montenegro, and they must learn to make appropriate compromises. The conditions will be tough, but the victory will be ours! When the final victory comes, Comrade Stalin and I will personally celebrate the comrades. Finally, I wish all the best to the comrades. ”

Balkans, Yugoslavia, the powder keg of Europe. Serbia, at the turn of the spring-summer of '41, was an indescribably chaotic period. The catastrophe that befell Yugoslavia was so sudden and so comprehensive that it demoralized the Serbian people - but the summer was not over, and a high level of optimism once again stirred up the Serbian people to revolt, and drove the Germans almost out of Serbia!

What has brought back hope and fighting spirit to the Serbian people? Because of the outbreak of the Soviet-German war!

The history of Yugoslavia is not a simple succession, and it would take at least a few days for an expert on the Balkans to explain to others how the region has changed over the centuries. It is precisely for the reasons of history and national feelings that the majority of Serbs have a kind of Slavic brotherhood towards the USSR, and even praise for that powerful country with a Slavic predominantly body!

When the Germans attacked Yugoslavia, it was impossible for the Soviet Union to cross Romania to help the Balkan country, and watching the demise of Yugoslavia did not make the Serbs feel abandoned by the Slavic brothers - when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the Serbs were angry and passionate, and they wanted to fight for themselves and their Slavic brothers in the Soviet Union!

Such an environment gave the Communist Party of Yugoslavia the opportunity to flourish in guerrilla warfare under the leadership of the party.

Since the imposition of the dictatorship in Yugoslavia in 29, almost all the main leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party have been in prisons in the Kingdom of Serbia, including Josip Broz. After their release, many of the leaders fled to the Soviet Union, the common homeland of the world's working class.

But no one would have thought that the "Purge" not only caused heavy losses to the Soviet Union, but also that the leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia were almost all executed before Lin Jun and Alexander could completely control the terrifying man-eating beast of the "Purge"!

A few years ago, when Lin Jun learned that Filippović, the founder of the Yugoslav Communist Party, and Golkic, the general secretary of the Yugoslav Communist Party, had already been shot, but that Josep Broz was still alive, he didn't know whether to laugh or be depressed.

Josep Broz reorganized the central organs of the Yugoslav Communist Party and moved the headquarters of the Yugoslav Communist Party to Yugoslavia, instead of staying in the Liukes Hotel - no way, once bitten by a snake, ten years afraid of grass ropes: in the eyes of the leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party, who returned to Yugoslavia under the pseudonym "******", it was safer to engage in underground struggle in Yugoslavia, where "monarchy and fascism ****" were carried out, than to stay in Moscow.

Josep Broz, the leader of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, but before the German invasion of Yugoslavia, he was only a small party leader, and like his personal reputation, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was not well-known among the left-wing parties of the world, and even in Yugoslavia it was a small party with little influence. But Lin Jun had high hopes for him and his party, and his name would soon become famous all over the world, because he now had a pseudonym, and the comrades of the Yugoslav Communist Party were also calling him by this pseudonym - Tito!

As Josep Broz-Tito and the Yugoslav Communist Party headquarters were facing a complicated situation, Lin Jun had the Ministry of the Interior send liaison officers to Serbia to consolidate direct ties with the Yugoslav Communist Party, which was also the first step in his European strategy.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union provided Tito with an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen the Yugoslav Communist Party: Serbian young students and intellectuals had always been dissatisfied with the corruption and oppression of the old Yugoslav kingdom and had always been politically inclined to ****. Although only a few of them were Marxists, the strong pan-Slavic sentiment in Serbian peasant families gave Tito the opportunity because young people with such family backgrounds made up the majority in Serbia, and they all had a good opinion of the communist Soviet Union, because they were all Slavs.

"Our dear socialist motherland, our hope and beacon" - before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Tito believed that the first task of the Yugoslav Communists was to keep Yugoslavia out of the imperialist war at all costs.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Comintern issued a sternly worded directive to the headquarters of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia - "You must absolutely do everything possible to support and help the Soviet people in their struggle." You want to launch a campaign against the German and Italian fascist bandits under the call of the national united front, and indeed the international united front. ”

Under the call of this directive, the policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and Tito's personal goals changed radically: the demands of the Comintern, though arbitrary and severe, also gave the Communist Party of Yugoslavia an opportunity to transform itself from a small party lacking a mass base and seemingly with little prospect into the vanguard of the national resistance!

After the German invasion, the Yugoslav state ceased to exist and was dismembered into ten different regions under the jurisdiction of eight different occupation authorities.

Germany took over two-thirds of northern Slovenia and most of Serbia, including Belgrade; Italy received the remaining third of Slovenia and a small part of Bosnia, all of Montenegro, the coastal areas of Dalmatia, part of Kosovo and the Albanian-populated Sanjak region.

In the center was the independent Kingdom of Croatia, which became a client state of Nazi Germany. Bulgaria received most of Macedonia, and the rest was given to Greater Albania, a vassal state of Italy. Hungary received Bačka, Barannia, and the Banat region east of the Danube was governed by local ethnic Germans.

The different occupation authorities, their different occupation regimes and conflicting interests, which dismembered Yugoslavia, but also complicated German control over Yugoslavia's economic wealth and strategic communications, a situation that was criticized by some Germans for facilitating the resistance - as in the long history of Yugoslavia: chaos!

The partisans were able to exploit these differences, and the fragmentation of the country contributed to the revival of the Yugoslav national feelings, which were one of the sources of strength for the growth of the resistance.

On 27 June, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia established the People's Liberation Guerrilla Command and sent 12 members of the Central Committee to different parts of the country to guide and build guerrilla units.

The Germans failed to prepare for an armed Serbian uprising in the summer of 1941, and by September the Germans had lost control of about two-thirds of the Serbian countryside, while one-third of Yugoslavia was burning with the flames of the uprising.

On 24 September, the guerrillas occupied the northwestern Serbian city of Užice, and Tito's General Staff, at a meeting held on 26 September, decided to establish military commands in each of the districts of Yugoslavia, to establish military and political structures in all areas where the enemy was cleared, and to expand the scale of the military struggle. The Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party headed by Tito and the Supreme Command of the Guerrillas also moved to the region, and Užice became the center of the anti-fascist movement throughout Yugoslavia, affectionately known as the "Republic of Užice." The "republic" is not small, stretching from the Sava River in the north, to Sanjak in the south, to the Drina River in the west, and to the Morava River in the east, with an area of 15,000 square kilometers, a population of more than one million, and its own arsenal.

Hitler could not tolerate this "chaos" to develop endlessly, and from the beginning of September, he transferred an additional battalion of the 342nd Infantry Division and the 100th Panzer Brigade from France; The 125th Infantry Regiment and two battalions of the 164th Division were redeployed from Greece; Later, the 113th Infantry Division was transferred from the Eastern Front into Serbia. The main targets of the attack were from the outskirts of Belgrade to the liberated areas of Užice and Kruševac, where the general headquarters of the partisans was located.

Now that the situation of the "Republic of Užitse" is not good and dangerous, Hitler sent a large number of troops to attack the liberated areas of Užice. And earlier this month, the partisans' allies in the uprising were led by Draza Mikhailovich, an officer of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a Serb loyal to the Yugoslav royal family and, like his army, carrying the big black flag "For the King and the Fatherland - Freedom or Death". First with the German and Italian armies, and then with the Croats, ****** and partisans. Chetnik (derived from the Serbian word Ceta, i.e. army. Treacherous and also began to attack guerrilla strongholds in Užice and elsewhere.

Lin Jun has always been concerned about the problems of Yugoslavia, but the war situation in Minsk and other parts of the Soviet Union has exhausted him, for the distant Yugoslavia, he can put his energy is really limited, and there is not much he can do, and the distance also makes the communication with the other side not very smooth, and the situation from Tito's radio is only an approximation.

But it's time to send a liaison officer, and not to let the British get ahead of the curve (the British also sent liaison officers to Yugoslavia, even earlier than the Soviets, and airdropped them in October, but that was to that Mikhailovich). It was evident that the British would be saddened to find that the Royalist armies had none, or very few battles against the Germans, and that they would have to accept this reality. The Western world knew very little about Tito and his partisans - some British intelligence officers thought that "Tito" was a pseudonym for a young woman. -- The liaison officers are all comrades with some experience in guerrilla and counter-guerrilla warfare, but just like Lin Jun said, "they are just liaisons," and Lin Jun did not want to send a few pointers to provoke Tito, the commander of Yugoslavia.

The liaison officer also carried with him a letter from Lin Jun, which contained the guerrilla tactics of the Chinese Red Army in those years, because now the Germans are using the experience of German military advisers in dealing with the Red Army in China against the Yugoslav partisans!

The German General Command would have decided not only to crush the partisans, but also to cut off the guerrillas from the rear, so that the Yugoslav uprising could be suppressed. Therefore, the German High Command ordered special retaliatory measures against the people of the liberated territories, including mass shooting of citizens in the cities!

On 19 October, this order was carried out in the most horrific way in the industrial city of Kragujevac, in retaliation for an attack by partisans in the vicinity two days earlier: ten German soldiers were killed and twenty wounded.

The Germans drove most of the city's men between the ages of 16 and 60 to the barracks, and the city's secondary school students were taken straight from their classrooms. From the evening of the next day, shooting began in the order of groups of every 100 people. The massacre continued until the next day, when even the German firing squads were disgusted and some could not even support it, and at least 5,000 people were slaughtered, while others were held hostage.

When the partisans killed one German soldier, the Germans killed 200 civilians; Wound a German soldier and kill 50! -- This was the Nazi policy and the best way to deal with the partisans in Yugoslavia!

、、、、、、

At the northern airfield of Sevastopol, two transport planes converted from long-range bombers are being prepared, each with three liaison officers on board, and a drop of medicine and high-power radios. One of them will go to Užice in Serbia, while the other will continue west to Montenegro.

For thousands of years, Montenegrins have been famous in Europe for their bravery and good war, because Montenegro was once a necessary place for the great powers to cross the East and West, and under the influence of perennial wars, the life of Montenegro residents is relatively difficult, and war will befall Montenegrins at any time.

The diet of Montenegrins is mainly coarse grains, and due to the relatively developed animal husbandry, meat and dairy products are also consumed. The relatively natural diet and the life of marching and fighting in the mountains for generations have made Montenegrins indomitable and strong: in 1883, a French scientist once wrote, "The Montenegrin character is as strong as the rocks there, and each of them is tall and very strong." ”

In the 19th century, Montenegrin men with a height of more than 1.9 meters accounted for a large part! According to some statistics, the average height of Montenegrin in the whole of Europe is among the highest: 1.95 meters male and 1.85 meter female are common, and slightly smaller foreigners always have a sense of depression in Montenegro, because they are surrounded by young men and girls who need to look up!

Since this summer, it can be said that in the whole of Yugoslavia, the uprising in Montenegro was the loudest, and by now the Italians have been driven out of all cities, except Podgorica and Tserinje!

However, the character and habits of Montenegrins make it difficult for them to deal calmly with certain issues, especially under the influence of some over-the-top leaders: the communist guerrillas in Montenegro have taken an extremist line in politics, which is somewhat dangerous - unlike Tito's policy of "not imposing communism on others", they will confuse Montenegrin tradition with barbaric tribal feuds with guerrilla warfare and revolution - They even sent a message to Moscow: soon Montenegro will be completely liberated, and the liberated Montenegro will be an integral part of the Soviet Union!

The brave, fierce, and overzealous Montenegrin guerrillas need someone to show them the way and unite as many people as possible -- this is one of the important prerequisites of guerrilla warfare, and not to carry out a "'41 year purge" in Montenegro, where all the officers of the army of the old Kingdom of Yugoslavia, who had intended to join the guerrillas to fight the fascists, could be shot and forced to flee to the army of Draza Mikhailovich.

"Montenegro is an integral part of the Soviet Union" -- Lin Junke would never think so, that would provoke Tito, and in Yugoslavia, Tito, the commander-in-chief, would have to drag down dozens of German divisions.

After more than three hours of night flight, the plane crossed the Black Sea, one ventured over southern Romania into Serbia, and the other south over Bulgaria into Montenegro.

In a large flat area west of the city of Užice, several huge bonfires were lit, and the partisans were staring intently at the night sky. Now the nascent republic was facing a crisis, and at this critical moment, the Soviet Union finally sent a liaison, and Josep Broz Tito was waiting in front of the radio.

The frequency of communication had been determined, and after an anxious wait, a call was heard from the radio from the pilots, who had arrived in the skies near Užice and had seen the indications on the ground.

There were long-distance night planes in the air, more than a dozen parachutes appeared in the air one after another, and the people on the ground cheered!

After a while, three liaison officers met with Comrade Tito, "We brought a high-power radio station and some medicines, as well as a personal letter from Marshal Andrei Nikolayevich Plunyakov, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Supreme Command of the USSR. ”

The lieutenant colonel of the Red Army, who led the team, reported to Tito.

Before Tito left Moscow in 36, he had not seen Lin Jun with his own eyes, but he was no stranger to Lin Jun at all, including everything about Lin Jun in Spain - Tito had helped at the volunteer recruitment station in Moscow back then, and many comrades around him now had participated in the international column, some comrades had also participated in the defense of Madrid, and everyone who had seen Lin Jun in the university town had one: he admired the marshal of the Soviet Union, especially his personal charm.

Personal charisma, Tito knew that this time the Soviet Union sent him liaison officers and material support, and the personal charisma of the Soviet marshal played a decisive role - although there was a telegraph contact in the early stage, the Soviet Union did not seem to want to give Yugoslavia any substantial assistance. Because Stalin believed that Mikhailovich would be the leader of the Yugoslav national resistance, and Tito's troops could be wiped out militarily.

In Moscow, there were also fears that premature support for the communist revolution in Yugoslavia might cause contradictions within Yugoslavia and among the allies and become a political burden.

Lin Jun's strong personal influence ruled out Moscow's fears and "negative support" for the Yugoslav partisans, and through the introduction of the liaison, Tito was able to form the concept that it was Lin Jun's personal influence that led Moscow to explicitly support him and the guerrillas he commanded.

It turned out that Tito's repeated requests were only exchanged for verbal generous support, but when Lin Jun was distracted and learned about the situation in Yugoslavia, the support finally became a reality in front of him: this was too good for Lin Jun, the Soviet marshal, to influence among the members of the Yugoslav partisans, and this was also the effect that Lin Jun foresaw - an increase in personal charm and influence.

It's not for the sake of appetite that he will send airdrops - giving support to people in distress is the most rewarding move, but Lin Jun is not such a philistine, and his mind has not paid much attention to the Balkans in the past few months, nor has he had the heart to learn more about Moscow's attitude and measures towards the Yugoslav Communists.

It would have been impossible for the Soviet Union to send planes massively to support the Yugoslav partisans, but only to drop what the comrades needed most. The medicines were immediately transported to hospitals and various field medical stations, and the wounded were waiting for their lives!

Tito's close comrade-in-arms, his staff officer Zhujovic, was seriously wounded, and people like Tito, who were born as hardware workers, knew that those precious medicines were life-savers!

In the early days of the telegram to Moscow, Tito mentioned several times that he hoped to get the anesthetic and the magic penicillin that the partisans needed most, but he did not expect to airdrop enough penicillin to his troops, because for the Soviet Union penicillin was not enough.

When Tito learned that there were exactly 5,000 copies of penicillin and a large number of other medicines airdropped under Lin Jun's intervention, he was a little incredulous! The three liaison officers are not only proficient in guerrilla warfare, one of them is also a communications technician, and the other two can be used as surgeons at critical moments.

"I had the Air Force airdrop a total of 8,000 copies of penicillin to Yugoslavia." Thousands of kilometers away, Lin Jun said in a conversation with Gusev.

"So much? Marshal, the leaders of the partisans in Yugoslavia will be very grateful to you. ”

"They shouldn't thank me, they should thank our drug research experts, who have overcome the technical difficulties of producing penicillin in large quantities. The fighters were able to get enough penicillin, and the number of wounded who died in the absence of antibiotics should be much reduced. ”

……

When the German High Command received the news of the Red Army's counteroffensive, the German Army General Staff urged Hitler to order Army Group Center to withdraw from Minsk, and they had almost convinced the Führer.

However, Hitler ultimately vetoed the following proposal.

Now it was difficult for them to retreat, and the Red Army troops, while consolidating the encirclement, continued to advance westward, and von Bock had to withdraw his headquarters from Baranovic!

On the 25th, the Red Army's encirclement was temporarily stabilized, and the troops in the encirclement were already more than 40 kilometers away from the German troops outside, and the walls of the "steel pockets" were thick enough!

On the southern front, the Ukrainian Front finally broke the Romanian encirclement of Odessa on the 26th, and the Odessa troops, who had been fighting fiercely for months, finally received support from land. Although the Black Sea coast is not very cold, both sides will be exhausted, and they will invariably want to maintain a relatively calm front to recuperate temporarily.

On the Baltic coast, Tukhachevsky's "small fights" generally recaptured a depth of several tens of kilometers and the surface temporarily died down, and the troops began to build a winter defense line, waiting in the thick snow for the coming year.

However, Army Group North also seemed to want to indirectly support the hundreds of thousands of troops besieged in the south from the flank, and to advance eastward, creating a clearly large depth salient that threatened the entire front of the Soviets. But the bitter cold and thick snow made it impossible for them to effectively break through the winter defense line of the hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops commanded by Tukhachevsky.

The non-combat attrition of Army Group North had reached an unacceptable level, and the German commanders had to accept the reality and dig bunkers to transport supplies in preparation for the harsh winter: for the next three months, no one would want to march in the field in the freezing cold of minus tens of degrees Celsius unless they were insane.

Field Marshal von Loeb would not have dared to send a large number of troops to the south - the threat of the cold was one reason, and even more so because of the famous Marshal of the Soviet Union in front of him: Tukhachevsky and his troops clearly deserved the title of "madman" in the eyes of the Germans, and they were extremely dangerous and cunning madmen!

The Red Army would attack at the slightest opportunity, and even the cold could not stop them - some of Tukhachevsky's troops had participated in the Soviet-Finnish war, and the cold here was only a small matter to them, not to mention that the Soviets were better adapted to such a climate than the Germans: once the German front was empty, Tukhachevsky seemed to be keenly aware of it and made a reasonable decision, forcing von Loeb to take it step by step.

There seems to be little movement in the north, but everyone understands: whoever thinks that the "Red God of War" is conservative is very wrong! Although he did not command the troops to fight with such vigor and vigor as in the south, he was constantly accumulating the victories of the troops and depleting the living forces of the German army.

Once Tukhachevsky is given the right opportunity and the right time, von Loeb's life will never be better than von Bock!

Difficulties began to arise in the supply of the German troops in the encirclement, the speed of the German airdrop of supplies could not meet the needs of the besieged troops, and the Soviet air force and anti-aircraft artillery fire caused huge losses to the Luftwaffe. Cold, hunger, and injuries made the morale of the German army irreversibly declining.

On the evening of December 8, 1941, it had already darkened for a few hours, but it was just before half past six.

Lin Jun put down his work and looked at his watch.

Greeted Gusev: "Please come to my office in half an hour for dinner, I guess they should not have eaten yet." ”

I took out a few items from my cupboard, among which were the best Caspian caviar and Georgian wine.

"Andri, why are you going to add food today?" After Zhukov and Chuikov came in together, the general said as he looked at the red wine on the table and a dozen canned foods that had been heated in the kitchen.

"Hehe, to celebrate."

Beckoning the two generals to sit down with his attachés, he looked a little mysterious in the eyes of everyone, which was not in line with the usual style of the deputy commander-in-chief.

"Celebrate what? Marshal. Chuikov asked as he sat down.

"Don't worry, I guess everyone will know after eating. Eat slowly, we'll have time, and the Germans won't cause us any big trouble yet. If everyone still thinks there's nothing to celebrate after eating, just don't say it. ”

A meal is unfathomable, but what needs to be said has to be discussed. Chuikov planned to launch a large-scale attack on the city in two more days, and the German troops on the opposite side estimated that their combat effectiveness and will to fight had already dropped by a large margin.

Zhukov was very patient, he could detect the slightest abnormality, because he was the commander of the front, and he had received the secret instruction that the "red whirlwind" should not be ended without the final order of the high command.

"Is it time to celebrate the final annihilation attack? It can't be, it will take at least more than a month to completely trap the Germans. Zhukov thought as he ate.

His thinking was very correct, because although the morale of the German army was declining and logistical supply was difficult, there was not enough time to completely trap the Germans -- in the later stage of the Battle of Stalingrad, it was more than two months after the siege and the general offensive of annihilation was launched.

The shrill ringing of the phone seemed to ring suddenly, and as was customary, Gusev left his seat and picked up the phone.

"What, you say it again. yes, okay, got it. ”

Gusev turned his head and saw that everyone was looking at him, and he probably didn't even realize that he was staring at his lieutenant commander with a kind of "fanatical god-looking" look!

Lin Jun's palm stretched out, signaling him to shut up, and Gu Shev forcibly held back the words that reached his throat.

Looking down at his watch, "Say it." ”

"Marshal, Moscow received a report that not so long ago Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, where the headquarters of the Pacific Fleet in the Hawaiian Islands of the United States is located." Gusev's tone was well controlled, and the Cheka elite did not react out of the ordinary, but everyone could tell that he was talking about this report with great admiration to the deputy commander-in-chief!

"From the listening post to Moscow, and then verify, the news reached me in 27 minutes, and Alexander they were very efficient." Lin Jun thought: The time on the watch is 20:25, and the ridiculous and famous plain-code telegram should have spread around the world at 19:58 Moscow time.

"The Japanese woke up a sleeping giant, and now he is full of rage." Yamamoto Fifty-six himself may have never said it, but Lin Jun would have said it while sitting at the humble table in his office.

Celebrate, celebrate what? -- Everyone in the office will understand why the deputy commander invited everyone to dinner and celebrate!

"Comrades, for the stupid bombs of the Japanese, a toast!"

Lin Jun picked up the red wine glass that had been poured by the staff officer at the beginning, stood up and toasted to his comrades - he hadn't drunk for a long time, but it was worth a drink to celebrate today.

(Another 8,000-word chapter, ask for a monthly pass again, this will be the only smoke and dust seen in front of the chasing soldiers, and the situation is grim!) (To be continued.) )