"Report to the General Secretary with Mikhail. Comrade Lyovakov (commander of the Belarusian Front) reported that the 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th and 11th armies of the Red Banner Special Mechanized Cavalry Group had completed their full pre-war mobilization by August 20. The 16 infantry divisions, 8 cavalry divisions and 8 tank brigades belonging to the four army groups and one mechanized cavalry group have all arrived at their designated positions.

Semyon. Comrade Timoshenko (commander of the Ukrainian Front) reported that the 6th, 9th, and 12th armies had completed all their pre-war mobilization by August 21. The 12 infantry divisions, 8 cavalry divisions and 4 tank brigades belonging to the three army groups have all arrived at their designated positions.

As of 21 August, there were 28 infantry divisions, 16 cavalry divisions, and 12 tank brigades, totaling 510,000 men, 3,739 tanks, and 380 armored vehicles, ready for combat at any time. In addition, the Red Air Force has mobilized 2,000 combat aircraft to various front-line airfields in Belarus and Ukraine......"

On August 25, a few days before the outbreak of World War II, in the Kremlin, People's Commissar of Defense Voroshilov was reporting to Stalin and other members of the Political Bureau on preparations for war.

Stalin smoked his pipe and listened to Voroshilov's speech with a blank face. The war that will take place is the first battle of the Red Army after the "Great Purge".

The "Great Purge" was largely over at the end of 1938, during which the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army underwent a "rebirth" of changes. A total of 35,000 officers were suppressed during the campaign, including 80% of the senior officers, 3 of the 5 marshals, all the commanders of military districts and the vast majority of army commanders and other top echelons of the army - 13 out of 15 army commanders were killed; Of the 85 commanders, 57 were executed; 110 of the 159 division commanders were executed; More than 40,000 senior and middle-ranking officers at and above the battalion level were punished to varying degrees.

Of course. The purge of the army was also not indiscriminate. Stalin's purpose in this campaign was to eliminate the different factions in the army, in order to achieve the goal of purifying the ranks and unifying the minds - with the exception of the Stalin-Voroshilov-Budyonny faction, all the other factions in the Red Army were dealt a heavy blow and no longer posed any threat.

It can be said that the present Workers' and Peasants' Red Army is more united than ever. It really became a taming tool of the D Central Committee of the Soviet Union with Stalin as the core.

Now Stalin could let them do anything, but could the "Soviet blade" of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army remain sharp after all the "purges"?

Stalin was not 100 percent sure.

"Comrades, the time has come to fulfill Lenin's last wishes!" Stalin muttered, "Just now, the German ambassador Schulenburg officially informed us that Germany will attack Poland on September 1, and this is the final decision!" ”

His eyes looked around the conference room, and the meeting was attended by the members of the Political Bureau who had just been elected in March. The political bureau has also undergone a "purge", and compared with the previous one, Kirov, Kuibyshev, Ordzhonikidze, Kosiol and Chubal have been missing. Two new people were added.

One of them was Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the D Central Committee of Ukraine. This comrade with a short figure and a bare head only entered the political bureau at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. He was young, only 45 years old, and only joined the Bolshevik Party in 1918, not the kind of old qualification who did not have much energy. It would be most appropriate to take over the right-bank Ukraine - this would not be easy to do, because the Soviet Union did not occupy the right-bank Ukraine, but liberated it.

"Comrade Khrushchev!" Stalin named the first secretary of Ukraine. "How? Is it sure that the people of right-bank Ukraine will voluntarily vote to join the USSR? ”

"Comrade General Secretary, please rest assured." Khrushchev said in a tone of admiration. "In accordance with your instructions, the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks of Ukraine has organized and trained 100,000 cadres. They were to form more than 10,000 teams and follow the Red Army into the right bank. At the same time, the NKVD organized tens of thousands of people, divided into several thousand squads. Together with the Ukrainian cadres, they will carry out the task of social transformation in right-bank Ukraine. ”

"The target for the suppression of rebellion is set at 800,000." Stalin smoked a cigarette and gave the "enemy indicator", "I think there should be so many enemies waiting for us to suppress." ”

In the USSR. The "enemy" also has indicators! Usually it can be more than some, but not too much.

Because right-bank Ukraine has long been under the rule of White Poland, there must be many "enemies" there, such as landlords, kulaks, counter-revolutionaries, capitalists, aristocrats, and this and that element.

So Comrade Stalin set a target of 800,000 people. Not much, because Stalin knew that Khrushchev was very hard at repression, and he exceeded the target of destroying the enemy while he was in Moscow (the Political Bureau believed that there were 35,000 enemies in Moscow Oblast, while Khrushchev captured 41,000, and shot 3,500 more than the 5,000 people requested)...... It is estimated that this time Khrushchev could get a "big harvest" in right-bank Ukraine and catch at least 1 million "enemies".

Having decided on the number of "enemies", Stalin then lowered his tone: "Now I propose that the Political Bureau adopt a resolution to liberate the workers and peasants of the oppressed right-bank Ukraine and overthrow the colonial rule of the Polish reactionaries!" ”

Historically, the Soviet Union invaded Poland in the name of protecting the "minority" - at that time the Ukrainians and Belarusians were the "minority" of Poland and at the same time the "minority" of the Soviet Union. But the situation in this time and space is different, Poland is a federal state, the Ukrainian Free State is the main body of the Polish Federation, and the Ukrainians are not the "few people" of Poland.

So Stalin decided to consider both Right-Bank Ukraine and Western Belarus as Polish colonies.

"Agreed!" "Agreed!" "Totally agree!"

The members of the Political Bureau expressed their approval one after another and unanimously passed it.

Stalin nodded, and added: "The Germans will go to war on September 1st, and we can deliver an ultimatum to Poland on September 2nd, asking them to expel the Free State of Ukraine from the Polish Confederation...... This is Poland's last chance! ”

……

"Rudolph, how about the new plane? Is it easy to drive? ”

Tsosen, Heinsberg Manor, Hersmann's family is eating around the table. This is the last reunion of the whole family before the start of the war!

Hersman is now the head of a large family, and Chloe has bore him 5 children, which is really good, but it is necessary. He looked at his eldest son, blonde, well-proportioned, and handsome, and Rudolf, who was only 19 years old this year, put on the uniform of the German naval aviation - he had graduated from Lichfield two years earlier, then entered the air force non-commissioned officer school in Karlsruhe for 24 months, and had just been assigned to the supplementary training unit in August this year - Hersmann knew that he would most likely lose him in this world war!

Hersmann's second son, Reinhardt, is now also enrolled in the Lichfield Cadet Military Academy - and if the war on this plane lasts long enough, he may also go to war.

And Hersman's other three children are all girls, the eldest daughter Maria, the second daughter Elizabeth, and the youngest daughter Amalia...... They are not the heirs of a suitable Junker officer family.

"Father, Uncle Fock's Zero is a very good aircraft, with very low wing loads, good stall characteristics, and extremely responsive handling at low speeds." Rudolph was eating his mother's steak and his brow fluttered as he introduced his father to his new plane, a "Fokker Zero" produced by the BF-FK consortium.

Although he is only 19 years old this year, because he was born in the Hersman family, he is Anthony. Fokker's nephew, so he has long been an "old pilot". With more than 1000 hours of flying experience. Therefore, he was assigned to the 1st Combat Aviation Regiment of the Naval Air Force, which is full of elites, as supplementary pilots, and theoretically will only go to the battlefield after completing supplementary training, but it is difficult to say whether it will really fight.

"Its plane maneuver ability, both in terms of gyration radius and gyration rate, is first-class, and is said to surpass the Bf-109, and it also climbs very fast, and can climb almost instantaneously as a plus aerobatic aircraft, the only drawback is poor dive performance," Rudolph said. I think the Air Force brothers flying the Bf-109E will have to suffer during this exercise......"

He didn't know there was going to be a war yet!

The army was assembled in the name of exercises, and more than 2,500 aircraft, including some of the aircraft of the German naval air force, have now been concentrated at various airfields in the eastern part of the German mainland.

Rudolph's unit was also transferred to a military airfield near Berlin. Because the planes of the naval air force are all long-range and can take off from Berlin to bomb Lviv, there is no need to go to the front-line airfield with the short-legged air force planes.

Today, Rudolph took a leave of absence and went to his home not far from the station to have dinner with his parents -- he did not know that there was going to be a war, and neither did the commander of the 1st Combat Aviation Regiment of the Navy, to which he belonged. Because the troops had not yet entered the final state of imminent combat, they were granted a half-day leave to replenish the pilot Rudolph.

"Okay," Hersman nodded calmly, he couldn't tell his son military secrets, "you must be safe. ”

"There will be no problem," Rudolph said with a smile, "I'm a veteran, I can fly at the age of 16." Of all the replenishment pilots of the 1st Combat Aviation Regiment of the Navy, there was no pilot with better skills than me. ”

"Then I'll be relieved," Hirschman paused, "but you still have to be careful, don't fly too low, the Zero is not armored, and it is easy to be hit when flying at low altitudes." ”

"Hit?" Rudolph was stunned for a moment, and then smiled, "I have never been hit in simulated air combat training......"

At this moment, a maid of the Hirschman family suddenly walked into the dining room quickly, and she said to Hirschman: "Marquis, there is a telephone, it is looking for Young Master Rudolph, it is from the army!" ”

Hersman knew that this was an order to cancel the vacation...... (To be continued.) )