Chapter 42: Loss Counting
Early in the morning of the 1st New Year's Day, Lynn met Wohlrich, her former classmate and roommate in the general officer class. As the commander of the special squad directly under the Nuremberg operation, he led his team to set up an ambush on the road leading from the airport to the city on the day of the operation, holding back hundreds of Allied soldiers for four hours with mines and machine guns, and then retreating calmly at dawn. He then made secret sneak along, making contact with Task Force Wiesenfeld on the way and acting as cover on the flank, protecting Goering and his party to the secret camp north of Munich.
"Sir, the Imperial Marshal threatens to go on a hunger strike, and wants to leave the secret hiding place immediately to join the Führer." As soon as Wohlrich opened his mouth, he put Lynn in a seemingly tricky situation, and even Tanze, who was sitting together for breakfast, looked very surprised.
"It's really a rare reckless thing in the world, since I can't wait to die, then it's no wonder that I'm not going to die." Lynn muttered in his heart, but this matter was not trivial, he had already decided to act in secret, and no one would be implicated whether he succeeded or not, so he could not reveal his true intentions even in front of people he trusted immensely.
Thinking that Lynn's face was stiff because he was embarrassed by this, Wolrich sat down and explained helplessly: "We had strictly kept the secrets of the base, Tromsø and the Führer according to your instructions, but the soldiers inevitably chatted a few words when they were not in private, but they were heard by the Imperial Marshal who came out to wander at night, and at that time he grabbed the soldier like crazy and asked, the young man was frightened and revealed a lot of information to him, and now Marshal Keitel should also know about them." ”
The orderly brought fresh milk, boiled shelled eggs, and hot bread to the trio, and Lynn sat in her usual position, her eyes resting on the white eggs for a long time. Seeing this, Walbashi and Tanze did not move their knives and forks, and the three of them sat separately like sculptures until Lynn spoke again.
"What's the reaction of the people?"
Wolrich hurriedly replied, "They all seem to be relatively calm, but the Imperial Marshal's restlessness and sometimes shouting day and night have a very bad effect on the rest and mental state of the others, and Victor and I both feel that it is better to put the Imperial Marshal in a private room, and we are afraid that he will misunderstand and make it worse." What do you think? ”
Lynn didn't answer directly, but picked up the knife and fork back to his senses: "Let's have breakfast first!" ”
And the German civilians who were in the country and endured the plight of lack of supplies, whether in Northern Europe or North America, the Reich personnel were still relatively adequate in terms of material security, at best, they suffered more in the mountains and forests during the Nuremberg operation, Lynn was not interested in the food in front of him, and Wolrich and Tanze were only tastelessly muttering.
Sweeping the food on the plate, Lynn picked up a napkin and wiped her mouth, and said in a tone similar to a storytelling: "We have a secret tunnel on the Swiss border, the entrance is in the woods near Brumberg, more than six kilometers long, and it is a safe shortcut to Switzerland to avoid the border guards, and it is through that secret passage through which many officials and SS members sneaked out of Germany to Switzerland at the end of the war." Later, a large number of Allied troops entered Württemberg and placed a tight guard in the German-Swiss border area, and the area where the entrance was located was also classified as a military exclusion zone, and if you wanted to cross the border, you had to find another way. ”
Neither Walrich nor Tanzer, who had spent most of the post-war period in North America, was completely aware of this, and the latter's identity allowed him to play a completely listener role at this breakfast. Wolrich put down his knife and fork after breakfast: "Was that secret tunnel later discovered by the Allies?" ”
"Nobody knows—at least not on our side." Lynn replied.
Wolrich speculated on Lynn's train of thought: "The route previously arranged for the Imperial Marshal was to go to Frankfurt via Munich and then leave the continent from Belgium - if they were to be evacuated earlier, would it be better to divert them to Switzerland?" ”
Lynn replied with a helpless expression: "It's not the best, but the highest success rate at present, if you want to ensure absolute safety, it's best to wait patiently for two or three months." ”
"I agree with you completely, but the Imperial Marshal... ・・・Can we use tranquilizers? Wolrich suddenly made an alternative suggestion.
Without much hesitation, Lynn categorically dismissed the suggestion: "One is that we are going to take the risk of getting a tranquilizer that is rarely used by civilians, and the other is that it may not be effective, and after such a fuss from the Imperial Marshal, I think the patience of the others has been greatly weakened." Let's leave this problem to the base camp! If it goes well, you should receive a reply soon. ”…,
"Alas!" Wallrich sighed, his intentions were self-explanatory.
Given this opportunity, Lynn deliberated over and drafted a concise report that he felt would both explain the situation and relieve himself of responsibility as much as possible after the incident, and asked the communications officer to send a secret telegram to the base camp using the "super dumb" transmitter that had arrived secretly from northern Europe. The response from the Imperial Headquarters did not take long, and later that day, a telegram was delivered to Lynn, and the content was equally concise:
The personal safety of the Marshal and his party must be the primary consideration, and if necessary, extraordinary measures may be taken to calm the mood, and when the situation allows, adjust the strategy as appropriate to help them reach the north as soon as possible.
The Telegraph Department was named the Emperor's base camp, and Lynn could see at a glance that it was instructed by the Führer, and that only the Führer would give such an order taking into account the friendship of his comrades-in-arms for many years. If it were up to Goebbels or Rommel, the Ten would have quietly thrown the dangerous group back into the Allied prison.
Since the Führer was interested in saving the lives of Goering and the others, Lynn was not in a hurry to deploy and let the contingents continue to operate according to the plan, with Wolrich temporarily on the command to help, and his 24-man direct detachment continuing to act as an additional protective force on the farmstead on the northern outskirts of Munich. Under these circumstances, Lynn believed that Goering's temper would not be consumed by time, and that he would become more and more manic, and that he would report to the base camp with a little more vinegar, and the Führer would be able to relent.
During the New Year, millions of officers and soldiers on the battlefields of Eastern Europe enjoyed a peaceful atmosphere for a few moments, and as the wind and snow ended, fierce fighting between the Eastern and Western camps resumed in the western Ukrainian region. The Western allies have an absolute advantage in the total number of air forces, but the weather has just improved, and the available airfield runway facilities on the front line are limited, which makes them only able to dispatch about a third of their fighters in the first few days, and although the Soviet aviation forces suffered heavy losses in the summer and autumn wars, their experience in field airfield raid repairs and maintenance in bad weather is obviously more adequate The use of a large number of second-line troops and German volunteers, the battlefield attendance rate of the Soviet Air Force is much higher than that of the allies, On January 4, Romania declared war on the United States, Britain, France, Poland and other Western allies, officially joining the Soviet bloc, and at the same time playing the disgraceful role of "three family slaves" again after World War II.
Under the cover of the American and British air forces, more than 300,000 British and French troops under the command of Field Marshal Alexander slowly retreated to the Polish-Ukrainian border, but the flank troops failed to finally hold the key support point of Namiref. In the tragic and unprecedented Battle of Namirif, more than 50,000 Western Allied forces, mainly the French 4th Army and the British armored forces, were killed or missing, and the number of wounded was even more staggering, while the Soviet army, which was determined to win, also lost 120,000 troops and nearly 1,000 tank fighting vehicles, and the elite 5th Guards Tank Army was almost incapacitated. At this cost, the Soviets finally captured Namirev, directly threatening the retreat channel of the remnants of the Allied southern front, they were forced to detour to the south, and the longer the retreat route, the longer the time and the risk of the journey, the more time and risk were taken, and finally on a dark and windy night, the Soviet tanks broke through the two defense lines of the Allied forces and blocked the retreat path of more than 400,000 Allied remnants. The Allied forces, surrounded and separated by a strong will to survive, launched a fierce attack in both directions, but the Soviet heavy tanks withstood the opponent's counterattack with invincible momentum. As a large number of Soviet infantry arrived in the starry night, the Allied officers and soldiers in the encirclement gradually fell into despair in the futile struggle again and again, and the tragic scene of a few months ago was played out in a strikingly similar way!
The Soviet Army's summer and autumn annihilation war was about to break off the arms of the Allies, and this time the Soviet Defense Military Council, which gathered a number of famous generals, soon showed greater ambitions, and when the encirclement on the Southern Front was gradually consolidated, the Soviet Army broke the prediction of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces that the opponent could not launch two large-scale offensives at the same time, and the Soviet Northern Front, reinforced by the reserve front, broke through from southwestern Russia and northwestern Belarus on January 7 to launch a fierce attack on the allied forces that had reoccupied Latvia. With only a small amount of air support, these two Soviet troops, with a total strength of more than 600,000, successively conquered Daugavpils and Derkapils, less than 60 hours after the start of the battles, the combat assault groups with the 1st Guards Red Banner Don Tank Army, the 9th Guards Red Banner Uman Tank Army, and the 3rd and 8th Guards Mechanized Armies as sharp knives had advanced to the Baltic Sea port and the city of Riga, the capital of Latvia, although the subsequent siege battle was once deadlocked under the obstruction of the Allied navies. Soviet officers and men still swept away the last obstacles overnight with great tenacity, and the light bomber groups of the Soviet naval aviation also took advantage of the early morning and dusk to inflict heavy losses on the Allied fleets. …,
At this point, more than 100,000 officers and soldiers of the Allied Northern Front Army, which had entered Latvia for the second time and had advanced into Estonia, were caught in the second encirclement of the Soviet army, and they could only rely on a few small ports on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Riga and air transport for supplies, while the Polish 4th Army, which was trying to launch a counterattack from the direction of Lithuania, also almost collapsed under the strong attack of the Soviet army, and nearly 100,000 people were killed and captured. In view of the fact that the Soviet rapid assault forces were able to consolidate the front quickly after forming an encirclement, and that the strategic reserves had been held back by the Romanian political situation and the troops on the southern front, the Allied command did not let the troops on the northern front return to seek a breakthrough from the northern border area of Riga and Lithuania, but ordered them to storm the western ports of Estonia, and the American and British fleets operating in the Baltic Sea also made every effort to cooperate in the operation. Within a few days, the trapped US forces captured the port of Pärnu in the northeast of the Gulf of Riga, and although the Soviet troops wantonly destroyed the port facilities before retreating, with the experience of the Dunkirk retreat, the Allies were very confident in the short-term evacuation of more than 100,000 people, and the task force, which included nearly half of the main force of the US Navy, supported a tenacious air umbrella, enabling the retreating troops on the shore to build trestle bridges and repair seawalls day and night. After that, the large and medium-sized landing craft that had participated in the Normandy landings and had shown their skills in the Königsberg landings and the Gulf of Riga landings launched a massive retreat.
For the changing war situation in Eastern Europe, Lynn, who is far away in the Munich countryside, can only show infinite envy while silently paying attention. Once upon a time, he dreamed of becoming a top god of war in command of a million lions, and made powerful enemies bend with his amazing command skills, but the opportunity to travel through time and space did not make his dream come true, but he tasted the pain and bitterness of an ordinary soldier struggling under the general trend of defeat was determined. It's like the helplessness of the grassroots of a poor boy who has struggled for many years to sit and drink coffee with the goddess has plagued Lynn for a long time, even if he takes a shortcut to the top, he only has a special operations force of hundreds of people under his command......
"Sir, sir, big event!"
Selot timefully dragged Lynn out of the bitter entanglement of self-worth, his hands empty, and he reported in words only: "The Allied command in Germany issued a very sudden proclamation -- after a trial by the International War Tribunal, the former German Führer Marshal Dönitz, the former German Deputy Führer Hess, the former Luftwaffe commander Field Marshal Goering, the former German High Command Chief of Staff Field Marshal Keitel, the former German Navy commander Marshal Raeder, the former German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and others were guilty of war crimes, Former German Chancellor Papen and former German Economy Minister Schacht were acquitted, and Papen was appointed to be responsible for the formation of the German Provisional Government, and was exempted from the war crimes committed by Admiral Dönitz, Admiral Raeder, Ribbentrop, and Fritzcher, but was restricted from participating in German political, military, and diplomatic political activities for life. Goering, Keitel, Rosenberg, Jodl, Frank and others were sentenced to death, and Rudolf was sentenced to death. Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment. ”
Seeing that Therot finished speaking in one breath, Lynn asked rhetorically, "You can't be mistaken, right?" ”
"No!" Selot replied in a resolute tone, "It's easy to remember, those who didn't escape were rewarded accordingly, and all those who escaped were sentenced to death, and it is estimated that an order has been issued within the Allies that they can be shot on the spot once they are captured!" ”
It is indeed not easy to confuse the lengthy list in this way, and Lynn pondered it carefully, and soon realized that although the results of the Allied surprise trial were not much different from history, especially the poor Rudolph who mysteriously went to England during the war. Hess, who was sentenced to life imprisonment even if he refused the chance to escape, was clearly jealous of the former German deputy Führer's appeal among the Nazi remnants, and the acquittal of Papen and Schacht was expected, and whether or not the former German propaganda officer Fritcher was guilty of war crimes seemed less important, the point was that they were both free, and as the last chancellor of the Weimar Republic, Papen was authorized to form the first post-war German government, This was a positive for Germany in chaos, and in Lynn's view, it was a fatal mistake made by the heads of the Allies in desperation and haste: Papen was certainly not a German official in the Third Reich after and after World War II, and he was a German official during the Third Reich, and at the same time released Dönitz, Raeder, and Ribbentrop, the slightest misinterpretation of such a tolerant attitude is a terrible indulgence of the ideological tendencies of the German people.
"The allies are really shooting themselves in the foot this time!" This sentence came out of Lynn's mouth, and Therot may not understand the meaning of the sentence, but his personal inclination can be seen in his positive emotions.
With a god-given opportunity, Lynn clapped her hands and decided to hold it firmly in her palm.
"First, determine the content of this information, and don't ignore every detail. Second, to screen out the intelligence agents and reliable entrepreneurs who developed after the war, if Bapen can really form a provisional government, he must find a way to cram them into this government, and it will be worth the cost. Third, it was rumored that Goering and others had absconded to Italy and were preparing to flee to Africa by sea. ”
Driven by Lynn's emotions, especially the fact that the second order was obviously conducive to the revival of the Empire, Selot also became excited: "Okay, this is easy to do, you just wait to hear the good news!" ”
Optimistic and positive emotions can easily make people excited, especially when the good news suddenly falls, and Lynn is not a person who gets too excited easily, walked to the terrace to breathe fresh air, he quickly calmed down, and asked Tanze to prepare a few maps and letters, using the basic skills he had cultivated while working in the staff to forge false road maps and confidential letters, once the Allies turned these things out of the objects carried by the escapees, They would assume that the real purpose of Goering's party was to join up with the remnants of the Third Reich who had fled to Switzerland, in order to use the large sums of money secretly stored in Swiss banks by the Nazi dignitaries to move to Spain or South America to live a super-rich life - rather than returning to Germany to recall the old Ministry. Clear